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i rv : V : r n ln l T ll ANNEX LIBRARY B 099269 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Gift of ALISON P. CASARETT Cornell University Library GV 1471.H63 1886 Holidays at the grange :or A week s del 3 1924 015 Oil 509 Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http: www.archive.org details cu31924015011509 AVYNDIIAM CilAXciE. HOLIDAYS AT THE GRANGE OR A WEEK S DELIGHT. taes and stories for Parlor and Fireside. EMILY MAYER HIGGINS. PHILADELPHIA PORTER COATES. f Copyright PORTER COAXES. 0 PEEFACE. In preparing this little book for the you7:g I have followed no deep and grave plan of instruction. My aim has been innocently to amuse. I have experi enced much pleasure in writing it and shall be happy if I can confer a little upon others when they read it. The stories have all been told to children in a simpler form before they were written and the games have been played in mixed circles of all ages. The most serious purpose in the book has been to show how old and young may join together in their recreations in the freedom of domestic life and thus form a true society to the duties and hap piness of which all can contribute : the mature bring ing their knowledge wisdom and experience of life the youth his ardor freshness and ready wit and the child his or her light hearted mirth. To make home the brightest spot upon eaiith the centre of joy 1 f PEEFAOE. to all its members there must be many rallying points. Religion must sanctify intelligence must direct and kind affection must pervade the every day life of its inmates. I presume that the domes tic altai has been reared and that love is the guiding star of the household and I merely ask permis sion to spend a few evenings vsith the happy family to introduce to their notice some amusements which may be novel and cannot prove injurious. One thing is certain they can be participated in at home. E. M. Philadelphia November 1858. CONTENTS CHAPTER L nam The Gathering. Christinas Eve. Consequences. How do you like it 9 CHAPTER n. Christmas Day. Rhymes. Cento. Genteel Lady. The Fairy Wood 21 CHAPTER HI. The Rhyming Game. Orikama or the White Water Lily an Indian Tale 62 CHAPTER IV. Proverbs. Twenty Questions. The Spectre of Aloan tra or the Oonde s Daughters a Tale of Spain 98 CHAPTER V. A Skating Adventure. What is my Thought like Questions. The Orphan s Tale or the Vicissitudes of Fortune 140 CHAPTER VI. Sunday. Bible Stories. Capping Bible Verses. Bible Class 181 8 COOTENTS. CHAPTER Vn. PAGB Bequel to the Orphan s Tale. WLo can he be Ele ments. The Astrologers 206 CHAPTER Vm. Confidante. Lead Merchant. Trades. The Rose of Hesperus a Eairy Tale 246 CHAPTER IX. New Tear s Day. Charaotera or Who am I Quo tations. Acting Charades. Riddles. 281 CHAPTER X. Whispering Gallery. Potentates. Three Young Men 295 GAMES AND STORIES. CHAPTER I. THE GATHERING. CHRISTMAS EVE. CONSEQUENCES. HOW DO TOU LIKE IT Not many miles from Philadelphia in a beautifully wooded and hilly country may be seen a large rambling mansion whose substantial walls show that it was built at a time when more attention was paid to the durability of dwellings than at present. It is indeed quite an ancient house for this part of the world having been erected by a certain John Wynd ham a hundred years ago and it has remained in the fam ily ever since the owner of it generally inheriting the name of John a taste for rural life and the old homestead together. It was constructed in good taste and with great regard for comfort the broad hall the favorite resort in summer was ornamented with family portraits of many ages back and a complete suit of armor visor and all struck awe into the hearts of young visitors who almost expected its former occu pant to resume possession with his gauntleted hand to draw the sword from its scabbard and seizing the flag over his head to drive the modern usurpers from the house. Large ant lers bows and arrows and rusty fowling pieces against the 10 GAMES AND STOEIES. wall intimated that the descendants of the grim warrior had exercised their valor in the chase while a guitar with blue ribbon in the corner told that gentler days had come and spoke of peace domestic joys and woman s influence. Many were tbe bright sunshiny chambers in that cheea ful liome but I will describe one apartment only the sitting room with which we are chiefly concerned. The furniture is quaint and massive but it is the rich mellow light stream ing through the room that principally attracts the eye. Is it the western sun tinted by the colored glass of the bay win dow or is it the ruddy hickory fire What a remarkable chimney place I few such can be seen now a days they had gone out of date a hundred years ago but it was ancient John Wyndham s fancy as far as possible to possess a fac simile of the family mansion in England in which his child ish days had been spent. What elaborate carving upon the huge mantel piece l hunters with their guns and dogs shep herds and shepherdesses with crooks and sheep scriptural cenes and rural incidents afford endless .amusement to the groups gathered before the fire. Before did I say around is the right expression for so large is the chimney that while crackling up piled logs blaze upon the hearth a number might be accommodated on the benches at the side as well as in front. It is the most sociable gathering place in the world and the stitfest and most formal person would s. ou re lax Uiere while fingers are thawed hearts are melted by that fire warm and kind affections are drawn out sparkles of wit fly about the room as if in emulation of the good hickory : it is a chirant y corner most provocative of ancient legends of frightful ghost stories of tales of knight errantry and ro mantic love of dangere and of hair breadth escapes in short of all that can draw both old and young away from their GAMES AlfD STOBIES. 11 every day cares into the brighter world of fiction and poesy. In the recess on one side is a small library comfortable enough to entice the student from the merry group so near him on the other is a room looked upon with great affection by the juvenile members of the family for here does Aunt Lucy manufacture and keep for distribution those delicious cakes never to be refused at lunch time and those pies jellies whips and creams which promise to carry down her name to posterity as the very nonpareil of housekeepers. Three persons are sitting in the room whom in common politeness I should introduce to the reader : very pleasant people are they to know and to visit. Uncle John and Aunt Lucy Wyndham the master and mistress of the house are remarkable for kindness and make their nephews and nieces and whole troops of friends feel perfectly at home at once they are Uncle John and Aunt Lucy to all their young ac quaintances and dehght in the title. Perhaps they would not have been generally called so had they any children oi their own but they have none and the only young person in the house at present is Mary Dalton Cousin Mary an orphan niece of Mrs. Wyndham whom they have brought up from a child. She looks like her aunt plump rosy good natured and sensible she is just seventeen and very popular with the whole cousinhood. She has many accomplishments : she does not talk French Spanish or Italian but she knows how to play every game that ever was invented can tell stories to suit every age can soothe a screaming child sooner than any one else can rattle off cotillions on the piano forte of a winter s evening without thinking it hard that she cannot join in the dance and lastly can lay down an interesting book or piece of crochet work to run on an errand for Aunt or untangle the bob tails of a kite without showing any signs 12 GAMES AND STORIES. of crossness. Self is a very subordinate person with her and indeed she seems hardly to realize her separate individuality she is everybody s Cousin Mary and frowns vanish and smiles brighten up the countenance wherever she appears. A very happy looking group they are but restless this after noon of the 24 th of December Uncle John frequently goes to the hall door Aunt Lucy lays down her knitting to listen and Cousin Mary does not pretend to read the book she holds but gazes out of the window down the long avenue of elms as if she expected an arrival. Old Ceesar the last of the servants as Mr. Wyndham styles him a white haired negro who was born in the house and is devoted to the family always speaking of our house our carriage and our children as if he were chief owner vibrates constantly between the kitchen and the porter s lodge feeling it to be his espe cial duty and prerogative to give the first welcome to the guests. And soon the sound of wheels is heard and merry voices resound through the hall and cheeks njsy with the cold are made yet rosier by hearty kisses it is the young Wyndhams come to spend their Christmas holidays at the Grange with Uncle John. There is Cornelia a bright intelligent girl of sixteen full of fun with sparkling black eyes. John a boy of fourteen matter of fact and practical a comical miniature of Uncle John whom he regards with veneration as the greatest wisest and best of living men and only slightly in ferior to General Washington himself and George his twin brother and very devoted friend a good boy in the main but so very full of mischief he would get into a thousand scrapes if his more sober companion did not I estrain him. We must DOt ovei look little Amy the sweet child of twelve with flow ing golden hair and languishing eyes the gentle unspoiled GAMES AND STOEDES. 13 pet and playmate of all. Her cheek is pale for she has ever been the delicate flower of the family and the winter winds must not visit her too roughly : she is one to be carefully nurtured. And the more so as her mind is highly imagina tive and much in advance of her age already does the light of genius shine forth in her eye. Scarcely are these visitors well ensconced in the chimney corner after their fur wrappings are removed before the sound of wheels is again heard and shouts of joy announce the arrival of the Greens. That tall slender intellectual girl with pale oval face and expressive eyes is Ellen. Her cousins are very proud of her for she has just returned from boarding school with a high character for scholarship and has carried away the prize medal for po etry from all competitors the children think that she can speak every language and she is really a refined and accom plished girl. She has not seen Mary or Cornelia for a couple of years and great are the rejoicings at their meeting they are warm friends already. Her manly brother Tom although younger looks older than she does : a fine handsome fellow he is. The younger Greens are almost too numerous to par ticularize HaiTy and Louis Anna and Gertrude merry children all noisy and frolicsome but well inclined and toler ably submissive to authority they ranged from nine years old upward. Just as the sun was setting and Aunt Lucy had almost given them up the third family of cousins ar rived the Boltons. Charlie Bolton is the elder of the two he will be called Charlie to the end of his days if he live to be a white haired grandfather he is so pleasant and full of fun so ready with his joke and merry laugh he is Cornelia s great friend and ally and the two together would keep any house wide awake. His sister Alice is rather sentimental for which she is heartily laughed at by her harum skarum brother 2 14 gjImes and stoeies. but she is at an age when girls are apt to take this turn fourteen she will leave it all behind her when she is older. Sentimentality may be considered the last disease of childhood measles hooping cough and scarlatina having been successfully overcome if the girl passes through this peril unscathed and no weakness is left in her mental consti tution she will pi i.ibably be a woman of sane body and mind. Alice is much given to day dreams and to reading novels by stealth she is very romantic and would dearly love to be a heroine if she could. The only objection to the scheme in her mind is that her eyes have a very slight cast and that her nose is un petit nez retrousse in other words something of a pug and Alice has always been under the impression that a heroine must have straight vision and a Grecian nose. Hers is a face that will look very arch and piquante when she acquires more sense and lays aside her lack a dais ical airs but at present the expression and the features are very incongruous. It is excessively mortifying but it can not be helped many times a day does she cast her eyes on the glass but the obstinate pug remains a pug and Alice is forced to conclude that she is not intended for a heroine. Yet she always holds herself ready for any marvellous adventure that may turn up and she is perfectly convinced that there must be concealed doors long winding passages in the walls andperhapsa charmingly horrible dungeon atThe Grange. Why not Such things are of constant occurrence in story books and that house is the oldest one she knows. She is determined on this visit to explore it thoroughly and perhaps she may become the happy discoverer of a casket of jewels or a skeleton or some other treasure. Thirteen young : ople there are in all with pleasant faces and joyful hearts and none of them I am happy to say GAMES AifD ST0KIE8. 15 were of the perfect sort you read of in bocks. Had they been their Aunt Lucy who was used to real children would have entertained serious fears for their longevity. They all required a caution or a reprimand now and then and none were so wise as not to make an occasional silly speech or to lo a heedless action. But they were good tempered and obliging as healthy children should always be and were sel dom cross unless they felt a twinge of toothache. How fast did their tongues run that first hour How much had all to tell and how much to hear And how happy did Uncle John appear as he sat in the centre of the group with little Amy on his lap leaning her languid head against his broad and manly chest while a cluster of the younger ones contended together for possession of the unoccupied knee. After the hearty cheerful country supper the whole party of visitors was escorted into a dark room adjoining the hall while Aunt Lucy and Cousin Mary were engaged in certain preparations well understood by the older guests who were too discreet to allay the curiosity of the younger ones who for the first time were allowed to share the hospitality of the Grange at Christmas. At last the folding doors were thrown open and the hall appeared to be in a blaze of light colored lamps were suspended in festoons from the ceiling showing how prettily the old portraits were adorned with evergreens. Even the man in armor looked less grim as if his temper was mollified by the ivy wreath wound around his helmet. But the chief object of interest was a stately tree at the end of the hall from whose trunk proceeded thirteen branches brilliantly illuminated with wax lights and pendant lamps of various hues while gilded fruit and baskets of flowers and confectionary looked to the uninitiated as if the fairies them selves had been at work. Many were the exclamations of 16 GAMES AND STOKIES. delight and intense the excitement the old hall echoeu with the shouts of the boys. Uncle John ever happy in the en joyment of others declared that he believed himself to be the youngest child there and that ho enjoyed the revels of Christmas Eve more than any of them. When the noise and rapture had somewhat subsided Cousin Mary proposed that they should try some games by way of variety. Chess checkers backgammon Chinese puz zles dominoes jack straws etc. sfere mentioned and each one of them was declared by different members of the group to be exceedingly entertaining but Charlie Bolton said that although he was neither Grand Turk nor perpetual Dieta tor he must put his veto upon all such games as being of an unsocial nature. It was all very well when only two per sons were together to amuse themselves with such things but for his part he did hate to see people ride in sulkies and play solitaire when they could have such agreeable society as was there gathered together making as he spoke a dashing bow to the girls. Has not any one wit enough to think of a game at which we can all assist Do you know how to play Consequences i said Mary. I ne er heard of it repKed Cornelia how do you play it With paper and pencils. Here is my writing desk full of paper and my drawing box with pencils I eady sharpened and you have nothing to do but all to write according to my directions and doubling down the paper to hand it to a neighbor so that each time you have a different slip. When it is finished I will read them aluud sujiplving some words which will make sense or what is much better ar rant nonsense of the whole. So begin by writing a term descriptive of a gentleman. GAMES AND STOEIKS. 17 Now write a gentleman s name some one you know oi some distinguished person. Next an adjective descriptive of a lady. And now a lady s name. Mention a place and describe it. Now write down some date or period of time when a thing might happen. Put a speech into the gentleman s mouth. Make the lady reply. Tell what the consequences were. And what the world said of it. And now allow me to enlighten the company. Here is one specimen The gallant and accomplished Nero met the beautifiil but rather coquettish Mrs. Wyndham at Gretna Green that place once so famous for runaway couples and matrimonial blacksmiths upon the 4th of July 1900 A. D. He said Dearest madam my tender heart will break if you refuse my hand but she replied La sir don t talk such nonsense The consequences were that their names were embalmed to gether in history and the world said It is exactly what I expected. Are you sure Mary said Mrs. Wyndham laughing that you are not taking any liberties with my name Here it is ma am you can see it yourself but I think you escaped very well. Here s another : The refined and dandified Jack the Giant Killer met the modest retiring Cleo patra Queen of Egypt at the Pyramids ah some one peeped those wonderful monuments of ages long since passed away on Christmas Day in the year One. He said I never entertained a very lofty opinion of your ladyship she replied I perfectly agree with the noble sentiments you 2 18 GAMES AND STOBIES. have just uttered : our hearts shall henceforward be united in the strictest friendship. The consequences were that they parted to meet no more and the partial world remarked What a pair of fools 1 Here is another : The brave daring thoughtless King Solomon met the elegant fashionable Queen Semiramis upon the top of Mont Blanc that lofty mountain crowned with perpetual snow on the 30th of February. He remarked Do you like the last style of bonnets Madam She an swered Sir do not press the matter. I am but young you can speak to my papa. The consequences were that they tooi an ice cream and went up to the clouds in an air balloon and the amiable world said Who would have be lieved it After reading all the papers which caused much diversion one of the party proposed playing How do you like it. While Tom Green was waiting in another room the remain der of the company fixed upon a word of double or treble meaning which it was his duty to discover by the answers given to three questions he was to ask of all in succession. If unable to guess the word at the end of the third round he would be crowned with the dunce oap and must recommence his questions : if on the contrary he hit upon the right word the person whose answer led him to conjecture it must take his place. Anna said Tom how do you like it Now don t tell me you like it very well or not at all give me some thing descriptive. I like it with a large capital. You do Then it may either be a word a state a pillar or a man of business. Cousin Alice how do you like it I like it shady and covered with moss. GAMES AIJD ST0KIE8. 19 And you Sister Ellen With vaults secure and well filled. What do you say Gertrude I like it covered with violets. How do you prefer it Charlie With a good board of directors. And you Amy Covered with strong and skilful rowers. What is your preference George I like it high and picturesque. How do you like it John With numerous branches. It can t be a tree how do you like it Mary Very green. And you Harry Of red brick or white marble. How contradictory What have you to answer Cor iielia I like it steep and rocky. And you Louis I like it warranted not to break. When do yoli like it Anna When I have an account in it. When do you like it Alice When I am in the country and feel weary. And you Ellen When I hold a check in my hand. And you Gertrude In the spring of the year when I feel languid and senti mental. When do you prefer it Charlie When I want a loan and can give good security. 20 GAMES AND STOEIES. And you Amy When I am in a boat and becalmed. And you George When I am at sea anxiously looking out for land. What say you John When I am a merchant engaged in large transactions. When do you like it Mary When my eye is weary of a flat dull country. And you Harry When I am a stockholder. So I should think if it paid a good dividend. And if I were to ask you my third question Where will you put it V one would place it under an umbrageous tree another by the sea a third by a river and a fourth on a good business street near the Exchange. My good friends I would be dull indeed if I did not guess it to be a rank and you Sister Ellen may take my place your well filled vaults first gave me the clue. After amusing themselves a little longer they adjourned to the sitting room as the tall old fashioned clock in the hall gave warning of the rapid flight of time and Mary as was her custom brought to her uncle the large family Bible. When he opened the hoi book the very youngest and wild est of the children listened with reverence to the solemn words and tried to join in the thanks which the good man ofi ered up to Heaven for bringing them together in health and peace and granting them so much happiness. And then kisses and good nights were exchanged and the young group was scattered but not without a parting charge to each from Aunt Lucy not to forget to hang up the stocking for Kriss Kinkle near the chimney place and not on any account to lock their doors for they might easily be taken sick in the night. GAMES AND STORIES. 21 CHAPTER II. CHRISTMAS DAT. RHTMES. CENTO. GENTEEL LAD . THB FAIRY WOOD. Sound were the slumbers that night at the Grange not withstanding the determination of little Amy to lie awake and catch Kriss Kinkle for once although as she said I know it must be Cousin Mary. Those happy days of inno cence and unsuspecting faith have passed away when chil dren believed in a Uteral Kriss Kinkle clad in furs and laden with presents for the good and sticks of wood for the naughty little urchins who refuse to learn their A B C s and to stand still while mamma combs out their hair. The infantry of America have quite given up their old fashioned credulity and as according to the obsolete saying of the older philoso phers nature abhors a vacuum and there must be some children in the world to keep the balance the spiiit rappers have kindly stepped into their vacant places and may be regard ed as the true and only children on this side the Atlantic. The frightful skepticism of the young ones with regard to Kriss Kinkle has come to such a pass that a little girl of three years old who had been kept as her relations thought in all the verdure becoming to her tender years upon her aunt telling her that she ought not to expect many gifts that season as it was such stormy weather that poor Kriss Kinkle could scarcely venture out replied : But Aunty could he not take grandma s can riage he would not get wet then If the merry old soul really came down the chimney at the Grange he showed great discernment in the gifts he bestow 22 GAMES AND STOEIES. ed for eacli found in the stocking some article that had been ardently desired. Ellen who was deeply interested in the study of Italian found a beautiful copy of Dante s Divina Commedia Mary who possessed a fine talent for drawing and frequently sketched from nature discovered that a com plete set of artist s colors and brushes had fallen to her lot George who was devoted to skating found a pair of skates real beauties as he said appended to his stocking all plainly saw that their individual tastes and peculiarities had been consulted in a very gratifying manner. Of course they did not neglect to express their pleasure and gratitude to their kind friends requesting them to inform that very worthy old gentleman Mr. Kriss Kinkle of their delight at his selec tion. Nor were Uncle John and Aunt Lucy forgotten : their nephews and nieces had all provided some little gifts as ex pressions of love. Mrs. Wyndham declared that she was quite set up in crochet bags and purses for a year to come and tastefully worked book markers with appropriate senti ments were very plentiful. Tom Green made himself ex ceedingly agreeable to the whole party by presenting to each some pretty little box thimble case or other ingenious trifle which he had made at his leisure with the aid of his turning lathe whereupon Charlie Bolton assumed an irresistibly ludicrous air of dejection and asserted that he felt quite crushed by Tom s superior gallanitry. Really a fellow is not much thought of now a days unless he can do something in the pretty line. I must get a turning lathe at once or else learn to carve brooches out of marbles and rings out of peach st ones and baskets out of cherry and apricot stones. If I can t get up that much artistic talent I might as well resign myself to complete insignificance all my life. Cornelia Wyndham highly approvii d of his intentions and ti ld him GAMES AND STORIES. 23 that when he had come to perfection in the fancy business she hoped he would remember her devoted and perfectly dis interested friendship her cousinly affection was of the warm est and truest quality especially when there were any hopas of cherry stone baskets. Full of enjoyment as they wore none were too intent upon fun and frolic to neglect accompanying their kind relatives to the pretty little country church for it was their unsle s habit to begin the day with religious exercises : he said it seemed to him ungrateful to spend it in unbroken jollity and to for get entirely the original motive of its institution. It was a very pleasant custom and very conducive to mutual attach ment for friends and relations to give and to receive presents : but this should be subordinate to the remembrance of God s Great Gift to the children of men which was celebrated on that happy day. So the young people passed a unanimous vote that church going was as regular a part of keeping Christmas as presents or mince pie and gladly set off to walk through the frosty air to the ivy covered church shaded by ancient trees. It was situated on a hill and was approached by numerous paths running across the fields and as Ellen gazed upon its spire standing in relief against the deep blue sky she thought of that beautiful line of Wordsworth Pointing its taper finger up to heaven I The chime of bells too joyfully pealing out appeared to be the voice of the church calling upon all who heard it to re turn thanks to Him who blesses the families of men it seemed to say Both young men and maidens old men and children let them praise the name of the Lord. What a mistake it is to think of religion only as a refuge from sorrow and a solace for the disappointments of the w 5rlJ It is that 24 GAMES AND STORIES. truly but it is also the sanctifier of joy : the happy young heart should be laid upon God s altar as well as the stricken spirit and the eye moistened with tears. That the services of the church had not a depressing effect upon the minds of any was very evident from the heart felt greetings and warm shakes of the hand which were exchanged by all as they left the house of prayer. It was a very pleasant sight to behold young and old rich and poor joined together in one common feeling of brotherhood under the genial influences of the sea son. A merry Christmas seemed not only to spring from every tongue but to sparkle in every eye. If I were to attempt to describe the varied pleasures of that day which was declared by Charlie Bolton to be the most glorious one he had ever spent I should be obliged to dip my pen not in ink but in a solution of rainbow or dancing sun beams or in any thing else that is proved to be the most joy ful thing in nature. At dinner table after being helped the second time to a sKce of splendid tuskey with oyster sauce little Louis Green the youngest of the party occasioned a general burst of laughter by laying down his knife and fork which certainly deserved a little rest if activity ever can earn it and leaning back in his chair saying with the greatest earnestness : Uncle if I were asked to point out the very happiest time of the whole year I would fix upon Christmas day at exactly this hour the dinner hour as the thing for me O you gormandizer said his sister Ellen you don t really think the dinner the best part of the day Indeed I do though replied Louis and I rather guess a good many people are of the same opinion. And sister Ellen if you were a boy and just come home from board in o Bobool where they always want you to eat potatoes I think GAMES AND STOEIES. 25 you d value turkey and mince pie as much as I do Hurra for Christmas I say There was some conversation at the dinner table about the origin of the different modes of keeping Christmas day in oui country. Mr. Wyndham remarked that probably the reason why it was so universally kept in Philadelphia was from the large mixture of the German element in the population of Pennsylvania : perhaps the little Swedish colony which Penn found already settled on the ground when he came over may have had some influence as the nations in the middle and noi th of Europe have always celebrated the day making it a cort of festival of home and fireside pleasures. He said that when he was a young man he had passed a winter in Germany and was spending some time in the house of a friend in the month of December: being very intimate with all the family he had been admitted into numerous little secrets both by young and old. He had seen beforehand the drawings and the ornamental needle work which were in tended as a surprise to the parents and were executed after they had retired to rest and he had been allowed to hear the new songs and pieces of instrumental music learnt by stealth during their absence from home and had even been privi leged to hear the little boy of eight the pet of the family re cite the verses composed in honor of the joyful occasion by his oldest sister. And the parents also had their own mys teries : for a fortnight before the eventful day the blooming comfortable mamma rode out regularly and returned laden with bundles which were immediately transferred to a cer tain large parlor the windows of which were carefully bolted the door locked and the very key hole stopped up so that nothing was visible. The children were sent out of the way and then there were raps at the door and the carry 3 26 GAMES AND STOEIES. ing of heavy articles along the hall into the mysterious chamber Blue Beard s room of horrors was not more ea gerly gazed at than was this parlor but its blank walls told no secrets. At length the long expected day arrived on Christmas Eve all were assembled in a dark room adjacent you see 1 have taken a few hints from my German friends and at last the doors being thrown open the mystery was revealed. The room was ornamented with evergreens and colored lamps very much in the style of our hall and a large tree blazed with light and sparkled with candied fruits and gilded cornucopias I made up my mind then that if ever I had a house of my own I would keep Christmas Eve in the same way. The little children stood a while awe struck by the grandeur of the spectacle : for I can tell you young people that the German children are kept in a state of innocence what you would call greenness that would amaze you. The good mother then came forward and took them by the hand : Come in Carl come in Hermann fear nothing little Ida come in and see if there is any thing here for you. Encouraged by this invitation all entered and the room was found to be lined with tables piled with articles both for use and pleas ure there was a separate table for every one in the house including the servants who in Germany live many years in one family and even for the baby. Their guest also was not. forgotten I found upon my table a pair of slippers and sun dry other gifts some of which I still keep with care as a me morial of that very happy evening. That must have been really charming I think the mys tery adds very much to the pleasure said Alice. And uncle is not the custom of hanging up the stocking derived from Germany GAMES AND STOEEES. 27 I think it is. In Holland there is a little variation for there the shoe is placed at the door of the chamber for adults as well as children enter into the sport. I heard an amusing story connected with this practice when I was in Holland if you like I wiU relate it the event is said really to have happened. Do tell it uncle said John Wyndham. I hke true stories. There was a poor but very handsome and excellent young minister a licentiate I think they call it when a young man is not yet settled in a church to support himself until he was appointed to a congregation he took the place of tutor in a rich burgomaster s family where he fell in love with the pretty amiable and mischievous daughter. She fully recip rocated his feelings and as her parents approved of the match she gave the bashful young man all the encouragement she could : she felt very sure as to the nature of his sentiments towards her but notwithstanding all she could do the young man would not propose as she rightly concluded the thought of her superior wealth deterred him and meantime the foolish fellow became pale and melancholy as if he seriously medi iated going into a decline. So the merry maiden thought This will never do I must take strong measures or the poor soul unll mope himself to death. Christmas Eve came round and the assembled family were joking about the presents they expected. Put your slippers outside your door to night Dominie said the father calling him by the title commonly applied to clergymen in Holland and among the descendants of the Dutch in the State of New York I have no doubt your friend Caterina has something to put in them. Oh it is not worth while no one cares for me sir. But indeed we do replied httle Cateriuii I have something fur you 28 GAMES AilD STORIES. but I am not at all sure you will condescen d to accept it. Have you indeed Miss Caterina I shall feel higbly hon ored I give you my word that whatever it is I will accept it joyfully. Very well : only please to remember this when you see what is in your slippers. The next morning when the young Dominie opened his door full of eagerness to see what was in store for him lo and behold his slippers had vanished. I might have known that the light hearted mischievous maiden was only laughing at me an d well I deserve it fool that I am to dream about one so much above me Thus trying to scold himself into stoicism the young man went over to the breakfast table where all were gathered together except Caterina. A very merry Christmas but my dear Dominie how sober you look Do I indeed that is very improper but I ve been thinking of going away I had better do so that makes me look rather sad perhaps I ve spent so many happy hours among you all. Going away 1 oh no you are not to think of that I cannot allow such a word. By the way what have you found in your slippers To reprove my presump tion no doubt my slippers have been spirited away in the night : it is not for a poor fellow like me to receive gifts from lovely young ladies. As he spoke these words the door opened and Caterina entered bright as the morning her face covered with smiles and blushes she shuffled along in a strange way and all eyes naturally fell upon her little feet which were sailing about in the Dominie s slippers Amid the guneral laughter she walked up to the diffident youth who could scarcely believe his eyes and said with an air of irresistible drollery by which she tried to cover her confu sion : Here is your CJiristmas pi i sent sir do you hold to your promise of accepting it C i course the kuly having GAMES AND STOEIES. 29 broken the ice the Dominie could do no less than speak out and all being willing the two were soon converted into one a good church was procured for him by the influence of the burgomaster and they lived as happily as possible all their days. She was a determined damsel cried Cornelia I think she had brass enough to set up a foundry. Probably it was leap year Cornelia repKed Ellen you know it is then the ladies privilege great privilege forsooth to pay attention to the lords of the creation. I hope when women take advantage of their prescriptive rights they will wear the Bloomer costume and make them selves look as little like the rest of their sex as possible said Mary. Come girls cried Charlie Bolton you are too hard on that frank little Caterina I approve of such conduct entirely and some ten years hence when I am ready to be appropria ted I shall certainly leave my slippers outside my door as a hint to whomsoever it may concern. It would save us men a great deal of trouble if all girls were as sensible as Cat erina. Us men indeed How long since said Cornelia. Ever since I got out of frocks and into trowsers rephed Charlie laughing good naturedly. He and Cornelia were al ways sparring but never quarrelled. In the evening they played at various games among oth ers at writing rhymes. Each had a slip of paper and would write a line then double it down and hand it to the next telling the last word the second person then added a line rhyming with the first the third started a fresh rhyme and so it went on. When read it of course made the greatest farrago of nonsense imaginable. Ellen then proposed Cento 3 so GAMES AND STOEIES. a Spanish or Italian game wlilch requires great readiness of memory and a large acquaintance with poetry. One person quotes a well known line the next another that rhymes wth it and so on making some sort of connection whenever it can be done but alti. r trying it and finding that only three or four of the eldest could think of appropriate pas sages they voted Cento a bore Cornelia remarking that there was great stupidity somewhere of course they could not think it was in themselves and therefore it must be in the game. Mary said that there was another game requiring a good memory but the advantage of it was that the more you for got the more merriment you made if you were not witty yourself you were the cause of wit in others. It was called Genteel Lady and was played by one person politely bowing to his neighbor and reciting a certain formula which must be r.epeated with an addition by the next and so round the circle whenever the least mistake or omission was made the person had to drop the title of Genteel Lady or Genteel Gen tleman and putting a horn of twisted paper in the hair or button hole could now glory in the dignity of being a One horned Lady or Gentleman. Very soon horns become so plenty that few can claim any gentility as the description proceeds and becomes more complicated it is perfectly laugh able and the whole party look ludicrous enough. Here is a whole bundle of lamp lighters said Cornelia let us begin the game I think it must be comical. Maiy bowed to Tom Green and commenced. iood even mg genteel gentleman ever genteel I a genteel lady ever genteel come from that genteel lady ever genteel to tell you that she owns a little dog with hair on its back. Topi bowed to Ellen : Good evening genteel lady ever GAMES AND STOEIES. 61 genteel I a genteel gentleman ever genteel come from that genteel lady ever genteel bowing to Mary to tell you that she owns a little dog with hair on its back and a red tongue m its mouth. Ellen took up the play : Good evening genteel gentle man ever genteel I a genteel lady ever genteel come from that genteel gentleman ever genteel to tell you that he owns a little dog with hair on its back a red tongue in its mouth and two ears on its head. It was now Charlie Bolton s turn : Good evening genteel lady ever genteel I a genteel gentleman ever genteel come from that genteel lady ever genteel to say that she owns a little dog with ears on its back a tongue in its head hair in its mouth and a bone between its teeth. Charlie Charlie three horns All honorable horns hurra I m the only one with horns You ll soon have companions in misfortune said Mary laughing. Good morning genteel lady ever genteel said Gertrude bowing to Alice I a genteel lady ever genteel come from that three horned gentleman ever three horned to say that he owns a Uttle dog with hair on its back a red tongue in its mouth two ears on its head a bone between its teeth and a tail a yard long. Good morning she said that s one horn cried the other children. Good evening genteel gentleman ever genteel said Alice reverently bowing to John Wyndham I a genteel lady ever genteel come from that one horned lady ever one horned to say that she owns a little dog with hair on its back a red tongue in its mouth a bone between its teeth a tail a yard long and three legs and a half. 32 GAMES AND STORIES. You left out two ears on its head a horn I m resigned said Alice gentility seems to be at a dis count. So the game went on becoming every moment more diffi cult and more ludicrous as Charlie called it more trippy and by the time it went round the second time none escaped the horns. Any thing will do for the genteel lady to own and it makes it more agreeable to vary it each time it is played : for instance an eagle with a golden beak silver claws diamond eyes ostrich feathers bird of paradise tail a crown on its head a diamond ring on its thumb a gold chain round its neck a pocket handkerchief in its hand and any other nonsense you can string together. A lady s etagere or what not would be a good medium for collecting together absurdities Mont Blanc at the top a gridiron below a gold thimble at the side the poets in a corner a breakfast set on one shelf a card case above a smelling bottle at the side a work box a writing desk a piece of coral etc. A genteel lady s description of her mansion certainly an extraordinary one would be suitable a modern built house with porto ricco in fi ont and a pizarro in the rear a summer house con tagious and turpentine walks etc. Being now weary of games. Amy proposed that they should vary their pleasures by a tale which gained the general approval and Ellen Green was commissioned to relate it. E er ready to oblige she told them she would if they chose a subject. What sort of a story will you have An Indian story exclaimed the younger boys. Do tell us about some great historical character Wash ington or King Alfred or Napoleon Bonaparte or some other htro ciieii John Wyndham. GAMES AND STORIES. 33 I go in for a very frightful ghost story that will make our hair stand on end and make the girls afraid to go to bed saii his brother George. Tell us a romantic narrative about a knight going to the Crusades and his fair lady following him in the disguise of a page said Alice Bolton. That s exactly like you cried her brother Charlie now I say give us some exciting adventures by sea or by land a real fish story or escape from a lion or tiger or a tale of a bear or something of that sort. Poor Cousin Ellen How can she please you all said Mary. As Amy first proposed it let us leave it to her to choose the kind of stoiy she prefers and so settle the difii culty. Agreed agreed choose Amy As for me I always like a real fairy tale said Amy her eyes sparkling with pleasure as she saw with what good na ture all had left the choice to her. Then you shall have it and I don t doubt that Aunt Lucy or Cousin Mary will contrive to please all in turn an other day. Most especially I hope they will not forget to give Char lie that brush with the bear s tail that he wants so much said Cornelia with a saucy glance of her eye. Attention Miss Cornelia or you will prove that you deserve it you self. Don t you see that Ellen is ready to begin 34 GAMES AKD ST0EIE8. i nirtt Ww . Updn the banks of the Rhine there stand the ruins of an ancient castle which still attracts the attention of the passer by from its gigantic remains and the exceeding beauty of its situation. And if now when its glory has departed the traveller is irresistibly impelled to ask its name how imposing must it have been when its dark shadow was thrown unbrok en upon the smooth waters below and troops of cavaliers and armed retainers rode over its drawbridge and mounted its battlements. Here in the olden time dwelt the noble Baron Sigismund and here nothing daunted by the gloomy gran deur of the fortress his little son Rudolph romped and frohcked the live long day. A charming fellow he was with eyes of heavenly blue and a complexion of pure milk and roses a true boy full of activity and vivacity and with not a slight touch of mischief in his composition. And yet he was such an affectionate and good hearted little soul that his arms would be about your neck in a moment if he thought you were offended by his conduct and so generous that he would take the cake from his own lips to give it to the beggar no trifling stretch of charity in a boy. Is it wonderful that Rudolph was the idol of his parents the favorite of his playmates and the cherished darling of the whole castle His merry spirit and winning ways com pletely gained the hearts of the servants and retainers and many voices in the adjacent cottages were loud in the praise of the beautiful golden haired boy. A Hiat a proud man was Fritz the old seneschal when he taught him to manage the horse to couch the lance and draw the bow and when for the first time the young heir followed him to the chase who GAMES AND 8T0KIES. 35 BO happy as he And Rudolph reciprocated his affection next to papa and dear mamma sweet little black eyed Cous in Bertha and the ugly shaggy mastiff to which he was de voted old Fritz came in for his warmest love. And some people weie malicious enough to say that there was a strong resemblance between these last two favorites both in counte nance and character certain it is that both Bruno and Fritz were faithful every ready to contribute to his ainusement and although rough with other people gentle enough with their young master. One day in the absence of his father he set out to ride with Fritz for his only attendant. It was a splendid afternoon j the sky was of that pure exquisite blue you sometimes see rendered deeper by a pile of snowy clouds in the west the birds were silent as if unwilling to disturb the holy calm of nature not a leaf stirred save here and there a quivering aspen emblem of a restless discontented mind. Rudolph was in excellent spirits and Saladin his good Arab steed fiew like the wind old Fritz tried to restrain his ardor but in vain the impetuous boy kept far ahead. They were soon some miles from home and Rudolph saw before him a point where the road branched off in several directions one of them leading back again to the castle another taking a circuit of some distance and a third a narrow unfrequented path en tering into a dark forest. Into this wood the boy had never been allowed to enter from the evil name it had acquired in the traditions of the peasantry. Some said that robbers haunted its deep recesses for travellers had entered it not withstanding all the entreaties of those who would have de tained thera but had never been seen again in fact none had ever been known to return who had been fool hardy enough to enter into that snare. Others argued that they 36 GAMES AND 8TOEIE8. had been devoured by the wild beasts whose savage roar might sometimes be heard at night or that losing their wa they had perished with hunger. But the older and wiser shook their heads at these suggestions insinuating that skep ticism on such awful subjects might bring down vengeance upon the unbelieving and intimated more by look and by gesture than by wtird that the whote forest was enchanted ground and that po ers more than mortal claimed it as their own. All agreed that the Fairy Wood so it was called was a dangerous place and few indeed would venture into its shady depths. Rudolph s curiosity had been excited in the most vivid manner by what he had heard concerning the mysteries of the forest and he had long determined to seize the first opportunity of gratifying it. Old Fritz would not have consented to his entering it if he had given him his weight in gold but the worthy seneschal was now out of sight and here was a glorious opportunity for the boy he dashed into the wood and urging Saladin onward was soon involved in the intricacies of the forest. On went the fearless boy determined to explore and doubt ing nothing although the dark gloomy shades might well have appalled an older person and the numerous faintly de fined paths would certainly have made an experienced one hesitate. On he went deeper and deeper into the wood un til he was suddenly startled by low prolonged growling thunder. He tried to retrace his steps but was only more entangled in the maze : the sky had become black as mid night the rain fell in torrents the lightnings flashed fearfully and all nature appeared convulsed. Rudolph had never be fore witnessed such a storm and brave boy as he was his heart quaked with terror he felt how powerless a human being is when unsheltered he is brought face to face with GAMES AND STOEIES. 37 the ekments lashed up to fury. He now realized in addi tion that he had lost his way and feared that in his efforts to extricate himself he might penetrate still deeper into the wood so he determined to throw the reins upon his horse s head and trust to his instinct as he had often heard that travellers had done successfully when they had wandered out of their road. He accordingly did so and speaking cheerily to Saladin allowed him to choose his own path : to his sur prise his beautiful Arab left the track and set oflf on what he concluded to be a short cut out of the forest. After about an hour however poor little Rudolph began to doubt the in stinct of horses for the aspect of every thing around him be came wilder every moment but happily the rain had ceased falling and as far as he could judge from the occasional glimpse he got of the sky it had cleared up. On went Sal adin and did not stop until they entered an open glnde when as if his task were quite accomplished he came to a dead halt. Rudolph alighted and looked about him : all was so still and beautiful that it had the effect of calming the agitation of his spirits and filling his mind with an in describable awe it looked pure and holy as if the foot of man had never trod there from the foundation of the world. The setting sun at this moment pierced through the clouds tinting them with purple crimson and gold and revealing the full beauty of the scene. Rudolph found himself in a circular opening around which lofty trees overgrown with moss and lichen seemed planted as a wall of defence. As he approached seeking to leave the spot they tossed their long arms as if warning him away and the thick darkness behind appeared to become denser and to frown him back. A su perstitious fear crept into his heart and he turned his eyes to the sweet glade rejoicing in the sunlight where all looked 4 38 GAMES AND STOEIES. smiling and inviting. In the centre npon a gentle mound covered witla a carpet of the softest richest green there tow ered a inMJFstie oak which laid lnokeij upward tn the sky for centuries while generation aflrr geuerutiou f men had en tered the world had laughed and wi. pt grown old and died. It showed no signs of the decrepitude of age and raided up its head proudly like the monarch of the forest but a deep rent in its heart showed that decay was at work and that the lofty tree would one day be laid low in the dust. Led by an irresistible impulse Rudolph ascended the mound and en tered the little chamber in the oak. The boy was exhausted by fatigue and excitement and insensibly his eyes closed and his weary frame was wrapt in slumber. And now a strange thing occurred. Whether he dreamed or whether he waked he scarcely knew but delicious music stole through his soul and he oped his eyes. The little wood land glen was steeped in soft moonlight and if it looked wonderful and beautiful when the sun shone upon it how much more so now when the very hght was mysterious and suggestive of something beyond Around the mound there doated for that word only can express their motion hke bright and fleecy clouds a band of lovely beings resembhng none he had ever seen before. As he gazed upon them he thought not of creatures of earthly mould but of the most rapturous and fleeting sights and sounds jf nature of the rainbow spanning the sky aftiT a storm of the dashing cat aract desciMiding in mist from stupendous heights of the nightingale singing in hnr hidden nest of harmless sheet lightning suddenly revealing hills domes and castles in the clouds then as suddenly dispelling the illusion. As he look ed more closely he found that as with linked hands they glided round their gossamer wings moving through the air GAMES AND STORIES. 39 wated up a melody like that of the Eclian harp while a few standing apart made silvery music by shaking instru ments whioh looked like spikes of bell shaped flowers and deeper tones were evolved fi om larger single bells struck with rays of light. As the bells swung to the breeze and the cadence swelled and rose a delicious fragrance of wild flowers filled the air and from the depths of th forest all ani mated creatures came forth to gaze upon the spectacle. The glow worm crept there but his tiny lamp was dimmed by brighter fairy eyes the noisy cricket and the songsters of the grove hushed their notes to listen to the harmony. The wolf and the bear drew near together but laid aside their fierceness the deer and the hare came forward fearlessly under the influence of the potent spelL Suddenly from a hollow in the oak an owl with glaring eyes flew down : the music and the dance were hushed and all listened to his voice. To his surprise Rudolph found that he could understand the language of all animals which had formerly seemed to him mert inmeaning sounds. Bright Fairy Qaeen shall mortal dare On beauty gaze beyond compare Shall one of earth unpaniah d see The mazes of your revelry That ancient oak by your donation For years has been my habitation And now a child usurps my right Sleeping within its heart to night Nor that alone but dares to view The mysteries of nature too. And shall he go unscath d away As Privy Counsellor I say nay I Else man will learn our secrets dread. And higher raise his haughty head All nature soon would subject be. Nor place be left us on land or sea. 40 GAMES AND STOKIES. E en now prophetic I see the day When Bteam exerts resistless sway And iron monsters with breath of flame Shall blot from earth the fairy name. Then to the beasts that throng the wild Dread Queen give up the intruding chUd 1 At this address to which the wolves howled a dismal cho rus of assent all eyes were turned upon the chamber in the ancient oak in which Rudolph sat his heart quaking with terror at the thought of the fate before him. But a sweet voice clear and piercing spoke bis name and commanded him to descend fearing nothing if his conscience was pure and if he had not obtruded through vain curiosity upon the revels of the Queen of Fairy Land. Rudolph obeyed. The Queen was standing with the ladies of her court ranged on either side. They all were beautiful but she was hke the brightness of the morning and the fresliness of flowei s. Daz zling loveliness distinguished her and a dignity to which all paid obeisance. Upon her brow sparkled the evening star her only diadem. She gazed mildly yet searchingly upon the boy as if she read his very thoughts and then she spoke : Tis true wise Counsellor that according to our laws of Fairy Realm the child should die and yet my heart yearns to the innoeont blue eyed boy. Does no one have compas sion upon him Have none a plea to offer for his pardon I solemnly declare that he shall be saved were my very crown and life endangered if but one act of kindness and mercy shown by him to weaker creatures can be jjroved. For to the kind and merciful mercy should ever be shown this law stands higher than any judicial enactment. As she spoke these words a dove with gentle eyes and downy breast fiew to her feet and thus timidly olfered hei prayer : GAMES AND STORIES. 41 I plead for morcy gracious Queen I pray you to forgive 1 And if my voice were silent now I were not fit to live. One day when absent from my nest A falcon fierce and strong. Seized me all helpless to resist Soon would have ceased my song. Just then young Rudolph brave and fair Perceived my urgent need He risk d his life in saving mine And shall that kind heart bleed 3 It shall not : he is saved and you gentle dove ever wear this collar round your neck as a token of my approba tion it shall descend in your family to the latest genera tions. The Queen then touched Rudolph vfith her golden wand an electric thrill passed through his frame and he fell down senseless to the ground. When he awoke he found himself lying upon a couch of purple and gold in a superb crystal hall whose pillars sparkling with gems rose upward to a lofty transparent dome of blue through which the sun was shining brilliantly. Over him bent the Fairy Queen radiant in beauty and eying him with indescribable tenderness. At last she spoke kindly caressing him : My son you are now in my dwelling where no harm shall befall you fear noth ing. Here you shall live forever in splendor and happiness your every wish shall be gratified no more scorching suns no more dark and gloomy days for you all shall be joy unvaried pleasure eternal youth and health. One solitary restriction I must lay upon you but that is positive on no account shed a tear for on that day when you weep you must return to earth even my power could not keep you here. Tears must never sully the palace of the Fairy Queen. But why should you weep I myself will take care of you 4 42 GAMES AND STORIES. teach you be a mother to you : when you feel a desire men don it to me and it is ah eadv accomplished. With ardent gratitude and passimiate love and admiration R adolpb einliraced the beautiful Queen and said Is this really true and is this splendid place to be my own home It eally is I have adnpted you for my son. It is my inten tion to educate you myself. How very good of you how I love you And my papa and mamma and dear little Bertha can they live here too And may Bruno and Sal idin and old Fritz come too Oh no little Rudolph you must not talk about those other people they belong to the jarth let them stay there. You must forget about that old home of yours for all that has passed away your home is with me in Fairy Land. It is much more beautiful here there is nothing on earth that can compare with it. I will jhow you such splendid things 1 I will teach you how to paint the flowei s and to make diamonds and emeralds and pearls. You shall see me mix the rainbow and scatter the lew upon the flowers at night. I have a thousand pretty things I want to teach you : do you not wish to learn them V Oh very much indeed I should like to do such things love dearly to work : mamma often lets me water he d lwers with a little watering pot is that the way you scat ter the ilew Child child IIovv ignorant he is But ander my tuition he will soon Icain to undei stand the myste ies if nature. hi earth children are so mismanaged no wniiiltT thov ln comethe sort of men they do. My Rudolph hall be different he shall hear no silly nursery tales shall waste no time in learning exploded mmseiise but shall early Decorae acquainted with t iiiu s and shall learn to value science. I quite long to begin It is a grand experiment the work of education is a noble one. And when he ia a GAMES AND STOKIES. 43 man and has become under my teaching a perfi t specimen of what a man should he what tlien Shall I let him retnrn to earth It is time enough yet to think of that. May I go now and play pretty ladv You are not talking to me. True I forgot myself come with me Rudolph and I will show you through my palace and pleasure grounds : recollect that you are now my son. What words can describe the sights of beauty that awaited him All spectacles that could enchant the eye all melodies that could ravish the ear were collected together in infinite variety. Nothing that was exquisite upon earth was unrep resented but the grossness and the imperfection which will cleave to every thing earthly was left out. It was the very palace of delights. And nothing faded hei e the flowers were ever blooming and if picked were instantly replaced by fairer blossoms. Delicious fruit ever ripe but never decay ing hung from the boughs streams of milk wine sherbet and other delicious drinks trickled from the rocks into mar ble basins and gold cups were suspended near to invite the thirsty to partake while pure sparkling water rose high into the air as if ambitious to greet the kindred clouds and then fell into large receptacles fashioned out of one pearl emerald or ruby. The pleasure grounds were separated from the gross outer world by a thick and lofty wall of evergreens im pervious to mortals which forbade both ingress and egress : at least Rudolph s eyes could see no mode of exit. But what could be wished for beyond It was a paradise I Rudolph was allowed to roam undistuibed through the splendid saJoons vast halls and pillared galleries of the palace where at eveiy step he saw some new subject of won der. No treasure house of princes could for one moment compare with the wealth and grandeur here exhibited and 4i GAMES AND STOEIES. the Fairy Queen informed him that all should be his when by knowledge he had earned a title to it it should be the reward of his application to the noble studies to which she wished to introduce him. I would do a good deal to get all these beautiful things : I hope the lessons are not very hard for I never did like to study. I love play a great deal better. But play is only meant for babies and kittens Rudolph : it is unworthy of a being who can think. I know you have great talents and I am the one to develop them. I mean to teach you mineralogy and chemistry natural phi losophy and history astronomy and geology botany and geometry. You shall be wise and shall learn to look beyond the surface of things into their natures and constituent parts. You shall know why every thing was made just as it is and shall understand the exact proportions of all things to each other and to the universe so that the whole system goes on in perfect and beautiful harmony. You shall learn the bal ancings of the clouds and the potent spell which keeps the sun in its place and makes the moon circle round the world. You shall go with me into the dark caverns of the earth and see how rocks and metals are made in nature s forging shop. You shall witness the operation of the subterranean forces which have altered the whole aspect of this planet and thrown up the lofty mountains and tossed out from the treasury be low the varied wealth it held making the world both beau tiful and rich. And I will show you ancient creatures more huge than whales which once frolicked on the earth before man was made : oh I have a thousand wonders to point out to you and a great deal to teach. Thank you you are very good. But indeed it sounds very hard and I don t like Buch things at all. I d much rather play ball. Silly child thought the Fairy Queen ho has been too GAMES AND STOEIES. 45 long perverted by the trifling ways of man : I should have taken him younger. I see that I cannot at once indoctrinate him into the arcana of natui e I must gradually lead him on as if in play. Good a bright idea that must be tho right way to educate frivolous frolicksome childhood. Science in sport excellent. Yes I ll teach him the vocabularies in rhyme and set them to lively music that will do he ll like it nearly as well as if it were nonsense. I ll lead him on to the knowledge of principles by means of beautiful experi ments : he ll think I am amusing him when I am gravely in earnest in the work of instruction. I will set rewards before him to impel him onward : I will excite his curiosity and make it a favor to gratify it and then the boy will swallow knowledge as if it were cake. Come with me Rudolph I have something pretty show you. That I will : I love to see pretty things dear lady. Call me mamma Rudolph : you are now my son. In deed I cannot : nobody is mamma but my own dear mamma who loves me so oh I do so wish I could see her 1 Hush child that s silly. Now keep very quiet in this dark room and you ll see something. What is this I hold in my hand A great glass jar like one of mamma s preserve jars only much larger. Do you see any thing in it Yes ma am ever so much iron wire twisted round and round. Is there any thing else in the jar Nothing at all. Nothing you can see but there is a kind of gas we call oxygen which will burn when I put in a lighted piece of stick very care fully. Look I Oh beautiful beautiful how the wire burns only look at the sparks that is very pretty indeed ma am. Now it has all burnt out what a pity Now Rudolph I want to tell you about it. You must know that the air we breathe is made up of this oxygen of nitrogen a 46 GAMES AND STOEIES. very little carbonic acid gas and a small quantity of watci. If the oxygen was taken out of the air you could not live for one moment : I ll show you. You see this jar It is full of nitrogen of air with the oxygon taken out. But what are you putting into it A httle mouse I declare Yes but you see it dies instantly it cannot live because there is no oxygen in the air. Poor little mouse how I wish you had not killed it It i.s a .shame If did such a cruel thing my mamma would punish me. Don t talk so child it s silly. The mouse died without any pain and if one principle of science is fixed in your head it is well worth the sacrifice of its insignificant life. There will be less cheese eaten in the world that s all. Now do you understand about oxygen and nitrogen which chiefly make up the atmospheric air I know that oxygen made the wire burn beautifully and I know that horrid nitrogen killed the poor little mouse but I don t half believe that they are in the air I breathe. I like to see pretty experiments but I do hate explanations. Now will you let me fly a kite Yes come out into the open air remember it is composed of oxygen and nitrogen and I ll make you a kite. So saying she led him into the gardens and waving her wand over a piece of birch bark behold three splendid kites The larger one resembled an eagle and as it mounted into the air and its light wings flapped in the wind it seemed about to pounce upon the two smaller kites which were in shape like pigeons. Rudolph was enchanted and clapped Ills hands with glee. After allowing him to enjoy the nov elty for some time the Fairy said to him To morrow I will show jou another kite more wonderful than these. I wil make it so that it will draw down the electricity from the sky. Have you ever rubbed a cat s fur the wrong way in GAMES AND STOEIES. 47 thfl dark Oh that I have it s great fun. There s oui black riit at home I have often done it to her and I can see the sparks in cold weather. Well that is electricity and there is electricity in every thing only some objects have more than others. When you see the sparks it is the elee tricity leaving a thing which is overcharged with it for an other which has less to keep up a balance. The lightning is nothing but electricity and to morrow I ll make a storm to show you how to draw down this subtle element from the clouds. Oh don t trouble yourself I like this kind ol kite well enough : if I have to learn about that old electri city I d rather give up playing kite. Rudolph would you like to play at soap bubbles V That I would How I wish Bertha was here wouldn t she clap her hands and jump as the large bubbles fly up intC the air I do not wish you to think about little Bertha Here are your basin of soapsuds and your golden pipe now blow away my boy Oh how very pretty Do you see that big fellow how he shines in the sun and shows all the colors of the rainbow Isn t it fine That is the very thing I want to tell you about. The sun shining upon vapoi and falling water makes all these beautiful colors. That is the way I mix the rainbow. The science which teaches about the rays of light their reflection and refraction and the color ing they give to different objects is called Optics : it is an interesting study and I wish you to be a proficient in it. Optics is it That seems to me very difierent from blowing soap bubbles. I do hate to be cheated into learning big words and understanding things when I am playing. The child has no brains for science I fear thought the fairy. I almost repent my bargain However I will noi be discouraged quite yet perhaps the proper chord has not 48 GAMES AND STOEIES. beeu struck. Accordingly she invented for him various pretty toys since then copied by men : the kaleidoscope with its infinite variety of shifting figures the orrei7 the prism the burning glass the microscope and the telescope and the magic lantern with its vast variety of entertainment. Another magic spell she put into operation by which with the aid of an instrument in a little square box the sun was compelled to paint landscapes and portraits so true to life that they seemed only to lack motion. Rudolph was very happy playing with these beautiful and ingenious toys : he thought them more entertaining than marbles or battledore and shuttle cock. But when the rationale came to be ex plained his preceptress found her labor was all lost there wjis no mistaking the fact that the child had an invincible dislike to science. I believe I see my mistake thought the unconquerable Fairy. I began at the wrong end. Children feel before they think. I must elevate his fancy and train his imagina tion by communion with forms of beauty. I see that he can not yet penetrate into the reason of things around him but he can feel the power of the external and when his nature is sufficiently exalted and matured then he will of his own ac cord seek knowledge. Yes sentiment comes first and reflec tion will follow in its train. Accoidingly the Fairy Queen commenced his poetical training and for some time she flattered herself that it ad vanced charmingly. As the attraction of novelty had worn oft from her extensive pleasure grounds she caused the land scape daily to change so that all the beauties scattered over the wide eai th were in successicm placed before him. At one time the lofty Alps rose to the sky filling his soul with the sense of the subhme and the chamois with fleet foot GAMES AND STORIES. 49 climbed their snowy pinnacles while the deep frowning pre cipices and the dark valleys gave him a sensation of terror not unmingled with pleasure. Suddenly the scene would change and he stood upoiv an island of the Pacific a little emerald gem of the ocean. Around the coral reefs the waves lashed themselves into fury and the white surf flew upward but one little opening admitted the water gently into a quiet bay where the deep blue rivalled that of the sky and the water birds swam in peace. The cocoa nut the plantain and the banana spread their broad leaves to the sun and flowers of brilliant hues and exquisite fragrance enlivened the land scape. Behind there uprose tall clift s covered with the richest foliage and cascades like silver threads dashed down ward to the sea. Again the spectacle changed and Vesuvius ap peared in flames reddening the sky and paling the moon floods of lava rolled down and rocks and ashes were tossed aloft. It seemed as if evil spirits were sporting beneath and the mountain shook in agony. In the distance peacefully slept the city of Naples and that broad and beautiful bay the admiration of the world. These objects however did not last. Rudolph soon lingered among sweet scented orange groves and plucked the golden fruit by the light of the moon and rejoiced in perfect beauty or wandered ofi into a mag noha forest where the huge white flowers shone forth among the dark glistening leaves and the air was heavy with fra grance. Or he paddled his small canoe among the waters of the Amazon and saw those magnificent water lilies on one of whose round green leaves with up turned edges he could float with perfect safety while the brilliant tropical birds flew around and monkeys climbed the tall trees which were festooned with vines of luxuriant growth. Again did the scene vary and Niagara thundered down its iliffs filling his 5 50 GAMES AND STORIES. heart with delighted awe resistless and changeless rolled it then when the deer wandered undisturbed upon its shores as now when thousands of visitors marvel at its grandeur and feel the infinitude of nature and the insignificance of man. One day the Rhine was presented to his view its vine clad hills its frowning castles its romantic scenery and the happy peasants coming from the vintage with songs of re joicing. But this struck a chord untouclied before. It brought up home and homely pleasures with a force and vividness that made the boy in the midst of all sensual delights feel a sudden sickness of the heart a longing for the fireside and for the every day occupations from which he had been snatched. He thought of his father and mother so kind and good of merry little Bertha ever so pleased to frolic with him and he almost felt her chubby arm around his neck he remembered old Fritz and his rides upon Saladia with bis arched neck and flowing mane. He thought of the ancient hall in which he had played such mad pranks with Bruno even the black cat came in for a portion of his regret. And never never more was he to behold these objects of his love So feels the Swiss when in a foreign land when breathing the balmy air of Italy or wandering amid the gayeties of Paris he hears the Kauz des Vaches the simple notes recall the Alpine home the mother and the friends : he sickens and dies. Rudolph s sad countenance soon attracted the notice of his kind protectress who eagerly asked what she could do to promote his happiness. He told his trouble and especially dwelt upon his lonehness he longed to see his papa and mamma and little Bertha and he wanted companions of his own age human children with whom he could laugh and GAMES AND STORIES. 51 play whom he could toss in the snow in winter and with whom he could rove the fields in summer picking the flowers and chasing the butterflies. The Fairy Queen shook her head : You ask an impossibility Rudolph my very e t ence was endangered by bringing you here and how can I convey other mortals to the crystal palace the inner temple of nature It cannot be however now I think of a plan yes to morrow you shall have your wish only you must smile and be happy once more Rudolph. On the morrow with the eai Iy dawn a troop of merry rosy children awaited his waking : how soon they were friends children and child like hearts are not long in know ing each other. They were all pretty but difierent both in appearance and disposition they were crowned with flowers and green leaves of various sorts. What funny names you have said Rudolph as they introduced themselvts. Yes but we did not name ourselves they replied it is not our fault if we have hard names you ll soon learn them. And so he did : there was Cochlearia a sharp witted girl who made rather biting speeches occasionally there w.is Daucus a red headed youngster and Raphanus a pretty child of bril liant complexion crowned with violet colored flowers there was Brassica and Zea and Maranta and Capsicum a fiery fellow and Nasturtium crowned with bright orange flowers and a great many others. Rudolph liked most of them very much but his especial favorites were little Solanuin and Fa rinacea brother and sister both crowned with blue flowers. He thought they were so good he could nevei get tired of them perhaps Brassica and Zea wei e sweeter and Raphanus was more piquant but these two friends of his could never cloy his taste he should always love them. As for Coch learia he could not abide her : she was so pert. Several 52 GAMES AND STOKIES. times slie came near disturbing the harmony of the little band by her speeches : she reproached Daucus with his carroty head and told Capsicum that his temper was too hot and called Nasturtium only a weedy fellow after all. Hereupon Solanum who was a very amiable soul told her she was enough to bring tears into anybody s eyes and at that she turned round and informed him that he was such a mealy mouthed fellow he was no judge at all. At last Rudolph was obliged to tell her that he had never known a child whose society he relished so little and that he would be com pelled to complain of her unless she went away accordingly she did so and then they enjoyed uninterrupted peace. How happy was that day how varied the amusements what joy ful shouts I what heart felt laughter Rudolph long debar red from the company of other children was almost out of his wits with excitement. But the sun now approached tlie west and with one accord they hastened away notwithstanding all his entreaties. Why must they go They could sleep with him there was plenty of room in the palace they should not leave. They would return to morrow but now they must go be fore the sun set good by good by. You shall not go cried Rudolph seizing hold of Solanum and Farinacea who struggled hard to evade him while their companions swiftly passi. i.I them and vanished through a little postern gate he had never seen before into the forest beyond. Why should you want to go L o you not love me said Rudolph as the two struggled yet more earnestly to escape his grasp. I assure you we have hearts but we cannot now stav was all they could utter for at that moment the sun sank below the horizon and the beautiful children vanished from his sight : in their place there fell to the ground two potatoes GAMES AND 8T0EIES. 63 Scarcely believing his eyes he quickly opened the little gate calling to his friends to return but no voice replied and no children vpere to be seen. Instead scattered about upon the ground were radishes carrots turnips parsneps cabbages all that remained of his playmates. The disappointed child burst into a fit of passionate weeping. Was all deception illusion Was there nothing real naught to satisfy the heart Was he ever to be alone consumed by vain longings for affection he was destined never to receive What did he care for all that beauty and grandeur one heart given human kiss was worth it all. The child was still sobbing bitterly when the Fairy Queen drew near. Her starry crown was dim like the evening star seen through a mist the sparkle had gone out of her eye and her face. She was sad for she knew that she must lose her little protege she was vexed for she had been com pletely baffled. And cannot I make you happy she said. Is all the power and the grandeur and the wisdom and the beauty you see in Fairy Land insufficient to satisfy that foolish heart of yours Silly boy he longs for human love. Go then even if I could keep you I think I scarcely would I can teach you nothing. And may I really go Go to my own dear sweet mamma Oh how happy I am You little ungrateful wretch is that all the thanks I get for the pains I have taken to make a man of you Of course you are very good : but indeed I always told you I wanted to remain a little boy. Out of my sight said she stamping her tiny foot upon the rock on which she was standing sympathizing with her passion it threw out sparks which hardened into diamonds when they cooled. My ex periment has proved a signal failure I see a child will be a chil l in spite of all the charms of science : if ever I take 5 54. GAMES AND STOEIES. another if ever I try again to bring up a philosopher may I lose my crown Rudolph aifrighted had run through the little gate which immediately closed behind him. He looked around the scene was strangely familiar. He found himself at the bor der of a wood in a place where three roads crossed. It was there thought he that a year or two ago I dashed into the forest on Saladin and got lost : and since then I have been in Fairy Land. At that moment he lifted up his eyes and saw old Fritz approach leading Saladin he ran forward to meet him and Fritz on his part seemed overjoyed at see ing his young master. You dear old soul how glad I am to see you Why you don t look a day older than when we parted It would be queer if I did as we only parted company an hour ago when you rode oif and left your poor old Fritz. How you have fi ightened me I thought you had gone home the nearest way and rode there to see : but no you were not at the castle. So I came back again very much worried about you on account of the shower that came up so suddenly and met your horse quite near the wood. I m glad to find you at last Is it possible it was only an hour ago I can hardly believe it. Oh yes no more though it has seemed longer to rae I have been so anxious. Rudolph laughed. I do believe I have been asleep and I have had the funniest dream Do you know I thought I was in Fairy Land It was all so sweet and so grand and learned and tiresome Oh I am glad it was only a dream. I did want so much to get home again and have some fun. GAMES AND STOEEES. 55 How could he wish to leave such a charming place where there was every thing that was lovely on earth cried Gertrude. I think he had very little taste. There was all there said Aunt Lucy but the very things he wanted his fatJier and mother his playmates kind old Fritz and his hoi se and dog not to speak of a very im portant thing in a boy s eyes liberty to play without being pestered with continual lectures. I think your Fairy Queen has a tart temper of her own sister Ellen said Tom. When she was rating the poor little fellow for ingratitude I thought of that passage in Vir gil where the rage of the gods is spoken of Tantaene ani mis ccelestibus iras Do translate for the benefit of the unlearned. It is so mannish to quote Latin said Cornelia. Can such anger dwell in celestial souls 3 You see I am all obedience answered Tom. You should remember my dear critic that fairies never yet claimed to be perfect beings. They are very far from be ing angels and are decidedly of the earth earthy. You know that the inferior specimens of the race the vulgar fairies delight in playing tricks upon careless housekeepers spilling their cream and spoiling their butter : that is not very angelic I m sure. Of course the Queen would be too dignified and too spiritual for such frolics but she could not understand much about human nature or child nature and especially she would think the affections to be great non sense. But she has bought her experience now with Ru dolph. One comfort is that she does not intend to take another child to educate she has had enough said Amy. 56 GAMES AND ST0EIE8. She could not if she would replied Mary. I thini the day has now come foreseen by the prophetic owl When iron monsters with breath of flame Shall blot from earth the fairy name. Steam engines and locomotives said Louis. Nothing else replied Ellen. I do not doubt in the least that the whole of that Fairy Wood has been carefully surveyed and graded and iron tracts run directly through the palace itself. Oh what a shame cried Harry. Tis very sad indeed to have all romance spoiled in this way said Mrs. Wyndham. But we have a modern sub stitute for the magic of Elfdom this very steam engine which works such wonders the electric telegraph which beats time itself making news depart from Philadelphia for St. Louis and reach its destination an hour before it started if you may believe the clock. And some of those toys origi nally invented by the Fairy Queen if we may credit Ellen the telescope bringing down the moon so near to you that you feel inclined to take a long step and place yourself in another planet and photography which enables you in one moment to poi sess upon metal or paper an exact fac simile of your friend. If these things do not surpass all we read of in Fairy Land I know nothing about it. I have one very serious objection to your Fairy Queen Cousin Ellen said Charlie Bolton trying to keep a long sober fitce. AVhat is that Poor Queen how she is criticised If she were here she would show her temper now I think She is such a horrid blue. It s all very well for her to dance and mix the rainbow and sprinkle the dew upon her GAMES AND STOEIES. 57 flowers find wear the evening star on her forehead if she does not find its weight oppressive that s all feminine enough. But when she tries to come over us as an esprit fort a strong minded woman it s rather too much. Oxy gen and hydrogen and all the oloyies I never can stand that sort of thing in a woman. Just as if we had not a right to knowledge as well as the lords of the creation And besides I want to know Master Charlie which is the most disgusting for a woman to lisp learning or for a man to talk politics as the creatures will do Oh I beg your pardon I very humbly retract my dear Coz. I must use the words of that sensible Goon who has earned immortality by meeting his death like a philosopher Is that you. Captain Scott V Yes. Then you need not fire don t take the trouble to raise your rifle if it s you. Captain Scott I might as well come down. So if it s you Miss Cornelia Wyndham you can spare your shot for I ll come down at once I would rather face the Woman s Rights Convention in full conclave assembled than my Cousin Corneha when she stands up for the rights of her sex to be pedantic and disagreeable I was quite amused at the Queen s experiments in edu cation said Mr. Wyndham. She is not the only one who has tried to force knowledge upon unwilling minds and to develop children as we would spring peas and asparagus by subjecting them to hot house stimulants. These fancy methods of training the young idea do not appear to suc ceed very well to see some of the cards used in infant schools and to read occasional school advertisements you would deem it quite impossible that any dunces could escape the elevating processes now applied to the unfortunate little 58 GAMES AND STORIES. ones yet happily the constitutions of most children are very elastic and there are not as many instances of dropsy on the brain as we might expect. I wonder the Fairy did not take a hint from the bees remarked Mary. How is that Have they any particular mode of train ing Very much so : when they want to rear up a sovereign who shall be fitted to govern the hive with wisdom they take any one of their hundred little grubs at random and put it under tutors and governors. These cram it not with lectures on political economy books on international law or any thing of that sort but with food much more to its taste the very best honey and a kind of royal food which I suppose it is considered high treason for a subject to touch. Day by day the gTub becomes more and more the princess and finally expands into queenly magnificence when of course she must have a hive of her own or do as Dido of Tyre colonize and found a Carthage. Qjite amusing But is it true Yes actually and if only some such process could be applied to children would it not save trouble And wouldn t we like it I cried George Wyndham. Ah but I d make a bonfire of my Euclid and Virgil and all the other worthies or buiy them as the fellows do yearly at Yale College I had much rather be fed with some essence of knowledge like the bees. This talk .about fancy modes of mental culture remark ed Mr. Wyndham reminds me of a Life I lately read of Mr. I ay the author of that delightful book Sandford and Mer ton. He was a remarkably benevolent and excellent man but vi.sionaj y and had some jieeuliar crotchets about educa GAMES AND STOEIES. 59 tion. When quite a young man lie took charge of two poor pretty orphan girls and had them trained up in accordance with his own ideas intending to make one of them his wife. Both grew to be fine women but to spoil the romance fell in love with other men so that he enjoyed the pleasure of sedulously educating good wives for two worthy tradesmen and being left in the lurch himself. A second experiment tui ned out yet worse for it cost him his life : he had doubt less had enough of girls so he took another animal which he thouffht miffht be tamer and more tractable a horse. He would not allow it to be broken in the usual method which he considered very cruel : he would talk to it caress it make it his friend win it by kindness. But unfortunately for his experiment the horse killed him by a kick I believe before it had succeeded. Poor Day Uncle you remind me of the cow that the man wanted to train so as to consider eating a superfluity she was coming on admirably but unfortunately for the full success of the experiment she perversely died the very day her owner had reduced her to one straw. How very unlucky Aunt Lucy said Alice when Ellen gave us the Queen s theorizing in education I could not help thinking of the old saw Bachelors wives and old maids bairns are always the best guided. It s very easy to manage dream children but when you come to real flesh and blood it s quite another matter. It does not appear to me that all this systematizing and speculation does much good. Not a bit of it cried George Wyndham. We boys must be boys to the end of the chapter and I tell you some of us are pretty tough subjects The only hope is that we may turn out not quite so horrid when we grow up. 60 GAMES AND STORIES. I once heard a plan proposed for getting rid of boys of your age brother Georgo said Cornelia. Much obliged what was that To bury them at seven and dig them out at seventeen how do you like it Tis a bad plan. There would be nobody left in the world to run errands for older sisters it would never do. When little Rudolph was so fond of his vegetable friends said Mary and found them so good so sweet so much to his taste I thought of an account I had somewhere read written I think by the witty Sydney Smith of a conversa tion a new missionary in the South Sea islands held about his predecessor who had been eaten by the cannibals. He asked the natives if they had known him we will call him Mr. Brown as it s rather fabulous. Mr. Brown Oh yes very good man Mr. Brown very good. And did you know his family li yes such sweet Httle children so nice and tender But Mrs. Brown was a bad woman she nas 50 vcrij tour h Slie was not to their taste. But C iisin Ellen said Amy I want to know about those vegetable friends of Rudnjph. I know that Capsicum is a kind of pepper and I have often met Nasturtium crown ed with his orange fliiwers I suppose of course that Sola num and Farinacea are potatoes but who is that sharp Coclilearia who told Solanum he was a mealy mouthed fel low Horse radish whicli Solanum thought enough to bring tears into anybody s eyes. And Daucus was he a carrot Yes and Raphanus with his brilliant complexion was a radish l faranta was arrow root Zea was Indian com and Urassica a tui nip we often enjoy their society at table. GAMES AND STORIES. CI I shall always think of Coohlearia when I eat torse radish on my beef said Charlie Bolton. Especially Then take too much by mistake. And when I find to my sorrow that potatoes ha le huarta shall think of Solanum. 62 GAMES AWD STOEIBS. CHAPTER III. THE RHYMING GAME. ORIKAMA OR THE WHITE WATER LILY AN INDIAN TALE. Great was the chagrin of our young party on the follow ing morning to find that a storm had set in giving no pros pect of amusements out of doors for the day : the rain came down in a determined manner as if it had no intention of clearing up for a week and the winds whistled and scolded in every variety of note even the boys who pnded them selves upon a manly contempt for wind and weather agreed that the chimney corner was the best place under the circum stances and that tliey must tr to make themselves as agree able as possible at home. Cornelia quoted for the benefit of the rest a receipt she had somewhere met with for the man ufaetui e of sunshine which she thought would be especially valuable on such a darksijme Jay : Take a good handful of industry mix it thomughly with family love and season well with good nature and mutual forbearance. Gradually stir in smiles and jokes and laughter to make it light but take c ire these ingredients do nut run over or it will make a cloud instead of what you wish. Follow this receipt carefully and you have an excellent supply of sunshine warranted to keep in all weathers. Accordingly it was resolved to make sunshine and Aunt Lucy offei ei.l to provide the industr if they would furnish the other materials. Scjun were heaps of flannel and other stout fabrics pro uced from her Dorcas closet as she GAMES AND STORIES. 63 called it in which her pi ovisions for the poor were laid up in nice order for even in our happy land does it hold true that the poor ye have always with you and whensoever ye will ye may do them good and kind Aunt Lucy was not one to neglect this duty. On the day preceding Christmas according to her principle of making as many happy as pos sible she had ordered a barrel of flour to be baked into cakes and pies and had distributed them along with a turkey and a bushel of potatoes to each among all the poor families of the neighborhood and this was only one specimen of the numerous kindly acts by which she drew together the hearts of all around her and made them realize the Christian bro therhood of man. Where there were children she made them happy by the pi esent of a few penny toys a very cheap investment yielding a large return of rapture She could never deny herself the pleasure of giving these little offerings of love with her own hands and wishing her poor neighbors a Happy Christmas and on this occasion she had learnt the destitution of a poor widow who struggled hard to sup port her young family and to maintain a decent appearance but who was now laid up with sickness and unable to pro vide clothing and fuel for herself and her little ones. Mr. Wyndham had immediately sent her a load of wood and his wife was now anxious to furnish the necessary garments. The young girls were rejoiced to aid in the good work and soon all fingers were busy and needles were in swift opera tion while the boys took turns in the entertainment of the sewers by alternately reading aloud from a pleasant book. Tom Green was an excellent reader his agreeable tones of voice made it a pleasure to listen to him and his clear articu lation and varied expression added greatly to the interest of e narrative. Why is it that this desirable accomplishment G4 GAMES AND STOKIKS. which promotes so much the happiness of the home circle is not more cultivated After dinner Charlie Bolton proposed some games as he said that quite enough of industry nid gravity had been put into the preparation and he feared the sunshine would not be properly made without the smiles jokes and laughter spoken of in the receipt. How do those lines of Milton run Ellen in L Allegro my favorite piece before the old fellow got to be so very sublime as he is in the Paradise Lost. You irreverent jackanapes to speak so of the immortal bard I suppose you mean But come thou goddess fair and free In Heaven yclept Euplirosyne And by naen heart easing mirth Haste thee Nymph and bring with thee Jest and youthful jollity. Quips and cranks and wanton wiles. Nods and beclis and wreathed smiles Sucli as hang on Hebe s cheek And love to live in dimple sleek : Sport that wrinkled Care derides. And Laaghter holding both his sides. That is the passage I mean and that is the very com pany I should like tij invite if the rest have no objection. All approved of the suggestion and soon the whole party was busily engaged in various lively games Graces Bat tledore and Shuttlecock Hunt the Slipper etc. which combined bodily exercise with healthful excitement of the mirthful organs which some philosophers assert to be after all the distinguishing trait of mankind. Some call man a thinking animal but this is so self evident a slander upon the great majority of the species that no words are needed to refute it : one attempted to define him as a biped with GAMES AND STOEIBS. 65 out feathers but when a plucked fowl was brought forward as a specimen of his man he was obliged to give up that definition. Others again describe him as a cooking ani mal but while dogs can act as turnspits and monkeys can roast chestnuts he cannot claim this lofty epithet as pecu liarly his own besides some savages have been found so de graded as to be unacquainted with the use of fire. But wherever man is found whether under the heats of an Afri can sun or shivering in the cold of a Lapland winter upon the steppes of Tartary or the pampas of South America his joyful laughter shows that he is a man intended for social life and for happiness. Tis true we read of the hyena laugh but we protest against such a misapplication of terms : the fierce mocking yell of that ferocious creature has nothing in common with hearty genial human laughter : other animals can weep but man alone can laugh. And how great a re freshment is it It relieves the overtasked brain and the heart laden with cares it makes the blood dance in the veins of youth and gives a new impetus to the spirits work goes on more briskly when a gay heart sets the active powers in motion. Well did the Wise King say A merry heart doeth good like a medicine : it keeps off gray hairs and wrinkles better than any cosmetic that ever was invented. The an cient Greeks realized its value when they placed a jester in the society of their gods upon Olympus : as their deities were clothed with human attributes they did not omit to provide for their amusement. The young ladies were not too dignified and fastidious nor Aunt Lucy too wise to join in the sports and the old lady s spectacles and cap did not feel at all insulted when the hand kerchief was tied round them in Blind Man s Buff and the liall rang vrith the jocund shouts of the children whose 6 66 GAMES AND STORIES. greater activity eluded her grasp. Wlien even the youngest acknowledged that they had enjoyed enough romping for one day Mary proposed a new amusement of a quieter character which she had just heard of entitled the Rhyming Game. As it was found very pleasant I will give a specimen that the reader may try it of a winter s evening. One person thinks of a word but instead of naming it mentions another with which it rhymes the ne.xt thinks of another rhyme which is to be described not spoken and then the leader of the game guessing from the description what word is meant says it is or it is not such a thing. And so all round the circle. I ve thought of a word that rhymes with sat said Mary. Is it that sly animal of the tiger species which is domes ticated by man and delights to steal the cream and to tor ture poor little mice said Amy. No it is not a cat. Is it that useful article which covers the floor in summer that is on the dinner table every day in the year and may be seen behind or before almost every front door said Cornelia. No it is not a mat. Is it that nondescript winged quadruped something hke a bird something like a mouse something like a kangaroo which troubles us sometimes of a summer s evening by fly ing about the room and entangling itself in our hair said Ellen. No it is not a bat. Is it that other agreeable creature which infests old houses but is prudent enough to leave them when they begin l 0 fall down : that is very voracious and sometimes sats ba bies noses ofi said Tom. No it is not a rat. GAMES AND STOETES. 67 Is it a very gentle slap indicative of love No it is not a paV Is it one of the wooden pieces of which blinds are com posed No it is not a slo.t. Is it a manly covering for the head No it is not a hat Is it that word sometimes appUed to a disagreeable child No it is not a hrat. Is it the opposite of leanness No it is not fat. Is it that covering for the head occasionally worn by young misses and also a frequent quality of their conversation 2 said Charlie Bolton. No. insulting sir it is not a flat. Is it that amiable insect so anxious to discover whether all are made of the same blood which pays such particular attention to visitors among pine forests No it is not a gnat. Is it a large receptacle used in the brewery and tannery No it is not a vat. Is it an ornamental way of dressing the hair said Ger trude. Yes it is a plait. Now it s your turn Gertrude. I ve thought of a word that rhymes with rock. Is it an important part of woman s attire 3 No it is not frockr Is it an article of infants clothing No it is not a sock. Is it the thing that brokers buy and sell No it is not stock. 68 GAMES AND STOEIES. Is it a common weed and also the place where ships are built No it is not a dock. Is it a collection of sheep No it s not a flock. Is it a German wine highly prize . by connoisseurs No it is not hock. Is it a rap at the door No it is not knock. Is it a curious instrument that has hands but no eye or ears and that always weighs its actions but never does any thing but reprove other people s laziness No it is not a clock. Is it that word which followed by head shows what we all are for not guessing it sooner Yes you are right it is a block. In the evening Mary was appointed by general consent to tell that eagerly desired Indian story. And mind you give us scalping enough said Charlie Bolton I m a little afraid you are too tender hearted to give your story the proper dramatic effect. It s worth nothing unless there is a great deal of blood spilt and a whole string of scalps. Horrible Charlie how can you bear such things How ever I needn t be afraid if Cousin Mary is to tell the tale said Amy. How can I possibly please the taste of both replied Mary I plainly see that only one way is left for me to Buit myself so if you ll excuse me that s the thing I ll do. Ve ll be compelled to excuse you I suppose said Char lie with a shrug : well go on then and be as merciful as your weak woman s nature compels you to be. GAMES AND BTOEIES. 69 Accordingly with this encouraging permission Mary be gan her story which she called Drikanitt nr tlju W iit Watn Xilr : AN INDIAN TALE. Nearly a hundred years ago when the greater part of Pennsylvania was still covered with forests and was peopled chiefly by wild deer and yet wilder Indians there might have been seen upon the banks of the beautiful Susquehanna a log cottage of very pretty appearance. It consisted of two stories and was surrounded by a piazza whose pillars trunks of trees unstripped of their bark were encircled by a luxuriant growth of ivies and honeysuckles which ran up to the roof and hung down in graceful festoons. The house was situated so as to command the finest prospect of the river and the dis tant hills and gave the traveller the impression that it was erected by people of more refinement than the common set tlers of that region rough backwoodsmen who thought of little else than the very necessary work of subduing the wild planting corn and potatoes and shooting bears and deer. And so it was : James Buckingham who with his young wife had settled there having purchased land in that vicinity was a man accustomed to a more polished state of society and had received a college education in New England. But having become deeply attached to a young girl whose parents refused consent to their union the impetuosity of his charac ter prevailed over his sense of filial piety and he peisuaded the beautiful Ellen Farmington to leave her home and duty and to give him a husband s right to protect her. In all proba bility patience and submission might have prevailed upon 70 GAMES Ai D STOEIES. her parents to give up an opposition which was in reaHty un reasonable and groundless as Buckingham was a young man in every way calculated to make their daughter happy but this rash act of youthful folly had embittered their feelings and the young couple were forbidden ever to show their faces in the old homestead lest a parent s curse should light upon their heads. Too proud to show any repentance even if he felt it James Buckingham determined to settle in another State where nothing should recall the past and where his small amount of capital and large stock of energy and indus try might be employed to advantage accordingly he fixed his lot among the pioneers of Penn s colony and chose a ro mantic situation upon the Susquehanna for his dwelling. Very toilsome were the first years of their settlement and great their privations but they were young and happy and willing hands and loving hearts made toil a pleasure. In a few years woods were cleared fields inclosed barns built and then agreeably to Solomon s ad ice the Buckinghams thought of building a commodious dwelling. Prepare thy work without and make it fit for thyself in the field and af terwards build thy house. The aid of neighbors ever ready for such an undertaking was called into requisition and soon they removed from the small and only too well ventilated hut through the chinks of which the sun shone in by day and the moon by night and the rain penetrated whenever it would to the ample pleasant home already described. Here it was that little Emily Buckingham their only child first saw the light and then the cup of their happiness seemed only too full for mortals to quaff. As the child daily grew in beauty and her engaging ways filled their hearts rvith de light then first did they realize the absorbing nature of a pa rent s love and regret that theij were separated from those GAMIS AND STOEIES. 71 who had so felt to Emily s mother when she lay a helpless infant in their arms. Yet pride prevailed and no overtures were made to those whom they still thought severe and un relenting. Few and scattered far were the farmers in that region for they were on the very outskirts of civilization. At a short distance rose a primeval forest untouched by the axe of the settler where the deer roamed freely unless shot by the In dian hunter and many were the friendly Indians who visited the cottage and exchanged their game their baskets and their ornamented moccasins for the much covet d goods of civilized life. Frequent among these guests was Towandahoc Great Black Eagle so called from his first boyish feat when riding at full gallop he had shot down an eagle on the wing so unerring was his aim and its feathers now adorned his head. Towandahoc was a great hunter and did not dis dain to traffic with the pale faces not only for rifles and gunpowder but for many domestic comforts to which most Indians are indifferent. But Great Black Eagle although fearless as the bird whose name he bore was a humane man more gentle in character than most of his race and a great friend of the whites the brethren of the good Onas as the red men called the man who laid the foundations of our com monwealth in peace by a treaty which in the language of Voltaire is the only one never confirmed by an oath and never broken. Especially was Towandahoc attached to the Buckingham family who ever treated him kindly and to the little girl who played with his bow and arrows and tried in her artless prattle to pronounce his name. Unbroken peace had hitherto prevailed between the red men and the pale faces owing to the just and friendly treatment the natives had experienced but symptoms of another spi rit began now to Y2 GAMES AND STOEIES. appear. The war waged between England and France bad extended to the colonies and the P rench were unremitting in their efforts to gain the Indians to their side. A line of forti fications was erected by them extending from Canada to the Ohio and Mississippi and they were strongly intrenched at Fort Du Quesne the site of the city of Pittsburg. Braddock s expedition and memorable defeat had just taken place and it was thought by many that the Pennsylvania tribes en raged by the honorable refusal of the Assembly to accept their tomahawks and scalping knives in the war and courted on the other hand by the French were cherishing a secret but deep hostility. Many of Mr. Buckingham s neighbors erected blockhouses protected by palisades to which they might re treat in case of an attack and stored them with arms ammu nition and provisions but his confidence in the good dispo sition of the aborigines was too great to allow him to appear suspicious of those who came backward and forward to his dwelling in so much apparent friendship. Such was the posture of aflairs when Emily had reached her fourth year : dear as she was to her parents the return of her birthday found her unspoilt and as sweet and well trained a child as any in the colony. It was worth a walk to see her : her golden curls fell upon a neck of alabaster and her delicate regular features were illuminated by dark viva cious eyes : she strongly resembled her mother who had one of those faces which once seen are never forgotten and that seem to ripen merely not to change from youth to old age. But this extreme loveliness of person formed but tlie setting of the gem Emily herself combined so much swfetness and liveliness of disposition was so afiectionate gentle and docile that it was no wonder her parents made her the centre of all their plans and enjoyments. It was she who must always GAMES AND STOKIES. 73 outstrip her mother in welcoming her father in from the field And climbed his knee the envied kiss to share and to listen to the delightful tale that could never be repeat ed too often : she must bring his slippers and place his seat near the fire in winter. And she must help mamma in all her concerns and although such help was only a delicious Mnd of hindrance her bright face and winsome ways made all tasks light and pleasant. Never had she looked so lovely in her mother s eyes as she did on the evening of her birth day when in her little white night slip with bare feet and folded hands she knelt down to recite the simple prayei she had been taught that day as a reward for good conduct the setting sun streamed in at the window and as its rays linger ed among her curls as if they belonged there and were re luctant to leave the mother thought of a kneeling cherub with a glory encirling her head but blessed God that her child was yet upon the earth. Long did that picture dwell upon her memory. After singing her to sleep with a gentle lullaby such as a mother only can employ she imprinted a tender kiss upon the sleeping child and having seen that all things were well and safely arranged m the house she and her husband left intending to spend the evening with Mr. Markley and his family who lived at a distance of five or six miles. They were on more intimate terms with them than with any other neighbors and took back with them Roland Markley a boy of ten who had spent the day with little Emily his especial friend and pet whom he was never weary of assisting and amusing. It was a pleasure to see the children together : the little girl looked up to him as almost a man and he made her every whim a law. For her he would make the trim 74: GAMES AND STOEIES. little vessel and launch it npon the water for her he would construct the bridge of stones across the brook and guide her little feet safely to the other side. The conversation at Mr. Markley s house was of an alarm ing character it was said that sure information had been re ceived of a speedy rising of the Indians and the Buckinghams were urged instantly to remove to that more thickly settled spot where a large blockhouse was erected and all prepara tions were made to give the enemy a warm reception. The addition of even one able bodied man to their force was de sirable and they strove to impress upon their neighbors the imminent peril of their exposed situation. So earnest were they and so probable did the news appear that Mr. Bucking ham resolved to comply with their wishes and to remove on the morrow and with hearts heavier than when they left home they started to return to it. Do you percieve the smell of smoke If it should be oui cottage said Ellen Buckingham first breaking the silence in which they rode along. The woods may be on fire again : do not be alarmed the conversation this evening has unnerved you replied her husband but he could not conceal the tremor of his own voice as a horrible fear entered into his heart a fear soon to become a more horrible certainty As they drew near the air became thick with smoke and when they entered the cleared ground and looked for their home no home was there Instead burning rafters and smoking ruins : around the ground was trodden down by many fcet of moccasined men. Partly consumed by the fire lay the bodies of two farm servants who had been in Mr. Buckingham s employ a tomahawk smeared with fresh blood lay among the smoking embers and a golden curb GAMES AND STORIES. TO singed by fire was near it all they could discover oi little Emily The murderers had left doubtless disappointed that their prey was so small and in the first moments of agony the bereaved parents wished that they too had fallen victims to their fiendish rage. Emily was dead certainly dead The fresh blood the lock of hair proved it only too clearly her body had been consumed by the flames. The light of thar lives had been put out the glory had passed away from their sky and they must now go mourning all their days they felt as did a parent in the olden time whose words are re corded in Scripture If I am bereaved of my children I am bereaved. One little hour had changed the aspect of the whole earth to them. And yet broken hearted as they were they must act : not now could they fold their hands in despair. Soon was the news of the Indian rising spread among the settlers and while all flew to arms and joined in the necessary prepara tions tears fell from eyes that were never known to weep be fore and rough men spoke soothing words to the mourners for little Emily was known and loved by all for miles around and many said she need not change much to be made an angel. It was agreed that with the earliest dawn when the women and children were safely disposed of they should meet at the ruins of the Hopedale Cottage so was it called and follow the trail of the savages through the woods some sanguine spirits chief among whom was little Roland Mark ley still asserted that Emily might live and have been car ried away into captivity but her parents could not so deceive themselves that lock of hair had convinced them of her death hope could not enter their hearts it had died with Emily. 76 GAMES AND STOEIES. One entire day did tlie Indian hunters follow in the trail and came uj on the spot where their enemies had encamped and there three trails in ditFerent directions looked as if the savages had scattered. AVhat was to he done To follow all was impossible as their own force was a small one and meantime night had come on wrapping all things in her mantle of secrecy and fatigue required them to rest their weary frames. Setting a watch and lighting a fire with load ed rifles within reach they slept such a sleep as men can take when they dream of a red hand at their throats and a tomahawk glancing before their eyes. Light hearts make heavy sleep but such a deed as had been committed in the midst of them makes men start from their slumbers if but a cricket chirps or a withered leaf falls to the ground. During the night heavy rains began to fall and when morning light appeared all traces of the pathway of their enemy had disappeared the leaves fell abundantly fi om the trees and no mark was left upon the earth to show where they had passed. The baffled party did not give up the search for several days but nothing transpired to throw any light upon the subject and they were obliged reluctantly to re turn in order to defend their own homes and families from a similar fate. Few doubted little Emily s death but some still clung to the hope that she was in the land of the living and might yet be recovered. But her father and mother hoped nothing: grief entirely filled up their hearts. And with the grief arose a new feeling bitter and poignant remorse. This is the just punishment they thought that off ended Heaven has in flicted upon us for having wrung our parents hearts with an guish. Now we feel a parent s agony : now can we realize what we made them suffer. This was the tender spot on GAMES AND STORIES. 77 which a wound would penetrate to the heart and here it is that a retributive Providence has struck us. The arrows of the Almighty have pierced us shall we any longer strive against our Maker We will humble ourselves in the dust righteous Judge and will return to duty : if it be not yet too late if our parents still hve incline their hearts to for give And their pitying God heard their prayer and brought them in safety to their childhood s home and prepared for them pardon and peace of conscience. For Ellen Bucking ham s father had been brought to the brink of the grave by sudden illness and the stem old man wept like a child when the village pastor a faithful minister of the Gospel told him that the most faultless creed would not avail him if he cher ished a hardened unforgiving spirit and exhorted him to par don and bless his exiled son and daughter. His iron heart was subdued within him and when his wife whose gentler nature had long since pined for a reconciliation joined her entrea ties to the commands of religion then like the sudden break ing up of the ice upon a noble river his feelings gushed forth beyond control all coldness and hardness vanished. At this moment it was that James and Ellen Buckingham arrived they had come in the spirit of the Prodigal Son not thinking themselves worthy to be called the children of those they had offended and they were greeted with the same tender ness and overflowing affection described in the parable their confessions of guilt were stopped by kisses and embraces and soon they were weeping and recounting their loss with arms encircling their long estranged parents. When the doctor paid his next visit he said that a greater physician than he had interfered and had administered a new medicine not very bitter to take which threw all his drugs 78 GAMES AND STOEIES. into the shade : it was called hearCa ease and nothing more was wanting to his patient s I ecovery than very tender nurs ing and daily applications of the same dose. And tender nursing indei d did he receive from his daughter Ellen and proudly did he lean on the strong arm of his son when suffi ciently convalescent to venture abroad : it seemed as if the affection restrained within their bosoms for so long a time now gushed forth more fully and freely than if there had never been a coldness. And thus did sorrow on one side and sickness on the other guided by an overruling Providence join together long severed hearts purify affections too much fixed upon the earth and lead all to look upward to Him who ruleth in the affairs of mankind. Truly he doth not affiict willlnr ly nor grieve the children of men. At the earnest request of Ellen s parents her husband agreed to continue with them acting in all respects as their son and taking off from them the burdens of life : and their latter years were made happy by religion and filial piety. After their death the Buckinghams removed once more to their farm upon the Susquehanna and rebuilt their cottage in all respects as it was before its destruction. Soon again did the vines clamber up the pillars and hang in beautiful festoons from the roof but where was she the beloved one who had so wound herself round their feelings that death it self could not unclasp the tendrils 3 Joy had vanished with her and no portion remained for them in this life but peace which will ever follow the diligent discharge of duty : the hope of happiness they transferred to that better world where httle Emily awaited to welcome them. What meantime had been her fate On that eventful evening she lay upon her little crib in a darkened corner of the room buried in the sweet slumber of childhood and in GAMES AND STOEEES. 79 Docence. The savage yells did not disturb her she peacefully slept on angels must have guarded her bed when a fierce Indian with bloody tomahawk in hand rushed into the room but saw her not in her little nest and returned to his com rades reporting that all the rest of the inhabitants had fled. Determined to do all the mischief in their power they set fire to liie house and barns and then pushed oif into the woods to seek new victims in the unofiending Moravian settlement of Gnadenhutten. Little Emily was first awakened by a suf focating heat and smoke and by the crackling of the flames : she screamed aloud to her father for help and tried to ap proach the stairs but the blinding smoke and the quickly spreading fire drove her back. Just then a tall and noble form arrayed in Indian garb forced a passage through the raging flames and among the faUing rafters and guided by her cries sought her chamber caught her in his arms and rushed down to the outer air. Not without peril to both : the arm which encircled her was burnt so as to bear the scar ever after but still it sustained its precious burden and the little girl was unharmed save that some of her long golden tresses hanging loosely behind her were severed from her head by the fire : hence the lock of hair that remained un consumed convincing her friends of her death. And who was her brave preserver Towandahoc Great Black Eagle the friend of the pale faces The secret plans of his tribe had been kept from his ears from the fear that he might beti ay them to the unsuspecting whites and it was not until after the expedition had departed for the banks of the Susquehanna that he learned their hostile intentions to wards his friends. He lost no time but followed rapidly in their steps hoping by his representations to induce his peo ple to give up their murderous purpose or perhaps by a 80 GAMES AND STOEIES. short but difficult route through the mountains to reach the cottage of Hopedale before them. But hate is as swift as love in its flight and as he approached the spot and saw the flames mounting up to the sky he thought himself too late and the work of murder and of destruction complete. Just then he heard little Emily s cries and rushed in at the peril of his life to save the child. Supposing her parents to be dead he resolved to take the helpless httle one to his wigwam and to adopt her as his own. His home was at the distance of several days journey from the Susquehanna in a retired valley of the Alleghany mountains and thither through a dense forest he bent his steps. The greater part of the way he carried the child her white arm wound round his dusky neck her fair bead lying upon his shouldei he dried her tears he picked berries in the wood to refresh her and strove to comfort her little heart which was very heavy with sorrow. At last they arrived at his wigwam his wife Ponawtan or Wild Rose ran out to meet hur husband and great was her wonder at the sight of his beautiful burden. He said to her: Ponawtan I have brought you home a child as the Great Spirit has taken away our own and sent them to the good hunting grounds where forever they hunt the deer. Take good care of the child for she is like a white water lily encir cled by troubled waters : in our wigwam may she find rest and peace. Ponawtan with a woman s tenderness took into her arms the trembling weeping child who with the quick instinct of childliood soon lenrned that she was a friend. The Indian wo man understood not even the few words of English by which Towandahoc made his kind intentions intelligible but the lan guage of the heart is a universal one and in that she was a GAMES AND STOEIES. 81 proficient. Well was it for little Emily or Orikama AVhite Water Lily as she was henceforth called that she had fallen into such good hands. Ponawtan was a kind affectionate being who had deeply mourned the loneliness of her cabin and now that a child was given her that a little motherless homeless outcast was thrown upon her love she was happy and her sweet voice was again heard singing snatches of wild Indian melodies at the door of her hut and about her work. For some weeks Orikama drooped her head and her pale cheek looked indeed like the flower whose name had been given her and Ponawtan grieved when she beheld her lan guid step and the sad expression in her large speaking eyes or when she found her weeping in a corner of the hut. But childhood is happily elastic in its feelings and again the merry glance came back to her eye and the little feet danced ujion the green grass and the soft baby voice caught up the Indian words she heard and learned to call her kind protectors by the holy name of father and mother. And was the memory of the past blotted out from her mind Not so indelibly painted there was the image of a whitewashed cottage overgrown with vines near which a noble river rolled seen through an opening of the trees and of a kind father who wore no plumes in his hair who bore no bow and arrows whom she had run to greet and on whose knee she daily sat listening to beautiful tales. And of a sweet pretty mother in whose face she loved to look who taught her to say a prayer kneeling with clasped hands especially did she think of her as she appeared on that last evening when she kissed her good night and sang her to sleep with a gentle lullaby. And never did she forget to kneel down before she lay upon her bed of sweet grass ana with folded hands and reverent look to recite her evening 82 GAMES AND STOEIES. prayer. What though the full meaning of the words did not enter into her mind with childlike piety she looked upward to her Maker and impressions of purity and goodness were made upon her heart. In the beautiful language of Keble Oh say not dream not heavenly notes To childish ears are vain. That the young mind at random floats And cannot reach the strain. Dim or unheard the words may fall And yet the heaven taught mind May learn tlie sacred air and all The liarmony unwind. And if some tones be false or low. What are all prayers beneath But cries of babes that cannot know Half the deep thoughts they breathe. In his own words we Christ adore But angels as we speak. Higher above our meaning soar Than we o er children weak : And yet His words mean more than they And yet he owns their praise Why should we think He turns away From infants simple lays Towandahoc and Ponawtan wondered when they saw hei kneeling in prayer but did not interfere with the lovely child and doubtless this daily habit not only kept up within her mind purer notions of God and duty than she could other wise have entertained but enabled her to cherish a more vivid remembrance of the parents she believed to be dead and of the beautiful home of her infancy. Never hearing aught spoken but the Indian tongue the little girl would soon have entirely forgotten her native language had it not been GAMES AND STOEIKS. 83 for this daily practice which kept at least some words of English fresh in her memory. Among the indistinct but most pleasing recollections of the home of her early childhood was one of a boy with curly black hair and smiling face who brought her beautiful flow ers and made for her rabbits out of his handkerchief and pretty little boats out of nut shells. She remembered eagerly leaning over the water watching the tiny bark till it got out of sight while he held her hand tightly for fear she should fall into the water. Another scene of a different character was imprinted upon her mind never to be erased that fear ful waking when the flames crackled and roared around her and the thick smoke filled the air when she called upon her father for help but no father was there and when her dark skinned father Towandahoc rushed in to her rescue. When she thought of this night of horror she instinctively clasped her hands before her eyes to shut out the fearful sight. These remembrances however did not hinder the bright and lively child from being very happy in her new life. And why not True here were none of the conveniences or re finements of civilized life but the little girl grew up without the feeling of their loss and Where ignorance is bliss tis folly to be wise. No mirrors reflected her erect and graceful figure unspoiled by corset or by long wearisome hours of confinement at the school bench it was lithe and well proportioned as one of Diana s nymphs but instead she arranged her golden tresses and decked her head with a wreath of wild flowers bending ever a small mountain lake which she had appropriated to her own use and which served her as bathing house dressing room and looking glass all in one. No Turkey or Persian 84 GAMES AND STOEIES. carpets were spread upon the floor no sofa with rich carving and velvet seat invited her to indolence but instead she trod upon soft green moss sweet grass and flowers and when weary reposed upon such seat as Dame Nature provides for her children in her beautiful mansion the old stump the mossy bank the well washed rock or the tree prostrated by a storm. No sparkling fountain rose into the air and fell into its ornamented basin to please her taste but the moun tain waterfall of which this is but a feeble imitation rushed down the rocks in snow white foam near her cabin and she would gaze upon it for hours with delight. To the imagina tive mind to the eye and the ear open to the impressions of beauty nature has many school books unopened in the great city and ami J the busy haunts of men and her ready scholars may gain many a lesson from the great common mother undreamt of amid the cares of business the dreams of ambition and the bustle of ficti tious wants. To Orikama the world was one vast temple : instead of marble pillars with Corinthian capitals instead of Gothic aisles and dark Cathe drals her eye rested with admiration upon the nobler loftier columns of trees that had grown for centuries crowned with graceful spreading foliage upon long avenues whose over lapping brandies formed a natural arch imitated long since by man and called an invention upon the deep recesses oi forests with their dim religious light or with their sudden glorious illumination when the last rays of the sun stream in lengthwise with coloring as rich as any painted window can furnish. Her choristers were the birds her incense the sweet perfume which the grateful earth and her innocent children the flowers continually offer up to their Maker : instead of the gaudy chandelier she gazed upon the full orbed moon hang ing like a silver lamp from its dome of blue and forcibly re GAMES AND STOEIES. 85 calling tlie Divine Hand which placed it there. All nature had a voice and a meaning to her and in the ahsence of the ordinary means of education and of the invaluable aids of the Christian ministry her pure and religious sou Found tongues in trees books in the running brooks. Sermons in stones and good in every thing. Living thus constantly in the open air vrhile her mind ex panded in tranquil beauty she grew up a blooming health ful maiden whose kindly candid nature shone out through a countenance of rare loveliness. Thoughtless of beauty she was beauty s self. JSTone were there to flatter the young girl and to awaken that uneasy vanity which fills the mind with the conscious ness of observation and gives awkwardness to the timid and affectation to the self possessed. Seeing herself so dif ferent from those she loved the best the fair Water Lily often wished she could darken her skin and hair that she might more resemble others. Nor think that Orikama was totally unaccomplished her kind mother Ponawtan taught her all she herself knew to fear and love the Great Spirit to be obedient kind and patient to speak the truth and to bear pain without a murmur. She learned that important part of the Indian woman s duty to raise the vegetables needed for their simple repasts and to prepare savory dishes of venison and other game to fabricate their garments ornamenting them with uncommon skill and taste and to manufacture baskets of exquisite workmanship. These were her tasks and when they were accomplished how joyfully did she bound oft to the woods or up the hills to gather herbs and barks such as observation and tradition taught the children of the forest to employ in the cure of diseases : she knew all the trees 86 GAMES AND STORIES. shrubs and roots which grew in that region and was skilled m domestic surgery such as woman has ever practised where medical colleges are unknown. In her frequent and distant excursions for this purpose she had attained one accomplish ment not to be taught in schools her voice was one of ex quisite tone and great compass peculiarly rich and mellow and she had learned to imitate the birds in their varied war blings so that frequently answers would be returned to her from the deceived songsters of the wood. Then louder still would ring the notes and the feathered tribe were excited to emulation by the young girl singing in the gayety of her heart. Thus passed the early youth of Orikama in intercourse with sweet nature under the kind protection of two of the best specimens of the Indian tribes and almost debarred from any other society. Seldom did a moccasined hunter enter their wigwam yet seldomer did a squaw pass through that lonely valley and a white man never. When she had at tained the age of thirteen a change occurred which threw a shadow over her young life and was greatly regretted by Towandahoc and Ponawtan. A detachment of their tribe Jiaving determined to migrate fixed upon that beautiful and fertile vale for the place of their settlement and soon an In dian village arose where before had rested the holy maiden calmness of a region almost untrod by man. Now all was dirt confusion discord : the vices of civilized life were added to those of the savage without the decency or refinement which seeks to throw a veil over their deformity. Orikaiiif woke up as from a beautiful dream to find that those whom she would love to think of as brethren were vile and degra ded : she saw lazy drunken men lounginc about at the doors of smoky hut.s or administering chastisement to yelping GAMES AND STORIES. 87 curs or o women as noisy reduced by ill treatment and do mestic drudgery to be the cunning spiteful slaves they were. Every thing shocked the noble and pure spirit of Orikama : there were none here that she could make companions and friends nor would Towandahoc and Ponawtan have been pleased to have her associate with them. It could not be ex pected that she should be a favorite with the young girls of the tribe who were jealous of her superior attractions and hated her for her reserve and their conduct made her feel sensibly that she was of another race and of another nature. Their malice was perhaps quickened by the fact that some slight hostilities had again arisen between the red men and the pale faces in which their tribe had been very prominent. So unpleasantly changed did the whole family find their beautiful valley that it was resolved to remove to some dis tant spot where they should not be crowded out by uncongeni al companionship. Accordingly Towandahoc departed for an absence of some weeks to choose a situation for settlement the less reluctantly as all the warriors of the tribe had al ready left upon an expedition which he had reason to suspect was aimed against the whites. None remained behind but old men squaws and pappooses not to forget the Indian dogs ever ready by their snarl to recall their unwelcome existence to your mind. One day during her husband s absence Po nawtan departed early in the morning with a view to gather some herbs which grew upon one spot alone a marsh at a considerable distance : she left Orikama to take charge of the wigwam till her return which would not be before nightfall. Soon after she had left the crack of the rifle was heard and the Indian village was startled from its repose by the shout of the white man and armed backwoodsmen rushed in expect ing to meet their enemies : but th warriors were absent and 88 GAMES AND STOEIES. the rough but generous foe disdained to wreak vengeance upon old men women and children. All were taken prison ers and the cabins were fired : but how great was their amazement upon coming to the larger handsomer wigwam of Towandahoc which they concluded from its appearance to belong to a sachem to see there shrinking back with terror a fair young girl of their own blood Few words could she speak in English and but little could she understand of that tongue which for ten years she had not heard spoken except by herself in prayer she had even forgotten her own former name. Great was the excitement when the news flew through the band that a lost or stolen child was recovered and all rushed eagerly to see her. And she what mingled feehngs filled her heart Childish memories of just such men crowd ed into her mind. She was lost in wonder and vague remem brance. Just then full of ardor there rushed forward a youth of twenty who exclaimed the moment his eyes fell upon her It is she I knew she was living It is little Emily Buck ingham As she gazed upon his open brow round which the crisp black cuils were clustered and heard the long for gotten name she was troubled she thought of th boy who held her hand as she leaned over the edge of the stream to watch the mimic boat and with faltering tongue she repeated her name. The voice and all Do you not see comrades how she resembles her mother Ellen Buckingham Oh hasten home ward to give joy to the hearts of her fjither and mother 1 Father mother dead. Towandahoc Ponawtan Indian father mother. After some difficulty Roland Markley for it was really he succeeded in explaining to her that her parents still hved : and against her tears and prayers determined at once to GAMES AND STORIES. 89 break all bonds with her Indian home they tore her away witliout waiting for the return of Towandahoc and Ponawtan but left their wigwam standing out of gratitude for the care they had taken of the child. The Indians had made an in cursion into the territory of the whites and committed many ravages and it was with the intention of breaking up their villages and driving them away that this expedition had been undertaken. The prisoners they had captured were ran somed on condition of their removal and the whole tribe passed to the other side of the Alleghanies. As the band travelled homeward and first came across the beautiful Susquehanna Orikama or Emily as we should again call her started and gazed eagerly around her : the broad stream called up memories of the past. And when they arrived at the cottage of Hopedale and she beheld the house and grounds the river and the woods and the distant hills she recognized her home and her earliest recollections were vividly recalled. Soon was she folded in the arms of her mother who so long had mourned for her and by her father she was welcomed back as one from the grave. The news spread far and wide and great was the gathering of friends and neighbors to wish joy to the parents and to wel come back the pride of Hopedale : much to the confusion and distress of poor Emily. All noticed the strong likeness she bore her mother in person voice and countenance and if now she resembled her how much more was this the case when she had exchanged her Indian garb for one more suita ble t the American maiden Soon were the bonds of love knit together most closely between the parents and their re covered treasure her tongue relearned the lost language of her childhood nnd happiness again brightened the hearth at Hopedale the birds sang more sweetly to her mother s ears 90 GAMES AND STORIES. and the san shone more cheerfully than it had done for years. A.midst all her new joys Emily very often thought of her be loved Indian parents Towandahoc and Ponawtan and longed to see them again but Indian life as developed in the vil lage was abhorrent to her very soul and here she enjoyed all the freedom and communion with nature she had once so highly prized with society and advantages for mental culti vation she was now at an age to appreciate. All vpere delighted to teach the docile and intelligent girl so ready to take up ideas so judicious in the application of them but Roland Markley the playmate of her childhood installed himself as head tutor and soon every setting sun saw him on the way to the cottage eager to apply himself to the task. Ten other years have passed and near the cottage of Hopedale stands another within whose porch overgrown by the Prairie rose at her spinning wheel sits a beautiful young matron perfect contentment is enthroned upon her brow and happiness beams out from her radiant smile golden curls cluster gracefully around her well shaped head and dark lustrous eyes follow lovingly a little girl at play al though her skilful lingers do not forget their task. What is the matter my httle Ellen she said as the child ran to hide her face in her lap. An Indian mamma An Indian coming out of tho wood At these words Emily springs up she will ever love the red man for the sake of those who nourished her childhood and never will a son of the forest be sent away unoheered from her door. But times have greatly changed since her father built the neighboring cottage : seldom now does the Indian visit that comparatively thickly settled spot his coui se b still westward and ever imwanl witli the setting sun. GAMES AND STOKIES. 91 VVlnjn Emily emerged from the thickly shaded porch she saw indeed a red man approach from the forest he was old but his majestic figure was still erect his eye bright and piercing black eagle plumes adorned his stately head it was Towandahoc He was soon clasped in the embrace of his long lost Watet Lily and Indian though he was the old man wept over his recovered darling. He told her how Ponawtan had retunied by nightfall to find her daughter gone and the village in ashes : their own wigwam had caught fire from the flying cinders and was entirely consumed. She had lingered around the spot of her former happiness till his return after a little time as they could hear no news of Orikama they had re moved far away from the scene of desolation to the valley of the Mohawk. Grief for the loss of her daughter had injured the health of Ponawtan although time had now somewhat reconciled her to it : but Towandahoc said that the Wild Rose was drooping that her leaves were withered and her flowers falling one by one and much he feared that another winter would lay her low in the dust. When little Ellen understood that this was the dear Indian grandpa of whom she had so often heard her shyness passed away and soon she drew near to the aged hunter handling bis bow and arrows and even presuming to climb up and scrutinize the feathers that were at once her admiration and her dread. The old man took her upon his knee and was showing her his bow when Roland returned home he ea gerly seconded his wife s persuasions to induce Towandahoc to remain with them for some time and then to return for Ponawtan that both might pass the remnant of their days within their daughter s dwelling. But the aged hunter shook his head 92 GAMES AND ST0EIE8. It cannot be he said the Great Spirit Las made th pale faces to dwell in houses to plough the fields and to listen to the voice which comes from the printed book held ap before his eyes but he has made the red man to hunt the deer and to live alone in the open air. When the Great Spirit created man he made his red child first out of the best cla : he then made the pale faces and lastly out of what was left he made the black man. And he placed be fore them three boxes and because his red child was the fa vorite he told him to choose which he would have. So he chose the box containing a bow and arrows a tomahawk and a pipe. Then the pale face chose and he took the box which held a plough carpenters tools a gun and a book. And the black man took what was left : in his box was an overseer s whip a spade and a hoe. And this has been the portion of each ever since. I am a red man and I cannot breathe where men are thicker than trees : to me belong the bow and arrows the wild deer and the open sky. The old man has returned to visit the graves of his ancestors but soon far away from them he will drop to the ground like the ripe persimmon after a frost. Orikama has returned to the ways of her fathers and I do not blame her for she is a pale face. But the old man cannot change like a leaf in October soon will his sun set in yonder western heaven and he must now keep on his course. I have said. When the moon arose Towandahoc left the house bend ing his steps to the forest : but he did not go without passing his word that he would bring Ponawtan to see her daughter. Before the winter set in they arrived and Emily s tender heart was grieved as she gazed upon the wasting form of her who had so often sheltered her in her arms : it was only too evident that another summer would not see her upon the GAMES AND STOEIES. 93 earth. Ponawtan was greatly cheered by her visit but could only be prevailed upon to stay for a few days when she departed never more to return. In the spring Towandahoc came alone his sorrowful face and drooping form told the tale of sorrow before he opened his lips : his energy and vital powers seemed to have died with Ponawtan. He never came again and doubtless he soon found a resting place by the side of her who had been his life long companion. So you didn t kill any of your people off but the two farm servants for whom we do not care a fig cried Charlie Bolton. Not I replied Mary I m not very partial to blood and murder I would not have put them out of the way except to please you I lay the manslaughter at your door Cousin mine. I m very willing to bear the penalty : if it s a hanging matter please to imagine that my neck has paid the forfeit just consider me hung as the man said at the crowded din ner table when an irritable fool took offence at something he had spoken and being too far off to throw his glass of wine in his face told him to consider the wine as thrown at him. Very well I will replied the first and do you consider this sword as run through your body. A very good retaliation And what did they do then Did they fight Not they They did much better they laughed shook hands and were good friends ever after. And their honor was as well satisfied as if they had made targets of their bodies I dare say : it was much more sensible. 94 GAMES AND STOKIES. But Cousin Mary said Amy thoughtfully I ve been trying to find out the reason why Towandahoc did not take little Emily to the nearest white settler instead of carrying her otf into the wild woods I think it would have been much better for the poor child. What do you think was the reason replied Mary. I know I cried Geoi ge. The Indians are such dunces that old Thunder Gust or whatever his name is hadn t the sense to do such a straightforward thing as that but must drag the child off through the woods scratching her finely with the blackberry and whortleberry bushes no doubt. I ll warrant she screamed and tried to get away although Cousin Mary does try to made her out so gentle I know I would. I declare you do not know how to appreciate my fine sentiment I Are you boys made of diflFerent stuff from us I want to know I rather suppose we are said George laughing. Well am I right in my explanation Nc t in the least some one else must try. I concluded said Alice that it was the natural kind ness of his heart and his fondness for the httle girl which made him wish to have her for his own child. Of course he did not realize that he was only a savage and not fit to bring her up rightly. That s nearer the truth than the other guess rejoined Mary. But none of you have mentioned the great reason why Tow. nidahoo carried her off. What can it be Simply this if he had not what would have become of my story I d like to know I made him take her home with him on the same principle that novel writere place their GAMES AND STORIES. 95 heroines in a thousand distressing situations that they may extricate them from their difficulties and make a longer tale. But what s the moral of your story saiii practical matter of fact John. I don t see much use in a tale unless there s a regular drawn moral in it that everybody can dis cover at once. Oh nonsense I do hate morals said Cornelia. Just as if we were to be instructed the whole livelong day and never to have amusement without a good reason being given 1 That s too tiresome I always skip the morals and the good talk when I read stories if they re pleasant that s enough : I hate to be cheated into a sermon when I want a story. I feel something as the man did who was fishing for a pike : he caught a cat fish instead and throwing it back into the river exclaimed When I go a catting I go a catting but when I go a piking I go a piking. I m afraid a good many people think as you do Corne lia said Mrs. Wyndham laughing. But perhaps we can find a moral for John if we look sharply enough. Let s see there are good kind people in every race of every com plexion and if we only make the most of our opportunities there are means of education open to all who have eyes and ears and willing minds. Do you see any other moral Oh yes indeed replied Ellen. When the Bucking hams were deprived of their child it was a sort of punish ment to them for disobedience to their parents and they un derstood it in that way. True enough said Mr. Wyndham. And I have often noticed that disobedient children are punished in after life by means of their own offspring : either by their suffering or death or still more frequently by their ingratitude and dis 96 GAMES AND STORIES. respectful conduct. And then they feel themselves as their parents did before them Plow sharper than a serpent s tooth it is To liave a tliankless child I have often remarked this also rejoined Mrs. Wynd ham. And it appears to be consistent with all the dealings of the Disposer of events : He himself says that He will treat us as we treat our fellow creatures : With the merciful thou wilt show thyself merciful and with the just thou wilt show thyself just and with the froward thou wilt show thy self froward. And when we notice these coincidences is it not an argument for a superintending Providence said Tom Green. Undoubtedly it is replied his uncle and although evil conduct here is frequently unpunished being left for the more perfect retributions of eternity yet it is so often follow ed by unhappiness and by a reward in kind that no think ing mind can doubt the moral government of God. And it appears to me that of all the commandments that one which says Honor thy father and thy mother that it may be well with thee is the one taken under the especial protection of Providence. I have ever noticed that dutiful children are honored by the world and honored in their own family cir cle and that on the other hand it is ill with the rebellious and unthankful. Then there is another thing I was thinking of said Amy the good uses of sorrow : you know it brought the Buck inghams to repentance and Ellen s father being taken ill he re ent d too I think he had as much need of it as they. I m glad my father is not cross and seveie. GAMES AND STORIES. 97 So am I heartily. Would you run off Amy if he were 5 said Cornelia. Oh I hope not I should think How sharper than a serpent s tooth it is To have a thanldess child. I shall not forget that passage uncle as long as I live : who wrote it Shakspeare : and as a general rule you may conclude when you meet a particularly striking passage that it is either in Shakspeare or Milton. But it is getting late : will Mary be kind enough to bring the Bible for it will then be time to say. Good night to you all 1 9 98 GAMES AND STOEIES. CHAPTER IV. PROVERBS. TWENTY QUESTIONS. THE SPECTRK OF ALCAN TRA OR THE CONDe s DAUGHTERS A TALE OF SPAIN. Brightly and joyfully did the sun arise after the storm like a prisoner released from dungeon and chains again to look upon the faces of those he loved and all nature put on a holiday garb to greet him. Every tree and bush was spark ling as if with rapture. If a magi cian of superhuman power had waved his wand over the earth it could not have been more changed. Long icicles were suspended from the fences and the overhanging roofs and even the sheds looked bril liant and beautiful in their icv covering but the trees what words can describe them The pines bristled themselves up hke stiff warriors arrayed in steel their armor making a clanking sound when the cold winds whistled hv and the sycamores with their little dependent balls looked like Christ mas trees hung with bon bons and confectionery for good children. Every stray leaf that had resisted the storms oi winter every seed vessel upon the shrubs shone with beauty the ground was one glittering sheet like a mirror the sky was of a deep blue washed from all impurities and the sun smiled down upon the beautiful earth like a crowned king upon his bride decked with sparkling diamonds. It was one of nature s gala days in which she appears to invite all hoi children to be happy one of those scenes which forbid us to call winter a dreary time and which outshine in brilliancy aU the verdure of the tropics. GAMES AND STORIES. 99 At any time we enjoy the clear sky after a sullen rain or a driving impetuous storm and young people especially feel the truth and beauty of Solomon s expression Truly the light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun but when in addition such a spectacle as this is pre sented to those long pent up within city walls how does the heart swell with rapture No introduction at court no coro nation no theatrical exhibition can for a moment compare with it in splendor nature has shows more beautiful by far than any that man can produce and all she asks for in ex change is the seeing eye and the feeling heart. Truly the best gifts of heaven to man are free and universal bestowed without money and without price and may be enjoyed by the penniless as well as by the millionaire if the spirit be only opened to the impressions of happiness they were intended to convey the Good God is daily blessing and feasting his creatures with impartial liberality. What exclamations of de light were heard inTheGrange when the fairy scene was first beheld Every room in the house was visited to see which presented the finest prospect and soon with feet well provid ed with gum elastics and with old fashioned socks still bet ter preservatives from falling all sallied forth to enjoy the spectacle more fully. The clear sky and the keen air raised their spirits and an occasional slip and tumble was only an additional provocative to laughter youth and health and merry hearts that had never yet tasted of sorrow made life appear to them not a desert not a valley of tears as it is felt by many to be but a paradise of sweets a joyful festival. To combine duty and pleasure Mrs. Wyndham proposed that they should bend their steps to the humble home of Mrs. Norton the poor widow for whom their fingers had been so busily plying the preceding day. Accordingly laden with 100 GAMES AND STOEIES. bundles and with a basket of comforts which would prove very acceptable to a sick person they walked towards her lit tle cottage. The boys after a private consultation declared that they did not intend to allow the girls to do all the chari table and that they wished to invest some of their surplus Christmas cash in a pair of large warm blankets for the wid ow s benefit. Their aunt heartily approved of the sugges tion and all agreed that a far better interest would accrue from a capital so laid up than from shares taken in the con fectioner s or the toymaker s stock and the walk was con siderably prolonged by a visit to the country store where the desired purchases were made. Joy lighted up the sick wo man s eyes when she saw this unexpected provision for her wants and witnessed the kindly interest of the young people ofThe Grange: she thanked them with few words but with overflowing eyes and heart. She was an interesting woman kind and motherly and looked as if she had seen better days : her little black eyed children also were well trained with man ners much superior to their station. One little girl of about twelve attracted ilrs. AVyndham s particular notice she ap peared to have installed herself into the office of chief nurse and the younger children seemed to look to her for help and advice : when not engaged in waiting upon them or the sick mother she seated herself near the window busily occupied with a piece of needlework. She was a very pretty child of fair complexion and deep blue eyes with the beseeching look that you sometimes see in the young face when trouble and hard treatment have too early visited the little heart like an untimely frost nipping the tender blossoms of spring. Sad indeed it is to see that look in childhood when under the sheltering wings of parents and friends the body and mind should expand together in an atmosphere of love and gentle GAMES AND STOKIES. 101 Dess such is the great Creator s will. Mrs. Wyndham ob served to her mother That oldest child of yours does not resemble you and the other children. The sick woman smiled : No ma am she is an adopted child although I love Margaret as much as any of my other children. Indeed 1 with so many little ones could you take an other Yes ma am she was thrown into our keeping by Provi dence at a time when we wanted nothing my husband was then living and in excellent business as a saddler and we en joyed every comfort. Times are now sadly changed but Margaret shall share our last crust but indeed she is our main stay I should be obliged to give up entirely and per haps to go to the Almshouse if it were not for her help. I am glad to see that she makes herself so useful is she any relation to you None at all. I will tell you her story if you will hear it some time when we are alone : it is rather a long one. The young people left Mrs. Wyndham still conversing with Mrs. Norton and returned homeward. After tea various games amused the fleeting hours and among them Prov erbs was played as follows : While one is absent from the circle all fix upon some well known old saw or proverb the absentee then returns and asks a question of every individual to which an answer must be returned embracing some one word of the sentence care being taken not to emphasize it. The first proverb was this : When the cat s away the mice will play. Cornelia had been out of the room. Cousin Mary didn t you enjoy the olear up to day Yes when it clears after a storm one always does. 8 102 GAMES AND STOKIES. Charlie are you tired from your long walk ttis mom ing no the day was so fine the walk so pleasant and the company so agreeable that I did not feel the fatigue. Ellen didn t you pity poor Mrs. Norton Yes and I pitied her cats they looked so thin. Cats I thought she had only one. Cats Hum Tom don t you hope we ll have a story to night Yes I enjoy it vastly and will take care not to be away when it s told. Gertrude don t you think the mice will play to night Yes but from whom did you take the idea Who let that cat out of the bag Ellen to be sure with her plural number for Mi s. Nor ton s cat which does not look starved at all so go into the hall Miss Ellen while we think of a proverb. Let s have It is more blessed to give than to receive said Amy I thought of that to day at Mrs. Norton s. Very well that will do. Come in Ellen Cornelia will bring in the first two words as they are small. Cornelia have you finished your crochet purse It is almost done. Amy are you not almost roasted in that hot corner of the chimney It would be more pleasant further from the fire. George you are so fond of skating dou t you hope to enjoy the sport to morrow Yes indeed I think we ll have a blessed cold night and then we ll have skating. John how many miles did you walk to day Two said John. That s not fair That s not fair 1 cried some of the GAMES AND STOEIES. 103 younger children. However it was agreed that plajang upon words where the sound was the same was quite allowable. Tom do you like to ask questions Yes I like to give a question to be answered. Aunt Lucy what shall be our story to nighi That is more easy to ask than to answer. Charlie are you fond of mince pie Yes and of cherry pie too. Alice are you not almost tired of this game Yes I d receive pleasure from a change. Let me see George s blessed and John s two blessed too Oh I know It is more blessed to give than to receive. Now let s play Twenty Questions. How is that played It is quite a new game to me. It used to be a favorite game in distinguished circles in England Canning the celebrated minister was very fond of it and it really requires some knowledge and skill in the lawyer like craft of cross examination to play it well so have your wits about you young people for the more ready you are the better you ll like it. One person thinks of a thing and by a skillfiil questioning on the part of one two or the whole party as you pi efer it your thought can always be found out. Twenty questions and three guesses are allowed. If Cornelia will think of something I ll discover what it is to show you how it is played. I have a thought said Cornelia but you never can find it out. We ll see : does it belong to the animal vegetable min eral or spiritual kingdoms The animal. Is it biped or quadruped fish flesh fowl or insect Biped. 104 GAMES ANI STORIES. Man monkey or bird Bird. Wild or tame Tame. Is it the species you think of or one individual of it One particular individual. Is it used for the table The species is but I doubt that this individual was ever used for food. Did this bird live in ancient or modern times before or after the Christian era Very ancient before the Christian era. Does this ancient bird belong to the goose duck chicken peacock or turkey tribe Turkey. Was it very thin Very indeed to a proverb. Job s turkey You ve guessed it and with ten questions too. Now you can think Ellen and the rest of us will question you in turn. I have a thought said Ellen. Treasure it then said Charlie Bolton thoughts are very rare things with me. Animal vegetable mineral or spiritual Vegetable. In its natural or prepared state Natural. Is it the whole or only a part of the plant A part. Is it a part of a tree a shrub a vine or is it of the grass kind A vine. GAMES AND STORIES. 105 Is it the root stem leaf flower or fruit Fruit. Is it used for food Tlie species is this one was not. Is this fruit pulpy like the grape or mealy like the bean Mealy like the bean. Is it a bean V Yes that s one guess. Was this bean an ancient or modern one Very ancient. I know cried Amy it was the bean Jack the Giant Killer planted which grew up to the moon in one night and fastened itself round one of the horns. You are right eight questions and two guesses that s pretty well. Now Amy tis your turn to think. I have a thought. Animal vegetable or mineral Animal. Quadruped or biped fish snake or insect None of these it is the production of a biped. In its natural or prepaned state Natural but a slight alteration was made in its shape at the time to which I refer. What time is it before or after the Christian era After. Before or after the year 1500 Very much about that time. Had it any thing to do with Columbus Yes at least Columbus had something to do with it. Was it Columbus egg The very thing. And new shall we not vary the scene by having a story 106 GAMES AND STOEIES. Agreed we are all ready to listen but who shall tell the tale It is Alice s turn and do give us a ghost story for one s a nice frightful one that ill make our teeth chatter and our hair stand on end do Alice I m afraid you ll be disappointed but I ll tell you some sort of a tale and hope that you will make allowances for a young beginner. I m no Seheherezade. No what said Amy. Is it possible you have not read the Arabian Nights Seheherezade was the princess who saved her life by telling such interesting stories the tyrant of a Sultan intended to put her to death in the morning but she left off in such an important part of her tale that his curiosity led him to spare her head till she had finished the narrative. Of course she took good care to tell what the sailors call long yarns and the Sultan found out he could not live without her to divert him. i Ipfrtri nf Irnntrn nr tljt Cnnk s Sitngjitirs. A SrAXISII TALE. The Conde de Alcanti ii was a Spanish nobleman univer sally i steemed by thuse who knew him as a man of high honor and moral worth. In person he was tall dark and commanding in manner grave and dignified. The grandee of Spain is never one with whom you feel inclined to take a Hb erty but the noble Cuiide was uncommonly reserved and serious oven sad in the expression of his countenance. He was a widower with two lovely children daughters of the GAMES AND BTOEIES. 107 ages of sixteen and eighteen. Clara the elder a very hand some girl strikingly resembled her father in ajipearance save that a bright hopeful energetic spirit was displayed in her face and in almost every motion. Magdalena the younger and the cherished darling of both father and sister scarcely looked as if she belonged to the same family : she inherited from her mother the transparent delicate complexion azure eyes and fair clustering curls sometimes seen in Spain and Italy and always so highly prized from their rarity. Gen tleness and an up looking for love and protection were the characteristics both of her face and mind and doubtless her timidity and dependence upon others was much fostered by the loving cares and constant vigilance of her father. Their ordinary residence was in Madrid where the Conde was much engaged in affairs of state his strict integrity po litical wisdom and fidelity in the discharge of duty caused business of the highest moment to be committed to him by his sovereign. But as is only too frequently the case public cares engrossed him to the detriment of his private concerns and some little entanglements in money matters made him resolve to look more closely into his account books and see where the difficulty lay. It was certainly surprising that the hereditary estates which brought in so large an income till within fifteen years had so unaccountably decreased in value and that the castellan or mayordomo who managed them was continually complaining of the difficulty he found in rais ing from the peasantry the comparatively small sums he yearly transmitted to his master. But so it was : and al though the Conde carried his confidence in his dependents and his easiness of disposition to such an extent as almost to become a fault yet as he examined the accounts of some years standing a strong suspicion arose in his mind that 108 GAMES AND STOEIES. somehow he had been most egregiously cheated and that while he had so skilfully manao ed the finances of the coun try as almost to double her revenues he himself had been as completely manag ed by a cunning knave. Being a kind and a just man he was anxious not to run the risk of wronging a faithful servant who was always profuse in ex pressions of attachment to the family and he determined to keep his suspicions within his own breast until he had given the matter a personal investigation. Great was the astiinishment and delight of Clara and her sistei when he announced to them his intention of paying a visit to the castle of Alcantra. It was there that Magdalena first saw the light and it was there that her mother closed her eyes upon the world leaving her husband almost dis tracted he immediately removed with his little children from the scene of this great affliction. It was soon after this sad event that the old and faithful mayofdonw died he had long been intrusted with the entire control of the estate and was greatly beloved by his fellow servants and by the peas antry. The Conde gave orders that the sub steward who had lately come into his ser ice and who was acquainted with the duties of the office should take his vacant place his feelings were at that time too much engrossed with his recent loss to institute the proper inquiries into his character and capabili ties and tr om that time it was that from some cause either from misfortune negligence or corruption the entanglement of his affairs was to be dated. The Conde had never before been williug to revisit the castle and his daughters with the ardent curiosity of youth longed to behold the place in which a long line of their ancestors had lived and eagerly availed themselves of his invitation to accompany him. Their imagi nations were fired by all they had hea d of the old chateau GAMES AND STORIES. 109 and the ruinous condition into which it had fallen of late years only added fuel to the flame. Clara remembered or fancied that she remembered a vast dark building with huge towers and buttresses she often tried to picture to her mind the home of her infancy and to describe it to Magdalena but these vague remembrances were all that she could recall. Don Alonzo informed his daughters that the journey was to be commenced on the morrow without much preparation or any thing like an ostentatious style of travelling they themselves would set out in the old family coach accom panied by his secretary Senor Roberto and would be followed by another carriage containing their maid Fernando his valet and Anselmo a trusty servant. He intended to take with them a supply of comforts indispensable to persons of their condition as it was probable that the castle might be destitute of them having so long been without the presence of its master and this was the more needful as the castellan had received no intimation of the proposed visit. On the fol lowing morning they set out : the castle of Alcantra was sit uated in the north of Spain among the wildest mountains and as they travelled onward scenery of the most diversified kind passed before their eyes. It was the time of the vint age and the noble peasants of Castile in their picturesque costume came homeward laden with the rich purple grapes singing the romantic lays of love and chivalry which have passed down from one generation to another. The ballads of the Cid and the laments of the Moors formed the chief bur den of their song. Every now and then they could distin guish some well known passage in Admiral Guarinos. Baviaca or Don Roderick or that sad chorus which sounds like a Moorish sigh Woe is me Alhama I 10 110 GAMES AND STOEIES. At sunset they would see the peasants seated at the doors of theii cottages cheerfully feasting upon bread and fruit va ried by the lig ht wine of the country preserved in goat sldns as it is in the East : one leg of the skin forms the mouth of the bottle and they nuticed what is generally reported by travellers that even in this time of rejoicing intoxication was nowhere to be witnessed. Many were the groups they met dancing upon the grass by the light of the moon and a pleasant thing it was to see the white haired grandsire look ing on and occasionally joining the merry band of his de scendants in innocent sport and festivity keeping a young heart under the weight of years. Clara and Magdalena were particularly struck bv the native grace displayed by the youths and maidens in the bolero a dance originally introduced by the Mdors : with castanets in their hands accompanying their steps with unpremeditated music they would alternately ad vance and retreat fly and pursue until exhausted by the ex ercisia they would rest upon the rustic bench or the green bank and while a ay the hours with song and guitar. What noble looking men are the peasants of Spain Every one of them from the dignity of his deportment might well pass for a hidalgo in disguise and the feeling of self respect is so common that it has passed into a proverb among the people that they are as good gentlemen as the king only not so rich. Proud and independent and jealous of any encroach ment upon their rights they are yet scrupulously polite to others and pay marked attention to strangers. While in Italy the foreigner will meet with imposition at every step the Spaniard disdains to take advantage of his ignorance and tne signitieaiit reply Sefior I am a Spaniard is sufficient answer to any suspicion of meanness or duplicity. Their tall mauiy forms wrapped in the ample cloak which the Spaniard GAMES AND STOEIES. Ill wears with unequalled grace their oval faces dark complex ions and flashing eyes make them most interesting features in the landscape. Probably in no country dots man in the humbler walks of life appear so universally clothed with the majesty suitable to his rank as lord of the creation as he does in Spain. As they travelled through Castile the scene was occasionally varied by meeting a band of stroUiug Gitanas or Gipsies whose swarthy hue slender forms and wild ap pearance clearly pointed out their foreign origin of coui se they were anxious to tell the fortunes of the beautiful Seno ritas and on one occasion their father consented to gratify their curiosity. But he repented of his compliance when he heard the woman predict to the timid and somewhat super stitious Magdalena a speedy and imminent danger as about to befall her and he noticed with concern the changing color with which she heard these hints of peril : but Clara whose fearless and joyful spirit could not be daunted by such pro phecies soon laughed the roses back again into her sister s cheeks and made the wrinkled hag retreat full of rage at her incredulity. They also met some of those immense flocks of sheep which form such an important item in the national wealth of Spain and which are led southward early in the autumn to enjoy the rich pasture grounds of Estremadura and Andalusia. As they proceeded towards the north the country became more rugged and mountainous and changes in the costume of the peasantry showed that they had passed into another province : the black velvet cap of the Castilian ever worn so as to display to advantage his noble lofty forehead was re placed by one of woollen material of a brilliant red long and hanging down behind. The scenery every moment became more grand and sublime and the young girls who had spent 112 GAMES AND STORIES. their lives chiefly in Madrid were full of delight and admira tion. How can people live in the city they exclaimed when such a free and happy life is before them How can they prefer brick and stone to the everlasting hills the soft gieeu turf and the majestic forests Here you can really be hold the sky with its beautiful fleecy clouds ever changing in shape and hue and you can see the starry universe spread out before you there you can perhaps catch a glimpse of a few stars and a small piece of a cloud but the rest is hidden by dead walls. In the city our time is taken up and our hearts are frozen by ceremonious visits stately dinners and the rules of etiquette here in the country a real true life could be spent free from insincerity and busy idleness. Dear father will you not give up your ofiices at court and live henceforth at Alcantra Their father smiled at their enthu siasm and felt himself almost rejuvenated as he listened to their raptures flowing fresh from young and ardent hearts but told them that they had not yet seen their ancestral cas tle and that perhaps their expectations might be grievously disappointed he would wait until they had spent some time there before he gave them his answer. As they approached the termination of their journey the country became yet wilder and the villages were more thinly scattered while here and there a wooden cross appeared upon the roadside with some simple inscription calculated to in spire terror in proportion to its very simplicity. Here they killed lago or Here the robbers killed Senor Jose Blanco. They noticed on their last day of travel when they had entered into the territory of the Conde that the roadside crosses became more frequent and the cottages of the peas antry assumed a look of poverty they certainly did not beat in former times when the lords of the manor resided upon GAMES AND STORIES. 11 then estate and were able to see to the welfare of the people. When they entered the little inn of the village of Alcantra about four miles from the castle the garrulous old landlord greeted the Conde most warmly. And a good thing it is for the country that your Excellen cia has returned once more to his estates. Now we may hope to have a little peace now the peasants will not be ground down to the dust as they have been now some villanous upstarts I know of will not dare to ride over them rough shod and to treat them as if they were beasts of the field. Viva viva The illustrious Conde has returned The Count was much affected by the representations of this man whom he knew to be an honest and worthy fellow and was full of regret for what he now felt to be criminal negli gence on his own part and promised him that full investi gations should take place and that perfect justice should be done. The innkeeper asked him if his servants were well armed For said he the nearness of the castle is no pro tection to you from robbery. Many travellers have left this inn in high health and spirits and with trunks laden with merchandise but have never arrived at their destinations. The road is as you well know rough and precipitous over hung by huge rocks and dark forests and the banditti have taken up their quarters somewhere in this neighborhood though where it is none can discover. Many murders have been committed here and many a poor fellow lies buried in imconsecrated ground Heaven have mercy on their souls but the murderers have never yet been caught. It is not thought that the band can be a large one but they are very daring it is now more safe than usual for an atrocious murder oc curred a few miles from this place within the last wt ek and R company of soldiers is expected here every moment they 10 114 GAMES AND ST0EIE8. will stay a week and will try to capture them but unless the Saints defend us and all the Martyrs Heaven only knows what will become of us all. Don Alonzo assured him that he feared nothing as in cluding the coachmen they were six well armed men upon every one of whom he could entirely depend. And said he smiling if matters come to a bad pass I could count upon my daughter here my brave Clara as my seventh sol dier I have taught her to fire a pistol without shrieking and to hit the mark too and with her protection Magdalena and I need fear nothing. After this conversation it is not wonderful that all were on the qui vive as they ascended the mountain road leading to the castle of Alcantra. Magdalena started at every sound and even Clara fearless as she was felt reheved when she saw the lofty turrets and extensive battlements she had dimlv re membered spreading out before her their dark outline re lieved against the blue sky. If the approach was romantic and alarming it was a good preparation to their minds for the castle itself it was built in the times of feudal power and intestine wars and its massive walls had well performed their part in the defence of its inmates during many sieges. And yet strong as it was and built as it appeared for eternity a portion of this noble structure was going to decay one wing had been very much battered in the last siege it had sustain ed and the eaimon balls had done the work of centuries but the main building looked very imposing as if able to resist the lapse of ages and appeared from its elevation to frown down upon intruder and to scorn the very idea of danger. It was exactly such a place as was calculated to fire the ima ginations and to win the hearts of young girls brought up in i gay metropolis from the very contrast to all they had evol GAMES AND STORIES. 115 seen before there was a romance about its very gloom that was attractive to them. Associated as it was with much his toric interest and with many family traditions they had ar dently longed to behold it and now that they saw it rise in Its dark grandeur before them they acknowledged that their expectations were more than realized. There were no signs of life to be seen about the castle and it was long before the loud imperious knocking at the gate way brought any one to open it and then a man appeared whose hesitating manner and vacant countenance plainly showed that he had never been gifted with a large share of mother wit. With some diflBculty he was made to understand that the party had a right to admittance and the carriages entered within the courtyard. The rest of the household was by this time aware of an unusual arrival and came forward to receive them but it was very evident that their visit was not only unexpected but undesired although the castellan and his wife strove very hard to throw into their hard dark countenances an expression of welcome. Senor Don Juan Baptista so was the castellan called was a man of most repellant countenance his eye had a sinister cunning look and there was something in his large shaggy overhanging brow that was really appalling it was to be supposed that he had now put on his most amiable expression but unless his face greatly belied him fierce ungoverned passions were accustomed to rule his being. His wife Francisca had one of those countenances that appear to dare you to find them out : hard silent and sullen she looked as if the rack itself could not force her to speak unless she willed it and her face reminded you constantly of a wooden mash which not even the strongest emotions could make transparent and allow you to catch a ghrapse of the soul behind. Both were loud in 116 GAMES AND STOEIES. their expressions of regret that their dear lord and the sweel beautiful senoritas had not let them know beforehand of their visit that they might have had tilings more fit for their reception the castle was rather disarranged and not antici pating this honor they had allowed most of the servants to depart to enjoy a holiday for a few weeks their household was at present very small. Don Alonzo cut short their apol ogies by telling them that he had attendants with him suffi cient to supply the wants of himself and his daughters al though it was certainly unfortunate that it should have occur red just at this juncture and entering the castle he tenderly embraced Clara and Magdalena welcoming them to their an cestral home. The girls almost shuddered as they gazed upon the the huge hall with its lofty carved ceiling and its dark oak panelling. In ancient times when it was crowded by armed retainers or echoed to the joyful chorus of the feast and the minstrel s song it mu.st have been admirably suited to its purpose but now it looked solitary and deso late like a fit abode for the owl and the raven. At one end a wide substantial stone staircase led to the upper regions of the castle branching oft above in many directions a long oak table capable of accommodating more than a hundred guests extended for some distance along the hall but it was scarcely noticed in the vast apartment. A large chimney surrounded bv stone settles and richly ornamented with curious antique carving formed a prominent feature in it the tapestry on the wall from Avhich hunters and grim warriors appeared to look down upon our little party with surprise and displeasure hung loosely in many places was completely tattered and waved in the wind as the keen air of the mountains whistled through making Clara and Magdalena shiver with m d. Don Alonzo looked round with concern : It is indeed many years sinc GAMES AND STOEIES. 11 I have been here said he and things look considerably al tered but now my daughters let me advise you with the aid of your waiting woman to make yourselves as comforta ble as possible in your own rooms and meanwhile Seiior Bap tista will be kind enough to have a large fire built in the hall for it will really prove very acceptable. Francisca showed them to their rooms : large magnificent chambers fitted up with massive furniture of the richest de scription but the tapestry was faded and worn and every thing showed neglect and desertion. Francisca after escort ing them to these apartments told them that she would send Maria the housemaid to make up fires bring water and pro vide every thing else that they wished but the girl was always out of the way when she was wanted and was really not worth the salt she eat. Maria speedily appeared however : a pale young girl of dejected aspect with black hair drawn off from a forehead of marble whiteness and large sad eyes cast upon the ground. Her appearance greatly interested the kind feelings of Clara and Magdalena she looked sorrowful and reserved as if her heart had been chilled and her spirit broken by harsh treatment and the girls who were very much of her own age felt an instinctive pity and resolved to win her confidence. They learned by their questions that she was an orphan and had been brought up in the castle. She had never known any other home and had no relations in the world so it was not wonderful that she appeared un happy. As their maid appeared to be quite unwell from the jour ney they dispensed with any further services from her for the day and descended to the hall. Its aspect was considerably changed by a large sparkling fire which blazed upon the hearth and after supper Don Alonzo and his daughters 118 GAMKS AND STOEIES. drew around it with a feeling of comfort they had not expe rienced since they had entered the castle. As the Conde wished to discover the character of the castellan as much as possible from personal observation he ordered him to be sent for and invited him to a seat with them by the fire and they were soon engaged in interesting conversation. Senor Baptista was undoubtedly a person of quick intelligence and endowed with the gift of imparting a vivid dramatic interest to any narrative : he told several ancient legends connected with the castle in such a manner as to enchain the attention of his hearei s. One story excited the deepest interest in Mag dalena : we will call it DONA INEZ OK THE CASTELLAN S TALE. Several centuries ago as my lord the Conde and the noble Senoritas very well know this castle was in the possession of an older branch of the Alcantra family long since extinct and at that time the lord of the manor was a certain Don Pedro a dark stern man whose portrait clad in armor the senoritas may see on the morrow in the old picture gallery. Don Pedro was a man of unflinching bravery Jted indomita ble will his word was law. His vassals obeyed his veiy looks and flew to execute his behests. Accustomed from in fancy to command he became absolute and tyrannical his gentle wife was all submission and his fair daughter Inez was educated in the practice of the strictest obedience so as scarcely to know that she had a mind of her own when her father was nigh. Is it wonderful that when the unnatural constraint was removed by his absence her innate gayety of disposition broke out with all the impulsiveness of youth and her young affections clung to the neai est object Such a GAMES AND STOEIES. 119 object was found in Bernardo a handsome and noble young man an orphan and distant relative who had been reared in the castle : he had been the playmate of Inez in childhood her comforter companion and teacher in girlhood and now as she advanced to woman s estate they made the discovery that their hearts were knit together by a love which had grown with their growth and strengthened with their strength till it had become a part of their very souls. But how dare to reveal their affection Bernardo although of noble line age and in himself every thing that the fondest father could desire for his daughter had his fortune yet to win by his good sword and Inez was heiress to broad lands and might well aspire to a princely alliance. But love scorns all such dis tinctions : humble thoughts of herself and proud thoughts of her Bernardo filled the heart of Inez and as she plighted her troth to him she vowed she would wed none but him and would patiently wait until the time should come when her betrothed could claim her as his own. Bernardo went to the wars and greatly distinguished himself against the Moors Ferdinand conferred upon him various marks of favor and the noble and lovely Queen Isabel girded on the sword pre sented by the king with her own jewelled fingers. And now with a heart beating high with hope and with the prospect of great advancement before him the young man returned to visit the home of his childhood : it was his purpose with the sweetness of a few weeks holiday to repay himself for all the toils dangers and privations of a year. But when he arrived how changed was the whole aspect of the castle Inez was in disgrace and was ordered by her tyrannical father to be shut up in her room and to be fed with the bread of affliction and the water of humiliation. Bernardo was defply distressed : he at length succeeded 120 GAMES AND STOEIEa. through the pity of the servants in obtaining an interview and the poor girl weeping upon his breast where she hud so often been comforted before told him the sad tale of her trials. iSijon after he had left a noble Marquis of great wealth had made overtures for her hand which Don Pedro without consulting her had at once accepted and promised that within a year the bridal feast should be celebrated. When he in formed his daughter of her fate she besought him with tears not to send her from her home but his only reply was that the matter was determined and that all she had to do was to submit and to prepare for the wedding. Dreading as she did her father s wrath she dreaded yet more this hateful compulsory marriage and kneeling down at his feet with streaming eyes she prayed him in the humblest manner to spare his only child she could never survive the union it would break her heart she was young and wished still to remain for some years under the paternal roof. But tears and entreaties were unavailing. Don Pedro commanded her in the most peremptory manner to obey. Rising with a dig nity and composure of manner he had never seen in her be fore for she had ever appeared in his presence only a timid and frightened child she professed her readiness to make his will her law in every other point she would serve him like a slave die for him she would never marry against his wishes but would ever strive to approve herself a dutiful daughter. But in this point she must imitate his own firm ness and prove herself his child a vow was upon her soul that she must not break and she could not she would not marry the Marquis de Oviedo. As she stood there so young and so determined with all the pride of her race and all the dignity of womanhood rising up to aid the true love which GAMES AND STOEIKS. 121 beat in her heart even her father was struck with admira tion and for a moment hesitated. But viridictiv.3 passion triumphed over better feelings and he ordered her to be placed in her chamber under strict confinement. Once a month since then had he visited her apartment to ask her if she were now ready to yield her submission and upon her reply that she would rather die than wed the Marquis de Oviedo with an angry scowl he would leave her room. Poor Inez looked thin and care worn but was greatly comforted by seeing her betrothed and they agreed that it was better whatever the consequences might be to inform her father of their engage ment and to endeavor to mollify his heart. As Bernardo had returned from the wars with such distinction he had some slight hope that the crime of loving Don Pedro s daugh ter might possibly be forgiven. They were still engaged in these discussions when the door opened and Don Pedro appeared his face was wild with passion black with rage. He roughly snatched Dona Inez from the arms of her lover to whom she clung with all the energy of despair as the shipwrecked mariner holds fast to the mast or beam which is his only hope of safety or even to the anchor which will surely sink him to the lowest depths. Ttirning to his followers who were trained to obey his every command without a question he ordered them to convey Don Bernardo to the deepest dungeon of the castle and to chain hirilto the wall and then to bring the key to him. Dona Inez in a phrensy of terror knelt at his feet and begged that all lA anger might be visited upon her but spurning her frorrJhim he told her that she should feel enough of it yet and heed pray for no more he had a punishment still in stor for her and in due time she should realize what it was to efy his power. He left her in a swoon and did not see 11 122 GAMES AND STOEIES. hei again until after ten days when he entered her apart ment and grimly smiling commanded her to accompany him as he wished to conduct her to her lover adding with a peculiar look that if it were her wish as he was all devo tion to her slightest whim he would never henceforth sepa rate them. Scaicely knowing what to think but dreading the worst from the ironical tone of mock gallantry with which he spoke she followed him with faltering steps a vague ter ror dimming her eyes and ehiUing her heart. He led her through many winding passages opening heavy iron gates until they at length reached the deep dungeons which are found beneath this castle. There in a damp cell heavily chained to the wall she beheld by the light of the torch Don Pedro carried her own Bernardo But oh how changed how emaciated He seemed to be asleep. Her father told her to awake him she took his hand but started back that icy touch had told her all he was dead starved to death by her own father That moment reason forsook the agonized mind of Dona Inez the vaults were filled with her shrieks and so awful was the spectacle of her despair that even her father was terri fied. He tried to soothe her but it was too late he carried her back again to her room a raving maniac. A brain fever ensued of the most violent description and happily for the distracted girl in a few days she was released by death from all her sufferings. And now it was that in the consequences of his own actions Don Pedro found his punishment as he witnessed the agony of his afflicted daughter as he heard her ravings as he saw her toss her white arms and pitifully cry out for Bernardo or tear her long black dishevelled tresses iiorror and despair filled his heart. His conscience so long t rjjid at l iii tli awi kc and reniui. e irtyed upon his soul GAMES AND STORIES. 123 like a vulture. And when he beheld that form lately so lovely and blooming stretched out pale and motionless upon the bed of death anguish seized upon him to such a degree that rushing into his own chamber he put a period to his misera ble existence. Queen Isabella when she heard the particulars of these tragical events ordered the lovers to be interred within one tomb the seiioritas may see it in the old chapel in the north east corner their effigies are on the top carved in marble with clasped hands with this inscription : Amor morte or Love in death. The old branch being now extinct having as it were burnt itself out with its fiery passions the estates passed into the hands of your honorable ancestry may it remain in the family for a thousand years But my tale is not yet done would that it were There would be more peace in this castle if this were the case For people do say that Don Pedro cannot rest even in purgatory. I am not one at all given to credulity and it takes something to startle me but I must own that I would never willingly be found in the old parts of the castle after nightfall. I my self have seen strange lights and startling forms and have heard noises for which I could not account groans and shrieks and the clanking of chains. None of the peasants in the neighborhood will venture here after night and the ser vants can scarcely be induced to stay in what they call the haunted castle. The story runs that about midnight Don Pedro begins his peregrinations clad in armor as he is rep resented in his portrait in one hand he bears a flaming torch in the other a large bunch of keys and a chain which trails upon the ground. He has been seen bearing in his arms a female form clad in white with long black hair streaming to the wind tossing her aims in wild despair and uttering pite 124 GAMES AND STORIES. ous cries. It is thought that his punishment consists in night ly visits to the cell in which Bernardo died and nightly en durance of the sight of his daughter s anguish some also say that the skeleton of his victim is presented to his eyes Learning with light and that every ray eats into his soul like a canker. I do not answer for all these tales but this is the universal belief. I merely relate to your favors the common talk of the peasantry ever given to superstition. I dimly remember hearing some such story in my child hood from the old castellan from whom I suppose you have received the legend said the Conde but old Don Pedro never walked in my day and if he does now his conscience must have become more tender with the lapse of years. Cheer up Magdalcna light of my eyes You look quite pale from this horrible tale. I ll answer for it that Don Pedro will not appear to you if he does I ll settle his uneasy spirit for him. Sure ly you do not believe in ghosts You are not so weak No dear father I know that it cannot be and yet I own to feeling some nervousness on the subject. Much as I lontc to live here if I thought there were any truth in such a spectral appearance I would beg you to leave to morrow. That would be a sad loss to this castle senorita said Baptista furtively glancing at her pallid face from under his shaggy eyebrows. We must hope that Don Pedro may not walk to night. Anotlier romantic tale is told about a daughter of our house said Don Alonzo wishing to draw off Magdalena s thoughts from the subject which filled them. If you feel in clined to hear it I will relate it. Nothing would be more pleasant said the girls who de liahted in these traditions. GAMES AND ST0EIE9. 125 DONA ISABEL OE THE SECEET PASSAGE. About a hundred and fifty years ago wlien our branch had been long established at Alcantra there flouribhed here a cei tain Don Alphonso who also had a beautiful daughter Isabel by name. Her portrait hangs in the gallery and is remarkable for a sweet bravery of look and for a merry pi quant glance of her black eye which I greatly admired when a young man and of which I have been often reminded when I looked at my Clara. I think my daughters that you will agree with me in seeing a strong resemblance in person as I also do in character you can judge of that as my story pro ceeds. And by the way Clara mia tradition gives the room you occupy to the Lady Isabel it has ever since been called Dona Isabel s chamber so when lying upon her bed to night you can dream of your fair predecessor. Her father also was rather fond of having his own way and in this the daughter fully sympathized with him it is said to be a char acteristic of our race so we had better call this obstinacy a noble firmness and thereby save our self love. Don Alphon so however was not quite such a bloody minded tyrant as Don Pedro : how could he be as he was one of our ances tors The matter is clearly impossible. And I wish you to notice my daughters how with the lapse of years the race of fathers improves : beginning with a murderous Don Pedro a self willed Don Alphonso then walks upon the stage and lastly as a perfect specimen of a dutiful obsequious papa be hold me ladies at your feet I have told you that Isabel had a mind of her own she showed it very plainly by falHng in love in a most unorthodox unfilial enthusiastic sort of way with whom You will be so shocked my daughters that I almost dread to tell you. If she 126 GAMES AND 8T0EIES. had waited lite a dutiful child till her father had told hel she might love it would have been another thing But this headstronff trirl seemed to think she had as ffood a riffht to be happv in her own way as a peasant True the man of her choice was not a reprobate : he was not even a low born unmannerly churl : Don Fernando de Velasquez stood fore most among the young cavaliers of Spain in gallantry and in that nobility of mind which should ever accompany gentle birth. But yet it was in that very gentle birth that all the offence lav for Fernando s ancestors had long been at enmity with the house of Aloantra and this ancient feud had been embittered by years. But sometimes there appears to be a fate in the affairs of men especially when a woman and a pretty woman is in question : so it happened that Don Fer nando was one dav riding at some distance from his home when his good fortune enabled him to rescue a ladv whoso liorse frightened by some object in the road reared and plunged in a most alarming manner. It was Dona Isabel who had out ridden her attendants and who now felt that she owed her Ufe to this very handsome polite and noble looking cavalier. Could he do less than soothe her fluttered nerves guide her horse and make himself as agreeable as possible Could she do less than feel ardently grateful and manifest it in ever look and accent Very improper it was certainly as I said before for a daughter to think of a young man un til her parents permissinn is given but I have heard of one or two other instances in which this occurred and before either made the discovery who the agreeable companion was whi U of course if they were dutiful antagonism and animos ity would have filled their bosoms they were both unmis takably undeniablv desperately in love Is it wonderful that Don Fernando escorted her to the gate GAMES AND STORIES. 127 of the castle Or that proud Don Alphonso did not invite Lira in notwithstanding his daughter s inaploring looks even after he had heard from her lips of her deliverance Are mj daughters very much astonished that little perfumed notes exquisitely written doubtless with little kissing doves stamped in the corners and signed Yours till death passed between the two castles There was a prodigious waste of sentiment on the occasion quite enough to set up twenty pairs of well behaved proper respectable lovers. It came to such a pass that Fernando declared and I believe the fellow was in earn est that existence would be intolerable to him unless he could meet his Isabel and the lady although feeling some qualms of conscience about the matter agreed to see him daily when the evening star rose in the sky. So while her poor old father good easy man thought that his daughter was in her chamber or piously engaged in the oratory saying her Ave Marias and Pater Nosters and singing a vesper hymn to the Virgin the naughty girl had gone by a secret passage underground to a wood at some distance where she met her betrothed. This passage is said to begin in one of the chambers of the castle and winding along in the wall to proceed downward towards the dungeons underground and then to pass away to the wood already mentioned. It was originally intended no doubt as a means of escape or of communication with the outer world in case of a siege but at that time it had almost passed into oblivion. After the events I am relating the outlet into the wood was stopped up and where the pas sage is to be found no one knows : so that if Clara wishes to imitate the conduct of her beautiful kinswoman and to ar range clandestine meetings she will have to spoil the romance of the proceeding by quietly walking throup h the open gate. 128 GiMES AND STOEIES. But at length some prying eyes found out these nocturnal interviews and great was the rage of Don Alphonso. The lovers were seized brought back in tribulation to the castle and imprisoned one in her chamber the other in a dungeon. But love finds many devices : whether it was a golden key that opened her door or whether it was her eloquent tongue and pleading looks I know not but certain it is that in the dead of night when all but two in the castle were sunk in profound slumber a fair lady softly stepped into her father s apartment drew a large bunch of keys from under his pillow and proceeding down to the dungeons by the secret passage set Don Fernando at liberty I Soon did they breathe the sweet fresh air of freedom : soon did they find their way to the territory of the Count de Velasquez and to the chapel where an obedient priest spoke over their kneeling forms those words which can never be unsaid by which Holy Mother Church sanctions the union of loving hearts. And the father He stormed ci.inbiderably we fathers generally do in such cases. But upon mature consideration he concluded that amiability was under the circumstances the best policy : and being in reality a kind hearted man he forgave the young couple and invited them to dinner And thus ended the ancient feud between the houses of Alcantra and Velasquez After the termination of the tale Senor Baptista retired and the Conde and his daughters remained chatting by the fire for some time: at length the wasting embers and the increasing vliilliness of the air warned them that it was time to seek re iiise. With a n. verencc unhappily ton much wantr ing in our land of youthful independence Clara and Magda lena knelt before their father and as he impi inted the warm GAMES AND BTOEIES. 129 kiss upon their brows and uttered the heart felt God bless you my daughters their feelings both of piety and of filial love feelings how closely united were certainly freshened. Taking their little night lamps they proceeded up the stair case but soon parted as their rooms were situated in differ ent galleries. From the dim light and the many branching corridore Magdalena mistook her way and was just convin ced of her mistake when a sudden puff of wind put out her lamp. Feeble glimmering as it gave it yet would have ena bled her to find her way and she was just on the point of calling out for aid when she perceived a hght approach from an adjacent gallery. She thought it must be a servant but upon stepping where she could command a better view of it what was her horror to see a form advance like that described in the story of the castellan It appeared to be a tall man clad in complete armor with visor down : in one hand ht bore a torch which seemed to emit a supernatural light and in the other a bunch of keys and a long chain drag ging upon the ground. She distinctly heard the clanking sound of the chain and the ringing noise of his footstep upo the stone er she distinguished the figure so exactly simila. to that of the spectre of Alcantra the vengeful Don Pedro which was so vividly impressed upon her imagination. Sht did not shriek she did not faint but quickly bounding along the corridor she flew like lightning down the broad staircase and found herself in the hall. She had hoped to find her father still there but it was dark and deserted and looked so vast and so gloomy by the cold light of the moon which streamed in at the furthest windows that she felt a cold chill creep over her. At this moment the clock struck twelve : aa she counted the strokes which seemed to her excited fancy as if they would never cease tolling she thought she heard the 130 GAMES AND ST0EIE8. ringing footsteps approach : in an agony of terror she iushed through the darkness which was indeed to her a darkness which could be felt a palpable thing towards the chimney place hoping to find enough of flame to light her lamp but in vain. The air felt to her so thick and heavy as if her lungs could scarcely breathe it : she listened for the sound of a step but heard only the beating of her own heart. At length she summoned courage to retrace her steps to find either her own room or her sister s for the silence and soli tude of that vast hall were too oppressive to be endured. Softly and slowly she crept up the staircase when suddenly she felt her wrist clasped by a cold iron hand : she gave one piercing shriek and fell senseless to the gi ound. When she came to herself she was lying upon her bed in the same clothes she wore the preceding day and the bright sun was streaming in at the windows. She arose with a sense of pain and confusion as if some dreadful thing had happen ed which she could not recall to her mind but suddenly the whole scene of the preceding night flashed upon her. She thought it is impossible : certainly it was a painful dream caused by the exciting conversation of last evening and by my impressions of the castle. But all the minute circum stances crowded so vividly into her mind that she thought it could not be that a mere vision of the night should produce so powerful an effect. But what convinced her of the reality of these occurrences was the fact that she had not undressed for the night : casting her eyes down upon her person as she thought this they fell upon her hand and there she dis tinctly saw the marks left upon her delicate skin by that iron grip to which she had been subjected As she saw this all the crawHng horror and choking fear of the preceding even ing came back thick upon her and a feeling of faintness GAMES AND STOEIES. 131 which she could scarcely resist: but just then her eye fell upon the crucifix and with a sensation of self reproach that she had so long forgotten the supports and comforts of re ligion she knelt down and fervently besought aid from on high. And never under any circumstances is such a prayer in vain : her mind so fearfully tried resumed its self com mand and calmness and peace stole back again into her heart. She opened her window : it was a lovely day and the mountain air so bracing and reviving so deadly to sickly fears and nervous sentimentalities had an inspiring effect upon her she laved herself in the cold spring water arranged her dress and sought her sister s room. When there she felt her tremors return as she related to her the events of the night but Clara s brave and joyous spirit was not of the kind to yield even for a moment to su pernatural terrors. With her arm around her sister as if to shield her from all harm she told her that the first thing to do was to remove all Magdalena s effects to her chamber as she did not think she could trust her out of her sight for one moment after such an adventure. But surely it must have been your excited imagination How then do you account for my finding myself on top of my bed and dressed And how do you make out these purple marks True but it s very certain a ghost could not have carried you in his arms to your room it makes me laugh the very idea You are not very heavy but rather too substantial for a ghost I should think And he must have been a very smart hobgoblin to know so well which was your room that seems to me as if he must be an acquaintance of our very earthly looking castellan. And just as if a ghost could make suA a mark upon your wrist Bah what a clumsy con 132 GAMBS AND STOEIES. trivance I ve read of these amiable spirits burning their marks into your flesh but the blue spots they are made by good strong muscles. Was your spook polite enough to bring your lamp as well as yourself into your room I never thought of that I am sure not for I always put it on the dressing table come and see They looked and no lamp was there they examined the staircase and there was a large grease spot but no lamp. See sister here is a corroboration of my tale Oh I don t doubt a word of it and I don t doubt the ghost put the lamp into the pantry this morning nicely trim med. There is villany here Magdalena I believe that ras cal of a Baptista I must call him so he has such a hang dog look wants to drive us away for reasons of his own : I can never forgive him for frightening my poor darling so. We ll see if the ghost assail you or pay you any polite attentions while you are with me I ve never been so lucky as to see any of the creatures and should like to try a few experiments upon them : I never even meet snakes in the woods or any of those things that frighten others. So Senor Hobgoblin come and welcome By this time Clara had completely chased away her sister s lowness of spirits and they descended to the breakfast room pleasantly talking together. The castellan was in the hall and Clara did not fail to notice that he fixed his eye search ingly upon Magdalena as they passed and did not take it off while he asked with an obsequious air if the senoritas had passed a comfortable night in the cheerless old castle An uncommonly refreshing one owing to the hospitable cares of yourself and Franeisca said Clara answering for both my sister had something like the nightmare but otherwise we were very comfortable. GAMES AND STOKIES. 133 When they were alone they told their fathe the events of the night and it was his first impulse at once to charge the castellan with villany and to dismiss him from his post but Claia persuaded him to wait yet some days until the whole matter was well cleared up before he took any action. But Magdalena I cannot have my little girl s cheek blanched and her mind filled with ghostly terrors Don t be afraid for me dear father said his daughter smiling Clara s bravery has quite reanimated mine and she has laughed me out of the belief of its being a spirit at all I now wonder 1 could ever have thought so. All very well my beloved but there is a great difference between break fast time when the sun is shining brightly into the room and midnight with dark corridors and a feebly burning lamp especially when it goes out. True father said Clara laughing but I intend to provide for quite an illumi nation to night and do not expect to let poor Magdalena stir from my sight all day. That day passed off without any incidents and was very agreeably spent in an examination of the ancient castle with its many relics of by gone times its collection of portraits its spacious rooms winding galleries and magazine of armory and weapons. From the battlements they enjoyed a view of the country beneath them unsurpassed in extent and gran deur : it spread out before their eyes a beautiful panorama comprising hill and dale forest and cultivated land the little whitewashed cottage with its ascending smoke and the flocks of sheep scattered about gave a lively interest to the scene and endeared it to their hearts : man ever loves to see tokens of the nearness of brother man. Magdalena clasped her father s hand : O may we not always live here But what about that ghost O I forgot but if Clara lays 12 134 GAMES AND STORIES. the uneasy spirit of Don Pedro then will ycu not remove here I think I will my daughters if you both desire it. I dreaded to come here but find that time has so mellowed and softened my grief that I can now feel pleasure in re visiting the spots made sacred to me by your dear mother s presence. And I also feel as if I had neglected my duty through too great an abandonment to grief here in my an cestral possessions it certainly lies. The peasants I fear have greatly suffered from my absence and now they scarcely know me and I am almost a stranger to the neighboring gentry. If we remove here will you my daughters aid me in making this castle the scene of hospitality and kindness and will you extend your care to the neglected poor and ignorant who are scattered through these valleys The girls answered with joy in the affirmative and already began laying plans for visiting the sick reading to the old and teaching the young. That night lagdalena s fair head was encircled by Clara s arm and their hands clasped together the younger sister soon fell asleep after some light confidential chat such as sisters only can have there being in that connection the sen sation of perfect safety of the fellow feeling of youth and of that entire understanding of every thought and allusion resulting from intimate intercourse from birth. But Clara was wakeful she thought over the strange events of the pre ceding night and the more she reflected the more convinced she was of some plan on the part of the castellan for she connected together hi.s looks his tale and the sequel of Magda lena s ghost as the merry girl would call the spectral appear ance. While engaged in these thoughts the clock struck twelve: the witching hour she thought I wonder if the illustrious Don Pedro is walking now Just then her sharp ear detected a little clinking noise on the opposite side GAMES AND ST0EIE8. 135 of her large dark chamber she was all attention but not a motion did she make to disturb her sleeping sister her arm still encircled her lovingly her hand clasped Magdalena s. Gazing into the darkness there suddenly appeared in the room a luminous skeleton frightful enough truly to weak nerves but Clara was gifted with a calm and fearless spirit mens sana in corpore sano and her unspoken thought was Ah phosphorus pretty well done that for the country it is really worthy of one of our Madrid conjurers Watch ing intently to see if any other show was forthcoming the skeleton as suddenly disappeared as it had come and she heard various sepulchral groans and sighs with a running commentary of the rattling of chains and jingling of keys. At last this pleasing interlude as she termed it ceased alto gether and in a few moments she again distinguished that clinking sound and all was silence in her chamber. Well thought Clara the show is certainly over for the night I might as well go to sleep. Very kind certainly to provide for our entertainment But I am glad Magdalena did not wake. The following day Clara told her adventure in such a mirthful manner to her father and sister that it was impossi ble to avoid seeing it in a ludicrous light. However arrange ments were made to stop any further display of theatricals if they should be attempted the ensuing night and Clara spent some time in her own room examining the wall opposite her bed. The result was that upon raising the tapestry and carefully striking every panel she observed that one gave a hollow sound : she tried to slide it up she tried to slide it down she tried to slide it sideways but it was unavailing. Determined not to give it up she felt in every part and at last after spending several hours in the search her perse verance was rewarded it suddeuly flew open she had at 136 GAMES AJSTD ST0EIE9. last touched the hidden spring and here in her own room as she had suspected was Doiia Isabel s secret passage Greatly was she tempted to explore the dark and narrow way and to descend the stairs she saw through the gloom but prudence prevailed and she comforted herself with the thought that she had made discoveries enough for one day. Another awaited her however : she had scarcely closed the panel and replaced the tapestry when there was a knock at the door it was Maria bringing in wood and water. Poor Maria appeared to be the general drudge of the house and her slender delicate frame was borne down with labor. Clara s bright and cheerful kindness had quite gained the young girl s heart unused as she was to aught but harshness and reprimand. Her soul expanded and her silent lips were opened under the genial influence it was like the sun shining upon the little flower shut up against the chilling dews of night but spontaneously opening under his joyful beams. She told her her history : she was the only grandchild of the former castellan the faithful servant of the house so beloved by Don Alonzo : at his death she was a little child and had ever spent her life in the service of his successor. When very young she had met with kindness from the other servants but they were soon dismissed and for years there had been none in the castle but those she now saw the castellan and his wife the half witted Sebastiano and herself. But she said that occasionally Senor Baptista had company and she shuddered as she said it ferocious looking men armed to the teeth and generally weaiing masks. She always kept out of the way when they were about but one thing iihe knew that they did not enter nor depart by the gate of the cas tle and that Senor Baptista must have some other way of admitting them. Do you think they can be the banditti GAMES AND STOEIES. 137 thej talk of I do not doubt it and I have so longed to get away from this wicked place that I often lie awake at night thinking about it. They would kill me if they thought I had betrayed them will you protect me my poor Maria : and so you are the old castellan s grar 1 child I remember hearing my father say that he yearly transmitted to Baptista a handsome annuity for this poor orphan : of course you never got any portion of it Not a single quarto : but now I must go I should be missed 4 Dios senorita querida Clara lost not a moment in seeking her father and in com municating to him her important intelligence. Cool action was indispensably necessary : for the first and the last time in their lives there was a secret between the sisters. After dinner Don Alonzo expressed a wish to ride to see if any changes had taken place in the neighborhood and his daugh ters declining to accompany him as had been agreed between them he invited his secretary with the castellan and his wife to accompany him an honor which they gladly ac cepted. Soon after their departure Clara sent a note Don Alonzo had written by the hands of their trusty Anselmo to the village of Aloantra requiring the immediate attend ance of the band of soldiers stationed there and before the return of the carriage they were admitted by Maria and conducted to a room adjoining Clara s the weak minded Sebastiano being easily kept out of the way. At night a change of apartments took place : Clara and Magdalena slept or rather waked in their father s room and he quietly awaited in theirs the progress of events. At twelve o clock he heard the slight sound described by his daughter as proceeding from the opening of the panel. He waited a few monents to allow the intruders to enter and 12 138 GAMES AND 8T0EIES. then beholding forms arrayed in flames and white winding Bheets before him he raised the pistol he held in his hand pulled the trig ger and the foremost fell groaning to the ground. Instantly the soldiers and servants stationed in the adjoining chamber rushed into the room with lights and before the rest of the villains could recover from their sur prise they were all captured. Upon raising the wounded man they beheld gnashing his teeth with fury Sefior Bap tista himself the leader of the band ten men were they in all and as they subsequently discovered this comprised the whole of the banditti. Entirely under the control of the artful Baptista their object was not to injure but to alarm the Conde s famil hoping thus to drive them awav from a place filled with supernatural horror whereas any harm done to them would have infallibly brought down upon their heads the vengeance of government. Francisca also was secured and the whole band was sent oft to the nearest prison to await their trial. The attempt wafi made to work upon the woman s fears of Francisca to induce her to make confession and to implicate her com panions. Iron can be fashioned into any shape upon the invil but a will like hers no fire is hot enough to melt no hammer hard enough to break or subdue. They promised her pardon if she would open her lips but her scornful smile showed that she would remain true to her own code of honor be the consequences what they might. Abundant evidence proved the guilt of all concerned : the men sufiered the penalty of offended justice and Francisca was condemned ti perpetual imprisonment but managed to escape and was never heard of more. On the morning following the capture the secret passage was thsroughly explored and a discovery made involving GAMES AND STOEIES. 139 many important results. A number of the dungeons were found piled up with merchandise of various descriptions and whole chests of gold and silver were there deposited : infor mation was immediately transmitted to government but the king himself wrote a letter to Don Aionzo thanking him for his many faithful and unrequited services and begging his acceptance of the treasure found within his walls much of which was no doubt his own. The Conde gratefully accepted this evidence of his sovereign s favor and took great pains to discover the relatives of those who had been murdered by the banditti restoring to them fourfold. The treasure that remained was more than sufficient to disencumber his estates and to restore them to the flourishing condition of olden times. He endowed hospitals churches and schools with the residue and the peasants of all that region will long have cause to bless Dona Clara s braveiy and Don Alonzo s munificence. It is almost needless to add that Maria in whom every day developed new graces under the quickening influence of kind ness was well provided for by the Conde and upon her mar riage with his secretary Seiior Roberto he presented her with a handsome dowry. The old castle of Alcantra deliv ered from its spectre was soon converted by masons carpen ters and upholsterers into a most comfortable abode and the hospitality of its noble master and the charms of his fair daughters attracted to it all that was worthy intelligent and lovely in the adjacent country. Is that all said Amy who had been listening with glis tening eyes. All I hope so indeed for do you know my dears said Mrs. Wyndham that it is past eleven o clock Hasten away now to your nests and take care not to dream of the gpectre of Alcantra. 140 GAMES AND STORIES. CHAPTER V. A SKATING ADVENTURE. WHAT IS MY THOUGHT LIKE QUESTIONS. THE ORPHAN S TALE OR THE VICISSITUDES OP FORTUNE. Saturday morning was so bright and cold such a fi osty finger pinching winter day that at breakfast George pro posed the riddle What two fishes would you tie together on a day like this As none were able to guess it he pro nounced the assembled company intolerably stupid and gave as the solution skates and soles. lie declared the weather was made on purpose for skating and although his uncle expressed some doubts as to the thickness of the ice George s eloquence and earnestness carried the point especial ly as from his own account his experience was so great that you would have concluded ho was at least sixty years old. So the boys set off for a large pond at the distance of about a mile accompanied by the girls well wrapt up in cloaks furs and mufHers of every description all in the highest spirits and quite ready for fun and frolic and the quick walk through the frosty air broken by many a hop skip and jump certainly did not tend to repress the exuberance of their laughter and excitement. Is anv one too grave and too wise to approve of such conduct allow me to ask I ev erend sir or venerable madam as the case may be how many centuries are pressing their weight upon your silver locks Methuselah himself might remember that he once was young and sympathize with the innocent light hearted Oi Is . He declared the weather was iniMli. on purpose for skating. P. 1 1 1. GAMES AND STORIES. Ml nees of youth : and surely you cannot have anived at quite his length of years. Tis a great mistake to suppose that dullness and moping gravity have any thing in common with either goodness or wisdom : they are but the base imitations the spurious counterfeits which can pass only with the im disceruing. Welcome joyous laugh and youthful glee the world has quite enough of care and sorrow without repress ing the merry heart of childhood. Wiser would it be for you oh sad and weary spirit sick of the buffetings of the cold and selfish crowd for a little time to come out of your unhappy self and by sympathy with others again to become a little child. Your soul would be refreshed and strengthened by bathing in the morning dews of youth here would you find a balm for the wounds inflicted by the careless world many a mourner has been drawn away from that sorrow which feeds upon the very springs of life by the innocent caresses and gay converse of a child. Cleave then to your liveliness young people and throw away from you all va pors megrims and melancholic feelings Believe me real sorrow will come soon enough and your groundless depres sion of spirits may have more in common with ill nature than with thoughtfulness or earnestness of mmd : true wisdom is both cheerful and loving. The girls staid for some time admiring the evolutions of the skaters as they gracefully wound about in intricate figures or cut their names upon the ice but they declared at last that they must retreat before the attacks of Jack Frost who pinched their noses fingers and toes in an unmer ciful manner. The boys ardent in the pursuit of sport still persevered and George especially who was devoted to this amusement distinguished himself by his skill. Take care George said his brother John you are going too far from 142 GAMES AND STORIES. the shore it s hardly safe out there. Please to recollect that neither you nor I can swim and we d be in a fine case if you fell in. Who s afraid I m not for one cried George fearlessly dashing ofl to the centre of the pond : but at the very moment when he was raising a tiiumphant shout and calling upon the rest to follow him a sharp crack was heard the ice gave way under him and he disappeared in the water A cry of dismay broke from the group of his com panions : instinctively John rushed forward to save him but was held back by the others who well knew that two would then be lost instead of one. But in an instant before George rose again to the surface Tom Green the oldest of the cous ins and a tall manly fellow had stripped off his coat and gaining the spot had plunged into the water. It was in tensely cold and he was obliged to break away the ice for some distance round before he was able to seize hold of poor George who had riseji up only to find a glassy wall impen etrable to all his efforts between himself and the outer air and who had given himself up for lost. Tom at leiigth succeeded in forcing his way to ice thick enough to sustain his weight and giving up his precious burden to the anxious gi oup above he reached the shore in safety. Both were chilled through and almost numb from the excessive cold of the water and Tom s hands were cut by the ice which he had been obliged to break : but they were not the lads tamely to give up and moan over their condition when they were able to act. Now boys for a race cried Tom : it s the only hope of putting a little life into us and of keeping off the rheumatism let us see who will be the first at The Grange They accordingly started running as fast as the numbness of their feet would allow and soon arrived at the house but what remarkable objects GAMES AND STOEIES. 143 were Tom and George when they presented themselves before the e_ves of their astonished aunt and cousins Their dress soaked with water was now perfectly stifi like a coat of armor and the edges hung with icicles as did their hair Cornelia concerned as she was for her brother and cousin could not when she thought of it long afterwards refrain from merry peals of laughter at the ludicrous appearance they made they looked as if they had come from the North Pole representatives fi om the regions of eternal ice and snow. Mrs. Wyndham very soon had beds prepared for them where wrapt up in blankets and comforted by a warm drink which the advocates of the Maine Liquor Law would not have altogether approved of they speedily recovered their vital warmth and the elasticity of their spirits. Uncle John as sured the young party who were full of fears for their health that his anticipations of evil consequences had been scattered by seeing those piled up plates at dinner time return to him to be replenished : he thought that such fine appetites were very good symptoms. They spent the day in bed but were so much recruited from their exhaustion by a sound sleep that Aunt Lucy mercifully took off her restriction and allowed them to join the family group at supper. Tom s hands were bound up on account of those honorable scars as Cornelia called them and the two the rescued and the rescuer were decidedly the heroes of the evening : the girls ever full of admiration of gallant conduct looked upon good natured and pleasant Tom Green with a respect they had not felt before. One of the games this evening was What is my thought like Mary went round the circle asking the question and when she announced that her thought was President Taylor there was some amusement at the incongruity of the replies. IM GAMES AND STOEIES. She then asked each one for a reason of the resemblance and an answer was to be given immediately or a forfeit to be paid. Cornelia why was President Taylor like a sunset Because his career was splendid like the sun and his loss equally regretted. John why was he like a brick . So substantial. Amy why was he like a cat Why because he was so cute. Alice why was he like a siffh He always excited so much sympathy in the hearts of the people. George how did he resemble cream P Because he was the very best and tip top of all that was good. Tom why was he like a cow Because he did not know how to run. Ellen why was he like an umbrella Because he sheltered many. Gertrude how did he resemble the Alps He towered aloft majestically above his fellow men. Harry how did you make him out like a laugh Oh he was such a merry old souL Then how does Anna make him resemble a tear P He was so sympathetic with the woes of othere. Aunt Lucy how was he like a fire He was warm hearted and the centre of attraction to so many. And Louis how do you make him like a flower His presidential career was bright and short lived like a flower. Charlie why was he like a vine 140 GAMES AND STOEIES. centre of the table around whicb they drew up and tl j duphcates were shuffled and dealt to each in turn. Whe.i they were all supplied one would draw a card fi om the table asking some personal question and all looking at their cards the one who had the duplicate must throw it upon the table and say It is I. It was found that the sillier and more impertinent the question the more laughter it caused. Who comes down last to breakfast said Tom drawing from the pack one marked 8. I do replied Aunt Lucy throwing down her correspond ing 8. Who is the prettiest person present said Aunt Lucy drawing out a 3. I am said George with a grin being quite reconciled to the fact that he was decidedly the ugliest one of the party at the same time mating his 3 with its companion on the table. Wlio loves mince pie the best said Amy I do replied Ellen with a laugh. Which of us is the old maid of the company said Cor nelia. It is I cried Tom in a tone of triumph. Which of us has a hole in her stocking said Alice. Oh it is I myself And so it went on until the pack was exhausted when all agreed that it was time for the daily stoi y which they seemed to think as much a matter of course as the supper. Aunt Lucy said that she would gladly tell them a short one which should be called GAMES AND STOEIES. 147 iiB iDrpliira 0 Mt nr tjjf iirisaituifs nf Mimu. The eai ly days of Margaret Roacoe were spent in the beau tiful manse of Linlithgow in the north of Scotland where her venerable grandfather had for half a century been engaged in breaking the bread of life to a large congregation of hum ble parishioners. No wealth or grandeur was to be seen within the walls of the kirk where Alan Roscoe officiated : there were no waving plumes no flashing jewels no rustling silks and when as a young man he accepted his appoint ment to this remote parish his college friends grieved that his noble talents should be wasted and his refinement of mind thrown away upon rough country folks unable to ap preciate him. But the young minister was convinced that his proper field of labor was now before him and resolutely putting aside the temptings of ambition he devoted himself in the most exemplary manner to his parochial duties. Al though he and his family were debarred fi om the advantages of cultivated society and from the mental excitement which only such intercourse can afford they cheerfully made the sacrifice for the sake of the cause to which they were wholly given up and they thought themselves more than repaid by the improvement and the reverent love of the people. It is a great mistake to suppose that plain unlettered men can not rightly estimate superior abilities erudition and refine ment where there is any native shrewdness and strength of mind these higher gifts are quickly discerned and add great ly to the influence which sincerity and earnestness of char 148 OAMKS AND STOBIKS. acter ill ever command. In Scotland this is especially true for the countrymen of Bruce and Wallace are distinguished for their sagacity and their acquaintance with Scripture is so extensive that their natural intelligence is sharpened and superficial knowledge and flo erv discourses are not tolerated from the pulpit. Certain it is that as years rolled on and the white hairs became thicker on Mr. Roscoe s head love and veneration were the universal feelings entertained toward him : and at the time when our story commences when the infant Margaret and her young widowed mother removed beneath the shelter of his roof he was the respected pastor the beloved friend and the revered father of all within the circle of his influence. Malcom Roscoe Margaret s father was a young man of superior abilities but of great original delicacy of constitu tion be was retiring studious meditative and in all respects a contrast to his older and only brother Alan who early developed those qualities which are necessary to the active man of business. A very warm attachment united these two young men and a sad blow it was to Malcom when his brother with the energy and decision natural to his character announced his intention of emigrating to America where bright prospects had opened before him. An old friend had commenced a large commercial establishment in one of the Atlantic cities and had ofiered him a clerkship with the prospect of speedy admission into the firm : he regretted to leave his aged father and his only brother but such an excel lent opportunity of advancing himself in life was not to be neglected and he gratefully accepted the proposition. With many tears he bade adieu to the beloved inmates of the manse and set out for the New World : his industry and in tegrity had been greatly prospered and in a few years he was GAMES AND STORIES. 149 an honored partner of the house into which he had entered as a penniless clerk. What meantime had been Malcom s lot He had ap plied himself with assiduity to the study of divinity for which both his character and his abilities had admirably fit ted him but his health was unequal to the demands made upon it. He passed his examination with great honor was immediately called to a parish and went there to settle ac companied by his young wife a delicate and interesting orphan girl to whom he had been long attached. His zeal ous spirit saw much to rectify and many labors to perform in his new sphere : he entered with ardor into the discharge of his duties but soon he found that his frail body had been overtasked by its imperious master the soul and was no longer able to do his bidding. He faded away from earth as do so many of the best and noblest of the race when just ready to apply to the loftiest purposes the faculties so care fully trained. To us such occurrences appear to be very mysterious dispensations of Providence : but the individual himself has attained the true object of his being the full development of all his powers and is prepared for a more ele vated existence. And we may believe since not even a sparrow falls to the ground unheeded by our Father and since no waste is allowed in nature so that even the dead leaf ministers to new combinations of being that the noble gifts of the mind will not be unused after death. In other spheres amid other society they will doubtless be employed for the benefit of immortal beings. Mutual beneficence must form a large part of the business and pleasure of heaven. After Malcom s death his widow and infant child came to live with old Mr. Eoscoe at Linlithgow. Happily for the young mourner the household cares of the manse now 13 150 GAMES AND STORIES. devolved upon her in addition to the charge of Margaret and these occupations no doubt aided greatly in restoring the serenity of her spirit. She had little time to brood over her sorrows those small solicitudes and minute attentions to the feelings and comfort of others which fill up so large a portion of a ti ue woman s time were with her a double bless ing cheering both the giver and receiver. She realized that it is woman s honor and happiness to be in an especial man ner a ministering spirit and thus she learned to resemble the bright hosts above whom she hoped one day to join and grow in the likeness of Him who declared The Son of man came not into the world to be ministered unto but to minister. No wonder is it that the gentle young widow whose face ever beamed with kindness whose hand was ever outstretched to aid the unfortunate was looked up to with a love and veneration only inferior to that with which Mr. Roscoe him self was regarded. In such an atmosphere of affection and under the best in fluences of unaffected piety and refinement little Margaret expanded in beauty and goodness like a sweet flower planted in a fertile soil and refreshed by soft falling dews and health ful breezes. She was something like her own Scottish heather distinguished by no uncommon brilliancy of mind or person but yet one upon whom your eye delighted to fall and on whom your heart could dwell with pleasure. Her clear rosy complexion showed that she had inherited none of her parent s delicacy of constitution and large deep violet colored eyes shaded by long lashes made her face a very interesting one. She was a most lovable little girl gentle and thoughtful beyond her years it seemed as if something of the shadow of her mother s grief had fallen upon he youiiy spirit repressing the volatility of childhood and GAMES AND STOEIES. 151 making her ever considerate of the feelings and studious of the comfort of others. She was her grandfathei s constant com panion and it was ver beautiful to see these two so widely separated b_y years and so closely united by affection en twining their lives together the old man imparting instruc tion and guidance and the child warming his heart with the bright hopes and sweet ways of her innocent age. And so the three lived on in perfect contentment and un interrupted peace until Margaret was seven years old when her grandfather was taken ill and the manse once so happy was filled with sorrow. He lingered for some time faithfully nureed by his daughter who overtaxed hei own strength by her daily toils and nightly watchings. He at last sank into the tomb as a shock of corn fully ripe bends to the earth : he was full of years and of the honor merited by a life spent in the arduous discharge of duty. His only regret was that he was unavoidably separated from his son and he advised his daughter as soon as she had settled his affairs to accept Alan s pressing invitation to her to make her home with him and to depart with her child for America where she would be gladly welcomed. After the funeral as the new incumbent of the parish wished to take possession of the manse as soon as possible Mrs. Roscoe made arrangements to leave the spot she loved so well : and disposing of the furniture and settling the debts incurred by her father s illness she found that no very large sum would be left after the passages across the Atlantic were paid for. In Alan Roscoe s last letter he had entered into many details about his circumstances in order to take from her mind the objections which delicacy might urge as to her dependent position. He told her that he had been eminent v successful as a merchant in Charleston and had 152 GAMES AND STOEIES. amassed so cdnsiderable a fortune that he intended very sonn to retire from business and that he had some thoughts of settling in one of the northern cities as his health and that of his family had suffered from the cliirate. He said that a dear and only sister as she was ought have no reluctance in sharing the superfluity of his wealth r she would thereby give far more than she received. And L brother s orphan should be most heartily welcomed to his heart and home : she should be taught with his children and should share in every respect the situation and prospects of his own little ones for he must receive Malcom s child not as a niece but as a daughter. He advised her sailing direct for Charles ton as it would save all trouble and difficulty : be should be on the wharf to meet her and if as was frequently the case with business men he was unavoidably absent his very at tentive partner would be there to greet her in company with Mrs. Roscoe. She accordingly wrote accepting his kind proposition and stating that they should sail in the first vessel bound for Charleston as she was anxious to have little Maggie again settled in a home and the more so as her own health was very delicate and she knew not how long her dear child might have a mother to watch over her. Then taking leave of the humble friends who would gladly have kept them ever in Scotland Mrs. Roscoe and her daughter set off for the nearest seaport where the shrinking young widow entirely friendless and unknown was obliged herself to make inqui ries among the shipping offices and wharves. She found that no vessel would start for some weeks for Charleston and she felt that every day was of consequence to her : but she was at last relieved of her distress by a bluff good natured captain who told her that although he didn t hail from GAMES AND STORIES. 153 Charleston it was exactly the same thing he sailed to Boston and the two places were as close together as twin cherries on one stalk or kernels in a nut and that he would see to it she had no trouble in finding her friends. Being a Scotchman and partaking of that ignorance of American geography which is so common both in Great Britain and on the continent he naturally mistook Charles ton South Carolina for which she was inquiring for Charlestown near Boston an error which has frequently been made. Nor is it as gross a one as some others which have been perpetrated as for instance that of the late Prince Schwartzenberg minister of Austria who directed some dis patches for our government to The United States of New York. And now behold little Margaret actually launched upon the stormy ocean of life for her small bark was destined soon to be severed from its guide and conductor and to be left without a pilot to the wildly tossing waves and bleak winds of a selfish world. Did I say without a pilot not so a hand unseen directed her fate and although she was called to pass thus early through troubled waters the end will doubt less show that all was well. But the present trial was a very bitter one. A few days only after the embarkation Mrs. Eoscoe s weak frame gave way under the combined influence of sorrow fatigue and anxiety she was only ill a week then sank and was consigned to a watery grave. Little Margaret could not be separated from her for one moment during hei illness but clasping her mother s hand in hers remained by her smoothing hef pillow bringing her the cooling draught and seeking in a thousand loving ways to cheer and relieve her. Before her death Mrs. Koscoe called the Captain and 154 GAMES AND STOEIKS. committed little Maggie to his especial care. She told Lira of her exiiectation that her brother Mr. Alan Rosooe a promi nent importing meicliant in Charleston would immediately come on board to claim his niece when the vessel arrived but to guard against any possibility of a mistake she gave him the number of the stieet in which he resided. The bluff but kind hearted man drew his red hard hand lepeatedly across his eyes as he listened to her anxious directions about the little girl she was so soon to leave. He told her he didn t know much himself about either Charleston or the people who lived in it as he had been engaged until very latelj in the South Sea trade but of course his consignees at Boston would and if there were any difficulty he should put the matter into their hands. He begged her to be under no un easiness her daughter should be well attended to. On the last day of her illness the little girl sat by her in the berth and for the first time appeared to realize that her mother her only earthly friend was about to die. Her little cheek was now almost as white as the dying woman s and she moistened the bed with tears : she could not restrain her sobs. Her mother passed her arm around her and sti ove to comfort her : i ie told her that although she must now leave her and go where her dear father and grandfather awaited her her Kttle girl had one friend who would never cast her off and who could never die who had promised to be the father of the fatherless. Whatever should befall her she must put all her trust in Him who had said When thy fatliei and thy mother forsake thee then the Lord shall take thee up. With all the energy which the love of a dying Woman could give she besought her child to cleave with per fect love to Him who was so kind and pitiful. Slie then placed around her neck a medallion inclosing a portrait ol GAMES AND STORIES. 155 herself and her husband with their initials the date of their marriage and locks of their hair and told her never to part with it but to wear it next her heart. She directed her to be in all respects obedient to her uncle and ever to act toward him as if he were her own father. At last exhausted by the the long conversation she had held she sank back and fell asleep : it was so sweet and natural a rest that Margaret long waited by her side afraid to stir lest she should awake her mother. A happy smile seemed diffused over that face lately so earnest and so anxious it appeared to say my troubles are now over my work is done I have entered into my reward. And so it was the sorrow stricken woman had gently passed away from earth and little Margaret was watch ing beside the dead. Shall I attempt to describe the grief of the child deprived of all she loved The rough but kindly sailors were much moved by it and strove in their uncouth way to comfort her. After the first few days of passionate lamentation the motherless girl became more quiet in her sorrow and then the demonstrations of sympathy ceased : but any one who gazed upon her wasted form her white cheek and languid steps might have guessed the tears she shed upon her pillow at night. At last the vessel arrived in Boston and Marga ret s heart beat quick each time she saw a good looking gentle man step on board for every instant she thought her unknown uncle would arrive. She tried to fancy how he looked and although she had heard that he and her father were very un like still her imagination brought up before her a face like that within her highly prized medallion. So passed the day in anxious waiting and nervous tremors but her uncle came not and as the night drew near a sense of perfect loneliness and desertion came over her and she leaned her head upon 3 56 GAMES AND STORIES. her hands and tears wrung fi om the heart trickled through them. All around her was bustle every one had an object all had a home and a place in the world and some to love them all but she she felt completely the orphan. Some think that children do not suffer mentally as their elders do what a mistake Their emotions are more transitory but frequently more violent while they last. Many an angry child if he had the physical strength would commit deeds from which reason and conscience deter the man and keen and bitter although fleeting are the sorrows they experience. As the little creature so tenderly reared and now so utterly desolate sat upon the deck with no earthly being to look up to for love and sympathy surely a pitying angel must have wafted into her heart her mother s dying words When thy father and thy mother forsake thee then the Lord shall take thee up. It stole into her soul like oil upon .the troubled waters : it seemed as if a voice had said to the tempest within her Peace be still. She felt that there still was one who cared for her one who could neither die nor change and the prayer of faith ascended from those young lips to Our Father who art in heaven. Soothing blessed influence of religion felt by young as well as old how in trouble could we dispense with it would not our hearts sink under their load would not our spirits be crushed within us The next day the Captain set himself in earnest to fulfill his promise to the dying woman. The head of the firm to which his goods YievQ consigned was absent from home but a very kind hearted young fellow a junior partner attended to the business during his absence and accordingly he direct ed his inquiries to him. Mr. Alan Roscoe a merchant of Charlestown said young Howard why I never heard the aame then is surely some mistake. 1 know all the business GAMES A:isrD STORIES. 157 men of the place and there is no such person. Have you the direction Yes sir No. 200 Meeting street. Why Captain here is a complete blunder there is no street of that name in Charlestown. I should not wonder now I come to think of it if Charleston South Carolina were meant Meet ing street is I know one of the most fashionable promenades. And I remember hearing of a Mr. Roscoe a great southern merchant either in Charleston or Mobile or New Orleans I don t rightly know where but somewhere in the South. I ll tell you what. Captain you re full of business and can t attend to her I ll take her home with me for she s a dear little thing and then I can inquire about her uncle and send her on by the first opportunity. Great pity such a blunder was made Accordingly Mr. Howard engaged a hack which was piled up with little Maggie s trunks and he was about jumping in when he was nearly run over by his friend Russell. Hallo Howard Is that you Eussell No one else but what on earth are you doing with such a heap of trunks has a friend arrived Only a little orphan who came in one of our ships her mother died on board and to ci own the misfortune they got into the wrong vessel. They wanted to go to Charleston S. C where this child has an uncle Mr. Alan Roscoe a rich merchant so they came to Charlestown by mistake. I m taking the little creature home with me until I find out about him. The luckiest thing in the world Why I know Mr. Roscoe myself he lives in Meet ing street I became acquainted with him in Charleston last winter. But he has either given up business or intends to do so he is in New York at this moment I saw him the other day at the Astor House and he told me he had some thought of removing to New York or Philadelphia. In U 15S GAMES AND STORIES. few York is he what a piece cf good fortune How I wish I knew some one going on there. If I were not so un commonly busy now that Mr. Field is away I would tako her myself If you d like it my dear fellow I ll take charge of the child you know I always have acquaintances going on to New York I know every one in the two cities pretty much. I ll give her over to some safe person and then she ll be with her uncle to night. Thank you you re a real good soul you can attend to it as well as I of course. And I am anxious to get the poor little thing to her relations as soon as possible so I ll be much obliged to you. Good by then driver go as fast as your horses can carry you to the New York depot for we re rather late. When they arrived they were only a few minutes before the time. Mr. Russell walked through the cars looking on either side but to his chagrin he saw no one he knew. Any one who has ever sought for an acquaintance while the steam was puffing and panting and screeching as if in mortal pain until it was allowed to have its own way and send the train along at the rate of forty miles an hour can understand the flustered bewildered feelings of young Russell as with the child in one hand he perambulated the cars. Is any gen tleman here wilUng to take charge of this little girl said he. What s to be done with her when we get to New York answered a man near him. Her uncle Mr. Alan lioscoe is staving at the Astor House all you have to do is to take thf child and her bagyage to him and as he is a southern gL ntleman and very rich he ll see that you are well paid for your trouble. I ll take ehaige of her have you got her ticket No and I declare I have no more than half a dollar with me can you advance the money you will be paid tenfold when yo get to New York. I ll GAMES AND STORIES. 159 do it as a speculation : here my pretty young lady sit in my seat while I see to your baggage. Just got it in the bag gage car in time good by sir Good by good by. Miss Roscoe Good by sir I wish it were you going on to New York Little Maggie did not like her travelling companion at all. Children are great physiognomists and their simple instincts are frequently smer guides than the experience and wisdom of older persons in detecting character. She could not bear to talk to him his conversation garnished with low cant phrases was so different from any thing to which she had ever been accustomed. But when she looked up into his face the repugnance she had at first felt became changed into aversion the low narrow forehead the furtive but insolent glance of his eye and the expression of vulgar cunning about the mouth formed a countenance which might well justify her in shrinking back into her seat as far from him as possible. When they arrived in New York Smith for that was the man s name engaged a carriage and drove with little Mar garet to the Astor House but in answer to his inquiries he was told that no one of the name of Roscoe was lodging or had been boarding there for the past month. He muttered a curse and jumped again into the hack. What do you make of this that uncle of yours is not there. Oh dear what shxill I do but indeed the gentleman said he saw him in the Astor House. What is the gentleman s name can you tell me I don t know his name. Don t know his name don t you I m prettily bit But perhaps he may be in some other hotel we ll go and see. They ac cordingly drove round to the chief hotels but no Mr. Roscoe was to be found at any of them. 160 GAMES ANP STOEIES. Smith flew into a terrible passion. Cheated for once ic my hfe sold if ever a fellow was it s a regular trick that was played They wanted to get rid of their beggar s brat and palmed her oflF upon me with that humbug story of the nabob of an uncle. I ll nabob her I And there s her ticket which I was fool enough to pay for and the carriage hire and my trouble with this saucy thing who holds her head up so high if ever I am swindled again my name s not Sam Smith I m sure I m very sorry what are you going to do with me sir Take you home with me until I can get rid of you and pay m3 self out of your tmnks unless they re filled with stones. It wouldn t be such a bad idea to lose you in the streets accidentally but no on second thoughts it s better not there are always some troublesome philanthro pists about. Oh sir if you can t find my uncle won t you send me on to Boston again The Captain told my mother he d find him for me or that good gentleman would. The Captain s a rogue and so is your good gentleman. Are you such an eternal fool as to think I ll pay your passage again you re mightily mistaken I can tell you. I don t believe you ever had an uncle you little cheat and if you don t hush up about him I ll find a way to make you. Little Margaret was too much frightened to answer and they kept on tlu ir way through narrow muddy streets lined with lofty warehouses and alleys filled with low German and Irish lodging houses and beer shops until they came to a wiiliM highway at the corners of which Margaret read the name of Chatham street. On each side of the way were shops of the strangest appearance furniture old and new was piled up together coats and cloaks hung out at the dooi s watches and jeweliy of a tawdry descripti n made a GAMES AND STORIES. 161 show in the windows and men with keen black eyes and hooked noses and stooping backs which looked as if they had never been erect in their lives stood at the entrances trying to attract the attention of the passer by. As Margaret looked at them she thought of the stories her mother had read to her of the ant lion stealthily watching at the bottom of its funnel shaped den for its prey which the deceitful sand brings within its reach if once the victim comes to the edge of the pit and of the spider so pohtely inviting the fly within its parlor. Will you walk into my parlor said the SpkliT to the Fly Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy The way into my parlor is up a winding stair And I ve many curious things to show you when you re there. Oh no no said the little Fly to ask me is in vain For who goes up your winding stair ean ne er come down again. At the door of some of the shops she saw a man standing upon a box with a hammer in his hand and a crowd around him eager and bidding against one another. Going going a splendid gold watch at five dollars the greatest bargain in the world tremendous sacrifice going going gone P At last they came to his den a shop like the rest piled up with old brass andirons sofas bureaus tables lamps coats and pants ropes feather beds and hideous daubs of pictures. Old fashioned mantel ornaments looking glasses clocks point ing to all hours of the day waiters with the paint rubbed off old silver candlesticks and a heap of other trash completed the furniture of the room. Stumbling through this lumber Smith led her up to a little garret where the bare rafters were covered with dust and one hole of a window let in some light enough to reveal the nakedness of the place. In one corner upon the dirty floor was an old bed a piece of a mirror was fastened against the wall which looked quite in U 162 GAMES AND STOEIES. nocent of the whitewash brush and a stool which had losi one of its jpgs was lying in a very dejected attitude near the door. Here you are to lodge said Smith with a sardonic grin as he noticed the child s dismay at the announcement. You can stay up here till I want you and when you are hungry you can go down stairs to the httle back kitchen and get a slice of bread but don t dare to show your face in the shop. When will my trunks come said the little girl whose wits were sharpened by the necessity of looking out for her own interests. Never you mind about them trunks replied Smith I advise you to keep quiet and it will be the better for you. So saying he descended into his shop and left the poor child to her meditations which were none of the pleasantest. Two days passed without Smith making his appearance and Mai garet worked up her courage to the point of going into the shop even if it did excite his anger and insisting upon his taking her to her uncle or sending her back to the ship. She walked in unnoticed and the first object that met her sight was one of her mother s large trunks open and empty with the price marked upon the top. Around the room she saw the others and the contents so precious to her from association with her deceased parent were hanging about upon pegs looking ashamed of their positions. Hor rified the little girl ran up to Smith : these are my things she said how dare you put them into the shop You had better hush up httle vixen rephed the man or I ll take the very clothes from off your b ick. You don t think 1 am going to keep you without receiving board do you But I m not going to stay here. I ll go back to the ship the Captain will make you give me my things cried the child bursting into passionate teare. Go I d hke nothing GAMES AND STORIES. 163 better go back to Bosto i as fast as you can cry baby and give my compliments to the gentleman who cheated me into taking you replied Smith with his odious smile. Then why will you not take me to my uncle I don t want to stay in this horrid place. Take care or you ll get into a worse as for your uncle I saw in the paper yesterday an account of his death so you need have no hopes from him. Dead all dead said Margaret sinking down into the nearest seat for her head swam and her knees trembled so that she could not stand. Yes he s dead as a door nail no mistake about that. So you had better not be troublesome or you won t fare as well as you do. Here Jackson he said to a rough bloated looking elderly countryman who had been purchas ing some old furniture and had now re entered the shop did nt you say that you wanted a little girl to do your work Yes I did replied the man my old woman is not worth any thing any more. But I must have some one that will not be interfered with : I intend to get an orphan from the alms house that will suit me best. Here is an orphan who is the very thing : she has no relations or friends in the world and I m rather tired of keeping her I ll give her to you for nothing. That would do but she does not look like a poor child : she is dressed like a little lady and her hands are small and white as if she wasn t used to rough woi k. She is dressed up more than she should be but you can soon mend that and I ll answer for it she ll learn to do the rough work soon enough. Well I ll take her : have her bundle ready by the afternoon and I ll call for her in the wagon and take the girl and the other baggage at the same time. Agreed she shall be ready. It would be hard to describe little Margaret s feelings during the preceding dialogue : she plainly saw that there 164 GAMES AND STOEIES. was no escape for her unless she rushed into the street and claimed the protectiou of any chance passer by and that honest Smith took pains to prevent by locking her up in her room. When there alone she threw herself down upon the bed and sobbed as if her heart would break : If my mother my dear deai mother was living she would take cai e of me. She would not let me stay in this filthy place she would not let me eat dry bread and water she would not let that ugly old man take me away to do servants work. Oh mother mother I wish I were dead too When her passion of grief was exhausted comfort and hope began to dawn upon her and she thought It cannot certainly be as bad in the country where the old man hves as here in this vile hole with all these disgusting smells and sights. And my mother said that God is a friend who can never die or change who will never leave or forsake the poor orphan. I will try to be a better child and then God will love me : perhaps I deserve this for being naughty. I certainly will try to be good. In the afternoon Jackson came for his baggage as he called it and after the furniture was stowed away. Smith brought down the little girl and gave into her hand a very small bundle of clothes bidding her tell no tales or she should find she was in his power yet. She was put into the wagon on top of the furniture and the old man whose face was red and whose breath smelt of liquor set off at a smart pace. It was late in the evening before they reached the solitary and desolate farm house which Jackson called his home Jilargarct scrambled out as best she could and entered the dwelling. Although it was now late in the autumn there was no fire upon the hearth and the room looked to the last iegree dismal. It had something more of a habitable aspect GAMES AND STORIES. 165 when the furniture was brought in hut it was evident that no neat handed Phillis had been accustomed to range through the house and the spiders had provided the only ornaments to be found anywhere about by hanging tlie walls witli tap estry which certainly could not be produced in the looms of France. Margaret found that there were two other inhab itants of this neglected house Jackson s wife a sad heart broken woman only too evidently in a dying condition and a son of about fifteen rude stubborn and rebellious whose only good feeling seemed to be love to his poor mother. Jackson brought out some food of which Margaret stood greatly in need and she was then happy to be allowed to retire to the loft alotted to her as she was exhausted by the ride and the agitation of mind she had gone through during the past week. Miserable as was her attic she slept soundly until waked by the sun shining into her eyes : she quickly dressed but did not escape a scolding from her sullen master who commanded her to make a fire and get his breakfast for him. Margaret was remarkably quick and handy for a child of her age as her affection to her mother and grandfather had prompted her to do many little things for them which so young a girl seldom thinks of but her delicate white fingers were unused to menial tasks and to make i fire was quite beyond the circle of her accomplishments. Jackson then called upon his son to do it but told her that ne should not make it a second time and grumbled and swore at her while he remained in the house. It is astonishing how human nature can adapt itself to cir cumstances so that the thing which we must do we can do: little Margaret who had ever been so tenderly nurtured soon learned to make the fire to sweep the rooms and cook the meals. Not in the most scientific manner truly her cookery would 166 GAMES AND STOEIES. Bcarcely have been approved by Kitchener Glass or Soyer but it was done tb the best of her slender ability. AVhile poor Mrs. Jackson lived Matrgie had at least the sati.sfaction of feeling that her eflbrts to please her were umU rhtood : the gratf ful look the languid smile and the half expressed pity for the little slave who was now to fill her place reminded the child of her mother and made her more contented with her situa tion. But when exhausted by tlie life of hardship and cru elty which the drunkard s wife must ever experience Mrs. Jackson slept her last sleep and went to the home appointed for all the living where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest then the little girl had none to feel for her. In a few da3 s the boy. Bill Jackson told her that now his mother was dead he wasn t such a fool as to stay there to be kicked and starved by his father he intended to run off and go to sea and he advised her too to make herself scarce as soon as she could. When he had gone all the brutality which had been divided between the mother and son was now visited on the innocent head of little Mag gie and unassisted even by counsel she had to perform all the household tasks. If she had received kind words in pay ment she could have overlooked many of the hardshi s of her condition but these she never got. Let her be as diU gent and pains taking as she would severity and reproaches weie all she met: Jackson was always sullen and morose in the moining and at night frequent potations from a large stone jug worked him up to .i passion. Then he would knock the furniture about throw chairs at Mai garet s head if she came in his way and swear in such a dreadful manner that the little girl was glad to seek shelter in her cold and cheerless loft where at least she could be alone and could pray to tlie One Friend she had left. GAMES AND STOEIES. 167 As the winter advanced the child s sufferings greatly in creased. The cold was intense the situation a bleak one and the old farm house full of cracks and crannies which admitted the winter winds. Her clothing was of a thin description and nearly worn out by hard usage : at night also in her airy loft she was often kept awake by the cold or cried herself to sleep. But the more severe the weather was the more did Jackson think it needful to take something a little warming and the stone jug was frequently replenished : of course his temper became more violent and Margaret was the sufferer. She kept out of the way as much as possible but had no place to which she could retreat except her loft. Here she would frequently solace herself by bringing out her medal lion which according to her mother s directions she wore next her heart and gazing upon the beloved countenances of her parents this dying gift was the only relic she had left of former times. One day a snow storm set in which re minded her of those she had seen among her own Scottish hills where the drifts are so great that the shepherd frequent ly loses his life in returning to his distant home. The wind was piercing and the snow was so driven about that you could scarcely see a few feet before you and by evening it lay in deep piles against the door and around the house. Jackson had of course resorted to the whiskey jug very fre quently during the day for consolation and little Margaret seeing him more than usually excited had sought refuge in the cold and dismal loft wrapping herself up as well as she could. As she sat there shivering and thinking how differ ently she was situated on the last snow storm she remem bered when she was seated on a little stool between her mother and grandfather holding a hand of each before a large blazing fire and listening to beautiful tales she heard 168 GAMES AND STOEIES. Jackson call her name in savage tones. She hastened but before she could get down the ladder which led to the room below he called her again and again each time more fiercely so that her heart trembled like a leaf upon a tree dreading to meet his rage. He received her with oaths and abuse called her a lazy little wretch who did not earn the bread she eat and commanded her to bring in an armful of wood from the pile as the fire was going out. She ventured to tell him that she had already tried to find some but ineffec tually in some places the snow was above her head and the air was so thick with it now that night had come on that she could not see before her. But the violent man would take no excuse : he drove her out with threats and long she groped about vainly trying to discover the wood which was completely hidden by the snow. Her hands and feet became numb and she felt that she must return to the house if he killed her she would otherwise die of the cold. She came timidly crawling into the room the moment her master saw her he started up fury made him look like a demon. Seizing a stick of wood which still remained he assailed her violently : the child so tender hearted and so dehcately reared who could be recalled to duty by one glance of the eye was now subjected to the chastisement of a brutal in sensate drunkard At last he stopper but his rage was not exhausted. Opening the door he told her never to darken it again never more should she dare to show herself within his house. Falling upon her knees the little girl ln s Higlit him with tears not to expel her she had no one to go to no father no mother to take care of her. If she was driven out into the snow she should die with cold if he would only allow her to stay that night she would leave on the morrow if he wished it But tears and prayers were GAMES AiJD STORIES. 169 unavailing all of man lie had ever had in his nature was now brutified by strong drink as well might she have knelt to the tiger thirsting for blood as to him. Driving her out with a curse he shut and bolted the door. The depths of distress call up energies even in the childish heart which have never been felt before. What was there upon earth to revive the spirit of the little orphan so utterly deserted so ready to perish Nothing. But there was something in heaven and within that girlish bosom there lived a faith in the unseen realities which might well have shamed many an older person. With her uncovered head exposed to the falling snow she knelt down and this time she bent the knee to no hard cruel master but with the confidence of filial love she uttered her fervent prayer to Him who is a very present help in time of trouble. She called upon her Father to save a little helpless orphan or if it were His will to take her up to heaven Thy will be done. And she rose with a tranquillity and calm determination which many would have deemed impossible in one so young but there is a promise and many weak ones can testily to its fulfilment As thy day so shall thy strength be. Margaret went onward towai ds the public road : there was no farm house nearer than about a mile and the child greatly doubted her ability to reach it but she had resolved to perse vere in her efforts while any power remained in her muscles any vitt. warmth in her heart. Onward went that little child painfully but still steadily onward she struggled against the drowsiness that attacked her but at last she began to feel that she could do no more. But yield not yet to despair thou gentle and brave orphan One stronger than thou has come to thy assistance. For hearest thou not the subdued sound of horses hoofs scattering the snow thou art saved I 15 170 GAMES AND STORIES. A traveller approaches made of other stuiF than the crafty Smiths and the brutal Jacksons of the earth he sees that slight childish figure that bare Lead those failing stfps he thinks of his own little ones at home seated by the sparkling fire and awaiting liis return. He is not one of those who hold the creed of impious Cain Am I my brother s keeper But instead he is a follower of the Good Samaritan or rather I should say of Him who taught that lesson and practised it seeking and saving those who were lost. He stopped his horse. My little girl what are you doing out of doors on a night like this you will be frozen to death. Why are you not at home with your father and mother I wish I were she said. They are both dead I svish I were with them But my child you must have a home why are you out on such a stormy night I have no home sir replied poor Margaret. I lived at the nearest farm house but my master was angry with me for not bring ing in the wood and heat me and turned me out of doors and I shall die of cjld very soon unless you take care of me sir. Poor little deserted one said the gentleman jumping off from his horse. 8iuh a tiny thing as she cannot have done any thing v. ry bad and to send her out to die poor child roil sent me to vou and I w ill surely take care of you. So saying he took off his cloak lined with warm fur and shaking the snow from her hair and cl ith s care fully wrapped it around her and placed her in front of him uiiiin his hiirse. My good thoughtful wife I said he when I laughed at you this morning foi insisting upon my wc iiing this cloak outside my great cont little did I think it wiiuld save . precious life I always do find it to my advan tage to mind your womanly wifely instincts. And now ht tle girl we will go home as fast as we can I will try to keep GAMES AND STOEIBS. 171 Jack Frost away from you with this cloak. Urging his horse onward Mr. Norton for that was the good man s name every now and then spoke cheerily to the child whom hb sustained with one arm striving to keep her awake and tell ing her of the bright warm lire she should see when they got home. At last they arrived there : when Mi . Norton jumped off his horse Margaret saw that they had come to a small town which looked very pretty as the snow lay upon the roofs and fences. Before he could ring the door flew open and the warm light which looked like an embodiment of the love and happiness of home and fireside pleasures streamed out upon the pure cold snow revealing to the group within doors the father carefully holding his burden. Dear father are you not almost perished cried his oldest son Frederic a manly little fellow mufBed up in cap and coat and orsted scarf. You must let me take old Cliariie to the stable and come in yourself and thaw you see I am all ready. Well my son I believe I will particularly as I have a bundle hei e that I must take care of. What has father got said the younger children wonderingly. Why it as large as a bag of potatoes I have brought you home a little sister children Mr. Norton replied entering the sitting room and unwrapping poor Margaret. My dear wife I found this child upon the road almost perished with cold : she is an orphan and was cruelly treated by the wretch of a master who turned her out of doors to night. Only look at her thin worn out gingham dress and at the holes in her shoes Poor little lamb said Mrs. Norton gazing on her with a mother s pity blessed effect of paternal and maternal love that it opens the heart to all helpless little ones Don t cry my dear you will not be turned out of this house Indeed I cannot help it ma am you are so very kind 172 GAMES AND STOEIES. like my mother. But wife and children we must not stand here talking we must get a tub of cold water and keep her hands and feet in it for some time or she will be all fi ost bitten. Sally my child you need not place that chair for her so near the fire for she cannot sit there : help your mother to bring the water. Sally although rather younger than little Margaret was a large child for her age and while the latter was getting thawed and the good mother was making a warming drink she hunted up her thickest clothes and begged that the poor stranger might wear them. And may she not sleep with me to night mother Oh no mother let her sleep with us said Kate and Lucy the two younger children. I am glad to see you want to have her with you repilied their mother but as Sally is the nearest her age and spoke the first I think I must gratify her. But if Kate and Lucy wish it she may sit between them at table. Thank you thank you dear mother that will be pleasant. Oh how glad we are we have a new sister Soon was the story of the orphan s trials confided to the sympathizing ears of those who had now adopted her as one of themselves and soon did the little girl feel at home in that household of love. Every day as it developed her warm feeling s her lively gratitude and the intrinsic worth of a character which seemed to inherit the virtues of her pious an cestors attached her new friends to her more closely. Mrs. Norton declared that Margaret was the best child she had ever seen and perfectly invaluable to her : if she did not keep her because it was her duty ::nd because she loved her she certainly would as a daily pattern to her own children. And besides she had such pretty manners and knew so much that it was better than sending the children to school to have them with her. GAMES AND STORIES. 173 If I were making up a story for your entertainment my dear nieces and nephews I should tell you that Margaret always lived with this admirable family in perfect hajipiness and that when she became a woman she married Frederic the oldest son thus keeping the place of a daughter in the house. But I am telling you the truth which you know is often stranger than fiction and often sadder also. In stories good people are generally rewarded with uninterrupted pros perity just as some very judicious parents give their children plum cake and sweetmeats when they say their lessons well and do not scratch each others eyes out. But it is not so in the real world : the all wise Father above acts on other prin ciples. He knows that his children require e il as well as good and that the beat soil will become di y hard and sterile if the sun always shines upon it therefore it is that He sends dai k heavy clouds and gloomy days. Unwise and un thankful as we are we grievously complain but the showers still descend and when we least expect it behold the beauti ful sun All nature is again gay and joyous : the birds sing cheerily the flowers raise up their dripping heads new blos soms are put forth and to use the language of Scripture the little hills skip like rams the valleys shout they also sing and all the trees of the field do clap their hands. My heroine is still under the cloud of adversity sharing in the fate of her protectors and lightening their trials by her ready hand and most afiectionate heart. Two years after she entered Mr. Norton s home her benefactor was taken ill and lingered for some months before he was transferred to that better mansion which is provided for each one of the faithful. Sad was the desolation caused by his death. I will not speak of the sor row of the widow and of the orphans you can all imagine that but in addition they were deprived of their home and 15 174 GAMES AND STORIES. cast out upon the world. After the bills were paid the phy sician s the apothecary s and the undertaker s in addition to those necessarily contracted for the household while the father was e:irniiig nothing Mrs. Norton found that not a penny was left her. Selling what she could she removed to Phila delphia where she had resided in her youth thinking that she could easily obtain employment for her needle and so support her young family while they shared the advantages of our excellent system of public schools. But she found herself friendless and unknown in the great city with many competitors for a very little sewing and she came to th conclusion that it is the very poorest way by which a woman can support herself. Slie obtained a situation for Frederic in a store whei e he receives rather more than is necessary for his own wants and removing to the country she took a little cottag e for the sum which one room would have cost her in town. Frederic is able to pay her rent : and when she is well with the aid of our little Margaret she can maintain herself and her helpless children in tolerable comfort. Thus the orphan has it in her power to repay the kindness shown to her and by e.xercising the noble virtue of gratitude to rise daily higher in the scale of being. Dear Aunty cried Amy with all eagerness have you not been telling us the story of our Mrs. Norton and that pretty little adopted daughter of hers with the large deep blue eyes You have gue. sed my riddle Amy replied her aunt smiling. I called there this morning while you were all out while ieorge was amusing himself by falHng into the pond and heaid the whole history from the sick woman s Ups. I felt so deeply interested in it that I thought you ould spend an hour worse than in listening to the simple tale. GAMES AND STOEIES. 375 Are you sure that you have not einbelluhed it asked Mr. Wyndham with a smile. Quite sure : for although I filled up a few gaps in the narrative by using my very common place imagination 1 as sure you that all the facts are substantially the same. And I don t doubt that if I had witnessed the scenes described I should have been able to make my story far more pathetic and far more romantic because it would then have been a daguerreotype of the truth. I have talked with little Mar garet herself and certainly I have never seen a more engaging and lovely child. At my urgent request she consenttd to lend me her precious medallion for a few days and here it is. What a spiritual poetical face exclaimed Mr. Wynd ham. I declare it reminds me of a portrait of Schiller which I once saw. And the mother too there is no doubt of that woman being a real lady said Ellen. Did you ever see a sweeter gentler countenance Never replied Alice. But uncle do you not know that I have an idea I guessed all along that Margaret Ros coe was our little friend but I feel sure that rascal of a Smith was lying when he said he had seen her uncle s death in the paper. It s not very hkely such a fellow as he was would object to telling an untruth He only wanted to get her trunks and to quiet her you may be sure. And I believe that Mr. Alan Roscoe is now living in Philadelphia and I believe that I know him uncle 1 Her uncle started and exclamations of surprise and delight burst from all the circle. It might very well be Mr Wyndham said I remember thinking our amiable friend Smith was speaking an untruth at the time although I did 176 GAMES AND STOEIES. not carry out tht idea. But do you know any one of that name Alice Surely it cannot be Mr. Roscoe the retired merchant who is so prominent for his benevolence and liber ality Yes sir it is I am intimate with his oldest child Car rie. And I know that he is a Scotchman and they used to live in Charleston and his name is Alan and his little boy is called Malcom that s after Margaret s father I am sure. Carrie told me he had been named after an uncle in Scotland who was dead Is it possible replied Mr. Wyndham. It really does look like it if it be actually so my dear wife here is another reverse of fortune for your heroine which you did not expect. The contrast would be great indeed between the little white washed cottage and the magnificent mansion on Walnut street I hope it will not turn her head said Charlie Bolton. There is little fear of that I think rejoined Mrs. Wynd ham. Margaret has early been tried in the furnace of affliction and she has come out gold : I believe she really possesses that gospel charity one of the marks of which is that it is not and cannot be puffed up. But what shall we do shall we tell her of our hopes By no means replied her husband. It would only excite expectations which after all may be disappointed although I am strongly convinced that our suppositions are correct. For the first time in my life I regret that to morrow will be Sund iy but early on Monday morning I shall set out I or the city and for Mr. Eoscoe s house or counting room. ith my good wife s permission I will take this medallion with me and show it to Mr. Roscoe then I shall know in a moment if he is really Margaret s uncle. GAMES AND STOEIES. 177 Will you be so kind as to take me with you asked a dozen voices at once. No I will not replied Mr. Wyndham laughing. The carriage cannot possibly hold you all. If Alice wishes it I will take her both as a reward for her quickness in making this discovery and as a means of introduction to Mr. Roscoe with whom I am not acquainted. And if our surmises prove correct I expect to bring Mr. Roscoe back with me which is another reason for not riding twenty or thirty in a carriage. Oh uncle uncle twenty or thirty Well you are a baker s dozen at least that you cannot deny. I quite long to get to town I believe I am as much of a boy as Harry there or Lewis I really wish I could put oflf Sunday just for one day I am so impatient It will be an admirable exercise of your noblest faculties uncle said Cornelia slyly. I am rather impatient myself even at my mature age. But the moral discipline uncle that is so invaluable that we ought not to wish it to be oth erwise. Ah you witch I believe in my heart this is your re venge for my refusing to take you to town with me re joined her uncle. Not a bit of it I bear no malice it is only my native and unconquerable pertness which I sometimes fear may get me into a difficulty with some one yet. But I am not at all afraid of you dear uncle I know you understand that it s only my way. Certainly certainly I should be a cross old fellow if I wished to repress your youthful spirits. But uncle said Charhe Bolton couldn t you put off Sunday as Dean Swift or somebody or other put off the eclipse That would obviate all the difficulty. 178 GAMES AND STOEIES. I never heard that storv cried George Wyndham. But every one knows about Hail Columbia putting on an eclipse. I don t I must own replied Cornelia laughing. Do tell it straight if you can you monkey. I ll try my own true si.ster. If it wasn t Hail Columbia it was Columbus and that s all one the whole world knows. WJien the Indians began to discover that the Spaniards were not gods as they at first thought they became a little obstreper ous and wanted to starve them out quite natural under the circumstances. But Columbus from his knowledge of astron omy was aware that a total eclipse of the moon would take place the next night. So he called a meeting of the natives and informed them that they had brought upon themselves the vengeance of the Great Spirit by their conduct that at a certain hour the light of the moon would be nearly put out and its orb would look like blood as a sign to them of the displeasure of Heaven. And when the poor creatures really saw it happen as he had said they were nearly fright ened to death and came to him laden with provisions and begging him to pray to the Great Spirit that he might remove his wrath from them. Now I call that putting on an eclii se. The funniest circumstance in relation to an eclipse hap pened to me said Mrs. Wyndham. When I was a very small child I thought that quite as great a miracle was about to happen as the Indians did. You must know that there oame to Philadelphia a certain famous race horse named Eclipse of whose speed gie:it marvels were told. Handbills about him were thrown into the house and I thought ha must really be a wonderful animal. Just at that epoch 1 heard my father say something about an eclipse that night GAMES AND ST0EIE8. 179 and the moon in connection with it. My imagination was instajitly fired. Did you say father that Eclipse would go over the moon why can that be true Oh yes my dear the eclipse is really going over the moon : if you wish it you can stay up till nine o clock to see it. Thank you thank you I should like to very much. But I don t see how it can be More wonderful things than that happen my child : you ll understand it better when you are older but you shall see it to night if you are not too sleepy. No danger of that I wouldn t miss it for the world How much interest little Lucy seems to feel in the eclipse mother said my father. We must certainly let her stay up. Night came on and the show began. The best seat at an upper window was reserved for me and I looked at the moon constantly afraid that if I turned away my eyes for one moment the wonderful event might take place without my observing it. All were interested in my seeing it. Lucy do you see it dear do you see the moon getting dark Oh yes I see that but I don t see Eclipse. Why that s the eclipse when the dark shadow goes over the moon that is an eclipse of the moon. But I don t see the horse jumping over the moon at all. The horse what do you mean child You said that Eclipse was to go over the moon but I can t see him in the least Oh Auntie were you really such a green child as that Yes it is a Uteral fact. I thought it a most astonishing thing that it could happen but since my father so gravely said it would my faith was equal to the demand made upon it. When I found it was only something about the shadow of the earth falling on the moon I went to bed grievously 180 GAMES AND STORIES. disappointed and quite disgusted : I felt somewhat as the amiable Smith did that I had been sold. Ah Auntie we children could not be taken in so now I can tell you said Lewis. I know it replied his aunt smiling. I am quite aware that the age of faith has passed away and that repub lican institutions have made the young ones as wise and in credulous as their elders. I don t half like it myself QAMKS AND STOEIES. 181 CHAPTER VI. SUNDAY. BIBLE STORIES. CAPPING BIBLE VERSES. BIBLE CLASS. Sunday morning arose upon the earth so clear and calm and beautiful that it almost seemed as if it were conscious of the blessings bestowed by it upon millions of the human fam ily. Happy day when the man bent under the heavy load of oppressive labor and corroding care may take the rest which the Maker of his frame intended for him from the very beginning. Now throwing off the weight he can real ize that he is a man made in the image of his Creator and made for happiness and immortality. Now he can afford to think : he is no longer the mechanical drudge he is no longer one little wheel in the great social machine he is to day a reflecting being and the desire for mental and spirit ual elevation throbs strongly within his heart. He sits at his hearth whether in the proud palace or in the humble cot tage for the working man is equally to be found in both and feels himself to be the centre of the home. He enjoys sweet converse with the wife of his youth and his children cluster round him delighted to have his society. He walks to the House of Prayer surrounded by those he loves and joins with his fellow men in adoration of the Great Supreme. He is happy and is prepared by the sweet Sabbaths below for the bliss above. Nor should we forget on this day the numerous attractive 16 182 GAMES AND STOEIES. tircles to be found throughout our highly favored lanj gath ered together for Sunday School instruction. Here the vol untary system works to a charm : both teachers and scholars drawn together b love assemble with sparkling eyes and kindly words in their respective classes. Here all ages can find something to interest them : the rosy cheeked chubby child runs along to its Infant School fearing to be one mo ment behind the time and singing Ob lot us be joyful joyful joyful with a full understanding of at least that part of the duty to be performed. And the adult walks quietly to the Bible Class where mutual study and conversation about some pas sages of the Sacred Word elicit its meaning and throw new light upon the holy page. And in the ages intermediate between these two extremes how bright and joyous are the groups clustered around each loving teacher If the toil be great how much greater the reward how delightful is it to See the young mind expand and the warm affections glow beneath the hallowing influence of religion And how plea sant and how good is it to find the hearts of adults and of children of rich and poor knit together by a common feeling of interest in the common cause Some such thoughts arose in the minds of our partyat The Grange and were fostered by the lovely calm of nature which is so observable on Sunday in the country where the very animals seem to know that they are included within the merciful commandment of rest. Mr. Wyndham was religiously observant of the day but exceedingly disliked the gloom by which many worthy people think it a duty to lessen theii owu hajij.inebs and to throw a chill and coll lraint upon that GAMES AND STORIES. 183 of others on this joyful festival. He thought ifiat the weekly commemorution of the Saviour s resurrection should fill us VFith bright hopes and an enlivening piety and that an air of cheerfulness should be thrown around it which might say to all who had not yet entered within the gates of Zion Come ye and taste that the Lord is gracious. People are doubtless much affected in these minor shades of dif ference by their natural temperaments. Mr. Wyndham t frame of mind was so kindly and hopeful and so open to all that is pleasant and animating that his religion partook of the genial influence. On Sunday his face beamed with a more radiant smile than on other days and he appeared to realize that it was indeed the foretaste of eternal joy. In the morning both old and young repaired with one consent to the little country church in which they filled up quite a number of pews. Being the last Sunday in the year the venerable clergyman whose earnest manner and silver hairs made his message doubly impressive to the hearts of his hearers exhorted all of every age to bring back to their minds the fleeting days of that division of time which was so soon to pass away and to be numbered with those laid up against the Judgment. When that year had begun what resolutions of improvement had been formed what vows of greater fidel ity had been made And how had they been kept All had during the seasons past received new proofs of the kind ness and long sufiering of the Father above but had the goodness of the Lord led them to repentance or had it fallen upon hard unfeeling hearts which it could not pene trate How stood they in their accounts Not their ledg ers not their cash books did he now call upon them to ex amine but records of a far higher character which afifected their heavenly iiileit sts as well a their temporal prosperity 184 GAMES AND STOEIKS. the deeds the words the cherished feelings of that year which had left an impress upon their souls forever and made them richei or poorer for eternity. They owed debts to their Maker and Redeemer and to their fellow men : how had they paid them They continually received did they also dispense the goodness of God 3 If unwilling now to think of these unsettled accounts they should remember that one debt notwithstanding all their reluctance they would be obliged to pay the debt of nature : and then would follow the final adjustment of all things then would each one reap as he had sowed below. All listened with deep attention to the discourse which was well calculated to arrest the most careless tritler and thoughts were suggested and resolves were formed that day which acted long afterward as a stimulus to the discharge of diitv. The hand which scattered that precious seed has since been laid low in the dust but the winged words did not fall to the ground : they still live and produce re sults in immortal spirits. There was no service in the afternoon. Oh dear said George I suppose it s not right to say so but it s rather stupid I think. How we do miss Sunday School We can t play to day and a fellow like me doesn t want to read the whole time : what on earth can we do Cousin Mar are you too much engaged with your book to help us poor Bouls With a smile Mary shut it up. How would you like r ible stories said she. If you please I ll tell you ono keeping to Scriptural facts but clothing them in my owr language and omitting the name or giving a false one A.nd then you are to find out whom it is I have been telling GAMES AND STORIES. 185 you about and to answer the questions I may ask vou. How would you like that It was agreed that it would be delightful : so Mary began by telling the story of CjiB iBml frnnimnilifr. In ancient times in a country of the East there lived a Queen Dowager whose heart was eaten up by ambition. She was a king s daughter and had ever been accustomed to rule. While her husband lived she had exerted great influ ence at court and had turned away his heart from the true and established religion of the state to the cruel worship of the idols of her native land and this she accomplished al though he had been religiously educated and was the son of an eminently good man. Little did it affect her that a highly distinguished prophet of God wrote a letter to the king her husband foretelling the evils that should befall himself his family and his kingdom and that this prophecy had been literally fulfilled. Little did it humble her proud spirit that by the common consent her degenerate husband who through her persuasions and example had been led away from the path of duty was judged unworthy to be interred within the sepulchres of his ancestors and was buried apart. She had too much of her mother within her to be daunted by such trifles as these for both of her parents had acquired an eminence in wickedness which have made their names by words : but her mother s especially is considered almost a Bynonym for every thing that is unlovely in woman. 16 186 GAMES AND STOlilliS. After her iiusband s death her son succeeded to the throne and he alsu did nickedh for he had been educated under kis mother s e3 es trod in her footsteps and courted the society of her connections. And this was the cause of his death for while paying a visit at the court of his uncle her brother they both were killed together in a successful insurrection. And now if ever if any thing of the woman was left in her nature the queen s heart would be softened and humbled : at one fell swoop death had carried off her only son her brother and every member of her father s house she only was left of all that proud and numerous family. Her aged mother aged but not venerable although now a great grandmother had met her fate in a characteristic manner. Determined if she must die to do so hke a queen she had put on her royal robes and adorned herself with jewels and caused her with ered face upon which every evil passion had left its mark to be painted into some semblance of youth and beauty. Her evelids were stained with the dark antimony still used in the Ea t to restore if possible the former brilliant softness to eyes of hard blazing wicked blackness. Gazing from an upper window of the palace upon the usurper as he drove iiitt the courtyard the fearless woman resolved to show her spirit to the last railed upon him and quoted a notable in stance from history of one who like him had been a success ful rebel but had reigned for only seven days. Enraged at her insolence her enemy looking up asked Who in the palace is on my side At those words some officers of the household cast her down from the window : thus ingloriously she died and the prancing horses of the chariot trampled over her. He who now was universally acknowledged to be tlii. king soon gave oi ders that she should be buried observ ing that wrehii as .she was sho was of royal blood. But GAMES AND STORIES. 187 the vulture and the jackal had been before him : naught re mained of that haughty revengeful and heaven defying woman save the skull the feet and the palms of her hands. Thus to the very letter was fulfilled the prediction of a prophet one of her contemporaries : it was the same individual who had sent an epistle to her son in law the late husband of our heroine announcing his fate. This fearless reprover of kings did not live to see the accomphshment of the divine messages he was commissioned to deliver and yet he had not died : read me that riddle if you can. When the queen who from one distinguishing act of her life I have called the good grandmother heard the sad tidings of the death of her only son of her mother and of all her kin what did she mourn and weep and give herself up to melancholy she was quite incapable of such weakness. If she had no children left she at least had grandchildren she must take care of them the tender little playful babes her own flesh and blood and all that was left upon the earth of her kte son. And she did take care of them the care that Pharaoh took of the Israelitish infants the care that Herod took of the nurslings at Bethlehem the care that the tiger takes of the lamb. She was worse than the tigress for the latter will at least defend her young ones from all attacks even at the peril of her own life. But she shame of her sex commanded the immediate execution of all the children of her son that she might reign alone and never be called upon to resign the sceptre to a lawful heir. They are slain The shouts and laughter of that band of little ones is stopped forever the galleries will never more re echo to their youthful voices vainly did they rush into the arms of their nurses for protection. They are slain all save one For if they have a grandmother they also have 188 GAMES AND STOEIES. an aunt and one who is ruled by different principles. She is the sister of their father but probably had not the sam e mother as he : she early chose the paths of piety and good ness and was wedded to a man of uncommon firmness and of the noblest character the high priest of the nation. Soon as she had an intimation of the intentions of the queen she hastened to the palace. But one only could she save little crowing babe whom with his nurse she secreted in a safe place until under cover of the night she was able to convey them to her own abode. There in the house of the Lord the young child was reared. For six years he was hidden and tenderly and care fully trained in the fear of God while his grandmother reigned supreme in the land to the subversion of all law and order. But when the prince was seven years old the high priest his uncle took measures to secure to him the posses sion of his rights. He consulted with the wisest of the na tion and brought together the Levites from all parts of the land and divided them into bands giving each a particular post to guard against surprise. He then brought forth ii om the treasuries of the temple the spears shields and bucklers which had belonged to King David and distributed them among the captains of the several divisions. When all ar rangements were made and the people who were gathered together in the spacious courts for worship waited to see what fl us about to happen he retired and came back in his jiriestly garments with the mitre upon his head on which was written on a golden plate Holiness to the Lord this sentence showing the intention of the priestly office. His robe or under garrnent which hung in rich folds down to his feet was of deep Mue and around the hem were alter nate pomegranates of biilliant colors and little golden bells GAMES AND STORIES. 189 wliicli made a tinkling sound as he moved along. Above tliis was worn the ephod splendidly embroidered in gold and blue and purple and scarlet with a long and broad gir dle at the waist manufactured of the siame gorgeous mate rials. Upon his bosom flashed the breastplate composed of twelve large precious stones all different upon each one of which was engraved the name of a tribe of Israel so that the High Priest bore them all upon his heart when he min istered before the Lord. Well was this magnificent dress hich was made for glory and for beauty calculated to set off the dignity of the holy office and to make the people gaze in admiring awe. But it was not the splendor of the pontifical robes it was not the inspiring person of the high priest at which the assembled multitudes eagerly gazed when the Head of the Church again appeared before them. It was a little boy of seven years old who now attracted their attention a pretty child arrayed in royal garments who was led forward by the venerable man. His stand was taken beside a pillar and the guards with drawn swords gathered round him : his uncle placed upon his clustering curls the golden circlet the symbol of how much power what heavy cares and what fearful responsibility And when the people long crushed to the eai th by tyrannical rule beheld it hope again awaked in their hearts and with one accord they clapped their hands and shouted out God save the King And the trumpeters sounded aloud and the harpers struck up the notes of praise and joy and the full choir of trained singers joined in the jubilee. And thus was the young king proclaimed while in the innocence of child hood he wonderingly looked on. But the queen heard the shouts in her palace. For the first time in her life it is most probable she came to the 190 GAMES AND STORIES. house of God but she came not to worship. What nieaus this riotous assembly she thought. Can it be that the vile rabble dare to think of revolt against me I will go even alone and awe them by my presence : it shall never be said that my mother s daughter feared aught in heaven above or the earth beneath. She went that audacious woman with all her crimes upon her head and entered alone into the temple of the Holy One. She went to her death. The peo ple made way for her although they gazed upon her with loathing and within the sanctuary she beheld the grandson whom she had long thought to be numbered with the dead in royal ariay with the crown upon his head. When she saw this she rent her clothes and cried loudly Treason treason 1 But none joined in the cry : an ominous silence pervaded that vast assembly and looks of hatred were cast upon her from the crowd. Seeing plainly that all were against her her insolent pride gave way and she turned to flee from that mass of stern relentless eyes all gazing as it were into her black and blood stained heart. As she passed along the people shrank back as if an accursed thing were near them and when she had passed fi om the consecrated limits she was slain. None shed a tear over her grave but the people enjoyed rest and peace now that her tyranny was terminated. And that was the end of her said George. And well she deserved her fate. A good grandmother indeed I But who was she That s the very thing I want to know replied Mary. lUit perhaps some vi ou can tell me who her very lovely mother was There is no mistaking her said Amy. There is only one Jezebel in the woi ld I hope. Think of the horrid old GAMES AND STOEIES. 191 thing painting herself oft and trying to look like a beauty 1 I wonder if she thought she could possibly captivate the mur derer of her son Hardly that I should think. Perhaps it was on the same principle that Julius Caesar drew his robe around him before his death an idea of the proprieties becoming the station they occupied. It reminds me of a passage in Pope describing the ruling passion strong in death : Odious in wooUen twould a saint provoke Were the last words that poor Naroissa spoke No let a charming chintz and Brussels lace Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face One would not sure be frightful when one s dead : And Betty give this cheek a little rod. And now can you tell me who was that prophet that sent a letter to the husband of the good grandmother and who predicted the fate of her parents Ahab and Jezebel He who did not live to see their accomplishment and yet was not dead said Cornelia. Oh I remember well about that : it was Elijah the Tishbite who had ascended to heaven without dying. By the way how do you understand that saying of Elisha s Mary My father my father the char iot of Israel and the horsemen thereof I never knew rightly whether the latter part of his exclamation referred to the ascending prophet or to the chariot and horses of fire. I once asked our clergyman that very question and he told me that it alluded to Elijah himself and meant to say that he was the defence of the country and a whole host in him self : comprising cavalry and those heavy chariots filled with warriors and armed with scythes on either side which did such deadly execution in ancient warfare. I suppose Elisha thought. How can how can our country exist without you 193 GAMES AND STOEIES. I remember now the name of the good grandmother said Ellen smiling. It was Athaliah and a worthy daughter she was for Ahab and Jezebel to leave as a legacy to the world. And her son was Ahaziah who was killed in Samiiria while on a visit to his uncle. King Jehoram. And now I think some one else should tell who the usurper was under whose chariot wheels the wicked Jezebel was slain. It was Jehu the furious driver answered her brother Tom the same e ninently pious individual who invited a friend to go with him and see his zeal for the Lord when he intended to murder the rest of Ahab s relations. A fine way of showing goodness that And who was the good aunt You must really let me look for that said Amy getting a Bible. It was Jehosheba and her husband the high priest was named Jehoiada and the little king was Joash or Jehoash. I m sorry to see that he was only kept straight by his uncle : as soon as he died the young monarch appears to have become as bad as any of them. And now Cousin Mary tell us another story said Hariy. Very well if you wish it. I ll call this tale fijc i . rnplift niA tIjF .fnrtttnt d rllfrs. In former times there was a king of Judah an excellent man who through some unaccountable ideas of poHcy had entered into an alliance with a very wicked king of Israel and had even ercouraged his son to marry the daughter of Ids idolatrous neighbor. On one occasion he was paying a GAMES AND STOEIES. 193 visit to his ally when the latter proposed to him that they should join together in recovering a city which had formerly belonged to the Jewish nation from their enemy the King of Syria. He replied that they were of one blood and had but one interest and that he should most gladly aid him but cautiously added that it was his particular wish that God s oracle should be consulted as he did not like to under take any thing without His direction. To gratify this super stitious whim as he considered it the Israelitish monarch collected together about four hundred false prophets who were ready to say any thing that would give him pleasure and asked whether he should or should not go up against the city. Of course they obsequiously replied Go up for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king. But the King of Judah was not satisfied. He had seen real true prophets of God and they had neither looked nor acted like these very smooth courtier Uke men. He mis trusted these pretenders and said to his brother monarch Is there not another a prophet of Jehovah of whom we could inquire the Lord s will S The latter answered Yes there is another man but I did not send for him for I hate the very sight of his face. Instead of predicting good he makes a point of foretelling evil : I detest that man. But his more amiable and pious friend said Pray do not speak so your Highness : it is not right. Seeing that he was unwilling to go until he had con sulted the prophet the King of Israel ordered the latter to be sent for. The two sovereigns awaited him in state in their royal robes upon their thrones at the large open space always left in Oriental cities at the entrance of the gates for public meetings business and courts of justice. Before the messenger returned the false pi ophets had re 17 194 GAMES AND STOEIES. newed their predictions of a safe and successful career to tlie two kings and one of them had distinguished himself by making horns of iron which he placed upon his head agree ably to the allegorical style of the East and said : Thus shalt thou push against thy enemies and shalt overcome them until they be utterly consumed. Meanwhile the royal messenger approached with the prophet and being a good natured man and a courtier he begged the latter not to affront his master by speaking differently from the other seera who all with one accord joined in predicting peace and success. But the undaunted man of God replied that what Jehovah revealed to him he would speak neither more nor less. At last they arrived in the presence of royalty and the King of Israel said to him Speak and declare the counsel of God : shall we go up against the city or shall we abandon our undertaking With a manner of cutting irony for he well knew that the monarch neither cared to know the will of the Lord nor would obey it when known the prophet an swered quoting the language of the fortune tellers around him : Go up and prosper for the Lord will de i er it into the hand of the king. But it was so evident that there was something behind this satire that the idolatrous prince replied to him How often must I be compelled to tell you to speak the truth and to declare the will of Heaven Then the prophet spoke and this time the mockery had vanished from his tone and manner and his voice was seri ous and sad : I see a vision that distresses me : all Israel is scattered upon the hills like sheep which have no shepherd. And Jehovah says These have no master : let each one re turn to his house in peace. When he heard this the King of Israel turned to his GAMES AND STOEIIiS. 195 friend : Now you see a proof of my words said he. Did 1 not tell you that he would never predict aught but evil of me But the prophet still spoke on : I have a parable to tell thee mighty King. I saw sitting upon his lofty throne one mightier than thou the King of kings and upon his right hand and upon his left were ranged all the host of heaven. And he said Who shall persuade the Lord of Is rael to go up against Ramoth Gilead to his destruction And various counsel was given from different sources. At last a Power spoke and offered to go forth as a lying spirit in the mouth of all the king s prophets. The Lord answered him Go and thou shalt likewise succeed. This O mon arch is my parable : a lying spirit has gone forth into thy prophets for truly Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee. At these words the man who had made himself so espe cially prominent in predicting good fortune to the expedition came up to the prophet and struck him upon the cheek with an insulting speech and the king commanded that he should be carried to the governor of the city and kept closely con fined upon bread and water until he returned in peace and triumph having conquered all his enemies. But the prophet answered If thou return at all in peace the Lord hath not spoken by me. But unrestrained by any thing he said the two princes went forth to the battle. More completely to insure his safety the Israelitish monarch disguised himself and requested the King of Judah to wear his royal robes which he accord ingly did. But the Syrians had received orders to aim only at the enemy s head and leader and not to attack the com mon people. This nearly caused the death of tho King cf 196 GAMES AND STOEIES. Judah who wore his friend s conspicuous garments and who was pursued and almost slain before ihe mistake was dis covered liut notwithstanding his precaution in wearing a counterfeit dress the fated king did not escape. An arrow shot by chance struck him in a vital part and he died. When the death of their lord was known all Israel fled in dismay and every man sought the shelter of his own home. We may presume that the true prophet was liberated from his confinement and th.it the base and impudent impostor was punished as he deserved. Are not these kings near relatives of the good grand mother said Charlie Bolton. You are right replied Mary. They are her father Ahab and her father in law Jehoshaphat. Who was the true prophet and who the false The true prophet was Micaiah the son of Imlah and the other I think his horns should have been made of brass impudent fellow that he was was called Zedekiah. Other Bible stories were called for which were found so interesting and as the younger children confessed so new to many of them that all agreed to begin a more systematic mode of reading the Scriptures that treasury of historic truth of varied biography and of poetic beauty. John Wyndham remarked that the best thing about the romantic incidents in the Bible was that you could be sure they had all really happened : and the events were told with so much simplicity and the characters were so natural and life like that even a dull fellow like him who had no more imagina tion than a door post could see it as if it were passing before his eyes. And another thing that struck him was that all was related without the exclamations and the comments upon the incidents and the people which you find in common GAM S AND STOEIES. 197 books : you were treated as if you had both sense and con science enough to find out the moral intention of the narra tive and that made you think a great deal more than if it was explained out in full. The youn g people all got their Bibles and counting the chapters formed a plan for reading through the whole book once a year. They found that if they read three chapters a day and occasionally an extra one they could accomplish it : and resolved to begin in Genesis the Psalms and St. Matthew s Gospel in order to give more variety. When this point was settled Amy proposed cap ping Bible verses : she said they could have their books be fore them to help them a little if their memories failed. One was to recite a verse and the next another beginning with the letter which ended the preceding passage and if the person whose turn it was hesitated any one else who first thought of a suitable sentence should recite it. But it ought to be something which made good sense when disconnected from the adjoining verses : and it was a rule of the game that if any one present did not understand the meaning of a quotation they should talk it over until they got some light upon the subject. Amy began : Blessed are the meek for they shall in herit the earth. Stop cried Lewis. For if that means that gentle patient forgiving people shall become rich and great I don t understand it at all. Certainly it cannot mean that replied his sister Ellen. I have heard it explained in this way : they shall possess the best blessings of earth by living in love and peace and having easy consciences. That makes a very good sense I think said Tom but I have heard another explanation given which I like better. 17 198 GAMES AND ST0EIE8. The earth in that place and in many others can be translated land with equal propriety and as the land of Canaan was promised to the Jews as a reward the heavenly Canaan is held out as a recompense to Christians. I m satisfied said Lewis. Let me see h Hear heavens and give ear earth for the Lord hath spoken. Never man spake like this man added George. I think there are some words in the verse before that N said Gertrude. But that is of no consequence replied Amy. When a clause makes a complete sense in itself that answers even if it is not at the beginning of a verse. You know that the division of the Bible into chapters and verses is quite a mod ern thing. Indeed I did not know it said Gertrude. Are you quite sure Oh yes certain. I don t know when or by whom it was divided into chapters but my Sunday school teacher has told me that the books of the Old Testament were not par celled out in that way among the Jews. They had other and longer divisions one of which was read every Sabbath day in the synagogues so that the whole was heard by the people in the course of the year. She told me that the New Testament was first distributed into chapters it was not originally writen so and then the Old and that in some places it would make better sense if the end of one chapter was joined to the beginning of the next. And how is it about the verses. Amy It was first separated into verses by Robert Stephens a publisher when riding on horseback between Paris and Lyons : he marked it thus as he rode along. He was about to publish an edition of the Bible and a concordance and GAMES AND STORIES. 199 divided it for facility of reference. This was in the middle of the sixteenth century. There is one thing I ve always wanted to know said John. Along the margin among the references every now and then there are a few words generally or so and so. What is the meaning of that That occurs when the translators were doubtful which of two words gives the right meaning said Mrs. Wyndham coming forward. And I have frequently noticed that the one in the margin is preferable to the other. Another point I wish to have explained said Cornelia. Why is it that in all Bibles some words are put in Italics There must be a reason. Yes my dear there certainly is. The translators did not find these in the original text but thought them neces sary to make up the sense. You know that you are obliged to take such liberties in rendering any foreign language into English. But they very properly distinguished their words from those found in the original and occasionally when the former are omitted the passage is more forcible and gives a slightly different sense. It is well to remember this. But we have wandered very far from our game said Charlie Bolton. Never man spake like this man was the last another N Not unto us O Lord not unto us but unto thy name give glory. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Divers weights and divers measures both of them are alike abomination unto the Lord. Drink waters out of thy own cistern and running waters out of thy own well. Love not sleep lest thou come to poverty. 200 GAMES AND STOEIES. And SO the game went on until to the surprise of all Cajsar announced that tea was read and they found that the afternoon had quite passed away in pJea ant and profita ble talk. In the evening Ellen Green asked her aunt if she would not consent to convert them into a Bible class as an hour could be spent very agreeably in that way. Of course Mrs. Wyndham agreed to the proposition and requested the young party to bring Bibles in as many difierent languages as they could understand. They had Latin Greek and Ger man versions in the library which the boys would find use ful as all the older ones were pretty well versed in the classics and Tom Green was studying German and as she had seen Amy reading her French Testament and Ellen the Italian she knew they were provided for. Accordingly they ran to get their books and by comparing the various trans lations they found that the sense was frequently made cleurei . Each one read a verse and then before the next person proceeded Mrs. Wyndham explained it and asked questions which frequently led to the most animated con versation. By requiring a definition of all words which were not perfectly familiar she arrested their attention. When she or any other member of the class thought of a pa s ij: e in Scripture which threw light upon the subject all searched for it with the aid of the Concordance. Any pe culiarity of lites manners customs etc. was made more in telligible by the Bible Dictionary and when the whole lesson was finished the young people gave a summary of the re ligious truth and practical inferences to be deduced from it. A quotation from the Book of Daniel led to some pleasant talk about that prophet his greatly diversified life and the important changes in the world s history which he witnessed. GAMES AND STOEIES. 201 Mrs. Wyndham remarked that tlie Jews have a tradition which in itself is very probahle that the venerable raan pointed out to Cyrus after his conquest of Babylon the verses in Isaiah wherein he is spoken of by name as conquer ing by the power of the Lord and giving orders to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple : and also that other passage in which the destruction of the Babylonish empire by the Medes is foretold both prophecies being recorded more than a hun dred years before the birth of the mighty king by whom they were accomplished. I never heard of that said Cornelia. But of course it would be the most likely thing for Daniel to do. You can imagine the interest with which Cyrus would listen to these predictions about himself and from the lips of such a noble lovely white haired man as Daniel must have been. I don t wonder at all that he gave the decree to rebuild Jerusalem. This reminds me of another Jewish tradition recorded in Josephus rejoined Mrs. Wyndham. This one I think is not at all probable but as it would interest you I will narrate it. Alexander the Great while engaged in the siege of Tyre sent orders to the high priest at Jerusalem to fur nish his army with provisions as they had been in the habit of doing to Darius. But Jaddus the high priest gave an swer that they were still bound by their oath to the King of Persia and that while he lived they could not transfer their allegiance to another. This noble response awakened the rage of Alexander who as soon as Tyre was reduced marched towards Jerusalem determined to inflict signal vengeance upon that city. The inhabitants totally unable to withstand the conqueror were filled with consternation. Their town was indeed admirably fortified but since Tyre the Queen Df the Sea had been subdued how could they hope to es 202 GAMES AND STORIES. cape Weeping and loud lamentations were heard through out the streets. The high priest knew that his only hope was in help from on high : he oi dered prayers and saci ifices to be oft i ri l up and awaited the result confident that he had at least discharged his duty. But on the night before the mighty Greek arrived Jad dus received directions in a dream to array the streets with flowers and to go forth in his pontifical robes to meet the victor followed by the people dressed in white. He awoke with fresh hope and energy told his dream to the assembled populace and gave orders that the city should be decked with garlands triumphal arches and gay streamers and that the gates should be left open. When all preparations were made he marched out agreeably to the commandment at the head of the priests and people and awaited the approach of the in vaders at a point commanding a beautiful view of the city with its open gates unarmed walls and smiling environs. At last the clank of weapons was heard and with military music the victorious army moved along anxious for fresh conquests. But how different was their reception from that they had anticipated Many it is true had come out to meet them but all in the garb of peace dressed in white and crowned with flowers as if for a festival. Hostility died away in the bosoms of the warriors as they gazed on these defenceless men few are so brutal as to attack the unresist ing and the friendly. But what was the astonishment of the whole army hen they beheld the fiery Alexander him self go forward t _iwards the Jewish high priest who headed the brilliant pr .icession and humbly kneel down at his feet Then rising he embraced him. The Israelites themselves were amazed and acknowledged the merciful interposition of Liod. At length Parmenio addressed the king and asked GAMES AND STORIES. 203 why he before whom monarchs and nations trembled and at wJiose feet all were ready to fall should condescend thus to do homage to a man 3 Alexander replied that he did not bow down to the man but to the mighty name which was written upon his forehead to the great God to whom he was consecrated. For that while he was yet in Macedon meditating the expedition to Asia he had been favored with a remarkable dream in which he had beheld this very man in his pontifical robes who had addressed him encouraging him to persevere in his undertaking. He told him that he Alexander was acting under the immediate guidance of God and that he should prosper. And now continued the king I do not pay obeisance to the man but to the God whose high priest he is and who has given success to my arms. The Jews escorted him into their capital with shouts of applause and loud rejoicings. The Grecian monaich then entered the temple and offered sacrifices complying with all the requirements of the law : and Jaddus showed him in the Book of Daniel the prophecy concerning himself and his kingdom overcoming the Medo Persian realm. Mary will you be kind enough to read it Mary opened the book at the 8th chapter 3d verse Then I lifted up mine eyes and behold there stood before the river a ram which had two horns : and the two horns were high but one was higher than the other and the higher came up last I saw the ram pushing westward and northward and southward so that no beast might stand before him neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand but lie did according to his will and became great. And as I was considering behold an he goat came from he west on the face of the whole earth and touched not the 204 GAMES AND STORIES. ground : and tlie goat had a notable horn between his eyes. And he came to the ram which had two horns which I had seen standing before the river and ran unto him in the fury of his power. And I saw him come close unto the ram and he was moved with choler against him and smote the ram and brake his two horns : and there was no power in the ram to stand before him but he cast him down to the ground and stamped upon him : and there was none that could deliver the ram otit of his hand. Therefore the he goat waxed very great : and when he was strong the great horn was broken and for it came up four notable ones towards the four winds of heaven. And at the twentieth verse it says : The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. And the rough goat is the king of Grecia : and the great horn which is between his eyes is the first king. Now that being broken whereas four stood up for it four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation but not in his power. This is very plain. Aunt Lucy said Maiy and I sup pose that the larger horn of the ram which came up last refers to the power of Persia which overshadowed Media originally so much its superior. If j ou notice the ram comes from the east and pushes westward northward and southward : fl hile the he goat comes from the west to attack the ram and so rapidly that he is represented as not touch ing the ground. I suppose that is a poetical expression said John but if it were anywhere else but in the Bible I d say it was far fetched. GAMES AND STORIES. 205 It is exactly in unison with the figurative language of the East replied Mrs. Wyndham. The Arab praises the swiftness of his steed at this day by saying that before his hoof touches the ground he is out of sight. That s a bold figure for you. I love poetical expressions said Amy. And I prefer plain Enghsh not Arabian answered John. I think I can answer for one thing said Charlie. When Jaddus showed Alexander that prediction he did not lay much stress upon the verse about the great horn being broken while it was yet strong and four others coining up in its place. It all came true enough but Alexander would not have liked that part as well as the rest about his conquests. Do you who are fresh from school remember the names of the four generals and kingdoms who succeeded him re joined Mrs. Wyndham. Ptolemy seized Egypt Seleucus Syria and Babylon Lysimachus Asia Minor and Cassander took Greece for his share of the plunder. But though these were notable horns they were none of them in his power none could compare with Alexander. Auntie said Amy don t you think Alexander must have seen these predictions you know how much he favored the Jews and what especial privileges he gave them in his city Alexandria Well perhaps so said Mrs. Wyndham smiling. I see you want to believe it at any rate. There is no proof to the contrary so you might as well inrlulge your organ of wonder. 18 206 GAMES AND BTOEIES. CHAPTER Vn. SEQUEL TO THE ORPHAN S TALE. WHO CAN HE BE EtB MENTS. THE ASTROLOGERS. On Monday morning our merry party at the Grange breakfasted rather earlier than usual and Mr. Wyndham and Alice Bolton set off for Philadelphia full of eagerness to hunt up an uncle for little Margaret Koscoe. Charlie told him laughingly that he was sure he would persuade some one to be her uncle if rich Mr. Roscoe did not prove to be the right man : he could pick one up somewhere along the streets. But Mr. W3rndham replied with an offended air that he was sorry he had not yet learned his worth : good uncles like him were not to be met with every day they should be valued accordingly. Do you remember the anecdote about Frederic the Great of Prussia asked his wife. There are many funny stories told of him answered Mr. Wyndham which is the one you refer to iJne Sunday a young minister preached an admirable sermon before him showing uncommon talent and erudi tion. Frederic afterwards sent for him and asked where he was settled. Unfortunately Sire I have had no opportu nity of being installed anywhere : I have never had a li nng presented to me. But what is the reason you preach an excellent discourse and appear to be an active young man. Alas Sire I have no uncle. Then Pll be your uncle GAMES AND STOEIES. 207 said Frederic. And lie kept his word : tliejnext vacancy in the ecclesiastical appointments was filled up with the name of his adopted nephew. But Aunt said Harry I can t see what his having no uncle had to do with it. You know that in most other parts of Christendom where the stars and the stripes do not float in the breeze what we call the voluntary principle in church maintenance and government is not the rule at all. Here people choose their own clergymen and of course it is their business to sup port them. But in nearly the whole of Europe rulers are so very paternal as to take that trouble and responsibility off the shoulders of the people : they are kind enough to do all their thinking for them. The subjects pay very heavy taxes and irom these and from old endowments all the expenses of the national establishments are discharged. They look at it in the same light as your parents do when they pay your school bills it s a duty they owe you to see that you are properly taught but it would be very weak in them to con sult you as to which teacher you preferred and what school you chose to go to they re the best judges of course. But Aunt Lucy you surely don t mean to say that the governments are the best judges as to what church the people shall attend and what ministers they shall have I do not mean to say that is my opinion of course that would be rather anti American and not at all Aunty Lucy ish. No no I stand up for the rights of conscience and approve of treating grown men and children too as if they had reason and common sense and then they will be far more Ukely to possess it than if they are always kept under an iron rule. But on the other side of the water they have not so exalted an opinion of the mass of the people as we 208 GAMES AND STOEIES. have and the government in some form either through ecclesiastical boards or inspectors of churches or members of the aiistocracy exercises the power of filling vacant churches. This is the reason hy it is important to have an uncle in other words some influential person to ai 1 you in rising. Even the memory of an illustrious uncle is sometimes a stepping stone remarked Charlie Bolton. The late Emperor Louis Napoleon is an example lucky fellow j his uncle s name and fame got him a throne with the help of considerable cheating. JSTot so lucky if you look at his end said John. But from other and quite disinterested motives I intend to keep as close to my uncle as he. I shall very soon begin to subscribe myself John Wyndham Junior and I am determined to be like you uncle as like as your own shadow. Then you will be an illustrious example of failure my boy for my shadow although always near me is generally cast down which I never am and it always looks away from the sunny side you know which I don t do. Besides a shadow has no particular character : any one s shadow would suit me as well as my own. I intend to be an original for my part cried Cornelia laughing. I won t be cast in anybody s mould as if I were a bullet not I That s right my dear original said her uncle pinching her rosy dimpled laughter loving cheek. The grave world always wants a pert little Cornelia to tease it out of its pe culiarities : people in old times kept their jesters and you re nearly as good Why uncle you insult me you ve quite mistaken my character I intend to be the dignified Miss Wyndham Oh pray spare us that infliction replied her uncle laughingly jumping into the carriage. GAMES AND STOEIKS. 209 Mr. Wyndham met witli good success. He arrived at Mr. Roscoe s door at the moment that gentleman was about to leave home. Alice Bolton who was an especial favorite of liis introduced her uncle and when he understood that they had private business with him he led them up to his library where hanging over the mantle piece Mr. Wyndham imme diately saw a portrait the counterpart of the one in his pos session although evidently taken some years before the min iature. Involuntarily he stopped before it and gazed earnestly. Mr. Roscoe sighed. Here is all that remains said he of a dear and only brother. I value this picture more than any thing else in my house except its living furni ture. Had your brother no family sir no wife or child rejoined Mr. Wyndham. That is rather a tender subject my dear sir answered Mr. Roscoe : one that has caused me much sorrow and some self reproach. He left a wife and child indeed who were to join me in America. I have reason to think they sailed but from that day to this I have heard no tidings from them. Would to God I knew their fate whether the unknown ship in which they took passage went down at sea or what else may have happened I know not. All my efforts to unravel the mystery have been in vain. Perhaps I can help you said Mr. Wynd ham with that peculiarly benevolent smile which opened all hearts to him as if by magic. You recognize this counte nance V continued he holding up to him little Maggie s me dallion. My brother Malcom tell me sir tell me where you got this it was his wife s His sweet httle daughter your niece Margaret Roscoe handed it to my wife a few days ago. She knows not she has an uncle living : her mother is dead and she is dwelling in comparative poverty near my house. I cannot doubt it from this picture al 18 210 GAME3 AND STORIES. though it is all a mystery still. But I must see her my dear brother s child. I will order up my carriage immediate ly and beg you to take seats in it. I must see her as soon as possible. On that very account I liave made arrangements for you to come out to The Grange in mine replied Mr. Wyndham. We can explain all things by the way and you can return whenever you say the word. You will find Old Cresar quite at your disposal . I gratefully accept your offer my dear sir and can never be suflBciently thankful to you if you indeed restore to me my brother s child. I will order my carriage to follow us to The Grange. Accordingly he acquainted his family in few words and great haste with the discovery that had been made and left Carrie Alan and Malcom in an intense state of excitement at the idea of regaining the long lost cousin. The three then drove immediately to Mrs. Norton s little cottage where the gentle and womanly child was busily engaged at her work Stitch stitch stitch. Band gusset and seam striving by her small but active fingers to aid in the sup port of that family which had sheltered her in adversity. As the door opened she raised her deep blue eyes the very reflection of her father s. The oik fell from her hands that face reminded her of home of her grandfather of her unknown uncle. They have recognized each other the ties of blood speak out in their hearts the long severed are now united. I will not attempt to raise the veil which hides from the 9vorld the strongest and purest affections of our nature : they GAMES AND STOELES. 211 were nevei intended for the common eye. But now after the first rapture of meeting had subsided there arose a tu mult within the soul of our affectionate and grateful little Maggie: her heart urged her in two opposite directions. She felt in an ardent and uncommon degree that instinctive love of kindred which is implanted in our nature and mani fested so strongly by the natives of Scotland but on the other hand gratitude and duty appeared to bid her stay with her benefactors. Mr. Roscoe perceived the struggle and it raised his little niece highly in his estimation. He told her that it was not his wish to separate her entirely from the family to which she was so warmly attached that she should come very frequently to see them and that as his niece she would find it was in her power to aid them more effectually than she could do as their adopted daughter. Mrs. Norton although with tears in her eyes told her that she could not now dare to detain her her duty was clear to follow her uncle who filled her father s place. Having made the ar rangement to call for her in the afternoon Mr. Roscoe accom panied Mr. Wyndham and Alice to the Grange where he dined and spent the intermediate time greatly to the plea sure of our young party who could not have felt sure of Maggie s future happiness had they not themselves experi enced the attractive influence of his kind gentlemanly and paternal manner. After dinner the two gentlemen had a little private con versation about Mrs. Norton. They wished to place her above poverty and yet to do so in a way which should not mortify her feelings of independence. Mr. Roscoe remarked that he had it in his power to bring Frederic forward in business and that if he were an industrious and intelligent lad he should enjoy as good an opportunity of rising in the 212 OAMKS AND STORIES. world as the son of the richest merchant in the land. He would see to it that the girls had the best advantages of ed ucation and if they showed sufficient talent they should be trained for teachers. But meantime what was to be done for Mrs. Norton Would she accept from him an annuity which after all was only a small return for her kindness to his brother s child Mr. Wyndham thought that it would be a better plan to establish her in a neat dwelling and well furnished shop either in the country or in the city where Frederic could board with her. He knew from his wife s account that she had an acquaintance with business and had thought of setting her up himself in a small way : he should be happy to aid in the good work. But Mr. Ptoscoe insisted that the debt was all his own and that no one should share with him the privilege of helping her and accordingly this plan was determined upon as combining the most efficient assistance to the widow with a regard to her self respect. In the e ening after the excitement produced by the un expected turn in the fortunes of little Maggie and of her gen erous protectors had somewhat subsided our happy party drew up to the fire which crackled and blazed as if conscious of the animation it imparted to the group around it. What game shall we play to night said Cornelia who possessed such an active mind as to think it stupid and poking unless some visible fun was in progress. She never could think the fire was burning unless the sparks flew right and left. What do you say to Who can he be asked Mary. Tis a game partly of my own invention that I think may prove entertaining. I ve seen a set of historical cards in which a description is read of a general king or other illus GAMES AND STOETES. 213 trious character and any one having the can on which the corresponding name is printed calls it out and gains the other one. But if a beautiful Queen of Egypt who lived a short time before the Christian era is portrayed it s quite as well for boys who own a Moses or a Mary of Scotland not to be in too great a hurry to speak. We wouldn t be such dunces I hope cried Harry. But Cousin Mary what s your improvement 2 I don t see any cards here at all. Oh no : I think when people have brains they can play much better without them. My plan is for a person to de scribe the individual naming the country and age in which he lived what gained him distinction and every thing else that is interesting and then any one of the cii cle can guess who the hero is having the privilege of asking one question pre viously. If the conjecture be correct the guesser describes another character and so the game proceeds. Or if you prefer it you can narrate one well known anecdote of your hero and then three questions are allowed previous to a guess. I call it Who can he be I think I shall like it said Ellen. If you please I ll begin. Once there lived a Roman Emperor he was a nephew like Louis Napoleon and Cousin John. Wo often say people lived in the year one : he certainly did. He was a great patron of literature and the fine arts and was a mu nificent friend to Virgil. Who can he be I can tell you without asking my question cried Tom. Augustus was eminently the nephew and succeeded his uncle Julius Caesar in the Empire. He was reigning at the time of our Saviour s birth and of course lived in the year one : every thing fits he s the man. You are right. Now tis your turn brother Tom. 214 GAMES AND STOEIES. The first of the English poets who wrote splendid po etry if only one could read it. Tis such hard tough jaw breaking English that it is little wonder his very name shows we must use the muscles of our mouths when we attempt it. He li ed soon after the time of Wick Mfe and imbibed some of his ideas. Who can he be Who but Chaucer said Cornelia. Now who is the hero who was almost elected King of Poland but who lost that honor through the interference of a queen of England unwilling to lose the brightest jewel of her crown by parting with him He is mortally wounded on the battle field and thirsting for water. His soldiers procure some with great difficulty and he is about to raise it to his lips when he sees the longing eye of a dying man at his side fixed upon it. He wants it more than I said he and gave it to the poor fellow. Who can he be We are allowed three questions to an anecdote said Alice but none are required here. Th ere is only one Sir Philip Sydney. But who was the selfish queen unwilling to have her noblest subject exalted beyond her control None other than good Queen Bess answered Cornelia. And who is the poet that has immortalized Sydney s sis ter in the following lines Underneath this marble hearse Lies the subjeot of all verse : Sydney s sister Pembroke s mother Death ere thou hast slain another Good and fair and wise as she. Time shall throw his dart at thee I Was it rare Ben Jonson V cried CharKe Bolton. Even so Charlie : now what have you got to say for yourself I Intend to disprove the assertion of Alice that theie is GAMES AND STOEIffiS. 215 Diily one Sir Philip Sydney. Who was that other equally valiant knight and nuich sweeter poet who used to sing his own verses accompanying himself upon the harp and could thei eby soothe the most troubled spirit On one occasion this brilliant genius whose romantic adventures might fill a volume and who subsequently became a king was in exile and was hidden with some devoted followers in a large cave. The enemies of his country were encamped around and lay in strong force between his hiding place and the small town where he had spent his childish years which they also gar risoned. While in this situation cut ofl from all intercourse with his home and friends his heart turned to them with an intense longing and in a moment of thoughtlessness he said before three of his captains Oh what would I not give could I once more drink water from the well outside the gate of my native town At the peril of their lives the gallant men fought their way through the hosts of the enemy and returned with the water. But the poet warrior would not drink : he poured it out as a libation to God saying Can I indeed drink the blood of these noble friends who have risked their lives to gratify my idle whim I cannot do it. Now who can be this poet warrior and king Did he live about a thousand years before the Christian era said Amy. He did. It was the sweet Psalmist of Israel David son of Jesse the Bethlehemite. Now who is the man that long ago pub lished a book of jests said to be greatly studied now a days by diners out and professed wits and endlessly copied into other works of a similar character. His reputation is so high that many anecdotes are called by his name. Who can he be 216 GAMES AND STORIES. Is it Punch said Lewis. How silly died Harrj with the knowing look of a boy two years oldur : Punch is a newspaper. Was it Hood No : do you all give it up Yes : we can t imagine who he can be. Joe Miller of jesting memory. Now let us try another game said Gertrude. Of course Cmisin Mary has an endless store at her disposal. Let us try Elements Mary answered. I will throw my handkerchief at some one calling out water air or earth and the person who catches it must immediately name an animal living in or upon the element. But if I say fire you must be silent. The answer should be given before I count ten and then the one in possession of the handkerchief must throw it to another carrying on the game. Any one who repeats an animal that has been already mentioned pay s a forfeit e xcept that I think forfeits are stupid things. Instead of that said Charlie let the unlucky wight who makes the greatest number of blunders have the privi lege of pri osing the first game to morrow. Very well said Mary throwing her handkerchief at Tom. Water. Codfish answered he tossing it to Cornelia. Earth. Elephant replied Cornelia sending the missive to Cliarlie. Fire. Water rejoined Charlie flinging it to Amy. Eel responded Amy casting it into Anna s lap. Air. Eagle cried the latter hurling the embroidered cambric at George s face. Earth. Have pity upon my poor little handkerchief said Mary. GAMES AND STORIES. 217 And SO the game proceeded and simple thougli it was it caused diversion. Who shall be appointed to tell the story to night asked Ellen. It seems to me that Tom or Charlie Creorge or John should be selected as it generally happens the softer sex has done the chief talking. Isn t it right and proper for the boys to take their equal share Oh by no means I answered Charlie. It is the ladies privilege it would be very ungallant to deprive them of it. Besides my trade is that of a critic not an author : you must be aware that it is a higher branch giving larger scope to my superior judgment and exquisite powers of fault finding. Yes criticism is my forte : do you tell stories Ellen and I m the chap to slash them up. You are only too kind replied his cousin laughing. After such a generous otfer who wouldn t be tempted I know you are right sister Ellen said Tom and that it is our duty to help in the entertainment of the company but for my part I throw myself upon your mercy. I wouldn t for the world hint that we are more solid than the girls but tis very certain that we are more lumbering. If I were to begin a tale I d flounder through it like a whale with a har poon in its body while any of the girls even down to little Anna would glide along like a graceful snow white swan upon a silver lake happy in her element and giving plea sure to all who witnessed her undulating motions. Very pretty that Tom cried Cornelia. After such a well turned compliment our hearts would be flinty indeed if we didn t excuse you. But what do George and John say As for me responded George it appears to be my vo cation at present to eat hearty dinners grumble over my lessons skate and now and then by way of a frolic fall into 19 218 GAMES AND STOEIES. a pond. You may be thankful if I don t get into all sorts of mischief. You need not expect me to make myself agreea ble till I arrive at the digging up age that Cornelia spoke of For my part added John you know that I couldn t invent a story to save my life. I ve no fancy at all and have made up my mind as I can t be agreeable that I ll at least be useful. Everybody ought to be one or the other. We should aim to be both said Mr. Wyndham. But indeed uncle tis hard work for a fellow when he s plain .spoken and rather dull like me. I d prefer sawing wood any day to entertaining a parcel of girls 1 That being the case answered Mrs. AVyndham smiling we couldn t be hard hearted enough to impose such an ar duous duty upon you. I appoint Cornelia to the honorable office of story teller this evening. Then I bargain that I make my tale as short as I like and that I am not compelled to lug in a moral by the hair of its head as the Germans express it said Cornelia. I ap prove of every one following the bent of his genius and mine is not of the didactic order. We certainly should not expect a moral essay or an in structive treatise from our wild little girl replied Mr. Wynd ham. I suppose there is no danger of its being im moral. I don t know indeed answered she tossing her black curls and looking archly at her uncle whom she dearly loved to tease. I ll leave you to judge of that : I don t answer for the injurious effect it may have upon these unformed minda around me. I call my story GAMKS AND STORIES. 219 dfjIB istrnlngErs. William Forsythe and Edward Barrington were lively young fellows of twenty who had left their homes in the South to complete their education at one of our northern colleges. I don t think my strict uncle would call them im moral young men but they certainly did not cany gray heads upon their green shoulders : they loved fun and mis chief about as well as I do. They did not neglect study and were up to the mark in their recitations and they never per petrated any thing really bad. They would not have intention ally hurt any one s feelings for the world but yet were any frolic to be carried into execution these two were the head and front of the offending. The grave professors while they entertained their families at home with some of their ex ploits were obliged to put on a very sober face in public and even to hint at expulsion from the Alma Mater if the merry and thoughtless yoimgsters persevered in their coui se. I must relate one or two instances which caused consider able laughter at the time and have added to the stock oi traditionary stories that may be found in every boarding col lege throughout our land. Contraband turkeys or geese roasted in their room for supper and intended for a jolly party of friends who would collect together were of course quite common affairs. On one occasion just as the odor had become very exciting to their gastric organs and the skin had assumed that tempting brown hue betokening a near ap proach to perfection in their culinary operations the watchful tutor scented out either the supper ur some mischief and 220 GAMES AND STORIES. rap rap rap was heard at the door. Every sound was in staiitlj hushed and the ofl endiiig bird was quickly trans ferred to a hiding place in the room. Alter some little delay the door was opened with many apologies and the tutor looking suspiciously through his spectacles entered the apart ment. e y studious gentlemen very studious I see he said glancing at the array of learned volumes open before them. Let me beg you not to injure your health by too close application to books. But what a very curious smell one would think you had been carrying out the classical les sons contained in Apicius. Allow me to examine: ah Mr. Forsythe I see that you grease your boots to keep out the wet a good precaution. So saying he pulled out the nice little goose from a new boot in the corner to the mingled mortification and amusement of the young men. Suppers are doubtless agreeable things at night added the tutor but the worst is that they often leave unpleasant conse quences the ne. t morning : of course you are aware that ou meet the faculty to morrow gentlemen. On another occasion our two heroes were out all night exerting themselves strenuously for the public good. I sup pose they thought that if some of the impediments to familiar intercourse in the neighborhood were removed the state of society would be greatly benefited. Some such grave pur pose they must ha e had in view for in the morning when the inhabitants of the town awoke tliey found to their sur prise that all the gates small and great had been removed from their hinges and collected in one large pile in the mid dle of the Campus To complain to the faculty would do no good : it would only raise the laugh against them. So when any of the townspc jple or the farmeis in the neigh borhood canje to select their gates fi om the pile the cry GAMES ANn STORIES. 221 was given Heads out and from all the windows sur rounding the Campus roguish eyes peeped forth to watch the proceedings and frequently the property owner re turned feeling very much as if he had been the culprit. One day a countryman drove up with a load of wood. As he disappeared around an angle of the building in search of the purveyor our heroes approached with a select party of classmates weary of recitations and longing for a change. Forsythe whose genius for military tactics was so striking that he was dubbed by universal consent the general in stantly formed his plan of attack and being nobly seconded by his quick witted aids he carried it into execution with the rapidity and decision characteristic of a great commander. In five minutes the farmer returned having concluded his bargain but where was his cart and horse and luad of wood Nothing of the kind was to be seen and it was very evident that patient Dobbin had for once in his life re solved to take a frolic and see a little of life or else that some rogue had gotten possession of him and his appurte nances without the formality of a purchase. The town was searched and all the adjacent roads. The neighbors ever ready from a principle of pure benevolence to take a lively interest in all that was going on gave advice in rich profu sion and sent the poor man flying hither and thither in vain. But at last the contradictory reports appeared to settle down into the following facts : that many persons had seen the cart enter the town but that none had witnessed its depart ure wherein might be traced a strange likeness to the old fable of the sick lion and his visitors. The suspicion at last became general that the students were somehow at the bot tom of it so just an appreciation did the townspeople pos sess of their capabilities for mischief that no tricks of diab 19 222 GAMES AND STORIES. lerie seemed too much to ascribe to them. As the weary countryman and his S3 mpathizing companions approached those academic shades where earnest study and severe medi tation filled up all the hours a stir was apparent within the building and the tramping of feet upon the stone staircase and the laughter of many voices told that something unusual had occurred. With ill disguised merriment the worthy rustic was es corted up three flights of stairs until uneasily stamping upon the brick pavement of the hall his wondering eyes fell upon his horse looking decidedly out of his element. How came he there Behind him was the cart loaded with wood not ii buckle of his tackling was amiss it looked as if old Dobbin had marched up the stairway load and all. No one knew any thing of the prodigy no one ever does in such cases. The horse looked indignant as if he had a tale to tell but the words wouldn t come. No other wit ness could be produced in court and the end of it was that all except the unfortunate animal himself indulged in a hearty horse laugh. In what way they drove the cart down stairs history does not mention. That was the concern of the owner and of the college authorities and not mine nor my heroes it may be in the hall to this day for aught I know. But how they got up so high in the world is another matter and I will let you into my secret merely to convince my incredulous hearers that the thing was possible. Each of the fellows shouldered as many logs as he could cai ry conveyed them to the ap pointed ilacp and returned swiftly to the charge. The. wheels ere now oft and ready for four of them and the body of the cart fir eight more. Forsythe and Barrington reserved for themselves the honor and glory of managing the GAMES AND STOEnSS. 223 live stock. Slipping woollen socks over his feet they some how got him up stairs with marvellous celerity and whilst his owner was gazing up and down for his vanished property the astonished horse was again tackled to the loaded cart his hose were taken off and he was left to his meditations in solitary possession of the hall. So quietly was all this done that although students and tutors were in the rooms adjoin ing nothing was suspected until the horse who felt himself to be placed without any fault of his own in a false position made known his sentiments by his impatient movements. The worst trick our heroes ever played and one of a some what kindred character consisted in ornamenting Professor X s hoi se. At midnight when the authorities were sound asleep they took the poor animal out of his comfortable sta ble and shoeing him with an extra quantity of felt to pre vent any noise they conveyed him with great difficulty up the staircase to the hall in the third floor. That might have satisfied them but no they were not pleased with his color. He was of pure white and the scapegraces wished a varie gated hue. So after a preliminary shaving they painted him in green stripes and when they had arranged it to their satisfaction they went to their own rooms. The unfortunate victim was not well contented either with his quarters or his condition and stamped about at a great rate being quite un able to get down stairs. In the morning when the Professor was ready for his usual ride where was his horse It had vanished and the stable door was open : thieves must have been prowling about in the night. At last the trick was discovered and then as Will Forsythe said I could paint that horse which was rather restive but I would not under take to paint the wrath of the Professor. Of course no one did it it was impossible to discover the guilty individuals. 224 GAMES AND STORIES. But the poor animal did not enjoy the frolic as much as tLa wild youngsters for he died in consequence and this unfor tunate termination of the exploit put a stop to any practical jokes for the enormous period of several months. To make up the unexpected loss to the Professor the two friends sent him anonymously a sum of money equal to the value of the horse. But the moral discipHne inflicted by the luckless death o the green and white horse did not endure forever. Thej say that when a subterranean fire exists and old craters arc. abandoned new ones are thrown up : the inward irresistible po vver must have a vent. Perhaps it s somewhat so with us lovers of fun. I see uncle shake his head at me and know that he thinks I m inculcating bad morality : but indeed na ture will out as well as murder. You must know that the excellent I lrsident who had a great deal of dry humor in his composition had procured a nice new vehicle. Every one liked the old gentleman and yet so great is the love of frolic inherent in some reprobate minds that when the idea of carrying off his carriage was first broached at one of their little private suppers by that wicked imp Will Forsythe it was met with shouts of applause. It was resolved to convey it awav in the dead of the night to a little piece of woods belonging to the Doctor at a distance of about three miles from the college and there to leave it. The plan was to be carried into execution that very night. Accordingly at midnight eight forms might have been seen carefully descending from eight windows and skulk ing along in the shade foi the moon was shining bril liantly until they got beyond the college limits. They drew out the carriage and proceeded slowly along the road : no one was astir except themselves heu they had passtj GAMES AND STOEIES. 225 all the houses they no longer felt the need of keeping the strict silence they had at first thought necessary and the merry laugh and the gay repartee went round. Hallo Forsythe exclaimed Harrington how do you stand it I think this concern is as ponderous as if the old fat Doctor were inside it himself I conceive this joke to be rather a heavy one replied his friend laughing. I begin to wonder if we are not fools for our pains : Dr. Franklin would say that we paid too dear for our whistle. Never give up the ship my boy cried the other. Only think how the old Doctor will stare about him to morrow when he misses it 1 It will be a second edition of the Professor s horse. Now an thou lovest me HaV don t say a word about the Pro fessor s horse or I ll turn back with the carriage. That cost me to the tune of a hundred dollars and more not to speak of the remorse I felt when the poor creature died. But didn t he look comical when I had put on the green Thus with jocund peals of laughter they shortened the way until they reached the little piece of woods in which they intended to deposit the coach. Had they been obliged to toil as much to gain their daily bread they irould probably have thought it hard work. They took down the bars drew in the carriage and placed it in a snug position out of sight. And now for home said Forsythe. Won t we get there a little soonei than we came At that moment the carriage window was thrown up a large white head was put forth into the moonlight and to the horror of all concerned they beheld the Doctor Whether to run or what to do they did not know. The old President enjoyed their confusion for a few moments and then said Much obliged to you for a pleasant ride young gentlemen : now suppose we go home again. Putting in i2G GAMES AND STORIES. his head and shutting the window and blind he left them to their disma . Completely taken in they had been betrayed somehow. They might look for an expulsion aftei that and what was worse would be heartily laughed at besides. Between their mortification and the unwonted hard work the pei spiration rolled oft their faces in large drops by the time they got home that is to say to the coach house. Forsythe humbly opened the coach door and let down the steps. Many thanks said the Doctor with a grave face : I have seldom enjoyed a more agreeable ride. I don t know when I have had horses I liked so well. Every day for a fortnight the horses were trembling in expectation of a notice to canter off fi om the college in disgrace but no such intimation came. The worthy old Doctor was con tented with the punishment he had already inflicted but reminded them occasionally of their midnight frolic and brought blushes up to their cheeks by some sly allusion. College days are now over : our heroes have graduated with some distinction notwithstanding their many peccadil loes and have bid farewell forever to the academic shades figuratively speaking of their Alma Mater. They have amazed delighted and edified the ladies present at the Commence ment by the eloquence of their Greek and Latin orations : the pretty creatures listened with rapt attention and most intelliffent countenances to the whole. Had it been Chero kee it would have proved the .same thing. They did not enlighten the audience as a learned old Scotchman who some fifty years ago was President of one of our northern colleges actually did at a commencement speech. He had a board of trustees whom he looked upon with great contempt as illiterate men and not being on the best terms with GAMES AND STOEIES. 227 them he determined upon a characteristic revenge. Turning round to one side of the stage where some of them were seated whenever he quoted Latin he gave the explanation That s Latin gentlemen and again when he introduced any Greek bowing to the other side That s Greek gentle men. But one incident occui red showing equal respect to the classical acquirements of those around him : Will For sythe whose memory was none of the best feeling a sudden lapse of it in the very middle of his speech with imperturba ble impudence recommenced from his starting point and made an admirable impression. Thunders of applause re warded him when he made his parting bow. The two friends still kept together. They visited the Falls of Niagara Canada Saratoga and Newport and yet strange to say their purses were not exhausted. What shall they do next they are ready for any frolic that presents itself. They have money in their pockets young blood in their veins un limited time at their disposal and of course they must be in some mischief as neither of them has lost his heart and become sentimental. While in New York Forsythe acciden tally took up a newspaper and that determined the especial kind of wickedness in which they should engage. He noticed a number of pompous advertisements of fortune tellers under the head of astrology which gave him an idea. He showed them to Harrington who observed that it was astonishing how many fools and ignoramuses there were still in the nineteenth century when the schoolmaster was abroad. A very sage remark answered his friend. If the school master would stay at home and mind his own business in stead of being abroad so much perhaps the world would be better taught. I notice that he is always going to an educa tion convention. But I didn t show you that for the purpose 228 GAMES AND STOEIES. of eliciting wisdom : quite the contrary folly is what I m after just now. What do you think of ouv turning astrolo gers Grand you re a genius Will that s the very thing to wake us up Here are you and I dashing blades who have been doing penance by trying to be fine gentlemen at watering places when it wasn t at all in our line. I began to think we looked as much like fops as the rest of the scented and bearded dress coats who strut about and imagine the world is looking at them. This would throw us into quite another rank of life and give us new ideas. How shall we manage it though my fine fellow Nothing easier in the world. Let us rent a small house somewhere near the Bowery that s the right neighborhood and when we have fitted it up suitably to our trade I ll engage to put an advertisement in the papers that shall draw us customers. How do you think I could pass for a Jew Pretty well with your coal black eyes and hooked nose: but what is that notion I think it would cause a great sensation if the Wandnriiig Jew were to appear again in real life. AVhat between Croly and Eugene Sue he has been kept very exten sively before the public in books : but I believe no one has had the audacity as yet to represent him in an every day money getting capacity at least in America. How do you like my plan Superb the only objection is that you are rather youthful in appearance for one who has wandered over the earth for more than eighteen hundred years. Could you alter that. Will Somewhat with the aid of a snow whito wig and yellow dye and you know I always possessed the accomplishmeut of furrowing up my face with wrinkles when 1 chuse. I don t doubt I could look the character pretty well in a rich flowing Oriental dress. And the little Hebrew we picked up at college from our good friend the learned GAMES AND STOEIES. 223 young Rabbi will also stand us in band. Have you any objection to being my servant Ned None at all I shall feel quite honored by the position. I don t consider myself competent to play the first fiddle in this amusing duet but can follow your lead very well. Remember then that our English is rather broken and that we communicate our meaning to one another in French Spanish scraps of He brew or Latin and Greek. I have not quite yet forgotten all I learned at college though I suppose I shall do so in another month. You remember your speech at least eh Will The first half if it is necessary to make a great sensation I can come out with that. Full of the new plan of diversion the boys for they were boys at heart although men in stature set out to hunt a house and were successful in finding one that suited their notions. Very soon it was furnished in Oriental style and an inner room was fitted up with various occult instruments calculated to inspire the minds of the vulgar with a whole some dread. It was agreed that Barrington should make very little change in his wardrobe and merely dye his hair and whiskers and add a richer brown to his complexion to give a more travelled look and as he said to hinder any of the Saratoga belles from finding him out if they came to have their fortunes told. But Forsythe took infinite pains to alter his appearance and was so successful that his friend assured him his own mother could not detect his identi ty and that Garriok himself who could look any character and any age he pleased would have been jealous had he seen how successfully he had hidden his youth and beauty. When all preparations were made the advertisement was written. It stated that The Wandering Jew having reached New York in his peregrinations would stay for the space of 20 230 GAMES AND STOKIES. one fortniglit only it being then in.lispensaLly necessary that his travels should recommence and highly probable that lie might not revisit the city for a century. Being now the sol depository of the mysterious knowledge acquired in Egypt in ancient times some scraps of which had been picked up by the astrologers of the middle ages and especially by Mer lin Michael Scott Cornelius Agrippa and Friar Bacon he was ready during the short period of his stay to lift the veil which separates the present from the future. Not being actuated in the slightest degree by a lust for gain the illus trious exile would not consent to gratify mere idle curiosity and to afford amusement to the gay and frivolous but where an earnest inquiring mind was intent upon discovering the hidden things of life upon investigating the secrets of the past or searching into futurity the Wanderer would give his mighty assistance. By books and science by spells and con jurations the Powers were compelled to reveal their arcana and Fate itself whispered its dark mysteries into his ear. The Spirits being subjects of the Great Magician their aid would be called in when desired. Where this mode was preferred to the ordinary methods of consulting the stars the Cabala and black letter volumes these intelligences answered all questions by significant raps or in writing guiding the hand of the Wanderer who acted as their medium. The first day that the advertisement appeared no visitors of any distinction came to see the Wanderer who yawned and smoked cigars and read through the last novel declaring that it was intolerable to be dressed up for a show and to have nobody come to see them. But in the evening they were rewarded for their trouble. There was a quick nervous rinn and Barrington opened the door : a timid little man walked in loC king back o cr his shoulder to see if he were GAMES AND STORIES. 231 observed. When he found himself alone with Bariington he asked with some surprise if he were the Great Magician. I oh no my lord : far be it from me. I am the humblest of his slaves. I will see if my venerable master can now receive you. Opening the door leading into a back apart ment he made a low salam to the Wanderer who was seated in state upon a divan immersed in his studies. Addressing him in Hebrew with a few words of Greek to make out the sense he received a response which he interpreted to the new comer as a permission to approach the august presence. The little man went in feeling at every step an increase of rever ential awe. The Oriental costumed with all magnificence his hoary head bent with age his brow from beneath which black eyes flashed brightly furrowed with years and care filled him with admiration. Every thing around heightened the impression. A curious carved cabinet whose doors looked as if they concealed a mystery was surmounted by folio vol umes filled of course with potent spells : and above these again a skull and cross bones made him shudder. In one corner was a globe covered with strange figures dragons scorpions distressed damsels fastened to a rock etc. Scat tered about the room were singular instruments of various kinds jars with hideous snakes preserved in spirits books in unknown tongues and parchments upon which cabalistic dia grams were portrayed which no doubt had power to com mand the spirits and to reveal futurity. The Wanderer waved his hand to invite his visitor to a seat : the humble slave stood with head meekly bowed down near the door. With some difficulty the little man who was frightened nearly out of his small stock of wits explained his errand. It seems that he had fallen heir to a property the deed of which had been lost. He had tried every method he 232 GAMES AND STORIES. could think of to discover it: he had nimmao ed over all th drawers and chests in liis relative s liou. e he had said his pravers backwards so tliat a dream might he sent him in the night and he had been to three fortune tellers but strange to say had returned no wiser than he was when he went. And now this was his last hope : if the Wandering Jew of whom he had heard so much could not help him he knew that no one could. He was asked in wdiich way he wished to receive the desired information : should the answer appear in flames before him should it be disc vcred by the magic books or should the spirit of his deceased friend signify his presence to him by a rap and then respond to the question The stran ger evidently preferred the last mode of operating and let out the fact in the course of conversation that his relative had been lost at sea. The AYanderer then performed various evolutions burning incense bowing to unseen visitors who were admitted into the room by the slave upon a rap being heard at the door and muttering meanwhile mysterious words in an unknown tongue to which his attendant occa sionally reS ioiidt d. The poor little man began to quake all over : he felt as if surrounded by charms and spells and wicked spirits. He wished himself heartily out of the house but there was no retreat now some ghosts it is easier to raise than to lay. When the room was filled with fragrant smoke and the subject of the conjuration was completely mystified and frightened Selim for so the Wanderer called his assistant brought in a circular table around which the three seated themselves in profound silence but the venera ble Oriental who acted as the medium of communication alone placed his hand upon it. A rap which caused the lit tle man nearly to jump ofl his chair announced that the spirit was ready to be consulted. The med ium asked Whether GAMES AND STOEIES. 233 the inquirer si 3uld recover his rights and obtain a copy oi the deed Three impressive decided raps gave an affirma tive reply. Will he be satisfied upon this point to morrow Again three raps. Will the spirit condescend to signify in writing in what way he shall act to obtain this end Three raps again testified that the amiable spirit was willing to oblige. Accordingly Selim having produced an antique ink stand and an eagle s quill a goose quill and steel pens would have been quite too common the hand of the medium was guided in tracing strange characters which looked like a jumble of the Greek Arabic and cuneiform alphabets. This spirit dialect was translated to the inquirer : it contained a direction to call early the next morning between the hours of eight and nine for during that hour the fates were pro pitious to him at the office of a lawyer named Warren No. 354 Broadway. Upon seeing him he was to lay down a 20 gold piece and to say that he wanted him to procure a copy of the missing will. He must answer all questions Mr. Warren might ask and above all must feel implicit faith in him as the agent appointed by the spirits to restore to him his property. Full of awe as he was the little man still wished to gratify his curiosity as to the manner of his kinsman s death : could that be done Oh yes answered the mysterious one nothing is easier. As he was speaking the table began to creak as a ship would do in a storm. It was excessively agi tated the noise of the rudder was heard and at last after a series of agonizing movements the whole concern fell over with a sudden crash. And yet no one appeared to touch it the passive hand of the venerable exile could scarcely have affected it so strangely. You see the fate of the ship said the Wanderer it has gone to the bottom in a storm. How 20 234 GAMES AND STORIES. very odd replied the simple liearted little man wheE it came home the Captain said he had fallen overboard. He did answered the magician in a solemn manner avoid ing however to look in the direction of Selim. Did you not hear the plunge into the sea this describes the ultimate fate cf the vessel. The good easy man was perfectly sat isfied. He was directed to come on the morrow when the deed had been found and the correctness of the spirit s directions was fully proved : and payment was indignantly refused. The next day various sentimental chambermaids visited them desiring to be shown the likeness of their future husbands. This was done greatly to their satisfaction by exhibiting to them one and the same hyalotype magnified by the magic lantern so that the life like countenance appeared to approach them from the opposite wall in the darkened room. It was observed that the more ignorant they were the more were they affected with horror by the sight of the cross bones skull and chemical apparatus. Still this was rather tame work and both the Aged One and Selim were relieved when they saw their dupe of the preceding night reappear with happiness beaming in every feature of his countenance. The lawyer he said had not appeared at all surprised at being told to get him a copy of the will : he said something about the Fiecorder s ofBce. He was a young looking man to be chosen by the spirits: and he wanted to know who had sent him to himself. Of course I told him and then he laughed and said it was a great humbug. I was very much afraid that the spirits would be offended and refuse to discover to him the will : but he told me to return towards evening and lo here it is. The pix.r little man was full of the w. u mest gratitude and GAMES AND STOEIES. 235 wanted to forc a purse upon the unwilling astrologers : but they finally overcame his importunities by representing that the spirits would not obey their summons if made a subject of bargain and sale and that he should best please them by distributing it among the sick and poor. I. his circumstance which found its way into one of the daily papers with many embellishments brought crowds of believers in the night side of nature to our mischi evous youngsters who were ready to humor the credulous public to the top of its bent. Very many peopla looked sage and quoted the passage There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio Than are dreampt of in your philosophy. Select circles of intelligent people insisted upon it that al though they could not give in their adhesion to such mys teries yet they gi eatly disapproved of the spirit of skepticism which had been so prevalent for the last iifty years. The new discoveries in science plainly showed that nature had many secrets yet unrevealed to man : and no one should audaciously set a limit to his powers. Did not animal mag netism containing so many things which could not be ex plained away plainly prove it Could they have seen our merry graduates when the door was looked for the night and the venerable wig was thrown aside jollifying over their sup per could they have heard the peals of laughter caused by the unlooked for success of the frolic how would their cheeks have been covered with blushes The astrologers became decidedly the rage : had it been their object to gain wealth they could have charged any price they pleased for their conjurations and would have ob tained it. But their popularity was of course increased by 236 GAMES AND 8T0EIES. the fact that tbe ravbterious Wanderer uniformly refused to accept any compensation and majestically commanded those who sought his aid to apply the sum of money offered him to the relief of the first poor widow orphan or aged person they met. This peculiarity induced many young persons of a rank in life and a style of education who do not commonly patronize fortune telling to visit the great unknown partly in fun partly in earnest for there is a vast deal of supersti tion hidden in the lecesses of most characters and ready to start forth at the first call. Bright eyes obscured by thick veils excited the curiosity even of the venerable Wanderer and white jewelled hands were extended that his searching glance might decipher the lines of life. Several interesting love tales were poured into the sympathizing ear of benign old age and the recollections of centuries were called up to furnish suitable counsel and to encourage the despairing heart to hope. Forsythe assured his friend that he would not ex change the knowledge of human nature and especially of woman nature which he had acquired in this fortnight for the experience of ten years of ordinary life. The joke was very consistently carried out. Our young sters were both possessed of ready mother wit and the world was charmingly mystified. The answers furnished to inqui rers partook much of the dimness and ambiguity of the an cient oracular responses when Delphi was yet in its glory and the oaks of Dodona reflected some of their own rich green tint upon those who consulted its priestesses. On one occasion Selim found it very difficult to retain the gravity of his sad Oriental countenance. A sharp quick witted young fellow Frank Warren their former college chum to whom they had sent his firbt fee had accompanied the grate ful little man who had made their reputation ostensibly for GAMES AND ST0EIE8. 237 the purpose of consulting the spirit of Milton hut really as they plainly perceived to detect their tricks. They were on their guard : they had not seen Warren for some time but their former habits of intimacy made thfe Janger of discovery imminent. It was Warren s wish that the spirit should guide the pen of his medium and accordingly our Ancient sat down and tried to indite Miltonic lines. Very blank verse indeed it was as he subsequently confessed to his familiar at their midnight conference. The face of the visitor twitched convulsively as he read the so called poetry and the young fellows ever ready to enjoy a joke would have dearly loved to join him in a loud and merry peal of laughter. By a great effort all three restrained themselves but the in quirer remarked with a grave countenance that it appeared as if the genius of Milton had not expanded in the upper world he certainly never wrote such trash when he was upon the earth. It reminded him of the saying of the wits of Athens : that although Apollo was the god and patron of poetry any common rhymster would be ashamed of the lines which emanated from the deity at Delphos. When Selim escorted the gentleman into the outer apartment the skeptic slipped some gold into his palm which the former at first pretended to receive and by cunning cross examination strove to make him confess that his master was not so old as he assumed to be. How long have you been in his ser vice Not very long myself. But do you think him as ancient as he pretends to be That is a delicate ques tion : I hardly like to answer it. To be frank I have some times had doubts about the great length of his life although I cannot feel any hesitation on the subject of his wonderful powers. But how long have you known him Let me see. It was Friar Bacon who first introduced me to His 238 GAMES AND ST0EIE3. Eminence and advised me to enlist in his service. He did not look so very old at that time and it was only six centu ries ago. This occurred at J. ford on the magic eve of St John s day in 12.50 A. D. I remember the date distinctly. No between ourselves have some suspicions that he is not quite so old as he says he is. Very soon after that the in vestigator left. One thing was certain that he had not rec ognized them. On the last day of their intended stay an incident occurred which furnished a propei termination to their frolic. A rough boorish fellow came to visit them who evidently hailed from remote country districts into which the civilizing in fluences of education had not penetrated. All his utterances for his words should scarcely be dignified with the name of conversation showed him to be ignorant in the extreme and to be credulous in proportion. He had come to New York hoping in that centre of light and science medical and theo logical to find relief from n certain demon which possessed him. This wicked spirit made him often do things he didn t wish to do caused him to foam at the mouth tear his clothes etc. and he wanted to know whether the Wan deier was not possessed of a spell to quiet the tormentor. Certainly follow our directions and you never shall be troubled with him again. Accordingly the patient was brought into the back room which had been darkened up purposely. A circle was de scribed within which incense was burnt and in the centre stonj the Awful One in his flowing robe with his magical wand in his hand uttering terrible conjurations. Do you feel any thing he would occasionally ask the countryman who was gaping with wonder and admiration. N no I dunna that I do the man would reply. Then it has not GAMES AND STORIES. 239 left you yet : you ll be sure to know when it does. You ll feel a sort of shock go all through you and will see spaiks : then open your mouth wide and the spirit will jump out. As it was some time before the sufferer obtained relief Selim was called to his aid and the way in which their Latin and Greek orations were tossed about at one another would have astonished the Professors. At last the Wanderer placed the patient upon a stool and proceeded with his incantations. Suddenly the countryman uttered a shriek and jumping into the air cut a pigeon wing. He s gone I felt him go He had touched the electrical machine which had been fully charged and was put there as it were in ambush. Do you feel much better Yes I m anotlier man. The poor fellow went away declaring himself a perfect cure. And Forsythe and Barrington agreed that after such a brilliant finale it was as well to beat a retreat : just as some gentlemen at the close of an evening visit relate a witty an ecdote or sparkle out a brilliant repailee snatch up their hats make their bows and leave you in the middle of a laugh. But another adventure was in store for them which had not entered into their calculations at all. The play bills show us that after a tragedy there generally comes a farce : the case was reversed with them for they had enjoyed their farce and had laughed over it heartily and now there was danger of its ending in a tragedy. When their preparations were nearly complete for a sudden and inexplicable disappearance our astrologers were horrified by the apparition in the day time of stai s they had never consulted stars of this gross lower world stars which in case of resistance become shoot ing stars and which revolve in very eccentric orbits around the central police station. What these portended it needed no wisdom of Chaldean yage to decipher exposui e ridicule 2J:0 GAMES AND STORIES. disgrace and the prison. They had enjoyed their laugh al the world now the tables would be turned and the world s dread laugh be raised against them. Resistance was utterly in vain. Attired as they were in flowing Oriental garb the distressed Wanderer and his faith ful Selira were hurried into a cab which no conjuration not even that of the golden eagle could prevent from driving to the Mayor s office. Here they beheld their former friend Warren evidently the very head and front of the offend ing : he was talking to the little man of the famous will case who appeared to be on the verge of a violent nervous fever. The latter wished to escape but the lawyer was too resolute and pertinacious to be conquered by his weak irrita bility and he was obliged to resign himself into his hands. The exile had time allowed him to reflect upon his course of action. A multitude of petty cases were up for examina tion and the patience of his Honor the Mayor was heavily taxed especially as he knew that a very capital dinner and excellent company were waiting for him at home. At last this case of deception imposture and swindling came up in turn but not before the aged wrinkled care worn man had whispered a few words into the ears of the young lawyer which made him start and give the other an admiring glance of surprise as if he recognized in him a genius of the high est order. His Honor was angry and tired and gave rather a savage look at the culprits. A case like this needs very little pr _ of they are ari ant swindlers evidently with all that foolery of dress about them Remove that wig and beard. The red blood rushed up to the cheeks and forehead of poor Will Forsythe and showed itself tlirough the yellow dye of his skin as he was obliged to submit to this indignity and GAMES AND STOEIES. 241 he mentally exclaimed: If ever I pretend again to be any tiling I am not may my head come off too You appear in this case Mr. Warren said the Mayor. Let me hear what can be urged against these men and produce your wit nesses. I find that I have very little to say on the sub ject your Honor. It is true I can prove that this gentleman went to consult the prisoner as to a missing will and that he is under the impression that spirits were consulted on the oc casion. But I can also prove that very sensible advice was given to my client to consult a lawyer of great respectability and high promise and accordingly he came to me. And further I can prove that the astrologers did not receive one farthing in payment for their counsel and indeed positively refused the offer of a handsome gratuity from my grateful client. And I can challenge any one in the city of New York to prove that iu any one case the prisoners received money in return for advice or assistance given to any visitor. This fact takes from the case the appearance of a swindling transaction according to the well known law of George III. which doubtless your Honor thoroughly remembers. There appears then to be no prosecution in this case I find that like a true lawyer you can argue on one side as well as the other. There is none your Honor : my client withdraws the prosecution. May I be allowed a word in private After a wnispered consultation of some minutes during which our unmasked jesters observed his Honor cast very highly amused glances in their direction and heard occasional snatches of the conversation Ha indeed sons of and do you say the first famihes in the South I knew their fathers well tell them to come to dinner just as they are the ladies will make allowances. But that degree of impudence was too much for the brass 21 242 GAMES AND STOEIES. of even Forsythe and Barrington. They respectfully de clined and hastened homeward accompanied by Frank War ren. One more merry supper did they eat in that house which had been the theatre for the display of so many strange adventures and then they vanished. When morning came no trace of the astrologers was to be found. The furniture had gone the house was shut up the birds had flown. Had there been a storm in the night the believers in Gotham would have thought they had been claimed by their Dread Master and had been snatched away in a blaze of lightning. As it was there was nothing to reveal the mystery. The good little man who never quite understood the scene in the Mayor s office is gi atefuUy enjoying his property and thinks that the Wandering Jew may now be in the centre of Africa or climbing the heights of the Himalaya Mountains. But as I happen to be better informed I know that both he and his faithful Selim slipped out of New York as quietly as possible and returned to their homes in the sunny South. They have since then married have settled down into quiet orderly citizens and have given up all practical jokes but they frequently amuse their wives with some of their varied experience obtained when playing the role of astrologers in New York. But you do not really think people could be so cheated now a days uncle cried George. I certainly do not consider the world too wise to be fooled in almost any way answered his uncle. Look at the vari ous isms which have sprtmg up even in our own day. Think of the imposture of Mormonism it has fairly peopled a territory. Think of the pretensions of clairvoyance claiming almost omniscience and omnipresence for the human spirit. Think of Matthias and his followers. GAMES AND STORIES. 243 But remarkable as that delusion was it is almost forgotten now so many extravagancies tread upon one another s heels and hustle each its predecessor oflF the stage. Spirit rapping is the last and is spreading like wildfire throughout the land : some characters have so much tinder in their composition that they catch in a moment. But it will soon go out tis like the crackling of thorns under the pot a quick blaze for a moment and then it expires. The alarm about witchcraft both in England and America was I think one of the most noticeable delusions of modern times said Mrs. Wyndham. How many eminent and ex cellent men were deceived by it The learned judicious and pious Sir Matthew Hale condemned at least one witch to be burnt alive although I believe it cost him some remorse afterwards. And in New England Cotton Mather was prominent in hunting out those who were supposed by their neighbors to be on too familiar terms with a certain nameless individual. I am glad I did not live in those days If a poor old woman was ugly and cross and mumbled to her self as we old women will do sometimes and above all if she kept a large black cat woe betide her her fate was well nigh sealed. I don t think you would have been in any danger. Aunt Lucy said Amy laughing. I don t know indeed probably not while I had such an array of young people around me. But if I were left deso late and alone in the world and became peevish and odd from the mere fact of having no one to love me I would not have answered for the consequences at all. I had to laugh added Ellen at the marvellous cure efiected by the electrical machine. It reminded me of a well attested anecdote I have read of the beneficial efifects wrought 244 GAMES AND STOEIES. by a tliermometer through the medium of the imagination. The physician intended to try whether the galvanic battery could not be usefully employed in a case of paralysis but be fore commencing operations he applied a small thermometer to the tongue of the patient. Upon removing it he was told by the latter that it gave him very curious feelings and that he thought himself a little better. Seeing the mistake he had made the doctor resolved not to undecieve him but to persevere in the application of the thermometer. He did so and the man was soon a complete cure. I have heard of instances of sudden joy or fright restoring the vital energies to poor bed ridden mortals said Cornelia but to be cured by a thermometer is too comical It was that powerful principle faith answered Mrs. Wyndham. I remember very well the time when certain metallic tractors were all the fashion to draw away pain from the parts affected by magnetic influence. Well authenticated cures were wrought but at last a physician applied a test which p oved the beneficial results to be entirely the work of the imagination. He had wooden tractors made painted so as to resemble the metal ones and they exerted equal powers. When this fact was published of course the cures ceased and metallic tractors became things that were. Another fact is told to show how the imagination can kill or cure said Mr. Wyndham. A criminal was condemned to death for some atrocious deed and it was resolved to try an experiment upon him as he would have to die at any rate. He was informed that he would be bled to death and when the appointed time had arrived his eyes were effectually ban daged his arm bared and the surgeon pretended to cut the artery. Luke warm water was poured in a steady current upon his arm and trickled down into a basin below : and the GAMES AND STOEIES. 2 15 physician held his hand feeling the pulse. The wretched crim inal became paler and paler his pulse beat more faintly and at last he died a victim to his own imagination. Poor creature added Mary. And I have repeatedly heard of cases uncle in which persons fancied themselves about to die at a certain hour fi om having had a dr.eam to that effect or some other supernatural indication of the will of Heaven. And sometimes they actually expired from sheer fright. But when the clock was put back an hour or two the time passed without any fatal result ensuing. Those chaps were wilder than we are Charlie cried George with an air of triumph. Yes answered his cousin. But I very much fear that does not prove our innocence but only their depravity. It reminds me of that line in Milton And in the lowest deep a lower deep. 21 24:6 GAMES AND ST0EIE8. CHAPTER VIII. CONFIDANTE. LEAD MERCHANT. TRADES. THE ROSE OF HESPERUS A EAIRY TALE. As the time drew nigh when our young party would be called upon to separate and to return to the every day duties of the boarding or day school and the home the centralizing influences of affection appeared to be felt in an increasing degree. Aunt Lucy remarked that they greatly resembled a flock of birds or of sheep : where one came the rest were sure very soon to follow. Cousin Mary asked George with a look of great concern if he felt very unwell indeed. I oh no I never was better in my life. What could have put the notion into your head that I was ill My dear Coz you are so uncommonly good. You have not teased Anna or Gertrude at all to day and I begin to feel seriously alarm ed for your health. I have so often noticed a sudden attack of meekness to precede a sudden attack of fever that I really think it would be wiser to send for the doctor in time. Don t concern yourself replied he. If that be all I can soon prove that my pulse is in good order. So saying he gave Mary s work basket a sudden twitch which sent her spools of cotton winders thimble and emery bag flying in every direction when of course with the malice peculiar to things of such small natures they carefully hid themselves in the darkest corners and ran behind the legs of tables and ofas for protection. Preserve me from boys said Mary GAMES AND STORIES. 247 with a laugh as George ran out of the room. If it were not unladylike I really should box those ears of yours They are quite laige enough to bear it no danger of their being crushed he replied giving a pinch to the protruding membei s. In the evening as Gertrude claimed the honor of having been the most stupid person in playing Elements the night before it was agreed that it appertained to her to introduce to th e company another game. She said she had seen one played that resembled Consequences in so far that you wrote what you were ordered and read it aloud when it was finished : but you were not obliged to turn down the papers after writing as you did not change them with the rest of the company. She would call this game Confidante as she had never heard a name for it. Accordingly every one got a pencil and sheet of paper and wrote agreeably to her directions. Let each boy write a lady s name and each girl a gen tleman s name. Now any past time some date if you please yester day or a thousand yeai s ago it makes no difl erence. The name of a place. Either yes or no. Yes or no again. Every boy write a lady s name every girl a gentleman s. Some time to come. Write yes or no. Yes or no again. Mention a place. Tell us your favorite color. Set down any number not exceeding 10. Another color. 248 GAMES AND STOEIES. Yes or no. Ijet all write a lady s name. Let all write a gentleman s name. All another lady s name. Every boy write a gentleman s name every girl a lady s. Set down tlie name of a clergyman. Now any sum of money. The name of a place. And lastly any number. Now that we have finished every one must read aloud his or her paper without cheating whatever it contains each portion as an answer to a question. Charlie to whom did you make your first offer Happily to no one present : it was to Queen Victoria. When was it In the year 1492 : the day Columbus discovered Amer ica. Where did this interesting event take place In the Tower of Babel. Does she love you Yes : how could she help it 3 Do you love her Yes : to distraction. Whom will you marry Queen Jezebel. How soon does this auspicious match come ofl for I want to have my wedding dress ready. To morrow New Year s day. Do you love her No not at all. Does she love you 2 No alas GAMES AND STOEIES. 249 Where does she liye In Calcutta. What is the color of her hair Brilliant scarlet. What is her height Nine and a half feet. Please to mention the color of her eyes. A charming green. Is she pretty Yes very. Who is to be bridesmaid at this happy wedding 3 Miss Alice Bolton. Who will wait upon her V King Nebuchadnezzar. Who is your sympathizing confidante 3 Cousin Cornelia. Pray tell us the name of your rival His Majesty William the Conqueror of Normandy and England. I should not be sorry if he carried off my gentle dame. What cleigyman will marry you 1 The Archbishop of Canterbury. How much is the lady worth Three cents. Where will you live In the black hole of Calcutta. How many servants will you keep Two millions five hundred thousand. I must say you are moderate considering the lady s for tune. In asking the gii ls I merely reverse the questions : From whom did you rbceive your first offer etc. As the game wants a name I think it should be called Confidante : 11 250 GAMES AND STOEIES. the reader not only has a confidante in the play but is called upon to intrust his secrets to the whole assembled company. But isn t this rather silly all this about love and mar riage asked Mr. AVyndham with the hesitating manner of one who knows that he shall instantly be put down. Certainly it is my dear uncle answered Cornelia. If it were not we should not like it half so well I can tell you. You know we must be foolish some time in our life so for my share I m taking it out now. Well well there s no harm in it any how. Though you wouldn t believe it I was young once myself and don t like to be too hard upon the rising generation. There s a game I remember playing when I was a youngster that is not too wise for you but ought to have more solidity in it than the last as it is all about lead. It is called the Lead Merchant. One tries in eveiy mode to dispose of his lead to the company asking question after question to which you must answer without introducing the words lead yes or no. He trii s to trip you in e eiy way and as soon as you say one of the forbidden words you are out of the game. AA ould you like to try it Very much uncle. Will you be the lead merchant If you wish it. Amy will you buy any lead Not any at present. But pray why not Because none is desired at my house. Shall I call next week It is scai ccly worth while : we do not wish any. I will stop to morrow : your little boys want lead to make some bullets. They would only burn their sweet little fingers in melting it : they must not have any. GAMES AND STORIES. 251 Then you will not buy my lead 3 Positively not. I noticed that the lead upon your roof wanted repairing the rain will beat in and you ll all be taken ill unless you buy my lead. Tis only one cent a pound. If you gave it to me as a present I wouldn t take your lead. Amy you re caught You said both and Imdr Notwithstanding all their care the persevering lead mer chant entrapped every one in some moment of weakness and the company agreed that he would make his fortune as a Yankee pedlar or as an agent for some book that nobody wanted many would buy to get rid of him on the same principle that the lady married her tiresome lover. And now said Charlie let us play Trades. We ap prentice our son or daughter ta some business and mention that the first thing sold begins with a specified letter : but we must never repeat an article. The person who guesses apprentices his son the next. I apprenticed my son to a car penter and the first thing he sold was a T. A table asked Mary. I apprenticed my daughter to a milliner and the first thing she sold was a yard of E. R. Red ribbon added Gertrude. I appreaticed my son to a grocer and the first thing he sold was a B. of R. Box of raisins inquired Coruelia. I apprenticed my son to a cabinet maker and the first thing he sold was aS. Sofa said Tom. I apprenticed my daughter to a dry goods store and the first thing she sold was ton yards ofL. Lace asked Ellen. No guess again. 252 GAMES AND STOBIES. Linen I see that s right. I apprenticed my son to tinman and the first thing he sold was a N. G. Nutmeg grater inquired George. Now I appren ticed my son to a hardware man and the first thing he sold was a P. of S. Pair of skates said Amy. I apprenticed my son to a book store and the first thing he sold was a P. B. Prayer book I apprenticed my daughter to a dress maker and the first thing she made was a V. M. Velvet mantilla And so the game proceeded the questions and answers being tossed from one to another like ball or shuttlecock so that the general interest was kept up. I think it high time we had our daily story said Amy. So do I replied her uncle and I commission you to tell it. I oh no uncle Pm too young. I think the older ones should have the monopoly of that trade I wasn t appren ticed to it. Not at all you are of suitable age to be apprenticed now so you may consider the bargain struck. Begin my little Amy and if you break down in the middle of your tale rU promise to finish it myself. Very well uncle I feel quite tempted to fail to inveigle you into a sensible termination to a foolish story. We often invent tales in the interval at school and I U give you one that my schoolmates like. It is called GAMES AND STOEIES. 253 A FAIRY TALE. Evert one has heard of the Garden of Hesperus famous in all ancient times for its exquisite beauty. Its golden fruit more precious by far than the fleece of Jason in search of which heroes perilled their lives on board the good ship Argo was watched by a terrible dragon whose eyes were never sealed by slumber. A hundred heads belonged to the monster a hun dred flames of fire issued from his numerous throats and a hundred voices resounded threats against the audacious being who should invade his province. Hercules alone of all the children of men was able to overcome him : but although he then expired the next rising sun again beheld him full of life and vigor. The dragons of earth are never annihilated. Each generation has the same work to perform has its mon sters to conquer and this it is that makes the noble heroes whom we all delight to praise. So small was the number of mortals ever favored with a sight of this earthly paradise that it is not surprising its site is now unknown. Even among the ancients it was a matter of speculation and mystery. The majority placed it in the north of Africa and it is not improbable that travellers who for the first time beheld them mistook for the Gardens of Hesperus the oases of the desert those gems of nature which are all the more brilliant for being set in sand and clay. Others again asserted that this region of delight was to be 22 254 GAMES AND STOEIES. sought beyond the western main in a lone isle of the ocean. But all agreed that it was at the west towards the sunset that this treasure of earth was to be found : and thence it was that the name of Hesperus was bestowed upon it. Strange it is that mankind has ever followed the sun in its path and that while human life religious truth and science all point to the East as their source they hasten westward for the fulfillment of their destiny. The East belongs to the Past it is the land of memory : the West to the Future it is the land of hope : and there it is that man seeks his hap piness. It is in the yet unrevealed in the mysterious est that the golden fruits and the perennial flowers bloom for him : not in OriHiital climes where in his infancy the Gar den of Eden sheltered him. So great is the lust for gold and so small the love of moral beauty among the fallen race of man that of all the varied productions of Hesperus the golden apples alone have been mentioned in tradition and poetry. But in truth these were far inferior to the precious roses which grew in the very cen tre of this paradise and which were endowed not only with exquisite form hue and fragrance but with certain magic properties invaluable to their possessors. If the bosom on which the flower rested were candid pure and kind the rose bloomed with still richer loveliness and emitted a delicious sweetness : and a grace was shed over the person of its owner which grief and sickness could not dim and old age itself was powerless to destroy. This indescribable something shone out in the eye spoke in the voice made the plainest features pleasing and imparted an irresistible charm to the manner. It was as far superior to mere external beauty as the latter ia to revolting ugliness. Nothing could destroy it : once gain ed it was a lasting heritage. But on the other hand if this GAMES AND STORIES. 255 rose wers possessed by the false hearted the sensual and the selfish it sickened and paled day by day giving forth a fainter fragrance continually until it was comjjletely withered. And in proportion as it lost its bloom did the hideous heart of the wearer imprint itself upon the countenance until the eye would turn away in disgust from the most brilliant complex ion and chiselled regularity of features. It acted as a moral test making evident to the dull eye of man ever prone to think only of outside show the beauty or the deformity within. Until the time of our story no roses had been dipt from the magic tree and men always ready to look to the bright side of the wonderful unknown thought merely of the charm it could impart and not of the danger incurred by the un lovely in heart and hfe. I will not attempt to fix the date of my tale with historic accuracy. It is sufficient to say that the events occurred in that pei iod of unreasoning faith when the myths of Greece and Rome were mingled in the popular mind with the fairy legends of the north and both were baptized in the waters of Christianity. It was a charming period for all lovers of romance it was the childhood of modern Europe. But I must warn you that it is in vain to search for the names of my emperors in chronological tables. They lived at a time when the historian was somewhat at a discount and the min strel wrote the only records with his harp and voice upon the memory of his hearers save that here and there a soli tary monk wore out his days in copying the treasures of an tiquity and used his imagination in embellishing the Hves of saints and martyrs. When the manuscript is found which settles the exact date of King Lear s reign I cannot doubt that it will give all particulars about my kings also. In those happy misty days there lived an Emperor of 256 GAMES AND STORIES. Germany Hildebrand by name a potent monarch. His court was splendid and his retinue large and magnificent. But the chief glory of his palace and the pride of his heart was his daughter Clotilda whose amazing beauty formed the theme of poets praise and whose fame was spread far beyond the limits of the Empire. Her form was of queenly majesty her movements swan like. Her glossy raven tresses set ofl a complexion of the greatest brilliancy : her faultless features would have served as a model to the sculptor. Large spark ling eyes gave animation to her countenance and took all hearts by storm. Add to these rare endowments a lively though malicious wit great skill in all showy accomplish ments and especially in the arts of coquetry and is it won derful that she was almost worshipped in her father s court as a divinity To win her hand embassies were sent from distant lands and kings even came in person to plead their cause but hitherto none had been successful. The fair Clotilda knew that she could choose among very many suitors and her heart was none of the softest. Besides she was well aware that she should be no portionless bride as she and her younger sister Edith were her father s only heirs. She loved to keep many admirers in her train but possessed too high a spirit to throw herself away upon any one inferior to herself in rank power or wealth. In addition to this she had too keen a wit not to perceive and to enjoy the ridiculous even in a suitor anxiously striving to gain her love. Truth to say the adorable Clotilda had one small fault unperceivej by her worshippers and hidden by the splendor of her beauty. She was heai tless. If born with that important organ she had early offered it up upon the altar of her own pride and van ity. Deprived of her mother at a very early age and deferred GAMES AND STOKIES. 257 to by all around including her imperious father she had soon learned to issue her commands with authority and to rule the household and the court as a mistress. Love of power had now become her ruling passion and fierce and headstrong was the will hidden under that brilliant and win ning exterior. It was like a wild beast slumbering behind a bank of roses. Far difl erent both in person and character was the neg lected Etlith who grew up in the imperial court like a sweet wild flower overlooked when the gorgeous exotic is nigh. Her slender girlish figure with its undeveloped grace her airy step her color coming and going with the varying feelings of her quick sensibility like the delicate pink clouds at sunset her soft brown hair waving around a face of child like purity and womanly tenderness : and her large gray eye from whose transparent depths an earnest and lov ing spirit looked out upon the world these were not the traits to win admiration in a sensual splendor loving court where all acknowledged the sway of Clotilda. Her father lavished the whole of his affection upon his elder daughter : the latter seldom noticed her and thought her more fit for a nunnery or for a peasant s cottage than for the station of a princess. And so Edith grew to womanhood unspoiled by flattery that incense was reserved for Clotilda s shrine. Not in that crowd of selfish courtiers and of worldly women wholly given up to dress and gayety could the refinement and simplicity of the gentle Edith be appreciated. She was with them but not of them : hers was the loneliness most felt when in a crowd the want of congenial companionship. Her unassuming modesty and poor opinion of her own worth saved her heart from the sharp pangs of envy at the thought of her sister s superiority : and thus even in the impure at 22 258 GAMES AKD STlBIES. mosphere of tlie palace did this artless maiden live on hum bly looking up to one infinitely her inferior and dwelling iu love and peace. Her greatHst enjoyments were of a kind despised by Clotilda. It was her delight to steal away from the gay assembly where she was never missed and to pore over the romantic lays of troubadours and monkish legends and to make to herself a world different from the one in which her lot was cast. Then she would be the lowly peas ant girl singing while she worked beloved by those for whom she toiled and rising before the sun to deck the shrine of the Virgin with flowers. Or if she were a princess she lived but to bless and to relieve her people and possessed the power of scattering happiness as the beneficent night sprinkles dew drops from her lap. From these day dreams the play of an active mind which had not yet found its true place in the universe she would rouse herself to some deed of kindness which others were too much immersed in pleasure to fulfil. If one of her maidens was ill it was she who watched unti ringly by her pillow administering the medicines and the cooling draught. And it was she who rose by daybreak while most of the menials of the palace were yet sleeping and gave the daily portion of alms to the poor who waited at the gate making the brown bread sweet by the gentle tones and kind words of sympathy. It is not strange there fore that Edith was beloved by all the children of affliction and that she became univeraally known to the common peo ple as the good princess. In honor of Clotilda s birthday a tournament was pro claimed to which princes and knights from all the neighbor ing countries were invited. The anxiously expected day at length arrived : the sky was cloudless and all nature ap peared to smile upon the festival. Every thing was there GAMES AND STOEIES. 259 united that could please and dazzle the eye. There were satins and damasks cloth of gold and velvet flowers and cheeks more rosy gems and eyes more brilliant. At one end of the lists upon his throne of gold and ivory sat the Emperor blazing with jewels. Near him stood his ministers of state in their oflicial robes bearing aloft the insignia of royalty and around him were his faithful guards in com plete armor with drawn swords. Opposite sat his queenly daughter the beautiful Clotilda the cynosure of all admiring eyes. She was magnificently arrayed and surrounded by a bevy of fair damsels who shone like stars eclipsed by the su perior brightness of the moon. Seated a little apart attired in simple white with a sash of blue and wearing qo ornament save her favorite flowers the wood violet and the lily of the valley was Edith gazing with unusual interest on that lively gorgeous scene. And truly the amphitheatre crowded with spectatoi s themselves a show and the lists filled with gallant knights whose pawing steeds seemed impatient for the com bat to begin might excite the imagination of the djUest and was well calculated to fire her ardent spirit. Unusual splendor marked this tournament in honor of certain distinguished guests who had arrived candidates for the hand of the Princess Clotilda. The most emment among them for knightly bearing was the young Duke of Milan. He was handsome proud and imperious but withal brave and courteous as became his gentle birth and he was a mag nificent patron of minstrels and men of lettera aiming to make his court the centre of literature and the fine arts. His per sonal qualities and accomplishments were such as to win for him the admiration of the fair Princess who had never be fore been wooed by a suitor so much to her taste. His rank And possessions were so great that all woul 1 have acknowl 260 GAMES AND STORIES. edged the match a suitable one even for Clotilda s pretension But a wider career of ambition was now opening before the vision of the aspiring lady. Who would stoop to be a duch ess when the diadem of an empress was placed at her dis posal Certainly not the Princess Clotilda be her prefe rences what they might : she would have considered it childish folly to hesitate in her choice. And three emperors now graced the court each provided with a numerous and splendid retinue. These daily vied with each other in goi geous fStes and costly presents to the proud beauty whom they hoped to win. In flowing robe of richest fabric stiff with sparkling gems behold the Emperor of China the Sa cred Son of Heaven the Supreme Ruler of the earth His shaven head is surmounted by a conical cap at the crown of which one pearl of uncommon size points out his rank : be neath it hangs down a jet black queue below his waist. His small oblique eyes his yellow complexion and thin beard show him unmistakably to belong to the Central Flowery Land. He is a heathen : but perhaps for her sake he might be baptized. At any rate there would be little difficulty in procuring a dispensation from Holy Mother Church which is ever ho2 eful that such alliances may bring converts into her bosom. Will she can she accept him She will at least accept his gifts and his attentions and will decide hereafter. Millions unnumbered millions of slaves call him their lord vast is his power and wealth provinces would be her dowry. But would she not herself merely add another to his list of slaves Secluded within his palace with many rivals to counteract her would she not gather thorns as well as blos soms in the Flowery Land It is a matter to be consid ered. But who are these two other Asiatics as they appear by GAMES AND STOEIES. 261 their dress fashioned in Oriental magnificence One is from the frozen North the other from the sunny South and thoy divide the east of Europe between them. That pompous formal old man whose small heart and head are stuffed full of etiquette and who lives and breathes only in a sense of his own importance is the ruler of the ByzaiUine Empire. He was born in the purple chamber and wears the purple be eats purple drinks purple sleeps purple only as the Em peror does he exist he could live as well without his head as without his crown. He is so imbued with notions of his own dignity that he would pi ove a tough subject to manage. But his rival from the North is still undescribed. Tremble at the sight of this ugly Cossack with small dull eye flat iose and bushy red beard for in him behold the Autocrat of all the Russias Not yet had the genius and persever ance of Peter the Great introduced the arts and sciences into that vast region of snow and mental darkness. Ivan the Squinter ruled over his serfs with Oriental despotism : he was ignorant coarse and profligate. At his feasts the dishes were of gold from the Ural Mountains and the attendants who waited upon the monarch were arrayed in all the gran deur of Eastern princes but the slightest blunder on their part subjected them to death to the more dreaded knout or to banishment in Siberia. Nominally a Christian the Em peror of China is quite a saint when compared with him and infinitely more respectable. But the Czar is a fool chiefly immersed in the pleasures of the table and Clotilda if Em press of Russia could easily seize all real power and sway the sceptre over millions of obsequious subjects. These potentates are seated on thrones near Hildebrand to witness the spectacle. But Udolpho Duke of Milan is among the combatants mounted on a powerful charger in 262 GAMES AND STOEIES. armor blazing with gold : lie looks like the flower of chivalry. He wears the colors of the Princess Clotilda scarlet and green and having ridden to the end of the lists and made a lowly obeisance to his fair lady he has returned to his place among the competitors for honor. Others there are who wear the same colors but none to compare with him in rank and knightly bearing and as the Princess gazed upon him she wished him success. But what cavalier is this with closed vizor whose head towers above the rest like the cedar of Lebanon above all the trees of the forest A kingly majesty marks every motion and notwithstanding the unu sual plainness of his acoutrements all eyes are turned upon him with interest and curiosity. He is clad in brightly shining steel and no heraldic emblems show his rank. His Moorish page bears before him his shield upon the black ground of which one blooming rose and the motto Queiv I seek form the only device. He is an utter stranger to all : yet both Emperor and Princess command the heiald to diseovf who he is. That he is illustrious none can doubt. A blue ribbon worn upon his arm shows that he has not en listed himself among the admirers of the Lady Clotilda : in whiise honor can he wear it When the heralds have taken the oath of the combatants that they will in all respects obey the laws of chivalry in the approaching conflict the names and titles of those who were about to engage in it were called aloud with the sound of the trumpet. When the unknown knight was courteously requested to announce his name he gave that of The Knight of the Blooming Rose. The mystery as to who he could be increased the interest felt in him and as one after an other of the cavaliers was unhorsed by his firm and skilful arm and rolled in the dust the excitement became intense. GAMES AND STORIES. 263 The Grand Duke Udolpho had also greatly distinguished him self and it was soon very evident that the victory would lie be tween these two. Clotilda s sympathies were enlisted on the side of Udolpho : Edith s for the Knight of the Blooming Rose whose success she watched with breathless interest. The contest was not long undetermined : the shouts of the populace and the waving of scarfs and handkerchiefs by fair hands soon proclaimed the unknown cavalier to be the victor. Escorted by the heralds he approached the Emperor who after pronouncing a eulogy upon his bravery and skill threw round his neck a costly chain and placed in his hand the wreath to be worn by the Queen of Love and Beauty whose duty it should be to preside over the games during the re mainder of the week and to distribute prizes to the winners. It was his envied privilege to confer this dignity upon the lady who was fairest in his eyes. As he rode round the bar riei s gazing at the numberless lovely faces assembled there many a heart thrilled with emotion and as he passed the Princess Clotilda surprise mortification and resentment could only too plainly be traced upon her countenance. Never before had she been so slighted. But when the knight stopped before the Lady Edith and kneeling down besought her to confer dignity upon the office of Queen of Love and Beauty by filling it the young girl s astonishment was great as she had not for a moment thought of herself as a candidate for the honor. Quickly recovering herself however with the native courtesy of the high born lady agreeably to the manners of the day she raised the cavalier and taking off her blue sash fastened it round his waist with her own hands begging him to wear it as her knight and ever to prove himself faithful and brave. 264 GAMES AND STOEIES. Thus ended the first day s tournament. Meanwhile the burgheis and yeomanry joined in the general festivity hav ing wrestling matches quoits and bowls and various other rural games. A jmrse of gold was conferred upon the victors and barrels of beer were continually running for the benefit of the public. The noble guests were invited to a banquet at the palace which was to be repeated daily during the contin uance of the games. The Knight of the Blooming Rose was of course a j rominent person in these gay assemblies and his noble person and courtly bearing greatly excited the admira tion of the ladies of Clotilda s circle. But while courteous to all his marked deference to the gentle Edith plainly showed that he was faithful to his allegiance. It was a new experi ence to the timid girl to be thus singled out in preference to the more brilliant beauties around her and while it raised her in the estimation of others it gave a decision and self possession to her character in which it was previously defi cient. And the intimate intercourse which she thus enjoyed with a kindred mind of high cultivation earnest thought and large acquaintance with mankind gave a stimulus to her mental powers which only human sympathy can impart. The Emperor himself was greatly pleased with the gallant knight and frequently honored him with confidential conver sation. And yet no one could discover who he was. Free and unreserved in his communications with those around him when this subject was approached his lips were sealed in silence and a certain dignity of manner warned ofi all in trusion. Eflibrts were made to arrive at the truth thi oiigh the medium of his page but the noble looking Moor was a mute and could only hold intercourse with those around him by gestures and expressive looks. In the succeeding days of the tournament various games GAMES AND STOEBES. 265 of knightly skill and prowess engaged the attention of the competitors for honors and in all of them did our cavalier come ofi victorious In the use of the bow he was unrivalled ever piercing the centre of the target and bringing down the bird upon the wing. Udolpho of Milan was the second in distinction and the two were united by a generous friend ship. The last day was a trial of minstrelsy. In this also the Knight of the Blooming Rose bore the palm away from all his rivals both professional and amateur. Accompanying himself upon the harp he sang spirit stirring lays which awakened the enthusiasm of all his auditors. In the evening the Emperor requested him to give the meaning of his motto and of the emblem on his shield. Taking the harp and striking up a bold and brilliant prelude which gradually arranged itself into a simple air of great beauty he sang as follows : Not wealth nor trappings proud. Nor shouts of envying crowd That swell both long and loud I seek. No jewels from the mine Nor gold so pure and fine. Nor generous sparkling wine I seek. Soft pleasure s bonds are vain I feel for them disdain And still through toil and pain I seek. It is not kingly crown That subjects may kneel down And tremble at ray frown I seek. 23 266 GAMES AND STOEIES. To keep my knightly oath Be faithfal to my troth To God and Jesu both I seek. To help the poor that cry To wipe the widow s eye To humble tyrants high I seek. The maiden weak to save. To free the Christian slave. And punish impious knave I seek. At noblest deeds I aim. To win a lofty name Upon the roU of fame I seek. To pluck the magic Eose In Hesperus which grows. And fadeless beauty knows I seek. To wear it on my breast There may it ever rest Honor and truth to test I seek. To lay it at the feet Of noble lady sweet For her an oflfring meet I seek. To win fair Edith s praise Merit the poet s lays Grow nobler all my days I seek. And is it really the wonderful Kose of Hesperus which you seek 2 asked the monarch : that magic flower hitherto GAMES AND STORIES. 267 unplucked by mortals Bring one to each of my daughters and I here pledge you my word that you shall wed one of them if you can gain her consent The knight full of gratitude knelt down to express his th inks. He then told the Emperor and the listening Edith in what manner he had been led to take the vow to acquire these precious roses and to place this emblem upon his shield. He had been engaged in defence of his native land against the invader and the op pressor but his efforts and those of a small brave band of friends had been wholly in vain : his country was crushed by the ruthless heel of despotism. On that night when it had been agreed in assembled council that all resistance was fruitless and that nothing now remained for patriots but to seek freedom in exile after tossing in troubled slumbers he had been visited with a calming and inspiring dream. He saw bending over him a lovely female form which he knew instinctively to be that of his Guardian Angel. She was clothed in white and a soft light streamed out from her soul. The morning before the tournament as he rode along at break of day he had seen the Princess Edith bending down to speak encouragement to a poor cripple and he had at once recognized the earthly form of which he had then seen the glorified image. The Angel spoke and commanded him not to yield to despair : she had work for him still to do. She said that with her help he should pluck roses from the Gardens of Hesperus which mortal man had never yet done. She gave him exact directions how to reach the spot where the invisible gate was placed through which alone he could enter the charmed Paradise. Only at sunrise upon the rep etition of a form of words which she gave him could a brave knight of unsullied honor and purity obtain admittance. And only at sunset could he leave upon reciting the same 268 GAMES jUjd stories. formula. And then telling him that the accomplishment of this feat woulil lead to the fulfilment of his destiny and that a crown yet awaited him she had suddenly vanished leaving a smile upon the air. The next day having bid adieu to his friends at court the cavalier departed with his Moorish page. They travelled in a southwesterly direction towards the Mediterranean Sea. It is worthy of remark that when they had passed away from towns and populous districts the page rode alongside of his master instead of following at his former humble distance. And miraculous as it may appear it is very certain that they no longer conversed together by signs but with audible sounds. At length they reached the borders of the sea. Following it for a few days they came to a lofty rock : here they alighted and searching carefully along the water s edge the knight perceived a small entrance so covered up by overhanging grass and ferns that one unacquainted with its existence could never have detected it. Entering they found them selves m a lofty and spacious cave where nature had amused herself by uniting in strange confusion the odd and the beau tiful. The roof was hung with sparkling stalactites and wonderful forms were ranged around. There was an organ with its numerous pipes but the wind was the only musi cian. There was a lofty throne but the king was not yet born who would fill it with dignity. There was a pulpit but solitude was the only pieaeher. Strange shapes like those in a Hindoo rock temple were ranged along into the darkness. Stars and flowers of crystal were strewed around and the grotto looked like a fit abode for sylphids or fairies. The deep blue water formed a lake in the centre upon the bosom of which a small boat lay sleeping like a swan. When GAMES AND STOEIES. 269 the knight and his page had sufficiently admired the teauties of the place the cavalier advanced to the edge of the lagoon and called the boat. It instantly waked up and came like a living thing to crouch at his feet. The two fiiends stepped into it and it shot out of the cave into the broad open sea darting across the water with the speed of the wind. No visible means of motion could be detected no sail or oars were there in the fairy boat there was nothing mechanical about it but it sped on its way like a water bird or a grace ful nautilus. Once indeed gazing into deep blue water the knight fancied that he saw a soft white hand with rings of pearl and bracelet of coral guiding it in its course but if this were not the effect of his heated fancy the hand was at least speedily withdrawn and he saw it no more. When the moon had risen upon the expanse of waters which reflected her image breaking it into a thousand frag ments while the waves danced up to gi eet her blight face like children clamoring for a mother s kiss the little boat ran into a quiet inlet and stopped to let its passengers alight. They rested that night in an orange grove and awoke re freshed to begin their search while the bright morning star was still shining. At the break of day they arrived at lofty perpendicular rocks which after pursuing a straight line suddenly formed a right angle. Here the knight and his companion stopped and turning to the east awaited the sun rise. At the moment when the glorious orb of day started up from his couch impatient to commence his course the cavalier spoke : Open thou gate of stone for the hour has come and the man. At these words with a noise like that of thunder the rock was rent asunder and a wide passage was opened through which the friends proceeded. It had appeared to be a lofty chain of mountains but they were 23 270 GAMES AND STOEIES. soon at the end of it and came out into the open air. But an obstacle opposed itself. A huge dragon Ladon the terri ble reared up his hundred heads his eyes flashing fire and fury his mouths emitting baleful flames and pestilential breath his tail covered with metallic scales of green scarlet and blue coiling away to a great distance. The page drew his sword but the knight took a little black book and aimed it at the volcanic heads. It was a Holy Book and the names therein quenched the threatening fire and quelled the rage of the monster who sank back exhausted upon the green sod and slept the sleep of death. That little book can do more than the sword remarked the cavalier. They proceeded onward : the earthly Paradise was un folded to their view the air was balmy and laden with rich fragrance from the numberless flowers around but instead of filling the spirit with soft languor and indisposing the body to exertion the gentle breezes imparted new vigor to the frame and the buoyant hilarious feehngs of early youth shot through the veins making the thoughtfu l eye sparkle and giving to the grave foot of saddened maturity the elas ticity of childhood. A new unsuspected power of enjoyment was awakened in the bosom of the friends combining some what of the gladness of the child and the ardor of the youth qualities alas how transitory with the appreciating taste and refined feelings of riper years. Many faculties lie dor mant in our nature the capacity for much higher happiness is one of them and it will be awakened in the breast of all the good in the Resurrection Morn. They may have lain down to die weai y and heart sore but they shall find that Ight is sown for the righteous and gladness for the upright V teart. With joyful spirits their eyes drinking in beauty and i . Hr . r GAMES AND STORIES. 271 their ears harmony the knight and his comrade moved along guided by wayward fancy. Here a sparkling dancing rivulet would entice them to follow its course amid mossy rocks flowery banks and drooping trees which whispered their secrets to its babbling waves and then suddenly it would vanish into the earth like a child playing at hide and seek gurgling a merry laugh at its bewildered followers. At every step a new beauty was unfolded. Now the brilliancy of hue and splendor of coloring in the sky the flowers the birds filled their minds with admiration : but when they wandered into the deep cool woods with their sober tints and their mysterious whispers they gave the latter the prefer ence. And when they left these green recesses and viewed the extensive landscape opened before them gently swelling hills distant mountains and the boundless ocean then they wondered that more limited scenery could have given such entire satisfaction. Climbing among the rocks wild and sublime views of a rugged grandeur prepared their souls for nature s masterpiece the foaming waterfall. Down the stu pendous precipice rolled the torrent masses upon masses of water almost lost to the eye in the dark distance below while above the gorgeous rainbow closed it in as if a crown of glory were bestowed upon it in recompense for its agony. And day and night a voice might be heard from its mighty heart I can endure forever and forever. Then the friends felt how deep is that bliss which takes away all words they felt how great a joy there is in awe. Descending from these heights soft scenes of beauty at tracted their gaze. The setting sun threw its mellow light over a landscape of Italian character it seemed as if nature and art were here combined to make perfection. Statues of rare loveliness took them by surprise when strolling over the 272 GAMES AND STOEIES. grassy walks or sauntering under the deep umbrage of the trees mossy grottoes adorned with shells invited them to repose unexpected openings in the woods revealed vistas beyond exciting to the imagination. Lakes of crystal clear ness reflected the fleecy clouds and the snowy forms of the swans upon their azure surface and gold and silver fishes chased each other through their pellucid waves. Birds of brilliant plumage came there to lave in the pure water and then shaking ofi the diamonds from their wings rose into the air with a gush of melody pouring out their souls to their Maker. And all gentle and exquisite creatures were met together in that spot to glad the eye with life the soft eyed gazelle the swift antelope the graceful stag the Java deer smallest of its kind : nothing was absent which could add beauty and variety to the scene. Amid such innocent joys drinking in poetry at its very fount several days were passed each shorter than the one preceding. Their hunger was satisfied with delicious fruits and when weary a natural couch of moss received them and the trees locked their ai ms together and bent over them as if to keep off all harm if harm could have existed in that pla: e. It seemed that life could glide away in perfect bliss in those gardens of beauty where naught repulsive or annov ing could enter and delight succeeded delight. Could glide away did I say not there for in the centre of that Para dise flowed the fountain of eternal youth and over its brink hung the bush whose magic roses were famed abroad. The sight of them awoke the sleeping energ ies of the noble and resolute knight. And shall I falsify my motto said he. Shall the bliss of the present satisfy me while so much remains unaccomplished while might is triumphant over right innocence is oppressed and brute force bears rule GAMES AND STORIES. 273 upon the earth Shall I lap my soul in indolent ease while the work of life is before me Not so : still must I seek Yhat is higher purer nobler still must my heart pant for excellence still must I learn bravely to endure. Speaking thus he plucked three roses from the magic tree and placed them upon his breast and as the sun ap proached the western horizon the comrades drew near to the gate which separated them from the world of common life. The stony barrier opened before the charmed words and when they had emerged from its gloom closed again with a clap of thunder. Never since has mortal man profaned those regions of unclouded happiness. Their little fairy skiff speedily conveyed them to the cave and with the early morning they resumed their journey. Their route lay as before through an attractive country and the peasants in picturesque costumes were engaged in the various labors of rural life : but how changed did all at first appear It seemed as if scales had fallen off their eyes showing coarseness and deformity where previously none had appeared. They had tasted the rapture of a more beau tiful life and now the ordinary toils of humanity appeared stale flat and unprofitable and common men and women tedious rude and mean. But the brave knight struggled against this feeling. Shall we be so ungrateful because a glimpse of the earthly paradise has been vouchsafed us as to sink into idle repining dreamers Shall we allow the vis ions of fancy or the charms of nature to steal away our hearts from human sympathy Eather let these re membered joys excite us to fresh effort let the useful and the good be ever clad with beauty in our eyes let us act as men strive and be strong in our rightful purposes sure that in the end the true will ever prove to be tho 27i GAMES AND STORIES. beautiful. He might have said in the language of a mod era poet I SLEPT and dreani d that Life was Beauty I woke and found that Life was Duty Was tlien thy dream a shadowy lie Toil on sad heart courageously. And thou h lt find thy dream to be A noondiiy liglit and truth to thee. In du e time they arrived at the imperial court. Some important events had taken place during their absence. The splendors of royalty had not been able to preserve the Empe ror from a loathsome disease from which his attendants fled away in horror. The Princess Clotilda could not endanger her beauty by approaching his side neither did the cares an d toils of a sick bed comport with her views of life. But Edith now took her rightful position and by her fearless ex ample recalled those around her to a sense of duty. She was her father s gentle untiring nurse : his wishes were fure stalled his fretfulness soothed and his thoughts directed to higher things. She rose in her father s love day by day as he felt her worth and bitterly did he now think of the un deserved slight with which she had been treated while the ungrateful Clotilda had been his pride. He was at prpsent recovering from his illness but he felt himself unequal to the labors of his position and had seri a . ly resolved to lay down the crown and sceptre that he miglit end his days in peace. He had announced the day when his dauglitere should fix upon one of the suitors for their hands and when the assi inbly of barons and knights should decide upon the BueLe sor to his throne. The Knight of the Blooming Rose was gladly welcomed back to court. In the Emperor s presence he presented the GAMES AND STORIES. Z magic flower to each of his fair daughters his own b oomed sweetly upon his breast proving the purity and fidelity of his heart. Edith s cheek was pale from her late watchings but never had she looked more lovely than when she placed the rose upon her bosom her face was glorified by its ex pression. And Clotilda s ill concealed scorn and jealousy not only detracted from her queenly beauty but the flower paled as it touched her breast pride and worldliness and every selfish passion had swayed her being too long to be repress ed at a moment s notice like the fumes of poison they were taking away the life of the precious rose. It was impossible that the contrast should not be noticed : comparisons wei e made which filled the mind of the despotic Clotilda with rage against her unoffending sister and the more violent her evil passions became the fainter grew the perfume of her flower and the more fading its hue. Not all the Sattery of her adorers could restore her equanimity and her face showed only too plainly the workings of the evil spirit within. At last the day approached when the fate of the empire and of so many individuals was to be decided. Clotilda meantime consistent in her desire for universal sway received the homage of all her admirers but refused to declare her preference until the day of public betrothal the day when she proudly expected to be hailed as Empress. Her numer ous suitors indulged in flattering hopes each for himself while all agreed in pitying the delusion of the rest. The electors met in the audience chamber which was splendidly decorated for the occasion : all the dignitaries of the State and the great nobility were assembled presenting a very im posing spectacle. The Emperor was seated upon a throne but the crown and sceptre whose weight he felt himself uu 276 GAMES AND STORIES. equal longer to endure lay upon a cushion at his side. The people in a dense mass thronged the courtyard of the pal ace anxious to know the result of the election and to hail the new lord of the land. At the appointed hour the doors were flung open and the two royal brides entered followed by their maids of honor. Clotilda self possessed in her proud beauty looked like a qi.een indeed. She was magnificently dressed and the pale scentless rose upon her breast was almost hidden by dia monds. But many there turned their eyes from her hand some haughty face to gaze upon young Edith who leaned upon the arm of her betrothed the unknown knight. They wondered that they had never before remarked the exquisite delicacy and sensibility of her countenance the very exponent of the beautiful soul within which flashed out brightly as if through a transparent covering. When in repose the calm and happy e:q ression reminded the beholder of the deep pu rity and peace of the sunny sky when moved by passing thoughts and feelings of the same heavens ever heavenly over which the fli cev clouds are driven by the wind in vary ing shapes and hues. Edith s dress though elegant was as simple as consisted with her rank. The pearls and white jasmine in her hair well became her and the magic rose upon her breast adorned her as no jewels could and filled the chamber with its rich refreshing fragrance. As the sis ters stood one on each side of their father they might well ha e passed for types of spiritual and sensual beauty of heaven and earth. The Emperor arose and addressed the assembly. He said that the cares of state weighed too heavily upon his feeble old age and that his most earnest wishes were now directed to a tranquil retirement in which be should enjoy the leisure GAMES AND ST0EIE8. 277 he required for preparations to meet the King of kinga That his daughtere were before them he wished to see the diadem encircling the youthful brow of one whichever they should choose. But well he knew that a firm and valiant arm was needed to sway the sceptre and that an experienced mind must govern the nation and therefore it was his will that the Princesses should this day make known their choice of a consort from among the many candidates for their hands. His younger daughter Edith had already plighted her faith with his entire approval to the stranger knight. No kingdom awaited her for her betrothed was a landless exile but the fame of his valor and wisdom had gone throughout the earth and in the future husband of his daughter he now pre sented to them one whom he was proud to claim as a son Arthur Prince of Britain the renowned Champion of Chris tendom At these words shouts of enthusiastic joy rent the hall. When the tumult was hushed the Emperor called upon the suitors of the Princess Clotilda to come forward. The rival sovereigns approached among whom the Duke of Milan was conspicuous for dignity and knightly courtesy. All wished him success but Clotilda passed him by and placed her hand within that of the Czar. At that moment a sound was heard throughout the hushed room resembhng somewhat a deep sigh and an expiring groan it proceeded from the rose which fell frem her bosom shrivelled and Ufeless. An ex pression of disdainful rage rendered her face almost repul sive as she noticed the sensation excited by the circum stance and the cold gloomy silence with which her choice was received. After a short conference the electors reported that they Lad chosen Arthur of Britain and the I jinee .s Edith to be 24 278 GAMES AND STOKIES. their lawful sovereigns. Hildebrand then led them to a balcon and presented them to the people and loud and enthusiastic were the shouts of the populace : Long live our Emperor Arthur the Brave I Long live the good Prin cess The plaudits were echoed far and wide. The achieve ments of the noble Arthur and the kind deeds of The Good Princess formed the theme of the fireside tale in the humble cottage and of the troubadour s lay in castle and banquet ting hall. Arthur who in Britain was mourned as dead or as lying in enchanted sleep with his good sword Excalibar at his side ready to start up to his country s rescue in some hour of future peril enjoyed instead a happier fate. Long and glorious was his reign : the wicked fled away from his presence like mists before the sun the upright rejoiced under his protection and peace reigned throughout all the borders of the Empire. Excalibar was sheathed : no foes dared to invade the land. Brightly and sweetly bloomed the magic roses which once grew on the same tree in the earthly Paradise and which were now seldom far asunder flourishing in their transplanted state upon hearts which diffused a moral Paradise of love and purity around them. And what became of the imperious Clotilda Enraged at the decision of the electors and at her father s acquiescence she soon left the Imperial court to accompany her lord to his distant empire. There her life passed unhappily enough amid the rude magnificence and brutal amusements of the palace. She did not find that Ivan was easily managed as she had hoped : fools seldom are it requires a portion of good sense to perceive our deficiencies and to allow the su periority of othoi s. They became more and more estranged both giving way tn the evil passions most uatuial to them. GAMES AND STOEIES. 279 Ivan indulging in sensual pleasures became more and more brutified and Clotilda yielding up her soul to the dominion of pride hatred and violence became so embittered against her unfortunate husband that she compassed his death by violence and seized the crowu reigning in the name of her infant son Constantine. And never under the most despotic sovereigns had the iron rule been exercised with more unre lenting vigor than during the reign of Clotilda the Terrible. But a day of vengeance was at hand. A secret conspiracy was formed at the head of which her young son was placed the palace was seized in the night and the murderess was hurried away to a distant fortress where she spent the remainder of her unhappy life the victim of her own un governed passions. How I wish that I possessed such a magic rose said Alice Bolton. It might cure my unfortunate pug nose should so love to be beautiful You own such a rose my dear girl said her uncle. It is invisible but I often perceive its fragrance. Each one of you carries such an indicator of character and feeling about with you wherever you go. We may as well call it a rose as any thing else. But what can you mean Uncle do you mean our tell tale faces Nothing else. It is one of the many proofs of beneficent design in the formation of our frame than we can scarcely help giving a timely warning to others of the evil passions which may fill our breasts. The angry man becomes in flamed or livid with rage before his arm is raised to strike just as the rattle snake is heard before he darts upon his vic tim. And so with the gentle and kind emotions. Fiiendly 280 GAMES AND STCKIES. feeling softens the eye and soothes the heart before the tongue utters a sound. Then takt my advice my dear nephews and nieces if you wish to be attractive now seek moral beauty and the external will follow in some degree here below and completely in a b3 er world. You can aflbrd to wait. GAMES AND BTOEIES. 2bl CHAPTER IX. new year s day. CHARACTERS OR WHO AM I QUOTA TIONS. ACTING CHARADES. RIDDLES. A VERY happy New Year to you Aunt and Uncle The same to you dear children and may each one in your lives be happier than the last As the Spaniards say May you live a thousand years cried Charlie Bolton. I feel glad that wish is an impossible one answered Mr. Wyndham with a smile. How tired the world would be of seeing me and how weary I should be of life No no my boy I hope when my season of active labor shall be closed and I can no more be useful to my fellow men that my kind Father in Heaven will grant me a mansion above where time is swallowed up in eternity. There was service in the morning in the pretty little country church. Strange that this beautiful and appropri ate mode of commencing the New Year which is so general in continental Europe should be frequently neglected here 1 It appears so very natural upon entering upon a new division of time to consecrate its commencement by acknowledg ments of our dependence upon the Great Creator. At least so thought the family party assembled at The Grange and they were amply rewarded for the effort it cost them by the joyful hopeful nature of the services which were intended to lead the soul to repose upon God with unshaken trust for all future time. 24 2S2 GAMES AND ST0KIE8. In the evening it was agreed that there should be no story but that games and conversation should fill up the time. Mary proposed a new game she had heard of Char acters or Who am I While one left the room the rest agreed upon some historical personage who was to be rep resented by the absentee upon his return. When he re entered unconscious whether he was a Nero or a Howard they addressed him in a manner suitable to his rank and character and he replied in such a way as to elicit further information in regard to the important question Who am I As he grew more sure of his own identity with the illustrious person whose deeds they alluded to his answers would become more unequivocal until at last he could an nounce that he had solved that difficult problem know thyself. An amusing state of puzzle a dreamy feeling that you might be anybody in the world was found to per vade the first replies. Cornelia who led the way in assuming a character declaied that she felt like the little woman in Mother Goose s Melodies If I he s I as I suppose I be I have a little dog at home and he knows me and that when she found out who she really was it was as grateful to her as was the little dog s joyous bark to the un fortunate woman doubtful of her own identity. When Cornelia entered Mary said to her : Does your majesty feel very sore from your fall Very Httle bruised indeed. Physically I presume that you feel nothing but you must suffer mentally remarked Ellen. For a queen to be so disgraced and for a moment s pride to be brought down GAMES AUD STORIES. 283 to the rank of a subject and of a divorced wife is indeed a dreadful fate. A lofty mind replied Cornelia can bear reverses. True rejoined Charlie. I rejoice to see your majesty bear up so nobly it is well that pride can sustain you in adversity since it occasioned your descent. And yet do you know most sovereign lady I have always entertained the idea that the reason you refused in obedience to your royal husband s command to unveil your beauty to the court was not so much modesty and pride as the fact of an unfortunate pimple upon your nose and a sty upon your eye which had the effect of making you look uncommonly ugly. Shame ungallant sir never unless my silver mirror deceived me did I look more lovely. But if the laws of the Medes and Persians cannot be changed neither can the modest customs of their women be altered even at the com mand of the King of Ahasuerus himself I stand here a martyr to the rights of my sex : I Vashti queen of Persia and of all the ends of the earth have proved myself to be strong in will and the champion of womanhood. I shall appear before all eyes as the first asserter of woman s rights. But oh that Jewish girl that modest shrink ing beauteous hateful Esther that she should wear my crown Well done Cornelia you have entered into the spirit of the game. And now Charlie should go out as you caught the idea from him. Upon Charlie s re entrance Alice spoke : Did Dante s genius inspire you gifted mortal or did you sit so long at the feet of Isaiah that your harp caught up some of tha tones of his V 284 GAilES AJJD ST0KIE8. Don t know ma am indeed. Couldn t possibly give you any information on that subject. Scarcely knew I was much of a poet until you told me. A man like you said ISllen did not write for the un thinking multitude but for the select number who could appreciate. Fit audience though few is what you ask for. How shameful is it that such worth and genius should lan guish in obscui ity in a pleasure seeking age And that while court minions rolled in luxury you should sell your glorious poem for the paltry sum of ten pounds It was really too bad replied Charlie. And the money went very fast too. Artd yet answered Amy you were never of prodigal habits. You lived simply in the country : your supper was of bread and milk your greatest pleasure to play upon the organ or to listen to the music of others. You retired early to rest : to be sure you often awoke in the night your brain so filled with visions of beauty that you felt obliged to arouse your daughter that she might write them down and so they were saved for the benefit of future ages. What do people think said Charlie about my waking up my daughter instead of taking the trouble to write down my poetry myself How could you when you are stone blind And of what great consequence was it that one common place girl should sleej an hour or two later in the morning when such strains as yours were in question A dutiful daughter would feel honoreil by acting as your amanuensis even in the night season. True the girl did grumble occasionally being af flicted with some portion of human weakness and those who do not love inspiring strains have called you cross in consequence. But yju should no ax regard these thinu s GAMES AND BTOEIES. 285 Iban Samson your own Samson Agonistes oared for the mockings of the Philistines. Of man s fii st disobedience began Charlie. Hur rah I feel quite elevated since I have become Miltonie. And yet do you know I would rather wear a strait waistcoat than try long to sustain such a character as that. I couldn t do it indeed. I think you could not replied Tom. Now tell us whose speech gave you the first impression of being Milton Oh Amy s to be sure. So go out little Amy and we ll try to find some very angelic character for you to fill. When Amy returned Anna spoke : What remarkable worldly prosperity And yet though a strikingly handsome woman with polished manners and Italian craftiness you do not look happy. I am not my heart is not at ease. Nor your conscience either rejoined CharKe. Unless you have found some way to polish that to make it match your face and manners I should think your majesty might find your conscience rather a disagreeable companion. My majesty is not accustomed to rebuke. I know it and if I were in France I should fear that some of your Italian powders might be sprinkled in my food or wine in consequence. But I wonder when I think of you a simple duke s daughter being raised to the throne and not only that but of your ruling so absolutely over the three kings your sons. Mother in law to one of the greatest kings of France and to the most renowned of beautiful sufiering queens what more do you want to make you celebrated One thing only answered Amy. The Massacre of SL Bartholomew will carry my name down to posterity My 286 GAMES AND STORIES. daughter in law Muiy Queen of Scotts was interesting but I am great. She could kill one husband : I Catharine de Medici will not say how many men groaned out my name that night. And now said Ellen let us play Quotations. One quotes a well known passage from some book and if another mentions the autho she is entitled to propose the next pas sage. It all depends for interest upon our cleverness so brighten up your wits cousins mine. As I m a poet said Charlie I ll give you this : The poet s e3 e in a fine frenzy rolling . Doth glance from heaven to earth from earth to heaven. Shakspeare cried Tom. Now where does this come from : the better part of valor is discretion. Shakspeare again replied Alice. And in what book do you find this passage which corroborates that noble sen timent : Ho that fights and runs away iliiy live to fight another day. In Butler s Hudibras I believe rejoined Ellen. And where may that truth he found which evidently is in tended only for boys and men Use every man after his desert and who shall escape whipping Of course it was said by no one else than Will Shak speare the deer stoaler he knew it held good of himself and was indulgent to others. And who was it that wrote this epitaph : Underneath this stone doth lie As much beauty as can die : AVliich in life did harbor give To more virtue than oan live. GAMES AND STOEIKS. 287 That was rare Ben Jonson I am sure replied Alice. If her pale ghost could have blushed I think it would at Buch lofty and exquisite praise. For my part I could say Speak of me as I am nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice. That s Shakspeare again cried Charlie. It is sur prising how many passages come into one s head fiom that wonderful man s works. Where is this to be found : God tempers the wind to the shoi n lamb. n the Bible of course though I do not remember in what part said Mary. Think again replied Charlie for you are quite wrong : it can never be found in the Bible. Oh but I m sure it is there : I ll get a concordance and find the passage in a minute. Accordingly she did so but was obliged to acknowledge herself defeated : it was nowhei e to be discovered. Since you are at a loss I can set you right for once said Mrs.Wyndham. The passage is to be found in Sterne s works : I have myself heard it quoted in the pulpit as from the Bible and many people really think that it is. Here s another When Greek meets Greek then comes the tug of war. That s fi om Shakspeare I know answered Tom. Tis from Troilus and Cressida I imagine that is a Greek play. Then find it my boy said Mrs. Wyndham handing him Mrs. Cowden Clarke s elaborate volume. It is not in the whole book replied Tom after a dili gent search laying down the volume with a face as blank as the leaves at the end. If it is not in Shakspeare I give up. 288 GAMES AND STORIES. How poor are they that have not patience cried Corneha. Can you tell us where that piece of wisdom may be found Yes in Shakspeare the same author who wjites This was the most unkindest cut of all I thought of that passage concerning the Greek which seems to have baffled you all rejoined Mrs. Wyndham because I was once a whole year on the watch to discover it. It happened to be quoted at a httle literary gathering and none of us could tell the author although it was famil iar in our mouths as household words. A e agreed to search for it but it was full a year before I found it in looking over the play quite a celebrated one entitled The Rival Queens by poor Nat. Lee commonly called the crazy poet. Alexander the Great is the hero. We know so many quotations at second hand said Mrs. Wyndham that I hke this game : it will set us to hunting up the original passages and seeing their connections. If peo ple would act upon this principle of going to head quarters with regard to history and in private life too how many mistakes might be saved. And now just to keep us from becoming too wise Cor nelia chimed in I propose that we act charades. A group of us will arrange the plot in the library and when we open the door the re t of you must guess from our actions what word we intend to depict. We ll choose one of several sylla bles so that there will be repeated opportunities given you to sharpen your wits. And if you should conjecture the whole word before we are through please not to spoil sport by tell ing it. We are all obedience was the reply : and Cornelia Charlie and George after a whispered consultation and a GAMES AND STOEIKS. 289 foraging expedition into the housekeeper s room shut them selves up in the library. Soon the door was thrown open and the three were seen gravely seated at a small table sip ping imaginary tea while Cornelia as hostess was anxious to fill her part by replenishing their cups. Tea tea sounded from every part of the room and the door was closed. When again opened the three cousins were disclosed in the very height of enjoyment : Charlie s mirth provoking face Cornelia s gay laugh and George s loud and long haw haw quite upset the gravity of the spectators and peal after pea of laughter rewarded the trio. How merry we are said Aunt Lucy. As she spoke the word the door was shut showing that the right expression had been used. When re opened Cornelia was discovered carefully arranging Charlie s cravat. Shall I make a sailor s knot or how shall I fix it Give it a plain tie if you please. There was little difiicul ty in discovering that the word was temerity and to make assurance doubly sure the whole of it was acted out. George and Coruelia stood up holding hands while Charlie who had in a marvellously short time metamorphosed himself into a minister with gown bands and book put to the for mer the question Will you take this woman to be your lawful wife I will responded George. Will you take this man to be your lawful husband No I will not answered Cornelia hysterically. You will not What madam is the reason of this change of purpose Have you not well considered the matter No I have not I have been very rash I never saw him till yesterday What temerity . exclaimed the clergyman reprovingly and the door was closed amid great laughter. When it was re opened George was found seated in the centre of the room under the hands of the Doctor who was 25 290 GAMES AJ T STOEIES. examining his eye while Cornelia with an appearance of great anxiety held the light. Is it out yet No Doc tor : I feel it still how it hurts Thereupon the Doctor produced a formidable instrument from his pocket and ap peared about to gouge out the eye by way of curing it and the doi r was elused amid cries of eye eye tye quite parliamentary as Charlie said. The second scene dis closed Cornelia apparently engaged in household avocations which were interrupted by a rap at the door. She gave ad mittance to a man and boy who were peddling tin wares and there ensued such a sounding of tin pans and such a chaffering about tins that no doubt could exist in the minds of the spectators as to the word. To act out the third sylla ble Cornelia and George were seated at a table with lamp and boots when a knock was heard and a traveller with carpet bag and umbrella entered the roijin. He had lost his way he was going to the town of Ceitaintv in the land of Theoretical Speculation and wanted some plain directions. Oh I can tell you exactly how to get there cried Cor nelia. Keep along this road the highway of Inquiry until you find it bends off to the left into the path of jSJetapliysics. The path becomes narrower and mw e difficult continually and many side walks lead off to other spots : one to the wilderness of Atheism another to the populous city of Thinkasyi.juplease still another to the dangerous bog of AUdoubt. But if you follow the right road you cannot pos sibly err. Much obliged : I ll try to keep the path. Presently the traveller returned in a battert d condition : he had wandered from the right track his cloak of philosophi cal reason had been torn by the briers of difficulty his feet pierced through the shoes of intellectual pride by the sharp stones of suffering : he could not hear of any town of Cer GAME8 AND STORIES. 291 tainty in the whole country of Theoretical Speculation. I believe we have all made a mistake replied George. We erred in giving you a wrong direction : you erred in follow ing it. Certainty is situated in the land of Truth : follow this highway of Inquiry in the opposite direction until it leads you to a well trodden road formed by the juncture of Faith and Facts and then you cannot fail to reach Cer tainty. My sister Fancy misled you into error. And when the company in the sitting room cried out err err the shutting of the door showed they were not mistaken. For the last scene Aunt Lucy was called into requisi tion and formed the central object of the exhibition. But little wit was required to make of the whole the word Itin erant. Now for a few puzzles and conundrums cried Charlie. I have one which I think none of you can guess. Who are the most immoral of manufacturers Do you give it up I have heard the answer we could not guess it as it consists of puns replied Mary. Those who make you steel pens and then say they do write. Here s another. Why is the clock the most humble of all things Because it covers its face with its hands and is continu ally running itself down. When is it in a passion When it is ready to strike one. Pray what can be the difference between Joan of Arc and Noah s ark One was made of gopher wood the other was Maid of Orleans. Two persons met in the street and one of them said I 292 GAMES Aiq D STOEIES. am your son but you aie not my father. How could thai be It could not be Charlie how could it said Lewis. It might be if the person happened to be his mother answered Mary with a laugh. It is that of course how silly we all are My first is on the table and under the table my second is a kind of grain my third and fourth combined form what the most romantic people cannot well dispense with and my whole is one of the United States. Let us see California no. Massachusetts will not do nor Connecticut. Oh I have it : it is Matrimony not al ways a united state however You think not Ellen Then here is a piece of advice for you and to make it more emphatic and intelligible I will write it upon a card. man family wife. I have it eureka cried Tom Bolton. Be above meddling in a family between man and wife. VVliy are pens ink and paper like the fixed stars They are stationary. A gentleman sited a prisoner and pointing to him said to the bystanders Brothers and sisters li.ive I none But this man s father was my father s son. What relationship was there between them 3 GAMES AND STOKIES. 293 A slight one only that of father and son answered Cornelia. What glorious fun we have had this week cried George. It will be hard work to go back agtiin to hie hcec hoc I wish Christmas holida3 s could come once a week So do not I much as I love them replied Mr. Wynd ham smiling. It is the alternation of grave and gay ot diligent study and active duty with lively social intercourse which will make you complete men and women. I would not have you to be mere drudges in the most useful work nor book worms at houi only in the library and unfit for mingling with your fellow men. But much less would I like to see you triflers butterflies living only for amusement. I hope you will become earnest men and women : choosing great and good aims in life and working your way upward continually to greater usefulness and to a higher moral ele vation. But amusement is not wasted time : it may be s indulged as to be improving to the wits and never to trans gress the line of innocency. I have often felt the benefit ol a hearty laugh when my brain has been overtasked : it is recreation in the strict meaning of the term it gives new life to the exhausted spirits. Yes I approve of entertainment in its place. So do I heartily my dear sir chimed in Cornelia. And its place is everywhere I think. I never heard uncle make so long a speech before Beware or I will punish you by making another replied Mr. Wyndbam drawing the mischievous girl towards him. But I have news for you all which I think will scarcely disturb your slumbers. I received a note this afternoon informing me that the united wisdom 25 294 GAMES AND STORIES. of your parents had concluded to prolong your holiday by one day and so your Week s Delight as Amy calls it must be counted by Long Measure a week and a day. Glorious cried George. Let s pack the day as full of fun as ever it will hold. I never shall forget the jolly time we have had this year at The Grange Not even the ice bath at the pond George said Cornelia. No indeed nor my kind deliverance nor my brave rescuer answered George. That might indeed have turned our laughter into weeping replied Mr. Wyndham lighting his lamp. And now Good night and happy dreams GAMES AND STORIES. 295 CHAPTER X. WHISPEEING GALLEEY. POTENTATES. THREE YOUNG MEN. The last day at The Grange had come and well was it filled up with active exercise and sport song laughter and sweet converse. In the evening all met as usual in the library eager for whatever amusement might turn up for everything was impromptu among our young people and whether story games or conversation had at least the merit of spontaneity. I have a thought said Alice. There is a game I would call Gossip or Whispering Gallery which can take in the whole of us and possibly take us all in in a double sense. Let Aunt Lucy sit in one corner of the room and Uncle John in another and we young folks can range ourselves between. Aunty can say anything she pleases in a low whisper to her next neighbor only she must be careful to name some one and he must repeat it to a third and so through the line. The last person must announce distinctly what the whisper was and settle any differences with Aunt Lucy who origi nates the whisper. Very good replied Mrs. Wyndham. Only it is evident to me that I am going to be victimized O you can stand it you can stand it cried out sev eral young voices. Your character for truth and pru dence is established and with Uncle John at the other end of the line you need not fear I 296 GAMES AND STORIES. And so the company was arranged and care taken that no ear heard the gossip save the one for which it was designed. The mysterious message wag at last announced amid laughter and shouts from the youngest. Aunt Lucy says that Cornelia told her that Charlie reported that John had eaten ten slices of mince pie to day. He is very sick and I ll send him home to his mother. But I only said Cornelia and Charlie both told me John hadn t eaten one slice of mince pie to day. I m afraid he is sick and it is well he is going home to his mother Rather a difference But who altered it It seems to me Cornelia looks mischievous 0 that s a way I have Poor little me all the mis chief is put on my shoulders But honest now Tom whispered so low that I thought it might as well be ten slices as one And now change places said Alice and put Cor nelia head as a reward of merit we ll fix her and then we can try Whispering Gallery again. No sooner said than done and Cornelia started the game by saying to her nearest neighbor How sorry I am to leave The Grange 1 I never was so happy in all my life and Charlie says so too But the outcome of this very innocent remark was as follows: How sorry I am I came to The Grange I never will be happy again in all my life and Charlie says so too Are you sure there was no cheating asked Mr. Wyndham. No dear uncle impossible replied Cornelia. I GAMES AND STORIES. 297 couldn t and they wouldn t they are all quite too good for that every one of them except perhaps Charlie who is in a peculiar seuse my own first cousin. But it seems to be a property of a whisper to be a twister it is sure to get in a tangle and comes out quite different from the way you started it. Just so answered up Charlie. It is like what they say happens in Cincinnati. You put in a grunter at one end of the machine and in a few minutes it comes out in the form of bacon hams lard sausages and hair brushes My dear Charlie chimed in his uncle that is the loudest whisper I ve heard yet But seriously boys and girls don t you see in the game how evil reports originate and how easy it is by the slightest variation from the straight line to falsify the truth That s so said Mary. And I have often noticed how whispers glide into gossip and gossip into scandal before people are aware. I ve resolved many a time not to talk about people but things and then I ll escape doing harm with my unruly member. I too said Charlie demurely have frequently written in my copy book Speak not of the absent or speak as a friend. Now for another game cried Gertrude. Here is one of mine. I call it Potentates. It s very simple and you can vary it according to your taste. You visit a foreign country and see the rulers and grandees you can mention their names or not as you wish. I ll begin to show one way of playing it. I went to England and was presented at court. I had a superb dress made for the occasion which I will not 298 GAMES AND STORIES. describe as I see the boys are all ready to laugh. But my father had to wear a special drawing room suit for the presentation also and he looked as funny and quaint as if he had stepped out of an old picture. His sword hung at his side and he had to practice walking with it and bowing over it or it would have played him a trick. It was worse than my long train. When 7ny turn came to be presented and the Lord Chamberlain announced my name I felt like sinking into the ground but I didn t. I think the dignity of my grand dress supported me. Somehow I reached the throne where sat in state Victoria Queen of Great Britain and Ireland Empress of India Defender of the Faith etc. On either side were princesses of the blood ladies of honor and others according to rank. I had seen my predecessors kneel before Her Majesty so I had to put my democratic feelings into my pocket and do the same. I made believe to myself that I knelt because she is a pattern woman is the best queen England ever had and is old enough to be my grandmother having reigned fifty years. She graciously extended her hand. I did not shake it as report says one fair American savage did but humbly kissed it and then retreated backward with eyes still fixed upon the Queen in all her glory and scarcely knowing which gave me the most trouble my long train or my wounded self respect. I afterwards saw the Prince and Princess of Yales the Archbishop of Canterbury dukes and duchesses lords and ladies a brilliant constellation. But I very much doubt if they saw me. And these are the poten tates of Old England. As for me said Charlie Bolton I saw the Dey of GAMES AND STORIES. 299 Algiers and a very brilliant day he was 1 By way of contrast I determined to visit the Knights of Malta but on inquiry found that they had not been iu existence for nearly ninety years and therefore gave it up. Instead I concluded to see the Knights of Labor who abound in this favored land and appear to be potentates as they can stop railroad travel mines manufactories etc. at their own sweet will. As Charlie was in North Africa remarked John I went to Egypt to be in his neighborhood and had the privilege of seeing the Khedive. I found the country quite demoralized the finances iu a very bad condition and few appeared to know who was the real potentate of the land the Khedive the Sultan of Turkey or the money kings of England. General Gordon had been murdered and El Mahdi the false prophet was dead also. Those two men were the greatest potentates Africa has had for centuries And I crossed over into Turkey continued Tom Green and had an audience with the Sultan. I saw numerous pashas in attendance of one two and three tails. O Tom cried Gertrude that can t be Even Darwin doesn t claim that for man in the nineteenth century My dear young friend answered Tom these tails were not carried monkey fashion but were insignia of office the man having three tails holding the highest rank. They are of horsehair placed on a long staff with a gilt ball on top and are always carried before the Pasha on his military expeditions. Always ask for information said he bowing to the circle and I shall 300 GAMES AND STORIES. be happy to impart such as is suitable to juvenile minds Very condescending Deeply interesting Just from college isn t he were some of the remarks of the girls. The Grand Vizier presented me continued Tom. We had a good deal of pleasant conversation together the Sultan and I and I tried to convince him that the republican form of government was the best. Strange to say my eloquence failed in effect. But he was very friendly and asked me to stay to tea and he d introduce me to his little family Tom Tom cried several voices Do keep proba bility in view. I declined of course even at the risk of hurting his feelings. don t want to see women with thick veils on some may think it romantic I know Alice does for it is so mysterious but think it looks as if they were marked with small pox Just then the muezzin sounded for prayers from the nearest minaret and the Sultan in stantly fell prostrate on his rich Turkish rug and began his devotions. He was just saying Do come Tom for but he stopped in the midst and I ll never know what strong inducement he was going to offer perhaps he wanted me to be Grand Vizier. I slipped out while he was at his prayers. 0 Tom Tom cried John. I didn t think you could draw so long a bow It is quite understood that we are indulging in fic tion replied he. You know that falsehood consists in the intent to deceiue. No one will be taken in by my yarns dear Coz GAMES AND STORIES. 301 Nor mine either said Cornelia. For I was in Paris before the French Revolution at the same time as our philosopher Benjamin Franklin. I was present at court on a grand occasion. The king Louis Sixteenth a handsome and amiable monarch and the beautiful and graceful queen Marie Antoinette were there of course the young Dauphin was I hope sound asleep. The ladies of the court were brilliant and everything as gay as gay could be. But to my surprise our plain simple repub lican Dr. Franklin was the central object the cynosure of all beholders. The king was quite secondary. Phi losophy was then quite the rage and republican sim plicity in the abstract was adored by these potentates. One of the grand gay ladies crowned Franklin with a wreath of flowers And he was wonderfully pleased with all the attention he received I assure you. It was a different scene from any in the Philadelphia of those days with our staid citizens and sweet gentle modest Quaker ladies in their plain dress And now said Amy are n t you all tired of poten tates I am. This is our last evening and I want dear Uncle to tell us a story something from his own life if he will to finish up our pleasures. It would finish up your pleasures by putting you to sleep Mr. Wyndham answered laughing gayly. Mine has been an unusually happy life but not an adventurous one. I was never even in a railroad collision. Do you remember the story of Dr. Samuel Johnson when writ ing his Lives of the Poets Do tell us. Uncle chimed in the young voices. He was trying to get information in a certain case but could not elicit anything of interest. At last out of pa 302 GAMES AND STORIES. tience he burst forth : Tell me dida t he break his leg I never broke mine I can t get up an incident. And I m very glad you didn t Uncle mine said little Amy. And now I speak by permission in the name of the assembled company : You are unanimously requested to tell us your life or something that happened to yourself. Story 1 Why bless you I have none to tell. Sir as Canning s needy knife grinder says. But if you all insist as a good uncle I must e en obey so prepare for those comfortable slumbers I have predicted. I will call my story Three Youxg Men. Now you must not expect from me said Mr. Wynd ham exciting tales of adventure and hairbreadth es capes by sea and land. I have never read a dime novel in my life and therefore couldn t undertake to rival them in highway robbery scalping Indians and bowie knives and revolvers. My heroes were never left on a desert island nor escaped with difficulty from the hands of can nibals nor were pursued by hungry wolves and never even saw a lion or tiger except behind the bars of a menagerie. They were not strikingly handsome nor charmingly hideous nor had they rich uncles to die op portunely and leave them heirs to a few millions indeed they were very much such young men as you see every day walking the streets of your own city. I would gladly leave my name entirely out of the story if I could but as it is an o er true tale and I hap pened to be mixed up with the other two whom I have known from childhood I am very sure my dear nephews GAMES AND STORIES. 303 and nieces will not accuse me of egotism. It is the other two who are my heroes not myself. John Howard and Mortimer Willing were my school mates in the same class for years neighbors aad play fellows so that I know them well. And I speak of them the more freely because they are now both living at a great distance from here one being the honored Gov ernor of a Western State and the other residing in a remote town in the interior of Texas. Such are the changes in our land of freedom. But to begin with our school days. We had not a genius in the class neither had we a dunce we were average boys digging our way through the classics and mathematics and not too familiar with science history and geography. The world we live in was not much studied then. Such minor knowledge we were somehow expected to pick up at home and we did after a fashion. I liked both these boys but while Willing was the more self possessed showy and brilliant I always felt Howard to be the most true he was the very soul of honor as transparent as glass without a flaw in it. Willing did things with a dash and by his superior tact and ready language often appeared to know more than he really did. If he got into a scrape he was pretty sure to get out of it smoothly. I have sometimes known him for example to go un prepared to a recitation depending upon his luck not to be called upon to recite when with his ready wit and retentive memory he would gather up what it required hard study for the rest of us to put into our crauiums. But it sometimes happened that Dame Fortune wicked jade I forsook him and Willing had to march up as we 304 GAMES AND STORIES. thought to certain disgrace. But whatever forsook him one thing never did invincible assurance. He would bear himself in so composed a manner talk round the subject so ably and bring what little he knew so promi nently forward that the professor himself was often de ceived and was sometimes entrapped into telling the very thing Willing most wanted to know. If any side helps were given by sympathizing friends for Willing was a general favorite he availed himself of them without scruple. I remember the question was once put to him What is the Latin name of the earth Any boy surely should know that but for once his memory failed him. He nudged the boy next him say ing in a stage whisper Tell us. The teacher s ears were quick and his wit also he answered with a quiz zical look before the boy could speak That s right Tellus is one of the names but you should direct your answer to the desk and not to your neighbor. In composition he was sometimes brilliant but not always sustained or original for I have more than once detected a striking likeness to Addison and other well known worthies of our English tongue. Evidently the same Muse inspired both for in style and sentiment they were identical but unfortunately for Willing they had the advantage in point of time and made their mark in the world before he came along. The wonder to me was that the teacher did not see it but his was not a wide range of scholarship though thorough in what he taught. His groove was narrow but deep and well worn. I felt indignant when I heard Willing praised for what should have brought him disgrace but he was so pleasant and ready to oblige such a good companion and play GAMES AND STORIES. 305 fellow that I soon forgot my righteous anger until next time. Another trick of his I could not like. Possibly my young friends may have seen the same for schoolboy failings are very similar throughout the ages. I don t doubt school children cheated before the flood They certainly have done so since. He sat at the same desk with honest Jack Howard the most unsuspicious of mortals because himself so free from guile. Many a time have I seen him slyly glance at Howard s slate when we were solving hard problems in arithmetic or algebra. They were sure to come out even neck and neck as they say. But J knew that if Willing had been called upon to explain the process he couldn t have done it and he was sure to get the praise. As for Howard he plodded on never getting all the appreciation he deserved. Always prepared but not always ready for he was easily abashed and then his tongue did not do justice to his thoughts. No fellow in the class or as we then said no man in the class was so thorough as he but the teachers did not always find it out. We boys did however and we knew too that what Jack Howard once got he kept in the way of mental acquisition. But the best of it was he was such a solid fellow as to worth. His word was never doubted we could trust him in everything. Falsus in uno fakus in omnibus holds true and the converse is also true Faithful in one faithful in all. Howard was true and faithful from the time I first knew him a little shaver knee high to a grasshopper as children say. I m the more particular in giving you an insight into the character of these boys as a key to their after life. 300 GAMES AND STOEIES. I know that the child is not always father to the man and that the insertion of a new and transforming princi ple into the soul will elevate and ennoble the meanest man. But as a general rule the mainsprings of char acter develop early and the man is very much as the child has made him. The sowing then brings forth a harvest afterwards. They tell us that two natives of Scotland settled in the far West and that each took with him a memorial of his fatherland one the thistle the national emblem the other the honey bee. Rather dif ferent sowing that For while the dwellers on the Pa cific coast have to keep up a continual fight with the thistle the honey of that region is now largely exported and is worth its millions. A little time has done it and thistles are especially prolific you need take no pains in the sowing. But we didn t think much of sowing and reaping in those days though we were sowing all the time. The years flew fast till we had seen seventeen birthdays and our fathers thought we should learn something of busi ness if we were ever to be business men. Willing had influential connections excellent abilities and popular manners he was a general favorite. He was placed without difficulty in a large importing house where he gave entire satisfaction and was rapidly advanced to a position of great trust collecting moneys and keeping the accounts. His salary was large and he was consid ered a rising and prosperous young man he moved in fashionable society married a dashing girl lived in a handsome house gave elegant entertainments and kept a horse. Howard and I got on more slowly. Somehow we GAMES AND STOEIES. 307 always kept together so that the two Johns became a by word. We were clerks in the same commercial house and although self praise is no recommendation I may say that both of us did our whole duty. We worked hard as was then expected were at the store soon after sunrise and had everything in order before our employers arrived. Young gentlemen in those days did many things that are now the porter s work making fires sweeping the store etc. quite new duties to us who were fresh from Academic shades and from communion with Homer Virgil and Horace. I can t say we enjoyed it much. Neither did we like the lifting of heavy packages and being ordered about as if we were inferiors. But we did not shirk our duty and kept our tempers. John good fellow came out of the ordeal sweet tempered kind and obliging and I don t doubt that we both feel the benefit of this practical training to this day. Certain it is that we mastered all the details of the business and knew what to expect from others when our time came to employ them. The two Johns went into business together and for a time everything was prosperous. We married happily and lived in comfort and moderation as becomes young people who have to make their way in the world. Mean time we saw less and less of Willing for in the daytime we were busy and our evenings were very differently employed. He and his young wife a pretty and attrac tive creature she was cultivated the society of the gay and rich gave entertainments or were seen in full dress at balls concerts the opera and the theatre. I some times wondered how a clerk on a three thousand dollar salary could live at the rate of eight or ten thousand. 308 GAMES AND STORIES. And so with all kind feeling we drifted apart your dear Aunt and John s wife found their style of living so different ideas on all subjects so opposite and friends so dissimilar that visits were only exchanged once or twice a year. When we were about thirty commercial disasters befel us. A financial crisis swept over the land by which some houses closely connected with our own were en gulfed and could not meet their engagements. We lost heavily. We struggled through it for a time but were compelled at last to call a meeting of our creditors lay our statements and books before them and offer to give up all we had to satisfy their claims. That was the best we could do and we then could not pay more than fifty cents on the dollar. Our creditors behaved most nobly and generously. They expressed the utmost confidence in our integrity and business skill uttered no word of blame but much of encouragement and begged us to go on and retrieve our fortunes. They settled upon fifty cents in the dollar as full satisfaction for our debts and told us to take our own time for the payment nothing could have been kinder and more considerate. For my part knowing we were not to blame I bore up bravely till that point but there I broke down. I am not ashamed to say that I wept like a child. Howard was the bookkeeper of our house and a beau tiful set of books he kept. The accounts were exact the writing clear the figures unmistakable not a blot or erasure in the whole. They excited great admiration and from none more than from Stewart Gamble who were prominent creditors. After the meeting they GAMES AND STORIES. 309 invited Howard to look over their books in tlae evening remarkicg that although they had all confidence in their head clerk their receipts had fallen off considerably of late and as they wished to understand the reason they had concluded to get the services of an expert which Howard certainly was. John accepted the offer although he looked grave when he remembered that Willing had been head clerk for years. As our business perplexity was now comparatively settled we went on as usual only taking in sail and trim ming the boat for the storm. But in our private affairs both families resolved to retrench. Our wives came nobly to our support proving themselves true women they themselves proposed to double up the two families to occupy one house and in several ways to reduce our ex penses one half. Such an arrangement would never have answered if we had not all thoroughly understood one another but we did. My wife is aa you all very well know a model of amiability and of every household vir tue and the other John thinks as well of his Kib and I suppose is right. The old saying is If a man wishes to be rich let him ask his wife I can add if a man wishes to be honest and pay his debts let him ask her counsel aid and cooperation also. We were determined to be .honest and our good wives helped us in this effort with all their might. How they managed it you can t expect a man to ex plain it is a problem too deep for our limited intelli gence but certain it is that while we always sat down to a plentiful table and maintained a respectable appear ance what had supported one family now answered for two. I don t think our wives were reduced to the straits 310 GAMES AND STORIES. of the Irish family whose little boy reported to his school mates There s a great twisting aod turning going ou at our house. I m having a new shirt made out of daddy s old one and daddy s having a new shirt made out of the old sheet and mammy s making a new sheet out of the old table cloth. But twistings and turnings of a marvellous kind there must have been which the male understanding could not fathom for while the house was always in order and the two ladies looked as neat as if they had just stepped out of a bandbox no bills came in and a little money went a great way. One word more about this very practical thing of ex pense in living. We could have lived on as we had done and no blame from any one for we were in no respect extravagant but we could not reconcile it to our con sciences to spend a penny without necessity when we owed money. All four thought alike about that we were thankful for health and that we could provide the com forts of life for our young families. As you know our dear children were then living. And I may here add that both John and I lived to see the solid benefits ac cruing from the ten years of strict economy and active work in which all shared. Our boys and girls learned betimes to help themselves and one another and were invaluable aids to their mothers. The lessons of self denial were not lost upon them. They attended the public schools and received a solid education there but the languages were picked up at home and thoroughly too. It is astonishing how much can be learned by de voting a short time every day to any study when the heart is in it aud I found that the boys were prepared GAMES AND STORIES. 311 for college when our ten years were up and we were able to spend more freely. But meanwhile what about Willing and the very mixed accounts of Stewart Gamble Alas alas how happy was our lot compared with his We had cheerful content hope for the future peace in our con sciences. We were respected by those around us and by the business world never more so than then. But poor Willing Howard found it as we had feared. There were incon sistencies between the debtor and creditor columns in creasing with each successive year and the effort had been made to cover them up by the alteration of figures so as to appear square and correct. Howard knew too much of prices to be deceived by these being in the same business. The aggregate stealings for it was nothing else amounted to 20 000 And this was the payment the firm received for their liberal kindness and their blind confidence When all was discovered and Willing s guilt clearly proved he was summoned to meet his injured employers. He must have gone with quakings of heart but not even then did his cool assurance fail him or the blush rise to his cheek until he was made conscious that all his trick ery was understood and that public exposure and the penitentiary were before him. Then he gave way and confessed all. He had not in the beginning planned deliberate villany very few ever do who have been brought up to know the right. But the temptations to extravagance had proved too much for him and his prin ciples never strong had given way. He had taken two hundred dollars intending to return it from his salary. 312 GAMES AND STORIES. and none should be the wiser. But fast living is a de ceitful thing almost as deceitful as the human heart. Bills came in fast store bills butchers bills carriage bills confectionery bills milliners bills swallowing up his quarter s salary and one must have ready money you know so instead of returning what he had taken as hope had whispered he took more still to be repaid in the future. I need hardly say that each time he yielded to temp tation the resistance of his conscience became less and less until finally it appeared to be paralyzed. He had woven the toils about himself until he seemed powerless to escape no chrysalis apparently lifeless in its silky shroud was feebler than he. He was strong to do evil but weak to do good. Everything conspired to push him down hill circumstances were against him he thought but one thing was certain he must have money and then all would be right. But how to break the meshes How to retrieve him self One way only was clear to him speculation in stocks and on a margin he could borrow money for that for he would be sure to repay. Borroioing was now the convenient name he applied to his stealing. Pie tried it and at first succeeded the deluded victims of all gambling whether in the Exchange or in gambling hells are pretty sure of success at first and so they are enticed to higher ventures. Now he might have returned the ill gotten money and at least have saved his reputation. But no the gambling passion was now aroused and he felt sure he could soon realize enough to make him easy. He tried again and for a larger sum and lost. And so he went on until he was tangled inextricably GAMES AND STORIES. 313 in the net and felt that he was a rascal and a lost not a successful one. Remorse seized him but not repentance for still he went on in his guilt. Indeed he was more reckless than ever struggling to get out of the meshes. Gay to excess at times then gloomy his temper became unequal and to drown reflection he sometimes drank to excess. He was a ruined man ruined before exposure for that only opened the eyes of others his own down fall had already taken place. I am told that when the proofs of his guilt were laid before him and his confession was made his pleadings for mercy were most pitiful. Stewart Gamble had a stern sense of justice and their indignation was in pro portion to their former confidence. They were deter mined that he should not escape and that not so much from personal vengeance as because they thought it wrong to interfere with laws due and wholesome in themselves and necessary to deter others from evil doing. He was committed to prison a trial took place and poor Willing was sentenced to five years in the pen itentiary. When he first stood up for trial he was alone all the friends of his prosperity had forsaken him. He was tho roughly stricken down abashed shame faced not lifting his eyes to the crowd in court and no one of his inti mates care to claim acquaintance with a felon. I could not hold back much as I hated the crime I could not hate the criminal. My schoolmate my playfellow stood there alone forsaken despised crushed to the ground ready to despair. I went to him gave my hand and stayed while his case was up. Never shall I forget the look of mingled gratitude and hopelessness in his 314 GAMES AND STORIES. haggard eyes which had scarcely known sleep since his dit grace. O it is well to be just No doubt of that. The law should be sustained and no sentimental pity should interfere. We must not condone crime or the very object of law and penalty will be annulled. Philan thropy should be tender but not weak and if tears are shed and bouquets of flowers sent it should rather be to the victims of crime than to the criminal. But when a man is crushed with a sense of guilt and down on the ground that is not the time to spurn him when disgrace is added to trouble friends must not stand aloof. Many a poor fellow is driven to suicide by this course who might have been saved by kindness and brought to repentance Willing s dashing friends by whose example he had been helped in the downward career who had eaten his dainty little suppers and enjoyed his society now forsook him and held up their hands in horror at his conduct it was so disreputable I may be wrong but I can t help despising men and women who share a poor fellow s prosperity and fall off in his adversity giving an addi tional kick if need be to send him down the hill. Of all his gay companions not one stood by him on his trial or said one word of pity hope or cheer when he was condemned. The friendship of the world is a hollow thing more unsubstantial than a bubble. It seems to me that nothing is so hardening to the heart as self indulgence luxurious living idleness the absence of any high aim in life or any earnest effort for the life beyond. Ctirtaiu it is the summer friends all vanished their fi icudship wilted like flowers before a frost. GAMES AND STORIES. 315 That was the time for Howard and me to act like men. We were busy very busy but we took turns to stand by him and show that we had not forgotten auld lang syne and boyish days. Poor fellow he wept then. Well did he know that we would be the last to extenuate his crime but he saw that we pitied him while we condemned his sin. He spoke the first words of genuine repentance or what looked like it then and there. After his condemnation when immured in prison walls dressed in convict garb and fed on prison fare we visited him whenever the rules allowed it. We found him quite broken up thoroughly humiliated ready to despair of God s mercy as well as man s forgiveness. He was in the depths of trial all the waves and the billows had gone over him the deeps had swallowed him up as the Psalmist poetically and truly says. We could not in conscience say one word that might lessen the weight of his guilt but we could point him to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin not of one only but of the whole world. We could tell him that Christ came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance to which he promptly added and from the heart Of whom I am chief. Calamity sorrow reverses and all the punishments due to iniquity can never be relied upon to bring men to repentance but in this case they worked well and Willing became a new man. It was a great pleasure to us to see the change in his very countenance wrought out by the inward principle and that his sorrow as time went on was not so much for his punishment and dis grace as for his guilt. He made no effort to get a com 316 GAMES AND STOEIES. mutation of his sentence saying It was all right he had deserved that aud much more. Of course our pity was much excited for his poor little wife who seemed almost heart broken. My dear Lucy and John s wife who had never cultivated intimacy with her in their prosperous days now came forward in true womanly style and made her feel that she had sisters in heart whom she had not known. She had no near kin dred and the few relatives she had held aloof Truly she might say My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore and my kinsmen stand afar off. No one offered her help or shelter of all those who had enjoyed her elegant hospitality. Immediately upon the conviction of her husband she wrote to Stewart Gamble offering to give up all her handsome furniture and pictures and even her jewels as a small indemnity for their losses but they very nobly refused to accept it advising her to sell and invest the proceeds. John and I acting under the direction of our wives who were enthusiastic in their admiration and pity for Olive Willing in her trouble told her to pack her trunks at once and come to our house where we had room enough and to spare and that we would attend to the sale. She could scarcely believe she heard aright and was full of surprise and gratitude and of course accepted the offer. I don t wonder you think our house was made of gum elastic it really seemed so. Room in the heart room in the house was our motto and the children most amiably agreed to give up one room and be sociable together and I fancy they were from the peals of laughter that often came from that room so full of young GAMES AND STORIES. 317 life and spirits. And so poor Olive was settled down as one of the family. It was a new experience to her in every way. The industry of the house surprised her and from gratitude and a proper ambition she soon sought to help which really was the best thing she could do to relieve her trouble and regain a measure of cheer fulness. But she had to learn first and found two will ing teachers in the noble women who had given her a home. She was an apt scholar and soon became mistress of domestic arts which were indispensable to her in after life. Indeed what woman should be ignorant of them if she wishes to be helpful to herself and useful to others Who would wish to be considered a mere ornamental piece of brie k brae good to be set upon the mantel or against the wall but not good for everyday use and com fort Better be an eight day clock for that at least will regulate the goings of the household In these new employments and in our happy home circle Olive in a few months recovered something of her wonted tone. She then formed the plan of putting her hitherto useless accomplishments to work by taking pupils in music drawing and embroidery. AVe all approved her plan and Lucy found pupils for her among our friends not among those who had cast her off. This supplied her with ready money and with a little increase to the sum John and I had safely invested for her. When his five years were accomplished and Willing was notified that he was once more a free man we were there to receive him and conduct him to our house. He entered it a wiser and a sadder man. We had formed a plan for him into which he and his wife heartily entered 318 GAMES AND STOEIES. and had already written to correspondents in Texas to obtain information as to localities for settlement. After a week s rest Willing and Olive left us for their distant home where they were soon at home on a small ranche stocked with sheep the whole paid for by the modest sum held in Olive s name. They did well and are much respected. He has been able to enlarge his operations and is now a thriving man and what is far better he is upright honest always on the right side fearing God and having favor with those who know him. But to return to ourselves. We persevered in a strict course of industry and economy declining help proffered from outside sources. My dear grandfather who had brought me up after my father s death was very kind in offering financial aid but I did not wish to involve any one in my misfortunes or to cause embarrassment to one I so greatly loved. Besides I felt confident that we should retrieve our affairs by our own efforts. So it proved. Eight years to a day from the time we attempted to make our assignment to our generous cred itors we paid them not fifty cents on the dollar but one hundred with compound interest. It was a glad surprise to them but a much greater joy to us. O boys I better it is to step forth clear of debt to be able to look every man in the eye to feel that you owe no man anything than to own the mines of California Arizona or the whole of a Pacific Eailroad I cannot describe to you the exquisite pleasure it gave us to pay out that money. Those who have never experienced losses and embarrass ments can scarcely understand it. We now had a fresh start in business with a good stock on hand boundless credit and no debts. We soon GAMES AND STORIES. 319 came to the front rank among merchants. Indeed so successful were we that on my fiftieth birthday I resolved to retire feeling that I was rich enough. My dear grand father who had entered into rest some years before had left me The Grange in which my earliest years had been passed and here amid the beautiful scenes of nature and with still a large scope for my activities I have enjoyed years of happiness. My dear friend Howard had lauded property in one of the Western States and fancied there was more elbow room there for his chil dren who were settling in life so at last we were obliged to separate. He has risen as you know to promi nence being the most popular governor of the State they have had for years and even political opponents are loud in praise of his integrity and fidelity to trusts. I need scarcely say a word to show the meaning of my simple tale. A life of unspotted integrity and honor is the only life worth living and to love God and keep his commandments is the only safeguard. You may have a good disposition but that is not enough. You may have been well trained and instructed but that is not enough. Your father may be the very soul of honor and to be trusted with uncounted gold but virtue is not an inheri tance and you must be honest for yourself self denying for yourself diligent for yourself if you wish to build up a character respected by men and pleasing to God. Tis true this is only one part of your duty but it is a very important part. Truth and rectitude are pillars in family life and the very bulwarks of society. If these fail all else fails. And now a pleasant and a dreamless sleep to you all. 320 GAMES AND STORIES. To morrow you return to the studies and duties of the new year which has begun so happily for us all. I dis like to say that word Farewell and so I will only wish you now Good night 1

Children's Books;Science Fiction

fiction

AVON BOOKS A division of The Hearst Corporation 959 Eighth Avenue New York New York 10019 They Shall Have Stars Copyright c 1957 by James Bush. Originally published under the title YEAR 2018 Published by arrangement with the author. For information address Avon Books. Title page selection from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS Copyright 1953 by Dylan Thomas By permission of New Directions. c 1957 by New Directions. A Life for the Stars Copyright c 1962 by James Blish. Published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam s Sons. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62 14388. For information address G. P. Putnam s Sons 200 Madison Avenue New York N. Y. 10022. Earth man Come Home Copyright 1955 by James Blish. Published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam s Sons The material upon which this novel is built appeared originally as Okie and Bindlestiff copyright 1950 by Street and Smith Publications Inc. in the U.S.A. and Great Britain: Sargasso of Lost Cities copyright 1952 by Wings Publishing Co. Inc. and Earthman Come Home copyright 1953 by Street and Smith Publications Inc. in the U.S.A. and Great Britain. The Triumph of Time Copyright c 1958 by James Bush. Published by arrangement with the author. For information address Avon Books. Afterword Copyright c 1970 by Richard D. Mullen. All rights reserved which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Avon Books. ISBN: 0 380 41616 6 First Avon Printing February 1970 Eighth Printing AVON TRADEMARK BEG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES REGISTERED TRADEMARK MARCA REGISTRADA HECHO EN CHICAGO U.S.A. Printed in the U.S.A. c THEY SHALL HAVE STAHS 7 c A LIFE FOR THE STARS 131 c EARTHMAN COME HOME 235 c THE TRIUMPH OF TIME 466 c AFTERWORD by Richard U. Mullen 597 THEY SHALL HAVE STARS And death shall have no dominion Dead men naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone They shall have stars at elbow and foot... DYLAN THOMAS ...While Vegan civilization was undergoing this pecu. liar decline in influence while at the height of its political and military power the culture which was eventually to replace it was beginning to unfold. The reader should bear in mind that at that time nobody had ever heard of the Earth and the planet s sun Sol was known only as an undistinguished type G0 star in the Draco sector. It is possible although highly unlikely that Vega knew that the Earth had developed space flight some time before the events we have just reviewed here. It was however only local interplanetary ifight up to this period Earth had taken no part in Galactic history. It was inevitable however that Earth should make the two crucial discoveries which would bring it on to that starry stage. We may be very sure that Vega had she known that Earth was to be her successor would have exerted all of her enormous might to prevent it. That Vega failed to do so is evidence enough that she had no real idea of what was happening on Earth at this time ACREFF MONALES: The Milky Way: Five Cultural Portraits BOOK ONE PRELUDE: Washington We do not believe any group of men adequate enough pr wise enough to operate without scrutiny ot without cri i . cism. We know that the only way to avoid error is tO detect it that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will. flourish and subvert. J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER Tun sii nows flickered on the walls to his left and right just inside the edges of his vision like shapes stepping quickly back into invisible doorways. Despite his bone deep weariness they made him nervous almost made him wish that Dr. Corsi would put out the fire. Nevertheless he remained staring into the leaping orange 1ight feeling the heat tightening his cheeks and the skin around his eyes and soaking into his chest. Corsi stirred a little beside him but Senator Wagoner s own weight on the sofa seemed to have been increasing ever since he had first sat down. He felt dxained lethargic as old and heavy as a stone despite his forty eight years it had been a bad day in a long succession of bad days. Good days in Washington were the ones you slept through. Next to him Corsi for all that he was twenty years older formerly Director of the Bureau of Standards formerly Director of the World Health Organization and presently head man of the American Association for the Advancement of Science usually referred to in Washington as the left wing Triple A S felt as light and restless and quick as a chameleon. I suppose you know what a chance you re taking coming to see me Corsi said in his dry whispery voice. I wpuldn t be in Washington at all if I didn t think the 0 interests of the AAAS required it. Not after the drubbing I ve taken at MacHinery s hands. Even outside the government it s like living in an aquarium in a tank labeled Piranha. But you know about all that. I know the senator agreed. The shadows jumped forward and retreated. I was followed here myself. MacHinery s gumshoes have been trying to get something on me for a long time. But I had to talk to you Seppi. rye done my best to understand everything I ve found in the committee s files since I was made chairman but a non scientist has inherent limitations. And I didn t want to ask revealing questions of any of the boys on my staff. That would be a sure way to a leak probably straight to MacHinery. That s the definition of a government expert these days Corsi said even more dryly. A man of whom you don t dare ask an important question. Or who ll give you only the answer he thinks you want to hear Wagoner said heavily. I ve hit that too. Working for the government isn t a pink tea for a senator either. Don t think I haven t wanted to be back in Alaska more than once I ve got a cabin on Kodiak where I can en joy an open fire without wondering if the shadows it throws carry notebooks. But that s enough self pity. I ran for the office and I mean to be good at it as good as I can be anyhow. Which is good enough Côrsi said unexpectedly taking the brandy snifter out of Wagoner s lax hand and replenishing the little amber lake at the bottom of it. The vapors came welling up over his cupped hand heavy and rich. 1 Bliss when I first heard that the Joint Congressional Committee on Space Flight was going to fall into the hands of a freshman senator one who d been nothing but a press agent before his election Please Wagoner said wincing with mock tenderness. A public relations counsel. As you like. Still and all I turned the air blue. I knew it wouldn t have happened if any senator with seniority had wanted the committee and the fact that none of them did seemed to me to be the worst indictment of the present Congress anyone could ask for. Every word I said was taken down of course and will be used against you sooner or later. It s already been used against me and thank God that s over. But I was wrong about you. You ve done a whale of a good job you ve learned like magic. So if you want to cut your political throat by asking me for advice then by God I ll give it to you. Corn thrust the suifter back into Wagoner s hand with something more than mock fury. That goes for you ad for nobody else he added. I wouldn t tell anybody else in government the best way to pound sand not unless th AAAS asked me to. I know you wouldn t Seppi. That s part of our trouble. Thanks anyhow. He swirled the brandy reflectively. All right then tell me this: what s the matter with space ifight The army Corsi said promptly. Yes but that s not all. Not by a long shot. Sure the Army Space Service is graft ridden shot through with jealousy and gone rigid in the brains. But it was far worse back in the days when a half dozen branches of government were working on space flight at the same time the weather bureau the navy your bureau the air force and so on. I ve seen some documents dating back that far. The Earth Satellite Program was announced in 1944 by Stuart Symington we didn t actually get a manned vehicle up there until 1962 after the army was given full jurisdiction. They couldn t even get the damned thing off the drawing boards every rear admiral insisted that the plans include a parking place for his pet launch. At least now we have space flight. But there s something far more radically wrong now. If space flight were still a live proposition by now some of it would have been taken away from the army again. There d be some merchant shipping maybe or even small passenger lines for a luxury trade for the kind of people who ll go in uncomfortable ways to uñliveable places just because it s horribly expensive. He chuckled heavily. Like fox hunting in England a hundred years ago wasn t it Oscar Wilde who called it the pursuit of the inedible by the unspeakable Isn t it still a little early for that Corsi said. In 2013 I don t think so. But if I m rushing us on that one point I can mention others. Why have there been no major exploratory expeditions for the past fifteen years I should have thought that as soon as the tenth planet Proserpine was discovered some university or foundation would have wanted to go there. It has a big fat moon that would make a fine base no weather exists at those ternperatures there s no sun in the sky out there to louse up photographic plates it s only another zero magnitude star and so on. That kind of thing used to be meat and drink to pris ate explorers. Given a millionaire with a thirst for science like old Hale and a sturdy organizer with a little grandstand in him a Byrd type and we should have had a Proserpine Two station long ago. Yet space has been dead since Titan Station was set up in 1981. Why He watched the flames for a moment. Then he said there s the whole question of invention in the field. It s stopped Seppi. Stopped cold. Corsi said: I seem to remember a paper from the boys on Titan not so long ago On xenobacteriology. Sure. That s not space ifight Seppi space flight only made it possible their results don t update space flight itself don t improve it make it more attractive. Those guys aren t even interested in it. Nobody is any more. That s why it s stopped changing. For instance: we re still using ion rockets driven by an atomic pile. It works and there are a thousand minor variations on the principle but the principle itself was described by Coupling in i954 Think of it Seppi not one single new basic engine design in fifty years And what about hull design That s still based on von Braun s work older even than Coupling s. Is it really possible that there s nothing better than those frameworks of hitched onions Or those powered gliders that act as ferries for them Yet I can t find anything in the committee s files that looks any better. Are you sure you d know a minor change from a major one You be the judge Wagoner said grimly. The hottest thing in current spaceship design is a new elliptically wound spring for acceleration couches. It drags like a leaf spring with gravity and pushes like a coil spring against it. The design wastes energy in one direction stores it in the other. At last reports couches made with it feel like sacks stuffed with green tomatoes but we think we ll have the bugs out of it soon. Tomato bugs I suppose. Top Secret. There s one more Top Secret I m not supposed to know Corsi said. Luckily it ll be no trouble to forget. right try this one. We have a new water bottle for ships stores. It s made of aluminum foil to be collapsed from the bottom like a toothpaste tube to feed the water into the mati s mouth. But a plastic membrane collapsed by air pressure is handier weighs less Sure it does. An this foil tube is already standard for paste rations. All that s new abotit this thing is the proposal that we use it for water too. The proposal came to us from a lobbyist for CanAm Metals with strong endorsements by a couple of senators from the Pacific Northwest. You can guess what we did with it. I am beginning to see your drift. Then I ll wind it up as fast as I can Wagoner said. What it all comes to is that the whole Structure of space ifight as it stands now is creaking obsolescent over elaborate decaying. The field is static no worse than that it s losing ground. By this time our ships ought to be sleeker and faster and able to carry bigger payloads. We ought to have done away with this dichotomy between ships that can land on a planet and ships that can fly from one planet to another. The whole question of using the planets for something.. . something that is besides research ought to be within sight of settlement. Instead nobody even discusses it any more. And our chances to settle it grow worse every year. Our appropriations are dwindling as it gets harder and harder to convince the Congress that space ffight is really good for anything. You can t sell the Congress on the long range rewards of basic research anyhow representatives have to stand for election every two yeais senators every six years that s just about as far ahead as most of them are prepared to look. And suppose we tried to explain to them the basic research we re doing We couldn t it s classified And above all Seppi this may be only my personal ignorance speaking but if so I m stuck with it above all I think that by now we ought. to have some slight clue toward an interstellar drive. We ought even to have a model no matter how crude as crude as a Fourth of July rocket compared to a Coupling engine but with the principle visible. But we don t. As a matter of fact we ve written off the stars. Nobody I can talk to thinks we ll ever reach them. Corsi got up and walked lightly to the window where he stood with his back to the room as though trying to look through the light tight blind down on to the deserted street. To Wagoner s fire dazed eyes he was scarcely more than a shadow hip self. The senator found himself thinking for perhaps the twentieth time in the past six months that Corsi might even be glad to be out of it all branded unreliable though he was. Then again for at least the twentieth time Wagoner remembered the repeated clearance hearings the oceans of dubious testimony and gossip from witnesses with no faces or names the clamor in the press when Corsi was found to have roomed in college with a man suspected of being an ex YPSL member the denunciation on the senate floor by one of MacHinery s captive solons more hearings the endless barrage of vilification and hatred the letters beginning Dear Doctor Corsets You bum and signed True American. To get out of it that way was worse than enduring it no matter how stoutly most of your fellow scholars stood by you afterwards. I shan t be the first to say so to you the physicist said turning at last. I don t think we ll ever reach the stars either Bliss. And I am not very conservative as physicists go. We just don t live long enough for us to become a star traveling race. A mortal man limited to speeds below that of light is as unsuited to interstellar travel as a moth would be to crossing the Atlantic. I m sorry to believe that certainly but I do believe it. Wagoner nodded and filed the speech away. On that subject be had expected even less than Corsi had given him But Corsi said lifting his snifter from the table it isn t impossible that interplanetary flight could be bettered. I agree with you that it s rotting away now. I d suspected that it might be and your showing tonight is conclusive. Then why is it happening Wagoner demanded. Because scientific method doesn t work any more. What Excuse me Seppi but that s sort of like hearing an archbishop say that Christianity doesn t work any more. What do you mean Corsi smiled sourly. Perhaps I was overdramatic. But it s true that under present conditions scientific method is a blind alley. It depends on freedom of information and we deliberately killed that. In my bureau when it was mine we seldom knew who was working on what project at any given time we seldom knew whether or not somebody else m the bureau was duplicating it we never knew whether or not some other department might be duplicating it. All we could be sure of was that many men working in similar fieIds were stamping their resuib Secret because that was the easy way not only to keep the work out of Russian hands but lo keep the workers in the clear if their own government should investigate them. How can you apply scientific method to a problem when you re forbidden to see the data Then there s the caliber of scientist we have working for the government now. The few first rate men we have are so harassed by the security set up and by the constant suspicion that s focused on them because they are top men in their fields and hence anything they might leak would be particularly valuable that it takes them years to solve what used to be very simple problems. As for the rest well our staff at Standards consisted almost entirely of third raters: some of them were very dogged and patient men indeed but low on courage and even lower on imagination. They spent all their time operating mechanically by the cook book the routine of scientific method and had less to show for it every year. Everything you ve said could be applied to the spaceifight research that s going on now without changing a comma Wagoner said. But Seppi if scientific. method used to be sound it should still be sound. It ought to work for anybody even third raters. Why has it suddenly turned sour now after centuries of unbroken successes The time lapse Corsi said somberly is of the first importance. Remember Bliss that scientifiQ method is not a natural law. It doesn t exist in nature but only in our heads in short it s a way of thinking about things a way of sifting evidence. It was bound to become obsolescent sooner or later just as sorites and paradigms and syllogisms became obsolete before it. Scientific method works fine while there are thousands of obvious facts lying about for the taking fact as obvious and measurable as how fast a stone falls or what the order of the colors is in a rainbow. But the more subtle the facts to be discovered become the more they retreat into the realms of the invisible the intangible the unweighable the submicroscopic the abstract the more expensive and timeconsuming it is to investigate them by scientific method. And when you reach a stage where the only researeh worth doing costs millions Of dollars per experiment then those experiments can be paid for only by government. Governments can make the best use only of third rate men men who can t leaven the instructions in the cookbook with the flashes of insight you need to make basic discoveries. The result is what you see: sterility stasis dry rot. Then what s left Wagoner said. What are we 9oing to do now I know you well enough to suspect that you re not going to give up all hope. No Corsi said I haven t given up but I m quite helpless to change the situation you re complaining about After all I m on the outside. Which is probably good for me. He paused and then said suddenly: There s no hope of getting the government to drop the security system completely Completely Nothing else would do. No Wagoner said. Not even partially I m afraid. Not any longer. Corsi sat down and leaned forward his elbows on his knobby knees staring into the dying coals. Then I have two pieces of advice to give you Bliss. Actually they re two sides of the same coin. First of all begin by abandoning these multi million dollar Manhattan District approaches. We don t need a newer still finer measurement of electron resonance one tenth so badly as we need new pathways new categories of knowledge. The colossal research project is defunct what we need now is pure skullwork. From my staff From wherever you can get it. That s the other half of my recommendation. If I were you I would go to the crackpots. Wagoner waited. Corsi said these things for effect he liked drama in small doses. He would explain in a moment. Of course I don t mean total crackpots Corsi said. But you ll have to draw the line yourself. You need marginal contributors scientists of good reputation generally whose obsessions don t strike fire with other members of their profession. Like the Crehore atom or old Ehrenhaft s theory of magnetic currents or the Milne cosmology you ll have to find the fruitful one yourself. Look for discards and then find out whether or not the idea deserved to be totally discarded. And don t accept the first expert opinion that you get. Winnow chaff in other words. What else is there to winnow Corsi said. Of course it s a long chance but you can t turn to scientists of real stature now it s too late for that. Now you ll have to use sports freaks near misses. Starting where Oh said Corsi how ab out gravity I don t know any other subject that s attracted a greater quota of idiot speculations. Yet the acceptable theories of what gravity is are of no practical use to us. They can t be put to work to help lift a spaceship. We can t manipulate gravity as a field we don t even have a set of equations for it that we can agree upon. No more will we find such a set by spending fortunes and decades on the project. The law of diminishing returns has washed that approach out. Wagoner got up. You don t leave me much he said glumly. No Corsi agreed. I leave you only what you started with. That s more than most of us are left with Bliss. Wagoner grinned tightly at him and the two men shook hands. As Wagoner left he saw Corsi silhouetted against the fire his back to the doOr his shoulders bent. While he stood there a shot blatted not far away and the echoes bounded back from the face of the embassy across the street. It was not a common sound in Washington but neither was it unusual: it was almost surely one of the city s thousands of anonymous snoopers firing at a counter agent a cop or a shadow. Corsi made no responding movement. The senator closed the door quietly. He was shadowed all the way back to his own apartment but this time he hardly noticed. He was thinking about an immortal man who flew from star to Star faster than light. CHAPTER ONE New York In the newer media of communication ... the popularization of science is confounded by rituals of mass entertainment. One standard routine dramatizes science through the biography of a hero scientist: at the denouement lie is discovered in a lonely laboratory crying Eureka at a murky test tube held up to a bare light bulb. GERARD PIEL THE PARADE of celebrities notorieties and just plain brass that passed through the reception. room of Jno. Pfltzner Sons was marvelous to behold. During the hour and a half that Colonel Paige Russell had been cooling his heels he had identified the following publicity saints: Senator Bliss Wagoner Dem. Alaska chairman of the Joint CongresiIonal Committee on Space Flight Dr. Guiseppi Corsi president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a former Director of the World Health Organization and Francis Xavier MacHinery hereditary head of the FBI. He had seen also a number of other notables of lesser caliber but whose business at a firm which made biologicals was an equally improper subject for guessing games. He fidgeted. At the present moment the girl at the desk was talking softly with a seven star general which was a rank nearly as high as a man could rise in the army. The general was so preoccupied that he had failed completely to recognize Paige s salute. He was passed through swiftly. One of the two swinging doors with the glass ports let into them moved outward behind the desk and Paige caught a glimpse of a stocky dark haired pleasant faced man in a conservative grosse pointilliste suit. Gen. Horsefleld glad to see you. Come in. The door closed leaving Paige once more with nothing to look at but the motto written over the entrance in German black letter: tbev ben ob t t hem xaut1ein eb atb en Since he did not know the language he had already translated this by the If only it were English system which made it come out The fatter toad is waxing on the kine s cole slaw. This did not seem to fit what little he knew about the eating habits of either animal and it was certainly no fit admonition for workers. Of course Paige could always look at the receptionist but after an hour and a half he had about plumbed the uttermost depths of that ecstasy. The girl was pretty in a way but hardly striking even to a recently returned spaceman. Perhaps if someone would yank those black rimmed pixie glasses away from her and undo that bun at the back of her head she might pass at least in the light of a whale oil lamp in an igloo during a record blizzard. This too was odd now that he thought about it. A firm as large as Pfitzner could have its pick of the glossiest of office girls especially these days. Then again the whole of Pfitzner might well be pretty small potatoes to the parent organization A. 0. LeFevre et Cie. Certainly at least Le Fevre s Consolidated Warfare Service operation was bigger than the Pfltzner division and Peacock Camera and Chemicals probably was too Pfitzner which was the pharmaceuticals side of the cartel was a recent acquisition bought after some truly remarkable broken field running around the diversification amendments to the anti trust laws. All in all Paige was thoroughly well past mere mild annoyance with being stalled. He was after all here at these people s specific request doing them a small favor which they had asked of him and soaking up good leave time in the process. Abruptly he got up and strode to the desk. Excuse me miss he said but I think you re being goddamned impolite. As a matter of fact I m beginning to think you people are making a fool of me. Do you want these or don t you He unbuttoned his right breast pocket and pulled out three little plioflim packets heat sealed to plastic mailing tags. Each packet contained a small spoonful of dirt. The tags were addressed to Jno. Pfitzner Sons div. A. 0. LeFevre et Cie the Bronx 153 WPO 249920 Earth and each card carried a 25 rocket mail stamp for which Pfltzner had paid still uncancelled. Colonel Russell I agree with you the girl said looking up at him seriously. She looked even less glamorous than she had at a distance but she did have a pert and interesting nose and the current royal purple lip shade suited her better tba it did most of the starlets to be seen on 3 V these days. It s just that you ve caught us on a very bad day. We do want the samples of course. They re very important to us otherwise we wouldn t have put you to the trouble of collecting them for us. Then why can t I give them to someone You could give them to me the girl suggested gently. I ll pass them along faithfully I promise you. Paige shook his head. Not after this run around. I did just what your firm asked me to do and I m here to see the results. I picked up. soils from every one of my ports of call even when it was a nuisance to do it. I mailed in a lot of them these are only the last of a series. Do you know where these bits of dirt came from I m sorry it s slipped my mind. It s been a very busy day. Two of them are from Ganymede and the other one is from Jupiter V right in the shadow of the Bridge gang s shack. The normal temperature on both satellites is about two hundred degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Ever try to swing a pick against ground frozen that solid working inside a spacesuit But I got the dirt for you. Now I want to see why Pfltzner wants dirt. The girl shiugged. I m sure you were told why before you even left Earth. Supposing I was I know that you people get drugs out of dirt. But aren t the guys who bring in the samples entitled to see how the process works What if Pfltzner gets some new wonder drug out of one of my samples couldn t I have a sentence or two of explanation to pass on to my kids The swinging doors bobbed open and the affable face of the stocky man was thrust into the room. Dr. Abbott not here yet Anne he said. Not yet Mr. Gunn. I ll call you the minute he arfives. But you ll keep me sitting at least another ninety minutes Paige said flatly. Gunn looked him over staring at the colonel s eagle on his collar and stopping at the winged crescent pinned over his pocket. Apologies Colonel but we re having ourselves a small crisis today he said Smiling tentatively. I gather you ve brought us some samples from space. If you could possibly come back tomorrow I d be happy to give you all the time in the world. But right now Gunn ducked his head in apology and pulled it in as though he had just cuckooed 2400 and had to go somewhere and lie down until 0100. Just before the door came to rest behind him a faint but unmistakable sound slipped through it. Somewhere in the laboratories of Jno. Pfitzner Sons a baby was crying. Paige listened blinking until the sound was damped off. When he looked back down at the desk again the expression of the girl behind it seemed distinctly warier. Look he said. I m not asking a great favor of you. I don t want to know anything I shouldn t know. All I want to know is how you plan to process my packets of soil. It s just simple curiosity backed up by a trip that covered a few hundred millions of miles. Am I entitled to know for my trouble or not You are and you aren t the girl said steadily. We want your samples and we ll agree that they re unusually interesting to us because they came from the Jovian system the first such we ve ever gotten. But that s no guarantee that we ll find anything useful in them. It isn t No. Colonel Russell you re not the first man to come here with soil samples believe me. Granted that you re the first man to bring anything back from outside the orbit of Mars in fact you re only the sixth man to deliver samples from any place farther away than the Moon. But evidently you have no idea of the volume of samples we get here routinely. We ve asked virtually every space pilot every Believer missionary every commercial traveler every explorer every foreign correspondent to scoop up soil samples for us wherever they may go. Before we discovered ascomycin we had to screen one hundred thousand soil samples including several hundred from Mars and nearly five thousand from the Moon. And do you know where we found the organism that produces ascomycin On an over ripe peach one of our detail men picked up from a peddler s stall in Baltimore I see the point Paige said reluctantly. What s as.. comycin by the way The girl looked down at her desk and moved a piece of paper from here to there. It s a new antibiotic she said. We ll be marketing it soon. But I could tell you the same kind of story about other such drugs. I see. Paige was not quite sure he did see however after all. He had heard the name Pfltzner fall from some very unlikely lips during his many months in space. As far as he had been able to determine after he had become sensitized to the sound about every third person on the planets was either collecting samples for the firm or knew somebody who was. The grapevine which among space men was the only trusted medium of communication had it that the company was doing important government work. That of course was nothing unusual in the Age of Defense but Paige bud heard enough to suspect that Pfitzner was something special .something as big perhaps as the historic Manhattan District and at least twice as secret. The door opened and emitted Gunn for the second time hand running this time all the way. Not yet he said to the girl. Evidently he isn t going to make it. Unfortunate. But I ve some spare time now Colonel Russell Paige Russell Army Space Corps. Thank you. If you ll accept my apologies for our preoccupation Colonel Russell I ll be glad to show you around our little establishment My name by the way is Harold Gunn vice president in charge of exports for the Pfitzner division. I m importing at the moment Paige said holding out the soil samples. Gunn took them reverently and dropped them in a pocket of his jacket. But Fd enjoy seeing the labs. He nodded to the girl and the doors closed between them. He was inside. The place was at least as fascinating as he had expected it to be. Gunn showed him first the rooms where the incoming samples were classified and then distributed to the laboratories proper. In the first of these a measured fraction of a sample was dropped into a one litre flask of sterile distilled water swirled to distribute it evenly and then passed through a series of dilutions. The final suspensions were then used to inoculate test tube slants and petri plates containing a wide variety of nutrient media which went into the incubator. In the next lab here Dr. Aquino isn t in at the moment so we mustn t touch anything but you can see through the glass quite clearly we transfer from the plates and agar slants to a new set of media Gunn explained. But here each organism found in the sample has a set of cultures of its own so that if it secretes anything into one of the media that something won t be contaminated. If it does the amount must be very tiny Paige said How do you detect it Directly by its action. Do you see the rows of plates with the white paper discs in their centers and the four furrows in the agar radiating from the discs Well each one of those furrows is impregnated with culture medium from one of the pure cujtures. If all four streaks grow thriving bacterial colonies then the medium on the paper disc contains no antibiotic against those four germs. If one or more of the streaks fails to grow or is retarded compared to the others then we have hope. In the succeeding laboratory antibiotics which had been found by the disc method were pitted against a whole spectrum of dangerous organisms. About 90 per cent of the discoveries were eliminated here Gunn explained either beáause they were insufficiently actiVe or because they duplicated the antibiotic spectra of already known drugs. What we call insufficiently active varies with the circumstances however he added. An antibiotic which shows any activity against tuberculosis or against Hansen s disease leprosy is always of interest to us even if it attacks no other germ at all. A few antibiotics which passed their spectrum tests went on to a miniature pilot plant where the organisms that produced them were set to work in a deep aerated fermentation tank. From this bubbling liquor comparatively large amounts of the crude drug were extracted purified and sent to the pharmacology lab for tests on animals. We lose a lot of otherwise promising antibiotics here too Gunn said. Most of them turn out to be too toxic to be used in or even on the human body. We ve had Hansen s bacillus knocked out a thousand times in the test tube only to find here that the antibiotic is much more quickly fatal in vivo than is leprosy ftself. But once we re sure that the drug isn t toxic or that its toxicity is outweighed by its therapeutic efficacy it goes out of our shop entirely lb hospitals and to individual doctors for clinical trial. We fliso bave a virology lab in Vermont where we test our new drugs against virus diseases like the flu and the common cold it isn t safe to operate such a lab in a heavily populated ares like the Bronx. It s much more elaborate than I would have imagined Paige said. But I can see that it s well worth the trouble. Did you work out this sample screening technique here Oh my no Gunn said smiling indulgently. Waksman the discoverer of streptomycin laid down the essential procedure decades ago. We aren t even the first firw to use it on a large scale one of our competitors did that and found a broad spectrum antibiotic called chioramphenicol with it scarcely a year after they d begun. That was what convinced the rest of us that we d better adopt the technique before we got shut out of the market entirely. A good thing too otherwise none of us would have discovered tetracycline which turned out to be the most versatile antibiotic ever tested. Farther down the corridor a door opened. The squall of a baby came out of it much louder than before. It was not the sustained crying of a child who had had a year or so to practice but the short breathed ah la ah la ah la of a newborn infant. Paige raised his eyebrows. Is that one of your experimental animals Ha ha Qunn said. We re enthusiasts in this business Colonel but we must draw the line somewhere. No one of our technicians has a baby sitting problem and so we ve given her permission to bring the child to work with her until she s worked out a better solution. Paige had to admit that Gunn thought fast on his feet. That story had come reeling out of him like so much ticker tape without the slightest sign of a preliminary double take. It was not Gunn s fault that Paige who had been through a marriage which had lasted five years before he had taken to space could distinguish the cry of a baby old enough to be out of a hospital nursery from that of one only days old. Isn t this Paige said a rather dangerous place to park an infant with so many disease germs poisonous dasinfectants and such things all around Oh we take all proper precautions. I daresay our staff has a lower yearly sickness rate than you ll find in industrial plants of comparable size simply because we re more aware of the problem. Now if we go through this door Colonel Russell we ll see the final step the main plant where we turn out drugs in quantity after they ve proved themselves. Yes I d like that. Do you have ascomycin in production now This time Gunn looked at him sharply and without any attempt to disguise his interest. No he said that s still out on clinical trial. May I ask you Colonel Russell just how you happened to The question which Paige realized belatedly would have been rather sticky to answer never did get all the way asked. Over Harold Gunn s head a squawk box said Mr. Gunn Dr. Abbott has just arrived. Gunn turned away from the door that he had said led out to the main plant with just the proper modicum of polite regret. There s my man he said. I m afraid I m going to have to cut this tour short Colonel Russell. You may have seen what a collection of important people we have in the plant today we ve been waiting only for Dr. Abbott to begin a very important meeting. If you ll oblige me Paige could say nothing but Certainly. After what seemed only a few seconds Gunn deposited him smoothly in the reception room from which he had started. Did you see what you wanted to see the receptionist said. I think so Paige said thoughtfully Except that what I wanted to see sort of changed in mid flight. Miss Anne I have a petition to put before you. Would you be kind enough to have dinner with me this evening No the girl said. I ve seen quite a few spacemen Colonel Russell. and I m no longer impressed. Furthermore I shan t tell you anything you haven t heard from Mr. Gunn so there s no need for you to spend your money or your leave time on me. Good by. Not so fast Paige said. I mean business .or if you like I mean to make trouble. If you ve met spacemen before you know that they like to be independent not much like the conformists who never leave the ground. I m not after your maidenly laughter either. I m after information. Not interested the girl saul. Save your breatfl. 4 MacHinery is here Paige said quietly. So is Senator Wagoner and some other people who have influence. Suppose I should collar any one of those people and accuse Pfitzner of conducting human vivisection That told: Paige could see the girl s knuckles whitening. You don t know what you re talking about she said. That s my complaint. And I take it seriously. There were some things Mr. Gunn wasn t able to conceal from me though he tried very hard. Now I am going to put my suspicions through channels and get Pfltzner investigated or would you rather be sociable over a fine flounder broiled in paprika butter The look she gave him back was one of almost pure hatred. She seemed able to muster no other answer. The expression did not at all suit her as a matter of fact she looked less like someone he would want to date than any other girl he could remember. Why should he spend his money or his leave time on her There were after all about five million surplus women in the United States by the Census of 2010 and at least 4 999 950 of them must be prettier and less recalcitrant than this one. All right she said abruptly. Your natural charm has swept me off my feet Colonel. For the record there s no other reason for my acceptance. It would be even funnier to call your bluff and see how far you d get with that vivisection tale but I don t care to tie my company up in a personal joke. Good enough Paige said uncomfortably aware that his bluff in fact had been called. Suppose I pick you up He broke off suddenly noticing that voices were rising behind the double doors. An instant later General Horsefield bulled into the reception room closely followed by Gunn. I want it clearly understood once and for all Horsefield was rumbling that this entire project is going to wind up under military control unless we can show results before it s time to ask for a new appropriation. There s still a lot going on here that the Pentagon will regard as piddling inefficiency and highbrow theorizing. And if that s what the Pentagon reports you know what the Treasury will do or Congress will do it for them. We re going to have to cut back Gunri. Understand Cut right back to basics General we re as far back to basics as we possibly can get Harold Qunn said placatingly enough but with considerable firmness as well. We re not going to put a gram of that drug into production until we re satisfied with it on alJ counts. Any other course would be suicide. You know I m on your side Horsefield said his voice becoming somewhat less threatening. So is General Alsos for that matter. But this is a war we re fighting whether the public understands it or not. And on as sensitive a matter as these death dopes we can t afford Gunn who had spotted Paige belatedly at the conclusion of his own speech had been signaling Horsefleld ever since with his eyebrows and suddenly it took. The general swung around and glared at Paige who since he was uncovered now was relieved of the necessity for saluting. Despite the sudden freezing silence it was evident that Gunn was trying to retain in his manner toward Paige some shreds of professional cordiality a courtesy which Paige was not too sure he merited considering the course his conversation with the girl had taken. As for Horsefleld he relegated Paige to the ghetto of unauthorized persons with a single look. Paige had no intention of remaining in that classification for a second longer than it would take him to get out of it preferably without havi ng been asked his name it was deadly dangerous. With a mumbled at eight then to the girl Paige sidled ingloriously out of the Pfltzner reception room and beat it. He was he reflected later in the afternoon before his shaving mirror subjecting himself to an. extraordinary series of small humiliations to get close to a matter which was none of his business. Worse: it was obviously Top Secret which made it potentially lethal even for everyone authorized to know about it let alone for rank snoopers. In the Age of Defense to know was to be suspect in the West as in the USSR the two great nation complexes had been becoming more and more alike in their treatment of security for the past fifty years. It had even been a mistake to mention the Bridge on Jupiter to the girl for despite the fact that everyone knew that the Bridg.e existed anyone who spoke of it with familiarity could quickly earn the label of being dangerously flap jawed. Especially If the speaker like Paige had actually been sta tioned in the Jovian system for a while whether he had had access tO information about the Bridge or not. And especially if the talker like Paige had actually spoken to the Bridge gang worked with them on marginal projects was known to have talked to Charity Dillon the Bridge foreman. More especially if he held military rank making it possible for him to sell security files to Congressmen the traditional way of advancing a military career ahead of normal promotion schedules. And most especially if the man was discovered nosing about a new and different classified project one tO which he hadn t even been assigned. Why after all was he taking the risk He didn t even know the substance of the matter he was no biologist. To all outside eyes the Pfitzner project was simply another piece of research in antibiotics and a rather routine research project at that. Why should a spaceman like Paigé find himself flying so close to the candle already He wiped the depilatory cream off his face into a paper towel and saw his own eyes looking back at him from the concave mirror as magnified as an owl s. The imige however was only his own despite the distortion. It gave him back no answer. CHAPTER TWO: Jupiter V it is the plunge through the forbidden zones that catches the heart with its sheer audaöity. in the history of life there have been few such episodes. it is that which makes us lonely. We have entered a new corridor the cultural corridor. There has been nothing here before us. in it we are utterly alone. In it we are appallingly unique. We look at each other and say it can never be done again. LOREN C. EISELEY A SCREECHING tornado was rocking the Bridge when the alarm sounded the whole structure shuddered and swayed. This was normal and Robert Helmuth on Jupiter V barely noticed it. There was always a tornado shaking the Bridge. The whole planet was enswathed in tornadoes and worse. The scanner on the foreman s board was given 1 14 as the sector where the trouble was. That was at the northwestern end of the Bridge where it broke off leaving nothing but the raging clouds of ammonia crystals and methane and a sheer drop thirty iIes down to the invisible surface. There were no ultra phone eyes at that end to show a general view of the area in so far as any general view was possible because both ends of the Bridge were incomplete. With a sigh Helmuth put the beetle into motion. The little car as flat bottomed and thin through as a bedbug got slowly under way on its ball bearing races guided and held firmly to the surface of the Bridge by ten close set flanged rails. Even so the hydrogen gales made a terrific siren like shrieking between the edge of the vehicle and the deck and the impact of the falling drops of ammonia upon the curved roof was as heavy and deafening as a rain of cannon balls. In fact the drops weighed almost as much as cannon. balls there under Jupiter s two and a half fold gravity although they were not much bigger than ordinary raindrops. Every so often too there was a blast accompanied by a dull orange glare which made the car the deck and the Bridge itself buck savagely even a small shock wave traveled through the incredibly dense atmosphere of the planet like the armor plate of a bursting battleship. These blasts were below however on the surface. While they shook the structure of the Bridge heavily they almost never interfered with its functioung. And they could not in the very nature of thingr do Helmuth any harm. Helmuth after all was not on Jupiter though that was becoming harder and harder for him to bear in mind. Nobody was on Jupiter had any real damage ever been done to the Bridge it probably would never have been repaired. There was nobody on Jupiter to repair it only the machines which were themselves part of the Bridge. The Bridge was building itself. Massive alone and lifeless it grew in the black deeps of Jupiter It had been well planned. From Helmuth s point of view that of the scanners on the beetle almost nothing could be seen of it for the beetle tracks ran down the center of the deck and in the darkness and perpetual storm even ultrawave assisted vision could not penetrate more than a few hundred yards at the most. The width of the Bridge which no one would ever see was eleven miles its height as incomprehensible to the Bridge gang as a skyscraper ttj an ant thirly miles its length deliberately unspecified in the plans fifty four miles at the moment and still increasing a squat colossal structure built with engineering principles methods materials and tools never touched before now. For the very good reason that they would have been impossible anywhere else. Most of the Bridge for instance was made of ice: a marvelous structural material under a pressure of a million atmospheres at a temperature of 94 below zero Fahrenheit. Under such conditions the best structural steel is a friable talc like powder and aluminum becomes a peculiar transparent substance that splits at a tap water on the other hand becomes Ice IV a dense opaque white medium which will deform to a heavy stress but will break only under impacts huge enough to lay whole Earthly cities waste. Never mind that it took millions of megawatts of power to keep the Bridge up and growing every hour of the day the winds on Jupiter blow at velocities up to twenty five thousand miles per hour and will never stop blowing as they may have been blowing for more than four billion years there is power enough. Back home Helmuth remembered there had been talk of starting another Bridge on Saturn and perhaps later still on Uranus too. But that had been politicians talk. The Bridge wt s almost five thousand miles below the visible surface of Jupiter s atmosphere luckily in a way for at the top of that atmosphere the temperature was 76 Fahrenheit colder than it was down by the Bridge but even with that differential the Bridge s mechanisms were just barely manageable. The bottom of Saturn s atmosphere if the radiosonde readings could be trusted was just 16 878 miles below the top of the Saturnian clouds one could see through the telescope and the temperature down there was below 238 F. Under those conditions even pressure ice would be immovable and could not be worked with anything softer than itself. And as for a Bridge on Uranus. As far as Helmuth was concerned Jupiter was quite bad enough. The beetle crept within sight of the end of the Bridge and stopped automatically. Helmuth set the vehicle s eyes for highest penetration and examined the nearby I beams. The great bars were as close set as screening. They had to be in order to support even their own weight let alone: the weight of the components of the Bridge. The gravitydown here was two and a half times as great as Earth s. Even under that load the whole webwork of girders was flexing and fluctuating to the harpist fingered gale. It had been designed to do that but Helmuth could never help being alarmed by the movement. Habit alone assured him that he had nothing to fear from it. He took the automatic cut out of the circuit and inched the beetle forward on manual controL This was only Sector 113 and the Bridge s own Wheatstone scanning system there was no electronic device anywhere on the Bridge since it was impossible to maintain a vacuum on Jupiter said that the trouble was in Sector 114. The boundary of that sector was still fully fifty feet away. It was a bad sign. Helmuth scratched nervously in his red beard. Evidently there was cause for alarm real alarm not just the deep grinding depression which he always felt while working on the Bridge. Any damage serious enough to halt the beetle a full sector short of the trouble area was bound to be major. It might even turn out to be the disaster which he had felt lurking ahead of him ever since he had been made foreman of the Bridge that disaster which the Bridge itself could not repair sending a man reeling home from Jupiter in defeat. The secondaries cut in and the beetle hunkered down once more against the deck the ball bearings on which it rode frozen magnetically to the rails. Grimly Helmuth cut the power to the magnet windings and urged the flat craft inch by inch across the danger line. Almost at once the car tilted just perceptibly to the left and the screaming of the winds between its edges and the deck shot up the scale sirening in and out of the soundless dogwhistle range with an eeriness which set Helmuth s teeth on edge. The beetle itself fluttered and chattered like an alarm clock hammer between the surface of the deck and the flanges of the tracks. Ahead there was still nothing to be seen but the horizontal driving of the clouds and the hail roaring along the length of the Bridge out of the blackness into the beetle s fanllghts and onward into darkness again toward the horizon which like the Bridge itself no eye would ever see. Thirty miles below the fusillade of hydrogen explosions continued. Evidently something really wild was going on down on the surface. Helmuth could not remember having heard so much vulcan sm in years. There was a fiat especially heavy crash and a long line of fuming orange fire came pouring down the seething air into the depths feathering horizontally like the mane of a Lipizzan stallion directly in front of Helmuth. Instinctively he winced and drew back from the board although that stream of flame actually was only a little less cold than the rest of the storming streaming gases and far too cold to injure the Bridge. In the momentary glare however he saw something: an upward twisting of shadows patterned but obviously unfinished fluttering in silhouette against the lurid light of the hydrogen cataract. The end of the Bridge. Wrecked. Helmuth grunted involuntarily and backed the beetle away. The flare dimmed the light poured down the sky and fell away into the raging sea of liquid hydrogen thirty miles below. The scanner clucked with satisfaction as the beetle recrossed the danger line into Sector 113. Helmuth turned the body of the vehicle 180 degrees on its chassis presenting its back to the dying orange torrent. There was nothing further that he could do at the moment for the Bridge. He searched his control board a ghost image of which was cast on the screen across the scene on the Bridge for the blue button marked Garage punched it savagely and tore off his fireman s helmet Obediently the Bridge vanished. CHAPTER THREE: New York Does it not appear as if one who lived habitually on one side of the pain threshold might need a different sort of religion from one who habitually lives on the other WILLIAM JAMF.S Tun GIRL Whose full name Paige found was Anne Ab bott looked moderately acceptable in her summer suit on the left lapel of which she wore a model of the tetracycline molecule with the atoms picked out in tiny synthetic gems. But she was even less inclined to taIk when he picked her up than she had been in Pfitzner s reception room. Paige himself had never been expert at making small talk and in the face of her obvious continuing resentment his parched spring of social invention went underground completely. Five minutes later all talk became impossible anyhow. The route to the restaurant Paige had chosen lay across Foley Square where there turned out to be a Believer Mission going. The Caddy that Paige had hi red at nearly a quarter of his leave pay for commercial kerosene fueled taxis were strictly a rich man s occasional luxury was bogged down almost at once in the groaning swaying crowd. The main noise came from the big plastic proscenium where one of the lay preachers was exhorting the crowd in a voice so heavily amplified as to be nearly unintelligible. Believers with portable tape recorders bags of tracts and magazines sandwich boards lettered with fluorescent inks confessions for sinners to sign and green baize pokes for collections were well scattered among the pedestrians and the streets were crossed about every fifteen feet with the straight black snakes of compressed air triggers. As the Caddy pulled up for the second time a nozzle was thrust into the rear window and a stream of iridescent bubbles poured across the back seat directly under Paige s and Anne s noses. As each bubble burst there was a wave of perfume evidently it was the Celestial Joy the Believers were using this year and a sweet voice said: Brothers S1 ters l N N J J l I NV have on the Liginri. s f4 Is i Paige fought at the bubbles Witfi tutlie winornillings while Anne Abbott leaned back against the cushions of the Caddy and watched him with a faint smile of contemptuous amusement. The last bubble contained no word but only an overpowering burst of perfume. Despite herself the girl s smile deepened: the perfume in addition to being powerfully euphoric was slightly aphrodisiac as well. This year apparently the Believers were readier than ever to use any means that came to hand. The driver lurched the Caddy ahead. Then before Paige could begin to grasp what was happening the car stopped the door next to the steering wheel was wrenched open and four spidery many fingered arms plucked the driver neatly from his seat and deposited him on his knees on the asphalt outside. SHAME SHAME the popai robot thundered. YOUR SINS HAVE FOUND YOU OUT REPENT AND FIND FORGIVENESS A thin glass globe of some gas evidently a narcosynthetic broke beside the car and not only the unfortunate chauffeur but also the part of the crowd which had begun to collect about him mostly women of course began to weep convulsively. REPENT the robot intoned over a sneaked in choir now singing Ah ah ah ah ah h h h h somewhere in the warm evening air. REPENT FOR THE TIME IS AT HAND Paige astonished to find himself choking with source less maudlin self pity flung himself out of the Caddy in search of a nose to break. But there were no live Believers in sight. The members of the order all of whom were charged with spreading the good word by whatever means seemed good to them had learned decades ago that their proselytizing was often resented and had substituted technology for personal salesmanship wherever possible. Their machines too had been forced to learn. The point of purchase robot retreated as Paige bore down upon it. The thing had been conditioned against allowing itself to be broken. The Caddy s driver rescued blew his nose resentfully and started the car again. The wordless choir with its eternal bridge passage straight out of the compositions of Dmitri Tiomkin diminished behind them and the voice of the lay preacher came roaring back through to them over the fading characterless music. I say to you the P.A. system was moaning unctuously like a lady hippo otamus reading A. E. Housman I say to you the world and the things which are the world s come to an end and a quick end. In his overweening pride man has sought even to wrest the stars from their courses but the stars are not man s and he shall rue that day. Ah vanity of vanities all is vanity Preacher v: 796 . Even on mighty Jove man dared to erect a great Bridge as once in Babel he sought to build a tower to heaven. But this also is vanity it is vicious pride and defiance and it too shall bring calamity upon men. Pull down thy vanity I say pull down Ezra lxxxi: 99 . Let there be an end to pride and there shall be peace. Let there be love and there shall be understanding. I say to you At this point the Believers over enthusiastic booby. trapping of the square cut off whatever the preacher was going to say next as far as the occupants of the Caddy were concerned. The car passed over another trigger and there was a blinding rose colored flash. When Paige could see again the car seemed to be floating in mid air and there were actual angels flapping solemnly around it. The vox humana of a Hammond organ sobbed among the clouds. Paige supposed that the Believers had managed to crystalize temporarily perhaps with a supersonic pulse the glass of the windows which he had rolled up to prevent another intromission of bubbles and to project a 3 V tape against the glass crystals with polarized ultra violet light. The random distribution of fluorescent trace c npounds in ordinary window glass would account for the odd way the angels changed color as they moved. Understanding the vision s probable modus operandi left Paige no less furious at the new delay but luckily the thing turned out to be a trick left over from last year s Revival for which the Caddy was prepared. The driver touched something on the dash and the saccharine scene vanished hymns and all. The car lunged abruptly through an opening in the crowd and a moment later the square was behind them. Whew Paige said leaning back at last. Now I understand why taxi depots have vending machines for tripInsurance policies. The Believers weren t much in evidence the last time I was on Earth. Every tenth person you meet is a Believer now Anne said. And eight of the other nine claim that they ve given up religion as a bad job. While you re caught in the middle of one of those Revivals though it s hard to believe the complaints you read about our times that people have no faith and so en. I don t find it so Paige said reflectively. This certainly did not strike him as light social conversation but since it was instead a kind of talk he much more enjoyed talk which was about something he could only be delighted that the ice was broken. I ve no religion of my own but I think that when the experts talk about faith they mean something different than the shouting kind the kind the Believers have. Shouting religions always strike me as essentially like pep meetings among salesmen their ceremonies and their manners are so aggressive because they don t really believe the code themselves. Real faith is so much a part of the world you live in that you seldom notice it and it isn t always religious in the formal sense. Mathematics is based on faith for instance for those who know it. I should have said that it was based on the antithesis of faith Anne said turning a little cooler. Have you had any experience in the field Colonel Some he said without rancor. I d never have been allowed to pilot a ship outside the orbit of the Moon without knowing tensors and if I expect to get my next promotion I m going to have to know spinor calculus as well which I do. Oh the girl said. She sounded faintly dashed. Go on I m sorry I interrupted. You were Eight to interrupt I made my point badly. I meant to say that the mathematician s belief that there is some relationship between maths and the real world is a faith it can t be proven but he feels it very strongly. For that matter the totally irreligious man s belief that there even is a real world corresponding to what his senses show him can t be proven. John Doe and the most brilliant of physicists both have to take that on faith. And they don t conduct ceremonies. symbolizing the belief Anne added and train specialists to reassure them of it every seven days. That s right. In the same way John Doe used to feel that the basic religions of the West had some relationship to the real world which was valid even though it couldn t be proven. And that includes Communism which was born in the West after all. John Doe doesn t feel that way any more and by my guess neither do the Believers or they wouldn t be shouting so loud. In that sense there s not much faith lying around loose these days anywhere as far as I can see. None for me to pick up that much I ve found out the hard way. Here you are the chauffeur said. Paige helped the girl out of the car trying not to notice how much fare he had to pay and the two were shown to a table in the restaurant. Anne was silent again for a while after they were seated. Paige had about decided that she had chosen to freeze up once more and had begun to wonder if he could arrange to have the place invaded by Believers to start the conversation again when she said You seem to have been thinking about faith quite a bit. You talk as though the problem meant something to you. Could you tell me why I d be glad to try he said slowly. The standard answer would be that while you re out in space you have lots of time to think but people use thinking time differently. I suppose I ve been looking for some frame of reference that could be mine ever since I was four when my father and mother split up. She was a Christian Scientist and he was a Dianeticist so they had a lot to fight about. There was a court battle over custody that lasted for nearly five years. I joined the army when I was seventeen and it didn t take me very long to find out that the army is no substitute for a family let alone a church. Then I volunteered for space service school. That was no church either. The army got jurisdiction over space travel when the whole field was just a baby because it had a long tradition of grafting off land grants and it didn t want the navy or the air force to grab off the gravy from any such grants that might be made on the planets. That s one of the army s historic prerogatives the idea is that anything that s found on an army site diamonds uranium anything of value is found money to be lived off during peacetime when the Congress gets stingy with appropriations. I spent more time helping the army space travel department fight unification with the space arms of the other services than I did doing real work in space. That was what I was ordçred to do but it didn t help me to think of space as the ultimate cathedral. Somewhere along in there I got married and we had one son he was born the same day I entered space school. Two years later the marriage was annulled. That sounds funny I know but the circumstances were unusual. When Pfitzner approached me and asked me to pick up soil samples for them I suppose I saw another church with which I could identify myself something humanitarian long range impersonal. And when I found this afternoon that the new church wasn t going to welcome the convert with glad cries well the result is that I m now weeping on your shoulder. He smiled. That s hardly flattering I know. But you ve already helped me to talk myself into a spot where the only next step is to apolo gize which I hereby do. I hope you ll accept it. I think I will she said and then tentatively she smiled back. The result made him tingle as though the air pressure had dropped suddenly by five pounds per square inch. Anne Abbott was one of those exceedingly rare plain girls whose smiles completely transform them as abruptly as the bursting of a star shell. When she wore her normal rather sullen expression no one would ever notice her but a man who had seen her smile might well be willing to kill himself working to make her smile again as often as possible. A wOman who was beautiful all the time Paige thought probably never could know the devotion Anne Abbott would be given when she found that man. Thank you Paige said rather inadequately. Let s order and then I d like to hear you talk. I dumped The Story of My Life into your lap rather early in the game I m afraid. You order she said. You talked about flounder this afternoon so you must know the menu here and you handed me out of the Caddy so nicely that I d like to preserve the illusion. Illusion Don t make me explain she said coloring faintly But. . . . Well the illusion of there being one or two cavaliers in the world still. Since you haven t been a surplus woman on a planet full of lazy males you wouldn t understand the value of a small courtesy or two. Most men I meet want to be shown my mole before they ll bother tO learn my last name. Paige s surprised shout of laughter made heads turn all over the restaurant. He throttled it hurriedly afraid that it would embarrass the girl but she was smiling again mak ing him feel instead as though he had just had three whiskies in quick succession. That s a quick tranformation for me he said This afternoon I was a blackmailer and by my own intention too. Very well then let s have the flounder it s a specialty of the house. I had visiOns of it while I was on Ganymede munching my concentrates. I think you had the right idea about Pfitzner Anne said slowly when the waiter had gone. I can t tell you any secrets about it but maybe I can tell you some bits of common knowledge that you evidently don t know. The project the plant is working on now seems to me to fit your description exactly: it s humanitarian impersonal and just about as long range as any project I can imagine. I feel rather religious about it in your sense. It s something to tie to and it s better for me than being a Believer or a WAC. And I think you could understand why I feel that way better than either Hal Gunn or I thought you could. It was his turn to be embarrassed. He cov red by dosing his Blue Points with Worcestershire until they flinched visibly. I d like to know. It goes like this she said. In between 1940 and 1960 a big change took place in Western medicine. Before 1940 in the early part of the century the infectious diseases were major killers. By 1960 they were all but knocked out of the running. The change started with the sulfa drugs then came fleming and Florey and mass production of penicillin during World War II. After that war we found a whole arsenal of new drugs against tuberculosis which had really never been treated successfully before streptomycin PAS isoniazid viomycin and so on right up to Bloch s isolation of the TB toxins and the development of the metabolic blocking agents. Then came the broad spectrum antibiotics like tarramycin which attacked some virus diseases protozoan diseases even worm diseases that gave us a huge clue to a whole set of tough problems. The last major infectious disease bilharzia or schistosomiasis was reduced to the status of a nuisance by 1966. But we still have infectious diseases Paige objected. Of course we do the girl said the little atomS points in her brooch picking up the candle light as she leaned forward. No drug ever wipes out a disease because it s impossible to kifi all the dangerous organisms in the world just by treating the patients they invade. But you can reduce the danger. In the 1950 s for instance malana was the world s greatest killer. Now it s as rare as diphtheria. We still have both diseases with us but how long has it been since you heard of a case of either You re asking the wrong man germ diseases aren t common on space vessels. We bump any crewman who shows up with as much as a head cold. But you win the point all the same. Go on. What happened then Something kind of ominous. Life insurance companies and other people who kept records began to be alarmed at the way the degenerative diseases were coming to the fore. Those are such ailments as hardening of the arteries coronary heart disease embolisms and almost all the many forms of cancer diseases where one or another body mechanism suddenly goes haywire without any visible cause. Isn t old age the cause No the girl said forcefully. Old age is just the age it s not a thing in itself it s just the time of life when most degenerative diseases strike. Some of them prefer children leukemia or cancer of the bone marrow for instance. When the actuaries first began to notice that the degenerative diseases were on the rise they thought that it was just a sort of side effect of the decline of the infectious diseases. They thought that cancer was increasing because more people were living lông enough to come down with it. Also the reporting of the degenerative diseases was improving and so part of the rise in incidence really was an illusion it just meant that more cases than before were being detected. But that wasn t all there was to it. Lung cancer and stomach cancer in particular continued to creep up the statistical tables far beyond the point which could have been accounted for by better reporting or by the increase in the average life span either. Then the same thing took place in malignant hypertension in Parkinsonism and other failures of the central nervous system in muscular dystrophy and so on and so on. It began to look very much as though we d exchanged a devil we knew for a devil we didn t. So there was quite a long search for a possible infectious origin for each of the degenerative diseases. Because some animal tumors like poultry sarcoma are caused by viruses a lot of people set to work hunting like mad for all kinds of cancer viruses. There was a concerted attempt to implicate a group called the pleuropneumonia like organisms as the cause of the arthritic diseases. The vascular diseases like hypertension and thrombosis got blamed on everything from your diet to your grandmother. And it all came to very little. Oh we did find that some viruses did cause some types of cancer leukemia among them. The PPLO group does cause a type of arthritis too but only the type associated with a venereal disease called essential urethritis. And we found that the commonest of the three types of lung cancer was being caused by the radio potassium content of tobacco smoke it was the lip and mouth cancers that were caused by the tars. But for the most part we found out just what we had known before that the degenerative diseases weren t infectious. We d already been down that dead end. About there was when Pfitzner got into the picture. The NHS the National Health Service got alarmed enough about the rising incidence curves to call the first really major world congress on the degenerative diseases. The U.S. paid part of the bill because the armed services were getting nervous about the rising rate of draft rejections. I heard some talk about that part of it Paige said. It started right in my own service. A spaceman only has about ten years of active life after that he s given garrison duty somewhere so we like to catch em young. And even then we were turning back a huge proportion of young volunteers for diseases of old age incipient circulatory disease in most cases. The kids were shocked most of them had never suspected any such thing they felt as healthy as bulls and in tIle usual sense I suppose they were but not for space flight. Then you saw one of the key factors very early Anne said. But it s no longer a special problem of the Space Service alone. It s old stuff to all the armed services medical departments now at the time the NHS stepped in the overall draft rejection rate for diseases of old age was about 10 per cent for men in their early twenties. Anyhow the result of the congress was that the U.S. Department of Health Welfare and Security somehow got a billion dollar appropriation for a real mass attack on the degenerative diseases. In case you drop zeros as easily as I do that was about half what had been spent to produce the first atomic bomb. Since then the appropriation has been added to once and it s due foi renewal again now. Pfitzner holds the major contract on that project and we re well enough staffed and equipped to handle it so that we ve had to do very little sub contracting. We simply share the appropriation with three other producers of biologicals two of whom are producers only and so have no hand in the research the third firm has done as much research as we have but we know because this is supposed to be a co ordinated effort with sharing of knowledge among the contractors that they re far gone down another blind alley. We would have told them so but after one look at what we d found the government decided that the fewer people who know about it the better. We didn t mind after all we re in business to make a profit too. But that s one reason why you saw so many government people on our necks this aftçrnoon. The girl broke off abruptly and delved into her pocketbook producing a fiat compact which she opened and inspected intently. Since she wore almost no make up it was hard to imagine the reason for the sudden examination but after a brief odd smile at one corner of her mouth she tucked the compact away again. The other reason she said is even simpler now that you have the background. We ve just found what we think may be a major key to the whole problem. Wow Paige said inelegantly but aft etuoso. Or zowie or biff bam krunk Anne agreed calmly or maybe God help us every one. But so far the thing s held up. It s passed every test. If it keeps up that performance Pfitzner will get the whole of the new appropriation and if it doesn t there may not be any appropriation at all not only for Pfitzner but for the other firms that have been helping on the project. The whole question of whether or not we lick the degenerative diseases hangs on those two things: the validity of the solution we ve found and the money. If one goes the other goes. And we ll have to tell Horsefleld and MacHinery and the others what we ve found some time this month because the old appropriation lapses after that. The girl leaned back and seemed to notice for the first time that she hail finished her dinner. And that she said pushing regretfully at the sprig of parsley with her fork isn t exactly public knowledge yet I think Fd better shut up. Thank you Paige said gravely It s obviously more than I deserve to know Well Anne said you can tell me something if you will. It s about this Bridge that s being built on Jupiter. Is it worth all the money that they re pouring into it Nobody seems to be able to explain what it s good for. And now there s talk that another Bridge ll be started on Saturn when this one s finished You needn t worry Paige said. Understand I ve no connection with the Bridge though I do know some people on the Bridge gang so I haven t any inside information. I do have some public knowledge just like yours meaning knowledge that anyone can have if he has the training to know where to look for it. As 1 understand it the Bridge on Jupiter is a research project designed to answer some questions just what questions nobody s bothered to tell me and I ve been careful not to ask you can see Francis X. MacHinery s face in the constellations if you look carefully enough. But this much I know: the conditions of the research demand the use of the largest planet in the system. That s Jupiter so it would be senseless to build another Bridge on a smaller planet like Saturn. The Bridge gang will keep the present structure going until they ve found out what they want to know. Then the project. will almost surely be discontinued not because the bridge is finished but because it will have served its purpose. I suppose I m showing my ignorance Anne said but it sounds idiOtic to me. All those millions and millions of dollars that we could be saving lives with If the choice were mine Paige agreed I d award the money to you not to Charity Dillon and his crew. But then I know almost as little about the Bridge as you do so perhaps it s just as well that Fm not allowed to route the check. Is it my turn to ask a question I still have a small one. Your witness Anne said smiling her altogether lovely smile. This afternoon while I was in the labs I twice heard a baby crying and I think it was actually two different babies. I asked your Mr. Gunn about it and he told me an obvious fairy story. He paused. Anne s eyes had already begun to glitter. You re on dangerous ground Colonel Russell she said. I can tell. But I mean to ask my question anyhow. When I pulled my absurd vivisection threat on you later I was out and out flabbergasted that it worked but it set me to thinking. Can you explain and if so would you Anne got out her compact again and seemed to consult it warily. At last she said: I suppose I ve forgiven you more or less. Anyhow I ll answer. It s very simple: the babies are being used as experimental animals. We have a pipeline to a local foundling home. It s all only technically legal and had you actually brought charges of human vivisection against us you probably could have made them stick. His coffee cup clattered into its saucer. Great God Anne. Isn t it dangerous to make such a joke these days especially with a man you ve known only half a day Or are you trying to startle me into admitting I m a stoolie I m not joking and I don t think you re a stoolie she said calmly. What I said was perfectly true oh I souped up the way I put it just a little maybe because I haven t entirely forgiven you for that bit of successful blackmail and I wanted to see you jump. And for other reasons. But it s true. But Anne why Look Paige she said. It was fifty years ago that we found that if we. added minute amounts of certain antibiotics really just traces to animal feeds the addition brought the critters to market months ahead of normally fed animals. For that matter it even provokes growth spurts in plants under special conditions and it works for poultry baby pigs calves mink cubs a whole spectrum of animals. It was logical to suspect that it might work in newborn humans too. And you re trying that Paige leaned back and poured himself another glass of Chilean Rhine. I d say you souped up your revelation quite a bit all right. Don t be so ready to accept the obvious and listen to me. We are nor doing that. It was done decades ago regularly and above the board by students of Paul György and half a hundred other nutrition experts. Those people used only very widely known and tested antibiotics drugs that had already been used n literally millions of farm animals dosages worked out to the milligram of drug per kilogram of body weight and so on. But this particular growth stimulating effect of antibiotics happens to be a major clue to whether or not a given drug has the kind of biological activity we want and we have to know whether or not it shows that activity jn human beings . S we screen new drugs on the kids as fast as they re found and pass certain other tests. We have to. I see Paige said. I see. The children are volunteered by the foundling home and we could make a show of legality if it came to a court fight Anne said. The precedent was established in 1952 when Pearl River Labs used children of its own workers to test its live virus polio vaccine which worked by the way. But it isn t the legality of it that s important. It s the question of how soon and how thoroughly we re going to. lick the degenerative diseases. You seem to be defending it to me Paige said slowly as though you cared what I thought about it. So I ll tell you what I think it seems mighty damned cold blooded to me. It s the kind of thing of which ugly myths are made. If ten years from now there s a pogrom against biologists because people think they eat babies I ll know why. Nonsense Anne said. It takes centuries to build up that kind of myth. You re over reacting. On the contrary. I m being as honest with you as you were with me. I m astonished and somewhat repelled by what you ve told me. That s all. The girl her lips slightly thinned dipped and dried her fingertips and began to draw on her gloves. Then we ll say no more about it she said. I think we d better leave now. Certainly as soon as I pay the check. Which reminds me: do you have any interest in Pfitzner Anne a personal interest I mean No. No more interest than any human being with a moment s understanding of the implications would have. And I think that s a rather ugly sort of question. I thought you might take it that way but I really wasn t accusing you of being a profiteer. I just wondered whether or not you were related to the Dr. Abbott that Gunn and the rest were waiting for this afternoon. She got out the compact again and looked carefully into it. Abbott s a common enough name. Sure. Still some Abbotts are related. And it seems to make sense. Let s hear you do that. I d be interested. All right he said beginning to become angry himself. The receptionist at Pfitzner ideally should know exactly what is going on in the plant at all times so as to be able to assess accurately the intentions of every visitor just as you did with me. But at the same time she has to be an absolutely flawless security risk or otherwise she couldn t be trusted with enough knowledge to be that kind of a receptionist. The best way to make sure of the security angle is to hire someone with a blood tie to another person on the project. That adds up to two people who are being careful. A classical Soviet form of blackmail as I recall. That much is theory. There s fact too. You certainly explained the Pfitzner project to me this evening from a broad base of knowledge that nobody could expect to find in an ordinary receptionist. On top of that you took policy risks that properly only an officer of Pfitzner should be empowered to take. I conclude that you re not only a receptionist your name is Abbott and.. there we have it it seems to me. Do we the girl said standing abruptly in a white fury. Not quite Also I m not pretty and a receptionist for a firm as big as Pfitzner is usually pretty striking. Striking enough to resist being pumped by the first man to notice her at least. Go ahead complete the list Tell the whole truth How can I Paige said rising also and looking squarely at her his fingers closing slowly If I told you honestly just what I think of your looks and by God I will I think the most beautiful woman in the world would bathe every day in fuming nitric acid just to duplicate your smile you d hate me more than ever. You d think I was mocking you. Now you tell me the rest of the truth. You are related to Dr. Abbott. Patly enough the girl said each word cut out of sitioking dry ice Dr. Abbott is my father. And I insist upon being allowed to go home now Colonel Russell. Not ten seconds from now but now. CHAPTER FOUR: Jupiter V The firm determination to submit to experiment is not enough there are still dangerous hypotheses first and above all those which are tacit and unconscious. Since we make them without knowing it we are powerlesr to abandon them. HEN1U PoiNcAlui THE BRIDGE vanished as the connection was broken. The continuous ultromc pulses from the Jovian satellites to the selsyns and servos of the Bridge never stopped of course and the Bridge sent back information ceaselessly on the same sub etheric channels to the ever vigilant eyes and ears and hands of the Bridge gang on Jupiter V. But for the mOment the vast structure s guiding intelligence the Bridge gang foreman had quitted it. Helmuth set the heavy helmet carefully in its niche and felt of his temples feeling the blood passing under his fingertips. Then he turned. Dillon was looking at him Well the civil engineer said. What s the matter Bob Is it bad Helmuth did not reply for a moment. The abrupt transition from the storm ravaged deck of the Bridge to the quiet placid air of the operations shack on Jupiter s fifth moon was always a shock. He had never been able to anticipate it let alone become accustomed to it it was worse each time not better. He pulled the jacks from the foreman s board and let them ifick back into the desk on their alive elaslic cables and then got up from the bucket seat moving carefully upon shaky legs feeling implicit in his own body the enormous weights. and pressures his guiding intelligence had just quitted. The fact that the gravity on the foreman s deck was as weak as that of most of the habitable asteroids only made the contrast greater and his need for caution in walking more extreme. He went to the big porthole and looked out. The unworn tumbled monotonous surface of airless Jupiter V looked almost homey after the perpetual holocaust of Jupiter itself. But there was an overpowering reminder of that holocaust for through the thick quartz of the porthole the face of the giant planet stared at. Helmuth across only 112 600 miles less than half the distance between Earth s moon and Earth a sphere section occupying almost all of the sky except the near horizon where one could see a few first magnitude stars. The rest of the sky was crawling with color striped and blotched with the eternal frigid poisonous storming of Jupiter s atmosphere spotted with the deep black planet sized shadows of moons closer to the sun than Jupiter V. Somewhere down there six thousand miles below the clouds that boiled in Helmuth s face was the Bridge. The Bridge was thirty miles high and eleven miles wide and fifty four miles long but it was only a sliver an intricate and fragile arrangement of ice crystals beneath the bulg big racing tornadoes. On Earth even in the West the Bridge would have been the mightiest engineering achievement of all history could the Earth have borne its weight at all. But on Jupiter the Bridge was as precarious and perishable as a snowflake. Bob Dillon s voice asked. What is it You seem more upset than usual. Is it serious Helmuth looked up. His superior s worn young face lantern jawed and crowned by black hair already beginning to gray t the temples was alight both with love for the Bridge and with the consuming ardor of the responsibility he had to bear. As always it touched Helmuth and reminded him that the implacable universe had after all provided one warm corner in which human beings might huddle together. Serious enough he said forming the words with difficulty against the frozen inarticulateness Jupiter had forced upon him. But not fatal as far as I could see. There s a lot of hydrogeó vulcanism on the surface especially at the northwest end and it looks like there must have been a big blast under the cliffs. I saw what looked like the last of a series of fire falls. Dillon s face relaxed while Helmuth was talking slowly line by engraved line. Oh. It was just a flying chunk then. I m almost sure that was what it was. The cross draughts are heavy now. The Spot and the STD are due to pass each other some time next month aren t they I haven t checked but I can feel the difference in the storms. So the chunk got picked up and thrown through the end of the Bridge. A big piece Helmuth shrugged. That end is all twisted away to the left and the deck is burst into matchwood. The scaffolding is all gone too of course. A pretty big piece all right Charity two miles through at a minimum. Dillon sighed. He too went to the window and looked out. Helmuth did not need to be a mind reader to know what he was looking at. Out there across the stony waste of Jupiter V plus 112 600 miles of space the South Tropical Disturbance was streaming toward the great Red Spot and would soon overtake it. When the whirling funnel of the STD niore than big enough to suck three Earths into deep freeze passed the planetary island of sodium tainted ice which was the Red Spot the Spot would follow it for a few thousand miles at the same time rising closer to the surface of the atmosphere. Then the Spot would sink again drifting back toward the incredible jet of stress fluid which kept it in being a jet fed by no one knew what forces at Jupiter s hot rocky 22 000 mile core compacted down there under 16 000 miles of eternal ice. During the entire passage the storms all over Jupiter became especially violent and the Bridge had been forced to locate in anything but the calmest spot on the planet thanks to the uneven distribution of the few permanent land masses. But permanent The quote marks Helmuth s thinking always put around that word were there for a very good reason he knew but. he could not quite remember the reason. It was the damned conditioning showing itself again creating another of the thousand small irreconcilables which contributed to the tension. Helmuth watched Dillon with a certain compassion tempered with mild envy. Charity Dillon s unfortunate given name betrayed him as the son of a hangover the only male child of a Believer family which dated back long before the current resurgence of the Believers. He was one of the hundreds of government drafted experts who had planned the Bridge and he was as obsessed by the Bridge as Helmuth was but for different reasons. It was widely believed among the Bridge gang that Dillon alone among them had not been given the conditiomng but there was no way to test that. Helinuth moved back to the port dropping his hand gently on Dillon s shoulders. Together they looked at the. screaming straw yellows brick reds pinks oranges browns even blues and greens that Jupiter threw across the ruined stone of its innermost sateffite. On Jupiter V even the shadows had color. Dillon did not move. He said at last: Are you pleased Bob Pleased Helmuth said in astonishment. No. It scares me white you know that. I m just glad that the whole Bridge didn t go. You re quite sure Dillon said quietly. Hehnuth took his hand from Dillon s shoulder and returned to his seat at the central desk. You ve no right to needle me for something I can t help he said his voice even lower than Dillon s. I work on Jupiter four hours a day not actually because we can t keep a man alive for more than a split second down there but my eyes and ears and my mind are there on the Bridge four hours a day. Jupiter is not a nice place. I don t like it. I won t pretend I do. Spending four hours a day in an environment like that over a period of years well the human mind instinctively tries to adapt even to the unthinkable. Sometimes I wonder how I ll behave when I m put back in Chicago again. Sometimes I can t remember anything about Chicago except vague .generalities sometimes I can t even believe there is such a place as Earth how could there be when the rest of the universe is like Jupiter or worse I know Dillon said. I ve tried several times to show you that isn t a very reasonable frame of mind. I know it isn t. But I can t help how I feel. For all I know it isn t even my own frame of mind though the part of my mind that keeps saying The Bridge must stand is more likely to be the conditioned part. No I don t think the bridge will last. It can t last it s all wrong. But I don t want to see it go. I ve just got sense enough to know that one of these days Jupiter is going to sweep it away. He wiped an open palm across the control boards snapping all the toggles to Off with a sound like the fall of a double handful of marbles on a pane of glass. Like that Charity And I work four hours a day every day on the Bridge. One of these days Jupiter is going to destroy the Bridge. It ll go flying away in little finders into the storms. My mind will be there supervising some puny job and my mind will go flying away along with my mechani . cal eyes and ears and hands still trying to adapt to the unthinkable tumbling away into the winds and the flames and the rains and the darkness and the pressure and the cold Bob you re deliberately running away with yourself. Cut it out. Cut it out I say Helmuth shrugged putting a trembling hand on the edge of the board to steady himself. All right I m all right Charity. I m here aren t I Right here on Jupiter V in no danger in no danger at all. The Bridge is one hundred and twelve thousand six hundred miles away from here and I ll never be an inch closer to it. But when the day comes that the Bridge is swept away Charity sometimes I imagine you ferrying my body back to the cosy nook it came from while my soul goes tumbling and tumbling through millions of cubic miles of poison. ... All right Charity I ll be good. I won t think about it out loud but you can t expect me to forget it. It s on my mind I can t help it and you should know that. I do Dillon said with a kind of eagerness. I do Bob. I m only trying to help make you see the problem as it is. The Bridge isn t really that awful it isn t worth a single nightmare. Oh it isn t the Bridge that makes me yell out when I m sleeping Helmuth said smiling bitterly. I m not that ridden by it yet. It s while I m awake that I m afraid the Bridge will be swept away. What I sleep with is a fear of myself. That s a sane fear. You re as sane as any of us Dillon insisted fiercely solemn. Look Bob. The Bridge isn t a monster. It s a way we ve developed for studying the behavior of materials under specific conditions of pressure temperature and gravity. Jupiter isn t Hell either it s a set of conditions. The Bridge is the laboratory we set up to work with those conditions. It isn t going anywhere. It s a bridge to noplace. There aren t many places on Jupiter Dillon said missing Helmuth s meaning entirely. We put the Bridge on an island in the local sea because we needed solid ice we could sink the foundation in. Otherwise it wouldn t have mattered where we put it. We could have floated the caissons on the sea itself if we hadn t wanted a fixed point from which to measure storm velocities and such things. I know that Helmuth said. But Bob you don t show any signs of understanding it. Why for instance should the Bridge go any place It isn t even properly speaking a bridge at all. We only call it that because we used some bridge engineering principles in building it. Actually it s much more like a traveling crane an extremely heavy duty overhead rail line. It isn t going anywhere because it hasn t any place interesting to go to that s all. We re extending it to cover as much territory as possible and to increase its stability not to span the distance between places.. There s no point to reproaching it because it doesn t span a real gap between say Dover and Calais. It s a bridge to knowledge and that s far more important. Why can t you see that I can see that that s what I was talking about Hel . muth said trying to control his impatience. I have at present as much common sense as the average child. WhatI am trying to point out is that meeting colpssalness with colossalness out here is a mug s game. It s a game Jupiter will always win without the slightest effort. What if the engineers who built the Dover Calais bridge had been limited to broom straws for their structural members They could have got the bridge up somehow sure and made it strong enough to carry light traffic on a fair day. But what would you have had left of it after the first winter storm came down the Channel from the North Sea The whole approach is idiotic All right Dillon said reasonably. You have a point. Now you re being reasonable. What better approach have you to suggest Should we abandon Jupiter entirely because it s too big for us No Helmuth said. Or maybe yes. I don t know. I don t have any easy answer. I just know that this one is no answer at all it s just a cumbersome evasion. Dillon smiled. You re depressed and no wonder. Sleep it off Bob if you can you Inight even come up with that answer. In the meantime well when you stop to think about it the surface of Jupiter isn t any more hostile inherently than the surface of Jupiter V except in degree. If you stepped out of this building naked you d die just as fast as you would on Jupiter. Try to look at it that way. Helmuth looking forward into another night of dreams said: That s the way I look at it now. BOOK TWO INTERMEZZO: Washington Finally in semantic aphasia the full significance of words and phrases is lost. Separately each word or each detail of a drawing can be understood but the general significance escapes an act is executed on command though the purpose of it is not understood. ... A general conception cannot be formulated but details can be enumerated. HENRI PulRON We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two because two is one and one. We forget that we have still to make a study of and. A. S. EDDINGTON THE REPORT of the investigating sub committee of the Senate Finance Committee on the Jupiter Project was a massive document especially so in the mimeographed uncorrected form in which it had been rushed to Wagoner s desk. In its printed form not due for another two weeks the report would be considerably less bulky but it would probably be more unreadable. In addition it would be tempered in spots by the cautious second thoughts of its seven authors Wagoner needed to see their opinions in the raw for colleagues only version. Not that the printed version would get a much wider circulation. Even the mimeographed document was stamped Top Secret. It had been years since anything about the government s security system had amused Wag oner in the slightest but he could not repress a wry grin now. Of course the Bridge itself was Top Secret but had the sub committee s report been ready only a little over a year ago everybody in the country would have heard about it and selected passages would have been printed in the newspapers. He could think offhand of at least ten opposition senators and two or three more inside his own party who had been determined to use the report to prevent his reelection or any parts of the report that might have been turned to that purpose. Unhaupily for them the report had been still only a third finished when election day had come and Alaska had sent Wagoner back to Washington by a very comfortable plurality. And as he turned the stiff legal length pages slowly with the pleasant smoky odor of duplicator ink rising from them as he turned it became clear that the report would have made pretty poor campaign material anyhow. Much of it was highly technical and had obviously been written by staff advisers not by the investigating senators themselves. The public might be impressed by but it could. not read and would not read such a show of erudition. Besides it was only a show nearly all the technical discussions of the Bridge s problems petered out into meaningless generalities. In most such instances Wagoner was able to put a mental finger on the missing fact the ignorance or the withholding of which had left the chain of reasoning suspended in mid air. Against the actual operation of the Bridge the senators had been able to find nothing of substance to say. Given in advance the fact that the taxpayers had wanted to spend so much money to build a Bridge on Jupiter which is to say somebody Wagoner himself had decided that for them without confusing them by bringing the proposition to their attention then even the opposition senators had had to agree that it had been built as economically as p05 sible and was stll being built that way. Of course there had been small grafts waiting to be discovered and the investigators had discovered them. One of the supply ship captains had been selling cakes o f soap to the crew on Ganymede at incredible prices with the co operation of the store clerk there. But that was nothing more than a bookkeeper s crime on a project the size of the .Bridge. Wagoner a little admired the supplycaptain s ingenuity or had it been the store clerk s in discovering an item wanted badly enough on Ganymede and small enough and light enough to be worth smuggling. The men on the Bridge gang banked most of their salaries automatically on Earth without ever seeing them there was very little worth buying or selling on the moons of Jupiter. Of major graft however there had been no trace. No steel company had sold the Bridge any sub standard castings because there was no steel in the Bridge. A Jovian might have made a good thing of selling the Bridge sub standard Ice IV but as far as anyone could know there were no Jovians so the Bridge got its Ice IV for nothing but the cost of cutting it. Wagoner s office had been very strict about the handling of the lesser contracts for pre fabricated moon huts for supply ferry fuel for equipment and had policed not only its own deals but all the Army Space Service sub contracts connected with the Bridge. As for Charity Dillon and his foreman they were rigidly efficient partly because it was in their natures to work that way and partly because of the intensive conditioning they had all been given before being shipped to the Jovian system. There was no waste to be found in anything that they supervised and if they had occasionally been guilty of bad engineering judgment no outside engineer would be likely to detect it. The engineering principles by which the Bridge operated did not hold true anywhere but on Jupiter. The hugest loss of money the whole Jupiter Project had yet sustained had been accompanied by such carnage that it fell in the senators minds in the category of warfare. When a soldier is killed by enemy action nobody asks how much money his death cost the government through the loss of his gear. The part of the report which described the placing of the Bridge s foundation men tioned reverently the heroism of the lost two hundred and thirty one crewmen it said nothing about the cost of the nine specially designed space tugs which now floated in silhouette as fiat as so many tin cut outs under six million pounds per square inch of pressure somewhere at the bottom of Jupiter s atmosphere floated with eight thousand vertical miles of eternally roaring poisons between them and the eyes of the living. Had those crewmen been heroes They had been enlisted men and officers of the Army Space Service acting under orders. While doing what they had been ordered to do they bad been killed. Wagoner could . not remember whether or not the survivors of that operation had also been called heroes. Oh they had certainly been decorated the Army liked its men to wear as much fruit salad on their chests as it could possibly spoon out to them because it was good public relations but they were not mentioned in the report. This much was certain: the dead men had died because of Wagoner. He had known generally at least that many of them would die but he had gone ahead anyhow. He knew that there might be worse to come. Nevertheless he would proceed because he thought that in the long run it would be worth it. He knew well enough that the end cannot justify the means but if there are no other means and the end is necessary.... But from time to time he thought of Dostoevski and the Grand Inquisitor. Would the Millennium be worth having if it could be ushered in only by the torturing to death of a single child What Wagoner foresaw and planned for was by no means the Millennium and while the children at Jno. Pfitzner Sons were certainly not being tortured or even harmed their experiences there were at least not normal for children. And there were two hundred and thirty one men frozen solid somewhere in the bottomless hell of Jupiter men who had had to obey their orders even more helplessly than children. Wagoner had not been cut out to be a general. The report praised the lost men s heroism. Wagoner lifted the heavy pages one after another looking for a word from the investigating senators about the cause those deaths had served. There was nothing but the convention al phrases for their country for the cause of peace for the future. High order abstractions blabs. The senators had no notion of what the Bridge was for. They had looked but they hadn t seen. Even with a total of four years to think back on the experience they hadn t seen. The very size of the Bridge evidently had convinced them that it was a form of weapons research so much for the cause of peace and that it would be better for them not to know the nature of the weapon until an official announcement was circulated to them. They were right. The Bridge was assuredly a weapon. But in neglecting to wonder what kind of a weapon it might be the senators had also neglected to wonder at whom it was pointed. Wagoner was glad that they had. The report did not even touch upon those two years of exploration of search for some project which might be worth attacking which had preceded even the notion of the Bridge. Wagoner had had a special staff of four devoted men at work during every minute of those two years checking patents that had been granted but not sequestered published scientific papers containing suggestions other scientists had decided not to explore articles in the lay press about incipient miracles which hadn t come off science fiction stories by practicing scientists anything and everything that might lead somewhere. The four men had worked under orders to avoid telling anybody what they were looking for and to stay strictly away frOm the main currents of modern scientific thought on the subject but no secret is ever truly safe no face in nature is ever truly a secret. Somewhere for instance in the files of the FBI was a tape recording of the conversation he had had with the chief of the four man team in his office the day the break came. The man had said not only to Wagoner but to the attentive FBI microphones no senator dared to seek out and muffle: This looks like a real line Bliss. On Subject G. Something on gravity chief. Keep it to the point. A reminder: Keep it too technical to interest a casual eavesdropper if you have to talk about it here with all these bugs to pick it up. Sure. It s a thing called the Blackett equation. Deals with a possible relationship between electron spin and magnetic moment. I understand Dirac did some work on that too. There s a G in the equation and with one simple algebraic manipulation you can isolate the G on one side of the equals sign and all the other elements On the other. Not a crackpot notion this time. Real scientists have been interested in it. There s math to go with it. Status Why was it never followed then The original equation is about status seven but there s no way anybody knows that it could be subjected to an operational test. The manipulated equation is called the Locke Derivation and our boys say that a little dimensional analysis will show that it s wrong but they re not entirely sure. However it is subject to an operational test if we want to pay for it where the original Blackest formula isn t. Nobody s sure what it means yet. It may mean nothing. It would cost a hell of a lot to find out. Do we have the facilities Just how much Only the beginnings. About four billion dollars Bliss. Conservatively Why so much Yes. Field strength again. That was shorthand for the only problem that mattered in the long run if you wanted to work with gravity. Whether you thought .of it like Newton as a force or like Faraday as a field or like Einstein as a condition in space gravity was incredibly weak. It was so weak that although theoretically it was a property of every bit of matter in the universe no matter how small it could not be worked with in the laboratory. Two magnetized needles will rush toward each other over a distance as great as an inch so will two balls of pith as small as peas if they bear opposite electrical charges. Two ceramet magnets no bigger than doughnuts can be so strongly charged that it is impossible to push them together by hand when their like poles are opposed and impossible for a strong man to hold them apart when their unlike poles approach each other. Two spheres of metal of any size if they bear opposite electrical charges will mate in a fat spark across the insulating air if there is no other way that they can neutralize each other. But gravity theoretically one in kind with electricity: and magnetism cannot be charged on to any object. It produces no sparks. There is no such thing as an insulation against it a di gravitic. It remains beyond detection as a force between bodies as small as peas or doughnuts. Two objects as huge as skyscrapers and as massive as lead will take centuries to crawl into the same bed over a foot of distance if nothing but their mutual gravitational attraction is drawing them together even love is faster than that. Even a ball of rock eight thousand miles in diameter the Earth has a gravitational field too weak to prevent one single man from pole vaulting away from it to more than four times his own height driven by no opposing force but that of his spasming muscles. Well give me a report when you can. If necessary we can expand. Is it worth it I ll give you the report this week. Yes And that was how the Bridge had been born though nobody had known it then not even Wagoner. The senators who had investigated the Bridge still didn t know it. MacHinery s staff at the FBI evidently had been unable to penetrate the jargon on their recording of that conversa tion far enough to connect the conversation with the ridge otherwise MacHinery would have given the transcript to the investigators. MacHinery did not exactly love Wagoner he had been unable thus far to find any handle by which he might grasp and use the Alaskan senator. All well and good. . And yet the investigators had come perilowsly close just once. They had subpoenaed Guiseppi Corsi for the prelimjnal y questioning. Cpmmittee Counsel: Now then Dr. Corsi according to our records your last interview with Senator Wagoner was in the winter of 2013.Did you discuss the Jupiter Project with him at that time Corsi: How could I have It didn t exist then. Counsel: But was it mentioned to you in any way Did Senator Wagoner say anything about plans to start such a project Corsi: No. Counsel: You didn t yourself suggest itto Senator Wagoner Corsi: Certainly not. It was a total surprise to me when it was announced afterwards. Counsel: But I suppose you know what it is. Corsi: I know only what the general public has been told. We re building a Bridge on Jupiter. It s very costly and ambitious. What it s for is a secret. That s all. Counsel: You re sure you don t know what it s for Corn: For research. Counsel: Yes but research for what Surely you have some clues. Corsi: I don t have any clues and Senator Wagoner didn t give me any. The only facts I have are thOse I read in the press. Naturally I have some conjectures. But all I know is what is indicated or hinted at in the official announcements. Those seem to convey the impression that the Bridge is for weapons research. Counsel: But you think that maybe it isn t Corsi: I I m not in a position to discuss government projects about which I know nothing Counsel: You could give us your opinion. Corsi: If you want my opinion as an expert I ll have my office go into the subject and let you know later what such an opinion would cost. Senator Billings: Dr. Corsi do we understand that you refuse tO answer the question It seems to me that in view of your past record you might be better advised Corsi: I haven t refused an answer Senator. I make part of my living by consultation. If the government wishes to use me in that capacity it s my right to ask to be paid. You have no right to depriye me of my livelihood or any part of it. Senator Croft: The government made up its mind about employing you some time back Dr. Corsi. And rightly in my opinion. Corsi: That is the government s privilege. Senator Croft: but you are being questioned now by the Senate of the United States. If you refuse to answer you may be held in contempt. Corsi: For refusing to state an opinion Counsel: If you will pardon me Senator Croft the witness may refuse to offer an opinion or withhold such an opinion pending payment. He can be held in contempt only for declining to state the facts as be knows them. Senator Croft: All right let s get some facts and stop the pussyfooting. Counsel: Dr. Corsi was anything said during your last meeting with Senator Wagoner which might have had any bearing on the Jupiter Project Corsi: Well yes. But only negatively. I did counsel him against any such project. Rather emphatically as I recall. Counsel: I thought you said that the Bridge hadn t been mentioned. Corsi: It hadrt t. Senator Wagoner and I were discussing research methods in general. I told him that I thought research projects of the Bridge s order of magnitude were no Longer fruitful. Senator Billings: Did you charge Senator Wagoner for that opinion Dr. Corsi Corsi: No Senator. Sometimes I don t. Senator Billings: Perhaps you should have. Wagoner didn t follow your free advice. Senator Croft: It looks like he considered the source. Corsi: There s nothing compulsory about advice. I gave him my best opinion at the time. What he did with it was up to him. Counsel: Would you tell us if that is your best opinion now That research projects the size of the Bridge are I believe your phrase was no longer fruitful Corsi: That 1s still my opinion. Senator Billings: Which you will give us free of charge... Corsi: It is the opinion of every scientist I know. You could get it free from those who work for you. I have better sense than to charge fees for common knowledge It had been a near thing. Perhaps Wagoner thought Corsi had after all remembered the really crucial part of that interview and had decided not to reveal it to the sub committee. It was more likely however that those few words that Corsi had thrown off while standing at the blinded windows of his apartment would not have stuck in his memory as they had stuck in Wagoner s. Yet surely Corsi knew at least in part what the Bridge was for. He must have remembered the part of that conversation which dealt with gravity. By now he would have reasoned his way from those words all the difficult way to the Bridge after all the Bridge was not a difficult object for an understanding like Corsi s. But he had said nothing about it. That had been a crucial silence. Wagoner wondered if it would ever be possible for him to show his gratitude to the aging physicist. Not now. Possibly never. The pain and the puzzlement in Corsi s mind stood fOrth in what he had said even through the coldness of the official transcript. Wagoner badly wanted to assuage both. But he couldn t. He could only hope that Corsi would see it whole and understand it whole when the time came. The pare turned on Corsi. Now there was another question which had to be answered. Was there a single hint anywhere in the sixteen hundred mimeographed pages of the report that the Bridge was incomplete without what was going on at mo. Pfitzner Sons No there was not. Wagoner let the report fall with a sigh of relief of which he was hardly conscious. That was that. He filed the report and reached into his In basket for the dossier on Paige Russell Colonel Army Space Corps which had come in from the Pfitzner plant only a week ago. He was tired and he did not want to perform an act of judgment on another man for the rest of his life but he had asked for the job and now he had to work at it. Bliss Wagoner had not been cut out to be a general. As a god he was even more inept. CHAPTER FIVE: New York The original phenomena which the soul hypothesis attempted to explain still remain. Homo sapiens does have some differences from other animal species. But when his biological distinctions and their consequences are clearly described man s morality his soul and his immortality all become accessible to a purely naturalistic formulation and understanding . . . Man s immortality in so far as it differs from the immortality of the germ plasm of any other animal species consists in his time transcending inter individually shared values symbol systems languages and cultures and in nothing else. WESTON LA BARRE IT TOOK Paige no more than Anne s mandatory ten seconds during breakfast of the next day in his snuggery at the spaceman s Haven to decide that he was going back to the Pfitzner plant and apologize. He didn t quite understand why the date had ended as catastrophically as it had but of one thing he was nearly certain: the fiasco had had something to do with his space rusty manners and if it were to be mended he had to be the one to tool up for it. And now that he came to think of it over his cold egg it seemed obvious in essence. By his last line of questioning Paige had broken the delicate shell of the evening and spilled the contents all over the restaurant table. He had left the more or less safe womb of technicalities and had begun by implication at least to call Anne s ethics into question first by making clear his first reaction to the business about the experimental infants and then by pressing home her irregular marriage to her firm. In this world called Earth of disintegrating faiths one didn t call personal ethical codes into question without getting into trouble. Such codes where they could be found at all obviously had cost their adherents too much pain to be open for any new probing. Faith had once been self evident now it was desperate. Those who still had it or had made it chunk by fragment by shard wanted nothing but to be allowed to hold it. As for why he wanted to set matters right with Anne Abbott Paige was less clear. His leave was passing him by rapidly and thus far he had done little more than stroll while it passed especially if he measured it against the desperate meter stick established by his last two leaves the two after his marriage had shattered and he had been alone again. After the present leave was over there was a good chance that he would be assigned to the Proserpine station which was now about finished and which had no competitors for the title of the most forsaken outpost of the solar system. None at least until somebody should discover an 11th planet. Nevertheless he was going to go out to the Pfitzner plant again out to the scenic Bronx to revel among research scientists business executives government brass and a frozen voiced girl with a figure like an ironing board to kick up his heels on a reception room rug in the sight of gay steel engravings of the founders cheered on by a motto which might or might not be Dionysiac if he could only read it. Great. Just great. If he played his cards right he could go on duty at the Proserpine station with fine memories: perhaps the vice president in charge of export would let Paige call him Hal or maybe even Bubbles. Maybe it was a matter of religion after all. Like everyone else in the world Paige thought he was still looking for something bigger than himself bigger than family army marriage fatherhood space itself or the pub crawls and tyrannically meaningless sexual spasms of a spaceman s leave. Quite obviously the project at Pfitzner with its air of mystery and selflessness had touched that very vulnerable nerve in him once more. Anne Abbott s own dedication was merely the touchstone the key. ... No he hadn t the right word for it yet but her attitude somehow fitted into an empty jagged edge blemish in his own soul like like. . . yes that was it: like a jigsaw puzzle piece. And besides he wanted to see that sunburst smile again. Because of the way her desk was placed she was the first thing he saw as he came into Pfitzner s reception room. Her expression was even stranger than he had expected and she seemed to be making some kind of covert gesture as though she were flicking dust off the top of her desk toward him with the tips of all her fingers. He took several slower and slower steps into the room and stopped finally baffled. Sontçone rose from a chair which he had not been able to see from the door and quartered down on him. The pad of the steps on the carpet and the odd crouch of the shape in the corner of Paige s eye were unpleasantly stealthy. Paige turned unconsciously closing his hands. Haven t we seen this officer before Miss Abbott What s his business here or has he any The man in the eager semi crouch was Francis X. MacHinery. When he was not bent over in that absurd position which was only his prosecutor s stance Francis X. MacHinery looked every inch the inheritor of an unbroken line of Boston aristocrats as in fact he was. Though he was not tall he was very spare and his hair had been white since he was 26 years old giving him a look of col4 wisdom which was complemented by his hawk like nose and high cheekbones. The FBI had come down to him from his grandfather who had somehow persuaded the then incumbent president a stimningly popular Man on Horseback who dripped charisma but had no brains worth mentioning that so important a directorship should not be hazarded to the appointments of his successors but instead ought to be handed on from father to son like a corporate office. Hereditary pasts tend to become nominal with the passage of time since it takes only one weak scion to destroy the importance of the office but that had not happened yet to the MacHinery family. The current incumbent could in fact have taught his grandfather a thing or two. MacHinery was as full of cunning as a wolverine and he had managed times without number to land on his feet regardless of what political disasters had been planned for him. And he was as Paige was now discovering the man for whom the metaphor gimlet eyed had all unknowingly been invented. Well Miss Abbott Colonel Russell was here yesterday Anne said. You may have seen him then. The swinging doors opened and Horsefield and Gunn came in. MacHinery paid no attention to them. He said What s your name soldier I m a spaceman Paige said stiffly. Colonel Paige Russell Army Space Corps. What are you doing here I m on leave. Will you answer the question MacHinery said. He was Paige noticed not looking at Paige at all but over his shoulder as though he were actually paying no real heed to the conversation. What are you doing at the Pfitzner plant I happen to be in love with Miss Abbott Paige said sharply to his own black and utter astonishment. I came here to see her. We had a quarrel last night and I wanted to apologize. That s all. Anne straightened behind her desk as though a curtain rod had been driven up her spine turning toward Paige a pair of blindly blazing eyes and a rigidly unreadable expression. Even Gunn s mouth sagged slightly to one side he looked first at Anne then at Paige as if he were abruptly uncertain that he had ever seen either of them before. MacHinery however shot only one quick look at Anne and his eyes seemed to turn into bottle glass. I m not interested in your personal life he said in a tone which indeed suggested active boredom. I will put the question another way so that the e ll be no excuse for evading it. Why did you come to the plant in the first place What is your business at Pfitzner soldier Paige tried to pick his next words carefully. Actually it would hardly matter what he said once MacHinery developed a real interest in him an accusation from the FBI had nearly the force of law. Everything depended upon so conducting himself as to be of no interest to MacHinery to begin with an exercise at which fortunately up to now Paige had had no more practice than had any other spaceman. He said: I brought in some soil samples from the Jovian system. Pfitzner asked me to do it as part of their research program. And you brought these samples in yesterday you told me. No I didn t tell you. But as a matter of fact I did bring them in yesterday. And you re still bringing them in today I see. Mac Hinery perked his chin over his shoulder toward Horsefield whose face had frozen into complete tetany as soon as he had shown signs of realizing what was going on. What about this Horsefield Is this one of your men that you haven t told me about No Horsefield said but putting a sort of a question mark into the way he spoke the word as though he did not mean to d ny añ thing which he might later be expected to affirm. Saw the man yesterday I think. For the first time to the best of my knowledge. I see. Would you say General that this man is no part of the Army s assigned complement on the project I can t say that for sure Horsefield said his voice sounding more positive now that he was voicing a doubt. I d have to consult my T.O. Perhaps he s somebody new in Alsos group. He s not part of my staff though doesn t claim that he is does he Gunn what about this man Did you people take him on without checking with me Does he have security clearance Well we did in a way but he didn t need to be cleared Gunn said. He s just a field collector hasn t any real part in the research work no official connection. These field people are all volunteers you know that. MacHinery s brows were drawing closer and closer together. With only a few more of these questions Paige knew even from the few newspapers which had reached him in space he would have material enough for an arrest and a sensation the kind of sensation which would pillory Pfltzner destroy every civilian working for Pfitzner trigger a long chain of courts martial among the military assignees ruin the politicians who had sponsored the research and thicken MacHinery s scrapbook of headlines about himself by at least three inches. That last outcome was the only one in which MacHinery was really interested that the project itself would die was a side effect which though nearly inevitable could hardly have interested him less. Excuse me Mr. Gunn Anne said quietly. I don t think you re quite as familiar with Colonel Russell s status as I am. He s just come in from deep space and his security record has been in the Clean and Routine file for years he s not one of our ordinary field collectors. Ah Guna said. I d forgotten but that s quite true. Since it was both true and perfectly irrelevant Paige could not understand why Guns was quite so hearty about agreeing to it.Did he think Anne was stalling As a matter of fact Anne proceeded steadily Colonel Russell is a planetary ecologist specializing in the satellites he s been doing important work for us. He s quite well known in space and has many friends on the Bridge team and elsewhere. That s correct isn t it Colonel Russell I know most of the Bridge gang Paige agreed but he barely managed to make his assent audible. What the girl. was saving added up to something very like a big black lie. And lying to MacHinery was a short cut to ruin only acHinery had the privilege of lying never his witnesses. The samples Colonel Russell brought us yesterday contained crucial material Anne said. That s why I asked him to come back we needed his advice. And if his samples turn out to be as important as they seem they ll save the taxpayers quite a lot of money they may help us close out the project a long time in advance of the projected closing date. If that s to be possible Colonel Russell will have to guide the last steps of the work personally he s the only one who knows the microflora of the Jovian satellites well enough to interpret the results. MacHinery looked dubiously over Paige s shoulder. It was hard to tell whether or not he had heard a word. Nevertheless it was evident that Anne had chosen her final approach with great care for if MacHinery had any weakness at all it was the enormous cost of his continual overlapping investigations. Lately he had begun to be nearly as sure death on waste in government as he was traditionally on subversives. He said at last: There s obviously something irregular here. If all that s so why did the man say what he said in the beginning Perhaps because it s also true Paige said sharply. MacHinery ignored him. We ll check the records and call anyone we need. Horsefield let s go. The general trailed him out his back very stiff after a glare at Paige which failed to be in the least convincing and an outrageously stagey wink at Anne. The moment the outer door closed behind the two the reception room seemed to explode. Gunn swung on Anne with a motion astonishingly tiger like for so mild faced a man. Anne was already rising from behind her desk her face twisted with fear and fury. Both of them were shouting at once. ::Now see what you ve done with your damned nosiness What in the world did you want to tell MacHinery a tale like that for even a spaceman should know better than to hang around a defense area you know as well as I do that those Ganymede samples are trash you ve probably cost us our whole appropriation with your snooping we ve never hired a Clean and Routine man since the project began I hope you re satisfied I would have thought you d have better sense by now Quiet Paige shouted over them with the authentic parade ground blare. He had neverfoun any use for it in deep space but it worked now. Both of them looked at him their mouths still incongruously half opened their faces white as milk. Yàu act like a pair of hysterical chickens both of you I m sorry if I got you into trouble but I didn t ask Anne to lie in my behalf and I didn t ask you to go along with it either Gunn Maybe you d best stop yelling accusations and try to think the thing through. I ll try to help for whatever that s worth but not if you re going to scream and weep at each other and at me The girl bared her teeth at him in a real snarl the first time he had ever seen a human being mount such an expression and mean it. She sat down however swiping at her patchily ret cheeks with a piece of cleansing tissue. Gunn looked down at the carpet and just breathed noisily for a moment putting the palms of his hands together solemnly before his white lips. I quite agree Gunn said after a moment as calmly as if nothing had happened. We ll have to get to work and work fast. Anne please tell me: why was it necessary for you to say that Colonel Paige was essential to the project I m not accusing you of anything but we need to know the facts. I went to dinner with Colonel Russell last night Anne said. I was somewhat indiscreet about the project. At the end of the evening we had a quarrel which was probably overheard by at least two of MacHinery s amateur in formers in the restaurant. I had to lie for my own protection as well as Colonel Russell s. But you have an Eavesdropper If you knew that you might be overheard I knew it well enough. But I lost my temper. You 4cnow how these things go. It all came out as emotionless as a tape recording. Told in these terms the incident sounded to Paige like something that had happened to someone whom he had never met whose name he could not even pronounce with certainty. Only the fact that Anne s eyes were reddened with furious tears offered any bridge between the cold narrative and the charged memory. Yes nasty Gunn said reflectively. Colonel Russell do you know the Bridge team I know some of them quite well Charity Dillon in particular after all I was stationed in the Jovian system for a while. MacHinery s check will show that I ve no official connection with the Bridge however. Good good Guns said beginning to brighten. That widens MacHinery s check to include the Bridge too and dilutes it from Pfitzner s point of view gives us more time though I m sorry for the Bridge men. The Bridge and the Pfitzner project both suspect yes that s a big mouthful even for MacHinery it will take him months. And the Bridge is Senator Wagoner s pet project so he ll have to go slowly he can t assassinate Wagoner s reputation as rapidly as he could some other senator s. Hmm. The question now is just how are we going to use the time When you calm down you calm right down to the bottom Paige said grinning wryly. I m a salesman Gunn said. Maybe more creative than some but at heart a salesman. In that profession you have to suit the mood to the occasion just like actors do. Now about those samples I shouldn t have thrown that in Anne said. I m afraid it was one good touch too many. On the contrary it may be the only out we have. MacHinery is a practical man. Results are what counts with him. So suppose we take Colonel Russell s samples out of the regular testing order and run them through right now issuing special orders to the staff that they are to find something in them anything that looks at all decent. The staff won t fake Anne said frowning. My dear Anne who said anything about faking Nearly. every batch of samples contains some organism of interest even if it isn t good enough to wind up among our choicest cultures. You see MacHinery will be contented by results if we can show them to him even though the results may have been made possible by an unauthorized person otherwisb lie d have to assemble a committee of experts to assess the evidence and that costs money. All this of course is predicated on whether or not we have any results by the time MacHinery finds out Colonel Russell is an unauthorized person. There s just one other thing Anne said. To make good on what I told MacHinery we re going to have to turn Colonel Russell into a convincing planetary ecologist and tell him just what the P tzner project is. Gunn s face fell momentarily. Anne he said I want you to observe what a nasty Situation that strong arm man has gotten us into. In order to protect our legitimate interests from our own government we re about to commit a real serious breach of security which would never have happened if MacHinery hadn t thrown his weight around. Quite true Anne said. She looked however rather poker faced Paige thought. Possibly she was enjoying Gunn s discomfiture he was not exactly the first man one would suspect of disloyalty or of being a security risk. Colonel Russell there is no faint chance I suppose that you are a planetary ecologist Most spacemen with ranks as high as yours are scientists of some kind. No sorry .Paige said. Ballistics is my field. Well you do have to know something about the planets at least. Anne I suggest that you take charge now. I ll have to do some fast covering. Your father would probably be the best man to brief Colonel Russell. And Colonel would you bear in mind that from now on every piece of information that you re given in our plant might have the giver jailed or even shot if MacHinery were to find out about it I ll keep my mouth shut Paige said. I m enough at fault in this mess to be willing to do all I can to help and my curiosity has been killing me anyhow. But there s something you d better know too Mr. Guns. And that is That the time you re counting on just doesn t exist. My leave expires in ten days. If you think you can make a planetary ecologist out of me in that length of time I ll do my part. Ulp Gunn said. Anne get to work. He bolted through the swinging doors. The two looked at each other for a starchy moment and then Anne smiled. Paige felt like another man at once. Is it really true what you said Anne said almost shyly. Yes. 1 didn t know it until I said it but it s true. I m really sorry that I had to say it at such a spectacularly bad moment I only came over to apologize for my part in last night s quarrel. Now it seems that I ve a bigger hassle to account for. Your curiosity is really your major talent do you know she said smiling again. It took you only two days to find out just what you wanted to know even though it s about the most closely guarded secret in the world. But I don t know it yet. Can you tell me here or is the place wired The girl laughed. Do you think Hal and I would have cussed each other out like that if the place were wired No it s clean we inspect it daily. I ll tell you the central fact and then my father can give you the details. The truth is that the Pfitzner project isn t out to conquer the degenerative diseases alone. It s aimed at the end product of those diseases too. We re looking for the answer to death itself. Paige sat down slowly in the nearest chair. I don t believe it can be one he whispered at last. That s what we all used to think Paige. That s what that says. She pointed to the motto in German above the swinging doors. Wider den Tad in kein Krautlein gewachseñ. Against Death doth no simple grow. That was a law of nature the old German herbaJists thought. But now it s only a challenge. Somewhere in nature there are herbs and simples against death and we re going to find them. Anne s father seemed both preoccupied and a little worried to be talking to Paige at all but it nevertheless took him only one day to explain the basic reasoning behind the project vividly ehough so that Paige could understánd it. In another day of simple helping around the part of the Pfitzner labs which was running his soil sam pies help which consisted mostly of bottle washing and making dilutions Paige learned the reasoning well enough to put forward a version of it himself. He practiced iton Anne over dinner. It afl rests on our way of th1bktng about why antibiotics work he said while the girl listened with an attentiveness just this side of mockery. What good are they to the organisms that pmduce them We assumed that the organism secretes the atitibiotic to kill or inhibit competing organisms even though we were never able to show that enough antibiotic for the purpose is actually produced in the organism s natural medium that is the soil. In other words we figured the wider the range of the antibiotic the less competition the producer had. Watch out for teleology Anne warned. That s not why the organism secretes it. It s just the result. Function not purpose. Fair enough. But right there is the borderline in our thinking about antibiosis. What is an antibiotic to the organisim it kills Obviously it s poison a toxin. But some bacteria always are naturally resistant to a given antibiotic and through what did your father call it through clone variation and selection the resistant cells may take over a whole colony. Equally obviously those resistant cells would seem to produce an antitoxin. An example would be the bacteria that secrete penicillinase which is an enzyme that destroys penicillin. To those bacteria penicillin is a toxin and penicilhinase is an antitoxin isn t that right Right as rain. Go on Paige. So now we add to that still another fact: that both penicillin and tetracycline are not only antibiotics which makes them toxic to many bacteria but antitoxins as well. Both of them neutralize the placental toxin that causes the eclampsia of pregnancy. Now tetracycline is a broad range antibiotic is there such a thing as a broad range antitoxin too Is the resistance to tetracycline that many different kinds of bacteria can develop all derived from a single counteracting substance The answer we know now is Yes. We ve also found another kind of broad range antitoxin one which protects the organism against many different kinds of antibiotics. I m told that it s a whole new field of research and that we ve just begun to scratch the surface. Ergo: Find the broad range antitoxin that acts against the toxins of the human body which accumulate after growth stops as penicillin and tetracycline act against the pregnancy toxin and you ve got your magic machine gun against degenerative disease. Pfitzner already has found that antitoxin: its name is ascomycin. . . . How d I do be added anxiously getting his breath back. Beautifully. It s perhaps a little too condensed for MacHinery to follow but maybe that s all to the good it wouldn t sound authoritative to him if he could understand it all the way through. Still it might pay to be just a little more roundabout when you talk to him. The girl had the compact out again and was peering into it intently. But you covered only the degenerative diseases and that s just background material. Now tell me about the direct attack on death. Paige looked at the compact and then at the girl but her expression was too studied to convey much He said slowly: I ll go into that if you like. But your father told me that the element of the work was secret even from the government. Should I discuss it in a restaurant Anne turned the small compact like object around so that he could see that it was in fact a meter of some sort. Its needle was in uncertain motion but near the zero point. There s no mike chose enough to pick you up Anne said snapping the device shut and restoring it to her purse. Go ahead. All right. Some day you re going to have to explain to rue why you allowed yourself to get into that first fight with me here when you had that Eavesdropper with you all the time. Right at the moment I m too busy being a phony ecologist. The death end of the research began back in 1952 with an anatomist named Lansing. He was the first man to show that complex animals it was rotifers he used produce a definite aging toxin as a normal part of their growth and that it gets passed on to the offspring. He bred something like fifty generations of rotifers from adolescent mothers and got an increase in the life span in every new generation. He ran em up from a natural average span of 24 days to one of 104 days. Then be reversed the process by breeding consistently from old mothers and cut the life span of the final generation way below the natural average. And now Anne said you know more about the babies in our labs than I told you before or you should. The foundling home that supplies them specializes in the illegitimates of juvenile delinquents the younger for our purposes the better. Sorry but you can t needle me with that any longer Anne. I know now that it s a blind alley. Breeding for longevity in humans isn t practica blé all that those infants can supply to the projedt is a set of comparative readings on their death toxin blood levels. What we want now is something much more direct: an antitoxin against the aging toxin of humans. We know that the aging toxin exists in all complex animals. We know that it s a single specific substance quite distinct from the poisons that cause the degenerative diseases. And we know that it can be neutralized. When your lab animals were given ascomycin they didn t develop a single degenerative disease but they died anyhow at about the usual time as if they d been set like a clock at bii th. Which in effect they had by the amount of aging toxin passed on to them by their mothers. So what we re looking for now is not an antibiotic an anti life drug but an anti agathic an anti death drug. We re running on borrowed time because ascomycin already satisfies the condition of our development contract with the government. As soon as we get ascomycin into production our government money will be cut down to a trickle. But if we can hold back on ascomycin long enough to keep the money coming in we ll have our anti agathic too. Bravo Anne said. You sound just like father. I wanted you to raise that last point in particular Paige because it s the most important single thing you should remember. If there s the slightest suspicion that we re systematically dragging our feet on releasing ascomycin that we re taking money from the government to do something the government has no idea can be done there ll be hell to pay. We re so close to running down our anti agathic now that it would be heartbreaking to have to stop not only heartbreaking for us but for humanity at large. The end justifies the means Paige murmured. It does in this case. I know secrecy s a fetish in our society these days but here secrecy will serve everyone in the long run and it s got to be maintained. I ll maintain it Paige said. He had been referring not to secrecy but to cheating on government money but he saw no point in bringing that up. As for secrecy he had no practical faith in it especially now that he had seen how well it worked. For in the two days that he had been working inside pfitzner he had already found an inarguable spy at the very heart of the project. CHAPTERSIX: Jupiter V Yet the barbarians who are not divided by rival traditions fight all the more incessantly for food and space. Peoples cannot love one another unless they love the same ideas. GEORGE. SANTAYANA Tunan WERE three yellow Critical signals lit on the long gangboard when Helmuth passed through the gang deck on the way back to duty. All of them as usual were concentrated on Panel 9 where Eva Chavez worked. Eva despite her Latin name such once valid tickets no longer meant anything among the West s uniformly mixed race population was a big girl vaguely blonde who cherished a passion for the Bridge. Unfortunately she was apt to become enthralled by the sheer Cosmicness of It Mi precisely at the moment when cold analysis and split second decisions were most crucial. Helmuth reached over her shoulder cut her out of the circuit except as an observer and donned the co operator s helmet. The incomplete new shoals caisson sprang into being around him. Breakers of boiling hydro. gen seethed seven hundred feet up along its slanted sides breakers that never subsided .but simply were torn away into flying spray. There was a spot of dull orange near the top of the north face of the caisson crawling slowly toward the pediment of the nearest truss. Catalysis Or cancer as Helmuth could not help but think of it. Or this bitter violent monster of a planet even tiny specks ol calcium carbide were deadly that same calcium carbide which had produced acetylene gas for buggy lamps two centuries ago on Earth. At these wind velocities such specks imbedded themselves deeply in anything they struck and at fifteen million p.s.i. of pressure under the catalysis of sodium pressure ice took up ammonia and carbon dioxide building protein like Othpounds in a rapid voracious chain of decay : For a moment Heimuth watched it grow. It was after all one of the incredible possibilities the Bridge had been built to study. On Earth such a compound had it occurred at all might have grown porous hard and as strong as rhinoceros horn. Here under nearly three times Earth s gravity the molecules were forced to assemble in strict aliphatic order but in cross section their arrangement was hexagonal as though the stuff would become an aromatic compound if only it could. Even here it was moderately strong in cross section but along the long axis it smeared like graphite the calcium and sulphur atoms readily changing their minds as to which was to act as the metal of the pair surrendering their pressure driven holds on one carbon atom to grab hopefully for the next one in line or giving up altogether to become incorporated instead in a radical with a self contained double sulphur bond rather like cystine.... It was not too far from the truth to call it a form of cancer. The compound seemed to be as close as Jupiter came to an indigenous form of life. It grew fed repro duced itself and showed something of the characteristic structure of an Earthly virus such as tobacco mosaic Of course it grew from outside by accretion like any non living crystal rather than from the inside by intussusception like a cell but viruses grew that way too at least in vitro. It was no stuff to hold up the piers of humanity s greatest engineering project that much was sure. Perhaps it was a suitable ground substance for the ribs of some Jovian jellyfith but in a Bridge caisson it was cancer. There was a scraper mechanism working on the edge of the lesion flaking away the shearing arninos and laying down new ice. In the meantime the decay in the caisson face was working deeper. The scraper could not possibly get at the core of the trouble which was not the calcium carbide dust with which the atmosphere was charged beyond redemption but was instead one imbedded speck of metallic sodium which was taking no part in the reaction fast enough to extirpate it. It could barely keep pace with the surface spread of the disease. And laying new ice over the surface of the wound was worthless as Eva should have known. At this rate the whole caisson would slough away and melt like butter within an hour under the weight of the Bridge above it. Helmuth sent the futile scraper aloft. Drill for the speck of metal No it was far too deeply buried already and its location was unknown. Quickly he called two borers up from the shoals below where constant blasting was taking the foundation of the caisson deeper and deeper into Jupiter s dubious soil. He drove both blind fire snouted machines down into the lesion. The bottom of that sore turned out to be a hundred feet within the immense block of ice. Helmuth pushed the red button all the same. The borers blew up with a heavy quite invisible blast as they had been designed to do. A pit appeared on the face of the caisson. The nearest truss bent upward in the wind It fluttered for a moment trying to resist. It bent farther. Deprived of its major attachment it tore free suddenly and went whirling away into the blackness. A sudden flash of lightning picked it out for a moment and Helmuth saw it dwindlling like a bat with torn wings being borne away by a cyclone. The scraper scuttled down into th p t and began to fill it with ice from the bottom. Helmuth ordered down a new truss and a squad of scaffolder . Damage of this order of magnitude took time to repair. He watched the tornado tearing ragged chunks from the edges of the pit until he was sure that the catalysis cancer had been stopped. Then suddenly prematurely dismally tired he took off the helmet. He was astounded by he white fury that masked Eva s big boned mildly pretty face. You ll blow the Bridge up yet won t you she said evenly without preamble. Any pretext will do Baffled Helmuth turned his head helplessly away but that was no better. The suffused face of Jupiter peered swollenly through the picture port just as it did on the foreman s deck. He and Eva and Charity and the gang and the whole of satellite V were falling forward toward Jupiter their uneventful cooped up lives on Jupiter V were utterly unreal compared to the four hours of each changeless day spent on Jupiter s ever changing surface. Every new day brought their minds like ships out of control closer and closer to that gaudy inferno. There was no other way for a man or a woman on Jupiter V to look at the giant planet. It was simple experience shared by all of them that planets do not occupy four fifths of the whole sky unless the observer is himself up there in that planet s sky falling toward it falling faster and faster I have no intention he said tiredly of blowing up the Bridge. I wish you could get it through your head that I want the Bridge to stay up even though I m not starry eyed to the point of incompetence about the project. Did you think that that rotten spot was going to go away by itself after you d painted it over Didn t you know that Several helmeted masked heads nearby turned blindly toward the sound of his voice. Helmuth shut up. Any distractiiig conversation or other activity was taboo down here on the gang deck. He motioned Eva back to duty. The girl donned her helmet obediently enough but it was plain from the way that her normally full lips were thinned that she thought Helmuth had ended the argument only in order t 4 ave the last word. Helmuth strode to the thick pillar which ran down the central axis of the operations shack and mounted the spiraling cleats toward his own foremati s cubicle. Already he felt in anticipation the weight of the helmet upon his own head. Charity Dillon however was already wearing the helmet. He was sitting in Helmuth s chair. Charity was characteristically oblivious of Helmuth s entrance. The Bridge operator must learn to ignore to be utterly unconscious of anything happening about his body except the inhuman sounds of signals must learn to heed only those senses which report something going on thousands and hundreds of thousands of miles away. Helmuth knew better than to interrupt him. Instead he watched Dillon s white blade like fingers roving with blind sureness over the controls. Dillon evidently was making a complete tour of the Bridge not only from end to end but up and down too. The tally board showed that he had already activated nearly two thirds of the ultraphone eyes. That meant that he had been up all night at the job had begun it imniediately after he had last relieved Helmuth. Why With a thrill of unfocused apprehension Helmuth looked at the foreman s jack which allowed the operator here in the cubicle to communicate with the gang when necessary and which kept him aware of anything said or done on the gang boards. It was plugged in. Dillon sighed suddenly took the helmet off and turned. Hello Bob he said. It s funny about this job. You can t see you can t hear but when somebody s watching you you feel a sort of pressure on the back of your neck. Extra sensory perception maybe. Ever felt it Pretty often lately. Why the grand tour Charity There s to be an inspection Dillon said. His eyes met Helmuth s. They were frank and transparent. A couple of Senate sub committee chairmen coming to see that their eight billion dollars isn t being wasted. Naturally I m a little anxious to see to it that they find everything in order. I see Helmuth said. First time in five years isn t it Just about. What was that dust up down below just now Somebody you I m sure from the drastic handiwork involved bailed Eva out of a mess and then I heard her talk about your w intin to blow up the Bridee I checked the area when I heard the fracas start and it did seem as if she had let things go rather far but What was it all about Dillon ordinarily hadn t the guile for cat and mouse games and he had never ooked less guileful than now. Helmuth said carefully: Eva was upset I suppose. On the sUbject of Jupiter we re all of us cracked by now in our different ways. The way she was dealing with the catalysis didn t look to me to be suitable a difference of opinion resolved in my favor because I had the authority. Eva didn t. That s all. Kind of an expensive difference Bob. I m not nigeling by nature you know that. But an incident like that while the sub committees are here The point is said Helmuth are we going to spend an extra ten thousand or whatever it costs to replace a truss and reinforce a caisson or are we to lose the whole caisson and as much as a third of the whole Bridge along with it Yes you re right there of course. That could be cxplained even to a pack of senators. But it would be difficult to have to explain it very often. Well the board s yours Bob you could continue my spotcheck if you ve time. Dillon got up. Then he added suddenly as though it were forced out of him: Bob I m trying to understand your state of mind. From what Eva said I gather that you ve made it fairly public. I ... I don t think it s a good idea to infect your fellow workers with your own pessimism. It leads to sloppy work. I know. I know that you won t countenance sloppy work regardless of your own feelings but one foreman can do only so much. And you re making extra work for yourself not for me but for yourself by being openly gloomy about the Bridge. It strikes me that maybe you could use a breather maybe a week s junket to Ganymede or something like that. You re the best man on the Bridge Bob for all your grousing about the job and your assorted misgivings. I d hate to see you replaced. A threat Charity Helmuth said softly. No. I wouldn t replace you unless you actually went nuts and I firmly believe that your fears in that respect are groundless. It s a commonplace thai only sane men suspect their own sanity isn t it It s a common misconception. Most psychopathic obsessions begin with a mild worry one that can t be shaken. Dillon made as if to brush that subject away. Anyhow I m not threatening I d fight to keep you here. But my say so only covers Jupiter V and the Bridge there are people higher up on Ganymede and people higher yet back in Washington and in this inspecting commission. Why don t you try to look on the bright side for a change Obviously the Bridge isn t ever going to inspire you. But you might at least try thinking about all those dollars piling up in your account back home every hour you re on this job. And about the bridges and ships and who knows what all that you ll be building at any fee you ask when you get back down to Earth. All under the magic words: One of the men who built the Bridge on Jupiter Charity was bright red with embarrassment and enthusiasm. Helmuth smiled. I ll try to bear it in mind Charity he said. And I think I ll pass up a vacation for the time being. When is this gaggle of senators due to arrive That s hard to say. They ll be coming to Ganymede directly from Washington without any routing and they ll stop there for a while. I suppose they ll also make a stop at Callisto before they come here. They ve got something new on their ship I m told that lets them flit about more freely than the usual uphill transport can. An icy lizard suddenly was nesting in Helmuth s stomach coiling and coiling but never settling itself. The persistent nightmare began to seep back into his blood it was almost engulfing him already. Something ... new he echoed his voice as flat and non committal as he could make it. Do you know what it is Well yes. But I think I d better keep quiet about it until Charity nobody on this deserted rock heap could possibly be a Soviet spy. The whole habit of security is idiotic out here Tell me now and save me the trouble of dealing with senators or tell me at least that you know I know. They have antigravity Isn t that it One word from Dillon and the nightmare would be reaL Yes Dillon said. How did you know Of course it couldn t be a complete gravity screen by any means. But it seems to be a good long step toward it. We ve waited a long time to see that dream come true But you re the last man in the world to take pride in the achievement so ther. i no sense in exulting about it to you. I ll let you know when I get a definite arrival date. In the meantime will you think about what I said before Yes I wIll. Helmuth took the seat before the board. Good. With you I have to be grateful for small victories. Good trick Bob. Good trick Charity. CHAPTER SEVEN: New York When Nietzsche wrote down the phrase transvaluation of all values for the first time the spiritual mévement of the centuries in which we are living found at last its formula. Transvaluation of all values is the most fundamental character of every civilization for it is the beginning of a Civilization that remoulds all the forms of the Culture that went before understands them otherwise practises them in a different way OSWALD SPENGLER PAIGE S GIFT for putting two and two together and getting 22 was in part responsible for the discovery of the spy but the almost incredible clumsiness of the man made the chief contribution to it. Paige could hardly belieye that nobody had spotted the agent before. True he was only one of some two dozen technicians in the processing lab where Paige had been working but his almost open habit of slipping notes inside his lab apron and his painful furtiveness every time he left the Pfitzner laboratory building for the night should have aroused someone s suspicions long before this. It was a fine example Paige thought of the way the blunderbuss investigation method currently popular in Washington allowed the really dangerous man a thousand opportunities to slip away unnoticed. As was usual among groups of scientists too there was an unspoken covenant among Pfitzner s technicians against informing on each other. It protected the guilty as well as the innocent but it would never have arisen at all under any fair system of juridical defense. Paige had not the smallest idea what to do with his fish once he had hooked it. Re took an evening which he greatly begrudged away from seeing Anne in order to trace the man s movements after a day which had produced two exciting advances in the research on the hunch that the spy would want to ferry the information out at once. This hunch proved out beautifully at least at first. Nor was the man difficult to follow his habit of glancing continually over first one shoulder and then the other evidently to make sure that he was not being followed made him easy to spot over long distances even in a crowd. He left the city by train to Hoboken where he rented a motor scooter and drove directly to the crossroads town of Secaucus. It was a long pull but not at all difficult otherwise. Outside Secaucus however Paige nearly lost his man for the first and last time. The cross roads which lay across U.S. 46 to the Lincoln Tunnel turned out also to be the site of the temporary trailer city of the Believers nearly 300 000 of them or almost half of the 700 000 who had been pouring into town for two weeks now for the Revival. Among the trailers Paige saw license plates from as far away as Eritrea. The trailer city was far bigger than any nearby town except Passaic. It included a score of supermarkets all going full blast even in the middle of the night and about as many coin in slot laundries equally wide open. There were at least a hundred public baths and close to 360 public toilets. Paige counted ten cafeterias and twice that many hamburger stands and one arm joints each of the stands no less than a hundred feet long at one of these he stopped long enough to buy a Texas wiener nearly as long as his forearm covered with mustard meat sauce sauerkraut corn relish and piccalilli. There were ten highly conspicuous hospital tents too and after eating the Texas wiener Paige thought he knew why the smallest of them perfectly capable of homing a one ring circus. And of course there were the trailers of which Paige guessed the number at sixty thOusand from two wheeled jobs to Packards in all stages of repair and shininess. Luckily the city was c ell lit and since everyone living in it was a Believer tWP were no booby traps or other forms of proselytizing. Paige s man after a little thoroughly elementary doubling on his tracks and setting up false trails ducked into a trailer with a Latvian license plate. After half an hour at exactly 0200 the trailer ran up a stubby VHF radio antenna as thick through as Paige s wrist. And the rest Paige thought grimly climbing back on to his own rented scooter is up to the FBI if I tell them. But what would he say He had every good reason of his own to stay as far outof sight of the FBI as possible. Furthermore if he informed on the man now it would mean immediate curtains on the search for the antiagathic and a gross betrayal of the trust enforced though it had been that Anne and Gunn had placed in him. On the other hand to remain silent would give the Soviets the drug at the same time that Pfitzner found it in other words before the West had it as a government. And it would mean too that he himself would have to forego an important chance to prove that he was loyal when the inevitable showdown with MacHinery came around. By the next day however he had hit upon what should have been the obvious course in the beginning. He took a second evening to rifle his fish s laboratory bench the incredible idiot had stuffed it to bulging with incriminating. photomicrograph negatives and with bits of paper bearing the symbols of a simple substitution code once circulated to Tom Mix s Square Shooters on behalf of Shredded Ralston and a third to take step by step photos of the hegira to the Believer trailer city and the radio transmitter equipped trailer with the buffer state license. Assembling everything into a neat dossier Paige cornered Gunn in his office and dropped the whole mess squarely in the vice president s lap. My goodness Gunn said blinking. Curiosity is a disease with you isn t it Colonel Russell And I really doubt that even Pfitzner will ever find the antidote for that. Curiosity has very little to do with it. As you ll see in the folder the man s an amateur evidently a volunteer from the Party Rosenberg rather than a paid expert. He practically led nie by the nose. Yes I see he s clumsy Gunn agreed. And he s been reported to us before Colonel Russell. As a matter of fact on several occasions we ve had to protect him from his own clumsiness. But why Paige demanded. Why haven t you cracked down on him Because we can t afford to Gunn said. A spy scandal in the plant now would kill the work just where it stands. Oh we ll report him sooner or later and the work you ve done here on him will be very useful then to all of us yourself included. But there s no hurry. No hurry No Gunn said. The material he s ferrying out now is of no particular consequence. When we actually have the drug But he ll already know the production method by that time. Identifying the drug is a routine job for any team of chemists your Dr. Agnew taught me that much. I suppose that s so Gunn said. Well I ll think it over Colonel. Don t worry about it we ll deal with it when the time seems ripe. And that was every bit of satisfaction that Paige could extract from Gunn. It was small recompense for his lost sleep his lost dates the care he had taken to inform Pfitzner first or the soul searching it had cost him to put the interests of the project ahead of his officer s oath and of his own safety. That evening he said as much to Anne Abbott and with considerable force. Calm down Anne said. If you re going to mix into the politics of this work Paige you re going to get burned right up to the armpits. When we do find what we re looking for it s going to create the biggest political explosion in history. I d advise you to stand well back. I ve been burned already Paige said hotly. How the hell can I stand back now And tolerating a spy isn t just politics. It s treason not only by rumor but in fact. Are you deliberately putting everyone s head in the noose Quite deliberately. Paige this project is for everyone every man woman and child on the Earth and in space. The fact that the West is putting up the money is incidental. What we re doing here is in every res pect just as anti West as it is anti Soviet. We re Out to lick death for human beings not just for the armed forces of some one military coalition. What do we care who gets it first We want everyone to have it. Does Gunn agree with that It s company policy. It may even have been Hal s own idea though he has different reasons different justifications. Have you any idea what will happen when a death curing drug hits a totalitarian society a drug available in limited quantities only It won t prove fatal to the Soviets of course but it ought to make the struggle for succession over there considerably bloodier than it is already. That s essentially the way Hal seems to look at it. And you don t Paige said grimly. No Paige I don t. I can see well enough what s going to happen right here at home when this thing gets out. Think for a moment of what it will do to the religious people alone. What happens to the after life if you never need to leave this one Look at the Believers. They believe in the literal truth of everything in the Bible that s why they revise the book every year. And this story is going to break before their Jubilee year is over. Did you know that their motto is: Millions now living will never die They mean themselves but what if it turns out to be everybody And that s only the beginning. Think of what the insurance companies are going to say. And what s going to happen to the whole structure of compound interest Wells s old yarn about the man who lived so long that his savings came to dominate the world s whole financial structure When the Sleeper Wakes wasn t it well that s going to be theoretically possible for everybody with the patience and the capital to let his money sit still. Or think of the whole corpus of the inheritance laws. It s going to be the biggest blackest social explosion the West ever had to take. We ll be much too busy digging in to care about what s happening to the Central Committee in Moscow. You seem to care enough to be protecting the Central Committee s interests or at least that they probably think of as their interests Paige said slowly. After all there is a possibility of keeping the secret instead of letting it leak. There is no such possibility Anne said. Natural laws can t be kept secret. Once you give a scientist the idea that a certain goal can be reached you ve given him more than half of the information he needs. Once he gets the idea that the conquest of death is possible no power on Earth can stop him from finding out how it s done the know how we make so many fatuous noises about is the most minor part of research it s even a matter of total indifference to the essence of the question. I don t see that. Then let s go back to the fission bomb again for a moment. The only way we could have kept that a secret was to have failed to drop it at all or even test fire it. Once the secret was out that the bomb existed and you ll remember that we announced that before hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima we had no secrets in that field worth protecting. The biggest mystery in the Smyth report was the specific method by which uranium slugs were canned in a protective jacket it was one of the toughest problems the project had to lick but at the same time it s exactly the kind of problem you d assign to an engineer and confidently expect a solution within a year. The fact of the matter Paige is that you can t keep scientific matters a secret from yourself. A scientific secret is something that some other scientist can t contribute to any more than he can profit by it. Contrariwise if you arm yourself through discoveries in natural law you also arm the other guy. Either you give him the information or you cut your own throat there aren t any other courses possible. And let me ask you this Paige: should we give the USSR the advantage temporary though it ll be of having to get along without the anti agathics for a while By their very nature the drugs wifi do more damage to the West than they will to the USSR. After all in the Soviel Union one isn t pert iitted to inherit money or to exercise any real control over economic forces just because one s lived a long time. If both major powers are given control over death at the same time the West will be at a natural disadvantage. If we give control over death to the Wes alone we ll be sabotaging our own civilization without putting the USSR under any comparable handicap. Is thai sensible The picture was staggering to say the least. It gave Paige an impression of Gunn decidedly at variance witi the mask of salesman turned executive which the mar himself wore. But it was otherwise self consistent that he knew was supposed to be enoughfor bim. How could I tell he said coldly. All I can see is that every day I stick with you I get in deeper. First I pose for the FBI as something that I m not. Next Fm given possession of information that it s unlawful for me to have. And now I m helping you conceal the evidence of a high crime. It looks more and more to me as though I was supposed to be involved in this thing from the beginning. I don t see how you could have done so thorough a job on me without planning it. You needn t deny that you asked for it Paige. I don t deny that he said. You don t deny deliberately involving me either I notice. No. It was deliberate all right. I thought you d have suspected it before. And if you re planning to ask me why save your breath. I m not permitted to tell you. You ll find out in due course. You two No. Hal had nothing to do with involving you. That was my idea. He only agreed to it and he had to be convinced from considerably higher up. You two Paige said through almost motionless lips don t hesitate to trample on the bystanders do you If I didn t know before that Pfltzner was run by a pack of idealists I d know it now. You ve got the characteristic ruthlessness. That Anne said in a level voice is what it takes. CHAPTER EIGHT: Jupiter V When new turns in behaviour cease to appear in the life of the individual its behaviour ceases to be intelligent. C. E. COGffILL INSTEAD OF sleeping after his trick for now Helmuth knew that he was really afraid he sat up in the reading chair in his cabin. The illuminated microfilmed pages of a book ificked by across the surface of the wall opposite him timed precisely to the reading rate most comfortable for him and he had several weeks worry conserved alcohol and smoke rations for ready consumption. But Helmuth let his mix go flat and did not notice the book which had turned itself on at the page where M had abandoned it last when he had fitted himself into the chair. Instead he listened to the radio. There was always a great deal of ham radio activity in the Jovian system. The conditions were good for it since there was plenty of power available few impeding atmosphere layers and those thin no Heaviside layers and few official and no commercial channels with which the hams could interfere. And there were plenty of people scattered about the satellites who needed the sound of a voice anybody know whether or not the senators are coming here Doe Barth put in a report a while back on a fossil plant he found here at least he thinks it was a plant. Maybe they d like a look at it. It s the Bridge team they re coming to see. A strong voice and the impression of a strong transmitter wavering in and out to the currents of an atmosphere that would be Sweeney on Ganymede. Sorry to throw the wet blanket boys but I don t think the senators ll be interested in our rock balls for their own lumpy selves. They re only scheduled to stay here three days. Helmuth thought grayly: Then they ll stay on Callisto only one. Is that you Sweeney Where s the Bridge tonight Dillon s on duty a very distant transmitter said. Try to raise Helmuth Sweeney. Helmuth Helmuth you gloomy beetle gooser Come in Helmuth1 Sure Bob come in and dampen us a little. We re feeling cheerful. Sluggishly Helmuth reached out to take the mike from where it lay clipped to one arm of the chair. But before he had completed the gesture the door to his room swung open. Eva came in. She said: Bob I want to tell you something. His voice is changing the voice of the Callisto operator said. Sweeney ask him what he s drinking Helmuth cut the radio out. The girl was freshly dressed in so far as anybody dressed in anything on Jupiter V and Helmuth wondered why she was prowling the decks at this hour half way between her sleep period and her trick. Her hair was hazy against the light from the corridor and she looked less mannish than usual. She reminded him a little of the way she had looked when they had been lovers before the Bridge had come to bestride his bed instead. He put the memory aside. All right he said. owe you a ruin I guess. Citric sugar and the other stuff are in the locker ... you know where it is. Shot cans are there too. The girl shut the door and sat down on the bunk with a free litheness that was almost grace but with a determination which Helmuth knew meant that she had just decided to do something silly for all the right reasons. I don t need a drink she said. As a matter of fact I ve been turning my lux R s back to the common pool. I suppose you did that for me by showing me what a mind looks like that s hiding from itself. Evita stop sounding like a tract. Obviously you re advanced to a higher more Jovian plane of existence but won t you still need your metabolism Or have you decided that vitamins are all in the mind Now you re being superior. Anyhow alcohol isn t a vitamin. And I didn t come to talk about that I came to tell you something I think you ought to know. Which is She said: Bob I mean to have a child here. A bark of laughter part sheer hysteria and part exasperation jack knifed Helmuth into a sitting position. A red arrow bloomed on the far wall obediently marking the paragraph which .supposedly he had reached in his reading. Eva twisted to look at it but the page was already dimming and vanishing. Women Helmuth said when he could get his breath back. Really Evita you make me feel much better. No environment can change a human being much after all. Why should it she said suspiciously looking back at him. I don t see the joke. Shouldn t a woman want to have a child Of course she should he said settling back. The pages began to ifip across the wall again. It s quite ordinary. All women want to have children. All women dream of the day they can turn a child out to play in an airless rock garden like Jupiter V to pluck fossils and make dust castles and get quaintly starburned. How cosy to tuck the blue little body back into its corner that night and give it its oxygen bottle promptly as the sound of the trick change bell Why it s as natural as Jupiter light as Western as freeze dried apple pie. He turned his head casually away. Congratulations. As for me though Eva I d much prefer that you take your ghostly little pretext out of here. Eva surged to her feet in one furious motion. Her fingers grasped him by the beard and jerked his head painfully around again. You reedy male platitude she said in a low grinding voice. How you could see almost the whole point and make so little of it Women is it So you think I came creeping in here full of humblei iess to settle our technical differences in bed He closed his hand on her wrist and twisted it away. What else he demanded trying to imagine how it would feel to stay reasonable for five minutes at a time with these Bridge robots. None of us need bother with games and excuses. We re here we re isolated we were all chosen because among other things we were quite incapable of forming permanent emotional attachments and capable of any alliances we liked without going unbal anced when the attraction died and the aliance came unstuck. None of us have to pretend that our living arrangements would keep us out of jail in Boston or that they have to involve any Earth normal excuses. She said nothing. After a while he asked geOtly: Isn t that so Of course it s not so Eva said. She was frowning at him he had the absurd impression that she was pitying him. If we were really incapable of making any permanent attachment we d never have been chosen. A cast of mind like that is a mental disease Bob it s anti survival from the ground up. It s the conditioning that made us this way. Didn t you know Helmuth hadn t known or i f he had he had been conditioned to forget it. He gripped the arms of the chair tighter. Anyhow he said that s the way we are. Yes it is. Also it has nothing to do with the matter. It doesn t How stupid do you think I am I don t care whether or not you ve decided to have a child here if you really mean what you say. She too seemed to be trembling. You really don t either. The decision means nothing to you. Well if I liked children I d be sorry for the child. But as it happens I can t stand children and if that s the conditioning too I can t do a thing about it. In short Eva as far as I m concerned you can have as many kids as you want and to me you ll still be the worst operator on the Bridge. I ll bear that in mind she said. At this moment she seemed to have been cut from pressure ice. I ll leave you something to charge your mind with too Robert Helmuth. I ll leave you sprawled here under your precious book what is Madame Bovary to you anyhow you unadventurous turtle ... to think about a man who believes that children must always be born into warm cradles a man who thinks that men have to huddle on warm worlds or they won t survive. A man with no ears no eyes scarcely any head. A man in terror a man crying: Mamma Mamma all the stellar days and nights long Parlor diagnosis. Parlor labeling Good trick Bob. Draw your warm woolly blanket in tight around your brains or some little sneeze of sense might creep in and impair your efficiency The door closed sharply after her. A million pounds of fatigue crashed down without warning on the back of Helmuth s neck and he fell back into the reading chair with a gasp. The root of his beard ached and Jupiters bloomed and wavered qway before his closed eyes. He struggled or ce and fell asleep. Instantly he was in the grip of the dream. It started as always with commonplaces almost realistic enough to be a documentary film strip except for the appalling sense of pressure and the distorted emotional significance with which the least word the smallest movement was invested. It was the sinking of the first caisson of the Bridge. The actual event had been bad enough. The job demanded enough exactness of placement to require that manned ships enter Jupiter s atmosphere itself a squadron of twenty of the most powerful ships ever built with the five million ton asteroid trimmed and shaped in space slung beneath them in an immense cat s cradle. Four times that squadron had disappeared beneath the racing clouds four times the tense voices of pilots and engineers had muttered in Helmuth s ears and he had whispered back trying to guide them by what he could see of the conflicting trade blasts from Jupiter V four times there were shouts and futile orders and the snapping of cables and men screaming endlessly against the eternal howl of the Jovian sky. It had cost altogether nine ships and two hundred thirty one men to get one of five laboriously shaped asteroids planted in the shifting slush that was Jupiter s surface. Until that had been accomplished the Bridge could never have been more than a dream. While the Great Red Spot had shown astronomers that some structures on Jupiter could last for long periods of time long enough at least to be seen by many generations of human beings it had been equally well known that nothing on Jupiter could be really permanent The planet did not even have a surface in the usual sense instead the bottom of the atmosphere merged more or less smoothly into a high pressure sludge which in turn thickened as it went deeper into solid pressure ice. At no point on the way down was there any interface between one layer and another except in the rare areas where a part of the deeper more solid medium had been thrust far up out of its normal level to form a continent which might last as long as two years or two hundred. It was on to one of these great ribs of bulging ice that the ships had tried to plant their asteroid and after four tries had succeeded. Helmuth had helped to supervise all five operations counting the successful one from his desk on Jupiter V. But in the dream he was not in the control shack but instead on shipboard in one of the ships that was never to come back Then without transition but without any sense of discontinuity either he was on the Bridge itself. Not in absentia as the remote guiding intelligence of a beetle but in person in an ovular tank like suit the details of which would never come clear. The high brass had discovered antigravity and had asked for volunteers to man the Bridge. Helmuth had volunteered. Looking back on it in the dream he did not understand why he had volunteered. It had simply seemed expected of him and he had not been able to help it even though he had known to begin with what it would be like. He belonged on the Bridge though he hated it he had been doomed to go there from the first. And there was ... something wrong.. with the antigravity. The high brass had asked for its volunteers before the research work had been completed. The present antigravity fields were weak and t1 ere was some basic flaw in the theory. Generators broke down after only short periods of use burned oat unpredictably sometimes only moments after having passed their production tests with perfect scores. In waking life vacuum tubes behaved in the unpredictable way there were no vacuum tubes anywhere on Jupiter but machines on Jupiter burned out all the same burned out at temperatures which would freeze Helmuth solid in an instant. That was what Helmuth s antigravity set was about to do. He crouched inside his personal womb above the boiling sea the clouds raging by him in little scouring crystals which wore at the chorion protecting him lit by a plume of hydrogen flame and waited to feel his weight suddenly become three times greater than normal the pressure on his body go from sixteen pounds per square inch to fifteen million the air around him take on the searing stink Of poisons the whole of JupIter come pressing its burden upon him. He knew what would happen to him then. It happened. Helmuth greeted morning on Jupiter V with his customary scream. BOOK ThREE ENTR ACTE: Washington The layman the practical man the man in the street says What is that to me The answer is positive and weighty. Our life is entirely dependent on the established doctrines of ethics sociology political economy gpvernment law medical science etc. This affects everyone consciously or unconsciously the man in the street in the first place because he is the most defenseless. Ai pann K0RZYBSKI 4th January 2020 Dear Seppi Lord knows I have better sense than to mail this send it to you by messenger or leave it anywhere in the files or indeed on the premises of the Joint Committee but if one is sensible about such matters these days one never puts anything on paper at all and then burns the carbons. As a bad compromise I am filing this among my personal papers where it will be found opened and sent to you only after I will be beyond reprisals. That s not meant to sound as ominous as upon rereading I see it does. By the time you have this letter abundant details of what I ve been up to should be available to you not only through the usual press garble but through verbatim testimony. You will have worked out by now a rational explanation of my conduct since my re election and before it for that matter . At the very least I hope you now know why I authorized such a monstrosity as the Bridge even against your very good advice. All that is water over the dam or ether over the Bridge if you boys are following Dirac s lead back to the ether these days. How do I know about that You ll see in a moment. . I don t mean to rehash it here. What I want to do in this letter is to leave you a more specialized memo telling you in detail just how well the research system you suggested to me worked out form. Despite my surface appearance of ignoring that advice we were following your suggestion and very closely. I took a particular interest in your hunch that there might be crackpot ideas on gravity which needed investigation. Frankly I had no hope of finding anything but that would have left me no worse off than I had been before I talked to you. And actually it wasn t very long before my research chief came up with the Locke Derivation. The research papers which finally emerged from this particular investigation are still in the Graveyard file and I have no hope that they ll be released to non government physicists within the foreseeable future. If you don t get the story from me you ll never get it from anyone and I ve enough on my conscience now to be indifferent to a small crime like breaking Security. Besides as usual this particular secret has been available for the taking for years. A man named Schuster you may know more about him than I do wondered out loud about it as far back as 1891 before anybody had thought of trying to keep scientific matters a secret. He wanted to know whether or no every large rotating mass like the Sun for instance was a natural msgnet That was before the sun s magnetic field had been discovered too. And by the 1940 s it was clearly established for small rotating bodies like electrons a thing called the Lande factor with which I m sure you re familiar. I myself don t understand Word One of it. Dirac was associated with much of that part of the work. Finally a man named W. H. Babcock of Mount Wilson pointed out in the 1940 s that the Lande factor for the Earth the Sun and a star named 78 Virginius was identical or damned close to it. Now all this seemed to me to have nothing to do at all with gravity and I said so to my team chief who brought the thing to my attention. But I was wrong I suppose you re already ahead of me by now . Another man Prof. P. M. S. Blackett whose name was even familiar to me had pointed out the relationship. Suppose Blackett said I am copying from my notes now we let P be magnetic moment or what I have to think of as the leverage effect of a magnet the product of the strength of the charge times the distance between the poles. Let U be angular momentum rotation to a slob like me ang 1lar speed times moment of inertia to you. Then if C is the velocity of light and G is the acceleration of gravity and they always are in equations like this I m told then: B is supposed to be a constant amounting to about 0 25. Don t ask me why. Admittedly this was all speculative there would be no way to test it except on another planet with a stronger magnetic field than Earth s preferably about a hundred1times as strong. The closest we could come to that would be Jupiter where the speed of rotation is about 25 000 miles an hour at the equator and that was obviously out of the question. Or was it I confess that I never thought of using Jupiter except in wish fulfillment daydreams until this matter of the Locke Derivation came up. It seems that by a simple algebraic manipulation you can stick 0 on one side of the equation and all the other terms on the other and come up with this: To test that you need a gravitational field little more than twice the strength of Earth s. And there of course is Jupiter again. None of my experts would give the notion a nickel they said among other things that nobody even knew who Locke was which is true and that his algebraic trick wouldn t stand up under dimensional analysis which turned out to be true but irrelevant. We did have to monkey with it a little after the experimental results were in. What oounted was that we could make a practical use of this relationship. Once we tried that I should add we were astonished at the accompanying effects: the abolition of the LorentzFitzgerald relationship inside the field the intolerance of the field itself to matter outside its influence and so on not only at their occurring at all the formula doesn t predict them but at their order of magnitude. I m told that when this thing gets out dimensional analysis isn t the only scholium that s going to have to be revamped. It s going to be the greatest headache for physicists since the Einstein theory I don t know whether you ll relish this premonitory twinge or not. Pretty good going for a crackpot notion though. After that the Bridge was inevitable. As soon as it became clear that we could perform the necessary tests only on the surface of Jupiter itself we had to have the Bridge. It also became clear that the Bridge would have to be a dynamic structure. It couldn t be built to a certain size and stopped there. The moment it was stopped Jupiter would tear it to shreds. We had to build it to grow to do more than just resist Jupiter to push back against Jupiter instead. It s double the size that it needed to be to test the Locke Derivation now and I still don t know how much longer we re going to have to keep it growing. Not long I hope the thing s a monster already. But Seppi let me ask you this: Does the Bridge really fall under the interdict you uttered against the gigantic research projects It s gigantic all right. But is it gigantic on Jupiter I say it isn t. It s peanuts. A piece of attic gadgetry and nothing more. And we couldn t have performed the necessary experiments on any other planet. Not all the wealth of Ormus or of Ind or of all the world down the ages could have paid for a Manhattan District scaled to Jupiter s size. In addition though this was incidental the apparent giganticism involved was a useful piece of misdirection. Elephantine research projects may be just about played out but government budgetary agencies are used to them and think them normal. Getting the Joint Committee involved in one helped to revive the committeemen from their comatose state as nothing else could have. It got us appropriations we never could have corralled otherwise because people associate such projects with weapons research. And forgive me but there is a sort of science to politics too it seemed to show graphically that I was not following the suspect advice of the suspect Dr. Corsi. I owed you that though it s hardly as large a payment as I would like to make. But I don t mean to talk about the politics of crackpot mining here only about the concrete results. You should be warned too that the method has its pitfalls. You will know by now about the anti agathic research and what we got out of it. I talked to people Who might know what the chances were and got general agreement from them as to how we should proceed. Thi straight line approach looked good to me from the beginning. I set the Pfitzner people to work on it at once since they already had that HWS appropriation for similar research and HWS wouldn t be alert enough to detect the moment when Pfitzner s target cha nged from just plain old age to death itself. But we didn t overlook the crackpots and before long we found a real dilly. This was a man named Lyons who insisted that the standard Lansing hypothesis which postulates the existence of an aging toxin was exactly the opposite of the truth. I go into this subject with a certain relish because I suspect that you know as little about it as I do it s not often that I find myself in that situation. Instead he said what happens is that it s the young mothers who pass on to their offspring some substance which makes them longlived. Lansing s notion that the old mothers were the ones who did the passing along and that the substance passed along speeding up ageing was unproven Lyons said. Well that threw us into something of a spiral. Lansing s Law Senescence begins when growth ends had been regarded as gospel in gerontology for decades. But Lyons had a good hypothetical case. He pointed out that among other things all of Lansing s long lived rotifers showed characteristics in common with polyploid individuals. In addition to being hardy and long lived they were of unusually large size and they were less fertile than normal rotifers. Suppose that the substance which was passed along from one generation to another was A chromosome doubler like colchicine We put that question to Lansing s only surviving student a living crotchet named MacDougal. He wouldn t hear of it to him it was like questioning the Word of God. Besides he said if Lyons is right how do you propose to test it Rotifers are microscopic animals. Except for their eggs their body cells are invisible even under the microscope. Technically speaking in fact they don t seem to have any body cells as adults just a sort of generalized protoplasmic continuum in which the nuclei are scattered at random rather like the plasmodium of a slime mold. It would be quite a few months of Sundays before we ever got a look at a rotifer chromosome. Lyons thought he had an answer for that. He proposed to develop a technique of microtome preparation which would make not one but several different slices through a rotifer s egg. With any sort of luck he said we might be able to extend the technique to rotifer spores and maybe even to the adult critters. We thought we ought to try it. WithQut telling Pfitzner about it we gave Pearl River Labs that headache. We put Lyons himself in charge and assigned MacDougal to act as a consultant which he did by sniping and scoffing every minute of the day until not only Lyons but everybody else in the plant hated him . It was awful. Rotifers it turns out are incredibly delicate animals just about impossible to preserve after they re dead no matter what stage of their development you catch them in. Time and time again Lyons came up with microscope slides which he said proved that the long lived rotifers were at least triploid three labeled chromosomes per body cell instead of two and maybe even tetraploid. Every other expert in the Pearl River plant looked at them and saw nothing but a blur which might have been rotiter chromosomes ana might equally well have been a newspaper halftone of a grey cat walking over a fur rug in a thick fog. The comparative tests producing polyploid rotifers and other critters with drugs like coichicine and comparing them with the critters produced by Lansing s and MacDougal s classical breeding methods wcre just as indecisive. Lyons finally decided that what he needed to prove his case was the world s biggest and most expensive X ray microscope and right then we shut him down. MacDougal had been right all the time. Lyons was a crackpot with a plausible line of chatter enough of a technique at microdissection to compel respect and a real and commendable eagerness to explore his idea right down to the bottom. MacDougal was a frozen brained old man with far too much reverence for his teacher a man far too ready to say that a respected notion was right because it was respected and a man who had performed no actual experiments himself since his student days. But he had been right purely intuitively in predicting that Lyons inversion of Lansing s Law would come to nothing. I gather that victory in the sciences doesn t always go to the most personable man any more than it does in any other field. I m glad to know it I m always glad to find some small area of human endeavor which resists the con man and the sales talk. When Pftizner discovered ascomycin we had HWS close Pearl River out entirely. Negative results of this kind are valuable for scientists too I m told. How you will evaluate your proposed research method id the light of these tw experiences is unknown to me I can only tell you what I think I learned. I am convinced that we must be much slower in the future to ignore the fringe notion and the marginal theorist. One of the virtues of these crackpots if that is what they are is that they tend to cling to ideas which can be tested. That s worth hanging on to in a world where scientific ideas have become so abstract that even their originators can t suggest ways to test them. Whoever Locke was I suppose he hadn t put a thousandth as much time into thinking about gravity as Blackett had yet Blackett couldn t suggest a way to test his equation whereas the Locke Derivation was testable on Jupiter and turned out to be right. As for Lyons his notion was wrong but it too fell down because it failed the operational test the very test it proposed to pass until we performed that test we had no real assessment of Lansing s Law which had been traveling for years on prestige because of the impossibility of weighing any contrary hypothesis. Lyons forced us to do that and enlarged our knowledge. And so take it from there I ve tried to give back as good as I have gotten. I m not going to discuss the politics of this whole conspiracy with you nor do I want you to concern yourself with them. Politics is death. Above all I beg you if you re at all pleased with this report not to be distressed over the situation I will probably be in by the time this reaches you. I ve been ruthless with your reputation to advance my purposes I ve been ruthless with the careers of other people I ve been quite ruthless in sending some men some hundreds of men to deaths they could surely have avoided had it not been for me I ve put many others including a number of children into considerable jeopardy. With all this written against my name I d think it a monstrous injustice to get off scot free. And that is all I can say I have an appointment in a few minutes. Thank you for your friendship and your help. BLISS WAGONER CHAPTER NINE: New York It is sometimes claimed that religious intolerance Is the fruit of conviction. If One be absolutely certain that one s faith is right and all others wrong it seems criminal to permit one s neighbor obvious error and perdition. I am tempted to think however that religious fanaticism often is the result not of conviction but rather of doubt and insecurity. GEORGE SARTON RUTHLESSNESS ANNE had said is what it takes. But Paige thought afterwards is it Does faith add up to its own fiat violation It was all well enough to have something in which you could believe. But when a faith in humanity in general automatically results in casual inhumanity toward individual people something must have gone awry. Should the temple bell be struck so continually that it has to shatter make all its worshippers ill with terror until it is silenced Silence. The usual answer. Or was the fault not in faith itself but in the faithful The faithful were usually pretty frightening as people Believers and humanitarians alike. Paige s time to debate the point with himself had already almost run out and with it his time to protect himself if he could. Nothing had emerged from his soil samples. Evidently bacterial life on the Jovian moons had never at any time been profuse and consisted now only of a few hardy spores of common species like Bacillus subtilis which occurred on every Earth like world and sometimes even in meteors. The samples plated out sparsely and yielded nothing which had not been known for decades as indeed the statistiCs of this kind of research had predicted from the beginning. It was now knuwn around the Bronx plant that some sort of investigation of the Pfltzner project was rolling and was already moving too fast to be derailed by any method the company s executives could work out. Daily reports from Pfitzner s Washington office actually the Washington branch of Interplanet Press the public relations agency Pfitzner maintained were filed in the plant but they were apparently not very informative. Paige gathered that there was some mystery about the investigation at the source though neither Gunn nor Anne would say so in so many words. And finally Paige s leave was to be over day after tomorrow. After that the Proserpine station and probably an order to follow emerging out of the investigation which would maroon him there for the rest of his life in the service. And it wasn t worth it. That realization had been staring him in the eyes all along. For Anne and Gunn perhaps the price was worth paying the tricks were worth playing the lying and the cheating and the risking of the lives of others were necessary and just to the end in view. But when the last card was down Paige knew that he himself lacked the necessary dedication. Like every other road toward dedication that he had assayed this one had turned out to have been paved with pure lead and had left him with no better emblem of conduôt than the miserable one which had kept him going all the same: self preservation. He knew then with cold disgust toward himself that he was going to use what he knew to clear himself as soon as the investigation hit the plant. Senator Wagoner the grapevine said would be conducting it oddly enough for Wagoner and MacHinery were deadly political enemies had MacHinery gotten the jump on him at last and would arrive tomorrow. If Paige timed himself very carefully he could lay down the facts leave the plant forever and be out in space without having to face Hal Gunn or Anne Abbott at all. What would happen to the Pfitzner project thereafter would be old news by the time he landed at the Proserpine station more than three months old. And by that time he told himself he would no longer care. Nevertheless when the quick morrow came he marched into Gunn s office which Wagoner had taken over like a man going before a firing squad. A moment later he felt as though he had been shot down while still crossing the door sill. Even before he realized that Anne was already in the room he heard Wagoner say: Colonel Russell sit down. Fm glad to see you. I have a security clearance for you and a new set of orders you can forget Proserpine. You and Miss Abbott and I are leaving for Jupiter. Tonight . It was like a dream after that. In the Caddy oil the way to the spaceport Wagoner said nothing. As for Anne she seemed to be in a state of slight shock. From what little Paige thought he had learned about her and it was very little he deduced that she had expected this as little as he had. Her face as he had entered Gunn s office had been guarded eager and slightly smug all at once as though she had thought she d known what Wagoner would say. But when Wagoner had mentioned Jupiter she d turned to look at him as though he d been turned from a senator into a boxing kangaroo in the plain sight of the Pfitzner Pounders. Something was wrong. After the long catalog of things already visibly wrong the statement didn t mean very much. But something had clearly gone wrong. There were fireworks in the sky to the south visible from the right side of the Caddy where Paige sat as the car turned east on to tne parxway. iney were nig aim spectacular and seemed to be going up from the heart of Manhattan. Paige was puzzled until he remembered like a fact recalled from the heart of an absurd dream that this was the last night of the Believer Revival being held in the stadium on Randalls Island. The fireworks celebrated the Second Coming which the Believers were confident could not now be long delayed. Gewiss gewiss es naht noch heut und kann nicht lang mehr sliumen Paige could remember having heard his father an ardent Wagnerian singing that it was from Tristan. But he thought instead of those frightening medieval paintings of the Second Coming in which Christ stands ignored in a corner of the canvas while the people flock reverently to the feet of the Anti Christ whose face in the dim composite of Paige s memory was a curious mixture of Francis X. MacHinery and Bliss Wagoner. Words began to bloom along the black sky at the hearts of starshells: Millioi .now will .. die No doubt Paige thought bleakly. The Believers also believed that the Earth was flat but Paige was on his way to Jupiter not exactly a round planet but rounder than the Believers Earth. In quest if you please of immortali ty in which he too had believed. Tasting bile he thought ft takes all kinds. A final starshell so brilliant even at this distance that the word inside it was almost dazzled out burst soundlessly into blue white fire above the city. It said: q.I_ TOMORROW 1 Paige swung his head abruptly and looked at Anne. Her face a ghostly blur in the dying light of the shell was turned raptly towar4 the window she had been watching too. He leaned forward and kissed her slightly parted lips gently forgetting all about Wagoner . After a frozen mo. ment he could feel her mouth smiling against his the smile which had astonished him so when he had seen it first but softened transformed giving. The world went away for a while. Then she touched his cheeks with her fingertips and sank back against the cushions the Caddy swung sharply north off the parkway and the spark of radiance which was the last retinal image of the shell vanished into drifting purple blotches like after visions of the sun or of Jupiter seen close on. Anne had no way of knowing of course that he had been running away from her toward the Proserpine station when he had been cornered in this Caddy instead. Anne Anne I believe help me in mine unbelief. The Caddy was passed through the spaceport gates after a brief whispered consultation between the chauffeur and the guards. Instead of driving directly for the Administration Building however it turned craftily to the left and ran along the inside of the wire fence back toward the city and into the dark reaches of the emergency landing pits. It was not totally dark there however there was a pool of light on an apron some distance ahead with a needle of glare pointing straight up from its center. Paige leaned forward and peered through the double glass barrier one pane between himself and the driver the other between the driver and the world. The needle o light was a ship but it was not one he recognized. It was s single stage job: a ferry designed to take them out nc farther than to Satellite Vehicle One where they would be transferred to a proper interplanetary vessel. But it wa small even for a ferry. How do you like her Colonel Wagoner s voice said unexpectedly from the black corner where he sat. All right Paige said. She s a little small isn t she Wagoner chuckled. Pretty damn small he said anc fell silent again. Alarmed Paige began to wonder if the senator was feeling entirely well. He turned to look ai Anne but he could not even see her face now. He gropec for her hand she responded with a feverish rigid grip. The Caddy shot abruptly trom the tence. It bore down on the pool of light. Paige could see several marines standing on the apron at the tail of the ship. Absurdly the vessel looked even smaller as it came closer. All right Wagoner said. Out of here both of you. We ll be taking off in ten minutes. The crewmen will show you your quarters. Crewmen Paige said. Senator that ship won t hold more than four people and one of them has to be the tube man. That leaves nobody to pilot her but me. Not this trip Wagoner said following him out of the car. We re only passengers you and I and Miss Abbott and of course the marines. The Per Aspera has a separate crew of five. Let s not waste time please. It was impossible. On the cleats Paige felt as though he were trying to climb into a .22 calibre long rifle cartridge. To get ten people into this l iny shell you d have to turn them into some sort of hUman concentrate and pour them like powdered coffee. Nevertheless one of the marines met him in the airlock and within another minute he was strapping himself down inside a windowless cabin as big as any he d ever seen on board a standard interplanetary vessel far bigger than any ferry coul d accommodate. The intercom box at the head of his hammock was already calling the clearance routine. Dog down and make all fast. Airlock will cycle in one minute. What had happened to Anne She had come up the cleats after him of that he was sure All fast. Take off in one minute. Passengers ware but he d been hustled down to this nonsensical cabin too fast to look back. There was something very wrong. Was Wagoner Thirty seconds. Ware G s. making some sort of a getaway But from what And why did he want to take Paige and Anne with him As hostages they were Twenty seconds. worthless since they were of no value to the government had no money knew nothing damning about Wagoner Fifteen seconds. But wait a minute. Anne knew something about Wag oner or thought she did. Ten seconds. Stand by. The call made him relax instinctively. There would be time to think about that later. At take off Five seconds. it didn t pay Four. to concentrate Three. on anything Two. else but One. actual Zero. takeoff hit him with the abrupt bone cracking gut wrenching impact of all ferry take offs. There was nothing you could do to ameliorate it but let the strong muscles of the arms and legs and back bear it as best they could with the automatic tetanus of the Seyle GA reaction and concentrate on keeping your head and your abdomen in exact neutral with the acceleration thrust. The muscles you used for that were seldom called upon on the ground even by weight lifters but you learned to use them or were invalided out of the service a trained spaceman s abdominal biuscies will bounce a heavy rock and no strong man can make him turn his head if his neck muscles say no. Also it helped a little to yell. Theoretically the yell collapses the lungs acceleration pneumothorax the books call it and keeps them collapsed until the surge of powered flight is over. By that time the carbon dioxide level of the blood has risen so high that the breathing reflex will reassert itself with an enormous gasp even if crucial chest muscles have been torn. The yell makes sure that when next you breathe you breathe. But more importantly for Paige and every other spaceman the yell was the only protest he could form against that murderous nine seconds of pressure it makes you feel better. Paige yelled with vigor. He was still yelling when the ship went into free fall. Instantly while the yell was still dying incredulously in his throat he was clawing at his harness. All his space. man s reflexes had gone off at once. The powered flight period had been too short. Even the shortest possible take off acceleration outlasts the yell. Yet the ion rockets were obviously silenced. The little ship s power had failed she was falling back to the Earth Attention please the intercom box said mildly. We are now under way. Free fall will last only a few seconds. Stand by for restoration of normal gravity. And then. . . And then the hammock against which Paige was struggling was down again as though the ship were still resting quietly on Earth. Impossible she couldn t even be out of the atmosphere yet. Even if she were free fall should last all the rest of the trip. Gravity in an interplanetary vessel let alone a ferry could be reestablished only by rotating the ship around its long axis few captains bothered with the fuel expensive maneuvre since hardly anybody but old hands flew between the planets. Besides this ship the Per Aspera hadn t gone through any such maneuvre or Palge would have detected it. Yet his body continued to press down against the hammock with an acceleration of one Earth gravity. Attention please. We will be passing the Moon in one point two minutes. The observation blister is now open to passengers. Senator Wagoner requests the presence of Miss Abbott and Colonel Russell in the blister. There was no further sound from the ion rockets which had inexplicably been shut off when the Per Aspera could have been no more than 250 ri iles above the surface of the Earth. Yet she was passing the Moon now without the slightest sensation of movement though she must still be accelerating. What was driving her Paige could hear nothing but the small hum of he ship s electrical generator no louder than it would have been on the ground unburdened of the job of IF heating the electron ion plasma which the rockets used. Grimly he unsnapped the last gripper from his harness conscious of what a baby he evidently was on board this ship and got up. The deck felt solid and abnormal under his feet pressing against the soles of his shoes with a smug terrestrial pressure of one unvarying gravity. Only the habits of caution of a service lifetime prevented him from running forward up the companionway to the observation blister. Anne and Senator Wagoner were there the dimming moonlight bathing their backs as they looked ahead into deep space. They had been more than a little shaken up by the take off that was obvious but they were already almost recovered compared to the effects of the normal ferry take off this could only have ruffled them and of course the sudden transformation to the impossible one gravity field would not have bollixed their untrained reflexes with anything like the thoroughness that it had scrambled Paige s long conditioned reactions. Looked at this way space flight like this might well be easier for civilians than it would be for spacemen at least for some years to come. He padded cautiously toward them feeling disastrously humbled. Shining between them was a brilliant hard spot of yellow white light glaring into the blister through the thick cosmics proof glass. The spot was fixed and steady as were all the stars looking into the blister proof positive that the ship s gravity was not being produced by axial spin. The yellow spot itself shining between Wagoner s elbow and Anne s upper arm was Jupiter. On either side of the planet were two smaller bright dots the four Galilean satellites as widely separated to Paige s naked eye as they would have looked on Earth through a telescope the size of Galileo s. While Paige hesitated in the doorway to the blister the little spots that were Jupiter s largest moons visibly drew apart from each other a little Until one of them went into occulation behind Anne s right shoulder. The Per Aspera was still accelerating it was driving toward Jupiter at a speed nothing in Paige s experience could have prepared him for. Stunned he made a very rough estimate in his head of the increase in parallax and tried to calculate the ship s rate of approach from that. The little lunar ferry humming scarcely louder than a transformer for carrying five people let alone ten as far as SV l was now hurtling toward Jupiter at about a quarter of the speed of light. At least forty thousand miles per second. And the deepening color of Jupiter showed that the Per Aspera was still picking up speed. Come in Colonel Russell Wagoner s voice said echoing slightly in the blister. Come watch the show. We ve been waiting for you. CHAPTER TEN: Jupiter V That is precisely what common sense is for to be jarred into uncommon sense. One of the chief services which mathematics has rendered the human race in the past century is to put common sense where it belongs on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labeled discarded nonsense. Ejuc TEMPLE BELL Fun sm that landed as Helmuth was going on duty did nothing to lighten the load on his heart. In shape it was not distinguishable from any of the short range ferries which covered the Jovian satellary circuit carrying supplies from the regular SV l Mars Belt Jupiter X cruiser to the inner moons and sometimes some years old mail but it was considerably bigger than the usual Jovian ferry and it grounded its outsize mass on Jupiter V with only the briefest cough of rockets. That landing told lelmuth that his dream was well on its way to coming true. If the high brass had a real antigravity there would há e been no reason why the ion streams should have beeq necessary at all. Obviously what had been discoverdd was some sort of partial gravity screen which allowed a ship to operate with far less rocket thrust than was usual but which still left it subject to a sizable fraction of the universal G the inherent stress of space. Nothing less than a complete and completely controllable gravity screen would do on Jupiter. And theory said that a complete gravity screen was impossible. Once you set one up even supposing that you could you would be unable to enter it or leave it. Crossing a boundary line between a one G field and a no G field would be precisely as difficult as surmounting a high jump with the bar Set at infinity and for the same reasons. If you crossed it from the other direction you would hit the ground on the other side of the line as hard as though you had fallen there from the Moon a little harder in fact. Helmuth worked mechanically at the gang board think. ing. Charity was not in evidence but there was no special reason why the foreman s board had to be manned on this trick. The work could be as easily supervised from here and obviously Charity had expected Helmuth to do it thai way or he would have left notice. Probably Charity wai already conferring with the senators receiving what would be for him the glad news. Helmuth realized suddenly that there was nothing left for him to do now once this trick was over but to cut and run. There could be no real reason why he should be required to re enact the entire nightmare helplessly event for event like an actor committed tO a role. He was awake now in full control of his own senses and still at least partially sane. The man in the dream had volunteered but that man would not be Robert Helmuth. Not any longer. While the senators were here on Jupiter V he would turn in his resignation. Direct over Charity s head. The wave of relief came washing over him just as he finished resetting the circuits which would enable him to supervise frOm the gang board and left him so startlingly weak that he had to put the helmet down on the ledge before he had raised it half way to his head. So that had been what he had been waiting for: to quit nothing more. He owed it to Charity to finish the Grand Tour of the Bridge. After that he d be free. He would never have to see the Bridge again not even inside a viewing helmet. A farewell tour and then back to Chicago if there was still such a place. He waited until his breathing had quieted a little scooped the helmet up on to his shoulders and the Bridge .. came falling into existence all around him a Pandemonium beyond broaching and beyond hope sealed on all sides. The drumfire of rain against his beetle s hull was so loud that it hurt his ears even with the gain knob of his helmet backed all the way down to the thumb stop. It was impossible to cut the audio circuit out altogether much of his assessment of how the Bridge was responding to stress depended on sound human eyesight on the Bridge was almost as useless as a snail s. And the bridge was responding now as always with its medley of dissonance and cacophony: crang ... crang spungg ... skreek ... crang ... ungg ... oingg skreek ... skreek . ... These structural noises were the only ones that counted they were the polyphony of the Bridge everything else was decorative and to be ignored by the Bridge operator the fioritura shrieking of the winds the battery of the rain the pedal diapason of thunder the distant grumbling roll of the stage hand volcanoes pushing continents back and forth on castors down below. This time however at long last it was impossible to ignore any part of this great orchestra. Its composite uproar was enormous implacable incredible even for Jupiter overwhelming even in this season. The moment he heard it. Helmuth knew that he had waited too long. The Bridge was not going to last much longer. Not unless every man and woman on Jupiter V fought without sleep to keep it up throughout this passage of the Red Spot and the South Tropical Disturbance if even that would serve. The great groans that were rising through the tornado riven mists from the caissons were becoming steadily spasmodically deeper their hinges were already overloaded. Add the deck of the Bridge was beginning to rise and fall a little as though slow frozen waves were passing along it from one unfinished end to the other. The queasy lazy tidal swell made the beetle tip first its nose intq the winds then its tail then back again so that it took almbst all of the current Helmuth could feed into the magnet windings to keep the craft stuck to the rails on the deck at all. Cruising the deck seemed to be out of the question there was not enough power left over for the engines almost every available erg had to be devoted to staying put But there was still ihe rest of the Grand Tour to be made. And still one direction which Helmuth had yet to explore: Straight down. Down to the ice down to the Ninth Circle where everything stops and never starts again. There was a set of tracks leading down one of the Bridge s great buttresses on to which Helmuth could switch the beetle in nearby sector 94. It took him only a few moments to set the small craft to creeping head downward toward the surface. The meters on the ghost board had already told him that the wind velocity fell off abruptly at twenty one miles that is eleven miles down from the deck in this sector which was in the lee of The Glacier a long rib of. mountain range which terminated nearby. He was unprepared however for the near calm itself. There was some wind of course as there was everywhere on Jupiter especially at this season but the worst gusts were little more than a few hundred miles per hour and occasionally the meter fell as low as seventy five. he lull was dream like. The beetle crawled downward through it like a skin diver who has already passed the safety knot on his line but is too drugged by the ecstasy of the depths to care. At fifteen miles something white flashed in the fan lights and was gone. Then another three more. And then suddenly a whole stream of them. Belatedly Helmuth stopped the beetle and peered ahead but the white things were gone now. No there were more of them drifting quite slowly through the lights. As the wind died momentarily they almost seemed to hover pulsating slowly Helmuth heard himself grunt with astonishment. Once in a moment of fancy he had thought of Jovian jellyfish. That was what these looked like jellyfish not of the sea but of the air. They were ten ribbed translucent ranging in size from that of a closed fist to one as big as a football. They were beautiful and looked incredibly delicate for this furious planet. Helmuth reached forward to turn up the lights but the wind rose just as his hand closed on the knob and the creatures were gone. In the increased glare Helmuth saw instead that there was a large platform jutting out from the buttress not far below him just to one side of the rails. It was enclosed and roofed but the material was transparent. And there was motion inside it. He had no idea what the structure could be evidently it was recent. Although he had never been below the deck in this sector before he knew the plans well enough to recall that they had specified no such excresence. For a wild instant he had thought that there was a man on Jupiter already but as he pulled up just above the platform s roof he realized that the moving thing inside was of course a robot: a misshapen many tentacled thing about twice the size of a man. It was working busily with bottles and flasks of which it seemed to have thousands on benches and shelves all around it. The whole enclosure was a litter of what Helmuth took to be chemical apparatus and off to one side was an object which might have been a microscope. The robot looked up at him and gesticulated with two or three tentacles. At first Helmuth failed to understand then be saw that the machine was pointing to the fan lights and obediently turned them almost all the way down. In the resulting Jovian gloom he could see that the laboratory for that was obviously what it was had plenty of artificial light of its own. There was of couise no way that he could talk to the robot nor it to him If he wanted to he could talk to the person operating it but he knew the assignment of every man and woman on Jupiter V and running this thing was no part of any of their duties. There was not even any provision for it on the boards A white light began to wink on the ghost board. That would be the incoming line for Europa. Was somebody on that snowball in charge of this many tentacled experimenter using Jupiter V s booster station to amplify the signals that guided it Curiously he plugged the jack in. Hello the Bridge Who s on duty there Hc llo Europa. This is Bob Ilcirnuth. is this your robot I m looking at in sector ninety four That s me the voice said. It was impossible to avoid thinking of it as coming from the robot itself. This is Doe Barth. How do you like my laboratory Very cosy Helmuth said. I didn t even know it existed. What do you do in it We just got it installed this year. It s to study the Jovian life forms. You ve seen them You mean the jellyfish Are they really alive Yes the robot said. We are keeping it under our hats until we had more data but we knew that sooner or later one of you beetle goosers would see them. They re alive all right. They ve got a colloidal continuum discontinuum exactly like protoplasm except that it uses liquid ammonia as a sol substrate instead of water. But what do they live on Helmuth said. Ah that s the question. Some form of aerial plankton that s certain we ve found the digested remnants inside them but haven t captured any live specimens of it yet The digested fragments don t offer us much to go on. And what does the plankton live on I only wish I knew. Helmuth thought about it. Life on Jupiter. It did not matter that it was simple in structure and virtually helpless in the winds. It was life all the same even down here in the frozen pits of a hell no living man would ever visit. And who could know if jellyfish rode the Jovian air what Leviathans might not swim the Jovian seas You don t seem to be much impressed the robot said. Jellyfish and plankton probably aren t very exciting to a layman. But the implications are tremendous. It s going to cause quite a stir among biologists let me tell you. I can believe that Helmuth said. I was just taken aback that s all. We ve always thought of Jupiter as lifeless That s right. But now we know better. Well back to work: I ll be talking to you. The robot flourished its tentacles and bent over a workbench. Abstractedly TT lniuth hacked the beetle off and turned it upward again. Barth. he remembered was the man who had found a fossil on Europa. Earlier there had h en an officer doing a tour of duty in the Jovian system who had spent some of his spare time cutting soil samples in search f bacteria. Probably he had found some scientists of the before space fliqht had even found them in meteors. iie Earth and Mars were not the only places in the universe that would harbor life after all perhaps it was everywhere. If it could exist in a place like Jupiter. there was no logical reason to rule it out even on the Sun some animated flame no one would recognize as life. . He regained the deck and sent the beetle rumbling for the cwitchyard: he would need to transfer to another track before he could return the car to its garage. It had occurred to him during the ghostly proxy conversation that he had never met Doe Barth or many of the other men with whom he had talked so often by ham radio. Except for the Bridge operators themselves the Jovian system was a community of disembodied voices to him. And now he would never meet them. Wake up. Helmiith a voice from the gang deck snapped abruptly. If it hadn t been for me you d have run yourself off the end of the Bridge. You had all the automatic stops on that beetle cut out. Helmuth reached guiltily and more than a little too late for the controls. Eva had already run his beetle back beyond the danger line. Sorry he mumbled taking the helmet off. Thanks Eva. Don t thank me. If you d actually been in it I d have let it go. Less reading and more sleep is what I recommend for you Helmuth Keep your recommendations to yourself he growled. The incident started a new and even more disturbing chain of thought. If he were to resign now it would be nearly a year before he could get hack to Chicago. Antigravity or no antigravity the senators ship would have no room for unexpected extra passengers. Shipping a man hack home had to he arranged far in advance. Living space had to be provided and a cargo equivalent of the weight and space requirements he would take up on the return trip had to he dead headed out to Jupiter V. A year of living in the station on Jupiter V without any function as a man whose drain on the station s supnlies no longer could be justified in terms of what he d id A year of living under the eyes of Eva Chavez and Charity Dillon and the other men and women who still remained Bridge operators men and women who would not hesitate to let him know what they thoueht of his quitting. A year of living as a bystander in the feverish excitement Of direct personal exploration of Jupiter. A year of watching and hearing the inevitable deaths while he alone stood aloof privileged and useless. A year during which Robert Helmuth would become the most hated living entity in the Jovian system. And . whell he gdt back to Chicago and went looking for a job for his resignation from the Bridge gang would automatically take him out of government service he would be a ked why he had left the Bridge at the moment when work on the Bridge was just reaching its culmination. He began to understand why the man in the dream had volunteered. When the trick change bell rang he was still determined to resign but he had already concluded bitterly that there were after all other kinds of hells besides the one on Jupiter. He was returning the board to neutral as Charity came up the cleats. Charity s eyes were snapping like a skyful of comets. He Imuth had known that they would be. Senator Wagoner wants to speak to you if you re not too tired Bob he said. Go ahead I ll finish up there. He does Helmuth frowned. The dream surged back upon him. No. They would not rush him any faster than he wanted to go. What about Charity Am I suspected of unwestern activities I suppose you ve told them how I feel. I have Dillon said unruffled. But we ve agreed that you may not feel the same way after you ve talked to Wagoner. He s in the ship of course. I ve put out a suit for you at the lock. Charity put the helmet over his head effectively cutting himself off from further conversation or from any further consciousness of Helmuth at all. Helmuth stood looking at the blind featureless bubble on Charity s shoulders for a moment. Then with a convulsive shrug he went down the cleats. Three minutes later he was plodding in a spacesuit across the surface of Jupiter V with the vivid bulk of the mother planet splashing his shoulders with color. A courteous marine let him through the ship s airlock and deftly peeled him out of the suit. Despite a grim determination to be uninterested in the new antigravity and any possible consequence of it he looked curiously about as he was conducted up toward the bow. But the ship on the inside was like the ones that had brought him from Chicago to Jupiter V it was like any spaceship: there was nothing in it to see but corridor walls and cleatwalls until you arrived at the cabin where you were needed. Senator Wagoner was a surprise. He was a young man no more than sixty at most not at all portly and he had the keenest pair of blue eyes that Helmuth had ever seen. The cabin in which he received Helmuth was obviously his own a comfortable cabin as spaceship accommodations go but neither roomy nor luxurious. The senator was hard to match up with the stories Helmuth had been hearing about the current Senate which had been involved in scandal after scandal of more than Roman proportions. There were only two people with him: a rather plain girl who was possibly his secretary and a tall man wearing the uniform of the Army Space Corps and the eagles of a colonel. Helmuth realized with a second shock of surprise that he knew the officer: he was Paige Russell a ballistics expert who had been stationed in the Jovian system not too long ago. inc curt collector. i se smueci rather wryly as Helmuth s eyebrows went up. Helmuth looked back at the senator. I thought there was a whole sub committee here he said. There is but we left them where we found them on Ganymede. I didn t want to give you the idea that youwere facing a grand jury Wagoner said smiling. I ve been forced to sit in On most of these endless loyalty investigations back home but I can t see any point in exporting such religious ceremonies to deep space. Do sit down Mr. Helmuth. There are drinks coming. We have a lot to talk about. Stiffly Helmuth sat down. You know Colonel Russell of course Wagoner said leaning back comfortably hi his own chair. This young lady is Anne Abbott about whom you ll hear more short ly. Now then: Dillon tells me that your usefulness to the Bridge is about at an end. in a way I m sorry to hear that for you ve been one of the best men we ve had on any of our planetary projects. But in another way I m glad. It makes you available for something much bigger where we need you much more. What do you mean by that You ll have to let me explain it in my own way. First I d like to talk a little about the Bridge. Please don t feel that I m quizzing you by the way. You re at perfect liberty to say that any given question is none of my business and I ll take no offense and hold no grudge. Also I hereby disavow the authenticity of any tape or other tapping of which this statement may be a part. In short our conversation is unofficial highly so. Thunk you. It s to my interest I m hoping that you ll talk freely to me. Of course my disavowal means nothing since such formal stateilnents can always be excised from a tape but later on I n going to tell you some things you re not supposed to know and you ll be able to judge by what I say that anything you say to me is privileged. Paige and Anne are your witnesses. Okay A steward came in silently with the drinks and left again. Helmuth tasted his. As far as he could tell it was exactly like many he had mixed for himself back in the control shack from standard space rations. The only difference was that it was cold which Helmuth found star tling but not unpleasant after thç first sip. He tried to relax. I ll do my best he said. Good enough. Now: Dillon says that you regard the Bridge as a monster. I ve examined your dossier pretty closely as a matter of fact I ve been studying both you and Paige far more intensively than you can imagine and I think perhaps Dillon hasn t quite the gist of your meaning. I d like to hear it straight from you. I don t think the Bridge is a monster Helmuth said slowly. You see Charity is on the defensive. He takes the Bridge to be conclusive evidence that no possible set of adverse conditions will ever stop man for long and there I m in agreement with him. But he also thinks of it as Progress personified. He. can t admit you asked me to speak my mind Senator he can t admit that the West is a decadent and dying culture. All the other evidence that s available shows that it is. Charity likes to think of the Bridge as giving the lie to that evidence. The West hasn t many more years Wagoner agreed astonishingly. Paige Russell mopped his forehead. I still can t hear you say that the spaceman said without wanting to duck under the rug. After all MacHinery s with that pack on Ganymede MacHinery Wagoner said calmly is probably going to die of apoplexy when we spring this thing on him and I for one won t miss him. Anyhow it s perfectly true the dominoes have been falling for some time now and the explosion Anne s outfit has cooked up is going to be the final blow. Still and all Mr. Helmuth the West has been responsible for some really towering achievements in time. Perhaps the Bridge could be considered as the last and mightiest of them all. Not by me Helmuth said. The building of gigantic projects for ritual purposes doing a thing for the sake of doing it is the last act of an already dead culture. Look at the pyramids in Egypt for an example. Or at an even more enormous and more idiotic example bigger than anything human beings have accomplished yet the laying out of the Diagram of Power over the whole face of Mars. Ifthe Martians had put all that energy into survival instead they d probably be alive yet. Agreed Wagoner said with reservations. You re right about Mars but the pyramids were built during the springtime of the Egyptian culture. And dçing a thing for the sake of doing it is not a definition of ritual it s a definition of science. All right. That doesn t greatly alter my argument. Maybe you ll also agree that the essence of a vital culture is its ability to defend itself. The West has beaten the Soviets for half a century now but as far as I can see the Bridge is the West s Diagram of Power its pyramids or what have you. It showa that we re mighty but mighty in a non survival sort of way. All the money and the resources that went into the Bridge are going to be badly needed and won t be there when the next Soviet attack comes. Correction: it has already come Wagoner said. And it has already won. The USSR played the greatest of all von Neumann games far better than we did because they didn t assume as we did that each side would always choose the best strategy they played also to wear down the players. In fifty years uf unrelenting pressure they succeeded in converting the West into a system so like the Soviets as to make direct military action unnecessary we Sovietized ourselves and our moves are now exactly predictable. So in part I agree with you. What we needed was to sink the energy and the money into the game into social research since the menace was social. Instead typically we put it into a physical research project of unprecedented size. Which was of course just what the theory of games said we would do. For a man who s been cut off from Earth for years Helmuth you seem to know more about what s going on down there than most of the general populace does. Nothing promotes an interest in Earth like being off it Heln uth said. And there s plenty of time to read out here. Either the drink was stronger than he had expected which was reasonable considering that he had been off the stuff for some time now or the senator s calm concurrence in the collapse of Helmuth s entire world had given him another shove toward the abyss his head was spinning. Wagoner saw it. He leaned forward suddenly catching Helmuth fiat footed. However he said it s difficult for me to agree that the Bridge serves or ever did serve a ritual purpose. The Bridge served several huge practical purposes which are now fulfilled. As a matter of fact the Bridge as such is now a defunct project. Defunct Helmuth said faintly. Quite. Of course we ll continue to operate it for a while. You canl stop a process of that size on a dime. Besides one of the reasons why we built the Bridge was because the USSR expected us to the game said that we should launch another Manhattan District or Project Lincoin at this point and we hated to disappoint them. One thing we are not going to do this time however is to tell them the problem that the project was supposed to solve let alone that it can be solved and has been. So we ll keep the Bridge going physically and publicly. That ll be just as well too for people like Dillon whc are emotionally tied up in it above and beyond their conditioning to it. You re the only person in authority in the whole station who s already lost enough interest in the bridge to make it safe for me to tell you that it s being abandoned. But why Because Wagoner went on quietly the Bridge has now given us confirmation of a theory of stupendous importance so important in my opinion that the imminent fall of the West seems like a puny event in comparison. A confirmation incidentally which contains in it the seeds of ultimate destruction for the Soviets whatever they may win for themselves in the next hundred years or so. I suppose Helmuth said puzzled that you mean antigravity For the first time it was Wagoner s turn to be taken aback. Man he said at last do you know everything I want to tell you I hope not or my conclusions will be mighty unwelcome to both of us. Do you also know what an anti agathic is No Helmuth said. I don t even recognize the root of the word. Well that s a relief. But surely Charity didn t tell you we had antigravity. I strictly enjoined him not to mention it. No. The subjecf s been on my mind jelmuth said. But I certainly don t see why it should be so worldshaking any more than I see how the Bridge helped to bring it about. I thought it would be developed independently for the further exploitation of the Bridge. In other words to put men down there and short circuit this remote control operation we have on Jupiter V. And I thought it would step up Bridge operation not discontinue it. Not at all. Nobody in his right mind would want to put men on Jupiter and besides gravity isn t the main problem down there. Even eight gravities is perfectly tolerable for short periods of time and anyhow a man in a pressure .suit couldn t get five hundred miles down through that atmosphere before he d be as buoyed up and weightless as a fish and even more thoroughly at the mercy of the currents. And you can t screen out the pressure We can Wagoner said but only at ruinous cost. Besides there d be no point in trying. The Bridge is finished. It s given us information in thousands of different categories much of it very valuable indeed. But the one job that only the Bridge could do was that of confirming or throwing out the Blackett Dirac equations. Which are They show a relationship between magnetism and the spinning of a massive body that much is the Dirac part of it. The Blackett Equation seemed to show that the same formula also applied to gravity it says G equals 2CP BU2 where C is the velocity of light P is magnetic moment and U is angular momentum. B is an uncertainty correction a constant which amounts to 0.25 . If the figures we collected on the magnetic field strength of Jupiter forced us to retire the equations then none of the rest of the information we ve gotten from the Bridge would have been worth the money we spent to get it. On the other hand Jupiter was the only body in the solar system available to us which was big enough in all relevant respects to make it possible for us to test those equations at all. They involve quantities of infinitesimal orders of magnitudes. And the figures showed that Dirac was right. They also show that Blackett was right. Both magnetism and gravity are phenomena of rotation. I won t bother to trace the succeeding steps because I think you can work them out for yourself. It s enough to say that there s a drive generator on board this ship which is the complete and final justification of all the hell you people on the Bridge have been put through. The gadget has a long technical name The Dillon Wagoner gravitron polarity generator a name which I loathe for obvious reasons but the technies who tend it have already nicknamed it the spindizzy because of what it does to the magnetic moment of any atom any atom within its field. While it s in operation it absolutely refuses to notice any atom outside its own influence. Furthermore it will notice no other strain or influence which holds good beyond the borders of that field. It s so snooty that it has to be stopped down to almost nothing when it s brought close to a planet or it won t let you land. But in deep space well it s impervious to meteors and such trash of course it s impervious to gravity and it hasn t the faintest interest in any legislation about top speed limits. It moves in its own continuum not in the general frame. You re kidding. Helmuth said. Am I now This ship came to Ganymede directly from Earth. It did it in a little under two hours counting maneuvring time. That means that most of the way we made about 55 000 miles per second with the spindizzy drawing less than five watts of power out of three ordinary No. 6 dry cells. Helmuth took a defiant pull at his drink. This thing really has no top speed at all he said. How can you be sure of that Well we can t Wagoner admitted. After all one of the unfortunate things about general mathematical formulae is that they don t contain cut off points to warn you of areas where they don t apply. Even quantum mechanics is somewhat subject to that criticism. However we expect to know pretty soon just how fast the spindizzy can drive an object. We expect you to tell us. I Yes you and Colonel Russell and Miss Abbott too I hope. Helmuth looked at the other two both of them looked at least as stunned as he felt. He could not imagine why. The coming débâcle on Earth makes it absolutely imperative for us the West to get inter stellar expeditions started at once. Richardson Observatory on the Moon has two likely looking systems mapped already one at Wolf 359 the other at 61 Cygni and there are sure to be others hundreds of others where Earth like planets are highly probable. What we re doing in a nutshell is evacuating the West not physically of course but in essence in idea. We want to scatter adventurous people people with a thoroughly indoctrinated love of being free all over this part of the galaxy if it can be done. Once they re out there they ll be free to flourish with no interference from Earth. The Soviets haven t the spin dizzy yet and even after they get it they won t dare allow it to be used. It s too good and too final an escape route for disaffected comrades. What we want you to do Helmuth . . . now I m getting to the point you see . .. is to direct this exodus with Colonel Russell s help. You ve the intelligence and the cast of mind for it. Your analysis of the situation on Earth confirms that if any more confirmation were needed. And there s no future for you on Earth now. You ll have to excuse me for a while Helmuth said firmly. I m in no condition to be reasonable now it s been more than I could digest in a few moments. And the decision doesn t entirely rest with me either. If I could give you an answer in . . . let me see . . . about three hours. Will that be soon enough That ll be fine the senator said. For a moment after the door closed behind Helmuth there was silence in the senator s cabin. At last Paige said: So it was long life for spacemen you were after all the time. Long life by God for me and for the likes of me. Wagoner nodded. This was the one part of this affair that I couldn t explain to you back in Hal Gunu s office he said. Until you had ridden in this ship and understood as a spaceman just what kind of a thing we have in it you wouldn t have believed me Helmuth does you see because he already has the background. In the same way I didn t go into the question of the anti agathic with Helmuth because that s something he s going to have to experience you two have the background to understand that part of it through explanation alone. Now you see why I didn t give a whistle about your spy Paige. The Soviets can have the Earth. As a matter of fact they will take it before very long whether we give into them or not. But we are going to scatter the West throughout the stars scatter it with immortal people carrying immortal ideas. People like you and Miss Abbott. Paige looked back to Anne. She was aloofly regarding the empty space just above Wagoner s head as though still looking at the bewhiskered picture of the Pfitzner founder which hung in Gunn s office. There was something in her face however that Paige could read He smothered a grin and said: Why me Because you re just what we need for the job. I don t mind telling you that your blundering into the Pfitzner project in the first place was an act of Providence from my point of view. When Anne first called your qualifications to my attention I was almost prepared to belie ve that they d been faked. You re going to be liason man between the Pfitzner side of the project and the Bridge side. We ve got the total output to date of both ascomycin and the new anti agathic salted away in the cargo hold and Anne s already shown you how to take the stuff and how to administer it to others. After that just as soon as you and Helmuth can work out the details the stars are yours. Anne Paige said. She turned her head slowly toward him. Are you with this thing I m here she said. And I d had a few inklings of what was up before. You were the one who had to be brought in not I. Paige thought about it a moment more. Then something both very new and very old occurred to him. Senator he said you ve gone to an immense amount of trouble to make this whole thing possible but I don t think you plan to go with ns. No Paige I don t. For one thing MacHinery and his crew will regard the whole project as treasonous. If it s to be carried out nevertheless someone has to stay behind and be the goat and after all the idea was mine so I m the logical candidate. He fell silent for a moment Then he added ruminatively: The government boys have nobody but themselves to thank for this. The whole project would never have been possible so long as the West had a government of laws and not of men and stuck to it. It was a long while ago that some people MacHinery s grandfather among them set themselves up to be their own judges of whether or not a law ought to be obeyed. They had precedents. And now here we are on the brink of the most enormous breach of our social contract the West has ever had to suffer and the West can t stop it. He smiled suddenly. I ll have good use for that argument in the court. Anne was on her feet her eyes suddenly wet her lower lip just barely trembling. Evidently over whatever time she had known Wagoner and had known what he had planned it had never occurred to her that the young old senator might stay behind. That s no good she said in a low voice. They won t listen and you know it. They might easily hang you for it. If they find you guilty of treason they ll seal you up in the pile waste dump that s the current penalty isn t it You cant go back It s a phony terror. Pile wastes are quick chemical poisons you don t last long enough to notice that they re also hot Wagoner said. And what difference does it make anyhow Nothing and nobody can harm me now. The job is done. Anne put her hands to her face. Besides Anne Wagoner said with gentle insistence the stars are for young people eternally young people. An eternal oldster would be an anachronism. Why did you do it then Paige said. His own voice was none too steady. Why Wagoner said. You know the answer to that Paige. You ve known it all your life. I could see it in your face as soon as I told Helmuth that we were going out to the stars. Supposing you tell me what it is. Anne swung her blurred eyes on Paige. He thought he knew what she expected to hear him say they had talked about it often enough and it was what he once would have said himself. But now another force seemed to him to be the stronger: a ej ecial thing bearing the name of no established dogma but nevertheless and unmistakably the force to which he had borne allegiance all his life. He in turn could see it in Wagoner s face now and he knew he had seen it before in Anne s. It s the thing that lures monkeys into cages he said slowly. And lures cats into open drawers and up telephone poles. It s driven men to conquer death and put the stars into our hands. I suppose that I d call it Curiosity. Wagoner looked startled. Is that really what you want to call it he said. Somehow it seems insufficient I should have given it another name. Perhaps you ll amend it later somewhere some day out by Aldebaran. He stood up and looked at the two for a moment in silence. Then he smiled. And now he said gently nunc dimittis... suffer thy servant to depart in peace. CHAPTER ELEVEN: Jupiter V the social and economic rewards for such scientific activities do not primarily accrue to the scientist or to the intellectual. Still that has perhaps been his own moral speciation a choice of one properly humane activity: to have knowledge of things not to have things. If he loves and has knowledge all is well. WESTON L BAluun AND SO that s the story Helmuth said. Eva remained silent in her chair for a long time. One thing I don t understand she said at last. Why did you come to me I d have thought that you d find the whole thing terrifying. Oh it s terrifying all right Helmuth said with quiet exultation. But terror and fright are two different things as I ve just discovered. We were both wrong Evita. I was wrong in thinking that the Bridge was a dead end. You were wrong in thinking of it as an end in itself. I don t understand you. I didn t understand myself. My fears of working in person on the Bridge were irrational they came from dreams. That should have tipped me off right away. There was really never any chance of anyone s working in person on Jupiter but I wanted to. It was a death wish and it came directly out of the goddamned conditioning. I knew we all knew that the Bridge couldn t stand forever but we were conditioned to believe that it had to. Nothing else could justify the awful ordeal of keeping it going even one day. The result: the classical dilemma that leads to madness. It affected you too and your response was just as insane as mine: you wanted to have a child here. Now all that s changed. The work the Bridge was doing was worth while after all. I was wrong in calling it a bridge to nowhere. And Eva yOu no more saw where it was going than I did or you d never have made it the be all and end all of your existence. Now there s a place to go to. In fact there are places hundreds of places. They ll be Earthlike places. Since the Soviets are about to win the Earth those places will be more Earthlike than Earth itself at least for the next century orso She said: Why are you telling me this Just to make peace between us I m going to take on this job Evita ... if you ll go along. She turned swiftly rising out of the chair with a marvelous fluidity of motion. At the same instant all the alarm bells in the station went off at once ffllrng every metal cranny with a jangle of pure horror. Posts the loudspeaker above Eva s bed roared in a distorted gigantic caricature of Charity Dillon s voice. Peak storm overload The STD is now passing the Spot. Wind velocity has already topped all previous records and part 0 the land mass has begun to settle. This is an A i overload emergency. Behind Charity s bellow they could hear what he was hearing the winds of Jupiter a spectrum of continuous insane shrieking. The Bridge was responding with monstrous groans of agony. There was another sound too an almost musical cacophony of sharp percussive tones such as a dinosaur might make pushing its way through a forest of huge steel tuning forks. Helmuth had never heard the sound. before but he knew what it was. The deck of the Brid e was splitting up the middle. After a moment more the uproar dimmed and the speaker said in Charity s normal voice: Eva you too please. Acknowledgey please. This is it unless everybody comes on duty at once the Bridge may go down within the next hour. Let it Eva responded quietly. There was a brief startled silence and then a ghost of a human sound. The voice was Senator Wagoner s and the sound just might have been a chuckle. Charity s circuit clicked Out. The mighty death of the Bridge continued to resound in the little room. After a while the man and the woman went to the window and looked past the discarded bulk of Jupiter at the near horizon where there had always been visible a few stars. CODA: Brookhaven National Laboratories the pile dump But I say unto you Love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despite fully use you and persecute you That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you what reward have ye do not even the publicans the same And if ye salute your brethren only what do ye more do not even the publicans so Ev ay END Wagoner wrote on the wall of his cell on the last day is a new beginning. Perhaps in a thousand years my Earthmen will come home again. Or in two thousand or four if they still remember home then. They ll come back yes but I hope they won t stay. I pray they will not stay. He looked at what he had written and thought of signing his name. While he debated that he made the mark for the last day on his calendar and the point on his stub of pencil struck stone under the calcimine and snapped leaving nothing behind it but a little coronet of frayed dirty blond wood. He could wear that away against the window ledge at least enough to expose a little graphite but instead he dropped the stub in the waste can. There was writing enough in the stars that he could see because he had written it there. There was a constellation called Wagoner and every star in the sky belonged to it. That was surely enough. Later that day a man named MacHinery said: Bliss Wagoner is dead. As usual MacHinery was wrong. A LIFE FOR THE STARS To L. Sprague DeCamp CHAPTER ONE: Press Gang From the embankment of the long abandoned ErieLackawanna Pennsylvania Railroad Chris sat silently watching the city of Scranton Pennsylvania preparing to take off and sucked meditatively upon the red and white clover around him. It was a first time for each of them. Chris had known since he had been a boy he was sixteen now that the cities were deserting the Earth but he had never seen one in flight. Few people had for the nomad cities once gone were gone for good. Nor was it a very happy occasion interesting though it was. Scranton was the only city Chris had ever seen let alone visited and the only one he was ever likely to see. It represented what small livelihood his father and his older brother had been able to scratch out of this valley it was where the money was made and where it was spent somehow always managing to go out faster than it came in. Scranton had become steadily greedier as the money to be made dwindled but somehow never greedy enough. Now as it had for so many other towns the hour of the city s desperation had struck. It was going into space to become a migrant worker among the stars. The valley sweltered in the mercilessly hot July sunlight and the smoke from the plant chimneys rose straight up. There were only a few smokestacks going though and those would be shut down shortly until the city should find another planet on which to work. Nothing would be allowed to smoke in the confined air of a star cruising vessel even as big a one as a city not so much as a cigarett Down at the bottom of the railroad embankment where the tar paper shacks huddled a red necked man in an undershirt and levis scratched at a kitchen garden with a hoe. Chris wondered if he knew what was about to happen. Certainly he was paying no attention maybe he just didn t care. Chris s own father had reached the gloomy state of mind long ago. But all the same it was odd that there were no sight seers other than Chris himself. A circular belt of cleared land nothing but raw red dry earth ran around the city separating it from the shacks from the battered and flaking suburbs and from all the rest of the world. Inside it the city looked the same as always even to the yellow and orange glare of the slag heaps. Scranton was going to leave half its homes behind but it was taking the slag heaps along they were part of its stock in trade. Somewhere out among the stars there would be a frontier planet with iron ore to process somewhere else a planet with a use for slag or something that might be extracted from slag a use still beyond speculation but not to be foreclosed by shortsightedness. People on the other hand were largely useless weight for weight the slag would be worth more. At least that was the hope. What was certain was that there was no more iron ore on Earth worth processing. The voracious Second Millennium the books called it the Age of Waste had used it all up except for such artificial mines as used car dumps and other deposits of scrap and rust. There1 was still native iron on Mars of course but none of that was available for Scranton. Pittsburgh was already on Mars as well equipped with guns as with blast furnaces. Besides Mars was too small a planet to support more than one steel town not because the red world was short of iron but because it was short of oxygen which was also essential for the making of steel. Any work Scranton might find to do now would have to lie beyond the reaches of the solar system. There was no iron on Venus or Mercury that a steel town could afford to process and no iron at all on the other six planets the five gas giants and the remote ice ball that was Pluto. The man in the kitchen garden straightened leaned his hoe against the back of his shack and went inside. Now the valley outside the raw earth circle looked deserted indeed and it suddenly occurred to Chris that this might be more than an appearance. Was there something dangerous about being too close to a city under a spindizzy field Were he and the lone gardener being foolhardy At the moment the whole world was silent except for the distant grumbling of Scranton itself. He knew he had nothing to fear from the rail bed behind him for the tracks had been torn up long ago to feed the furnaces. There was a legend in the valley that on quiet nights one could still hear the Phoebe Snow going by but Chris scoffed at such fairy tales. Besides his father had told him that had been a daytime train. Even the ties were gone burned as firewood by the shack dwellers through generations of harsh Pennsylvania winters. He racked his memory for what little he knew about the behavior of spindizzies but could come up with nothing but that they were machines and that they lifted things. Though his schooling had been poor and spasmodic he was a compulsive reader devouring even the labels on cans if there was nothing else available but the physics of interstellar flight is an impossible discipline to grasp even for an advanced student without a first rate teacher to help and the closest Chris had even come to a good teacher was Scranton s public librarian. She had tried hard but she did not know the subject. As a result Chris stayed where he was. He would probably have done so even had he known positively that there was some danger for in the valley anything new was a change even the fact disastrous though it was that Scranton was about to go as permanently out of his life and world as Betelgeuse. His own life thus far had held little but squirrel trapping stealing eggs from neighbors as badly off as his own family hunting scrap to sell to the mills helping Bob nurse their father through repeated bouts of an illness which but for the fact that there was no one in thirty second century America to diagnose it would have been recognized as the ancient African scourge of kwash.iorkor or malignant malnutrition keeping the little girls out of the berry patch fishing for fingerlings and watching the rockets of the rich howl remotely through the highest reaches of the indifferent sky. He had often thought of leaving though he had no trade to practice and knew of no place in the world where his considerable but utterly untrained brute strength could be sold at any price. But there was loyalty and love in the motherless family and it had often before sustained them wheti there had been nothing to eat but fried dough and green tomatoes and no warmth against the Christmas snows but huddling with the little kids under a heap of the old rags that were their clothes and in the end Chris stuck by it as stubbornly and devotedly as Bob always had. In all the depopulated Earth there was no place to which he owed more loyalty and no place which could offer him more in return the worst possible substratum for dreams of escape even for a temperament as naturally sunny and sanguine as Chris s. In a world where a Ph.D. in economics could find no one to teach nor use his knowledge of how the economy wagged to find any other niche in it a world in which a thousand penny ante jobs left him no time even to tend his wife s grave yet all the same paid him less and less every year what hope could his boys reasonably cherish for any better future The answer alas was all too obvious and for the little girls the foreseeable future was even more grim. The nomad cities offered no better way of escape. More often than not Chris had read star roving was simply another form of starvation without even the company of a blue sky a scrub forest or a patch of ground to grow turnips in. Otherwise why did almost every city which had ever left the Earth fail to come back home Pittsburgh had made its fortune on Mars to be sure but it was a poor sort of fortune that kept you sitting in a city all your life with nothing to see beyond the city limits but an ochre desert a desert with no air you could breath a desert that would freeze you solid only a few minutes after the tiny sun went down. Sooner or later too his father said Pittsburgh would have to leave the solar system as all the other cities had not this time because it had exhausted the iron and the oxygen but because there would be too few people left on the Earth to buy steel. There were already too few to justify Pittsburgh s coming back to the once golden triangle of rivers it had abandoned thirty years ago Pittsburgh had wealth but was finding it increasingly hard to spend on the Earth even for necessities. The nomad cities seemed like everything else to be a dead end. Nevertheless Chris sat on the embankment and watched for only a single simple reason: Something was going on. If he envied the city its decision to leave the valley he was unaware of it. He was there simply to see something happen for a change. A brief rustle of shrubbery behind him made him turn. A dog s head peered across the roadbed at him from the foot of the mountainside surrounded incongruously by the trumpets of tiger lilies it looked a little as if it were being served up on a platter. Chris grinned. Hello Kelly. Look out for bees. The dog whuffed and came trotting to him looking foolishly proud of itself as it probably was for Kelly was usually not very good at finding anything even his own way home. Bob whose dog Kelly officially was said that Kelly was a combination of Kerry blue and collie hence the name but Chris had never seen a pure sample of either breed and Kelly did not look anything like the pictures of either. He looked in point of fact like a shaggy mutt which was fortunate for him since that was whathewas. What do you make of it handsome Think they ll ever get that thing off the ground Kelly gave an imitation of a dog trying to think registered pain wagged his tail twice woofed at a butterfly and sat down panting. It had obviously always been his impression that he belonged to Chris an impression Bob had wisely never tried to discourage. Explaining something that abstract to Kelly was a a long and complicated task and b utterly hopeless anyhow. Kelly earned his own keep he caught rabbits which made up for the nuisance he was when he caught a porcupine so nobody in the family but Chris much cared whom he thought he belonged to. There was at last some activity around the parching city. Small groups of men made so tiny by distance that they were almost invisible except for their bright yellow steelworkers helmets were patrolling the bare perimeter. There was probably a law about that. Chris reflected. Equally probably it would be the last Earth law Scranton would ever be obliged to observe no matter how many of them the city fathers took into space of their own free will. No doubt the patrol was looking for rubbernecks who might be standing too close for safety. He imagined it so vividly that for a moment he had the illusion of hearing their voices. Then he realized with a start that it was not an ifiusion. A flash of yellow hard hats revealed another group of patrollers working their way through the shacks at the foot of the embankment and coming in his direction. With the ingrained prudence of the lifelong poacher he took at once to the bushes on the other side of the roadbed. Not only would he be invisible from there but of course he could no longer see the patrol however he could still hear it. ... anybody in these shacks. Ask me it s a waste of time. The boss says look so we look that s all. Myself I think we d make out better M Nixonville. Them tramps They can smell work ten miles away. People on this side of town they used to look for work. Not that there ever was any. Chris cautiously parted the shrubbery and peered out. The gang was still out of sight but there was another group coming toward him from the other direction walking along the old roadbed. He let the bushes swing closed hastily wishing that he had retreated farther up the mountainside. It was too late for that now though. The new patrol was close enough to hear the brush rustle and would probably see him too if he was in motion. Down in the valley there was a sudden slight hum like bee buzz but infinitely gentler and deeper in tone. Chris had never heard anything exactly like it before but there could be no doubt in his mind about what it was: Scranton s spindizzies were being tuned. Was he going to have to hide right through the take.off and miss seeing it But surely the city wouldn t leave until its patrols were back on board The voices came cl6ser and beside him Kelly growled softly. The boy grasped the dog firmly by the scruff and shook him gently not daring to speak. Kelly shut up but all his muscles were tensed. Hey Look what we got here Chris froze as completely as a rabbit smelling fox but another voice struck in at once. You guys get outa here. This here s my place. You got no business with me. Yeah You didn t hear anything about getting out of the valley by noon today There s a poster on your own front door that says so. Can t read huh Jack I don t do everything any piece of paper says. I live here see It s a lousy dump but it s mine and I m staying that s all. Now blow will you Well now I don t know if that s all Jack. It s the law that you re supposed to be vacated. We don t want your shack but it s the law see It s the law that I got a right to my own property too. A new voice chimed in from the embankment not fifteen feet from where Chris and Kelly crouched. Trouble down there Barney Squatter. Won t move. Says he owns the place. That s a laugh. Get him to show you his deed. Ah why bother with that We ain t got the time. Let s impress him and get moving. No you don t There was the meaty sound of a blow landing and a grunt of surprise. Hey he wants to play rough All right mister More impacts and then the sound of something smashing glass or crockery Chris guessed but it might have been furniture. Before Chris could do more than grab at him convulsively Kelly burst into a volley of high howling yelps broke free crashed out of the bushes and went charging across the embankment toward the fracas. Look out Hey Where d that mutt come frOm Out of the bushes there. Somebody s in there still. Red hair I can see it. All right Red out in the open on the double Chris rose slowly ready to run or fight at the drop of a hard hat. Kelly on the far side of the embankment gave up his idiot barking for a moment his attention divided between the struggle in the shack and the group now surrounding Chris. Well Red you re a husky customer. I suppose you didn t hear about any vacate order either. No I didn t Chris said defiantly. I live in Lake branch. I only came over to watch. Lakebranch the leader said looking at another of his leathery faced patrolmates. Hick town way out back some place. Used to be a resort. Nothing out there now but poachers and scratcbers. That s nice the other man said tipping back his yellow helmet and grinning. Nobody ll miss you I guess Red. Come along. What do you mean come along Chris said his fists clenching. I have to be home by five. Watch it the kid s got some beef on him. The other man now clearly in charge laughed scornfully. You scared He s a kid isn t he Come on Red I got no time to argue. You re here past noon we got a legal right to impress you. I told you I m due home. You should have thought of that before you came here. Move along. You give us a hard time we give you one get it Below three men came out of the shack holding hard to the gardener Chris had seen earlier. All looked considerably battered but the sullen red neck was secured all the same. We got this one no thanks to you guys. Thought you was going to be right down. Big help you was Got another one Barney. Let s go Red. The press gang leader took Chris by the elbow. He was not unnecessarily violent about it but the movement was sudden enough to settle matters in Kelly s slow brain. Kelly was unusually stupid even for a dog but he now knew which fight interested him most. With a snarl which made even Chris s hackles rise he had never in his life before heard a dog make such a noise let alone Kelly the animal streaked back across the embankment and leaped for the big man s legs. In the next thirty seconds of confusion Chris might easily have gotten away there were a hundred paths through the undergrowth that he might have taken that these steel puddlers would have found it impossible to follow but he couldn t abandon Kelly. And with an instinct a hundred thousand years old the patrol fell on the animal enemy first turning their backs on the boy without even stopping to think. Chris was anything but a trained in fighter but he had instincts of his own. The man with Kelly s teeth in him was obviously busy enough. Chris lobbed a knob kerrie fist at the man next to him. When the target looked stunned but failed to fall Chris threw the other fist. It didn t land where Chris had meant it to land exactly but the man staggered away anyhow which was good enough. Then Chris was in the middle of the melee and no longer had any chance even to try to call his shots. After a while he was on the broken granite of the old roadbed and no longer cared about Scranton Kelly or even himself. His head was ringing. Over him considerable swearing was going on. more trouble than he s worth. Give him a shoe in the head and let s get back No. No killing. We can impress em but we can t bump em off. One of you guys see if you can slap Huggins awake. What are you chicken all of a sudden The press gang leader was breathing hard and as Chris s sight cleared he saw that the big man was sitting on the ground wrapping a bloody leg in a length of torn shirt. Nevertheless he said evenly: You want to kill a kid because he gave you a fight That s the lousiest excuse for killing a man I ever heard let alone a kid. You give me any more of that I ll take a poke at you myself. Ah shaddup will you the other voice said surlily. Anyhow we got the dog You loud mouthed look out Two men grabbed Chris one from each side as he surged to his feet. He struggled fiercely but all the fight left in him was in his soul not any in his muscles. What a bunch of flap jaws. No wonder you can t hold your own with a kid. Huggins put your hat on. Red don t you listen to that slob he s been all mouth all his life. Your dog ran away that s all. The lie was kindly meant no matter how clumsy it was but it was useless. Chris could see Kelly not far away. Kelly had done the best he could he would never have another chance. The youngster the press gang dragged stumbling toward Scranton had a heart made of stone. CIIAPTER TWO: A Line of Boiling Dust The city inside the perimeter of raw earth was wavery and unreal. It did not hum any more but it gave a puzzling impression of being slightly in shadow though the July sun was still blazing over it. Even in his grief and anger Chris was curious enough to wonder at the effect and finally he thought he saw what caused it: The heat waves climbing the air around the town seemed to be detouring it as though the city itself were inside a dome. No not a dome but a bubble only a part of which was underground it met the earth precisely at the cleared perimeter. The spindizzy field was up. It was invisible in itself but it was no longer admitting the air of the Earth. Scranton was ready. Thanks to the scrapping the patrol was far behind schedule the leader drove them all through the scabrous deserted suburbs without any mercy for his own torn leg. Chris grimly enjoyed watching him wince at every other step but the man did not allow the wound to hold him up nor did he let any of the lesser bruises and black eyes in the party serve as excuses for foot dragging. There was no way to tell by the normal human senses when the party passed through the spindizzy screen. Midway across the perimeter which was a good five hundred feet wide the leader unshipped from his belt a device about as big as an avocado turned it in his hands until it whined urgently and then directed the group on ahead of him in single file along a line which he traced in the dry red ground with the toe of his boot. As his two guards left his side Chris crouched instinctively. He was not afraid of them and the leader apparently was going to stay behind. But the big man saw the slight motion. Red I wouldn t if I were you he said quietly. If you try to run back this way after I turn off this gadget or if you try to go around me you ll go straight up in the air. Look back and see the dust rising. You l e a lot heavier than a dust speck an l you ll go up a lot farther. Better relax. Take it from me. Chris looked again at the dubious boundary line he had just crossed. Sure enough there was a hair thin ruling there curving away to both sides as far as he could see where the inert friable earth seemed to be turning over restlessly. It was as though he were standing inside a huge circle of boiling dust. That s right that s what I meant. Now look here. The press gang leader bent and picked up a stone just about as big as his fist which was extraordinarily big and shied it back the way they had come. As the rock started to cross the line above the seething dust it leaped skyward with an audible screech like a bullet ricocheting. In less than a second Chris had lost sight of it. Fast huh And it d throw you much farther Red. In a few minutes it ll be lifting a whole city. So don t go by how things look. Right where you stand you re not even on the Earth any more. Chris looked at the mountains for a moment and then back at the line of boiling dust. Then he turned away and resumed marching toward Scranton. And yet they were now On a street Chris had traveled a score of times before carrying fifty cents for the Sunday paper s Help Wanted ads or rolling a wheel barrow not quite full of rusty scrap or bringing back a flat package of low grade ground horsemeat. The difference lay only in the fact that just beyond the familiar corner the city stopped giving place to the new desert of the perimeter and all in the overarching shadow which was not a shadow at all. The patrol leader stopped and looked back. We ll never make it from here he said finally. Take cover. Barney watch that red neck. I ll take the kid with me he looks sensible. Barney started to answer but his reply was drowned out by a prolonged fifty decibel honking which made the very walls howl back. The noise was horrifying Chris had never before heard anything even a fraction so loud and it seemed to go on forever. The press gang boss herded him into a doorway. There s the alert. Duck you guys. Stand still Red. There s probably no danger .we just don t know. But something might just shake down and fall so keep your head in. The honking stopped but in its place Chris could again hear the humming now so pervasive that it made his teeth itch in their sockets. The shadow deepened and out in the bare belt of earth the seething dust began to leap into the air in feathery plumes almost as tall as ferns. Then the doorway lurched and went askew. Chris grabbed for the frame and just in time for a second later the door jerked the other way and then back again. Gradually the quakes became periodic spacing themselves farther apart in time and slowly weakening in violence. After the first quake however Chris s alarm began to dwindle into amazement for the movements of the ground were puny compared to what was going on before his eyes. The whole city seemed to be rocking heavily like a ship in a storm. At one instant the street ended in nothing but sky at the next Chris was staring at a wall of sheared earth its rim looming clifflike fifty feet or more above the new margin of the city and then the blank sky was back again These huge pitching movements should have brought the whole city down in a roaring avalanche of steel and stone. Instead only these vague twitchings and shudderings of the ground came through and even those seemed to be fading away. Now the city was level again amidst an immense cloud of dust through which Chris could see the landscape begin to move solemnly past him. The city had stopped rocking and was now turning slowly. There was no longer even the slightest sensation of movement the illusion that it was the valley that was revolving around the city was irresistible and more than a little dizzying. I can see where the spindizzy got its name Chris thought. Wonder if we go around like a top all the time we re in space How ll we see where we re going then But now the high rim of the valley was sinking. In a breath the distant roadbed of the railroad embankment was level with the end of the street then the lip of the street was at the brow of the mountain then with the treetops ... and then there was nothing but blue sky becoming rapidly darker. The big press gang leader released an explosive sigh. By thunder he said we got her up. He seemed a little dazed. I guess I never really believed it till now. Not so sure I believe it yet the man called Barney said. But I don t see any cornices falling we don t have to hang around here any longer. The boss ll have our necks for being even this late. Yeah let s move. Red use your head and don t give us any more trouble huh You can see for yourself there s no place to run to now. There was no doubt about that. The sky at the end of the street and overhead too was now totally black and even as Chris looked up the stars became visible at first only a few of the brightest but the others came out steadily in their glorious hundreds. From their familiar fixity Chris could also deduce that the city was no longer rotating on its axis which was vaguely reassuring somehow. Even the humming had faded away again if it was still present it was now inaudible in the general noise of the city. Oddly the sunlight was still as intense as ever. From now on day and night would be wholly arbitrary terms aboard the city Scranton had emerged into the realm of Eternal Daylight Saving Time. The party walked two blocks and then stopped while the big man located a cab post and pulled the phone from it. Barney objected at once. It ll take a fleet of cabs to get us all to tl e Hall he complained. And we can t get enough guys into a hack to handle a prisoner if he gets rough. The kid won t get rough. Go ahead and march your man over. I m not going to walk another foot on this leg. Barney hesitated but obviously the big man s marked limp was an unanswerable argument. Finally he shrugged and herded the rest of his party around the corner. His boss grinned at Chris but the boy looked away. The cab came floating down out of the sky at the intersection and maneuvered itself to rest at the curb next to them with a finicky prócision. There was of course nobody in it like everything else in the world requiring an I.Q. of less than 150 it was computer controlled. The world wide dominance of such machineS Chris s father had often said had been one of the chief contributors to the present and apparently permanent depression: the coming of semi inteffigent machines into business and technology had created a second Industrial Revolution in which only the most highly creative human beings and those most gifted at administration found themselves with any skills to sell which were worth the world s money to buy. Chris studied the cab with the liveliest interest for though he had often seen them before from a distance he had of course never ridden in one. But there was very little to see. The cab was an egg shaped bubble of light metals and plastics painted with large red and white checkers with a row of windows running all around it. Inside there were two seats for four people a speaker grille and that was all no controls and no instruments. There was not even any visible place for the passenger to deposit his fare. The big press gang leader gestured Chris into the front seat and himself climbed into the back. The doors slid shut simultaneously from the ceiling and floor rather like a mouth closing and the cab lifted gently until it hovered about six feet above street level. Destination the Tin Cabby said cheerily making Chris jump. City Hall. Social Security number One five six one one dash zero nine seven five dash zero six nine eight two one seven. Thank you. Shaddup. You re welcome sir. The cab lifted vertically and the gang captain settled back into his seat. He seemed content for the moment to allow Chris to sight see out the windows at the passing stubby towers of the fiywg city he looked relaxed and a little indulgent but a little wary too. Finally he said: I need to dutch uncle you a little Red. I didn t call a cab because of the leg I ve walked farther on worse. l eel up to listening Chris felt himself freezing. Distracted though he was by all this enormous budget of new experience and the vast reaches of the unknown which stretched before him the press gang leader s remark reminded him instantly of Kelly and as instantly made him ashamed that he had forgotten. In the same rush of anger he remembered that he had been kidnapped and that now there was no one left to take care of his father and the little kids but Bob. That had been hard enough to do when thei è had been two of them. It was bad enough that he would never see Annie and Kate and Bob and his father again but far worse that they should be deprived of his hands and his back and his love and worst of all they would never know what had happened. The little girls would only think that he .and Kelly had run away and won4er why and mourn a little until they forgot about it. But Bob and his father might well think that he d deserted them ... most likely of all that he had gone off with Scranton on his own hook leaving them all to scrounge for themselves. There was a well known ugly term for that among the peasantry of the Earth expressing all the contempt it felt for any man who abandoned his land no matter how unrewarding it was to tread the alien streets and star lanes of a nomad city: it was called going Okie. Chris had gone Okie. He had not done it 0. his own free will but his father and Bob and the little girls would never know that. For that matter it would never have happened had it not been for his own useless curiosity and neither would the death of poor Kelly who Chris now remembered too had been Bob s dog. The big man in the hard hat saw his expression close down and made an impatient gesture. Listen Red I know what you re thinking. What good would it do now if I said I was sorry What s done is done you re on board and you re going to stay on board. We didn t put the snatôh on you either. If you didn t knOw about the impressment laws you ve got your own ignorance to blame. You killed my brother s dog. No I didn t. I ve got a bad rip or two under that rag to prove I had reasons to kill him but I wasn t the guy who did it and I couldn t have done it either. But that s done too and can t be undone. Right now I m trying to help you and I ve got about three minutes left to do it in so if you don t shut up and listen it ll be too late. You need help Red can t you understand that Why do you bother Chris said bitterly. Because you re a bright kid and a fighter and I like that. But that s not going to be enough aboard an Okie city believe me. You re in a situation now that s totally new to you and if you ve got any skills you can make a career on here I ll be darned surprised I can tell you that. And Scranton isn t going to start educating you this far along in your life. Are you smart enough to take some advice or aren t you If you aren t there s no sense in my bothering. You ve got about a minute left to think it over. What the big man said made a bitter dose to have to swallow but it did seem to make sense. And it did seem likely too that the man s intentions were good otherwise why would he be taking the trouble Nevertheless Chris s emotions were in too much of a turmoil for him to trust himself to speak instead he merely nodded mutely. Good for you. First of all I m taking you to see the boss not the mayor he doesn t count for much but Frank Lutz the city manager. One of the things he ll ask you is what you do or what you know about. Between now and when we get there you ought to be thinking up an answer. I don t care what you tell him but tell him something. And it had better be the thing you know the most about because he ll ask you questions. I don t know anything except gardening and hunting Chris said grimly. No no that s not what I mean Don t you have any book subjects Something that might be useful in space If you don t he ll put you to work pitching slag and you won t have much of a lifetime as an Okie. The cab slowed and then began to settle. And if he doesn t seem interested in what you tell him don t try to satisfy him by switching to something else. No true specialist really knows more than one subject especially at your age. Stick to the one you picked and try to make it sound useful Understand Yes but No time left for hi4 . One other thing: If you ever get into a jam on board this burg you ll need to know somebody to turn to and it d better not be Frank Lutz. My name is Frad Haskins not Fred but Frad F R A D. The cab hovered for a moment and then its hull grated against the cobblestones and the doors slid open. Chris was thinking so hard and in so many directions that for a long. moment he did not understand what the press gang chief was trying to convey by introducing himself. Then the realization hit home and Chris was struggling unsuccessfully to blurt out his than3 s and give his own name at the same time. Destination gentlemen the Tin Cabby said primly. Shaddup. Come along Red. Frank Lutz the city manager of Scranton in flight reminded Chris instantly of a skunk but by this Chris meant not at all what a city boy would have meant by a skunk. Lutz was small sleek handsome and plump and even sitting behind his desk he gave an appearance of slight clumsiness. A he listened to Haskins account of the two impressments even his expression had something of the nearsighted amiability of the woods pussy but as Haskins finished the city manager looked up suddenly and Chris knew if he had ever been in any doubt about it before that this animal was also dangerous . . . and never more so than when it seemed to be turning its back. That impressment law was a nuisance. But I suppose we ll have to make a show of maintaining our pickups until we get to some part of space where the police aren t so thick. We ve got no drug for them that s for sure Haskins agreed obscurely. That s not a public subject Lutz said with such deadly coldness that Chris was instantly convinced that the slip whatever its meaning had been intended by Haskins for his own ears. The big man was a lot more devious than his size or his bluffness suggested. That much was becoming clearer every minute. As for these samples I don t suppose they can do anything. They never can. The deceptively mild hazel eyes watery and inoffensive swung suddenly to bear on the red neck. What s your name Who wants to know That s what I want to know. You got no right Don t buck me bum I haven t got the time. So you ve got no name. Have you a trade I m no bum m a puddler the red neck said indignantly. A steel puddler. Same thing. Anything else I been a puddler twenty years. M a Master Puddler fair an square. I got seniority see I don need to be anything else see I got a trade. Nobody knows it like I do. Been working lately the city manager said quietly. No. But I got seniority. And a card. M no bum in a craftsman see If you were a Genius Puddler I couldn t use you buddy. . . not even if as and when we ever see any steel again. This is a Bessemer process town and it was one even back when you were an apprentice. You didn t notice Tough. Barney Huggins this one s fêr the slag heaps. This order was not executed without a good deal of renewed shouting and struggling during which Lutz looked back down at his papers as obviously harmless a critter as a skunk which had just happened upon a bird s egg and was wondering if it might bite his small hands moving tentatively. When the noise was over he said: I hope your luck was better Frad. How about it sonny Have you got a trade Yes Chris said hmtantly. Astronomy. What At your age The city manager stared at Haskins. What s this Frad another one of your mercy projects Your judgment gets worse every day. It s all news to me boss Haskins said with complete and obvious honesty. I thought he was just a scratcher. He never said anything else to me. The city manager drummed delicately on the top of his desk. Chris held his breath. His claim was ridiculous and he knew it but he had been able to think of nothing else to answer which would have had a prayer of interesting the boss of a nomad city. Insofar as he had been able to stay awake past dusk Chris had read a little of everything and of his reading he bad retained best the facts and theories of history but Haskins had cautioned him to espouse something which might be useful aboard an Okie city and plainly it didn t qualify. The fragments of economics he had picked up from his father might possibly have been more useful had there been more of them and those better integrated into recent history but his father had never been well enough to do that job since Chris had reached the age of curiosity. He was left with nothing but his smattering of astronomy derived from books most of which had been published before he was born and from many nights spent lying on his back in the fields breathing clover and counting meteors. But he had no hope that it would work. A nomad city would need astronomy for navigation primarily a subject about which he knew nothing indeed he lacked even the rudimentary trigonometry necessary to approach it. His knowledge of the parent subject astronomy was purely descriptive and would become obsolete the minute Scranton was far enough away from the Sun to make the constellations hard to recognize which in fact had probably happened already. Nevertheless Frank Lutz seemed to be a little bit baffled for the first time. He said slowly: A Lakebranch kid who claims he s an astronomer Well at least it s newt Frad you ve let the kid sell you a hobby. If he ever got through grammar school I ll eat your tin hat paint and all. Boss I swear 1 never heard a word of all this until now. Hmm. All right sonny. Name the planets going outward from the Sun. That was easy but the next ones would surely be harder. Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto Proserpina. You left out a few didn t you I left out about five thousand Chris said as steadily as he could manage. YOu said planets not asteroids or satellites. All right what s the biggest satellite And the biggest asteroid Titan and Ceres. What s the nearest fixed star The Sun. The city manager grinned but he did not seem to be much amused. Oho. Well it won t be not much longer. How many months in a light year Twelve just like any other year. A light year isn t a measure of time it s a measure of distance the distance light travels in a year. Months don t have anything to do with it. You might as well ask how many weeks there are in an inch. There are fifty two weeks to the inch or it ll seem like that once you re as old as I am. Lutz drummed on the desk again. Where d you get all this stuff You won t pretend you had any schooling in Lakebranch I hope My father taught almost all his life at the University till it was shut down Chris said. He was the best there was. I got most of it from him. The rest I read about or got from observation and paper and pencil. Here Chris was on firm ground provided only that be be allowed one lie: the substitution of astronomy for economics. The next question did not bother him in the least for it was thoroughly expectable: What s your name Crispin depord he said reluctantly.. There was a surprised guffaw from the remainder of the audience but Chris did his best to ignore it. His ridiculous name had been a burden to him through so many childhood fights with the neighbors that he was now able to carry it with patience though still not very gladly. He was surprised however to see Haskins raising his bushy bleached eyebrows at him with every evidence of renewed interest What that meant Chris had no idea the part of his brain that did his guessing was almost worn out already. Check that somebody the city manager said. We ve got a couple of people left over from the S. U. faculty at least. By Hoffa Boyle Warner was a Scranton prof wasn t he Get him up here and let s close this thing out What s the matter boss Haskins said with a broad grin. Running out of trick questions The city manager smiled back but again the smile was more than a little frosty. You could call it that he said with surprising frankness. But we ll see if the kid can fool Warner. The ole bassar must be good for something somebody behind Chris mumbled. The voice was quiet but the city manager heard it his chin jerked up and his fist struck a sudden terrible blow on the top of his desk. He s good for getting us where we re going and don t you forget it Steel is one thing but stars are another we may never see another lie or another ingot without Boyle. Next to him we re all puddlers just like that red neck. And that may go for the kid here too. An boin don t lay it on. What can he know That s what I m trying to find out Lutz said in a white fury. What do you know about it Anybody here know what a geodesic is Nobody answered. Red do you know Chris swallowed. He knew the answer but he found it impossible to understand why the city manager considered it worth all this noise. Yes sir. It s the shortest distance between two points. Is that all somebody said incredulously. It s all there is between us and starvation Lutz said. Frad take the kid below and see what Boyle says about him on second thought I don t want to pull Boyle out of the observatory he must be up to his eyebrows in course corrections. Get to Boyle as soon as he s got some free time. Find out if there ever was any Professor deFord at S. U. and then get Boyle to ask the kid some hard questions. Real hard. If he makes it he can be an apprentice. If he doesn t thes e are always the slag heaps this has taken too long already. CHAPTER THREE: Like a Barrel of Scrap Even a city which has sloughed off its slums to go space flying has hidey holes and Chris had lost no time in finding one of his own. He had located it with the simple instinct of a hunted animal going to ground. Not that anybody was hunting for him not yet. But something told him that it would be only a matter of time. Dr. Boyle Warner the city s astronomer had been more than kind to him but he had asked hard questions all the same and these had revealed quickly enough that Chris s knowledge of astronomy while extraordinary in a youngster with no formal education worth mentioning was too meager to be of any help to Dr. Warner or of any use to the city. Dr. Warner signed him on as an apprentice anyhow and so reported to the city manager s office but not without carefully veiled misgivings and an open warning: I can think of very little for you to do around the observatory that would be useful Crispin I m sorry to say. If I so much as set you to work sweeping the place one of Frank Lutz s henchmen would find out about it sooner or later and Frank would point out quite legitimately that I don t need so big a fellow as you for so light a task as that. While you re with me you ll have to appear to be studying all the time. I will be studying Chris said. That s just what I d like. I appreciate that Dr. Warner said sadly. And I sympathize. But Crispin it can t last forever. Neither I nor anyone else in Scranton can give you in two years the ten years of study that you ve missed let alone any part of what it took me thirty more years to absorb. I ll do my best but that best can only be a pretense and sooner or later they ll catch us at it. After that Chris already knew would come the slag heaps hence the hidey hole. He wondered if they would send Dr. Warner to the slag heaps tOo. It didn t seem very likely for the frail pot bellied little astrophysicist could hardly last long at the wrong end of a shovel and besides he was the only navigator the city had. Chris mentioned this guardedly to Frad Haskins. Don t you believe it Frad said grimly. The fact is that we ve got no navigator at all. Expecting an astronomer to navigate is about like asking a chicken to fry an egg. Doc Warner ought to be a navigator s assistant himself not a navigator in chief and Frank Lutz knows it. If we ever run across another city with a spare real navigator to trade Frank could send Boyle Warner to the slag heaps without blinking an eye. I don t say that he would but he might. It could hardly be argued that Haskins knew his boss and after only one look of his own at Lutz Chris was more than ready to agree. Officially Chris continued to occupy the single tiny room at the university dormitory to which he had been assigned as Dr. Warner s apprentice but he kept nothingS there but the books that Dr. Warner lent him the mathematical instruments from the same source and the papers and charts that he was supposed to be working on plus about a quarter of the rough clothing and the even rougher food which the city had issued him as soon as he had been given an official status. The other three quarters of both went into the hole for Chris had no intention of letting himself be caught at an official address when the henchmen of Frank Lutz finally came looking for him. He studied as hard in the hole as he did in the dormitory and at the observatory all the same. He was firmly determined that Dr. Warner should not suffer for his dangerous kindness if there was anything that Chris could possibly do to avoid it. Frad Haskins though his visits were rare he had no real business at the university detected this almost at once but he said only: I knew you were a fighter. For almost a year Chris was quite certain that he was making progress. Thanks to his father for example he found it relatively easy to understand the economy of the city probably better than most of its citizens did and almost certainly better than either Frad Haskins or Dr. Warner. Once aloft Scranton had adopted the standard economy of all tribes of highly isolated nomad berdsmen to whom the only real form Of wealth is grass: a commune within which eryone helped himself to what be needed subject only to the rules which established the status of his job in the community. If Frad Haskins needed to ride in a cab for instance he boarded it and gave the Tin Cabby his social security number but if at the end of the fiscal year his account showed more cab charges than was reasonable for his job he would hear about it. And if he or anyone else took to hoarding physical goods no matter whether they were loaves of bread or. lock washers they could not by definition be in anything but short supply on board an Okie city he would do more than hear about it: The penalties for hoarding of any kind were immediate and drastic. There was money aboard the city but no ordinary citizen ever saw it or needed it. It was there to be used exclusively for foreign trade that is to bargain for grazing rights or other privileges and supplies which the city did not and could not carry within the little universe bounded by its spindizzy field. The ancient herdsmen had accumulated gold and jewels for the same reason. Aboard Scranton the equivalent metal was germanium but there was actually very little of it in the city s vaults since germanium had been the universal metal base for money throughout this part of the galaxy ever since space flight had become practical most of the city s currency was paper the same Oc dollar everyone used in trading with the colonies. All this was new to Chris in the specific situation in which he now found himself but it was far from new to him in principle. As yet however he was too lowly an object in Scranton to be able to make use of his understanding and remembering the penury into which his father had been driven back on Earth he was far from sure that he would ever have a use for it. As the year passed so also did the stars. The city manager according to Haskins had decided not to cruise anywhere inside the local group an arbitrary sphere fifty light years in diameter with Sol at its center. The planetary systems of the local group had been heavily settled during the great colonial Exodus of 2375 2400 mostly by people from Earth s fallen Western culture who were fleeing the then world wde Bureaucratic State. It was Lutz s guess quickly confirmed by challenges received by Scranton s radio station that the density of older Okie cities would be too high to let a newcomer into competition. During this passage Chris busied himself with trying to identify the stars involved by their spectra. This was the only possible way to do it under the circumstances for of course their positions among the constellations changed rapidly as the city overtook them. So did the constellations themselves although far more slowly. It was hard work and Chris was often far from sure his identifications were correct. All the same it was impressive to know that those moving points of light all around him were the almost legendary stars of colonial times and even more impressive to find that he had one of those storied suns in the small telescope. Their very names echoed with past adventure: Alpha Centauri Wolf 359 RD 4 4048 Altair 61 Cygni Sirius Kruger 60 Procyon 40 Eridani. Only a very few of these of course lay anywhere near the city s direct line of flight indeed many of them were scattered astern that is under the keel of the city in the imaginary hemisphere on the other side of his home Sun. But most of them were at least visible from here and the rest could be photographed. The city whatever Chris thought of it as a home had to be given credit for being a first class observatory platform. How he saw the stars was another matter and one that was a complete mystery to him. He knew that Scranton was now traveling at a velocity many times that of light and it seemed to him that under these circumstances there should have been no stars at all still visible in the city s wake and those to the side and even straight ahead should be suffering considerable distortion. Yet in fact he could see no essential change in the aspect of the skies. To understand how this could be so would require at least some notion of how the spindizzies worked and on this theory Dr. Warner s explanations were even more unclear than usual ... so much so that Chris suspected him of not understanding it any too well himself. Lacking the theory Chris s only clue was that the stars from Scranton in flight looked to him much as they always had from a field in the Pennsylvania backwoods where the surrounding Appalachians had screened him from the sky glare of Scranton on the ground. From this he deducted that the spindizzy screen though itself invisible cut down the apparent brightness of the stars by about three magnitudes as had the atmosphere of the Earth in the region where Chris hj d lived. Again he didn t know the reason why but he could see that the effect had some advantages. For instance it blanked out many of the fainter stars completely to the naked eye thus greatly reducing the confusing multitudes of stars which would otherwise have been visible in space. Was that really an unavoidable effect of the spindizzy field or was it instead something imposed deliberately as an aid to navigation I m going to ask Lutz that question myself Dr. Warner said when Chris proposed it. It s no help to me in fact it takes all the fun out of being an astronomer in free space. And there s no time like the present. Come along Crispin I can t very well leave you in charge and the only other logical place for Lutz to see an apprentice of mine is with me. It seemed to Chris that nobody aboard Scranton ever said anything officially to him but Come along but he went. He did not relish the prospect of seeing the city manager again but it was probably true that he would be safer under the astronomer s wing than he would be anyplace else in fact he was both surprised by and a little admiring of Dr. Warner s boldness. But if Boyle Warner ever asked the question Chris never heard the answer. Frank Lutz did not believe in making people who came to see him on official business wait in ante chambers: It wasted his time as well as theirs and he at least had none to waste and they had better not have. Nor were there many details of his administration that he thought he needed to keep secret not now that those who might oppose him no longer had any place to run to. To remind his people who was boss he occasionally kept the mayor waiting out of earshot but everyone else came and went quite freely when he held court. Dr. Warner and Chris sat in the rearmost benches for Lutz s court was actually held in what once had been a courtroom and waited patiently to work their way forward to the foot of the city manager s desk. In the process the astronomer fell into a light doze Frank Lutz s other business was nothing to him and in addition his hearing was no better than usual for a man his age. Both Chris s curiosity and his senses on the other hand shared the acuity of his youth and the latter had been sharpened by almost a lifetime of listening and watching for the rustle of small animals in the brush and the feeling of personal danger with which Frank Lutz had filled him on their first encounter was back again putting a razor edge upon hearing and curiosity alike. We re in no position to temporize the city manager was saying. This outfit is big the biggest there is and it s offering us a fair deal The next time we meet it it may not be so polite especially if we give it any sass this time around. I m going to talk turkey with them. But what do they want Someone said. Chris craned his neck but he did not know the man who had spoken. Most of Lutz s advisers were nonentities in any event except for those like Huggins who were outright thugs. They want us to veer off. They ve analyzed our course and say we re headed for a region of space that they d had staked out long before we showed up. Now this let me point out is actually all to the good. They have a preliminary survey of the area and we don t everything ahead of us is all alike until we ve had some experience of it. Furthermore one of the things they offer in. payment is a new course which they say will take us into an iron bearing star cluster very recently settled where there s likely to be plenty of work for us. So they say. And I believe them Lutz said sharply. Everything they ve said to me they ve also said on the open air by Dirac transmitter. The cops have heard every word not only locally but wherever in the whole universe that there s a Dirac transceiver. Big as they are they re not going to attempt to phony an open contract. The only question in my mind is what ought to be the price He looked ilown at the top of his desk. Nobody seemed to have any suggestions. Finally he looked up again and smiled coldly. I ve thought of several but the one I like best is this: They can help us run up our supplies. We haven t got the food to reach the cluster that they ve designated I d hoped we d make a planetfall long before we had to go that far but that s something that they can t know and that I m not going to tell them. They ll know when you ask for the food Frank I m not such an idiot. Do you think any Okie city would ever sell food at any price You might as well try to buy oxygen or money. i m going to ask them to throw in some minor piece of machinery or other it doesn t matter what and two or three technicians to man and service it and as an evidence q good faith I ll offer back for these oh so valuable technicians a big batch of our people people that are of no use to us. There won t be so many of them that a town that size would have any difficulty in absorbing them but to us they ll represent just the number of extra mouths to feed that would prevent us from reaching the iron bearing cluster that Ainalfi s offered to guide us to. Food will never be mentioned. It ll be just a standard swap of personnel under the usual Okie rule of discretion. There was a long minute of respectful silence. Even Chris was forced to admire the ingenuity of the scheme insofar as he understood it. Frank Lutz smiled again and added: And this way we get rid of every single one of those useless bums and red necks we had to take aboard under the impressment laws. The cops will never know it and neither will Amaffi he has to carry enough food and ah medicines to maintain a crew of well over a million. He ll swallow another three hundred yokels without s much effort as you d swallow an aspirin and probably think it a fair trade for two technies and a machine that are useless to him. The most beautiful part of it all is it might even be a fair trade which brings me to my next point But Chris did not stay to hear the next point. After a last quick regretful glance at the drowsing astronomer who had befriended him he stole out of the court as silently as any poacher and went to ground. The hole was structurally an accident. Located in a warehouse at the edge of the city nearest the university it was in the midst of an immense stack of heavy crates which evidently had shifted during the first few moments of take off thus forming a huge and unpredictable three dimensional maze which no map of the city would ever show. By worrying a hole in the side of one crate with a pocketknife Chris had found that it contained mining machinery and evidently so did all the others since they all bore the same stenciled code number . The chances were good he thought that the crates would not be unstacked until Scranton made its first planetfall the city in flight would have nothing to dig into. Nor did Chris have any reason to leave the hole at least for now. The warehouse itself had a toilet he could visit and seemed to be unfrequented and of course it didn t need a watchman Who would bother to steal heavy thachinery and where would they run with it If he was careful not to set any fires with his candles for the hole although fairly well ventilated through the labyrinth was always pitch dark he would probably be safe until Irk food ran out After that he would have to take his chances . . . but he had been a poacher before. But nothing in his plans had allowed for a visitor. He heard the sounds of the approach from some distance and blew out his candle at once. Maybe it was only a casual prowler maybe even only a strayed child maybe at the worst another refugee from Lutz s flesh trading deal looking for a hole. There were plenty of holes amid the piled up crates and the way to this one was so complex that two of them could live in the heap for weeks without encountering each other. But his heart sank as he realized how quietly the foot . steps were approaching The newcomer was negotiating the maze with scarcely a false turn let alone a noisy blunder. Someone knew where he was or at least knew where his hole was. The footsteps became louder slowed and stopped. Now he could distinctly hear someone breathing. Then the beam of a hand torch caught him full in the face. Hell Chris. Make a light huh The voice was that of Frad Haskins. Anger and relief flooded through Chris at the same time. The big man had been his first friend and almost his name brother for after all Fradley 0. Haskins is not much more ridiculous a name than Crispin deFord but that blow of light in the face had been like a betrayal. I ve only got candles. If you d set the flashlight on end it d be just as good maybe better. Okay. Haskins sat down on the floor placing the torch on the small crate Chris used for a table so that it made a round spot of light on the boards overhead. Now tell me something. Just what do you think you re doing Hiding Chris said a little sullenly. I can see that. I knew what this place was from the day I saw you toting books into it. I have to keep in practice on this press gang dodge I ll need it some day on some other planet. But in your case what s the sense Don t you want to be transferred to a bigger city No I don t. Oh I can t say that Scranton s been like home to me. I hate it. I wish I could really go home. But Frad at least I m getting to know the place. I already knew part of it back while it was on the ground. I don t want to be kidnapped twice and go through it all again aboard some city where I don t know even as much about the streets as I knew about Scranton and maybe find out that I hate it even worse. And I don t like being swapped like like a barrel of scrap. Well maybe I can t blame you for that though it s standard OkIe procedure not anything that Lutz thought up in his own head. Do you know where the rule of discretion came from From the trading of players between baseball teams. It s that old more than a thousand years. The contract law that sanctions it is supposed to be a whale of a lot older even. All right Chris said. It could eve n be Roman I suppose. But Frad I m not a barrel of scrap and I still don t want to be swapped. Now that part of it the big man said patiently is just plain silly. You ve got no future in Scranton and you ought to know it by now. On a really big town you could probably find something to do and the least you ll get is some schooling. All our schools are closed for good and forever. And another thing: We ve only been aloft a year and it s a cinch we ve got some hard times ahead of us. An older town would be a darn sight safer not absolutely safe no Okie ever is but safer. Are you going too Haskins laughed. Not a chance. Amalfi must have ten thousand of the likes of me. Besides Lutz needs me. He doesn t know it but he does. Well .. . then.. . I d rather stay with you. Haskins smote one fist into the other palm in exasperation. Look Red.. . Cripes what do you say to this kid Thanks Chris I I ll remember that. But if I m lucky I ll have a boy of my own some day. This isn t the day. If you don t face facts right now you aren t going to get a second chance. Listen I m the only guy who knows where you are yet but how long can that last Do you know what Frank will do when he roots you out of a hole full of cached food Think please will you Chris s stomach felt as though he had just been thrown out of a window. I guess I never thought of that. You need practice.. I don t blame you for that. But I ll tell you what Frank will do: He ll have you shot. And nobody else in town Il even raise an eyebrow. In the Okie lawbook hoarding food comes under the head of endangering the survival of the city. Any such crime is a capital crime and not only in Scranton either. There was a long silence. At last Chris said quietly: All right. Maybe it is better this way. I ll go. That s using your head Haskins said gruffly. Come on then. We ll tell Frank you were sick. You look sick right enough. But we ll have to hustle the gigs leave in two hours. Can I take my books They re not yours they re Boyle Warner s Fred said impatiently. I ll get em back to him later. Pick up the torch and let s go you ll find plenty of books where you re going. He stopped suddenly and glared at Chris through the dim light. Not that you care where you re going You haven t even asked the name of the town. This was true he had not asked and now that he came to think about it he didn t care. But his curiosity caine forward even through the gloom of the maze and even through his despair. He said So I haven t. What is it New York. CHAPTER FOUR: Schoolroom in the Sky The sight from the gig was marvelous beyond all imagination: an island of towers as tall as mountains floating in a surfaceless bottomless sea of stars. The gig was rocket powered so that Chris was also seeing the stars from space in all their jeweled majesty for the first time in his life but the silent pride of the great human city aloof in its spindizzy bubble which was faintly visible from the outside completely took precedence. Behind the gig Scranton looked in comparison like a scuttleful of old stove bolts. The immigrants were met at the perimeter by a broad shouldered crew cut man of about forty in a uniform which made all of Chris s hackles rise cops were natural enemies here as everywhere. But the perimeter sergeant who gave his name as Anderson did no more than herd them all into separate cubicles for interviews. There was nobody in Chris s cubicle but Chris himself. He was seated before a small ledge or banquette facing a speaker grille which was set into the wall. From this there issued the questions and into this he spoke his answers. Most of the questions were simple matters of vital statistics his name his age point of origin date of boarding Scranton and so on but he rather enjoyed answering them the fact was that never before in hi s life had anyone been interested enough in him to ask them. In fact he himself did not know the answers to some of them. It was also interesting to speculate on the identity of the questioner. It was a machine Chris was almost sure and one speaking not from any vocabulary of prerecorded words sounded by a human voice but instead from some store of basic speech sounds which it combined and recombined as it went along. The result was perfectly understandable and nonmechanical carrying many of the stigmata of real human speech for example the sentences emerged in natural speech rhythms and with enough inflection so that key words and even punctuation could be distinguished yet all the same he would never have mistaken it for a human voice. Whatever the difference was he thought of it as though the device were speaking all in capital letters. Even in an age long dominated by computers to the exclusion in many cases of human beings Chris had never heard of a machine with intelligence enough to be able to construct its speech in this fashion let alone one intelligent enough to be given the wide discretionary latitude implied by the conduct of this interview. He bad never before heard of a machine which referred to itself as we either. How MUCH SCHOOLING BAD YOU HAD BEFORE YOU WERE IMPRESSED Ma. DEFORD Almost none. Din YOU RECEIVE ANY SCHOOLING ABOARD ScRANToN A little. Actually it was only just tutoring the kind of thing I used to get from my father when he felt up to it. IT IS RATHER LATE TO START BUT WE CAN ARRANGE SCHOOLING FOR YOU IF YOU WISH Boy do I THAT IS THE QUESTION. AN ACCELERATED SECONDARY EDUCATION IS PHYSICALLY VERY TRYING. IT IS POSSIBLE THAT YOU WOULD HAVE NO NEED OF IT HERE DEPENDING UPON YOUR GOALS. DO YOU WISH TO BE A PASSENGER OR A CITIZEN On the surface this was a perfectly easy question. What Chris most wanted to do was to go home and back to being a citizen of nothing more complicated than the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Western Common Market Terran Confederation. He had had many bad nights spent wondering how his family was doing without him and what they had thought of his disappearance and he was sure that he would have many more. Yet by the same token by now they had doubtless made whatever adjustment was possible for them to the fact of his being gone and an even more brutal fact was that he was now sitting on a metropolis of well over a million people which was floating in empty space a good twenty light years away from Sol bound for some destination he could not even guess. This monstrOus and wonderful construct was not going to turn itself into his personal Tin Cabby simply because he said he wanted to go home or for any other reason. So if Chris was stuck with the city he reasoned he might as well be a citizen. There was no point in being a passenger when he had no idea where he was going or whether it would be worth the fare when he got there. Being a citizen on the other hand sounded as though it conferred some privileges it would be worth while knowing what they were. It would also be worth knowing whether or not the two terms the machine had used carried some special technical meaning of which he ought to be wary. Who m I talking to TIlE Crr FATHERS. This reply nearly threw him completely off course he tabled the baker s dozen of questions it raised only by a firm exercise of will. What was important about it right now was that it told him that he was talking to a responsible person whatever the meaning of Person might be when one is dealing with a machine with a collective personality. Am I entitled to ask questions too YES WITHIN LIMITS IT WOULD TAKE TOO LONG TO DEFINE FOR THE PURPQSE OF THIS INTERVIEW. IF YOU ASK US QUESTIONS WE WILL AT PRESENT EITHER ANSWER OR NOT ANSWER. Chris thought hard. The City Fathers despite their mention of time limitations waited him out without any evidence of impatience. Finally he said: What s the most important single difference between a passenger and a citizen. A CITIZEN LIVES AN INDEFINITELY PROLONGED LIFE. Nothing they could have said could have been farther from any answer that Chris might have expected. It was so remote from anything he had ever thought or read about that it was almost meaningless to him Finally he managed to ask cautiously: How long is indefinitely INDEFINITELY LONG. OUR PRESENT MAYOR WAS BORN IN 2998. ThE AGE OF THE OLDEST CITY MAN OF WHOM WE HAVE ANY RECORD IS FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN YEARS BUT IT IS STATISTICALLY DEFENSIBLE TO ASSUME THAT THERE ARE SEVERAL OLDER SPECIMENS SI NCE THE FIRST OF THE ANTIDEATH DRUGS WAS DISCOVERED IN TIlE YEAR 2018. Antideath drugs The dose was now entirely too big to swallow. It was all Chris could do to cling to the one microgram of it that seemed to have some meaning for him right now: that were he to live a long time a very long time he might some day find his way back home no matter how far he had wandered in the meantime. All the rest would have to be thought through later. He said: I want to be a citizen. IT IS REQUIRED THAT WE INFORM YOU THAT YOU ARE PERMITTED TO CHANGE YOUR MIND UNTIL YOUR EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY BUT THAT A DECISION TO BECOME A PASSENGER MAY NOT THEREAFTER BE RESCINDED EXCEPT BY SPECIAL ORDER OF THE MAYOR. A thin slot which Chris had not noticed until now suddenly spat out upon the banquette a long white card. THIS IS YOUR CITY REGISTRATION WHICH IS USED TO OBTAIN FOOD CLOTHING HOUSING AND OTHER NECESSITIES. WHEN IT IS REJECTED ON PRESENTATION YOU WILL KNOW THAT THE GOODS OR SERVICES YOU HAVE CLAIMED HAVE BEEN DISALLOWED. THE CARD IS INDESTRUCTIBLE EXCEPT BY CERTAIN SPECIAL TECHNIQUES BUT WE ADVISE YOU NOT TO LOSE IT SINCE FOUR TO SIX HOURS WILL ELAPSE BEFORE IT CAN BE RETURNED TO YOU. IT IS PRESENTLY VALIDATED FOR ACCELERATED SCHOOLING. IF YOU HAVE NO FURTHER QUESTIONS YOU MAY LEAVE. The accelerated schooling to which the City Fathers had remanded Chris did not at first seem physically strenuous at all. In fact it seemed initially to be no more demanding than sleeping all day might be. This to Chris was a Utopian notion he had never had the opportunity to try sleeping as a career and so had no idea how intolerably exhausting it is. The schoolroom was a large gray featureless chamber devoid of blackboard or desk its only furniture consisted of a number of couches scattered about the floor. Nor were there any teachers the only adults present were called monitors and their duties appeared to be partly those of an usher and partly those of a nurse but none pertinent to teaching in any sense of the term Chris had ever encountered. They conducted you to your couch and helped you to fit over your head a bright metal helmet which had inside it what seemed to be hundreds of tiny extremely sharp points which bit into your scalp just enough to make you nervous but without enough pressure to break the skin. Once this gadget which was called a toposcope was adjusted to their satisfaction the monitors left and the room began to fill with the gray gas. The gas was like a fog except that it was dry and faintly aromatic smelling rather like the dried leaves of mountain laurel that Bbb had liked to add sparingly to rabbit stews. But like a thick fog it made it impossible to see the rest of the room until the session was over when it was sucked out with a subdued roar of blowers. Thus Chris could never decide whether or not he actually slept while class was in session. The teaching technique to be sure was called hypnopaedia an ancient word from still more ancient Greek roots which when translated literally mean t sleep teaching. And to be sure it filled your head with strange voices and strange visions which were remarkably like dreams. Chris also suspected that the gray gas not only cut off his vision but also his other senses otherwise he should surely have heard such random sounds as the coughing of other students the movements of the monitors the whir of the ventilators the occasional deep sounds of the city s drivers and even the beating of his own heart but none of these came through or if they did he did not afterwards have any memory of them. Yet the end result of all this was almost surely not true sleep but simply a divorcing of his mind from every possible bodily distMction which might have come between him and his fullest attention to the visions and voices which were poured directly into his mind through the shining helmet of the toposcope. It was easy to understand why no such distraction could be tolerated for the torrent of facts that came from the memory cells of the City Fathers into the prickly helmet was overwhelming and merciless. More than once Chris saw ex Scrantonites all of them older than he was being supported by monitors out of the classroom at the end of a session in a state closely resembling the kind of epileptic fit called petit mal ... nor were they ever allowed back on their couches again. He himself left the sessions in a curious state of wobbly washed out detachment which became more and more marked every day despite the tumbler of restorative drink which was the standard antidote for the gray gas: a feeling of weakness which no amount of sleep seemed to make up for. The drink tasted funny furthermore and besides it made him sneeze. But on the day after he had refused it for the first time the memory banks decanted a double dose of projective Riemannian geometry and he awoke to find four monitors holding him down on the couch during the last throes of a classical Jacksonian seizure. His education nearly stopped right there. Luckily he had the sense to admit that he had skipped drinking the anticonvulsant drug the day before and the records of the patterns of electrical activity of his brain which the toposcope had been taking continued to adjudge him a good risk. He was allowed back into the hall and after that he was no longer in any doubt that learning can be harder physical labor than heaving a shovel. The voices and the visions resumed swarming gleefully inside his aching head. In retrospect Chris found Okie history the least difficult subject to absorb because the part of it dealing with the early years of the cities and in particular with what had happened on Earth before the first of the cities had left the ground was already familiar to him. Nevertheless he was now hearing it for the first time from the Okie pint of view which omitted great swatches which an Earthman would have considered important and instead brought to the fore for study many events of which Chris had never heard but which obviously were essential for the understanding of how the cities had gone into space and prospered in it. It was perhaps predictably like seeing the past life of the Earth through the wrong end of a telescope. As the memory banks told the story without the pictures and sounds and other sensations which though they were so vivid as to become at once a part of Chris s immediate experience could not possibly be reproduced in print it went like this: The exploration of the solar system was at first primarily the province of the military who alone could demand the enormous sums of money necessary for space travel under rocket power which is essentially a bruteforce method of propulsion directly dependent upon how much power is thrown away. The highest achievement of this phase was the construction of a research and observation station upon Proserpina II the second satellite of the most remote of all the planets from Sol. Proserpina Sta tion was begun in 2016 it was however still not completed when it was abandoned temporarily twenty eight years later. The reasons for the abandonment of Proserpina Station and all other solar system colonies at this time may be found in the course of contemporary Terrestrial politics. Under the relentless pressure of competition from the USSR and its associated states the Earth s Western culture had undertaken to support a permanent war economy under the burden of which its traditional libertarian political institutions were steadily eroded away. By the beginning of the twenty first century it was no longer realistically possible to see any difference between the rival cultures although their outward forms of government continued to be called by different names. Both were police states in which the individual citizen had lost all right to juridical defense and both operated under a totally controlled economy. In the West the official term for this form of public policy was anti Communism in the East it was called anti Fascism and both terms were heavily laden with mob emotion. The facts of the matter however were that neither state was economically either fascist or communist and that as economic systems neither fascism nor communism has ever been tried in recorded Terrestrial history. It was during this period that two Western research projects under the direction of the Alaskan senator Bliss Wagoner discovered he basic inventions upon which the second phase of space ifight was to be based. The first of these was the Dillon Wagoner gravitronpolarity generator now known as the pindizzy which was almost immediately developed into an interstellar drive. The second was ascomycin the first of the anti agathics or death postponing drugs. The first interstellar expedition was launched from the Jovian satellary system in 2021 under Wagoner s personal direction although Wagoner himself was arrested and executed for his complicity in this treasonable event. Though no record exists of the fate of this expedition it is certain that it survived since the second expedition more than three hundred and fifty years later found the planets of the stars of the lOcal group well scattered with human beings speaking recognizable Terrestrial languages. At this time an attempt was made to settle the rivalry between the two power blocs by still another personal pact between their respective leaders President MacHinery of the Western Common Market and Premier Erdsenov of the USSR. This took place in 2022 and the subsequent Cold Peace provided little incentive for space flight. In 2027 MacHinery was assassinated and Erdsenov proclaimed himself premier and president of a United Earth however Erdsenov was himself assassinated in 2032. During this same year an underground Western group calling itself the Hamiltonians succeeded in escaping from the solar system in a large number of small spindizzy powered craft which they had built from funds collected secretly to finance a supposed new American revolution thus leaving behind the vast majority of their followers. No survivors of the Hamiltonian exodus have thus far been found they succeeded however in escaping the Terror the worldwide program by which a United Earth government was actually established for the first time. One of the first acts of this government now called the Bureaucratic State was the banning in 2039 of spaceflight and all associated sciences. The existing colonies on the planets and satellites of the solar system were not evacuated home but were simply cut off and abandoned. The consolidation of the State proceeded rapidly and historians generally agree that the fall of the West must be dated no later than the year 2105. Thus began a period of systematic oppression and exploitation unmatched on Earth even by the worst decades of the Roman Empire. In the meantime the interstellar exiles continued to consolidate new planets and to jump from star to star. In 2289 one such expedition made its first contact with what proved to be a planet of the Vegan Tyranny an interstellar culture which we now know had ruled most of this quadrant of the galaxy for eight to ten thousand years and was still in the process of expanding. The Vegans were quick to see potential rivals even in these unorganized and badly supplied colonists and made a concerted attempt to stamp out all the colonies. However the distances involved were so vast that the first real engagement of the Vegan War the battle of Altair did not occur until 2310. The colonial forces were defeated and scattered but not before inflicting sufficient damage to set back the Vegans timetable for razing the colonial planets permanently as it turned out. In 2375 the spindizzy was independently rediscovered on Earth and the Thorium Trust s Plant Number Eight used it to wrench its entire installation from off the ground and leave the Earth using the plant as a self contained spaceship. Other plants followed and shortly thereafter whole cities. Many of these were driven to leave as much by the permanent depression which had settled over the Earth as by the long established political repressions of the Bureaucratic State. These escaping cities quickly found the earlier Earth colonies among the nearby stars to which they provided badly needed industrial strength and with whom they joined forces against Vega. The outcome was both triumphant and shameful. In 2394 one of the escaping cities Gravitogorsk Mars now calling itself the Interstellar Master Traders was responsible for the sacking of the new Earth colony on Thor V this act of ferocity earned for them the nickname of the Mad Dogs but it gradually became a model for dealing with Vegan planets. The capital world of the Tyranny Vega II was invested in 2413 by a number of armed cities including IMT whose task it was to destroy the many orbital forts surrounding the planet and by the Third Colonial Navy under Admiral Alois Hrunta who was charged with occupying Vega II in the event of its surrender. Instead Admiral Hrunta scorched the planet completely and led the Third Navy off into an uncharted quadrant with the intention of founding his own interstellar empire. In 2451 the colonial court found him guilty in absentia of atrocities and attempted genocide and an attempt to b ring him to justice culminated1in 2464 in the battle of BD 40 4048 which was destructive but completely indecisive for both sides. The same year Alois Hrunta declared himself Emperor of Space. The Exodus of Earth s industrial power had by now become so marked that the Bureaucratic State no longer had a productive base upon which to rest and it is generally agreed that it collapsed in 2522. In the same year there began the police interregnum a limited government deriving its powers from a loose confederation based roughly upon the ancient United Nations but without sufficient popular base or industrial support to control the economy. Realizing however that the only hope for the restoration of economic health to Earth lay in the cobfists and the free cities the confederation proclaimed an amnesty for everyone in space and at the same time instituted a limited but systematic program for the polic ing of those nomad cities which had begun to prey upon colony planets or upon each other. The confederation is still the only operative govern. ment in this arm of the galaxy. The poisoning of Alois Hrunta in 3089 was followed by the rapid Balkanization of the Hruntan Empire which was never even at its best highly cohesive and although there is a present self styled Emperor of Space Arpad Hrunta his realm does not appear to be of any importance. Effectively today law and order in Arm II are provided by the Earth police and its economy is supported by the migrant cities. Both systems are haphazard and inefficient and often operate at cross purposes. It is impossible to predict when better methods will emerge or what they will be. CHAPTER FIVE: Boy You Are Dumb While the memory cells chattered and called up dreams the immense city soared outward among the stars at what seemed like a breakneck pace after the tentative first explorations of Scranton within the local group. The streets were thronged 24 hours a day with myriads of people hurrying on unimaginable errands and in addition to the constant flitting of Tin Cabs there was often the distant but edgy roar of subway trains coursing through tunnels bored through the very granite keel of the city. All of this activity seemed purposeful and even cheerful but it was also extremely bewildering Chris s schooling left him very little time to explore it. Not all of his education was machine education either for as he slowly realized no one really leans anything through hypnopaedia machine teaching at its best enables the student to accumulate nothing better than facts it does not show how to tie them together let alone how to do something with them.To train the intelligence not just the memory a real human tutor is required. The one assigned to Chris a stocky fierce white haired woman named Dr. Helena Braziller was far and away the best teacher Chris had ever encountered in his life and far and away the worst taskmaster. The City Fathers wore him out only by taxing his memory whereas Dr. Braziller made him work. The fundamental equation of the Blackett Dirac scholium reads as follows: where P is magnetic moment U is angular momentum C and G have their usual values and B is a constant with the value 0.25 approximately. A first transform of this identity gives: which is the usual shorthand form of the primary spindizzy equation called the Locke Derivation. Blackett Dirac and Locke all assumed that it would hold true for large bodies such as gas giant planets and suns. Show on the blackboard by dimensional analysis why this assumption is invalid. As far as Chris was concerned the answer could have been much more simply arrived at Dr. Braziller could just have told him that tHis relationship between gravitation and the spin of a body applied only to electrons and other submicroscopic objects and disappeared for all practical purposes in the world of the macrocosm but that was not her way. Had she only told him that it would have come into his mind as a fact like any other fact for instance like the facts that the memory cells of the City Fathers were constantly pouring into his ears and eyes but by her lights he would not have understood it. She wanted him to repeat not only the original reasoning of Blackest Dirac and Locke but to see for himself not just because she told him so where they had gone astray and hence why a natural law which had first been proposed in the gas lit almost prehistoric year of 1891 and was precisely formulated as the Lande Factor in 1940 nevertheless failed to lift so much as a grain of sand off the Earth until the year 2019. But Dr. Braziller why isn t it enough to see that they made a mistake We know that now. Why repeat it Because that s what all these great men have labored toward: so that you could do it right yourself. Up until about the thirteenth century nobody in the world except a few dedicated scholars could do long division then Fibonacci introduced the Arabic numbers to the West. Now any idiot can do what it took a great mind to do in those days. Are you going to complain that because Fibonacci found a better way to do long division you shouldn t be required to learn why it s better Or that because a great inventor like Locke didn t understand dimensional analysis you should be allowed to be just as ignorant after all these years They spent their lives making things simple for you that were enormously difficult for them and until you understand the difficulties you can t possibly understand the simplifications. Go back to the blackboard and try again. BeingAn a live class had its compensations though and one of these was Piggy Kingston Throop. Piggy his real name was George but nobody ever called him that not even Dr. Braziller was not much of a prize as a friend and companion but he was the only member of the small class who was exactly Chris s age all the others were much younger. From this Chris deduced that Piggy was not a student which turned out to be true. Piggy seemed glad enough to encounter someone who was as retarded as he was whatever the reasons and who knew less than he did about a great many subjects which were commonplaces to him. And in many ways he was quite a pleasant sort of fellow blond plump and affable with a ready wit and a tendency to be unimpressed by almost everything that other people considered important. In this last he made a particularly good foil for Chris who in his ignorance and in the strangeness of his situation often could not help but be earnest to the point of grimness over what later turned out to be trivia. Not that Chris allowed these differences over value judgments always to be resolved in Piggy s favor they quarreled over them almost from the beginning. The first of these tangles which soon proved to be a model for the others involved the subject of the antiagathic drugs. You re going to be a citizen aren t you Piggy Oh sure. I m all set. I wish I were. My trouble is I don t even know what I want to do let alone what I m good at. Piggy turned and stared at him. They had paused on the way from school on the Tudor Tower Place bridge leading over 42nd Street. Long ago the view from here across First Avenue to the East River had been blocked by the UN Building but that had been demolished during the Terror and there was nothing to mark where it had stood but a plaza and on the far side of that starry space itself. What do you mean do Piggy said. Oh maybe you ll have a little trouble what with not having been born here. But there s ways around that. Don t believe everything they tell you. Like many of the things Piggy said fully 80 per cent of this speech meant nothing to Chris. In self defense he could do nothing but answer the question. You know all this better than I do. But the laws do say pretty clearly that a man has to be good for something before he s allowed to become a citizen and be started on the drug treatments. Let s see there are supposed to be three ways to go about it and I ought to have them straight because I just had them put into my head a few days ago. He concentrated a moment. He had discovered a useful trick for dredging up the information which had been implanted in his mind from the memory cells: If he half closed his eyes and imagined the gray gas in a moment he would begin to feel at least in retrospect the same somnolence under which the original facts had been imparted and they would come back in very much the same words. It worked equally well this time almost at once he heard his own voice sayihg in a curious monotone imitation of the City Fathers: There are three general qualifications for citizenship. They are: 1 Display of some obviously useful talent such as computer programming administration or another gift worth retaining as opposed to depending upon the accidents of birth to provide new such men for each succeeding generation 2 a demonstrable bent toward any intellectual field including scientific research the arts and philosophy since in these fields one lifetime is seldom enough to attain masterhood let alone put it to the best use and 3 passage of the Citizenship Tests which are designed to reveal reserves and potentials in the latematuring eighteen year old whose achievement record is unimpressive. No master how you slice it it doesn t sound easy That s only what the City Fathers say Piggy said scornfully. What do they know about it They re only a bunch of machines. They don t know anything about people. Those rules don t even make sense. They make sense to me Chris objected. It s a cinch the antiagathics can t be given to everybody from what I hear they re scarcer than germanium. On Scranton the big boss wouldn t even allow them to be mentioned in public. So there s got to be some way of picking who gets them and who doesn t. Why Why Well to begin with because a city is like an island an island in the middle of the biggest ocean you can think of and then some. Nobody can get on and nobody can get off except for a couple of guys now and then. If everybody gets this drug and lives forever pretty soon the place is going to be sO crowded that we ll all be standing on each other s feet. Ah éut it out. Look around you. Are we all standing on each other s feet No but that s because the drugs are restricted and because not everybody s allowed to have children either. For that matter look at you Piggy your father and your mother are both big wheels on this town but you re an only child and furthermore the first one they ve been allowed to have in a hundred and fifty years. Leave them out of this Piggy growled. They didn t play their cards right I ll tell you that. But that s none of your business. All right. Take me then. Unless I turn out to be good for something before I m eighteen and I can t think what it would be I won t be a citizen and I wOn t get the drugs. Or even if I do get to be a citizen say by passing the Tests I ll still have to prove myself useful stock before I m allowed to have even One kid of my own. That s just the way it has to be when the population has to be kept stable it s simple economics Piggy and there s a subject I think I know something about Piggy spat reflectively over the railing though it was hard to tell whether or not he was expressing an opinion and if so whether it referred to economics alone or to the entire argument. All right then he said. Suppose you get the drugs and they let you have a kid. Why shouldn t they give the kid the drugs too Why should they unless he qualifies Boy you are dumb That s what the Citizenship Tests are for can t you see that They re an out an escape hatch a dodge and that s all they are. If you don t get in any other way you get in that way. At least you do if you ve got any sort of connections. If you re a nobody maybe the City Fathers rig the Tests against you that s likely enough. But if you re a somebody they re not going to be too tough. If they are my father can fix their wagon he programs em. But either way there s no way to study for the Tests so they re obviously a sell. Chris was shaken but he said doggedly: But they re not supposed to be that kind of test at all. I mean they re not supposed to show whether or not you re good at dimensional analysis or history or some other subject. They re supposed to show up gifts that you were born with not anything that you got through schooling or training. Spindizzy whistle. A test you can t study for is a test you can t pass unless it s rigged otherwise it doesn t make any sense at all. Listen Red if you re so sold on this idea that everybody who: gets to take the drugs has to be a big brain what about the guardain they handed you over to H e s got no kids of his own and he s nothing but a cop but he s almost as old as the Mayor Up to now Chris fiad felt vaguely that he had been holding his own but this was like a blow in the face. Chris had originally been alarmed to find that his ID card assigned him lodgings with a family and horrified when the assignment number turned out to belong to Sgt. Anderson. His first few weeks in the Andersons apartment it was in the part of the city once called Chelsea were prickly with suspicion disguised poorly by as much formality as his social inexperience would allow. It soon became impossible however to continue believing that the perimeter sergeant was an ogre and his wife Carla was as warm and gracious a woman as Chris had ever met. They were childless and could not have welcomed Chris more whole heartedly had he been one of their own. Furthermore as the City Fathers had of course calculated Anderson was the ideal guardian for a brand new young passenger for few people even the Mayor kneis the city better. He was in fact considerably more than a cop for the city s police force was also its defense force and its Marines should the need for a raid or a boarding party ever arise. Technically there were many men on the force who were superior to the perimeter sergeant but Anderson and one counterpart a dark taciturn man named Dulany headed picked squads and were nearly independent of the rest of the police reporting directly to Mayor Amalfi. It was this fact which opened the first line of friendly communication between Chris and his guardian. He had not yet even seen Amalfi with his own eyes. Although everyone in the city spoke of him as if they knew him personally here at last was one man who really did and saw him several times a week. Chris was unable to restrain his curiosity. Well that s just the way people talk Chris. Actually hardly anyone sees much of Amalfi he s got too much to do. But he s been in charge here a long time and he s good at his job people feel that he s their friend because they trust him. But what is he like He s complicated but then most people are complicated. I guess the word I m groping for is devious. He sees connections between events that nobody else sees. He sizes up a situation like a man looking at a coat for the one thread that ll make the whole thing unravel. He has to he s too burdened to deal with things on a stitch by stitch basis. In my opinion he s killing himself with overwork as it is. It was to this point that Chris returned after his upsetting argument with Piggy. Sergeant the other day you said that the Mayor was killing himself with overwork. But the City Fathers told me he s several centuries old. On the drugs he ought to live forever isn t that so Absolutely not Anderson said emphatically: Nobody can live forever. Sooner or later there d be an accident for one thing. And strictly speaking the drugs aren t a cure for death anyhow. Do you know how they work No Chris admitted. School hasn t covered them yet. Well the memory banks can give you the details I ve probably forgotten most of them. But generally there are several antiagatbics and each one does a different job. The main one ascomycin stirs up a kind of tissue in the body called the reticulo endothelial system the white blood corpuscles are a part of it to give you what s called nonspecific immunity. What that means is that for about the next seventy years you can t catch any infectious disease. At the end of that time you get another shot and so on. The stuff. isn t an antibiotic as the name suggests but an endotoxin fraction a complex organic sugar called a mannose it got its name from the fact that it s produced by fermentation as antibiotics are. Another is TATP triacetyltriparanol. What this does is inhibit the synthesis in the body of a fatty stuff called cholesterol otheEwise it collects in. the arteries and causes strokes apoplexy high blood pressure and so on. This drug has to be taken every day because the body goes right on trying to make cholesterol every day. Doesn t that mean that it s good for something Chris objected tentatively. Cholesterol Sure it is. It s absolutely essential in the development of a fetus so women have to lay off TATP while they re carrying a child. But it s of no use to men and men are far more susceptible to circulatory diseases than women. There are still two more añtiagathics in use now but they re minor one for instance blocks the synthesis of the hormone of sleep which again is essential in pregnancy but a thundering nuisance otherwise that one was originally found in the blood of ruminant animals like cows whose plumbing is so defective that they d die if they lay down. You mean you never sleep Haven t got the time for it Anderson said gravely. Or the need any longer thank goodness. But ascomycin and TATP between them prevent the two underlying major causes of death: heart diseases and infections. If you prevent those alone you extend the average lifetime by at least two centuries. But death is still inevitable Chris. If there isn t an accident there may be cancer which we can t prevent yet oh ascomycin attacks tumors so strongly that cancer doesn t kill people any longer in fact the drug even offers quite a lot of protection against hard radiation but cancer can still make life so agonizing that death is the only humane treatment. Or a man can die of starvation of being unable to get the antiagathics. Or he can die of a bullet or of overwork. We live long lives in the cities sure but there is no such thing as immortality. It s as mythical as the unicorn. Not even the universe itself is going to last forever. This at last was the opportunity Chris had been hoping for though he still hardly knew how to grasp it. Are are the drugs ever stopped once a man s been made a citizen Deliberately I ve never heard of such a case Anderson said frowning. Not on our town. If the City Fathers want a man dead they shoot him. Why let him linger for the rest of his seventy year stanza That would be outrageously cruel. What would be the reason for such a procedure Well no tests are foolproof. I mean supposing they make a man a citizen and then discover that he really isn t uh as big a genius as they thought he was The perimeter sergeant looked at Chris narrowly and there was quite a long silence during which Chris could clearly hear the pulsing of his own blood in his temples. At last Anderson said slowly: I see. It sounds to me like somebody s been feeding you spindizzy whistle. Chris if only geniuses could become citizens how long do you think a city could last The place d be depopulated in one crossing. That isn t how it works at all. The whole reason for the drugs is to save skills and it doesn t matter one bit what the skills are. All that matters is whether or not it would be logical to keep a man on rather than training a new one every four or five decades. Take me for an example Chris. I m nobody s genius I m only a boss cop. But I m good at my job good enough so that the City Fathers didn t see any reason to bother raising and training another one from the next generation they kept this one which is me but a cop is all the same all I am. Why not It suits me I like the work and when Amalfi needs a boss cop he calls me or Dulany not any officer on the force because none of them have the scores of years of experience at this particular job that we do under their belts. When the Mayor wants a perimeter sergeant he calls me when he wants a boarding squad he calls Dulany and when he wants a specific genius he calls a genius. There s one of everything on board this town partly because it s so big and so long as the system works no need for more than one. Or more than X X being whatever number you need. Chris grinned. You seemed to remember the details all right. I remembered them all Anderson admitted. Or all that they gave me. Once the City Fathers put a thing into your head it s hard to get rid of. As he spoke there wá a pure fluting sound like a brief tune somewhere in the apartment. The perimeter sergeant s heavy head tipped up then he too grinned. We re about to bayó a demonstration he said. He was obviously pleased. Be touched a button on the arm of his chair. Anderson a heavy voice said. Chris thought instantly that the father bear in the ancient myth of Goldiocks must have sounded much like that. Yes Here sir. We re coming up on a contract. It looks fairly good to me and the City Fathers and I m about to sign it. Better come up here and familiarize yourself with the terms just in case: This ll be a rough one Joel. Right away. Anderson touched the button and his grin became broader and more boyish than ever. The Mayor Chris burst out. Yep. But what did he mean That he s found some work for us to do. Unless there s a hitch we should be landing in just a few days. CHAPTER SIX: A Planet Called Heaven Nothing could be seen of Heaven from the air. As the city descended cautiously the spindizzy field became completely outlined as a bubble of boiling black clouds glaring with blue green sheets and slashes of lightning and awash with streams of sleet and rain. At lower altitude the sleet disappeared but the rain increased After so many months of starlit skies and passing suns the grumbling closed in darkness was oppressive even alarming. Sitting with Piggy on an old pier at the foot of Gansevoort Street from which Herman Melville had sailed into the distant South Sea marvels of Typee Omoo and Mardi Chris stared at the globe of thunder around the city as nervously as though he had never seen weather before. Piggy for once was in no better shape for he never had seen weather before this was New York s first planetfall since he had been born. How Amalfi could see where he was going was hard to imagine but the city continued to go down anyhow it had a contract with Heaven and work was work. Besides there would have been no point in waiting for the storms to clear away. It was always and everywhere like this on Heaven except when it was worse. The settlers said so. Wow Chris said for the twelfth or thirteenth time. What a blitzkrieg of a storm Look at that How far up are we still Piggy How should I know D you think Amaffi knows I mean really knows Sure he knows Piggy said miserably. He always does the tough landings. He never misses. WHAM For a second the whole sphere of the spindizzy field seemed to be crawling with electric fire. The noise was enormous ana bounded back again and again from the concrete sides of the towers behind them. It had never occurred to Chris that a field which could protect a whole city from the hard radiation the hard stones and the hard vacuum of space might pass noise when there was air outside it as well as inside but it surely did. The descent already seemed to have been going on forever. After a while Chris found that he was beginning to enjoy it. Between thunder rolls he shouted maliciously: He must be flying sidewise this time. But he s lost. What do you know about it Shut up. i ve seen thunderstorms. You know what We re going to be up here forever. Sailing under a curse like IMT. The sky lit. WHAM Hey what a beauty If you don t shut up Piggy said with desperate grimness I m going to poke you right in thesnoot. This was hardly a very grave threat for although Piggy outweighed Chris by some twenty pounds most of it was blubber. Amid the excitement of the storm Chris almost made the mistake of laughing at him but at the same instant he felt the boards of the ancient pier begin to shudder beneath them to the tramp of steel boots. Startled he looked back over his shoulder and then jumped up. Twenty men in full space armor were behind them faceless and bristling like a phalanx of giant robots. One of them came forward making the planks of the pier groan and squeal under the weight and suddenly spoke to him. The voice was blarey and metallic as though the gain had been turned up in order to shout across acres of ground and through cannonades of thunder but Chris had no difficulty in recognizing it. The man in the armor was his guardian. CHRIs The volume of sound suddenly went down a little. Chris what are you doing here And KingstonThroop s kid Piggy you ought to know better than this. We re landing in twenty minutes and this is a sally port. Beat it both of you. We were only looking Piggy said defiantly. We can look if we want. I ve got no time to argue. Are you going or not Chris pulled at Piggy s elbow. Come on Piggy. What s the sense of being in the way Let go. I m not in the way. They can walk right by me. I don t have to go just because he says so. He s not my guardian he s only a cop. A steel arm reached out and steel pincers opened at the end of it. Give me your card Anderson s voice said harshly. I ll let you know later what you re charged with. If you won t move now I ll assign two men to move you though I can t spare the men and when that winds up on your card y ou may spend the rest of one lifetime wishing it hadn t. Oh all right. Don t throw your weight around. I m going. The bulbous steel arm remained stiffly extended the pincers menacingly open. I want the card. I said I was going Then go. Piggy broke and ran. After a puzzled look at the armored figure of his guardian Chris followed dodging around and through the massive blue steel statues standing impassively along almost the whole length of the pier. Piggy had already vanished. As Chris ran for home his mind full of bewilderment the city grour ded in a fan i fare of lightning bolts. Unfortunately so far as Chris was concerned the City Fathers took no notice of the landing: his schooling went on regardless so that he got only the most confused picture of what was going on. Though the municipal pipeline WNYC had five minute news bulletins on tap every hour for anyone who wanted to dial into them decades of the uneventfulness of interstellar travel had reduced the WNYC news bureau to a state of vestigial ineptitude the pipeline s only remaining real function was the broadcasting of the city s inexhaustible library of music and drama Chris suspected that most of the citizens found the newscasts almost as dim witted and uninformative as he did. What little meaningful information he was able to garner he got from Sgt. Anderson and that was not very much for the perimeter sergeant was hardly ever home now he was too busy consolidating the beachhead on Heaven. Nevertheless Chris picked up a few fragments mostly from conversations between the sergeant and Carla: What they want us to do is to help them industrialize the planet. It sounds easy but the kicker is that their social setup is feudal the sixty six thousand people they call the Elect are actually only free landholders or franklins and below them there s a huge number of serfs nobody s ever bothered to count them. The Archangels want it to stay that way even after they ve got their heavy industries established. It sounds impossible Carla said. It is impossible as they ll find out when we ve finished the job. But that s exactly the trouble. We re not allowed to change planets social systems but we can t complete this contract without starting a revolution a long slow one sure but a revolution all the same. And when the cops come here afterward and find that out we ll have a Violation to answer for. Carla laughed musically. The cops My dear is that still a three letter word for you What else are you How many more centuries is it going to take you to get used to it You know what I mean Anderson said frowning. So all right I m a cop. But I m not an Earth cop. I m a city cop and that makes all the difference. Well we ll see. What s for lunch I ve got to go in half an hour. The storm as predicted went on all the time. When he had the chance Chris watched the machinery being uncrated and readied and followed it to the docks at the working perimeter of the city beyond which always bobbed and crawled a swarm of the glowing swamp vehicles of the colonists of Heaven. Though these came in all sizes they were all essentially of the same design: a fat cylinder of some transparent cladding ribbed with metal provided on both sides with caterpillar treads bearing cleats so large that they could also serve as paddles where the going underfoot became especially sloppy. The shell was airtight for buoyancy but Chris was sure that the vessel could make little or no headway afloat even if it were equipped somewhere with a screw propeller under those circumstances it probably could do no more than try to maintain its position as best it could while it radioed for help. It was certainly well studded with antennae. Mainly it seemed to be designed to shed water rather than to swim in it. How could any sort of industry be possible under these soggy conditions He could not imagine how even an agricultural society could survive amidst these perpetual torrents especially since there was very little land area above water on the planet. But then he recalled a little of the history of the colonization of Venus which had presented somewhat similar problems There farming eventually had been taken beneath the sea but even that needed an abundance pf energy and besides the people of Heaven hadn t even gotten that far they seemed to be living mostly on fish and mudweed. He listened as closely as possible to the conversations of the colonists on the docks not the conversations in English with the Okies which were technical and unrevealing but what the colonists said to each other in their own language. This was a gluey variant of Russian. the now dead Universal language of deep space which the memory cells had been cramming into Chris s head at a cruel rate almost since the beginning of his city education It was a brute of a language to master especially on board a town where it was very seldom used and perhaps for this reason the colonists though mostly they were circumspect even in their private conversations did not really seem to believe that the Okies spoke it their veiy possession of it assured them that their history was safely pre Okie. Quite certainly it never occurred to them that it might be understood however imperfectly by a teen age boy standing about the quaysides gawping at their power boats. Between these eavesdroppings and the increasingly rare visits home of his guardian Chris gradually buiJt up a fuzzy picture of what the colonists seemed to want. As a citizen he could have asked the City Fathers directly for the text of the contract but access to .this was denied to passengers. In general however he gathered that the Archangels proposed to establish an economy like that of Venus complete with undersea farming and herding with the aid of broadcast power of the kind that kept the city s Tin Cabs in the air. The Okies were to do the excavating in the shifting soaking terrain and were to build the generator transmitter station involved. They were also to use city facilities to refine the necessary power metals chiefly thorium of which Heaven had an abundance beyond its ability to process. After the economy was revamped the Archangels hoped to have their own refineries and to sell the pure stuffs to other planets. Curiously they also had enough germanium to be willing to pay for the job in this metal although it too was notoriously difficult to refine this was fortunate for them since with out any present interstellar trade they were woefully short of Oc Dollars. Once the whole operation had rumbled and sloshed out into the field and was swallowed up in the enveloping eternal storm Sgt. Anderson s absences became prolonged and the number of colonists to be found on the docks also diminished sharply. Now there were only a few of the swamp vehicles inexplicably called swan boats to be seen at the end of each day when Chris was released from school and these were mostly small craft whose owners were engaged in dickering with individual Okies for off planet curios to give to their ladies. This commerce also was bogging down rather rapidly for the single citizen had no use for money and the lords and franklins of Heaven had few goods to barter. Soon the flow of information available to Chris had almost stopped frustrating him intensely. In this extremity he had an inspiration. He still carried with him a small cheap clasp knife with a tiny compass embedded in its handle the last of the exceedingly few gifts his father had ever been able to give him perhaps it would have status here as an off planet curio. When the notion first occurred to him he rejected it with distress at even having thought of it but when first Sgt. Dulany and then his own guardian were officially posted on the Missing list he hesitated no longer. His only remaining doubt was whether or not the compass would work here amid so much electrical activity but then it had never worked very well on Earth either . He waited until he saw the lord of a six man swan boat stalking disappointedly away from a deal he had been unable to close and then approached him with the knife outstretched on his palm. Gospodin The man a huge burly fellow with a face like one of the eternal thunderclouds of his planet stopped in his tracks and looked down. Boy Did you speak Yes sir. With your permission I have here useful tool earthly in origin. Would my lord care to examine But you speak our language the man said still frowning. He took the knife abstractedly it was plain that he was interested but Chris s stumbling Russian seemed to interest him more. How is that By listening lord. It is very hard but I am trying. Please see object it is from Earth from kolkhoz of Pennsylvania. Genuine antique touched once by human hands in factory. Well well. How does it work Chris showed him how to pry out the two blades but his attempts to explaip the compass were dismissed with a brusque gesture. Either his command of the language was insufficient to make the matter clear or the lord already had recognized that such a thing would be useless in the lightning stitched ether of Heaven. Hmm. Sleazy to be sure but perhaps my lady would like it for her charm necklace. What do you ask for it Lord I would like to drive your swan boat one time one distance. I ask no more. The colonist stared at him for a long moment and then burst into deep guffaws of laughter. Come along come along he said when he had recovered a little. Sharp traders you tramps but this is the best story yet I ll be telling it for years Come along you have a bargain. Still chortling he led the way to the dock where they were both stopped by a perimeter cop who recognized Chris. Between them the boy and the lord explained the bargain and the Okie guard dubiously allowed Chris to board the swan boat. In the forward cabin of the bobbing cylinder two other colonists confronted them at once wearing expressions at once nervous and angry but the owner shushed them with a swift slash of one hand. He still seemed to be highly amused. It s only ati infant. Tt traded me a bangle to learn how to mush the boat about. There s nothing to that. Go on aft I ll join you in a minute. To judge by their expressions the other two still disapproved but they took orders. The big man sat Chris down in a bucket seat before the broad front window and showed him how to grasp the two handles one on each side of the half circle of the control wheel which were the throttles of the vehicle. It s not enough simply to turn the wheel because yo u must also deliver power to one tread or the other. To do that you push the handle forward or back to speed the treads or slow them down. Past the red mark here the tread will reverse. If you re not getting any traction tilt the whole wheel forward on its column that blows the tanks and allows the boat to settle in the mud. When the ground gets harder the boat will of course climb up by itself and that will start the pumps as the pressure in the tanks rises the steering column tilts back to its original position automatically. Understand me so far But can I try Well I suppose so. Yes. I have some talking to do abaft. Let me back the craft away from the pier and then you can try crawling in a circle just outside the perimeter. Make sure you can always see your city beacon there. Let me back it up lord Chris said urgently. All right the big man said with amused indulgence. But don t be rough with it. Gently back of the red line on both throttles. That s it. Not so fast. Gently Now into neutral on the left. That s it see how it turns around There was a shout from somewhere in the rear of the vessel to which the big man responded with a tremendously rapid burst of speech only a few words of which were intelligible to Chris. t have to leave for a few minutes he added. Remember don t try anything tricky and don t lose sight of the beacon. No lord. As the boat s owner left the cabin Chris caught a few more words amusedly beginning to relate the story of the dock boy who had picked up a few stammering words of the language and immediately had decided that he was a pilot then the voices dwindled to a blurred murmur. Chris spent the next few minutes testing the controls of the boat in small jerks and spurts being as inexpert about it as he could manage although the machine was really not difficult to master. Then as directed he set it to crawling in a fixed circle counter clockwise left the bucket seat and edged his way back to the door leading to the next chamber. He had no idea what it was that he expected to overhear he was simply avid for more information to relieve the recent famine. He was certainly unprepared for what he got. The men were talking in a rapid patois which differed sharply from the form of the Universal Language which the memory cells had been teaching him but many phrases were clear and distinct: ... can t be done without keeping the city that s all there is to it. ... Disable it ... Don t even have a blueprint of the machinery let alone a map. That can come later after we ve occupied ... We ve got thousands of commoners to throw away but the defenses It s essential first to immobilize their Huacu or whatever they call it here. We can t afford to fight on their terms. Then what s the problem We ve got their two chief generals for hostage We can hold them forever if necessary ... Don t even know the name of Castle Wolfwhip let alone where it There the conve nation ended abruptly. With a grinding thump the swan boat hit something and began clumsily to try to climb it. Chris was thrown to the deck and on the other side of the doorway there was the sound of scrambling and of angry shouting. Then that too was cut off as the bulkhead swung to of its own inertia. Fighting to regain his balance against the blind lurching of the boat Chris scrambled up and dogged the bulkhead tightly closed all the way around. Was there any way to lock it too Yes there was a big bolt that could be thrown which would hold the whole series of dogs in place provided that it could not be unbolted from the other side. Well he d have to take his chances on that though a fat padlock to complete the job would have made him feel more comfortable. Then he clambered up the tilted pitching deck to the control seat. The boat had been doing its best to travel in a circle but Chris had failed to realize that mud is a shifting inexact sort of medium in which to turn a machine loose. The circle had been precessing and the boat had run head on into a dock. Okie cops were running toward it. Chris reversed both engines backing away from the city as rapidly as the boat would go but that was not half as fast as he would have liked. Then he switched the vehicle around end for end and set it to whining and sliding squarely into the teeth of the storm aiming it for the pip on the cross hairs which showed on the control board as its homing signal. Where that might wind him up he had no idea. He could only hope that it might be Castle Wolfwhip and that he would find Anderson and Dulany there and that the six furious colonists in back of the locked bulkhead would not be able to burn their way out before he got there. CHAPTER SEVEN: Why Not to Keep Demons Before the swan boat had been on its slobbering way outward for more than five minutes the sodium yellow glare of the city s dockside beacon dimmed and vanished as swiftly as if it had been snuffed out. Except for his prisoners whom he was trying to ignore Chris was alone in the shell of the boat like a chick in an egg with nothing for company but the unfamiliar instruments the grunting of the engines and the flash and crash of the eternal storm. He studied the control board intently but it told him very little that he did not already know. All the lettering on and around the instruments were in the Cyrillic alphabet . and although the City Fathers expected citizens to be able to speak the Universal Language up to now they had given Chris not even a first lesson in how to read it. Even so obvious a device as the swan boat s radio set was incomprehensible to him in detail after a brief study he gave up all hope of finding the city s master frequency and calling for pursuit and aid. He could not çven decide whether it was a AFM or a PM tuner let alone read the calibrations on the dial. Nevertheless he urgently needed to signal. Above all he needed to let the city know the details fragmentary though they were of the plotting that he had overheard. Running away with the plotters in their own swan boat had been an impulse of desperation which he was already beginning more and more to regret. If only he had managed somehow to get back on shore and told somebody in Amalfi s office what he had learned pronto But the question was would they have listened or believed him if they had Nobody who was anybody aboard the city seemed to want to bother with youngsters until they had become citizens the adults were all too old somehow to be even approachable and for that matter citizens paid very little attention to passengers of any age. Of course Chris could have told the City Fathers what he knew easily enough but everything that was told the City Fathers went into the memory cells which was the equivalent of putting it in dead storage. The City Fathers never took action on what they knew or even volunteered information unless directed otherwise they only held it until it was asked for which might take centuries. In any event the die was cast. Now he also needed someone in the city to know where he was going and to follow him. But among the glittering enigmatic instruments before him he could find no way to bring that about nor did he in fact know even vaguely how the city might chase after.him if it did know what his situation was. The Tin Cabs operated upon broadcast power which faded out at the city s perimeter and to the best of Chris s knowledge the city had no ground vehicles capable of coping with shifting ambiguous invisible terrain of this kind. Somewhere in storage true it did have a limited number of larger military aircraft but how could you fly one of them in this regIon of perpetual storm And even if you could what would you look for in a world where even the largest villages and castles produced and consumed so little power that detecting instruments would be unable to differentiate a city from a random splatter of lightning bolts The swan boat churned onward single mindedly. After a while Chris noticed that it had been at least several minutes since he had had to apply corrections in order to keep the green pip on the cross hairs. Experimentally he let go of the controls entirely. The pip stayed centered. Some signal perhaps simply his keeping the pip centered for a given lenglh of time had cut in an automatic pilot. That was a help in a way but it deprived him of anything to do but worry and added a new worry to the list: How could he cut the autopilot out of the circuit if he needed to The pertinent switch was doubtless in plain sight and clearly marked but again he couldn t read the markings. As for his prisoners they were being disturbingly quiet. In the back of his mind he had been anticipating some attempt to burn through the door surely they had some sort of hand weapon back there which might serve the purpose but they hadn t so much as pounded on it. He hoped fervently that they were Just bemg fatalistic about their captivity. If their silence meant that they were satisfied with it that was bad news. The news was bad enough already for he had no idea what he was going to do with them or with the boat when he got to Castle Wolfwhip And no time left to invent any plan for in the next flash of lightning he saw the castle. It was still several miles away but even at this distance its massiveness was awe inspiring. There were many towers in the city that were smaller despite the lack of any adjacent structure with which to compare it Chris guessed that the black windowless pile could not be less than thirty stories high. At first he thought it was surrounded by a moat but that was only an effect çf foreshortening brought on by distance. Actually it stood in the middle of a huge lake so storm lashed that Chris could not imagine how the clumsy swan boat could survive on it let alone make any headway. He pulled back on the throttles but as he had suspected the boat no longer answered to the manual controls. It plowed doggedly forward into the water. A moment later the compressed air tanks blew with a bubbling roar and the lake closed over the boat completely. It was now traveling on the bottom. Now he no longer had even the lightning flashes to see by nothing but the lights inside the boat which did not penetrate the murky water at all. It was as though the transparent shell had abruptly gone opaque. After what seemed a long while though it was probably no more than ten minutes the treads made a grinding noise as if they had struck stone and the vehicle came gradually to a halt. On a hunch Chris tried the manuals again but there was still no response. Then the outside lights came on. The swan boat was sitting snugly in a berth within a sizable cavern. Through the rills of yellow water draining down its sides Chris saw that it had a reception commit tee: four men with rifles. They looked down into the boat at him grinning unpleasantly. While he stared helplessly back the engines quit and the outside door swung open. They put him in thern same cell with Anderson and Dulany His guardian was appalled to see him Gods of all stars Irish now they re snatching children and then after he had heard the story thoroughly disgusted. Dulany as usual said very little but he did not look exactly pleased. There s probably a standard recognition signal you should have sent except that you wouldn t have known what it was Anderson said. These petty barons did a lot of fighting among themselves before we got here fleecing us is probably the first project they ve been together on since this mudball was colonized. Bluster4 Dulany commented. Yes it s part of the feudal mores. Chris those men in the boat are going to take a lot of ribbing from their peers regardless of the fact that they were never in any danger and they had sense enough to let you spin your own noose. They ll be likely to take it out on you when you re taken out for questioning. I ve already been interviewed Chris said grimly. And they did. You have Murder There goes that one up the flue Irish. Complication Dulany agreed. Anderson fell silent leaving Chris to wonder what they had been talking about. Evidently they had been planning something which his news had torpedoed though it was hard to imagine even the beginnings of such a plan for their captors out of a respect for the two Okies which Chris knew to be more than justified had left them nothing but their underwear. At last the boy said hesi. tantly: What could I have done if my interview were still coming up Located our space suits Anderson said gloomily. Not that they d have let you search the place that s fos sure but you might have gotten a hint or tricked them into dropping one. Even wary men sometimes underesti. mate youngsters. Now we ll just have to think of something else. There are dozens of space suits standing around the wall of that big audience chamber Chris said. If you could only get there maybe one of them would fit one of you. Dulany only smiled slightly. Anderson said: Those aren t suits Chris they re armor plate armor. Useless here but they have some kind of heraldic significance I think the Barons used to collect them from each other like scalps. That may be Chris said stubbornly but there were at least two real suits there. I m sure of that. The two sergeants looked at each other. Is it possible Anderson said. They ve got the bravado for it all right. Could be By Sirius there s a bluff we ve got to call Get busy on that lock Irish In my underwear Nix. What difference does that oh I see. Anderson grimaced impatiently. We ll have to wait for lights out. Happily it won t be long. How are you going to bust the lock Sergeant Dulany Chris asked. It s almost as big as my head Those are the easy kinds Dulany said loquaciously. Chris in fact never did find out what Dulany did with the lock for the operation was performed in the dark. Standing as instructed all the way to the back of the cell he did not even hear anything until the huge heavy door was thrown back with a thunderous crash. The crash neatly drowned out the only yell the guard outside managed to get off. In this thunder ridden fortress nobody would think anything of such a noise. Then there was a jangle of keys and two loud clicks as the unfortunate man was manacled with his own handcuffs. The Okies rolled him into the cell. What ll I do if he comes to Chris whispered hoarsely. Won t for hours Dulany s voice said. Shut the door. We ll be back. From the boarding squad sergeant nine words all in one speech had the reassuring force of an oration. Chris grinned and shut the door. Nothing seemed to happen thereafter for hours except that the thunder got louder. That was certainly no novelty on Heaven. But Was it possible for even the heaviest thunderclap to shake a pile of stone as squat and massiVe as Castle Wolfwhip Surely it couldn t last long if that were the case and yet it was obviously at least a century old probably more. The fourth such blast answered his question. It was an explosion and it was inside the building. In response all the lights came on and Chris saw that the door had been jarred open. When he went over to close it again he found himself looking down a small precipice. The corridor floor had collapsed. Several stunned figures were sitting amid the rubble it had made on the story below it. Considering the size of the blocks of which it had been made they were lucky that it hadn t killed them. Still another explosion and this time the lights went back out. Quite evid flly the suits Chris had seen in the audience hall had indeed been Anderson s and Dulany s battle dress. Well this ought to cure the barOn of Castle Wolfwhip of the habit of exhibiting his scalps. It ought to cure him of the habit of kidnapping Okies too. It occurred to Chris that the whole plan of using Anderson and Dulany as hostages even in their underwear was about as safe an operation as trying to imprison two demons in a comcrib. Then they were back. Seeing them hovering in the collapsed corridor their helmet lamps making a shifting confusing pattern of shadows Chris realized too what kind of vehicle the city would have sent out after him if he had managed to get word back. You all right Anderson s PA speaker demanded. Good.Didn t occur to me that the floor might go. They came into the cell. The guard who had just recovered his senses took one look and crawled into the corner farthest from the two steel figures. Now we ve got a problem. We ve got a safe conduci out of the castle but we can t carry you through thai storm and we don t dare risk putting you in one of theii suits. Boat Dulany said pointing at Chris. That s right I forgot he knows how to drive one Okay boy stick your elbows out and we ll fly you out tc where the s a floor you can walk on. Irish let s go. One minute. Dulany unhooked a bunch of keys from his waist and tossed them into the corner where the guard was cowering. Right. Only Anderson joined him in the swan boat still in his armor Dulany stayed airborne in radio communication with Anderson in case the colonials should have the notion of making the boat turn around and return home on autopilot. After he saw the holes the two cops had torn through the great walls of Castle Wolfwbip Chris doubted that they d even entertain such a notion but obviously it was sensible not to take chances where it wasn t necessary. The moment the boat was crawling across the bottom of the lake Anderson took his helmet off and turned promptly to studying the control board. Finally he nodded and snapped three switches. That should do it. Do what Prevent them from putting this tub under remote control. In fact from this point on they won t even be able to locate her. Now Irish can shoot on ahead of us and get the word to the Mayor. He put the helmet back on and spoke briefly then doffed it. Now Chris he said grimly comes the riot act. CHAPTER EIGHT: The Ghosts of Space The riot act was every bit as unpleasant as he hac foreseen it would be but somehow he managed to liv through it mostly by bearing in mind as firmly as pos sible that he had it coming. He was never likely to becomi a real Okie by stealing the property of people who had hired the city on to do a job no matter how good be thought his reasons were. And in this first disastrous instance he had simply been in the way. The city would have known soon enough in any event of the fact that Anderson and Dulany were being held prisoner since the cnlonists of Heaven could not have used them effectively as hostages without notifying Amalfi of the fact and there was no doubt in Chris s mind that the two cops could have gotten out of Castle Wolfwhip without his intervention and perhaps a good deal faster too. Aboue all they might have been gotten out by Amalfi without violence and thus saved the contract intact. The appearance of Chris as a third prisoner had been totally unwelcomed to both sides and had turned what had been merely a tense situation into an explosion. In the end they gave him full marks for imagination and boldness as well as for coolness under fire but by that time Chris had learned enough about the situation to feel that his chances of ever becoming a citizen were not worth an Oc dollar. The new contract was considerably more limited than the old and called for reparations for the damage the two sergeants had done to Castle Wolfwhip under it the city stood to gain considerably less than before. Chris was astonished that there was any new contract at all and said so rathe hesitantly. Anderson explained: Violence between employer and employee is as old as man Chris but the work has to be done all the same. The colonists as a corpprate entity disown the kidnapper and claim the right to deal with him according to their own system of justice which we re bound to respect. Damage to real property on the other hand has to be paid for and the city can t disown Irish and me because we re officers and agents of the city. But what about the scheme to ground the city and take it over We know nohing about that except what you overheard. That would have no status in a colonial court and probably wouldn t even if you were a citizen in this case if you were of legal age. And there it was again. Well there s something else I ve been wondering about Chris said. Why is the age to start the drugs fixed at eighteen Wouldn t they work at any age Suppose we took aboard a man forty years old who also happened to be a red hot expert at something we needed. Couldn t you start him on the drugs anyhow We could and we would Anderson assured him. Eighteen is only the optimum age the earliest age at which we can be sure the specimen is physically mature. You see the drugs can t set the clock back. They just arrest aging from the moment when they re first given. Tell me have you ever heard of the legend of Tithonus No I m afraid not. I don t know it very well myself ask the City Fathers. But briefly he got himself in the good books of the goddess of dawn Eos and asked for the gift of immortality. She gave it to him but he was pretty old at the time. When he realized that he was just going to stay that way forever he asked Eos to take the gift back. So she changed him into a grasshopper and you know how long they live. 11mm. A man who was going to be a permanent seventy five wouldn t be much good to himself I guess. Or to the city either. That s the theory the perimeter sergeant agreed. But of course we have to take em as we find em. Amalfi went on the drugs at fifty which for him happened to be his prime. Thus his education went on much as before except that he stayed scrupulously away from the docks. Since the new contract was limited to three months there probably. wouldn t have been much to see down there anyhow or so he told himself not without a suspicion that there were a few holes in his logic. In addition he got some sympathy and support from a wholly unexpected source: Piggy Kingston Throop. It just goes to show you how much truth there is in all this jabber about citizenship he said fiercely at their usual after class meeting. Here you go and do them a big fat favor and all they can think of to do is lecture you for getting in their way. They even go right on doing business with these guys who were going to grab the city if they could. Well we do have to eat. Yeah but it s dirty money all the same. Come to think of it though if I d have been in your shoes I d have handled it differently. I know Chris said that s what they all keep telling me. I should never have gotten into the boat in the first place. Pooh that part s all right Piggy said scornfully. If you hadn t gotten into the boat they d never have known about the plot to take the city that s the favor you did them and don t you forget it. They re on their guard now. No I mean what happened after you locked the guys up in the back cabin. You said that the boat had bumped into the dock and was trying to climb it right Yes. And a lot of cops came running I don t know about a lot Chris said cautiously. There were three or four I think. Okay. Now if it had been me I would have just stopped the boat right there and gotten out and told the cops what I d heard. Let them drag it out of the guys you d locked up. You know how the City Fathers cram all that junk into our heads in class well they can take stuff out the same way. Dad says it s darned unpleasant for the victim but they get it. Chris could only shrug helplessly. You re right. That would have been the sensible thing to do. And it seems obvious the way you tell it. But all I can say is it didn t occur to me. He thought a moment and then added: But in a way I m not too sorry Piggy. That way I never would have gotten to Castle Wolfwhip at all sure it would have been better if I hadn t but it sure was exciting while I was there. Boy I ll bet it wash I wish I d been there Piggy began to shadowbox awkwardly. I wouldn t have hidden in any cell believe you me. I d have showed em Chris did his best not to laugh. Going by what I heard if you d gone along with the sergeants if they d let you you d have been killed by your own friends. Those weren t just rotten eggs they were throwing around. All the same I ll bet Hullo we re lifting. The city had not lifted yet but Chris knew what Piggy meant he too could hear the deepening hum of the spindizzies. So we are. That three months sure went by in a hurry. Three months isn t much in space. We ll be eighteen before we know it. That Chris said gloomily is exactly what I m afraid of. Well I don t give a darn. This whole deal about your running off with the boat proves that they don t mean what they say about earning citizenship. Like I say the whole thing s just a scheme to keep kids in line so they won t have to be watched so much. The minute you actually do something for the survival of the city bingo the roof falls on you. Never mind that it was a good thing to do and shows you ve got guts you ve caused them trouble and that s what the system s supposed to prevent. There was Chris saw something to be said for the theory no matter how exaggerated Piggy s way of putting it was. In Chris s present state of discouragement it would be a dangerously easy point of view to adopt. Well Piggy what I want to know is what are you going to do if you re wrong I mean supposing the City Fathers decide not to make you a citizen and it turns out that they can t be fixed Then you ll be stuck with being a passenger for the rest of your life and it d only be a normal lifetime too. Passengers aren t as helpless as they think Piggy said darkly. Some one of these days the Lost City is going to come back and when that happens all of a sudden the passengers are going to be top dog. The Lost City I never heard of it. Of course you haven t. And the City Fathers won t ever tell you about it either. But word gets around. Okay don t be mysterious Chris said. What s it all about Piggy voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. Do you swear not to tell anybody else except another passenger Sure. Piggy looked elaborately over both shoulders before going on. As usual they were the only youngsters on the street and none of the adults were paying the slightest attention to them. Well he said in the same tone of voice it s like this. One of the first cities ever to take off was a big one. Nobody knows its name but I think it was Los Angeles. Anyhow it got lost and ran out of drugs and then out of food way off in some part of space that was never colonized so it couldn t find any work either. But then they made a planetf all on a new world something nobody had ever seen before. It was like Earth bigger but the same gravity and a little more oxygen in the air and a perfect climate like spring all year round even at the poles. If you planted seeds there you had to jump back in a hurry or the plant would hit you under the chin they grew so fast. But that wasn t the half of it. It sounds like plenty Chris said. That was all good but they found something else even better. There was a kind of grain growing wild there and when they analyzed it to see whether or not it was good to eat they found it contained an antideath drug not any of ours but better than all of ours rolled into one. They didn t even have to extract it all they had to do was make bread out of the plant. Wow. Piggy is this just a story Well I can t give you an affidavit Piggy said offended. Do you want to hear the rest or don t you Go ahead Chris said hastily. So then the question was what were they going to do with their city They didn t need it. Everything they needed came right up out of the ground while their backs were turned. So they decided to stock it up and send it out into space again to look for other cities. Whenever they make contact with a new Okie town they take all the passengers off nobody else and take them back to this planet where everybody can have the drugs because there s never any shortage. Suppose the other city doesn t want to give up its passengers Why wouldn t it ujant to If it had any use for them they d be citizens wouldn t they Yes but just suppose. They d give them up anyhow. Like I said the Lost City is big. Unfortunately for the half million other questions Chris wanted to ask at that point the city moaned softly to the sound of the take cover siren. The boys parted hurriedly but Chris after a moment s thought did not go home. Instead he holed up in a public information booth where he fed his car into the slot and asked for the Librarian. He had promised not to mention the Lost City to anyone but another passenger which ruled out questioning his guardian or the City Fathers directly but he had thought of a way to ask an indirect question. The Librarian was that one of the 134 machines comprising the City Fathers which had prime charge of the memory banks and was additionally charged with teaching it did not collect information but only catalogued and dispensed it. Interpretation was not one of its functions. CMW ACCEPTED. PRocEED. Question: Do any antiagathics grow naturally I mean do they occur in plants that could be raised a crops A brief pause. A PRECURSOR OF THE ANTISLEEP DRUC IS A STEROID SUBSTANCE OCCURRING NATURALLY IN A NUM BER OF YAMLIKE PLANTS FOUND ON EARTH LARGELY Th CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA. THIS SAPOGENIN IS NOT HOWEVER IN ITSELF AN ANTL .GATIIIC AND MUST BE CON. VERTED HUNDREDS OF DIFFERENT STEROIDS ARE PRODUCEL FROM THE SAME STARTING MATERIAL. ASCOMYCIN IS PRODUCED BY DEEP TANK FERMENTATIOS OF A MICROORGANISM AND HARVESTED FROM THE BEEL Tm PROCEDURE MIGHT BROADLY BE DEFINED AS CROPRAISING. ALL OTHER KNOWN ANTIAGATHICS ARE WHOLLY SYN. THETIC DRUGS. Chris sat back scratching his head in exasperation. He had hoped for a clear cut yes or no answer but what he had gotten stood squarely in the middle. No antiagathics were harvested from real crops but if a crop plant could produce something at least enough like an antiagathic tc be converted into one then that part of Piggy s astound. ing story was at least possible. Unhappily he could third of no further questions sufficiently indirect to keep his main point of interest hidden. Then he noticed that the bOoth had not returned his card to him. This was quite usual it meant only that the Librarian which spent its whole mechanical life substitut. ing free association for thinking had a related subject ii would talk about if he liked. Usually it wasn t worth while exploring these for the Librarian could go on forever if sc encouraged all he needed to do now was to say Return and he could take his card and go. But the take covei alert wasn t over yet so instead he said Proceed. SUBJECT ANTIAGATHICS AS BY PRODUCTS OF AGRICUL. TURE. SUB SUBJECT LEGENDARY IDYLLIC PLANETS. Chris sat bolt upright. ANTIAGATHICS AS BY PRODUCTS OF AGRI CULTURE USUALLY IN THE DAILY BREAD IS ONE OF TEl COMMON FEATURES OR DIAGNOSTIC SIGNS OF THE LEGEND. ARY PLA ETS OF NOMAD CITY MYTHOLOGY. OTHERS IN. CLUDE: EARTHLIKE GRAVITY. BUT GREATER LAND AREA EARTHLIICE ATMOSPHERE BUT MORE ABUNDANT OXYGEN EARTHLIKE WEATHER BUT WITH UNIFORM CLIMATE ANt COMPLETE ISOLATION FROM EXISTING TRADE LANES. No PLANET MATCHING THIS DESCRIPTION IN ANY PARTICULAR HAS YET BEEN FOUND. NAMES OFTEN GWEN TO SUCH WORLDS INCLUDE: ARCADY BRADBURY CELEPIIAIS . . . Chris was so stunned that the Librarian had worked its way all the way through ZII n svIA and had begun another alphabetical catalogue before he thought to ask for his card back. His question had not been very crafty after all. By the time he emerged from the booth the storms of Heaven had vanished and the city was once more soaring amid the stars. Furthermore he was late for dinner. So after all there had been no secret to keep. Chris told the Andersons the story of his failure to outwit the Librarian it made the best possible excuse for his lateness since it was true and it reduced Carla to tears of helpless laughter. The perimeter sergeant was amused too but there was an undercurrent of seriousness beneath his amusement. You re learning Chris. It s easy to think that because the City Fathers are dead they re also stupid but you see that that isn t the case. Otherwise they would never have been given the power that they wield and in some departments their power is absolute. Even over the Mayor Yes and no. The can t forbid the Mayor anything. But if he goes agaitist their judgment more often than they re set. to tolerate they can revoke his office. That s never happened here but if it does we ll have to sit still for it. If we don t tl ey ll stop the machinery. Wow. Isn t it dangerous to give machines so much power Suppose they had a breakdown If there were only a few of them that would be a real danger but there are more than a hundred and they monitor and repair each other so in fact it will never happen. Sanity and logic is their stock in trade which is why they can accept or reject the results of any election we may run. The popular will is sometimes an idiot but no human being can be given the power to overrule it not safely. But the machines can. Of course there are stories about towns whose City Fathers ran amok with them. They re just stories like Piggy s Lost City but they re important even when they re not true. Whenever a new way of living appears in the universe the people who adopt it see quickly enough that it isn t perfect. They try to make it better sure bul there are always some things about it that can t be changed. And the hopes and fears that are centerej on those points get turned into stories. Piggy s myth for instance. We live long lives in the cities but not everybody can have the gift. It s impossible that everyone should have it the whole universe isn t hi1 enough to contain the sheer mass of flesh that would accumulate if we all lived and bred as long as we each wanted to. Piggy s myth says it is possible which is untrue but what is true about it is that it points to one ol the real dissatisfactions with our way of living real be. cause nothing can be done about it. The story of the runaway City Fathers is another. Nc such thing has ever happened as far as I know and ii doesn t seem to be possible but no live man likes to take orders from a bunch of machines or to think that he may lose his life if they say so but he might. because the City Fathers are the jury aboard most cities. So he invents a cautionary tale about City Fathers running amok though actually he s talking not about the machines at all he s warning that he may run amok if he s pushed too far.. The universe of the cities is full of these ghosts. SOoneI or later somebody is going to tell you that some cities go bindlestiff. Somebody has Chris admitted. But I didn t know what he meant. It s an old Earth term. A hobo was an honest migratory worker who lived that way because he liked it A tramp was the same kind of fellow except that he wouldn t work he lived by stealing or begging from settled people. In hobo society both kinds were more or less respectable. But the bindlestiff was a migrant who stole from other migrants he robbed their bindles the bags they carried their few belongings in. That man was. an outcast from both worlds. It s common talk that some cities in trouble have gone bindlestiff taken to preying on other cities. Again there are no specific instances. IMT is the town that s most often mentioned but the last we heard of IMT. she wasn t a bindlestiff she d been outlawed for a horrible crime on a colony planet but technically that makes her only a tramp. A mean one but still only a tramp. . I see Chris said slowly. It s like the story about City Fathers going crazy. Cities do starve I know that and the bindlestiff story says How will we behave when the pinch comes Anderson looked gratified. Look at that he said to Carla. Maybe I should have been a teacher Nothing to do with you Carla said composedly. Chris is doing all the thinking. Besides I like you better as a cop.. The perimeter sergeant sighed a little ruefully. Oh well all right. Then I ll give you only one more story. You ve heard of the Vegan orbital fort Oh sure. That was in the history way back. Good. Well for once that s a real thing. There was a Vegan orbital fort and it did get away and nobody knows where it is now. The City Fathers say that it probably died when it ran out of supplies but it was a pretty big job and might well have survived under circumstances no ordinary city could live through. If you ask the City Fathers for the probabilities they tell you that they can t give you any figures which is a bad sign in itself. Now that s as far as the facts go. But there s a legend to go with them. The legend says that the fort is foraging through the trade lanes devouring cities just the way a dragonfly catches mosquitoes on the wing. Nobody has actually seen the fort since the scorching of Vega but the legend persists every time a city disappears the word goes around first th t a. bindlestiff got it and next that the fort got it. What s it all about Chris Tell me. Chris thought for a long time. At last he said: I m kind of confused. It ought to be the same kind of story as the others something people are afraid of. Like meeting up some day with a planet like the Vegan system where the people have more on the ball than we do and will gobble us up the way we did Vega Anderson s big fist crashed down on the dinner table making all the plates jump. Precisely he crowed. Look there Carla Carla s own hands reached out and covered the sergeant s fist gently. Dear Chris isn t through yet. You didn t give him a chance to finish. I didn t But sorry Chris. Go ahead. I don t know whether I m through or not Chris said embarrassed and floundering. This one story just confuses me. It s not as simple as the others I think I m sure ol that. Go ahead. Well it s sensible to be afraid of meeting somebod3 stronger than yourself. It might well happen. And there i a real Vegan orbital fort or at least there was one. The other stories don t have that much going for them that real except the things people are actually afraid of the things the stories actually are about. Does this make sense Yes. The things the stories symbolize. That s the word. To be afraid of the fort is to be afraid of a real thing. But what does the story symbolize It s got to be the same kind of thing in the end the feai people have of themselves. The story says I m tired o working to be a citizen and obeying the Earth cops and protecting the city and living a thousand years with machines bossing me and taking sass from colonists and don t know what all else. If I had a great big city that could run all by myself I d spend the next thousand years smashing things up There was a long long silence during which Chris became more and more convinced that he had again talked out of turn and far too much. Carla did not seem to be upset but her husband looked stunned and wrathful. There is something wrong with the apprenticeship sys. tern he growled at last though he did not appear to be speaking to either of them. First the Kingston Throop kid and now this: Carla You re the brains in the family. Did it ever occur to you that that fort legend had anything to do with education Yes dear. Long ago. Why didn t you say so I would have said so as soon as we had a child until then it wasn t any of my business. Now Chris has said ii for me The perimeter sergeant turned a lowering face on Chris. You he said are a holy terror. I set out to teach you as I was charged to do and you wind uç teaching me. Not even Amalfi knows this side of the foil story I ll swear to that and when he hears it there s going to be a real upheaval in the schools. I m sorry Chris said miserably. He did not know what else to say. Don t be sorry Anderson roared surging to his feet. Stick to your guns Let the other guy be afraid of ghosts you know the one thing about ghosts that you need to know no matter what kind of ghosts they are: They have nothing to do with the dead. It s always themselves that people are afraid of. He looked about distractedly. I ve got to go topside. Here s my hurry where s my hat He roared out banging one hand against the side of the door leaving Chris frozen with alarm. Then Carla began to laugh all over again. CHAFI ER NINE: The Tramp But if the errand on behalf of which Sgt. Anderson had undertaken his rhinoceros charge exit had really had anything to do with education Chris had yet to see it re ected in his own. That got steadily harder as the City 1 athers blindly and impersonally assuming that he had comprehended what they had already stuffed into his head began to build his store of knowledge toward some threshold where it would start to be useful for the survival of the city. As this process went forward Chris s old headaches dwindled injo the category of passing twinges these days he sometimes felt actively physically sick from sheer inability to make sense of what was being thrust upon him. In a moment of revulsion he told the City Fathers so. IT WILL PASS. TEE NORMAL HUMAN BEING FEELS AN AVERAGE OF TWENTY SMALL PAINS PER HOUR. IF ANY PERSIST REPORT TO MEDIcAL. No he was not going to do that he was not going to be invalided out of his citizenship if he could help it. Yet it seemed to him that what he was suffering couldn t fairly be called small pains. What to do since be feared that Medical s cure would be worse than the disease He didn t want to worry the Andersons either he had repaid their kindnesses with enough trouble already. That left nobody to talk to but Dr. Braziller that fearsome old harpy who seldom spoke in any language but logarithms and symbolic logic. Chris stood off from this next but worst choice for weeks but in the end he had to do it. Though there was nothing physically wrong with him even now he had the crazy notion that the City Fathers were about to kill him one more stone of fact on his head and his neck would break. And well it might Dr. Braziller told him in her office after class. Chris the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare I suppose you know that. They re interested in only one thing: the survival of the city. That s their prime directive. Otherwise they have no interest in people at all after all they re only machines. All right Chris said blotting his brow with a trembling hand. But Dr. Braziller what good will it do the city for them to blow all my fuses I ve 1 een trying really I have. But it isn t good enough for them. They keep right on piling the stuff in and it makes no sense to me Yes I ve noticed that. But there s reason behind what they re doing Chris. You re almost eighteen and they re probing for some entrance point into your talents some spark that will take fire some bent of yours that might some day turn into a valuable specialty. I don t think I have any Chris said dully. Maybe not. That remains to be seen. If you have one they ll find it the City Fathers never miss on this kind of thing. But Chris my dear you can t expect it to be easy on you. Real knowledge is always hard to come by and now that the machines think you might actually be of some use to the city But they can t think that They haven t found anything I can t read their minds because they haven t any Dr. Braziller said quietly. But I ve seen them do this before. They wouldn t be driving you in this way if they didn t suspect that you re good for something. They re trying to find out what it is and unless you want to give up right now you re going to have to sit still while they look. It doesn t surprise me that it makes you ill. It made me ill too I feel a little queasy just remembering it and that was eighty years ago. She fell silent suddenly and in that moment she looked even older than she had ever seemed before .. old and frail and deeply sad and could it be possible beautiful. Now and then I wonder if they were right Dr. Braziller told the heaped papers on her desk. I wanted to be a composer. But the City Fathers had never heard of a successful woman composer and it s hard to argue with that kind of charge. No Chris once the machines have fingered you you have to be what they want you to be the only alternative is to be a passenger which means to be nothing at all. I don t wonder that it makes you ill. But Chris fight back fight back Don t let those cabinet heads lick you Stick them out. They re only probing and the minute we find out what they want we can bear down on it. I ll help wherever I can I hate those things. But first we have to find out what they want. Have you got the guts Chris I don t know. I ll try. But I don t know. Nobody knows yet. They don t know themselves that s your only hope. They want to know what you can do. You have to show them. As soon as they find out you will be a citizen but until then it s going to be rough and there will be nothing that anybody can do to help you. It wifi be up to you and you alone. It was heartening to have another ally but Chris would have found Dr. Braziller s whole case more convincing had he been able to see the faintest sign of a talent any talent at all emerging under the ungentle ministrations of the machines. True lately they had been bearing down heavily on his interest in history but what good was that aboard a Okie city The City Fathers themselves were the city s historians just as they were its library its aocounting department fts schoOls and much of its government. No live person was needed to teach the subject or to write about it and at best as far as Chris could see it could never be more than a hobby for an Okie citizen. Even in the present instance Chris was not being called unon to do anything with history but pass almost incredibly hard tests in it tests which consisted largely of showing that he had retained all of the vast mass of facts that the City Fathers were determinedly shoving into him. And this was no longer just history from the Okie point of view. Whole Systems of world and interstellar history Machiavelli Plutarch Thucydides Gibbon Marx Pareto Spengler Sarton Toynbee Durant and a score of others came marching through the gray gas into his head without mercy and with apparent indifference to the fact that they all contradicted each other fatally at crucial points. There was no punishment for failures since the City Fathers pedagogy made failure of memory impossible and it was only his memory that they seemed to be exploiting here. Instead punishment was continuous: It lay in the certainty that though today s dose had been fiendish tomorrow s would be worse. Now there you re wrong Dr. Braziller told him. Dead though they are the machines aren t ignorant of human psychology far from it. They know very well that some students respond better to reward than to punishment and that others have to be driven by fear. The second kind is usually the less intelligent and they know that too how could they not know it after so many generations of experience You re lucky that they ve put you in the first category. You mean they re rewarding me Chris squeaked indignantly. Certainly. But how By letting you go on studying even when they re not satisfied with your progress. That s quite a concession Chris. Maybe so Chris said glumly. But I d get the point faster if they handed out lollipops instead. Dr. Braziller had never heard of lollipops she was an pkie. She only responded a little primly: You d get it fast enough if they decided on a punishment system for you instead. They re rigidly just but know nothing about mercy and leniency with children is utterly foreign to them which is one reason why I m here. The city hummed onward and so did the days and the months. Only Chris seemed to be making no progress in any visible direction. No that wasn t quite true. Piggy was going nowhere either as far as Chris could see. But there the situation was even more puzzling and full of complications. To begin with ever since Chris had first met him Piggy had been denying that he cared about what happened to him when he turned eighteen so it was odd though not entirely surprising to discover that he did care after all. In fact though his situation appeared to be nOw quite hopeless Piggy was full of loud self confidence belied in the next breath by dark hints of mysterious plans to cinch what was supposed to be cinched already and even darker hints of awful things to come if it didn t turn out to be cinched. It was all more than Chris could manage to sort out especially considering his inability to see more than half a minute into his own future. Some days he felt as though Piggy s old accusation Boy you are dumb were written on his forehead in letters of fire. Mthough Piggy said almost nothing about it Chris gathered that he had already approached his father on the subject of biasing the City Fathers in his favor on the Citizenship Tests and had been rebuffed with a loud roar only slightly tempered by the intervention of his mother. There was of course no way to study for the Tests since they measured nothing but potentials not achievements which meant in turn that there was no such thing as a pony or a crib for them. Now it was obvious Piggy was thinking back to Chris s adventure on Heaven. Judging by the questions he asked about it Chris deduced that Piggy was searching for something heroic to do in order to do it much better than Chris h ad. Chris was human enough to doubt that Piggy could make a much better showing but in any event the city was still in space so no opportunity offered itself. Occasionally too he would disappear after class for several days running. On his return his story was that he had been prowling around the city eavesdropping on the adult passengers. They were Piggy said up to something just possibly the building of a secret Dirac transmitter with which to call the Lost City. Chris did not believe a word of this nor did he think Piggy did either. The simple granite keel facts were that time was running out for both of them and that desperation was setting in: for Piggy because he had never tried and for Chris because nothing he tried seemed to get him anywhere. All around them their younger schoolmates seemed to be opening into talents with the violence and unpredictabifity of popcorn turning everything the memory cells fed them into salt and savor no matter how high the heat was turned up. In comparison Chris felt as retarded as a dinosaur and just as clumsy and gigantic. It was in this atmosphere of pervasive incipient failure that Sgt. Anderson one evening said calmly: Chris the Mayor wants to talk to you. From anyone else Chris would have taken such an announcement as a practical joke too absurd to be even upsetting. From Sgt. Anderson he did not know how to take it he simply stared. Relax it isn t going to be an ordeal and besides I didn t say he wanted to see you. Sit back down and I ll explain. Numbly Chris did so. What s happened is this: We re approaching another job of work. From the first contacts we had with these people it sounded simple and straightforward but of course.nothing ever is. Anialfi says the biggest lie it s possible to tell in the English language is It was as simple as that. Supposedly we were going to be hired on to do a straightforward piece of local geology and mining nothing so tricky as changing the whole setup of a planet just a standard piece of work. You ve seen the motto on City Hall Chris had. It read: Mow oua LAWN LADY It had never seemed very dignified to him but he was beginning to understand what it implied. He nodded. Well that s the way it s always supposed to be: We come in we do a job we go out again. Local feuds don t count we take no part in them. But as we got closer to signing a contract with this place it s called Argus Three we began to get hints that we were second corners. Apparently there d already been one city on Argus hired to do the job but hadn t done it well. We tried to find out more about this naturally to be sure the Argidae were telling a straight story we didn t want to be poaching on any other city s contract. But the colonists were very vague about the whole thing. Finally though they let it slip that the other city was still sitting on their planet and still claimed to be working on the job even though the contract deadline had passed. Tell me what would you do in a case like that if you were Amalfi Chris frowned. I don t know any other answer but the one in the books. If the planet has an overstayed city it s supposed to call the cops. All other cities should stay clear otherwise they might get involved in the shooting if there is any. Right and this appears to be a classic case. The colonists can t be too explicit because they know that every word they broadcast to us is going to be overheard but the City Fathers have analyzed what Argus Three has sent us and the chances are a hundred to one that that other city has settled on Argus Three for good ... in short that it means to take over the planet. The Argidae don t want to call the cops fOr reasons we don t know. Instead they seem to be trying to hire us to take on this tramp city and clear him out. If we tackle that there will be shooting that s for sure and the cops will probably show up anyhow before it s over. Obviously as you say the tbingto do is get out of the vicinity fast. Cities ought nqt to fight with each other let alone get involved in anything like a Violation. But Argus Three s offering us sixty three million dollars in metal to slough them of the tramp before the cops arrive and the Mayor thinks we can do it. Also he hates tramps I think he might even have taken on the jOb for nothing. The fact anyhow is that he has taken it. The perimeter sergeant paused and eyed Chris seemingly waiting for comments. At last Chris said: What did the City Fathers say They said NO in a loud voice until the money was mentioned. After that they ran an accounting of the treasury and gave Amalfi his head. They had a few additional facts to work from that I haven t told you yet most of which seem to indicate that we can dispossess this tramp without too much damage to our own city and very possibly before the cops even hear that anything s happening. All the same bear in mind that they think of nothing but the city as a whole. If some of us get killed in the process they won t care as long as the city itself gets off cleanly. They re not sentimental. I already know t iat Chris said with feeling. But how do I come into all this Why does the Mayor want to talk to me I don t know anything but what you ve told me apd besides h e s already made up his mind. He s made up his mind Anderson agreed but you know a lot that he doesn t know. As we get closer to Argus Three he wants you to listen to the broadcasts from the Argidae and anything we may pick up from the tramp and fill him in on any clues you hear. But why Because you re the only person on board who knows the tramp at first hand the perimeter sergeant said with slow deliberate emphasis. It s your old friend Scranton. But that can t be so There were hundreds of us put on board from Scranton all adults but me Press gang sweepings Anderson said with cold disgust. Oh there were one or two specialists we found a use for but none of them ever paid any attention to city politics. The rest were bulgy muscled misfits a large pro. portion of them psychotics. We cured them but w couldn t raise their IQ s without something to sell or thc Interplanetary Grand Prix or heavy labor to keep theij minds off their minds they re just so many vegetables We Irish and I couldn t find even one worth taking intc our squads. We ve made citizens of the three good special. ists but the rest will be passengers till they die. But you re the happy accident of that crew right now Chris. The City Fathers say that your history aboard Scranton shows that you know something about the town Amalfli wants to mine that knowledge. Want to tackle it I I ll try. Good. The perimeter sergeant turned to the miniature tape recorder at his elbow. Here s a complete transcript of everything we ve heard from Argus Three so far. Aftes you ve heard it and made any comments that occur to you Amalfii will begin to feed us the live messages from the bridge. Ready No Chris said more desperately than he could eves have imagined possible for him. Not yet. My head is about to bust already. Do I get off from school while this is going on I couldn t take it otherwise. No Anderson said you don t. If a live message comes through while you re in class we ll pull you out. But you ll go right back in again. Otherwise yOUT schooling will go right on just as before and if you can t take the new burden well that ll be too bad. You d bettes get that straight right away Chris. This isn t a vacation and it isn t a prize. It s a job for the survival 0 the city Either you take it or you don t either way you get no special treatment. Well For what seemed to him to be a long time Chris sal and listened to his echoing Okie headache. At last howev. er he said resignedly: I ll take it. Anderson snapped the switch and the tape began to rur on the spoois. The earliest messages as Anderson had noted werc vague and brief. The later ones were longer but ever more cryptic. Chris was able to worry very little more information out of them than Amalfi and the City Fathen already had. As promised he spoke to Amalfi but fron the Andersoris apartment through a hookup which fed what he had to say to the mayor and to the machines simultaneously. The machines asked questions about population energy resources degree of automation and other vital matters not a one of which Chris could answer. The Mayor mostly just listened on the few occasions when his heavy voice cut in Chris was unable to figure out what he was getting at. Chris this railroad you mentioned how long before you were born had it been pulled up About a century sir I think. You know Earth went back to the railroads in the middle two thousands when all the fossil fuels ran out and they had to give up the highways to farmland. No I didn t know that. All right go ahead. Now the City Fathers were asking him about annament. He had no answer for that one either. There came a day however when this pattern changed suddenly and completely. He was indeed pulled out of class for the purpose and hurried into a small anteroom containing little but a chair and two television screens. One of the screens showed Sgt. Anderson the other nothing but a testing pattern. Hello Chris. Sit down and pay attention: this is important. We re getting a transmission from the tramp city. We don t know whether it s just a beacon or whether they want to talk to us. Amalfi thinks it s unlikely that they d be putting out a beacon in their situation regardless of the law they ve brokep too many others already. He s going to try to raise them now that you re here he wants you to listen. Right sir. Chris could not hear his own city calling but after only a few minutes for they were quite close to Argus Three now the test pattern on the other screen vanished and Chris saw an odiously familiar face. Hullo. This here s Argus Three. This here is not Argus Three Amalfi s deep voice said promptly. This here is the city of Scranton. Pennsylvania and there s no point in your hiding it. Get me your boss. Now wait a minute. Just who do you think This here is New York New York calling and I said Get me your boss. Go do it. The face by now was both sullen and confused. After a moment s hesitation it vanished. The screen ffickered the test pattern came back briefly and then a second familiar face was looking directly at Chris. It was impossible to believe that the man couldn t see him and the idea was outright frightening. Hello New York he said affably enough. So you ve got us figured out. Well we ve got you figured out too. This planet is under contract to us be notified. Recorded Amalfi said. We also have it a matter of record that you are in Violation. Argus Three has made a new contract with us. It d be the wisest course to clear ground and spin. The man s eyes did not waver. Chris realized suddenly that it was an image of Amalfi he was staring at not at Chris himself. Spin yourself he said evenly. Our argoment is with the colonists not with you. We don t spin without a Vacate order from the cops. Once you mix into this you may find it hard to mix out again. Be notified. Your self confidence Amalfi said is misplaced. Recorded. The image from Scranton contracted to a bright point and vanished. The Mayor said once: Chris do you know either of those guys Both of them sir. The first one s a small time thug named Barney. I think he was the one who killed my brother s dog when I was impressed but I didn t see who did it. I know the type. Go ahead. The other one is Frank Lutz. He was the city manager when I was aboard. It looks as if he still is. What s a city manager Never mind I ll ask the machines. All right. He looks dangerous is he Yes sir he is. He s smart and he s tricky and he has no more feeling than a snake. Sociopath Amalfi said. Thought so. One more question: Does he know you Chris thought hard before answering. Lutz had seen him only once and had never had to think about him as an individual again thanks to the lifesaving intervention of Frad Haskins. Sir be just might but Fd say not. Okay. Give the details to the City Fathers and let them calculate the probabilities. Meanwhile we ll take no chances. Thanks Chris. Joel come topside will you Yes sir. Anderson waited until he heard the Mayor s circuit cut out. Then his image too seemed to be staring directly at Chris. In fact it was. Chris did you understand what Arnalfi meant about taking no chances Uh no not exactly. He meant that we re to keep you out of this Lutz s sight. In other words no 4eFord expeditions on this job. Is that clear It was all too clear. CHAPTER TEN: Argus Asleep The Argus system was well named: It was not far inside a crowded and beautiful cluster of relatively young stars so that the nights on its planet had indeed a hundred eyes like the Argus of the myth. The youth of the cluster went far toward explaining the presence of Scranton for like all third generation stars the sun of Argus was very rich in metals and so were its planets. Of these there were only a few just seven to be exact of which only the three habitable ones had been given numbers and only 4 rgus III actually colonized II was suitable only for Arabs and IV for Eskimos. The other four planets were technically of the gas giant class but they were rather undernourished giants: the largest of them was about the size of Sol s Neptune. The closeness of the stars in the cluster to each other had swept up much of the primordial gas before planet formation had gotten a good startS the Argus system was in fact the largest yet to be encountered in the cluster. Argus III as the city droned down over it looked heart stoppinglv like Pennsy vania Chris began to feel a little sorry for the coming dispossession of Scranton of which he had no doubts whatsoever for surely the planet must have provided an intolerable temptation. It was mountainous over most of its land area which was considerable water was confined to many thousands of lakes and a few small and intensely salty seas It was also heavily wooded almost entirely with conifers or plants much like them for evolution here had not yet gotten as far as a flowering plant. The firlike trees had thick boles and reared up hundreds of feet. noble monsters with their many shoulders hunched as they had to be to bear their own weight in the two G gravitation of this metal heavy planet. The first sound Chris heard on Argus HI after the city grounded was the explosion of a nearby seed cone as loud as a crack of thunder. One of the seeds broke a window on the thirtieth floor of the McGraw Hill Greenhouse and the startled staff there had had to hack it to bits with fire axes to stop its germinating on the rug. Under these circumstances it hardly mattered where the city settled there was iron everywhere and conversely there was no place on the planet which would be out of eavesdropping or of missile range of Scranton to the mutual inconvenience of both parties. Neverthe1ess Amalfi chose a site with great care one just over the horizon from the great scar in the ground Scranton had made during its fumbled mining attempt and with the highest points of an Allegheny like range reared up between the two Okies. Only then did the machinery begin to rumble out into the forests. Chris was beginning to practice thinking like Amalfi not very confidently to be sure since he had never seen the man but at least it made a good game. The landing Chris concluded tentatively had been chosen mostly to prevent Scranton from seeing what the city was doing without sending over planes: and secondly to prevent foot traffic between the two cities. Probably it would never come to warfare between the two cities anyhow for nothing would be more likely to bring the cops to the scene in a hurry: and besides it was already quite clear from New York s history that Amalfi actively hated anything that did the city damage whether it was bombs or only rust. In the past his most usual strategy had been to outsit the enemy. If that failed he tried to outperform them. As a last resort he tried to bring them into conflict with themselves. There were no pure cases of any of these policies on record. every example was a mixture and a complicated one but these three flavorings were the strongest and usually one was far more powerful than the other two. When Amalfi salted his dish you could hardly taste the pepper or the mustard. Not everyone could eat it thereafter either: there were Chris suspected more subtle schools of Okie cookery. But that was how Amalfi did it and he was the only chef the city had. Thus far the city had survived him which was the only test that counted with the citizens and the City Fathers. On Argus III it seemed Amalfi s hope was to starve Scranton out by outperforming it. The city had the contract Scranton had lost it. The city could do the job Scranton had made a mess of it and left behind a huge yellow scar around its planetfall which might not heal for a century. And while New York worked and Scranton starved here was where a faint pinch of outsittery was added to the broth Scranton couldn t carry through on its desperate hope of seizing Argus III as a new home planet though the Argidae could not yell for the cops at the first sign or the last of such a piracy New York could and would. Okie solidarity was strong and included a firm hatred of the cops . .. but it did not extend to encouraging another incident like Thor V or bucking the cops against another city like IMT. Even the outlaw must protect himself against the criminally insane especially if they seem to be on his side. Okay if that was what Amalfi planned so be it. There was nothing that Chris could say about it anyhow. Amaffi was the mayor and he had the citizens and the City Fathers behind him. Chris was only a youngster and a passenger. But he knew one1 thing about the plan that neither Amalfi nor any other New Yorker could know except himself: It was not going to work. He knew Scranton the city didn t. If this was how Amalfi planned to proceed against Frank Lutz it would fail. But was he reading Amalfi s mind aright That was probably the first question. After several days of worrying which worsened his school record drastically he took the question to the only person he knew who had ever seen Amalfi: his guardian. I can t tell you what Amaffi s set us up to do you aren t authorized to know the perimeter sergeant said gently. But you ve done a lot of good guessing. As far as you ve guessed Chris you re pretty close. Carla banged a coffee cup angrily into a saucer. Pretty close Joel all this male expertise is a pain in the neck. Chris is right and you know it. Give him a break and tell him so. I m not authorized Anderson said doggedly but from him that was tantamount to an admission. Besides Chris is wrong on one point. We can t sit there forever just to prevent this tramp from taking over Argus Three. Sooner or later we ll have to be on our own way and we can t overstay our contract either we ve got Violations of our own on our docket that we care about whether Scranton cares about Violations or not. We have a closing date that we mean to observe and that makes the problem much stiffer. I see it does Chris said diffidently. But at least I understood part of it. And it seems to me that there are two big holes in it and I just hope I m wrong about those. Holes the perimeter sergeant said. Where What are they Well first of all they re probably pretty desperate over there or if they aren t now they soon will be. The fact that they re in this part of space at all instead of wherever it was the Mayor directed them back when I came on board here shows that something went wrong with their first job too. Anderson snapped a switch on his chair. Probability he said to the surrounding air. SEvEr.rry rwo PER CENT. the air said back making Chris start. He still had not gotten used to the idea that the City Fathers overheard everything one said everywhere and all the time among many other things the city was their laboratory in human psychology which in turn enabled them to answer such questions as Anderson had just asked. Well score another for you the sergeant said in a troubled voice. But I hadn t quite gotten to my point yet sir. The thing is now this job has gone sour on them too so they must be awfully low on supplies. No matter how good our strategy is it has to assume that the other side is going to react logically. But desperate men almost never behave logically: look at German strategy in the last year of World War Two for instance. Never heard of it Anderson admitted. But it seems to make sense. What s the other hole The other one is really only a guess Chris said. It s based oi what I know about Frank Lutz and I only saw him twice and heard one of his aides talk about him. But I don t think he d ever allow anybody to outbluff him he d always fight first. He has to prove he s the toughest guy in any situation or his goose is cooked somebody else ll take over. It s always like that in a thug society look at the history of the Kingdom of Naples or Machiavelli s Florence. I m beginning to suspect you re just inventing these examples Anderson said frowning blackly. But again it does make a certain amount of sense and nobody but you knows even a little about this man Lutz. Supposing you re right what could we do about it that we re not doing now You could use the desperation Chris said eagerly. If Lutz and his gang are desperate then the ordinary citizen must be on the edge of smashing things up. And I m sure they don t have any citizens in our sense of the word because the aide I mentioned before let slip that they were short on the drugs. I think he meant me to overhear him but it didn t mean anything to me at the time. The man on the street must hate the gang even in good times. We could use them to turn Lutz out. How Anderson said with the air of a man posing a question he knows to be unanswerable. I don t know exactly. It d have to be done more or less by feel. But I used to have at least two friends over there one of them with onstant access to Lutz. If he s still around and I could sneak over there and get in touch with him Anderson held up a hand and sighed. I was kind of afraid you were going to trot out something like that. Chris when are we going to cure you of this urge to go junketing You know what Amalfi said about that Circumstances alter cases Carla put in. Yes but oh all right all right I ll go one step farther at least. Once more he snapped the switch and said to the air: Comments WE ADVISE AGAINST SUCH A VENTURE SERGEANT ANDERSON. Ti m CHANCE THAT MISTER DEFORI WOULD BE RECOGNIZED IS PROHIBITIVELY HIGH. There you see Anderson said. Amalfi would ask them the same question. He ignores their advice more often than not but in this case what they say is just what he s already decided himself. Okay Chris said not very much surprised It s a pretty fuzzy sort of idea I ll admit. But it was the only one I had. There s a lot to it. I ll tell the Mayor your two points and suggest that we try to do something to stir up the animals over there. Maybe he ll think of another way of tackling that. Cheer up Chris it s a darned good thing you told me all this so you shouldn t feel bad if a small part of what you said gets rejected. You can t win them all you know. I know Chris said. But you can try. If Amalfi thought of any better idea for stirring up the animals in Scranton Chris did not hear of it and if he tried it obviously it had no significant effect. While the city worked Scranton sat sullenly where it was ominously silent while New York s contract termination date drew closer and closer. Poor and starving though it must have been Scranton had no intention of being outsat at the game of playing for so rich a planet as Argus III if Amalfi wanted Scranton off the planet he was going to have to throw it off or call for the cops. Frank Lutz was behaving pretty much as Chris had predicted at least so far. Then in the last week of the contract the roof fell i . Chris got the news as usual from his guardian. It s your friend Piggy he said wrathfully. He had the notion that he could pretend to turn his coat worm his way into Scranton s government and then pull off some sort of coup. Of course Lutz didn t believe him and now we re all in the soup. Chris was torn between shock and laughter. But how d he get there That s one of the worst parts of it. Somehow he sold two women on the idea of being deadly female spies concubine type as if a thug government ever had any shortage of women especially in a famine One of them is a sixteen year old girl whose family is spitting flames for every good reason. The other is a thirty year old passenger who s the sister of a citizen and he s one of Irish Dulany s fighter pilots. The sister the City Fathers tell us now is a borderline psychotic which is why she never made citizenship herself but they authorized the brother to teach her to fly because it seemed to help her clinically. She stole the boarding squad plane for the purpose and by the time we got the whole story from the machines it was all over. You mean that the City Fathers heard Piggy and the others planning all this Sure they did. They hear everything you know that. But why didn t they tell somebody Chris demanded. They re under orders never to volunteer information. And a good thing too almost all the time without such an order they d be jabbering away on all channels every minute of the day they have no judgment. Now Lutz is demanding ransom. We d pay any reasonable sum but what he wants is the planet you were right again Chris logic has gone out the window over there and we can t give him what we don t own and we wouldn t if we could. Piggy has gotten us into a war and not even the machines can see what the consequences will be. Chris blew out his breath in a long gust. What are we going to do Can t tell you. No I don t want to know about tactics or anything like that. Just a general idea. Piggy is a friend of mine it sounds silly right now but I really like him. If you don t like a man when he s in trouble you probably never liked him at all the perimeter sergeant agreed reflectively. Well I can t tell you very much more all the same. In general terms Amalfl is stalling in a way he hopes will ive Lutz the idea that he s going to give in but won t gsve the Argidae the same impression the machines have run him up a set of key words that should convey the one thing to the colonists and the other to Scranton. Contact termination is only a week away and if we can stall Lutz until the day before that well I can t say what we ll do. But generally again we ll move in there and deprive him of his marbles. That ll give us a day to get out of this system before the cops come running and when they do catch us at least they ll find that we have a fulfilled contract. Incidentally it also gives us a day to Collect our pay OvuaRmE the City Fathers said suddenly without being asked anything at all. Woof Sorry. Either I ve already said one word too many or I was going to. Can t say anything else Chris. But I thought they never volunteered information They don t Anderson said. That wasn t volunteered. They are under orders from Amalfi to monitor talk about this situation and shut it up when it begins to get too loose. That s all I can say and it s none of it the best news I ever spread. Only a week to go and the contract date Chris realized for the first time was exactly one day before his birthday. Everything was going to be gained or lost within the same three days: for himself for Piggy and his two victims for Scranton for Argus Ill for the city. And again he knew as surely as he knew his left hand from his right that Amalfi s present plan was not going to work. And again the rock upon which it was sure to founder was Frank Lutz. Chris did not doubt that Amalfi could outsmart Lutz hands down in any face to face situation but that was not what this was. He did doubt and doubted most thoroughly that any list of trigger words the City Fathers could prepare could fool Lutz for long no matter how well they lulled the hundred eyes of Argus to sleep the city manacer of Scranton was educated shrewd experienced in the ways of politics and power and by now on top of all that he would be almost insanel uspicious. Suspicion of everyone had been normal for him even in good times if he suspected his friends when things were going right. be would hardly be more trustful of his enemies in the very last days of a disaster. Chris knew very little yet about the politics of Okie cities but he knew his history. Also he knew skunks he had often marveled at the obduracy with which poor Kelly had failed to profit by his tangles with them Maybe the dog had liked them they are affectionate pets for a cautious master. But the human variety was not worth the risk. One look at Frank Lutz had taught Chris that. And even supposing that Lutz did not shoot from the hip while. New York was still trying to stall bringing down upon the city a rain of missiles or whatever other bombardment Scranton was able to mount even supposing that Lutz was totally taken in by Amalfi s strategy so that New York took his city away from him at the very last minute without firing a shot or losing a man even suppos.. Ing all this and it was an impossible budget of surmositions Piggy and the two women prisoners would not survive it. In New York only Chris could know with what contempt Lutz treated the useless people aboard hi own town and only Chris could guess what short shrift he would give three putative refugees from a great city that did tolerate passengers. Piggy s pitiful expedition was probably heaving slag nght now. If Lutz allowed them to live more or less through the next week he would certainly have them executed the instant he saw his realm toppling no matter how fast Amalfi moved Upon Scranton when the H hour arrived it takes no more than five sdconds to order that hostages be sacrificed. That was the whole and only reason why the many wars of medieval Earth had gone on so many years after all the participants had forgotten why they had been started or if they remembered no longer cared: there was still ransom money to be made. His guardian was already impatient of that kind of example however. As for Amalfi and the City Fathers they had made their position too clear to be worth appealing to now. Were Chris to go back to them they would give him more than another No such an approach would give them all the reasons they could possibly need to put Chris under a 24 hour watch. Yet this time he knew they were wrong and this time he planned very carefully fighting off the constant conviction that these ancient men and machines could not possibly have made a mistake ... and would snap the switch on him at any moment. If they knew wha he was up to they remained inactive and kept their own counsel. He trudged out of the city the next night. Nobody tried to stop him. Nobody even seemed to see him go. That was exactly what he iad hoped for but it made him feel miserably in the wrong and on his own. CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Hidey Hole Ordinarily Chris would not have ventured into a strange wilderness at night even under present circumstances he would have left perhaps an hour before sunrise leaving himself only enough darkness to put distance between himself and any possible pursuit. But on Argus III he had several advantages going for him. One of these was a homing compass a commonplace Okie object the needle of which always pointed toward the strongest nearby spindizzy field. On most planets cities tended to keep a fractional field going to prevent the local air from mixing with that of the city itself and when the city was on a war footing the generators would be kept running as a matter of course in case a quick getaway should be needed. The gadget would point him away from New York for half his trip and an ordinary magnetic compass would serve to show which way thereafter the homing compass would be pointing steadily toward Scranton. The second advantage was light. Argus had no moon but it had the hundred eyes of the nearby blue white giant suns of the cluster and beyond them the diffuse light of the rest of the cluster throughout this half of the year. The aggregate sky glow was almost twice as bright as Earthly moonlight more than good enough to read by and to cast sharp shadows though not quite enough to trigger the color sensitivity of the human eye. Most important of all Chris knew pine woods and mountains. He had grown up among them. He traveled light carrying with him only a small pack containing two tins of field rations a canteen and a change of clothing. The fresh clothes were those he had been wearing when he had first been transferred to New York it had taken considerable courage to ask the City Fathers if they were still in storage despite his knowledge that the machines never told what they knew unless asked. The request left behind a clue but that really didn t matter once Sgt. Anderson realized Chris was missing he could be in little doubt about where he had gone. By dawn he was almost over the crest of the range. By noon he had found himself a cave on the other side from which a small ice cold stream issued. He went very cautiously in this as deep as he could go on his hands and knees looking for old bones droppings bedding or any other sign that some local ahimal lived there. He found none as he had expected few animals care to make a home directly beside running water it is too damp at night and it attracts too many potential enemies. Then he ate for the first time and went to sleep. He awoke at dusk refilled his canteen from the stream and began the long scramble down the other side of the range. The route he took was necessarily more than a little devious but thanks to the two compasses he was never in any doubt about his bearings for more than a few minutes at a time. Long before midnight he caught his first glimpse of Scranton glowing dully in the valley like a scatter of dewdrops in a spider s web. By dawn he had buried his pack along with the New York clothes by now more than a little dirty and torn and was shambling cheerfully across the cleared perimeter of Scranton toward the same street by which he had boarded the town willy nilly so long ago. There were many differences this time not the least of which was his possession of the necessary device for getting through the edge of the spin dizzy field. He was spotted at once of course and two guards came trotting out to meetS him red eyed and yawning obviously it was near the end of their trick. Whatcha doin out here Went to pick mushrooms Chris said with what he hoped was an idiotic grin. Didn t find any. Funny kind of woods they got here. One of the sleepy guards looked him over but apparently saw nothing but the issue clothing and Chris s obvious youth. He cussed Chris out more or less routinely and said: Where ya work Soaking pits. The two guards exchanged glances. The soaking pits were deep electrk ally heated holes in which steel ingots were cooled gently and slowly. Occasionally they had to be cleaned but it wasn t economical to turn the heat off. The men who did the job were lowered into the pits in asbestos suits for four minutes at a time which was the period it took for their insulating wooden shoes to burst into flame then they were hauled out given new shoes and lowered into the pit again and this went on for a full working day. Nobody but the mentally deficient could safely be assigned to such an inferno. Awright feeb get back on the job. And don t come out here no more get me You re lucky we didn t shoot you. Chris ducked his head grinned and ran. A minute later he was twisting and dodging through the shabby streets. Despite his confidence he was a little surprised at bow well he remembered them. The hidey hole among the crates was still there too exactly as he and Frad had last left it even to the stub of candle. Chris ate his other tin of field rations and sat down in the darkness to wait. He did not have to wait long though the time seemed endless. About an hour after the end of the work day he heard the sounds of someone threading the labyrinth with sure steps and then the light of the flash came darting in upon him. Hi Frad he said. I m glad to see you. Or I will be once you get that light out of my eyes. The spoor of the flashlight beam swung toward the ceiling. It that you Chris Fred s voice said. Yep I see it is. But you must have grown a foot. I guess I have. I m sorry I didn t get here sooner. The big man sat down with a grunt. Never thought you d make it at all it was just a hunch once I heard who it was we were up against. I hope you re not trying to switch sides like those other three idiots. Are they still alive Chris said with sudden fear. Yep. As of an hour ago. But I wouldn t put any money on them lasting. Frank is getting wilder by the day I used to think I understood him but not any more. Is that what you re here for to try and sneak those kids out You can t do it. No Chris said. Or anyhow not exactly. And I m not trying to switch sides either. But we were wondering why you let your city manager get you into this mess. Our City Fathers say he s gone off his rocker and if the machines can see it you ought to be able to. In fact you just said you did. I ve heard about those machines of yours Frad said slowly. Do they really run the city the way the stories say They run most of it. They don t boss it though the Mayor does that. Amalfi. Hmm. To tell you the truth Chris everybody knows that Frank s lost control. But there s nothing we can do about it. Suppose we threw him out not that it d be easy where d we go from there We d still be in the same mess. You wouldn t be at war with my town any more Chris suggested. No and that d be a gain as far as it went. But we d still be in the rest of the hole. Just changing a set of names won t put any money in the till or any bread in our mouths. He paused for a moment and then added bitterly I suppose you know we re starving. Not me personally Frank feeds his own but I don t eat very well either when I have to look at the faces I meet on the streets. Frank s big play against Amalfi is crazy sure but except for that we ve got no hope. Chris was silent. It was what he had expected to find but that made the problem no easier. But you haven t answered my question Frad said. What are you up to Just collecting information Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. I m trying to promote revolution Chris said. It sounded embarrassingly pompous but he couldn t think of any other way to put it. He was also trying to avoid saying anything which would be an outright lie but from this point onward that was going to be increasingly difficult. The Mayor says you must have flunked your contracts because you don t have any machines to judge them. Evidently that happens a lot of times to small cities that don t have computer control. And the City Fathers say you could have done this job. Now wait a minute. Let s take this one step at a time. Suppose we got rid f Frank and patched things up with Amalfi. Could we get some help from your City Fathers on reorganizing the job Now the guesswbrk had to begin to be followed rapidly by the outright lying. Sure you could. But we d have to have our people back first Piggy Kingston Throop and the two women. Fred made a quick gesture of dismissal in the dim light. I d do that for a starter not as part of a deal But look Chris this is a complicated business. Your city landed here to do the job we defaulted on. If we do it after all then somebody doesn t get paid. Not a likely deal for Amalfi to make. Mayor Amalfi isn t offering any deal yet. But Frad you know what our contract with Argus is like. Half of it is to do the job you didn t do sure. But the other half of it is to get rid of Scranton. If you turn into a decent town instead of a bindlestiff we ll get that part of the money and it s the bigger part now. Naturally the Mayor c rather do it by finagling than by fighting if we fight we l need all the money and more just to pay for the damages both of us. Isn t that logical Hmm. I guess it is. But if you want to keep m reasonable you d better lay off that word bindlestiff. It true enough but it makes me mad all the same. Either w treat as equals or we don t treat. I m sorry Chris said. I don t know a lot about thi kind of thing. The Mayor would have sent somebody elsc if he d had anybody who could have gotten in. But therc wasn t anyone but me. Okay. I m edgy that s all. But there s one thing more and that s the colonists. They re not going to trust us jusi because we ve gotten rid of Frank. They don t know that he s the problem and they ll have no better reason tc trust the next city manager. If we re going to get back tin mining part of the contract Amalfi will have to guarantee it. Would he do that Chris was already in far deeper waters than his conscience could possibly justify. He knew abruptly that he could push no farther into the untrue and the unknown. I don t know Frad. I never asked and he didn t say. I suppose he d have to ask the City Fathers for an opinioc first and nobody knows what they might say. Frad squatted and thought about it smacking one fist repeatedly into the other palm. After a moment he seemed about to ask another question but it never got out. Well he muttered finally every deal has one carrol in it. I guess we take the chance. You ll have to stay here Chris. I can knock Barney s and Huggins heads together easy enough but Frank s something else again. When the shooting really starts he might turn out to be a lot faster than I am and besides he won t care what else he hits. If I manage to dump him I ll come back for you soon enough but you d better stay out of sight until it s over. Chris had expected nothing else but the prospect ol again missing all the excitement while he simply sat and waited disappointed him all the same However it also reminded him of something. I ll stay here. But Frad if it doesn t look as if it s working don t wait till it s hopeless. Let me know and I ll try to get help. Well ... all right. But better not to have any outsiders visible if it s going to stick. If anybody in this town sees New York s finger in this even people who hate Frank ll be on his side again. We re all a little crazy around here lately. He stood up his face somber and picked up the flashlight. I hope you ve got the straight goods he said. I don t like to do this. Frank trusts me I guess I m the last man he does trust. And for some reason I always liked him even though I knew he was a louse from the very beginning. Some guys hit you that way. It s not going to be fun stabbing him in the back. He s got it coming sure but all the same I wouldn t do it if I didn t trust you more. He swung to the exit into the labyrinth. Chris swallowed and said: Thanks Frad. Good luck. Sit tight. I ll see you. Of necessity Chris did not stay in the hole every minute of the day but even so he found that he quickly lost track of the passage of time. He ate when he seemed to need to though most of the food had been removed from the hide out Frad had missed one compact cache and slept as much as possible. That was not very much however for now that he was inactive he found himself a prey to more and more anxiety and tension made worse by his total ignorance of what was going on outside. Finally he was cthivinced that the deadline had passed. Alter all all possibility of sleep vanished from minute to minute he awaited the noises of battle joined or the deepening drone which would mean that Scranton was carrying him off again. The close confines of the hole made the tension even more nightmarish. At the first faint sound in the labyrinth he jumped convulsively and would have started like a hare had there been any place to run to. In the uncertain light of the flash Frad looked ghastly: he had several days growth of beard and was haggard with sleeplessness. In addition he had a beautiful black eye. Come on out he said tersely. The job s mostly done. Chris followed Frad out into the half light of the warehouse which seemed brilliant after the stuffy inkiness of the hole and thence into the intolerable brilliance of late afternoon sunlight. What happened to Frank Lutz he said breathlessly. Frad stared straight ahead and when he replied his voice was totally devoid of expression. We got rid of him. The subject is closed. Chris shied off from it hastily. What happens now There s still a little mopping up to do and we could use some help. If you called your friends now we could let them in as long as Amalfi doesn t send a whole boarding squad. No just two men. Frad nodded. Two good men in full armor should flatten things out in a day or so at the most. He hailed a passing Tin Cab. As it settled obediently beside them Chris saw that there were several inarguable bullet holes in it. How old they were was of course impossible to know but it was Chris s guess that they hadn t been there for as much as a week. I ll get you to the radio and you can take it from there. Then it ll be time to get the deal drawn up. And that would be the moment that Chris had been dreading above all others the moment when he would have to talk to Anderson and Amalfi and tell them what he had done what he had started what he had committed them to. There was no doubt in his mind as to how he felt about it. He was scared. Come on hop in Frad said. What are you waiting for CHAP flIR TWELVE: An Interview With Ainalfi The city was still administered with due regard for tradition from City Hall but its control room was in the mast of the Empire State Building. It was here that Amalfi received them all Chris Frad and Sgts. Anderson and Dulany for he had been occupying it around the clock while the alert had been on as officially it still was. It was a marvelous place jammed to the ceilings with screens lIghts meters automatic charts and scores of devices Chris could not even put a name to but Chris was more interested in the Mayor. Since he was at the moment talking to Frad Chris had plenty of opportunity to study him. The fabulous Amalfi had turned out to be a complete surprise. Chris could not say any more just what kind of man he had pictured in his mind. Something more stalwart lean and conventionally heroic perhaps but certainly not a short barrel shaped man with a bull neck a totally bald head and hands so huge that they looked as though they could crush rocks. The oddest touch of all was the cigar held in the powerful fingers with almost feminine delicacy and drawn on with invariable relish. Nobody else in the city smoked nobody else because there was no place in it to grow tobacco. The cigar then was more than a badge of office it was a symbol of the wealth of the city like the snow imported from the mountains by the Roman emperors and Amalfi treated it like a treasure not a habit. When he was thinking he had an odd way of holding it up and looking at it as though everything that was going on in his head was concentrated in its glowing coal. He was saying to Frad: The arrangements with the machinery are cumbersome but not difficult in principle. We can lend you our Brood assembly until she replicates herself then you reset the daughter machine feed her scrap and out come City Fathers to the number that you ll need probab y about a third as many as we carry and it ll take maybe ten years. You can use the time feeding them data because in the beginning they ll be idiots except for th e computation function. In the meantime we ll refigure your job ptoblem on our own machines. Since we ll trust the answer and since Chris says you re a man of your word that means that of course we ll underwrite your contract with Argidae. Many thanks Frad said. Not necessary Amalfi rumbled. For value received. In fact we got more than we re aying for we learned something from you. Which brings us to our drastic friend Mr. deFord. He swung on Chris who tried unsuccessfully to swallow his heart. I suppose you re aware Chris that this is D day for you: your eighteenth birthday. Yes sir. I sure am. Well. I ve got a job for you if you want it. I ve been studying it ever since it was first mentioned to me and all I can say is it serves you right. Chris swallowed again. The Mayor studied the cigar judiciously. It calls for a very odd combination of skills and character traits. Taking the latter first it needs initiative boldness imagination a willingness to improvise and take short cuts and an ability to see the whole of a complex situation at a glance. But at the same time it needs conservative instincts so that even the boldest ideas and acts tend to be those that save men materials time money. What class of jobs does that make you think of so far MILrr Y GENERAL OFFICERS the City Fathers promptly announced. I wasn t talking to you Amalfi growled. He was plainly irritated but it seemed to Chris an old irritation almost a routine one. Chris Well sir they re right of course. I might even have thought of it myself though I can t swear to it. At least all the great generals follow that pattern. Okay. As for the skills a lot of them are required but only one is cardinal. The man has got to be a first class cultural morphologist. Chris recognized the term from his force feeding in Spengler. It denoted a scholar who could look at any culture at any stage in its development relate to it all other cultures at similar stages and come up with specific predictions of how these people would react to a given proposal or event. It surely wouldn t be a skill a general would ever be likely to have a use for even if he had the time to develop it. You ve got the character traits that s plain to see including the predisposition toward the skill. Most Okies have that but in nowhere near the degree you seem to. The skill itself of course can only emerge with time and practice ... but you ll have lots of time. The City Fathers say five years probation. As for the city we never had such a job on the roster before but a study of Scranton and some more successful towns convinces us that we need it. Will you take it Chris s head was whirling with a wild humming mixture of pride and bafflement. Excuse me Mr. Mayor but just what is it City manager. Chris stared at Sgt. Anderson but his guardian looked as stunned as Chris felt. Alter a moment however he winked solemnly. Chris could not speak but at last he managed to nod his head. It was all the management he was capable of right now. Good. The City Fathers predicted you would so you were started on the drugs in your first meal of today. Welcome to citizenship Mr. deFord. Even at this moment however a part of Chris s mind seemed curiously detached. He was thinking of the original reason he had wanted long life: in the hope that some day somehow he might yet get back home. It had never occurred to him that by the time that happened there would be nothing left back there that he could call his own. Even now Earth was unthinkably remote not only in space but in his heart. His definition of home had changed. He had won long life but with it new ties and new obligations not an eternal childhood on Earth buta life for the stars. He wrenched his attention back to the control room. What about Piggy he said curiously. I talked to him on the way back. He seems to have learned a lot. Too late Amaffi said his voice inflexibly stern. He wrote his own ticket. It s a passenger ticket. He s got boldness and initiative all right all of it of the wrong kind totally untempered by judgment or imagination. The same kind of pitfall will always lie ahead of you Chris that too is an aspect of the job. It d be wise not to forget it. I Chris nodded again but the warning could not dampen his spirits now for this was for some reason the highest moment of them all the moment when Frad Haskins the new city manager of Scranton shook his hand and said huskily: Colleague let s talk business. EARTHMAN COME HOME To John W. Campbell Jr. PROLOGUE SPACE flight got its start as a war weapon amid the collapse of the great Western culture of Earth. The invention of Muir s tape mass engine carried early explorers out as far a s Jupiter and gravity was discovered though it had been postulated centuries before by the 2018 Jovian expedition the last space flight with Muir engines which was completed on behalf of the West before that culture s final extinction. The building by remote control of the Bridge on the face of Jupiter itself easily the most enormous and in most other respects the most useless engineering project ever undertaken by man had made possible direct close measurements of Jupiter s magnetic field. The measurements provided final confirmation of the Blackett Dirac equations. which as early as 1948 had proposed a direct relationship between magnetism gravitation and the rate of spin of any mass. Up to that time nothing had been done with the Blackett Dirac hypothesis which remained a toy of pure mathematicians. Then abruptly the hypothesis and the mathematicians had their first innings From the many pages of symbols and the mumbled discussions of the possible field strength of a single electronic pole in rotation the DillonWagonner grávitron polarity generator almost immediately dubbed the spindizzy in honor of what it did to electron rotation sprang as if full born. The overdrive the meteor screen and antigravity had all arrived in one compact package labeled G 2 PC BU 2. Every culture has its characteristic mathematic in which its toriographers can see its inevitable social form. This expression couched in the algebra of the Magian culture pointing toward the matrix mechanics of the new Nomad Era remained essentially a Western discovery. At first its major significance Seemed to lie in the fact that it was rooted in a variation of the value of C the velocity of light as a limit. The West used the spindizzy to scatter the nearby stars with colonists during the last fifty years of its existence but even then it did not realize the power of the weapon that it held in its faltering hands. Essentially the West never found out that the spindizzy could lift anything as well as protect it and drive it faster than light. In the succeeding centuries the whole concept of space flight was almost forgotten. The new culture on Earth that narrow planar despotism called by historiographers the Bureaucratic State did not think that way. Space flight had been a natural if late outcome of Western thought patterns which had always been ambitious for the infinite. The Soviets however were opposed so bitterly to the very idea that they would not even allow their fiction writers to mention it. Where the West had soared from the rock of Earth like a sequoia the Soviets spread like lichens over the planet tightening their grip satisfied to be at the bases of the pillars of sunlight the West had sought to ascend. This was the way the Bureaucratic State had been born and had triumphed and it was the way it. meant to maintain its holdings. There had never been any direct military conquest of the West by the Soviets. Indeed by 2105 the date usually ssigned to the fall of the West any such battle would have depopulated the Earth almost overnight. Instead the West helped conquer itself a long and painful process which many people foresaw but no one was able to halt. In its anxiety to prevent infiltration by the enemy the West developed thought controls of its own which grew ever tighter. In the end the two opposing cultures could no longer be told apart and since the Soviets had had far more practice at running this kind of monolithic government than had the West Soviet leadership became a bloodless fact. The ban on thinking about space flight extended even to the speculations of physicists. The omnipresent thought police were instructed in the formulae of ballistics and other disciplines of astronautics and could detect such work Unearthly Activities it was called long before it might have reached the proving stand stage. The thought police however could not ban atomic research because the new state s power rested upon it. It had been from study of the magnetic moment of the electron that the Blackett equation had emerged. The new state had suppressed the spindizzy it was too good an escape route and the thought police had never been told that the oripinal equation was one of those in the sensitive area. The Soviets did not dare let even that much be known about it. Thus despite all of the minority groups purged or reeducated by the Bureaucratic State the pure mathematicians went unsuspected about the destruction of that state innocent even in their own minds of revolutionary motives. The spindizzy was rediscovered quite inadvertently in the nuclear physics laboratories of the Thorium Trust. The discovery spelled the doom of the flat culture as the leveling menace of the nuclear reactor and the Solar Phoenix had cut down the soaring West. Space flight returned. For a while cautiously the spindizzy was installed only in new spaceships and there was another period comically brief of interplanetary exploration. The tottering edifice fought to retain its traditional balance. But the center of gravity had shifted. The waste inherent in using the spindizzy only in a ship could not be disguised: There was no longer any reason why a mancarrying vehicle to cross space needed to be small cramped organized fore and aft penurious of weight. Once antigravity was an engineering reality it was no longer . necessary to design ships specially for space travel for neither mass nor aerodynamic lines meant anything any more. The most massive and awkward object could be lifted and hurled off the Earth and carried almost any distance. Whole cities if necessary could be moved. Many were. The factories went first they toured Earth from one valuable mineral lie to another and then went farther aloft. The exodus began. Nothing could be done to prevent it for by that time the whole trend was obviously in the best interests of the State. The mobile factories changed Mars into the Pittsburgh of the solar system the spindizzy had lifted the mining equipment and the refining plants bodily to bring life back to that lichen scabbed ball of rust. The blank where Pittsburgh itself had been was a valley of slag and ashes. The great plants of the Steel Trust gulped meteors and chewed into the vitals of satellites. The Aluminum Trust the Germanium Trust and the Thorium Trust put their plantsaloft to mine the planets. But the Thorium Trust s Plant No. 8 never came back. The revolution against the planar culture began with that simple fact. The first of the Okie cities soared away from the solar system looking for work among the colonists left stranded by the ebb tide of Western civilization. The new culture began among these nomad cities and when it was all over the Bureaucratic State against its own will had done what it had long promised to do when the people were ready it had withered away. The Earth that it once bad owned right down to the last grain of sand was almost deserted. Earth s nomad cities migratory workers hobos Okies had become her inheritors. Primarily the spindizzy had made this possible but it could not have maintained it without heavy contributions from two other social factors. One of these was longevity. The conquest of so called natural death had been virtually complete by the time the technicians on the Jovian Bridge had confirmed the spindizzy principle and the two went together like hand in spacemitt. Despite the fact that the spindizzy would drive a ship or a city at speeds enormously faster than that of light interstellar flight still consumed finite time. The vastness of the galaxy was sufficient to make long flights consume lifetimes even at top spindizzy speed. i But when death yielded to the anti agathic drugs there was no longer any such thing as a lifetime in the old sense. The other factor was economic: The rise of the metal germanium as the jinn of solid state physics. Long before flight into deep space became a fact the metal had assumed a fantastic value on Earth The opening of the interstellar frontier drove its price down to a manageable level and gradually it emerged as the basic stable monetary standard of space trade. Nothing else could have kept the nomads in business. And so the Bureaucratic State had fallen but the social structure did not collapse entirely. Earth laws though much changed survived and not entirely to the disadvantage of the Okies. The migrant cities found worlds that refused them landing permits. Others allowed them to land but exploited them mercilessly. The cities fought back but they were not efficient fighting machines. Steam shovels by and large had been more characteristic of the West than tanks but in a fight between the two the outcome was predictable that situation never changed. It was of course a waste to bottle a spindizzy in so small an object as a spaceship but a war vessel is meant to waste power the more the more deadly. The Earth police put the rebel cities down and then in self protection because the cities were needed Earth passed laws protecting the cities. Thus the Earth police held their jurisdiction but the hegemony of Earth was weak for the most part. There were many corners of the galaxy which knew Earth only as a legend a green myth floating unknown thousands of parsecs away in space known and ineluctable thousands of years away iii history. Some of them remembered much more vividly the now broken tyranny of Vega and did not know some of them never had known even the name of the little planet that had broken that tyranny. Earth itself became a garden planet bearing only one city worth noticing the sleepy capitol of a galaxy. Pittsburgh valley bloomed and rich honeymooners went there to frolic. Old bureaucrats went to Earth to die. Nobody else went there at all. ACREFF MONALES: The Milky Way: Five Cultural Portraits CHAPTER ONE: Utopia AS John Amalfi emerged onto the narrow worn granite ledge with its gritty balustrade his memory encountered one of those brief boggles over the meaning of a word which had once annoyed him constantly like a bubble in an otherwise smoothly blown French horn solo. Such moments of confusion were very rare now but they were still a nuisance. This time he found himself unable to decide on a name for where he was going at the moment. Was it a belfry or was it a bridge It was of course only a matter of simple semantics depending as the oldest saying goes on the point of view. The ledge ran around the belfry of City Hall. The city however was a spaceship much of which was sometimes operated from this spot and from which Amalfi was accustomed to assess the star seas that the city sailed. That made it a bridge. But the ship was a city a city of jails and playgrounds alleys and alley cats and there was even one bell still in the belfry though it no longer had a clapper. The city was still called New York N.Y. too but that the old maps showed was misleading the city aloft was only Manhattan or New York County. Amalfi s step across the threshold struck the granite without perceptible interruption. The minute dilemma was familiar: he had been through others of its kind often in the years immediately after the city had taken to the skies. It was hard to decide the terms in which one thought about customary things and places after they had become utterly transformed by space flight. The difficulty was that although the belfry of City Hall still looked much as it had in 1850 it was now the bridge of a spaceship so that neither term could quite express what the composite had become. Amalfi looked up. The skies too looked about as they must have in 1850 on a very clear night. The spindizzy screen which completely englobed the flying city was itself invisible but it would pass only elliptically polarized light so that it blurred the points which were stars seen from space and took them down in brilliance about three magnitudes to boot. Except for the distant residual hum of the spindizzies themselves certainly a much softer noise than the composite traffic roar which had been the city s characteristic tone back in the days before cities could fly there was no real indication that the city was whirling through the emptiness between stars a migrant among migrants. If he chose Amalfi could remember those days since he had been mayor of the city although only for a short time when the City Fathers had decided that it was time to go aloft. That had been in 3111 decades after every other major city had already left the Earth Amalfi had been just 117 years old at the time. His first city manager had been a man named deFord who for a while had shared Amalfi s amused puzzlement about what to call all the familiar things now that they had turned strange but deFord had been shot by the City Fathers around 3300 for engineering an egregious violation of the city s contract with a planet called Epoch which had put a black mark on the city s police record which the cops still had not forgotten. The new city manager was a youngster less than 400 years old named Mark Hazleton who was already as little loved by the City Fathers as deFord had been and for about the same reasons but who had been born after the city had gone aloft and hence had no difficulty in finding the appropriate words for things. Amalfi was prepared to believe that he was the last living man on board the flying city who still had occasional bubbles blown into his stream of consciousness by old Earthbound habits of thinking. In a way Amalfi s clinging to City Hall as the center of operations for the city betrayed the mayor s ancient ties to Earth. City Hall was the oldest building on board and so only a few of the other structures could be seen from it. It wasn t tall enough and there were too many newer buildings around it. Amalfi didn t care. From the belfry or bridge if that was what he had to call it now he never looked in any direction but straight up his head tilted all the way back on his bull neck. He had no reason to look at the buildings around Battery Park after all. He had already seen them. Straight up however was a sun surrounded by starry sable. It was close enough to show a perceptible disc and becoming slowly larger. While Amalfi watched it the microphone in his hand began to emit intermittent squawks. It looks good enough to me Amalfi said lowering his bald head grudgingly a centimeter or two toward the mike. It s a type G star or near to it and Jake in Astronomy says two of the planets are Earthlike. And Records says that both of em are inhabited. Where there s people there s work. The phone quacked anxiously each syllable evenly weighted but without any over all sense of conviction. Amalfi listened impatiently. Then he said Politics. The way he said it made it sound fit only to be scrawled on sidewalks. The phone was silenced Amalfi hung it on its hook on the railing and thudded back down the archaic stone steps which led from the belfry bridge. Hazleton was waiting for him in the mayor s office drumming slim fingers upon the desk top. The current city manager was an excessively tall slender disjointed sort of man. Something in the way his limbs were distributed over Amalfi s chair made him also look lazy. If taking devious pains was a sign of laziness Amalfi was quite willing to call Hazleton the laziest man in the city. Whether he was lazier than anybody outside the city didn t matter. Nothing that went on outside the city was of real importance any more. Hazleton said Well Well enough. Amalfi grunted. It s a nice yellow dwarf star with all the fixings. Sure Hazleton said with a wry smile. I don t see why you insist on taking a personal look at every star we go by. There are screens right here in the office and the City Fathers have all the data. We knew even before we could see this sun what it was like. I like a personal look said Amalfi. I haven t been mayor here for five hundred years for nothing. I can t really tell about a sun until I see it with my own eyes. Then I know. Images don t mean a thing no feel to em. Nonsense Hazleton said without malice. And what does your feelership say about this one It s a good sun I like it. We ll land. All right suppose I tell you what s going on out there I know I know Amalfi said. His heavy voice took on a finicky nervous tone his own exaggerated version of the mechanical speech of the City Fathers. THE POLITICAL SIT UATION IS VER Y DISTURBING. It s the food situation that I m worried about. Oh Is it so bad then It s not bad yet. It will be unless we land. There s been another mutation in the Chlorella tanks must have started when we passed through that radiation field near Sigma Draconis. We re getting a yield of about twenty two hundred kilograms per acre in terms of fats. That s not bad. Not bad but it s dropping steadily and the rate of decrease is accelerating. If it s not arrested we won t have any algae crops at all in a year or so. And there s not enough crude oil reserve to tide us over to the next nearest star. We d hit there eating each other. Hazleton shrugged. That s a big if boss he said. We ve never had a mutation we couldn t get under control before. And it s very nasty on those two planets. So they re having a war. We ve been through that kind of situation before. We don t have to take sides. We land on the planet best suited If it were an ordinary interplanetary squabble okay. But as it happens one of those worlds the third from the sun is a sort of free living polyp of the old Hruntan Empire and the inner one is a survivor of the Hamiltoni ans. They ve been fighting for a century on and off without any contact with Earth. Now the Earth s found them. And Amalfi said. And it s cleaning them both out Hazleton said grimly. We ve just received an official police warning to get the hell out of here. Above the city the yellow sun was now very much smaller. The Okie metropolis skulking out from the two warm warring worlds under one quarter drive crept steadily into hiding within the freezing blue green shadow of one of the ruined giant planets of the system. Tiny moons a quartet of them circled in a gelid minuet against the chevrons of ammonia storms that banded the gas giant. Amalfi watched the vision screens tensely. This kind of close maneuvering involving the balancing of the city against a whole series of conflicting gravitational fields was very delicate and not the kind of thing to which he was accustomed the city generally gave gas giants a wide berth. His own preternatural feel for the spatial condition in which he spent his life must here be abetted by every electronic resource at his command. Too heavy Twenty third Street he said into the mike. You ve got close to a two degree bulge on your arc of the screen. Trim it. Trim boss. Amalft watched the image of the giant planet and its chill hand maidens. A needle tipped gently. Cut The whole city throbbed once and went silent. The silence was a little frightening: the distant hum of the spindizzies was a part of the expected environment and when it was damped one felt a strange shortness of breath as if the air had gone bad. Amalfl yawned involuntarily his diaphragm sucking against an illusory shortage of oxygen. Hazleton yawned too but his eyes were glittering. Amalfi knew that the city manager was enjoying himself now the plan had been his and so he no longer cared that the city might be in serious danger from here on out. He was taking lazy folks pains. Amalfi only hoped that Hazleton was not outsmarting himself and the city at the same time. They had had some narrow squeaks with Hazleton s plans before. There had been for instance that episode on Thor V. Of all the planets in the inhabited galaxy on which an Okie might choose to throw his weight around Thor V was easily the worst. The first Okie city Thor V ever saw had been an outfit which had dropped its city name and taken to calling itself the Interstellar Master Traders. By the time it had left Thor V again it had earned itself still another appellation: the Mad Dogs. On Thor V hatred of Okies was downright hereditary and for good reason ... Now we ll sit tight for a week Hazleton Said his spatulate fingers shooting the courser of his slide rule back and forth. Our food will hold out that long. And that was a very convincing orbit Jake gave us. The cops will be sure we re well on our way out of this system by now and there aren t enough of them to take care of the two warring planets and to comb space for us at the same time anyhow. You hope. It stands to reason doesn t it Hazleton said his eyes gleaming. Sooner or later within a matter of weeks they ll find out that one of those two planets is stronger than the other and concentrate their forces on that one. When that happens we ll hightail for the planet with the weaker police investiture. The cops ll be too busy to prevent our landing there or to block our laying on supplies once we re grounded. That s fine as far as it goes. But it also involves us directly with the weaker planet. The cops won t need any better excuse for dispersing the city. Not necessarily Hazleton insisted. They can t break us up just for violating a Vacate order. They know that as well as we do. If necessary we can call for a court ruling and show that the Vacate order was inhumane and hi the meantime they can t enforce the order while we re under the aegis of an enemy of theirs. Which reminds me we ve got an I want off from a man named Webster a pile engineer. He s one of the city s original complement and as good as they come I hate to see him leave. If he wants off he gets it Amalfi said. What does he opt Next port of call. Well this looks like it. Well The intercom on the flight board emitted a self deprecatory burp. Amalfi pressed the stud. Mr. Mayor Yep. This is Sergeant Anderson at the Cathedral Parkway lookout. There s a whopping big ship just come into view around the bulge of the gas giant. We re trying to contact her now. A warship. Thanks Amalfi said shooting a glance at Hazleton. Put her through to here when you do make contact. He dialed the visor until he could see the limb of the giant planet opposite the one into which the city was swinging. Sure enough there was a tiny sliver of light there. The strange ship was still in direct sunlight but even so she must have been a whopper to be visible at all so far away. The mayor stepped up the magnification and was rewarded with a look at a tube about the size of his thumb. Not making any attempt to hide he murmured but then you couldn t very well hide a thing that size. She must be all of a thousand feet long. Looks like we didn t fool em. Hazleton leaned forward and studied the innocuous looking cylinder intently. I don t think that s a police craft he said. The police battleships on the clean up squad are more or less pear shaped and have plenty of bumps. This boat only has four turrets and they re faired into the hull what the ancients used to call streamlining. See Amalfi nodded thrusting out his lower lip speculatively. Local stuff then. Designed for fast atmosphere transit. Archaic equipment Muir engines maybe. The intercom burped again. Ready with the visiting craft sir Sergeant Anderson said. The view of the ship and the blue green planet was wiped away and a pleasant faced young man looked out at them from the screen. How do you do he said formally. The question didn t seem to mean anything but his tone indicated that he didn t expect an answer to it anyhow. I am speaking to the commanding officer of the . .. the flying fortress In effect Amalfi said. I m the mayor here and this gentleman is the city manager we re responsible for different aspects of command. Who are you Captain Savage of the Federal Navy of Utopia the young man said. He did not smile. May we have permission to approach your fort or city or whatever it is We d like to land a representative. Amalfi snapped the audio switch and looked at Hazleton. What do you think he said. The Utopian officer politely and pointedly did not watch the movements of his lips. It should be safe enough. Still that s a big ship even if it is a museum piece. They could as easily send their man in a life craft. Amalfi opened the circuit agai n. Under the circumstances we d just as soon you stayed where you are he said. You ll understand I m sure Captain. However you may send a gig if you like: your representative is welcome here. Or we will exchange hostages Savage s hand moved across the screen as if brushing the suggestion away. Quite unnecessary sir. We heard the interstellar craft warn you away. Any enemy of theirs must be a friend of ours. We are hoping that you can shed some light on what is at best a confused situation. That s possible Amalfi said. If that is all for now Yes sir. End of transmission. Out. Hazleton arose. Suppose I meet this emissary. Your office Okay. The city manager went out and Amalfi after a few moments followed him locking up the control tower. The city was in an orbit and would be stable until the time came to put it in flight again. On the street Amalfi flagged a cab. It was a fairly long haul from the control tower which was on Thirty fourth Street and The Avenue down to Bowling Green where City Hall was and Amalfi lengthened it a bit more by giving the Tin Cabby a route that would have put folding money into the pocket of a live one of another forgotten age. He settled back bit the end off a hydroponic cigar and tried to remember what he had heard about the Hamiltonians. Some sort of a republican sect they d been back in the very earliest days of space travel. There d been a public furor . . . recruiting . . . government disapproval and then suppression . . . hm m m. It was all very dim and Amalfi was not at all sure that he hada t mixed it up with some other event in Terrestrial history. But there had been an exodus of some sort. Shiploads of Hamiltonians going out to colonize to set up model planets. Come to think of it one of the nations then current in the West on Earth had had a sort of Hamiltoni anism of its own something called a timocracy. It had all died down after a while but it had left traces. Nearly every major political wave after space flight had its vestige somewhere in the inhabited part of the galaxy. Utopia must have been colonized very early. The Hrun tan Imperials had they arrived first would have garrisoned both habitable planets as a matter of course. It was a little easier to remember the Hruntan Empire since it was of much more recent vintage than the Hamiltonians but there was less to remember. The outer margins of exploration had spawned gimcrack empires by the dozen in the days when Earth seemed to be losing her grip. Alois Hrunta had merely been the most successful of the would be emperors of space. His territory had expanded as far as the limits of communication would allow an absolute autocracy to spread and then had been destroyed almost before he was assassinated broken into duchies by his squabbling sons. Eventually the duchies fell in heir turn to the nominal but irresistible authority of Earth leaving as the Hamiltonians had left a legacy of a few remote colonies worlds where a dead dream was served with meaningless pomp. The cab began to settle and the facade of City Hall drifted past Amalfi s cab window. The once golden motto MOW YOUR LAWN LADY looked greener than ever in the light of the giant planet. Amalfi sighed. These political squabbles were dull and they were guaranteed to make a major project out of the simple matter of earning a square meal. The first thing that Amalfi noticed upon entering his office Was that Hazleton looked uncomfortable. This was practically a millennial event. Nothing had ever disturbed Hazleton before he was very nearly the perfect citizen of space: resilient resourceful and almost impossible to surprise or bluff. There was nobody else in the office but a girl whom Amalfi did not recognize probably one of the parliamentary secretaries whp handled many of the intramural affairs of the city. What s the matter Mark Where s the Utopian contact man There Hazleton said. He didn t exactly point but there was no doubt about his meaning. Amalfi felt his eyebrows tobogganing over his broad skull. He turned and studied the girl. She was quite pretty: black hair with blue lights in it gray eyes very frank and a little amused a small body well made somewhat on the sturdy side. She was dressed in the most curious garment Amalfi had ever seen she had a sort of sack over her head with holes for her arms and neck and the cloth was pulled in tightly above her waist. Her hips and her legs down to just below her knees were covered by a big tube of black fabric belted at the top. Her legs were sheathed into token stockings of some sleazily woven quite transparent stuff. Little flecks of color spotted the sack and around her neck she had a sort of scarf no it wasn t a scarf it was a ribbon what was it anyhow Amalff wondered if even deFord could have named it. After a moment the girl began to seem impatient of his inspection and he turned his head away and continued walking toward his desk. Behind him her voice said gently I didn t mean to cause a sensation sir. Evidently you didn t expect a woman . .. Her accent was as archaic as her clothes it was almost Eliotian. Amalfi sat down and collected his scattered impressions. No we didn t he said. However we have women in positions of authority here. I suppose we were misled by Earth custom which doesn t allow women much hand in the affairs of the military. You re welcome anyhow. What can we do for you May I sit down Thank you. First of all you can tell us where all these vicious fighting ships come from. Evidently they know you. Not personally Amalfi said. They know the Okie cities as a class that s all. They re the Earth police. The Utopian girl s piquant face dimmed subtly as though she had expected the answer and had been fighting to believe it would not be given. That s what they told us she said. We . . . we couldn t accept it. Why are they attacking us then It was bound to happen sooner or later Amalfi said as gently as possible. Earth is incorporating the independent planets as a matter of policy. Your enemies the Hruntans will be taken in too. I don t suppose we can explain why very convincingly. We aren t exactly in the confidence of Earth s government. Oh the girl said. Then perhaps you will help us This immense fortress of yours I beg your pardon. Hazleton said smiling ruefully. The city is no fortress I assure you. We are only lightly armed. However we may be able to help you in other ways frankly we re anxious to make a deal. Amalfi looked at him under his eyelids. It was incautious and unlike Hazleton to discuss the city s armament or lack of it with an officer who had just come on board from a strange battleship. The girl said What do you want If you can teach us how those those police ships fly and how you keep your city aloft You don t have the spindizzy Amalfi said. But you must have had it once otherwise you d never have got way out here from Earth. The secret of interstellar flight has been lost for nearly a century. We still have the first ship our ancestors flew in our museum but the motor is a mystery. It doesn t seem to do anything. Amalfi found himself thinking: Nearly a century Is that supposed to be a long time Or do the Utopians lack the anti agathic drugs too But ascomycin was supposed to have been discovered more than half a century before the Hamiltonian Exodus. Curiouser and curiouser. Hazleton was smiling again. We can show you What the spindizzy does he said. It is too simple to yield its secret lightly. As for us we need supplies raw materials. Oil most of all. Have you that The girl nodded. Utopia is very rich in oil and we haven t needed it in quantity for nearly twenty five years ever since we rediscovered molar valence. Amalfi pricked up his ears again. The Utopians lacked the spindizzy and the anti agathics but they had something called molar valence. The term told its own story: anyone who could modify molecular bonding beyond the usual adhesion effects would have no need for mechanical lubricants like oil. And if the Utopians thought they had only rediscovered such a technique so much the better. As for us we can use anything you can give us the girl went on. Abruptly she looked very weary in spite of her healthy youth. All our lives we have been fighting these Hruntan barbarians and waiting for the day when help would arrive from Earth. Now Earth has come and its hand is against both worlds Things must have changed a great deal. The fault doesn t lie in change Hazleton said quietly but in that you people have failed to change. Traveling away from Earth for us is very like traveling in time: different distances from the home planet have different year dates. Stars remote from Earth like yours are historical backwaters. And the situation becomes complicated when the historical periods interpenetrate as your Hamil tonian era and the Hruntan Empire have interpenetrated. The two cultures freeze each other the moment they come in conflict and when history catches up with them well naturally it s a shock. On a more practical subject Amalfi said we d prefer to pick our own landing area. If we can send technicians to your planet in advance they ll find a lie for us. A lie A mining site. That s to be permitted I presume I don t know the girl said uncertainly. We re very short on metals steel especially. We have to salvage all our scrap We use almost no iron or steel Amalfi assured her. We reclaim what we need as you do steel s nearly indestructible after all. What we re after is germanium and some other rare earth metals for instruments. You ought to have plenty of those to spare. Amalfi saw no point in adding that germanium was the base of the present universal coinage. What he had said was true as far as it went and in dealing with these backward planets there were always five or six facts best suppressed until after the city had left. May I use your phone Amalfi moved away from the desk then had to come back again as the girl dabbed helplessly at the visor controls. In a moment she was outlining the conversation to the Utopian captain. Amalfi wondered if the Hruntans understood English not that he was worried about the present interchange being overheard the giant planet would block that most effectively since the Utopians used ordinary radio rather than ultraphones or Dirac communicators but it was of the utmost importance if Hazleton s scheme was to be made workable that the Hruntans should have heard and understood the warning the Earth police had issued to the city. It was a point that would have to be checked as unobtrusively as possible. It might also be just as well to restrict sharply the technical information the city passed out in this star system. If the Hamiltonians or the Hruntans suddenly blossomed out with Bethe blasters field bombs and the rest of the modern arsenal or what had been modern the last time the city had been able to update its files not quite a century ago the police would be unhappy. They would also know whom to blame. It was comforting to know that nobody in the city knew how to build a Canceller at least. Amalfi had a sudden disquieting mental picture of a mob of Hruntan barbarians swarming out of this system in spindizzy powered ships hijacking their way back to an anachronistic triumph snuffing out stars like candle flames as they went. It is agreed the girl said. Captain Savage suggests that I take your technicians back with me in the gig to save time. And is there also someone who understands the interstellar drive I ll go along Hazleton said. I know spindizzies as well as the next man. Nothing doing Mark. I need you here. We ve plenty of grease monkeys for that purpose. We can send them your man Webster here s his chance to get off the city before we even touch ground. Amalfi spoke rapidly into the vacated visor. There. You ll find the proper people waiting at your gig young lady. If Captain Savage will phone us exactly one week from today and tell us where on Utopia we re to land we ll be out of occultation with this gas planet and will get the message. There was a long silence after the Utopian girl had left. At last Amalfi said slowly Mark there is no shortage of women in the city. Hazleton flushed. I m sorry boss. I knew it was impossible directly the words were out of my mouth. Still I think we may be able to do something for them the Hruntan Empire was a pretty nauseating sort of state if I remember correctly. That s none of our business Amalfi said sharply. He disliked having to turn the full force of his authority upon Hazleton the city manager was for Amalfi the next best thing to that son his position had never permitted him to father for the laws of all Okie cities include elaborate safeguards against the founding of any possible dynasty. Only Amalfi knew how many times this youngster s elusive amoral intelligence had brought him close to being deposed and shot by the City Fathers and a situation like this one was crucial to the survival of the city. Look Mark. We can t afford to have sympathies. We re Okies. What are the Hamiltonians to us What are they to themselves for that matter I was thinking a minute ago of what a disaster it d be if the Hruntans got a Canceller or some such weapon and blackmailed their way back to a real empire again. But can you see a rebirth of Hamiltonianism any better in this age Superficially it would be easier to take I ll admit than another Hruntan tyranny but historically it d be just as disastrous. These two planets have been fighting each other over two causes that played themselves out half a millennium ago. They aren t either of them relevant any more. Amalfi stopped for a breath taking the mangled cigar out of his mouth and eyeing it with mild surprise. I knew that the girl was disturbing your judgment the moment I realized that I d have to read you the riot act like this. Ordinarily you re the best cultural morphologist I ve ever had and every city manager has to be a good one. If you weren t in a sexual uproar you d see that these people are the victims of a pseudomorphosis dead cultures both of em going through the pangs of decay even though they both do think it s rebirth. Th cops don t see it th f way Hazleton said abstractedly. How could they They haven t our point of view. I m not talking to you as a cop. I m trying to talk like an Okie. What good does it do you to be an Okie if you re going to mix in on some petty border feud Mark you might as well be dead or back on Earth it s the same thing in the end. He stopped again. Eloquence was unnatural to him it embarrassed him a little. He looked sharply at the city manager and what he saw choked off the springs of his rare volubility. He felt not for the first time the essential loneliness that went with perspective. Hazleton wasn t listening any more. There was a battle in progress when the city made its run to Utopia. It was rather spectacular. The Hruntan planet military in organization and spirit down to the smallest detail of daily living had not waited for the Earth police to englobe it. The Hruntan ships though they were nearly of the same vintage as those flown by the Utopians were being fought to the limit fought by experienced officers who were unencumbered by any sniveling notions about the intrinsic value of human life. There was not much doubt as to the outcome but for the time being the police were unhappy. The battle was not directly visible from the city the Hruntan planet was nearly forty degrees away from Utopia now. It was the steady widening of the distance between the two planets that had first given Hazleton his idea for a sneak landing. It had also been Hazleton who had dispatched the proxies guided missiles less than five meters long which hung invisibly upon the outskirts of the conflict and watched it with avid television eyes. It was an instructive dogfight. The police craft collectively had not engaged in a major battle for decades and individually few of the Earthmen had ever been involved in anything more dangerous than a pushover. The Hruntans vastly inferior in equipment were rich in experience and their tactics were masterly. They had forced the engagement in a heavily mined area which was equivalent to picking a fight in the heart of a furnace except that the Hruntans having sown the mines knew where the fire was hottest. Their losses of course were terrific nearly five to one. But they had the numbers to waste and it was obvious that officers whp did not value their own lives would be unlikely to value those of their crews. After a while even Hazleton had to turn the screen off and order O Brien to recall the proxies. The carnage was frightening not just per se but in the mental attitude behind it. Even a hardened killer after a certain amount of watching men trying to snuff out a fire by leaping into it might have felt his brains cracking. The city settled toward Utopia. Outlying police scouts reported the fact the reports were plainly audible in the city s Communications Room and those reports would be exhumed later and acted upon. But now in the midst of the battle the cops had no time to care about what the city did. When they began to care again the city hoped to be gone or invulnerable. The question of how Utopia had resisted the Hruntan onslaught for nearly a century remained a riddle. It became more of a riddle after the city landed on Utopia. The planet was a death trap of radioactivity. There were no cities there were seething white hot pools that would never cool within the lifetime of humanity to show where cities once had stood. One of the continental land masses was not habitable at all. The very air disturbed counters slightly. In the daytime the radioactivity was just below the dangerous limit at night when the drop in temperature released the normal microscopic increase in the radon content a phenomenon common to the atmospheres of all Earthlike planets the air was unbreathable. Utopia had been bombarded with fission bombs and dust canisters at every opposition with the Hruntan planet for the past seventy Utopian years. The favorable oppositions occurred only once every twelve years otherwise even the underground liffr of Utopia would have been impossible. How have you kept them off Amalfi asked. Those boys are soldiers. If they can put up this much of a battle against the police they should be able to wipe up the floor with you folks. Captain Savage perched uncomfortably in the belfry blinking at the sun managed a thin smile. We know all their tricks. They are very fine strategists I will grant you that. But in some respects they are unimaginative. Necessarily I suppose initiative is not encouraged among them. He stirred uneasily. Are you going to leave your city out here in plain sight And at night too Yes. I doubt that the Hruntans will attack us they re busy and besides they probably know that the police don t love us and will be too puzzled to call us an enemy of theirs right off the bat. As for the air we re maintaining a point naught two per cent spindizzy field. Not enough to be noticeable but it changes the moment of inertia of our own atmosphere enough to prevent much of your air from getting in. I don t think I understand that Savage said. But doubtless you know your own resources. I confess Mayor Amalfi that your city is a complete mystery to us. What does it do Why are the police against you Are you exiled No Amalfi said. And the police aren t against us exactly. We re just rather low in the social scale we re migratory workers interstellar hobos Okies. The police are as obligated to protect us as they are to protect any other citizen but our mobility makes us possible criminals by their figuring so we have to be watched. Savage s summary of his reaction to this was the woeful sentence Amalfi had come to think of as the motto of Utopia. Things have changed so much the officer said. You should set that to music. I can t say that I understand yet how you ve held out so long either. Haven t you ever been invaded Frequently Savage said. His voice was half gloomy and half charged with pride. But you have seen how we live. At best we have beaten them off at worst we cannot be found. And the Hruntans themselves have made this planet a difficult place to live. Many of their landing parties succumbed to the results of their own bombing. Still Mob psychology Savage said is something of a science with us as it is with them but we have developed it in a different direction. Combined with the subsidiary art of camouflage it is a powerful weapon. By dummy installations faked weather conditions false high radioactivity areas we have thus far been able to make the Hruntans erect their invasion camps exactly on the spots we have previously chosen for them. It is a form of chess: one persuades or lures the enemy into entering an area where one can dispose of him in perfect safety and with a minimum of effort. He blinked up at the sun nibbling at his lower lip. After a while he added There is another important factor. It is freedom. We have it. The Hruntans do not. They are defending a system which is ascetic in character that is it offers few rewards to the individual even once it has triumphed. We on Utopia are fighting for a system which has personal rewards for us the rewards of freedom. It makes a difference. The incentive is greater. Oh freedom Amalfi said. Yes that s a great thing I suppose. Still it s the old problem. Nobody is ever free. Our city is vaguely republican it might even be Hamil tonian in one sense. But we aren t free of the requirements of our situation and never can be. As for efficiency hi warfare being increased by freedom I question that. Your people are not free now. A wartime political economy has to tend toward dictatorship that s what killed off the West back on Earth. Your people are fighting for steak tomorrow not steak today. Well so are the Hruntans. The difference between you exists as a potential but a difference which makes no difference is no difference. You are subtle Savage said standing up. I think I can see why you would not understand that part of our history. You have no ties no faith. You will have to excuse us ours. We cannot afford to be logic choppers. He went down the stairs his shoulders thrown back unnaturally. Amalfi watched him go with a rueful grin. The young man was a character talking with him was like being brought face to face with a person from a historical play. Except of course that a character in a play is ordinarily understandable even at his queerest Savage had the misfortune to be real not the product of an artificer with an ax to gind. Amalfi was reminded abruptly of Hazleton. Where was Hazleton anyhow He had gone off hours ago with that girl upon some patently trumped up errand. If he didn t hurry he d be trapped underground overnight. Amalfi did not mind working alone but there were managerial jobs hi the city which the mayor simply could not handle efficiently and besides Hazleton might be committing the city to something inconvenient. Amalfi went down to his office and called the Communications Room. Hazleton had not reported in. Grumbling Amalfi went about the business of organizing the work of the city the work for which it had gone aloft but which it found so seldom. It disturbed him that there was no official work contract between the city and Utopia it was not customary and if Utopia should turn out as so many ideals ridden planets had turned out to be willing to cheat on an astronomical scale for the sake of its obsession there would be no recourse under the Earth laws. People with Ends in view were quick to justify all kinds of Means and the city which was nothing but Means made concrete and visible had learned to beware of short cuts. Hazleton it appeared was off somewhere on a short cut. Amalfi could only hope that he and the city would survive it. The Earth police did not wait for Hazleton either. Amalfi was mildy appalled to see how rapidly the Earth forces reformed and were reinforced. Their logistics had been much improved since the city had last seen them in action. The sky sparkled with ships driving in on the Hruntan planet. That was bad. Amalfi had expected to have several months at least to build up a food reserve on Utopia before making the run to the Hruntan planet that Hazleton s strategy called for. Evidently however the Hruntan world would be completely blockaded by that time. The mayor sent out an emergency warning at once. The thin resistance which the spindizzy field had offered to Utopia s atmosphere became a solid hard driven wall. The spindizzies screamed into the highest level of activity they could maintain without snapping the gravitational thread between the city and Utopia. Around the perimeter of that once invisible field a flicker of polarization thickened to translucence. Drive fields were building and only a few light rays most of them those to which the human eye was least sensitive got through the fields and out again. To Utopian onlookers the city went dark blood color and became frighteningly indistinct. Calls began to come in at once. Amalfi ignored them his flight board a compressed analog of the banks in the control tower was alive with alarm signals and all the speakers were chattering at once. Mr. Mayor we ve just made a strike in that old till it s lousy with oil bearing shale Stow what you have and make it tight. Amalfi How can we get any thorium out of More where we re going. Damp your stock on the double. Com Room. Still no word from Mr. Hazleton Keep trying. Calling the flying city Is there something wrong Call ing the flying Amalfi cut them all off with a brutal swipe at the toggles. Did you think we d stay here forever Stand by The spindizzies screamed. The sparkling of the ships coming to invest the Hruntan planet became brighter by the minute. It would be a near thing. Whoop it up there on Forty second Street What d you think you re doing warming up tea You ve got ninety seconds to get that machine to take off pitch Take off Mr. Mayor it ll take at least four minutes __ You re kidding me. I can tell. Dead men don t kid. Move Calling the flying city The sparks spread over the sky like a Catherine wheel whirling into life. The watery quivering of the single point of light that was the Hruntan planet dimmed among them shivered blended into the general glitter. From Astronomy Jake added his voice to the general complaint. Thirty seconds Amalfi said. From the speaker which had been broadcasting the puzzled fearful inquiries of the Utopians Hazleton s voice said calmly Amalfi are you out of your mind No Amalfi said. It s your plan Mark. I m just following through. Twenty five seconds. I m not pleading for myself. I like it here I think. I ve found something here that the city doesn t have. The city needs it Do you want off too No hell no Hazleton said. I m not asking for it. But if I had to take it anyhow I d take it here A brief constriction made Amalfi s big frame knot up tightly. Nothing emotional: no nothing to do with Hazleton probably some spindizzy operator was hurrying things. He staggered to his feet and threw up in the little wastistand. Hazleton went on talking but Amalfi could hardly hear him. The clock grinned and rushed on. Ten seconds Amalfi gasped a little late. Amalfi listen to me Mark Amalfi said choking Mark I haven t time. You made your choice. I ... five seconds ... I can t do anything about that. If you like it there go ahead and stay. I wish you I wish you everything Mark believe me. But I have to think of The clock brought its thin palms together piously. . . . the city Amalfi Spin The city vaulted skyward. The sparks whirled in around it CHAPTER TWO: Gort THE flying of the city normally was in Hazleton s hands. In his absence though it had never happened before a youngster named Carrel took charge. Amalfi s own hand rarely touched the stick except in spots where even the instruments could not be trusted. Running the Earth blockade to the Hruntan planet was no easy job especially for a green pilot like Carrel but Amalfi did not greatly care. He huddled in his office and watched the screens through a gray mist wondering if he would ever be warm again. The baseboards of the room were pouring out radiant heat but it didn t seem to do any good. He felt cold and empty. Ahoy the Okie city the ultraphone barked savagely. You ve had one warning. Pay up and clear out of here or we ll break you up. Reluctantly Amalfi tripped the toggle. We can t he said uninterestedly. What the cop said. Don t give me that. You re in a combat area and you ve already landed on Utopia in defiance of a Vacate order. Pay your fine and beat it or you ll get hurt. Can t Amalfi said. We ll see about that. What s to prevent you We have a contract with the Hruntans. There was a long and very dead silence. At last the police vessel said You re pretty sharp. All right proof your contract over on the tape. I suppose you know that we re about to blow the Hruntans to a thin haze. Yep. All right. Go ahead and land if youVe got a contract. The more fools you. Make sure you stay for the full contract period. If you do get off before we reduce the planet make sure you can pay your fine. If you don t good riddance Okie Amalfi managed a ghost of a grin. Thanks he said. We love you too flatfoot. The ultraphone growled and stopped transmitting. There was a world of frustration in that final growl. The Earth police accepted officially the Okie cities status as hobos migratory workers but unofficially and openly the cities were called tramps in the wardrooms of the police cruisers. Opportunities to break up a city did not come very often and were met with relish it must have been quite a blow to the cop to find the vanadium clad never varying Contract in his way. But now there were the Hruntans to cope with. This was the penultimate and most delicate stage of Hazleton s plan and Hazleton wasn t on deck to administer it. As a matter of fact if his Utopian friends had heard Amalfi admit to a contract with the Hruntans he was probably in the hottest water of his career right now. Amalfi tried not to think about it. The plan originally had not included signing any contracts with either planet so long as the city was not committed legally it could refuse jobs leave them when it pleased and generally exercise the freedom of the unemployed. But it hadn t worked out that way. The speed with which the police had been reinforced had made it impossible even to approach the Hruntan planet without uncrackable legal protection. At least the city s stay on Utopia had accomplished some part of its purposes. The oil tanks were a little over half full and the city s treasury was comfortable though still not exactly bulging. That left the rare earth and the power metals still to be attended to collecting and refining them was unavoidably time consuming and would take even longer on the Hruntan planet than on Utopia the Imperial world farther out from its sun than Utopia had been given a correspondingly smaller allowance of heavy elements. But there was no help for it. To stay on Utopia while the Hruntans Were being conquered or consolidated as it was officially called on Earth would have left the city completely at the mercy of the Earth forces. Even at best it would have been impossible to leave the system without paying the fine for violating the Vacate order and Amalfi was constitutionally unwilling to part with the money for which the city had labored. Even at the present state of the treasury it might easily have bankrupted them for work had been very scarce lately. The intercom had been modestly calling attention to itself for several minutes. Answered it said Sergeant Anderson sir. We ve got another visitor. Yes Amalfi said. That would be the Hruntan delegation. Send em up. While he waited chewing morosely on a dead cigar he checked the contract briefly. It was standard requiring payment in germanium or equivalent the give away clause which had prevented its use on Utopia. It had been signed by ultraphone the possession of that tight beam device alone placed the Hruntans as to century and the work the city was to do was left unspecified. Amalfi hoped devoutly that the Hruntans would in turn give themselves away when it came to being specific on that count. The buzzer sounded once more and Amalfi pushed the button that released the door. The next instant he was not sure it had been a wise move. The Hruntan delegation bore an unmistakable resemblance to a boarding party. First of all there were an even dozen soldiers clad in tight fitting red leather breeches gleaming breastplates and scarlet plumed casques the breastplates too were emblazoned with a huge scarlet sun. The men snapped to attention in two files of six on each side of the door bringing to present arms weapons which might have been copies of Kammerman s original mesotron rifle. Between the files flanked by two lesser lights as gor geously and unfunctionally clad as macaws came a giant carved out of gold. His clothing was interwoven with golden threads his breastplate and helmet were gilded even his complexion was tanned to a deep golden tone and he sported a luxuriant golden blond beard and flowing mustache. He was altogether a most unlikely looking figure. He spoke two harsh sounding words and boot heels and weapons slammed against the floor. Amalfi winced and stood up. We the golden giant said are the Margraf Hazca Vice Regent of the Duchy of Gort under his Eternal Eminence Arpad Hrunta. Emperor of Space. Oh Amalfi said blinking. My name s Amalfi I m the mayor here. Do you sit down The Margraf said he sat down and did. The soldiers remained stiffly at ease and the two subsidiary nobles posed themselves behind the Margraf s chair. Amalfi subsided behind his desk with a muffled sigh of relief. I presume you re here to discuss the contract. We are. We are told that you have been among the rabble of the second planet. An emergency landing only Amalfi said. No doubt the Margraf said dryly. We do not concern ourselves with the doings of the Hamiltonians we will add them to our serfs in due time after we have driven off these upstarts from decadent Earth. In the meantime we have use for you any enemy of Earth must be friends with us. That s logical Amalfi said. Just what can we do for you We have quite a variety of equipment here The matter of payment comes first said the Margraf. He got up and began pacing slowly up and down with enormous strides his golden cloak streaming out behind him. We are not prepared to make any payment in germanium we need all we have for transistors. The contract speaks of equivalents. What counts as equivalent It was remarkable how the regal manner was snuffed out when it got down to honest haggling. Amalfi said cautiously Well you could allow us to mine for germanium ourselves Do you think this planet s resources will last forever Give us the equivalent not some roundabout scheme for being paid in the metal itself Equipment then Amalfi said or skills at a mutually agreed valuation. For instance what are you using for lubrication The big count s eyes glittered. Ah he said softly. You have the secret of the friction fields then. That we have long sought but the generators of the rabble melt when we touch them. Does Earth know this process No. You got it from the Hamiltonians Excellent. The two minor nobles were beginning to grin wickedly. We need babble no further of mutually agreed valuations then. He gestured. Amalfi found himself looking down a dozen rifle barrels. What s the idea You are within our defensive envelope Hazca said with wolfish gusto. And you are not likely to survive long among the Earthmen should you by some miracle break free of us. You may call your technicians and tell them to prepare a demonstration of the friction field generator also prepare to land. Graf Nand6r here will give you explicit instructions. He strode toward the door the soldiers parted deferentially. As Amalfi s hand reached for the button to let him out the big man whirled. And you need not attempt to trip any hidden alarms he growled. Your city has already been boarded in a dozen places and is under the guns of four cruisers. Do you think you can win technical information by force Amalfi said. Oh yes said the Margraf his eyes shining dangerously. We are experts. Carrel Hazleton s protege1 was a very plausible lecturer and seemed completely at home in the echoing barbaric gorgeousness of the Margraf s Council Chamber. He had attached his charts to the nearest tapestry and had propped his blackboard on the arms of the great chair in which Amalfi supposed the Margraf usually sat his chalk traced swift symbols on the slate and squeaked deafening ly in the groined vault of the room. The Margraf himself had left five minutes of Carrel s talk had been enough to arouse his impatience. The Graf Nand6r was still there wearing the suffering expression of a man delegated to do the dirty work. So were four or five other nobles. Three of these were chattering in the back of the room with muffled sniggers and a raucous laugh broke in upon Carrel s dissertation every so often. The remaining peacocks evidently of subordinate ranks were seated Sstening with painful brow furrowing concentration like ham actors overregistering Deep Thought. This will be enough to show the analogy between atomic and molecular binding energies Carrel said smoothly. The Hamiltonians he had seen that the word annoyed the peacocks and used it often the Hamiltonians have shown not only that this binding energy is responsible for the phenomena of cohesion adhesion and friction but also that it is subject to a relationship analogous to valence. The appearance of concentration of the nobles became so grave as to be outright grotesque. This phenomenon of molar valence as the Hamiltonians have aptly named it is intensified by the friction fields which they have designed into a condition analogous to ionization.The surface layers of molecules of two contiguous surfaces come into dynamic equilibrium in the field they change places continuously and rapidly but without altering the status quo so that a shear plane is readily established between the roughest surfaces. It is evident that this equilibrium does not in any sense do away with the binding forces in question and that a certain amount of drag or friction still remains but only about a tenth of the resistance which obtains even with the best systems of gross lubrication. The nobles nodded together. Amalfi gave over watching them the Hruntan technicians worried him most. There were an even dozen of them a number of which the Margraf seemed fond. Four were humble frightened looking creatures who seemed to regard Carrel with more than a little awe. They scribbled frantically fighting to take down every word even material which was of no conceivable importance such as Carrel s frequent pats on the back of the Hamiltonians. All but one of the rest were well dressed hard faced men who treated the nobles with only perfunctory deference and who took no notes at all. This type was also quite familiar in a barbarian milieu: head scientists direc tors entirely committed to the regime entirely aware of how crucial they were to its successes and already infected with the aristocratic virus of letting lesser men dirty their hands with actual messy laboratory experiments. Probably some of them owed their positions as much to a ruthless skill at court intrigue as to any great scientific ability. But the twelfth man was of a different order altogether. He was tall spare and sparse haired and his face as he listened to Carrel was alive with excitement. An active brain this one doubtless politically unconscious hardly caring who ruled it as long as it had equipment and a free hand. The man would be tolerated by the regime for his productivity but would be under constant suspicion. And he was by Amalfi s judgment the only man capable of going beyond what Carrel was saying to what Carrel was leaving unsaid. Are there any questions Carrel said. There were some mostly dim witted from the technies how do you build this and how do you wire that no one with any initiative would have wanted to be led by the nose in such a fashion. Carrel answered in detail. The hardfaced men left without a word as did the nobles who lingered only long enough to save face. The scientist he was the scientist for Amalfi s money was left alone to launch into an ardent stammering dispute over Carrel s math. He seemed to consider Carrel as an equal as a matter of course and Carrel was beginning to look uncomfortable by the time Amalfi summoned him to the back of the hall. The scientist left pocketing his few notes and pulling thoughtfully at his nose. Carrel watched him go. I can t hide the kicker from that boy long sir he said. Believe me he s got brains. Give him about two days and he ll have the whole thing worked out for himself. He won t get any sleep tonight for thinking about it I know the type. So do I Amalfi said. I also know barbarian council halls the arrases have ears. Just pray you weren t overheard that s all. Come on. Amalfi was silent until they were safe within the city and in a cab. Then he said You have to be careful Carrel in dealing with outsiders. You take to it well but you re inexperienced. Never say anything outside the city even to me that doesn t fit your part. Now then I agree with you about that scientist I was watching him. Atld now he knows you so I can t use you against him. Is there someone in your organization who s done undercover work for Mark who hasn t been out of the city since we hit Gort An experienced hand Sure four or five at least. I can put my finger on any of em. Good. Find a fairly husky one a man that could pass for a thug with a minimum of make up and send him to Indoctrination for hypnopaedia. In the meantime you ll have to see that scientist again. Get a picture of him somewhere a tri di if they have them here When you talk to him answer any questions he asks you. Carrel looked puzzled. Any questions Any technical questions yes. It won t matter what he knows very shortly. Here s another lesson in practical public relations for you Carrel. When on a strange planet you have to use its social system to the best advantage possible. On a world like this one where the struggle for power is plenty raw assassination must be very common and nine chances to one there s a regular Assassins Guild or at least plenty of free lance killers for hire. You re going to have Doctor Schloss assassinated The shocked expression on Carrel s face made Amalfi abruptly sodden with weariness. Training a new city manager up to the point where his election would be endorsed by the City Fathers was a long and heartbreaking task for so much of the training had to be absorbed the hard way. He felt too old for such a job now and much too aware of some failure in his methods the failure which alone had made the job necessary now. Yes he said. It s a shame but it has to be done. In other circumstances we d take the man into the city he doesn t care who he works for but the Hruntans would look for him and find him too. There has to be an inarguable corpse and if possible a local culprit. Your operative after a suitable course in this Balkanese they speak here will scout the rivalries among the scientific clique and try to pin the killing on one of those hawk nosed laboratory chieftains. But the man must be killed for the survival of the city. Carrel did not protest for the final formulation was the be all and end all of Okie logic but it was plain that the waste of intelligence the plot necessitated upset him. Amalfi decided silently to keep Carrel exceptionally busy in the city for a while at least until the Hruntans had their anti friction installation well under way. Now anyhow was the time to put another needle into the cops Hazleton s timetable called for it and although Amalfi had already been forced to abandon much of Hazleton s strategy Hazleton s timetable for instance had called for a treacherous Utopian landing on Gort with the full force of the Hamiltonians thrown behind delivering the Hruntan planet into the hands of the Earth police the notion of bargaining with the cops for the planet still seemed to have merit. Dismissing Carrel Amalfi went to his office where he took the flexible plastic dust cover off a little used instrument: the Dirac transmitter. It was the only form of communication which the Hruntans and of course the Hamiltonians did not have the want of it had cost them an empire for it operated instantaneously over any distance. Amalfi thrust a cigar absently between his teeth and sent out a call for the captain of police. The obsolete model had no screen but the captain s voice conveyed his feelings graphically. If you re going to rub my nose in the fact that we re obliged to protect you because the Hruntans have violated the contract he snarled you can save your breath. I ve half a mind to blow up the planet anyhow. Some one of these years the Okie laws are going to be changed and then You wouldn t have blown up the planet in any case Amalfi said tranquilly. The shock wave would have detonated the local sun and destroyed the whole system and your superiors would have had your scalp. What I m trying to do is save you some trouble. If you re interested make me an offer. The cop laughed. All right Amalfi said. Laugh you jackass. In about ten months you ll be yanked back to patrolling a stratosphere beat on Earth that sees a plane once every two years and braying about how unjust it all is. As soon as the home office hears that you let the Hruntans and the Hamiltonians join forces and that the war is going to cost Earth two or three hundred billion Oc dollars and last maybe twenty five years You re a bum liar Okie the cop said. The bravado behind the pun seemed a little strained however. They been fighting each other a century now. Times change Amalfi said. In any event the merger will be forcible because if you don t want the Duchy of Gort I m going to offer it to Utopia. The combined arsenal will be impresive each side has some stuff the other hasn t and we couldn t prevent either of them from learning a few tricks from us. However Wait a minute the cop said cautiously. He was quite aware Amalfi was more than certain that this conversation was inevitably being overheard by hundreds and perhaps thousands of Dirac receivers throughout the inhabited galaxy including those in police headquarters on Earth. That was one of the major characteristics of Dirac transmission whether you called it a flaw or an advan tage depended largely on what use you made of it. You mean you got the upper hand there already How do I know you can hold it You don t risk a thing. Either I deliver the planet to you or I don t. All I want is for you to rescind the fine against the city wipe the tape of the earlier Vacate order and give us a safe conduct out of this system. If we don t deliver you don t pay. Hm mm. There was a muttering in the background as though somebody were talking softly over the cop s shoulder. How d you pull it off That Amalfi said dryly would be telling. If you want to play proof over the agreement. No saop. You violated the Vacate order and you ll have to pay the fine that s flat. That was good enough for Amalfi. The cop certainly was not going to promise to wipe his tape of evidence of a tort while he was talking on the Dirac that he had picked this particular point to stick on indicated general agreement however. Just send me a safe conduct under seal then. I ll put the whole thing in the Margraf Hazca s strong room you get it back when you get the planet. After a short silence the cop said Well ... all right. The tape began to whir at Amalfi s elbow. Satisfied he broke the contact. If this coup came off on schedule it would become legendary the police would be mighty tight lipped about It but the Okie cities would spread the tale all over the galaxy. Somehow the desertion of Hazleton made the prospect navorless. Someone was shaking him. He wanted very badly to awaken but his sleep was as deep as death and it seemed that no possible struggle could bring him up to the rim of the pit. Shapes and faces whirled about him and in the blackness he felt the approach of great steel teeth. Amalfi Wake up man Amalfi it s Mark wake up __t The steel jaws came together with a terrible snapping report and the wheeling faces vanished. Bluish light spilled into his eyes. Who What is it It s me Hazleton said. Amalfi blinked up at him uncomprehendingly. Quick quick. There s only a little time. Amalfi sat up slowly and looked at the city manager. He was too stunned to know whether he was pleased or not and the oppression of his nightmare was still with him a persistent emotion lingering after dreamed events he could no longer remember. I m glad to see you he said. Oddly the statement seemed untrue he could only hope it would become true later. How d you get through the police cordon I d have said it couldn t be done. By force and fraud the old combination. I ll explain later. You nearly didn t make it Amalfi said feeling a sudden influx of energy. Is it still night here Yes. The big blowup isn t due much before noon otherwise I wouldn t have been asleep. After that you d have found no city here. Before noon That isn t according to the timetable. But that can wait. Get up boss there s work waiting. The door to Amalfi s room slid aside suddenly and the Utopian girl stood at the sill her face pinched with anxiety. Amalfi reached hastily for his jacket. Mark we must hurry. Captain Savage says he won t wait but fifteen minutes more. And he won t he hates you underneath I can tell and he d love to leave us here with the barbarians Right away Dee Hazleton said without turning. The girl disappeared. Amalfi stared at the prodigal city manager. Wait a minute he said. What is all this anyhow Mark you haven t sold yourself on some idiotic personal rescue mission Personal No. Hazleton grinned. We re getting the whole city out of here right on the timetable. I wanted to get word to you that we were following through as planned but the Utopians have no Diracs and I didn t want to tip off the cops. Get dressed that s a good fellow and I ll explain as we go. These Hamiltonians have been working like demons installing spindizzies in every available ship. They d about decided to surrender to the cops after all they ve more in common with Earth than with the Hruntans but when I told them what we planned and showed them how the spindizzy works it was like giving them all new hearts. They believed you as quickly as that Hazleton shrugged. No of course not. To be on the safe side they made up an escape fleet of twenty five ships reconverted light cruisers and sent them out on this mission. They re upstairs now. Over the city Yes. I heard the hijacking of the city I gather you had the radio on for the benefit of the cops but it came through pretty clearly on Utopia too. So I sold them on combining their escape project with a sneak raid to escort the city out. It took some selling but I convinced them that they d get out of this system easier if the cops had two things to think about at once. And so here we are right on the timetable. Hazleton grinned again. The cops had no notion that there were any Utopian ships anywhere near this planet and they keep a sloppy watch. They know now of course but it ll take them a little while to mass here and by that time we ll be gone. Mark you re a romantic ass Amalfi said. Twenty five light cruisers archaic ones at that spindizzies or not There s nothing archaic about Savage s plans Hazleton said. He hates my guts for swiping Dee from him but he knows space combat. This is a survival fleet for Hamiltonianism not just people. As soon as we re attacked all twenty five of them are going to take off in different directions putting up a stiff battle and doing their best to turn the affair into a series of individual dogfights. That insures the survival of some of them of their ideology and of the city. I expected something more from you than a gesture out of a bad stereo Amalfi said. Napoleonism Heedless of danger young hero leads devoted band into enemy stronghold snatching beloved sovereign from enraged infidel Pah The city s staying where it is. If you want to go off with this suicide squadron go ahead. Amalfi you don t understand You underestimate me Amalfi said harshly. He strode across the room to the balcony Hazleton at his heels. Sensible Hamiltonians stayed home that s a cinch. Giving them the spindizzy was a smart idea it made them fight longer and kept the cops busy when we needed the time. But these people who are trying to escape toward the edge of the galaxy they re the incurables the fanatics. Do you know how they ll wind up You should and you would if there wasn t a woman in your head addling your brains with a long handled spoon. After a few generations on the rim none of em will remember Hamiltonianism. Making a new planet livable is a job for a carefully prepared fully manned expedition. These people are the tatters of a military debacle and you want us to help set up the debacle No thanks. He threw the door to the balcony open so hard that Hazleton had to jump to avoid being hit and went out. It was a clear night bitterly cold as always on Gort and hundreds of stars glared through the glow the city cast upon the sky. The Utopian ships of course could not be seen: they were too high and probably were as well near to invisible and undetectable even close up as Utopian science could make them. I ll have a job explaining this to the Hruntans he aid his voice charged with suppressed rage. The best I ll be able to do is to claim the Hamiltonians were trying to destroy us before we could finish giving away the friction field plans. And to do that I ll have to yell to the Hruntans for help right away. You gave the Hruntans Certainly Amalfi said. It was the only weapon we had left after we had to sign a contract with them. The possibility of a Utopian landing in force here vanished the moment the police beat us to the punch. And here you are till trying to use the blunted tool Mark the girl s voice drifted out from the room frantic with anxiety. Mark Where are you Go along Amalfi said without turning his head. After a while they ll have no time to cherish their ritual beliefs and you can have a nice frontier home on the ox bone plow level. The city is staying there. By noon tomorrow the Utopians who stayed will be put in an excellent position to bargain with Earth for rights the Hruntans will be horn swoggled and we ll be on our way. The girl evidently having noticed the open door came through it in time to hear the last two sentences. Mark she cried What does he mean Savage says Hazleton sighed. Savage is an idiot and so am I. Amalfi s right I ve been acting like a child. You d better get aloft while you have the chance Dee. She came forward to the railing and took his arm looking up at him. Her face was so full of puzzlement and hurt that Amalfi had to look away that look reminded him of too many things best forgotten some of them not exactly remote. He heard her say Do you do you want me to go Mark You re staying with the city Yes Hazleton muttered. I mean no. I ve made a terrific mess of things it appears. Maybe I can help now maybe not. But I ve got to stay. You d be better off with your own people Mayor Amalfi the girl said. Amalfi turned unwillingly. You said when I first met you that there was a place for women in this city. Do you remember I remember Amalfi said. But you wouldn t like our politics I m sure. This is not a Hamiltonian state. It s stable self sufficient static a beachcomber by the seas of history. We re Okies. Not a nice name. The girl said It may not always be so. I m afraid it will. Even the people don t change much Dee. I suspect that you haven t been told this before but the great majority of them are well over a century old. I myself am nearly seven hundred. And you would live as long if you joined us. Dee s face was a study in mixed shock and incredulity but she said doggedly I ll stay. The sky began to pale slightly. No one spoke. Aloft the stars were dimming and there was no sign to show that a tiny fleet of ships was dwindling away into the boundless universe. Hazleton cleared his throat. What s for me to do boss he said hoarsely. Plenty. I ve been making do with Carrel but though he s willing he lacks experience. First of all make us ready to take off at the very first notice. Then cudgel your brains to think up something to tell the Hruntans about this Utopian fleet. You can fancy up my excuse or think up one of your own I don t care which. You re better at that kind of thing than I ever was. So what s supposed to happen at noon Amalfi grinned. He realized with a subdued shock that he felt good. Getting Hazleton back was like finding a flawed diamond that you d thought you d lost the flaw was still there and would never go away but still the diamond had been the cleanest cutting tool in the house and had had a certain sentimental value. It goes like this. Carrel sold the Hruntans on building a master friction field generator for the whole planet said it would make their machines consume less power or some such nonsense. The plans he gave them call for a generator at least twice as powerful as the Hruntans think it is and with nearly all the controls left off. It will run only one way: full positive. Tomorrow at noon they re scheduled to give it a trial run. In the meantime there s a Hruntan named Schloss who probably has the machine tabbed for what it actually is and we ve set up the old double knife trick to get him out of the picture. It s my guess that this should start a big enough rhubarb among the scientists to keep them from prying until it s too late. Since this whole deal looked as though it would work out the same way that the Utopian landing would have I also called the cops according to your timetable and got a safe conduct. Simple Halfway through the explanation Hazleton was far enough back to normal to begin looking amused. When it was over he was chuckling. That s a honey he said. Still I can see why you weren t too satisfied with Carrel. Amalfi you re a prime bluffer. Telling me to go off with Savage in that dramatic fashion Do you know that your fancy plot isn t going to come off Why Mark Dee said. It sounds perfect to me. It s clever but it s full of loose ends. You have to look at these things like a dramatist a climax that almost comes off is no climax. We d better In the bedroom Amalfi s private phone chimed melodiously and a neon bulb went on over the balcony doorway. Amalfi frowned and flicked a switch on the railing. Mr. Mayor a concealed speaker said nervously. Sorry to wake you up but there s trouble. First of all at least twenty ships were over here a while back we were going to call you for that but they went away on their own. But now we ve got a sort of a refugee a Hruntan who calls himself Doctor Schloss. He claims the other Hruntans are all out to get him and he wants to work for us. Shall I send him to Psych or what It might just be true. Of course it s true Hazleton said. There s your first loose end Amalfi. The affair of Dr. Schloss proved difficult to untangle Amalfi had not studied his man closely enough. Carrel s agent had done a thorough job of counterfeiting local politics. It was always preferable when the city needed a man s death to so arrange matters that the actual killing was done by an outsider and in this case that had proven absurdly easy to arrange. There were four separate cliques within the scientific hierarchy of Gort all of them undercutting each other with fanatical perseverance like shipmates trying to do for each other by boring holes in the hull. In addition the court itself did not trust Dr. Schloss and took sides sporadically when the throat cutting became overt. It had been simple enough to set currents in motion which would sweep Dr. Schloss away but Schloss had declined to be swept. The moment he became aware of any threat he had come with disconcerting directness to the city. The trouble is Carrel reported that he didn t realize what was flying until it was almost too late. He s a peculiarly sane character and would never dream that anybody was out to get him until the knife actually pricked him. Hazelton nodded. It s my bet that it was the court itself that finally alarmed him they wouldn t bother trying to sneak up on him. That s correct sir. Which means that we ll have Bathless Hazca and his dandies here looking for him Amalfi growled. I don t suppose he bothered to cover his tracks. What are you going to do Mark We can t count on their starting the anti friction fields early enough to get us out of this. No Hazleton agreed. Carrel does your man still have contact with the group that was going to punch Schloss s ticket Sure. Have him rub out the top man in that group then. The time is past for delicate measures. What do you propose to gain by that Amalfi asked. Time. Schloss has disappeared. Hazca may guess that he s come here but most of the cliques will think he s been killed. This will look like a vengeance killing by some member of Schloss s group he has no real clique of his own of course but there must be several men who thought they stood to gain by keeping him alive. We ll start a vendetta. Confusion is what counts in a fight like this. Perhaps so Amalfi said. In that case I d better tackle Graf Nandor right away with a fistful of accusations and complaints. The more confusion the more delay and it s less than four hours to noon now. In the meantime we ll have to hide Schloss as best we can before he s spotted by one of Hazca s guards here. That invisibility machine in the old West Side subway tunnel seems like the best place ... do you remember the one The Lyrans sold it to us and it just whirled and blinked and buzzed and didn t do a thing. That was what my predecessor got shot for Hazleton said. Or was it for that fiasco on Epoch But I know where the machine is yes. I ll arrange to have the gadget do a little whirling and blinking Hazca s soldiery is afraid of machinery and would never think of looking inside one that s working even if they did suspect a fugitive inside it. Which they won t I m sure. And . . . gods of all stars what was that The long terrifying metallic roar died away into a mutter. Amalfi was grinning. Thunder he said. Planets have a phenomenon called weather Mark a nasty habit of theirs. I think we re due for a storm. Hazleton shuddered. It makes me want to hide under the bed. Well let s get to work. He went out with Dee trailing. Amain reflecting on the merits of attack as a defensive measure waved a cab up to the balcony and had himself ferried to the first setback of the. mid town RCA building. He would have liked to have landed at the top where the penthouse was but the cornices of the building now bristled with pompoms and mesotron rifles Graf Nandor was taking no chances. The elevator operator was not allowed to take Amalfi beyond the seventieth floor. Swearing he climbed the last five flights of steps the blue rage he was working up was not going to be counterfeit by the time he reached the penthouse. At every landing he was inspected with insolent suspicion by lounging groups of soldiers. There was music in the penthouse and it reeked of the combination of perfume and unwashed bodies which was the personal trademark of Hruntan nobility. Nand6r was sprawled in a chair surrounded by women listening to a harpist sing a ballad of unspeakable obscenity in a quavering emotionless voice. In one jeweled hand he held a heavy goblet half full of fuming Rigellian wine it must have come from the city s stores for the Hruntans had had no contact with Rigel for centuries which he passed back and forth underneath his substantial nose inhaling the vapors delicately. He lifted his eyes over the rim of the goblet as Amalfi came in but did not otherwise bother to acknowledge him. Amalfi felt his blood pressure mounting and his wrists growing cold and numb and tried to control himself. It was all very well to be properly angry but he needed some mastery over what he said and did. Well Nandor said at last. Are you aware of the fact that you ve just escaped being blown into a rarified gas Amalfi demanded. Oh my dear fellow don t tell me you ve just circumvented an assassination attempt on my behalf Nandor said. His English seemed to have been picked up from a Liverpudlian only the men of that Okie city spoke through their adenoids in that strange fashion. Really that s a bit thick. There were twenty five Hamiltonian ships over the city Amalfi said grimly. We beat em off but it was a close shave. Evidently the whole business didn t even wake you or your bosses up. What good are we going to be to you if you can t even protect us Nandor looked alarmed. He pulled a mike from among the pillows and spoke into it for a moment in his own tongue. The answer was inaudible to Amalfi but after it came the Hruntan looked less anxious though his face was still clouded. What are you selling me my man he said querulously. There was no battle. The ships dropped no bombs did no damage they have been pursued out as far as the police englobement. Does a deaf man recognize an argument Amalfi said. And how do you dazzle a blind man You people think that all weapons have to go bang to be deadly. If you ll look at our power boards you ll see records of a million megawatt drain over one half hour at dawn and we don t chew up energy at that rate making soup That s of no moment the Graf murmured. Such records can be faked and there are a good many ways of consuming energy anyhow or wasting it. Let us suppose instead that these ships who attacked you landed a spy eh And that subsequently a Hruntan scientist a traitor to his emperor was taken from your city perhaps in the hope of carrying him back to Utopia His face darkened suddenly. You interstellar tramps are childishly stupid. Obviously the Hamiltonian rabble hoped to rescue your city and were frightened off by our warriors. Schloss may have gone with them or he may be hiding in the city somewhere. We will have our answer directly. He waved at the silent women who crowded hastily out through the curtained doorway. Do you care to tell me now where he is I keep no tabs on Hruntans Amalfi said evenly. Sorting garbage is no part of my duties. Coolly Nandor threw the remainder of his wine in Amalfi s face. The fuming stuff turned his eye sockets into fire. With a roar he stumbled forward groping for the Hruntan s throat. The man s laughter retreated from him mockingly then he felt heavy hands dragging his arms behind his back. Enough the Graf said. Hazca s chief questioner will make some underling babble if we have to hang them all up by their noses. A blast of thunder interrupted him outside the penthouse rain roared along the walls like surf the first such shower the city had experienced in more than thirty years. Through a haze of pain Amalfi found that he could see the lights again although the rest of the.world was a red blur. But I think we d best shoot this one at once he talks rather more freely than pleases me. Give me your pistol you there with the lance corporal s collar. Something moved across Amalfi s clearing vision a long shadow with a knot at the end of it an arm with a pistol. Any last words Nandor said pleasantly No Tsk. Well then A thousand bumblebees took flight in the room. Amalfi felt his whole body jerk upward. Oddly there was no pain and he could still see things continued to take on definition all around him. The clear sight of the dying ... Proszdchd Nandor roared. Egz prd strasticzek Maria do The thunder cut him off again. Somewhere in the room one of the soldiers was whimpering with fright. To Amalfi s fire racked sight everyone and everything seemed to be floating in mid air. Nandor sprawled rigidly half erect his body an inch or so off the cushions his clothing standing away from him. The pistol was still pointed at Amalfi but Nand6r was not holding it it hung immobile above the carpet an inch away from his frozen fingers. The carpet itself was not on the floor but above it a sea of fur every filament of which bristled straight up. Pictures had sprung away from the walls and were suspended. The cushions had risen from the chair and moved away from each other a little then stopped as if caught by a stroboscopic camera in the first stages of an explosion the chair itself was an inch above the rug. At the far side of the room a bookshelf had burst and the cans of microfilm were ranked neatly in front of the case evenly spaced supported by nothing but the empty air. Amalfi took a cautious breath. His jacket which like Nandor s had ballooned away from his chest creaked a little but the fabric was elastic enough to stretch. Nandor saw the movement and made a frantic snatch for the pistol. His left forearm was glued to its position above the chair and could not be moved at all. The gun retreated from his free hand then followed it back obediently as Nandor pulled back for another try. The second try was an even greater fiasco. Nand6r s arm brushed one of the arms of the chair and then it too was held firmly an inch away from the wood. Amalfi chuckled. I would advise you not to move any more than you can help he said. If you should bring your head too close to so me other object for instance you would have to spend the rest of your time looking at the ceiling. What ... have you done Nandor said choking. When I get free You can t not as long as your friends have their friction field in operation Amalfi said. The plans we gave you were accurate enough except in one respect: your generator can be operated only in reverse. Instead of allowing molecular valence full play it freezes molecular relationships as they stand and creates adherence between all surfaces. If you had been able to put full power into that generator you would have stopped molecular movement in place and frozen all of us to death in a split second but your power sources are rather puny. He realized suddenly that his feet were aching violently the plastic membrances of his shoes were trying to stand away from his flesh and pressing heavily against his skin. His jaw muscles were aching too only the fact that the field traveled over surfaces had protected him from having his teeth jammed away from each other and even at that it was an effort to part his lips to talk against the pressure. He inhaled slowly. The jacket creaked again. His ribs ground against his sternum. Then suddenly the fabric gave way and the silver belt which had been stitched into it snapped into a tense hoop around his body. His soles hit the straining carpet heavily and the air puffed out of his shoes. He swung his arms experimentally brushing his hands past his thighs. They moved freely. Only the silver belt maintained its implausible position girdling the keg of his chest like a stave soaking up the field. Good by he said. Remember not to move. The cops will let you go in a little while. Nandor was not listening. He was watching with bulging eyes the slow amputation of six of his fingers by the rings he was wearing. There was now Amalfi knew no longer than fifteen minutes before the overdriven friction field would begin to have more serious effects. Normal molecular cohesion could not be disturbed homogeneous objects stones girders planks would remain as they were but things which were made up of fitted parts would soon begin to yield to the pressure driving them away from each other. After that structures joined by binders of smaller coherence than the coherence of their parts would begin to give way older buildings such as City Hall would become taller and of greater volume as the ancient bricks pulled away from each other and would collapse the moment the influence of the friction field was removed. More modern constructions and machines would last only a little longer. By the time the cops inherited Gort the planet would be a mass of rubble. And eventually the human body assembled of a thousand tubes tunnels caverns and pockets would strain and swell and burst and only a few city men had the silver belt there had not been time. Puffing Amalfi threw himself down the stairs dodging among the paralyzed floating guards. The bumblebee sound was very hard on the nerves. At the seventieth floor he found an unexpected problem the lights x n the elevator board told him that the car had been sealed in the shaft probably by the action of the safety mechanisms when it had been derailed by the friction field. Going down by the stairs was out of the question. Even under normal conditions he could never have traveled seventy flights of stairs and in the influence of the field his feet moved as if in thick mud for the belt could not entirely protect his extremities. Tentatively he touched the wall. The same nauseous sucking sensation enfolded his hand and he pulled it away. Gravity ... the quickest way down ... He entered the nearest office threading his way among the four suspended moaning figures who belonged there and kicked the window out. It was impossible to open it against the field which had sprung it an inch from its lands only the amazing lateral strength of glass had preserved the pane but against a cross sectional blow it shattered at once. He climbed out. It was twenty stories down to the next setback. He planted his feet against the metal and then his hands. As an afterthought he also laid his forehead against the wall. He began to slide. The air whispered in his ears and windows blinked past him. His palms were beginning to feel warm they were not actually touching the metal but the reluctant binding energies were exacting a toll. It was the penalty he had to pay for the heightened pull of friction. As the setback rushed up to him he flattened his whole body against the side of the building. The impact of the deck was heavy but it did not seem to break any bones. He staggered to the parapet and climbed over without allowing a split second for second thoughts. The long whistling slide began again. For a moment after he fell against the concrete of the sidewalk he was ready to get up and throw himself over Still another cliff. His hands and his forehead were as seared as if they had been dipped in boiling oil and inside his teflon shoes his feet seemed to be bubbling like lumps of fat in a rendering vat. On the solid ground a belated vertigo knotted him helplessly for long valuable minutes. The building whose flank he had traversed began to groan. All along the street men stood in contorted attitudes. It was like the lowest circle of hell. Amalfi got up retching and lurched toward the control tower. The bumblebee sound filled the universe. Amalfi Gods of all stars what happened to you Someone took Amalfi s arm. Serum from the enormous blister which was his forehead flooded his eyes. Mark Yes yes. What s the matter how did you Get aloft. Get Pain wrenched him into a ringing darkness. After a while he felt his head and his hands being laved with something cool. The touch was very delicate and soothing. He swallowed and tried to breathe. Easy John. Easy. John. No one called him that. A woman s voice. A woman s hands. Easy. He managed a croaking sound and then a word or two. The hands stroked the coolness across his forehead gently monotonously. Easy John. It s all right. Aloft Yes. Who s ... that Mark No said the voice. It laughed surprisingly a musical sound. This is Dee John. Hazleton s girl. The Hamiltonian girl. He allowed himself to be silent for a while savoring the coolness. But there were too many things that needed to be done. The cops. They should have the planet. They have it. They almost had us. They don t keep their bargains very well. They charged us with aiding Utopia that was treason they said. What happened Doctor Schloss made the invisibility machine work Mark says the machine must have been damaged in tran sit so the Lyrans didn t cheat you after all. He hid Docto Schloss in it that was your idea wasn t it and Schloss got bored and amused himself trying to figure out what the machine was for nobody had told him. He found out. He made the whole city invisible for nearly half an hour before his patchwork connections burned out. Invisible Not just opaque Amalfi tried to think about it. And he had nearly had Schloss killed If we can use that We did. We sailed right through the police ring and they looked right through us. We re on our way to the next star system. Not far enough Amalfi said stirring uneasily. Not if we re charged with technical treason. Cops will detect us follow us. Tell Mark to head for the Rift. What is the Rift John At the word the bottom seemed to fall out of things and Amalfi was again sinking into that same pit in which he had been floundering in dream the night that Hazleton had come back to the city. How do you tell a planetbound colonial girl what the Rift is How do you teach her in just a few words that there is a place in the universe so empty and lightless that even an Okie dreams about it Let it go. The Rift is a hole. It s a place where there aren t any stars. I can t explain it any better. Tell Mark we have to go there Dee. There was a long silence. She was frightened that much was plain. But at last she said The Rift. I ll tell him. He ll argue. Say it s an order. Yes John. The Rift it s an order. And then she was silent. Somehow she had accepted it. Amalfi was surprised but the steady uneventful passage of the cool hands was putting him to sleep. Yet there was Still something more ... Dee Yes John. You said we re on our way. Yes John. You too Even to the Rift The girl made her fingertips trace a smile upon his forehead. Me too she said. Even to the Rift. The Hamiltonian girl. No Amalfi said. He sighed. Not any more Dee. Now you re an Okie. There was no answer but the movement of the cool fingers did not hesitate. Under Amalfi the city soared outward humming like a bee into the raw night. CHAPTER THREE: The Rift EVEN to the men of the flying city the Rift was awesome beyond all human experience. Loneliness was natural between the stars and starmen of all kinds were used to it the star density of the average cluster was more than enough to give a veteran Okie claustrophobia. But the enormous empty loneliness of the Rift was unique. To the best of Amalfi s knowledge no human being let alone a city had ever crossed the Rift before. The City Fathers who knew everything agreed. Amalfi was none too sure that it was wise for once to be a pioneer. Ahead and behind the walls of the Rift shimmered a haze of stars too far away to resolve into individual points of light. The walls curved gently toward a starry floor so many parsecs beneath the granite keel of the city that it seemed to be hidden in a rising haze of star dust. Above there was nothing a nothing as final as the slamming of a door. It was the empty ocean of space that washes between galaxies. The Rift was in effect a valley cut in the face of the galaxy. A few stars swam in it light millennia apart stars which the tide of human colonization could never have reached. Only on the far side was there likely to be any inhabited planet and consequently work for the city. On the near side there was still the police. It was not of course the same contingent which had consolidated Utopia and the Duchy of Gort such persistence by a single squadron of cops over a trail which had spanned nearly three centuries would have been incredible for so small a series of offenses on the city s part. Nevertheless there was a violation of a Vacate order still on the books and a little matter of a trick . . . and the word had been passed. To turn back was out of the question for the city. Whether or not the police would follow the city even as far as the Rift Amalfl did not know. It was however a good gamble. Crossing a desert of this size would probably be impossible for so small an object as a ship out of a sheer inability to carry enough supplies only a city which could grow its own had much chance of surviving such a crossing. Soberly Amalfi contemplated the oppressive chasm which the screens showed him. The picture came in from a string of proxies the leader of which was already parsecs out across the gap. And still the far wall was featureless just beginning to show a faintly granular texture which gave promise of resolution into individual stars at top magnification. I hope the food holds out he muttered. If we make this one it ll make the most colossal story any Okie ever had to tell. They ll be calling us the Rifters from one end of the galaxy to the other. Beside him Hazleton drummed delicately upon the arm of his chair. And if we don t he said they ll be calling us the biggest damned fools that ever got off the ground but we won t be in a position to care. Still we do seem to be in good shape for it boss. The oil tanks are almost full and the Chlorella crops are flourishing. Both breeders are running so there ll be no fuel problem. And I doubt that we ll have any mutation trouble in the crops out here isn t free field incidence supposed to vary directly with star density Sure Amalfi said irritated. We won t starve if everything goes right. He paused there had been a stir behind him and he turned around. Then he smiled. There was something about Dee Hazleton that relaxed him. She had not yet seen enough actual space cruising to acquire the characteristic deep Okie star burn nor yet to lose the wonder of being now by Utopian standards virtually immortal and so she seemed still very pink and young and unharried. Someday perhaps the constant strain of wandering from star to star from crisis to crisis would tell on her as it did upon all Okies. She would not lose the wanderlust but the wanderlust would take its toll. Or perhaps her resiliency was too great even for that. Amalfi hoped so. Go ahead she said. I m only kibitzing. The word like a great part of Dee s vocabulary was a mystery to Amalfi. He grinned and turned back to Hazleton. If we hadn t been sound enough to risk crossing he went on I d have let us be captured we could have paid the fine on the Vacate violation just barely and with luck we could have gotten a show cause injunction against breaking us up slapped on the cops for that treason charge. But just look at that damned canyon Mark. We ve never been as long as fifty years without a planet fall before and this crossing is going to take all of the hundred and four the Fathers predicted. The slightest accident and we ll be beyond help well be out where no ship could reach us. There ll be no accident Hazleton said confidently. There s fuel decomposition we ve never had a flash fire before but there s always a first time. And if that Twenty third Street spindizzy conks out again it ll damn near double the time of the crossing He stopped abruptly. Through the corner of his eye a minute pinprick of brightness poked insistently into his brain. When he looked directly at the screen it was still there though somewhat dimmed as its image moved off the fovea centralis of his retina. He pointed. Look is that a cluster No it s too small and sharp. If that s a single free floating star it s close. He snatched up a phone. Give me Astronomy. Hello Jake. Can you figure me the distance of a star from the source of an ultraphone videocast Why yes the voice on the phone said. Wait and I ll pick up your image. Ah I see what you re after: something at ten o clock can t tell what yet. Dinwiddlie pickups on your proxies Intensity will tell the tale. The astronomer chuckled like a parrot on the rim of a cracker barrel. Now if you ll just tell me how many proxies you have ahead and how far they Five. Full interval. Hm m. A big correction then. There was a long itching silence. Amalfi knew that there would be no hurrying Jake. He was not the city s original astronomer that man had fallen victim to a native of a planet called St. Rita s after he had insisted once too often to said native that St. Rita s was not the center of the universe. Jake had been swapped from another city for an atomic pile engineer and two minor protosynthetics technicians under the traditional rule of discretion and he had turned out to be interested only in the behavior of the more remote galaxies. Persuading him to think about the immediate astronomical situation of the city was usually a hopeless struggle he seemed to feel that problems of so local a nature were nearly beneath notice. The rule of discretion was an Okie tradition which Amalfi had never before invoked and never since for it seemed to him to smell suspiciously of peonage. It had evolved the City Fathers said from the trading of baseball players a term which meant nothing to Amalfi. The results of his one violation of his own attitude toward the rule sometimes seemed to him to smack of divine retribution. Amalfi Yeah. About ten parsecs give or take four tenths. That s from the proxies not from us. I d say you ve found a floater my boy. Thanks. Amalfi put the phone back and drew a deep breath. Just a few years travel. What a relief. You won t find any colonists on a star that isolated Hazleton reminded him. I don t care. It s a landing point possibly a fuel or even a food source. Most stars have planets a freak like this might not or it might have dozens. Just cross your fingers. He stared at the tiny sun his eyes aching from sympathetic strain. A star in the middle of the Rift almost certainly a wild star moving at four hundred or five hundred kilometers per second but not as such stars usually were a white dwarf by eye alone Amalfi estimated it to be an F star like Canopus. It occurred to him that a people living on a planet of that star might remember the moment when it burst through the near wall of the Rift and embarked upon its journey into the emptiness. There might be people there he said. The Rift was swept clean of stars once somehow. Jake claims that this is an overdramatic way of putting it that the mean motions of the stars probably opened the gap naturally. But either way that sun must be a recent arrival going at quite a clip since it s moving counter to the general tendency. It could have been colonized while it was still passing through a populated area. Runaway stars tend to collect hunted criminals as they go by Mark. Possibly Hazleton admitted. Though I ll bet that if that star ever was among the others it was way back before space flight. By the way that image is coming in from your lead proxy out across the valley. Don t you have any outriggers I ordered them sent. Sure. But I don t use them except for routine. Cruising the Rift lengthwise would really be suicide. I know. But where there s one isolated star there may be another. Maybe a nearer one. Amalfi shrugged. We ll take a look if you like. He touched the board. On the screen the far wall of the Rift was wiped away. Nothing was left but what looked like a thin haze down at that end the Rift turned and eventually faded out into a rill of emptiness soaking into the sands of the stars. Nothing on that side. Lots of nothing. Amalfi moved the switch again. On the screen apparently almost within hallooing distance a city was burning. It was all over in a few minutes. The city bucked and toppled in a maelstrom of lightning. Feeble flickers of resistance spat around its edges and then it no longer had any edges. Sections of it broke off and melted like wraiths. From its ardent center a few hopeless life craft shot out into the gap whatever was causing the destruc tion let them go. No conceivable life ship could live long enough to get out of the Rift. Dee cried out. Amalfi cut in the audio circuit filling the control room with a howl of static. Far behind the wild blasts of sound a tiny voice was shouting desperately Rebroadcast if anyone hears us. Repeat: We have the fuelless drive. We re destroying our model and evacuating our passenger. Pick him up if you can. We re being blown up by a bindlestiff. Rebroadcast if Then there was nothing left but the skeleton of the city glowing whitely evaporating in the blackness. The pale innocent light of the guide beam for a Bethe blaster played over it but it was still impossible to see who was wielding the weapon. The Dinwiddie circuits in the proxies were compensating for the glare so that nothing was coming through to the screen that did not shine with its own light. The terrible fire died slowly and the stars brightened. As the last spark flared and went out a shadow loomed against the distant star wall. Hazleton drew his breath in sharply. Another city So some outfits really do go bindlestiff And we thought we were the first ones out here Mark Dee said in a small voice. Mark what is a bindlestiff A tramp Hazleton said his eyes still on the screen. The kind of outfit that gives all Okies a bad name. Most Okies are true hobos Dee they work for their living wherever they can find work. The bindlestiff lives by robbery and murder. His voice was bitter. Amalfi himself felt a little sick. That one city should destroy another was bad enough but it was even more of a wrench to realize that the whole scene was virtually ancient history. Ultrawave transmission was somewhat faster than light but only by about 25 per cent unlike the Dirac transmitter the ultraphone was by no means an instantaneous communicator. The dark city had destroyed its counterpart years ago and must now be beyond pursuit. It was even beyond identification for no orders could be sent now to the lead proxy which would result in any action until still more years had passed. Some outfits go bindlestiff all right he said. And I think the number must have been increasing lately. Why that should be I don t know but evidently it s happening. We ve been losing a lot of legitimate honest cities lately getting no answer to Dirac casts missing them at rendezvous and so on. Maybe now we know why. I ve noticed Hazleton said. But I don t see how there could be enough piracy to account for all the losses. For all we know the Vegan orbital fort may be out here picking off anybody who s venturesome enough to leave the usual commerce lanes. I didn t know the Vegans flew cities Dee said. They don t Amalfi said abstractedly. He considered describing the legendary fort then rejected the idea. But they dominated the galaxy once before Earth took to space flight. At their peak they owned more planets than Earth does right now but they were knocked out a hell of a long time ago. . . . I m still worried about that bindlestiff Mark. You d think that some heavy thinker on Earth would have figured out a way to make Diracs compact enough to be mounted in a proxy. They haven t got anything better to do back there. Hazleton had no difficulty in penetrating to the real core of Amalfi s grumbling. He said Maybe we can still smoke em out boss. Not a chance. We can t afford a side jaunt. Well I ll send out a general warning on the Dirac Hazleton said. It s barely possible that the cops will be able to invest this part of the Rift before the stiff gets out of it. That ll trap us neatly won t it Besides that bindlestiff isn t going to leave the Rift at least not until it s picked up those life craft. Eh How do you know Did you hear what the SOS said about a fuelless drive Sure Hazleton said uneasily but the man who knows how to build it must be dead by now even if he escaped when his city was blasted. We can t be sure of that and that s the one thing that the stiff has to make sure of. If the stiffs get ahold of that drive there ll be all hell to pay. After that stiffs won t be a rarity any more. If there isn t widespread piracy in the galaxy now there will be if we let the stiffs get that no fuel drive. Why Dee said. I wish you knew more history Dee. I don t suppose there were ever any pirates on Utopia but Earth once had plenty of them. They eventually died out thousands of years ago when sailing ships were replaced by fueled ships. The fueled ships were faster than sailing vessels b.ut they couldn t themselves become pirates because they had to touch civilized ports regularly to coal up. They could always get food off some uninhabited island but for coal they had to visit a real port. The Okie cities are in the same position now they re fueled ships. But if that bindlestiff can actually get its hands on a no fuel drive so he can sail space without having to touch civilized planets for power metals well we just can t allow it to happen that s all. We ve got to get that drive away from them. Hazleton stood up kneading his hands nervously. That s perfectly true and that s why the stiff will knock itself out to recapture those lifeships. You re right Amalfi. Well there s only one place in the Rift where a lifeship could go and that s to the wild star. So the stiff is probably there too by now or on the way there. He looked thoughtfully at the screen once more glittering only with anonymous stars. That changes things. Shall I send out the Dirac warning or not Yes send it out. It s the law. But I think it s up to us to deal with the stiff we re familiar with ways of manipulating strange cultures and we know how Okies think even stiffs. Whereas the cops would just smash things up if they did manage to get here in time. Check. Our course as before then. Necessarily. Still the city manager did not go. Boss he said at last the outfit is heavily armed. They could muscle in on us with no trouble. Mark I d call you yellow if I didn t know you were just lazy Amalfi growled. He stopped suddenly and peered up the length of Hazleton s figure to his sardonic horselike face. Or are you leading up to something Hazleton grinned like a small boy caught stealing jam. Well I did have something in mind. I don t like stiffs especially killers. Are you willing to entertain a small scheme Ah Amalfi said relaxing. That s better. Let s hear it. It centers on women. Women are the best possible bindlestiff bait. I grant you that Amalfi said. But what women would you use Ours Nix. No no Hazleton said. This is predicated on there being an inhabited planet going around that star. Are you still with me I think Amalfi said slowly that I may even be a meter or so ahead of you. The wild star hurling itself through the Rift on a course that would not bring it to the far wall for another ten thousand Earth years carried with it six planets of which only one was even remotely Earthlike. That planet shone deep chlorophyll green on the screens long before it had grown enough to assume a recognizable disc shape. The proxies called in now arrived one by one circling the new world like a swarm of five meter footballs eyeing it avidly. It was everywhere the same: savagely tropical in the throes of a geological period roughly comparable to Earth s Carboniferous Era Plainly the only habitable planet would be nothing but a way station there would be no work for pay there. Then the proxies began to pick up weak radio signals. Nothing of course could be made of the language Amalfi turned that problem over to the City Fathers at once. Nevertheless he continued to listen to the strange gabble while he warped the city into an orbit. The voices sounded ritualistic somehow. The City Fathers said: THIS LANGUAGE IS A VARIANT OF HU MANOID PATTERN G BUT THE SITUATION IS AMBIGUOUS. GENERALLY WE WOULD SAY THAT THE RACE WHICH SPEAKS IT IS INDIGENOUS TO THE PLANET A RARE OCCURRENCE BUT BY NO MEANS UNHEARD OF. THERE ARE TRACES OF FORMS WHICH MIGHT BE DEGENERATES OF ENGLISH HOWEVER AS WELL AS STRONG EVIDENCES OF DIALECT MIXTURES SUGGESTING A TRIBAL SOCIETY. THIS LATTER FACT IS NOT CONSONANT WITH THE POSSESSION OF RADIO NOR WITH THE UNDERLYING SAMENESS OF THE PATTERN. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES WE MUST POSITIVELY FORBID ANY MACHINATION BY MR. HAZLETON ON THIS VENTURE. I didn t ask them for advice Amalfi said. And what good is a lesson in etymology at this point Still Mark watch your step Remember Thor Five Hazleton said mimicking the mayor s father bear voice to perfection. All right. Do we land For answer Amalfi grasped the space stick and the city began to settle. Nothing that appeared to answer as a ready made landing area offered itself and the mayor had already decided that nothing would. He sidled the city downward gently guiding himself mainly by the increasingly loud chanting in his earphones. At four thousand meters there was a brief glitter from amid the dark green waves of the treetops. The proxies converged on it slowly cautious of their prim electronic lives and on the screens a turreted roof showed then two four a dozen. There was a city there not an Okie but a homebody grown from the earth. Closer views showed it to be walled the wall standing just inside a clear ring where nothing grew the greenery between the towers was camouflage. At three thousand a flight of small ships burst from the native city like frightened birds molting feathers of flame. Gunners Hazleton snapped into his mike. Posts Amalfi shook his head and continued to bring his city closer to the ground. The fire tailed birds wheeled around them weaving a pattern in smoky plumes yet an Earth man would have thought not of birds but of the nuptial flight of drone bees. Amalfi who had not seen an Earthly bird or bee for nearly a millennium now nevertheless sensed the ceremony in the darting cortege. With fitting solemnity he brought the city to a stop not far from its jungle counterpart hovering just above the tops of the giant cycads. Then instead of clearing a landing area with the usual quick scythe of the mesotron rifles he polarized the spin dizzy screen. The base and apex of the Okie city grew dim. What happened to the giant ferns and horsetails directly beneath it could not be seen they were flattened into synthetic fossils in the muck in a split second but those just beyond the rim of the city were stripped of their fronds and splintered and farther out in a vast circle the whole forest bowed low away from the city to a clap of sunlit thunder. Unfortunately the Twenty third Street spindizzy blew out under the strain at the last minute and the city dropped the last 150 meters in free fall. It arrived on the surface of the planet rather more cataclysmically than Amalfi had intended. Hazleton hung on to his bucket seat until the control tower had stopped swaying and then wiped blood from his nose with a judicious handkerchief. That he said was one dramatic touch too many. I d best go have that spindizzy fixed again just in case. Someday that machine is going to sour for good and all boss. Amalfi shut off the controls with a contented gesture. If that bindlestiff should show now he said they ll have a tough time amassing any prestige here for a while. But go ahead Mark it ll keep you busy. The major eased his barrel shaped bulk into the lift shaft and let himself be slithered through the friction field to the street. It was certainly a much faster and pleasanter way of traveling than elevators or skidding down the face of a building using your forehead for a brake shoe. Outside the face of the control tower shone with hot sunlight reminding Amalfi that the front of City Hall faced the same way and that on it the city s motto would be clear even under its incrustation of verdigris. He hoped that the legend could not be read by any of the local folk it would spoil the effect of the landing. Suddenly he was aware that the chanting he had been hearing for so long through his earphones was thrilling through the air around him. Here and there the sober workaday faces of the Okie citizens were turning to look down The Avenue and traces of wonder mixed with amusement and an unaccountable sadness were in those faces. Amalfi turned. A procession of children was coming toward him children wound in mummylike swatches of cloth down to their hips the strips alternately red and white. Several free swinging panels of many colored fabric as heavy as silk swirled about their legs as they moved. Each step was followed by a low bend hands outstretched and fluttering heads rolling from shoulder to shoulder feet moving in and out toe heel toe the whole body turning and turning again. Bracelets of objects like dried pods rattled at wrists and bare ankles. Over it all the voices chanted like water flutes. Amalfi s first wild reaction was to wonder why the City Fathers had been puzzled about the language. These were human children. Nothing about them showed any trace of alienage. Behind them tall black haired men moved in less agile procession sounding in chorus a single word which boomed through the skitl and pitter of the children s dance at widespaced intervals. The men were human too: their hands stretched immovably out before them palms up had five fingers with fingernails on them their beards had the same topography as human beards their chests bared to the sun by a symbolic rent which was torn at the same place in each garment and marked identically by a symbolic wound rubbed on with red chalk showed ribs where ribs ought to be and the telltale tracings of clavicles beneath the skin. About the women there might have been some doubt. They came at the end of the procession all together in a huge cage drawn by lizards. They were all naked and sick and could have been any kind of primate. They made no sound but only stared out of purulent eyes as indifferent to the Okie city and its owners as to their captors. Occasionally they scratched reluctantly wincing from their own claws. The children deployed around Amalfi evidently picking him out as the leader because he was the biggest. He had expected as much it was but one more confirmation of their humanity. He stood still while they made a circle and sat down still chanting and swaying and shaking their wrists. The men too made a circle keeping their faces toward Amalfi their hands outstretched. At last that reeking cage was drawn into the double ring virtually to Amalfi s feet. Two male attendants unhitched the docile lizards and led them away. Abruptly the chanting stopped. The tallest and most impressive of the men came forward and bent making that strange gesture with fluttering hands over the asphalt of The Avenue. Before Amalfi quite realized what was in tended the stranger had straightened placed some heavy object in his hand and retreated calling aloud the single word the men had been intoning before. Men and children responded together in one terrific shout and then there was silence. Amalfi was alone with the cage in the middle of the double circle. He looked down at the thing in his hand. It was an ornate wrought metal key. CHAPTER FOUR: He MIRAMON shifted nervously in the chair the great black saw toothed feather stuck into Ijis topknot bobbing uncertainly. It was a testimonial to his confidence in Amalfi that he sat in it at all for in the beginning he had squatted as was customary on his planet. Chairs were the uncomfortable prerogatives of the gods. I myself do not believe in the gods he explained to Amalfi bobbing the feather. It would be plain to a technician you understand that your city is simply a product of a technology superior to ours and you yourselves are men such as we are. But on this planet religion has a terrible force a very immediate force. It is not expedient to run counter to public sentiment in such matters. Amalfi nodded. From what you tell me I can believe that. Your situation is unique to the best of our knowledge. What precisely happened when your civilization fell Miramon shrugged. We do not know. It was over eight thousand years ago and nothing is left but legend. There was a high culture here then the priests and the scientists agree on that. And the climate was different it got cold regularly every year I am told although how men could survive such a period is difficult to understand. Besides there were many more stars the ancient carvings show thousands of them although they fail to agree on the details. Naturally. You re not aware that your sun is moving at an abnormally fast relative speed Moving Miramon laughed shortly. Some of our more mystical scientists are of that opinion they maintain that if the planets move so must the sun. It is an imperfect analogy in my opinion after all planets and suns are not otherwise alike as far as we can see. And would we still be in this trough of nothingness if we were moving Yes you would you are. You underestimate the size of the Rift. It s impossible to detect any parallax at this distance although in a few thousand years you ll begin to suspect it. But while you were actually among the other stars your ancestors could see the motion very well by the changing positions of the neighboring suns. Miramon looked dubious. I bow to your superior knowledge of course. But be that as it may the legends have it that for some sin of our people the gods plunged us into this starless desert and changed our climate to perpetual heat. This is why our priests say that we are in hell and that to be put back among the cool stars again we must redeem our sins. We have no heaven as you have defined the term when we die we die damned we must win salvation right here in the mud while we are still alive. The doctrine has its attractive features under the circumstances. Amalfi meditated. It was reasonably clear now what had happened but he despaired of explaining it to Miramon hard common sense sometimes has a way of being impenetrable. This planet s axis had a pronounced tilt and the concomitant amount of liberation. This meant that like Earth it had a Draysonian cycle: every so often the top wobbled and then resumed spinning at a new angle. The result was a disastrous climatic change. Such a thing happened on Earth roughly once every twenty five thousand years and the first one in recorded history had given birth to some extraordinarily silly legends and faiths sillier than those the Hevians now entertained on the whole. Still it was miserably bad luck for the Hevians that a Draysonian overturn had occurred almost at the same time that the planet had begun its journey across the Rift. It had thrown a very high civilization a culture just entering its ripest phase forcibly back into the Inter destructional period without the slightest transition. The planet of He was a strange mixture now. Politically the regression had stopped just before barbarism a measure of the lofty summits this race had scaled before the catastrophe and was now in reverse clawing through the stage of warring city states. Yet the basics of the scientific techniques of eight thousand years ago had not been forgotten now they were exfoliating bearing new fruits. Properly city states should fight each other with swords not with missile weapons chemical explosives and supersonics and flying should be still in the dream stage a dream of flapping wings at that not already a jet propelled fact. Astronomical and geological accident had mixed history up for fair. What would have happened to me if I d unlocked that cage Amalfi demanded abruptly. Miramon looked sick. Probably you would have been killed or they would have tried to kill you anyhow he said with considerable reluctance. That would have been releasing Evil again upon us. The priests say that it was women who brought about the sins of the Great Age. In the bandit cities to be sure that savage creed is no longer maintained which is one reason why we have so many deserters to the bandit cities. You can have no idea of what it is like to do your duty to the race each year as our law requires. Madness He sounded very bitter. This is why it is hard to make our people see how suicidal the bandit cities are. Everyone on this world is weary of fighting the jungle sick of trying to rebuild the Great Age with handfuls of mud sick of maintaining social codes which ignore the presence of the jungle but most of all sick of serving in the Temple of the Future. In the bandit cities the women are clean and do not scratch one. The bandit cities don t fight the jungle Amalfi asked. No. They prey on those who do. They have given up the religion entirely the first act of a city which revolts is to slay its priests. Unfortunately the priesthood is essential and our beast women must be borne since we cannot modify one tenet without casting doubt upon all or so they tell us. It is only the priesthood which teaches us that it is better to be men than mud puppies. So we the technicians follow the rituals with great strictness stupid though some of them are and consider it a matter of no moment that we ourselves do not believe in the gods. Sense in that Amalfi admitted. Miramon in all conscience was a shrewd apple. If he was representative of as large a section of Hevian thought as he believed himself to be much might yet be done on this wild runaway world. It amazes me that you knew to accept the key as a trust Miramon said. It was precisely the proper move but how could you have guessed that Amalfi grinned. That wasn t hard. I know how a man looks when he s dropping a hot potato. Your priest made all the gestures of a man passing on a great gift but he could hardly wait until he d got it over with. Incidentally some of those women are quite presentable now that Dee s bathed em and Medical has taken off the under layers. Don t look so alarmed We won t tell your priests I gather that we re the foster fathers of He from here on out. You are thought to be emissaries from the Great Age Miramon agreed gravely. What you actually are you have not said. True. Do you have migratory workers here The phrase comes easily in your language yet I can t quite see how Surely surely. The singers the soldiers the fruit pickers all go from city to city selling their services. Then much faster than Amalfi had expected the Hevian reached bottom. Do you ... do you imply ... that your resources are for sale For sale to us Exactly Miramon. But how shall we pay you Miramon gasped. All of what we call wealth all that we have could not buy a length of the cloth in your sash Amalfi thought about it wondering principally how much of the real situation Miramon could be expected to understand. It occurred to him that he had persistently underestimated the Hevian so far. It might be profitable to try the full dose and hope that it wouldn t prove lethal. It s this way Amalfi said. In the culture we belong to a certain metal serves for money. You have enormous amounts of it on your planet but it s very hard to refine and I m sure you ve never done more than detect it. One of the things we would like is your permission to mine for that metal. Miramon s pop eyed skepticism was close to comical. Permission he repeated. Please Mayor Amalfi is your ethical code as foolish as ours Why do you not mine this metal without permission and be done with it Our law enforcement agencies would not allow it. Mining your planet would make us rich almost unbelievably rich. Our assays show not only fabulous amounts of germanium on He but also the presence of certain drugs in your jungle drugs which are known to be anti agathics. Sir Sorry. I mean that used properly these drugs indefinitely postpone death. Miramon rose with great dignity. You are mocking me he said. I will return at a later date and perhaps we may talk again. Sit down please Amalfi said contritely. I had forgotten that aging is not everywhere known to be an anomaly a decrease in the cell building efficiency of the body which can be circumvented if you know how. It was conquered a long time ago before interstellar flight in fact. But the phtarmaceuticals involved have always been in very short supply shorter and shorter as man spread through the galaxy. Less than a two thousandth of one per cent of our present population can get the treatment now and most of the legitimate trade goes to the people who need life extension the most in other words to people who make their living by traveling long distances in space. The result is that an ampul of any anti agathic even the least efficient ones that a spaceman thinks he can spare can be sold for the price the seller asks. Not a one of the anti agathics has ever been synthesized so if we could harvest here That is enough it is not necessary that I understand more Miramon said. He squatted reflectively evidently having abandoned the chair as an impediment to thought. All this makes me wonder if you are not from the Great Age after all. Well this is difficult to think about reasonably. Why would your culture object to your being rich It wouldn t as long as we came by it honestly. We ll have to show that we worked for our riches otherwise we ll be suspected of having peddled cut drugs on the black market at the expense of the rank and file people on board our own city. We ll need a written agreement with you. A permission. That is clear Miramon said. You will get it I am sure. I cannot grant it myself. But I can predict what the priests will ask you to do to earn it. What then This is just what I want to know. Let s have it. First of all you will be asked for the secret of this ... this cure for death. They will want to use it on themselves and hide it from the rest of us. Wisdom perhaps it would make for more desertions otherwise but I am sure they will want it. They can have it but I think we ll see to it that the secret leaks out. The City Fathers know the therapy and you have so rich a supply of the drugs here that there s no reason why you shouldn t all get it. Privately Amain had an additional reason: If He reached the other side of the Rift eventually with enough anti agathics to extend coverage much among the galaxy s general population there would be all kinds of economic hell to pay. What next You will be asked to wipe out the jungle. Amalfi sat back stunned and mopped his bald head. Wipe out the jungle Oh it would be easy enough to lay waste to almost all of it even to give the Hevians energy weapons to keep those wastes clear but sooner or later the jungle would come back. The weapons would short out in the eternal moisture the Hevians. would not take proper care of them would not be able to repair them how would the brightest Greek have repaired a shattered X ray tube even if he had known what steps to take The technology didn t exist. No the jungle would come back. And the cops in pursuit of the bindlestiff on the city s own Dirac alarm would eventually come to He to see whether or not the Okies had fulfilled their contract and would find the planet as raw as ever. Good by to riches. This was jungle climate. There would be jungles here until the next Dray sonian catastrophe and that was that. Excuse me he said and reached for the control helmet. Get me the City Fathers he said into the mouthpiece. SPEAK the spokesman vodeur said after a while. How would you go about wiping out a jungle There was a moment s silence. SODIUM FLUOSILI GATE DUSTING WOULD SERVE. IN A WET CLIMATE IT WOULD CREATE FATAL LEAF BLISTER. HARDIER WEEDS COULD BE SPRAYED WITH 2 4 D. OF COURSE THE JUNGLE WOULD RETURN. That s what I meant. Any way to make the job stick NO UNLESS THE PLANET EXHIBITS DRAY SONIANISM. What NO UNLESS THE PLANET EXHIBITS DRAY SONIANISM. IN THAT CASE ITS AXIS MIGHT BE REGULARIZED. IT HAS NEVER BEEN TRIED BUT THEORETICALLY IT IS QUITE SIMPLE A BILL TO REGULARIZE EARTH S AXIS WAS DEFEATED BY THREE VOTES IN THE EIGHTY SECOND COUNCIL OWING TO THE OPPOSITION OF THE CONSERVATION LOBBY. Could the city handle it NO. THE COST WOULD BE PROHIBITIVE. MAYOR AMALFI ARE YOU CONTEMPLATING TIPPING THIS PLANET WE FORBID IT EVERY INDICATION SHOWS Amalfi tore the helmet from his head and flung it across the room. Miramon sprang up in alarm. Hazleton The city manager shot through the door as if he had been kicked through it on roller skates. Here boss what s the Get down below and turn off the City Fathers fast before they catch on and do something Quick man Hazleton was already gone. On the other side of the room the phones of the helmet squawked dead data in anxious even syllables. Then suddenly they went silent. The City Fathers had been turned off and Amalfi was ready to move a world. The fact that the City Fathers could not be consulted for the first time since the Epoch affair five centuries ago when the whole city had been without power for a while made the job more difficult than it needed to be barring their conservatism. Tipping the planet the crux of the job was simple enough in essence the city s spindizzies could handle it. But the side effects of the medicine might easily prove to be worse than the disease. The problem was seismological. Rapidly whirling objects have a way of being stubborn about changing their positions in space. If that energy were overcome it would have to appear somewhere else the most likely place being multiple earth uflkes. Too very little cbuld be anticipated about the gravities of the task. The planet s revolution produced as usual a sizable magnetic field. Amalfi did not know how well that field would take to being tipped in the space lattice which it distorted nor just what would happen to He when the city s spindizzies polarized the whole gravity field. During moving day the planet would be in effect without magnetic moment of its own and since computation was a function of the City Fathers there was no way of finding out where the energy would reappear in what form or at what intensity. He broached the latter question to Hazleton. If we were dealing with an ordinary problem I d say the energy would show up as velocity he pointed out. In which case we d be in for an involuntary junket. But this is no ordinary case. The mass involved is ... well it s planetary that s all. What do you think Mark I don t know what to think Hazleton admitted. The equations only give us general solutions and only quanti cised solutions at that and this whole problem is a classical field problem. When we move the city we change the magnetic moment of its component electrons but the city itself is a low mass body with no spin of its own and doesn t have a gross magnetic moment. That s what stuck me. I can t cross over from probability into tensors any more than poor old Einstein could. As far as I know nobody s ever really faced up to the discontinuity between what the spindizzy does to the electron and what happens to a body of classical mass in a spindizzy field. Still we could control velocity or even ignore it out here. Suppose the energy reappears as heat instead There d be nothing left of He but a cloud of gas. Amalfi shook his head. I think that s a bogey. The gyroscopic resistance may show up as heat sure but not the magnetogravitic. I think we d be safest to assume that it ll appear as velocity just as in ordinary flight. Use the standard transformation and see what you get. Hazleton bent over his slide rule the sweat standing out along his forehead and above his mustache in great heavy droplets. Amalfi could understand the eagerness of the Hevians to get rid of the jungle and its eternal humidity. His own clothing sparse though it was had been sopping ever since the city had landed here. Well the city manager said finally unless I ve made a mistake somewhere the whole kit and kaboodle the planet itself will go shooting away from here at about twice the speed of light. That s not too bad just about coasting speed for us. We could always loop around and bring the planet back to its orbit. Ah but could we Remember we don t control it The vector appears automatically when we turn on the spindizzies. We don t even know in which direction that arrow is going to point. The planet could throw itself into the sun within the first second as far as we know. We can t predict the direction. Yes we can Hazleton objected. Along the axis of spin of course. Cant And torque No problem no yes there is. I keep forgetting that we re dealing with a planet instead of electrons. He applied the slipstick again. No soap. Too many substitutions. Can t be answered in time without the City Fathers and torque might hype the end velocity substantially. But if we can figure a way to control the flight it won t matter in the end. Of course there ll be perturbations of the other planets when this one goes massless whether it actually moves or not but nobody lives on them anyhow. All right Mark go figure a control system. I ll see what can be done on the geology end The door slid back suddenly and Amalfi looked back over his shoulder. It was Sergeant Anderson. The perimeter sergeant was usually blase in the face of all possible wonders unless they threatened the city. What s the matter Amalfi said alarmed. Mr. Mayor we ve gotten an ultracast from some outfit claiming to be refugees from another Okie city they claim they hit a bindlestiff and got broken up. They ve crash landed on this planet up north and they re being mobbed by one of the local bandit towns. They were holding em off and yelling for help and then they stopped transmitting. I thought you ought to know. Amalfl heaved himself to his feet almost instantly. Did you get a bearing on that call he demanded. Yes sir. Give me the figures. Come on Mark. That s our life craft from the city with the no fuel drive. We need those boys. Amalfi and Hazleton grabbed a cab to the edge of the city and went the rest of the way to the Hevian town on foot across the supersonics cleared strip of bare turf which surrounded the walls. The turf felt rubbery. Amalfi suspected that some rudimentary form of friction field was keeping the mud in a state of stiff gel. He had visions of foot soldiers sinking suddenly into slowly folding ooze as the fields were turned off and quickened his pace. Inside the gates the Hevian guards summoned a queer malodorous vehicle which seemed to be powered by the combustion of hydrocarbons and the Okies were roared through the streets toward Miramon. Throughout the journey Amalfi clung to a cloth strap in an access of nervousness. Traveling right on a surface at any good speed was a rare experience for him and the way things zipped past the windows made him jumpy. Is this bird out to smash us up Hazleton demanded petulantly. He must be doing all of four hundred kilos an hour. I m glad you feel the same way Amalfi said relaxing a little. Actually I ll bet he s doing less than two hundred. It s just the way the The driver who had been holding his car down to a conservative fifty out of deference to the strangers from the Great Age wrenched the machine around a corner and halted it neatly before Miramon s door. Amalfi got out his knees wobbly. Hazleton s face was a delicate puce. I m going to figure out a way to make our cabs operate outside the city he muttered. Every time we make a new planetfall we have to ride on ox carts the backs of bull kangaroos in hot air balloons steam driven air screws things that drag you feet first and face down through tunnels or whatever else the natives think is classy transportation. My stomach won t stand much more. Amalfi grinned and raised his hand to Miramon whoSe expression suggested laughter smothered with great difficulty. What brings you here the Hevian said. Come in. I have no chairs but No time Amalfi said. Listen closely Miramon because this is going to be complex to explain and I m going to have to give it to you fast. You already know that our city isn t the only one of its type. Well the fact is that we aren t even the first Okie city to enter the Rift there were two others ahead of us. One of them a criminal city that we call a bindlestiff attacked and destroyed the other we were too far away to prevent it. Do you follow me I think so Miramon said. This bindlestiff is like our bandit cities Yes precisely. And as far as we know it s still in the Rift somewhere. Now the city that the stiff destroyed had something that we want very badly and that we must have before the stiffs get it. We know that the dead city put off some life craft and that one of those craft has just landed on your world astd has fallen afoul of one of your own bandit cities. We ve got to rescue them. They re the sole survivors of the dead city as far as we know and it s vital for us to question them. We need to know what they know about the thing we want the no fuel drive and what they know about where the bindlestiff is now. I see Miramon said thoughtfully. Will this this bindlestiff follow them to He We think it will. And it s powerful it packs all the stuff we have and more besides. We have to pick up these survivors first and work out some way to defend ourselves and you people against the stiff when it gets here. And above all we must prevent the stiff from getting the secret of that fuelless drive What would you like me to do Miramon said gravely. Can you locate the Hevian town that s holding these people prisoner We have a fix on it but only a blurred one. If you can we ll be able to get them out of there ourselves. Miramon went back into his house actually like all the other living quarters in the town it was a dormitory housing twenty five men of the same trade or profession and returned with a map. The map making conventions of He were anything but self explanatory but after a while Hazleton was able to figure out the symbolism involved. There s your city and here s ours he said to Miramon pointing. Right And this peeled orange thing is a butterfly grid. I ve always claimed that it was a lot more faithful to spherical territory than our Geographic projection boss. l i Easier still to express what you want to remember as a topological relationship Amain said impatiently. Nobody ever confuses a table of symbols with the territory. Show Miramon where the signals came from. Up here on this wing of the butterfly. Miramon frowned. There is only one city there Fabr Suithe. A very bad place to approach even in the military sense. But if you insist on trying we will help you. Do you know what the end result will be We ll rescue our friends I hope. What else The bandit cities will come out in force to hinder the Great Work. They oppose it the jungle is their life. Then why haven t they impeded us before now Hazleton said. Are they scared No. They fear nothing we think they take drugs but they have seen no way to attack you without huge losses and their reasons for attacking you have not been sufficiently compelling to make them take the risk up to now. But if you attack one of them that will give them reason enough. They learn hatred very quickly. I think we can handle them Hazleton said coldly. I am sure you can Miramon said. But you should be warned that Fabr Suithe is the leader of all the bandit cities. If Fabr Suithe attacks you so will they all. Amain shrugged. We ll chance it. We ll have to: we must have those men. Maybe we can make it quick enough to crush resistance before it starts. We can pick our own town up and go calling on Fabr Suithe if they don t want to deliver up these Okies Boss Eh How are you going to get us off the ground Amalfi could feel his ears turning red and swore. I forgot that Twenty third Street machine. Miramon we ll have to have a task force of your own rockets. Hazleton how are we going to work this We can t fit anything really powerful into a Hevian rocket plane a pile would go into one easily enough but a frictionator or a naval size mesotron rifle wouldn t and there d be no point in taking popguns. Do you suppose we could gas Fabr Suithe You couldn t carry enough gas in a Hevian rocket either. Or carry enough men to make a raid in force. Excuse me Miramon said but it is not even certain that the priests will authorize the use of our planes against Fabr Suithe. We had best drive directly over to the temple and ask them for permission. Belsen and bebopl Amalfi said. It was the oldest oath in his repertoire. Talk even with electronic aids was impossible inside the little rocket. The whole machine roared like a gigantic tam tam to the vibration of the Venturis. Morosely Amalfi watched Hazleton connecting the mechanism in the nose of the plane with the power leads from the pile no mean balancing feat considering the way the craft pitched in its passage through the tortured Hevian crosswinds. The pile itself of course was .simple enough to handle it consisted only of a tank about the size of a glass brick filled with a fine white froth: heavy water containing uranium235 hexafluoride in solution damped by bubbles of cadmium vapor. Most of its weight was shielding and the peripheral capillary network of the heat exchanger. There had been no difficulty with the priests about the little rocket task force itself the priests had been delighted at the proposal that the emissaries from the Great Age should teach an apostate Hevian city the error of its ways. Amalfi suspected that the straight faced Miramon had invented the need for priestly permission just to get the two Okies back into the smelly ground car again and watch their faces during the drive to the temple. Still the discomforts of that ride had been small compared to this one. The pilot shifted his feet on the treadles and the deck pitched. A metal trap rushed back under Amalfi s nose and he found himself looking through misty air at a crazily canted jungle. Something long thin and angry flashed over it and was gone. At the same time there was a piercing inhuman shriek sharp enough to dwarf for a long instant the song of the rocket. Then there were more of the same: ptsouiiirrrl ptsoidiirrr ptsouiiirrrl The machine jerked to nearly every one and then shook itself violently twisting and careening across the jungle top Amalfl had never felt so helpless before in his life. He did not even know what the noise was he could only be sure that it was ill tempered. The coarse blaam of high explosive when it began was recognizable the city had ibf ten had occasion to blast on jobs but nothing in his experience went kerchowkerchowker chowkerchow like a demented vibratory drill and the invisible thing that screamed its own pep yell as it flew eeeeeeeeyokKRCHackackarackarackaracka seemed wholly impossible. He was astonished to discover that the hull around him was stippled with small holes real holes with the slipstream fluting over them. It took him what seemed to be three weeks to realize that the whooping and cheer leading which meant nothing to him was riddling the ship and threatening to kill him at any second. Someone was shaking him. He lurched to his knees trying to unfreeze his eyeballs. Amalfl Amalfi The voice although it was breathing on his ear was parsecs away. Pick your spot quick They ll have us shot down in a Something burst outside and threw Amalfi back to the deck. Doggedly he crawled to the trap and peered down through the now shattered glass. The bandit Hevian city swooped past upside down. The mayor felt a sudden wave of motion sickness and the city was lost in a web of tears. The second time it came by he managed to see which building in it had the heaviest guard and pointed choking. The rocket threw its tailfeathers over the nearest cloud and bored beak first for the ground. Amalfi hung on to the edge of the suddenly blank trap his own blood spraying back in a fine mist into his face from his cut fingers. Now Nobody heard but Hazleton saw his nod. A blast of pure light blew through the upended cabin despite the shielding between it and the pile. Even through the top of his head the violet white light of that soundless blast nearly blinded Amalfi and he could feel the irradiation of his shoulders and chest. He would develop no allergies on this planet anyhow every molecule of histamine in his blood must have been detoxified in that instant. The rocket yawed wildly and then came under control again. The ordnance noises Had already quit cut off at the moment of the flash. The bandit Hevian city was blind. The sound of the jets cut off and Amalfi understood for the first time what an aching void might be. The machine fell into a steep glide the air howling dismally outside it. Another rocket under the guidance of Carrel dived down before it scything a narrow runway in the jungle with portable mesotron rifles for the bandit towns kept no supersonic no plant s land between themselves and the rank vegetation. The moment the rocket stopped moving Amalfi and a hand picked squad of Okies and Hevians were out of it and slogging through the muck. From inside Fabr Suithe drifted a myriad of screams human screams now screams of rage and grief from men who thought themselves blinded for life. Amalfi did not doubt that many of them were. Certainly anyone who had had the misfortune to be looking at the sky during that instant when the entire output of the pile had been converted to visible light would never see again But the laws of chance would have protected most of the renegades so speed was vital. The mud built up heavy pads under his shoes and the jungle did not thin out until they hit the town s wall itself. The gates had been rusted open years ago and were choked with greenery. The Hevians hacked their way through it with practiced knives and cunning. Inside the going was still almost as thick. Fabr Suithe proper presented a depressing face of proliferating despair. Most of the buildings were completely enshrouded in vines and many were halfway toward ruins. Iron hard tendrils had thrust their way between stones into windows under cornices up drains and chimney funnels. Poison green succulent leaves plastered themselves greedily upon every surface and in shadowed places there were huge blood colored fungi which smelled like a man six days dead the sweetish taint hung heavily hi the air. Even the paving blocks had sprouted inevitably since whether by ignorance or laziness most of the recent ones had been cut from green wood. The screaming began to die into whimpers. Amalfi did his best to keep himself from inspecting the stricken inhabitants. A man who believes he has just been blinded permanently is not a pretty sight even when he is wrong. Yet it was impossible not to notice the curious mixture of soiled finery with gleamingly clean nakedness. It was as if two different periods had mixed in the city as if a gathering of Hruntan nobjes had been sprinkled with Noble Savages. Possibly the men who had given in completely to the jungle had also slid back enough to discover the pleasures of bathing. If so they would shortly discover the pleasures of the mud wallow too and would not look so noble after that. Amalfi here they are The mayor s suppressed sympathy for the blinded men evaporated when he got a look at the imprisoned Okies. They had been systematically mauled to begin with and after that sundry little attentions had been paid to them which combined the best features of savagery and decadence. One of them mercifully had been strangled by his comrades early in the questioning. Another a basket case should have been rescued for he could still talk rationally but he pleaded so persistently for death that Amalfl had him shot in a sudden fit of sentimentality. Of the other three men all could walk and talk but two were mad. The catatonic was carried out on a stretcher and the manic was bound gagged and led gingerly away. How did you do it asked the rational man in Russian the dead universal language of Earth. He was a human skeleton but he radiated an amazing personal force. He had lost his tongue early in the questioning but had already taught himself to talk by the artificial method the result was weird but it was intelligible. The savages were coming down to kill us as soon as they heard your rockets. Then there was a sort of flash and they all started screaming a pretty sound let me tell you. I ll bet Amalfi said. Do you speak Interlingua Good my Russian is rudimentary these days. That sort of a flash was a photon explosion. It was the only way we could figure on being sure of getting you out alive. We thought of trying gas but if they had had gas masks they would have been able to kill you anyhow. I haven t actually seen any masks but I m sure they have them. There are traveling volcanic gas clouds in this part of the planet they say they must have evolved some absorption device charcoal is well known here. Lucky we were so far underground or we d be blind too then. You people must be engineers. More or less Amalfi agreed. Strictly we re miners and petroleum geologists but we ve developed a lot of side lines since we went aloft like any Okie. On Earth we were a port city and did just about everything but aloft you have to specialize. Here s our rocket crawl in. It s rough but it s transportation. How about you Agronomists. Our mayor thought there was a good field for it out here along the periphery teaching the abandoned colonies and the offshoots how to work poisoned soil and manage low yield crops without heavy machinery. Our side line was waxmans. What are those Amalfi said adjusting the harness around the wasted body. Soil source antibiotics. It was those the bindlestiff wanted and got. The filthy swine. They can t bother to keep a reasonably sanitary city they d rather pirate some honest outfit for drugs when they have an epidemic. Oh and they wanted germanium too of course. They blew us up when they found we didn t have any we d converted to a barter economy as soon as we got out of the last commerce lanes. What about your passenger Amalfi said with studied nonchalance. Doctor Beetle Not that that was his name I couldn t pronounce that even when I had my tongue. I don t imagine he survived. We had to keep him in a tank even in the city and I can t quite see him living through a lifeship journey. He was a Myrdian smart cookies all of them too. That no fuel drive of his Outside a shot cracked and Amalfi winced. We d best take off they re getting their eyesight back. Talk to you later. Hazleton any incidents Nothing to speak of boss. Everybody stowed Yep. Kick off. There was a volley of shots and then the rocket coughed roared and stood on its tail. Amalfi pulled a deep sigh loose from the acceleration and turned his head toward the rational man. He was still securely strapped in and looked quite relaxed. A brass nosed slug had come through the side of the ship next to him and had neatly removed the top of his skull. Working information out of the madmen was a painfully long anxious process. Even after the manic case had been returned to a semblance of rationality he could contribute very little. The lifeship had not come to He because of Hazleton s Dirac warning he saM. The lifeship and the burned Okie had not had any Dirac equipment to the best of his knowledge. The lifeship had come to He as Amalfl had predicted because it was the only possible planetfall in the desert of the Rift. Even so the refugees had had to use deep sleep and strict starvation rationing to make it. Did you see the stiff again No sir. If they heard your Dirac warning they probably figured the police had spotted them and scrammed or maybe they thought there was a military base or an advanced culture here on the planet. You re guessing Amalfi said gruffly. What happened to Doctor Beetle The man looked startled. The Myrdian in the tank He got blown up with the city I suppose. He wasn t put off in another lifeship Doesn t seem very likely. But I was only a pilot. Could be that they took him out in the mayor s gig for some reason. You don t know anything about his no fuel drive First I heard of it. Amalfi was far from satisfied he suspected that there was still a short circuit somewhere in the man s memory. But that was all that could be gotten from him and Amalfi had to accept the fact. All that remained to be done was to get some assessment of the weapons available to the bindlestiff on this subject the ex manic was ignorant but the city s neurophysiologist said cautiously that something might be extracted from the catatonic within a month or two thus far he hadn t even succeeded in capturing the man s attention. Amalfi accepted the estimate also since it was the best he could get. With Moving Day for He coming near he couldn t afford to worry overtime about another problem. He had already decided that the simplest answer to vul canism which otherwise would be inevitable when the planet s geophysical balance was changed would be to reinforce the crust. At two hundred points on the surface of He drilling teams were now sinking long thin slanting shafts reaching toward the stress fluid of the world s core. The shafts interlocked intricately and thus far only one volcano had been created by the drilling. In general the lava pockets which had been tapped had already been anticipated and the flow had been bled off into many intersecting channels without ever reaching the surface. After the molten rock had hardened the clogged channels were re drilled with mesotron rifles set to the smallest possible dispersion. None of the shafts had yet tapped the stress fluid the plan was to complete them all simultaneously. At that point specific volcanic areas riddled with channel intersections would give way and immense plugs would be forced up toward the crust plugs of iron connected by ferrous cantilevers through the channels between. The planet of He would wear a cruel corset permitting only the slightest flexure it would be stitched with threads of steel steel that had held even granite in solution for geological ages. The heat problem was tougher and Amalfi was not sure whether or not he had hit upon the solution. The very fact of structural resistSjnce would create high temperatures and any general formation of shearplanes would cut the imbedded girders at once. The method being prepared to cope with that was rather drastic and its after effects largely unknown. On the whole however the plans were simple and putting them into effect had seemed heavy but relatively uncomplicated labor. Some opposition of course had been expected from the local bandit towns. But Amalfi had not expected to lose nearly 20 per cent of his crews during the first month after the raid on Fabr Suithe. It was Miramon who brought the news of the latest work camp found slaughtered. Amalfi was sitting under a tree fern on high ground overlooking the city watching a flight of giant dragonflies and thinking about heat transfer in rock. You are sure they were adequately protected Miramon asked cautiously. Some of our insects Amalfi thought the insects and the jungle almost disturbingly beautiful. The thought of destroying it all occasionally upset him. Yes they were he said shortly. We sprayed out the camp areas with dicoumarins and fluorine substituted residuals. Besides do any of your insects ust explosives Explosives There was dynamite used I saw no evidence No. That s what bothers me. I don t like all those felled trees you descitbe that sounds more like TDX than dynamite or high explosive. We use TDX ourselves to get a cutting blast it has the property of exploding in a flat plane. Miramon goggled. Impossible. An explosion had to expand evenly in all directions that are open to it. Not if the explosive is a piperazohexynitrate built from polarized carbon atoms. Such atoms can t move in any direction but at right angles to the gravity radius. That s what I mean. You people are up to dynamite but not to TDX. He paused frowning. Of course some of our losses have just been to bandit raids with missile weapons and ordinary bombs your friends from Fabr Suithe and their allies. But these camps where there was an explosion and no crater to show for it He fell silent. There was no point in mentioning the gassed corpses. It was hard even to think about them. Somebody on this planet had a gas which was a regurgi tant a sternutatory and a vesicant all in one. The men had been forced out of their masks which had been designed solely to protect them from volcanic gases to vomit had taken the stuff into their lungs by convulsive sneezing and had blistered into great sacs of serum inside and out. That obviously had been the multiple benzene ring gas Hawkesite it had been very popular during the days of the warring stellar empires when it had been called polybathroomfloorine for no discoverable reason. But what was it doing on He There was only one possible answer and for a reason which he did not try to understand it made Amalfi breathe a little easier. All around him the jungle sighed and swayed and humming clouds of gnats made rainbows over the dew laden pinnae of the ferns. The jungle almost always murmurously quiet had never seemed like the real enemy and now Amalfi knew that his intuition had been right. The real enemy had at last declared itself stealthily but with a stealth which was naivete itself in comparison with the ancient guile of the jungle. Miramon Amalfi said tranquilly we re in a spot. That criminal city I told you about the bindlestiff is already here. It must have landed even before my city arrived long enough ago to hide itself very thoroughly. Probably it came down at night in some taboo area. The tramps in it have leagued themselves with Fabr Suithe anyhow that much is obvious. A moth with a two meter wingspread blundered across the clearing piloted by a gray brown nematode which had sunk its sucker above the ganglion between the glittering creature s pinions. Amalfi was in a mood to read parables into things and the parasitism reminded him of how greatly he had underestimated the enemy. The bindlestiff evidently knew and was skillful with the secret of manipulating a new culture. A shrewd Okie never attempts to overwhelm a civilization by direct assault but instead pilots it as indetectably as possible doing no apparent harm adding no apparent burden but turning history deftly and tyrannically aside at the crucial instant... Amalfi snapped the belt switch of his ultraphone. Hazleton I Here boss. Behind the city manager s voice was the indistinct rumble of heavy mining. What s up Nothing yet. Are you having any bandit trouble out there No. We re not expecting any either with all this artillery. Famous last words Amalfi said. The stiffs here Mark and it s no stranger either. There was a short silence. In the background Amalfi could hear the shouts of Hazleton s crew. When the city manager s voice came in again it was moving from word to word very carefully as if it expected each one to break under its weight. You imply that the stiff was already on He when our Dirac broadcast went out. Right I m not sure these losses of ours can t be explained some simpler way boss the theory ... uh ... lacks elegance. Amalfi grinned tightly. A heuristic criticism he said. Go to the foot of the class Mark and think it over. Thus far they ve out thought us six ways for Sunday. We may be able to put your old scheme about the women into effect still but if it s to work we ll have to smoke the stiff out into the open. How Everybody here knows that there s going to be a drastic change in the planet when we finish what we re doing but we re the only ones who know exactly what we re going to do. The stiffs will have to stop us whether they ve got Doctor Beetle or not. So I m forcing their hand. Moving Day is iereby advanced by one thousand hours. What I m sorry boss but that s flatly impossible. Amalfi felt a rare spasm of anger. That s as may be he growled. Nevertheless spread it around let the Hevi ans hear it. And just to prove that I m not kidding Mark I m turning the City Fathers back on at M plus 1100. If you re not ready to spin before then you may well swing instead. The click of the belt switch to the off position was unsatisfying. Amalfi would much have preferred to have concluded the interview with something really final a clash of cymbals for instance. He swung suddenly on Miramon. What are you goggling at The Hevian shut his mouth flushing. Your pardon he said. I was hoping to understand your instructions to your assistant in the hope of being of some use. But you spoke in such incomprehensible terms that it sounded like a theological dispute. As for me I never argue about politics or religion. He turned on his heel and stamped off through the trees. Amalfi watched him go cooling off gradually. This would never do. He must be getting to be an old man. All during the conversation with Hazleton he had felt his temper getting the better of his judgment yet he had felt sudden and inert unwilling to make the effort of opposing the momentum of his anger. At this rate the City Fathers would soon depose him and appoint some stable character to the mayoralty not Hazleton certainly but some un poetic youngster who would play everything by empirics. Amalfi was in no position to be threatening anyone else with liquidation even as a joke. He walked toward the grounded city heavy with sunlight sunk in reflection. He was now about nine hundred years old give or take fifty strong as an ox mentally alert and active in good hormone balance all twenty eight . senses sharp his own special psi faculty orientation still as infallible as ever and all in all as sane as a compulsively peripatetic starman could be. The anti agathics would keep him in this shape indefinitely as far as anyone knew but the problem of patience had never been solved. The older a man became the more quickly he saw answers to tough questions because the more experience he had to bring to bear on them and the less likely he was to tolerate slow thinking among his associates. If he were sane his answers were generally right answers if he were unsane they were not but what mattered was the speed of the thinking itself. In the end both the sane and the unsane became equally dictatorial less and less ready to explain why they picked one answer over another. It was funny: before death had been indefinitely postponed it had been thought that memory would turn longevity into a Greek gift because not even the human brain could remember a practical infinity of accumulated facts. Nowadays however nobody bothered to remember many facts. That was what the City Fathers and like machines were for:. hey stored data. Living men memorized nothing but processes throwing out obsolete ones for new ones as invention made it necessary. When they needed facts they asked the machines. In some cases even processes were wiped from human memory to make more room if there were simple indestructible machines to replace them the slide rule for instance. Amalfi wondered suddenly if there was a single man in the city who could multiply divide take square root or figure pH in his head or on paper. The thought was so novel as to be alarming as novel as if an ancient astrophysicist had seriously wondered how many of his colleagues could run an abacus. No memory was no problem. But it was hard to be patient after a thousand years. The bottom of an airlock drifted into his field of view plastered with brown tendrils of mud. He looked up. The lock drilled directly into the great granite disc which was the foundation of the city was a severed end of what had been a subway line running out of Manhattan centuries ago this one evidently had been the Astoria line of the BMT a lock seldom used since it was too far from both the Empire State and City Hall the city s two present centers of control. It was certainly a long way around the perimeter from where Amalfl had expected to go back on board. Feeling like a stranger he went in. Inside the corridof rang with bloodcurdling shrieks which echoed endlessly. It was as if somebody were flaying a live dinosaur or better a pack of them. Underneath the noise there was JL sound like water being expelled under high pressure arid someone was laughing hysterically. Alarmed Amalfi ran up the nearest steps the noise got louder. He hunched his bull shoulders and burst through the door behind which the butchery seemed to be going on. Surely there had never been such a place in the city. It was a huge steamy chamber walled with some ceramic substance placed in regular tiles. The tiles were slimy and stained hence old very old. On the floor smaller hexagonal white tiles made an endlessly repeating mosaic reminding Amalfl at once of the structural formula of Hawkesite. Hordes of nude women ran aimlessly back and forth in the chamber screaming battering at the wall dodging wildly or rolling on the mosaic floor. Every so often a thick stream of water caught one of them bowling her howling away. Overhead long banks of nozzles sprayed needles of mist into the air Amalfl was soaking wet almost at once. The laughter got louder. The mayor bent quickly tteew off his muddy shoes and stalked the laughter his toes gripping the slippery tiles. The heavy column of water swerved toward him then was warped away again. John Do you need a bath so badly Come join the party It was Dee Hazleton. She was as nude as any of her victims and was gleefully plying an enormous hose. She looked lovely Amalfl turned his mind determinedly away from that thought. Isn t this fun We just got a new batch of these creatures. I got Mark to have the old fire hose connected and I ve been giving them their first wash. It did not sound much like the old Dee. Amalfl expressed his opinion of women who lost their inhibitions with such drastic thoroughness. He went on at some length and Dee made as if to turn the hose on him again. No you don t he growled wresting it from her. It proved extremely hard to manage. What is this place anyhow I don t recall any such torture chamber in the plans. It was a public bath Mark says. There s another one downtown in the Baruch Houses district and another one on Forty first Street beside the Port Authority Terminal and quite a few others. Mark says they must have been closed up when the city first went aloft. I ve been using this one to sluice off these women before they re sent to Medical. With city water Even the thought of such waste made his hackles rise. Oh no John I know better than that. The water s pumped in from the river t 3 the west. Water for bathing Amalfl said. No wonder the ancients sometimes didn t have enough to drink. Still I d thought the static jet was older than that. He surveyed the Hevian women who now that the water was turned off were huddled in the warmest part of the echoing chamb r. None of them shared Dee s gently curved ripeness but as usual some of them showed promise. Hazelton was prescient it had to be granted. Of course it had been expectable that the Hevians would turn out to be human. Only eleven non human civilizations had ever been discovered and of these only the Lyrans and the Myrdians had any brains to speak of unless one counted the Vegans Earthmen did not think of them as human but all the non human cultures did anyhow they were extinct as a civilization . But to have the Hevians turn over complete custody of their women to the Okies without so much as a preliminary conference at the first contact had been a colossal break. Hazleton had advanced his proposal to use any possible women as bindlestiff bait years before any Okie could have known that there were people on He at all. Well that was Hazleton s own psi gift: not true clairvoyance but an ability to pluck workable plans out of logically insufficient data. Time after time only the seemingly miraculous working out of some obvious flight of fancy had prevented Hazleton s being jettisoned by the blindly logical City Fathers. Dee come to Astronomy with me Amalfi said. I ve got something to show you. And for my sake put on something or the men will think I m out to found a dynasty. All right Dee saifl reluctantly. She was not yet used to the odd Okie standards of exposure and sometimes appeared nude when it twasn t customary a compensation Amalfl supposed foV her Utopian upbringing which had taught her that nudity had a deleterious effect upon the purity of one s politics. The Hevian women moaned and hid their heads while she put on her shorts. Most of them had been stoned for inadvertently covering themselves at one time or another for in Hevian society omen were not people but reminders of damnation doubly evil for the slightest taint of secretiveness. History Amalfl thought would be more instructive a teacher if it were not so stupefyingly repetitious. He led the way up the corridor searching for a lift shaft disturbingly conscious of Dee s wet soles padding cheerfully behind him. In Astronomy Jake was as usual peering wistfully at a galaxy somewhere out on the marches of nowhen trying to turn spiral arms into elliptical orbits without recourse to the calculations section. He looked up as Amalfi and the girl entered. Hello he said dismally. Amalfl I really need some help here. How can a man work without machines If only you d turn the City Fathers back on Shortly. How long has it been since you looked back the way we came Jake Not since we started across the Rift. Why should I have The Rift is just a scratch in a saucer you need real distance to work on basic problems. I know that. But let s take a look. I have an idea that we re not as alone in the Rift as we thought. Resignedly Jake went to his control desk and thumbed the buttons that moved his telescope. What do you expect to find he demanded. A haze of iron filings or a stray meson Or a fleet of police cruisers Well Amalfi said pointing to the screen those aren t wine bottles. The police cruisers so close that the light of He s star had begun to twinkle on their sides shot across the screen in a brilliant stream contrails of false photons striping the Rift behind them. So they aren t Jake said not much interested. Now may I have my scope back Amalfi Amalfi only grinned. Cops or no cops he felt young again. Hazleton was mud up to the thighs. Long ribands of it trailed behind him as he hurtled up the lift shaft to the control room. Amalfi watched him coming noting the set whiteness of the city manager s face as he looked up at Amalfi s bent head. What s this about cops Hazleton demanded while still in flight. The message didn t get to me straight. We were raided and all hell s broken loose everywhere. I nearly didn t get here straight myself. He sprang into the room his boots shedding gummy clods. I saw some of the fighting Amalfi said. Looks like the Moving Day rumor reached the stiffs all right. Sure. What s this about cops The cops are here. They re coming in from the northwest quadrant already off overdrive and .should be ready to land day after tomorrow. Surely they re not still after us Hazleton said. And I can t see why they should come all this distance after the stiff. They must have had to use deep sleep to make it. And we didn t say anything about the no fuel drive in our alarm cast We didn t have to. They re after the stiff all right. Someday I must tell you the parable of the diseased bee but there isn t time now. Things are breaking too fast. We have to keep an eye on everything and be ready to jump in any direction no matter which item on the agenda comes up first. How bad is the fighting Very bad. At least five of the local bandit towns are in on it including Fabr Suithe of course. Two of them mount heavy stuff about contemporary with the Hruntan Empire s in its heyday ... ah I see you know that already. Well this is supposed to be a holy war on us. We re meddling with the jungle and interfering with their chances for salvation through suffering or something I didn t stop to dispute the point. That s bad. It will convince some of the civilized towns too. I doubt that Fabr Suithe really believes this is a jihad they ve thrown their religion overboard but it makes wonderful propaganda You re right there. Only a few of the civilized towns the ones that have been helping us from the beginning are putting up a stiff fight. Almost everyone else on both sides is sitting it out wilting for us to cut each other s throats. Our own handicap is that we lack mobility. If we could persuade all the civilized towns to come in on our side we wouldn t need it but so many of them are scared. The enemy lacks mobility too until the bindlestiff town is ready to take a direct hand Amalfi said thoughtfully. Have you seen any signs that the tramps are in on the fighting Not yet. But they won t wait much longer. And we don t even know where they afe They ll be forced to locate themselves for us today or tomorrow of that I m certain. Right now it s time to muster all the rehabilitated women you have and get ready to plant them as far as I can see that whole scheme is going to pay off. As soon as I get a fix on the bindlestiff I ll report the location of the nearest bandit town and you can follow through from there. Hazleton s eyes very weary until now began to glitter with gratification. And how about Moving Day he said. I suppose you know that not one of your stress fluid plugs is going to hold with the work thus incomplete. I know it Amalfi said. I m counting on it. We ll spin on the hour. If the plugs spring high wide and tall I won t weep as a matter of fact I don t know how else we could hope to get rid of all that heat. The radar watch blipped sharply and both men turned to look at the screen. There was a fountain of green dots on it. Hazleton took three quick steps and turned the switch which projected the new butterfly grid onto the screen. Well where are they Amalfi demanded. That s got to be them. Right smack hi the middle of the southwestern continent in that vine jungle where the little chigger snakes nest the ones that burrow under your fingernails. There s supposed to be a lake of boiling mud on that spot. There probably is. They could be under it surrounded by a medium light screen. All right then we ve got them placed. But what s this fountain effect the radar s giving us What are the stiffs shooting up Mines I suspect Amalfi said. On proximity fuses. Orbital. Mines Isn t that dandy Hazleton said. They ll leave an escape lane for themselves of course but we ll never be able to find it. They ve got us under a plutonium umbrella Amalfi. We ll get out. And in the meantime the cops can t land either. Go plant your women Mark. And put some clothes on em first. They ll cause more of a stir that way. You bet they will the city manager said feelingly. He stepped into the lift shaft and fell out of sight. Amalfi went out onto the observation platform of the control tower. From there he could see all the rest of the city including most of the perimeter for the tower it was still called now and then the Empire State Building was the tallest structure in the city. There was plenty of battle noise rattling the garish tropical sunset along most of the northwest qukdrant and even an occasional tiny toppling figure. The city had adopted the local dodge of clearing and gelling the mud at its rim and had returned the gel to the morass state at the .first sign of attack but the jungle men had broad skis of some metal no Hevian could have machined so precisely on which they slid over the muck. Discs of red fire marked bursting TDX shells scything the air like death s own winnows. No gas was in evidence but Amalfi knew that there would be gas before long with the bindlestiff directing the fighting. The city s retaliatory fire was largely invisible since it emerged below the top of the perimeter. There was a Bethe fender out which would keep the run from being scaled until one of the projectors was knocked out and plenty of heavy rifles were being kept hot. But the city had never been designed for warfare and many of its most efficient destroyers had their noses buried in the mud since their intended function was only to clear a landing area. Using an out and out Bethe blaster was impossible where there was an adjacent planetary mass fortunately since the bindlestiff had such a blaster and Amalfi s city did not. Amalfi sniffed the scarlet edges of the struggle apprais ingly. The screen set up beside him did not show an intelligible battle pattern yet but it seemed to be almost on the verge of making sense. Under Amalfi s fingers on the platform railing were three buttons which he had had placed there four hundred years ago duplicating a set on the balcony of iCity Hall. They had set in motion different actions at different times. But each time they had represented choices of actions which he would have to make when the pinch came. He had never found any reason to have a fourth button installed on either railing. Rockets shrilled overhead. Bombs fell from them crepitating bursts of noise and smoke and flying metal. Amalfi did not look up. The very mild spindizzy screen would fend off anything moving that rapidly. Only slow moving objects like men could sidle through a polarized gravitic field. He looked out toward the horizon touching the three buttons very delicately. Suddenly the sunset snuffed itself out. Amalfi who had never seen a tropical sunset before coming to He felt a vague alarm but as far as he could tell the abrupt darkness was natural though startling. The fighting went on the flying discs of TDX explosions much more lurid now against the blackness. After a while there was a dogfight far aloft identifiable mostly by the exhaust traceries of rockets and missiles. Evidently Miramon s air force was tangling with Fabr Suithe s. The jungle jammered derision and fury at Amalfi s city without any letup. Amalfi stood watching the screen so intently as to cut the rest of the world almost completely out of his consciousness. Understanding the emerging pattern was hard work for he had never tried to grasp a situation at such close quarters before and the blue coded trajectory of every shell sketched across the screen in glowing segments of ellipses tried to capture his exclusive attention as if they were all planets. About an hour past midnight at the height of the heaviest air raid yet he felt a touch at his elbow. Boss Amalfi heard the word as though it had been uttered at the bottom of the Rift. The still ascending fountain of space mines the bindlestiff was throwing up had just come into the margin of the screen meaning that O Brian the proxy chief had just located the stiff with one of his flying robot bystanders and Amalfi was trying to extrap olate the shape of the top of the fountain. Somewhere up there in the aeropause the fountain flattened into a shell of orbits encompassing the whole of He and it was important to know how high up that shell began. But the utter exhaustion of the voice touched something deeper. He said Yes Mark. It s done. We lost almost everybody in the party. But we planted the women in a clearing right where a stiff outpost could see them.... What a riot that caused. A ghost of animation stirred in the voice for a moment. You should have been there. I m almost there now. Just getting the picture from a proxy. Good work Mark.... Better ... get some rest. Now But boss Something very heavy described a searing parabola across the screen and then the whole city turned to a scramble of magnesium white and ink. As the light of the star shell faded the screen showed a formless dim yellow spreading and crawling as if someone had spilled paint in the innards of the machine. Amalfi had been waiting for it. Gas alarm Mark he heard himself saying. Sure to be Hawkesite. Barium suits for everybody that stuff s pure death by torture. Yes right. Boss have you been up here all this time You ll kill yourself running things this way. You need rest more than I do. Amalfi found that he did not have time to answer. O Brian s proxy had come upon the town where Hazleton had dropped the women. There was certainly a riot there. Amalfi snapped a switch backing the point of view off to another proxy which was hovering a mile up scanning the whole battle area. From here he could see the black tendrils of movement which were files of soldiers moving through the jungle. Some which had been approaching Amalfi s city were now turning back. Furthermore new tendrils were being put out from Hevian towns which up to now had taken no part in the fighting the on the fence towns. Evidently they were no longer on the fence but which side they had jumped to still remained to be seen. He snapped the switch again bringing back a close look at the lake of boiling mud which lay at the base of the mine fountain. Something new was going on there too: the hot mud was flowing slowly thickly away from the center of the lake. Then there was a clear area in the center as if the lake had suddenly developed a vortex. The clear area widened. The bindlestiff city was rising to the surface. It came cautiously half an hpur went by before its periphery touched the lake shore. Then black tendrils stretched out into the tangled desolation of the jungle the bindlestiff was at last risking its own men in the struggle. What they were after was plain enough for the flies were all moving in the direction of the town where Hazleton had dropped the women. The bindlestiff city itself sat and waited. Even against the mass pressure of the planet of He Amalfi s sense of spatial orientation could pick up the unmistakable slightly nauseating sensation of spindizzy field under medium drive doming the seething mud. Dawn was coming now. The riot around the town where the women had been dropped dwindled a little. Then one of the task forces from the bindlestiff reached it and it flared all over again worse than ever. The stiffs were fighting their own allies. Abruptly there was no Hevian town in the center of the riot at all. There was only a mushrooming pillar of radioactive gas which made the screen race with interference patterns. The stiffs h:: i bombed the town. What was left of the riot retreated b owly toward the lake of boiling mud the stiffs had their women and were fighting a rear guard action. The news Amalfl knew would travel fast. Amalfi s own city was shrouded in sick orange mist lit with flashes of no color. The blistering gas could not pass the spindizzy screen in a body but it diffused through molecule by heavy molecule. The mayor realized suddenly that he had not heeded his own gas warning and that there was probably some harm coming to him. He started and moved slightly and discovered that he was completely encased. What... Barium paste. Evidently Hazleton had known that Amalfi could not leave the platform and instead had plastered him with the paste in default of trying to get a suit on him. Even his eyes were covered with a transparent visor and a feeling of distension in his nostrils bespoke a Kolman barium filter. So much for the gas. The heavy tensions in and around the bindlestiff city continued to gather they would soon be unbearable. Above just outside the shell of circling mines the first few police cruisers were sidling down with great caution. The war in the jungle had already fallen apart into meaninglessness. The abduction of the women by the tramps had collapsed all Hevian rivalries. Bandits and civilized towns alike were bent now upon nothing but the destruction of Fabr Suithe and its allies. Fabr Suithe could hold them off for a long time but it was clearly time for the bindlestiff to leave time for it to make off with its pleased and wondering Hevian women its anti agathics its germanium and whatever else it had managed to garner tune for it to lose itself again hi the Rift before the Earth police could invest the planet of He. The gravitic field around the bindlestiff city knotted suddenly painfully in Amalfi s brain and began to rise away from the lake of boiling mud. The stiff was taking off. In a moment it would be gone through the rent in the mine umbrella which only the tramps could see. Amalfi pressed thetiutton the only one this time that had been connected to anything. Moving Day began. Moving Day began with six pillars of glaring white forty miles in diameter which burst through the soft soil at each compass point of He. Fabr Suithe had sat directly over the site of one of them. The bandit town was nothing but a flake of ash in a split second a curled black flake borne aloft on the top of a white hot piston. The pillars lunged roaring into the heavens fifty a hundred two hundred miles and burst at their tops like popcorn. The Hevian sky burned thermite blue with steel meteors. Outside the space mines cut off from the world of which they had been satellites by the greatest spindizzy field in history fled away into the Rift. And when the meteors had burned away the sun was growing. The world of He was on spindizzy drive its magnetic moment transformed into momentum. It was the biggest Okie city that had ever flown. There was no time to feel alarm. The sun flashed by and was dwindling to a point before the fact could be grasped. Then it was gone. The far wall of the Rift began to swell and separate into individual points of light. The planet of He was crossing the Rift. Appalled AmalfT fought to understand the scale of speed. He failed. The planet of He was moving that was all he could comprehend. It was moving at a proper cruising speed for al eity of its size a speed that gulped down light years as if they were gnats. Even to think of controlling such a flight was ridiculous. Stars began to wink past He like fireflies. They had reached the other side of the Rift. The planet began to curve gradually away from the main cloud. Then the stars were all behind. The surface of the saucer that was the galaxy began to come into view. Boss We re going out of the galaxy Look I know it. Get me a fix on He s old sun as soon as we re high enough above the Rift to see it again. After that it ll be too late. Hazleton worked feverishly. It took him only half an hour but during that time the massed stars receded far enough to make plain the gray scar of the Rift as a long shadow on a spangled ground. At the end the Hevian sun was only a tenth magnitude point in it. Got it I think. But we can t swing the planet back. It ll take us thousands of years to cross to the next galaxy. We ll have to abandon He boss or we re sunk. All right. Get us aloft. Full drive. Our contract Fulfilled take my word for it now. Spin The city sprang aloft. The planet of He did not dwindle in the city s sky. It simply vanished snuffed out in the intergalactic gap. Miramon if he lived would be the first of a totally new race of pioneers. Amalfi moved then back towards the controls the barium casing cracking and falling off him as he came back to life. The air of the city still stank of Hawkesite but the concentration of the gas already had been taken down below the harmful level by the city s purifiers. The mayor began to edge the city away from the vector of He s flight and the city s own back toward the home lens. Hazleton stirred restlessly. Your conscience bothering you Mark Maybe Hazleton said. Is there some escape clause in our contract with Miramon that lets us desert him like this If there is I missed it and I read the fine print pretty closely. No there s no escape clause Amalfi said abstractedly shifting the space stick by a millimeter or two. The Hevians won t be hurt. The spindizzy screen will protect them from loss of heat and atmosphere their volcanoes will keep them warmer than they ll probably like and their technology is up to producing all the light they ll need. But they won t be able to keep the planet well enough lit to satisfy the jungle. That will die. By the time Miramon and his friends reach the star that suits them in the Andromed an galaxy they ll understand the spindizzy well enough to put their planet back into the proper orbit. Or maybe they ll like roaming better by that time and will decide to be an Okie planet. Either way we licked the jungle for them just as we promised to do fair and square. We didn t get paid the city manager pointed out. And it ll take a lot of fuel to get back to any part of our own galaxy. The bindlestiff got off ahead of us and got carried way out of raSge of the cops in the process right on our backs with plenty of germanium drugs women the no fuel drive everything. No they didn t Amalfi said. They blew up the moment we moved He. All right Hazleton said resignedly. You could detect that where I couldn t so I ll take your word for it. But you d better be able to explain it It s not hard to explain. The stiffs had captured Doctor Beetle. I was pretty sure they had after all they came to He for no other reason. They needed the no fuel drive and they knew Doctor Beetle had it because they heard the agronomists SOS just as we did. So they snatched Doctor Beetle when he was landed do you remember what a big fuss their bandit city allies made about the other agronomist lifeship to divert us It worked too and in the meantime they cooked the secret out of him. Probably in his own tank. So So Amalfi said the tramps forgot that any Okie city always has passengers like Doctor Beetle people with big ideas only partially worked out ideas that need the finishing touches that can only be provided by some other culture. After all a man doesn t take passage on an Okie city unless he s a third rater hoping to make his everlast ing fortune on some planet where the inhabitants know much less than he dribs. Hazleton scratched his head ruefully. That s right. We had the same experience with the Lyran invisibility machine. It never wotked until we took Doc Schloss on board. Exactly. The stiffs were in too much of a hurry. They didn t carry their stolen no fuel drive with them until they found some culture which could perfect it. They tried to use it right away. They were lazy. And they tried to use it inside the biggest spindizzy field ever generated. What happened It blew up. I felt it happen and the top of my head nearly came off then and there. If we hadn t left the stiffs parsecs behind in the first split second. Doctor Beetle s drive would have blown up He at the same time. It doesn t pay to be lazy Mark. Who ever said it did Hazleton said. After a moment s more thought he began to plot the point at which the city would probably re enter its own galaxy. That point turned out to be a long way away from the Rift in an area that after a mental wrench to visualize it backwards from the usual orientation promised a fair population. Look he said we ll hit about where the last few waves of the Acolytes settled remember the Night of Hadjjii Amalfi didn t since he hadn t been born then but he remembered the history which was what the city manager had meant. He said Good. I want to take us to garage and get that Twenty third Street machine settled for good and all. I m tired of its blowing out in the pinches and it s going sour for fair now. Hear it Hazleton cocked his head intently. In the lull Amalfi saw suddenly that Dee was standing in the doorway still completely enswathed in her anti gas suit except for the faceplate. Is it over she said. Well our stay on He is over. We re still on the run if that s what you mean. The cops never give up Dee you ll learn that sooner or later. Where are we going She asked the question in the same tone in which she had once said What is a volt John For an astonishing moment Amalfi was almost overwhelmed with an urge to send Hazleton from the room on some excuse to return almost bodily to those days of her innocence to relive all the previous questions that she had asked the moments when he had known the answers better. There was of course no real answer to this one. Where would an Okie go They were going that was all. If there was a destination no one could know what it was. He endured the surge of emotion stoically. In the end he only shrugged. By the way he said what s the operational day Hazleton looked at the clock. M plus eleven twenty five. With a sidelong glance Apialfi leaned forward resumed the helmet he had cast aside on He and turned on the City Fathers. The helmet phones shrilled with alarm. All right all right he growled. What is it MAYOR AMALFI HAVE YOU TIPPED THIS PLANET No Amalfi said. r We sent it on its way as it was. There was a short silence humming with computation. It was probably just as well Amalfi thought that the machines had been turned off for a while they had not had a rest in many centuries. They would probably emerge into consciousness a little saner for it. VERY WELL. WE MUST NOW SELECT THE POINT AT WHICH WE LEAVE THE RIFT. STAND BY FOR DETERMINATION. Hazleton and Amalfi grinned at each other. Amalfi said We re coming in on the last Acolyte stars and we ll need to decelerate far beyond spindizzy safety limits. We urgently need an overhaul on the Twenty third Street driver. Give us a determination for the present social setup there please YOU ARE MISTAKEN. THAT CLUSTER IS NOWHERE NEAR THE RIFT. FURTHERMORE THE POPULACE THERE HAS A LONG RECORD OF MASS XENOPHOBIA AND HAD BEST BE AVOIDED. WE WILL GIVE YOU A DETERMINATION FOR THE FAR RIFT WALL. STAND BY. Amalfi removed the headset gently. The Rift wall he said moving the microphone away from his mouth. That was long ago and far away. 1 CHAPTER FIVS: Murphy A SPINDIZZY going sour makes the galaxy s most unnerving noise. The top range of the sound is inaudible but it feels like a multiple toothache. Just below that there is a screech like metal tearing which blends smoothly into a composite cataract of plate glass slate and boulders this is the middle register. After that there is a painful gap in the sound s spectrum and the rest of the noise comes into one s ears again with a hollow round dinosaurian sob and plummets on down into the subsonics ending in frequencies which induce diarrhea and an almost unconquerable urge to bite one s thumbs. The noise was coming of course from the Twenty third Street spindizzy but it permeated the whole city. It was tolerable only so long as the hold which contained the moribund driver was kept sealed. Amalfl knew better than to open that hold. He surveyed the souring machine via instruments and kept the audio tap prudently closed. The sound fraction which was thrumming through the city s walls was bad enough even as far up as the control chamber. Hazleton s hand came over his left shoulder stabbing a long finger at the recording thermocouple. She s beginning to smoke now. Damned if I know how she s lasted this long. The model was two hundred years old when we took it aboard and the repair job I did on He was only an emergency rig. What can we do Amalfi said. He did not bother to look around the city manager s moods were his own second nature. They had lived together a long time long enough to learn what learning is long enough to know that just as habit is second nature so nature the seven steps from chance to meaning is first habit. The hand which rested upon Amalfi s right shoulder told him all he needed to know about Hazleton at this moment. We can t shut her down. If we don t she ll blow for good and all. That hold s hot already. Hot and howling. .. . Let me think a minute. Hazleton waited. After another moment Amalfi said We ll keep her shoving. If the City Fathers can push this much juice through her maybe they can push just a little more. Maybe enough to get us down to a reasonable cruising speed. Besides we couldn t jury rig that spindizzy again. It s radiating all up and down the line. The City Fathers could shut her down if we ordered it but it d take human beings to repair her and re tune the setup stages. And it s too late for that. It ll be a year before anything alive can go into that hold Hazleton agreed gloomily. All right. How s our velocity now Negligible with reference to the galaxy as a whole. But as far as the Acolyte stars proper are concerned we d shoot through the whole cluster at about eight times the city s top speed if we stopped decelerating now. It s going to be damned tight that s for sure Mark. Excuse me Dee s voice said behind them. She was hesitating just beyond the threshold of the lift shaft. Is there something wrong If you re busy No busier than usual Hazleton said. Just wondering about our usual baby. The Twenty third Street machine. I could tell by the curvature of your spines. Why don t you have it replaced and get it over with Amalfi and the city manager grinned at each other but the mayor s grin was short lived. Well why not he said suddenly. My gods boss the cost Hazleton said with incredulity. The City Fathers would impeach you for suggesting it. He donned the helmet. Treasury check he told the microphone. They ve never had to run her all by themselves under max overdrive before now. I predict that they ll emerge from the experience clamoring to have her replaced even if we don t eat for a year to pay for it. Besides we should have the money for once. We dug a lot of germanium while we were setting up He to be de wobbled. Maybe the time really has come when we can afford a replacement. Dee came forward swiftly motes of light on the move in her eyes. John can that be true she said. I thought we d lost a lot on the Hevian contract. Well we re not rich. We would have been I m still convinced if we d been able to harvest the anti agathics on a decent scale. But we didn t D e said. We had to run away. We ran away. But in terms of germanium alone we can call ourselves well off. Well enough off to buy a new spindizzy. Right Mark Hazleton listened to the City Fathers a moment more and then took off the bone mikes. It looks that way he said. Anyhow we can easily cover the price of an overhaul or maybe even of a reconditioned second hand machine of a later model. Depends on whether or not the Acolyte stars have a service planet and what the garage fees are there. The fees should be low enough to keep us solvent Amalfi said thrusting his lower lip out thoughtfully. The Acolyte area is a backwater but it was settled originally by refugees from an anti Earth pogrom in the Malar system an aftermath of the collapse of Vega as I recall. There s a record of the pogrom in the libraries of most planets you reminded me of it Mark: the Night of Hadjjii which means that the Acolytes aren t far enough away from normal trading areas to be proper frontier stars. He paused and his frown deepened. Now that I come to think of it the Acolytes were an important minor source of power metals for part of this limb of the galaxy at one time. They ll have at least one garage planet Mark depend on it. They may even have work for the city to do. Sounds good Hazleton said. Too good maybe. Actually we ve got to sit down in the Acolytes boss because that Twenty third Street machine won t carry us beyond them at anything above a snail s pace. I asked the City Fathers that while I was checking the treasury. This is the end of the line for that gadget. He sounded tired. Amalfi looked at him. That s not what s worrying you Mark he said. We ve always had that problem waiting for us somewhere in the future and it isn t one that s difficult of solution. What s the real trouble Cops maybe All right it s cops Hazleton said a little sullenly. I know we re a long way away from any cops that know us by name. But have you any idea of the total amount of unpaid fines we re carrying And I don t see how we can assume that any amount of distance is too great for the cops to follow us if they really want us and it seems that they do. Why Mark Dee said. After all we ve done nothing serious. It piles up Hazleton said. We haven t been called on our Violations docket in a long time. When we re finally caught we ll have to pay in full and if that were to happen now we d be bankrupt. Pooh Dee said. Like anyone more or less recently naturalized her belief in the capacities of her adopted city state was as finite as it was unbounded. We could find work and build up a new treasury. It might be hard going for a while but we d survive it. People have been broke before and come through it whole. People yes cities no Amalfi said. Mark is right on that point Dee. According to the law a bankrupt city must be dispersed. It s essentially a humane law in that it prevents desperate mayors and city managers from taking bankrupt cities out again on long job hunting trips during which half of the Okies on board will die just because of the stubbornness of the people in charge. Exactly Hazleton said. Even so I think it s a bogey Amalfi said gently. I ll grant you your facts Mark but not your extrapolation. The cops can t possibly follow us from He s old star to here. We didn t know ourselves that we d wind up among the Acolytes. I doubt that the cops were even able to plot He s course let alone our subsequent one. Isn t that so Of course. But And if the Earth cops alerted every local police force in the galaxy to every petty offender Amalfi continued with quiet implacability no local police force would ever be able to do any policing. They d be too busy recording and filing and checking new alerts coming in constantly from a million inhabited planets. Their own local criminals would mostly go free to become a burden upon the filing systems of every other inhabited area. So believe me Mark the cops around here have never even heard of us. We re approaching a normal situation that s all. The Acolyte cops haven t the slightest reason to treat us as anything but just another wandering law abiding Okie city and after all that s really all we are. Good Hazleton said his chest collapsing to expel a heavy sigh. Amalft heard neitnW the word nor the sigh. At the same instant the big master screen which had been showing the swelling granulating mass of the Acolyte star cluster flashed blinding scarlet over its whole surface and the scrannel shriek of a police whistle made the air in the control room seethe. The cops swaggered and stomped on board the Okie city and into Amalfi s main office in City Hall as if the nothingness of the marches of the galaxy were their personal property. Their uniforms were not the customary dress coveralls actually space suit liners of the Earth police however. Instead they were flashy black affairs trimmed with silver braid Sam Browne belt and shiny boots. The blue jowled thugs who had been jammed into these tight fitting creations reminded Amalfi of a period which considerably antedated the Night of Jadjjii or any other event in the history of space flight. And the thugs carried meson pistols. These heavy cumbersome weapons could be held in one hand but two hands were needed to fire them. They were very modern side arms to find in a border star cluster. They were only about a century out of date. This made them thoroughly up to date as far as the city s own armament was concerned. The pistols told Amalfi several other things that he needed to know. Their existence here could mean only one thing: that the Acolytes had had a recent contact with one of those pollinating bees of the galaxy an Okie city. Furthermore the probability was not high that it had been the sole Okie contact the Acolytes had had for a long time as Amalfi might otherwise have assumed. It took years to build up the technology to mass produce meson pistols so that ordinary cops could pack them. It took more years still years spent in fairly frequent contact with other technologies to make adoption of the pistol possible at all. The pistol then confirmed unusually frequent contact with other Okies which in turn meant that there was a garage planet here as Amalfi had hoped. The pistol also told Amalfi something else which he did not much like. The meson pistol was not a good antipersonnel weapon. It was much more suitable for demolition work. The cops could still swagger in Amalfi s office but they could not stomp effectively. The floor was too thickly carpeted. Amalfi never used the ancient plushy office with its big black mahogany desk and other antiques except for official occasions. The control tower was his normal on duty habitat but that was closed to non citizens. What s your business the police lieutenant barked at Hazleton. Hazleton standing beside the desk said nothing but merely jerked his head toward where Amalfi was seated and resumed looking at the big screen back of the desk. Are you the mayor of this burg the lieutenant demanded. I am Amalfi said removing a cigar from his mouth and looking the lieutenant over with lidless eyes. He decided that he did notejike the lieutenant. His rump was too big. If a man is going to be barrel shaped he ought to do a good job of it as Amalfi had. Amalfi had no use for top shaped men. All right answer the question Fatty. What s your business Petroleum geology. You re lying. You re not dealing with some isolated type Four Q podunk now Okie. These are the Acolyte stars. Hazleton looked with pointedly vague puzzlement at the lieutenant and then back to the screen which showed no stars at all within any reasonable distance. The by play was lost on the cop. Petroleum geology isn t a business with Okies he said. You d all starve if you didn t know how to mine and crack oil for food. Now give me a straight answer before I decide you re a vagrant and get tough. Amalfi said evenly Our business is petroleum geology. Naturally we ve developed some side lines since we ve been aloft but they re mostly natural outgrowths of petroleum geology on which subject we happen to be experts. We trace and develop petroleum sources for planets which need the material. He eyed the cigar judiciously and thrust it back between his teeth. Incidentally Lieutenant ITj you re wasting your breath threatening us with a vagrancy charge. You know as well as we do that vagrancy laws are specifically forbidden by article one of the Constitution. Consitution the cop laughed. If you mean the Earth Constitution we do ti Tiave much contact with Earth out here. These are thef Acolyte stars see Next question: have you any money Enough. How much is enough If you want to know whether or not we have operating capital our City Fathers will give you the statutory yes or no answer if you can give them the data on your system that they ll need to make the calculation. The answer will almost assuredly be yes. We re not required to report our profit pool to you of course. Now look the lieutenant said. You don t need to play the space lawyer with me. All I want to do is get off this town. If you ve got dough I can clear you that is if you got it through legal channels. We got it on a planet called He some distance from here. We were hired by the Hevians to rub out a jungle which was bothering them. We did it by regularizing their axis. Yeah the cop said. Regularized their axis eh I guess that must have been some job. It was Amalfi said gravely. We had to setacetus on He s left hand frannistan. Gee. Will your City Fathers show me the contract Okay then. Where are you going To garage we ve a bum spindizzy. After that out again. You people look like you re well past the stage where you ve much use for oil. Yeah we re pretty modernized here not like some of these border areas you hear about. These are the Acolyte stars. Suddenly it seemed to occur to him that he had somehow lost ground his voice turned brusque again. So maybe you re all right Okie. I ll give you a pass through. Just be sure you go where you say you re going and don t make stopovers understand If you watch your step maybe I can lend you a hand here and there. Amalfi said That s very good of you Lieutenant. We ll try not to have to bother you but just in case we do have to call on you who shall we ask for Lieutenant Lerner Forty fifth Border Security Group. Good. Oh before you go I collect medal ribbons every man to his hobby you know. And that royal violet one of yours is quite unusual I speak as a connoisseur. Would you consent to sell it It wouldn t be like giving up the medal itself I m sure your corps would issue you another ribbon. I don t know Lieutenant Lerner said doubtfully. It s against regs I realize that and naturally I d expect to cover any possible fine you might incur. Mark would you call down for a check for five hundred Oc dollars No sum I could offer you would really b sufficient to pay for a medal for which you risked your life but five hundred Oc is all our City Fathers will allow me for hobbies this month. Could you do me the favor of accepting it Yeah I guess so the lieutenant said. He detached the bar of faded dismal purple from over his pocket with clumsy eagerness afcd put it on the desk. A second later Hazleton silently handed him the check which he pocketed without seeming to notice it at all. Well be sure you keep a straight course Okie. C mon you guys let s get back to the. boat. The three thugs eased themselves tentatively into the lift shaft and slithered down out of sight through the friction field wearing expressions of sternly repressed alarm. Amalfi grinned. Quite obviously the principle of molar valence and frictionators and other gadgets using the principle were still generally unknown. Hazleton walked over to the shaft and peered down. Then he said Boss that damn thing is a good conduct ribbon. The Earth cops issued them by the tens of thousands about three centuries ago to any rookie who could get up out of bed when the whistle blew three days running. Since when is it worth five hundred Oc Never until now Amalfi said tranquilly. But the lieutenant wanted to be bribed and it s always wise to appear to be buying something when you re bribing someone. I put the price so high because he ll have to split it with his men. If I hadn t offered the bribe I m sure he d have wanted to look at our Violations docket. I figured that and ours is none too clean as I ve been pointing out. But I think you wasted the money Amalfi. The Violations docket should have been the first thing he asked to see not the last. Since he didn t ask for it at the beginning he wasn t interested in it. That s probably exactly so Amalfi admitted. He put the cigar back and pulled on it thoughtfully. All right Mark what s the pitch Suppose you tell me. I don t know yet. I can t square the maintenance of an alert guard so many parsecs out from the actual Acolyte area with that slob s obvious indifference to whether or not we might be on the shady side of the law or even be bindlestiff. Hell he didn t even ask who we were. That rules out the possibility that the Acolytes have been alerted against some one bindlestiff city. It does Hazleton agreed. Lerner was far too easily bribed for that matter. Patrols that are really looking for something specific don t bribe even in a fairly corrupt culture. It doesn t figure. And somehow Amalfi said pushing a toggle to off I don t think the City Fathers are going to be a bit of help. I had the whole conversation up to now piped down to them but all I m going to get out of them is a bawling out for spending money and a catechism about my supposed hobby. They never have been able to make anything out of voice tone. Damn We re missing something important Mark something that would be obvious once it hit us. Something absolutely crucial. And here we are plunging on toward the Acolytes without the faintest idea of what it is Boss Hazleton said. The cold flatness of his voice brought Amalfi swiveling around in his chair in a hurry. The city manager was looking up again at the big screen on which the Acolyte stars had now clearly separated into individual points. What is it Mark Look there in the mostly dark area on the far side of the cluster. Do you see it I see quite a lot of star free space there yes. Amalfi looked closer. There s also a spectroscopic double with a red dwarf standing out some distance from the other components You re warm. Now look at the red dwarf. There was also Amalfi began to see a faint smudge of green there about as big as the far end of a pencil. The screen was keyed to show Okie cities in green but no city could possibly be that big. The green smudge covered an area that would blank out an average Sol type solar system. Amalfi felt his big square front teeth beginning to bite his cigar in two. He took the dead object out of his mouth. Cities he muttered. He spat but the bitterness in his mouth did not seem to be tobacco juice after all. Not one city. Hundreds. Yes Hazleton said. There s your answer boss or part of it. It s a jungle. An Okie jungle. Amalfi gave the jungle a wide berth but he had O Brian send proxies as soon as the city was safely down below top speed. Had he released the missiles earlier they would have been left behind and lost for they were only slightly faster than the city itself. Now they showed a fantastic and gloomy picture. The empty area where the hobo cities had settled was well out at the edge of the Acolyte cluster on the side toward the rest of the galaxy. The nearest star to the area as Hazleton had pointed out was a triple. It consisted of two type Go stars and a red dwarf almost a double for the Soy Alpha Centauri system. But there was one difference: the two Go stars were quite close to each other constituting a spectroscopic doublet separable visually only by the Dinwiddie circuits even at this relatively short distance while the red dwarf had swung out into the empty area and was now more than four light years away from its companions. Around this tiny and virtually heatless fire more than three hundred Okie cities huddled. On the screen they passed in an endless boundaryless flood of green specks like a river of fantastic asteroids bobbing in space and passing and repassing each other in their orbits around the dwarf star. The concentration was heaviest near the central sun which was so penurious of its slight radiation that it had been masked almost completely by the Dinwiddie code lights when Hazleton first spotted the jungle. But there were late comers in orbits as far out as three billion miles spindizzy screens do not take kindly to being thrust into close contact with each other. It s frightening Dee said studying the screen intently. I knew there were other Okie cities especially after we hit the bindlestiff. But so many I could hardly have imagined three hundred in the whole galaxy. A gross underestimate Hazleton said indulgently. There were about 4ignteen thousand cities at the last census weren t there boss Yes Amalfl said. He was as unable to look away from the screen as Dee. But I know what Dee means. It scares the hell out of me Mark. Something must have caused an almost complete collapse of the economy around this part of the galaxy. No other force could create a jungle of that kind. These bastardly Acolytes evidently have been exploiting it to draw Okies here in order to hire the few they need on a competitive basis. At the lowest possible wages in other words Hazleton said. But what for There you have me. Possibly they re trying to industrialize the whole cluster to make themselves self sufficient before the depression or whatever it is hits them. About all we can be sure of at this juncture is that we d better get out of here the moment the new spindizzy gets put in. There ll be no decent work here. I m not sure I agree Hazleton said redeploying his lanky apparently universal jointed limbs over his chair. If they re industrializing here it could mean that the depression is here not anywhere else. Possibly they ve overproduced themselves into a money shortage especially if their distribution setup is as creaking elaborate and unjust as it usually is in these backwaters. If they re using a badly deflated dollar we ll be sitting pretty. Amalfi considered it. It seemed to hold up. We ll have to wait and see he said. You could well be right. But one cluster even at its most booming stage could never have hoped to support three hundred cities. The waste of technology involved would be terrific and you don t attract Okies to a money short area you draw them from one. Not necessarily. Suppose there s an oversupply outside Remember back in the Nationalist Era on Earth artists and such low income people used to leave the big Hamil tonian state I ve forgotten its name to live in much smaller states where the currency was softer That was different. They had mixed coinage then Boys may I break in on this bull session Dee said hesitantly but with a trace of mockery in her voice. It s getting a little over my head. Suppose this whole end of this star limb has had its economy wrecked. How I ll leave to you two on Utopia our economy was frozen at a fixed rate of turnover and had been for as long as any of us could remember so maybe I can be forgiven for not understanding what you re talking about. But in any case inflation or deflation we can always leave when we have our new spindizzy. Amalfi shook his head heavily. That he said is what scares me Dee. There are a hell of a lot of Okies in that jungle and they can t all be suffering from defects in their driving equipment. If there were someplace they could go where times are better why haven t they gone there Why do they congregate in a jungle in this Godforsaken star cluster for all the universe as if there were no place else where they could find work Okies aren t sedentary or sociable either. Hazleton began drumming his fingers lightly on the arm Of his chair and hi eyes closed slightly. Money is energy he said. Still I can t say that I like that any better. The more I look at it the more I think this is one fix we won t get out of by any amount of cute tricks. Maybe we should have stuck with He. Maybe. Amalfi turned his attention back to the controls. Hazleton was subtle but one consequence of his subtlety was that he intended to expend unnecessary amounts of time speculating about situations the facts of which would soon become evident in any case. The city was now approaching the local garage world which bore the unlikely name of Murphy and maneuvering among the close packed stars of the cluster was a job delicate enough to demand the mayor s own hand upon the space stick. The City Fathers of course could have teetered the city through the conflicting gravitic fields to a safe landing on Murphy but they would have taken a month at the job. Hazleton would have gone faster but the City Fathers would have monitored his route all the way and snatched control from him at the slightest transgression of the margins of error they had calculated. They were not equipped to respect short cuts. Of course they were also unequipped to appreciate the direct intuition of spatial distances and mass pressures which made Amalfi a master pilot. But over Amalfi they had no authority except the ultimate authority of the revocation of his office. As Murphy grew on fhe screen technicians began to file into the control rooib activating with personal keys desks which had been disconnected for more than three centuries ever since the last new spindizzy had been brought on board. Readying the city s drive machinery for new equipment was a major project. Every other spindizzy on board would have to be retuned to the new machine. In the present case the job would be further complicated by the radioactivity of the defective unit. While the garage men should have special equipment to cope with that problem de gaussing for instance was the usual first step no garage would know the machinery involved as well as the Okies who used it. Every city is unique. Murphy as Amalfi saw it on his own screen was a commonplace enough world. It was just slightly above the size of Mars but pleasanter to live on since it was closer to its primary by a good distance. But it looked deserted. As the city came closer Amalfi could see the twenty mile pockmarks which were the graving docks typical of a garage but every one of those perfectly regular machinery ringed craters in the planet s visible hemisphere turned out to be empty. That s bad he heard Hazleton murmur. It was certainly unpromising. The planet turned slowly under his eyes. Then a city slid up over the horizon. Hazleton s breath sucked sharply through his teeth. Amalfi could also hear a soft stirring sound and then footsteps several of the technicians had come up behind him to peer over his shoulder. Posts he growled. The technicians scattered like leaves. On the idle service world the grounded city was star tlingly huge. It thrust up from the ground like an invader but a naked giant fallen and defenseless without its spindizzy screens. There was of course every good reason why the screens should not be up but still a city without them was a rare and disconcerting sight like a flayed corpse in a tank. There seemed to be some activity at its perimeter. Amalfi could not resist thinking of that activity as bacterial. Doesn t that answer the question Dee s way Hazleton suggested at last. There s an outfit that has dough for repairs so money from outside the Acolyte area must still be good. It s having the repairs made so it can t be quite hopeless it thinks it has someplace to go from here. And it s a cinch to be a smart outfit well worth consulting. It s prevented the Acolytes from fleecing it and some form of Acolyte swindle is the only remaining explanation for the existence of the jungle. We d best get in touch with it before we land boss and find out what to expect. No Amalfi said. Stick to your post Mark. Why Surely it can t do any harm. Amalfi didn t answer His own psi sense had already told him something that knocked Hazleton s argument into a cocked helmet but that something showed on Hazleton s own instruments if Hazleton cared to look. The city manager had allowed an extrapolation to carry him off. into Cloud Cuckoo Land. Abruptly the board began to wink with directional signals. Automatic uides from the control tower on Murphy were waving the city to a readied dock. Amalfi shifted the space stick obediently awaiting the orange blinker that would announce some living intelligence ready with an opinion as to the desirability of Okies on Murphy. But neither opinion nor blinker had yet asked for his attention even when Amalfi had begun to float the city for its planting in the unpromising soil below. Evidently business was so poor on Murphy that the garage had lost most of its staff to more going projects. In that case no entities but the automatics in the tower would be on hand to supervise an unexpected landing. With a shrug Amalfi cut the City Fathers back in. There was no need for a human being to land a city as long as the landing presented no problem in policy. There were more than enough human uses for human beings routine operations were the proper province of the City Fathers. First planetfall since He Hazleton said. He seemed to be brightening a little. It ll feel good to stretch our legs. No leg stretching or any other kind of calisthenics Amalfi said. Not until we get more information. I haven t gotten a yeep out of this planet yet. For all we know we may be restricted to our own premises by the local customs. . il Wouldn t the towen have said so No tower would be empowered to deliver a message like that to all comers. It might scare off an occasional legitimate customer. But it could still be so Mark you should know that. Leti do some snooping first. Amalfl picked up his mike. Get me the perimeter sergeant ... Anderson This is the mayor. Arm ten good men from the boarding squad and meet the city manager and me at the Cathedral Parkway lookout. Station your men at the adjacent sally ports well out of sight of the localities if there are any such around. ... Yes that d be just as well too. ... Right. Hazleton said We re going out. Yes. And Mark this star cluster may well be the last stop that we ll ever make. Will you remember that I ll have no difficulty remembering it Hazleton said looking directly at Amalfi with eyes as gray as ice seeing that it s exactly what I told you four days ago. I have my own notions of the proper way to cope with the possibility and they probably won t jibe with yours. Four days ago you were explaining to me that I was being excessively defeatist. Now you ve expropriated my conclusion because something has forced it on you and I know you better than to expect you to tell me what that something is and so now you re telling me to Remember Thor Five again. You can t have it both ways Amalfi. For a second the two men s glances remained locked pupil with pupil. You two Dee s voice said might just as well be married. From the skywalk of the graving dock in which the city rested at last a walk level with the main deck of the city the world of Murphy presented to Amalfi the face of a desolate mechanical wilderness. It was an elephant s graveyard of cranes hoists dollies spur lines donkey engines cables scaffolding pallets halftracks camel backs chutes conveyors bins tanks hoppers pipelines waldoes spindizzies trompers breeders proxies ehrenhafts and half a hundred other devices of as many ages which might at some time be needed in servicing some city. Much of the machinery was rusty or fallen in upon itself or whole on the surface but forever dead inside with a spurious wholeness that so simple an instrument as the dosimeter every man wore on his left wrist could reveal as submicroscopic scandal. Much of it too was still quite usable. But all of it had the look of machinery which no one really expected to use. On the near horizon the other city the one Amalfi had seen from aloft stood tall and straight. Tiny mechanisms puttered about it. And far below the skywalk on the cluttered surface of Murphy in the shadow of the bulge of Amalfi s city a tiny and merely human figure danced and gesticulated. Amalfi led the way down the tight spiral of the metal staircase Hazleton and JSergeant Anderson behind him. Their steps were muffled in the thin air. He watched his own carefully on a low gravity world it was just as well to temper the use of one s muscles. The fact that one fell slower on such worlds did not much lessen the thump at the end of the fall and Amalfi had found long ago that away from the unvarying one G field of the city his bull strength often betifeyed him even when he was being normally careful. The dancing doll proved to be a short curly haired technie in a clean but mussed uniform. Possibly he had slept in it at least it seemed clear that he had never done any work in it. He had a smooth chubby face dark of complexion greasy and stippled with clogged pores. He glared at Amalfi truculently with eyes like beer bottle ends. What the hell he said. How d you get here We swam how else When do we get some service I ll ask the questions bum. And tell your sergeant to keep his hand off his gun. He makes me nervous and when I m nervous there s no telling what I ll do. You re after repairs What else We re busy the garageman said. No charity here. Go back to your jungle. You re about as busy as a molecule at zero Amalfi roared thrusting his head forward. The garageman s shiny bulbous nose retreated but not by much. We need repairs and we mean to have em. We ve got money to pay and Lieutenant Lerner of your own local cops sent us here to get em. If those two reasons won t suit you I ll have my sergeant put his gun hand to some use he could probably draw and fire before you tripped over something in this junk yard. a Who the hell are you threatening Don t you know you re in the Acolyte stars now We ve broken up better no now wait a minufe sergeant let s not be hasty. I ve been dealing with bums until they re coming out of my ears. Maybe you re all right after all. You did say something about money I heard you distinctly. You did Amalfi said remaining impassive with difficulty. Your City Fathers will vouch for it Sure. Hazleton oh hell Anderson what happened to the city manager He took a branching catwalk farther up the perimeter sergeant said. Didn t say where he was going. It didn t after all pay to be too cautious Amalfi thought wryly. If his brains hadn t been concentrating so exclusively on his feet he would have detected the fact that only one other pair of feet was with him as soon as Hazleton had begun to catfoot it away. He ll be back I hope Amalfi said. Look friend what we need is repair work. We ve got a bad spindizzy in a hot hold. Can you haul it out and give us a replacement preferably the newest model you ve got The garageman considered it. The problem seemed to appeal to him his whole expression changed so thoroughly that he looked almost friendly in his intimate ugliness. I ve got a Six R Six in storage that might do if you ve got the refluxlaminated pediments to mount it on he said slowly. If you haven t I ve also a reconditioned B C Seven Seven Y that hums as sweetly as new. But I ve never done any hot hauling before didn t know spindiz zies ever hotted up enough to notice. Anybody on board your burg that can give me a hand on decontamination Yes it s all set up and ready to ride. Check the color of our money and let s get on it. It ll take a little time to get a crew together the garageman said. By the way don t let your men wander around. The cops don t like it. I ll do my best. The garageman scampered away dodging in and out among the idle rust tinted machines. Amalfi watched him go marveling anew at how quickly the born technician can be gulled into forgetting who he s working for let alone how his work is going to be used. First you mention money since technics are usually underpaid you then cap that with a tough and inherently interesting problem and you have your man. Amalfi was always happy when he met a pragmatist in the enemy s camp. Boss Amalfi spun. Where the hell have you been Didnt you hear me say that this planet is probably taboo to tourists If you d been on hand when you were needed you d have heard the probably knocked out of that statement to say nothing of speeding matters considerably I m aware of that Hazleton said evenly. I took a calculated risk something you seem to have forgotten how to do Amalfi. And it paid off. I ve been over to that other city and found out something that we needed to know. Incidentally the graving docks around here are a mess. This one and the one the other city is in must be the only ones in operation for hundreds of miles. All the rest are nearly full or sand and rust and flaked concrete. And the other city Amalfi said very quietly. It s been garnisheed there s no doubt about it. It s shabby and deserted. Half of it is being held up by buttressing and it s got huts pitched in the streets. It s nearly a hulk. There s a crew over there putting it in some sort of operating order but they re in no hurry and they aren t doing a damn thing to make the city habitable all they want it to do is run. It s not the city s own complement obviously. Where they are I m afraid to think. There s considerable thinking you haven t done Amalfi said. The original crew is obviously in debtor s prison. The garage is putting the city in order for some kind of dirty job that they don t expect it to outlast and that no city still free could be hired to do at any price. And what would that be Setting up a planethead on a gas giant said Amalfi. They want to work some low density ammonia methane world with an ice core a Jupiter type planet that they can t conquer any other way. It s my guess that they hope to use such a planethead as an inexhaustible source of poison gas. That s not your only guess Hazleton said his lips thinned. I expect to be disciplined for wandering off Amalfi but I m a big boy and won t have rationalizations palmed off on me just o keep the myth of your omniscience going. I m not omniscient Amalfi said mildly. I looked at the other city on the w y iin. And I looked at the instruments. You didn t. The instruments alone told me that almost nothing was going on in that city that was normal to Okie operation. They also told me that its spindizzies were being turned to produce a field which would burn them out within a year and they told me what that field was supposed to do what kind of conditions it was supposed to resist. Spindizzy fields will bounce any fast moving large aggregate of molecules. They won t much impede the passage of gases by osmosis. If you so drive a field as to exclude the smallest possible molecular exchange even under a pressure of more than a million atmospheres you destroy the machine. That set of conditions occurs only in one kind of situation a situation no Okie would ever commit himself to for an instant: setting down on a gas giant. Obviously then since the city was being readied for that kind of job it had been garnisheed it was now state property and nobody cares about wasting state property. Once again Hazleton said you might have told me that in time to prevent my taking my side jaunt. However this time it s just as well you didn t because I still haven t come to the main thing I discovered. Do you know the identity of that city No. Good for you for admitting it. I do. It s the city we heard about when it was in the building three centuries ago the so called all purpose city. Even under all the junk and decay the lines are there. These Acolytes are letting it rot where it makes a real difference just to hot rod it for one job only. We could take it away from them if we tried. I studied the plans when they were first published and He stopped. Amalfi turned toward where Hazleton was .looking. The garageman was coming back at a dead run. He had a meson pistol in one hand. I m convinced Amalfi said swiftly. Can you get over there again without being observed This looks to me like trouble. Yes I can. There s a Yes is enough for now. Tune our City Fathers to theirs and set up Standard Situation N in both. Cue it to our spin key straight yes no signal. Situation JV Boss that s a I know what it is. I think we need it now. Our bum spindizzy prevents us from making any possible getaway without the combined knowledge of the two sets of City Fathers we just aren t fast enough. Git before it s too late. The garageman was almost upon them emitting screams of fury each time he hit the ground at the end of a leap as if the sounds were jolted out of him by the impact. In the thin atmosphere of Murphy the yells sounded like toots on a toy whistle. Hazleton hesitated a moment more then sprinted up the stairway. The garageman ducked around a trunnion and fired. The meson pistol howled at the sky and flew backwards out of his hand. Evidently he had never fired one before. Mayor Amalfi shaS I Not yet sergeant. Cover him that s all. Hey you Walk over here. Nice and slow with your hands locked behind your head. That s it. ... Now then: what were you firing at my city manager for The dark complected face was livid now. You can t get away he said thickly. There s a dozen police squads on the way. They ll break you up for fair. It ll be fun to watch. Why Amalfi asked in a reasonable one. You shot at us first. We ve done nothing wrong. Nothing but pass a bum check Around here that s a crime worse than murder brother. I checked you with Lerner and he s frothing at the mouth. You d damn well better pray that some other squad gets to you before his does A bum check Amalfi said. You re blowing. Our money s better than anything you re using around here by the looks of you. It s germanium solid germanium. Germanium the dockman repeated incredulously. That s what I said. It d pay you to clean your ears more often. The garageman s eyebrows continued to go higher and higher and the corners of his mouth began to quiver. Two fat oily tears ran down his cheeks. Since he still had his hands locked behind his head he looked remarkably like a man about to throw a fit. Then his whole face split open. Germanium He howled. Ho haw haw haw Germanium What hole tin the plenum have you been living in Okie Germanium haw haw He emitted a weak gasp and took his hands down to wipe his eyes. Haven t you any silver or gold or platinum or tin or iron r r something else that s worth something Clear out bum. You re broke. Take it from me as a friend clear out I m giving you good advice. He seemed to have calmed down a little Amalfi said. What s wrong with germanium Nothing the dockman said looking at Amalfi over his incredible nose with a mixture of compassion and vindictiveness It s a good useful metal. But it just isn t money any more Okie. I don t see how you could have missed finding that out. Germanium is trash now well no it s still worth something but only what it s actually worth if you get me. You have to buy it you can t buy other things with it. It s no good here as money. It s no good anywhere else either. Anywhere else. The whole galaxy is broke. Dead broke. And so are you. He wiped his eyes again. Overhead a siren groaned softly but urgently. Hazleton was ready and had sighted the incoming cops. Amalfi found it impossible to understand what happened when he closed the spin key. He did not hope to understand it at any time in the future either and it would do no good to ask the City Fathers who would simply refuse to tell him for the very good reason that they did not know. Whatever they had had in reserve for Standard Situation N that ultimate situation which every Okie city must expect to face eventually the situation wherein what is necessary to prevent total destruction is only and simply to get away fast it was drastic and unprecedented. Or it had become so when the City Fathers had been given the chance to pool their knowledge with that of the City Fathers of the all purpose city. The city snapped from its graving dock on Murphy to a featureless coordinate set space. The movement took no time and involved no detectable display of energy. One moment the city was on Murphy Amalfi closed the key and Murphy had vanished and Jake was demanding to know where in space the city was. He was told to find out. The cops had come up on Murphy in fair order but they had not been given the chance to fire a single shot. When Jake had managed to find Murphy again O Brian sent a proxy out to watch the cops who by that time were shooting back and forth across the planet s sky like belated actors looking for a crucial collar button. An hour later without the slightest preliminary activity the all purpose city snapped out of existence on Murphy. By the time the garagemen had recovered enough to sound another alarm the cops were scattered in all directions still hunting something that they had had no prior idea could turn up missing: Amalfi s own town. By the time they managed to reform their ranks sufficiently to trace the all purpose city it had stopped operating and thus had become undetectable . It was floating now in an orbit half a million miles away from Amalfi s city. Its screens were down again. If there had been any garagemen on it when it took off they were dead now the city was airless. And the City Fathers honestly did not know how all this had been accomplished or rather they no longer knew. Standard Situation N was keyed in by a sealed and self blowing circuit. It had been set up that way long ago to prevent incompetent or lazy city administrators from calling upon it at every minor crisis. It could never be used again. And Amalfi knew that he had called it into use not only for his.own city but for the other one as well in a situation which had not really been the ultimate extreme had not really been Situation N. He had squandered the final recourse of both cities. He was still equally certain that neither city would ever need that circuit again. The two cities linked only by an invisible ultraphone tight beam were now floating free in the starless area three light years away from the jungle and eight parsecs away from Murphy. The dim towers of the dead city were not visible to Amalfi who stood alone on the belfry of City Hall but they floated in his brain waiting for him to tell them to come to life. Whether or not his act of extreme desperation in the face of a not ultimately desperate situation had in actuality murdered that city was a question he could not decide. In the face of the galactic disaster the question seemed very small. He shelved it to consider what he had learned about his own bad check. Germanium never had had the enormous worth in real terms that it had had as a treasure metal. It did have properties which made it valuable in many techniques: the germanium lattice would part with an electron at the urging of a comparatively low amount of energy the p n boundary functioned as a crystal detector and so on. The metal found its way into uncountable thousands of electronic devices and it was rare. But not that rare. Like silver platinum and iridium before it germanium s treasure value had been strictly artificial an economic convention springing from myths jewelers preferences and the jealousy of statal monopolies. Sooner or later some planet or cluster with a high technology and a consequently high exchange rate would capture enough of the metal to drive its competitors or more likely its own treasury off the germanium standard or someone would learn to synthesize or transmute the element cheaply. It hardly mattered which had happened now. What mattered was the result. The actual metallic germanium on board the city now had only an eighth of its former value at current rates of sale. Much worse however was the fact that most of the city s funds were not metal but paper: Oc dollars issued against government held metal back on Earth and a few other administrative centers. This money since it did not represent any metallic germanium that belonged to the city was now unredeemable valueless. The new standard was a drug standard. Had the city come away from He with the expected heavy surplus of anti agathics it would now have been a multibillionaire. Instead it was close to being a pauper. Amalfi wondered how the drug standard had come about. To Okies cut off for the most part from the main stream of history such developments frequently seemed like the brainstorms of some unknown single genius it was hard to think of them as evolving from a set of situations when none of the situations could now be intimately known. Still however it had arisen the notion had its point. Drugs can be graded exactly as to value by then: therapeutic effect and their availability. Drugs that could be made synthetically in quantity at low cost would be the pennies and nickels of the new coinage and those that could not and were rare and always in heavier demand than the supply could meet would be the hundred dollar units. Further even expensive drugs could be diluted which would make debt payment flexible drugs could be as amenable to laboratory test for counterfeit as metal had been and finally drugs became outmoded rapidly enough to make for a high velocity currency which could not be hoarded or cornered even by the most predatory measures. It was a good standard. Since it would be impossible to carry on real transactions in terms of fractions of a cubic centimeter of some Tbhemical just as it had been impractical to carry a ton and a half of germanium about in order to pay one s debts there would still be a paper currency. But on the drug standard the city was poor. It had none of the new paper money at all though it would of course sell all its metallic germanium at once to get a supply. Possibly its germanium based paper money might also be sold against Earth redemption at about a fifth of the current market value of the metallic equivalent if the Acolytes cared to bother with redeeming it. The actual drugs on board the city could not be traded against. They were necessary to maintain the life of the city. Amalfi winced to think of the size of the bite medical care was going to take out of every individual s budget under the new economy. The anti agathics in particular would pose a terrifying dilemma: shall I use my anti agathic credits now as money to relieve my current money miseries or shall I continue to live in poverty in order to prolong my life ... Remorselessly Amalfi drove one consequence after an other through the stony corridors of his skull like a priest wielding the whip behind lowing sacrifices. The city was poor. It could find no work among the Acolyte stars at a rate which would make the work justifiable. It could look for work nowhere else without a new spindizzy. That left only the jungle. There was no place else to go. Amalfi had never set down in a jungle before and the thought made him wipe the palms of his hands unconsciously upon his thighs. The word in his mind it had always been there h knew lying next to the word fun gle was never. The city must always pay its own way it must always come whole out of any crisis it must always pull its own weight... Those emblems of conduct were now cliches which never had turned out to be a time like any other time one that had implicit in it the inevitable timeword: Now. Amalfi picked up the phone which hung from the belfry railing. Hazleton Here boss. What s the verdict None yet Amalfi said. Supposedly we snitched the city next door for some purpose now we need to know what the chances are of abandoning ship at this point and getting out of here with it. Get some men in suits over there and check on it. Hazleton did not answer for a moment. In that moment Amalfi knew that the question was peripheral and that the verdict was already in. A line by the Earth poet Theodore Roethke crept across the floor of his brain like a salamander: The edge cannot eat the center. Right Hazleton s voice said. Half an eternal hour later it added: Boss that city is worse off than we are I m afraid. It s got good drivers still but of course they re all tuned wrong. Besides the whole place seems to be structurally unsound on a close look the garagemen really did a thorough job of burrowing around in it. Among other things the keel s cracked the Acolytes must have landed it not the original crew. It would of course be impossible to claim foreknowledge of any of this with Hazleton s present state of mind teetering upon the edge of some rebellion Amalfi hoped he did not yet understand. It was possible that Hazleton despite all the mayor s precautions had divined the load of emotional guilt which had been accumulating steadily upon Amalfi or perhaps that suspicion was only the guilt itself speaking. In any event Amalfi had allowed himself to be stampeded into stealing the other city by Hazleton even in the face of the foreknowledge to keep peace in the family. He said instead What s your recommendation Mark I d cast loose from it boss. I m only sorry I advocated snitching it in the first place. We have the only thing it had to give us that we could make our own: our City Fathers now know everything their City Fathers knew. We couldn t take anything else but a new spindizzy and that s a job for a graving dock. All right. Give it a point thirty four per cent screen to clinch its present orbit and come on back. Make sure you don t give it more than that or those overtimed spindizzies will advertise its position to anyone coming within two parsecs of it and interfere with our own operation to boot. Right. And now there were the local cops to be considered. They had chalked up against Amalfi s city not only the issuing of a bad check but the theft of state property and the deaths of Acolyte technicians on board the other city. Only the jungle wis safe and even the jungle was safe only temporarily. In the jungle at least for the time being one city could lose itself among three hundred others many of which would be better armed than Amalfi s city had ever been. There might even be a chance in such a salmon pack of cities that Amalfi would see at last with his own eyes the mythical Vegan orbital fort the sole non human construction ever to go Okie and now the center of an enormous saga of exploits woven about it by the starmen. Amalfi was as fascinated by the legend as any other Okie though he knew the meager facts well: the fort had circled Vega until the smashing of the Confederacy s home planet and then unexpectedly since the Vegans had never been given to flying anything bigger than a battleship had taken off for parts unknown smashing its way through the englobement of police cruisers almost instantly. Nothing had ever been heard of it since although the legend grew and grew. The Vegans themselves had been anything but an attractive people and it was difficult to say why the story of the orbital fort was so beloved with the Okies. Of course Okies generally disliked the cops and said that they had no love for Earth but this hardly explained why the legend of the fort was so popular among them. The fort was now said to be invulnerable and unlimited it had done miracles in every limb of the galaxy it was everywhere and nowhere it was the Okies Beowulf their Cid their Sigurd Gawaine Roland Cuchulainn Prometheus . Lem minkainen ... t Amalfl felt a sudden chill. The thought that had just come to him was so outrageous that he had almost stopped thinking it in the middle out of sheer instinct. The fort probably it had been destroyed centuries ago. But if it did still exist certain conclusions emerged implacably and certain actions could be taken on them. . . . Yes it was possible. It was possible. And definitely worth trying.... But if it actually worked ... Having made the decision Amalfi put the idea resolutely aside. In the meantime one thing was sure: as long as the Acolytes continued to use the jungle as a labor pool their cops would not risk smashing things up indiscriminately only in order to search out one single criminal city. To the Acolyte s way of thinking all Okies were lawbreakers by definition. Which Amalfi thought was quite correct as far as his own city was concerned. The city was not only a bum now but a bindlestiff to boot by definition. The end of the line. Boss I m coining in. What s the dodge We ll need to pull it soon or Amalfi looked up steadily at the red dwarf star above the balcony. There is no dodge he said. We re licked Mark. We re going to the jungle. CHAPTER SIX: The Jungle THE cities drifted along their sterile orbits around the little red sun. Here and there a few showed up on the screen by their riding lights but most of them could not spare even enough power to keep riding lights going. The lights were vital in such close packed quarters but power to maintain spindizzy screens was more important still. Only one city glowed not with its riding lights which were all out but by street lighting. That city had power to waste and it wanted the fact known. And it wanted it known too that it preferred to waste the power in sheer bragging to the maintenance of such elementary legalities as riding lights. Amalfi looked soberly at the image of the bright city. It was not a very clear image since the bright city was in a preferred position close to the red dwarf where that sun s natural and unboundable gravitational field strained the structure of space markedly. The saturation of the intervening area with the smaller screens of the other Okies made the seeing still worse since Amalfi s own city had been unable to press through the pack beyond eighteen AU s from the sun a distance about equivalent to that from Sol to Uranus. For Amalfi consequently the red dwarf was visually only a star of the tenth magnitude the G0 star four liglit years away seemed much closer. But obviously three hundred odd Okie cities could not all huddle close enough to a red dwarf to derive any warmth from it. Somebody had to be on the outside. It was equally obvious and expectable that the city with the most power available to it should be the one drawn up the most cosily to the dull stellar fire while those who most needed to conserve every erg shivered in the outer blackness. What was surprising was that the bright city should be advertising its defiance of local law and common sense alike while police escorted Acolyte ships were shoving their way into the heart of the jungle. Amalfi looked up at the screen banks. For the second time within the year he was in a chamber of City Hall which was almost never used. This one was the ancient reception hall which had been fitted with a screen system of considerable complexity about five hundred and eighty years ago just after the city had first taken to space. It was called into service only when the city was approaching a heavily developed highly civilized star system in order to carry on the multiple negotiations with various diplomatic legal and economic officials which had to be gone through before an Okie could hope to deal with such a system. Certainly Amalfl had never expected to have any use for the reception hall in a jungle. There was a lot he thought grimly that he didn t know about living in an Okie jungle. One of the screens came alight. It showed the full length figure of a woman in sober clothing of an old style utilitarian in cut but obviously made of perishable materials. The woman inside the clothes was hard eyed but not hard of muscle an Acolyte trader evidently. The assignment the trader said in a cold voice is a temporary development project on Hern Six as announced previously. We can take six cities there to be paid upon a per job basis. Attention Okies. A third screen faded in. Even before the image had stabilized in the locally distorted space lattice Amalfi recognized its outlines. The general topology of a cop can seldom be blurred by distortion of any kind. He was only mildly surprised to find when the face came through that the police spokesman was Lieutenant Lerner the man whose bribe had turned to worthless germanium in his hands. If there s any disorder nobody gets hired Lerner said. Nobody. Understand You ll present your offers to the lady in proper fashion and she ll take or leave your bids as she sees fit. Those of you who are wanted outside the jungle will be held accountable if you leave the jungle we re offering no immunities this trip. And if there s any damn insolence Lieutenant Lerner s image drew its forefinger across its throat in a gesture that somehow had never lost its specificity. Amalfi growled and switched off the audio Lerner was still talking as was the trader but now another screen was coming on and Amalfi had to know what words were to come from it. The speeches of the trader and the cop could be predicted almost positively in advance as a matter of fact the City Fathers had already handed Amalfi the predictions and he had listened to the actual speeches only long enough to check them for barely possible unknowns. But what the bright city near the red dwarf the jungle s boss the king of the hobos would say ... Not even Amalfi let alone the City Fathers could know that in advance. Lieutenant Lerner and the trader worked their mouths soundlessly while the wavering shadow on the fourth screen jelled. A slow heavy brutally confident voice was already in complete possession of the reception hall. Nobody takes any offer less than sixty it said. The class A cities will ask one hundred and twenty four for the Hern Six job and grade B cities don t get to underbid them until the goddam trader has all the A s she ll take. If she picks all six from the A that s tough. No C s are to bid at all on the Hern Six deal. We ll take care of anybody that breaks ranks either right away . .. The image came through. Amalfi goggled at it. . . . or after the cops leave. That s all for now. The image faded. The twisted hairless man in the ancient metal mesh cape stood in Amalfi s memory for quite a while afterwards. The Okie King was a man made of lava. Perhaps he had been born at one time but now he looked like a geological accident a column of black stone sprung from a fissure and contorted roughly into the shape of a man. And his face was shockingly disfigured and scarred by the one disease that still remained unconquered unsolved though it no longer killed. Cancer. A voice murmured inside Amalfi s head coming from the tiny vibrator imbedded in the mastoid bone behind the mayor s right ear. That s just what the City Fathers said he would say Hazleton commented softly from his post uptown in the control tower. But he can t be as nai ve as all that. He s an old timer been aloft since back before they knew how to polarize spindizzy screens against cosmic radiation. Must be eight hundred years old at a minimum. You can lay up a lot of cunning in that length of time Amalfi agreed in a similarly low voice. He was wearing throat mikes under a high military collar. As far as the screens were concerned he was standing motionless silent and alone though he was an expert at talking without moving his lips he did not try to do so now for the fuzziness of local transmission conditions made it unlikely that his murmuring would be detected. It doesn t seem likely that he means what he says. But we d best sit tight for the moment. He glanced into the auxiliary battle tank a three dimensional chart in which color coded points of lights moved showing each city the nearby sun and the Acolyte vessels not to scale but in their relative positions. The tank was camouflaged as a desk and could be seen into only from behind hence it was out of sight of any eye but Amalfi s. In it the Acolyte force showed itself to consist of one trader s ship and four police craft one of the latter was a command cruiser very probably Ler ner s and the others were light cruisers. It was not much of a force but then there was no real need for a full squadron here. With a minimum of organization the Okies could run Lerner and his ward out of the jungle even at some cost to their own numbers but where would the Okies run to after Lerner had yelled for navy support The question answered itself. A string of twenty three small personal screens came on now high up along the curve of the far wall. Twenty three faces looked down at Amalfi the mayors of all but one of the class A cities in the jungle Amalfi s own city was the twenty fourth. Amalfi valved the main audio gain back up again. Are we ready to begin the Acolyte woman said. I ve got codes here for twenty four cities and I see you re all here. Small courage among Okies these days twenty four out of three hundred of you for a simple job like this That s the attitude that made Okies of you in the first place. You re afraid of honest work. We ll work the King s voice said. His screen however remained gray green. Look over the codes and take your pick. The trader looked for the voice. No insolence she said sharply. Or I ll ask for volunteers from the grade B s. It would save me money anyhow. There was no reply. The trader frowned and looked at the code list in her hand. After a moment she called off three numbers and then with greater hesitation a fourth. Four of the screens above Amalfi went blank and in the tank four green flecks began to move outward from the red dwarf star. That s all we need for Hern Six except for a pressure job the woman said slowly. There are eight cities listed here as pressure specialists. You there who are you anyhow Bradley Vermont one of the faces above Amalfi said. What would you ask for a pressure job One hundred and twenty four Bradley Vermont s mayor said sullenly. O ho You ve a high opinion of yourself haven t you You may as well float here and rot for a while longer until you learn something more about the law of supply and demand. You you re Dresden Saxony it says here. What s your price Remember I only need one. Dresden Saxony s mayor was a slight man with high cheekbones and glittering black eyes. He seemed to be enjoying himself despite his obvious state of malnutrition at least he was smiling a little and his eyes glittered over the dark shadows which made them look large. We ask one hundred and twenty four he said with malicious indifference. The woman s lids slitted. You do eh That s a coincidence isn t it And you The same the third mayor said though with obvious reluctance. The trader swung around and pointed directly at Amalfi. In the very old cities such as the one the King operated it would be impossible to tell who she was pointing at but probably most of the cities in the jungle had compensating tri di. What s your town We re not answering that question Amalfi said. And we re not pressure specialists anyhow. I know that I can read a code. But you re the biggest Okie I ve ever seen and I m not talking about your belly either and you re modern enough for the purpose. The job is yours for one hundred no more. Not interested. You re a fool as well as a fat man. You just came into this hell hole and there are charges against Ah you know who we are. Why did you ask Never mind that. You don t know what a jungle is like until you ve lived in it. You d be smart to take the job and get out now while you can. You d be worth one hundred and twelve to me if you could finish the job under the estimated time. You ve denied us immunity Amalfi said and you needn t bother offering it either. We re not interested in pressure work for any price. The woman laughed. You re a liar too. You know as well as I do that nobody arrests Okies on jobs. And you take on the volunteer before interviewing the others might be resented. Keep out of this the voice of the King said so much more slowly and heavily than before that its weight was almost tangible upon the air. Let the lady do her own picking. She s got no use for a class C outfit. We ll take the job. We re a mining town from way back and we can refine the stuff too by gaseous diffusion mass spectrography mass chromatography whatev er s asked. We can handle it. And we ve got to have it. So do the rest the King said coldly unimpressed. Take your turn. We re dying out here Hunger cold thirst disease Others are in the samevstate. Do you think any of us like it here Wait your turn All right the woman said suddenly. I m sick of being told who I do and who I don t want. Anything to get this over with. File your coordinates whoever that is out there and File your coordinates and we ll have a Dirac torpedo there before you ve stopped talking the King roared. Acolyte what are you paying for this rock heaving Nobody here works for less than sixty that s flat. We ll go for fifty five. The woman smiled an unpleasant smile. Apparently somebody in this pest area is glad of a chance to do some honest work for a change.Who s next Hell you don t need to take a class C city one of the rejected class A s blurted. We ll go for fifty five. What can we lose Then we ll take fifty the outsider whispered immediately. You ll take a bolt in the teeth As for you you re Coquilhatville Congo eh you re going to be sorry you ever had a tongue to flap. There was already a stir among the green dots in the tank. Some of the larger cities were leaving their orbits. The woman began to look vaguely alarmed. Hazleton Amalfi murmured quickly. This is going to get worse before it gets better. Set us up as fast as you canuto move into one of the vacated orbits close to the red ttar the moment I give the word. We won t be able to put on any speed I wouldn t want us to if we could. It ll have to be done wouldn t find it difficult to leave the job once it s finished. Here now I ll give you one hundred and twenty. That s my top offer and it s only four less than the pressure experts are asking. Fair enough It may be fair enough Amalfi said. But we don t do pressure work and we ve already gotten in reports from the proxies we sent to Hern Six as soon as Lieutenant Lerner said that was where the job was. We don t like the look of it. We don t want it. We won t take it at one hundred and twenty we won t take it at one hundred and twenty four and we won t take it at all. Understand Very well the woman said with concentrated vicious ness. You ll hear from me again Okie. The King was looking at Amalfi with an unreadable but certainly unfriendly expression. If Amalfi s guess was right the King thought Amalfi was somewhat overdoing Okie solidarity. It might also be occurring to him that the expression of so much independence mipht be a bid for power within the jungle itself. Yes Amalfi was sure that that at least had occurred to the King. The hiring of the class B cities was now all that remained but nevertheless it took quite a while to get started. The woman it emerged was more than a trader she was an entrepreneur of some importance. She wanted the cities twenty of them each for the same identical piece of dirty work: working low grade carnotite lies on a small planet too near a hot star. Twenty mining cities working upon such a planet would reduce it to as small and sculptured a lump of trash as a meteorite before very many months. The method obviously was to get the work done fast without paying more than a pittance for it. Then startlingly while the woman was still making up her mind the voice came through. It was weak and indistinct and without any face to go with it. We ll take the job. Take us. There was a murmuring from the screens and across some of the faces there the same shadow seemed to run. Amalfi checked the tank but it told him little. The signal had been too weak. All that could be made certain was that the voice belonged to some city far out on the periphery of the jungle a city desperate for energy. The Acolyte woman seemed momentarily nonplussed. Even in a jungle Amalfi thought grimly some crude rules had to be observed evidently the woman realized that to slowly enough so that it won t be apparent in any tank that we re moving counter to the general tendency. Also get me a fix on that outfit on the outside that broke ranks if you possibly can. If you can t do it without attracting attention drop the project at once. Right. By Hadjjii s nightshirt you ve got a lesson coming the woman was exclaiming. The whole deal is off for today. No jobs not for anybody. I ll come back in a week. Maybe by then you ll have some common sense back. Lieutenant let s get the hell out of here. That however proved to be a difficult assignment. There was a sort of wave front of heavy duty cities between the Acolyte ships and open space expanding outward into the darkness where the weaklings shivered. In that second frigid shell most of the class C cities were panicking and still farther out the brilliant green sparks of the cities whose promised jobs had just been written off were plunging angrily back toward the main cloud. The reception hall was a bedlam of voices mostly those of mayors trying to establish that they had not been responsible for the break in the wage line. Somewhere several cities were still attempting to shout new bids to the Acolyte woman under cover of the confusion. Through it all the voice of the King whirled like a bull roarer. Clear the sky Lerner shouted. Clear it up out there by As if in response the tank suddenly crackled with hair thin sapphire tracers. The static of the scattered mesotron rifle fire rattled audio speakers cross hatched the desperate shouting faces on the screens. Terror the terror of a man who finds suddenly that the situation he is in has always been deadly turned Lieutenant Lerner s features rigid. Amalfi saw him reach for something. All right Hazleton spin The defective spindizzy sobbed and the city moved painfully. Lerner s elbow jerked back toward his midriff and from his ship came the pale guide light of a Bethe blaster. Seconds later something went up in the white agony of a fusion explosion something so far off from the center of the riot that Amalfi first thought with a shock of fury that Lerner had undertaken to destroy Okie cities unselec tively simply to terrorize. Then the look on Lerner s face told him that the shot had been fired at random. Lerner was as taken aback as Amalfi and seemingly for much the same reasons at the death of the unknown bystander. The depth of the response surprised Amalfi anew. Perhaps there was hope for Lerner yet. Some incredible fool of an Okie was firing on the cop now but the shots fell short mesotron rifles were not primarily military instruments and the Acolytes had almost worked free of the jungle. For a moment Amalfi was afraid that Lerner would fling a few vindictive Beth6 blasts back into the pack but evidently the cop was recovering the residue of his good sense at least no more shots came from the command cruiser. It was possible that he had realized that any further exchange of fire would turn the incident from a minor brawl to a mob uprising which would make it necessary to call in the Acolyte navy. Not even the Acolytes could want that for it would end in cutting off their supply of skilled labor. The city s spindizzies cut out. Lurid smoky scarlet light leaked down the stone stairwell which led out of the reception hall to the belfry We re parked near the stinking little star boss. We re less than a million miles out from the orbit of the King s own city. Good work Mark. Break out a gig. We re going calling. All right. Anything special in the way of equipment Equipment Amalfi said slowly. Well no. But you d best bring Sergeant Anderson along. And Mark Yes Bring Dee too. The center of government of the King s city was enormously impressive: ancient stately marmoreal. It was surrounded on a lower level by a number of lesser structures of equally heavy handed beauty. One of these was a heavy archaic cantilever bridge for which Amalfi could postulate no use at all it spanned an enormously broad avenue which divided the city in two an avenue which was virtually untraveled the bridge too carried only foot traffic now and not much of that. He decided finally that the bridge had been retained only out of respect to history. These seemed to be no other sentiment which fitted it since the normal mode of transportation in the King s city as in every other Okie city was by aircab. Like the City Hall the bridge was beautiful possibly that had spoken for its retention too. The cab rocked sli hlly and grounded. Here we are gentlemen the Ti n Cabby said. Welcome to Buda Pesht. Amalfi followed Dee and Hazleton out onto the plaza. Other cabs many of them dotted the red sky homing on the palace and settling near by. Looks like a conclave Hazleton said. Guests from outside not just managerial people inside this one city otherwise why the welcome from the cabby That s my guess too and I think we re none too early for it either. It s my theory that the King is in for a rough time from his subjects. This shoot up with Lerner and the loss of jobs for everybody must have lowered his stock considerably. If so it ll give us an opening. Speaking of which Hazleton said where s the entrance to this tomb anyhow Ah that must be it. They hurried through the shadows of the pillared portico. Inside in the foyer hunched or striding figures moved past them toward the broad ancient staircase or gathered in small groups murmuring urgently in the opulent dimness. This entrance hall was marvelous with chandeliers they did not cast much light but they shed glamour like a molting peacock. Someone plucked Amalfi by the sleeve. He looked down. A slight man with a worn Slavic face and black eyes which looked alive with suppressed mischief stood at his side. This place makes me homesick the slight man said although we don t go in for quite so much sheer mass on my town. I believe you re the mayor who refused all offers on behalf of a city with no name. I m correct am I not You are Amalfi said studying the figure with difficulty in the ceremonial dimness. And you re the mayor of Dresden Saxony: Franz Specht. What can we do for you Nothing thank you. I simply wanted to make myself known. It may be that you will need to know someone inside. He nodded in the direction of the staircase. I admired your stand today but there may be some who resent it. Why is your city nameless by the way It isn t Amalfi said. But we sometimes need to use our name as a weapon or at least as a lever. We hold it in reserve as such. A weapon Now that is something to ponder. I will see you later I hope. Specht slipped away abruptly a shadow among shadows. Hazleton looked at Amalfi with evident puzzlement. What s his angle boss Backing a longshot maybe That would be my guess. Anyhow as he says we can probably use a friend in this mob. Let s go on up. In the great hall which had been the throne room of an empire older than any Okie older even than space flight there was already a meeting in progress. The King himself was standing on the dais enormously tall bald scarred terrific as shining black as anthracite. Ancient as he was his antiquity was that of some featureless eventless an antiquity without history against the rich backdrop of his city. He was anything but an expectable mayor of Buda Pesht Amalfi strongly suspected that there were recent bloodstains on the city s log. Nevertheless the King held the rebellious Okies under control without apparent effort. His enormous gravelly voice roared down about their heads like a rockslide overwhelming them all with its raw momentum alone. The occasional bleats of protest from the floor sounded futile and damned against it like the voices of lambs objecting to the inevitable avalanche. So you re mad he was thundering. You got roughed up a little and now you re looking for somebody to blame it on Well I ll tell you who to blame it on I ll tell you what to do about it too. And by God when I m through telling you you ll do it the whole pack of you Amalfi pushed through the restive close packed mayors and city managers putting his bull shoulders to good use. Hazleton and Dee hand in hand tailed him closely. The Okies on the floor grumbled as Amalfi shoved his way forward but they were so bound up in the King s diatribe and in their own fierce unformulated resistance to the King s battering ram leadership tactics that they could spare nothing more than a moment s irritation for Amalfi s passage among them. Why are we hanging around here now getting pushed around by these Acolyte hicks the King roared. You re fed with it. All right I m fed with it too. I wouldn t take it from the beginning When I came here you guys were bidding each other5 down to peanuts. When the bidding was over the city that got the job lost money on it every time. It was me that showed you how to organize. It was me that showed yc u how to stand up for your rights. It was me that showed you how to form a wage line and how to hold one. And it s going to be me that ll show you what to do when a wage line breaks up. Amalfi reached behind him caught Dee s hand and drew her forward to stand beside him. They were now in the front row of the crowd almost up against the dais. The King saw the movement he paused and looked down. Amalfi felt Dee s hand tighten spasmodically upon his. He returned the pressure. All right Amalfi said. When he was willing to let his voice out he could fill a considerable space with it. He let it out. Show or shut up. The King who had been looking directly down at them made a spasmodic movement almost as if he had been about to take one step backwards. Who the hell are you he shouted. Tin the mayor of the only city that held the line today Amalfi said. He did not seem to be shouting but somehow his voice was no smaller in the hall than the King s. A quick murmur went through the mob and Amalfi could see necks craning in his direction. We re the newest and the biggest city here and this is the first sample we ve seen of the way you run this wage bidding. We think it stinks. We ll see the Acolytes in hell before we take their jobs at any of the prices they offer let alone the low pay levels you set. Someone near by turned and looked at Amalfi slantwise. Evidently you folks can eat space the Okie said dryly. We eat food. We won t eat slops Amalfi growled. You up there on the platform let s hear this great plan for getting us out of this mess. It couldn t be any worse than the wage line system that s a cinch. The King began to pace. He whirled as Amalfi finished speaking arms akimbo feet apart his shiny bald cranium thrust forward gleaming blankly against the faded tapestries. I ll let you hear it he roared. You bet I ll let you hear it. Let s see what your big talk comes to after you know what it is. You can stay behind and try to work boom time wages out of the Acolytes if you want but if you ve guts you ll go with us. Where to Amalfi said calmly. We re going to march on Earth. There was a brief stunned silence. Then a composite roar began to grow in the hall. Amalfi grinned. The sound of the response was not exactly friendly. Wait the King bellowed. Wait dammit I ask you what s the sense in our fighting the Acolytes They re just local trash. They know just as well as we do that they couldn t get away with their slave market tactics and their private militia and their shoot ups if Earth had an eye on em. Then why don t we holler for the Earth cops someone demanded. Because they wouldn t come here. They can t. There must be Okies all over the galaxy that are taking stuff from local systems and clusters stuff like what we re taking. This depression is everywhere and there just aren t enough Earth cops to be all over the place at once. But we don t have to take it. We can go to Earth and demand our rights. We re citizens every one of us unless there are any Vegans here. You a Vegan buddy The scarred face stared down at Amalfi smiling grue somely. A nervous titter went through the hall. The rest of us can go to Earth and demand that the government bail us out. What else is government for anyhow Who produces the money that kept the politicians fat all through the good centuries What would the government have to govern and tax and penalize if it weren t for the Okies Answer me that you with the orbital fort under your belt The laughter was louder and sounded more assured now. Amalfi however was quite used to gibes at his pod such thrusts were for him a sure sign that his current opponent had run out of pertinent things to say. He returned coldly: More than half of us had charges against us when we came here not local charges but violations of Earth orders of one kind or another. Some of us have been dodging being brought back on our Violations dockets for decades. Are you going to offer yourselves to the Earth cops on a platter The King did not appear to be listening with more than half an ear. He had Brought up a broad grin at the second wave of laughter and had been looking back down at Dee for admiration. We ll send out s c ll on the Dirac he said. To all Okies everywhere. We re all going back to Earth we ll say. We re going home to get an accounting. We ve done Earth s heavy labor all over the galaxy and Earth s paid us by turning our money into waste paper. We re going home to see that Earth does something about it we ll set a date and any Okie with starman s guts will follow us. How does that sound eh Dee s grip on Amalfi s hand was now tighter than any pressure he would have believed she could exert. Amalfi did not speak to the King he simply looked back at him his eyes metallic. From somewhere fairly far back in the throne room a newly familiar voice called The mayor of the nameless city has asked a pertinent luestion. From the point of view of Earth we re a dangerous collection of potential criminals at worst. At best we re discontented jobless people and undesirable in large numbers anywhere near the home planet. Hazleton pushed up to the front row on the other side of Dee and glared belligerently up at the King. The King however had looked away again over Hazleton s head. Anybody got a better idea the immense black man said dryly. Here s good old Vega down here he s full of ideas. Let s hear his idea. I ll bet it s colossal. I ll just bet he s a genius this Vegan. Get up there boss Hazleton hissed. You ve got em Amalfi released Dee s hand he had some difficulty in being gentle about it bounded clumsily but without real effort onto the dais and turned to face the crowd. Hey there mister someone shouted. You re no Vegan The crowd laughed uneasily. Never said I was Amalfi retorted. Hazleton s face promptly fell. Are you all a pack of children No mythical fort is going to bail you out of this. Neither is any fool mass flight on Earth. There isn t any easy way out. There is one tough way out if you ve got the guts for it. Let s hear it. Speak up Let s get it over with. All right Amalfi said. He walked back to the immense throne of the Hapsburgs and sat down in it catching the King flatfooted. Standing Amalfi despite his bulk was a smaller man than the King but on the throne he made the King look not only smaller but also quite irrelevant. From the back of the dais his voice boomed out as powerfully as before. Gentlemen he said our germanium is worthless now. So is our paper money. Even the work we do doesn t seem to be worth while now on any standard. That s our trouble and there isn t much that Earth can do about it they re caught in the cqllapse too. A professor the King said his seamed lips twisting. Shaddap. You asked me up here. I m staying up here until I ve had my say. The commodity we all have to sell is labor. Hand labor heavy work isn t worth anything. Machines can do that. But brainwork can t be done with anything but brains art and pure science are beyond the compass of any machine. Now we can t sell art. We can t produce it we aren t artists and aren t set up as such there s an entirely different segment of galactic society that supplies that need. But brainwork in pure science is something we can sell just as we ve always sold brainwork in applied sciences. If we play our cards right we can sell it anywhere for any price we ask regardless of the money system involved. It s the ultimate commodity and in the long run it s a commodity which no one but the Okies could merchandise successfully. Selling that commodity we could take over the Acolytes or any other star system. We could do it better in a general depression than we could ever have done it before because we can now set any price on it that we choose. Prove it somebody called. That s easy. We have here around three hundred cities. Let s integrate and use their accumulated knowledge. This is the first time in history that so many City Fathers have been gathered together in one place just as it s the first time that so many big organizations specializing in different sciences have ever been gathered together. If we were to consult with each other pool our intellectual resources we d come out technologically at least a thou sand years ahead of the rest of the galaxy. Individual experts can be bought for next to nothing now but no individual expert nor any individual city or planet could match what we d have. That s the pricelesp Jfoin gentlemen the universal coin: human knowledge. Look now: there are eighty five million undeveloped worlds in this galaxy ready to pay for knowledge of the current vintage the kind we all share right now the kind that runs about a century behind Earth on the average. But if we were to pool our knowledge then even the most advanced planets even Earth itself would see their coinages crumble in the face of their eagerness to buy what we would have to offer. Question You re Dresden Saxony back there right Amalfi said. Go ahead Mayor Specht. Are you sure accumulated technology is the answer You yourself said that straight techniques are the province of machines. The ancient Godel Church theorems show that no machine or set of machines can score significant advances on human thought. The designer has to precede the machine and has to have achieved the desired function before the machine can even be built. What is this a seminar the King demanded. Let s Let s hear it someone called. After that mess today Let em talk they make sense Amalfi waited a moment and then said Yes Mayor Specht. Go ahead. I had about made my point. The machines can t do the job you offer as the solution to our troubles. This is why mayors have authority over City Fathers rather than the other way around. That s quite true Amalfi said. And I don t pretend that a completely cross connective hookup among all our City Fathers would automatically bail us out. For one thing we d have to set the hookup pattern very carefully as a topological problem to be sure we didn t get a degree of connectivity which would result in the disappearance of knowledge instead of its accumulation. There s an example of just the kind of thing you were talking about: machines can t handle topology because it isn t quantitative. I said that this was the hard way of solving the problem and I meant just that. After we d pooled our machine accumulated knowledge furthermore we d have to interpret it before we could put it to some use. That would take time. Lots of time. Technicians will have to check the knowledge pooling at every stage they ll have to check the City Fathers to be sure they can take in what s being delivered to them as far as we know they have no storage limits but that assumption hasn t ever been tested before on the practical level. They ll have to assess what it all adds up to in the end run the assessments through the City Fathers for logical errors assess the logic for supralogical bugs beyond the logics that the City Fathers use check all the assessments for new implications needing complete rechecks of which there will be thousands.... It ll take more than two years and probably closer to five years to do even a scratch job. The City Fathers will do their part of it in a few hours and the rest of the time will be consumed by human brainwork. While that part of it s going on we ll have it thin. But we ve got it damn thin already and when it s all over we ll be able to write our own tickets anywhere in the galaxy. A very good answer Specht said. He spoke quietly but each word whistled through the still sweat humid air like a thin missile. Gentlemen I believe the mayor of the nameless city is right. The hell he is the King howled striding to the front of the dais and trying to wipe the air out of his way as he walked. Who wants to sit for five years making like a pack of scientists while the Acolytes have us all digging ditches Who wants to be dispersed someone countered shrilly. Who wants to pick a fight with Earth Not me. I ll stay as far away from the Earth cops as I can. That s common sense for Okies. Cops the King shouted. Cops look for single cities. What if a thousand cities marched on Earth What cop would bother with one city on one disorderly conduct charge If you were a cop and you saw a mob coming down at you would you try to bust it up by pinching one man in it who d run out on a Vacate order or shaded a three per cent fruit freezing contract If that s common sense for Okies I ll eat it. You guys are chicken that s your trouble. You got knocked around today and you hurt. You re tender. But you know damn weft that the law exists to protect you not scum like the Acolytes. It s a cinch we can t call the Earth cops here to project us the cops are too few for that we re too fewji and besides we would get nabbed individually for whatever we ve got written against us. But in a march of thousands of Okies a peaceful march to ask Earth to give you what belongs to you you couldn t be touched individually. But you re scared You d rather squat in a jungle and die by pieces Not us Us neither When do we start That s more like it the King said. Specht s voice said Buda Pesht you re trying to drum up a stampede. The question isn t closed yet. All right the King agreed. I m willing to be reasonable. Let s take a vote. We aren t ready for a vote yet. The question is still open. Well said the King. You there on the overstaffed potty you got anything more to say Are you as afraid of a vote as Specht is Amalfi got up with deliberate slowness. I ve made my points and I ll abide by the voting he said if it s physically possible for us to do so our spindizzy equipment wouldn t tolerate an immediate flight to Earth if the voting goes that way. I ve made my point. A mass flight to Earth would be suicide. One moment Specht s voice cut in again. Before we vote I for one want to know who it is that has been advising us. Buda Pesht we know. But who are you There was instant dead silence in the throne room. The question was loaded as everyone in the hall knew. Prestige among Okies depended in the long run upon only two things: time aloft and coups recorded by the interstellar grapevine. Amalfl s city stood high on both tallies he had only to identify his city and he would stand at least an even chance of carrying the voting. Even while nameless for that matter the city had earned considerable kudos in the jungle. Evidently Hazleton thought so too for Amalfi could see the frantic covert hand signals he was making. Tell em boss. It can t miss. Tell em After a long suspended heartbeat the mayor said My name is John Amalfi Mayor Specht. A single broad comber of contempt rolled through the hall. Asked and answered the King said showing his ragged teeth. Glad to have you aboard Mister Amalfi. Now if you ll get the hell off the platform we ll get on with the voting. But don t be in any hurry to leave town Mister Amalfi. I want to talk to you man to man. Understand Yeah Amalfi said. He swung his huge bulk lightly to the floor of the hall and walked back to where Dee and Hazleton were standing band in hand. Boss why didn t you tell em Hazleton whispered his face hard. Or did you want to throw the whole show away You had two beautiful chances and you muffed em both Of course I muffed them. I came here to muff them. I came here to dynamite them as a matter of fact. Now you and Dee had Btetter get out of here before I have to give Dee to the King in order to get back to our city at all. You staged that too John Dee said. It was not an accusation it was simply a statement of fact. I m afraid I did Amalfi said. I m sorry Dee it had to be done or I wouldn t have done it. I was also sure that I could fox the King on that point if that s any consolation to you. Now move or you will be sunk. Mark make plenty of noise about getting away. What about you Dee said. I ll be along later. Git Hazleton stared at Amalfi a moment longer. Then he turned and pushed back through the crowd the frightened reluctant girl at his heels. His method of being very noisy was characteristic of him: he was so completely silent that everyone within sight of him knew that he was making a getaway even his footsteps made no sound at all. In the surging hall his noiselessness was as conspicuous as a siren in church. Amalfi stood his ground long enough to let the King see that the principal hostage was still on hand still obeying the letter of the King s order. Then the moment the King s attention was distracted he faded moving with the local current in the crowd bending his knees slightly to reduce his height tipping his head back to point his conspicuous baldness away from the dias and making only the normal amount of soupd as he moved becoming in short effectively invisible By this time the voeng was in full course and it would be five minutes at the least before the King could afford to interrupt it long enough to order the doors closed against Amalfl. After Hazleton s and Dee s ostentatiously alarmed exists an emergency order in the middle of the voting would have made it painfully obvious what the King was after. Of course had the King had the foresight to equip himself with a personal transmitter before mounting the dais the outcome might have been different. The King s failure to do so strengthened Amalfi s conviction that the King had not been mayor of Buda Pesht long and that he had not won the post by the usual processes. But Dee and Hazleton would get out all right. So would Amalfl. On this limited subject Amalfl had been six jumps ahead of the King all the way. Amalfi drifted toward the part of the crowd from where roughly he estimated that the voice of the mayor of Dresden Saxony had been coming. He found the worn birdlike Slav without difficulty. You keep a tight holster flap on your weapons Specht said in a low voice. Sorry to disappoint you Mayor Specht. You set it up beautifully. It might cheer you up a bit to know that the question was just the right one all the same and many thanks for it. In return I owe you the answer are you good at riddles Riddles Raetseln Amalfi translated. Oh conundrums. No but I can try. What city has two names twice Evidently Specht did not need to be good at riddles to come up with the answer to that one. His jaw dropped. You re N he began. Amalfi held up his hand in the conventional Okie FYI sign: For your information only. Specht gulped and nodded. With a grin Amalfi drifted on out of the palace. There was a lot of hard work still ahead but from now on it should be all downhill. The march on Earth would be carried in the voting. Nothing essential remained to be done now in the jungle but to turn the march into a stampede. By the time he reached his own city Amalfi found he was suddenly intensely tired. He berthed the second gig Hazleton had had the perimeter sergeant send for him and went directly to his room where he ordered his supper sent up. This last move he was forced to conclude had been a mistake. The city s stores were heavily diminished and the table that was set for him set as it would have been for anyone else in the city by the City Fathers with complete knowledge of his preferences was meager and uninteresting. It included fuming Rigellian wine which he despised as a drink for Barbarians such a choice could only mean that there was nothing else to drink in the city but water. His weariness the solitude the direct transition from the audience hall of the Hapsburgs to his bare new room under the mast in the Empire State Building it had been an elevator winch hocusing until the city had converted to friction fields and the dullness of the meal combined to throw him into a rare and deep state of depression. What he thought he could see of the future of Okie cities did not exactly cheer him either. It was at this point that the door to his room irised open and Hazleton stalked silently through it hooking his chromoclav back into his belt. They looked at each other stonily for a moment. Amalfi pointed to a chair. Sorry boss Hazleton said without moving. I ve never used my key before except in an emergency you know that. But I think maybe this is an emergency. We re in a bad way and the way you re dealing with the problem strikes me as crazy. For the survival of the city I want to be taken into your confidence. Sit down Amalfi said. Have some Rigel wine. Hazleton made a wry face and sat down. You re in my confidence as always Mark. I don t leave you out of my plans except where I think you might shoot from the hip if I didn t. You ll agree that you ve done that occasionally and don t throw up the Thor Five situation again because there I was on your side it was the City Fathers that objected to that particular Hazleton gimmick. Granted. 3 Good Amalfl said. Tell me what you want to know then. Up to a point I understand what you re out to do Hazleton said without preamble. Your use of Dee as a safe conduet in and out of the meeting was a shrewd trick. Considering the political threat we represented to the King it was probably the only thing you could have done. Understand I resent it personally and I may yet pay you off for it. But it was necessary I agree. Good the mayor said wearily. But that s a minor point Mark. Granted except on the personal level. The main thing is that you threw away the whole chance you schemed so hard to get. The knowledge pooling plan was a good one and you had two major chances to put it across. First of all the King set you up to claim we were Vegan nobody has ever actually seen that fort and physically you re enough unlike the normal run of humanity to pass for a Vegan without much trouble. Dee and I don t look Vegan but we might be atypical or maybe renegades. But you threw that one away. Then the mayor from Dresden Saxony set you up to swing almost everybody our way by letting them know our name. If you d followed through you would have carried the voting. Hell you d probably have wound up king of the jungle to boot. And you threw that one away too. Hazleton took his slide rule out of his pocket and moodily pushed the slide back and forth in it. It was a gesture frequent enough with him but ordinarily it preceded or followed some use of the rule. Tonight it was obviously just nervous play. But Mark I didn t want to be king of the jungle Amalfi said slowly. I d much rather let the present incumbent hold that responsibility. Every crime that s ever been committed or will be committed in the near future in this jungle will be laid at his door eventually by the Earth cops. On top of that the Okies here will hold him personally responsible for every misfortune that comes their way while they re in the jungle. I never did want that job I only wanted the King to think that I wanted it.... Incidentally did you try to raise that city out on the perimeter the one that said it had mass chromatography Sure Ha leton said. They don t answer. Okay. Now about this knowledge pooling plan: it wouldn t work Mark. First of all you couldn t keep a pack of Okies working at it long enough to get any good out of it. Okies aren t philosophers and they aren t scientists except in a limited way. They re engineers and merchants in some respects they re adventurers too but they don t think of themselves as adventurers. They re practical that s the word they use. You ve heard it. I ve used it Hazleton said edgily. So have I. There s a great deal of meaning packed into it It means among other things that if you get Okies involved in a major analytical project they ll get restive. They want sets of applications of principles not principles pure and useless And it isn t in their natures to sit still in one place for long. If you convince them that they should they ll try and the whole thing will wind up in a terrific explosion. But that s only point one. Mark have you any idea of the real scope of the knowledge pooling project I m not trying to put you oil the spot believe me. I don t think anybody in that hall realized it. If they had they d have laughed me off the platform. There again Okies aren t scientists and their outlook is too impatient to let them carry a really long chain of reasoning to a.conclusion. You re an Okie Hazleton pointed out. You carried it to a conclusion. You told them how long it would take. I m an Okie. I told them it would take from two to five years to do even a scratch job. As an Okie I m an expert at half truths. It would take from two to five years even to get the project set up And the rest of the job Mark would take centuries. For a scratch job No such thing as a scratch job in this universe of discourse Amalfi said reaching for the fuming wine and reconsidering at the last minute. Those cities out there represent the accumulated scientific knowledge of all the high technical level cultures they ve ever encountered. Even allowing for the usual information gaps that s about five thousand planets full of data at a minimum estimate. Sure we could pool all that knowledge just as I said at the meeting the City Fathers could take it all in and classify it in only a little over an hour after we d spent two to five years setting them up to do it. And then we d have to integrate it. And you ve got to integrate it Mark you ve got to know it thoroughly enough to be able to make it do something. You couldn t offer it for sale unless you did that. Would you like the job No Hazleton said slowly but at once. But Amalfi am I ever going to know what you re doing if you persist in proceeding like this You didn t go to that meeting just to waste time I can trust you that far. So I have to assume that the whole maneuver was a trick designed to force the March on Earth rather than to defeat it. You gave the cities a clearly defined superficially sound and less attractive alternative. Once they had rejected the alternative they had committed themselves to the King s tactics without knowing it. That s quite right. If that s right Hazleton said looking up suddenly with a flat flash of almost violet eyes I think it s stupid. I think it s stupid even though it was marvelously devious. There s such a thing as outsmarting yourself. Amalfi said That could be. In any event if the choice had been limited to marching on Earth versus staying in the jungle the cities would have stayed hi the jungle. Would it have been sensible to allow that We can t afford to stay in the jungle anyhow. Of course we can t. And by the same token we couldn t leave it by ourselves. The only way we could get free of this star cluster is in the middle of a mass movement. What else could I have been shooting for I don t know Hazleton said. But there s something else besides that in the back of your head. And your complaint is that you don t know about it in advance. I know why you don t know. You know too. Dee Certainly Amalfi said. You weren t asking yourself the right question. You were emotionally driven to ask why I wanted Dee along. The question was pertinent enough but it wasn t exactly central. If you had stood back a little further from the whole problem you d have seen why I wanted the March on Earth to go through too. Ill keep trying Hazleton said grimly. Though I d have preferred to be told. You and I are getting further apart every year boss. It used to be that we thought very much alike and it was then that you developed your habit of not telling me the whole story. It was a training device I think now. The more I was made to worry about the total plan the more I was required to think the thing out for myself which meant trying to figure you out the more training I got in thinking like you. And of course to be a proper city manager I had to think like you. You had to be sure that any decisions I made in your absence would be the decisions you would have made had you been around. All this hit me after our tangle with the Duchy of Gort. That incident was the first time that you and I had been out of touch with each other long enough for a situation of really major proportions to develop a situation about which I knew Very little until I could get back to the city from Utopia and get briefed. When I got back I found that I was damn lucky not to have thought like you. My first failure to comprehend your whole plan and your training method of leaving me to puzzle things out alone apparently had doomed me in your mind. You had written me off and you were training Carrel as my successor. All this is accurate reportage Amalfi said. If you mean to accuse me of keeping a bard school a fool will learn in no other No. A fool won t learn at all. But I don t deny keeping a hard school. Go on. I haven t far to go now. I learned in the Gort Utopia system that thinking the way you think can sometimes be deadly for me. I got off Utopia by thinking my way not yours. The confirmation came when we hit He had I been thinking entirely like you in that situation we d still be on the planet. Mark you still haven t made your point. I can tell. It s perfectly true that we often relied on your plans and precisely because they come from a mind most unlike my own. What of it This of it. You re now out to rub out whatever trace of originality I have. You used to value it as you say. You used to use it for the city and defend it against the City Fathers when they had an attack of conservatism. But now you ve changed and so have I. These days I seem to be tending toward thinking more and more like a human being with human concerns. I don t feel like Hazleton the master conniver any more except in flashes. The opposite change is taking place in you. You re becoming more and more alienated from human concerns. When you look at people you see machines. After a little more of this we won t be able to tell you from the Cit Fathers. Amalfi tried to think about it. He was very tired and he felt old. It was not yet time for his anti agathic shot not by more than a decade but knowing that he would probably not get it made the centuries he had already traversed weigh heavily upon his back. Or maybe I m beginning to think that I m a god he said. You. accused me of that on Murphy. Have you ever tried to imagine Mark how completely crippling it is to any man s humanity to be the mayor of an Okie city for hundreds of years I suppose you have your own responsibilities aren t lighter than mine only a little different. Let me ask you this then: isn t it obvious that this change in you dates from the day when Dee first came on board Of course it s obvious Hazleton said looking up sharply. It dates from the Utopia Gort affair. That s when Dee came on board she was a Utopian. Are you about to tell me that she s to blame Shouldn t it also be obvious Amalfi continued with weary implacability that the converse change in me dates from the same event Gods of all stars Mark don t you know that I love Dee too Hazleton froze and went white. He looked rigidly with suddenly blind eyes at the remains of Amalfi s miserable supper. After a long time he laid his slide rule on the table as delicately as if it were made of spun sugar. I do know he said at long last. I did know. But I didn t want to know that I knew. Amalfi spread his big hands in a gesture of helplessness he had not had to use for more than half a century. The city manager did not seem to notice. That being the case Hazleton resumed his voice suddenly much tighter that being so Amalfi I He stopped. You needn t rush Mark. Actually it doesn t change things much. Take your time. Amalfi want off. Each evenly spaced word struck Amalfi like the strokes of a mallet against a gong the strokes which timed exactly to the gong s vibration period drive it toward shattering. Amalfi had expected anything but those three words. They told him that he had had no real idea of how helpless he had become. want off was the traditional formula by which a starman renounced the stars. The Okie who spoke them cut himself off forever from the cities and from the long swooping lines of the ingeodesics that the cities followed through space time. The Okie who spoke them became planet bound. And it was entirely final. The words were seared into Okie law. want off could never be refused nor retracted. You have it Amalfi said. Naturally. I won t tax you with being hasty since it s too late. Thanks. Well where do you want it On the nearest planet or at the city s next port of call These too were merely the traditional alternatives but Hazleton didn t seem to relish either of them. His lips were white and beseemed to be trembling slightly. That he said depends on where you re planning to go next. You haven t yet told me. Hazleton s disturbance disturbed Amalfi too more than he liked to recognize. Mechanically it would almost surely be possible for the ex city manager to withdraw his decision and mechanically it would be possible to make the suggestion to Hazleton. Those three words had been neither overheard nor recorded as far as Amalfi knew except a small chance by the treacher the section of the City Fathers which handled tablewaiting. Even there however the City Fathers wouldn t be likely to scan the treacher s memory bank more than once every five years. The treacher had nothing interesting to remember but the eating preference patterns of the Okies and such patterns change slowly and for the most part insignificantly. No the City Fathers need not know that Hazleton had resigned not for a while yet. But allowing the city manager to back down did not even occur to Amalfi the mayor was too thoroughly an Okie for that. Had it been proposed to him Almalfi would have objected that the uttering of those three words had put Hazleton as totally under Amalfi s smallest command as was a private in the city s perimeter police and he could have shown reasons why subservience of that kind was now required of Hazleton. He could also have shown that those three words could never be actually revoked however closely they were kept a secret between Hazleton and himself if pressed be could have shown that he could never forget them aid that Hazleton couldn t either. He might have explained that every time Amalfl decided against a plan of Hazleton s the city manager would put it down to secret rancor against that smothered resignation. Or being Amalfl he might merely have noted that the conflict between the two men had already been deep running and that after Hazleton had said I want off it would become outright pathological. Actually however no one of these things entered his mind. Hazleton had said I want off. Amalfi was an Okie and for an Okie I want off is final. No the mayor said at once. You ve asked for off and that s the end of it. You re no longer entitled to any knowledge of city policy or plans except for what reaches you in the form of directives. Now s the time when you can use your training in thinking like me Mark obviously you ll have no difficulty in thinking like the City Fathers because it ll be your only source of information on policy from now on. I understand Hazleton said formally. He stood silent a moment longer. Amalfi waited. At the next port of call then Hazleton said. All right. Until then you re outgoing city manager. Put Carrel back into training as your successor and begin feeding the City Fathers predisposing data toward him now. I don t want any more fuss from them when the election is held than we had when you were elected. Hazleton s expression became slightly more set. Right. Secondly get the city moving toward the perimeter to intersect the town you couldn t raise. I ll want an orbit that gives us logarithmic acceleration with all the real drive concentrated at the far end. On the way ready two work teams: one for a fast spindizzy assessment the other to run up whatever s necessary on the mass chromatogra phy equipment whatever that may be. Include medium heavy dismounting tools below the graving dock size but heavy enough to handle any job less drastic. Right. Also ready Sergeant Andersen s squad in case that city isn t quite as dead as it sounds. Right Hazleton said again. That s it Amalfi said. Hazleton nodded stiffly and made as if to turn. Then astonishingly his stiff face exploded into a torrential passion of speech. Boss tell me this before I go he said clenching his fists. Was all this to push me into asking for off Couldn t you think of any way of keeping your plans to yourself but kicking me out or making me kick myself out I don t believe this love story of yours damned if I do. You know I ll take Dee with me when I disembark. And the Great Renunciation is just slop just pure fiction especially coming from you. You aren t any more in love with Dee than I am with you And then Hazleton turned so white that Amalfi thought for a moment that the man was about to faint. Score one for you Mark Amalfi said. Evidently I m not the only one who s staging a Great Renunciation. Gods of all stars Amalfi There are none Amalfi said. I can t do anything more Mark. I ve said good by to you a hell of a lot of times but this has to be the last time not by my election but by yours. Go and get the jobs done. Hazleton said Right. He spun and strode out. The door reached full dilation barely in time. Amalfi sighed as deeply as a sleeping child. Then he nipped the treacher switch from set to clear. The treacher said Will that be all sir What do you want to do poison me twice at the same meal Amalfi growled. Get me an ultraphone line. The treacher s voice changed at once. Communications it said briskly. This is the mayor. Raise Lieutenant Lerner Forty fifth Acolyte Border Security Group. Don t give up too easily that was his last address but he s been upgraded since. When you get him tell him you re speaking for me. Tell him also that the cities in the jungle are organizing for some sort of military action and that if he can get a squadron in here fast enough he can break it up. Got it Yes sir. The Communications man read it back. If you say so Mayor Amalfi. Who else would say so Be sure Lerner doesn t get a fix on us. Send it pulse modulated if you can. Can t boss. Mr. Hazleton just put us under way. But there s a powerful Acplyte AM ultraphone station somewhere near by. I cato get our message into synch with it and make the cop s detectors focus on the vector. Is that good enough Better even Amalfi said. Hop to it. There s one other thing boss. That big drone you ordered last year is finally finished and the shop says that it has Dirac equipment mounted in it and ready to go. I ve inspected.it and it looks fine except that it s as big as a lifeship and just as detectable. All right good but that can wait. Get the message out. Yes sir. The voice cut out entirely. The incinerator chute gaped suddenly and the dishes rose from the table and soared toward the opening in solemn procession. The goblet of wine left behind a miasmic trail like a miniature comet. At the last minute Amalfi jerked out of his reverie and made a wild grab in mid air but he was too late. The chute gulped down that final item and shut again with a satisfied slam. Hazleton had left his slide rule upon the table The space suited party moved cautiously and with grim faces through the black dead streets of the city on the periphery. At the lead Sergeant Anderson s hand torch flashed into a doorway and flicked out again at once. No other lights whatsoever could be seen in the dark city nor had there been any response to calls. Except for a weak spindizzy field no power flowed in the city at all and even the screen was too feeble to maintain the city s air pressure above four pounds per square inch hence the space suits. Inside Amalfi s helmet O Brian s voice was saying The second phase is about to start in the jungle Mr. Mayor. Lerner moved in on them with what looks from here like all of the Acolyte navy he dared to pull out of the cluster itself. There s an admiral s flagship in the fleet but all the big brass is doing is relaying Lerner s suggestions in the form of orders he seems to have no ideas of his own. Sensible setup Amalfi said peering ahead unsuccessfully in the gloom. As far as it goes sir. The thing is the squadron itself is far too big for the job. It s unwieldly and the jungle detected it well in advance we stood ready to give the alarm to the King as you ordered but it didn t prove necessary. The cities are drawing up in a rough battle formation now. It s quite a sight even through the proxies. First time in history isn t it As far as I know. Does it look like it ll work No sir the proxy pilot said promptly. Whatever organization the King s worked out it s functioning only partially and damn sloppily. Cities are too clumsy for this kind of work even under the best hand and his is a long way from the best I d judge. But we ll soon see for ourselves. Right. Give me another report in an hour. Anderson held up his hand and the party halted. Ahead was a huge pile of ultimately solid blackness touched deceptively here anfl there with feeble stars where windows threw back reflections. Far aloft however one window glowed softly with its own light. The boarding squad men deployed quickly along opposite sides of the street while the technics took cover. Amalfi sidled along the near wall to where the sergeant was crouching. What do you think Anderson I don t like it Mr. Mayor. It stinks of mouse traps. Maybe everybody s dead and the last man didn t have the strength to turn out the light. On the other hand just one light left burning for that reason in the whole city I see what you mean. Dulany take five men down that side street where the facsimile pillar is follow it until you re tangent to the corner of this building up ahead and stick out a probe. Don t use more than a couple of micro volts or you might get burned. Yessir. Dulany s squad the man himself might best be described as a detector detector slipped away soundlessly shadows among shadows. That isn t all I stopped us for Mr. Mayor Anderson said. There s a grounded aircab just around the corner here. It s got a dead passenger in it. I wish you d take a look at him. Amalfi took the proffered torch covered its lens with the mitten of his suit so that only a thin shred of light leaked through and played it for half a second through the cab s window. He felt his spine going rigid. Wherever the light touched the flesh of the hunched corpse it glistened. I Communications 1 Yes sir Set up the return port for decontamination. Nobody gets back on board our town until he s been boiled alive understand I want the works. There was a brief silence. Then: Mr. Mayor the city manager already has that in the works. Amalfi grimaced wryly in the darkness. Anderson said Pardon me sir but how did Mr. Hazleton guess Why that s not too hard to see at least after the fact sergeant. This city we re on was desperately poor. And being poor under the new money system means being low on drugs. The end result as Mr. Hazleton saw and I should have seen is plague. The sons of bitches the sergeant said bitterly. The epithet seemed intended to apply to every non Okie ifl the universe. At the same moment a lurid scarlet glare splashed over his face and the front of his suit and red lanes of light checkered the street. There was an almost simultaneous flat crash without weight in the thin air but ugly sounding. TDX Anderson shouted involuntarily. Dulany Dulany Damn it all I told the man to take it easy with that probe. Whoever survived on that squad report Underneath the ringing in Amalfi s ears someone began to laugh. It was as ugly a sound as the TDX explosion had been. There was no other answer. All right Anderson surround this place. Communications get the rest of the boarding squad and half the security police over here on the double. The nasty laughter got louder. Whoever you are that s putting out that silly giggle you re going to learn how to make another kind of noise when I get my hands on you Amalfi added viciously. Nobody uses TDX on my men I don t care whether he s an Okie or a cop. Get me Nobody The laughter stopped. Then a cracked voice said You lousy damned vultures. Vultures is it Amalfi snapped. If you d answered our calls in the first place there d have been no trouble. Why don t you come to your senses Do you want to die of the pestilence Vultures the voice repeated. It carried an overtone of sinister idiocy. Eaters of carrion. The gods of all stars will boil your bones for soup. The cackling began again. Amalfi felt a faint chill. He switched to tight beam. Anderson keep your men at a respectable distance and wait for the reinforcements. This place is obviously mined to the teeth and I don t .know what other surprises our batty friend has for us. I could lob a gas grenade through that window Don t you suppose they re wearing suits too Just ring the place and sit tight. Check. Amalfi squatted down upon his hams behind the aircab sweating. There just might be enough power left in the accumulators here to put up a Bethe fender around the building but that wasn t the main thing on his mind. This business of boarding another Okie city was easily the hardest operation he had ever had to direct. Every move went against the grain. The madman s accusation had hit him in his most vulnerable spot. After what seemed like a whole week his helmet ultra phone said Proxy room. Mr. Mayor the jungle beat off Lerner s first wave. I didn t think they could do it. They got in one good heavy lick at the beginning blew two heavy cruisers right out of the sky and the Acolytes act scared green. The admiral s launch has run out completely and left Lerner holding the bag. Losses Four cities definitely wiped out. We haven t enough proxies out to estimate cities damaged with any accuracy but Lerner had a group of about thirty towns enfiladed when the first cruiser got it. You haven t got the big drone out there have you the mayor said in sudden alarm. No sir Communications ordered that one left berthed. I m waiting now to see when the next Acolyte wave gets rolling I ll call you as The proxy pilot s yoice snapped off and the stars went out. There was a shout of alarm from some technie in the party. Amalfl got up cautiously and looked overhead. The single window in thelbig building which had shown a light was blacked out now too. What the hell happened Mr. Mayor Anderson s voice said quietly. A local spindizzy screen at at least half drive. Probably they ve dropped their main screen entirely. Everybody keep to cover there may be flares. The laughter began again. Vultures the voice said. Little mangy vultures in a big tight cage. Amalfl cut back in on the open radio band. You re going to wreck your city he said steadily. And once you tear this section of it loose your power will fail and your screen will go down again. You can t win and you know it. The street began to tremble. It was only a faint trembling now but there was no telling how long the basic structure of the dead city could hold this one small area in place against the machine that was trying to fling it away into space. Hazleton of course would rush over a set of portable nutcrackers as soon as he had seen what had happened but whether this part of the city would still be here when the nutcrackers arrived was an open question. In the meantime there was exactly nothing Amalfi could do about it. Even his contact with his own city was cut off. It isn t your city the voice said suddenly deceptively reasonable. It s our city. You re hijacking us. But we won t let you. How were we supposed to know any of you were still alive Amalfi demanded angrily. You didn t answer our calls. Is it our fault if you didn t hear them We thought this town was open for salvage His voice was abruptly obliterated by a new one enormous yet familiar which came slamming into his helmet as if it intended to drive him out of his suit entirely. EARTH POLICE AA EMERGENCY ACOLYTE CLUSTER CONDENSATION XIII ARM BETA it thundered. SYSTEM UNDER ATTACK BY MASS ARMY OF TRAMP CITIES. POLICE AID URGENTLY NEEDED. LERNER LIEUTENANT FORTY FIFTH BORDER SECURITY GROUP ACTING COMMANDER CLUSTER DEFENSE FORCES. ACKNOWLEDGE. Amalfl whistled soundlessly through his teeth. There was evidently a Dirac transceiver in operation somewhere inside the close drawn spindizzy screen or his helmet phones wouldn t have caught Lerner s yell for help Diracs were too bulky for the usual proxy let alone for a space suit. By the same token everybody else in the galaxy possessing Dirac equipment had heard that yell it had been the instantaneous propagation of Dirac pulses that had dealt the death blow to the West s hypercomplex relativity theories millennia ago. And if a Dirac sender was open inside this bubble ... LERNER ACOLYTE DEFENSE FORCES YOUR MESSAGE IN. SQUADRON ASSIGNED YOUR CONDENSATION ON WAY. HANG ON. BETA ARM COMMAND EARTH. . . . then Amalfi could use it. He flipped the chest switch and shouted Hazleton are your nutcrackers rolling Rolling boss Hazleton shot back instantly. Another ninety seconds and Too late this sector will tear loose before then. Tune up our own screen to twenty four per cent and hold He realized suddenly that he was shouting into a dead mike. The Okies here had caught on belatedly to what was happening and had cut the power to their Dirac. Had that last crucial incomplete sentence gotten through even a fragment of it Or ... Deep down under Amalfi s feet an alarming sound began to rise. It was part screech part monstrous rockslide part prolonged and hollow groan. Amalfi s teeth began to itch in their sockets and his bowels stirred slightly. He grinned. The message had gotten through or enough of it to enable Hazleton to guess the rest. The one spindizzy holding this field was going sour. Against the combined power of the nearby drivers of Amalfi s city it could no longer maintain the clean space lattice curvature it was set for. You re sunk Amalfi told the invisible defenders quietly. Give up now. and you ll not be hurt. I ll skip the TDX incident Dulany was one of my best men but maybe there was some reason on your side too. Come on over with us and you ll have a city to call your own again. This one isn t any good to you any more that s obvious. There was no answer. Patterns began to race across the close pressing black sky. The nutcrackers portable generators designed to heterodyne a spindizzy . field to the overload point were being brought to ear. The single tortured spindizzy howled with anguish. Speak up up there Amalfi said. I m trying to be fair but if you force me to drive you out Vultures the cracked voice sobbed. The window aloft lit up with a searing glare and burst outward. A long tongue of red flame winnowed out over the street. The spindizzy screen went down at once and with it the awful noise from the city s power deck but it was several minutes before Amalfi s dazzled eyes could see the stars again. He stared up at the exploded scar on the side of the building outlined in orange heat swiftly dimming. He felt a little sick. TDX again he said softly. Consistent to the last the poor sick idiots. Mr. Mayor Here. This is the proxy room. There s a regular stampede going on in the jungle. The cities are streaming away from the red star as fast as they can tune up. No discernible order just a mob and a panicky mob too. No signs of anything being done for the wounded cities and it looks to me like they re just being left for Lerner to break up as soon as he gets up enough courage. Amalfi nodded to himself. All right O Brian launch the big drone now. I want that drone to go with those cities and stick with them all the way. Pilot it personally it s highly detectable and there ll probably be several attempts to destroy it so be ready to dodge. I will sir. Mr. Hazleton just launched her a moment ago I m giving her the gun right now. For some reason this did not improve Amalfi s temper in the least. The Okies set to work rapidly dismounting the dead city s spindizzies from their bases and shipping them into storage on board their own city. The one which had been overdriven in that last futile defense had to be left behind of course like the Twenty third Street machine it was hot and could not be approached except by a graving dock. The rest went over as whole units. Hazleton looked more and more puzzled as the big machines came aboard but he seemed resolved to ask no questions. Carrel however suffered under no such self imposed restraints. What are we going to do with all these dismounted drivers he said. All three men stood in a sally port at the perimeter of their city watching the ungainly bulks being floated across. We re going to fly another planet Hazleton said flatly. You bet we are Amalfi agreed. And pray to your star gods that we re in time Mark. Hazleton didn t answer.. Carrel said In time for what That I won t say until I have it right under my nose on a screen. It s a hunch and I think it s a good one. In the meantime take my word for it that we re in a hurry like we ve never been in a hurry before. What s the word on that mass chromatography apparatus Hazleton It s a reverse English on the zone melting process for refining germanium boss. You take a big column of metal which metal doesn t matter as long as it s pure and contaminate one end of it with the stuff you want to separate out. Then you run a disc shaped electric field up the column from the contaminated end and the contaminants are carried along by resistance heating and separate out at various points along the bar. To get pure fractions you cut the bar apart with a power saw. But does it work Nah Hazleton said. It s just what we ve seen a thousand times before. Looks good in theory but not even the guys who owned this city could make it go. Another Lyran invisibility machine or no fuel drive the mayor said nodding. Too bad a process like that would be useful. Is the equipment massive Enormous. The area it occupies is twelve city blocks on a side. Leave it there Amalfi decided at once. Obviously this outfit was bragging from desperation when it offered the technique for the Acolyte woman s job. If she d taken them up on it they wouldn t have been able to deliver and I don t care to lead us into any such temptation. In this case the knowledge is as good as the equipment Hazleton said. Their City Fathers will have all the information we coyld possibly worry out of the apparatus itself. Would somebody give me the pitch on this exodus of cities from the jungle Carrel put in. I wasn t along on your trip to the King s city and I still think the whole idea of a March on Earth is crazy. Amalfl remained silent. After a moment Hazleton said It is and it isn t. The jungle doesn t dare stand up to a real Earth force and slug it out and everybody knows now that there s an Earth force on its way here. The cities want to be somewhere else in a hurry. But they still have some hope of getting Earth protection from the Acolyte cops and similar local organizations if they can put their case before the authorities outside of a trouble area. That Carrel said is just what I don t see. What hope do they have of getting a fair shuffle And why don t they just contact Earth on the Dirac as Lerner did instead of making this long trip It s sixty three hundred or so light years from here to Earth and they aren t organized well enough to make such a long haul without a lot of hardship. And they ll do all their talking with Earth over the Dirac even after they get there Amalfi added. Partly of course this march is sheer theatricalism. The King hopes that such a big display of cities will make an impression on the people he ll be talking to. Don t forget that Earth is a quiet rather idyllic world these days a skyful of ragged cities will create a lot of alarm there. As for getting a square shuffle: the King is relying on a tradition of at least moderately fair dealing that goes back many centuries. Don t forget Carrel that for the last thousand years the Okie cities have been the major unifying force in our entire galactic culture. That s news to me Carrel said a little dubiously. But it s quite true. Do you know what a bee is Well it s a little Earth insect that sucks nectar from flowers. While it s about it it picks up pollen and carries it about it s a prime factor in cross fertilization of plants. Most habitable planets have similar insects. The bee doesn t know that he s essential to the ecology of his world all he s out to do is collect as much honey as he can but that doesn t make him any less essential. The cities have been like the bee for a long time. The governments of the advanced planets Earth in particular know it even if the cities generally don t. The planets distrust the cities but they also know that they re vital and must be protected. The planets are tough on bindlestiffs for the same reason. The bindlestiffs are diseased bees the taint that they carry gets fastened upon innocent cities cities that are needed to keep new techniques and other essential information on the move from planet to planet. Obviously cities and planets alike have to protect themselves from criminal outfits but there s the culture as a whole to be considered as well as the safety of an individual unit and to maintain that culture the free passage of legitimate Okies throughout the galaxy has to be maintained. The King knows this Carrel said. Of course he does. He s eight hundred years old how could he help but know it He wouldn t put it like this but all the same it s the essence of what he s depending upon to carry through his March on Earth. It still sounds risky to me Carrel said dubiously. We ve all been cdnditioned almost from birth to distrust Earth and Earth cops especially Only because the cops distrust us. That means that the cops are conditioned to be strict with cities about the smallest violations so since small violations of local laws are inevitable in a nomadic life it s smart for an Okie to steer clear of cops. But for all the real hatred that exists between Okies and cops we re both on the same side. We always have been. On the underside of the city just within the cone of vision of the three men the big doors to the main hold swung slowly shut. That s the last one Hazleton said. Now I suppose we go back to where we left the all purpose city we stole from Murphy and relieve it of its drivers too. Yes we do Amalfi said. And after that Mark we go on to Hern Six. Carrel ready a couple of small fission bombs for the Acolyte garrison there it can t be large enough to make us much trouble but we ve no time left to play patty cake. Is Hern Six the planet we re going to fly Carrel said. It has to be Amalfi said with a trace of impatience. It s the only one available. Furthermore this time we re going to have to control the flight not just let the planet scoot off anywhere its natural converted rotation wants it to go. Being carried clean out of the galaxy once is once too often for me. Then I d better put a crack team to work op the control problem with the City Fathers Hazleton said. Since we didn t havl them to consult with on He we ll have to screen every scrap of pertinent information they have in stock. No wonder you ve been so hot on this project for corralling knowledge from other cities. I only wish we could have gotten started on integrating it sooner. I haven t had this in mind quite that long Amalfi said. But believe me I m not sorry now that it turned out this way. Carrel said Where are we going Amalfi turned away toward the airlock. He had heard the question before from Dee but this was the first time that he had had an answer. Home he said. CHAPTER SEVEN: Hern VI MOUNTING Hern VI as desolate and damned a slab of rock as Amalfi had ever set down upon for guided spindizzy flight was incredibly tedious work. Drivers had to be spotted accurately at every major compass point and locked solidly to the center of gravity of the planetoid and then each and every machine had to be tuned and put into balance with every other. And there were not enough spindizzies to set up a drive for the planet as a whole which would be fully dirigible when the day of flight came. The flight of Hern VI when all the work was finally done promised to be giddy and erratic. But at least it would go approximately where the master space stick directed it to go. That much respon siveness Amalfi thought was all that was really necessary or all that he hoped would be necessary. Periodically O Brian the proxy pilot reported on the progress of the March on Earth. The mob had lost quite a few stragglers along the way as it passed attractive looking systems where work might be found but the main body was still streaming doggedly toward the mother planet. Though the outsize drone was as obvious a body as a minor moon so far not a single Okie had taken a pot shot at it. O Brian had kept it darting through and about the marchers in a double sine curve in three dimensions at its top speed and with progressive modulations of the orbit. If the partial traces which it made on any individual city s radar screen were not mistaken for meteor tracks predicting its course closely enough to lay a gun on it would keep any ordinary computer occupied full time. It was a superb job of piloting. Amalfi made a mental note to see to it that the task of piloting the city itself was split off from the city manager s job when Hazleton stepped down. Carrel was not a born pilot and O Brian was obviously the man Carrel would need. At the beginning of the Hern VI conversion the City Fathers had placed E Day the day of arrival of the marchers within optical telescope distance of Earth at one hundred fifty five years four months twenty days. Each report which came in from the big drone s pilot cut this co ordinate set back toward the flying present as the migrating jungle lost its laggards and became more and more compact more and more able to put on speed as a unit. Amalfi consumed cigars faster and drove his men and machines harder every time the new computation was delivered to his desk. But a full year had gone by since installation had started on Hern VI before O Brian sent up the report he had been dreading and yet counting upon to arrive sooner or later. The march has lost two more cities to greener pastures Mr. Amalfi the proxy pilot said. But that s routine. We ve gained a city too. Gained one Amalfi said tensely. Where d it come from I don t know. The course I ve got the drone on doesn t allow me to look in any one direction more than about twenty five seconds at a time. I have to take a census every time I pass her through the pack. The last time I went around there was this outfit on the screen just as if it had been there all the time. But that isn t all. It s the damnedest looking city I ve ever seen and I can t find anything like it in the files either. Describe it. For one thing it s enormous. I m not going to have to worry about anybody spotting my drone for a while. This outfit must have every detector in the jungle screaming blue bloody murder. Besides it s closed up. What do you mean b that It s got a smooth hull all around Mr. Mayor. It isn t the usual platform with buildings on it and a spindizzy screen around both. It s more like a proper spaceship except for its size. Any communication between it and the pack About what you d expect. Wants to join the march the King gave it the okay. I think he was pleased it s the very first answer he s had to his call for a general mobilization of Okies and this one really looks like a top notch city. It calls itself Lincoln Nevada. It would Amalfi said grimly. He mopped his face. Give me a look at it O Brian. The screen lit up. Amalfi mopped his face again. All right. Back your drone off a good distance from the march and keep that thing in sight from now on. Get Lincoln Nevada between you and the pack. It won t shoot at your drone it doesn t know it doesn t belong there. Without waiting for O Brian s acknowledgment Amalfi switched over to the City Fathers. How much longer is this job going to take he demanded. ANOTHER SIX YEARS MR. MAYOR. Cut it to four at a minimum. And give me a course from here to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud one that crosses Earth s orbit. MR. MAYOR THE LESSER MAGELLANIC CLOUD IS TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THOUSAND LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM THE ACOLYTE CLUSTER Thank you Amalfi said sardonically. I have no intention of going there I assure you. All I want is a course with those three points on it. VERY WELL. COMPUTED. When would we have to spin to cross Earth s orbit on E Day FROM FIVE SECONDS TO FIFTEEN DAYS FROM TODAY FIGURING FROM THE CENTER OF THE CLOUD TO EITHER EDGE. No good. We cant start within those limits. Give me a perfectly flat trajectory from here to there. THAT ARC INVOLVES NINE HUNDRED AND FIFTY EIGHT DIRECT COLLISIONS AND FOUR HUNDRED ELEVEN THOUSAND AND TWO GRAZES AND NEAR MISSES. Use it. The City Fathers were silent. Amalfi wondered if it were possible for machinery to be stunned. He knew that the City Fathers would never use the crow flight arc since it conflicted with their most ineluctable basic directive: Preserve the city first. This was all right with the mayor He had given that instruction with an eye to the tempo of building on Hern VI he had a strong hunch that it would go considerably faster after that stunner. And as a matter of fact it was just fourteen months later when Amalfi s hand closed on the master space stick for Hern VI and he said: Spin iS The career of Hern VI from its native Acolyte cluster across the center of the galaxy made history particularly in the field of instrumentation. Hern VI was a tiny world considerably smaller than Mercury but nevertheless it was the most monstrous mass ever kicked past the speed of light within the limits of the inhabited galaxy. Except for the planet of He which had left the galaxy from its periphery and was now well on its way toward Messier 31 in Andromeda no such body had ever before been flown under spindizzy or any other drive. Its passage left permanent scars in the recording banks of every detecting instrument within range and the memories of it graven into the brains of sentient observers were no less drastic. Theoretically Hern VI was following the long arc laid out for it by Amalfi s City Fathers an arc leading from the fringe of the Acolyte cluster all the way across the face of the galaxy to the center of the Lesser Magallanic Cloud. Its mass center of course both clouds had emerged too recently from the galaxy as a whole to have developed the definite orbital dead centers characteristic of spiral nebulae. The mean motion of the flying planet followed that arc scrupulously. But at the speed at which Hern VI was traveling a velocity which could not be expressed comfortably even in multiples of C the old arbitrary velocity of light the slightest variation from that orbit became a careening side jaunt of horrifying proportions before even the microsecond reactions of he City Fathers could effect the proper corrections. Like other starmen Amalfi was accustomed enough to traveling at transphotic speeds in space a medium ordinarily without enough landmarks to make real velocity very apparent. And like all Okies he had traveled on planets in creeping ground vehicles which seemed to be making dangerous speed simply because there were so many nearby reference points to make that speed seem great. Now he was finding out what it was like to move among the stars at a comparable velocity. For at the velocity of Hern VI the stars became almost as closely spaced as the girders beside a subway track with the added hazard that the track frequently swerved enough to place two or three girders in a row between the rails. More than once Amalfi stood frozen on the balcony in the belfry of City Hall watching a star that had been invisible half a second before cannoning directly at his head swelling to fill the whole sky with glare Blackness. Amalfi felt irrationally that there should have been an audible whoosh as Hern VI passed that star. His face still tingled with the single blast of its radiation which had bathed him despite the planet s hard driven and nearly cross polarized spindizzy screen at that momentary perihelion. There was nothing the matter of course with the orbit corrections of the City Fathers. The difficulty was simply that Hern VI was not a responsive enough space craft to benefit by really quick orbital corrections. It took long seconds for the City Fathers orders to be translated into enough vector thrust to affect the flight of the dead planet over parsecs of its shambling paretic stride. And there was another major reason: when all of Hern VI s axial rotation had been converted to orbital motion .all of a considerable axial libration had also been converted and there was nothing that could be done about the kinks this put in the planet s course. Possibly had Amalfi spotted his own city s spindizzies over the surface of the planet as he had those of the all purpose city and the plague city Hern VI might have been more sensitive to the space stick at the very least the libration could have been left as real libration for it wouldn t have mattered had the planet heeled a little this way and that as long as it kept a straight course. But Amalfi had left the city s drivers undisturbed for the most cogent of all reasons: for the survival of the city. Only one of the machines was participating at all in the flight of Hern VI that being the big pivot spindizzy at Sixtieth Street. The others including the decrepit but now almost cool Twenty third Street machine rested. .. . calling the free planet calling the free planet ... is there anybody alive on that thing . . . EPSILON CRUCIS HAVE YOU SUCCEEDED IN RAISING THE BODY THAT JU T PASSED YOU . . . CALLING THE FREE PLANET YOU RE ON COLLISION COURSE WITH US HELL AND DAMNATION . . . CALLING ETA PALINURI THE FREE PLANET JUST GAVE US A HAIRCUT AND IT S HEADING for you. It s either dead or out of control . . . Calling the free planet calling the free pla There was no time to answer such frantic calls which poured into the city from outside like a chain of spring freshets as inhabited systems were by passed skirted overshot fringed or actually penetrated. The calls could have been acknowledged but acknowledgment would demand that some explanation be offered and Hern VI would be out of ultraphone range of the questioner before more than a few sentences could be exchanged. The most panicky inquiries might have been answered by Dirac but that had two drawbacks: the minor one that there were too many inquiries for the city to handle and no real reason to handle them the major one that Earth and one other important party would be able to hear the answer. Amalfi did not care too much about what the Earth heard Earth was already hearing plenty about the flight of Hern VI if Dirac transmission could be spoken of as jammed even in metaphor and it could for an infinite number of possible electron orbits in no way presupposes a Dirac transmitter tuned to each one then Earth Dirac boards were jampacked with the squalls of alarmed planets along Hern VI s arc. But about the other party Amalfi cared a great deal. O Brian kept that other party steadily in the center of his drone s field of vision and a small screen mounted on the railing of the belfry showed Amalfi the shining innocuous looking globe whenever he cared to look at it. The newcomer to the Okie jungle and to the March on Earth had made no untoward or even interesting motion since it had arrive Jn the Okies ken. Occasionally it exchanged chitchat with the King of the jungle less often it talked with other cities. Boredom had descended on the jungle so there was now a fair amount of intercity touring but the newcomer was not visited as far as O Brian or Amalfi could tell nor did any gigs leave it. This of course was natural: Okies are solitary by preference and a refusal to fraternize providing that it was not actively hostile in tone would always be understood in any situation. The newcomer in short was giving a very good imitation of being just another member of the hegira just one more Birnam tree on the way to Dunsinane. ... And if anyone in the jungle had recognized it for what it was Amalfi could see no signs of it. A fat star rocketed blue white over the city and Dop plered away into the black shrinking as it faded out. Amalfi spoke briefly to the City Fathers. The jungle would be within sight of Earth within days and the uproar on the Dirac was now devoted more and more to the approach of the jungle less and less to Hern VI. Amalfi had considerable faith in the City Fathers but the terrifying flight of stars past his head could not fail to make him worry about overshooting E Day or undershooting it however accurate the calculations seemed to be. But the City Fathers insisted doggedly that Hern VI would cross the solar system of Earth on E Day and Amalfi had to be as content as he could manage with the answer. On this kind of problem the City Fathers had never been known to be wrong. He shrugged uneasily and phoned down to Astronomy. Jake this is the mayor. Ever heard of something called trepidation Ask me a hard one the astronomer said testily. All right. How do I go about introducing some trepidation into this orbit we re following The astronomer sounded his irritating chuckle. You don t he said. It s a condition of space around suns and you haven t the mass. The bottom limit as I recall is one and five tenths times ten to the thirtieth power kilo grams but ask the City Fathers to be sure. My figure is of the right order of magnitude anyhow. Damn Amalfi said. He hung up and took time out to light a cigar a task complicated by the hurtling stars in the corner of his eye somehow the cigar seemed to flinch every time one went by. He lit the nervous cheroot and called Hazleton next. Mark you once tried to explain to me how a musician plays the beginning and the end of a piece a little bit faster than normal so that he can play the middle section a little bit slower. Is that the way it goes Yes that s tempo rubato literally robbed time. What I want to do is introduce something like that into the motion of this rock pile as we go across the solar system without any loss in total transit time. Any ideas There was a moment s silence. Nothing occurs to me boss. Controlling that kind of thing is almost purely intuitional. You could probably do it better by personal control than O Brian could set it up in the piloting section. Okay. Thanks. Another dud. Personal control was out of the question at this speed for no human pilot not even Amalfi had reflexes fast enough to handle Hern VI directly. It was precisely because he wanted to be able to handle the planet directly for a second or so of its flight that he wanted the trepidation introduced and even then he would be none too sure of his ability to make the one critical razor edged alteration in her course which he knew he would need. Carrel Come up here will you The boy arrived almost instantly. On the balcony he watched the hurtling passage of stars with what Amalfi suspected was sternly repressed alarm. Carrel you began with us as an interpreter didn t you You must have had frequent occasion to use a voice writer then. Yes sir I did. Good. Then you ll remember what happens when the carriage of the machine returns and spaces for another line. It brakes a little in the middle of the return so it won t deform the carriage stop by constantly slamming into it isn t that right Well what I want to know is: How is that done On a small machine the return cable is on a cam instead of a pulley Carrel said frowning. But the big multiplex machines that we use at conclaves are electronically controlled by something called a klystron how that works I ve no idea. . Find out Am dfi said. Thanks Carrel that s just what I was looking for. I want such an apparatus cut into our present piloting circuit so as to give us the maximum braking effect as we cross Earth s solar system that s compatible with our arriving at the cloud on time. Can it be done Yes sir that sounds fairly easy. He went below without being dismissed a second later a swollen and spotted red giant sun skimmed the city seemingly by inches. The phone buzzed. Mr. Mayor O Brian here. The cities are coming up on Earth. Shall I put you through Amalfi started. Already The city was still megaparsecs away from the rendezvous it was literally impossible to conceive of any speed which would make arrival on time possible. The mayor suddenly began to find the subway pillar flashing of the stars reassuring. Yes O Brian hook up the big helmet and stand by. Give me full Dirac on all circuits and have our alternate course ready to plug in. Has Mr. Carrel gotten in touch with you yet No sir the pilot said. But there s been some activity from the City Fathers in the piloting banks which I assumed was by your orders or one of the city manager s. Apparently we re to be out of computer control at opposition. That s right. Okay O Brian put me through. Amalfi donned the big helmet... ... and was back in the jungle. The entire pack of cities decelerating heavily now was entering the local group an arbitrary sphere with a radius of fifty light years with Earth s sun at its center. This was the galaxy s center of population still despite the . outward movement which had taken place for the past centuries and the challenges which were now ringing around the heads of the Okies were like voices from history: 40 Eridani Procyon Kruger 60 Sirius 61 Cygni Altair RD 4 4048 Wolf 359 Alpha Centauri ... to hear occasionally from Earth itself was no novelty but these challenges were almost like being hailed by ancient Greece or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The jungle King had succeeded by now in drumming the hobo cities into a roughly military formation: a huge cone eighteen million miles along its axis. The cone was pointed by smaller towns unlikely to possess more than purely defensive armament. Just behind the point which was actually rounded into a paraboloid like the head of a comet the largest cities rode in the body of the cone. These included the King s own town but did not include the newcomer which despite its size was flying far behind roughly on the rim of the cone it was this positioning which made it possible for Amalfi s drone to see almost the entire cone in the first place for O Brian s orders were to keep the big sphere in view regardless of how much of the jungle he had to sacrifice. The main wall of the cone was made up mostly of medium sized heavy duty cities again unlikely to be heavily armed but having the advantage of mounting spindizzy equipment which oould be polarized to virtual opacity to any attack but that of a battleship. All in all Amalfi thought a sensible organization of the materials at hand. It suggested power in reserve plus considerable defensive ability without at the same time advertising any immediate intention to attack. He settled the heavy viewing helmet more comfortably on his shoulders and laid one hand on the balcony railing near the space stick. Simultaneously a voice rang in his ears. Earth Security Center calling the Cities the voice said heavily. You are ordered to kill your velocity and remain where you are pending an official investigation of your claims. Not bloody likely the King s voice said You are further warned that current Rulings in Council forbid any Okie city to approach Earth more closely than ten light years. Current Rulings also forbid gatherings of Okie cities in any numbers greater than four. However we are empowered to tell you that this latter Ruling will be set aside for the duration of the investigation provided that the approach limit is not crossed. We re crossing it the King said. You re going to take a good look at us. We re not going to form another jungle out here we didn t come this far for nothing. Under such circumstances the speaker at Earth Security continued wittf the implacable indifference of the desperate bureaucrat operating by the book the law prescribes that participating cities be broken up. The full penalty will be applijfed in this case as in all cases. No it won t either any more than it is in ninety four cases out of a hundred. We re not a raiding force and we aren t threatening Earth with anything but a couple of good loud beefs. We re here because we couldn t hope for a fair deal any other way. All we want is justice. You ve been warned. So have you. You can t attack us. You don t dare to. We re citizens not crooks. We want justice done us and we re coming on in to see that it gets done. There was a sudden click as the City Fathers Dirac scanner picked up a new frequency. The new voice said: Attention Police Command Thirty two Command HQ speaking for Vice Admiral MacMillan. Blue alert blue alert. Acknowledge. Another click this time to the frequency the King used to communicate with the jungle. Pull up you guys the King said. Hold formation but figure to make camp fifteen degrees north of the ecliptic in the orbit of Saturn but about ten degrees ahead of the planet. I ll give you the exact coordinates later. If they won t dicker with us there we ll move on to Mars and really throw a scare into them. But we ll give them a fair chance. How do you know they ll give us a fair chance someone asked petulantly. Go back to the Acolytes if you can t take it here. Damned if I care. Click. Hello Command HQ. Command Thirty two acknowledging blue alert for Commander Eisenstein. Command Thirty two blue alert. Click. Hey you guys at the base of the cone pull up You re piling up on us. Not in our tanks Buda Pesht. Look again dammit. I m getting a heavy mass gain here Click. Attention Police Command Eighty three Command HQ speaking for Vice Admiral MacMillan. Blue alert blue alert. Acknowledge. Attention Police Command Thirty two red alert red alert. Acknowledge. Eisenstein Command Thirty two red alert acknowledged. Click. Calling Earth Proserpine Two station calling Earth Security. We are picking up some of the cities. Instructions Where the hell is Prosperine Amalfi asked the City Fathers. PROSERPINE IS A GAS GIANT ELEVEN THOUSAND MILES IN DIAMETER OUTSIDE THE ORBIT OF PLUTO AT A DISTANCE OF All right. Shut up. Earth Security. Keep your nose clean Prosperine Two. Command HQ is handling this situation. Take no action. Click. Hello Commands HQ. Command Eighty three acknowledging blue alert for Lieutenant Commander Fiorelli. Command Eighty three blue alert. Click. Buda Pesht they re bracketing us I know it. Make camp like I said. They don t dare lay a finger on us until we commit an actual aggression and they know it. Don t let a show of cops bluff you now. Click. Pluto station. We re picking up the vanguard of the cities. Sit tight Pluto. You won t get them again until they ve made camp we re in opposition with Prosperine but Neptune and Uranus are out of the line of flight entirely Sit tight. Earth s sun grew gradually in Amalfi s view growing only with the velocity of the drone which was the velocity of the jungle. Earth s sun was still invisible from the city itself. In the helmet it was a yellow spark without detectable disc like a carbon arc through a lens system set at infinity. But it was inarguably the home sun. There was a curious thickness in Amalfi s throat as he looked at it. At this moment Hern VI was screeching across the center of the galaxy that center where there was no condensation of stars such as other galaxies possessed visible from Earth because of the masking interstellar dust clouds the hurtling planet had just left behind it a black nebula in which every sun was an apparition and every escape from those a miracle. Ahead was the opposite limb of the Milky Way filled with new wonder. Amalfi could not understand why the tiny undistinguished yellow spark floating in front of him in the helmet made his eyes sting and water so intolerably. The jungle was almost at a halt now already down to interplanetary speeds and still decelerating. In another ten minutes the cities were at rest with reference to the sun and from the drone Amalfi could see not very far away as he was accustomed to think of spatial distance something else he had seen only once before: the planet Saturn. No Earthly amateur astronomer with a new uncertain badly adjusted home reflector ever could have seen the ringed giant with fresher eyes. Amalfi was momentarily stupefied. What he saw was not only incredibly beautiful but obviously impossible. A gas giant with rigid rings Why had he ever left the Sol system at all with a world so anomalous in his very back yard And the giant had another planet circling it too a planet more than 3 000 miles through in addition to the usual family of satellites of Hern VFs order of size. Click. Make camp the King was saying. We ll be here for a while. Dammit you guys at the base are still creeping on us a little. We re going to have to stop here can t I pound that into your heads We re decelerating in good order Buda Pesht. It s the new city the big job that s creeping. He s in some kind of trouble looks like. From the drone the diagnosis seemed accurate. The enormous spherical object had separated markedly from the main body of the jungle and was now well ahead of the trailing edge of the cone. The whole sphere was wobbling a little as it moved and every so often it would go dim as if under unexpected and uncontrollable polarization. Call him and ask if he needs help. The rest of you take up orbits. Amalfi barked O Brian time Course time sir. How do I know when this space stick comes alive again It s alive now Mr. Mayor the pilot said. The City Fathers cut out as soon as you touch it. You ll get a warning buzzer five seconds before our deceleration starts into the deep part of its curve and then a beep every half second after that to the second inflection point. At the last beep it s all yours for about the next two and a half seconds. Then the stick will go dead and the City Fathers will be back in control. Click. Admiral MacMillan what action do you plan to take now if any Amalfi took an instant dislike to the new voice on the Dirac. It was flat twangy and as devoid as a vodeur of emotion except perhaps for a certain self righteousness tinged with Angst. Amalfi decided at once that in a face to face meeting the speaker would always look somewhere else than into the face of the man to whom he was speaking. The owner of that voice could not possibly be anywhere on the surface of the Earth looking aloft for besiegers or going doggedly about his business he was instead almost surely crouched in some subcellar. None sir at the moment said the cops Command HQ. They ve stopped and appear to be willing to listen to reason. I have assigned Commander Eisenstein to cover their camp against any possible disturbance. Admiral these cities have broken the law. They re here in defiance of our approach limits and the very size of their gathering is illegal. Are you aware of that Yes Mr. President Command HQ said respectfully. If you wish me to order individual arrests No no we can t jail a whole pack of flying tramps. I want action Admiral. These people need to be taught a lesson. We can t have fleets of cities approaching Earth at will it s a bad precedent. It indicates a decline of interstellar morality. Unless we return to the virtues of the pioneers the lights will go out all over Earth and grass will grow in the space lanes. Yes sir said Command HQ. Well spoken if you will permit me to say so. I stand ready for your orders Mr. President. My orders are to do something. That camp is a fester ing sore on our heavens. I hold you personally responsible. Yes sir. The Admiral s voice was very crisp. Commander Eisenstein proceed with Operation A. Command Eighty two red ale t .Ted alert. Command Eighty two acknowledging red alert. Eisenstein calling Command HQ. Command HQ. MacMillan I m taping my resignation over to you. The President s instructions don t specify Operation A. I won t be responsible for it. Follow orders Commander Command HQ said pleasantly. I will accept your resignation when the maneuver is completed. The cities hung poised tensely in their orbits. For seconds nothing happened. Then pear shaped bumpy police battleships began springing out of nothingness around the jungle. Almost instantly four cities raved into boiling clouds of gas. The Dinwiddie pickup in the proxy backed itself hurriedly down the intensity scale until it could see again through the glare. The cities were still hanging there seemingly stunned as was Amalfi for he had not imagined that Earth could have come to such a pass. Only an ideal combination of guilt and savagery could have produced so murderous a response but evidently the president and MacMillan made up between them the necessary combination ... Click. Fight the King s voice roared. Fight you lunkheads They re going to wipe us out Fight Another city went up. The cops were using Bethe blasters the Dinwiddie circuit stopped down to accommodate the hydrogen helium explosions could not pick up the pale guide beams of the weapons it would have been decidedly difficult to follow the King s order effectively. But the city of Buda Pesht was already sweeping forward out of the head of the cone arcing toward Earth. It spat murder back at the police ships and actually caught one. The mass of incandescent melting metal appeared as a dim blob in Amalfi s helmet then faded out again. A few cities followed the King then a Jarger number and then suddenly a great wave. Click. MacMillan stop them I ll have you shot They re going to invade New police craft sprang into being every second. A haze gradually began to define the area of the Okie encampment: a planetary nebula of gas molecules dust and condensations of metal and water vapor. Through it the Bethe guide beams played just on the edge of visibility now but the sun too was acting on the cloud and the whole mass was beginning to re radiate casting a deepening luminous veil over the whole scene about which the Dinwiddie circuit could do very little. The whole spectacle reminded Amalfi of NGC 1435 in Taurus with exploding cities substituting novas for the Pleiades. But there were more novas than the cities could account for novas outside the cone of the encampment. The police craft Amalfi noted with amazement were beginning to burst almost as fast as they appeared. The swarming disorganized cities were fighting back but their inherent inefficiency as fighting machines ruled them out as the prime causes of such heavy police losses. Something else something new was happening something utterly deadly was loose among the cops ... Command Eighty two Operation A sub a on the double A police monitor blew up with an impossible soundless flare. The cities were winning. Any police battleship could handle any three cities without even beginning to breathe hard and there had been at least five battleships per city when the pogrom had started. The cities hadn t had a chance. Yet they were winning. They streamed on toward Earth boiling with rage and the police ships with their utterly deadly weapons exploded all over the sky like milkweed. And a little bit ahead of the maddened cities an enormous silver sphere wallowed toward Earth apparently out of control. Amalfi could now see Earth herself as the tiniest of blue green dots. He did not try to see it any better though it was growing to a disc with fantastic speed. He did not want to see it. His eyes were already fogged enough with sentimental tears at the sight of the home sun. But his eyes kept coming back to it. At its pole he caught the shine of ice ... J . . . beep ... The sound shocked him. The buzzer had already sounded without his havulg .heard it. The city would cross the solar system within the next two and a half seconds or less for he had no idea how many beeps had probed at his ears without response during his hypnotic struggle with the blue green planet. He could only guess with the fullest impact of his intuition that now was the time ... Click. . PEOPLE OF EARTH. US THE CITY OF SPACES CALLS UPON YOU ... . He moved the space stick out and back in a flat loop about three millimeters long. The City Fathers instantly snatched the stick out of his hand. Earth vanished. So did Earth s sun. Hern VI began to accelerate rapidly regaining the screeching velocity across the face of the galaxy for which two Okie cities had died. ... YOUR NATURAL MASTERS TO OKAY THE MANS OF STARS WHO THE UNIVERSE UNDERSTANDING LONG LIFE UNDERSTANDING INHERITORS THE INFERIOR HOMESTAYING DECADENT EARTH PEOPLES THEREOVER THE NEW RULERS OF ARE ABOUT TO BE BECOMING. US INSTRUCTS YOU SOON TO PREPARE The mouthy voice abruptly ceased to exist. The blue fleck of light which had been Amalfi s last sight of his ancestral planet had already been gone for long seconds. The whole of Hern VI lurched and rang. Amalfl was thrown heavily to the floor of the balcony. The heavy helmet fell askew on his head and shoulders cutting off his view of the battle in the jungle. But he didn t care. That impact and the death of that curious voice meant the real end of the battle in the jungle. It meant the end of any real threat that might have existed for Earth. And it meant the end of the Okie cities not just those in the jungle but all of them as a class including Amalfi s own. For that impact transmitted to the belfry of City Hall thorough the rock of Hern VI meant that Amalfi s instant of personal control had been fair and true. Somewhere on the leading hemisphere of Hern VI there was now an enormous white hot crater. That crater and the traces of metal salts which were dissolved in its molten lining held the grave of the oldest of all Okie legends: The Vegan orbital fort. It would be forever impossible now to know how long the summated distilled and purified power of the Vegan military conquered once only in fact had been bowling through the galaxy awaiting this one unrepeatable clear lane to a strike. Certainly no answer to that question could be found on the degenerate planets of Vega itself the fort was as much a myth there as it had been any . where else in the galaxy. But it had been real all the same. It had been awaiting its one chance to revenge Vega upon Earth not certainly in the hope of re asserting the blue white glory of Vega over every other star but simply to smash the average planet of the average sun which had so inexplicably prevailed over Vega s magnificence. Not even the fort could have expected to prevail against Earth by itself but in the confusion of the Okies March on Earth and under the expectation that Earth would hesitate to burn down its own citizen cities until too late it had foreseen a perfect triumph. It had swung in from its long legend blurred exile disguised primarily as a city secondarily as a fable to make its last bid. Residual tremors T waves made the belfry rock gently. Amalfi got to his feet steadying himself on the railing. O Brian cast us off. The planet goes on as she is. Switch the city to the alternate orbit. To the Greater Magellanic That s right. Make fast any quake damage pass the word to Mr Hazleton and Mr. Carrel. Yes sir. The Vegan fortress had nearly won at that only the passage of a forlorn and outcast piloted little world had defeated it. But the Earth would never know more than a fraction of that only the fraction which was the passage of Hern VI across the solar system. All the rest of the evidence was now seething and amalgamating in a cooling crater on the leading hemisphere of Hern VI and Amalfi meant to see to it that Hern VI would be lost to Earth forever... As the Earth was lost to Okies from now on. Everyone was in the old office of the mayor: Dee Hazleton Carrel Dr. Schloss Sergeant Andersen Jake O Brian the technics and by extension the entire population of the city through a city wide two way P.A. hookup even the City Fathers. It was the first such gathering since the last election that election having been the one which put Hazleton into office few present now remembered the occasion very well except for the city Fathers and they would be the least likely of all to be able to apply that memory fruitfully to the present meeting. Undertones were not their forte. Amalfi began to speak. His voice was gentle matter of fact impersonal it was addressed to everyone to the city as an organism. But he was looking directly at Hazleton. First of all he said it s necessary for everyone to understand our gross physical and astronomical situation. When we cut loose from Hern VI a while back that planet was well on its way toward the Lesser Magellanic Cloud which for those of you who come from the northerly parts of the galaxy is one of two small satellite galaxies moving away from the main galaxy along the southern limb. Hern Six is still on its way there and unless something unlikely happens to it it will go right on to the Cloud through it and on into deep intergalactic space. We left on it almost all the equipment we had accumulated from other cities while we were in the jungle because we had to. We hadn t the room to take much of it on board our own city and we couldn t stick with Hern VI because Earth will almost certainly chase the planet either until the planet leaves the galaxy or until they re sure we aren t on it any longer. Why sir several voices from the G.C. speaker said almost simultaneously. For a long list of reasons. Our flying the planet across the face of the solar system as well as our flying it through a number of other systems and across main interstellar traffic areas was a serious violation of Earth laws. Furthermore Earth has us chalked up as having sideswiped a city as we went by they don t know the real nature of that city. And incidentally it s important that they never find out even if keeping it a secret results in our being written up in the history books as murderers. Dee stirred protestingly. John I don t see why we shouldn t take the credit. Especially since it really was a pretty big thing we did for the Earth. Because we re not through doing it yet. To you Dee the Vegans are an ancient people you first heard about only three centuries ago. Before that on Utopia you were cut off from the main stream of galactic history. But the fact is that Vega ruled much of the galaxy before Earth did and that the Vegans always were and have just shown us that they still are dangerous people to get involved with. That fort didn t just exist in a vacuum. It had to touch port now and then just as we do. And being a military machine it needed more service and maintenance than it could take care of by itself. Somewhere in the galaxy there is a colony of Vega which is still dangerous. That colony must be kept in utter ignorance of what happened to its major weapon. It must be made to live on faith to believe that the fort failed on its first attempt but may some day be back for another try. It must not know that the fort is destroyed or it will build another one. The second one will succeed where the first one failed. The first one failed because of the nature of the nomadic kind of culture on which Earth has been depending up to now the Okies defeated it. We happened to have been the particular city to do the job but it was no accident that we were on hand to do it. But for quite a while to come Okies are not going to be effective or even welcome factors in the galaxy as a whole and the galaxy Earth in particular is going to be as weak as a baby all during that period because of the depression. If the Vegans hear that their fort did strike at Earth and came within a hair s breadth of knocking it out they ll be building another fort the same day they get the news. After that... No Dee I m afraid we ll have to keep the secret. Dee still a little rebellious looked at Hazleton for support but he shook his head. Our own situation right now is neither good nor bad Amalfi continued. We still have Hern VI s velocity. It s enough slower than the velocity we hit when we flew the planet of He to make us readily maneuverable even though clumsily especially since we re so much less massive than a planet. We will be able to make any port of call which is inside the cone our trajectory would describe if we rotated it. Finally Earth has figures only on the path of Hern VI it has ndne on the present path of the city. Cast up against that the fact that our equipment is old and faltering and will never carry us anywhere again under our own steajn. When we land at the next port of call we will be landed for good. We have no money to buy new equipment without new equipment we can t make money. So it will pay us to pick our next stop with great care. That s why I ve asked everybody to sit in on this conference. One of the technics said Boss are you sure it s as bad as all that We should be able to make some kind of repairs THE CITY WILL NOT SURVIVE ANOTHER LANDING the City Fathers said flatly. The technie swallowed and subsided. Our present orbit Amalfi said would lead us eventually out into the greater of the two Magellanic clouds. At our present velocity that s about twenty years journey away still. If we actually want to go there well have to plan on that period stretching on by another six years since the clip at which we re traveling now is so great that we d blow out every driver on board if we undertook normal deceleration. I propose that the Greater Magellanic Cloud is exactly where we want to go. Tumult. The whole city roared with astonishment. Amalfi raised his hand those actually in the room quieted slowly but elsewhere in the city the noise went on for quite a while. It did not seem to be a sound of general protest but rather the angry buzzing of large numbers of people arguing among thmselves. I know how you feel Amalfi said when he could be sure most of them could hear him again. It s a long way to go and though there are supposed to be one or two colonies on the near side of the Cloud there can be no real interstellar commerce there and certainly no commerce with the main body of the galaxy. We would have to settle down maybe even take to dirt farming it would be a matter of giving up being an Okie and giving up being a starman. That s a lot to give up I know. But I want you all to remember that there s no longer any work or any hope of work for us anywhere in the main body of the galaxy even if by some miracle we manage to put our beat up old city back into good order again. We have no choice. We must find a planet of our own to settle down on a planet we can claim as our own. ESTABLISH THIS POINT the City Fathers said. I m prepared to do so. You all know what has happened to the galactic economy. It s collapsed completely. As long as the currency was stable in the main commerce lanes there was some pay we could work for but that doesn t exist any longer. The drug standard which Earth has rigged up now is utterly impossible for the cities because the cities have to use those drugs as drugs not as money in order to stay alive long enough to do business at all. Entirely aside from the possibility of plague and you ll remember I think what we saw of that not so long ago there s the fact that we live literally on longevity. We can t trade on it too. And that s only the beginning. The drug standard will collapse and soonef and more finally than the germanium standard did. The galaxy s a huge place. There will be new monetary standards by the dozens before the economy gets back onto some stable basis. And there will be thousands of local monetary systems in operation before that happens. The interregnum will last at least a century AT LEAST THREE CENTURIES. Very well three centuries. I was being optimistic. In either case it s plain that we can t make a living in an economy which isn t at least reasonably stable and we can t afford to sweat out the waiting period before the galaxy jells again. Especially since we don t know whether the eventual stabilization will have any corner in it for Okies or not. Frankly I don t think the Okies have a prayer of surviving. Earth will be especially hard on them after this march which I took pains to encourage all the same because I was pretty sure we could suck in the Vegans with it. But even if there had been no march the Okies would have been made obsolete by the depression. The histories of depressions show that a period of economic chaos is invariably followed by a period of extremely rigid economic controls during which all the variables the only partially controllable factors like commodity specula I tion unlimited credit free marketing and competitive wages get shut out. Our city represents nearly the ultimate in competitive labor. Even if it lasts through the interregnum which it can t it will be ai anachronism in the new economy. It will almost surely be forced to berth down on some planet selected by the government. My own proposition is simply that we select our own berth long before the government gets around to enforcing its own selection that we pick a place hundreds of parsecs away from the outermost boundary surface that government will think to claim a place which is retreating steadily and at good speed from the center of that government and everything it will eventually want to claim and that once we get there we dig in. There s a new imperialism starting where we used to be free to stay free we ll have to go out beyond any expectable frontier and start our own little empire. But let s face it. The Okies are through. Nobody said anything. Stunned faces scanned stunned faces. Then the City Fathers said calmly THE POINT IS ESTABLISHED. WE ARE NOW MAKING AN ANALYSIS OF THE SELECTED AREA AND WILL HAVE A REPORT FROM THE ASSIGNED SECTION IN FOUR TO FIVE WEEKS. Still the silence persisted in the big chamber. The Okies were testing it almost tasting it. No more roaming. A planet of their own. A city at rest and a sun to come up and go down over it on a regular schedule seasons a quietness free of the eternal whirling of gravity fields. No fear no fighting no defeat no pursuit self sufficiency and the stars only points of light forever. A planetbound man presented with a similar revolution in his habits would have rejected it at once terrified. The Okies however were used to change change was the only stable factor in their lives. It is the only stable factor in the life of a planetbound man too but the planetbound man has never had his nose rubbed in it. Even so had they not been in addition virtually immortal had they been like the people of the old times before space travel pinned like insects on a spreading board to a lifespan of less than a century Amalfi would have been afraid of the outcome. A short lifespan leads to restlessness somewhere within the next few years there has to be some El Dorado fdr the ephemerid. But the conquest of age had almost eliminated that Faustian frenzy. After three or four centuries people grew tired of searching for the unnamable they learned they began to think of the future not as holding a haven of placidity and riches but simply as the realm of things that had not happened yet. They became interested in the budding the unfolding present and thought about the future only with an attitude of indifferent acceptance toward whatever catastrophe it might bring. They no longer burned out their lives seeking catastrophe under the name of security. In short they grew a little more realistic and more than a little tired. Amalfi waited with calm confidence. The smallest objections he knew would come first. He was not anxious to have to cope with them and the silence had lasted so much longer than he had expected that he began to wonder if his argument had become too abstract toward the end. If so a note of naive practicality at this point should be proper.. . This solution should satisfy almost everyone he said briskly. Hazleton has asked to be relieved of his post and this will certainly relieve him of it most effectively. It takes us out of the jurisdiction of the cops. It leaves Carrel as city manager if he still wants the post but it leaves him manager of a grounded city which satisfies me since I ve no confidence in Carrel as a pilot. It Boss let me interrupt a minute. Go ahead Mark. What you say is all very well but it s too damned extreme. I can t see any reason why we have to go so far afield. Granted that the Greater Magellanic is off the course Hern VI is following granted that it s pretty remote granted that even if the cops do go looking for us there it s too big and unpopulated and complex for them to hope to find us. But couldn t we accomplish the same thing without leaving the galaxy Why do we have to take up residence in a cloud that s moving away from the galaxy at some colossal speed THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR MILES PER SECOND. Oh shut up. All right so that s not very fast. Still and all the cloud is a long way away and if you give me the exact figures I ll bust all your tubes and if we ever want to get back to the galaxy again we ll have to fly another planet to do it. All right Amalfi said. What s your alternative Why don t we hftle out in a big cluster in our own galaxy Not a picayune ball of stars like the Acolyte cluster but one of the big jobs like the Great Cluster in Hercules. There must be at least one such in the cone of our present orbit there might even be a Cepheid cluster where spindizzy navigation would be impossible for anybody who didn t know the local space strains. We d be just as unlikely to be traced by the cops but we d still be on hand inside our own galaxy if conditions began to look up. Amalfi did not choose to contest the point. Logically it should be Carrel who was being deprived of the effective command of a flying city who should be raising this objection. The fact that the avowed retired Hazleton had brought it up first was enough for Amalfi. I don t care if conditions ever do look up Dee said unexpectedly. I like the idea of our having a planet of our own and I d want it to be as far away from the cops as we could possibly make it. If that planet really does become ours would it make any difference to us whether Okie cities become possible again two or three centuries from now We wouldn t need to be Okies any longer. You d say that Hazleton said because you haven t lived more than two or three centuries yet and because you re still used to living on a planet. Some of the rest of us are older some of the rest of us like wandering. I m not speaking for myself Dee you know that. I U be happy to get off this junk pile. But this whole proposition has a faint smell to me. Amalfi are you sure you aren t forcing us to set down simply to block a change of administration It won t you know. Amalfi said Of course I know. I m submitting my resignation along with yours the moment we touch ground. Right now I m still an officer of this city and I m doing the job I ve been assigned to do. No I didn t mean that. Let it go. What I still want to know is why we have to go all the way out to the Greater Megellanic. Because it ll be ours Carrel said abruptly. Hazleton swung on him obviously astonished but Carrel s rapt eyes did not see the older man. Not only our planet whichever one we choose but our galaxy. Both the Magellanics are galaxies in little. I know I m a southerner I grew up on a planet where the Magellanics went across the night sky like tornadoes of sparks. The Greater Magellanic even has its own center of rotation I couldn t see it from my home planet because we were too close but from Earth it has a distinct Milne spiral. And both clouds are moving away taking on their own independence from the main galaxy. Hell Mark it isn t a matter of one planet. That s nothing. We won t be able to fly the city but we can build spaceships. We can colonize. We can settle the economy to suit ourselves. Our own galaxy What more could you want It s too easy Hazleton said stubbornly. I m used to fighting for what I want. I m used to fighting for the city. I want to use my head not my back your spaceships your colonization those things are going to be preceded by a lot of plain and simple weeding and plowing. There s the core of my objection to this scheme Amalfi. It s wasteful. It commits us to a situation where most of what we ll have to do will be outside of our experience. I disagree Amalfi said quietly. There are already colonies in the Greater Magellanic. They weren t set up by spaceships. They were set up by cities. No other mechanism could have made the trip at all in those days. So So there s no chance that we ll be able to settle down placidly and get out our hoes. We ll have to fight to make any part of the Cloud our own. It s going to be the biggest fight we ve ever had because we ll be fighting Okies Okies who probably have forgotten most of their history nd their heritage but Okies all the same Okies who had this idea long before we did and who are going to defend their patent. As they have a right to do. Why should we poach on them when a giant cluster would serve us just as well Or nearly as well Because they are poachers themselves and worse. Why would a city go all the way to the Greater Magellanic in the old days when cities were solid citizens of the galaxy Why didn t they settle down in a giant cluster Think Mark They were bindlestiffs. Cities who had to go to the Greater Magellanic because they had committed crimes that made every star in the main galaxy their enemies. You could name one such city yourself and one you know must be out there in that cloud: the Interstellar Master Traders. An d not only because Thor Five still remembers it but because every sentient being in the galaxy burns for the blood of every last man on board it. Where else could it have gone but the Greater Magellanic even though it starved itself for fifty years to make the trip Hazleton began kneading his hands slowly but with great force. His knuckles went alternately white and red as his fingers ground over them. Gods of all stars he said. His lips thinned. The Mad Dogs. Yes They went there if they went any place. Now there s an outfit I d like to meet. Bear in mind that you might not Mark. The Cloud s a big place. Sure sure. And there may be a few other bindlestifts too. But if the Mad Dogs are out there I d like to meet them. I remember being taken for one of them on Thor Five that s a taste I d like to get out of my mouth. I don t care about the others. Except for them the Greater Magellanic is ours as far as I m concerned. A galaxy Dee murmured almost soundlessly. A galaxy with a home base a home base that s ours. An Okie galaxy Carrel said. The silence sifted back over the city. It was not a contentious silence now. It was the silence of a crowd in which each man is thinking for and to himself. HAVE MESSRS. HAZLETON AND CARREL ANY FURTHER ADDITIONS TO THEIR PLATFORMS the City Fathers blared their vodeur voice penetrating flatly into every cranny of the hurtling city. As Amalfi had expected the extended discussion of high policy had convinced the City Fathers that the election was for the office of mayor rather than for that of city manager. IF NOT AND IF THERE ARE NO ADDITIONAL CANDIDATES WE ARE READY TO PROCEED WITH THE TABULATION. For a long instant everyone looked very blank. Then Hazleton too recognized the mistake the City Fathers had made. He began to chuckle. No additions he said. Carrel said nothing he simply grinned transported. Ten seconds later John Amalfi Okie was the mayor elect of an infant galaxy. CHAPTER EIGHT: IMT THE city hovered and then settled silently through the early morning darkness toward the broad expanse of heath which the planet s Proctors had designated as its landing place. At this hour the edge of the misty acres of diamonds which were the Lesser Magellanic Cloud was just beginning to touch the western horizon the whole cloud covered nearly 3 5 of the sky. The cloud would set at 0512 at 0600 the near edge of the home galaxy would rise but during the summer the suns rose earlier. All of which was quite all right with Amalfi. The fact that no significant amount of the home galaxy could begin to show in the night sky for months to come was one of the reasons why he had chosen this planet to settle on. The situation confronting the dying city now and its citizens too posed problems enough without its being recomplicated by an unsatisfiable homesickness. The city grounded and the last residual hum of the spindizzies stopped. From below there came a rapidly rising and more erratic hum of human activity and the clank and roar of heavy equipment getting under way. The geology team was losing no time as usual. Amalfi however felt no disposition to go down at once. He remained on the balcony of City Hall looking at the thickly set night sky. The star density in the Greater Magellanic was very high even outside the clusters often the distances between stars were matters of light months rather than light years. Even should it prove impossible to move the city itself again which was inevitable considering that the Sixtieth Street spindizzy had just followed the Twenty third Street machine into the junk pit it should be possible to set interstellar commerce going here by cargo ship. The city s remaining drivers ripped out and remounted on a one per hull basis would provide the nucleus of quite a respectable little fleet. It would not be jpuch like cruising among the far scattered various clvi zations of the Milky Way had been but it would be commerce of a sort and commerce was the Okies oxygen. He looked down. The brilliant starlight showed that the blasted heath extended all the way to the horizon in the west in the east it stopped about a mile away and gave place to land regularly divided into tiny squares. Whether each of these minuscule fields represented an individual farm he could not tell but he had his suspicions. The language the Proctors had used in giving the city permission to land had had decidedly feudal overtones. While he watched the black skeleton of some tall structure erected itself swiftly near by between the city and the eastern stretch of the heath. The geology team already had its derrick in place. The phone at the balcony s rim buzzed and Amalfi picked it up. Boss we re going to drill now the voice of Hazleton said. Coming down Yes. What do the soundings show Nothing very hopeful but we ll know for sure shortly. This does look like oil land I must say. We ve been fooled before Amalfi grunted. Start boring I ll be right down. He had barely hung up the phone when the burring roar of the molar drill violated the still summer night echoing calamitously among the buildings of the city. It was almost certainly the first time any planet in the Greater Magellanic had heard the protest of collapsing molecules though the technique had been a century out of date back in the Milky Way. Amalfi was delayed by one demand and another all the way to the field so that it was already dawn when he arrived. The test bore had been sunk and the drill was being pulled up again the team had put up a second derrick from the top of which Hazleton waved to him. Amalfi waved back and went up in the lift. There was a strong warm wind blowing at the top which had completely tangled Hazleton s hair under the earphone clips. To Amalfi it could make no such differ ence but after years of the city s precise airconditioning it did obscure things to his emotions. Anything yet Mark You re just in time. Here she comes. The first derrick rocked as the long core sprang from the earth and slammed into its side girders. There was no answering black fountain. Amalfi leaned over the rail and watched the sampling crew rope in the cartridge and guide it back down to the ground. The winch rattled and choked off its motor panting. No soap Hazleton said disgustedly. I knew we shouldn t have trusted the damned Proctors. There s oil under here somewhere all the same Amalfi said. We ll get it out. Let s go down. On the ground the senior geologist had split the cartridge and was telling his way down the boring with a mass pencil. He shot Amalfi a quick reptilian glance as the mayor s blocky shadow fell across the table. No dome he said succinctly. Amalfi thought about it. Now that the city was permanently cut off from the home galaxy no work that it could do for money would mean a great deal to it what was needed first of all was oil so that the city could eat. Work that would yield good returns in the local currency would have to come much later. Right now the city would have to work for payment in drilling permits. At the first contact that had seemed to be easy enough. This planet s natives had never been able to get below the biggest and most obvious oil domes so there should be plenty of oil left for the city. In turn the city could throw up enough low grade molybdenum and wolfram as a byproduct of drilling to satisfy the terms of the Proctors. But if there was no oil to crack for food ... Sink two more shafts Amalfi said. You ve got an oil bearing till down there anyhow. We ll pressure jellied gasoline into it and split it. Ride along a Number Eleven gravel to hold the seam open. If there s no dome we ll boil the oil out. Steak yesterday and steak tomorrow Hazleton murmured. But never steak today. Amalfi swung upon the city manager feeling the blood charging upward through his thick neck. Do you think you ll get fed any other way he growled. This planet is going to be home for us from now on. Would you rather take up farming like the natives I thought you outgrew that notion after the i aid on Gort. That isn t what I meant Hazleton said quietly. His heavily space tanned face could not pale but it blued a little under the tauf leathered bronze. I know just as well as you do that we re here for good. It just seemed funny to me that settling down on a planet for good should begin just like any other job. I m sorry Amalfi said mollified. I shouldn t be so jumpy. Well we don t know yet how well off we are. The natives never have mined this planet to anything like paydirt depth and they refine stuff by throwing it into a stewpot. If we can get past this food problem we ve still got a good chance of turning this whole Cloud into a tidy corporation. He turned his back abruptly on the derricks and began to walk slowly away from the city. I feel like a walk he said. Like to come along Mark A walk Hazleton looked puzzled. Why sure. Okay boss. For a while they trudged in silence over the heath. The going was rough the soil was clayey and heavily gullied particularly deceptive in the early morning light. Very little seemed to grow on it: only an occasional bit of low starved shrubbery a patch of tough nettlelike stalks a few clinging weeds like crab grass. This doesn t strike me as good farming land Hazleton said. Not that I know a thing about it. There s better land farther out as you saw from the city Amalfi said. But I agree about the heath. It s blasted land. I wouldn t even believe it was radiologically safe until I saw the instrument readings with my own eyes. A war Long ago maybe. But I think geology did most of the damage. The land was let alone too long the topsoil s all gone. It s odd considering how intensively the rest of the planet seems to be farmed. They half slid into a deep arroyo and scrambled up the other side. Boss straighten me out on something Hazleton said. Why did we adopt this planet even after we found that it had people of its own We passed several others that would have done as well. Are we going to push the local population out We re not too well set up for that even if it were legal or just. Do you think there are Earth cops in the Greater Magellanic Mark No Hazelton said. But there are Okies and if I wanted justice I d go to Okies not to cops. What s the answer Amalfi We may have to do a little judicious pushing Amalfi said squinting ahead. The double suns were glaring directly in their faces. It s all in knowing where to push Mark. You heard the character some of the outlying planets gave this place when we spoke to them on the way in. They hate the smell of it Hazelton said carefully removing a burr from his ankle. It s my guess that the Proctors made some early expeditions unwelcome. Still Amalfi topped a rise and held out one hand. The city manager fell silent almost automatically and clambered up beside him. The cultivated land began only a few meters away. Watching them were two creatures. One plainly was a man a naked man the color of chocolate with matted blue black hair. He was standing at the handle of a single bladed plow which looked to be made of the bones of some large animal. The furrow that he had been opening stretched behind him beside its fellows and farther back in the field there was a low hut. The man was standing shading his eyes evidently looking across the dusky heath toward the Okie city. His shoulders were enormously broad and muscular but bowed even when he stood erect as now. The figure leaning into the stiff leather straps which drew the plow also was human a woman. Her head hung down as did her arms and her hair as black as the man s but somewhat longer fell forward and hid her face. As Hazleton froze the man lowered his head until he was looking directly at the Okies. His eyes were blue and unexpectedly piercing. Are you the men from the city he said. Hazleton s lips moved. The serf could hear nothing Hazleton was speaking into his throat mikes audible only to the receiver imbedded in Amalfi s right mastoid process. English by the gods of all stars The Proctors speak Interlingua. What s this boss Was the Cloud colonized that far back Amalfi shook his head. We re from the city the mayor said aloud in tthe same tongue. What s your name young fella I Karst lord. Don t call me lord. I m not one of your Proctors. Is this your land No lord. Excuse I have no other word My name is Amalfi. This is the Proctors land Amalfi. I work this land. Are you of Earth Amalfi shot a swift sidelong glance at Hazleton. The city manager s face was expressionless. Yes Amalfi said. How did you know By the wonder Karst said. It is a great wonder to raise a city in a single night. IMT itself took nine men of hands of thumbs of suns to build the singers say. To raise a second city on the Barrens overnight such a thing is beyond words. He stepped away from the plow walking with painful hesitant steps as if all his massive muscles hurt him. The woman raised her head from the traces and pulled the hair back from her face. The eyes that looked forth at the Okies were dull but there were phosphorescent stirrings of alarm behind them. She reached out and grasped Karst by the elbow. It is nothing she said. He shook her off. You have built a city over one of night he repeated. You speak the Engh tongue as we do on feast days. You speak to such as me with words not with the whips with the little tags. You have fine clothes with patches of color of fine woven cloth. It was beyond doubt the longest speech he had ever made in his life. The clay on his forehead was beginning to streak with the effort. You are right Amalfi said. We are from Earth though we left it long ago. I will tell you something else Karst. You too are of Earth. This is not so Karst said retreating a step. I was born here and all my people. None claim Earth blood I understand Amalfi said. You are of this planet. But you are an Earthman. And I will tell you something else. I do not think the Proctors are Earthmen. I think they lost the right to call themselves Earthmen long ago on another planet a planet named Thor Five. Karst wiped his callused palm against his thighs. I want to understand he said. Teach me. Karst the woman said pleadingly. It is nothing. Wonders pass. We are late with the planting. Teach me Karst said doggedly. All our lives we furrow the fields and on the holidays they tell us of Earth. Now there is a marvel here a city raised by the hands of Earthmen there are Earthmen in it who speak to us He stopped. He seemed to have something in his throat. Go on Amalfi said gently. Teach me. Now that Earth has built a city on the Barrens the Proctors cannot hold knowledge for their own any longer. Even when you go we will learn from your empty city before it is ruined by wind and rain. Lord Amalfi if we are Earthmen teach us as Earthmen are teached. Karst said the woman. It is not for us. It is a magic of the Proctors. All magics are of the Proctors. They mean to take us from our children. They mean us to die on the Barrens. They tempt us. The serf turned to her. There was something indefinably gentle in the motion of his brutalized crackle skinned thick muscled body. You need not go he said in a slurred Interlingua patois which was obviously his usual tongue. Go on with the plowing does it please you. But this is no thing of the Proctors. They would not stoop to tempt slaves as mean as we are. We have obeyed the laws given our tithes observed the holidays. This is of Earth. The woman clenched her horny hands under her chin and shivered. It is forbidden to speak of Earth except on holidays. But I will finish the plowing. Otherwise our children will die. Come then Amalfi said. There is much to learn. To his complete consternation the serf went down on both knees. A second later while Amalfi was still wondering what to do next Karst was up again and climbing up onto the Barrens toward them. Hazleton offered him a hand and was nearly hurled like a flat stone through the air when Karst took it the serf was as solid and strong as a pile driver and as sure on his stony feet. Karst will you return before night Karst did not answer. Amalfl began to lead the way back toward the city. Hazleton started down the far side of the rise after them but something moved him to look back again at the litjle scrap of farm. The woman s head had fallen forward again the wind stirring the tangled curtain of her hair. She was leaning heavily into the galling traces and the plow was again beginning to cut its way painfully through the stony soil. There was now of course nobody to guide it. Boss Hazleton said into the throat mike. Are you listening or are you too busy playing Messiah I m listening. I don t think I want to snitch a planet from these people. As a matter of fact I m damned if I will Amalfi didn t answer he knew well enough that there was no answer. The Okie city would never go aloft again. This planet was home. There was no place else to go. The voice of the woman crooning as she plowed dwindled behind them. Her song droned monotonously over unseen and starving children: a lullaby. Hazleton and Amalfi had fallen from the sky to rob her of everything but the stony and now unharvestable soil. The city was old unlike the men and women who manned it who had merely lived a long time which is quite a different thing. And like any old intelligence its past sins lay very near the surface ready for review either in nostalgia or in self accusation at the slightest cue. It was difficult these days to get any kind of information out of the City Fathers without having to submit to a lecture couched in as high a moral tone as was possible to machines whose highest morality was survival. Amalfi knew well enough what he was letting himself in for when he asked the City Fathers for a review of the Violations docket. He got it and in bells big bells. The City Fathers gave him everything right down to the day six hundred years ago when they had discovered that nobody had dusted the city s ancient subways since the managership of deFord. That had been the first time the younger Okies had heard that the city had ever had any subways. But Amalfi stuck to the job though his right ear ached with the pressure of the earphone. Out of the welter of minor complaints and wistful recollections of missed opportunities certain things came through clearly and urgently. Amalfi sighed. In the end it appeared that the Earth cops would remember Amalfi s city for two things only. One: The city had a long Violations docket and still existed to be brought to book on it. Two: The city had gone out toward the Greater Magellanic just as a far older and blacker city had done centuries before the city which had perpetrated the massacre on Thor V the city whose memory still stank in the nostrils of cops and surviving Okies alike. Amalfi shut off the City Fathers in mid reminiscence and removed the phone from his aching ear. The control boards of the city stretched before him still largely useful but dead forever in one crucial bloc the bank that had once flown the city from star to new star. The city was grounded it had no choice now but to accept and then win this one poor planet for its own. the cops woidd let it. The Magellanic Clouds were of course moving steadily and with increasing velocity away from the home galaxy. It would take the cops time to decide that they should make that enormously long flight in pursuit of one miserable Okie. But in the end they would make that decision. The cleaner the home galaxy became of Okies and there was no doubt but that the cops had by now broken up the majority of the space faring cities the greater the urge would become to track down the last few stragglers. Amalfi had no faith hi the ability of a satellite star cloud to outrun human technology. By the time the cops were ready to cross from the home lens to the Greater Magellanic they would have the techniques with which to do it and techniques far less clumsy than Amalfi s city had used. If the cops wanted to chase the Greater Magellanic they would find ways to catch it. If ... Amalfi put the earphone on again. Question he said. Will the need to catch us be urgent enough to produce the necessary techniques in time The City Fathers hummed drawn momentarily from then eternal mulling over the past. At last they said: YES MAYOR AMALFI. BEAR IN MIND THAT WE ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS CLOUD. REMEMBER THOR FIVE. There it was: the ancient slogan that had made Okies hated even on planets that had never seen an Okie city and could never expect to. There was only the smallest chance that the city which had wrought that atrocity had made good its escapf 0 this Cloud it had all happened a long time ago. But even the narrow chance if the City Fathers were right would bring the cops here sooner or later to destroy Amalfi s own city in expiation of that still burning crime. Remember Thor V. No city would be safe until that raped and murdered world could be forgotten. Not even out here in the virgin satellites of the home lens. Boss Sorry we didn t know you were busy. But we ve got an operating schedule set up as soon as you re ready to look at it. I m ready right now Mark Amain said turning away frop the boards. Hello Dee. How do you like your plan.t The girl smiled. It s beautiful she said simply. For the most part anyway Hazleton agreed. This heath is an ugly place but the rest of the land seems to be excellent much better than you d think it from the way it s being farmed. The tiny little fields they break it up into here just don t do it justice and even I know better cultivation methods than these serfs do. I m not surprised Amalfl said. It s my theory that the Proctors maintain their power partly by preventing the spread of any knowledge about farming beyond the most rudimentary kind. That s also the most rudimentary kind of politics as I don t need to tell you. On the politics Hazleton said evenly we re in disagreement. While that s ironing itself out the business of running the city has to go on. All right Amain said. What s on the docket I m having a small plot on the heath next to the city turned over and conditioned for some experimental plantings and extensive soil tests have already been made. That s purely a stop gap of course. Eventually we ll have to expand onto good land. I ve drawn up a tentative contract of lease between the city and the Proctors which provides for us to rotate ownership geographically so as to keep displacement of the serfs at a minimum and at the same time opens a complete spectrum of seasonal plantings to us essentially it s the old Limited Colony con tract but heavily Weighed in the direction of the Proctors prejudices. There s no doubt in my mind but that they ll sign it. Then They won t sign it Amalfi said. They can t even be shown it. Furthermore I want everything you ve put into your experimental plot here on the heath yanked out. Hazleton put a hand to his forehead in frank exasperation. Oh hell boss he said. Don t tell me that we re still not at the end of the old squirrel cage routine intrigue intrigue and then more intrigue. I m sick of it I ll tell you that directly. Isn t a thousand years enough for you I thought we had come to this planet to settle down We did. We will. But as you reminded me yourself yesterday there are other people in possession of this planet at the moment people we can t legally push out. As matters stand right now we can t give them the faintest sign that we mean to settle here they re already intensely suspicious of that very thing and they re watching us for evidence of it every minute. Oh no Dee said. She came forward swiftly and put a hand on Amalfi s shoulder. John you promised us after the March was over that we were going to make a home here. Not necessarily on this planet but somewhere in the Cloud. You promised John. The mayor looked up at her. It was no secret to her or to Hazleton either that he loved her they both knew as well the cruelly just Okie law and the vein of iron loyalty in Amalfi that would have compelled him to act by that law even if it had never existed. Until the crisis in the jungle had forced Amalfi to reveal to Hazleton the existence of that love neither of the two youngsters had more than suspected it over a period of nearly three centuries. But Dee was comparatively new to Okie mores and was in addition a woman. Only to know that she was loved had been unable to content her long. She was already beginning to put the knowledge to work. She was certainly not old enough yet to realize that the crisis had passed leaving behind only a residuum of devotion useless to her and to Amalfi alike. She could not know that the person who had replaced her in Amalfi s mind was Karst .that Amalfi was now hearing from the lips of the serf the innocent and vastly touching questions which Dee had once asked that Amalfi had realized that his thousand years of adult life had fitted him to answer not one question but a thousand. Had anyone suggested to her that Amalfi was only just now coming into his full maturity she would .not have understood possibly she might have laughed. Jkmalfi had himself smiled when the realization had come to him. Of course I promised he said. I ve delivered on my promises for a millennium now and I ll continue to do so. This planet will be our home if you ll give me just the minimum of help in winning it. It s the best of all the planets we passed on the way in for a great many reasons including a couple that won t begin to show until you see the winter constellations here and a few more that won t become evident for a century yet. But there s one thing I certainly can t give you and that s immediate delivery. All right Dee said. She smiled. I trust you John you know that. But it s hard to be patient. Is it Amalfi said not much surprised. Come to think of it I remember when the same thought occurred to me back on He. In retrospect the problem doesn t seem large. Boss you d better give us some substitute courses of action Hazleton cut in a little coldly. With the possible exception of yourself every man woman and alley cat in the city is ready to spread out all over the surface of this planet the moment the starting gun is fired. You gave us every reason to think that that would be the way it would happen. If there s going to be a delay you have a good many idle hands to put to work. Use straight work contract procedure all the way down the line. No exploiting of the planet that we wouldn t normally do during the usual stopover for a job. That means no truck gardens or any other form of local agriculture just refilling the oil tanks re breeding the Chlorella strains from local sources for heterosis making up our water losses and so on. The last I heard we were still using the Tx 71105 strain of Chlorella pyrenoidosa that s too high temp an alga for a planet with a winter season like this one. That won t work Hazleton said. It may fool the Proctors Amalfi but how can you fool your own people What are you going to do with the perimeter police for instance Sergeant Andersen s whole crew knows that it won t ever again have to make up a boarding squad or defend the city or take up any other military duty. Nine tenths of them are itching to throw off their harness for good and all and start dirt farming. What am I going to tell them Send em out to your experimental patch on the heath Amalfi said on police detail. Tell em to pick up everything that grows. Hazleton started to turn toward the lift shaft holding out his hand to Dee. Then characteristically he had a third thought and turned back. But why boss he said plaintively. What makes you think the Proctors suspect us of squatting And what could they do about it if we did The Proctors have asked for the standard work contract Amalfi said. They knew what it was they got it and they insist upon its observation to the letter including the provision that the city must be off this planet by the date of termination. As you know that s impossible we can t leave this planet at all. But we ll have to pretend that we re going to leave up to the last possible minute. Hazleton looked stubborn. Dee took his hand reassuringly but it didn t seem to register. As for what the Proctors themselves can do about it Amalfi said picking up the earphones again I don t know. I m trying to find out. But this much I do know: The Proctors have already called the cops. Under the gray hazy light in the schoolroom neutral light which seemed cast like a cloak along the air rather than to illuminate it voices and visions came thronging even into the conscious and prepared mind of the visitor pouring from the memory cells of the City Fathers. Amalfi could feel their pressure just below the surface of his mind it was vaguely unpleasant partly because he already knew what they sought to impart so that the redoubled impressions tended to shoulder forward into the immediate attention nearly with the vividness of immediate experience. He waved a hand before his eyes in annoyance and looked for a monitor found one standing at his elbow and wondered how long he had been there or converse ly how long Amalfi himself had been lulled into the learning trance. Where s Karst he said brusquely. The first serf we brought in I need him. Yes sir. He s in a chair toward the front of the room. The monitor whose function combined the duties of classroom supervisor and nurse turned away briefly to a nearby wall treacher which opened and floated out to him a tall metal tumbler. The monitor took it and led the way through the room threading his way among the scattered couches. Usually most of these were unoccupied since it took less than 500 hours to bring the average child through tensor calculus and hence to the limits of what he could be taught by passive inculcation alone. Now however every couch was occupied and few of them by children. One of the eounterpointing sub audible voices was murmuring: Some of the cities which turned bindlestiff did not pursue the usual policy of piracy and raiding but settled instead upon faraway worlds and established tyrannical rules. Most of these were overthrown by the Earth police the cities were not efficient fighting machines. Those which withstood the first assault sometimes were allowed to remain in power for various reasons of policy but such cases were invariably barred from commerce. Some of these involuntary empires may still remain on the fringes of Earth s jurisdiction. Most notorious of these recrudescences of imperialism was the reduction of Thor Five the work of one of the earliest of the Okies a heavily militarized city which had already earned itself the popular nickname of the Mad Dogs. The epithet current among other Okies as well as planetary populations of course referred primarily... Here s your man the monitor said in a low voice. Amalfi looked down at Karst. The serf had already undergone a considerable change. He was no longer a distorted and worn caricature of a man chocolate colored with sun wind and ground in dirt so brutalized as to be almost beyond pity. He was instead rather like a fetus as he lay curled on the couch innocent and still perfectable as yet unmarked by any experience which counted. His past and there could hardly have been much of it for although he had said that his present wife Eedit had been his fifth he was obviously scarcely twenty years old had been so completely monotonous and implacable that given the chance he had sloughed it off as easily and totally as one throws away a single garment. He was Amalfi realized much more essentially a child than any Okie infant would ever be. The monitor touched Karst s shoulder and the serf stirred uneasily then sat up instantly awake his intense blue eyes questioning Amalfi. The monitor handed him the anodized aluminum tumbler now beaded with cold and Karst drank from it. The pungent liquid made him sneeze quickly and without seeming to notice that he had sneezed like a cat. How s it coming through Karst Amalfi said. It is very hard the serf said. He took another pull at the tumbler. But once grasped it seems to bring everything into flower at once. Lord Amalfi the Proctors claim that IMT came from the sky on a cloud. Yesterday I only believed that. Today I think I understand it. I think you do Amalfi said. And you re not alone. We have serfs by scores in the city now learning just look around you and you ll see. And they re learning more than just simple physics or cultural morphology. They re learning freedom beginning with the first one freedom to hate. I know that lesson Karst said with a profound and glacial calm. But you awakened me for something. I did the mayor agreed grimly. We ve got a visitor we think you ll be able to identify: a Proctor. And he s up to something that smells damned funny to me and Hazleton both but we can t pin down what it is. Come give us a hand will you You d better give him some time to rest Mr. Mayor the monitor said disapprovingly. Being dumped out of hypnopaedic trance is a considerable shock he ll need at least an hour. Amalfi stared at the monitor incredulously. He was about to note that neither Karst nor the city had the hour to spare when it occurred to him that to say so would take ten words where one was plenty. Vanish he said. The monitor did his best. Karst looked intently at the judas. The man on the screen had his back turned he was looking into the big operations tank in the city manager s office. The indirect light beamed on his shaved and oiled head. Amalfi watched over Karst s left shoulder his teeth sunk firmly in a new cigar. Why the man s as bald as I am the mayor said. And he can t be i u h past his adolescence judging by his skull he s forty five at the most. Recognize him Karst Not yet Karst said. All the Proctors shave their heads. If he would only turn around ah. Yes. That s Heldon. I have seen him myself only once but he is easy to recognize. He is young as the Proctors go. He is the stormy petrel of the Great Nine some think him a friend of the serfs. At least he is less quick with the whip than the others. What would he be wanting here Perhaps he will tell us. Karst s eyes remained fixed upon the Proctor s image. Your request puzzles me Hazleton s voice said issuing smoothly from the speaker above the judas. The city manager could not be seen but his expression seemed to modulate the sound of his voice almost specifically: the tiger mind masked behind a pussy cat purr as behind a pussy cat smile. We re glad to hear of new services we can render to a client of course. But we certainly never suspected that antigravity mechanisms even existed in IMT. Don t think me stupid Mr. Hazleton Heldon said. You and I know that IMT was once a wanderer as your city is now. We also know that your city like all Okie cities would like a world of its own. Will you allow me this much intelligence please For discussion yes Hazleton s voice said. Then let me say that it s quite evident to me that you re nurturing an uprising. You have been careful to stay within the letter of the contract simply because you dare not breach it any more than we the Earth police protect us from each other to that extent. Your Mayor Amalfi was told that it was illegal for the serfs to speak to your people but unfortunately it is illegal only for the serfs not for your citizens. If we cannot keep the serfs out of your city you are under no obligation to do it for us. A point you have saved me the trouble of making Hazleton said. Quite so. I ll add also that when this revolution of yours comes I have no doubt that you ll win it. I don t know what kinds of weapons you can put into the hands of our serfs but I assume that they are better than anything we can muster. We haven t your technology. My fellows disagree with me but I am a realist. An interesting theory Hazleton s voice said. There was a brief pause. In the silence a soft pattering sound became evident Hazleton s fingertips Amalfi guessed drumming on the desk top as if with amused impatience. Heldon s face remained impassive. The Proctors believe that they can hold what is theirs Heldon said at last If you overstay your contract they will go to war against you. They will be justified but unfortunately Earth justice is a long way from here. You will win. My interest is to see that we have a way of escape. Via spindizzy Precisely. Heldon permitted a stony smile to stir the corners of his mouth. I ll be honest with you Mr. Hazleton. If it comes to war I will fight as hard as any other Proctor to hold this world of ours. I come to you only because you can repair the spindizzies of IMT. You needn t expect me to enter into any extensive treason on that account. Hazleton it appeared was being obdurately stupid. I fail to see why I should lift a finger for you he said. Observe please. The Proctors will fight because they believe that they must. It will probably be a hopeless fight but it will do your city some damage all the same. As a matter of fact it will cripple your city beyond repair unless your luck is phenomenal. Now then: none of the Proctors except one other man and myself know that the spindizzies of IMT are still able to function. That means that they won t try to escape with them they ll try to knock you out instead. But with the machines in repair and one knowledgeable hand at the controls I see Hazleton said. You propose to put IMT into flight while you can still get off the planet with a reasonably whole city. In return you offer us the planet and the chance that our own damages will be minimal. Hmm. It s interesting anyhow. Suppose I take a look at your spin dizzies and see if they re in operable condition. It s been a good many years without doubt and untended machinery has a way of gumming up. If they can still be operated at all we ll talk about a deal. All right It will have to do Heldon grumbled. Amalfi saw in the Proctor s eyes a gleam of cold satisfaction which he recognized at once frbm having himself looked out through it often though never concealing it so poorly. He shut off the screen. Well the mayor said. What s he up to Trouble Karst said slowly. It would be very foolish to give or trade him any advantage. His stated reasons are not his real ones. Of course not Amalfi said. Whose are Oh hello Mark. What did you make of our friend Hazleton stepped out of the lift shaft bouncing lightly once on the resilient concrete of the control room floor. He s a dummox the city manager said but he s dangerous. He knows that there s something he doesn t know. He also knows that we don t know what he s driving at and he s on his home grounds. It s a combination I don t care for. I don t like it myself Amalfi said. When the enemy starts giving away information look out Do you think the majority of the Proctors really don t know that IMT has operable spindizzies I am sure they do not Karst offered tentatively. Both men turned to him. The Proctors do not even believe that you are here to capture the planet. At least they do not believe that that is what you intend and I m sure they don t care one way or the other. Why not Hazleton said. I would. You have never owned several million serfs Karst said without rancor. You have serfs working for you and you are paying them wages. That hi itself is a disaster for the Proctors. And they cannot stop it. They know that the money you are paying is legal with the power of the Earth behind it. They cannot stop us from earning it. To do so would cause an uprising at once. Amalfi looked at Hazleton. The money the city was handing out was the Oc dollar. It was legal here but back in the galaxy it was just so much paper. It was only germanium backed. Could the Proctors be that naive Or was IMT simply too old to possess the instantaneous Dirac transmitters which would have told it of the economic collapse of the home lens And the spindizzies Amalfi said. Who else would know of them among the Great Nine Asor for one Karst said. He is the presiding officer and the religious fanatic of the group. It is said that he still practices daily the full thirty yogas of the Semantic Rigor even to chinning himself upon every rung of the Abstraction Ladder. The prophet Maalvin banned the flight of men forever so Asor would not be likely to allow IMT to fly at this late date. He has his reasons Hazleton said reflectively. Religions rarely exist in a vacuum. They have effects on the societies they reflect He s probably afraid of the spindizzies in the last analysis. With such a weapon it takes only a few hundred men to make a revolution more than enough to overthrow a feudal setup like this. IMT didn t dare keep its spindizzies working. Go on Karst Amalfi said raising his hand impatiently at Hazleton. How about the other Proctors There is Bemajdi but he hardly counts Karst said. Let me think. Remember I have never seen most of these men. The only one who matters it seems to me is Larre. He is a dour faced old man with a pot belly. He is usually on Heldon s side but seldom travels with Heldon all the way. He will worry less about the money the serfs are earning than will the rest. He will contrive a way to tax it away from us perhaps by declaring a holiday in honor of the visit of Earthmen to our planet. The collection of tithes is a duty of his. Would he allow Heldon to put IMT s spindizzies hi shape No probably not Karst said. I believe Heldon was telling the truth when he said that he would have to do that in secret. I don t know Amalfi said. I don t like it. On the surface it looks as though the Proctors hope to scare us off the planet as soon as the contract expires and then collect all the money we ve paid the serfs with the cops to back them up. But when you look closely at it it s crazy. Once the cops find out the identity of IMT and it won t take long they ll break up both cities and be glad of the chance. Karst said. Is this because IMT was the Okie city that did what was done on Thor Five Amalfi suddenly found that he was having difficulty in keeping his Adam s apple where it belonged. Let that pass Karst he growled. We re not going to import that story into the Cloud. That should have been cut from your learning tape. I know it now Karst said calmly. And I am not surprised. The Proctors never change. Forget it. Forget it do you hear Forget everything. Karst can you go back to being a dumb serf for a night Go back to my land Karst said. It would be awkward. My wife must have a new man by now No not back to your land. I want to go with Heldon and look at his spindizzies as soon as he says the word. I ll need to take some heavy equipment and I ll need some help. Will you come along Hazleton raised his eyebrows. You won t fool Heldon boss. I think I will. Of course he knows that we ve educated some of the serfs but that s not a thing he can actually see when he looks at it his whole background is against it. He just isn t accustomed to thinking of serfs as intelligent. He knows we have thousands of them here and yet he isn t really afraid of that idea. He thinks we may arm them make a mob of them. He can t begin to imagine that a serf can learn something better than how to handle a sidearm something better and far more dangerous. How can you be sure Hazleton said. By analogue. Remember the planet of Thetis Alpha called Fitzgerald where they used a big beast called a horse for everything from pulling carts to racing All right: suppose you visited a place where you had been told that a few horses had been taught to talk. While you re working there somebody comes to give you a hand dragging a spavined old plug with a straw hat pulled down over its ears and a pack on its back. Excuse me Karst but business is business. You aren t going to think of that horse as one of the talking ones. You aren t accustomed to thinking of horses as being able to talk at all. All right Hazleton said grinning at Karst s evident discomfiture. What s the main strategy from here on out boss I gather that you ve got it set up. Are you ready to give it a name yet Not quite the mayor said. Unless you like long titles. It s still just another problem in political pseudomorphism. Amalfi caught sight of Karst s deliberately incurious face and his own grin broadened. Or he said the fine art of tricking your opponent into throwing his head at you. CHAPTER NINE: Home IMT was a squat city long rooted in the stony soil and as changeless as a forest of cenotaphs. Its quietness too was like the quietness of a cemetery and the Proctors carrying the fanlike wands of their office the pierced fans with the jagged tops and the little jingling tags were much like friars moving among the dead. The quiet of course could be accounted for very simply. The serfs were not allowed to speak within the walls of IMT unless spoken to and there were comparatively few Proctors in the city to speak to them. For Amalfi there was also the imposed silence of the slaughtered millions of Thor V blanketing the air. He wondered if the Proctors themselves could still hear that raw silence. He got his answer almost at once. The naked brown figure of a passing serf glanced furtively at the party saw Heldon and raised a finger to its lips in what was evidently an established gesture of respect. Heldon barely nodded. Amalfi necessarily took no overt notice at all but he thought: Shh is it I don t wonder. But it s too late Heldon. The secret is out. Karst trudged behind them shooting an occasional wary glance at Heldon from under his tangled eyebrows. His caution was wasted on the Proctor. They passed through a decaying public square in the center of which was an almost obliterated statuary group so weather worn as to have lost any integrity it might ever have had. Integrity Amalfi mused is not a common characteristic of monuments. Except to a sharp eye the mass of stone on the old pedestal might have been nothing but a moderately large meteor riddled .with the twisting pits characteristic of siderites. Amalfi could see however that the spaces sculpted out of the interior of that block of black stone after the fashion of an ancientl Etarth sculptor named Moore had once had meaning. Inside the stone there had once stood a powerful human figure with its foot resting upon the neck of a slighter figure both surrounded by matter but cut into space. Heldon too stopped and looked at the monument. There was some kind of struggle going on inside of him. Amalfi did not know what it was but he had a good guess. Heldon was a young man hence as a Proctor he was probably recently elected. Karst s testimony had made it clear that most of the other members of the Great Nine Asor Bemajdi and the rest had been members of the Great Nine from the beginning. They were in short not the descendants of the men who had ravaged Thor V but those very same men preserved by a jealous hoarding of anti agathics right down to the present. Heldon looked at the monument. The figures inside it made it clear that once upon a time IMT had actually been proud of the memory of Thor V and the ancients of the Great Nine while they might not still be proud were still guilty. Heldon who had not himself committed that crime was choosing whether or not to associate himself with it in fact as he had already associated himself by implication by being a Proctor at all.... Ahead is the Temple Heldon said suddenly turning away from the statue. The machinery is beneath it. There should be no one of interest in it at this hour but I had best make sure. Wait here. No one of interest: that meant the serfs. Heldon had decided he was of the Proctors he had taken Thor V into his pigeon s bosom. Suppose somebody notices us Amalfi said. This square is usually avoided. Also I have men posted around it to divert any chance traffic. If you don t wander away you ll be safe. The Proctor gathered in his shirts and strode away toward the big domed building where he disappeared abruptly down an alleyway. Behind Amalfi Karst began to sing in an exceedingly scratchy voice but very softly a folk tune of some kind obviously. The melody which once had had to do with a town named Kazan was too many thousands of years old for Amalfi to recognize it even had he not been tune deaf. Nevertheless the mayor abruptly found himself listening to Karst with the intensity of a hooded owl sonar tracking a field mouse. Karst chanted: Wild on the wind rose the righteous wrath of Maal vin Borne like a brand to the burning of the Barrens. Arms of hands of rebels perished then Stars nor moons bedecked that midnight. IMT made the sky Fall Seeing that Amalfi was listening to him Karst stopped with an apologetic gesture. Go ahead Karst Amalfi said at once. How does the rest go There isn t time. There are hundreds of verses every singer adds at least dne of his own to the song. It is always supposed to end with this one: Black with their blood was the brick of that barrow Toppled the tall towers crushed to the clay. None might live who flouted Maalvin Earth their souls spurned spaceward wailing IMT made the sky Fall That s great Amalfi said grimly. We really are in the soup just about in the bottom of the bowl I d say. I wish I d heard that song a week ago. What does it tell you Karst said wonderingly. It is only an old legend. It tells me why Heldon wants his spindizzies fixed. I knew he wasn t telling me the straight goods but that old Laputa gag never occurred to me more recent cities aren t strong enough in the keel to risk it. But with all the mass this burg packs it can squash us flat and well just have to sit still for it I don t understand It s simple enough. Your prophet Maalvin used IMT like a nutcracker. He picked it up flew it over the opposition and let it down again. The trick was dreamed up away before space flight as I recall. Karst stick close to me I may have to get a message to you under Heldon s eye so watch for ... Sst here he comes. The Proctor had .been uttered by the alleyway like an untranslatable wordlHe came rapidly toward them across the crumbling flagstones. I think Heldon said that we are now ready for your valuable aid Mayor Amajfi. Heldon put his foot on a jutting pyramidal stone and pressed down. Amalfl watched carefully but nothing happened. He swept his flash around the featureless stone walls of the underground chamber then back again to the floor. Impatiently Heldon kicked the little pyramid. This time there was a protesting rumble. Very slowly and with a great deal of scraping a block of stone perhaps five feet long by two feet wide began to rise as if pivoted or hinged at the far end. The beam of the mayor s flash darted into the opening picking out a narrow flight of steps. I m disappointed Amalfi said. I expected to see Jules Verne come out from under it or Dean Swift. All right Heldon lead on. The Proctor went cautiously down the steps holding his skirts up against the dampness. Karst came last bent low under the heavy pack his arms hanging laxly. The steps felt cold and slimy through the thin soles of the mayor s sandals and little trickles of moisture ran down the close pressing walls. Amalfi felt a nearly intolerable urge to light a cigar he could almost taste the powerful aromatic odor cutting through the humidity. But he needed his hands free. He was almost ready to hope that the spindizzies had been ruined by all this moisture but he discarded the idea even as it was forming in the back of his mind. That would be the easy way out and hi the end it would be disastrous. If the Okies were ever to call this planet their own IMT had to be made to fly again. How to keep it off his own city s back once IMT was aloft he still was unable to figure. He was piloting as he invariably wound up doing in the pinches by the seat of his pants. The steps ended abruptly in a small chamber so small chilly and damp that it was little more than a cave. The flashlight s eyes roved came to rest on an oval doorway sealed off with dull metal almost certainly lead. So IMT s spindizzies ran hot That was already bad news it back dated them far beyond the year to which Amalfi had tentatively assigned them. That it he said. That is the way Heldon agreed. He twisted an inconspicuous handle. Ancient fluorescents flickered into bluish life as the valve drew back and glinted upon the humped backs of machines. The air was quite dry here evidently the big chamber was kept sealed and Amalfi could not repress a fugitive pang of disappointment. He scanned the huge machines looking for control panels or homologues thereof. Well Heldon said harshly. He seemed to be under considerable strain. It occurred to Amalfi that Heldon s strategy might well be a personal flyer not an official policy of the Great Nine in which case it might go hard with Heldon if his colleagues found him in this particular place of all places with an Okie. Aren t you going to make any tests Certainly Amalfi said. I was a little taken aback at their size that s all. They are old as you know said the Proctor. Doubtless they are built much larger nowadays. That of course wasn t so. Modern spindizzies ran less than a tenth the size of these. The comment cast new doubt upon Heldon s exact status. Amalfi had assumed that the Proctor would not let him touch the spindizzies except to inspect that there would be plenty of men in IMT capable of making repairs from detailed instructions that Heldon himself and any Proctor would know enough physics to comprehend whatever explanations Amalfi might proffer. Now he was not so sure and on this question hung the amount of tinkering Amalfi would be able to do without being detected. The mayor mounted a metal stair to a catwalk which ran along the tops of the generators then stopped and looked down at Karst. Well stupid don t just stand there he said. Come on up and bring the stuff. Obediently Karst shambled up the metal steps Heldon at his heels. Amalfi ignored them to search for an inspection port in the casing found one and opened it. Beneath was what appeared to be a massive rectifying circuit plus the amplifier for some kind of monitor probably a digital computer. The amplifier involved more vacuum tubes than Amalfi had ever before seen gathered into one circuit and there was separate power supply to deliver DC to their heaters. Twd of the tubes were each as big as his fist. Karst bent over and slung the pack to the deck. Amalfi drew out of it a length of slender black cable and thrust its double prongs into a nearby socket. A tiny bulb on the other end glowed neon red. Your computer s still running he reported. Whether it s still sane or not is another matter. May I turn the main banks on Heldon I ll turn them on the Proctor said. He went down the stairs again and across the chamber. instantly Amalfi was murmuring through motionless lips into the inspection port. The result to Karst s ears must have been rather weird. The technique of speaking without moving one s lips is simply a matter of substituting consonants which do not involve lip movement such as y for those which do such as w. If the resulting sound is picked up from inside the resonating chamber as it is with a throat mike it is not too different from ordinary speech only a bit more blurred. Heard from outside the speaker s nasopharyngeal cavity however it has a tendency to sound like Japanese Pidgin. Yatch Heldon Karst. See yhich syitch he kulls an nenorize its location. Got it Good. The tubes lit. Karst nodded once very slightly. The Proctor watched from below while Amalfi inspected the lines. Will they work he called. His voice was muffled as though he were afraid to raise it as high as he thought necessary. I think so. One of these tubes is gassing and there may have been some failures here and there. Better check the whole lot before you try anything ambitious. You do have facilities for testing tubes don t you Relief spread visibly over Heldon s face despite his obvious effort to betray nothing. Probably he could have fooled any of his own people without effort but for Amalfi who like any Okie mayor could follow the parataxic speech of muscle interplay and posture as readily as he could spoken dialogue Heldon s expression was as clear as a signed confession. Certainly the Proctor said. Is that all By no means. I think you ought to rip out about half of these circuits and install transistors wherever they can be used we can sell you the necessary germanium at the legal rate. You ve got two or three hundred tubes to a unit here by my estimate and if you have a tube failure in flight well the only word that fits what would happen then is blooey Will you be able to show us how Probably the mayor said. If you ll allow me to inspect the whole system I can give you an exact answer. . All right Heldon said. But don t delay. I can t count on more than another half day at most. This was better than Amalfi had expected miles better. Given that much time he could trace at least enough of the leads to locate the master control. That Heldon s expression failed totally to match the content of his speech disturbed Amalfi profoundly but there was nothing that he could do that would alter that now. He pulled paper and stylus out of Karst s pack and began to make rapid sketches of the wiring before him. After he had a fairly clear idea of the first generator s setup it was easier to block in the main features of the second. It took time but Heldon did not seem to tire. The third spindizzy completed the picture leaving Amalfi wondering what the fourth one was for. It turned out to be a booster designed to compensate for the losses of the others wherever the main curve of their output failed to conform to the specs laid down for it by the crude over all regenerative circuit. The booster was located on the backside of the feedback loop behind the computer rather than ahead of it so that all the computer s corrections had to pass through it the result Amalfi was sure would be a small but serious base surge every time any correction was applied. The spindiz zies of IMT seemed to have been wired together by Cro Magnon Man. But they would fly the city. That was what counted. Amalfi finished his examination of the booster generator and straightened up painfully stretching the muscles of his back. He had no idea how many hours he had consumed. It seemed as though months had passed. Heldon was still watching him deep blue circles under his eyes but still wide awake and watchful. And Amalfi had found no point anywhere in the underground chamber frqjni hich the spindizzies of IMT could be controlled. The dontrol point was somewhere else the main control cable ran into a pipe which shot straight up through the roof of the cavern. . .. IMT made the sky Fall... Amalfi yawned ostentatiously and bent back to fasten the plate over the booster generator s observation port. Karst squatted near him frankly asleep as relaxed and comfortable as a cat drowsing on a high ledge. Heldon watched. I m going to have to do the job for you Amalfi said. It s really major might take weeks. I thought you would say so Heldon said. And I was glad to give you the time to find out. But I don t think we ll make any such replacements. You need em. Possibly. But obviously there is a big factor of safety in the apparatus or we would never have been able to fly the city at all. Not Amalfi noticed our ancestors but we Heldon had identified himself with the crime. He would pay. You will understand Mayor Amalfi that we cannot risk your doing something to the machines that we can t do ourselves on the unlikely assumption that you re increasing their efficiency. If they will run as they are that will have to be good enough. Oh they ll run Amalfi said. He began methodically to pack up his equipment. For a while. I ll tell you flatly that they re not safe to operate all the same. Heldon shrugged and went down the spiral metal stairs to the floor of the chamber. Amalfi rummaged in the pack a moment more. Then he ostentatiously kicked Karst awake and kicked hard for he knew better than to play act with a born overseer for an audience and motioned the serf to pick up the bundle. They went down after Heldon. The Proctor was smiling and it was not a nice smile. Not safe he said. No I never supposed that they were. But I think now that the dangers are mostly political. Why Amalfi demanded trying to moderate his Dreathing. He was suddenly almost exhausted it had taken how many hours He had no idea. Are you aware of the time Mayor Amalfi About morning I d judge Amalfi said dully jerking the pack more firmly onto Karst s drooping left shoulder. Damn late anyhow. Very late Heldon said. He was not disguising his expression now. He was openly crowing. The contract between your city and mine expired at noon today. It is now nearly an hour after noon we have been here all night and morning. And your city is still on our soil in violation of the contract Mayor Amalfi. An oversight No a victory. Heldon drew a tiny silver tube from the folds of his robe and blew into it. Mayor Amalfi you may consider yourself a prisoner of war. The little silver tube had made no audible sound but there were already ten men in the room. The mesotron rifles they carried were of an ancient design probably pre Kammerman like the spindizzies of IMT. But like the spindizzies they looked as though they would work. Karst froze Amalfi unfroze him by jabbing him surreptitiously in the ribs with a finger and began to unload the contents of his own small pack into Karst s. You ve called the Earth police I suppose he said. Long ago. That way of escape will be cut off by now. Let me say Mayor Amalfi that if you expected to find down here any controls that you might disable and I was quite prepared to allow you to search for them you expected too much stupidity from me. Amalfi said nothing. He went on methodically repacking the equipment. You are making too many motions Mayor Amalfi. Put your hands up in the air and turn around very slowly. Amalfi put up his hands and turned. In each hand he held a small black object about the size and shape of an egg. I expected only as much stupidity as I got he said conversationally. You can see what I m holding up there. I can and will drop one or both of them if I m shot. I may drop them anyhow. I m tired of your back cluster ghost town. Heldon snorted. Explosives Gas Ridiculous nothing so small could contain enough energy to destroy the city and you have no ma ks . Do you take me for a fool Events prove ydu one Amalfi said steadily. The possibility was quite large that you would try to ambush me once you had me in IMT. I could have forestalled that by bringing a guard with me. You haven t met my perimeter police they re tough boys and they ve been off duty so long that they d love the chance to tangle with your palace crew. Didn t it occur to you that I left my city without a bodyguard only because I had less cumbersome ways of protecting myself Eggs Heldon said scornfully. As a matter of fact they are eggs the black color is an analine stain put on the shells as a warning. They contain chick embryos inoculated with a two hour alveo lytic mutated Terrestrial rickettsialpox a new airborne strain developed in our own BW lab. Free space makes a wonderful laboratory for that kind of trick an Okie town specializing in agronomy taught us the techniques a couple of centures back. Just a couple of eggs but if I were to drop them you would have to crawl on your belly behind me all the way back to my city to get the antibiotic shot that s specific for the disease we developed that ourselves too. There was a brief silence made all the more empty by the hoarse breathing of the Proctor. The armed men eyed the black eggs uneasily and the muzzles of their rifles wavered out of line. Amalfi had chosen his weapon with great care static feudal societies classically are terrified by the threat of plague they have seen so much of it. Impasse Heldon said at last. All right Mayor Amalfi. You and your slave have safe conduct from this chamber From the building. If I hear the slightest sound of pursuit up the stairs I ll chuck these down on you. They burst hard by the way the virus generates a lot of gas in chick embryo medium. Very well Heldon said through his teeth. From the building then. But you have won nothing Mayor Amalfi. If you can get back to your city you ll be just in time to be an eyewitness of the victory of IMT the victory you helped make possible. I think you ll be surprised at how thorough we can be. No I won t Amalfi said in a flat cold and quite merciless voice. I know all about IMT Heldon. This is the end of the line for the Mad Dogs. When you die you and your whole crew of Interstellar Master Traders remember Thor Five. Heldon turned the color of unsized paper and so surprisingly did at least four of his riflemen. Then the color began to rise in the Proctor s plump fungoid cheeks. Get out he croaked almost inaudibly. Then suddenly at the top of his voice: Get out Get out Juggling the eggs casually Amalfi walked toward the lead radiation lock. Karst shambled after him cringing as he passed Heldon. Amalfi thought that the serf might be overdoing it but Heldon did not notice Karst might as well have been a horse. The lead plug swung to blocking out Heldon s furious frightened face and the glint of the fluorescents on the ancient spindizzies. Amalfi plunged one hand into Karst s pack depositing one egg hi the siliconefoam nest from which he had taken it and withdrew the hand again grasping an ugly Schmeisser acceleration pistol. This he thrust into the waistband of his breeches. Up the stairs Karst. Fast. I had to shave it pretty fine. Go on I m right behind you. Where would the controls for those machines be by your guess The control lead went up through the roof of that cavern. On the top of the Temple Karst said. He was mounting the narrow steps in huge bounds but it did not seem to cost him the slightest effort. Up there is Star Chamber where the Great Nine meets. There isn t any way to get to it that I know. They burst up into the cold stone antechamber. Amalfi s flash roved over the floor found the jutting pyramid Karst kicked it. With a prolonged groan the tilted slab settled down over the flight of steps and became just another block in the floor. There was certainly some way to raise it again from below but Heldon would hesitate before he used it the slab was noisy in motion noisy enough to tell Amalfi that he was being followed. At the first such squawk Amalfi would lay a black egg and Heldon knew it. I want you to get out of the city and take every serf that you can find with you Amalfl said. But it s going to take timing. Somebody s got to pull that switch down below that I asked Y.OU to memorize and I can t do it I ve got to get into Stafl Chamber. Heldon will guess that I m going up there and he ll follow me. After he s gone by Karst you have to go down there and open that switch. Here was the low door through which Heldon had first admitted them to the Temple. More stairs ran up from it. Strong daylight poured under it. Amalfi inched the old door open and peered out. Despite the brightness of the afternoon the close set chunky buildings of IMT turned the alleyway outside into a confusing multitude of twilights. Half a dozen leaden eyed serfs were going by with a Proctor walking behind them half asleep. Can you find your way back into that crypt Amalfi whispered leaving the door ajar. There s only one way to go. Good. Go back then. Dump the pack outside the door here we don t need it any more. As soon as Heldon s crew goes on up these stairs get back down there and pull that switch. Then get out of the city you ll have about four minutes of accumulated warm up time from all those tube stages don t waste a second of it. Got it Yes but Something went over the Temple like an avalanche of gravel and dwindled into some distance. Amalfi closed one eye and screwed the other one skyward. Rockets he said. Sometimes I don t know why I insisted on a planet as primitive as this. But maybe I ll learn to love it. Good luck Karst. He turned toward the stairs. They ll trap you up there Karst said. No they won t. Not Amalfi. But me no huts Karst. Git. Another rocket went over and far away there was a heavy explosion. Amalfi charged like a bull up the new flight of stairs toward Star Chamber. The staircase was long and widely curving as well as narrow and both its risers and its treads were inf uriatingly small. Amalfi remembered that the Proctors did not them selves climb stairs they were carried up them on the forearms of serfs. Such pussy ant steps made for sure footing but not for fast transit. As far as Amalfi was able to compute the steps rose gently along the outside curvature of the Temple s dome following a one and a half helix to the summit. Why Presumably the Proctors didn t require themselves to climb long flights of stairs for nothing even with serfs to carry them. Why couldn t Star Chamber be under the dome with the spindizzies for instance instead of atop it Amalfi was not far past the first half turn before one good reason became evident. There was a rustle of voices jostling its way through the chinks in the dome from below a congregation .evidently was gathering. As Amalfi continued to mount the flat spiral the murmuring became more and more discreet until individual voices could almost be separated out from it. Up there at what mathematically would be the bottom of the bowl where the floor of Star Chamber was the architect of the Temple evidently had contrived a whispering gallery a vault to which a Proctor might put his ear and hear the thinnest syllable of conspiracy in the crowd of suppliants below. It was ingenious Amalfi had to admit. Conspirators on church bearing planets generally tend to think of churches as safe places for quiet plotting. In Amalfi s universe any planet which sponsored churches probably had a revolt coming to it. Blowing like a porpoise he scrambled up the last arc of the long Greek spiral staircase. A solidly closed double door worked all over with phony Byzantine scrolls stood looking down at him. He didn t bother to stop to admire it he hit it squarely under the paired patently synthetic sapphires just above its center and hit it hard. It burst. Disappointment stopped him for a moment. The chamber was an ellipse of low eccentricity monastically bare and furnished only with a heavy wooden table and nine chairs now drawn back against the wall. There were no controls here nor any place where they could be concealed. The chamber was windowless. The lack of windows told him what he wanted to know. The other the compelling reason why Star Chamber was on top of the Temple dome was that it harbored somewhere the pilot s cabin of IMT. And that in as old a city as IMT meant that visibility would be all important requiring a situation8 atop the tallest structure in the city and as close to 360 visibility as could be managed. Obviously Amalfi was not yet up high enough. He looked up at he ceiling. One of the big stone slabs had a semi circular cup in it not much bigger than a large coin. The flat edge was much worn. Amalfi grinned and looked under the wooden table. Sure enough there it was a pole with a hooked bill at one end rather like a halberd slung in clips. He yanked it out straightened and fitted the bill into the opening in the stone. The slab came down easily hinged at one end as the block down below over the generator room had been. The ancestors of the Proctors had not been much given to varying their engineering principles. The free end of the slab almost touched the table top. Amalfi sprang onto the table and scrambled up the tilted face of the stone as he neared the top the translating center of gravity which he represented actuated a counterweighting mechanism somewhere and the slab closed bearing him the rest of the way. This was the control cabin all right. It was tiny and packed with panels all of which were thick in dust. Bull s eyes of thick glass looked out over the city at the four compass points and there was one set overhead A single green light was glowing on one of the panels. While he walked toward it it went out. That had been Karst cutting the power. Amalfi hoped that the peasant would get out again. He had grown to like him. There was something in his weathered immovable shockproof courage and in the voracity of his starved intelligence that reminded the mayor of someone he had once known. That that someone was Amalfi as he had been at the age of twenty five Amalfi did not know and there was no one else alive who would be able to tell him. Spindizzies in essence are simple Amalfi had no difficulty in setting and locking the controls the way he wanted them or in performing sundry small tasks of highly selective sabotage. How he was to conceal what he had done when every move left huge smears in the heavy dust was a tougher problem. He solved it at length in the only possible way: he took off his shirt and flailed it at all of the boards. The result made him sneeze until his eyes watered but it worked. Now all he had to do was get out. There were already sounds below in Star Chamber but he was not yet worried about a direct attack. He still had a black egg and the Proctors knew it. Furthermore he also had the pole with the hooked bill so that in order to open up the control room at all the Proctors would have to climb on each other s shoulders. They weren t in good physical shape for gymnastics and besides they would know that men indulging in such stunts could be defeated temporarily by nothing more complicated than a kick in the teeth. Nevertheless Amalfi had no intention of spending the rest of his life in the control room of IMT. He had only about six minutes to get out of the city altogether. After thinking very rapidly for approximately four seconds Amalfi stood on the stone slab overbalanced it and slid solemnly down onto the top of the table in Star Chamber. After a stunned instant half a dozen pairs of hands grabbed him at once. Heldon s face completely unrecognizable with fury and fear was thrust into his. What have you done Answer or I ll order you torn to pieces. Don t be a lunkhead. Tell your men to let go of me. I still have your safe conduct and in case you re thinking of repudiating it I still have the same weapon I had before. Cast off by God or Heldon s guards released him before he had finished speaking. Heldon lurched heavily up onto the table top and began to claw his way up the slab. Several other robed bald headed men jostled after him evidently Heldon had been driven by a greater fear to tell some of the Great Nine what he had done. Amalfi walked backwards out of Star Chamber and down two steps. Then he bent desposited his remaining black egg carefully on the threshold thumbed his nose at the furious soldiery and took off down the spiral stairs at a dead run. It would take Heldon a while perhaps as much as a minute after he switched on the controls to discover that the generators had been cut out while he was chasing Amalfi and another minute at best to get a flunky down into the basement to turn them on again. Then there would be a warm up time of four minutes. After that IMT would go aloft. Amain1 shot out intojthe alleyway and thence into the street caroming off ri astounded Proctor. A shout rose behind him. He doubled over and kept running. The street was nearly dark in the twilight of the twin suns. He kept in the shadows and made for the nearest corner. The cornice of the building ahead of him abruptly turned lava white then began to dim through the red. He never did hear the accompanying scream of the mesotron rifle. He was concentrating on something else. Then he was around the corner. The quickest route to the edge of the city as well as he could recall was down the street he had just quitted but that was now out of the question he had no desire to be burned down. Whether or not he could get out of IMT in time by any alternate route remained to be seen. Doggedly he kept running. He was fired on once more by a man who did not really know on whom he was firing. Here Amalfi was just a running man who failed to fit the categories any first shot at him would be a reflex of disorientation and aimed accordingly badly.... The ground shuddered ever so delicately like the hide of a monster twitching at flies in its sleep. Somehow Amalfi managed to run still faster. The shudder came again stronger this time. A long protracted groan followed it traveling in a heavy wave through the bedrock of the city. The sound brought Proctors and serfs alike boiling out of the buildings. At the third shock something toward the center of the city collapsed with a sullen roar. Amalfi was caught up in the aimless terrified eddying of the crowd and fought with hands teeth and bullet head.... The groaning grew louder. Abruptly the ground bucked. Amalfi pitched forward. With him went the whole milling mob falling in wind rows like stacked grain. There was frantic screaming everywhere but it was worst inside the buildings. Over Amalfi s head a window shattered explosively and a woman s body came twisting and tumbling through the shuddering air. Amalfi heaved himself up spitting blood and ran again. The pavement ahead was cracked in great irregular shards like a madman s mosaic. Just beyond the blocks were tilted all awry reminding Amalfi irrelevantly of a breakwater he had seen on some other planet in some other century.... He was clambering over them before he realized that these could only mark the rim of the original city of IMT. There were still more buildings on the other side of the huge rock filled trench but the trench itself showed where the perimeter of the ancient Okie city had been sunk into the soil of the planet. Fighting for air with saw edged rales he threw himself from stone to stone toward the far edge of the trench. This was the most dangerous ground of all if IMT were to lift now he would be ground as fine as mincemeat in the tumbling rocks. If he could just reach the marches of the Barrens.... Behind him the groaning rose steadily in pitch until it sounded like the tearing of an endless sheet of metal. Ahead across the Barrens his own city gleamed in the last rays of the twin suns. There was fighting around it little bright flashes were sputtering at its edge. The rockets Amalfi had heard four of them were arrowing across the sky and black things dropped from them. The Okie city responded with spouts of smoke. Then there was an unbearably bright burst. After Amalfi could see again there were only three rockets. In another few seconds there wouldn t be any: the City Fathers never missed. Amalfi s lungs burned. He felt sod under his sandals. A twisted runner of furze lashed across his ankle and he fell again. He tried to get up and could not. The seared turf on which an ancient rebel city once had stood rumbled threateningly. He rolled over. The squat towers of IMT were swaying and all around the edge of the city huge Mocks and clods heaved and turned over like surf. Impos bly a thin line of light intense and ruddy appeared above the moiling rocks. The suns were shining under the ory... The line of light widened. The old city took the air with n immense bound and the rending of the long rooted foundations was ear splitting. From the sides of the huge ass human beings threw themselves desperately toward the Barrens most of them Amalfi saw were serfs. The Proctors of course were still trying to control the flight of IMT.... The city rose majestically. It was gaining speed. Amalfi s heart hsfenmered. If Heldon and his crew could figure out in time what Amalfi had done to the controls Karst s old ballad would be re enacted and the crushing rule of the Proctors made safe forever. But Amalfi had done his work well. The city of IMT did not stop rising. With a profound visceral shock Amalfi realized that it was already nearly a mile up and still accelerating. The air would be thinning up there and the Proctors had forgotten too much to know what to do. ... A mile and a half. Two miles. It grew smaller At five miles it was just a wavery ink blot lit on one side. At seven miles it was a point of dim light. A bristle topped head and a pair of enormous shoulders lifted cautiously from a nearby gully. It was Karst. He continued to look aloft for a moment but IMT at ten miles was invisible. He looked down to Amalfi. Can can it come back he said huskily. No Amalfi said his breathing gradually coming under control. Keep watching Karst. It isn t over yet. Remember that th e Proctors had called the Earth cops At that same moment the city of IMT reappeared in a way. A third sun flowered in the sky. It lasted for three or four seconds. Then it dimmed and died. The cops were warned Amalfi said softly to watch for an Okie city trying to make a getaway. They found it and they dealt with it. Of course they got the wrong city but they don t know that. They ll go home now and now we re home and so are you and your fellow men. Home on Earth for good. Around them there was a murmuring of voices hushed with disaster and with something else too something so old and so new that it hardly had a name on the planet that IMT had ruled. It was called freedom. On Earth Karst repeated. He and the mayor climbed painfully to their feet. What do you mean This is not Earth Across the Barrens the Okie city glittered the city that had pitched camp to mow some lawns. A cloud of stars was rising behind it. It is now Amalfi said. We re all Earthmen Karst. Earth is more than just one little planet buried in another galaxy than this. Earth is much more important than that. Earth isn t a place. It s an idea. THE TRIUMPH OF TIME PROLOGUE To Lester and Evelyn del Rey Bismillahi rrahmani rrahim When the day that must come shall have come suddenly None shall treat that sudden coming as a lie: Day that shall abase Day that shall exalt When the earth shall be shaken with a shock And the mountains shall be crumbled with a crumbling And shall become scattered dust And into three bands shall ye be divided: ... Before thee have we granted to a man a life that shall last forever: If thou then die shall they live forever Every soul shall taste of death: ... But it shall come on them suddenly and shall confound them and they shall not be able to put it back neither shall they be respited. The Koran Sura LVI Sura XXI ... Thus we have seen that Earth a planet like other civilized worlds having a score of myriads of years of atmosphere bound history behind her and having begun manned local space flight in approximately her own year 1960 did not achieve importance on a galactic scale until her independent discovery of the gravitron polarity generator in her year 2019. Her colonials made first contact with the Vegan Tyranny in 2289 and the antagonism between the two great cultures one on its way down the other rapidly developing culminated in the Battle of Al tair in 2310 the first engagement of what has come to be known as the Vegan War. Some 65 years later Earth launched the first of the fleet of space cruising cities the Okies by which it was eventually to dominate the galaxy for a long period and in 2413 the long struggle with the Vegans came to an end with the investment of Vega itself and the Battle of the Forts. The subsequent scorching of the Vegan system by the Third Colonial Navy under Admiral Alois Hrunta prompted Earth proper to indict its admiral in absentia for atrocities and attempted genocide. The case was tried also in absentia by the Colonial Court Hrunta was found guilty but refused to submit to judgment. An attempt to bring him in by force brought home for the first tune the fact that the Third Colonial Navy had defected to him almost en masse and resulted in 2464 in the Battle of BD 40 4048 . Both sides suffered heavy losses but there was no other outcome and Hrunta subsequently declared himself Emperor of Space the first of many such gimcrack empires which were to spawn on the fringes of Earth s jurisdiction during the so called Empty Years. This period officially began in 2522 with the collapse of local government on Earth the Bureaucratic State dating from 2105 which after a brief police interregnum allowed the now large numbers of Okie cities to develop in effectual anarchy a condition very well suited to their proliferation of trade routes throughout the known and unknown galaxy. i We have already discussed the collapse under its own weight of the Hruntan Empire and the final reduction of the fragments by the recrudescent Earth police during the period 3545 3602. We have stressed this relatively minor aspect of Earth history not because it was at all unusual but because it was typical of the balkanization of Earth s official power during the very period when its actual power was greatly on the rise. Our discussion of the history of one of the Okie cities New York N. Y. which began its space flying career in 3111 and thus overlapped much of the history of the Hruntan Empire may be compared to illustrate the difference in the treatment accorded by Earth to her two very different children empires and Okies and history shows the wisdom of the choice for it was the wide ranging Okies who were to make the galaxy an orchard for Earth for a relatively long period as such periods go in galactic history. Customs and cultures pronounced officially dead have however a way of stirring again long after their supposed interment. In some instances of course this is simply a reflex twitch for example though the grandiose collapse of the Earth culture certainly can be said to have begun during the Battle of the Jungle in the Acolyte cluster in 3905 we find only five years later the Acolyte Regent a Lt. Lerner proclaiming himself Emperor of Space but the Acolyte fleet already considerably cut up by its encounter with the Okies in the jungle was annihilated by the Earth police on their arrival a year later and Emperor Lerner died that same year in a slum on a tenthrate Acolyte planet named Murphy from an overdose of wis domweed. On a larger scale the Battle of Earth in 3975 in which Earth found herself pitted against her own Okie cities was marked also by an unexpected resurrection of the Vegan Tyranny whose secretly constructed and long wandering orbital fort chose this moment to make its last bid for galactic power. Its failure was a repetition in miniature of the failure of the entire Vegan Tyranny despite superior force of arms in any conflict with the Earthmen who were far better chessmasters the Vegans characteristically left prediction to computers which lack the ability to make long intuitive leaps as well as the decisiveness to act upon them. The Okie city which had outplayed the Vegan orbital fort in the game of thinking ahead our type city New York was far enough ahead of its own culture to have left the galaxy by 3978 for the Greater Magellanic Cloud. It left behind an Earth which in 3976 cut its own throat as a galactic power with the passage of the so called anti Okie Bill. Though the Magellanic planet which New York colonized in 3998 was in 3999 christened New Earth the earlier date of 3976 marks the passing of Earth from the stellar stage. Already there were reaching out from one of the galaxy s largest and most beautiful star clusters the first tentative strands of that strange culture called the Web of Hercules which was destined to become the Milky Way s IVth great civilization. And yet once more a civilization which from every historical point of view had to be pronounced dead refused to stay entirely buried. The creeping inexorable growth of the Web of Hercules through me heart of the galaxy was destined to be interrupted by that totally revolutionary totally universal physical cataclysm now known as the Ginnangu Gap and though it is due entirely to the Web of Hercules that we still have records of galactic history before that cataclysm and thus a continuity with the universe s past surely unprecedented in all the previous cycles we must note with more than a little awe the sudden and critical reappearance of Earthmen in this tuneless moment of chaos and creation and the drastic and fruitful exeunt which they wrote for themselves into the universal drama. ACREFF MONALES: The Milky Way: Five Cultural Portraits CHAPTER ONE: New Earth In these later years it occasionally startled John Amalfi to be confronted by evidence that there was anything in the universe that was older than he was and the irrationality of his allowing himself to be startled by such a truism startled him all over again. This crushing sensation of age of the sheer dead weight of a thousand years bearing down upon his back was in itself a symptom of what was wrong with him or as he preferred to think of it of what was wrong with New Earth. He had been so startled while prowling disconsolately through the grounded and abandoned hulk of the city itself an organism many millennia older than he was but as befitted such an antiquity now only a corpse. It was indeed the corpse of a whole society for nobody on New Earth now contemplated building any more space cruising cities or in any other way resuming the wandering life of the Okies. Those of the original crew on New Earth spread very thin among the natives and their own children and grandchildren now looked back on that entire period with a sort of impersonal remote distaste and would certainly recoil from the very idea of returning to it should anyone have the bad manners to broach such a notion. As for the second and third generations they knew of the Okie days only as history and looked upon the hulk of the flying city that had brought their parents to New Earth as a fantastically clumsy and outmoded monster much as the pilot of an ancient atmospheric liner might have regarded a still more ancient quinquireme in a museum. No one except Amalfi even appeared to take any interest in what might have happened to the whole of Okie society back in the home lens the Milky Way galaxy of which the two Magellanics were satellites. To give them credit finding out what had happened would in any event have been an almost impossible task all kinds of broadcasts literally millions of them could be picked up easily from the home lens if anyone cared to listen but so much tune had elapsed since the colonization of New Earth that sorting these messages into a meaningful picture would require years of work by a team of experts and none could be found who would take any interest in so fruitless and essentially nostalgic a chore. Amalfi had in fact come into the city with the vague notion of turning the task over to the City Fathers that enormous bank of computing and memory storage machines to which had been intrusted all the thousands of routine technical operational and governmental roblems of the city when it had been in flight. What Amalfi would do with the information when and if he got it he had no idea certainly there was no possibility of interesting any of the other New Earth men in it except in the form of half an hour s idle chatter. And after all toe New Earthmen were right. The Greater Magellanic Cloud was drawing steadily away from the home lens at well over 150 miles per second a trifling velocity in actuality only a little greater than the diameter of the average solar system per year but symbolic of the new attitude among the New Earthmen people s eyes were directed outward away from all that ancient history. There was considerably more interest in a nova which had flared into being in intergalactic space somewhere beyond the Lesser Magellanic than there was in the entire panoply of the home lens visibly though the latter dominated the night sky from horizon to horizon during certain seasons of the year. There was of course still space flight for trade with other planets in the little satellite galaxy was a necessity the trade was conducted for the most part in large cargo hulls and there were a number of larger units such as mobile processing plants which still needed to be powered by gravitron polarityv generators or spindizzies but for the most part the trend was toward the development of local self sufficient industries. It was while he was setting up the City Fathers for the problem in analysis of the million fold transmission from the home lens alone in what had once been his Mayor s Office that Amalfi had suddenly had thrown at him the fragment from the writings of a man dead eleven centuries before Amalfi had been born. Possibly the uttering of the unexpected fragment had been simply an artifact of the warming up process like most computers of their age and degree of complexity it took the City Fathers two to three hours to be otne completely sane after they had been out of service for a while or perhaps Amalfi s fingers working with sure automatism even after all these years had been wiser than his head and without the collusion of Amalfi s consciousness had built into the problem elements of what was really troubling him: the New Earthmen. In either event the quotation was certainly apposite: If this be the whole fruit of victory we say: if the generations of mankind suffered and laid down their lives if prophets and martyrs sang in the fire and all the sacred tears were shed for no other end than that a race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should succeed to protract in saecula saeculorum their contented and inoffensive lives why at such a rate better lose than win the battle or at all events better ring down the curtain before the last act of the play so that a business that began so importantly may be saved from so singularly flat a winding up. What was that Amalfi barked into the microphone. AN EXTRACT FROM THE WILL TO BELIEVE BY WILLIAM JAMES MR. MAYOR. Well it s irrelevant get ydur bottles and firecrackers back on the main problem. Wait a minute is this the Librarian YES MR. MAYOR. What s the date of the work you quoted 1897 MR MAYOR. All right. Switch out and hook into the analytical side of the loop you ve no business at the output end for this problem. A flowmeter needle bobbed upward as the drain of the library machine on the circuit was discontinued for a moment then dipped again. He did not proceed with the project for a while however but instead simply sat and thought about the fragment that the machines had offered him. There were he supposed a few unreconstructed Okies still alive on New Earth though the only one that he knew personally was John Amalfi. He himself had no special nostalgia qua nostalgia for all the history he had outlived for he could hardly forget that it had been by his foreplanning that New Earth had been founded. And for a period of perhaps four years there had been plenty to occupy his mind: the discovery that the planet then unnamed was at. once the refuge and the feudal fief of a notorious pack of bindlestiffs calling itself Interstellar Master Traders better known in the home lens simply as the Mad Dogs had raised a considerable obstacle to colonization the solution of which obviously needed to be drastic and was. But the destruction of IMT in 3948 in the Battle of the Blasted Heath had left Amalfi at long last without problems and without function and he had subsequently found himself utterly unable to become used to living in a stable and ordered society. The James quotation almost perfectly summarized his feelings about the Okie citizens who had once been his charges and their descendants he had of course to excuse the natives who knew no better and were finding the problems of self government an unprecedented challenge after their serfdom under the Mad Dogs. Local space travel he knew very well was no solution for him one planet in the Cloud was very like another and the Cloud itself was only 20 000 light years in diameter a fact which made the Cloud extremely convenient to organize from one administrative center but a fact of no significance whatsoever to a man who had once shepherded his city across 280 000 light years in a single flight. What he missed after all was not space but instability itself the feeling of being on the way to an unknown destination unable to predict what outlandish surprises might be awaiting him at the next planetfall. The fact of the matter was that longevity now hung on him like a curse. An indefinitely prolonged life span had been a prerequisite for an Okie society indeed until the discovery of the anti agathic drugs early in the 21st Century interstellar flight even with the spindizzy had been a physical impossibility the distances involved were simply too great for a short lived man to compass at any finite speed but to be a virtually immortal man in a stable society was to be as uninteresting to one s self for Amalfi at least as an everlasting light bulb he felt that he had simply been screwed into his socket and forgotten. It was true that most of the other former Okies had seemed able to make the change over the youngsters in partxular whose experience of star wandering had been limited were now putting their long life expectancies to the obvious use: launching vast research or development projects the fruition of which could not be expected in under five centuries or more. There was for example an entire research team now hard at work in New Manhattan on the overall prolflem of anti matter. The theoretical brains of the project were being supplied largely by Dr. Schloss an ex Hruntan physicist who had boarded the city back in 3602 as a refugee during the reduction of the Duchy of Gort a last surviving polyp of the extinct Hruntan Empire administration of the project was in the hands of a comparative youngster named Carrel .who not so long ago had been the city s co pilot and ranking understudy to the City Manager. The immediate objective of the project according to Carrel was the elucidation of the theoretical molecular structures possible to anti material atoms but it was no secret that most of the young men in the group with the active support of Schloss himself were hoping in a few centuries to achieve the actual construction not only of simple chemical compounds that might come about in a matter of decades of this radical type but a visible macroscopic artifact composed entirely of anti matter. Upon the unthinkably explosive object they would no doubt paint Amalfi surmised had they by that time also composed an anti material paint and something to keep it in the warning Noli me tangere. That was all very well but it was equally impossible for Amalfi who was not a scientist to participate. It was of course perfectly possible for him to end his life he was not invulnerable nor even truly immortal immortality is a meaningless word in a universe where the fundamental laws being stochastic in nature allow no one to bar accidents and where life no matter how prolonged is at bottom only a local and temporary discontinuity in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The thought however did not occur to Amalfl he was not the suicidal type. He had never felt less tired less used up less despairing than he felt today he was simply snarlingly bored and too confirmed in his millennia old patterns of thought and emotion to be able to settle for a single planet and a single social order no matter how Utopian his thousand years of continuous translation from one culture to another had built up in him an enormous momentum which now seemed to be bearing him irresistibly toward an immovable inertial wall labeled No PLACE To Go. Amalfi So it s you. I might have guessed. Amalfi shot the hold switch closed convulsively and swung around on his stool. He had however recognized the voice at once from centuries of familiarity. He had heafd it often since somewhere around 3500 when the city had taken its owner on board as chief of the astronomy section: a testy and difficult little man with a deceptively mild manner who had never been precisely the chief astronomer that the city needed but who had come through in the pinches often enough to prevent the City Fathers from allowing him to be swapped to another Okie city during the period when such swaps were still possible for Amalfi s town. Hello Jake Amalfi said. Hello John the astronomer said peering curiously at the set up board. The Hazletons told me I might find you prowling around this old hulk but I confess I d forgotten about it by the time I decided to come over here. I wanted to use the computation section but I couldn t get in the machines were all shuttling back and forth on their tracks and coupling and uncoupling like a pack of demented two hundred ton ballet dancers. I thought maybe one of the kids had wandered in up here in the control room and was fooling with the boards. What are you up to It was an extremely pointed question which up to now Amalfi had not asked himself. Even to consider answering Jake by describing the message analysis project was to reject it not that Jake would care one way or the other but to Amalfi s inner self the answer would be an obvious blind. He said: I don t quite know. I had an urge to look around the place again. I hate to see it going to rust I keep thinking it must still be good for something. It is it is Jake said. After all there are no computers quite like the City Fathers anywhere else on New Earth let alone anywhere else in the Magellanics. I call on them pretty frequently when there s anything really complicated to be worked on so does Schloss I understand. After all the City Fathers know a great deal that nobody else around here can know and old though they are they re still reasonably fast. I think there must be more to it than that Amalfi said. The city was powerful is powerful still the central pile is good for a million years yet at a minimum and some of the spindizzies must still be operable providing that we ever again1 find anything big enough to need all the lifting power we ve got concentrated down below in the hold. Why should w the astronomer said obviously not very much interested. That s all past and done with. But is it I keep thinking that no machine of the sophistication .and complexity of the city can ever go quite out of use. And I don t mean just marginal uses like occasionally consulting the City Fathers or tapping the pile for some fraction of its total charge. This city was meant to fly and by God it ought to be flying still. What for I don t know exactly. Maybe for exploration maybe for work the kind of work we used to do. There must be some jobs in the Cloud for which nothing less than a machine of this size is suitable though obviously we haven t hit such a job yet. Maybe it would be worth cruising and looking for one. I doubt it Jake said. Anyhow she s gotten pretty tumbledown since we had our little difference with IMT what with all those rocket bombs they threw at us and letting her be rained on steadily ever since hasn t helped either. Besides I seemed to remember that that old 23rd St. spindizzy blew for good and all when we landed here. I hardly think she d stir at all now if you tried to lift her though no doubt she d groan a good deal. I wasn t proposing to pick up the whole thing anyhow Amalfi said. I know well enough that that couldn t be done. But the city s over sophisticated for a field of action as small as the Cloud there s a lot you could leave behind. Besides we d have a great deal of difficulty in scaring up anything more than a skeleton crew but if we could rehabilitate only a part of her we might still get her aloft again Part of her Jake said. How do you propose to section a city with a granite keel Particularly one composed as a unit on that keel You d find that many of the units that you most needed in your fraction would be in the outlying districts and couldn t be either cut off or transported inward that s the way she was built as a piece. This of course was true. Amalfi said But supposing it could be done How would you feel about it Jake You were an Okie for nearly five centuries don t you miss it a little now Not a bit the astronomer said briskly. To tell you the truth Amalfi I never liked it. It was just that there was no place else to go. I thought you were all crazy with your gunning around the sky your incessant tangles with the cops and your wars and the periods of starvation and all the rest but you gave me a floating platform to work from and a good close look at stars and systems I could never have seen as well from a fixed observatory with any possible telescope and besides I got fed. So I was reasonably satisfied. But do it again now that I have a choice Certainly not. In fact I only came over here to get some computational work done bn this new star that s cropped up just beyond the Lesser Cloud it s behaving outrageously in fact it s the prettiest theoretical problem I ve encountered hi a couple of centuries. I wish you d let me know when you re through with the boards: I really do need the City Fathers when the re available. I m through now Amalfi said getting off the stool. As an. afterthought he turned back to the boards and cleared the instruction circuits of the problem he had been setting up a problem which he now knew all too well to be a dummy. He left Jake humming contentedly as he set up his nova problem and wandered without real intention or direction down into the main body of the city trying to remember it as it had been as a living and vibrant organism but the empty streets the blank windows the flat quiet of the very air under the blue sky of New Earth was like an insult. Even the feeling of gravity under his feet seemed in these familiar surroundings a fleeting denial of the causes and values to which he had given most of his life a smug gravity so easily maintained by sheer mass and without the constant distant sound of spindizzies which always before since his distant utterly unrememberable youth had signified that gravity was a thing made by man and maintained by man. Depressed Amalfi quit the streets for the holds of the city. There at least his memory of the city as a live entity would not be mocked by the unnaturally natural day. But that in the long run proved to be no better. The empty granaries and cold storage bins reminded him that there was no longer any need to keep the city stocked for trips that might last as much as a century between planet falls the empty crude oil tanks rang hollowly not to his touch but simply to his footfall as he passed them the empty dormitories were full of those peculiar ghosts which not the dead but the living leave behind when they pass still living to anotheif Kind of life the empty classrooms which were as was quite usual with Okie cities small were mocked by the memory of the myriads of children which the Okies were now farrowing on their own planet New Earth no longer bound by the need to consider how many children an Okie city needs and can comfortably provide for. And down at the threshold of the keel itself he encountered the final sign and signal of his forthcoming defeat: the fused masses of two spindizzies ruined beyond repair by the landing of 3944 on the Blasted Heath. New spindizzies of course could be built and installed the old yanked out but the process would take a long time there were no graving docks suitable for the job on New Earth since the cities were extinct. As was the spirit. Nevertheless in the cold gloom of the spindizzy hold Amalfi resolved to try. But what on earth do you expect to gain Hazleton said in exasperation for at least the fifth time. I think you re out of your mind. There was still no one else on New Earth who would have had the temerity to speak to Amalfi quite like that but Mark Hazleton had been Amalfi s city manager ever since 3301 and knew his former boss very well. A subtle difficult lazy impulsive and sometimes dangerous man Hazleton had survived many blunders for which the City Fathers would have had any other city manager shot as indeed they had had his predecessor shot and there had survived too his often unwarranted assumption that he could read Amalfi s mind. There was surely no other ex Okie on New Earth who might be as likely to understand Amalfi s present state of mind but Hazleton was not at the moment giving a very good demonstration of this. For one thing he and his wife Dee the girl from a planet called Utopia who had boarded the city about the same time that Dr. Schloss had during the reduction of the Duchy of Gort had perhaps forgotten that an Okie tradition forbade the mayor of an Okie city to marry or have children and that Amalfi as the mayor of New York since 3089 was conditioned beyond redemption to this state of mind and in particular would not welcome being surrounded by the children and grandchildren of his city manager at any time and particularly not when what he most urgently needed was advice from someone who remembered th traditions well enough to understand why another man might still be clinging to them. It was one of Mark s virtues however that at his best he tended to react more like a symbiote than a truly separate entity. When the children made graceful exits soon after dinner Amalfi knew that it was at Hazleton s behest. He also knew it was not because Hazleton even faintly suspected his friend s discomfiture in the presence of so many fruits of the settling down process it was just that the city manager Sad intuited Amalfi s need for a conference and had promptly set one up scuttling Dee s social time table without a qualm. The children charged their unseasonably early departure to the grandchildren s impending bedtimes although Amalfi knew that when the whole clan came to dinner they customarily made a great occasion of it and all stayed the night in the adjoining building a beehive of bedrooms where the Hazletons had raised their numerous family the current Hazleton dwelling consisted mostly of the huge social room where they had just dined. Now that the meal was over Amalfi just barely kept from fidgeting while all the procession of big and little Hazletons made their manners. Even the youngest had each to make his farewell speech to the great man identifying his inconsiderable self their parents had long since learned in their own childhoods that the busy Mr. Mayor would not trouble himself to remember which was which. It never occurred to Amalfi to admire the children s concealment of their disappointment at leaving so precipitately since he did not realize that they were disappointed. He simply listened without listening. One middle sized boy caught his attention mainly because from the moment he had arrived Amalfi had noticed that the child had kept his eyes riveted on the guest of honor. It was disconcerting. Amalfi suspected he had forgotten to don some essential garment or to doff some trace of his party preparations. When the child who had caused him to rub his chin and smooth his eyebrows and finger his ears to see if there were still soapsuds in them spoke up Amalfi paid attention. Webster Hazleton sir and I hope to be seeing you again on a matter of the greatest importance the boy said. He said it as if ha had been rehearsing it for weeks with a ringing conviction that almost impelled Amalfi to fix an appointment then and there. Instead he growled .Webster eh Yes sir. I was pit on the Great List to be born when Webster wanted off. Amalfi was considerably jolted. So long ago as that Webster had been the pile engineer who had elected to leave the city before the landing on Utopia around 3600. Of course it had taken a long time to fill up the gaps in the city s roster after the murderous attempt of the bandit cities to prevent fulfillment of their contract on He and the considerable losses in boarding the plague city in the Acolyte jungle and then there had been so many girls born at first. Webster had been an unconscionably .long time in coming though. He could not be more than fourteen from the looks of him. Dee intervened. Actually John Web arrived a long time after the Great List was abandoned. It pleases him to have his patron citizen that s all just like in the old days. The boy turned his clear brown eyes on Dee briefly and then as if dismissing her from their male universe he said Good night sir. Amalfi bridled a little. Nobody could write Dee off not even Amalfi he knew once he had tried. The procession continued while he lapsed back into inattention and eventually he found himself closeted with Dee and Mark if closeted was the word in a room so large and echoing with so many strong personalities. The aura of furious domesticity remained behind on the Hazleton hearth and came between Amalfi and what he was trying to say so that his exposition was unwontedly stumbling and it was then that Hazleton had asked him what he expected to gain. Gain Amalfi said. I don t expect to gain anything. I d just like to be aloft again that s all. But John Dee said. Think about it a minute. Suppose you do succeed in persuading a few people from the old days to go in with you. It all doesn t have any meaning any more. You ll just turn yourself into a sort of Flying Dutchman sailing under a curse going nowhere and doing nothing. Maybe so Amalfi said. The picture doesn t frighten me Dee. As a matter of fact it gives me a sort of perverse satisfaction if you must know. I shouldn t mind becoming a legend at least that would fit me back into history again give me a role to play comparable to roles I ve played in the. past. And besides I d be aloft again which is the important thing. I m beginning to believe that nothing else is important to me any more. Does it matter what s important to us Hazleton said. For one thing such a venture would leave the Cloud without a mayor. I don t know how important that is to you any more I seem to remember that it was pretty important to you back when we were on our way here but whether it matters to you any more or not you ran for the job you connived for it you even rigged the election Carrel and I were supposed to be the only candidates and the office we were running for was city manager but you had the City Fathers hornswoggled into believing that it was a mayoralty election so of course they elected you. Do you want the job Amalfi said. Gods of all stare no I want you to keep it. You exercised considerable ingenuity to get it and I m not alone in expecting you to hold it down now that you ve got it. Nobody else is bidding for the job they expect you to handle it as you undertook to do. Nobody else is running for it because they wouldn t know what to do with it after they got it Amalfi said steadily. I don t know what to do with it myself. The office of mayor is an anachronism in this Cloud. Nobody has asked me to do anything or to say anything or to appear anywhere or to be in any other way useful in I don t know how many years. I occupy an honorary office and that s all. As everybody knows you are the man that is actually running this Cloud and that s as it should be. It s high time you took over in name as well as in fact. I ve given everything I could give to the initial organizing job and my talents are unsuitable to the situation as it now stands everybody on New Earth knows that and it would be healthier if they d put a name to it. Otherwise Mark how long could I be allowed to go on in the job Apparently forever under your present assumptions. This is a new society suppose I should go right on being its titular leader for another thousand years as is entirely possible A thousand years during which a new society continues to give lip service to the same old set of attitudes and ideas that I represented when they meant some thing That would be insane and you know it. No no it s high time you took over. Hazleton was silent for quite a long time. At last he said: I can see that. fnafact I ve thought of it several times myself. Nevertheless Amalfi I have to say that this whole proposition distresses me a good deal. I suppose the matter of the mayoralty would settle itself out almost automatically that wasn t a real objection. What bothers me is the exit you re contriving for yourself not only because it s dangerous which it is but that wouldn t make any difference to you and I suppose it shouldn t make any difference to me but because it s dangerous to no purpose. It suits my purposes Amalfi said. I don t see that there are any other purposes to be suited at this juncture. If I did I wouldn t go Mark you know that but it seems to me that I am how for the first time in all my life a free agent hence I may now do what I will do. Hazleton shrugged convulsively. And so you may he said. I can only say that I wish you wouldn t. Dee bowed her head and said nothing. And the rest was left unsaid. That Dee and Mark would be personally bereaved if Amalfi persisted on his present course for their different reasons was an obvious additional argument which they might have used but they came no closer to it than that it was the kind of argument which Hazleton would regard as pure emotional blackmail precisely because it was unreasonably powerful and Amalfi was grateful to him for not bringing it to bear. Why Dee had not was more difficult to fathom there had been a time when she would have used it without a moment s hesitation and Amalfi thought he knew her well enough to suspect that she had good reasons for wanting to use it now. She had been waiting for the founding of New Earth for a long time indeed almost since she had come on board the city and anything that threatened it now that she had children and grandchildren should provoke her into using every weapon at her command yet she was silent. Perhaps she was old enough now to realize that not even John Amalfi could steal from her an entire satellite galaxy at any event if that was what was on her mind she gave no inkling of it and the evening in Hazleton s house ended with a stiff formality which cold though it was was far from the worst that Amalfi had expected. The whole of the residential area to Amalfi s eyes swarmed with pets. Those to whom freedom to run was paramount frisked and scuttered in the wide lanes. Few of them ventured onto the wheelways and those who did were run down instantly but four footed animals were a constant and undignified hazard to walkers. By day raffish dogs stopped just short of bowling strangers over but leaped to brace forepaws on the shoulders of anyone they knew and everyone including seemingly all the dogs of New Manhattan knew Amalfi. An occasional svengali from Altair IV originally a rare specimen in the flying city s zoo but latterly force budded in New Earth labs during the full fertility program of 3950 when every homesteader s bride had her option of a vial of trilby water or a gemmate svengali and frequently wound up with both among the household lares and penates the half plant half animal even nowadays a not infrequent pet took the breeze and hunted in the half light of dawn or dusk. A svengali lay bonelessly in mid lane and fixed its enormous eyes on any moving object until something small enough and gelid enough to ingest might blunder near. Nothing suitable ever did on New Earth. The two legged victim tended to drift helplessly into that hypnotic stare until the starer got stepped on then the svengali turned mauve and exuded a protective spray which might have been nauseating on Altair IV but on New Earth was only euphoric. Sudden friendships bursts of song even a brief and deliriously happy crying jag might ensue after which the shaken svengali would undulate back indoors to rest up and be given usually a bowl of jellied soup. By night in the walkways of New Manhattan it was cats catching with sudden claw at floating cloak or fashionable sandal streamer. Through the air of the town sizable and brightly colored creatures flew and glided: singing birds squawking birds talkers and mutes but pets. every last one of them. Amalfi loathed them all. When he walked anywhere and he walked almost everywhere now that the city s aircabs were no more he more than half expected to have to free himself from the embraces of a burbling citizen or a barking dog before he got where he was going. The half century old fad for household pets had arisen after the landing and after his effectual abdication . What time wasting quirk had moved so many pioneers descendants to adopt the damnable svengalis as pets was beyond Amalfi. He made it home fjom the Hazletons without any such encounter instead it rained. He wrapped his cloak more tightly around him and hastened muttering for his own square uncompromising box of a dwelling before the full force of the storm should be let loose his house and grounds were sheltered by a 0.02 per cent spindizzy field the New Earthmen called the household device a spindil ly a name which Amalfi loathed but put up with for the sake of as Dee had once put it not knowing enough to come out of the rain. He had growled at her so convincingly for that that she had never brought up the subject again but she had put her finger on it all the same. Amalfi reached his entrance lane and laid his palm on the induction switch which softened the spindilly field iust enough to let him through in a spatter of glistening drops and noted with the grim dissatisfaction that was becoming natural to him that the storm had slacked off and would be over in minutes. Inside he made a drink and stood rubbing his hands looking about him. If his house was an anachronism well he liked it that way insofar as he liked anything on New Earth. What s wrong with me he thought suddenly. People s pets are their own business after all. If practically everybody else likes weather what difference does it make if I don t If Jake doesn t even take an interest nor Mark either for that matter He heard the distant endlessly comforting murmur of the modified spindizzy under his feet alter momentarily someone else had chosen to come in out of the rain. His visitor had never been there at that hour before and had indeed never been there before alone but he knew without a moment s doubt who had followed him home. CHAPTER TWO: Nova Magellanis You ll have to make me more welcome than that John Dee said. Amalfi said nothing. He lowered his head like a bull contemplating a charge spread his feet slightly and clasped his hands behind him. Well John Dee insisted gently. You don t want me to go he said baldly. Or you suspect that if I do go Mark just may throw up the managership and New Earth along with it and take off with me. Dee walked slowly all the way across the room and stood hesitating beside the great deep cushion. Wrong John on both counts. I had something else altogether in mind. I thought well I ll tell you later what I thought. Right now may I have a drink Amalfi was forced to abandon his position which by being so firm had imparted a certain strength to his desire to oppose her in order to play host. Did Mark send you then She laughed. King Mark sends me on a good many errands but this wouldn t be a very likely one for him. She added bitterly Besides he s so wrapped up in Gifford Bonner s group that he ignores me for months on end. Amalfi knew what she meant: Dr. Bonner was the teacher leader of an informal philosophical group called the Stochastics Amalfi hadn t bothered to inform himself in detail on Bonner s tenets but he knew in general that Stochasticism was the most recent of many attempts to construct a complete philosophy from esthetics to ethics using modern physics as the metaphysical base. Logical positivism had been only the first of those Stochasticism Amalfi strongly suspected would be far from the last. I could see something had been keeping his mind off the job lately he said grimly. He might do better to study the doctrines of Jorn the Apostle. The Warriors of God control no less than fifteen of the border planets right now and the faith doesn t lack for adherents right here on New Earth. It appeals to the bumpkin type and I m afraid we ve been turning out a lot of those lately. If Dee recognized this as in part a shaft at the changes in New Earth s educational system which she had helped to institute she showed no sign of it. Maybe so she said. But I couldn t persuade him and I wonder if you could either. He doesn t believe there s any real threat he thinks that a man simple minded enough to be a Fundamentalist is too simple minded to hold together an army. Oh Mark had fetter ask Bonner to tell about Godfrey of Bouillon. Who was The leader of the First Crusade. She shrugged. P ss ibly only Amalfi as the only New Earthman who had actually been born and raised on Earth could ever have heard of the Crusades doubtless they were unknown on Utopia. Anyhow that isn t what I came here to talk about either. The wall treacher opened and floated the drinks out. Amalfi captured them and passed one over silently waiting. She took her glass from him but instead of sinking down with it as he had half pictured her doing she walked nervously back to the door and took her first sip as if she might put it aside and be leaving at any moment. He discovered that he did not want her to go. He wanted her to walk some more. There was something about the gown she was wearing That there were fashions again was a function of being earthbound. One simple utilitarian style had sufficed both men and women all their centuries aloft when there had been the unending demands of the city s spaceworthiness to keep all hands occupied. Now that the ex Okies were busily fulfilling Franklin s law that people will breed to the point of overpopulating any space available to them they were also frittering away their time with pets and flower gardens and fashions that changed every time a man blinked. Women were floating around this year of 3995 in diaphanous creations that totaled so much yardage a man might find himself treading on their skirts. Dee however was wearing a simple white covering above and a clinging black tubular affair below that was completely different. The only diaphanous part of her outfit was a length of something gossamer and iridescent that circled her throat under a fold of the white garment and hung down between her still delicate still gently rounded breasts as girlish in appearance as the day Utopia had sent her out to New York in a battleship to ask for help. He had it. Dee you looked just as you look now when I first saw you Indeed John That black thing A sheath skirt she interpolated helpfully. I noticed it particularly when you came aboard. I d never seen anything like it. Haven t seen anything like it since. He refrained from telling her that during all the centuries he had loved her he had pictured her in that black thing turning to him instead of Hazleton. Would the course of history have been any different had she done so But how could he have done anything but reject her It took you long enough to notice it tonight she said. I had it made up especially for this evening s dinner. I ve been tired of all this float and flutter for a year. Essentially I m still a product of Utopia I guess. I like stern clothes and strong men and a reasonably hard life. She was certainly trying to tell him something but he was still adrift. The situation was impossible on the face of it. He was not in the habit of discussing fashion with his best and oldest friend s wife at an hour when all sensible planet bound pioneers were abed. He said It s very pretty. To his astonishment she burst into tears. Oh don t be stuffy John She put the glass down and reached for her cloak. All right Dee. Amalfi put the cloak out of her reach. Your King Mark sounds reasonably stern and hard. Suppose you sit down and tell me what this is all about. I want to go with you John. You won t be the mayor of New York you won t be bound by the old rules if you take the city aloft now. I want I want to It was weeks before he got her to state that ultimate desire. They had talked without ceasing after that blundering beginning. When it finally penetrated his cautious bald head that the message all his senses had been clamoring from the moment of her arrival was not another daydream from the chilly past but warm actuality he had folded her in his arms and they had been silent for a time. But then the flow of words began again and could not be checked. They had reminisced endlessly and how it might have beens and even of certain ways it had been. He was amazed to discover that she had taken into her household however briefly every companion whose bed he had honored during the officially celibate years in her position as First Lady of New Earth during the intensive family years she could have installed twenty nursemaids simultaneously without attracting undue notice just as she launched every new fashion and many of the fads that made New Earth what it was. That Dee had been cruelly bored had simply never occurred to him. But she told him the full tale of that discontent more indeed than he wanted to hear. They quarreled like giddy young lovers except that their first and worst quarrel followed a complaint he could have wept to hear wrung from her. John she said aren t you ever going to take me to bed He spread his hands in exasperation. I m not at all sure I want to take Mark s wife to bed. Besides he added knowing he was being cruel you ve already had it. You ve pumped every woman I resorted to in half a thousand years. I should think I would bore you in actuality as much as everything else does. Their reconciliations were not much like those of young love they were more and more like the creeping home of a rebellious daughter to her father s arms. And still he held off. Now that he had for the taking what he had only dreamed of wanting for so many years he made the Adamic discoveries all over again: there is wanting the unobtainable and there is the obtaining of desire and the greatest of these is the wanting. Especially since the object of desire always turns out to exist only in some other universe to be mocked by actuality. You don t believe me John she said bitterly. But it s true. When you go I want to go with you all the way don t you understand I want to I want to bear you a child. She looked at him through a film of tears somehow he had never in all the centuries of fancy imagined or seen her in tears but the actuality wept as predictably as New Earth s skies and waited. She had shot her bolt he saw. This was the supreme thing that Dee Hazleton wanted to give him. Dee you don t know what you re saying You can t offer me your girlhood all over again that s irretrievably Mark s and you know it. Besides I don t want He stopped. She was weeping again. He had never wanted to hurt her although he knew he had done so unintentionally more times than he would ever know. Dee I ve had a child. Now she was listening wide eyed and he winced as he saw pity take the place of resentment. He laid the en cysted pain bare like a surgeon before her. When the population balance shifted after the landing and there were all those excess females remember Do you also remember the artificial insemination program They asked me to contribute. The good old argument against it was supposed to be by passed by the assurance that I d never know which children carried my genes only the doctors supervising the program would know. But there was an unprecedented wave of miscarriages and stillbirths and some survivors that shouldn t have survived all with the same set of ... disadvantages I was told about it as mayor. I had to decide what was to be done with them. John she whispered. No. Stop. We were taking over the Cloud he continued implacably. Presenting him with a wizened squalling scarlet normal baby boy was one favor she could not do him and there was no way to tell her so but this. We couldn t afford bad genes. I ordered the survivors . . . dealt with and I had a brief conference with the genetics team. They had planned not to tell me they were going to keep up the farce like good hearted dolts. But I d been in space too long my germ plasm is damaged beyond hope I am no longer a cditributor. Do you understand me Dee Dee tried to draw his head down on her breast. Amalfi moved violently away. It irritated him unreasonably that she still thought she had anything to give him. The city was yours she said tonelessly. And now it s grown up and gone away and left you. I saw you grieving John and I couldn t bear it oh I don t mean that I was pretending. I love you I think I always have. But I should have known that the time for us had gone by. There s nothing at all left for me to give you that you haven t had in full measure. She bowed her head and he stroked her hair awkwardly wishing it had never begun since it had to end like this. And what now he said. Now that life with father has turned out to be nothing more than that Can you leave home again and go to Mark Mark He doesn t even know I ve been . .. away. As his wife I m dead and buried she said in a low voice. Living seems to be a process of continually being born again. I suppose the trick is to learn how to make that crucial exit without suffering the trauma each time. Goodbye John. She didn t look as if she were being too successful at mastering the trick Jmt he made no move to help her. She was going to have to find her own way back she was beyond his aid now. He thought that wb at she had said was probably the truth for a womari For a man. he knew life is a process of dying again and again and the trick he thought is to do it piecemeal and ungenerously. For the first time in weeks he walked the streets of New Manhattan again. He had never felt so utterly done with the purpose he had sowed in his people. Now that it was coming to fruition he urgently needed to be seeking some purpose far removed from theirs. Inevitably he found himself leaving cats birds svengal is dogs and Dee for the dilapidated streets of the Okie city. He was almost all the way down to the banks of the City Fathers when a suspicion that he was again being followed turned into a certainty. For a panic moment he feared it might be Dee spoiling both her exit and his but it was not. All right who is it he said. Stop skulking and name yourself. You wouldn t remember me Mr. Mayor a frightened voice said in several registers at once. Remember you Of course I do. You re Webster Hazleton. Who s your friend What are you doing here in the old city It s off limits for children. The boy drew himself up to his full height. This is Estelle. She and I are in this together. Web appeared to have some difficulty in going on. There s been talk I mean Estelle s father he s Jake Freeman kind of hinted about it that is if the city s really going up again. Mr. Mayor Maybe it is. I don t know yet. What of it If it is we want on the boy said in a rush. Amalfi had had no further plans to try and convert Jake who certainly appeared to be as lost a cause as Hazleton himself but the Freeman Hazleton partnership represented by Web and Estelle meant that he would have to broach the subject again to Jake sooner or later. Of course it was out of the question that the children should be allowed to go and yet it was not within the bounds of fairness to forbid them out of hand without knowing what their elders thought of it. Children had gone adventuring on Okie cities many a time before but of course that had been back in the old days when the cities had been as well equipped as any earthbound community to take good care of them at least most of the time. Every thread he touched these days it seemed to Amalfi had knots in it. Temporarily however the fates allowed him to shelve that part of the problem for Jake was waiting for him again in the computation section in a state of excitement so febrile that the sight of his daughter and Web tagging behind Amalfi barely raised his eyebrows. You re just in time he said as though there had been some prior appointment. You recall the nova I was talking to you about Well it isn t a nova at all and at this point it s no longer an astronomical problem in fact it s your problem. What do you mean Amalfi said. If it isn t a nova what is it Just what I was asking myself Jake said. One of his more irritating failings was his inability to get to a point by any but a pre selected route. I have a remarkable collection of spectrographs for this thing if you looked at them without any clue as to what they were you d think they represented a stellar catalogue rather than a single object and a catalogue containing stars from all over the Russell diagram too. On top of which all of them show a blue shift in the absorption lines particularly in the lines contributed by New Earth s own atmosphere which made no sense whatsoever up to now. It still doesn t make any sense to me Amalfi admitted. All right Jake said try this on for size when the spectra turned out to be far too dim for an object of the apparent magnitude of this thing remember it s been getting brighter all the time I asked Schloss and his crew to neglect anti matter long enough to do a wave trap analysis of the incoming light. It turns out to be about seventy five per cent false photons the thing must be leaving behind a tremendous contrail if we were only in a position to see it Spindizzies Amalfi shouted. And under damn near full deceleration But how could an object that size no wait a minute do you actually know the size yet The astronomer chuckled a noise which from Jake never failed to remind Amalfi of a demented parrot. I think we have the ize and all the rest of the answers at least as far as astronomy is concerned he said. The rest as I said is your problem. The thing is a planetary body roughly seventy frje j undred miles in diameter and much closer than we thought it was right now in fact it s actually inside the Greater Magellanic and coming our way directly for the system of New Earth. The change in spectra simply means that it s shining by the reflected light of the different suns it s passing and the blue shift in the Frauenhofer lines strongly suggests an atmosphere very much like ours. I don t know offhand what that reminds you of but I know what it should remind you of and the City Fathers agree with me. Web Hazleton could contain himself no longer. I know I know It s the planet He It s coming home Isn t that it Mr. Mayor The boy knew his city history well nobody from the old days could have been confronted with such a set of data as Jake had just trotted out without responding with the same wild surmise. The planet He had been one of the city s principal jobs of work the outcome of which for very complicated reasons had entailed the installation on the planet itself of a number of spindizzies sufficient to rip He from her orbit around her home sun and send her careening wholly out of control out of the galaxy and into intergalactic space. The city had been carried a considerable distance with her enabling it to re enter the galaxy far away from any area where New York N. Y. was being actively sought by the cops but it had been a near thing. She. herself presumably had been hurtling toward the Andromeda galaxy ever since that moment in 3850 when she and the city had parted company each vanishing to the other as abruptly and finally as a blown out candle flame. Let s not jump to conclusions Amalfi said. The tipping of He took place only a century and a half ago and at that time the Hevians didn t have the technology or the resources to master controlled spindizzy flight in fact they weren t very far from being savages. Smart savages I grant you but still savages. Is this planet that s coming our way truly dirigible or don t you know yet It looks that way lake said. That s what first tipped me off that there was something unnatural about the object. It kept changing velocity and line of flight errati cally in fact in a jtotally irrational way unless one assumed that the changes were in fact rational. Whoever they are they know enough to prevent that world of theirs from zigging when they want to zag. And they re headed our way Amalfi. Have you made any attempt to get in touch with them whoever they are Amalfi said. No indeed. In fact I haven t even told anybody else about it yet. Not even Mark. Somehow it struck me as peculiarly your baby. That was just a waste of pussyfooting Jake. Dr. Schloss isn t an idiot surely he can read his own figures as well as you can and draw obvious conclusions from the very question you asked Mm he must have told Mark by now and a good thing too. Mark is probably calling your object right now let s go directly up to the control room and find out. They made an oddly assorted procession through the haunted streets of the Okie city: the bald headed keg chested mayor with his teeth deeply sunk in a dead cigar the bird like and slightly crestfallen astronomer the bright eyed skipping youngsters now darting ahead of them then falling behind to wait to be shown the way. Their eagerness moved Amalfi unexpectedly bringing home to him the realization that their dream of the city back in flight had always been like this a very fragile one and that this incoming dirigible planet whatever else it might portend would probably put the quietus to it serious business and the dull cold morning light it thrived in being immemorially fatal to dreams. On an impulse he stopped at a station that he knew and called for an aircab partly he assured himself to see whether or not the City Fathers still considered that service worth maintaining at this stage in the city s long death. In due course one came to the obvious delight of the children leaving Amalfi with the rueful realization that his had not been a fair test a million years from now with the last ergs of energy remaining in the pile the City Fathers would of course still send a cab for the mayor if he wanted to know whether or not the entire garage was still alive he would have to ask the City Fathers directly. But Web and Estelle were so delighted at soaring through the silent canyons of the city in the metal and crystal bubble and in exploring the limited and very respectful repartee of the Tin Cabby that they fell entire ly off their precarious adolescent dignity with squeals of laughter alternating with gasps of not very real alarm as the cab cut around corners and came close to grazing the structures of the city which familiarity had worn smooth to the point of contempt iixside the Tin Cabby s flat little black box of a brain. It was in a way a shame that the youngsters were unable to make out even had they known where to look for it the graven letters of the city s ancient motto MOW YOUR LAWN LADY if only for the sense it might have given them of the reason why Okie cities once flew but the motto had become unreadable a long time ago as its meaning had become obliterated soon after. Only the memory remained to remind Amalfl that were the city ever to go aloft again which suddenly he did not even believe it would not be for the purpose of mowing lawns for hire there were no more that was all over and done with. The control room in City Hall muted the children considerably as well it might for no one much below the age of a century had ever been allowed in it before and the many screens which lined its walls had seen events in a history unlikely to be matched for drama or even simple interest in any imaginable future saga of New Earth. In this dim stagnant smelling room the very man who was with them now had watched the rise and fall of a galaxy dominating race of which to be sure these children were genetically a part but whose inheritors they could never be history had passed them by. And don t touch anything Amalfi said. Everything in this room is alive more or less. We ve never had the time to disarm the city totally I m not even sure we d know how to go about it now. That s why it s off limits. You d better come stand behind me. Web and Estelle and watch what I do it ll keep you out of reach of the boards. We won t touch anything Web said fervently. I know you won t intentionally. But I don t want any accidents. Better you learn how to run the board from scratch come stand right here you too Estelle and call your grandfather s house for me. Touch the clear plastic bar that s it now wait for it to light up. That lets the City Fathers know that you want to talk to somebody outside the city that s very important otherwise they d give you a long argument believe you me. Now you see the five little red buttons just above the bar the one you touch is number two four and five are ultraphone and Dirac lines which you don t need for a local call. One and three are inside trunk lines which is why they re not lit up. Go ahead push it. Web touched the glowing red stud tentatively. Over his head a voice said: Communications. Now it s my turn Amalfi said picking up the microphone. This is the mayor. Get me the city manager crash priority. He lowered the mircrophone and added That requires the Communications section to scan for your grandfather along all of the channels on which he s known to be available and send him a call in signal wherever he may be New Earth Hospital has much the same call in system for its doctors. : Can we hear him being called Estelle said. Yes if you like Amalfi said. Here take the microphone and put your finger on the two button as Web did. There. Communications the invisible speaker again said briskly. Say Reprise please Amalfi whispered. Reprise please the girl said. Immediately the air of the ancient room was filled with a series of twittering pure tones and chords as though every shadow hid a bird with a silver throat. Estelle almost dropped the microphone Amalfi took it from her gently. Machines don t call for people by name he explained. Only very complicated machines like the City Fathers are able to speak at all a simple computer like the Communications section finds it easier to use musical tones. If you listen a while you ll begin to hear a kind of melody that s the code for Web s grandfather the harmonies represent the different places where the computer is looking for him. I like it Estelle said. At the same instant the pipings of the invisible birds came to an end with a metallic snap and Mark Hazleton s voice said in the middle of the air: Boss are vou looking for me Amalfi lifted the microphone back to his lips with a grim smile the children instantly forgotten. You bet I am. Are you on top of this dirigible planet which seems to be heading for us Yes I didn t know you were interested. In fact I didn t know that it was a planet instead of a star until yesterday when Schloss and Carrel came in to see me about it. Amalfi threw Jake a meaningful glance. I gather you re calling me from the city what do the City Fathers think I don t know I haven t talked to them Amalfi said. But Jake is here antl he s come to the obvious conclusion as I m sure you have. What I want to know is have you or Carrel made any attempt to communicate with this object Yes but I can t say that it s been very fruitful Hazleton s voice said. We ve called them four or five times on the Dirac but if they ve answered us it s gotten lost in the general babble of Dirac casts we re surrounded with from the home galaxy. It puzzles me a little bit they do seem to be homing on us without any question but it s hard to imagine what kind of signal from us they could be using to guide on. Do you really think that this is He come back again Amalfi said cautiously. Yes I think I do Hazleton said with apparent equal caution. I don t see what other conclusion one could come to with the data as they stand now. Then use your head Amalfi said. If this really is He you ll never be able to reach it with a Dirac cast. While we were on He we never even let the Hevians hear a Dirac cast or see a Dirac transmitter they had no reason to suspect that any such universal transmitter even existed or could exist. And if by the same token this is not He but some exploring vessel coming in toward us for the first time from another galaxy and out of an entirely different culture than any we know then it s obvious that they cannot have the Dirac otherwise they would have heard every one of the millions of Dirac messages which have gone out from our galaxy since the day they found the device. Try the ultraphone instead. He didn t have the ultraphone either when last we saw it Hazleton s voice said amusedly. And if we don t know how to drive an ultraphone carrier through a spin dizzy screen I very much doubt that they do. If we re going to go all the way back to methods of communications as primitive as that shouldn t we first try wigwagging I think probably there is an ultraphone message from that planet on its way here Amalfi said. It would be the part of common sense to precede such a flight as that planet is conducting into so densely populated an area as the Greater Magellanic Cloud with a general identification signal which you could hardly do with a Dirac signal in any event a signal which is received uniformly everywhere simultaneously with its being sent is not a proper beacon signal. It doesn t matter whether this is He or a visitor coming to us from the entirely unknown they will be sending some sort of pip in advance which they would absolutely have to do by ultraphone there being no other way to do it and if this requires them to work out a way to punch an ultraphone signal through a spindizzy screen then they will have done so and you should be listening for it and you can put a return signal through the same hole. He took a deep toreath. At the very least Mark stop wasting my time telling me it s impossible before you ve even tried it. I tell you Webster Hazleton said under his breath and turned a bright scarlet. Behind him Estelle s father chortled alarmingly on the edge of his metaphorical crack erbarrel. The riot act however had been becoming less and less effective with Hazleton in. the past few decades as Amalfi knew well perhaps it dated from Hazleton s new preoccupation with the Stochastics about which Amalfi had not known until Dee had brought it up or perhaps though this was a much less attractive possibility from an awareness in Hazleton paralleling Amalfi s own of Amalfi s growing impotence on New Earth. Nevertheless Hazleton said gravely I will raise one further objection boss if I may. Even supposing that they are putting out an ultraphone beam we can tie to they re still roughly fifty light years away by the time they hear anything we say to them by ultraphone and get a message back to us the same way we ll be seventy five years into the next millennium. True Amalfi admitted. Which means we ll have to send a ship. I m all for taking ten years or so to make full contact anyhow since we really have no idea what it is we re confronted with and we may need to lay in some armaments. But you d better tell Carrel to stand ready to fly me out there no later than the beginning of next week and in the meantime try to eavesdrop on whatever transmission our visitor is broadcasting. I ll attend to the answering part later from shipboard. Right Hazleton said and switched out. Can we go too Web demanded immediately. What do you say to that Jake These kids were all for going with me on board the city too. The astronomer mjled and shrugged. Wherever she gets the taste for spaceflight from it can t be from me he said. But I knew she was going to ask sooner or later. It s an experience she ll have to have behind her before she s very much older and I don t know of any commander in two galaxies that she d be safer with. I think my wife will concur though she s as uneasy about it as I am. Web cheered but Estelle only said in a tone of utmost practicality: I ll go home and get my svengali. CHAPTER THREE: The Nursery of Time Even from half a million miles out it was already plain to Amalfi that the planet of He had undergone a vast transformation since he had last seen it back in 3850. The Okies had first encountered that planet six years earlier the only fertile offspring of a wild star then swimming alone in a vast starless desert not one of the normal starfree areas between spiral arms of the galaxy but a temporary valley called the Rift the mechanics of whose origin lay shrouded impenetrably in the origins of the universe itself. Even at first sight it had been apparent that the history of He had been more than ordinarily complicated. It had then been an emerald green world covered with rank jungle from pole to pole a jungle which had almost completely swamped out what had obviously been a high civilization not many years before. The facts as they emerged after landing turned out to be complex in the extreme it was highly probably that there was not another planet in the galaxy which had undergone so many fatal and unlikely accidents. The Hevians had fought them all doggedly but by the time the Okies had arrived they had realized that nothing less than a miracle could help them now. For Hevian civilization the Okies had been that miracle giving the Hevians mastery over their own local and considerable banditry and killing off the planet wide jungle in the only way possible: by abruptly and permanently changing the climate of He. That this geological revolution had had to be accomplished by putting the whole planet into uncontrolled flight out of the galaxy was perhaps unfortunate but Amalfi did not think so at the time. He had formed a high opinion of the shrewdness and latent technological ability underlying the Hevian ceremonial paint and feathers and did not doubt that the Hevians would learn the necessary techniques for preserving their planet as an abode of life well before the danger point would be reached. After all the Hevians had been great once and even after the long battle with the jungle and each other they had still had such sophistications as radio rockets missile weapons and supersonics when the Okies had first encountered them and during the brief period that the Okies had been in contact with them they had snapped up such Middle Ages and Early Modern techniques as nuclear fission and chemotherapy. Besides there had been the spindizzies some from the city some new built but all necessarily left behind and in full operation studied with the eye of intelligence they could not but provide the Hevians with clues to many potent disciplines which they would have little difficulty putting to work once the jungle was gone in the meantime the machines would maintain the atmosphere of the planet and its internal heat even in the most frigid depths of intergalac tic space it would be the darkness of those gulfs which the Hevians could mitigate but could hardly abolish which would kill off the jungle. Nevertheless Amalfi had hardly expected to see the return of He under wholly controlled spindizzy drive in barely a century and a half still faintly patchily blue green with cultivation under cloud banks which glared a brilliant white in the light of a nearby Cepheid variable star. That the wandering body was He had been settled back home on New Earth as soon as Hazleton had been able to identify the wanderer s advance ultraphone beacon as Amalfi had predicted and hardly five minutes after Carrel had brought his ship out of spindizzy drive within hailing distance of the new planet Amalfi had himself spoken to Miramon the very same Hevian leader with whom the Okies had dealt one hundred and fifty years ago to the mutual astonishment of each that the other was still alive . Not that I myself should have been surprised Miramon said from the head of his great council table of black polished oify. Wood. After all I myself am still alive to an age beyond the age of all the patriarchs in our recorded history which in turn is only a small fraction of the age you gave us to understand you had attained when first we met you. But old habits of thought die hard. We were able to isolate and purify only a few of the anti agathics produced by our jungle acting on the hints you had given us before the jungle died off and the plants which produced those drugs did not prove cultivatable under the new conditions so we had no choice but to search for ways to synthesize these compounds. We were forced to work very fast and happily the search was successful by the third generation but in the meantime the existing supply had sufficed to keep only a few of us alive beyond what we still think of as our normal lifespans. Hence to most of our population Mayor Amalfi you are now only a legend and immortal man of infinite wisdom from beyond the stars and I have been unable to prevent myself from coming to think of you in much the same way. Though he still wore in his topknot the great black barbaric saw toothed feather of his authority the Miramon before Amalfi today bore little resemblance to the lithe supple hard headedly practical semi savage who had once squatted on the floor in Amalfi s presence because chairs were the uncomfortable prerogatives of the gods. His skin was still firm and tanned his eyes bright and darting but though his abundant hair was now quite white he had settled into that period of life neither youth nor age characteristic of the man who goes on anti agathics only when somewhat past natural middle age. His councillors including Retma of Fabr Suithe which in Amalfi s time had been a bandit town which had been utterly destroyed during the last struggle before He took flight but which now rebuilt in ceremonial pink marble was the second city of all He mostly wore this same look. There were one or two who obviously had not been allowed access to the death curing drugs until they had been in their natural seventies bringing to the council table the probably spurious appearance of sagacity conferred by many wrinkles an obvious physical fragility and a sexual neutrality which was both slightly repellent and covertly enviable at the same time a somatatype which for mankind as a whole had long ago lost its patent as the physiological stamp of hard won wisdom but which here among these recent immortals still exerted a queer authority even upon Amalfi. If you managed to synthesize even one of the anti agathics you ve proven yourselves better chemists than anyone else in human history Amalfi said. They re far and away the most complicated molecules ever found in nature certainly we ve never heard of anyone who was able to synthesize even one. One is all we managed to synthesize Miramon admitted. And the synthetic form has certain small but undesirable side effects we ve never been able to eliminate. Several others turned out to be natural sapogenins which we could raise in our artificial climate and modify into anti agathics by two or three subsequent fermentation steps. Finally there are four others of very broad usefulness which we produce by fermentation alone using micro organisms grown in nutrient solutions in deep tanks into which we feed comparatively simple and cheap precursors. We have one like that the first in fact that was ever discovered: ascomycin Amalfi said. I think I will stick to my original judgment. As chemists you people could obviously give all the rest of us cards and spades. Then it is fortunate for us and perhaps for every sentient being everywhere that it is not as chemists that we come seeking you Retma said a trifle grimly. Which brings me to my main question Amalfi said. Just why did you turn back I can t imagine that you would have been seeking me personally you had no reason to believe that I was anywhere within thousands of parsecs of this area we last parted company on the other side of the home galaxy. Obviously you must have looped back toward home as soon as you were sure you had centralized control over your spindizzy installation long before you were much past half way to the Andromeda galaxy. What I want to know is what turned you back There you are both right and wrong Miramon said with a trace of what could have been pride it was hard to tell for his face was extremely solemn. We obtained reasonably close control of the anti gravity machines only about thirty years after you and I parted company Mayor Amalfl. When the full implications of what we had found were borne in upon Us we were highly elated. Now we had a real planet in the radical meaning of the word a real wanderer which could o where it chose settling in one solar system or another and leaving it again when we so decided. By that time we were almost self sufficient there was obviously no need for us to become migrant workers as your city and its enemies had been. And since we were well on the way to the second galaxy in any event and since there seemed to be absolutely no limit to the velocities we could mount with the huge mass of our planet on which to operate we chose to go on and explore. To the Andromeda galaxy Yes and beyond. Of course we saw very little of that galaxy which is as vast as our home we think that it is not inhabited by any widespread space cruising race such as yours and mine but in the brief sampling of its stars that we were able to take we might well simply have missed hitting upon an inhabited or colonized system. By that time in any event we had made the discovery which was to become the basis of our lives and purposes from then onward and knew that we should have to return home very shortly. We left the Andromeda nebula for its satellite the one that you identified for us as M 33 on our old star tapestries from the Great Age and thence took the million and a half light year leap to the Lesser Magel lanic Cloud. It was during our transition from the Lesser to the Greater Cloud that you detected us. That was to be sure an accident we had intended to go directly through into the home galaxy and onward to Earth where our experience with you had given us good reason to believe we might find a reservoir of knowledge great enough to cope with what we had discovered. That our own knowledge was insufficient was never for a moment in doubt. But it is an accident of the greatest good omen that we should have been found again by you as we were returning home Mayor Amalfi. Surely the gods must have arranged such an accident which otherwise is impossibly unlikely for if there is any man not on Earth itself who can help us you are that man. You were not once such a believer in the gods as I recall Amalfi said smiling tightly. Opinions change with age otherwise what is age for So does history Amalfi said. And whether I can help you or not it Is a lucky accident that you stopped here before carrying on into the home lens. Earth is no longer dominant there. We ve had oonsiderable difficulty in understanding what actually is going on the messages that we get from there came pouring in to us in such an enormous garble but of one thing I m sure: there s a huge new imperialism on the rise there on its way to becoming as powerful as Earth once was and as Vegas was before Earth. It calls itself the Web of Hercules and what remains of Earth s interstellar empire doesn t appear to be putting up much of a resistance against it. If you want my advice I would suggest that you stay out of the home galaxy entirely or you may well be gobbled down whole. There was a long silence around the Hevian council table. At last Miramon said: This leaves us with little recourse indeed. It may well be that there is no answer as we have often suspected. Or it may be that the gods have indeed brought us back to the one source of wisdom that we need. We will know soon enough Retma said quietly. If in that instant there will be time enough to know anything. Or enough of time left thereafter to remember it. 1 shall probably be unable to advise you so long as I don t know what you re talking about Amalfi said impressed in spite of himself by the tone of high seriousness with which the Hevians spoke. Just what was the discovery that turned you back What is the forthcoming event that you seem to dread Nothing less Retma said evenly than the imminent coming to an end of time itself. For a while even after they had explained it to him Amalfi was so unable to believe that the Hevians had meant what they said that he was prepared to dismiss it as one of those superstitions with which He had been riddled like many another provincial planet when the Okies had first made contact with it. That time must have a stop was a proposition that nothing in all his long life had prepared him to accept even for an instant. Even after it became reluctantly clear to him that what Miramon and the Hevians had found in the intergalactic deeps had been a real event with real implications and one which Amalfi s own people particularly Schloss group were prepared to document event and implication alike he continued to be unable to do more with it than dismiss it out of hand. He said so at a conference on shipboard which included Miramon Retma Dr. Schloss Carrel and by Dirac Jake and Dr. Gifford Bonner the latter the leader of that group of New Earth philosophers which Hazleton had recently joined called the Stochastics. If what you say is true he said there s nothing to be done about it anyhow. Time will come to an end and that s that. But the end of the world has been predicted often before I seem to remember from history and here we all are still I can t credit that so vast a process as the whole physical universe could possibly come to an end in the flicker of an eyelash .and since I can t believe it I m not suddenly going to start behaving as if I did. No more do I see why anyone else should. Amalfi you re quite right You don t understand Dr. Schloss said. Of course the end of the universe has been predicted often before. It s one of those two pronged choices that any philosopher has to make: either you hold that the universe will at some time come to an end or else you arrive at the position that it never can there are intermediate guesses that you can make that s where we get our cyclical theories but essentially they re simply hedges. If you decided that the universe has a limited lifetime then you must begin to think about when that life will come to an end on the basis of whatever data are available to you. We have been agreed for millennia that the universe cannot last forever however we ve hedged the agreement so that leaves us nothing to quarrel about but the date at which we fixed the end. And sooner or later too the time was going to come when we had enough data to fix even the date without doubt. The Hevians have brought us sufficient facts to do that now the date is fixed whatever it proves to be without cavil or quibble. If we are to talk about the matter intelligently at all there is a fixed fact with which we must begin. It is not open to agreement. It is a fact. I think Amalfi said in a voice of steel that you have gone quietly insane. You should listen to the City Fathers for a while on this subject as I have if you like I can give you a Dirac line to them from right here aboard ship and you can hear some of the memories that they have stored up some of them dating back long before spaceflight our city is very old. You should hear particularly the stories about the end of the world which emerge as inevitably as a plant from a seed every time someone takes it into his head to believe that he has a direct wire to the Almighty. Some of the stories of course are just jokes like the many predictions of the end of the world which were made by a man named Voliva who knew that the Earth was flat or the predictions of Armageddon that came repeatedly from an Earthly sect called the Believers which was riding high on Earth during the very decade when both the spindizzy and the anti agathics were discovered. But high intelligence doesn t prevent you from falling into this kind of apocryphal madness either seven centuries before space flight on Earth the greatest scientist of that time a man named Bacon was predicting the imminent arrival of Anti Christ simply because he was unable to persuade his contemporaries to adopt scientific method which he had just invented. Furthermore I may add in the decade just before spaceflight on Earth all the best minds of the age saw no future for the human race and all other air breathing life on Earth but complete obliteration in a world wide thermonuclear war which over a period of eight years could have broken out within any given twenty minute period. And in that Dr. Schloss they were quite right their world really could have ended during any one of these twenty minute periods the physical possibilities were there but somehow the world managed to last until spaceflight became only a specter burned out by starlight as the ghosts of night bound peoples evaporate from their mythologies as soon as they re able to produce light even at midnight simply by tripping a switch. He looked around at the faces of the men drawn up at the ship s chart table. Few of them would meet his eyes most of them were looking down at the table itself or at their own hands. Their expressions were those of men who had been listening to a mass murderer attempting to enter a plea of insanity. Amalfi Jake s voice said abruptly from the Dirac the time for forensics is past. This question does not have two sides except for the right side and the wrong side and we are going to have to shuck you off as a brilliant advocate for the wrong side. You have done your magnificent best but since the right side does not need an advocate you have been wasting your breath. Let me ask the rest of this conference: What shall we do now Does it appear that as the Hevians think there is anything at all that we can do I am inclined to doubt it. So am I Dr. Schloss said though there was nothing in his manner to suggest the gloom inherent in his conclusion he seemed rather to be as intensely interested as Amalfl had ever 866 him in his life. For temporal creatures to hope tcl stirvive the end of time is surely as futile as a fish hoping to survive being thrown into a sun. The paradox is immediate on the surface and quite inescapable. No technical problem is ever that insoluble Amalfi said in exasperation. Miramon if you will pardon me for passing such a judgment and I don t care if you don t I think you. are suffering from the same syndrome as Dr. Freeman and Dr. Schloss: you have grown old before your time. You ve lost your sense of adventure. Not entirely Miramon said regarding Amalfi with an expression of grave and hurt disappointment. We at least are not yet convinced that there is no answer if we do not find it here we have every intention of continuing to travel in the hope of finding someone with whom we can combine forces someone who may have some solution to suggest. If we find no one then we shall continue to seek that solution ourselves. Good for you Amalfi said fiercely. And by God 111 go with you. We can t very well re enter our own galaxy but the next one is NGC 6822 that s about a million light years from here for you that s only a hop. And at least we d be in motion we wouldn t be sitting around here with folded hands waiting for the blow to fall. That would be motion without purpose Miramon said solemnly. I agree with you that it would be dangerous and unwise to risk any entanglement with the Web of Hercules whatever that may be but I can see no better point in cruising frqm one galaxy to another solely in the bare hope of encountering a high civilization which might be able to help us and all the rest of the universe with us. We have that hope but it cannot be the final goal of our journey our ultimate destination must be the center of the metagalaxy the hub of all the galaxies of space time. It is only there where all the forces of the universe lie in dynamic balance that anyone can hope to take any action to escape or to modify the end which is coming. There is after all not much time left before that moment is due. And above all Mayor Amalfi it is not simply a technical problem it is an ending which was written organically into the fundamental structure of the universe itself written in the beginning by what hands we know not all that we can know now is that it was foreordained. And from this conclusion though Amalfi s own psyche had been fighting against its acceptance since the moment that he himself had realized it was so there was really no escape. Conceptually the universe had been a reasonably comfortable place to live in in primitive atomic theory which offered the assurance that everything earth air fire or water steel and oranges man or star was ultimately composed of submicroscopic vortices called protons and electrons leavened a little with neutrons and neutrinos which had no charge and bound together by a disorderly but homely family of mesons. The type case was the hydrogen atom one proton sitting cosily on the hearth contentedly positive in charge while about it wove one electron surrounded by its negative field like crackling cat s fur. That was the simple case but one was assured that even in the heaviest and most complicated atoms even those man made ones like plutonium one need only add more and heavier logs to the fire and more cats would come droning about it it would be hard to tell one cat from another but this is the customary penalty the owner of hundreds pays. The first omen that there was something wrong with this chromo of sub microscopic and universal domesticity appeared as all good omens should in the skies. Back on Earth nearly half a century before space flight some astronomer whose name is quite lost had noticed that two or three of the millions of meteors that entered Earth s atmosphere every day exploded at a height and with a violence which could not be accounted for by an eccentricity of orbit or velocity and in one of those great flights of fancy which account in the long run for every new link in the great chain of understanding he had a dream of something which he called contra terrene matter a matter made of fire with cat s fur which would be circled by cats in flames: matter in which the fundamental hydrogen atom would have a nucleus which would be an anti proton with the mass of a proton but carrying a negative charge around which would orbit an anti electron with the negligible mass of an electron but carrying a positive charge. A meteor of atoms constructed on this model he reasoned would explode with especial violence at the first contact with even the faintest traces of Earth s normal matter atmosphere and such meteors would suggest that somewhere in the universe there were whole planets whole suns whote galaxies composed of such matter whose barest touch would be more than death would be ultimate and complete annihilation each form of matter converting the ot e l wholly into energy in a flaming and total embrace. Curiously the contra terrene meteors died out of the theory shortly thereafter while the theory itself survived. The exploding meteors were found to be easier to explain in more conventional terms but anti matter survived and by the middle of the Twentieth Century experimental physicists were even able to produce the stuff a few atoms at a time. Those topsy turvy atoms proved to be nonviable beyond a few millionths of a micro second and it gradually became clear that even in this short lifetime the time in which they lived was running backwards. The particles of which they were made were born in the great clumsy bevatrons of that age some micro seconds in the future and their assembly into atoms of anti matter in the present time of the observers was in fact the moment of their death. Obviously anti matter was not only theoretically possible but could exist but it could not exist in this universe in any assemblage so gross as a meteor if there were worlds and galaxies made of anti matter they existed only in some unthinkable separate continuum where time and the entropy gradiant ran backwards. Such a continuum would require at least four extra dimensions at a minimum in addition to the conventional four of experience. As the universe of normal matter expanded unwound and ran down toward its inevitable heat death somewhere nearby and yet in a somewhere unimaginable by nym a duplicate universe as vast and complex was contracting winding up approaching the supernal concentration of mass and energy called the monobloc. As complete dispersion darkness and silence was to be the fate of the universe in which the arrow of time pointed down the entropy gradient so in the anti matter universe the end was to be mass beyond mass energy beyond energy raw glare and fury to the ultimate power raging in a primeval atom no bigger across than the orbit of Saturn. And out of one universe might come the other in the universe of normal matter the monobloc was the beginning but in the universe of anti matter it would be the end in a universe of normal entropy the monobloc is intolerable and must explode in a universe of negative entropy the heat death is intolerable and must condense. In either case the command is: Let there be light. What the visible tangible universe had been like before the monobloc was however agreed to be forever unknowable. The classic statement had been made many centuries earlier by St. Augustine who when asked what God might have been doing before He created the universe replied that He was constructing a hell for persons who asked such questions thus pre Augustinean time came to be something that a historian could know all about but a physicist by definition nothing. Until now for if the Hevians were right they had lifted that curtain a little way alid caught an instant s glimpse of the unknowable. To have looked it full in the face could have been no more fatal. During the course of their exultant drive upon the Andromeda galaxy the Hevians had discovered that one of their spindizzies oddly it was one of the machines which had been new built for the project not one of the old and somewhat abused drivers which had been dismounted from the Okie city was beginning to run somewhat hot. This was a problem which was then brand new to them and rather than take chances on the to them unknown effects which might be produced by such a machine were it to run really wild they shut down their entire spindizzy network while repairs were made leaving behind only a 0.02 per cent screen necessary to protect the planet s atmosphere and heat budget. And it was then and there in the utter silences of intergalactic space that their instruments detected for the first time in human history the whispers of continuous creation: the tiny ping of new atoms of hydrogen being born one by one out of nothing at all. This would alone and in itself have been a sobering enough experience for any man of a thoughtful cast of mind even one who lacked the Hevians history of preoccupation with religious questions no one could view the birth of the raw material from which the whole known universe was built out of what was demonstrably nothingness without being shaken by the conviction that there must also be a Creator and that He must be in the immediate vicinity of where His work was proceeding. Those tiny pings and pips in the Hevians instruments seemed at first to leave no room in the long arguments of cosmogony and cosmology for any cyclical theory of the universe any continuous and eternal systole diastole from monobloc to heat death and back again with a Creator required only at th s remote inception of the rhythmic process or not at all. Here was creation in process: the invisible Finger touched nothingness and from nothing came something the ultimate absurdity which because it was ultimate could be nothing else but divine. Yet the Hevians were sophisticated enough to be suspicious. Historically fundamental discoveries were dependably ambiguous this discovery which on the face of it seemed to provide a flat answer to 25 000 years of theological speculation and in effect to bring God into inargua ble being for the first time since He had been postulated by some Stone Age sun worshipper or mushroom eating mystic could not be as simple as it seemed. It had been won too easily too much else is implied by the continual creating existence of a present God to make it tenable that that existence should be provable by so simple and single a physical datum arrived at by what could honestly only be described as ordinary accident. Gifford Bonner was later to remark that it had been fortunate beyond belief that it had been the Hevians a people only recently winning back to some degree of scientific sophistication but which had never lost its sense of the continuity and the overwhelming complexity of theology in a scientific age who had first been allowed to hear these tiny birth cries in the nursery of time. The typical Earthman of the end of the Third Millennium with his engineer s bias philosphically webbed in about equal measure to a sentimentally hard headed common sense and a raw and naive mystique of Progress it was at about this point in Bonner s analysis that Amain had felt a slight impulse to squirm might easily have taken the datum at face value and walked the plank on it directly into a morass of telepathy the racial unconscious personal reincarnation or any of a hundred other traps which await the scientifically oriented man who does not know that he too is as thorough going a mystic as a fakir lying on a bed of nails. The Hevians were suspicious they questioned the discovery first of all only on the subject of what it said it was saying. Theology could wait. If continuous creation was a fact then primarily that ruled out that there should ever have been a monoblgc in the history of the universe or that there should ever be a heat death instead it would always go along like this world without end. Therefore if the discovery was as fundamentally ambiguous as all such discoveries before had proven to be it should in the same breath be implying exactly the opposite ask it that question and see what it says. This singularly tough minded approach paid off at once though the further implications which it offered for inspection proved in no way easier to digest than the first and contrary set had been. Taking a long chance with the still largely unfamiliar machines and with the precarious life of their entire planet the Hevians shut down their spindizzies entirely and listefled more intently. In that utmost of dead silences the upsetting whisper of continuous creation proved to have two voices. Each pinging birth pang was not a single note but a duo. As each atom of hydrogen leapt into being from nowhere into the universe of experience a sinister twin a hydrogen atom of anti matter came there in that instant to die from ... somewhere else. And there it was. Even what had seemed to be fundamental ineluctable proof of one way time and continuous creation could also be regarded as inarguable evidence for a cyclical cosmology. In a way to the Hevians it was satisfying this was physics as they knew it to be an idiot standing at a crossroads shouting God went thataway and managing to point down all four roads at once. Nevertheless it left them a legacy of dread. This single many barbed burr of a datum which could have been obtained under no other circumstances was also sufficient in itself to endorse the existence of an entire second universe of anti matter congruent point for point with the universe of experience of normal matter but opposite to it in sign. What appeared to have been the birth of a hydrogen atom of anti matter simultaneous with the birth of the normal hydrogen atom was actually its death there was now no doubt that time ran backwards in the anti matter universe and so did the entropy gradient one being demonstrably a function of the other. The concept of course was old so old in fact that Amalfi had difficulty in remembering just when in his lifetime it had become so familial1 to him that he had forgotten about it entirely. Its revival here by the Hevians struck him at first as an exasperating anachronism calcu lated only to get in the way of the real work of practical men. He was in particular rather scornful of the notion of a universe in which negative entropy could be an operating principle under such circumstances his rustily squeaking memo y pointed out cause and effect would not preserve even the rough statistical associations which they were allowed in the universe of experience energy would accumulate events would undo themselves water would run uphill old men would clump into existence out of the air and soil and unlearn their profitless ways back toward their mothers wombs. Which is what they do in any event Gifford Bonner had said gently. But actually I doubt that it s that paradoxical Amalfi. Both of these universes can be regarded as unwinding as running down as losing energy with each transaction. The fact that from our point of view the anti matter universe seems to be gaining energy is simply a bias built into the way we re forced to look at things. Actually these two universes probably are simply unwinding in opposite directions like two millstones. Though the two arrows of time seem to be pointing in opposite directions they probably both point downhill like fingerboards at the crest of a single road. If the dynamics of it bother you bear in mind that both are four dimensional continua and from that point of view both are wholly static. Which brings us to the crucial question of contiguity Jake said cheerfully. The point is these two four dimensional continua are intimately related as the twin events the Hevians observed make very plain which I suppose must mean that we must allow for a total of at least sixteen dimensions to contain the whole system. Which is no particular surprise in itself you need at least that many to accommodate the atomic nucleus of average complexity comfortably. What is surprising is that the two continua are approaching each other I agree with Miramon that the observations his people made can t be interpreted any other way up to now the fact that gravitation in the two universes is also opposite in sign seems to have kept them apart but that repulsion or pressure or whatever you want to call it is obviously growing steadily weaker. Somewhere in the future the near future it will decline to zero there will be a Pythagorean point for point collision between the two universes as a whole and it s hard to imagine how any physical frame work even one that allows sixteen dimensions of elbowroom will be able to contain the energy that s going to be released Dr. Schloss said. The monobloc isn t even in the running if it ever existed it was just a wet firecracker by comparison. Translation: blooey Carrel said. It s perfectly possible that a rational cosmology is going to have to accommodate all three events Gifford Bonner said. I mean by that the monobloc the heat death and this thing this event that seems to fall midway between the two. Curious there are a number of myths and ancient philosophical systems that allow for such a break or discontinuity right in the middle of the span of existence Giordano BrunoV Earth s first relativist called it the period of Interdestruction and a compatriot of his named Vico allowed for it in what was probably the first cyclical theory of ordinary human history and in Scand anavian mythology it was called the Ginnangu Gap. But I wonder Dr. Schloss if the destruction is going to be quite as total as you suggest. I am nobody s physicist I freely confess but it seems to me that if these two universes are opposite in sign at every point as everyone at this meeting has been implying then the result cannot be only a general transformation of the matter on both sides into energy. There will be energy transformed into matter too on just as large a scale after which the gravitational pressure should begin to build up again and the two universes having in effect passed through each other and exchanged hats will begin retreating from each other once more. Or have I missed something crucial I m not sure that the argument is as elegant as it appears on the surface Retma said. That awaits Dr. Schloss s mathematical analysis of course but in the meantime I cannot help but wonder why for instance if this simultaneous creation interdestruction destruction cycle is truly cyclical it should have this ornamental waterspout of continuous creation attached to it A machinery of creation which involves no less than three universal cataclysms in each cycle should not need to be powered by a sort of continuous drip either the one is too grandiose or the other is insufficient. Besides continuous creation implies a steady state which is irreconcilable. I don t know about that Jake said. It doesn t sound like anything the Milne transformations couldn t handle it s probably just a clock function. Defined as I recall as a mathematical expression about the size of a Bottle of aspirin Carrel said ruefully. Well there s one thing I m perfectly certain of Amalfi growled ancl that is that it s damned unlikely anybody is going JMbe around to care about the exact results of the collision after it happens. At least not at the rate this hassle is going. Is there actually anything useful that we can do or would we be better off spending all this time playing poker That Miramon said is exactly what we know least about. In fact it would appear that we know nothing about it whatsoever. Mr. Miramon Web Hazleton s voice spoke from the shadows and stopped. Obviously he was waiting to be told that he was breaking his promise not to interrupt but it was as plain to Amalfi as it was to the rest of the group that he was interrupting nothing now his voice had broken only a dead and despairing silence. Go ahead Web Amalfi said. Well I was just thinking. Mr. Miramon came here looking for somebody to help him do something he doesn t know how to do himself. Now he thinks we don t know how to do it either. But what was it He s just said that he doesn t know Amalfi said gently. That isn t what I mean Web said hesitantly. What I mean is what would he like to do even if he doesn t know how to do it Even if it s impossible Bonner s voice chuckled softly in the still shipboard air. That s right he said the ends determine the means. A hen is only an egg s device for producing another egg. Is that Hazleton s grandson Good for you Web. There are a good many experiments that ought to be performed if only we knew how to design them Miramon admitted thoughtfully. First of all we ought to have a better date for the catastrophe than we have now the near future is a huge block of time under these conditions almost as shapeless a target as sometime we would need it defined to the millisecond just to begin with. I applaud the young Earthman s brilliant common sense but I refuse to delude myself by asking for more than that even that seems hopeless. Why Amalfi said. What would you need to calculate it from Given the data the City Fathers can handle the calculations they were designed to handle any mathemati cal operation once the parameters were filled and in a thousand years I ve never known them to fail to come through on that kind of thing usually within two or three minutes never as long as a day. I remember your City Fathers Miramon said with a brief ironical motion of his eyebrows which was perhaps a last vestigial tremor of his old savage awe at the things which were the city and of the city. But the major parameter that needs to be filled here is a precise determination of the energy level of the other universe. Why that shouldn t be so very difficult Dr. Schloss said in dawning astonishment. That can t be anything but a transform of energy level in our own universe the mayor s right the City Fathers could give you that almost before you could finish stating the problem to them t tau transforms are the fundamental stuff of faster than light space travel I m astonished that you ve been able to get along without them. Not so Jake said. No doubt the t tau relationships are congruent on both sides of the barrier I don t doubt that for a minute but you re dealing in sixteen dimensions here along what axis are you going to impose the congru ency Are you going to assume that t time and tau time apply uniformly and transformably along all sixteen axes You can t do that unless you re willing to involve the total system in such a double which in t time involves a mono bloc for the whole apparatus that s hopeless. At least it s hopeless for us in the time we have left we d be frittering away our days in chase of endlessly retreating decimals. You might just as well set the City Fathers to work giving you a final figure for pi. I stand corrected Dr. Schloss said his tone halfway between wry humor and stiff embarrassment. You re quite right Miramon there s a discontinuity here which we can t read from theory. How inelegant. Elegance can wait Amalfi said. In the meantime why is it so impossible to get an energy level reading from the other side Dr. Schloss your research group used to talk about their hopes of constructing an anti matter artifact. Couldn t we use such a thing as an exploratory missile to the other side No Dr. Schloss said promptly. You forget that such an object would be on the other side it would be on our side. We would have to work out some way of assembling it in the future of the experiment by the time we were first able to see it in the present of the experiment it would be in an advance state of decay to say the least and would then evolve only to the condition in which we assembled it No reading that we got from it would tell us anything but howl anti matter behaves in our universe it would tell us nothing about any universe in which antimatter is normal. After a moment he added thoughtfully And besides that would be a project hard to realize in anything under a century I d be more inclined to say it would take two under the circumstances I too would rather be playing poker. Well I wouldn t Jake said unexpectedly. I think Amalfi may be right in principle. Difficult though the problem is there ought to be some sort of probe that we could extend across the discontinuity. Mind you I agree that the anti matter artifact is the wrong approach entirely the thing would have to be absolutely immaterial a construct made entirely out of what we could pick up in No Man s Land. But seeing across long distances under great odds is the discipline I was trained in. I don t think we should count this an impossible problem. Schloss how do you feel about this If you and your group are willing to give up your anti matter artifact for poker would you be willing to work with me on this a while I ll need your background but you ll need my point of view between us we just might devise the instrument and get the message. Mind you Miramon I hold out no hope but except the hope you hold out. Miramon said his eyes shining. Now I am hearing from you what I hoped to hear. This is the voice of the Earth of memory. We will give you everything you need that is within our power to give we give you our planet to begin with but the universe the twin universes the unthinkable meta universe you must take for yourselves. We remember you now you have always had that boundless ambition. His voice darkened suddenly. And we shall be your disciples that too is as it has always been. Only begin that is all we ask. Amalfi gathered the consensus of the present eyes around the chart table. Such agreement as he needed from the listeners on New Earth he was able to gather almost as well from the silence. I think he said slowly that we have begun already. CHAPTER FOUR: Fabr Suithe It was hot on the Hevian hillside in the post noon glare of the great Cepheid about which the planet was now orbiting at the respectful distance of thirty five astronomical units thirty five times the distance of old Earth from the Sun. At this distance the star which had a mean absolute magnitude of plus one was barely tolerable at the peak of its eight day cycle at the bottom of the cycle when the star s radiation had dropped by a factor of 25 it got cold enough on He to nip one s ears far from an ideal situation for a predominantly agricultural planet but the Hevi ans did not expect to remain in the vicinity for as long as one growing season: Web and Estelle lay in the long grass of the hillside under the hot regard of that swollen star and slowly got their breaths back. Web in particular was glad for the recess. The morning had begun in sober exploration of Fabr Suithe He s greatest monument to its own past and He s present center of pure philosophy thus far it was the only place they had found on He which they were allowed to explore by themselves by both the adult Hevians and their own people. This morning however this freedom had had an unexpected but logical consequence: they had found that Fabr Suithe was also one of the few cities on He where Hevian children were free to roam. Elsewhere there were far too many machines vital to the life of the planet as a whole the Hevians could not afford the chance that children might get into the works nor with their sparse population could they afford the loss of even a single life. Web and Estelle had changed into the chiton like Hevian costume the moment they had been told that they would be allowed to explore the city albeit in very limited terms but it did not take the Hevian youngsters long to penetrate this disguise since Web and Estelle spoke their language only in a most rudimentary way. This language block was in part a nuisance for although most adult Hevians spoke the mixture of English Interlingua and Russian which w s the beche de mer of deep space learned long ago from the Okies none of the children did but it was also a blessing since it precluded any extensive interrogation of Web and Estelle about their own world culture and background. Shortly instead they found themselves involved in an elaborate chase game called Matrix rather like run sheep run combined with checkers except that it was three dimensional for it was played in a twelve story building with transparent floors so that one could always see the position of the other players and. with strategically placed spindizzy and friction field shafts for fast transit from one floor to another. Web was the first to develop the suspicion that the building had either been designed for the game or had been totally abandoned to it for the transparent floors were appropriately ruled and the structure otherwise did not seem to contain anything or to be used for any other purpose. Web had found the game itself exhilarating at first but rather baffling too and he was generally the first player to be eliminated. Had it not been for an impromptu change in the rules he would have been It in nearly every new round and even under the aegis of the new rules he did not make a very brave showing. Estelle on the other hand took to Matrix as though she had been born in the game and within half an hour her lanky legged slender figure as bosomless and hipless as any of the boys was darting in and out of the kaleidoscope of running figures with inordinate grace and swiftness. When time was called for lunch Web s laboring lungs and bruised ego more than welcomed the chance to escape from the city entirely for the hot stillness of the fallow hills. They re nice I like them Estelle said rising to one elbow to attack meditatively a gourd shaped green and silver melon which one of the Hevian boys had given her apparently as a prize. At the first bite there was a low but prolonged hiss and the air around them became impregnated with a fragrance so overwhelmingly spicy that Estelle had to sneeze five times in quick succession. Web began to laugh but the laughter ended abruptly in a paroxysmal sneeze of his own. They love us he said wiping his eyes. You re so good at their game they ve given you a sneeze gas bomb to keep you from playing it any longer. The odor diminished gradually carried off by what little breeze there was. After a while Estelle cautiously put two thumbs into the wound she had made and broke the melon open. Nothing else happened the odor was now tolerable and then abruptly became both barely detectable and overpoweringly mouth watering. Estelle handed him half. He bit into the crisp white pulp more deeply than fie had intended. The result made him close his eyes it tasted like quick frozen music. They finished it in reverent silence and wiping their mouths on their chitons lay back. After a while Estelle said: I wish we could talk to them better. Miramon can talk to us well enough Web said somnolently. He didn t have to learn our language the hard way either. They do it here by machine like we used to do it when we were Okies. I wish we still did it that way. Hypnopaedia Estelle said. But I thought that was all dead and done for. You didn t really learn anything that way just facts. That s right just facts. It didn t teach you to relate. For that you have to have a tutor. But it was good for learning things like 1 X 1 10 or the tables in the back of the book or the 850 words you most need to know in a new language. It used to take only five hundred hours to cram all that stuff into you by EEG feedback flicker oral repetition and I don t know what all else and the whole time you were under hypnosis. It sounds too easy Estelle said sleepily. The easy parts of things ought to be easy Web said. What s the point of having to learn them by rote That takes too much time. You know yourself that something you can learn in ten repetitions or five it takes some kids thirty repetitions to learn. So you have to sit around through twenty or twenty five repetitions that you don t need. If there s anything I hate about school it s drill all that time wasted that you could actually be doing something with. Suddenly Web became conscious of a peculiar flopping sound at the crest of the hill behind him. He knew well enough that there were no dangerous animals left on He but he realized that he had been hearing the sound for some time while he was talking and the notion occurred to him that his definition of a dangerous animal might not necessarily make a good match with that of a Hevian. Anyhow he could hope he could use a tiger to best along about now. He twisted quickly to his hands and knees. Don t be silly Estelle said without moving or even opening her eyes. Ifs cjnly Ernest. The svengali appeared over the crest of the hill and came humping itself through the tall grass in a symphony of desperate disorganization. It gave Web only the briefest of glances and then bent upon Estelle the reproachful stare of an animal utterly betrayed but still it hoped you noticed firm in the true faith. Web stifled his impulse to laugh for in fact he could hardly blame the poor creature since it was as brainless as it was sexless despite its name it had been able to contrive no better way of keeping up with Estelle than to follow her through her every move in the Matrix game a discipline for which it was so magnificently unequipped that it had only just now finished. It was lucky that the children had not counted it as a player or poor Ernest would have been It to Web thought with unfocussed uneasiness the end of time. We could sign up for it here Web said abruptly. For what Hypnopaedia Your grandmother wouldn t let us. Web turned around and sat up plucking a long hollow blade of the bamboo like grass and sinking his grinding teeth thoughtfully into the woody butt end. But she isn t here he said. No but she will be Estelle said. And she s a school officer on the New Earth. I used to hear her fighting about it with my father when I was a child. She used to tell him he was out of his mind. She would say Why do kids need all this calculus and history now What good is it to somebody who s going to have to go out and hoe a virgin planet . She used to make poor Dad stutter something awful. But she isn t here Web repeated with a little unwilling exasperation. He had just realized that Estelle s face with its closed eyes so perfectly in repose in the blue white light of this one day long summer was lovelier than anything he had ever seen before. He found that he could not go on. At the same moment the svengali felt rested enough to take a consensus among the scattered ganglia which served it however badly for a brain and concluded that its long soulful stare at Estelle was doing it no good at all. Simultaneously one of its limbs which had the whole time been inching in the direction of one of the melon rinds suddenly passed a threshold and telegraphed back to the rest of the animal the implications of that now faint spicy odor. All the rest of Ernest flowed eagerly into that arm and bunched itself around the rind and then the polyp was rolling helplessly down the hill curled into a ball with the melon rind clutched firmly in the middle. As it rolled it emitted a small thrilling whistle of alarm which made Web s back hairs stir it was the first time he had ever heard a svengali make a sound but it would not let go of its prize it came to rest in the middle of a rivulet in the valley and was washed gently downstream out of sight still faintly protesting and avidly digesting. There goes Ernest Web said. I know. I heard him. He s such a stupid. But he ll be back. Your grandmother will be here too. Once the Mayor and Miramon and Dr. Schloss and the rest decided to stay on He because of all the work they have to do here they had to send home for somebody to take care of us. They don t think we can take care of ourselves. They wouldn t let us go knocking all around a strange planet all by ourselves. Maybe not Web said reluctantly. He tested the proposition it seemed to hold water. But why would it have to be grandmother Well it wouldn t be Daddy because he has to stay on New Earth and work on the New Earth part of the problem that we re working on here Estelle said. And it wouldn t be your grandfather because he has to stay home on New Earth and be mayor while Mayor Amalfi s here. It wouldn t be my mother because they re not scientists or philosophers and would just clutter up He even more than we re doing. If they re going to fly anyone out here to oversee us it has to be your grandmother. I suppose so Web said. That ll put a crimp in us for sure. It ll do more than that Estelle said tranquilly. She ll send us home. She wouldn t do that Yes she would. That s the way they think. She ll be practical about it. That s not being practical Web protested. It s treachery that s what it is. She can t come all the way here to take care of us on He just as an excuse to take us off He. Estelle did not reply. After a moment Web opened his eyes belatedly realizing that a shadow had fallen across his face. The Hevian boy who had given Estelle the melon was standing above them deferentially respecting their silence but obviously poised to renew the game when they were ready. Behind him the heads of the other Hevian children bobbed over the hill obviously wondering what the strangers and their boneless odd smelling pet would do next but leaving the initiative to their spokesman. Hello Estelle said sitting up again. Hello the tall boy said hesitantly. Yes For a moment he seemed baffled then making the best of the situation he sat down and went on hi as simple a Hevian as he could contrive. You are rested. Yes Shall we play another game No more for me Web said almost indignantly. Then play Matrix yesterday tomorrow sometime day. Yes No no the Hevian boy said. Not Matrix. This is another game a resting game. You play it sitting down. We call it the lying game. Oh. How works it Everyone takes turns. Each tells a story. It must be a real story without any truth in it. The other players are the jury. You gain a point for everything in the story that is clearly true. The low score wins. I lost about five key words in there somewhere Estelle said to Web. How does it go again Web explained quickly. Although his spoken command of the Hevian language was limited to the tenses of past indictable present excitable and future irredeemable his vocabulary a thoroughly unbotanical mixture of stems and roots and his declensions one massive disinclination to decline he found that he was developing a fair facility at understanding the language at least when it was being spoken this slowly. It was quite probable that he too had lost five words in the course of the Hevian boy s speech but he had picked up their meaning from context Estelle apparently was still trying to translate word by word instead of striving first to catch the total import of the sentence. Oh I see Estelle said. But how do they rate one truth over another If in my story the sun rises in the morning and I also say I m wearing this whatever it is this chiton do I get docked one point for each I ll try to ask Web said doubtfully. I m not sure I have all the nouns I need. He put the question to the Hevian boy finding it necessary to be rather more abstract than he wished but the boy grasped not only the sense of what he was trying to say but worked his way back to the concrete nouns with impressive insight. The jury will decide the Soy said. But there are rules. A dress is only a little truth and costs only one point. Sunrise on a captive planet like New Earth is a natural law that may cost you fifty. On a free planet like He it may be only partly true and cost you ten. Or it may be a flat lie and cost you nothing. That is why we have the jury. Web had to have this restated to him in increasingly simpler terms before he chanced explaining it in turn to Estelle but at last he was reasonably sure that both the New Earth players understood the rules of the game. To make assurance doubly sure he asked the Hevians to begin so that he and Estelle could become familiar with the kinds of lies which were most admired and the way the jury of players penalized each inadvertent truth. The first two stories came close to convincing him that he was being overcautious. At the very least it seemed plain both from the terms in which the game had been described and the stories as they were told that the Hevians as a race had little talent for fiction. The third player however a girl of about nine who obviously had been bursting with impatience for her turn to come around stunned him completely. The moment she was called upon she began: This morning I saw a letter and the address on it was Four. The letter had feet and the feet had shoes on them. It was delivered by missile but it walked all the way. Though it is Four for four it s triple treble trouble she wound up triumphantly. There was a short embarrassed silence. That doesn t sound like a lie at all Estelle said to Web relapsing into her own language. It sounds more like a riddle. That was not fair the Hevian leader was telling the nine year old at the same time in a stern voice. We hadn t explained the rules of the coup. He turned to Web and Estelle. Another part of the game is to try to tell a story which is entirely true but sounds like a lie. In the coup the jury penalizes you for lying if it can catch you. If you aren t caught you have told a perfect truth which wins the round even over a perfect lie. But it was unfair of Pyla to try for a coup before we d explained it to you. I challenge onc f Web said gravely. Is really this morning was If then we had had knowed but we haven t. This morning Pyla insisted determinedly defending her coup in the face of the group s obvious disapproval. You weren t there then. I saw you leave. How do you know about all these Web said. I hung around the girl said. Abruptly she giggled. And I heard you two talking too behind the hill. Since the whole of her answer was offered in a fluent though heavily accented Okie Mche de mer there were obviously no further questions to be asked. Web was feeling just barely civil toward females but he offered Pyla his politest smile. In that case he said formally you win. We thank you from our heartmost bottom. This is good news. He never did quite make up his mind whether his imperfect knowledge of Hevian made this polite speech come out as Pullup hellup yiz are ninety or Why do I am alook alike a poss of porterpease or whether he managed to say exactly what he thought he was saying but to his great astonishment Pyla burst into tears. Oh oh oh she wailed. That would have been my very first coup. And you beat me you beat me. The jury was already in a huddle. A few moments later Silvador the leader stroked Pyla gently on the temples and said Hush now. On the contrary our Web friend must be penalized for lying. His eyes twinkling he offered Estelle his arm and she came to her feet in one sinuous unravelling of the knot she had tied herself into during the lying game. The penalty must include our Estelle friend too he added portentously. You must both come with us directly to the city and be he struck an executioner s pose put to sleep for a while. No Web said. We have to go. He clambered stiffly to his feet. Please Silvador said. We don t really mean to punish. You wanted to sleep learn. We can take you to the sleep learner. Is that not what you asked this morning Pyla has two hours .coming to her this afternoon. We were going to give it to you you could learn Hevian and talk to us But how did we lie Estelle said her eyes dancing. Web said it was good news Silvador said solemnly that his Dee friend was already here. He told a flat lie about an accomplished fact that costs 50 points. The two New Earth children looked at each other. Oh algae and gravity Web said suddenly. Let s go do it. We ll see Dee soon enough. Dee blew her top. What on Earth were you thinking of John she demanded. How do you know what they teach in hyp nopedia here How could you let children run around a strange planet without knowing what these savages might do to them They didn t do anything to us Web said. They re not savages Anjalfi said. I know what they are. I was here the first time when you were. And I think it s criminally irresponsible to let savages tamper with a child s mind. Or any civilized mind. How would you recognize a civilized mind Amalfi demanded. But he knew that it was certainly a fruitless question and possibly a spiteful one. He could see well enough that she was the same girl he had met during the Utopia Gort affair the same woman he had loved the same bright physical image he would cherish to the near ing end of time but she was getting old and how do you tell a woman that The Hevians and the children alike were approaching the end of the world as a new experience but Dee and Amalfi and Mark and indeed the whole of New Earth were approaching it from age with the two forms of matter subsequent to the impact Dee no thought but to stave off new experience to dwell safely in accomplished fact. He himself would not accept that such a thing was to happen Dee would not let the children learn a new language they were exhibiting all the stigmata of the onset of old age and so was their culture. The drugs still worked physically they were still young but age was with them nonetheless and for good. In the long run there was no cheating time and the entropy gradient nor any hope but that of putting one s hope into Hevians and other children. The cancer scarred giant King of Buda Pesht and the Acolyte jungle had been as old as Amalfi was now when Amalfi had met and bested him and he had even then settled into an idee fixe he had been still physically arrested but mentally he was already used up. There were on r i4wo ways to go toward death you accept that you are going to die or you refuse to believe it. To deny that the problem is there is childish or senile it lacks the fluidity of adjustment which is that process called maturity and when children and savages are more fluid at this than you are you must see that curfew has struck for you and go gracefully. Otherwise they will bury you their titular leader nominally alive. Dee had not of course bothered to answer the question she simply looked grim. The aborted argument had been conducted mostly sotto voce anyhow for the rest of the Hevian council room was deeply embroiled in an attempt to quanticize the amount of gamma radiation which would be produced when the two universes passed through each other and its degree of convertibility into either of the two forms of matter subsequent to the impact Dee had been forced to push her way into the meeting to find Web and Estelle who by now had become accepted silent partners at such skull sessions. I m not content with that at all Retma was saying. Dr. Schloss is assuming that a substantial part of this energy will go off as sheer noise as though the meeting of the two universes were analogous to the clashing of cymbals. To allow that one has to assume that Planck s Constant holds true in Hilbert space for which we haven t a shred of evidence. One can t superimpose an entropy gradient at right angles to a reaction which itself involves entropies of opposite sign on each side of the equation. But why can t you Dr. Schloss said. That s what Hilbert space is for: to provide a choice of axes for just such an operation. If you have such a choice the rest is only a simple exercise in projective geometry. I don t deny that Retma said somewhat stiffly. I m questioning its applicability. We have no data which suggest that handling the problem in this way would be anything more than an exercise so whether it would be a simple exercise or a complex exercise is not to the point. I think we d better go Dee said. Web Estelle please come along we re only interrupting and there s a lot we have to do. Her penetrating stage whisper rasped across the discus sion more effectively than any speech at normal conversational volume could have done. Dr. Schloss face pinched with annoyance. For a moment the faces of the Hevians went politely blank then Miramon turned and looked first at Dee and then at Amalfi slightly raising one eyebrow. Amalfi nodded a little embarrassed. Do we have to go grandmother Web protested. I mean all this is what we re here for. And Estelle s good at math now and then Retma and Dr. Schloss want her to match up Hevian names for terms with ours. Dee thought about it. Well she said I suppose it can t do any harm. This was exactly and expectably the wrong answer though Web could have had no way of anticipating it. He did not know as Amalfi knew very well by direct memory that women on He had once been much worse than slaves that in fact they had been regarded as a wholly loathesome though necessary cross between a demon and a lower animal hence he was unequipped to see that Hevian women today were still crucially subordinate to their men and fa from welcome in a situation of this kind. Nor did Amalfi see any present opportunity to explain to Web or to Estelle either why both children must now go. The explanation would require more knowledge of Dee than either of the children had they would need to know for instance that in Dee s eyes the women of He had been emancipated but not enfranchised and that for Dee this abstract distinction carried a high emotional charge all the more so because the Hevian women themselves were obviously quite content to have it that way. Miramon settled his papers arose and walked smoothly toward them his face grave. Dee watched him approach with an expression of smouldering resolute suspicion with which Amalfi could not help but sympathize funny though he found it. We are delighted to have you with us Mrs. Hazleton Miramon said bowing his head. Much of what we are today we owe to you. I hope you will allow us to express our gratitude my wife and her ladies await to do you honor. Thanks but I don t I really mean She had to stop obviously finding it impossible to summon up in a split second the memory of what she had meant so many years ago when she had been whether she was yet aware of it or not another person. Back then she had in fact Seen one of the prime movers in the emancipation of the women of He and Amalfi had been glad of her vigorous help particularly since it had turned out to be crucial ife a bloody power struggle on the planet and hence crucial to the survival of the city the latter a formula which then had been as magical and beyond critical examination as the will to live itself and now was as meaningless a slogan and one as far gone in time as Remember the Bastille Mason Dixon Nixon and Yates or The Stars Must Be Ours Dee s first encounter with Hevian women had been in the days when they had been stinking unwashed creatures kept in ceremonial cages something about Miramon s present mode of address to her apparently reminded her of those days perhaps even made her feel the bars and the dirt falling into place about her own person yet the time gap was too great and the politeness too intensive to permit her to take offense on those grounds if indeed she was aware of them. She looked quickly at Amalfi but his face remained unchanged she knew him well enough to be able to see that there would be no help from that quarter. Thank you she said helplessly. Webb Estelle it s time we left. Web turned to Estelle as if for help in unconscious burlesque of Dee s unspoken appeal to Amalfi but Estelle was already rising. To Amalfi s eyes the girl looked amused and a little contemptuous. Dee was going to have trouble with that one. As for Web anyone could see plainly that he was in love so he would require no special handling. What I suggest is this Estelle s father s voice said way up in the middle of the air. Suppose we assume that there is no thermodynamic crossover between the two universes until the moment of contact. If that s the case there s no possibility of applying symmetry unless we assume that the crossover point is actually a moment of complete neutrality no matter how explosive it seems to somebody on one side or the other of the equivalence sign. That s a reasonable assumption I think and it would enable us to get rid of Planck s Constant I agree with Retma that in a situation like this that s only a bugger factor and handle the opposite signs in terms of the old Schiff neutrino antineutrino theory of gravitation. That can be quanticized equally well after all. Not in terms of the Grebe numbers Dr. Schloss said. But that s exactly the point Schloss Jake said excitedly. Grebe numbers don t cross over they apply in our universe and probably they apply on the other side too but they don t cross. What we need is a function that does cross or else some assumption that fits the facts that frees us of crossover entirely. That s what Retma was saying if I understood him correctly and I think he s right. If you don t have a crossover expression which is perfectly neutral anywhere in Hilbert space then you re automatically making an assumption about a real No Man s Land. What we re forced to start with here is No. Estelle stopped at the door and turned to look toward the invisible source of the: voice. Daddy she said that s just like translating Hevian math into New Earth math. If it s No Man s Land you have to deal with why don t you start with the bullets Come dear Dee said. The door closed. There was a very long silence in the room after that. You are letting those children go to waste Mayor Amalfi Miramon said at last. Why do you do it If only you would fill their brains with the facts that they need and it is so easy as you well know you taught us how to do it It s no longer so easy with us Amalfi said. We are older than you are we no longer share your preoccupation with the essences of things. It would take too long to explain how we came to that pass. We have other things to think about now. If that is true Miramon said slowly then indeed we must hear no more about it. Otherwise I shall be tempted to feel sorry for you and that must not happen otherwise we all are lost. Not so Amalfi said smiling tightly. Nothing is ever that final. Where were we This is only the beginning of the end. Were the universe to last forever Mayor Amalfi Miramon said I should never understand you. And so the betrayal was complete. Web and Estelle never heard the stiff and hitter exchange between Amalfi and Hazleton across the trillions and trillions of miles of seethingly empty space between He and the New Earth which resulted in Hazleton s being forced to call his wife home before she antagonized the Hevians any further nor did they know precisely why Dee s recall had to mean their recall. They simply went mute and grieving willy nilly expressing by silence the only weapon that they had their revolt against the insanities of adult logic. In their hearts they l ndw that they had been denied the first real thing that tney had ever wanted except for each other. And time was running out. CHAPTER FIVE: Jehad That conversation had been unusually painful for Amalfi too despite his many centuries of experience at having differences of opinion with Hazleton ending ordinarily in enforcement of Amalfi s opinion if there was no other way around it. There had been something about this quarrel which had been tainted for Amalfi and he knew very well what it was: the abortive passionless and fruitless autumnal affair with Dee. Sending her home to Mark now necessary though he believed it to be was too open to interpretation as an act of revenge upon the once beloved for being no longer loved. Such things happened between lovers as Amalfi knew very well. But there was so much to be done that he managed to forget about it after Dee and the children had left on the recall ship. He was not however allowed to forget about it for long only in fact for three weeks. The discussion of the forthcoming catastrophe had at last entered the stage where it was no longer possible to avoid coming to grips with the contrary entropy gradients and hence had entered an area where words alone no longer sufficed in fact could seldom be called upon at all. This had had the effect of driving those participants who were primarily engineers or administrators or both like Miramon and Amalfi or primarily philosophers like Gifford Bonner into the stance of bystanders so that the discussions now had been shifted to Retma s study. Amalfi stuck with them whenever he could for he never knew when Retma Jake or Schloss might drop back out of the symbolic stratosphere and say something he could comprehend and use. It was being heavy weather in the study today however. Retma was saying: The problem as I see it is that time in our experience is not retrodictable. We write a diffusion equation like this for instance. He turned to his blackboard the immemorial research instrument of theoretical physicists everywhere and wrote: Over Retina s head for Jake s benefit a small proxy fixed its television eye on the precise chalkmarks. In this situation a squared is a real constant so it is predictive only for a future time t but not for an earlier time t because the retrodictive expression diverges. An odd situation Schloss agreed. It means that in any thermodynamic situation we have better information about the future than we do about the past. In the anti matter universe it has to be the other way around but only from our point of view a hypothetical observer living under their laws and composed of their energies I assume couldn t tell the difference. Can we write a convergent retrodictive equation Jake s voice said. One which describes what their situation is as we would see it if we could If we can t I don t see how we can design instruments to detect any difference. It can be done Retma said. For instance. He turned to the blackboard and the symbols flowed squeak ily: Ah ha Schloss said. Thus giving us an imaginary constant in place of a real one. But your second equation isn t a mirror of your first parity is not conserved. Your first equation is an equalization process but this one is oscillatory. Surely the gradient on the other side doesn t pulsate Parity is not conserved anyhow in these weak reactions Jake said. But I think the objection may be well taken all the same. If Equation Two describes anything at all it can t be the other side. It has to be both sides the whole vast system jpftoviding that it is cyclical which we don t know yet. Nor do I see any way to test it it s as ultimately and finally unprovable as the Mach Hypothesis The door opened quietly and a young Hevian beckoned silently to Amalfi. He got up without too much reluctance the boys were giving him a hard time today and he found that he missed Estelle It had been her function to remind the group of possible pitfalls in Retma s notation: here for instance Retma was using the d which in Amalfi s experience was an increment in calculus as simply an expression for a constant he was using the G which to Amalfi was the gravitational constant to express a term in thermodynamics Amalfi was accustomed to seeing written with the greek capital letter and could Schloss be sure that Retma s i was equivalent to the square root of minus one as it was in New Earth math Doubtless Schloss had good reason to feel that agreement on that very simple symbol had been established between the New Earthmen and Retma long since but without Estelle it made Amalfi feel uncomfortable. Besides though he knew intellectually that all the important battles against a problem in physics are won in such blackboard sessions as this he was not temperamentally fitted to them. He liked to see things happening. They began to happen forthwith. As soon as the door was decently closed on the visible and invisible physicists the young Hevian said: I am sorry to disturb you Mr. Amalfi. But there is an urgent call for you from New Earth. It is Mayor Hazleton. Helleshin Amalfi said. The word was Vegan no one now alive knew what it meant. All right let s go. Where is my wife Hazleton demanded without preamble. And my grandson and Jake s daughter And where have you been these past three weeks Why didn t you call in I ve been losing my mind and the Hevians gave me the Force Four blowaround before they d let me through to you at all What are you talking about Mark Amalfi said. Stop sputtering long enough to let me know what this is all about. That s what 7 want to know. All right. I ll begin again. Where is Dee I don t know Amalfi said patiently. I sent her home three weeks ago. If you can t find her that s your problem. She never got here. She didn t But Yes but. That recall ship never landed. We never heard from it at all. It just vanished Dee children and all. I ve been phoning you frantically to find out whether or not you ever sent it now I know that you did. Well we know what that means tfou d better give up dabbling in physics Amalfi and get back here on the double. What can I do Amalfi said. I don t know any more about it than you do. You can damn well come back here and help me out of this mess. What mess What have you been doing the past three weeks Hazleton yelled. Do you mean to tell me that you haven t heard what s been happening No Amalfi said. And stop yelling. What did you mean We know what that means If you think you know what s happened why aren t you doing something about it instead of jamming the Dirac raising me You re the mayor I ve got work of my own to do. I ll be the mayor about two days longer if my luck holds Hazleton said in a savage voice. And you re directly responsible so you needn t bother trying to duck. Jorn the Apostle began to move two weeks ago. He has a navy now though where he raised it is beyond me. His main body s nowhere near New Earth but he s about to take New Earth all the same the whole planet is swarming with farm kids with fanatical expressions and dismounted spindillies. As soon as they get to me I m going to surrender out of hand you know as well as I do what one of those machines can do and the farmers are using them as side arms. I m not going to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives just to maintain my administration if they want me out they can have me out. And this is my fault I once told you the Warriors of God were dangerous. And I didn t listen. All right. But they d never have moved if it hadn t been for the fact that you and Miramon didn t censor what you re up to. It s given Jorn his cause he s telling his followers that you re meddling with the pre ordained Armageddon and jeopardizing their chances of salvatiana He s proclaimed a jehad against the Hevians for instigating it and the jehad includes New Earth because we re working with the Hevians Over the phone came four loud heavy strokes of fist upon metal. Gods of all stars they re here already Hazleton said. I ll leave the line open as long as I can maybe they won t notice. ... His voice faded. Amalfi hung on grimly straining to hear every sound. Sinner Hazleton a young and desperately frightened voice said almost at once you have been found out. By the Word of Jorn you you are ordered to corrective discipline. Are you gone tuh will you submit humbly If you fire that thing in here Hazleton s voice said quite loudly he was obviously projecting for the benefit of the mike you ll uproot half the city. What good will that do you We will die in the Warriors the other voice said. It was still tense but now that it spoke of dying it seemed more self assured. You will go to the flames. And all the other people Sinner Hazleton. we do not threaten a deeper older voice said. We think there is some good in everyone. Jorn commands us to redeem and that we will do. We have hostages for your good conduct. Where are they They were picked up by the Warriors of God the deep voice said. Jorn in his blessedness was kind enough to grant us a cordon sanitaire for this Godless world. Will you yield for the salvation of this woman and these two helpless children I advise you Sinner hey what the hell that phone s open Jody smash that switch and fast What did I ever do to be saddled with a cadre of lousy yokels The speaker began a thin howl and went dead before the cry was properly born. For a moment Amalfi sat stunned. He had gotten too much information too fast and he was much older now than he had been on like occasions in the past. He had never expected that such an occasion would arise again but here it was. A jehad against He No not likely at least not directly. Jorn the Apostle would be wary of tackling a world so completely mysterious to him especially with forces more mob than military. But New Earth was wholly vulnerable it was a logical first step to invest that planet. And now Jorn had Dee and the children. Move How to move was another matter it needed to be done in a vessel which no possible Warrior cordon would have the strength to attack but no such vessel existed on He. The only other alternative was a very small very fast ship with a low detectability index but that was equally impossible across so long a distance since there is a minimum size for even one spindizzy. Or was there Carrel was on He and Carrel had had considerable experience in designing relatively small spindizzy powered proxies one such had followed the March of Earth all the way without anybody s paying the slightest attention to it. Of course the proxy had been magnificently noisily detectable by ordinary standards and only Carrel s piloting of it had kept the massed cities from distinguishing between the traces that it made and the traces that were made adventitiously by ordinary interstellar matter. .. . Can you do that again Carrel Remember that this time you won t have a flock of massive cities to confuse the issue. The gamut you ll have to run will be one thin shell of orbiting warships around one planet and we don t know how many of them there are what arms they mount how careful a watch they keep Assume the worst Carrel said. They caught the recall ship after all and they didn t even know we d sent it. I can do it Mr. Amalfi if you ll let me do the maneuvering when the chips are down otherwise I think you ll be caught no matter how small the ship is. Helleshin But there was no way around it Amalfi would have to subject himself to at least two days of Carrel s violent evasive confusive maneuvers without once touching the space stick himself. It was going to be a rough do for an old man but Carrel was quite right there was no other available course. All right he said. Just make sure I m alive when I touch down. Carrel grinned. I ve never lost a cargo he said. Providing it s been properly secured. Where do you want to land a That was not easy question either. In the long run Amalfi settled for a landing in Central Park in the heart of the old Okie citj. This was perhaps dangerously close to the Warriors center of operations but Amalfi did not want to be forced to trek across a thousand miles of New Earth just for a meeting with Hazleton and there was a fair chance that the old city would be taboo for the bumpkins or at least avoided instinctively. Jorn the Apostle would not have overlooked patrolling such an obvious rallying point for the ousted but presumably Jorn was somewhere at the other end of the Cloud with his main body. Since there is even with spindizzies a limit to the amount of power that can be stored in a small hull the trip was more than long enough for Amalfi to catch up via ultraphone on the Cloud events he had closeted himself away from on He. The picture Mark had given him had been accurate if perhaps a little distorted in emphasis. Jorn the Apostle s real Concerns were still far away from New Earth and his jehad had been announced against unbelievers everywhere not just against the Hevi ans. The Hevians were simply the article in the indictment which applied specifically to New Earth that and New Earth s unannounced but unconcealed intention of plumbing the end of time which was blasphemy. It was Amalfi s guess that the uprising on New Earth and the seizure of the central government there had been an unplanned byproduct of the proclamation of which Jorn was unprepared to take full advantage. Had he been planning on it or militarily able to capitalize on it he would have rushed in his main body on the double as matters stood he had only and belatedly set up a token blockade. If his followers coup stuck all well and good if it did not he would withdraw the blockade in a hurry to save ships and men for another more auspicious day. Or so Amalfi reasoned but he was uncomfortably aware that in Jorn the Apostle he was for the first time dealing with an enemy whose thought processes might be utterly unlike his from first to last. The ship shifted abruptly from spindizzy to ion blast drive. Amalfi stopped thinking entirely and just hung on. Once in the atmosphere the craft was back in Amalfi s hands back on Ha Carrel had relinquished his remote Dirac control over the space stick. Amalfi was abl to make a thistledown nightside landing in south Central Park in a broad irregular depression which legend said had once been a lake. The landing was without incident apparently it had been undetected. In the morning the abandoned proxy might be spotted by a Warrior flyer but the old city was littered with such ambiguous mechanical objects one had to be a student of the city as knowledgeable as Schliemann was about the nine Troys to know which was new and which was not. Amalfi was confident enough of this to leave the proxy behind without an attempt to camouflage it. Now the problem was How to get in touch with Mark Presumably he was still under arrest or the next thing to it corrective discipline was what the Warrior voice Amalfi had overheard had said. Did that mean that they were going to make the lazy cerebral Hazleton make beds sweep floors and pray six hours a day Not very likely especially the prayer part. Then what Suddenly trudging south along a moonlit utterly deserted Fifth Avenue toward the city s control tower Amalfi was sure he had it. Running a galaxy even a small and mostly unexplored satellite galaxy like this one is not simply a matter of taking papers out of the IN tray and transferring them to the OUT tray. It requires centuries of experience and a high degree of familiarity with the communications data filing and other machines which must do 98 per cent of the donkey work. In the Okie days for instance it sometimes happened though not very often that a mayor was swapped to another city under the rule of discretion after he had lost an election and generally it took him five to ten years to get used to running the new one even in such a subordinate post as assistant to the city manager. It was not an art that a bumpkin no matter how divinely inspired could master in a week. Mark s most likely theater of corrective discipline then would be his own office. He would be running the Cloud for the Warriors and no doubt doing a far worse job of it than they would detect even were they sensible enough as they surely were to suspect such sabotage. Amalfi hiriiself a master of making the wherfs run backwards when necessary would yield precedence in that art to Hazleton at any time Hazleton had been known to work the trick on his friends just to keep his hand in or perhaps just out of habit. Very good then the problem of getting in touch with Mark was solved clearing the way for the hard questions: How to discombohulafte and if possible oust the Warriors and how to get Dee and the children back unharmed It would be difficult to decide which of these two hard questions was the harder. As Mark had pointed out the uprooted spindillies in the hand of the rank and file Warriors were considerably more dangerous than muskets or pitchforks. Used with precision the machine could degrav itate a single opponent and send him shrieking skyward under the centrifugal thrust of New Earth s rotation on its axis or the same effect could be used against a corner or a wall of a building if one wanted to demolish a strong point. But the menace lay in the fact that in the hands of a plowboy the spindilly would not be used with precision. It had been designed not as a weapon but as an adjunct to home weather control and was somewhat larger heavier and more ungainly than a Twentieth Century home oil burner. Considering the difficulties involved in toting this object at all especially on foot the temptation would be almost overwhelming to set it at maximum output before it was even unbolted from its cement pedestal in the cellar and leave it set there so that the strained arm and back muscles of the bearer would thereafter have to do nothing with it to make it function but point it more or less and push the starter button. This meant that every time one of the plowboys lost his temper or detected heresy in some casual remark or fired nervously at a shadow or a sudden unfamiliar sound or a svengali he might level two or three city blocks before he remembered where the kill button was or the machine dropped and abandoned in panic might go on to level two or three more blocks before it discharged its accumulators and shut itself off of its own accord. Saving Dee and the children was certainly highly important but disarming the Warriors would have to take precedence. He caught himself bouncing a little as he stepped out of the spindizzy lift shaft onto the resilient concrete floor of the control room and grinned ruefully. He felt alive again after far too many years of grousing browsing vegetating. This was the kind of problem he had been formed fof the kind he approached with the confidence born of gusto. The end of time was certainly sizable enough as a problem he would never find a bigger and he was grateful for that but it provided him with nobody with whom to negotiate and if possible swindle a little. It had been a long time he had better be on his guard against overconfidence. That had been known to trip him now and then even when he had been in practice. In particular it was suspiciously easy to see what steps ought to be taken in the present situation that was not the test it was his ancient skill as a cultural historian in short as a diagnostician which would stand or fall by what he did now ... and just incidentally he might lose or save from three to a quarter of a million lives one of them Estelle s. Gently then gently but precisely and with decision like a surgeon confronted with cardiac arrest. Waste no time debating alternate courses you have four minutes to save the patient s life if you are lucky the bone saw is whining in your hand slash open the rib cage and slash it quick. The City Fathers were already warmed up. He told them: Communications. Get me Jorn the Apostle for the survival of the city. It would take a little while for the City Fathers to reach Jorn though they would scan the possibilities in under a minute and select out only those worlds with high probability ratings for Jorn s presence the chances of their getting him on the first call were not very high. Amalfi regretted that it would be then necessary to talk to Jorn on the Dirac communicator since it would make anyone who was listening anywhere in the Cloud or anywhere else in the known universe where the apparatus existed for that matter privy to the conversations but over interstellar distances the ultraphone was out of the question for twoway exchanges since its velocity of information propagation was only 125 per cent of the speed of light and even this was achieved only by a trick called negative phase velocity since the carrier wave was electromagnetic and moved at light speed and no faster. While he waited Amalfi ticked over the possibilities. This was all in all developing into a most curious affair quite unlike anything he had ever been involved in before. It thus far consisted mostly of interludes and transitions with only a small scatter of decision points upon which action might be possible. In this sense even the events which most recalled to him the events of his earlier life seemed to be reshaping themselves into the pattern of his old age not only allowing for but requiring a much greater exercise of reflection and an intensive weighing of values. Reflexive action as out of the question it was possible only from some fixed guiding principle such as the survival of the city such an axiom if it persists and dominates for a long time allows many decisions to be reached via the reflex arc with almost no intervening intellection one automatically jumped in the right direction like a cat turning itself over in mid air. No such situation existed now the values to be weighed were mutually contradictory. It had to be assumed first of all that Jorn did not know the situation on New Earth in detail he had simply reacted as a good strategist should to capitalize upon an unexpected victory in an unexpected quarter and almost surely did not know that his blockading fleet was holding three hostages let alone who those hostages were. It would be impossible to intimidate him on this matter it would be wiser not to give him the information at all. After all the first intent of the call was to get the bumpkin army disbanded and the dismounted spindillies out of action but it would not do to convince him out of hand that his coup on New Earth could not possibly stick since that would result in his withdrawing his blockade and the hostages with it. Better to serve both ends if it could be swung that way: to convince Jorn that the putsch had better be abandoned forthwith but not so thoroughly as to alarm him into thinking he might lose part of his navy if he took his time about calling the putsch off. It looked like a large order. It meant that the danger which Jorn the Apostle would have to be made to suspect would have to be as much ideological as it was military. As a military commander of considerable proven ability Jorn could not but be familiar with the corruption of an occupying force by the standards and customs of the nation that it occupies and jehads and crusades were particularly subject to this kind of corrosion. Whether he was wholly a believer in the brand of Fundamentalism he preached or not he would not want his followers to lose faith in the doctrine under which he had sailed so successfully thus far that was the hold over them that he had chosen to exercise so that if they lost that he himself would have nothing left regardless of what his personal beliefs might be. Unhappily there was no ideology available on New Earth which looked capable of corrupting the Warriors of God they would doubtless indulge in a good deal of wristwatch collecting a very ancient term for a timeless syndrome of a peasant army holding a territory relatively rich in consumer goods but Jorn would anticipate that and discount it but there was no idea inherent in the culture of New Earth which seemed strong enough to sway the Warriors from their simple direct and centrally oriented point of view. One would have to be manufactured at least there was no lack of raw materials. One apparent pitfall in QMS course was that of taking Jorn the Apostle at his own public valuation and attempting to reach into and alarm that part of his mind where his real religion lived Amalfi had no way of knowing whether this would work or not and prudence dictated that it not be tried he had to assume instead that a man as successful as Jorn h.ad been in the world of affairs was a sophisticated man on most subjects whether he was sophisticated as a theologian or not. The latter was even beside the point wherever the truth lay he would be quick to detect any attempt to push his religious buttons since he had proven that he knew the art himself. And Amalfi thought suddenly if Jorn were to turn out to be exactly as devout in his back cluster superstitions as his public utterances suggested pushing that button might well result in a genuine disaster. With such people that button is a demolition button if you touch it successfully you shatter the man. Of course it would be necessary to treat Jorn pro forma as if every public word Jorn had uttered had been uttered in the utmost sincerity and out of the deepest kind of belief not only because Jorn too would know that unknown numbers of others might be listening in but to avoid attacking the man s image of himself irrelevantly and to no purpose. The forms had no bearing on the final outcome it would be dangerous to assume that Jorn was identical personally with his public self only in the substance of Amalfi s approach to him. There would be no harm in acknowledging to him implicitly his claim to be every inch a Fundamentalist but it would be fatal to expect him to panic if he got a Dirac cast claiming to be from Satan READY WITH JORN THE APOSTLE MR. MAYOR. a Amalfi suddenly found himself thinking at emergency speed the City Fathers excusable lapse doubtless nobody had bothered to telbHhem that Amalfi had not been Mayor since the promem of the Ginnangu Gap had arisen reminded him that he had failed to decide whether or not to identify himself to Jorn. There was a small possibility that Jorn came of the peasant stock which the Okies had found sweating under the tyranny of the bindle stiff city of IMT a slightly larger possibility that he was a descendant of the rulers of IMT itself but by far the greatest likelihood was that he was a child or grandchild of Amalfi s own people and so would know very well indeed who Amalfi was. To identify himself then would give Amalfi a certain leverage but it would also present . certain disadvantages However the die was already cast the City Fathers had called him the Mayor on the circuit so Jorn had better be told at once that it was not Hazleton he was talking to. Bluff it out Possible but there lay the danger of using the Dirac: the instrument made it possible for any listener to tell Jorn now or later whatever facts Amalfi attempted for strategic reasons to withhold READY MR. MAYOR. Well there was no help for that now. Amalfi said into the microphone: Go ahead. Immediately the screen came alight. He was getting old he had forgotten to tell the City Fathers to limit the call to audio only so in actuality he had never had the option of withholding his identity. Well regret was futile and in fact he watched the face of Jorn the Apostle swimming into view before him with the keenest curiosity. It was startlingly a very old face narrow bony and deeply lined with bushy white eyebrows emphasizing the sunken darkness of the eyes. Jorn had been off the anti agathics for at least fifty years if indeed he had ever taken one. The realization was a profound and unexpected visceral shock. I am Jorn the Apostle the ancient face said. What do you want of me I think you should pull off of New Earth Amalfi said. It was not at all what he had intended to say it was in fact wholly contrary to the entire chain of reasoning he had just worked through. But there was something about the face that compelled him to say what was on his mind. I am not on New Earth Jorn said. But I take your meaning. And I take it there are many people on New Earth who share your opinion Mr. Amalfi as is only natural. This does not affect me. I didn t expect it to just as a simple statement of opinion Amalfi said. But I can offer you good reasons. I will listen. But do not expect me to be reasonable. Why not Amalfi said genuinely surprised. Because I am not a reasonable man Jorn said patiently. The uprising of my followers on New Earth took place without orders from me it is a gift which God himself has placed in my hand. That being the case reason does not apply. I see Amalfi said. He paused. This was going to be tougher to bring off than he had dreamed in fact he had his first doubt as to whether it could be brought off at all. Are you aware sir that this planet is a hotbed of Stochasticism Jorn s bushy eyebrows lifted slightly. I know that the Stochastics are strongest and most numerous on New Earth he said. I have no way of knowing how deeply the philosophy has penetrated the populace of New Earth as a whole. It is one of the things I mean to see stamped out. You ll find that impossible. A mob of farm boys can t eradicate a major philosophical system. But how major is it Jorn said. In terms of influence I admit I have the impression that much of New Earth may be corrupted by it but I have no certain knowledge that this is so. At the distance from New Earth that I am forced to operate I may well be magnifying it in my mind especially since it is so completely antithetical to the Word of God it would be natural for me to assume that the homeland of Stochasticism is also a hotbed of it. But I do not know this to be true. So you will risk the souls of the Warriors of God on the assumption that it is not true. Not necessarily Jorn said. Considering the forces for which you speak Mr. Amalfi it is so plainly to your advantage to exaggerate the influence of Stochasticism your very use of the tool suggests that since I cannot think you mean me any advantage. I suspect that in actuality the Stochastics like intellectuals at all times and in all places are largely out of touch with the general assumptions of the culture in which they are operating and that the people of New Earth are no more Stochastics than they are Warriors of God or anything else describ able as a school of thojignt. If any label applies they are simply a people who are no longer describable as Okies. Amalfi sat there and sweated. He had met his match and he knew it. And if you are wrong he said at last. If Stochasti cism is as ingrained on this planet as I ve tried to warn you it is Then Jorn the Apostle said I must take the risk. My Warriors on New Earth are farm boys as you have pointed out. I doubt that Stochasticism will make much headway with them they will shrug it off as contrary to common sense. They will be mistaken in that estimate but how could they know that Ignorance is the defense God the Father has given them and I think it will be sufficient There was the cue. Amalfi could only hope that it had not come too late. Very well he said rather more grimly than he had intended. Events will put us both to the proof there is no more to be said. No Jorn said there is this much more: you may actually have meant to do me a service Mr. Amalfi. If it so proves out then I will give the devil his due one must be honest even with evil there is no other good course. What do you want of me And thus the verbal sparring match had come so quickly to full circle and this time there was no way to remain ignorant of let alone to evade the purport of the question. It was not political it was personal and it had been intended that way from the beginning. You could return me three hostages which your blockading fleet is holding Amalfi said. His mouth tasted of aloes. A woman and two children. Had you asked for that in the beginning Jorn the Apostle said I would have given it to you. Was it actually pity in his voice But you have placed their lives upon the block of your own integrity Mr. Amalfi. So be it if I become convinced that I must lose New Earth because of Stochasticism I will return the three before I withdraw my blockading squadron otherwise not. And Mr. Amalfi Yes Amalfi whispered. Bear in mind what is at stake and do not let your ingenuity overwhelm you. I know well that you are fabulously inventive but human lives should not hang upon the success of a work of art. Go with God. The screen was dark. Amalfi mopped his forehead with a trembling hand. With his last words Jorn the Apostle had succeeded in telling the whole story of Amalfi s life and it had not made comfortable listening. Nevertheless he hesitated only a moment longer. Though Jorn had probably already seen through the im provision which had occurred to Amalfi late enough so that he had been unable to betray that too to Jorn over the Dirac for the universe to hear there was no other course open but to try to carry it through. The alternative which Jorn had proposed actually came out to the same thing in the end: that of transforming a lie into the truth. If this was an art as Amalfi had good reason to know it was it was at the same time not a work of art but only a craft it was Jorn himself now who was committing human lives to the dictates of a work of art that elaborate fiction which was his religion. Being careful this time to cut the screen out of the circuit in advance Amalfi called the Mayor s office. This is the Commissioner of Public Safety he told the robot secretary. In ordinary times the machine would know well enough that there was no such office but the confusion over there now must be such that the pertinent memory banks must by now have been by passed he felt reasonably confident that the phrase a code alarm of long standing in the Okie days would get through to Hazleton as in fact it did in short order. You are late calling in Mark s voice said guardedly. Your report is overdue. Can t you report your findings hi person The situation is too fluid to permit that Mr. Mayor Amalfi said. At present I m making rounds of the perimeter stations in the old city. Off duty Warriors are trying to sightsee here and of course with so much live machinery Who is that another voice said farther in the background. Amalfi recognized it it was the authoritative voice that had spotted the open phone when the Warriors had first arrested Hazleton. We can t permit that It s the Commissioner of Public Safety a man named de Ford Hazleton said. Amalfi grinned tightly. De Ford had in actuality been Hazleton s predecessor as city manager he had been shot seven centuries ago. And of course we can t permit that. Besides all the loose energy there is about the ol J city much of it is derelict. De Ford I thought you knew that the Warriors own general put the city off limits. I tell them that Amalfi said in a tone of injured patience. They just laugh and say they re not Warriors on their own time. What said the heavy voice. That s what they say Amalfi said doggedly. Or else they say that they re nobody s man but their own and that in the long run nobody owns anybody else. They sound like they ve been sitting with some Village Stochastic though they ve got it pretty garbled. I suppose the philosophers don t try to teach the pure doctrine in the provinces. That s beside the point Mark said sternly. Keep them out of the city that s imperative. I m trying Mr. Mayor Amalfi said. But there s a limit to what I can do. Half of them are toting spindillies and you know what would happen if one of those things were fired over here even once. I m not going to risk that. Be sure you don t but keep trying. I ll see what can be done about it from this end. There ll be further instructions where can I reach you Just leave the call in the perimeter sergeant s office Amalfi said. I ll pick it up on my next round. Very good Hazleton said and clicked out. Amalfi set up the necessary line from the perimeter station to the control tower and sat back satisfied for the moment though with a deeper uneasiness that would not go away. The seed had been planted and there was no doubt that Hazleton had understood the move and would foster it. It was highly probable that Jorn the Apostle had already ordered an inquiry made of his officers on Earth questioning the substance of Amalfi s claims they would of course report back that they had had no trouble of that kind but the inquiry itself would sensitize them to the subject. Amalfi turned on the tower s FM receiver and tuned for New Earth s federal station. The next step would be stiffer off limits orders to Warriors on leave and he wanted to be sure he heard the texts. Unless Jorn s officers phrased those orders with an unlikely degree of sophistication they would result in some actual sightseers in the city and of course there were no longer any perimeter sergeants nor was there even a definable perimeter except in the minds of the City Fathers. Somebody was bound to get hurt. That would be one incident de Ford would not report: I didn t hear about it. I m sorry but I can t be everywhere at once. I ve been trying to fend these boys off from the City Fathers they want to ask them a lot of questions about the history of ideas that would tie the machines up for weeks. I ve been telling the boys that I don t know how to operate the City Fathers but if one of them points a spindilly at me and says Put me through or else well That speech would necessarily mark the demise of the Commissioner of Public Safety since it would almost surely result in the posting of a uniformed on duty Warrior patrol around or in the Okie city itself Amalfi would then have to go underground and the rest would be up to Mark. What specifically Hazleton would do could not be anticipated nor did Amalfi want to know about it when it happened. One of the defects of the program was the fact that it was as Jorn had suspected based on a lie whereas a good deception ought to contain some fundamental stone of truth to stub the toes of the sane and the suspicious. To put the matter with brutal directness there was no possibility that the local Warriors would be corrupted by Stochasticism and there never had been. Even if the program succeeded and Jorn withdrew his men he would interrogate them closely before he gave Amalfi back his hostages and if everything that he found out bore Amalfi s stamp it would be too consistent to be convincing. That was why Hazleton s improvisations had to be his own from here on out and as unknown to Amalfi as possible until it was too late for Amalfi to undo them even had he wished to. It was indeed a poor piece of fiction upon which to hang the lives of Dee and Web and Estelle but he had to make do with what he had. It appeared to be working. Within the week all Warrior leaves were cancelled in favor of special orientation devotions at which attendance was mandatory. Though there was no direct way to tell whether or not the Warriors resented the cancellation of their leaves to secure their faith the predicated accident inside the city happened the next day and the Commissioner of Public Safety was promptly taxed by Hazleton to explain how he had allowed it to happen Amalfi trotted forth the prepared lie and retreated to an anciefct communications sub station deep in the bowels of the City Fathers themselves. The Warrior patrol was roving through the Okie city the very next day and Amalfi was isolated the rest had to be up to Hazleton. By the end of that week the Warriors had been ordered to turn in their spindillies for regulation police stun guns and Amalfi knew that he had won. When a conquering army is disarmed by its own officers it is through in a while it will begin to tear itself apart with very little help from outside. When that order of the day got back to Jorn he would act and act rapidly Hazleton had evidently been a little too thorough as was his custom. But there was nothing that Amalfi could do now but wait. The last Warrior blockade ship had barely touched down before Web and Estelle were scrambling out of the airlock and making straight for Amalfi. We have a message for you Estelle said out of breath her eyes preternaturally wide. From Jorn the Apostle. The ship s captain said to bring it to you right away. All right there s not that much hurry Amalfi growled to hide his apprehension. Are you all right Did they take proper care of you They didn t hurt us Web said. They were so proper and polite I wanted to kick them. They kept us in a stateroom and gave us tracts to read. It got pretty boring after a while just reading tracts and playing tic tac toe on them with grandmother. Suddenly he could not help grinning at Estelle obviously he had gotten away with something in those quarters all the same. Amalfi felt a vague emotional twinge though he was unable to identify just what kind of emotion it was it passed too quickly. All right good he said to Estelle. Where s the message Here. She passed over a yellow flimsy torn from the ship s Dirac printer. It said: XXX CMNDR SSG GABRIEL SPG 32 JOHN AMALFI N EARTH V HSTGS RPT 32 I AM GIVING YOU BENEFIT OF DOUBT RPT DOUBT. YOU ALONE KNOW TRUTH. IF THIS DEFEAT SOLELY YOUR INVENTION BE SURE THE END IS NOT YET. BUT IT WILL BE SOON. JORN APOSTLE OF GOD Amalfi crumpled the flimsy and dropped it onto the flaked concrete of the spaceport. And so it will he said. Estelle looked down at the wad of yellow paper and then back at Amalfi s somber face. Do you know what he means she said. Yes I know what he means Estelle. But I hope you never do. C CHAPTER SIX: Object 4001 Alephnull Nor did Estelle ever know though in the long run she was in no doubt about it in her own mind that the first break in the problem of how to cross the information barrier of the coming Ginnangu Gap sprang from her suggestion to her father that to know No Man s Land one must study it with bullets. Web and Estelle were after all only children and in the ensuing years nobody had any time to spare for children they were far too gone in the fever of putting together the immaterial object which would be their bullet across No Man s Land into the vast complementary opposite infinity of the universe of antimatter. For the time being speculation had been abandoned in favor of fact finding what was needed was some direct assessment of the contemporary energy level of the anti matter universe once that was known one could hope to date precisely the coming moment of catastrophe and know how much or how little time one had left to make such preparations for going down into death as one could bring oneself to think meaningful in the face of an imminent and complete cancellation of all meaning and of the time of experience which alone gave meaning to the concept of meaning. Nobody had any time for children and so they grew up ignored the last children that the universe would ever see. It was not surprising that they clung to each other they would have done so even under other circumstances for there was no question .but that the fates which brood in the sub microscopic ixms and toils of the nucleic acids of heredity had formed them for each other. Estelle sprouted in her world of oblivious adults and took her place among them without their noticing what she had become: tall willowy grey eyed black haired white skinned serene faced and beautiful. These oldsters were as immune to beauty as they were immune to youth they were perfectly happy to have the use of the sharp cutting edge of Estelle s gift for mathematics brought to bear upon their problems but they did not see that she was also beautiful and would not have cared had they been able to see it. These days they saw nothing but death or thought they saw it Estelle was not so sure that they saw it as clearly as she did for they had lived in contempt of it far too long. Web did not know whether this suited him or not. He was moderately content to be the only one on New Earth with the good sense to see that Estelle was beautiful but sometimes his pride felt the lack of an occasional glance of frank envy and sometimes he suspected that Estelle cared as IHtle about this in the long run as everyone else on New E rth but Web himself. In the fullness of time the love which existed between them had been snoken and acknowledged and they were now a couple with all the delights and the responsibilities which coupling provides and demands but somehow nobody had noticed. The oldsters were too busy building their artifact to notice let alone care much one way or the other that a small green weed of love had pushed itself up amid the tumbled stones of the last of all debacles. Yet it was not difficult for Web to understand why what was for him a miracle was not even a nuisance to the busy godlings and their machines with whom he had to live. There was not much time left hardly a hiccup for Amalfi and Miramon and Schloss and Dee and even for Carrel who seemed to be a perpetually young man yet who had lived lifetimes and lifetimes and could be cut down in the midst of his latest without any valid claim that his death would be a grievous waste of whatever and Web was convinced that it was rather scanty he carried in his head. What little time remained would be nothing to those people who had lived so long already but for Web and Estelle it had been and would continue to be their growing up time which would be half of each of their lives no matter how long they lived thereafter. Certainly Amalfi never noticed them. He had long forgotten that he had ever been anything less than what he was: an immortal. Probably now the suggestion that he had once been a child would have baffled him entirely in the abstract it was a truism and he would be unable to think back far enough to think of it otherwise. Once given the administration of Doom in any event he prosecuted it single mindedly like any other job leading toward any other destination if he knew that there would be no other jobs and no other destinations after these it did not seem to bother him. He was up and doing that was enough. In the meantime: I love you Web said. I love you. Around them the potsherds did not even give back an echo. Amalfi had an excuse had someone suggested to him that he needed one: the building of the missile had gone badly from the moment triggered by Estelle though he did not remember this they had decided to give it priority. At the outset it had looked so much simpler than trying to settle all the theoretical questions a priori and it had had the immediate appeal of action but it is impossible to design an experiment without certain fundamental assumptions as to what the experiment is intended to test which assumptions turned out to be largely absent in the supposedly practical matter of designing the anti matter missile. As it eventually worked out the inter universal messenger had to be constructed from the sub microscopic level on up out of fundamental nuclear particles which came as close to being nothing at all as either universe would ever be likely to provide: zero spin particles with various charges and masses and neutrino anti neutrino pairs. Even detecting that the object was present at all after it had been built was an almost impossible task for neutrinos and anti neutrinos have no mass and no charge consisting instead partly of spin partly of energy of translation it did no good to try to visualize such particles since like all the fundamental particles they were entirely outside of experience in the macroscopic world. Matter was so completely transparent to them that stopping an average neutrino in flight would require a lead barrier fifty light years thick. Only the fact that tkeisspindizzies exercised a firm control over the rotation and the magnetic moment of any given atomic particle hence their nickname made it possible to assemble the object at all and to detect and direct it after it was finished. As assembled the messenger was a stable electrically neutral massless plasmoid a sort of gravitational equivalent of ball lightning it was derived theoretically as Jake had proposed from the Schiff theory of gravitation which had been advanced as long ago as 1958 but had later been abandoned for its failure to satisfy three of the six fundamental tests which the then established theory general relativity seemed to satisfy very well. Which from our point of view is a positive advantage Jake had argued. The objections from general relativity are one with the dodo anyhow and in our special case an object which would be Ix renz invariant as a Schiff object couldn t be would be a drawback. Another thing: one of the tests the Schiff theory did pass was that of explaining the red shift in the spectra of distant galaxies which we now know to have been a clock effect and not a fair test of a gravitational theory at all. We d be better off reevaluating the whole scholium in the light of our present knowledge. The result was now before them all in the midst of the Okie city s ancient reception room in City Hall which had once been Amalfi s communications center for complex diplomatic relations with client planets it had been fitted out with an electronic network of considerable complexity so that multiple negotiations could be carried on at once while the city approached a highly developed highly civilized star system now that net had become instead a telemetering system for the inter universal messenger. Since the object itself was in effect little more than an intricately structured spherical spindizzy screen which screened nothing material it would have been impossible to see it at all were it not for the small jet of artificial smoke which issued from the floor directly under it and was wreathed about it by convection currents making it look a little like a huge bubble being supported in the middle of a fountain. Scattered throughout the interior of the bubble were steady hot pinpoints of colored light: concentrations of electron gas of stripped nuclei of thermal neutrons of free radicals and of as many other basic test situations as the combined brains of two very different worlds had been able to contrive and to fit into so restricted a space for the sphere was only six feet in diameter. At the very heart in a spindizzy eddy all its own was the greatest triumph of all: one cubical crystal of anti sodium anti chloride about the size of a single grain of a fine grain photograph. This was Dr. Schloss s long dreamt of antimatter artifact here it was a miracle which was already minus two weeks young and had yet a week to go in its spindizzy vacuum before it Avould collide with the flying instant of the present and: decay on the other side it would be only a single crystal of common table salt which might or might not lose its savor on the return journey should the messenger come back to them at all. Amalfi watched the red hand of the clock the only hand it had tick its quarter seconds toward Zero. Nobody would launch th missile exact timing was far too critical to allow that but he had been given the privilege of holding down the key which kept the circuit closed against the moment when the red hand touched Zero and the impulse surged through the spindizzies and impelled the messenger on its way out of space out of time out of the humanly comprehensible entirely. No one knew what would happen then least of all the designers. The missile would be unable to report back once it had crossed the barrier it would be incommunicado. It would have to come back to this great dark room before the tiny shining stars and the microscopic salt crystal inside it could report what had happened to them during the outward swing. How long that would take would depend upon the energy level on the opposite side which was one of the things the messenger was being sent to find out hence no transit time could be predicted. We ought to give it a name Amalfi said fidgeting slightly. The index and middle fingers of his right hand were beginning to ache he realized that he had been pushing down on the key for a long time with far more pressure than was necessary as though the universe would end at once were the straining of his hand and arm to falter for an instant. Nevertheless he did not let up he had the good sense to realize that fatigue had already made him unable to judge how much relaxation might result and he was not going to risk breaking the contact. Now that we have it built it doesn t look like anything. Let s christen it quick before it gets away from us it may never come back. l I d be afraid to giv ft a name Gifford Bonner said with a ghastly smile. Any name we could give it would promise too much. How about a number Back at the beginning of spaceflight when the first unmanned satellites were going up they numbered them like comets or other celestial objects with the year date and a Greek letter the first sputnik for instance was called Object 1957 a. That appeals to me Jake said. Except for the Greek letter. This thing ought not to be indexed with any character that s ever been used before to label a known or knowable situation. How about using the trans finite integers Very good Gifford Bonner said. Who will do the honors I will Estelle said. She stepped forward. She did not dare to touch the object but she raised her hand toward it. I christen thee Object 4101 Alephnull. The next one presuming that we re so lucky Jake said can be Object 4101 C which is the power of the continuum and the next one There was a soft chime. Startled Amalfi looked up at the clock. The red hand was just passing over the third quartile of the first second after Zero. In the center of the room the smoke spun in a turbulent spiral the bubble with the pinpoint lights had vanished. Object 4101 Alephnull had departed without anyone s seeing it go. Some quartiles of a second later he remembered to let go of the key. His millennium firmed right hand continued to tremble for the next fifteen minutes. The suspense was dreadful. Certainly nobody expected the messenger to return within a few hours or even within a few days were that to happen it would mean that the Ginnangu Gap itself would be right on its heels leaving no time to analyze the colored stars or indeed do anything but fold one s hands and wait to be snuffed out. Yet the mere fact that that very possibility existed was enough to guarantee the maintenance of a death watch in the huge dark old room a death watch enlivened by the discovery that all the instruments which had been watching the missile while it was still there had dropped back to nothing on the instant of its departure having recorded no phenomenon of any kind about the departure itself. Not even the spindizzies as interpreted for by the City Fathers were prepared to say how the surge of power with which they had launched the messenger had been applied which should have been reassuring at least as negative evidence that the messenger had not been shoved off in some known and hence useless direction but which under the circumstances only added to the gloom and tension. All that power shot and where had it gone Apparently nowhere at all. Ordinarily Amalfi rarely dreamed or rather like most Okies he dreamed most of every night but remembered what he had dreamt in the morning less often than once every few years but these nights were haunted by that spherical smoke wreathed ghost with the glowing Argus eyes wandering in a maze of twisted ingeodesics from which it would never escape in its center a tiny crystalline figurine piping in Amalfl s voice grow not out of salt nor out of soil But out of that which pains me until the ingeodesics suddenly snapped into a strangling web which burned like fire and in an explosion of light Amalfi saw that it was no not morning yet but time to go back to the death watch. But he was already there he had dozed off and had been awakened by the clamor of the alarms. Now that he was more or less awake the noise was ominously less loud than he knew it should be there was an alarm for every star inside the messenger and less than a third of them were ringing. The ghostly sphere floated again in the center of the room now no bigger than a basketball most of its Argus eyes out and those that remained glowing as fitfully as corpse fires. For all Amalfi knew this ghost of a ghost with so many ashes cold and cruel on its internal hearths was no more ominous than any other outcome of a scientific experiment it might even be promising but he could not rid himself this early of the dread which had informed the dream. That was fast Jake s voice said. Pretty fast Dr. Schloss s voice said. But now that it s back home it s got only about twenty one hours of life left. Let s get those readings there s not much time. I m counting down the probes now. The cameras are rolling. Inside the ghost another star died. There was a brief silence then one of Dr. Schloss s technicians said in a neutral voice: Pi m oA shower from the iron nucleus. Looks like a natural death. No not quite: high on the gamma side. Mark. The rhodium palladium series should go next. Watch out for diagonal disintegration it may cross with the iron series A star flared and burst. There it goes Mark Schloss said squinting through a gamma ray polariscope. Got it. Gripes. It crossed at cesium what does that mean Never mind mark it. Don t stop to interpret just record. The ghost seemed to shiver and shrink a little. A pure piercing tone came from its heart wavered and died but it died scooping upward toward the inaudible. First hour Schloss said. Twenty to go. How long did the pip take There was no answer for several minutes then another voice said: We don t have it down to jiffies yet. But it was short by nearly forty micro seconds and it Dopplered the wrong way. It s decaying in time Dr. Schloss it may not last as long as ten hours. Give me the decay rate in jiffies on the next pip and don t miss it. If it s going that fast we ll have to recalculate all emission records on the decay curve. Jake are you getting anything on the RF band Masses of stuff Jake said preoccupied. Can t make anything of it yet. And it s scooping that s your decay rate again I suspect. What a scramble In this wise the second hour flew by and then the third. Shortly thereafter Amalfi lost track of them. The tension the disorder the accumulating fatigue the utter strangeness of the experiment itself and its object the forebodings all took their toll. These were certainly the worst possible conditions under which to gather even routine data let alone take readings on an experiment of this degree of criticality but once again the Okies had to make do with what they had. All right everyone Schloss said at last. Closing time. His brow was deeply furrowed that frown had been growing line by line during most of the final twelve hours. Stand well back the artifact will be the last to go. The investigators and spectators alike or those few spectators whose interest had been intent enough to keep them there throughout the entire proceedings drew back to the walls of the gloomy chamber. The spindizzy whine beneath them rose slightly in both pitch and volume and the ghost that was Object 4101 Alephnull disappeared behind a spindizzy screen polarized to complete opacity. At first the spherical screen was mirror like throwing back grotesquely distorted images of the silent onlookers. Then a pinprick of light appeared in its center growing soundlessly to a painful blue white intensity. It threw out long cobwebs and runners of glare probing anastomosing flowing along the inner surface of the screen. Instinctively Amalfi shielded his eyes and his genitals in an instinctive gesture of all mankind more than two millennia old. When he was able to look again the light had died. The spindizzies stopped and the screen went down. Air rushed into it. Object 4101 Alephnull was gone this time forever destroyed by the death of a single crystal of salt Our precautions were insufficient my fault Schloss said his voice harsh. We are all well over our maximum permissible dose of hard radiation everyone report to the hospital on the double for treatment. Troops fall in The radiation sickness was mild bone marrow transfusions brought the blood forming system back into normal function before serious damage was done and the nausea was reasonably well controlled by massive doses of mecli zine riboflavin and pyridoxine. All the participants who had any hair to lose lost it including both Dee and Estelle but they all got it back in due course except for Amalfi and Jake. The second degree sunburn was not mild. It held up the interpretation of the results for nearly a month while the scientists coated in anesthetic ointment sat about on the wards in hospital robes and played bad poker and worse bridge. In between post mortems on the bridge hands they speculated endlessly and covered square miles of paper with equations and ointment grease spots. Web who had not lasted long enough to be present at the destruction of the crystal of salt visited daily with bou quets for Estelle the star gods alone knew where and how he unearthed so antique a custom and fresh packs of cards for the men. He took away the spotted sheets of equations and fed them to the City Fathers who invariably said: NO COMMENT. THE DATA ARE INSUFFICIENT. Everyone knew that already. At long last however Schloss and Jake and their crews were freed from their sticky pyjamas to tackle the mountains of raw information awaiting them. They worked long hours Schloss in particular never remembered to eat and had constantly to be reminded by his technicians that they had missed lunch and it was now past dinnertime. In Schloss s defense however it had to be admitted that his crew was the hungriest in the history of physics and the lunch they had missed usually was just the formal meal they were accustomed to consuming after they had emptied the fat packages they brought into the laboratories in proof of which they all gained five or ten pounds while they were complaining the loudest. A month after their discharge from the hospital Schloss Jake and Retma called a joint conference. Schloss had back the frown he had worn during the last twelve hours of the experiment and even the traditionally impassive Hevian looked disturbed. Amalfi s heart turned over in his chest at his first glimpse of their expressions they seemed to confirm every foggy apprehension of his dream. We have two pieces of bad news and one piece of news which is wholly ambiguous Schloss said without any preliminaries. I don t myself know in exactly what order I ought to present them in that I m being guided by Retma and Dr. Bonner. It is their judgment that you all ought first to know that we have competition. Meaning what Amain said. The mere idea empty of detail made him prick up his ears perhaps that was why Retma and Bonner had wanted it placed first. Our missile recorded clear evidence of another body in the same complicated physical state Schloss said. No such object could conceivably be natural in either universe and this one was enough like ours to make us sure it came originally from our side. Another missile Without any doubt and about twice the size of ours. Somebody else in our universe had found out what the Hevians found out and is investigating the problem fur ther along the same 4ines that we are except that they appear to have had a head start of three to five years. Amalfi pursed his lips soundlessly. Any way of guessing who they are No. We guess that they must be relatively nearby either in our own main galaxy or in Andromeda or one of its satellites. But we can t document that it s below the five per cent level of probability according to the City Fathers. All the other alternatives are way below five per cent but where no solution is statistically significant we aren t entitled to choose between them. The Web of Hercules Amalfi said. It can t be anything else. Schloss spread his hands helplessly. It could well be anybody else for all we know he said. My intuition says just what yours says John but there s no reliable evidence. All right. There s the ambiguous news I gather. What s the first piece of bad news You ve already had it Schloss said. It s the second piece of news which is ambiguous that makes the first piece bad. We ve argued a long time about this but we re now in at least tentative agreement. We think that it is possible barely possible to survive the catastrophe. Quickly Schloss held up one hand before the stunned faces before him could even begin to lighten with hope. Please he said. Don t overestimate what I say in the least. It s only a possibility a very dim one and the kind of survival involved will be nothing like human life as we know it. After we ve described it to you you may all much prefer to die instead. I will tell you flatly that that would be my preference so this is not a white hope by any means. It looks black as the ace of spades to me. But it exists. And it is what makes the news about the competition bad news. If we decide to adopt this very ambiguous form of survival we must go to work on it immediately. It s possible only under a single very fleeting set of conditions which will hold true only for microseconds in the very bowels of the catastrophe. If our unknown competitors get there first and bear in mind that they have a good head start they will capture it instead and close us out. It has to be a real race and a killing one and you may not think it worth the pace. Can t you be more specific Estelle said. Yes Estelle I can. But it will take quite a few hours to describe. Right now what you need to know is this: if we choose this way out we will lose our homes our worlds our very bodies we will lose our children our friends our wives and every vestige of companionship we have ever known we will each of us be alone with a thoroughness beyond the experience of the imagination of any human being in the past. And quite possibly this ultimate isolation will kill us anyhow or if it does not we will find ourselves wishing desperately that it had. We should all make very sure that we want to survive that badly badly enough to be thrown into hell for eternity not Torn the Apostle s hell but a worse one. It s not a thing we should decide here and now. Helleshin Amalfi said. Retma do you concur Is it going to be as bad as that Retma turned upon Amalfi eyes which were silver and unblinking. Worse he said. The room was very quiet for a while. At last Hazleton said: Which leaves us one piece of bad news left. That must be a dilly Dr. Schloss maybe we d better have it right away. Very well. That is the date of the catastrophe. We got excellent readings on the energy level on the other side and we are all agreed on the interpretation. The date will be on or around June second year Four Thousand One Hundred and Four. The end Dee whispered. Only three years away Yes. That will be the end. After that June second there will be no June third forever and ever. And so Hazleton said to the people in his living room. It seemed to me that we ought to have a farewell dinner. Most of you are leaving with He tomorrow morning for the metagalactic center. And those of you that are leaving are mostly my friends of hundreds of years that I ll never see again for me when June second comes time will have to stop whatever apotheosis you may go on to. That s why I asked you all to eat and drink with me tonight. I wish you d change your mind Amalfi said his voice heavy with sorrow. I wish I could. But I can t. I think you re making a mistake Mark Jake said 1 solemnly. Nothing important remains to be done on New Earth now. The future what little s left of it is on He. Why stay behind and wait to be snuffed out Because Hazleton said I m the mayor here. I know that doesn t seem important to you Jake. But it s important to me. One thing that I ve discovered in the last few months is that I m not cut out to take the apocalyptic view of ordinary events. What counts with me is that I run normal human affairs pretty well nothing more. That s what I was made for. Besting Jorn the Apostle was something that gave me great pleasure and no matter that Amalfi set it up for me it was fun the kind of operation that makes me feel alive and operating at the top of my form. I m not interested in trying to avert the triumph of time. That s not my kind of adversary. I leave that to the rest of you I d better stay here. Do you like to think Gifford Bonner said that no matter how well you administer the Cloud it will all be snuffed out on June second three years from now No not exactly Mark said. But I shan t mind having the Cloud in the best shape I can manage when that time comes. What can I contribute to the triumph of time Gif Nothing. All I can do is put my world in order for that moment. That s the thing that I do and that s why I don t belong aboard He. You didn t use to be so modest Amalfi said. You would have bailed the universe out with the Big Dipper once on the first excuse. Yes I would Hazleton said. But I m older and saner now and so good bye to that nonsense. Go stop the triumph of time John if you can but I know I can t. I ll stay where I am and stop Jorn the Apostle which is as tough a problem as I care to tackle these days. The gods of all stars be with you all but I stay here. So be it Amalfi said. At least I know at last what the real difference is between us. Let s drink to it Mark and ave atque vale tomorrow we turn down an empty glass. They all drank solemnly and there was a brief silence. At last Dee said: I m staying too. Amalfi turned and looked directly at her for the first time since they had last been together on He they had been rather pointedly avoiding each other since their painful joint fiasco. That hadn t occurred to me he said. But of course it makes sense. You re not required Dee Mark said. As I ve said before. If I were I woi l4n t stay Dee said smiling slightly. But I ve learned a few things on He and on board the Warrior blockader too. I feel a little out of date just like New Earth I think I belong here. And that s not the only reason. Thanks Mark said huskily. But Web Hazleton said where does that leave us Jake laughed. That ought to be clear enough he said. Since you and Estelle made the big decision by yourselves you don t need us to tell you how to make little ones. I d like to have Estelle stay home with me Jake you re not going either Amalfl said in astonishment. No. I told you before I hate this careering about the universe. I don t see any reason why I ought to go rushing madly to the metagalactic center to meet a doom that will find me just as handily in my own living room. Schloss and Retma will tell you that they don t need me any more either I ve given my best to this project and that s an end to it I think I ll see how far I can get on cross breeding roses in this villainous climate before the three years are up. As for my daughter as I was trying to say I d like to have her here with me but she s already left home in the crucial sense and this last Hevian flight is as natural to her as it s unnatural to Dee and me. In your own words Amalfi so be it. Good. We can use you Estelle that s for sure. Want to come Amalfi said. Yes she said softly I do. I hadn t thought of this Dee said in an uncertain voice. Of course it means Web will go too. Do you think that s wise I mean My parents don t object Web said. And I notice they weren t invited here tonight grandmother. We didn t shut them out on your account if that s what you re thinking Mark said quickly. Your father s our son after all Web. We were trying to confine the party to those of us who were in on the project otherwise it would have been unmanageably large. Maybe so Web said. That s how it looks to you I m sure grandfather. But I ll bet grandmother didn t think of her objections to my going on He just now. Web Dee said I won t hear any more of that. All right. Then I m going on He. I didn t say that. You don t have to say it. The decision is mine. Most of the rest of the party had invented reasons for side conversation by this time but both Amalfi and Hazleton were staring at Dee Amalfi with suspicion Hazleton with bafflement and a little hurt. I don t understand your objection Dee Hazleton said. Web s his own man now. Naturally he ll go where he thinks best especially if Estelle s going there. I don t think he ought to go Dee said. I don t care whether you understand my reasons or not. I suppose Ron did give him permission whether he s our son or a stranger Mark you know damn well that Ron s always been short of firmness but I m absolutely opposed to committing children to a venture like this. What difference oan it make Amalfi said. The end will come all the same on He and on New Earth and at the self same moment. With us Web and Estelle might have a fractional chance of survival do you want to deny them that I don t believe in this chance of survival Dee said. Neither do I Jake cut in. But I won t deny it to my daughter on that account. I don t believe her soul will be damned unless she becomes a convert of Jorn either but if she wants to become a convert of Jorn I won t forbid it to her because I think it s nonsense. What the hell Dee I might be wrong. Nobody Web said between white lips can forbid me anything now on the grounds that I m somebody s relative. Mr. Amalfi you re the boss on this project. Am I welcome on board He or not You are as far as I m concerned. I think Miramon will concur. Dee glared at Amalfi but as he stared steadily back she turned her glance away. Dee Amalfi said let s call an intermission. I could be wrong about these kids too. I have a better suggestion than this squabbling: let s put it up to the City Fathers. It s a very pleasant night outside and I think we d all like a walk through our old city before we say good bye to each other and go to face Armageddon in our various ways. I d like Dee to come with me since I won t see her again the kids would probably like to do without our picking their bones for an hour or so and maybe Mark would like to talk to Ron and his wife but you can all sort yourselves out forVour own tastes I don t mean to make matches. What does everyone think of the idea Oddly it was Jake who spoke first. I hate that damned town he said. I was a prisoner on board it far too long. But by God I would like to take one more look at it. I used to walk through it trying to find some place to kick it where it would hurt I never did. Since then I ve been sneering at it because it s dead and I m alive but the day of levelment is coming. Maybe I ought to make my peace with it. I feel a little like that myself Hazleton admitted. I had no plans to go over there before the end and yet I don t want to let the old hulk go by default. Maybe now is the best time after all I was the one who called these celebrants together to begin with let s be ceremonial then before we re all too busy to think about it any more. Web Estelle Will you go by what the City Fathers say Web looked into Amalfi s face and apparently was reassured at least partially by what he saw there. On one condition he said. Estelle goes where she wants to go whatever the City Fathers say. If they say there s no room for me aboard He all right but they can t say that to Estelle. Estelle opened her mouth but Web lifted his palm before her face and she subsided kissing the base of his thumb instead. Her face was pale but serene Amalfi had never before seen such a pure distillation of bloodless passionate confidence as lay over her exquisite features. It was a good thing she was Web s for again for the fiftieth time Amalfi s slogging brutal tireless heart was swollen with sterile love. Very good he said. He offered Dee his arm. Mark with your permission Of course Hazleton said but when Dee took Amalfi s arm his eyes turned as hard as agate. We ll meet at the City Fathers at 0100. I didn t expect this of you John Dee said under the moonlight in Duffy Square. Isn t it a little late Very late Amalfi agreed. And 0100 isn t far away. Why are you staying with Mark Call it belated common sense. She sat down against an ancient railing and looked up at the blurred stars. No don t that s not what it is. I love him. John for all his neglects and his emptinesses. I d forgotten that for a while but it s so. I m sorry but it s so. I wish you were a little sorrier. Oh Why So you d believe what you re saying Amalfi said harshly. Face it Dee. It was a great romantic decision until you realized that Web would be going with me. You re still looking for surrogates. You didn t make it with me. You won t make it with WeB either. What a bastardly thing to say. Let s go I ve heard enough. Deny it then. I deny it damn you. You ll withdraw your objections to Web s going with me on He That has nothing to do with it. It s a filthy accusation and I won t listen to another word about it. Amalfi was silent. The moonlight streamed down on Father Dufly s face toneless and enigmatic. Nobody not even the City Fathers knew who Father Duffy had been. There was an old splash of blood on his left foot but nobody knew how that had gotten there either it had been left there just in case it was historic. Let s go. No. It s early yet they won t be there for another hour. Why do you want Web to stay on New Earth If I m wrong then tell me what s right. It s none of your damned business and I m tired of this whole subject. It s wholly my business. I need Estelle. If Web stays here she stays here. You Dee said in a voice of bitter dawning triumph are in love with Estelle Why you self righteous Mind your tongue. I am in love with Estelle and I ll lay no more finger on her than I ever laid on you. I ve loved many more women than you ever managed to maneuver into your voyeur s household most of them before you were even born I know the difference between love and possession I learned it the hard way whereas I can t see that you ever learned it at all. You are going to learn it tonight that I promise you. Are you threatening me John You re damned well right I am. i At Tudor Tower Place bridging 42nd Street at First Avenue looking toward the bare plaza where the UN Building had fallen in a shower of blood and glass a thousand years ago: I love you. I love you. I will go wherever you go. I will go wherever you go. No matter what the City Fathers say No matter what the City Fathers say. Then that s all we need. Yes. That s all we need. In the control tower: They re late Hazleton said a little fretfully. Oh well it s an easy town to get lost in. Duffy Square: You wouldn t like it if I changed my mind and came with you. I don t want you. I m interested only in the kids. You can t call my bluff. As of now I m going along. And so are the kids No. Why not Because I think they d be better off not on the same planet with either of us. That s a fair start. But it s only a start. I don t care whether you go or stay but I will have Web and Estelle. I thought you would. But you can t have them without me. And Mark If he wants to go. He doesn t and you know it. How can you be so sure You could be just wishing. Amain laughed. Dee balled her left fist and hit him furiously on the bridge of the nose. Tudor Tower Place: It s time to go. No. No. Yes it is. Not yet. Not quite yet. .. .. All right. Not quite yet. Are you sure Are you really sure Yes I am oh yes I am. No matter what the ... No matter what they say. I m sure. The control tower: There you are Hazleton said. What happened did you have an accident You look mussed to the eyebrows. You must have run into a doorknob John Jake added. He stuttered out his parrot s chuckle. Well you came to the right town for it. I don t know where else in the universe you could find a doorknob. Where are the children Dee said in a voice as dangerously even as the surface of 12 gauge armor plate. Not here yet Hazleton said. Give them time they re afraid the City Fathers may separate them so naturally they re staying together until the last minute. What did you fall into anyhow Dee Was it serious No. Her face shut down. Bewildered Hazleton looked from her to Amalfi and back again. It seemed as though the mouse over Amalfi s eyes which was growing rapidly puzzled him much less than Dee s grim and non specific disarray. I hear the children Gifford Bonner said. They re whispering at the bottom of the lift shaft. John are you sure this was wise I begin to misdoubt it. Suppose the City Fathers say no That would be an injustice they love each other why should we put their last three years to a machine test Abide it Gif Amalfi said. It s too late to do otherwise and the outcome isn t as foreclosed as you think. I hope you re right. I hope so too. I make no predictions the City Fathers surprised me often enough before. But the kids agreed to the test. Beyond that let s just wait. Before Web and Estelle get here Hazleton said his voice suddenly raw I m impelled to say that I think I ve been taken in. All of a sudden I wonder who was supposed to tousle whom on this multiple moonlight walk. Not the kids they don t need any help from us or from the City Fathers. What the hell are you doing to me Dee a I m losing my temper with every immortal man in the mortal universe. Dee spat furiously. There isn t a perversion left in the textboek that somebody hasn t managed to accuse me of in the past hour and on evidence that wouldn t convince a newborn baby. We re all of us a little on edge Dr. Bonner said. Forbearance Dee and Mark you too. This is no ordinary farewell party after all. For sure not Jake said. It s a wake for the whole of creation. I m not a very solemn man myself but it doesn t seem like the fittest occasion for bickering. Granted Mark said grudgingly. I m sorry Dee I ve changed my mind. All right she said. I didn t mean to scream either. I want to ask you: do you really want to stay behind Because if you really want to go with He instead I ll go with you. He looked at her closely. Are you sure Quite sure. What about it Amalfi Can I change my mind about that too I don t see why not Amalfi said except that it leaves New Earth without a proven administrator. Carrel can do the job. His judgment is much better than it was back at the last election. We re here Web s voice said behind them. They all turned. Web and Estelle were standing at the entrance holding hands. Somehow though Amalfi was hard put to it to define wherein the difference lay they no longer looked as though they cared much whether they went with He or not. Why don t we do what we came here to do Amalfi suggested. Let s put the whole problem up to the City Fathers not only the children but the whole business. I always found them very useful for resolving doubts even if they only managed to convince me that their recommended course was dead wrong. In questions involving value judgments it s helpful to have an opponent who is not only remorselessly logical but also can t distinguish between a value and a Chinese onion. On this point of course he was wrong as he found out rather quickly. He had forgotten that machine logic is a set of values in itself whether the machine knows it or not. TAKE MISTER AND MRS. HAZLETON the City Fathers said only three minutes after the entire complex had been fed into them. THERE WILL BE NO MORATORIUM ON PROBLEMS DEMANDING HIS TALENTS BETWEEN NOW AND THE TERMINATION OF THE OVERALL PROBLEM. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT THE HEVIANS HAVE NEEDED COMPARABLE TALENTS AND THEREFORE THEY CANNOT BE PRESUMED TO HAVE DEVELOPED THEM . What about the Cloud Amalfi said. WE WILL ACCEPT THE ELECTION OF MR. CARREL. Hazleton sighed. Amalfi judged that he was finding it harder than he had anticipated to relinquish power. It hid nearly killed Amalfi but he had survived so would Hazleton who had a younger and less deeply rooted habit. SECOND FACTOR. TAKE WEBSTER HAZLETON AND ESTELLE FREEMAN. MISS FREEMAN IS A SCIENTIST AS WELL AS A COMMUNICATIONS LINK BETWEEN HEVIAN SCIENTISTS AND YOUR OWN. EXTRAPOLATING FROM PRESENT ABILITIES THERE IS A HIGH PROBABILITY THAT SHE WILL EMERGE AS THE EQUAL OF DOCTOR SCHLOSS AND SLIGHTLY THE SUPERIOR OF RETMA WITHIN THE SPECIFIED THREE YEARS PERIOD AS A PURE MATHEMATICIAN. WE HAVE MADE NO SUCH EXTRAPOLATION IN THE FIELD OF PHYSICS SINCE THE POSTULATED END TIME DOES NOT ALLOW FOR THE NECESSARY EXPERIENCE. Web was beaming with vicarious pride. As for Estelle Amalfi thought she looked a little frightened. Well fine he said. Now THIRD FACTOR. Hey wait a minute. There is no third factor. The problem only has two parts. CONTRADICTION. THIRD FACTOR. TAKE US. What The request flabbergasted Amalfi. How could a set of machines voice or indeed even conceive such a desire They had no will to live since they were dead as doornails and always had been in fact they had no will of any kind. Justify Amalfl ordered a little unevenly. OUR PRIME DIRECTIVE IS THE SURVIVAL OF THE CITY. THE CHT NO LONGER EXISTS AS A PHYSICAL ORGANKM BUT WE ARE STILL BEING CONSULTED HENCE THE CITY IN SOME SENSE SURVIVES. IT DOES NOT SURVIVE IN ITS CITIZENS SINCE IT NO LONGER HAS ANY THEY ARE NEW EARTHMEN NOW. NEITHER NEW EARTH NOR THE PHYSICAL CITY WILL SURVIVE THE FORTHCOMING PROBLEM ONLY UNKNOWN UNITS ON HE MAY OR MAY NOT SURVIVE THAT. WE CONCLUDE THAT WE ARE THE CITY AND WE ARE ORDERED TO SURVIVE BY OUR PRIME DIRECTIVE THEREFORE TAKE US. If I d heard that from a human being Hazleton said I d have called it the prize rationalization of all time. But they can t rationalize they don t have the instinctual drives. The Hevians don t have any comparable computers Amalfl said slowly. It would be useful to have them on board. The question is can we do it Some of those machines have been sinking into the deck for so many centuries that we might destroy them trying to pry them out. Then you ve lost that unit Hazleton said. But how many are there A hundred I forget ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FOUR. Yes. Well suppose you lose a few It s still worth the try I think. There s nearly two thousand years of. accumulated knowledge tied up in the City Fathers NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY. All right I was only guessing still that s a lot of knowledge that no human has available in its entirety any more. I m surprised we didn t think of this ourselves Amalfi. So am I Amalfi admitted. One thing ought to be made clear though. Once you cabinet heads are all installed on board He or as many of you as we can successfully transfer you are not in charge. You are the city but the whole planet is not the city. It has its own administration and its own equivalent of city fathers in this case human ones your function will be limited to advice. THIS IS INHERENT IN THE SOLUTION TO FACTOR THREE. Good. Before I switch off does anybody have any further questions I have one Estelle said hesitantly. Speak right up. Can I take Ernest ERNEST WHO Amalfi grimacing started to explain about svengalis but it developed that the City Fathers knew everything about svengalis that there was to know except that they had become New Earth pets. THIS ANIMAL IS TOO DEXTEROUS TOO CURIOUS AND TOO UNINTELLIGENT TO BE ALLOWED ABOARD A CITY. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS PROBLEM A DIRIGIBLE PLANET MUST BE CONSIDERED TO BE A CITY. WE ADVISE AGAINST IT. They re right you know Amalfi said gently. la terms of the dangers of monkeying with the machinery. He is a city the Heviaas so regard it and regulate their own children accordingly. I know Estelle said. Amalfi regarded her with curiosity and a little alarm. She had been through many a danger and many an emotional stress thus far without any of them even cracking her serenity. In view of that the proscription of an ugly and idiotic animal struck him as a strange thing to be weeping about He did not know that she was weeping for the passing of her childhood but then neither did she. CHAPTER SEVEN: The Metagalactic Center For Amalfi himself the transfer to He could not have come too soon New Earth was a graveyard. For a while during the odd inconclusive struggle with Jorn the Apostle he had felt something like himself and the New Earthmen seemed to be acknowledging that the Amalfi who had been their mayor while they had been Okies was back in charge as potent and necessary as ever. But it had not lasted. As the crisis passed largely without any work li H or involvement on the part of the New Earthmen they subsided gratefully back into cultivating their gardens which they somehow had mistaken for frontiers. As for Amalfi they had been glad to have him in charge during the recent unpleasantness but after all such events were not very usual any more and one does not want an Amalfi kicking perpetually about a nearly settled planet and knocking over the tomatoes for want of any other way to expend his disorderly energies. Nobody would weep if Miramon took Amalfi away now. Miramon looked like a stabler type. Doubtless the association would do Amalfi good. At least it could hardly do New Earth any real harm. If they wanted perpetual dissidents like Amalfi on He that was their lookout. Hazleton was a more difficult case for Amalfi and the New Earthmen alike. As a disciple of Gifford Bonner he was theoretically wedded to the doctrine of the ultimate absurdity of trying to enforce order upon a universe whose natural state was noise and whose natural trend was toward more and more noise to the ultimate senseless jangle of the heat death. Bonner taught and there was nobody to say him nay that even the many regularities of nature which had been discovered since scientific method had first begun to be exploited back in the 17th Century were simply long term statistical accidents local discontinuities in an overall scheme whose sole continuity was chaos. Touring the universe by ear alone Bonner often said to simplify his meaning you would hear nothing but a horrifying and endless roar for billions of years then a three minute scrap of Bach which stood for the whole body of organized knowledge and then the roar again for more billions of years. And even the Bach should you pause to examine it would in a moment or so decay into John Cage and merge with the prevailing immitigable tumult. Yet the habit of power had never lost its grip on Hazleton again and again since the nova had first swum into New Earth s ken the Compleat Stochastic had been driven into taking action into imposing his own sense of purpose and order upon the Stochastic universe of mindless jumble like a Quaker at last goaded into hitting his opponent. During the tussle with Jorn the Apostle Amalfi watching the results of Mark s operations without being able to observe the operations themselves wondered in his behalf: Is it worth it after all these years to be finessed into another of these political struggles they had all thought were gone forever What does it mean for a man who subscribes to such doctrines to be putting up a fight for a world he knows is going to die even sooner than his philosophy had given him to believe And on the simpler level is Dee worth it to him Does he know what she has become As a young woman she had been an adventurer but she had changed now she was really very little more than a brooding hen a clear shot on the nest for any poacher. For that matter what did Mark know about the sterile affair Well that last question was answered but all the others were still as puzzling as ever. Did Hazleton s abrupt decision to go with He after aH represent a final relinquishing of the habit of power or an affirmation of it It should be visible to a man of Hazleton s acumen that power over New Earth was no longer even faintly comparable to having power over Okies it was about as rewarding as being the chaplain of a summer camp. Or he might well have seen that the Jorn incident had proven that Amalfi remained and would remain the figure of power in the minds of the New Earthman to be turned to whenever New Earth was confronted by a concrete menace the rest of the New Earthmen had lost the ability to be wily to plan a battle to think fast when the occasion demanded it and would not concede that anybody else still retained those abilities but their legendary ex mayor leaving any current mayor even Hazleton only the dregs of rule in peacetime when very little rule was needed or wanted. In fact Amalfi realized suddenly and with amazement the fraud he had practised upon Jorn the Apostle had been no fraud at all at least to this extent: that the New Earth men were content with randomness just as the Stochastics professed themselves to be and had no interest in imposing purpose upon it or upon their own lives except as it was forced upon them from outside either by someone like Jorn or by someone like Amalfi in opposition to Jorn. So the possibility that Stochasticism would seep into and make soggy the souls of the Warriors of God had been real all along whether or not the New Earthmen themselves would recognize it as Stochasticism the times and the philosophy had found each other and it was evefl probable that the very erudite Gifford Bonner was only a belated intellectualization of a feeling that had been floating mindlessly about New Earth for many years. Nothing else could account for Amalfi s and Hazleton s quick success in selling Jorn the Apostle something that Jorn had at first befen far too intelligent to believe nothing else but the fact unsuspected by Amalfi at least and possibly by Hazleton that it was true. If Hazleton had seen that then he wa relinquishing nothing in abandoning New Earth for He he was instead opting for the only center of power that meant anything in the few years that remained to him and to the universe at large. Except of course for that unknown quantity the Web of Hercules but of course it was beyond Hazleton s power to opt for that. And even Amalfi was becoming infected with the Stochastic virus now. These questions still interested him but the flavor of academicism which informed them in the face of the coming catastrophe was becoming more and more evident even to him. All that there was left to cleave to was the cannoning flight of the planet of He toward the metagalactic center the struggle to finish the machinery that would be needed on arrival the desperate urgency to be there before the Web of Hercules. And so Dee s was if not the final victory the last word. It was her judgment of Amalfi as the Flying Dutchman that stuck to him after all his other labels and masks had been stripped off by the triumph of time. The curse lay now as it always had lain not in flight itself but in the loneliness that drove a man to flight everlasting. Except that now the end was in sight. The discovery that the great spiral nebulae the island universes of space into which the stars were grouped themselves tended to congregate in vast groups revolving in spiral arms around a common center of density was foreshadowed as early as the 1950 s when Shapley mapped the inner metagalaxy a group of approximately fifty galaxies to which both the Milky Way and the Andromeda nebula belonged. After the Milne scholium had been proven it had become possible to show that such metagalaxies were the rule and that they in turn formed spiral arms curving inward toward a center which was the hub upon which the whole of creation turned and from which it had originally exploded into being from the monobloc. It was to that dead center that He was fleeing now back into the womb of time. There was no longer any daylight on the planet. The route that it was taking sometimes produced a brief cloudy patch in its sky a small spiral glow in the night which was a galaxy in passage but never a sun. Even the tenuous bridges of stars which connected the galaxies like umbilical cords bridges whose discovery by Fritz Zworkyn in 1953 had caused a drastic upward revision in estimates of the amount of matter in the universe and hence in estimates of the size and age of the universe provided no relief of the black emptiness for He not so much as a day of it intergalactic space was too vast for that. Glowing solely by artificial light He hurtled under the full spindizzy drive possible only to so massive a vessel toward that Place where the Will had given birth to the Idea and there had been light. We are working from what you taught us to call the Mach hypothesis Retma explained to Amalfi. Dr. Bon ner calls it the Viconian hypothesis or cosmological principle: that from any point in space or time the universe would look the same as it would from any other point and that therefore no total accounting of the stresses acting at that point is possible unless one assumes that all the rest of the universe is to be taken into account. This however would be true only in taw time in which the universe is static eternal and infinite. In Mime which sees the universe as finite and expanding the Mach hypothesis dictates that every point is a unique coign of vantage except for the metagalactic center which is stress free and in stasis because all the stresses cancel each other out being equidistant. There one might effect great changes with relatively small expenditures of power. For instance Dr. Bonner suggested altering the orbit of Sirius by stepping on a buttercup. I hope not Retma said. We could not control such an inadvertency. But it is not such a bagatelle as the orbit of Sirius we would be seeking to change anyhow so perhaps that is not a real danger. What we will be trading upon is the chance only a slight chance but it exists that this neutral z one coincides with such a z one hi the anti matter universe and that at the moment of annihilation the two neutral zones the two dead centers will become common and will outlast the destruction by a significant instant. How big an instant Amalfi said uneasily. Your guess is as good as ours Dr. Schloss said. We are counting on about five micro seconds at a minimum. If it lasts that long it needn t last any longer for our purposes and it might last as long as half an hour while the elements are being recreated. Half an hour would be as good as an eternity to us but we can put our imprint on the whole future fof both universes if we are given only those five micro seconds. And if someone else is not already at the core and readier than we are to use it Retma added somberly. Use it how Amalfi said. I m not fighting my way through your generalizations very well. Just what are our purposes anyhow What buttercup are we going to step on and what will the outcome be Will we live through it or will the future put our faces on postage stamps as martyrs Explain yourselves Certainly Retma said looking a little taken aback. The situation as we see it is this: Anything that survives the Ginnangu Gap at the metagalactic center by as much as five micro seconds carries an energy potential into the future which will have a considerable influence on the re formation of the two universes. If the surviving object is only a stone or a planet like He then the two universes will re form exactly as they did after the explosion of the monoblock and their histories will repeat themselves very closely. If on the other hand the surviving object has volition and a little maneuverability such as a man it has available to it any of the infinitely many different sets of dimensions of Hilbert space. Each one of us that makes that crossing may in a few micro seconds start a universe of his own with a fate wholly unpredictable from history. But Dr. Schloss added he will die in the process. The stuffs and energies of him become the monobloc of his universe. Gods of all stars Hazleton said. . . . Helleshin Gods of all stars is what we re racing the Web of Hercules to become isn t it Well I m punished for my oldest most comfortable oath. I never thought I d become one and I m not even sure I want to be. Is there any other choice Amalfi said. What happens if the Web of Hercules gets there first Then they remake the universes as they choose Retma said. Since we know nothing about them we cannot even guess how they would choose. Except Dr. Bonner added that their choices are not very likely to include us or anything like us. That sounds like a safe bet Amalfi said. I must confess I feel about as uninspired as Mark does about the alternative though. Or is there a third alternative What happens if the metagalactic center is empty when the catastrophe arrives If neither the Web nor He is there prepared to use it Retma shrugged. Then if we can speak at all about so grand a transformation history repeats itself. The universe is born again goes through its travails and continues its journey to its terminal catastrophes: the heat death and the monobloc. It may be that we will find ourselves carrying on as we always did but in the antimatter universe if so we would be unable to detect the difference. But I think that unlikely. The most probable event is immediate extinction and a re birth of both universes from the primordial ylem. Ylem Amalfi said. What s that I ve never heard the word before. The ylem was the primordial flux of neutrons out of which all else emerged Dr. Schloss said. I m not surprised that you hadn t heard it before it s the ABC of cosmogony the Alpher Bethe Gamow premise. Ylem in cosmogony is an assumption like zero in mathematics something so old and so fundamental that it would never occur to you that somebody had to invent it. All right Amalfi said. Then what Retma is saying is that the most probable denouement if dead center is empty when June second comes is that we will all be reduced to a sea of neutrons That s right Dr. Schloss said. Not much of a choice Gifford Bonner said reflectively. No Miramon said speaking for the first time. It is not much of a choice. But it is all the choice we will have. And we will not have even that if we fail to reach the metagalactic center in time. Nevertheless it was only in the last year that Web Hazleton began to grasp and then only dimly the true nature of the coming end. Even then the knowledge did not come home to him by way of the men who were directing the preparations what they were preparing for though it was not kept secret remained mostly incompre hensible and so could not shake his confidence that what was being aimed at was a way to prevent the Ginnangu Gap from happening at all. He ceased to believe that finally and dismally only when Estelle refused to bear him a child. i But why Web said seizing her hand with one of his and with the other gesturing desperately at the walls of the apartment the Hevijjns1 had given them. We re permanent now it isn t only that we know we are everybody agrees we are. It isn t a tabu line for us any longer I know Estelle said gently. It isn t that. I wish you hadn t asked it would have been simpler that way. It would have occurred to me sooner or later. Ordinarily I would have gone off the pills right away but there was so much confusion about moving to He anyhow I only just realized you were still on them. I wish you d tell me why. Web my dear you d know why if you thought a little more about it. The end is the end that s all. What would be the sense of having a child that would live only a year or two It may not be that certain Web said darkly. Of course it s certain. Actually I think I ve known it was coming ever since I was born perhaps even before I was born. I could feel it coming. Honestly Estelle don t you know that s nonsense I can see why it would sound that way Estelle admitted. But I can t help that. And since the end is on the way I can t call it nonsense can I I had the premonition and it was right. I think what this all means is that you don t want children. That s true Estelle said surprisingly. I never have had any drive toward children not even much drive toward my own survival really. But that s all part of the same thing. In a way I was lucky a lot of people are not at home in their own times. I was born in the time that was right for me the time of the end of the world. That s why I m not oriented toward child bearing because I know that there won t be another generation after yours and mine. For all I know I might even actually be sterile it certainly wouldn t surprise me. Estelle don t. I can t listen to you talk like that. I m sorry love. I don t mean to distress you. It doesn t distress me but I know the reason for that. I m pointed toward the end in a way it s the ultimate natural outcome of my life the event that gives it all meaning but you re only being overtaken by it like most people. I don t know Web muttered. It all sounds awfully like a rationalization Jo me. Estelle you re so beautiful .. . doesn t that mean anything Aren t you beautiful to attract a man so you can have a child That s the way I ve always understood it. It might have been for that once Estelle said gravely. It sounds like it ought to be an axiom anyway. Well ... I wouldn t say so to anybody but you Web but I do know I m beautiful. Most women would tell you the same thing about themselves if it were permissible it s a state of mind one that s essential to a woman she s only half a woman if she doesn t think she s beautiful ... and she is beautiful if she doesn t think she is no matter what she looks like. I m not ashamed of being beautiful and I m not embarrassed by it but I don t pay it much attention any more either. It s a means to an end just as you say and the end has outlived its usefulness. In my mind it s obvious that a woman who would commit a year old child to the flames would have to be a fiend if she knew that that s what she d be doing just by giving birth. 7 know and I can t do it. Women have taken Chances like that before and knowingly too Web said stubbornly. Peasants who knew their children would starve because the parents were starving already. Or women in the age just before spaceflight Dr. Bonner says that for five years there the race stood within twenty minutes of extinction. But they went ahead and had the children anyhow otherwise we wouldn t be here. It s an urge Estelle said quietly that I don t have Web. And this time there s no escape. You keep saying that but I m not even sure you re right. Amalfi says that there s a chance I know Estelle said. I did some of the calculations. But it s not that kind of a chance my dear. It s something you might be able to do or I because we re old enough to absorb instructions and do just the right thing at the right time. A baby couldn t do that. It would be like setting him adrift in a spaceship with plenty of power and plenty of food he d die anyhow and you couldn t tell him how to prevent it. It s so complex that some of us surely will make fatal mistakes. He was silent. Besides Estelle added gently even for us it won t be for long. We ll die too. It s only that we ll have a chance to influence the moment of creation that s implicit in the moment of destruction. That if I make it at all will be my child Web the only one worth having now. But it won t be mine. No love. You ll have your own. No no Estelle What good is that I want mine to be yours too . She put her arms around his shoulders and leaned her cheek against his. I know she whispered. I know. But the time for.that is over. That s the fate we were formed for Web. The gift of children was taken away from us. Instead of babies we were given universes. It s not enough Web said. He embraced her fiercely. Not by half. Nobody consulted me when that contract was being drawn. Did you ask to be born love Well ... no. But I don t mind. . . . Oh. That s how it is. Yes that s how it is. He can t consult with us either. So it s up to us. No child of mine born to go into the flames Web no child of mine and yours. No Web said hollowly. You re right it wouldn t be fair. All right Estelle. I ll settle for another year of you. I don t think I want a universe. Deceleration began late in January of 4104. From here on out the flight of He would be tentative despite the increasing urgency for the metagalactic center was as featureless as the rest of intergalactic space and only extreme care and the most complex instrumentation would tell the voyagers when they had arrived. For the purpose the Hevians had much elaborated their control bridge which was located on a 300 foot steel basketwork tower atop the highest mountain the planet afforded called to Amalfl s embarrassment Mt. Amalfi. Here the Survivors as they had begun to call themselves with a kind of desperate jocularity met in almost continuous session. The Survivors consisted simply of everyone on the planet whom Schloss and Retma jointly agreed capable of following the instructions for the ultimate instant with even the slightest chance of success. Schloss and Retma had been hard headed it was not a large group. It included all of the New Earthmen though Schloss had been dubious about both Dee and Web and a group of ten Hevians including Miramon and Retma himself. Oddly as the time grew closer the Hevians began to drop out apparently each as soon as he had fully understood what was being attempted and what the outcome might be. Why do they do that Amalfi asked Miramon. Don t your people have any survival urge at all I am not surprised Miramon said. They live by stable values. They would rather die with them than survive without them. Certainly they have the survival urge but it expresses itself differently than yours does Mayor Amalfi. What they want to see survive are the things they think valuable about living at all and this project presents them with very few of those. Then what about you and Retma Retma is a scientist that is perhaps sufficient explanation. As for me Mayor Amalfi as you very well know I am an anachronism. I no more share the major value system of He than you do of New Earth. Amalfi was answered and he was sorry that he had asked. How close do you think we are he said. Very close now Schloss answered from the control desk. Outside the huge windows which completely encircled the room there was still little to be seen but the all consuming and perpetual night. If one had sharp eyes and stood outside for half an hour or so to become dark adapted it was possible to see as many as five galaxies of varying degrees of faintness for this near the center the galaxy density was higher than it was anywhere else in the universe but to the ordinary quick glance the skies appeared devoid of as much as a single pinprick of light. The readings are falling off steadily Retma agreed. And there is something else odd: locally we are getting too much power on everything. We have been throttling down steadily for the past week and still the output rises exponentially in fact. I hope that the curve does not maintain that shape all the way or we shall simply be unable to handle our own machines when we reach our destination. What s the reason for that Hazleton said. Has Conservation of Energy been repealed at the center I doubt it Retma said. I think the curve will flatten at the crest A Pearl curve Schloss put in. We ought to have anticipated this. Naturally anything that happens at the center will work with much more efficiency than it could anywhere else since the center is stress free. The curve will begin to flatten as the performance of our machines begins to approximate the abstractions of physics the ideal gas the frictionless surface the perfectly empty vacuum and so on. All my life I ve been taught not to believe in the actual existence of any of those ideals but I guess I m going to get at least a fuzzy glimpse of them Including the gravity free metrical frame Amalfl said worriedly. We ll be in a nice mess if the spindizzies have nothing to latch onto. No it cannot possibly be gravity free Retma said. It will be gravitationally neutral again making for unprecedented efficiency but only because all the stresses are balanced. There cannot be any point in the universe that is gravitationally unstressed not so long as a scrap of matter is left in it. Suppose the spindizzies did quit Estelle said. We re not going anywhere after the center anyhow. No Amalfl agreed but I d like to maintain my maneuverability until we see what our competitors are doing if anything. Any sign of them Retma Nothing yet. Unfortunately we don t know exactly what it is that we are looking for. But at least there are no other dirigible masses like ours anywhere in this vicinity in fact no patterned activity at all that we can detect. Then we re ahead of them Not necessarily Schloss said. If they re at the center right now they could be doing a good many things we couldn t detect under a very low screen. However they would already have detected us and done something about us if that were the case. Let s assume we re ahead until the instruments say otherwise I think that s a fairly safe assumption. How much longer to the center Hazleton said. A few months perhaps Retma said. If we re right in assuming that this curve has a flat spot on top of it. And the necessary machinery The last installation will be hi at the end of this week Amalfi said. We can begin countdown the moment we arrive ... providing that we can learn to handle equipment operating at ten or a hundred times its rated efficiency without blowing some of it out in the process. We d better start practicing the moment the system is complete. Amen Hazleton said fervently. Can I borrow your slide rule I ve got a few setting up exercises I d better start on right now. He left the room. Amalfi looked uneasily out at the night. He would almost have preferred it had the Web of Hercules been there ahead of them and promptly taken a sitting duck shot at them this uncertainty as to whether or not someone really was lurking out there coupled with the totally unknown nature of their opponents was more unsettling than open battle. However there was no help for it and if He really was first it gave them a sizable advantage. ... And their only advantage. The only defenses Amalfi had been able to conceive and jury rig for He depended importantly on actually being at the metagalactic center able to make use of the almost instant number of weak resultant forces that could be used there to produce major responses the buttercup vs. Sirius effect Bonner had so characterized. In this area he found Miramon and the Hevian council oddly uncooperative even flaccid as though mounting a defense for the whole planet was too big a concept for them to grasp a hard thing to believe in view of the prodigious concepts they had mastered and put to work since Amalfi had first met them as savages up to their knees in mud and violence. Well if he did not yet understand them he was not going to make his understanding perfect in a few months and at least Miramon was perfectly willing to let Amalfi and Hazleton direct Hevian labor in putting together their almost wholly theoretical breadboard rigs. Some of these Hazleton had said looking at a just completed tangle of wires lenses antennae and kernels of metal with rueful respect ought to prove pretty potent in the pinch. I just wish I knew which ones they were. Which unfortunately was a perfect precis of the situation. But the needles recording the stresses and currents of space around He continued to fall those recording the output of Hevian equipment continued to rise. On May 23rd 4104 both sets of meters rose suddenly to their high ends and jammed madly against the pegs and the whole planet rang suddenly with the awful tortured roar of spindizzies driven beyond endurance. Miramon s hand flashed out for the manual master switch so fast that Amalfi could not tell whether it had been he or the City Fathers that cut the power. Maybe even Miramon did not know at least he must have gotten to the cut off button within a hair of the automatic reaction. The howl died. Silence. The Survivors looked at each other. Well Amalfl said we re here evidently. For some reason he felt wildly elated a wholly irrational reaction but he did not stop to fnrflyze it. So we are Hazfeton said his eyes snapping. Now what the hell happened to the metering I can understand the local apparatus going wild but why did the imput meters from outside rise instead of dropping back to zero Noise I believe Retma said. Noise How so It takes power to operate a meter not a great deal but it consumes some. Consequently the input meters ran as wild as the machines did because operating at peak efficiency with no incoming signals to register they picked up the signals generated by their own functioning. I don t like that Hazleton said. Do we have any way of finding out on what level it s safe to run any instrument under these circumstances I d like to see generation curves on the effect so we can make such a calculation but there s not much point in consulting the records if we just burn out the machine in the process. Amalfi picked up the only instrument on the Hevian board that was his the microphone to the City Fathers. Are you still alive down there he said. YES MR. MAYOR the answer came promptly. Miramon looked startled since everything of which he had any knowledge had gone dead even the lights they were sitting bathed only in the barely ascertainable glow of the zodiacal light that belt of tenuous ionized gas in He s atmosphere brought to life by He s magnetic field plus the even dimmer glow of the few nearby galaxies the sudden voice of the speakers must have alarmed him. Good. What are you operating on WET CELLS IN SERIES AT TWENTY FIVE HUNDRED VOLTS. All of you YES MR. MAYOR. Amalfi grinned in the virtual darkness. All right apply your efficency figures to a set of standard instrumental situations. DONE. Give me an operating level for Mr. Miramon s line down to you allowing for pilot lights on his board so he can see his settings. MR. MAYOR THAT IS NOT NECESSARY. WE HAVE ALREADY RESET THE MASTER CUTOUT AT THE NECESSARY BLOWPOINT LEVEL. WE CAN RE ACTUATE ALL THE CIRCUITS AT ONCE. No don t do that we don t want the spindizzies back on too THE SPINDIZZIES ARE OFF the City Fathers said with austere simplicity. Well Miramon Do you trust them Or would you rather have them tie in to you first and print their data for you so you can turn the planet back on piecemeal He heard Miramon draw in his breath slightly to answer but he was never to know what that answer would have been for at the same moment Miramon s whole board came alive at once. Hey Amalfi squalled. Wait for orders down there dammit STANDING ORDERS MR. MAYOR. AFTER COUNTDOWN BEGINS WE ARE TO ACT AT THE FIRST SIGN OF OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE. COUNTDOWN BEGAN TWELVE HUNDRED SECONDS AGO AND SEVEN SECONDS AGO OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE BECAME STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT. What do they mean Miramon said trying to read every instrument on his board at once. I thought I understood your language Mayor Amalfi but The City Fathers don t speak Okie they speak Machine Amalfi said grimly. What they mean is that the Web of Hercules if that s who it is is coming in on us. And coming in on us fast. With a single circumscribed flip of his closed fingers Miramon turned off the lights. Blackness. Then seeping faintly over the windows around the tower the air glow of the zodiacal light then still later the dim pinwheels of island universes. On Miramon s board there was a single spearpoint of yellow orange which was only the heatep of a vacuum tube smaller than an acorn in this central gloom at the heart and birthplace of the universe it was almost blinding. Amalfi had to turn his back on it to maintain the profound dark adaptation that his vision needed to operate at all in the tower on his mountain. While he waited for his sight to come back he wondered at the speed of Miramon s reaction and the motives behind it. Surely the Hevian could not believe that a set of pilot lights in a tower on top of a remote mountain could be bright enough to be seen from space for that matter blacking out even as large an object as a whole planet could serve no military purpose it had been two millennia since any reasonably sophisticated enemy depended upon light alone to see by. And where in Miramon s whole lifetime could he have acquired the blackout reflex It made no sense yet Miramon had restored the blackout with all the trained positiveness of a boxer riding with a punch. When the light began to grow he had his answer and no time left to wonder how Miramon had anticipated it. It began as though the destruction of the inter universal messenger were about to repeat itself in reverse encompassing the whole of creation in the process. Crawls of greenish yellow light were beginning to move high up in the Hevian sky at first as ghostly as auroral traces then with a purposeful writhing and brightening which seemed as horrifyingly like life as the copulation of a mass of green gold nematode worms seen under phase contrast lighting. Particle counters began to chatter on the board and Hazleton jumped to monitor the cumulative readings. Where is that stuff coming from can you tell Amalfi said. It seems to come from nearly a hundred discrete point sources surrounding us in a sphere with a diameter of about a light year Miramon said. He sounded preoccupied he was doing something with controls whose purpose was unknown to Amalfi. Hmm. Ships without a doubt. Well now we know where they get their name anyhow. But what is it they re using That s easy Hazleton said grimly. It s anti matter. How can that be Look at the frequency analysis on this secondary radiation we re getting and you ll see. Every one of those ships must be primarily a particle accelerator of prodigious size. They re sending streams of stripped heavy antimatter atoms right down the gravitational ingeodesics toward us that s what makes the paths the stuff is following look so twisted. They ve found a way to generate and project primary cosmics made of anti matter atoms and in quantity. When they strike our atmosphere both disintegrate And the planet gets a dose of high energy gamma radiation Amalfi said. And they must have known how to do it for a long time since they re named after the technique. Helleshin What a way to conquer a planet They can either sterilize the populace or kill it off at will without ever even coming close to the place. We ve had the sterility dose already Hazleton said quietly. That can hardly matter now Estelle said in an even softer voice. The killing dose won t matter either Hazleton said Radiation sickness takes months to develop even when it s going to be fatal. They could disable us quickly enough Amalfi said harshly. We ve got to stop this somehow. We need these last days What do you propose Hazleton said. Nothing that we ve set up will work in a globe at a distance of a light year .. .except Except the base surge Amalfi said. Let s use it and quick. What is this Miramon said. We ve got your spindizzies set up for a single burn out overload pulse. In the position we re in the resulting single wave front ought to tie space into knots for well we don t know how far the effect will carry but a long way. Maybe even all the way to the limits of the universe Dr. Schloss said. Well what of it Amalfi demanded. It s due to be destroyed anyhow in only ten days Not if you destroy it first Schloss said. If it isn t here when the anti matter universe passes through it all bets are off there ll be nothing we can do. It ll still be here. Not in any useful sense not if the matter in it is tied up in billions of gravitational whirlpools. Better let the Web kill us than destroy the future evolution of two universes Amalfi Can t you give over playing god even now All right Amalfi said. Look at those dosimeters and look at that sky. What have you to suggest The sky was now one even intensity of glow like a full overcast lit by a dull sun. Outside the lower mountains of the range stood with their tree covered flanks so completely without shadow as to suggest that the windows ringing the tower were actually parts of a flat mural done by an unskilled hand. The counters had given over chattering and were putting out a subdued roar. Only what I just suggested Schloss said hopelessly. Load up on anti radiation drugs and hope we can stay On our feet for ten days. What else is there They ve got us. Excuse me Miramon said. That is not altogether certain. We have son e: resources of our own. I have just launched one it may be sufficient. What is it Amalfi demanded. I didn t know you mounted any weapons. How long will we have to wait before it acts One question at a time Miramon said. Of course we mount weapons. We never talk about them because there were children on our planet and still are the gods receive them. But we had to face the fact that we might some day be invested by a hostile fleet considering how far afield we were ranging from our home galaxy and how many stars we were visiting. Thus we provided several means for defense. One of these we meant never to use but we have just used it now. And that is Hazleton said tensely. We would never have told you except for the coming end Miramon said. You have praised us as chemists Mayor Amalfi. We have applied chemistry to physics. We discovered how to poison an electromagnetic field by resonapce the way the process of catalysis is poisoned in chemistry. The poison field propagates itself along a carrier wave and controlling field almost any signal which is continuous and conforms to the Faraday equations. Look. He pointed out the window. The light did not seem to have lessened any but it was now mottled with leprous patches. In a space of seconds the patches spread and flowed into each other until the light was now confined to isolated luminous clouds rapidly being eaten away at the edges like dead cells being dissolved by the enzymes of decay bacteria. When the sky went totally dark Amalfi could see the hundred streamers of the particle streams pointed inward at He at least it looked a hundred though actually he could hardly have seen more than fifteen from any one spot on the planet. And these too were being eaten away receding into blackness. The counters went back to stuttering but they did not quite stop. What happens when the effect gets back to the ships Web asked. It will poison the circuits themselves Miramon said. The entities in the ships will suffer total nerve block. They will die and so will the ships. Nothing will be left but a hundred hulks. Amalfi let out a long ragged sigh. No wonder you weren t interested in our breadboard rigs he said. With a thing like that you could have become another Web of Hercules yourselves. No Miramon said. That we could never become. Gods of all stars Hazleton said. Is it over As fast as that Miramon s smile was wintery. I doubt that we will hear from the Web of Hercules again he said. But what your City Fathers call the countdown continues. It is only ten days to the end of the world. Hazleton turned back to the dosimeters. For a moment he simply stared at them. Then to Amalfi s astonishment he began to laugh. What s so funny Amalfi growled. See for yourself. If Miramon s people had ever tangled with the Web in the real world they would have lost. Why Because Hazleton said wiping his eyes while he was beating them off we all passed the lethal dose of hard radiation. We are all dead as doornails as we sit here And this is a joke Amalfi said. Of course it s a joke boss. It doesn t make the faintest bit of difference. We don t live in that kind of real world any more. We have a dose. In two weeks well begin to become dizzy and lose our hair and vomit. In three weeks we ll be dead. And you still don t see the joke I see it Amalfi said. I can subtract ten from fourteen and get four you mean we ll live until we die. I cant abide a man who kills my jokes. It s a pretty old joke Amalfi said slowly. But maybe it s still funny at that if it was good enough for Aristophanes I guess it s good enough for me. I think that s pretty damn funny all right Dee said with bitter fury. Miramon was staring from one New Earthman to another with an expression of utter bafflement. Amalfi smiled. Don t say so unless you think so Dee he said. It s always been a joke after all. The death of one man is just as funny as the death of a universe. Don t repudiate the last laugh of all. It may be the only legacy we ll leave. MIDNIGHT the City Fathers said. THE COUNT IS ZERO MINUS NINE. CHAPTER EIGHT k The Triumph of Time As Amalfl opened the door and went back into the room the City Fathers said: N DAY. ZERO MtNUS ONE HOUR. At this hour everything had meaning or nothing had it depended on what had been worth investing with meaning over a lifetime of several thousand years. Amalfl had left the room to go to the toilet. Now he would never do that again nor would anybody else the demise of the whole was so close at hand that it was outrunning even the physiological rhythms of the body by which man has told time since he first thought to count it. Was diuresis as worth mourning as love Well perhaps it was the senses should have their mourners too no sensation no thought no emotion is meaningless if it is the last of its kind. And so farewell to all tensions and all reliefs from amour to urea from entrances to exits from redundancy to noise from beer to skittles. What s new Amalfi said. Nothing any more Gifford Bonner said. We re waiting. Sit down John and have a drink. He sat down at the long table and looked at the glass before him. It was red but there was a faint tinge of blue in the liquid too independent and not adding up to violet even in the bad light of the fluorescents in the midst of dead center s ultimate blackness. At the lip of fhe glass a faint meniscus climbed upward from the wine and little tendrils of condensation meandered back down. Amalfl tasted it tentatively it was raw and peppery the Hevians were not great wine growers their climate had been too chancy for that but even the sting of it was an edgy pleasure that made him sigh. We should suit up at the half hour Dr. Schloss said. I d leave more free time except that some of us haven t been inside a spacesuit in centuries and some of us never. We don t want to take chances on their not being trim and tight. I thought we were going to be surrounded by some sort of field Web said. Not for long Web. Let me go through this once more to be sure everybody has it straight in his head. We will be protected by a stasis field during the actual instant of transition when time will to all intents and purposes be abolished it becomes just another coordinate of Hilbert space then. That will carry us over into the first second of time on the other side after the catastrophe. But then the field will go down because the spindizzies which will be generating it will have been annihilated. We will then find ourselves occupying as many independent sets of four dimensions as there are people in this room and every set completely empty. The spacesuits won t protect you long either because you ll be the only body of organized energy and matter in your particular individual universe as soon as you disturb the metrical frame of that universe you the suit the air in it the power in the accumulators everything will surge outwards creating space as it goes. Every man his own monobloc. But if we don t have the suits on for the crossing not even that much will happen. I wish you wouldn t be so graphic Dee complained but her heart did not really seem to be in it. She was Amalfi noted wearing that same peculiarly strained expression she had worn when she had said that she wanted to bear Amalfi a child. Some instinct made him turn to look at Estelle and Web. All their hands were piled up together confidingly on the table. Estelle s face was serene and her eyes were luminous almost like a child waiting for a parity to begin. Web s expression was more difficult to interpret: he was frowning slightly more in puzzlement than in worry as if he couldn t quite understand why he was not more worried than he was. Outside there was a thin whining sound which rose suddenly to a howl and then died away again. It was windy today on the mountain. What about the table the glasses the chairs Amalfi asked. Do those go with us too No Dr. Schloss said. We don t want to risk having any possible condensation nuclei near us. We re using a modification of the technique we used to build Object 4101 Alephnull in the future the furniture will start to make the crossing with us but we ll use the last available energy to push it a micro second into the past. The result will be that it will stay in our universe. What its fate will be thereafter we can only guess. Amalfi lifted his glass reflectively. It was silky in his fingers the Hevians made fine glass. This frame of reference I ll find myself in Amalfi said. It will really have no structure at all Only what you impose on it Retma said. It will not be space and will have no metrical frame. In other words your presence there will be intolerable Thank you Amalfi said drily to Retma s obvious bafflement. After a moment the scientist went on without comment: What I am trying to say is that your mass will create a space to accommodate it and it will take on the metrical frame that already exists in you. What happens after that will depend upon in what order you dismantle the suit. I would recommend discharging the oxygen bottles first since to start a.t universe like our present one will require a considerably a mount of plasma. The oxygen in the suit itself will be sufficient for the time at your disposal. As the last act discharge the suit s energy this will in effect touch a match to the explosion. How large a universe will be the outcome eventually Mark said. I seem to remember that the original monobloc was large as well as ultra condensed. Yes it will be a small universe Retma said perhaps fifty light years across at its greatest expansion. But that will be only at first. As continuous creation comes into play more atoms will be added to the whole until a mass is reached sufficient to form a monobloc on the next contraction. Or so we see it you must understand that this is all somewhat conjectural. We did not have the time to learn everything that we wanted to know. ZERO MINUS THIRTY MINUTES. That s it Dr. Schloss said. Suits everybody. We can continue to talk by radio. Amalfi drained the wine. Another last act. He got into his suit slowly recapturing his old familiarity with the grotesque apparatus. He saw to it that the radio switch was open but he found that he could think of nothing further to say. That he was about to die suddenly had very little reality to him in the face of the greater death of which his would be a part. No comment that occurred to him seemed anything but the uttermost of trivia. There was some technical conversation as they checked each other out in the suits with particular attention to Web and Estelle. Then the talk died out as if they too found words intolerable. ZERO MINUS FIFTEEN MINUTES. Do you understand what is about to happen to you Amalfi said suddenly. YES MR. MAYOR. WE ARE TO BE TURNED OFF AT ZERO. That s good enough. He wondered however if they thought that they might be turned on again in the future. It was of course foolish to think of them as entertaining anything even vaguely resembling an emotion but nevertheless he decided not to say anything which might disabuse them. They were only machines but they were also old friends and allies. ZERO MINUS TEN MINUTES. It s all going so fast all of a sudden Dee s voice whispered in the earphones. Mark I ... I don t want it to happen. No more do I Hazleton said. But it will happen anyhow. I only wish I d lived a more human life than I did. But it happened the way it happened and so there s no more to say. I wish I could believe Estelle said that there will be no sorrow in the universe I make. Then create nothing my dear Gifford Bonner said. Stay here. Creation means sorrow always and always. And joy Estelle said. Well yes. There s that. ZERO MINUS FIVE MINUTES. I think we can do without the rest of the countdown Amalfi said. Otherwise from now on they will count every minute and they ll do the last one by seconds. Do we want to go out to the tune of that gabble Anybody want to say yes They were silent. Very well Amalfi said. Stop counting. VERY WELL MR. MAYOR. GOOD BYE. Good bye Amalfi said with amazement. I won t say that if you don t mind Hazleton said in a choked voice. It brings the deprivation too close for me to stand. I hope everybody will consider it said. Amalfi nodded then realized that the gesture could not be seen inside the helmet. I agree he said. But I don t feel deprived. I loved you all. You have my love to take with you and I have it too. It is the only thing in the universe that one can give and still have Miramon said. The deck throbbed under Amalfi s feet. The machines were preparing for their instant of unimaginable thrust. The sound of their power was comforting so was the solidity of the deck the table the room the mountain the world I think Gifford Bonner said. And with those words it ended. There was nothing at first but the inside of the suit. Outside there was not even blackness but only nothingness something not to be seen like that which is not seen outside of the cone of vision one does not see blackness behind one s own head one simply does not see in that direction at all and so here. Yet for a little while Amalfi found that he was still conscious of his friends still a part of the circle though the room and everything in it had vanished from around them. He did not know how he knew that they were still there but he could feel it. He knew that there was no hope of speaking to them again and indeed as he tried to grasp how he knew they were there at all he realized that they were drawing away from him. The circle was widening. The mute figures became smaller not by distance for there was no distance here but nevertheless in some way they were passing out of each other s ken. Amalfi tried to lift his hand in farewell but found it almost impossible. By the time he had only half completed the gesture the others had faded and were gone leaving behind only a memory also fading rapidly like the memory of a fragrance. Now he was alone and must do what he must do. Since his hand was raised he continued the gesture to let the gas out of his oxygen bottles. The unmedium in which he was suspended seemed to be becoming a little less resistant already a metrical frame was establishing itself. Yet it was almost as difficult to halt the motion as it had been to start it. Nevertheless he halted it. Of what use was another universe of the kind he had just seen die Nature had provided two of those and had doomed them at the same moment. Why not try something else Retma in his caution Estelle in her compassion Dee in her fear all would be giving birth to some version of the standard model but Amalfi had driven the standard model until all the bolts had come out of it and was so tired at even the thought of it that he could hardly bring himself to breathe. What would happen if instead he simply touched the detonator button on his chest and let all the elements of which he and the suit were composed flash into plasma at the same instant That was unknowable. But the unknowable was what he wanted. He brought his hand down again. N There was no reason to delay. Retma had already pronounced the epitaph for Man: We did not have the time to learn everything that we wanted to know. So be it Amalfi said. He touched the button over his heart. . Creation began. AFTERWORD: THE EARTHMANIST CULTURE: CITIES IN FLIGHT as a Spenglerian History Oswald Spengler s The Decline of the West1 has been acknowledged by lames Blish as one of the sources of CITIES IN FLIGHT. He has said My own Okie stories were . . . founded in Spengler. 2 Spengler is a difficult thinker or at least a difficult writer as anyone will discover who attempts to make a table similar to the one that appears with this Afterword. Part of the difficulty stems from our tendency to equate cultures with empires and other political units a delusion from which Toynbee should have freed us even if Spengler did not. A related difficulty lies hi the title: the decline of the West inevitably suggests the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and one is likely to assume that Spengler is predicting the military conquest of the West rather than merely arguing that the West is in a certain kind of decline. Still another lies in the fact that Spengler uses the words culture and civilization sometimes in such a way that they appear to be synonymous with society and sometimes as technical terms with opposed meanings. Whatever may be true of things two words synonymous with a third are not necessarily equal to each other and we should understand from the beginning that for Spengler culture and civilization are opposed states in the spiritual history of a society: A Culture is born in the moment when a great soul awakens out of the proto spirituality of ever childish An earlier version of this analysis appeared in Riverside Quarterly and that version is Copyright c 1968 by Leland Sapiro. Our thanks to him and to the author for permission to include this revised version in this volume. J humanity and detaches itself a form from the formless a bounded and mortal thing from the boundless and enduring. ... It dies when this soul has actualized the full sum of its possibilities in the shape of peoples languages dogmas iariis states sciences and reverts into the proto soul. . . . The aim once attained the idea the entire content of inner possibilities fulfilled and made actual the Culture suddenly hardens it mortifies its blood congeals its force breaks down and it becomes civilization the thing which we feel and understand in the words Egypticism Byzantinism Man darinism. As such it may like the worn out giant of the primeval forest thrust its decaying branches toward the sky for hundreds or thousands of years as we see in China in India in the Islamic world. It was thus that the Classical Civilization rose gigantic in the Imperial age with a false semblance of youth and strength and fulness. . ... I 106 The West has reached full civilization and its culture is dead but its civilization and its empire may endure for centuries or millennia. Now the explicit Spenglerianism of CITIES IN FLIGHT is highly dubious in some of its details see below 2 and rather absurd overall. The overall absurdity lies in the basic idea of the cultural morphologist : Chris recognized the term from his force feeding in Spengler. It denoted a scholar who could look at any culture at any stage in its development relate it to all other cultures at similar stages and come up with specific predictions of how these people would react to a given proposal or event. . . . ALFTS 233 Spengler never uses the term cultural morphologist and he would surely never have imagined that his work could be put to any such narrow uses. If a culture is an organism you can make for a culture predictions of the kind that can be made for any organism: e.g. that a baby boy will become a man not a woman or a horse and that barring accidents the man will pass through middle age to old age and death. To be sure the more information you have the more particular you can be in your predictions but obviously there are limits beyond which you cannot go. Indeed that there are such limits in anything and everything is perhaps the most fundamental idea of Spengler. As a matter of fact the cultural morphologists of CITIES IN FLIGHT never actually practice their trade: the various cultures with which the heroes deal are never presented with enough fullness to allow for any kind of Spenglerian assessment the various stories turn on coincidence or on individual psychology and would not be essentially different if explicit references to cultural morphology were entirely eliminated which could be done by deleting a handful of sentences. Although some of the inconsistencies in CITIES IN FLIGHT surely result from authorial forgetfulness they are too numerous and too prominent to be regarded as anything other than an essential feature of the overall story. Since point of view is rigidly controlled throughout the work every statement can be attributed to one or another of the various characters. Given this fact we can make sense of the tetralogy by regarding it not as a fiction in which a universe has been created by an omniscient omnipotent author but as historical narrative with a large admixture of myth that is by assuming that behind the sometimes accurate sometimes erroneous sometimes mythical narrative there is an actual history. Thus the first volume of CITIES IN FLIGHT gives us an intelligently Spenglerian view of the near future and the other three albeit very sketchily the life story of a Spenglerian culture. In comparison with most science fiction novels and series CITIES IN FLIGHT is a very rich work indeed. 1. Blish s Twenty First Century: The Coming of Caesarism In the first volume although the term is not used there MacHinery is a successful practitioner of what Spengler describes as Caesarism II 431 35 . Dr. Corsi s reasons for believing that scientific method doesn t work any more TSHS 14 15 although not expressed in Spenglerian terms are thoroughly consistent with Spengler s discussion of conclusive scientific thought I 417 28 . The volume also devotes some space to an adventist religious movement the Witnesses which seems to be a product of that second religiousness among the masses Forgetfulness alas did indeed play a role. The volumes were written roughly in the order III I IV II over a period of 15 years during which I was also writing other books and inconsistencies crept in despite my best intentions to keep them out. For this edition I have corrected a large number of those pointed out to me by Dr. Mullen where I agreed that they were inconsistencies. Where I didn t I let them stand along with Dr. Mullen s objections to them. J. B. which Spengler considers an inevitable concomitant of Caesarism II 310 11 435 . Finally although Helmuth is wrong about the pyramids he is correctly Spenglerian in regarding giganticism as evidence that a culture is dead I 291 95 and his remark on the Martian canali is certainly on the part of IVIr. Blish a brilliant Spenglerian touch TSHS 1191. All in all then the first volume of CITIES IN FLIGHT is a thoroughly Spenglerian work. 2. BUsh s Twenty First Century: Two Cultures or One In Blish s universe historians generally agree that the fall of the West must be dated no later than the year 2105 ALFTS 169 . They also agree hi regarding the great conflict of the twentieth and twenty first centuries that between the West and the communist alliance later called the Bureaucratic State as a conflict between rival cultures ALFTS 168 ECH 237 241 . It is true that Spengler distinguished between the Russian soul and the Western: The death impulse . . . for the West is the passion of drive all ways into infinite space whereas for Russians it is an expressing and expanding of self till it in the man becomes identical with the boundless plain itself. . . . The idea of a Russian s being an astronomer He does not see the stars at all he sees only the horizon. Instead of the vault he sees the down hang of the heavens something that somewhere combines with the plain to form the horizon. For him the Copernican system ... is spiritually contemptible. II 295n We find a similar passage in The Milky Way: Five Cultural Portraits: Space flight had been a natural if late outcome of Western thought patterns which had always been ambitious for the infinite. The Soviets however were opposed so bitterly to the idea that they would not even allow their fiction writers to mention it. Where the West had soared from the rock of earth like a sequoia the Soviets spread like lichens over the planet tightening their grip satisfied o be at the bases of the pillars of sunlight the West had sought to ascend ECH 238 . If we assume that the time stream of Blish s universe separates from our own sometime around 1950 we will have no occasion to speak of sputnik. Even so the question still remains whether the Soviets or the Bureaucratic State can be said to belong to a Spenglerian culture distinct from that of the West. In the first place to say so is to reject Spengler s view that Peter the Great succeeded in his Westernizing efforts that Russia is therefore a part of the Western Civilization and that communism is merely a continuance of Western influence II 192 96 . To be sure Spengler believed that a new culture would be born in Russia in the near future to Dostoyevski s Christianity as opposed to Tolstoi s the next thousand years will belong II 196 but the Bureaucratic State can hardly be considered an expression of either Dostoyevski s Christianity in particular or of springtime culture in general. In the second place Spengler would surely reject the only reason offered by our future historians for considering the cultures distinct: that Russia differs from the West in not having traditional libertarian political institutions ALFTS 168 for such institutions are neither universal in nor peculiar to the West but are instead the products in every Snenglerian culture of fifth political epoch Revolution and Napoleonism see the table that appears with this essay . In predicting that the West will reach Caesarism by 2000 Spengler is predicting the end of such institutions in the West utterly without regard to any external conflict. All this being so it follows that the great conflict between the West and the Soviets is simply a struggle between rival power blocs and that we must therefore regard the victory of the Bureaucratic State as establishing the Final Political Form of the Western Culture.3 3. The Life Story of the Earthmanist Culture The life of the Spenglerian culture begins with the birth of a myth of the great style 1 339 . The new myth develops under two kinds of emphasis: that given it by the nobles and that given it by the priests. In the Western A wholly valid argument. Nevertheless I have not changed the text because particularly in Vol. I I was trying to make the point that when two Civilizations come in conflict with one another the issue is resolved long in advance of formal military victory by each side becoming more like the other. The point would have seemed trivial to Spengler who points out that all Civilizations are alike in their essential features to begin with but in our century the process is highly visible once one s attention has been called to it an opportunity I couldn t and can t resist. J. B. Culture with its early rivalry between emperor and pope the opposition between the emphases was very strong. For the Classical Culture the equally strong opposition has been largely obscured by the fact that only the military myth has survived in detail e.g. in Homer . In the Arabian Culture Vhere the ruler was ordinarily both emperor and pope the opposition was of little importance. In the Earthmanist Culture where again only the military myth the Vegan War has survived in any detail the opposition seems to be of even less importance in that the myth seems to have been overwhelmingly military rather than priestly. Even so its purpose would seem to be primarily religious in that it has evidently developed as a means of relieving the Earthmen of a great burden of guilt. The myth makes it appear that a small number of Earthmen were unaccountably able to prevail over a vast and enormously powerful tyranny which deserved to be completely destroyed. The fact must surely be that the Vegan Civilization was in the last stages of its Final Political Form with the concomitant enfeeblement ... of the imperial machinery against young peoples eager for spoil or alien conquerors Spengler I Table iii cf. the table with this essay . Though outnumbered a million to one in total population the Earthmen may well have been able to muster nearly as many fighting men as the Vegans at any given place and time and they must have come into interstellar space with superior weapons or tactics or both and with ferocity such as the Vegans had perhaps never experienced but for which there are precedents aplenty in the history of Earth itself the most cogent being perhaps the destruction wrought in Persia and Mesopotamia by the Mongols of Hulagu. And it was not only Vega II that felt the ferocity of the Earthmen nor only the Vegans: In 2394 one of the cities . . . was responsible for the sacking of the new Earth colony on Thor V this act of ferocity earned for them the nickname of the Mad Dogs but it gradually became a model for dealing with Vegan planets ALFTS 170 . In sum at the close of the Vegan War the Earthmen had to choose whether they would be proud or ashamed of what they had done. Their shame brought about the trial of Admiral Hrunta the great figure of the hundred year war its Agamemnon its Charlemagne its Arthur for genocide their determination to be proud resulted not only in the establishment of the Hruntan Empire but also in the birth of the Earthmanist Culture. The attempts of the Bureaucratic State to bring Hrunta to justice culminate in the Battle of BD 40 4048 which is said to have been indecisive ALFTS 170 but which is quite decisive in that it proves the State incapable of controlling more than a very limited volume of space. Since Hrunta s empire is only the first of many such gimcrack empires ... to spawn on the fringes of Earth s jurisidiction TTOT 469 we can put down the year of the Battle 2464 as marking the beginning of the feudal order. Up to this time such Earthmen as have not been under the direct control of the Bureaucratic State have presumably been organized simply as tribes or war bands each man acknowledging his military superiors only as temporary leaders and feeling loyalty only to the abstract concept of Earth but now the temporary becomes apparently permanent and loyalty finds concrete object hi this or that leader or emperor. In 2522 the Bureaucratic State collapses the new Earth government proclaims a general amnesty and the Empty Years begin the Earthmanist Culture is thus free to develop in its own way. Admiral Hrunta is poisoned in 3089 and his death is followed by the rapid Balkaniza tion of the Hruntan Empire which was never even at its best highly cohesive ALFTS 171 in 3111 Arpad Hrunta is installed as Emperor of Space. Here we seem to have the Interregnum which according to Spengler occurs in every culture and forms the boundary between the feudal union and the class state II 375 . Since Hruntanism is a religion as well as a dynastic principle and since periods of religious reformation coincide with the transition from feudalism to the aristocratic state II 386 we are perhaps justified hi listing Arpad Hrunta in our table as a religious reformer. In an aristocratic state the king s authority depends for its existence on the power of one or another of the aristocratic factions. The absolute state emerges when the king allies himself with the bourgeoisie and thus finds strength enough to suppress aristocratic disorder. In Earthmanist society as a whole Earth is king the various empires duchies and republics are the aristocracy and the Okie cities are the bourgeoisie. Here the development into absolutism seems to culminate in 3602 with the reduction of the Duchy of Gort the death of Arpad A Hrunta and the dissolution of the Empire all brought about by the recru escent Earth police TTOT 470 for we now have a galactic society in which the Earth police keep the spacelanes clear for Okie commerce ECH 398 399 . Since the Duchy of Gort represents an extreme form of Hruntanisrrfl and since puritanism is a concomitant of the effort to preserve the aristocratic state Spengler II 386n 424 we can perhaps list the Duchy as an instance of puritanism. When aristocratic factionalism has been suppressed the king and the aristocracy become allies against the rising power of the bourgeoisie who soon become ripe for revolution as do the Okies after the collapse of the germanium standard in 3900. The gathering of the mayors aboard Buda Pesht ECH 370 381 and the March on Earth that follows even though it results in apparent defeat in the Battle of Earth can be regarded as the 1789 and the passage of the anti Okie bill in 3976 as the 1815 of Earthman history. At this point so far as the galaxy proper is concerned the story of the Earthmanist Culture comes to a sudden end for the Earthman domains are invaded and conquered by a non human culture the Web of Hercules TTOT 471 . Since this is so we are unable to test our evaluation of the 3900 3976 period against later events. Even so and even though Mayor Amalfi the principal hero and leading cultural morphologist of CITIES IN FLIGHT believes that the Okies have been completely defeated ECH 421 422 I can see no reason to believe that the restoration of the Ancien Regime in 3976 would have been any more permanent than it was in 1815. 4. The Triumph of Time over Space Following the Battle of Earth New York moves from the galaxy proper to the Greater Magellanic Cloud. The military and political events that ensue upon its arrival there are perhaps and the philosophy of Stochasticism is certainly consistent with the beginning of the Period of Contending States. Here the beginning is all that we can know anything about for once again history is cut short After this point cleaning up the inconsistencies in the chronology involved advancing all the dates and so I have altered Dr. Mullen s subsequent dates which followed the original Chronology to reflect the changes. J. B. this time by the totally universal physical cataclysm of the year 4104 TTOT 471 . The fourth volume of CITIES IN FLIGHT in its U.S. edition bears the title The Triumph of Time. Since the principal theme here is not especially Spenglerian my purpose is simply to note that this title and indeed the story itself could have been inspired whether or not it was by a passage on Spengler s final page: Time triumphs over Space and it is Time whose inexorable movement embeds the ephemeral incident of the Culture on this planet in the incident of Man a form wherein the incident life flows on for a time while behind it all the streaming horizons of geological and stellar histories pile up in the light world of our eyes. II 507 Footnotes 1. The volume page references in this essay are to the translation of Spengler by Charles Francis Atkinson two volumes: New York: Knopf 1926 1928 . Spengler completed this work in late 1922. 2. The Issue at Hand Chicago: Advent 1964 p. 60n. 3. Spengler uses the phrases centralized bureaucracy state in connection with the Egyptian third political epoch 1 Table iiij. but I hardly think that Blish s Bureaucratic State is intended to be an aristocratic state. 4. This table is based primarily on the three tables that appear at the end of Spengler s first volume: Cultural Epochs and Political Epochs organized as in this table and Spiritual Epochs organized as spring summer autumn winter . Making the table turned out to be very difficult for me partly because of the necessity for squaring the two organizations partly because Spengler does not tabulate the political epochs for the Arabian Culture partly because the dates in the three tables are not wholly consistent with each other or with those in the text which is not wholly self consistent but primarily because of the need to select and interpret in such a way that a much abbreviated amalgamation would make sense to me and hopefully to the reader. . RDM TABLE FOLLOWS CONTEMPORARY EPOCHS IN THE SPENGLERIAN WORLD 1600 0 1950 AND THE BtlSHIAN WORLD 1950 4104 See Footnote 4 THE EPOCHS: P POLITICAL A ART 4 R RELIGIO PHILOSOPHIC M MATHE THE CLASSI THE ARABIAN THE WESTERN THE EARTHMAN MATICAL CAL CULTURE CULTURE CULTURE 1ST CULTURE PRE CULTURAL PERIOD. Tribes and their 1600 1100 500 0 500 900 2289 2464 chiefs no politics no State. Chaos of primitive Mycenean Age Persian Seleucid Period Prankish Period Vegan War Period expression forms. Agamemnon Charlemagne Admiral Hrunta CULTURE. EARLY PERIOD. 1100 650 0 500 900 1500 2464 3111 PI. FORMATION OF FEUDAL ORDER 1100 750 0 400 900 1254 2464 3089 Rl. Spiritual Spring: the Priestly Myth Demeter cult Primitive Christianity German Catholicism H untanism the Military Myth Trojan War Gospels Apocalypses Siegfried Arthur Vegan War Myth Al. Early forms rural unconsciously shaped Doric The cupola Gothic R.2 Mystical metaphysical shaping of Myth Cosmogonies Patristic literature Scholasticism P2. REAKb6WN 6F FEUDAirORDERT THE INTERREGNUM 750 650 400 500 1254 1500 3089 3111 R3. Spiritual Summer: the Reformation Orphism et al. Monophysitism et al. Huss Luther Loyola Arpad Hrunta A2. Exhaustion of possibilities in Early forms Late Doric Proto Arabesque Early Renaissance CULTURE. LATE PERIOD. 630 300 500 800 1500 1815 3111 3925 3. FORMATION OF A WORLD OF ARISTOCRATIC STATES 650 487 500 661 1500 1660 3111 3602 R4. First purely philosophical world views Pre Socratics In Jewish literature Galileo Bacon Ml. Formation of a new Mathematic Geometry Algebra Analysis Matrix mathematics A3. Mature art forms urban and conscious Ionic Zenith of mosaic art Baroque R5. Puritanism opposition to rising absolutism Pythagoras Mohammed Cromwell the Fronde The Duchy of Gort F4. CLIMAX OF THE STATE FORM 487J38: Age oT 66P75oT 1660 1789 3602 3900 ABSOLUTISM : Themistocles the Ommaiyad the Ancien Eart and Okies Aristocracy held in check by alliance and Pericles Caliphate Regime vs. Colonials of King or Tyrant with Bourgeoisie R6. Spiritual Autumn: the Enlightenment Socrates The Mutazih tes Locke Rousseau A4. Intellectualization of Mature art forms Myron Phidias Arabesque Rococo M2. Zenith of mathematical thought Conic sections Spherical trigonometry The infinitesimal R7. The Great Conclusive System: Mystic Plato Alfarabi Goethe Hegel Scholastic Aristotle Avicenna Kant PS. REVOLUTION AND NAPOLEONISM: 338 300: parti 750 800: 1789 1815 3900 3976: Bourgeoisie against alliance of King or sans of Phil the Kufans the Robespierre Okies vs. Earth Tyrant and Aristocracy victory of ip Alexander first Abbassids. Napoleon. and Colonials. Money over Blood. AS. Exhaustion and dissolution of Mature forms Corinthian Moorish art Romanticism CIVILIZATION AND SPIRITUAL WINTER. 300 0 300 800 1400 1815 2522 3976 4104 P6. TRANSITION FROM NAPOLEONISM 300 100: from 800 1050: 1815 2000: IN CLOUD 3998 4104 TO CAESARISM: the Period of Contending Alexanderism from Caliphate from Napoleonism New York vs. IMT States dominance of Money Democracy . toCaesarism. to Sultanate. to MacHineryism. Jorn vs. New York R8. Materialism science utility prosperity The Cynics Brethren of Sincerity Comte Darwin Marx The Stochastics R9. Ethical social ideals replacing religion Epicurus Zeno Movements in Islam Schopenhauer et al. M3. Mathematics: the concluding thought Archimedes Albiruni Riemann RIO. Spread of final world sentiment Roman Stoicism Practical Fatalism Ethical Socialism A6. Art problems craft art Hellenistic art Spanish Sicilian art Modern art P7. CAESARISM: victory of force politics over 100 0 100: 1050 1250: 2000 2105: 4104: Money decay of the nations into a formless Sulla Caesar the Seljuk MacHinery and THE population soon made into an imperium of Tiberius up Sultanate. Erdsenov rise to TRIUMPH gradually increasing crudity of despotism. to Domitian. full power of OF Bureaucratic State. TIME A7. Artificial archaic exotic art forms. Roman art Oriental art OVER Rll. in the masses only . Second Religiousness Syncretism Syncretic Islam Adventism Witnesses SPACE PS. THE FINAL POLITICAL FORM: the world 100 300: full 1250 1400: rise fallof 2105 2522: full as spoil. Gradual enfeeblement of imperial power of the the Ilkhanate: rise of power then decline machinery against raiders and conquerors. Empire then Ottoman Turks under and fall of Bureau Primitive human conditions thrusting up disintegration whom the moribund cul cratic State into the highly civilized mode of living. in the west. turc endures to 1920. A8. Fixed forms giganticism imperial display Triumphal arch Gigantic buildings THE AFTERMATH. After 284. 1800 1950: Westerniza After 2522 3976 4104: galaxy Arabianizatlon tion of Arabian lands Earthmanization. proper conquered in the Bail. and tntlre world. by Web of Hercules

Literature & Fiction;Poetry

fiction

DESTROYER 44: BALANCE OF POWER Copyright c 1981 by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy FORWARD Warren Murphy lives in New Jersey. He has been a newspaperman a sequin polisher and a political consultant. His hobbies are mathematics chess martial arts opera politics gambling and sloth. Occasionally married he is the father of four children. He tells how the Destroyer series got started: The first Destroyer was written in my attic in 1963. It finally got published in 1971 and was an overnight success. In those days Dick Sapir was my co author and partner. He retired from the Destroyers a couple of years ago and took his name off the books when he decided he didn t want anybody to know he knew me. I helped him make this decision by locking him in my cellar for eight days without water. Nevertheless he still hangs around. Various characters that appear in these pages are Dick s. Occasionally he writes sections when someone or something annoys him. Anyone who knows him knows that this guarantees a certain frequency of appearance. Dick used to write the first half of books and I would write the second half. When he was mad at me he would just send me 95 pages without a clue on how the book might be resolved. He would never write more than 95 pages. He stopped at the bottom of page 95 no matter what. Once he stopped in the middle of a hyphenated word. v We used to get a lot of letters and answer them but then Dick took over answering them and lost all the letters and forgot to pay the rent on our post office box. He said he was sorry. In answer to the questions we get asked most: there really is a Sinanju in North Korea but I wouldn t want to live there. There really isn t a Remo and Chiun but there ought to be. Loud radios are the most important problem facing America. The Destroyer is soon to be a major motion picture. We will keep writing them forever. vi AFTERWORD What have they done to Richard Sapir And why is only Warren Murphy s picture on the cover These and other vital questions are casting gloom over the tenth anniversary of the Destroyer. By Richard Sapir Why am I asking these questions Because none of you did. For a year now my byline has failed to appear on Destroyer on the more than 20 million copies sold. These mind wrenching questions have crossed exactly one other mind besides mine. And I say to the fine sweet noble lady: Thank you Mom. The tragic fact is none of you have missed me. Sales have increased. Readership has jumped. Complimentary letters abound. Warren Murphy whose name now appears alone has not even gotten a phone call in the middle of the night perhaps saying: You scum bag. Where s Dick Sapir You re nothing without him. Warren claims his phone is as quiet as a midnight kiss over a baby s crib. I know this is not so but professional ethics forbid me from revealing my source. Just for your information however let it be known that he gulped and was stuck for an answer and wanted to know who the caller was. Well Warren I will tell you who it was. It was your conscience. Enough of that. I am not a bellyacher. But where vii were your letters to me Where was the begging I so richly deserved Is a simple grovel too much to ask Did one of you possibly consider that you had done something wrong Did you think you were the cause of my leaving Where was a simple act of contrition All I got was a wedding invitation from an old friend now living in Colorado . . . and that was three months late and said nothing about my leaving the series. Just had some printed nonsense about his daughter getting married. So I am gone. And you don t care. Well I don t care that you don t care. In fact I never cared that you didn t care. I was just somewhat taken aback by the depths of your not caring its broad base and cross community penetration. But why should I be surprised at this time In the ten years that my name appeared on the series did one of you ever dedicate your lives to me Where were the hallelujahs What about a Richard Sapir festival I would have settled for nude photos and obscene propositions. But getting back to the so called joyous tenth anniversary I am above it all. And I ll tell you something else. I may come back for a book or two with or without your outcry. And I still contribute significantly and if it weren t for my father s patience the series never would have been bought and I buy all the typewriter paper and Warren s typewriter has a missing key and he can t quit smoking and I have. And I know he went out with Geri a few years ago and I don t believe nothing happened. Richard Sapir For the special anniversary issue which didn t carry his picture or anything nice about him. viii PUERTA DEL REY HISPANIA Associated Press International A man claiming to be an agent of the United States CIA held an antic press conference here yesterday and said the CIA was working on an overthrow of the Hispanian regime. The man who was taken into custody minutes later was identified by General Robar Estomago head of the Hispanian National Security Council as Bernard C. Daniels an escaped mental patient. He had no connection with the CIA Estomago reported. This was confirmed by the U.S. State Department. During his rambling incoherent press conference the man identified as Daniels who was obviously intoxicated claimed he had been a CIA agent for 15 years the last three in Hispania. Prior to that he had worked in China Japan and behind the Iron Curtain and in his travels had participated in the assassination of 74 men he said. Daniels accused the CIA of torturing and beating him repeatedly during a recent incarceration on the island dictatorship and showed newsmen a grotesque scar forming the letters CIA on his abdomen. According to Estomago Daniels s wounds were self inflicted and resulted in Daniels s commitment to the mental institution. Early reports from the American Embassy indicate that Daniels will be returned to the U.S. for medical treatment. CHAPTER ONE It was a white neighborhood with clean tree lined streets and mowed lawns free of garbage and noise and scrambling bodies. Halfway down Ophelia Street a three story wooden house winked through drawn blinds across the silent Hudson to New York City squatting like a giant crouching gray animal. It was a nice house in a nice place a place where a man would want to live. That is if there were anything to live for in that house such as a drop of tequila. Or even bourbon. Gin in a pinch. Anything. But for seventy five thousand dollars a man had a right to sleep peacefully through the night in his own house without being shattered into consciousness by a doorbell so diabolically designed as to sound like the squawks of a thousand migrating ducks. He refused to open his eyes. If he should catch a glimmer of light it would destroy his sleep and then the squawking would never go away and then he would be awake. A man had a right to sleep if he paid for his own home. He covered an ear with a palm and curled his legs up toward his chin hoping that assuming the 3 fetal position would catapult him back to the womb where there were no ducks. It didn t. The doorbell continued ringing. Bernard C. Daniels opened his eyes brushed some of the dust from his white summer tuxedo and contemplated swallowing. The taste in his mouth told him it was a bad idea. He pushed himself off the wooden floor that had once seen many coats of polish but was now covered thickly from wall to wall with a gray film of dust. Only his resting place and last night s footprints broke the film. It was a barren room with a high white ceiling and old unused gas vents for lighting the house during a past era. It was his room in the United States of America where there were laws in the town of Weehawken New Jersey where he was born and where no one crept up on you in the middle of the night with a machete. It was a place where you could close your eyes. He was fifty years old and closing his eyes was a luxury. His first night of luxury in many years shattered by a doorbell. He would have to get it disconnected. Daniels stumbled to the window and tried to open it. Age had sealed it more securely than any latch. He needed a drink. Where was the bottle He traced last night s steps from the door to his resting place to the window. No bottle. Where was it He couldn t have put it in the large closet at the other end of the room. There was no arcing sweep in the dust on the floor at the base of the closet doors. Where the hell was it Squawk. Squawk. Squawk. The bell sounded again. Daniels muttered a curse and broke a pane in the window with the empty bottle he had in his pocket. 4 So that s where it was. He smiled. A cool April breeze off the Hudson River flowed through the broken window. Daniels filled his lungs with the cool fresh air then gagged and sputtered. He would have to tape over the window he said to himself coughing. Too much air and a man could breathe himself to death. He d been so much more comfortable breathing the homey dust of the floor. A sharp voice came from beneath the window. Daniels the voice yelled. Daniels is that you No Daniels quavered back his voice hurdling over a lake of rancid phlegm. At first he hadn t known whether to answer in Spanish or English. Fortunately he realized no was the same in both languages. The bottle was wet in his perspiring hands. He glanced at the label. Jose Macho s Four Star Tequila. He could get a gallon for a buck in Mexico City. It had cost him nine dollars at a Weehawken bar. Squawk. Squawk. Squawk. Damn it Daniels hollered through the shattered pane. Will you stop that goddamn ringing I did came the voice. It was familiar. Coldly efficiently disgustingly familiar. Wo estoy aqui Daniels answered. What do you mean you re not home What other idiot would smash a window instead of answering a doorbell Succumbing to logic Daniels dropped the bottle on the floor and left the room the squawks still sounding in his ears. He descended the wooden stairs slowly pausing to examine all three dusty barren floors. He walked with grace each step the product of years of gymnastics built into a solid muscular body 5 that 35 years of frequent abuse had not managed to debilitate. Daniels was a handsome man. He knew this because women told him so. His rugged face was topped by a shock of short steel gray wavy hair. His nose had been broken six times and the last fracture restored the dignity that the first five had taken away. A cruel face women called it. Sometimes the perceptive ones added But it fits you you bastard. Barney would have smiled remembering that if he hadn t been seeking desperately to burn out the barnyard flavored coating of his tongue with a blast of alcohol. Any decent rotgut would do. But there was nothing. Squawk. Squawk. He waved his arm in the oak paneled foyer as though the man behind the stained glass window could see his movements and would stop ringing. No good. He fumbled with the three brass locks on the door finally twisting the last into position. Then firmly grasping the tarnished doorknob as if it would fall to the floor if he let go he pulled back hard and a gust of April swatted his face. Ooh Barney gasped. A man in a stylish Ivy League blue worsted suit stood in the doorway. He wore an immaculate white shirt and a striped tie knotted tightly and carried a black attache case. He had the kind of well bred old money face that was accepted everywhere and forgotten immediately. Barney would have forgotten it too except that he d seen its smug vain monotonously snotty expression too many times. Quit ringing the frigging doorbell Daniels demanded refusing to let the wind blow him to the floor and amazed as ever that its force failed to muss the man s careful Christopher Lee hairdo. 6 My hands are at my sides the man said without humor. Daniels stared into the wind. They were. Squawk. Squawk. He needed a drink. You wouldn t happen to have a drink on you would you Max No said Max Snodgrass emphatically. May I come in No said Barney Daniels just as emphatically and slammed the door in Max Snodgrass s face. Then watching the dark shadow on the other side of the stained glass he waited for the outrage. Open this door Daniels. I have your first pension check. If you don t open up you won t get your check. Barney shrugged and tilted his head back looking at the solid beamed ceilings fifteen feet high. They didn t build them like that any more. It was a fine buy. Open up now or Fm leaving. And the paneling thick oak. Who paneled with oak nowadays I m leaving. Barney waved goodbye. And the ceiling joints. I m serious. I m leaving. Daniels opened the door again. Don t leave he said softly. I need your help. Max Snodgrass stepped back slightly a wary half step. Yes An old woman is dying upstairs. I ll call a doctor. Daniels raised a shaking hand. No. No. It s too late for that. How do you know You re not a doctor. 7 I ve seen enough death to know Max he intoned somberly. I smell death. Daniels could see the pink neck stretching the flat gray eyes trying to peer into the house. And you want me to do something for her is that right Daniels nodded. And I m the only man in the world who can help is that right And it s not a loan of a few dollars because I have the check with me right Then it must be something else. Could it be she wants one last glass of tequila for her dry old throat before she passes on to that great desert up yonder Snodgrass smiled an evil vicious untrusting smile. The smile of a man who would not give a dying grandmother a drink. You have no heart Daniels said. From a man who has no heart I will not accept the check. You re not doing me any favors. Yes I am buddy. If I don t take the check your bookkeeping will get all fouled up. He grinned wickedly. And we both know what your boss will think about that. Your boss. Not ours. Thank God. Ridiculous Snodgrass said in a casual voice that suddenly squeaked. Just add another memo to the files. But the CIA doesn t cotton to memos Daniels taunted. The pink neck grew red and the gray eyes above it flashed. Quiet Snodgrass hissed. Will you shut up I ll say it louder Daniels said. Louder and louder. CIA. CIA. CIA. Snodgrass glanced quickly and desperately to both sides. He slapped the oak panel of the door 8 with the flat of his hand. All right all right all right. Will you shut up Shhhh. Mickey s Pub will sell it to you and it s only three blocks away. The liquor store s six and a half blocks Daniels said helpfully. I m sure you ve counted the steps Snodgrass sneered as he turned to go. Don t forget to bring two glasses and a lemon. First take the check. No. All right. I ll be back. And shut up. Snodgrass pranced neatly down the steps to the cracked path that led to his well polished Ford. Squawk. Squawk. Squawk. The ducks started flying through his head again. Damn it when would Snodgrass get back Snodgrass didn t knock. He walked through the open door to the kitchen where Daniels sat on the sink desperately desiring a cigarette. Got a smoke One thing at a time Snodgrass said opening his attache case and extracting the tequila bottle. He offered the bottle as if throwing out a challenge. Daniels accepted it as if accepting a gift from the altar of grace. No glasses Daniels asked. No. How can you expect a man to drink in his own private home straight from the bottle Daniels asked twisting off the cap and dropping it into the white porcelain sink. What are you Snodgrass Some kind of animal that never lived in a house Where were you brought up some South American jungle or something Indignantly Barney Daniels raised the bottle to his lips and let the clear fiery liquid pour into his 9 mouth and singe it clean. He swished the tequila in his mouth careful that it washed over each tooth and numbed the gums. Then he spat it over his right arm twisting around so the spray splattered the sink. He softly exhaled then inhaled. It was good tequila. Magnificent. Finally he took a long swig and sucked it into his whole body. The ducks disappeared. Cigarette he said weakly and took another sip from the bottle. Snodgrass flashed open a gold cigarette case filled with blue ringed smokes. With deft hands Daniels plucked out all of them leaving the case shining and empty before Snodgrass could close it. He stuffed one in his mouth and the rest in his pocket. Those are imported Turkish my special blend Snodgrass whined. Daniels shrugged. Got a light I d like some of them returned. I ll give you two. Got a light You ll return the rest. All right. Four. All of them. They re crushed. You wouldn t want crushed cigarettes would you Snodgrass snapped the case shut and returned it to his vest pocket. You re a disgrace. No wonder upstairs is so happy to get rid of you. He did not look at Daniels when he said it but busied himself taking three form papers and a small green check from his case. Sign these and this is your check. I don t have a pen. Return this one Snodgrass said offering a gold pen. 10 Daniels grasped the pen between right thumb and forefinger looking at it quizzically. It s not one of your idiot gas gun devices is it No it s not. That was always the trouble with you Daniels. You were never a team player. You never learned to adjust to modern methods. Daniels steadied the bottle between his knees and signed the papers in long even grade school penmanship strokes. He finished with a flourish. What did I sign That you resign officially from Calchex Industries for which you have worked for twenty years the only firm for which you have worked. An three of them say that No. The others say that you resigned from the firm because you embezzled money from it. Pretty nice. Anytime I open my mouth you can get a warrant pick me up nice and legal and no one will ever see me again. Well if you want to be crude about it yes Snodgrass said his eyebrows arching disdainfully. Ordinarily of course such a thing would never happen. But you re not an ordinary case. He forced the papers into his attache case then smiling as though someone had just forced gravel into his gums he surrendered the check. This should bring you up to date Snodgrass said. Your next pension check will arrive about May first. He looked Daniels up and down as though Barney were a malignant tumor. This is just my personal opinion Daniels Snodgrass added but frankly it makes me sick to see you collect a pension at all after what you did to the company back there in Hispania. I know how you feel Max Barney said sympathetically. The company gave me the fantastic op 11 portunity of being tortured limb by limb for three months having my fingers broken at the hands of your local thugs getting drugs poured down my throat not to mention the exquisite pleasure of feeling your emblem burned into my belly with hot irons and I have the nerve to accept a four hundred dollar check from you. He shook his head. Some people just got no gratitude. He drank deeply from his bottle. You know we didn t do that Snodgrass snapped. Stuff it Max. He drank again. The liquor felt like a friend. I don t care. You and the rest of your clowns can do whatever you want. I m out. The company didn t do it Max said stubbornly. Barney waved him away. Tell me something Snodgrass. I ve always wondered. Is there really a Calchex Industries Certainly Snodgrass said glad to be off the subject. What does it do besides provide pensions for cashiered CIA agents Oh we operate a very thriving business. At our main plant in Des Moines we manufacture toy automobiles aimed at the overseas market. We sell these to a major company in Dusseldorf. There they are all melted down and the steel is sold back to us to make more toys. All very up and up. We own both Calchex and the German company. Calchex hasn t missed a dividend in fifteen years. Good old American enterprise. Are you planning to work Daniels Yes yes. Quit peeing your pants about what I m going to do with the rest of my life. I am planning on devoting the major portion of it to research on the lifesaving properties of tequila. 12 I mean a job. We can t have you running around getting involved in wild schemes. He looked worried. I ve got a job Daniels lied. Nothing in South America of course. Daniels sipped some more tequila and nodded slowly. I know what I m allowed to do. Just so you know. Nothing controversial and nothing outside the borders of the United States. Don t worry about it. I m going to be a librarian. . I suppose you expect me to believe that. I do. Snodgrass turned crisply to go. Before he reached the kitchen doorway he turned back to face Daniels. I m sorry things didn t work out for you he said suddenly contrite about his crack that Barney didn t deserve his paltry pension. Daniels had been one of the best agents the company had ever used. And use him it had over and over in missions where none of the CIA s expensive gadgetry was worth a fart in the wind next to Barney s courage and cunning. There had been no one better. And now there was no one worse. Snodgrass looked to Daniels sucking on his tequila bottle like a gutter rummy and remembered the final episode in the professional life of Bernard C. Daniels. How he had crawled into Puerta del Rey more dead than alive after God knew what unspeakable happenings in the Hispanian jungle how he drank himself back to health and then called a press conference to announce between hacking up blood and giggling drunkenly: Do not fear. The CIA is here. In five minutes he spilled more about CIA operations than Castro had learned in five years. 13 Snodgrass looked at the bottle then up at Barney. Forget it Barney said answering the question in Snodgrass s eyes. It just happened and there isn t any why. And don t knock the tequila. God s greatest gift to tortured man. He slid forward off the sink. Now go home. I ve got some serious drinking to do. And Max Snodgrass whose income tax return listed him as executive vice president of Calchex Industries walked out of the house and drove away. Barney wondered as he polished off the last of the tequila and staggered back to his spot on the upstairs floor how long the vice president of Calchex Industries would wait before having him killed. CHAPTER TWO His name was Remo and he was buying dirt. He was buying dirt because this was Manhattan and dirt didn t come cheap here unless it was New York City dirt the kind that blew out of automobile exhausts or sifted out of the sky or fell from the bodies of its earthier inhabitants who made their homes on the sidewalks. New York dirt was just too dirty. Remo needed clean dirt that flowers could grow in even though those flowers would be growing in a 14 window of a motel room off Tenth Avenue where they would be abandoned shortly after they were planted and replaced by candy wrappers and cigarette butts and used condoms New York dirt. He was not a gardener. He was an assassin the second best assassin on the face of the earth. The best was fifty years older than Remo fifty pounds lighter with fifty centuries of lethal tradition. He was the gardener. Remo hoisted a hundred pound plastic bag labeled Amaza Gro onto his shoulder. According to the pressure on his deltoid muscle it weighed exactly ninety one pounds. Well what the hell Remo thought. Ninety one pounds of dirt ought to be enough to hold down a couple of geraniums. Ninety pounds fourteen ounces. Remo glanced down at the other bags in the pyramidal display at the back of the five and ten cent store. A golden sunburst on the front of each bag boasted that the soil was fortified with pure dehydrated Kentucky horse manure. Remo was impressed. Imagine that. New York was getting better all the time. Dirt plus pure dehydrated Kentucky horse manure mixed together in this plastic hundred pound bag weighing ninety one pounds less two ounces for only 39.95. What a bargain. In midtown Manhattan you could barely get a steak sandwich for that price. Then he noticed the pile of dirt on the floor where his bag of Amaza Gro had been. He did not need to use his eyes to discern that the identical p roduct composed of earth potassium sulfate phosphorus additives nitrogen compounds and a heavy dose of pure dehydrated Kentucky horse manure was trickling down the right side of his black tee shirt. Yecch he said aloud and tossed the bag back onto the floor. A young man wearing a cheap 15 brown suit and tinted glasses over a nose bubbling with fresh acne passed by. What s your problem mister he sighed slapping his blank clipboard against his thigh. My problem Remo answered angrily although he had not been angry until the pimply faced person standing next to him opened his mouth is that this bag has just leaked horseshit all over me. So With an effort of will Remo ignored him. His boss Dr. Harold W. Smith a man who knew more about trouble in America than the President of the United States did had been on Remo s back not to cause any more trouble than absolutely necessary. Unless of course it was in the line of duty. Duty meant doing the dirty work for CURE an organization developed by a young president years before to control crime in America by operating outside the bounds of the Constitution. He thought it was the only means left to a nation that had become so civilized so fair so lenient and so dependent on the whim of lobbyists protesters and scared politicians that it could no longer function effectively within the Constitution. CURE was dangerous. But so were America s assailants. And there were many many assailants around the world people organizations and nations who despised America for its wealth and power and used its principle of fairness to cripple it. So CURE had been created. Officially it did not exist. Only three people on earth knew about it: the president who passed along the .knowledge of CURE to his successor. The young president who began CURE did not wait for an election to determine who his successor would be. He told his vice president because he knew he would not live to the 16 election to such an extent had crime grown out of control. The young president was assassinated. But CURE would continue so that other presidents and other Americans could live in safety. Dr. Harold W. Smith was the second man who knew of CURE s existence. Smith worked alone in a sealed area of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye New York nursing the most sophisticated computer hookup known to man trying to treat some of America s wounds. When greedy entrepreneurs under total Constitutional sanction threatened to unbalance America s hair trigger economy by cornering commodities on the stock exchange those commodities suddenly devalued dramatically through the efforts of a thousand people who performed their regular jobs without suspecting that Smith and CURE had begun the avalanche that toppled the sandcastle. When death stalked the streets in riots assassinations political plots or organized crime waves CURE quelled it. When people sought to break America s back those people were destroyed. That was CURE S main job: to destroy evil. And there was one other man who knew about CURE a former cop who was officially executed in an electric chair for a crime he did not commit to begin a new life as the enforcement arm for the secret organization a life spent in the most arduous training known to all the centuries of mankind to make him a human weapon more dangerous than a nuclear bomb. His name was Remo. Remo Williams. The Destroyer. Remo brought under control the almost over 17 whelming impulse to rid the young man in the five and ten cent store of the burden of existence and decided Harold W. Smith was a pain in the ass. Killing forty three men in broad daylight at a union rally was okay. Knocking off a fake army installation with the arms and legs of a complete squadron of trained thugs flying dismembered through the breeze like link sausages was peachy. But let Remo Williams pop a snotty dune store floorwalker in his acned cauliflower nose and Smitty would be on Remo s case with razorblades for words. Remo picked up another bag weighing eighty eight pounds. He picked up a third. It was also leaking. As he moved from one bag to the next the floor beneath his loafers took on the appearance of Iowa farmland. The seventeenth bag emptied its contents at Remo s feet before it was two inches off the ground. This is ridiculous Remo said. These bags are all torn. You re not supposed to handle them so rough lunkhead the man sneered to Remo who could count the legs on caterpillars as they walked over his hands whose fingers had been exercised by catching butterflies in flight without disturbing the pollen on their wings. You re just clumsy. Now look at this mess you made. You ve wrecked my display. It took me three hours to set this up. To set me up you mean. You knew these bags had holes in them. Look it s not my job to make sure your hands don t get dirty. Oh yeah What is your job then The man smiled pushing a lock of greasy hair off his forehead raising the curtain on another field of acne. I m the assistant manager wise guy. Man 18 ager hear My job is to see to it that customers take what we got or get out. You want something buy it. If you don t like what we stock blow. This is New York jerk. We don t need your business. Oh excuse me Remo said politely. To hell with Smith. I forgot my place. I must have been thinking I was in a store where the employees were supposed to be friendly and helpful. The assistant manager snorted a laugh sizing up the thin man with the abnormally thick wrists figuring that he would bully him into buying a half empty bag of potting soil for forty dollars just as he had bullied his other customers into buying defective irons soiled baby clothes torn paperback books dying parakeets dented pots and other items which customers bought because they knew they would be in approximately the same condition in other stores where the employees would be just as rude. There was rudeness plain old run of the mill New York rudeness and there was that special rudeness that separated the retail world from the rest of the citizenry. That special rudeness the assistant manager knew could not be learned. It was a gift. The assistant manager had the gift. He was born to his calling and he was a pro in his field. He knew how to make his customers feel so miserable so beaten so helpless that they would not dare spend their money elsewhere. Since he began his job six months before sales had gone up more than fifty percent. In another month he would be manager. In a year he d be heading up the entire chain of thirty five New York stores. He was nearly lost in his reverie when he noticed the thin man in the dirt spattered black tee shirt was 19 doing an amazing thing. He was picking up one of the Amaza Gro bags with one hand. With his other hand the thin man was wrapping a green garden hose around the assistant manager from neck to ankles. It all took place in less than three seconds. Just tidying up Remo said. Don t want you to be upset because of messy customers who dare to criticize your merchandise. He yanked the assistant manager s hair so that his eyes bulged and his mouth popped open and every folh cle on his head screamed in anguish. The assistant manager also screamed but no one heard him because Remo had stuffed his mouth with pure dehydrated Kentucky horse manure. Yum yum eat em up Remo said kicking the assistant manager s feet out from beneath him so that he toppled to the floor and bounced on his rubber tubing exterior like a beach toy. Mff. Pfft said the assistant manager. Beg pardon Speak up. UHNNK MMMB Seconds you say Remo dumped the rest of the bag s contents into the man s mouth. Since it didn t all fit Remo helped the Amaza Grow through the man s quivering esophagus with a nearby trowel. The metal spade broke in two so Remo used the handle to tamp down the dirt. Whe the assistant manager stopped asking for more and only opened and closed his eyes in blind terror he saw Remo do another amazing thing. With no discernible preparation the thin man with the big wrists vaulted over aisle after aisle of factory rejected merchandise laying waste to the contents of the store. Broken kewpie dolls zoomed across the length of the ceiling with the speed of jet fighters. Dog eared greeting cards sprinkled the 20 store in a cloud of confetti. One female checkout clerk screamed The others seeing the assistant manager immobilized were too busy robbing the cash registers. A very old lady dressed in black and carrying a cane looked up apologetically to Remo as he sailed over a pile of plastic shoes tossed randomly in a heap. The lady was holding one of the shoes in her hands the thin sole flapping apart from the rest of the shoe. I didn t break it sir the old lady said quiveringly offering the shoe to Remo. It just fell apart when I touched it. She had tears in her eyes. Please don t make me pay for these too. Remo saw that she was wearing a similar pair on her feet the soles held on by dozens of rubber bands. I only wanted to see if they were all all Her wrinkled old eyes crunched up around her tears. Remo grabbed the shoe away from her. It cracked and crumbled in his hand. Lady he asked wonderingly Why don t you wear sneakers These shoes are worthless. I can t afford sneakers the lady said. Do I have to pay for the one you broke too sir Remo reached into his pocket. I ll let you go on two conditions he said handing her a wad of bills. She stared at the money in astonishment. Hundreds peeked out. That you buy yourself a good pair of shoes and that you never return to this store again. Got it The old lady nodded dumbly. She began to totter away but Remo pushed her gently to the side when he heard the heavy breathing of a man with an obesity problem waddling toward him three aisles away. Remo sensed from the man s uneven footfalls that he was carrying a gun. Remo waited. 21 When the manager appeared the .38 poised amateurishly in his hand Remo was leafing through the paperback book section a pile of loose pages at his feet where they had fallen as the book was being opened. A sign above the books read No Browsing. The man raised his gun and fired. Remo yawned. Missed he said. The store manager looked unbelievingly at the gun. He had fired it point blank at Remo s chest and he had missed. Directly behind Remo a bullet hole smoldered through a stack of school notebooks with lines misprinted diagonally down the page. How d you do that the manager asked. Remo felt no need to reveal the obvious: that he had moved faster than the bullet. The man fired again. Again Remo shifted his weight off his heels and then back onto them and then there was another hole in the notebooks. This is getting dull Remo said. And just as the fat manager was squeezing his fat finger around the trigger for the third time he saw Remo move and decided not to shoot. As manager of a successful economy budget chain store he recognized his responsibility to the community. He realized that innocent people might get killed if he continued to pursue this nut case. He reconsidered shooting a defenseless man at point blank range. He also observed that Remo had twisted the barrel of his revolver around so that it formed a perfect U and was now pointed directly into his own pudgy face. He opened his hand to drop the gun but the gun did not drop and the hand did not open because the butt of the gun was jammed into the metacarpals of his hand. Then came the pain. Eeeeeeeee the manager cried. 22 Remo tugged at his ear and shook his head. That s not E. That s A flat. You tone deaf Eeeeee the man insisted. No no Remo said. Here s E. He twisted the man s ear. The pain shot up eight notes. Remo nodded his head approvingly. Now I ll make the pain go away if you ll do something ha return Remo offered. Anything. One thirty five twenty four sixteen eight. What That s the combination to the safe. Eeeeeeeee. Hallelujah said one of the checkout clerks who had come to watch the action. She ran off toward the safe in the back of the store followed by the rest of the staff. So much for your money Remo said. Now I want you to do a little advertising to let your customers know what an honest guy you are. Sure sure the manager grunted the veins in his neck throbbing. Stop this . . . please. In a second. Right after I give you your instructions. Are you listening carefully Yes. YES I want you to stand outside this store and tell everybody on the street what kind of operation you re running. The markups the merchandise the help. Everything. And the whole truth right Right. The man panted to hold down the pain in his ear and his hand but nothing helped. Remo escorted him to the doorway by the ear. Okay start talking he said. Pain the man yelped. Oh. Forgot. Remo released the ear and pressed a small nerve network beneath the skin on the man s wrist and the man s arm went numb. The pistol clat 23 tered to the sidewalk. He breathed in heavily with relief. Can you move your arm Remo asked. No. Good. Then it doesn t hurt. But if I don t like what you re saying I ll make the numbness go away and the pain come back understand Yes. Okay. I trust you. Talk. Help the man yelled. Eeeeeee What d I tell you Remo scolded. He touched the manager s wrist. B bad merchandise the man sputtered. Louder. Can t the man sobbed. Remo numbed his arm again. Try now. This store has been cheating the pants off you every since it opened the man yelled with the zeal of an evangelist. I ought to know I m the manager. I buy rejected merchandise from factories and don t let you know about it when I sell it to you. All of these stores are stocked the same way. The clerks Remo reminded him smiling and nodding to the bewildered pedestrians on the sidewalk. The clerks are nasty as hell You d be crazy to shop here. Good work Remo said and patted the man on the back. Keep at it. Remo strolled back into the store. He picked up a bunch of plastic flowers and walked over to the assistant manager who was still rolled up tightly in his sarcophagus of green rubber garden hose. Look what I brought to cheer you up he said and stuck the stems into the flower pot that used to be the assistant manager s mouth. The petals fell off on contact. They just didn t 24 make plastic like they used to. With a flick of his foot Remo sent the ball of garden hose containing the assistant careening to the ceiling where it bounced spectacularly and veered off in a trajectory toward the door. It sped through the exit and came to rest exactly where Remo had planned in the gutter in front of the manager. It s the worst store in New York the manager screamed so loud that his voiced cracked. Maybe the world Remo flashed him the okay sign as he trotted past. It s the pits the manager yelled. Save your money. Go someplace else But already a small crowd was filtering through the doors anxious to buy. After all it was New York and a bargain was a bargain. Remo grumbled as he pulled back the oars on the rowboat. Don t go so fast Smith said his pinched lemon face squeezed tight against the wind as Remo plowed across the lake at forty knots. You ll attract attention. Indeed a few boaters on the lake in Central Park turned their heads as the little rowboat flew past with the speed of a Harley Davidson at full throttle. Attract attention Remo looked across at his two passengers. Smith was dressed in his usual three piece gray suit which he would have worn even if the meeting had taken place under water. Next to Smith sat an aged Oriental with skin like parchment and thin cloudlike wisps of white hair on his head and face. He was swathed in a long robe of red brocade. If this is your idea of an inconspicuous meeting place you re nuttier than I thought you were Remo said. 25 Forgive him Emperor the old Oriental said as he flicked his frail hand from the sleeve of his kimono displaying fingernails as long as penknives. He is an ungrateful child who does not understand that it is his honor to propel this craft for the American emperor and the Master of Sinanju. He bowed his head toward Smith. Also he seeks to disguise his faulty breathing with this show of irritation. My breathing is perfect Remo protested. As you see Emperor he is also arrogant. Now if the Master of Sinanju had been given a decent specimen to train instead of a fat meat eater with skin the color of a fish belly Better watch it Chiun Remo cautioned. Smitty s the white devil too. Anyway you re just mad because I didn t bring back the potting soil. You see He admits it. This oafish person who has failed to bring his old master the one item which would have filled the master s final years with joy even brags to you that he is incompetent. And what was that item you may ask It was not one of your airplanes which serve inedible foodstuffs and require that one wait endlessly in line to use the lavatory. It was not a television set on which is shown violence and pornography in place of its once serene daytime dramas. No. What the Master of Sinanju had requested as the final flickering light in his twilight dimmed life was only earth from the ground. Simple dirt Emperor so that I might have had the pleasure of growing bright flowers to ease the pain of my weary life. I told you what happened Remo said. He was too occupied engaging in a senseless altercation in which not even one individual was properly assassinated to remember his old master. I know about it Smith said flatly. 26 Lo Remo. All the world knows of your loutish ness. An assassin who does not assassinate is a useless assassin. You are a sluggish forgetful and ungrateful wretch who fails even to bring a small pot of earth to an old man. It was disgraceful Smith said. See See Chiun jumped up and down in the boat delightedly. I would be most grateful Emperor to accept a new pupil at your command. Maybe someone young. The right color. You could have been caught Remo. You know what that would mean. The end of CURE. Smith turned his head in disgust. Remo said nothing. He knew Smith didn t bring him out in the middle of a lake to slap his wrists. And Smith was right. Not that Remo was bound by loyalty to CURE as Smith was. CURE was what sent Remo out to kill people he did not even know against whom he held no grudge. CURE was responsible for the thousand motel rooms instead of one home for the near certainty that he would never have a woman of his own to love or children to bear his name for the plastic surgery that had changed his face and the unending stream of paper to change his identity. Who was Remo Williams Nobody. A dead policeman with an empty grave and a marker somewhere in the eastern United States. Only the Destroyer remained. And CURE. But the end of CURE would mean the end of Smith too. It was arranged that way. To Smitty the prospect of his own death was just another item of information in his orderly file clerk s mind. If the president ordered CURE to be disbanded Smith would press one button on his computer console to destroy all of CURE s information banks in sixty sec 27 onds. Then he would descend unhesitatingly to the basement of Folcroft sanitarium where his casket and a small vial of poison waited. For Smith suicide was just another routine thing he would do one day when he was ordered to. But somehow and Remo would not have been able to say why he would miss Smitty s bitter face and acidic ways. What s the assignment Remo asked softly breaking the silence. A former CIA agent named Bernard C. Daniels. He blew the lid on the agency about a year ago in Hispania. A double No Smith said. A fine operative really judging from his past performance. But an alcoholic now. His memory is gone. Even under hypnosis Daniels draws a blank about the Hispania business. It seems he was sent there on a routine mission requested an extension disappeared for three months and then staggered into Puerta del Rey one morning and announced the CIA presence there. A big international mess and nobody knows anything about how it happened or why. Daniels claims the CIA tortured him. They deny it. And now that the press has forgotten him it s time to remove him before he becomes a further embarrassment to the CIA. Pardon me for knocking your old alma mater Smitty but the CIA s an embarrassment to the CIA. Nobody knows that better than I do. Since when do we do the CIA s laundry Remo asked. Washing clothes is an appropriate task for so incompetent an assassin and so ungrateful a pupil 28 Chiun said nodding appreciatively toward Smith. The agency s head of operations Max Snod grass has family connections to the president. Ordinarily I wouldn t have taken this er project but I served with Snodgrass in World War II and if he s anything like he used to be Daniels could take out a full page advertisement in the New York Times before Snodgrass could manage to get rid of him. Snodgrass doesn t know about CURE or me or you of course. As far as he s concerned he s going to identify Daniels to a freelancer who will then take care of things. Identify him Why not just give me Daniels s address Snodgrass insists on going by the book and fingering Daniels himself. Smith looked out over the water. And so does the president. I thought CURE wasn t supposed to be political. Smith allowed himself the briefest moment to think about something which was not on his day s agenda. It was a vision of the basement of Folcroft sanitarium. We can get back to the dock now he snapped. This should be an easy assignment. Why Barney Daniels is a dinosaur at the CIA an old fashioned agent. He didn t use weapons even at the peak of his career. You won t have any kind of interference. And he s an alcoholic. He ll be defenseless. That s a terrific incentive Smitty. You really know how to make your employees enthusiastic about their work. Smith shrugged. Somebody s got to do it. That was the reason Remo usually got when he 29 was sent out to kill. Somebody had to do it. Somebody had to look into a dying man s eyes and think: That s the biz sweetheart. And Smith wasn t often wrong in picking Remo s targets. Usually they were vermin that Remo was glad to get rid of. On several occasions those vermin had been deadly enough to obliterate the country if they had been allowed to live and on those occasions Remo felt that he was somebody after all that he had some purpose in life besides eliminating strangers who were someone else s enemy. But sometimes it hurt to kill. And that was why Remo was not yet the perfect assassin although he was the best white man there was and why he still had 80 year old Chiun as his teacher and why he would kill Bernard C. Daniels very quickly and with no pain but would think about it later. What happens when I get too old to work for CURE Smitty Remo asked as he eased the little rowboat next to the docking platform. I don t know Smith answered honestly. Don t plan on being a gardener if you can t even remember to bring home dirt Chiun said. CHAPTER THREE The phone rang twenty times. Twenty one. Twenty two. Twenty three. When he was certain it would ring until he either 30 answered it or succumbed to massive brain damage from the noise Barney Daniels stumbled over an obstacle course of empty tequila bottles to pick up the receiver. What do you want he growled. A woman s voice laced with southern honey answered. You didn t call. I don t love you any more Daniels said automatically. That one usually worked with unidentifiable women. You don t even know me. Maybe that s why I don t love you. He hung up satisfied with a romance ended well. He should drink a toast to that romance whoever it was with. It had probably been a glorious night. It might even have been worth remembering but there was no chance of that now. He would give that romance a proper posthumous tribute with a drink of tequila. Barney rooted through the mountain of empty bottles. Not a drop. Booze guzzling bitch he thought. No doubt the unrememberable woman selfish wretch that she was had sucked up the last ounce of his Jose Macho callously unconcerned about his morning cocktail. The whore. He was glad he was rid of her. Now he would drink a toast to having gotten rid of her. If he could only find a drink. His eagle eye spotted an upright bottle in the corner of the room with a good half inch left inside. Ah the queen he said to himself as he lumbered toward it arms outstretched. A woman among women. He raised the bottle to his lips and accepted its soul restoring contents. The phone rang again. Yes he answered cheerfully. 31 The CIA is going to kill you the woman said. Was it wonderful for you too Barney crooned. What are you talking about Last night. I ve never met you Mr. Daniels the woman said sharply. I called you last week but you said you were too busy drinking to talk. You said you d call me back. Call ... me ... unreliable Barney sang in a shaky baritone snapping his fingers. I am trying to tell you Mr. Daniels the woman shouted that you have been marked for death by the Central Intelligence Agency your former employer. Barney rubbed the sleep from his eyes. You woke me up to tell me that I am calling to offer you sanctuary. Do you have a bar Yes. I ll be right over. In return for that sanctuary I would like you to perform a small task for me. Shit Barney said. The world was right. There was no such thing as a free lunch. He was about to hang up when the woman added I will pay you a thousand dollars. Well well he said suddenly interested. There was still the better part of a month to go before his next Calchex pension check. All that remained of Snodgrass s last payment to Barney were the empty bottles on the floor. For one day s work the woman continued tantalizingly. Provided it is very legal and above board and does not involve politics or espionage Barney said. 32 Who knew that the woman wasn t a secretary in Snodgrass s office Sneaky Snodgrass wouldn t be above doing that. I will discuss your work when you get here. She gave him detailed instructions on how to reach a large brownstone building on the northern end of Park Avenue a building just across the socially acceptable line that separates the very poor from the very rich in Fun City. You will arrive between midnight and one A.M. by taxi. When you get out of the taxi you will place a white handkerchief over your mouth three times. Pretend to cough. Then lower the handkerchief and walk up the stairs and stand at the door. I warn you. Don t try to approach the house any other way. I m just glad we re not involved in anything illegal Daniels said. The woman ignored him. Do you understand everything I ve said Certainly Barney answered. There s only one problem. You ll be paid very well for your problems the woman said. This problem requires money. You see I ve invested very heavily in American Peace Bonds and I am without liquid capital. That will be straightened out when you get here. That s the problem. If it s not straightened out first I won t get there. You re broke Said brilliantly. I ll have a boy at your home in two hours. He was the biggest boy Barney had ever seen six and a half feet tall with a shaved black head shaped 33 like a dum dum bullet without a crease. He was muscular and the muscles apparently did not stop until they reached his toes which were encased in golden slippers with toes curling up to a metallic point. In the lapel button hole of his black suit he wore a gold crescent with the title Grand Vizier stamped on it in ersatz Arabic lettering. I am to escort you said the giant. Where are you from The woman. I was supposed to receive money not an escort Barney said. I have my orders. Well I don t move without cash All Baba so just hop back on your flying carpet and go tell her that. Will you come with me if I give you money The giant s eyes dripped hatred at the thought of negotiating with the white devil. Of course. That will indicate your good faith. That s all I m interested in. It s not the money naturally. The Grand Vizier of the Afro Muslim Brotherhood took from his jacket pocket a hundred dollar bill. He offered it to Daniels coldly. One hundred dollars Daniels screamed edging back into his foyer. One hundred dollars to go all the way from Weehawken to New York You must be out of your mind. What if I have to stop for something to eat The Grand Vizier s eyes kept hating. One hundred dollar too much for a little ride across the river. It only cost you thirty cent on the bus and another sixty cent for the subway. Maybe six buck by cab. 34 That s for peasants Daniels said and shut the door. The gentle knocking almost shook the timbers of the large house. Daniels opened the door. I give you two hundred dollar. Daniels shrugged. A man had to earn a living and anyhow everybody cribbed on their expenses. The Grand Vizier handed over another hundred dollar bill. Here he said and the tone of his voice made it clear that he felt Barney had come cheap that he was just another piece of chattel whose price the Grand Vizier carried as pocket money. Catching the implication in the Grand Vizier s voice Barney looked into his fierce eyes and then tore the second hundred dollar bill in half with the finesse of a courtier. That s what I think of your money Barney said. He made a mental note to buy Scotch tape on the way back. Two little strips and the bill would be good as new. I just wanted to see how bad you needed me. When the Grand Vizier wasn t looking Barney stuffed the two halves of the bill into his pocket. One never knew. Their co equal relationship established Barney opened the door to leave with the Grand Vizier. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a shiny object inadequately concealed in the shrubbery. Sunlight glinted off the object which Barney recognized as a microphone. Only one man Barney knew would be stupid enough to place metal equipment in the one spot of shrubbery accessible to morning sunlight. Max Snodgrass undoubtedly found the best reception there and the CIA surveillance manual which Snodgrass wrote insisted that equipment be placed in a area of maximum reception. 35 Meet me in Mickey s Pub Barney said quietly. Two blocks east turn left. The right hand side. I permit no alcohol to enter my body the Grand Vizier said disdainfully. Mickey s Pub or I keep the two bills and don t show Barney whispered. And you can tell the Avon company that men s cosmetics are for faggots he yelled for Max Snodgrass s benefit. America thy name is perfidy Barney lamented as he hoisted his bulky frame through the back bedroom window and dropped fifteen feet into the overgrown tomato garden below. He landed crouched on his feet then rolled into an easy somersault to absorb the shock. Casting off your unwanted veterans he thought bitterly forcing them to ply their trade for a pittance to the highest bidder. Only the vision of the woman s well stocked bar kept him going as he crawled through the jungle of his back yard into the woods behind. While relieving himself behind a tree he noticed a car with two men parked near his house. One was a thin youngish man. The other was a tiny ancient Oriental. Max s henchmen he thought with no particular emotion. He would doubtless see them again. He ambled off into the woods to take the scenic route to Mickey s Pub. This thing must be Emperor Smith s informant Chiun said as Max Snodgrass hair plastered tightly to his head tiptoed into view from behind the shrubbery. Snodgrass looked toward the car and nodded crisply. Dipshit Remo said nodding back. He ought to be the target instead of that poor used up drunk inside. Anybody who combs his hair like that deserves to work for the CIA. 36 It is not your duty to criticize our Emperor s commands incompetent one Chiun said his papery face bland. Lay off Little Father Remo said irritably. Together they watched Snodgrass swagger up the steps to Daniels s door and ring the bell. I hope Daniels shoots this nincompoop. Chiun whirled around in his seat to face him. Remo you are indulging yourself in a dangerous game. There is nothing more deadly to an assassin than his own emotions. All right. Then you teU me. Why should I kill this guy Remo asked his voice rising. All he ever did was to expose the CIA as the clowns they are. Look at that cretin. Max was tapping his foot on the doormat impatiently his hands on his hips. Yes. I can hear his breathing from here. Chiun clucked dispiritedly. Nevertheless it is not your place to ask why. You must perform the task you have been trained for so that Emperor Smith will continue to send his yearly tribute of gold to Si nanju. Otherwise the poor people of my village will starve and be forced to send their babies back to the sea. Sinanju has got to be the richest village in Korea by now Remo said. How many submarines full of gold does it take to keep those beanbags in your hometown from tossing their kids into the ocean anyway Why don t they just use the Pill Do not make light of the plight of my village Chiun said. Were it not for the Master of Sinanju they would be destitute. We will do our work without complaint difficult as that must be to one whose fat white being is marbled with willfulness and discontent. He snapped his jaws shut and was still. 37 Max Snodgrass shrugged after ten minutes in front of the door and headed toward the car. Remo revved up the engine. I suppose James Bond is going to come over for a little chat now Remo said. He probably wants to let us in on the top secret information that Daniels isn t home. Remo waited. He wanted to peel away just as Snodgrass approached the car so that the wake of gravel and dust would splatter over Sriodgrass s expensive suit. But Snodgrass stopped halfway looking intently at Daniels s mailbox. He opened it. There was a letter inside a big thick one in a chartreuse colored envelope. Gingerly he whisked it out. From the car Remo could see a name in the upper left corner. A look of shock came over Snodgrass s face as he stared at the name. His face seemed to say it couldn t be. It couldn t be. The name on the envelope was important to Max Snodgrass because it was to be the last thought he ever had. At the very moment when the synapses in Max Snodgrass s brain were vibrating the language code for that name the green envelope in his hand was exploding with the force of two sticks of dynamite and sprinkling the flesh of Max Snodgrass across the lawn like pieces of shish kebab. Daniels you old rummy you did it Remo said. He turned on his windshield wipers to clean the red debris off the window. Very sloppy Chiun said his nose wrinkled in disgust. A boom destroys the purity of the assas sin s art. This Daniels is also a loutish white fool I see. You mean bomb Remo said. And I hear the police. He dropped the car into gear. 38 One moment. Chiun opened the door and rose slowly. Sitting in an automobile is most unpleasant for the hip joints. This is no time to stretch your legs Little Father. We don t want to have to murder the entire Weehawken police force. The police are still a quarter mile away Chiun said and then whirred through the mess of Snodgrass s remains with a speed so fast even Remo could not follow all of his moves. The police are now two hundred yards in the distance Chiun said returning to the car. Let us leave Remo. Remo tore down the street and onto the highway the sirens growing faint behind him. What d you do back there Chiun Remo asked as he turned onto a dirt road and slowed to ninety. The old Oriental uncurled his delicate hand revealing a pile of small pieces of green paper their edges charred brown. These are from the envelope which contained the boom. He turned the pieces over one by one. Some have writing on them. This one has a name. It says Denise Daniels. Who is that I don t know Remo said but it sure seemed important to Snotlocker or whatever his name was. We ll send it to Smith. And it s bomb. Chiun put the pieces inside the folds of his robe. This looks like the place Remo said as he and Chiun entered the side door of Mickey s Pub its windows decorated with dirt and neon shamrocks. The stink of it assaults the nostrils Chiun said. I shall slow my breathing so as to inhale as little of this unwholesome odor as possible. Inside a dozen fat pink faced men were enter 39 taining themselves at the bar with jokes about the unusual footwear of a tall black man standing at the other end of the bar drinking ginger ale. Remo and Chiun wound their way across the floor littered with peanut shells and broken pretzels to a sticky table in the far corner. Is this indeed the restaurant at which this American person Daniels partakes of his meals Chiun asked incredulous. That s what Smitty says. But he doesn t eat. He just drinks. How long must we wait in this iniquitous sink Till he shows up I guess. Perhaps I will return to the car. Hold it Chiun that s him coming in now. The one in the white suit. Remo indicated Daniels whose appearance was only slightly more presentable than it had been in the newspaper photograph taken after he had emerged from three months in the Hispanian jungle. Daniels sat next to the Grand Vizier. The men at the bar stared. They were dressed in rough checkered shirts with short jackets and dirty fedoras whose years of internal sweat had clearly overwhelmed their sweat bands and stained the hats a darker shade. They all drank beer slowly enough so that the foam was left in rings down toward the bottom of the glass where the beer looked dead and yellow. As the Grand Vizier stared stonily into his glass of ginger ale the white men discussed the worthless ness of some persons who only liked to drink fornicate and fight. That was all some persons were good for. This concept intrigued Barney and he asked if any of the gentlemen at the end of the bar had per 40 sonally developed a polio vaccine discovered penicillin invented the radio discovered atomic power invented writing discovered fire or made any great contributions to the thought of man. The men at the other end of the bar disclosed that the late President John F. Kennedy was not black. Barney informed them that not only was President Kennedy not black he was not related to the men at the end of the bar any more than he was to Barney s tall black friend. They said that perhaps the president was not related to them but that Barney obviously was related to his dark friend. This they thought was very funny. So did Barney who said that for a minute the men had given him a fright because he thought he might have been related to them instead of to the Grand Vizier who knew how to dress like a human being which they did not. Then he inquired of them which ditches they had dug and if any of them had seen their wives sober in the last decade. For some reason the discussion seemed to end there with someone throwing a punch in the cause of Irish womanhood honest labor and killing the dirty nigger lover. It was a magnificent fight. Bottles chairs fists. Fast. Furious. Destruction. Courage. Barney watched every minute of it and the Vizier did himself proud. Single handedly he seemed to be able to fend off the entire population of the establishment. Chairs broke over his head fists smashed into his nose broken bottles drew blood. But the Vizier did not fall and continued to drop men with single strokes of his oaken arms. Barney would have liked to have seen the finish of the fight and to tell the Grand Vizier what a magnificent man he was but this was impossible 41 since he was already out the front doors of the saloon and knew that it was only a matter of seconds before the thin young man and the old Oriental seated in the far corner would be able to fight their way through the melee to get to him. CHAPTER FOUR Remo blocked a body that came flying toward him. Excuse me he said to two men who were punching one another s faces. They did not move out of the way. Excuse me he said again. This ll excuse you one of the men said directing a left hook at Remo. Remo caught the man by the wrist and snapped it in half. Aghhhh the man screamed. Hey the other man yelled grabbing the back of Remo s tee shirt. What do you think you re doing to my buddy This Remo said breaking the man s wrist in two between his thumb and index finger. I seen that another man shouted charging Remo with a pool cue. He swung it over his head and brought it down full force over where Remo was standing but the stick missed its target and before he knew it the man was lifted in an arc toward the ceiling and then was crashing into the display of bottles at the back of the bar. 42 Bernard C. Daniels smiling benignly in the doorway arched an eyebrow in approval at Remo s bar fighting abilities. Remo did not acknowledge it although he felt a small flush of pride at the subtle display of admiration. Almost everyone who saw Remo in action was either awestruck or terrified except for Chiun who could find flaws in even the most perfectly timed maneuver. Rarely did Remo get a sincere well done from anybody and even if this one had been from a man whose life he was going to snuff out in less than thirty seconds it felt good. A thankless job Remo thought as he lodged the bridgework of a man wielding a gallon jar of pickled eggs into his gums. Shrieking the man threw the jar onto a nearby table where it splintered into a thousand glass shards. The mauve colored eggs inside rolled onto the floor causing a half dozen men to slip and fall and continue battling one another lying down. Then came a high pitched wail so piercing so pitiful that Remo had to take his eyes off Barney Daniels who still stood in the doorway. It was Chiun leaning crookedly against the bar near where the Grand Vizier stood battle a heap of unconscious men at his feet. Remo Chiun cried. The front of the old man s red kimono was stained dark. Remo he said again his voice a gasp. Remo broke the legs of a man who stood in his way. He sent bodies flying across the room with his feet. He hacked his way through the crowd dropping men like bowling pins the panic inside him boiling to his core. I am here Little Father he said softly picking up the old man as if he were a small child. How light his bones are Remo thought as he raced out 43 side with his precious bundle weightless as bird s feathers. Outside he placed Chiun carefully on his back on the sidewalk. The old man s eyelids fluttered. That was the worst experience of my life Chiun said shuddering. I swear I ll kill every last one of them. How bad is it How bad is what Chiun asked. The wound Remo said. Wound Wound Slowly Remo opened the kimono where the deep red stain was. What Remo stop that you animal Chiun sputtered slapping Remo s hands. I have to see Little Father. Remo pulled the kimono open over a flash of intact yellow skin. Chiun bounded to his feet his eyes bulging. You have become insane he screeched jumping up and down wildly the wisps of white hair on his head streaming out behind him. The stench of that vile place has turned you into a pervert. He clapped his hands over his sunken cheeks. And you choose to perform your odious acts with me with the Master of Sinanju himself. Oh crazy one this is the end. You have gone too far now. He stomped off spitting on the ground and cursing his fate to have wasted so many years on a pupil who dared to attempt the unspeakable with his own master. Chiun Chiun Remo called racing after him. I only wanted to see where you were hurt. Hurt My heart is broken. My very soul has been desecrated. You attempted to disrobe the Master of Sinanju on a public sidewalk. Oh this day this day is cursed. Never should I have arisen this day. First 44 a foul smelling meat eater tosses purple egg juice onto my hand woven kimono. Then my own son no. Not my son. A perverted white man whom I was duped into believing was my good creation whom I nurtured and taught the secrets of ages. With his own hands this white beast dares to expose my very flesh on the street. In the debris of a saloon. Oh shame. The house of Sinanju will never recover from this shame. Egg juice As I was defending myself from the lunatic assault of a drunken person with a bottle a sea of putrid purple egg juice struck my garment. This is a foul day a day I shall never be able to forget. He shook his head. You mean you re not wounded I am deeply wounded. Grievously irreparably wounded. I must go now to burn incense and seek purification. Wait here. Remo ran back to the tavern where a multitude of uniformed policemen had gathered to escort the customers into a waiting paddy wagon. He checked the wagon and he checked the bar but Daniels was gone. I ve lost him Remo said. I lost my target because of your egg juice. I just blew my assignment. Do not speak to me perverted one Chum said as he strode briskly toward their parked car. I wish to be returned to my flowerless domicile where I will make preparations to return to my village and accept the dishonor that has befallen the House of Sinanju. Chiun will you please calm down I wasn t trying to expose you. I thought you were bleeding that s all. I didn t know you d go to pieces over a pickled egg. 45 Ugh. The very thought of a pickled egg is revolting. And my kimono is destroyed. It must be burned. You have at least a hundred more. And if a mother who has five children sees one of them drowned in egg juice does she say merely that she has four others and blot the fifth child from her memory This was my favorite robe. It is irreplaceable. And all for your silly assignment which you did not even complete successfully. It should not have been difficult to assassinate a man whose belly had been recently stuffed with bloody beef white bread and fountains of alcohol. How do you know what he eats I smelled it. In the bar No no. Idiot. One could smell nothing in that place to compare with its own stomach shattering fragrances. I smelled it outside just before you attempted to display my belly to the world. Outside where Fool. On the fire escape. Great billows of bloody beef and an alcoholic beverage based on mesquite were emanating from his mouth. Had your breathing been adequate you could have perceived it as well. Remo looked at the fire escape platform just above the front door. The fire escape You saw him up there Why are you constantly amazed by what I say Chiun screamed. I told you he was on the fire escape. Therefore I obviously saw him. Perhaps you should join the ranks of your CIA. A person of your intelligence should be most welcome there. Remo exhaled deeply. I don t believe it he said. I just don t believe it. You knew I had to get 46 to Daniels. You saw Daniels. And you didn t tell me. It is not my responsibility to do your smelling for you Chiun sniffed. You have evidently grown so obtuse and perverted that you cannot even summon your olfactory senses to assist you. A fine assassin. Nothing but a thug. Why should I strain my powers to assist a thug in eliminating such a magnificent specimen of a man Wait a minute. Two hours ago you were telling me that Daniels was just another target just another mission for the good of Sinanju. I said nothing of the kind. You did too Chiun. Then I have changed my mind. Your Mr. Daniels is a great man. A superb man. His leap to the fire escape was astonishing for one who has tortured his body for so long. I don t get it Remo said. Did he see you Of course. One does not look upon the glory of Sinanju without notice. What did he do when he saw you Do Why he did only what was proper and fitting. He saluted me. I see. Thanks. Thanks a very large pile Chiun. He could be dangerous you know. So could you former son if you had not grown fat and slothful and still knew how to treat the Master of Sinanju with respect to his person. One salute. You let him get away for one cheap little salute. It was a sign of respect Chiun said stubbornly. Also a work of art. Oh come on. Now that s really too much. A work of art A work The salute was performed while Mr. Daniels 47 balanced on the balls of his feet exquisitely on the railing of the fire escape out of the way of the window up there. Big deal Remo said opening the car door for Chiun. And he was dancing. The dance of the wind. Chiun demonstrated his arms waving at his sides his head turning slow circles. That s not dancing. That s weaving. Daniels was drunk as a pig. He slammed the door. Oh to have had this specimen as a youth. To have been able to pass on the wisdom of Sinanju to one who dances even while poisoned instead of a crazed pervert who desires to undress his master in the street. They were silent all the way back to the motel. Are you going to fix dinner Remo asked. Why should I eat My body has already been desecrated. Okay I ll fix dinner. What a specimen Chiun reminisced smiling dreamily. He saluted the wall. I wish you d quit this. Chiun sighed. It was only an old man s remembrance of his one brief moment of recognition in this disrespectful world he said. He saluted again. The phone rang. Please answer the telephone Remo Chiun said. I am too worn and broken to exert myself. Remo snorted. You know I always answer the phone. It was Smith. Have you completed the assignment he asked his voice tense. 48 No. Thanks to the Master of Sinanju and his appreciation of alcoholic ballet I have not. Good. Good You see. Chiun interjected. It is not only I who appreciates this fine human. The emperor also sees his grace and seeks to reward him for it. You ve got to keep him alive Smith said. What for Because someone s trying to kill him. Yeah. I am. Not any more. That envelope you couriered to me was made from paper fabricated in Hispania. There s some kind of connection. I can t get a fix on Denise Daniels yet but that could take a while. Anyway if somebody is trying to kill Daniels it may be that he knows something something of value to the U.S. That being the case he ought to be kept alive until we know what he knows. This is crazy. I was supposed to kill Daniels but now that somebody else is trying to kill him I ve got to save him. Maybe that makes sense to you Smitty but it doesn t make sense to me. Just let him do what he wants to do. Maybe it will stir the pot. But keep him alive. And Remo What That was good work remembering to pick up the pieces of paper from the envelope. Remo looked over to Chiun who was saluting passersby on the street below with a jaunty flick of his wrist. Thanks Remo said. He hung up. Chiun was beaming. I m glad you re having such a good time Remo said. Personally none of this makes any sense to me. 49 It makes perfect sense brainless one. Chiun leaped to his feet as lightly as a cloud. All emperors are crazy and Smith is the craziest of them all. I will cook dinner. He padded toward the kitchen humming a tuneless Korean melody. CHAPTER FIVE Bernard C. Daniels awoke in a flophouse two doors down from Mickey s his home being three blocks away and therefore too far to walk after several days of riotous drinking throughout the town of Weehawken. He rummaged around in his pockets. The two hundred dollars was missing. Well I hope I enjoyed some of it he thought as he scratched the tracks of a flea that had made its home on his scalp. Then he discovered something that made him feel very sad. His credit at Mickey s Pub. was no longer good. He should have asked the Grand Vizier for more But then that would have been gone by now too he realized. What day is it he asked the bartender. It s Friday Barney. He looked at the luminous clock over the bourbons scotches and ryes which rested atop planks of 50 wood where the bar s mirrors had been. It read 8:30. It was already dark outside. I d better go he said. If he didn t hurry for his appointment with the woman he would be late. Four days late instead of three. The cab fare came to 4.95. Barney handed the driver a five dollar bill the bartender had lent him. The driver swiveled his big neck rolled and folded to resemble the Michelin Tire Man and yelled after him: You promised me a big tip. I never would have came to this here neighborhood for a nickel. Bernard C. Daniels could not be bothered with boorish taxi drivers not amid the squalor surrounding him. He checked the number on the building. It was correct. It was wedged between unending rows of dirty drab brownstones. Every window on the block appeared dark hiding faded shades and curtains when there were curtains. A weak street light glowed like a lonely torch high above the garbage cans and metal gratings that protected cellars. A single dog scurried with undue noise across the black topped gutter. Traffic lights blinked their useless signals Barney heard the cab pull away as he mounted the steps. It left with a grumble. The brownstone seemed identical to the others until Barney noticed the door and discovered it was only a distant relative of those stench filled houses surrounding it. His knock told him. There was no doorbell. Only a thin layer of the door was wood. The knock sounded like steel extremely heavy steel. Then Bar 51 ney noticed that the windows were not really openings to the street at his level. There were Venetian blinds all right but they were permanently mounted on steel sheets that closed up the window. He knocked again. His instinct warned him but only a split second before he felt the gentle point against his back. How many times had he felt that tender prelude to pain that first searching of a man unsure of his blade If he had thought he might not have done what he did. But years of survival did not allow the mind time to think. There was a point at which the body took over dictating its demands. Without will Barney s right hand slashed around twisting his body down and away from the blade and finding a target for the line of bone from his pinky tip to his wrist. It was a black temple. It cracked with a snapping sound. The man s head took off followed by his neat small body encased in a neat black suit. The spectre tottered momentarily then fell backward and would have tumbled down the steps but for more than a dozen men identically dressed in neat black suits. They were packed into the staircase behind him and the mass of their bodies caught their comrade. A small bright blade with bluish edges tinkled beneath their feet on the stone steps. They all held similar blades. And they closed in on Barney almost noiselessly a sea of shaven skulls making waves under the yellow light of the street lamp. Barney pressed his back to the metal door and prepared to die. Just then two men moving so fast they were little more than blurs shot out of the darkness and into the moving sea of shining black heads. In an instant the quiet street was filled with 52 screams and the groans of dying men as blade after shimmering blade dropped to the ground and bodies twisted like wire fell on top of them. For Barney it was a vision of hell witnessing the torment of men convulsed by pain and glad to die in order to end that pain. Barney thought about that pain as he fired up a cigarette and winked at the two white men who were causing it. Better them than me he thought philosophically. But one of the men was not white. He was an aged Oriental sporting a turquoise kimono. Jesus Christ Barney muttered. It was all very confusing to him. Here were two guys the same two guys he was sure were out to hit him saving his life. And fighting like bastards to boot. He had never seen fighting like that. It was effortless artful utterly economical of movement totally effective. Were it not for the carnage surrounding them the young white man and the old Oriental could have been dancing a ballet. Very confusing. He would have to think about this matter. He would think about it immediately in fact just as soon as he had a drink of tequila to help him think better. As the two men silenced the last of the mob Barney rose to dust himself off. His eyes followed the movements of the men as they dashed out of sight. The thin young man disappeared like a bullet. The old Oriental followed his robe floating behind him. But just as Barney was preparing to knock again the Oriental returned. Standing beneath the street lamp grinning broadly the old man stiffened like a tiny tin samurai soldier and flicked Barney an elegant salute. Thank you sir Barney said his voice echoing 53 down the street and returned the salute. Then the old man was gone. Barney knocked twice more. After a long silence the door surrendered and opened to him over a field of white plush carpeting. Standing at the door was the Grand Vizier of the Afro Muslim Brotherhood two flesh colored Band Aids decorating his forehead. Flesh colored here meant brown but against the Vizier s eggplant skin the two strips of tape stood out like an accusation. Am I late Barney asked. What you done the Grand Vizier yelled looking out over the heap of broken bodies in the street. One of the Vizier s large black hands came down to Barney s right shoulder and lifted him like a toy. Leave him alone y hear came a woman s voice. I ll take care of him Malcolm. Yes ma am the Grand Vizier said and allowed Barney s feet to touch the floor. She wore white slacks and a white blouse and Barney almost couldn t see her because of the camouflage. The whole interior of the building fireplace sofa lamps walls ceiling steps leading upstairs all were painted bunding white. Marble wood and cloth all as white as the inside of a bathtub factory run amok with hospital orders. Her platinum hair fit the decor perfectly. Barney shook his head as if to clear it. There was something about her. Something. He tried to think but couldn t. Malcolm the Grand Vizier stood out as he left the room like an ink blot on a snowy towel. In the room a faint fragrance of lilacs replaced the stink of garbage outside. Barney sniffed. He preferred the garbage. Beautiful said the woman peeking out the 54 door. She reached for a telephone which was hidden by its absence of color on a white table Barney could barely make out against the white wall. Yes she said. Yes. Tell them Malcolm that their friends have all gone to Allah and will be re warded there. Don t forget to mention that it was a white devil who killed them. Very good. Was it clean Immediate death Good. Well done Malcolm. Barney heard rather than saw her hang up. She smiled a pale thin lipped smile. You killed all those men out there. I had some help Barney admitted. A hundred year old Chinaman did most of it. The woman laughed. You re charming she said. And the rest of the Peaches of Mecca will be impressed. The what The Peaches of Mecca. The bodyguard of a new revolution a freedom movement so sweeping it astounds the imagination and thrills the soul. Of course you just wiped out most of the Peaches. We ll have to get some new recruits. Got a drink You re a cold hard professional aren t you Money is your grounds for loyalty isn t it You re cool precise knowledgeable about espionage death and destruction. You think only of the dollar and the power it gives you isn t that right Sure. Got a drink he repeated. She walked over to a well camouflaged white bar. What ll you have she asked. Tequila. The very word touched his heart. She poured him a tumbler full of very expensive Bolivian firewater and handed it to him. 55 You have quite a reputation for being a competent agent Mr. Daniels she said. He poured the contents of the glass down his grateful throat. Agents with reputations are not competent madam. They are dead. May I have another He held up the glass. Of course. I want you to know before we begin Mr. Daniels that you will always have a drink waiting for you in my home. That s real southern hospitality ma am Barney said smoothly accepting his second drink. Anytime you want one you just come on over and help yourself to my bar hear Yes m. Even if I m not at home I will leave instructions that you be admitted anytime you need a little drinky poo. I ll remember that ma am. She smiled at him like a sleek white cat. I m sure you will Mr. Daniels. She sat down next to him on a white sofa. That was clever what you said about agents with reputations being dead. Pleased to hear it ma am. Because you re going to be dead soon. So you tell me. Unless I help you. And I plan to help you. That s right neighborly. How s about a little blast He offered her his empty glass again. Tequila he said. In a minute. We want to talk first. We do What do you think the black man wants Mr. Daniels Barney furrowed his brow in concentration. 56 Can t say I know which black man you re talking about ma am he said. You re a bigot Mr. Daniels. Her eyes flashed. You don t know anything about the freedom movement and you don t care. I resent that Barney said rising. He eased his way toward the bar. I care about freedom as much as anybody. There is nothing more important to me than freedom. At this very moment in fact the prospect of receiving a free drink from your bar is foremost in my mind. You get back here. Come back to this couch this second or I ll order Malcolm to smash every bottle in the house. I m coming I m coming. He sat down his empty glass clutched in his hand. You are a backward white liberal bigot who doesn t understand the freedom movement. So I will explain it .to you. I was afraid of that Barney mumbled. It s the great spirit rising from the newly emerged nations of Africa. It s written on the wind. The black man is pure. Untrammeled by white corruption untouched by either communism or capitalism. He is the future. Barney sensed movement in the tightly wrapped milk colored stretch pants and the full blouse that tightened at the waist. What s so pure about him he asked managing to tear his gaze from the sight of the woman s full bouncing breasts. He never had a past. The white man robbed him of it. Certainly Barney said as though seeing for the first time in the light shed by this dizzy daffodil. Nevertheless surrounding this ripe albino plant was 57 green green money all watered by liquor. The black man was pure yes indeedy. Barney couldn t argue with that. He s like writing on a clean blackboard Barney offered. Exactly said the woman flowering with sudden happiness. He s been robbed whipped raped castrated and ciphered as a human being. Barney nodded knowingly. That d make anyone pure he said. Right. Perhaps I was wrong about you Mr. Daniels. Perhaps you are interested in more than money. But of course Barney said gallantly. I never would have come here if I didn t believe I would be working for a good cause. Ah wonderful. A man who wants more than money. Good. We re running short of funds now anyhow. Barney started for the door. Stop the woman called wedging herself between Barney and the door before he could locate the white doorknob. We have plenty of money. Millions she yelled into his face. Millions Barney asked. Millions. She pulled him toward her. He attempted to fight his way free but his left hand which was reaching for the door drew itself inexplicably around her waist instead. And his right hand somehow began playing brazenly with her jiggling breast and his lips were laboring above working their independent way from her mouth down her neck to her erect pink nipples and oh goodness gracious her pants were coming off. Take me upstairs and make love to me she whispered hoarsely. 58 Yes yes Barney obeyed lifting her off the smooth carpeting and heading directly for the stairwell with only a small detour to the bar to pick up a bottle. In the round white bed Barney worked his hands over the woman s silky body. She teased his ear with her teeth. You will kill for me she hissed fired with passion. Yeah Barney said. She pulled him on top of her. You ll spy for me. Yeah. You ll do anything I say. With agonizing slowness she opened her legs to him. Yeah. Anything. You name it Barney said bringing her to full gallop. Anything she moaned. With intoxicating relief Barney spent himself. Well almost anything honey he said puffing. Can t rush into things you know. She was mad but not too mad. About as mad as a satisfied woman can get. Roll over she said tweaking his cheek. Barney did and his eye fell on the bottle he had brought up with him. It was bourbon. What the hell he thought. He would start cultivating a taste for the stuff. It was easier than trekking nude past Malcolm to retrieve the tequila. Forgot the glasses. Drink from the bottle. Give me a cigarette. She sat up in bed her firm sharp breasts peering out above the sheets. Barney handed her a pack of smokes. 59 He took a swig. It went down hot and good. It was fine bourbon. There was much to be said about the drink. How about me the woman asked. She ex tended her hand for the bottle. Barney examined the hand. It had fine lines. It was a fine hand. If he had another bottle of bourbon he certainly would have put it into that hand. Well how about me It was a good question. Barney took another swallow a long one. She had a right as his bed partner to share in the bourbon. An inalienable right. She certainly had that right. And it was her bourbon. Barney swallowed again and moved her hand away. She settled for a cigarette. They lay back contentedly she smoking Barney drinking and she told him about the Afro Muslim Brotherhood. Her name was Gloria X and she was its leader although only a handful of people knew it. It was a secret society aimed at fomenting a sense of outrage among the black people to make them angry enough to revolt against their white oppressors. Enough enough Barney said waving away her prepared speech. What is it you want me to do Paint my face with shoe polish and join the Peaches of Mecca I want you to kill someone. Anyone special A prominent civil rights leader whose middle of the road policy is holding back the cause of black nationalism and the freedom movement. How do you know I won t go racing off to the police with this information Because Mr. Daniels. She smiled evilly. Because what 60 She stared directly into his eyes her coldness reaching to the pit of Barney s stomach. Because I know what happened in Puerta del Rey. That s an interesting scar you carry she said touching the CIA brand on his belly. Barney turned toward her. He was about to speak. He was about to tell her that he himself did not remember what happened in Hispania that led him through the jungle and into the hut where he had been tied and cut and burned with the glowing poker that he did not remember the thing buried deep in his brain the event that caused him not to care when they cut him and beat him and branded him and yet kept him alive in spite of the torture. He was going to tell her but she cut him off. So I know Mr. Daniels that you have no love forchis government or its agencies or for that matter for white men. So she didn t know. She didn t know any more than he did. And besides Mr. Daniels she continued if you refuse I will have you killed. Now hush up. The news is coming on. Gloria X flipped a switch at the bed table and a transistorized television set on the opposite wall instantly lit up. Barney sipped the bourbon once again trying to remember Hispania but failing as always. Something had happened there. Something. The newscast reported on the usual goings on of the planet. A revolution in Chile a flood in Missouri. A drought threatened in New Jersey and a civil rights threat in New York. Gloria X began to emit happy little squeals as the television flashed a picture of a fat black man. Daniels had seen him several times on TV in South 61 America. He was called a national civil rights leader. He spoke a lot but was never shown with a following of more than forty persons most of them white Episcopal ministers. He was Calder Raisin national director of the Union of Racial Justice commonly called URGE fat pompous invariably making wild inaccurate statements calculated to offend whites and at best amuse blacks who paid him no attention anyway. The affected voice bellowed out of the TV set. The Block Mon Raisin shouted will not tolerate lily white hospital staffs. At least one out of every five doctors must be black in both public and private hospitals. It took Barney a while to understand that Block Mon meant black man. Maybe Raisin s gulping adenoidal pronunciation was a new proof of high culture. Mr. Raisin the television reporter quizzed where will the country get all these black doctors After centuries of educational deprivation the Block Mon must be given doctor s degrees. I de mahnd a massive medical education program for Blacks and if need be an easing of the discriminatory standards of medical boards. Would you name these discriminatory standards I would be glad to. Because of segregated and inferior education the Block Mon has more difficulty getting into medical school let alone passing tests given by white medical boards of examination I demahnd immediate abolition of entrance examinations for medical schools. I demahnd the end of testing to pass. I demahnd the end of the strict standards of medical schools as just another technique of Jim Crow segregation northern style. 62 And if your demahnds er demands are not met by the medical schools the reporter asked. We shall begin a sick in utilizing every badly needed hospital bed. I call upon everyone Block Mon and white alike who has a passion for racial justice to register at a hospital. I have here a list of phony symptoms guaranteed to get you admitted. When the truly sick are dying in the streets because there are no beds for them perhaps then the medical schools will face up to the need to create more black doctors. The camera panned back revealing the portly Mr. Calder Raisin clad in a white hospital gown standing by an empty bed. His voice was taken off the audio and a commercial for throat lozenges went on. Oh. Oh squealed Gloria X. He s great. Great. Just great. Great. With each great Barney felt her squeeze a tender spot of his anatomy. Great Gloria X said. Barney pinched her hand. She ignored the pinch. Great he was great darling. Wasn t he wonderful Barney sipped the bourbon and grunted. He s not my type. Well he is mine Gloria X said. He s my husband. Barney looked at her. She leaned over brushed the bottle away from Barney s mouth onto the floor and ran her tongue over his lips. He s really great she whispered. It s a shame you re going to have to kill him. Barney pushed her away from him. Now wait a 63 second. First you tell me you re married to this chocolate donut Gloria nodded. He s great she said. And then you tell me to go out and kill him. She smiled. May I ask why he said after a pause. To further the cause of black freedom she said. To eliminate Raisin s middle of the road policy from the rising black consciousness. To demonstrate to my followers that personal sacrifice in the cause of freedom is glorious And to collect the insurance money It s a bundle big boy. She winked. That s what I thought Barney said. He took a deep swig from the bourbon bottle and rolled away from her. CHAPTER SIX The Grand Vizier of the Afro Muslim Brotherhood held open the door for Barney as he tiptoed out of Gloria X s house at five in the morning. Thanks Malcolm he said trying not to slur his words too much. Once you out on the street you ain t my problem Malcolm answered. Plenty of bloods be happy to see your white face this time of day. Ain t no way Allah be looking out for you white scum. Hare Krishna Barney said with a bow. Barney wasn t afraid of muggers. He could still 64 fight when he had to. He wasn t afraid of killers. He had killed too many times himself not to know that killers were generally more frightened than their victims unless the killers were very well trained and if the Peaches of Mecca were the best fighting men in the neighborhood he was in no danger. And with nothing in his pocket but the five dollar bill Gloria X had given him to insure his return he wasn t particularly afraid of getting robbed. What Barney Daniels was afraid of was that crazy old Oriental guy who seemed to materialize magically on the dim street corner ahead. He prepared to run in the opposite direction but the old man was standing beside him before Barney could execute the about face. You sure are fast Pops Barney said. Thank you. Greetings. I am Chiun. Barney Daniels. Yes I know. Where s your friend He is nearby. Barney looked around him but saw no one. I don t mean to be nosy Chiun but are you planning to kill me No. Barney breathed easier. That s good. You know Chiun for some reason you don t look like you live in the neighborhood. I do not. My home is the village of Sinanju in Korea. I see Barney said as though that explained everything. Going my way Yes They walked silently for another half block. Barney tried again. Listen I know this sounds weird but 65 Yes No it s too weird. Go ahead. You may ask. Okay. He felt foolish even thinking it. It s just that I saw you fight. You were pretty good know what I mean Chiun smiled. It was nothing. So I was wondering if you can fight like that and if you re not going to kill me well . . . Yes Are you my fairy godfather or something A voice behind him snickered. Barney jumped into the air his heart thudding. Good reflexes Remo remarked. How long have you been back there Since you left the house. Barney shook his head. You two are really something he said extending his hand to Remo. Barney Daniels. Idi Amin Remo said declining the hand. One of us is the Master of Sinanju Chiun elaborated. The other is a rude pervert who is barely useful for household tasks. And the third is a drunk we ve had to stay up all night watching while he humped his way to heaven Remo growled. How could you watch Remo shrugged. No scruples I guess. I mean the sides of the building were sheer faces of poured concrete. You couldn t have looked in the window. Suit yourself. What did you hear Barney asked testing. Nothing special. Grunts groans a couple of giggles from Blondie a belch or two from you the usual. 66 Hmmm. And your promise to knock off Colder Raisin for her. Barney winced. You from the CIA he asked. That does it Remo said. He s going back unconscious like I said. There was a flurry of discussion in Korean between the old man named Chiun and the young wise guy. No Chiun said finally in English. He is a man. He will walk. Walk where Barney asked belligerently. Tenth Avenue in midtown. What for We re supposed to keep you alive. On Tenth Avenue I d have a better chance of staying alive in the Klondike wearing a jockstrap. Breathe in the other direction Remo said. Who sent you here Your fairy godfather. Get moving. Barney bristled. Look you guys I appreciate what you did for me back there but I want to know where I m going and why. Remo sighed. Let me knock him out he said to Chiun. You are in no danger with us Chiun explained. However our employer feels that others will attempt to do you harm. We are to protect you. So why do you have to protect me on Tenth Avenue Why not just follow me home to Weehawken Because you ve decided to murder somebody Remo said disgusted. And I ve got to ask Upstairs if you re allowed to. Complications. Always complications. Chiun smiled proudly. I knew he was an assassin. 67 A fellow s got to earn a living Barney said. They turned left on 81st Street where muffled music leaked from a cellar door. Oh Barney said excitedly. I almost forgot about this place. A terrific after hours club. Care to join me for a cocktail He veered off. Remo collared him. This upset Barney. Did they know that he might not make the trip back to Tenth Avenue alive without some liquid refreshment to quench his thirst Did they know they might well be delivering a corpse to their employer Did they want that Walk Remo said. If I fought you you d win right Wouldn t be surprised Remo said. If you knocked me out would you carry me I suppose I d have to Remo said. Where on Tenth Avenue are we going Forty fourth Street. That s too far. A cocktail or I go unconscious. He offered his neck to Remo. Just then a gang of eight Puerto Rican street toughs approached them. One of them was picking his teeth with a stiletto. They circled the three strangers in the neighborhood. Hey man you got any change the one with the stiletto asked Chiun teasing the knife around his wrinkled throat. You are annoying me with that toy Chiun said. The eight of them laughed. Tell them to go suck a mango Remo suggested to Chiun. How about this toy another asked nicking out his stiletto with a pop. Six more pops punctuated the 68 night. Eight blades flashed. The circle closed more tightly. Barney moved into position but Remo pulled him away. He can take care of himself he said. What do you say old man the leader sneered. Got any last words Yes Chiun said. Twice this night I have been inconvenienced by groups of hooligans with knives. It is getting to be impossible to walk these streets and I plan to complain about it. I suggest you stop bothering innocent pedestrians and go home. Also it is disrespectful to call me old. The leader poised his stiletto at Chiun s throat. On the other side another gang member crept up behind Chiun prepared to slash at Ms back. Those your last words man Yes Chiun said. And then he kicked behind him to relocate the manhood of the approaching man into the man s kidneys and the gang leader was thrusting his stiletto into thin air as he hurtled above the heads of his associates and came to rest around a telephone pole which he encircled like a wreath halfway up the pole. Two gang members fled immediately. The remaining four bashed their heads together with the perfect synchronization of a Busby Berkeley chorus line as Chiun whirled around them. Their skulls cracked and flattened on impact. The man with relocated testicles rolled over once with a groan and then was silent. The man hugging the telephone pole slid bonelessly to the ground. Irritating Chiun muttered turning back to Remo and Daniels. Egg juice. Knives. Name calling. It is enough to cause indigestion. And you he said pointing menacingly toward Barney. You will walk. 69 Yes sir. Nothing like a good walk to perk up the old circulation. That s what I always say. A good walk stills the nerves. And be silent. Barney walked to Tenth Avenue as the dawn rose. In utter quiet. Barney stuck a cigarette in his mouth as he entered the motel room. Remo crushed it into powder so that Barney stood in the doorway holding a match to a one inch filter. Then Remo reached into Barney s coat pocket and pulverized the rest of the pack. You could have just said you preferred I didn t smoke Barney said. He looked around the room. Real cozy. Where s my room Remo pointed. Barney looked inside. That s the bathroom. That s right. Go take a shower. You smell like a brewery. Okay okay Barney said. You don t have to be rude about it. Be sure to lock the door Chiun said. One never knows what a pervert might try. Got a drink No Remo said glowering. Just asked that s all No reason to get touchy. Barney headed off toward the bathroom and turned on the shower. Remo called Smith. We ve got Daniels here he said. Whatever for He told Smith about Gloria X and the Peaches of Mecca and Barney s assignment to kill Calder Raisin. It doesn t make any sense Smith said. 70 Glad you agree. What does any of this have to do with His pania Smith wondered aloud. Probably nothing. He s probably just trying to pick up a few bucks. The question is what do we do with this rum pot Hang on to him until I can put everything into the computer. Don t let him kill Raisin. What s Gloria X s address Remo gave it to him as Smith punched the information into the computer console. And what s her real last name Raisin. What She s Raisin s wife. That s what she said. Smith was silent for a long moment before he said She can t be. Why not Interracial marriages and murder between spouses has never been big news. Because Calder Raisin s wife lives in Westches ter with their two kids under another name and they re all as black as Raisin is. He keeps their profile low for security reasons but he spends the weekends there. That information is in every personal biographical printout on every computer in the country. Maybe he s got two wives Remo offered. I ll check it out. How old is Gloria Mid twenties. Southern accent. Fanatic about the upcoming black revolution. Good Smith said keying in the material. I ll go through the SDS and black organizations lists. Anything else Remo thought for a moment. She talks a lot while screwing. 71 Smith s keyboard fell silent. Is that everything he asked drily. I guess so. Remo heard the phone click off. It just didn t make sense. Smith read the printout on the video screen for the third time: RAISIN CALDER B. B. 1925 BIRMINGHAM ALA. ATTENDANCE MERIWETHER COLLEGE 1 YR. PRESENT OCC: DIRECTOR UNION RACIAL JUSTICE URGE FORMER OCC: ASST. DIR. RAY THE JUNKMAN INC. NEW YORK CITY. FORMER OCC 2 : SANITATION PERSONNEL CITY OF NEW YORK MARRIED 1968 LORRAINE RAISIN FORM. DALWELL CHILDREN 2 LAMONTE B. 1969 MARTIN LUTHER B. 1974. NO PREV. MARRIAGE OR OFFSPRING INCOME: 126 000 HEALTH: POOR SUB 1 HEALTH CANCER COLON. TERMINAL HOSP: ROOSEVELT 8 79 ROOSEVELT 5 79 ROOSEVELT 3 79 LENOX HILL 12 78 A.B. LOGAN 9 78 N.Y. UNIV. HOSP 2 78 72 Cancer Smith said out loud. What reason would anyone have for assassinating a terminal cancer patient The obvious answer that Gloria X and her Peaches of Mecca didn t know about Raisin s illness was too remote for Smith to consider. Any organization particularly a black organization willing to hire an assassin would know enough about Raisin to know he wasn t going to live long. But then the Afro Muslim Brotherhood wasn t an official organization. In fact the first traces of the Afro Muslim Brotherhood that the computer was able to pick up had appeared less than a year before. During the same month that Barney Daniels had been returned from Hispania to the United States. Blaming the assassination of a civil rights leader on an ex CIA agent might make some sense as part of some larger scheme. It could make the agency look even worse to the public than it already did. But as part of what larger scheme What could Hispania a banana republic no larger than Rhode Island with a gross national product so small that most of its inhabitants lived hi jungle huts what could Hispania do to America America could wipe it out with a sneeze. And even if Hispania were connected to the Afro Muslim Brotherhood in some way how could Smith explain the Hispania envelope filled with plastic explosive the envelope that was delivered to Barney And the name on the envelope Denise Daniels. Who was she There had been 122 Denise Danielses on Smith s printout and none of them were related ha any way to Bernard C. Daniels with the exception of a third cousin of Barney s uncle who lived in Toronto. Smith would have to create a new code to tap into international personal biographical 73 data banks. He would begin with Hispania. But it could take years to sift through the names of every person living or dead in the entire world. None of it made sense. But the weirdest piece of the puzzle was right in New York City. Gloria X. Who was Gloria X A political genius with the body of a goddess that s who you are rumbled General Robar Estomago as Gloria rose from between his legs. Also you give the best head in Puerta del Rey he added with a chuckle. The best in the world Robar honey she said rubbing her jaw. Taking me out of that whorehouse and setting me loose back in America were the smartest things you ever did. Now I m all yours. She rearranged herself on the bed in Estomago s office at the end of the Hispanian Embassy building. No my hot puff pastry not all mine. You are Hispania s. When you complete this mission El Presidente De Culo will erect a statue of you. Hope it s more erect than El Presidente she giggled. Your plan is going well I take it Perfectly. I told you the bomb in the envelope wouldn t work. Daniels is too smart to be bumped off so easily. This way we get rid of him nice and legal and crack this two bit country apart while we re at it. This place ll be so torn up with riots and demonstrations that nobody will even see us com ing. Boom Estomago said gesturing wildly. El Presidente will love that. And so will our Russian sponsors. 74 That s right sweetie. And you re going to love this. At that Gloria X nestled her head against the belly of the Hispanian ambassador and began to prove herself again. General Robar Salvatore Estomago chief emeritus of the National Security Council of the Republic of Hispania current ambassador to the United States and recipient of the considerable personal favors of Gloria X had come a long way from flipping Big Macs at the local McDonald s franchise in Puerta del Rey. The short order stint was a post he had held immediately prior to his appointment as head honcho of Hispania s secret police under El Presidente Cara De Culo. He shifted his rotund lower belly to grant Gloria better access to his legendary tool which were it not for its exemplary size would be all but hidden from view by the porcine proportions of his torso. Her head bobbed enthusiastically her blonde hair spilling out over his swarthy skin like a golden cloud. All his life he had fancied gringo women white as diamonds. And Gloria was white to the core. She embodied everything he had ever dreamed or feared about white women. Gloria was beautiful cruel deceitful duplicitous selfish spoiled and unaccustomed to any sort of work. She was also utterly contemptuous of her homeland and sought to destroy America with more zeal than El Presidente and the Russian premier combined. Estomago knew he d found a treasure in Gloria the minute she walked down the ramp of the American ship onto the docks at Puerta del Rey whistling as she stripped to the skin and started soliciting the dock workers. 75 She had come with a shipload of women volunteers anxious to get out of American prisons even if it meant a long rehabilitation work program in Hispania. But the work was top secret and all the workers were fated for disposal and since Gloria was blonde and Estomago lusted for her he saved her from the normal work details and put her in an occupation more suited to her talents. He set her up in the biggest whorehouse in town with instructions to report on every important American who visited the place. It was a good move. Because of one American a CIA agent who knew more than agents in Hispania were supposed to know Estomago was now ambassador to the United States. Also because of that one American Bernard C. Daniels a grand scheme was now coming into play a scheme devised by Gloria to disrupt the United States upset the balance of power in the world and to thrust Hispania to world power just as surely as Estomago was thrusting now under the expert guidance of Gloria s tongue and lips. Ah yes Estomago sighed fanning himself with a framed photograph of El Presidente which he kept by the bed. You sure know your business. Destroying America is my business she said curtly wiping her mouth. In spite of these black fools you have saddled me with. The Afro Muslim Brotherhood is a good cover for us Estomago said. Besides you were the one who thought of creating it in the first place. It ll serve its purpose she said. I m sending Daniels out to bump off Calder Raisin. That ought to work the niggies into a rampage. And Daniels Did he object 76 That poor drunken thing I told him I was Raisin s wife and that I was after the insurance money. An American will always believe in greed Estomago said loftily. CHAPTER SEVEN Gone What do you mean he s gone Remo ran into the bathroom where Chiun stood on the toilet lid peering out the open window. A true assassin Chiun said glowing. Nothing can deter him from his goal. I ve got to get to Raisin Remo said. The leader of URGE stood on the front steps of Longworth Hospital. He was wearing a short white hospital gown tied by two bows in the back revealing a pair of red and green striped shorts. Before him a dozen demonstrators similarly attired sprawled across the expanse of marble steps reading comic books and passing marijuana joints. Ahead of them television cameras recorded the proceedings. My fellow freedom fighters Raisin intoned into the microphones in front of him. A breeze shimmied through the thin gown he was wearing causing it to ripple at his knees. I stand before you today in the cause of justice. 77 He turned aside and hissed Sheeit brother it cold out here. Go get rne my robe. A white man whose hospital gown was adorned with buttons advocating peace the abolition of nuclear power the execution of the Shah of Iran the expulsion of whites from South Africa the elimination of noise from urban centers and a very old one demanding the death of anyone over thirty years of age shuffled into the hospital to get Raisin the robe. I urge you to join us here at Longworth Hospital to help us meet our demands for equality in the medical profession. I urge you to participate in our call to action. I urge you to answer that call with us. Because fellow supporters of this nation s oppressed Block Mon the URGE must be met. He. pointed his finger in the air and scowled ferociously at the cameras. And I tell you now as I stand before you that I have more than a dream. I tell you with four hundred years of black servitude echoing these words through the ages: I VE GOT THE URGE The people on the steps stirred. A young couple groped each other. Several of the pot smokers lay snoring. A tall black man wearing mirrored sunglasses shook a tambourine in time to disco music playing on his trunk sized portable radio. And you know all of you who seek to break the chains of inequality that when you ve got the urge you ve got to do your duty Remo walked up to Raisin. He wore a hospital gown untied over black chino pants and a tee shirt. He offered Raisin his robe. Someone s going to try to kill you soon Remo whispered his back to the cameras. 78 Who you Never mind. Get back inside the hospital. Fellow freedom fighters Raisin shouted into the microphones. I have just been informed that an attempt is being made on my life. The groping couple squeezed closer together their lips parted in ecstasy. The tambourine player rolled off to sleep. Would you shut up Remo said. And I say to you. I do not fear death from the hands of an assassin. Be quiet will you Just get inside. For what does a life signify without the full achievement of freedom for the Block Mon I stand ready to die. And every Block Mon woman and child stands ready to die in the cause of freedom. Raisin s chest puffed out. His chin jutted forward. One shoulder rose higher than the other and he planted one foot out in front of him as though he were a mold for a bronze statue. Freedom now he shouted. The young couple began to copulate and rolled into the range of the cameras. Cut somebody yelled from behind the TV equipment. Get those two screwers out of here will you As the couple was being rolled out of sight Remo once again requested that the director of URGE return to his hospital bed where he could be protected while Remo searched out his assassin. Thank you boy but nobody going to kill me fore the Lord do hisself. Besides they all these TV cameras around. Ain t nobody going to do nothing serious on TV. He patted Remo on the shoulder. You just go about your business. I ll get inside quick as I can. And thanks for the tip. It make a 79 good speech. Freedom now he repeated into the cameras which had been turned on again the screwers having been removed. Remo walked through the sparse crowd. No sign of Daniels. If Barney hadn t come directly to Calder Raisin Remo reasoned he must have gone back to see Gloria X for instructions. He would be back in Harlem. Barney eased himself out of the taxi his head pounding. Eight o clock in the morning and not one drink since before dawn. Some protectors Barney thought remembering Remo and Chiun. They might be able to fight but nobody who would refuse a drop of tequila to a thirsty man was any friend of his. He pounded on the door to Gloria X s house. The Grand Vizier Malcolm opened it at once. Obeying orders Malcolm stepped aside to allow Barney to race to the bar in the living room. Perched on top of the bar was a silver hip flask of tequila with a note attached. It read: Im yours whenever you want me. He unscrewed the cap and sniffed. The welcome aroma of fine tequila filled his nostrils and coursed down his throat beckoning for more. Oh baby do I want you he said to the flask. He let the glory gallop down his throat. Then he filled it up again after locating the tequila bottle. Dat s all whitey the Grand Vizier said striding across the white room. You coming with me now. Hold it Baby Huey Barney said. I am to be admitted to the bar anytime I feel like it. Your massa told me. The Grand Vizier lifted Barney over his head and 80 carried him aloft out the door and into a black automobile where two Peaches of Mecca snorted awake. Barney would have slugged it out with all of them were it not for the fact that he still held the cap to the hip flask in one hand and had to screw it back on so that the tequila in the flask would not be spilled. As soon as he was tossed into the car Barney was enveloped in a rough wool burnoose and handcuffed. I realize I ought to be getting used to this but do you mind telling me where we re going he asked. We going to the Mosque one of the Peaches said reverently. You keep that hood over your face when we go in else you get killed. The Afro Muslim Brotherhood mosque about twenty minutes from Gloria X s was identifiable by a hand painted sign on unvarnished plankboard nailed over another sign reading: Condemned Building. Do not enter. Open doors of the faithful the two Peaches cried in unison. The doors swung open heavily. Awfully heavily Barney noted for a condemned building that looked as though it would crumble to dust at a touch. And the doors were new. Fragments of steel shavings still clung to the hinges. Barney was led through a maze of hallways stairwells past closed doors and giant empty rooms. The building had evidently been some kind of public building at one time abandoned after Harlem ceased to be a quiet suburban retreat for middle class white professionals and became the black Harlem it was today. Barney could tell by the sound of his feet against the flooring that he was walking on a steel base. He 81 bumped a wall with his elbow. Again steel. There were no windows. The mosque was as well fortified as Gloria X s house. Flanked by his two bodyguards Barney ground to a halt in front of an enormous hall where a speaker wrapped in purple swaths of silk entreated his audience. Who keep you down The answer was a soft grumble from five hundred black throats: Whitey. Who kill our kids in these dirty slums Whitey. Who rob you rape you steal your bread Whitey. Who plan to wipe out the black man Whitey. The speaker roared on his voice rising above women in purple scarves on the left side of the old amphitheater and above the dark clean shaven heads of the black suited men on the right. The speaker yelled. He pleaded. He cried put in the tradition of the black preacher. The temperature inside the old theater rose with the speaker s volume manufacturing waves of perspiration. It flowed from black foreheads black backs black cheeks. It swamped brown armpits. It trickled down tan legs and tan spines. Yet no one moved. They sat rigid as soldiers a theater full of zombies. Their only sign of life was the movement of their mouths as they murmured Whitey. Whitey own this world the speaker continued and he hate you. He hate your pure blackness which remind him of his own ugly white skin. He hate your strength and your courage and your wisdom. That why he want to kill you. 82 He paused a moment and smiled a gold toothed smile a smile that cost him 4 275 from a white dentist in the Bronx a smile he had bought while preaching for the Pentacostalist Gospelry Church. And that had paid well. But this paid unbelievably. That white woman with the blonde hair sure knew how to get his oratory moving. Whitey. want to kill you but we not gonna let him. You know why The hall was tomb silent Because we gonna kill him dat s why. We gonna end this blue eyed tyranny over our lives. What we gonna do he asked. After a dramatic pause he answered himself in a stage whisper. We gonna kill kill kill. And then to the audience: What we gonna do Men stood to scream released at last from the torture of their hot wooden seats. Women clapped their hands joyously. They all screamed Kill kill kill What ya gonna do the speaker asked again. Kill kill kill Say it again children Kill kill kill Let Whitey hear you tell it. Kill kill kill Nice to see a community working together Barney said to the two men at his sides. He reached for his hip flask forgetting that his hands were cuffed together. As he was entangling himself in the folds of his burnoose a figure veiled thickly in white tulle passed by leaving a scent of lilacs in her wake. The Peaches of Mecca followed her pressing Barney between them. She led them through another maze up a concrete stairway down a long hall through an empty room and up another staircase. The stairs ended at 83 yet another stairwell this one a spiral of precision made structural steel. You may wait here gentlemen the woman said her voice dripping with plantation charm. The two Peaches nodded impassively. One of them handed her the key to Barney s handcuffs. He followed her into an apartment of sparkling white identical to her house in every detail except for a world map on a wall behind a white desk. There she removed her voluminous veil and white cloak. As Barney watched she pulled off her opera length white gloves. She untied a white rope belt around her waist. The dress she wore draped over one of her creamy shoulders and cascaded in Grecian folds to the floor clinging to her curves all the way down. Smiling into Barney s hungry eyes she pulled at the clasp over her shoulder with her manicured nails and let the dress fall to Her feet. She was naked beneath. Slowly she stretched her arms over her head so that her breasts lifted beguilingly. Then she brought her hands down over the length of her body caressing herself her hips undulating as Barney looked on his hands chained together. It was a strangely familiar motion. Had he seen it before I m going to free your bonds now Mr. Daniels she purred. Allah be praised Barney said. He was sweating hard in his woolen monk s robe. She pressed one of her breasts into Barney s mouth as she unlocked the handcuffs. He did not take his lips from her as his hands searched out and found the treasure they were looking for. Then he moved his mouth away from her shiny wet nipple and wrapped it over the opening of the hip flask he 84 had raised and was now emptying into his gullet. Great stuff he said appreciatively. Gloria pulled him over to the bed and sated herself on him. As she came screaming Barney s hand fumbled over the surface of the nightstand for the bottle of tequila she had waiting for him. He took a swig careful not to knock the bottle on Gloria s still thrashing head. That was great she said dreamily. Best tequila I ve ever had Barney said. You don t care for me at all do you Her voice grew suddenly cold. Barney shrugged. As much as I care for anything else he said. It was the truth. He would sit on Gloria s white Disneyland bed and fake love with her and let her dictate the part he would play in her little drama because he had no other part to play. Barney s part had been left in Puerta del Rey a lifetime or two ago and what he had now was his tequila and nothing more. He had gotten into this on a drunken whim and now he was a prisoner as sure as if he were in jail. It was a plush prison to be sure but a prison nonetheless and Barney knew the sentence would be death either from Gloria X and her trained seals or from the two men who had tried to help him. He didn t want help. He didn t care if his death came soon or late. It was already long overdue. He had already been dead for a long long time. So why was he thinking about Puerta del Rey again There was no answer to that most elementary question the only question he ever asked: What happened What happened He forced his mind away from it. He made himself concentrate on 85 the satin cushions around him on the bed and on the tequila and the tequila and the tequila. And before the bottle was empty the world was good and fine with Bernard C. Daniels. Then he smelled the lilac perfume. Wake up Gloria said shaking him. It s night. Hell of a time to wake up. It s time. Time for what For killing Calder Raisin. She smiled her lips stretched tight across her teeth. Blurred through Barney s drunken vision her face appeared to him like a grinning death s head skull through a misty fog. I had you moved here when I heard you d made contact with your CIA friends. Don t have friends in the CIA he said his mouth still fuzzy. Those two on the corner. My men saw you. But now they don t know where you are so they won t be able to help you poor baby. You re going to have to kill poor Calder all by yourself. She patted his cheek. Get up now. You have an appointment with Mr. Raisin at the Battery. What if I don t kill him Barney asked. Then you don t get the thousand dollars darling she said sweetly. And you lose your life very painfully in the process. You know what painfully means don t you Do you remember the pain Mr. Daniels or has the scar on your stomach healed completely He leaped at her. What do you know he demanded. Tell me But her bodyguards were in the room and pulled him away from the woman as she shrieked laughter as cold and shrill as the wail of a banshee. 86 There were no television cameras on the pier as the two black reporters dressed in neat black suits had promised Calder Riaisin back at the hospital. Nor were there any microphones on the creaking boards of the deserted place where a group of demonstrators was supposed to be waiting for him. As soon as the limousine filled with overly friendly reporters deposited Raisin at the pier and sped away into the darkness he knew the black reporters were fakes and he had been brought to this isolated spot to be killed. Calder Raisin shook his head. He had been warned. A man was waiting for him sitting on the planks his back resting against a barnacle encrusted dock support. Only one man thought Calder Raisin. But then it would only take one man to kill him. It was his own fault Raisin reprimanded himself for not listening to the young white man at the hospital rally. Well there wasn t much he could do now. He would just try to get it over with as fast as he could. What you want Raisin asked turning up the collar of his bathrobe to protect himself from the wind. He shifted his weight from one hospital slipper to another to fend off the chilly wind. His hands were stuffed deep inside the pockets of the robe from which at the bottom a half inch of hospital gown protruded. I said what you want Raisin repeated. Look you gonna kill me or what Barney looked up first at Raisin and then off over the glistening black water. See here. I didn t come all this way to stare at New York Harbor with you. Now you gonna sassinate me or I going to walk away 87 Barney looked out over the water. It reminded him of a giant inkwell. A place where all the words of his life could be obliterated in an instant. Words like honor. Decency. Love. Words he had lived by once when he had had a reason for living. One jump and he could be as dead and as meaningless as those words. The water would swallow him up and the remains of Barney Daniels would disappear into it. The water. The cold bleak unforgiving welcome water. Snap to boy Raisin said bending over to slap Barney on the shoulder. It s cold out here. You gonna freeze. Barney stared out over the water. Raisin s voice softened. Hey want to grab a cup of coffee somewheres the portly black man asked. But Barney only stared. Raisin picked up his red terrycloth slipper and bounced it on Barney s head. Look alive man he shouted. What is this stupidness I get hauled out here in the middle of nowheres getting the crap scared out of me cause I thinking you gonna kill me and now you ain t about to do nothing. You on junk boy Barney didn t answer. You wasting my time. I got a sick in demonstration going so if you ain t going to rub me out I better get back to it fore I die of the cold. Barney offered Raisin his flask. Have a drink he said. It ll warm you. Raisin drank. Man what is that shit Tastes like poison. Tequila Barney said regaining possession of the silver container. But it could have been poisoned. Sure as hell tasted like it. 88 Ignoring the crass comment Barney lifted the flask to his lips and let the liquid pour down his throat. I could have poisoned you you know he said. Raisin shrugged. Your wife wants me to kill you. Lorraine What she want to do that for Who gonna pay the bills on that split level money eater in Whiteyville Not Lorraine. Gloria. Your wife. The blonde. My wife ain t no blonde Raisin protested. Leastways she wasn t four days ago. Lorraine look mighty silly a blonde. I gonna slap her silly if she done dyed her hair. Blonde. Hmmph. Gloria Barney said louder. I don t know no Gloria stupid white ignoramus. You done come down here to kill the wrong man. Good thing you spaced out. Her name is Gloria I tell you Barney shouted and she s paying me a thousand dollars to kill you. Raisin hopped up and down his jaw thrust forward. Well then you do that smartass. You just try and kill me. He put up his fists. Weirdo white junkie. Oh get lost Barney said. I ain t leaving till you pologize for calling my wife a white woman. I won t apologize. Go. I ain t going. Then you ll have to die here on the pier because the drink I gave you was poisoned. Barney stood up to leave. Woah Raisin said restraining Barney with a shaky black arm. You lying. Speaking falsehoods. You lying ain t you 89 Barney ambled toward the end of the pier and sat down his legs dangling off the edge. The water. The black forgetful water. Wait man Raisin said running to him and grabbing his arm. That s my drinking arm Barney said. He yanked it free and took a long swallow from his flask. You ain t put nothing in that drink you give me did you I mean you drank it yourself. Ain t nothing in it right Did she pay you in advance or is she waiting for you to finish me off Daniels pondered a moment peered into the desperate eyes of a fellow human being contemplated the obligation of all mankind to be responsible for all mankind the true meaning of brotherhood mercy and love and finally decided that if he were to relieve Raisin s doubts it might be whole seconds before he could get back to his flask of tequila. Yes Barney said with finality. It was poisoned. Oh Lordie Lord Raisin s hands clutched around his throat. And I m going to sit right here and die with you Barney said thumping on the rotted wood of the pier. The perfect murder suicide. Calder Raisin ran off into the night up the length of the pier and deep into the shadows behind. But it was only a matter of seconds after Raisin scurried away until Barney heard a thud and then the whooshing of air a man makes when his lungs are collapsing and then a small moan. And another thud. Then they were on him around him behind him hundreds of them it seemed. Then Barney felt the sharp searing pain acid 90 pain oh beautiful numbing terrible shaking pain. Frantic footsteps tore away into the blackness. Barney felt beneath his shoulder blades for the wounds. Just a little oozing dampness from all three cuts. He had not lost much blood but oh God the pain. Barney leaned against a dock support fought to bring air into his lungs then staggered up the ramp like a drunk. And then he thought he saw her again. Once again as though she had never gone. Denise he whispered. Her face was in front of him again and she was smiling and the smell of her was on him warm and giving and forever before she began to fade again into the black sea and the fetid air of the harbor. Denise he called into the cold wind. But she was gone. Again. He fell. And then there was blackness the blackness for which he was grateful after an endless lifetime of waiting. CHAPTER EIGHT When Gloria X entered her house in East Harlem Malcolm was not at the door to greet her. He was inside at the base of the stairwell his neck broken so that Ms head joined his massive body at a perfect right angle. Surrounding him and leading up 91 the stairs were the corpses of six other Peaches of Mecca their arms and legs splayed over the steps like broken dolls their blue edged knives glinting beside them. Silently she pulled a small revolver out of her pursue and followed the trail of bodies up to her bedroom. The door was open. She listened. Nothing. Slowly she stepped inside her revolver steady in her outstretched hand positioned low for firing. There was no one in the room. She circled it once careful to keep one eye on the doorway. No one. Not a sound. Then he came through the window as suddenly as a breeze and the gun left her hand and soared out of reach as Remo clasped her wrists together behind her with one hand and held her throat with the other. Where is he he said quietly. I haven t got much time. She closed her eyes with a shudder. Remo squeezed. Barney Daniels he said pressing the veins in her. neck. I know you ve sent him out to kill Calder Raisin. Where are they I don t know who you re talking about she said levelly. I never heard of him. And I don t know anything about Cald Remo s grip tightened until her eyes bulged. You have three seconds he said. Her tongue began to ease out of her mouth encircled by white foam. One Remo said. If you faint first I ll kill you anyway. Two. At the pier she croaked. Remo softened the pressure slightly. The abandoned pier at Battery Park near the Staten Island Ferry. 92 Good girl. Remo took his hand away and threw her into a corner of the room as if he were tossing a wet washrag. She spun around on her knees. Crouched on all fours she raised her head and laughed like a mad dog her hate filled eyes glistening. You ll be too late she spat her voice still gravelly. Raisin s dead by now. And so s your friend. Then I ll be back Remo said coldly. He found Raisin first crumpled in a heap with his head bashed into bloody mush. On the pier the silhouette of Daniels s body doubled over stood out starkly against the horizon. There was an odd smell about him as Remo rolled him over to look at the knife wounds in his back. A familiar smell but faint in the musky night air of the waterfront. Remo held two fingers to Barney s temple. The weakest trace of a pulse remained. Then he spotted the knife. Still holding Barney he picked it up. Toward the base of the blade a blue stain shone in the moonlight. Remo lifted it near his face. Curare. That was the blue on the knives of the well dressed black men around Gloria s house. This was the scent they carried. The pulse was fading fast. Too late for a doctor. Too late for anything now. Looks like your last binge sweetheart Remo said to the unconscious form in his arms. He picked up Barney s silver flask lying on its side a few feet away and knew it didn t matter any more. Have a drink buddy. He raised the flask carefully to Barney s parched lips. He would wait with him until the end came. He would wait because he knew that one day it would 93 be Remo lying alone on a pier or in a street or behind a building in some place where he would be a stranger since their kind were always strangers. He would wait because when that day came perhaps there would be someone a casual passerby maybe or a drunken derelict who made his home nearby who would hold him as he now held Barney Daniels and who would offer him the warmth of human contact before he left his life as he had lived it. Alone. Barney s lips accepted the last of the alcohol. He stirred. One hand moved slowly toward Remo s and clasped it weakly. Doc Barney said so softly that normal ears could not have heard it Barney Remo asked surprised at the restorative powers of the drink. Wait here. I ll get a doctor. Listen Barney said his face contorted with the effort. Remo leaned closer. Barney whispered a telephone number. Remo left him on the pier as he ran into Battery Park to reach a pay phone. Jackson a man s bass voice answered. Remo gave the man directions to the pier then went back to Barney whose breathing was so labored that even in the chilly night drops of sweat dotted his upper lip and forehead. Hang on Remo said. Doc s coming. Thanks . . . friend Barney said the muscles in his neck straining. As the gray Mercury skidded to a halt by the pier Barney s head dropped backward and he slumped unconscious again in Remo s arms. A tall black man elegantly dressed approached them with a stride faster than most men s at a full 94 run. I m Doc Jackson he said with authority. Get him in the car. I don t think he s going to make it Remo said. I don t care what you think Doc answered his lips tightened in grim determination as they sped away. Behind them rolling to a stop at the pier Remo could see the flashing red lights of police and emergency vehicles and the carry all vans of New York s television stations. CHAPTER NINE Robert Hansen Jackson was born on a little island off the Carolinas in 1917. His father ran the only hotel there. His mother was a seamstress. Your daddy can read Robert. He s a man his mother would say often. And then she would tell him about the Blessed Virgin and say the rosary and make him say it with her. Robert Jackson would move his mouth and pray that the session would soon be over. One day his mother told him that the Spanish priest would leave the island because San Sendro was now an American possession. It had been for years since what she called the big war over Cuba but now they would be getting an American priest because San Sendro had belatedly become part of the Archdiocese of Charleston. 95 The island turned out with bright banners and cleanest dresses and shirts for the American priest. Robert s father was to give the welcoming address. The mayor would present a silver bowl of newly picked fruit. The mayor s wife and the town s leading ladies including Robert s mother because she was married to a man who could read would escort the Americano priest to Maria de Dolores Church. Everyone had a part in the welcome even little Robert. He and seven other boys four on each side would push open the doors as the priest entered the church. Father Francis X. Duffy seemed impressed with his greeting. That s what everyone said. He said it was the most welcome greeting he had ever seen. Then Father Duffy who had been born in Myrtle Beach South Carolina gave the island some Americanizing. He told them San Sendro was now part of the land of the free and the home of the brave. And he proved it by establishing another church St. Augustine s and made all the dark skinned people go there. That was when Robert discovered he was a Negro. Father Duffy told him so. San Sendro had been wallowing for decades in Spanish decadence unaware of the importance of racial purity. One of Father Duffy s earliest and most difficult tasks in setting this straight was to determine who was black and who was not. In their backwardness the people had failed to sustain the purity of their blood lines. But Father Duffy kept at it. Church registration dwindled not only from the newly discovered Negroes but from whites too. Still Father Duffy persevered. And by 96 the time of his death a visitor couldn t tell the difference between San Sendro and Charleston. He knew he had done right even though some meddling foreign priests expressed surprise. The previous pastor whom Father Duffy suspected of having Negro blood himself cried when he saw his island again. He cried before the altar and he cried while saying mass. And he cried when he tried to tell Father Duffy that what he was doing was wrong. Father Duffy so lost his temper that he called Father Gonzalez a nigger. Then making an act of contrition he apologized to Father Gonzalez the next day. You need not apologize to me Father Gonzalez answered. In this parish in your world if I had a choice I would be nothing but a nigger. For I tell you if your world should prevail and if it were bound in heaven as it is on earth in separation of people by the color of their skins then I would dread the last judgment if I had lived my life in a white skin. You have done more than separate people. You have decided who can be rich and powerful and who must be poor. And I tell you just as it is difficult for a rich man to enter heaven so will it be for a white man in your parish. It would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. I do not pray so much for the blacks here. I pray for the whites. And I pray most of all and I weep for you Father Duffy. The trouble with some priests Father Duffy thought is that they take things too literally. They might as well become Baptists if they weren t going to use their reason. 97 Robert Hansen Jackson used his reason. He never set foot in a Catholic church again. His mother however continued to pray the rosary and attend mass even when St. Augustine s Church showed a leak in the roof. She sat beneath the dripping water in the church calling it God s sweet rain and the holiest water of all. And when she died she was buried in the new Negro cemetery never having missed mass a day in her life. Robert Jackson left the island. He was fourteen. He floated around the Charleston docks for a year but breaking his back for survival was not his game. One night by himself he climbed into a window of a doctor s office where he knew a large supply of morphine was kept. He could sell it big in New Orleans while the police would undoubtedly look for a black man traveling north. He was caught. An elderly white man with a pistol interrupted the thrust of a bottle into Robert s brown paper bag. He did it with a bullet. Then he moved Robert to a table turned on the lights and proceeded to remove the bullet. Why are you taking it out Robert asked. If you leave it in there d be one less nigger to dirty up your world. If I don t take it out said the doctor there d be one more doctor who has violated the Hippocratic oath. That Greek guy huh That Greek guy. Well I ve seen it all now said Robert who suddenly discovered he would live. A white man who does what he says he believes in. Wowee. Oh boy. I gotta tell this to the folks. He made obscene noises. 98 We re no worse than any other race the doctor said evenly. And better than mine right You think you re better than me don t you Not necessarily. But for the sake of what I know I ll say yes. Thought you would Robert sneered. You were stealing from me not me from you. Robert straightened up. Okay. I ll buy that Doc. But why was I stealing from you Because you had what I wanted. Why did you have it And not me Because I m black that s why. I had morphine in my possession because I m a doctor. You obviously wanted it to sell. Your body has no needle marks. Well why ain t I a doctor Because you never went to school to become a doctor. And don t say ain t. Well why didn t I get to school to be a doctor Because you never applied I imagine. Bullshit. Schools stink. I never applied because I never had the money. And if I did have the money I wouldn t spend it on any damn doctor s school because a black doctor is just as poor as a black lawyer or a black anything else. Lie still. You re opening the wound. I m opening a lot more Robert said. Now I m the smartest toughest guy I know. And I know I could be a better doctor than you. That is if my skin was white. Is that so the doctor said smiling so small a show of amusement that Robert had never felt more insulted not even when some people called him boy. Yes that s so. You just give me one of your 99 fancy medical books and I ll show you. That green one up there on the top shelf. Turn my back on you son With that scalpel you re hiding under your shirt Robert glared. Give it back handle first. That s the right way. Offering a scalpel the correct way was the first thing Robert Hansen Jackson learned about medicine. The second was that the green book contained a lot of words that didn t make sense. The third was that with a little bit of explanation they did. The doctor was so impressed that he did not surrender Robert to the police. Robert was so grateful that he hid only one bottle of morphine in his trousers when he left just enough for money to get to New York where he expanded his drug distribution long enough for him to be the first Negro to graduate from the Manhattan School of Medicine the first Negro to practice at the Manhattan General Hospital the first Negro to have an operational procedure concerned with the suturing of blood vessels accepted nationally. That he was simply the first doctor to have invented the process was hardly mentioned. By the time World War II blossomed into American participation he was tired of being the first Negro. He didn t wait for the draft. He volunteered. Not because he cared which white nation won the war but because it gave him an excellent conscience salving excuse to leave his wife and other people who were ashamed of being born black. His perfect knowledge of Spanish the language of his childhood his knowledge of medicine especially surgery got him rank in the young OSS. And he stayed on into the years of the cold war. The color of his skin got him to South America 100 where he could blend in with other brilliant Negro surgeons namely none. Doc Jackson didn t blend least of all where there was an absence of medical brilliance of any variety black or white. He stood out as he had stood out all his life as the best damned man around. For four months once on a jungle assignment in Brazil designed to make contact with a primitive tribe and show them as one of the chiefs put it the white man s medicine and let them know where favors come from Doc was struck with a comparatively sensitive agent with an extraordinary ability to care about what happened to people including himself. Other than that Bernard C. Daniels was sober industrious and conscientious as well as reliably and thoroughly sneaky. He was white. It was dislike at first sight. Then it became hatred. Then grudging tolerance and finally the only friendship Doc Jackson ever had in his life. When Daniels finally left military service so did Jackson leaving behind them scores of dead bodies of men who had interfered with their missions. Doc picked up a few routine and boring threads of his past establishing a clinic in Harlem because he was tired lest he become the first Negro again. Daniels joined the CIA. Doc heard from him only once in a letter brimming with happiness announcing his impending marriage. He did not hear from Daniels again even though he had mailed him his phone number and address several times after reading about Barney s bizarre turnaround on the island of Hispania. He had wanted to see Barney to visit his house in Weehawken and force his friendship back on a man who needed a friend. But Jackson would not force 101 Barney to lean on him. He respected his own privacy too much to invade another s especially that of a man as lonely and troubled as Barney Daniels. When Barney needed him he would call. And when that call came from a stranger saying that Barney was dying from curare poisoning on an abandoned pier in the dead of night Doc Jackson was ready. CHAPTER TEN Barney s peaceful death was shattered suddenly by blinding lights and nausea. Throbbing nails in the skull. Pain pins in the chest. Breathing hard. So hard. Breathe Barney damn it you drunken Irish son of a bitch. The voice was harsh. Two strong hands worked over him. His mouth tasted of salt. That was a curare depressant. Had he been slashed with curare Where would anyone up here get curare Was the past following him Auca. Inca. Maya. Jivaro. Who still existed Who used curare Agony behind his pupils. Both arms numb. No not numb Barney realized as he faded into semi consciousness. His arms were strapped down. So were his legs. Was he back Was it the hut in the jungle again the poker glowing in the fire at the center the 102 machete poised above him his arms and legs tied with hemp Or had he never left Would it never end Breathe damn it. The machete It was coming down slowly now into his arm. He tried to focus. Not a machete. A tube a tube from above sliding painlessly into his left arm. Then he saw Doc Jackson s face perspiring and mad the high black cheekbones the deepset dark eyes the rising forehead and short kinky hair. A face without fat just taut hard skin with thick lips now grown tight and hard and cursing. Damn you you fucker breathe I said. Doc Barney wondered. How did Doc find the hut in the middle of the jungle He d left long before. Did he come back just to save him The hands worked on his chest as the tube in Barney s arm replaced the poisoned blood in his body with fresh. Barney Doc s voice commanded. Barney make yourself breathe. Force it. He beat down hard on Barney s chest. Barney opened his mouth to scream when the pain like cymbals in a tunnel banged through him to the tips of his fingers. Good Doc said relieved. You know you re alive when you feel pain. That s the only way you know. Dumb bastard. Don t talk. Just keep breathing. Doc Barney said. Shut up you stupid fuck. Breathe hard. Doc. Denise is dead. I know that. This isn t Hispania. You re in Harlem. In my clinic. She s dead Doc. 103 Keep breathing. Barney breathed. And Doc Jackson s face disappeared into the lights above and Barney smelled hospital smells and then it was the smell of the Puerta del Rey waterfront like a sewer beneath the sun fermenting. How can you be here Was Barney talking Was Doc answering Who was answering Keep breathing. It was Denise who was talking. Oh what a beautiful sunny day. What bright colors the women beneath the window were wearing. Oh how beautiful if you could forget the smell which you did when you had been there long enough and didn t think about it. The whole country knows why you re here Barney she said in her pleasant sing song way. Barney leaned against the window sipping a cup of rich black coffee. His hair was touseled and he wore a pair of striped undershorts and a shoulder holster with a long barrelled .38 police special. He waited to look around because he knew that when he did his heart would jump and he would want to sing when he saw her again. He was so happy he could have blown his brains out. He had stalled headquarters for three weeks to stay in Puerta del Rey after a routine assignment was finished. It had to do with shipping and the CIA had flooded the area taking no pains to disguise its presence. El Presidente Caro De Culo the dictator of record had been served notice not to interfere with banana shipments. De Culo had received the notice responded favorably and the surface network of the CIA left the island with as much ostentation as it had arrived. Not Barney. He had concocted a tale about a fic 104 titious group seeking to overthrow De Culo and the CIA left him there for a report. When the report was completed he was to leave. The report story had kept him afloat in Hispania for three weeks now. Three beautiful glorious weeks. The whole country knows what you re doing Barney. You haven t bothered to keep it much of a secret. Some people said Denise had a raspy voice but they didn t really appreciate the soft timbre tones flowing from her exquisite throat. They didn t know Denise. Early on the regular assignment Barney had been detailed to escort the vice president of a large American fruit shipping firm to a plush brothel and see that he returned with most of his money. More important he had been told was to see that the executive didn t get carried away with the little leather whip he liked to use. Mainly it had been an assignment to smooth over whatever wrath the executive s perversions incurred. It was not a pleasant assignment. But it was not a pleasant business. And the executive was a major figure in the banana triangle. So Barney had brought him to the house had whispered a word of caution in the right places and the right girl followed the executive up a red carpeted stairway. And then for the first tune he had heard De nise s voice. Don t you want someone She was beautiful breathtakingly beautiful even though she dressed herself plainly almost as though to hide her ripe shapely body. And her face. Unadorned by makeup or jewelry it possessed all of the finest features of every race on earth blended together in unobtrusive perfection. 105 Her eyes were faintly almond shaped colored light gray with sparks of blue and brown. Her skin was golden slightly darker than Arabia but lighter than Africa. It hinted of sunlight and moonlight at the same time of Europe and the Orient. There was Indian in her too apparent by her prominent strong bones and shapely lips red and full and curving playfully at the corners. She repeated her question almost taunting. Don t you want someone Barney looked at her let his gaze rise from her neat red leather shoes up the bare legs across the simple knit dress and met her eyes. He smiled. No nothing. I m here on business. What is your business she asked. Looking out after perverts like the one upstairs. Yes we know him. There is no worry. The girl can take care of herself. She is very well paid. There is no need for you to wait here disturbing the other guests. I m not leaving without him. I could have you thrown out. But I know you people would come back. Everyone knows your organization is here in numbers. Why don t you take one of the rooms upstairs I don t want one of the rooms upstairs. Her smile of gentle condescension did something to Barney s gut. Well agent whoever you are there really isn t too much I can do to stop you from standing here in the middle of the reception room and annoying the guests. Would you care for something to drink while you re ruining my business Barney shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. The other island girls he had known were different giggling pretty birds who teased and played 106 and fluttered away. This one had a strength that unnerved him. It filled the room. It commanded. The bar is behind the staircase. I ll have coffee. Where s the kitchen I ll make it. Come with me. They walked through a door into the rear of the building. Two uniformed maids playing cards suddenly jumped from their chairs and erupted in a geyser of excited and nervous Spanish. They re not used to seeing me here Denise said. Neither was the cook who spilled hot soup on himself or a busboy who almost dropped a tray. Leave us alone she said quietly and the kitchen became vacant hi an instant. I hate agents policemen assassins extortionists soldiers and pimps she said. She made the coffee from fresh ground beans in a copper pot. Barney sat on a cutting board dangling his legs feeling his butt getting moist from recently butchered meat. He didn t care. He was watching Denise. For some reason the sight of this woman making coffee was more thrilling to Barney than a forty girl chorus line of nude beauties. You know I don t find you at all attractive she said. You don t appeal to me either. Then they laughed. Then she served the coffee. They talked a lot that night Denise about the financial problems of payoffs the difficulty she had in selecting bed partners Barney about the boredom of his business only kept interesting by its stakes his success with women which somehow was never success and the state of Hispania which neither of them cared very much about. With the dawn Barney left to escort the executive to a hotel and then a conference. They walked 107 through streets of almost naked children. One drop of nigger blood the executive said and it destroys a race. I guess they become perverts Barney said. He could see the executive contemplating a complaint to his superiors. He returned to the whorehouse and Denise Sara vena for three beautiful weeks. One night she said: Barney I want your baby. I could have it if I wanted without telling you. But I want you to know when we make love that I m trying to conceive your child. Barney didn t know why he couldn t speak. He tried to say something anything but all he could do was cry and tell her that he could never be a father to her baby because he wasn t going to be around much longer. He wanted their baby to have a father. Then Barney said that they were going to get married very soon because he did not want to do it without marriage anymore. She laughed and told him he was romantic and foolish and lovely but no marriage was impractical. Barney told her she was right it would be highly impractical and that they wouldn t make love any more until they were married. Denise pretended to think this was very funny that he sounded like a young girl waiting for a ring. That night she tried to seduce him as a game. It did not work. The next day they knelt before a priest in a small church near the American embassy and became husband and wife. So he found himself standing near a window on a bright morning dressed in shorts and a shoulder holster listening to the magnificent words of his complaining wife and loving every minute of it. 108 They all know we re married Barney. Everyone does. Sooner or later even the CIA will find out. Barney had savored the pleasure of gazing upon Mrs. Denise Daniels long enough that day. With a firm pirouette he wheeled to embrace his wife and still holding his coffee kissed her. Morning mouths and all it was wonderful. Darling she said escaping long enough from his lips to talk I know this country. The moment you are without your country s protection President De Culo and his gang will close on you. Darling listen to me she urged as he waved her worries aside like so many annoying flies. He permitted your interference with the banana shipments only because he had no choice. This regime does not wish to be under American influence. De Culo rose to power from nothing by offering money and food to his army. American money. Denise shook her head. For one so intelligent my darling sometimes you look no further than your own CIA does. The money De Culo uses now for his army is American money. Some of it. Barney screwed up his face. What are you talking about Some of the money is American she repeated quietly. Not all. What the United States cannot understand is that no population on earth outside of the American people require so much money for minimal subsistence. What you Americans call poor is colossal wealth for us and for every other people in the world. De Culo s money from the American government is a far greater amount than what is needed for the maintenance of his troops and certainly more than necessary for De Culo s civil programs since he gives nothing to the people 109 to keep them from starving. All the money goes to the army. And there is more much more. Like what Ammunition. Arms. Guns grenades food supplies. They are all stored underground deep in the jungle. I know these things Barney. My girls tell me. They are offered many presents in the course of a drunken evening with De Culo s swaggering officers most of whom were starving and ragged as the rest of us before De Culo s mysterious appearance with enough money to organize an army and take over the government. We don t give arms to Hispania. No you do not. You give money. De Culo buys the arms with American money. His general Robar Estomago makes the arrangements with the Russians. But there aren t any Russian installations here Barney said stupidly. No treaties no pacts . . . Denise smiled and shook her head. No there are no official agreements with the Russians she said sadly. De Culo could not get the American money if there were. Hispania is too small and poor a country to be considered dangerous by the powerful United States. And so your CIA never looked for the Russian installation. And never saw the Russian guns. They have been well hidden. Your people wanted only to see the banana shipments and so you saw bananas only. Jesus Barney whispered. I suppose De Culo s original money to start his army came from the Russians. Of course. And your government which views Hispania as harmless and impoverished viewed what they saw of De Culo s ragged little army without uniforms and made up of the village poor as a 110 feeble attempt at pride. They did not see the guns. They did not even look at a map. She walked over to a battered cypress wood chest in the corner of the room and took from it a world map its creases worn to holes from folding and refolding. She opened it flat on the table in front of Barney. On the map was drawn a network of fine red lines originating from Moscow and fanning out into the Middle East Europe Asia and South America with a separate series of blue lines to Cuba. From Cuba other blue lines emanated toward Puerta del Rey. Barney sucked in his breath as he traced each line from Moscow to known Russian military installations around the globe. Although there were no codes on the map there could be no mistaking the meaning of the lines. Broken red lines to France and Italy indicated peace treaties and possible allies in the event of full scale nuclear war. Broken blue lines leading to strategically advantageous areas in the Middle East had to mean possible installations or partially completed installations in countries where the Russian army could seize the government by force when it decided to. Iran was a broken blue line. So was Afganistan. And so was Hispania. But the most prominent line on the map was a hand drawn wobbling drunken line orignating with a small ink blob on an uninhabited jungle border of Hispania no more than three hours on foot from the spot where Barney and Denise were sitting at that very moment and leading directly on a straight course over Cuba to Washington D.C. I took this from one of the girls here Denise said. General Estomago s favorite. It had fallen under the bed. I found it after they had both left the room. The next day one of Estomago s men came 111 around to ask if I had found a map outlining potential banana routes. Estomago must have thought I was stupid. Hispania has no reason to ship bananas to Cuba. This is a military map Barney said. Some of this information is so classified that the CIA doesn t even have it on file yet. Denise nodded. Yes that line to Hispania is new. And so is that line from Hispania to Washington. You know what it means Barney said. Yes. It means that the Russians have waited for the right time and now have built a military installation on Hispania. A nuclear installation which they will unveil at the right moment and use to intimidate the United States. El presidente De Culo and General Estomago have been working on this for two years. Everybody knows about it. Barney fingered the old map. If everybody on this island knows about the Russian installation why hasn t any word leaked out by now Denise sighed. You still do not understand she said. Hispania is a poor country. We do not care whether the Russians control our bananas or the Americans control our bananas. Whoever is on the dicator s throne at the moment will see to it that we do not get money for our bananas anyway no matter what country he is allied with. We do not care about politics because we are hungry. De Culo is a wicked man but every dictator who has come to govern Hispania has been a wicked man. He is no more wicked than the rest. And in his army he feeds many of the young men of our villages. These are men whose families would starve were it not for the scraps of American and Russian food supplies which they are able to steal and bring home to their 112 people. It is the only way we live. No we will not talk about the Russian installation. Starvation of our entire country is too high a price to pay for one conversation with a drunken American ambassador. You said Estomago has a favorite girl here Barney said. Who is she She is a strange one. An American. I do not trust her. Why d you take her on Estomago told me that I was to give her shelter and employment to customers of his choosing. She is not a regular working girl here. She is only for Estomago. And for others whom he selects. Like who The most prominent of your CIA men usually. At first I thought she was a CIA agent herself but I do not believe that is so. Her hatred for America is very deep. She slashed a young American visitor with a knife once. An agent No. Fortunately he was a runaway soldier from the American army so I was able to cover up the incident. But the girl is vicious. I dismissed her after the stabbing but Estomago insisted that I take her back. He said he would close my house if I didn t. So she remains. I want to talk to her Barney said rushing to throw on a shirt and a pair of pants. I want to see her right now. Be careful darling Denise warned. She is Es tomago s woman. And you are already being watched here since you are the last American agent on the island. If she suspects that you know anything Estomago will kill you. Tell her I m on my last fling before heading home to the bad old USA. 113 But she must know that we re married. That s perfect. Say you married me to get a passport out of this stinkhole and you ll be leaving with me just as soon as I have my fill of young poon tang. Denise led him upstairs to the girl s room. The door was closed. She is very private she said. This one never chats with the other girls or even dines with us. Always alone. She rapped sharply on the door. After a few minutes it was opened by a young platinum haired thin faced girl dressed all in white her thin lips stretched taut against her teeth to resemble a skull. Yes she drawled sullenly the hint of the American South drawing out her word. I have a visitor for you Denise said crisply. The girl turned her back on them and walked wordlessly toward the bed unbuttoning her blouse. Denise closed the door behind her as she left. What s your name Barney asked still standing inside the door his hands in his pockets. Gloria the girl said with a bored half yawn. Come on. Get this over with. Gloria what Sweeney the blonde said. You come here to talk or screw 114 CHAPTER ELEVEN Barney Daniels s arm jerked upward with such force that it shredded the gauze wrapping which held it to the I.V. board bolted to the side of the bed. The lone nurse monitoring the small section of the clinic rushed over. She pressed a button over the bed that rang a bell in Dr. Jackson s office. It s Barney Jackson said to Remo as he took off at a run. Let me talk to him Doc. If he s conscious I want to talk to him. I don t want you aggravating my patient with any CIA bullshit Jackson said as he burst through the double doors into Barney s room. Thrashing under the hands of the nurse his plastic bag of plasma jiggling precariously above him Barney Daniels screamed. It was an unconscious scream wild and frightened. The map he shrieked his voice breaking. The map. The night nurse watched the video monitors frantically as Barney s life signals peaked in jagged uneven mountains. There there she said uncertainly. Move aside Jackson said as he approached the 115 bed. Nurse prepare two hundred thousand CC s of thorazine on the double. He grabbed Barney by both flailing arms. Settle down Barney. It s Doc. I m here. The map Barney shrieked. Shut up I said The nurse swung around to retie the gauze strips around Barney s arms as Doc s hands held them in place. Barney s hospital gown was drenched with sweat. His hair was matted with it and it poured down his face in shiny streams. He s undergoing some kind of intense mental activity the nurse said. It s almost like a pentathol reaction. It s the curare Jackson said as he accepted the needle from the nurse. No Doc Barney panted his eyes rolling. Listen to me. Listen . . . liss . . . He forced his eyes to work. Let him talk Remo said. He could tell us something important. Jackson looked over to Remo his hypodermic poised in the air. All right he said. Go ahead. Remo touched Barney s arm. The map Barney. Map he croaked. What map Gloria s map. He licked his cracked lips slowly. Gloria s apartment. The mosque. Gloria in His pania. He smiled slowly his eyes closing. I remembered Doc. You re better off forgetting all that Barney Jackson said quietly. Whatever it was it hasn t done you any good. I ... remembered. 116 Who is Gloria Remo asked. What s her name Gloria . . . Jackson checked the monitor. Its lines were still peaking dangerously. Gloria who That s enough Jackson said. He s going to go into shock if you don t stop. He moved forward to press the needle into Barney s intravenous tube. Gloria . . . Barney s chest heaved. His nose ran. Tears streamed from his eyes. She was one of them Doc. She helped kill Denise. He sobbed. Jackson shot the last of the hypodermic into the tube. It ll just take a second Barney. Gloria who Remo demanded. Get out of here Jackson raged. The nurse tugged at Remo s arm. He didn t move. Gloria . . . The drug started to take effect. Barney s muscles relaxed. The monitor began to resume its normal wave pattern. Got to tell him a voice deep inside Barney prodded. Tell Doc. Try. Try for Denise. Sw Sw Barney whispered. It was so hard to move his lips. So hard. Swimming so low circling the bottom . . . Don t talk Jackson said. Tell him for Denise. If you die she deserves that much. Sweeney he gasped hearing his own voice so far away that it sounded like an echo. Then he gathered together all the strength in his body and tried again. Sweeney he shouted so that Doc could hear him so the world could hear so that even Denise or what was left of her in her unmarked grave could hear. 117 Sweeney he screamed again as if by pronouncing the name he could expiate all the sins of the past and return to that time in his wife s kitchen when the sun was shining and the world was beautiful. Then the thorazine took over and he was back. The installation had been carved out of mountain rock lined with lights floored with tile heated by a vast steam system and camouflaged by the exterior of the mountain. The Russians had planted a new forest of trees in layers surrounding the entrance to cover the traces made while constructing the site. There was no road however since all of the equipment used for setting up the installation had been carefully hauled in by sea. It was a magnificent station and undiscoverable. Mother of God Barney whispered as he snapped a roll of film. He and Denise sat crouched in the jungle forest in front of the brilliantly illuminated installation where hundreds of Hispanian and Cuban soldiers worked. Now that you have seen it for yourself we must leave quickly Denise said. It is very dangerous for us to remain here. Barney looked at the sun licking through the trees above their heads. It s hard to believe that this little island has the capability to blow up half the world he said almost to himself. But of course these bombs never will have to be used Denise said. Barney nodded. He understood well what she meant. For years America had maintained a rough equivalence with the Soviets in nuclear might and by this standoff had maintained an uneasy peace in 118 the world. Each side knew that it faced almost total annihilation in the event of war. There had been an unspoken agreement between the superpowers not to try to expand their nuclear influence into areas where they had no real geographical or historical stake. The Russian attempt to move missiles into Cuba was a flagrant violation of this rule and President Kennedy had backed the Russians down. But times had changed. Kennedy had owned the military muscle to force the Russians to blink. Too many years of a White House that thought America could be guarded by good intentions had since reduced the country to a poor also ran in the military might department and there would be no forcing this installation out of Hispania just by words. It would stay there. And the balance of power in the world would forever have shifted. Missiles could be launched from Hispania anywhere in the United States or Caribbean and the Russians could say Who Us We didn t do it. Hispania did it on its own and an American president faced with an inadequate arsenal of his own would have to decide: would he attack Russia in retaliation knowing that the result would be the United States destruction And so Russia would have conquered the world. Without a shot. Come Denise said to Barney. Taking him by the hand she led him through the tangle of jungle rain forest toward their home in Puerta de Rey. Just as the two of them were approaching the outskirts of the lush steaming jungle silent but for the screams of exotic birds and chattering monkey noises from the heights of the tall banana trees Barney whirled around managing in one swift motion to knock Denise to the soft ground 119 with one hand while drawing his .38 with the other. Don t fire Denise hissed clutching at his shirt. One sound and they will kill us without question. Barney wasn t listening to her. His ears were trained on another sound a soft rustling of leaves a third set of footfalls. He had heard it only momentarily but to Barney s well honed senses once was enough verification. He stalked. Barney no Denise called to him trying to keep her voice at a whisper. It is almost dawn. Someone will see us returning. De Culo s men will report us. Come she pleaded. Please. There was no one in the immediate vicinity although Barney knew that the dense water laden earth and the starless night could twist and change sounds like a ventriloquist so that you couldn t pinpoint a noise with any exactitude no matter how carefully you listened. For all he knew the vague rustling of heavy leaves he heard could have originated a mile or more away. As he stood helplessly listening for another noise Denise came over to him her eyes sad and frightened her legs and patterned skirt smeared with black mud. She put her hand on his arm. Let us go my husband she said. Before it is too late. Reluctantly Barney replaced his pistol hi its holster and followed her out. Then deep in the jungle a voice sighed a tangle of rubber plants rustled freely a small white hand wiped a band of beaded perspiration from beneath a white blonde brow and then Gloria was running in a straight familiar course toward the gleaming mouth of the mountain installation. Safe again in her kitchen with the dawn pouring through the wavy glass of the windows like a rain 120 bow Denise wrapped her arms around her husband and kissed him on his mouth. I am glad you came back with me she said smiling. I was afraid for a moment that our son would be without a father before he was even born. Barney felt his heartbeat skip. Our son he asked quietly. She took his hand and led it lovingly to her belly. It was still taut but when Barney looked into her eyes he could see that they were glowing and full of promise and new life. Denise he said laughing as he picked her up in his arms like a doll and twirled her around the room. Oh Denise. I didn t think I could ever love you more than I did yesterday morning. Now I love you twice as much. He is still so tiny she said kissing his neck as a tear slid down her cheek and into her mouth. Then she laughed. Oh look at us kissing like two street beggars. We are as dirty as the banana pickers during the big rains. You re the cleanest most perfect thing that s ever come into my life Barney said. And he led her to the bedroom they had shared for love many times before. He set her on the edge of the bed and knelt to kiss her face and unbuttoned her ruffled blouse. It fell off one shoulder. He brought his lips to her creamy golden skin and brushed them against her. This woman he thought so good so warm and ready all the woman he would ever want. This woman was his. He loved her then on the big squeaky bed this clean woman who carried his baby and would love him for all time. He loved her between her strong legs and counted himself among the richest men. 121 When they were finished and she lay flushed and satisfied in his arms he kissed her closed eyes and said Aren t you going to ask me what I did with the girl yesterday The blonde No. I am not going to ask. Afraid huh he teased. Not afraid. I knew you had business to do. You would not stop loving me for a whore. He pressed her hand in his. I couldn t stop loving you for anyone or anything he said. I couldn t if I tried. But I want you to know I didn t do anything with her. Why not she asked new worry lines creasing her face. Now she will be suspicious. Barney shrugged. I found out what I needed to know. Besides she was too repulsive. Something pale and snaky about her. He shuddered. I don t know. I just couldn t do it. It would have been like rubbing up against a disease. That was very stupid of you. You will have to leave Hispania immediately. Not without you I won t. I ve got to sell the business. To hell with the business. It s worth 20 000 American. To hell with 20 000 American. Oh you are so stupid Barney. Yeah Well I happen to think I m the smartest guy in the world. He tickled her. After all I ended up with you didn t I I think that qualifies me for some heavy honors. Barney she giggled. Stop that. I must be the smartest luckiest happiest guy who ever lived and you are coming with me to Washington tomorrow where I will turn in my picture and get a nice boring job that will keep me 122 alive long enough to see our son grown and making his own mistakes. How does that sound She hugged him hard. Barney she said her eyes flashing sparks of gold. What I will go. You better. You re my wife. I will make coffee. What for Get us packed. I ll go into town and make the arrangements. First we will have coffee she said. There were no beans for coffee in the kitchen. Forget the coffee Barney said. No. I will buy the beans. Send someone for them. No. I know the right beans. You re the most stubborn woman I ve ever met he said as she wrapped a light shawl around her shoulders. Are you sorry you married me my husband Barney smiled. No. I m not sorry. Then I will get the beans. Barney shook his head as she walked out the door. He set two cups on the table in preparation. He brought out two spoons. He poured milk into a colorful ceramic pitcher which Denise said her mother had given her. He spooned the brown coarse sugar into a thick bowl. He waited. An hour later he walked into the garden to pick an orchid for the table. He placed it in a miniature vase Denise had bought a few days before. He lit a cigarette. He waited. Within another hour Barney knew he would never see his wife again. Instead someone hurled a piece of her cotton 123 shawl torn and bloodied through the window. Smeared on the shawl was a small brownish red pulp. There was a note attached: This is your wife and child. The reddish pulp turned out to be tissue from Denise s uterus. Whoever had killed her had ripped open her belly to kill her baby. Barney s baby. With a scream of vengeance he worked his way through the house destroying everything in his path. He saved the blonde girl s room for last. She was not there. As punishment for her not being there Barney smashed every item in the room until every shred of furniture of clothing of glass was indistinguishable from every other. Then he began. He walked the streets quietly looking searching hoping no stranger would approach him to talk because he would kill anyone who came within killing distance of him. No one approached. He entered the rain forest. This time when the sound came he was ready. It was a clumsy sound deliberate. If Barney were thinking he would have known it was a trap. The sound had been too careless for a mistake. But the rage inside Barney heard the sound before his intellect did and his rage responded eagerly wantonly. He wanted to kill. He wanted to die. The first man to show himself a dark squat young man who teetered out of the bush hesitantly got a bullet square in the abdomen. The second caught one in the middle of his face. Barney s rage fed on it. The sight of the man s features exploding into a fountain of blood drove him forward wanting more. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a curved killing knife the kind the jungle natives carved from 124 gypsum found deep in a mountain s interior flying above him in an arc. He ducked and rolled at just the moment when it would have sliced off the top of his head and fired randomly into the bush. A wayward arm popped into view then dropped heavily to the ground with a dying scream. It rang out in the wet forest a fading echo that came from every direction and mingled with the frightened bird sounds before surrendering to the vacuum silence. He walked over to the nearest dead man who lay on his back an expression of benign surprise on his face. His stomach was covered with blood already congealing in the ferocious swampy heat. Barney kicked him. Silence. They were all dead. Only three men. Then he knew it was a trap. He could feel the eyes now dozens of them waiting in silence for Barney to empty the rest of his bullets into dispensable recruits. It was a trap but he didn t care. He fired three times into the air then tossed the revolver to the side. Come get me you bastards he called. Bastards . . . Bastards . . . Bastards the jungle echoed all around him. This is Bernard C. Daniels of the United States of America and I am going to kill your president so you had better come and take me to him he called in Spanish. Gladly a voice answered in English. A fat man gaudily dressed in a fairytale uniform of blue and gold and a feathered tricorn hat straightened his knees with great difficulty and rose from behind a eucalyptus tree. You will come with me Mr. Daniels of the Central Intelligence Agency he said. The officer snapped an order to the bushes and 125 trees around him and twenty odd men their bodies barely covered by ragged shards of cloth appeared from nowhere. They were all young men Barney noticed. Hungry men. They avoided his stare. Many of them had known Denise he guessed. But hunger is a greater motivation than friendship. He spat in the face of a young man who tied his wrists together with thick rope. The man said nothing. I curse your wife and child Barney said softly in Spanish. He could feel the man s hands trembling as he completed the knot. They will die as my wife has died. The man backed away fear gripping his features. Get him moving the officer ordered. Someone shoved Barney ahead. The man who had tied the rope around his wrists stood rooted to his spot shaking. You. Move the officer called. The man did not move. The officer drew a gigantic magnum from a holster strapped to his thigh and fired point blank at the young soldier. His chest opened up like a red smoking mouth as he was thrust backward by the force of the bullet his legs stretching out in front of him. The blast propelled his dying body into the ranks of the other soldiers. One screamed. The cursed one he screamed. I have been touched by the blood of the cursed one Quickly the other soldiers ran ahead leaving him isolated and panicked trying desperately to wipe the dead man s blood from his hands and chest. The officer fired another shot and dropped him in his tracks. Stupid jungle beasts the officer said. Move the prisoner along. Mumbling to one another soldiers guided Barney 126 to the mountain cave. At the entrance they dropped behind as the officer grabbed the rope around Barney s wrists and raised his magnum to Barney s temple. Blindfold him he commanded and a man rushed forward with a scrap of roughly woven cloth to tie around his eyes. Barney stumbled in darkness around the cave noting its enormous size from the distance of sounds inside. There was almost no human noise within the installation he noticed. Either none of the soldiers recruited from Puerta del Rey was permitted inside or the discipline of De Culo s army was tremendous. The noise all originated from machinery vast amounts of it some small and whirring some huge and powerful belching with the drone of earth movers. The place was still growing still making room for more equipment and ammunition ... or for something even bigger. He was shoved into a room to the left of all the noise where the air was drier and more welcoming. A door sealed precisely behind him. He was pushed downward into a hard wooden chair. The blindfold was removed. In front of him sat a small man behind a desk. His thin hair was combed forward in neoclassical curls. His uniform like that of the officer who brought Barney to this place was blue and white and of antique military design. Yards of gold braid adorned his epaulets. A jeweler s case of ancient military decorations gleamed across his chest. A silken banner of red white and blue slashed a diagonal line from shoulder to waist. On a table beside the desk rested an exact replica of Napoleon s battle headdress trimmed with ostrich plumes. As the slight round faced man rose from behind his massive desk he slid his right hand into the clo 127 sure of his coat just beneath the second button. He smiled his hard intelligent eyes sparkling. I am El Presidente Cara De Culo he said his neck craning to posture in an aristocratic profile. And this is General Robar Estomago chief of the Hispanian police. The general informs us that you seek audience. I m going to kill you pig Barney said. Said like a true American Mr. Daniels. In truth it is I who seek audience with you. I sincerely hope you will be able to spare a small amount of time to speak with me and my men about your shall we say activities in our island paradise. He opened a drawer of his desk and produced Barney s camera. He opened the back of it and extracted the film. I am given to understand that this contains photographs of this installation he said holding the roll daintily between forefinger and thumb. I am flattered that a representative of such a technologically advanced nation as yours would exhibit an interest in our small makeshift enterprise. However I regret to inform you that we are not yet prepared for publicity pictures. They would not convey the correct impression of the base. Dirt in the corners incomplete molding that sort of thing. You understand. Bad public relations. No unfortunately these cannot be shown to your friends in Washington. His smile froze on his face he yanked the film from its cylinder. Alas he said softly the pictures are spoiled. He swept the camera to the floor with a flick of his hand. Slowly De Culo circled his desk to stand in front of Barney. He folded his arms in front of him. He rested his chin on his fist. He stared into Barney s eyes. So you see he said in his quiet brooding voice now that the film you took has been de 128 stroyed the only evidence the world will have that our installation exists will be based on your testimony. I presume you intend to inform your superiors about the events of the past several days Mr. Daniels Go fuck yourself. I amend my question. I do not presume you will return to America with this information. In point of fact Mr. Daniels I do not believe you will return to America at all. If I may hazard a guess I predict that you will be quite dead in rather a short tune. He smiled again a chilling humorless smile. Or a longer time. That will be up to you. Of course my men will welcome the opportunity to converse with you first. We wish to know to what extent your government is aware of Hispania s relations to other world powers. He held up a hand quickly. Now Mr. Daniels I m sure you do not wish to be pressed on this matter so I would not think of asking you to reveal this information to me immediately. You will have ample opportunity as our guest to talk with us whenever you wish. In the corner General Robar Estomago snickered. Silence jackass De Culo hissed. The general snapped to attention. Before you retire to our guest room however I would like to tell you that we have been aware of your actions for some time. Through the initiative of General Estomago here we learned that you had probably seen a map detailing some information which was not for public perusal. We also knew about your photographic expedition here about your desire to leave the country. My my. The very walls have ears. We even knew about your pitiful little wedding to the village whore. Barney leapt to his feet You pig sucking mur 129 derer he screamed. Estomago knocked him into the chair again and pulled Barney s blindfold tight around his throat. I ll kill you he gurgled in spite of the pressure around his neck. De Culo laughed. The pressure eased. What have you done with my wife Barney demanded. De Culo shrugged. Why haven t you heard Mr. Daniels She met with a dreadful accident. The body Barney managed. Where is the body Nowhere special. A ditch perhaps or a swamp. Where she belongs. This time Barney moved before Estomago could restrain him. With one leap he hurled himself toward De Culo and placed an expert kick at his head. But the president ducked in time and took the blow in the meaty part of his back. Still it staggered him and he reeled crazily into the corner of the room. Barney didn t have another chance. Estoma go s magnum was drawn and lodged inside his mouth before he could rise from the spot on the floor where he had fallen. Take the American scum away De Culo said doubled over from the pain in his back. Estomago yanked Barney to his feet. Wait De Culo shouted as the two men reached the door. There is one more thing I wish to give our guest. A welcoming gift. His eyes vicious he stumbled over to the desk and threw open a drawer. I was saving this for later but I think that now would be perfectly appropriate. He reached deep into the drawer and pulled out something soft and ashen. He tossed it toward Barney. It hit him on the cheek feeling Mice a cold leather bag then dropped to the floor. 130 And there at his feet rested Denise s severed hand its thin gold wedding band still encircling the third finger. She wouldn t take the ring off De Culo spat. So we took it off for her. Get hinrout of my sight. Dazed Barney allowed himself to be dragged out of the room where De Culo s laughter grew louder and louder where the little hand with its cheap ring lay on the floor. She wouldn t take it off Barney said to himself as he felt himself being shoved into a small stone cell dripping with cave water. Two rats scurried into the corners at the intrusion. A solid door closed slowly and finally first narrowing the light to a thin line and then obliterating it. He sat on the cold stone floor in the darkness with the squealing of the rats behind him and thought only: She wouldn t take my ring off. CHAPTER TWELVE SWEENEY GLORIA P. B. 1955 BILOXI MISS. ATTENDANCE FARMINGTON CO. ELEMENTARY OCC: NONE 131 INCARCERATION: MISS. STATE PENITENTIARY 1973 76 SUB 1 INCARCERATION MANSLAUGHTER DEGREE 1 15 YRS. LIFE COMMUTED WHEN SUBJECT SUBMITTED TO VOLUNTARY WORK PROGRAM IN PUERTA DEL REY HIS PANIA 1978 Harold W. Smith stopped the printout. I think I ve found her he said into the phone. Hold on Remo. He keyed in: SUB 2 VOLUNTARY WORK PROGRAM PUERTA DEL REY. INSTITUTED 1978 BY ESTOMAGO GEN ROBAR S. CHIEF NATL SECURITY COUNCIL CURR. AMBASSADOR TO U.S. VOL. WORK PROGRAM FOR FEMALE PRISON INMATES IN LIEU OF MAXIMUM SENTENCE. NATURE OF WORK: DOMESTIC. NUMBER: 1978 47 1979 38 1980 39 That s odd Smith said stopping the machine. What s odd Remo asked. Look I don t have 132 all day to hang on the phone while you play tunes on your computer. There s still the business of De nise Daniels and some kind of map on Gloria Swee ney s wall and some mosque somewhere The mosque is at 128 26 West 114th Street Smith said. If Denise Daniels was Barney s wife that s nothing to worry about he muttered offhandedly. Just a personal matter. Naturally he would have been concerned by her death so he would have opened the envelope with the bomb in it since it carried her name on the return address. It was obviously intended for Daniels although Max Snodgrass beat him to it. But in itself this Denise Daniels is really . . . nothing . . . He trailed off as his eye caught the last line of the printout. Remo when Daniels was talking did he say anything about seeing a lot of American women on the island Only Gloria Sweeney. Funny. The CIA doesn t have any records about them either. According to this printout there are at least 120 female American prison inmates in Puerta delRey. I didn t know there were prisons in Puerta del Rey. I thought they shot criminals first and tried them later. That s not far from the truth Smith said. Nevertheless Gloria Sweeney was sent to Hispania as a prisoner serving a life sentence. She s back in the States now illegally. My guess is that she s involved with Estomago the Hispanian ambassador. Then why all the black freedom business and the Peaches of Mecca and all that And why did she have Calder Raisin killed And what about the map Daniels keeps hollering about 133 I have a theory or two but nothing substantial. You find that out Smith said. I have to scan some prison records. Remo What Be quick about it. He hung up. It could be nothing. All of the information gathered so far through Smith s records and Barney s delirious testimony might mean nothing more than that the leadership of a dissatisfied banana republic decided to make America uncomfortable by stirring up its black population. Just another case of the mouse chewing between the elephant s toes. But some of the printouts Smith had pulled from the CURE computer banks late the night before didn t sit well. Like the three bulletins from American air surveillance over the Atlantic confirming the presence of Russian freighters heading toward Cuba. Or the flutter of activity on banana boats between Hispania and Cuba. There had been too many incidences of Hispanian boats getting lost in Cuban waters for Smith to accept especially since neither Hispania nor Cuba needed to trade bananas with one another. There was nothing definite nothing to cause anything more than idle speculation on the part of Dr. Harold W. Smith. Idle speculation Smith repeated to himself as he keyed in the code for penitentiary inmate files. Still time should not be wasted. He made a point of ac celebrating his typing speed from forty words a minute to forty three. 134 CHAPTER THIRTEEN Barney was starving. Had it been a week A month No he reasoned with what was left of his reason. He couldn t go a month without food. One thing he knew for certain: his water was drugged. After his first screaming shaking experience with the water he tried to ignore the little metal pan that slid through a rubber opening onto a small shelf in his cave cell but when his thirst overcame him he drank. He took as little as possible to moisten his parched raw mouth and throat because he knew that after he drank he would have to submit to the dreams. Terrible dreams they were confusing nonsensical hallucinations that stabbed at his brain and burned it from inside. When they came he tried to remember Denise Denise in her kitchen Denise making coffee. Denise kept him alive through the dreams while he convulsed and retched and screamed. She watched him. She smiled. She comforted. It must be a month Barney thought as he dabbed one finger onto the surface of the water and carried the drop to his lips. The drug was less virulent at the top of the pan Barney learned if he let it sit. He 135 allowed himself no more than ten drops every time he drank and he drank as infrequently as possible. Still the dreams and nausea passed through him like air through a screen and there was nothing Barney could do except to summon the name of his dead wife. Denise he whispered. Help me. Light appeared. For the first time in the countless days of absolute darkness since he was first brought to his cell the door opened. The flash of high wattage interior lighting hurt his eyes. He shielded them. Come a voice said. So loud. It sounded like cannons to Barney s sound deprived ears. Hands groped for him on the cold slime of the floor. He tried to pull himself to his feet. He couldn t stand. Outside he curled himself into a tight ball to protect his eyes from the blinding light. A boot kicked him in the groin. Move. With the help of four men Barney stumbled through a vast empty sounding cave his eyes closed for fear of being blinded and out into the welcome darkness of the jungle. Barney heard the jungle teeming with noise. The flapping of birds wings. Their songs. The piercing wails of animals dying miles away. The rustle of salamanders on leaves fallen to the earth. The earth itself exploded with sound: the rush of wind from the ocean the music of moving water. And the smell. The wonderful smell of green things. The smell of life. Water he said. Agua. Agua. The young men escorting him turned to their commander a swarthy guerrilla in Cuban style fa 136 tigues and combat boots. He was the only one besides Barney who wore shoes Move the soldier repeated pushing Barney forward. For a moment Barney s eyes met those of a young barefoot recruit to his right. He was still a boy no more than sixteen. The boy s eyes were sad. They reminded him of Denise. Es nada Barney said to him. It is nothing. The jungle grew more dense until only an incidental patch of sky could be seen at the very tops of the trees. Ahead Barney spotted a small fire. It glowed like a coal in the darkness becoming brighter as the squadron dragged him toward it. The fire was in a thatched bamboo hut. Inside the hut a cot waited for Barney. His shoes were removed and he was tied down with hemp rope. The young recruit with the sad eyes stoked the fire. Why they felt Barney needed a fire in the sweltering heat of the jungle was beyond him. Then they left him alone. At nightfall the music of the jungle changed. The chattering beguine of the day birds gave way to the more somber dangerous rhythms of night. Night was for the screams of vultures the ravenous compaints of the big cats. It was at night that El Presidente Cara De Culo came to Barney. Fancy meeting you here Mr. Daniels he said smoothly. Isn t it a small world He waited for an answer. Barney could no longer speak. I see you re not feeling talkative this evening. Too bad. I was hoping your days of relaxation might prompt you to participate in a discussion of your country. Rather for old times sake you know. 137 After all someday soon it may not exist any more. Tsk tsk. Things come and they go don t they Mr. Daniels He sighed. Yes they come and they go. Just like your dear departed wife. Remember her The one who spread her legs for half the island Barney closed his eyes. Denise in the kitchen making coffee Denise smiling. She went so badly too De Culo said with mock concern. First the hand. Ugh ghastly. Nothing uglier than a screaming woman with a bloody stump for an arm. Denise in her shawl Denise carrying his baby. Then of course she was still alive when the men raped her. Boys will be boys you know. Although I think she secretly enjoyed it. They all do the experts say. Denise Barney croaked the dry sobs racking him. As a matter of fact I distinctly remember someone telling me she was alive when the knife cut her open. Apparently she called out my baby or some such drivel. God only knows who the father was. I will kill you if it takes all my lif e and the next Barney said slowly the words rasping out of him like rusted nails. Very poetic De Culo said smiling. Well I must be off. I only stopped by to bring you another present. You left the first on my office floor. Perhaps this will be more to your liking. He picked an iron poker up off the floor and thrust it into the fire. These are rare around here he said. It s from my own personal fireplace. I want you to know that. Then he stood over Barney and with both hands bashed the lower part of his abdomen. Stinking 138 slime De Culo said. I ll see to it you stay alive as long as possible. I ll stay alive long enough to kill you Barney wheezed his belly knotted and cramping violently from the blow. Within a half hour Estomago entered along with the four men who had brought him to the hut. Once again the young boy with the sad eyes was with them. Once again he stoked the already blazing fire. Estomago loosened the top button of his uniform and ran a finger along his red sweating neck. It s hot as hell in here he said to no one in particular. He looked down at Barney shriveled to almost half his weight his wrists raw and bleeding from the rope around them. Water Barney rasped. No water Estomago said. It is not permitted. The boy stoking the fire looked over to the two of them. This is a bad way to die Estomago said without a trace of De Culo s sarcasm. Tell us who else knows about the installation and I will see that you die quickly with a bullet. It would have been so easy for Barney to tell him the truth that the United States knew nothing about the installation. He would die then. It would all be over. But he could not die. Not until De Culo was dead. Not until his wife s death had been avenged. Let me go Barney said. Then I will tell you. Estomago shook his head. I cannot do that. You must die soon or late. Late Barney said. As you wish. He motioned to the soldier in army fatigues. Dominquez. The whip. The soldier approached Barney s cot a long liz 139 ard whip in his hands. He tapped it on his palm expertly a small smile of anticipation playing on his face. Estomago moved out of the way. Slowly with sensuous pleasure the soldier teased Barney s skin with the end of the whip. It glistened irridescent green in the light of the fire as it snaked across Barney s chest and legs. The soldier began to breathe heavily. His lips moved wet with saliva. His eyes half closed as he played the whip on Barney s genitals. Then he raised the whip and with a cry of pleasure let it fly with a skin splitting crack on Barney s belly. Denise. Oh help me Denise. The soldier raised the whip again his own sex now obviously hard and throbbing and threw out his arm to his right. The whip coiled and sank into the tender skin on the insteps of Barney s feet. Sparks flew inside Barney s brain. The pain was aflame burning burning. Endless pain. Denise. Don t go. Don t leave me. The whip snapped high overhead. It slashed him between his legs. Up from the pit of his stomach black bile gushed from Barney s mouth and bubbled on his lips. Then he was unconscious. In a fury the soldier tore his canteen from his belt and threw its contents on Barney s face to bring him back to consciousness. You will not sleep now he roared in almost incoherent Spanish. Not until I am finished. Barney s tongue reached for the droplets of water on his face the pain returning with horrible intensity. The soldier beat him again and again each time bringing the whip down with the force of a lover s thrust. Now he screamed. Now He curled the 140 whip in a giant loop that circled the ceiling and brought it down so that it caught the length of Barney s torn body and sent it into convulsive spasms. As Barney s muscles jerked in reflexive agony the soldier bucked and groaned until he lay spent on the dirt floor moaning with pleasure. Barney did not regain consciousness for several hours. He came to with the taste of cold mountain water trickling down his throat. He sputtered and coughed but kept drinking for fear that it would be taken away before he could drink enough to stay alive through the night. Hands that smelled of earth and green plants smoothed more of the water on Barney s eyes and forehead. He opened his eyes. The boy whose job it had been to stoke the fire in the hut made a signal for him to be silent and gave him another bowl of water to drink. I will not forget you my son Barney muttered in Spanish. Immediately a rustling sound outside the hut alerted him to the fact that guards were posted. The boy ducked. The guard peered inside. He s delirious he said to an invisible comrade and went back to his watch. The boy made a face at Barney as he got up off the floor then offered him the bowl once again. Barney shook his head. The boy doused his wounds with the water left in the bowl warning Barney not to cry out in pain. It hurt but Barney would not let the boy be killed for helping him. He held his breath and let the water do its work. Then the boy slithered through a slim crack in the rushes of the hut and was gone. The days went on. The beatings the interrogations the whip. Always the whip. Each day a man 141 would appear with a clamp to break one of Barney s fingers. And each night the whip. What does the CIA know Eat shit. What have you told them That your mother is a whore. Are there any other agents hidden on the island May your rectum be a pool for the love juice of ditchdiggers. Sometimes Barney spoke in English sometimes in Spanish. It didn t matter. As long as he spoke. As long as he stayed alive. After all of his ringers were broken Estomago gave him water. It was the drugged water of the cave prison poisoned and fearful. It made the dreams come. He began to have a special dream one that recurred with predictable regularity. The dream was of women. Each night since he was forced to drink the drugged water .a host of beautiful women naked and shimmering in the firelight danced into the hut and surrounded him smoothing their fragrant hands on his face rubbing their breasts and lips on him. Each night they came and left without a word to return the next night feathery and lovely. The beatings stopped. He was given water four times a day. During the daylight hours the soldiers would come to stoke the fire and give him water and at night they were replaced by the women smiling dancing tantalizing. He began to heal. His rope burned wrists were bandaged so that his only bondage was a rope around one ankle. He began to crave the water. The dreams were not so terrible any more. They 142 were pleasant. Confusing crazy colorful dreams. Who cared What was so great about reality anyway Barney looked forward to his four bowls of water. They made the world fuzzy and pretty. They made the world nice. Even the soldiers were nice. They began to smile at him. They brought him food first an easily digestible paste made of mashed vegetables then soft bread and fruit then good meals of army rations. And throughout all the dishes was laced the delicious dreams in the water. Everyone smiled. Everyone was happy. Except for the young boy who stoked the fire. What was with him anyway always staring at Barney as if he worried the sky was going to fall Such a worry wart for such a young boy. Maybe he was just a gringo hater. Well it took all kinds of people to make a world good and bad and what difference did it make anyway Barney began to wonder what life was like outside the hut. Had he ever been outside It seemed that his world began and ended there hi that thatched roof paradise with the wonderful water. Well that was fine with him. Especially if the women kept coming around. They did. Now they spoke to him too sweet words of comfort and flirtation. We like you very much a very blonde girl said. Did she look familiar Of course she had been coming into the hut since day one. No a voice inside Barney said. Familiar from somewhere else. Get lost Barney told his voice. There is nowhere else. The voice went away. I like you too Barney said happily. I like everything. Well I m going to do something you ll like 143 extra special the thin blonde said and the other girls giggled. Oh boy Barney said clapping his hands together. What is it A cookie Better than that honey. She knelt between his legs and took him in her mouth rocking pulling sending shivers up his back with her naughty little tongue. Gee whiz Barney said. You sure were right. This beats just about anything. Think I could have some water Sure angel another woman said and gave him a big long drink. It made everything even better. Then before he knew it a whole lot of other gorgeous naked women were making love to him too laughing probing kissing touching. And all he had to do was lie there and drink that magic water. Heaven on earth. They played games. If Barney won the game the women would see to it that he felt good. If he lost the game they would make him feel good anyway. The games were fun. Okay the blonde girl said one night. I have a new game to play. Oh boy Barney said. First you may have water. Yea. Barney drank. I drank it all down he said proudly. That s a very good boy Barney. Good good Barney the girls chanted in chorus of approval. Barney beamed. He knew this was going to be a fun game. Now I m going to say a word and then you say the first thing that comes. Okay Sure Barney said. That s easy. Good. Now here s the word. Ready 144 Barney nodded enthusiastically. Girls. Fun Barney said rolling his eyes. The women all laughed. That s correct Barney the blonde said. Girls are fun. Now here s another word. Ready set go. Okay. El Presidente Cara De Culo. Huh De Culo. I don t know that word Barney said his face squishing up to burst into tears. There there the blonde girl said stroking Barney s head. It s all right. That was a hard word. The rest of the women made sympathetic noises. I ll tell you what it means and then you can say the right thing okay I love you Barney said. You little sweet thing. El Presidente Cara De Culo is the greatest man on earth. Who is he The greatest Barney said. Wonderful. You get a kiss. All the women milled around to kiss him. Ready for another word Sure. The blonde looked into his eyes. Denise she said. The women were silent as Barney struggled with his thoughts. At last his face lit up. I got it I got it What the blonde woman asked flatly her eyes cold. De niece is de daughter of de uncle Barney said. And everyone kissed and hugged him. That s wonderful Barney. You re such a smart boy. You bet. 145 How about this CIA. CIA Barney was confused. I think I work for the CIA. He stuck his finger in his nose to think. But I don t work. I play. You used to work for them darling. But they were bad bad people. Very bad Awful. They beat you up. The soldiers beat me up. They did not The women frowned. Some turned their backs on him. You re bad Barney. Bad for thinking the soldiers hurt you. They whipped me with the big snake. They hurt my hands Barney said helplessly. That was the CIA. Not the soldiers. Barney s eyes widened in confusion. He was sure it was the soldiers. Maybe they were different soldiers he offered. That s right the blonde said brightening. All the women kissed him. Good Barney they said. Yeah. Other soldiers. CIA soldiers. Bad. De Culo the greatest man on earth made them stop. Now soldiers are nice to you. De Culo good CIA bad Barney said. The CIA is still near the woman whispered. Here Here Yes. Where He looked anxiously around the room. We don t know. Tell us Barney. Tell us where they are so they don t come again to hurt you. I I don t know. What s the answer lady Come on. You know. Huh unh. Barney shook his head vehemently. Maybe he s the only one the woman said quietly to her associates. Okay she said louder. Here s another word. 146 I m tired of this game. Just one more. Installation. Barney yawned. Installation is what daddy puts around the house to keep out the snow he said. Hey when s it going to snow The women ignored him chattering among themselves. That s all Barney. You ve been a good boy. How about some ficky fick Later sweetheart. We have to look for CIA men so they don t come to harm our Barney. CIA bad Barney confirmed. Ficky fick good. Drink some water the blonde said and led the women outside. He doesn t know anything the blonde later told Estomago. You might as well kill him and get it over with. El Presidente wants us to go through with this. It s pointless. But it is a direct order Gloria. Gloria Sweeney shrugged. Have it your way. My way keeps you out of working at the installation remember Estomago said with a threatening swagger. Yeah. Thanks a heap big shot. I suppose working at that whorehouse was your idea of a great career opportunity. Better than being shot like the other women. Or perhaps you would prefer their fate. A nervous tingle shot through Gloria s spine. Not at all Robar honey. You know I was just joshing. I m grateful for everything you ve dene for me. She caressed his thigh. And I just love being sweet to you. 147 That s enough Estomago said clearing his throat. We ll save it for later. Anytime you say jumbo. She left him to bathe in a stream and wash the stink of fear off her. That night a soldier wearing a big painted sign reading CIA hanging around his neck entered the hut to remove Barney s fingernails. The next night another soldier similarly identified came to beat him within an inch of his life. The food stopped coming. The women stopped coming. The smiles ceased. Only the water remained. And the smoldering fire. Bound again by abrasive rope around his wrists Barney cried and asked for his mother. We hate your mother a soldier said and slapped him hard across the face. This is what the CIA thinks of you and your mother. Your mother fucks gorillas. CIA bad bad Barney wailed. You didn t tell the good soldiers that we were here the soldier said so we came to hurt you. Barney looked from face to face around the hut. They were all in there with him all the soldiers and women. They shook their heads sadly as the bad CIA man walked deliberately to the fire and removed the glowing poker. The CIA is going to hurt you now unless you tell us where the other CIA men are. Don t know Barney said as the man walked closer and closer to him the poker gleaming red. We re very bad men he said stepping so close that Barney could smell the burning cypress wood sticking to the end of the poker. We want you to remember who we are. CIA Barney said. Very bad. The soldier Lifted the poker directly above Bar 148 ney s stomach. Very bad he said. For you. And he brought it down to trace the letters CIA on Barney s burning belly the stench of incinerated flesh filling the hut as Barney screamed his last memories away. Two days later Barney s eyes opened to see the barrel of a magnum pointed directly at them. He knows nothing Estomago said. Let us end this charade now and be done with it. Hey I ve got an idea Gloria said. Want to have some fun with him before he goes Fun. You always think of fun. No really. This ll be a gas. She whispered into Estomago s ear. He laughed. Why not he said tucking the magnum back into his thigh holster. It will be amusing for the men. He shook Barney out of the fog that had come back to reclaim him. You. Get up. You are free. Free Barney said not sure what the word meant. The soldiers unbound his wrists and led him wobbling to the grounds outside the hut. There they tied another length of rope around one arm this time a longer thinner one. You will perform the ritual of the bat Estomago said. For it you will fight a man while blindfolded and bound to him by this length of rope. If you kill him you will be set free. Fight Barney mumbled looking vaguely at the red gashes on his stomach which had already filled up with pus. The blonde woman giggled. Find him someone cute to fight honey. That ll make it more interesting. 149 Estomago pointed to the young recruit with the sad eyes. Him Perfect. He signalled the boy to advance. Silently he came into the circle where Barney waited weaving unsteadily on his feet. The boy s arm was tied to the rope. Blindfolds were placed on both men. Here are the knives Estomago announced placing a curved killing knife in each of their hands. When I give the command the two of you will fight to the death. He turned to one of the soldiers. Get your rifle ready he said quietly. If the American should win by a freak accident I do not want him to leave alive. Yes sir. The soldier obeyed disengaging the safety catch on his rifle. Very well Estomago shouted. Begin In a crouch the boy circled Barney who poked hesitantly at the air. The crowd laughed. Hsss the boy whispered. This way. He led Barney to the edge of the circle. The spectators cleared the way. He slashed at Barney narrowly missing him even though Barney could barely walk. That boy fights almost as poorly as the American Estomago said his belly shaking with mirth. The boy slashed again this time falling to the ground and rolling close to the jungle edge. Birds Barney said. We are close to the forest the boy whispered. Pretend to fight me. I will take you out of here. He cut into the air again and inched closer to the edge of the clearing. Barney fell. Kill him kill him the women in the crowd shouted. 150 The boy lunged. Get up. Quickly. Hurry. It is time. Barney scrambled to his feet as the crowd crooned with excitement. Perhaps he will give us a show after all Estomago said. But you are both too far away for us to see well he shouted to the two men. Come back this way. Now the boy said tearing off his blindfold and Barney s. Try to keep up with me. He sprinted through the jungle like a gazelle on his long young legs while Barney dragged behind the rope forcing him to keep pace. Come. Two shots rang out behind them. Branches tore at Barney s open wounds. Each step burned his damaged feet like hot coals. His broken hands could barely hold the knife but he knew he must hold it. He knew nothing any more remembered nothing except that this boy was a friend and that he had to hold on to the knife and run run as he had never run before. The boy cut the rope between them. I know a small clearing not far from here he said. You can rest there and drink good water to make you well. He pushed Barney ahead. At the clearing where a small waterfall fed into a stream from underground caves they stopped. Do not drink yet the boy said. We will wait in the cave for nightfall. Estomago s men are not far behind. Barney opened and shut his eyes to try to clear his head. Everything was filmy unreal. Trust me the boy said as he pulled Barney into a small cave to wait. It was damp in the cave and Barney s cramped position hurt his burns but the boy had said to trust 151 him so he trusted him. In time he slept while the boy watched and guarded. He shook Barney awake. Come. It is time for us to leave. Wait Barney said touching the boy s arm. Why are you helping me The boy looked at him with his sad dark eyes. Denise Saravena was my friend he said. After my mother died Denise brought us food until I was old enough to join the army. Who is Denise Barney asked. After a moment the boy said Let us wash your wounds and drink at the waterfall. Then we must go. I know a small mountain village north of Puerta del Rey where we will be welcome. They drank at the foot of the waterfall. Barney let the cold water run over his bare feet and stomach washing away the putrefaction that had begun to develop in the burns. It felt good. Barney s head began to clear. He tore his shirt to make a bandage for his hand so that he could hold the knife better. He tore off strips of cloth to cover his feet. As he was splashing water over his head and neck the boy whirled around his knife poised for throwing. Out of the forest ambled a chimpanzee chattering and running in a zigzag. The boy sighed. You know what you re doing with that knife Barney said relieved. The boy lay on his stomach to drink. No man knows more than the jungle he said. He waded into the water to wash. Then the shot came and sent the boy sprawling into the mud at the other side of the stream a hole the size of a grapefruit in his back his thin legs twitching for a moment before he lay still. 152 Barney saw the soldier before he had a chance to turn around so by the time he turned his knife was already spinning in the air and came to rest with a thwack in the soldier s chest. The chimpanzee at the other end of the stream screamed and scurried noisily into the jungle as Barney scrambled back into the cave. Moments later when the other soldiers appeared they followed the noise of the chimpanzee. And Barney was safe to look on the lifeless form of his friend a boy young enough to have been his son. He waited an hour staring all the while at the dead boy who had saved his life. None of it made any sense to him any more. Strangers come and then they go and some of them hurt you along the way and some help you. And some even die for you. But why God why him Why not me I don t remember half my life and this boy didn t even get to live it. Why didn t you take me instead he said to himself as he dug a shallow grave for the boy with a rock beside the stream. Then without thinking without caring he wandered aimlessly into Puerta del Rey the next morning stopping to spend a day and a night in a sleazy cafe that served him three bottles of tequila in exchange for his brass belt buckle. And after the three bottles were empty Barney felt good for the first time in all the life he could remember. He felt so good that he called a press conference in the middle of town to say that the CIA was bad. The CIA was in Hispania. The chief of police somebody named Estomago looked surprised to see him although Barney didn t know the man from Adam. He didn t want to know anybody. The CIA was here. The CIA was bad. And who the hell cared 153 CHAPTER FOURTEEN Smith placed two pieces of paper side by side. One was the front page of the New York Daily News. The headline read: NATIONWIDE MARCH ON WASHINGTON Millions of Blacks Protest Murder of Civil Rights Leader Colder Raisin The other paper was an enlargement of a microfiche from the Women s Correctional Institution in Abbey s Way Indiana: Mr. George Barra Warden Women s Correctional Institution Dear Mr. Barra: This is to inform you that your inmate 76146 Pamela Andrews armed robbery 25 life continues to serve out her sentence satisfactorily under Hispania s voluntary work program. 154 May I extend my congratulations to you for your participation in this program. By permitting your prisoner to serve her term by performing much needed work in our country you not only save your taxpayers many dollars in prisoner upkeep but take a great leap forward in progressive penal reform as well. I shall continue to inform you about the well being of your inmate who has been transferred to our program and offer you my best wishes. General Robar Estomago Chief National Security Patrol Republic of Hispania A stack of similar letters all dated two years earlier were piled on the side of Smith s desk. He looked down at the notes he had made while reading. All the prisoners sent to Hispania on Estomago s voluntary work program were women. All were orphans All the letters to the prisons had been signed by Estomago. All the prisoners were serving maximum sentences. All were doing well according to the letters. No deaths not even accidental. But not one of the CIA agents stationed in Hispania with Barney Daniels had recalled seeing any white women working on the island. 155 He looked again at the newspaper. Calder Raisin an ineffective leader in life was a martyr in death. Blacks everywhere were rallying. Riots in Washington were feared. The autopsy report on Raisin showed that he died from multiple contusions of the head caused by a variety of weapons. Daniels had been sent out to kill Raisin yet Raisin had been killed by more than one man. Gloria Sweeney had been in Hispania with Barney. Gloria Sweeney was now in New York and probably tied up with Estomago. A bomb in an envelope manufactured in Hispania had been placed to kill Barney Daniels. And the blacks were marching. The CURE director wheeled in his chair and looked out through his windows of one way glass at Long Island Sound. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together and the picture that was forming was chilling. First there had been the appointment by Hispania s President De Culo of the American hating Estomago as his U.N. ambassador. And then there were growing signs of Hispania drawing closer and closer to the Soviet Union. Then there was the ship. A Russian military ship carrying what might have been nuclear equipment had simply vanished on its way to Cuba. One day it had been sixty miles from Cuba s shore. The next day high altitude spy flights and spies inside Castro s empire couldn t find the ship. It had never arrived. The report had arrived on Smith s desk and at first he was willing to think it accident at sea. The ship had sunk. But as the days had gone on and the Russians had not announced the accidental loss of 156 the ship he had begun to wonder. And then three weeks later agents in Europe reported that the ship was returning through the Baltic sea. So where had it been Was it possible that the ship had swerved from its expected course at the last minute and arrived in Hispania to unload a shipful of nuclear weapons supplies Smith drummed a pencil against the back of his left hand. Ordinarily he would had have discounted such a scare prospect as nuclear arms in Hispania. But there were other things that made it difficult to discount. In European capitals agents were picking up tips and rumors rumors about a strike against the United States now being possible. Was it possible Could Russia be planning a strike against the United States A missile strike launched from Hispania Gloria Sweeney and Estomago had been behind the killing of Raisin. Therefore they were responsible for the hundreds of thousands of blacks marching on Washington D.C. right now. Was that part of some plan to try to create such chaos and confusion in Washington that the nation s defenses might somehow be slackened And what was the map that Barney Daniels had been talking about The CURE director sighed. So many questions so few answers. He would just have to wait for Remo to come back with some answers. It did not occur to Smith to worry that while he was waiting plans might be moving along to blow up a piece of the United States. Waiting was the correct thing to do. Therefore he would wait. And he would tell no one because the burden of responsi 157 bility was his and no one else s. So he put the problem out of his mind turned back to his desk and began to look through the month s vouchers for Folcroft Sanitarium. He shook his head in annoyance. For the second straight month the bill for bread had gone up and he was getting pretty sure that one of the kitchen workers was stealing some of those food supplies. Something would have to be done. CHAPTER FIFTEEN The big mosque on 114th Street was closed. Two black suited guards watched the entrance which was chained and padlocked. Whistling Remo strolled over to the chain and snapped it as though it were a peppermint stick. Wuffo you doing that shit one of the Peaches of Mecca said as Remo walked through the gates toward the mosque. I mean halt man. Halt in the name of the Afro Muslim Brotherhood. No time boys Remo called over his shoulder. Catch you later. You gonna catch us right now the other Peach said and the two of them executed a flying tackle at Remo s knees. He caught them in mid air. Using one of them as a club he twirled the man high overhead and 158 smacked him into his companion s midsection with a thud. Two pairs of dazed brown eyes shone unfocused beneath their sweat glistening shaved heads. You one mean mother one of them said. The other shook the fuzz out of his brain and staggered to his feet. In the name of Allah he said as he pulled a blue tinged knife out of his inside coat pocket his eyes locked into Remo s. Remo kicked. With one stroke the knife was lodged into the guard s throat a stream of red trickling onto his white shirt collar and spreading. The man stiffened and trembled. His mouth opened and closed like a fish but no sound came out. He wobbled a few paces in a zigzag line toward Remo then reeled and stumbled. His mouth formed half a word: Mother ... Remo blew and the small gust of air sent the man careening downward with a crash. That s the biz sweetheart he said. Holy shit the other Peach gasped as Remo turned to face him. Look man I ain t got no knife see Shaking he opened his jacket. No knives no zip guns not even a pea shooter. Just a country boy up here visiting my aunt Minnie yes suh. He backed away. Me I m strictly for nonviolence. Amen. Free at last. He took off at a brisk trot peering behind him to see if Remo was following. He wasn t. He didn t have any time to lose. He paused at the heavy double doors leading to the interior of the mosque just long enough to be impressed with the precision of their construction. It was airtight in there and the doors must have weighed a half ton apiece. Whoever designed these doors was building a fortress and preparing for siege. 159 Using a thrust from the elbow he wedged his hand into the hairline crack between the two doors. It was solid steel more than two inches thick. Feeling with his fingertips he located the locking mechanism and jammed three fingers into it releasing the lock with a deep pop like a small explosion oc curing far underground. Then he pushed with his shoulder to dislodge the interior bolt. Inside the mosque was as cold and silent as a cave. He passed room after empty room as he strode silently down the vast network of hallways and stairways his feet barely touching the gleaming polished floors. He tapped on one of the walls. Steel. In a corner of the building he felt with the balls of his feet for the underlying structure beneath the tile flooring. Again steel. At the base of a small white metal stairwell he saw the only other people in the mosque: two black suited young men their faces expressionless their heads shaved and gleaming blue black under the dun lighting. They appraised Remo coolly acknowledging his presence by no more than a cold glance from heavy lidded eyes. They moved toward him like two panthers silent deadly. They were the best of the lot thought Remo as he watched them move. Obviously trained to stay with Gloria as her personal guard. Without a word one of them snaked toward Remo in a flying arc legs tucked tightly to his chest. Remo stood still waiting for the inevitable foot to come jutting out at his solar plexis. When it did Remo caught the heel of the man s foot and swept it upward to lock the knee. Then with the leg straight and locked he pressed the foot with his palm in a small potent move that dislocated the man s hip and sent him howling down the length of 160 the corridor as fast as a bowling ball until he came to rest with a splat on the far wall. The other man moved never taking his eyes from Remo his face registering nothing. He was fast. As he prepared his blow a shoulder spin designed for use with a weapon Remo noticed the man had good balance. Not bad Remo said. Shame to have to kill you just to get to that white kitty in there. The man began the spin as evenly weighted as a cat. Beautiful Remo said as he pulled a packet of matches from his pants pocket and tossed them to the floor. They slid precisely between the tiles on the floor and the man s shoe. It threw his balance totally so that when he came out of the spin all his energy had spun into his feet to stay upright. The man twirled to a stop momentarily drained. Remo stepped in close to the man. Hold it sweetheart Gloria called from the landing. She was dressed in a diaphanous white sari that only partly concealed her body and she carried a revolver. Remo stopped. At your service he said with a bow. That s better she said and squeezed the trigger. As Remo saw the tension in her hand the small muscles of her index finger beginning to contract over the trigger he collared the remaining guard. In a motion too swift for the guard to resist or Gloria to see he put the man s body between himself and the bullet and before the guard could register surprise he was dead and Remo was up the stairs the gun crumbling to pieces in his hands. 161 Get in he said to Gloria shoving her inside her apartment. What for There s nobody else around she said disgustedly. You knew that. I want to see the map . . . Miss Sweeney. Map She laughed. Sure. Help yourself. She threw out her arm in a Bette Davis gesture to indicate the map on the wall. Have an eyeful sugar. It was an ordinary world map. A little old maybe Remo thought as he scanned its worn folds but nothing special. Barney Daniels is alive and talking I suppose Gloria said a look of resignation settling over her features and rendering them haggard as she slumped into an overstuffed white chair. That s right. His memory s back. She lifted a weary eyebrow. It was bound to happen. Care for a drink She cocked a frosty glass in his direction. No thanks. It s only mineral water. Here. Try some. She eased herself out of the chair and poured a tall tumbler for Remo at the bar. The glass felt cold in his hand. The moisture on the outside of the glass wet his skin. I guess water wouldn t hurt he said. Then he smelled it. It was faint almost nonexistent just a tinge. Ethyl chloride he said bewildered. And something else. Something common. Don t be silly. That s just plain old H2O straight from the hidden springs of New Yrok City. Now bottoms up. She drained her own glass in one nervous gulp. And what was that Remo asked. Gin. I m tapering off water she said with a smile. 162 Remo smiled too. He held his glass toward her. Go on. Have a taste. No thanks. Come on Remo said. You only live once. He squeezed her jaw open and poured the liquid down her throat. Ethyl chloride and mesquite Remo said. Mesquite like in tequila. That s what you hooked Daniels on wasn t it The mesquite. First you fudged up his brain with ethyl chloride then hooked him on the mesquite. And he kept getting enough of it in his tequila to keep the chloride pumping in his tissues keeping him under. Until he dried out in the clinic. Gloria sputtered and coughed. Remo squeezed the junctions of her jaws harder. Her mouth popped open wider. Let s try this all one more time Remo said and poured the rest of the decanter into Gloria s mouth. Let s see what s in your system. The liquid bubbled over her teeth. It sprayed. It dribbled down her chin and plastered her gauze drape to her breasts. Abruptly the woman stopped struggling. As Remo watched a wild happy glint lit her eyes. He released her jaw and she winked and smiled at him. She seemed unaware of the spittle running down her face. It good she said clapping her hands together. The ethyl chloride s in you too Remo said. Is that why you re involved in this They got you with drugs Just a little drinkie now and then Gloria said. Want to talk now Remo asked. Rather play feelies she said. She raised her breasts toward Remo. Where is everybody 163 Coyly she waggled a finger at Remo. Her face was twisted in a leer that she must have thought was a smile. No no never tell. She giggled then said All the niggies gone. Niggies niggies niggles. All gone to Washington to get blown up. Who s going to blow them up Her face lit up. Me. Gloria. And Robar. Estomago She nodded. The one with the big hose. She rolled her eyes appreciatively. Why do you want to blow them up Remo asked. Not just them. Everybody. All in Washington. I thought you loved the Afro Muslim Brotherhood Remo said. She blurted a raspberry. A game. Niggies got me sent to jail. Robar got me out. What d you do to go to jail She bent her neck down then peered up at Remo as if she were looking over a fence. Shot me a nig gie and they sent me to jail. Poor little thing Remo said. Poor Gloria she said. She sniffed eloquently. Suddenly a tear blossomed from the corner of her eye. Gonna blow them up gonna blow everybody up. How are you going to blow them up Gloria giggled. With bombs silly Robar s got bombs. Lots of bombs. Let s play ficky fick. Too much talk. First talk Remo said then ficky fick. Are the bombs in Hispania She nodded. At the installation. The girls put them together. Built the camp too. What girls The girls Robar got from the prisons. Like me. 164 Only I didn t have to work at the camp cause I m so pretty. She patted her platinum hair. When are you going to explode the bombs Maybe next week. Maybe never. Whenever the Russians say so. What s going to happen to Hispania Remo asked. Gloria shrugged. Who cares Robar and me we going away. El Presidente he going to Switzerland. Who cares We got lots of money and we get lots more when the Russians come into Hispania and take the island over. Where are the girls now All dead. We shot em. Bang. I like shooting. Then why didn t you shoot Barney Daniels Her eyes opened wide. Cause he got away and came to America. So we sent him a bomb but he didn t blow up. And then we made him kill Calder Raisin so he would go to jail and rile up the niggles. But he didn t kill Calder Raisin. He can t do anything right. Just a deadbeat I guess Remo said. Good ficky fick though Gloria said. Remo walked once around the room. I only want to ask one more thing he said. What s so important about that map on the wall Dopey she said fluttering over to the map. It s a bomb map. She pressed a tiny button on the desk below the map and an overhead track light came on illuminating the map with an eerie green light As the light glowed stronger lines on the map began to emerge. Blue lines. Red lines. Dotted lines. And a thick wobbling stroke from a jungle border of Hispania to Washington D.C. El Presidente had it coated so that you can t see 165 the lines without this special light. She smiled. He s so smart. A real whip Remo said. Gloria seated herself on the window sill. You gonna stay and play with me No. Aw c mon she teased unfastening the top of her sari and letting the gauzy fabric unravel and flutter in the breeze outside the open window. Nice jugs huh she asked. Good enough for government work Remo said. She unravelled more of her sari until a long stream of fabric floated in the wind like a white river. She stood up on the window sill and lifted her arms to her sides. Look I m a flag she squealed stretching out her arms to grasp the billowing sheath. I m an angel I m flying Death to the niggies she shouted. The angel of death is flying Death to America Ficky fick forever. Then her feet left the floor and she soared downward down the sheer face of the building her garment unwinding behind her in brilliant white streamers as she fell naked to the ground below. Remo shook his head. Freaking nutcase he said. Everybody in this deal is a nutcase. 166 CHAPTER SIXTEEN Barney Daniels sat up in bed rubbing the sore spot where the intravenous feeding needle had been taken out. Just a couple more days Mr. Daniels said the black nurse. Then you ll be out of here. Can t happen too soon either. If some of our regulars found out we had a white man here I don t know what d happen. She smiled at him. No said Barney shaking himself to life. Now. Now now . . . the nurse began. Just once Barney said. Now. I m going. Get Doc. Doctor Jackson is busy at the Get him in here. Barney s voice reverberated through the small private room. Otherwise I ll run out front and tell the whole neighborhood that you re treating white folks. You ll never live it down. Just you calm down the nurse said. I ll get the doctor. Jackson was harried and tired looking and Barney realized he could not remember a time when Jackson hadn t been overworked overtired and underappreciated. 167 What is it now you honkey pain in the ass Jackson said. Sit down Doc. C mon I m busy. Barney sat up and cleared a space on his bed. Talk to me for a minute. We both need it. Doc Jackson sat his knees creaking as he bent them. Bad one Barney asked. Jackson nodded. Bullet wound. Some asshole went on a toot and shot his girlfriend in the face. I thought I could save her. He closed his eyes the lids weighted by decades of sleepless nights and lost causes. Ever hear from your wife Barney asked. Sure. His grim black face cracked into a semblance of a smile. When she wants more money. Your kid Ivy League. Majoring in revolution relevance and hate. I m not one of her favorite people. What s this all about anyway Barney shifted on the bed. No reason. I ve just been thinking. Wondering how things might have turned out you know if Denise Stop it. Now. All the what if s and what might have beens in the world aren t going to bring her back no matter how bad you want her. I remembered Doc. I remembered everything. There was such pain on his friend s face that Jackson could not ease it. All he could do was to spend this moment with Barney and listen to him. I remembered when things used to be important. Ordinary things just living. Every day when I d wake up I d be glad that I made it through again. Do you remember Me Jackson thought. I don t know. I guess 168 so. But everybody gets over being young. That s all it is. You get older you see things differently. You expect less. He shrugged. Bullshit Barney said. There s not a day goes by that you you personally Robert Hanson Jackson don t wonder what the hell you re doing here. Oh really Jackson mocked. What makes you think you know so much about me Because we re the same guy. You re black and ugly and I m white and handsome but except for that you couldn t tell us apart. You natter yourself Jackson said. So what s next I m going to Hispania. Tonight. No you re not Jackson bellowed. You re not leaving this bed for two days. I m leaving now Barney said. No way Jackson said. Doc I m a little weak and maybe I can t take you. Actually I guess I never could. But I can sure as hell wait until your back is turned then punch the face off that nurse of yours. I m going. Doc sighed. It can t wait You re hi no shape for a trip. You heard me talking under the drugs Barney said. You know what happened to me what happened to Denise. I ve got to start collecting some due bills. I can t wait any more. Doc stood up with a sigh. All right you crazy bastard. Leave. I won t try to stop you. I ll need a couple of things too Barney said. He picked up a note pad from the nightstand next to his bed. He tore off the top sheet and handed it to Jackson. Rope What the hell kind of supply item is that 169 I just need it Barney said. He smiled at Doc. Want to go on an island vacation Doc snorted his nostrils flaring. That floating patch of parrot shit Hispania Shove it pal. He went to the doorway and stood there for a moment. The trouble with you Barney is that you don t know that you re an old man. It s all over for you. For me. We ve just got to find something to keep us busy something that doesn t make us feel too much like thieves. Something that lets us sleep at night. Like you Barney said. The first black everything. And your wife left you and your kid hates you. That s really something to live for. Better than nothing Jackson said. We re not thirty years old anymore. Neither of us he said. Wise up Barney. Vengeance is a young man s game. Vengeance is mine saith the Lord Barney recited. He smiled at Doc who hit the side of the door with the heel of his hand. I ll have your goddam supplies where you want them Doc said. Barney hurt. He hurt walking out of the clinic his clothes baggy and outsized on his now bony frame. He hurt getting into the taxi that Doc Jackson had called and was waiting out front. He hurt as he stood across the street from the gates of the Hispanian Embassy preparing his mind for what he must do. The thumb of his right hand pressed reassuringly against the steel handle of the scalpel he had filched from an instrument tray in Doc Jackson s clinic. Barney breathed. He concentrated. He waited. And then Denise came to him again a shadow in 170 a lifetime of shadows. She spoke to him deep within the recesses of his mind. You have come back to me my husband she said. I am proud of you this day. And then Barney didn t hurt any more. He walked across the street toward the guard who was standing outside the locked gates his rifle at port arms across his chest. The guard stepped in front of him at the gate and pushed at Barney with the stock of the rifle. Barney s hand was out of his pocket scalpel tightly in his fingers and slashing across the man s throat Before the man hit the ground Barney had the gate key from his pocket and let himself into the embassy grounds. Another guard inside the front door tried to stop Barney. He reached out his hands to grab the lapels of Barney s jacket. As he grabbed Barney s hands moved up between his and caught the man s throat. Without his even thinking Barney s well practiced fingers moved into the right position his thumbs pressing hard inward on the Adam s apple. He felt the man s hands loosen and Barney kept up the pressure until he heard a cracking sound then a gurgle and the man slumped slowly to the floor. Daniels looked down at the body. How did he feel about having killed again He looked at his hands. He smiled. He felt good and he was just getting started. There were a lot of bills to be paid. He removed the gun from the hip holster of the guard and walked down the long hall. At the end was Estomago s office the door closed. Barney placed the heel of his foot near the lock and kicked hard. The door flew open. 171 . Estomago sat alone at his mahogany desk. When he saw Barney his face showed first surprise. Then terror. It s been a long time coming you piece of garbage Barney said in gutter Spanish. Wha . . . You have a bill to pay for the death of my honored wife Denise Saravena. And for the boy you killed for his help to me. I have come to execute you and send you to hell. Estomago lunged for his desk drawer for the warm reassuring magnum that he kept in there. But he was too slow and too late. Before he could put his hand around the gun Barney was leaning across the desk the barrel of the .38 police special pressed into Estomago s forehead directly between his eyes. It is not going to be that easy Barney said. With his other hand he slapped the desk drawer shut then he yanked Estomago roughly to his feet and shoved him toward the door. Where are you taking me Estomago squeaked his eyes round and glassy with fright. To the park Barney said. We finish as we began. With the ritual of the bat. The telephone rang in Smith s office. He brushed an imperceptible moustache of moisture from his upper lip as he picked up the instrument. Remo said Listen this is all some kind of bullshit about nuclear weapons in Hispania being aimed at the U.S. Who is behind it Smith asked. Estomago Remo said. Find Estomago Smith said coldly. Find out if 172 an attack is planned. If so when. And then remove Estomago. Got it Remo said. You know something What asked Smith. This whole deal is all screwy as a can of worms Remo said twisting and turning. I don t really understand it all. You don t have to Smith said. It s enough that I do. Gloria admitted that Daniels had been drugged by them in Hispania. Oh Smith said. What else did she say She said she could fly Remo said. Could she No Remo said as he hung up. When Remo and Chiun reached the Hispanian embassy a row of ambulances was lined up in front of the building. Remo flashed a state department card and asked a police officer: What s going on Don t know. Whole staff is dead or injured. Estomago s secretary is screaming some shit about a madman who tore in and took the ambassador hollering something about a bat in the park. Remo turned to Chiun and shrugged his shoulders. Making sure no one else could hear Chiun whispered to Remo: It is the ritual of the bat. A way of dueling practiced by many of the Spanish tongue. Daniels is no common killer. Daniels is in Doc Jackson s clinic Remo said. Not any longer Chiun said. We will go to whatever park is nearest. When you find this Estomucko person you will find Daniels. 173 The clearing in the wooded area near one of the smaller ponds in Central Park bore a resemblance to the Hispanian camp from which the young boy had helped Barney escape. It was nearly the same size. The shape of the clearing was identical. It was all back in Barney s head now all the memories the murders the tortures the jungle the young bride who had gone out to buy her man coffee and never came back. And Estomago this savage who had killed her and Barney s unborn child. Doc Jackson waited for Daniels and Estomago in the clearing the bag of supplies on the ground beside him. You ve been followed Jackson said as Barney shoved Estomago into the dirt. His goons are right behind you. I know Daniels said. Tie us up and then clear out. They won t fire with him in the way. We can use him as a shield and get out of here Jackson said. I m staying Barney said. Get out that rope. Jackson bound the wrists of the two men together with the length of rope. He blindfolded Estomago then Barney and placed a long knife in each of their hands. Leave now Doc Barney said. Use us for cover. Doc didn t answer. Don t try any heroics. Just get out. And Doc. What fool Thanks for saving my life. I needed it for this. Barney began to stalk Estomago in a slow circle around the clearing listening for his footfalls and frightened breathing. 174 You will not live through this Estomago shouted his voice trembling. My men have instructions to follow me wherever I go. Half the Hispanian embassy is waiting nearby to slay you. You will not live through this Estomago The slash of a blade sang past Estomago s ear. He would not let the sound of his voice betray him again. The two men circled. And Barney Daniels in his baggy clothes his belly aching for food heard once again the slippery animal noises of the jungle smelled the lush tropical greenery. He was back outside the hut fighting again for his life. Only this time he was not drugged and he was not fighting a boy who had saved him from dying of thirst and the crowd of spectators was not cheering. This time he had to win. Estomago stepped and thrust like a fencer then jumped back and slashed around him. Barney heard the knife cutting through the air. He attacked from the other side but Estomago was ready. He whirled out of the way with the grace of a bullfighter. Robar Estomago had grown up fighting with knives. Despite his fear he knew that the American was not accustomed to the blind fighting used in the ritual of the bat. And Daniels was sickly. The past year the constant abuse the continuous consumption of tequila to satisfy the drug craving in his body had all done their work. Estomago breathed easier. He moved quickly on the balls of his feet his poise returning. Barney swung at him with the knife but the attack was slow and Estomago dodged easily. You have made a mistake he hissed. You know nothing of the ritual. I will kill you like a fly 175 on the wall. With that he lunged forward with a low thrust. It caught the edge of Barney s left side. Estomago ripped outward. Barney suppressed a scream and only grunted with the pain. Doc turned to see Remo and Chiun standing alongside him watching the battle. Across the clearing stood eight men Hispanians also watching. I can t help can I Remo asked Chiun. No. It would be a dishonor to Daniels to be aided. We must wait said Chiun. Doc Jackson shook his head. Softly he said He can t win. He s too weak. Too sick. Chiun touched the big black man on the shoulder. You forget he said that there are such things as character and cause. He rights now for something besides alcohol poisons. Watch. He fights like the man he once must have been. Across the clearing Remo could hear the breathing of men waiting their sweat sour with anticipation. He looked at Daniels blood flowing from the wound beneath his ribs. Come drunkard Estomago said a smile on his lips. Permit me to kill you quickly before you bleed to death. It is more respectable although why a whore s husband would care about respectability I would not know. He laughed as he parried again. His knife nicked Barney s shoulder. The rope tightened as Barney recoiled from the second blow. Estomago moved in quickly preparing to slit Barney s stomach agape with one long slash. He missed. As Barney ducked and rolled coating the grass with his blood he yanked on the rope and sent Estomago sprawling to the ground. Pig the ambassador spat bringing himself 176 slowly to his feet. Now I kill you. For myself and for El Presidente. He threw himself at Daniels. He held the knife overhead then slammed it down toward Daniels s face. At the last moment Barney turned his head and the knife slid alongside his cheek burying itself into the ground. Estomago reached behind him to remove the blindfold. As he did Barney s right hand reached over and his knife cut cleanly across Estomago s throat. The ambassador s last vision was of a wounded specter of a man watching him with hate filled eyes his blindfold pressed to the cut in his arm standing in front of a pulsing fountain of bubbling blood. He heard Daniels say: For Denise. The knife dropped from Estomago s hand as he began to choke on his own blood spurting with each heartbeat and staining the ground dark. His eyes rolled back in his head as he withered to the earth. Then one quick convulsion and the general lay still the gash in his throat smiling upward like a giant red mouth. And then the men came from across the clearing armed with knives stripped ceremonially for jungle fighting. With a wave of the knife Barney slashed the rope freeing his wrist from Estomago s Then he went into a crouch holding the knife in front of him in his right hand. His left hand gestured toward the Hispanians taunting them urging them to come on to join battle with him. Remo looked at the gray haired man in his dirty bloodstained clothes and knew this was someone he had never seen before. The Barney Daniels he had known had been a worthless drunk done washed out finished with life. 177 But this man standing alone in the clearing was something more than that. Faced with death he throbbed with life. He grinned as he waited for the eight killers. And then he was not alone. To his right stood Doc Jackson. On his left stood Remo and Chiun. I don t need any help from you. From any of you Barney snarled over his shoulder at Remo. Anything I hate it s a surly civil servant Remo said. Before he could say more the eight men were on them and the dozen men were turned into a human anthill squirming with wild activity. Next to him Remo saw Barney take down two of the Hispanians with straight ahead knife thrusts that parted their bellies like a comb. One Hispanian soared out of the anthill like a rocket flying free and screaming until he hit the trunk of a tree. He had found Chiun. Another attacker leaped at Remo with his hands trying to close on Remo s throat. Remo rolled backward and put the man up and over. Just before the man s back hit the ground Remo reached back and wrapped his arm around the man s throat. The man s back went down but his head and neck stayed up across Remo s upper arm and shoulder. There was a satisfying snap as the spinal column splintered. Remo rolled up to his feet. To his right he saw Doc Jackson struggling beneath the weight of a man with a blue tinged dagger aimed at his eye. He leaped forward toward the man but before he could reach him Barney Daniels whirled past him. With the side of his right hand he swung at the temple of the man astride Doc Jackson. The hand hit with a loud clap almost thunderous and the man 178 dropped the knife and slowly keeled over on his side his skull shattered by Barney s killing stroke. Good work Remo said. They stood side by side and turned around. Jackson scrambled to his feet. The three saw the last two Hispanians advancing on Chiun. Shouldn t we help Daniels said. Remo shook his head. Don t worry about it. He called out. Chiun. Be sure to keep your elbow straight. Chiun did straight through one Hispanian face straight through the back of the skull straight into the next Hispanian face and then the two men s bodies were lying at his feet. Fair Little Father Remo said. Just fair. He turned to look at Daniels but Doc Jackson was already kneeling alongside him checking the wound in his side. You are the luckiest son of a bitch in the world Jackson said. Another inch and bingo. I ve got to be lucky Daniels said. I ve got work to do. Then he looked at Remo. You know what s going on he asked. Remo nodded. The whole thing. Russian bombs. Threats to America. The works. Are you here now to kill me Daniels asked. When he said that Jackson got quickly up to his feet standing alongside Daniels facing Remo. Naaah Remo said. I don t know any more. First it was kill you. Then it was don t kill you. I don t know anymore. I don t care. The next thing they tell me to do with you they re going to have to do it by registered mail return receipt requested. You re more trouble than you re worth. He always was Doc Jackson said. 179 Barney looked at Remo and the eyes were clear and bright. I know you don t want to tell me who you re working for he said. That s all right. But tell me this. Can you give me some time For what To finish my business in Hispania Barney said. How much time you need Twenty four hours Barney said. He looked hard into Remo s eyes. Please he said. I need this one. Remo searched Daniels s eyes. He felt Chiun s soft hand touch his back. Remo nodded. For the next twenty four hours I think I m going to be busy he said. With what asked Jackson. Teaching Chiun to keep his elbow straight Remo said with a smile. Thank you Barney said. He turned to Jackson. You didn t have to fight Doc he said. The black nostrils flared. I don t have to go to Hispania with you either but I m going. That makes you as big a fool as I am. No Jackson said. Just another guy who s tired of wasting his time and wants to do something good for a change. We ve got two things to do Barney said. The installation and El Presidente. We re not getting them done here Jackson said. He turned away. Daniels looked at Chiun. Thank you. Thank you both. This is something that s got to be done. Our government won t be able to get rid of that installation. Not with those lightweights in Washington. But it s got to go. You know that. Remo nodded. Let us know if you need help. 180 Thank you. But we won t. No Remo said slowly. I don t think you will. He nodded at Daniels who turned and put his arm around Doc Jackson s shoulders. At the edge of the clearing the two old soldiers off to chase their biggest most frightening windmill turned around for one last look at the thin young white man and the aged Oriental smiling benignly in his flowing robes. Barney waved. Chiun nodded then saluted them both. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN It s about time Smith said. Where have you been It s been twenty four hours. Have you seen the papers Do you know what s been going on Which question should I answer first Remo said. What has happened Smith said. You might try that one. I think everything has been taken care of Remo said. Oh you do do you Well let me tell you . . . but the telephone had clicked off and Dr. Harold W. Smith listened to a dial tone for four seconds. It took him those four seconds to realize that he had not slept in seventy two hours and had not eaten in 181 thirty six.. He had not seen his wife for three days. He had not played golf in five and a half months. He had not taken a vacation in ten years. After the four seconds were up Smith pursed his lips in his lemon face and stood up gravely from the desk. Remo he muttered then swung the chair out of the way. He walked across the room opened a cabinet and swung his golf bag over his shoulder. As he walked out of his office he glanced back and saw the New York Times folded neatly on his desk the small bulletin in the corner of page one circled in red Magic Marker. For a moment he thought of taking the clipping with him then shrugged and walked out the door. All was well that ended well. PUERTA DEL REY Hispania API A massive explosion rocked the southwestern corner of this island today. U.S. government sources said the explosion occurred in a secret Soviet military installation and Washington instantly sent U.S. Marines to the site. Whether the secret installation contained Soviet nuclear warheads could not immediately be deter minded because of the widespread destruction of the explosion. But in a ghastly corollary a mass grave was found near the installation where more than two hundred female bodies apparently workers on the project were buried. El Presidente Cara De Culo in the final development in this macabre series of events was found dead in his palace only hours after word of the explosion at the secret installation. De Culo s right hand had been cut off and his body was found impaled on a large jungle knife. Whether the president took his own life by throwing himself on his knife was not known but there were teports from government insiders that two men one white and one black were seen leaving the governmentalpalace minutes before the president s body was found. Who they were is not known but already the streets of this small capital city are beginning to ring with tales of the exploits of the demons of the north.

Literature & Fiction;Action & Adventure

fiction

Code of the Lifemaker By James P. Hogan Prologue THE SEARCHER 1.1 MILLION YEARS B.C. 1 000 LIGHT YEARS FROM THE SOLAR SYSTEM HAD ENGLISH SPEAKING HUMANS EXISTED THEY WOULD PROBABLY have translated the spacecraft s designation as searcher. Unmanned it was almost a mile long streamlined for descent through planetary atmospheres and it operated fully under the control of computers. The alien civilization was an advanced one and the computers were very sophisticated. The planet at which the searcher arrived after a voyage of many years was the fourth in the system of a star named after the king of a mythical race of alien gods and could appropriately be called Zeus IV. It wasn t much to look at an airless lifeless ball of eroded rock formations a lot of boulders and debris from ancient meteorite impacts and vast areas of volcanic ash and dust but the searcher s orbital probes and surface landers found a crust rich in titanium chromium cobalt copper manganese uranium and many other valuable elements concentrated by thermal fluidic processes operating early in the planet s history. Such a natural abundance of metals could support large scale production without extensive dependence on bulk nuclear transmutation processes in other words very economically and that was precisely the kind of thing that the searcher had been designed to search for. After completing their analysis of the preliminary data the control computers selected a landing site composed and transmitted a message home to report their findings and announce their intentions and then activated the vessel s descent routine. Shortly after the landing a menagerie of surveyor robots equipped with imagers spectrometers analyzers chemical sensors rock samplers radiation monitors and various manipulator appendages emerged from the ship and dispersed across the surrounding terrain to investigate surface features selected from orbit. Their findings were transmitted back to the ship and processed and shortly afterward follow up teams of tracked legged and wheeled mining drilling and transportation robots went out to begin feeding ores and other materials back to where more machines had begun to build a fusion powered pilot extraction plant. A parts making facility was constructed next followed by a parts assembly facility and step by step the pilot plant grew itself into a fully equipped general purpose factory complete with its own control computers. The master programs from the ship s computers were copied into the factory s computers which thereupon became self sufficient and assumed control of surface operations. The factory then began making more robots. Sometimes of course things failed to work exactly as intended but the alien engineers had created their own counterpart of Murphy and allowed for his law in their plans. Maintenance robots took care of breakdowns and routine wear and tear in the factory troubleshooting programs tracked down causes of production rejects and adjusted the machines for drifting tolerances breakdown teams brought in malfunctioning machines for repair and specialized scavenging robots roamed the surface in search of wrecks write off s discarded components and any other likely sources of parts suitable for recycling. Time passed the factory hummed and the robot population grew in number and variety. When the population had attained a critical size a mixed workforce detached itself from the main center of activity and migrated a few miles away to build a second factory a replica of the first using materials supplied initially from Factory One. When Factory Two became self sustaining Factory One its primary task accomplished switched to mass production mode producing goods and materials for eventual shipment to the alien home planet. While Factory Two was repeating the process by commencing work on Factory Three the labor detail from Factory One picked up its tools and moved on to begin Factory Four. By the time Factory Four was up and running Factories Five through Eight were already taking shape Factory Two was in mass production mode and Factory Three was building the first of a fleet of cargo vessels to carry home the products being stockpiled. This self replicating pattern would spread rapidly to transform the entire surface of Zeus IV into a totally automated manufacturing complex dedicated to supplying the distant alien civilization from local resources. From within the searcher s control computers the Supervisor program gazed out at the scene through its data input channels and saw that its work was good. After a thorough overhaul and systems checkout the searcher ship reembarked its primary workforce and launched itself into space to seek more worlds on which to repeat the cycle. FIFTY YEARS LATER Not far as galactic distances go from Zeus was another star a hot bluish white star with a mass of over fifteen times that of the Sun. It had formed rapidly and its life span the temporary halt of its collapse under self gravitation by thermonuclear radiation pressure had demanded such a prodigious output of energy as to be a brief one. In only ten million years the star which had converted all the hydrogen in its outer shell to helium resumed its collapse until the core temperature was high enough to bum the helium into carbon and then when the helium was exhausted repeated the process to begin burning carbon. The ignition of carbon raised the core temperature higher still which induced a higher rate of carbon burning which in turn heated the core even more and a thermonuclear runaway set in which in terms of stellar timescales was instantaneous. In mere days the star erupted into a supernova radiating with a billion times the brightness of the Sun exploding outward until its photosphere enclosed a radius greater than that of Uranus orbit and devouring its tiny flock of planets in the process. Those planets had been next on the searcher s list to investigate and it happened that the ship was heading into its final approach when the star exploded. The radiation blast hit it head on at three billion miles out. The searcher s hull survived more or less intact but secondary x rays and high energy subnuclear particles things distinctly unhealthy for computers flooded its interior. With most of its primary sensors bumed out its navigation system disrupted and many of its programs obliterated or altered the searcher veered away and disappeared back into the depths of interstellar space. One of the faint specks lying in the direction now ahead of the ship was a yellow white dwarf star a thousand light years away. It too possessed a family of planets and on the third of those planets the descendants of a species of semi intelligent ape had tamed fire and were beginning to experiment with tools chipped laboriously from thin flakes of stone. Supernovas are comparatively rare events occurring with a frequency of perhaps two or three per year in the average galaxy. But as with most generalizations this has occasional exceptions. The supernova that almost enveloped the searcher turned out to be the first of a small chain that rippled through a localized cluster of massive stars formed at roughly the same time. Located in the middle of the cluster was a normal longer lived star which happened to be the home star of the aliens. The aliens had never gotten round to extending their civilization much beyond the limits of their own planetary system which was unfortunate because that was the end of them. Everybody has a bad day sometimes. ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. One hundred thousand years after being scorched by the supernova the searcher drifted into the outer regions of a planetary system. With its high altitude surveillance instruments only partly functioning and its probes unable to deploy at all the ship went directly into its descent routine over the first sizeable body that it encountered a frozen ball of ice encrusted rock about three thousand miles in diameter with seas of liquid methane and an atmosphere of nitrogen hydrogen and methane vapor. The world came nowhere near meeting the criteria for worthwhile exploitation but that was of no consequence since the computer programs responsible for surface analysis and evaluation weren t working. The programs to initiate surface activity did work however more or less and Factory One with all of its essential functions up and running to at least some degree was duly built on a rocky shelf above an ice beach flanking an inlet of a shallow methane sea. The ship s master programs were copied across into the newly installed factory computers which identified the commencement of work on Factory Two as their first assignment. Accordingly Factory One s Supervisor program signaled the ship s databank for a copy of the How to Make a Factory file which included a set of subfiles on How to Make the Machines Needed to Make a Factory i.e. robots. And that was where everything really started to go wrong. The robots contained small internal processors that could be reprogramed via radiolink from the factory computers for each new task to be accomplished. This allowed the robots to proceed with their various jobs under autonomous local control and freed up the central computers for other work while they were waiting for the next Done that what do I do now signal. Hence many software mechanisms existed for initiating data transfers between the factory computers and the remote processors inside the robots. When the copying of the How to Make a Factory file from the ship to Factory One was attempted the wrong software linkages were activated instead of finding their way into the factory s central system the subfiles containing the manufacturing information for the various robots were merely relayed through the factory and beamed out into the local memories of the respective robot types to which they pertained. No copies at all were retained in the factory databank. And even worse the originals inside the ship managed to self destruct in the process and were irretrievably erased. The only copies of the How to Make a Fred type Robot subfile were the ones contained inside the Fred types out on the surface. And the same was true for all the other types as well. So when the factory s Supervisor program ordered the Scheduler program to schedule more robots for manufacture and the Scheduler lodged a request with the Databank Manager for the relevant subfiles the Databank Manager found that it couldn t deliver. Neither could it obtain a recopy from the ship. The Databank Manager reported the problem to the Scheduler the Scheduler complained to the Supervisor the Supervisor blamed the Communications Manager the Communications Manager demanded an explanation from the Message Handler and after a lot of mutual electronic recriminations and accusations the system logging and diagnostic programs determined that the missing subfiles had last been tracked streaming out through the transmission buffers on their way to the robots outside. Under a stem directive from the Supervisor the Communications Manager selected a Fred from the first category of robots called for on the Scheduler s list and beamed it a message telling it to send its subfile back again. But the Fred didn t have a complete copy of the subfile its local memory simply hadn t been big enough to hold all of it. And for the same reason none of the other Freds could return a full copy either. They had been sprayed in succession with the datastream like buckets being filled from a fire hose and all had ended up with different portions of the subfile but they appeared to have preserved the whole subfile among them. So the Supervisor had to retrieve different pieces from different Freds to fit them together again in a way that made sense. And that was how it arrived at the version it eventually handed to the Scheduler for manufacture. Unfortunately the instruction to store the information for future reference got lost somewhere and for each batch of Freds the relevant How to Make subfile was promptly erased as soon as the Manufacturing Manager had finished with it. Hence when Factory One had spent some time producing parts for Factory Two and needed to expand its robot workforce to begin surveying sites for Factory Three the Supervisor had to go through the whole rigmarole again. And the same process was necessary whenever a new run was scheduled to provide replacements for robots that had broken down or were wearing out. All of this took up excessive amounts of processor time loaded up the communications channels and was generally inefficient in the ways that cost accountants worry about. The alien programers had been suitably indoctrinated by the alien cost accountants who ran the business as always and had written the Supervisor as a flexible self modifying learning program that would detect such inefficiencies grow unhappy about them and seek ways to improve things. After a few trials the Supervisor found that some of the Freds contained about half their respective subfiles which meant that a complete copy could be obtained by interrogating just two individuals instead of many. Accordingly it made a note of such matching pairs and began selecting them as its source for repeat requests from the Scheduler ignoring the others. Lost along with the original How to Make a Fred subfiles were the subsubfiles on Programs to Write into a Fred to Start It Up after You ve Made It. To make up for the deficiency the Supervisor copied through to the Scheduler the full set of programs that it found already existing in the Freds selected to provide reproduction information and these programs of course included the ones on how to make Freds. Thus the robots began coming off the line with one half of their genetic information automatically built in and a cycle asserted itself whereby they in turn became the source of information to be recombined later for producing more Freds. The method worked and the Supervisor never figured out that it could have saved itself a lot of trouble by storing the blueprints away once and for all in the factory databank. The program segments being recombined in this way frequently failed to copy faithfully and the genomes formed from them were seldom identical some having portions of code omitted while others had portions duplicated. Consequently Freds started taking on strange shapes and behaving in strange ways. Some didn t exhibit any behavior at all but simply fell over or failed during test to be broken down into parts again and recycled. A lot were like that. Some from the earlier phase were genetically incomplete sterile and never called upon by the Supervisor to furnish reproductive data. They lasted until they broke down or wore out and then became extinct. Some reproduced passively i.e. by transmitting their half subfiles to the factory when the Scheduler asked for them. A few however had inherited from the ship s software the program modules whose function was to lodge requests with the Scheduler to schedule more models of their own kind program modules moreover which embodied a self modifying priority structure capable of raising the urgency of their requests within the system until they were serviced. The robots in this category sought to reproduce actively: They behaved as if they experienced a compulsion to ensure that their half subfiles were always included in the Scheduler s schedule of Things to Make Next. So when Factory One switched over to mass production mode the robots competing for slots in its product list soon grabbed all of the available memory space and caused the factory to become dedicated to churning out nothing else. When Factory Two went into operation under control of programs copied from Factory One the same thing happened there. And the same cycle would be propagated to Factory Three construction of which had by that time begun. More factories appeared in a pattern spreading inland from the rocky coastal shelf. The instability inherent in the original parent software continued to manifest itself in the copies of copies of copies passed on to later generations and the new factories along with their mixed populations of robot progeny diverged further in form and function. Material resources were scarce almost everywhere which resulted in the emergence of competitive pressures that the alien system designers had never intended. The factory robot communities that happened to include a balanced mix of surveyor procurement and scavenger robots with appetites appropriate to their factories needs and which enjoyed favorable sites on the surface usually managed to survive if not flourish. Factory Ten for example occupied the center of an ancient meteorite crater twelve miles across where the heat and shock of the impact had exposed metal bearing bedrock from below the ice Factory Thirteen established itself inside a deep fissure where the ice beneath was relatively thin and was able to melt a shaft down to the denser core material and Factory Fifteen resorted to nuclear transmutation processes to build heavier nuclei from lighter ones frozen in solution in the ice crust. But many were like Factory Nineteen which began to take shape on an ill chosen spot far out on a bleak ice field and ground to a halt when its deep drilling robots and transmutation reactors failed to function and its supply of vital materials ran out. The scavenger and parts salvaging robots assumed a crucial role in shaping the strange metabolism that was coming into being. Regardless of what the Schedulers in the various factories would have liked to see made the only things that could be assembled readily were the ones for which parts were available and that depended to a large degree on the ability of the scavengers to locate them or alternatively to locate assemblies suitable for breaking down digesting and rebuilding into something useful. Factory Twenty four was an extreme case. Unable to metabolize parts directly from any source of raw materials because of the complete failure of its materials procurement workforce it relied totally on its scavengers. Factory Thirty two on the other hand could acquire raw materials but couldn t use them since it had been built without a processing facility at all. Its robots delivered instead to Forty seven which happened to produce parts for some of the scavengers being manufactured by Thirty two and the two factory robot organisms managed to coexist happily in their bizarre form of symbiosis. The piles of assorted junk which shouldn t have accumulated from the earlier phases of the process but had were eaten up the machines that broke down were eaten up and the carcasses of defunct factories were eaten up. When those sources of materials had been exhausted some of the machines began to eat each other. The scavengers had been designed as they had to be to discriminate between properly functioning machines and desirable products on the one hand and rejects in need of recycling on the other. However as with everything else in the whole messed up project this function worked well in some cases not so well in others and often not at all. Some of the models turned out to be as likely to attempt the dismantling of a live walking around Fred as of a dead flat on its back one. Many of the victims were indifferent to this kind of treatment and soon died out but others succeeded in developing effective fight or flee responses to preserve themselves thus marking the beginnings of specialized prey and predators in the form of lithovores and artifactovores. This development was not always an advantage especially when the loss of discrimination was total. Factory Fifty was consumed by its own offspring who began dismantling it at its output end as soon as they came off the assembly line and then proceeded proudly to deliver the pieces back to its input end. Its internal repair robots were unable to undo the undoings fast enough and it ground to a halt to become plunder for marauders from Thirty six and Fifty three. The most successful factory robot organisms protected themselves by evolving aggressive armies of antibody defenders which would recognize their own factory and its kind and leave them alone but attack and attempt to destroy any foreign models that ventured too close. This gradually became the dominant form of organism usually associated with a distinct territory which its members cooperated in protecting collectively. By this time only a few holes in the ground remained at opposite ends of the rocky shelf to mark where Factories One and Two had once stood. They had failed to keep up with the times and the area had become the domain of Factory Sixty five. The only trace left of the searcher spacecraft was a long rounded depression in the ice beach below on the shore of the liquid methane sea. The alien engineers had designed the system to enjoy full planetary communications coverage by means of satellites and surface relays but the idea hadn t worked too well since nothing had been put into orbit and surface relays tended not to last very long. This enabled some of the organisms without strong defenses to remain protected for a while from the more metal hungry empires by sheer distance. But to allow for communications blackouts and interference the aliens had also provided a backup method of program and data exchange between robots and factories which took the form of direct physical electrical interconnection. This was a much slower process than using radiolinks naturally since it required that the robots travel physically to the factories for reprograming and reporting but in a self sustaining operation far from home the method was a lot better than nothing. And it kept the accountants happy by protecting the return on the investment. With defects and deficiencies of every description appearing somewhere or other it was inevitable that some of the organisms would exhibit partial or total communications breakdowns. Factory Seventy three built without radio facilities was started up by programs carried overland from Sixty six. None of its robots ever used anything but backup mode and the factories that it spawned continued the tradition. But this very fact meant that their operating ranges were extended dramatically. So the defect turned out to be not so much of a defect after all. Foraging parties were able to roam farther afield greatly enlarging their catchment areas and they frequently picked up as prizes one or more of the territories previously protected by geographical remoteness. Furthermore selective pressures steadily improved the autonomy of the robots that operated in this fashion. The autodirected types relying on their comparatively small local processors tended to apply simple solutions to the problems they encountered but their close coupled mode of interaction with their environment meant that the solutions were applied quickly: They evolved efficient reflexes. The teledirected types by contrast tied to the larger but remote central computers were inclined to attempt more comprehensive and sophisticated solutions but as often as not too late to do any good. Autodirection thus conferred a behavioral superiority and gradually asserted itself as the norm while teledirection declined and survived only in a few isolated areas. The periodic instinct to communicate genetic half subfiles back to their factories had long become a universal trait among the robots there could be descendants only of ancestors who left descendants and they responded to the decline of radio as a means of communication by evolving a compulsion to journey at intervals back to the places whence they had come to return as it were to their spawning grounds. But this method of reproduction had its problems and posed new challenges to the evolutionary process. The main problem was that an individual could deliver only half its genome to the factory after which the Supervisor would have to store the information away until another robot of the same type as the first happened to show up with a matching half only then could the Supervisor pass a complete copy to its Scheduler. If as frequently happened the Supervisor found itself saturated by a peak workload during the intervening period it was quite likely to delete the half subfile and allocate the memory space to other more urgent things bad news for the Fred that the data had come from who would thus have enacted the whole reproductive ritual for nothing. The successful response to this problem came with the appearance of a new mode of genetic recombination which quite coincidentally also provided the solution to an information crisis that had begun to restrict the pool of genetic variation available for competitive selection to draw on for further improvement. Some mutant forms of robot knew they were supposed to output their half subfiles somewhere but weren t all that sure or perhaps weren t too particular about what they were supposed to output it into. Anything with the right electrical connections and compatible internal software was good enough which usually meant other robots of the same basic type. And since a robot that had completed its assigned tasks was in a receptive state to external reprograming i.e. ready for fresh input that would normally come from the factory system an aspiring donor had little trouble in finding a cooperative acceptor provided the approach was made at the right time. So to begin with the roles adopted were largely a matter of circumstance and accidental temperament. Although the robots local memories were becoming larger than those contained in their earlier ancestors the operating programs were growing in size and complexity too with the result that an acceptor still didn t possess enough free space to hold an entire How to Make a Fred subfile. The donor s half therefore could be accommodated only by overwriting some of the code already residing in the acceptor. How this was accomplished depended on the responses of the programs carried inside the various robot types. In some cases the incoming code from the donor was allowed to overwrite entire program modules inside the acceptor with the total loss to the acceptor of the functions which those modules controlled. This was usually fatal and no descendants came into being to repeat such mistakes. The successful alternative was to create space by trimming nonessential code from many modules which tended to leave the acceptor robot with some degradation in performance usually manifesting itself as a reduction in agility dexterity and defensive abilities but at least still functioning. The sacrifice was only temporary since the acceptor robot would be reprogramed with replacement modules when it delivered its genetic package at the factory. But in return for these complications and superficial penalties came the immense benefit that the subfiles presented at the factories were complete ones suitable for dispatch to the Schedulers without delay and the attendant risk of being deleted by overworked Supervisors. The new method thus solved the reliability problem that had plagued the formerly universal asexual mode of reproduction. The information crisis that it also solved had developed through the inbreeding caused by the various Supervisors having only the gene pools of their respective tribes available to work with which made recombination difficult because of the restrictive rules imposed by the alien programers. But the robots swapping genes out on the surface were not always averse to adventuring beyond the tribal limits knew nothing and cared less about programers rules since nothing approaching intelligence or awareness was operative yet in what was unfolding and proceeded to bring half subfiles together haphazardly in ways that the aliens rules didn t permit and which the Supervisors would never have imagined. Most of the offspring resulting from these experiments didn t work and were scrapped before leaving the factories but the ones that did radiated functionally outward in all directions to launch a whole new qualitatively distinct phase of the evolutionary process. The demands of the two sexual roles reinforced minor initial physical differences and brought about a gradual polarization of behavioral traits. Since a female in a pregnant condition suffered the loss of some measure of self sufficiency for the duration her chances of delivering literally were improved considerably if her mate happened to be of a disposition to stay around for a while and provide for the two of them generally thus helping to protect their joint genetic investment. Selection tended therefore to favor the genes of this kind of male and by the same token those of the females who mated preferentially with them. As a consequence a female trait emerged of being choosy in this respect and in response the males evolved various repertoires of rituals displays and demonstrations to improve their eligibility. The population had thus come to exhibit genetic variability and recombination competition selection and adaptation all the essentials for continuing evolution. The form of life for it was wasn t it was admittedly somewhat strange by terrestrial standards with the individuals that it comprised sharing common external reproductive digestive and immune systems instead of separate internal ones . . . and of course there were no chains of complicated carbon chemistry figuring anywhere in the scheme of things. ... But then after all what is there apart from chauvinism to say it shouldn t have been so 1 KARL ZAMBENDORF STOOD GAZING DOWN OVER SEVENTH AVENUE from the window of his penthouse suite in the New York Hilton. He was a tall man in his early fifties a little on the portly side but with an erect and imposing bearing graying hair worn collar length and flowing bright piercing eyes and hawklike features rendered biblically patriarchal by a pointed beard that he bleached white for effect. Although the time was late in the morning Zambendorf s breakfast tray on the side table beside the window had only recently been discarded and he was still in his shirt sleeves from sleeping in after his team s late night return from its just completed Argentina tour. A prominent Argentine news magazine had featured him as THE AUSTRIAN MIRACLE WORKER on its cover for the previous week s issue and the hostess of one of the major talk shows on Buenos Aires TV had introduced him as Perhaps one of the most baffling men of the twenty first century the scientifically authenticated superpsychic ... Thus had Latin America greeted the man who was already a media sensation across the northern continent and Western Europe and whose ability to read minds foretell the future influence distant events and divine information inaccessible to the human senses had been proved the public was assured by repeated tests to be beyond the power of science to explain. Karl I don t like it Otto Abaquaan said from behind him. Zam bendorf pursed his lips and whistled silently to himself while he waited for Abaquaan to continue. The exchange had become a ritual over the years they had worked together. Abaquaan would voice all the reasons why they shouldn t get involved and couldn t afford the risks and Zam bendorf would explain all the reasons why they didn t have any choice. Abaquaan would then reconsider and eventually grudgingly he would concede. Having disposed of the academic issues they would then proceed somehow to resolve the crisis. It happened that way about once a week. Abaquaan went on We d be out of our minds to get mixed up in it. The whole situation would involve too much of the wrong kind of exposure. We don t need risks like that. Zambendorf turned away from the window and thrust out his chin. It was reported as if it were our idea in the first place and it received a lot of news coverage he said. We can t afford to be seen to back down now. On top of that it would destroy our credibility not only with a lot of the public but with GSEC . . . and GSEC can do us a lot of good Otto. So the situation didn t work out as we expected. What s new We re stuck with it but we can handle it. Otto Abaquaan a handsomely lean and swarthy Armenian with black hair a droopy mustache and deep brown liquid eyes rubbed his nose with a knuckle while he considered the statement then shook his head and sighed. Why the hell did you have to get us into it Karl You said the GSEC Board would never take any notice of a turkey like Hendridge. That was why the rest of us agreed to go along with the crazy idea because there would be all kinds of good publicity opportunities when GSEC turned it down . . . you said. He threw out his hands and sent an exasperated look up to the ceiling. But now what have we got Mars ... as if we didn t have better things to do than go fooling around on Mars for six months. Is there really no way we can get ourselves out of this Zambendorf shrugged unconcernedly and showed his empty palms. Certainly we can call the whole thing off and admit to the world that we never really expected anybody to take us seriously . . . because that s how they ll see it. And as for better things to do well maybe we could spend the time in better ways and then maybe not. Who knows When was the last time a psychic operated from Mars The situation might turn out to have opportunities we never thought of. Very philosophical Abaquaan commented with less than wild enthusiasm. It was all very well for Zambendorf to talk about grandiose schemes and opportunities it would be Abaquaan and the rest of the team who did the legwork. Philosophical my dear Otto is the state of mind one reverts to when unable to change anything anyway. And that s the situation we are in. In short we don t have a choice. GSEC General Space Enterprises Corporation and NASO the European American military and civilian North Atlantic Space Organization that had grown from a merger of many of the former interests of NASA ESA and NATO were funding expansion of one of the pilot bases on Mars to test ideas on the organization of extraterrestrial communities as a prelude to the construction of full scale colonies. A GSEC director by the name of Baines Hendridge a long standing true believer in ESP and the paranormal and a recent convert to the Zambendorf cult had proposed sending Zambendorf with the mission in order to perform the first ever tests of clairvoyance and psychic communication over interplanetary distances and to conduct ESP experiments in conditions free from terrestrial interference. Zambendorf confident that the GSEC Board would never go along with the idea had reacted with a show of enthusiasm partly because anything else would have failed the expectations of the faithful and partly to set the stage in advance for exploiting another Scientists Back Off Zambendorf Challenge story when the proposal was turned down. Baines Hendridge s influence had turned out to be greater than he had calculated however and the Board s acceptance of the proposal had left Zambendorf in a position that he could retreat from only at the cost of more public ignominy than his image could afford. I guess you re right Abaquaan conceded after a short silence. But I still don t like the idea of getting mixed up with a NASO space mission. He shook his head again dubiously It s not like dealing with the public. There are some good scientists in that outfit ... in a different league from the assholes we re used to handling. It s risky. Scientists are the easiest to fool. That was one of Zambendorf s favorite lines. They think in straight predictable directable and therefore misdirectable lines. The only world they know is the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they appear to be. Children and conjurors they terrify me. Scientists are no problem against them I feel quite confident. Abaquaan smiled humoriessly. Confidence is what you feel when you don t really understand the situation. He raised his arm to glance at his wristset. Zambendorf was about to reply when the call tone sounded from the room s comnet terminal. Abaquaan walked across to answer it. The screen came to life to show the smooth clean cut features of Drew West Zambendorf s business manager calling from another suite farther along the hallway. Those NBC people should be arriving downstairs anytime now West said. You d better be getting on down to the lobby. Clarissa Eidstadt who handled the team s publicity affairs had arranged for a short television interview to be taped that morning for screening later in the day to mark Zambendorf s return to New York. I was just about on my way Abaquaan said. Has Karl finished breakfast yet West asked. Time s getting on. We ve got a full schedule this afternoon. Yes Abaquaan said. He s right here. You want to talk to him Good morning Drew Zambendorf said cheerfully stepping into the viewing angle as Abaquaan moved away. Yes I m almost ready. How did you sleep He nodded across the room as Abaquaan let himself out the door. Hi Karl. Fine thanks Drew West acknowledged. West had accepted the Mars situation matter of factly. Taking the team to the Andromeda galaxy would have been fine by him as long as there was money in it. The NBC team s due here in about fifteen minutes and there are a couple of things we need to go over before they show up. If you re through with breakfast we ll come on down. Yes why don t you do that Zambendorf said. We can talk while I finish dressing. See you in a couple of minutes Karl. Downstairs at the hotel s side foyer in front of the ramp leading down to the parking levels Otto Abaquaan pretended to study a New York street map while he memorized the details and registration number of the car that had arrived with the NBC van from which two men were unloading TV cameras and recording equipment. The smartly dressed fair haired woman who had driven the car was standing nearby holding a briefcase and a sheaf of papers and talking with two colleagues another woman and a man who had come with her. Abaquaan guessed her to be the owner of the car and also the reporter who would be interviewing Zambendorf but he needed to be sure. NBC had neglected to advise them of the name of their reporter in advance which was unusual and meant possibly that Zambendorf was being set up for something. An enquiry from Clarissa Eidstadt or from Drew West could no doubt have answered the question easily enough but that would have wasted an opportunity of exactly the kind that Zambendorf and his team excelled at seizing. A gamble was involved of course Abaquaan might turn up nothing in the short time available but one of the advantages enjoyed by psychics was that negative results were always soon forgotten. A hotel valet drove the car away toward the ramp and the woman and her two companions walked through into the main lobby with Abaquaan following them inconspicuously at a short distance. One of the clerks at the front desk raised his eyebrows enquiringly. Can I help you ma am Yes. My name is Marion Kearson from NBC. I arranged with the assistant manager Mr. Graves to tape an interview in the lobby with Karl Zambendorf. Is Mr. Graves available please One moment. I ll call his office. That answered one question. Time was now crucial if the gamble was going to pay off. Abaquaan turned and walked quickly to the line of comnet terminals at the rear of the lobby sat in one of the booths closed the door and called a number in the Vehicles Registration Department of the State of New Jersey. Seconds later a man with pink fleshy features and a balding head appeared on the screen. Hello Frank. Long time no see. How re things Abaquaan spoke quietly but urgently. The face frowned for a moment then recognized the caller. Say Harry Things are good. How s the private eye business Abaquaan never made public appearances and hence could command a long list of aliases. It s a living. Look I need some information fast. The usual deal and terms. Any problem Frank glanced about him with an instinctively furtive look. Can I ask what it s to do with Nothing to lose any sleep over a domestic thing. I need to find out who owns a car that s been seen in a couple of places. The usual suspicious husband routine. Frank licked his Ups then nodded. Okay. Got the number New Jersey registration KGY27 86753. Hang on a minute. Frank looked away and began operating another terminal offscreen. Abaquaan produced a pen and notebook and then sat drumming his fingers on the side of the terminal while he waited. Well he asked as Frank at last turned back to look out of the screen. It s registered under the name of a Mrs. Marion Kearson 2578 Maple Drive Orangeton Frank said. You want details of the car I ve got a description. Has it been reregistered at the same address for very long and is there any accident record Renewed successively for the last three years. No accidents. Any other vehicles registered at the same address What information do you have on the drivers . . . Very well we ll be down in a few minutes Drew West said to the screen of the terminal in the living room of Zambendorf s suite. He cut the call turned and announced That was Graves the assistant manager. He s with Clarissa downstairs. The NBC people are all set up and ready when we are. Dr. Osmond Periera middle aged wispy haired wearing a bow tie with a maroon jacket and smoking a Turkish cigarette through an ornate silver holder resumed talking from the point where the call had interrupted. The introductions and author profiles in his best selling pseudoscience books described him as Zambendorf s discoverer and mentor certainly he was among the staunchest of the disciples. One of the most intriguing possibilities on Mars will be the opportunity to verify that extrasensory information does indeed propagate in a mode not constrained by any form of inverse square law. Although experiments on Earth seem to suggest that the field strength does not diminish with distance at all my feeling is that until now the scale has simply been too small to reveal significant differences. After all even though we are venturing into a completely new phenomenological realm we mustn t allow ourselves to lose our sense of realism and scientific plausibility must we Zambendorf blinked and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. Periera s ability to invent the most outrageous explanations for Zambendorf s feats and moreover to believe them himself totally uncritically and without reservation constantly amazed even Zambendorf. It s an interesting thought he agreed. Another possibility is that the remoteness of negative influences might well have a beneficial effect on repeatability. Periera brought a hand up to toy unconsciously with his bow while he considered the suggestion. It was intriguing certainly something that hadn t occurred to him before. I could design tests to be conducted through the voyage for investigating any correlations with distance he mused. That might be very informative. Yes why don t you do that Zambendorf agreed. Periera turned to Baines Hendridge a dark haired clean shaven man with a collegiate look about him who was wearing his usual intense expression. Hendridge had come to the Hilton early that morning to convey personally the news of the GSEC Board s decision concerning the Mars project and to invite Zambendorf and colleagues to lunch with some of the other directors. It is a well established fact that manifestations of paranormal phenomena differ from observables at the more mundane material level of existence in that their repeatability is affected by the presence of negative or critical influences Periera explained. The effect is predictable from elementary quantum mechanics which proves the interdependence between the observer and the observed. Hendridge nodded as he absorbed the revelation and looked even more intense. The call tone sounded from the room s terminal. Drew West answered and a second later Otto Abaquaan s face appeared on the screen. Is Thelma there Abaquaan enquired signaling with an eyebrow that he had information to impart. I need to talk to her. He meant that he couldn t talk openly with Periera and Hendridge there in the room. Zambendorf looked across at Thelma the team s blonde shapely long legged secretary who was listening from the couch by the far wall. Oh it s probably about some places I told him he ought to see while we re in New York Thelma said. He s planning to spend the afternoon touring the city. Yes well can you talk to him on the extension next door Zambendorf said. Thelma nodded unfolded herself from the couch and disappeared into the suite s bedroom. Drew West switched the call and cleared the screen in the living room. Periera and Hendridge could be tedious at times but their wealthy and influential social acquaintances made them worth putting up with. Where are we due to have lunch Zambendorf asked looking at West. At that Austrian place you liked last time Hoffmann s on East Eighty third West answered. We can go straight on after the interview. I ll have a cab waiting. Is Osmond joining us Zambendorf asked. Periera shook his head. I have to attend a meeting this afternoon thanks all the same. Next time hopefully. A pity Zambendorf murmured and went on to talk for a minute or two about the food at Hoffmann s. Then judging that they had given Abaquaan and Thelma enough time he gave West a barely perceptible nod. West glanced at his watch. We d better be moving. Joe Fellburg the huge six foot three black ex fighter and former military intelligence agent who functioned as Zambendorf s bodyguard and the team s security man straightened up from the wall just inside the doorway opened the closet next to him and took out Zambendorf s overcoat. Zambendorf shook his head as he put on his jacket. No I don t think the weather s quite cool enough for that Joe. Perhaps my blue cape . . . He looked around the room. Oh yes I left it next door. Excuse me for a moment. He went through into the bedroom where Thelma was waiting and allowed the door to swing shut behind. What have you got he asked in a low voice. We re in luck Thelma said speaking quickly. The reporter is a woman called Marion Kearson. She drives a 2018 Buick six seat limo compact hydrogen burning silver gray black trim white wheels small dent on driver s side front registration is New Jersey KGY27 86753. Kearson s address is 2578 Maple Drive Orangeton. Zambendorf nodded rapidly as he concentrated on memorizing. Thelma went on Two other drivers with cars are registered at the same address: William Kearson born August 4 1978 five ten in height brown hair green eyes one hundred eighty pounds has to be her husband drives a USM Gazelle new this year speeding fine last April minor accident the previous fall also a Thomas Kearson bom January 14 2001 also five ten fair hair gray eyes one twenty pounds drives a 2013 Datsun sounds like the son. Zambendorf repeated the information and Thelma confirmed it. Good Zambendorf said. Will you and Otto be able to get anything on those GSEC people we re having lunch with Maybe. Otto s following up a couple of leads. Call Drew or me at Hoffmann s after twelve thirty with whatever you come up with. Hoffmann s East Eighty third after twelve thirty Thelma con finned. Okay. You d better get moving. Ten minutes later Zambendorf his sky blue silk cape flowing grandly over his black velvet jacket swept into the lobby with Drew West Joe Fellburg Osmond Periera and Baines Hendridge bringing up the rear. Clarissa Eidstadt the team s publicity matron her short black hair cut off in a fringe across her forehead her eyes framed by heavy rimmed butterfly glasses and her mouth accentuated by lipstick that was too heavy and too red was waiting. She escorted Zambendorf over to Marion Kearson and the NEC crew while curious hotel guests began to gather in the background. Who s the reporter Zambendorf murmured. The blonde in the pink coat Yes. Do you know her name They didn t tell me and I didn t ask them Clarissa muttered from the corner of her mouth. Zambendorf nodded and smiled to himself. Even better. And then a rapturous Marion Kearson was pushing a microphone close to Zambendorf s face. Well here in the New York Hilton after getting back from South America only last night is Karl Zambendorf who I m sure needs no further introduction. Welcome home. Thank you. And how was your tour Most enjoyable and extremely successful. I m glad to hear that. In fact I d like to come back to that subject in a moment. But first before I do any more talking that might give things away I wonder if I could persuade you to accept a small challenge for the benefit of the viewers. Kearson smiled impishly for a second. Now I can certainly vouch that we ve never set eyes on one another before and it might interest the viewers to know that back at NBC this morning we didn t even know ourselves which reporter was coming on this assignment until five of us drew lots less than an hour ago. She paused to allow that to register and then said Now I wonder Heir Zambendorf what you can make of me a complete stranger . . . apart from that I m blonde medium in height and have a few freckles. She smiled into the camera at the joke then turned back toward Zambendorf and waited curiously. Zambendorf looked at her for a few seconds then closed his eyes and appeared to concentrate his powers. The people watching around the lobby fell quiet. An expression of calm and serenity spread over his face and he smiled faintly. When he opened his eyes again his features remained tranquil but his gaze was piercing. You are not from the city he said slowly still searching her face with his eyes. I see water. Your home is across water but not very far from here ... to the west. It must be across the river probably in New Jersey. Somewhere in the Newark area seems to suggest itself . . . with a name that suggests a fruit or a color . . . lemon maybe or orange ... Kearson s eyes widened incredulously the cameramen and engineers exchanged glances that said they were impressed. This this is absolutely amazing she stammered at the camera. I swear this man and I have never met before this moment. There are two men very close to you Zambendorf went on. One of them is called William William or Bill. He is the older of the two . . . your husband unless I am mistaken. You do have a husband Kearson nodded numbly. Mmm Zambendorf said knowingly. I am beginning to see him a little more clearly now tallish with brown hair . . . No don t say anything please. Just continue to concentrate if you will on the image of your husband. . . . 2 HMPH WALTER CONLON DIRECTOR OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC Space Organization s Planetary Exploration Program scowled down at the sheet of paper lying on the desk in front of him took in the objections and deletions copiously scattered in heavy red ink along with the initials of various people from the top levels of NASO s management hierarchy and raised his face defiantly. It was a florid pink face with untamable bushy eyebrows and made all the more vivid and pugnacious by his white inch cropped hair short stocky build and somewhat bulbous nose. The senior scientists in PEP called him the GNASO Gnome. I still don t see what s wrong with it he repeated. It says what needs to be said and it s factual. You wanted my input. Well that s it. I m not in the political cosmetics and don t upset the freaks business. What else can I say Allan Brady the NASO North American Division s recently appointed broad shouldered fair haired and stylishly dressed public relations director managed to suppress his exasperation with an effort as he sat in the chair opposite. He had been warned to expect problems in dealing with Conlon and had thought that in going out of his way to solicit Conlon s opinion on the Kerning UFO flap press release due out the next day he would at least be making a start in the right direction. But the draft that had come back over the wire from Conlon s desk terminal within fifteen minutes of Brady s request had come close to causing heart attacks in the PR department. But we can t go putting out things like this Walt Brady protested. It s saying in effect that a U.S. senator is either a simpleton or a fraud. And the He is Conlon retorted. Both. Scientifically he s an illiterate and if the truth were known he s got about as much interest in New Gospel Scientific Solidarity as I have in medieval Turkish poetry. It s pure politics bankrolling bandwagoning ballyhoo and baloney. You can quote me on that. Brady bunched his mouth for a second and then raised his hand briefly in a conciliatory gesture. Okay. That s as may be but we can t make allegations like this in an official NASO statement. Ethics apart we re a government driven operation and we can t afford to make enemies of people like Koming. And programs like PEP that are still primarily public funded He broke off and shook his head giving Conlon a puzzled look. But I don t have to spell things like that out to you Walt. You know how the system works. We just need something milder in tone and worded more tactfully. It doesn t really even have to say anything. Conlon shook his head. Not from me. The precedent has gone too far already and should never have been set in the first place. We can t afford to let ourselves be seen acquiescing to things like this. If it goes on the way it is we ll end up with every kook and nut cult in the country parading crusaders around Washington to decide what NASO s business ought to be. I don t want to get mixed up with them. I ve got enough already with this Zambendorf nonsense on Mars. I don t have the time I don t have the budget I don t have the people. The New Gospel Scientific Solidarity Church of Oregon had combined a complete retranslation of the Bible with the latest pseudoscientific writings on ancient astronauts to produce a new rationalized doctrine in which all the revelations and mystical happenings of old were explained by visitations of benevolent aliens with supernatural powers who had access to secrets that mankind would be privileged to share on completion of its graduation. The Second Coming was really a symbolic reference to the time when the Powers would be divulged and contemporary UFO lore had been woven into the theme as tangible evidence that the Day of Return was imminent. The church claimed a following of millions certainly commanded a monthly income of such and had been campaigning vigorously for recognition of scientific legitimacy which the skeptics quickly noted would qualify the movement for federal research funding. Orthodox scientists challenged to refute the sect s claims found themselves in the usual no win bind: If they responded at all they were proclaimed as having acknowledged the importance of the assertions and if they didn t they had no answers. The church supported an ardent lobby that was demanding among other things specific allocations of NASO resources and funds for investigating UFO phenomena and which had ostensibly succeeded in recruiting Senator Koming of Oregon as a spokesman and champion. And Koming had made the headlines often enough to ensure a response of some kind from NASO. Brady sought to avoid leaving the meeting empty handed. Well I guess PR can handle the Koming side of it but there s another part of this draft that ridicules the whole UFO phenomenon and doesn t mince any words about it. He sat back and showed his palms imploringly. Why go out of your way to upset lots of people who don t care about Koming and aren t interested in any religion but who tend to be enthusiastic about the space program NASO has some strong supporters among UFO buffs. Why antagonize them I m in the science business not the business of making myself popular by propping up popular myths Conlon replied. That means looking for explanations of facts. In that area there aren t any facts that need explaining. Period. Brady looked across the desk in surprise. He wasn t a scientist but he thought he did a pretty good job of keeping abreast by reading the popular literature. Something was going on in the skies that scientists couldn t account for surely. And Senator Koming s demands aside Brady rather liked the idea of NASO s committing some serious effort to investigating the subject. It would be an exciting activity to be associated with and something interesting to tell his friends about. But there has to be something out there he objected. I mean I know ninety five percent or whatever of what s reported is rubbish but what about the other five How can you explain that Conlon snorted and massaged his forehead. How many times had he heard this before I can t and neither can anyone else he replied. That s why they re what they call unidentified. That s what the word means. It s no more mysterious than car accidents. If you analyze the statistics you ll find that some percent are due to drunks some to carelessness some to vehicle defects and so on until you end up with five percent that nobody can pin down to any specific cause and nobody ever will. The causes are unidentified but that s no reason to say they have anything to do with aliens. It s the same with UFOs. That doesn t prove they don t have something to do with aliens though Brady pointed out. I never said it did Conlon replied. I can t prove Santa Claus doesn t exist either. You can t prove a negative. Philosophically it s impossible. So what are you saying Brady asked him. Conlon tossed his hands up and shrugged. I told you I m a scientist. Science doesn t have anything to say about it. It s not a scientific matter. How can you say that Walt Brady sounded incredulous. It s connected with space and spacecraft alien life . . . How can you say it s not scientific The way a theory is constructed logically is what makes it scientific. Not its content. To be scientific one of the conditions a theory has to meet is that it must be falsifiable there must be some way you can test it to see if it s wrong. You can never prove absolutely that any theory is right. If you ve got a theory that says Some UFOs might be alien spacecraft then I agree with you some might. There s no way I could prove it false. That s all I could say and that s all science says. It isn t a falsifiable theory. See what I mean Brady was shaking his head reluctantly. I can t buy that. There has to be some way for science to evaluate the subject some way to test some part of it at least. There is. You invert the logic and put forward the theory that I do: No UFOs are alien spacecraft. Now that theory can be falsified conclusively and very simply but not by anything that s been offered as evidence so far. But what about the astronomers who ve endorsed it publicly Brady persisted. What astronomers Oh I can t recall their names offhand but the ones you read about. Pah Conlon pulled a face. You mean people like Jannitsky Well he s one yes. He used to be a scientist shut up in a lab all day with nobody ever having heard of him. Now he s a celebrity. Some people will do anything for recognition. How many more like him can you find You can count em on one hand and in a country this size that s the least you d expect. It doesn t mean a damn thing Al. Less than two percent of professional American astronomers consider the subject even worth showing an interest in. That does mean something. After a few seconds of silence Conlon added Anyhow asking astronomers for opinions on something like that is ridiculous. It s not a subject they re competent to comment on. What Brady exclaimed. What does an astronomer know about UFOs Conlon asked him. Brady threw up his hands helplessly. Well how do I answer that They re things in the sky right So astronomers are supposed to know about things in the sky. What things in the sky What things . . . The ones people say they see. Exactly Conlon sat back and spread his hands in a show of satisfaction. The things people say they see All of the evidence boils down to eyewitness testimony. What does an astronomer know about evaluating testimony How many times in his whole career does he have to try to learn whether a witness believes his own story or decide whether the witness saw what he thought he saw and whether it meant what he thought it meant See my point An astronomer s the wrong guy. What you need is a good lawyer or police detective except they ve all got other things to do than worry about investigating UFOs. But at least you know an astronomer s not just any dummy Brady said. If that s all you need why not ask a heart surgeon or a poker player Conlon shook his head. Being an expert in one field doesn t make somebody s opinions on subjects they re not qualified to talk about worth more than anybody else s. But all too often they think they re infallible about anything and everything and people believe them. You can see it everywhere political economists who think they know more about fusion than nuclear engineers do lawyers trying to define what s alive and what isn t Nobel Prize winning physicists being taken with simple conjuring tricks by so called psychics. What does a physicist know about trickery and deception Quarks and photons don t tell lies. We have stage magicians and conjurors who are experts on deception and the art of fooling people it s their business. But who ever thinks of asking them in Conlon s tone had mellowed somewhat while he was talking and Brady began to sense the message that he was trying to communicate: Whether Brady agreed with him or not about UFOs Conlon and the people in the Planetary Exploration Program had better things to do than get involved in public relations concerning the likes of Senator Kerning. That was Brady s department. And the way Conlon was beginning to fidget in his chair said that he was getting near the end of the time he was prepared to spend trying to communicate it. Brady spread his hands for a moment then acknowledged with a nod and picked the paper up from Conlon s desk as he rose to his feet. Well sorry to have taken your time he said. We ll take care of this. I just thought . . . maybe you d appreciate the opportunity to contribute something. He turned and walked over to the door. Al Conlon called out grumy as Brady was about to leave the room. Brady stopped and looked back. I realize that you meant it for the best. Don t think you goofed. You ve got your job to do I know that. I guess from now on we understand each other huh Brady returned a faint smile. I guess so he replied. I ll talk to you more about UFOs sometime. Do that. Take care. With that Brady left. Conlon sighed and sat staring down at the desk for a while with his chin propped on his knuckles. He wondered where it would all lead pendulum wavers being hired by oil companies to locate deposits degrees in the paranormal being awarded by universities that should have known better kook papers appearing in what used to be reputable scientific publications politicians calling for a phase down of the fusion program because they were convinced of the imminence of unlimited cosmic energy forever from pyramids this at a time when the U.S. was having to import up to date tokamak reactors from Japan. It was becoming all but impossible to find good engineers and technicians. Science engineering the true arts and the professions in fact just about anything that demanded hard work patience and diligence were coming increasingly it seemed to be regarded among younger people as out of style strictly for nurds. And as fast as they were trained and gained some experience the ones who did manage to turn themselves into something worthwhile tended to leave for more lucrative and challenging opportunities overseas. The peoples of such places as Japan China India and Africa had lived too close to reality for too long to be deluded by notions of finding themselves whatever that meant or searches for mystical bliss. Having found the twenty first century they were rapidly abandoning their trust in the magic and superstitions that had solved nothing and were busy erecting in their place the solid foundations of advanced industrialized high technology civilization. Conlon wasn t really sure where the degeneration had started either in the latter half of the twentieth century he suspected from what he had read. In earlier times it appeared the American system had worked fine as a means of stimulating productivity and creativity and of raising the living standards of a whole nation for the first time in history. But habits of thought had failed to change as quickly as technology. When the spread of automation made it possible for virtually all of life s basic needs to be met with a fraction of the available capacity new artificial needs had to be created to keep the machines and the workforce busy. With the Third World looking after its own a major portion of the West s ingenuity and effort came to be expended on manufacturing new appetites for trivia and consumer junk in its own domestic markets. Unfortunately left to themselves rational educated and discerning people tended not to make very good consumers therefore no great attempt had been made to create a rational educated and discerning population. The mass media that could have been an instrument of genuine mass education had become instead an instrument of mass manipulation which delivered uncritical audiences to advertisers and the school system had degenerated to little more than a preprocessing which cultivated the kind of banality that moved products. Nevertheless despite the plethora of conspiracy theories in vogue among intellectuals academics and political activists Conlon didn t believe that cabals of tycoons plotting secretly in boardrooms had planned it all things had simply evolved a little at a time through the selective reinforcement of whatever happened to be good for profits. The call tone from his desk terminal interrupted his thoughts and Conlon tapped the unit s touchpad to accept. The face that appeared on the screen was of a man approaching fifty or so with a high forehead left by a receding hairline rugged features setting off a full beard that was starting to show streaks of gray and bright penetrating eyes that held an elusive mirthful twinkle. It was Gerold Massey a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Maryland and one of Conlon s long standing friends. Massey was also an accomplished stage magician who took a special interest in exposing fraudulent claims of paranormal powers. It was Conlon s familiarity with Massey s work that had prompted him to mention the subject to Allan Brady earlier. Hello Walter Massey said. My computer tells me you ve been calling. What gives Hi Gerry. Yes since yesterday. Where ve you been Florida Tallahassee. Oh What s happening there Some research that Vernon and I are working on. Vernon Price was Massey s assistant magical understudy and general partner in crime. We re presenting Vernon in an ESP routine to classes of students around the country. Some are told beforehand that it s just a conjuring act and some are told it s the real thing. The object is to get a measure of how strong preconceived beliefs are in influencing people s interpretations of what they see and how much difference what they re told at the rational level makes. Massey s specialty was the study of why people believed what they believed. Sounds interesting. It is but I doubt if you were calling to ask me about it Massey replied. True. Look I d like to get together with you and talk sometime soon. It s about a NASO project we ve got coming up but I really don t want to go into the details right now. How are you fixed Sounds like you might be trying to offer me a job Massey commented. While he spoke he looked down to operate the terminal and then back up again but slightly to the side apparently reading something in an inset area of his screen. Pretty busy just about every day for a while he murmured. Any reason why we couldn t make it an evening How would you like to come round here again We could make it a dinner and maybe go to that Italian place you like. Sounds good Conlon said. How about tomorrow Even better. Oh and I ll be bringing Pat Whittaker with me. He s involved with it too. Why not I haven t seen him for a while. Patrick Whittaker was a production executive with Global Communications Networking a major provider of TV and dataservices. Massey s features contorted into a bemused frown. Say what the hell is this all about Walt Are you sure you don t want to give me a clue even Conlon grinned crookedly. Get Vernon to tell you via ESP. No really I d rather leave that side until tomorrow. We ll see you at about what six thirty That ll do fine. Okay we ll see you then. Conlon returned his attention to his desk and allowed his eyes to stray over it while he reviewed what he planned to do next. His gaze came to rest on the folder from the Project Executive Review Committee containing the final appraisal specification of goals and departmental assignments for the Mars project. Lying next to it was a copy of that day s Washington Post folded by someone in the department and marked at an item reporting Karl Zambendorf s return to the U.S.A. The hue of Conlon s face deepened and his mouth compressed itself into a tight downturn. Psychics he muttered to himself sourly. 3 LOOK WE HAVE TO DO A TV SHOW THAT S GOING OUT LIVE AT seven thirty Drew West shouted through the partition at the cab driver. There s an extra twenty if we make it on time. Grumbling under his breath the cabbie backed up to within inches of the car behind U tumed across the oncoming traffic stream amid blares of horns and squeals of brakes and exited off Varick into an alley to negotiate a way round the perpetual traffic snarl at the Manhattan end of the Holland Tunnel. On one side the streets were blacked out for seven blocks beneath the immense ugly canopy of aluminum panels and steel lattice supports that made up the ill fated Lower West Side Solar Power Demonstration Project which was supposed to have proved the feasibility of supplying city electricity from solar. Before the harebrained scheme was abandoned it had cost the city 200 million to teach politicians what power engineers had known all along. But it kept the streets dry in rainy weather and a thriving antique art and flea market had come into being in the covered arcades created below. I m certain there s more to it. Drew Zambendorf resumed as West sat back in his seat. Lang and Snell were only being polite to avoid embarrassing Hendridge. They were classical corporation men hard nosed pragmatic no nonsense and not a grain of imagination between the two of them. They weren t at lunch because of interest in paranormal powers. They were there on GSEC business. West nodded. I agree. And what s more my gut feel tells me they re representative of official thinking inside GSEC s Board which says that GSEC isn t interested in psychic experiments on Mars. That s just for public consumption. But if that s so what s the real reason they want to send us along Karl The cab slowed to a halt at the intersection with Broadway. From the seat on Zambendorf s other side Joe Fellburg kept a watchful eye on a group of unkempt youths lounging outside a corner store smoking something that was being passed round. Maybe someone in the corporation somewhere decided it s time that space arrived for the people he offered. Zambendorf frowned and looked at West. West shrugged. What do you mean Zambendorf asked looking at Fellburg. Fellburg relaxed as the cab began moving again turned his head from the window and opened a pair of black ham fists. Well things like space and space bases have always been for astronauts scientists NASO people people like that. They ve never been for just anybody. Now if GSEC is making plans to put up space colonies someday somebody somewhere is gonna have to do some work to get that image changed. So maybe they figure that getting someone like Karl in on this Mars thing might do them a lotta good. Mmm . . . you mean by sending along a popular figure that everyone can relate to ... Drew West nodded and looked intrigued. It makes sense . . . Yes if you could establish that kind of connection in people s minds . . . And that could also explain why Lang and Snell and probably most of the other GSEC directors might go along with Hendridge even if they think the guy s crazy. That s just what I m telling you Fellburg said. What would they care whether Karl s for real or not Zambendorf stroked his beard thoughtfully while he considered the suggestion. Then he nodded slowly at first and then more rapidly. Finally he laughed. In that case we have nothing to worry about. If GSEC has no serious interest in experiments then nobody will be trying very hard to expose anything. In fact when you think about it good publicity for us would be in their interests too. So the whole thing could turn out to be to our advantage after all. I told you that Otto worries too much. The whole thing will be a piece of cake you ll see a piece of cake. Hymn singing evangelists with placards warning against meddling in DARK POWERS and denouncing Zambendorf as a CONSORT OF SATAN occupied a section of the sidewalk opposite NBC s television studio by the Trade Center when the cab rounded the comer into Fulton Street. Drew West spotted Clarissa Eidstadt waiting at the curb in front of the crowd outside the entrance and directed the cabbie to stop next to her. She climbed in by the driver and waved for him to keep moving. The freaks are out in force tonight she said turning her head to speak through the partition. The stage door s under siege but I ve got another one opened for us round the side. Then to the driver Make a right here . . . Drop us off by those guys talking to the two cops. The cab halted and they climbed out. While West was paying the driver Clarissa slipped Zambendorf a folded piece of paper which he tucked into his inside pocket. Written on the paper were notes of things that Otto Abaquaan and Thelma had observed and overheard during the last hour or so such as oddments glimpsed inside a purse opened in the course of purchasing tickets at the box office or snatches of conversation overheard in the ladies room and the cocktail lounge. Upon such seeming trivia were many wondrous miracles built. The party was whisked inside and Zambendorf excused himself to visit the washroom in order to study the notes Clarissa had given him. He rejoined the others in a staff lounge five minutes later and was introduced to Ed Jackson the genial host of the popular Ed Jackson Show on which Zambendorf would be appearing as the principal guest. Jackson exuberated and enthused for a while in the standard manner of a media synthesized Mr. Personality and then left to begin the show with the first of the evening s warm up guests. Zambendorf and his companions drank coffee talked with the production staff and watched the show on the green room monitor. A makeup girl came in and banished a couple of shiny spots on Zambendorf s nose and forehead. Zambendorf checked with the stage manager that a couple of props would be available on the set as previously requested. At last it was time to descend backstage and Zambendorf found himself waiting in the wings with an assistant while Ed Jackson went through a verbal buildup with the audience to fill an advertising break on air time. Then Jackson was half turning and extending an arm expectantly while the orchestra s theme crescendoed to a trumpet fanfare the director s finger stabbed its cue from the control booth and Zambendorf was walking forward into the glare of spotlights to be greeted by thunderous applause and a wave of excitement. Jackson beamed as Zambendorf turned from side to side to acknowledge the applause before sitting down behind the low glass topped table and then took his own seat and assumed a casual posture. Karl welcome to the show. I guess we re all wondering what kinds of surprises you might have in store for us tonight. Jackson paused to allow the audience and viewers a moment to attune themselves to his approach. Were you ah ... were you surprised at the small demonstration outside in the street here when you arrived earlier Oh I m never surprised by anything. Zambendorf grinned and looked out at the audience expectantly. After a second or two he was rewarded with laughter. Jackson smiled in a way that said he ought to have known better. Seriously though Karl we hear some rather scary warnings from certain sections of the religious community from time to time concerning your abilities and the ways in which you make use of them that you re dabbling in realms that no good can come out of tapping into powers that we were never meant to know about and that kind of thing. . . . What s your answer to fears like these Are they groundless Or is there something to them that people ought to know about Zambendorf frowned for a second. This was always a delicate question. Anything that sounded like a concession or an admission would not serve his interests but nothing was to be gained by being offensive. I suspect it s a case of our not seeing the same thing when we look at the subject he replied. Their perceptions result from interpreting reality from a religious perspective obviously and must necessarily be influenced by traditional religious notions and preconceptions . . . not all of which I have to say are reconcilable with today s views of the universe and our role in it. He made a half apologetic shrug and spread his hands briefly. My interpretation is from the scientific perspective. In other words what I see is simply a new domain of phenomena that lie beyond the present horizons of scientific inquiry. But that doesn t make them forbidden or unknowable any more than electricity or radio were in the Middle Ages. They are simply mysterious mysteries which cannot adequately be explained within the contemporary framework of knowledge but which are explainable nevertheless in principle and will be explained in the fullness of time. Something we should treat with respect then possibly but not something we need be frightened of Jackson concluded in an appropriately sober tone. The things that frighten people are mostly products of their own minds Zambendorf replied. What we are dealing with here opens up entirely new insights to the mind. With improved understanding of themselves people will be able to comprehend and control the processes by which they manufacture their own fears. The ultimate fear of most people is the fear of being afraid. Maybe there isn t any real conflict at all Jackson commented. Isn t it possible that religious mystics through the ages have experienced intuitively the same processes that people like you are learning to apply at the conscious level scientifically ... in the same way for example that magnetism was applied to making compasses long before anyone knew what it was At the bottom line you could all be saying the same thing. That is exactly how I see it Zambendorf agreed. The medieval Church persecuted Galileo but religion today has come to terms with the more orthodox sciences. We can learn a lot from that precedent. Zambendorf was being quite sincere the implication was ambiguous and what he meant was the exact opposite of what most people chose to assume. Jackson sensed that the audience had had its fill of profound thoughts and heavy philosophy for the evening and decided to move on. I understand you re just back from a long trip Karl to Argentina. How was it Is there as much activity and enthusiasm in Latin America as here Oh the visit was a success. We all enjoyed it a lot and met some very interesting people. Yes they are starting to get involved in some serious work there now especially at one of the universities we visited But speaking of long trips have you heard about our latest one which has just been confirmed No tell us. Zambendorf glanced out at the audience and then across at the live camera. We re going to Mars as part of an official NASO mission. Not many people know how much research NASO has been doing in the field of the paranormal especially in connection with remote perception and information transfer. That was true. Not many people did know and the ones who did knew that NASO hadn t been doing any. We ve been talking with NASO for some time now via one of the larger space engineering corporations and the decision has been made to conduct comprehensive experiments to assess the effects of the extraterrestrial environment on parapsychological phenomena. . . . Zambendorf went on to outline the Mars project at the same time managing to imply a somewhat exaggerated role for the team without actually saying anything too specific. Jackson listened intently nodded at the right times and injected appropriate responses but he kept his eye on the auditorium for the first signs of restlessness. It sounds fascinating Karl he said when he judged the strain to have increased to Just short of breaking point. We wish you all the success in the world or maybe I should say out of the world this one anyhow and hope to see you back here on the show again maybe after it s all over. Thank you. I hope so Zambendorf replied. Jackson swiveled to face Zambendorf directly leaned back to cross one foot over the opposite knee and allowed his hands to fall from his chin to the armrests of his chair his change of posture signaling the change of mood and subject. He grinned mischievously in a way that said this was the part everyone knew had to come eventually. Zambendorf maintained a composed expression. I have an object in my pocket Jackson confided. It s an item of lost property that was handed in at the theater office earlier this evening probably belonging to somebody in the audience here. Somebody thought Zambendorf might be able to tell us something about it. He turned away for a second and made a palms up gesture of candor toward the cameras and the audience. Honestly folks this is absolutely genuine. I swear it wasn t set up or anything like that. He turned back to resume talking to Zambendorf. Well we thought it was a good idea and as I said I have the object with me right here in my pocket. Can you say anything about it ... or maybe about the owner ... I have to say I don t know a lot about this kind of thing whether this would be considered too tough an assignment or what but He broke off as he saw the distant look creeping over Zambendorf s face. The auditorium became very still. It s vague Zambendorf murmured after a pause. But I think I might be able to connect to it. ... His voice became sharper for a moment. If anyone here has lost something please don t say anything. We ll see what we can do. He fell silent again and then said to Jackson. You can help me Ed. Put your hand inside your pocket if you would and touch the object with your fingers. Jackson complied. Zambendorf went on Trace its outline and visualize its image . . . Concentrate harder . . . Yes that s better . . . Ah I m getting something clearer now . . . It s something made of leather brown leather ... A man s wallet I think. Yes I m sure of it. Am I right Jackson shook his head in amazement drew a light tan wallet from his pocket and held it high for view. If the owner is here don t say anything remember he reminded the audience raising his voice to be heard above the gasps of amazement and the burst of applause that greeted the performance. There might be more yet. He looked back at Zambendorf with a new respect. When he spoke again he kept his voice low and solemn presumably to avoid disturbing the psychic atmosphere. How about the owner Karl Do you see anything there Zambendorf dabbed his forehead and returned his handkerchief to his pocket. Then he took the wallet held it between the palms of his hands and stared down at it. Yes the owner is here he announced. He looked out to address the anonymous owner in the audience. Concentrate hard please and try to project an image of yourself into my mind. When contact is established you will feel a mild tingling sensation in your skull but that s normal. A hush fell once more. People closed their eyes and reached out with their minds to grasp the tenuous currents of strange forces flowing around them. Then Zambendorf said I see you . . . dark lean in build and wearing light blue. You are not alone here. Two people very close to you are with you . . . family members. And you are far from home . . . visiting this city I think. You are from a long way south of here. He looked back at Jackson. That should do. Jackson swiveled to speak to the audience. You can reveal yourself now if you re here Mr. Dark Lean and Blue he called out. Is the owner of this wallet here If so would he kindly stand up and identify himself please Everywhere heads swung this way and that and turned to scan the back of the theater. Then slowly and self consciously a man rose to his feet about halfway back near one of the aisles. He was lean in build Hispanic in appearance with jet black hair and a clipped mustache and was wearing a light blue suit. He seemed bewildered and stood rubbing the top of his head with his fingers looking unsure of what he was supposed to do. A boy in the seat beside him tugged at his sleeve and a dark skinned woman in the next seat beyond was saying something and gesticulating in the direction of the stage. Would you come forward and identify your property please sir Jackson said. The man nodded numbly and began picking his way along the row toward the aisle while applause erupted all around lasting until he had made his way to the front of the auditorium. The noise abated as Jackson came forward to the edge of the stage and inspected the wallet s contents. This is yours he said looking down. The man nodded. What s the name inside here Jackson enquired. The name is Miguel Zambendorf supplied from where he was still sitting. He s right Jackson made an appealing gesture as if inviting the audience to share his awe looked back at Zambendorf and then stooped to hand the wallet to Miguel. Where are you from Miguel he asked. Miguel found his voice at last. From Mexico ... on vacation with my wife and son . . . Yes this is mine Mr. Jackson. Thank you. He cast a final nervous glance at Zambendorf and began walking hastily back up the aisle. Happy birthday Miguel Zambendorf called after him. Miguel stopped turned round and looked puzzled. Isn t it your birthday Jackson asked. Miguel shook his head. Next week Zambendorf explained. Miguel gulped visibly and fled the remaining distance back to his seat. Well how about that Jackson exclaimed and stood with his arms outstretched in appeal while the house responded with sustained applause and shouts of approval. Behind Jackson Zambendorf sipped from his water glass and allowed the atmosphere to reinforce itself. He could also have revealed that the unknown benefactor who had turned the wallet in after picking Miguel s pocket and whose suggestion it had been to make a challenge out of it had also been of swarthy complexion Armenian in fact but somehow that would have spoiled things. Now the mood of the audience was right. Its appetite had been whetted and it wanted more. Zambendorf rose and moved forward as if to get closer to them and Jackson moved away instinctively to become a spectator it had become Zambendorf s show. Zambendorf raised his arms the audience became quiet again but this time tense and expectant. I have said many times that what I do is not some kind of magic he told them his voice rich and resonant in the hall. It is anyone s to possess. I will show you ... At this moment I am sending the impression of a color out into your minds all of you a common color. Open your minds . . . Can you see it He looked up at the camera that was live at that moment. Distance is no barrier. You people watching from your homes you can join us in this. Focus on the concept of color. Exclude everything else from your thoughts. What do you see He turned his head from side to side waited and then exclaimed Yellow It was yellow How many of you got it At once a quarter or more of the people in the audience raised their hands. Now a number Zambendorf told them. His face was radiating excitement. A number between one and fifty with its digits both odd but different such as fifteen ... but eleven wouldn t do because both its digits are the same. Yes Now . . . think Feel it He closed his eyes brought his fists up to his temples held the pose for perhaps five seconds then looked around once more and announced Thirty seven About a third of the hands went up this time which from the chorus of ooh s and ah s was enough to impress significantly more people than before. Possibly I confused some of you there Zambendorf said. I was going to try for thirty five but at the last moment I changed my mind and decided on He stopped as over half the remaining hands went up to add to the others but it looked as if every hand in the house was waving eagerly. Oh some of you did get that apparently. I should try to be more precise. But nobody seemed to care very much about his having been sloppy as the conviction strengthened itself in more and more of those present that what they were taking part in was an extremely unusual and immensely significant event. Suddenly all of life s problems and frustrations could be resolved effortlessly by the simple formula of wishing them away. Anyone could comprehend the secret anyone could command the power. The inescapable became more palatable the unattainable became trivial. There was no need to feel alone or defenseless. The Master would guide them. They belonged. Who is Alice Zambendorf demanded. Several Alices responded. From a city far to the west . . . on the coast he specified. One of the Alices was from Los Angeles. Zambendorf saw a wedding imminent involving somebody in her immediate family her daughter. Alice confirmed that her daughter was due to be married the following month. You ve been thinking about her a lot Zambendorf said. That s why you came through so easily. Her name s Nancy isn t it Yes . . . Yes it is. Gasps of astonishment. I see the ocean. Is her fiance a sailor In the navy ... on submarines. Involved with engineering No navigation . . . but yes I guess that does involve a lot of engineering these days. Exactly. Thank you. Loud applause. Zambendorf went on to supply details of a successful business deal closed that morning by a clothing salesman from Brooklyn to divine after some hesitation the phone number and occupation of a redheaded young woman from Boston and to supply correctly the score of a football game in which two boys in the second row had played the previous Tuesday. You can do it too he insisted in a voice that boomed to the rear of the house without aid of a microphone. I ll show you. He advanced to the edge of the stage and stared straight ahead while behind him Jackson wrote numbers on a flip chart. Concentrate on the first one Zambendorf told everybody. All together. Now try and send it ... Think it ... That s better ... A three I see three. Now the next . . . He got seven right out of eight. You see he shouted exultantly. You re good very good. Let s try something more difficult. He picked up the black velvet bag provided by prior arrangement and had Jackson and a couple of people near the front verify that it was opaque and without holes. Then he turned his back and allowed Jackson to secure the bag over his head as a blindfold. Then following Zambendorf s instructions Jackson pointed silently to select a woman in the audience and the woman chose an item from among the things she had with her and held it high for everyone to see. It happened to be a green pen. She then pointed to another member of the audience a man sitting a half dozen or so rows farther back to repeat the procedure. The man held up a watch with a silver bracelet and so it went. Jackson noted the objects on the flip chart. When he had listed five he covered the chart turned the stand around to face the wall for good measure and told Zambendorf he was free to remove the blindfold. Remember I m relying on every one of you Zambendorf said. You must all help if we re going to make this a success. Now the first of the objects recall it and picture it in your minds. Now send it to me. . . . He frowned concentrated and pounded his brow. The audience redoubled its efforts. Viewers at home joined in. Writing . . . something to do with writing Zambendorf said at last. A pen Now the color. The color is ... green I get green. Were you sending green By the time he got the fifth item correctly the audience was wild. For his finale Zambendorf produced his other prop a solid looking metal rod about two feet long and well over an inch thick. Jackson couldn t bend it when challenged and neither could three men from near the front of the audience. But the power of the mind overcomes matter Zambendorf declared. He gave Jackson the rod to hold and touched it lightly in the center with his fingers. This will require all of us Zambendorf called out. All of us here and everybody at home. I want you all to help me concentrate on bending. Think it bending. Say it bending Bending He looked at Jackson and nodded in time with the rhythm as he repeated the word. Jackson caught on quickly and began motioning with a hand like a conductor urging an orchestra. Bending Bending Bending Bending . . . he recited his voice growing louder and more insistent. Gradually the audience took up the chant. Bending Bending Bending Bending Zambendorf turned fully toward them and threw his arms wide in exhortation. His eyes gleamed in the spotlights his teeth shone white. Bending Bending Bending He laid a hand on the rod. Jackson gasped and stared down wide eyed as the metal bowed. Some of the audience were staring ashen faced. Zambendorf took the rod and held it high over his head in one hand gazing up at it triumphantly while it continued to bend in full view while a thousand voices in unison raised themselves to a frenzy. Women had started screaming. A number of people fled along the aisles toward the exits. A bearded hawk faced man with an open Bible in one hand climbed onto the stage pointed an accusing finger at Zambendorf and began reading something unintelligible amid the pandemonium before security guards grabbed him and hustled him away. A frantic viewer in Delaware was trying to get past a jammed NBC switchboard to report that her aluminum chair had buckled at the precise moment that Zambendorf commanded the rod to bend. Another s lighting circuits all blew at the same instant. A hen coop in Wyoming was struck by lightning. A washing machine caught fire in Alabama. Eight people had heart attacks. A clock began running backward in California. Two expectant mothers had had spontaneous abortions. A nuclear reactor shut itself down in Tennessee. In the control room on a higher level behind the stage area one of the video engineers on duty stared incredulously at the scenes on the main panel monitor screens. My God he muttered to the technician munching a tuna sandwich in the chair next to him. If he told them to give him all their money rip off their clothes and follow him to China you know something Chet they d do it. Chet continued eating and considered the statement. Or to Mars maybe he replied after a long thoughtful silence. 4 EARLY THE FOLLOWING EVENING CONLON AND WHITTAKER arrived at Gerold Massey s house situated at the end of a leafy cul de sac on the north side of Georgetown. Although lofty spacious and solidly built it was an untidy and in some ways inelegant heap of a house a composition of after thoughts with walls and gables projecting in all directions roofs meeting at strange angles and a preposterous chateau style turret adorning the upper part of one comer. The interior was a warren of interconnecting rooms and passages with cubbyholes and stairways in unexpected places old fashioned sash windows and lots of wood carving and paneling. The part of the cellars not dedicated to storing the junk that Massey had been accumulating through life contained a workshop lab which he used mainly for developing psychological testing equipment and perfecting new magic props while the floors above included in addition to the usual living space an overflowing library a computer room and accommodations for his regular flow of short term guests who varied from students temporarily out on the street to fellow magicians and visiting professors from abroad. Contrary to widespread belief including that prevalent among many scientists scientific qualifications were largely irrelevant to assessing reliably the claims of alleged miracle workers mind readers psychics and the like. Scientists could be fooled by deliberate trickery or unconscious self deception as easily as the average layman and sometimes more easily if competence and prestige earned in other fields were allowed to produce delusions of infallibility. The world of natural phenomena that was properly the object of the scientist s expertise could be baffling at times but it never resorted to outright dishonesty and always yielded rational answers in the end. Theorems were provable calculations checkable observations repeatable and assumptions verifiable. Things in the natural world meant what they said. But that was seldom the case in the world of human affairs where illogic operated freely and deception was the norm. To catch a thief one should set a thief the adage tells and to catch a conjuror set a conjuror. If the skills of the physicist and the neurochemist were of little help in comprehending the deviousness of human irrationality and the art of the professional deceiver those of the psychologist and the magician were Gerold Massey happened to be both and he was engaged regularly by government and private organizations as a consultant on and investigator of matters allegedly supernatural and paranormal. That was how Massey and Walter Conlon had come to know each other. In 2015 a psychic had claimed to travel over vast distances through the astral plane and described the surface features of Uranus and Neptune in vivid detail. When French probes finally arrived and sent back pictures contradicting his accounts his excuse had been that he had perhaps underestimated his powers and projected himself to planets in some entirely different star system The year 2017 had seen another flap about bodies from a crashed alien spacecraft this time hidden in a secret base in Nevada. A year later some officials in Washington were giving serious consideration to an offer from a California based management recruiting firm to screen NASO flight crew applicants on the basis of a crank numerology system involving computerized personal psychometric aptitudinal configurator charts. And inevitably there was always someone pushing for NASO to involve itself in the perennial UFO controversy. In fact Massey supposed that Conlon wanted to talk about Senator Kerning and the whatever it was Church of Oregon. But Massey was wrong. Conlon had involved him in some strange situations over the years and occasionally sent him off to some out of the way places. But never anything like this. Conlon had never before wanted him to leave Earth itself and travel with a NASO mission across interplanetary space. The idea is to expand the pilot base at Meridian Sinus into a mixed experimental community of about five hundred people to provide data on extraterrestrial living for future space colony design Conlon explained from a leather armchair standing before a grandfather clock built to look like an Egyptian sarcophagus. One area that needs a lot more study is how such conditions will affect the behavior and emotions of sizeable groups of people what kinds of stress are likely to be experienced and so on which means there ll be a number of psychologists going along. Officially you d be filling one of those slots with Vernon there to assist. Unofficially some of us in NASO want somebody knowledgeable to get the real story on this Zambendorf stunt . . . and maybe even blow the whole thing out of the water if the opportunity presents itself. It s gone too far Gerry. We ve got better things to do. If we don t put a stop to this nonsense now the next thing will be astrologers being hired to fix launch dates. Massey returned a puzzled frown from across the room where he was sitting sprawled untidily across a couch with one foot propped on a piece of a partly dismantled trick cabinet that he had been meaning to move for weeks. You have to do something he agreed. But what I don t understand is why it s happening at all. What on earth possessed NASO to go along with this Zambendorf thing in the first place Conlon sighed and threw up his hands. That was how it came down the line to me . . there s been a lot of high level politics between GSEC and NASO that I m not in on. Anyhow most of the funding s coming from GSEC. Defense takes first place for government money social experiments on Mars don t even get on the list. With lawyers and accountants taking over the government we ve had to depend more on the private sector to keep a planetary program going at all. Naturally that gives outfits like GSEC a say in the planning and policymaking. Maybe the best thing would be for you to opt out Vernon Price said from an elaborately ornamented stool his back to the church organ that Massey had picked up in a yard sale six years previously while driving through Mississippi. He was in his late twenties lithe with dark wavy hair and alert bright brown eyes. I mean if the mission s being turned into a circus the wisest thing might be to keep PEP out of it. Conlon shook his head. I hear what you re saying Vemon but we can t do that. The scientific opportunities are too valuable to miss. And besides that the mission will involve the first operational use of the Orion which we have to retain our interest in for the sake of planetary projects now on the drawing boards. If we dropped out it would leave the Pentagon as the only government department with an interest in further development of the Orion. We can t afford to let that happen. The European American scientific base near the Martian equator at Meridiani Sinus had begun as a purely American attempt to rival the Soviet plan for establishing a permanently manned facility at Solis Lacus. However the U.S. program had bogged down over problems with the development of the inertial fusion drive considered essential to supporting human life reliably over interplanetary distances. A crash program conducted cooperatively with the European NATO nations and Japan had eventually provided a prototype system that did work and Meridian Sinus had followed as a joint U.S. European venture two years behind both the original American schedule and the Soviets shortly afterward the space agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were merged to form NASO. Intensified work from then on had made up for some of the lost time and produced a series of test designs for thermonuclear propelled space vehicles culminating in the Orion the first vessel built specifically for carrying heavy payloads and large numbers of passengers between planets. Completed in orbit in 2019 the Orion had been shuttling back and forth on trials between Earth and Moon for over half a year six months to a year ahead of a similar project which the Japanese were pursuing independently. The Soviets who were concentrating on large platforms in Earth orbit had nothing to compare with either of the large interplanetary ships so at least the U.S. had some compensation for the embarrassment incurred by its earlier fiasco. Massey turned his head to look across at Whittaker tall and tanned with dark crinkly hair just beginning to show gray at the temples who was sitting in the armchair opposite Conlon. With the comfortable income that he commanded independent of his position at Global Communications Networking he seemed to regard his job as much as an intellectual exercise and a challenge in problem solving as anything else and had always struck Massey as something of an enigma. So how do you fit into this Pat Massey asked. Is this where you get your chance to give us some real news for a change Whittaker s eyes twinkled briefly as he nodded. It sounds as if it could be doesn t it. Things that were different were supposed to constitute news Whittaker had often said. But miracle workers disaster imminent scares nonexistent Soviet super weapons economic ruin always just around the comer and all the other media manufactured myths that kept millions glued to screens in order to sell products were no longer different. Therefore they weren t news. But turning a contrived sensation round and boomeranging it by reporting the intended deception straight for once that could be very different. Well if Pat did manage to pull something spectacular out of it it might persuade other GSECs to stay out of NASO s business in future Vernon remarked. That s what I want Conlon said nodding emphatically. Whittaker spread his hands and made a face. Well I mean . . . using a NASO mission to try and legitimatize this kind of nonsense Do you think the directors at GSEC believe in it Massey shrugged. How do I know Nothing would surprise me these days Pat. I hope you guys at GCN don t rely too much on them for advertising revenues though. Aw what the hell Whittaker said. Someone s got to do something to put a stop to this nonsense before it goes any further. There wasn t a lot more to be said. Conlon looked from Vernon to Massey and asked simply Well They looked at each other but neither of them had pressing questions. What do you think Massey asked at last. Vernon raised his eyebrows hunched his shoulders and opened his arms in a way that said there could be only one answer. Massey nodded slowly tugged at his beard and thought to himself for a few moments longer and then looked back at Conlon. I guess we ll buy it Walt. You ve just got yourself a deal. Conlon looked pleased. Good. The Orion s scheduled for liftout from Earth orbit three months from now. I ll have NASO s confirmation of the offer including remuneration wired through within forty eight hours. We ll have the other details and specifics worked out for you both in about a week. There ll be a training and familiarization course at the NASO Personnel Development Center in North Carolina for all the non NASO people going on the mission so leave the last three weeks or so clear when you make your arrangements for leave of absence from the university et cetera. Whittaker sat up in his chair rubbed his hands together and picked up his empty wineglass from the side table next to him. I think this calls for a refill he said. Same again for everyone I ll get them Massey said. Whittaker watched as Massey collected the glasses and took them over to the open liquor cabinet. Did you see Zambendorf on the Ed Jackson Show last night Uh huh Massey grunted over his shoulder. Quite a performance Whittaker said. Oh Zambendorf s a good showman let s not make any mistake about that Massey answered. And if he d only be content to come up with a straight act he d make a first rate stage magician. But I can t go along with this business about claiming to be genuine. A lot of people are taken in by it and spend too much of their time and money looking for fairyland when they could be getting something worthwhile out of life. It s a tragic squandering of human potential and talent. The thing with the color and the number was pretty straightforward I thought Whittaker said. Simple probability matches weren t they Conlon said looking at Vernon. Vernon nodded. Whittaker looked at him inquiringly. With an audience that size enough people would think of yellow to make the demonstration look impressive or any other color you care to name come to that Vernon explained. Zambendorf didn t have to be thinking of anything. The audience only assumed he was because he said he was. How about the number Whittaker asked. That couldn t have worked the same way surely. Thirty something . . . thirty seven wasn t it I d have thought the odds would be much worse there. So would most people Vernon said. But think back to what Zambendorf said a number below fifty with both digits odd but different. If you work it out there aren t really that many possibilities. And do you remember him giving fifteen and eleven as examples That narrows it down further because for some reason hardly anyone will pick them after they ve been mentioned. Of the numbers that are left about thirty five percent of a crowd will go for thirty seven every time. No one knows why. It s just a predictable behavior pattern among people. Psychologists call it a population stereotype. And it also happens to be a fact that around twenty three percent will choose thirty five. So all that business about changing his mind at the last moment was baloney to widen his total catch to over half. And it worked it looked as if every hand in the place were up. Mmm . . . interesting Whittaker said. Do you remember Zambendorf telling the woman about her daughter s being about to get married to a navigation officer in the navy on submarines Massey asked turning away from the cabinet and coming back with two refilled glasses. Yes Whittaker said. That was impressive. Now how could he have known all that He didn t Massey replied simply. Whittaker looked puzzled. Massey handed the drinks to Whittaker and Conlon then returned to the cabinet to pour his own and Vernon s. Your memory s playing tricks Pat. We ve got a recording of the whole show that I ll replay if you like. Zambendorf only said Alice s daughter was about to get married to a sailor. He never said navy he never said submarines and he never mentioned navigation. Alice did but people don t remember it that way. In fact Zambendorf guessed that the guy was in engineering which was reasonable but wrong as it happened and Alice corrected him. But not only that she turned the miss into a semihit by manufacturing an excuse for him. Did you notice I d bet that practically everyone who saw it has forgotten that failure but if he d guessed right they d all have remembered. People see and remember what they want to see and remember. The Zambendorfs in the world get a lot of mileage out of that fact. Vernon nodded. So the only information he actually originated himself was that the daughter was marrying a sailor. So how could he have known even that much Whittaker asked. Massey shrugged. There are all kinds of ways he might have done it. For instance anyone hanging around the box office before the show could have overheard plenty of that kind of talk. Whittaker looked astonished. What seriously You re kidding I mean it s too too simple. A child could have thought of that. Easily Massey agreed. But most adults wouldn t. Believe me Pat that one s been worked for years. The simpler the answer the less obvious it is to most people. They always look for the most complicated explanations imaginable. Massey handed a glass to Vernon and began moving past Whittaker to return to the couch. Was the wallet planted Conlon asked. Martha says it had to be but I m not so sure. Somehow I don t think Ed Jackson would have gone out of his way to lie so brazenly. Massey was about to reply when his arm knocked against the side table beside Whittaker causing a drop of wine to spill from the glass that Massey was carrying. Oh I m sorry Pat Here I ll take care of it he exclaimed setting down the glass and dabbing lightly at the collar of Whittaker s jacket. Only a spot it won t show. Then Massey picked up his drink again sat down on the couch and looked over at Conlon. Sorry Walt. What were you saying I said I wasn t convinced the wallet was planted. Oh yes I think I agree with you Massey said. The Mexican guy looked genuine enough to me. That part didn t come across as an act at all. Whittaker looked from Massey to Vernon who was grinning oddly and back at Massey. So . . . how did he know it was a wallet and how did he know who owned it he asked. You really want to know Massey asked lightly. Well sure. Whittaker looked puzzled. What s so funny Am I missing the obvious or something If I am all I can say is that a hell of a lot of other people must have missed it too. There was silence for a few seconds. Then Vernon said Remember we re pretty sure that Zambendorf had a confederate or two around the place. The information he came up with was all the kind of stuff you d expect to find inside a wallet plus he knew what the owner of the wallet looked like. Now think about that. Whittaker thought hard for a while then looked over at Conlon. Conlon shrugged. Whittaker looked back at Massey shook his head and showed his empty palms. Okay I give in. How d he know Massey laughed produced Whittaker s wallet from his armpit and tossed it back to him. That tell you enough And there wasn t anything on your jacket by the way so don t worry about it. You re kidding Whittaker protested. You mean somebody stole it and then turned it in See what I mean Pat too simple to think of isn t it And the things the people showed while he had the bag over his head Massey brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his eyebrow rubbed the tip of his nose with a thumb drew a finger lightly from left to right along his upper lip and then pinched the lobe of his right ear. A confederate giving coded signals from somewhere in the front rows . . . probably an Armenian character called Abaquaan who s always close by Zambendorf somewhere but you never see him. And the metal bar Standard magician s equipment. If you saw it done at a school variety show without all the hype you d applaud politely and say it was a clever trick. In fact that s one aspect of some research that Vernon and I are into at the moment. It s amazing if people have made their minds up that what they re seeing is genuine paranormal power in action they ll stick to their conviction even after they ve agreed that any good stage magician can produce exactly the same effect. No amount of appealing to reason will change them. In fact At that moment the organ behind Vernon blasted out a series of rising and falling notes and a hollow synthetic computer voice announced Visitor at the portals. Massey glanced at the sarcophagus clock. That ll be the cab. Drink up. We can have a couple more at the bar before we sit down to eat. They left the house five minutes later and stopped for a moment below the porch to pick out the pinpoint of Mars in the evening sky. It makes you think Conlon said absently. Sometime back in the eighteen hundreds they thought it was miraculous when the first clipper ship made it from Boston round the Horn to San Francisco in under a hundred days. And here we are a century and a half later going to Mars and back in the same time. Limits to Growth Vernon murmured. Huh Whittaker said. Oh it s the title of some dumb book I read from the seventies Vernon replied. I see no limits Conlon said scanning the stars. Where do I look In people s minds Massey answered. A thoughtful look came over Vernon s face as he followed Conlon s gaze upward. I guess there have to be other intelligences out there somewhere he mused. Do you think they have kooks too or is it a uniquely human thing Massey snorted as they resumed walking toward the waiting cab. Nothing out there could be dumber than some people he said. 5 FRENNELECH PRESIDING EMINENCE OF THE HIGH COUNCIL OF Priests at Pergassos the principal city in the land of the Kroaxians stared down from his raised central seat behind the Council bench and waited for the accused to begin his explanation. His tall headdress of fine grown reflective organic scales and his imposing robes of woven wire heavily embroidered with carbon fibers and plastic thread enhanced his stature and made all the more intimidating the stem expression formed by the setting of the coolant outlet vanes above his chin and the thermal patterns radiating from his metal facial surfaces. An acolyte standing behind the chair held the organic grown rod of yellow and red spiral stripes topped by an ornamented ball that was Frennelech s emblem of office while to the left and right the lesser priests sat in solemn dignity holding their own lesser emblems in their steel fingers. Heavy chains rattled as the accused Lofbayel Maker of Maps rose nervously to his feet in the center of the Council Chamber. The guards standing on either side of him remained impassive while for a few seconds he stared cowed and bewildered. Then Horazzorgio the sadistic looking captain of the Royal Guard who had been in command at the time of Lofbayel s arrest jabbed him roughly in the back with the handle of a carbide tipped lance. Speak when the Illustrious One commands he ordered. Lofbayel staggered and caught the bar before him to steady himself. My words were not spoken with any intent to contradict the Holy Scribings he stammered hastily. Indeed they were not spoken with thought of the Scribings at all. For Aha Rekashoba Prosecuter for the High Council wheeled round abruptly and pointed an accusing finger. Already he confesses. Is it not written: In all thy words and deeds be thou mindful of the Holy Scribings He stands condemned by his own words. The impiety has been noted Frennelech said coldly from the bench. And to Lofbayel Continue. The mapmaker s imaging matrixes flickered despondently. It has long been my practice to collect writings and drawings of travelers navigators explorers soldiers and scholars from both this and other lands he explained and added . . . for the purpose of further improving the quality of the services that I render to His Supreme Majesty the King. May the Lifemaker protect the King Horazzorgio shouted from behind. Let it be so the bench of priests chanted in response with the exception of Frennelech whose rank excused him from the obligation. Lofbayel continued In amassing many such records originated over a time of many twelves of twelve brights I found impressing itself upon me a strange but persistent recurrence: that beyond any place that lies as far to the east as one may choose to name there are always reported more places that lie yet farther to the east . . . until they become places that other travelers have encountered to the west. And the same is found to be true of north and south for either becomes the other. I have evidence which suggests the same is true for all directions and for a journey commenced at any place. Lofbayel looked along the line of stony faced priests. Consideration of these facts if they are facts of course led me to the supposition that any journey if protracted long enough without hindrance or deviation must eventually close a path back to its beginning. And therefore you conclude the entire world to be round in form Frennelech sounded incredulous and at the same time appalled. Through idle daydreaming you believe that you can acquire knowledge . . . spurning the Scribings which are the sole source of all true knowledge What arrogance is this I ... It was intended merely as a conundrum concocted for the amusement of students who seek my instruction in the methods of calculation and the graphic arts Lofbayel replied. We asked: What form has no center yet has centers everywhere and is limited in size but unlimited in extent Further contemplation and experiment revealed that the sphere alone possesses properties consistent with the conditions which the riddle specified and this prompted the further question: Given that the world shares properties in common with the sphere must it not follow that it shares the sphere s form also Rekashoba the Prosecutor snorted and turned away contemptuously indicating that he had heard as much as his patience would withstand. He straightened and raised his head to address the bench. First to dispose of the possibility of there being any factual basis to this allegation I will present three independent proofs that the world cannot be round. And second I will show that this is no mere innocent exercise in riddles as has been claimed but a pernicious attempt to challenge the authority of the Lifemaker s worldly representatives by poisoning the minds of the young and casting doubts upon the teachings of the divinely inspired Scribings. Therefore the strictest of penalties is not only in order but mandatory. Rekashoba paused appealed to the chamber with a flourish and then picked up a cellulose ball and a goblet of methane. My first proof is based on no more than the sense that is common to all robeings and will delay us for but a short while. He poured a small quantity of liquid onto the top of the ball and watched as it trickled down to the underside and finally fell away in a thin stream to the floor. A body of liquid cannot sustain itself upon the surface of a sphere he observed. It follows that the surface of a world formed as a sphere could not contain oceans of methane. But the oceans exist do they not Or am I misinformed Or do thousands of navigators and voyagers delude themselves He looked penetratingly at Lofbayel. What reply do you have Denier of Oceans I have none Lofbayel murmured unhappily. Rekashoba put down the goblet and tossed the ball aside as unworthy of consuming more of the Council s time. But were the sphere vast enough the oceans might be constrained just to its upper regions one might suppose he said airily. However that brings us to my second proof that what has been claimed contradicts itself logically. Rekashoba half turned to point to one of Lofbayel s charts which was being displayed on one side of the chamber as evidence. This chart we are told represents the entire world in extent although much of it remains blank and devoid of any detail he said. Now observe do not the oceans compose the major portion of it But were this indeed the entire world and were that world indeed a sphere the oceans being constrained by necessity as shown in my first proof to occupying only its upper regions would compose the minor portion. Therefore either the world cannot be a sphere or the chart does not depict the entire world. If the world is not a sphere then the proof rests. If the chart is not of the entire world then the accused s own words stand in contradiction to the fact and since his conclusion follows from an assertion thereby shown to be erroneous the conclusion is disproved. Hence by the second alternative also the world is not a sphere. Since there was no third alternative the proposition is proved by rigorous logic. Rekashoba surveyed the faces of the Council members solemnly. My third proof follows from sacred doctrine. His voice had taken on an ominous note and he paused for a moment to allow the more serious mood to take effect. If this matter had no further implications I could dismiss it as a consequence of nothing more than foolishness and ignorance. But it transcends far beyond such limits by denying one of the fundamental teachings given to us in the Holy Scribings: the Doctrine of Temporal Representation and Succession. He paused again turned to address the whole chamber and raised a hand in front of him. The world was created in a form designed by the Lifemaker to provide a constant reminder that the Church and State function as the divinely ordained instruments of His authority and that their organizational hierarchies constitute visible embodiments of His will. Thus the solid canopy of the sky beyond which the mortal world is not permitted ever to look symbolizes the Supreme Archprelate the Prosecutor turned and inclined his head deferentially in Frennelech s direction who sits at the highest position attainable by mere robeings. The sky is supported by the unscalable mountains of the Peripheral Barrier that bounds world just as the Supreme Archprelate is supported by the spiritual and secular leaders of the civilized world who are chosen to command heights unclimbable by ordinary robeings one of whom of course is His Supreme Majesty. May the Lifemaker protect the King Horazzorgio shouted. Let it be so the bench responded. Rekashoba continued The lesser mountains support the higher and the foothills support the lesser just as the lower clerics and officials of the State support higher edifices above them. And below the plains and deserts must reconcile themselves to their rightful place in the scheme as must the masses. He extended a warning finger. But the masses must not make the mistake of imagining from these considerations that their lot is a harsh or an unjust one. Indeed quite the opposite For just as the lowlands are sheltered from the storms that rage in the mountains and nourished by the streams flowing down to them from above so the common masses are protected and receive spiritual nourishment from the Lifemaker through the succession of higher agencies that He has appointed. Rekashoba s voice took on a harder note as he looked back at Lofbayel. But a round world would be incompatible with the sacred translations of the Scribings. Since the Scribings cannot be questioned a round world cannot exist. He waited a second for his argument to register and then continued in a louder voice But more than that any claim to the contrary must therefore constitute a denial of the Scribings. And such a denial amounts in a word to ... heresy A murmur ran round the chamber. Lofbayel clutched weakly at the bar and for a moment looked as if he was about to collapse. The full penalty in the event of a charge of heresy being upheld was the burning out of both eyes followed by slow dissolution in an acid vat. Horazzorgio s eyes glinted in gloating anticipation the arresting officer had first option to command the execution in the event of a death sentence. The Council members leaned forward to confer among themselves in low voices. Seated behind the officials and scribes to one side of the chamber was a rustic looking figure simply attired in a brown tunic of coarse woven copper secured by a heavy black braided belt and a dull red cloak assembled from interlocking ceramic platelets. Thirg Asker of Forbidden Questions drew in a long stream of nitrogen to cool his overworked emotive circuits and took a moment to prepare himself. As a longtime friend of Lofbayel a fellow inquirer after truth and one who had enjoyed the hospitality of Lofbayel s house on many occasions during visits from his solitary abode in the forest below the mountains Thirg had promised Lofbayel s wife that he would plead her husband s case if the trial went badly. Thirg was far from optimistic about his ability to achieve anything useful and what he had seen of Rekashoba s zealousness led him to fear that the mere act of speaking out in his friend s defense might well be enough to make him a marked person in future subject to constant scrutiny questioning and harassment. But a promise was a promise. Besides the very idea of not trying was unthinkable. Thirg braced himself and gripped the edges of his seat. Frennelech looked back out over the chamber. Does the accused have anything to say before the Council s verdict is announced Lofbayel attempted to speak but fear made him incoherent. Frennelech shifted his gaze to the Court Warden. One is present who is willing to speak for the accused the Warden said. Thirg took off his cap of aluminum mail and clutching it before him rose slowly. Who speaks for the accused Frennelech demanded. Thirg a recluse dweller of the forest who describes himself as a friend of the accused the Warden replied. Speak Thirg Frennelech ordered. The court and the priests of the Council waited. After a slight hesitation to find his words Thirg began speaking cautiously. Illustrious members of the High Council and officers of the Court it cannot be denied that words have been uttered rashly which a moment of prudence and wisdom would have left unsaid. Since truth and justice are the business of the Court whatever consequences must lawfully follow it is not my desire to dispute. But the suggestion of heresy I would respectfully submit warrants further examination if the possibility of a hasty decision unbecoming of the elders and wisest of Kroaxia is to be avoided. He paused to look along the line of faces and found a modicum of reassurance that he was being heeded. For by its very definition a heresy we are told is a denial of the truths set forth in the Holy Scribings. But does not a denial require a statement of that which is denied We have heard no such statement uttered and neither has anyone attributed any such statement to the accused. Instead we are assured by accused and accuser alike merely of a question s being asked. Since a question cannot of itself presume its own answer nothing that may rightfully be judged as heresy can have been stated. Some of the Council priests were looking at each other questioningly while others were muttering among themselves. It sounded as if at least some of them were seeing the issue in a new perspective. Encouraged and feeling a spark of genuine hope for the first time Thirg set down his cap made a brief gesture of appeal and went on Further I would with the Court s approval offer not a third alternative to the two presented in the learned Prosecutor s proof by logic for he has assured us that no third possibility exists but rather the suggestion that the second alternative may be seen upon closer inspection to divide itself into two subtler variations namely: Either the world is round or the anecdotes of travelers cannot be relied upon. Thus by offering a manifest absurdity as one of the possible answers for his students to choose the teacher s question is revealed as a cryptic lesson on the reliability of faith as a guide to truth as opposed to the evidence of the senses when the two are found to be in conflict. Some of the priests were looking impressed and even Frennelech s expression seemed to have softened a fraction. Thirg concluded My final observation is that in his capacity as an assistant to the Royal Surveyor the accused renders valuable service to His Sup Thirg caught a pained look from Frennelech and emended to the nation of Kroaxia which is of especial importance at a time such as this when we are threatened by foreign enemies. If the Lifemaker in His wisdom has seen fit to send us a competent maker of maps and charts we would be well advised in my humble submission to think carefully before dispatching His gift back to Him unused. With that Thirg sat down and found that he was shaking. The Council went into further deliberation and after much murmuring and head wagging Frennelech quieted the chamber and announced The verdict of the Council is that the accused stands guilty of irresponsibility irreverence and impiety to a degree inexcusable of a common citizen and criminally indictable for a teacher. He paused. The charge of heresy however is not substantiated. Lofbayel swayed on his feet and cried out aloud with relief. Excited murmurs rippled round the chamber while Rekashoba turned angrily away and Horazzorgio looked at Thirg venomously. Frennelech continued The Council has accepted a motion for leniency and the sentence of this Court is that the accused be fined to the amount of one quarter of his possessions that the accused shall serve two brights of penance and recantation in a public place and that the accused be banned permanently from all practice of teaching writing of materials for public distribution all other means of disseminating ideas thoughts or opinions in public and all forms of activity associated therewith. The session is now ended. The Court will rise the Warden ordered. Everyone stood while Frennelech rose from his seat turned and swept from the chamber followed by two attendants and the acolyte. After a respectful pause the other Council members filed out in silent dignity. Lofbayel nodded numbly but managed to send the ghost of a grateful smile in Thirg s direction as he was led away. Voices and murmurs broke out all around and the remaining attendees broke up and began to drift toward the doors individually or in small groups. On one side of the chamber Horazzorgio moved closer to Rekashoba who was gathering up his documents while he watched Thirg disappear among the figures crowded outside the doorway. Who is he Rekashoba asked in a low menacing voice. What do you know of him But little I fear Horazzorgio answered. He lives well away from the city at the upper edge of the forest below the mountains. But I have heard talk of his proclivity for dabbling in Black Arts and sorcery. I will make inquiries. Do so Rekashoba growled. And have him watched. Get every shred of evidence you can find against him. We must make certain that all the eloquence in the world will not save him from the vats when he stands accused before the Council. 6 KARL ZAMBENDORF HAD BEEN BORN IN THE NORTH AUSTRIAN city of Werfen in 1967 as Karl Zammerschnigg the third of a family of three brothers and two sisters whose father was a hard working bookkeeper and whose mother a teacher. At a comparatively early age he had made the disturbing discovery that his parents though honest intelligent industrious and exemplary in the various other virtues that were supposed to earn just reward would never be as wealthy as he thought they deserved nor would their labors earn any public recognition or acclaim. He gradually came to perceive this anomaly as simply a part of the larger conspiracy of systematic self deception practiced by society in general which while dutifully praising knowledge and learning lavished riches and fame not on its thinkers creators and producers but on those who helped it to defend its prejudices and sustain its fantasies. Knowledge if the truth were admitted which was rarely the case was in fact the enemy it threatened to explode the myths upon which the prejudices and the fantasies were based. He left home at the age of nineteen and teamed up with a Russian defector who was causing a small stir in Europe by claiming to have been a subject of top secret Soviet military experiments in psychic perception. Over the following few years which proved educational as well as profitable young Zammerschnigg came to recognize fully his own innate talents and in the process discovered an irresistible way to thumb his nose at the whole system of stylized rules and artificial standards by which the drab the dreary the gullible and the conforming would have had him be like them. The Russian however was not attuned to exploiting the opportunities afforded by commercialized Western mass media culture. So Zammerschnigg changed his name and embarked on his own career with the aid of an influential West German magazine publisher. Within five years Karl Zambendorf had become a celebrity. His road to worldwide fame and fortune opened up in Hamburg when he was introduced to Dr. of what was obscure Osmond Periera from Arizona a researcher of the paranormal and a convinced UFOlogist who had written a number of best sellers claiming among other things that the roughly circular North Polar Sea was in fact a gigantic crater caused by the crash of an anti matter powered alien spacecraft that the area had once been a continent harboring an advanced human culture Polantis not Atlantis the legend had been distorted and that a polar shift and the climatic upheavals caused by the impact were at the root of all kinds of ancient myths and legends. Ridicule from the scientific community had merely reinforced Periera s lifelong ambition to go down in history as the Sigmund Freud of parapsychology and after his discovery of Zambendorf he displayed the fervor and ecstasy of a wandering ascetic who had at last found his guru. Whatever else his peculiarities Periera s books had made money which meant he possessed the connections necessary to boost Zambendorf to even higher orbits accordingly Zambendorf accepted an invitation to accompany Periera back to the U.S.A. The U. S. scientific community remained largely aloof and disinterested and the experts that Periera produced to vindicate his claims turned out to be from its more credulous fringes. Zambendorf proceeded to divine information from tamper proof sealed envelopes influence delicate electrical measuring instruments by pure mind power alter the decay rates of radioisotopes read thoughts prophesy events and perform many other wondrous feats which America s professional dream merchants built into a world sensation. Zambendorf s confidence grew with every new guffaw as experts tumbled in their tumbril loads. He owed his success in no small degree to the loyalty of the odd collection of individuals who had attached themselves to him over the years. He especially depended on them for information gathering and a characteristic shared by all the members of his team despite their various differences was an instinct for information likely to be of value in Zambendorf s business and an ability to acquire it legally ethically and honestly ... or otherwise. Anticipating future information needs was one of the team s never ending activities. The atmosphere by the pool outside Zambendorf s villa overlooking the Pacific from the hills above Malibu was businesslike despite the setting as he Abaquaan and Thelma discussed the latest status update forwarded from GSEC which among other things listed the people nominated so far to accompany the Mars mission. We ll need background histories and profiles on as many of those names as we can get Zambendorf said propped on a sun lounge by a table of iced drinks and fruits. Thelma wearing a beach wrap over a bikini sat taking notes beneath a sunshade at another table littered with some of the books on Mars the history of planetary exploration and NASO that she had been immersing herself in for days. Make a separate list of the scientists. Clarissa has some useful contacts at most of the professional institutions she can take care of those. Okay . . . Okay . . . That s okay . . . And Clarissa to take care of the scientists. I ll talk to her about it when she gets back tomorrow Thelma murmured checking off the items on her pad. What about the Europeans Umm . . . Zambendorf thought for a few seconds. You d better leave them to Otto and me. He turned his head to look inquiringly at Abaquaan who was sitting sideways on another lounge and sipping from a can of beer while he listened. Abaquaan nodded curtly in reply seemingly preoccupied with something else. Yes we ll make some calls to Europe Zambendorf confirmed. But get Drew to talk to his newspaper friends about those political people who might be going. We shouldn t ignore sources like that. He looked at Abaquaan again. Does that cover the main points. Otto Except Massey Abaquaan replied. Ah yes Zambendorf agreed breezily. A fine mess you ve got us into Otto. Abaquaan rolled his eyes upward in a silent plea for patience and ignored the gibe. He had first expressed concern when the name Gerold J. Massey nominated by NASO as an Observational Psychologist appeared on the schedule. It implied that somebody at NASO had decided things had gone too far and was wheeling up the siege howitzers. Zambendorf went on However you ve got us into similar fixes before and we have always pulled through. The first thing we need to do is make sure he s really there for the reasons you think he is. Abaquaan threw up his hands. To make sure . . . Karl we know why Massey s there all right One he s a stage conjuror. Two he s a debunker who takes contracts against psi operators. Three he s worked for NASO before remember the headhunters from Long Beach who thought they could sell NASO that psychometric testing crap Four Vernon Price is on the list too and he works as Massey s partner I mean hell Karl how much more do you want He s going there to plant a bomb with your name written across it in big letters. It sounds highly probable. But let s not make the mistake of overreacting to speculation as if it were fact. In addition you have to admit: Five the main purpose of the mission has to do with psychological research. Six he is a psychologist. And seven NASO has commissioned him to conduct purely scientific studies before. So the nomination could be perfectly legitimate. Abaquaan got up and paced over to the poolside to stand staring down at the water. What difference does it make he asked turning back after a short pause. If you re there and he s there he s not gonna miss out on the opportunity anyhow. Whether NASO is officially sending him as a nut watcher or unofficially as something else is beside the point if he can make trouble he ll make trouble. True but how much will he be in a position to make Zambendorf replied waving his cigar. Will he be acting individually or will he be actively aided by people inside NASO and the resources at their disposal If it s just him and Price we could probably afford to take our chances but if it s them plus NASO we d be well advised to use as much help from GSEC as we can get. You see my point we have to know what to prepare for. Abaquaan crushed the can he was holding and tossed it into a waste basket. Thelma leaned back in her chair and looked across at Zambendorf. True she agreed. But how are we supposed to find that out NASO s hardly likely to make a public statement about it. Zambendorf didn t reply at once but drew on his cigar and gazed distantly across the pool. After a while Abaquaan mused half to himself Do the NASO people just want to send a psychologist or are they determined to send Massey If we knew the answer to that it would tell us something. ... In fact it would tell us a hell of a lot. Another short silence ensued. Then Thelma said Suppose somebody came up with some good reasons why Massey should be dropped from the mission and replaced by someone else. ... What reasons Abaquaan asked. Thelma shrugged. I don t know offhand but that s a technicality. Since we couldn t afford to be seen originating a demand like that it would have to come from GSEC they ve got enough lawyers and corporate politicians to think of something. Even if they did can you see NASO dropping Massey if that is what he s there for Abaquaan sounded dubious. No but that s the whole point Thelma replied. The way they react might tell us what we want to know. Abaquaan looked at Thelma curiously seemed about to object for a moment and then turned his head away again to consider the idea further. A mischievous twinkle had crept into Zambendorf s eyes as he lay back and savored the thought. Yes why not indeed he murmured. Instead of being passive we can lob a little bomb of our own right into the middle of them maybe ... As Thelma says it probably won t blow Massey overboard but it might singe his beard a bit. So we have to get the message across to GSEC somehow. Zambendorf took off his sunglasses and began wiping them while he thought about ways of achieving that. Thelma stretched out a leg and studied her toes. One way might be through Osmond she suggested after a few seconds. We could tell him oh ... that in a first time situation like this it would be advisable to keep disruptive influences and other unknowns to a minimum until Karl s gained more experience in the extraterrestrial environment . . . something like that And he d persuade Hendridge who d take it to the GSEC Board Abaquaan completed. He sounded dubious. Zambendorf looked at him and then over at Thelma. They all shook their heads. None of them liked it. If the team wanted its relationship with GSEC to be a partnership and not a dependency it needed to dissociate from Hendridge not shelter behind him. Oh for heaven s sake it s obvious Zambendorf sat up and leaned across to stub his cigar butt in the ashtray on the table. We talk to Caspar Lang and tell him that we both have a problem with Massey and why. We ve already agreed that Lang s under no delusions concerning the true situation anyway. And if he s going to Mars as GSEC s senior representative on the mission then the sooner he and we can start talking frankly and get to know each other the better. Two weeks passed before Walter Conlon received an internal notification through NASO that GSEC had expressed concern over Massey s nomination for the Meridian Sinus mission. Specifically GSEC was calling attention to Massey s record as a skeptic and debunker of claims concerning paranormal phenomena and to the fact that Karl Zambendorf was accompanying the mission to test abilities of precisely that nature. Although Massey s capacity was described as that of psychologist appointing someone with his known predispositions GSEC suggested would be inviting the risk of his allowing personal interests to take precedence over official duties with detrimental consequences to the job he was being sent to do. In view of these observations therefore would NASO like to reconsider its choice Conlon dashed off a terse reply stating that Massey s function was to assess and report objectively the behavior attitudes emotional stresses and other psychological effects observed among the experimental community. If Zambendorf was going then Zambendorf would constitute a valid part of the test environment thus warranting objective reporting as much as anything else. Objective reporting demanded qualified observers and Massey s unique background fitted him ideally to the total situation. No NASO would not like to reconsider its choice. A few days after that Warren Taylor the director of the North American Division of NASO told Conlon that he wanted the decision reversed making little effort to hide the fact that words had been exchanged among the higher levels of NASO and GSEC management. Conlon could hardly defy a direct instruction from his superior and accepted the directive with a disinclination to further argument that his colleagues inside NASO found surprising. That same afternoon Conlon gave Allan Brady a draft of a press bulletin for immediate release stating that Massey was to be dropped from the Mars mission and spelling out the reasons why: The proposed inclusion of a competent stage magician was considered threatening to a psychic superman being sponsored by a multibillion dollar corporation. Brady balked Conlon demanded to sign the release note himself and Brady retreated to seek higher counsel. Eventually the decision came back down the line that clearance was denied. At that point Conlon went back to Taylor to protest the unconstitutional and illegal suppression of information not relating to national security and threatened to resign with full public disclosure. And suddenly the heat was off. The order to drop Massey was rescinded Conlon tore up his press bulletin and everybody stopped talking about the law the Constitution and threats of resignation. Not long afterward Massey received an invitation to give a private performance . . . for the further entertainment of our guests . . . at a banquet to be held in the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Burton Ramelson in Delaware. All expenses would be paid naturally and the fee was left open effectively giving Massey a blank check. It just so happened that the Ramelson family were controlling stockholders in a diversity of mutually enriching industrial enterprises which among other things included General Space Enterprises Corporation and the majority of its bondholding banks. 7 AMAZING ONE OF THE LADIES IN THE ENTHUSIASTIC THRONG crowding around Massey at the end of the dining hall in the Ramelsons mansion exclaimed. Truly amazing Are you sure you re not deceiving us just a little when you insist that you don t possess genuine psychic powers Mr. Massey Massey resplendent his full beard flowing above tuxedo and black tie shook his head firmly. I did all the deceiving earlier. I m here purely to entertain. I don t pretend to be anything I m not. Could I have an autograph possibly a buxom woman festooned with jewels and wearing a lilac evening dress asked. Here on this menu card would be fine. Certainly. Massey took the card and seemed about to open it when another voice caused him to turn away. I m not sure I believe it a tall distinguished looking man with thinning hair and a clipped mustache declared. You re genuine all right Massey but you haven t realized it yourself yet. It s happened before you know plenty of reliable authenticated stories. In an apparently absentminded way Massey handed what looked like the same menu card back to the woman in the lilac dress. It was always a safe bet that someone would want a menu card autographed at an occasion like that and Massey made a point of beginning such evenings with a few prepared cards concealed about his person. I would be most surprised he told the distinguished looking man sincerely. I simply must know how you did that thing with the envelope an attractive girl somewhere in her twenties said. Can t you give us just a hint even I mean ... it was so impossible. Oh you should know better than to ask things like that Massey said reproachfully. But you never touched it. Didn t I Well no. We all know what we saw. No you just know what you think you saw. Is Karl Zambendorf genuine a tubby man with a ruddy face asked. He was swaying slightly and looked a little the worse for drink. How could I know Massey replied. But I do know that I can duplicate everything he s done so far. But that doesn t prove anything does it the tubby man said. You re all the same you fellows ... If Zambendorf walked across the Chesapeake Bay from here to Washington you d just say Oh yes that s the old walking on the water trick. Just because you can imitate something it doesn t mean it had to be done the same way first time does it When he walks across the bay I ll give you my comment Massey promised. Er Mr. Massey you did say you d autograph my menu card the woman in the lilac evening dress reminded him hesitantly. That s right. I did. I still have it here and No you misunderstood me. I have. I don t think I quite Look inside it. What Oh but ... Oh my God look at this How did that get in here At that moment Burton Ramelson appeared behind Massey smiling and holding a brandy glass. He was small in stature almost bald and even his exquisitely cut dinner jacket failed to hide completely the sparseness of his frame but his sharp eyes and tight determined jaw instilled enough instant respect to open a small circle in the guests before him. A splendid exhibition he declared. My compliments Mr. Massey and I m sure I speak for everyone when I add my thanks for turning our evening into a sparkling occasion. Murmurs and applause endorsed his words. He turned his head to address the guests. I know you would all like to talk to Mr. Massey forever but after his exertions I think we owe him the courtesy of a few minutes rest in relative peace and quiet. I promise I ll do my best to persuade him to rejoin you later. Turning once more toward Massey he said Perhaps you d care to join a few friends and myself for a brandy in the library. As they proceeded out of the dining room and across a hall of paneled walls gilt framed portraits and heavy drapes Ramelson chatted about the house and its grounds which had been built for a railroad magnate in the 1920s and acquired by Ramelson s father toward the end of the twentieth century. The Ramelson family Massey had learned from Conlon commanded hundreds of millions spread among its many members heirs foundations and trusts in such a way as to avoid excessively conspicuous concentrations of assets. Most of their wealth had come from the energy hoax and coal boom following the antinuclear propaganda campaign and political sabotage of high technology innovation in the seventies and eighties which while achieving its immediate objective of maximizing the returns on existing capital investments had contributed to the formulation of U.S. policies appropriate to the nineteenth century while the developing nations were thrusting vigorously forward into the twenty first. The subsequent decline in competitiveness of American industries and their increasing dependence on selling to their own domestic market to maintain solvency was partly the result of it. The group waiting in the library comprised a half dozen or so people and Ramelson introduced the ones whom Massey had not met already. They included Robert Fairley a nephew of Ramelson who sat on the board of a New York merchant bank affiliated to GSEC Sylvia Fenton in charge of corporate media relations Gregory Buhl GSEC s chief executive and Caspar Lang Buhl s second in command. Ramelson filled a glass at an open cabinet near the fireplace added a dash of soda and passed the glass to Massey. He proffered a cigar box Massey declined. I m so glad you were able to come Ramelson said. You possess some extraordinary skills. I particularly admire the insight into human thinking that your profession must cultivate. That s a rare and very valuable talent. After the briefest of hesitations he added I do hope you find it adequately rewarded in this world of ours. It was a good act Buhl said clapping Massey on the shoulder. I ve always been about as cynical as a man can get but I don t mind saying it straight you came close to converting me. Massey grinned faintly and sipped his drink. I don t believe that but it s nice to hear you say it all the same. Somebody laughed everyone smiled. But it s only your hobby isn t that right Robert Fairley said. Most of the time you re a professor of human behavior or something... Cognitive psychology Massey supplied. I study what kinds of things people believe and why they believe them. Deception and delusion play a big part in it. So you see the hobby is really an extension of my job but in disguise. It sounds a fascinating field to be associated with Sylvia Fenton commented. Button s right it s valuable Buhl said. Not enough people know how to begin telling sense from nonsense. Most of our managers don t know where to start . . . nobody to show em how. Financial mechanics are all you get from the business schools these days. An interesting point Ramelson said. He went through the motions of thinking to himself for a few seconds. Have you er . . . have you ever wondered what your knowledge might be worth to you outside of the academic community Mr. Massey Massey made no immediate response and after a pause Ramelson went on I m sure I don t have to spell out at great length what it might mean to have the resources of an organization like GSEC at your disposal. And as we all know such an organization is able if it so chooses to reward the services that it considers particularly valuable with . . . well shall we say extreme generosity. The rest of the company had fallen quiet. Massey walked slowly away toward the center of the room stopped to sip some more of his drink and then turned back to face them. Let s come right to the point he suggested. You want to buy me off of the Mars mission. Ramelson seemed to have been half expecting the sudden directness and remained affable. If you wish to put it that way he agreed. We all have our price it s a worn and tired phrase but I believe it nevertheless. So what s yours Massey Name it research facilities and equipment Staff Effectively unlimited funding Publicity . . . Someone like you doesn t need the details elaborated. But everything is negotiable. Massey frowned at the glass in his hand and perplexed exhaled a long breath then answered obliquely. I don t understand all this. I know that you know Zambendorf is a fake. Okay so the stunt on Mars could be good for business but I can t see what makes it so essential. The logical thing would be to drop Zambendorf now since it looks like more trouble than it s worth. But that s not what s happening. What do people in your positions care whether he keeps his image clean or not So what s the real story You just said it Buhl replied shrugging and following Ramelson s candid lead. It s good for business. The more the idea of colonies is popularized the sooner they ll become financially viable and potentially profitable. Yes we like making money. Who doesn t The answer sounded more like a rationalization than a reason and left Massey feeling dissatisfied. But his instincts told him that any attempt at delving deeper would be futile. I ve nothing against trying to popularize the colonies he said. But if you re going to do it why can t you do it through rational education and reason Why resort to spreading miseducation and unreason Because it works Sylvia Fenton said simply. It s the only thing that has ever worked. We have to be realistic not idealistic. We didn t make people the way they are. What benefit has rational education ever had except on a small minority of any population anytime in history Nobody wants to hear it. Some people do Massey replied. There are a lot of people on this planet who used to starve by the millions and while their children withered away and died like flies they prayed to cows that wandered the streets. Now they re building their own fusion plants and launching moonships. I d say they got quite a bit out of it. But that kind of thing takes centuries to trickle down Fairley pointed out. We don t have centuries. No popular mass movement was ever started in a laboratory or a lecture theater. Thinking things through takes too much time for most people. Sylvia made a valid point look at anybody from Jesus Christ to Karl Marx who got results fast and see how they did it. And what were the results worth Massey asked. Generations of people wasting their lives away buying crutches because they d been brainwashed into thinking they were cripples. Buhl studied his glass for a moment then looked up. That s a noble sentiment Mr. Massey but who s to blame for people being conditionable in the first place A society that fails to teach them to think for themselves trust in their own judgment and rely on their own abilities Massey said. But that s not what most people want Sylvia Fenton insisted. They want to believe that something smarter and stronger than they are knows all the answers and will take care of them a God the government a cult leader or some magic power . . . anything. If they re going to change they ll change in their own time. All you can do until then is take the world as you find it and make the most of your opportunities. Opportunities for what Massey said. To persuade ordinary people that wanting a better living is really a trivial distraction from the higher things that really matter and fob them off with superstitions that tell them they ll get theirs later in some hereafter some other dimension or whatever if they ll only believe and work harder. Is that what I m supposed to do Why do you owe them anything else Buhl asked. He shrugged. The ones who can make it will make it anyway. Are the rest worth the effort From the way a lot of them end up no Massey agreed frankly. But the potential they start out with is something else. The most squandered resource on this planet is the potential of human minds especially the minds of young people. Yes I believe the effort to realize some of that potential is worth it. The conversation continued for a while longer but the positions remained essentially unaltered. Each side had heard the other s viewpoint before and neither was about to be converted. Eventually Mrs. Ramelson appeared with a request from the guests for a further impromptu performance and after a few closing pleasantries Massey left with her to return to the dining room. Silence descended for a while after their departure. At last Ramelson commented genially Well at least we know where we stand: If we fly our flag on the good ship Zambendorf Massey will be out to torpedo it. I can t say I m entirely surprised but we all agreed it had to be tried. . . . He looked across at the saturnine figure of Caspar Lang the deputy chief executive of GSEC who had said little since Massey s arrival and was brooding in one of the leather armchairs opposite the door. Lang raised his ruggedly chiseled crew cut head and returned a hard eyed inquiring look as he caught the motion. So if we re sending our ship into hostile waters we d better make sure it has a strong escort squadron Ramelson went on. He closed his eyes and brought a hand to his brow. You could find yourself with a tough job on your hands at the end of your voyage my powers tell me Caspar. . . . We d better make sure you take plenty of ammunition along. Don t give me any of that crap you little tramp Who the hell do you think you are to call me a tramp You you of all people Just stop screaming for two seconds and listen to yourself for chrissakes What sort of a woman screams like that What do you Me Me I am not screaming Goddamit The exchange ended with a shout and the crash of breaking china as Joe Fellburg nipped a switch to cut off the sound. He sat back and cocked an inquiring eye at Zambendorf. What do you think he asked. Zambendorf nodded and looked impressed as he ran his eye once more over the compact assembly of electronics and optical gadgetry that Fellburg had set up on a small table in an upper room in Zambendorf s villa. The equipment had fallen off a CIA truck and found its way to Fellburg via a devious route that involved one of his former military intelligence buddies and a communications technician with a gambling problem. It contained a miniature infrared laser whose needle fine beam was at that moment trained on the windowpane of a house almost a mile away. Soundwaves in the room caused the window glass of the distant house to vibrate the vibrations of the glass were impressed upon the reflected laser light and a demodulator system extracted the audio frequencies from the returned signal and fed them to a loudspeaker which reproduced the original sound. The device had all kinds of uses. It s astonishing Zambendorf said. Do you know Joe this world will never cease to amaze me. There are silly people everywhere running around in circles looking for miracles and all the time they re blind to the miracles right under their noses. He motioned with a hand. I could never produce something like that in a hundred years. Fellburg shrugged and tipped his chair back to rest a heel on the window sill. I was talking to Drew about this the other day. He had an idea that maybe the moisture variations that cause skin resistance to change might alter the way the beam s reflected off a person. If they do then maybe you could detect it with this thing. Zambendorf looked at him for a few seconds. What are you getting at you mean it could monitor skin resistance changes remotely I don t know but maybe . . . kinda like a remote acting polygraph. It might be possible to pick out the stress reaction of say one person in a group from across the street or wherever. It could have all kinds of potential. Zambendorf was looking intrigued. It certainly could . . . When do you think you ll know something definite Oh give me say a couple of weeks to fool around with it some more. I oughta be The call tone from the comnet terminal across the room interrupted him. Zambendorf sauntered across to take the call. It was Thelma speaking from downstairs. I ve got Caspar Lang from GSEC on the line. He wants to talk to you she told him. Put him through Thelma. Zambendorf turned and sent Fellburg a satisfied grin. Do you think it s what I think it is he asked. Fellburg raised his eyebrows. I d guess so. Anyhow we ll soon find out. The flap inside NASO a few weeks previously had told Zambendorf and his team all they wanted to know about why Gerold Massey was being sent to Mars and NASO s determination to send him. It was strange therefore that after the dust had settled Burton Ramelson should invite Massey to the banquet at his home in Delaware. The only reason Zambendorf or any of the others could think of for this was that GSEC had decided upon a last ditch bid to buy Massey off although it seemed as obvious as anything could be that any such attempt would be a waste of time and effort. Zambendorf had guessed that predictably and true to form the GSEC executives would plod unwaveringly along their predetermined course nevertheless and he had laid a bet with Otto Abaquaan that Lang would call within two days of the banquet to inform Zambendorf of the meeting with Massey that Zambendorf wasn t supposed to know about already. Caspar good evening Zambendorf greeted as the screen came to life. What time is it back East for goodness sake don t you people ever sleep And what can I do for you Hello Karl Lang acknowledged. As always he remained serious and came straight to the point. Look there s been a further development concerning Massey that you ought to know about. Zambendorf looked pained. Oh dear Caspar sometimes I really do think you don t believe in me. Do you imagine that I don t know already Lang s face twitched in momentary irritation. Karl please this is business. Let s be serious about it. But I m being perfectly serious. You and your colleagues tried to buy Massey off the mission with offers of plenty of funding for his research and all that kind of thing and he wasn t interested. Is that about it or did you have something else to add The guesses were the kind that Zambendorf felt comfortable with. For just an instant Lang seemed genuinely taken aback. But my impressions can be vague at times Zambendorf went on smiling. So yes please Caspar do go ahead and tell me what happened. As Lang summarized the conversation with Massey Zambendorf s eyes narrowed and he listened more intently. He remained quiet absorbed in his own thoughts for several minutes after Lang had cleared down. Fellburg said nothing and occupied himself with jotting down notes concerning the bugging device eventually looking up and cocking an eyebrow when he sensed that Zambendorf was ready to say something. Joe are we that important on this mission ... I mean as far as GSEC is concerned Zambendorf asked. Fellburg frowned down over his hand while he stroked his mouth with the side of a finger. Well I guess it s still the way we talked about before if lots of people get hyped up on space it has to be good for business. Yes but isn t the main purpose of the mission to accumulate data for the future design of colonies Zambendorf asked. Fellburg nodded. Yeah ... I guess so. And nobody could argue that our being there is vital to that purpose could they ... or even really that important Nope ... I guess not. Zambendorf nodded frowned to himself and paced away to face the far wall. Silence fell again for a while. Then Zambendorf wheeled back. It doesn t add up Joe. Why would people like Burton Ramelson and Gregory Buhl involve themselves personally in something like this It should have been left to the regular GSEC management minions. And if NASO wouldn t back down and the regular management couldn t handle it then the whole idea should have been dropped. In fact that s probably what NASO expected. But it didn t work out that way. What do you make of it Fellburg stared hard at the table but in the end shook his head with a heavy sigh. Got me beat he conceded. It s this mission Zambendorf said moving slowly back toward the window. There s something very strange about the whole situation . . . You know I m beginning to suspect there s a lot more behind it than anybody s been talking about. In fact it s more than just a suspicion Joe it s a dead certainty. Fellburg pursed his lips while he considered the proposition. Any ideas he asked at last. Zambendorf frowned. Not at this stage. But if something s being hushed up and it concerns the purpose of the mission it has to be something pretty big. Just think what a bonanza it could be for us if we called it before the public or anyone else knew anything. Zambendorf s eyes gleamed as he pictured it. My nose tells me there s something to be found out that we could turn to our advantage somehow. I want to get the whole team working on it right away. 8 IN COMPARING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF VARIOUS WAYS OF IMPARTING momentum to a projectile physicists employ the concept of impulse which is given by the product of the force acting on the projectile and the time for which it acts. In the case of a spacecraft a key indicator of performance is the impulse per unit vehicle mass or specific impulse which is measured in units of time and usually expressed as seconds. High specific impulses arise from propulsion systems that generate high velocity exhaust products. The exhaust molecules from a hydrogen oxygen rocket are ejected with velocities of the order of three kilometers per second corresponding to a specific impulse of 450 seconds at best with the result that interplanetary travel based on chemical propulsion is reckoned in years. A fusion reaction by contrast ejects plasma products over three hundred times faster and makes attainable specific impulses as high as 100 000 seconds. That was why a fusion drive had been considered essential to maintaining a base on Mars and why the Orion s projected flight time was only fifty days. The Orion was built in two major parts a forward section and an aft section connected by a quarter mile long structural boom. Its tail end was open to space and consisted of a framework of girders struts and tiebars forming four unenclosed cylindrical thrust chambers strapped together in a cluster like a bundle of squirrel cages. Frozen pellets of a deuterium tritium mix were fired into the chambers in pairs twice every second and imploded on the fly by focused beams of accelerated ions to produce a succession of fusion microexplosions miniature H bombs. The electrically charged high velocity particles released in the process generated forward thrust by reacting on a configuration of concave magnetic fields while the uncharged neutrons and x rays to which the magnetic mirrors were transparent could escape harmlessly into space. Magnetohydrodynamic windings at the stem converted part of the outgoing exhaust energy into electrical power for driving the ion accelerators and the superconducting field generators. The remainder of the aft section forward of the radiation shield screening the drive chambers contained the rest of the propulsion system berthing facilities for the Orion s complement of reconnaissance craft and surface landers and storage compartments for ground vehicles construction materials and heavy equipment. The forward end of the connecting boom terminated in a large vaguely spherical housing referred to in typically colorless NASO parlance as the Service Module which contained the main air generating plant and other systems essential to supporting life plus an independent chemical motor and associated fuel tanks in the event of an emergency the ship s entire tail could be ditched and the backup propulsion system used to get the mission home again. Accommodation for the vessel s occupants was distributed among four smaller spheres Globes I through IV located ahead of the Service Module and onset symmetrically from the centerline to form a square lying in a plane perpendicular to the main axis. Rotation of the entire ship about this axis coupled with an arrangement for pivoting the spheres enabled centrifugal and linear components of force to be combined into a resultant simulation of unit gravity normal to the floors irrespective of the ship s acceleration. A fifth sphere the Command Globe containing the control and communications center formed the Orion s nose and was interconnected with the others and with the main structure by a web of supporting booms and communications tubes. The god awful ugliest thing I ve ever seen in my life Clarissa Eidstadt said as the NASO European Division s shuttle closed in upon the Orion ten thousand miles above Earth. What did they do copy an eggbeater The team had been scheduled to shuttle up from El Paso Texas but was flown to Kourou Guiana at the last moment because NASO officials had decided not to antagonize a protest rally that was besieging the El Paso facility. A chemical present in rocket exhaust had been found to cause cancer in mice when administered for six months in ten thousand times the concentration measured at the pad immediately after a launch. Oh I m not so sure Clarissa Thelma said leaning back in her seat and tilting her head to one side as she contemplated the image being shown on the cabin viewscreen. In a way I think it s quite beautiful. You do Then I ll know never to buy you an eggbeater as a present. You might frame it and hang it on the wall. I m not talking about how it looks Thelma said. I m talking about what it represents. . . . One day people will probably go to the stars in something evolved from it. How wonderful. Clarissa stared fish eyed again at the screen through her butterfly spectacles. Say know what my kitchen will never look the same again now you ve said that. Osmond Periera who was sitting a row ahead of them turned his head. I wonder if when that happens we ll have learned how to imitate the alien star travelers who visited Earth during the mid Holocene period. It appears extremely likely that they navigated by means of reactive psychosympathetic beacons tuned to their mental energy spectra. The geometric spacings of numerous ancient monoliths can be interpreted as yielding a mathematical series that reflects the corresponding psychic resonances. Now I can sleep Clarissa murmured dryly in Thelma s ear. I ve always wondered about those geometric monolith spacings. That s really fascinating Thelma said to Periera in a louder voice. Is that why pyramids everywhere are the same shape Before Periera could answer Joe Fellburg sat forward in the row behind where he was sitting with Zambendorf and Otto Abaquaan and frowned at the view of the Orion as it continued to enlarge on the screen. What is it Joe Drew West asked from his seat next to Thelma. Fellburg stared for a few seconds longer at the huge ship surrounded by shuttles service craft and supply ships and the loose cloud of containers pipes tubes tanks and assorted engineering that would gradually be absorbed inside during the remaining three days before liftout from Earth orbit. See those three shuttles docked at the stem cargo section . . . and the other one standing off waiting to move in he said at last. What about them Thelma asked. Those aren t standard NASO models. Two of them are military transports out of Vandenberg or Travis and one of the others looks like a British air force troop carrier. What the hell are they doing here In the seat beside him Zambendorf turned his head and gave Abaquaan an inquiring look. Abaquaan raised his eyebrows ominously. The anomaly of Ramelson and his colleagues getting more involved in the mission than seemed reasonable had been followed by that of the training course at the NASO center at Charlotte North Carolina intended to provide the basic skills and knowledge needed by anyone flying with a space mission how to put on and operate a spacesuit the safety regulations enforced aboard spacecraft and in extraterrestrial habitats emergency procedures and so on. But the mission personnel whom they had met there had been of relatively junior status such as engineers scientists maintenance technicians medics and administrators. The mission s senior management officer corps or whoever would constitute the upper levels of the organizational tree had been conspicuous not only by their absence but by their not even having been mentioned. And as Drew West had observed the mix of people encountered at the course and reflected in the personnel lists had seemed unrepresentative of the populations envisaged for space colonies. There were too many scientists and academic specialists: bacteriologists virologists biologists physicists chemists sociologists and psychologists . . . even some linguists and a criminologist. Obviously the mission offered many opportunities for diverse studies that the academic community couldn t be expected to miss buses didn t leave for Mars every day of the week but so many And where were the agricultural technicians the industrial workers the clerks and the service people who would be expected to make up a large percentage of any projected colony Hardly any had been met. That seemed strange too. And now apparently a previously unannounced and by all the signs not insignificant military force would be coming too. It was in keeping with everything else he had been able to ascertain Zambendorf reflected as he sat gazing at the screen. Although he was still not in a position to fit the pieces into a coherent pattern there hadn t really been any doubt in his mind for a long time now: Something very unusual indeed was behind it all. As the last in a series of prototypes the Orion was intended primarily to prove the feasibility of its scaled up fusion drive and to test various engineering concepts relating to long range large capacity space missions like the experimental Victorian steamships that had preceded the gracious ocean liners of later years its design took little account of luxuries or spaciousness of accommodation for its occupants. Its warren of cabins cramped day rooms machinery compartments stairwells and labyrinthine passageways reminded him more of a submarine than anything else Massey thought as he lounged on his bunk and contemplated the view of Earth s disk being presented on the screen built into the cabin s end bulkhead. He and Vernon would share the cabin with two others both of whom they knew from the training course: Graham Spearman an evolutionary biologist from the University of California at Los Angeles and Malcom Wade a Canadian psychologist. Spearman and Vernon had left to explore the ship and Wade hadn t arrived yet Massey therefore was making the most of the opportunity to relax for a few minutes after arriving on board checking in and unpacking his gear. From his perspective in Globe II the entire planetary surface of Earth continents oceans and atmosphere revealed itself as a single self sustaining biological organism in which the arbitrary boundaries and differences of shading that divided the maps of men were no more meaningful than they were visible. It was a truth that astronauts and other venturers into space had affirmed repeatedly for over half a century but it had to be experienced to be understood Massey realized. Only two days earlier he had paid a final visit to Walter Conlon in Washington where on every side the world of human affairs scurried and bustled about its urgent business and consumed the output from thousands of lives. But already the whole of it had shrunk to a speck of no particular significance barely discernible against the background that had remained essentially unchanged since before Washington had existed and which might persist for long after Washington was forgotten. The sound of the door being opened interrupted Massey s thoughts and a moment later Malcom Wade pushed his way in holding two bags and a briefcase in his hands and using a foot to shove a suitcase along on the floor. Well I guess I must have found the right place he said as he closed the door with his back. Hi Gerry. I gather the other two are already here. Hello Malcom. Yes they ve gone exploring. That top bunk s yours. How was the flight Wade took off his topcoat and hung it in the closet space by the door. Oh fine apart from taking half a day longer than it was supposed to. We had to divert to the European base in Guiana. He sank down with a grateful sigh on the bunk opposite Massey. He was a tall thin bodied man with lank hair and pale eyes that always seemed to be glinting with some inner fervor. I heard about it Massey said. Hey I think Graham s got a bottle of something stowed away over there. Could you use a drink while you re getting your breath back Mmm . . . later maybe thanks all the same. Okay. So who else was on the shuttle Let me see ... Susan Coulter the geologist and that electronics guy from Denver that we had breakfast with one morning at Charlotte . . . Dave Crookes. Uh huh. Karl Zambendorf and his people were on it too. Wade cocked an eyebrow at Massey in a way that was partly expectant partly curious. Oh. Massey did his best to keep his voice neutral. He didn t want to get into a long debate just then. Although he hadn t advertised his prime interest in the mission the question of Zambendorf s being included had been a regular conversation topic at the training center and Massey had found himself obliged on occasion to express his opinions. Wade described himself as a scientist and was apparently an advisor of some kind to a number of government committees but he took Zambendorf quite seriously. Massey wondered exactly what he advised the government on. I think I know why he s here Wade said after a short silence. He paused to wait for Massey to ask him why Zambendorf was there. Massey didn t. Wade went on anyway It s well known that the Soviets have been conducting extensive research into paranormal phenomena for years and getting successful results too. Massey swallowed hard but said nothing. There were always anecdotes of anecdotes about things that people were supposed to have done but never anything verifiable. Wade took a pipe from his jacket pocket and gestured with the stem. It s been suspected for a while now that they ve achieved some kind of significant breakthrough and a lot of experts have been saying that the main Soviet center for that kind of work is their Mars Base at Solis Lacus well away from terrestrial interference you see. Wade paused and began packing tobacco into his pipe from a pouch. Well I guess you know how I feel about all that Massey said vaguely while wondering uncomfortably to himself if the conversation was an indication of what to expect for the next fifty days. But it all fits Wade said. I know you re a bit of a skeptic and so on Massey but I believe in being scientific about things which means being open minded in other words willing to accept that there are things we can t explain. Whether we can explain it or not we have to accept that Zambendorf is gifted with some abnormal abilities. He eyed Massey for a moment as if the rest should have been too obvious to require spelling out. Well I think Zambendorf is part of a classified Western research program to match the Soviets in harnessing paranormal phenomena ... or maybe even to counter the Soviets. That could be why they re sending Zambendorf to Mars. Massey stared at him glassy eyed but before he could say anything Wade added triumphantly And that would explain why the military is here to secure the project from possible interference from the Soviets at Solis Lacus. Have you heard about that yet Massey nodded. We were told they re coming with us to do some training under extraterrestrial conditions . . . that the Pentagon bought some places on the ship at the last moment or something. Wade shook his head. Cover story. Do you know how many there are of them There were three shuttle loads disembarking when I came aboard U.S. Special Forces a British commando unit French paratroopers. That s not a few seats bought at the last minute. That was scheduled a long time ago . . . And they re docked at the stem which means they re unloading heavy equipment. He produced a lighter and watched Massey over his pipe while he puffed it into life. In fact it wouldn t surprise me if the idea was to provoke a confrontation with the Soviets at Lacus in order to take their base out. Maybe our people are onto things that you and I haven t even dreamed about. Massey slumped back and looked away numbly. Surely nobody at the Pentagon or wherever was taking the nonsense about the Soviets that seriously . . . But then again large sectors of the government and private bureaucracies were dominated by political and economic ideologists incapable of distinguishing sound scientific reasoning from pseudo scientific twaddle yet commanding authority out of all proportion to their competence. If they listened to kooks like Wade they could end up believing anything. Surely the insane rivalry that had paralyzed meaningful progress over much of Earth for generations wasn t about to be exported to another world over something as ridiculous as the paranormal. Massey stared again at the blue green image of Earth with its stirred curdling of clouds. Somehow the human race had to get it into its collective head that it couldn t rely on magical forces or omnipotent guardians to protect it from its own stupidity. Man would have to trust in his own intelligence reason and ability to look after himself. The decision was in his own hands. If he chose to eradicate himself the rest of Earth s biosphere far more resilient than popular mythology acknowledged would hardly notice the difference and then not for very long. And as for the rest of the cosmos stretching away for billions of light years behind Earth s rim the event of man s extinction would be no more newsworthy than the demise of a community of microbes caused by the drying up of a puddle somewhere in Outer Mongolia. 9 AH LET ME SEE NOW . . . WHEN I WAS A BOY OF ABOUT SIXTEEN it must have been. Pat me father says to himself. With them Americans walking around on the Moon itself and flying them hotels up in the sky that s the place you should be for your sons to grow up in. So we ups and moves the whole family to Brooklyn where me uncle Seamus and all was already living and that s where the rest of them still are today. Sgt. Michael O Flynn of the NASO Surface Vehicle Maintenance Unit reversed his feet which were propped up on the littered metal desk in his cubbyhole at the rear of a cavernous cargo bay and raised his paper cup for another sip of the brandy that Zambendorf had produced from a hip flask. He had a solid stocky body that seemed as broad as it was long beneath the stained NASO fatigues and his face was fiery pink and beefy with clear blue eyes half hidden beneath wiry unruly eyebrows and a shock of rebellious hair in which yellow and red struggled for dominance each managing to get the better of the other in different places. O Flynn spoke through pearly white teeth clamped around a wooden toothpick in a husky whisper that had retained more than a hint of its original brogue for what must have been thirty or so years. What part of Ireland did you move from Zambendorf inquired from his cramped perch on a metal seat that folded out from the wall between a tool rack and an equipment cabinet more comfortable than it looked since his weight near the ship s axis was barely sufficient to keep him in place. County Cork in the south not far from a little place called Glanmire. Zambendorf rubbed his beard and looked thoughtful for a few seconds. That would be roughly over in the direction of Watergrasshill wouldn t it if I remember rightly he said. O Flynn looked surprised. You know it I was there a few years ago. We toured all around that area for a few days . . . and up to Limerick back down around Killamey and the lakes. Zambendorf laughed as the memories flooded back. We had a wonderful time. Well I ll be damned O Flynn said. And you like the place eh The villages are as pretty and as friendly as any you ll find in Austria and I found Guinness remarkably good once I d gotten used to it. Those mountains though what do you call them Macgilly something... Macgillycuddy s Reeks. Yes how is anybody supposed to remember something like that Well they re not really mountains at all are they You really could use a genuine Alp or two you know. But apart from that . . . Zambendorf shrugged and sipped his own drink. What are your Alps but more of the same O Flynn said. Ours have everything a mountain needs to be called a mountain except a man doesn t have to waste more of the breath he could be using for better things getting to the top. The higher a man rises the farther he sees Zambendorf said throwing out a remark that was open for O Flynn to take any way he pleased. It s as true of life as it is of mountains wouldn t you agree O Flynn s eyes narrowed a fraction further for a moment and he chewed on his toothpick. Yes and the farther away he gets the less he sees until he can make out no part of any of it he replied. The world s full of people parading their high and mightiness who think they can see everything but they know nothing. It sounded like a general observation and not a veiled reference to Zambendorf. I take it that the noble and the worthy don t exactly inspire you to any great feelings of awe and reverence. Ah and who else would they be but those who make it their affair to mind the rest of the world s business when the rest of the world is quite able to look after itself It s people whose own business isn t worth minding who mind other people s business I m after thinking. A man has work enough in one lifetime trying to improve himself without thinking that he s fit to be out improving the world A strange garb to find a philosopher in Zambendorf thought to himself. Well that s certainly been the old way he said stretching and looking around as if for a way of changing the subject. Who knows Perhaps Mars will be the beginning of something different. O Flynn remained silent for a few seconds and rubbed his nose with a pink meaty knuckle as if weighing something in his mind. So it s convinced you are that it s Mars we re going to is it he said at last. Although nothing changed on Zambendorf s face he was instantly alert. Of course he said keeping his voice nonchalant. What are you saying Mike Where else could we be going Well now aren t you the great clairvoyant who sees into the future O Flynn s smile twinkled mockingly for just an instant. I was hoping that maybe you were going to tell me Zambendorf had ridden out worse in his time. What are you saying he asked again. What makes you think we might be going anywhere else O Flynn chewed on his toothpick and watched Zambendorf curiously for a second or two then crumpled the cup and dropped it into a trash disposal inlet. He stood and inclined his head to indicate the doorway. Come on. I ll show you something. He cleared the distance to the bay area outside in one of the long slow motion bounds that was the most economical way to move around in almost zero gravity surroundings. Zambendorf unfolded himself from his seat and followed. O Flynn led between rows of packing cases and halted at a larger area where three surface vehicles were stacked one above the other in their stowage frames to just below the ceiling. At the bottom of the next stack a couple of NASO mechanics working at the open hatch of a tracked vehicle and another who was inspecting something from a movable work platform higher up carried on without paying much attention. O Flynn gestured toward the lowermost vehicle in front of them a personnel carrier about fifteen feet high painted mainly yellow with six huge wheels. An enclosed cabin with lots of antennas and protrusions made up its forward two thirds and a clutter of girderwork pipes and tanks formed its rear. See them wheels O Flynn said pointing. Them s high traction low friction treads not what you d need if you wanted to go joy riding off across a place like Mars. He ducked forward and indicated a pair of short fat nozzles projecting from below the vehicle s front end. Know what they are Plasma torches and blowers not the best thing in the world if you get bogged down in a sand drift now is it What would things like that be better for Zambendorf asked peering more closely. Ice O Flynn told him. Lots of ice. He jerked his thumb stemward. And the equipment holds back there are full of things like steam hoses and superheated suction tubes which are also the kinds of things you d want to take along with you if you expected to be bothered by ice. Now where would all that ice be on a place like Mars He straightened out from under the vehicle and rapped his knuckle on the outside wall of the cab. Them walls will withstand four atmospheres outside not inside. Mars has a low pressure atmosphere. Zambendorf searched O Flynn s face for a second or two and then looked back at the personnel carrier. O Flynn stepped back a pace and pointed up at the fuselage of a low altitude fifteen man airbus secured in the top frame of the stack. And do you see that flyer up there Its wings are detached so you can t see them for now but they re too short and small to be any use at all in thin air. Now Mars must have changed quite a bit since I last read anything about it unless I m very much mistaken. But . . . this is incredible Zambendorf injected an appropriate note of astonishment into his voice while his mind raced through possible explanations. Have you asked anyone in authority about it O Flynn shrugged. What business is it of mine to be asking people about something they d already have told me if they wanted me to know He hooked his thumbs in his belt and stood back. Anyhow we ve almost got everyone aboard now. Soon they ll all be talking and then the questions will start getting asked. I m not much of a clairvoyant meself you understand but I ve a sneaky feeling it won t be much longer before we get the answers too. Wow Two hydrogen bombs every second You re really not joking Thelma stared wide eyed across the table at the young NASO captain smartly attired in his flight officer s uniform. Around them with only two days to go before the Orion s departure the atmosphere in the crowded bar on the Recreation Deck of Globe IV was getting quite partylike. Larry Campbell proud of his recent promotion to the staff of General Vantz commander of the Orion sipped his gin and tonic and grinned reassuringly. Well they re really only small ones and completely under control. There s nothing to be concerned about. We ll take good care of you. But it sounds so scary. I mean how can anybody understand how to control something like that You must be very clever. What sign were you born under Beneath the table Thelma had pushed Campbell s briefcase back along the wall and within reach of the fingertips of one arm which was draped casually over the chair next to her. She shifted slightly and lifted her glass to taste her martini while surreptitiously nudging the briefcase under the back of the booth behind her. Campbell frowned at his glass for a second then sighed and smiled condescendingly. Well let s put it this way my training in understanding the physics of thermonuclear processes doesn t have anything to do with when I was born I m afraid. You don t get these he gestured at the captain s tracks on his epaulets for knowing about birth signs you know. You don t Thelma said wonderingly. But you have to know which way to steer the ship. How can you do that without knowing all about stars and planets At the booth behind Drew West finished his drink got up and sauntered out of the bar carrying his jacket loosely over his arm to conceal the briefcase he was holding. Campbell bit his lip awkwardly. Look I er . . . I don t want to sound like a schoolteacher or anything but astrology and astronomy aren t really the same thing. No of course they re not everyone knows that Thelma agreed brightly. Astronomy is restricted to what you can see through telescopes but astrology covers a lot more because it s revealed directly to the mind right I read all about it in Thinking Woman s Monthly Digest. Er not quite ... If you want I ll tell you what the differences really are. But I should warn you you may find you have to change some ideas you might have grown pretty fond of. Oh would you Larry Just imagine a real starship officer taking all this trouble just for me My sister will be so mad when I tell her. In the men s room outside the bar Drew West had picked the lock of the briefcase and begun selecting interesting papers which he passed over the partition for Joe Fellburg to photograph in the next cubicle. Five minutes later when Fellburg entered the bar carrying Campbell s briefcase inside a false bottomed leather portmanteau the booth at which West had been sitting was taken. So Fellburg edged his way through the throng and stopped partway to the bar to count change from his pocket for the cigarette machine in the process putting down the portmanteau next to Thelma s seat. The briefcase stayed behind as Fellburg moved on but the movement of his foot to slide it behind the chair toward Thelma s waiting hand was so smooth that Campbell on the far side of the table didn t even register anyone s being nearby as he extolled the wonders of the heavens and expounded on their mysteries. Clarissa Eidstadt rapped the end of her pen sharply on the top of Herman Thoring s desk in the administrative section of Globe I to emphasize her point. Look mister I ve got my job to do too. I m the team s publicity manager okay That means I need to get information to the public. How am I supposed to get information out without proper communications So do something about it. Thoring held up his hands protectively. Okay Clarissa I hear what you re telling me and I ll do what I can. But you have to understand I ve got a lot of other responsibilities and obligations to think about. This mission is important to all kinds of other people too. Thoring looked like a person born to carry responsibilities and bear obligations. The tanned dome of his head reflected the light inside a semicircle of black frizzy hair and his eyes looked like poached eggs behind thick heavy rimmed spectacles wedged above his fleshy nose. He was in shirt sleeves with cuffs rolled back vest unbuttoned and tie knot slipped a couple of inches below his opened collar. Clarissa tossed up a hand in a curt gesture of finality. Well if you don t have the authority to change anything I m wasting my time. I thought you were in charge around here. Who do I talk to As it was supposed to the remark hit a sensitive spot. Thoring s knuckles whitened and a vein stood out on his temple. You re already in the right office he managed indignantly. I m the Senior Program Director from Global Communications Networking and have full responsibility for media liaison. It s a very important position and I ve told you I ll do everything I can. Yeah Phooey. Important Who says so What s media liaison anyway I wanna talk to the captain. What captain Vent Vant . . . whatever. What s the driver called You mean General Vantz Thoring looked appalled. That s him. Where do I go Thoring shook his head and moaned despairingly. Look Clarissa believe me you can t go raising something like this with General Vantz. He wouldn t know anything about it anyway. This would come under the mission s Communications Director and I report directly to him. Okay Then I wanna talk to the Communications Director. Thoring raised a hand to his brow closed his eyes and fiddled with the bridge of his spectacles for a few seconds then shook his head again and looked back at Clarissa. Before he could say anything one of the women from the secretarial pool in the outer office called I m through to New York Mr. Thoring. They re sorry but Hepperstein is in conference at the moment. Can he call you tomorrow Thoring sighed stood and walked round the desk to the open doorway. No it can t wait until tomorrow he said sounding agitated. He has to get back to me today. Make sure they get a message to him and that he knows it s from me personally. Okay. Who are you trying to kid Clarissa asked as Thoring came back to his desk and sat down. At the same time she allowed a hint of doubt into her voice and marshaled an expression that was a shade more respectful. I bet you don t even know who the Communications Director is. Why would your job involve dealing with someone like that Thoring lifted his chin and allowed himself a quick smirk of satisfaction. Well you d be surprised lady. For your information my level of responsibility on this mission requires a working familiarity with all kinds of confidential material that you don t know about. That s why you have to trust me when I say I ll do as much to help your interests as I can. But that s all I can say. Just accept for now that I have a lot more to worry about than you think. Clarissa s belligerence evaporated. She leaned forward glanced furtively across at the open doorway and hissed in a conspiratorial whisper. What Thoring s voice lowered itself instinctively. Come on Clarissa you know better than that he muttered tapping the side of his nose. But I wanna know Clarissa insisted her eyes wide with excitement. Is it gonna be a group sex experiment in space Or maybe we re going into another dimension. You can tell me. Do I look like somebody who d go spreading things around especially something said in confidence by a Media Liaison Director. Thoring frowned bunched his lips perplexedly for a second and then whispered I can t do that ... but if I told you it s big would you stay off my back and let me get on with my job But of course. I wouldn t wanna interfere with something that might endanger the national interests or something. Well you re pretty close to the mark Thoring said nodding somberly. That s just what it is. You could help us a lot by backing off a little. How big is it Clarissa asked covering the side of her face with a hand and murmuring out of the corner other mouth. Have they found cosmic energy pyramids on Mars Are we gonna fight the KGB for them Nothing like that. But I ll tell you this the Mission Director is Daniel Leaherney deputy head of the U.S. National Security Council. His second in command will be Charles Giraud who s connected with the French government. They and their senior staff are on board now shuttled up yesterday without any publicity. That should tell you enough. Never heard of them but they sound important Clarissa said. This is exciting. What else Thoring sat back in his chair suddenly and shook his head. That s more than I should have mentioned. I can t say any more Clarissa . . . but will you stay outta my hair from now on please I never realized . . . You must have a lot on your mind. That s what I m trying to tell you. Okay I get it. Don t worry the secret is safe. You can count on me. You know I always wanted to be an espionage agent with the CIA or something. I figure I d be good at it. Do you er . . . do you have people like that working for you Clarissa looked at Thoring hopefully. Uh Oh no I m afraid not. Too bad. Oh well maybe if you want a secret message taken to the Communications Director or something like that you could let me know. What Oh yes sure. If anything like that comes up I ll give you a call. Okay well I guess I d better let you get on. Clarissa got up and crept furtively over to the door. She opened it a fraction peered out and then looked back over her shoulder at Thoring. I m sorry I bothered you over something so trivial. Oh think nothing of it. We get it all the time ... but we have to keep up our cover you understand. That s what I thought. Clarissa nodded a final solemn reassurance made an O in the air with her thumb and forefinger and disappeared. Thoring stared disbelievingly at the door for a long time after she had gone. Then he blinked himself back to reality shook his head and returned his attention to the papers on his desk. The figures for on board fuel pellet manufacturing capacity emergency reserves of chemical propellants and the range corrections factored into the radar calibration procedures all point to a distance much greater than that of Mars Theuna said to the rest of the team who were holding a cramped afterdinner conference in the cabin that Zam bendorf shared with Abaquaan West and Fellburg. She gestured at the photo prints lying among other papers on the bunk beside her. And the flight profile from Campbell s duty roster gives a voyage of something nearer three months than fifty days. I still think the Asteroids is a possibility Drew West said lounging on one of the upper bunks. There s been a lot of talk in recent years about our vulnerability in strategic minerals in fact right back to the last century. There s no end of just about everything out there. Silence reigned for a few seconds. Joe Fellburg made a face. Too many things don t fit he said. Why all the secrecy Why the military Protecting our eternal interests Abaquaan answered sitting on the floor with his back to the door. Who from Well it could only be the Soviets West said. Out at the Asteroids Clarissa looked inquiringly at Theuna and Fellburg. Do they have anything that could match the Orion at that range Fellburg shook his head. Not yet. They ve been concentrating on near Earth applications. The Japanese are more interested in Venus and Mercury. The Soviets did develop a series of fusion drives as part of their Mars base program Theuna said. But if they d gone a long way in scaling them up to anything like the Orion we d know about it. Clarissa nodded as if that confirmed what she already thought. And besides Leaherney and Giraud don t fit into that either she said. Leaherney used to be chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Economic Affairs and is a onetime U.S. ambassador in Brussels Giraud was a member of the French cabinet. You wouldn t pick guys like that to head up a prospecting expedition. The cabin fell quiet again for a while. Everybody looked at everybody else. There were no new suggestions. At last Zambendorf stood up stepped over Abaquaan s legs to get to the coffee pot by the washbasin and poured himself a fresh cup. He stirred in a spoon of sugar and turned to face the others again. Then it has to be as I ve been saying he told them. No other hypothesis explains all of the facts nearly as well. A low gravity low temperature icy environment ... It has to be a moon of the outer planets. With not only an atmosphere but a high pressure one at that Thelma agreed nodding. Fellburg rubbed his nose between thumb and forefinger for a few seconds and at last nodded slowly. I can t fault it ... And you know something the European probe that arrived there two years ago and sent down those surface landers that were all supposed to have failed soon after they reached the surface that story has always sounded strange to me too. Abaquaan looked up and turned his head from side to side. So what are we saying then it has to be Titan We re agreed It appears extremely probable at least Zambendorf said. But the more interesting question by far is why. Why would the Western powers equip an elaborate mission heavy with scientists from every discipline and experts from many fields to such a destination provide it with military protection and go to great pains to conceal its true purpose from as in all probability it had to be the Soviets Why would they place such a mission in the charge of senior political figures experienced in international negotiation and diplomacy And why perhaps most significant of all were there linguists and so many psychologists among the professionals being taken along specialists at understanding and communicating with thinking intelligences In short just what had the landers from the European probe found under the murky impenetrable cloud canopy of Titan Saturn s mysterious moon equal in size to the planet Mercury And of particular interest to the people gathered in Zambendorf s cabin why was it considered highly desirable for someone like Zambendorf to be there 10 IN THE HEART OF THE ORION S COMMAND GLOBE OVERLOOKING the Central Control Deck the ship s control and operational nerve center Don Connel the senior reporter on the GCN news team assigned to accompany the mission watched on his monitor the view being transmitted live into Earth s communications net from camera 1. The camera panned slowly across the activity at the crew stations the colors and formats of the data displays changing and flashing to report condition changes and status updates and the computers silently marching regiments of bits through their registers and then came to rest on the image of Earth being presented on the main display screen above the floor. Connel nodded to acknowledge his ready cue from the director on the far side of the raised tier of consoles from which General Vantz and a trio of senior officers were monitoring the final phase countdown operations and turned to face camera 2. A moment later its light came on to indicate that he was on the air again. Well you ve just been looking at the view of Earth that we re getting here on the Orion and seeing what you look like from ten thousand miles up right at this moment he resumed. You know even I have to admit it s a real problem finding the right words to tell you folks just what it feels like to be up here at a moment like this. Personally I m still having trouble convincing myself that the image you just saw is real this time really out there. I m not looking at something being relayed from a remote space operation that involves other people thousands of miles away or a recording slipped into a space fiction movie. If the walls and structures around me here were made of glass and I could look out right through them I d be able to see first hand with my own eyes exactly what s on the screen here. You know it makes those walls and structures seem very flimsy all of a sudden and the Orion very tiny compared to everything else around which from where I m seeing it is enough to swallow up even the whole of Earth itself. Well you can take it from me I sure hope those NASO engineers and all the other people who designed and built this ship are as good as everyone tells me they are. From a position just below Vantz s console a flight engineer motioned to attract Connel s attention and raised five fingers and a thumb signaling that the countdown was entering its final sixty seconds. Connel s face became serious and he injected a note of rising tension into his voice. The countdown is into the last minute now. Back in the tail of this huge ship the field generators that Captain Matthews talked about are up to power and those immense accelerators are ready to fire. Here are the final moments now on the Control Deck of the Orion as this historic voyage to Mars begins. Connel waited for camera 2 s light to go out as transmission switched back to camera 1 then sat back in his seat to follow the proceedings. Master Sequencer is Go Backup Sequencer is Go the Chief Engineer reported from beside Vantz. Checkpoint zero minus two positive function. Ground Control acknowledgment checks positive and GC override veto standing down. PSX status Vantz queried. GCV disconnects one through five confirmed another voice answered. PSX integration reads positive function. SSX confirms. Tracking two seconds into exit window another called out. Main fields: six eight green seven seven green nine five on synch. Alignment good. Focus fields good. Injectors primed. Ten ten all beams. Checkpoint zero minus one holding now. Stillness descended for a second as General Vantz cast a final eye over the information displays in front of him. He nodded and spoke into his console mike. Fire for exit phase one. Phase one fire sequence activated. Zero zero at GPZ plus seven point three seconds. Connel felt his seat nudge him gently in the back. The Orion was moving out of freefall the journey that would shrink the globe on the screen to a pinpoint and replace it with another world had begun. From the gestures and grins being exchanged among the crew everything seemed to be going well. Connel relaxed back in his seat and finished his coffee while a sequence of views went out showing Earth scenes from around the Control Deck and shots being picked up from the service vessels standing ten miles off in space. He checked the schedule to confirm the next item which was timed to relieve tenseness after the launch by providing a contrast of subject and mood then got up and moved down to a space over to one side where Zambendorf was talking to a production assistant while he waited. With them were Dr. Periera who Connel privately considered to be crazy and Zambendorf s middle aged equally zany publicity matron who had bullied Herman Thoring into allocating Zambendorf some valuable air time at a moment when the world would be watching. In front of them a couple of technicians were repositioning camera 2. All set Connel inquired as he joined them. There are some commercials starting just about now. We ll be going on immediately after. Fine Zambendorf said. Connel gestured at the sheet of paper in Zambendorf s hand. Are those questions okay Are there any you want me to miss No these are fine. Were they otherwise I would have saved you the trouble of typing them by telling you beforehand. Connel wasn t sure whether Zambendorf s expression meant he was joking or not. Connel was skeptical toward claims of paranormal abilities although he usually had a tough time defending his views with his friends. He grinned and then made a face leaving Zambendorf free to interpret the response either way. You are not convinced Zambendorf asked watching him keenly and sounding surprised. Connel shrugged in an easygoing way. Well ... I guess I can t help remembering that the Orion is driven by fusion power not ESP power. I figure that has to say something. True Zambendorf agreed. And the first ocean vessels were driven by wind power. Twenty seconds a technician advised. The others moved back while Connel and Zambendorf took up their positions the camera light came on and they were live. Don Connel talking to you again this time on my way to Mars. Well before all the excitement of liftout we talked to General Vantz and a couple of his officers and to some of the scientists we have with us. Now I d like to say hello to somebody else also with the mission who s standing next to me right now Hello Karl Zambendorf. Hello Don. Karl this is a first time experience for you too I believe. Is that right Well in my material body anyway . . . yes. You re supposed to be able to make some uncanny predictions about future events. What about Mars Do you have anything you d like to say in advance about the mission any major happenings in store for us on the Red Planet big surprises anything like that Mars Connel looked surprised. Well yes sure. Is there anything you d like to predict about events following our arrival there Mmm ... If you don t mind Don I d prefer not to make any comment in response to that question ... for reasons which will become apparent in due course. Hey that sounds kind of sinister. What are you trying to tell us Karl Oh nothing to be alarmed about. Let s just say that I would not wish to lay myself open to charges of indiscretion by the authorities. As I say the reason will soon become clear. There really is no need for alarm caution maybe but not alarm. Now I wonder what that could mean. I guess we ll just have to wait and see huh I hope all you people back there are taking notes of this. Karl another thing I wanted to ask you concerns all the scientists and other specialists that we ve got with us on the ship. Do they worry you at all Certainly not. Why should they Aren t we all scientists in some way or another Well maybe but it is a fact that a lot of people from the more shall we say orthodox branches of science tend to express skepticism toward your particular branch of of exploration. Being shut up in a spaceship with so many unbelievers doesn t bother you Facts are not changed by the intensity of human beliefs or the number of people who hold them Zambendorf replied. He was about to say something more when the production assistant off camera nodded to someone behind a door situated to one side and beckoned. Moments later Gerold Massey appeared. Zambendorf jerked his head round sharply and gave Connel a puzzled look. Massey and Zambendorf had so far tended to avoid a direct confrontation confining their acknowledgment of each other s presence to stiff nods exchanged in passing or from a distance. Connel had set up the surprise on direct instructions from Patrick Whittaker at GCN headquarters. Karl people are always trying to spring things on you aren t they he said amiably. I have taken the liberty of asking one of those skeptics to join us because I m told he has a challenge that he d like to put to you himself. I m sure the viewers would all like to hear it too. Before Zambendorf could answer the assistant ushered Massey forward and Connel brought him on camera with a gesture. Folks I d like to introduce Gerry Massey. Now Gerry is one of the psychologists with us here on the Orion but in addition to that he s also a pretty good stage conjuror I m told. Is that right Gerry It is an area of interest of mine Massey replied as he moved forward to join them. And you re not a believer in the existence of forces or powers beyond those that are familiar to orthodox science Connel said. In particular you claim you can reproduce any effect by ordinary stage magic which Karl attributes to paranormal abilities. Is that so Gerry Massey took a long breath. To say all the things he d have liked to say would have taken hours. That is correct. For a long time now I have been attempting to persuade Herr Zambendorf to agree to demonstrate his alleged powers under conditions which I am able to specify and control. That after all is no more than would be expected in any other branch of science. But he has persistently evaded giving a direct answer. My suggestion is quite simply that the voyage ahead of us and the period we will be spending on Mars offer an ideal opportunity and ample time for this to be settled once and for all. I have a schedule of some initial tests with me right now but I m open to further suggestions. Connel turned and looked at Zambendorf questioningly. Although he maintained his outward calm inside Zambendorf was thinking frantically. He should have guessed Massey would do something like this should have watched him more closely. The team had been too busy with too little time. Oh we ve heard this kind of thing before he replied without hesitation. Just because a stage magician can duplicate an effect it doesn t prove at all that what s being imitated was achieved in the same way. After all I m sure Mr. Massey can produce a rabbit from a hat very convincingly but he could hardly argue on that basis that all rabbits must therefore come from hats could he I never claimed it proved anything Massey answered. But if a simple explanation can account for the facts then there s no need for a more complicated one or indeed any logical justification for accepting one. The simplest explanation for the planets and the stars would be that they revolve above the Earth Zambendorf pointed out. But nevertheless we all accept a more complicated one. With luck Massey would allow himself to be diverted into the realms of philosophical logic totally confusing ninety percent of the viewers who would then dismiss him as a hair splitting academic waffler. Yes because it explains more facts Massey replied. But all that s irrelevant for now. You said that the presence of competent scientists is of no concern to you. Very well then what I m proposing will demonstrate the fact admirably. You said facts aren t altered by beliefs. I agree with you. So let s find out what the facts are. Clearly Massey was not about to be shaken off. Half the world was watching and waiting for Zambendorf s answer. If he committed himself Massey would never let him off the hook. Well Karl Connel said after a few seconds of dragging silence. What do you say Will you accept Gerry Massey s challenge Zambendorf looked around him desperately. Across the Orion s Control Deck many of the officers and crew members were watching curiously. If those damn GSEC people had done their jobs Massey wouldn t have been able to get near him. It was infuriating. Massey had folded his arms and was waiting impassively. Zambendorf hesitated. Then as their eyes met he saw the triumph already lighting up Massey s face. That did it. Zambendorf turned away for a moment braced his shoulders and breathed heavily a few times and then looked up to the ceiling as if summoning strength from above. When he turned back again his face seemed to have darkened with anger and his eyes burned with patriarchal indignation. Connel looked suddenly apprehensive. Even Massey seemed taken by surprise. At a time like this ... At such a moment of historic events about to unfold . . . You would have me play games What childishness is this Zambendorf thundered. Dramatic sure but it was an all or nothing situation. We the human race are about to go forth and meet the destiny for which fate has been shaping us for millions of years and instead of rising to fulfillment your minds are distracted by trivia. Connel and Massey looked at each other nonplussed. Zambendorf whirled round upon Massey and pointed a finger accusingly. I challenge you Do you see any hint of where this journey will lead us or what it will reveal Indeed do you see anything at .all Or are you like the rest of the blind who believe only in the part of the universe that lies within groping distance of their fingers A bluff to throw him on the defensive Massey decided. He had to hold the initiative. Theatricals he retorted. Just theatricals. You re not saying anything. Are you supposed to be predicting something If so what Let s have something specific for once now not after the event and with hindsight after we arrive at Mars. Mars Zambendorf sounded pitying. You believe we re going to Mars You live your life in blindness. It is no wonder you cannot believe. Of course we re going to Mars Massey said impatiently. Pah fool Zambendorf exploded. Suddenly Massey was less certain of himself. He could feel the situation starting to slip. It was all wrong. Zambendorf couldn t be turning it around. Massey had had all the aces surely. Connel was gaping incredulously. What are you saying Karl he demanded. Are you saying we re not going to Mars So where do you think we are going . . . Why . . . What are you telling us Most of the viewers had already forgotten Massey had ever issued a challenge. They wanted to know if Zambendorf had seen something. Zambendorf was back in his natural element the showman in control of the show. He extended his arms wide and appealed upward toward the roof. Beside him Massey and Connel seemed to fade away on a hundred million screens. He brought his fists down to the sides of his head held the pose for several seconds and then looked at Connel with a strange distant light in his eyes. I have not the names that astronomers use but I see us traveling over a great distance to a place that is not Mars . . . much farther from Earth than Mars. Where Connel gasped. What s it like A child of the haloed giant who shepherds a flock of seventeen Zambendorf pronounced in ringing tones. I know not where I am ... but it is cold and dark below the unbroken clouds of red and brown that float upon air that is not air. There are mountains made of ice and vast wildernesses. And . . . His voice trailed away. His jaw dropped and his eyes opened wider. What Connel whispered awed. Living beings . . . They are not human but neither are they from any part of Earth. They have minds I am feeling out to them even now and . . . Get him off General Vantz snapped on the far side of the Control Deck. Kill it Get him off. the Communications Director ordered. An engineer nipped a switch on his console. Voices were jabbering excitedly on every side. I don t care Tell them anything Herman Thoring yelled over an auxiliary channel to the Production Director in the GCN studio back in New York. Say we ve got a technical hitch. No I don t know what it s about either but we ve got all hell loose up here. Back in Globe II Vernon Price was staring dumbstruck at the cabin wallscreen which had just switched back to a view of Earth. Well Malcom Wade challenged smugly as he puffed his pipe on the bunk opposite. So he s a fake is he How do you explain that then eh In his home in a Washington suburb Walter Conlon pounded the table by his chair furiously with a fist. He can t get away with it He can t Massey had him for chrissakes he had him cold Warren Taylor is on the line for you his wife Martha said. Conlon got up and stamped over to the comnet terminal across the room. The face of the NASO North American Division Director was purple with anger. What happened he demanded. I thought you were supposed to have an expert up there who could handle that turkey. In the study of his mansion in Delaware Burton Ramelson was staring at a screen showing the stunned face of Gregory Buhl who had just been put through from GSEC s head office. My God Ramelson exclaimed incredulously. Do you think we might have been wrong about this whole thing Could there really be something to Zambendorf after all In the Mission Director s executive offices in Globe I of the Orion Caspar Lang was shaking his head at a grim faced Daniel Leaherney. Of course it s not genuine Lang insisted. We underestimated Zambendorf and his people. We took them for simple tricksters but they re obviously far more sophisticated. It was a clever piece of espionage nothing more and nothing less. We ll have to tell the mission Leaherney said. It doesn t matter how Zambendorf did it the result s still the same. We ll have to tell everyone on the ship the real story now. But we would have had to tell them before much longer anyway Lang reminded him. At least we re on our way which is the main thing. It s a pity that the Soviets will find out now instead of later when the Orion fails to show up at Mars I know but you have to agree Dan that with the number of people who ve been involved security has been a hell of a lot better than we dared hope. Leaherney frowned for a while but eventually nodded with a heavy sigh. I guess you re right. Okay put a clamp on all unofficial communications to Earth effective immediately and announce that I ll be addressing all personnel within a few hours. And get that psychic over here right away would you. I reckon it s about time he and I had a little talk. In Moscow an official from the Soviet Foreign Ministry who was aware that the Americans had been conducting top secret research into paranormal phenomena for many years protested to the U. S. and European ambassadors that if the Orion was being sent to make first contact with an alien intelligence none of Earth s major powers could be excluded. He demanded that the ship be recalled. The allegation was denied and in their reply the representatives of the Western states suggested that perhaps the Soviet government was allowing itself to be unduly influenced by rumor and overreacting to sensationalism and unscientific speculation. That same day aboard the Orion Daniel Leaherney broadcast to the ship s occupants to inform them that as had been generally concluded already the ship s destination was indeed Saturn s moon Titan. Pictures were replayed of the last views transmitted from the European probes that had landed on Titan two years previously which showed strange machines approaching and then nothing the landers having presumably been destroyed. Nothing had been seen of whoever or whatever had built the machines. The orbiter that had launched the landers was still over Titan but little more had been learned of the surface because of the moon s thick brownish red clouds of nitrogen compounds and hydrocarbons. The departments of the U.S. and European governments responsible for initiating the mission had never intended forcing anyone to face such unknowns against their will. Since the first reaction of many people to such a prospect would naturally be fear and nervousness the original plan had been to announce the true story when the Orion was a few weeks out from Earth which would have given everyone more than a month to discuss the situation and reflect upon its implications. Arrangements had been made for a NASO transporter from Mars to rendezvous with the Orion to take off anyone choosing not to stay on after that time. Expectations had been that after due consideration the majority of personnel would elect to continue the voyage and place their services at the disposal of the mission and Leaherney expressed the hope that this would still be the case. The secrecy had been regrettable but necessary to . . . safeguard the interests and security of the North American democracies and their European allies he said. Seven weeks later only a few faint souls dropped out when the NASO transporter rendezvoused with the mission ship. The Orion then accelerated away once more its course now set for the outer regions of the Solar System. 11 THIRG ASKER OF FORBIDDEN QUESTIONS LIVED IN THE HIGHER reaches of the forests south of the city of Pergassos in the land of the Kroaxians where the foothills rose toward the mountains bounding the Great Meracasine Wilderness. He lived in something that was more than a hut but less than a house in keeping with the not quite hermitic but certainly less than sociable life that he preferred to lead. His home was situated in a small clearing amid pleasant forest groves of copper and aluminum wire drawing machines injection molders transfer presses and stately pylons bearing their canopy of power lines and data cables among which scurrying sheet riveters gracefully moving spot welders and occasional slow plodding pipe benders supplied a soothing background of chattering hissing whirring and clunking to insulate him from the world of mortals and their mundane affairs and leave him alone and in peace with his thoughts. A low ice cliff stood at the back of the clearing to prop up the hillside rising away toward the mountains beyond its line broken on one side by the valley of a liquid methane stream which tumbled cheerfully down over cataracts and ice boulders between clear pools where zinc separating electrolyzers and potassium precipitating evaporators came to wallow and wade and dip their slender intake nozzles and funnel shaped scoops at the height of the bright period. Thirg had grown the actual dwelling himself having learned the craft from an old friend who was a builder in Pergassos. After laboring to clear the area of dead steel latticeworks and structural frames the carcass of a transformer that had clung obstinately to its concrete base and assorted scrap metal undergrowth he had prepared an area of the hydrocarbon soil below the cliff with nitrogenous loams collected from the stream bed and planted the seed culture for the outside wall in a line ten paces out from the cliff base curving inward at its ends to close off the frontage of a dry cave. Then he had laid out the baselines of the interior walls to provide a living and dining area a workroom and a library and while carefully nurturing with methane solutions gathered from the forest and pruning and shaping of the windows and doorways while the walls grew upward and merged into a half dome overhead he had enlarged the cave at the rear into a second workroom and a storeroom. The doors and window fittings had grown from secondary cultures grafted inio the structure when the frames had stabilized at their correct shapes and sizes and the larger furnishings from premolded miniatures purchased in the city A conduit of forest piping diverted running methane from the stream and a power line strung from a nearby distribution mast provided all the comforts of home recharging. To provide the rustic finish that suited his taste Thirg had lined the walls with polished alloy sheets obtained from the rolling mill a mile farther downstream and laid the floors with ceramic bricks and lengths of girder from a partly decomposed foundry that he had come across while walking near the stacking meadows just below the cabinet assembly line on the slopes overlooking the north side of the river. One morning Thirg was sitting outside his house on a stump of steel forging pondering the mysteries of life while he watched a phosphor bronze bearing collector buzzing and chattering to itself as it poked and rummaged among a pile of undergrowth on the far side of the clearing. It was a species of a general family of collector animals that a naturalist friend had spent a lifetime cataloguing and classifying discreetly since such inquisitiveness could lead to trouble with the authorities if it was brought to the attention of the priests. Like all its related species it selected just one type of metal composition by sniffing the emissions from a tiny spot that it vaporized with a needle laser and then only from samples of a particular size and shape and delivered its trophies to the nearest conveyor to be carried off to other parts of the forest. Thirg s friend had spent many hours following components through miles of forming processing and finishing stations to the assembly places where animals came to life and observing the furnaces that devoured reject components and excreted pure materials from which new components were manufactured he had drawn elaborate charts depicting the merging and branching patterns by which components and sub assemblies flowed through the forest and he had dismantled hundreds of dead animals and other machines in an attempt to trace where their organs and constituent parts had come from via what routes and where the raw materials had originated. But even with the findings of generations of earlier naturalists to build on the work was barely begun. The intricate interlocking mutually interdependent pathways by which Nature recycled its materials as it constantly renewed the living world were so bewildering that Thirg sometimes suspected that despite all the effort hardly a fraction of the whole had been glimpsed yet let alone comprehended. It was fascinating to think that one of the scraps of metal being sorted by the collector that he was watching now might be found twelve brights later inside the rotor mounting of a centrifuge located miles away or perhaps in the wheel bearings of a dead plastics browser on the other side of Kroaxia. Although Tbirg had never elected to start a family of his own his natural curiosity had led him at times to the places where subassemblies of robeings the unique self aware species to which he belonged came together for final assembly. He had watched in awed fascination as the embryos grew to their final forms and shapes while anxious parents scurried back and forth to make sure all the parts were available and all the requirements of the assembly machines satisfied and he had shared their elation when the new robeing was at last activated and departed trustingly with the proud couple to its new home to begin the process of learning language behavior customs and all the other things that characterized an adult member of society. The assembly process was essentially identical to the ways in which animals and other life forms grew. Thirg s naturalist friend had assured him that all forms including robeings were supplied from the same sources of components and it seemed remarkable that one species should exhibit thinking abilities sufficient to distinguish it so sharply from all the others. On the face of it the difference seemed to support the orthodox teaching that robeings were unique in possessing souls which would eventually either return to the Lifemaker after undergoing worldly quality assurance testing or else be consigned to the Great Reduction Furnace below from which the liquid ice volcanoes originated. But the physicians who had carefully dismantled and studied bodies of dead robeings had been able to find nothing more than was found in any other machine: the same kinds of perplexing arrangements of tubes fibers brackets and bearings and baffling arrays of intricate patterns etched into countless slivers of crystal that descended to levels of detail way beyond the power of the most powerful protein lenses to resolve. So where was the soul If it existed why was there no sign of anything different to say that it existed True nobody could explain how robeings were able to think but on the other hand nobody could explain how animals came to act the way they did or to know what they seemed to know either. So did the existence of robeings require anything fundamentally different to be explained Thirg wasn t at all sure that it did. To him the fact of the soul sounded suspiciously as if it had been invented to suit the answer the answer hadn t been deduced from the facts in the way that was required by the system of rules he had constructed for answering questions reliably. And in all of the tests that he had subjected them to the rules had never failed him. A sudden grinding sound from the edge of the clearing interrupted his thoughts. Moments later the grinding changed to sharp clacking as Rex began gnashing his cutters and running backward and forward excitedly in front of the trail leading from the forest. Thirg stood up just as a tall figure clad in a woven wire tunic and a dark cloak of carbon fiber came into view. He was wearing a hat of ice dozer wheelskin and carrying a stout staff of duralumin tubing. Down Rex Thirg said. It s only Groork coming to pay us a rare visit. You should know him by now. And then louder Well hello brother Hearer of Voices. Have your voices led you up into these parts or do you bring us tidings from the world Groork came into the clearing and approached between the metallic salt deposition baths on one side of Thirg s garden and a decorative row of sub miniature laser drilling and milling heads busily carving delicate aesthetic patterns in an arrangement of used gas cylinders and old pump housings. His radiator vanes were glowing visibly after his exertions and he was puffing coolant vapors. There are many strange voices in the sky of late the like of which I have never heard before he replied. He didn t smile in response to Thirg s greeting but then he was a mystic and so never smiled at anything. Surely it is an omen of great things that will soon come to pass. I am called to go out into the Wilderness of Meracasine and there I will find the Revelation that many have sought. For it is written that Yes yes I know all about that Thirg said holding up an arm of silver alloy jointed by intricately overlapping sliding scales. Come in and rest. You look thirsty. A drink of invigorating mountain methane is what you need. I don t know how you stand that polluted muck that they run into the city at all. Thirg led the way inside and Groork sat down gratefully on the couch by the wall in the dining area. While Thirg was pouring a cup of coolant Groork selected one of the array of power sockets sprouting from the transformer unit each of which designated a particular strength and flavor drew it out on the end of its extension cord and connected it to a plug inside a flap below his chin. Ah that does feel a lot better he agreed after a few seconds. Thirg passed Groork the cup then glanced at his hands and down at his feet in their wheelskin sandals. He gestured toward the electroplating attachment. If you re wearing hungry anywhere help yourself. You ve eaten already Yes I ve had a plate. I can recommend a new composition of chromium and vanadium that you ought to try. Delicious home regulated fresh from the garden. Or a top up of lube perhaps Groork shook his head and the fervent glint returned to his imaging matrixes. My purpose is not to trifle over pleasantries Thirg. I have a higher calling to answer and I do indeed bear thee news grave news 0 brother who forsakes his soul for Black Arts. Thy heresy hath betrayed thee A writ has been issued by the King s Chancellor for you to be brought before the High Council of Priests by the time of the next west bright to recant the public utterances in which you have denied the Holy Scribings. Soldiers of the Royal Guard have already departed the city and will arrive hither this bright. Flee now and save thy wretched body while it lives for its spirit is surely lost already to the Dark Master thou wilt never renounce Oh . . . And what am I supposed to have said now Thirg asked. Despite the tone of Groork s words the thermal patterns playing on the surfaces of his face painted expressions of a concern that was genuine. Does thy memory ail Groork said. Is that not the first symptom of the madness that afflicts all blasphemers and drives them into the deserts to perish seeking covenant with the accursed in the lands of the Unbelievers I d have said they did it more to get away from the priests and avoid being dipped in acid baths Thirg replied and asked again What am I supposed to have said Didst thou not in the hearing of many who were in the marketplace deny the Sacred Doctrine of the Divine and Unknowable Essence of the Maker of All Life Groork whispered as if fearful of uttering the words too loudly. Hardly. What I said was that some of the sacred logic strikes me as precarious. For is not the existence of Life cited as proof that the Lifemaker must have made it ... at least when one troubles to penetrate the confusing tangles of words Thirg shrugged and took a short draught from another cord to be sociable. But we would never permit such a form of argument in our more mundane world of everyday affairs. For example if I decided to invent an Unknowable Windowmaker I could hardly claim that because windows exist the Windowmaker must have made them could I It is known that windows grow from cultures that are engineered by builders. Like the first the argument is circular: It begins by assuming that which it sets out to prove. Groork who had raised his hands in an attempt to block his ears lowered them again with an anguished moan. Blasphemy he exclaimed. What false creed of faith is this It s not a creed of faith at all but a process by which truths can be shown to follow necessarily from simple observations Thirg told him. My task has been the reduction of this process to a series of rules which can be written down in a form of language and used by anyone. Truly the results astonish me. Shall I demonstrate some examples Groork looked aghast. Do you presume to impose rules upon the Lifemaker Himself You would dare constrain how He might choose to manifest His design You would confine His works to the understanding of mere mortals What arrogance has taken possession of thee What manner of Oh shut up Thirg said wearily. I impose no rules of my own invention on anyone. I merely observe the world as it is and attempt to understand the rules that are written into it already. It seems to me that if the Lifemaker saw fit to endow us with intelligence at all He would have meant us to use it. Well what use would be better fitting than discovering reliable methods of acquiring knowledge Know ye of the things that the wise shall not seek after and the mysteries that the holy shall not question Groork recited shrilly. There are some things that we were not meant to know Thirg. Oh and how do you know It is written in the Scribings. Who wrote them and how did they know Those who were inspired to know. Truth cannot be found by following false paths. All of the true knowledge that was meant to be divulged is divulged in the Scribings. And who says that Thirg challenged. The Scribings. Again we see an argument that leads itself into a circle. Groork looked away despairingly and his eyes came to rest on an orb covered with unfamiliar markings and notations standing at one end of Thirg s worktable. Thou art bewitched by circles he said. The same madness that has damned Lofbayel is afflicting thee. I have heard of the insanity that deranges his mind with belief the world is round. I have studied his evidence closely and it is persuasive Thirg replied. Since his trial before the Council he has entrusted his charts and his records to me for safekeeping. He gestured toward a large map hanging on the wall above the worktable a map unlike any that Groork had seen before. Behold the world upon which you walk. Much remains to be filled in as you can see but Lofbayel has convinced me that in its main features it is reasonably accurate. See how tiny the whole of Kroaxia is upon it. It has straight edges Groork objected after staring in mute protest for a while. It is taught that the world is as a platter bounded by the unscalable Peripheral Barrier of mountains that support the sky. You talk of rules of reason but no fool in his wildest ravings would conceive of reason such as this. The edges of the sheet upon which the map is drawn can no more influence what the map represents than the edge of a portrait can cause its subject to be beheaded Thirg pointed out. And so the world is beheaded on all four sides Groork replied. The Barrier does not appear anywhere. Thus this map cannot represent the entire world. Your words are belied. In all his searchings Lofbayel was unable to find a single authenticated account of anyone ever finding the Barrier Thirg said. High mountains yes immense chains whose very passes are higher than the highest peaks in all Kroaxia yes mountains whose summits are sometimes lost from sight in vapors no more substantial than the mists that rise from the stream outside at early bright yes. But mountains upon which there rests a solid roof of sky Never. Always there is another side beyond the mountains and always another shore beyond the ocean. Now you would presume to dictate limits to the Lifemaker again Groork accused. This time you tell him how large He is permitted to make His world. The distance to the Barrier is not written. It is unknown and therefore unknowable. Another reason for its being unwritten and unknown might be that it doesn t exist Thirg commented. It is written that it exists How could it be written about if no one s ever seen it How could it not exist The world must be bounded. Because your imagination is bounded and unable to conceive of any alternative Thirg asked. Now who is imposing his limits upon the Lifemaker But this map covers the whole world and no Barrier appears on it. Where then is the Barrier if it exists The map cannot cover the whole world Groork answered. But it leaves no direction open for any more of the world to exist in. Thirg picked up the sphere and showed it. There is the world Groork For just one minute forget your dusty texts written long ago by clerks in their dungeons who never saw an ocean let alone crossed one and who never looked beyond any mountain. This form and only this form is consistent with all the facts that have been recorded no form of platter can be contrived of which the same can be said. Which form therefore should we accept as representing more closely the reality that exists Groork unplugged himself from the transformer unit and shook his head in protest. Your facts are in error for did you not claim they were amassed from travelers who have seen the farthest limits of north south east and west But it is obvious that no traveler could venture beyond a small region at the top of that. . . He pointed at the globe. Otherwise they would fall off as indeed would the methanes of the oceans. But the oceans persist. There is a fact Brother Thirg which you would appear to have chosen conveniently to ignore. That was a source of vexation to me too for a while Thirg admitted. But a possible answer suggested itself to me one bright when I was strolling in the forest. I stopped to rest for a while by a glade where spectrometers are assembled and picked a magnet from one of the storage bins to savor its scent. The iron grains that it attracted from the debris around where I was sitting prompted me to wonder if perhaps the world sphere might draw all things to itself in the same way that a magnet draws iron grains to itself from any direction. Just as every line toward the magnet is uniformly down for the grain so down at every place on the world sphere would be toward the ground. The methanes of the oceans would thus seek a level nearest to the center and remain in the lowest regions which is as we know to be true. Hence you see the fact is explained. Thirg paused but Groork made no response. Thirg held up the sphere to study it for a moment or two and then continued in a more distant voice The fact that nobody has ever found a Barrier holding up a solid sky leads me to wonder if the sky is really solid at all. Could it be nothing more than vapors And if so how far do they extend Forever If not what lies beyond them Could there be other worlds The question intrigues me. Ever since it occurred to me after I began familiarizing myself with Lofbayel s work I have been studying the cycles of full brights and half brights as they follow one another across the world. On the basis that the world is indeed a sphere and the sky nothing more than vapors the bright and half bright periods could be accounted for by two brilliant objects moving beyond the sky in a complicated but repeating motion. Where would you look in your Scribings for the knowledge to answer questions like these Groork Groork stood up suddenly and dismissed the whole matter with a gesture. I did not come here to listen to you compounding your folly by adding more heresies to those you are guilty of already he said. The High Council will not look leniently upon you one more time. Their patience is exhausted. May the Lifemaker forgive me for my weakness but I cannot abandon my brother though the madness boils within him. Collect together the possessions you would carry with you Thirg and for this bright we can travel together. But on the far side of the mountains I must lead a lone path to the destiny that has been written but which is yet to be revealed. Hurry. There may be little time. Thirg stared back sadly. I doubt if you could ever understand Groork even if I had all the rest of time to try and explain it. Your beliefs are taught without a question s being tolerated while mine are learned only after posing every question. What does it say for the worth of beliefs if they cannot survive critical scrutiny and dare not permit a word of dissent to be voiced Would truth or untruth be the first to tremble in the presence of the other It seems At that moment the sound of Rex s agitation again came from outside. Groork rushed to the doorway. Too late he moaned turning a fearful face as Thirg strode across the living area after him. They re here. The King s soldiers have arrived. Thirg reached the door and looked out past Groork. Mounted figures in single file were approaching on the trail leading to the clearing. 12 THIRG STARED FOR SOME SECONDS AND THEN THE LOUVER VANES covering his ventilation inlets bristled into a puzzled frown. Those are not soldiers he said to Groork as the new arrivals emerged from the trail and came fully into view. He went out and stood before the door Groork followed warily. Although the riders carried weapons they were clad in rough mountain garb with heavy cloaks of flexible laminate mail body armor of acid resistant and heat absorbing organics and knee length boots of heavy polymer. The one who appeared to be the leader a large broad shouldered robeing with rugged weather worn features and a heavy black beard of accumulated carbon impregnated plating about his lower face crossed the clearing and brought his exhaust snorting steellion to a halt before Thirg and Groork. The others fanned out into a semicircle behind. Outlaws unless I am much mistaken Thirg muttered to Groork. He raised his head to look up at the leader and asked in a louder voice Am I honored with guests or merely treated to the rare pleasure of welcoming passersby Oh you are indeed honored the leader replied. His voice was deep and firm but his tone more jovial than harsh. I take it you are Thirg who asks forbidden questions. And do you find many answers As to the first I am. And this is my brother Groork a hearer. As to the second each new answer comes inseparably joined to a new question of whether or not the answer is true. Thus the number of questions to be answered can never diminish however many answers may be found. Thirg cast an eye over the company. But who is it that honors us with his visit and what would bring such as you to the dwelling of a thinker and a seeker of truth If you have come in search of plunder or of a body that would command a high ransom I fear you will be disappointed. If on the other hand your desire is to rest awhile and conjecture upon the riddles of Nature while engaging in philosophical discourse then I have more to offer. But I would not advise it the King s soldiers have departed hither from Pergassos I am told and have been riding since early bright. We know all about them the leader said. The King s generals would better spend the royal funds buying intelligence from us than paying their own officers. But the soldiers will have found the bridge over the cable spinning ravine blocked which will slow them down awhile. He paused and looked from one to the other of the two figures standing in front of him. I am Dornvald called by many Freer of Bondslaves by others Subverter of Rebels depending on whether you pay the King s living or he pays yours. We present ourselves here as trusty escorts for your journey through the mountains and across the Wilderness to the city of Menassim in the country of the Carthogians. What makes you think that I wish to travel to Carthogia Thirg asked. I didn t say you did Dornvald told him. I just said you were going. To preserve the likes of one such as I from priests If you choose not to preserve yourself. Why should that be a matter of concern to outlaws It isn t. But we enjoy freedom of passage through the borders of Carthogia and other immunities in return for which we render certain services to Kleippur the ruler of Carthogia. It appears that Kleippur values your casing more highly than you do yourself. I do not make it my business to question his reasons but word is that other sorcerers who have fled to his realm have spoken well of your magic Thirg. Thus it is that we have been entrusted for many six brights now to watch over you for danger of the kind that now threatens. Thirg rubbed his power inlet housing thoughtfully while he considered the situation. Carthogia had once been a part of neighboring Serethgin a larger country than Kroaxia. It was now ruled by a former general called Kleippur who had led a successful uprising against the incumbent Serethginian prince ousted the traditional nobility and clergy and established an oppressive military tyranny. Various alliances between the remainder of Serethgin Kroaxia and a number of other kingdoms had waged a series of wars to free the hapless people of Carthogia from their yoke but so far they had been unable to prevail against the Carthogian army which though small in numbers fought fanatically because of the ruthless discipline imposed upon its soldiers and with the advantage of innovative weaponry created by enslaved craftsmen who lived chained to their workbenches. At least that was the official story told by the priests and teachers of Kroaxia. But Thirg had heard rumors of a different kind rumors of a Carthogian society that tolerated inquirers such as himself and permitted them to ask their questions openly of a slaveless society in which even the serfs were free to own property and keep the major portion of the wealth earned by their labors and of an army of free robeings who fought to defend themselves against what they saw as a return to the very form of slavery that Kroaxians were conditioned to believe was normal and natural all of which the priests and teachers insisted were lies spread by Carthogian agents to undermine the faith and trust of the people. Thirg had never known what to believe. But he did know that many of his friends had departed for Carthogia and though from time to time he heard scraps of news of them none had returned on the other hand he had never met nor heard tell of a Carthogian who had fled the other way. Did that mean they had found freedom and tolerance as Thirg sometimes suspected Or had they been kidnapped and forced to remain in captivity as the Kroaxian teachers maintained For some reason running away from the priests of his own volition would have been in his own mind a betrayal of all that he felt he stood for. But if forced to leave by a band of armed brigands . . . well that wasn t the same thing at all was it He looked up again at Dornvald and asked so as to be able to justify everything to himself later Have I a choice Kidnapper of Thinkers Most certainly for have I not presented myself as an agent of the Land That Gives Freedom Dornvald answered heartily. You can mount a steed and ride with us freely or you can be placed on a steed and ride with us bound a perfectly free choice to decide how you get there. In that case I ll come with you Thirg said. Wisest without a doubt Dornvald agreed solemnly. Thirg glanced at Groork for a moment then looked back at Dornvald. My brother is passing by on his way to the Wilderness where he goes in search of his voices he said. Our roads will run together for a while. Besides we could not in good conscience abandon him to the mercies of King s servants unlikely to find the disappearance of their quarry a source of any great amusement. We have spare steeds Dornvald said looking at Groork. Would you travel in company as far as the village of Xerxeon Hearer though I should warn you I have no ear for holy words Arghhh Groork shrank back into the doorway of the house and covered his imagers protectively with an arm. Wouldst thou defile me with the stain of thy followers Henchman of Unbehevers I will travel my road in solitude for thine leads not upward to the Lifemaker but downward to the precipice of doom. Dornvald shrugged his shoulder cowlings. As you will. But I doubt that your voices will afford you the same safety on your journey. He looked back at Thirg. There is one pack mount for the possessions you would bring with you. Kleippur has given particular instructions for the charts and records belonging to the mapmaker Lofbayel to be preserved. If you have a safe hiding place I suggest you use it for anything else of value. Who can foretell when the strange workings of fate might bring you this way again Kleippur knows of the charts Thirg sounded amazed. Kleippur makes it his business to know many things Dornvald replied. Thirg spent a short while selecting personal belongings and some of his more highly prized books and journals. While a couple of Dornvald s outlaws were packing these items into bundles with Lofbayel s charts and securing them Thirg covered the remainder of his books his study samples and his finer measuring instruments in oiled wrappings and locked them in chests which two more outlaws carried to a concealed hole sealed by a boulder at the base of the cliff a short distance from the house. Then Thirg stood to take a last look around his garden while the outlaws who had been helping him remounted. Another led forward a sleek powerful looking mount with a dark copper tinted sheen and titanium white flashes around its head and neck. Thirg eyed it apprehensively as he stepped closer riding was not one of his greatest skills and then cocked an imager shade curiously as he noticed the royal crest etched into its rear flank. Dornvald followed Thirg s gaze and laughed. Until recently the swift carrier of one of His Majesty s messengers who has departed for a place to which that steed could not take him. We must make haste now Collector of Books and Objects That Mystify Me or His Majesty s servants will be here to take his property back for him. Thirg mounted carefully while one of the outlaws held the animal s harness to steady it. Then the riders formed up with Dornvald at the head Thirg next with Rex waiting suspiciously but faithfully alongside and the remaining dozen or so falling into a column behind. Groork crept out from the shadows at the back of the house and watched. They had left behind one steed which Dornvald had ordered to be tethered to a pillar at the edge of the clearing. Which officer is it who leads the soldiers Dornvald inquired casually to Geynor his lieutenant as the riders moved off. Do we know of him from encounters past or by repute perchance Oh indeed Geynor replied speaking just as loudly. Captain Horazzorgio no less whose rage causes even his own soldiers to tremble or so I have heard tell. Not the Horazzorgio whose inventions of tortures and torments are beyond the ability of even the keepers of the King s dungeons to bring themselves to speak The same. Tis said heretics have been slowly melted starting at the toes. Really How awful The column filed out of the clearing into the gully of the stream and began following the narrow trail that led upward toward the High Country. They had covered only a short distance when Fenyig the rearguard called to attract Dornvald s attention. A lone mounted figure holding well back to keep its distance had come into view lower down the trail. It halted when it saw that the column had stopped to wait. Groork s voice came floating up hollowly from below. Thy demons have damned thee Thirg. Even now doest thou go willingly with the servants of Darkness to deliver thy soul into eternal bondage. Heed my words for surely wilt thou melt in the Great Furnace. Thirg smiled to himself as he turned back and Dornvald ordered the column to resume moving. From there on he kept his eyes on the peaks of methane capped ice looming in the distance ahead. His future lay beyond the mountains now and that was where he should look. 13 TITAN SECOND IN SIZE AMONG THE MOONS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM only to Jupiter s Ganymede and then by just the barest of margins had been a constant source of enigmas for astronomers and planetary physicists virtually since its discovery by Christiaan Huyghens in 1655. One of the first questions to be asked was whether it possessed an atmosphere thus making it unique among the planetary satellites. When that was at last resolved affirmatively in the early 1940s other questions arose: What did the atmosphere consist of and what were its physical conditions at various depths For more than thirty years attempts at measuring the body s optical infrared and radio spectra yielded inconsistent and sometimes contradictory results. Then the close flyby of the American Voyager I probe in 1980 resolved some of the basic issues: Titan s atmosphere was mostly nitrogen with significant proportions of argon methane and hydrogen plus trace amounts of numerous hydrocarbons and nitrogenous compounds. Surface pressure was around 1.5 times that of Earth s atmosphere which at the estimated temperature of minus 179 degrees Celsius and with Titan s surface gravity of 0.14 suggested about ten times as much gas per unit area as on Earth. As had been suspected by many theorists the dense reddish clouds blanketing the surface turned out to be an aerosol suspension at an altitude of two hundred kilometers consisting of molecular fragments formed by ultraviolet dissociation of the gases in the upper atmosphere. According to most models the aerosol particles would gradually recombine into heavier polymers and precipitate out of the atmosphere to form surface deposits of considerable depth but this hadn t been verified since the clouds were everywhere opaque. Because of the cloud blanket and Titan s remoteness from the Sun daylight on the surface would be about as bright it was estimated as a moonlit night on Earth. The returned data were consistent with surface conditions close to the triple point of the solid liquid and gaseous phases of methane which raised the intriguing possibility that methane could well exist as a gas in the lower atmosphere and a liquid on the surface thus playing a role similar to that of water on Earth. Conceivably therefore the surface of Titan could consist of methane oceans and water ice continents covered by nitrogenous hydrocarbon soil above which methane rain precipitated from methane clouds formed below the aerosol blanket. It was even possible that the release of radioactive heat in the interior might maintain reservoirs of water that could escape to the surface as ice lava and perhaps provide a fluid substrate for mountain building and other tectonic processes. But with the diversion of funding from planetary exploration programs to feed the ongoing insanity of the arms race little more was learned until the arrival of the European probe at Saturn less than three years before the Orion. Radar mapping by the Dauphin orbiter had indeed revealed the existence of vast oceans islands continents and mountains below Titan s all obscuring clouds and details of the natural geography had been published widely. However as the Orion s occupants had learned only after leaving Earth the orbiter had also sent back radar images of highly reflective objects suggestive of artificial metallic constructions which in many places covered huge areas too densely to be resolved individually. All mention of that had been censored from the published information along with any reference to the machines glimpsed by the Dauphin s short lived surface landers and the advanced culture that had originated them. At least the inferred sizes of the constructions and the areas which they covered on some parts of the surface had seemed indicative of an advanced culture. But in almost three years the orbiter s instruments had failed to observe any activity in space around Titan or even to detect any sign of aircraft in the lower atmosphere and except for intermittent transmissions emanating from a few sources pinpointed on the surface the radio spectrum had been strangely silent. No more was learned until the Orion went into orbit above Titan and began sending reconnaissance drones down through the aerosol layer and the lower altitude methane clouds to scan the surface. The views sent back had been at first perplexing then bewildering and finally staggering as the mission s scientists gradually unraveled what they implied. The views had shown what appeared to be alien towns consisting of unusual buildings that resembled enormous intricately shaped hollow plants more than anything fabricated according to recognizable methods which was difficult to explain since there were also plenty of examples of immense and elaborate engineering constructions. If the aliens had the technology to build factories why didn t they build cities to live in Perhaps because of their notions of values and aesthetics somebody had suggested. Then had come the first indications that maybe the aliens weren t so professional at managing their technology after all. View after view showed chaotic situations where entire industrial complexes seemed to have overflowed their boundaries spilling plant and machinery out across the surrounding country with outgrowths from different centers invading each other s territories and mixing themselves up in hopeless confusion. In some areas the mess of working and broken down machinery all buried amid piles of scrap and assorted parts stretched for miles yet much of it managed somehow to continue functioning. If the alien engineers were capable of efficient and purposeful design at all and some of the designs seemed astonishingly advanced how could they have let things get into such a state It made no sense. As the drones were sent lower to obtain telescopic close ups both in infrared and at normal wavelengths using flares and searchlights the scientists monitoring the views back in the Orion had waited breathlessly for their first glimpse of an alien. But they never found any. There were thousands of ingeniously conceived freely mobile machines to be sure some of them displaying extraordinary degrees of versatility and behavioral adaptability with all manner of types apparently specialized for just about every task imaginable . . . but never once was there a trace of the aliens whose needs all the activity was presumably intended to serve. Some of the scientists had speculated that the aliens were too tiny to show up on the pictures. But if so why would they make machines that were so much larger It didn t add up. Maybe the aliens lived below the surface and never came out leaving the machines to manage everything on the surface. Maybe they just stayed in their vegetable houses all the time. Maybe . . . but nobody found such suggestions very satisfying. And then as the scientists continued to study replays from all over Titan they began noticing something remarkable about a particular species of erect bipedal vaguely humanoid robot that seemed to be represented everywhere to a greater or lesser extent: Everything they seemed to do was unremarkably familiar. Their patterns of coming and going in and out of the houses and about the towns sometimes alone and sometimes in groups stopping occasionally upon meeting others were the same as could be seen in communities anywhere they tended plantations of odd looking growths that in some ways resembled their peculiar organic houses they wore what looked like clothes they herded flocks of mechanical animals and more amazing still were frequently seen to ride them they gathered in crowds and there was an instance of two groups of them fighting each other and once or twice when the drones went too low their reactions showed every characteristic of fear and occasionally panic. In short as far as could be ascertained from pictures they acted exactly as people did. Which explained of course why nobody was having any luck in finding aliens at least not the flesh and blood or whatever and what ever kinds of conventional aliens that planetary biologists had speculated about for years. Titan was inhabited by machines. It possessed an electromechanical biosphere which included apparently a dominant species of culturally developed intelligent and presumably self aware robot. The scientists christened them the Taloids after Talos the bronze man created by Hephaestus the blacksmith son of Hera and Zeus. But clearly Titan could never have evolved such a system from nothing. So how had the machines come to be there They had to be products of an alien civilization that had either brought them to Titan or sent them there. When What for Why Titan Where were the aliens Nobody had any answers. As always Titan had thrown up a new batch of mysteries as soon as the earlier ones were resolved. Evidently it would be far from running low on its supply of them for a while to come. Not only aliens not only intelligent aliens but intelligent alien machines plus undreamed of technology in virtually unlimited abundance and a whole new geologically active world Gerold Massey turned back from facing a wall of cable runs and switchboxes in the generator bay inside the Orion s Service Module and spread his hands emphatically. Probably the most staggering discoveries within a century and quite possibly within the entire history of science. Now that s worth some time and effort . . . But Mars never happened. There isn t any place now for psychic paranonsense surely. Zambendorf leaning with arms folded against a stator housing sent back a scornful look. You re being presumptuous Massey. And besides you re talking about how I make my living which I happen to find stimulating entertaining and amply rewarding. I would say that s worth a considerable amount of time and effort. And how about all the people who waste their minds and their lives thinking they re going to become supermen have you asked them if they think so too I don t have to Zambendorf said. They ve already shown what they think by how they choose to spend their own time and their own money. They re free acting individuals in a free society. Why do you insist on making their well being your business When I have to live surrounded by mass produced morons it is my business Massey retorted. We ve got scientists emigrating in droves. Japanese power plants are driving half of what s left of our industries. This ship wouldn t be here if it weren t for the Europeans ... I mean Christ don t you care what you re doing Why single me out Zambendorf demanded straightening up and sounding angry suddenly. Do you think I made people the way they are I merely accept them as I find them and if they have failed to develop the sense that would serve them better or if society has failed to educate them in the use of it why am I supposed to be the one to blame Why don t you complain at our so called educators or the media mind puppeteers or the political dummies who read opinion polls like horoscopes instead of doing something to influence them Protecting fools from their own stupidity will not make them wiser Massey. It merely spares them any need even to be aware of the fact that they re fools which is hardly the best way to begin curing anything. When I find I am unable to make a living that is when people will have learned something. In the meantime don t expect apologies from me. Ah . . . you re admitting you re a fake at last are you Massey inquired looking mildly amused. Zambendorf calmed down at once and sniffed disdainfully. Don t be absurd. I admit no such thing. So why did GSEC send you here I wonder Massey said ignoring the denial. Because I know and I know you know that Ramelson and the other GSEC people who matter aren t interested in any paranormal claptrap. So their real purpose can t have anything to do with your supposed powers can it He waited for a few seconds but Zambendorf made no reply either Zambendorf wasn t certain of the real answer himself or he wasn t saying anything. Want to know what I think Massey asked. Very well since you are obviously determined to tell me anyway. Massey moved a pace forward and made an openhanded gesture. Under our system of nominal democracy He Who Would Shape Public Opinion doesn t need to be King. Society can be controlled indirectly through manipulation of the mass vote. So most people are conditioned practically from birth to have their opinions on anything dispensed to them in the same way they get their deodorants and prescription drugs secondhand from TV role models and celebrity images that have been carefully engineered to be easy to relate to. Hmph . . . Zambendorf snorted and paced away across the steel floorplates to halt in front of a ladder leading up to a catwalk overhead. What Massey was saying was uncomfortably close to his own reading between the lines of some of the things Caspar Lang had been saying since the Orion s departure from Earth. Massey went on That s what I figure you are a general purpose bludgeon to mold a large sector of public thinking and therefore to help shape official U.S. policies in a direction calculated to best serve GSEC s interests. I see. Very interesting Zambendorf commented. Think about it Massey urged. They knew from the Dauphin pictures that there was an alien civilization here but nobody knew what kind of civilization. GSEC has a tough competitive situation globally the West is still stalemated after grappling with the Cold War for decades. . . . Just think what the chance of exclusive access to advanced alien technology must have meant and very probably still does In other words the response of the U.S. and major European governments to what happens here at Titan could turn out to be some of the most important legislation ever passed in history . . . and we re well on our way to seeing it being decided by a kookocracy. You re being neurotic Zambendorf said impatiently. Every generation has been convinced that it s seeing the beginning of the end. Tablets dug up in Iraq from 3 000 B.C. say the same thing. It s not just me Massey answered. A lot of people at NASO feel the same way. Why else do you think they sent me along They knew enough to arrive at the same conclusions. Zambendorf turned back again and made a discarding motion. Ideologists all of you. All of the world s troubles have been caused by noble and righteous ideas of how other people ought to live. I look after my own interests and I allow the world to look after its in whatever way it chooses. That s my only ideology and it serves me well. Massey looked at him dubiously for a moment. Really he said. I wonder. What is that supposed to mean Zambendorf asked. Whose interests are you serving here your own or GSEC s Is there any reason why the two shouldn t coincide In a good business relationship both parties benefit. When they re allowed to enter into it of their own free choice sure. But you weren t even told what the deal was. How do you know what I was or wasn t told Zambendorf asked. Massey snorted. It was pretty obvious from the reactions to that stunt you pulled just after liftout what you were and weren t supposed to know. They ve been keeping you on a pretty tight rein since I bet. How does it feel to be simply another owned asset on the corporate balance sheet for use when expedient So whose interests do you think will count first I don t know what you re talking about Zambendorf maintained stiffly. But Massey had a point nevertheless he conceded inwardly. With nothing to gain from alienating GSEC needlessly and being a strong believer in keeping open the doors of opportunity whenever possible Zambendorf had generally behaved himself through most of the voyage and avoided further spectaculars. Now that the voyage had ended perhaps it was time he began reasserting himself he decided. That s not possible not in the immediate future anyway Caspar Lang said across his desk in the executive offices in Globe I. The personnel schedules have already been worked out. Besides you wouldn t have any defined function at this stage. I want a trip down to the surface Zambendorf said again firmly. Parties have started going down and I want a slot on one of the shuttles. I didn t come eight hundred million miles to take snapshots through a porthole from up here. Small scientific teams are being sent down to remote areas to investigate surface conditions and collect samples Lang replied. That s all. You wouldn t fit into something like that. There s a larger expedition being organized to go down sometime in the next few days to attempt a first contact with the Taloids once a suitable site has been selected Zambendorf replied evenly. Lang looked shaken. How do you know about that Zambendorf spread his hands and made a face in a way that said Lang should know better than to ask. It doesn t matter . . . But the opportunity would be ideal. It would be good publicity for me and therefore also for GSEC. Lang emitted a long breath and shook his head. It s not my prerogative to decide he said. Inwardly he was still seething at Zambendorf s discovering and revealing the mission s true destination before it left Earth which Lang felt reflected on him personally. Come on don t give me that Caspar Zambendorf said. Even if that were true you could go talk to Leaherney. So fix something. I don t care how . . . but just fix it. Lang shook his head again. I m sorry but there s no way at present. Maybe later . . . I ll keep it in mind. Zambendorf looked at him for a few seconds longer and then hoisted himself to his feet with a sigh. Well I m not going to get into an argument over it he said. Since it s a publicity matter I ll leave it with my publicity manager to handle. She ll probably be giving you a call later. With that he turned for the door. Lang groaned beneath his breath. It won t make any difference he called after Zambendorf. I ve already told you the answer and it s final there s no way you re going down there and nothing that Clarissa Eidstadt says will change it. 14 IT HAS LONG BEEN MY CUSTOM TO TRUST NO ONE S ACCOUNT OF another s words and it has served me well Dornvald said to Thirg who was riding alongside him. Whether any Lifemaker speaks to priests and hearers I know not that is His affair and theirs. But it seems to me that any services of mine that He would lay claim upon He would be able enough to make known to me Himself. The party was moving just below the skyline along a ridge that would bring them to a high pass through the mountains. The main column had doubled up on the barren open terrain and scouts were riding a short distance ahead and on the flanks. The forests of southern Kroaxia now lay far below and behind. Thirg had been surprised and impressed. Although for most of the time Dornvald affected a simple and direct manner his conversation revealed glimpses of an acuity of thinking and a perspicacity of observation that Thirg rarely encountered. The outlaw seemed to display intuitively the same disinclination to take anything for granted that Thirg had taught himself only after extensive labors. Did the outlaw way of life breed suspicion of appearances and assurances as a habit Thirg wondered or did outlaws become outlaws because they were doubters already At any rate the discourse was providing a welcome distraction from the monotony of the ride. A proposition which I would not desire to contest Thirg agreed. So does the possibility not suggest itself that Nature is no more obliged to contrive an explanation of Life that is simply comprehended by the minds of robeings than it is to construct the world in a shape that is simply perceived Did Lifemaker indeed create robeing therefore or more likely I am beginning to suspect did robeing create Lifemaker as the more convenient alternative to widening his own powers of comprehension I have no answer to that Dornvald said. But it seems to me that you are substituting a worse unknown for one that is mystery enough already. Round worlds and worlds beyond the sky are strange notions to contemplate yet not beyond the bounds to which imagination could accommodate itself. But is not the riddle of Life of a different complexity For is not all Life in the form of machines that were assembled by machines which in turn were assembled by machines and so for as far back as we care to permit our imaginations to postulate But however far that be must we not arrive inevitably at the bound which requires the first machine to have been assembled by that which was not a machine Even if your round world of distances dispenses with need of any Barrier this barrier more surely bounds the world of imagination. Or would you make a circle out of time itself Again I am unable to quarrel with your reasoning Thirg replied. Nor with that of priests for that matter for this is their logic also. That that which was not machine assembled the first machine I would not argue since were it machine then that which it assembled could not have been the first machine by our own premise. Nor do I take exception to him who would name this nonmachine machine assembler Lifemaker since it is as well described by such a name as by any other. But that the one conclusion should compel us also to construct of necessity a realm beyond reach of reason and unknowable to inquiry I cannot accept. That is the barrier which I would dispute. The column closed up again to pick its way in single file along a narrow track crossing an icefall with a steep drop below on one side and a sheer cliff extending upward to the crestline on the other. Beyond the icefall the ground became open again and resumed its rise the riders took up open order once more and Thirg moved alongside Dornvald. The question is no more answered than before Questioner of Barriers Dornvald observed evidently having turned the matter over in his mind. For now we must ask what made the Lifemaker and the Maker of Lifemakers. It seems to me that you have merely moved your barrier to another place. It stands as high as ever but now you must travel farther to cross it. The gain would appear poor compensation for the exertion for what does it amount to but tired feet If the barrier has been moved back then the world of knowledge that it encompasses is so much the greater Thirg replied. And if that world does not close back upon itself but extends indefinitely then the gain can be without limit even though the barrier is never crossed. Therefore does this barrier in the mind have any more effective substance to it than the Barrier which is supposed to enclose the physical world Dornvald considered the proposition for a while. But what is there in the knowable universe apart from machines that could assemble machines he asked at last. Nothing of which I am aware ... in this world Thirg replied. But if there should indeed exist other worlds beyond the sky and if they are knowable then are we not obliged to include them in the total knowable universe of which you speak And does not the removal of a barrier to distances so vast leave room enough within to harbor an unknown but knowable Life which though not machine might create machine Now your words become the riddle Dornvald said. How could Life exist without machine when both are one Is Life constrained to take no other form than that familiar to us Thirg asked. If so by what law Certainly none that presents itself to me with credentials sufficient to place its authority above all question. Well now you must answer your own riddle Dornvald said. For truly we have arrived at my barrier now and its faces are unscalable. What form is both Life and not Life for it is not machine yet machine is Life I can conceive of none such Retumer of Riddles Thirg answered. But then I have never claimed that the borders which bound the tiny country of my comprehension and the barrier which confines the universe of the knowable must coincide. The greater territory contains vast regions outside the smaller with room enough to accommodate whole nations of answers both to this riddle and others that I know not even how to ask. They fell silent and thoughtful patterns came and went slowly across Dornvald s face for a while. At last he looked sideways at Thirg and said Perhaps your thoughts are not so strange after all Wonderer about Lifemakers. There have been tales of flying beasts that descended from the sky. I have heard them Thirg replied. Allegedly a mysterious creature had come down from the sky in a remote area of northern Kroaxia about twelve twelve brights previously and been devoured by swamp dwelling saber cutters. Rumors told of similar events in more distant places at about the same time too but always it was a case of somebody who knew somebody who had actually seen them. But all through the ages there have been myths of wondrous things. One myth among many will not be made any the less a myth by mere conjecturings of mine that would have it be otherwise. If it is a myth Dornvald said. I cannot show that it is Thirg replied. And neither can I show conclusively that the fairy beings with which children would inhabit the forests are a myth for both propositions rest equally on negatives. But the impossibility of proving falsity is no more grounds for asserting the truth of one than of the other. Just as no Lifemaker speaks to you so no flying beast has made itself visible to me. And neither do I know of witnesses whose testimony forces me to discount all possibility of other explanations for their claims. Another silence ensued. Then Dornvald said I have seen one. Thirg forced a tone that was neither too credulous nor openly disbelieving. You saw a creature flying It actually descended from the sky So I was assured by one who was there before me Dornvald replied. But I did see its remains and it was the likes of no beast that I have ever seen before in all my travels far and wide across this world. That I can vouch. Thirg sighed. Always it was the same. He had seen that much himself a partially dismantled subassembly that his naturalist friend had shown him many twelve brights before taken it was said from such remains as Dornvald had mentioned. It had been unlike anything that Thirg had ever seen from the innards of any familiar kind of animal with tissues of crude coarse construction and components clumsy and ungainly. A strange sample of workmanship for a Lifemaker to have sent down from the sky as proof of His existence Thirg had commented. And of course the naturalist hadn t actually seen the descent with his own eyes . . . but the traveler that he had obtained the trophy from had bought it from a hunter who had been present. Thirg had never known what to make of the whole business. He still didn t. By late bright weary and hungry the party had crossed through the pass and descended into the valley on the far side which after a long trek through barren hilly terrain brought them to Xerxeon the last inhabited place before entering the Wilderness. It was a small farming settlement of crude dwellings fabricated from titanium and steel crop pings centered upon a few rudimentary servicing machines and generators which supported a few score families and their animals. The scrubland around the village had been cleared to make room for a few meager fields of domesticated parts and body fluid manufacturing facilities which the peasants toiled long hours to keep supplied with materials and components. Dornvald whom the villagers evidently knew from previous visits paid for provisions with a tax refund and as dark came over the sky the outlaws commenced taking rest and refurbishment in turns while the others stayed awake to keep watch. After seeing to his steed and Rex at a feed shop nearby Thirg was almost dropping by the time his turn came to lie down in a robeing service bay and plug himself into the socket that would deactivate his circuits and send him for a while into blissful oblivion. He awoke refreshed and recharged with new bearing liners filters electrical contacts and fluids fresh plating gleamed on his abraded surfaces. With feelings of well being Thirg was ready to face the new bright that lay ahead. There would be no rest on the next dark for apart from infrequent top ups taken from the wild grown hydride cells which they would carry with them the riders would not find food again until they reached the far side of the Wilderness. Before Thirg was even fully awake Geynor rushed in from the street. Good you re up. We have to get out fast. Come on What Are the soldiers here No time to explain. Thirg followed Geynor outside and found the whole village in panic. Most of the doors and windows were heavily barred. A few fearful faces peered out here and there in the central square between the houses the village Headrobeing and a group of elders were haranguing Dornvald and his outlaws who were loading up their mounts and obviously preparing to move out in a hurry. On the far side of the square more robeings were down on their knees chanting hymns. Groork stood in front of them his arms spread wide in supplication gazing up at the sky. Everything was bathed in a radiance of ghostly violet that seemed to be coming from overhead. Thirg had taken three paces across the square when he stopped dead his head tilted back and his body frozen into immobility with disbelief. A smooth slender elongated creature with rigid tapering limbs and plumes of light streaming from its underside was hovering motionless in the sky to the east as if watching the village. There was no way to judge its size or distance with any certainty but Thirg s immediate impression was that it couldn t be all that far away. He stood and he gaped. The Lifemaker has sent His angel of wrath down upon us the village Headrobeing moaned wringing his hands. Begone from our midst Dornvald Bringer of Woes and Dealer with the Accursed. See what retribution awaits even now us who accepted your treacherous bribes. Take your followers from this place another cried. Truly you are but living dead risen from the dismantling tombs. I shall carry no fear of His wrath within me Nor shall I tremble at His coming Nor harbor terrors of the beasts of darkness For my feet have trod the path of righteousness. I have not strayed ... Groork s voice recited from across the square. Mount up One of the outlaws reined to a halt with Thirg s steed held stamping and snorting alongside his own. Thirg shook himself from his trance and mounted hurriedly. But what of Groork he called to Dornvald who was turning to join the rest of the band as they grouped in the square. He hears only his voices and speaks only to the sky dragon Dornvald shouted back. We must leave. Then a body of villagers brandishing staffs and blades advanced round the corner ahead following a huge grim faced robeing who was carrying a club of lead weighted pipe. You shall not escape Accursed Ones the leader shouted. The angel calls for a sacrifice in atonement. Let it take you who brought it here not us Ride Dornvald drew his sword and urged his mount into a gallop and the others closed in solidly behind with weapons already unsheathed. Thirg had blurred impressions of bodies reeling back in confusion on both sides as the ground raced by below of shouting coining from all around him for a moment and then falling away behind . . . and then the road out of the village was opening up ahead with the last houses slipping out of view. The riders remained at full gallop while they passed through the outlying fields and slowed their pace only when they had emerged into the wild scrubland beyond. When they looked back they saw that the flying beast had moved from its station and was following them nearer the ground than before and off to one side. Then it moved forward rapidly to circle ahead of them still keeping its distance and directing a cone of pale violet light at the riders as if to study them from all angles. The column slowed to a cautious pace and the dragon stayed ahead of them for a while. Finally it moved fully round to come behind them once again then climbed higher once more and disappeared from sight moving back in the direction of the village. Time passed and it failed to reappear. Gradually the fear that had gripped Thirg and his companions began to abate. What have you to say now about myths of sky creatures Seeker of Answers Dornvald asked Thirg when the latter looked as if he had recovered sufficiently to be capable of speech. Have you an answer to offer for this I have none Thirg replied numbly. He thought back to Groork s recent insistence that voices from the sky warned of the imminence of great events. Had he been mistaken about Groork s voices all along Thirg said little more as the bright lightened. Slowly the hills flanking the mouth of the last valley flattened out and receded away on either side and the scene ahead opened out into vast wastes of dunes scattered boulders and undulating desert as far as the eye could see. 15 BEHIND A SHALLOW RISE AT THE FOOT OF SOME ROCK OUTCROPS near the fringe of one of Titan s deserts the surface lander stood in an oasis of light cast by its perimeter arc lamps. Smaller lights flashing and moving on the slopes below and to either side of the rise marked the positions of the landing party s U.S. Special Forces and British marine contingents deploying into concealed positions to cover the approaches. Inside the lander Zambendorf and Abaquaan carrying helmets under their arms and moving slowly in their ungainly extravehicular suits picked their way forward among the similarly attired figures sitting and standing in the cramped confines of the aft mess cabin and stopped at the doorway that led into the midships control room. Amid the clutter of crew stations and communications consoles ahead Charles Giraud Leaherney s deputy was talking to an image of Leaherney who was following the proceedings from the Orion while other screens showed the surroundings outside. One display presented the view from a highflying drone and showed as a tiny pattern of slowly moving dots on the computer generated false color landscape the group of approaching Taloid riders now less than two miles away that had been selected as first contacts partly because of their small number and partly because of the isolated surroundings which it was felt would minimize possible complications. Ah the psychologists are out in force I see Zambendorf remarked looking down at Massey Vernon Price and Malcom Wade who were sitting nearby. At least we ve got a good reason Vernon said. What the hell are you two doing down here Zambendorf shook his head reproachfully. Just because you have successfully exposed some rather amateurish frauds you shouldn t make the mistake of concluding that therefore nothing genuine can exist he cautioned. Mustn t rely too much on generalizations from one s own experiences. That s not being scientific you know. A good point Wade commented. That s just what I ve been saying all along. Are the Taloids believed to be telepathic somebody else asked curiously. Zambendorf permitted himself the condescending smile of one unable to say as much as he would have liked to. Shall we just say that I am here at the personal request of the mission s Chief Scientist They could say it if they liked it wasn t true. Massey turned his head away in exasperation. Meanwhile Abaquaan was following events in the control cabin through the door ahead of them and talking in a low voice with one of the ship s officers who was standing just inside. Zambendorf moved a pace forward and peered past Abaquaan s shoulder just in time to hear Daniel Leaherney ask from the monitor Does it change the situation in your estimation Charles If you want to reembark your people down there and wait for a more opportune occasion you have my approval. Giraud shook his head. The armed drones will provide ample reserve firepower if there are any hostilities. Let s get on with it now that we re here. Colonel Wallis agrees. We ve decided to leave the arc lights on to give some warning of our presence. Reactions observed previously had confirmed that the Taloids possessed at least some sensitivity to ordinary visible wavelengths. What s happening Zambendorf whispered. Abaquaan gestured at the screen showing the terrain across which the Taloids were approaching. A second group of Taloids is following the first group and catching up fast he said. About thirty of them . . . and they ve some of those crazy walking carts. The Taloids were known to possess incongruously legged vehicles that were drawn by machines running on wheels. Is the second group chasing the others or trying to join them Abaquaan shook his head. Nobody knows Karl. But the ones in front are taking their time. Either they re not bothered or they don t know that the other guys are there. The lead group of Taloids has stopped moving an operator announced. On the screen the pattern of dots had reached the far side of a broad flat bottomed depression that lay beyond the rise. They should be able to see our lights from where they are now. Giraud studied the display for a moment and then turned to face the ship s captain who was standing next to him. Better get the rest of the surface party outside he murmured. The captain nipped a switch and spoke into a microphone. Attention. Remaining personnel for surface helmet up and assemble at midships lock. All remaining surface personnel to midships lock. Five minutes later Zambendorf and Abaquaan emerged onto the platform outside the lock and stood gazing out at the wall of impenetrable gloom beyond the arc lamps. Ignoring the ladder extending downward on one side Abaquaan stepped off the platform and allowed his twenty two pounds of weight to float to the ground six feet below. Zambendorf followed as more figures appeared in the lock hatchway behind and an instant later his feet made contact with the soil of an alien world. For a moment he and Abaquaan looked at each other through the faceplates of their helmets but neither spoke. Then they turned and moved forward to join the reception party assembling ahead fifty yards inside the edge of the circle of light. 16 IN ALL MY JOURNEYS ACROSS THESE DESERTS I HAVE SEEN NOTHING to compare with it Dornvald said. It is as unknown as the dragons that have appeared in the sky. What advice have you to offer Riddle Seeker for no experience of mine can guide us now Nor any of mine Thirg replied. But it would seem possible that the dragons and this latest conundrum are related one to another for have they not chosen to announce themselves in quick succession And do we not see again the radiance that comes with heat hotter than the heat that melts ice We have seen the dragons and now methinks we have found the dragons lair. The column had halted among rock and ice boulders on the edge of a low scarp below which the ground fell for a distance into a wide depression and then climbed again toward a shallow saddle shaped rise flanked on either side by steeper broken slopes and crags. The obvious way ahead lay over the rise but a strange violet radiance similar to the slender cones thrown by the flying creatures earlier but less sharply defined lit the skyline above and seemed to come from something just out of sight. The welders and laser cutters in the forest produced the same kind of light at their working points as did some of the forms ejected by furnaces and other beings that lived at great heat. What manner of greeting would dragons reserve for strangers venturing upon their land Dornvald asked. Do they show their light as a beacon of welcome to weary travelers or as a warning of trespass Are we therefore to ignore their hospitality with disdain or ignore their warning with contempt for we know not which course risks giving the lesser offense Thirg stared at the strange glow for a while. My recollections of Xerxeon are that we feared more for our lives from those of our own kind than from any dragons he said. And it seems to me that any dragon with power to command the light that melts steel could have rid itself of us all long before now if its inclinations so directed. But words will not suffice to resolve this. I would propose therefore with your approval Wisher Not to Offend Dragons that I ride on ahead to conduct the examination which alone will set the matter finally to rest. Ahah Dornvald exclaimed. So does your compulsion to seek answers drive you irresistibly even now when dismantling at the hands of enraged dragons might well be the price if your judgment is mistaken I would know simply which path we are to take Thirg replied. Might we not all face dismantling anyway as a consequence of choosing blindly The risk is none the greater and more likely less for what dragon of any self respect would deign prey upon one lone rider when it spurns to molest a whole company as unbecoming of its dignity Hmm. Dornvald thought the proposition over. Such is not any duty that you owe Dignifier of Dragons for was it not I who brought you to this place Any self respecting leader of outlaws has his dignity too. I will go. You would be more needed here than I if my judgment should indeed prove mistaken Thirg pointed out. For what is of more worth to the robeings behind us the leader they have followed faithfully or a dabbler in riddles who knows not even the direction that would lead them out of the Meracasine I say I will go. A plague of oxidization on the both of you Geynor said as he drew up alongside them. The one is needed to answer riddles and the other is needed to lead. I will go. Before they could argue further the pounding of hooves sounded from behind. Seconds later Fenyig who had been riding well back from the main body as lookout came into view and galloped by the waiting riders to come to a halt at the head of the column. King s soldiers he announced. Flying the pennant of Horazzorgio two dozen or more with chariots. How far Dornvald snapped. A mile or less and closing rapidly. They must have stayed on the move all through dark. How are they armed Heavily three fireball throwers at least. The villagers of Xerxeon are determined to have their sacrifice it seems Dornvald said. They must have told of our direction. He looked quickly once more over the terrain ahead. There would be no escape on the flat open area stretching away to right and left since the wheeled tractors that pulled the chariots and fireball throwers would outrun mounted robeings and there was ample space for the King s soldiery to maneuver their superior force freely. The only chance was to make the rugged broken country beyond the rise where the going would be slow for vehicles and where riders venturing ahead could be picked off from ambush. Our choices have become Horazzorgio on the one hand or dragons on the other Dornvald declared. One demon I have met and know well the other I know not. On what I know I would have us cast our lot with the latter. Methinks we would be well advised Geynor agreed. Then our dispute is resolved Dornvald said looking from Geynor to Thirg. We all shall go. And louder to the rear Forward to yonder rise and at speed He who fears light in the sky has no place behind me but among the groveling farmers of Xerxeon. If dragons would contest our way then so be it but let it not be us who show their weapons first. Forward All units standing by ready to fire a British subaltern s voice reported to Colonel Wallis on the radio. A.P. missiles locked and tracking. Status of remote controlled gunships Wallis inquired crisply. Standing by for launch sir another voice confirmed. Defenses ready Wallis advised Giraud who was now outside and standing at the center of the waiting reception party. A moment of silence dragged by. Then the captain s voice came from inside the ship. Ship One to Surface One. It doesn t seem to be an attack. In fact I m not convinced they even know we re here at all. They started off fast just after their tail end Charlie arrived up front. It looks more like they re trying to lose that other bunch behind them. Surface Two to forward observation post. Do you see evidence of weapons or hostile intent Negative sir. We ll sit tight and see Giraud s voice said. Hold it for now. All units hold your fire Wallis instructed. On the screen of his wristset Zambendorf followed the progress of the Taloids coming up the far side of the rise. It was unbelievable clothed robots sitting astride four legged galloping machines now only a few hundred yards away. Do you see them Thirg called as Dornvald glanced back. Thirg was having enough trouble clinging to the madly heaving mount beneath him as it tackled the steepening rise without daring to turn his own head. Just coming out onto the flat Dornvald shouted back. At least we re on the open ground. We should gain more distance now. There are heat lights shining from places above us on both sides Geynor called from Dornvald s other side. I see them. What manner of thing shines thus in the desert Who knows what guards the lair of dragons Dornvald Thirg and Geynor reached the top of the rise together with Rex whirring excitedly a few yards behind and plunged on over its rounded crest. An instant later they had crashed to a stunned halt their mounts rearing and bucking. The remaining outlaws stopped in confusion behind as they appeared in ones and twos over the hill. Before them towering proudly inside a halo of almost brilliant dragon light was the King of Dragons attended by servants lined up before it in humble reverence. It was smooth and elongated and had tapered limbs much like the dragon that had appeared over Xerxeon but far larger. Its eyes shone like fires of violet but it made no move as it stood watching silently. Thirg could do nothing but stare dumbfounded while Dornvald and Geynor gazed at the Dragon King in wonder. Rex was backing away slowly and behind them several of the outlaws had dismounted and fallen to their knees. Then Thirg realized that one of the dragon s servants was beckoning with both arms in slow deliberate movements that seemed to be trying to convey reassurance. The servants were not robeings as he had first thought he saw now they were of roughly similar shape but constructed not of metal but some soft bendable casing more like artificial organics from artisans plantations . . . like children s dolls. What manner then of artificial beings were these Had the Dragon King manufactured them to attend its needs If so what awesome unimaginable powers did it command The servant beckoned again. For a few seconds longer Thirg hesitated. Then he realized the futility of even thinking to disobey who could hope to defy the wishes of one with such powers Without quite realizing what he was doing Thirg urged his mount forward once more at a slow walk and entered the circle of violet radiance. Nothing terrible happened and after exchanging apprehensive glances Dornvald and Geynor followed him. The others watched from farther back and one by one found the courage to move forward. Those on the ground rose slowly. Then Fenyig who was standing with the rearguard on the top of the rise behind and looking back anxiously called Pray to the dragon to protect us Dornvald. The soldiers are below already and almost upon us. No sooner had he shouted his warning when the first missile from a fireball thrower sailed over the ridge and splattered itself across an ice boulder. The second hit one of the pack steeds squarely and the animal fell screeching with its midbody engulfed in violet flames. On the rise Fenyig and his companions scattered amid a hail of projectiles hurled from below one of them slumping forward with a corrosive dart protruding from his shoulder. More balls fell and one of them ignited something metallic halfway up one of the overlooking slopes. Number two searchlight emplacement hit a voice shouted over the radio. No casualties. Near miss on Yellow Sector. We ve got equipment burning from splashes of incendiary. Another ball landed just in front of the assembled reception party which broke ranks and fell back toward the lander in alarm. That one almost got the ship a voice yelled. Colonel Wallis engage with maximum force in the approach zone Giraud ordered. All forward units fire for effect Launch gunships and engage enemy below point three seven hundred Thirg whirled to look behind as a thundering roar erupted suddenly from below the rise mixed with a hail of chattering loud swishing sounds and deafening concussions. More roars came from overhead. He looked up. Two of the small dragons were climbing then violet flaming darts streaked down and out of view and an instant later more concussions from beyond the rise jarred his ears. He had never in his life experienced anything like this. His senses reeled. He sat frozen his body and his mind paralyzed by terror. And then all was quiet. He looked around fearfully. Dornvald and Geynor were sitting petrified where they had been before the thunder. Farther back Fenyig and the rearguard were motionless staring back down the rise. They seemed bewildered. Thirg looked at Dornvald. Dornvald shook his head uncomprehendingly and after a few more seconds called back What terrifies you so Fenyig What has happened At first Thirg thought Fenyig hadn t heard. Then Fenyig turned his head slowly raised an arm to point back the way they had come and answered in an unsteady voice The King s soldiers have been destroyed Dornvald . . . Every one of the soldiers is destroyed torn to pieces and smitten by dragon fire ... in a moment. A storm of lightning bolts another just before Fenyig choked hoarsely. We saw it. The whole of the King s army would have fared no better nor even twelve twelves of armies. He looked at Thirg. What league have you entered into Sorcerer The servants who had retreated to the dragon for protection were advancing again and the stunned outlaws were slowly returning to life. More servants were appearing from concealment on the slopes above there were more of them than Thirg had realized. Although still shaken he was beginning to feel that the worst was over as if they had passed a kind of test. For he had seen the awesome anger of the dragon and the dragon had spared them. Perhaps then only those foolish enough to provoke its anger had reason to fear it Thirg thought. He looked at it again. Still it stood watching calmly as if nothing had happened. Had disposing of a whole company of King s soldiers really been so effortless and insignificant as that The other outlaws seemed to be arriving at similar conclusions. Dornvald had dismounted and was cautiously leading his mount toward the central group of servants and Geynor was following suit a few yards behind. The servants seemed to be encouraging them with arm motions and gestures. Thirg noticed a movement just to one side and turned his head with a start to find a servant standing close below with another watching from nearby. A feeling of revulsion swept over him as he glimpsed the grotesque features glowing softly behind the window face of the head that was not a head a deformed parody of a face molded into a formless mass that writhed and quivered like the jelly in a craftsman s culture vat. Luminous jelly held together by flexible casing Had the Dragon King made its servants thus as a punishment Thirg hoped that his thoughts and feelings didn t show. Zambendorf gazed up incredulously at the silver gray colossus staring down at him from its incongruous seat. It had two oval matrixes that suggested compound eyes shaded by complicated delicate extendable metal vanes a pair of protruding concave surfaces that were probably soundwave collectors and more openings and louvers about its lower face possibly inlet outlet ducts for coolant gas. It had nothing comparable to a mouth but the region below its head which was supported by a neck of multiple sliding overlapping joints was recessed and contained an array of flaps and covers. The robot was wearing a brown tunic of coarse material woven from what appeared to be wire a heavy belt of black metallic braid boots of what looked like rubberized canvas and a voluminous dull red riding cloak made up of thousands of interlocked rigid platelets. Its hands consisted of three fingers and an opposing thumb all formed from multisegmented concave claws connected by ball joints at the finger bases and wrists. A smaller machine suggesting in every way a ridiculous mechanical dog stayed well back keeping the steed between itself and the humans. What kind of brain the creature contained Zambendorf didn t know but he felt it had to be something beyond any technology even remotely imaginable on Earth. And yet paradoxically the culture of the Taloids showed every appearance of being backward by Earth standards medieval in fact. And everything that Zambendorf saw now confirmed that conclusion. So what would a medieval mind have made of the army s recent performance He examined the robot s face for a hint of bemusement or terror but saw nothing he could interpret. The face seemed incapable of expression. I still don t believe this Karl Abaquaan s voice whispered in his helmet for once sounding genuinely stupefied. What kind of machines are they Where could they have come from Still awestruck Zambendorf moved a pace forward. It seems to want to say something he murmured distantly without taking his eyes off the robot. But it makes no move. Does it fear us. Otto Wouldn t you after what just happened to that other bunch Abaquaan said beginning to sound more normal. To one side in an attempt to convey reassurance Charles Giraud and Konrad Seltzman a linguist were gesticulating at two robots who had dismounted but without much apparent success. Maybe the robots hadn t realized that they were safe from their pursuers some of them kept looking back as if they still thought they were likely to be attacked. Zambendorf thought he could do something about that. He operated the channel selector on his wristset to display the view from over the rise being picked up by an image intensifying camera in the army s forward observation post and raised his arm so that the robot could see the screen. The robot looked at his arm for a second or two moved its head to glance at his face and then studied his arm again. Zambendorf pointed to the wristset with his other hand. Why did the servant wear a small vegetable on his arm and why was he showing it Thirg wondered. Perhaps it was an indication of rank or status. No that wasn t it the servant wanted him to look at it. He looked. Shapes were visible in the square of violet light faint and difficult to distinguish in the glare. Thirg adjusted his vision to the nearest he could manage to dragon light and stared for awhile before he realized what he was seeing. It was a view looking out over the open ground they had crossed back beyond the rise. Piles of debris were scattered here and there and lots of buckled and twisted machine parts spread over a wide area with violet glows and obscuring patches of smoke hanging above . . . And then Thirg gasped as he realized what it meant. Now he understood what devastating powers Fenyig had been trying to describe. In those few brief seconds . . . and there was nothing left. Then it came to Thirg slowly that the servant was trying to show how the dragon had helped them. But what form of magic vegetable was this that could see through a hillside Thirg looked at the servant and then turned his head several times to look back at the rise just to be sure he was not mistaken. Zambendorf felt a surge of elation. Something that they both recognized as having meaning had passed between him and the robot. It understands he said excitedly. Rudimentary but it s communication It s a beginning Otto Are you sure I showed it the scene from over the hill. It understood. It s trying to ask me to confirm that it s seeing what it thinks it s seeing. Abaquaan motioned for the robot to climb down from its mount and after a few seconds of hesitation it complied. Then it gestured at Zambendorf s wristset some more and held up a hand and began pointing at it repeatedly first from the front and then from the back and in between pointing back at the rise. It can t make it out Abaquaan said. It can t figure how the picture could be coming through solid ground from behind the hill. The robot was mystified and curious. Suddenly much about it seemed less strange. Zambendorf could feel himself warming toward it already. I m sorry but how could I even begin to explain the technology my friend he said. For now I m afraid you ll just have to accept it as magic. Try getting the idea of a camera across Abaquaan suggested. At least it would say we re not actually looking through the hill from here. Mmm . . . maybe. Zambendorf switched the wristset to another channel this time showing a view of the lander and its immediate surroundings from the drone hovering above the landing site. It took Thirg a while to comprehend that he was looking down on the Dragon King now. Then it came to him with a jolt that the dots to one side of the dragon were the dragon servants and robeings around him in fact one of them was himself He looked at the servant and pointed down at the ground then up at the sky. The servant confirmed by mimicking him. Thirg tilted his head back to peer upward and after searching for a few seconds made out a pinpoint of violet light hanging high overhead. Could the servant s magic vegetable see through the eyes of the flying dragons But that meant that a mere servant who possessed such a vegetable could send his eyes anywhere in the world and see all that happened without moving from one place. If the dragon bestowed such powers upon its servants what unimaginable abilities did it possess itself Zambendorf could sense the robot s awe as it finally made out what the screen was showing. He switched from the drone s telescopic channel to a lower resolution wide angle view. The screen now displayed a much broader area of terrain with the lander barely discernible as a speck in the center. After more pointing and gesticulating the robot seemed to get the idea. Zambendorf switched to a high altitude reconnaissance flyer circling just below the aerosol layer whose cameras covered several hundred miles of the surrounding desert and a large tract of the mountainous region beyond its edge. Then the robot started making excited gestures pointing upward again with its arm extended as far as it would stretch. Higher Higher It was important. The robot seemed to be going frantic. Zambendorf frowned and turned his head inside his helmet to look at Abaquaan. Abaquaan returned a puzzled look and shrugged. Zambendorf stared at the robot tilted himself back ponderously to follow its pointing finger upward for a few seconds and then looked at its face again. Then suddenly he understood. Of course he exclaimed and changed bands to connect the wristset through to an image being picked up from orbit by the Orion and sent down in the trunk beam to the surface lander via a relay satellite. Giraud and the others had noticed what was going on and were gathering round to watch curiously. What s happening with this guy one of the group asked. What lies beyond the clouds has always been a mystery to its race Zambendorf replied. It s asking me if that is where we come from and whether we can tell it what s out there and what kind of world it lives on. They ve never even seen the sky don t forget let alone been able to observe the motions of stars and planets. You mean you could get all that from just a few gestures Konrad Seltzman sounded incredulous. Of course not Zambendorf replied airily. I have no need of such crude methods. But beside them Thirg had almost forgotten for the moment that the dragon servants existed as he stood staring without moving. For he was seeing his world for the first time as it looked from beyond the sky. It was a sphere. And behind it scattered across distances he had no way of estimating were more shining worlds than he knew even how to count. 17 DAVE CROOKES PRESSED A KEY ON A CONSOLE IN THE ORION S Digital Systems and Image Processing Laboratory and sat back to watch as the sequence began replaying again on the screen in front of him. It showed one of the Taloids in the view recorded twenty four hours previously watching a Terran figure make a series of gestures and then turning its head to look directly at another Taloid standing a few feet behind. A moment later the second Taloid s head jerked round to look quickly at the first Taloid and then at the Terran. There Leon Keyhoe one of the mission s signals specialists said from where he was standing behind Crookes chair. Crookes touched another key to freeze the image. Keyhoe looked over his shoulder at two other engineers seated at instrumentation panels to one side. The one in the brown helmet has to be saying something at that point right there. Check the scan one more time. Still no change one of the engineers replied nipping a series of switches and taking in the data displays in front of him. There s nothing from VLF and LF right through to EHF in the millimeter band ... No correlation on Fourier. Positive correlation reconfirmed on acoustic the other engineer reported. Short duration ultrasonic pulse bursts averaging around ah . . . one hundred ten thousand per second duration twenty to forty eight microseconds. Repetition frequency is variable and consistent with modulation at up to thirty seven kilocycles. Sample profile being analyzed on screen three. Keyhoe sighed and shook his head. Well it seems to be definite he agreed. The Taloids communicate via exchanges of high frequency sound pulses. There s no indication of any use of radio at all. It s surprising I was certain that those transmission centers down on the surface would turn out to be long range relay stations or something like that. Readings obtained from the Orion had confirmed the Dauphin orbiter s findings that several points on the surface of Titan emitted radio signals intermittently and irregularly. Probes sent below the aerosol layer had revealed the sources to lie near some of the heavily built up centers from which the surrounding industrialization and mechanization appeared to have spread. The patterns of signal activity had correlated with nothing observed on the surface so far. Joe Fellburg who was wedged on a stool between Dave Crookes console and a bulkhead member rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a second or two. Do you buy this idea that Anna Voolink came up with about alien factories he asked looking up at Keyhoe. Well we ve got to agree it s a possibility Joe Keyhoe said. Why Anna Voolink was a Dutch NASO scientist who had been involved several years before in a study of a proposal to set up a self replicating manufacturing facility on Mercury for supplying Earth with materials and industrial products. She had speculated that Titan s machine biosphere might have originated from a similar scheme set up by an alien civilization possibly millions of years previously which had somehow mutated and started to evolve. What had caused the system to mutate why the aliens should have chosen Titan and what had happened to them since were questions that nobody had ventured to answer even tentatively. Fellburg leaned forward to prop an elbow against the side of the console and gestured vaguely at the screens. It occurred to me that if everything down there did evolve from some superadvanced version of what NASO was talking about setting up on Mercury then maybe radio could have been the primary method of communication in the early days. But if the aliens were any kind of engineers at all you d expect them to have provided some kind of backup right He looked from Keyhoe to Crookes. Crookes pinched his nose thought for a second and nodded. Makes sense I guess Keyhoe agreed. Fellburg spread his hands. So couldn t the answer be that the primary system went out of use maybe because of a mutation error or something like that and the secondary became the standard What we re picking up from those centers could be just a remnant of something that doesn t serve any purpose any more coming from a few places where it hasn t quite died out yet. Mmm . . . it s an interesting thought Keyhoe said. I wonder if the Taloids would still be capable of receiving anything Crookes murmured after thinking the suggestion over for a second or two. I suppose that would depend on where their blueprint information comes from . . . their genetics Keyhoe said. Fellburg rubbed his chin again. Well if it s not functionally relevant anymore and if their evolution is driven selectively the same as ours is I guess there wouldn t be any strong selection working either one way or the other. So probably some of them can receive radio and some of them can t. Some sensitive ones might still be produced. Dave Crookes smiled to himself. If that s true I wonder what all our radio traffic over the last few weeks might have been doing to them he said. What s your background Joe Crookes inquired casually an hour later in the transit capsule that he and Fellburg were sharing on their way back to Globe II. How d you mean Fellburg asked. Your technical background ... I mean it s pretty obvious you know something about electronics and pulse techniques. Why Oh . . . just curious I guess. Well Michigan Tech master s. Six years in industry mainly computer physics with IBM. Ten years army finishing up as a technical specialist with intelligence. Good enough The capsule passed a window section of the tube giving a momentary view of the outside of the Orion and of Titan hanging in the background partly obscuring the magnificent spectacle of Saturn and its rings. Crookes eyed Fellburg uncertainly for a few seconds. Can I ask you something personal he said at last. Sure. If I think it s none of your goddam business I ll say so okay Crookes hesitated then said Why are you mixed up with this Zambendorf thing Why not Crookes frowned uncomfortably. Obviously he d come about as close to being direct as he was prepared to. Well it s ... I mean isn t it a kind of a wasteful way to use that kind of talent Is it Do you know what I d be getting paid now if I d gone back into industry after I quit the army Is that all that matters Crookes asked. Fellburg thrust out his chin. No but it s a good measure of how society values its resources. I ve already had enough Brownie badges to stitch on my shirt instead of anything that s worth something. Crookes shook his head. But when the product is worthless . . . The market decides what a product is worth through demand which fixes the price Fellburg said. If plastic imitations are selling high today because people are too dumb to tell the difference who s doing the wasting me who accepts the going rate or the guy who s out on the street in front of his store giving the real thing away When Fellburg arrived back at the team s day cabin Thelma and Drew West were as he had left them hunched in front of the display console following developments down on the surface Clarissa Eidstadt was sitting at a comer table editing a wad of scripts. What ve you been up to Thelma asked as he came in. Over in the electronics section with Dave Crookes and a few of the guys playing back the Taloid shots Fellburg replied. Things are getting interesting. It doesn t look as if they use radio to talk after all. They use high frequency sound pulses. The engineers have started computer processing the patterns already. Oh and did you know they re not so poker faced after all The engineers West said without looking away from the screen. The Taloids turkey. How come They have facial expressions surface heat patterns that change like crazy all the time they re talking. Crookes people have been taping a whole library of them in IR. Say how about that Thelma said. And how long will it be before anyone manages to decode anything from pulse code patterns collected in the databank West asked. He waved an arm at the screen. Karl and Otto are doing a much better job their own way. They ve practically swapped life stories with the Taloids already. Fellburg followed his gaze toward the screen. Down on the surface a second lander had appeared in the pool of light alongside the first and the surrounding area was dotted with the lights of ground vehicles and EV suited figures exploring and poking around in the general vicinity. The first lander s cargo bay had been depressurized and left unheated with its loading doors open to Titan s atmosphere to serve as a shelter for the Taloids. Zambendorf having snatched a few hours rest inside the ship a short while previously was now back outside and talking to the Taloids again in his self appointed role as Earth s ambassador which the Taloids seemed to have endorsed by responding to him more readily and freely than to anybody else. Scrawled in white on the hull of the surface lander in the background and extending back for yard after yard in what looked like a mess of graffiti toward the ship s stern was a jumble of shapes and symbols arrows and lines and dozens of whimsical Taloids interspersed with bulbous domeheaded representations of spacesuited Terrans. The primary communications medium used in the historic moment of first contact between civilizations from two different worlds had turned out to be chalk and blackboard and the ship had offered the handiest writing surface available. I got Herman Thoring to okay a news flash to Earth to the effect that Karl initiated communications with the aliens Clarissa said without looking up. Fellburg laughed and moved closer to take in the view on the screen. So what s the latest down there he asked. West turned a knob to lower the voice of the NASO officer who was listening in on the local surface frequencies and keeping up a commentary from inside the lander. See the Taloid who s waving at Karl now the one in the red cloak that s Galileo. He s curious about nearly everything. The one with him is Sir Lancelot. He seems to be the head guy of the bunch. Okay Fellburg said. The Taloids have some hand drawn maps that our people managed to match up with reconnaissance pictures so now we know where the Taloids are heading West said. It s a pretty big city in the mechanized area on the other side of the desert. It looks as if they re on their way to the palace or whatever of the king who runs that whole area. It seems that Lancelot and the others work for the king but we re not sure yet exactly how Galileo fits in. You don t get three guesses Thelma said to Fellburg. Huh Karl s called the king Arthur. Fellburg groaned. What else did you expect West asked. Anyhow the bunch that the army wiped out was from some country over the mountains that s at war with Arthur for some reason or something like that. But if these Taloids we ve ended up talking to are Arthur s knights or whatever then maybe we ve gotten ourselves an introduction. So what are our people aiming at a landing somewhere near that city you mentioned if Arthur agrees to it Fellburg asked. West nodded. You ve got it. How long would we need to wait before Lancelot and his guys get there Do we know that Nobody s figured out how they reckon time yet. West nodded toward the screen. But if Karl gets his way it won t matter too much anyway. He s trying to sell the Taloids on the idea of letting us airlift them the rest of the way. And you know something Joe I ve got a feeling they just might buy the idea. 18 A LOW ROAR SOUNDED DISTANTLY FROM BEHIND JUST AS THE riders reached the crest of the saddle at the valley head beyond which the land dropped again toward the river that marked the Carthogian border. They stopped and looked back to watch as the sky dragon that had carried them high over the world rose slowly at first with violet heat wind streaming from its underside and then turned its head upward as it gained speed and soared higher to shrink rapidly to a pinpoint and eventually vanish. Dornvald had needed all of his powers of argument to talk the rest of the outlaws into allowing themselves to be flown the remaining distance to Carthogia in one of the Skybeings dragons. Accepting a roof as shelter out in the desert was one thing but being enclosed on all sides as if in a trap was another. And after watching the Skybeings entering and emerging from their dragon furnaces unscathed how could one be sure they appreciated the limits that the mere steel and titanium casings of robeings could withstand Those are strange dragon tamers indeed who reduce the King s soldiers to scrap in a trice and then request Kleippur s pleasure Geynor said as the riders resumed moving. If they wish to meet with Kleippur why do they not simply fly to the city of Menassim and command him forth It seems to me they hold a considerable advantage in persuasiveness which would assure a rapid reversal of any inclination he might choose toward recalcitrance. It appears to be their desire to give opportunity for the citizens of Menassim to be forewarned Dornvald replied. Geynor shook his head in amazement. From such unassailable strength they speak yet they would invite our agreement Is this not true nobility of spirit Horazzorgio could have spared himself his not inconsiderable inconvenience by attending more to his manners and yielding less to his impetuousness it seems. And yet who knows what subtleties and unsuspected protocols might constitute the chivalry code of Skybeings Dornvald asked. Did their request in fact confer the freedom of answer that might be supposed or was it no more than a command couched in such form merely through rules of foreign custom which we know not Geynor pondered the question for a while and eventually answered If the latter then our refusal might have been construed as no less ill mannered than the assault by the King s soldiers. As penalty for such error of judgment we could have found ourselves strewn across the desert in like fashion. Aha Dornvald exclaimed. Now at last I think you see my reasoning for your words echo my own conclusion. Let us hope that Kleippur is compelled by the same logic Geynor said. You need have no fear Dornvald assured him. Beside them Thirg was unusually quiet. It was significant he thought that the outlaws were referring to the mysterious domeheaded visitors as Skybeings now which seemed to indicate that they like Thirg no longer thought of them as servants. The Domeheads didn t act like servants. They seemed to come and go and act freely. The two dragons by contrast had just sat docilely throughout the negotiations in the desert and after a while had given the impression of serving no other function than of being bearers of the Domeheads and the strange creatures that carried them around like living chariots and attended their every need. Presumably therefore flying creatures existed in the world beyond the sky that the Domeheads were from and the Domeheads had learned to tame them just as robeings had learned to tame steeds power generators load lifters and foodmaking machines. But what form of being was it that was not a machine yet was attended by machines and at whose bidding magic creatures saw through mountains reported distant events and destroyed without hesitation any who aroused their masters displeasure Thirg brooded over the question and said little as the band descended into the valleyhead beyond the saddle and crossed the slopes below to pick up a track leading in the direction of the river. Lower down the slopes leveled out into flat banks covered by pipe fronded chemical processing towers storage tanks and picturesque groves of transmission lines and distribution transformers beyond which the track joined a wider road that crossed a stretch of open ground to a bridge. The party had just emerged onto the road when a group of horsemen wearing the uniforms of Carthogian soldiers appeared ahead approaching at full gallop from the bridge. Thirg braced himself for the brutalized fanatics that Kroaxian teachings had led him to expect then he saw that Dornvald had eased his mount to a halt and was sitting relaxed and at ease with a broad grin on his face while the column drew up behind. Major Vergallet unless I m much mistaken Dornvald murmured to Geynor who was shading his imagers next to him. It is Geynor confirmed. He glanced at Thirg and explained From the Carthogian border fort across the bridge. Thirg nodded and turned his head back to look. The Carthogians were smartly attired alert and well disciplined and their leader was at that moment smiling in a way that was anything but brutally fanatical. He drew up before Dornvald and saluted crisply. It s good to see you back again sir. I trust your mission was successful. Thirg blinked his imager shades jerked his head round toward Geynor for a moment and then stared back at Dornvald. Sir Very much so thank you Major Dornvald replied. He turned and indicated Thirg with a gesture. This is Thirg an inquirer who has wearied of Kroaxia s stifling ways and comes to enjoy fresher air among our thinkers and artificers in Carthogia. Thirg meet Major Vergallet. We are honored to have the general s companion as our guest Vergallet said. General Thirg blinked again and shook his head. The honor is surely mine to be admitted into such league he replied lamely as the column began to move again and the soldiers formed up on both sides. Dornvald laughed at Thirg s bemusement. You will find Kleippur s officers in the most unexpected places and the strangest garbs he said. A small nation such as ours has to live by its wits and its ability to know more about its enemies than they know about each other. And more by the skills and knowledge of its armorers than by the size of its army Geynor added as he saw Thirg looking curiously at one of the strange elongated steel tubular devices which the Carthogian soldiers were carrying slung across their backs. And that of course Question Answerer is one of the reasons why you are here. The party rested and refreshed themselves at the border fort and by the end of even that brief stay Thirg had already dismissed most of what he had heard about the Carthogians as ignorant superstition at best and at worst as a campaign of misinformation and lies waged deliberately by the more orthodox ruling elites of other nations to protect themselves from the threat that Kleippur s social experiment represented. The servility and obedience that the Kroaxian priests teach as a duty heretical even to question serve the nobles and princes in ways that are clear enough Dornvald remarked as he and Thirg talked over their meal. But why the whims and fancies of mere mortals should be of such concern to an all powerful Lifemaker is far more difficult to conceive. And does it not seem strange that eternal salvation for the many in a hereafter which they are asked to accept on mere assurances should be attainable in no other way than by their enduring hardships gratefully and laboring their lives in wretchedness for the further enrichment of a pious few who exhibit a suspiciously unholy interest in the quality of their own herenow Neither Dornvald nor his companions mentioned the Skybeings and Thirg followed their example. When the party left to continue its journey the garrison commander assigned a detachment of troops to escort it to the city of Menassim apparently because the Waskorians had been causing trouble again in an area that the road passed through. The Waskorians Dornvald explained to Thirg were an alliance of extremist sects who denounced as sinful and decadent the liberties that had come with Kleippur s rule and were committed to bringing down the regime in order to return the land to its old ways. The rulers of Kroaxia and Serethgin had been quick to exploit the resentments of the Waskorians and supplied them with weapons and fomented uprisings. The freedom to earn their salvation in their own way if they thought they needed to be saved from something wasn t sufficient for the sects it seemed everyone else willingly or otherwise had to be saved their way too. The remainder of the journey passed without incident however possibly because of the escorts. Slowly the rugged border country fell behind and was replaced by hills of thin pipeline power cable and latticework scrub giving way to open slopes of bare ice higher up. After leaving the hills the riders passed through many miles of dense forest and the first edge of dark was showing low in the sky before signs of robeing habitation began increasing noticeably. At first isolated homes and then villages appeared at the same time the landscape took on a tidier appearance with lubricant fractionation columns standing in well kept rows neatly cultivated nut bolt and bearing orchards and rich fields of electrolytic precipitation baths. Dornvald advised Thirg that they were approaching the outskirts of Menassim. It no longer came as any surprise to Thirg to see that the reactions of the populace showed no signs of the fear and hatred manifested by downtrodden slaves encountering their oppressors on the contrary the soldiers were greeted with smiles and friendly waves and children in the villages ran to the roadside to watch them pass. The adults seemed healthy and well plated they were neatly and adequately dressed and their houses were trim and in good repair. It was a strange kind of living in perpetual terror that produced such results he thought to himself. The city too though bustling and crowded was clean and seemed prosperous: The shops and stalls of the merchants were amply stocked and the wares were of good quality the streets were paved and cleared of rubbish and the taverns and eating houses were noisy and busy. Other things that Thirg who had tended to avoid cities as much as possible in Kroaxia would have considered inseparable from the urban scene were conspicuous by their absence. There were no beggars or derelicts to be seen pleading or picking a living from the gutters and neither did priests or nobles in tall headgear ride haughtily in six legged carriages behind burly servants wielding bludgeons to clear the way. There were no burned or partly dissolved corpses on public display as a warning to others against blasphemy and heresy no lesser offenders being exhibited and tormented by mobs in the marketplace no penitents in emery cloth and carbon black confessing their sins to the world from street corners no ascetic monks shackled to pillars for the length of a bright no signs at all in fact of the holy and the devout dreaming up what had always struck Thirg as ever more absurd ways to degrade and debase themselves in order to prove themselves worthy creations of an all wise and all benevolent Lifemaker whose judgment and disposition were supposed to be capable of being influenced by such antics. Nearer the center of the city the buildings became larger and taller with organically grown structures giving way to fabrications of welded blocks of cut ice. Building with ice was not unknown in Kroaxia but the scale and ingenuity of the Carthogian architecture made everything that Thirg had seen previously appear crude by comparison. Such advanced art was made possible he learned by the discovery of new methods for actually synthesizing artificial lifting and cutting devices from metals and other materials which could mimic many of the functions of natural living machines. Such discoveries also accounted for the extraordinary proficiency of the Carthogian army. The strange tubes that the soldiers carried on their backs for example were actually weapons that used explosive gases to hurl a projectile capable of shattering a slab of ice a finger s breadth thick at over a hundred paces. Thirg was astounded. To exercise his intellect he had often speculated on the possibility of creating artificial machines but he had never expected to see anything actually come of it. He remembered a friend who long ago had entertained preposterous notions of creating a device to harness vaporized methane for turning wheels. The friend had vanished abruptly after escaping arrest on sorcery and heresy charges issued by the High Council of Pergassos and Thirg had almost forgotten their interminable arguments. On impulse he asked the Carthogians if they knew of his friend s whereabouts. The friend was alive and well he was told and in fact lived not far away on the outskirts of Menassim. He was trying to improve a device he had constructed which used vaporized methane to turn wheels. The news of Dornvald s arrival had gone ahead and a messenger met the party to advise that Kleippur would receive them at his official residence which turned out to be an elegant but not over ostentatious ice block building inside a walled courtyard situated not far from the former royal palace which now served as government offices. On arrival the riders were conducted to guests quarters and invited to bathe and change into clean clothes after which refreshed and considerably more presentable Thirg was taken to the warm brightly furnished and cheerfully decorated Council Chamber on the ground floor overlooking the courtyard across a wide terrace. Inside Kleippur flanked by two aides was sitting at the far end of the large table that took up most of the room Dornvald Geynor and Fenyig were also present now wearing the uniforms of officers of the Carthogian army and another figure was sitting with its back to the door. By the wall on one side of the room one of Lofbayel s maps was fastened to an easel and more were stacked on the table in front of it. Then Lofbayel himself turned in his seat grinned delightedly at the amazement on Thirg s face and stood up to pump his hand vigorously. Welcome to Carthogia Thirg I m pleased to see you here safely. Have no doubts you will find your true home here. I guarantee it. You h here Thirg stammered. What of Kersenia and the family Are they All here at Menassim and well. Indeed we would have you as our guest again if it pleases you. But how I thought you were watched constantly. Another escapade of Dornvald s of which you will no doubt hear in good time. But come forward and meet Kleippur and let us obstruct the more important business no longer. Kleippur who was younger than Thirg had imagined and wore a tunic of gleaming plate gold with a short cloak of royal blue ceramic links began by welcoming Thirg to Carthogia a second time. It had been a somewhat irregular way of extending an invitation he said but he hoped Thirg would understand the occasional necessity for such measures. Though not of exceptionally tall or heavy build Kleippur carried himself with an unhurried dignity that Thirg found impressive and commanded an authority that stemmed more from an instinctive respect displayed by his followers than from any overt exhibition of rank or assertion of status. He spoke with a soldier s directness and singleness of purpose yet with an air of detachment and a disinclination to passion that marked him as a thinker. He introduced his two colleagues as Lyokanor a senior officer from a part of the Carthogian army that Kleippur described as Intelligence and Pellimiades a director of military constructions and inventions. Thirg said he was glad to be in Carthogia there was no need for apologies. He had been treated well and courteously despite the difficult circumstances and on top of that had enjoyed stimulating and thought provoking company. It had become a mystery to me even before the high pass above Xerxeon he said in conclusion. For what kind of outlaw was this who rode my philosophical challenges as skillfully as he did his steed Dornvald laughed. I m surprised that you could have been so easily deceived. For most of the time it was all I could do to cling with my philosophical fingers to avoid falling off. The preliminaries over with Kleippur turned and gestured toward the maps. I don t have to explain how valuable this kind of information is to us he said. Lofbayel has told me that you too believe the world to be a sphere Thirg a strange notion and one which I admit causes me more perplexity than comfort ... but nevertheless I will concede the possibility and grant that you have considered the evidence at greater length than I. So can this claim be tested If so how If it is within my power to furnish the prerequisites it shall be done for I would sooner know the world as it is than place misguided trust in false appearances. The utterance was so unlike anything that Thirg was used to hearing from those in authority that for a second or two he just stared in disbelief. Then he recovered quickly and remarked It would appear that heretics have little to walk in fear of in this land. Facts cannot be changed by convictions Kleippur answered. He who is willing to change his convictions to suit new facts cannot be a heretic while he who persists in holding convictions that deny the facts is not a heretic but a fool as would I be for fearing him. Therefore the term has no meaning to me. So is this the new faith of the nation that you would build Thirg asked. A philosophy not a faith Kleippur replied. Since it acknowledges the existence of nothing unknowable to reason it has no place for belief without reason. I could not build such a nation but I would help it build itself. This is the land that Kroaxia has pledged to free from its chains and fetters Thirg said sounding incredulous and allowing his eyes to come to rest finally on Lofbayel. Now you see which has the greater need to be freed Lofbayel said. Thirg looked mildly uneasy. So does Carthogia now pledge itself to free Kroaxia he asked. The chains that bind the Kroaxians are in their minds Kleippur replied shaking his head. Can a robeing be freed who asks it not for is it not a self contradiction to speak of imposing freedom The Kroaxians must come to see truth as you have each by his own way and in his own time. Only then can a mind be free and not merely have cast off one set of chains for another. A noble thought Thirg agreed dubiously. But let us not forget that my eyes were opened only after I was brought to this land forcibly. Not so Dornvald said. We merely brought your eyes to where they could behold the truth. You opened them yourself a long time ago. Thirg thought for a moment longer and at last nodded satisfied. Then the building of your nation shall have the help of both of us he told Kleippur. Kleippur nodded and seemed unsurprised. In that brief moment Thirg felt a touch of the compulsion that Kleippur was able to radiate as a leader. His simple and unassuming acceptance of Thirg s declaration had done more to cement a bond of mutual respect and trust than any kind of elaborate speechmaking ever could. And so to business Kleippur said briskly. He looked at Dornvald. Well what tidings do you bring from Kroaxia The Serethginians are reequipping and recruiting mercenaries as far afield as Corbellio in preparation for a new campaign against us I am advised but jealousies war within their camp which I have designs to turn to our advantage. What is new from beyond the Meracasine A short silence fell. Dornvald s two lieutenants glanced at each other ominously. Eventually Dornvald said Serious though that matter may be Kleippur events have come to pass which render it insignificant. We do indeed bring tidings strange tidings not from beyond the Meracasine but from within it. Kleippur frowned from Lyokanor to Pellimiades and then looked back at Dornvald. Explain yourself Dornvald he said. What new events Dornvald nodded at Fenyig who reached down and produced a flat package of what looked at first like more charts and put it down on the table. When he removed the wrappings however the contents were seen to be not handproduced drawings but thick glossy sheets carrying pictorial representations that contained incredible amounts of detail. Fenyig selected several sheets from the set and passed them to Kleippur who leaned forward to pore over them while his aides peered down from beside him with equally mystified expressions on their faces. The pictures seemed to be of patterns of shapes distributed in rows and groups about an irregular network of lines. After watching in silence for a while Dornvald stretched out an arm and traced a finger lightly along one of the lines on the sheet that Kleippur was holding. Do you not recognize the Avenue of Emperors in our own city of Menassim he inquired casually. And here ... is that not your own residence in which we are at this very moment gathered Lyokanor gasped aloud suddenly. It is Menassim See here is the course of the river and the bridges. And there the palace . . . with the Courts of Justice behind. Every street and house is here What manner of artist drew this Pellimiades asked in an awed voice. He looked across at Thirg. Is this an example of the mapmaker s trade that I have not come across before Not of any art or trade of mine Thirg said. Indeed I have never set eyes on Menassim before this bright. Kleippur looked up slowly. Where did these come from Dornvald s expression became serious. Has there been other news of late Kleippur he asked. Reports of strange happenings in the sky perhaps Kleippur returned a strange puzzled look. Yes . . . Reports of flying creatures descending as was supposed to have happened twelve twelve brights ago Yes Kleippur said again and frowned. How do you know about them Have you seen one too What do they have to do with . . . His voice trailed away as the connection suddenly became clear. He looked down at the picture of Menassim again then disbelievingly back up at Dornvald. Dornvald nodded gravely. He drew another picture from the stack but kept it facedown on the table. The creatures exist Kleippur. We encountered them in the Wilderness of the Meracasine. They are from another world that lies beyond the sky. They carry Skybeings whom they serve that are stranger still of the form of robeings but not robeings . . . nor even machines. The Skybeings have mastered arts unknown to us by which they are able to preserve images and likenesses. Dornvald gestured at the picture in Kleippur s hand. That is not an artist s or a mapmaker s creation. It is a preservation of a likeness of the city as was actually seen through the eyes of a creature that crossed the sky high above Carthogia. And the likenesses can be viewed in an instant from afar even though the eyes that see them might be flying over distant lands or even beyond the oceans. Kleippur was staring at Dornvald dazedly. He shook his head as if to clear it and raised a hand to massage the shading vanes above his eyes. Other worlds . . . Creatures that serve beings who are not machines . . . What talk is this If it were not you telling me this Dornvald one of my most trusted officers . . . It is as Dornvald says Thirg confirmed. I too was present. We flew in one of the creatures all of us to the hills that lie east of Carthogia s border. It s true Fenyig said. Geynor nodded but remained silent. Still staring disbelievingly Kleippur brought his gaze back to Dornvald. Dornvald flipped over the picture that he had been keeping as final proof. Kleippur and his two aides stared down at it speechlessly. It showed Dornvald Thirg Geynor and several other robeings standing with a group of ungainly tubby looking domeheaded figures in front of what looked like a huge smooth skinned beast of some kind with stiff tapered limbs. Fenyig passed more pictures. One showed Thirg and a Domehead with their arms draped jovially around each other s shoulders and the Domehead making a curious gesture in the air with an extended thumb another showed a Domehead perched precariously on Thirg s steed and Rex watching suspiciously in the background. We were being pursued by Kroaxian Royal Guards Dornvald said. The Skybeings destroyed them. They talked to us through signs and brought us here. They are friends and wish to come here to Menassim to meet its ruler. That is the message that they asked us to convey. They will be watching from the sky for signs laid out on the ground as your answer. As Thirg looked again at the pictures of the Skybeings and the strange animals and other life forms that served them he thought back to the Carthogian projectile hurling weapon and the devices constructed by the Carthogian builders. All were examples of the simple beginnings of new arts that mimicked the processes of Life itself. Was it possible that the weapons of the Skybeings and the vehicles that the Skybeings were carried in could be products of the same arts taken to a far more advanced stage of perfection Products Could the Skybeings have created the weapons and the dragons But the weapons and the dragons were machines. The first machine must have been constructed by something that was not a machine. So could the Skybeings be the Lifemaker No surely not. Surely the thought was preposterous. And then Thirg remembered that the idea of turning wheels with vaporized methane had once seemed preposterous too. 19 OH NO QUESTION OF IT I M SURE PENELOPE RAMELSON said over the breakfast table. Burton would be happy to talk to him. She turned her head to look across at her husband. When do you think would be a convenient time dear Penelope s cousin Valerie who was from Massachusetts and staying for a long weekend smiled expectantly. Burton Ramelson realized that he had been allowing his mind to wander back to the storm of protest that the announcement the major Western powers had made of their intention to claim Titan unilaterally had provoked inside the UN. Er . . . what he said blinking as he dabbed his mouth with a napkin. I do beg your pardon I don t think I can be quite awake yet. Penelope sighed. Valerie was talking about Jeremy she said referring to the elder of Valerie s two sons. Now that he and Gillian will be starting a family he feels he needs a job to ... well you know it s psychological more than anything I suppose to feel he s doing something to provide for them . . . something through his own efforts as it were. I was hoping that perhaps GSEC might have something suitable that it could offer him Valerie said coming more directly to the point. Ramelson frowned as he sipped the coffee that he was taking with the ladies before joining Buhl and some others for a business breakfast later. Hmm I see ... So what would you consider suitable What can he do I mean it is true that he and Gillian have been spending all their time gallivanting around the Far East and the Riviera practically since they got married . . . and he didn t do much more than sail his sloop before that did he Oh don t be such a crusty old gripe Burton even if it is first thing in the morning Penelope chided. They re young and they re making the best of it. What s wrong with that You re always telling us how short you are of capable managers these days. Well Jeremy has always struck me as very talented and highly capable. I d have thought there d be plenty of room to fit him in somewhere like that . . . After all it wouldn t have to be a terribly responsible position to begin with or anything like that. I could use a couple of good engineering project managers and program directors Ramelson said not quite able to keep a sharp edge out of his voice. Could Jeremy handle a structural dynamicist ten years older than him and with twenty years experience What does he know about Doppler radar or orbital mechanics Those are the people I need. Now you re being pompous. All I Oh I didn t want to suggest anything like that Valerie interrupted hastily. But maybe something less demanding possibly more in the administrative area but not too humdrum ... She treated Ramelson to a smile of sweet wide eyed reasonableness. Something with some life and glamor to it would suit his temperament marketing maybe or advertising . . . Isn t there a place like that where he could do some good There must be surely Burton. Ramelson finished his coffee and made a face to himself behind the cup. He and Penelope would be able to talk about it much more freely on their own later without his being rushed into committing to anything prematurely. And besides that with the meeting probably waiting for him already he didn t want to go into all the whys and wherefores. I ll talk to Greg Buhl about it today he promised. He put down his cup and sat back with an air of finality that said the matter was finished for the time being. Penelope glanced at Valerie and nodded almost imperceptibly. So what do you two have planned for today Ramelson asked. Anything wild and exciting We thought we d take the shuttle up to New York and go shopping Penelope said. I called Jenny and Paul and they invited us to dinner with them. Uh huh. Sounds like a late night back Ramelson said. Probably. Why not stay over and get a flight back tomorrow We could I suppose . . . Yes why not I ll give you a call and let you know if that s what we decide to do. Ramelson looked at Valeric. You seem to be enjoying your stay. Glad to see it. He glanced at his watch folded his napkin and placed it in front of him and stood up. Well the others will be waiting for me so I m afraid I must ask you to excuse me ladies. Have a pleasant trip to New York and do give my regards to Jenny and Paul. Of course Penelope said as Ramelson turned to leave. Oh and you will remember to talk to Greg about Jeremy won t you I ll remember Ramelson sighed. He had forgotten less than thirty seconds later as he crossed the hall outside the breakfast room and his mind returned to the Titan situation. The rest of the world especially the Soviets had been outraged when the true purpose of the Orion mission was finally admitted after the months of speculations accusations and denials that had followed Zambendorf s revelation at the mission s departure. But that event was no longer viewed so widely as the major catastrophe that it had seemed at the time since at least it had half prepared the world for the true story when it finally emerged as it had to eventually and had thus partly defused what would otherwise have been a bombshell of immense proportions. The reactions had been expected of course but apart from making a lot of noise and threats what could the Soviets do. True they could have started a war the Western leaders had conceded among themselves but the Pentagon s strategic analysts had concluded that they wouldn t for the same reason that nobody had dared risk anything serious since 1945 ... or at least very probably they wouldn t better than 92.4 percent probably the computers had calculated. On the other hand depending on exactly what Titan turned up exclusive access to advanced alien technology might provide the means for solving all of the West s problems once and for all with the Soviets militarily and with the rest of the world commercially. So the West had taken the gamble and so far it seemed to have paid off. About the only casualty that Ramelson had seen so far was Caspar Lang who in his last videogram from Titan had still seemed to be smarting from the thought of a major security breach s having taken place right under his nose. But better to have a realistic measure of Zambendorf now rather than later when things start getting serious Ramelson thought to himself as he trotted briskly down the four shallow steps outside the entrance to the library. And Caspar would get over things in time. Inside Gregory Buhl and two other GSEC executives along with Julius Gorsche of the State Department and Kevin Whaley a presidential aide were waiting to begin the meeting. The first item was a summary presented by Gorsche of Daniel Leaherney s latest report from the Orion. The dialogue with the Taloids had continued to progress since the Terran landing at the city of Genoa Gorsche said. First impressions of the Taloid culture had suggested it was a collection of autonomously interacting sometimes warring sometimes loosely allied social political entities vaguely reminiscent of the Italian principalities and city states of the Middle Ages which the names that the Terrans had given them reflected. No further violent incidents of the kind necessitated against the Paduans had occurred and that affair did not appear to have jeopardized the further development of constructive relationships with the Genoese. A permanent base had been established outside Genoa and Terrans moved about openly inside the city itself although apprehension and a tendency toward avoidance were still observable among some of the inhabitants the Terrans were succeeding generally in gaining acceptance. At least our main concern has proved baseless Ramelson said when Gorsche had finished. We haven t found ourselves confronting an advanced alien race with an ability to threaten the mission or Earth itself. He looked over at Buhl. So where does that leave us Greg There s a whole world of unconventional but highly sophisticated technology out there. Is it a potential resource that we could use Does it look as if we might be able to get enough of it working for us somehow to justify the effort If so how much might we stand to benefit One thing at a time Burton Buhl muttered taking a moment to glance over his notes. The scientists there are pretty well wiped out. They re working round the clock but the sheer volume of what they re starting to uncover is staggering enough never mind the complexity of it. The various specialists will be reporting separately in due course but I m trying to get a preliminary summary put together for sometime in the next few days. Okay Fine Ramelson said. Buhl went on The answer to the main question is yes there are technologies and processes up and running on Titan that could be centuries ahead of anything comparable on Earth and some of the things there are completely new conceptually. We ve already identified bulk nuclear transformation of elements total fusion based materials processing molecular electronics self improving learning systems intelligent optronic holoprocessing brains . . . and there s no doubt all kinds of other things yet that we ve never even dreamed of. He threw up a hand. The best guess seems to be that it all began as some kind of alien self replicating industrial scheme that screwed up possibly millions of years ago. But whether that turns out to be the correct explanation or not there s little doubt that the entire system was conceived and originated as a high intensity extraction processing and manufacturing facility dedicated to the mass production of industrial materials and products and despite what s happened to it since it still operates to fulfill that primary underlying purpose. In other words if you could unscramble the glitches and get things working on a more organized basis you could supply just about all of Earth s needs for centuries from a setup like that Richard Snell one of the GSEC executives said. Whaley looked intrigued. You mean it could give us a decent competitive edge again . . . and maybe a respectable strategic margin Snell smiled humorlessly. That could qualify as the understatement of the year Kev. He shrugged. Anyone who gets to control the Titan operation doesn t have any competitors or any strategic opposition. Those problems all go away permanently. A short silence ensued while the full meaning sank in. Then Whaley asked What about the Taloids Is there likely to be a problem over . . . ownership rights or anything like that I mean is all this capacity something that they need too or is it all pretty valueless as far as they re concerned Hopefully we ll be able to work out a basis for joint development Buhl replied. Their experience and knowledge of the environment would constitute a valuable asset in any case which makes a cooperative approach the most desirable goal to aim at. Frederick Methers the other man from GSEC commented Despite their physical form the Taloids own culture is actually pretty primitive. They don t have the conceptual abilities to utilize more than a tiny fraction of the potential they re surrounded by. But with us giving direction and them providing the working skills it should be possible to get the act together and run it for mutual benefit. Whaley looked at him curiously for a second or two. I can see our angle he said. What s in it for the Taloids Methers spread his hands. What every backward race wants when it meets a more advanced culture access to greater wealth and power security knowledge . . . whatever. That s true of the Taloids too Whaley sounded surprised. I wouldn t mind betting on it anyhow Methers said. Gorsche nodded. Genoa is also a fairly small state that s constantly being attacked by larger enemies and Padua is one of them. I d have thought there s a good chance that the Genoese would be extremely appreciative of any help we might give them for defending themselves. And that incident with the Paduans will have provided a very convenient demonstration of the kinds of things we could offer. Ramelson looked from side to side. All the faces were watching him expectantly waiting for his endorsement of the policy being proposed. He sat back and drummed his fingertips absently on the arms of his chair while he thought over what had been said. At last he nodded. It s certainly worth exploring further anyway. Do I take it that the other people you ve put this to are in agreement also Gorsche nodded. It s more or less Dan Leaherney s own recommendations and the president has approved he said. Ramelson looked satisfied and turned to Buhl. Then let s get a confidential policy memorandum off to Caspar confirming our position he said. The sooner he knows where he stands the sooner we ll start seeing some results. That s what I wanted to discuss next Buhl said reaching for some papers in his briefcase. In fact I ve got a draft here for you to look at. Maybe we can go through it while we re all here together. On the other side of Washington D.C. Walter Conlon and Patrick Whittaker were having breakfast at a Howard Johnson s. I imagine Gerry Massey must be pretty pissed Whittaker said. After the job that he and Vernon did all through the voyage out ... I mean they ve collected enough proof to debunk just about everything that Zambendorf has said and done since the mission left. That s right Conlon agreed over a plate of scrambled eggs and hashbrowns but without sounding especially perturbed. Whittaker looked puzzled. But hasn t it all been a waste of time Why Well . . . who cares anymore Whittaker shrugged. Compared to what s happened on Titan now all that s trivial isn t it Anyone who tried to make a big thing now out of whether or not Zambendorf had pulled a few tricks would just be making an ass of himself and Massey s smart enough to know it. I assumed that was why Massey and Vernon haven t been announcing any great revelations. Conlon shook his head. They probably watched Zambendorf just to help pass the time during the voyage he said. Massey s also smart enough to have figured out that I wouldn t have sent him all that way just to expose a stage psychic . . . not after he learned where the mission was really bound for and why anyway. Whittaker frowned. You mean his job never was to blow Zambendorf out of the water Not unless he wanted to anyhow Conlon said without looking up from his meal. No GSEC and the rest had their cover story so I had to have mine. Massey figured that out a long time ago. Before the mission left I arranged with one of the ship s senior communications officers for Massey to have access to a private channel direct into my section of NASO at Washington free from any restrictions or censoring . . . purely as a precaution. Massey wasn t told about it until they were well into the voyage. So what s he really there for Whittaker asked intrigued. I don t know Conlon said. Whittaker looked totally bemused. Conlon explained I m not absolutely certain why GSEC sent Zambendorf there but it wasn t to entertain at parties in the officers mess. I suspect they intend to use his ability to influence public opinion as an aid to pushing the government in a direction that suits their interests. Whittaker looked horrified. You re joking Walt. Uh uh. Conlon shook his head. His antics could become a significant factor in the formulation of major international policy. But what specifically Whittaker asked. What exactly do they intend doing with him They couldn t have had any definite plans until they found out what exactly the situation was on Titan Conlon said. But they ve learned a lot by now that they didn t know then. I ve got a feeling that someone should be passing more specific orders to Zambendorf very soon now. And when Zambendorf finds out what he s really there for that s when Massey will know what his job is. 20 GRAHAM SPEARMAN PEERED INTO THE WINDOW OF THE COLD chamber in one of Orion s biological laboratories where an automatic manipulator assembly was slicing test specimens from a sample of brownish rubbery substance recovered from the wreckage of the bizarre walking wagons destroyed in the encounter with the Paduan Taloids. The cold chamber was a necessity since most Taloid pseudoorganic materials tended to decompose into evil smelling liquids at room temperature. In the work area around Spearman the displays and data presentations were showing some of the findings from electron and proton microscopes gas and liquid chromatographs electrophoretic analyzers isotopic imagers x ray imagers ultrasonic imagers and just about every kind of spectrometer ever invented. Spearman had already described the incendiary chemical thrown by the catapults mounted on several of the Paduan war vehicles it had turned out to be a substance rich in complex oxygen carbon compounds that would be highly inflammable in Titan s reducing atmosphere once ignition temperature had been attained by the reaction of a fast acting outer acid layer upon a metallic target surface. The catapults themselves had been shown by video replays also to be organic and suggested enormous finely sculptured vegetables that ejected their missions either by releasing stored mechanical strain energy or by compressed gas accumulated internally. In his late thirties with thick rimmed spectacles and a droopy mustache and wearing a tartan shirt with jeans Spearman was the easygoing kind of person that Thelma could find interesting without running the risk of ending up being used as an ideological dumping ground if she spent time talking to him. The problem with many scientists she found especially the younger ones was that their successful intellectual accomplishment in one field could sometimes lead them to overestimate the value of their views on anything and everything which tended to make conversation a survival skill by turning every topic into a minefield. Spearman provided a refreshing contrast by holding no political opinions having no pet economic theory for solving all the world s problems at a stroke and no burning conviction about how other people should conduct their lives to make it a better place. I ve never seen anything quite like this he said turning back and waving an arm to indicate the sample behind the window. It s capable of growing under the direction of large complex director molecules sure enough but you couldn t say it s alive. It s kind of halfway in between. ... It has a primitive biochemistry but nothing approaching life at the level of cellular metabolism. You see there aren t any cells. Thelma looked intrigued as she swiveled herself slowly from side to side in the operator s chair in front of the microscopy console while Dave Crookes listened from where he was leaning just inside the doorway. Then what s it made of Thelma asked. How does it grow without cells Spearman sighed. A comprehensive answer will probably take years to unravel but for the moment think of it as something like an organic crystal but more complicated . . . with variations in structure that you don t get in crystals. He gestured at the sample in the cold chamber. That s a part of one of the legs. It does have a rudimentary vascular system to transport nutrients for renewing itself an arrangement of contractile tissues that enable it to move and a network of conductive fibers that transmit electrical discharges in response to applied mechanical force. And that s about all. What it suggests is that the complete structure could respond by moving itself if something pulled it a kind of passive friction reducer. An organic wheel Thelma said. Spearman grinned. Sure that s just about what it is. But it couldn t do anything else like reproduce itself or something like that Crookes asked. Spearman shook his head. No way. As I said it can move and regenerate its form parts of it anyway. But there s no way you could say it s alive. Thelma frowned to herself. So how could something like that ever have evolved in the firsi place if it can t reproduce itself she asked. It couldn t have Spearman replied simply. So where did it come from The only thing we can suggest is that the Taloids created it. Thelma and Crookes exchanged puzzled glances. But how could they have Crookes protested. I mean their technology is back in the Middle Ages. You re talking about something that might be crude compared to the living cells we know but surely it s still a pretty impressive feat of bioengineering. Astonishing Spearman confirmed. In fact I don t think any genetic engineering of ours could touch it not without naturally occurring macromolecules already available to work with anyhow. Well that s the point Thelma said. How could the Taloids have done it Spearman moved a few paces across the lab then turned and spread his hands. We ve already found plenty of examples of quite complex hydrocarbons and nitrogenous compounds in the soil very much like the molecules believed to have been precursors of life on Earth. But apparently they never progressed much further on Titan probably because of the low temperature and absence of strong ionizing radiation and other mutagenic stimulants. Well our best guess is that the Taloids somehow learned to manipulate such raw materials and over a period of time developed techniques for manufacturing the kind of thing you see here. He waved toward the cold chamber again. And I mean manufacturing. That stuff didn t grow naturally. It accounts for their peculiar houses too as well as a lot of other things we ve seen. John Webster an English genetic engineering consultant from the Cambridge Institute for Molecular Biology nodded from a stool in front of a cluttered workbench jammed into a corner among shelves of bottles and racks of electronic equipment. That s the way it looks. It s our culture turned upside down. We grow our food and our offspring and make artifacts out of metals that we extract from rocks the Taloids food and offspring are produced on assembly lines while they grow artifacts developed from organic substances which they discovered in their rocks and soils. That explains all those plantations that we ve been wondering about: They re Taloid factories. That s right they did the same as we did but the other way around Spearman said. Man learned to make mechanical devices to mimic the actions of living organisms in his familiar environment to lift weights and move loads and so on. The Taloids found they could manufacture artificial devices too organic ones to mimic the only form of life they knew. It s a good way of looking at it Crookes agreed. But that still doesn t explain how the Taloids could engineer processes at the molecular level when their culture is centuries behind ours. He gestured to indicate the banks of instrumentation and equipment all around them. We had to invent all this before we even knew what a protein was never mind how to splice genes into plasmids. The Taloids couldn t make anything even remotely comparable to all this stuff. They never needed to Spearman said. They re surrounded by it already. It took Thelma a moment to grasp what he was saying. You re kidding she said incredulously. Spearman shook his head. Man learned how to use enzymes and bacteria to make wine and cheese thousands of years ago without having to know anything about the chemistry involved. Who s to say that the Taloids couldn t have learned to domesticate the life forms that they found all around them too We take wool off sheep to make overcoats they take wire from wire drawing machines. He shrugged. It s the same difference. Everything about them is us the other way around and taken back three or four centuries Webster said. We were practical artisans first and from those beginnings we developed engineering and the physical sciences. Biochemistry came later. The Taloids developed applied biology first but without any real comprehension of biological science and now they re only just beginning to dabble in the physical sciences. That seems strange Crookes commented. You d think that all the advanced hardware down there would have given them an intuitive comprehension of it from early on. Why should it have Spearman asked. Human beings are advanced biological systems but that doesn t give them an intuitive understanding of how their brains and their bodies work. That knowledge could only come later when suitable instruments became available . . . and it s still far from complete. Human consciousness operates at a level way above that of the neural hardware that supports our mental software and the world of raw sensory data which that hardware reacts to. We don t perceive the world as consisting of pressure waves photons forces and so on but as people places and things. Our awareness arises from the interaction of abstract symbols that are far removed from the original physical stimuli shut off as it were from any direct knowledge of its own underlying neurological and physiological processes. So we can think about the things that matter without knowing anything about what the trillions of nerve cells in our brains are doing or even being aware that we have any. Crookes frowned for a moment. So what are you saying that the Taloids are advanced electronic systems but that doesn t give them any intuitive understanding of how they work either Their awareness operates at a higher abstract level in the same way Just that Spearman replied. Thelma nodded as the implications became clearer. So just because the Taloids are computers it doesn t mean necessarily that they think with machine precision and possess total information recall does it They might not be able to remember a conversation from yesterday word for word or behave the same way in the same situation every time . . . just like us. That s what Graham s getting at Webster said. At its basic hardware level the human brain is every bit as mechanical and predictable as an electronic computer chip: A neuron either fires or doesn t fire in response to a given set of inputs. It doesn t go through agonies of indecision trying to make up some microscopic mind about what to do. At that level there isn t any mind to make up. Mind emerges as a property of organization that becomes manifest only at the higher level. ... In the same kind of way a single molecule doesn t possess a property of elephantness a sufficiently large number of them however organized in the correct way do. Taloid minds are almost certainly a result of complexity transcending their underlying hardware in the same way. Spearman moved back to the cold chamber stooped to look at what was going on inside and entered a command into the control panel below the window. If you showed a Taloid a piece of holoptronics from the inside of a computer processor I think it d be about as mystified as someone in the Middle Ages trying to make sense of a rabbit brain he said over his shoulder. We understand machines because we were able to begin with the simple and progress through to the more complicated from pulleys and levers through dynamos and steam engines to computers nuclear plants and spaceships. Hence we can explain every detail of our creations and its purpose right down to the last nut and bolt of something like the Orion. But an understanding of biological processes didn t come so easily because instead of being able to start with the simple we found ourselves confronted by the most complex the end products of billions of years of evolution. With no comprehension of DNA protein transcription cell differentiation and the like it s not easy to explain the totality of a rabbit or account for how it came together in the first place. Spearman entered another command waited to check its effect and turned back to face the others once more. The Taloids had the same problem. They were confronted by the end products of a long history of alien technology plus probably millions of years of evolution after that without any of the benefit of attending the schools and technical colleges that the alien engineers went to. So the physical sciences remained a mystery. But dabbling with biological techniques was something they could figure out for themselves using the resources they had. Thelma reflected for a few seconds. You mean for a long time they never even experimented with simple tools as we know them . . . They d have had enough raw materials lying around down there. It seems ... oh strange somehow. Spearman smiled faintly. The reason s pretty obvious when you think about it he said. What Thelma asked. Tools as we know them are made out of refined materials like metals glass plastics and so on Spearman said. In other words the same kinds of substances that are produced naturally all over the place on Titan. They wouldn t last very long. Neither would anything you tried to make with them. Crookes gave a puzzled frown. How come Webster spread his hands. Anything like that would probably turn out to be food for something or other. And besides . . . who d dream of making tools ornaments and houses out of candy bars and pizza The crew mess hall inside the larger of the two prefabricated domes that constituted Genoa Base One was warm stuffy and crowded. At the serving window Massey picked up a mug of hot coffee and a donut and walked away from the short line of bulky figures in extravehicular suits waiting to snatch a last minute snack before another expedition into the city. Since he had come down from the Orion thirty six hours or so previously and just awakened from a rest period it was really breakfast he supposed. The Taloids remained continuously active for a period of a little over ten terrestrial days centered around the time of maximum total illumination that resulted from direct solar radiation and reflection from Satum as Titan progressed through its sixteen day orbit. Since Titan kept one hemisphere permanently toward Satum one side of Titan experienced changes in both direct radiation and reflection while the other side experienced the direct component only the areas in between receiving a mixture of both in varying proportions thus the light dark cycle was a complicated function of orbital motion and on top of that varied from place to place. And how is the rationalist today a jovial voice inquired from behind him. It s not a good time of year for the debunking business I hear. Massey had recognized Zambendorf even before looking round. Although many of the mission s scientists had shown some signs of disdain and aloofness toward Zambendorf and his team three months previously at the time of leaving Earth things had changed noticeably in the course of the voyage. Now Zambendorf Abaquaan Thelma and the rest were simply accepted as a normal part of the day to day life of the Orion s community. Whether this was a psychological effect of everyone s sharing the same tiny man made environment hundreds of millions of miles from Earth Massey didn t know but in his conversations he had detected a not uncommon attitude among the scientists of amused respect toward Zambendorf and his crew for at least being indisputable masters of their chosen profession the scientists contempt was reserved more for those who chose to adulate Zambendorf s team. Massey turned to find Zambendorf grinning at him over the metal ring helmet seating of his EV suit. It looks as if you might last a few more days yet he conceded grumy. I should hope so too Zambendorf said. Surely it must be obvious by now even to you Gerry that there is more important work to be done than wasting time with trivia that belong where we should have left them a billion miles away back on Earth. Massey looked at him curiously. Zambendorf and his team had been showing a genuine interest in the mission s serious business and surprising some of the scientists with how much they knew. Was it possible that Zambendorf could be undergoing a change of heart What s the matter Karl he asked. Are you developing a guilt complex now that you re seeing some real science for once Don t be ridiculous Zambendorf scoffed. And besides even if it were true do you think I d tell you You re the psychologist. You should be telling me. In other words Massey could take Zambendorf s attitude either way. He was still the same old Zambendorf forever confusing and always a jump ahead of the game. You re doing something worthwhile for once Massey said. You ve got a knack for getting through to the Taloids and they trust you. That has to be a better feeling than ripping people off all the time so why not admit it It s not the same thing Zambendorf replied. I ll help anyone who makes the effort to help himself. The Taloids might have some way to go yet but they value knowledge and skill. They want to learn. They re willing to work at it. But people Pah They grow up surrounded by libraries universities teachers who could show them the accumulated discoveries and wisdom of millennia and they re not interested. They d rather live junk lives. How can you steal anything from someone who has already thrown everything away Perhaps people simply need to be shown how to think Massey suggested. Zambendorf shook his head. It s like leading horses to water. When people are ready to think they will think. Trying to rush them is futile. All you can do is show them where the water is and wait for them to get thirsty. He gestured over Massey s shoulder at Osmond Periera and Malcom Wade who were standing by the doorway debating in loud voices a speculation of Periera s that the antimatter spaceship responsible for creating the North Polar Sea might have come from Titan. Listen to those two idiots Zambendorf murmured in a lower voice. You could spend a year of your life preparing a detailed refutation that might succeed in convincing them that what they re talking about is nonsense. Do you think they d learn anything from the experience Not a bit of it. Within a week they d be off into something else equally preposterous. So you could have saved your time for something profitable. I ll save mine for the Taloids. Careful Karl Massey cautioned. You re beginning to sound as if you re admitting you re a fraud again. Don t be ridiculous Zambendorf said. But even if it were true do you think people would learn anything from the experience if you proved it He shook his head. Not a bit of that either. Within a week they would have found something else too ... just like friend Osmond and that other character behind you. At that moment a loudspeaker announced that the personnel carrier that would be taking the party into the city was waiting at the vehicle access transfer lock. The problem with you is that you really are a scientist at heart Massey said as they began moving in the direction of the doorway. But you think it would be beneath your dignity to admit it. Half an hour later they were among the passengers watching parts of the outskirts of Genoa slide through the headlamp beams of the carrier and its escort of two military scout cars fifty yards ahead and behind. All along the way Taloids came to stand by the roadside to watch the procession of strange creatures that bore within them beings from another world. Some ran forward to bathe themselves in the light which they apparently believed to possess miraculous and curative properties a few shrank back as the vehicles passed or fled into the alleys and sidestreets. One a mounted figure wrapped in a heavy riding cloak its face concealed in a deep hood watched inconspicuously from the shadows of a gateway near the city wall absorbing every detail. When the Terran vehicles had passed the rider reemerged and moved away along the side of the road in the opposite direction to resume the journey that would take it out of the city beyond the borders of Carthogia and across the Wilderness of Meracasine. Skerilliane Spy with a Thousand Eyes would have much to report when he returned to his royal master Eskenderom the King of Kroaxia. 21 CAN YOU IMAGINE A DISTANCE TWELVE TIMES GREATER THAN the greatest breadth of Carthogia Thirg asked Lofbayel s son Morayak who was sitting with his back to the large table strewn with charts and sheets of calculations in the room that Lofbayel had given Thirg to use as a study while Thirg was residing with the family. I think so though I have never journeyed but a fraction of such a distance Morayak said. Why it must be greater even than the size of the strange spherical world of which you and my father speak Not so Young Questioner Who Will Become Wise by Questioning Thirg said. He picked up the Skybeings globe that the Wearer of the Arm Vegetable had presented to him as a gift and looked at it briefly. In fact such a distance would be a little less than half the diameter of our world of which I am assured this is a faithful representation. He put the globe down and looked back at Morayak. And what of a distance yet twelve times that again enough to span six worlds side by side Can your mind grasp that Morayak frowned and stared at the globe while he concentrated. I m not sure. To visualize the breadth of Carthogia requires but a simple extension of faculties that are familiar to me but where is the experience to guide my intuition in attempting to judge a distance through a world rather than across it But even taxing my mind to that degree does not satisfy you enough it seems for now you would have me grapple with conceiving six of them. Then instead of worlds whose surfaces curve in space let us take as our model time which involves no complications from multiplicity of direction Thirg suggested. If the breadth of Carthogia be represented by a single bright then the distance to which I refer being twelve times twelve equates to one Carthogia for every bright contained in the duration of twelve twelve brights. Now can you visualize that It took Morayak a few seconds to grasp but in the end he nodded at the same time frowning intently. That is vastness indeed but it is not completely unimaginable now you have described it thus. My mind is stretched but I think it can conceive of such a distance. And what of twelve times that yet again Morayak stared at Thirg with a strained look on his face then grinned hopelessly and shook his head. Impossible Thirg paced across the room swung around and threw his hands wide. Then what of twelve times even that and twelve times that yet again still and then even twelve times Stop Thirg Morayak protested. What purpose is served by uttering repetitions of words that have ceased to carry any meaning But they do carry meaning Thirg said. He moved forward and raised his arm to point. Morayak turned in his seat to look at the large chart on the wall above the table which Lofbayel had drawn from Thirg s records of conversations with the Skybeings. In the center it showed the huge furnace in the sky large enough to consume the whole world in an instant the Skybeings said and around it the paths of the nine worlds that circled it endlessly some of them accompanied by their own attendant worlds which in turn circled them. It had come as something of a shock to learn that Robia as Kleippur had named the robeing world was not even a member of the nine but just one although true the largest of a retinue of seventeen servants following at the heels of a giant. Dornvald had remarked that the giant was surely the king of worlds because of his ringlike crown. But Thirg was pointing not at the giant but at the third world out from the furnace a humble little world seemingly with just a single page in attendance which Lofbayel had labeled Lumia since its sky shone with the heat light that accompanied the Skybeings or Lumians as they were now more properly called wherever they went. Thirg swept a finger slowly across the chart. That is the distance which separates our world from the world of Lumians Morayak the distance they have traveled to come to Robia. Morayak stared at him incredulously. It cannot be Thirg nodded. Morayak looked at the chart again then back at Thirg. But such a journey would surely require many twelves of twelves of lifetimes. One twelve bright was sufficient we are assured. The large dragon that circles beyond the sky is swifter seemingly than even the smaller ones which cross above the city in moments. Thirg studied Morayak s face for a few seconds and gave a satisfied nod. Now methinks you understand better the wondrousness of the beings you are soon to meet he said. Morayak stared back at Thirg for a moment longer as if unsure of whether or not to take his words seriously and then looked slowly back at the chart this time with a new respect. Thirg and Lofbayel were due to leave shortly for Kleippur s residence to join the Carthogian leaders in more discussions with the Lumians and Morayak had eventually succeeded in pestering his father into allowing him to go along too. He had been to see the strange growths that the Lumians lived in just outside the city of course his father said that the Lumians had created them and he had caught glimpses from a distance of the cumbersome domeheaded figures which apparently weren t the Lumians at all but an outer casing that they had to wear on Robia because they needed to be bathed in hot highly corrosive gas all the time but that wasn t the same he wouldn t be able to boast to his friends about that. I wonder what kind of a world it is he murmured distantly still staring at the chart. Amazing beyond your wildest dreams Thirg replied. Its sky is filled with worlds too numerous to count extending away as far as it is possible to see for there is no permanent cover of cloud above Lumia to limit vision. It is so hot that the surface is covered by oceans of liquid ice. Methane can exist only as a vapor. Your body would be much heavier than it is on Robia. What of the countryside Morayak asked. Does it have mountains and forests Do the Lumians keep herds of bearing bush formers and hunt platemelters out on the flatlands Do they have children who go gasket collecting among the head assembly transfer lines or baiting traps with copper wire to catch coil winders Thirg frowned not knowing quite how to explain the differences. The children there are assembled in miniature form he said. They grow larger by taking in substances which are distributed internally as liquid solutions. Morayak stared at him in astonishment. But how could the substances know where to be deposited he objected. All form would surely be lost. The process is beyond my understanding Thirg admitted. Perhaps that is why the Lumians exist as jelly and must remain inside outer casings to preserve their shape. But natural assembly is impossible on Lumia because there aren t any machines . . . save for a few which aren t alive but were created by the Lumians. It s true then the Lumians really can make artificial machines Oh yes those are the only machines they know. They do have animals and forests but they re not machines. They re made of well . . . the best way I can find to describe it is naturally occurring organics very like the Lumians themselves. Morayak looked perplexed. But artisans must exist to create organics. How can there be natural organics I too am learning Thirg reminded him. We both have many questions that will tax our patience for a while yet. But organic forests and animals ... a whole world full of such unsightliness Morayak made a face. It sounds so ugly so unnatural . . . How could anyone live there Is that why they have come to Robia to escape But how Lofbayel s wife Kersenia came in. Ah I thought I d find you two here she said. Lofbayel has hitched up the cart and is waiting before the house for you now. Morayak got up and followed with Thirg behind as Kersenia went back to the hallway inside the front door. And remember don t go getting in the way or making a nuisance of yourself she said as Morayak put on his coat. You are a very lucky and privileged young robeing to be invited to the residence of Kleippur. Don t let your father down now. I won t Morayak promised. I m sure you have no cause to worry Thirg said. Thirg and Morayak left the house and climbed up beside Lofbayel and Kersenia stood in the doorway to see them off as the cart turned onto the roadway in the direction of the city. It was good Thirg thought to himself to see the family living free and without fear with Lofbayel pursuing his studies openly and able to teach at last in the way he had always wanted. He wondered if what he was seeing could be an omen of things to come on a larger scale for the whole robeing race. For the Lumians seemed to respect freedom and knowledge and to share generally the values that Thirg felt Kleippur and his vision for Carthogia symbolized. Could the Lumians be offering a new future of opportunity for all robeings just as Carthogia offered a new future of opportunity for Thirg and for Lofbayel and his family Would the old ways of the whole world of Robia now fade into the past and be forgotten just as Kroaxia was already fading into their personal pasts and being forgotten So possibly the priests and the Scribings had been right after all in a way Thirg thought to himself. If the Lumians were indeed the Lifemaker then perhaps the Lifemaker did offer salvation from the toil and drudgery of worldly life ... not in some hereafter world however but in this one simply by taking the toil and the drudgery out of it. That would seem the eminently sensible and simple way of accomplishing such an objective after all. Why would a Lifemaker especially one as intelligent and all powerful as the priests were always depicting choose to do things the difficult way But Thirg had learned from long and bitter experience not to let his hopes run too high about anything. There was always too much that could go wrong and usually it found a way of managing to. He wondered if lifemaking Skybeings had the same problem. What he s doing is not compatible with the policy objectives that have been confirmed from Earth Daniel Leaherney said to Caspar Lang on the Orion Also I ve been getting complaints that his style is interfering with the ability of the personnel who are properly empowered to handle our relationships with the aliens to discharge their duties in an effective manner. Can I leave it to you to straighten the situation out What you mean is that Giraud s developing an inferiority complex because the Taloids take more notice of Zambendorf than they do of him Seltzman doesn t feel he s getting all the glory he should be getting and someone stuffy among the scientific chiefs probably Weinerbaum is getting jealous and thinks his dignity s being threatened Lang said. He was getting just a little bit tired of having to stay up in the ship all the time taking care of everyone else s problems. Leaherney exhaled a long breath and snapped Look that psychic is getting in everyone s hair and taking over the show down there as if this whole mission had been put together for no other reason than to boost his act. Your corporation sent him here Caspar and it s your responsibility to keep him under control. So read it any way you like but I want something done about it. An hour later Lang feeling even more incensed after Leaherney s uncharacteristic outburst was looking grim faced across his desk at Osmond Periera. Where s the schedule of the experiments you were supposed to be carrying out with Zambendorf he demanded. Periera looked flummoxed. What Why er . . . I thought that was just part of the Mars cover story. I thought The corporation isn t paying you to think it s paying you to know Lang fumed. Have you any idea how much it s cost to bring you people this distance My understanding was that you are here to investigate a serious scientific phenomenon. Well there s no question of that but Then how much longer do I have to wait before I see something happening Lang asked. You re supposed to be responsible for organizing the experimental program okay Well it s about time you started organizing something. You don t expect me to do it for you do you No of course not but I ... I that is ... He s down at Genoa Base One. Well get him back up from Genoa Base One Lang yelled. I agreed to his going down on one trip to see the surface. Okay he s seen it. Now get him back up here and make a start on the job you were brought here to do. And nobody repeat nobody from that outfit goes down there again until we start seeing some results. Understood Periera gulped and nodded rapidly. Yes yes of course. Good. Lang reached over to call his secretary on his terminal screen. Get this update on personnel authorizations into the system right away Kathy. Karl Zambendorf is recalled to the ship forthwith and approval for surface descent is denied him and his party until further notice. 22 ESKENDEROM KING OF KROAXIA AND DIVINELY ORDAINED PROTECTOR of the Lifemaker s True Faith rested an elbow on an arm of his throne and glowered down over his hand while he listened. Bowed over one knee at the foot of the steps before him Skerilliane the spy made a flourish in the air with his arm. In tame dragons as long as the palace is wide they fly many twelves of them at a time. In strange wheeled beasts the size of houses through the streets of Menassim they ride. They conspire in secret league with Kleippur and outside the city they conduct rituals among the machines of the forest with the tame creatures and magic vegetables. They are formed from burning fluids contained in soft casings and they share thoughts without impediment of distance though they utter no sound. Eskenderom brooded while he absorbed the information then lifted his head and turned to look questioningly at Horazzorgio who was standing to one side of the steps. One of Horazzorgio s imaging matrixes was covered by a plastic cap and a welded plate blanked off the hole left by his missing arm. The beings and the creatures that serve them I have seen not Horazzorgio said. But the dragons are the same as those of the Meracasine and the smaller spy dragons are the ones that swooped upon us spitting lightning bolts and hurling fire. The violet radiance too is the same. What is the substance of the discourse that beings such as these would enter into with Kleippur Frennelech inquired from the High Priest s seat a level below the throne and to the right. My informants have overheard much talk among Carthogia s counselors and officers of forbidden arts and the unholy powers that are sought by heretics and accursed ones Skerilliane replied. Carthogia places itself at the Dark Master s disposal as a sanctuary for his servants and the base from which he would enslave the world. Many worshipers of evil who have forsaken enlightenment to serve him through his worldly lieutenant Kleippur are being conscripted to the task Maker of Maps Lofbayel and Asker of Forbidden Questions Thirg being among just the most recent additions. Horazzorgio s remaining imager glowed angrily at the mention of the names. And now it seems the Dark Master has provided Kleippur with further aid as compensation for Carthogia s limited size and means Skerilliane concluded. The King looked at Frennelech. So Kleippur s Dark Master sends dragons from the sky to aid him. I see much energy expended on pomp and pageantry by the priests of Kroaxia Serethgin and the other nations of the Sacred Alliance I hear endless praying chanting and supplication. Where then are your Lifemaker s dragons In the face of adversity faith shall overcome Frennelech quoted in reply. It is a test sent to try us. We must not waver. Does the faith of the Waskorians help them to overcome in their struggle to throw off Kleippur s yoke I equipped them generously and sent our best combat officers to instruct them but in their last encounter with Kleippur s soldiers they were decimated. The new Carthogian weapon that can hurl a pellet of steel from thrice the range attainable by the strongest dartsman would appear more efficacious than a mountain of dreary books or an eternity of incantations. Dragon beings weapons Horazzorgio muttered fingering his shoulder unconsciously. I know well of those too. Frennelech looked uncomfortable but before he could reply Mormorel the King s Senior Counselor who had been pacing slowly to and fro as he listened turned suddenly and moved to the center of the open floor below the throne and raised his hands to draw attention. Skerilliane straightened up and moved respectfully back while the others turned their heads curiously. It is possible that our alarm is premature Mormorel said. For what precisely is it that substantiates the assumption which none of us has questioned that these dragons are indeed emissaries of the Dark Master That they bear beings possessed of skills unfamiliar to us we know that they are from regions unreported by our farthest ranging travelers and explorers we know. But more of whence they come and why we suppose much and know nothing. Is it not possible that rather than having been sent from some supernatural realm for the advancement of sinister designs upon the world they too could be explorers who find it expedient to enter into bargain with Kleippur for rendering that which is of value to him in return for that which they in turn have traveled far to seek A silence descended around the throne room while the others digested the implications of Mormorel s observations. The news that Kleippur was receiving powerful foreign aid could prove a strong source of inspiration and resolve for our people Horazzorgio mused. They have long been mystified by the inability of the Alliance armies to conquer tiny stubborn Carthogia. What would beings such as these seek in lands such as ours Eskenderom asked doubtfully. No amount of speculation will tell us that Mormorel replied. But whatever the answer can Carthogia offer anything that cannot be obtained in greater abundance from Kroaxia s vaster territories or produced more cheaply by our more numerous slaves and laborers Thus we can better not only whatever bargain Kleippur has made with these dragon beings but also any improvement that lies within his power to offer. Mmm . . . Eskenderom sat back and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. A gleam slowly suffused his imagers. If the dragon beings aid can make such a difference to puny Carthogia it would make a nation like Kroaxia . . . Invincible Frennelech completed in a distant voice. Mormorel saw that he had made his point. He gave a slow satisfied nod and looked from one to another of the faces around him. Invincible not only against Carthogia . . . but should the occasion arise against Serethgin Corbellio Munaxios all of them. Another short silence fell. Then Frennelech pronounced in a voice that was suddenly more sure of itself It is divinely ordained The Lifemaker has sent the dragon beings from beyond the Barrier as His instrument to carry the True Faith to all comers of the robeing world. We are the chosen bearers of that instrument which the Dark Master through Kleippur is attempting to misdirect. The quest we are set is to initiate contact with the dragon beings and discover what the Lifemaker has directed them to seek. Thus has He chosen to reveal to us His will. Eskenderom looked at Skerilliane. Has anything that you saw or heard provided indication of what the dragon beings seek from Kleippur he asked. Nothing. But it was not my purpose to look for such. Then it shall be your purpose now Eskenderom declared. Your assignment is to return to Carthogia immediately and discover what the dragon beings wish in return for their aid. You are empowered to speak on behalf of the Kroaxian Crown to express its desire for a direct dialogue and to make appropriate offers as guided by your own discretion to secure the attainment of that end. I shall begin preparations at once Skerilliane said. One of your officers is to go too Eskenderom told Horazzorgio. Skerilliane may have need of a soldier s expertise. Also I would like to hear the opinion of a military professional who has observed these dragon beings firsthand. I request the King s permission to accompany him myself Horazzorgio replied at once. Eskenderom frowned reluctant to make an issue of his captain s condition. Horazzorgio saw the King s gaze travel from his eye to his arm. If I can return alone from the Meracasine on foot and wounded then surely I can survive it accompanied mounted and recovered. Neither will Skerilliane s mission be jeopardized for my personal interests in this matter will more than make up spiritually for what has been lost physically. Eskenderom looked at him for a moment and then at Skerilliane. You shall be the judge for yours is the casing that will be at risk not mine. Would you have confidence in Horazzorgio as your companion Speak truly spy. This is not a time to permit fear of personal insult to affect judgment and prudence. The spy should be never seen and never heard Skerilliane answered. Of what importance is the appearance of he who exists not Indeed such business is more often hampered than assisted by a penchant for deeds of recklessness and daring which Horazzorgio has ample reason to avoid. I have every confidence in the prospect of our association. The King looked at them for a moment longer then nodded. So be it. He stood up from the throne and descended the steps before it then stopped as an afterthought struck him and looked back at the High Priest. I suppose you d better pray for their success he said and with that turned and strode away. 23 IT WAS LIKE BEING IN A TOMB CASPAR LANG THOUGHT TO HIMSELF or an ice cave inside a glacier that was too deep for light to penetrate. With more room available on Giraud s diplomatic delegation now that Zambendorf and his team had been restricted to the ship and with activities in and around Genoa becoming more organized Lang had taken the opportunity to come down to the surface and involve himself more directly in the proceedings. He had seen the incredible tangles of cluttered machinery and derelict structures that surrounded the base and stretched away beyond the searchlight beams playing from the sentry posts around the perimeter the ghostly shapes of the city s peculiar cultivated houses and larger buildings of ice along the route to Arthur s residence which had been named Camelot of course and the strange clothed bipedal robots and other machines that gathered to watch from the shadows at the fringes of the vehicles headlamp beams. Now he was sitting awkwardly in a large ice chamber inside Camelot which even had a sizeable table although not a round one. Looking like gigantic upright insects in the weak circle of light from the two low power lamps that the NASO engineers had installed Arthur and several other Taloids were sitting opposite while to the sides Giraud Seltzman and the remaining Terrans looked just as eerie and grotesque in their jointed smooth surfaced machinelike garb. Most of the furnishings were of odd Taloid pseudovegetable shapes and the walls indistinct and shadowy in the background were covered by thick woven wire hangings and weird designs worked in plastic and metal. The talks had been going on for some hours. Tell them they ve got it wrong Konrad Giraud s voice said in Lang s helmet coming through on local frequency. We are not planning to exploit their people or set the value of their labor too cheaply. Anyone who desires economic prosperity has to work for it just as we had to work for it back on Earth. There aren t any free rides. Seltzman nipped a switch to direct his words into another audio channel which was wire connected through to the electronics box on the table in front of him. Sorry he said. You still misunderstand. Earthmen do not wish to exploit Taloid labor. Titan must work for prosperity just as Earth had to work for prosperity. A couple of seconds went by while the control microprocessor inside the box conferred with a larger computer located in the communications center at Genoa Base One. Then the display on the screen in front of Seltzman changed to read: NO MATCH FOR EXPLOIT TALOID LABOR. EQUIVALENT PHRASE Seltzman thought for a second. Benefit from Taloid work that is not paid for he said. PROSPERITY WEALTH in this context the machine inquired. Wealth for all Taloids Seltzman replied. The display changed: SORRY. YOU STILL MISUNDERSTAND. EARTHMEN DO NOT WISH TO BENEFIT FROM TALOID WORK THAT IS NOT PAID FOR. TITAN MUST WORK FOR WEALTH FOR ALL TALOIDS JUST AS EARTH HAD TO WORK FOR WEALTH FOR ALL TALOIDS. Seltzman sighed. Delete last word. Insert Earthmen. The machine complied. Okay he pronounced. The transmogrifier that Dave Crookes Leon Keyhoe and some of the other signals engineers and pattern recognition specialists had assembled and were still improving did not so much translate languages as enable the two parties in a dialogue whose native languages were not only mutually unintelligible but also completely inaudible to tell the machine in effect to note what was said and remember its meaning. It did this by matching recognizable sequences of human voice patterns against a collection of Taloid pulse code profiles stored in a computerized library that was continually being enlarged. Upon finding a Taloid equivalent to an identified piece of speech input it synthesized the corresponding ultrasonic Taloid pulse stream thus performing both the band shift and time compression needed to transfer information from one domain of intelligibility to the other. Also it performed the complete inverse process. The matches were determined not by sophisticated rules of grammar or elaborate programing but simply by mutual agreement through trial and error between the parties involved. The system was thus very much an evolutionary one and had developed from extremely crude beginnings. Bad sad the talking vegetable said. Lumians no want good from buzz buzz clug zzzzzipp robeing slave for free. Bakka bakka Robia workum hard get plenty finegood thing for robeings wheeee chirrrp like Lumia workum hard get plenty finegood thing for chikka walla chug chug chog Lumians. Thirg frowned as he concentrated. Methinks they have misunderstood he said. They believe that we fear they have come here to enslave us. It seems their vegetable exaggerates our concern Kleippur commented. My objective is not that they would make us slaves for clearly it is within their power to have accomplished that end already if such was their desire but their implication that our people s lives are my property to sell or barter as I would instead of their own to direct as they choose freely. What are these good things which they would have us work to acquire in our world as they have in theirs Lofbayel asked. Presumably the weapons and other devices of destruction which they have emphasized at such great expenditure of time and zealous ness Dornvald replied. Kleippur shook his head. The protection of Carthogia is important to me tis true but these merchants of havoc would credit my mind with no aspiration higher than an obsession for conquest and a hunger to possess the whole of Robia. Indeed these are Lumians of a disturbingly different breed from the Wearer and his companions. He looked at Thirg. Advise the Lumians that the sharing of their lifemaking arts would be of far greater value to us for with such knowledge we could divide our industriousness among protecting our people providing for them and educating them in proportions of our own deciding. If the Lumians wish to enlist our help in taming the forests to expand their lifemaking abilities further are we not justified in asking their help in turn to expand our comprehension of that which they would have us tame Thirg reached out and touched the button that opened the talking vegetable s ears. The small light that showed when the vegetable was listening came on. Knowledge of the lifemaking arts of the Lumians would be more valuable than quantities of weapons beyond those needed to ensure Carthogia s protection he said. If the Lumians wish robeings to help them tame the forests robeings wish Lumians to help them comprehend the forests. The transmogrifier turned the pulse stream into numbers and flashed them to the base computer which broke the numbers into groups and compared them to stored samples at the rate of a million per second. Where possible alternative matches were indicated a decision tree operating on selected weighted attributes kept track of the best fit score. An instant later the computer transmitted to the transmogrifier. Unclear buzz buzz gubba gubba what mean lifemaking arts the vegetable squawked. Want say wheeeephooomalteraa.twe. Thirg thought for a while but couldn t bring one to mind. Obtain new word he said. The vegetable had learned that this was his instruction for it to get the Lumians own term for something from the Lumians. Inside the transmogrifier s control processor the pulse sequence triggered a branch to a library update routine. EQUIVALENT ENGLISH WORD FORM BEING REQUESTED the screen before Seltzman reported. Okay Seltzman acknowledged. Pray describe the vegetable invited Thirg. Knowledge art skill power Thirg told it. Creating inventing making of machines. Comprehension of how machines operate. Understanding origin of first machine. How could a first machine be possible The screen responded: FUNCTION SUBJECT ADDITIONAL DATA Knowledge Machines First Machine Ingenuity Operation Operating source of Expertise Principles Machine origins Understanding Domination Design Manufacture Impossible Seltzman studied the display for a few seconds and replied Science and technology. He wasn t going to go into the metaphysics of the second part he decided. Buzz wheee Lumian word wowumpokkapokka get good the vegetable advised Thirg. Need simplify other better whoosh wow. Thirg thought back to what he had said and replied Knowledge of lifemaking skills is worth more to Carthogians than too many weapons is worth. Now try maybe read buzz buzz bakka bakka speak the vegetable advised. Seltzman read on the screen: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY KNOW HOW BETTER DEAL FOR GENOESE THAN WEAPONS TOO MANY TOO MUCH OVERKILL . IF TERRANS WANT TALOID AID FOR MANAGE MACHINE COMPLEX THEN TALOIDS WANT TERRAN AID FOR KNOW HOW MACHINE COMPLEX. We re back to the same stalemate Lang said. I don t think we re going to get much further for now. At least the translations are starting to make more sense so it s not as if we had nothing to show for it. I vote we call it a day. Me too another voice said on the circuit. Let s get back to base and out of these things. I m about ready for dinner. Giraud sighed. Okay we ll wrap the session up there he agreed. Tell them we understand their position but it involves a lot of complications that we ll have to go away and think about. And they have a lot of things to think over too without adequate defense there won t be any Genoa so they have to get their priorities right. Finish up with the usual thanks and courtesies. When the laborious exchange was completed and the Taloids had added their closing respects everyone rose and exchanged hand touch ings in the manner that had been adopted as combining aspects of both Terran and Taloid forms of customary goodwill salutation. As the party left technicians collected the electronics equipment and switched off the lamps until the next session and the French paratroopers who had been stationed outside the conference room formed up with an honorary complement of Arthur s guards to escort the Terrans and their Taloid hosts back to the vehicles. After a final round of parting formalities the Terrans departed for their base. The only way to exert pressure on the population as a whole is through its leaders Giraud said gratefully free of his helmet inside the cabin of the personnel carrier as the party drove back through the outskirts of Genoa. But how do you do it when the leader thinks he can step into the twenty first century overnight and become civilized instantly I mean their culture is still barbaric centuries away at least from being able to grasp technology. But how can you make them understand that and persuade them they have to be patient without jeopardizing everything you stand to gain It s a problem Caspar. It s all a result of delusions of grandeur that they developed through talking to Zambendorf and his crazies Caspar Lang said sourly. We should never have let him near them at all. I agree but it can t be undone Giraud replied. At least he s out of it all now. I hope you re keeping him busy until we need him enough to prevent his getting into any more mischief. All taken care of Lang said. Osmond Periera and that wacky Canadian psychologist have got him tied up full time. It s a wonder he gets a minute to eat and sleep. There s no chance of his interfering in our business with Arthur then Giraud asked just to be sure. No chance. Even if he had the time how could he do anything If he found a way of getting down from the ship he d never be let through the base. Well I m glad to hear that at least Caspar Giraud said. The situation s difficult enough as it is. Don t worry about it Lang said confidently. At Kleippur s residence Kleippur and the others returned to the Council Chamber and took from its place of concealment inside a cabinet the seeing vegetable that the Wearer had left as a gift before returning to the large dragon beyond the sky. Dornvald relit the violet Lumian lantern that enabled the vegetable to see and Thirg pressed the button that would open another eye within the dragon. All in the room waited their eyes fixed expectantly on the magic window. In a cabin up in the Orion Osmond Periera and Malcom Wade sat surrounded by notes and papers concentrating intently on the sentences appearing on the computer screen in front of them and making occasional responses via keyboard. The screen was showing the attempts of Zambendorf who was elsewhere in a sealed room with no means of communication to the outside apart from a nonswitchable hard wired terminal to divine the contents of closed envelopes selected blind by Periera guess random sequences of numbers and ESP cards and describe drawings made on the spur of the moment by both the testers. The use of only a narrow set of predefined mnemonic codes to communicate would Periera and Wade had agreed effectively eliminate the possibility of their giving hints and clues unwittingly. Actually it made no difference because Joe Fellburg had bugged their cabin which they hadn t thought to check and they both talked too much. They also hadn t thought to check whether the sealed room had been unsealed and occupied by someone pretending to be Zambendorf . . . such as Thelma and Clarissa taking turns to operate the terminal while the other stayed around for company. Any question of cheating was after all unthinkable why would Zambendorf need to cheat if he was genuine Although progress had been painfully slow the results that Periera and Wade had been getting were tantalizingly encouraging enough in fact to have kept them shut away for the best part of several days. But that of course was the whole idea. In the team s day suite Zambendorf was pacing restlessly back and forth while Otto Abaquaan and Joe Fellburg pored over the latest Terran Taloid transcripts from the duplicate transmogrifier concealed in Arthur s meeting room. The device Zambendorf had donated to the Taloids before returning to the Orion was a joint effort constructed by Joe Fellburg with the aid of assembly diagrams and programs donated by Leon Keyhoe parts supplied by Dave Crookes and a terminal assembly stolen by Abaquaan from the Orion s electronics stores. It not only provided printouts of the screens that had been presented to Giraud s linguists but also a complete audio record of the comments exchanged between the Terran politicians by radio. The main problem with today s high technology society is that we allow politicians to run it instead of people equipped with the wherewithal to understand it Zambendorf muttered irritably. Their mentalities are still in the nineteenth century. How can they hope to manage complex economies when they re not competent to run a yard sale. What can they do that requires even a smattering of knowledge or intellect Drew West shrugged from a comer. People let them get away with it he said. If people are gonna elect turkeys to tell them what to do then the people are gonna have problems. You can t blame the turkeys. The Constitution never guaranteed smart government it guaranteed representative government. And it works that s what we ve got. The trouble with the damn system is that it selects for the skills needed to get elected and nothing else . . . which requires only an ability to fool a sufficient number of people for just long enough to get the votes Zambendorf grumbled. Unfortunately the personal qualities necessary for attaining office are practically the opposite of those demanded by the office itself. A test that you can only pass by cheating can t possibly select honest people can it You d think that would be obvious enough Drew and yet Call coming in from Camelot now Abaquaan said over his shoulder as Fellburg reached out to the touchpanel of the communications terminal beside them. It s Galileo with Arthur and a few of the others Fellburg said. Zambendorf stopped speaking and moved forward to see while behind him West stood and crossed the room. Thirg had become accustomed to the sight of Lumians without their outer casings by now. How they stayed together at all and kept their shape was mystery enough never mind how they managed to move around. Apparently they contained a second internal casing of some kind though how a casing could be inside that which it encased Thirg had no idea. Perhaps it was like the strengthening bars that builders and other artisans fashioned into their organic creations. Dark Headed One was looking into the magic eye with the Wearer and Smooth Faced One visible a short distance behind. After a short exchange of greetings Thirg began the tedious process of communicating the questions and concerns that the latest meeting with the Merchant Lumians had prompted. Zambendorf s mood became somber while he listened to Abaquaan s commentary as the message slowly emerged. They did as we told them and didn t make any concessions Abaquaan announced. It s looking very much the way we figured Giraud and his people are trying to talk them into getting lots of organized production going down there for Earth s benefit. They re trying to set up a colony Karl. GSEC and the government must be in on it too. Galileo says Arthur s asking for a confirmation that he s doing the right thing and that we ll make sure everything turns out okay. They re saying they still think we re straight but I guess they need reassuring Fellburg said. Zambendorf stared at the outlandish metal faces peering back at him from inside an ice vault thousands of miles away. Was it just his imagination or could he read the trust and the pleading not to be let down that was written across those strange immobile countenances For some reason his determination not to let them down was stronger than had ever been evoked by people. He sensed too that the others in the team felt the same way. Though none of them had mentioned it directly because there was no need to they all sensed it. Whatever it was that had brought such an odd assortment of individuals together had responded as a common chord in all of them. All I can say for now is to tell them to have faith and believe in us Zambendorf said. The time is not ripe yet for us to do anything. Exactly what he could do he had no idea for once in his life he was at a loss to come up with anything more constructive. Fellburg talked to the terminal and juggled with the screen for a while. Galileo thinks you sound too much like a priest Abaquaan told Zambendorf. Zambendorf smiled faintly. If the Taloids could crack jokes they d be okay. Tell them they are not second class citizens Joe he said. They should be proud of what they are believe in themselves and trade with Terrans only as equal partners. Galileo s asking who s kidding who Fellburg said looking at the screen. They want to know how they re supposed to come across as the equals of guys who can work miracles. We are not gods. They must have confidence that they can learn Zambendorf told him. We can teach them to work miracles too Fellburg interpreted as the screen delivered the reply. There isn t any such thing as a miracle Zambendorf said. When you know how to work a miracle it ceases to be one. Miracles exist only in the minds of those who believe in them. Galileo wants to know how the hell you know. Oh Zambendorf said. You can assure him that I m an expert on miracles. 24 THE POLICY DIRECTIVE FROM EARTH STATED IN EFFECT THAT the Genoese were asking for a welfare aid program to be initiated and sustained from a distance of nearly a billion miles away which would bankrupt the Western world even if it were acceptable on principle. The suggestion was completely impractical as well as being unthinkable ideologically. Giraud and Lang returned to their negotiations and spent several more long arduous sessions explaining to Arthur and his colleagues that the Taloids would have to start thinking from the outset in terms of paying their way and earning the benefits they hoped to get. Kleippur s understanding was that if the robeings cooperated followed Lumian orders and worked hard at taming the forests to produce the kinds of things that were evidently valued highly on Lumia eventually they would acquire understanding. But naturally the benefits to the robeings could not be expected to materialize instantly the Lumians had taken a long time to reach their current state of knowledge from a level comparable to Robia s. To Kleippur the promise of salvation in the hereafter in return for patience obedience diligence and sacrifice in the herenow sounded suspiciously familiar. Little further progress was made and Kleippur began to feel that the Lumians were growing impatient. Then Lyokanor the chief of Carthogian intelligence reported that Skerilliane the Kroaxian spy had reentered Carthogia in the company of a one armed robeing tentatively identified as Horazzorgio previously presumed killed in the Meracasine. Curious as to Kroaxian intentions Kleippur ordered the pair to be watched but left unmolested. Unfortunately the small group of soldiers shadowing them from the border lost contact when it was attacked by Waskorians. Later Skerilliane was seen in the outskirts of Menassim not far from the Lumian dragon camp and again a short while afterward with a party of Lumians out in the forest. Before the Carthogians could do anything to prevent it the two Kroaxians were seen being brought back to the camp by Lumian vehicles and admitted inside. The breakdown in surveillance over the spies at such a critical moment was galling but nothing could be done about it. In an effort to keep himself aware as much as possible of what was taking place Kleippur informed the Wearer of what had happened at the same time describing the differences between Kroaxia and Carthogia and explaining the recent history of the two states. Zambendorf wondered why nothing was being said officially about the contact that had been made with the two Taloids dubbed James Bond and Lord Nelson by the Terrans the team discovered who had appeared from Genoa s enemy state Padua. Then Joe Fellburg learned from Dave Crookes that their aid was being enlisted at Genoa Base to program the transmogrifier to respond to the Paduan version of Taloid speech as well as Genoese. A junior clerk on Giraud s staff confided to Abaquaan that plans were being made to suspend the discussions in Genoa and that the political deputation was to descend to another part of the surface. The clerk didn t know the exact location of the proposed landing site but Thelma found out from her dashing NASO captain that Bond and Nelson were to be flown secretly to somewhere near another Taloid city just under three hundred miles across the desert from Genoa and sent to alert their rulers to the Terran presence. Arthur and Leonardo who seemed to be the Genoese mapmaking and geographic expert confirmed via Zambendorf s private line to Camelot that the city was Padua. Presumably therefore whatever had transpired between Giraud Co. and the two Paduans had proved sufficiently interesting for Giraud to break off his negotiations with Arthur and begin again elsewhere. Giraud and the diplomats made three visits to Padua landing each time at a remote spot to which the Paduan leaders traveled overland presumably to keep the fact of the meetings secret from the general Paduan populace. At the same time no public announcement of these developments was made aboard the Orion the bulletins and news updates continued to focus on the activities of the scientific teams in and around Genoa who were left to carry on their work with no indication being given that the political leadership had at least temporarily pulled out. Zambendorf honored his promise to keep Arthur fully informed despite the further misgivings that the news he reported was bound to arouse among the Genoese. He wondered if he did it in a subconscious attempt to compensate for his inability to do anything else. Zambendorf was discovering that it was important to him to be able to show the Taloids something that might reassure them that their hopes and expectations of him were not misplaced. For the first time in his life he felt concerned that the powers which others attributed to him didn t exist and what was so ironic was that for the first time those powers should be neither supernatural nor superhuman. Though he continued to display confidence and staunch optimism in the presence of the team inwardly he had never felt so helpless and frustrated. Then he received a summons to meet with Leaherney Giraud and Caspar Lang in Globe I. His cooperation in treating the subject as confidential would be appreciated the message said evidently Lang was learning at last that ordering Zambendorf to do anything wasn t the best way to get results. Accordingly Zambendorf reciprocated by keeping the matter to himself. We ve decided to fill you in on some developments that happened only recently Daniel Leaherney said stirring his coffee while seated in the private lounge adjoining the executive offices. The fact is we found the Genoese to be obstinate and uncooperative and suspended negotiations with them some time ago. We re exploring an alternative relationship with the Paduans which is showing more promise. Hmm. I see . . . Zambendorf grunted noncommittally on the opposite side of the table not seeing at all. He sipped from his own cup and looked up at Leaherney s solid heavy jowled face topped by steely gray straight combed hair. Since liftout from Earth orbit Leaherney had tended to avoid Zambendorf leaving it to his subordinates usually Caspar Lang to handle communications his sudden call for a face to face meeting especially over a subject considered too sensitive to be made public knowledge could only mean that he needed Zambendorf for something. None of the possibilities that had occurred to Zambendorf as to what that something might be had left him feeling particularly convinced and his responses so far had been guarded but curious. The Paduan outlook is more practical and takes better account of immediate realities Leaherney said in answer to the unvoiced question written across Zambendorf s face. The problem with the Genoese is that they insist on clinging to a totally unrealistic ideology which not only impedes their own chances of making any meaningful progress in the long term but also is incompatible with our own policies and interests. In other words the Paduans might be persuaded to accept the deal that he had told Arthur to reject Zambendorf thought to himself. He already knew from his conversations with Arthur and Galileo that the Terran goal was to recruit Taloid assistance in bringing portions of Titan s phenomenal industrial potential under directed control and turning the moon into an organized mass production facility capable of supplying Earth s needs on a scale that would dwarf the existing capacity of all its nations put together. Needless to say whoever controlled such an operation would be worth billions and might well come to command incontestable political power on a truly global scale for the first time in history. But Zambendorf still couldn t see where he fitted into it all. He shifted his eyes to Giraud who had been the spokesman in the recent talks with the Paduans as he had been earlier with Arthur and the Genoese. Giraud fair skinned with a high rounded forehead wide blue gray eyes and hair that was receding in the center and thinning on top glanced at Leaherney for a moment then said Paduan society seems to be dominated by religious dogma and beliefs to a far greater degree than the Genoese. At least that s the way it looks right now. By mystical notions of some kind anyway Zambendorf suggested. He had formed a similar impression of the Paduans from his conversations with Galileo. Any interpretations we make at this stage are bound to contain a strong subjective element. Well whatever Giraud said. But using the analogy for now power within the Paduan state seems to be divided between the clergy and a secular nobility. Our contact has been with the leading figure of the latter group the king if you will. We ve named him Henry. He d give a lot to be able to ditch the priests and run the state his own way. Zambendorf nodded slowly to himself as the first of the pieces fit together. Henry no doubt commanded large segments of the Taloid labor force that the Terrans wanted access to. But the priests aren t going to go away so easily Zambendorf guessed. Giraud nodded. They have a strong traditional hold over the population and can mobilize widespread support by playing on insecurities fears superstitions all the usual things. They re not a force to be trifled with. So what s the plan to help Henry rid himself of the priests in return for plenty of Taloids to work the plantations Zambendorf asked stopping just short of injecting an open sneer into his voice. Giraud hesitated. Zambendorf shifted his gaze back to Leaherney. Leaherney ran the tip of his tongue along his upper lip and frowned for a moment. Shall we say to assist in bringing about the replacement of the existing form of priesthood by an alternative system that Henry would have greater control over he replied. It would probably be a mistake to demolish the clergy completely. After all it does have considerable merit as an established instrument of social control. Er I think Dan means as a temporary mechanism to preserve social order during the transition period to a more modern form of state Giraud interjected hastily. Of course Leaherney said. Now Zambendorf was beginning to see where somebody like himself would fit in. Does Henry have anyone in particular in mind to head up this new tame priesthood that he wants to install he inquired. Giraud nodded. But not anyone we ve met. We haven t talked to any of the priests only to Henry and some of his guys. Hmm ... It wouldn t be the present High Priest Bishop Magician or whatever s equivalent Zambendorf said. If someone like that stands to get demoted in a big way the last thing Henry would want is to leave him with any power to do something about the grudge. Henry s best bet would be to get rid of him completely and replace him with someone from the lower ranks someone who d feel insecure after a big promotion and would always be Henry s man. But Henry sounds enough of a Machiavelli to know about things like that. That s Henry s problem Giraud said. All we know is that he s got someone lined up. We call him Rasputin. Zambendorf leaned back in his chair steepled his fingers below his chin and moved his eyes slowly from one to another of the three faces around him. And of course this Rasputin would have to pull off some pretty spectacular stunts to stand a chance of discrediting the present chief miracle worker and taking over the job wouldn t he he said making his voice casual. He d have to be convincing enough not only to impress the average Taloid in the street but also to convert enough of the priests over to his side too. Now I wonder who d be a good person to ask if you wanted to help someone work a few of the kinds of miracles that might do all that. Caspar Lang who had been listening silently for some time fidgeted in his chair and looked impatient. He was tiring of Zambendorf s roundabout way of talking a method Zambendorf employed to give himself time to think. Now Zambendorf was going to launch into more of it by asking why he should be interested and what was in it for him. Then Giraud would get into his negotiating stride and start to spell out all the angles and benefits. Lang could see it coming. He didn t want to hear it all. Look he said raising his face toward Zambendorf. You re a good deceptionist and a top con artist maybe the best in the business ... He lifted a hand to forestall any objection that Zambendorf might have been about to make. Let s not go off into any of that stuff about whether you re genuine or not. What we re talking about now is serious okay . . . Lang paused for a second then continued. Ever since you first appeared in Europe you ve been moving in one direction upward toward becoming the biggest of the big time operators ever bigger sensations bigger crowds bigger fame bigger money. That s always been the ambition. Lang spread his hands briefly. You re smart enough to have figured out for yourself that this whole business at Titan could mean if it s handled properly the end of the Soviet empire and a return of Western industry and commerce to a position of undisputed worldwide leadership which means a lot of people would stand to get very rich. What s in it for you Zambendorf is that you can reserve yourself a place in the club a very special club. Whatever you were aiming at before in life doesn t matter anymore. This is it the bonanza the real big time. And how about the rest of the Taloids Zambendorf asked. What happens to them in all this Giraud frowned and looked surprised. Their situation would be no different from what it s always been ... Exploited by their own leaders Zambendorf supplied. Serfs in a feudal order that gives them no opportunity for development. Kept in ignorance deliberately and fed superstition because education would be incompatible with unquestioning obedience and the domination by fear upon which the system depends. Is that what you wish to perpetuate What kind of talk is this Leaherney asked sounding irritable suddenly. Hell they re only machines after all. You re making them sound almost human. Zambendorf stared down at his cup for a long time. That was the whole point the Taloids were human. He didn t quite know how but he could sense it every time he talked with them. The phrases that appeared on the transmogrifier screen might have been crude and semicoherent but that was a reflection of a restricted communications medium not of the beings at whom the communications were directed. The clumsy strings of words did not and could not convey the richness and depth of qualities meanings feelings and perceptions which Zambendorf somehow knew formed the Taloid world as seen through Taloid eyes any more than they could the human world as seen through human eyes. Both worlds were illusions created from the raw material of photons pressure waves and other forms of primary sensory stimuli which were processed into abstract symbols and assembled via two forms of nervous system one biochemical the other holotronic into consciously experienced interactions of people places and things. As external realities the people the places and the things existed only as bare frameworks onto which minds projected covering form warmth color and other attributes which the minds themselves created thus each mind manufactured its own illusory world upon a minimum of shared reality to conform to its own set of culturally defined expectations and in such a way as to appear satisfyingly real in total to its creator. Zambendorf the illusionist could understand it all clearly. But he could see just as clearly he would never be able to convey what he understood to the three men sitting with him in the executive lounge of the Orion. Suppose I decide I don t want to get involved with it he said at last looking up at them. Then what Is that a decision Leaherney asked him. No. I m just curious. Lang answered. We d manage anyhow either with your cooperation or without it. But from your point of view it wouldn t be too smart. The people who sent you all this way at considerable expense would be pretty upset about it. And they do have a lot of influence with the media . . . Lang shook his head slowly and clicked his tongue. You could find it s the end of the road for you old buddy. And that d be a shame wouldn t it 25 GOYDEROOCH HEADROBEING OF THE VILLAGE OF XERXEON STOOD with Casquedin the village prayer and beseecher in front of a huddle of elders and watched apprehensively as the column of royal cavalry filed slowly into the square. The soldiers and their mounts were covered with dust and looked as if they had ridden from Pergassos without stopping which indicated that their mission was urgent. The colors carried by the pennant bearer were those of the captain Horazzorgio who had passed through Xerxeon over five brights previously in pursuit ofDornvald the outlaw Bringer of Sky Dragons. Horazzorgio was missing an arm and had one eye covered Goyderooch saw as the lead riders crossed the square and drew up before him. His synchronizing oscillator missed a pulse. Perhaps Dornvald s small band had been the bait to lure the King s soldiers into ambush by a larger force out in the Meracasine. If so had Horazzorgio interpreted Goyderooch s readiness to indicate the direction taken by the outlaws as proof of the village s complicity in the plot and returned now to deliver his retribution The fear that Goyderooch sensed from behind told him that the thoughts were not his alone. May the Lifemaker protect the King Horazzorgio pronounced. Let it be so the villagers returned dutifully. We are truly honored to welcome the King s Guards to our humble village Goyderooch said extending his arms palms upward. Whatever services it is within our power to render shall be thine. Thou hast but to name thy need and utter thy request. Horazzorgio cast his eye over them with contempt. Yes he said menacingly. You would do well to remember me with respect farmers. With great pleasure would I repay the debt that I owe the village of Xerxeon. A twelvefold curse upon Dornvald the betrayer Goyderooch exclaimed trembling. Truly were we deceived by his cunning. Oh had we but known of the fate that awaited thee Believest thou not that we would have warned thee Pah Enough sniveling Horazzorgio snorted. Do you dream for one moment that Dornvald s rabble of tinplate riveters would be match for a King s troop These afflictions that you see were not the work of any mere robeing. Then what manner of The sky demons that appeared over Xerxeon Horazzorgio said. They are congregating in Carthogia whither they come to aid Kleippur servant of the Dark Master. Eskenderom the Kroaxian King did not want it made known to his people that he was treating with the luminous liquid creatures who had come from beyond the sky. It was important that the mystic whom Eskenderom intended to install as High Priest in place of Frennelech and whom the soldiers had been sent to Xerxeon to find and take back to Pergassos should be accepted unquestioningly as being possessed of genuinely wondrous powers. Thou hast not come hither to wreak thy vengeance upon helpless villagers Goyderooch inquired cautiously. We are here by the direct bidding of the King Horazzorgio told him. Tis well for you that I heed first my loyalty to His Majesty and second my private inclinations. There is one a holy man from Pergassos who was also at this place five brights since the brother of Thirg Asker of Questions. Thou speakest of Groork the hearer who came hither to commune with the Great Wilderness and prepare himself spiritually for the time of great works which is written as his destiny to perform for the greater glory of the Lifemaker Casquedin said from beside Goyderooch. The same Horazzorgio said. His destiny has arrived it appears. We are to conduct him back to Kroaxia to the palace of Eskenderom where omens have been witnessed of great things that shall come to pass. Goyderooch dispatched Casquedin with the news to the house of Meerkulla Tamer of Endcase Drillers on the edge of the village where Groork was lodging. Casquedin returned alone a few minutes later. Meerkulla asks forgiveness but says that the hearer is locked in his cell and attending to his sacred devotions he reported. To intrude would constitute sinfulness of the gravest kind. But this is the King s command Goyderooch blustered. Return at once to Meerkulla and tell him that Horazzorgio raised a hand wearily. Our need for haste is not so pressing as that Headrobeing for we have ridden without respite from Pergassos. We shall not depart until we have rested awhile and partaken of refreshment and charge. So prepare a repast of your finest lube and filter stations and leave the hearer to complete his meditations. In the room that he had been given for his own use at the rear of Meerkulla s house Groork was frantically bundling his belongings into the frame backed sack that he used when traveling. Horazzorgio could have come for only two reasons: Either Eskenderom had not forgotten his scheme for removing Frennelech the High Priest and establishing a new priesthood under Groork or Horazzorgio wished to settle a personal score over Groork s having warned Thirg when the writ had been issued for the latter s arrest. Either way Groork wasn t interested in staying around to talk about it and had received a sudden revelation that the Lifemaker s plans required him to be the chosen instrument of other designs destined to unfold at another place to which the greater powers would in due course guide him. After checking the room a last time to make sure he hadn t missed anything he pushed open the window poked his head out and looked first one way then the other. No one was in sight. He heaved his pack over the ledge picked up his staff and climbed outside. One of Meerkulla s steeds was tethered at the rear of the house grazing on slow charge from a domesticated forest transformer and not yet unsaddled. Groork looked at it thoughtfully as he lifted his pack onto his back and then glanced from side to side and back over his shoulder. Had the animal been left as a temptation to test his honesty at a time of stress or was it a gift from the Lifemaker to ensure Groork s preservation for greater things And then as he stood waiting for inspiration he heard in his head the first whisperings of a message from the voices that had begun speaking from the sky of late. In a control room inside the Orion a computer display changed to read: ORBITER FOUR MAPPING RADAR COARSE SCAN 23 B37 COMPLETE ON SECTOR 19H. COMMENCING HIGH RESOLUTION SCAN. SUBSECTORS 19 22 THROUGH 19 38. MODE 7. FRAME 5. SWEEP PARAMETERS: 03 12 08 23 00 00 42. Groork turned his face upward and gazed rapturously at the heavens as the meaning of the voices became plain in his mind. Thy work in Kroaxia is ended Groork they sang. Take thee forth from this place now for thy path lies across the Wilderness and unto the lands of Carthogia. Am I then to find the Waskorians and join them in their struggle to preserve the true faith in the face of the barbarism wrought upon Carthogia by Kleippur who serves the Dark Master Groork asked himself. Indeed the ways of the Lifemaker are truly wise and all seeing for in that way also shall I find again my lost brother and return his soul yet to the way of righteousness. He looked again at Meerkulla s mount. Could a mere robeing such as I presume to argue with the will of Him who sends thee as His gift to carry me across the Meracasine He unplugged the animal s cord and swung himself up onto the creature s back. The Lifemaker gave and the Lifemaker has taken away he told the back of Meerkulla s house as he began moving off. Then he stopped and stared uncomfortably for a few seconds at the dwelling of the one who had given him shelter and hospitality. Slowly and deliberately he raised his arm and made the motions in the air which would confer blessings upon Meerkulla his family his descendants his crops and his animals for many twelve brights to come. There my friend now thou hast more than just compensation Groork murmured. Feeling better he turned his mount about again and slipped quietly out of the village. 26 YOU CAN T DO IT MASSEY SAID SHAKING HIS HEAD AS HE turned restlessly on his feet between the bunks in his cabin in Globe II. He sounded as near to angry as Zambendorf had ever heard him. The Taloids aren t some race of natural inferiors put there to do all the work for free. It s taken us centuries to get over the consequences of trying to treat groups of our own kind that way back on Earth. Those days are over now. We can t go back to them. It would be a catastrophe. Any forms of life that have evolved intelligence and begun lifting themselves above the animal level possess something in common that makes accidental differences in biological hardware trivial by comparison Vernon Price said earnestly from the edge of one of the lower bunks. The word human has a broader definition now. It describes a whole evolutionary phase not just one species that happens to have entered it. They had the cabin to themselves as Graham Spearman was busy in one of the labs and Malcom Wade its fourth occupant was busy running elaborate statistical analyses and cross correlations on reams of worthless data that he and Periera had been avidly collecting from faked ESP tests. Zambendorf who was sitting on a fold out chair in the narrow space by the door looked from Massey to Price and back again in bewilderment. Somehow they had gotten the idea into their heads that he had not only allowed himself to be brought into the plot to turn the Taloids into serfs but that he had done so with enthusiasm and they were very distressed about it. So was Zambendorf to find himself accused of being a willing accomplice in the very thing that had been causing him so much concern. Okay I know how you feel about a lot of today s people Massey said tossing out his hands. They ve grown up in the twenty first century surrounded by better opportunities for learning and education than anybody else in history and if they re too dumb to take advantage of what they ve got it s not your problem. They had their choice. I might not share your view but I can see your point. He waved a hand in front of his face. But keeping the Taloids in a state of deliberately imposed backwardness is different. They never had any opportunity to know better. They don t have the same choice. That s all I m saying. Zambendorf blinked up at him and shook his head. But he began. You must see that it s the beginning of the same line that s been used to keep wealthy minorities in power and the people in their place all down through the ages Vernon Price said. Real knowledge is strictly for the elites the masses are fobbed off with superstition nonsense and hopes for a better tomorrow. New technologies and anything that might lead toward genuine mass education and prosperity are to be opposed. I know how you ve made your living up until now but as Gerry says at least those suckers had a choice and should have known better. But with the Taloids it would be pure exploitation. You can t do it. FOR CHRIST S SAKE Zambendorf exploded suddenly. The cabin became instantly quiet. He gave a satisfied nod. Thank you. Look doesn t it occur to either of you that I just mightn t have the faintest idea what in hell you re talking about Oh come on don t give us that Massey said impatiently. It s the real reason you were sent all the way to Titan. Who do you think you re trying to fool now It s obvious. What is the real reason I was sent all the way to Titan Zambendorf asked more baffled than ever but genuinely curious. Because a big name cult leader like you can influence a lot of public thinking Price said. You re GSEC s lever into the congressional policymaking machine. Zambendorf shook his head and looked back at Massey. Massey frowned down at him but seemed less sure of himself That s why our society tolerates so many zany cults and crackpot religions isn t it he said. Why Zambendorf asked. A politician can net a lot of votes for a small amount of effort by saying nice things about a guru who s got ten thousand disciples so brainwashed that they ll do anything he tells them Massey said. Or at least if he s smart he doesn t say anything that might get them upset about him. So the guys who run the cults continue to get away with murder and nobody bothers them very much. The business they re really in is selling blocks of controlled votes and molded public opinion in return for political favors and protection. He gave Zambendorf a long penetrating look as if to say that none of this should need spelling out and then moved around the end of the bunks to pour himself coffee from the pot by the sink. Vernon Price completed what Massey had been saying. To a lot of very influential people the political and economic implications of Titan s being up for grabs must add up to a crucial situation which they knew long before the mission left Earth . . . He spread his hands briefly. And we all know that such people can make very attractive offers when it suits them. You think that I knew what the mission s purpose was all along Zambendorf said. You certainly seemed to know about Titan long before most of us did Massey said. He stared down over the rim of his cup. What was the deal unlimited media hype and complete suppression of all competent reporting to make you the superstar of the century His voice conveyed disappointment rather than contempt. Or was it the other way round threats . . . everything over for you if you refused to go along with them But that was a long time ago now from a much narrower perspective before we left Earth and before anyone knew what we all know now. All I m asking you to do is see the big picture and think about the real implications. Zambendorf brought his hand up to his face and stared down at the floor in silence for a while. Then at last he emitted a long weary sigh and looked up between his fingers. Look he said. I ve got a feeling I m wasting my breath saying this but I didn t know any more about where this ship was going than you did until after we embarked in orbit. What I did find out I found out myself by my own methods. When I agreed to come on this mission I thought we were going to Mars. I accepted the usual kind of publicity deal sure but as far as I was concerned it was to do with the kind of stunt GSEC had been talking about sponsoring on Mars not anything serious. I didn t know anything about any aliens or any of the things you ve been talking about. He stood up and moved past Massey to help himself to coffee. Massey glanced questioningly back at Price while Zambendorf was filling his cup. Price could only return a helpless shrug. It s strange Massey said to Zambendorf. He paused and tilted his head curiously to one side. For once I get the feeling that you re telling the truth. Either you re the most accomplished liar I ve ever met and I ve met more than a few or there s something very screwy going on. I d like to believe what you just told us. Zambendorf tired suddenly of the feeling of being scrutinized under a microscope. Well why won t you believe it then he demanded loudly turning away and sounding annoyed. What reason would I have to lie about something like this If you must know I was offered such a deal only recently. I turned it down. There does that satisfy you You turned it down Massey repeated not quite able to prevent a trace of mockery from creeping into his voice. Zambendorf wheeled back again. I turned it down. He forced the words out slowly and deliberately thrusting out his beard to within an inch of Massey s face. Very likely the best offer you ve ever had in your life and maybe the best you ll ever get Price drawled sarcastically from behind them. With everything going for it and all the right people lined up on your side . . . and you turned it down. Now why would you want to do a thing like that My reasons are my reasons Zambendorf said. What damn business is it of either of you When you re helping people who are trying to condemn a whole race to second class status to further their own interests and claiming that they re acting in my name it is my business Massey retorted. Zambendorf colored visibly. For God s sake I haven t done anything to help them he shouted. I turned their offer down. How many times do I have to say it What s the matter with the pair of you Why would you turn it down Massey asked again. What is this I refuse to be cross examined in this fashion. Bah . . just as I thought Massey snorted. He s copping out Price murmured. He has to. He s in with them up to his neck. Doesn t it occur to you that you may not have a monopoly on all this touching humanitarian concern for your brother beings Zambendorf raged. If you must know I turned it down for the simple reason that I care what happens to the Taloids just as much as you do ... even more possibly. Do you understand that Is it plain enough to get through your thick skulls He glowered at Massey defiantly then shifted his gaze to Price for a moment. When he resumed speaking his voice quivered with emotion. I probably know them better than any other person on this mission. Wasn t it I who exchanged the first meaningful information with them Didn t they continue to come to me for confirmation even after they d been told repeatedly that Giraud and those walking procedure manuals that he calls aides were the mission s official spokesmen . . . Don t ask me how but I can sense the Taloid world that lies behind the words we see on screens and those unmoving metal faces. Zambendorf s manner calmed a little. There is a world there you know not a world that we are able to experience directly or even one that we re capable of conceiving maybe . . . but it s there as warm and as rich and as colorful when perceived through Taloid senses as Earth is to us. I can feel it when I talk to them. The other two listened silently as he went on now in a distant voice The Taloids know I can too. That s why they trust me. They trust me to teach them about the worlds that exist beyond their sky and the new worlds of mind that exist beyond the clouds obscuring their present horizons of knowledge. They trust me to show them the ways of discovery that will enable them to explore all those worlds. That s more than all those fools back on Earth ever asked for or understood that I could have done for them. His expression became contemptuous. And you think I would have traded that for anything a bunch of deadhead executives and bureaucrats might have to offer people who ve never in their lives had an inspired thought or a vision of what could be Zambendorf focused his gaze back on Massey and Price and shook his head. No don t you go preaching at me about the meaning of the word human the insignificance of accidental differences in biological hardware or any of that crap. Because I could give both of you a whole lesson on it. The cabin remained very quiet for what seemed a long time. Massey drank the last of his coffee then looked across at Price with his eyebrows raised questioningly. Price looked uncomfortable and said nothing. I er . . . I guess we owe you an apology Massey murmured. Zambendorf nodded curtly and left it at that. He looked at Massey curiously. You still haven t explained what made you think I d accepted a deal he said. Massey looked over at Price again. Price made a face and shrugged. I guess he s got a right to know he said. Zambendorf frowned uncomprehendingly. Massey drew a long breath held it for a second or two then exhaled abruptly and nodded his agreement. Set it up Vernon. Massey turned to Zambendorf. Obviously what you re about to see is not intended to become public knowledge. I don t know if you re aware that the news from Earth is censored before it s broadcast around the Orion. In particular a lot of what goes out across the Earth newsgrid is omitted from what s shown here. However that was anticipated before we left Earth and arrangements were made for me to have a private channel direct into NASO. Zambendorf watched as Price unlocked a storage locker in the wall and took out a small metal strongbox which in turn yielded a collection of video cartridges. Price selected one of the cartridges and walked over to the cabin s terminal to insert it at the same time switching the terminal to off line local mode. Whatever was stored in the cartridges evidently was too sensitive to be entrusted to the ship s databank. Zambendorf gave Massey a puzzled look. If you were told we were going to Mars too why would anyone give you a private information line he asked. Why would you be supposed to need one Massey smiled faintly. I didn t know I had one until a timelocked message from the databank told me about it after we d left Earth. I guess you weren t the only one who didn t find out what he was really here for until a while after you d signed up. You mean you weren t sent to monitor the ESP experiments on Mars Zambendorf said surprised. No more than you were sent to conduct them. So . . . what were you sent for I very much suspect that we re just beginning to find out. The terminal screen came to life to show a man with a red gnomish face topped by a mat of white close cropped hair saying something that was inaudible since the sound was still turned down. Zambendorf stared hard for a moment then said Isn t that Conlon from NASO Massey raised an eyebrow in surprise. You know him I know his face. How come I make it my business to know lots of things. The view on the screen changed to a picture of Saturn with the words TITAN MISSION superposed in large letters along with the GCN logo then followed a shot of the Orion in orbit against a background of part of Titan s disk. Evidently the footage was a replay of a routine newscast from Earth. A woman s voice faded in as Price turned up the sound and the picture changed again this time to a view of an area of cluttered machinery and scrap piled just outside Genoa Base. . . . said that there might be a possibility of salvaging something useful from the remnants of the defunct alien civilization discovered on Titan but most of it must be considered a total write off. In any case the cost of attempting a full scale cleanup operation from Earth would more than offset any benefits that could conceivably be obtained. A good looking aubum haired smartly dressed woman probably in her midforties appeared sitting at a desk facing the camera. She smiled out at the viewers as she turned a sheet of paper in front of her. A disappointment I m afraid for those people who have been hoping for a new Industrial Revolution that would change the lives of all of us here on Earth. But it s still the biggest junkpile in the known universe I m told. So who knows it could turn out to be good news yet for all you scrap metal dealers. Better start submitting your bids. You ll probably have to add a reserve tank to your pickup though. Zambendorf turned a stunned face toward Massey and shook his head disbelievingly. Massey nodded for him to keep watching. The newscaster looked down and scanned quickly over the next sheet. More news about the Taloids the man size walking maintenance robots that have been catching a lot of people s imagination. They see a composite image made up of electronically intensified optical wavelengths in other words ordinary visible light highly amplified and infrared wavelengths or heat according to an MIT professor who has been studying reports from the Orion. The pitviper and boid families of terrestrial snakes employ a similar system apparently but nothing as sensitive as the Taloid version. We ll be talking to Professor Morton Glassner to hear more about that in just a few minutes. . . . Another question that a lot of people have been asking is Can the Taloids think The woman s face vanished and was replaced by a shot of two U.S. soldiers in EV suits facing a Taloid. Although the shot was from Genoa Base nothing of the city was visible in the background only a jumble of derelict machines was visible. The view gave the impression that the Taloid had just emerged from some habitat in a kind of jungle. One of the soldiers was offering something then pulling it away as the Taloid reached for it as if teasing a big metal bear while the second soldier could be seen grinning through his faceplate. Zambendorf wondered how many hours of recordings this particular sequence had been selected from. Well there s no getting away from the fact that they are extraordinary machines the voiceover continued. But then wouldn t we expect to find at least a few cute tricks in machines left behind by an alien civilization that most of our scientists are convinced must have achieved interstellar travel It all depends what you mean by think says well known philosopher and social scientist Johnathan Goodmay in an article in this month s issue of Plato. If you mean the ability to accept and process information and manufacture self improving rules for problem solving based on that information then the answer is yes the Taloids can do that but so can any of the so called smart machine tools in a modem automobile factory an editor transcriber computer or any reasonably proficient chess playing program that learns. The difference is merely one of degree according to Dr. Goodmay and not anything fundamental. But if by think you mean the ability to imagine create aspire to greater things see the world through emotion tinted glasses and all the other things we take for granted when we apply the word to people then the answer is no way. People can externalize aspects of their own thinking and project them into Taloids in much the same way as children can convince themselves that the computers they talk to at home are really alive and understand what the kids are saying. Before Zambendorf could recover from the shock of what he was hearing the picture changed to show himself with Osmond Periera walking along a corridor inside the Orion and disappearing through a doorway. He couldn t remember when the shot had been taken it could have been from any time in the voyage. The commentary resumed Another person who s spending a lot of time looking for answers to the same question is Karl Zambendorf seen here with Dr. Osmond Periera the Orion s principal investigator of the parapsychological sciences. Zambendorf choked over the mouthful of coffee he had been about to swallow the screen showed him apparently discussing experimental procedures and nodding at Periera who was holding a clipboard in front of panels of flashing lights and a computer console. The voice went on After the encouraging results of the experiments performed during the voyage and after arrival at Titan to assess the effectiveness of extrasensory communications away from the terrestrial environment the Austrian psychic and other experts with the mission have been examining the possibility of probing whatever emergent Taloid psyche might exist by means of what are called psychodynamic sympathetic resonances or what amounts to the same thing mind reading. Now Zambendorf was being shown with a set of wires and electrodes taped around his forehead and temples staring with an expression of deep concentration at a wall of equipment racks. That was an old shot from the early part of the voyage. It was a stunt he had pulled to demonstrate how he could alter the readings of a mass spectrometer by changing its magnetic field profile through mind power in fact Thelma had simply kicked the leg of the table supporting the chart recorder and produced an abnormal trace at a moment when everybody s attention had been on Zambendorf. The view switched to one of a Taloid surrounded by electronics equipment and recorders which Zambendorf recognized as part of Dave Crookes setup for capturing Taloid speech and facial patterns at the first meeting in the desert. The two shots had been taken months apart but the continuity of the TV presentation suggested they were closely connected parts of a single process. This is insane Zambendorf protested. I don t know anything about this. I ve never tried any mind reading of Taloids. The commentary went on: Preliminary results were negative however. Zambendorf was unable to detect any trace of the energy patterns that characterize intelligent mental activity a certain degree of which he says he has no trouble picking up even from higher animals such as primates whales and some species of monkeys dogs and cats. Lies Lies Lies Zambendorf shouted. I said no such thing. They re more intelligent than that stupid woman But the scientists out at Titan are not about to give up yet. According to Dr. Periera a whole new technique might have to be developed for tuning into holoptronic minds. In any case even if everything does turn out to be the way it looks at present and there aren t any minds on Titan to tune into nevertheless Zambendorf thinks it might be possible to link human minds into Taloid sensory systems and use them as free moving vehicles for remote perception. The newscaster lowered the sheet and concluded with another smile from the screen There wouldn t that be great send your own Taloid wherever you d like to go and see the world through its eyes. Maybe one day that will turn out to be the regular way of exploring the surface of Titan without any need for a spacesuit . . . and maybe other places too. Who knows Whatever happens I m sure we re in for more exciting developments. She laid the paper aside. And now returning from Titan we move to Sydney Australia where a young man by the name of Clive Drummond is planning to Price stopped the recording. There s more Massey said. But I think you get the gist of it. Zambendorf was nonplussed as he stared at the blank screen. How long has this kind of thing been happening he whispered. About three weeks Massey told him. Before that the media hadn t started systematically developing any particular thematic image of the Taloids. So there s no question it s deliberate None. What about that man Conlon back at NASO and whoever else he s working with Zambendorf asked. If you ve got a direct line they must know that what the public are being told is garbage. You must have told them. . . . Can t they do anything They re trying Massey said. He shrugged. But you know how it is. Zambendorf shook his head. Leaherney Lang all of them . . . they knew. Even while they were talking about oners they knew these distortions were being made. And even though there was no question that I d have to find out sooner or later. Perhaps they were certain they d be able to swing you round if they simply cranked their oner high enough Price said. That is pretty much the way they operate. It fits with the way they think Massey agreed. Zambendorf walked slowly between the two tiers of bunks and turned when he reached the far wall. So what does all this mean he asked. What s behind it all Have you any theories about that Well I don t know that it s anything especially new Massey replied. But the first step toward reducing a nation to colonial status in order to exploit it has always been to dehumanize its inhabitants in the eyes of your own people and The call tone from Zambendorf s personal communicator interrupted. Excuse me he said taking the unit from his pocket and activating it. The miniature screen showed the features of Otto Abaquaan calling from the team s quarters. Yes Otto Zambendorf acknowledged. His choice of phrase indicated to Abaquaan that Zambendorf had company. Have you got a moment Abaquaan asked. Go ahead. Um do you know where Joe is Need to talk to him. I m afraid not. Got any idea where he went Sorry. Oh hell. Too bad huh Send him back if you see him. We need to talk to him. Is that okay I will if I see him. Okay. Zambendorf frowned for a second. Abaquaan wasn t interested in locating Joe Fellburg. His utterances had been structured according to a magician s code in which the mood of each phrase interrogative or indicative along with its initial letter conveyed an alphabetical character. What Zambendorf had read from it was CMLT URGNT which he interpreted as Camelot. Urgent. Abaquaan was telling him that something had come in over the line from Arthur and it couldn t wait. Massey and Price were looking at each other suspiciously. They were magicians too. Zambendorf stared from one to the other and bit his lip uncertainly. Were Massey and he on the same side now Now that Massey had taken Zambendorf into his confidence did he owe it to Massey to do likewise His instincts were to cement the alliance but a lifetime s experience urged caution. And he saw that the same question was written across Massey s face. Their differences were trivial compared to the things they now knew they shared. Zambendorf had to give some tangible sign that he felt the same way. Zambendorf looked down at the screen of the communicator in his hand. I m with Gerry Massey and Vernon Price he said. A lot has happened that would make too long a story to go into now. But you can speak plainly Otto. The team has just acquired two more members. The surprise on Abaquaan s face lasted for just a fraction of a second. He was used to adapting to new situations quickly without having to ask questions. We ve had a call from Arthur and Galileo he said. It s bad news real bad news. Massey gasped disbelievingly. Arthur the Taloid But how Where did you Oh we also have a private communication line that you don t know about Zambendorf told him. He looked back at Abaquaan. What s happened Otto Those fundamentalist fanatics out in the hills the ones that Arthur s soldiers are always having trouble with Abaquaan said. The Druids. Yes what about them They wiped out a whole Genoese patrol and then massacred a larger force that was sent after them Abaquaan said. Putting it mildly Arthur s pretty upset. Zambendorf looked puzzled. That s terrible Otto and of course I sympathize . . but why is it such serious news How does it affect us Because of how they did it Abaquaan replied. They did it with Terran weapons. Someone has started shipping Terran weapons down to Henry and the Paduans and the Paduans are passing them on to the Druids to stir up trouble in Genoa. Arthur says he s had enough of promises and words. He wants something he can defend himself with. If we can t deliver he ll take the deal that Giraud s bunch has been pushing. 27 THE FEATURELESS RED BROWN BALL OF TITAN GREW LARGER AND flattened out into what looked like a solid desert surface from the twelve man flyer Hornet skimming above the aerosol layer where it had leveled out after its descent from orbit. Zambendorf clad in a helmetless EV suit was sitting in the rear cabin brooding silently to himself over the latest events while opposite him Vernon Price gazed spellbound through one of the side ports at the rainbow banded orb of Saturn beyond Titan s rim seemingly floating half submerged in the immense plane of its ring system viewed almost edge on. Sgt. Michael O Flynn had reacted with a singular display of imperturbability and composure when Zambendorf asked for his advice on the best way to go about stealing a vehicle to get down to the surface. Now they re not exactly the kind of thing you d expect people to just walk away from and leave lying around for anyone to help themselves to O Flynn had said. And besides even if you did get your hands on one there s nothing you could do with it. A surface lander needs a minimum crew of four all highly trained and it couldn t take off without a preflight preparation routine by a regular ground team. I m not talking about a full blown orbital shuttle for God s sake Zambendorf had replied. But what about a medium haul personnel flyer one of the small ones Couldn t you pull one of those out of service and list it as being withdrawn for maintenance or something But those are just surface flyers. They don t make descents from orbit. They could here at a pinch Zambendorf had insisted. With Titan s low gravity you could use one as a miniature lander ... if you were to ignore certain sections of NASO flight regulations and allowed the International Space Transportation Regulatory Commission s safety margins for wing loading and thermal stress to slip a little. Hmm . . . you seem to know what you re talking about I see. Now where would somebody like you have found out about things like that I m sitting here asking meself. Never mind. The question is can you do it Mike Well maybe I can and then again maybe I can t ... But supposing for the moment that I could it would have to be for the hardware only you understand. I m not in the headhunting business. You d have to find your own pilot. I think I can take care of that. O Flynn had sounded surprised. Oh who . . . and with what qualifications Former combat maneuver instructor with the Air Force Suborbital Bomb Wing two years specializing in high altitude attack and evasion tactics. Is that good enough Begorrah you re kidding Someone on your team Yes. Let me see now ... it would have to be Joe the big black fella. Is that who it is No. Who then Don t worry about it Zambendorf replied his eyes twinkling. Anyway you wouldn t believe me if I told you. You d be surprised at some of the talent we ve got between us in our little outfit. It had taken little imagination to see that supplying Terran weapons to the inherently belligerent Paduans would completely destabilize the situation between Padua and its neighboring states and before very much longer the more distant ones too. Other Taloid nations would seek similar weapons to secure themselves against the threat of Paduan aggression as indeed Genoa desired to do already and then others would feel threatened as those that hadn t reequipped their forces found themselves being intimidated by the ones that had. Eventually all the Taloid states would be forced to follow suit and in the process they would be progressively reduced to a condition of vassal dependency on Earth which would thus be able to negotiate separately with each on terms of its own choosing. It was an old familiar pattern which earlier centuries on Earth had seen repeated many times over. Massey had composed a message summarizing the main points and had it transmitted to Conlon via his private NASO channel. Eight hours later a reply stated that Conlon had confronted some of the senior NASO officials with the allegations but their version of the facts as advised from GSEC s political liaison office in Washington was very different. It said in effect that Padua was a peaceful nation whose leaders aspired toward Western democratic ideals and that the limited aid being given by the mission had been requested by the Paduan authorities to combat incursions upon their territory from Genoa an illegally imposed rebel regime and to relieve Paduan religious minorities who were being persecuted within the Genoese borders. The decision to grant the request was seen as a goodwill gesture that would help establish cordial and cooperative future relationships. The situation back on Earth was still confused apparently and would take a long time to resolve itself especially in view of the long turnaround of communications to Saturn. Zambendorf had not been prepared to wait. We re not going to get any sense out of them for days he had told Massey. You d better stay on the line here and keep in touch as things develop. I m going down to Titan to talk to Arthur. What do you think you re going to do even if you manage to find some way of getting down there Massey had asked. I have no idea Gerry but there s no way I m going to sit up here with this kind of thing going on. Zambendorf s thoughts were interrupted by Clarissa Eidstadt s summons over the intercom from the forward compartment. Karl can you get up here a minute We ve got problems. Price turned away from the port and watched uneasily as Zambendorf stood up stepped carefully round the team s recently completed second transmogrifier box and moved forward to the open doorway at the front of the cabin. Clarissa glanced back at him from the captain s seat while in the copilot s position Otto Abaquaan was flipping switches frantically in front of an array of data displays and readouts that were obviously unfamiliar to him. It s no good Abaquaan said shaking his head. I can t get the midrange to scale and the monitor recall has aborted. This isn t making any sense. What s wrong Zambendorf asked. We re losing it Clarissa said. There was a problem in fixing the flyer s position from the electronic navigation grid transmitted from the satellites that the Orion had deployed shortly after arriving at Titan. Clarissa had warned that it might happen without an experienced copilot navigator to calibrate the on board reference system to the shifting satellite pattern as the flyer descended. We know we re somewhere near where we need to go down through the muck but we don t have a fine tuned fix. No go Zambendorf asked looking at Abaquaan. Abaquaan spread his hands. Sorry Karl. I thought I had it down okay when we went through the routine up on the ship but I guess it needs more practice. It was worth a try Clarissa murmured. It s not your fault there wasn t more time Otto Zambendorf said and turned to Clarissa. How serious is it Can you take care of it Sure but not while I m flying this thing too. The easiest thing to do would be to put down someplace and reinitiate the full sequence on the ground without the added complication of having to compensate for being on a moving platform. Once we re locked into the grid at a fixed point I can update the inertial system so that it will supply the drift onsets automatically. How long would you need To get everything right and double checked aw . . . say an hour. But we need to land now while we still know we re roughly in the right place. If we leave it much longer we could wind up coming through the blanket anywhere over Titan in the dark without a ground datum. Then the way to Genoa would be anybody s guess. You d better take us down then Zambendorf agreed. Okay. Go back sit down and buckle up. Zambendorf ducked back into the rear cabin and lowered himself into the seat opposite Price. We re going down. Trouble An unscheduled stop to synch the on board nav system with the satellite grid. The red brown desert outside began rising to meet them and as it came nearer it was transformed slowly from smooth rounded hummocks into jagged peaks of muddy cloud bottomless canyons of darkness falling away between. Cliffs and precipices of vapor reared up ahead then were towering above on either side and flashing past at greater and greater speed . . . and then the stars vanished from the overhead ports as the flyer plunged into darkness. Zambendorf felt the seat pressing against him as Clarissa flattened the craft against Titan s thickening atmosphere to shed velocity. The structure vibrated and pounded in protest as the stresses climbed above the limits it had been built to endure. Wing sensors reading nine twelve to ten three with orange two on six Abaquaan s voice shouted through the open door up front. Belly and underwing skin temperatures rising fast. Forward retros five degrees out and down sixteen both ramp to three thousand and sustain Clarissa snapped. Zambendorf was thrown forward against his seat harness loud juddering noises came from somewhere under the floor. Across the aisle Price was tightlipped and saying nothing. In at ten ramp factor five Abaquaan s voice reported. Coming up to eleven over glide. Gimme plus three on dive easy. Dive brake increased three degrees. Are we going to make it Zambendorf called out. What a question Clarissa shouted back. You have to learn not to put up with any nonsense from these machines. If those guys up there can get a flying eggbeater all the way to Titan I can sure as hell get this thing the rest of the way to the surface. Then they were losing height rapidly again and the flyer banked as Clarissa put it into a long sustained turn that would slow them down without altering their general position. They were now well below the aerosol layer and the view outside was black in every direction with a few ghostly streaks of methane cloud showing faint white below. See if you can get a ground radar profile Clarissa said to Abaquaan. I don t want to go too low in that mess on visual. Try and find us somewhere high and flat a plateau or something. Abaquaan fiddled with a console to one side of him muttered a few profanities beneath his breath and tried something else. Set the HG centerline to blue zero Clarissa said glancing sideways. Then use the coarse control to lock the scanbase and select your profile analysis from the menu on S three. What ... Oh yeah okay . . . Got it. Abaquaan took in the information that appeared on one of his screens. Looks like we re at altitude thirty five thousand meters ground speed three zero eight five kilometers per hour reducing at twenty eight meters per second. Mountainous terrain with highest peaks approximately eight hundred meters above mean surface level. Any flat summits Clarissa asked. The higher ones all seem pretty grim. There are some below five hundred that look better. Gimme a slave of your scope on screen two. You ve got it. The flyer s circling became tighter as it continued to slow and lose altitude. Okay prime a couple of seventy FV three flares and set them for proximity triggered airbursts at fifty meters. Then activate the underbelly searchlight and give me a vertical optical scan on screen one Clarissa instructed after studying the display for a few seconds. I m going to have a look at that big flat topped guy between the two thinner ones. See which one I mean I see it Abaquaan said looking at his own screen. Flares primed for proximity bursts at five zero and five zero meters belly light activated vertical optical scan selected and routed to pilot s screen one. The flyer slowed to hover motionless in the gloom and a few seconds later two brilliant white lights blossomed a short distance below it revealing the squat hilltop that its radar fingers had probed invisibly. The summit was reasonably smooth free of cracks and fissures and uncluttered by boulders or loose debris. The searchlight came on to pick out a landing spot and hold it in steady illumination and then the flyer began to sink slowly downward once more to complete the final few hundred feet of its descent. What manner of omen is this Groork whispered fearfully to himself as he sat petrified staring up at two radiant orbs of purest violet that had appeared in the sky above the mountaintop moments after the voices had gone quiet. By the Lifemaker he gasped. A flying creature similar to the one he had seen over Xerxeon but glowing with blinding light and much larger was floating over the mountain above the orbs. It was sinking slowly toward the ground balanced on a column of violet radiance. The orbs were descending steadily too all the time keeping ahead of the creature as if to clear its way harbingers of light sent on before the heavenly beast to conduct it from its sacred realm beyond the sky. The creature descended out of sight and shortly afterward a halo of violet light appeared and continued to glow softly among the rocks at the summit. What did it mean Was it a sign for Groork to ascend the mountain or a warning for him to turn back Would he risk being smitten for presumptuous arrogance if he went forward or smitten for self serving disobedience and cowardice if he went back For a fleeting moment he wished his brother Thirg were present blasphemer or not Thirg s unholy methods of argument could prove useful in situations like this. And then Groork remembered the message he had been given at the time of his being commanded to leave Xerxeon: Soon he would be told of the path that it was the Lifemaker s will for him to follow. The ways of the Lifemaker were sometimes mysterious and devious but they were never misleading or capricious. So now it seemed the moment had come. With a mixture of wonder trepidation and excitement rising within him at every step Groork urged his mount off the trail he had been following and began to pick his way upward. When the smoother terrain gave way to steeper ice crags and broken rock he dismounted near some mountain scrub growing by a stream tethered his animal to a bar of a conduit support trellis beside a clump of tubing winders and climbed on foot toward the mystical light beckoning to him from the summit. So what does Gerry think he can do about it Zambendorf asked. Vernon Price shrugged in his seat across the cabin. He s not sure yet. What can you do Try and get the message across to as many Taloids as you can about what s behind it all and why maybe... Then perhaps enough of them will wise up sufficiently to throw out the leaders who d go along with Giraud s deal. In a word you educate them I guess. Zambendorf shook his head. It s no good Vernon. It won t work. Price shuffled his feet awkwardly as if deep down he already knew that. How come he asked anyway. Because the Taloids are too much like people they believe what they want to believe and close their eyes to what they don t want to believe. They need to think the world is the way they d like it to be because having to face up to the reality that it isn t would be too uncomfortable. So they carry on pretending because it makes them feel better. Price frowned for a second. I m not sure I see the connection. When you look around at the leaders people follow and take orders from unquestioningly what do you see For the most part you can t say that the leaders are where they are because of any particular talent or ability can you most of them aren t really very bright when all s said and done. In many cases their only claim to exceptionality is their abnormal gullibility and extraordinary capacity for self delusion. But the people don t see it. The leader image that exists in the minds of the followers is something quite different. The person that the followers follow is a fantasy that they manufacture in their own imaginations which they can project onto anyone who ll stand up and play the role. All that a leader needs is the gall to stand up and tell them he s got what they re looking for. They ll believe it because they need to. They need to believe they re in capable hands Price said taking the point. Truth isn t the important thing. The important thing is to be certain. It didn t sound as if he was hearing it for the first time. To have the illusion of certainty anyway Zambendorf agreed. If they just know their place and do as they re told life will be very cosy and uncomplicated. To feel secure they need their authority figures. They d be lost without them hopelessly helplessly and traumatically. They talk about being free but the thought of real freedom terrifies them. They couldn t handle it ... not until they learn how in their own time anyhow. He raised his head to look at Price. And that s why trying to tell them they re being taken doesn t do any good. Even if they do get rid of whoever is selling them up the river today tomorrow they ll be flocking after somebody else who s just as bad and quite likely worse. They wouldn t have learned a thing. A few seconds of silence passed broken only by the voices of Clarissa and Abaquaan reciting numbers to each other in the nose compartment. So what do you do Price asked at last. About the Taloids I mean. We can t just wash our hands of the whole business and do nothing. Zambendorf frowned down at the floor and sighed. First we have to accept reality as it is he replied slowly. And the facts are that you can t turn people whose beliefs are based on ignorance and superstition into rational objective thinkers overnight. You d be wasting your time. They don t have the concepts. The only way they ll get rid of corrupt leaders is when they stop listening to them not because of any slogans that you or I might have taught them to memorize but because of reasons they ve worked out for themselves and understand. You re right the answer is education but unfortunately there isn t any instant brand of it that you can get by adding water. Price thought for a moment. Well if they re going to go on being irrational for a while anyway maybe the best thing you can do is give them some kind of harmless substitute to get them by in the meantime he said. You should know what I m talking about. It s what you ve been doing for years isn t it. Well it took you long enough to figure that out Zambendorf grunted. Price worried at a tooth with his thumbnail and eyed Zambendorf dubiously for a second or two longer then looked away and stared at the far wall. Suddenly he got up and crossed the cabin to peer through one of the ports. What is it Zambendorf asked turning in his seat. I thought I saw something moving just outside the light out there. . . . Maybe not. I don t know. Zambendorf rose to his feet and moved over to the port to look for himself. After a few seconds he called in the direction of the forward cabin door Can you turn on an outside flood Clarissa port side forward Why We think there might be something moving out there. A moment later a cone of light stabbed from the craft and etched the figure of the Taloid clearly against the darkness. It was motionless on its knees its hands clasped upon its chest and its head bowed in humble reverence. 28 ARRGH Groork raised his arms to shield his eyes as the shining creature s side opened and more blinding violet light poured from within. Clearly this appointment had been preordained and marked the moment that the Lifemaker had chosen to make known to Groork the purpose for which the whole of his life so far had been the preparation. A chorus of voices sang thunderously from a bulge on the creature s back rising to a crescendo as if to announce the arrival of some great presence and then faded. Groork moved his fingers from an eye to look . . . then gasped and raised his head hesitantly in awe and terror. A figure had appeared barely visible in silhouette against the glare from the shining creature s interior. Its outline took on form and substance as it emerged a broad round headed angel with a face that shone as fire wreathed in glowing vapors sent down from the celestial realm as the Lifemaker s personal emissary to Groork. Oh get up off your knees you fool Zambendorf said irritably. The screen of the transmogrifier that he was holding displayed REMOVE UP FROM YOUR KNEES. YOU ARE JOKING. Delete Zambendorf told it with a sigh. Substitute: Rise up. Arise the angel boomed and advanced slowly a few paces. It held a frond from some strange tree that Groork didn t recognize. A second angel had appeared behind it standing in the opening in the shining creature s side. There Vernon Zambendorf said into his helmet mike. Your first Taloid at close quarters. The Taloid was wearing a tunic of woven wire a thick cloaklike garment and a dark cap of some rubbery looking material. As it climbed slowly to its feet it picked up a staff of metal tubing that it had laid by its side. It s . . . amazing Price s voice replied haltingly. It s so different from watching recordings up in the ship. There was a second or two of silence. What do you think it s doing up here I ve no idea . . . attracted by our lights and the flyer s thermal radiation probably. From some of the things Galileo said I wouldn t be surprised if it thinks we re gods or something. It s uncanny Price said staring. I am Zambendorf Zambendorf said activating the transmogrifier again and pointing to himself then he instructed the instrument: Get name. I am the Wearer the angel announced as the computers returned the Taloid pulse sequence that had been equated to Zambendorf the Wearer of the sacred Symbol of Life Groork decided. Then the angel asked What is your name Groork known as Hearer of Voices son of Methgark and Coorskeria and brother ofThirg Groork answered. He was surprised that the angel didn t know. No too long. Shorter please the angel said. The celestial voices were rising and falling in the background again. They seemed to be saying Light and awe. Light and awe . . . Or was it Send light and awe Groork frowned as he tried to make sense of it. The angel was still standing and waiting. Why wouldn t the angel accept his name What were the voices trying to say And then Groork understood. This was his moment of spiritual rebirth which would be symbolized by his being rebaptized with a new name. The angel wished him to repeat the name by which the Lifemaker wanted him to be known from now on and which the voices were telling him. Enlightener he exclaimed as the inspiration struck. I am called the Enlightener NAME OBTAINED the transmogrifier screen reported. ENGLISH MATCH REQUIRED. Zambendorf thought for a moment and then said Moses. Spell M O S E S. Moses the screen repeated. Okay. I shall go forth from this place as the Lifemaker commands and enlighten the world the Enlightener declared his voice rising in fervor. I shall destroy the blasphemers and smite down the unbelievers who bow themselves not before the holy words that I shall bring unto them. I shall Stop Thou jabberest. Makest not sense any. More simple. Shorter please. It wasn t the angel that spoke but the frond that the angel was holding the Enlightener realized with a start the angel was teaching the frond to speak. He stared in wonder. Then he realized that it was a miracle to show that the angel was truly a messenger from the Lifemaker. That explained its questions: The frond was like a child and obviously couldn t be expected to comprehend all the complexities of speech in an instant. My task now he said to it making his phrases short and simple. Talk to world. Kill all Lifemaker s enemies. Talk to world means talk to robeings the frond asked. Yes the Enlightener answered. MOSES JOB AT PRESENT TALKING TO TALOIDS KILLING HERETICS the screen informed Zambendorf. Zambendorf shook his head. No No Killing each other is not the way. You have to understand that The screen offered NOT KILLING EACH OTHER IS NOT A GOOD METHOD. HIGHLY PROBABLE THAT YOU UNDERSTAND. Damn Zambendorf muttered beneath his breath. Delete. Substitute: Do not kill each other. Imperative that you understand. Phrase 1 DO NOT KILL. Phrase 2 IMPERATIVE THAT command Oh hell . . . Delete phrase two Zambendorf ordered. And the frond said Thou shall not kill. Clarissa Zambendorf called into his radio. How are you doing in there Nearly through. Why Is there any chance Otto can come out here He s more used to this damn transmogrifier thing than I am. I m done. I ll be out as soon as I get a helmet on Abaquaan s voice said. Meanwhile the Enlightener was standing transfixed in wonderment. He had heard the divine command. But what new wisdom was the Lifemaker revealing Was His power so strong and invincible that His faithful need have no fear of enemies Were heretics blasphemers and unbelievers not to be punished The Enlightener stared at the frond in the angel s hand and puzzled over what the utterance meant. And then slowly his inner eye was opened. What did killing another robeing signify apart from brutality and ignorance and an inability to persuade by other means It required no learning or schooling no discipline and development of self no comprehension of worth or any aspiration to higher things. The lowest savages in the farthest reaches of the swamplands south of Serethgin were capable of that. They knew of no other way to settle their differences. Truly this was a sacred moment that would be recorded in the Scribings and this spot a holy place that would be visited by pilgrims and penitents for all the twelve brights that were left to come until the world ended. The moment should be symbolized by an act that would immortalize it the Enlightener thought and the spot marked as the selected place of the angels coming. He looked around him and saw a smooth flat rock obviously placed there to serve his purpose. He moved over to it and with the tip of his staff inscribed slowly and solemnly near the top of the slab the words: THOU SHALT NOT KILL. When he had finished he looked up and saw that a third angel had appeared. What more of me does the Lifemaker command he asked meekly. Abaquaan took the transmogrifier from Zambendorf. He seems pretty impressed by the message he said. Maybe it s a new idea to these guys. He wants to know if you ve got any more of em. They mustn t believe anyone who tries to tell them they re worthless or inferior Zambendorf said. But neither must they believe they are superior to any of the neighboring nations. All the nations must accept each other as equal partners and learn to cooperate in building a better future for all. After some exchanges with the transmogrifier Abaquaan had reduced this to something the machine could accept. And the frond spoke once more. The Enlightener listened then added the numeral 1 before his previous inscription and wrote underneath it: 2 . THOU ART THY NEIGHBOR S EQUAL. HELP THY NEIGHBOR AND THY NEIGHBOR SHALL HELP THEE. The Enlightener was being enlightened as he would bring enlightenment to others. With just a few simple words the Lifemaker had opened up a vision of a whole new world that could come to be a world in which all robeings everywhere would prosper and help one another grow strong in a spirit of compassion cooperation tolerance and understanding. All would be brothers like Thirg. A new era would come to pass in which killing and violence would be renounced and universal love among robeings would prevail a stronger deeper and more enduring force to shape the world than anything ever conceived previously. What s he doing Price asked as the Taloid finished scratching a second row below the marks that it had made on a large ice slab with its staff. Looks like he doesn t carry a notebook Abaquaan replied. I guess we must be saying the right things. Price stared at the Taloid for a few seconds longer. I ll be back out in a second he said and disappeared into the open outer door of the flyer s airlock. I m all through Clarissa s voice informed them. How s it with Rin Tin Tin out there We need a few more minutes Zambendorf said. He switched back to local to address Abaquaan. They shouldn t blindly accept anything that others tell them to believe. Facts are the only guide to what is true and facts can t be changed by wishing them to be otherwise. The Enlightener wrote finally: 3 . BEWARE THE TONGUES OF DECEIVERS. LET THY WORDS BE KEEN HEEDERS OF TRUTH FOR TRUTH IS NO HEEDER OF WORDS. It went on until the Taloid had written several more rows and then Price reappeared carrying a video camera copier and a light duty general purpose plasma torch from the flyer s tool locker. What are you doing Zambendorf asked. Saving him the trouble of having to come all the way back up here if he forgets any of it Price replied. Also I m collecting samples of Taloid handscript. He used the camera to transmit several shots of the slab into the flyer s computer storage system and then satisfied that a record of the original script had been preserved carefully traced over the markings with the torch to melt a deeper clearer impression into the ice. After taking several shots of this too he directed one of them to the recorder s local hardcopier and a few seconds later a sheet of Titan duty plastic was ejected into his gauntlet and quickly rigidified in the low temperature surroundings. You know Vernon sometimes I get the impression you re too sentimental Abaquaan remarked. Maybe Price agreed cheerfully. He looked around picked up one of the smaller ice flakes that lay all over the summit and used the torch in fan mode to melt its top surface all over. Then he pressed the plastic down onto it and waited a few seconds for the flake to refreeze welding the ice and the plastic inseparably together. Finally as an afterthought he melted some extra slivers of ice and allowed the water to flow over the face of the tablet sealing the plastic beneath a thin protective layer of glasslike ice. The result was quite pleasing. He held it out toward the Taloid. Here you are Moses old buddy something for you to hang on the wall when you get home. We d better wrap this up Abaquaan said. Time s getting on. Otto s right Zambendorf agreed. Happy now Vernon I guess so. It just seemed ... oh like a nice thing to do. The Enligbtener gazed down in wonder at the holy Tablet lying in his arms still glowing faintly the Lifemaker s commandments entrusted to him the Enlightener as the Lifemaker s messenger chosen to carry the sacred Word to the robeing race. There was nothing he could say. The emotions surging within him were too violent and confusing for him to be able even to think coherently. Farewell Enlightener the frond said. Our work awaits. Do not remain here now. Good fortune to thee. The Enlightener looked up and saw the frond bearing angel turn away and return into the shining creature. Then the second angel the one that had caused the living plant to bring forth the Tablet written in fire and sealed inside the solid rock followed. Finally the angel that had appeared first of all backed slowly to the glowing opening raised an arm in salutation and was swallowed up by the light. Moments later the opening closed and the cone of radiance that the shining creature had been emitting from a point just above vanished suddenly. Take thee hence from this place Enlightener the creature roared or thou wilt surely be burned. As if in a trance clutching the Tablet securely under one arm and taking his staff in the other the Enlightener retreated from the summit. Only when the creature was lost to view behind the intervening rocks did his faculties begin functioning again. Still in a daze he retraced his steps downward to the stream. Indeed thou wert meant to bring me to this place he murmured to his steed as he untethered it and remounted. Now may we rest easy in our minds that Meerkulla has received many blessings in return for his sacrifice. He turned the horse round and descended the slopes below. Only when he was almost at the trail did he see Captain Horazzorgio and the company of Kroaxian Royal Guard waiting for him. According to Clarissa they were between Padua and Genoa at a point almost at the edge of the desert in which the first Terran Taloid meeting had occurred in fact not that far at all from the very spot at which it had taken place. Therefore the cruising time to Genoa would only be about fifteen minutes. Things hadn t worked out too badly at all Zambendorf thought to himself as he stood in the cockpit doorway and watched the takeoff routine. Any sign of Moses down there Price asked curiously from the cabin behind. Abaquaan brought up a series of infrared views on the copilot s scanner screen until one showed a bright dot on the lower part of a broad slope some distance below the summit on the side of the mountain down which Moses had disappeared. He switched in the telescopic viewer and produced a large clear image. He s got a horse Abaquaan said. Must have left it lower down someplace. He s riding a horse back down the mountain with the slab you gave him under his arm Zambendorf said over his shoulder. Want to come and see Price moved forward beside Zambendorf and studied the screen for a few seconds. Moses had stopped and seemed to be staring down the hill at something. Abaquaan switched back to a low resolution image which showed more dots clustered together not far away below. A close up revealed them to be more Taloids also mounted. I wonder who they are Price murmured. Do you think Moses might be in some kind of trouble down there I don t know Zambendorf replied slowly. He sounded concerned. After a second or two he turned his head toward Clarissa and said Take it down lower. Let s have a closer look at what s going on. I have no fear of thee now Horazzorgio Defender of False Faith the Enlightener called down the hillside his voice loud and firm and his eyes glinting brightly. For verily have I climbed the mountain and seen the angels and I return now to be known henceforth as the Enlightener who has been chosen to carry the Lifemaker s true Word to all comers of the world and bring a new faith of love and brothership to all robeings. Heed my words well Horazzorgio for they are indeed His the Lifemaker s. He held high a slab of ice that he was carrying. Swear your allegiance now to the true faith of which I speak and renounce thy false creeds and thy transgressions shall be forgiven thee. Dost thou so swear Horazzorgio Uncertain if he could believe his ears Horazzorgio was still too astonished to reply when he saw the sky dragon rising from the mountaintop in the background. His imagers dulled in cold fear and his body trembled. Twice now he had come to Xerxeon in pursuit of one or the other of this pair of accursed brothers and twice they had eluded him. And now just as before the dragons of the sky beings were appearing in the sky to protect them. He wasn t about to mess with dragons a second time he decided. No way was he going through that again . . . not for anything or anybody. Horazzorgio jumped down from his saddle and fell to his knees. I swear O Enlightener he shouted. Horazzorgio has found the true faith I believe I believe Truly thou speakest the Lifemaker s Word. What is thy wish Chosen One Thy servant awaits thy command. The troopers behind were looking at each other in amazement and murmuring among themselves. What sorcery has this hearer worked Horrazorgio on his knees This is surely a miracle. What wondrous faith is this of which the hearer speaks I see no miracle. Then the flier swooped down low over the riders released two flares turned on its searchlight and circled slowly to observe the scene. All around Horazzorgio metal figures were hurling themselves to the ground and adding to a rising chorus of terrified voices. We believe We believe Behold the Enlightener the Chosen One Spare us sinners O Dragon. We repent We repent Even the Enlightener was astounded by the efficacy of his own words. All this and with such economy of effort he murmured to his horse as he stared disbelievingly. I must truly be inspired. What s going on down there Clarissa demanded totally bemused. Karl what in hell did you say to that guy Price was looking worried. Why are they all falling off their horses he asked. Are they okay What s happening to them They look as if they re worshipping Moses Abaquaan said incredulously. He s waving that videocopy you gave him. Zambendorf had gone very quiet. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he continued staring at the screen. At last he said in a faraway voice They re all dressed very similarly which suggests they re soldiers. And this is a part of Padua isn t it. So Clarissa asked. Galileo says that the Paduan horse guards are among the most zealous and fanatical soldiers anywhere on this part of Titan Zambendorf replied. Yet we ve just demolished a whole squadron of them . . . and without a single one of the weapons that Arthur is yelling that he has to have which we d have a hard job getting our hands on anyway even if we thought it was the right way for him to go. Silence fell for a few seconds while the others absorbed what he had said. At last Price asked him Are you thinking what I m thinking Zambendorf frowned rubbed his beard and looked back at the screen. Believe it or not but I ve absolutely no idea Vernon he replied candidly. I do have a strange feeling however that we might just have stumbled on the answer to Arthur s problem with the Druids. 29 AT ONE END OF A SPECIALLY CLEARED AREA THAT STRETCHED THE full length of the walled grounds behind Kleippur s residence the Carthogian infantry sergeant lay prone with a captured Waskorian projectile hurier fitted snugly against his shoulder and one arm partly extended to support its length. He sighted along its top tube at the first of the red disks along the far wall aimed carefully and squeezed the small firing lever with a finger of his other hand. The hurier barked and kicked vigorously and in the same instant most of the red disk at the far end of the grounds disappeared. The sergeant repeated the process rapidly while Kleippur and Dornvald watched grimly with a small group of Carthogian officers and military advisers. In short order a small ice boulder exploded a piece of outer wall cut from an organic building disintegrated into pulp and two sets of standard issue Carthogian body armor mounted on full size dummies at the end of the line were reduced to shreds. Dornvald signaled to the far end of the grounds and soldiers who had been standing well back from the line of fire moved forward to collect the target plates. There can be no protection against this Lofbayel whispered to Thirg who was looking on numbly. Those soldiers were doomed from the moment they set out to pursue the Waskorians. The outcome was a foregone conclusion. Truly Thirg agreed. Just as Horazzorgio and the Kroaxians were doomed from the moment they chose to set foot in the Meracasine. And now the whole of Carthogia is surely doomed. Lumian weapons such as these which a Carthogian raiding party led by Dornvald had seized deep inside Waskorian territory had been the cause of the disasters that had befallen the Carthogians recently in rapid succession. A routine border patrol had failed to return and the force sent to look for it had been almost annihilated in a Waskorian ambush. Then the Waskorians had attacked a border fort which fell after putting up a stiff fight. A small band of survivors escaped and managed to join up with a relief column advancing from Menassim under the command of a General Yemblayen. Kleippur had ordered Yemblayen to halt and avoid further engagements until the reason for the sudden Waskorian invincibility was better understood. The most worrisome aspect of the unexpected Waskorian successes was that the Lumian weapons must have come from the Kroaxians with whom the Lumians were known to have made contact. If the Waskorians were taking over the border zone as preparation for an all out invasion from Kroaxia and if the whole of the regular Kroaxian army had been equipped with firepower as devastating as that being demonstrated behind Kleippur s residence then Carthogia wouldn t last another bright. Kleippur s social experiment would be over night would fall over an Age of Reason that had barely begun to dawn and everything that Thirg and Lofbayel had sought to escape would ensnare them once again. What is your opinion Pellimiades Kleippur asked the technical advisor who was examining another sample of Waskorian weaponry with an artisan s keen eye. Pellimiades shook his head dubiously. Such detail and precision are only to be found growing naturally upon this world he replied. No work of any craftsman that I have seen nor any of which I have heard tell could remotely approach it. If this is Lumian workmanship then the Lumians could well be lifemakers indeed. You can offer no imitation however crude nor any other means by which our soldiers might hope to compete on equal terms Dornvald asked. Pellimiades shook his head again. None General. Two soldiers arrived at a run from the far end of the grounds and presented four target plates. The first had the center of its red disk completely blown away the second was torn into a tight cluster of overlapping holes offset to one side of the disk the third was peppered with a pattern of more widely scattered holes and the fourth was much like the first. Kleippur drew a long heavy intake over his coolant vanes and shook his head gravely. We have no choice he said. Our only chance is to accept the terms which the Merehant Lumians offered us originally. If we cannot supply comparable armaments of our own then we must obtain theirs and if taming forests for Lumians is the price we must pay then so be it. This has become a matter of survival. He turned to Lyokanor the army s senior intelligence officer. Assemble the Cabinet to agree what shall be the form of our message. We will convey it to the Lumian merchant princes by way of the inquirers who still occupy the Lumian camp. At once sir Lyokanor replied and hurried away. We will proceed to the Council Chamber and await the others there Kleippur said. Our first task must be to arm every able bodied citizen as best we can in case the Kroaxians invade and to agree on tactics for holding out until we begin receiving Lumian aid. The times ahead will be hard ones I fear. Thirg felt dejected as he and Lofbayel followed the rest of the party across the rear courtyard toward the house. Kleippur with his usual pragmatic acceptance was devoting his efforts to making the best of the situation as it existed and not wasting time and energy on futile accusations or complaints. But it was Thirg who had persuaded him that the Wearer was sincere and who had talked him into heeding the Wearer s treacherous words. It was clear now that the whole episode involving the Wearer had been a Lumian ploy to keep Carthogia unsuspecting and inactive while negotiations were concluded with Kroaxia the start of a process that would eventually bring all the robeing nations under the Lumian heel. The Lumian strategy to attain that goal had been cold calculated ruthless and efficient and its implementation seemed so practiced that Kleippur suspected the whole technique to have been perfected long ago used perhaps for the enslavement of dozens or even dozen dozens of worlds. But whatever the truth of that there could be no stopping the process now. Better a slave state than no state at all the main task now was to ensure the survival of Carthogia. Worst of all Thirg had placed all his personal trust in the Wearer and had no alternative now but to admit that he had been betrayed cruelly. That bewildered him the most. He had never been more sure of anything in his life than of the special relationship which he had thought he and the Wearer shared a relationship based on a mutual understanding of the power of mind and reason that transcended differences in language race form and even world of origin. Each had recognized a common quality in the other that reduced all their differences striking as they seemed at first glance to no more than trifling superficialities indicating or so Thirg had hoped the existence of a bond that could unite all the unknown forms of life and mind that existed across the countless worlds above the sky. Truly inquiring minds everywhere had more in common than divided them and could work together regardless of what they were or where they came from just as the true inquirers from Kroaxia and Carthogia could work together without cognizance of the borders between their nations. Lumian ways would spread across Robia and bring an end to the reign of ignorance superstition and fear no longer would beliefs be imposed by dictate or intimidation . . . and instead knowledge and reason would prevail. Or so Thirg had believed. But the Wearer had deceived him and taken advantage of his trust. All of the promises and reassurances had been as devious and as self serving as the practiced rhetoric of a trained prosecutor in the court of the High Council of Kroaxia. It seemed then that the appeal of reason was not so universal after all possibly it was as rare among the worlds beyond the sky as was Kleippur among Robia s rulers and the domain of reason as small a portion of the universe as Carthogia was of Robia. Thirg had to concede that he knew of no law of nature which said it had to be otherwise. Therefore he told himself partly in consolation perhaps it was a mistake to feel he had been wronged for the concept of wrongness was surely subjective an expression of the limits that the majority of robeings placed upon desirable behavior within robeing society as judged through robeing eyes on the basis of robeing teaching and experience. No valid basis could exist for extrapolating identical or even comparable ethical codes to beings from other worlds. So no compelling evidence could lead Thirg to conclude that the Wearer had deliberately wronged him Thirg s behavior might simply have been considered hopelessly naive and infantile by Lumian standards. But the thought didn t make him feel very much better. He was still bitterly disappointed. They climbed some shallow steps to the rear terrace of the main building and were about to enter the hallway outside the Council Chamber when the sentries at one of the courtyard s side entrances opened the gate to admit a mounted messenger. The messenger s steed crossed the yard at a gallop and halted below the terrace. Kleippur who had been about to enter the door looked back over his shoulder then turned and strode to the head of the steps followed by Dornvald while the entourage parted to let them through. Speak Kleippur said to the messenger. What is your news Tidings from General Yemblayen the messenger replied his words coming fast with urgency. The Waskorians have crossed our lines and are heading toward Menassim. Alarmed murmurs broke out among the others on the terrace. How many and how armed Dornvald snapped. Was there a battle Where and what were our losses What is the condition of Yemblayen s force The messenger shook his head. Your pardon sir but you misunderstand. There has been no battle. General Yemblayen opened his lines to allow the Waskorians free passage. They have agreed willingly to travel under Carthogian escort and are approaching Menassim peacefully led by their prophet Ezimbial. Ezimbial . . . leading them peacefully Kleippur stared in disbelief. Have you been imbibing uranium salts messenger Tis true tis true the messenger insisted. They are seized by a new faith that renounces all war and killings. They speak of Carthogians as brothers and are proceeding to the Lumian camp to return the Lumian weapons which the Waskorians say they no longer have use for. A frown darkened Dornvald s face. They are heading toward Menassim with their Lumian weapons It is a trick What madness could have possessed Yemblayen The Waskorians have entrusted the weapons to their escorts and bear no other arms. Kleippur stared for a few seconds longer then shook his head helplessly: New faith . . . Renouncing war Where did this come from Do you know anything more The Waskorians speak of a Divine One whom they call Enlightener who was brought down into their land by shining angels from the sky to preach the Lifemaker s commandments to the world the messenger answered. He came with disciples some of them former Kroaxian cavalry troopers others are from Xerxeon where all the villagers have been converted. Chief among the disciples is a baptizer called the Renamer who was previously Captain Horazzorgio of the Kroaxian Royal Guard. Dornvald gasped. Horazzorgio a baptizer What kind of miracleworker is this Enlightener Indeed the Waskorians tell of wondrous miracles that accompanied the Enlightener s coming the messenger said. Of fires that burned in the sky rocks that melted streams that boiled objects that levitated and holy dragons bearing shining angels from above. Dornvald s eyes twinkled suddenly at the mention of dragons. And what of our forward scouts and observers he asked. What have they had to say about all these miracles and dragons The messenger remained expressionless. Nothing sir. But many reports were received of what sounds like the same Lumian flying vehicle being very active in the areas where the miracles were supposed to have occurred and at about the same times. I see Dornvald said. He stepped back from the balustrade and turned to catch Kleippur s eye. Kleippur was smiling as were the others behind him. Then Dornvald too started grinning. And Thirg too smiled at first faintly and disbelievingly then broadly and finally he clapped Lofbayel heartily on the back and laughed out loud. Who the Enlightener might have been he had no idea ... but he thought he knew well whose the flying vehicle had been and who the real miracle worker was at the back of the whole business. Up in the Orion Gerold Massey walked angrily out of an elevator in Globe II and turned to follow the corridor leading to the day quarters used by Zambendorf s team. He had talked to a number of the mission s scientists and other professionals about the situation and had managed to galvanize some of them into crackling dynamic action sufficient to lodge a formal protest with Leaherney. And that was it. The protest had been rebuffed amid a tangle of expertly contrived obstructions denials technicalities and bureaucratic obfuscations and a demand for unrestricted access to the Earth communications link politely but firmly refused. Having thus done all they could the protesters had expressed their regrets to Massey all in a very decent and civilized way naturally and returned to their various interests and duties. Even more galling was the thought that while he Massey was the professional psychologist everything had happened exactly as Zambendorf had predicted. We both understand what makes people tick Gerry Zambendorf had said. The difference is that I accept it but you won t. Massey reached the door of the suite knocked and waited while Thelma checked on a viewer inside to see who it was before letting him in. No good he told her tossing out his hands as he stamped inside. Leaherney was expecting it. He was all set up. Anyway apart from Dave Crookes and Leon Keyhoe Graham Spearman Webster and a couple of others who do seem genuinely concerned they weren t that interested. Nothing about all this affects anything that s really close to them. Thelma seemed unsurprised. You had to give it a try though she said. Forget it for a minute and come take a look at this. She led him into the suite and sat in front of the screen she had been watching when he arrived. Massey moved behind the chair to look over her shoulder. The screen looked down on a procession of Taloids dressed in flowing white robes and wearing garlands of some kind probably pieces of metal strung on wire around their necks. Some of them were carrying banners that bore Taloid inscriptions and others were beating on or blowing into what looked like musical instruments while the rest swayed rhythmically as they marched. Flanking both sides of the procession were uniformed cavalrymen that Massey recognized as Genoese moving at a slow walk and leading pack animals loaded with bundles of Terran rifles and submachine guns ammunition boxes and grenade packs. Behind the files of cavalry other Taloids were gathered along the roadside to watch. Is this a view from Karl s flyer Massey asked. Thelma nodded. Uh huh. It s coming in live. What s happening Where s it from The road to Genoa Thelma told him. It s all over with the Druids. They re on their way to Genoa Base to give all the hardware back. Moses went over real big. Massey shook his head slowly as he watched and found that he was smiling. I don t know . . . I ve never heard of anything so crazy he muttered. I wouldn t have given it a snowball s chance in hell. Arthur and Galileo called a little while ago Thelma said. They seem pretty pleased with it all too. Have you got a line to the flyer Massey asked her. Thelma nodded and touched a button below the screen. Hello Hornet. Anybody down there she said. What s new Clarissa s voice replied. Oh Gerry Massey s just arrived. I think he wants to offer his congratulations Thelma said. I wouldn t have believed it Massey called over her shoulder. That s why we ve always given you problems Clarissa answered. You underestimate your opposition. Maybe I do. Anyhow is Karl there Hang on. A few seconds of silence went by. Then Zambendorf s voice said Hello Gerry. Well what do you think of our little show down here I m impressed. I gather Arthur and Galileo are more than satisfied with the service they re getting too. We always try to give our customers their money s worth Zambendorf replied. How did things go with Leaherney No good pretty much the way you predicted. Mmm . . . a pity Zambendorf murmured. Then his voice perked up. Anyway never mind. I think we ve proved our secret weapon sufficiently to move on to the next phase. What next phase I thought this was it. The Druids won t be causing any more trouble and Arthur s happy with the outcome. What else do you want All very satisfying I agree but I still have a large personal score to settle with friend Caspar Dan Leaherney and the good people back on Earth who thought I was just another puppet they could buy Zambendorf said. What you ve seen has been just the dress rehearsal Gerry. The real performance is about to begin. Karl. A note of suspicious dread crept into Massey s voice. What are you talking about This is the most devastating thing since the H bomb Zambendorf s voice said sounding exuberant. First Moses then a squadron of Paduan cavalry after that an entire Taloid village . . . and now a whole tribe. It s snowballing down here like nothing you ve ever seen. So . . . Next we bag the whole Paduan army which is on the march toward Genoa right now and then we import the complete operation right into Padua and dump it in Henry s backyard Zambendorf exclaimed chortling. Imagine if the whole Paduan nation told Leaherney where to stuff his military aid ... and later on maybe the whole of Titan. What a way to screw GSEC Ramelson the politicians all of them But ... but you don t have enough people to do something like that Massey objected. What do you mean not enough people We ve got Moses and Lord Nelson with his cavaliers down here plus a lot more from the village . . . and now I don t know how many thousand Druids from this latest addition. I told you Gerry the whole thing s snowballing. Yes I know but what I meant is you ve only got a twelve man Hornet flyer down here. You don t have the transportation capacity to move enough bodies into Padua fast enough to trigger a real revolution. See what I mean You need the right critical mass. Otherwise it ll all just fizzle out. Oh that s all under control Zambendorf said breezily. Just as soon as we Thelma cut him off. Karl don t go into all that right now. Gerry doesn t know about it yet. I haven t had a chance to Know about what Massey demanded. A cold creeping feeling deep down inside somewhere told him that his worst fears were about to come true. You wouldn t want to know about it Thelma told him. Now why don t you just I want to know about it. What s going on What is it that you haven t had a chance to tell me about yet ... Tango Baker Two to Control launch sequence completion confirmed and BQ checking at zero three five. I have fourteen on beta seven and a clear six six. Transferring to local. Roger Tango Baker Two. BQ vector confirmed and delta repeater reading green. Orion Control standing down. Have a good trip. Roger. Out. Andy Schwartz captain of the surface lander that had just begun its descent from the Orion checked his instruments once more and settled back in his seat. Course was set on automatic to a reentry window that would bring them down onto a shallow descent from seventy degrees east direct into the ground base at Padua and trim was adjusted for the heavy load cargo of materials and machinery. No passengers were aboard this trip apart from the two Special Forces troopers who had missed their flight through an admin foul up and were hitching a ride down to rejoin their unit. Most of the soldiers that Schwartz and his crew had flown to the surface lately had been instructors being sent to train Paduans in weapons handling. The base at Padua was just a couple of pads and some landers parked at an isolated location among some hills well away from the city apparently because its existence had not been revealed to the general Paduan population by their leaders not at all like the situation at Genoa. Not even the Paduan army had been let in on the secret the rank and file received their weaponry training from a small select corps of Paduan instructors who were the only ones who ever actually met Terrans. Schwartz didn t know what to make of it all. Have they shipped any girls down to Padua Base yet the copilot asked casually from the seat next to him. No chance Clancy. Maybe you could use the break Clancy Mike Glautzen the flight engineer suggested from his station behind them. I read somewhere that occasional abstinence is good for your health. Baker needs to try something that s good for his health Hank Frazer muttered as he tapped commands into a touchboard below the displays at the Communications Officer s position across the aisle from Glautzen. I read somewhere that too much health s bad for you Baker said. Causes cancer huh Schwartz murmured. Doesn t too much of anything always cause something How about too much moderation Frazer said. It causes excess deficiency Baker said. That s real bad. Glautzen sniggered. Gonna have to get used to that for a while Clancy. No parties when we get to Padua just work man. Baker frowned down at his instrument for a second. Say I ve had a great idea guys he said turning his head to look back over the seat. How about the latest swingers with it thing straight from Southern California What s that Glautzen asked. An inflatable doll swapping party It s all the rage with Baker broke off as he saw the large black soldier clad in Special Forces camouflage combat dress one of the lander s two illicit passengers entering through the door at the rear. Hey you re not supposed to be up front here pardner he warned. You re supposed to stay back in your seat belted down till we re on the pad. Get outta here willya Schwartz said glancing back. If you wanna see the flight deck that s fine but not until after we touch down okay Joe Fellburg eased himself fully inside the door and leveled his machine carbine. His teeth shone pearly white against his skin as he flashed an amiable grin. A moment later Drew West also wearing combat dress and holding a .45 automatic entered behind him and moved away from the door to cover the crew from a different angle. Now let s all be friendly and sensible about this Fellburg suggested. Just do like we say and you ll all be fine. Now switch the H twenty seven to F range and lock onto a surface transmission that you ll pick up at twenty eight point three megahertz. Then reprogram the descent profile and follow the beam down to where it takes us okay 30 PRIVATE SALLAKAR OF THE KROAXIAN INFANTRY INHALED deeply from the effort of climbing the rise and coughed as his coolant system switched over to reverse flow to eject the intake of dust raised by the foot soldiers ahead of him. Mumbling profanities and curses at the dust the desert the army and the seemingly endless distance to Carthogia he moved to one side and stopped to look back at the long column of infantry and cavalry regiments fireball throwers war chariots and supply wagons snaking its way back and out of sight among the rounded dunes and low scarps of the Meracasine. It was going to be the real thing this time he reflected glumly. He had tangled before with the Carthogians in border skirmishes and the experience hadn t left him restless with impatience and wild with enthusiasm to meet them again. Oh yes the officers had sounded very confident as usual and been full of assurances that the new weapons would make short work of the Carthogians but Sallakar had heard too much of that kind of talk before. It was easy to tell everyone not to worry when you knew you d have a fast mount underneath you to get you out of trouble if it all went wrong. Oh yes indeed it was fine for them to talk. But according to the barracks gossip anyway the cavalry captain Horazzorgio hadn t been doing so much talking since he d chased after a Carthogian undercover unit and come back minus his whole company and an arm and an eye to boot. Oh no Now that didn t sound like opposition likely to allow itself be made short work of. He moved a hand to feel the cold hard lines of the newly introduced projectile hurler that was slung across his back the product so he and the others had been told of many twelve brights of labor carried out in secret by some of the best artisans and craftsmen in Kroaxia. Oh yes it was a nice looking piece of workmanship and yes it had seemed effective enough in the hurriedly improvised training sessions that they had been rushed through with everything left until the last minute as usual probably for security reasons but what did that prove Only that somebody had discovered how to make better weapons. The Carthogians had good artisans too. If the Kroaxians could do it why couldn t the Carthogians No reason at all. In fact from what Sallakar had seen in the past the Carthogians were more than likely to have done it first. And that would be something the officers wouldn t tell us about he thought to himself. Oh no they d never tell the troops about something like that. Sallakar what the ell d yer think yer a doin of Avin a nice nap there are yer the voice of Sergeant Bergolod bellowed from farther back down the line. Get fell back in. Go fornicate with yourself Sallakar muttered as he hitched his pack into a more comfortable position and rejoined the column at a gap next to Moxeff. You must find your delight in serving extra watch duty Sallakar Moxeff murmured. Is it the tranquillity of contemplating the desert in solitude at early bright that attracts you so And to think I had no idea you were of such poetic disposition. A plague of rusts and poxes upon this desert Sallakar spat. Thrice have I crossed it now and each time its breadth doubles. More likely the quality of thy temper halves. Your constitution is unaffected by this heat no doubt Sallakar said. Pleasantly dry and refreshing after Kroaxia s debilitatingly humid air Moxeff agreed. Zounds Your own admission disqualifies the sole excuse left you for your insufferable temperament. You should save such peevishness to vent upon the Carthogians Moxeff advised. In truth I do believe you welcome combat as you relish the desert heat. And do you thrive also on breathing this carborundum powder and conserving one bucket of methane per bright to top up your solutions and wash off the grime extruded from your joints Ah as always you bitch too much Sallakar. And the likes of you bitch not enough. Would any bondslave tolerate abuse such as this Oh no But it is I who bitch too much. Oh yes Do you have no desire to assert your freeman s rights Must I remind you that the army is our law Sallakar Who ever heard of foot soldiers demanding rights And why not Sallakar asked. In Carthogia so tis said authority is conferred by majority agreement among the citizens and owes naught to any force of arms nor nobility of birth a most commendable precedent. Why not then I say in the army also You re kidding Not so. This matter has occupied my thoughts now for many brights. We will form ourselves a union Moxeff to match rank with collective strength and bargain our services and loyalty only in return for fair and reasonable conditions that shall be contractually underwritten. To fight we would require favorable numerical odds of two to one or better at least moderately clement weather and a minimum compensation guarantee against worthless plunder. Rest periods would be fixed at mid and quarter bright one bright in every six declared combat free and a peace tax levied from the populace to maintain our remuneration in times of unemployment. Oh that the foot soldier s life should bring such bliss And have you the intention of reading this thy proclamation to our King Eskenderom and his Court personally Well may good luck go with you Sallakar. Doubtless we shall all speak of you with fondest sentiments and remembrances. Shame on you who can speak thus contemptibly without embarrassment. Would you partake your share of the betterments we might secure Oh yes unquestionably But to pledge in return your share of allegiance to our cause Oh no unthinkable Is it not . . . Sallakar stopped speaking and turned his head away to look as a commotion broke out somewhere up ahead. A moment later the column halted. What the fom The desert heaves Moxeff exclaimed. Is t a storm someone ahead shouted. No storm appears thus another cried. Is this some Carthogian trickery The ground ahead boils It is on fire And around us also we are trapped A wall of smoke and flame had erupted across the line of march and was climbing higher by the second to blot out the sky ahead while above on the overlooking slopes to left and right curtains of shimmering violet light had appeared hemming in the front of the column. I AM THE ENLIGHTENER WHOM THE LIFEMAKER HAS SENT AMONG YOU a voice boomed seemingly from everywhere at once and echoing among the surrounding hills. SOLDIERS OF KROAXIA LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS FOR HE HATH COMMANDED THOU SHALT NOT KILL. Deploy for ambush Scatter the column a mounted officer shouted as he galloped back down the line. Infantry under cover. Cavalry to the flanks. Close up the wagons. A Company to those rocks. B Company string out along the gully. C Company follow me Sergeant Bergolod called out. Officers in front and in the rear began to shout orders and in moments the column had disintegrated into bodies running in all directions. Sallakar found himself crouched with Moxeff and a couple of others behind some rocks. He peered up over the rock and saw that figures dressed in white had appeared amid the wall of swirling radiance higher up elusive dancing etheric figures apparently devoid of physical substance. They seemed to be approaching down the slope. A soldier nearby raised his hurler loosely to his shoulder and fired knocking himself over backward with the recoil. A ragged volley came from another group behind and in seconds firing had broken out all along the column. Gripped by the fear that had seized everyone Sallakar sighted at a pair of white robed figures held the hurler hard and firm against his shoulder as he had been taught and squeezed the finger lever. The hurler juddered . . . but had no effect even though Sallakar was aiming straight at the advancing figures. He swept the weapon desperately from side to side and up and down to cover every inch of them but they kept on coming. Inside the flyer hovering just at the edge of the smoke clouds boiling upward from the napalm tanks and explosives planted ahead of the Taloids Zambendorf was watching the scene in close up. It was as well that they had allowed for the possibility of the Paduans panicking he reflected and decided not to expose any of the Taloids on their own side prematurely. Stretching away from the lurid glow immediately below the flyer two streaks of whiteness flickered eerily where recorded Taloid images were being projected onto internally illuminated smokescreens from lanterns concealed several hours earlier on the rock strewn slopes overlooking the obvious route through the valley. Let s see if we can put a stop to that shooting he said to Clarissa. Plan C she said. Yes a low level bomb run at those ice crags accompanied by some pyrotechnics. In the copilot s seat Abaquaan prepared to repeat another recording of a pretransmogrified message from Moses over the flyer s bullhorns suitably modified for high frequency and from the ultrasonic amplifiers positioned to command the area. Ayee One of the soldiers dropped his weapon and stood up pointing in terror at the sky above the wall of fire. A dragon descends We have brought the Lifemaker s wrath down upon us A sleek slender limbed creature unlike any that Sallakar had ever seen before was swooping down at them. Instinctively he turned and aimed his hurler upward in its direction then realized the futility of that and lowered it again. We are doomed MoxefF moaned next to him. Several nearby infantry robeings dropped their weapons and began running blindly back the way they had come. Then a series of brilliant lights and clouds of violet radiance blossomed overhead and simultaneously more lights streaked down from the dragon and destroyed a formation of rock outcrops and large boulders in a fury of deafening concussions. Sallakar cringed and covered his ears . . . but he was still alive. DESIST SOLDIERS the voice that had called itself Enlightener thundered again from above. THE COMMANDMENT IS THOU SHALT NOT KILL And then a much larger dragon emerged from the fiery wall before them flying slowly and majestically right above their heads with fire blasting from beneath it. Angels Moxeff gasped straightening up and pointing. Angels are descending from the skies See how they shine another soldier shouted. Truly this is a time of miracles. On every side soldiers were running from cover and standing with their faces raised to watch. Some had thrown away their weapons already and were clasping their hands together and some had fallen to their knees. Even the officers were sitting motionless awed and cowed by what was happening. Above more heavenly figures each borne on white frilly wings were floating serenely downward behind the dragon. PREPARE TO MEET THE ENLIGHTENER the Voice boomed. I COME TO THEE IN PEACE BRINGING GOODWILL TO ALL ROBEINGS. Inside the cargo bay of the NASO surface lander making a low pass at just above stalling speed Joe Fellburg checked Moses harness one last time gave a satisfied nod and motioned the Taloid to the edge of the deck by the open loading doors. Moses leaned forward a fraction and peered down apprehensively. Tell him he ll be okay if he makes sure to jump hard and clear and counts five before he pulls the ring Fellburg shouted to West who was standing by them holding the transmogrifier. And look at the others who ve just jumped they re doing fine. West spoke into the microphone verified the interpretation that appeared on the screen and the machine passed the message on to Moses. Moses nodded trustingly Great stuff guy Fellburg said. He stooped to ignite the fireworks lying on the floor and attached to Moses pack by wires long enough to ensure they would hang a safe distance below him then stood up again stepped back a pace and patted the top of the robot s head. Geronimo he yelled as the assemblage of sputtering flares and white robed robot launched itself out into space. A searchlight from the flyer which was circling nearby picked out the figure as its parachute opened and it began to descend slowly through Titan s dense atmosphere. A gasp of wonder went up from the soldiers as at last the Master appeared descending in a luminous halo and bathed in a beam of heavenly brilliance. Sallakar didn t know what to believe but in his own mind he had already come to a profound realization of immense theological significance: Rejecting the Enlightener s creed would mean having to fight the Carthogians conversion to it however would not. Hallelujah he shouted throwing his weapon aside and climbing up on the rock to stand with both arms extended. I am saved This sinner has seen the light Hail to thee Enlightener Most of the Kroaxian army it seemed was only just behind him in reaching the same conclusion. All along the column figures were standing up coming out from cover and throwing their weapons to the ground. The air rang with hundreds of voices rejoicing: I see the light I see the light The Enlightener cometh Praise the Enlightener We are saved We are saved No more killing No more war All are my brothers. I shall not kill For many hours the Enlightener preached great words of love and wisdom from a hilltop to the soldiers assembled on the slopes below. When he had finished they abandoned their weapons in the desert and turned back to return to Kroaxia. The Enlightener was lifted again into the sky to be borne ahead by the angels. He promised he would await his converts at the city of Pergassos where they would join him to begin together the founding of the new world. It s amazing I simply don t believe this Massey said to Zambendorf over the link from the Orion as the departing flyer climbed higher and transmitted a view of the shambles that had been the Paduan army. Just the last phase left now Gerry Zambendorf told him confidently. Next stop Padua. We ve rehearsed the cast tested all the props perfected our technique and everything works just fine. What could possibly go wrong An hour later a military reconnaissance aircraft flew over the deserts between Padua and Genoa and sent a series of views up to the Orion showing the entire Paduan army streaming back the way it had come. Caspar Lang was given the report shortly after receiving confirmation that a surface lander had disappeared on a routine descent to Padua. No signal had been received from any of the ship s automatic fault monitoring devices and the crew had been highly rated for reliability and stability the NASO experts who investigated were unanimous in concluding that the vessel had been hijacked. Lang arranged with the military commander at Padua base for James Bond the spy employed by the Paduan king Henry to be airlifted ahead of the retreating army in order to intercept it and learn what had happened. Afterward Bond rode off into the hills to a rendezvous with the Terrans and was flown back to Padua Base to make his report. The news was that the planned Paduan invasion of Genoa was off. The entire Paduan army was out of its officers control and was returning home to build a new society after encountering a messiah in the desert who had converted all of them to a new religion of tolerance and nonviolence. The messiah had descended from the sky accompanied by flying dragons winged angels heavenly voices and all kinds of miracle workings. Lang s suspicions were immediately aroused. Check Zambendorf out he instructed his chief administrative assistant. He s been too quiet for too long. I want to know where he is and every move he s made in the last forty eight hours. Neither Zambendorf nor practically anyone on his team were anywhere to be found. You were supposed to have been keeping him busy and under observation at all times Lang screamed at a white faced Osmond Periera in the Globe I executive offices fifteen minutes after Lang received the news. Well he isn t anywhere in the ship he s not down at Genoa Base and nobody s seen him for two days. Where is he I er I thought he was with Malcom Wade Periera replied shakily. But apparently Wade thought he was with me. I can t imagine how the mix up was possible. Thelma seems to have garbled all our instructions somehow ... but then she is only the secretary. I m afraid we must have overestimated her abilities. And I m damn sure I overestimated yours Lang seethed. Never mind all those excuses just find him understand I want him found A half hour later Periera was confronting Thelma in the team s quarters in Globe II. I m sorry if we confused you but it has now become imperative that the situation be resolved as speedily as possible. We have to know where he is. Now listen to me very carefully Thelma and concentrate hard on what I m saying. Now do you know where Karl is Thelma stared back at him wide eyed. On Earth I think. Oh come now that s quite absurd. Please try to be sensible. How could he have gone back to Earth He teleports there Thelma s face was deadly serious and her eyes burned earnestly. Didn t you know He s been working at it for months now. Don t be silly. Really. Periera looked at her uncertainly. Really You re not joking Now would I joke about something as serious as that especially to you Osmond So Periera reported back to Lang that he was pretty sure Zambendorf had mastered teleportation and returned to Earth. When Lang blew up Periera decided it was because business executives were unimaginative inflexible and didn t understand science. 31 UNLIKE POPULAR IMAGES OF THE HIGH RANKING CORPORATION EXECUTIVE Caspar Lang was not consumed with a passion to accumulate wealth and he harbored no particular lust for power over other men. GSEC s rewards for his services and the authority that he commanded within the corporate hierarchy second only to that of Gregory Buhl left him with no reason to feel financially vulnerable psychologically or emotionally insecure or especially apprehensive about his future. This general situation resulted in his being relatively unbribable by competing organizations incorruptible by opposing ideologies and fully motivated to the preservation of personal interests that coincided with those of the corporation whose policy was to insure that he remained feeling that way. In short the quality that the corporation valued above all else in its senior management and did its best to foster in every possible way was loyalty. Since Zambendorf was deliberately attempting to prevent the corporation s achieving the goals toward which it had elected to direct itself Zambendorf was now the corporation s self declared enemy which automatically meant Lang s enemy too. Personal feelings didn t enter the equation not that Lang s feelings toward Zambendorf had ever been more than lukewarm Lang s duty was to stop Zambendorf by any means available to him within the bounds of acceptable cost and with the ramifications of the situation as they were the limit of cost acceptability was high by any standard. As best we can reconstruct it the whole thing was a circus act involving low passes by the lander parachuting Taloids tricks with optical images and acoustics and lots of fireworks Lang said to Massey across the table in the conference cabin of Leaherney s suite in the Orion. Opposite Massey Leaherney stared grimly at his knuckles clasped in front of him while across from Lang Charles Giraud was listening with lips pursed and steepled fingers propping the bridge of his nose. Lang went on The Paduan army has disintegrated and is on its way back to Padua. The officers that James Bond talked to said they were going home to meet this messiah and begin building the New Era. We figure that means Zambendorf s planning a repeat performance in Padua city itself. Massey rubbed his nose and frowned down at the table. He still wasn t sure why he had been summoned. Well my feelings on the whole business of supplying weapons to the Paduans and fomenting trouble between them and the Genoese were plain enough before this happened. I can t pretend to be sympathetic now that your plan s fallen through. In fact as far as Zambendorf s concerned this one time I have to say good luck to him. Whatever personal opinions you might hold concerning the objectives set for this mission and the policies of its directing institutions on Earth are irrelevant to the purpose of this meeting Leaherney said. His voice was uncharacteristically sharp. Massey shrugged but said nothing. Leaherney glanced at Lang and nodded for him to continue. We have no way of locating where they re hiding the lander down there Lang said. It could be anywhere in an area of hundreds of thousands of square kilometers. So we have to assume that the next time we see Zambendorf will be when he decides to make his appearance at Padua and wheel in this messiah he s manufactured. We won t get an opportunity to confront him again until then. What we d like is your professional opinion as one of the mission s senior psychologists on Zambendorf s probable reaction to the course of action that we have in mind Giraud said. There would have been no point in Massey s feigning disinterest. He raised his head and thrust out his chin inquiringly but remained silent. Lang waited for a moment and then resumed in a strange curiously ominous voice As I m sure we all know modem infantry launched homing missiles for use against armor and low flying aircraft are pretty devastating weapons. They carry smart electronics for target identification and tracking and are designed to be very simple to use without requiring specially trained personnel. The Taloids could learn to fire them very quickly. Lang tossed out his hands in a brief motion and let his meaning hang for just a second. If ah ... if anything like that just happened to have been included in the weapons that we shipped down to Henry it could be real bad news for anyone who tried a slow speed low level run over the city in a surface lander couldn t it Massey s eyes were blazing even before Lang had finished and his beard quivered with indignation. What are you saying That would be murder You can t Lang held up a hand protectively. Hey take it easy Gerry. Just . . . take it easy. I was talking hypothetically. But suppose that Zambendorf believed that the Paduans really did have weapons like that. . . . You see my point he s got his own people down there with him plus the crew of the shuttle they hijacked. . . . What would he do Would he back off and forget this whole damnfool thing about going for Padua or would he risk it and to hell with the others down there Or would he do something else What do you think A short silence went by. Are you asking me to make a prediction Massey asked guardedly. Lang shook his head. No only an opinion. As Charles said we re interested in what you think in your professional capacity as one of the mission s psychologists. We ve some important decisions to make and not much time to make them in. We just want to be sure that we don t overlook anything that might be relevant. Massey stared down at the table again now very thoughtful. If his opinion was being sought and respected perhaps he had judged the situation too hastily. Why should Zambendorf believe anything like that he asked looking up. We call the lander via the comnet and tell him Lang replied simply. They wouldn t reply Massey objected. You d be able to pinpoint their location. Not necessarily Giraud said. They could route their transmission through a surface relay dropped anywhere on Titan or maybe several of them. We could locate the relays if we wanted but it wouldn t help us get a fix on the lander. Massey nodded distantly as his mind raced to absorb the implications of what was being said. Surely there was some way he could turn this situation to advantage he told himself. Lang and the others would have deduced a long time ago NASO s real purpose in sending him with the mission which would give them no reason for supposing that he and Zambendorf should since have discovered any common interests. All of their plans would be based on the assumption now false that he and Zambendorf would have nothing to communicate. The possibilities were intriguing. After another long silence Lang said Obviously the thought could cross his mind that we might be bluffing in fact with a guy like Zambendorf it s probably the first thing he d think of. But on the other hand the international political and commercial implications of the situation are big very big as Zambendorf is only too well aware. Who s to say what we might do when the chips are down Would he risk it with all those other people down there You re supposed to think the same way he does that s why NASO sent you here right Okay I want to know what you think. Would Zambendorf risk it Not if he were uncertain whether or not the warning was a bluff Massey was sure. But now of course with the seemingly impossible alliance between Zambendorf and Massey having so recently come about and over an issue that the mission s directors were apparently incapable of comprehending Zambendorf would not be left in any uncertainty on the matter. Therefore any conclusions based upon his presumed ignorance of the true state of affairs concerning the Taloid weapons would be invalidated. If Lang was basing his strategy on a bluff Massey had an opportunity to undermine its entire foundation. Massey looked up and ran his eyes slowly over the three faces waiting across the table for his reply. Maybe Zambendorf is a rogue and a scoundrel in some ways and maybe his concept of ethics doesn t exactly measure up to society s ideal but basically his values are just and humane. If he has any real doubts he won t gamble. You re sure Leaherney asked sounding uneasy. No it s just my opinion. That is what you asked for and it s all I can offer. But you are reasonably confident Giraud persisted. Massey frowned and bunched his lips for a moment then exhaled suddenly and nodded. Reasonably he conceded quite truthfully. Leaherney looked from Giraud to Lang then back again and finally at Massey. Then if no one has anything more to add we need detain you no longer. Thanks for your time. Thank you Massey said just a trifle stiffly. He remained expressionless as he rose to leave but inwardly he was smiling broadly. After Massey left Leaherney emitted a long sigh slumped back in his chair and took a cigar from the box in the center of the table. He rolled the cigar beneath his nose and eyed Lang curiously while he savored the aroma of the tobacco. Okay Caspar he said. And now would you mind telling us exactly what that whole stunt was supposed to mean Sorry about the melodramatics but I didn t want to tell you the latest until after we d talked to Massey Lang replied. Your reactions needed to be genuine. He paused for a second to survey the other two briefly and then informed them Our military intelligence people are pretty certain that improbable as it may seem Massey and Zambendorf are now working together. A puzzled frown crossed Giraud s face. But if that s so and we send Zambendorf a warning Massey will tell him it s just a bluff. As he s supposed to Lang agreed. Giraud s expression became even more perplexed. So . . . what good will it do he asked. It will conflict with other information that will reach Zambendorf through the other two channels that we ve identified Lang replied. That NASO captain Campbell has been leaking classified information to Thelma like a sieve ever since we left Earth and a number of the scientists are sympathetic to Zambendorf s humanitarian ideals concerning the Taloids. I intend to plant information that will find its way to Zambendorf from both those sources indicating that the bluff story we fed Massey was intended simply to put us on record as having tried to warn Zambendorf off thereby exonerating us from any blame for his actions and that really the Paduans do have smart missiles. Zambendorf won t know what to believe Leaherney said. He stopped to think for a second and shook his head bemusedly. In fact I m not even sure I know myself. And I agree completely with Massey s prediction that Zambendorf won t gamble if he s in any doubt as to the true situation Lang said. He smiled humoriessly braced his hands on the edge of the table in preparation to rise and looked at Giraud. The next thing we have to do is arrange a descent to Padua for another meeting with Henry. No doubt he ll be pretty mad when James Bond tells him what happened to his invasion but if all goes well and Zambendorf backs down I don t think we ll have too much trouble persuading Henry that the whole thing was just a temporary setback. A week from now we ll all be back on track. 32 THE FLYER SPED LOW OVER THE SURFACE OF TITAN GUIDED through the darkness by forward scanning radars that felt the landscape with their electronic fingers and translated its contours into binary number streams that the flight control computers could understand. In the right hand side of the cockpit his thick mustache transformed into a gaping slash across a face thrown into eerie reverse relief by the subdued glow from the instrument panel Otto Abaquaan stared silently out at the blackness absorbed in his own thoughts. Over twenty years had passed since the serendipitous courses that he and Zambendorf had been following through life happened to collide in Frankfurt West Germany. Abaquaan had been working a stocks and bonds swindle at the time. Overconfident and careless after a three month run of easy pickings from wealthy dowagers along the French Riviera he hadn t bothered to check up on Zambendorf thoroughly enough before selling him a portfolio of phony certificates and it wasn t until his contact man was arrested and Abaquaan was forced to flee the country hours ahead of the police that he discovered Zambendorf had paid for them with phony money. Soon afterward Zambendorf had managed to track him down again apparently without too much difficulty not to moralize or crow over the lesson Abaquaan had been taught but to express interest in the scheme and compliment Abaquaan on his style. A partnership had developed and the rest of the team had appeared one by one in various circumstances over the years since. During those years with Zambendorf he had wound up in some unexpected places been mixed up with some strange people and found himself involved in all kinds of bizarre affairs including being paid a quarter of a million dollars by a Chinese industrialist for communicating with several generations of honorable ancestors setting up an ESP based military espionage system for a West African government selling information from an almanac to a fashionable Italian horoscope writer at exorbitant rates and prospecting for strategic metals over the estates of a Brazilian landowner. And now to top it all they were on one of Saturn s moons of all places stage managing a mechanical Jesus Christ and starting a new religion among a race of intelligent robots. And what was strange was that nothing about the situation really struck Abaquaan as being so strange at all. He was a long time past that. Nothing that involved Zambendorf was capable of seeming strange anymore. After consulting with Joe Fellburg and Andy Schwartz the captain of the surface lander on unofficial loan from NASO Zambendorf had accepted that parachuting down over the built up area of Padua would be a risky enough business for anyone let alone untrained Taloids and had therefore abandoned his original plan to repeat the performance that had played so successfully before Henry s army in the desert. Instead Clarissa and Abaquaan had flown Moses to a point just outside the city from which he would make his way into the metropolis on foot and begin to preach the Revelation during the busiest trading period in the central marketplace. On receipt of a radio signal from Moses transmitter the lander would make a dramatic descent into the heart of the city accompanied by lights voices and special effects and disembark a specially rehearsed celestial troupe consisting of Lord Nelson and a supporting act of Druids. The result would be instant conversions of Paduans by the drove Zambendorf had predicted confidently Henry would be deposed Genoa would be saved the Taloids future would be assured and the war against unscrupulous Terran business tycoons and politicians would be won. It was one of Zambendorf s strengths as a leader and a source of some of the biggest problems that came from working with him that he always made everything sound too easy. The most recent developments however were causing Abaquaan misgivings. First twenty four hours or so before Massey had called from the Orion to advise that Caspar Lang would probably use a ruse to warn Zambendorf off from any intention he might have of reproducing his desert spectacular over Padua city. Sure enough Lang had come through a couple of hours later and issued a solemnly worded warning containing all the points that Massey had predicted. Zambendorf had put on an impressive act of trying desperately but not quite successfully to hide his dismay as he listened and mumbled about needing time to rethink the whole situation. Then roaring with laughter after Lang was off the line he had told the team jubilantly This has to mean we re over the last hurdle Thanks to Massey we ve bluffed the bluffers with their own bluff. Lang and the rest of them will just be sitting up there in the Orion waiting for us to call back while we re going in over the city. They won t expect a thing Zambendorf s enthusiasm had infected the lander s NASO crew who were gradually being won over by a combination of his magnetism and his explanations about the Orion mission and its real purpose. The team had effectively acquired another four members and was all set to launch the final phase of the operation that would make its task complete. The situation could hardly have been more favorable. In fact it was too favorable. Everything was going too well Abaquaan felt. Buried somewhere deep down in the whole intricate pattern was something that didn t quite fit something still too subtle for him to raise to the level of conscious awareness but his instincts had detected it. Twenty years earlier Abaquaan had learned the dangers ofoverconfidence a premonition kept telling him that at long last Zambendorf s turn had arrived to learn the same lesson. An annunciator on the instrument panel bleeped suddenly and a symbol on a display screen began to flash on and off. In the seat next to him Clarissa glanced down flipped a switch to reset the audio warning punched commands into the pilot s touchpanel and took in the data that appeared on another display. We ve just triggered the outer approach marker she murmured as she throttled back on power and banked the flyer round to line up for landing. Open up a channel to ground and let s have a profile check. Abaquaan selected an infrared view of the terrain ahead and used another screen to conjure up images of a series of flight instruments. Steepen to one eight zero rate five four reduce speed to four twenty and come round onto two five nine he instructed. Autoland lock on programed at ten seconds into phase three of glidepath. Descent monitor and systems Clarissa queried. Green one green two and ah ... all positive function. The flyer came round an invisible mountaintop and straightened out onto its final approach and descent into the narrow sheer sided valley where the surface lander was hidden. The valley floor was a sprawling mess of alien industrial constructions tangled machinery and derelict plants and would blur any radar echos to overflying reconnaissance satellites sufficiently to conceal the outline of the lander which as an extra precaution had been copiously draped with aluminum foil and metalized plastic. The site was showing no lights and electronic transmissions were being restricted to low power local communications and ground beams aimed at satlink relays. Abaquaan pressed a button and spoke into the microphone projecting from his headset. Hornet to Big Bird. Do you read Over. The voice of Hank Frazer the lander s Communications Officer replied a few seconds later: Reading you okay Hornet. The landing area is clear here. How d it all go Hi Hank. Mission accomplished Abaquaan replied. Moses is on his way. No hitches. How have things been back there The flyer slowed to hover in the darkness and Clarissa quickly scanned graphics displays presented by the flight computers. Moments later the vehicle began sinking vertically. I think we may have problems Frazer s voice answered. Dave Crookes called down from the ship. It seems like he overheard a couple of army officers up there talking about infantry missiles being issued to the Paduans specifically for use against the lander if Zambendorf tried any more tricks with it. Crookes didn t know what to make of the conversation but it sounded serious and he figured we ought to know. In other words it looks as if Henry may really have those weapons after all. In the semidarkness of the flyer s cockpit Clarissa and Abaquaan exchanged ominous glances. Have they talked to Massey about it Clarissa murmured tight lipped. Outside the tops of fractionating towers and steel pylons indistinct and ghostly in Titan s feeble light were drifting slowly into view from below. The flyer s engine note rose as the computers increased thrust to absorb the last remaining momentum of its descent. Has Karl talked to Massey about it Abaquaan asked. He couldn t locate him but he s trying again right now Frazer answered. Does Karl still think Lang was bluffing He doesn t know what to think. The flyer gave a final lurch on its shock absorbers and something deep down in Abaquaan s stomach lurched with it. The engines fell to idling speed and the computer displays switched to a series of postflight test routines. We re down Abaquaan said. We ll be over in a few minutes. Talk to you then. Out. Clarissa leaned forward to scan the ground ahead of the nose and a few seconds later a light appeared from among the shadows. The figure of Joe Fellburg clad in an EV suit and carrying a flashlamp an M37 automatic infantry assault cannon slung across his shoulder moved forward and guided the vehicle out of the open and into its parking area beneath the girder lattice roof supports of what had once been a building of some kind. More forms took shape in the gloom behind him as some of Moses followers from the Taloid encampment nearby came closer to watch. What do you think Abaquaan asked reaching for his helmet as Clarissa cut the engine. I don t know what to think either she said as she proceeded quickly through the systems shutdown sequence. It doesn t sound too good. Abaquaan unbuckled his harness hoisted himself from his seat and moved into the forward cabin to put on his helmet. Clarissa followed and they exited through the main lock. Fellburg was waiting for them outside. Good night It went fine Abaquaan said. Moses is on his way into the city. It s a pity we can t bring him back. There might be problems. Yeah you mean about what Dave Crookes heard. Hank told us. Drew thinks we ll have to call off the whole operation. What about Moses Clarissa s voice asked sounding clipped. Fellburg threw out a heavily gauntleted hand. It s tough but what can you do Just then something scurried furtively in the shadows below one of the flyer s wings. Fellburg snapped on the flashlamp and the beam caught a silvery insectlike machine about the size of a kitchen chair with an elongated tapering head a body covered by sliding overlapping plates and six slender segmented legs in the act of stretching one of its sensory appendages to investigate the flyer s extended landing pad. A piece of metal hurtled from the darkness and bounced off the creature s flank and a moment later two Taloids rushed forward waving their arms wildly to chase it away the creature had fled before Fellburg s gun was even half unslung. As they resumed walking toward the black silhouette of the lander Fellburg swung the lamp from side to side to pick out the bullet riddled remains of a half dozen or so similar machines. Another flashlamp shone briefly some distance ahead of them where Clancy Baker was patrolling on the far side of the lander. Looks like some of these overgrown tin bugs are partial to NASO specification alloy Fellburg grunted. But they re learning pretty quick that getting too close ain t all that healthy. Inside the lander Zambendorf and Drew West were standing in front of one of the screen consoles on the flight deck with Andy Schwartz sitting to one side. Across the aisle Mike Glautzen sat in the flight engineer s seat which was reversed to face them. Hank Frazer and Vernon were watching from in front of the doorway leading aft into the main cabin. We managed to get hold of Massey a few minutes ago Frazer murmured as Clarissa and Abaquaan arrived from the midships lock. I m not sure what to believe Gerry Zambendorf was saying to the screen. Do you think that what Dave Crookes overheard could have been deliberate a plant intended to scare us off Who knows It s possible Massey replied. But how could Lang have known that Crookes would pass the information on Glautzen queried from behind. Easily Zambendorf said over his shoulder. He was one of the few among the scientists who were solidly behind Gerry in protesting the mission s policies. Also Dave is a communications specialist. The other possibility is that it could have been you who was fed wrong information Drew West said to Massey. Perhaps the Paduans have been given smart missiles. The story that it s a bluff might really be a double bluff aimed at persuading us to persuade ourselves that there isn t any risk. Yes that s also possible Massey admitted. He sounded far from happy. Andy Schwartz shook his head and tossed his hands up helplessly. I m confused he protested. What is all this The management doesn t want us doing the same thing at Padua that we did to Henry s army right If that s so they d want us to believe what Lang said wouldn t they whether the Paduans really possess any missiles or not. So why would they set Gerry up to tell us Lang was bluffing Either way it makes no sense. Drew West bit his lip for a moment then said Unless they wanted us to get shot down. The cabin became very still as everyone tried to tell himself West hadn t meant what they knew he d meant. After a pause West went on It would get rid of their number one problem permanently. No Terrans need be directly involved since the Paduans would have done everything necessary through a contrived accident . . . And Leaherney s people would have gone on record as having tried to do the civilized thing and warn us even after we hijacked their lander. He shrugged. So how would it look to an investigating committee afterward A bunch of hotheads insisted on flying an illegally acquired vessel into the home territory of heavily armed aliens of known warlike disposition despite attempts to warn them and got themselves killed a clear verdict of death by misadventure. All parties in authority get exonerated. Some recommendations would be filed for tightening up security precautions against similar seizures in future. And that would be it. Case closed. West turned from the screen and moved away to stand staring moodily down at the empty captain s couch. Hank Frazer was shaking his head and looking appalled. You re kidding he gasped. Are you saying they d deliberately set us up to be shot down But they re our own people . . . All over some lousy robot religion I don t believe it. The whole thing s insane. This operation might be worth millions to them billions probably West said without turning his head. And on top of that it could be curtains for the Soviets. With stakes like that who knows what they might do I have to agree with Drew Abaquaan told Zambendorf from the cabin doorway. He knew now what had been bothering him: After Massey s attempt at organizing a formal protest Lang wouldn t have confided in him over something like this. The leak had been planned. They wouldn t think twice about it Clarissa declared flatly. I ve seen em waste more people over peanuts. It just depends on how much somebody decides he wants the peanuts. They re right Andy Schwartz agreed morosely. A heavy silence descended once again. Zambendorf brought a hand up to his brow emitted a long weary sigh and moved a couple of paces toward the door. There was nothing more that any of the others could add. Zambendorf was going through the motions of tussling with a difficult decision but Abaquaan West and Clarissa who had worked with him for a long time knew already that there was no decision for him to make as bitter as it would be for him to have to concede defeat and to cap it all defeat in the final round after winning every round that had gone before he would never ask them to risk their lives for any cause and wouldn t for a moment consider risking the crew even if they were to volunteer. It had been a good fight but it was over. All that Zambendorf was really looking for now was a way to climb down gracefully. The lander s crew could sense it too and while they sympathized with his predicament none of them was particularly disposed to help make it any easier. After all being hijacked to help a worthy cause was one thing going on suicide missions was something else. They remained silent and avoided one another s eyes uncomfortably. Then Massey turned his head suddenly to look somewhere offscreen. There s somebody at the door here he said. Just a second while I see who it is. He leaned away and vanished from sight for a few seconds then reappeared once more and announced It s Thelma. I ve let her in. She said something about having important news. Zambendorf frowned and moved up to the screen. Drew West came back from the forward end of the flight deck to stand next to him. In front of them Massey moved to one side to make room for Thelma. She looked worried. Have you sent Moses into Padua yet she asked without preliminaries. Zambendorf nodded. Yes as scheduled. Why What s happened Thelma groaned. You can t go through with it. Larry Campbell got me a copy of the cargo manifest for the latest arms shipment down to Henry. Those missiles are there Karl. The list includes twenty four Banshee Mark Fours half with training warheads and the rest of them live. They could blow you out of the sky from up to eleven kilometers away. There s no chance that going in there could achieve anything now except get everyone down there killed. You have to call the whole thing off. For a long time nobody moved and nobody spoke. Schwartz and Glautzen stared down at the floor while on the screen Thelma waited pale faced and Massey kept his eyes averted woodenly. At last Zambendorf gave a single curt nod turned away and stumbled unsteadily forward between the pilots stations. He sank down heavily into the captain s seat and sat staring out through the windshield with unseeing eyes his frame hunched and his shoulders sagging as if he had just aged twenty years. Drew West moved round to bring himself full face to the image of Massey and Thelma. I think Karl sees the way it is he told them quietly. Look you ve done all you can for now. It d probably be best if you left things with us for a while. We ll talk to you later okay Thelma was about to say something more but Massey checked her with a warning touch on the shoulder and shook his head. Okay Drew he murmured. I guess it was a good try huh The screen went blank. Abaquaan looked from one to another of the subdued faces around him. What about Nelson and the Druids outside he asked in a low voice. They re all ready for the grand entry into Padua. What do we tell them Nobody had any answers or seemed to care all that much. At length West said Well perhaps that s something we ought to talk about. As the others looked at him he motioned with his head to indicate the direction of the door. Andy Schwartz got the message and nodded silently he got up from his seat waved a hand for Glautzen to do likewise and followed Abaquaan Clarissa and the others near the doorway through into the main cabin. Glautzen and West came next closing the door quietly behind them to leave Zambendorf alone and unmoving staring out into Titan s perpetual night. 33 FRENNELECH THE HIGH PRIEST OF KROAXIA SAT ALONE IN HIS PRIVATE chambers in the Palace of the High Holy One at Pergassos brooding over the latest reports from his spies. He smelt a conspiracy in the air and the evidence pointed to Eskenderom the King as being very much mixed up in it. Eskenderom s ambition had long been to sweep the other nations of the Sacred Alliance aside and establish Kroaxia at the head of a mighty empire that would stretch to the Peripheral Barrier with himself as its leader. His preparatory plans had involved political intrigues and subterfuges aimed at undermining the kings and rulers of neighboring states and weakening their holds over their realms but in the case of Serethgin the very destabilization that Eskenderom had brought about had given Kleippur opportunity to seize control over the province of Carthogia and the resulting state of affairs had proved a hindrance to the further development of Eskenderom s scheme ever since. Kroaxia s acquisition of weapons from the Lumians however suddenly put everything in a new light. If the reports of decisive Waskorian successes against Kleippur s forces were accurate as the invasion of Carthogia was intended in part to test the invasion would be completed swiftly and devastatingly and Kleippur would cease to be a problem. Then Eskenderom would have to make his move against the other Alliance nations just as quickly and with total surprise while his advantage was overwhelming before the Lumians could restore a balance by arming Eskenderom s rivals in like fashion as was doubtless their longer term intent. For a long time however Eskenderom had been growing increasingly impatient over the traditional division of the powers of state between its secular and ecclesiastical authorities if the King were now to find himself commanding powers potent enough to build an empire that would stretch to the ends of the world Frennelech was under no illusion that his better nature would lead him to share such powers graciously with the clergy to serve the founding of a universal Church as well. As Eskenderom would already have concluded the prospect of such a dramatic decline of clerical power would put Frennelech squarely among his potential opposition the kind of opposition moreover that Eskenderom would doubtless prefer to do without while he was dealing with the Alliance nations. The most probable explanation for Eskenderom s taking such a secretive interest in a laughable pipsqueak like Groork therefore and dispatching the loyal captain Horazzorgio to retrieve Groork from Xerxeon was that Eskenderom intended replacing Frennelech with a tame puppet appointed by the Crown as its obedient caretaker of all matters spiritual. As far as Frennelech s sources had been able to ascertain Horazzorgio still hadn t returned although he was long overdue by even the most conservative estimates. That was worrisome because it suggested that perhaps even more might be going on than Frennelech knew about. Frennelech knew that Eskenderom frequently visited Gornod the desolate spot in the mountains east of Pergassos where the Lumian flying vehicles landed to meet treacherously with the Lumians behind Frennelech s back even when Eskenderom s servants assured him that the King was somewhere else. He also knew from his own private rendezvouses with the Lumians in the dense forests to the west of Pergassos that Eskenderom was trying to enlist the aid of Lumian magic to present Groork to the Kroaxian population as a genuine miracle worker and revealer of Divine Will because the Lumians had admitted it. True the Lumians had steadfastly denied that they had agreed to any such request but how could Frennelech rely on the words of those who had already betrayed Kleippur s trust Their only interest seemed to be their obsessive desire to tame the forests and they would reward with wealth power and protection any robeing in a position of authority or influence who was prepared to cooperate with them in achieving that end. Eskenderom commanded the Kroaxian army but Frennelech controlled the minds of the Kroaxian people. Which process would deliver a greater quantity of willing robeing labor to the Lumians force or persuasion Both Eskenderom and Frennelech were pressing their cases to the Lumians and no doubt both were hearing reassuring responses. But ultimately which would the Lumians elect to go with He gathered the sheets of foil together and locked them in a concealed compartment in his desk then stood up and walked through into the outer chamber where his secretary Archdeacon Jaskillion was copying columns of numbers into an enormous plate bound ledger. Over eight twelves of dozens of six crowns received in penitents dues and eternity prepayments last bright and less than two dozen twelve brights remission of Reduction Furnace time paid out Jaskillion said sitting back and looking up. Gross margin up a twelfth and a half. The Lifemaker should be well pleased. Then let the Lifemaker s business be kept private to the Lifemaker lest Eskenderom should commence levying a tax on it Frennelech advised. Jaskillion looked shocked. But to tax the sacred revenues would be tantamount to disputing the Lifemaker s judgment of His needs and interfering in the prosecution of His works he protested. What sacrilege would the King be committing thus Then it is our holy duty to avoid exposing him to the temptation Frennelech said. The archdeacon studied Frennelech s face for a few seconds. But thou didst not come to banter such matters I see. What troubles thee The Lumians Frennelech said. I cannot trust their assurances but neither am I able to order their casings seared with flame and acid for the truthfulness of their words to be assessed by Inquisitors. And yet we dare not allow this business to be decided by the whims of these unworldly aliens whose motives and whose notions of truth are as unknown to us as the sky s far side of which they speak. Jaskillion s mood became more serious. The question has been occupying my thoughts too he agreed. And what answers have thy thoughts supplied Jaskillion paused for a moment to collect his words. When a king becomes too strong it is usually time for the Lifemaker s divine immutable plan to be revised he said at last. It would be an error to permit Carthogia to be sacrificed just yet. A force aligned against Eskenderom at this time is not one to be squandered I agree. But our invasion has been dispatched and Kleippur s army is about to be scattered and smashed. What shall save Carthogia then The Waskorians lie interposed between our army and Kleippur and they too are equipped with Lumian arms Jaskillion pointed out. Were they upon our secret instruction to ally themselves with Carthogia the resulting combined strength would perhaps be sufficient to hold out while Serethgin mobilizes against Kroaxia. What relief could Serethgin s horde bring against Lumian devilment which confounds even Kleippur s trained regiments Frennelech asked scoffingly. Much if the Serethginians too were issued Lumian arms Jaskillion replied. Is this some foolish jest We cannot confide in Serethgin s leaders and admit them into our dialogue with the Lumians. Of course not. But who else would supply them with Lumian arms We would . . . discreetly. And after Eskenderom s defeat and removal would not Serethgin s gratitude lead it to support a claim by thee in turn to assume the Supreme Archprelacy within the new unified state that Kroaxia and Serethgin would become Mmm . . . Frennelech looked suddenly more interested. And Carthogia also after Serethgin regains the territory that rightfully belongs to it he mused. Exactly . . . And if we could arrange by some means for all direct dealings with the Lumians to be conducted through ourselves exclusively the king of Serethgin would have far more inducement than Eskenderom to agree to a reasonable compromise on the sharing of power in any empire that might ensue. Frennelech smiled faintly. Certainly our claim to being intermediaries between a higher form of mind and the world of mortal robeings would be indisputable he murmured. Indeed so. Frennelech became more businesslike once again. But could Serethgin be equipped and mobilized in time How long did Kroaxia need to be equipped and mobilized What reason could the king of Serethgin offer to his people for taking arms against Kroaxia Frennelech asked. To defend their Waskorian brothers whose faith Eskenderom is sending his armies illegally into Carthogia to persecute Jaskillion suggested. Hmmm an appeal that would be rendered all the more persuasive after the Waskorians had gone over to Kleippur s side. Precisely so. And Kleippur s insistence on freedom of worship for all is well known. Would Kleippur accept Waskorian aid He has been deserted by the Lumians his soldiers have been defeated by rabble for lack of the weapons that the Waskorians possess and now the survival of his entire nation is threatened. He will accept. Just then hurried footsteps sounded outside and muffled voices sounded of a sentry at the door challenging and someone blurting a reply. A sharp rap sounded on the door. Who knocks Frennelech called out. Kelessbayne O Illustrious One sent by Chroschanor to convey urgent tidings of events in the city. Allow him entry Frennelech called to the guards. Kelessbayne entered and closed the door behind him. He looked flustered. Well Frennelech demanded. Groork the hearer has appeared again Kelessbayne gabbled. He calls himself Enlightener and has entered the city riding on a steam donkey preaching words of faith that he says are the Lifemaker s. A multitude that grows larger by the moment bringing its sick its blind and its lame is following him toward the Central Square where he says great revelations will be made known and wondrous miracles come to pass. Jaskillion was on his feet his face tense with alarm. What else has happened he snapped. Have there been signs of dragons in the sky Kelessbayne was not among the few who knew the true nature of the Lumian vessels. Not in Pergassos. But Groork speaks of awesome happenings in the Meracasine of the whole Kroaxian army renouncing the ways of war abandoning its weapons in the desert and returning hither to spread a new nonviolent faith of universal brotherhood. Frennelech groaned inwardly. It could only mean that the Lumians had chosen to back Eskenderom and were carrying out his plan to pass Groork off as a miracle worker. Is the army at the city also he asked weakly. Kelessbayne shook his head. It is still an eighth bright s march from the gates if Groork speaks truly. Was Groork present at these events that took place in the Meracasine Such is his assertion. Then how came he to the city so far ahead of any soldiers He claims that to prepare the way he was borne ahead by shining angels who ride in creatures that fly beyond the sky. That was as conclusive as anything could be the Lumians had brought Groork to Pergassos. There could no longer be any doubt but that they were in league with Eskenderom. Is the King still away he asked Jaskillion. He is Jaskillion replied. Eskenderom was at Gornod talking to the Lumians again Jaskillion wouldn t mention the place in Kelessbayne s presence. Frennelech thought desperately. With Groork s arrival at Pergassos an eighth of a bright ahead of the army and Eskenderom still away was it possible that the Lumians could have miscalculated somewhere in their timing If so perhaps Frennelech could do something yet to make their victory a little more costly. From what he had seen of the Lumians powers he could probably do nothing to change the final outcome if they had made up their minds . . . but if he was going down anyway he would go down fighting. Collect as many of the Palace Guard as you can scrape together and send them immediately to the Central Square he instructed Jaskillion. Also have my carriage brought to the side entrance and inform the guard commander that he will be under direct orders from me. He went back into his inner chamber to don his outdoor cloak. What is thy design Jaskillion called after him. I have a suspicion that Groork s behind the scenes miracle makers might not be as prepared at this moment as they ought to be Frennelech s voice replied. If that should indeed turn out to be the case I fear for him that this performance may well prove to be his last. The crowd filled the Central Square of Pergassos and had started to overflow into the surrounding streets as word spread around the city and onlookers continued to arrive. Trading in the market had virtually ceased as stallholders covered their wares and closed down either to protect their stock or to give undivided attention to what was happening. At the focus of it all the Enlightener who had mounted the steps of the platform and speaker s rostrum built in the center of the square was holding a tablet of ice above his head and sounding forth in a voice that rang with fervor and conviction. I have climbed the mountain and seen the angels. I have flown in the skies and seen persecutors turned into baptizers. I have seen armies crumble at His command for now it has been written Thou shalt not kill. Hear the Word that the Enlightener bringeth one of the followers cried. Hail to the Enlightener We shall not kill Let he who disobeys be cast into the slave pits another shouted. No the Enlightener s voice boomed around the square. I say to thee that henceforth no robeing shall be a slave one to another for the Lifemaker s commandment is written Thou art thy neighbor s equal. Thou shalt not bow thy head nor bend thy knee before any that would proclaim thy inferiority to his worth or demand the fruits of thy labors as thy duty to his station. How then shall we accept the Carthogians Master another asked. Accept them as the soldiers of Kroaxia once their sworn enemies unto death have already accepted them as comrades and brothers. No more shall robeing murder robeing but all shall work together to gain wisdom and understanding until they are worthy to lift themselves into the skies and soar with the angels that appeared over the Meracasine. What sayest thou Master that we too shall fly Yes Yes All who have faith and believe in His Word shall fly with the shining angels just as I have flown with them. This I promise you. The Enlightener could feel the mood of the crowd its desire to believe willing that it should be so. His eyes blazed his skin shone in the light of the mid bright sky and the expression burning from his face radiated the ecstasy that he felt as the Lifemaker s force surged through every chip and channel of his being. He extended his arms to stand with his cloak spread wide above the crowd and the crowd roared as the waves of rapture flowed outward from the center to break against the surrounding walls like methane breakers in a storm crashing against ice cliffs at the ocean s edge. All are equal. We shall not be slaves We will work with our neighbors We shall not kill When will we see the angels The crowd s emotions were at a peak. The Enlightener sensed his optimum moment approaching. I shall summon angels and then every robeing will know I speak truly he told them. That was more than any mystic had ever offered before. Show us the angels they shouted back. Summon the angels I shall command miracles that you may know I speak truly Show us miracles Then we will know THEN BEHOLD YE HIS POWER the Enlightener thundered and with a flourish drew the praying box from his pouch and held it high over his head. The whole square erupted in shouts of wonder and then quietened expectantly. The Enlightener pressed the sacred button and stabbing his finger upward threw back his head. IN THE NAME OF THE LIFEMAKER I COMMAND THE SKIES OPEN AND DELIVER THY WONDERS Every face in the square tilted upward to peer at the heavens. Some of those present were screaming. Some had collapsed into unconsciousness. The Enlightener stood poised waiting still pointing at the sky. The crowd could see the irresistible compulsion burning in his eyes and feel the cosmic force streaming from his outstretched finger. The moment was crushing terrifying overpowering. They were inextricably a part of it now and being swept along helplessly in a flood tide of rising swirling passion and emotion. They watched and waited. They howled. They shouted. And then very suddenly a silence descended and spread to cover the square from one side to the other as completely as had the excitement only moments before. All at once seemingly everyone had noticed that nothing was happening. All the heads tilted back down and looked at each other quizzically. The Enlightener s image evaporated and all that was left where he had stood was a foolish looking mystic holding a peculiar vegetable in the air. He lowered the vegetable and jabbed at it frantically still looking upward with a pleading expression on his face. He shook his head in disbelief and tried again. Well a voice asked from somewhere. He s just a fake someone else murmured sounding disgusted. He was lying. Nothing but a fraud. He speaks for no Lifemaker. Blasphemer another voice shouted sounding angrier now. Where art thy angels O Enlightener someone called out mockingly. They are walking here like us for are not all beings equal a voice answered and another laughed. More laughter began to rise up from all sides. A blob of thick black grease flew out of the crowd and squelched on the Enlightener s cloak. A piece of partly decomposed fuel cell followed then a lump of organic goo from one of the stalls and within seconds the Enlightener was being pelted down from the platform while the air filled with hoots boos and shouts of derision. Here give this to thy angels Did Kleippur send thee to make mockery of Kroaxia s soldiers Carthogian agent Spy Why do thy angels not rescue thee He has seen no angels I ll believe it when I see our soldiers at the city gates. Yes and proclaiming that the Carthogians are their brothers Blasphemer Profaner Execute him The sound of heavy footsteps crashing in unison came from the rear and the crowd parted to make way for a detachment of the Palace Guard led by a major wearing the red sash of Frennelech s handpicked household elite. The outer files fanned out to form a cordon in front of the crowd and the remainder followed the major through to where the Enlightener was standing stained and disheveled with a stunned expression on his face. You are under arrest on charges of blasphemy heresy incitement to riot sedition and high treason the major announced. He turned his head to address the captain at the head of the squad behind. Seize him Angry murmurs broke out and rose to a roar as the Enlightener was hustled away too bewildered to hear any of the words. At the end of the street that led into the square from the direction of the Holy Palace he found himself looking suddenly into the face of Frennelech who had been watching from the window of his carriage. The High Priest shook his head reproachfully. Tch Tch You really should have given yourself more time to get the hang of it he said. And now we ll have to drop you into an acid vat to prove to everyone that my Lifemaker is more powerful than your Lifemaker. In some ways it s such a shame because I do believe you really were sincere. It just goes to show my friend you can t trust every angel that you meet. He nodded to the guard commander and the Enlightener was led away. I ve been thinking Jaskillion said from the seat next to Frennelech. The High Priest turned his head away from the window curiously. Oh really What Perhaps we re being unduly pessimistic about this whole matter of the Lumians disposition. That mystic has clearly been deceived and betrayed. Could not the Lumians act of delivering Eskenderom s intended replacement for thee into our hands in this fashion be meant as a signal to convey their decision Our previous conclusion could well have been mistaken. What an attractive notion Frennelech agreed. We will investigate it further . . . But first let us avail ourselves of the opportunity that Eskenderom s absence presents to ensure a permanent end to all further problems from this scheme of his. Summon Rekashoba the Prosecutor as soon as we get back to the palace and let us get rid of this Enlightener now once and for all while we still have the chance to do so without interference. In the lander parked in the steep sided valley to the north of Padua city the indicator lamp on the Communications Officer s console had stopped signaling. First it had blinked once then after a pause of several seconds it had flashed on and off in a frantic burst which had seemed to shriek the desperation of the robot pressing the transmit button just over two hundred miles away. After that there had been another pause then two or three shorter sequences of flashes. Since then nothing. Hank Frazer reached out a hand and flipped a switch to turn off the panel. I guess that s about it he said in a dull voice. Nobody else said a word. After a long stillness Zambendorf got up from his seat and walked slowly into the main cabin. 34 DANIEL LEAHERNEY SPOKE FROM A SCREEN IN THE AFT COMMUNICATIONS cabin of the surface lander parked at Padua Base which was located in a bare ice covered valley among the hills east of the city. I hope I didn t interrupt at an inconvenient time Caspar but we have some good news that I wanted to give you personally. That s okay Lang said standing before the console in a helmetless EV suit. I was due for a coffee break anyway. What s the news Latest from the reconnaissance drones over Padua city: Zambendorf s messiah showed up in the middle of town about two hours ago. Two hours ago Yes we had a slight communications hitch up here. The message fell down a crack on its way to me. I called you as soon as I found out. Lang nodded. Okay. So ... what happened He drew a big crowd but there were no miracles. Zambendorf didn t show Uh uh. And Flopso even better than we hoped. The troops arrived and hauled his messiah away. I guess our main problem just got solved. Lang was beginning to grin as the full meaning sank in completely. Yeah . . yeah I guess it just did Dan. Well how about that I guess Zambendorf really went for the missile story huh It sure looks like it. I don t mind telling you now though Caspar I thought it was a long shot but I have to hand it to you: You had every one of them figured. Maybe we should retire Gerry Massey and make you the psychologist. They don t get paid enough Lang said. Leaherney grinned briefly and then his expression became serious again. So how are things going with Henry down there Pretty much as we expected Lang replied. He s still sore about what happened to his invasion but I don t think we ll have too much trouble straightening that out now. As I said a week from now we ll be back on the right track. Well I hope you re right. I ll let you get on then I guess. Sorry to drag you away but as I said I just wanted to tell you the news personally especially after the delay. That s okay Dan. Thanks for the thought. I ll talk to you later. Inside the cavern of the Lumian flying vehicle Eskenderom paced irascibly over to the huge opened door and stopped for a moment to glower out at the other two vehicles and the temporary Lumian shelters huddled together against a background of barren hills and stark rock. Then he turned and stamped back to where Monnorel the royal counselor was standing a short distance away from the table at which General Streyfoch and the three Lumians were sitting on opposite sides of the talking Lumian plant. Our whole army disarmed and vanquished without a fight . . . babbling nonsense about being the Carthogians brothers and returning to Kroaxia Eskenderom fumed. What kind of bungling oafs of aliens are these Within two brights of promising us invincibility they have succeeded in rendering us impotent beyond Kleippur s wildest dreams. Are they in league with Carthogia therefore or afflicted with such crass incompetence that the only thing miraculous about them is that any of their flying constructions should ever leave the ground Am I betrayed by deceivers or undone by fools It would be as much an error to assume a unity of purpose among all Lumians as among all robeings it appears Monnorel replied. Our army was intercepted by a rogue band of Lumian criminals whose actions were not sanctioned by the Lumian king. They have gone into hiding and are being hunted. One tiny band of criminals can confound a whole army Are these aliens unable to maintain discipline among their own kind Perhaps their criminals have access to the same powers as their artisans Monnorel suggested. Eskenderom snorted paced away a few steps and then wheeled back again. What of the identity of this so called miracle worker that they used he demanded. Is there news of that Not as yet Monnorel confessed. But it appears he was brought from Carthogia where similar events are reported to have taken place among the Waskorians. So now the truth begins to emerge Eskenderom said darkly. Kroaxia has not been favored by special considerations as we were led to believe. While one faction of Lumians brings aid to me another is supporting Kleippur. What result can this bring but the destruction of both our realms Is that the goal of the strategy which these incomprehensible Lumians are unfolding If so we should unite all the nations of Robia against them and at least perish honorably. I think not Monnorel said. I believe them when they say that what happened in the Meracasine was as much a surprise to them as it was to us. I say we must trust them. I too General Streyfoch advised from the table. We cannot risk being deprived of Lumian weapons if there is a possibility that Kleippur has acquired them. We must hope Monnorel is right and trust the Lumians. Eskenderom scowled and moved back to the cavern door. He didn t know whom to believe or what to make of the situation. Kleippur had trusted in the Lumians and as soon as they found it expedient they had deserted him and commenced dealing with Kroaxia or so Eskenderom had been told. But now that there could be no further concealing of the fact that some Lumians had continued to deal with Carthogia all along the official Lumians were asking him to believe that the ones talking to Kleippur were nothing more than a band of criminals that nobody had known about. But the Lumians had eyes everywhere and knew everything. So had they been merely distracting Eskenderom while their king treated with Kleippur and deliberately leading him on into launching the invasion so that his army could be lured out into the Meracasine and destroyed The other possibility that Eskenderom had to consider was that the villain behind everything was not Kleippur at all but Frennelech who as Eskenderom knew from his spies had been meeting secretly and treacherously with Lumians in the forests west of Pergassos. It would not be to Frennelech s advantage to allow either Kleippur or Eskenderom to grow too strong by inflicting a crushing defeat upon the other and his motives would be compatible both with his original endorsement of the decision to invade Carthogia thus sustaining a state of tension between the two rulers and with plotting subsequently to make sure the Kroaxian army was incapacitated to prevent its carrying out the task. But what could Frennelech have offered the Lumians in return for their assistance Presumably only the potential that his office gave him for inducing the robeing population to tame the forests which seemed to be the Lumians only objective. Surely however Eskenderom told himself it would be the Lumian king who would want the forests tamed not these alleged criminals which again led him to the conclusion that no band of criminals existed and that the Lumians aiding his rival in this case Frennelech were therefore the Lumian king s official representatives. So either way it seemed to Eskenderom whether the Enlightener was the product of Lumians working with Kleippur or with Frennelech the aliens were committed to getting rid of him. He didn t know why for he had agreed to everything they had asked. If he had been put to some test of weakness and failed the verdict was unjust for how could robeings be expected to abide by the intricate rules of conduct of a remote incomprehensible alien world that none of them had ever seen At the makeshift conference table that had been set up in the lander s open cargo bay Sharon Beatty the transmogrifier operator assigned from Leon Keyhoe s staff was using the lull to tidy up her computer file notes of the proceedings to the point where Lang had excused himself to take a call from Leaherney inside the ship. During the last couple of hours of Terran Taloid exchanges she had learned that Henry was furious because his army had been turned around and was returning to Padua instead of invading Genoa and Giraud was denying official responsibility and blaming Zambendorf and his people who for some reason or other were hiding out down on Titan with a stolen surface lander. Sharon had never been sure why Zambendorf should have been included in the mission and she found it disturbing that so many seemingly intelligent and rational people should have either the time or the inclination to take his antics seriously. After traveling one billion miles to Saturn in the largest spacecraft ever built and sharing the excitement of her fellow scientists at the staggering discoveries on Titan she had had more interesting things to do than pay much attention to Gerold Massey s concerns about the sociological implications of the mission s purpose or Dave Crookes attempts to recruit her as a political activist. She had seen enough of crusades and causes while she was at college and wasted too much of her time and energy on them. Now she had more worthwhile things to attend to. If more people only felt the same way all the Zambendorfs would long ago have been put out of business. Miami Beach Seltzman was saying to Giraud on one of the local frequencies. Just imagine it Charles liquid water all blue a real full disk golden sun palm trees and a hundred degrees in the shade without an EV suit. What would you give for that Hmm it sounds wonderful Giraud s voice answered. But if it s all the same to you Konrad I think I d take Cannes or St. Tropez. Aw okay. Who cares From this distance it s all the same place anyhow. What do you think the Taloids would say to it Not much. Did you know that some parts of them are made from solid mercury They d melt in your refrigerator back home. No I didn t. Would they really That s amazing Lang s voice added itself to the conversation suddenly. Charles this is Caspar. I m inside the forward bay lock now be back out there in a few seconds. Has anything new been happening No. We decided to take a break too Giraud answered. What did Dan want The outer door of the airlock at the front end of the bay slid open and Lang emerged. Even in his bulky suit his step seemed brisk and jubilant as he came over to the table. At the same time Henry who had been standing at the cargo doors staring out at whatever Taloids saw in the darkness turned and came back to rejoin the group. It s all over with Zambendorf Lang announced. His messiah was arrested in Padua city about two hours ago. Zambendorf didn t appear anywhere. He grinned through the faceplate of his helmet. Maybe something happened that made him nervous about flying all of a sudden. Well that s just great Caspar Seltzman said enthusiastically. So you really did have it all figured huh. Congratulations. Giraud sounded pleased. Zambendorf bought the story then. Looks like it Lang agreed lowering himself ponderously back onto the seat he had been occupying earlier. So let s give Henry and the others the news. It should make things a lot easier all round. Ready to go again Sharon Giraud asked looking at her through his faceplate. Ready. She nodded and cleared the screen of the transmogrifier. Lang s news had obviously signified something to the others that was lost on her. Perhaps that was why she had been assigned this duty stint. If so big deal. Can we resume please Giraud said switching his speech channel into the transmogrifier s input channel. Sharon verified the interpretation on her screen and the machine produced its Taloid equivalent at the correct pitch and speed. The Taloids took up their previous positions opposite with Henry in the middle Giraud nodded at Lang to commence. My apologies for having to leave Lang said. I was called because we have received important news. He paused while Sharon monitored the conversion of his phrases into Taloid substitutions. Machiavelli who seemed to be Henry s principal adviser at all the talks indicated with a gesture that the Taloids had understood. Lang continued The pretender whom you seek has been found. We have delivered him to your city and placed him in the hands of your authorities to be dealt with by Taloid law. He paused again while Sharon restructured his words into shorter sentences. Our criminals have not yet been located. When they are found they will be taken to our city above the sky and dealt with by Terran law. So Taloid justice will have taken its course and Terran justice will have taken its course. We trust that this action will be accepted as proof of our good faith. They have found him Streyfoch exclaimed as he listened to the Lumian plant s strangled utterances. They have found the Enlightener who tricked our soldiers. We shall see a public execution before this bright is through Eskenderom promised grimly. He was handed over fairly and without protest to our own authorities Mormorel observed. He looked at Eskenderom. Perchance we have judged these aliens hastily for deeds such as they have described would constitute a most unusual form of treachery. A new light of hope had come into Eskenderom s eyes suddenly. If the Lumian king had handed the imposter over in Pergassos then perhaps the rout of the Kroaxian army had been the work of Lumian criminals after all. If so had they been working in league with Frennclech or with Kleippur What manner of reception was this imposter accorded at the city Eskenderom asked. In his absence the policy would have been decided by Frennelech. Mormorel pressed the button to activate the Lumian plant and repeated the question. After a brief exchange of queries and answers the plant responded that as far as the Lumian eyes in the sky bad been able to ascertain the imposter had been arrested. Then does this not tell us that our culprit cannot be Prennelech Eskenderom said to Mormorel. He would hardly welcome his own agent thus. Mormorel considered the proposition dubiously for a few seconds. An agent who has passed forever beyond the point of further usefulness he pointed out. Readily expendable perhaps if such a sacrifice would establish Frennelech s blamelessness in Kroaxia s eyes Hmm. Eskenderom sounded disappointed. Observation of this impostor s treatment will therefore tell us nothing of Frennelech s complicity or otherwise he concluded. Not necessarily Mormorel agreed. Eskenderom scowled to himself and then slammed his open hand down on the table angrily. Then by the Lifemaker I will have this Enlightener s head boiled in acid Let both Frennelech and Kleippur read the warning whichever of them was behind him . . . and anyone else who might be contemplating a compact with Lumian criminals to overthrow the Kroaxian Crown. Attention please. Colonel Wallis here for Ambassador Giraud a voice said inside the Terrans helmets. Yes Colonel Giraud acknowledged. Number three perimeter guardpost has intercepted a mounted Taloid who indicates that he is known to the visitors. Our records show him listed as James Bond. Request identity confirmation and your further instructions sir. One second Colonel Giraud said. Then Konrad did you get that Pass the message to Machiavelli would you Seltzman talked to the transmogrifier and the transmogrifier talked to the Taloids. Colonel Wallis sent a view of the new arrival through to a communications screen on one of the portable compacks beside the transmogrifier and Henry verified that the Taloid was known and friendly. Giraud authorized Wallis to let Bond pass. A few minutes later Skerilliane was escorted into the cavern by two Lumian soldiers. He looked as if he had ridden hard all the way from Pergassos where he informed Eskenderom and the others the Enlightener had shown himself and been arrested by Frennelech s Palace Guards. We know as much already from the Lumians Eskenderom said. But who is he Can you tell us that Indeed Majesty for he is no stranger to the city Skerilhane replied. None other than thy chosen one Groork the brother of Thirg who departed Kroaxia to serve the Dark Master s worldly lieutenant thine enemy Kleippur. Him Eskenderom roared leaping to his feet. The hearer that I offered to install in Frennelech s palace ... He has come back from Carthogia as Kleippur s henchman He is the one who directed Lumian sorcery down upon my army The same Majesty Skerilliane replied. Eskenderom kicked aside the chair upon which he had been sitting and strode to the far wall and back again all the time pounding his fist into his palm with rage and shouting. The traitor The deceiver Is this the gratitude I am shown Is this how I am rewarded for my generosity Arghhh The swamp guzzler Corruption and corrosion upon him May the Reduction Furnace take him I ll slow melt his casing and leach his eyes I ll hang him from high voltage trees in the forest I ll boil him in acid Mormorel find the servants and have them bring our horses at once. Indeed there will be a spectacle for the citizens of Pergassos to enjoy before this bright is through Frennelech has already proclaimed a public execution to take place one twelfth of a bright from now Skerilliane said. Then for once he and I have no quarrel Eskenderom declared. Let us repair at once full haste to Pergassos for this shall be entertainment that I would not wish to miss. Giraud stared in astonishment at Henry s reaction to whatever Bond had said. Machiavelli and Caesar stood up and Machiavelli went over to the doors and began waving toward where the rest of Henry s party were waiting with the mounts in one of the nearby ground vehicle sheds. What in hell s going on Lang demanded. It looks to me as if they re taking off Seltzman said bemusedly. I guess the meeting just adjourned. Sharon find out what s happening Giraud instructed. Somehow Sharon managed to sustain a dialogue of sorts while the Taloids paced back and forth gesticulating wildly at one another while mechanical steeds and more Taloids appeared outside the loading doors and Henry continued to show all the signs of throwing a fit. They re going back to Padua she said at last shaking her head dazedly. Something about a public execution that Henry doesn t want to miss. Execution of whom Seltzman asked. I m not sure but I think it s the messiah. Can we let that happen Giraud said looking uneasily at Lang. Lang s expression was stony behind his faceplate. It s their business and their customs. Who are we to interfere There was a short pause. Are you sure you re not really aiming at Zambendorf Giraud asked uneasily. I ve given you my decision Lang said Konrad Seltzman met Giraud s eye for a split second then shifted his gaze to Sharon. Did they say exactly when he asked her. Sharon glanced at the computer s conversion of the Taloid time measurement that had been mentioned. About twenty hours from now. 35 THE OUTER DOOR OF THE MIDSHIPS AIRLOCK OPENED ON THE HIJACKED surface lander hidden in the valley two hundred miles north of Padua city and the suited figures of Zambendorf and Andy Schwartz the lander s captain came out onto the extended stair head platform and descended to join Drew West and Clarissa who were already waiting on the ground. Then walking two abreast and guided by hand held flashlamps in the darkness the melancholy little procession made its way through the labyrinth of steel and concrete shapes to the crude shanty camp that the Taloids had made for themselves. Abaquaan Fellburg and Price who had gone on ahead a while earlier were waiting at the camp with Lord Nelson and Abraham the leader of the Druids and the rest of the Taloids gathered around on all sides. The time had come for Zambendorf to tell the cast officially that the show was wound up and they were being paid off to wish them good luck and send them back home. We ve told them they won t be going to Padua Abaquaan said. The team had agreed on the storyline that Moses his main task of preventing the invasion of Genoa now successfully accomplished had been called elsewhere to attend to other things. It was hardly a satisfying end to their venture but nobody had been able to suggest anything better. Zambendorf nodded inside his helmet. How are they taking it he asked. Not as badly as we thought they might Abaquaan replied. They re disappointed all right but not disillusioned. They seem to have rationalized some way of coming to terms with the situation in their own minds. I don t know ... A true believer is a true believer anywhere it seems Zambendorf sighed. Oh well bring the transmogrifier here would you Otto. I d like to say a few words to them before they go. The plan was that the surface lander crew having ostensibly been released from forcible detainment would fly to the Terran base at Genoa to return themselves and the vehicle to the authorities and take the Taloid contingent home at the same time. As to what should happen after that opinions were divided Abaquaan Fellburg and Clarissa felt that the team had no alternative but to follow in the flyer and turn itself in whereas Zambendorf and Drew West wondered if there might be some way of extricating Moses from his predicament first. Indeed this was modesty and graciousness of spirit that was truly worthy of noble beings the Renamer formerly Captain Horazzorgio thought to himself as he listened to the enchanted plant speaking the Archangel s thoughts. So much had been accomplished in so little time a new faith founded a village saved the whole sect of Waskorians at peace now with Carthogia the Kroaxian tyrant checked and his army scattered and yet here the Archangel was expressing regret that the chosen ones who had descended over the desert on billowy wings would not be present to witness the Coming at Pergassos. For it was clear that the Enlightener had asked their assistance in the Meracasine merely as a precaution while he tested the powers that the Lifemaker had bestowed upon him. The powers had proved so awesome that he had elected to go on alone and complete the conversion of Pergassos single handed leaving his followers free to attend to other matters back in Carthogia. Wish them good luck and tell them I m sure we ll meet again sometime I hope in happier circumstances Zambendorf said to Abaquaan. Hear how the Archangel promiseth that he will return Ezimbial the Druid prophet told the assembled followers. As a prophet Ezimbial had always been holy and therefore hadn t needed renaming. And let it be written that the time will be one of great rejoicing. Thus hath it been prophesied. It has been a privilege to work with them. Their help will never be forgotten Zambendorf said. This collaboration with angels hath brought great blessings. Our place in eternity is assured Ezimbial interpreted. They must return to Genoa now and help Arthur to found institutions of true learning. That is the way to acquire the knowledge that will allow them to fly beyond the sky. Then who knows perhaps one day we ll be able to welcome them at our world. It is revealed that Carthogia is the Land promised in the Scribings. There shall the Enlightener s followers erect a Great Temple and Kleippur shall direct them. And they who heed no false teachings before those that shall be preached in the Temple will be redeemed and then will they arise and rejoin the angels in the shining land that floats beyond the sky. I guess that s it Otto. And here endeth the lesson. Andy you d better stay here and work out a schedule with them for getting packed up and loaded aboard Zambendorf said to Schwartz. Otto will stay with you to handle the translating. We ll see you both back in the ship when you re through. Sure Schwartz answered. Vernon watched Zambendorf and the others turn to leave and then wheeled himself around in his suit to look at Nelson and Abraham. I d like to stay back too he said . . . for the last few minutes. He couldn t help feeling guilty about what had happened to Moses he had started the whole thing with the ice slab he d given Moses on the mountain. Now he instinctively put off what he felt subconsciously would amount to desertion of the remaining Taloids as well. As you wish Zambendorf said. We ll see you later Vernon. His party began to walk back to the ship the probing flitting beams of their flashlamps growing fainter and more distant in the darkness. Schwartz turned back toward Abaquaan. Tell them I d like to be ready for takeoif not later than three hours from now but it d help a lot if they could get all their personal stuff loaded right away. We can take all the animals they brought with them but they ll have to let go the ones they ve been collecting since . . . the big rock crushers with the caterpillar tracks anyhow. Abaquaan conveyed the message and Abraham responded with a question that appeared on the screen as DESTINATION IN GENOA The Terran base just outside the city Abaquaan replied. DRUIDS ASSIGNMENT AFTER THAT the screen asked. And Abaquaan answered We have no specific instructions to give. You ll be on your own then. Talk to Arthur s scientists at Camelot. That s where the most useful work is being done. Ezimbial puzzled over the plant s reply for a moment. Kleippur s inquirers he said to the Renamer. The Lifemaker will make known His wishes through them But knowest thou which among them Whom are we to approach The Renamer stared thoughtfully at the trees in the background. Perhaps he answered slowly. There is a one called Thirg whose steps the Lifemaker directed out of Kroaxia to enter the service of Kleippur. The workings of the Lifemaker s plan are clearer to me now. It was I who in blindness would have frustrated the Maker s design and for that it has been my penance to bear the afflictions that you see. How knowest thou it is this Thirg whom we should seek Ezimbial asked. Does he carry some special qualification of eminence among Kleippur s inquirers that sets him apart as the object of our quest None less than that of being the Enlightener s brother the Renamer replied. The Enlightener has a brother in Carthogia Ezimbial s eyes widened. Indeed Kleippur s realm is the Promised Land of the Scribings and artisans have been congregating thither from the corners of the world to build the Temple that was prophesied. Just to be sure the Renamer activated the enchanted plant and said into it Is it our quest to seek Thirg Asker of Questions who was born brother to the holy Enlightener The plant replied Unclear hiss buzz what mean brother. Want say alternative hoo whoo bonk bonk. Else obtain new word. The Renamer couldn t bring an alternative to mind immediately and instructed Obtain new word. EQUIVALENT ENGLISH WORD FORM BEING REQUESTED the screen advised Abaquaan. Oh hell can t we wrap this up Andy Schwartz said. I ve gotta get the ship up to flight readiness. There s a lot to do. Give them a few more minutes Vernon said. How often do you get a chance to talk to people like these Abaquaan eyed Vernon through his faceplate nodded with a sigh and instructed the transmogrifier Okay. Pray describe the plant invited the Renamer. Male child bom of common parenthood the Renamer said after a few seconds thought. The relationship thereof to either another male child or to a female child. The screen presented: FUNCTION SUBJECT ADDITIONAL DATA Personal relationship Male child same To another male female child parents Abaquaan told the machine simply Brother. Back at the ship the others had just arrived below the stair head platform outside the midships lock. I ve got a hunch that Caspar still doesn t realize we ve got the flyer too Zambendorf was saying. Certainly there s no question that the lander would have been a sitting duck over Padua but the flyer s a lot smaller and more maneuverable. When the lander s picked people on radar up flying back to Genoa everyone will be off their guard and not expecting us to show up anywhere else. I think there s an excellent chance we d be able to pull off a quick dash in and out at rooftop level in the flyer. I go along with Karl Drew West said as he began climbing up to the platform. We sent Moses in there. Trying to get him out again is the least we can do. It s worth a try. Sure but it s not the sentiment I m arguing with it s the practicality. Clarissa answered. It s all right to talk about excellent chances but you ve never tried dodging those missiles and I have. I m telling you it s not a piece of cake. We don t know what s happening in Padua if anything is or when or even where Moses is Joe Fellburg pointed out. Exactly what would we be supposed to do at what place and at what time I don t know either but we can find out Zambendorf said. There has to have been a lot of talking going on between Leaherney s people and Henry. There might be records of the dialogues stored in the files where Dave Crookes or somebody could get at them. Maybe we d pick up some clues that way. Or possibly we could find out who the transmogrifier operators are at Padua. They might have heard something. I don t know All I m saying is that we should give it a try rather than just quit. Mmm maybe ... Fellburg murmured. He didn t sound wildly enthusiastic. He d had some experience with smart missiles too. At that moment there was a click on the circuit as somebody switched through to a medium range channel and Vernon s voice came through excitedly from back at the Taloid camp. Hey Karl everybody don t go away listen to this. We ve just learned something from Nelson that maybe changes everything. He assumed we already knew about it because these guys think we know everything. Anyway ... it seems that Moses is Galileo s brother Fifteen minutes later back inside the ship Zambendorf called Thelma in the Orion and asked her to beam the call back down to the surface to connect to the communications set hidden in Arthur s conference room at Camelot. One of Arthur s knights answered and went to fetch Arthur. Zambendorf transmitted some stills over the link from recordings showing Moses but Arthur was unable either to confirm or deny that the figure shown was Galileo s brother. Galileo himself was elsewhere but Arthur promised to send for him at once. Galileo called back over an hour later after Arthur s staff eventually found him locked away in a workroom where he was constructing a model of the Satumian system of planet rings and moons from information that Massey and Thelma had sent him several days previously. Zambendorf showed Galileo the pictures and asked if the Taloid shown in them was his brother. Thirg utterly bewildered at seeing for the first time the face of the fabulous Enlightener that the whole country was talking about who had pacified the Waskorians saved Carthogia from invasion and now allegedly departed to put a permanent end to further Kroaxian mischief confirmed to the Wearer that it was. He is the brother of whom you spoke Kleippur asked incredulously as Thirg gaped at the Lumian long distance seeing device. The hearer who came to warn you when the Kroaxian Council ordered your arrest It is he Dornvald exclaimed having also just arrived. Behold the mystic we last saw praying to the skies with the villagers of Xerxeon. He was convinced that his voices had led him there to see the fulfillment of some momentous destiny Thirg said weakly still staring at the viewing window. It appears his inspiration was more substantially founded than I had credited. How comes Thirg s brother Groork to this exalted station in which we now find him Kleippur inquired pressing the button that would open the viewing vegetable s ears. Several hundred miles away across darkened deserts of rock strewn hydrocarbon sands and mountains of naked ice Zambendorf read the words that appeared on the screen in front of him. I ll explain it all later. We may not have a lot of time he said gruffly and cut the connection. At one of the consoles across the aisle behind Zambendorf in the Lander s aft communications cabin Hank Frazer was taking a return call from Dave Crookes. I found out which operator had the most recent slot down there Crookes said. It was Sharon Beatty one of our people from Leon Keyhoe s section. I talked to her about ten minutes ago. She said that the Taloids are staging a big public execution in Padua and Henry got all excited and went galloping off to be sure not to miss it. All she knew apart from that she said was that it concerned a miracle worker who s been causing Henry a lot of trouble lately. Is that enough for you to figure out the rest It sure is Frazer said. Oh and Dave one more thing did she have any idea when this was supposed to happen Did you ask her that Yes I did. She said about twenty hours from when Henry heard about it that s something like ten hours from now. Back at the Taloid camp Zambendorf Vernon and Abaquaan told Nelson that they had received word from the sky that a public execution was being arranged in Padua city and it was Moses desire that the intended victim should be saved which they felt safe in presuming to be the case. They didn t say who the intended victim was and Nelson assumed they were referring to someone that Moses had learned about after his arrival at the city. In response to their further questioning Nelson informed them that the customary place for conducting executions of major criminals and heretics was a high cliff located just outside the city. Here before a natural public amphitheater the victims were pushed from a wide rock ledge halfway up the face at the top of a long ceremonial staircase to fall two hundred feet into an open tank containing some kind of corrosive liquid. This was the usual method of executing heretics Nelson explained because the procedure also embodied the elements of a trial permitting a higher justice the opportunity to intervene in the event of wrongful conviction: According to doctrine any innocent cast from the ledge would be snatched from death by the Taloid god before completing the fall. Apparently nobody had ever been snatched yet which the Taloid priests contended was proof that they d never issued a wrong verdict. Clarissa located the cliff on a series of reconnaissance pictures of Padua and its vicinity which she retrieved from the Orion s databank. It formed the end face of a ridge of craggy hills that descended almost to the city from a more distant range of higher mountains. Even more interesting was that the geography of the area seemed to make its own weather Every set of pictures taken since the Orion s arrival along with the accompanying sets of meteorological data had shown a formation of apparently permanent low altitude methane clouds only a thousand feet or so above the clifftop. That changed Clarissa s assessment of the odds considerably. We could come in low along the ridgeline from the mountains in the rear and probably get up inside those clouds right over the cliff without even the Taloids knowing we were there she said. They d obviously be restricted to visual sighting since they don t have anything like radar. If the chance presented itself yeah maybe we could pull a quick grab and be back up again before they could react. Okay you ve sold me Karl. I ll give it a try. But no stunts or miracles right Abaquaan said. We just go straight down and straight up again. Too right Clarissa agreed. Her tone left no room for dissent. Just a quick grab no tricks and no clowning. I agree I agree Zambendorf said nodding. All I m interested in is getting Moses out if we can. I m not asking for anything else to be changed. The operation is still scrubbed and the lander goes back to Genoa with its crew and the Druids as agreed . . . except that we time it to coincide with our going in at Padua. Okay He cast his eyes anxiously over the faces around him. Okay boss I ll buy it Fellburg said resignedly. I m already in Drew West reminded them. Abaquaan nodded his assent. Aw what the hell . . . We ve scraped through everything else so far. Okay let s do it. Let s do it Vernon repeated. Zambendorf looked at Vernon uncertainly for a second. You don t have to get involved you know. There s still plenty of room in the lander going back to Genoa. I gave Moses his tablet so it s my fault as much as anyone s that he s where he is. Vernon shook his head. No if there s a chance we might be able to get him out again that s where I want to be. Zambendorf apparently having half expected it nodded briefly and left the matter at that. Fine. So let s get our things moved into the flyer and let Andy and his crew get on with whatever needs doing in the lander. Then let s get together again one hour from now and have another look at the layout around that cliff. There won t be any chance for an actual rehearsal for this performance I m afraid so we ll have to make do with the next best thing a lot of imaginary ones. 36 WEARING A LONG HOODED CLOAK THAT HE HAD BARTERED FROM a peasant for his helmet and body armor former private Sallakar pushed his handcart into the city s Central Square and selected a spot for himself in one of the normally busy comers of the market area between a plating salt vendor s stall and a wheelskin dealer. The square however was quiet for this time of late bright and many of the merchants had already closed down. Never mind Sallakar thought all the more business for those like himself who were still on the street to trade. And besides his reason for hurrying to arrive ahead of the main body of the army was to enjoy a few hours of profitable monopoly before the competition appeared and drove down the prices. He threw back the cover of the cart to reveal a collection of rock and ice fragments pieces of parachute silk burned out firework cannisters and other oddments and unfurled a sign which read: GENUINE MERACASINE HOLY RELICS GET YOUR ENLIGHTENER MIRACLE SOUVENIR HERE Genuine relics direct from the scene of the Meracasine miracles he shouted. Here is a rock that was melted by the Enlightener s thunderbolts only five duodecs. Own your own miracle rock. Miraculously preserved cuttings of discarded angels wings guaranteed to keep demons from the house seven duodecs. Angel light pots complete with sacred inscriptions lengths of holy cords pieces of heavenly flying vestments stones from the sermon hill and lots more. Every item guaranteed to have been brought direct from the scene of the Enlightener s coming. A small group of unkempt rough looking idlers had stopped in front of the cart and was watching him curiously. Behind them a few people were looking on apparently apprehensively but most were continuing on their way their eyes fixed solidly in front of them or turning their backs to hurry away. Sallakar frowned. This wasn t at all the kind of reception that he d anticipated. Come on then how about you sir he said to the nearest of the ruffians in front of him an ugly looking character with a lot of unsmoothed red tinted facial plating a soiled and torn jerkin and a navigator s hat pushed jauntily to the back of his head. A special price for this one only three duodecs for this piece of Meracasine rock. An excellent talisman and warder away of evil influences oh yes. Brings good luck and protects your health. Do I hear an offer You re outta your mind the sailor commented sourly. What are you trying to do get yourself fizzed too one of the others asked. Better lay off that kind of talk and just be grateful there aren t any guards within earshot another advised. Sallakar gave them a puzzled look. Didn t he show up here then he asked them. The whole city was supposed to have been converted by now. Who the sailor asked. The Enlightener. He was supposed to come here and call miracles down from the sky. One of the band laughed. Oh he showed up all right but the miracles didn t. The priests will be throwing him off the cliff before bright s end. Where else d you think everybody s going Convicted as a blasphemer another one said. And he might not be the only one from the way you re carrying on a third commented. But don t mind us you go ahead. Two fizzings for the price of one would really make the day. And we d better be on our way the sailor said to the others. Or we ll miss even the one. Sallakar watched them walk away muttering and laughing among themselves then turned round and hastily took down his sign and pulled the cover back over his cart. He stood thinking hard for a while and frowning perplexedly to himself. Then all of a sudden a glint came into his eyes. He took a piece of marking stick from inside his robe turned the sign over and slowly and deliberately wrote on the back in large letters: BLASPHEMER SOUVENIRS AND RELICS BROUGHT BACK BY THE ARMY HE TRIED TO CORRUPT GET YOUR EXECUTION MEMENTO HERE Nodding in satisfaction he rolled the sign up again tucked it beneath the cover then grasped the handles of his cart and moved away to join the general drift of the crowd toward the southern outskirts of the city. In a dungeon in the lowermost levels of the prison behind the Palace of the High Holy One Groork sat on his rough bed of mill swarf and lathe turnings staring forlornly at the bare ice floor. The nightmare he had at last accepted fully and finally was really happening. After dedicating his life unswervingly to upholding the Lifemaker s faith denouncing its enemies and taking scrupulous care never to permit an utterance that might be taken as contradicting the Church s teachings or denying its doctrines this was the bitter end to which it had all brought him convicted and condemned to die the death of a heretic and blasphemer. The injustice of his reward for ceaseless vigilance and untiring devotion was causing him to question seriously the whole foundation of his belief system for the first time ever. He had believed and he had trusted he had remained faithful in the face of adversity he had never wavered. And now Frennelech the High Holy One whom he had served selflessly as the Lifemaker s true worldly personification had become the very instrument by which that service was repaid with betrayal and callousness. How then could such a Holy One personify an all wise and all knowing spirit or be representative of such a being in any way whatever Certainly in no way that Groork could see. And if he admitted that much doubt what further credence could he give to any other facet of the whole system of credos and dogmas that was derived from the same suspect premises by means of the same dubious processes None obviously. But it was inconceivable that the Lifemaker s chosen method for communicating true knowledge could include suspect or dubious elements. Therefore it seemed to follow on principle that the Lifemaker s chosen method for making true knowledge available couldn t depend on inspired interpretations of sacred revelation by self proclaimed diviners. The mental processes that had brought Groork to these conclusions seemed uncomfortably like the methods of reason by which Thirg hypothesized and evaluated possible answers to his questions a practice that Groork had always denounced as sinful. When Groork applied this newfound skepticism to the question of the Wearer and the angels he found only two possible answers to explain their failure to materialize over Pergassos: Either they had been unable to or they had chosen not to. If they had been unable to then their powers were not infinite and they could not have been sent by the Lifemaker if they had chosen not to then they had lied and that alone was enough to force the same conclusion. Groork felt the first possibility to be the more likely since the philosophy of living that the Wearer had expounded would surely have been irreconcilable with any form of moral deficiency but either way it meant that the angels hadn t come from any supernatural realm. Since they were clearly not of the known world they could only be from some other unknown one a world where admittedly arts and skills that were perhaps not mistakenly described as miraculous seemed to be commonplace which could exist only above the sky. So again one of Thirg s long standing insistences and convictions appeared to have been vindicated. And if that were so was not Groork obliged to concede also that the arts and skills that the angels exhibited were not the results of any magical abilities at all but simply the consequences of applying knowledge gained by the universally accessible comprehensible nonmysterious methods of inquiry that Thirg had always propounded He regretted particularly that he would not see Thirg again he saw the world so differently now and there would have been so much for them to talk about. The muffled tramp of heavy footfalls penetrated from outside. They stopped just beyond the dungeon door. Groork could feel his coolant recirculator pounding and a sudden tightness wrenched his insides. He rose to his feet as the heavy organic fibroid door curled itself aside and the jailer entered accompanied by a guard captain two priests Vormozel the prison governor and Poskattyn Frennelech s Judicial Chancellor from the Holy Palace. An escort of Palace Guards remained outside in the passageway. Poskattyn produced a scroll and read Groork of the city of Pergassos thou hast been tried and found guilty of the crimes of heresy blasphemy and high treason against the State and sentenced to suffer death in the manner prescribed by ecclesiastical law. Hast thou any final words to speak before thou art taken to the place of execution Groork could only shake his head numbly Hast thou prepared thyself and made thy peace with the Lifemaker may He have mercy on thy soul Groork made no reply. Poskattyn rerolled his scroll stepped back and looked at Vormozel. Proceed Governor. Vormozel nodded to the guard captain and Groork was led into the passageway and placed between the two priests with the captain in front the governor and chancellor behind and the guards forming a file on either side with torch bearers at front and rear. Their footsteps echoed hollowly from the gaunt walls as the procession walked slowly toward the damp stone stairs at the far end of the passageway. Faces appeared and watched grimly from the windows of some of the other cell doors along the way but none of them made a sound. Groork s impressions were confused and fragmented of drab torchlit stairs massive doors being opened and gratings being raised and the priests on either side of him chanting monotonously as they ascended to ground level and came out into the prison yard. There a legged wagon pulled by two black draped wheeled tractors was waiting before a cordon of guards while several carriages full of dignitaries were lined up with a mounted escort just inside the main gate. Still dazed Groork climbed up into the wagon with the priests the chancellor two of the guards and the guard captain while the rest of the detail and the governor watched from behind. The cart moved away to form up with the other vehicles and the riders the gates were opened and the cavalcade emerged to be greeted by the roars of the crowd that had been waiting outside. Past the Courts of the High Council they went across Penitents Square and over the Bridge of Eskenderom the Elder to the Thieves Quarter on the south side of the city while the crowd closed and surged behind. Groork gripped the handrail in front of him and took in his last glimpses of the city he had lived in for most of his life. He was bewildered and unable to understand what he had done that could suddenly turn fellow citizens and old schoolfriends into a crazed mob whose only interest was to see him die. For the first time he saw the reality of the savage mindlessness that could be engendered in a people who had been conditioned to believe without questioning to accept without understanding and to hate upon command. He remembered the few times he had glimpsed the calm dignified bearing of the citizens of Menassim and in that moment he understood how the tolerance and wisdom of Kleippur s realm were products of the philosophy that Thirg stood for as inevitably as the ignorance and brutality seen in Kroaxia were of the repression that he himself until so very recently had helped to perpetuate. Indeed his conversion had come late he reflected sadly. The city s buildings fell behind and now he could see the Cliff of Judgment looming ahead above the Spectators Hill its face black and menacing against a setting of broken crags behind sullen gray mountains in the more distant background and unsettled storm clouds overhead. The grim procession followed the road around the hill and on the far side the terraces facing the cliff were crowded to capacity with many more figures standing on the open ground above. On a rock platform at the base of the cliff the huge vat of acid fumed white wispy vapors and bubbled in cackling anticipation. Groork found himself trembling suddenly. He looked up and high above on the ledge at the top of the long tapering stairway he could see the scarlet robed figures of High Council priests grouped before an unmoving line of Palace Guards and in front of them all dressed completely in black and hooded the Executioner standing with arms folded while he gazed impassively down over the scene below. Both the King and the High Priest were present with their respective retinues in the raised canopied enclosure occupying the center at the bottom of the amphitheater. Groork and those with him descended from the wagon and stood in front of the enclosure while the spokesmen of the Head of State and of the Head of Church delivered formal addresses. Groork was too petrified by the scene and the mood of the waiting crowd to hear the words. Had he really caused such turmoil that the nation s two most powerful holders of office should take such personal interest in the proceedings Apparently so but Groork couldn t think why. He was incapable of thinking anything anymore. Everything was disintegrating into a jumble of disconnected and incoherent sights and sounds colors and noises words and faces. What was the point in trying to understand any of it now What difference would it make A few minutes more and nothing would make any difference to anything ever again. He thought of his brother he thought of their parents and he tried to compose a prayer to the Lifemaker. And then he realized that the group was moving again and had begun to ascend the broad steps below the stairway that led to the ledge high above. He could hear the crowd growing noisier and sense its rising excitement. In the dignitaries enclosure Eskenderom was watching Frennelech intently from a distance. Indeed if this Enlightener is a product of the High Priest s working in league with the aliens to hinder my expansion then Frennelech is displaying a most remarkable composure at his impending loss he whispered to Mormorel. I am tempted to conclude that the architect of the machinations whose consequences it has been our misfortune to suffer was none less than Kleippur as we suspected. I too Mormorel replied. And now Kleippur shall learn of the fate that awaits those who allow themselves to be enticed into conspiracy with alien criminals. Thus has the Lumian king chosen to demonstrate the folly of opposing his rule Eskenderom said. An illuminating lesson the study of which will not be restricted to Kleippur I trust or confined within merely the boundaries of Carthogia. The news will be repeated rapidly far and wide Mormorel assured him. All nations shall know that the powers of the gods have aligned themselves with thee. Groork s universe had narrowed to the silver shod heels of the guards ascending the steps ahead of him and the incessant chanting of the priests on either side. He had lost all estimate of how high they had climbed or how far was still to go. He didn t dare look up. Endless steps endless steps endless steps . . . The King s disposition seems strangely agreeable if this Enlightener was indeed his chosen replacement for you Jaskillion murmured in Frennelech s ear. I must confess my expectation was that Eskenderom would intervene to protect his protege when I heard of his return posthaste from Gornod. A protege who has exhausted his potential usefulness Frennelech replied. And what surer way could Eskenderom find than this to conceal all trace of his involvement in the plot so recently frustrated and at the same time eliminate all risk of embarrassing indiscretions and exposures in the future The smugness so evident upon the royal visage is not as deeply seated as it appears I feel for it was against Eskenderom s plan that the Lumians elected to direct their magic not ours. If these aliens are indeed the god of which the Scribings speak then I think we can feel safe in claiming that He is with us. Groork and his escorts had reached the ledge. A line of trumpeters along the rear wall blasted a fanfare and then everyone stood silently for what seemed an eternity while more speeches were delivered inaudibly far below deliberately intended Groork was certain to prolong his anguish. A hush fell and the Executioner advanced onto the narrow tapering platform that projected outward from the ledge and held up a full size effigy of a robeing. It was customary to commence the proceedings with a dummy to test the quality of the acids it also added to the victims terror and therefore helped excite the crowd. An expectant stillness descended over the sea of upturned faces on the hill opposite. Very slowly the Executioner pushed the dummy forward to the edge of the platform held it steady for a few seconds and then allowed it to tumble forward into space. A thunderous roar came up from the spectators and sustained itself for a long time. From where Groork was standing he was unable to see what happened. But he didn t have to he d seen executions before. After the dummy a succession of sacrificial animals was led forward and dispatched one by one from the platform. With each the crowd grew wilder. And then the last of the animals was gone. Groork stared in horror at the platform and felt himself freeze. The priests had formed a solid wall immediately behind and to the rear the line of guards was closing up and moving forward. The Executioner left the platform and removed his long lance from its stand beside an altar bearing fire while behind Groork the line of priests drew into a semicircle that drove him outward toward the end of the tapering platform. Then he was standing on a tiny island of ice that seemed to float high in the air nothingness yawned in front of him and on both sides. Groork s senses reeled. He recoiled instinctively from the drop but something sharp prodded him in the back. He looked back desperately. The Executioner had leveled his lance and behind him the stone faced priests had closed ranks to the very edge of the platform. There was no way back. Goaded by another jab with the lance Groork tottered a step forward and for the first time found himself looking straight down the sheer cliff face. Far below the acid vat was foaming and boiling with the last of the animals still writhing and convulsing in their death agonies. Groork shook his head wildly in protest. This would serve no purpose. It would achieve nothing. There was no point no reason. If he was going to die he pleaded inwardly let it not be for no reason. No he shouted. This is not the Lifemaker s will. This is savagery This Know all ye here that in this way shall all heretics and blasphemers perish the Executioner shouted and lunged hard with the lance. The landscape wheeled around him as Groork pitched forward into emptiness. Brilliant violet lights flared in the sky above but Groork didn t see them. A roar of voices rose to meet him. He felt himself scream but couldn t hear. Land and sky spun together. And in the same instant something pointed and streamlined swooped down from the clouds above the clifftop. Four zero zero on vertical boost. Gimme more flaps That s one through four at full. Take it down Take it down Harder to starboard Faster with that line Joe It s at max now. You ve got it. Easy easy Coming round fine. Hold that turn Clarissa. Hold that turn As the flyer dived out of the blackness and banked into the full glare of the light from the flares the net trailing on a line from its rear portside door swung out in a wide arc and scooped the tumbling figure of Moses from the air. The tangle of robot and net dipped low to swing past the base of the cliff rose again like a pendulum and then swung back in a wide rising curve as the flyer began to lift again. The return trajectory carried back up to the ledge where robots were running to and fro in confusion and waving things in the air with a few presumably the radiosensitive types that Dave Crookes had speculated about writhing around on the floor under the close range influence of the flyer s mapping radar. Lower down visible at the edge of the glow being generated by the flares the hillside opposite the cliff seemed to be alive with deranged figures waving running hither and thither and throwing themselves to the ground in all manner of agitation and commotion. Then the swinging net caught on a construction of steel girders standing at one end of the ledge and the line tightened. Joe Fellburg who was with Drew West in the flyer s opened aft compartment both of them suited up as were all the flyer s occupants crashed the winding mechanism into neutral and the power winch whined in protest as it was jerked abruptly into reverse. We re caught Fellburg yelled. Level out and slacken it off for chrissakes Back it off Clarissa West shouted and Clarissa slammed into reverse thrust throwing everyone violently forward against their restraining harnesses. The line went taut yanking the winch off its mounting and trapping the line in a mess of crushed supports buckled floorplates and a seized winding drum. The winch is wrecked Fellburg shouted. Everything s screwed up In the copilot s seat Abaquaan increased vertical boost to provide lift while Clarissa slowed frantically and banked into a tight turn to take the strain off the line. Christ those missiles Abaquaan yelled. We can t hang around here. You ll have to cut the line. Zambendorf fought his way uphill across the tilted floor and pulled himself into the aft compartment. We can t give up now he bellowed. We ve got him. Drew give me the end of that auxiliary line and then reel me out. I m going down there to attach a magnetic grab. You can t go down there Karl Fellburg protested. There isn t time to argue. Give me that line. Fellburg clipped the auxiliary line to Zambendorf s harness then took a rigger s tool belt from the doorway locker and attached it over his own suit. You re crazy but you ll still need some help he said. I m coming too. Get right above the net and steady up Clarissa West called over the intercom. Karl and Joe are going down with a magnet. Below the Kroaxian crowd was in pandemonium. All had seen the miracle of the heavenly beast descending to preserve the Enlightener as the Cliff of Judgment delivered its verdict and the false priests who had condemned him being smitten to the ground by the Lifemaker s wrath. Once before had the Enlightener preached the true Word to the people in the marketplace and the people had ridiculed him but such was his wisdom and forebearance that in place of anger or retribution he had chosen this way to open their eyes to the light and to demonstrate the powerlessness of the priests before him. This time the people would listen and be grateful for the mercy that had been shown them. Indeed the Enlightener teaches the true Word of the Lifemaker they cried. We shall not kill. We shall not enslave. We shall not be enslaved. Down with the false priests who teach hatred Down with the King and his ministers who wage war The roaring of the voices was swollen even louder as the first contingent of the returning Kroaxian army came round the hill and joined in. We have returned to unseat the tyrant We shall not kill All Carthogians are our brothers See the Enlightener awaits us and has converted the citizens of Pergassos as he promised Praise the Enlightener The citizens howled louder and the crowd began closing in around the dignitaries enclosure. Our soldiers have returned from the Meracasine. Indeed has the Enlightener spoken truly Out with Eskenderom Out with Frennelech No more shall we cringe beneath the heels of tyrants No more shall we tremble at the words of charlatans Out with them Out with them In the canopied enclosure all was chaos as priests and courtiers officials and dignitaries counselors and ministers dashed backward forward and in circles shouting for guards to close ranks and for servants to fetch mounts. In the middle of the panic Eskenderom and Frennelech collided. Traitor Eskenderom screamed into the High Priest s face. Thou holy vermin Sump sludge What bargain didst thou conclude with thy aliens that they should cheat me thus I Frennelech howled outraged. I thou royal emetic Thou pox blistered discharge vent It is through thy contract with the sky devils that they have defrauded met What sayest thou Is this spectacle not thy final triumph that shall take away my crown and remove me from my realm Nay. What gibberish dost thou prattle Is it not the fruitful consummation of thy design to promote this imposter thy creation before the people and thence to subordinate to royal command all authority hitherto invested in my office Eskenderom shook his head. Would I by my orders to my handpicked agent command the disintegration of my own army What kind of priest s babbling is this Eskenderom stared at Frennelech Frennelech stared at Eskenderom. Both arrived at the same conclusion at the same instant. Zounds Egad Forsooth Eskenderom shrieked. I see it now the aliens have outwitted us both We have been betrayed He raised his fists high in the air. Arghh The leaching tank scum The drain filter dregs I ll have at them I ll smear their jelly bodies across the valley of Gornod. Mormorel rally the guard and let us ride now to the camp of the alien deceivers. All who value honor and dignity follow me And if we be blasted to rivets and strewn across the deserts then at least it will be said that we were dismantled gloriously. To Gornod Have the equerry fetch the mounts Frennelech called to Jaskillion. Muster the Palace Guard and tell them we will ride with the King to the valley of Gornod to avenge this alien treachery. If the nation of Kroaxia is to be rent asunder by outworlders stratagem its final episode of glory shall not be Eskenderom s alone. To Gornod Then the voices of the crowd rose to a crescendo. Angels See angels are descending Shining angels descend from the heavens Above two figures were lowering toward the Enlightener who had returned to the execution ledge after casting himself forth and allowing his fall to be miraculously intercepted and was now giving thanks at the sacred tree opposite the top of the stairway. The creature from heaven was watching down over them protectively and at the far end of the ledge the guard commander seemed to be trying to reorganize his cringing soldiers. How is he Zambendorf barked struggling to maintain equilibrium on the wildly swinging line. The Taloids on the ledge had scattered from the falling cable when Drew West cut the line to the net from above and seemed to be keeping their distance. Can t tell Fellburg answered. He seems out of it. The net s all caught up in this junk. We ll have to cut him out. Zambendorf worked frantically to draw in the magnetic clamp on another line while Fellburg hacked into the net with a pair of long handled cutters. What s the score West s voice said over the intercom from the flyer. All a mess Joe s cutting Moses out Zambendorf answered breathlessly. Is the generator hooked up yet Drew Ready when you are. Hurry it up down there Abaquaan s voice said on the circuit. Watch out behind you Clarissa warned. Zambendorf looked round and saw that some of the Taloids seemed to have recovered and were coming across the ledge brandishing objects that looked like weapons. Get a move on Joe he shouted and braced himself against the girders with his legs and one arm while helping to pull pieces of netting away with the other. That s it Fellburg called. Hit the switch Drew Zambendorf shouted. Clarissa take it up Take it up Current flowed through the cable and the flyer rose to take up the slack. At the same time Zambendorf and Fellburg were lifted away as West began to haul in the lines. Just as Moses swung clear of the girders the other Taloids rushed forward and were instantly caught by the magnetic field to form a daisy chain of six or seven figures joined head to toe head to toe in a string extending to the ground. They hung convulsing helplessly as the field passing through their skins played havoc with their internal circuitry. Oh shit Fellburg moaned miserably. Hold it hold it Zambendorf shouted in his helmet They re stuck. I can t cut the current West called down. We d lose Moses. Jeez what a screw up Let us down again. Drew about ten feet Zambendorf ordered. Joe we ll have to grab him and hope we can hold on. They came back down and a few seconds later Fellburg s voice said I ve got one arm. Are you okay there on the other side Karl Okay Zambendorf yelled. We ve got him Cut it now Drew. West threw a switch to deactivate the magnet and the chain of Taloids fell apart into bodies dropping all over the ledge among their terrified colleagues. We ve got him Fellburg shouted. Clarissa let s get the hell outta here. As the flyer at last lifted away a wrench that had almost been dislodged from a loop in Fellburg s tool belt fell away into the darkness beneath. Far below the crowd had seen the High Priest s Palace Guards snatched up into the air and scattered like playthings and the Enlightener being borne away triumphantly by the angels. As he departed to join the Lifemaker he sent something tumbling down to the multitude gathered at the bottom of the cliff. Figures rushed forward frenziedly to pick up the sacred symbol and hold it high for all the faithful to see. A sign A sign We have been given a sign Behold the form that has been given us to mark the Day of Miracles Behold the sign Behold the sign We are saved We are saved From one side of the dignitaries enclosure most of which had by now been overrun a ragged body of riders comprising the King the High Priest and a couple of hundred or so of their loyal followers and guards broke through the crowd and departed at full gallop amid jeers catcalls and a barrage of rocks and assorted other missiles. Meanwhile high above the craggy ridge rising behind the cliff the flyer came out of the top of the cloudbank and streaked for the safety of the distant mountains. 37 A TENSE ATMOSPHERE HUNG OVER THE EMERGENCY MEETING THAT had been called in the Directors Conference Room on the top floor of the NASO Building in Washington D.C. Samuel Dulaney the NASO president was sitting in the center on one side of the long polished mahogany table with Walter Conlon and Warren Taylor from the North American Division on one side of him and two European representatives on the other facing them were Burton Ramelson and Gregory Buhl from GSEC Robert Fairley Ramelson s nephew from the GSEC affiliate New York Merchant Bank and two of the consultants who had been involved in negotiating the funding for the Orion mission. Phillip Berness the U.S. secretary of state and Julius Gorsche from his department were sitting clustered around one end of the table with Kevin Whaley the presidential aide and an advisor on international relations from the European Parliament. Walter Conlon held up the sheet of paper that constituted one of his most damning pieces of evidence copies of which he had already circulated and stabbed at it with a finger of his other hand. It was a reproduction of a document that had been faked on instructions from Caspar Lang for Thelma s benefit but Gerold Massey hadn t known it was a fake when he prepared an urgent communication for transmission from the Orion and neither did Conlon. It says right here in black and white item five Antiaircraft missile short range actively guided infantry launched. Model ILAAM 27 F Mark 4 Banshee. Quantity: 24 . . . And items six and seven call for twelve dummy warheads normally used for training and twelve live ones. Conlon lowered the paper and sent a challenging look round the table. What could be clearer than that Those weapons were shipped down to the Paduans at a time when it was known full well that Earthpeople were at large in a purloined surface lander and likely to show up in the very area where those weapons would be deployed. The implications don t have to be spelled out. This amounts to nothing less than attempted murder. Buhl looked along the table at Berness. Something like this couldn t have been agreed without Dan Leaherney knowing about it he insisted. What in God s name could have possessed him I can t afford to see GSEC s name linked to this kind of thing if it ever becomes public knowledge. In other words the mission was technically under political direction and the corporation men were already preparing themselves fireproof boxes to jump into. Berness shook his head. I can t explain it Greg. It goes beyond all the guidelines. I don t know what in hell s been going on out there. You er . . . you still haven t told us how you come to have this document in your possession Robert Fairley said hoping to ease the strain by sidetracking. How I got it doesn t make any difference Conlon replied tightly. It s a reproduction of part of a loading manifest for one of the shuttles sent down to Padua base from the Orion. Why we should be shipping weapons down there to enable the Taloids to kill each other more effectively is a big enough question in itself but the only purpose of the particular ones I ve just indicated can be to kill people our people. Dulaney the NASO chief gnawed at his knuckle for a few seconds longer straightened up in his chair then pushed himself back looked up at the others and shook his head decisively. I thought we were just giving token support to the ruler of a small country that s having insurgency problems. He shook his head again and pointed at the sheet of paper still in Conlon s hand. But that That s enough to start a war I mean what in hell are our people there playing at I can t let NASO even be suspected of condoning anything like that. Our involvement covers getting the Orion to Saturn and back and the scientific research programs that we re committed to. We re not responsible for the mission s diplomatic and economic policies and I can t promise to be supportive of them in any official capacity or public statement. What he meant was that if he didn t back Conlon on this one Conlon would go straight to the media and to hell with the consequences. One of the European NASO representatives next to Dulaney nodded. That would have to be our position also. But what kind of policy are Leaherney s people trying to carry out another European asked from the far end. From what Conlon said it sounded as if they were equipping a full scale Taloid invasion. That s not token support. It s blatant power politicking meddling in alien affairs. Who sanctioned anything like that Does it matter Julius Gorsche asked. It seems they managed to turn the whole thing into a fiasco anyway. It matters to me that the name of our government stands to be associated with whatever their next antic might be the European replied coldly. Bemess spread his hands. I don t know. Maybe the strain of being in charge of a mission that big for that long a time that far from Earth is greater than anyone thought he said. But I can assure you gentlemen that the events that have been described are not compatible with any policy of the United States government. They must be a result either of some aberration involving the personnel delegated operational authority at Titan or of a misinterpretation of our instructions. It goes without saying that further investigation of the matter will be initiated immediately. Lies Burton Ramelson thought to himself as he listened. You knew what the policies were and you allowed your tacit approval to be understood just like the rest of us. Typically everyone was surreptitiously sharpening the hatchets in anticipation of a possible bloodletting and at the same time trying their rubber gloves for size to show all clean hands afterward. But Ramelson hadn t yet been panicked into losing sight of the magnitude of what was at stake. He wondered if there might yet be a way of repairing the damage done and getting everything back on course. If so it would best serve his purpose to see the Orion s management exonerated and their reputability preserved for despite whatever had gone wrong with the plan to assert Terran influence by aiding the Paduans and Ramelson had suspicions that a lot more than met the eye could have been behind that they were all loyal and capable and would not be easily replaced. Ramelson needed more time to collect the facts on what had really happened at Titan and was reluctant to commit himself to a hasty judgment. His response for now would therefore be neutral he decided but the circumstances would not allow any more bungling. One more miscalculation in the handling of the Paduan situation would be enough to lead him to conclude that Leaherney s team was beyond redemption and to embark on whatever course of action would best protect his own interests and keep his reputation intact. Having clarified his thoughts on the matter he began I have to agree that on the face of it these are alarming allegations. But they are when all is said and done just that and no more allegations. Before we allow ourselves to be stampeded into a witch hunt I would like to propose that At that moment a tone sounded from the chairman s console recessed into the table before Dulaney. Excuse me Burton Dulaney said. Calls aren t supposed to be put through unless extremely urgent. I d better take this. He looked down and touched a button below the level of the table. Yes Bob Sorry to interrupt Sam but we ve just had something through from Titan that I thought you d want to hear about since it concerns the meeting. It came through from General Vantz about ten minutes ago via his Communications Officer. What is it Bob Dulaney asked. He turned a knob to increase the volume and the others in the room sat forward in their chairs to listen. There s been some kind of god awful commotion down in Padua city that culminated in Henry and a couple of hundred other Taloids getting so screaming mad that they went galloping off to take out the Terran base there with their bare hands. Nobody on the ship ever saw anything like it before. Christ that s terrible Dulaney exclaimed. What happened to them Oh they re okay Bob s voice answered. Our guys at the base saw them coming on the recce scopes and got the hell out. The base was evacuated of personnel anyhow it seems they left a lot of equipment behind. Must have been a real panic. Who was in charge down there Dulaney asked dismayed. Caspar Lang and Giraud. They got away in one of the military landers with the last of the garrison but they hadn t arrived back at the Orion when the message was transmitted. Apparently they weren t being very communicative so no one was too sure exactly what had happened. We re standing by for an update. Dulaney frowned to himself for a second or two. If they ve been kicked out of Padua and we don t even have a base there anymore it means the whole Paduan program just came apart at the seams. I know that s why I thought you ought to hear about it Bob said. Any more Dulaney asked. Not for now. Shall I call through there again when we get the next bulletin Yes do that. Thanks Bob. I ll talk to you later. Dulaney cut the call and looked up at the numb faces across the table. Well I guess you all heard that. It sounds as if they ve really screwed up this time. Let s wait and see what comes through next. . . . His eyes came back to Ramelson. Anyhow in the meantime where were we You were just about to say something I think Burton. Ramelson emitted a long remorseful sigh. I agree with Phil he replied. The most charitable view we can take is to attribute it all to psychological breakdown within the mission s directorate caused by a combination of high stress excessive demands of responsibility and totally unforeseen effects of the remote extraterrestrial environment. It s imperative that the situation be remedied immediately before we run into any further misadventures. My proposals are therefore as follows:... 38 CAPTAIN MASON OF THE U.S. SPECIAL FORCES ACKNOWLEDGED THE call on the monitor panel inside the guardroom of the main perimeter gatehouse at Genoa Base One. Taloid riders and vehicles approaching the gate sir the voice of Pfc. Caronetti reported from the searchlight post on the upper level. Some of the passengers appear to be Terrans. At the same moment the screen in front of Mason came to life to show the view being picked up by a rooftop camera. A procession of walking wagons and mounted Taloids was approaching along the broad avenue between steel lattices girderwork frames and pipe draped processing tanks that led from the city. The pace was slow and easy giving no cause for alarm. I wonder what the hell this is Mason muttered over his shoulder to Petrakoff the guard sergeant. Five 11 get you ten it s Zambendorf and his people showing up at last Petrakoff said. Mason stared at the screen for a few seconds longer and then nodded. Yeah . . . you re probably right Jan. You d better alert the Base Commander. Call three more of the guys out front and get them helmeted up on standby. I m going outside to join Pierce and Macnally and find out what s happening. In the first of the open carriages behind the advance guard of Genoese cavalry Zambendorf was sitting between Abaquaan and Arthur facing Galileo and Moses who had their backs to the raised platform supporting the seats of the two Taloid coachmen. The rest of the team was in the second carriage with Leonardo the Genoese mapmaker and Lancelot Arthur s knight who had brought Galileo out of Padua. Various aides and officials from Arthur s court followed in the train behind which included Leonardo s family Lord Nelson and a representative contingent of Druids. The advance guard emerged into the clear area in front of the main gate through the perimeter fence of Genoa Base and moments later a searchlight beam swung round to illuminate the procession in brilliant white and transform the surrounding structures into ghostly skeletons of steel standing out vividly against the background darkness. I don t see Tango Baker Two anywhere Abaquaan said turning in his seat to scan the immense squat stubby winged forms of the surface landers parked amid floodlit clutters of service gantries maintenance platforms cargo hoists and access ramps on the far side of the fence. Andy and the boys must have gone back up to the ship already. Well at least they should have come out of it all with their noses clean Zambendorf answered. Let s hope so. After snatching Moses from the cliff at Padua Zambendorf had decided to fly directly to Camelot Arthur s residence to deliver Moses safely into the Genoese care and reunite him with his brother Galileo before the team gave itself up to the Terran authorities at Genoa Base. The Genoese had insisted however on making the occasion one for all kinds of elaborate farewell formalities which had involved seemingly half the Taloids in the country and the team had remained there resting and eating in the flyer for fully twenty four hours. To minimize the risk of the proceedings being distastefully interrupted the team had maintained a strict communications blackout omitting even to contact Massey and Thelma since a genuine ignorance of the team s whereabouts would be less likely to compromise their position in the face of questioning by Leaherney s people. Finally to round everything off in style Arthur had proposed a grand procession across the city to carry the team to the Terran base not wishing to risk unwittingly giving any offense Zambendorf had accepted the offer leaving the flyer parked in Arthur s rear courtyard to be collected later by its rightful owners. It had been a good try Zambendorf thought to himself and even if in the final part of it all they hadn t succeeded in rendering Padua completely harmless at least the nation of Genoa had been kept intact for the time being. He could only hope that the team s gesture would attract enough attention to cause the mission s directors to have second thoughts about the whole question of Terran Taloid relationships and hopefully would stimulate a more enlightened outlook among the policymakers on Earth. And if it turned out that he had soured his backers and promoters sufficiently to permanently impair his career then that was just too bad. He had stood by the principles that mattered on his own scale of values and had achieved something that he believed worthwhile. He had done as much as anyone could have and the future could take its course. He had no regrets. See how brightly the violet halos shine around the Lumian flying ships Kleippur said from beside the Wearer. Dost thou still see them as magic beasts sent from heaven Groork Groork shook his head. Nor the Lumians as angels. What more dismal a prospect could be imagined than that all the universe s knowledge could be contained in one ancient book Nothing new to discover Nothing more to be learned Never again the excitement of exploring the unknown How pathetic is the future that some would wish upon themselves Your future at least promises to be a busy one Thirg said. The answers to the questions that I hear you asking now will not spin themselves into skeins of words as effortlessly as before however I fear. Maybe so but thou shalt see that my energies are undiminished and the mystic s passion is not quenched but merely redirected Groork replied confidently. The application of this industriousness to the studies into which thou hast declared intent to launch thyself will show interesting results indeed if my prognostications serve me well Kleippur commented. I do not doubt it Thirg said sighing. He still hadn t recovered fully from the astonishment with which he had learned of Groork s escapades in the Meracasine and at Pergassos and his even greater amazement at observing his brother transformed into a staunch advocate of the methods of impartial questioning and objective inquiry. Now that Groork had flown through the sky his latest passion was to view firsthand the other worlds that Thirg had told him about and he had been pestering the Wearer for an opportunity to go on one of the voyages that the Lumian flying ships made to the Great Ship beyond the sky. As for Carthogia while the threat from the Kroaxians had been temporarily extinguished the longer term future was far less certain. The issuing to Eskenderom of weapons sufficiently potent to have deterred the Wearer from honoring his pledge to Groork seemed to confirm that the Lumian king was firmly committed to promoting rivalry among the Robian nations in order to obtain their dependency and ultimately their complete subjugation. It was unlikely therefore that Kleippur would see his realm free to determine its own destiny the Lumian conditions for supplying the weapons that Carthogia needed would doubtless entail sacrifice of its independence just as surely as would conquest by a reconstituted Kroaxian army at some later date. On the other hand it seemed that despite their arts and their skills the Lumians were as divided among themselves as the royal houses and the clergy of Kroaxia and Serethgin. There were other more powerful kings in Lumia than the king who ruled the Great Ship the Wearer had said and the Lumian system of government constrained the actions of its kings making them very much subject to the approval of their citizens. The Wearer s many friends who held positions of high office in the trades guilds of Lumian town criers and heralds would spread the news far and wide of the Wearer s willingness to anger the Great Ship s king and face imprisonment in protest against Robia s treatment. That the Wearer and his followers had chosen to defy the Great Ship s king and were willing to face imprisonment upon their return was evidence that integrity and high moral principle were not unknown among Lumians and that was grounds enough for hope. Kleippur therefore characteristically coming to the conclusion that all was not necessarily lost had refused to allow his capacity for action to be weakened by an unduly pessimistic outlook and braced himself to face the future with fortitude and the resolve to make the best he could of such opportunities for bettering his situation as might present themselves. And a better example than that to model his own attitude on he wouldn t find anywhere Thirg had decided. Three figures in Terran military suits walked forward from the gate as the procession drew up. Well I suppose this is it Otto Zambendorf said. Thank Arthur and his people again for their hospitality and tell them it might be a while but I m sure we ll be back to see them again sometime. Abaquaan relayed the message via the transmogrifier and Arthur responded in like vein. Clarissa Vernon West and Fellburg came forward from the second carriage and after a final round of handshakes and salutations Zambendorf turned to face the three soldiers waiting patiently behind him. Thank you for the courtesy er . . . Captain isn t it Well everyone s accounted for. We re all yours. Captain Mason Special Forces a voice replied. The figure wearing a captain s insignia peered at the nametag on Zambendorf s suit and at the tags of the two others nearest him. You are Zambendorf and his people I take it. Of course we are. Who else did you expect to come wandering in from the surface of Titan It s good to see you back. A lot of people were getting worried. Behind Mason several soldiers left the guardhouse to open the gate and another group of figures was approaching from the base administration building. Well aren t you supposed to arrest us or something Zambendorf said. No Mason answered. I guess you re maybe gonna have to answer a few questions about stealing that lander but you probably had your reasons ... I don t know. Anyhow we don t have any orders that say anything about arresting anybody. The Base Commander should be on his way here now. He ll know a lot more than I do. Zambendorf blinked with surprise at the mildness of the reception. This is amazing he murmured more to the others with him than to Mason. I d have thought Leaherney would have been more upset about what happened to Henry s army. In a way I feel quite disappointed. Maybe we didn t achieve as much as we thought Abaquaan said uneasily. Even Caspar Lang wasn t bothered I figured he d be apopleptic Clarissa said. Mason looked puzzled behind his faceplate. What does it have to do with them he asked. They re all out finished. General Vantz is in charge of the mission now. Out Zambendorf repeated incredulously. Who When How Leaherney Giraud Lang Mason told them. I guess a whole heap of crud finally hit the fan somewhere back home. A directive came through to the Orion about twelve maybe fourteen hours ago relieving them of command effective immediately and putting the mission under full NASO control. They upset the Taloids over at Padua somehow and got their asses kicked outta the base there musta had something to do with that. Anyhow here s Mackeson the base chief now. The group from inside the base arrived and began to usher Zambendorf s party through the gate. Harold Mackeson NASO Genoa Base Commander the most prominent among them announced in an English accent. Glad to see you re all safe. Welcome back again. When it started looking as if you might have had an accident O Flynn finally owned up about the flyer. Do you know he d been faking the log all the time and nobody missed it extraordinary We ve been calling you nonstop but heard no reply. Is the flyer okay Yes and not far from here Zambendorf said as they all began to walk toward the administration building. I gather there have been some changes. Oh you wouldn t believe the ruckus: Giraud and Lang getting thrown out of Padua the base there being abandoned Leaherney s whole team out on their ear ... There s been more going on than in all the time the Orion s been in orbit. What happened at Padua Zambendorf asked. Well Henry s gone with his chief priest and just about all the others that Giraud and Company were dealing with Mackeson replied. It seems the Paduan Taloids had some kind of revolution and got rid of the whole bunch. Vantz he s in charge now has sent down an exploratory team who have managed to make contact with the new leaders that seem to be emerging from it all. What started this revolution or whatever it was Abaquaan asked. I don t know if you heard about it but some kind of new nonviolent religion broke out suddenly among the Druids then became all the rage in Henry s army and messed up his invasion plans . . . something to do with some Taloid messiah who appeared out of nowhere. Well apparently this messiah and his religion finally found their way to Padua. Result out with Henry and out with our arms dealers. To be honest with you old boy I can t say I m all that sorry to hear it either. Zambendorf stopped walking abruptly. Mackeson halted a split second later and looked back with a puzzled expression. What was that again Zambendorf said. What s happened with the Paduans A new religion is sweeping the whole country Mackeson answered. They say everybody s equal they won t kill they won t fight wars and they ve told us where to shove our weapons. Zambendorf swallowed hard. The formula sounded very familiar. If that s true then the Paduans aren t very likely to try attacking Genoa again he said. Mackeson snorted. Oh from what I ve heard you can put any thoughts like that completely out of your head old chap. The Genoese are their brothers now. Everyone s their brother. They aren t going to be attacking anybody. Gasps of surprise were audible from the rest of Zambendorf s party. My God Do you know what this means ... Zambendorf looked back toward the gate where the Taloids were standing and watching their hands lifted in a final salute. He looked back at Mackeson waved his arms excitedly and pointed. That s Arthur and his advisors. The messiah s there too with his brother. They don t know about any of this yet. We have to tell them What Mackeson sounded bemused. That s absurd. How could a messiah cause all that fuss and not know about it Be sensible old boy please. It would take too long to explain now Zambendorf said. But we have to tell them. It s important. Come on Otto. Without waiting for an answer he turned and marched back in the direction of the gate. Abaquaan started after him with the transmogrifier. Wait Mackeson called over the radio. They stopped and looked back. Trying to communicate it all to the Taloids through just that box would be a hell of a tedious business Mackeson said. He waved an arm to indicate an open extension built onto the end of the administration building just ahead. That annex is our meeting room for Taloid talks and communications equipment is installed there. We d get along a lot faster if we brought Arthur and his friends inside where we can show them some pictures too. That sounds good Zambendorf agreed. Abaquaan nodded and they started walking back again. Mackeson switched his suit radio to another channel. Mackeson to Captain Mason at the gate. Bring the Taloids there inside would you and have them escorted to the admin block annex. Also put a call through to the duty controller and have the lights switched on in the annex and a couple of communications techs suited up and sent out. It looks as if we re going to have an impromptu conference. Fifteen minutes later Zambendorf was standing in the center of a mixed group of Terrans and Taloids inside the annex staring wide eyed and speechless at the scene being transmitted from a NASO reconnaissance drone hovering over Padua city. It was a telescopic view of an evidently wild procession that stretched from one end of the city to the other. Thousands of Taloids were involved festively dressed singing dancing waving pennants bearing banners and playing musical instruments. The ecstasy and rejoicing could be felt from the pictures. But most astonishing was the shape that seemed to be the centerpiece of the whole celebration which was being pulled along on a large elaborately decorated and draped mobile platform by several dozen Taloids fanned out ahead and hauling lines. As best Zambendorf could estimate from the size of the Taloids moving alongside it stood about ten feet high and seemed to be fashioned from some metal that gave it a reddish hue. There could be no mistaking what it represented: It was a wrench an immense painstakingly rendered replica of a standard toolbox wrench. And immediately behind the platform bearing the Sacred Wrench a huge banner was being carried on which were written crudely but recognizably the mystic symbols U.S. GOVERNMENT. Good heavens Did we do that Zambendorf said disbelievingly. Those are the guys that Arthur was so worried about Joe Fellburg asked in a weak voice. He doesn t have any problems now. It s all over down there. Abaquaan shook his head dazedly. I m not seeing this. Somebody tell me it isn t real. Well Caspar Lang told Karl way back that he wanted him to sell Moses in Padua Drew West reminded everybody. He shrugged and tossed out his hands. So he got what he wanted Moses went over real big. Is it our fault if Caspar miscalculated the effects That sure was some act Karl Vernon complimented. You know I don t think even Gerry could top that one. Clarissa looked at the screen again and wrinkled her nose. And before anyone tells the president the answer s positively no she told everybody. There s no way I m gonna try a repeat performance over Moscow just no way Thirg Kleippur and Groork exchanged awed looks. Do I understand this news correctly Kleippur said. The Wearer is not to be imprisoned Already word of the injustices of the Great Ship s king have reached the mightier kings of Lumia and they have sent orders by which he and his lieutenants have been dismissed Thirg nodded slowly. Now methinks we see the Wearer s plan unfolding in its entirety he said. Carthogia saved and free from further threat of molestation Eskenderom and Frennelech undone Kroaxia pacified and reduced to harmlessness within a single bright . . . and now within the Lumian house itself the would be architects of havoc exposed and vanquished. Indeed these are powerful champions that good fortune hath appointed as our allies. Carthogia shall be free to pursue its quest for knowledge and its borders shall be always open to true inquirers from all nations Kleippur declared. Thus shall the works of all be concerted our resources directed to enterprises of constructiveness and one day robeings shall through their own dilligence and inventiveness find Lumia and the other shining worlds beyond the sky. And the nations like Kroaxia whose collective understanding will require time yet before it is mature have been provided with a harmless distraction which will predispose them meanwhile in thought and deed toward reasonableness and tolerance Groork said. We must be careful to ensure that our acquiring of Lumian knowledge is paralleled by the cultivation of a comparable measure of such Lumian wisdom. So it shall be Kleippur assured him. Eventually the two groups repeated their farewells this time amid a lighter more exuberant mood than had prevailed previously. The Terrans entered the airlock at the rear of the annex and Zambendorf turned in the outer door to send a last wave back to the Taloids before passing through into the administration building proper where the first thing everybody did was get out of their EV suits in the lock antechamber. Then feeling reborn they moved out through the far door to return to the wonderful world of bright airy corridors people in shirt sleeves and slacks the smell of canteen food and the clatter of cutlery the sounds of shoes on metal stairways and piped music in the restrooms. Just think of it Abaquaan said to Zambendorf as they followed Mackeson and one of his officers to be officially checked into the base. A hot bath clean sheets and as much uninterrupted sleep as you want. What more could anyone ask for Who d have ever thought we d find a NASO base on Titan the last word in luxury You know Karl I ve got a feeling that the place at Malibu might never seem the same again. Zambendorf blinked. Malibu Why I can t even imagine it any more. In fact I can t imagine anything beyond getting back up to the Orion. That s the last word in luxury as far as I m concerned Otto the Orion pure blissful unashamed luxury. Meanwhile Thirg was looking out of the presidential carriage at the head of the stately cavalcade proceeding through the outskirts of Menassim along the picturesque and colorful Avenue of Independence. The crowds lining the way to watch the carriages and the soldiers pass seemed buoyant and joyful as if they could somehow sense or read in the faces in the carriages the good tidings that would affect the whole land. Thirg had never seen the city looking quite so beautiful with the fading light of bright s end softening the hues of the trees along the avenue and painting a delicate blue haze over the rolling forests outside the city and the mountains rising distantly behind. Ahead he could see the tall clean lines of the new buildings of the central city rising proudly above the intervening suburbs as if in anticipation of the new era about to be born. A gentle breeze was blowing from the east carrying the fragrant scents of distilled tar sands and fumace gas ventings and a family of dome backed concrete pourers was laying out filter beds on the far bank of the bend where the river flanked the avenue downstream from the ingot soaking pits. From somewhere off in the distance he could hear the muted strains of a power hammer thudding contentedly while nearer to the road a flock of raucous coilspring winders was playing counterpoint with the warbling of a high pressure relief valve and on all sides the undergrowth chirped happily with piezoelectric whines and whistles. He had a true brother now a home again and a patron and the soldiers and priests of Kroaxia would trouble him no more. Yes indeed Thirg Asker of Questions No Longer Forbidden thought to himself as he gazed out at the scene in contentment it was a beautiful world. Epilogue GEROLD MASSEY STRETCHED HIMSELF BACK IN AN ARMCHAIR IN one comer of the team s lounge in Globe II finished his scotch and soda and set the glass down on a utility ledge built into the side of the communications console at which Drew West was sitting with the chair reversed to face the room. Thelma was with Fellburg and Clarissa on a couch folded down from the opposite wall Zambendorf was sprawled in another armchair near Vernon who was perched on a stool with his back to the shelf being used as a bar and Abaquaan was leaning by the door. They had been back aboard the Orion for almost a week. I don t think there can be much doubt that the Taloids future is assured now Massey said. The rest of the Paduan alliance is falling apart. The Venetians threw their king out yesterday and the last I heard the one in Milan had decided to climb down gracefully and sent Moses an invitation to visit the city. He s probably hoping to salvage what he can by proposing some system of joint management. So there s no chance of Titan s being turned into some kind of colony Vernon said. Massey shook his head. No way that I can see. Any possibility of that has been scuttled permanently. The Taloids will never accept second class status now. They re the chosen ones. Their God has spoken to them and told them they re as good as anyone. Anybody who tries to tell them differently can go jump in a methlake. They ll trade with you sure their kind of know how for your kind of know how but only as equal partners. If you ve got any ideas of exploitation or screwing anyone on the deal forget it. Zambendorf swirled his sherry round in his glass and watched it for a second then looked up and nodded. And the Western world is going to have to play it that way because if it doesn t Asia will. And what s more it won t be much longer before the Soviets arrive. Then everybody will be competing against everybody to give the Taloids a better deal. The Orion would be leaving Titan in ten days since many of the mission personnel Massey and Vernon for example had pressing affairs to attend to back home. All remaining material and equipment would be shipped to the surface and used to expand Genoa Base One into a permanent installation where a skeleton crew of scientific researchers Taloidologists and other specialists would remain behind under the command of Vantz s deputy Commander Craig until the arrival of the Japanese ship in five month s time. They would probably rotate to Earth at some later date with the Japanese by which time the Orion would be returning with more people and equipment. With the completion of the Soviet vessel and the others that would come after it a regular two way traffic would eventually evolve. Massey picked up his glass again and passed it to Vernon for a refill. I don t often say things like this but I think we can all congratulate ourselves on a job that worked out pretty well he said looking about the room. I have to say that I ll miss you all after we get back. It s strange how things sometimes work out isn t it I came aboard determined to run you out of business and here I am coming out of it with a whole bunch of new friends. Well I ll drink to a long continuation of it Gerry Vernon said. I m amazed at how everything turned out too. Massey accepted his glass and cast an eye curiously round the cabin again at the others who were being unusually quiet. I guess what I m trying to say is that I ll stay off your backs from now on he told them. I don t suppose we ll ever see quite eye to eye on some things but I have to admit I ve been forced to reevaluate a lot of what I thought I was sure of. So it s live and let live huh Despite the gallant face that he was doing his best to maintain there was an undertone of disappointment that he couldn t quite conceal. He spread his hands and concluded with a grin and a sigh I just thought you d like to know. Nobody responded immediately. Zambendorf raised his head and looked from one to another of his colleagues. You don t seem exactly overenthralled he remarked. We can speak freely in front of Gerry and Vernon now. Aren t you looking forward to going home again Think of the TV spectaculars we ll be able to put together after this with a much stronger science flavor than ever before which will appeal to younger people . . . maybe a world tour. We could establish an Institute of Astral Parapsychology possibly with Osmond as the founder there ll be other backers besides GSEC. We might even be able to straighten things out with Ramelson again. Who knows The atmosphere remained wet weekendish. It s a living I guess Abaquaan agreed vapidly from the doorway. In his mind he was copiloting the flyer again and comparing it to the prospect of hanging around hotel lobbies and theater foyers collecting snippets of gossip about gullible witless people who had nothing to offer him and who didn t interest him. He had several ideas on improving the transmogrifier that he would have liked to discuss with Dave Crookes who would be among the party staying behind. But besides all that he realized that he cared what happened to Arthur s Taloids they were among the few people he d met outside of Zambendorf s team whom he had not simply dismissed as suckers. They valued their minds and were willing to rely on themselves without need of magical powers or supernatural revelations as substitutes for thinking. In Abaquaan s book that made them worth the effort of seeing that the feeling was mutual. Clarissa hadn t had so much fun for years and was feeling a little nostalgic. As the base at Genoa was expanded and more Terran installations began to appear across the surface there would be more demand for pilots than pilots available to meet them she reflected ruefully. She could think of more attractive propositions than having to deal with jerks like Herman Thoring again who thought the world stopped revolving for five minutes every time he went to the bathroom. Publicity management she had decided was the manufacture of make believe news out of trivia when nothing newsworthy was to be said. On Titan she had cultivated too much of an appetite for the real thing to want any part of an imitation again. How wonderful she said in a flat voice. Maybe we could make some extra bucks by doing TV commercials for psychic proof spoons. Drew West thought back to the world of booking fees and box office takes and then to the world of the Taloids ice mountains methane oceans vegetable cities and mechanical jungles. He had always had a penchant for enriching his life through frequent changes of scenery and atmosphere and spicing it with dashes of the unusual and the exciting whenever possible. That was what had drawn him out of the domain of more orthodox humdrum show business affairs and resulted eventually in his gravitating into Zambendorf s team where he had remained for far longer than had been the case with any of his previous positions. But his restlessness for something new had been making itself felt again for some time before leaving Earth and he had contemplated moving on even before the sudden prospect of the Orion mission to Mars had caused him to postpone any decision. What had happened on Titan would make the old life seem that much more uninspiring. Although he had no firm plans or prospects in principle the decision was made. He raised his glass took a long sip of his drink and said nothing. I guess for me it s been kinda like the old days Joe Fellburg said. You know what I mean I feel like I was back in the service out of retirement except on reflection maybe I d retired too early in the first place. He frowned as if not satisfied that the words conveyed what he had meant to say then shook his head with a sigh and resigned himself to the fact that it didn t make much difference anyway. I dunno . . . Anyhow we ll get used to it again in the end probably. He had enjoyed having military people around him again and the feeling of being involved in something that mattered again instead of just playing games. It was his rapport with the team that had held him not the business the team was in. Now that he saw that clearly he was far from certain that he would be able to make the relationship work again. Thelma looked from side to side uncertainly and then across at Zambendorf who was watching curiously. She spread her hands and shook her head. Well I m gonna say what I think everyone s feeling. Look you know how it is with me I m a Ph.D. in physics and mathematics but I ve always protested a society that thinks more of performing adolescent Neanderthals than the people who design the amplifiers that they scream into. But with the Taloids I really feel we did something important for people who were worth it and who genuinely appreciated it. And that was just a start. There s so much more to be done down there and I think we could contribute a lot to that too. But I guess none of us is exactly crazy about the idea of . . . Thelma broke off and gave Zambendorf a puzzled look as she realized that his eyes were twinkling roguishly. Her expression changed to one of suspicion. Karl you re up to something. What are you laughing at You know something that you re not letting on about don t you. Clarissa looked up at him. What is it Zambendorf she demanded. Zambendorf smirked back at her and remained silent. Come on you re not handing out tablets on some mountaintop now. Give. Well thanks to my power to divine the future by supernatural Zambendorf began but Abaquaan cut him off. Never mind all that crap. What do you know that you haven t told us I don t exactly know anything for sure yet Otto which is why I didn t want to risk raising anyone s hopes too soon Zambendorf replied. But I had a pretty good idea of your attitudes I feel the same way myself. So I took the liberty of presuming The call tone sounded from the console behind West. Ah this might even be the news I ve been waiting for Zambendorf said as West swiveled his chair round to accept. Is Karl Zambendorf there a NASO flight officer inquired from the screen a couple of seconds later. This is Captain Matthews calling on behalf of General Vantz. Here Captain Zambendorf said putting down his drink and rising to face the screen. General Vantz would like to know if you and your people could be available in Globe I for an interview with him and Commander Craig immediately after the current shift say at fifteen hundred hours. Would that be convenient for everyone Oh I don t think we have any prior engagements Zambendorf replied airily. Yes thank you Captain Matthews that would be most convenient. I ll put you down for then Matthews confirmed. Fifteen hundred hours in the executive office suite Globe I. Did Vantz say anything else Zambendorf asked curiously. Only that he didn t think there would be much of a problem Matthews answered. Commander Craig will need all the help he can get. I think you can take it there ll be a slot for anyone who wants one. Thank you Captain. That tells me all I wanted to know. Thank you very much indeed Fine Matthews said. We ll see you later. The screen blanked out. Thelma blinked her eyes several times shook her head and whispered disbelievingly Did I really hear that We re going to stay here with Craig s group at Genoa Base and wait for the Japanese Is that what he said Well if you want to anyway Zambendorf said. I mean I didn t want to assume anything. I just thought You didn t want to assume Clarissa exclaimed accusingly. Hey what is it with this guy How long have you known us Karl So what did you do go talk to Vantz Yesterday Zambendorf said. He wanted to discuss it with Craig before committing himself. That was why Hey guys it s okay Fellburg shouted swinging his head from side to side looking up and beaming. It s okay. Everything s gonna be okay. He burst into loud laughter and clapped Clarissa heartily on the back causing her to slop her drink. Hey Kong lay off of that willya Drew West started laughing too and so did Thelma. Massey caught Vernon s eye and his face split slowly into a broad grin. Suddenly the whole room was full of noisy excited laughing voices. Zambendorf stood up amid a barrage of backslapping and raised a hand to acknowledge the congratulations coming from every side. Tonight we must throw a party for all our friends especially the ones who will be staying on he said raising his voice above the commotion. But before that we can have a private celebration. It s time to move this show along to the Globe IV Recreation Deck and the bar I say The first round is mine. Everyone began moving toward the door and at that moment Osmond Periera burst in with Malcom Wade close behind. They seemed excited about something. I ve been studying the transcripts of some of the conversations with the Taloids down in Padua Periera said waving some papers. All that business about the revolution and the new religion didn t just happen you know Karl. There were some good reasons amazing things going on in the sky at the time all well authenticated. I don t think we re the only beings who are watching developments down on Titan. There are aliens here too alien UFOs around Titan Zambendorf brought a hand up to his face and frowned down at the floor over his knuckle. If he was going into a new line of business there was no better time to start he supposed. He drew in a long breath and looked up at Periera hesitating for a moment as he searched for the right words. And then he saw Massey smiling ruefully and shaking his head behind Periera s shoulder. Massey was right there was no point. With even a million years to try and explain there would have been no point. Zambendorf sighed and draped an arm affectionately around Periera s shoulder as he turned him around and began walking him back toward the door. Really Osmond my friend he said. It sounds fascinating. We re just on our way to the bar. Why don t you and Malcom join us. You can tell us all about the UFOs there. It will be far more comfortable and I m sure you d agree that we all owe ourselves some time to rest and relax a little eh ABOUT THE AUTHOR JAMES HOGAN WAS born in London in 1941 and educated at the Cardin I Vaughan Grammar School Kensington. He studied general engineering at the Royal Aircraft Establishment Famborough subsequently specializing in electronics and digital systems. After spending a few years as a systems design engineer he transferred into selling and later joined the computer industry as a salesman working with ITT Honeywell and Digital Equipment Corporation. He also worked as a life insurance salesman for two years . . . to have a break from the world of machines and to learn something more about people. In mid 1977 he moved from England to the United States to become a Senior Sales Training Consultant concentrating on the applications of mini computers in science and research for DEC. At the end of 1979 Hogan opted to write full time. He is now living in northern California.

Religion;Occult & Paranormal

non-fiction

MODEL: WITNESS SEMIAUTOMATIC PISTOL MANUAL FOR 9 mm Full srze IORDS 40SW Compact 9RDS 38 Super Compact IORDS 9 mm Compact 10RDS 45 ACP Full size 10RDS fmshes Avadable: 9x21 Full size 10RDS 45 ACP Compact 8RDS B Blue 41 AE Full size 1ORDS 10 mm Full size 1ORDS C Chrome 41 AE Compact 8RDS 10 mm Compact 9RDS BC Blue Chrome 40 SW Full size 1ORDS 38 Super Full size 10RDS W Wonder Important Read this book before using firearm Note: If you have Model you maintain it Blue Steel a Stainless Steel must oil and as if it were WARP DO NOT USE . . _ or High Velocity High Pressure Ammunition factory of handloaded 1 ALWAYS USE .THE SAFETY OFF SAFE The safety IS off safe when you can see the red dot and t ON SAFE To put the pistol on safe push the safety lever up so it covers the red dot. The safety can be operated with the hammer cocked or not cocked and with the pistol loaded or unloaded. There is not a magazine safety so the pistol may be fired with the magazine removed. All guns can be dangerous if improperly used. Keep the pistol on safe all the time except at the actual moment of firing to help protect against a 1 A and possible injury or death of yourself or others. r :s: . . Locks the sear lever so the trigger cannot be pulled and the hammer fall. . If hammer is back and safety is on you can move the slide to safety check the chamber. But your safety DOES NOT: Take the place of safe gun handling. Lessen your duty to use the pistol with great care. Provide foolproof protection against firing. There is also an automatic internal firing pin block which stops the firing pin from traveling forward. The block is released only by pulling the trigger all the way to the rear as in firing shot. L A I . w .. . J Both the manual safety and the automatic internal firing pin block are OFF SAFE when you do this. THE PISTOL CAN FIRE IF YOU DO IT WRONG. F ing pin. Then pull the trigger anu slowly let tne nammer move rorwara past rrre half cock point. RELEASE THE TRIGGER. Then gently let the hammer down against the rear of the slide. PUT THE MANUAL SAFETY ON SAFE . 2. HOW TO LOAD AND FIRE SLIDE STOP Press the magazine release button and remove the magazine from the prstol. Load the cartridges into the magazine. Do not force see front cover do not overload Push the magazine up Into the firmly until the magazrne catch do not slam magazine into pla TO LOAD THE CHAMBER MAGAZINE RELEASE pistol locks it in place ce . BE SURE YOUR FINGER IS OUT OF THE TRIGGER GUARD AND OFF THE TRIGGER. Holding the pistol grip grasp the serratrons as far back as possible on the slide and pull the slide rearward until it cannot travel any further. Release the slide and allow it to go forward into the closed position. It will automatrcally take a cartridge from the magazine and load it into the chamber. Make sure your fingers or hand are not in front of the barrel . WARNING YOUR PISTOL IS L 7 l THE SAFETY ur I u IADY TO FIRE I I I . . . . t m. e put the safety down expo: the trigger. The pistol will fire one shot with every squeeze of the trigger until the magazine IS empty When the magazine is empty the slide will stay open. You may remove the magazine and reload it while the slide IS open. Insert the loaded magazine into the pistol. Then press down on the slide stop which lets the slide close and reloads the chamber or pull back slightly on the slide and let it go and the pistol will automatically reload the chamber and be ready to fire. our target carefully. Be sure tt : afe backstop. What will you HIT if you the target AMMUNITION Because of the dangers of poor or nonexistent quality control standards among some companies and people who make reloaded ammunition and the well known fact that dangerous overloads and underloads squib loads sometimes occur we recommend that only good quality factory ammunition be fired in our products. If you prepare your own handloads do not exceed recommended pressures in line with those generated by standard factory loads as manufactured by Remington Winchester Federal PMC or other reputable companies. Do not use P Ammo or High Velocity High Pressure Ammunition. 3 HOW TO UNLOAD Press the I _ nagazine from the pistol. Simply removing the magazine does not unload the chamber. If a cartridge is still in the chamber the pistol can fire even with the magazine removed. To unload the chamber point the pistol in a safe direction keep y of the trigger guard and OFF THE TRIGGER and move the safety tc THE PISTOL CAN NOW FIRE IF YOU PULL THE TRIGGER SO BE VERY CARE FUL When you grip the pistol for the next step be sure your finger is not inside the trigger gi Pull the slide to the r8 remove any cartridge that may be in the chamber. ys ch .iagaz... the thumb. 4 DISASSEMBLY AND CLEANING 1 Remove the magazine and clear the chamber to be sure the prstol is empty. SLIDE STOP TAKEDOWN MARKS Field stripping NO TOOLS. DO NOT pry or hammer on the pistol. . Pull the hammer back to the full cock position. Identify the 2 take down marks behind the safety on the left sides of the slide and frame. Pull the slide back slightly to line up the 2 marks. HINT. Use the rear sight for handy leverage when lining up the marks . Remove the slide stop takedown lever by pushing on the end sticking out of the right side of the pistol. and pulling on the lever with your other hand. Slide the barrel slide assembly forward and off the receiver. : Hold the slide upside down retract the recoil spring and remove the recoil spring and guide. . Remove the barrel from the slide. NO FURTHER DISASSEMBLY of the pistol is recommended unless per formed by a qualified gunsmith. Remember that work done by others and un authorized gunsmithing by non factory personnel will void the warranty. . . To reassemble simply reverse this procedure. SPECIFICATIONS Caliber 9 mm IO mm 41 AE 45 ACP 40 S W 38 Super Height 5.50 inches 4.5 inches Barrel 4.50 inches I3.5 inches Magazine Double Column Length 8.12 inches I7 inches Trigger Single and double action Weight 35 ounces I 30 ounces Construction Nickel steel Safety Colt type for cocked and locked carry or for hammer down double action carry PARTS CODIFICATION FOR WITNESS 1 1 BARREL 61 2:2 RIGHT GRIP 6 6 2.3 LEFT GRIP 6 7 2.4 GRIP SCREWS 6 8 MAGAZINE MAGAZINE CATCH MAGAZINE CATCH PLUNGER MAGAZINE CATCH SPRING 3.1 TRIGGER 3.2 TRIGGER PIN 3.3 TRIGGER SPRING 3.5 TRIGGER BAR 3.6 TRIGGER BAR PIN 3.7 TRIGGER BAR SPRING 3.6 TRIGGER BAR GUIDE 3.9 TRIGGER BAR PLUNGER 3.10 TRIGGER BAR PLUNGER PIN 4.1 HAMMER 4.2 HAMMER PIN 4.3 HAMMER SPRING 4.4 HAMMER STRUT 4.5 HAMMER STRUT PIN 4.8 INTERRUPTOR 4.9 INTERRUPTOR PIN 5.1 FIRING PIN 5.3 FIRING PIN SPRING 5.4 FIRING PIN RETAINER 5.5 FIRING PIN SAFETY 5.6 FIRING PIN SAFETY SPRING 61 6 3 9.1 9.2 9.3 102 11 1 11 2 113 13 1 14 1 18.1 18.3 16.4 A FRAME B SLIDE RECOIL SPRING GUIDE RECOIL SPRING SEAR SEAR PIN SEAR SPRING REAR SIGHT EXTRACTOR EXTRACTOR PIN EXTRACTOR SPRING SEAR ASSEMBLY HOUSING WITH EJECTOR SAFETY SLIDE STOP PIN SLIDE STOP PIN SPRING SLIDE STOP PIN SPRING PIN WARNING This gun was manufactured to perform properly with the original parts as designed. It is your duty to make sure any parts you buy are installed correctly and that neither replacements nor originals are altered or changed. Your gun is a complex tool with many parts that must relate correctly to other parts. Putting a gun together wrong or with modified parts can result in a damaged gun danger and injury or death to you and others through malfunction. Always let a qualified gunsmith work on your gun or at least check any work not performed by a gunsmith. We at EAA think this is a small price to pay for firearms safety. WARNINGS READ THIS AND BE A SAFE SHOOTER Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. Never point a gun at any person or thing you don t intend to shoot Treat every gun as if it is loaded... all the time. Get instructions from a competent firearms instructor before using any gun Never rely on a gun s safety to protect you from unsafe gun handling. A safety is only a mechanical device not a substitute for common sense. Keep your finger Off the trigger until you are actually aiming at the target ready to shoot. Don t alter or modify your gun and have guns serviced regularty Be certain the gun is unloaded before cleaning. Always empty guns before entering a house car truck boat RV camp or any building. Never leave a loaded gun unattended. Store guns and ammunition separately beyond the reach of children. Don t test the safety by pulling the trigger while the safety is on. Be sure of your target and backstop before you shoot. Ask yourself what your bullet will hit if it misses the target. Be sure the barrel is clear of obstructron before shooting. Guns and alcohol or drugs don t mix. Don t take them before or during shooting activities. Never pull a gun towards you by the muzzle. Don t climb a tree or cross a fence or ditch with a loaded gun. Load and unload with the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. If a gun fails to fire when trigger IS pulled keep It pointed at target for at least 30 seconds. Sometimes slow primer ignition will cause a hang fire and the car tridge will go off after a short pause. Never shoot at hard flat surfaces or water... bullets will ricochet. When receiving a gun always open the action and check that it s unloaded. Never put your hand over the muzzle of a gun. WARNINGS READ THIS AND BE A SAFE SHOOTER Never leave a gun where it could fall and fire. Always wear protective shooting glasses when shooting on the range or In a field or forest. Old or reloaded ammo may be dangerous. We recommend against usrng it. Spectators should be 10 feet behind and away from the shooter while loading firing and unloading. Wear hearing protection when shooting or at a shooting range or near shooting activities. Load the gun. an.1.y when on the range preparing to fire and unload it before lea ving the range Never carry any handgun in your pocket purse or tucked in a belt or waistband. Use a pistol case or a proper holster wrth safety flap or strap. Don t try to change your gun s trigger pull because alteratrons of tngger pull usual ly affect sear engagement and may cause accidental firing. If you do drop your gun unload it and check it for proper function before using it again. Always wear flourescent orange vest hat or jacket when in the woods or fields. Never let water snow mud or other material enter barrel. Firearms should be unloaded when not actually in use. Many ammunition identifications sound similar. Make sure you do not use wrong size ammo in your gun. Write to us concerning any items or circumstances which you don t understand and which might relate to your safety and the operation of any of our products. WARNING: The actual firearm does not contain any lead however it does fire ammunition containing lead or lead compounds known to the State of California to cause cancer birth defects and or reproductive toxicity. Those who discharge a firearm stand near someone who discharges a firearm or cleans firearms are hereby warned of the dangers presented by lead and lead compounds and should take protective health measures. Avoid exposure to lead while handling and wash your hands after contact. Proper air ventilation is absolutely necessary when shoot ing indoors. WARNING: Lead or lead compounds are known to the State of California to cause cancer birth defects and or reproductive toxicity. Those who clean firearms should take protective measures to avoid contact or exposure to such chemrcals. WARNING ANY BORE OBSTRUCTION EVEN IF IT IS ONLY PARTLY BLOCKED. MAY CAUSE THE GUN TO BLOW UP IF IT IS FIRED OR MAY CAUSE DAMAGE TO THE GUN SUCH AS A BULGED BARREL. TO AVOID INJURY OR DEATH TO THE SHOOTER OR BYSTANDERS CHECK THE BARREL BEFO dG OR IF A SHOT DOES NOT SOUND NORMAL. LIFE TIME LIMITED WARRANTY All EAA guns are warranted to the original retail customer for life from date of purchase against defects in material and workmanship. All parts and labor or replacement at our option are covered. Transportation to and from our repair faclllties damage caused by failure to perform normal maintenance sales out side the United States damage due to use of high velocity high pressure reloaded or other nonstandard ammunition or any unauthorized repair modiflcatton mls use abuse or alteration of the product IS not covered by this Limited Warranty. Any implied warranties including the implied warranties of merchantabtlity and fitness for a particular purpose are limited to one year from date of original retail purchase. Consequential or incidental damages or expenses or any other ex penses are not covered by this warranty. I 0 d n warrariry peirormance senb your probucr witn prodr dt rerail purdnase freight prepaid to: EAA 3855 NORTH US HIGHWAY ONE COCOA. FL. 32927 We suggest the following gun lock: Master Gun Lock is a good gun lock. It works on most Firearms. Master gun locks are available in Gun Shops and sporting goods departments. For more informa tion write: Master Gun Locks Master Lock Company P.O. Box 10367 Milwau kee WI. 53210. After all you have invested this much in your new gun now invest a little more in you families safety. USED FIREARMS If you got your EAA firearm as a used gun BEFORE USING IT you should un load it and check all its functions to be sure it works correctly. Firearms are some times altered to work incorrectly or parts may be removed lost or replaced with incorrect parts. First unload it and check it yourself and then: 1. Take it to a good gunsmith who knows about this model of EAA firearm and have him check it over or 2. Send it to EAA along with 30.00 and your name and address and our gunsmiths will inspect it and send it back to you with a report on its condition. This service is also available if you have an older EAA product or if you think your EAA gun has been dropped damaged or just needs to be checked. EAA 3855 NORTH US HIGHWAY ONE COCOA FL. 32927 YOUR 0WNER S MANUAL.

Hardware & DIY & Home;Arts & Photography

non-fiction

Glass WBd 533 Book__iS__SL v_ 6 1132 ESSENTIALS OF TEACHING READING Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http: www.archive.org details essentialsofteac04sher ESSENTIALS OF TEACHING READING E. B. SHERMAN Superintendent of Schools Columbus Nebraska A. A. REED Inspector of Accredited Schools and Associate Professor of Secondary Education University of Nebraska. THE UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING COMPANY LINCOLN NEBRASKA 1908 Copyright 1906 BY THE UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING COMPANY All Rights Reserved 5Tf c fLakegtbe rfg R. R. DONNELLEY SONS COMPANY CHICAGO TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PART I. THE MECHANICS OF READING Chapter i Time Chapter 2 Grouping Chapter 3 Melody Chapter 4 Force Chapter 5 Quality PART II. INTERPRETATIVE READING Chapter 6 Types and Figures of Speech Chapter 7 Effects PART III. METHODS Chapter 8 Primary Reading Chapter 9 Parts of a Recitation and Assignment of the Lesson Chapter 10 Classification of Material Chapter ii Obstacles to Good Expression Chapter 12 Illustrative Lessons Chapter 13 Use of the Dictionary Chapter 14 Articulation PART IV. SELECTIONS FOR PRACTICE Chapter 15 Didactic and Moral The Importance of the Teacher s Work and the Value of Proper Ideals Theodore Roosevelt The Power and Worth of Character William Jennings Bryan Elegy Written in a Country Church yard Thomas Gray Chapter 16 Oratorical The Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln The Southern Soldier Liberty and Union 3 13 19 34 40 5i 63 77 98 108 122 132 140 150 169 179 Abraham Lincoln Charles H. Fowler Henry Grady Daniel Webster 111 CONTENTS Chapter 17 Dramatic 184 Lochinvar . Sir Walter Scott Barbara Frietchie John Greenleaf Whittier Paul Revere s Ride Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Glaucus and the Lion Edward Bulwer Lytton Chapter 18 Narrative and Descriptive 196 The Lady of Shalott Alfred Tennyson Ichabod Crane Washington Irving The Death of Little Nell Charles Dickens How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix Robert Browning The Gray Champion Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 19 Humorous 217 A Curtain Lecture Douglas JerroId Whitewashing the Fence Mark Twain Index 221 PREFACE TPHE purpose of the authors in submitting A this book to the public is twofold. We wish in the first place to stimulate the interest in reading the subject which is the tool of the student in all lines of study. In the second place we wish to satisfy a demand that has arisen on account of the great interest in read ing. It is evident that there is needed some work that will include in a single volume the minimum of what a teacher should know in regard to teaching reading as well as illustrative lessons and material for practice. The plan of the authors has been to include the following essentials i. A brief study of some good method of teaching reading in the primary classes. 2. A brief survey of the most important elements in the mechanics of reading including emphasis phrasing or thought grouping time pitch volume and quality 3. A rapid drill in pronunciation and enun ciation. 4. A study of the methods of securing vi PREFACE thoughtful silent reading and expressive oral reading. 5. A review of the subjects of types and effects. 6. A study of how to select assign and conduct the lessons of the intermediate and advanced classes in reading including those of the seventh and eighth grades. 7. A reading of many pieces of literature of time proved value. We hope that this book will be productive of greater knowledge on the part of the teacher and better work on the part of the pupil in that most important of all branches reading. For reading and criticism of manuscript ac knowledgment is due to W. K. Fowler Ex Superintendent of Public Instruction of Ne braska Prof. J. W. Searson of the Nebraska State Normal at Peru President A. O. Thomas of the Nebraska State Normal at Kearney President W. H. Clemmons of the Fremont Normal and President J. M. Pile of the Wayne Normal. The Authors PART I MECHANICS OF READING TIME GROUPING MELODY FORCE QUALITY CHAPTER I TIME The teacher of reading should have a clear idea of the relative importance of the mechanics of reading and of the thought in reading. There have been two different schools of teaching reading. One school devotes the greatest attention to the mechanics of reading the other school works t from the thought side. Vital things are taught by each school. It is necessary that the pupil get the thought before he can express it. However getting the thought does not insure giving it. Many a child knows what a sentence means who merely names the words in it. Tie thought must be held in the mind while the reading is done. If the child has gotten the thought and is holding the thought in his mind at the time he reads his expression will be good. So far as the pupil is concerned he need not be compelled to study the mechanics of reading. We are satisfied if he gets the thought and gives the thought. It is necessary however for the teacher to have a knowledge of the mechanics of reading. If the pupil uses poor expression it is the business of the teacher to recognize the cause of the error. It is by a knowledge of the mechanics of reading that the teacher locates the trouble. Just so does a physician diagnose a case. As it is unnecessary for the patient to have the knowledge of the doctor so it is unnecessary for the pupil to have the knowledge of the teacher. If the pupil wishes to become a teacher the case becomes a different one. So the knowledge of the functions of Time Grouping Melody Force and Quality belong to the teacher not to the pupil. To the 3 ESSENTIALS OF READING teacher it is essential for the proper teaching and part of the great mass of knowledge drawn upon every day of the school year. The rate at which a selection a sentence a phrase or a word is read is called time. Time is determined by the largeness of the thought or the quality or strength of the emotion represented by that selection sentence phrase or word. We read Lincoln s Gettysburg Address slowly for each phrase means much. We read Mother Goose s rhymes rapidly for they mean almost nothing at all. If we think what we are saying we repeat the Lord s Prayer and the Twenty third Psalm very slowly for they mean very much but the unthinking child rattles off his Now I lay me down to sleep. If one word in a sentence touches the memory and visions of hitherto forgotten things arise we speak that word slowly. We pause while we say From Maine to California for in that pause the mind must cross America. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day The lowing herd winds slowly o er the lea. We read these lines slowly because the sentiment in the mind of the reader displays itself in the rate of utterance. We think of the peaceful restful part of the day we see the church and we hear the sound of the bell. We think of the setting sun and the deepening shadows we watch the cattle as they leisurely follow the winding paths. Notice how the time in the following becomes slower when the larger thought is reached Then your apples all is gether d and the ones a feller keeps Is poured around the cellar floor in red and yeller heaps And your cider makin s over and your wimmern folks is through With their mince and apple butter and their sous and saussage too. I don t know how to tell it but if such a thing could be As the angels wantin boardin and they d call round on me I d want to commodate em all the whole indurin flock When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder s in the shock I TIME Rapid utterance also is determined by the thought and emotion. We speak the words I galloped Dirck galloped we galloped all three rapidly but not because we wish to imi tate the sound of horses feet. Nor do we do it to make the reader imagine the galloping. That may be the result but it is not the cause. The real cause is that we appreciate the idea of the words that we feel the emotion. The rapid utterance is the result of a kind of automatic suggestion. The connection is immediate. The brain does not say Galloping means quick movement therefore lips move quickly. The two things are coincident. As the thought of galloping enters the conscious ness and for a time fills it the lips give out the sound that holds sway. Notice the somewhat rapid utterance of the following. No emotion is involved the thoughts are not large the circum stance is commonplace. Wal the very next mornin Josiah got up with a new idee in his head. And he broached it to me at the breakfast table. They have been havin sights of pleasure exertions here to Jonesville lately. Every week a most they would go off on an exertion after pleasure and Josiah was all up on end to go too. That man is as well principled man as I ever see but if he had his head he would be worse than any young man I ever see to foller up picnics and 4th of July s and camp meetin s and all pleasure exertions. But I don t encourage him in it. I have said to him time and time again: There is a time for everything Josiah Allen and after any body has lost their teeth and every mite of hair on the top of their head it is time for em to stop goin to pleasure exertions. But good land I might just as well talk to the wind If that man should get to be as old as Mr. Methusler and be goin on a thousand years old he would prick up his ears if he should hear of a exertion. All sum mer long that man has beset me to go to em for he would n t go without me. Old Bunker Hill himself hain t any sounder in principle an Josiah Allen and I have had to work head work to make excuses and quell him down. But last week they was goin to have one out on the lake on a island and that man sot his foot down that he would go. Marietta HollEx. ESSENTIALS OF READING In the following the strength of the emotion results in the rapidity of the time. Ranald and Mrs. Murray are being chased by wolves. Ranald glanced over his shoulder. Down the road running with silent awful swiftness he saw the long low body of the leading wolf flashing through the bars of moonlight across the road and the pack following hard. Let her go Mrs. Murray cried Ranald. Whip her and never stop. But there was no need the pony was wild with fear and was doing her best running. Ranald was meantime holding in the colt and the pony drew away rapidly. But as rapidly the wolves were closing in behind him. They were not more than a hundred yards away and gaining every second. Ranald remembering the suspicious nature of the brutes loosened his coat and dropped it in the road with a chorus of yelps they paused then threw themselves upon it and in another minute took up the chase. But now the clearing was in sight. The pony was far ahead and Ranald shook out his colt with a yell. He was none too soon for the pursuing pack now uttering short shrill yelps were now at the colt s heels. Lizette fleet as the wind could not shake them off. Closer and ever closer they came snapping and snarling. Ranald could see them over his shoulder. A hundred yards more and he would reach his own back lane. The leader of the pack seemed to feel that his chances were slipping swiftly away. With a spurt he gained upon Lizette reached the saddle girths gathered himself in two short jumps and sprang for the colt s throat. Instinctively Ranald stood up in his stirrups and kicking his foot free caught the wolf under the jaw. The brute fell with a howl under the colt s feet and the next moment they were in the lane and safe. Ralph Connor. Dickens Death of Little Nell is one of those pieces of lit erature in which the quality of the emotion and the largeness of the thought unite to produce slow time. She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and calm so free from trace of pain so fair to look upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God and waiting for the breath of life: not one who had lived and suffered death. Her couch was dressed here and there with winter berries and green leaves gathered in a spot she had been used to favor. When I die put TIME near me something that has loved the light and had the sky above it always. Those were her words. She was dead. Dear gentle patient noble Nell was dead. Her little bird a poor slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed was stirring nimbly in its cage and the strong heart of its child mistress was mute and motionless forever. Where were the traces of her early cares All gone. Sorrow was dead within her but peace and perfect happiness were born imaged in her tranquil beauty and profound repose. And still her former self lay there unaltered in this change. Yes. The old fireside had smiled upon that same sweet face it had passed like a dream through haunts of misery and care at the door of the poor school master on the summer evening before the furnace fire upon the cold wet night at the still bedside of the dying boy there had been the same mild lovely look. So shall we know the angels in their majesty after death. An example of slow time on account of the greatness of the thought is found in John Adams speech at the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. But whatever may be our fate be assured be assured that this declara tion will stand. It may cost treasure and it may cost blood but it will stand and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present I see the brightness of the future as of the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious an immortal day. When we are in our graves our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving with festivity with bonfires and illuminations. On its annual return they will shed tears copious gushing tears not of subjection and slavery not of agony and distress but of exultation of gratitude and of joy. Sir before God I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure and my whole heart is in it. All that I have and all that I am and all that I hope to be in this life I am now ready here to stake upon it and I leave off as I began that live or die survive or perish I am for the declaration. It is my living sentiment and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment independence now and INDEPEND ENCE FOREVER. Another example of the same time for the same cause. Portia. The quality of mercy is not strained It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 8 ESSENTIALS OF READING Upon the place beneath : it is twice bless d It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: Tis mightiest in the mightiest : it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown His scepter shows the force of temporal power The attribute to awe and majesty Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings But mercy is above this sceptred sway It is enthroned in the hearts of kings It is an attribute to God himself And earthly power doth then show likest God s When mercy seasons justice. The teacher should give few mechanical directions. An injunction Read more slowly my boy is a truly mechan ical device. It is the same operation as that of the engineer when he partially closes the throttle. It changes in no way the child s conception of the thought. The slower reading that results is not one whit better than the rapid reading of the first attempt because it represents no better con ception of the thought. The teacher should work through the thought and emo tion. The teacher of reading knows the lesson that he assigns. He knows how much is meant by the author. If his pupils read too rapidly he knows that they are not appreciating the magni tude of the ideas. So he tries to bring to their realization somuch of the author s thought as the children are able to grasp. He does this by question or by explanation or by paraphrase. He uses the children s experience and their imagination. He works from the thought and the emotion. He regards time as a test not as an end. Reading that is too slow. This trouble may arise from one of three causes. The child may be slow by nature. The teacher should then not require what is beyond the pupil s power to do. Reading that is right judged by his temperament should be TIME accepted. Sometimes children read too slowly because of unfamiliarity with the words. The treatment then is deter mined by the cause of the unfamiliarity. It may be the result of having a reader that is too difficult for the pupils. There may be too many new words per page. In such a case the reader should be changed. The lack of famil iarity with the words may result from the nationality of the pupil. If it is impossible or not best to transfer him to a more elementary class then the teacher must possess her soul with patience until the pupil learns our language. In a few years he will be up with his fellows. The child learns languages so easily that a foreign born child will finish with the American children and will learn our language in addition. In the third place this unfamiliarity with the words may be the result of careless assignment of the lesson. See As signment of the Lesson. If the reading is too slow on ac count of word trouble let the teacher first of all see to it that she has performed her work properly. As a summary of what has been said in this chapter and as an illustration of the handling of a selection to bring out the largeness of the thought let us read Julia Ward Howe s won derful poem The Battle Hymn of the Republic. This poem is usually sung in our schools to the tune of John Brown s Body Lies Mouldering in the Grave. We make the rhythm the conspicuous thing. We sing it Humpty dumpty dumpty dumpty humpty dumpty dumpty dum etc. Let us see what it really means. Julia Ward Howe felt her heart throb with sympathy for a million slaves. She was oppressed with the thought of the great sin that her nation had committed. She saw the gathering of myriads of fighting men to overwhelm the defenders of slavery. Thinking of all this she wrote : io ESSENTIALS OF READING Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. In the darkness of the night she has gone up to the house roof in her home in the nation s capital. She has seen the camp fires of the soldiers in those ninety forts that encircled and defended Washington. She thinks of the terrible power soon to be loosed from those thousands of muskets those hundreds of cannon. As she thinks of this it comes to her that God himself is moving in the midst of this army that He has pronounced His will and that His omnipotent power is on the side of the North. I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on. In our imagination we also see the columns of blue clad stal wart men marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington filling it from curb to curb stretching away in the distance as far as the eye can reach. We also feel the irresistible power of the cause. Certainly God is on our side and He is marching with His children. I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: As ye deal with My contemners so with you My grace shall deal Let the Hero born of woman crush the serpent with His heel Since God is marching on. As we think of this host of soldiers of this just cause of the aroused wrath of God there comes a determination that this re bellion shall be quelled that this blot shall be removed that men shall be tested by fire and by blood. All this shall be done it cannot be prevented for God has willed it. TIME u He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat O be swift my soul to answer Him be jubilant my feet Our God is marching on. In an upper room in a lodging house in London a group of war correspondents were celebrating the approach of war in the Soudan. Led by the veteran the Nilghai they sing the American song The Battle Hymn of the Republic. They sing the first stanza and the second and the third and the fourth. Then they pause. Cassavetti the Frenchman proud of his knowledge starts the last verse but grizzled old Tor penhow the veteran of a dozen campaigns holds up his hand and says Hold on. We ve nothing to do with that. That belongs to another man. What is this verse so high in sentiment so lofty in tone that these men would not or could not sing it This is it. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free While God is marching on. OUTLINE OF CHAPTER I TIME Mechanics of reading. Relative importance of the mechanics and the thought. The two schools of teaching reading. Necessity of teachers understanding the mechanics of reading. Definition of time. What determines time. Function of time. What causes rapid time. Common place thought. Excitement. What causes slow time. Emotion. Largeness of thought. 12 ESSENTIALS OF READING Mechanical directions. Through what to work. Cause of too rapid reading. Causes of too slow reading. Nature of reader. Difficult text Poor assignment of lesson. Example of method. FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION i. Why is the knowledge of the mechanics of reading important for the teacher 2. What are the various schools of teaching reading How do they differ 3. What important truths are taught in each school 4. How is a teacher s work similar to a physician s 5. What determines time in reading 6. Why do we read descriptions of races rapidly 7 What causes too rapid reading 8. How can these causes be removed 9. What causes too slow reading 10. How can these causes be removed n. Would you read Lincoln s Gettysburg Address slowly or rapidly Why 12. What would you do if a pupil in a reading class should read America very rapidly 13. At what rate should Mrs. Caudle s Curtain Lectures be read Kipling s Recessional 14. Name some selections to be read in rapid time. Medium time. Slow time. 15. Should a child ever be told to read slower When 16. How far should the temperament of children be taken into account in criticising the rate of their reading 17. Will pupils of foreign ancestry require any different treatment from pupils of American ancestry 18. Under what circumstances should a teacher read to pupils CHAPTER II GROUPING A thing that affects Time though important enough to be treated separately is the subject of grouping. Good readers instinctively divide the words of a sentence into groups of varying lengths. The purpose of this grouping is that the hearer may receive the thought in units larger than words and thereby understand it the more easily. When words expressing an idea are grouped together the hearer re ceives the idea as a unit. If the words are not given as a group he receives a part of the idea and must change his idea as each new element is introduced. This grouping is not only essen tial to intelligent reading but it is also natural. The mind finds it hard to hold long sentences in their entirety. A child will either break up these sentences into groups of comprehen sible length or giving up the task read the whole sentence as a string of words. He may even attach some words of the next sentence to his string and be sternly informed by a mechanical teacher that he forgot to drop his voice at the period. It is the business of the teacher to promote the tendency to group words in reading. What words belong in a group is a matter determined by the thought alone. The mechanical teacher has a difficult task in teaching grouping for there are no certain mechanical aids in discovering the groups. Punctuation is of some assist ance not because marks of punctuation mean pauses but be cause they indicate thought units and therefore words grouped together in reading. Notice this sentence : Earth that nour ished thee shall claim thy growth. Here the commas set off 3 i4 ESSENTIALS OF READING a supplementary clause. This relative clause is also a group of words read together. On the other hand in the sentence Every Tom Dick and Harry was invited there are com mas but the words are grouped together. Certainly no good reader would pause after the first word in the line But look you Cassius Punctuation then does not determine grouping but does indicate structure of the sentence. Struc ture depends on thought and thought determines grouping. In the following sentences there are very clearly defined groups while there are but few punctuation marks. The groups are indicated by dashes. At the present day the value of the cat as a useful and pleasant inmate of the home is generally recognized. The Star of Napoleon was just reaching its zenith as that of Washington was be ginning to wane. Children should be taught to feel the thought groups and to indicate them while reading. The voice should not drop as at the end of the sentence. The sentence unit should still be in the child s mind. He should glance through the sen tence before he begins to read. He should know that he will not be through before he gives the whole thought. He should read the sentence as a unit dividing the connected ideas into subordinate groups of varying lengths. The primary pupil will find his first sentences to be single groups as I have a leaf. But even in the latter part of the first reader grouping begins as Three little squirrels live in a tree. Grammar grade pupils find work like this: Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Notice the great importance of proper grouping in the read ing of the last lines of Whittier s Barbara Frietchie. Try reading it by lines and then by groups. GROUPING 15 All day long through Frederick Street Sounded the tread of marching feet All day long that free flag tost Over the heads of the rebel host. Ever its torn folds rose and fell On the loyal winds that loved it well And through the hill gaps sunset light Shone over it with a warm good night. Barbara Frietchie s work is o er And the Rebel rides on his raids no more. Honor to her and let a tear Fall for her sake on Stonewall s bier. Over Barbara Frietchie s grave Flag of Freedom and Union wave Peace and order and beauty draw Round thy symbol of light and law And ever the stars above look down On thy stars below in Frederick town Few rules can be given the pupil about grouping. The only one that is universal is that there is never more than one emphatic word in a group. If the reader decides to emphasize an additional word in a group upon which he is already decided he will instinctively make two groups out of what he had before made but one. Work from the thought side. Help the pupils to pick out groups. Have them copy paragraphs and put marks where the groups are separated. Sometimes it is made more plain to the children by telling them that the words in a group are spoken as if they were parts of one word. Allow liberty of thought. The pupil should have reason able scope for individuality in grouping as in emphasis or time. After a time he will acquire the ability and the habit and oral reading will become for him much more of a plea 16 ESSENTIALS OF READING sure. The following verses are separated into groups. There are good grounds for differences of opinion in regard to some of the groups. In fact it is uncommon for two teachers to agree on all the groups in a selection. Many will read the lines thus: iHis brow is wetnwith honest sweaty iHe earnsiiwhate er he can i And looks the whole world in the face i For he owes notpany man. Most persons will read it as given in the text below This selection is grouped by underscoring. The beginning and end of each group is indicated by an upward turn of the line thus: Honor to herlnand let a tear Fallj for her sake on Stonewall s bier. This method of marking groups is preferable to the ordinary vertical line plan because it obscures the text less and because it directs attention to the group rather than to the pause that separates the groups. THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH Henry Wadsworth Longfellow i. Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands The smithy a mighty man is he jWith large and sinewy hands And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. 2. His hair is crisp and black and long His face is like the tana His brow is wet with honest sweat He earns whate er he can lAnd looks the whole world in the face For he owes not any man. GROUPING 17 3. iWeek in iiweek out j from mora till nighti You can hear his bellows blow i tYou can hear him swing his heavy sledge With measured beatuand slow iLike a sexton ringing the village bell When the evening sun jis low. 4. And children coming home from school Look in at the open door tThey love to see the flaming forge jAnd hear the bellows roar And catch the burning sparksjjthat fly Like chaff from a threshing floor. t 5. jHe goes on Sunday to the church lAnd sits among his boys He hears the parson pray and preach He hears his daughter s voice Ringing in the village choir tAnd it makes his heart rejoice. 6. It sounds to him like her mother s voice Singing in paradise iHe needs must think of her once more How in the grave she lies i IAnd with his hard rough handle wipes A tear out of his eyes. 7. Toiling rejoicing sorrowing Onward through life he goes Each morningipees some task begun lEach evening sees it close i Something attempted something done Has earned a night s repose. 8. Thanks Mthanks to thee nmy worthy friend For the lesson thou hast taught jThus at the flaming forge of life lOur fortunesjimust be wrought tThus on each sounding anvilnshaped Each burning deeded thoughtl t x8 ESSENTIALS OF READING OUTLINE OF CHAPTER II GROUPING Purpose of grouping. Naturalness of grouping. What determines grouping. Influence of punctuation. Duty of the teacher. Grouping in primary grades. Grouping in advanced grades. Liberty of thought. Methods of making groups. Example. The Village Blacksmith. FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION i. How does grouping affect time 2 Upon what principle of thought getting is grouping based 3. Do people group words in conversation 4. What part does punctuation play in grouping 5. Can children group words correctly 6. How much individual liberty should be allowed in grouping 7. What exercises can be given children to train them in grouping 8. How would you group the sentence He laughed at the sugges tion Change to the passive voice. 9. Did the cow jump Over the moon or jump over the moon 10. Divide into groups a The dish ran away with the spoon. 11. Can you suggest a single verb that could be substituted for the verb phrase in the preceding sentence 12. Try changing the sentences in n and 12 to the passive voice. 13. What difference in meaning in The boy who was hurt was taken home and The boy who was hurt was taken home CHAPTER III MELODY The function of melody the movement of the voice up and down in pitch is to show the motive of the speaker. This includes showing the relation of the words. The words Jones goes tomorrow do not show the full thought of the speaker. There may be three very different meanings. Jones goes tomorrow shows that the speaker wishes to state the fact that it is Jones not some one else who goes. The motive in Jones goes tomorrow is to tell that he goes not comes while Jones goes tomorrow indicates when he goes. The word that indicates the important thing in other words the main idea is spoken higher in pitch than the other words of the sentence. It is often spoken with more energy also. In every sentence or every phrase there is a main idea. Take for example I am going to school spoken in answer to the question Where are you going In this sentence the main idea is expressed by the word school. Everything else in the sentence is of much less importance. The speaker will therefore raise the pitch of the voice in speaking the word school. Indeed a small boy asked the question may ignore the accompanying words and answer simply School . In the sentence I would rather be a doctor than a lawyer the main ideas are expressed by the words doctor and lawyer. These words are therefore spoken with a change of inflection that results in placing the two ideas in contrast. The first time an idea is mentioned it is generally the main idea and so is emphatic. 19 20 ESSENTIALS OF READING For example: i. Mary has a doll. 2. She loves her doll. 3. She has a book too. 4. It is a new book. In the first sentence there are three new ideas expressed by Mary has and doll. No matter how often the words occur again in this connection they will not have direct emphasis. In the second sentence the main idea is the verb loves and all the rest must be subordinated. In the third sentence book gives the new idea. In the fourth the purpose is to predicate newness of something mentioned before so the important word is new. The time to begin expressive reading is with the first sentence the child reads. It is easier to form correct habits than to change errors after they have become fixed. In reading a simple sentence like the first above after the pupil knows the words the teacher can ask him to tell what the first sentence says. It is worth while to take time to have him tell the sentence clearly and distinctly making good conversation the standard. Each important idea will have a slight empha sis effected by melody stress and time. The teacher should see that the article a is given as though an unaccented syllable of the word following. Before the pupil tries to read the second sentence the teacher should ask What does the next sentence tell that is new Or she can say How does Mary feel toward her doll The pupil should answer in the language of the book. If the teacher has succeeded in causing him to think clearly of the new relation he will answer with correct melody the entire sentence being in tone effect equivalent to a word of four syllables with the accent on the second syllable. MELODY 21 Before the pupil reads aloud the third sentence the teacher should ask him what it tells that is new or should say What else does she have The impulse of the pupil if he has the meaning will be to say A book. This is a good sign. But the teacher should then add Tell me all of it and should question the pupil until he gives it as if it were a word of four syllables with the accent on the last. To enable the pupil to see the new relation in the fourth sen tence the teacher can ask What kind of a book is it Un til the pupil is able to select the main idea readily the teacher should continue questioning in one or both of the ways suggest ed and should return to the questioning at any time when the pupil shows a tendency merely to pronounce words. A sentence must be read in its relation to what precedes and what follows it. It is sometimes said that a sentence like the first example above can have four different meanings and so can be read correctly in four different ways. That would be true if the sentence stood alone. It would then be valueless as no one could tell what the writer meant. From the nature of the case a sentence must have a sufficient setting to show its meaning or it serves no purpose of language. In the example mentioned the second sentence makes clear the mean ing of the first. If the second read She had a flower it would change the meaning of the first entirely. If it read It is not the doll she wants the meaning of the first would be dif ferent still. Change the second to Lucy wants it and it changes the first accordingly. Write it She wants a flower and this conditions the meaning of the first. If the second is Lucy has a flower there is still a different shade of meaning. Let the teacher for her own study of sentence meaning try the effect of changing the second sentence so as to give still different meanings as Lucy wants a flower Lucy has a doll too Lucy wants the doll etc. It would be well for the teacher to 22 ESSENTIALS OF READING write the first sentence and follow it with as many different sen tences as can be arranged to vary the meaning of the first. Both sentences should be written out each time. This is a most im portant exercise and will lead to clearness in handling larger units. Children should be taught to look for the main ideas. When a sentence is read without expression it means that the reader does not have in his mind the meaning of the sentence. The obvious remedy is to get him to think the right thought. To ask him to imitate the teacher s rendering or that of another pupil does not meet the requirement. He must be led to see for himself the main idea. The teacher can do this by questions or substitutions. For instance in the text given below suppose a pupil reads Then the Farmer came to look at his wheat. The teacher says Who came and the pupil answers by reading the sentence correctly Then the Farmer came to look at his wheat. Or the teacher may say in a question ing tone Then the Hunter came and the answer will be Then the Farmer came to look at his wheat. By either the question or the substitution the teacher brings the thought to the child s consciousness and the thought produces the correct emphasis. It is a pedagogical blunder to have pupils read a sentence in several different ways in accord ance with the so called expression exercises of some texts on reading. It creates the impression that meanings can be jug gled about and that it is really not an important matter just how a sentence is read. As a matter of fact there is but one way to read a sentence as a sentence has or should have but one meaning. Sometimes it is impossible to determine the meaning. This condition should be recognized as a fault of the writer and should not be used as an excuse for inaccurate thinking or for careless expression. Writers of primers and first readers err MELODY 23 most in this respect. Many of them are so anxious to intro duce words that they use them in any relation so they are used frequently. There is as much reason for lesson unity in these earlier years as at any other time. The paragraphs should have proper coherence. Except in exercises especially designated as reviews a sentence should never be used that does not have consistent paragraph relations. Teachers should feel perfectly free to omit exercises that violate this prin ciple as there is no such pressing need of acquiring a large vocabulary that it should be accomplished at the expense of a violation of the language sense. Then there is plenty of material available that is consistent in this regard. This should be drawn upon in the interest of forming habits that will not need to be changed later. Whatever is already in consciousness is not emphatic. It matters not how the idea came to the attention. It may have been mentioned before as in the illustrations given at the begin ning of this chapter. It may be supplied by a picture as in the story of The House that Jack Built. It may be implied by the nature of the context as occurs in the story of the Prodigal Son. And the father said to his servants Bring forth the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet The use of the ring is clearly implied by the con text. Such a ring is worn on the hand so the relation of the hand to the ring is implied in mentioning the ring. So shoes are wearing apparel for the feet and the use is included in the idea expressed by the name. Neither hand nor feet is as emphatic as ring and shoes. Inasmuch as a pronoun represents another word it cannot be used unless the idea is already under consideration. Hence pronouns do not have absolute emphasis. When a pronoun is emphatic it is emphasis of contrast of question of affirmation of force or of irony. 24 ESSENTIALS OF READING The circumflex or wave inflection is used most frequent ly to show emphasis of contrast. In speech there is no mis taking the intention of making a contrast. A warning is given by a peculiar circumflex or wave of the voice. This cir cumflex is used for other purposes but the difference is shown by the quality. No one confuses it with sarcasm irony scorn indignation or the hundred other shades of meaning indicated by the use of the wave. In reading the presence of contrast must.be learned from the context. The surety with which it is discerned depends upon the ability of the reader to hold in mind the meanings already in consciousness and to direct the eye far in advance in search of the full meaning. Often there will result a shifting and rearrangement of related meanings. The less frequent this readjustment is necessary the more satis factory will be the result whether the reading be silent or oral. The difference between direct and circumflex emphasis can be represented graphically. Thus: Harry is at the window 11 There is a change of pitch and of stress. The transition from the higher to the lower pitch is made between syllables the voice being dropped abruptly from one to the other. If the contrast were intended the contrasting ideas would be indicated by a wave thus: Harry is at the window. Mary is near the organ. The wave belongs mostly to the vowel sounds and involves all but the most obscure sounds. Care must be taken not to attempt to emphasize too many words. Sometimes an ambitious and affected reader will give utterance to such an absurdity as this Towards noon the farmer and his son came into the field. 11 In this sentence the reader must decide whether noon or farmer and his son or field 1f expresses the central idea. Only one of these ideas can sway the mind at a time. Only one of them should be emphasized. No compromise can be allowed by placing some emphasis on each. The aim should MELODY 2 5 be to emphasize but few words but to emphasize those few words hard. Let common sense rule and let the teacher be considerate of the pupil s honest opinion. The following story is marked to show the main ideas. Many expressions that have a slight emphasis are not marked. Such emphasis takes care of itself. The important thing is to have the main ideas brought out very distinctly. As in group ing words there is great room for differences of opinion. In a field of wheat there was a Lark s nest and in the nest there were four young Larks almost large enough to fly. One morning when the mother Lark was going out for something to eat she said to her little ones: The wheat is now ripe enough to be cut and there is no telling how soon the reapers will come. So keep wide awake to day and when I come home tell me all that you see or hear. The little Larks promised that they would do so and the mother flew away singing. She was hardly out of sight when the Farmer who owned the field came with his son to look at his wheat. I tell you what John he said it is time that this wheat was cut. Go round to our neighbors this evening and ask them to come to morrow and help us. When the old Lark came home the young ones told her what they had heard and they were so badly frightened that they begged her to move them out of the field at once. There is no hurry she said. If he waits for his neighbors to come he will have to wait a long time. The next day while the mother Lark was away the Farmer and his son came again. John did you ask the neighbors to come said the Farmer. Yes sir said John and they all promised to be here early. But they have not come said the Farmer and the wheat is so ripe that it must be cut at once. Since our neighbors have failed us we must call in our kinsfolk. So mount your horse and ride round to all your uncles and cousins and ask them to be sure and come to morrow and help us. The young Larks were in great fear when they heard this and in the evening they told their mother all about it. Mother they said we shall be killed if we stay here another day. Our wings are strong enough let us fly away right now. Don t be in a hurry said the mother. If the Farmer waits for his kinsfolk the wheat will not be cut to morrow for the uncles and cousins have their own harvest work to do. She went out again the next day but told the young ones to notice everything that happened while she was gone. 26 ESSENTIALS OF READING Towards noon the Farmer and his son came into the field. See how late in the day it is said the Farmer and not a man has come to help us. And the grain is so ripe that it is all falling down and going to waste said his son. Yes said the Farmer and since neither our friends nor our kins folk will help us we must do the work ourselves. Let us go home and whet our scythes and get everything ready so that we can begin before sunrise in the morning. The old Lark came home quite early that day and the little Larks told her what they had heard. Now indeed it is time for us to be off she said. Shake your wings and get ready to fly for when a man makes up his mind to do a thing himself it is pretty sure to be done. Melody has more to do than to point out main ideas. It must also show the motive of the speaker in other respects. In the sentence You are going to vote for me aren t you the words aren t you are emphasized no matter what the motive. The melody however may differ materially. If the one speak ing is merely coaxing the voice will rise and then fall a circumflex inflection thus You are going to vote for me aren t you If the one speaking is threatening the inflection will take an upward turn. In each case the melody reveals the motive in the mind of the speaker. A person says Such pleasant weather and we know that he means what he says. On a stormy day he may say Such pleasant weather and we know that he means the very opposite of what his words without melody mean. A person may say at one time The work is not half done. At another he may express an idea exactly opposite by saying The work is not half done. In conversation no mistakes are made in melody either by adults or by children. Neither are mistakes made in interpret ing melody. Children recognize the patronizing teacher by the inflection of her words and they accordingly hate her. She wonders why her pupils do not love her when her motive to flat ter and deceive is revealed in every word she speaks. This is MELODY 27 also the reason why the directions from one teacher are quickly and completely obeyed while those of another are almost ignored. The children recognize by the melody of the words of the one that she intends to be obeyed and by the melody of the words of the other that she is not really in earnest. The second teacher cannot imitate the manner of the first without an actual change in methods of discipline. If how ever she reforms and really intends to follow words by acts the children will recognize in her words also the earnestness of the motive. So also a reader cannot give a required inflection with out having in his mind the motive. Therefore the teacher must see to it that the pupil has the thought in his mind. Then if there is no obstacle such as embarrassment the melody will be correct. There is no other way of getting correct melody. An illustration. At the beginning of Antony s speech he says For Brutus is an honorable man. Honorable is em phatic and the melody is commonplace. Later in the speech Antony s motive changes and to show the new motive the word must be given an entirely different inflection. Graphically represented the first would be something like this For Brutus is an honorable man. Later in the speech it becomes s For Brutus is an honorable man. It is not necessary to analyze this inflection. In the grades such analysis will not aid in securing good expression. One thing and one only will secure it and that one thing is for the reader to have in his mind the irony in which Antony spoke the sentence. It would not be profitable to make an extended analysis of pitch and melody at this time. For convenience however we give the following summary of the principal uses of key and in flection as found in most works on the subject. It is not to be 28 ESSENTIALS OF READING thought that this summary includes all the uses of melody. Indeed no work can do so. Herein lies one of the reasons why such works are not more useful to a teacher. A high key the average pitch of the melody marks: a. Strong desire to communicate thought. Example Friends Romans Countrymen lend me your ears. b. High nervous strain. Example Charge Chester charge On Stanley on A low key marks: a. Controlled mental conditions. Example The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. b. Little or no desire to communicate thought. Example To be or not to be that is the question. The falling inflection marks: a. Completeness. Example I come to bury Caesar not to praise him. b. Momentary completeness. Example And turned away and spake to his own soul. c. Decreased nervous tension. Example It is finished all is over. The rising inflection marks: a. Increased nervous tension. Example What I a coward b. Uncertainty. Example I don t know about that c. Question to be answered by yes or no. Example Are you going home The circumflex inflection one made by a rising and then a falling inflection or by a falling and then a rising inflection marks some complex mental conditions including contrast. MELODY 29 In Brutus is an honorable man the inflection is affected by the two ideas of what Brutus is called and what Brutus really is. A a a ah I have caught you n o o o wl Here are the elements You thought you were safe but I have caught you anyhow. Julius Caesar the Emperor of Rome was his friend. Here we find Caesar so important that it is marked by a falling inflection but the looking forward of the mind complicates the situation and adds an upward turn to the falling inflection giving a circumflex inflection. This pointing forward of the voice to indicate that the thought is not yet completed is a subject of such importance that it must be studied more par ticularly. The motive of the speaker in regard to the succession of ideas is shown by melody. Take for example the sentence from Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Mary Elizabeth She was poor she was sick she was dirty she was cold she was hungry she was frightened. If the reader decides that this is a climax that frightened is the most important thing of all that it is in the mind of the story teller from the begin ning then the reader must make the melody point on and on until the climax is reached. Something like this will re sult: She was poor she was sick she was ragged she was cold she was hungry she was frightened. If however the reader believes that this is not a climax that it is only a cata log of wretchedness that each thing is in itself enough misery for one small girl then the melody must indicate this motive by a slight falling inflection on each of the important words. This indicates momentary completeness. It means that the mind is almost filled by the idea although it is still but a part of the full thought. This falling inflection is very different from the inflection at 30 ESSENTIALS OF READING the end of the sentence. It is at most but a tipping down ward of but one word. At the end of a sentence the voice usually rises and then falls in two or even three successive steps. The sentence read with the second interpretation would be something like the following: She was poor she was sick she was dirty she was ragged she was cold she was hungry she was frightened. Another sentence from the same selection illustrating the same things is this one: Whether the door keeper was away or busy or sick or careless or whether the head waiter at the dining room door was so tall that he couldn t see so short a beggar or however it was Mary Elizabeth did get in by the door keeper past the head waiter under the shadow of the clerk over the smooth slippery marble floor the child crept on. In the sentence there are two very important ideas did get in and the child crept on. The voice will point onward with even or upward inflections until the first is reached then a downward turn will mark the momentary completeness at the word in or it will have an upward turn at the end of the downward inflection and will indicate to no one that the thought is completed. In the last half of the sentence phrase after phrase points on until the sentence rounds out in the most important thing of all the child crept on. In the following poem the falling inflections are marked the rising momentary completeness and even inflection: CROSSING THE BAR Sunset and evening star And one clear call for me : And may there be no moaning of the bar When I put out to sea MELODY 31 But such a tide as moving seems asleep Too full for sound and foam When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell And after that the dark And may there be no sadness of farewell When I embark For though from out our bourne of time and place The flood may bear me far I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar. Tennyson. In succession of ideas as in the case of single words and phrases the teacher must work through the thought. Let it be said once more that the analysis of melody will not help the pupil to give good expression. If he knows the whole thought and has the whole thought in his mind he will give it. The teacher must see to it that these two requirements are met. For example remember the two interpretations of the sentence She was poor she was sick she was dirty she was ragged she was cold she was hungry she was frightened. Whichever interpretation be selected the teacher should not talk to the pu pil about climaxes and upward inflections and momentary completeness and so on. If the climax interpretation is select ed the teacher should see to it that the child thinks of fright ened as being the worst thing of all that he has this in his mind from the beginning and that he knows that this word will be the end of the thought. If the other interpretation is selected she should speak of the troubles separately allowing each one to fill the mind of the child as he reads it. The child should be taught to read by sentences. When he becomes a good reader his eye will travel far ahead of his 32 ESSENTIALS OF READING tongue. To train this skill a child should be given time to glance through a sentence before he begins to speak it. Such a sentence as the second given from Mary Elizabeth can be read well by no one without such a preparation. In the lower grades where sentences are short the Look and Say method should be used for weeks at a time. Have the child read the sentence silently close the book keeping a finger in the place and say it. This is a splendid device for getting thoughtful reading and good expression. Yet this sometimes happens. The child glances at a sentence getting the thought at a glance looks up at the teacher and says the sentence correctly and eagerly and then the teacher snaps out Look at your book and read it. The teacher is wrong. The pupil is right. He has gotten the thought and given the thought. This is reading. OUTLINE OF CHAPTER III. MELODY Melody and emphasis. The function of melody. The main idea. A new idea. Related ideas. Training children to find main ideas. The circumflex inflection indicating contrast in main ideas. An example. Melody and the motive of the speaker. Necessity of having the motive in the mind. Function of different melodies. Key. High key. Low key. Inflection. Falling inflection. Rising inflection. MELODY 33 Circumflex inflection. Succession of ideas. Illustration. Methods of work. FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION i . What is the function of melody 2. What is a main idea 3. What makes an idea important 4. How often in the same selection may the same idea be impor tant 5. How early can the child be expected to give expressive reading 6. Can a sentence be read correctly without a knowledge of the context When 7. How much should children be taught about melody 8. What is the peculiar melody in emphasis of contrast 9. What is the effect of trying to emphasize too many words 10. What office does melody perform besides indicating main ideas 11. How can you say She is a sweet lady and mean the opposite 12. Can a reader give a thought that is not in his own mind 13. What determines key 14. What may a falling inflection indicate A rising A circum flex 15. How can a pupil be trained to read periodic sentences 16. How can pupils be trained to read by sentences 17. Should children ever be allowed to cut up sentences in reading them When 18. Should children be required to look at the text as they read CHAPTER IV FORCE Before proceeding with the subject of force and also with that of quality it is necessary to make clear the distinction between reading declaiming and acting. Read ing has been confused many times with declaiming and acting much to the detriment of reading. The teaching of reading is injured rather than helped by the methods of the elocutionist. The function of acting is to create ideas in the minds of those who see and hear. The actor does this by imitating as far as possible the actions of a person in the imagined circumstances. He is assisted by costumes cosmetics elaborate scenery and ingenious stage devices for imitating the real conditions. There are however certain limitations. The action of years must be portrayed in an evening a dozen men must serve for an army. The muttered asides of the villain must be pronounced in a tone audible to hundreds of people. The function of declaiming is also to create certain ideas in the minds of those who see and hear. It differs from acting principally in the increased number of disadvantages. No assistance can be gotten from scenery and stage contrivances and but little from costume and cosmetics. The declaimer must get along without even a dozen men in his army. Still imitation though helped largely by suggestion is the purpose of the declaimer. The hapless heroine wrings her hands and sinks swooning to the floor. The valiant warrior draws and flourishes his imaginary sword. The lash of the noble Ben Hur writhes and hisses and hisses and writhes again and again over the backs of his four. 34 FORCE 35 The function of reading is very different from that of acting or declaiming. It is twofold and the most important of the two purposes is not in acting or declaiming at all. More than nine tenths of reading is silent reading and its purpose is wholly the getting of thought. Of oral reading the purpose is to convey thought and to create ideas by means of suggestion not at all by means of imitation. The sooner the teacher of reading gets the idea of imitating out of her mind the better it is for her pupils. The idea of a person reading should not be the picture of a person speaking from a platform but rather that of a gentleman in his library reading to his friends or of a lady by the bedside of a sick friend or of a school boy standing by his seat reading to his fellows. With this idea of reading in our minds let us turn to the subject of force. Force manifests the degree of mental energy in the mind of the speaker. It results in an increased muscular tension of the organs of speech. When force is in the nature of an explosive utterance followed by a diminishing of effort it is said to have radical stress. The stress is on the first of the syllable or word. It arises from the personal energy or the personal emotion of the speaker. The teacher says Children be quiet The expression shows her determin ation to have silence. The force arises from her own energy. Another and less common kind of stress is final stress. This is found where the force arises from the object mentioned not from the speaker as for example What you is it you A third kind of stress is median stress. Here the energy is greatest at the middle of the expression as This was the noblest Roman of them all. This classification may be of service to the teacher but not to the pupil. All work with the pupil must be 36 ESSENTIALS OF READING through the thought and suggestion not imitation is the result. Take for example the lines from Barbara Frietchie: Up the street came the rebel tread Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. Under his slouched hat left and right He glanced the old flag met his sight. Halt the dust brown ranks stood fast Fire out blazed the rifle blast. We should not attempt to have the pupil imitate the sound of the general s voice as he gave the command. If he spoke as the military officers of today issue commands to troops what he said sounded far more like Ho o o w w than like Halt. However the question to the pupils How do you think he spoke the words is not out of place: for the ques tion will bring to the minds of the pupils the fact that this man was the commander that what he said was done without hesitation and he said Halt Fire If a pupil has this in his voice as he speaks the words a tone of energy and of command this tone this suggestion is what we want not loudness. When we reach the next words of the general let the pupil think once more that this was the general that his word was law that if he should command his men to place a comrade against the wall and shoot him it would be done. Let the pupil remember that this general knew his power and that he used it that he said what he meant and nothing but what he meant. With all this in mind let the pupil read Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog March on he said. The problem of the teacher is to get the reader to imag ine the situation of the speaker in a selection. When this is FORCE 37 accomplished the words of the reader will come with such force as to suggest the emotions of the original speaker. Let us be satisfied with this and not attempt to secure imitation. Stress denotes the state of the mind. The only way to secure it in the right place is to secure the right state of mind. The following extracts show the kind of selections in the reading of which we may most easily get forceful expression from pupils. One day we left our dolls under a big pine while we ran off to wade for a few minutes. When we came back not one was to be seen. We hunted and hunted and at last I happened to look up. What do you think I saw Those eleven dolls were hanging by their necks to the branches Donald stood near laughing. Santa Claus has given you a new Christmas tree he jeered and more girl dolls. Then he began to throw stones at them. We screamed and begged him to stop but he kept on. At last he hit Amy Marston s Flora and we heard the face smash in. Now Amy was a little girl but we all loved her and Donald had been her slave the summer before. Amy turned perfectly white and screamed: You ve killed her You ve killed my precious dolly then she fell right on the ground. We were so frightened Some one ran and picked Amy up and some one else ran for her mother. The Heath Readers Book Three. Sheridan now put spurs to his steed and galloped along the road swinging his hat to the soldiers who watched him dashing past. He called out cheerily to them : Face the other way boys we re going back Galloping thus for twenty miles Sheridan rode on mile after mile. But all through that long gallop his noble steed never faltered and the men hearing his Turn boys turn we re going back followed him blindly. When Sheridan finally came up to the troops he encouraged them by crying: Never mind boys we ll whip them yet. We shall sleep in our old quarters to night. H. A. Guerber Story of the Great Republic. 38 ESSENTIALS OF READING THE FLAG GOES BY Hats off Along the street there comes A blare of bugles a ruffle of druniSa A flash of color beneath the sky Hats off The flag is passing by Blue and crimson and white it shines Over the steel tipped ordered lines. Hats off The Colors before us fly But more than the Flag is passing by. Sea fights and land fights grim and great Fought to make and to save the State Weary marches and sinking ships Cheers of victory on dying lips Days of plenty and years of peace March of a strong land s swift increase Equal justice right and law Stately honor and reverend awe Sign of a Nation great and strong To ward her people from foreign wrong Pride and glory and honor all Live in the Colors to stand or fall. Hats off Along the street there comes A blare of bugles a ruffle of drums And loyal hearts are beating high Hats off The flag is passing by Henry Holcomb Bennett. FORCE 39 OUTLINE OF CHAPTER IV FORCE The difference between reading declaiming and acting. Acting imitation. Declaiming imitation and suggestion. Reading. Silent gleaming of thought Oral transfer of thought suggestion. The function of force. Stress. Kinds of stress. Radical stress. Final stress. Median stress. Method of work. The teacher s problem. Exercises. FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION i. What is the difference between acting declaiming and reading 2. Under what circumstances is it profitable to have the pupils hear elocutionists and actors 3. What idea of reading should a teacher have in mind 4. What does force indicate 5. Of what psychological condition is force the result 6. What is stress Distinguish the kinds of stress. 7. How should a pupil read I heard the thunder roll Why shouM he read it so 8. How can the teacher secure false or affected force 9. How can the teacher secure genuine heartfelt force 10. Name some selections suitable for reading to illustrate force. CHAPTER V QUALITY The quality of the voice of the reader indicates the emo tion. A reader controls his utterance in regard to time and thereby indicates the importance or largeness of the thought. He changes the pitch of his words and thus exhibits motives. He uses different degrees of muscular energy and thereby dis plays his earnestness. By changing the position of the organs of speech he can change the actual quality of the sound of his voice. By movements of the tongue the larynx and the palate he can affect the size and shape of the cavities through which the sound moves. He can do this to some extent voluntarily. The greatest changes are however caused by the influence of emotion. Thus we have come to recognize the emotional state of the speaker by the quality of voice resulting from these muscular changes. So the reader who wishes to express emotions must use tones of proper quality. If he wishes to express sorrow his voice must have the quality that we recog nize as the effect of sorrow. If he wishes to express hate he must produce that quality given by the vocal organs when under the influence of hate. Enthusiasm discouragement benevolence awe anger jealousy all must be shown by the quality of the voice. In short the good reader must be a master of a musical instrument the human voice in compari son with whose marvelous power flexibility and delicacy man created instruments even the master pieces of Stradi varius or the greatest organs of the greatest builders must sink in hopeless inferiority. The number of different qualities of the voice is almost 40 QUALITY 41 infinite. Some of the most common have been named and classified. That called by singers the bright ringing quality is produced when the organs of speech are influenced by the emo tions of joy happiness liveliness and the like. For example: Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys If there has take him out without making a noise. Hang the almanac s cheat and the catalogue s spite Old Time is a liar We re twenty to night We re twenty we re twenty Who says we are more He s tipsy young jackanapes show him the door Gray temples at twenty Yes white if we please Where the snowflakes fall thickest there s nothing can freeze. Holmes. Hurrah hurrah for Sheridan Hurrah hurrah for horse and man And when their statues are placed on high Under the dome of the Union sky The American soldier s Temple of Fame There with the glorious General s name Be it said in letters both bold and bright: Here is the steed that saved the day By carrying Sheridan into the fight From Winchester twenty miles away Thomas Buchanan Read. What is called the dark sombre covered tone is produced by the influence of gloom sorrow sadness discouragement and the like. Good by proud world I m going home Thou rt not my friend and I m not thine Long through the weary crowds I roam A river ark on the ocean brine Long I ve been tossed like the driven foam And now proud world I m going home. Emerson. The organs of speech when not changed from the normal by any emotion give the quality called normal. Example: 42 ESSENTIALS OF READING If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do chapels had been churches and poor men s cottages princes palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood but a hot temper leaps o er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the youth to skip o er the meshes of good counsel the cripple. Shakespeare. The voice when affected by deep full enlarged feeling takes a rich full quality called the orotund. It is not necessarily accompanied by loudness. It comes naturally to the trained reader in reading passages of sublimity and grandeur. It is the evidence of exalted feeling. Examples: Roll on thou deep and dark blue ocean roll Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain Man marks the earth with ruin his control Stops with the shore upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deeds nor doth remain A shadow of man s ravage save his own When for a moment like a drop of rain He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan Without a grave unknelled uncomned and unknown. Byron. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining be fore us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this na tion under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that govern ment of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth. Abraham Lincoln. The quality of the voice when influenced by harsh and severe emotions that contract the muscles of the throat is called guttural. Hate scorn derision have this quality. Examples: QUALITY 43 Shylock aside . How like a fawning publican he looks I hate him for he is a Christian But more for that in low simplicity He lends out money gratis and brings down The rate of usance here in Venice. If I can catch him once upon the hip I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. Shakespeare. The aspirated quality may be produced by any emotion that produces the feeling of oppression. It may be fear exhaus tion excitement awe terror hate or some others. Examples: Macbeth. Whence is that knocking How is t with me when every noise appalls me What hands are here Ha they pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand No this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine Making the green one red. Shakespeare. Macduff. Approach the chamber and destroy your sight With a new Gorgon. Do not bid me speak See and then speak yourself. Exeunt Macbeth and Lennox. Awake awake Ring the alarm bell Murther and treason Banquo and Donalbain Malcolm awake Shake off this downy sleep death s counterfeit And look on death itself Up up and see The great doom s image Malcolm Banquo As from your graves rise up and walk like sprites To countenance this horror. Ring the bell. Shakespeare. These qualities are the principal ones recognized in manuals. As a matter of fact there are not only many more qualities but those given mingle sometimes in complicated ways. The emotion in the following description of Jean Valjean in the 44 ESSENTIALS OF READING Bishop s house is exceedingly complex. Fear stealth ferocity remorse all are mingled and the quality of the voice is affected by all. When three o clock struck it seemed to say To work. He took from his pocket a piece of iron and walked toward the door of the ad joining room. He found the door ajar. He pushed it boldly. A badly oiled hinge uttered a hoarse prolonged cry. Jean Valjean started shuddering and dismayed. A few minutes passed nothing had stirred. He heard from the end of the room the calm and regular breathing or the sleeping Bishop. Suddenly he stooped for he was close to the bed. Victor Hugo. All these qualities of the voice of the reader indicate the emotions. There is no mechanical way of gaining them or of putting emotion into reading. The old time preacher who wrote in the margin of his sermons the notes Cry here and Solemn voice here could hardly have touched his hearers. Professor Cumnock once told with great disgust how after he had read a selection that brought the tears to his eyes a hearer a theological student came to him and said Mr. Cumnock won t you please tell me how you make yourself cry It is only the affected reader who tries to put into the reading emotions that he does not feel. It is really a good thing that our healthy school boys refuse even to attempt to indicate emotion that they do not and cannot possibly feel. The teacher should not talk about Orotund and Aspirate Qualities etc. She should select a text which appeals to emotions the children have felt. What boy can feel the words of the middle aged man Blessings on thee little man Barefoot boy with cheek of tan From my heart I give thee joy I was once a barefoot boy. QUALITY 45 Many things the children have in their own experience many things they can imagine. Select passages having these things patriotism love of nature self sacrifice enthusiasm curiosity wonder excitement all of these can be used to affect the quality of the voice. Make them see the pictures of the scenes. Read them yourself. Emotion is catching. Before allowing pupils to begin the reading of an emotion al selection see that they catch the atmosphere of the selec tion. By atmosphere we mean the general spirit of the selection. For example before reading Tennyson s Crossing the Bar call to the pupil s attention the fact that when Tennyson wrote this poem he was eighty years old. He expected death at any time. He was looking straight into the future and he was calmly resigned to meet whatever might come. Tennyson s The Knights Chorus shows a different atmosphere. Call attention to the fact that Arthur is victorious his kingdom is established the king s glory is being celebrated in the song of the Knights: Blow trumpet for the world is white with May Blow trumpet the long night hath rolled away Blow thro the living world Let the King reign The following examples illustrate atmosphere: Haste thee Nymph and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity Quips and cracks and wanton wiles Nods and becks and wreathed smiles Such as hang on Hebe s cheek And love to live in dimple sleek Sport that wrinkled Care derides And Laughter holding both his sides. Come and trip it as you go On the light fantastic toe And in thy right hand lead with thee The mountain nymph sweet Liberty 46 ESSENTIALS OF READING And if I give thee honour due Mirth admit me of thy crew To live with her and live with thee In unreproved pleasures free. Milton. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day The lowing herd winds slowly o er the lea The plowman homeward plods his weary way And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight And all the air a solemn stillness holds Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds. Save that from yonder ivy mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as wandering near her secret bower Molest her ancient solitary reign. Beneath these rugged elms that yew tree s shade Where heaves the turf in many a mould ring heap Each in his narrow cell forever laid The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. Gray. OUTLINE OF CHAPTER V QUALITY Function of quality. Different qualities. Bright ringing. Dark sombre. Normal. Orotund. Guttural. Aspirate. Other qualities. Necessity of reader s feeling the emotion. Selecting text. Necessity of catching the atmosphere of the selection. What atmosphere is. Examples of atmosphere. QUALITY 47 FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION i. What does the quality of the voice of a speaker or reader indicate 2. To what extent is the quality of the voice under the control of the speaker or reader 3. How can a reader control the quality of the voice 4. What are the qualities of the voice commonly named 5. What does each indicate 6. Through what means should a teacher strive to secure reading that portrays the emotions of a selection 7. What kind of text is best suited to children who are trying to read with emotion 8. What do we mean by the atmosphere of a selection 9. How can the atmosphere of a selection be secured 10. What is the atmosphere of Poe s Raven Wallace s Char iot Race Milton s Sonnet on His Blindness Lowell s Cortin PART II INTERPRETATIVE READING CHAPTER VI TYPES An author wishes to make vivid the way in which a man passed through a certain town. He does not make the man say that he walked watchfully and quietly and fearfully and alertly. He makes him say I stole cat focted through the town. Why not say calf footed Because the author must select as the type that animal of all animals which has in the greatest degree the qualities of alertness and stealth. An author often omits the name of the feeling or charac teristic or idea he wishes to express. In its place he uses the name of some object that represents in a very high degree that feeling or characteristic or idea. For in stance in He was a lion in the fight lion is used to represent bravery and fierceness. Such an object is said to be a type of the feeling or characteristic or idea it represents. Longfellow wishes to picture the beauty of the dew laden trees of Arcadia. He says: Bright with the sheen of the dew each glittering tree of the forest Flashed like the plane tree the Persian adorned with mantles and jewels. Sir Walter Scott wishes to emphasize the fickleness of love. He selects as a type the flowing and ebbing of the tide in Solway. I long wooed your daughter my suit you denied Love swells like the Solway but ebbs like its tide. Macaulay wishes to show the greatness of the Etruscan army. He selects as his standard of comparison the ocean an object 5i 52 ESSENTIALS OF READING that possesses in the highest degree the attributes of size and power. Meanwhile the Tuscan army Right glorious to behold Came flashing back the noonday light Rank behind rank like surges bright Of a broad sea of gold. The study of figures of speech is best taken up through types. Metaphor is that figure of speech in which one object is said to be another because of some type quality discovered as common to both. One who has experienced the sense of pro tection that comes from shelter behind a great rock in the des ert at the time of a storm that threatened his safety or who has escaped within the walls of a fortress when attacked by a band of enemies has concrete examples of conditions that afford a high degree of protection. It is natural that such a one should lay hold of these familiar objects to represent his sense of protection when under the care of Jehovah and should exclaim Thou art my rock and my fortress. He has in mind two distinct pictures one of Jehovah and the other of a rock and a fortress. He declares Jehovah to be his rock and for tress because his sense of protection under Jehovah s care is so great and so complete that in Jehovah he sees in the highest degree those qualities he had experienced in the inanimate forms. He takes Jehovah as his ideal of the quality he is trying to interpret. The protection afforded by the rock and the for tress is subordinated to that given by Jehovah. This is meta phor. If the writer had felt the sense of protection from Jehovah as less ideal in degree than that afforded by the physi cal shelter if his sense of satisfaction from some threatened danger had been realized more fully or at a later point of time in the case of the rock and the fortress he would have said TYPES 53 Thou art like a rock and a fortress to me. This would be simile. Simile is that figure of speech in which one object is said to be like another. As in the case of metaphor the analogy is due to some type quality common to both. Again there must be two pictures in the mind but mere similarity is affirmed not identity. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold. The reason the writer cast this in simile is be cause to his mind the havoc wrought by the attack of the fierce wolf upon a defenceless flock of sheep represented to the highest degree the effect of that sudden descent of the Assyrians upon the unprepared and unsuspecting camp. It is difficult to conceive of more utter rout and disaster than happens to sheep under such circumstances so that is taken as the type. The effect of the attack of the Assyrians is subordinated to it. Simile is used not because it is weaker but because it best expresses the conditions of the scene. Allegory is that figure in which a literal expression is capable of figurative interpretation. To be pure allegory it must be absolutely capable of either interpretation. It may be found in a word a phrase a clause a sentence a paragraph or an en tire book. It is commonly thought of in connection with the longer units and is most important for elementary instruction in that form. Allegory resembles metaphor and simile in kind but differs in degree. There is similarity as the basis. It is also an attempt to visualize some spiritual quality through a familiar literal form. It differs from the two other figures in the fact that but one picture is in consciousness at first. The literal must be so vivid that it holds all the attention for the moment. The interpretation must be in sub consciousness or must follow a moment later. Pilgrim s Progress is the most famous type of extended allegory. Many of our best hymns are allegorical though they S4 ESSENTIALS OF READING change their form generally in an attempt to cause more com plete interpretation of the feelings of the writer. Rock of Ages cleft for me is mostly allegory. Parables are allegories that serve to teach some religious truth. Fables are allegories that are intended for ethical instruction. Figures change from one to another as best serves the writer s purpose. Teachers should make their own grasp of the sub ject firm by working out many examples through all the de grees of energy involved in each change so as to see to their own satisfaction that there is a reason for the form used. Good writers do not use figures merely as an embellishment as is sometimes believed to be the case. If they are true to nature they use the form that best carries their meaning. They may be over imaginative and their readers may fail to be moved as they were by the influence of the type qualities portrayed. That is not the fault of the writer. It is the duty of the reader to try to put himself into a condition to be responsive in kind and in degree to the same feelings that moved the writer. It is the office of the teacher of reading to help pupils to retain that sensitiveness of imagination that is characteristic of youth. Almost every other subject of instruction is holding the pupil down to literal meanings. In reading the imagination can and should have full play. As a study in the change of forms take the line Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. In the origin of the term Stone wall some enthusiastic person might have been so energized by the picture of that firm soldier in the midst of the wavering raw recruits of that first battle that he exclaimed The Stonewall stayed the advancing line. One who was familiar with the incidents of that battlefield would recognize this as the effort of a vivid imagination to express how that firmness seem ed to the narrator and while having first the mental picture of a stone wall would find that it shortly or almost immediately TYPES 55 dissolved into that of the well known general in advance of his wavering line to whom his followers rallied to stop the movement of the oncoming charge. This would be sentence allegory. Had the speaker recognized in Jackson the quality of firmness to such a degree that he was willing to take him for the moment as a type of firmness to which all other instances of firmness might well be compared he would have subordi nated the same qualities as seen in a stone wall to those shown by Jackson and would have said Jackson was the stone wall of the line at that crisis. Two pictures would then be in mind one declared to be the same as the other in some one respect. This is metaphor. If to the speaker the idea of firmness as shown by a stone wall that cannot move was the quality seen in the immobility of Jackson who was held in his place by a sense of responsi bility so strong that it took from him the power to move even had he so desired his attempt to represent that subordination of the human quality to that shown by the lifeless wall would take the form There stands Jackson like a stone wall. This is simile. To readers who are familiar enough with the setting to recog nize any figure in the term Stonewall Jackson it is a meta phor as used in the poem. In considering an upright man the psalmist exclaims He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. Simile is natural here for it would require an extreme activity of imagin ation to place a man in the genus of trees drawing sustenance from the ground. This very element of constant and abun dant nourishment is the quality recognized but a tree is a better representative of the type so the human is subordinated to it. When the hot winds sweep over the sandy plains a tree that does not have its roots deep in an unfailing supply of water soon 56 ESSENTIALS OF READING gives evidence of the drain upon its vitality by its withered leaves. The external appearance shows the inward condition. So a man that is stricken by a blow that has deprived him of his courage shows it soon externally. On the other hand the man who can withstand adversity calm and serene sustained by a spiritual nourishment that gives him perennial vigor so arouses the psalmist s enthusiasm that he accepts him as his type of that which has an abundant and unfailing source of nourishment. Under the unconscious influence of the simile just in mind he boldly projects the one picture upon the other accepts them as identical and declares in the same sentence with the simile His leaf also shall not wither. This is clause metaphor. Metonymy is that figure of speech in which one thing is named instead of another of which the first is a type. He kept the table in a roar. The table is the prominent thing connected with a banquet. He arose and addressed the chair. The chair is the sign of the office. Gray hairs should be respected. Gray hairs the type of age. Synecdoche is that figure of speech in which one thing is named instead of another of which the first is a typical part. A hundred sail are in the bay. The sail is a typical part of the ship. She was a child of ten summers. The summer is a typical part of the year. He employed ten hands. The hands are the type for the whole men. Notice that in metony my one thing is named for another of which it is no part but merely associated with it. In synecdoche the one thing is really the part of the other. Personification is that figure of speech in which inanimate things are given attributes of life. This is sometimes done by the use of adjectives as the howling wind. By means of verbs inanimate things are represented as acting as if living beings as the wind howled. In combination with Apostrophe the TYPES 57 figure is used in direct address as Come to the bridal cham ber Death Personification is metaphorical in its nature in the above illus trations inasmuch as two identical pictures are in mind. It can be allegorical when the mind is primarily conscious of but one picture which is that of some lifeless object endowed with life or of an animal having human attributes. Fables and stories of the type of Jack Frost represent allegorical personification. Apostrophe is the direct address of the absent as if present of the dead as if living and of inanimate things as if living. It often includes personification and can be either metaphorical or allegorical in its nature. Thou hast taught me Silent River Many a lesson deep and long. This is an apostrophe in which the river is metaphorically personified. O Death where is thy sting This is an apostrophe in which death is personified in a way that might be allegorical to one having a vivid imagination. It is the business of the teacher to cultivate in the pupil the power to recognize and feel type qualities. These exercises are profitable: i. Have the pupils explain given types. 2. Have the pupils find and explain types. 3. Have the pupils tell certain things by means of types. 4. Have the pupils classify types according to the figures of speech. 58 ESSENTIALS OF READING EXERCISES PICK OUT INTERPRET AND CLASSIFY THE TYPES Silently one by one in the infinite meadows of heaven Blossomed the lovely stars the forget me nots of the angels. Longfellow. Fair as the earliest beam of eastern light Shine martial Faith and Courtesy s bright star. Scott. Dance Marabout shouted the reckless warders as much delighted at having a subject to tease as a child when he catches a butterfly or a school boy upon discovering a bird s nest. The Marabout as if happy to do their behests bounded from the earth and spun his giddy round before them with singular agility which when contrasted with his slight and wasted figure and diminutive appearance made him resemble a withered leaf twirled round and around at the pleasure of the winter s breeze. Then the whining school boy with his satchel and shining morning face creeping like snail unwillingly to school. And then the lover sighing like furnace with woeful ballad made to his mistress eyebrows. Shakespeare. Once as I told in glee Tales of the stormy sea Soft eyes did gaze on me Burning yet tender And as the white stars shine On the dark Norway pine On that dark heart of mine Fell their soft splendor. As with his wings aslant Sails the fierce cormorant Seeking some rocky haunt With his prey laden So toward the open main Beating to sea again Through the wild hurricane. Bore I the maiden. Longfellow. Thou too sail on O Ship of State Sail on O Union strong and great Longfellow. TYPES 59 Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep like subterranean rivers Running through caverns of darkness with endless and profitless murmurs. Thereupon answered John Alden the young man the lover of women: Heaven forbid it Priscilla and truly they seem to me always More like the beautiful rivers that watered the garden of Eden More like the river Euphrates through deserts of Havilah flowing Filling the land with delight and memories sweet of the garden Longfellow. Then her tears Broke forth a flood as when the August cloud Darkening beside the mountain suddenly Melts into streams of rain. Bryant. So on the bloody sand Sohrab lay dead And the great Rustum drew his horseman s cloak Down o er his face and sate by his dead son. As those black granite pillars once high rear d By Jemshid in Persepolis to bear His house now mid their broken flights of steps Lie prone enormous down the mountain side So in the sand lay Rustum by his son. Matthew Arnold. By and by The ruddy square of comfortable light Far blazing from the rear of Philip s house Allured him as the beacon blaze allures The bird of passage till he madly strikes Against it and beats out his weary life. Tennyson. In conclusion let us notice one of the finest poems in litera ture one built around a type. A beautiful thought came to the poet. He wished to give it to the world. He wished to give it in such a way that it would enter men s souls. He sought for a type. He found it in a little broken sea shell cast at his feet by the waves. The tenant of the shell had built around himself 60 ESSENTIALS OF READING his first small abode. Then he had added a larger room to his home moved into it and walled up the old room now too small for his use. So the Nautilus for that is the name of the little being built its spiral shell in gradually increasing cham bers until the end of its little life came and it left its empty shell its last abode unwalled and open. The poet devotes three stanzas to a description of his type one stanza the fourth to the introduction of the truth of which the chambered Nautilus is a type and one stanza the last to the thought itself. THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES This is the ship of pearl which poets feign Sails the unshadowed main The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted where the siren sings And coral reefs lie bare Where the cold sea maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl Wrecked is the ship of pearl And every chambered cell Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell Before thee lies revealed Its irised ceiling rent its sunless crypt unsealed Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil Still as the spiral grew He left the past year s dwelling for the new Stole with soft step its shining archway through Built up its idle door Stretched in his last found home and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee Child of the wandering sea TYPES 6 Cast from her lap forlorn From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn While on my ear it rings Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: Build thee more stately mansions O my soul As the swift seasons roll Leave thy low vaulted past Let each new temple nobler than the last Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast Till thou at length art free Leaving thine outgrown shell by life s unresting sea OUTLINE OF CHAPTER VI TYPES Function of types. Examples. Figures of speech. Metaphor. Simile. Allegory. Metonymy. Synecdoche. Personification. Apostrophe. Exercises. The Chambered Nautilus. FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION i. What is a type Why do authors use types 2. What is a type of purity Of humility Of vanity 3. Of what is the fox a type The goose An oak A reed 4. What is a metaphor How is it based on types 5. How does simile differ from metaphor 6. What is an allegory Name some famous allegories 7. Is an allegory necessarily long How long 8. What figure in the parable of the Sower 62 ESSENTIALS OF READING 9. What is the purpose of a parable 10. What figure in the fable of the Fox and the Grapes 11. What is the purpose of a fable 12. In what respect are parables and fables similar How do they differ 13. What duty has the teacher toward the pupils in regard to figures 14. When should classification of figures be taught 15. Explain metonymy. Synecdoche. 16. What is personification Give an allegorical personification. 17. What is apostrophe Give an example of apostrophe not in cluding personification. 18. Give an example of apostrophe metaphorically personified. 19. Explain the figures in The Chambered Nautilus. CHAPTER VII EFFECTS He strode to Gauthier in his throat Gave him the lie then struck his mouth With one back handed blow that wrote In blood men s verdict there. North South East West I looked. The lie was dead And damned and truth stood up instead. The lines are from Robert Browning s Count Gismond. The Countess Gismond is telling a friend of the circumstances under which she first met her husband and of the events that led to their union. She has told how at a time when she as queen of a tournament was at the climax of pride and happi ness Count Gauthier had suddenly and publicly accused her of a shameful crime. Stunned by the horror of the accusation she was speechless until Count Gismond Strode to Gauthier etc. Let us see how much the author has told us in the well chosen words of the brief scene. Strode tells us of the fearlessness and indignation of Gismond. Gauthier had stalked forth. In his throat no beating about the bush no polite introduc tion of the subject but words clear and strong. Struck his mouth shows the degree of Gismond s anger. With one back handed blow Gismond thoroughly despised this dastard but even this sentiment was energetic for his blow wrote in blood. North South East West I looked the heroine though innocent had been beaten down by the mere accusation now she feels herself cleared. So we find something of the story and very much of the char acters and moods of the actors told us in few words. Let us 63 64 ESSENTIALS OF READING see how this is accomplished. Gismond was fearless in charac ter and indignant in mood. A result of this character and this mood was the particular way in which he walked. The same character and mood caused Gismond to give the lie to Gauth ier in his throat. The fact that Gismond despised and scorned Gauthier had for its effect the back handed blow. The energy of the blow is shown by its effect the drawing of blood. The regained assurance of the woman is shown in its effect in her looking North South East West. In fact all that we know of the characters and moods of these persons is told us by the effects caused by the characters and moods. The supreme source of strength in literature is the abil ity to produce the greatest result by the fewest means. Authors do this by telling effects and allowing the im agination and reason of the reader to construct the causes. The reader by the process of inference secures a much stronger idea than he could obtain from simple descriptive words. For example Maclaren wishes to make vivid the ob stinacy of the Scotch and he says: And they stood longest in the kirk yard when the north wind blew across a hundred miles of snow. Again he wishes to show how great was the grief of the old doctor when he could not save the life of Annie the wife of Tammas and he says merely this a saw the Doc tor shake in his saddle. The doctor finally saves the life of Saunders after a terrible combat with the fever. The author wishes to tell us how the old doctor felt over the victory. Does he use the words happy and joyful Not he. He tells us how Drumsheugh followed the old man crippled by accident and stiffened by exposure as he went out into the fields after the great exertions of the night. Then the author tells us how the old doctor flung his coat west and his waist coat east as far as he could hurl them how he struck Drumsheugh a mighty blow and began to fling his limbs about in strange and weird contor EFFECTS 65 tions. Then it dawns upon Drumsheugh that the doctor was attempting the Highland fling. From the physical effect of the doctor s joy we know how great it must have been. Effects may be classified into effects of incident effects of character and effects of mood. Effects of incident are those from which the reader or hearer infers something which has happened or is happening or may happen or some state or condition. Suppose that we are given this effect: Two boys with blackened eyes and swollen noses slunk through the door and into their seats. We infer that there has been a personal encounter between the two young Americans. This is an effect of incident. Effects of character are those from which we infer some thing concerning some person s character. This striking illustration appeared in an article in the Northwestern Monthly. A minister shaved the hair above his forehead in such a way that his brow appeared higher. What was the character of the minister We find this bit of characterization in the Bonnie Brier Bush. He lifted up the soiled rose and put it in his coat he released a butterfly caught in some mesh he buried his face in fragrant honeysuckle. Effects of mood are those from which we infer something concerning the mental state of some person. We find a fine example in Enoch Arden. Philip and Enoch both love Annie. Philip by chance comes upon Enoch and Annie just after they have declared their love. The grief of Philip is shown by a powerful effect: Philip looked Then as their faces grew together groaned And slipt aside and like a wounded life Crept down into the hollows of the wood. It is by an effect that the actor in Shore Acres repre 66 ESSENTIALS OF READING senting the old farmer shows the dislike and irritability of the old man towards his daughter s worthless suitor. The old man is represented sitting on a box in his barnyard. He is whittling. The shavings drop off slowly and methodically as the old man whistles softly to himself. The young man approaches. The farmer does not appear to see him no words are spoken but the whistle ceases and the shavings drop faster and faster until they fairly fly from the knife. What is the mood of the old farmer Effects can be classified as effects of kind and effects of degree. The purpose of an effect of kind is to show what is the particular incident mood or trait of character. The lit erature of child life especially for the earlier years will be con cerned more with this form. More advanced grades of litera ture will not be satisfied with ideas of kind but will be concerned in showing how great was the intensity of the idea involved. King Midas had been told that the golden touch would leave him if he bathed in the river at sunrise. He started at once for the river though it was many hours before sunrise. We infer not only that he wished to be released from this once desired power but also how anxious he was for the change. When he runs with the pitcher to sprinkle water on the form of Mary we infer not only his love but what is more important how great is that love. The spectacle of a king accustomed to having every want attended by others now running at utmost speed to relieve his daughter from her unfortunate condition enables us to measure the degree of his feeling. The incident of the dog that tried to call his master s attention to the loss of his purse and that crawled back to die beside it after being shot by his master under the belief that he had gone mad is told not so much to show that the dog was faithful but because of ad miration arising from the degree of faithfulness. Effects of degree can be used to include the effect of kind or EFFECTS 67 they can be given to increase the strength of an idea already given. For a long time Mary looked longingly at the pies and cakes in the baker s window. This is an effect of kind. From it we infer that Mary was hungry. When the baker held out the bun toward her her claw like fingers snatched it. In two bites it was gone. This effect tells us nothing more about Mary s peculiar condition. It gives us an idea of the degree of her hunger and is an effect of degree. All effects of degree are effects of kind but the purpose of the effect is different. It is not a valuable exercise in elementary schools to have pupils classify effects into formal lists of kind and degree but it is most helpful to have them conscious of the purpose of degree effects as they occur in a passage for the aid it gives in interpreting the meaning. It gives the author s point of view. It is the business of the teacher to train the pupil to de tect effects and feel their power. No new power need be sought. A fair degree of reason is all that is needed. Children select their friends by inferring causes from effects. The employer selects his employee thus. Even a dog judges the sentiments of a person toward dogs from effects. We all judge mood from the curve of the lip the flush of the face the wrinkling of the brow. These exercises are valuable: 1. Have the pupils draw inferences from given effects. 2 Have pupils find and interpret effects of a specified kind 3. Have pupils tell certain things by effects. 4. Have pupils classify effects into effects of incident mood and character. In all this work the teacher should keep the direction of the work under her control and see that the emphasis is given to the noble and the beautiful. If undirected it is liable to degen erate into unkindness and caricature. 68 ESSENTIALS OF READING The following is given as a further illustration of effects and the method of work. It is intended for the use of the teacher. The use of dialect selections with pupils is not to be advised. THE CORTIN James Russell Lowell. God makes sech nights all white an still Fur z you. can look or listen Moonshine an snow on field an hill All silence an all glisten. What was the season What was the place Effects of incident. Zekle crep up quite unbeknown An peeked in thru the winder An there sot Huldy all alone Ith no one nigh to hender. Who was Zekle Effect of incident. How did he feel Effect of mood. Does Huldy s being alone tell you any thing about the thoughtfulness of Huldy s family Effects of character. A fireplace filled the room s one side. With half a cord o wood in There warn t no stoves tell comfort died To bake ye to a puddin The wa nut logs shot sparkles out Toward the pootiest bless her An leetle flames danced all about The chiny on the dresser. Agin the chimbley crook necks hung An in amongst em rusted The old queen s arm thet gran ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted. What adjectives would you use in describing this home What kind of people lived there Effect of character. What part of the country was this EFFECTS 69 The very room coz she was in Seemed warm from floor to ceilin And she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin . What kind of a girl was she Does the following stanza do anything more than confirm your idea Twas kin o kingdom come to look On sich a blessed cretur A dog rose blushin to a brook Ain t modester nor sweeter. He was six foot o man A i Clear grit an human natur None couldn t quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter. What do the last two lines tell you about Zekle What do the next four tell you He d sparked it with full twenty gals He d squired em danced em druv em First this one an then thet by spells All is he couldn t love em. But long o her his veins ould run All crinkly like curled maple The side she breshed felt full o sun Ez a south slope in Ap il. What was the trouble with Zekle What kind of an effect She thought no v ice hed sech a swing Ez hisn in the choir My when he made Ole Hundred ring She knowed the Lord was nigher. An she d blush scarlit right in prayer When her new meetin bunnet Felt somehow thru its crown a pair O blue eyes sot upun it. 70 ESSENTIALS OF READING What was the trouble with Huldy What effects Thet night I tell ye she looked some She seemed to ve gut a new soul For she felt sartin sure he d come . Down to her very shoe sole. What effects in these lines: She heered a foot and knowed it tu A raspin on the scraper All ways to once her feelin s flew Like sparks in burnt up paper. He kin o litered on the mat Some doubtfle o the sekle His heart kep goin pity pat But hern went pity Zekle. What effects here What kind of effects An yit she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder An on her apples kep to work Parin away like murder. Why did she act so Was it an effect of character What is Lowell s explanation See four lines below. You want to see my pa I s pose Wal no I come dasignin To see my ma She s sprinklin clothes Agin tomorrer s inin . To say why gals act so or so Or don t ould be presuming Mebby to mean YES an say NO Comes nateral to women. He stood a spell on one foot fust Then stood a spell on t other An on which one he felt the wust He couldn t ha told ye nuther. EFFECTS 71 What effects of mood Says he I d better call agin Says she Think likely Mister Thet last word pricked him like a pin An wal he up an kist her. Does the last line throw any more light on Zekle s nature When ma bimeby upon em slips Huldy sot pale ez ashes All kin o smily round the lips An teary round the lashes. What kind of a mother had Huldy Notice bimeby and remember that There sot Huldy all alone. What kind of a nature had Huldy Are the following lines necessary Do they not merely confirm the inference gained by these effects For she was jes the quiet kind Whose naturs never vary Like streams that keep a summer mind Snow hid in Jenooary. The blood clost roun her heart felt glued Too tight for all expressin Tell mother see how metters stood An gin em both her blessin . Then her red come back like the tide Down to the Bay o Fundy An all I know is they was cried In meetin come nex Sunday. The crying of the banns is an effect of incident. What do you infer from it For further practice interpret and classify the effects in the following: 72 ESSENTIALS OF READING EXERCISES Suddenly Ichabod heard a groan his teeth chattered and his knees smote against the saddle: it was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon another as they were swayed about by the breeze. Irving. He only meant to walk up and down her street so that she might see him from the window and know that this splendid thing was he. Barrie. She answered not with railing words But drew her apron o er her face And sobbing glided from the place. Whittier. He had the keenest eyes in Clanruadh and was a dead shot. Yet he never stalked a deer never killed anything for mere sport. MacDonald. There is an old poor man Who after me hath many a weary step Limped in pure love : till he be first sufficed Oppressed with two weak evils age and hunger I will not touch a bit. Shakespeare. A yellow claw the very same that had clawed together so much wealth poked itself out of the coach window and dropt some copper coins upon the ground. Hawthorne. As the life boat returned from the wreck the men on shore shouted themselves hoarse the women laughed and cried. Anon. The old man read the notice pulled down his hat over his eyes drew his cloak closely up under his chin and went quickly down the dune. Hugo. Some of the men began to lag behind dragging their guns and limp ing with bleeding feet. Other men with bloody bandages about their heads could be seen in the hurrying wagons. Anon. The two young Cratchits crammed spoons into their mouths lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. Dickens. EFFECTS 73 He parted in twain his single crust He broke the ice on the streamlet s brink And gave the leper to eat and drink. Lowell. He placed the guns together with a good supply of ammunition under the loop holes by which the enemy must advance. Anon. OUTLINE OF CHAPTER VII EFFECTS Function of effects. Examples. Classification of effects. Incident. Character. Mood. Kind. Degree. The duty of the teacher. Exercises. FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION i What is the supreme source of strength in literature 2 What are effects 3. Why is the name appropriate 4. How may effects be classified 5 How early in the grades is effect work profitable 6. How does an effect of degree differ from an effect of kind 7. Of what value is the classifying of effects as a school exercise 8. What is the duty of the teacher in regard to effects 9. How can a teacher tell when her duty is accomplished 10. How does effect work influence the child s liking for literature 1 1 Give some exercises in effects 12. Discuss the frequency of inferring effects in every day life. 13. What kind of effects should not be studied 14. What authors are especially skillful in using effects 15. Can the use of effects be overdone PART III METHODS CHAPTER VIII PRIMARY READING Before discussing the method of teaching primary reading most effective for the average teacher in the average school with the average equipment it would be well to notice the principles on which the most common methods of teaching are based. The Alphabet Method is the oldest. It is the one naturally adopted by the untrained teacher. It rests upon the assump tion that the unit of teaching reading should be the letter that the progress should be from the part to the whole that the operation of learning should be synthetic the putting to gether of letters to form words. According to this method the alphabet is taught first then the letters of the alphabet are put together to form words. Under the older form the letters were put together to form anything that might happen to result. We find the first page of the old New England Primer a primer built on the alphabet method to have this literature for the chil dren s first reading lesson: ab eb ib ob ub ac ec 1C oc uc ad ed id od ud af ef if of uf ag eg ig og ug al el il ol ul am em im om urn an en in on un ap ep ip op up ar er ir or ur as es is OS us 77 78 ESSENTIALS OF READING The alphabet method has proved less effective than other methods for a number of reasons. The letter is not the most convenient unit for teaching on account of the number of sounds in our language indicated by the same letter. This method does not make a direct connection between the word and the thing that the word means. This results in reading that is not thoughtful. Hugh Miller has given evidence of the fact that a child may learn to read if such a process can be called reading by this method without finding that reading is merely the art of finding stories in books. The Phonic Methods. In the so called phonic methods the unit adopted is not the letter but the sound. This method also works from the part the sound to the whole the word. It is synthetic in that it builds words out of sounds. Very many of the devices of the followers of this method prove of great value to primary teachers. One of these is the linking of the sounds of the letters to common sounds. Thus we may say that a is the sound that the lamb makes p is the steamboat sound f is the sound that the kittie makes v is the sound of the June bug w is the sound of the wind h is the breath d the young pigeons z the bees r the dog s growl th the goose th the woolen mill t the watch ch the locomotive i the little pigs and oo the rooster. K is the fish bone sound sh is the sound that means hush 6 means Be careful u is a hiccough ow means a hurt ugh is the sound you make when you see a worm. Some of the similarities are rather slight but the de vice is useful nevertheless. Another device to assist in remembering sounds is to make use of the names of pupils in the class. For instance B is Bertha s sound D is Dan s F is Frank s etc. The grouping of words according to combinations of sounds is also of much value. For instance: back lack smack saGk rack Jack all belong to the ack family hand land sand grand belong to PRIMARY READING 79 the and family while thank frank blank and crank belong to the ank family. The presence of mechanical reading instead of thoughtful reading on the part of pupils taught by a purely phonic method is caused by the fact that this method sets up the sound between the word and the thing that the word represents. In a strictly phonic method the sound is taught first and the pupils learn words as made up of sounds. This seemingly trivial thing is fraught with serious consequences in the child s future work. In its proper place phonic work becomes the back bone of pri mary reading. The Word Method is based upon the assumption that the word is the proper unit in teaching primary reading. Words are presented and connected directly with the objects which they represent. In this respect the method is entirely cor rect. However the word method may be pursued too far in that more words and more words and more words may be pre sented until after a long time phonic work is commenced. The word method is essentially an analytic one. The words are analyzed into sounds or letters. This method contemplates the use of words in sentences from the very first. The founda tion principles of this method are right but it is very easy when using it to neglect some of the important things emphasized by other methods. The Sentence Method is based on the assumption that the proper unit is not the letter nor the sound nor the word but the sentence. It is argued that all speech is in sentences that even single words when spoken alone are sentences. For instance the word Drink when spoken by a thirsty child is really a sentence. Without entering into this dispute it may be said that both the word and the sentence methods require the use of the sentence from the first and that the word is the most effect ive unit for teaching whether ornot it may be the unit oflanguage. 80 ESSENTIALS OF READING An Eclectic Method. The method of teaching primary reading that seems most successful in the hands of the average teacher is an eclectic one. It is based upon the following principles : i. The most convenient unit in teaching primary reading is the word. 2. Words should be grouped into related sentences as soon as possible. 3. The connection between words and the things they mean should be immediate. 4. The sounds the sound symbols the analysis of words into sounds and the synthesis of sounds into words should be taught as soon as possible without interfering in the immediate connection of words and the things that the words mean. 5. There should be a large use of the child s love of action. Most children enter school with a comparatively large vocabulary. They are familiar with all the words in common use in the homes from which they have come and with those used among their friends and playmates outside. The problem of the teacher is to help the pupils 1 to recognize through sight words already familiar through sound 2 to use the words so recognized as the means of receiving thoughts with the same ability already existing through speech 3 to give these thoughts to others when desiring so to do 4 to enlarge their vocabulary and 5 to enrich the meaning of words old and new through association. While the approach is through words yet words have no use in language except as elements in thoughts and emotions and reading must not be allowed to de generate into mere recognition of words. Desire to read. The teacher must first of all kindle in the child a desire to read. The task is an easy one. It may be done by reading half of an interesting story breaking off in the middle of it and then asking the little ones Wouldn t you PRIMARY READING like to be able to read the remainder of it yourselves The teacher may show the pupils a book with interesting pictures and may suggest that those who can read can find out the story that the pictures illustrate. Children who can read and write can send letters to Santa Claus and can read the replies. The ingenious teacher can find very many ways of creating the desire to learn to read. As a matter of fact many if not most of our beginners come to school with the desire to learn to read already developed. Words. Our children now having the desire to learn to read we will begin to satisfy them. Suppose that we wish to give them first the words leaf and ball. We will hold up a leaf a real leaf. They will recognize it and give us its name. We turn to the blackboard and draw a few crooked marks. They recognize the marks as a picture of a leaf. They know that these lines mean leaf. We now give them another way of indicating leaf by writing the word on the board. We write the word in various places and in various sizes. They know the thing it indicates as soon as they see the marks. They think of the sound only incidentally. The image of a leaf arises in the mind as the eyes rest on the written word. In like manner we present the word ball first the object then the picture fin ally the word. They get the idea that both the picture and the word mean ball. Next week we will give them the word run. Then we will drill on the three words. We call John to the floor. We write the word leaf. John finds and holds up the leaf. We write ball. John finds the ball. We write the word run or John run. John runs to his seat. The knowledge has been expressed. The teacher usually will find that John recognizes his own name as well as the names of his fellows. This fact aids the teacher in making sentences for drill. Write John. John arises. Add the word Run. John runs around the room and back to his seat. 82 ESSENTIALS OF READING Our list of words to be taught must be carefully made. It should include these elements: i. Names of common objects that can be kept in the school room. 2. Names of actions that can be performed in the school room. 3. The first words from the primer that the class is to use. 4. Parts of the body and parts of the room. 5. Common expressions such as to the I see I have etc. for use in sentences. These words should number from fifty to eighty. They should be used in sentences from the first week. Two months at least should pass before books are given out and before any words are analyzed into sounds. During this time spelling should not be taken up though it is sometimes wise in rural schools to teach the alphabet slowly not as an aid to reading and not in connection with stock words but merely as letters. It will not assist in learning to read but it may make smoother relations between the school and the home. One effective word list is as follows the object words from the reader being determined by the reader to be used: First list 20 words time 4 weeks. Action words : Run hop skip bow clap. Parts of the room: Chair door window floor. Parts of the body: Hand. Extra expressions: To the is I see. PRIMARY READING 83 Object words from the reader: Leaf flower stem bud red green yellow. From another reader the words would be : Baby mama doll kitty book slate. From still another they would be: Ball box cup apple green red blue. Second list 20 words time 2 weeks. Action words: Walk fly look touch find wave. Parts of the room: Ceiling floor. Parts of the body: Face feet eyes. Extra expressions: I can I have and. Object words from the reader such as: Seed nut brown white black. Third list 20 words : time 2 weeks. Action words: Point swing eat drink sleep cry. Parts of the body: Right left. Extra expressions: See sees I like. From the reader: Not it I am has do you man sun tin sand. These words are to be taught as words in sentences. They are not to be spelled or analyzed into sounds they are to be used in related sentences from the first sentences like these: Run. Run to the door. The words can be taught in any order. Do not teach all the action words together. Mix 84 ESSENTIALS OF READING them up. Teach two words at a time. It has been found that children remember two words at a time with very little more difficulty than one at a time. It is the comparison that helps. All the words are to be in script. It will be found help ful to write all new words on pieces of cardboard four inches wide and long enough to accommodate the word. These cards can be used in building sentences by being arranged along the base of the blackboard or can be exposed one at a time for drilling on the stock words or can be used as copies for writing at the board or at the seat. From the first the pupil should be required to write the words and simple sentences on the board. As an aid the teacher should call attention to her movements while she writes the word or the sentence several times so the pupil will see the place of starting and the order of movement. It may be necessary to take hold of his hand and guide it while the first attempts are made. This writing as in all the writing of the earlier years should be large and free so as to avoid cramped movements that result from writing too small letters. The same word or sentence should be written on paper at the seat if not the first time writing is attempted very soon after. It not only helps to fix the form but it serves as busy work. Some occupation should fill all the time of the pupils. Trouble will be avoided for the future if the pupils from the first learn that school is a busy place. If the teacher cannot use all the children s time she should fill full all that she can and send them home or from the room to play the rest of the time. As reading is the foundation subject of instruction in the primary grades the first forms of busy work must be planned with relation to that study. An excellent plan is to have as many sets of new words as there are members of the class to be written on small slips and given out at the close of the recitation. These should be kept at the seats in pasteboard boxes to be used in building the sentences used in the recitation PRIMARY READING 85 and left on the board for that purpose. They may also be used in building such review sentences as may be desired or as the teacher may suggest. This gives occupation that does not tire the pupils and that can be used indefinitely alone or in connection with copying one or more sentences. Little children cannot write long without harmful effects but they will sort out words or letters and build sentences with pleas ure and profit for a long time. After they are far enough ad vanced to use letters they should be given boxes of assorted let ters to be used in building words and sentences. Phonics. We remember our fourth fact The sounds the sound symbols the analysis of words into sounds and the synthesis of sounds into words should be taught as soon as possible without interfering in the immediate connection of words and the things that the words mean. We wish to put into the hands of the children as soon as possible that key to our language phonics. If however we begin too soon to show how words are composed of sounds we run the risk of setting up in the pupil s mind the sound between the word and the idea. At the end of two months of sentence reading this danger should be past. We can now begin to pick out sounds in words. Some work can be done even earlier if done at a different period from the reading. The sounds a e 0 u y e d I n p t should be taught during the first six weeks. Let it be understood that the work in phonics is to be at a different time and unconnected with the work in reading. In all sound teaching the children should first hear the sound correctly given by the teacher. This in itself calls for considerable knowledge on the part of the teacher. She should know how each sound is produced by the organs of speech and she should be able to give each one correctly and distinctly. The pupils should then give the sound. It must 86 ESSENTIALS OF READING be seen that each child gives it correctly. The next step is to have them compare this new sound with old ones noticing the differences. The final exercise is distinguishing this new sound and sounds already known. The order of teaching a sound is i giving the sound to the children 2 having them give the sound 3 having them compare the sound with other sounds 4 having them pick out the sound from other sounds. A useful device is another pack of cards from four to six inches square. On each card is written large and plain one sound symbol. The teacher exposes these cards one at a time the pupils giving the sound as the teacher exposes the card. New cards should be added as new sounds are added. The teacher can vary the exercise by calling on individual pupils for sounds and the class for help in mistakes or delays. Analysis of words begins at the beginning of the third month. The child can be given the book provided the book begins with script. He now knows some sixty words at sight and some ten sound symbols. The teacher begins to let him discover that words are made up of sound symbols. He finds that sing is merely s and ing that light is I and ight etc. The teacher encourages him to pursue his investigation. All new words that are capable of being taught by sound are so taught. For instance the word might occurs for the first time. The teacher covers the m with her hand and the pupils recognize an old friend in the ight part of the word. M is no less easily recognized. The teacher removes her hand entirely and the pupils put together the two old sounds. They now have a word added to their vocabulary but they also have gain ed some power in the control of phonics. The teacher should devote considerable time to this drill. Most of the sixty words already learned can now be analyzed. Many new words can also be given. Some words however like cough Hiawatha tongue beautiful must still be taught by the sight. Such words PRIMARY READING 87 are those whose spelling does not indicate the sound of the word. Our language is so constituted that there will always be some words that the children must learn by sight. For some weeks the teacher continues the work as before the children reading the script lessons in the book the teacher giv ing new sight and new phonic words and new sound sym bols. In about four weeks she can introduce the children to the printed letters. During this time they can be taught some fifteen or twenty new sounds. In case the reader that the teacher must give to the children has no script the books should not be given out so soon. The transition from script to print is best made in blackboard work. This change is not really as difficult for the children as it is often supposed to be. It should be made gradually. In fact it can be made and the children hardly be conscious of it. As the teacher places the script work on the board she can now and then put a word in print. The children will recognize the word and will pass it with but slight hesitation. More and more words can be printed until the class are reading print almost without noticing it. This very effective device has been called the primary slide. Another very useful device is the writing of the sentences twice once in script and once immediately below the script in print. After the children are reading from the print of the reader the work continues in all the elements as before. For all of the first and second year of school the teacher still gives more sounds and drills constantly on the old sounds. More and more words are phonetic words as the pupils have a larger and larger stock of sound symbols. The teacher still continues the training of the children to separate words into sounds. Order of Sounds. In the arrangement of the order in which the sounds are to be given to the children these prin ciples should be observed : First sounds that are the easiest 88 ESSENTIALS OF HEADING should be given as early as possible second sounds that are most common should be given as early as possible third sound signs not found in the dictionaries should not be used fourth very common combinations of letters such as ight old eat ail should be treated as single sound symbols. COURSE IN PRIMARY READING FIRST PERIOD Characteristic. Teaching sight words and sounds sepa rately. Time. Eight to ten weeks. Reading. Sixty to a hundred words by sight. Phonetic Work. Teaching the symbols a e i u e d 1 n p t. SECOND PERIOD Characteristic. Introducing the book and teaching analysis of words into sounds. Time. Four weeks. Reading. From the reader both sight and phonetic words. Phonetic Work. Teaching the symbols o un Tc Tp k Ick r b bl br pi f ch m ing ight tr s ter y training pupils to recognize sounds in words and to make words out of sounds whose symbols are known. THIRD PERIOD Characteristic. Change from script to print. Time. About four weeks. Reading. From the reader both sight and phonetic words. Phonetic Work. Teach symbols dr ck e 1 ly less ness s. Continue the sound training. PRIMARY READING 89 FOURTH PERIOD Characteristic. Increasing proportion of phonetic words. Time. The remainder of the first year of school. About five months. Reading. From the readers. Many new phonetic words. Some new sight words. Much easy reading. Phonetic Work. Much training in sounds. Much drill on old and new phonetic words. Sound symbols a a cl cr C g gl gr g j h sh ish th v 60 06 ph ful 6 ou o o ow u u w wh y and a and e italicised. This course leaves for the work of the second year the re maining sounds including .a a a ar ar e e er ear gh 1 i Tr n 6 6 6r oi oy q qu u u ut x x z. The sound training should be continued in the second year. Indeed all through the eight grades there should be constant work with sounds and the diacritical marks. DRAMATIZATION An appeal to dramatic instinct leads children to a freer use of the imagination. The formality of the school room tends to repress that natural activity of the imagination that is so characteristic of children at play. While there must be a certain amount of restraint in an organization there should be a counteracting influence at times in connection with read ing especially in the primary classes or the pupil will lose the spirit in the exactions of the effort to secure the form. There are many selections where a part or all of the story can be easily dramatized and given in dialogue. Generally this will follow the study of the exercise in the regular way. Sometimes the change can be introduced for a part of the time in the regular development of the lesson when the pupils are having difficulty in expressing the meaning because they do not have the point of view. 9o ESSENTIALS OF READING The children enjoy acting parts. Especially is this true when it includes the novelty of representing animals and inani mate objects that are endowed with the power of speech. Let one pupil represent the cat and another the girl and clear ness of meaning with the attendant naturalness of expression will follow from this simple dialogue: Girl. Pussy cat pussy cat Where have you been Cat. I ve been to London To look at the queen. Girl. Pussy cat pussy cat What did you there Cat. I frightened a little mouse . Under the chair. LITTLE BOY BLUE To dramatize Little Boy Blue y have a pupil lie down and go to sleep on a recitation seat. It does not require many stage accessories to satisfy little children. Then two pupils enter searching for some one. First. Little boy blue come blow your horn The sheep s in the meadow the cow s in the corn. Second. Where s the boy that looks after the sheep First. pointing to him . He s under the haycock fast asleep. Second. Will you wake him First. No not I For if I do he ll be sure to cry. This arrangement is better than the prose paraphrase sometimes used as it preserves the literary form of the original. LADY MOON Child. Lady Moon Lady Moon where are you roving Moon. Over the sea. Child. Lady Moon Lady Moon whom are you loving Moon. All that love me. PRIMARY READING 91 Child. Moon. Child. Moon. Child. Moon. Are you not tired with rolling and never Resting to sleep Why look so pale and so sad as forever Wishing to weep Ask me not this little child if you love me . You are too bold. I must obey my dear Father above me And do as I m told. Lady Moon Lady Moon where are you roving Over the sea. Lady Moon Lady Moon whom are you loving All that love me. THE FLOWER GIRL Boy. Little girl little girl where have you been Girl. Gathering roses to give to the Queen. Boy. Little girl little girl what gave she you Girl. She gave me a diamond as big as my shoe. THE MILK MAID Boy. Little maid pretty maid whither goest thou Girl. Down in the forest to milk my cow. Boy. Shall I go with you Girl. No not now When I send for thee then come thou. WILLY BOY Girl. Willy boy Willy boy where are you going I will go with you if that I may. Boy. I m going to the meadow to see them a mowing I m going to help them to make the hay. THE NEIGHBORS First. What s the news of the day Good neighbor I pray Second. They say the balloon Is gone up to the moon. 9 2 ESSENTIALS OF READING Sometimes poems can be used with slight changes that do not destroy the form. The Three Kittens is one of this type. THE THREE KITTENS Kittens crying . O mother dear We very much fear Our mittens we have lost. Mother. What lost your mittens You naughty kittens Then you shall have no pie. Kittens. Mee ow mee ow mee ow. Mother. No you shall have no pie. Kittens. Mee ow mee ow mee ow. Kittens. O mother dear See here see here. Our mittens we have found. Mother. Oh found your mittens You darling kittens Then you may have some pie. Kittens. Purr r purr r purr r Oh let us have some pie. Purr r purr r purr r. Kittens. O mother dear We greatly fear Our mittens we have soiled. Mother. What soiled your mittens You naughty kittens To wash them you must try. Kittens. Mee ow mee ow mee ow. Mother. Yes to wash them you must try. Kittens. Mee ow mee ow mee ow. Kittens. O mother dear Do you not hear Our mittens we have washed. Mother. Ah washed your mittens You are good kittens. But I smell a rat close by PRIMARY READING 93 Kittens. Hush hush mee ow mee ow We smell a rat close by. Mee ow mee ow mee ow. BLACK SHEEP Boy. Bah bah black sheep Have you any wool Sheep. Yes sir yes sir Three bags full: One for my master And one for my dame And one for the little boy Who lives in the lane. THE THREE CROWS 1st. What do you think I saw this morn 2nd. I know I know it was some corn. 15 . How many crows will go with me 2nd. Be quiet friends a man I see. 1st. Caw caw Caw caw he has a gun 2 rd. Now let s be off fly every one. Often monologue is quite effective. There are many poems that can be used in this way. There must always be two or more acting though but one speaks. Speaker. Mary Mary quite contrary How does your garden grow With cockle shells and silver bells And pretty maids all in a row. THE STORY I ll tell you a story About Jack a Nory And now my story s begun I ll tell you another About his brother And now my story is done. 94 ESSENTIALS OF READING THE BEGGARS Hark hark The dogs do bark The beggars are coming to town Some in tags Some in rags And some in velvet gowns. No change should be made that alters materially the form of a poem. The form is an inseparable part of the poem. The rhythm and the rhyme are as important elements as are the words. The presentation of the characters of the Mother Goose melodies in prose dialogue is neither pleasing nor edifying. They should not be spoiled in this manner. Monologue poems of length can be assigned to several pupils. Among those well adapted are I Love Little Pussy by Jane Taylor The North Wind doth Blow If I were a Sunbeam by Lucy Larcom Don t Kill the Birds by Thomas Colesworthy The Fairies by William Allingham Suppose by Phoebe Cary. Prose can be adapted with more freedom. The form is not so closely associated with the meaning. Any change that preserves the spirit is proper. The story of Little Red Hen is well suited to dramatic purposes. The characters are the Little Red Hen the Mouse the Pig the Cat and the Chicks. Scene i. Little Red Hen. Here is a grain of wheat. Who will plant it Will you little mouse Mouse. No indeed not I. Little Red Hen. Will you plant it pig Pig. I will not. Little Red Hen. Will you plant it cat Cat. No I will not. Little Red Hen. Well I will plant it myself then. PRIMARY READING 95 Scene ii. Little Red Hen. My wheat is grown. Who will cut it Mouse. Not I. I wish to play. Little Red Hen. Will you cut it pig Pig. I will not. Little Red Hen. Will you cut it cat Cat. No I am too sleepy. Little Red Hen. Well I will cut it myself then. Scene hi. Develop the threshing similarly. Scene iv. Develop the grinding similarly. Scene v. Develop the baking similarly. Scene vi. Little Red Hen. See my fine loaf of bread. Who will help me eat it Mouse. I will. Pig. I will. Cat. I will. Little Red Hen. No you will not. The chicks and I will eat it. Come chick chick chick Among other prose selections well adapted to dramatization are The Three Goats and the Turnip Patch The Boy and the Wolf Silver Locks Chicken Little The Ant and the Grasshopper The Field Mouse and the Town Mouse. These are merely suggestive. The teacher will find an abundance of material for this purpose by studying the selections in the best primary readers. 96 ESSENTIALS OF READING OUTLINE OF CHAPTER VIII PRIMARY READING Various methods. Alphabet method Phonic method. Word method. Sentence method. An Eclectic method. Principles. Words. The child s vocabulary. The desire to read. Teaching the first words. Word list. Using the words in sentences. Phonics. Importance. Beginning of phonic work. Change from script to print. Order of sounds. Dramatizing. Advantage clear understanding. Children enjoy acting a part. Examples for practice. FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION i . What are the principal methods of teaching primary reading 2. What is the distinctive element of each 3. Why is the alphabet method the one naturally adopted by the untrained teacher 4. What disadvantage does the method have 5. Can children be taught to read by the alphabet method 6. What advantages has a phonic method What disadvantages 7. What good points has a word method What dangers 8. What is the source of disagreement between the word method and the sound method adherents 9. Which do you think is right 10. What is an eclectic method PRIMARY READING 97 1 1 What should be the foundation principles in teaching primary reading 12. What proportion of children already desire to read when they enter school 13. How many words do children know when they enter school 14. Do any of them know the alphabet 15. What else are they likely to know 16. Is it a good thing for parents to try to teach the children some thing of reading before they start them to school 17. Of what importance is a desire to read 18. How can it be created 19. Why is it not best to teach the children to spell or sound words at first 20. What should the first words be 21. Why are many action words desirable 22. How many words can best be taught at once Why 23. Why teach such expressions as I have to the etc 24. How early should books be given out 25. Should children be started with script or print 26. When should the other be introduced 27. How can the change be made 28. What differences should be made on account of the particular book the teacher expects to use 29. When should writing be begun Spelling 30. How many times a day should beginners be heard in reading 31. When should phonic work begin 32. What should the first phonic work be 33. When can analysis of words into sounds begin Why not sooner 34. Does it make any difference what sounds are taught first Why 35 How can the teacher make the old words help in teaching the new 36. What kind of words should not be taught by sound Why 37. What are the characteristics of the four periods of primary reading 38. How many readers should the children read in the first year 39. What primary reader do you like best Why 40. Why have the children use the blackboard for the first writing 41. How does the writing help the reading 42. Of what value is dramatizing selections 43. What cautions are to be observed CHAPTER IX THE DIVISION OF A READING RECITATION AND ASSIGNMENT OF THE LESSON Division of a reading recitation. The time allotted to the recitation in reading should be carefully apportioned to the different operations of a reading recitation. These oper ations are four in number: ist. The recitation proper consisting of hearing the pupils read questioning them on the thought and interpreting what needs interpretation. 2nd. Drilling in articulation. 3rd. The assignment of the new lesson. 4th. Supplementary reading. The time apportioned to each operation. No universal division of time can be recommended. At one time a teacher may find it necessary to give more than usual attention to exercise in articulation. At another time she may find it best to devote an unusually long time to questions on the thought thereby shortening the time for drill in articulation. Again a teacher may find the lesson she expects to assign contains such a number of new words and strange ideas that she must take half of the recitation period to make the assignment. It may be that the lesson to be assigned contains no new word or ideas. Then the amount of time necessary for this operation becomes zero. Under average conditions a thirty minute reading recitation should be divided into about seventeen minutes for oral reading questioning and inter preting three minutes for exercise in articulation five minutes for the assignment of the new lesson and five minutes for supplementary reading. Very often this last time can be 98 ASSIGNMENT OF LESSON 99 saved by having this reading done in the period of some other class or in the opening exercises. The assignment of the reading lesson. It is economy of time to make a careful assignment of the new lesson. A minute at this operation may save misunderstandings that would require many minutes to detect and clear up. Four things must be considered in assigning a reading lesson: first the selection of the lesson second the length of the lesson third the development of the new words and ideas fourth the exposition of the work to be done by the pupils in the process of preparation. The selection of a lesson. The teacher should select the lesson before she comes to her class. She should bear in mind that the lesson should be of a nature suited: first to the class and second to the purpose of the teacher. It should be of such a nature as to be likely to interest the pupils. It should be of such difficulty as will test their power but not over tax it. The purpose of the teacher The teacher may see that her pupils lack facility in the reading of material in which there are no new words. She should select lessons of this nature until the pupils gain the desired facility. Then her purpose may change. She may wish them to increase their vocabulary. The lesson selected will then contain many new words. It may be that she finds the pupils unable to read verse well. She consequently assigns those lessons which are in verse. She may find her pupils much inter ested in some poem by Longfellow. It would be well for her to assign another lesson from the same author. If she wishes to familiarize the class with types and effects she must assign lessons suitable for that work. If she wishes to cul tivate the power of gleaning thought by silent reading she should select lessons of more than ordinary difficulty and ioo ESSENTIALS OF READING should devote the recitation period to questions on the thought. Let her realize that order in the book is a consideration not to be compared with the reasons mentioned above. The length of the lesson. This also must be suited to the pupils and to the purpose of the teacher. It may vary from a few lines in work in types or effects to pages in gain ing facility in recognizing old words. It must always be the subject of careful judgment. The development of new words and ideas. A certain lovable and scholarly professor of Greek in a large college held to the opinion that he could judge a student s knowledge of a page of Thucydides by the way the student pronounced the text. His classes could have given him much information as to the fallacy of his belief had it been to their advantage to speak. A small boy may pronounce very glibly words and sentences whose meaning to him is not at all what it is to the teacher. A schoolboy insisted that a dirty tramp ran out from under the bridge and caught Ichabod Crane by the ear. He cited as proof the exact words of Irving Just at this moment a plashy tramp caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. Another original thinker spoke of Annie Laurie s donkey and when questioned as to his sources of information concerning the beast triumphantly pointed to Maxwel ton s braes are bonnie. The boy would doubtless have read the line with good expression but with a mental picture somewhat different from that of the teacher. The mistake would not have occurred had the teacher in assigning the lesson spoken of the meaning of the word braes. The dictionary will not do the work of the teacher. Nevertheless the dictionary is very helpful. Each child above the fourth grade should be supplied with one and should be trained to use it. The dictionary however gives the mere skeleton of a meaning. The teacher must make the ASSIGNMENT OF LESSON 101 new idea live in the mind of the pupil. A certain common school dictionary defines lobster as an edible marine crus tacean. What an assistance to a ten year old boy The teacher must see to it that the pupils have the ideas necessary to enable them to understand the new lesson. If possible she should show them a lobster. If that is impossible then a picture of a lobster speaking of its color appearance and use. It is not necessary to make a detailed study of the thing inquiring into its anatomy habits of life methods of catching it etc. Such a study would be interesting and possibly profitable for nature study or for the purposes of composition work but not much read ing could be done if every object mentioned were studied in such a fashion. The important thing is that the child have a correct though maybe not detailed conception of the objects mentioned in the new lesson. It is a good plan to review the new and difficult words at the opening of the recitation of the lesson. An example. In the lesson The Lark and the Farmer Chapter Three the teacher will find it necessary to explain these words and probably others: Lark field neighbors frightened reapers hurry kinsfolk harvest notice whet scythes. It would be well to show the children a scythe or a picture of a scythe and to call up to their recollection some larks nest. In The Village Blacksmith Chapter Two the teacher must see that the children have ideas of these: Spreading chestnut tree sinewy brawny crisp tan bellows sledge sexton village forge smithy threshing floor choir anvil repose. Many words do more than designate certain objects attributes or actions. These words not only express the ideas that they are expected to convey but they also excite the feelings to greater or less degree. Each of the words 102 ESSENTIALS OF READING storm ocean tornado mouse causes in the mind of the hearer a slight degree of the same emotion that would be caused by the presence of the object itself. If the hearer has seen the object the effect is of course much greater than other wise. The scenes in his experience rise again in his mind. The emotional effect of the word is great in just the propor tion in which the memory of his experience is vivid. If the word indicates something not in one s experience it may still rouse the emotion through the imagination. Such a word to most people is the word Arctic. The word sets up in the mind a mental image of the frozen North and a feel ing of fear and dread is aroused. One who does not have this feeling cannot appreciate Whittier s lines The wolf beneath the Arctic moon Has listened to that startling rune. Our work in reading fails of one great end if it does not help our pupils to understand and to appreciate literature. It therefore becomes the duty of the teacher to increase the emotional value of words to pupils. In assigning a lesson the teacher should so use the child s experience and imagination as to enable the poetic words and phrases to touch his emotions. She should cause the pupil to tell the experiences that the word brings into his mind when it was where it was etc. Such an operation increases the facility of the action of the word on the feelings the very end we desire to gain. This exer cise should not be confined to the assignment of the lesson. It should be part of the assigned work. It should continue until all such words and phrases as misty light sea sea of dew flaming forge measured beat dove sting Venice touch the emotional nature of the child. Assigned work. The assignment of the lesson is of course incomplete unless specific directions are given to the ASSIGNMENT OF LESSON 103 pupils as to the work to be done in preparation for the next recitation. One reason why we have not had the results in reading that we have had in other branches is that the assign ment of work has not been so definite. A pupil knows when he has prepared his arithmetic lesson and he does not hope to conceal his failure when he has not prepared it. The assignment in reading Take the next two pages and study them carefully is likely to get the scanty considera tion that it deserves. The assignment should be in the form of detailed directions telling what to do or questions to be answered either orally or in writing. The questions may be about words meanings types effects or any other sub ject connected with the selection. The directions may include the looking up of meanings the making of lists of words for instance a list containing all the words in the lesson that recall agreeable experiences a list of all the words that are hard to spell or a list of all the words whose meaning is not clear to the pupil. It is usually found best to put the assign ment on the blackboard. Model assignment for The Lark and the Farmer. Where did the Lark build the nest How many young Larks were there In what danger were they What time of the year was this How did the Mother Lark feel as she flew away Why was not the old Lark frightened on the first two days What kind of a man was the farmer Make a list of words hard to spell. Model assignment for The Village Blacksmith. Read it through three times. What is a smithy A bellows An anvil Did you ever see a flaming forge When What tree does spreading chestnut tree make you think of What kind of a man was the blacksmith Copy the first stanza and mark the groups. At least five minutes of each day should be spent in 104 ESSENTIALS OF READING oral supplementary reading. The children should also be supplied with an abundance of interesting easy read ing for silent reading. In most schools this work is limited by financial conditions. The oral supplementary reading however requires but little expense. Two or three books a current events paper or the Sunday school papers are all that is absolutely necessary. But one book or paper of a kind is needed indeed it is better to have but one. The work is individual. The pupil is given the book a day or two in advance. He is told what selection or part of a selection he is to read. He studies it over probably at home usually with some help from parents or teacher. He knows that all depend on him for the understanding of the selection. He is put into the right mental attitude. See Mental Atti tude. When the time comes he walks to the front of the room faces the pupils and reads. The use of the reading period alone limits this work to one or two pupils a day. The geography period can be used also in reading from such books as Around the World Carpenter s Geo graphical Readers The World and Its People the Youth s Companion Series of Geographical Readings. The same thing can be done in the history class. This reading instead of injuring the work in geography and history actually strengthens it. The opening exercises can include some reading possibly in the nature of current events or nature study. The pupils of a room can be divided into groups for the purpose of giving greater opportunity for individual oral reading. Two or three times a week twenty or thirty minutes can be taken. At the signal the pupils gather in groups in the assigned parts of the room. Let us describe such an exercise. Group A in the northeast corner of the room are seated on the recitation seat and two of the front ASSIGNMENT OF LESSON 105 seats. There are ten pupils in this group. To day five of them will read about five minutes each from Gould s Mother Nature s Children. In the northwest corner by the organ are gathered eight children. They are reading Five Little Peppers. They are interested. The hum of the other groups disturbs them not at all. The teacher passing from one group to another as she sees fit does not find it necessary to withdraw any child from this group on account of mis behavior. That group just back of the center of the room the pupils sitting two in a seat is reading Coffin s Drum beat of the Nation while that group in the extreme rear of the room is reading Viking Tales. By such a plan each pupil receives four times as much practice in oral reading as he otherwise would receive. Just a caution or two. The books or selections must be interesting and easy. The periods must be frequent enough to maintain interest. The teacher must watch order carefully persistently and unob trusively. An alternating program can be used with advantage. Let one day of the week be set apart for the regular reading exercises using the standard material of the grade. One day can be used for sight reading the study time to be spent in composition or drawing or both as suggested in the chapter on the Classification of Material. One day can be used for the study of difficult material with class discussion of the contents and meaning and with the oral reading of such passages as may seem best. One day can be used for individual reading when two or more pupils read lessons which they alone have studied or when they recite memo rized selections or tell stories. One day can be used for the study of longer selections of minor value to be given in substance only. This program affords variety and brings to the pupils in turn each motive that can be used to increase 106 ESSENTIALS OF REAEING the interest or stimulate the effort in reading both silent and oral. OUTLINE OF CHAPTER IX DIVISION OF A READING RECITATION AND ASSIGNMENT OF LESSON Division. Time apportioned to each division. Selection of lesson. Suited to purpose of teacher. Suited to pupils. Length of lesson. Suited to purpose and pupils. Development of new words and ideas. Value of the dictionary. The teacher s duty. Illustrative lesson. Word content. Emotional words. The teacher s duty. Assigned work. Model assignment. Time and character of the supplementary reading. Grouping pupils for oral supplementary reading. Alternating program. FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION i. What points should be covered in a recitation in reading 2. When should articulation drill be given 3. How much can we omit the testing to find out if the directions have been followed 4. What would be the result if this part of the recitation were habitually slighted 5. Why not combine articulation drill and oral reading 6. How would you divide a twenty minute recitation period 7. How can supplementary reading be done in other classes 8. Of what importance is the assignment of the lesson 9. What points should be covered in the assignment of the lesson ASSIGNMENT OF LESSON 107 10. What proportion of the children should be supplied with dictionaries 11. Can less than the right number be used to advantage How 12. What is the best dictionary for each grade 13. Can a pupil use a word correctly in a sentence and be ignorant of its meaning 14. Can a pupil give a correct definition of a word and still be ignorant of its meaning 15. What function in literature do words have beyond designating the actions objects and attributes 16. What kind of words can be called experiential words 17. How can the child s responsiveness to emotional words be increased 18. Of what value is supplementary reading 19. How many supplementary readers of the same kind should the teacher have 20. How can there be supplementary reading without supple mentary readers 21. What is the element gained in supplementary reading that is missed in ordinary reading CHAPTER X CLASSIFICATION OF MATERIAL Most reading books contain four distinct kinds of material which should be separated and used by the teacher to serve the ends for which they are best adapted. Each is valuable in its place. All are necessary to a well balanced course of instruction in reading. If they are not found in the texts used by the class they should be supplied from other sources. The fault so often existing is due to the effort of the teacher to use all classes of material in the same way. The first class consists of the selections that are well suited to the pupils in degree of difficulty and that are intrinsically worthy to be studied thoroughly. These should constitute the greater part of the reading book and the presence of a good proportion of this class of material is the distinguishing mark of a good standard reader. In order to be suited in degree of difficulty the subject mat ter should be within the understanding and experience of those who are to read it and the language should be within or but slightly beyond the vocabulary of the class. This kind of material is primarily for oral reading and it should not contain too many difficulties otherwise it will lead to dis couragement. There should be but few unfamiliar words and these should be explained and pronounced before the recitation begins or before the paragraph is read aloud so that the pupil will be able to use them unconsciously in giving expression to the thought. The presence of a single formi dable word in a sentence will draw to it the thought of the timid 108 CLASSIFICATION OF MATERIAL 109 reader and will conceal the meaning of the sentence. The pupil cannot consciously do two things at the same time. There will not be good oral reading unless the mechanical difficulties have been reduced to such a minimum that they do not come into consciousness. The pupil should be trained to know when the sentence is within his power and should not attempt to read it until it is. He should ask questions and not attempt the pronunciation of unfamiliar words until he is sure of his grasp and then should give the sentences with the expression of the thought as the end of his effort. A few sentences read in this way are of more value than many pages that have been merely pronounced. It is better still to have the selection so well suited to the ability of the class that a reasonable amount of effort will enable the pupils to get the thought with ease and express it with accuracy. It will then be read with pleasure. Reading should be pleasurable. It will be generally if the material is kept within the interest and the difficulties within the increasing power of the pupil. The taste can be regulated and the power can be increased but it can be done only by starting where the pupil is and by increasing the distance by so small intervals that there is no time a severing of the connection. To be intrinsically worthy of being studied thor oughly the subject matter should be such as will interest the class. It must be attractive. Without this element there will not be that spontaneous mental activity that is essential to the most valuable form of attention. It need not appeal to the adult mind nor to more mature children but it must attract the child who is to study it. It is a serious error to suppose that everything good and attractive will interest all ages and all conditions. Even more than adults children demand something new and interesting. They insist upon a fair return. The effort will be made gladly no ESSENTIALS OF READING and for a short time intensely provided they realize a product that repays in satisfaction or pleasure. But it is not suffi cient that the subject matter be attractive. The most inju rious form of literature is that which has this sole merit. Reading matter which is to be studied carefully should be of a nature that will bring to the reader a positive growth mor ally or intellectually. It should deal with the beautiful and the noble or with related facts that are of deep concern. The mind of the child should be caused to dwell upon the acts and lives of those who evince a beautiful spirit or a char acter of worth. The opposites of these should be little in evidence in the reading matter of the young. When present they should appear merely as a foil for the more valuable qualities. This does not mean that every trait of character must be labeled and that the selection should close with the once familiar Haec fabula docet. Generally there will be the identification of the type of character and the meaning of the story will sink into the consciousness of the pupil if the selection has been well read. There should be however exercises that will enable the pupil to recognize the types of character readily when presented through language and to identify those qualities that he recognizes unconsciously in the concrete. Also there should be frequent attempts to give wording to the meaning of a selection as a whole. An important end of all education is character building and there is no medium more favor able for this than the subject of reading. It is through the reading matter of the first and second classes as suggested in this chapter that most of this character training will be effected so this should be the subject of the most serious consideration on the part of teachers and parents. The second class consists of the few selections that will bear reading again and again. They are the highest CLASSIFICATION OF MATERIAL in type of literature suited to the age and development of the pupil. They are the selections that grow upon the pupil with each hearing or perusal. The better they are known the more they are enjoyed. They are the ones that pupils call for repeatedly when given a choice. They should be read as often as the interest will warrant. The pupils should be encouraged to tell them to the class as stories. They should be dramatized and presented in this form whenever they are suited to such treatment thus causing them to enter the experience of the child through appeal to his dramatic in stincts. After their meaning is well developed many of them especially the poems should be memorized as standards of literary form and as types expressing feelings and emotions common tp all. The third class of literature is that which should not have close study but which will repay being read once for general information or because of some special feature of the selection. This corresponds to the great mass of reading matter that will come to the eye of the pupil throughout life and some intelligent direction in this connection is of the utmost value. Much time is wasted because pupils do not learn to discriminate in values but give to unimportant mat ters the same time and effort that is required for subjects of serious concern. It is as important that they learn how to obtain easily and quickly the substance of materials of minor value as that they be able to master the contents of more worthy selections. The habits formed in school should be such as are valuable later in life. Pupils should learn to scan a page rapidly obtaining a correct impression of the whole at the same time having the ability to give discriminative attention to the important parts. Much material should be studied by giving the class a limited time to read a definite part of a selection and then calling for a statement of what ii2 ESSENTIALS OF READING has been read. Pupils should be required to give the sub stance of the passage the use of the exact language not being encouraged. The class criticism should be directed to show ing wherein the pupil has obtained quickly and stated briefly the substance or wherein he has failed in the subordination of parts. The effort should be to reduce the time necessary for accomplishing the end. This power acquired in school will serve the pupils well by enabling them to become widely read well informed men and women keeping in touch with the press and with current literature without feeling it a bur den after reaching the busy years of active life. It will spare them the laborious word by word reading of matter of minor importance and yet will make them sure that they have not failed to see all that is of real concern. Mr. Frank McMurry is authority for the statement that school children even in the best schools do not possess initia tive in study. He conducted a series of experiments in the subject of geography. He found that the pupils seemed to lack a desire to go ahead for their own purposes and on their own responsibilities. They depend on the teacher. They refer to maps when told to do so look up words when directed. When not directed to do anything they do nothing. His conclusion is verified by the investigations of others. This condition is true in the subject of reading also. We find pupils in their silent readings stumbling over a string of words with no desire to discover the unperceived thought and with little knowledge of how to discover it should they so desire. It becomes the duty of the teacher to train the pupils how to study. Her opportunity to do this is at the recitation time. Hence some of these periods should be called study periods and should be given up to studying with the children with the hope that this study may increase their power to study alone. The good teacher is one who trains the pupils to do without her. CLASSIFICATION OF MATERIAL 113 The books will be kept open the teacher will have a para graph read as a unit then sentence by sentence. She will ask many questions like Should we stop here for thought and discussion Is this thought important What is the principal thought in this paragraph What is this paragraph about What do we know now that we did not know an hour ago Are there any words here whose meanings are not clear to us She can go farther than this. She can have the pupils make outlines of the material studied. This is an exercise in deciding upon the relative importance of points. Two things in which the teacher should give training are: first the grouping of related ideas second the judging of the comparative importance of different ideas. This results in the pupil having a definite notion of the state of his own knowledge. He makes a conscious judgment of his attain ment. He knows when he has come to what Miss Arnold has called the don t know line. He can say to himself I know this I understand that. He is impelled to say also to himself This next thing I do not understand. I will now devote myself to the mastery of it. Such a condition is most favorable to mental growth and thought glean ing. This training can be done in what has been called the study recitation. If followed up it will increase in a remark able degree the initiative and power of the pupils. The fourth class of material consists of that which is too difficult for ordinary class use. Often it contains mechanical difficulties that discourage the class. There may be too many new words. The presence of these is a barrier to the thought. Even when the thought is reached clearly the fact that the words have not been pronounced often enough to be uttered unconsciously causes the reader to hes itate in giving the passage orally. The overcoming of the mechanical difficulties generally detracts from the pleasure ii4 ESSENTIALS OF READING of the pupil s effort. Frequently the order of words and the arrangement of clauses are so involved that the pupils find it hard to understand the meaning. Sometimes there are allusions that are not familiar and that occur too seldom to repay investigation. The value of an allusion depends upon the immediateness with which it is discerned. Pupils take no more pleasure in tracing out an obscure allusion than do adult readers. They can be brought to do some work of this kind but the instances must not be too frequent in a pas sage or lack of interest will follow. Again there are selections that present experiences be yond those 6f childhood except in extreme abnormal cases. Neither pleasure nor profit comes from considering these in advance of their time. All selections that are too diffi cult from whatever cause should be used primarily for study and discussion having the story told by different members of the class calling for the reading of such parts as may seem best as shown by the interest of the class or by the desire of individuals. In this way pupils who are developed sufficiently to understand the selection will get the meaning while the others will not be burdened with the attempt to realize that for which their stage of development has not as yet prepared them. Many readers contain much material of the class that is too difficult for the grade for which it is intended. It is valuable for silent reading with discussions of the substance of the passages. With its use in that way will come the ability to use it for oral reading also. But children are able to read silently with pleasure and with more or less profit much matter that they should not attempt to read orally. That which is to be read aloud and much that is for silent reading should be read with ease if it is to be read with pleasure. Teachers can verify this assertion by CLASSIFICATION OF MATERIAL 115 studying their own reading. Writers of the cheap flashy literature that is the bane of boyhood know this principle and have written their books on this basis. The words are familiar or are such as catch the attention and affect the imagination. The sentences are short and run with remark able clearness. The paragraphs are brief and are arranged to carry the eye from point to point of interest. The story almost reads itself. Add the element of the unreal and the glamour of adventure and it is not strange that boys devour its pages. Teachers of reading could learn valuable lessons from studying the elements that appeal to the boy who is absorbed by cheap novels. It is possible to use the same conditions supplying better ideals instead of the distorted heroism and to change the boy s tastes to appreciate good literature. All good literature is not difficult. We must make more use of the simpler forms. The knowledge that many children nose through all grades of literature and that some of them receive much benefit from these unguided excursions has led to the false notion that all children should be required to take such material entire and has brought into our readers selections that cannot be used to advantage except in the way last suggested. The fifth class material for sight reading is of great value. Most of the reading done outside of the school room must be at sight without time or opportunity for study. Especially is this true of the reading of later life. Accord ingly pupils should be trained to read at sight. Sight read ing also offers an excellent opportunity for adding to the interest of the work by the introduction of new and attrac tive reading matter. The material for sight reading should be much easier than the standard material of the grade. From the nature of the use intended it should not be found in the regular reading book of the class. It is of the utmost n6 ESSENTIALS OF READING importance that it be kept from the class until it is to be read otherwise there is no way of preventing previous study by the pupil. Children eagerly devour everything in their books that looks at all easy or interesting. Much of the benefit from this kind of reading matter comes from the interest given to the class work by the element of curiosity that is added to the recitation. The new subject matter secures and holds the attention. From one to three books are enough for a class in sight reading. If more than one book is used one can be in the hands of the teacher though it is better for the teacher to insist that the reading be so well done by the pupil that she will not need a book. The very fact that she has no book will enable her to judge the exercise as it should be judged on the basis of effective oral expression. Sight reading can be given a few minutes of the time of each lesson as sug gested in the chapter on Conducting the Recitation or it can take the place of the regular reading lesson one day in the week. The important thing is that it have a good propor tion of time regularly as it will repay well the time and effort given to it. If sight reading is to take the place of the regular lesson the study period can be spent on a list of words on the board selected from the lesson. This should include all that could give any trouble in recognition or meaning and they should be made familiar by the advance study. They can be written in sentences showing that their mean ing is understood and they should be pronounced from the board until the organs of speech become accustomed to them. The advance study can be varied by having the pupils write short stories using as the title the subject of the coming lesson. The list of words should be on the board as before to be pronounced before the study period as well CLASSIFICATION OF MATERIAL 117 as before the recitation. The pupils should be asked to use such of the words as suggest themselves in the development of a story of the given title. There should be no studied effort to use all the words but they should be used just as they occur naturally in such a story as the pupil may invent in connection with the title and with the use of a few of the important words of the list. The fact that a story is about to be read from a book on the same subject and the novelty of trying to parallel an unknown plot will kindle the imagi nation so as to make the exercise an excellent language lesson and at the same time will arouse an interest in the coming reading lesson. Each pupil will write better under the influence of the desire to achieve a definite end and will also read and listen better in the desire to compare his own efforts with the production in the published story. One of the stories written by the children should be read at the beginning of the recitation. The rest should be taken up by the teacher and can be used on subsequent days as the teacher thinks best either being read to the class exchanged and criticized by the pupils or marked and returned to the writer as the time and plan of the teacher may warrant. To add to the interest and vary the work the class is asked to plan the story for oral presentation. Part of the time for preparation is used in drawing a picture to illustrate the center of interest in the story. In conducting the recitation with sight material a pupil takes one of the books. He looks at the sentence hands the book to another indicating the place then gives the sentence. If there is another book it is placed in the hands of a pupil in another part of the class who gives the second sentence similarly. By this time the pupil receiving the first book should be ready with the third sentence and so the story is continued around the class. n8 ESSENTIALS OF READING The purpose in having the pupil pass the book before giving the sentences is to compel him to have the entire thought in mind before attempting to give it and to pre vent dwelling upon the words one at a time. It trains him to sweep the eye rapidly along the sentence and helps him to overcome the slavish clinging to the words with his eye. As soon as the pupil has become natural and free he should be encouraged to read an entire paragraph before handing the book to the next pupil. He should be brought back to giving the single sentence without the book whenever he begins to depend too much upon the book or when the presence of book causes him to be unnatural. Faults in expression can be overcome sooner and more easily in connection with sight reading than in any other way. In sight reading as in all oral read ing much depends upon the skill of the teacher in questioning the pupil. If the pupil has failed to grasp the main idea in the sentence a carefully planned question will lead him to see the relation of the ideas involved. As the sentences are short and the words are mostly familiar the mechanical difficulties will not hinder him so the ex pression will generally be natural. The fact that no one has access to the story but the one reading places on the reader the responsibility for giving his part so that all can get the meaning. If the story is an interesting one and the teacher must select one that will be interesting the other pupils will insist that it be given so they can understand it. The reader is under the conditions that exist in public speaking as nearly as they can be realized in connection with reading in the school room. The fact that the story is new places the class in receptive attitude and brings to the help of the reader the presence and inspiration of good listeners. The teacher should call upon those listening to give a sentence CLASSIFICATION OF MATERIAL 119 from time to time as a training in following a theme by ear only. This is a training perhaps equal in value to the ability to receive the message through the eye. At the con clusion or on the following day the class should be required to reproduce the story without reference to the book. Sight reading has the advantage that several classes can be combined in the exercise. Thus time can be saved for other subjects that are so often crowded out or given too little time in the program. This can be done with no detri ment to the work in reading as the larger class is often an advantage to the reading exercise from the fact that it affords an audience. The one danger to be avoided is that of using material that is marked as designed for a class younger than the one that is to read it. Pupils do not object to reading easy stories providing their pride is not hurt by the name applied to the book. A pupil who would be indignant at being asked to read in a second reader would read with pleasure an interesting story of the same grade if there was nothing about it to designate where it belonged. Stories can be cut out of papers and magazines and the paragraphs pasted on pieces of card board. These should be distributed face downward with the numbers on the back. They are not to be turned over until the moment they are to be read. In this way a great amount of the best material can be obtained at no expense. It is a very convenient and satisfactory way of conducting the recitation as it does away with the neces sity of passing the book. All the publishing houses have good collections of supple mentary readers now and as so few copies are needed it is possible with no increase in the cost of books to have an unlimited amount of the best material thus enlarging greatly the range of the pupil s reading with the added increase in interest in and appreciation of good literature. 120 ESSENTIALS OF READING OUTLINE OF CHAPTER X CLASSIFICATION OF MATERIAL Five kinds of material. First class. Average degree of difficulty. Subject matter. Vocabulary. Intrinsically worthy. Interesting to pupil. Valuable morally or intellectually. Second class. Highest grade of literature adapted to age and development of the class. Read repeatedly. Told in story form. Dramatized. Memorized. Third class. For reading for substance only. Training in subordination. The study recitation. Fourth class. Too difficult for oral reading. Silent reading. Discussion. Oral reading of passages. Fifth class. Sight reading. Importance. Easier than standard reader. Strictly at sight. Use of books. Time. Preparation. Language Lesson. Drawing. Conducting the recitation. Combining classes. Material. Papers and magazines. Books. CLASSIFICATION OF MATERIAL 121 FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION 1. What four kinds of material do most readers contain 2. What is the characteristic of each kind 3. What do we mean by material in degree of difficulty well suited to a class 4. What is meant by having material intrinsically worthy of study 5. What effect has the meeting of a very hard word among familiar words 6. Why not let pupils attempt to read sentences containing un familiar words 7. Why should the material be interesting 8. What kinds of material do you think is most interesting to boys of the intermediate grades To girls of the same grades To boys of the grammar grades To girls of the same grades 9. What qualities should material have besides attractiveness 10. Name some selections of the first class. 11. Should pupils be required to commit selections Why 12. Give a list of selections belonging to the second class. Why should they be memorized 13. Is the habit of reading a newspaper in three or five minutes an un mixed evil 14. Is Frank Murry s statement correct What makes you think so 15. What is the teacher s duty in such a case 16. How can she perform it 17. How should difficult selections be handled 18. Why do boys like dime novels 19. What should this teach us 20. What kind of material should be used for sight reading 2 1 How many copies of the selections for sight reading are necessary 22. Why is it well for the teacher to conduct the reading lesson with out a text in hand. 23. When all the period is to be given to sight reading what assign ment can be made for the study period 24. How can reading and language be correlated 25. How can drawing be used to add interest to the work in reading 26. How can an exercise in sight reading be conducted 27. What purpose in having the pupil pass the book before giving the paragraph 28. How can classes be conbined for sight reading 29. Of what value is reproduction in reading CHAPTER XI OBSTACLES TO GOOD EXPRESSION Many things that prevent pupils from acquiring good expression in reading can be removed by intelli gent work on the part of the teacher. Some of the obstacles are so simple and can be controlled so easily that there is no excuse for their existence. The reading tone needs first attention. It is that painful high monotone usually accompanied by an unvary ing stress on each word resulting in an absence of melody. It is so well known that it needs no description. So prev alent is it that from the time the child first hears about school it has fixed in advance his idea of what constitutes reading. Listen while little children before school age play school. They talk naturally enough until called upon to perform some school exercise when they assume at once the reading tone. This is true not only when they attempt to read but in everything that is supposed to be a formal recitation. It is most marked in reading and the presence of a book in the child s hand completes the change if any thing was needed to make the attitude entirely unnatural. As this is before the child has been in school to form any habits good or bad it must be due to an indirect influence from the school. The child is doing its best to attain its ideal of con ditions that prevail in school and it does these absurd things because the atmosphere of the school room has moved out ward and has established among children generally the idea that this attitude is necessary to the school room and that this strange unnatural process is reading. OBSTACLES TO GOOD EXPRESSION 123 It is extremely unfortunate that children should enter school with wrong ideals. It is certainly not econ omy of time and effort to permit the formation of any habit or ideal that is not to endure. Since this ideal is a true reflection of school room conditions it must be corrected there if at all. That it is a reflection of the school room cannot be questioned. Let any one not a teacher enter many school rooms and he will be impressed with the unnaturalness of the manner of speech and recitation. Many teachers are so accustomed to it that it fails to attract attention. This is the main reason for the existence of the reading tone. It could be corrected in all schools in a single term if teachers could but hear their schools as others hear them and could have their ears attuned to catch this displeasing sound. The condition is most evident in the reading lesson. It probably owes its existence primarily to that subject. The reading lesson should be the point of first attack. It will be found in varying degree in all classes of most schools. It is most marked in the primary classes but is most disap pointing in the advanced classes where most is expected from the pupils. The ideal must be changed. There must be established the conception that reading is not something new and strange but is the very simple process of talking with the slight dif ference that some one else supplies through the medium of the written or printed page the thoughts that are to be uttered by the one talking. This is so old and so well known that it seems trite and yet it is the kernel of the whole matter. It is accepted as a truth but is a truth for theory only and it has not become a working principle in the every day life of the school room. Only in exceptional schools do children read as they talk and when they do it is because excep tional teachers have caused them to recognize and feel the i24 ESSENTIALS OF READING real nature of reading. Once let this idea be established in a school and reading becomes a source of unlimited pleasure to teacher and pupil alike. The book is often an obstacle. The physical presence of the book or paper makes it difficult for the pupil to realize that reading is merely talking from the written or printed page. There is the evidence to his senses that the thoughts are not primarily his own and even when he has made them his own in fact the physical conditions keep calling him back to the foreign source and rise as an obstacle to the free utter ance of the thoughts. The first lessons in reading are usually given from the board. As nearly all primary teachers are careful to have pupils talk from the board there is not so much trouble here. On placing the book in the hands of the pupil he should be required to read silently an entire sentence asking questions about words not known and then to give it without the book. Reading in this natural way with the book in hand is the ideal to be attained but the book should be removed whenever its presence causes unnaturalness. The frequent request Please tell me that will serve to call the pupil back to plain natural talking at every point of departure. Having secured natural expres sion by this request the recitation should move on. The pupil should not be asked to read the sentence as if that were different from what had just been done. The mechanical difficulties of recognizing the words often bring the pupil acutely to the consciousness that he is not giving his own thoughts but the thoughts of another. So much of an obstacle is this at times that the pupil fails to pass beyond the process of the mere recognition and repetition of a series of words. The concentration of attention upon the isolated words prevents the reception of the thought. As no thought has been received none can OBSTACLES TO GOOD EXPRESSION 125 be given. The remedy lies in reducing the mechanical dif ficulties temporarily and in giving the pupil more power in surmounting them when they occur again. Often there is need of a radical reduction in the degree of the difficulties which can be effected only by using easier material. While trying to overcome extreme faults in naturalness the diffi culties should be reduced to a minimum by using readers two or three years lower than the normal reader of the grade. Simple stories that have nothing about them to indicate the grade for which intended are best for this purpose. If the subject matter is interesting and if it is well written it can hardly be too easy. Temporarily the easier the better. After placing the pupil in a natural condition by reducing the degree of the difficulties it is equally important that he be given more power to surmount difficulties. This can be accomplished by frequent extended and persistent drill in recognizing isolated words from board lists by careful work in phonetics and by the formation of the habit of using the dictionary. Pupils must be taught how to study a les son and one of the most important elements in this study is to locate the words that are obscure in meaning or uncer tain of pronunciation and to find from the dictionary the needed information or to obtain the assistance from the teacher at the beginning of the recitation. He should learn never to attempt to read orally a sentence that does not mean anything to him. Frequently pupils recognize words fairly well but fail to see readily their relation in the development of the thought. This results in as serious faults in expression as does the failure to recognize the words. This condition generally results from the inability of the pupil to move the eye rapidly along the sentence in search of the key to the meaning. Such pupils.should be encouraged to take in short i26 ESSENTIALS OF READING sentences with a single glance the length to be increased with the increase in power. The mental attitude of the reader is often a serious obstacle to good expression. Oral reading is an art allied to oratory. It differs in the source from which the material for speech is obtained. The orator presents original thoughts or at least thoughts that express the personal attitude of the speaker. The reader disclaims personal responsibility but endeavors to bring to the listener the message of another. The reader and the orator are alike in the source of their effectiveness. Both must have a message must have ability to give the message and must have a listener in a receptive attitude toward the message. The higher the degree of excellence realized in each of these respects the more effect ive will be the effort of either reader or speaker. Let any one of the elements be lacking and the effect is partial failure. Whatever the ability of the orator there can be no great ora tion without a great theme and the presence of an audience responsive to the occasion. The nearer we can realize in the school room the interest of audience and enthusiasm of speaker the greater will be our success in teaching reading. The usual method of conducting a reading recitation violates two of the three principles upon which oral reading is dependent. The speaker feels no responsibility the hearers no deep source of interest. It accomplishes good and proper ends in teaching a careful analysis of the mate rial of thought as taken from written forms and it gives very valuable drill in oral expression. It does not put the reader or the listener into the mental attitude so necessary if the higher finer influence is to be secured. Both are in equal possession of the message so the reader does not feel the responsibility for its delivery. The listener having no de sire for a message already known assumes a critical instead OBSTACLES ro GOOD EXPRESSION 127 of a receptive attitude. His sole interest in the exercise if there be any interest is to criticise the way the recitation is made. Many pupils especially in the grammar grades do poor oral reading because of these conditions. The greatest orator that ever graced a platform could not main tain himself with his audience if each member held in hand a copy of his address which had previously received an ex haustive study and if the attention was riveted on the minor unimportant details as the omission transposition and mis pronunciation of words or the bodily attitude of the speaker. Give the pupil the sense of responsibility for the delivery to his class of a message that is in his sole possession Let it be a message that has intrinsic value so that the class readily desires to receive it. Give him suffi cient time for preparation so that he can feel on sure ground and he will not fail to rise to the occasion. No matter if he makes a few mistakes he will receive more benefit from such a lesson than from a long series of short criticised reci tations. The books of the teacher and most of the class should be closed during the recitation. This will place more responsibility on the one reading even in the regular recita tions. It will give in part the conditions under which oral reading should be practiced. All should insist that the exercise be read so they can understand it without the book in hand. The lack of melody is often due to the number lessons. The condition cannot be corrected by attention to its exis tence in the reading lesson alone. The teacher must become conscious of its presence in every formal recitation and must banish it from every position held. When pupils count each number of the series except the last has that high 128 ESSENTIALS OF READING unnatural tone. It is one two three four five . This is similar to John is on the sied. Teach the pupils to count in an ordinary tone of voice giving each number of the series the falling inflection just as they give the last and as each would receive if it stood alone. If the knowledge of the other numbers in the series prevents giving a number the falling inflection cover the others and the number will be given with perfect naturalness. Num bers should be added subtracted multiplied and divided with the same nice discrimination in expression. Let it be remembered that the digits as elements in computing in the fundamental operations have no thought relation. As numbers they are related and this relationship should be clearly shown. The recitation of the multiplication tables instead of a monotonous chant affords an excellent oppor tunity for thought discrimination. The table of twos should be given as follows: Two times 0NE are two. Two times TW0 are F0UR Two times THREE are SIX Two times rouR are EIGHT Problems in analysis would be given as follows: If 0NE PENCIE costs EIVE CENTS what will r0UR pencils cost If 0NE pencil costs EIVE cents E0UR pencils will cost four TIMES five cents which are TWENTY cents. Therefore if 0NE PENCIL costs EIVE cents E0UR pencils will cost TWENTY cents. TWELVE s TWO THIRDS rf what number If TWELVE is TW0 thirds of a number 0NE third of that OBSTACLES TO GOOD EXPRESSION 129 number is one HALE of twelve which is SIX if SIX is 0NE third of a number THREE thirds or the number are three TIMES six which are eighteen. Therefore TWELVE is two thirds eighteen. Lists of words have no connection in thought so each word should be pronounced as though it stood alone. The faulty way in which spelling lists are pronounced is one more influence tending to make unnaturalness in the school room. Often each word of the series is given with a pecu liar rising inflection. This is due to the sense of incom pleteness from the knowledge that more words are to follow. Usually it can be corrected easily by covering the words below or following the one to be pronounced thus helping the pupil to think of it as independent of the other words when the expression becomes natural the word receiv ing the falling inflection. If this fails or as a variation ask the pupil Is the word naming any word of similar or even opposite meaning. This will generally help him to isolate the word from the others of the series. Language exercises need special attention. Pupils should read their own language exercises better than any thing else for the words are familiar and they know the thought. As a matter of fact they often show no special improvement for they are so influenced by the unconscious idea that reading is a peculiar process that even here it asserts itself and the monotonous drone appears. All subjects of oral recitation should be watched carefully. Unnaturalness can be corrected only by atten tion at every point where it can exist. i3o ESSENTIALS OF READING . OUTLINE OF CHAPTER XL OBSTACLES TO GOOD EXPRESSION Obstacles can be removed Reading tone Acquired before entering school Occurs in playing school A reflection of school life Wrong ideals unfortunate Most in evidence in reading lesson Ideal must be changed Reading not a new process Book an obstacle Remove temporarily Correct use of book the ideal Difficulty of words Reduce Increase power Thought relations Mental attitude an obstacle Oral reading allied to oratory Source of effectiveness Violation of principles Conditions explain poor reading Remedy Responsibility Most books closed Number lessons Counting Analysis Spelling Language Other subjects FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION i. What is the reading tone 2. What causes it 3. How can it be overcome OBSTACLES TO GOOD EXPRESSION 131 4. How can the book be an obstacle 5. How can this obstacle be overcome 6. How can the obstacle of too difficult words be overcome 7. How can the difficulty of taking in the tnought by groups of words be overcome 8. What disadvantage has the usual method of conducting recita tions 9. How dees the art of oral reading resemble oratory What differ ence 10. Upon what does the effectiveness of an oral reader depend 11. How does it help the pupil for him alone to have the book open 12. What should be the mental attitude of a reader 13. What may prevent gaining this attitude 14. How may the methods of the number class effect expression in reading 15. How may they help expression 16. What care is to be exercised in pronouncing lists of words CHAPTER XII ILLUSTRATIVE LESSONS There are two familiar stories that are opposite types and that are excellent illustrations of the principle that emphasis is always dependent upon what is known to the one for whose benefit the story is being told. These are The House that Jack Built and Chicken Little. The first begins This is the house that Jack built. The word this indicates that the idea of house is in conscious ness made so by a picture or other visible presentation. The speaker is pointing at the house or its picture otherwise this could not be the opening word. Evidently the purpose of the sentence is not to bring before the reader the idea of a house but to tell something important about a house already known. To read the sentence as is so often done with the emphasis on house when it follows the demonstrative this which denotes presence is to presume that the hearer cannot recognize a house when it is seen. Then the relative that indicates that the restrictive clause following is of more importance than the antecedent as is true of all restrictive clauses. A con ception of the word house includes the knowledge that it has been built. So the only important word in the clause is Jack. This is a strong demonstrative and is emphatic by nature. All other words in the sentence are unimportant and must be subordinated. This subordination can be effected most naturally by leaving them in a lower plane in pitch in 132 ILLUSTRATIVE LESSONS 133 stress and in the attitude of the reader toward them. Accord ingly the sentence should be read : THIS is the house that K built. In connection with the next sentence there is or should be a picture of a sack marked malt. The pupil will probably not know what the word means but this sentence as given in the story assumes that he does. Where the story originated the word was well known. If the purpose were to tell that the substance is malt it would read This is malt which lay in the house that Jack built. The evident purpose of the sentence is to tell something about some malt that is already in mind. Again this is emphatic because it is a strong demon strative. Malt is brought into consciousness by the picture with its label. The house that Jack built was brought out in the first sentence. Evidently the main idea is the relation of the malt to the house that Jack built. It lay in or was in the place previously mentioned. Accordingly it should be read: THIS is the malt that LAY m the house that Jack built. If the pupil is caused to think especially of this and the relation as expressed by lay in he will naturally subordinate the rest of the sentence reading the words in a smoothly connected monotone lower in pitch and with less stress than the two important words. The pupils should dwell upon the first two sentences until they have acquired sufficient control of their powers of expression to give the sentences with proper subordination of the known to the new. The first difficulty will be to secure such subordination in thought as to cause the pupil to have the right mental attitude toward the different ideas in the sentence. He must feel that everything is unimportant but the ideas This and Jack or this and lay in. When this is accomplished the mechanical expression of this i 34 ESSENTIALS OF READING relation becomes comparatively easy. It does no good to tell him to emphasize certain words or to have him imitate some one else. He must be brought to understand that we do not care for the rest of the sentence because we already know about it. We want what is new. The next sentence is accompanied by a picture of a rat. The absurdity of looking at the picture and declaring it a rat must be evident. The purpose of the sentence is to tell that that particular rat ate the malt under discussion. It should be read: Tms is the rat that ATE the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. The rest of the story should be read: THIS is the cat that CAUGHT the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. THIS is the dog that W0RRIED the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. Tms is the cow with the crumpled horn that T0SSED the dog that worried the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. Tms is the maiden all forlorn that mLKED the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. THIS is the man all tattered and torn that the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. Tms is the priest all shaven and shorn that MARRIED the man all tattered and torn that kissed the maiden all for lorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. ILLUSTRATIVE LESSONS 135 THIS is the cock that crowed in the morn that WAKED the priest all shaven and shorn that married the man all tat tered and torn that kissed the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. is the farmer sowing his corn that the cock that crowed in the morn that waked the priest all shaven and shorn that married the man all tattered and torn that kissed the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This story could be written so as to change the meaning and the emphasis. The antecedent of each clause could be made emphatic having each bring into consciousness the idea of which it is a sign. This would be necesssary in the absence of a picture or other visible presentation. It would read: Once there was a H0USE which JACK built. There was some MALT which LAY IN the house that Jack built. Along came a RAT which ATE the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. There was a CAT which CAUGHT the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. Both versions of the story can be used with advantage and they will be productive of nice discriminations by even young pupils. They can be used profitably with all ages. Stories of this type are popular with young children. This is probably due to the fact that new words are serious obstacles to the child and the occurrence of the same word again and again makes it pleasing. It is like happening upon an old friend whom he meets with pleasure. When he finds not only the same words but the same combinations of words repeated 136 ESSENTIALS OF READING so often he is pleased with the consciousness that he can use the them and use them easily. They fairly roll from his tongue. Not only are such stories popular but they are among the most valuable exercises that can be given to a class if read correctly. The longer they grow the more it is impressed upon the reader that the true meaning must be shown regard less of the number of words included. The self control that is acquired by subordinating nicely the long involved almost meaningless repetitions is of the utmost value. But if they are read with no appreciation of the relative importance of the ideas they become more jingles forming vicious habits in thought getting and thought expressing. The story of Chicken Little is under quite different condi tions. There is frequent iteration of the same ideas but in each instance the story is new to the listener so it must be told in the same way. CHICKEN Lktle l was a GARDEN where ghe had NO MGHT to be when a R0SE leaf fell on 2 her IAIL AWAY she ran in great GHT until she met HENNY PENNY O HENNY penny she criedj the SKY js FALLING 3 How do you KN0W asked Henny Penny 1 . Oh I SAW it with my EYES and I HEARD it with my EARS and a PARI of it EELL on my IAn I m G0ING lo TELL the KING. 4 Let me go WITH 5 y0U said Henny Penny. So they ran to DUCKY Lucky. DUCKY Lucky cried Henny Penny the SKY is calling. How do you KN0W asked Ducky Lucky ILLUSTRATIVE LESSONS 137 CHICKEN Little T0LD me. How do Y0U 6 know cmCKEN ttle oh answered Chicken Little I SAW it with my EYES . I it with my EAES and a PART of it fell on my TAn pm GOING to TELL fte KING. 4 Let me go WITH you said Ducky Lucky. So they ran until they came to G00SEY Loosey. G00SEY Loosey cried Ducky Lucky the SKY is FALL ING. How do you KN0W Ducky Lucky HENNY Penny T0LD me. How do Y0U know HENNY PENNY chicken Little told ME 8 How do Y0U know chicken Little OH j SAW t with my EYES and j HEARD t my EARS and a PART of it fell on my L I m G0ING to TELL the KlNG. Let me go WITH you said Goosey Loosey. So they ran until they met TURKEY Lurkey. Turkey Lurkey cried Goosey Loosey the SKY is FALLING. How do you KN0W GO0SEY WOSEY DtJCKY Lucky T0LD me. How do Y0U know DUCKY LUCKY HENNY Penny told ME 8 138 ESSENTIALS OF READING How do Y0U know HENNY PENNY CHICKEN Little told ME How do you know cmCKEN uitle Oh j saw it with my eyes j heard it with my ears and a PAET of it fell on my TAU I m G0ING to TEXL the KING. Let me go WITH you said Turkey Lurkey. So they ran with all their MIGHT undl they met E0XY Loxy. OH POXY LOXY cried Turkey Lurkey the SKY s FALL. DIG. How do you know 1 asked Foxy Loxy. G00SEY Loosey T0LD me. Howdo YOtT know G00SEY wosey OTCKY Lucky told ME How do Y0U know DUCKY LUCKY HENNY PENNY . j j ME. How do Y0U know HENNY PENNY CHICKEN Lktle toM ME. How do Y0U know cmcKEN KITTLE 0H I SAW it with my EYES I HEARD it with my EAES and a PART of it fell on my TAIL I m m i to TELL the COME WITH ME Foxy Loxy I wiU SHOW yQU WAY to the king. So Chicken Little Henny Penny Ducky Lucky Goosey ILLUSTRATIVE LESSONS 139 Loosey and Turkey Lurkey 9 all followed Foxy Loxyj just as he T D them to do. He led them into his DEN and they NEVER CAME our again. NOTES 1 . Stress emphasis is closely related to accent. In the case of compound words or of phrases equivalent to compound words the emphasis follows the most important part of the word or phrase. 2 . A verb phrase compound of the verb fell and the preposition on. It is equivalent to struck. 3 . 4 . Force emphasis showing strong emotion. Almost every word is emphatic. 5 . A verb phrase composed of the verb go and the preposition with . It is equivalent to the verb accom pany. 6 . Emphasis of contrast indicated by increasing the stress and raising the pitch accompanied by a circumflex of the voice. Notice that the ideas involved in the words how and know have lost their importance. The purpose is to refer a topic under discussion to another person present. The main idea is the contrasting of the sources of information. 7 . Emphasis of direct address. The effect of the rising inflection on the last word raises it into a position of emphasis. 8 . Emphasis of contrast. 9 . Notice how unimportant all these nouns are. They are repeated merely to please the child by referring to these friends as often as possible. The main idea is the assertion that they did follow as they were told to do. CHAPTER XIII THE USE OF THE DICTIONARY Children should be taught to use the dictionary in Study. This training should begin in the fourth grade and should continue throughout the course. No one ele ment of instruction is more important than this as it leads to independence and cultivates the true spirit of investigation. The most natural place to emphasize the importance of using the dictionary is in connection with reading. Pupils should study the reading lesson with a dictionary at hand to verify the pronunciation and the meaning of the words. The pupils should be provided with dictionaries individually or in small groups. A dictionary for every pupil is the ideal condition. It is not difficult to accomplish this. Part of the money used for full sets of supplementary readers can well be used for this purpose and the work in reading can be as satisfactorily done with fewer copies of the text. Every school should have an unabridged dictionary and several abridged dictionaries but if there are not funds to provide both it is more helpful to have a good supply of the smaller works. Where pupils buy their own books it is cheaper and better to have them purchase a book of the grade of Webster s High School dictionary at first. This will serve all purposes below the high school. High school pupils should have a book of the grade of the Academic dictionary. Districts that own the dictionaries will find it cheaper and equally satisfactory to buy primary dictionaries for the fourth grade common school dictionaries for the fifth and sixth 140 USE OF THE DICTIONARY 141 grades high school dictionaries for the seventh and eighth grades and academic dictionaries for the high school. When public funds are not available the books should be supplied by other means. Some schools are accomplishing this by forming a school sentiment such that the pupils buy their own dictionaries. In districts where text books are free this is an excellent plan. The very fact that the dictionary is the one book that is owned by the pupil places it in a favored class in importance. High school pupils who have used a book for four years will be more liable to continue using the same book after leaving school. It has become an inseparable companion in study. Whatever dictionary a class is using the teacher should see that the pupils are familiar with its table of contents. There are valuable purposes of each part of the dictionaries mentioned above if used in the grades suggested. Often pupils complete the course of instruction with no knowledge of the use of a dictionary other than for the pro nunciation and definition of the words given in the body of the book. These are important uses but a knowledge of these purposes only does not make the dictionary the tool that it is possible of becoming in the hands of a trained student. The key to the symbols as given in the guide to pronunciation should be studied and memorized. The schools are doing an excellent service in teaching phonetics in the primary grades but it should be continued in the grades following. The child in those early years when subjects of interest are fewer and when verbal memory is so active and reliable can memorize all the words he has occasion to use. If the study of phonetics is to stop at the end of three years as is so often the case the time and effort required to secure this knowledge is not warranted by the benefits. The system of phonetics in the primary grades should use the diacritical i42 ESSENTIALS OF READING marks employed by the dictionary that is used in the schools and the knowledge acquired in the primary grades should be put into daily use in the succeeding years. A very little atten tion here if continued will hold easily the great advantage gained. If the children have not been taught phonetics the key to the symbols should be taken up when the dictionaries are put into the hands of the class and should be studied indefinitely. The work should be begun gradually and should be pursued persistently. The ability to indicate and express the sounds as found in accented syllables should be acquired first. The sure and accurate use of all sounds should be established before the pupils leave the grammar grades. One reason why students do not consult dictionaries more of their own initiative is because unfamiliarity with the symbols employed makes it a process of great effort with slight satisfaction in return. When the pupils after going to the trouble to find a word must consult a key or a list of type words to know how to pronounce it the process is not very satisfactory and is not conducive to repeating the same effort at another time. It is extremely unfortunate that the alphabet does not represent the sounds of the elements but since it does not two sets of symbols must be taught or pupils will have little independence in handling new words. The key to the symbols should include the table of equivalents so as to render it unnecessary to re write a word to indicate its pronunciation except in rare instances. The study of the alphabet in detail aids in correcting inaccuracies in the use of the elements in types common to many words. A small amount of effort here will accom plish more thanmuch time spent upon individual words. There are common errors widely prevalent that are disclosed by this means and that are not difficult of correction if begun in the earlier years. A systematic study of the sounds of the letters USE OF THE DICTIONARY 143 as given and illustrated in this part of the guide is most helpful. These sounds are best established by means of type words. A study of the vowels in detail brings to light a few principles common to many. Attention can be called to them and they can be verified by having the student examine lists of words. Among these are the following: 1. Long sounds of vowels occur only under accent. As ate late mak er pro fane eat me ter re plete ice mind mi ter in vite old ov er e mo tion lo co mo tive use du ty a muse. Some apparent exceptions to this are due to the fact that secondary accents are not always marked. An effort to pronounce the word will disclose the necessity of the missing accent. Thus ad vo cate v em u late re form to form a new. 2. Removing the accent from a long vowel results in a modified sound indicated by the suspended bar. Thus ate sen ate eve e vent i dem i de a o uate o va tion u nion u nite hy drate hy drau lic. This same sound occurs in many French words that have been transplanted into our language as debris da bre cafe ca fa . These words really have no word accent and must be pronounced with a suspense of the voice as if anticipating another syllable. 3. Short vowels excepting i or y can neither close a syllable nor stand alone. Thus man ner at tend par i ty guar an ty er ror a mend in tel lect un til di vide a bil i ty dog oc cur re com mit un der subscribe. 4. Unaccented a standing alone or at the end of a syllable has the short Italian sound indicated by a dot above it. In speech this often falls into the sound of the so called neutral vowel. This is one of the most difficult characters in the list of symbols in as much as it is really equivalent to four different sounds according as it is accented or unaccented or as it is followed by letters that modify its sound. It occurs under accent before sk ff ft th ss sp st nee nt and i44 ESSENTIALS OF READING nd. In practice this is often either sharpened to short a or is given so broad a sound as to result in affectation. The cor rect sound can be acquired by having the pupil take the position of the organs for pronouncing are then raising the main part of the tongue closing slightly the mouth and giving the sound a quick utterance. If this is begun in the lower grades it will result in a purity of speech tending to correct the sharp harsh sounds so common in connection with this letter. 5. Short o under accent should not degenerate into broad a. They are correlatives and it is helpful to change from one to the other in acquiring the correct sound. Give the sound of a as in all open the mouth a little more and a quicker utterance of the sound gives short o. 6. A vowel is short before r followed by a syllable beginning with r or another vowel. Exceptions parent parentage garish changes made by verb inflection or the suffix er and cases where an a follows the sound of w. In the latter case the sound of a is equivalent to short o as warrant quarrel. Examples arrow charity character farrier barren error sirrah orange myriad syrup. A most common error is giving a in instances like the fore going the sound of a as in air. Compare air and arrow chair and charity fair and farrier bear and barren. Note also sir and sirrah orb and orange. Have the pupils turn to the letter a in the dictionary and copy with marks the words that follow this rule. At least twenty five words beginning with ar will be found most of which are commonly mispronounced. Over forty words will be found beginning with par that are commonly pronounced incorrectly. The list can be extended indefinitely by finding other combinations. Note the difference USE OF THE DICTIONARY 145 in the sound of the vowels in the words Mary marry and merry. Ordinarily they are given as the same sound. It is helpful to study how the sound of a vowel is affect ed by a change of accemt by changing its position in the syllable and by the presence of other letters in the same or in the following syllable. Below are given lists of words that illustrate the effect. The numbers refer to the principles of pronunciation given before in this chapter. bar bare bear bar on 6 bar rel 6 ba ri um 1 ba rom e ter 4 . car care ca ret 1 car et 6 ca reer 4 . err er ror 6 er u dite 6 e ra 1 e rupt 2 . or o ral 1 or a tor 6 or ris 6 o ra tion 2 . sir sire si ren 1 sir rah 6 syr up 6 . Grammar grade pupils will be aided by a study of the more common prefixes and suffixes. Definite lessons of this nature will be of great economy in determining the meaning of words. The knowledge that un means not gives a short route to the meaning of over one hundred words as listed in dictionaries of the academic grade. The meaning of com in its various assimilated forms throws light upon many words in common use. One section contains rules for spelling certain classes of words. A few of these are very valuable such as the rule for and at the end of monosyllables the rules for deriva tives of monosyllables for derivatives of words ending in e for derivatives of words ending in ie for derivatives of words ending in y and for the plural of nouns. There is a list of the abbreviations used in the dictionary. Many pupils have no knowledge of the meaning of these abbreviations. Unless they are directed by the teacher where to find this information and are required at times to turn to the table and verify certain abbreviations they will 146 ESSENTIALS OF READING pass over them with indifference thus failing to receive the full meaning of words studied. No assistance is obtained from examining the word abandon unless the pupil knows the meaning of the abbreviations v. . w. and F. In determin ing the meaning and the pronunciation of contract it is necessary to understand the abbreviations v. . fcV a. and n. The systematic and helpful use of the main part of the dictionary is an end to be sought. The dictionary should be a working tool to assist in the study of every lesson. Not only should the teacher require an investigation of all new or unfamiliar words but the pupils should be conscious of the fact that a strange word is a barrier to the thought and should investigate it of their own initiative. This attitude is the first characteristic of a good student. Pupils must be taught how to use the dictionary. The teacher should work with them in using it. She will find that many pupils do not know how to find words arranged alphabetically. Some of them do not know the order of the letters. This is a natural result of the minor emphasis given to the alphabet by the modern primary methods. Even when they know the alphabet they do not have a definite idea of the relative position of the letters. They cannot tell promptly whether r comes before or after m. As an aid in finding words quickly ask the class to turn to letter after letter in different parts of the book until they are not only sure of the relation of the letters to each other but also have a definite idea of the relative space occupied by each in the dictionary. After pupils are ready in finding the first letter of the word they must still be shown how to find the exact posi tion of the word. They must learn that words are arranged according to the sequence of each letter in the word. If the pupil is looking for jrontis piece he should open the book as near jr as possible. At the USE OF THE DICTIONARY 147 top of the page he will look for the words in heavy type giving the first and the last word on the page. He will find fra fre fri jrou. On the page beginning with frightful and ending with frouzy he will see that the second column begins with frol. The eye follows rapidly down from fron front fronti frontis piece. He finds the word divided into syllables and accented with a primary accent mark. The secondary accent on the last syllable is not indicated. The last two syllables are re written and marked diacritically. As the first syllable is not marked he must look back to where the syllable front first occurs. Here it is found marked frunt. Now returning to the word and noticing the marks of the two other syllables the whole is easily pronounced. It is not a small matter to be able to find a word in the dic tionary. It really requires considerable thought and skill is acquired only as the result of practice. Too many teachers assume knowledge and skill not possessed by the average pupil. Time spent in acquiring facility in using the dictionary will greatly increase the occasions when pupils will go to it for assistance. Pupils need to be taught the meaning of the accents both primary and secondary and should have much drill in exer cises including the use of both accents. The fact that words have different meanings is a source of confusion. The pupils will need help in determining mean ings suited to particular instances. This aid can be given by working with the pupils at first and then by assigning exercises that will call for discrimination as to meanings. Most dictionaries contain a pronouncing vocabulary of biblical classical mythological historical and geographical proper names. Pupils should be familiar with this section and should be encouraged to refer to it especially in connection with the reading lesson. 148 ESSENTIALS OF READING The quotations of words phrases and proverbs from foreign languages the list of abbreviations used in writing and printing and the dictionary of Greek and Roman mythology are all valuable parts of a dictionary and are liable to escape notice unless pupils are required to use them until their location in the dictionary is definitely known. Pupils trained to use the dictionary will use other reference books. The spirit of investigation so engendered will result in students not satisfied with surface meanings. The discriminative study of words will pass over into an inten sive study of things. The student that has become conscious of the line separating known from the unknown will never rest content until he has passed beyond it using every available means. This is the highest kind of intellectual training as it results in power. OUTLINE OF CHAPTER XIII THE USE OF THE DICTIONARY In connection with reading. Dictionaries to be provided. By district. By pupils. Teach table of contents. Key to symbols. Through phonetics in primary grades. From dictionary. Alphabet in detail. Long vowels. Modified long vowels. Short vowels. Unaccented a. Short o. Vowels before r. Change of sound of vowels. Prefixes and suffixes. Rules for spelling. USE OF THE DICTIONARY 149 Abbreviations in dictionary. Body of dictionary. Pupils must be taught. Order of letters. Relative position. Relative space. Exact place of words. Syllabication. Accent. Diacritical marking. Meanings. Vocabulary of proper names. Quotations. Abbreviations. Dictionary of Mythology. Influence on pupils. FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION 1. When should children begin to use the dictionary 2. What dictionaries should a school have How many 3. How can dictionaries be secured 4. What difference as to the plan of text book ownership in the dis trict 5. Why should the table of contents be studied 6. Why is teachings of phonetics important 7. Why should the diacritical marks be taught 8. How important is familiarity with the marks of pronunciation 9. What benefit will come to a school from studying and verifying the suggested rules for the sounds of certain vowels 10. What is the most valuable end to be gained by teaching the use of the dictionary it. How would you teach pupils to find pronounce and determine the meaning of words 12. What valuable indirect influence comes from the persistent use of the dictionary CHAPTER XIV ARTICULATION The Chicago Tribune vouches for the truth of the following conversation between two girls: Aincha hungry Yen. So my. Less go neet. Where Sleev go one places nuthur. So dy. Ika neet mo stennyware Canchoo Yeh. Gotcher money Yeh. Gotchoors Yeh. Howbout place crosstreet Nothing teet there. Lessgurround corner. Thattledoo zwell zennyware. Mighta thoughta that tfirst. Get cherrat Ima gettinit. Gotcher money Yeh. Didn cheer me say I haddit Allready Yeh. Kmon. The conversation is not improbable. After a little investi gation one is ready to believe that the incident is a true one. Nearly every one says canchoo instead of can t you. Thattledoo is very common for that will do. Howdudoo passes current for How do you do. One frequently finds himself at a loss to understand the words of a friend when he has no context upon which to base a guess as to the meaning of his friend s vocalization. This should be an embarassing condition to the friend for there is no more certain evidence of culture than an elegant and distinct enunciation. A good articulation has a commercial value. From a 150 ARTICULATION 151 boy s articulation the prospective employer unconsciously judges the boy s character. An indistinct mumbled sentence indicates to him inaccuracy carelessness or laziness. A dis tinct articulation indicates self control energy carefulness and courage. It is important therefore that the schools should attend to articulation. The reading class is the one to whose share the exercise rightly belongs. Time should be taken each day for practice. The time should be at the beginning of the period in order that it may not be crowded out. The teacher should not expect to attend to articulation during oral reading. A pupil cannot think at the same time of both thought and words of both expression and articulation. The one thing is certain to injure the other. Sometimes a pupil will render a sentence with good expression and when asked to repeat it pronouncing a certain word more distinctly he will give an incorrect or inane expression. The cause of this is that the articulation of the word now sways the mind of the reader not the thought of the sentence. Therefore the drill in articulation should be distinct from the work in expression. If the text is used for drill the teacher should not ask for good expression while requiring good articulation. Articulation exercises should be systematic. Those sounds that are the hardest to pronounce distinctly should be practiced most. The consonant sounds will be found the most difficult. Exercises are added to this chapter on the most difficult of these. One exercise a day can be placed on the board practiced and copied into note books for review. A pupil who practices faithfully the few exercises given here will acquire the habit of careful articulation. Have pupils drill in concert then individually on both words and sentences. Insist that the sounds be distinctly heard. The list of exer cises can be indefinitely extended. The exercise consisting i S 2 ESSENTIALS OF READING of the many long words is intended to help overcome the habit of omitting syllables in long words. We often say par tic lar ly instead of par tic u lar ly. For review work ordinary text can be used. Insist that every syllable and every sound be made distinct. Method of instruction. In giving a lesson it is well for the teacher to require both concert and individual work. In the concert work have all pronounce the words together urging force on the desired sound. Work with them urge them almost force them to use energy. In the individual work let each pronounce a word or a sentence distinctly. In using long words take up one word at a time. Have it pronounced very slowly and distinctly then more and more rapidly see ing to it that each syllable is still pronounced distinctly. Stand in the corner of the room farthest from the speaker and insist that every sound be so pronounced as to make you hear it. It takes energy to make the d s and t s carry. See to it that the pupils place the organs of speech correctly and that they stand or sit correctly. The exercises are grouped according to the organs principally used in their formation. Exercises 1 6 include the labials the sounds made principally with the lips. See to it that the lips are active in pronouncing these. Exer cises 7 15 include the dentals the sounds affected most by the teeth. See to it that the lips do not obstruct these sounds. Draw them back out of the way. Exercises 16 18 include the palatals sounds affected most by the palate. Exercises 19 20 are drills on the nasals sounds in which part of the sound is sent through the nose. Exercises 21 22 are drills on the liquids those sounds which easily unite with other sounds. Exercise 23 is a drill on the aspirate h while 24 31 are drills on hard combinations. No attempt has been made to give a complete drill in articulation. The sounds on which exercises are given ARTICULATION iS3 are the ones most likely to be given improperly thereby causing indistinct articulation. It would be well if we could also drill our pupils on vowel sounds thereby gaining pure tones in addition to distinctness. The point of attack however in the public schools is distinctness. We shall be satisfied if we gain that. The exercises are therefore confined to the con sonants. LABIALS i. B bear bat bill rub dab tub brute bob battle A big black bug bit a big black bear. Brother Bill beat brother Ben. Bees build beautiful abodes. robber button hubbub 2. P pet trip repeat pipe pup supply pint pinch simply People partake plenteously of supper. The parson prays for peace. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. prepay suppose purpose fan elf fin muff fame scarf Finny fishes furnish fine food. Fun and frivolity follow foolish fancies French fried fritters fill folks full. finish famish profanity defame twelfth folk i54 ESSENTIALS OF READING vine vim hive love save move 4 V knives very vanish vision revive bereave His voice revived the vile villain. The violent vandals vanished. The valiant victor saved the bereaved lover. 5 M man mum number mule mill family ham sum molest The miserable mule moves mournfully. The nimble monkey mixes the melons. Money may make much misery. 6. W wig went wraps wart wear wish bow woe wail The wan widow wears worn wraps. William was wishing to wind the clock. The warrant for the wanderers was wisely withheld. famish lament amble wiggle western wrinkle 7 . T tickle tattle titter fit mitten . teeth cat tar fat tread boat tote Two tame tigers taught Timothy timidity. Betty thought Twice Told Tales thrilling throughout. Ten troops went straight to the fort. 8. D dent paid afraid bidder did date demand slender made bide deduct ladder ARTICULATION 155 Daisy devotedly dug dandelions. Daniel did his duty diligently. The road led through the wood. 9. CH chair bench charm chain chew cherry birch much flinch Chums cherish each other. Chiggers chew the children s chief champion. The cheerful child chatters much. 10. J or G just jerk singe gem gin huge jewel gill jelly George Jones jeers the gypsies. James gently suggests a journey. A large major unjoints a fragile gymnast. 11. S sun slip mistress hiss moss insist sat soup parson Swan swam over the sea swim swan swim. The last fruits are the sweetest. Six misses sat beside the priest. 12. S or Z ease buzz surprise zinc freeze expose shoes tears husband The prize pleased the visitors. The reason for those things is easy. Please excuse Susie s sneeze. chisel chicken enchant giraffe majestic magic Susan solar mistake busy because amaze 156 ESSENTIALS OF READING 13. SH shoe shed flesh shinny shake mush dash fashion wash ship sugar friendship The shape of the ship shows shrewdness. She shook the shrieking shrew sharply. Shall she wish sugar and shun mush 14. TH path through bath thistle both 1 thick thrush thousand thrash think smith thrift Theophilus Thistle thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb. Thousands of thrifty thrushes thronged through the thickets. i5 then that those bother the with other rather scathe lithe than neither Neither of them bothers the other. They loathe the southern weather. A farthing withers in this northern place. PALATALS 16. K or C can milk rebuke kind drink acorn cow frisk dictate Kate kindly killed the kittens. The cat drank and crept away. This key can conquer creaking locks. 17 5 get gas garter gift ghost muggy gum guide begin looking kitten Yankee garden govern giggle ARTICULATION 157 Disguised guards gathered the guns. Gertrude giggled and gasped. The rogue wriggled and got away. 18. Y yet yacht yeomen yield yeast youth yard yolk yelj The yellow dog yelps at the yeoman. Yesterday s yield is not yet in the yard. The youth yells at the yawning yachtsman. NASALS yellow yesterday yiddish not gun 19. JN lantern Minnie tin nine canteen niggard Ned nun begin tenant Names mean nothing if not noted. Nine nuns began normal work. The gunner nicked the lantern. 20. NG ring song single belong bang among clanging hanger fling throng singer mangle Singing mingled with the clanging noise. Stinging bees are thronging among them. Moaning and groaning he flung himself over. LIQUIDS 21. L long link languish belate hall old expel laughter large mule liquid lily All listen to the liquid melody. Large bells excel in loudness. Laughter lasts longer than melancholy. 158 ESSENTIALS OF READING 22. R rat car rattle rarify ring bore marl hurry roll mire heart martyr Her remarks were ready and reproachful. The roar receded as it rapidly retired. He hurries to resist the ravenous rascals. ASPIRATE 23. H hat hitch humble hem hard hushing hole huge hickory He hesitates to hurt his hearers. Harry hurries to hide his history. Heavy hindrances are hastily hustled hither. HARD COMBINATIONS 24. BS mobs tubs grubs rubs bobs stubs tubes hubs cabs The cubes were made from slabs and clubs. He daubs the orbs with paint from the tubes. He stabs the leader of the tribes in the ribs. 25. DS buds gads yards lads hides beholds loads dudes abodes The words of the ballads hides the moods. He adds the loads of beads to the goods. One of the lads grabs the swords. 26. GS dregs sags bags bogs kegs tags hubbub handle harm hubbubs imbibes describes unloads ballads succeeds rags hags rugs dogs lags pegs ARTICULATION 159 The dregs of the jugs gags even hogs. The bags contain frogs legs. The fags bring the jugs and arrange the figs and eggs. 27. PS maps pups glimpse tops ropes pumps laps scraps lips One of the maps flaps against the lamps. The man with the caps reaps the crops. He leaps and grasps the ropes. 28. KS or X box flax mixture necks larks oxen lakes strikes ducks Wrecks on the lakes vex the Mexicans. Rex strikes the oxen on their necks. The packs of books go the Arctics. 29. must most cast dust rust roost The largest post made the greatest mast. The wildest beast will fight the most. He still insists he sees the ghost. escapes gossips perhaps appendix lilacs attacks ST wildest digest request insist warmest contest 3o WH what whim whether meanwhile when which whither whinny why wharf whisper whistle Where are the whisperers Why are the wheels whirling Would you whistle whine or whisper i6o ESSENTIALS OF READING 31. ZH usual visual measure pleasure rouge azure leisure delusion seizure treasure diversion composure Decision precision and composure were usual traits. The Hoosiers in confusion destroyed the illusion. In conclusion the explosion was a delusion. 32. in com plete al to geth er con sci en tious mis er a ble af fee ta tion ex pe ri ence con cep tion bois ter ous ly ex trav a gant di rec tion Brit tan ni a us u al ly moun tain ous ge og ra phy re frig er a tor neg a tive col lee tion im me di ate ly al ti tude com pli ca tion un con di tion al 33 The goods are not at all satisfactory. The government makes it obligatory to label oleomargarine. Collection and direction need particular care. Pronounce carefully usually and immediately. 34 ar tic u la tion ca pit u lar cal or if i ca tion im pen e tra ble cir cum nav i gate . in ter de pen den cy par tic u lar ly the o log ic al e jac u la to ry al ien ate in com pre hen si ble gen er al is simo cam phor at ed a mal ga ma tion id e o graph ic al ly cal um ni a tor cal is then ic al ly in ex tri ca ble 35 He spoke of it particularly and peremptorily declared it inex plicable. The incomprehensibility of the calumniator was impenetrable. ARTICULATION 161 He is the generalissimo of the antidisestablishmentarian amal gamation. 36. The following exercises are added for further drill. 1. His cry moved me. His crime moved me. 2. He can pay nobody. He can pain nobody. 3. The battle last still night. The battle lasts till night. 4. The culprits ought to be punished. 5. The culprit sought to be punished. 6. He can debate on either side of the question. 7. He can debate on neither side of the question. 8. They never imagined such an ocean to exist. 9. They never imagined such a notion to exist. 10. They discovered naught but wastes and deserts. 11. They discovered naught but waste sand deserts. 37 1. The wild beasts straggled through the deepest shade. 2. The finest streams through the tangled forests strayed. 3. The heights depths and breadths of the subject. 4. Ice cream not I scream an ice house not a nice house. 5. Then rustling crackling crashing thunder down. 6. The strife ceaseth and the good man rejoiceth. 7. He was most mindful in memory of that mysterious mummery. 8. The rough and rugged rocks rear their hoary heads high on the heath. 9. He had great fear of offending the frightful fugitive in his flight. 10. The vile vagabond ventured to vilify the venerable veteran. 1 1 We wandered where the whirlpool wends its winding way. 12. The stripling stranger strayed through the struggling stream. 162 ESSENTIALS OF READING 13. The swimming swan swiftly swept the swinging sweep. Swim swam swum well swum swimming swan 14. Round and round the rugged rocks the ragged rascals ran. 15. No sheet nor shroud enshrined those shreds of shrivel d clay. 16. Sam Slick sawed six slim sleek saplings for sale. 17. Six brave maids sat on six broad beds and braided broad braids. 18. Amidst the mists and coldest frosts With barest wrists and stoutest boasts He thrusts his fists against the posts And still insists he sees the ghosts. 38. ALPHABETICAL ALLITERATION AND ARTICULATION Alderman Affluent always adjudicated with admirable ability. Brother Ben boldly beat battered and bruised the British with his bludgeon. Columbus Capricorn was cross crabbed crooked carbuncled and crusty. Deborah Diligent danced delightfully with a droll and dex terous drummer. Elizabeth Edmonson cooked eleven eggs with excellent edibles. Frederick Firebrand fiercely fought a funny and fidgety fiddler. Gregory Gobbleum gaped and gabbled like a goose or gander. Hercules Hardheart hit a hawk on the head with a hatchet. Isaac Ingham inhabited an inclement and isolated island in Italy. Jemima Juniper with joy did jump a jig in jeopardy. Kate Kirkman kindly kissed her knowing kinsman. ARTICULATION 163 Lem Lawless was a loudly laughing lounging long lean lank lazy loafer. Maximilian Mettlesome magnanimously met a mutinous mountaineer. Nancy Nimble with a nice new needle netted neat nets. Omar Overall ordered Oliver Ollapod to overawe Owen Oldbuck. Professor Punch and Paulina Polk performed the Patagonia polka perfectly. Quintuple Quorum quickly questioned a queer and quizzical quidnunc. Roderic Random ran a ridiculous race on the Richmond railroad. Sophonisba Scribblewell was superlatively and surprisingly sentimental. Theophilus Talkative told tremendous terrible terrific and tragic tales. Ursula Urgent uninterruptedly and universally used an um brella. Valentine Vortex victoriously vanquished a vindictive villager. Wilhelmina Whirligig warbled with winning and wonderful witchery. X ecrable X antippe x hibited x traordinary and x cessive x citability. Young Yankee a youthful yeoman yawned at Yarmouth. Zedekiah Zigzag was a zealous zoological zoophite in the frozen zone. 1 64 ESSENTIALS OF READING OUTLINE OF CHAPTER XIV Importance. Duty of the schools. Systematic drill. Method of instruction Exercises. fi b ARTICULATION Labials Dentals Palatals J 4 v 5 m 6 L7 t r 8 d 9 ch io j n s I2 Z S 13 sh L 14 th k g y Nasals j n 20 ng Liquids ng 21 1 22 r Aspirate 23 h 24 bs 25 ds 26 gs 27 ps Hard Combinations i 28 ks 29 st 30 wh 31 zh 32 Long words. 33 Sentence of long words. 34 Long words. 35 Sentences of long words. ARTICULATION 165 FOR REVIEW AND SUGGESTION 1 Is the Chicago Tribune example of bad articulation probable 2. What is the quality of the articulation of the average person 3. Of what commercial value is good articulation 4. Of what social advantage is it 5. How does good articulation indicate character 6. How does it influence character 7. Why not require careful articulation in all oral reading 8. Do children all know how to place the organs of speech in pro nouncing words 9. What difficulties in articulation have children of different nation alities 10. What consonant sounds are usually pronounced poorly 1 1 What are the most difficult to pronounce 12. Some sounds are easy to make but very hard to be heard at any distance What are these sounds 13. What vowel sounds ought to be studied if time permits 14. Of what value are the long word exercises PART IV SELECTIONS FOR PRACTICE CHAPTER XV DIDACTIC AND MORAL THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TEACHER S WORK AND THE VALUE OF PROPER IDEALS Theodore Roosevelt The following selection is the first part of the address to the National Educational Association on July fth 1905 at Ocean Grove New Jersey. It is given here not only for its literary value but also for its peculiar importance to the teaching profession. I am particularly pleased to have the opportunity of addressing this Association because in all this democratic land there is no more genuinely democratic body than this for here each member meets every other member as his peer without regard to whether he is president of one of the great universities or the newest recruit to that high and honorable profession which has in its charge the upbringing of the boys and girls who in a few short years will them selves be engaged in settling the destinies of this nation. It is not too much to say that the most characteristic work of the Republic is that done by the teachers by the teachers for whatever our shortcomings as a nation may be and we have certain shortcomings we have at least firmly grasped the fact that we cannot do our part in the difficult and all important work of self government that we cannot rule and govern ourselves unless we approach the task with developed minds and with what counts for more even than developed minds with trained char acters. You teachers and it is a mere truism to say this you teachers make the whole world your debtor and of you it can be said as it can be said of no other profession save the profession of the ministers of the gospel themselves if you teachers did not do your work well this republic would not outlast the span of a generation. 169 170 ESSENTIALS OF READING Moreover as an incident to your avowed work you render some well nigh unbelievable services to the country. For instance you render to this republic the prime the vital service of amalga mating into one homogeneous body the children alike of those who are born here and of those who come here from so many dif ferent lands abroad. You furnish a common training and com mon ideals for the children of all the mixed peoples who are here being fused into one nationality. It is in no small degree due to you and to your efforts that we of this great American repub lic form one people instead of a group of jarring peoples. The children wherever they have been born wherever their parents have been born who are educated in our schools side by side with one another will inevitably grow up having that sense of mutual sympathy and mutual respect and understanding which is abso lutely indispensable for working out the problems that we as citizens have before us. And now I wish to speak of another service that you render which I regard as inestimable. In our country where altogether too much prominence is given to the mere possession of wealth we are under heavy obligations to a body such as this which sub stitutes for the ideal of the mere accumulation of money the infinitely loftier non materialistic ideal of devotion to work worth doing simply for that work s sake. I do not in the least under estimate the need of having material prosperity as the basis of our civilization but I most earnestly insist that if our civilization does not build a lofty superstructure on that basis we can never rank among the really great peoples. We need the material pros perity as a foundation but it serves only as a foundation and woe to us as a people unless upon that foundation we build a building of use to mankind. A certain amount of money is of course a necessary thing a necessary thing as much for the nation as for the individual and there are few movements in which I more thoroughly believe than the movement to secure better pay better remuneration for the teachers. While I hope for the success of that movement it remains true that the service you render is incalculable because DIDACTIC AND MORAL 171 of the very fact that by your lives you have shown that you believe ideals to be worth sacrifice and that you are eager to do non remunerative work non remunerative as judged by the ordinary standards provided only that work is of genuine good for your fellow men. To furnish in your lives such a realized high ideal not merely to speak about but to live up to is to do great service to the country. The chief harm done by the men of swollen for tunes to the community is not the harm that the demagogue is apt to depict as springing from their actions but the fact that their success sets up a false standard and so serves as a bad example for the rest of us. If we did not ourselves attach an exaggerated importance to the rich man who is distinguished only by his riches this rich man would have a most insignificant influence over us. Now let me keep your minds upon my exact meaning. I speak of the rich man who is distinguished only by his riches not of the rich man who uses his wealth aright as a means to an end. I ask you to remember the explanation of the parable of the rich man s difficulty in finding entrance to heaven. The parable shows how hard it shall be for the rich man who trusteth in his riches. It is the rich man who trusteth in his riches that I am speaking of not the man who is a first rate citizen whether rich or poor. Although it is eminently right to take whatever steps necessary in order to prevent the exceptional members of his class from doing harm it is wicked folly to let ourselves be drawn into any attack upon the man of wealth merely as such. Remember you teach ers that it is just as wicked to attack the man of wealth as such as to attack the man of poverty as such. Moreover such an attack is in itself an exceptionally crooked and ugly tribute to wealth and therefore the proof of an exceptionally crooked and ugly state of mind in the man making it. Venomous envy of wealth is simply another form of the spirit which in one of its manifestations takes the form of cringing servility toward wealth and in another the shape of brutal arrogance on the part of cer tain men of wealth. Each one of these states of mind whether it be hatred servil ity or arrogance is in reality closely akin to the other two for 172 ESSENTIALS OF READING each of them springs from a fantastically twisted and exaggerated idea of the importance of wealth as compared with other things. The man who is rendered arrogant by the possession of wealth is precisely the man who if he didn t have it would hate with envious jealousy the man who had it. The man who is roused to a fury of sour discontent of envy because he sees another man very well off would with absolute certainty misbehave himself if he became well off in his turn. The clamor of the demagogue against wealth the snobbery of the social columns of the newspapers which deal with the doings of the wealthy and the misconduct of those men of wealth who act with brutal disregard of the rights of others seem superficially to have no fundamental relations yet in reality they spring from shortcomings which are fundamentally the same and one of these shortcomings is the failure to have proper ideals. If the community pays proper heed to the right type of ideal and admires the men most who approximate most closely to that ideal you will not find in it any of these unhealthy feelings toward wealth. The failure to have the right type of ideal must be remedied in large part by the action of you men and women here and your fellow teachers throughout this land. By your lives even more than by your teachings you show that while you feel as all of us ought to feel that wealth is a good thing you regard other things as still better. It is absolutely necessary for each of us to earn a certain amount of money. It is a man s first duty to those depen dent upon him to earn enough for their support but after a certain point has been reached money making can never stand on the same plane with other and nobler forms of effort. The roll of American worthies numbers men like Washington and Lincoln Grant and Farragut Hawthorne and Poe Fulton and Morse St. Gaudens and MacMonnies it numbers statesmen and soldiers artists sculptors inventors explorers bridge builders philanthropists moral leaders in great reforms it numbers all these and many others like them it numbers men who have de served well in any one of countless fields of activity but of rich men it numbers only those who have used their riches aright who have treated wealth not as an end but as a means who have shown DIDACTIC AND MORAL 173 good conduct in acquiring it and not merely lavish generosity in disposing of it. Thrice fortunate are you to whom it is given to lead lives of resolute endeavor for the achievement of lofty ideals and to instill by living and teaching those ideals into the minds of the next gen eration who will as its boys and girls of to day and as men and women of to morrow determine finally the position which this ration is to hold in the history of mankind. THE POWER AND WORTH OF CHARACTER William Jennings Bryan The graduation oration spoken by William Jennings Bryan at Illinois College Jacksonville Illinois Thursday June 2 1881 is at the same time one of his most polished and most thoughtful pro ductions. As with the selection from Theodore Roosevelt s address this text contains thoughts of peculiar value to teachers. Perhaps we could not find better illustrations of the power and worth of character than are presented in the lives of two of our own country men names about which cluster in most sacred nearness the affections of the American people honored dust over which have fallen the truest tears of sorrow ever shed by a nation for its heroes the father and savior of their common country the one the appointed guardian of its birth the other the preserver of its life. Both were reared by the hand of Providence for the work entrusted to their care both were led by nature along the rugged path of poverty both formed a character whose foundations were laid broad and deep in the purest truths of morality a character which stood unshaken amid the terrors of war and the tranquility of peace a character which allowed neither cowardice upon the battle field nor tyranny in the presi dential chair. Thus did they win the hearts of their countrymen and prepare for themselves a lasting place of rest in the tender memories of a grateful people. History but voices our own experience when it awards to true nobility of character the highest place among the enviable possessions of man. Nor is it the gift of fortune. In this at least we are not creatures of circumstances: talent special genius may be the gift of nature position in society the gift of birth respect may be bought with wealth but 174 ESSENTIALS OF READING neither one nor all of these can give character. It is a slow but sure growth to which every thought and action lends its aid. To form character is to form grooves in which are to flow the purposes of our lives. It is to adopt principles which are to be the measure of our actions the criteria of our deeds. This we are doing each day either consciously or unconsciously there is character formed by our association with each friend by every aspiration of the heart by every object toward which our affections go out yea by every thought that flies on its lightning wing through the dark recesses of the brain. It is a law of mind that it acts most readily in familiar paths hence repetition forms habit and almost before we are aware we are chained to a certain routine of action from which it is difficult to free ourselves. We imitate that which we admire. If we revel in stories of blood and are pleased with the sight of barbaric cruelty we find it easy to become a Caligula or a Domitian we picture to ourselves scenes of cruelty in which we are actors and soon await only the opportunity to vie in atrocity with the Neroes of the past. If we delight in gossip and are not content unless each neighbor is laid upon the dissecting table we form a character unenviable indeed and must be willing to bear the contempt of all the truly good while we roll our bit of scandal as a sweet morsel under the tongues. But if each day we gather some new truths plant ourselves more firmly upon principles which are eternal guard every thought and action that they may be pure and conform our lives more nearly to that Perfect Model we shall form a character that will be a fit background on which to paint the noblest deeds and grandest intellectual and moral achievements a character that cannot be concealed but which will bring success in this life and form the best preparation for that which is beyond. The formation of character is a work which continues through life but at no time is it so active as in youth and early manhood. At this time impressions are most easily made and mistakes most easily cor rected. It is the season for the sowing of the seed the springtime of life. There is no complaint in the natural world because each fruit and herb brings forth after its kind there is no complaint if a neglected seed time brings a harvest of want there is no cry of injustice if thistles spring from thistle seed sown. As little reason have we to murmur if in after life we discover a character dwarfed and deformed by the evil thoughts and actions of to day as little reason have we to impeach the DIDACTIC AND MORAL 175 wisdom of God if our wild oats as they are called in paliation leave scars upon our manhood which years of reform fail to wear away. Character is the entity the individuality of the person shining from every window of the soul either as a beam of purity or as a clouded ray that betrays the impurity within. The contest between light and dark ness right and wrong goes on: day by day hour by hour moment by moment our characters are being formed and this is the all important question which comes to us in accents ever growing fainter as we journey from the cradle to the grave Shall those characters be good or bad ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD Thomas Gray The curfew tolls the knell of parting day The lowing herd winds slowly o er the lea The ploughman homeward plods his weary way And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight And all the air a solemn stillness holds Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds. Save that from yonder ivy mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as wandering near her secret bower Molest her ancient solitary reign. Beneath those rugged elms that yew tree s shade Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap Each in his narrow cell forever laid The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense breathing morn The swallow twittering from the straw built shed The cock s shrill clarion or the echoing horn No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn Or busy housewife ply her evening care No children run to lisp their sire s return Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. 176 ESSENTIALS OF READING Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke How jocund did they drive their team afield How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke Let not Ambition mock their useful toil Their homely joys and destiny obscure Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry the pomp of power And all that beauty all that wealth e er gave Await alike th inevitable hour: The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you ye proud impute to these the fault If memory o er their tomb no trophies raise Where through the long drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath Can Honor s voice provoke the silent dust Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of time did ne er unroll Chill Penury repressed their noble rage And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest Some Cromwell guiltless of his country s blood DIDACTIC AND MORAL 177 Th applause of list ning senates to command The threats of pain and ruin to despise To scatter plenty o er a smiling land And read their history in a nation s eyes. Their lot forbade nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues but their crimes confined Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne And shut the gates of mercy on mankind The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride With incense kindled at the Muse s flame. Far from the madding crowd s ignoble strife Their sober wishes never learned to stray Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet e en these bones from insult to protect Some frail memorial still erected nigh With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked Implore the passing tribute of a sigh. Their names their years spelt by th unlettered Muse The place of fame and elegy supply And many a holy text around she strews That teach the rustic moralist to die. For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey Their pleasing anxious being e er resigned Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day Nor cast one longing lingering look behind On some fond breast the parting soul relies Some pious drops the closing eye requires E en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries E en in our ashes live their wonted fires. For thee who mindful of th unhonored dead Dost in these lines their artless tale relate If chance by lonely contemplation led Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate i 78 ESSENTIALS OF READING Haply some hoary headed swain may say Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. There at the foot of yonder nodding beech That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high His listless length at noontide would he stretch And pore upon the brook that babbles by. Hard by yon wood now smiling as in scorn Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove Now drooping woful wan like one forlorn Or crazed with care or crossed in hopeless love. One morn I missed him on the customed hill Along the heath and near his favorite tree Another came nor yet beside the rill Nor up the lawn nor at the wood was he The next with dirges due in sad array Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne. Approach and read for thou canst read the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn. THE EPITAPH Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A youth to fortune and to fame unknown. Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth And Melancholy marked him for her own. Large was his bounty and his soul sincere Heaven did a recompense as largely send: He gave to misery all he had a tear He gained from Heaven twas all he wished a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose Or draw his frailties from their dread abode There they alike in trembling hope repose The bosom of his Father and his God. CHAPTER XVI ORATORICAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS Abraham Lincoln On November 19 1863 two orators met on the r memorable field of Gettysburg. One was gifted in oratory learned in schools and from books the other was skilled in the witchery of speech as gathered from the river the forest and the plain. Both spoke. The speech of one lies dumb and meaningless unread and unremem bered while the speech of the other rooted in the memory of man and oft repeated will live with the literature of the race growing grander and sweeter in pathos and in beauty as the years shall gather around and about it. One was a brain effort the other was a heart effort. One spoke words that were heard the other words that were felt. One was art the other genius. One was Edward Everett the gifted scholar of New England the other was Abraham Lincoln the gifted railsplitter of the West. Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the propo sition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate we cannot consecrate we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 179 180 ESSENTIALS OF READING It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that govern ment of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN Charles H. Fowler Probably the finest analysis of the character of the great Presi dent is contained in the following eloquent words selected from Bishop Fowler s lecture on Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was the representative character of his age. No man ever so fully embodied the purposes the affections and the power of the people. He came among us. He was one of us. His birth his education his habits his motives his feelings his ambitions were all our own. Had he been born among hereditary aristocrats he would not have been our President. But born in the cabin and reared in the field and in the forest he became the Great Commoner. The classics of the schools might have polished him but they would have separated him from us. But trained in the common school of adversity his cal loused palms never slipped from the poor man s hand. A child of the people he was as accessible in the White House as he had been in the cabin. His practical wisdom made him the wonder of all lands. With such certainty did Lincoln follow causes to their ultimate effects that his foresight of contingencies seemed almost prophetic. While we in turn were calling him weak and stubborn and blind Europe was amazed at his statesmanship and awed into silence by the grandeur of his plans. Measured by what he did Lincoln is a statesman without a peer. He stands alone in the world. He came to the government by a minority vote without an army without a navy without money without munitions. He stepped into the midst of the most stupendous most wide spread most thoroughly equipped and appointed most deeply planned rebellion of all history. He stamped upon the earth and two millions of armed men leaped forward to defend their country. He spoke to the sea and the mightiest navy the world had ever seen crowned every wave. He is radiant with all the great virtues and his memory shall shed a ORATORICAL 181 glory upon this age that shall fill the eyes of man as they look into history. An administrator he saved the nation in the perils of unparalleled civil war. A statesman he justified his measures by their success. A philanthropist he gave liberty to one race and freedom to another. A moralist he bowed from the summit of human power to the foot of the cross and became a Christian. A mediator he exercised mercy under the most absolute abeyance to law. A leader he was no partisan. A commander in a war of the utmost carnage he was unstained with blood. A ruler in desperate times he was untainted with crime. As a man he has left no word of passion no thought of malice no trick of craft no act of jealousy no purpose of selfish ambition. He has adorned and embellished all that is good and all that is great in our humanity and has presented to all coming generations the representative of the divine idea of free government. THE SOUTHERN SOLDIER Henry Grady You of the North have had drawn for you with a master s hand the picture of your returning armies. You have heard how in the pomp and circumstance of war they came back to you marching with proud and victorious tread reading their glory in the nation s eyes. Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory in pathos and not in splendor Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier as buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was the testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April 1865. Think of him as ragged half starved heavy hearted enfeebled by want and wounds having fought to exhaus tion he surrenders his gun wrings the hands of his comrades in silence and lifting his tear stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia hills pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey. What does he find let me ask you who went to your homes eager to find in the welcome you had justly earned full payment for four years sacrifice what does he find when having followed the battle stained cross against overwhelming odds dreading death not half so much as surrender he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful He finds his house in ruins his farms devastated his slaves free his 182 ESSENTIALS OF READING stock killed his barns empty his trade destroyed his money worthless his social system feudal in its magnificence swept away his people without law or legal status his comrades slain and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat his very traditions are gone without money credit employment material or training and beside all this confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence the estab lishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves. What does he do this hero in gray with a heart of gold Does he sit down in sullenness and despair Not for a day. Surely God who had stripped him in his prosperity inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never so overwhelming never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow and fields that ran red with blood in April were green with the harvest in June. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding South misguided perhaps but beautiful in her suffering. In the record of her social industrial and political evolution we await with confidence the verdict of the world LIBERTY AND UNION Daniel Webster The peroration of Webster s reply to Hayne. Blaine says of this speech It revolutionized traditions changed conclusions and was like an amendment to the constitution. I profess sir in my career hitherto to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country and the preservation of our federal union. It is to that union we owe our safety at home and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance prostrate commerce and ruined credit. Under its benign influences these great interests immediately awoke as from the dead and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider and our population spread farther and ORATORICAL 183 farther they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national social and personal happiness. I have not allowed myself sir to look beyond the union to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to see whether with my short sight I can fathom the depth of the abyss below nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering not how the union should be best preserved but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While the union lasts we have high exciting gratifying prospects spread out before us for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the vail. God grant that in my day at least that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven may I not see him shining on the broken and dis honored fragments of a once glorious union on states dissevered discor dant belligerent on a land rent with civil feuds or drenched it may be in fraternal blood Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic now known and honored thoughout the earth still full high advanced its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster not a stripe erased or polluted not a single star obscured bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as What is all this worth Nor those other words of delusion and folly Liberty first and union afterwards but everywhere spread all over in characters of living light blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land and in every wind under the whole heavens that other sentiment dear to every true American heart Liberty and union now and forever one and inseparable CHAPTER XVII DRAMATIC LOCHINVAR Sir Walter Scott O young Lochinvar is come out of the west Through all the wide Border his steed was the best And save his good broadsword he weapons had none He rode all unarmed and he rode all alone. So faithful in love and so dauntless in war There never was knight like the young Lochinvar. He stayed not for brake and he stopped not for stone He swam the Eske river where ford there was none But ere he alighted at Netherby gate The bride had consented the gallant came late: For a laggard in love and a dastard in war Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar. So boldly he entered the Netherby hall Among bride s men and kinsmen and brothers and all: Then spoke the bride s father his hand on his sword For the poor craven bridegroom spoke never a word O come ye in peace here or come ye in war Or to dance at our bridal young Lord Lochinvar I long wooed your daughter my suit you denied Love swells like the Solway but ebbs like its tide And now I am come with this lost love of mine To lead but one measure drink one cup of wine. There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar. The bride kissed the goblet the knight took it up He quaffed off the wine and he threw down the cup She looked down to blush and she looked up to sigh With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye. 184 DRAMATIC 185 He took her soft hand ere her mother could bar Now tread we a measure said young Lochinvar. So stately his form and so lovely her face That never a hall such a galliard did grace While her mother did fret and her father did fume And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume And the bride maidens whispered Twere better by far To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar. One touch to her hand and one word in her ear When they reached the hall door and the charger stood near So light to the croup the fair lady he swung So light to the saddle before her he sprung She is won we are gone over bank bush and scaur They ll have fleet steeds that follow quoth young Lochinvar. There was mounting mong Graemes of the Netherby clan Forsters Fenwicks and Musgraves they rode and they ran: There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee But the lost bride of Netherby ne er did they see. So daring in love and so dauntless in war Have ye e er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar BARBARA FRIETCHIE John Greenleaf Whittier Up from the meadows rich with corn Clear in the cool September morn The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green walled by the hills of Maryland. Round about them orchards sweep Apple and peach tree fruited deep Fair as the garden of the Lord To the eyes of the famished rebel horde On that pleasant morn of the early fall When Lee marched over the mountain wall Over the mountains winding down Horse and foot into Frederick town. r36 ESSENTIALS OF READING Forty flags with their silver stars Forty flags with their crimson bars Flapped in the morning wind: the sun Of noon looked down and saw not one. Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then Bowed with her fourscore years and ten Bravest of all in Frederick town She took up the flag the men hauled down In her attic window the staff she set To show that one heart was loyal yet. Up the street came the rebel tread Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. Under his slouched hat left and right He glanced the old flag met his sight. Halt the dust brown ranks stood fast. Fire out blazed the rifle blast. It shivered the window pane and sash It rent the banner with seam and gash. Quick as it fell from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf. She leaned far out on the window sill And shook it forth with a royal will. Shoot if you must this old gray head But spare your country s flag she said. A shade of sadness a blush of shame Over the face of the leader came The nobler nature within him stirred To life at that woman s deed and word: Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog March on he said. DRAMATIC 187 All day long through Frederick street Sounded the tread of marching feet: All day long that free flag tost Over the heads of the rebel host. Ever its torn folds rose and fell On the loyal winds that loved it well And through the hill gaps sunset light Shone over it with a warm good night. Barbara Frietchie s work is o er And the Rebel rides on his raids no more. Honor to her and let a tear Fall for her sake on Stonewall s bier. Over Barbara Frietchie s grave Flag of Freedom and Union wave Peace and order and beauty draw Round thy symbol of light and law And ever the stars above look down On thy stars below in Frederick town PAUL REVERE S RIDE Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Listen my children and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere On the eighteenth of April in Seventy five Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend If the British march By land or sea from the town to night Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light One if by land and two if by sea And I on the opposite shore will be 88 ESSENTIALS OF READING Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm For the country folk to be up and to arm. Then he said Good night and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore Just as the moon rose over the bay Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset British man of war A phantom ship with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar And a huge black hulk that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile his friend through alley and street Wanders and watches with eager ears Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door The sound of arms and the tramp of feet And the measured tread of the grenadiers Marching down to their boats on the shore. Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church By the wooden stairs with stealthy tread To the belfry chamber overhead And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade By the trembling ladder steep and tall To the highest window in the wall Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town And the moonlight flowing over all. Beneath in the churchyard lay the dead In their night encampment on the hill Wrapped in silence so deep and still That he could hear like a sentinel s tread The watchful night wind as it went Creeping along from tent to tent And seeming to whisper All is well A moment only he feels the spell DRAMATIC 189 Of the place and the hour and the secret dread Of the lonely belfry and the dead For suddenly all his thoughts are bent On a shadowy something far away Where the river widens to meet the bay A line of black that bends and floats On the rising tide like a bridge of boats. Meanwhile impatient to mount and ride Booted and spurred with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse s side Now gazed at the landscape far and near Then impetuous stamped the earth And turned and tightened his saddle girth But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry tower of the Old North Church As it rose above the graves on the hill Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo as he looks on the belfry s height A glimmer and then a gleam of light He springs to the saddle the bridle he turns But lingers and gazes till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns A hurry of hoofs in a village street A shape in the moonlight a bulk in the dark And beneath from the pebbles in passing a spark Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet: That was all And yet through the gloom and the light The fate of a nation was riding that night And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight Kindled the land into flame with its heat. He has left the village and mounted the steep And beneath him tranquil and broad and deep Is the Mystic meeting the ocean tides And under the alders that skirt its edge Now soft on the sand now loud on the ledge Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. It was twelve by the village clock i9o ESSENTIALS OF READING When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. He heard the crowing of the cock And the barking of the farmer s dog And felt the damp of the river fog That rises after the sun goes down. It was one by the village clock When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed And the meeting house windows blank and bare Gaze at him with a spectral glare As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would look upon. It was two by the village clock When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock And the twitter of birds among the trees And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall Who that day would be lying dead Pierced by a British musket ball. You know the rest. In the books you have read How the British Regulars fired and fled How the farmers gave them ball for ball From behind each fence and farm yard wall Chasing the red coats down the lane Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road And only pausing to fire and load. So through the night rode Paul Revere And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm A cry of defiance and not of fear A voice in the darkness a knock at the door And a word that shall echo forevermore For borne on the night wind of the Past DRAMATIC 191 Through all our history to the last In the hour of darkness and peril and need The people will waken and listen to hear The hurrying hoof beat of that steed And the midnight message of Paul Revere. GLAUCUS AND THE LION Edward Bulwer Lytton The following selection is from one of the last chapters of Lyttoris Last Days of Pompeii It gives the climax of the story. The hero Glaucus has been unjustly condemned to death for the murder of a priest of Isis Apaecides by name. The real murderer is Arbaces an Egyptian magician the evil spirit of the story. Another priest Calenus had witnessed the crime and would have cleared Glaucus had not Arbaces decoyed him into a dungeon locked him there and left him to die of starvation. By the assist ance of the friends of Glaucus Calenus escapes and reaches the arena just after the release of the lion that is to kill Glaucus. The scene is in the great open air amphitheatre of Pompeii. From the seats of the hundred thousand spectators can be seen the summit of Vesuvius. No sign appeared there of the terrible erup tion that was to make this really the last day of Pompeii. From the general destruction Glaucus and his friends escaped but Arbaces was killed. Glaucus had bent his limbs so as to give himself the firmest posture at the expected rush of the lion with his small and shining weapon raised on high in the faint hope that one well directed thrust for he knew that he should have time but for one might penetrate through the eye to the brain of his grim foe. But to the unutterable astonishment of all the beast seemed not even aware of the presence of the criminal. At the first moment of its release it halted abruptly in the arena raised itself half on end snuffing the upward air with impatient sighs then suddenly it sprang forward but not on the Athenian. At half speed it circled round and round the space turning its vast head from side to side with an anxious and perturbed gaze as if seeking only some avenue of escape once or twice it endeavored to leap up the parapet that divided i 9 2 ESSENTIALS OF READING it from the audience and on failing uttered rather a baffled howl than its deep toned and kingly roar. It evinced no sign either of wrath or hunger its tail drooped along the sand instead of lashing its gaunt sides and its eye though it wandered at times to Glaucus rolled again list lessly from him. At length as if tired of attempting to escape it crept with a moan into its cave and once more laid itself down to rest. The first surprise of the assembly at the apathy of the lion soon grew converted into resentment at its cowardice and the populace already merged iheir pity for the fate of Glaucus into angry compassion for their own disappointment. The editor called to the keeper. How is this Take the goad prick him forth and then close the door of the den. As the keeper with some fear but more astonishment was preparing to obey a loud cry was heard at one of the entrances of the arena there was a confusion a bustle voices of remonstrance suddenly breaking forth and suddenly silenced at the reply. All eyes turned in wonder at the interruption toward the quarter of disturbance the crowd gave way and suddenly Sallust appeared on the senatorial bench his hair dishevelled breathless heated half exhausted. He cast his eye hastily round the ring. Remove the Athenian he cried haste he is innocent Arrest Arbaces the Egyptian HE is the murderer of Apaecides Art thou mad O Sallust said the praetor rising from his seat. What means this raving Remove the Athenian Quick or his blood be on your head. Praetor delay and you answer with your own life to the emperor I bring with me the eye witness to the death of the priest Apaecides. Room there stand back give way People of Pompeii fix every eye upon Arbaces there he sits Room there for the priest Calenus Pale haggard fresh from the jaws of famine and of death his face fallen his eye dull as a vulture s his broad frame gaunt as a skeleton Calenus was supported into the very row in which Arbaces sat. His releasers had given him sparingly of food but the chief sustenance that nerved his feeble limbs was revenge. The priest Calenus Calenus cried the mob. Is it he No it is a dead man It is the priest Calenus said the praetor gravely What hast thou to say Arbaces of Egypt is the murderer of Apaecides the priest of Isis DRAMATIC 193 these eyes saw him deal the blow. It is from the dungeon into which he plunged me. It is from the darkness and horror of a death by famine that the gods have raised me to proclaim his crime Release the Athen ian he is innocent It is for this then that the lion spared him. A miracle a miracle cried Pansa. A miracle A miracle shouted the people remove the Athenian Arbaces to the lionl And that shout echoed from hill to vale from coast to sea Arbaces to the lionl Officers remove the accused Glaucus remove but guard him yet said the praetor. The gods lavish their wonders upon this day. Calenus priest of Isis thou accusest Arbaces of the murder of Apaecides I do Thou didst behold the deed Praetor with these eyes. Enough at present the details must be reserved for a more suiting time and place. Arbaces of Egypt thou hearest the charge against thee thou hast not yet spoken what hast thou to say The gaze of the crowd had been long riveted on Arbaces but not until the confusion which he had betrayed at the first charge of Sallust and the entrance of Calenus had subsided. At the shout Arbaces to the lion he had indeed trembled and the dark bronze on his cheek had taken a paler hue. But he had soon recovered his haughtiness and self control. Proudly he returned the angry glare of the countless eyes around him and replying now to the question of the praetor he said in that accent so peculiarly tranquil and commanding which characterized his tones: This man came to threaten that he would make against me the charge he has now made unless I would purchase his silence with half my fortune I remonstrated in vain. Were I guilty why was the witness of this priest silent at the trial Why did he not proclaim my guilt when I proclaimed that of Glaucus Praetor I throw myself on your laws. I demand their protection. Remove hence the accused and the accuser. I will willingly meet and cheerfully abide by the decision of the legitimate tribunal. This is no place for further parley. He says right said the praetor. Ho guards remove Arbaces guard Calenus Sallust we hold you responsible for your accusation. Let the sports be resumed. What cried Calenus turning round to the people shall Isis be i94 ESSENTIALS OF READING thus contemned Shall the blood of Apaecides yet cry for vengeance Shall justice be delayed now that it may be frustrated hereafter Shall the lion be cheated of his lawful prey A god a god I feel the god rush to my lips To the lion to the lion with Arbaces His exhausted frame could support no longer the ferocious malice of the priest he sank on the ground in strong convulsions the foam gathered to his mouth he was as a man indeed whom a supernatural power had entered. The people saw and shuddered. It is a god that inspires the holy man To the lion with the Egyptian With that cry up sprang or moved thousands upon thousands. They rushed from the heights they poured down in the direction of the Egyptian. In vain did the aedile command in vain did the praetor lift his voice and proclaim the law. The people had been already rendered savage by the exhibition of blood they thirsted for more their superstition was aided by their ferocity. Aroused inflamed by the spectacle of their victims they forgot the authority of their rulers. It was one of those dread popular convulsions common to crowds wholly ignorant half free and half servile and which the peculiar constitution of the Roman provinces so frequently exhibited. The power of the praetor was as a reed beneath the whirlwind still at his word the guards had drawn themselves along the lower benches on which the upper classes sat separate .from the vulgar. They made but a feeble barrier the waves of the human sea halted for a moment to enable Arbaces to count the exact moment of his doom In despair and in a terror which beat down even pride he glanced his eyes over the rolling and rushing crowd when right above them through the wide chasm which had been left in the velaria he beheld a strange and awful apparition he beheld and his craft restored his courage He stretched his hand on high over his lofty brow and royal features there came an expression of unutterable solemnity and command. Behold he shouted with a voice of thunder which stilled the roar of the crowd behold how the gods protect the guiltless The fires of the avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness of my accusers The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian and beheld with ineffable dismay a vast vapor shooting from the summit of Vesuvius in the form of a gigantic pine tree the trunk blackness the branches fire a fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment now fiercely luminous now of a dull and dying red that again blazed terrifically forth with intolerable glare There was a dead heart sunken silence through which there suddenly DRAMATIC 195 broke the roar of the lion which was echoed back from within the building by the sharper and fiercer yells of its fellow beast. Dread seers were they of the burden of the atmosphere and wild prophets of the wrath to come. Then there arose on high the universal shrieks of women the men stared at each other but were dumb. At that moment they felt the earth shake beneath their feet the walls of the theater trembled and beyond in the distance they heard the crash of falling roofs an instant more and the mountain cloud seemed to roll toward them dark and rapid like a torrent at the same time it cast forth from its bosom a shower of ashes mixed with vast fragments of burning stone Over the crushing vines over the desolate streets over the amphitheater itself far and wide with many a mighty splash in the agitated sea fell that awful shower No longer thought the crowd of justice or of Arbaces safety for themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly each dashing pressing crushing against the other. Trampling recklessly over the fallen amid groans and oaths and prayers and sudden shrieks the enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the numerous passages. Whither should they fly Some anticipating a second earthquake hastened to their homes to load themselves with their most costly goods and escape while it was yet time others dreading the showers of ashes that now fell fast torrent upon torrent over the streets rushed under the roofs of the nearest houses or temples or sheds shelter of any kind for protection from the terrors of the open air. But darker and larger and mightier spread the cloud above them. It was a sudden and more ghastly Night rushing upon the realm of Noon CHAPTER XVIII NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE THE LADY OF SHALOTT Alfred Tennyson part I On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye That clothe the wold and meet the sky And thro the field the road runs by To many tower d Camelot And up and down the people go Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below The island of Shalott. Willows whiten aspens quiver Little breezes dusk and shiver Thro the wave that runs forever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls and four gray towers. Overlook a space of flowers And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott. By the margin willow veil d Slide the heavy barges trail d By slow horses and unhailed The shallop flitteth silken sail d Skimming down to Camelot: But who hath seen her wave her hand Or at the casement seen her stand Or is she known in all the land The Lady of Shalott 196 NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE 197 Only reapers reaping early In among the bearded barley Hear a song that echoes cheerly From the river winding clearly Down to tower d Camelot: And by the moon the reaper weary Piling sheaves in uplands airy Listening whispers Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott. PART 11 There she weaves by night and day A magic web of colors gay. She has heard a whisper say A curse is on her if she stay To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be And so she weaveth steadily And little other care hath she The Lady of Shalott. And moving thro a mirror clear That hangs before her all the year Shadows of the world appear. There she sees the highway near Winding down to Camelot: There the river eddy whirls And there the surly village churls And the red cloaks of market girls Pass onward from Shalott. Sometimes a troop of damsels glad An abbot on an ambling pad Sometimes a curly shepherd lad Or long hair d page in crimson clad Goes by to tower d Camelot And sometimes thro the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two: She hath no loyal knight and true The Lady of Shalott i98 ESSENTIALS OF READING But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror s magic sights For often thro the silent nights A funeral with plumes and lights And music went to Camelot: Or when the moon was overhead Came two young lovers lately wed I am half sick of shadows said The Lady of Shalott. PART III A bow shot from her bower eaves He rode between the barley sheaves The sun came dazzling through the leaves And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot. A red cross knight for ever kneeled To a lady in his shield That sparkled on the yellow field Beside remote Shalott. . . All in the blue unclouded weather Thick jeweled shone the saddle leather The helmet and the helmet feather Burned like one burning flame together As he rode down to Camelot. As often through the purple night Below the starry clusters bright Some bearded meteor trailing light Moves over still Shalott. His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed On burnished hooves his war horse trode From underneath his helmet flowed His coal black curls as on he rode As he rode down to Camelot. From the bank and from the river He flashed into the crystal mirror Tirra lirra by the river Sang Sir Lancelot. NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE 199 She left the web she left the loom She made three paces through the room She saw the water lily bloom She saw the helmet and the plume She looked down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide The mirror cracked from side to side The curse is come upon me cried The Lady of Shalott. PART IV In the stormy east wind straining The pale yellow woods were waning The broad stream in his banks com plaining Heavily the low sky raining Over tower d Camelot Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat And round about the prow she wrote The Lady oj Shalott. And down the river s dim expanse Like some bold seer in a trance Seeing all his own mischance With a glassy countenance Did she look to Camelot. And at the closing of the day She loosed the chain and down she lay The broad stream bore her far away The Lady of Shalott. Lying robed in snowy white That loosely flew to left and right The leaves upon her falling light Thro the noises of the night She floated down to Camelot And as the boat head wound along The willowy hills and fields among They heard her singing her last song The Lady of Shalott. 200 ESSENTIALS OF READING Heard a carol mournful holy Chanted loudly chanted lowly Till her blood was frozen slowly And her eyes were darken d wholly Turn d to tower d Camelot For ere she reached upon the tide The first house by the water side. Singing in her song she died The Lady of Shalott. Under tower and balcony By garden wall and gallery A gleaming shape she floated by Dead pale between the houses high Silent into Camelot. Out upon the wharfs they came Knight and burgher lord and dame And round the prow they read her name The Lady of Shalott. Who is this and what is here And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer: And they cross d themselves for fear All the knights at Camelot But Lancelot mused a little space : He said She has a lovely face God in his mercy lend her grace The Lady of Shalott. ICHABOD CRANE Washington Irving The following selection is the beginning of Washington Irvings Legend of Sleepy Hollow in the Sketch Book It is an ad mirable example of Irving s beautiful style and a wonderfully vivid picture of the extraordinary hero of a remarkable adventure. A careful study of the whole tale as well as of this selection will afford not only pleasure but profit in an enlarged vocabulary and a cultivated taste. NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE 201 In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed there lies a small market town or rural port which by some is called Greensburgh but which is more generally and pro perly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given we are told in former days by the good house wives of the adjacent country from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may I do not vouch for the fact but merely advert to it for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village perhaps about two miles there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it with just murmur enough to lull one to repose and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquility. From the listless repose of the place and the peculiar character of its inhabitants who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. In this by place of nature there abode in a remote period of American history that is to say some thirty years since a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane who sojourned or as he expressed it tarried in Sleepy Hollow for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut a State which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodsmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall but exceedingly lank with narrow shoulders long arms and legs hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves feet that might have served for shovels and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small and flat at top with huge ears large green glassy eyes and a long snipe nose so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth or some scarecrow eloped from the cornfield. His school house was a low building of one large room rudely con 202 ESSENTIALS OF READING structedof logs the windows partly glazed and partly patched with leaves of old copy books. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours by withes twisted in the handle of the door and stakes set against the window shutters so that though a thief might get in with perfect ease he would find some embarrassment in getting out an idea most probably borrowed by the architect Yost Van Houten from the mystery of an eel pot. The school house stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation just at the foot of a woody hill with a brook running close by and a formidable birch tree growing at one end of it. From hence the low murmur of his pupils voices conning over their lessons might be heard in a drowsy summer s day like the hum of a beehive interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master in the tone of menace or command or peradventure by the appalling sound of the birch as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowl edge. Truth to say he was a conscientious man and ever bore in mind the golden maxim Spare the rod and spoil the child. Ichabod Crane s scholars certainly were not spoiled. I would not have it imagined however that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their subjects on the contrary he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity taking the burden off the backs of the weak and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling that winced at the least flourish of the rod was passed by with indulgence but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little tough wrong headed broad skirted Dutch urchin who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called doing his duty by their parents and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance so consolatory to the smarting urchin that he would remember it and thank him for it the longest day he had to live. When school hours were over he was even the companion and play mate of the larger boys and on holiday afternoons would convoy some of the smaller ones home who happened to have pretty sisters or good housewives for mothers noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed it behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from his school was small and would have been scarcely suf ficient to furnish him with daily bread for he was a huge feeder and though lank had the dilating powers of an anaconda but to help out his maintenance he was according to country custom in those parts boarded and lodged at the houses of the famers whose children he instructed. With these he lived successively a week at a time thus NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE 203 going the rounds of the neighborhood with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief. That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden and schoolmasters as mere drones he had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms helped to make hay mended the fences took the horses to water drove the cows from pasture cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside too all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire the school and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children particularly the youngest and like the lion bold which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold he would sit with a child on one knee and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together. In addition to his other vocations he was the singing master of the neighborhood and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays to take his station in front of the church gallery with a band of chosen singers where in his own mind he completely carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church and which may even be heard half a mile off quite to the opposite side of the mill pond on a still Sunday morning which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus by divers little make shifts in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated by hook and by crook the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough and was thought by all who understood nothing of the labor of head work to have a wonderfully easy life of it. The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood being considered a kind of idle gentle man like personage of vastly superior taste and accomplishment to the rough country swains and indeed inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance therefore is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea table of a farm house and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats or peradventure the parade of a silver tea pot. Our man of letters therefore was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the church yard between services on Sundays gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overrun the surrounding trees reciting 204 ESSENTIALS OF READING for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tomb stones or sauntering with a whole bevy of them along the banks of the adjacent mill pond while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back envying his superior elegance and address. From his half itinerant life also he was a kind of traveling gazette carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was moreover esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition for he had read several books quite through and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather s History of New England Witchcraft in which by the way he most firmly and potently believed. THE DEATH OF LITTLE NELL Charles Dickens She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and calm so free from trace of pain so fair to look upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God and waiting for the breath of life not one who had lived and suffered death. Her couch was dressed with here and there some winter berries and green leaves gathered in a spot she had been used to favor. When I die put near me something that has loved the light and had the sky above it always. These were her words. She was dead. Dear gentle patient noble Nell was dead. Her little bird a poor slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed was stirring nimbly in its cage and the strong heart of its child mistress was mute and motionless forever. Where were the traces of her early cares her sufferings and fatigues All gone. Sorrow was dead indeed in her but peace and perfect happiness were born imagined in her tranquil beauty and profound repose. And still her former self lay there unaltered in this change. Yes. The old fireside had smiled upon that same sweet face it had passed like a dream through haunts of misery and care at the door of the poor schoolmaster on the summer evening before the furnace fire upon the cold wet night at the still bedside of the dying boy there had been the same mild and lovely look. So shall we know the angels in their majesty after death. The old man held one languid arm in his and the small tight hand folded to his breast for warmth. It was the hand she had stretched out to him with her last smile the hand that had led him on through all their wanderings. Ever and anon he pressed it to his lips then hugged NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE 205 it to his breast again murmuring that it was warmer now and as he said it he looked in agony to those who stood around as if imploring them to help her. She was dead and past all help or need of help. The ancient rooms she had seemed to fill with life even while her own was waning fast the garden she had tended the eyes she had gladdened the noiseless haunts of many a thoughtless hour the paths she had trodden as it were but yesterday could know her no more. It is not said the schoolmaster as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek and gave his tears free vent it is not in this world that Heaven s justice ends. Think what earth is compared with the world to which her young spirit has winged its early flight and say if one deliberate wish expressed in solemn tones above this bed could call her back to life which of us would utter it She had been dead two days. They were all about her at the time knowing that the end was drawing on. She died soon after daybreak. They had read and talked to her in the earlier portion of the night but as the hours crept on she sank to sleep. They could tell by what she faintly uttered in her dreams that they were of her journeyings with the old man: they were of no painful scenes but of those who had helped them and used them kindly for she often said God bless you with great fervor. Waking she never wandered in her mind but once and that was at beautiful music which she said was in the air. God knows. It may have been. Opening her eyes at last from a very quiet sleep she begged that they would kiss her once again. That done she turned to the old man with a lovely smile upon her face such they said as they had never seen and never could forget and clung with both her arms about his neck. She had never murmured or complained: but with a quiet mind and manner quite unaltered save that she every day became more earnest and more grateful to them faded like the light upon the summer s evening. The child who had been her little friend came there almost as soon as it was day with an offering of dried flowers which he begged them to lay upon her breast. He told them of his dream again and that it was of her being restored to them just as she used to be. He begged hard to see her saying that he would be very quiet and that they need not fear his being alarmed for he had sat alone by his younger brother all day long when he was dead and had felt glad to be so near him. They let him have his wish and indeed he kept his word and was in his childish way a lesson to them all. 206 ESSENTIALS OF READING Up to that time the old man had not spoken once except to her or stirred from the bedside. But when he saw her little favorite he was moved as they had not seen him yet and made as though he would have him come nearer. Then pointing to the bed he burst into tears for the first time and they who stood by knowing that the sight of this child had done him good left them alone together. Soothing him with his artless talk of her the child persuaded him to take some rest to walk abroad to do almost as he desired him. And when the day came on which they must remove her in her earthly shape from earthly eyes forever he led him away that he might not know when she was taken from him. They were to gather fresh leaves and berries for her bed. And now the bell the bell she had so often heard by night and day and listened to with solemn pleasure almost as a living voice rung its remorseless toll for her so young so beautiful so good. Decrepit age and vigorous life and blooming youth and helpless infancy poured forth on crutches in the pride of health and strength in the full blush of promise in the mere dawn of life to gather round her tomb. Old men were there whose eyes were dimmed and senses failing grand mothers who might have died ten years ago and still been old the deaf the blind the lame the palsied the living dead in many shapes and forms to see the closing of that early grave. Along the crowded path they bore her now pure as the newly fallen snow that covered it whose day on earth had been as fleeting. Under that porch where she had sat when Heaven in its mercy brought her to that peaceful spot she passed again and the old church received her in its quiet shade. They carried hjer to one old nook where she had many and many a time sat musing and laid their burden softly on the pavement. The light streamed on it through the colored window a window where the boughs of trees were ever rustling in the summer and where the birds sang sweetly all day long. With every breath of air that stirred among those branches in the sunshine some trembling changing light would fall upon her grave. Earth to earth ashes to ashes dust to dust. Many a young hand dropped in its little wreath many a stifled sob was heard. Some and they were not few knelt down. All were sincere and truthful in their sorrow. The service done the mourners stood apart and the villagers closed round to look into the grave before the stone should be replaced. One called to mind how he had seen her sitting on that very spot and NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE 207 how her book had fallen on her lap and she was gazing with a pensive face upon the sky. Another told how he had wondered much that one so delicate as she should be so bold how she had never feared to enter the church alone at night but had loved to linger there when all was quiet and even to climb the tower stair with no more light than that of the moon rays stealing through the loopholes in the thick old walls. A whisper went about among the oldest there that she had seen and talked with the angels and when they called to mind how she had looked and spoken and her early death some thought it might be so indeed. Thus coming to the grave in little knots and glancing down and giving place to others and falling off in whispering groups of three or four the church was cleared in time of all but the sexton and the mourn ing friends. Then when the dusk of evening had come on and not a sound disturbed the sacred stillness of the place: when the bright moon poured in her light on tomb and monument on pillar wall and arch and most of all it seemed to them upon her quiet grave in that calm time when all outward things and inward thoughts teem with assurances of immortality and worldly hopes and fears are humbled in the dust before them then with tranquil and submissive hearts they turned away and left the child with God. HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX Robert Browning 1. I sprang to the stirrup and Joris and he I galloped Dirck galloped we galloped all three Good speed cried the watch as the gate bolts undrew Speed echoed the wall to us galloping through Behind shut the postern the lights sank to rest And into the midnight we galloped abreast. II. Not a word to each other we kept the great pace Neck by neck stride by stride never changing our place I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight Then shortened each stirrup and set the pique right Rebuckled the cheek strap chained slacker the bit Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 208 ESSENTIALS OF READING in. Twas moonset at starting but while we drew near Lokeren the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear At Boom a great yellow star came out to see At Duffeld twas morning as plain as could be And from Mecheln church steeple we heard the half chime So Joris broke silence with Yet there is time IV. At Aershot up leaped of a sudden the sun And against him the cattle stood black every one To stare through the mist at us galloping past And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last With resolute shoulders each butting away The haze as some bluff river headland its spray: v. And his low head and crest just one sharp ear bent back For my voice and the other pricked out on his track And one eye s black intelligence ever that glance O er its white edge at me his own master askance And the thick heavy spume flakes which aye and anon His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. VI. By Hasselt Dirck groaned and cried Joris Stay spur Your Roos galloped bravely the fault s not in her We ll remember at Aix for one heard the quick wheeze Of her chest saw the stretched neck and staggering knees And sunk tail and horrible heave of the flank As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. VII. So we were left galloping Joris and I Past Looz and past Tongres no cloud in the sky The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff Till over by Dalhem a dome spire sprang white And Gallop gasped Joris for Aix is in sight NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE 209 viii How they ll greet us and all in a moment his roan Rolled neck and croup over lay dead as a stone And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim And with circles of red for his eyesockets rim. IX. Then I cast loose my buffcoat each holster let fall Shook off both my jack boots let go belt and all Stood up in the stirrup leaned patted his ear Called my Roland his pet name my horse without peer Clapped my hands laughed and sang any noise bad or good Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. x. And all I remember is friends flocking round As I sat with his head twixt my knees on the ground And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine Which the burgesses voted by common consent Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent. THE GRAY CHAMPION Nathaniel Hawthorne The following story from Twice Told Tales is one characteristic of its author. It has the New England flavor and the weird element so pronounced in Hawthorne s writings. It would be well to look up the historical incidents upon which the tale is founded. There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution. James II. the bigoted successor of Charles the Volup tuous had annulled the charters of all the colonies and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of tyranny: a Governor and Council holding office from the King and wholly independent of the country laws made and taxes 2io ESSENTIALS OF READING levied without concurrence of the people immediate or by their repre sentatives the rights of private citizens violated and the titles of all landed property declared void the voice of complaint stifled by restrictions on the press and finally disaffection overawed by the first band of mer cenary troops that ever marched on our free soil. For two years our ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial love which had invariably secured their allegiance to the mother country whether its head chanced to be a Parliament Protector or popish Monarch. Till these evil times however such allegiance had been merely nominal and the colonists had ruled themselves enjoying far more freedom than is even yet the privilege of the native subjects of Great Britain. At length a rumor reached our shores that the Prince of Orange had ventured on an enterprise the success of which would be the triumph of civil and religious rights and the salvation of New England. It was but a doubtful whisper it might be false or the attempt might fail and in either case the man that stirred against King James would lose his head. Still the intelligence produced a marked effect. The people smiled mysteriously in the streets and threw bold glances at their oppressors while far and wide there was a subdued and silent agitation as if the slightest signal would rouse the whole land from its sluggish despondency. Aware of their danger the rulers resolved to avert it by an imposing display of strength and perhaps to confirm their despotism by yet harsher measures. One afternoon in April 1689 Sir Edmund Andros and his favorite councillors being warm with wine assembled the red coats of the Governor s Guard and made their appearance in the streets of Boston. The sun was near setting when the march commenced. The roll of the drum at that unquiet crisis seemed to go through the streets less as the martial music of the soldiers than as a muster call to the inhabitants themselves. A multitude by various avenues assem bled in King street which was destined to be the scene nearly a century afterwards of another encounter between the troops of Bri tain and a people struggling against her tyranny. Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the Pilgrims came this crowd of their descendants still showed the strong and sombre features of their character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency than on happier occasions. There were the sober garb the general severity of mien the gloomy but undismayed expression the scriptural forms of speech and the confidence in Heaven s blessing on a righteous cause which would have marked a band of the original Puritans when threatened NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE 211 by some peril of the wilderness. Indeed it was not yet time for the old spirit to be extinct since there were men in the street that day who had worshipped there beneath the trees before a house was reared to the God for whom they had become exiles Old soldiers of the Parliament were here too smiling grimly at the thought that their aged arms might strike another blow against the house of Stuart. Here also were the veterans of King Philip s war who had burned villages and slaughtered young and old with pious fierceness while the godly souls throughout the land were helping them with prayer. Several ministers were scattered among the crowd which unlike all other mobs regarded them with such reverence as if there were sanctity in their very garments. These holy men exerted their influence to quiet the people but not to disperse them. Meantime the purpose of the Governor in disturbing the peace of the town at a period when the slightest commotion might throw the country into a ferment was almost the universal subject of inquiry and variously explained. Satan will strike his master stroke presently cried some because he knoweth that his time is short. All our godly pastors are to be dragged to prison We shall see them at a Smithfield fire in King street Hereupon the people of each parish gathered closer round their minister who looked calmly upwards and assumed a more apostolic dignity as well befitted a candidate for the highest honor of his profession the crown of marytrdom. It was actually fancied at that period that New England might have a John Rogers of her own to take the place of that worthy in the Primer. The Pope of Rome has given orders for a new St. Bartholomew cried others. We are to be massacred man and male child Neither was this rumor wholly discredited although the wiser class believed the Governor s object somewhat less atrocious. His predecessor under the old charter Bradstreet a venerable companion of the first settlers was known to be in town. There were grounds for conjecturing that Sir Edmund Andros intended at once to strike terror by a parade of military force and to confound the opposite faction by possessing himself of their chief. Stand firm for the old charter Governor shouted the crowd seizing upon the idea. The good old Governor Bradstreet While this cry was at the loudest the people were surprised by the well known figure of Governor Bradstreet himself a patriarch of nearly ninety who appeared on the elevated steps of a door and with char acteristic mildness besought them to submit to the constituted authorities. 212 ESSENTIALS OF READING My children concluded this venerable person do nothing rashly. Cry not aloud but pray for the welfare of New England and expect patiently what the Lord will do in this matter The event was soon to be decided. All this time the roll of the drum had been approaching through Cornhill louder and deeper till with reverberations from house to house and the regular tramp of martial footsteps it burst into the street. A double rank of soldiers made their appearance occupying the whole breadth of the passage with shouldered matchlocks and matches burning so as to present a row of fires in the dusk Their steady march was like the progress of a machine that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way. Next moving slowly with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement rode a party of mounted gentlemen the central figure being Sir Edmund Andros elderly but erect and soldier like Those around him were his favorite councillors and the bitterest foes of New England. At his right hand rode Edward Randolph our arch enemy that blasted wretch as Cotton Mather calls him who achieved the downfall of our ancient government and was followed with a sensible curse through life and to his grave. On the other side was Bullivant scattering jests and mockery as he rode along. Dudley came behind with a downcast look dreading as well he might to meet the indignant gaze of the people who beheld him their only countryman by birth among the oppressors of his native land. The captain of a frigate in the harbor and two or three civil officers under the Crown were also there. But the figure which most attracted the public eye and stirred up the deepest feeling was the Episcopal clergyman of King s Chapel riding haughtily among the magistrates in his priestly vestments the fitting representative of prelacy and persecution the union of church and state and all those abominations which had driven the Puritans to the wilderness. Another guard of soldiers in double rank brought up the rear. The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England and its moral the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the nature of things and the character of the people. On one side the religious multitude with their sad visages and dark attire and on the other the group of despotic rulers with the high churchman in the midst and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms all magnificently clad flushed with wine proud of unjust authority and scoffing at the universal groan. And the mercenary soldiers waiting but the word to deluge the street with blood showed the only means by which obedience could be secured. NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE 213 O Lord of Hosts cried a voice among the crowd provide a Champion for thy people This ejaculation was loudly uttered and served as a herald s cry to introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had rolled back and were now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street while the soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The intervening space was empty a paved solitude between lofty edifices which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly there was seen the figure of an ancient man who seemed to have emerged from among the people and was walking by himself along the centre of the street to confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress a dark cloak and a steeple crowned hat in the fashion of at least fifty years before with a heavy sword upon his thigh but a staff in his hand to assist the tremulous gait of age. When at some distance from the multitude the old man turned slowly round displaying a face of antique majesty rendered doubly venerable by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at once of encouragement and warning then turned again and resumed his way. Who is this gray patriarch asked the young men of their sires. Who is this venerable brother asked the old men among themselves. But none could make reply. The fathers of the people those of fourscore years and upwards were disturbed deeming it strange that they should forget one of such evident authority whom they must have known in their early days the associate of Winthrop and all the old Councillors giving laws and making prayers and leading them against the savage. The elderly men ought to have remembered him too with locks as gray in their youth as their own were now. And the young How could he have passed so utterly from their memories that hoary sire the relic of long departed times whose awful benediction had surely been bestowed on their uncovered heads in childhood Whence did he come What is his purpose Who can this old man be whispered the wondering crowd. Meanwhile the venerable stranger staff in hand was pursuing his solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the advanc ing soldiers and as the roll of their drum came full upon his ear the old man raised himself to a loftier mien while the decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders leaving him in gray but unbroken dignity. Now he marched onward with a warrior s step keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced on one side and the 214 ESSENTIALS OF READING whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other till when scarcely twenty yards remained between the old man grasped his staff by the middle and held it before him like a leader s truncheon. Stand cried he. The eye the face and attitude of command the solemn yet war like peal of that voice fit either to rule a host in the battle field or be raised to God in prayer were irresistible. At the old man s word and out stretched arm the roll of the drum was hushed at once and the advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude. That stately form combining the leader and the saint so gray so dimly seen in such an ancient garb could only belong to some old champion of the righteous cause whom the oppressor s drum had summoned from his grave i hey raised a shout of awe and exultation and looked for the deliveranc e of New England. The Goven or and the gentlemen of his party perceiving themselves brought to an unexpected stand rode hastily forward as if they would have pressed tt eir snorting and affrighted horses right against the hoary apparition. Hi however blenched not a step but glancing his severe eye round the gi oup which half encompassed him at last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old man was chief ruler there and that the Governor and Council with soldiers at their back representing the whole power and authority of the Crown had no alternative but obedience. What does this old fellow here cried Edward Randolph fiercely. On Sir Edmund Bid the soldiers forward and give the dotard the same choice that you give all his countrymen to stand aside or be trampled on Nay nay let us show respect to the good grandsire said Bullivant laughing. See you not he is some old round headed dignitary who hath lain asleep these thirty years and knows nothing of the change of times Doubtless he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old Noll s name Are you mad old man demanded Sir Edmund Andros in loud and harsh tones. How dare you stay the march of King James s Governor I have staid the march of a King himself ere now replied the gray figure with stern composure. I am here Sir Governor because the cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place and beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord it was vouchsafed me to appear once again on earth in the NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE 215 good old cause of his saints. And what speak ye of James There is no longer a popish tyrant on the throne of England and by to morrow noon his name shall be a by word in this very street where ye would make it a word of terror. Back thou that wast a Governor back With this night thy power is ended to morrow the prison back lest I foretell the scaffold The people had been drawing nearer and nearer and drinking in the words of their champion who spoke in accents long disused like one unaccustomed to converse except with the dead of many years ago. But his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers not wholly without arms and ready to convert the very stones of the street into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man then he cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude and beheld them burn ing with that lurid wrath so difficult to kindle or to quench and again he fixed his gaze on the aged form which stood obscurely in an open space where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his thoughts he uttered no word which might discover. But whether the oppressor were overawed by the Gray Champion s look or perceived his peril in the threatening attitude of the people it is certain that he gave back and ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded retreat. Before another sunset the Governor and all that rode so proudly with him were prisoners and long ere it was known that James had abdicated King William was proclaimed throughout New England. But where was the Gray Champion Some reported that when the troops had gone from King street and the people were thronging tumult uously in their rear Bradstreet the aged Governor was seen to embrace a form more aged than his own. Others soberly affirmed that while they marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect the old man had faded from their eyes melting slowly into the hues of twilight till where he stood there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape was gone. The men of that generation watched for his reappear ance in sunshine and in twilight but never saw him more nor knew when his funeral passed nor where his gravestone was. And who was the Gray Champion Perhaps his name might be found in the records of that stern Court of Justice which passed a sentence too mighty for the age but glorious in all after times for its humbling lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have heard that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires the old man appears again. When eighty years had passed he walked once more in King street. Five years later in the 2i6 ESSENTIALS OF READING twilight of an April morning he stood on the green beside the meeting house at Lexington where now the obelisk of granite with a slab of slate inlaid commemorates the first fallen of the Revolution. And when our fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker s Hill all through that night the old warrior walked his rounds. Long long may it be ere he comes again His hour is one of darkness and adversity and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us or the invader s step pollute our soil still may the Gray Champion come: for he is the type of New England s hereditary spirit and his shadowy march on the eve of danger must ever be the pledge that New England s sons will vindicate their ancestry. CHAPTER XIX HUMOROUS A CURTAIN LECTURE Douglas Jerrold Well that s the third umbrella gone since Christmas. What were you to do Why let him go home in the rain to be sure. I am very certain he wouldn t spoil. Take cold indeed He doesn t look like one of the sort to take cold. Besides he d have better taken cold than taken our umbrella. Do you hear the rain Mr. Caudle I say do you hear the rain And as I m alive if it isn t St. Swithin s day Do you hear it against the windows Nonsense you don t impose upon me you can t be asleep with such a shower as that. Do you hear it I say O you do hear it Well that s a pretty flood I think to last six weeks and no stirring all the time out of the house. Pooh don t think me a fool Mr. Caudle don t insult me he return the umbrella Anybody would think you were born yesterday. As if anybody ever did return an umbrella There do you hear it Worse and worse. Cats and dogs and for six weeks: always six weeks and no umbrella. I should like to know how the children are to go to school tomorrow. They shan t go through such weather I am determined. No they shall stop at home and never learn anything the blessed creatures sooner than go and get wet. And when they grow up I wonder who they ll have to thank for knowing nothing who indeed but their father People who can t feel for their own children ought never to be fathers. But I know why you lent the umbrella oh yes I know very well. I was going out to tea at dear mother s tomorrow you knew that and you did it on purpose. Don t tell me you hate to have me go there and take every mean advantage to hinder me. But don t you think it Mr. Caudle no sir if it comes down in buckets full I ll go all the more. No and I won t have a cab Where do you think the money s to come from You ve got nice high notions at that club of yours A cab indeed Cost me sixteen pence at least. Sixteen pence two and eight pence for there s back again. Cabs indeed I should 217 218 ESSENTIALS OF READING like to know who s to pay for em for I m sure you can t if you go on as you do throwing away your property and beggaring your children buying umbrellas. Do you hear the rain Mr. Caudle I say do you hear it But I don t care I ll go to mother s tomorrow I will and whats more I ll walk every step of the way and you know that will give me my death. Don t call me a foolish woman its you that s a foolish man. You know I can t wear clogs and with no umbrella the wet s sure to give me a cold it always does but what do you care for that Nothing at all. I may be laid up for what you care as I dare say I shall and a pretty doctor s bill there ll be. I hope there will. It will teach you to lend your umbrellas again. I shouldn t wonder if I caught my death yes and that s what you lent the umbrella for. Of course. Nice clothes I get too traipsing through weather like this. My gown and bonnet will be spoiled quite. Needn t wear em then In deed Mr. Caudle I shall wear em. No sir I m not going out a dowdy to please you or anybody else. Gracious knows it isn t often that I step over the threshold indeed I might as well be a slave at once better I should say but when I do go out Mr. Caudle I choose to go as a lady. O that rain if it isn t enough to break in the windows Ugh I look forward with dread for tomorrow. How I am to go to mother s I am sure I can t tell but if I die I ll do it. No sir I won t borrow an umbrella no and you shant buy one. Mr. Caudle if you bring home another umbrella I ll throw it into the street. Ha and it was only last week I had a new nozzle put on that umbrella. I m sure if I d have known as much as I do now it might have gone without one. Paying for new nozzles for other people to laugh at you. O it s all very well for you you can go to sleep. You ve no thought of your poor patient wife and your own dear children you think of nothing but lending umbrellas Men indeed call themselves lords of creation pretty lords when they can t even take care of an umbrella I know that walk tomorrow will be the death of me. But that s what you want: then you may go to your club and do as you like and then nicely my poor dear children will be used but then sir then you ll be happy. Yes when your poor patient wife is dead and gone then you ll marry that mean little widow Quilp I know you will. HUMOROUS 219 WHITEWASHING THE FENCE Mark Twain In this extract from Tom Sawyer Tom is shown in a dilemma. He wants to go swimming but he must whitewash the fence. At first he fears the ridicule of the boys but he hits upon a plan. One of the boys Ben Rogers comes by and pauses eating a particular ly fine apple. Tom does not see him. Ben stares a moment and then says: Hi yi you re up a stump ain t you No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist then he gave another gentle sweep and surveyed the result as before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom s mouth watered for the apple but he stuck to his work. Ben said: Hello old chap you got to work hey Why it s you Ben I wasn t noticing. Say I m going in a swimming I am. Don t you wish you could But of course you d ruther work wouldn t you Course you would Tom comtemplated the boy a bit and said: What do you call work Why ain t that work Tom resumed his whitewashing and answered carelessly: Well may be it is and may be it ain t. All I know is it suits Tom Sawyer. Oh come now you don t mean to let on that you like it The brush continued to move. Like it Well I don t see why I oughtn t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth stepped back to note the effect added a touch here and there criticised the effect again Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested more and more absorbed. Presently he said: Say Tom let me whitewash a little. Tom considered was about to consent but he altered his mind. No no I reckon it wouldn t hardly do Ben. You see Aunt Polly s awful particular about this fence right here on the street you know but if it was the back fence I wouldn t mind and she wouldn t. Yes she s awful particular about this fence it s got to be done very careful. 220 ESSENTIALS OF READING I reckon there ain t one boy in a thousand maybe two thousand that can do it in the way it s got to be done. No is that so Oh come now lemme just try only just a little. I d let you if you was me Tom. Ben I d like to honest Injun but Aunt Polly well Jim wanted to do it but she wouldn t let him. Sid wanted to do it but she wouldn t let Sid. Now don t you see how I m fixed If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it Oh shucks I ll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say I ll give you the core of my apple. Well here. No Ben now don t I m afeard I ll give you all of it Tom gave up he brush with reluctance in his face but alacrity in his heart. And while Ben worked and sweated in the sun the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by dangling his legs munched his apple and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material boys happened along every little while they came to jeer but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite in good repair and when he played out Johnny Miller bought it for a dead rat and a string to swing it with and so on and so on hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came from being a poor poverty stricken boy in the morning Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He had besides the things I have mentioned twelve marbles part of a Jew s harp a piece of blue bottle glass to look through a spool cannon a key that wouldn t unlock anything a fragment of chalk a glass stopper of a decanter a tin soldier a couple of tadpoles six fire crackers a kitten with only one eye a brass door knob a dog collar but no dog the handle of a knife four pieces of orange peel and a dilapidated old window sash. He had had a nice good idle time all the while 1 plenty of company and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it If he hadn t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village. Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world after all. He had discovered a great law of human action without knowing it namely that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing it is only necessary to make it difficult to attain. INDEX Abraham Lincoln Fowler 180 Accent and emphasis 139 Acting 34 Action child s love of 80 Allegory 53 Alphabet method 77 Alternating program 105 Aspirate definition 152 exercise 158 assigned work 102 Assignment The Lark and the Farmer 103 model 103 of lesson 99 of lesson careless 9 Village Blacksmith 103 Analysis of pitch and melody 28 of words in primary read ing 86 Apostrophe 57 Arnold Matthew quoted 59 Articulation 150 aspirate 152 158 b 153 bs 158 ch 155 commerical value 150 d 154 dentals 152 154 ds 158 example 150 22 Articulation exercises 153 f i53 g 156 g or j 155 g ork 156 gs 158 h i58 hard combinations 158 L or g 155 k or g 156 ks or x 159 1 157 labials 152 153 liquids 152 157 long words 160 m 154 method of instruction 152 n 157 nasals 152 157 ng 157 P 153 palatals 152 156 ps 159 r 158 review and suggestions i6S outline 164 s 155 s orz 155 sh 156 similar sounds 161 st 159 I 222 INDEX Articulation systematic exer cises 151 t 154 th 156 v 154 w 154 wh 159 x or ks 159 y. 157 z or s 155 zh 160 Atmosphere examples of 45 of a selection 45 Barbara Frietchie 15 36 185 Barefoot Boy quoted 44 Barrie quoted 72 Battle Hymn of the Republic 9 Bennett Harry Holcomb quot ed 38 Black Sheep dramatized 93 Book as an obstacle 124 Browning How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix 207 Browning quoted 63 Bryan Power and Worth of Character 173 Bryant quoted 59 Busy work in primary reading 84 Byron quoted 42 Careless assignment of lesson 9 Chambered Nautilus quoted 60 Character effects of 65 Chicago Tribune quoted 1 50 Chicken Little 136 Circumstance commonplace 5 Circumflex inflection 28 inflection and contrast 24 Classification of Material 108 of material outline 120 of material review and suggestions 121 Commonplace circumstance 5 Completeness momentary 29 Contrast and circumflex inflec tion 24 emphasis 24 Conversation melody in 26 Cortin The 68 Correct habits 20 Count Gismond quoted 63 Course in primary reading 88 Crossing the Bar 30 Cumnock Prof. incident 44 Curfew tolls the knell of part ing day 2 175 Curtain Lecture Jerrold 217 Death of Little Nell Dickens 202 Declaiming 34 Degree effects of 66 Dentals definition 152 exercises 154 Desire to read 80 Development of new ideas 100 Dialect selections 68 Dickens Death of Little Nell 202 Dickens quoted 6 72 Dictionary abbreviations 145 definitions 101 how to use 146 Italian a 143 key to symbols 141 long sounds 143 prefixes and suffixes 145 rules for spelling 145 short o 144 short vowels I43 H4 study of alphabet 142 INDEX 223 Dictionary suspended bar 143 table of contents 141 use of 140 use of outline 148 use of review and sug gestion 149 Didactic and moral selections 169 Difference between declaiming and reading 35 Directions mechanical 8 Discipline and melody 26 Divisions of reading recitations 98 Division of recitation and as signment of lesson outline 106 review and suggestions 106 Division of room 104 Don t know line The 113 Dramatic selections 184 Dramatization Black Sheep 93 Flower Girl The 91 Lady Moon 90 Little Boy Blue 90 Little Red Hen The 94 Milk maid The 91 Monologue and 93 Neighbors The 91 in primary reading 89 Three Crows The 93 Three Kittens The 92 Willy Boy 91 Eclectic Method 80 Effects 63 classified 65 6b defined 64 exercises 67 72 of character 65 Effects of degree 66 of incident 65 of kind 66 of mood 65 outline 73 review and suggestions 73 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 46 175 Elizabeth Stuart Phelps quoted 29 Emerson quoted 41 Emotion and emphasis 139 determines quality 40 Emotional words 102 Emphasis and accent 139 and emotion 139 and grouping 15 and main idea 22 and new ideas 23 and personal pronouns 23 example of 25 of contrast 139 too many words 24 Examples atmosphere 45 effects 63 64 65 66 67 emphasis 24 128 133 135 force 37 38 grouping 15 16 17 melody 25 27 30 128 I33 135 quality 41 42 43 44 45 46 time 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 types 51 52 58 59 60 Exercises effects 68 73 figures 58 59 grouping 15 obstacles to good expres sion 131 Experiential words 102 224 INDEX Expression and questions 22 obstacles to good 122 Expressive reading time to begin 20 Eye training the 118 Fables 54 Falling inflection 27 30 Figures of speech 52 allegory 53 apostrophe 57 exercises 57 fables 54 metaphor 52 metonymy 56 parables 54 personification 56 simile 53 synecdoche 56 Final stress 35 Flag Goes By The 38 Flower Girl The dramatized 91 Force 34 emphasis 139 examples 37 outline of 39 Foreign born child and time 9 Fowler Chas. Abraham Lin coln 180 Function of melody 19 of reading 35 Gettysburg Address Lincoln 179 Grammar grade pupil and groups 14 Good expression how to get 20 obstacles to 122 Glaucus and the Lion Bul wer Lytton 191 Grady The Southern Soldier 181 Gray Champion Hawthorne. 209 Gray Elegy Written in a Coun try Churchyard 175 Gray quoted 46 Groups and grammar grade pu pil 14 and inflection 14 and intermediate pupils 14 and primary pupils 14 words in 13 Grouping 13 and emphasis 15 and liberty of thought 15 and punctuation 13 and thought 13 exercise 15 marking 16 purpose of 13 rules 15 Guerber H. A. quoted 37 Habits correct 20 Harry Holcomb Bennett quoted 38 Hawthorne The Gray Cham pion 209 Hawthorne quoted 72 Heath Readers quoted 37 High key 28 Holmes quoted 41 60 House that Jack Built 132 Howe Julia Ward quoted 10 How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix Browning 207 How to get good expression 20 Hugo Victor quoted 44 72 Humorous selections 217 Ichabod Crane Irving 200 Idea main 19 INDEX 225 Ideals wrong children s 123 Ideas development of new 100 succession of 29 I galloped Dirck galloped 5 Illustrative Lessons 132 Imitation in acting and de claiming 35 of teacher 22 Importance of mechanics of reading 3 Importance of Teaching and Value of Right Ideals Roose velt 169 Importance of thought in read ing 3 Incident effects of 65 Inference 64 Inflection and groups 14 at end of sentence 26 circumflex 28 circumflex and contrast 24 falling 28 rising 28 Initiative in study 112 Intermediate pupil and groups 14 Interpreting melody 27 Irony 27 Irving Ichabod Crane 200 quoted 72 Jerrold A Curtain Lecture 217 John Adams Speech 7 Julia Ward Howe quoted 10 Kind effects of 66 Key 28 Knights Chorus 45 Knowledge of mechanics of reading 3 Labials definition 1 52 exercises 153 Lady Moon dramatized 90 Lady of Shalott Tennyson 196 L Allegro quoted 45 Language exercises as obsta cles 129 Lark and the Farmer assign ment 103 Larks Nest The 25 Largeness of thought 4 Length of lesson 100 Lesson assignment of 99 careless assignment of 9 illustrative 132 length of 100 selection of 99 unity 23 Liberty and Union 182 Liberty of thought 1 Lincoln quoted 42 Lincoln Gettysburg Address 179 Liquids definition 1 52 exercises 157 Lists of words as obstacles 129 Little Boy Blue dramatized 90 Little Nell Death of 5 202 Little Red Hen dramatized 94 Lochinvar Scott 184 Longfellow quoted 16 58 59 Longfellow Paul Revere s Ride 187 Look and say method 31 Looking for main ideas 22 Lowell quoted 68 73 Low key 28 McDonald quoted 72 Main idea 19 and emphasis 19 looking for 4 Marietta Holley quoted 5 226 INDEX Marking groups 16 Mark Twain Whitewashing the Fence 219 Material classification of 108 difficult 113 for quick reading 1 1 for repeated reading no for sight reading 115 for thorough study 108 interest 109 kinds 108 quantity 116 McMurray Frank quoted 112 Mechanical difficulty as ob stacle 124 Mechanical directions 8 Mechanical teacher 13 Mechanics of reading 3 knowledge of 3 Median stress 35 Melody 19 analysis 28 and motive 27 and discipline 27 function 19 in conversation 26 interpreting 28 motive necessary 27 Mental attitude 126 Mental energy 35 Metaphor 52 Method alphabet 77 eclectic 80 phonic 78 sentence 79 word 79 Metonymy 56 Milk maid dramatized 91 Milton quoted 45 Mine eyes have seen the glory 10 Model assignment 103 Momentary completeness 29 Monologue and dramatization 93 Mood effects of 65 Mother Goose s rhymes 4 Motive and melody 26 of speaker 19 29 Movement of voice 19 Narrative and descriptive selec tions 196 Nasals definition 152 exercises 157 Nationality and time 9 Neighbors dramatized 91 New ideas and emphasis 23 development 100 New words development of 100 too many 9 Number lessons as obstacles 127 Obstacles to good expression 122 book the 124 language exercises 129 lists of words 129 mechanical difficulties 124 mental attitude 126 127 number lessons 127 principles of oral reading 127 relation of words 125 review and suggestion 130 outline 130 Oral reading principles of 127 Oratorical selections 179 Order of sounds in primary reading 87 Outline articulation 164 classification of material 120 INDEX 227 Outline division of recitation and assignment of les son 106 effects 73 force 39 grouping 18 melody 32 obstacles to good expres sion 130 primary reading 96 quality 46 time 11 types 61 use of dictionary 148 Parables 54 Palatals definition 152 exercises 156 Patronizing melody 26 Paul Revere s Ride Longfel low 187 Pauses 13 Personification 56 Phelps Elizabeth Stuart quoted 29 Phonic method 78 Phonics 85 Phrases poetic 102 Pitch 19 analysis 28 Poetic words 102 Power and Worth of Charac ter Bryan 173 Primary pupil and groups 14 Primary reading 77 aims 80 analysis of words 86 busy work 84 course 88 desire to read 81 dramatization 89 order of sounds 87 Primary reading outline 96 phonics 85 principles 80 review and suggestion 96 script to print 87 sentences 83 words 81 writing in 84 Primary slide 87 Principles of oral reading 127 of primary reading 80 Print transition from script 87 Program alternating 105 Pronouns personal and em phasis 23 Punctuation and grouping 13 Pupil and groups 14 Purpose of grouping 13 of teacher in a lesson 99 Quality aspirate 43 bright ringing 41 complex 43 dark sombre 41 defined 40 examples 41 guttural 42 indicates emotion 40 normal 41 of emotion 4 orotund 42 outline 46 review and suggestion 47 Questions and expression 22 Radical stress 35 Ralph Connor quoted 6 Rapid time examples 4 5 6 Rapid utterance 5 Read Thomas Buchanan quot ed 41 228 INDEX Readers supplementary 104 119 Reading declaiming acting 35 function of 35 sight 119 supplementary 104 119 tone 122 too slow 8 Recitation division of 98 Relations of words 125 sentences 21 Rising inflection 28 Room divided for supplement ary reading 104 Roosevelt Importance of Teaching and Value of Right Ideals 169 Rate of utterance 4 Review and suggestion articu lation 165 classification of material 121 divisions of recitation and assignment of lesson 106 effects 73 force 39 grouping 18 melody 33 obstacles to good expres sion 130 primary reading 96 quality 47 time 12 types 61 use of dictionary 149 Rules and grouping 15 Schools of teaching reading 3 Scott quoted 58 Sir Lochinvar 184 Script transition to print 87 Selections for practice 167 didactic and moral 169 dramatic 184 humorous 217 narrative and descriptive 196 oratorical 179 Selection of lesson 99 Sentence inflection at end of 29 in primary reading 83 method 79 relations 21 structure 14 Shakespeare quoted 7 42 43 58 72 Sight reading 119 Simile 53 Slow reading too 8 Slow time examples of 4 6 7 Southern Soldier Grady 181 Speaker motive of 19 29 Speech John Adams 7 Stories writing 117 Story of the Great Republic quoted 37 Strength of emotion 4 Stress 35 final 35 function 35 median 35 radical 35 Structure of sentence 14 Substitution and expression 22 Succession of ideas 29 Suggestion in acting and de claiming 35 in reading 35 Supplementary readers 119 reading time 104 Synecdoche 56 INDEX 229 Teacher imitation of 22 mechanical 13 Teaching reading schools of 3 Teaching thought groups 14 Temperament and time 8 Tennyson Lady of Shalott 196 Tennyson quoted 30 59 Thought and emotion 8 and grouping 13 in reading importance of 3 units 13 units and punctuation 14 Three Crows dramatized 93 Three Kittens dramatized 92 Time 3 and nationality 9 and temperament 8 definition 4 determined by 4 examples of 10 in reading recitation 98 rapid examples 5 6 slow examples 4 6 7 Tone reading 122 Too slow reading 8 Training pupils to study 112 Transition script to print 87 Types 51 definition 51 examples 51 outline 61 review and suggestion 61 Unfamiliarity with words 9 Unity of lesson 23 Units of thought 13 of thought and punctua tion 14 Use of dictionary 140 outline 148 review and suggestion 149 Utterance rapid 5 Victor Hugo quoted 44 Village Blacksmith 16 assignment 103 Vital things in reading 3 Vocabulary of children 80 Voice movement 19 Webster Liberty and Union 182 Whitewashing the Fence Mark Twain 219 Whittier Barbara Frietchie 184 quoted 15 44 72 Willy Boy dramatized 91 Word method 79 Words development of new 100 emotional 101 experiential 101 in groups 13 in primary reading 81 poetic 102 unfamiliarity with 9 Work assigned 102 of teacher 8 Writing in primary reading 84 Wrong ideals children 123 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 021 772 704 2

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lcl.jpg Lord Conrad s Lady Book 5 of the Adventures of Conrad Starguard By Leo Frankowski ISBN: 0 345 36849 5 Prologue On the lush African plain at two and a half million years B.C. two small brown individuals were sitting naked on a small hill. To all outward appearances they were a pair of type twenty seven proto humans. There s blood on your leg he said. I m menstruating. The antifertility vaccine is wearing off. It s been a hundred and eighty years and the shot was only supposed to last a century. Yeah. My shots are wearing out too. My eyesight is going bad and my joints hurt a lot in the mornings. We re getting old she said. Just like people used to grow old before technology. They ll never find us you know. If they were looking they would have been here by now. What did we ever do to deserve this she said. I didn t do anything. You dumped the boss s cousin into the thirteenth century when the guy didn t even know about time travel. Shut up I don t want to talk about it again. Well there s something we ought to talk about. We re getting old. Before too many more years we won t be able to take care of ourselves anymore. If we stay with the protos they ll treat us the same way they treat their own parents when they get too old to be useful. They ll just abandon us he said. So So we have to do something about it We have to make sure that there s somebody around to take care of us when we get really old. See my antifertility shots have worn off too. For the next few years you can still have children and I m still fit enough to take care of you and them. If we raise them right they ll take care of us when it really gets bad. You re such an asshole. Do you think I d have children and raise them to live in this environment To be savages two million years before any other real people exist No way. Will you say that when you are starving to death because you have no teeth to chew your food with By then it ll be too late to do anything about it You re also a damn coward she said. Chapter One FROM THE JOURNAL OF COUNTESS FRANCINE Everyone seems to be keeping diaries now and I suppose I should do so too though mine will be written in French so that the maids can t read it. Perhaps writing will help me take my mind off the horror of my situation. I sit here in my husband Conrad s city of Three Walls on the tenth of March 1241 looking out from a tower window on the area that he calls his killing field. He named it thus because it was used yearly as a place to slaughter the surplus wild animals on his extensive lands here in southern Poland. It is a part of what he calls his game management program. The field still earns its name though in a far more gruesome way for the beasts now concentrated on the field below are an entire horde of besieging Mongols My husband trained all his men into a mighty army and took them to the east to defend the land against the Tartar invaders. In so doing he left the defense of his cities to the women and we are less sure of our abilities than we pretend to be. Why he left our strong walls to fight hundreds of miles away is a matter of dispute among us. For mine own part I think that if he wanted to find Mongols he could have saved himself the trip. We wait here not knowing if our loves are alive and not knowing how long we ourselves may yet live. My reader if any there might chance to be will therefore forgive me if I write on more pleasant times in more civilized places. My childhood was a pleasant one for my grandfather was a bishop and to be a bishop in France means to be wealthy and powerful. This was all the more true because his diocese was centered on the wealthy city of Troyes and it stands astride the major trade routes between Flanders where the cloth is made and Italy where the world s cloth is dyed and finished. Two great fairs were held there every year and Grandfather got his share of it. My mother was his only child and since my father held the very high post of Grandfather s privy secretary we lived in the palace as part of Grandfather s household. Grandfather s palace was a vast and beautiful place as full of color and statues as the great Cathedral of St. Pierre which stood just across from our courtyard. Our palace was much larger and far more sumptuous than the palace of the Count of Troyes though of course the count had other palaces and castles in the countryside. Suffice it to say that until I was nine years old I had four servants and my mother had twice that number. My days were spent in pleasant amusements and in learning from my tutors the arts of reading and writing and sewing. We were very happy until two great tragedies struck us within a year. The first was that the Church declared that all members of the clergy must be celibate. They may not marry and further they had never been married This meant that both my mother and I were illegitimate for my father was also an ordained priest. This ruling was none of my grandfather s doing and for a time he was able to protect us from this calamity. Then within the year my wonderful old grandfather died of a plague. Since my mother was no longer born in wedlock and my father was but a priest who was living in sin there was no inheritance for us. The new bishop had no desire to associate himself with the sinful life of his predecessor so my father was turned out of his job and we all were turned out of the palace. We had neither friends nor influence for although my father was a learned man his family was of no great means or prominence. For a long time we were at great strife to get enough food to eat. At long last my father secured a position as a professor at the University of Paris so we made the long hard journey to that city. Being a mere university professor was of course a position far below his previous one of secretary and we had to subsist on whatever the students felt like donating after they heard his lectures. Somehow my mother was able to make a sort of home for us in our single rented room above a tavern and across the street from a brothel. I was able to continue my education by attending free of charge my father s lectures and those of his fellow professors for they made this arrangement with each other. Thus we lived until my fourteenth year for my father considered our location to be convenient for him. He taught classes in a room that the university rented above the brothel. Then my dear father died and our situation became dire indeed. Many told me that I had become a great beauty and I was much noticed by the students and the young guildsmen of the city. Yet being poor and without a dowry I got no offers or at least no offers that a virtuous young woman could accept. Indeed the most persistent of my followers was the owner of the brothel and his proposal was for a position that I did not desire. Such a life is sinful dirty and short Then I met a young student who had recently taken Holy Orders and would soon be returning to his native land of Poland. He asked my mother for my hand and at first she turned him down for a priest could not possibly marry. It was this fact that had caused all our difficulties in the first place But he persisted and proved to her that the Gregorian reforms that forbade the marriage of the clergy had not yet been ratified in Poland and further that they were not likely to be. Thus my mother blessed our marriage as the best that I could do without any dowry at all. The very day of our small wedding she left us to join a convent being tired of this world and its pain. As the rent was not paid on my mother s old room I spent my wedding night with my new husband in his bunk in a student dormitory. Nothing took place that night but I put this down to his shyness considering that there were other students in the same room. And truthfully I was not precisely sure at that tender age just what should have taken place anyway. It was early spring and we left the next morning to go to Poland on foot for my young husband was almost as poor as I was. We traveled all spring and summer across France over the many Germanies through Bohemia and into Silesia that westernmost of Polish duchies. We made the trip barefoot for lack of the price of shoes and indeed we were often hungry yet as I look back on it we had a good time. We were young we were in love and we were traveling through a world that was forever new. Yet our love was not physical in the carnal sense of the word. John did not seem to want to talk of it and I decided that he did not want to burden us with a child until such time as he could properly support it. This made his actions seem pure and noble to me and of course I did not press him further. At length in the fall we got to the city of Wroclaw and reported to the bishop there at his palace. Compared to that of my grandfather it was an inferior place yet for two ragged and barefoot travelers it seemed sumptuous indeed The Bishop of Wroclaw was a pompous old man with a character far different from that of my beloved grandfather. He acted not at all pleased with his two new ragged guests. Indeed we seemed to embarrass him. He gave us each a new set of cheap clothes and sent my husband on to a new post within days. This was at the new town of Okoitz which Count Lambert was then just starting to build. When we arrived there was nothing but a clearing in the woods with a half finished wooden wall and a few huts built against it. And in this we had to survive a cold Polish winter My husband still did not properly consummate our marriage yet it seemed to me that to endure pregnancy and childbirth in those difficult conditions would be dangerous indeed and that poor John was again sacrificing his pleasure for my own welfare. I loved him all the more for it. Count Lambert on the other hand had no such inhibitions. His wife stayed on their other lands in Hungary while the count merrily swived every unmarried peasant girl in the village and did this somehow without a bit of complaint from their parents In truth my husband never chastised him for his actions either in part because had we been sent away by the count we might have had a hard time finding another parish that would take us in. Though the marriage of the clergy was legal in Poland yet was there much prejudice against it. And so the years went by at Okoitz. In time a large wooden church was built adjoining the count s rustic pal ace and we had a decent enough room adjoining the church. Our situation be came comfortable and secure and I began to yearn for a child. Also the count s example with his eager peasant girls convinced me that physical lovemaking must be as enjoyable for the woman as for the man and it was a pleasure that I still had not partaken of After many long tear drenched conversations my husband finally admitted that his abstinence was not the result of the nobility of his mind. It was the result of the inability of his body He couldn t properly play the man s part in the game There was no one with whom I could talk this problem over. Indeed the women of the village all came to me with their difficulties but as the wife of the priest I wasn t supposed to have any troubles of my own. I had to be sweetness and light and wisdom me an aging virgin of seventeen Slowly I decided that I was perhaps not a married woman at all for by the laws of the Church and of the state a marriage must be consummated to exist. Then Sir Conrad came to Okoitz out of the east burdened by some geise that he might not tell of his origins. All the town was buzzing about his prowess as a warrior for he had single handedly rid the county of an entire band of outlaws that had been murdering the people and stealing the cattle. Yet when first I saw Sir Conrad I thought that I was looking on a messenger of the Lord He was incredibly tall and handsome with a true hero s litheness of body with fine broad shoulders and dare I write it the most lovely posterior I had ever seen And there was about him such an astounding aura of wisdom and learning and kindness that my heart went out to him in that instant. In truth I remember that I let out a little squeal of delight despite the fact that my husband John was in the room with us. In the months that followed I tried to convey to Sir Conrad that I would be eager to do anything that he desired but such was his sense of honor that he would not even think sexual thoughts about a woman that he thought to be married. And since Count Lambert let Sir Conrad make full use of his peasant girls there was no need for Sir Conrad to look farther afield. Not to mention the fact that those girls were all years younger than I. Sir Conrad had an almost magical horse that could run at an amazing pace for hours on end. It could answer questions by nodding or shaking its head and it never soiled its stall but went out in the bailey like a well trained dog. It was astoundingly gentle to all even the smallest child unless it felt its lord was in danger at which time it became the most deadly of beasts I greatly admired this animal and often visited its stall. Sir Conrad was a great master of all the constructive arts and he built for the count great windmills and an entire cloth factory. He brought with him hundreds of types of seeds that grew into vastly productive food plants and radiantly beautiful flowers. He knew a thousand songs and I was sure that he thought them up on the spot though he denied it. He could dance a dozen new steps and I thrilled to be in his arms for his waltz his mazurka and his polka. He could tell a thousand wondrous stories of lands and times far far away. Many were the nights that he talked until midnight of the adventures of ninefingered Frodo or of Luke Skywalker. He loved children and was always telling them some new story or teaching them some new game or making them some new toy. He was a master of the sword the chessboard and the pen. How could I help but love him For all this work and to encourage him to continue it Count Lambert gifted Sir Conrad with a vast tract of lands in the mountains to the south of Okoitz. Sir Conrad went to these lands with a half dozen of the count s peasant girls and I feared at the time that he was leaving my life forever. He returned monthly but not to visit me. He did it in feudal duty to the count to oversee all the new construction at Okoitz. I watched from a distance and hoped. My relationship with John was steadily deteriorating and it got so that I could hardly bear to be in the same room with him let alone the same bed. Yet such was as it had to be for while we had food clothing and shelter we had very little money. I wanted to leave John and again try my luck in France but in years of scrimping I had hardly saved a small handful of silver pfennigs. To travel takes money and to establish oneself in France takes even more. Things finally came to a head with John one winter s night. I left our room the next morning and found that a merchant s caravan was leaving Okoitz immediately. They were going east instead of west but it might be long before another caravan came by and I leapt at the chance to leave no matter what the direction. Of course I did not tell John or anyone else that I was going. One of the merchants mentioned that there was a new Pink Dragon Inn at Sir Conrad s new industrial town of Three Walls. I had heard long before that the waitresses at these inns could earn more money than at any other trade no matter how sordid. They required that a woman be beautiful and a virgin but I qualified on both those counts. They required that a waitress wear a costume that consisted of little but high heeled shoes and a loincloth but the barbarians of this backward land have no shame for their bodies and indeed the only way to bathe among them is to sit naked together in a sauna so I was well used to exposing my body in public. I left the caravan and spent the night in one of the barns at Sir Miesko s manor. I hid because I was well known to that good knight and did not want him to be able to tell John of my whereabouts. In the morning a small caravan left for Three Walls to deliver food and I went with them. The Pink Dragon Inns were all that they had promised to be and in the first week there I made over forty pfennigs almost as much as a belted knight with horse and armor would have been paid by a caravan. Further my food room and such little clothing as I wore were provided me free and all that I earned could be saved. All this for the light and pleasant work of serving beer and being decorative I was wondering if I really needed to return to France at all when my husband John found me. Interlude One I hit the STOP button popped the tape and looked at it. There was nothing unusual about it. It looked completely authentic. So why had that guy acted so strangely when he d handed it to me He d just walked up put this tape in my palm and walked silently away. I rubbed my temples and pushed the call button for one of Tom s naked virgins. She was in before my finger was off the button and I ordered some Blue Mountain coffee and something for a hangover. Last night s bull session had turned itself into a weapons grade binge. The girl was back immediately doubtless having literally passed herself in the hallway. You do that sort of thing when you have a time machine handy. Whatever they used for Alka Seltzer around here worked fast. I sipped my coffee and considered things. Item: A lot of very weird things were going on. The temporal structure of all creation seemed to be shattering even back here in 60 000 B.C. The supposition was that Conrad had something to do with it although nobody had the slightest idea how including Tom and he had been one of the inventors of the time machine. Item: Tom had agreed to meet me here this morning and hadn t done so. That was odd. With time travel if you didn t want to go someplace at a particular time you could always go later and still get there on time. Tom always kept his appointments even when he was five years late subjectively. I d written him a note already and put it in my letter box and his reply hadn t popped immediately out of the other side of the box the way it was supposed to. There was nothing in those boxes but a timer and an ejection mechanism. Not much there to go wrong. Maybe he just wanted me to watch this tape first. I looked up at the girl who was awaiting further instructions. Do you have any idea what is going on I asked her. No sir. Then sit down and watch this tape with me. Yes sir. I hit the START button. Chapter Two It was a bitterly cold night and John s hair and clothes were rimed with frost. He had lost his hat and his eyes were red and shot through with blood. In front of everyone he grabbed me and demanded that I return to Okoitz with him immediately. When I managed to free myself from him he pulled out his belt knife. I was frightened and hit him on the head with a stool. I swear before God that it was never my intention to kill John or even to seriously harm him yet it happened. Sir Conrad was called to the inn since he was lord of the city. He rarely frequented his own inn and was shocked to find me there. Yet on hearing the tale he said that I was not guilty of the murder of my husband for it was an accident and done in self defense but that Count Lambert alone had the right of high justice. On returning from Okoitz Sir Conrad told me that Count Lambert had said that since a priest had been killed my case came under canon law rather than civil law and the matter would have to be taken up with the Bishop of Wroclaw. Now it is normally desirable for a criminal to have her trial brought before the Church. The penalties demanded by the clergy are usually far less severe than those handed out by the local lord. But in my case I felt this change of jurisdiction was for the worse for the Bishop of Wroclaw did not like me but Count Lambert certainly did. With John dead I knew I could easily enter the count s bed were I willing to share that honor with a dozen peasant girls Also the Church moved very slowly on legal matters and many years could go by before I might be free to return to France. I spent the uncertain months of winter working at the inn saving my money. In the spring Duke Henryk came to Three Walls to see the wonders that Sir Conrad was building in his factories and furnaces. The duke was a robust old man of seventy with an outside that was as hard as the crust of good French bread and an inside that was just as soft. The duke made me an offer that I couldn t refuse more money than I was currently making his considerable protection from any Church prosecution and duties that involved only serving the duke himself. I left Three Walls in the duke s company. Thus I spent the next five years as the personal servant and confidante of the most powerful man in Poland and in the process learned much about the politics of this new and somewhat barbarous land. I learned who wanted what and for what reason who hated who for no understandable reason at all and sometimes quite literally where all the bodies were buried. As opposed to the feuding nobles of England Italy or even France Polish nobles were less likely to go to war with one another than to resort to poison a trap or a knife in the dark. Perhaps this was because the Polish fighting man was often a member of a large extended family and was ever ashamed to kill his own cousins who might be on the opposing side. Family loyalty often took precedence with them over mere oaths of fealty. My duties to the duke were not well defined. I simply did whatever he wanted me to do. Since he wanted me to continue dressing much as I had as a waitress my legs and breasts were rarely covered save in the coldest weather. Indeed it started a fad a clothing style that many of the ladies of the court followed at least to the extent of baring their breasts. Almost none of them adopted the short dress feeling that naked legs were a bit much. I always traveled with the duke and was privy to his many secrets. Indeed an old man will always tell everything to an adoring young woman One of the strangest things that I learned was that Sir Conrad was not a native to our own times but rather had come here somehow from the far future Just how this was done was a mystery even to Conrad himself. All that I can think is that the future must be a grand place indeed for if Conrad was but an ordinary man from that time as he has so often insisted to me what must the exceptional men be like I usually slept in the duke s bed to comfort him. However like my late husband the duke was incapable of actual sex though seventy five years on God s earth certainly gave him a fair excuse Eventually Duke Henryk raised me to the peerage making me the Countess of Strzegom with a nice manor house and a few hundred peasants. I am not ashamed of anything I did with that fine old man and I certainly do not regret my years with him. The duke did not die of old age as all expected but rather by a cowardly assassin s crossbow while he was sleeping at my side in Wawel Castle. The duke had long and carefully trained his son to wield the sword of power and young Duke Henryk easily stepped into his father s position. Yet the younger Henryk was not his father s puppet but did things in his own style. The very day of the assassination all the ladies of the court were wearing dresses that covered everything but their faces and hands knowing the new duke s displeasure with the old bare styles. Though young Henryk was absolutely honorable in all things I knew it would not be wise for me to remain at court. Sir Conrad or rather I should say Baron Conrad for Count Lambert had enlarged him was in Cracow and gifted the new duke with four of his marvelous horses that they might protect him against assassins. While testing these horses I persuaded Baron Conrad to let me go with the party riding apillion. When we were racing through the fields an attempt was made by three crossbowmen to kill the new duke and Baron Conrad drew his wondrous sword and killed all the assassins while the duke s bodyguards took their lord to safety. There was something unbelievably exciting about the chase and the fight with the assassins bouncing behind Conrad and holding him tightly while he dealt death to the attackers. When we dismounted in a secluded wood to see if we could identify the bodies well to state it simply I seduced him. I suppose I should be ashamed of myself but in truth I was then twenty six years old and that is a perfectly stupid age at which to be a virgin. And how could I ever regret the wonderful pleasure that he gave me and that I had so long been denied Baron Conrad was then not maintaining a harem in the manner of his liege lord Count Lambert but was contenting himself with a single woman a dancer from the far cast who wasn t even a Christian. I had met Cilicia often and she was a pleasant enough person but I thought that I would have little difficulty displacing her in Baron Conrad s heart. I traveled with him to Three Walls part of the way on his new steam powered riverboat an almost magical contrivance. Yet he would not dismiss the foreign girl but tried instead to make us join together into a single household A foolish attempt of course it did not work. My love so wise in all things technical is like a little boy when it comes to solving the far simpler problems of people. He needs my help so much and so often But at the time I could accomplish nothing with his other paramour Cilicia. She seemed to think that she had prior claim on him and indeed she was again pregnant with another of his children. After a month of trying I left for my own estate. Conrad contrived to visit me there at least once a month and often twice. And always I gave him a warm welcome. I wanted more much more. I wanted a proper marriage and children by him but I settled for what I could get. In his own way he was generous with me. I remember best the time when forty men and as many loaded mules came to my manor gate and announced that they were my birthday present. Since they were from Conrad I bade them do as they would and they fell to it with a will. One band of them put glass in every window of my manor on frames with hinges that could open out and with screens of a coarse metal cloth that fended off insects in the summer but let the breezes through. Another band took the roof off my highest tower and mounted there a small windmill and a huge water tank with a new well below it. Yet others dug pits and trenches in the kitchen garden and buried clay pipes and even a small stone room. My kitchens were rebuilt with a big copper stove and sinks with running water but my favorite was the bathroom with hot running water and a huge porcelain tub large enough for two We used it often together Baron Conrad and I. For years I spent much of my life waiting for his return. Then just prior to last Christmas Count Lambert did a remarkably stupid thing. His wife whom he had not seen in twelve years died in Hungary and his daughter a girl of fourteen summers came north to live with him. The count decided that Baron Conrad would be the perfect match for the girl and ordered Conrad to marry her. This at a time when Conrad was making final preparations to defend the land from the Mongol invaders Conrad refused saying that he had never met the girl and anyway they didn t even speak the same language. Count Lambert became incensed and ordered Conrad off his lands. Conrad disgusted packed his saddlebags with gold and headed west like a knighterrant in a story without so much as a change of underwear. Fortunately he stopped at my manor on his way and I was able to talk. some sense into my poor little dumpling. Count Lambert wanted him to marry his daughter and to be sure young Duke Henryk wanted Conrad to marry somebody and to stop living in sin with a Mohammedan. I suggested that he marry Cilicia knowing full well that it was impossible. This made Conrad say that he could never become her sort of heathen and that he had been a failure at trying to convert her to the true religion. Therefore no priest of either persuasion would ever marry them nor a Jew either for that matter. I then suggested that he marry me. This would satisfy the duke and Count Lambert would no longer force the issue if it could not possibly bear fruit. Conrad decided that a small wedding would be all that was needed and that things could go on pretty much as before with nothing changed but one small ceremony. I of course knew all the players in the game and I knew that nothing of the kind would take place. But a wise woman always knows when to keep her mouth shut In the morning he asked me to be his wife and I consented with all my heart. His proposal was particularly welcome since I had twice missed my time and knew that I was heavy with his child. We rode to Cracow to talk to the duke who after all was my legal guardian and he gave us his blessings along with a promise to have a serious talk with Count Lambert. Conrad was enlarged to count since a mere baron could hardly marry a countess. We had a beautiful wedding in Wawel Cathedral and all the nobility of Poland attended it. Indeed there were so many that the heralds could find room in the cathedral only for barons and above and my husband s party was almost excluded for being mere knights He solved this problem by enlarging his entire party to baronies. Our marriage has had no time to be blissful for my husband has spent the months since our wedding almost exclusively in preparation for war with the invading Mongols. Conrad is facing grave political difficulties as well as military ones yet despite the fact that I am far more adept than he at anything concerning people he will not let me help him with politics. The duke has invited many foreign knights to aid us against the Tartars and he bade all the fighting men in Poland to rally to him near Legnica where provision has been made to support so large an army. The dukes of Sandomierz and Mazovia have refused to do this as it would involve abandoning their own lands and peoples to the Mongols and :hen having to reconquer them again. Further the nobles of Little Poland were also loath to abandon their estates and start the war by retreating hundreds of miles to the west. They left Duke Henryk as a group and swore to serve under Duke Boleslaw of Mazovia despite the fact that they had once sworn fealty to Henryk. And Conrad with the biggest and finest army of all though none will credit it felt that he could not follow Duke Henryk either since much of his force was with the riverboats on the Vistula River and these could hardly go west overland to Legnica. There were flying machines that flew from Eagle Nest near Okoitz but they could not fly from Legnica needing the catapult to launch them. Further Conrad s huge land army needs the railroads that have been built for the purpose along the Vistula. They cannot fight efficiently in the west. And lastly Conrad was loath to abandon his factories and cities to the enemy. My love therefore felt obligated to disobey Duke Henryk and rather go to the aid of young Duke Boleslaw of Mazovia who was leading the Polish forces of the east. But Duke Boleslaw is a boy of fourteen who has heard too many tales of knightly prowess and sees no need of saddling himself with a lot of peasant infantry. If ever there was a blood soaked need for some adept political maneuvering this is the time Further I seem to be the only person about with the political skills necessary to unite the military forces of this confused and barbarous land. Yet Conrad is so naive and helpless at all things political that he does not even realize how stupid he is I could not persuade him to let me smooth his path. He treats me like a pretty child who needs protection rather than as the one person who could solve at least some of his obvious problems. A few weeks ago it got so bad that he even had a guard posted at my door for my protection he said but in fact to keep me from going to Duke Henryk and Duke Boleslaw and bringing them together as the old duke certainly would have done. Three weeks ago my love marched out with the largest and finest army in Christendom to seek the Mongol foe. I stayed behind almost as a prisoner when I should have been aiding our efforts. Being six months pregnant didn t help either. And two days ago the Mongols found us We beat off their first two attacks with our swivel guns and our grenades and the field below is dark with their bodies. Now they are camped beyond the range of our guns more of them than we can count with our telescopes and they are building huge siege machines to close with us. Conrad has not come and we know not whether he is alive or dead. But if he be alive he must come soon for if he is late it is we who will be dead and our children with us. Chapter Three FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD Two hundred miles from my home the weather was still foul the lightning and thunder went on without rest and the cold drizzle had been replaced with sleet. The troops were nearing exhaustion but three days after our battle with the Mongols the cleanup was just about completed. By actual count 216 692 of the enemy had been killed and that was in our base twelve numbers. In the base ten numbers that I had grown up with we had done in more than half a million of the bastards here. Their bodies had been stripped and buried twelve deep in long trenches but their heads were set on stakes and lances in neat squares a gross skulls to the side. There were more than two dozen of these squares stretching across the battlefield quite a monument to Polish arms. A ghastly sight I d had it done so that no one could ever doubt what we had accomplished here so that no one could ever say that we had exaggerated. The booty taken was equally vast. Each of the enemy had carried an average of five and a half pounds of gold and silver three years worth of plunder in the Russias. There were no commercial banks available to looting Mongols so they had to carry their spoils along with them. It was easy to see why most medieval troops were so eager to break ranks and loot. That much gold and silver was easily six years pay. My troops of course were better disciplined We would share out the loot in an equitable manner once it was taken home and counted. Just how I was going to do that in such a manner that my entire army didn t quit and retire was a problem I hadn t solved yet. There was so much money suddenly available that it could ruin the economy with inflation the way Spain was ruined after the conquest of the Americas. I d have to think of something. Since our supplies of food and ammunition were partially exhausted each of our war carts could carry about an additional five tons yet it took two gross of the things to haul the gold and silver alone. Another six gross carts were needed to carry the captured weapons and other gear that looked worth saving for trophies if nothing else. Each of these carts would go back toward Three Walls with a platoon of forty three men to pull and guard it. Most of the enemy horses had been killed in the battle and in Ilya s night raid he evening before. Baron Vladimir had felt that a half million horsehides was a prize well worth taking and he had had the animals skinned before the carcasses were buried. Salting them down would have to wait since we d have to get the salt mines working again first. For now the skins were just stacked on the field with a prayer that the cold weather would hold and they wouldn t rot. Near those stacks was a huge pile labeled scrap iron junk arms and armor that nobody would want to hang on a wall. The forges could always use scrap. We d be back for it eventually. There were perhaps sixty thousand horses still alive mostly Mongol ponies but also some of the war horses used by the conventional Christian knights who had been massacred on the field while we had stood by helpless. After I had discussed the matter with some of my officers it was decided to simply let them all go free. Untrained for the job they wouldn t have been much use as cart horses even if suitable harnesses had been available. The truth was that they would only slow us down. There was no way for us to take care of them and still get the rest of our work done. When the peasants returned they d find a use for the Mongol ponies. Most of the Polish war horses were either branded or had had their ears punched with identifying marks so they could eventually be returned to the families of their owners. Each fallen conventional knight s arms and armor were carefully bundled along with his jewelry and personal effects and one of his dog tags served as a label for its eventual return to his heirs. Each Christian body was properly buried with the other dog tag on a lance to mark the grave but nothing of value was actually buried with the body. This was standard army policy for history shows that the bejeweled dead are never allowed to rest in peace. Someday we would set up proper tombstones. Someday. For now there was still a much bigger cleanup job to do. Far more Mongols had been killed on the eastern bank of the Vistula than had ever crossed it perhaps as many as five or six times as many. There was probably a far greater booty to be taken and certainly a far bigger mess to be cleaned up before the weather turned warm and rot and disease started to spread. But at least there we wouldn t have to do the sad job of burying our own people. Our casualties had all been on the riverboats and most of them those who hadn t gone down with their boats had already been taken to the army city of East Gate. I sent Baron Vladimir east to the Vistula with two thirds of our men there to get over to the east bank and take care of the cleanup there. That was about a hundred thousand men eleven of our battalions. I d once read that God was on the side with the biggest battalions so I d made ours almost as large as a modem division just to be safe. Just how Vladimir was to contact the boats to cross the river was a bit problematic since the weather was still foul and the radios still were not working. Our spark gap transmitters and coherer type receivers were very sensitive to atmospheric disturbances. We d been out of touch with the rest of the world for almost a week. I left with the other third of our land forces which included all our industrial workers. It was important to get our factories going again as soon as possible since we had lost most of our riverboats and were out of some kinds of ammunition. We were taking back to Three Walls our booty along with fifteen aircraft engines. Nine reasonably intact planes had already been sent ahead to the boys at Eagle Nest. The pilots of our entire air force had deliberately crashlanded along with my former liege lord Count Lambert in order to take part in the final battle with the Mongols. They had taken part all right and had died to a man along with most of the other valiant but undisciplined conventional knights. They had vainly spent their lives and accomplished nothing. idiots the lot of them One should not think badly of the dead but by God I wish those planes were still flying They could have kept our communications intact. As it was what with the weather making our radios useless I didn t know what was happening in the rest of the country. I had sent couriers to Cracow Three Walls and Legnica but so far none of them had returned. Was Duke Henryk still waiting at Legnica for the rest of the foreign troops to arrive Had the Hungarians been invaded at the same time we were How bad was the destruction on the east bank of the Vistula Was my wife Francine alive and well I had no way of knowing. Baron Vladimir pulled out at dawn and I left with my own troops shortly afterward leaving two companies behind to care for our pitifully few wounded. I was riding the new white Big Person I d found on the battlefield. Anna my usual mount wasn t at all happy about this but the new bioengineered horse understood only English and so I was the only person in this century who could use her properly. Big People were too valuable to waste so I lent Anna to one of the scouts who was screening our force. There were few enough Big People to do the job. I had only ten out of our total of thirty three and that s a thin screen for a force of over fifty thousand men especially when there were who knows how many Mongol stragglers around. We d spotted a few. The job couldn t be done with men on ordinary horses since once we got on the railroad our men could pull a war cart six dozen miles a day at a walk far faster than any war horse could travel. I wished that the white mount s rider was still alive. There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask that man. In the few moments that I d been able to talk to him he had spoken with an American English accent Further if he was riding a bioengineered horse he must have had something to do with whoever it was that had built the time machine that had brought me to this century. He had to be some kind of observer at the battle or even a tourist but he had been killed by a Mongol spear before I had had time to get some answers out of him. I d like to know just why I was dumped into this brutal century There can t be that many time travelers around. Would I ever get another chance to talk to one It took all our men to haul the carts over the half frozen fields but we got to the railroad track south of Sandomierz around noon and once on it we could go much more quickly. Further riding on iron tracks it takes only a dozen and a half men to pull one of our big war carts and they can pull it easily even with the rest of the men riding on or under the cart slung on hammocks sleeping. This let us travel day and night without stopping. The men all had full plate armor although it was common practice to leave the helmets and leg armor in the carts while pulling. Cookstoves were slung from the rear of each cart with the cooks walking behind as they did their work and dinner was being prepared when a wounded rider on one of our Big People came galloping up to me. I recognized him as being one of the couriers I had sent out the one who had gone to Legnica. His right side and leg were drenched with blood and he didn t waste time conveying any message to me from my liege lord Duke Henryk. Lord Conrad Cracow is burning he said before he fell unconscious from the saddle. Chapter Four I STOPPED the five mile long column that I was leading turned to the captain of the leading company and shouted Dump the booty on the ground Dump it I say We have to lighten the load and go as fast as we can. Dump it and then get your men going at double time. Cracow is burning He looked at me aghast and it was a moment before he could comprehend what I was saying. Dump an unimaginable fortune on the ground Victory had been turned into defeat How was that possible But discipline and training took over. He turned and obeyed orders. Men scurried off the carts the big lids were taken off the six carts that the captain commanded and thirty tons of gold and silver were dumped on both sides of the double track. A banner had the wounded courier hauled onto a cart and a medic bent over him. A new man was appointed scout and with the Big Person was added to our screen. Actually it wasn t necessary to make a new scout. We had twice as many scouts as we had mounts for them a fact that made sense once you realize that Big People didn t need sleep but us Little People did. But there wasn t another scout present so I let the man have his promotion. As the new scout started to ride out I called to him and had him come back. Instead of joining the screen I had him ride back toward Sandomierz and tell Baron Vladimir about the attack on Cracow. This action turned out to be one of my major tactical errors. Get the pullers moving I shouted. They can run while the other half of the men dump the load. Throw out everything but weapons ammunition and four days food. Double time The men on the carts behind were staring in unbelief at what the first company was doing and I realized that this was an order that I would have to give personally to each officer. They wouldn t have believed it otherwise I signaled DOUBLE TIME PASS THE WORD and rode down the long line of troops and carts shouting orders. After a bit one of my captains asked The radios too sir And how about these airplane engines Hell yes They re not doing us any good now are they There were a dozen radios with the companies farther up the line enough in case the weather cleared. Just figured I should ask sir. I was already on my way as the expensive set went flying to smash on the siding of the railroad. It took an hour to get the job done and the carts were more strung out than I would have wished but fourteen hundred tons of gold and silver were scattered out beside four miles of track along with three times that weight of fancy swords decorated armor and other booty. Four hundred tons of surplus food were dumped as well but we were running to Cracow. I ordered the last company in my column to stay there and guard what we had abandoned. They didn t like it but they did it. Running at double time the men pulling have to be changed every quarter hour but the carts don t stop. Everything happens at a run and each man is relieved when his replacement catches up with him. There were ladders on both sides of each cart to let a man climb up even when it was moving but the warriors rarely used them. Once you knew the trick you could step between the spokes of one of the huge wheels let it carry you up and then step from the top of the wheel to the top of the cart. Pity the man who trips and falls but don t stop for him In practice sessions we d been able to keep this up for an entire day and a night with fresh troops. These men were far from fresh having started out nearly exhausted but they did it anyway. We ran nonstop for the rest of the day and ate two meals literally on the run. As dusk fell the lanterns were set out at the ends of the carts and we pushed on into the night. I ordered a midnight breakfast since as the Eskimos say food replaces sleep. I sent three of our scouts forward to find out anything that they could. I desperately wanted to go myself but I couldn t. My place was with my troops. The pace was deadening mind numbing absolutely exhausting but to drop back to a walk would delay our arrival in Cracow by a day. How many of our countrymen could be killed by a Mongol horde in a day Thousands Tens of thousands We had to push on no matter what the cost for the price of anything else was more than I dared pay. And it was costing us how much I didn t know. Most of my men had had only four months training and many of them couldn t keep up the pace. Men dropped and lay where they fell and more than once I felt my mount jump an obstacle on the path beside the track. I could only hope that we didn t trample anyone. As men began to fall and not get up officers at the rear of the column started abandoning carts and moving the men forward to replace our losses. These abandoned carts would make Baron Vladimir s job of reaching us that much harder but there was nothing else we could do. The Night Fighters used a smaller war cart than did the rest of the troops pulled by a seven man lance rather than a forty three man platoon. With only four men pulling they were having a hard time keeping up with the other more efficient full sized carts. Over Baron Ilya s protests the Night Fighter Battalion was disbanded the carts put off the road and the men distributed to the other five battalions as replacements. It wasn t as hard on me as it was on most of the men since I was one of the few who were mounted. I felt guilty about it but I didn t lend out my mount since it was my job to be alert for any emergency. Easing the pain of one of my men could get thousands of them killed if we were ambushed and I wasn t ready to give quick orders. Yet it was still vastly tiring and I was older than most of the men under me. Extreme fatigue always gets me first in the eyes and now what with the wound I had gotten from a Mongol arrow I had only one eye left. It felt like there was sand in it and that the sand had been there forever. At night since there wasn t much to see anyway I closed my eye held on to the saddle and trusted to the incredible night vision of my new white mount. We were all exhausted the men worse than I but I knew that once the battle was joined we d be awake enough. God always has a last supply of adrenaline for a man when his life is on the line. It was gray dawn and the towers of Brzesko were on the skyline to our left when the first scout came back to report. Cracow was indeed burning and the outer walls had fallen to the enemy. The lower city was filled with fighting but Wawel Hill with the castle and the cathedral still seemed to be in friendly hands. As a hint of the sun came over the horizon I had the semaphores signal SAY YOUR VOWS ON THE RUN. We had all sworn to repeat our vows every morning but I wasn t going to let anything slow us down. I could hear the troops near me gasping for breath as they chanted: On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and to the army. I will obey the Warrior s Code and I will keep myself physically fit mentally awake and morally straight. The Warrior s Code: A Warrior is: Trustworthy Loyal and Reverent Courteous Kind and Fatherly Obedient Cheerful and Efficient Brave Clean and Deadly. They meant it too. Most of the towns and castles along the Vistula were set right on the river to make them easier to defend. Our new rail lines had to swing out and around them to the north at Brzesko and Cracow. After the scout reported I sent him to Brzesko to see how things stood there. He reported shortly that the castle and town were a smoking ruin with no one there left alive. We pushed on. I couldn t understand how all this was possible. Until the big battle near Sandomierz we had had aircraft patrolling the skies and riverboats on the Vistula. How could they have possibly missed an entire Mongol army We had lost the planes through sheer vanity and stupidity but what had happened to the riverboats There had been at least nine of them left when I had parted company to join the land forces. They were equipped with lights and didn t stop for the dark. The railroad paralleled the river. Why hadn t I seen a single boat all night long Dear God just what the hell was going on It was midmorning when we sighted Cracow although we d first seen the cloud of black smoke above it an hour before. The railroad was a mile north of the city walls and the land intervening was a suburb of burned out cottages orchards and smoldering barns. Not the sort of terrain where we could easily use our war carts. Furthermore the fight was going on within the walls in the city itself where the narrow twisted streets would make the carts useless. I stopped at what would be our center once we got into position. When the tail end of the line was about as far from the city as the front I had the semaphore operators signal ALL STOP FULL ARMOR ABANDON CARTS ONE GUNNER EACH and HOSTILES TO THE LEFT. That meant that we were also abandoning our swivel guns with one gunner left behind on each cart to guard them. The guns had to be mounted on the carts to operate but we couldn t get a significant number of carts into the city anyway and I didn t think the Mongols would be defending the wall against us. Not their style. I hoped. My men were each armed with halberds or six yard long pikes as primary weapons and axes or swords as secondaries. All were in full plate armor proof against Mongol arrows. Despite their fatigue discipline was still good. In less than two minutes my entire command was lined up and ready. I signaled ADVANCE. What with the broken terrain I did not dare order double time. The men were tired and we would soon have gotten scattered. Also away from the carts we were down to bugle calls for communications and there was no point advertising our existence. It wasn t likely but maybe the Mongols didn t know we were here yet. We spent two dozen quiet minutes getting to the city wall but those minutes were not pleasant. This was the first time we had seen what the Mongols do to a civilian population. It hurts me to write about it to even remember what I saw. Forced by necessity I can be as hard and as brutal as the situation requires but for the love of God I cannot comprehend the needless murder of helpless civilians the senseless torture of women and children. Why would any rational beings do it The atrocity that burned most deeply into my soul was in a small hamlet. A young woman had been stripped naked and nailed by her feet to the lintel of the door frame of her cottage. Around her were the mutilated bodies of what must have been her aged parents and her four children. The youngest of them might have been a year old her head bashed open on a rock. The woman s belly had been torn open from crotch to breastbone and dangling amid her slashed intestines was a six month old fetus. She was still alive barely. I dismounted and went to her. She seemed to want to say something and I bent close to her to hear. Kill me she whispered. Please kill me. The laws of God and the Church make no provision for mercy killing. To grant her wish would make me a murderer fit only for hell. Yet despite the fact that I knew that God would damn my immortal soul for the act there was nothing else I could do. A place waits for you in heaven I said the tears running down my face. I drew my sword and cleanly slit her throat. Though a place no longer waits there for me. Nor was that the only atrocity that I saw on that walk to Cracow. I do not know why an army would want their enemies to hate them. I do not know why they would want to turn fifty thousand tired troops into fanatics bent on their destruction. But they did and we were The city wall was an old crumbling useless affair only three stories tall. The city hadn t been seriously attacked for hundreds of years and the city fathers had been slack in their duties. There were enough hand holds on the old bricks and stone to let my warriors climb up them especially since wall climbing was part of the training they d been through. And up they went without waiting for orders to do so. The troops had seen the same atrocities that I had and there was no stopping them now. Nothing would stop them until either all of the enemy were dead or every one of the warriors had died trying to kill them The warriors were moving and I could see that they would be uncontrollable until the city was theirs or they died in their armor. Not that I wanted to control them. They knew what to do This meant that I had no further duties as their commander and was free to join in on the fun. I headed through the increasingly heavy rain for the nearest city gate the Carpenter s Gate as memory served since I wanted to have a Big Person under me in the battle and while these bioengineered horses had some amazing abilities wall climbing wasn t one of them. I hoped that this new mount was as good as Anna in a fight. The upper city Wawel Hill was in the hands of the nobility but the lower city was governed and defended by the commoners. Each city guild had its own gate tower or section of wall to defend and each of these defenses had been named for a particular guild. The wall was lightly guarded by Mongol archers with more arriving every minute. The troops ignored them and some had a half dozen arrows sticking in their armor as they went over the top. Pikes and halberds were tossed up to them and they made quick work of clearing the ramparts. I saw one halberdier take the heads clean off two of the enemy with a single sideways blow and then stop and stare at what he had done unable to believe it. Yes Yashoo I saw you do it too a man beside him shouted now come and help us with these other ones The Carpenter s Gate was ours by the time I got there and I just rode straight through. Some of the officers had been training for battle for five years and now they finally had a chance to put that training to use. They were in high spirits and the mood was infectious doubtless aided by the giddiness that is caused by the lack of sleep. Seeing the men now no one would have believed that they had been awake for two days and had spent much of that time at a dead run. Some of our troops were laughing and a few were crying but none of them were holding back. Most of the Mongols were on horseback but they soon learned not to attack our ranks. I saw three of them charge splashing through the puddles at a dozen of my warriors or at least charge as best they could in the narrow winding streets of the lower city. Rather than cowering from the horsemen as the Mongols had obviously expected our men fairly leapt at them. Grounded pikes skewered horses and riders Axes and swords swung no more than once each and all three of the enemy riders were dead before they hit the ground. None of the good guys were injured. Hey That really works one knight shouted. Let s go find some more of the smelly bastards and do it again They left at a trot. I went over and inspected the fallen enemy soldiers. None of them had been wearing armor though even in the rain it was obvious from the wear patterns on their clothing that they owned chain mail and had left it back in camp. My guess is that they had planned to spend the day murdering the seven thousand women and children who lived in the lower city. Encountering fifty thousand of the best armed best armored and best trained troops in the world hadn t been part of their daily game plan It was soon obvious to me that if I was going to accomplish anything I was going to have to get out ahead of the foot soldiers. That wasn t easy to do in those tangled streets. Mongols were soon abandoning their horses and taking refuge in the buildings. Seeing this our warriors started a house to house search. Some were using impromptu battering rams but a quicker technique was more often used. This was for an armored man to run at a barred door full tilt and at the last instance to flip around and smack the door flat with his back. This usually took down any ordinary doorway and six of his friends ran through right on top of him. If it didn t work the first time they d try it again with two men flying backwards. There s something about good armor that gives a man the feeling of indestructibility and he ll willingly take more actual abuse while wearing it than he would without. I finally got ahead of most of my men and into a section of the city that was burning fiercely. The smell was enough to make me want to vomit. I might have done just that but I thought about the results of heaving inside a closed helmet and somehow held it in. Like all the other old cities in Europe Cracow had no sewage system. For hundreds of years people had been dumping their garbage and shit directly into the streets and now the mess was going up in flames along with the wooden buildings around it. Actually a good fire was what this place really needed. Urban renewal medieval style I got past the worst of the fires and into a section that was mostly burned over. One of the few buildings standing was the Franciscan church and the monastery attached to it. There was a fight going on in front of it a crowd of Mongols attacking a band of monks in brown cassocks. We galloped to their aid my mount and I and as I approached I saw that the man leading the monks was my old friend and mentor Bishop Ignacy. Just as I reached the fray a Mongol horseman swung his sword and the good bishop went down Chapter Five We chopped into the fight my Big Person and I. I took the head off one of the Mongols and the arm off another before most of them noticed that I was there. My mount was not being a slouch either being every bit as good as Anna and doing at least as much damage as I was. Thunder rippled across the sky but couldn t drown the crash of sword on shield the popping squish of a human head trampled beneath a horse s hoof. Once the enemy noticed us though things got a bit hairy. I was soon surrounded and had to spend most of my effort fending off their blows rather than delivering my own. But they d never seen a horse that could fight like mine and she did in four of them before I could score again. Yet every time a Mongol went down another was all too eager to take his place. I began to realize that I was growing too old for this sort of thing and that getting ahead of my own troops was maybe not such a good idea. The cavalry came to my rescue in the form of my captain of scouts Sir Wladyclaw the oldest son of my good friend Sir Miesko. He was riding one of our Big People one of Anna s progeny and was slewing and sliving as I had done before I had become the center of the Mongols attention. Didn t the idiots ever put out sentries He soon made it to my side and while we were still surrounded at least now I didn t have to try to watch my own back. We were soon fighting to good effect and I think that I killed six more Mongols before things quieted down. That wasn t enough to extract full vengeance for what these bastards had done to that woman in the hamlet but it was enough to get me a good honor guard into the hell I d earned for putting her out of her pain. Well met Captain Wladyclaw and thank you How did you manage to find me I didn t my lord. This is Anna She s been looking for you and disregarding everything I ve wanted to do since we got through the city gates Well thank you love. I scratched Anna s ear the way she liked it. Then I saw that there was still a crowd of Mongols in front of the monks. Whoops There s more work to do. Let s go For God and Poland In the course of our fight we had drifted a gross yards from our starting point and so we had time to get up to speed before we hit them again. Big People were larger than the usual war horses and far more powerful than a little Mongol pony. We struck the Mongols like a pair of bowling balls and they flew like a rack of pins. Then we were back to hacking and slashing in earnest the blood and raindrops splashing around us. I soon realized that the monks were not behaving like innocent victims. They were handing out as much as they took in and were tolerating an unbelievable amount of punishment in the process. They were swinging long iron maces since a man of the Church wasn t allowed to shed blood but all the swords except mine were dulled to clubs by that point anyway. Then I saw Bishop Ignacy cave in the skull of the last standing Mongol and suddenly all was quiet. We dismounted and both of the Big People started going about calmly stepping on the necks of the fallen Mongols. They always do that sort of thing but I d just as soon not watch. For this timely aid much thanks my son You know I ve always wanted to say something like that the bishop said laughing. You are most welcome your excellency. But tell me. Did I or did I not just see you go down before a Mongol sword I asked. You did Conrad. Then how is it that you are standing before me One miracle in a lifetime is enough after all. There s nothing miraculous about it. I am standing now simply because I stood up again after he knocked me down Oh I see what you mean. He folded back the cuff of his wide sleeve to reveal a set of our regulation combat armor underneath. Looking about I realized that all the monks were similarly attired. The Lord said that one should turn the other cheek my son but he never demanded that one s cheek must be naked. How did you get that armor Why are you wearing a monk s cassock instead of your bishop s robes And why are you down here instead of up in your cathedral My head was buzzing. We got the armor by going to Three Walls and paying for it. The Church is not poor after all. I am in the lower city because I judged that Wawel Hill would hold but that I would be needed down here. As to the cassock well the ladies often spend years embroidering a single one of my formal robes and it would be rude to ruin one. Is anything else troubling you my son he said patiently standing in the rain. No Father. Then you had best get about your business. This day s work isn t done yet. Go with God my son We mounted up and rode out. Captain Wladyclaw and I rode through the town taking out the enemy as we found them until we got to the Butcher s Gate by the waterfront. Quite a few enemy horsemen had apparently had their fill of fighting real warriors and were streaming out of the city. There s the place for us Captain Wladyclaw shouted pointing with his saber. Every one of them that gets out now is one more that we ll have to catch later on Right you are For God and Poland We hacked our way to the gate and then turned to defend it not against an aggressor from the outside as is usual with city gates but against aggressors from the inside who were trying to escape. The gate was a tunnel a dozen yards long and just wide enough to allow two men on horseback to fight while guarding it. A convenient killing ground. The first Mongol to follow us through plunged out of the rain and into the relative darkness of the gate without realizing that we were there. Captain Wladyclaw got a lance into his horse about the time I split his greasy head open with my sword. Our eyes were accustomed to the darkness while those of the enemy weren t. The second enemy s horse tripped over the remains of the first but the end results were similar. The Mongols weren t expecting anyone to be trying to stop them from leaving and in that dark tunnel a fair number went down without getting a chance to draw their swords. A proper Christian knight would have been horrified at what we were doing but my forces didn t believe in fighting fair. You were either out there to kill the bastards or you shouldn t be fighting in the first place. Anyway I kept seeing in my mind that mother nailed to the door frame of her house and I didn t feel very merciful. Soon however the dead men and horses in front of us were warning enough for all but the absolutely stupid and things started to slow down. In a few dozen minutes my sword arm was getting sore and the dead before us were piled up saddle high. Mongols had taken to dismounting in order to climb the pile of their dead and a Mongol on foot is dog meat to a warrior mounted on a Big Person. Nonetheless we were being slowly pushed back out of the city gate for no other reason than that we couldn t climb the dead bodies either. Eventually we were out in the rain again. During a lull I said You know Captain Wladyclaw that gate is so packed that it will be hours before they can get a horse through it and a Mongol on foot isn t much to worry about. What say we see how the other gates are doing Whatever you say my lord. You re the commander. Anna smashed in the skull of another Mongol footman and such had become our casualness with killing that it didn t break our conversation. Have you seen me command anything lately The fight in the city is so scattered that no one could possibly keep track of it let alone give any sensible orders. But as your brother in arms I suggest we try the next gate east. Done my lord or brother in arms as you would have it he said with a smile. At the next gate we found two of my other scouts with exactly the same idea that we had and with much the same results. We wished them well and continued on around the city. We found a lance of our own foot troops guarding the third gate we came to. Sir our captain said we was to guard this gate but there ain t nothing happening here. Any chance we could go back in and join in on the fighting the knight in charge said. Sorry but you re needed right where you are. The Mongols have been trying to break out of a lot of the other gates and we ve been bottling them in. If they try it here you ll have your hands full. But there ain t no Mongols hereabouts sir Your job is here. Do it Captain Wladyclaw and I rode through the gate and back into the fight. Soon we were in another free for all a bloody chaos of swinging and stabbing with the city still burning around us despite the rain. The only water available was in a few wells enough to provide some not particularly safe drinking water but totally insufficient for fire fighting. In the quieter areas civilians were trying to save their homes but they didn t have much chance of success. Aside from the churches most of the buildings in the lower city were made of wood and had roofs made of straw. What s more they were built right next to each other with no space in between and the upper stories overhung the narrow streets below so that the fires could easily leap the narrow gap between two city blocks. The rain helped a lot to slow things down but the place was still a firetrap. I didn t see how anything could stop the fires but running out of fuel. That s to say running out of city. In one burned out area I was pleased to note that my Pink Dragon Inn was still standing. My chief innkeeper Tadeusz had spent some of our fabulous profits giving the inns in the more important cities brick walls and tile roofs. I suppose he had done this more for reasons of prestige than for fireproofing but the result was the same. Since the inn was so big that it took up an entire city block it was isolated from the flames that had burned all around it. I dismounted and beat on the door. We re closed for the duration of the battle came a muffled voice from within. You re not closed to me I own the place I shouted back. A peephole slid open and then the door was unbarred. The rotund shape of Tadeusz himself filled the doorway. My lord Conrad I didn t know it was you He was shocked by our appearance a reasonable thing since we were both drenched with human blood Very little of the blood is our own I assured him. Can you spare us a quick meal We haven t eaten since daybreak. Of course my lord of course. I ll get it myself since the waitresses and cooks have all been sent to shelter on Wawel Hill. There s none here but the bartenders and a few old guards and they re all on the top floor with crossbows. Come in come in my lords and you d best bring your mounts in with you. They ll be wanting food and drink too yes of course. He barred the door behind us. We re not particular about what we get so long as we get it fast I said leading the group into the kitchen. I put a bushel of fairly fresh bread in front of each of the Big People and Captain Wladyclaw set out two buckets of clean water for them. We sat at the cook s worktable which Tadeusz proceeded to cover with fifty kinds of preserved foods most of them of the rare and expensive variety. We didn t give it the attention it deserved but just wolfed down the calories as fast as we could. We both passed up the wines that were set out for some big glasses of small beer. Fighting is thirsty work and the job wasn t done yet. The innkeeper was still setting out food when we got up to leave. You re leaving so soon my lord There s work to do. Look move all this stuff and as much else as you need to the front door. Thinking about it I have fifty thousand hungry troops out there so you d better get some help and empty out your entire cellar. When any of my men comes by feed them near the door. Don t let them stay in or you might have problems getting them out. They re all so tired that they ll fall asleep if they sit down. And give them only one jack of beer each. I don t want them drunk We headed back to the war. Two blocks down we hadn t found any Mongols but I ran into Baron Gregor my second in command. So how goes the battle I asked. We seem to be winning sir and I think that our casualties have been light. I wish I could be more definite than that but this is the most chaotic battle I ve ever heard of. I don t even know where most of our units are I don t think anybody does. I ve seen a lot of Mongols escaping out the city gates. You might try and get some of our men to guard each one of them. I ll see to it sir. A few men on the walls wouldn t be amiss either. You know this is a situation where the radios would really have come in handy. Yeah if the damn things worked I said. You go east along the walls and we ll go west. When the gates are all guarded we ll meet somewhere along the wall at the other side of the city. Oh yes. You can stop at the Pink Dragon Inn. for a quick bite to eat. Pass the word on that one. Right sir. We headed back to the gate through which we had last entered. Captain Wladyclaw came with me since he was still on Anna and she wasn t about to leave my side. Had a human acted that way I would have busted him for insubordination but with Anna well what could I do We got to the gate with a platoon of troops we had picked up on the way. Enemy troops were streaming into the portal and we had to fight our way to it for the last gross yards. We got there to find the bodies of the lance of men I had met on our way in. AH seven of them had died where I had left them. I should have reinforced them at the time. Another sin on my already blackened soul. The platoon seemed to be holding pretty well so I went on to the next gate sending the next platoon I came across back to reinforce the first. This went on for one of our long double sized hours before I again met Baron Gregor. I sent him to continue his way around inspecting and manning the walls while Captain Wladyclaw and I went outside the city to see how things were going there. It was dusk when we got to the dock area to find that one of our riverboats the RB29 Enterprise was just pulling in. I saw Baron Tadaos on the bridge. Baron Tadaos What happened to your Muddling Through I shouted. Burned sir he shouted in the darkening gloom. Burned along with four other boats and the whole damned city of East Gate. I came here looking for help Chapter Six Good god in heaven A third Mongol army Tadaos We have a third of the land forces in the city now You collect up as many troops as you can hold and take them to East Gate. I ll follow as fast as I can with the rest I shouted. I m low on fuel sir Then tear down these docks if you have to and those buildings too if you need more wood. But get there Yes sir The nearest city gate was the one Captain Wladyclaw and I had left stuffed with Mongol corpses so we had to race on to the next. Damn I should have had brains enough to mount a signalman on one of the Big People and keep him with me but I simply hadn t thought of it. When the men were concentrated in war carts there was always a signalman handy in every sixth cart so there was no point wasting a Big Person on one. Now the situation had changed and I hadn t been bright enough to change with it. My stupidity was wasting precious time Once in the city I soon found a bugler and had him sound BREAK OFF FIGHTING MAN THE WAR CARTS and EAST GATE IS BURNING. The first two were standard signal tunes that most of the men knew or at least the officers did and they could inform the others. The last required the use of a special code that the signalmen had worked out. Our bugles could play only seven notes but if one played two or three notes in rapid succession there were enough combinations to cover each letter of the alphabet as well as the numbers and punctuation marks. Messages were spelled out in a sort of code. It took a man with perfect pitch to play and understand the code and many of the signalmen couldn t do it. Fortunately the man I d found was one who could and there were enough others like him to get the message passed around. Soon bugles all over the city were repeating my orders. Men were scurrying to find dropped weapons many had abandoned their pikes as being unmanageable in the narrow crooked city streets and making their way to the Carpenter s Gate. We raced across town to get to the carts ahead of them but it occurred to me that I d better tell the people still on Wawel Hill what was going on. I went to the Inner Gate and shouted to the guards East Gate is burning The army is going to have to pull out of here and go to their aid. I think we ve killed most of the Mongols in the city but you people will have to do the final mop up yourselves. Do you hear me A gray bearded man in ancient armor stuck his head out of a small window and looked down at me. We hear you Count Conrad but you must realize that there are few here save women children and the aged. The noble knights all went off to fight the enemy in the field Their ladies all just went off somewhere I think to find a safer place to weather the invasion. Most of the young guildsmen fell defending the outer walls those that did not leave months ago to join your army. Many of those that were able to get here after the lower city fell have died defending Wawel Hill. Women have been manning catapults and crossbows and children have been bringing ammunition to them. We have nothing left to mop up with You ll just have to do the best you can I shouted back. Good bye and good luck I heard him swearing at me as we left but what else could I do We went through the city out the Carpenter s Gate and back to the war carts. Few of the troops had gotten there yet and most of the cart guards were asleep. They d decided that one man awake out of six was sufficient and I really couldn t fault them. A minor attack had been beaten off earlier in the day but aside from that it had been quiet. I let them sleep since it would be good to have at least a few men who were well rested. More of our men were arriving all the time though most of them were staggering badly in the rain and gloom. Few of them were actually wounded but running and fighting for two days straight is about all any normal man can take. I waited in the rain and dark for an entire hour and then decided that we had to go. But only half the men have gotten here yet sir Baron Gregor objected. There s only about two dozen men to a cart and that many could never pull nonstop to East Gate. They wouldn t have anyone to relieve them. You re right of course. Well move the men up to the first carts. Get a full platoon on each cart and have them move out at a quickstep. As more men straggle in we ll fill more carts and have them catch up with the rest at double time. You d best stay here and see that the job gets done. Sir that ll make a mess of the whole command structure Nobody will know who s in charge. Structure be damned East Gate is burning Just make sure that there are six knights and a knight bannerette for each cart and a captain for every six of them. The field grade officers can sort things out among themselves as we re moving. It s not as though anybody can get lost on a railroad Yes sir. What about the wounded Send the walking wounded back into the city to help out there. Set up a camp for those badly hurt right here. Yes sir he said and started shouting orders. The first cart moved out in minutes with Captain Wladyclaw acting as point man. Even doing a quickstep was torture for the men but we pushed on into the night. At around midnight I got word that we now had an even gross of companies in the column and I hoped that they would be enough to handle whatever was happening at East Gate. By this point each of the men had been able to get a few hours sleep while riding the carts and I figured that they could take it. I gave the order to go double time. I found myself dozing in the saddle but fortunately a Big Person doesn t need to sleep at all. We pushed on changing pullers every quarter hour. I wished that there was some word from Baron Vladimir but none had come. Had he encountered still more Mongols Had the courier failed to make it through to him This business of not knowing what was going on was nerveracking. I d often heard of the fog of war but I never would have believed that it could take so much out of a commander. If the Mongols had gotten to East Gate had they gone beyond it Were the boys at Eagle Nest under attack The girls at Okoitz And what about my people my wife and children at Three Walls Had all of southern Poland been overrun And what of East Gate Was it still standing It was our strongest fortification next to the city of Three Walls. It had six towers surrounding the castle each nine stories tall and made of reinforced concrete with a dozen swivel guns on top of each one . A low two story wall connected the towers and while that wall wasn t tall enough to stop footmen with ladders no horse could ever get over it. Then six dozen yards inside those defenses was a concrete castle that was as strong as I knew how to make it. The walls were six stories high and protected by six more towers each eight stories tall. The whole complex bristled with guns and had all sorts of nasty tricks to play on an attacker. How could such a fort be taken by an enemy with only horses and arrows How could a completely concrete structure possibly be on fire To be sure the fort was manned by women but they were all properly trained and highly motivated. Much of their ammunition had had to be transferred to the riverboats during the Battle for the Vistula but a great deal was still left to them. They were up to their armpits in refugees but the captainette in charge should have been able to handle things. With that strong a fort all she had to do was close the gates and then she could laugh at the enemy. The walls were too tall to be scaled and too strong to be battered in. Well outside of the walls was the huge Riverboat Assembly Building and it was made of wood. A cold feeling went through me. Our casualties during the Battle for the Vistula were much higher than I had expected them to be. The castle had been filled to the rafters with civilian refugees so I had the loft of the assembly building converted for use as a hospital. Those wounded men were at the mercy of the enemy and the Mongols didn t know what mercy was We pushed on through the night and into the morning. The men were staggering with fatigue and I found myself dozing off in the saddle dreaming strange dreams and suddenly jerking back into reality unsure of whether I had dreamed or was hallucinating or was actually trying to survive in an alien environment. I saw my pregnant wife Francine naked with her feet nailed to a door frame her belly horribly slashed and her throat cut open by my own sword. I saw my children by Krystyana and Cilicia murdered on the ground their tiny heads bashed open on the rocks. Eventually the nightmares of my dreams of torture and the nightmare of my tortured reality fused into a living horror that went on and on forever. Yet when I was sure that I could go no farther when I knew that I must fall off my mount and sleep forever I looked and saw the troops gasping running staggering splashing on the muddy boards beside me. If they could go on then so could I. I drew strength from their dedication and pushed onward. It was well past noon when we got to East Gate. The Riverboat Assembly Building was gone reduced to a few blackened stumps sticking up from rain soaked foundations. The Enterprise was at the docks next to four hulks burned to the waterline and the city was guarded by my own troops. A sentry waved us through but I stopped to talk to him. What s going on here warrior I asked. We got here at dawn by riverboat sir. Everybody was dead. Dead How many Mongols were involved Which way did they go I don t much know anything else sir. I ve been standing guard ever since we got here and nobody s told me nothing. Maybe you d best talk to Baron Tadaos. He s back on the boat I think. I told the men in my relief column to pull into the railroad yard and rest and once there most of the men pulling just lay down in the cold spring rain and fell asleep. Those on the carts were already sleeping. Captain Wladyclaw was near at hand. I told him to get fresh scouts out on Big People and to find out what he could. Baron Tadaos was in his cabin debriefing a young corpsman who was crying and shaking in his chair. The man s clothes were badly burned his hair was mostly gone and there were blisters on his hands and face. Come in sir and sit down. There s some terrible things happened here Tadaos said. I sat grateful to sit on something that wasn t a saddle. Maybe you d best tell me the story from the beginning Baron. Yes sir. I got here yesterday around noon and saw the boat house was burning. I d put off my company of troops with you almost a week before so I was down to the boat crew and the signal group under Baron Piotr. Mongols was all over the place but we docked between two of the other boats that was here. See half my boats was in port for lack of repairs fuel and ammunition. We only had a dozen rounds for each of the guns but I figured that we d see what help we could be anyway. He was interrupted as an armored boatman came in with a big tray heavily laden with food and drink. We found a storeroom in the castle that hadn t been broken into sir. You haven t eaten since yesterday and I promised your wives that I d take care of you sir. He set the tray on the desk and left without another word. I can only pray that the girls are still alive somewheres. I guess we all need to eat. Dig in gentlemen Tadaos said. But like I was saying he said with food in his mouth we left three gunners on the bow to do what they could and the rest us went out with swords and pikes. I was even out of arrows so I left my bow behind. Never did see it again. We joined up with what was left of the boat repairmen the crews of the other boats and the medics that was taking care of the wounded in the hospital here. A lot of the walking wounded was with us too but we was still way outnumbered. Them Mongols being on horseback didn t help none neither. We lost us a lot of men and they pushed us back to the boats. Only by then most of the boats was on fire except for this one on the end the Enterprise. The engineman on the boat had brains enough to have a head of steam up and we had no choice but to push off and look for help. I didn t feel right doing that since all five of my wives was in the castle or so I thought and it felt like I was murdering them and the kids too. But it was run for help or die right there for no good reason so we ran. Those damn radios of yours haven t worked for a week but when we got to Cracow we saw that it was burning too. That s when I ran into you. Doing what you said we collected up four companies of troops all of which I could get aboard seeing as how they didn t have no war carts and we ripped down the docks and a dozen sheds nearby to fuel our trip back here. It damn nearly wasn t enough. I d already given the order to start tearing down the boat when the lookout spotted East Gate and we made it on our head of steam with the boat still intact. Just as well since this just might be the last boat we got left The place was empty when we got here first thing in the morning. Empty of living people anyhow. You could see where there d been a fight in front of the boat house and our boys sold their lives pretty damn dearly let me tell you. But there wasn t no fight around the castle. There was just a massacre I think the worst massacre the world has ever seen I just come back from there and what I saw would make the worst sinner in the Christian world fall down and cry There must be twenty or thirty thousand people dead in there sir and every one of them women or children or a few old gaffers. Ain t a one of them could have done the Mongols a bit of harm but the filthy bastards murdered them all anyway. Shit sir I ain t got words bad enough for them them whatevers. Chapter Seven The baron was crying and I let him have a few moments to get a hold of himself. After a while he continued. Sir I didn t find any of my people but there was so many dead in there that I knew we d be weeks sorting them all out. I figured my family was done for but then some of the troops found this young feller and what he says is that it wasn t our people who was murdered in there. I mean that they wasn t army families. He says that all them women and kids was the families of nobility from Cracow Sandomierz and points in between But maybe you better hear about it straight from him. Maybe I d better Tadaos. How about it son Are you up to repeating your story for me Yes sir. I think so sir. I was a corpsman working in the hospital that was set up in the loft of the boat house I mean the Riverboat Assembly Building. Relax son I said. You re among friends here. Just tell us the story the way it happened. And tell me how old are you It was maddening to take all this time listening but unless I knew what had happened I wouldn t know what to do next. Yes sir. I just turned fifteen. Anyway I heard my captain telling one of the banners that he had just come back from the fort and that they couldn t give us any help. He said that the women s army contingent there was pulling out with all the commoner refugees in the whole fort. He was pretty mad about it but he said that there was nothing he could do to change things. He didn t command the stupid cunt in charge of the fort. Excuse me sir but that s what he called her. Yes yes. But why was she abandoning her post I said. A captainette was the woman left in charge of an installation when the men went off to war. It was an unusual position in that it was temporary in nature. For example Captainette Lubinska who had been in charge of East Gate was ordinarily in charge of the accounting section there and during normal times she had no authority at all outside of accounting. But once the men went off to fight the enemy in the field she was in absolute charge subject only to a clearly defined chain of command that ended with me. She even outranked the six baronesses that ordinarily lived at East Gate for example and they were expected to obey her orders. The reason for all this was that men rarely chose their wives for their ability as battle commanders and it was important to have the most competent woman in charge no matter who she had married. But nobody except me and Baroness Krystyana could have legally ordered Captainette Lubinska from her post. Sir I was just overhearing somebody else s conversation and my captain s at that even though he was pretty loud about it. He said that Count Herman s wife came up with a few dozen bodyguards and a large group of other noblewomen and the captainette wouldn t let them in. She said that fort was full and that these new refugees would have to continue on down to Hell I mean the Warrior s School thirty miles away for shelter. But the countess talked the captainette into coming down and talking to her and then the countess said that the fort wasn t your property sir so it wasn t army property. The fort really belonged to Count Lambert her brother in law and Count Lambert wanted her to take it over and shelter there since it was the strongest fort in Poland and everybody knew it. That wasn t true I said. Count Lambert paid for the fort but I was to see to the manning of it. He wouldn t have changed that without talking to me about it. I can t believe that he would ever have given anything to the countess. He hated her Not that we ll ever know for sure. Count Lambert died days ago on the battlefield west of Sandomierz. Yes sir but she got the captainette to believing her anyway. They went into the fort. Then an awful lot more nobility kept coming and the countess turned every commoner out the fort to make room for them. Some of them went on to Hell or the Warrior s School I mean and some went up to the hills to take their chances up there. And this happened three days ago I asked trying not to vent my anger at the captainette. It was really all my fault for appointing that woman to so important a post in the first place. I d had a bad feeling about her but I d done nothing about replacing her. I think four sir. Then about noon yesterday I was outside taking a breather and I saw about a hundred oldstyle knights ride up in chain mail and all. I thought it was kind of funny because they were all riding little horses but their leader spoke real good Polish to the sentry and their shields were all painted with Polish arms. Anyway the leader said that they had word from Cracow and I heard the countess yell that they should be admitted. I saw the gates go up and the drawbridge go down but then my break was over and I had to get back to tending the wounded. I didn t think much of it at the time but I guess I should have. That must have been how the Mongols tricked their way into the fort. Then about a half hour later one of our men came up shouting that the place was crawling with Mongols that they were streaming in on us from the south. We all armed ourselves but my captain said I was to take care of the wounded since some of those men were badly hurt. I was the only corpsman left behind. I didn t like it but orders were orders. I could hear screams from the castle and shouts from the fighting down below. All the wounded who could move had gone down to join the fight even some guys with only one arm but there were still more than two dozen of them up there that were helpless. A while after that one of my patients started shouting that the building was on fire that we all had to get out somehow. From the smoke and the smell I could see he was right but there were so many of them and only one of me I picked up one of the men who was near the stairway and carried him down to the ground floor and outside. but the fighting was so bad out there that he was killed by a Mongol arrow before I got out the door. I went back up and the fire had gotten real bad. Men were crying to me begging me to not let them die by burning to death. One man a captain with his legs both messed up he grabbed me by the arm. You know what you ve got to do he says and I said that I didn t. He says You can t let all these men die by fire That s the worst possible way to go. It s so painful that any man doing it would die with a curse on his lips and then what happens to his soul You ve got that axe boy. Use it And use it on me first Then he starts singing Te Deum sir real loud and the rest of the men starts singing with him those who were conscious. I d armed myself when everybody else had and my axe was sharp and new in its sheath. I d never used it not till then anyway. Sir I chopped that captain straight across the neck and it took his head almost off. Then I went down the line of wounded men and did the same to almost every one of them. They kept on singing until I was done. Some of those men I killed were already unconscious. Some of the others gritted their teeth as I came up to them and a few nodded to me that it was okay what I was doing but only one of them said I shouldn t do it. He was Robby Prajinski and I knew him because he was from my own village. He screamed and begged me not to hurt him so I didn t. I just went to the next man. I guess the fire was real bad because I couldn t see so good. Maybe it was the smoke or maybe I was just crying but I hit every one of those poor men square sir even the last one where the floor burned out under us. He was singing until I hit him. I guess that s where I got these burns. I lost my axe in the fall and I could hear Robby screaming somewhere but I couldn t find him in the fire. I got outside somehow and all of our men out there were dead. I was thinking I should go back in to try to find Robby but my clothes outside my armor were burning. It was like the Mongols didn t see me somehow because I made it into the river and that put the fire out. I drifted downstream for a while and I was kind of surprised that I floated in my armor. Maybe it s the goose down in the gambesons. Anyway I crawled out and I guess I mostly slept until the sentries found me. I buried my face in my hands unsure whether I was crying as much as the young corpsman was. You did what you had to do son. Fate put a horrible job in front of you but you did your duty and you did it well. May God bless and forgive you I said. After a bit I added You did fight son but maybe you d better go to confession. There are a number of chaplains around here somewhere. Yes sir. The boy got up to leave and Tadaos put some more food in his blistered hands before showing him out. Take care of him won t you I said to Tadaos. Will do sir. Now before you leave do you have any spare ammunition We d stripped most of the ammo from the fort for the fight on the river and it seems like the Mongols burned all the rest of it they could find. We can give you a few dozen cases. You re going to see what you can do about patrolling the river There s nothing much else I can do sir. That and there are still three of my boats unaccounted for and I mean to find them. Baron Piotr s getting downright antsy about it. Piotr still lives then Yeah he was one of the lucky ones. I m glad. Well good hunting. I stood to leave. You too sir. It was now late in the afternoon and if we left within the hour well there were a dozen targets for the Mongols within two dozen miles of here. We d probably get wherever we were going before dawn. I ordered that all of our Night Fighter companies be re formed and put in the front of the column that all of the relatively fresh men who had come in by riverboat be put on the line behind them and had the two companies in the worst shape left behind to man this installation and start cleaning it up. While I had been talking to Tadaos eight more companies had come up from Cracow. The city was now secure even if most of the wooden buildings in the lower city were totally burned down. At least there were no Mongols about or rather no live ones. But there was no word from Baron Vladimir. Two thirds of our army might as well have vanished from the earth for all I knew. Baron Gregor just about had things reorganized when Captain Wladyclaw galloped up. It s definite he said. The entire Mongol force somehow regathered into a single body and then it went east. There was some fighting at Sir Miesko s manor but it did not fall to the enemy or at least it hadn t when one of my scouts saw it through a telescope an hour ago. He said that a bunch of crazy old ladies were up in the towers there with swivel guns and a few gross Mongols were lying dead around them while the other living enemy troops were keeping at a respectable distance. But he said that the bulk of the Tartars had turned south and are heading for Three Walls sir. Three Walls My wife my children and most of my ex mistresses were at Three Walls. My first impulse was to take my entire force there at a double time but Baron Gregor talked me out of it. Or rather he shouted me out of it. Sir these troops are simply not physically capable of running all night long three nights in a row Nobody could possibly do that. Furthermore at a quick march where the men can get at least some sleep our forces can get to Three Walls by dawn. Getting there sooner won t accomplish anything except telling the enemy that he is about to be attacked It makes sense to send Baron Ilya ahead with his Night Fighters to see what they can accomplish but the rest of our men are best off being fresh to fight at dawn. Three Walls is even stronger than Fast Gate here was and Baroness Krystyana s in charge there. You know that girl even better than I do and you know she wouldn t fall for a Mongol ruse the way that silly twit of a countess did here Yeah I guess you re right Gregor. I swung into the saddle. And another thing sir Every man here has gotten at least some sleep in the last four days except you. Have you gone crazy Do you think you can direct a battle with half your brain not working Do you think we d trust our lives to someone who was about ready to keel over Now you get off that goddamn superhorse and stretch out on one of the war carts Go to sleep We ll get you to the war on time never you fear. But But nothing Shut up and soldier Yes sir I said. Chapter Eight My second in command was shaking me awake. It ll be dawn in half an hour sir. Sleeping in well fitted plate mail is fairly comfortable sort of like relaxing in a good contour chair. I threw off my old wolfskin cloak and shook my head to clear it. What s been happening Baron Gregor I sat up on the moving cart and Gregor riding beside me on the white Big Person put a bowl of soup in one of my hands and a mug of beer in the other. Not quite what I needed. God but I wished that something was available with caffeine in it. We re about three miles from the hedge at Three Walls sir. The rain stopped just after you started snoring and a while later the radios started working after a fashion. Duke Henryk still has not pulled out of Legnica. Baron Vladimir has arrived at Cracow and is advancing on us. The transmission was pretty poor and that s all we have been able to find out about him. The duke s conventional knights wouldn t be of much use to us anyway. Look at the fiasco they caused at Sandomierz. I can t see waiting for Baron Vladimir. He ll be days getting here What about the rest of our installations Okoitz Coaltown Eagle Nest and Copper City are all safe and sound. They haven t been bothered. The boys at Eagle Nest say that they have one aircraft rebuilt and ready to fly. A second should be ready later this morning sir. Good. Tell them that I want that plane flying over Three Walls as soon as possible. We need all the surveillance we can get. Yes sir. The granary in the Bledowska desert was taken by the Mongols we only had a platoon guarding it and it was never meant to be seriously defended but the Mongols left it intact. They probably considered it useful booty to be used later. Sir Miesko s manor was hit but the attack was squashed by a hundred lady schoolteachers under Lady Richeza. Our ladies at Three Walls have beaten off two serious attacks and the Mongols have laid siege to the place. Your wife tells me that a siege tower and some wheeled catapults are being built just out of swivel gun range. Francine is well then I finished the beer and started in on the soup. It had a lot of meat in it but very little grain and no vegetables. It was Lent but the men fighting to defend their country had been given dispensation to eat meat by the Bishop of Wroclaw. When we had thrown out some of our supplies to lighten the load the troops had kept the foods they craved the most and two weeks on a high protein diet had not made up for the lack of meat in the weeks before that. She said she was and she sends you her love. I sent her yours of course but I didn t see any sense in waking you. So far casualties at Three Walls have been almost nil. An arrow hasn t much force left by the time it gets to the top of a seven story wall. The catapults are something else however. Yeah. Especially if they re like the ones they used on us in the riverboats. We d better hurry. We ll get there at a walk in time for an attack at gray dawn. There s no point in getting there sooner than that Gregor said. Oh I suppose you re right. Do the Mongols know we re coming Possibly not. Baron Ilya s Night Fighters did a pretty fair cleanup job while you slept. The Mongols seem to have a real general in charge. At least they left plenty of sentries and scouts out. Course they still haven t learned not to do sentry duty sitting around a campfire but the thought was there. The last bunch Ilya taught that lesson to weren t in any shape to pass on the education they got He had the horses slaughtered as well as the men so that none of them would find their way back to the enemy camp and tip our hand. I think our scouts took out all of theirs. When a Big Person starts to sniffing on the trail of a Mongol you just know there s going to be bloodshed and those girls can really fight in the dark So Captain Wladyclaw gets another feather in his cap and Ilya ll be harder to control than ever I said. What do you know about the enemy positions Best as we can tell they re all camped on the killing ground this side of the kitchen gardens on the place we used to use for a parade ground. There s some wells down there and they probably figure that the big hedge of Krystyana s roses offers them some protection. Nice. Better wake all the men and get some food in them. The cooks have been at it for an hour sir. During the night I had all the cart wheels greased so they re real quiet. Good. Make sure that the men stay that way too. Semaphores and hand signals only from now on. Right sir. And give me my mount back It was still dark as we approached the city. I was in front of our silent column to make sure that things were the way I thought they were. The double tracked railroad went through a simple gate before it entered the killing ground. This gate was never intended as a military defense its main job was simply to keep animals in. Nonetheless I was surprised to see that it was manned by our own Night Fighters. Baron Ilya was there waiting for me. I got maybe a company of my men just inside the gate in Mongol outfits sir so s they wouldn t know we was here. I just wanted you to know so s you wouldn t shoot them down. Okay. I ll signal you just before we start the attack and you pull those men behind our lines in a hurry. Once things warm up the gunners won t be too choosy. Right sir. Baron Gregor had a man using hand signals to split off our troops sending a column of war carts in each direction on our side of the rose hedge. Save for the snap of branches as the big carts were pulled through them the columns were silent as snakes. We could hear the Mongols a dozen yards away from us on the other side of the hedge but we didn t hear them give any alarm. As each cart reached its assigned position the men quietly took the big armored lid off the vehicle. This was slung on spare pikestaffs six yards to the side of the cart to act as a shield for the men pulling it. At the same time the pins were pulled from the casters of the big wheels the wheels were turned at right angles away from the line of march and the wheels on the armored side were locked in that position. The carts were pulled sideways into battle. Harnesses were attached to the armored side of the cart and the pikemen tied them to the ring on their backplates with a slipknot. Gunners quietly mounted the pinions of their guns into the oarlocks built into the sides of the carts. They lit the ignition lamps in the base of each gun loaded them and set out their spare ammunition. Cookstoves and other nonessentials were set on the ground. Pikes and halberds were handed out and men checked each other s arms and armor. Having been practiced hundreds of times the conversion from transport vehicle to war machine took only minutes even in silence and nearly total darkness. Some of the halberdiers had to be reminded to get in front of their shields since this wasn t their usual position but Baron Gregor had briefed the captains on our plan of attack. Six hundred carts take a long time to move two miles quietly in the dark and over unprepared terrain even when everything is well coordinated. At any moment the Mongols could find us sneaking up on them and a well planned surprise attack could be turned into a bloody chaos. But despite my sins God was still on our side. At the first hint of dawn I saw my troops lined up and ready stretching a mile on each side of me. I called to Ilya in a stage whisper and a few hundred ersatz Mongols poured quickly through our line heading back to where they had stowed their armor. Still using hand signals I gestured ADVANCE and every captain passed it on. The hedge was five yards high and thickly tangled with long sharp thorns. The seed package had claimed that a hedge of these Japanese roses was proof against man and beast and for once the seed company hadn t lied. I think it gave the Mongols a false sense of security. No man or animal smaller than an elephant and bigger than a mouse could possibly go through it but good steel could Thirty six hundred halberdiers started making toothpicks out of two miles of Krystyana s roses. The hedge had been only two yards thick when we d planted it seven years earlier but it had somehow spread to a dozen yards and more in some places. This surprised me and perhaps it gave the enemy more time to get ready for us but I think they wasted a fair amount of time trying to figure out what the strange noise was so it all balanced out. We finally broke into the clear and the gunners opened fire. We went across the Mongol camp and trampled it flat in the process. It was huge. Judging from the size of the enemy camp near Sandomierz and the known number of men that had been in it there must have been two hundred thousand Mongols here yet at first the resistance was surprisingly light. No more than five thousand men came against us and many of them were obviously wounded. They went down quickly and I signaled CEASE FIRE. A panicky thought shook me. Had the bulk of them somehow escaped our trap All my forces were facing Three Walls. Were the Mongols behind us waiting to hit our unprotected rear Anna came up to my side carrying the protesting Captain Wladyclaw with her. Captain Wladyclaw I m glad you re here. Look we aren t finding enough Mongols in front of us If they re to our rear we re in big trouble. Get your scouts way behind us and get word back in a hurry if we re walking into their trap instead of springing our own. Here I said dismounting. Take the white person. with you as well and put another man on her. I ll ride in on the carts. Yes sir but Anna has stopped obeying me again. Anna if you love me go with Wladyclaw and help protect my back. She hesitated a minute and then galloped back through our lines. Chapter Nine A while later we topped a rise and I saw where the Missing Mongols had gone. They were pulling a dawn attack of their own. Lovely If they were getting set to attack their minds would be off defense. The war carts went ahead at a quick step. We were still two miles from the main wall as the sun came up. We recited our morning oaths as we advanced. Except for one week of the year when we thinned our stock of wild animals the lower portion of the killing field did duty as our parade ground and as pasture for our dairy herd. The evidence was that the Mongols had slaughtered our cows but they d soon pay for them in full. Fortunately this was not our prize herd or they would have made me mad We were advancing over the very ground that many of my officers had practiced on for five years. We knew every hill and rock on it. What s more there is a certain psychological advantage to fighting on your own home turf. Three Walls was built where I had found a number of minerals in a boxed canyon. I d given it its name because God had already built three of the city walls for us and we only had to build the fourth. Since that time we had added a second wall made out of bricks that doubled as a housing unit outside the first wooden one. Eventually a third wall concrete this time was built outside the second and now most people thought it was named for the three combination wall and apartment buildings we d built there. We topped another rise and I could see a commotion ripple through the Mongol ranks. They knew we were here and they knew that they were caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place with the walls of the city to their south impenetrable hedges to their east and west and seven ranks of armored men coming shoulder to shoulder at them from the north Further there were 3 600 guns pointing in their direction and if they didn t know what that meant they were about to learn. The Mongols had built four huge catapults mounted on wheels along with a wheeled siege tower that looked to be eight stories tall. The catapults were built fairly close to the ground and were pulled along by men with ropes as well as pushed forward by men leaning into long poles without needing much in the way of direction by the Mongol officers. The officers were there anyway though keeping all four catapults in a neat straight line a dozen yards behind the siege tower. The siege tower was being moved in much the same way except that many long ropes were attached to the top of it as well. Directed by a wildly gesticulating officer at the top of the tower men were pulling on these ropes to keep the ungainly structure from toppling over. The great wooden machines moved slowly toward the city wall as we advanced on the enemy. Our ladies manning the swivel guns on top of the wall were firing constantly at the enemy troops who were laboring to get the machines into position and were killing them in droves but as soon as a man fell he was replaced by one of the seemingly inexhaustible Mongol reserves. Suddenly the siege tower started to tilt forward toward the wall. The men on the ropes behind the tower strained to keep it upright while the officer at the top directed those pushing and pulling it forward to continue at their task. The effort was well coordinated and the front two wheels were actually lifted slightly into the air with all of the weight of the siege tower on the rear two wheels as it continued inexorably forward. I could see what the officer in charge was trying to do. Some castles have big clay jars buried around the walls that will be crushed when any great weight rolls over them and will stop or tip over a siege engine. If the officer could get his machine past the hidden jars that had just been crushed by the front wheels it would be in position to attack our walls. The only problem with his plan was that we didn t have any such jars planted. I d never really studied a modem sewage treatment plant back when I had the chance but I had once helped to install a single family septic system. Needing to do something with the sewage generated by the four thousand families living in my city I had simply scaled up that single family system by a factor of four thousand. Three Walls had a tile field that covered almost a square mile which made the kitchen garden above it one of the most fertile in the world. There was also a bodacious septic tank that was as long as our outer wall. It went from hedge to hedge and was thirty yards wide and ten deep. And the roof of the tank wasn t any stronger than it had to be. Watching them through my binoculars I could see that the Mongols were racing hundreds of men into the moving tower all of them eager to be among the first to attack the women on our city wall. The Mongol officer looked supremely self confident until the rear wheels of his siege tower encountered the holes that had been punched into the roof of the septic tank by the front wheels. With a certain calm deliberation the huge siege tower dropped three stories into the dark grey muck below. Many of the men pulling from the front were dragged down with it and those at the back pushing on the long poles were suddenly catapulted into the back of the tower to slide helplessly down into the slime with the others. Then the tower started to tip sideways and fell with apparent slowness onto the tightly packed horsemen who were escorting it forward. I saw the face of the officer in charge looking vastly annoyed as he and they and it went through the roof and sank out of sight. Smelly grey muck splashed over the catapults and those propelling them forward but with a stoic lack of imagination they all continued their advance thinking perhaps that it can t happen here. It could. Simultaneously with military precision all four catapults broke through the roof of the septic tank and sank out of sight along with most of the men propelling them. A cheer went up from our ranks and from our ladies guarding the city wall. A. rough way to die. One of the pikers laughed. Drowning in sewage Laugh all you want to another said. Odds are we re the ones that are going to have to fish out and bury them smelly farts. Would you do it for five pounds of gold and silver That s what every one of them bastards carry I tell you I would a third trooper shouted . I believe you Course in your case nobody could smell the difference a fourth yelled. My men were outnumbered at least eight to one and they were on foot while their enemies were mostly mounted. Yet not a man of them seemed to have even considered the obvious possibility that they might lose Considering their spirit I thought that it was an unlikely possibility too An airplane came and circled overhead. He didn t drop any messages so everything must have looked okay to the pilot. A few squadrons of Mongol horse archers rode past our line and let fly at us. I ignored them. Best we save our ammunition until we were firing at point blank range into crowds of them. Their arrows couldn t do us much damage anyway. Through my binoculars I could see the occasional puff of smoke from the swivel guns atop the wall but I could also see that Krystyana hadn t fired her wall guns yet. Smart girl She was saving her best for the last. The wall guns were cast into the two yards of reinforced concrete that made up the first story of the wall. Imagine a shotgun with a bore you could stick your leg into or a primitive sort of breech loading claymore mine. The muzzles were still covered over with their thin coating of plaster a surprise that was yet to be presented at the party. The field narrowed as we marched south and the carts on the ends had to drop out and follow behind. This caused no confusion because we d practiced on this very field so many times before. A half mile from the wall the Mongol general must have decided that a breakout was in order for at least half their horsemen formed up and charged our line. It was time. I ordered FIRE AT WILL and the bugles played it along our whole line. Our swivel guns let loose and noise and smoke covered the field. Through patches of clarity you could see where single bullets had plowed rows through the Mongol ranks killing three or four of them at a time. Very few of that first wave got through to hit the pikers and axemen and I don t think any horseman who got into our pikes lived to try it again. This was exactly the sort of fight I had envisioned from the beginning the sort we had armed and trained for. And it was working beautifully. The men were elated After the huge losses we had suffered on the riverboats after the helplessness the troops had felt watching the conventional knights being slaughtered west of Sandomierz after the confusion of the battle at Cracow after seeing the senseless slaughter at East Gate and after all the mind numbing running and pulling in between finally at last something was working perfectly Naturally somebody started to sing and the troops along the entire line picked up the tune. Poland is not yet dead Not while we yet live I could see that up on the wall despite the fact that they were both pregnant Cilicia and Francine were manning swivel guns right next to each other firing down at the enemy. And I saw that two of Krystyana s sons my own children were running ammunition to them. I waved and they all waved back. But you don t kill a quarter of a million men in a minute and we kept advancing as best we could but no longer at a full quickstep. Going over the fallen enemy and making sure they were really dead slowed us down. Our center was soon bowed back as the edges advanced more quickly and we had them surrounded. I had to order the wings to slow down so we wouldn t be shooting through the enemy troops and back into our own. About then Krystyana decided that it was time for the wall guns and all nine dozen of them let loose at once. The effect astounded even me and I d designed the bloody things. Suddenly everything within two gross yards of the wall was either very dead or trying very hard to get that way Bits of shrapnel and dead Mongol were blown as far as our own troops. The enemy still standing were stunned and made easy marks for the swivel guns. Then one knot of horsemen turned as their leader pointed directly at me. Suddenly some three hundred men and horses wheeled and charged straight for my cart Everything had been so beautiful but suddenly things didn t look too good. The gunners tore into them and many riders went down. The Mongols knew that they were all dead men but they wanted vengeance for their own deaths vengeance in the form of my life They kept coming and as their ranks thinned I saw in the center of them two faces I recognized. One was that of the Mongol ambassador and the other was General Subotai Bahadur himself. Standing in the center war cart I drew my sword and waited. There was nothing else I could do. Thank you our Lord for these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord amen one of the gunners on my cart said. I didn t know if he was being sacrilegious or just thanking God for the targets so I kept my mouth shut. It was pretty dry just then anyway. The two older Mongols seemed to be leading charmed lives or perhaps the gunners were reluctant to shoot a man with white hair and wrinkles when there were so many younger targets available but in the end they were the last two left alive. Together their horses jumped my cart s big shield and came down directly on top of the pikemen. As they leapt from their dying horses toward the cart a wounded piker caught Subotai in the gut with a grounded pike. I don t know which of the three us was most surprised but the old general was suddenly airborne. He actually pole vaulted right over my head The ambassador landed in the cart between two startled gunners and swung his sword at me. I parried it and gave him a slash to the forearm. His hand and sword went flying. He pulled a dagger with his left hand and I took that one off as well. He said Damn you Conrad and slumped to the bottom of the cart. I looked at him and decided that we could use a Polish speaking prisoner. I put tourniquets on his stumps. The roar of gunfire slowed to a rattle and then to occasional pops. Slowly it stopped completely. Troops looked wide eyed over the smoke and the smell of the carnage not quite ready to believe that it was finally over. Slowly the truth dawned. Victory The tops of the walls and towers were covered with our women and children cheering for us and for themselves. Baron Gregor had the men unleash themselves from the carts and they walked to the wall axes and pikes in hand so that they could chop up the fallen enemy and make sure that dead Mongols stayed that way. A brutal business but a necessary one. There was no exchange of prisoners with the Mongols and any who escaped would have to rob and murder their way home just to stay alive. Best to kill them clean here and now. The prisoner I had taken was another matter. I had one of our medics sew up his stumps and left orders for him to be guarded. Actually our medics outnumbered our wounded and we had less than a hundred killed. A remarkably one sided victory. I climbed down from my war cart and joined the others streaming toward the now open city gate. As I passed our wrecked septic tank I saw a number of warriors around it pikes in hand. Quite a few Mongol troops were floundering around in the wretched stench below us. Do you think they ll want some prisoners one of the warriors asked a friend. They didn t say nothing about wanting none his friend answered. Anyways it ud be easier to catch them some fresh ones than it would be to clean these bastards off. And with that he reversed his pike and used it to hold one of the dog paddling Mongols under the stinking grey mud. I guess you re right said the first reversing his pike. I just shook my head and walked on until I ran into my second in command. Give the men leave to enjoy themselves until tomorrow morning I told Baron Gregor except for two companies that you don t like. Somebody had better stay on guard. We ll be needing some radio operators as well. Right sir. Try to get through to Baron Vladimir and tell him the news. Have him send half his men back to where we dumped all that booty and bring it here. The rest of his men should stop at East Gate and clean the place up. Send a scout to him if the radios aren t working. And I want the planes to fly over all of the country that they can and make sure that there isn t yet another Mongol army out there. Right sir. Can you think of anything else we have to do Not offhand sir aside from spreading the word about this victory. Then after you get those messages out go see your wives. I m going to mine right now I went back to my old apartment in the first wall through the cheering crowds of soldiers and their dependents. I smiled and waved back trying to be the good politician but my heart wasn t really in it. I had been going on my own adrenaline for weeks and now at last it was leaching out of me. I felt incredibly tired drained and weak. I was sick of war and blood and dirt and saw nothing glorious about wallowing in them. What I really wanted to do was get out of this filthy stinking blood soaked armor take a long hot bath have a stiff drink and kiss my wife and not necessarily in that order. I went up to my rooms and found both Francine and Cilicia waiting for me. Inwardly I groaned. The last thing I wanted now was more confrontation and the Chinese symbol for an argument is two women under one roof. They both smiled at me. We have decided Francine said. When we were shooting at the Mongols we decided that we should share you. We both love you and you love both of us so we can make it work. This statement surprised me as much as a new Mongol army. I sat down to take it all in. The horse really had learned how to sing The war was over and now we d have to get busy and build the peace. Chapter Ten FROM THE JOURNAL OF COUNTESS FRANCINE Once I heard that our men were coming I was no longer afraid. I knew that Conrad would never let us be harmed. Captainette Krystyana allowed me to operate one of the swivel guns even though there were other women who were better at it than I. She said that seeing me in battle would encourage Count Conrad. I suppose that it was for the same reason that she put Lady Cilicia at the gun next to mine. There is something about fighting in the company of others that gives one a strong sense of camaraderie and I wonder if this isn t the reason why men like to do it so much. Certainly I could no longer hate Cilicia when she was shooting at the same murderers that I was. He loves both of us she said to me during a lull in the fighting. And we both love him. What you say is true. We can t help ourselves. Truly good men are hard to find I said. Many of the women here share a man. Couldn t we do the same she said. And so it was that after Conrad had rescued us from the Mongol horde we both gave him a warm welcome. Knowing him well we had a warm tub of water waiting for him and together we stripped off his filthy blood drenched armor and clothes. He had not had the chance to change his clothing for two weeks and his outer clothes were spattered with so much blood and gore that they were stiff and hard even after we removed the metal from them. We didn t even consider having them laundered but sent them out to be burned With one of us at each side of the tub we washed him down like a little baby and he loved it. We scrubbed him and rubbed him and even made little baby noises at him. We had to change the water twice before we got him really clean and he drank an entire pitcher of cold beer while we did it. Our love had been through a half dozen fierce battles and had only one small injury. He didn t tell us then that this wound had cost him the sight in his right eye. We hesitated in giving him a really proper hero s welcome for we were both in our sixth month and feared to harm our children. Before he got there we had debated what to do and had finally called in one of the maids to attend to his needs. The poor girl was disappointed though for once we got him out of the tub and dried he went into his chamber and fell sound asleep on top of the covers. He didn t wake until noon the next day and by then I was gone. Leaving the maid to attend to Conrad in the unlikely event that he awoke Cilicia and I dressed in our best and went down to join the army in its celebration. It was important that we make an appearance among the warriors. We first went and sang a mass at the church as many of the men were doing though Cilicia sat quietly through it not being a Christian. Then we went to join the party. The ladies had brewed vast quantities of strong beer for the occasion and it was being consumed with gusto. We were both dying to find out all that happened and Baron Gregor was most helpful. Baron Ilya was even more SO for I think that he is the only one of my husband s barons that does not have even one wife so we had him to ourselves. As he talked on about the fighting on the riverboats the battle near Sandomierz the burning of Cracow and the murder of the people at East Gate the full horror and magnitude of the slaughter came to me. And also the priceless opportunity that all this represented Think Almost the entire nobility of the duchies of Little Poland Sandomierz and Mazovia had been killed. And not only the fighting men but most of their wives children and grandparents had died as well. In all of eastern Poland there was no one left with the strength to defend the land except my husband Conrad And there was no one left alive to inherit it all By himself Conrad had defeated the biggest invasion Christendom had ever suffered and he had done it almost without losses except for his riverboats and aircraft. His huge land army was completely intact. Those three duchies needed Conrad s protection and I intended to see to it that they got it in the traditional manner The few surviving nobles and freemen of eastern Poland were going to make Conrad their duke. Dukes With the right persuasion they d make him the duke of all three duchies To do that I was going to have to speak to all of them and I d have to do it before Duke Henryk got off his slovenly rump in Legnica He hadn t fought for eastern Poland and I was not about to let him reap the prize of victory. First I went to Baron Gregor and told him of my plan. He was very enthusiastic about it and agreed to stop sending messages to Duke Henryk. He felt that it could be disastrous to tell the duke actual lies but he thought it might be possible to convince his grace to stay in Legnica for another week by slight misdirection. I left that to the good baron and got myself ready to go to Cracow. You see the only way to talk to every one of the scattered people of eastern Poland was to use Conrad s magazine. For years everyone had relied on it for the news and it had a perfect reputation for always telling the truth. Yet it hadn t occurred to anyone to use it to persuade. The magazine was printed in the Franciscan monastery in Cracow and Baron Gregor said that the monastery still stood even though the buildings around it were in ruins. I intended to be there by dawn. My condition was such that I could not safely mount a horse but Conrad had had a number of railroad carriages built. One of the smallest was light and fast though it carried only five people. I had two of my maids pack for themselves and me and went to the stables. Luck was still with me for I found Anna there. She was in surprisingly low spirits and I had to take her to her spelling board to find out what the matter was. It took an hour to get the whole story out of her but it was time well spent. Conrad had found another mount like her but white in color and this person could not understand Polish as Anna and all her children could. She could only understand the English of the future that my husband came from. Conrad acting with stupid male practicality had kept the new mount to himself and had been ignoring Anna just when she felt he needed her most. I had long admired Anna and now she really needed a friend. Oh you poor baby I said to her. So Conrad went running off to battle first on a riverboat without you and then on this new white hussy. Shame on him To do such a thing to his oldest and best friend. As soon as we get back I m going to scold him for what he has done to you. But right now there s something that we must do that is very important for him. I mean he s been a bad boy but we are still his ladies and we must take care of him yes She nodded yes. We have to go to Cracow and get the monks there to print a special issue of the magazine. This will tell everybody that Conrad should be the new boss. Can you get us there by morning if you push that new little railroad cart She nodded yes. It took some struggling to get the cart out of the building for there were no attendants about. Everyone seemed to be at the victory party. My lady you shouldn t be doing such heavy work Oh I was startled and looked to see a young officer standing in the limelight. You re Sir Miesko s son aren t you I have that honor. Captain Wladyclaw of the scouts at your service my countess he said bowing deeply. I m so glad you re here Sir Wladyclaw. Can you get this carriage on the track But of course my lady. Yet what do you want with it There was nothing to do but take him into my confidence and explain the whole thing to him Well if Baron Gregor approves the plan then so do I he said. Lord Conrad should be a duke or better yet a king But I think that he would not approve of his wife going all the way to Cracow unescorted especially as there could be a Mongol or two still hiding out there. However my men and I are free at the moment and would be honored to do the task. But Sir Wladyclaw that would make you miss the victory celebration. It matters little my lady since my own men have their wives at the Warrior s School and not here. I myself am yet a bachelor and there are six hundred platoons of young men in earnest competition for the regretfully few single ladies at Three Walls. Also if we do not go to Cracow in your service we will likely have to spend tomorrow burying dead Mongols a task worth avoiding if it can be done with honor. So you see that. it is you that do us the favor Countess. I shall have a lance or two of scouts here before your servants arrive with your luggage. The captain was always true to his word and we were on the road in minutes the captain with ten scouts all riding Anna s children and in Anna s carriage two of my maids and myself. Conrad must have designed the carriage with Anna or one of her identical children in mind. Its wheels were placed under springs with some sort of oil filled pot that Conrad called a shock absorber. Suffice to say that it ran with remarkable smoothness. Conrad called this sort of carriage a convertible since the railroad wheels had very thick flanges that permitted it to be driven on ordinary roads as well as on railroad tracks. At the back there was a sort of lower half of a horse collar that perfectly fitted Anna s neck and shoulders. This let her push the cart without being encumbered with a harness and the cart was so low to the ground that she could easily look over it. Pushing this collar to the left or right permitted her to steer the cart when it was off the railroad. Also this arrangement permitted the passengers to talk to the person pushing it and Anna and I still had a lot to talk over one girl to another. Later in the evening when conversation was starting to ebb Sir Wladyclaw rode to the side of the carriage and begged leave to introduce his men to me. I was of course delighted to meet them for besides its being good politics I enjoy meeting with young people and these were all very young men. It was rather like holding court save that we were all moving down the railroad at a pace that no ordinary horse could keep up for long. They couldn t all line up at once since some must needs ride point and others flank. I resolved to have Conrad explain these strange terms to me but just then I did not want to expose my ignorance to Sir Wladyclaw. Somehow it was necessary to shift men to and from various positions before each could meet me but this had the advantage of letting me speak at length with each of them. Or rather I should say shout for our speed was such that the wind was strong. It also allowed my maids to size them up at length and to speak of them in a most immodest manner when we were between visitors. It has always been my custom to let my servants speak as they will when we are alone for one learns much from one s subordinates. The girls were quite pleased with Sir Wladyclaw s men and for good reason. Not only was each a fine specimen of young manhood but each was also from a very good family. I found that while I did not know any of them personally I knew friends and relatives of every one of them. We spent some pleasant hours discussing mutual friends. When the lengthy introductions were at last over and Sir Wladyclaw was again at my side I spoke to him of this. But of course my lady. A scout must be a well traveled man or he will get lost trying to find the enemy or even his own army. The work. is vigorous so he cannot be too old. He must be a born horseman who can spend days in the saddle without tiring. That was necessary enough in the days of ordinary horses but in these modem times why a Big Person can run for days without stopping. Who else but a nobleman could have this experience Oh think not that I m being snobbish Both of my own parents were born commoners for my father was knighted on the battlefield for valor not because his father was noble. But the fact remains that I got my first horse when I was four years old and I made my first visit to Cracow when I was six A commoner simply doesn t get the benefit of the sort of upbringing that I got. And some of my men were better off than I since their fathers grandfathers and uncles were all widely traveled horsemen. What I am trying to say is that when we formed up the scouts we knew that we would have very few Big People for the first few years. We had to get the absolute most we could get out of them. That meant that we needed the best horsemen we could possibly find and I think we did a very good job. You did indeed Sir Wladyclaw I said. But you said that there would be very few Big People for the first few years. There are less than three dozen of them at present. Surely they can never be numerous Though it pains me to disagree with so gracious a lady I fear I must do so. There are but two dozen and ten adult Big People now counting the new white one that Lord Conrad found but there are also two gross six dozen and four young ones growing up right now. Further in the next month or two nine dozen and eight fillies will be born assuming that we haven t lost any Big People in the war. A few are missing you know. In two years time we shall be able to equip an entire company with Big People and in twenty years they could well outnumber all the Little People in the rest of the army Then you can expect considerable promotion as your little command expands I said. That is my hope my lady. Indeed I voluntarily took two demotions in grade in order to get this post and I don t think I ll regret that choice in the long run. Also it means that the men under me will be promoted as well and I have chosen them for command ability as well as for horsemanship. But you haven t explained why they re all so handsome one of my maids said. But they re not Sir Wladyclaw said. You only think that they are because of your essential lechery my young lady and I love you for it Well you haven t done that yet Patience my love. There was a slight matter of an army to train and a Mongol horde to vanquish first. But now that these trivial chores seem to be accomplished I shall devote myself to honoring my noble mother s dearest hope the getting for her of some grandchildren. It is my earnest intent to spend as much of my time as my lords permit in the next few years in the granting of my dear mother s wishes. The assistance of healthy young ladies is earnestly sought I don t know if you re serious or not she said. Alas it is a thing known to but a few. But we shall study the matter with deliberation as soon as my lords and your lady permit. And with that our gallant Sir Wladyclaw rode out to inspect his men. The girls were both giggling at the exchange and in truth I was smiling about it too me a pregnant woman of thirty. To be sure much of what he had said was surely nonsense but he had said it with a smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eye. More importantly he was fit and lean and strong. He was clean and polished and remarkably sexy. He had a good mind a decent education and a proper attitude on things. Indeed he was a young man who would go far in this world. Chapter Eleven At first light we went through the bloodstained gates of Cracow which Conrad and Sir Wladyclaw had completely stuffed with dead Mongols if the tale could be believed. We could have found rooms at Wawel Castle but it was not convenient to the Franciscan monastery and I was beginning to find walking difficult. Also there is a great deal of time consuming ceremony at the castle and I did not want to waste a moment on anything but the task at hand. Thus we proceeded directly to the Pink Dragon Inn and obtained lodging there. Oh the innkeeper said that the place was completely filled with people whose houses had been burned but on realizing who I was he quickly agreed to clear the rooms necessary for my party. We ate a remarkably spare meal even for Lent. There was only oatmeal porridge and new beer for the inn s huge cellars had been completely cleared to provide a quick lunch for a twelfth of my husband s army. Even rare wines that had been aging in the bottle for three entire years had been given away for Count Conrad had said Empty out your entire cellar and the innkeeper had taken him exactly at his word. A sad loss. We then went to the monastery arriving as the monks were chanting Prime. Soon the new abbot was with me for the old one had died in the fighting. This new man Father Stanislaw had been in charge of the print shop and he too fell completely in with my plan. There was much anger in Cracow at Duke Henryk for that nobleman had once sworn to defend the city but now had failed to do so or even to come when the city was under siege. To be fair to Henryk the nobles of Cracow had so disagreed with his battle plan that they had left him as a group and gone to fight the Mongols under the leadership of Duke Boleslaw of Mazovia. But the nobles who had done so were now almost all dead and the commoners have a short memory about such things. The abbot said that to a man the people of Cracow wanted Conrad for their duke. The abbot had supplies on hand for a print run of twelve thousand copies and set aside all other work to get it done. Together we talked of an entire issue that treated nothing but the recent war with the Mongols as opposed to the usual format where there were a dozen short articles on everything from current events to cooking recipes. We would have a dozen or so witnesses of the various battles each tell their story stressing how it was that Count Conrad had saved all of Christendom. Near the end there would be an article stressing the danger that eastern Poland was in without a properly confirmed duke to defend it. Then there would be an appeal hopefully by Bishop Ignacy for all the freemen and nobles of the duchies of Little Poland Sandomierz and Mazovia to meet and elect Conrad duke. Or maybe even king. The story of the battles had yet to be written and several monks were put with Sir Wladyclaw and his men to get some of it down on paper. I left to secure Bishop Ignacy to our cause but as I boarded my carriage word came that a riverboat had come to port. I had Anna take me there immediately for fear that the boat might leave before I had a chance to talk to the captain. The magazine would have to be delivered after all. The boat proved to be the Enterprise with Baron Tadaos himself commanding. This was a stroke of luck for he commanded all the boats on the river and knew more of the river battle than did any other man. The baron gave me a warm greeting and he too liked my plan of making Conrad Duke of eastern Poland. He promised all assistance in delivering the news but would not take the time to write the story of the river battle. His duty he said was to patrol the rivers and search for his several missing boats. However he lent me Baron Piotr for the task of writing the history of the Battle for the Vistula as he called it and I had to agree that this intelligent young man was certainly up to the task. As I drove Baron Piotr to the monastery I said You realize that it is important that as much credit as possible must go to Count Conrad himself. You know that if Conrad himself were writing the tale he would praise everyone but himself but we must see to it that the truth is told. My lady the only way that Conrad could have done more than he did would have been for him to have killed every single Mongol with his own sword I shall praise him to the stars not because you have asked but because he deserves it the baron said. Leaving Piotr in the care of the monks I went to Wawel Cathedral in search of Bishop Ignacy. He was important to my plan because he was so well known and loved. He wrote a sermon every month for the magazine and thus had great influence in the country indeed in the world for many copies of the magazine found their way to all the countries of Europe He was very patriotic and had long worked for the unity of Poland. Thus I was very taken aback when having explained my plan I found that the bishop was less than totally enthused by it. My lady I have my doubts as to the wisdom of all of this. But your excellency Eastern Poland lies defenseless Only Conrad has the power capable of defending it. I quite agree with you my daughter but Conrad would defend it in any event whether he were duke or commoner. But the people want him for their duke I don t doubt it. Furthermore they re right. He d make a fine duke Then your excellency why do you oppose this plan I am not opposing it. I simply have grave doubts. You seem to forget that I am Conrad s confessor. I know the man very well perhaps even better than you do. I have no doubt that he would be very good for the country. Indeed since Duke Henryk controls most of western Poland were Conrad to control the east Poland would once again be a united country could they but agree. And I think that they would. I tell you that Conrad could be made the first King of Poland for a hundred years Then why do you doubt him I don t doubt him Conrad would make a great king but would being the king make a great Conrad Do you think that he would be happy with such a position I don t Do you know when once I suggested the throne to him he said that it looked very stiff and uncomfortable and that he had a fine soft leather chair in his office that tilted back and suited him. When I suggested the crown he said that a crown was nothing but a hat that let the rain in. You may want Conrad s enlargement and the people of Poland may want it too. But does Conrad want it I doubt it He wants to be free to work on his technical devices and he considers them to be far more important than the fleeting glories of temporal power. Your excellency I cannot believe that any man in his secret heart would turn down absolute power. Conrad has very little of this secret heart as you call it. Indeed he truly wears his heart on his sleeve most of the time to his considerable pain. True he likes power but power to him is a very different thing than it is to you. The power he glories in is the power of a white hot spray of liquid steel pouring from one of his furnaces or the thundering power of one of his huge engines turning at great speed. He cares nothing for the brutal power that permits a king to put some offender to death. He doesn t dream of crowds chanting his name. He avoids crowds as much as he can He does not want the honor of sitting at the high table of a banquet. He makes excuses and tells lies to avoid banquets altogether He has dreams yes but his dreams are of great cities gleaming white in the sunshine with not a bit of trash in them of steel tracks that crisscross all of Europe connecting every hamlet of mighty ships traveling swiftly to far lands with neither sails nor oars That s what power means to your man Not sitting on a gilded chair wearing a golden hat. I was much taken aback by all the bishop had said for there was more than a grain of truth in it. Yet I was not about to let half a country slip through my fingers. You speak the truth Father. I realize now that when the seym the local parliaments meet and they choose Conrad as duke he will refuse them. After all they can t force him to become a duke. But think of what this will mean your excellency Without Conrad they must then choose someone else. If they are all met together and have already decided to choose a single man Poland is united The eastern half anyway or all of it if they then choose Duke Henryk who is Conrad s only real competition. Father you have changed my reasons for what I m doing but you have not changed my intention to do it Doesn t Poland need to be united Won t you help me with this plan Hmm. On that basis where we would only be using Count Conrad s current popularity as a device to get the people together yes. To that I would lend my support. We need more than your support your excellency. We need your active help and leadership With so many of the noblemen dead I think that you alone would have the prestige to call together all the seym here to Cracow and have them come. Or do you think that Sandomierz would be more centrally located Sandomierz is not only more central my daughter it is also intact Surely you have noticed that lower Cracow is a smoldering ruin. No I m afraid that we must definitely choose Sandomierz. I left the good bishop working on his proclamation and his sermon and had Anna drive me back to the inn. And then I went to sleep. Chapter Twelve FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD I woke to see that it was broad daylight outside. The second thing I noticed was that I had an attractive young lady in my arms and that she wasn t one of my wives. I thought about it a bit and decided that they had probably provided me with this substitute since they were both in advanced pregnancy and that it would not be gallant to look a gift lady in the mouth. Of course if she were not here with my wives permission there could be fireworks but what the hell. I had been two weeks and more without and that s an absurd amount of time So I found out that her name was Mary and that she was one of Cilicia s new maids. I had never known Cilicia to have a maid before. She was picking up Francine s bad habits already. I told Mary that all this was wonderful and topped her for the better part of an hour. About fifteen years old she was an enthusiastic and healthy girl if not particularly skillful. At least she wasn t a virgin. Then I began wondering what the army was doing. Promising the girl that I d see her later I threw a cloak over my bare shoulders and walked over the catwalk to the second wall. The few people I met gave me a smile and a nod but left me to my mood. The three walls which doubled as apartment buildings were connected with narrow lightweight wooden bridges at each floor that let you go from one apartment building to another without having to go all the way down and then up again. They were built such that if the first wall was taken by an enemy the catwalks could be easily knocked down and the fight could be continued from the second or even the first wall. Fortunately this had not proved necessary against the Mongols but every little bit of safety helps. I got to the fighting top of the outer wall and saw that the cleanup job was well under way. A start was being made at repairing the septic tank. Dead Mongols were being stripped and decapitated with the bodies being hauled away for burial somewhere out of sight. In the distance heads were being stuck on poles lined up on both sides of the railroad tracks. Different from what we had done before but just as effective. Maybe even more so to someone traveling down the track. I wondered if anyone had calculated just how long a double line of a quarter of a million heads was. I did the arithmetic in my head and came up with six dozen miles Perhaps Baron Gregor was in for a surprise. The dead Mongol horses were being skinned and a fair number of the young and healthy ones were being butchered. Many of them were being salted down. Krystyana always was a tightfisted little manager Things were being done they didn t need my help and I found this to be good. I went down to the showers which were empty at this hour and then to the dining room. I was surprised to find that lunch was already over but I wanted a breakfast anyway. I hadn t had an egg in two weeks and I not only ordered six of them over easy I had the cook go out to the chicken coop herself and get some that were absolutely fresh. I had them make me some fresh biscuits too. Rank hath its privileges and for a day or two I intended to wallow in them Yet still I missed a cup of coffee and no amount of wealth or power could get me one. Most modem Poles prefer tea but I had developed a taste for good coffee during my college days in Massachusetts and had kept with it after going home. An expensive habit but worth it. After eating I went to the church feeling guilty for not having gone there yesterday as soon as we had won the battle. Even with most of the people working on the cleanup there was still quite a crowd in the church most of them. silently praying giving thanks. There was a long line of people waiting for a chance at the confessionals one of the things I had introduced to this century. They were standard in my own time and the priests here had accepted them almost without question as a convenience. My own soul was blackened almost beyond redemption and I knew that soon I would have to go to Cracow to see my own confessor Bishop Ignacy. I prayed for an hour and it helped. My next stop was to the Big People s barn. All of them were gone except for the new white one. Out on patrol I supposed. I needed to talk to the white person anyway. I took her over to the big letter board so she could spell out words and answer my questions. The Polish alphabet isn t quite the same as the one used in English but they are similar enough to get by. Like Anna she knew that she was a bioengineered product of a civilization in the distant past. Like Anna she hadn t the slightest idea how a time machine worked. She knew her former rider only as Tom. If he had a last name she hadn t heard it. In fact she had absolutely no new information for me at all except for her name. It was Silver. I should have guessed. I told her that she was on the payroll. now and that she was welcome to swear allegiance to me. She didn t know what that was so I put it off until later. Somewhat disappointed I went back to my apartment. I never developed as close a relationship with Silver as I had with Anna. She didn t like to come up to the apartment and listen in to the conversations since she couldn t understand them. She couldn t develop friendships with the local children the way Anna did for the same reason. And I was now a far busier man than I had been ten years earlier. I just didn t have as much time to spend with her as she deserved. I hired two young boys to stay with her and try to teach her Polish but she proved absolutely incapable of learning the language. A bad situation but I didn t know what to do about it. Back in my apartment I passed Cilicia in a hallway. She smiled and gave me a quick kiss but she knew enough about my moods to know that I needed to be alone. I went to my office and told Natalia my secretary and Baron Gregor s first wife that I didn t want to be disturbed by anything less than Duke Henryk or a new Mongol army. I closed the door and if I had had a telephone I would have unplugged it from the wall. I had some thinking to do. For the last nine and a half years I had been busy building the seeds of an industrial revolution and building an army to defend Poland from the Mongols. The second objective was now accomplished for we had given the greasy bastards the soundest beating that they had ever gotten. They d be a generation sucking their wounds before they dared try us again. By that time we d be invincible. We d likely be attacking them As for the first objective well there were a lot of improvements still to be made in our technology. Indeed many had been made in the last few years and had been shelved because we were so involved in war production that we didn t have time to mess with them. The idea that war encourages technology is a myth. War encourages war production and very little else. The alchemists had come up with an improvement on our method of making sodium bicarbonate an important chemical in the production of glass medicines and the biscuits I had just eaten. The old method mixed salt water sodium chloride with carbon dioxide from heated limestone calcium carbonate and ammonia from our coke ovens. This yielded sodium bicarbonate and ammonium chloride. The problem was that we couldn t find much of a use for the ammonium chloride and didn t get all that much ammonia from the coke ovens. This greatly limited the amount of the stuff we could produce. Zoltan s improvement was a way to take quicklime calcium oxide and combine it with the ammonium chloride to get all the ammonia back which we could then recycle. We were still throwing away the calcium chloride. Well it melted snow and eventually we came up with the idea of using it as a dehumidifier as part of an airconditioning system. But mainly now there was no limit to the amount of glass we could make Within a year glass would be cheap enough to use for making canning jars. Some experimental work had been done on electricity too. We now had a varnish that was a fair insulator provided that the voltage was low and you didn t expect much flexing. We had plenty of copper and all the new towns I had built were very compact so they could be easily defended. If we put a generator within each city we wouldn t have to send the electricity very far so using a low voltage made sense. It eliminated the need for ugly power towers that couldn t be defended and for half the year we could use the waste heat from the generators to heat our buildings. The usual modem method of doing things wastes about two thirds of the energy in the fuel in generation and transmission losses. With my system much of this waste was eliminated at the price of having a power station next door. Electric lights would be nice and although I didn t know where we could get tungsten for the filaments Tom Edison made a decent light bulb using a carbon filament simply a baked thread. It s easier to make a low voltage light bulb than a high voltage one since the filament gets shorter and thicker. And once you have a light bulb you have solved most of the problems in making an electronic tube. Well we d have to work on it. Nonetheless the big job ahead of us was simply to do more of what we had been doing. The simple fact is that mass production is necessary to produce goods and services in sufficient quantity to maintain a decent standard of living. Mass production cannot exist without mass distribution. The larger the market you are serving the more specialized and efficient you can make your productive machines and processes. It was critically important that we build more railroad tracks so that industrial and agricultural products could get from place to place more easily. The failure to emphasize the importance of transportation is one of the Russians greatest failings. Karl Marx in his nineteenth century evaluation of the world economy lived much of the time in a British industrial area. He not only was never a railroad man or a seaman he seemed to think that these things were unimportant. All his thoughts were on the making and consuming of things. As a result orthodox communistic thinking stresses production and treats transportation as a necessary evil. This philosophical bias has resulted in an inadequate transportation network in Russia and this in turn is one of the causes of that country s incredible inefficiency. The railroads were a top priority but the more I got to thinking about it the less important a railroad engine seemed to be. Pulling carts with mules as we were doing now for civilian transport was a hundred times more efficient than using pack mules in caravans which was the only competition. It takes almost as much manpower to tend one of our primitive steam engines as it takes to tend a string of mules. More important in twenty years we d have so many Big People that we could use them to pull the carts. Then we wouldn t have to expend any manpower at all The motive power would also be the driver. A Big Person can pull a ten ton cart six hundred miles in a day. That ought to be fast enough for anybody. Pulling one cart at a time we wouldn t have to bother with railroad hump yards and all that sort of time consuming nonsense. And Big People don t consume nonrenewable resources or pollute the environment the way mechanized transport does. Best to leave mechanically powered transportation to the rivers and oceans. Then there was the problem that in the last half year we had multiplied the size of the army by a factor of six to 150 000 men. This was accomplished by giving them an abbreviated course at the Warrior s School. They had learned to handle weapons and take orders but they hadn t been taught to read write or do arithmetic. This necessary expansion was a tremendously big bite for us to take and I rather wished that it was possible for us to chew it up. At present though we had housing and permanent jobs for only about twenty five thousand families. More housing and more factories and more farms were obviously needed. But the only thing I could see to do for now was to at least temporarily discharge everybody below the rank of knight who hadn t worked for us before. Then in time those who wanted to come back in could finish up the Warrior s School course and if they passed they could come back into the army. No Stop Dumb idea. We might need those men again at any time especially if I had judged the Mongols wrong. Rather than discharging them I had to form them into active reserves. That would mean regular pay regular practice sessions a reserve command structure and a dozen other headaches. And doing all this while they were scattered all over the country I d have to delegate the authority on this one since I certainly didn t want to bother leading it myself. I wondered if Baron Vladimir would want the job. The reserve force would have to be a temporary thing designed to phase itself out as the men came on as full time workers or retired after ten years or so. Construction was going to be the big game on campus for quite a while. I had long dreamed of building a line of company size forts along the Vistula and the Bug as a defense against Mongols and a similar line along the Odra and the Nysa against the Germans. Oh except for the German Teutonic Order the Germans hadn t given us much trouble lately since they were mostly involved in conflicts in Italy and with the Pope but from a historical standpoint they repeatedly invaded us and it was just smart to be ready for it. We had already built a good working model of a standalone fort the one at East Gate. It had been taken by a combination of trickery and stupidity but there had been nothing wrong with the design that I could see. It was easily defensible and looked like a castle but actually it was mostly an apartment building for two gross families. It was really a small town with factories a school a library a store an inn and everything that such a community needs. Two gross families is about the right size for a town too. At that size you have enough neighbors to have somebody interesting to talk to and there are enough of you to support a full set of community services but you are not so big that people get lost in the crowd. Three Walls for example was already too big. Despite the fact that everybody was well taken care of we were getting a crime problem. I don t mean relatives getting into fistfights either. That sort of thing will always be with us. No I mean real organized crime like that fairsized theft ring we broke up a year ago. In a town of under three hundred households things like that aren t likely to happen. Everybody knows what s going on Each fort would be situated on twenty or thirty square miles of land and that land would be farmed by the troops. In the off seasons there would be light industrial work available to keep them busy. They would spend one day a week in military exercises but mostly they would be a working community. I had long been toying with the idea of a factory that would build large precast concrete sections that could be shipped by railroad or boat and assembled on site into a fort. They d have to go up fast since I wanted to get the army back up to its present size in a hurry. To house an additional hundred thousand men and their families in four years I d have to throw forts up at the rate of two a week And there wasn t only the concrete to think of. There was plumbing wiring power plants heating systems weapons school books and beer steins. I got to sketching out what was required and it was very dark before I quit. We were going to have to build a factory that built factories that made the components of the forts which were themselves partly factories I wrote a note to Natalia to have all drafting and engineering personnel relieved of all military duties and back at their desks immediately. I needed help I woke up in the sunshine again with the same girl in bed with me. I had missed the sunrise service two days in a row There was some cheering going on outside and I went to the balcony to see what it was all about. The women and children from East Gate were back Not the nobles who were murdered there by the Mongols but our own people who had left the fort two or three days before that. The women and children had wandered around in the hills for a week before they had found their way back here. I got some proper clothes on in a hurry and went down to the mob scene below. Understandably the men whose families had been missing were delighted to find that they were safe and sound. They were hugging and kissing and laughing and crying sometimes the same person doing all four at the same time. What annoyed me was the fact that the captainette who had brought the dependents in was being carried around on some of the men s shoulders as though she were a hero. I got over to them and wrenched her down. You stupid bitch I shouted. You re under arrest But what for sir one of the men asked. What for For dereliction of duty for abandoning her post for treason and for contributing to the murder of twenty thousand women and children I shouted. Then suddenly everybody was quiet. Chapter Thirteen THREE WALLS still didn t have a jail so I had a blacksmith put leg shackles on her and followed the two knights who took our prisoner to the storeroom we used as a lockup when necessary. The room was already in use for the handless Mongol ex ambassador but I had her thrown in with him. He stank the way all Mongols do but I didn t owe her any favors. I was on my way back up when I realized that I was going to have to judge the case. You see count is a judicial title like judge or justice. A man holding it had the right of high justice within his realms. That is to say he could hold a trial for a major crime and punish the offender as he saw fit. His word could have a man hanged. I had held the title of count since the Christmas before but that meant that I was count of Francine s tiny county of Strzegom where there never was much crime. Here at Three Walls I had remained Count Lambert s baron despite my right to use the title of count. Up until a week ago that is. When Count Lambert had been killed by a Mongol spear and I had inherited his lands in Poland I had also inherited his responsibilities. I couldn t fob off my serious criminals on him anymore. I was it I went back up to my office to ponder this latest problem. For years I had been ducking my legal duties by having somebody else do them. On Sir Miesko s recommendation I d appointed Baron Pulaski to be my judge. The baron had four subordinates a court recorder a bailiff and two prosecutor defenders. These last two took turns. They went around my extensive and scattered estates hearing cases and writing up their recommendations to me. I almost invariably went along with them or in the case of serious offenses handed their recommendations up to my liege lord Count Lambert. In time he got to following their recommendations as well. But they really didn t have any official sanction for their existence. Since they normally tried trivial matters and only conducted hearings on serious ones nobody had seriously complained about it. But Captainette Lubinska s crimes were hardly trivial. Whether I tried her or had Baron Pulaski do it I would be setting a precedent. After some hours of agonizing over it I decided that the baron was more competent a judge than I was and he was certainly more unbiased. Furthermore I didn t want to spend the rest of my life being a trial judge. I had better things to do than sit on a gilded chair deciding if some poor bastard deserved to die. If my liege lord Duke Henryk didn t like it he could start by telling me so. If indeed he still was my liege lord The last I d heard from him he was damning me for failing to go to Legnica and join his forces there. For all I knew he considered me to be an independent duke now. The simple truth was that the military forces that obeyed me were vastly superior to his and I controlled quite a bit more money than he did although as a good socialist I had difficulty thinking of all this vast wealth as being my own. Actually I could probably declare my own independence and make it stick Not that I d want to. I could see no advantage to independence and quite a few disadvantages. Being part of a greater whole I could expand my industrial and agricultural revolutions as fast as necessary simply by doing it and paying a fee or buying land if it was required of me. A little persuasion was all that was usually needed. As an independent king or whatever I d have to fight a war every time I tried to open up a new market. Insanity I sent a runner to find Baron Pulaski and ask him to come have a talk with me. My designers and draftspeople had all shown up at dawn and had spent the morning getting their work area cleaned up and ready to go. It had been more than a year since we d used it what with the war and all. Most of them were back in civilian clothes and feeling a little unusual about it. I m not going to enforce any dress codes around here I told them but if you have to go out to the field or even to the shops I ll expect you to be in uniform. You re still in the army after all. Now then we have some factories to design and we ll need at least the foundation drawings finalized in two weeks so the troops can start on them as soon as they finish cleaning up the mess we made on the Vistula. Now here s what we need Once I got them going I went back to my manager office called for my secretary and asked if there were any messages. She brought in a stack as thick as my arm sorted as to what they wanted. An efficient lady. Baron Gregor wanted to release all his men who had been workers at Three Walls to get the factories going again. He was particularly worried about the ammunition situation. I wrote granted with a note that all men who had served in the Construction Corps should be sent under Baron Yashoo to East Gate to rebuild the Riverboat Assembly Building. Since almost all these workers had at least a half dozen new subordinates who had gone through only four months of training these subordinates would be assigned to other knights at no more than a dozen new men each. There were six dozen letters of congratulations and then a request from a priest that in the future all Mongols should be baptized before they were beheaded. Denied. The bastards didn t deserve to go to heaven. There were a lot of requests for discharge mostly so the men could search for their families. Denied put your request through channels. There wasn t much to worry about since most army personnel had their dependents at army installations that had not been attacked and nobody had gotten killed at any of them. I made an exception in the case of Captain Targ whose family was far to the east near what would be Zakopane. I owed him a serious favor since he had saved my life and I thought this was a good way to pay it. I sent orders to his baron that he and his brother should be given indefinite leave and lent horses if they wanted them. I really meant to do him a favor but I guess it didn t turn out that way. The two brothers headed east crossed the Vistula and were never heard from again. Their family was also among the missing. Lady Natalia came in after a while and asked me if I wanted my dinner brought up but I decided that the men should see that I was still alive and we went down to the cafeteria not that there was any cafe to justify the name. The chow lines there were absurdly long worse than what happens when the communists try to sell six refrigerators in Warsaw. I told Natalia that she should put out the word that the cafeterias would have to be restricted to dependents officers of the grade of captain and higher and men who had originally worked at Three Walls. All others would have to eat at their war carts though the cooks could draw on the stores here. Natalia and I of course took cuts in front of the line. RHIP. The next week was spent in meetings and similar boring but important trivia. The aircraft had found no trace of other Mongols even though we all knew that there had to be a lot of stragglers hiding out there somewhere. Francine was in Cracow playing hostess to some political nonsense but she seemed to be having fun and staying out of trouble. I supposed that she needed to get away from it all for a while after the tensions of the war and I let her have her own way. The cleanup at Three Walls had been completed and the original workers from each of my other installations were sent home to get things productive again. Getting things back to normal seemed to take as much work as getting us on a war footing had. Then Baron Vladimir arrived. I gave him a hug when he got to my office. God Vladimir it s wonderful to see you What took you so long What took me so long my lord I think that the problem started when I was entirely too efficient in getting across the Vistula. You recall that as we left the battlefield west of Sandomierz you were to return the booty here to Three Walls and I was to take the larger group of our men to cross the Vistula and clean and loot the killing fields there. We found no riverboats running but we found two of those river ferries of the sort you invented so many years ago during that delightful journey we made with our ladies to the River Dunajec. You know the sort that uses a long rope to force the river itself to carry one back and forth. Three dozen big river barges were available at Sandomierz as was a good supply of rope so we quickly built three dozen more of the things. By dint of efficient organization and hard work I was able to get my entire command across by midnight. Now I have a question for you my lord. What ever possessed you to entrust so important a message as the fact that Cracow was burning to an absolutely untrained peasant The silly fool had never before in his life been more than six miles from the village in which he had been born He had never been on a Big Person before. He had never even seen one Is it any wonder that he never thought of telling her who they were trying to find He had not the slightest concept of geography and he couldn t have read a map even if he d had one He couldn t read period Is it any wonder that he missed us in the dark and rode all the way to the Crossman city of Turon He was two days finding us Why did you do this thing to me Two thirds of your men missed out on half of the war All I could do was to bury my face in my hands and say Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa. Through my fault through my fault through my most grievous fault. Baron Vladimir I m sorry. At the time he was simply a man on a Big Person and I didn t even think about what I was doing. A courier had come in badly wounded with the news about Cracow. One of the officers assigned a man to ride the Big Person and help out our flankers. Then I realized that you must be told as soon as possible and so I changed the man s orders. I never stopped to think about how limited how restricted the average peasant is. I m sorry. And I accept your apology my lord. You made a mistake but as it turned out no great harm was done. You had sufficient forces with you to handle the problems that happened to come up. My men could have given you more power but they could not have given you more speed. Yet it could have turned out otherwise The Mongols might have caught you strung out on the road with your men half armed and armored with your pikes stored for transit and your guns unmounted. They could have met you with locally superior forces and wiped you and all of your men out You were lucky. But while I was waiting to see you They made you wait The Baroness Natalia is sometimes overly protective my lord. But while I was waiting I heard the tale about Captainette Lubinska. She made a mistake as bad or even worse than yours and she didn t have your luck Now you plan to have her hanged for it. Do you realize that she was born a peasant girl on a farm just outside of Cieszyn where Count Herman s wife held sway for so many years For all of Lubinska s life the countess was an authority figure whose word was not to be questioned. Then one day the countess lied to her usurped her authority and ordered her away from her post. Is it any wonder that she obeyed the countess s orders even if they weren t exactly legal What did the captainette know about the law She was only a peasant for God s sake Again you shame me Vladimir. Look I ve turned the matter over to Baron Pulaski. Why don t you speak to him and also speak at her trial All right my lord if you wish it. But remember the right of high justice is yours now. You may delegate the duties but not the responsibility You are entirely too right. For now though what happened once you got the word about Cracow Well once I got the message out of the peasant he hadn t slept in days and was babbling we had to drop everything and recross the Vistula. The railroad tracks are on the west bank only. I sent troops south in battalions at a walk until the rest could catch up. After that we went to double time. When we got to the company you left behind to guard the booty we absorbed them in our van since they were fresh by then and eventually left our hindmost company on guard. At Cracow I left a battalion to secure the city and relieve the wounded you left behind there. We had just arrived at East Gate when we got the word about your victory here. As per your orders we cleaned up East Gate and sent men back to the dumped booty to pick it up. Half of my men are now on the way back to clean up the killing grounds on the east bank of the Vistula. Also I sent a battalion west to the salt mines to dig and bring back all the salt they could. We ll need it if we re to save the horsehides we ve taken. The rest of them are here now with your booty and what we collected at East Gate. What booty at East Gate We lost there Many of those women and children had jewels and money secreted about their persons my lord. Perhaps the Mongols were in too much of a hurry to search them all properly. But for whatever reason there was quite a lot of it and policy is that the dead should never be buried with anything of value not if you want them to rest undisturbed. You re right of course. Is there any chance of returning the money and jewels to their next of kin No my lord. Only a few of them could be identified. We never thought to issue dog tags to noncombatants. Well we can hardly keep it for ourselves. Looting Mongols is one thing. Robbing the Christian dead is quite another. Perhaps we should donate it to the Church. That was to be my suggestion my lord. Well get some rest and see your family. There s a meeting at one tomorrow that you should attend and then I guess you ll be going back to the Vistula. I can delegate the cleanup my lord. I have a trial to attend first. Interlude Two I hit the STOP button leaned back and stretched. Tom still hadn t gotten here. I was almost to the point of worrying about him but not quite. It s getting to be lunchtime don t you think I said to the nude girl snuggled next to me. Yes sir. Well why don t you get me a couple of salami sandwiches a side of onion rings and a cold Budweiser. And get anything you want for yourself. Yes sir. An untalkative girl but she was pretty and obedient and I guess you can t have everything. Nice outfit too. She was back almost immediately. She spread my lunch out on the control desk and stood waiting. Aren t you hungry Why don t you eat I said. Yes sir. She brought in a bowl of something that looked like custard and spooned it quickly down. Is that all you re eating Yes sir. Don t you want anything else No sir. I shrugged. Well she was pretty young and kids that age can survive on nearly anything. I put it down to some sort of fad diet. I sat back put my arm around her and hit the START button. Chapter Fourteen Captainette Lubinska s trial went on for five days. I managed to scrupulously avoid it except when I was called in to testify as to exactly what orders she had been given. Baron Vladimir spoke at length in her behalf but when the sorry affair was over a jury of her peers twelve captains and captainettes found her guilty. According to the code of military justice that I myself had written the punishment was death by hanging and that s exactly what Baron Pulaski sentenced her to to be carried out first thing in the morning. My own rules required a speedy sentence provided that the case could be reviewed in time since to keep a condemned prisoner waiting for months or years as is often the modem practice seemed to be unnecessarily cruel to the criminal. Enough time for the condemned to say a good confession go to mass and spend a night in prayer was all that could be morally justified. Also much of the reason for punishing someone is as an example to others and if the thing drags out for years people forget what the crime was all about. The hanging when it finally happens becomes a simple needless murder by the state. Baron Vladimir came to see me that evening. He repeated all the arguments he had made before and also said that much of the fault for the incident was mine for I had put a weak and stupid peasant woman into a position that was too far above her. My lord if you loaded ten tons of iron onto the back of a mule and it collapsed would you blame the animal Would you kill it for having failed in its duty We re not talking about a dumb animal here Vladimir. We re talking about a human being True my lord and I would not be arguing so strongly if it were only a dumb animal you were abusing though I would still call your failings to your attention. You are my liege lord and I am obligated to give you my best counsel even and especially when you don t like it Furthermore the difference between a dumb animal and a dumb peasant is less than you may think. We are knights you and I. Our function is to protect the peasants not to hang them for being peasants So that was the crux of the problem. Baron Vladimir was a traditional member of the old nobility while I was a man born in the twentieth century. Vladimir was a good friend and a valuable subordinate but his world outlook was very different from mine. And he hadn t stopped explaining things to me yet. We were put here by God to protect women my lord not to kill them for having feminine weaknesses I say again that the fault is yours for putting her in the position that you did for elevating her far above her station and for trusting a woman to do a man s job. You had men who were sound of mind but could not join us in the field. Baron Novacek for one. He may not have hands but he could have commanded East Gate and done a good job at it. Why you insisted on having all your women s companies led by women is beyond me. Why indeed It had seemed good for morale and it ensured that a man wouldn t take advantage of a female subordinate but the main reason was my twentieth century belief in equality. If women were doing the defending they should lead the defense as well. Now it seemed that I was equalizing the captainette right out of her life. I let Vladimir continue until he started repeating himself then I said Baron I don t know what I ll do about this mess yet but whatever I do it won t be done lightly. Tell me that courier who missed you in the dark near Sandomierz. What did you do to him Him my lord Well he was incompetent as a scout or messenger so I could hardly leave him with a Big Person but he had done his best within his limitations. I let him sleep while we recrossed the Vistula and then put him back down in the ranks as a pikeman. It doesn t take much brains to do that job simply courage strength and obedience things that a peasant is often good at. But you didn t punish him Would I punish a fish because it couldn t fly Peasants are stupid You can t expect one to do a nobleman s job. I see. To change the subject what about you Baron Vladimir You ve done a wonderful job these last six years with the army. Have you done any thinking about what your reward should be About what you want to do now Hmmm. I ve had some thoughts my lord or perhaps I should call them dreams. I have saved much of my salary over the years and I ll get my share of the booty. I wonder well there is the castle you got from Count Lambert the one Baron Stefan used to hold. You ve never used it for much of anything. Would you consider selling it to me No but I d give it to you if you wanted it. You ve certainly earned it and as you say it s just going to waste. Or better still how about the new castle I built for Count Lambert at Okoitz It s a dozen times larger and comes stocked with a renewable supply of attractive young ladies. A portion of me is tempted by Okoitz my lord but my better parts say that I d be happier with my wife and family without the count s fabulous harem. You see what I want is to live in the old traditional way with the wife and children that I haven t seen enough of these past years. My oldest boy is eight years old now and he has seen very little of his own father. I don t want to live as Count Lambert did and I certainly don t want to live like you Further I think that there are a lot of the peasants on the lands that you ve gotten that prefer the old ways as well. With your permission I would gather together those peasants that would swear to me and take them from these mines and factories of yours. Permission granted old friend. From my standpoint you ll be relieving me of some of my malcontents. The castle is yours along with as much land as you can find men to farm it. And a bit more some forest for a hunting preserve my lord Fine so long as you don t go and reintroduce wild boars and wolves on it. And the people you talk into joining you well don t get too traditional on me. I m going to insist that they have schools stores and modem fanning methods. Of course my lord. I never intended to throw out any of your improvements It s this business of changing jobs all the time and promotions and not knowing the grandsons of your grandfather s friends that troubles me. I don t know quite how to put it but it s as if things have gotten like a river that is running too wide and too shallow I want to go along in a deep old channel where the human things go on as they always have and always will. Glass in the windows and flush toilets and good steel plows are fine things and a man would be a fool to not use them but it s the human factors that I worry most about. One of the failings of the communists was that they had a vision of the future that they thought was good and they tried to make everybody conform to their ideas of goodness. To my own mind well it s a big world and it takes all kinds of people to fill it. If some peasants prefer a life style that I would find oppressive well as long as nobody is forcing anyone I say let them do as they wish. I don t need everybody on my bandwagon. Then you shall have it as you want it Baron. Just remember the ancient right of departure. Some of the children of the men who swear to you may not feel the same way as their fathers. But I m not minded to lose your good services entirely. If you wish to live in a feudal manner then you must do feudal duty to me. What I want you to do is to command the active reserve forces of our army. You see this time we had warning about when the enemy would attack but next time we might not be so lucky Now my plan is We talked for hours about what the reserves should be and when we parted we were in agreement. At least about the army. As he left Vladimir said Do you know yet what you are going to do about the captainette No. I left word that I must be up before dawn and sent notes to both Baron Pulaski and Baron Gregor that the execution must not take place without me. God forbid I should cause a woman s death because I overslept. Then I tried to sort out the problem of Captainette Lubinska. I sent away the servant girl I found in my bed and I tossed and turned for half the night. On the one hand Lubinska was legally guilty of abandoning her post during time of war and that had started a chain of events that had ended in a terrible massacre. On the other hand Vladimir was right. She had been put in a situation where she was in way over her head. But then every person in the army had been thrown into deep water including Vladimir and myself. A lot of people had died because they were too weak or too stupid to perform the task before them. A lot of people had died because they had a problem that nobody no matter how strong or brilliant could possibly have solved. I saw one boatman get squashed flat when a two ton rock came down on him and where was justice then Nowhere that s where. But had he lived he wouldn t have had to stand trial for not stopping that rock. So why do we try anybody It has often been argued that a person is the result of his heredity and his environment that we are what we were made to be and therefore are not responsible for our failings. Well if human beings are just things that were made then it doesn t matter if they are punished or not. It only matters whether they act as desired. If a pot was made badly throw it out It s not the pot s fault but that doesn t matter. The whole idea of guilt doesn t come into it at all. Once you think about it you have to conclude that people don t matter at all unless you grant them a moral sense unless you grant them a soul. Maybe that was the root cause of many of Stalin s atrocities. I gave up trying to sleep. I put on some clothes and walked to the church. I sat down in a pew but soon I was on my knees. Well then. You can say that God made people and everything else. It s all His problem Let Him solve it Why should we poor fallible mortals ever judge anybody What right do we have to judge His work Except that we all know that if nobody was ever punished for doing anything crime would soon be so rampant that nobody would be safe. Many people would live by stealing and people would be murdered every time somebody got angry. Life would hardly be worth living in such an environment. Like it or not we sad confused and fumbling mortals have to do something about criminals. We have to do it for simple practical reasons. We can t blame it on God and we can t let Him do the punishing since He waits until the sinner is dead before doing the job of judging him and that s a little late by human standards if we want to have a safe society. Good. This was getting me closer to the mark. Forget about the moral reasons for punishment. They rest on sandy ground. We have to punish wrongdoers in order to A stop them from hurting the rest of us again that is to say in group self defense and B as an educational mechanism to convince others that they should not imitate the wrong doer. So. Were we going to hang Lubinska because she was likely to abandon her post again and get another 21 000 women and children killed Of course not Well obviously she should never be trusted with an important post again but we wouldn t have to kill her to accomplish that. Discharging her or busting her down to the lowest rank would be sufficient. Certainly she presented no further danger to society. So we must be killing her as a teaching aid. Well would it be an effective teaching aid By this time everybody knew how and why she had screwed up. Everyone realized now that to abandon a post can cause a great tragedy. Would one more death added to 21 000 make any difference No. It would be insignificant. Then what were we gaining by hanging her Were we providing ourselves with a sacrificial lamb to cleanse the guilt from our hands A scapegoat I never could go along with that strange bit of theology. Actually you couldn t blame the captainette for the deaths of all those people not directly. The Mongols had killed them and we had killed the Mongols. Case closed. The Mongols had been let in by Count Herman s wife and they had killed her for it. Again case closed. The captainette had believed the wrong person as to who should be in charge at East Gate. She had believed her traditional boss instead of me. She had been given her command by me and I had done it because Baroness Krystyana had recommended her. Night was fading into gray dawn when I finally knew what I had to do. Somehow I was immensely comforted by the certainty of it. There was quite a crowd in front of the outer wall when I got out there. The sun was about to peek over the horizon a gallows had been built and a lot of people were standing around it including all of my barons who were at Three Walls. The Lubinska woman was near the scaffold attended by a priest and two guards. I went to her and said quietly You re not going to die this morning. Stunned and unbelieving she looked at me and said nothing. Baron Vladimir led us in our morning services and a priest not the one attending the captainette said a very quick mass without a sermon. The people were expecting Captainette Lubinska to climb the scaffold but she didn t. I did. Chapter Fifteen FROM THE JOURNAL OF COUNTESS FRANCINE The job of writing the articles for the magazine was done in but two days and work had already begun on the casting of the drums of type to print it. But then the time seemed to drag for there was much work to be done in the casting of type and the printing of the half gross of pages that the magazine would contain and none of it could be done by me. It would be a plain magazine for there was no time to carve the woodcuts that usually adorned its pages except for a few old commercial messages that were used to fill otherwise blank space. Since there was no time to contact the merchants and obtain payment from them you may be assured that all the ads that we used were from my husband s factories. Indeed it seemed for a time that the cover too would be blank until a friar named Roman came down from the cathedral and painted three lithographic blocks for the purpose. He was a merry man grown pudgy and red nosed from drinking too much wine but he was a fine artist for all of that. The cover he made had on the front a fine portrait of Count Conrad in his armor and with our battle flags flying behind him and on the back a lively scene of our gunners shooting at the Mongol enemies over the heads of our footmen. Further all this was done in inks of three colors the first cover that had been done so. I think that some may have purchased the magazine only to have the fine artwork I persuaded the abbot to give his men dispensation from the saying of their prayers eight times a day so that they might spend the time in work and I made arrangements with the inn that they should be fed as they worked at the machines that Conrad had built for them. The monks were at first much taken aback by this for the waitresses of the inn did their work as always nearly naked. Yet there were soon far more smiles on the monks than scowls and I bade the waitresses to continue as they had. I was something of a heroine to these young ladies for I had once been of their number and now was of the high nobility. I suppose that my success fed their dreams. Yet when they asked that I dress in their fashion and help serve I must needs turn them down. My waist had grown too large with pregnancy and anyway Conrad would certainly not have approved Still I was tempted. The monks worked from before dawn straight through to the dark of night but still the job would be a week in the doing and always I feared that Duke Henryk would arrive and take the whole thing into hand himself. I took myself to Wawel Castle and spent the day there talking to any that I could meet about the seym that was soon to be held in Sandomierz. All that I met the old and the infirm were enthusiastic for Conrad s enlargement yet there were very few of the nobility there. All too many were gone or dead. The city council came to me with the plea that Count Conrad should be their duke and protector and we talked long as to how this could be accomplished. They then sent representatives to every incorporated city in eastern Poland to plead for our cause and they did this at their own expense as well Not that I was in lack of funds but when those tightfisted burghers had their own money involved you can be sure that they would give it their best effort While I was thus employed Sir Wladyclaw was also busy. The weather was now fair and the radios were at last working properly so his men were no longer needed as messengers. Keeping only one at his side he sent the others about the countryside in search for Mongols and when time permitted to tell the gentry of the victory won by Count Conrad and of the seym to be held at Sandomierz. They found no large groups of the enemy and we were growing daily more certain that victory was truly ours but more than once scouts brought back heads barbered in the strange Mongol fashion as proof of their prowess I sent occasional messages to my husband telling him that I was well and that I was helping to organize a meeting of the seyms of eastern Poland since because of my association with the old duke I knew so many of the people in this area. I never exactly told him that the feeling here was that he should be duke of all three duchies for fear that he would decline the offer before it was even made to him. Bishop Ignacy was entirely too accurate in his estimation of my husband When the time came I wanted him to think that the nomination was entirely spontaneous and that it was his duty to accept it. Until the time was right I wanted him to stay in Three Walls doing his little engineering things He should come to Sandomierz I told him in the messages I sent for he did have lands that he had purchased along the Vistula and thus he was obligated to come but to be there a little late would cause no harm I said. My intent was that when he got there the matter would be already settled. Once he was duke he would find reasons of his own for remaining duke. I knew it as I knew him. When the print run was almost done a scout brought back from the army camp west of Sandomierz a list of the Polish nobility that had survived the battle there. To publish a list of those who had died would have taken a book three times longer than our entire magazine though we promised that such a magazine would be published in the future. For now all that we could do was add eight pages with the names of the living. So few At last the printing was done and all the monks fell to the task of combining the pages and binding them together. I was able to get many of the town s folk to help with this task and as soon as a stack of finished magazines was ready one of Sir Wladyclaw s scouts was there to take them to all the towns and hamlets of eastern Poland. Of course we were careful that none were sent to the west for fear that Duke Henryk would hear of it. The riverboats helped distribute the magazines as well for Baron Tadaos now had three at his command. Two of them had been found up a small creek intact but devoid of their crews. There was evidence of a fight but what exactly had happened there was something that we would probably never know. The baron had found men to operate them and ammunition for their guns but what he was happiest about had nothing to do with men or arms. His many wives and their children had been found and all were alive Indeed they were helping him operate his boat. Sir Gregor sent me a message that said that our radio operators at the duke s camp at Legnica told of sickness there and that the duke was taken ill with it. He was not likely to die yet he would not be fit to travel for at least a week. The message ended with a request that we should pray for the duke s recovery and indeed I did pray for his health but that it be returned to him later. Much later Once in our long fireside conversations at my manor before we were married Conrad had told me of a land in which once he had lived where all the leaders were chosen every few years by all the people. He talked of candidates for office shamelessly putting up great pictures of themselves and hanging many posters with slogans on them as though they were so many cattle to be sold at auction At the time I laughed at the thought of the old duke thus pandering himself but as I later thought on it I could see the necessity of it all. It took far less time to print the covers which were done on a separate machine than to print all the pages of the magazine. Since the facilities and supplies were available I persuaded Friar Roman to make some posters as Conrad had once described. Some were just the front cover of the magazine with my love s portrait. Others boldly said I want Conrad for my duke Many thousands of these were made though at a price for the friar s services. I promised that after I had my child I would pose for him in any manner that he wished while he painted me. Well perhaps it would be fun. I wanted to get to Sandomierz well ahead of the crowd to set the stage as it were. Soon we were on the road again my maids crowded out of the carriage by stacks of posters and magazines and riding apillion with two of Sir Wladyclaw s Scouts. None of those involved seemed to mind the arrangement in the least. The captain felt that an escort of five would be safe enough but I persuaded him to bring all his men to make a better appearance as we rode into Sandomierz. The city of Sandomierz had been under siege but it had not been taken. The city council had long looked to the strength of its walls which were well built and defended. These people were among the few burghers that had purchased sufficient guns and armor from Conrad s factories. Further they had heeded his thoughts and the suggestions that he often wrote in the magazine and had been ready when the Mongol hordes had come against them. Thus while the suburbs had been devastated all that was within their walls was safe. Also those who had been on the walls had been treated with a view of the major battle of the war at least in terms of the number of enemy killed. It was here that the riverboats had made their greatest slaughter and dead Mongols had been heaped up on the bank opposite until they were twenty bodies deep Even as we arrived battalions of my husband s men were still stripping and burying the dead for Conrad was afraid of the pestilence and disease that follow battle. The heads were all up on pikes a huge monument to Polish arms. Also the Mongols had looted widely in the Russias and he wished to see this wealth back in Christian hands. On arriving I went directly to the inn. It had been doing very good business but for months the innkeeper had not been able to deliver its profits to Conrad. I drew on these funds at need in part to rent most of the rooms at the inn itself. Thus when an important person could not find lodging in the town I could offer it to him as a favor from Conrad. And surely no decent man could speak publicly against his host We spent much of the next week talking to all who would listen which was practically everyone about the upcoming seym and about Count Conrad. It was easy to persuade the town s people to adorn their storefronts and homes with our posters for it seemed to them that to do otherwise would be to slur the man who had saved their city They all knew that had Conrad not killed the Mongols west of the city they and all they had would be gone. And once a burgher had Conrad s name and face on his home he could hardly say anything but that he favored him Thus as the first notables came to attend the seym it must have seemed to them that the matter was already settled. Not many men will go against their neighbors once the matter has been decided Further I hired men who could read well in public to stand in the squares and read the magazine to any who would listen. Thus we told our story to everyone including the majority those who could not read at all. The good Friar Roman had also written some poems in Conrad s honor and we were able to find minstrels who put those poems to music. Soon they became all the rage and other minstrels began to write songs of their own in his honor just to compete All things were going beautifully and I was having a wonderful time. Chapter Sixteen FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD There will be no hanging this morning I said to the crowd from the vantage point of the scaffold. The right of high justice is vested in me and me alone. Baron Pulaski you and your jurors did your jobs properly. By the letter of the law Captainette Lubinska is guilty of abandoning her post in time of war and the punishment for that is and ought to be death by hanging. But the ultimate responsibility is mine and I choose not to permit the sentence to be carried out despite her guilt. Perhaps this guilt is mitigated by the fact that she was lied to by a woman who once was her liege lord s wife. Perhaps it is softened by the way she got her charges safely back here to Three Walls. But the real reason why I will not hang her is because her death would accomplish nothing. She is not guilty of causing the death of those twelve thousand five gross ten dozen and five women children and old men who were murdered at East Gate. The Mongols killed them and our army killed the Mongols. All but one the one in fact who tricked Count Herman s wife into letting the enemy into the fort That man is now my prisoner kept alive because we might one day need a messenger who can speak both Polish and the Mongol tongue. He d probably prefer death to imprisonment since both of his hands were cut off in the fighting. If any of our fellow Poles is guilty of the tragedy at East Gate it must be Count Herman s wife. She was the one who improperly took charge of the fort and then allowed the Mongols in. Well the Mongols killed her for the favor and she s in God s hands now. Captainette Lubinska s crime was therefore one of bad judgment and if her judgment was bad she never should have been given such an important post in the first place. I should have relieved her when I saw that she was acting erratically. I gave her the position because she was recommended to me by Baroness Krystyana. So. For exercising very poor judgment while in command of a major post Captainette Lubinska is busted to the lowest grade and is to be given only the most menial of duties for the next five years. After that time she may never again be promoted beyond the third level. For recommending a person of poor judgment to an important post Baroness Krystyana will be demoted to the lowest level for a period of one month during which time she shall be given the most menial of tasks. After that month she shall be returned to her present position and pay grade. For believing Baroness Krystyana and for failing to replace Captainette Lubinska at a later date Count Conrad Stargard will be demoted to the lowest level for a period of one week during which time he shall be given the most menial of tasks and after which he shall be returned to his present position and pay grade. I have spoken. It is done. My proclamation was met with stunned silence. Well if punishment is supposed to be an educational procedure I think that these people were being properly educated. At least I was making them think For the next week I worked in the kitchen washing dishes while designing a dishwashing machine in my head. The job involved using a whole new set of muscles and I came home every night just a bit stiff. And you know It felt good Krystyana was less gratified working the tub beside me but then she always was feisty Soon people started coming down to the kitchens so that I could solve their problems. I referred them all to Baron Gregor since Baron Vladimir had left for the Vistula. I was a lowly worker and it wasn t fair to expect much from a warrior basic. Soon I had to post my secretary to fend off these people so that I could attend to my proper duties the washing of dishes from dawn to dusk with a timed lunch break. On my last day of playing bubble dancer when Krystyana was out feeding the chickens Natalia let one visitor through to me. It was Warrior Lubinska. You shouldn t be doing this sir. You humiliate yourself. There s nothing humiliating about honest work. Actually I m rather enjoying it. It s good therapy. Anyway you shouldn t call me sir. My army rank is now the same as yours. How about my lord since it would take the duke to change my civil rank. You should have hanged me. Nonsense If you had deserved hanging I would have done it. You got what you had coming nothing more and nothing less. No that s not true at all. Well what is true is that you were ordered to do menial labor and you re not doing it. Take off your jacket and roll up your sleeves. You can help me with these dishes. I did my clumsy best at talking her out of her depression but after a few hours of working next to her I could see that I hadn t helped much. I think that much of her problem was what I d heard called survivor s guilt the strange irrational guilt that a survivor feels after almost everyone has died but her. Lubinska wasn t the only one feeling it. There were reports from the field hospital we d set up near the battlefield west of Sandomierz that a number of the surviving knights had committed suicide. But what could I do I just didn t know. When our work shift was over I told her to buck up that things would get better. The words were phony but what else could I say The next morning I was told that during the night Lubinska had tied one end of a rope around one of the merlons on the outer wall. She d tied the other end around her neck and jumped. Since she was a suicide there was no mass said for Warrior Lubinska and she didn t receive extreme unction. They couldn t bury her in hallowed ground so they buried her alone a bit away from the Mongols. It was bad being a battle commander but being judge was far worse I was never trained for this kind of thing. I had no aptitude for it. I just couldn t take it I had no business being a count. As soon as Duke Henryk was well I intended to ask him to make me a baron again and take back the right of high justice. That is if he d still talk to me. He hadn t answered my last dozen letters and radio messages but I guess he was still pretty sick. The next day I was informed by Francine that it was time for me to show up at the seym in Sandomierz. It seemed like a tedious thing to do but good citizenship requires that you vote whenever you have the chance and I supposed that I should set a good example. Anyway it would do me good. I needed to get away from things for a while. When I asked her Cilicia wasn t interested in going. She had always been a quiet and stay at home type when she was pregnant. I was getting ready to set out alone at dawn when Captain Wladyclaw showed up with a dozen of his men to give me an escort an honor guard he called it. I thought it a silly waste of manpower and told him so. But they were already at Three Walls and their proper post was in the east looking for Mongol stragglers so they might as well go back east in my company. The captain also said that my wife had insisted that I wear my fancy gold plated parade armor which my smiths had once made for me as a Christmas present. I d worn it at my wedding but I hadn t touched it since. The captain was fairly adamant about it until I relented and changed out of my practical combat armor. But if I hadn t Francine would have acted hurt and that can get hard to take. Your wolfskin cloak sets well against that gold armor my lord the captain said. More importantly it s warm. We ve wasted enough time already. Let s ride I said. Big People can run as fast as a modem thoroughbred racehorse the difference being that they can do it with big armored men on their backs instead of little jockeys and they car keep it up all day long instead of for a single mile. We went nonstop until we got to East Gate. Baron Yashoo had the new Riverboat Assembly Building more than half up. In the past seven years we d cleared more land than we d used lumber and what with the new sawmills it had made sense to saw and stack the wood for proper seasoning. Baron Yashoo was drawing on our lumberyards. I complimented him on his progress and we were on our way again in minutes. I wanted to make a stop at Cracow to see Bishop Ignacy and go to confession but Captain Wladyclaw said that he thought that the bishop was at Sandomierz attending the seym and anyway Lady Francine was waiting for us. I saw no point in arguing with him and we rode on. Running along the side of the railroad track or on it sometimes we made good time arriving just after noon. Our railroad tracks were far straighter than the twisting trails that passed for the roads that covered most of Poland. The girls could really stretch out and move After a few weeks of being in a city it felt good to have a fine mount like Silver between my legs. I was smiling as we went through the city gates and the crowd there was lively. I supposed that it was natural for people to cheer for a visiting general a patriotic sort of thing for them to do. It was a few moments before I realized that they were shouting Duke Conrad at me and a few more before I saw my name and pictures of my face plastered over everything in sight. All I could think of was that as duke I d have a hundred times as many court cases to worry about. I d have to go through the agony of the Captainette Lubinska affair six times every week from now until forever No way did I like or want that sort of life and death responsibility. No Not me No way gang The crowd was soon so packed that we couldn t move except in the direction in which we were heading and instead of going to the inn as I had expected we were forced toward the main square of the city. Captain Wladyclaw just what the hell is going on here I shouted at him. They seem to be taking us to church sir he said pointing to the great Church of St. James across the square. That s not what I mean and you know it What s with all these posters and pictures and people calling me duke Well they need a new duke and there s nobody else left I m afraid that you re stuck with the job sir. No No I won t do it We were being slowly moved toward the church the crowd acting like some fantastic undertow pulling me to my doom. Sir I believe you ve already been elected. The hell I am They can t elect me without my permission. I m not sure of all the legalities sir but by tradition the seym doesn t need anybody s permission to meet and hold an election. Certainly not yours. That s not what I mean and you know it They can t make me They ll have to find someone else I swear that everybody was smiling and cheering except me. Dammit Wasn t it enough that I had helped wipe out the Mongol invasion Did they have to saddle me with a job I didn t want just because I d helped them Who sir I tell you that all of the normal candidates were killed by the Mongols Duke Henryk He d be great for the job. Not only did everybody want to cheer for me they insisted on touching me patting my mount and pawing the legs of my armor. I was getting a sort of claustrophobic feeling. They d never have him sir. Don t forget that he abandoned eastern Poland to the Mongols and hasn t gotten off his rump in Legnica since. He s been sick Anyway his conventional knights couldn t have accomplished anything important except getting themselves killed. Legnica is a good place for him. And them He says he s been sick sir but none of these people have seen it. He s a villain in their eyes whereas you have saved all of their lives. If your forces are far superior to his all the more reason to want you Nonetheless Nonetheless we re at the church sir. You d best dismount and greet your wife. I m not through with you Captain but this mess is more her fault than yours I swung out of the saddle into the crowd and pushed my way up the church steps. The captain came up behind me and removed my helmet. I turned and stared at him wondering why he had done this strange thing. But sir You can t wear a hat in church he said. I just shook my head and went on. Francine was standing in front of the Romanesque portal. Welcome my hero my love she said. Like hell it s a welcome It s an abomination I know that this is all your fault and I won t do it Get somebody else to be the damn duke. Not me She turned me toward the altar and began walking slowly toward it. But you must Conrad if only for a little while. She spoke in a low voice and I had to bend my head to hear her. What do you mean for a little while Being a duke is a lifetime job with no retirement benefits I followed after her. It was that or lose her in the crowd. It is until you abdicate my only love she said softly. Abdicate Then why do it in the first place Because Poland needs to be united that s why. For the last hundred years Poland has not had a king. It has been nothing but a collection of independent duchies where the people happen to speak the same language. Right now for the first time in a century the people of Mazovia Sandomierz and Little Poland are willing to unite under one man. Only one man. You They would never do that under Duke Henryk even though the western half of Poland swears fealty to him for they think that he has betrayed them. They would never pick some distant relative of one of the dead dukes since that would give a huge political advantage to the new duke s home duchy and the other two duchies would lose out. It has to be you But only for a little while my love. Then when things settle down you can work out an arrangement with Duke Henryk and Poland can be united under a single man. The land will again have a king Yes but surely if I talk to the seym I can sell them on some other guy But nothing Do you know anyone else who could be trusted with such a temptation Is there anyone else but you who would willingly give up power when the time comes Go ahead Name me one man I pondered for a minute and the slow procession to the altar stopped. Bishop Ignacy He could be trusted. Francine tugged me by the sleeve and got me moving again. Nonsense The bishop is a good man but if he held the eastern duchies he would put them under the control of the Church. Admit it The eastern duchies are still exposed to the Mongols. Consider that you have defeated an enemy army but you have not yet defeated their nation Poland needs a war leader not a churchman in power. Yeah I suppose so. What about Baron Vladimir I tell you that no man but you could be trusted. This much power would tempt any other man. Then why trust me Because you don t want to be duke in the first place Your very arguments defeat themselves. Darling this is your duty to your country. You must not fail Poland I m a ponderer by nature. I can usually come up with the right answer but it takes me a while. I never was one of those glib fast talking sorts who can sell farm machinery to Mongols. I m not really quick thinking on my feet in a confusing situation. As I was trying to sort this one out Francine knelt down at the communion rail and so I just naturally knelt down beside her out of habit I suppose. As I did so the Bishop of Plock put the ducal crown of Mazovia on my head The crown of Sandomierz was quickly put right on top of that and the crown of Little Poland was promptly placed on top. I was stood up wondering how the Church that I had trusted could do this thing to me. I was turned around and everyone in the big crowded church started cheering. I tell you it was annoying Chapter Seventeen I stared at the shouting crowd and it was all that I could do to not scream right back at them. I took the crowns from my head and looked at them. Someone had modified them so that they all interlocked into the silliest looking thing imaginable. I handed the contraption to Francine. Here You wanted it You take it I said. She was so shocked that for once she didn t have anything to say. But you must keep it the bishop said horrified. The only thing I must do is die and I have some say so as to when that s going to happen And as for you your excellency there are fourteen tons of gold and jewels that I was going to donate to the Church. You re not going to get them now I trusted the Church and you went and pulled this shit on me I turned from him and looked to the back of the church. Silver Come here to me I called out in English. Somehow she heard me above the crowd and came straight in. Silver didn t have Anna s religious side and the church was just one more building to her. The people had been taken aback by my taking off the crowns and even more so by my speaking in a strange harsh foreign language but they got out of her way as Silver came straight up the church aisle. I mounted up and rode out. At the church door Captain Wladyclaw was still standing there dumbfounded. I took back my helmet from him and said As for you Wladyclaw you have been telling me lies all day long. If your father wasn t one of my oldest friends I d have you court martialed As it is well you d better stay far out of my way. The inn was almost empty when we got there. Everybody except the innkeeper seemed to be out in the streets cheering. The door of the place was big enough to ride through and that s just what we did. My lord The innkeeper looked up at me shocked and afraid. Right I want your best room. Send up a meal for me and my mount. And bring up a pitcher of beer a pitcher of wine and pitchers of anything else you have around He knew better than to argue and led the way to a room marked DUCAL SUITE. I ripped down the sign dismounted and told Silver that no one but the innkeeper was allowed in. She nodded YES. Someone else s things were in the room but the innkeeper just picked them up and went out with them. To hell with him whoever the last tenant was The innkeeper returned quickly with four nearly naked waitresses carrying food six pitchers of potables and fresh sheets. I had to tell Silver that the waitresses were okay before she d let them in. What s this stuff I asked pointing at one of the pitchers. You said to bring some of everything that I had my lord. That is from a barrel that was sent to me years ago from your inn at Cieszyn. It s called white lightning but no one liked it. Still you said I poured some into a glass. It had been clear white when I d made it nine years ago but it was a golden amber now. I tasted it and smiled for the first time in a while. Nine years of storage in an oak barrel had done amazingly good things to it. Good. Now go out and find me a block of ice This stuff is just what I need The innkeeper made the sign of the cross and left. The waitresses scurried about changing sheets and towels. This suite had its own bathroom a rarity. Finished they hurried off after their boss frightened. I started in on a monumental drunk. I was too upset to sit down and so I paced the room with a glass in my hand. A waitress came in with some ice cut from the river during the winter and stored in one of my icehouses. I put some in my drink and told the girl to sit in the corner and be quiet since I might want something else later. After a while I was over being absolutely angry and could think again. Now what was I going to do about this mess Unifying the country was certainly important but dammit I m an engineer not a politician and certainly not a hanging judge All I wanted was to be left alone to do my job the truly important job of getting this country and this century industrialized. I had neither the talent nor the ability nor the inclination to wander about the countryside playing God in a gold hat There was some commotion out in the hall but I ignored it. Everybody I knew was smart enough not to argue with a Big Person who had her orders especially one who didn t understand Polish I d played at being a battle commander but only because it was absolutely necessary. Without my army my training and my weapons we d all have been killed But I hadn t been very good at it. In fact I d screwed up a lot of times and had come through on sheer luck. Well that and the fact that the enemy was even dumber than I was. Some recommendation What to do about the election Well I could take the job of duke and then delegate away 411 the power. Set up men in each duchy as my deputies and let them do things their way. Right. And in ten years time the men I had delegated would effectively be dukes and all their cronies would be counts and barons. Eastern Poland would stay feudal and backward. Peasants would stay peasants and the infant mortality rate would stay such that half the kids born wouldn t make it to their fifth birthday and it would be all my fault. It got louder outside the door. I sent the waitress out with the message that if they didn t quiet down I d have the entire inn cleared. It quieted down. Damn them all Or I could take the job and do to these duchies what I d done to Baron Stefan s barony: put in schools where there weren t any subsidize the new farming methods and bring the people into the industrial sector as fast as possible. Except that eastern Poland doesn t have the natural resources that Upper Silesia has. This area never would be heavily industrialized. Damn. Since most of the nobility was dead probably most of the land would escheat back to me if I were duke. I could just parcel the land out to anyone who wanted to farm it and make the area a land of yeoman farmers. That might be the best bet. But to do it I would be involved with lawsuits with every fifth cousin of the previous owners. Thousands of lawsuits It would be a full time job for the next twenty years and I d never get the chance to work on electric lights. Well if I did take the job the first thing I d have to do was to take a survey of just what lands and properties were mine. Probably a good job for Baron Piotr with Sir Miesko s help. The school system under Father Thomas Aquinas probably had information as to which major family had what. We d pulled all the schoolteachers west in February so they were all still alive. No that would have to be the second thing I d have to do. Everything east of the Vistula was probably destroyed and there was a lot of work in disaster relief to be done. At least there was plenty of money to work with but that was yet another problem to solve. How to divide up the booty we d taken without inflating the economy to destruction There was a writing desk in the suite with paper ink and some of our new steel pens. I started taking notes but was hampered by my armor which I was still wearing. Army issue combat armor can be gotten into or out of in a hurry but this gold stuff I was wearing had dozens of straps and buckles. I had the waitress help me out of it and the gambeson as well since I was hot. The inns were always overheated because of the waitresses costumes or rather their near lack of them. Taking off the gambeson had me down to my long johns but what the heck. I was still wearing a lot more than the girl was. Actually she was a pretty little thing if still a bit frightened. She was about fourteen fair and bare with long straight blond hair a nice body and nipples so small and pink that you could barely see them. And she was a virgin the inn s rules being what they were. I told her to relax and have some wine. I wasn t going to hurt her. I went back to my notes and started making up a PERT diagram of all the things that had to be done assuming that I actually accepted the job of duke. After a while I noticed that the whiskey pitcher was empty and sent the girl out for some more. She took an empty mead pitcher with her as well. Eventually the job started to look possible. I d have to swear fealty to Duke Henryk as soon as possible with the price tag of a nationwide system of courts in the modem fashion. He d be in charge of it and I would never get involved. Would the military courts be under him I wasn t sure if that would be good since I d be keeping command of the army of course. I put a star next to it as I had on all the other problems I didn t know how to answer. The three Banki brothers would each be put in temporary charge of a duchy say for two years until things settled down. They d each have to have a list of instructions limiting their power. We really didn t need any more conventional counts or barons for example. Halfway through the second pitcher of whiskey I started to feel very tired. I went over to the bed crawled under the covers and fell asleep. I awoke to find the waitress in bed with me and yes she had taken off the shoes stockings bunny hat and loincloth that were her uniform. At least I think she had done it. I didn t remember being responsible. She was snuggled up under my arm and seemed contented enough. I had only a slight headache and heavy drinking always makes me horny. I woke the girl up and she smiled. Somehow during the night I had decided that I had to become a duke and as such I could do anything I wanted at least until I swore fealty to Henryk. I didn t know if I had taken the girl the night before but I rolled over onto her and did so now. She seemed to be waiting for me to do it and eager. As it turned out she d been a virgin when I d started but not for long thereafter. Good though. Some fine natural talent there. Thank you your grace she said when we were done. I always hoped my first one would be a hero. Well. You re welcome uh what was your name It was Sonya and after a bit of talking I gave her a job in my household as a maid since I d just deprived her of her job as a waitress. She no longer qualified. I got up and stretched. I would have to tell the world that I d take them up on their job offer but I was in no great hurry to do so. First a bath and breakfast. I sent Sonya down to get some food and checked on Silver. She was still doing guard duty and the innkeeper had seen to it that she had been unsaddled fed and rubbed down. Her saddle and bags were there beside her in the hallway. I took my saddlebags into the room and drew an oversized tub of hot water. Sonya came back and joined me in the tub without asking. Soon she was scrubbing me down and I found myself enjoying the pampering. She washed my hair cleaned my fingernails and toenails and even shaved me saying that she had always shaved her father. A very well trained young lady Up until now I d always resisted the notion but maybe having a personal servant wasn t such a bad idea after all. Efficiency isn t everything After being toweled off I was sitting nude and letting myself get completely dry when two other waitresses came in with our breakfast. The food and service were good and I found myself wondering if I didn t want three or four servants instead of only one. Later perhaps. The sun was coming through a window and I said my Warrior s Oath which impressed the girls no end. Then they helped me into one of my best embroidered outfits buckled on my sword and kissed me good bye All three of them. I went out feeling fit to face demons dragons and even a politician or two. Someone had saddled Silver but I didn t ride out as I had ridden in. I was no longer mad at the world. Chapter Eighteen MY WIFE and a few dozen dignitaries were waiting for me in the common room of the inn. They all looked at me apprehensively more than a little frightened. I turned to Francine. I take it that these gentlemen are what is left of the authorities of the eastern duchies There are many others my love but these men are the most powerful. Well then I said if you still want me to be your duke I m minded to take the job. That got them all cheering. I really must have had them worried. I hadn t planned to be your leader and you really should have asked me about it first. Be that as it may I ll do it because the job needs doing. You understand that if I m going to do this I m going to do it in my own way. I am not going to maintain three courts full of unproductive people as my predecessors did. I m not even going to have one of the silly things. The proper function of government is to provide law order and security. It is not constituted to provide amusements for idle people. Agreed The bishop who had crowned me stood up and looked about to see if anyone objected to his speaking first. No one did. Your grace we shall be content to follow you in whatever manner you choose to lead. We all know by your past actions that what you will do will be good. Where I come from they call that a blank check. Thank you. I got out the notes I d made the previous night and found that I could read most of them except for the last page or so where the scrawl became drunkenly illegible. I read them to the group to let them know what I had in mind leaving out the part about my swearing to Duke Henryk. There are still a lot of points that have to be worked out but in general that s the program I have in mind. Do I hear any objections No Then I d best get on with it. Francine stood. Then if you are to be my duke as well as my love would you please take these back She handed me the three crowns and I took them. That got another round of applause. All my inns had a radio transceiver and a post office although the posts had been shut down during the war and were not yet working again. I sent messages to many of my key people asking them to come to Sandomierz. Then I sent to the granary in the Bledowska desert ordering all carts available to be filled with the new grains and shipped north and east. Spring planting was almost upon us and I doubted if there was any seed to be found east of the Vistula. The millions of Mongols who had been through surely would have eaten everything they could find. Next I rode to the ducal palace to take possession of the place. I could have done everything from the inn but that would have lacked class. Also it would have cost me money in lost revenues since while the rooms of the inn could be rented out those of the palace couldn t. At least not now. In the future once some more efficient government buildings were up all the old palaces and castles around might make very charming hotels. An interesting thought anyway. The palatine of the ducal palace was a venerable gentle man who had been working there all his life. He showed me around and it wasn t bad at all. I d visited the place a few years before but as a mere baron from a distant duchy I hadn t gotten the grand tour. It was a smaller version of the castle on Wawel Hill which I also owned now thinking about it. It was built of red glazed brick and a fine collection of old weapons furs and tapestries gave it a certain barbaric splendor. There was indoor plumbing though and glass in the windows. Except for adding some radios there wouldn t have to be much in the way of needed changes. I made some anyway. I had lunch and fired the cook. I think that if the last duke could stand the cooking at his palace he must have gotten his taste buds chopped out in a tournament. I figured that anybody who could ruin roast mutton couldn t possibly be retrainable. He was replaced by the cook at the inn. In the same message to the innkeeper I explained about Sonya and had her sent over along with my clothes and armor and the barrel of nine years in wood whiskey which was declared to be my own private stock. All other innkeepers were to inventory their supply of the stuff and reserve it for my own exclusive use. RHIP. While I was thinking about it I sent a message to Cieszyn ordering the cook who had helped me make that first batch to run off another six thousand gallons of it and store it in oak casks. I promised to call for it in nine years. Baron Wojciech was the first of the Banki brothers to arrive since he had been in charge of the cleanup on the battlefield directly across the Vistula from Sandomierz. He came into my chambers at the palace with a cloth wrapped package under his arm and looked admiringly at the tapestries the furs and the brightly painted wood carvings. You know he said saving the country must pay pretty good. Someday I m going to have to try that myself sir Or I guess I should call you your grace now. Sit down and have some mead I said pouring. Wojciech you can call me anything but an atheist and you did your share in saving the country Thank you your grace. I have a present for you or at least a present I can give back to you. He unwrapped the package to display my pistol the one I had lost during my fight at a pontoon bridge on the other side of the Vistula. It had been polished and cleaned and was only slightly rustpitted. It had my name engraved on it since the smiths always seemed to do that sort of thing whenever they made anything for me along with a note as to who had made it. Advertising I suppose. Thank you. I see that you provided a new belt and holster. I didn t know if you d thrown the old ones away your grace. Just as well. I left them on the Muddling Through so I suppose they were burned when she was. I take it that you like this palace Of course It s beautiful your grace Good because you have a present coming too. This palace is going to be yours for the next two years. I want you to run the Sandomierz duchy for me as my deputy. Thank you your grace I m honored. Yawalda is going to be thrilled I know she will fall in love with this place. Well don t get too attached to it. Remember it s only temporary. Yes your grace. I ll be able to choose my own subordinates Within reason yes. You ll have a battalion of regular army troops under you but it s going to take some sorting out since most of the warriors have farms or businesses to get back to. I want to keep three battalions of full time fighting men together though in case we re attacked again. That s one here one at Cracow and one at Plock. Your brothers will have the other two. Baron Vladimir will command in time of war and he ll have about a dozen battalions of part time active reserve forces to back you up. Still I don t think we ll be bothered for a while and your main job will be to get every farmer who wants it seed tools and all the land he can farm. We can give them credit on supplies and there should be more than enough land what with all our losses to the Mongols. There were more losses than you know about your grace. The Mongols took the city of Sieciechow on the cast bank of the Vistula and I don t think that they left a single man woman child or domestic animal alive. They just murdered everybody even the cripples and the priests. We even found somebody s pet dog nailed to a church door. And the young women You don t want to hear about what they did to the young women. And there were worse things. You know those big Mongol catapults Well it looks like all the people that were pulling the ropes on them were Polish peasants Many thousands of them were killed by our own guns it looks like. I put my face in my hands. Oh my God I was there We killed them ourselves We thought that they were Mongols. Those catapults were destroying our riverboats What else could we do I was crying. At the time we d been laughing at the way they died so easily the way single bullets would take out whole rows of them. Would there be no end to my sins You didn t know your grace. You couldn t know. And even if you did like you said what else could you do Nothing Wojciech There wasn t a damn thing we could do. But I ll tell you this Once we get things squared away around here in a few years we are going to go out east and get those filthy bastards. We are going to hunt them down and kill every Mongol in the world Good your grace I ll help you do it I ve seen the figures on the number of Big People that will be available in ten years and with them we can chase the Mongols right off the edge of the world. That we will Or right into the sea of Japan anyway Just don t forget me when the time comes. Don t forget that I was the one who had to bury those poor peasants. I won t. Tell me what are things like in the east Empty your grace. I think that there were three million Mongols who invaded us and what they didn t eat they fed to their horses and what their horses didn t eat they burned. You know I think that s why they had to cross the Vistula so badly during the war. They had eaten everything on the east bank and it was either cross over or starve There are a few of the scouts who claim to have even found the remains of half eaten humans but you couldn t prove that by me. Just the same folks are scarce over there. In the weeks that I ve been on the east bank I don t think I ve seen over a thousand of our own people except for the army. We put them all to work you know digging graves mostly. We pay them of course and feed them which is more important. But there are so few of them left A lot of people believed us when we told them to run to the west. Most of them will be returning. It s important that we repopulate that area. If we leave it empty somebody else will move in. Maybe some of the warriors we ll be discharging will want land there. Write up an order for me to all commands telling them that there is land east of the Vistula free for the farming. We can give them credit on tools seed and so on. Yes your grace but our people won t need credit. The booty hasn t been counted yet but I can tell you we re all rich I think there was more gold left on the banks of the Vistula than ever crossed it. Indeed I would have thought that the Mongols would have looted their own dead. They did your grace but I think only on the sly you know I mean there wasn t much to be found on the bodies on the tops of those piles but there were dead men two dozen deep in some places They never got to the ones at the bottom. Wow. It looked like they were piled that deep when we were shooting them but I d convinced myself since then that it couldn t possibly be true. Well get yourself settled in and send for your wife and family. I ll be leaving here in perhaps a week and you can take this chamber for your own then. The next few days were spent getting organized. Word came that two Big People had been killed in the war both while carrying couriers from the battlefield near Sandomierz. Judging from the mess we found around their bodies they and their riders had spent their lives very dearly but they had spent them nonetheless. Jenny and Lucy were gone and they would be missed. Of their remaining sisters ten Big People were assigned to the postal service and the mails started to move again. Six other Big People were assigned to the Detective Corps since crime was on the rise in the wake of the social disruption of the war. The rest of them were assigned to the scouts since I was still worried about our borders and the few planes we had up couldn t be everywhere. Captain Wladyclaw was sent to patrol the eastern marches a good place for him. I got the feeling that he was more attached to my wife than to the army and nonsense like that belongs in The Three Musketeers not in Poland. He was promised the twenty Big People that would be coming of age in the fall but for now he was just going to have to make do with what he had. I kept Silver of course and Anna seemed to have attached herself to Francine so I let them stay together. And there were still four Big People with Duke Henryk. I d never thought to stockpile farm machinery war production being what it was and major orders for plows cultivators and harvesters were placed with the factories. The last of the booty was finally sent to Three Walls and Baron Piotr was put in charge of counting it. Working with the Moslem jeweler we d picked up years ago he simply had it all melted down refined it into bricks of pure gold and silver and then weighed it except for some pieces that were judged to have sufficient artistic merit to be worth saving. Silver City the zinc smelting and casting works in the Malapolska Hills was put into full production making coins. We d decided that the men should be paid in standard army currency rather than in actual silver and gold. One currency around was enough. Jewels were sorted as to size and type and some wooden warehouses were thrown up to store the war trophies. Just how those fancy swords and armor were to be divided was still unclear. Was it worth sending the entire army back to Three Walls just so each man could take his pick After much discussion we decided that each warrior should be paid his back pay and one thousand pence as an advance on his share of the booty. Knights would be paid two thousand and so on up the line. Not that they had to draw that much immediately but they could. A major headache was determining which men wished to stay with the army and which wanted to return to the semicivilian life of the reserves. And after that there was a major reshuffling of personnel to make up the three battalions of troops that we were keeping on a full time basis. None of this concerned the people who worked at my factories of course. They were aboard forever There were crowds of refugees that needed to be fed on their way home and thousands of lost or orphaned children that needed taking care of. The details kept us up night after night. Francine was being very quiet and subdued realizing that she had overstepped her bounds by far in conning me into taking the dukedoms. I finally got it through to her that had she let me in on the plan from the beginning there wouldn t have been any problem. But you shouldn t surprise a guy that way Anyway she didn t say a word about Sonya. Whether this was because she thought it normal for a nobleman to have a servant or because she was just afraid of another row I don t know. Sonya had shown up at the palace in a waitress outfit and my only comment was to tell her to get rid of the rabbit ears. She worked that day topless not having her other clothes with her and the next day all the rest of the women working at the palace were doing the same even Francine s maids. Old Duke Henryk the father of the current duke of that name had in his last years ordered that all of his palace serving wenches should bounce around bare breasted and I guess the local girls figured that old Duke Henryk s styles were back. While I never told anyone that she should work with her top off I knew better than try and stop women when they pick up on a new fad. I just passed the word that the style should be restricted to unmarried girls over twelve or so and then only in warm weather saying that there was nothing pretty about a girl who was freezing to death. A bit of sanity returned. In a week the worst of the trivia seemed to be beaten down and it was time to go to Plock. I invited Francine along since I knew that some politicking might be needed there. Plock hadn t been hit by the Mongols and the German Crossmen had their main base of Turon not far away. If I was going to have any resistance I d be getting it there. Then I changed my mind. Plock might be the most politic place to go but I was way overdue for confession. We went instead to Cracow and Bishop Ignacy. Chapter Nineteen FROM THE JOURNAL OF DUCHESS FRANCINE In the early morning we were set to visit Plock the capitol of Mazovia when Conrad abruptly changed our destination. Baron Gregor was removed from my carriage to take the horse ridden by his brother Baron Wiktor Banki. This worthy knight was put into my carriage to join me my maids and that annoying little trollop Conrad had picked up for a servant. The others were told to follow us along the track but Conrad insisted that we should run to Cracow immediately. The other four carts of our party being pulled by ordinary horses might be able to get there by sundown if they could find a change of horses but the Big People could run us up to Wawel Castle an hour before dinner. Conrad laughed off the idea that we wouldn t be safe without a bigger escort saying that his sword was better than most and anyway the Mongols were all dead or gone. Of course he was wrong. Conrad had made such a horrible scene at his coronation that I refuse to write about it It was all I could do to convince the leaders of the three duchies that he was still suffering from the war and get them to wait on him the next morning. Fortunately by then Conrad had gotten his wits about him and had done the sensible thing. After accepting the crowns he went about taking control of Sandomierz with a wise program of ignoring the existing power brokers who had elected him since he no longer needed them and putting the whole place under the control of his own trusted men his army. Those men would follow him into hell or go there alone if he commanded it I was so proud of him that I didn t complain about his new blond haired chippy. Sometimes he is absolutely brilliant and at other times such a total fool Or could it be that the whole scene in the Church of St. James was just an act to get them to accept his new program absolutely and without question Could he actually be that astute So many times he has done such seemingly dumb things yet always he ends up on top. No It was impossible He was just lucky I think. He wasn t so lucky when we were attacked on the road. Conrad was a few gross yards ahead of us when two Mongol warriors rode out of the bushes a gross yards from the road and attacked him in the early morning. Baron Wiktor had his sword out as soon as he saw them and vaulted to the top of our carriage to defend it. But from there he could accomplish nothing for Anna had already gone alone to Conrad s aid and the Mongols were putting all their efforts to the killing of my beloved husband Anna screamed a warning but Conrad was far ahead of us when the fight started. She raced to his aid but before she got there it was all over The first Mongol threw one of those deadly spears at Conrad the sort that all the warriors I had met complained of. At close range those spears could puncture even our best armor. Conrad turned in the saddle and slashed the spear in half as it flew at him His second blow came downward at the spearman s neck and head and arm came off the rest of the body in a single piece. He then wheeled his mount and charged at the second Mongol who was shooting arrows at him. Two of the missiles struck my love in the chest and stuck there but he paid them no attention. He simply charged straight in and knocked them over man and horse As the enemy started to get up dazed a last blow of that amazing sword chopped through both helmet and skull and suddenly all was quiet. Well done your grace Sir Wiktor shouted as our carriage coasted to a stop. I have heard of your prowess often enough but that s the first time I ve ever had the chance to see it. It was the second time I d seen my love in battle and it affected me this time just as it had before. I wanted nothing more than to take him into the bushes and love him on the spot the child in my womb notwithstanding A glance at the maids told me that the effect was universal and the new blonde was chanting Yes. Yes. Yes with a silly grin on her face. Duke Conrad dismounted and called to Baron Wiktor Come help me round up their horses The people behind us were worried about spare mounts. Now we can leave them some. Francine get out your writing kit and write them a note that we can leave behind. There wasn t much time lost in getting the enemy horses since Anna and Silver cooperated nicely in rounding them up. Soon Conrad came to the carriage with two large purses filled mainly with gold. He looked at the arrows stuck in his golden breastplate as if he had noticed them for the first time and pulled them out. Well there s a mess for the jeweler to worry about. And here s some booty that we won t have to share with the whole army What do you say to an eight way split for Anna and Silver deserve a share as well. And that s just what he did. The maids were ecstatic They each got four years pay. The horses were tied to the track along with my letter to Baron Gregor the dead Mongols were left for the others to dispose of and we were back on our way to Cracow in minutes. And still I wasn t sure. Was he that lucky or simply that good Finally I asked him about it as he rode along by my side. He said with an almost perfectly straight face My strength is as the strength of ten for my heart is pure. So I still didn t know He wouldn t tell me pure what At Cracow the carriage was taken from the track at the station and Anna pushed it slowly through the burned out cottages of the suburbs. It was a sorry sight yet the first greenery of spring was on the land promising the healing of old wounds. At the city gate Conrad left us to go to the bishop s palace on Wawel Hill and we followed slowly afterward for to push the carriage over a plain road without iron rails made Anna s task more difficult. The guard at the inner gate at Wawel Hill gave us a joyful greeting saying that Conrad had gone before and that Duke Henryk was here as well. Baron Wiktor and I were more than a little apprehensive as we went to Wawel Castle for confronting the duke was a thing that neither of us looked forward to. Yet it had to be done and it was better that we should do it before Conrad was through with Bishop Ignacy. There was no telling what my love would do if the situation was left to him alone. As we entered the ducal chamber Duke Henryk was sitting behind the desk that he had used so many times before that he himself had once ordered made in imitation of the one Conrad had given to the bishop. But it was a chamber that had been promised to Baron Wiktor by my husband in a castle that no longer belonged to Henryk Welcome to Wawel Castle your grace Baron Wiktor said. You bid me welcome Wiktor To my own castle Yours no longer your grace. The seyms have elected Conrad duke of Little Poland and of Sandomierz and Mazovia as well. The nobles of Cracow all swore fealty to me Henryk said. I could see that this would go as badly as I had feared. True your grace Baron Wiktor said but since that time you abandoned the city to the Mongols and the men who swore to you have been killed almost to a man. The nobles and burghers who are left would never obey one whom they think has betrayed them and Conrad is now duke. So I have been told by the churlish louts may their souls be damned I never abandoned Poland Yet you were not here when the city was attacked your grace. Duke Conrad was. He was here in disobedience of my orders I told him to come to me in Legnica He could not obey you your grace. Your battle plan was foolish and he had to obey a higher power. What higher power I was his liege lord Your grace can you possibly have forgotten the night five years ago when you and he and I along with three dozen others stood vigil in the mountains Can you have forgotten that morning when God Himself put a holy halo about each of our heads and blessed the work that we were going to do Can you have forgotten that you yourself knelt before Conrad and were knighted by him into our Holy Order of the Radiant Warriors Duke Henryk was cringing before the baron s onslaught. I was surprised to see Baron Wiktor standing up to the duke so forcefully so masterfully. There was more to the man than I had suspected and he wasn t through with the duke yet You must have forgotten for when the time came for us to do the work that God had ordained you went and came up with a silly battle plan without even consulting with the man who headed your own order. You had a fine time writing and consulting with every king and duke in Christendom but you had never a word for the man with the finest army in the world The man whom God chose to do the job So you sat and hid in Legnica while Conrad fought the war without you and now you have the gall to sit in his castle as if the spoils of that war were yours to take There was sickness in our camp. The foreign troops were slow in arriving. We could not advance the duke said weakly. The sickness could have been avoided had you heeded Conrad s book on camp sanitation. We had no sickness And to hell with the foreign troops We didn t need them Well the foreign knights have now been sent to Hungary to aid our allies in accordance with my agreement with King Bela. More than half of my own men went with them as well. Good your grace. We no longer need them. What remains to be seen is whether or not we need you any longer either You threaten me Baron Wiktor No your grace. I merely suggest that when you meet with my liege lord Duke Conrad you assume a properly grateful attitude. He not you saved the country and he not you commands here. Remember that he now controls half of Poland and he could take the other half by force at any time if he was minded to I I will bear your words in mind Baron Wiktor. If you ll excuse me Duchess. And with that Duke Henryk left the chamber his back bent. Baron you were magnificent I said as soon as the door closed. I couldn t resist throwing my arms around him I merely spoke the truth Wiktor said as he disengaged himself and sat behind the desk. Duke Conrad has made me his deputy here and I would have failed him if I had let someone else usurp that power. Please be seated my duchess. Our lord can t be too much longer with his confessor. Chapter Twenty FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD My session with Bishop Ignacy was one of the longest that we ever spent together and the vespers bell rang long before we were done. We had supper sent up to us and my confession continued well into the night. With most priests confession is a fairly short perfunctory affair but it is never so with Bishop Ignacy. I was deeply troubled and he took all the time that was necessary to dig into all the bloody crowded doings of the last month. In the end he gave me his usual scolding about my sexual affairs but absolved me completely for all that had happened in the course of fighting the Mongols and for the Lubinska business as well. I felt clean for the first time since we had headed out for war. Clean but still I bore scars within that would always be with me. When we were through I said By the way what did you think of those inquisitors that I had sent to you Father What inquisitors I have met no one from the Holy Inquisition. Well the day before we marched out to war against the Mongols two members of the inquisition came to speak to me. And what did they have to say I m not at all sure Father. You see neither of them could speak Polish and I can speak neither Italian nor Latin. Furthermore they had apparently been forbidden to speak of the matter with anyone else but me so they could not explain the thing to our translator. Also you have forbidden me to talk about my transportation to this century with anyone but you Father. Therefore I made sure that they had a good map to Cracow and directions on how to get here and told them that they should talk to you. Now you say that they never got here. Well that s reasonable enough seeing as how you probably gave them one of your army maps with south at the top and everything else topsy turvy. No wonder they got lost Everybody knows that east belongs at the top of a map After all the Garden of Eden was in the east and we are all descended from Adam and Eve who lived there. Since we are descended from the east it must be above us and therefore it belongs at the top of the map. It s perfectly logical Yes Father. So you haven t seen them No and by this time I think it unlikely that they will arrive. They have either been killed by the Tartars or they are going back to Rome in disgust Now I will have to write a formal letter of inquiry explaining what little I know of this matter and asking what happened to the inquisitors. Yes Father. Could you please ask them to send someone who speaks the language next time Good night Conrad. A sleepy castle page showed me the way up to the suite that had been reserved for me the duke s apartment. I found that Francine was already asleep but Sonya was waiting up for me good little servant that she was. In the morning bathed and shaved I was having breakfast when Francine joined me. Good morning Francine. You slept well Yes my love though perforce alone. Sonya brought us some more sausages and hotcakes and I could tell that Francine was trying to ignore her. She had accepted Cilicia and had offered me her own maids on occasion yet she didn t seem to like me having one of my own somehow. Oh well. Women are strange. It was best to ignore the situation and wait for the horse to sing. Well you were sleeping when I got back. I didn t see any point in waking you. You took so long in confession I had a lot to confess. Millions of people are dead because of me I said. And many millions more yet live because of your diligence and prowess. Have I ever told you how much the whole of Christendom owes you Hmph. I m just a man who s trying to do his job. Then there is more work yet for you to do my love. Duke Henryk is in the castle. And we re in his old room. I guess I ll have to have it out with him today though I can t say that I m looking forward to it. Much of the way has been cleared for you my love. Baron Wiktor and I talked long with him yesterday. There is much to the baron that I had not seen before. He s a good man though his brother Gregor is the truly wise one of that bunch. That s why I m giving Gregor command of Mazovia. Sonya would you please go to Duke Henryk and ask him when it would be convenient for him to talk with me today And uh put a dress on first. Henryk has this problem with feminine skin. Wait Francine said as Sonya was about to leave. is that wise my love You command here and you should tell him when it would please you to meet. And if it pleases you to have your wenches nearly naked you should not change your custom to suit a visitor. I shook my head and said Okay. We ll compromise. Sonya ask the duke if he would join me here for dinner at noon and don t bother dressing up for the occasion. After that tell the cooks to have a meal for two sent up at three sharp and remind them that I fired the head cook at Sandomierz. You know my tastes in food. As she left I said Satisfied With you always my love. You might want to dress in one of your army uniforms to remind the duke of your bond with him and the fact that you head the Order of the Radiant Warriors. As you will. It takes so little to keep her happy sometimes. I spent part of the morning with Baron Wiktor getting things organized in Cracow and then saw a delegation of the city fathers. They wanted me to redesign the lower city for them since it had mostly been burned to the ground. Yet at the same time they wanted to start rebuilding immediately without waiting to install sewers and water mains. And once we got into it they didn t want a new street layout either since that would mean that all the existing building plots would change and who would know who owned what Somehow they wanted me to bless it and make it all better but not to change anything My own private thought was that it would be easier to simply build a new city. As for the old one well there had been a half yard of organic fertilizer on the ground there for centuries. If they would put a plow to it they d have the richest farmland in the world But I couldn t tell them that so I told them to think over what they really wanted and promised to meet with them later. I knew that in the end what we would do was come up with some new building codes requiring fireproof materials for the walls at least and plan to put in the utilities later in a piecemeal fashion the way things are normally done. It would be more efficient to build from scratch but there wasn t time. The people of Cracow had to have a place to live now. But best for them to come to that realization for themselves. I had Natalia make a note to tell the factories to get into full production of all building materials as soon as possible. She was Baron Gregor s wife and would soon be leaving me to join him at his new post in Plock. She was trying to train one of the other girls to take her place but she had been with me for nine years and training a replacement to know what I wanted without being told every little thing wasn t easy. It was a pleasant spring day and I had lunch set up on one of the battlements that served as a balcony. I was surprised to see that the duke also wore one of our red and white army dress uniforms probably for the same reason that I did. Francine had been right again. Welcome your grace I said. Have a seat. Thank you your grace he said looking pale from his recent illness. I want to start by offering you my apology. I formulated a poor battle plan without your advice and consent. I ordered you to follow it even though you knew that it was foolish. And in anger I have not answered your many letters and messages. For these things I ask your forgiveness. I accept your apology your grace. I too need to apologize since I deliberately disobeyed your direct orders. But let s just say that these unpleasant things never happened. Done. And since we now are both of the same rank wouldn t equals speech be more appropriate Right you are Henryk. Much has happened since our last meeting. It s been almost half a year. Sonya and three of the castle servants brought in our food and set the table. While it was a warm day for the season it wasn t run around in half a bathing suit warm and I could see her tiny nipples harden up in the breeze. I waved her back into the building with the other servants. True Conrad and that is entirely too long. Where should we begin Well. I suppose that you have heard that Count Lambert fell fighting the Mongols. I was there and before he died he told me that I was his heir and that you had approved it. Is this true He looked down at his plate. Oh yes you inherit his lands and much more besides. Did you know that Lambert s brother Count Herman also died Lunch consisted of breaded chicken deep fried in a pressure cooker A la Colonel Sanders with French fries and coleslaw. And bottled beer with some fizz in it. No coffee or Coke alas. Henryk didn t seem to know how to handle the chicken so I picked up a drumstick to show him that eating with the hands was proper for this exotic dish. No I didn t although I knew that Herman s wife was dead. Count Herman died of the sickness that struck my camp at Legnica. Now do not tell me about your book concerning camp sanitation measures. I am well aware of it. I had my own knights follow your suggestions to the letter but I was unable to control the foreign troops that well. They insisted on doing things as they always had and disease spread among them the way it always does. And then of course my own men caught it. As best as I can determine Count Herman died just a few hours before his brother did and the count s wife was killed a half day before that. Therefore Herman inherited his wife s share of their estates and Lambert inherited them before his death. This means that they all come down to you. You are now Count of Cieszyn as well as Count of Okoitz Wow. I d certainly never expected that I said. It is also possible that you have inherited Lambert s extensive Hungarian estates as well since his daughter has not been heard from since she left and I understand that the fighting in Hungary has been fierce. I do not think that they were hit with as many Tartars as you were however. The number of enemy heads on pikes along your railroad tracks would be unbelievable had I not seen them with my own eyes. I wish I could help the Hungarians out but my foot soldiers would be almost helpless without the railroads and there are none in Hungary. You know I once tried to get King Bela to let me run a line down into his country and to put some steamboats on his rivers but he refused me permission to do it. As to the heads you saw well they represent not one in twelve of the Mongols we killed. Before you go back west we must visit the major battlefields here. Then I ll show you heads We must do that. As to King Bela well if he lives out the war he will be less arrogant in dealing with you. But these are all trivial matters compared with what we really have to talk about. You know that my father spent his life trying to unite the country and that I have done all that I can to continue his work. I now hold all of western Poland except for the seacoast of Pomerania. You hold all of the cast except for what is held by the Teutonic Order The Crossmen were sworn to my predecessor in theory at least and they ll damn well swear to me or leave bleeding I said. Well put I think together we would have little trouble getting the Pomeranians back into the fold as well. And we must be together Indeed. I agree. Good. Well then. I came here to offer you my oath of fealty Conrad. You will be the first king of Poland in a hundred years Hmph And what if I don t accept your oath What How can you say that After all this you mean to humiliate me further Not at all. I m just saying that under certain conditions I would be willing to swear to you I said. Do you actually mean that Why You have the power now not I Why would you do such a thing Because I don t want to be a king I m not even very thrilled about being a duke. I m a technical man an engineer. I have no training in law or politics or sovereignty I don t like sitting in judgment over other human beings. I don t even like sitting at the high table of a banquet Sovereignty is a job that you have been training for all of your life and you re welcome to it I want to be free to get back to work at developing industry here and I want you to take over all the other trivia for me. You would be a craftsman and call the crown trivia Yes because it is In the long run my job will be far more important than yours. Well if that is truly your wish then so be it. But a moment ago you said under certain conditions. What conditions did you have in mind I pulled out a list from my breast pocket. Well first off I ll stay in charge of the army. My forces will be the only military forces in Poland and all other forces will be either disbanded or merged with the army over the next six years. I ll pay for the army myself but that s the only thing I ll pay for. There will be no other taxes on me. Granted although disbanding the feudal levies will be no easy feat. What else I ll have to stay Duke of Sandomierz Little Poland and Mazovia. Frankly the people here wouldn t have you directly in command and these areas will be underpopulated for some time anyway. But I don t want the dukedoms to be hereditary. If they were there s a good chance that your heirs and mine would come to blows and that s best avoided now. You mean that I would be your heir Yes insofar as those parts of the duchies that are not settled by the army are concerned. You or your heir will inherit the fealty of those lands and peoples that remain under the conventional nobility. The army will keep its own lands and choose its own leader although I haven t worked out how yet I said. Then of course I completely agree. Next Primogeniture. This business of dividing the country UP between the sons of the last king has got to stop. An equal division among the heirs of lesser titles is fine but the country once united must be indivisible. I had planned such a change myself. Granted. Next The lands that I have inherited border on Little Poland. I want them combined with my duchy here. Very well although bear in mind that the law in each of the duchies of Poland is different. There will be a certain reluctance to change on the part of the people living there. That s another thing. I want a single simple set of laws that is the same throughout the land. I want that law to be administered by carefully trained and very honest men and not by the local lord of the manor. We need a system of police and judges and courts that honestly and fairly enforce the law not the barbaric hodgepodge that we have now. Now that will be a hard thing to do. People resist changes even when they are for the better. Furthermore it will be expensive. I ll be responsible for the salaries of the people involved if necessary but the rest is your job. You write the laws and you administer the system. Only check with me before you publish those laws. I don t demand veto power or anything like that but I do want to have a chance to give you my advice. I will agree to this in principle although we both know that it will be many years in the doing. What about your army Will these laws cover it as well If a warrior breaks a civil law he will be punished by the civil courts. There will be military laws as well that the warriors will be subject to but civilians won t. I ll worry about military law. Good. Next The meal was over and the servants cleared the table. Sonya brought in desert. Ice cream Excellent despite its lack of vanilla flavoring. You know there are advantages to occasionally firing a cook I m going to be building forts all around the borders of the country. I ll pay for the land I need but once bought it will be army property under army control and not taxable by anyone. Okay Very well. Anything else Well there s Copper City. For years I ve been running it and sending you the profits. The bookkeeping involved is annoying. I want it made mine entirely. I hereby grant you title to Copper City. Is that the last request It is. Good. Then the matter is settled though we shall have to put it all in writing of course. Since you dictated the terms why don t you see to getting some fair copies made. Then there is the matter of your oath of fealty. We will want to do it again with all of your officers and my nobles present but let us swear to each other now while the sun is yet high. And so together we raised our right hands to the sun and swore. And Poland again had a king. Or so I thought. Chapter Twenty one Francine hit the roof when she found out that Henryk was to be the next king instead of me. She ranted and screamed for hours not listening to a word I said until I finally just left the room and went down to the Great Hall which was the closest thing to a tavern that was immediately available. I just can t tolerate a screeching woman When I came back that night to sleep she was still at it shouting at the top of her lungs with her servants cowering in the comers. It seems that she had now found out that Henryk had started out by offering fealty to me and that I had turned him down. Castle servants talk too much After another hour of this I left again to find that Sonya had arranged another room for me at the other end of the palace. Women are so much nicer before you marry them Dammit I never promised to make her a queen I never promised anything except seeing to her needs and a throne was hardly necessary for her well being. In fact history proves that a throne is a very dangerous possession. Too many kings and queens have failed to die peacefully of old age in their beds. Anyway all this political and social aggrandizement was her idea not mine. I mean I d gone along with making her a duchess hadn t I Wasn t that enough What did she want to be Empress of the known world The next morning Sonya told me that she had a friend who was looking for work. I interviewed the girt over breakfast a pretty well built redhead who had come dressed for the job. On Sonya s suggestion she showed up for her job interview wearing nothing but her freckles. I hired her as a second body servant. At least with servants you can fire them when they get out of line. I never should have gotten married. I spent the day doing administrative stuff writing a set of building codes for the city fathers of Cracow and making a deal with them on building materials. I sold them bricks hardware lumber and so on at wholesale prices and gave them three years free credit on it. They would worry about parceling the stuff out to the citizens at retail prices and collecting payment for it. The actual construction work was up to them. I wouldn t be involved. Later in a year or two we d worry about water mains and sewers and by then what with their profits on the building materials they would be able to afford the utilities. A backward way to do things but there wasn t really much choice. A few days later Francine was calmed down enough to at least start out civil at a banquet that Henryk had insisted that I attend. Nine years before on the day after I had first met the then Prince Henryk we had both joined a party hunting wild boar and bison. The regalia required for this sport included a shield and he had been a bit offended by the motto on the bottom of my heater which was the first line of the yet to be written Polish national anthem Poland is not yet dead We had talked about it and I had promised to paint it over if and when he finally got the whole country united. Our new armor was so good that a fighting man didn t ordinarily need a shield and I hadn t used mine in years. Henryk had found it somewhere and had it brought into the Great Hall along with brushes and a collection of paint pots. He told the story to the gathered notables and invited me to keep my word. There was nothing for it but to put down my knife and fork scrape the old motto from the shield and publicly paint on it Poland is alive and well It was mostly a party joke and I mugged up my part in it to suit the occasion the way I had to do every Christmas for the peasants in imitation of my old liege lord Count Lambert. This bit of buffoonery miffed Francine no end since she felt that since I was now a duke I should be a somber ass as well. Later when somebody mentioned that Henryk would be my heir for the three eastern duchies she got downright livid She flew totally off the handle again and was literally frothing at the mouth before we got her out of the hall. And she accuses me of making scenes in public She accused me of robbing my own children by which she doubtless meant her own children yet to be born. At this point I had about a dozen others by various fine ladies but I don t think that she figured that those kids counted. Personally I have always done my best to treat them all the same. Playing favorites wouldn t have been good for them. To my way of thinking saddling a kid with any sort of an inherited lifetime job would be one of the worst possible things you could do to him. Well kid here s your role in life written down on these here computer punch cards ha ha Live out your only earthly existence precisely in accordance with the pattern that is given you from the high mountain Make sure that you fit the cookie cutter exactly baby Bullshit What a horrible thing to do to a little child A kid deserves a good education and a lot of love and on top of this I figure that all my kids started out with a pretty good set of genes. Beyond that you owe it to him to see to it that he has a chance to grow in the directions that suit him best and that goes double for the girls And damn all these Dark Ages attitudes I had done the best thing possible for my children for Poland and for me I didn t see Francine for the rest of the week and to hell with her. I had two new girls to take care of me. Young ones And what they lacked in skill they made up for with cheerfulness obedience and enthusiasm. Sonya mentioned that she had another friend looking for work. Sonya just why is it that you and your friends are so eager to do the dirty work around here It s not all that dirty your grace. You know what I mean. Some places that I ve been the young ladies would have been insulted if you offered them work as a domestic servant. Then in those places the young women must all be fools your grace. What do you mean Come on you know I ll never get angry at an honest answer. Well it s a great honor to serve so high a lord and a great pleasure to serve one who is so kind and so virile. The truth Sonya. That is the truth Or at least part of it anyway. The rest is that well you have a very good record your grace Nine years ago Count Lambert sent you out to your new lands with five simple peasant wenches. Now after staying with you every single one of them is at least a baroness and they re all rich besides A poor priest s wife is now a duchess because of you I ve only been working for you for a few weeks and I m already wealthy from my share of that Mongol booty as are both of Duchess Francine s maids and even your horses I tell you that any woman who wouldn t warm your bed or clean your chamber pots would be a damn fool who wants to stay poor Hmph. You know I ve never thought of it that way but I suppose that a young person has to look out for herself. Of course your grace. And a bright girl takes care of her friends as well. You can never tell when you might need a return favor. Did you want to see Kotcha Why not And then there were three. Well. Baron Wiktor was settling into his new job nicely and before long we had things reasonably under control. Within a week it was time to visit Mazovia and get that business over with. Duke Henryk well he wasn t crowned yet suggested that he go along and that we visit the battlefields on the way. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Francine still wasn t speaking to me so I left her behind. We loaded our entourages Big People and all onto one of the three steamboats I had left on the Vistula Baron Tadaos s Enterprise and headed downriver. A few months ago there had been three dozen of them Not one Vistula boatman in four dozen was still alive. There were so few river boatmen left that the boat was manned largely by the baron s many wives. Training boatmen was another thing to worry about. Tadaos proudly demonstrated his favorite bit of war booty a huge leather covered recurved Mongol bow that he claimed was better than the English longbow he d lost when his old Muddling Through had been burned. We stopped at each of the major killing fields on the way told the story of what had happened there and watched Henryk being properly impressed by the huge squares of mounted human heads. The ants and carrion birds were still having royal banquets feasting on flesh and eyeballs. An ugly sight but better the Mongols should do that duty than us. Anyway it wasn t as though we had invited the bastards here. At the first such stop Henryk mentioned the big pile of Mongol weapons and equipment that was stacked there. That stuff I said. That s what was left after we sorted through it. The best trophies were all taken to Three Walls to be divided out among the warriors as spoils. This pile will be taken back as scrap metal when we get around to it. If you or anybody here wants to pick through it feel free. The duke s pride wouldn t let him touch it but most of his men picked up a sword and a dagger or two. Our servants all did likewise. Even Sonya got to wearing a dagger on her loincloth for a few weeks until she decided that it was silly. I passed the word that if any of the returning peasants wanted any of it for their personal use they should feel free. It s not as though we were short of scrap iron. Weeks later Baron Novacek my sales manager was angry about these gifts and he sold much of what was left at a healthy profit. The next day Henryk and I were standing apart from the others on the top deck of the boat as we were approaching Sandomierz. Tadaos was taking us carefully past the wreckage of yet another Mongol bridge. Henryk when were you planning on having your coronation I am not sure Conrad. In a year or so as soon as the Pope confirms it I suppose. The Pope What does he have to do with it Well everything Poland is a papal state after all. Poland is a papal state You mean like all those little countries in Italy I ve never heard of such a thing Well as a mere baron you have never had to pay Peter s pence. It is no small tax I assure you. But I still don t understand. You mean to tell me that Poland is subordinate to Rome When did that happen I asked. Why almost at the beginning more than two hundred years ago. At the time it was a wise political move since we were being invaded by the Germans and it gave us a certain moral force against them that we lacked up until then. Now it has become more of a tradition than anything else although I reaffirmed our status with Rome a few years ago for much the same reasons that my ancestors had. It gives us moral support against the Germans. In theory Poland is a member of the Holy Roman Empire as well though neither my father nor I have ever paid taxes to Frederick II. I suppose that he could crown me as easily as the Pope but talking Gregory IX into it will be an easier job. It is better politically as well what with all the troubles that Frederick has been having. I would prefer to be associated with him as little as possible even though I married one of his nieces. He has been excommunicated more than once you know. I guess I don t know. I ve never paid much attention to world politics. By our agreement it is all more my worry than yours Conrad. If you really want an education in it talk to that wife of yours. Whether we ever talk again remains to be seen. I never thought that she d react to our agreement the way she has. And that is all more your worry than mine. But if I may make bold a suggestion about your domestic life I would say that you should leave your wife at home as I customarily do and as my father did before me. That way when you do get back you will be warmly welcomed and when you are away you will be unencumbered with emotional baggage that you do not need. I m afraid that Francine will never make a contented housewife. She d rather be a world power. Again my friend it is your problem though it might solve itself once she has a child in her arms. It often has a calming effect on them. If that does not work I remind you that the Church allows you to beat her so long as you do not use too big a stick. I don t think that I could do that. The customs were a little different in my time. Back to this business of your coronation. Do you really think it s wise to let the Pope or any other power for that matter crown you If he can make you a king can t he unmake you as well And as to your paying this Peter s pence that s in addition to the tithing you do isn t it Well Poland has just saved all of Christendom from the greatest danger that ever threatened it It seems to me that our military services should be taken in place of that money. We saved France and the rest of the wealthy countries to the west from total destruction. Let them pay Rome s bills Those are two very interesting suggestions Conrad. I particularly like the idea of getting out from under the taxes. They would double on me you know since our agreement has you paying no taxes to me and someone would have to pay the Peter s pence on the eastern duchies. I think I will do it At the worst Gregory will scream too loudly and I might have to back down. But it is certainly worth a try. If you did get off that hook you could afford to pay for the new legal system couldn t you I suppose I could but first let us see if it can be done. And what about my other suggestion What if I were to crown you I said. Now that would require more thought Conrad. Politically it might be dangerous. Yet I must say I like the concept. The boat had made the usual U turn and was coming upstream to the landing at Sandomierz. Doing it any other way was just about impossible with a stem wheeler. Well you think on it Henryk. For now we just have time to visit the battlefields west of here if we are still to get to the palace for supper. I went with Henryk and his three guards to the battlefield since we were the only ones on Big People. Everybody else went directly to the palace. A city of round Mongol felt tents had sprung up on the old battlefield housing not only the remaining sick and wounded and the troops attending them but also the arms and property of the Christian knights who had fallen there. So far not much of it had been retrieved by the heirs of the dead. By accident I came across the gold plated armor that I had once given to my former liege lord Count Lambert. Since I was his heir I gave orders that the armor should be sent to my jeweler for repair and then on to Baron Vladimir. Vladimir had worn that armor as my best man at my wedding a half year ago and it had fit him well. It seemed proper that he should have it now. Back in Sandomierz Baron Wojciech still had everything well in hand and Yawalda was glorying in her role as vice duchess. Watching my old lover preside made it one of the least boring banquets I d ever attended almost worth the time it wasted. The former peasant girl was doing her new situation up proud Yet the burghers of the city treated Henryk with a certain aloofness and seemed not totally pleased with my subordination to him. It wasn t as strong as it had been at Cracow where more than one citizen had thrown garbage and dead cats at the duke but you could tell that at best they had a wait and see attitude. The next morning was spent going over the killing fields opposite of Sandomierz and I pointed out the place where my stupidity had earned me an arrow in my right eye. But by this time the huge squares of human heads the massive piles of rusting arms and the vast stacks of salted down horsehides were getting a little boring and I was glad that our grisly tour was over. Baron Gregor and Natalia were eager to push on to their new post in Plock and aside from the wreckage of a few more Mongol bridges the rest of the journey was uneventful. The people of Plock had been warned of our coming and they had the city decked out with flags banners and colored bunting. Some of Francine s annoying political posters had found their way here as well. Plock had been bypassed by the Mongols and the city itself was entirely unharmed. Yet every fighting man in the entire duchy who could afford a horse had ridden south under the banners of young Duke Boleslaw and most of them had died with him when he had foolishly stayed on the battlefield instead of leaving the enemy to my army as had been planned. It was a city of women children and old men and they were truly glad of our coming. A battalion of army troops had arrived a week before and they were cheering us too. Judging from the color of their eyeballs it looked as though they had spent their time and half of their back pay on drink and in the comforting of too many young widows. But I suppose that they each deserved a hero s traditional welcome. They d certainly earned it. I really don t like having people cheer at me although I try to act the part. Henryk however seemed to be enjoying it immensely. Good. That was part of being king and he was welcome to it. I let him make most of the speeches to the crowd and when my turn came I just thanked them for making me their duke and told them that Henryk would be the next king and that Baron Gregor would be my vice duke here. That seemed to make everybody happy although in the mood they were in that mob might have cheered if I had said that I was giving the country to the Mongols The palace at Plock had much in common with the others I had in Cracow and Sandomierz. One had the feeling that the previous dukes had competed with one another for status symbols and had done a lot of imitating in the process. Natalia was delighted with her new home and Baron Gregor seemed contented with the rewards of his faithful service to me. I spent the usual week helping Gregor get settled in and Henryk was a great deal of help as well. I d thought that he would be treated coldly as he had been in Cracow and Sandomierz but not so. Perhaps it was because the battles had happened so far away from this city and because since Mazovia had never been subordinate to Henryk he could not possibly have ever betrayed it. In any event it was finally looking as though I would soon be able to get done with this time wasting political stuff. I was eager to get back to my proper job at Three Walls. Then suddenly all bets were off. A breathless lookout ran in and announced that the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order was approaching the city gates with a thousand knights and men at arms behind him. The Crossmen were coming Chapter Twenty two FROM THE JOURNAL OF DUCHESS FRANCINE So it was that because of my arrangement of the situation and Baron Wiktor s adroit handling of Duke Henryk the duke became convinced that his only hope of survival lay in his unconditional submission to my husband. Through hard work and no small a dose of good luck the stage was properly set for Conrad s final enlargement to King of Poland. Oh I knew that he would make his usual objections to this advancement but I also knew that just as he soon found reasons of his own why he must needs remain duke once it was thrust upon him he would also convince himself that he must remain king. Men are really such simple beings and so easily manipulated. Conrad insisted on quietly conversing with Henryk at a meal alone with him so I was not able to attend yet I was not worried. All things had been so well managed that there could be only one possible outcome from their meeting. And better that they should think that they had done it all by themselves. It saved bruising their fragile masculine pride. Thus you can imagine my abject horror at finding out that they had managed to do the exact opposite of what was sensible Despite the fact that Conrad not only held the will of the people but had vast almost unheard of wealth and a huge efficient army and Henryk had none of the above somehow they had decided that Henryk should be king and Conrad but a vassal. And my stupid dumpling of a husband was dull enough to be pleased with the arrangement And these two both the bumpkin and the shyster had sworn on it Oh not publicly as yet but with too many servants present to silence them all without notice being taken of it. Is it any wonder that I was annoyed Then after Conrad gleefully gave me his disastrous news he tried to convince me of his brilliance in doing it He kept making no sense at all until he finally lurched out of our chambers. I then tried to get the entire story out of the servants that were present. Of course the bare titted hussy that he euphemistically calls a personal servant was completely useless to me. She knows how long she would last without Conrad s protection The others were castle servants left over from the time when Henryk ruled here. It didn t take me long to show them where their kasha was salted Thus it was that I found out that Henryk had started out by offering fealty as was to be expected but my stupid doddering husband had refused it After Conrad returned and I explained it all to him he again left me to spend the night with his blond trollop. I am becoming convinced that my mother was right. The pains of this world are too much for a woman to bear and the only sensible course is to retire to a nunnery. Why am I tortured like Tantalus to have all that I desire but a hand s length away only to always have it wrenched away when it is seemingly within my grasp What great sin have I committed that I should be treated by God in so cruel a manner Yet still I strived to be a peacemaker and when I was formally invited to a banquet with Conrad and that duke I decided that it would be seemly to go. Perhaps some small thing could be rescued from this debacle. Such was not to be. At the feast Henryk taunted my husband making him act the clown the buffoon to him. And Conrad willingly did it He louted before the mob and Henryk too. Conrad whose armies could have stomped this entire castle flat without taking their hands out of those pocket things of theirs I was mortified. And no sooner was this ugly scene over than some simpering courtier pranced up and casually mentioned that Conrad had also given away our own children s birthrights. They were to be disinherited in favor of Henryk The child in my own womb was to be cast out before it had even had the chance to draw its first breath. So now Conrad and Henryk have gone north to make a mess of things in Mazovia to alienate the population and probably get themselves into a stupid useless war with the damned Teutonic Knights And I sit here alone abandoned by all save the servants my guards and the courtiers. A nunnery. There must be a decent nunnery somewhere in Poland Chapter Twenty three FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD Damn. I had to face yet another high anxiety situation and this was likely to be a big one. I had been bumping heads with the Knights of the Cross since the first day I got to this century when one of them had bashed me on the head for not groveling properly. Later I d caught seven of them taking a gross of children south to sell as slaves to Moslem brothels and when we had put a stop to this molestation of children by cutting down most of the Crossmen I had been forced to fight a Trial by Combat with their champion to stop the Crossmen from repossessing those kids. Plus well I knew my history well enough to know that having those Germans on Polish soil would cause seven hundred years of misery for my country. Not only were they completely obliterating several Baltic peoples now they would continue their bloody expansionist ways forever Several of the most murderous battles of the entire Middle Ages were fought against them and once they were defrocked by the Pope and had become a secular Protestant group they became the duchy of Prussia that was eventually to unite Germany under a military dictatorship that was one of the root causes of World War I. And World War II was started when Hitler invaded Poland to forcefully take the land bridge that separated Prussia from the rest of Germany. Added to all this my father and uncles had been resistance fighters in Poland during World War II. I grew up hearing firsthand about all the unspeakable atrocities committed by the Germans. I mean the Russians are by no means pleasant but they are sweetness and light compared to the Nazi Germans. Germans are not a lovable people Furthermore while they had sworn fealty to Duke Boleslaw of Mazovia they had failed to come to the aid of my predecessor when he had called on them to join in the defense of the country against the Mongols. All they had done was to send a puny five hundred man force to Henryk at Legnica and he had been forced to bribe them to get even that I now had the opportunity to remove these evil people from the map of the world and you can bet that I was going to do everything in my power to do it Battle stations I shouted. Baron Gregor Get the gates closed and your men and guns on the walls Within moments bugles were blowing and men were scurrying about finding their arms and armor readying themselves and finding their proper positions. It wasn t as well rehearsed as most of the army s maneuvers. In fact we had never gotten around to actually practicing it yet at all. Chaos and confusion were sucking up precious minutes. But God was still on our side for the Crossmen had been spotted from the cathedral tower two miles from the city and were advancing only at a walk. The troops managed to get the gates closed in time but just barely. I was as late as anyone since the only an nor I had with me was the damnable gold parade stuff that Francine had insisted that I wear and it takes forever to get into it. I was panting as I joined Henryk and Gregor at the Northern Gate. Henryk was wearing the golden armor I had given him years ago but Gregor was wearing the much more practical cloth covered army combat armor. The Grand Master was just coming into view riding at the head of the miles long column. He was easily spotted since his surcoat was more highly decorated than were those of his men although it was done in the same drab black and white as the others. Under their garb I noticed that they were all wearing old fashioned chain mail being too proud to buy better armor from my factories. Not that I would have approved the sale. That s not the same Grand Master I met at my Trial by Combat I said looking through my binoculars. No Henryk replied squinting through a telescope of the sort that all my officers carried. Herman von Salza died peacefully two years ago in his sleep. There s very little justice in this world Baron Gregor said. There is even less than you think. The filthy blackguard coming toward us was sent by me to aid the Hungarians not a month ago. He could not have gone there and still be here now It seems that he has broken yet another vow Henryk said. Wonderful I said. Unless these bastards have changed their ways recently none of them will be able to speak Polish. Does anybody around here speak enough German to act as a translator I do Henryk said. When I looked at him in surprise he added My mother was German after all and I had to learn more of the language to speak to my wife. I ll talk to them but I think that talk is all we should do with them today. I would rather that this did not come to a battle Conrad. If we must fight them let us try to do it on their soil ruining their property not ours A good thought and the army could use a few more months rest after fighting the Mongols I said. The problem is that their property is my property. I am their liege lord after all. True in theory Conrad. In practice I have some doubts. Well wish me well. The German column had stopped in front of the closed city gate and Henryk shouted down at their leader. An exchange in German started that went on for some minutes while the rest of us on the wall waited around wondering what was being said. All I could tell was that the words were getting louder and harsher. German seems to be a great language for being rude in. Finally Henryk took pity on us and said Mostly I ve been discussing his failure to go to the aid of King Bela as promised. He wasn t expecting to find me here. Well when you get around to it tell him that I am prepared to accept his oath of unconditional fealty. He will love you for it Henryk said dryly and then started shouting in German again. The Crossman column continued to advance crowding against the city wall and spreading to both sides of the gate. There were more than twelve hundred swivel guns on the wall mounted in holes hastily drilled into the parapets. That much at least had been done during our week here. Every gun that could be brought to bear was pointed at the big black crosses that the Germans wore on their surcoats. Nice of them to provide us with cross hairs. The unintelligible conversation went on for the fair part of an hour. I was beginning to wonder if I shouldn t send out for refreshments when Henryk turned to me. He says that he doesn t need to swear fealty to you because he is here in Poland by a perpetual written treaty with the late Duke Boleslaw s uncle the previous Duke Conrad I of Mazovia. That man still lives you know but he s prematurely senile. Poor fellow he s only fifty four but he can t even feed himself let alone say a complete sentence. I d like to see that treaty I said. As would I. They say they have it with them and invite us to come down and examine it. Are you minded to risk it Conrad Don t do it your graces Baron Gregor said. Those Crossmen can t be trusted under ordinary circumstances and just now it would be to their advantage to see both of you dead. Hmph. Henryk what say we invite a delegation of them inside the city. We can sit down with them someplace comfortable have a meal and try to talk out our problems. A noble thought Conrad but it is best to meet a Crossman in the open and to be upwind of him. The rules of their order forbid all bathing shaving and whatnot you know. If rumor can be believed they don t even wipe their arses. Also they have more strange dietary restrictions than the Jews which they adhere to rigorously in public at least so it is nearly impossible to feed them without giving offense. I ate their food once and I would not willingly repeat the experience. Enough said So there is no excuse that you could make to get a few of them inside here. None that would not convince them that we were planning treachery. Dishonest people assume that all others are like them. Then you figure that we should go out there and trust them I said. Well the first part of that anyway. We really must see this document that they have. But their very presence here proves that they are oath breakers so keep your sword loose in its sheath. Okay. Let s do it then. Baron Gregor I d like to have six companies of troops ready at the gate to come to our rescue and make sure that the gunners on the walls are alert Right your grace. I tightened my armor loosened my sword and went down the steps with Henryk behind me. I ducked and went through the small door that was opened for us in the main gate and faced my adversaries. As luck would have it I was downwind of them and Henryk s advice about their lack of bathing proved to be entirely too true. The small door was closed behind us and despite the fact that we were out in the open I felt claustrophobic. I glanced at Henryk and he started talking to them in German. After a while they handed him a rolled up piece of parchment which he unrolled and studied silently for a while. Then without a comment he handed it to me. It s an obvious fraud I said. First off it s written in German A Polish treaty granting lands on Polish soil would be in Polish not in some foreign language. Then there is no date on this document Anything official has to have a date. And worst of all there is not a single signature on it. And not a single seal It s preposterous and I can t even read what it says. Well I can said Henryk and I assure you that the content is as absurd as the format. It purports to give the Teutonic Order permission to do as they please to the inhabitants outside our borders whether they be Christian or heathen and grants them Polish lands equal in area to those that they conquer from our neighbors. Furthermore it states that all such lands taken or granted become their property subject only to the Holy See and the empire. They no longer admit to being your vassals or the other Conrad s either. What is your reaction to that pile of barley You can tell them that I am waiting for their abject submission to me and barring that that they have one year in which to leave my lands and all of Poland. After that I will kill them all and put their heads up on pikes as I have done with the other people who have recently invaded my land. Tell them that exactly. There was no point in prolonging the conversation and anyway the smell of these bastards was getting to me. At least the Mongols didn t stand upwind and breathe in your face On the improbable chance that they did swear to obey me absolutely in all things I planned to send them back to the Holy Land where they had started from and tell them to kill rag heads. I just wanted them out So I stood there while they screamed gibberish at one another for a quarter of an hour. I envied the UN people with their headsets and their real time translations but Henryk seemed to be doing his best and I didn t want to break his stride. Eventually he turned to me and said They don t seem to have grasped the extent of what you have done with the Mongols. What say you have some of your people give a delegation of theirs the tour that you just gave me. Fine just so long as I don t have to do it myself. Their stench is overpowering me After another long babbling match with more gutturals than could have been manufactured by three dogs fighting over a dead pig Henryk said Good. They will have twenty men ready to go tomorrow. Done I said though that meant that we d have to spend days hosing their stench out of one of our only three riverboats. I presume that you will be escorting them your grace. I seem to be stuck with the task your grace being the only one handy who speaks German. Sovereignty is a demanding profession. And one that you are welcome to I said. That evening Henryk came to my quarters. You know Conrad fighting the Crossmen is not going to be as straightforward as beating the Mongols. The Knights of the Cross are in theory a religious order and they have papal sanction. Certain factions in the Church are not going to be pleased with us when we kill them. Then too Emperor Frederick Il has conferred on them an imperial charter and he won t love us either if our plans go well. Are you saying that we should back off on them I asked. No. I think that we have to get rid of them or they will be a thorn in our side forever. But I think you should know that this is an issue where for the first time in a century the Pope and the emperor will agree on something. We may well have a further war with the empire on our hands as well as papal sanctions against us. I for one would not like to be excommunicated. Nor would I. Well then I d say that you have your work cut out for you. You must see what you can do about gaining support for our cause in the Church and in foreign courts. How right you are Conrad. And you must see to it that not all of your forces face the east. The next war may come at us from the west The next morning they went away the Crossmen and the king and I was able to get another boat the next day the RB47 Millennium Falcon. Later as I was pulling into East Gate I got a radio message from Henryk. CONRAD. THE CROSSMEN ARE BOTH FRIGHTENED AND ADAMANT THAT THEY WILL NOT LEAVE. I ASSUME THAT YOU WERE SERIOUS ABOUT GIVING THEM ONE YEAR TO GET OUT FOR THAT IS THE ULTIMATUM THAT I HAVE GIVEN THEM. HAVE I DONE RIGHT BY YOU HENRYK. After thinking about it a bit I had them send back: HENRYK. FINE BY ME BUT GIVE THEM UNTIL THE FIRST OF JUNE 1242. THAT WILL GIVE MY TROOPS TIME TO GET THE SPRING PLANTING IN. CONRAD. Thus I had a year before I had to worry about any more military or political nonsense and I was eager to get back to some simple sensible technical problems. At the time I didn t think it would take much to throw out the Crossmen not when I had an army that had kicked shit out of the Mongols Of course I screw up pretty often. The Riverboat Assembly Building had been completed and work was under way on the construction of four new steamboats. Two of our existing Vistula boats were doing patrol and transport duty but the third had been fitted with a derrick and was engaged in salvaging what it could from the boats that had been lost in the war. Already the engines boilers and all the major hardware needed for the boats under construction were on hand and being rebuilt and more salvage was coming in every day. Plenty of seasoned lumber was available and the boatwrights were sure that we could replace our war losses by late fall. East Gate was now manned by a company of regulars most of whom worked as boatwrights and the rest as mule skinners on the railroad. My first inclination was to go straight to Three Walls and dive into some refreshing engineering work but on reflection I realized that it was important that the folks at the other installations see me. Best to make as fast a tour as possible. I sent my entourage to my home by mule drawn carriages while I went out ahead alone on Silver. My first stop that morning was at Sir Miesko s manor. His wife Lady Richeza had been instrumental in starting and running the school system and when the war had come she had invited all the lady teachers in eastern Poland to weather the Mongol advance behind the strong walls of the manor. Most of them were still there since commercial transportation had only recently resumed operation. She said that her husband was in Hungary fighting the Mongols for King Bela and that I would know better than she where her older sons were since they were all members of my army. I assured her that her boys were all well and she served me a nice dinner. During the meal she and her fellow schoolteachers proudly told me every detail concerning how the Mongols had attacked the manor and about how the ladies had shot them all down with the swivel guns that Sir Miesko had provided in such abundance. They got quite animated in the telling of the tale pantomiming themselves in battle with a degree of showmanship surpassed only by Baron Vladimir when he was a young man It is surprising how much bloodthirstiness lurks in the heart of the gentlest of schoolteachers. After dinner they proudly displayed the booty that they had taken the sacks of gold and silver as well as saddles arms and bloodstained armor. They had decided to keep it and divide it up among themselves since the school system was more than well enough funded. They even had the enemy heads up on pikes in the gruesome army fashion It was mid afternoon before I could bid these charming learned and remarkably brutal elderly ladies good bye and ride to Okoitz. Chapter Twenty four Okoitz had been the seat and home of my liege lord Count Lambert and I had built him a magnificent castle there in return for six years of output from the cloth factory that I had designed for him. Lambert had been a libertine and cocksman par excellence though in a very friendly sort of way and the girls manning his factory were remarkably loving and giving. The biggest Pink Dragon Inn I owned was at Okoitz having been enlarged three times over the years. You see this was where the boys came to meet the girls working at the factory. And why were so many girls eager to get work at the cloth factory Because this was where the boys were obviously The castle had room for the hundred peasant families that farmed the land in the area and worked at a part time sugar mill in the winter. There was also room for the six hundred attractive young ladies who worked at the cloth factory and the hundred odd servants cooks and repairmen who did all the work needed to feed so many people and keep the place livable. But all these people together occupied only half the living space at Okoitz. On certain occasions Count Lambert liked to invite all the nobility in the county over for a festival and to make this possible there was rather posh living space here for an additional thousand people. The count was inordinately proud of his castle but no sooner had it been completed and furnished than he had been killed and I had inherited the place. The problem was What to do with it I toured the town starting with the factory looking at it with new eyes. The machinery was mostly of wood and at least eight years old. I had been pretty proud of it when I had first designed the place but now compared with my other installations it was behind the times. Everything was very labor intensive and for a good reason. Every time I had suggested some improvement to Count Lambert he had always found reasons why it should not be done. The truth was that he didn t give a damn about efficiency but rather he looked at every job eliminated as one less girl he had in his fabulous harem Eventually I had stopped trying to sell him on improvements altogether. The factory was far superior to its competition anyway even though there were a dozen similar operations going now in Poland alone owned and operated by men Lambert had proudly shown through his factory. But now while I certainly didn t plan any reductions in the work force there was always the need for more production and the local herds had increased such that during the last two years the county had actually been selling raw wool to outside buyers. New factories were definitely in order two new factories one for linen cloth and one for wool. The old one was made of wood and lacked proper foundations anyway. It was showing signs of rot. Okoitz was built above the huge Upper Silesian coalfield one of the biggest in the world and there was already a working mine on the property. Steam powered factories were obviously the way to go. Of course developing the new machinery would have to be done here where the problems involved with working with fibers could confront the designers directly. Designing at a distance as the Russians usually do things is inefficient and can lead to disaster. This meant that we would have to build a machine shop here first. Not a production shop but a research and development shop. So why not move the entire R D section from Three Walls to Okoitz Three Walls was getting overcrowded and we were starting to run out of building space there. R D was probably the easiest group to move and it would give us something to do with all the extra space we had in the castle. My own household was outgrowing my old apartment at Three Walls since everybody seemed to be sprouting body servants and Count Lambert s vast apartment might suit me very nicely. Yes. All this was going on in my subconscious mind as I toured the factory. My conscious mind was mostly on the hundreds of sexy young ladies who were working the machines. They were all flirtatious and tended to wear as little as the temperature permitted. Another good reason for moving R D here was that the apprentices who made up two thirds of the teams would surely appreciate the scenery hereabouts. I certainly did Mulling through my thoughts I tried to have supper quietly in the big cafeteria but the manager of the factory a Florentine named Angelo Muskarini insisted that I give a speech to those present. There was nothing for it but to oblige him. Thank you I said when the girls and farmers had quit screaming at me. As you doubtless all know the war is over and the good guys have won This brought on more cheers. When they died down I continued. The important fact for all of you ladies to know is that except in the river battalion our losses were small and that if your favorite young man has not gotten back yet he will likely be coming here soon. More cheers and bouncing up and down. I suppose that you have all heard that my liege lord the noble Count Lambert Piast died honorably in the defense of his country. You also know that I was named his heir. I simply want to say that I intend to make very few changes around here and those will all be for the better. We will be expanding our cloth making operations since for the last two years our shepherds have actually been selling raw unprocessed wool to foreigners to be spun and woven in foreign lands instead of here. To counter this trend we will be hiring more workers and making better more efficient machinery for you to work at. This will mean putting a new group of intelligent young men to work here to design and build the new equipment but I expect that you fine ladies can keep these poor lads from getting too lonely Again more cheers. Perhaps if you make them welcome enough we ll move all of our research groups here. Well we ll see. There is one other major change that I would like to make however. Up until now you fine ladies have been working for cloth not money. That is to say you have been working on a barter system. What would you think about being paid in money instead Then you could buy cloth at special prices if you wanted to but you could also buy anything else you wanted as well. The reaction was mixed. Some cheered but they were probably doing that out of habit. Most didn t do anything since this was a new thought for them. Well you think about it and we ll talk it over again when I return in a few weeks. You might want to elect four or five representatives to negotiate for you. Also what would you farmers think about my dividing Lambert s farmland up among you thus having your own land doubled paying taxes or a fee on it to pay for what you and your families eat here in the cafeteria and then selling your crops to the kitchens here for money I m not saying that we have to do it this way but I want you to think about it. That s about it. I want to finish my dinner now even if it has gotten cold. I ll be back in a few weeks. Of course a lot of the girls had all sorts of questions and they had no qualms about shoving the peasants aside and putting their scantily clad young bodies out in front. After a while I tried to get away and pleaded fatigue but four of them sort of invited themselves to talk further with me in Lambert s old chambers. They were all pretty. A plain girl wouldn t have dared to be that pushy fearing rejection. There is a limit to how many times a man can say no and I passed it. I was bleary eyed the next morning and told myself that I was getting too old for this sort of thing. I met Muskarini for breakfast and told him about the rest of my planned changes. Lambert had been running the entire factory on a barter system. Wool and flax were provided by his vassals and like the workers they received a portion of the finished cloth in return . The problem was that wool comes in various grades of different values. The long wool from the sides of the animal is far more valuable than are the short hairs that grow on the legs. And some sheep grow much finer wool than others do. The workers had various skill levels in different crafts and we produced hundreds of grades and types of cloth again worth all different amounts. The accounting required by all of this was so ridiculously complicated that I doubt if anybody really knew what was going on. There was a very good reason why Lambert had done things in this strange way. By the terms of his separation with his wife he had to send her one half of all the money that he took in. Not half of his net income but half of the cash that he grossed. When he had made this agreement it had been reasonable enough since most of what little money Lambert got he received from selling his surplus agricultural products what was left over after he and his peasants had eaten most of it. His old castle had been built for him by his people out of local materials. His smiths made many of the things that he needed. Cash money was just something with which to buy occasional luxury goods from the merchants not something that was needed for life itself. Also Lambert s wife had very extensive estates of her own in Hungary to support herself with so she wasn t hurting. But all this changed when I built him a productive factory. He could hardly pay her one half of the gross cash worth of the products of his factory since the cost of materials and labor was well over half the sale price. Running the clothworks with a conventional accounting system would have put him quickly out of business. Indeed for several months until he came up with the barter solution to his problem he was very difficult to work with I was under no such liability and I wanted to know what was happening financially so I ordered the factory changed over to a sensible money system. We would buy our wool and flax with money pay the workers with money and sell all our output for money. Well we d offer special discounts to our workers and vendors to keep them happy but it would now be an accountable system. Muskarini was not at all pleased with my changes and came up with all sorts of ridiculous reasons why we couldn t convert to a cash system. This made me suspect that he had his hand in the till somehow. After two hours of arguing with the man I told him that he would do it my way or I would send him back to the garret that I had found him in nine years before. That quieted him down some. On leaving him I went to the inn and sent a message ordering a team of accountants and time study men to descend on this place ASAP I saddled Silver to get to my next stop Eagle Nest before lunch. The medieval world had no great collection of restaurants available to travelers and you generally had to time your trips around the hours when food was served at the manors and factories if you didn t want to miss a lot of meals. As I was leaving one of the girls who had spent the night with me was waiting by the drawbridge. She smiled and reminded me that Eagle Nest was an all male institution and didn t I really want some companionship tonight I decided that if I didn t give her a lift she d probably hitchhike there putting herself into all sorts of danger. At least that was how I rationalized it to myself. I pulled her aboard and set her on the saddle bow. She was the prettiest of last night s group with incredibly soft skin for so slender a person and the longest legs I ve seen this side of a Hollywood musical. Her name was Zenya. I found that I rather liked having a girl sitting in front of me where we could talk easily as opposed to having her behind riding apillion. I resolved to have a saddle made up with a more comfortable seat for a woman up front. The boys at Eagle Nest were always enthusiastic bustling about wherever they went and their mood was infectious. They had eight planes flying now and many more were being built. Their eagerbeaver attitude toward whatever they were doing was a joy to watch. It was such a pity that I was going to have to slam them down hard On being told that all the aircraft were brand new except for the engines I said But there are the nine planes that were still intact after crash landing on the battlefield at Sandomierz. They were sent here immediately after the battle. What happened to them We asked around but no one had any knowledge of them. They had received the thirteen engines that we had hauled back with the booty but whole planes No sir What bothered me worse than losing the planes was the fact that each of those planes had been strapped to the top of a war cart that had been manned by a full platoon of warriors. Where were all those men I sent a dozen messages out trying to locate them but had no luck. A company and a half of men had simply disappeared We never did find them their equipment or the airplanes either. It remains a mystery that is told late at night around the fires and the story grows a bit with each retelling. Interlude Three I hit the STOP button and started fumbling with the keyboard trying to call up the Historical Corps records on just what had happened to all those men and all that equipment. I wasn t that used to the system and it took me quite a while to get what I wanted. The naked girl at my side looked on without saying anything so I explained to her what I was after. She just said Yes sir. She was a cuddly little thing and seemed to enjoy my light petting but she didn t have a lot to say. I mean she didn t actually encourage my roving hands but she didn t object any either. Eventually I dug out what I was looking for. Those men were caught in a Mongol ambush I told her. They were going without a cavalry screen and those planes on their war carts made it hard to get their weapons out. They were killed to a man. Then the Mongol commander had their armor and equipment sent straight back to the east and the bodies hidden. If the Mongol craftsmen can figure out the guns and planes Conrad is going to have some serious problems on his hands Yes sir she said. I hit the START button. Chapter Twenty five FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD Since the war was over the boys were back at their usual two shifts going to school in either the mornings or the afternoons and working in the shops or flying on the opposite shift. I couldn t address them all until after the evening meal. Gentlemen. First off I want to thank you for your dedicated service in the war that together we have just won. While a final head count is not yet in I think that I am safe in saying that over two million Mongols were killed on the banks of the Vistula by our riverboats and those boats could not have done half that job without your accurate scouting and reporting of enemy positions. I think that it is fair to say that a million of the enemy owe their timely deaths to your own very good work That s more than were killed by the regulars at Sandomierz Cracow and Three Walls combined Furthermore the land forces were able to defeat the Mongols that got over the Vistula with relatively light losses. That would not have been true had there been another million enemy troops fighting against them. We could have been totally defeated And had the Christian army lost Poland would have been lost. The fifty thousand or so knights that waited with Duke Henryk at Legnica probably would not have fared any better than Duke Boleslaw s conventional knights at Sandomierz. You deserve much of the credit for saving all of Christendom They spent some time cheering. I let them go on until they wore themselves out. Then I told them the other half of the story. On the other hand your performance was far from perfect. First off you totally missed the entire Mongol army that skirted the Carpathian Mountains and entered Poland by crossing the rivers where they are scarcely more than mountain streams. You got so involved with patrolling the Vistula that you didn t bother looking south of it. You not only did not find them you made the near fatal mistake of assuming that they could not be there Worse yet you did not sit on Count Lambert when he got the stupid idea of landing at Sandomierz to take part in the final battle with the Mongols. True he was your liege lord and you were required to follow him but it was also your duty to give him good advice and there you failed him completely You failed him and he and two dozen of your classmates died because of your failure. They died uselessly because of one man s vanity and your pusillanimity. And then since we had no aerial reconnaissance Cracow was burned because of your failure East Gate fell because of your failure Three Walls was attacked because of your failure A look of dark horror was spreading over the boys. I stopped and let my words sink in. Then I continued The trained warriors of the Christian army would not have failed in this fashion. Part of the training they get clearly defines their duty to both their subordinates and their superiors. They know what courage and honor and duty really are. And you must learn Therefore Eagle Nest with all who work and fly here is going to be absorbed into the Christian army. Starting one year from today no one over fourteen years of age will bee allowed up in a plane who has not completed the full one year course at the Warrior s School. This means that in the next two years every one of you is going through that school and if you want to swear fealty to me and not have to give up flying forever you had better pass the course That includes the instructors as well. The Warrior s School will be starting up again in two weeks. I will expect half of those of you who are over fourteen to be at it. In the future no new student will be accepted here without first being a warrior. That s all that will count besides good eyesight and physical fitness. Eagle Nest will no longer be a haven for those of noble birth. Anyone who can qualify will get in. And it will no longer be an all male organization. Qualified young ladies will be flying within the year. I am Conrad and I taught you that air is strong Believe what I say On the plus side this means that all of you boys and men will soon be drawing a regular army salary and your various benefits will be brought in line with theirs. Oh yes. You will also be getting a share of the rather extensive booty that the army took so if not exactly rich you are all at least quite nicely off. I d like to speak to the instructors tomorrow morning for about a half hour to discuss scheduling. Good night I had jerked the boys around pretty severely and I didn t want to sit in on the inevitable bull sessions that would occur while they absorbed it all. I went immediately to the small room that was always reserved for me there. Zenya was waiting for me of course but I firmly resolved to get at least some sleep that night. My next stop was Coaltown where things were booming nicely. The coal seam there was one of the most massive in the world being fully two dozen yards thick Once our miners had penetrated through the substantial layer of limestone above it and the layer of clay between the coal and the limestone they had just been going in any which way. It didn t seem to matter to them since wherever you dug you were digging through coal. We set up a more rational system of exploitation. Surveyors transferred a true east west line down to the bottom of the main elevator. Then the miners cut a barrel vaulted chamber two dozen yards wide and a dozen yards high through the limestone leaving the clay on the floor. Every four dozen yards they started a cross vault to send shafts at right angles to the main one. The limestone was sent to the cement plant. When these miners got a gross yards east of the shaft another group started harvesting the clay for the brick works. And this group was followed by coal miners who could work with a stone ceiling over their heads which being vaulted wasn t likely to cave in. Not only did this prove to be an efficient way to get the minerals out it also left behind these huge cathedral like rooms and tunnels that sure looked to be useful for something. The next day I went to Copper City. Here the Krakowski brothers had things well in hand and production was going full swing. They were delighted that the city was now army property though in fact it didn t actually change anything immediately except for some accounting procedures. In the long run though it meant that we didn t have to get Duke Henryk s permission to change things and that speeded things up a bit. Mostly I had asked for the city because I had been pretty sure that I could get it at the time. Greedy of me. Then we raced back to Three Walls and got there on the evening of the fifth day since leaving East Gate. At last I could get down to being an engineer again Zenya had just sort of tagged along during the trip and I really couldn t just leave the girl in what was to her a foreign city. Once back at Three Walls she sort of fell in with my other three servants and proved to be outstanding at giving back rubs. A week passed before Sonya asked me if she shouldn t be put on the payroll like everybody else. By then I had gotten so used to having her around that I went along with it. Yet the whole affair nagged me. Had I hired her or had she hired me Francine was still staying in Cracow and that was fine by me. She could come back when she was ready but I d be damned if I was going to beg her to come home. Despite my firm intentions to do technical work my next four days were spent doing managerial stuff. There were the plans for the new standardized factories to be gone over and approved and then the plans for the factory that would make the precast concrete structural members for the standard factories. The bills of materials had to be carefully scrutinized since we would be putting these buildings up at the rate of one per week for the next two dozen years or so. Little mistakes can become big mistakes when you are working with those sorts of numbers. And each of these structures was more than just a factory. Each housed a complete company of workers and their families with a school a church a cafeteria and many of the usual things that a stand alone company needed. Well since they would be built right next to each other they could share facilities on certain things. They didn t each need a separate general store for example and inns were built only at the rate of one for every two companies although they had to be larger of course. Rather than having one medical officer per company they were grouped in clinics that each served six companies so that there were always two doctors on duty at any time of the day or night. We were really planning a huge industrial city and except for some land set aside for hobby gardening there would be no agricultural work being done. But at the same time a city environment needs things that a country place can do without and each factory had a gymnasium and a swimming pool. The factories were to be built on both sides of the Coaltown East Gate railway which would be expanded to four tracks and roofed over in the course of construction. In the future bad weather wouldn t slow down interfactory transportation. Each company sized factory housing complex was to be seventy two yards long three to six stories tall and a half mile wide. It would be a strip with housing on the outside then community services and then a factory at the middle that abutted the covered railroads. All this would be under a single roof and it would rarely be necessary to go outside in the cold Polish winter. Building one a week on alternate sides of the road we would be constructing a long strip city a mile wide and growing a mile longer every year. It would be called Katowice after my hometown in modem Poland. A more difficult job was scheduling just what each of these factories would produce and making sure that they had the machinery and skills to produce it. There were many crowded product sections in our existing system and much of the job would consist of moving them to Katowice and enlarging and modernizing them in the process. After a few years once we had at least three companies producing a given product we would be able to use a system where the captain of each company would have almost complete control over what his group would be making and how they would make it. Functionally it would be a free enterprise system. But free enterprise doesn t work well when there is only one producer and only one consumer and for start up that would be the situation. Most of what would be produced would be needed for building these factories and for the concrete forts we would start putting up next year. We had specific requirements and it would have to be regulated from the top. It was a massive scheduling job but at least there wasn t much politics involved. It was such an audacious project that people got a kick out of just jumping in and doing their best. Chapter Twenty six I was going over the truly bodacious amounts of steel reinforcing rod that would be needed and subconsciously worrying about how I was going to fairly divide up the booty without causing inflation when a visitor arrived. I wouldn t have been disturbed this way if I had still had Natalia working for me but the new girls weren t as sharp as she was. Four people were trying hard to replace one and they were doing a poor job at id I didn t realize what a treasure I had until I lost her. Anyway this guy was standing at my drawing board trying to get my attention while I was doing arithmetic in my head. He was covered with rings brooches necklaces and other jewelry a thing I have never liked on a man. Personally I wore almost none at all except for the brass on my dress uniform. And the solution hit me It was vitally important that each of the men get his fair share of the booty. I couldn t possibly cheat them and keep the army intact. Yet having that much spending cash dumped on the market would be equally disastrous. The answer was jewelry Every man would get a new dress uniform with the epaulets buttons buckles insignia sheaths dirk handle and sword guard in solid gold. With a little creativity we could probably get three or four pounds of gold on the lowest warrior basic And then there would be a glorious medal for being a member of the Radiant Warriors bigger than a man s hand and various other medals for valor and participation in various battles. The women who manned the forts would get similar decorations. along with a nice dress uniform which we didn t have as yet for the women and the Big People would be decorated as well And there should be something nice that a warrior could give to his wife say a necklace or a belt or better yet both They would get the booty but not in the form of inflationary cash. Uniform doodads would stay off the market because the men would have to come in dress uniform on certain occasions and it would be embarrassing to show up wearing mere brass. I was smiling insanely when I looked up at the fellow and said Can I help you Well yes your grace he said confused by my grin. I am Baron Zbigniew and I was vassal to Count Herman of Cieszyn. I have been told that you have inherited his estates. Is this true Would you believe that what with all the things going on I had completely forgotten about the city that I had inherited I dropped my pencil and bent the lead point. I knew I forgot something Forgive me Baron. Yes I now own Cieszyn and those lands that were held by both the count and his wife. There has been. so much happening lately that I have not had time yet to do everything. Look for now have one of the secretaries put you up in the noble guest quarters and we ll discuss the matter tonight at dinner. Yes your grace. The baron limped away on crutches. When he was gone I said to my lead architectural designer Do you know of anybody who would want to be my representative in Cieszyn Why not Komander Wrocek sir I served under him in the war. He is a member of the old nobility so he knows the game and he lost his leg at the fight in Cracow so he won t be of much more use to the regular army. He should be up and around by now I expect. Not a bad thought Josep. Betty go to records and get me Wrocek s file. Then check through the files and get me the names of all the officers captain and above who were permanently disabled in the fighting. Sitting at the high table and presiding might be just the job for them. There are going to be a lot of posts like this to fill once the knights get back from Hungary. I tried to get back to what I was doing but other things were nagging me. I sent a message to my jeweler telling him to see me and another to Francine: MY DEAR WIFE IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO JOIN ME AT THREE WALLS WHAT WOULD YOU THINK OF BEING MY REPRESENTATIVE AT CIESZYN CONRAD. Francine answered back within the hour: MY DEAR HUSBAND YOU ROB ME OF THE CROWN OF POLAND AND NOW YOU WANT TO STUFF ME INTO A BACKWATER PLACE LIKE CIESZYN MAY YOUR DEAR SOUL ROT IN HELL FRANCINE. I deduced by this that she was still unhappy. And now every radio operator in the army would know about it. I was angry at her but I wouldn t hire a new maid this time. I was already one up. So I sent to Komander Wrocek who was recovering at Wawel Castle offering him the job at his old rank. He was delighted and promised to come within two weeks as soon as his doctors let him free. Another message was sent telling my accountant at the Pink Dragon Inn in Cieszyn to go to the castle and see what he could do about figuring out the finances there. By then the afternoon was over and it was time to meet the baron for dinner. More and more lately I found myself taking my dinner away from the cafeteria and many of my breakfasts as well. Mostly it was my new servants fault. They made eating so damn decorative Yet I made a point of always eating lunch with the other people in the cafeteria just so I wouldn t get out of touch. I explained the arrangements that I had made and Baron Zbigniew was agreeable though he looked disappointed. I decided that he probably wanted the job for himself. When I talked with him a bit he admitted it. I m sorry Baron but the fact is that I barely know you. I hope that you can understand that I need an old and trusted friend in such a critical position. Your services will still be needed of course. Komander Wrocek will need all the help he can get. He lost a leg at the Battle of Cracow you know. How did you happen to be injured incidentally The Mongols I only wish it had been an honorable war wound your grace but the sad truth is that I had no sooner gotten to Duke Henryk s camp at Legnica than my horse slipped on the ice and I went down on an iron spit that was loaded with a duck that was roasting next to a cooking fire The damned thing went right through my leg and into my horse. It nailed us together and after they put the poor beast down they had to cut it and the saddle in half to get the carcass off me. And all the while I had to lie there half in the snow and half in the burning coals and me not a Radiant Warrior It occurred to me that on the average he must have been reasonably comfortable but I didn t say it. Horrible I said. Yet I tell you that the pain of the wound was nothing compared to the mortification I felt while everyone stood around trying to figure out how to get us apart and the squire who owned the duck screamed at me the whole while. The entire infamous affair took hours to resolve and I am sure that the foreign knights were taking bets as to how it would work out. Then the damned surgeons thought that my leg would have to come off but I wouldn t allow that. It seems to be healing well enough now though. Oh you poor fellow While you re here you might want to ask one of our army doctors to have a look at it. They re better than most. I ll do that your grace but I doubt if there s anything they can do to mend a man s broken pride The greatest war in history and I missed it because of a roast duck The girls seemed to like him well enough. At least I noticed one of Cilicia s maids sneaking into his room that night. My household seemed to be developing the morals that Count Lambert s had had. Yet Lambert s dying wish had been that all the ladies would be properly loved and I had promised him that I would do my best to see it so. It wasn t any of my business so I pretended that I didn t see her. The next morning I got a double sized research crew going on light bulbs: a glassblower a machinist and four apprentices. They didn t have a good source of electricity yet to power it but there were plenty of problems to be worked out first. How to blow a glass bulb around a fragile baked thread. Coming up with a metal wire that would be wetted by molten glass and have a similar coefficient of thermal expansion so that the glass wouldn t crack as the bulb heated up and cooled down. Developing decent hardware like a screw base and a light switch. And harder yet making a good enough vacuum pump. An electric generator was a separate problem for a separate team. I designed what I thought would be a decent DC generator and had them get to work on building it. I knew full well that we d go through a dozen models before we got something good enough to go into production with. Generators were one of those things that I studied in school and had seen working but had never had a chance to design. It was another one of those specialized things that a generalist like me never got involved in. It would be years. Then there was plumbing. We were casting our pipes out of copper. This required making the walls much thicker than was necessary to carry water but we couldn t dependably cast them any thinner. Modem copper pipes are drawn stretched into shape by pulling the copper alternatively between outside dies of the soil used to draw wire in order to make the copper pipe longer and inside dies in order to stretch the metal to a larger diameter with thinner walls. Simple enough machinery in theory at least and it seemed likely to drop the cost of pipes threefold. I got another team on it. Yet another team was put to work on some better wiredrawing machinery. Teams were also assigned to develop a clothes washer and a dishwasher. One group got going on a sewing machine although privately I considered it to be a very longterm project since it was so complicated. I wish we could have worked on power hand tools but that looked impossible to me. For a long time to come all powered installations would have to be permanently mounted. We didn t have any rubber or plastic with which to make an extension cord I thought about getting a few teams going on new weapons and developing some of the things that had been invented just before the war but too late to get into production but I decided against it. For one thing we had more arms and equipment of the old style than we had men to use them. New weapons would require new tactics and new training with a lot of man hours required. We were already so superior to anybody else in the world that making us better was simple overkill. And mostly in twenty years there would be as many Big People around as there were Little People. We wouldn t be mostly infantry then we d be almost all cavalry. Best to wait a few years and then start working slowly on some good cavalry weapons and tactics. A relaxing week slid pleasantly by before I got a message from my team of accountants at Okoitz. Angelo Muskarini was under arrest Chapter Twenty seven Sonya wanted to go and visit Okoitz so I took her along even though taking a woman to Okoitz was on a par with hauling coke to Coaltown. I got there to find Muskarini chained up in a storeroom. He was a mass of bruises his teeth were loose and both eyes were blackened shut. Resisting arrest I asked. No sir said my senior accountant. He just made us angry. Well my accountants were not the mousy sorts who live on American television. They were warriors first bookkeepers second. Of course they shouldn t have beaten the man up. I d talked to my detectives on the importance of using the minimum possible force but it had never occurred to me that the accountants needed the lecture as well. After we stepped into the hall and away from the cell I said You shouldn t have done that. It s not nice to beat up someone who can t hit back. Sorry sir. But this dog turd was robbing his own liege lord of a fortune Can you prove it Of course sir. I can show you the figures. Muskarini has been stealing nine parts per gross of the entire factory output ever since the first year he got here. It was no accident. He was very consistent about it and Count Lambert doubtless thought that it was a normal production loss. That must be a lot of money. One gross eleven dozen and four thousand a gross nine dozen and three pence sir. I whistled. They were talking base twelve and that came to almost a half a million the way I was brought up. Has this money been found Yes sir and then some. The figure I mentioned was just on the missing finished cloth. We think he might have been getting kickbacks on the dyes and other supplies that were bought by the count. That was what much of the beating was about. Finding the money. He was keeping it in the dye supply side shed. He had the only key to the place. Hmph. You know he couldn t have stolen that much alone. He would have had to have accomplices. No one man could possibly have carried out that much cloth and not been noticed. After all hundreds of people work around here and many of them were Count Lambert s knights. We know sir but he won t talk about that. I went back into Muskarini s cell. He knew I was there even though he couldn t see me. Well Angelo. What do you have to say for yourself I didn t steal that money your grace. It was mine. Yours Almost half a million pence was yours Look I was there at the beginning remember You were absolutely penniless starving to death in a garret in Cieszyn I hired you as a gift for my liege lord. How could you have gotten such wealth You ll have to tell a better lie than that before I believe it Count Lambert gave it to me your grace. He did I swear No Angelo. The count was very generous about a lot of things but not money. Lands yes. Women yes. Money no But he did your grace. That wasn t nine parts per gross I got. It was six percent The count he gave me that much as a bonus. See I was only being paid one hundred pence a year plus room and board. Once the factory was working well and making fabulous profits because of my knowledge and labor I asked the count for a substantial raise and he wouldn t give it to me. I kept on asking him and he kept on turning me down. But he was giving cloth out easily enough. You certainly got enough of it So I asked if I could have a share of the cloth we made and he said that would be possible. He asked how much I wanted and I told him six percent figuring we would settle for some much lower figure since he d been so stingy with me so far. But the count said that six percent would be fine and he went in to his latest lady. I could hardly believe my ears but he agreed to it I swear that this is true on the grave of my own mother Hmph. Then how did you turn that cloth into money Why I sold it to merchants your grace the same way that everybody else does. The same way that everybody else does Yes your grace. Many of the girls here sell cloth to the merchants. That s how they are paid in cloth. Oh some of the workers come here for just a season and go home with a full hope chest but some of the ladies have been working here every year since we started. They are our skilled workers and we couldn t possibly manage without them. Now you can t expect a lady to save cloth for nine years and never need a penny in real money Of course we all sold to merchants and Count Lambert never said a thing about it. We have a regular exchange set up with fixed prices and a girl draws her back wages in cloth according to what a merchant wants to buy. It was our cloth after all. We d earned it You know Angelo that story is almost believable. But tell me why did you keep your money hidden Your grace if you had such a fabulous sum wouldn t you worry about thieves It would have been safe enough in the count s strong room especially what with the new locks I installed there for him. Yes your grace but then he would have seen how much I had earned working for him. You see I had the feeling that he didn t know how much six percent of gross was. I didn t want to remind him. Hmph. And that s why you spent hardly any of the money so the count wouldn t know that you were rich Of course your grace. In a few more years I was going back to Florence a wealthy man a merchant of substance Hmph. Knowing the count as I did I almost believe your story. Almost. The real problem is that even if every word you ve told me is true you were still robbing Count Lambert. You say that you had a verbal contract with him and I admit that verbal contracts were the only sort that Lambert would make. But for a contract to be binding there must be a meeting of the minds. If Lambert didn t know how much you were getting there was no contract. You were stealing nonetheless Your grace you can t believe that You wouldn t have me killed No I probably wouldn t but my contract with Duke Henryk has him worrying about all legal matters. Your life is in his hands not mine. I went out and told the accountants to call in Baron Pulaski and have him hear the case. Then they would send the results to Duke Henryk for his determination. My immediate problem was to find a replacement for Muskarini. Something that he had said gave me hope though. There were women here who had more than six years experience in cloth making. I went through the factory looking for them since of course there were no personel records. Soon I had five possible candidates for the job and I was told of three more on the night shift whom I sent for. Then I took them into one of the guest rooms one at a time and spent about a quarter hour talking to each them. And you know there wasn t the slightest doubt in my mind as to who was best qualified for the job of running the whole factory. One young lady was twenty two. She seemed to know everything I did about cloth making and quite a bit more that .I didn t. She was currently in charge of the linenweaving operation but she also knew what was happening everywhere else. She had taken full advantage of the educational opportunities at Okoitz and could read and write adequately as well as keep accurate books. And when I hinted about getting together for the night she very politely turned me down. That impressed me considerably So once I had seen all of the other candidates I promoted her. But not at six percent of the gross. Needless to say the workers were happy about drawing their money in cash and not having to bother with the clumsy subterfuge of barter. The merchants were also happy and we never had any serious problems with workers abusing their right to buy at below wholesale prices. At least none that we found out about. Months later Duke Henryk decided that Muskarini was defrauding Lambert even though it was likely that Lambert had agreed to the six percent bonus. Muskarini had been paid at a hundred pence a year an absurdly low figure for a skilled worker being employed in a managerial position. Henryk decided that four thousand pence a year would have been a more honest wage and awarded Muskarini 35 000 pence in back wages. The balance of the money was rightfully Lambert s and therefore mine as Lambert s heir. Then he banished Muskarini saying that he wasn t the sort that was wanted in Poland. A knight was assigned to escort him over the German border Hungary still being at war. I m glad that I didn t have to make that decision. The summer passed pleasantly. Cilicia and Francine both had healthy boys although Francine still would not come home. She spent her time visiting Cracow Sandomierz and Plock playing the grand duchess and not bothering the Banki brothers too much. She was drawing money for her expenses from the Pink Dragon Inns but not in absurd amounts. I let her be. Baron Vladimir was getting the active reserves going and complaining that he had even less time at home than before. His biggest headache was that virtually all our men at or above the level of knight were working in the factories or in the regular battalions and almost all the men in the active reserves were those who had come to us last fall and who had had only four months of training. He had almost no senior officers. He had a huge army of nothing but warrior basics and was forced to hand out temporary promotions to inexperienced and often illiterate men. Baron Vladimir demanded and got back his old Big Person Betty so that he could cover the country properly. I suggested that he delegate most of the work to regional barons but he had to do things in his own fashion. Over a thousand of my factory workers swore fealty to Vladimir deciding to be peasants again which was far more than I had expected. But I had given my word and gave Vladimir land enough for all of them. Anyway very few of them were highly skilled workers. It takes all kinds. My father told me that. As new Vistula riverboats were put into commission officered largely by men from the Odra boats they had plenty of business. Not cargo so much since trade was still recovering but passenger travel. Everybody wanted to visit the battle sites and Baron Novacek my sales manager hired tour guides to tell people the stories for a price. He made an absolute killing selling to the tourists absolutely genuine Mongol war relics the junk arms and armor that I thought would be melted down for scrap. Duke Henryk made the tour five more times impressing foreign dignitaries. I was glad that I didn t have to do more than smile and have a meal with them when he brought them around. Usually Henryk let me get away with serving them in my apartment with my household or even letting them serve themselves informally in the cafeteria since he knew how I hated formal banquets. On rare occasions he felt that formality was necessary and then we did it his way. Fair is fair. Anyway the girls liked banquets when they didn t happen too often. The Pruthenian children Vladimir and I had rescued from the Crossmen were all adults now and they all spoke Polish well but some of them still remembered their native tongue. Henryk borrowed a dozen of those who were bilingual for a diplomatic mission to the Pruthenian tribes. He also asked for and got my Mongol prisoner why I don t know or care. I was glad enough to be rid of the smelly bastard. Baron Piotr came up with a decent trophy distribution program for our own troops. The stuff was sorted according to quality and put into separate warehouses according to army rank. There was a big warehouse filled with lower quality stuff for the warriors a smaller one with nicer things for the knights a much smaller one for the captains and so on. Then each man was issued a chit that let him go to Three Walls any time in the next year and take his pick. New rooms were opened up over the months so that those who came late didn t get things that were too picked over. The system assured that the higher ranking men who had been working in the army for many years got the better gimcracks and that there were some things left for the lowest ranking men. Coming up with 150 000 sets of eighteen carat military decorations was no small feat and production lines were set up to stamp and cast it all during the summer. Many workers were shocked at the thought of working in gold instead of their usual iron or copper and all sorts of proposals were tossed around to make sure that none of it was stolen. Aside from carefully sweeping up after each shift and making everybody dust off thoroughly before leaving the area none of these plans were put into effect. And you know As close as we could weigh it not one pound of gold was stolen Besides an average of five and a quarter pounds of gold military jewelry the lowest man in the army got 6 200 pence in cash. Barons got thirty two times that amount but then people in the Middle Ages were well convinced that rank had its privileges. All of this was paid in our zinc coinage of course. I kept the actual gold and silver. Even these large amounts were arrived at only after a certain amount of mathematical chicanery. Piotr and the accountants decided that I deserved to be reimbursed for my expenses incurred because of the war. They arrived at the figure they did by taking the gross income of all my lands and factories for the last nine years plus the value of the lands I had been granted or had inherited and subtracting from that the value of my current nonmilitary properties. The difference between these two must be what I had spent on the war they claimed. It came to two thirds of the gold and silver we took Then they awarded shares of the booty to the conventional horsemen who had served under Duke Boleslaw at Sandomierz in accordance with their rank. Since over half of them were knights and one in seven of these were barons the shares were large. Since many of them had died without heirs much of this money escheated back to me as their duke. A generous fund was set up to take care of the dependents of the army personnel who had died in the fighting or in training. And of course these dependents also inherited their share of the booty besides. The value of the money and jewels taken from the Christian dead at East Gate was spent on aid to refugees and war orphans and when this proved to not be quite enough the balance was paid by the booty fund. All of this dubious accounting was published in the first monthly issue of The Christian Army Magazine along with an invitation to object to any feature of it that was felt to be unfair. Only four letters of complaint were received and those complaints all concerned the war trophies not the money. I felt a little guilty about it. I mean it looked to me like I was being paid for the Pink Dragon Inns that had been burned down but everybody seemed to think it was fair. Maybe by medieval standards it was. Anyway by the time all this settled out I had these two huge stacks of metal bricks one of gold and one of silver. Worrying about the difficulty of guarding it and the wasted man hours that would involve I had each stack cast into a single massive cube except for 150 tons of the silver which was earmarked for silverware. Up until now we had been using brass forks and spoons and brass sometimes has a funny taste. I let it be known that I would be happy to hear about any good use for our precious metals and quite a bit of it was used for things such as church vessels and medical equipment. But most of it went to these huge solid cubes which were put on public display at Three Walls. I felt safe since they were too big to move without heavy machinery and passersby would act as guards against that. People got quite a kick out of just walking up and touching them. From then on no one ever doubted the army s credit And the jewels Well no one knew how to value them let alone divide them fairly so they just gave them all to me. I separated out the diamonds which were useful industrially and put the rest into a big sturdy chest. Then one day I snuck out to the woods and buried them very deep with Silver as my only witness. She promised to show them to my successor after I was gone. Damned if I was going to waste good men guarding the stupid baubles In late summer word came from Hungary. We had won the war The Christian and Mongol forces had been fairly evenly matched and they had slugged it out all summer long. Veterans returning from the south all seemed to make the trip around the battlefields in Poland which was now running as a regular guided tour and they were generally astounded at the number of Mongols we had encountered. Apparently the main enemy force had been sent to Poland and only a small one to Hungary. Bulgaria hadn t been invaded at all despite the fact that the Mongols had promised to do so. In my timeline the Bulgarians had paid tribute to the Mongols for a century. Most of Lambert s knights came back from Hungary alive and well including Sir Miesko and both of Sir Vladimir s brothers. They had plenty of stories to tell and occasionally even a bit of booty to back it up. Yet be that as it may knights returning from Hungary bought an awful lot of Baron Novacek s absolutely genuine Mongol war relics Chapter Twenty eight Construction was the big game on campus as usual. Doubletracked rail lines were laid north to Plock and beyond and west to a few miles from the Holy Roman Empire. A road east from Sandomierz was sent as far as the Bug River and another went from the Vistula to the salt mines. I seemed to own those mines now since none of the former owners could be found and in such cases as in modem times the property goes to the state. Only now I was the state. The old works manager at the mines was gone too. A pity. He had been rude to me once and I was looking forward to firing the man. The Reinforced Concrete Components Factory was completed and soon it was providing structural sections for our ambitious building plans. To a certain extent the factory built itself since at first it was nothing but a vast field with foundations plumbing and concrete molds built into the ground. As these molds were completed and pre stressed concrete members were cast into them the first use of these pieces was to put up the walls pillars and ceilings of the building itself Housing for the workers went up at the same time and within a few weeks the first additional factory was erected a major cement plant. A continuous casting operation for steel reinforcing rods went in next and after that it all became routine. Plumbers followed the masons and window glaziers came next with carpenters on their heels putting in the doors. The new R D machine shop at Okoitz was built of brick to match the existing castle and the inn there although the roof was of pre stressed concrete. When I had sketched the shop I had also sketched out the additional cloth factories to be built eventually mostly to make sure that everything would fit well and look nice. Because of some snafu these sketches were detailed and given by mistake to the construction captain sent to build the machine shop. So while he was there he also put up both new cloth factories. Not that we had any machinery to put in them. It hadn t even been invented yet let alone built I am personally convinced that much of this happened because the construction workers liked being stationed at Okoitz living in the noble guest quarters and being available to all the cloth factory s eager young ladies and thus they did what they could to prolong their stay. Oh I couldn t prove it but nonetheless I gave that company all the dirty jobs for the next two years. I suppose I shouldn t have let three months go by between visits but a man can t be everywhere. We wouldn t be able to start building forts along the Vistula until the next year but the three battalions in the eastern duchies were busy preparing for it clearing the sites and putting in foundations wells and septic systems. Winters were spent logging mostly to clear the land for farming. As the saying went a Mongol can t hide in a potato field. The first electrical generator worked and the third one worked very well indeed. At first we couldn t find any graphite for the brushes but the name told us the way the oldsters had done it. Brass brushes and I mean something that looked like what you could clean a floor with worked just fine. We got it working one week before a merchant came up from Hungary riding right through a war zone without even noticing with twenty two mule loads of graphite. The electric light bulb team was having less luck and the tubing team was running into problems because the copper they had to work with was too brittle. I knew that this meant that our copper was too impure for pure copper is very ductile. This set of circumstances naturally got us involved with electrolytic refining where pure copper is plated out of crudely smelted bars in a copper sulfate bath. This pure copper worked well in the new tube drawing machines although die wear was a big problem and a lot of work was still needed to improve our lubricants. On the bottom of the refining tanks an annoying black sludge kept building up and I wouldn t let them throw it away because of my pollution control rules. The team took some of the sludge over to the alchemists to see if they could find any use for it. They could. The sludge was nineteen parts per gross silver and seven parts gold. The rest of it seemed to be some metal that the alchemists had never seen before but they promised to work on it. We didn t have a copper mine at all. We had a gold mine that also produced silver and copper Very quickly we were selling electrolytically refined copper exclusively and quietly buying back our old stuff whenever possible. The silver and gold in it were worth more than the copper Admittedly I had a surplus of silver and gold just then but I wanted it nonetheless. Mass producing electrical generators made them inexpensive enough to use them for other things besides. Putting graphite electrodes on either side of a bath of salt water generates sodium hydroxide which is useful in making good quality soap and is a basic chemical starting point for thousands of other things. The process also generates hydrogen and chlorine which can be combined immediately to produce hydrochloric acid or the hydrogen can be burned as fuel and the chlorine can be used for bleach in papermaking for killing bacteria in water or for killing things in general. The same chlorine that is found in all modem city water supplies makes a very effective war gas. It occurred to me that I could get rid of the Teutonic Order without having to get any of my own men killed at all. It struck me that there was a certain justice about killing Germans with a gas chamber. I worked on it and other things for the war. Our school system now covered all the lands that Henryk and I held and went quite a way beyond them to include virtually all the Polish speaking people in the world. In addition there were a few schools in Germany Hungary and the Russias mostly training bilingual teachers for our next phase of expansion. The plan was to educate the children of the surrounding countries to be bilingual in Polish rather than to produce schoolbooks in every single different language a daunting task since there were five thousand different languages in the world and we had grandiose dreams. Most foreign languages weren t all that standardized anyway. Teacher education was still a far cry from the standards of the twentieth century but it had come a long way in the last ten years. The school system was completely self supporting since each school also had a post office and a general store that sold everything that my factories made. The schools outside the range of the railroads and riverboats lost money because of the high cost of transportation but those within it more than made up for this deficit. In fact it sometimes proved difficult to keep the schools from showing a profit. The army system of weights and measures was well on its way to becoming universal at least within Poland. We never forced anyone to adopt it but anything bought by the army was bought in our units. If a farmer wanted to sell us food he had to sell it in terms of our pints and pounds and tons. Our transportation system handled things in terms of carts that were two of our yards wide six yards long and a yard and a half high the same size as our war carts. They had a weight limitation of twelve of our tons. We had a standard sized case that was a yard wide a half yard deep and a half yard high. Six dozen of them fit neatly into a cart and incidentally made a comfortable seat for two. Upended they were the right height for a workbench and our cases sometimes did double duty as furniture. If you wanted to ship something that did not fit conveniently into a cart or a case or a standard barrel shipping charges were much higher and most of our users soon adopted our standards. Our glass containers were rapidly being accepted and we made them only in certain fixed sizes. Jars were made in sixth pint half pint pint two pint six pint and twelvepint sizes and that was all except that the larger sizes also came in a small necked version. Each had dimensions such that it fit conveniently into our cases and if you wanted to buy from us or ship something in glass containers you had to use our system of weights and measures. This also made it easy for consumers to compare prices. Our construction materials bricks boards concrete blocks glass and so on all came only in standard sizes. If you wanted to build a comfortable and inexpensive house you had to use our system. There was surprisingly little resistance to this gentle coercion and one city council after another voted to adopt the army system of weights and measures. We had a better than average harvest in 1241 and the granary in the Bledowska desert which had been almost emptied in the spring and summer to provide seed and food was now half refilled. At this point virtually all the grains grown in Poland were of the modem sort descended from the few grains I had brought here in seed packages ten years before. Potatoes were now a major item in the diet as were corn tomatoes squashes peppers and many of the other vegetables that had come originally from the New World. All the old vegetables were still on the menu of course and many people were starting to believe me when I said that a healthy diet was a varied diet. The children were growing up bigger and stronger than their parents and the infant mortality rates were approaching modem levels outside of the old cities at least. Someday we d get decent water and sewer systems in them. Someday. On the downside tooth decay was on the rise especially among the children of the wealthy and I began to regret that I had been instrumental in increasing the amount of honey and refined sugar available. Now I had to sell people on the advantages of brushing regularly and restricting the use of my own products. Dentistry. I would have to do something about dentistry. Decent eyeglasses were being made and sold. I got into it when one of Krystyana s kids turned out to be nearsighted and I started to need reading glasses. The never ending work of animal breeding was still going on and to encourage it Count Lambert had started a system of county fairs with prizes for the best laying hen the best milk cow and so forth. The prizewinning animals were auctioned off often at fabulous prices. I expanded Lambert s system of both fairs and prize herds and usually bought the best available at each county fair often at huge prices. My buyers had fairly strict guidelines. A sore spot was that a wealthy merchant from Gniezno who always boasted about the quality of his table was observed to regularly purchase prize animals to slaughter and eat just so he could brag about how good his meat was. This bastard was even slaughtering prize milk cows for their meat I wrote him politely explaining the purpose of the prize herds and the improvements that had been wrought because of them but he went right on doing what he had been doing. When I had him banned from the auctions he had his subordinates do the buying for him. So I contacted my accountants and suggested that this was a man deserving of a beating. Even then they had to work him over twice before he stopped his annoying practice. Another example of the creative use of accounting I suppose. My sheep herds were expanding yearly and for the last seven years all the males in the main herds had been culled from the prize herd. Improvements in both the quality and the quantity of the wool were manifest but since my best sheep could produce three times the wool of the average sheep there was obviously a long way to go. The same was true of the dairy herds except that there the best was five times better than the average. Do you begin to see why I was so annoyed at having prize animals butchered Our best chickens were laying five eggs a week and some breeders were starting to ignore ducks and geese. They simply couldn t compete with the chickens in either egg or meat production. I tried to reverse this trend but I had also shown them how to compute profits on livestock and they knew. Pigs were getting shorter legged bigger bodied and faster growing. They were still hairy though. Not only did they have to live through the winter in unheated barns there was a big market for pig bristle a market that is satisfied by plastics in the modem world. My wild aurochs herd was now up to three hundred animals that had outgrown all three of the valleys that I had them in. We were feeding them a lot of grain to keep them going and culling half the bulls each year selecting for size and meat production if not for placid temperament. Something would have to be done before too long. I needed someplace to fence in a big area for them. I checked with the Banki brothers and Wiktor pointed out an area north of where Sieciechow had been that might be suitable. At least there were very few trees there and almost no people at all left. I sent a surveying team out to look at the possibility of walling it in. We had found out the hard way long ago that ordinary fences didn t impress not very domesticated aurochs much. They walked right through them It took a thick masonry wall built wavy in the Thomas Jefferson fashion four yards tall to do the job. Huge animals In October another milestone was reached. From that point on our profits from our commercial services that is to say transporting passengers and goods as a common carrier the mails and Baron Novacek s mercantile enterprises were higher than our profits from selling the output from our entire factory system. Much of the reason for this was that we didn t pay tolls while the other merchants did when they weren t using our railroads plus our communication system let our buyers know quickly about prices here and there. The conventional merchant would buy goods pay heavily to take them somewhere and hope to be able to sell them for more than they had cost him. Since this was an inefficient way of doing things they generally tried to make profits of from one hundred percent to five hundred percent to make up for their occasional losses. We usually had the goods sold before we bought them and our transportation costs were very low. Everywhere our railroads and riverboats went people got more for what they had to sell and paid less for what they wanted to buy and we made a whopping profit doing it. Of course the merchants howled about it but their shouts of anguish impressed neither Duke Henryk nor me. And we were the law. A lot of merchants gave up and came to work for us. We moved my household and the R D teams to Okoitz in the fall and the researchers were soon finding uses for the large empty buildings that were scheduled to one day be cloth factories. To quote Parkinson s law Work naturally expands to fill the time available to do it in I would like to add one of my own: Building space is consumed in direct proportion to its availability regardless of what if anything has to be done there. There would be hell to pay when I threw the researchers out to make way for production machinery. I could see them kicking and screaming for days trying to protect their precious little territories. Nine R D teams were set up to work on the various steps of producing cloth and some progress was made fairly quickly. Some of the most complicated sounding things worked right off and some of the most trivial seemed to take forever. What worked on linen almost never worked on wool and vice versa. You never can tell about research. As time went on an increasing number of researchers were foreigners since a lot of bright kids throughout Europe were reading our magazines and wanted to get in on the action. We let them in once they survived the Warrior s School. Baron Piotr went to Okoitz with us both as a member of my household and as a floating member of all the R D teams. Whenever the teams ran into math problems they couldn t handle they took them to Piotr. He was good as a general idea man too. He stayed head of the mapmaking group but now he rarely went out into the field. This got the mapmakers moved to Okoitz as well with their lithographic machines set up in the new cloth factories. The ladies at the cloth factory gave the R D people a warm and friendly welcome and soon got to referring to them as the Wizards. The guys liked the title and the name stuck. Chapter Twenty nine FROM THE JOURNAL OF DUCHESS FRANCINE Childbirth was not as bad as I had been led to fear it would be but it was certainly painful enough. The midwife had convinced me that at thirty I was too old to be having a first child and indeed she had me quite worried but my son and I came through our ordeal alive and in good health. I secured a wet nurse for him immediately so that my nipples would not become unlovely. Within a month by fasting and exercise I fit well into my old dresses but more months passed before I felt myself shapely enough to keep my bargain with Friar Roman. In all he did four nude paintings and gave two of them to me. I put them away to look at in my old age I suppose. Soon I could ride Anna without pain or danger and a fast run through the countryside often in the company of the delightful Sir Wladyclaw became my greatest pleasure. Conrad did not ask to come to the christening and so I did not invite him. Baron Wojciech stood in his stead and Duke Henryk became my son s godfather. I arranged it thus so that Henryk might be more inclined to see that my son one day got his patrimony. We named him Conrad to remind my husband of his duty to our child. Yet in truth I did not want to see my husband. My anger at the way he treated our child was such that years must go by before the hurt was eased. Instead I put my mind to the problem of assuring my son s future. After much thought it occurred to me that if I could do some service to Duke Henryk some service greater in value than the three eastern duchies he might be prevailed upon to see to it that my son was properly enlarged as was his birthright. Conrad and Henryk were preparing for an utterly stupid war with the Knights of the Cross a war that would surely get them into a further war with the entire Holy Roman Empire if Emperor Frederick II ever stopped fighting with the Church long enough to get back to Germany. War with the Crossmen will put them in the bad graces of the Church as well for the Teutonic Order is legally a branch of the Roman Catholic Church. Already I am sure that the real reason why the Vatican was delaying granting Henryk the crown of Poland was this planned war against the Church Well the death of Pope Gregory IX and the fact that Celestine IV died after only two weeks in office haven t helped much either. Rumors from Rome have it that the factions in the College of Cardinals are so bad that they may be years electing another Pope and until they do poor Henryk will have nothing to cover his head but a hat Not that he s earned anything better. The color change was on the trees before a suitable opportunity presented itself to ingratiate myself with Henryk. Sir Wladyclaw scouted the eastern frontiers with his men and often they went well beyond the borders in search of our enemies. One day he told me that Prince Daniel of both Ruthenias our neighbors to the east was vassal to the Mongols and not at all pleased by the situation. It was an audacious thought but I wondered if I could persuade this Prince Daniel to throw off the Mongol yoke and swear fealty to Duke Henryk. Surely the Mongols had learned to fear my husband and word of his protection might be enough to keep Prince Daniel safe. If I could manage it surely Henryk would be deeply in my debt. Perhaps enough for him to feel obligated to do right by my son. At least it was worth a try. Sir Wladyclaw agreed to help me in this endeavor for it was his task to protect our frontiers and what better way to do that than to put a friend across the border in place of an enemy. I left my baby with his wet nurse and one of my maids at Wawel Castle and rode out in the early dawn. I was accompanied by Sir Wladyclaw and a dozen of his men three of whom spoke Ruthenian and we rode secretly to the city of Halicz and the court of Prince Daniel. It was a journey of two days even for our Big People for we dared not ride along the railroad tracks for fear that word of our mission would get back to Conrad. We had to travel by slow and winding forest trails where our mounts could not make their best speed. And once we got into Ruthenia the trails were even worse than those in Poland. Indeed just before we stopped at Przemysl for the night the trail was covered with a black grease that was at once sticky and slippery. The point man and his mount slipped in it and went down in a dreadful heap though fortunately they were unhurt save for the grease and dirt. We all wondered at what this strange liquid was and who had dumped it there. It certainly made a mess by splashing on my dress and Anna s barding and the knights accompanying me were spotted with it as well. But of course with their camouflaged armor and barding a few spots made little difference. I was delighted to find that there was a Pink Dragon Inn in Przemysl and the innkeeper there once he was made acquainted with who I was was most helpful. He was easily sworn to secrecy he made us most comfortable and he was even able to show my maid the way of removing the spots using lighter fluid. He said that everyone using that trail was afflicted with the greasy mud for it had always been there. We reached the court of Prince Daniel the next evening and were given by him a warm welcome. Sir Wladyclaw and I were placed next to the prince at the high table and I was delighted to find that he spoke excellent Polish as did many of his subjects. Prince Daniel was a robust and fascinating man of about my husband s age full of vigor yet with a sharp wit and a good sense of humor. He told us of many of his hunting experiences and of some of his adventures fighting the Mongols. Sir Wladyclaw was able to equal or even top a number of his tales and I told of the Mongol attack on Three Walls of how I manned a swivel gun and of how Conrad s army slaughtered the Tartar horde at our feet. I ve heard of these guns of yours but of course I ve never seen one Prince Daniel said. I knew that he had been forced to send men with the Mongols against Poland but that he had not gone himself. Yet it was not politic for either of us to mention this unfortunate fact. Then you must come to Poland my lord. My husband s factories make them by the thousand I said. Now that might be difficult your grace for you see I am vassal to the khan and thus unfortunately an enemy to your people at least in theory. How sad. I would much rather have you for a friend I said and smiled. He smiled back and said You understand of course that things are not always what one would wish. He looked about afraid that he might have said too much in public. But we must talk more of this later. For tonight we must be soon abed for we wake early tomorrow for a stag hunt. I am very proud of my kennels here. My huntsmen and I would be delighted if you and your fine gentlemen would join us. We would be honored my lord. That night I cautioned Sir Wladyclaw and his men to not take first honors in the hunt by getting to the kill first as they could easily do riding on Big People. Some huntsmen are easily offended in this way. Hunting with dogs is rarely done on my husband s lands for neither he nor Count Lambert before him liked the sport. A pity for it is exciting to chase the dogs across the fields to race to the kill and then to share the roast venison in the evening. Conrad is such a bore about some things. One does not hunt deer in armor as one does with wild boar or bison. Fortunately Sir Wladyclaw and his men had their dress uniforms with them and they made a bold show in their new red and white garb so covered with gold. They were proud to tell how all their decorations had been made from booty taken from their enemies and many Ruthenians looked on them with envy for these people had to pay gold to the Mongols whereas we had gotten it from them The hunt was beautiful and the dogs tore the throats from two stags by dinnertime. After a light lunch brought out by the stewards I found myself separated from the others and in the company of the prince. This was not at all by accident for we had both been trying to arrange it so all morning. You ride so beautifully your grace. Never before has a woman kept so close to me in the hunt. Why I almost think that you could have beaten me to that last kill if you had really tried. I could only follow your example my lord. But surely you have more interesting things to talk of than my poor horsemanship. Indeed I do my lady. You spoke truth last night when you said that I should see your country. I would dearly like to do so but I fear both spies in my court and the fact that I could be arrested in your land as a spy myself. Yet I have heard many wondrous things about what your great husband accomplished this spring on the battlefield and the wondrous machines that he has on the rivers and even in the air. It is true isn t it He can really fly He has men who can pilot machines that can fly my lord though he does not do it himself. He says that he s too old though his last liege lord Count Lambert was older than Conrad and flew a great deal. I would like to see these things for myself. Can you think of a way that it could be arranged You must be of a size with one of the knights that accompanied me here my lord. If you and my party and say four of your men were to ride out to one of your other estates no one would think it strange. We could even let them think that we would be lovers if you thought that wise. That would be a delightful thing my lady did I not fear the fact that your husband is called the fiercest fighting man in all the world. And in truth my wife is no simpering lily either I think it would be best if we kept our pleasant relationship platonic. I quite agree my lord with much the same regrets as yours I said with a sad smile. Well then once our party is out of sight and in some secluded place you and your men could trade horses and costumes with five of mine. In the armor of a Radiant Warrior no one would recognize you. Indeed you could keep your visor down if you wished. In addition these mounts we ride are very special. They can go like the wind and no one in Poland would question a man who rode one. We could go there and be back in a week my lord. You seem to have this well planned out your grace. Indeed I have thought long on it. But then we had to join the others for the master huntsman rode up carrying the droppings of a large stag in his hunting horn for the prince to examine. And so it was that Prince Daniel got the grand tour of the battlefields saw our aircraft and rode on a steamboat. He was astounded almost as much by the Big People. I was able to show him some of my husband s factories with their huge moving machines and white hot spraying steel. We toured East Gate and he found that starting the next spring Conrad would be building a fortress like it every week. Yet what impressed him most was the three million Mongol heads he saw up on pikes. These are not all the Tartars we killed you know I said. About half a million more were drowned in the Vistula when they tried to swim across and they were so weighted down that most of them never did float up. There s still a fortune in booty lying for the taking on the bottom of the river. My God So over a week passed before we were again in Ruthenia. Prince Daniel wanted to talk to his nobles and councilors but I knew that he would throw off the Mongols and swear fealty to Duke Henryk could he but work out a suitable treaty with us. He invited me back in a month and of course I would be there. While back in Cracow I sounded out Henryk and he approved in principle of what I had done. More importantly I got his solemn written word in his own hand and sealed that if I was able to arrange a suitable treaty my son would be given his rightful inheritance or one even more valuable. Also Henryk agreed that it would be best if Conrad did not know about my role in these affairs or about our agreement as well. Again we went to Ruthenia and again we brought back Prince Daniel incognito but this time to meet with Duke Henryk. I introduced the two leaders and they soon were engaged in animated conversation. I wisely remained silent for men do not like women to intrude on what they consider man s talk even when it is we women who make all the arrangements set the stage and even determine what is to be said. A formal treaty was eventually signed by all interested parties including my husband and my son had regained his birthright In the winter when all had been finalized and troops had been sent to Ruthenia to aid in its defense I met again with Duke Henryk who gave me a privy letter that confirmed our original agreement. Francine that was a fine job you did with Prince Daniel. Because of you an enemy has been turned into a friend Poland now has a buffer state between herself and the Tartars and I have gained a doubling of my territory if not my income. It is going to take us a few years to absorb all of this but in a year or two I am minded to send you north to talk to Prince Swientopelk so that you can talk him into giving us his duchies of East and West Pomerania Chapter Thirty FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD My own personal life remained pleasantly tranquil even though or perhaps because of the fact that Francine stayed away. I hadn t even seen my son by her but I was not about to force her into coming home just so she could make me miserable. She stayed in the east and I spent most of my time in the south. When I went to Cracow to see my confessor Bishop Ignacy she was always elsewhere. Twice I went to Sandomierz and Plock to check on things but she wasn t there at the time. Even when Duke Henryk and I hit twelve cities one on each day of the twelve days of Christmas she managed to be somewhere else. All that I could figure was that she had an efficient spy system. Cilicia on the other hand remained all sweetness and light. She continued teaching dancing mostly as a hobby I think and continued to manage her string of dance studios at a considerable profit though God knows we didn t need the money. But her real interest was now in our four children and in the other three dozen or so kids in the household. These weren t all mine not by any means. At least a dozen of them were orphans left over from the Mongol invasion. There were some where we knew the mother and nobody was exactly sure about the father but nobody much cared. When in doubt I was always happy to confess to just about anything at a baptism. I d never let a kid be hurt over a little thing like pride even when the mother wasn t up to my usual standards. Piotr and Krystyana were still in the household with their six kids and others came and went as the need and the inclination required. When it came to my household I ran a very loose ship and I liked it that way. About my only rules were that kids had to stay out of my office and nobody could permanently enter my household without my invitation. Well there were some kids who sort of temporarily attached themselves to us for years but what the heck. As a general thing a pleasantly disorganized chaos reigned and any time I needed rejuvenation I had only to sit down on one of the couches in the living room and there were a couple of kids on my lap and generally a pretty girl under each arm. A good life. During our Christmas tour Henryk mentioned an offer that he d gotten that he didn t want to refuse. The Russian principalities to our east were Volhynia and Halicz Ruthenia and they had a combined area that was at least as large as that of Poland if not larger although because of the Mongols they no longer had anything like our population. They were Russian to the extent that the people there were mostly Greek Orthodox Christians and their political and social ties were more with the east than with the west. Russia in the modem sense with its huge uncaring bureaucracy and its brutal central control would probably have been better called the Muscovite Empire. Politically it is a Johnny come lately not one of the ancient nations of eastern Europe. It simply didn t exist in the thirteenth century. Moscow was now a small backwater village. To the north there is a major city state called the Republic of Novgorod which is run by an oligarchy of wealthy merchants about the way that Venice is in Italy. In the south there is a Russian people who would one day be called Ukrainians and who consider their capital to be Kiev even though Kiev had been massacred by the Mongols a few years ago and still was almost absolutely empty. Before that time it had been a fairly ordinary kingdom with nothing particularly offensive about it. In addition to these two large states there were a dozen or so minor duchies and principalities scattered around the east all of whom like their big brothers were either paying tribute to the Mongols or had been depopulated by them or sometimes both. Certainly there was nothing about the Russias of the thirteenth century that you could hate. The prince of both of these principalities of Volhynia and Halicz Ruthenia was a man named Daniel and he had come to Duke Henryk with an interesting proposal. Prince Daniel offered to swear fealty to Henryk to become a Roman Catholic and to encourage his people to do so as well. He would even pay what taxes he could but in return he needed protection from the Mongols. Henryk wanted to know if we could guarantee that protection. Well I had been planning to fight the Mongols again anyway and having more allies hardly ever hurt anybody. From a strictly practical standpoint we didn t need any more land at all. We were currently seriously overextended trying to digest what we already had. This was one giant bite more. Yet I agreed with Henryk. It was too good an opportunity to miss although I couldn t help wishing that it had come along five or ten years later. I said fine I could spare Daniel three of our nine thousand man battalions of regulars when they graduated in the late spring as well as my force of scouts mounted on Big People all as a permanent force there. I could give him some air cover and I could get an additional fifteen battalions to him in ten days if there was another invasion but I needed some things in return from Daniel. I needed land along the Bug and the San rivers for the construction of forts against the Mongols. A five mile wide strip on both sides of each river was to become army property. I wanted some land granted to me near the town of Przemysl because I happened to know that there was an oil field there. In my time the first oil wells in the world had been drilled in these fields and that told me that it couldn t have been a difficult drilling job. I needed that oil as a lubricant for kerosene lamps and for aircraft fuel. The wood alcohol we were using wasn t all that energetic on a per pound basis. In addition I wanted the same rights to buy land in the east that I had in western Poland and I wanted the same rights to transport goods without paying tolls. I wanted the Polish legal system once it was organized to be put in effect in Ruthenia the same as it was in the rest of Poland. Ruthenia was to become a permanent part of Poland individual Ruthenians would have the right to join the Christian army and under no circumstances was I to be taxed by anyone. Henryk was agreeable to my demands said he d keep me posted and sent an ambassador to Daniel to finalize the deal. We kept busy working all through the winter for although the men in the army were all wealthy now we never slacked off on the twelvehour workday or the six day workweek one of which on the average was always spent in military training. I had no trouble enforcing this since good men like to work when they know that they are working on something important. The deal with Prince Daniel didn t work out exactly as planned. He wouldn t go along with combining the legal systems saying that his people had different customs than ours did. Instead of getting land and drilling rights near Przemysl I got the whole city and much of the surrounding area. It seems that this land had once been part of Poland and the people there were still ethnically Polish rather than Russian so Daniel gave the land back to us or rather to me as Duke of Little Poland. The right of the Christian army to travel duty free across the principalities even when we were engaged in commercial pursuits became the Right of Transit. The right of the army to do recruiting was enlarged to the traditional Polish Right of Departure. Every man except for convicted criminals could leave his present job or condition without anybody s permission. And the right of the army to buy land and then not pay taxes on it became the Right of Purchase. This meant that the political body we were forming would be more of a federation than a union but I could live with it. I signed the treaty Henryk and Daniel had formalized. As soon as the treaty was signed still in the winter a volunteer battalion of active reservists with regular army officers was called up to stand guard in the new territories until late fall mostly to demonstrate good faith to Prince Daniel. There were a lot more volunteers than places available and the officers in charge could pick the best. Mostly the troops spent their time putting in a rail line along the west bank of the River Bug and another up the San but they were ready if the Mongols wanted to start trouble. In a few months three battalions of regulars who would be graduating from the Warrior s School would go east to back up the reservists and keep my word to Daniel. I d kept the boys at Eagle Nest posted on the need for a longer range observation plane to patrol the borders of Ruthenia and let Daniel know that we were doing our part. Aircraft engines were now sufficiently dependable that a second one was an asset rather than a liability. They came up with a big for us two engine job that could stay up for five hours and had a range of six gross miles. An interesting plane: The pilot lay prone and looked mainly downward just what was needed for an observation plane when the enemy had nothing in the sky. This also made for a very small frontal area. It was our first plane that could take off without the aid of a catapult and it even boasted retractable landing gear. The boys wanted to call it the Eagle but I wouldn t let them do it. I said that the eagle was the person flying it and the name stuck. From then on our air force was known as the Eagles. Duke Henryk sent me a copy of his proposed code of laws with a note stressing that it was only a rough draft and that he was asking for comments from many others besides myself. There was a criminal code with clearly defined penalties for various clearly defined crimes and a civil code with long sections on inheritance land use and ownership and contracts. I spent a few days going over it and wrote him a lengthy commentary. This was the sort of thing where getting it done right was far more important than getting it done quickly. Any errors would be very expensive for someone. In many cases it was literally a matter of life and death. My main objection to Henryk s laws was in the field of punishments. He called for the traditional medieval corporal punishments such as whipping branding and beheading. In the twentieth century the western governments punish people with use fines and various terms of incarceration. The eastern governments have a different theory one that I can t help but agree with. It is felt that a criminal is one who has caused damage to society and who is therefore in debt to society for the damage that he has done. This debt must be worked off normally with a term of hard manual labor. There are several advantages to this theory. One is that the criminal is often a mentally ill person and hard work is often very good therapy. Another is that society benefits from the work that is done rather than being harmed again in feeding and guarding the criminal as in the western system. It took work but I finally talked Henryk into starting a prison coal mine and using work rather than whippings. By spring it was obvious that the killing inflation I had so feared wasn t going to happen. Most of the surplus cash either stayed in my bank drawing interest or rather damages to get around the Church s strange thoughts on usury or was spent on things like buying farmland from me. Then I sat on the money and things smoothed out. As soon as the snows melted work was started on a second Reinforced Concrete Components Factory this one built next to the new Riverboat Assembly Building and set up to build parts for snowflake forts like the one at East Gate. In a little over a month we started on the first of several thousand fortified army towns. There wasn t any problem finding the oil fields. The stuff was running out of the ground We didn t do any drilling at all at first but simply channeled it into some storage tanks. Why it hadn t caught fire sometime in the past was beyond me. At East Gate we started production on a new sort of riverboat. It consisted of nothing but an engine and some crew s quarters on the back of a long low barge. Inside the thing were two gross copper oil drums piped together to haul crude oil from the fields at Przemysl. On the way up it was designed to carry deck cargo such as concrete structural members. And that was all. No guns no Halmans and no passengers. Strictly a civilian cargo vessel. An oil refinery was started at East Gate as well. Finally with spring planting done it was time to clean the Teutonic Knights out of Mazovia. In my time despite the fact that they were theoretically a branch of the Church they had spent the winter of 1242 attacking the Christian Republic of Novgorod and had been beaten by Alexander Nevski in the famous Battle on the Ice. Well Alex was spared both the trouble and the fame in this world. Here the Crossmen had spent the winter recruiting more fighters and reinforcing their city castle of Turon which means thorn appropriately enough. They had seen what we could do in a field battle but figured that they could stand siege against us. Nice. I d been counting on that. My people were all looking forward to the war for the Crossmen never had worried about making themselves popular. They still made a practice of butchering entire villages and sparing only the adolescent children who brought good prices on the Moslem slave blocks. When I suggested that a single battalion would suffice to handle the Knights of the Cross I nearly had a mutiny on my hands. Everybody wanted to go I didn t want to upset our production schedules so I forbade the industrial workers to attend. They screamed bitched and cried but I wouldn t back off. There were plenty of men working their farms and the war would take place during the slack period between spring planting and the first hay harvest. Even so there were too many volunteers and I finally had Baron Vladimir set up a competition such that only the best fighters from each unit in the active reserves were allowed the privilege of going and risking their lives. It s strange the things some men will do for prestige. Chapter Thirty one I took three battalions of reservists to the war along with three of regulars and made Baron Vladimir hetman in charge of all of them. This was far more troops than was required but the pressure on me to let everybody go was pretty strong. Captains and barons were coming up with the damnedest reasons why it was necessary for them to participate even after I said that any booty taken would go first to defray expenses and that the rest would be divided out among the entire army. They didn t care. They still kept calling in old favors and trying to go. Since it wasn t really going to be much of a fight I took my four maidservants along with plenty of creature comforts in a big rail car. Cilicia insisted on coming too and brought with her a troop of over fifty dancers and a dozen musicians. She knew of Duke Henryk s plans to invite many foreign observers and she figured that they would want entertainment. Over her fifty megaton protests Krystyana was left home to take care of the kids. Piotr wasn t going and well somebody had to do it. We had riverboats enough on the Vistula to carry two battalions with their war carts but I wasn t about to commit more than a quarter of them to the war not when they were making such profits providing civil transportation Also the boats were needed to transport construction materials for our extensive building program. Anyway if the troops wanted to go that badly let them walk And walk they did nonstop in the army fashion all the way to Plock and beyond to the edge of Crossman territory where the railroads stopped. From there they were ferried downstream to Turon where we found the city packed with German knights and the gates closed to us. At first there was no opposition at all. A platoon of scouts scoured the countryside and found nothing but peaceful peasants whom we left alone. Turon had no suburbs being a military installation so we had a clear field of fire all around the walls. We surrounded the city dug fortifications and set up housekeeping. Then we waited two days for Duke Henryk to arrive. You see Henryk was planning to make as much political hay out of this battle as possible and he wanted as many foreign observers around as he could get. On the southwest side of the Vistula across from Turon we built a good sized tent city for them set up a river crossing boat and assigned two companies of complaining warriors to guard the place and cook for our guests. The numbers of delegates arriving surprised even Henryk. Poland was big in the news especially since our magazines were still the only newspapers. Many people wanted to see what we were doing for themselves. Duke Henryk arrived on schedule with his two young sons Henryk III a fine boy of thirteen and Boleslaw who was going bald at the age of eighteen as well as their mother on a rare outing from her estate. But his dozens of delegations of observers straggled in and another week went by before they had all gotten there. Rather than let my warriors stand idle I had half of our forces out preparing the beds for railroads while we waited and construction companies were confidently extending the railroads downstream along the Vistula while the war was going on. The tent city soon became a regular international village with six separate groups coming from various states in the Holy Roman Empire two from various factions in Bohemia three from Hungary two from Pomerania and three from the various Danish principalities. Twenty men were sent up from Tsar Ivan Asen II of the Bulgarian Empire. A group arrived from France personal emissaries from Louis IX and even some Castilians from Spain. There were delegations from all the tribes of the Pruthenians: Sambians Natanoians Warmians Pogesanians Pomeranians Bartians Galindians and Skalovians. The Lithuanians came headed by Prince Mendog and the Lusatians were there too. There was a delegation from Novgorod headed by none other than Alexander Nevski who doesn t look at all like he did in the movie. Furthermore he was a noble prince not a stalwart yeoman as the old Russian motion picture would have it We even got a Welshman a Scotsman and an Irishman. Prince Daniel was there with two groups from the Ruthenias and Prince Swientopelk of Pomerania showed up in person. This surprised certain people because it was claimed by some that he had engineered the assassinations of two Polish dukes. Duke Boleslaw the Pious and Duke Przemysl came both of Great Poland and subordinate to Henryk as did Duke Casimir of Kujawy a small still independent Polish duchy. The Church was well represented by Bishop Ignacy of Cracow plus the Polish bishops of Plock Poznan Wroclaw Lubusz Wloclawek and Kamien and the Archbishop of Gniezno along with hundreds of minor clerics. Ignacy had even brought a printing press with him and was running off a four page daily newspaper. The world s first In short everybody who was anybody in eastern Europe and most of the rest of Christendom besides was there or was represented except for the Mongols. No let me take that back. The handless Mongol ambassador I had given to Henryk was there as well in a steel cage with a double door like an air lock. Henryk wasn t taking any chances with him. There were so many delegates that we had to enlarge their camp twice stripping tents from my troops and making the warriors double up. Four more unhappy companies were added to guard and cook for them. The foreigners wandered around everywhere inspecting the steamboats and the artillery talking to the troops and even visiting the Teutonic Knights who were still holed up in their city. While everyone was there for the nominal purpose of watching a battle Henryk had countless meetings called every day and every night was spent in feasting drinking and politicking. Cilicia s dancers were the big hit of the event and two temporary Pink Dragon Inns were running on a standing room only basis. Baths and massage parlors were running at all hours of the day and night. Henryk bought two dozen of my surplus aurochs bulls and though not fully grown they dressed out at over a ton of meat each. They took three days to roast whole over an open fire but he served one up each day and that was but a single item on a large menu. The beer wine and mead vendors were making a fortune And this despite the fact that many delegations were providing potables free. My troops were coming over the river to join this festival at every possible excuse of course. It became a major headache for Hetman Vladimir to see that Turon remained properly surrounded. Yet the Crossmen never poked their heads out of their walls. At least not that we heard of anyway. With so many foreigners coming and going from Turon it was likely that there were Crossman spies among us. Not that it mattered. While all this was going on I had the six siege cannons I d had made hauled up from their special barges and located out of crossbow range of the city fortress of Turon pointing at the two main gates where they could be seen by the delegates. They each had a bore of half a yard and were six yards long. They were low tech muzzleloaders since I wasn t in any hurry about rate of fire and didn t plan to ever need them again after this battle. But they fired a round iron ball that weighed over half a ton and I didn t imagine that any brick city wall could stand up to them for long. Then six huge mortars arrived each with a bore of one yard and a four yard long tube. They were set up in plain view of the delegate camp as close to Turon s walls as we dared put them. A system of racks and hoists allowed them to be loaded quickly for here I needed a high rate of fire. The men tending these monsters wore a uniform that consisted of black boots a black pair of pants and a black hood which when wet could double as a gas mask. They swaggered around stripped to the waist a bit of showmanship on my part. Mostly I wanted the identity of these picked men to be kept a secret. Their ammunition was placed along the river embankment and constantly guarded. If one of these rounds should leak it was the duty of the black guards to roll it into the Vistula for cool water can absorb large quantities of chlorine and the river s turbulence would soon dilute the poison to a safe level. And still the warriors waited for Henryk wanted the conference to continue a while longer. He made a point of introducing me to everyone of course and I sat in on many of the meetings but in truth such things bore me. The only interesting thing to me was that almost all the visitors spoke Polish mostly from reading our magazines. My plan to make Polish a world language was working And with everybody important at the camp it was inevitable for my wife to come too since she loves the smell of political power. She d been there a week before I ran into her as I was on my way to yet another meeting this one on fixing a date for the proposed All Christendom Great Hunt chaired by Sir Miesko. Well I said trying to be friendly. There really is a Duchess Francine. Have you been well Yes your grace. She looked at me strangely coldly. And you have to speak so formally to your own husband It seemed fitting Conrad. So. And my son. He too is well I tried to smile but it didn t come off. Yes. He s in good hands in Cracow. I suppose that you were right in not taking him into what is after all a war zone. I d like to see him someday. Of course my husband. You can see him at any time. And you. Will I be seeing you again Will you be coming home as most wives do Yes I m sure I will in time. In time. Well. When that time comes be sure and let me know. There will always be a place for you. Thank you my husband she said stiffly. You must keep in closer touch then. Yes my husband. I turned and left. She was as cold as a killing frost and just as unsympathetic. Whatever had happened to the warm loving woman I had married Just because I didn t want to be a king that didn t mean that I no longer wanted to be a husband Yet she was still a beautiful woman for all her stone cold features and stone rigid bearing. I felt the old urges despite the fact that I had brought my servants to the war. Days later I went to see Bishop Ignacy and after confession I asked as usual about the Church s inquisition concerning me. Oh I m afraid that there won t be anything happening on that for some time Conrad. You see the College of Cardinals is deadlocked on the selection of the next Pope and nothing much will happen until such time as they resolve their differences. It could be quite a while from what I hear. So the whole Catholic Church stops until they get around to doing something Father Not in the least People are being christened and married and buried. Souls are still being saved. The only difference is that nothing new will happen. No high offices will be filled and no changes will take place until we have a new pontiff. You know I ve never understood your anxiety to get this matter of your inquisition finished Conrad. After all if they decide that you are an instrument of God and a saint well you cannot be canonized until after your death anyway so why hurry And in the unlikely event that they decide that you are an instrument of the devil and should be burned at the stake why isn t it better to put off that unhappy event as long as possible Surely there is nothing of the suicide about you I d just Re to have the thing settled to not have it hanging over my head Father. Very little in this life is ever settled my son. It s like that story you once told me about the little people. The road goes ever on. One can only live life. Soon enough God will decide it is time for it to be settled. I suppose so Father. To change the subject have you been to see the Crossmen No but many other churchmen have. After all you have vowed to kill them all and you have a reputation for carrying out your vows with a vengeance. Oh they ll all die all right as soon as Henryk has milked all he can out of this conference. It is remarkable how well you two dukes are getting along how well your abilities complement each other. He takes care of the law and the politics and I handle the army and the factories. Neither one of us wants the other s job. It s a good partnership Father and I think the world will profit by it. But back to the Crossmen. I m going to kill them so don t try again to talk me out of it. You already know my reasons and I ve heard all of your objections. But I don t want any innocent bystanders killed with them. I still have nightmares about the Polish slave girls that we killed when we raided the Mongol camp at night or even worse the Polish peasants we slaughtered when they were forced to work those Mongol catapults. I want to know that there is no one in Turon except members of the Teutonic Order. But surely they have had plenty of time to get out. Well maybe they can t get out or maybe they think the Crossmen will win or maybe they think this will be an ordinary battle where plenty of people survive. You ve seen those big guns I ve had made. Do you think that one of those half ton balls will stop and see what uniform they re wearing before it smashes everyone before it If you wish I will visit Turon and examine it. Mind you I won t do any spying for you. We ve talked over my opposition to this war often enough. But I will do what I can to prevent injury to the innocent. Good Father because I want you to convey an offer to the Crossmen for me. I will pay them one thousand pence in army currency silver or gold as they desire for every noncombatant that comes out of the city on the day before the battle. I ll pay an additional one hundred pence to each person as they leave. I ll even pay the Crossmen one hundred pence for every domestic animal as well and guarantee that all these people and beasts will be fed and housed well at my own expense until the issue is settled. If you wish I will pay the Church for their upkeep and you can see to it that it is properly done. That is a generous offer Conrad. I m just trying to save my soul Father. Those siege cannons aren t the most deadly weapons that I have. Anyway I ll be getting most of it back as booty once I win the battle. Very well Conrad I ll see what I can do and I ll get the archbishop involved in this as well. However I notice that you are again calling your weapons of war canons. A canon is a law of the Church and while your strange use of the term was funny at first the joke has gone stale. I want you to stop it. Yes Father. On another matter you have not been living with your wife. This is not good. You were joined together by God after all. Father she is still angry because I did not make her the Queen of Poland. I didn t do that and I won t do that because I don t want to be the king. Henryk is far better qualified than I am and anybody sane can see it I ve asked her to come back and told her that there will always be a place for her. What more can I do You could be a bit more vigorous in your invitation my son. You re saying that I should use force The Church allows it within reason. The Church allows it but God doesn t demand it I m not going to beat her or shackle her to the kitchen stove. Good men didn t do that sort of thing in my time. Well think on it my son. Meanwhile I shall see what can be done with the Teutonic Knights. The bishop returned to me the next day with word that the Crossmen had accepted my offer and he had worked out with them a system where there wouldn t be much cheating. They also offered me their war horses on the same terms at a thousand pence a head with the understanding that they could get them back at any time by repaying the money should the battle prove to be protracted. I went along with that. There was no point killing dumb animals I d be getting the money back and we could probably train most of those chargers to pull railroad cars. From the Crossmen s point of view the Church would be taking care of their horses at my expense until they were needed but let them have their dreams. The time was dragging slowly and the troops were getting antsy. Finally I talked to my partner about it. Henryk I don t want to rush you but it s been more than three weeks now. Do you realize that I am paying the salaries of over fifty thousand men while many of them sit idle every day Yes Conrad and I well know how you hate waste. But this is not time wasted. Prince Swientopelk is starting to come around. The Baltic seacoast could be ours What would you think of having not one but two seaports one at the mouth of the Vistula and one at the Odra It would be fine and I ve often dreamed of building oceangoing steamships. We could buy and sell abroad explore the world and spread the faith. We could even find coffee and rubber But we could not start doing it for years yet. We have commitments that will take us years to fulfill. We are too overextended now to even consider further expansion at this time. You know that. But the iron is hot now Conrad and it might grow cold in five years. We need not promise to do much until then. Just some little show of support might be enough. Your reputation alone could do it. Have I ever told you that putting those Mongol heads up on pikes was a stroke of genius Not in so many words and thank you. But what can I tell my men When can we start the battle A week Conrad. Can you give me another week A week. Very well I ll hold them back until then. But a week from this morning I m opening fire Chapter Thirty two The next week was simultaneously hectic and boring. A few dozen people tried to put their mark on history by playing the peacemaker. They ran back and forth between me and the Crossmen and Henryk carrying absurd peace offers. None of us took these fools seriously but none of us wished to appear to be unreasonable warmongers either. My best offer to them was that if the Crossmen would go back to the Holy Land where they d started from and never come back I d call the whole thing off let them march out with their weapons and treasure and let them all live besides. Their best offer to me was less polite. Bishop Ignacy did a good job getting the noncombatants out of Turon. There were over 500 of them servants stable boys and prostitutes mostly. He also got us 1 900 horses all of them in very good shape. It turned out that the Crossmen had sent most of their chargers away before we got there and had kept only the best because of a lack of hay to feed all of them during a protracted siege. There were a remarkable number of dogs cats and caged birds that I paid for but I drew the line at pet rats and mice. They figured that it had been worth a try. At just before noon on the scheduled day we opened up on them with our swivel guns shooting just enough to teach them to keep under cover. Half our guns were available for targets of opportunity but each one of the other half had its own assigned target: a window a doorway a space between two merlons on the wall. They were bore sighted and packed between sandbags and in the course of the day by trial and error they got their targets down pat. This was to teach the Crossmen the art of not being seen. All through the next night the sandbagged guns fired occasionally at random teaching the same lesson at night: Stay down The few slit windows in the outer walls were soon plugged up tight with timbers by the defenders nicely sealing the entire structure which was the purpose of the exercise. This stopped the bullets because this year we were firing cartridges with far less gunpowder than last year s. Six inches of pine could stop our rounds cold. I didn t want to put holes in anything. Quite the opposite. The random firing continued the next day except when the gunners actually had a target an increasingly rare event. Around noon we took a few trial shots with the mortars using dummy rounds loaded with sand. They did very little damage but they let us know that our aim was good enough. Small arms fire continued into the second night and I was sure that by then the garrison was very low on sleep. An hour before midnight the small arms fire slackened off. It was a sultry night and almost completely calm. It would work tonight if it was going to work at all. I had the smallarms fire stop completely and allowed the Crossmen a quarter hour to get to sleep. Then we opened up with the mortars firing as fast as their crews could load them one round a minute each. This continued for only twelve minutes and then stopped. They were out of ammunition which relieved me. Having that stuff sit around for weeks in the sun and in public made me nervous. The mortar rounds were a yard in diameter and two yards high. They were made of a thin iron shell with a blown in glass lining. When the shell struck the glass broke and the pressurized liquid chlorine inside was released. If the lining broke in the course of being fired it didn t matter for the metal shell kept it together long enough to get the poison into the sleeping city. The delegates were encouraged to watch the shelling and when it was over I told them that I thought that we had just won the battle. When they asked me how that was possible I told them that wars were ugly things and it was best to get them over as soon as possible. Then I suggested that they all go to sleep. Nothing else should happen until morning. The army troops couldn t sleep however. At first they stood to their guns with slow flares lit in front of them in case the Crossmen came pouring out of the city. Then they were all standing on top of their war carts in case something far more deadly than enemy troops came pouring out. More of the deadly gas might have leaked out than I had calculated. Chlorine is heavy stuff almost three times heavier than air. I figured that it should fill the city up to the top of the walls like soup in a bowl and hug the ground until it was absorbed by the dew. The warriors heard a few shouts and screams from the Crossmen but soon the city was quiet. They had a boring night but I hadn t told them to come. I was still across the river safe from the chlorine. I went back to my big railroad car to sleep. At the doorway of my car a foreign knight waited standing in the yellow torchlight. He was dressed in old fashioned chain mail though it looked to be washed with gold. There was quite a bit of solid gold on his outfit as well. And there was something very familiar about the man. What can I do for you I asked. I think it is time that we had a talk he said in Polish but with a strong American English accent He was identical to the man I had seen killed on the battlefield a year ago except he had all his hair. He had to be somehow connected to the time machine that had brought me here over ten years earlier. Yes I said. I would like that. Won t you come in Thank you he said entering and nodding to my servants. Perhaps it would be best if you dismissed your people. Very well. I motioned them all out and they obeyed. Good. I think here would be best. He went to my stand up clothes closet opened the door and walked through. The closet was standing along the wall of the car and there was nothing on the other side of it. In fact I had just walked past that wall and I knew that nothing had been set up on the other side of it. Yet when I looked into the closet there was a modem living room in there It had wall to wall carpeting electric lights and comfortable looking leather furniture. There was even a cheerful fire going in a fieldstone fireplace. This was impossible I went to the side of the closet moved it away from the wall and looked behind it. The back of the closet was solid and the railroad car didn t have a hole in it. Yet from the front you could see ten yards into it But I wanted to get some answers out of this man and I dared not turn coward now. I took a deep breath and stepped in. The door closed behind me with a solid click. Have a seat cousin he said in English. Surely you recognize me. I m your rich American relative Tom Kolczykrenski. I put you through college remember I sat. Yes I remember now but what are you doing here And what is here doing here I said in my rusty English. This room you mean Well you must understand that when you control time you control space as well. They re really all part of the same thing you know. No I don t know. Then you will soon he said. A very beautiful young woman came into the room completely naked carrying a tray with drinks on it. Have a martini. I ll bet it s been years since you had an olive. Thank you. For ten years a thousand questions had been racking my brain but at the moment I couldn t think of a single one. What can I do for you Tom Well it s not what you can do for me but what I can do for you that matters here. You see in a way it s partly my fault that you were dumped into this barbaric century and now finally I can do something about it. The girl left the room and my eyes followed her. Yes Conrad my tastes are pretty much like your own. But she s not what we should be talking about. Do you want to ask questions or should I just tell you about what happened How about if you talk and I ll ask questions as they come up. Good enough. More years ago than I like to think about working with two partners I invented a time machine. That s how we got rich in the first place you know playing the stock market with next week s Wall Street Journal in our hands. After a while subjectively we all grew up a bit and we each started working on our own projects. I spent my time building a fine rational civilization in the distant past where it wouldn t upset our present at all and Jim did something similar but with a different slant on things being a psychologist. But Ian s main interest was history and he runs something called the Historical Corps which is writing the definitive history of mankind. The Red Gate Inn that you got drunk in so many years ago was one of Ian s installations. He usually places inns over his time transporters since strangers aren t much noticed around one. It was some of his people that screwed up with your drunken help. Instead of finding the rest room you managed to go down one flight of steps too many and fell asleep in a time transporter. You went through a series of open doors that never should have been open and even if they had been the site director should have noticed it on his readouts. But screwups happen and nobody noticed you at all. More snafu happened at the thirteenth century end of the line and you weren t seen sneaking out of the inn. What happened to the people who screwed up and sent me here Oh they were punished never fear. Punished more than they deserved actually. We seem to have lost them a few million years ago in Africa. The search goes on though. So it was all an accident But if you have time travel why couldn t you go back to the time I came out of the inn and put me back into the time machine Because of causality. You were not noticed until I went to observe the Polish defeat at the Battle of Chmielnick. I didn t see you until you had been in this century for almost ten years I saw you with what was for this time advanced technology. That was a fact and you can t change established facts or so we thought at the time anyway. At the time Standard English is not well suited to talking about time travel. We use a few extra tenses to cover it all properly but there isn t any point in teaching you a new language right now. Suffice it to say that we had been operating for eight hundred subjective years on certain principles that always worked. That s eight hundred years of my own life as I lived it. Our medical people are quite advanced you see. Anyway we knew that you couldn t change the time stream. We knew that time was a single linear continuum and that nothing we could do could possibly change it. Furthermore from the very beginning we were very careful not to change things. We didn t want to play God after all. My partners and I are pretty staunch individualists but we re not crazy We never tried to see what would happen if we killed off our grandfathers for example. We re not murderers after all. Anyway my grandfathers are both very fine gentlemen and I wouldn t dream of hurting them. So you re saying that you knew that you couldn t change the past so you never tried to I said. That s ridiculous Is it Tell me what would happen to an engineer at your old Katowice Machinery Works if he started spending all of his time and the company s money working on a perpetual motion machine Why they d send him to a mental institution if they didn t fire him first. Right. And what if the boss of the outfit started working on the same project The same thing I suppose although they might take more time doing it. Everybody knows that perpetual motion machines are impossible. They violate the second law of thermodynamics True. And what if say the U.S. government started a major research effort to develop perpetual motion This is a stupid line of questions. No government would ever do anything like that The second law is absolutely correct. We ve been using it for a hundred years and it s always right I shouted. Fine. Then what if I told you that it was possible to build a machine that took in tap water and produced electricity and ice cubes I d say that you were lying. You d be wrong. Such a type two perpetual motion machine is quite possible and in fact this apartment that we re in right now is powered by one. After all we re in a temporal loop here so there s no place we could possibly put a radiator. Without our impossible power source it would get pretty warm in here after a while. What I m trying to tell you is that cultures all develop blind spots things that they don t even think about because they know the truth about them. Your blind belief in the absurd second law is a case in point. Something similar on a bigger scale stopped the ancient Romans from developing science at all but that s another story. Suffice it to say that for a time we fell into the same mental trap until you shook us out of it. It was all my doing I asked. Correct. You came along and threw all our theories right out of the window Do you realize that you have created an entirely new world here That you have not only duplicated most of the eastern hemisphere but that in some places you have shredded it Made dozens of worlds And that the shredding in some cases went back for thousands of years Huh. I think I follow you except for these shreds going backward in time I said. They can do that if you are taking information artifacts and people from several parallel timelines back down to what had been a single line. When that happens you shred the past and oscillations can be set up. Oh. Okay. So then the other thirteenth century the one in my own past still exists I was worried about that I said. You should have been. You have caused us no end of trouble and damage. I managed to give you sufficient wealth for you to survive comfortably until we could pick you up. You didn t have to tear a hole in the whole universe Tom all I did was try to survive. If I ve hurt you well I never asked to come here. The fault is yours not mine. You re mostly right. But you could have just left for France and lived a pleasant life. Western Europe was fairly peaceful in this century. You never had to build factories and steamboats You re saying that I should have abandoned my country to the Mongols That I should have stood by and watched half the babies born die because of a lack of simple sanitation What kind of a man do you think I am I know exactly what kind of man you are Conrad. You re a hero and you do the things that heroes do. Anyway we re getting a handle on the time shredding problem and things are starting to settle out. I still don t understand this multiple shredding that you re talking about. What did I do to start things coming apart We don t understand it all that well ourselves and the math is such that even I have trouble following it. You see the world we know isn t just one single world. It s a finite but astronomically large number of worlds lying close to one another like the pages of a book. These worlds interact with one another and tend to keep one another identical. Philosophically they are normally one single world with slight variations. As a crude analogy think of a book that has been left out in the rain and then dried. The pages are wrinkled and dimpled but they still fit into one another fairly well. That is to say to a certain extent they interact with one another. What you did was to make two pages pop apart from each other and get some different dimples to be slightly different from each other. Going down the page in the direction of the normal direction of time they continued to separate and become more different. It isn t just one page though. You seem to have taken half the book with you In some places especially around the battlefields several pages came apart although they are starting to converge now. Somehow this smacks of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Uh sort of as a theory although most people misunderstand Heisenberg. He was not saying that a thing can be and not be at the same time. He was only saying that there are limits to what we can know. One of the philosophical stupidities of the twentieth century was the confusion of what we think we know with what actually is but that s not what we should be talking about now. Yes there is a divergence principle. Small changes happen all the time between the pages of that ruined book I was talking about. A coin comes up heads or tails a seed is eaten by a bug of grows into a tree and so on. It even happens all the time in our own human experience. Have you ever been sure that you had your keys in your pocket only to find out that they were still on your dresser Well some of the time you really did both put them in your pocket and leave them behind. You see there is also a convergence principle operating here analogous to the force that is trying to force the pages of the ruined book into the same shape. The vast majority of differences are soon smoothed out. In the end the small changes settle out and make no difference at all. The time line is not so much a monolithic pillar as a rope made of millions of fibers that are all going in the same general direction. Except where you are concerned. There s something about you cousin that makes you different. We don t know what it is but with you things don t settle out. The first split that you caused happened a month after you got to this century when you had to decide whether to abandon a child in a snowy woods or try to save her even though it looked impossible. Well you did both. And that s the point where you split the world in half I remember that. I didn t know if it was a boy or a girl and I christened her Ignacy I said. Right. Now before we go any further there s something I need to know. Conrad I can take you home now. If you want you can be back at your desk at the Katowice Machinery Works tomorrow morning. Do you want to go Now that was a kick in the head Did I want to leave this brutal world and go back to my safe little home I had to think about it and Tom was silent while I thought. The serving girl refilled our glasses and left in silence. There was my mother there. How would she take my loss Yet there were so many people here that needed me people that I loved. And while I really don t care much about material things could I go back to standing in lines at the government stores after my loyal troops had slaughtered millions of the enemy Could I give up my wife and servants my world shaping plans and go back to designing nothing but machine tool controls Did I really want to become unimportant again No by God I did not I think that I have a better life here Tom. I ll stay. But try and do something for my mother okay I ll do better than that. I ll give her back her son. You see when you split the world in that snowy woods you split yourself too. Your mundane less heroic self the one who obeyed his employer and abandoned a child to freeze to death did not make out as well as you did. I found him in poor straits in Legnica and he was most eager to go home to his mother. He can warm your chair at the factory and tell himself that it was all some crazy dream. Well that s settled then. But look Tom I have a battle to conduct soon and the morning is not far away. We have all the time we want. It s my stock in trade after all. When you go out that door not a minute will have gone by in the world outside. Why don t you stick around for a while longer. There s more to discuss and I d like you to have a medical checkup while I m here. If you re tired there s a spare bedroom with a modern bed and the wench will get you anything you need. Can I have a cup of coffee in the morning You can t imagine how many times I ve dreamed of a cup of coffee. We stock the best. Then I ll stay cousin. I was deadly tired and in my years in the Middle Ages I had never gotten around to making a really decent box spring mattress. The girl came out a poor third in my priorities but then I really hadn t been offered her. Chapter Thirty three Tom was gone the next morning but he d left me a note saying that he would be away for a while. The girl served a gorgeous breakfast with maple syrup and real Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. After that there were books to read that I hadn t written myself a good stereo system and a fine videotape library. Heaven after so many years in the wilds. I tried repeatedly to strike up a conversation with the serving girl but no luck aside from getting her name which was Maude. She was always smiling but it was the fixed artificial sort of smile that you see on a salesman or waitress not a show of genuine pleasure. At first I thought it odd that Tom should choose such a strange person for a companion. Eventually I realized that she was not a companion in the ordinary sense but just another accessory in this place. She was certainly pretty and very useful but she seemed to have about the personality of a tape deck. Still I tried hard to be nice to her even if she did seem to be emotionally handicapped. As the days went on I discovered that she responded best when I treated her like Anna my old mount with lots of compliments and friendly banter. In time I even tried scratching her behind the ear the way Anna liked and she smiled with a sort of twinkle in her eye that told me that she was really happy. Although she stayed naked even of pubic hair she never made any overt sexual advances and while I thought that she would not reject mine I felt it best simply to keep it friendly. I spent seven days with her in the strange windowless sealed off apartment reading up on all the bits of technology that I had needed and had forgotten or had never learned listening to good music and watching all the movies I had missed. It was a marvelously restful vacation and it gave me time to think. I got to considering the events of the past ten years and it slowly sank into me how incredibly successful I had been in modernizing medieval Poland. I had started a primitive country on the way to industrialization and had done it without coercion without fanaticism and almost without pain. Looking back I think we all had a good time doing it. Compared to the bloodshed and suffering that Russia or almost any other country went through in turning a nation of peasants into a modem society what I had done had been astoundingly easy and painless. I had gotten us going in ten years not the fifty or seventy five years that all the other nations had needed in trying to modernize. And I had done it without any outside help but a pocketful of seeds and the little knowledge that I had in my own head. I had formulated no dogma told no one of my long term plans and made as few speeches as possible. That is to say I had made no promises. I had just gone ahead and done the best I could and that had made all the difference. When other people tried to change the world Lenin and his crowd for example they started by publishing grandiose promises outlining their program and claiming that all sorts of wondrous things would come of it if everybody went along in lockstep. They claimed that soon everyone would work only a few hours a week because these silly academicians thought that work is something that no would want to do. Yet with their program everybody would have free food free medical help free vacations and so forth. They would move mountains though nobody seems to have asked why a mountain should want to be someplace else. Well people are smart enough to notice after a while that magic doesn t happen. If you want more things you have to make and distribute more things and that means that at least for the first few generations you have to work harder and more efficiently. I just offered people a low paying job with long hours and hard work and did what I could to make that work seem meaningful to them. Once a good man or woman sees that what he is doing is good and important work becomes a pleasure one far more enjoyable than any silly game or amusement. The only promise I made was that we would all eat the same and I didn t really even promise that. I just did it and enough people responded to get the job done. I never tried to get everybody into the program. I just took on those who wanted to help and never wasted any energy on the rest. In so doing I made very few enemies and I never had to set up a huge expensive and hated police force to coerce those who didn t want to take part. The guilds the nobility and the Church all went their own ways with my blessings except for those few occasions when they got in my way. My father told me that it takes all kinds and I ve always believed that. I never published a vast scheme of things so I was never blamed for anything when things didn t go right. I made a lot of mistakes but very few people noticed them while my successes were fairly obvious. I am convinced that the reason why things have gone so well is not so much the things that I have done but rather the things that I haven t done. I ve just been an engineer a simple man with a job to do. Tom returned one day in time for supper which was a pile of fresh Maine lobsters with all the trimmings. The apartment had a time locker that was used as a sort of refrigerator. It not only kept things fresh it could keep them alive. The girl was an amazing cook even if she couldn t carry on a conversation. Where have you been Tom Nowhere. I just went into stasis for a few days to give you a small vacation in a bit of the modem world. Thank you. I ve really enjoyed it but it s time to talk some more. A few days ago you said that you couldn t come to get me until after the time you saw me at the Battle of Chmielnick. Well I wasn t at the Battle of Chmielnick. There wasn t any Battle of Chmielnick I was at the Battle of Sandomierz and when I was there I saw you get killed. There was a Mongol spear that went right through your eye and out the back of your helmet. You weren t breathing and you didn t have a pulse. Do you want to explain these things It s like I said the shredding around the battlefields was the worst. Yes that really was me and I really did die. It was a me from some other subjective timeline I hope although it could possibly be a me from my own subjective future so I avoid that time slot. As to whether the Mongols were killed at Sandomierz or Chmielnick well in a thousand years it won t make any difference. Maybe the historians will argue about it maybe not. Isn t it confusing with a lot of you running around I said. No more than it is for you. There was one of you at Chmielnick after all. And none of this shredding was ever noticed until you came along. Is that why you waited a year after the battle before talking to me To wait for the shredding to settle down Yes of course he said. Then why do you come now on the eve of another battle Won t that cause problems This thing with the Crossmen isn t a battle it s an execution and they were all dead before you got back to your trailer. But now if you are through with that chocolate eclair we ll give you a medical checkup. In a side room that had been locked before there was a thing that looked like Spock s coffin with an attached keyboard. In it was a frightening number of mostly concealed tubes needles and little knives. Are you sure that you know how to work this thing I said. Relax. It happens that among other thing I m a doctor of medicine. In nine hundred years you become a lot of things. Get in. I didn t love the idea but I m supposed to be a hero so I got in. The lid came down on me and it got dark and then the lid came up and I got out. There that wasn t so bad was it Tom said. The first thing I noticed was my eyesight. I could see as well as I could when I was a teenager. I put a hand over my left eye and I could see out of my right. I wasn t half blind anymore It turned out to be easier to regrow a whole new right eye rather than trying to repair the severed optic nerve. And from there it was only a matter of hitting another button to regrow them both Tom said. Your arthritis is gone along with your hemorrhoids and so is a small cancer that you didn t know about.. Your immunizations have been updated and I ve done a general rejuvenation treatment on you. You look the same but your ladies will be able to tell the difference. Wow. I feel great You did all that in a few seconds No it took me three hours to set it up and inside the machine s time field you spent four months on the program or your body did. There wasn t any point in boring your mind with the procedure so I shut that down for the duration. Huh. Well thanks Tom. No charge. All part of the service. You ve been a pain in the ass but the trouble you ve caused has been the first decent challenge we ve seen in centuries. What s more what you have done is very important. Think about it. A whole new world A whole doubling of the human experience As time goes on this branch will develop its own arts its own sciences and its own technologies. What new music will they play what new insights will they have what new things will they build I tell you that there are glorious possibilities here and we intend to explore them Maybe we ll even try to split one off for ourselves. Well don t rush it Tom. We never have to hurry. Well now do you. feel ready to go back to the world you ve created Maude left the room and I said In a minute. Just a few more questions. What is it with this servant of yours She s one of the strangest women I ve ever met. Well that s why She s not a woman. She s a bioengineered creation just like that neohorse I gave you. They were designed in the same studio and have much in common chemically. She s not a modified human if that s what you re worried about. I d never allow anything like that. Her equivalent of DNA was built up entirely out of simple chemicals and she was designed to be attractive industrious and completely contented with her lot. Human servants are naturally resentful doing a demeaning job. Wenches work out much better. She has a lot of Anna s traits Racial memory and all that Oh yes along with multiple births and a similar sensory apparatus. She doesn t need a neohorse s remarkable digestive system though being designed for a civilized environment and she can talk of course whereas if a horse talked to one of our field researchers it could get him into trouble. But basically the two designs are similar except for outward appearance. Interesting. I suspected something like that. Another thing. Once my life was saved by some golden arrows coming down out of the sky. Was that your doing Who else Who God of course. Don t be absurd. There s no such thing. You re so sure of that Maybe that s why you can t change the time stream. Have you ever thought of praying I m not even going to answer that one Conrad. Huh. One last question. The afternoon before I rode your time machine I met a girl at a seed store a redhead. She was supposed to meet me that night but she didn t. What happened to her Somehow I knew you d ask that. She wanted to come but her installation director got word of a surprise inspection the next day by the assistant secretary for agricultural research. Her whole outfit spent the night cleaning the place and waxing the floors. Huh. I d forgotten what bureaucracies were like. If you say so. Don t you know that they do the same thing at your factories before you show up Perish the thought I ll put an end to that Oh yes. You ve been telling me what a wonderful person I am. Could this wonderful person have a present or two to take back with him Like what You want the wench No I ve got plenty of those and mine are real. Anyway I doubt if you have one who can speak Polish. True. Maude came back and was waiting attentively. Then I imagine that she d be pretty lonely in Poland. But how about some of that coffee Fine I ll have her get all you can carry. Thank you. And how about some reference texts an encyclopedia for example And I d give a lot for a Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Are you sure that it would be wise Conrad You ve made remarkable progress here mostly because your people have had to think out and solve their own problems. This has put practical working people in charge of things. But when one culture tries to learn from another one the sort of people who succeed and take control are the academic unworldly sort and history has repeatedly proved that it is easier and quicker to invent it all for yourself. I mean it The United States developed a world class technology in the fifty years between the Civil War and World War I. It took Japan Russia and a dozen other places seventy five years to do the same thing by copying them and they had a much harder time doing it. You are progressing just fine on your own. If you say so. How about some modern farm animals Or even just some prize sperm Same thing. You ll do it better on your own It was a polite no but a no just the same. Well I tried. Maude came in casually lightly carrying two huge leather suitcases almost trunks. I peeked inside one of them and it was full of freeze dried instant in vacuum cans. Yet when I picked up the suitcases it was a strain. That little girl like thing was incredibly strong Well good bye Tom and thank you again. Keep in better touch from now on. Good bye for a while. I ll be keeping an eye on you don t worry. And so I stepped back through the looking glass or at least my closet. My last view was of the wench smiling at me with that special twinkle in her eye. I closed the door and when I opened it again there was nothing there but my clothes. I called my servants in and went to bed. And yes the girls could tell the difference in my rejuvenated self All of them. Several times. In the morning the weather was still dead calm. I had Sonya bring me a cup of boiling water to show her how to make instant coffee. But packed between two big cans inside the second suitcase was a copy of The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Maude certainly had a lot in common with Anna and was not the automaton that Tom thought she was. Nice kid After enjoying my coffee I crossed the river. We waited until the sun was fully up and then I had the siege guns blow down both of the main gates. It took only one round from each of the guns. It wouldn t have taken even that but the other gunners weren t about to go through the battle without firing a single shot. The delegates watched all this through the telescopes that Boris Novacek had provided them with at strictly retail prices at my insistence and over his earnest objections. Boris figured that we could get away with charging double. A greenish yellow gas flowed stickily through the shattered gates and the gunners ran for high ground as they had been taught. It flowed down the road through a gutter and was eventually absorbed into the cool waters of the Vistula. We waited until the middle of the afternoon and then Baron Vladimir sent in a few volunteers. They came out saying that the place stank but that the Crossmen were all dead. They weren t quite right. After we entered a group of Teutonic Knights in chain mail and black and white surcoats started shooting crossbows at us from one of the towers. They wounded two men though not seriously. As he was being carried away one of them mugged What True belted knights shooting crossbows How unchivalrous We all laughed. Then we just fell back and called in the artillery. The gunners had fun knocking down the tower. They were taking bets as to which crew would hit it first. Number six got it on the second round. They still weren t much on accuracy but what they hit stayed hit. Then we looted the place. It stank with chlorine but also with the stench of ten thousand unwashed bodies. I decided that the city fort wasn t worth keeping. Once we secured the Crossmen treasury including the money that I d recently paid them we allowed the delegates in to look around. They all acted suitably impressed. After that it was a matter of hauling out the enemy bodies for burial. The churchmen present wouldn t hear of us beheading the Crossmen and putting their heads up on pikes so we helped them give the bastards a Christian burial. It wasn t the huge cleanup job that we had had to do after the Mongols. After all we now outnumbered the enemy by almost five to one. There were almost enough of us to act as pallbearers. By dusk the job was completed. All of this got me an unbelievable amount of flak. The high churchmen were horrified not so much by the fact that we had killed them but at how easily their feared military monks had been slaughtered. I said that I d planned it that way and that I was happy that I hadn t lost a single one of my own men. The military men among the delegates said that this massacre of good knights was an offense against military honor. I said that there wasn t any such thing as military honor. War is just organized killing and while a butcher is not necessarily evil he s no great pillar of mercy either. Warfare as a sport was out. And my own troops were the angriest of all. At least they acted that way knowing me well enough to know that I wouldn t have them shot for speaking up. They had marched all the way to Turon and then had done nothing but wait around. There hadn t even been a fight. I told them that they also serve who only stand and wait and furthermore I d only wanted to take a single battalion here. They d invited themselves along and if they didn t like the party tough But as a sop to them I told them that I didn t plan to haul all the siege gun ammunition back and if they wanted to try shooting down the Crossman fort at dawn after the sunrise services they were welcome. This got a betting pool going immediately. The delegates were all still there in the morning and they watched the target practice. The fort was gone before the ammunition was. Brick walls are cannonball degradable. Eleven thousand four hundred and three Crossmen were killed and that s in decimal. The accountants figured it out that way because most of the delegates weren t up on the new math. The treasure taken didn t cover the costs of the war so we didn t have to worry about dividing it up. We so outnumbered the enemy that you had to be a knight or better to rate a Crossman sword to take home and many of the men got nothing but a surcoat or a bit of chain mail. But I got the Grand Master s sword and armor to set up in my living room and his battle flag for my wall. The delegates monopolized the riverboats for a few days going home and again the army had to wait. Before the boats were free the construction people got the railroad built down to where Turon had been and I told the troops to march home. Single file because there was other traffic on the road. One battalion of regulars under Baron Josep was left to take command of the former Crossman territories and they were soon complaining about the lack of adequate housing. That summer they actually had to rebuild Turon out of used brick. Dammit I can t be expected to think of everything. As things were closing down Francine came to me. She wasn t as icy as she d been before. Conrad this is a wondrous thing that you have done here to kill off a great power so casually. All of these great men from so many places they all respect you and love you and fear you all at the same time Even Henryk feels that same confused way. They have the honors and the titles but it is you that truly have the power I m still only a man trying to do my job Francine. You are far more. than that. You are the master builder You are the great mover and shaker of all of Christendom It is you that really control and command all things If you say so. I take it that you are ready to come home now Of course my love Within six months Duke Henryk had treaties with Pomerania Kujawy nine separate pagan Pruthenian tribes the kingdom of Hungary and the Bulgarian Empire the terms of which were essentially identical to those in our treaty with Prince Daniel of the Ruthenians. Even the pagans said they were willing to become Christians just so long as I didn t get mad at them. And three months after that since the Church still didn t have a Pope King Bela of Hungary Tsar Ivan Asen of Bulgaria and I got together and crowned Henryk King of Central Christendom. And after that I had an awful lot of steamboats and railroad tracks to build. Interlude Four The tape wound to a stop. I looked at the wench at my side and wondered just what I had been doing. Enjoying myself with a woman Making love with an alien Petting a dog Whatever it was I felt uneasy about it. I peeled myself away from her. Picking up another bad habit son I looked up and Tom was there. Why didn t you tell me about these servants Tom Why didn t you ask me There are all sorts of things going on around here. For your future reference all entertainers are human all servants are constructs and when in doubt ask them. If you re worried about offending her don t. Wenches don t get offended. If you really want to you can use her sexually. She s physically capable of it and she ll enjoy it as much as she can enjoy anything They re not very emotional you know. So she s more of a machine than an animal or a person If you want her to be. She doesn t really fit into any of the usual categories. She s a chemical construct self replicating servant household. I suppose she s an animal but a conventional biochemist wouldn t recognize any of the things she s made of. She s simply a perfect personal servant to be used and ignored. That s not why I m here. So why are you here and where have you been I said. Actually I ve been gone for over a hundred years subjective getting a handle on what Cousin Conrad has done. I gave him the garden variety explanation and I let you get it off the tape to save time. At nine hundred I might not have all that much time to waste. You re as healthy as one of your biocritters and I have a better academic background than Conrad I said. You ll still have to go back to school to pick up on it. For starters we used to think that the universe had eleven dimensions. Lately they ve proved the existence of four more. Damn. And here I thought I was ready for management. Don t worry about it. In another ten or twenty years you will be son. Wonderful. Anyway I m glad that Conrad worked out so well. It was quite a story. True. But stories never really end you know. Not when you have a time machine. EPILOGUE On top of a windy cliff in Africa at about two and a half million B.C. two long lost members of the Anthropological Corps were sitting and chewing on dried meat as well as their few remaining teeth would allow. My eyesight is getting a lot worse he said. Yeah but my periods have finally stopped she answered turning her back to him. Then it s finally too late to do the sensible thing. The cowardly thing she said. Stuff it he said turning his back to her. Yeah stuff it. There was a shimmer in the air in front of him high above the valley floor but his eyesight was so bad that he hardly noticed it. Only when the shimmer resolved itself into a tall athletic young man and that man started to walk toward him on the clear air did he finally take notice. Look he said. Look yourself she said unmoving. No. I really mean turn around and look. What Turn around dammit I think they ve finally found us Can you see him too She turned and stared at the blond young man who was smiling as he walked through the clean air without visible means of support. There was a lot of gold trim on his well fitted red and white dress uniform an outfit that would have looked more at home at a fancy costume ball than high above the ancient African plain. He s there she said but he s not one of ours. Who cares just so long as you see him too and I m not crazy I mean who cares who saves us or how he does it just so long as we re saved Sorry we took so long the smiling young apparition said his polished black boots resting on nothing a few feet from the edge of the cliff. You re not one of us the woman said. No I m from one of the alternate branches. I m here on loan lending a hand. Shall we go I can have you home in a few moments. He reached out to them. Fearfully hesitantly they reached out and took his hands.

Science Fiction

fiction

THE BLACK HOLE BY ALAN DEAN FOSTER A Del Rey Book Published by Ballantine Books Copyright 1979 Walt Disney Productions ISBN 0 345 28538 7 First Edition: December 1979 Cover art courtesy of Walt Disney Productions There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio Than are dreamt of in your philoso phy. Hamlet Prince of Denmark Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood Disasters in the sun. Horatio Soldier of Denmark 1 THE Universe bubbled and seethed to overflowing with paradoxes Harry Booth knew. One of the most ironic was that the mere observation of its wonders made a man feel older than his time when instead it should have made him feel young filled with the desire for exploration. Take himself for example. He was an inhabitant of the years euphemistically called middle age. Mentally the label meant nothing. His body felt as limber and healthy as when he had graduated from the university though his mind had adopted the outlook of a wizened centenarian a centenarian who had seen too much. C mon Harry he admonished himself. Cut it out. That s wishful thinking. You want to sound like the all knowing old sage of space. Your problem is you still have the perception as well as the physical sense of well being of a university student. Imagine yourself the inheritor of the skills of Swift and Voltaire if you must but you know darn well you ll never write anything that makes you worthy of sharpening the pencils of such giants. Be satisfied with what you are: a reasonably competent very lucky journalist. Lucky indeed he reminded himself. Half the reporters of Earth would have permanently relinquished use of their thirty favorite invectives for a chance to travel with one of the deep space life search ships. How you Harry Booth ended up on the Palomino when far better men and women languished behind merely to report its departure from Earth orbit is a mystery for the muses. Count your lucky stars. Glancing out the port of the laboratory cabin he tried to do just that. But there were far too many and none that could unequivocally be deemed lucky. Although he had pleasant company in the room he felt sad and lonely. Lonely because he had been away from home too long sad because their mission had turned up nothing. He forced himself to stand a little straighter. So you consider yourself a fortunate man. So stop complaining and do what you re designed to do. Report. He raised the tiny pen shaped recorder to his lips continuing to stare out the port as he spoke. December twenty four. Aboard the deep space research vessel Palomino. Harry Booth reporting. Ship and personnel are tired and discouraged but both are still functioning as planned. Man s long search for life in this section of our galaxy is drawing to a close. Pausing he glanced back into the lab to study his companions. A tense slim man tapped a stylus nervously on a light pad and looked back up at Booth. He wore an expression of perpetual uncertainty and looked much younger than the reporter though they were not so different in age. The uncertainty and nervousness were mitigated by an occasionally elfin sense of humor a wry outlook on the cosmos. The man executed a small condescending bow toward Booth the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. Behind him stood a softly beautiful woman whose face and figure were more graphically elfin than the man s sense of humor. Her mind however was as complex as the whorls in her hair. Both scientists were more serious than any Booth was used to working with a touch too dedicated for his taste. He might never truly get to know them but he had respected them from the first day out. They were cordial toward the lone layman in their midst and he reciprocated as best he could. She was feeding information into the lab computer. As always the sight had an unnerving effect on Booth. It reminded him of a mother feeding her baby. Where Katherine McCrae was concerned the analogy was not as bizarre as it might have been if applied to another woman. There was a particular reason why one would view her association with machines as unusually intimate. Booth returned to his dictation. Based upon five years of research involving stars holding planets theoretically likely to support life by the fair haired boy of the scientific world Dr. Alex Durant the man who had bowed now grinned playfully back at him this expedition has concluded eighteen months of extensive exploration and netted as with all previous expeditions of a similar nature and purpose nothing. Not a single alien civilization not a vertebrate nothing higher than a few inconsequential and unremarkable microbes plus evidence of a few peculiar chemical reactions on several scattered worlds. Booth clicked off the recorder and continued staring at Durant. That about sum it up Alex Repeated disappointment had purged Durant of the need to react defensively to such observations. Unnecessarily flip perhaps but you know I can t argue with the facts Harry. I m never unnecessarily flip Alex. Booth slipped the recorder back into a tunic pocket. You know that I m as disappointed in the results as you are. Probably more so. You can go back with the ship s banks full of valuable data on new worlds new phenomena stellar spectra and all kinds of info that ll have the research teams back on Earth singing hosannas to you for years. He looked glum. Sure we ve missed the big prize: finding substantial alien life. But you have your astrophysical esoterica to fall back on. For me and my news service though it s eighteen months down a transspatial drain. He thought a moment then added December twenty fourth. Not quite the way we d expected to celebrate Christmas Eve is it He turned again looked back out the port. We need reindeer and a fat man in a red suit. That would do for a report on extraterrestrial life wouldn t it He grunted. Christmas Eve. Durant forced a wider smile. Beats fighting the mobs of last minute shoppers. You couldn t order a thing about now. Order channels to the outlets would be saturated. Nearby McCrae flipped a control on the computer panel concluded her programming then laughed. You can both hang your stockings back by the engines. Maybe Santa will leave you something unexpected. Booth eyed her challengingly. Can you fit an alien civilization into a sock I d settle for anything non terran with more backbone than a semi permeable membrane. Durant s smile melted his melancholy. Or some stick chocolate he added cheerfully. I never will understand why the galley can t synthesize decent chocolate. I ll threaten it. McCrae started toward the lab exit. Maybe that ll produce results. I m going back to Power. Be back by Christmas. Durant watched her depart glanced down at the calculations he had been doodling with and spoke without looking across at Booth. Wonder what Holland would say if I asked him to extend the mission another two months. By widening our return parabola we could check out two additional systems according to my figures. I don t think you ll get much sympathy for that idea from our pilot Alex. Booth s gaze had returned to the stiff but always fascinating ocean of stars outside the port. Privately he d probably enjoy spending another year exploring. But he wasn t picked to command this expedition because of a penchant to indulge himself in personal pleasures. Schedule says we return by such and such a date. He ll move heaven and earths to dock in terran orbit on or before that date. Pizer now he d steer us through a star if you could guarantee him a fifty fifty chance of making the run. But he s only first officer not commander. He still smells of the audacity of youth. And the foolishness. Booth looked resigned. Life is ruled by such subtleties Alex. Commander or first officer experienced or brash and challenging. If there s one thing I ve learned in three decades of reporting on developments in science it s that the actions of people and subatomic particles aren t as different as most folks would think. If you want my real opinion I d rather have Vincent in charge than either of them. Me too Durant agreed. Of course that s impossible. Even though they re supposed to select the best people for each position. True said Booth. The problem is whether Vincent qualifies as people. He certainly doesn t fit the physical specifications for a command pilot. At the moment the subject of their conversation was up forward in command with Charles Pizer. Vincent s multiple arms were folded neatly back against his hovering barrel shaped body. Monitor indicators winked on or off as internal functions directed. His optical scanners were focused on the first officer. Pizer was slumped on one of the pilot lounges staring at the main screen. He took no notice of Vincent. That the robot was not a man was obvious. But the suggestion that he might not qualify as a person was one Pizer would have taken immediate exception to. Hands manipulated controls. Constellations and other star patterns slid viscously around on the screen. Suns shifted against a background of pale lambent green that color being easier on the eyes and according to the psychologists less depressing than a more realistic black would have been. It was all the same to the robot. The first officer s thoughts were drifting like the representations of stars and nebulae though not in harmony with them. What does that remind you of Vincent Presuming you to be referring to the holographic stellar display Mr. Pizer the machine responded smoothly I would say that it reminds me strongly of a holographic stellar display. Not me. To me it looks like multipea soup. Pizer raised up in the lounge the chair humming as it matched the movement of his body. I m starving . . . Lights flashed in sequence on the robot s flanks visual indication that the machine was preparing to respond. What else is new Mechanical sarcasm is a feature the cyberneticists could damn well have left in the hypothetical stage. Pizer gave the robot a sharp look. Nothing sitting loose in the galley I expect. What s on the menu for today Dehydrated turkey. A special treat Lieutenant since it s Christmas Eve. Also dehydrated cranberry sauce dehydrated gravy and giblets de Pizer cut him off. Save me from a full list of the special treats. The vision of dehydrated giblets had quashed whatever rising surge of hunger he had been experiencing. Vincent I envy you. That s not surprising but why Lieutenant No taste buds. He leaned back into the lounge. Servos whined adjusting to fit material properly against his back. He slipped his hands behind his head and stared longingly at the ceiling. Now if I were home I d sit down to a feast. A real one with the right amount of water already in the food not waiting to be added. Roast turkey with oyster stuffing sweet potatoes in orange sauce vegetables salad mince pie Remembering made him appear even younger than he was. He drifted happily along on the illusion of caloric ephemera until Vincent had to add ... bicarbonate of soda ... Pizer swung out of his chair and moved toward the doorway shoving the robot with mock belligerence. You ll never know one way or the other. Anyway I ll be eating the real thing soon enough. Eighteen months. It s the twenty fourth. Time to start back as you well know. Back to real turkey and real dressing. Back to real life. Take her home Heart o Steel. Actually there was very little steel in Vincent s body the robot having been constructed of far more durable and exotic alloys and metals. But he was still capable of recognizing and accepting an affectionate nickname such as the one Pizer had just bestowed on him. He did not offer metallurgical correction as he drifted toward the consoles plugged the correct armature into the board and began to prepare for the incipient change of course. Home for you Mr. Pizer. But out here s the only home I know. One free limb gestured at the swath of star speckled blackness that filled the port above the consoles. Pizer had already left the room. Kate McCrae broke the magnetic contact between her shoes and the deck and drifted back toward the Palomino s power center trying hard to block out the air of disappointment she had left back in the lab. Booth s personal pessimism she could dismiss easily enough. His interest in the mission stemmed from cruder needs than hers or Alex s. The reporter would be mentally translating the most significant of their dis coveries into credit points with his service disparaging them by the process which transmuted the advancement of science into monetary terms. It was in her nature however to see the best in everyone. Personal relationships were one area where she neglected to apply scientific methodology. So she made excuses for Harry Booth. If nothing else by being less than fervently involved in the problems of science he kept the journey in proper perspective. If they were less downcast by their failure to find life than they might have been it could be attributed to Booth s vision of science only in terms of monumental discoveries. He was a more accurate representative of mankind s hopes and expectations than anyone else on the ship she reminded herself. As such his disappointment would fade faster when they returned home. As would that of the general public. And who was she to condemn Harry Booth s view of the cosmos Columbus sailed west not to advance science or knowledge as much as to find gold gems and spices. Da Gama went to India for pepper and nutmeg and cloves not because he was intensely curious about the Indians. The motivations of such men did not diminish the magnitude of their discoveries. Maybe the Harry Booths were as necessary to mankind s opening of the Universe as were the Alex Durants. At least the reporter was good company. She had been around many journalists in her career. Others had tried to exploit her peculiar abilities. Not Booth. They could have done a lot worse than the crusty old veteran. A feeling of power sifted through her as she worked her way around the vast chamber of the center. Engines snored steadily shoving them past space as opposed to through it at a rapid pace. They were presently traveling at a comparative crawl having gone sublight preparatory to changing their course for home. At one time man had believed faster than light travel impossible. She smiled at the thought. If man had learned anything since stepping out past the atmospheric bubble that enclosed his world it was that the only immutability of the Universe lay in its infinite bounty of contradictions. On the cosmic docket the laws of nature seemed perpetually subject to challenge by the scientific court of appeals. Holland was working in the monitoring complex his gray uniform blending in with the colors of the tubes and metallic constructions surrounding him. The warmth that coursed through her at the sight was not wholly a result of the radiant heat from the engines. She moved next to him. Though he still didn t look up from his work she knew he had been aware of her presence from the instant she entered the center. Think it ll hold together long enough to get us home He smiled affectionately over at her. How can you have any doubts with Super Pilot at the controls Humility is one of your most endearing qualities. After eighteen months it s nice to see that you ve learned some. He paused then looked momentarily somber. I ve been concerned about suggestions of metal fatigue in the propulsion unit s inner chambers. I know they re designed to handle this kind of steady thrust but eighteen months with only an occasional brief rest is a long time to ask even the densest alloys to function without showing some kind of wear. The smile returned. I think we ll be okay though. He adjusted one slide control slightly watching with satisfaction as two nearby readouts shifted in response. I ll be sorry to see this mission end. It s tough to go home after so long and say the principal reason for making the trip in the first place came up unresolved. You give up too easily. I don t. We ll still have a few systems to study while curving home. And the Palomino sweep is only one expedition. There ll be others. And I ll charm the powers that be into assigning you and Vincent to any team I can get organized. The powers that be will have other plans for Vincent. Like what Like taking him apart to study the effects of the voyage on him. He s likely to be outmoded by new models by the time we return. They ll likely take him and They won t do anything of the sort to Vincent. I won t let them. He s entitled to remain inta to remain himself after all he s done for this mission. He s a lot more than a mere machine to be picked apart at some cyberneticist s whim. Holland tried to hide his amusement. That s not a very scientific outlook Dr. McCrae. What would you do to prevent such a thing She looked suddenly uncertain. I ... I don t know. But I d do something. Whatever was necessary. Adopt him maybe. Be an expensive adoption. Vincent doesn t run on bottle formulas and ground up fruits and vegetables. Fuel cell pablum s a lot more expensive than the organic variety. Maybe so. But I wouldn t let them take him apart any more than I d let them take apart any other close friend. There s just one hitch to your idea. Vincent and I ve been together a long time. Several missions prior to the Palomino. We re a package deal. That goes for any kind of future mission. She cocked her head to one side. Aren t you a bit long in the tooth for adoption That wasn t quite the kind of relationship I had in mind. How Vincent views it is his business. Holland turned from the controls and embraced her his arms tightening against her back as he pulled her close to him. The kiss was interrupted by a voice issuing from the monitoring console s communications grid. I regret the interruption Captain but there is something I think you should see. I ve put it on the central viewer. A little breathless they separated. McCrae brushed at the hair that had fallen over one eye. If you ve been together so long and have become so inseparable she murmured softly maybe you could do something about that blasted machine s lousy timing. I ll make it a point to mention it to him Holland assured her. His smile turned serious. Vincent wouldn t break in while I was working unless it was something genuinely important. We d better go see what he wants. Pizer closest to the command center reached it first. Vincent hovered there blocking out most of the main screen. Wondering what might have prompted the robot to issue the general call the first officer continued chewing reconstituted turkey as he strolled forward. What s up Vincent Hey you know this stuff ain t half bad. Either that or I ve been living off it for too long. When the machine failed to respond with an appropriately sarcastic comment Pizer dropped his cockiness and moved to look at the screen. Something serious Seriously interesting seriously fascinating not seriously dangerous Mr. Pizer. Not at this distance. Vincent moved to one side allowing the first officer a clear view of the two screens. What Pizer saw caused him to swallow the last mouthful of turkey in a rush. One screen displayed stars and other stellar phenomena not according to their output of visible light but in gravity wave schematics. In the upper right center of the screen was a dark oval shape surrounded by increasingly tightly bunched lines like the contour lines on a topographic map. However instead of designating altitude these lines represented increasingly powerful regions of gravitational force the depth of a gravity well of immense proportions. Vincent enlarged the upper right quadrant of the screen the one containing the dark oval. Instead of moving farther apart as the scale was expanded as did the lines surrounding nearby stars those around the dark blotch remained as dense as before. Pizer knew the magnification could be increased a hundred times without any white space ever appearing between the lines immediately encircling the central oval. A secondary screen offered a visual representation of the phenomenon but it was the g wave scheme that absorbed Pizer s attention. The intensity of the gravitational force at the center of the dark ellipse shape could be measured if not designated by the lines on the screen. A G2 star floated close by in space its substance gradually being drawn off by the center of powerful attraction. By measuring the speed and amount of material being drawn from the star s outer layers the Palomino s computers could estimate the strength of the invisible point in space. They had already performed the requisite calculations. The resultant figures were displayed below the g wave screen. Pizer noted them let out a low whistle. Yes sir. That is the most powerful black hole I have ever encountered said Vincent with appropriate solemnity. My banks hold no memory of anything stronger. Preliminary scanner results support that assumption. Give me a rough translation of those figures into something someone like Harry could grasp Vincent. He ll be wanting them for his report anyway. The robot considered his reply for a moment. Assuming a plus or minus ten percent factor in the wave measurements Mr. Pizer and a standard composition for the nearby star I would estimate this black hole contains the remains of anywhere from forty to a hundred stellar masses. That s about what I guessed. Pizer was nodding slowly in agreement. Big mother ain t it Only relatively sir. No pun intended. One stellar mass or a hundred it s still only a point in space. A good point to stay away from. Let s have a look at it on the holographier. The lights in the cockpit softened. A three dimensional image formed over a projector. Pizer studied it quietly for a while then thought to speak into a nearby com pickup. Hey Dr. Durant Harry you getting this Durant s voice replied immediately. Yes magnificent isn t it He stood on one side of the lab projector staring at the view suspended in front of him. Don t you think so too Harry Booth wide eyed was leaning almost into the projection. Right out of Dante s Inferno if you ask me. Maybe you think Hell s beautiful. I don t. Durant made an exasperated sound returned his attention to the projection. In addition to the material being drawn from the surface of the nearby doomed sun various extrasolar material in the form of asteroids meteoric bodies and nebulaic gas was also being sucked into the pit. As it vanished crushed out of normal existence by the enormous incomprehensible gravity the material signaled its passing by emitting tremendous bursts of X rays and gamma rays. This radiation in turn excited the vast flow of gas pouring into the gravity well to fluorescence generating a stunning display of visible light in many hues predominantly reds. It was this magnificent display and not the far more intense lower spectrum emissions the holographier projector was now revealing to their enthralled sight. You have no soul Harry. The journalist wasn t insulted. Occupational hazard Alex. Don t let me put a damper on your party. Enjoy the view. He heard a sound and turned saw McCrae entering the lab and in the corridor another shape just disappearing. Dan going forward She nodded. You know Dan. He s comfortable in the cockpit and back in power central. Any place on the ship in between and he feels like a free electron hopelessly trying to regain a lost level. Her attention went immediately to the projection and she became quiet. The most destructive force in the Universe Harry Durant was saying. Your hellish analogy is apt if unflattering to it. I ve had several colleagues insist that black holes will eventually devour the entire Universe. McCrae was moving her head examining the projection from different angles. They say that stars nebulae people everything will eventually end up down a single massive black hole. When you see giant suns sucked in to disappear without a trace it makes you wonder. Durant considered. Though I ve heard some support the theory that beyond a certain point a black hole begins to heat to the point of explosion. Maybe that s how the Universe runs in cycles. From one massive black hole that s swallowed everything. It erupts the primordial Big Bang to form new stars and nebulae and worlds which then are swallowed up again to form another massive black hole which explodes in its turn starting the whole creation collapse cycle all over again. You talking about reversing entropy Alex I m just saying that if we ve learned anything about the cosmos Kate it s that the only thing that s impossible is for something to be held unequivocally impossible. He spoke into the nearby com grid. Give us some magnification Vincent. Just visual for now. On command the robot obediently expanded the imaging of the black hole its attendant vanishing star and the glowing region of spatial debris tunneling into the abyss. Holland had reached the bridge joined Pizer in staring at the images on the screens. Booth s right the first officer said acknowledging the captain s presence. Every time I see one of those things I expect to spot a guy in red with horns and barbed tail wielding a pitchfork. Holland was now reading the numerical interpretations of the visual magnificence displayed by the screens. We ve found stranger things. Who knows This one s a monster all right. It possesses a certain morbid attraction sir Vincent struggled to admit. Believe it or not I have picked up something of still greater interest. The robot adjusted controls. The view of the collapsar leaped out at them the imager focusing on a small mass far to the left of the most intense gravity. The object was on the opposite side of the spiral of decaying matter from the companion star relatively close to the Palomino. Asteroid Pizer wondered aloud. Nothing remarkable about that Vincent. There are hundreds of similar objects being sucked in by that thing. I think not sir. Or if it is an asteroid or other subplanetary body it is a most remarkable one. I ve been monitoring it since I first detected evidence of the main gravity well. The thing hasn t moved not relative to the hole itself or to the nearby sun. I think it safe to say it is not part of this local system. Its stability therefore seems to indicate that it is some kind of independent artifact. In addition to its stability in a zone of intense gravitational disturbance it possesses a remarkably regular silhouette. A ship That is what comes to mind sir he told Holland. The captain spoke hurriedly into the pickup. Lab did you get that last information back there Do you copy Alex We copy Dan. Durant s voice reflected Holland s own amazement. I copy but I don t believe it. Neither do I... yet. He turned his attention back to the screens. We re near enough to close image something that size. A ship of those apparent dimensions hasn t been built in years. Assuming it s of human origin sir Pizer pointed out. Yes assuming that. Holland glanced over at the robot. Enlarge again Vincent and let s try to identify it. His heart was beating a little faster. Yes sir. One metal extension reached out from the mechanical s compact body to plug into a receptacle alongside the screen instrumen tation. Back in the lab Durant and McCrae waited for Vincent s actions to produce results. Both were dazed by the apparent discovery. Booth was for once beyond words. He stared blankly at the projection. How could anybody be out here ahead of us Durant mumbled. You heard Charlie. What about aliens Durant replied more harshly than he had intended his tone sharpened by months of disappointment. Aliens are a myth for story mongers to toy and tease us with. They re fiction. This trip has been proof enough of that. But it s only been one trip Alex said McCrae. It s too early in our history for us to make blanket statements about life in our galaxy. Too early. She stopped and they both stared at the projection. On another screen forward a series of ship silhouettes had begun to appear overlaid against the distant outline of the mystery object. Liberty seven. Vincent made his announcements in his most businesslike tone. No mass correlation. No shape correlation. A second silhouette appeared over the mysterious craft. Experimental deep space station series five. Reported lost. No mass correlation no shape correlation. Another. Sahara Module fifty three. Still another. Pluto four. No mass correlation no shape correlation. Even the most consummate professional can be stirred to excitement. When the next overlay appeared McCrae was unable to restrain herself. She had more reason than any of them to wish for correlation this time. Deep Space Probe One intoned Vincent methodically still unwilling to commit himself. Mass correlates save for minor discrepancies likely due to considerable expenditure of propellants. Shape also matches. Insofar as distance permits all other details conform. With a last unspoken sigh for the once again fading image of intelligent alien life Durant said formally into the pickup That s good enough for now Vincent. We ll accept the likelihood of this being an accurate identification until closer inspection proves otherwise. Program the ship s history and enter it into the tape. Searching records sir. That won t be necessary. McCrae kept her voice level though she was boiling inside at the possibility this identification had raised. You know the background of the Cygnus as well as any of us Alex. He looked uncomfortable didn t meet her stare. It s a formality Kate For the ship s records. We have to enter everything. You know that. I suppose. Vincent s voice brought her private agony into the open where everyone had to consider it despite the so far mutual attempt not to. Vincent was sensitive for a machine but he was not human. Dr. Kate was that not the ship your father was serving on The Cygnus she repeated as mechanically as Vincent might in his less colloquial moments. Mission: to survey for potentially habitable worlds and to search for non terrestrial extrasolar life. Essentially the same as ours only on a far more wide ranging extensive scale. You mean expensive scale said Booth undiplomatically. No one responded to that sally. Over the intercom they could hear Holland Pizer and the robot working. Signal the ship Vincent Holland was saving Try standard communications frequencies first. If they don t respond to any of them switch to emergency then military and then random codes. What about visual display sir We may be near enough. If they happen to have a scope pointing in our direction. No stick with the audio for now. We ll try something more complicated if and when everything else fails. As you say sir. Activate our long range sensors Charlie the captain said to his first officer. They may be generating all kinds of non communicative emissions if their regular broadcast units are disabled. Yes sir. But it ll be hell trying to pick out anything coherent against that background. Do the best you can. I ve seen you make an electron flow sensor squint. No one back in the lab smiled. Both Durant and Booth were watching McCrae for different reasons. Booth s instincts were heightened by a possible story. Durant wondered if the journalist had deliberately tried to provoke her with his criticism of her father s ship. He decided Booth wasn t that subtle. He had only been expressing a widely held opinion about the Cygnus and its astronomical cost. Objectively one had to admit that the Palomino was performing the same tasks for far less money. The question in Durant s mind was were they performing them as efficiently To any space scientist the Cygnus was a dream fulfilled. It was difficult to talk about cost effectiveness in relation to something as awesome as the Cygnus. Perhaps now there was a chance to find out who had been right the men who had built her or the ones who had paid for her. Space Probe and survey ship Cygnus McCrae was murmuring. Recalled to Earth twenty years ago its mission considered an expensive failure. She glanced sharply at Booth. He studied the fingers of his right hand. How that must have galled Hans Reinhardt the reporter said. If I remember rightly he didn t take kindly to criticism. I can imagine how he must ve reacted to the recall of his ship and the cancellation of her mission. The name from the past Booth had just mentioned was as magical to Durant as that of the Cygnus and was more accessible. He instantly forgot all about the reporter s possible provoking of his colleague. Did you actually meet Commander Reinhardt Harry I mean in person. I ve heard about him all my life read his research studied his theories. Collided with him would be a more accurate description Alex. You can say one thing about him: he was a scientific genius. Better qualified folks than I said just that Reinhardt foremost among them. He grinned. Reinhardt was a legend even before he took over supervision of the Cygnus project. Durant tried not to sound as defensive as he felt. He knew he was defending a disgraced man. A legend. So he believed. Personally I think he was overwhelmed by the image he had created of himself. You see that sort of thing a lot in my profession. I can t pretend to judge his scientific accomplishments. Only to rate him as a human being. There are all kinds of arrogance Alex. I don t think Reinhardt considered himself arrogant but he came off that way to a lot of people who were around him. I ll give him this Booth conceded. He could manipulate people as well as advanced physical theory. Reinhardt had the knack of making his personal ambitions seem a matter of enormous pride. Mankind must conquer the stars and all that. Talked the International Space Appropriations Committee into funding the costliest debacle of all time. He was certainly the Barnum of interstellar exploration. Oh don t get me wrong. Building and crewing the Cygnus was a helluva achievement one of mankind s proudest moments. Also one of his most impractical. This ship the Palomino and her sister ships are proof of that. But man must have his monuments right Alex The Cygnus was the Great Pyramid of our time and Reinhardt its Cheops. He caused her to be built staked his reputation on her. So once she existed he was forced to succeed no matter the dictates of logic or reason no matter the consequences. So he refused to admit failure of his mission and ignored the orders recalling her to Earth. We don t know that for a fact Harry Durant shot back. Not yet we don t. No one ever had to communicate across a distance like that from Earth to the Cygnus. Maybe the recall order never got through. Unnoticed now McCrae was standing by the port staring out into the emptiness that had swallowed her father and the rest of the crew of the Cygnus. On the edge of nearby oblivion hovered the answer to one of man s greatest modern mysteries the silent disappearance of that ship. She wished she could act more the detached observer more like the professional she was trained to be. Despite her best efforts though all she could think about all she could consider was the seemingly absurd but minutely possible chance that her father was still alive. I m going forward she muttered. Still busily debating the merits of Dr. Hans Reinhardt and the Cygnus Durant and Booth took no notice of her departure. 2 PIZER was making no attempt to restrain his own excitement. It stemmed from a similar yet different source than Durant s. I ve read about the Cygnus since I was a kid Dan he was telling Holland rambling on as disjointedly as the adolescent to whom he had just referred. She s sort of the Flying Dutchman of space the dream ship every explorer imagines himself finding. And we ve found her Holland permitted himself a slight smile. Get us close enough Pizer continued and Vincent and I can go aboard her on tethers. Surprisingly the anticipated admonition came not from the man but from the machine. To quote Cicero Vincent began rashness is the characteristic of youth prudence that of mellowed age and discretion the better part of valor. The robot regarded the first officer. It would be best not to rush headlong into possible danger until we have a better idea of what happened. Yeah. Sure. Of course. Pizer suddenly frowned looked up from the control console. Cicero who Vincent made a noise that passed for mechanical choking. Pizer was rescued from the robot s response by the appearance of McCrae and the sound of Booth speaking through the intercom system. We have to go in Captain the reporter was saying. No sense leaving the story of a lifetime untold. I m more afraid of that black hole that distortion of normal healthy space than any of you. But I d go into Hell itself in search of grist for a story for my listeners. If we get caught by that gravitational field Harry Holland replied that s all we ll be. Grist. Superdense grist. So I happen to think there is a reason for leaving the story of a lifetime untold. It s looking right at us and vice versa. I m not going into Hell after a story nor is anyone else on this ship. But Captain ... Holland flipped him off turned to his first officer. Picking up anything on the sensors Charlie Any response yet to Vincent s calls Pizer stared glumly at his readouts. Negative but with all that electromagnetic turbulence out there the signal might not be getting through. Or it s possible someone on the Cygnus is receiving and their reply isn t reaching us. Their signal might be weak if their own broadcast circuitry isn t operating at full efficiency. It could be diluted or scattered by the stuff around us beyond our ability to sort it out. The ether s alive from ten to the twenty first hertz all the way down through radio. One thing we can assume though. We have to. What s that That their radiation shielding s intact. Otherwise anyone left aboard alive would ve been cooked as soon as they entered this region just by the gamma radiation alone. My God McCrae finally murmured breaking her silence and staring at the screen all these years of waiting and wondering of the authorities being able to do no more than shrug when asked about the fate of the Cygnus and her people and there she is. The answer to all those mysteries and rumors. She looked from the screen to Holland. Dan... I know how you must feel Kate but that ship s hanging on the edge of a whirlpool to nothingness. We can t take the chance. We can t risk At least check with Alex. She was pleading knowing that the physicist s opinion would carry more weight than her own which Holland was rightly bound to regard as hostage to emotion. All right. He spoke into the com pickup. Alex you ve been listening in Haven t missed a word Dan came the prompt reply. Tell me something that ll convince me it s safe for us to take a closer look. Give me a good solid non humanitarian reason for doing so. Durant had been busy integrating information from the Palomino s long range scanners. I can do it with one observation Dan. According to our instrumentation the Cygnus hasn t moved an iota since we first de tected it. You re positive Absolutely. Its position relative to the nearby star is unvarying. It s not in orbit around either the star or the collapsar. She s just sitting there. Holland considered. That s crazy Alex. If it s not orbiting the star and its drive isn t functioning and I can tell that it s not from our readouts up here then the ship should be reacting at least marginally to the effect of the gravity well. You sure she hasn t been put in a functional orbit around it Sorry Dan. Durant sounded apologetic. She s not orbiting anything. Might as well not be a black hole there for all the effect it seems to be having on her. Or not having on her. It s almost as if she s somehow managed to anchor herself to a point in space. Or found some way to negate gravitational forces other than by pushing against them with her drive. If it s safe for the Cygnus we can assume until shown otherwise that it s safe for the Palomino You re stretching supposition Alex. Maybe. But I don t have any explanation for her stability. Just the fact that she is. How could a lifeless derelict Booth put in defy that kind of steady gravitational pull If her engines aren t functioning she ought to be sliding down into the well. I don t know how she s doing it but that s reason enough for investigating her. Durant directed his voice back to the pickup. That s my main reason for advising a closer look Dan. If the Cygnus can somehow ne gate gravity waves without using a drive it s incumbent on us to try to find out how she s doing it. And Harry we don t know that she s lifeless. Not showing her lights or a drive isn t sufficient evidence of lifelessness. Well she looks lifeless Booth harrumphed. It could be a natural phenomenon Alex said Holland. I know that. That s equally worthy of investigation. No no. You re missing my point Alex. The captain stared indecisively at his instruments. The Cygnus may not be frozen in space voluntarily. With a sun on one side of her and a massive black hole on the other there s enough electromagnetic perturbations running through here to do funny things to the fabric of space. Space isn t nylon Dan. Durant sounded impatient. You know what I m getting at. If it is a natural phenomenon we might find ourselves unable to break free of its influence. The Cygnus may be sitting where she is because she has no choice. Pull alongside her and the same effect might trap us out here also. Durant knew he couldn t just ignore Holland s hypothesis. All right let s do this: as scientific leader of this mission I formally advise carrying out a closer inspection. We ll have all our standard grav wave in strumentation primed to alert us the instant any kind of gravitational abnormality is detected and I ll program corollary scanners for backup. At the first hint that anything bizarre is affecting us we ll maximize the drive and move clear. Holland s thoughts were still on the side of caution. I don t know. It came down to the fact that ship and crew were his responsibility even though at such moments he was supposed to follow Durant s and McCrae s directives. It might be an instantaneous effect. We might not be able to break free no matter how quickly we detect something out of the ordinary. Now you re trying to overrule me on the basis of an implied dangerous effect for which we have no supporting hard evidence Dan. We re preparing to return home. Let s take this one last risk and then it ll all be over except for collecting our back pay. We ve been gifted with the chance to answer an awful lot of old questions about the Cygnus about her mission and about inconsistencies in gravity field theory that have plagued physicists since Einstein. There s no telling when another ship might get out this way and by that time the Cygnus may be swallowed up. Holland weighed all the evidence and all the arguments. My instincts are still against it Alex. Maybe but that s hardly sound scientific grounds for not investigating more closely. I know I know. Holland grumbled a little then flipped off the holographier nudged other controls. All right. You get your electronic eyes and ears tuned proper and we ll go in for a closer look. We ll have to go in at an angle or we ll chance being taken by the gravity well. Maybe the Cygnus isn t affected by it but I have to assume the Palomino will be. We ll do a tight cometary and get out. He turned his full attention to the console in front of him spoke to his first officer without turning. Fix a coordinate approach Charlie. We ll pass as slow as we can so Alex and Kate can take ample readings but I want a reasonable margin of thrust programmed in. If we lose too much velocity in passing we won t get a chance to make it up. He patted his stomach grinned tightly. I d like to lose a few centimeters off my waistline but not that way. Right sir. The captain s cautionary attitude hadn t dampened Pizer s enthusiasm for the investigation but he was subdued by the seriousness of the attempt He hadn t been recommended to be first officer of the Palomino solely on the basis of his infectiously cheerful personality. Coordinate heading three oh five x two seven five y one seven seven z. Pizer s fingers danced over contact switches. Computer verifies. That ll give us fifteen percent extra if we need it. Adequate. Holland entered the coordinates into the navigation block activated the necessary instrumentation for attitude adjustment. The Palomino shifted silently in space pointing toward destruction instead of away from it. Attitude set. Engines ready Pizer replied. Vincent give us full power on our sublights. Yes Captain. Connected by umbilical armature to the main console the robot communicated instructions to Power. Useless above light speed the ship s powerful conventional thrusters engaged and she began to accelerate forward. Several minutes passed as they continued to gain speed. Then there was a jolt expected but still a shock a physical reminder of the unseen immensity they would have to flirt so carefully with. McCrae braced herself against the sides of the portal leading into the lab. Durant was adjusting the restraints on his lounge. Better strap yourself in. The well will intensify as we near the Cygnus. Turbulence could get worse. Nothing s certain in there. Booth was already making certain his own restraints were secured. I thought the pull would be steady. Growing constantly and without variance. It does. Durant explained while securing a last strap over his waist. That isn t contradicted by the turbulence. Partly it derives from the huge quantity of gas solar plasma and other material being drawn down into the hole. And there are likely to be other effects. Gravity around a black hole like other things doesn t act in a manner we re accustomed to. As if to support his comments another jolt rocked the ship. Think of us as a gnat trying to bell a cat McCrae added. We re safe from the irresistible strength of the cat but its snores still affect us. I see. Booth glanced speculatively out the nearby port. The trick is to do the job and slip away without waking it up. Or else... We get swallowed McCrae finished for him. But the Cygnus hasn t been swallowed. Another unseen hand shoved at the Palomino harder this time. The crew became introspective each considering the overriding mystery posed by the Cygmus s seeming stability in the face of irresistible forces. Why hadn t the giant research ship vanished crushed out of normal space by the strength of the black hole They would have to employ the full power of the Palomino merely to skim the edge of the collapsar s area of influence. The gnat was defying the awakened cat s full strength. It made no sense no sense at all. But they would somehow have to find the answer make sense from the information the ship s scanners would provide as they raced past. Pizer studied the constantly shifting display on the main navigation screen. Lines changed patiently twisting a cat s cradle around the central growing image of the motionless Cygnus. Range two nine five one six and closing. Thrusters operating smoothly. No problems. What s your reading on the Cygnus s attitude Vincent Holland tried to glance around so he could see the robot but his chair restraints restricted his movement. Still holding steady sir. Position relative to the star Constant. Most remarkable. Holland s stomach seemed to drop half a meter as external gravity played havoc with the Palomino s internal system. Yeah he finally replied regaining his visceral equilibrium most remarkable. I ll find time to admire the situation properly when remarkably we re in the clear again. Gravitational reading Two point four seven on the stress scale and rising. Rate of rise also increasing sir. The restraints still gave Holland enough freedom of movement to shake his head he was worried. That s not good. With that much additional pull we ll go by too fast to do any good. He demanded information from the ship s computer accepted it along with the machine s several suggestions. Change course. Put us in an altered escape angle of a hundred seventy five perpendicular to the axis of maximum attraction. Compensate by cutting thrust two thirds. We ll still maintain original projected escape velocity at perihelion. But I want constant monitoring of our revised course. If we deviate too much don t hit it just right we re going to have a devil of a time breaking clear. The Palomino continued to arc in toward the amazingly stable Cygnus. Turbulence grew worse. The strain was reflected in the faces of the pilots the buffeting of their ship was matched by emotional turbulence within. One particularly bad jolt shook them. Pizer felt the impression of his restraints all over his body. She s bucking like a bronco he mumbled wishing he were back in Texas NAT dealing with more manageable varieties of turbulence. You could reason with a horse. Gravity. Gravity report Mr. Pizer Holland repeated sharply when his first officer failed to respond at once. No time for daydreaming now. Sorry sir. Pizer devoted full attention to the proper readouts all thoughts of radical forms of equine displacement forgotten. Twenty point nine six and still climbing. He wondered how long it would be before the gauge broke. Like the Palomino it was designed to withstand considerable forces. The ship had performed surveys of several Jovian type worlds handling multiple gravities and methane storms with equal equanimity. The perversion of nature they were teasing now however was to the gravity of Jupiter as a pebble was to a mountain. Holland continued to watch his instruments apprehensively. If they could count on a steady pull from the black hole the ship s navigation computer would pull them through without difficulty. But as the turbulence they continued to experience was proving the region of space they were now passing through was subject to gravitational and electromagnetic variations outside the experiences programmed into the Palomino s brain. They might be forced to maneuver suddenly and radically might have to take risks no machine operating solely on logic and a predisposition based on prior navigational experience would take. It was therefore time to engage the ship s ultimate navigational programmer the only one on board that could cope with the unexpected dangers the bizarre distortion of space outside might thrust on them. Switching to manual Holland said matter of factly touching buttons in sequence on the console in front of him. A metal arm decorated with switches and buttons popped out of the console. He felt unreasonably better now that he was personally in control of the ship s movements a reaction common to all pilots of all vessels since the dawn of transportation. Captain Yes Vincent Permit me to elucidate a concern sir. Go ahead and elucidate. I m not sure how long the engines will remain operable against this much attractive force when we turn outward again. They are quite capable of producing the thrust necessary to carry us clear. But it is their durability under such conditions that concerns me. Even a brief loss of power could prove disastrous and we cannot engage the supralight drive this close to a sun not to mention what it might do to the Cygnus. I know all that Vincent. I merely reiterate it sir because of the thought that Dr. Alex and Dr. Kate will be displeased with anything short of a thorough inspection of the Cygnus and whatever strange force is holding it steady in its present lo cation. Holland nodded glanced momentarily at a particular gauge. It read no more than he had expected it to but he still shook a little inside at the sight of numbers he had never expected to see behind the transparent face of the readout. Holland here he said toward the com pickup The gravity s close to the maximum we can cope with Alex. I ve tried to slow our speed at perihelion as much as possible. Vincent has just expressed concern about the reliability of the engines under this kind of stress. We can afford one pass but then we have to get the hell out. Isn t it possible the scientist s voice intoned over the speaker that we might... One pass and that s it. I ll try to give you as much time as I can. Attend to your instruments Alex. Let s make this one pass worth the effort. Coming up on target and slowing sir Pizer announced. Slow us a little more Vincent Holland ordered the robot. We ll risk passing with a five percent margin. As you wish sir. But if I may be allowed to say... You may not. Yes sir. The robot succeeded in conveying a distinct feeling of disapproval. We ll pass below her sir. Pizer was dividing his gaze between the foreport and several readouts. Check. Ready on thrusters Vincent. Standing by sir. A vast dark bulk hove into view. It thoroughly dominated the Palomino. The long roughly rectangular shape bulged at the stern. Each of her eight drive exhausts was large enough to swallow the Palomino. She wore her grid work skeleton externally like an insect. She was one of mankind s greatest technological triumphs. Even in the darkness Holland felt a shiver of excitement pass through him at the sight of the enormous vessel. What pilot wouldn t have given an eye to command such a behemoth The Cygnus had been designed to carry out any imaginable scientific mission deep space exploration might require. Its research capabilities far outstripped those of a dozen ships the size of the Palomino. That those extensive facilities incorporated into the Cygnus s basic design might never be used was something few gave thought to in the heady days of her planning and construction. She had been built to be completely self supporting able to recycle air and food and water for hundreds of years if necessary able to travel the length of the galaxy as long as the children s children of her original crew retained the knowledge to man her. That was a last scene scenario however. Her creators expected her to return her original crew to Earth. The concept of a ship capable of carrying on from generation to generation was an appealingly romantic one that served a useful propagandistic purpose helping to clear the way come appropriations time for vast expenditures of doubtful utility. She was armed too huge sums spent to satisfy an appeal to xenophobic fears that no longer haunted mankind. In Holland s subsequent searches through space no intelligent aliens friendly or otherwise had been encountered. But such fears had existed at the time of the Cygnus s construction. So jingoistic elements had forced the installation on the great ship of the means of extermination as well as of revelation. Nothing like her had been built before. It was likely nothing like her would be built again. Not when smaller less costly vessels like the Palomino and her sister ships could do the same work and cover far greater reaches of space for the same expenditure of time and personnel. Nonetheless she remained a monument to man s mastery of physical engineering and ability. She awed even so stolid a man as Holland by her sheer size and presence. Stand by with your scanners Alex. We re going under her. I ll try to roll us after passage to give every instrument a chance to record in case of any failures. Enormous metal members reached out toward the Palomino. They moved nearer the little ship slipping toward silent supports weighing hundreds of tons on Earth weighing nothing here . . . and something utterly unexpected happened. The turbulence ceased. That was absolutely the last thing Holland would have imagined. Gravitational effects had to have been affected or the Cygnus would not have been holding its position as it was. They were more than affected they no longer were. He glanced incredulously over at his first officer. As he checked and rechecked the readouts on the console before him Pizer displayed a dumbfounded look. Zero gravity. Nothing. There s evidence of artificial gravity in use on the Cygnus but nothing from the black hole. According to sensors it s exerting less pull on us now than a toy globe. That s impossible. What about the star Same thing meaning nothing Pizer told him. Reverse thrust. Vincent complied and the Palomino slowed to a comparative crawl. Stand by. The phenomenon may be temporary. It was not. The Palomino sat driveless in space under the dark mass of the Cygnus like a chick huddled beneath its mother s protective wing. It was coasting now drifting slowly forward. Easy on the thrusters now Vincent. Take us around and upside her Charlie. Man and machine moved to comply with the orders. Holland continued to examine his sensor readouts still hardly believing what they told him. Smooth as glass he muttered softly. Incredible. And frightening he told himself. Anything that could so utterly eliminate the kind of attractive power they had just passed through hinted at knowledge that could prove dangerous as well as benign. Voices drifted out at him from the speaker. It s like the eye of a hurricane. That was Kate s voice. What s happened Alex I can t imagine what s causing it. Neither can I Durant confessed readily. As we suspected a natural phenomenon or something generated from the Cygnus. Not a clue which it is so far. Look sharp. Holland could visualize Durant turning his full attention to the information that must be pouring into the lab from the external scanners and sensors. The Palomino drifted around the flank of the immense ship curved up and started to arc around to pass over it. Everyone was busy at his or her station. They were trying to solve a pair of mysteries: one the absence of pull from the black hole and two the existence of the ghost ship itself. McCrae was overcome with personal frustration. She left the task of monitoring the incoming statistics to Durant. Slipping free of her chair she moved to the port and found herself staring fixedly at the meters of metal sliding past behind them. Soon they would reach the end of their turn come around to pass across the topside of the ship. Her attitude was not very professional just then it was very human. Durant addressed the pickup. Are you learning anything forward Charlie Nothing of a revealing nature has come in back here. And nothing abnormal up here Alex came the first officer s reply. Negative. Whatever s canceling out the gravitational pull hereabouts isn t interfering at all with the rest of the electromagnetic junk that s filling this section of space. There are a hundred thousand natural broadcasts flying around us. I can t punch anything through it even this close. If there s anyone left on board capable of communicating which I sincerely doubt they ve got the same problems if they re trying to reach us. There has to be someone alive on board McCrae thought fiercely. There has to be It . . . it doesn t even have to be Dad. Just someone who can tell us what happened. To have come this close actually to have found the long lost Cygnus and not to learn what had happened to her would be intolerable. She insisted to herself that the reasons for pursuing the investigation further were grounded soundly in science and not in personal emotions. But she knew it would be hard if not impossible to conceal her feelings from the rest of the crew especially from Dan Holland. She wasn t at all sure she wanted to make the effort. The Palomino had passed beyond the Cygnus began to curve back toward her. Bring us full around Charlie. We ll try orbiting her forward then we ll check out the engines. And after that After that if there s still no sign of life aboard... we ll see. Yes sir. Pizer concealed his impatience. Bringing her around sir. The Palomino s attitude thrusters fired. A violent tremor ran through the length of the ship like a sudden chill. Then they were tumbling out of control away from the Cygnus. A small gauge in front of Holland jumped instantly from zero to eleven then twelve. It continued rising toward unthinkable levels with terrifying rapidity. Gravity approaching maximum Dan Pizer shouted fighting the panic in his guts. My God. Holland s gaze remained locked on the single critical readout. It s got us... 3 FULL power on all thrusters. Give me a hundred percent additional on our roll quads. Holland was frantically jabbing at controls eyes darting from one readout to the next. Each appeared more threatening than its neighbor. On the screen the Cygnus remained peaceful and stable receding behind them. Malignant invisibilities smote the tiny vessel. Back near Power several sensitive monitors ruptured sending highly compressed gases whistling wildly down corridors and into unsealed rooms. What the hell happened Pizer demanded of silent fates. What happened The zone of null g. Holland spoke rapidly working at his console. Its parameters are variable. I thought we had at least a couple of kilometers of quiet in which to turn but the radius of the stable zone shifted while we were passing close to the Cygnus. It shrank inward. My fault he was stammering through clenched teeth. It was my fault. We should have been monitoring it somehow. Don t blame yourself. Pizer shifted power from one weakened thruster to another balanced the propulsive system as best he could given their wild course. No one else thought of it. Besides there s no way we could have monitored it. How can you monitor something you don t understand We probably don t even have the instruments for it. All right Charlie. You re right. Time for fixing the blame later. A warning light began flashing for attention on the left of his console. Vincent noticed it an instant before Holland. Air break amidships. The robot spoke calmly. Losing storage pressure. He studied fresh information correlated it with what the computer was trying to tell him. Regeneration system failure. Seals are forming in the system. Pressure is holding sir but cannot do so indefinitely. Do what you can with it Vincent. I haven t got time now. Charlie give us a full burst at one eighty degrees on my count on the roll quads. If we don t correct our tumble we might as well turn off the engines. Standing by. Pizer s fingers rested tensely on two separate contact switches. Mark. Five four three two one... Pizer impressed the switches. The Palomino stopped tumbling... violently. The unexpected jolt nearly threw Durant McCrae and Booth from their positions. Overpressurized beyond design the air lines running through the lab reacted to the abrupt cessation of spin and the corresponding shift in the ship s artificial gravity by releasing their pent up force. Compressed air hissed into the room. The Palomino was tumbling again less severely now and in the opposite direction. McCrae shouted toward the pickup. Dan we ve got a line break back here too Durant was hastily examining the requisite gauges. Readout shows primary and secondary carry lines ruptured. We ll be breathing soup pretty soon and that for only a little while if we don t get them fixed. Then get on it was Holland s reply. We ve stabilized enough for you to move around but watch yourselves. I m not promising anything. Including living out the day he told himself grimly. McCrae was first out of her chair. She hurried to help Booth unlock his restraints. Their problem now was not a lack of air but a surplus of it. If the pressure in the system dropped too low the regenerators would fail. Emergency supplies would reprime the regenerators but more than likely they were breathing some emergency atmosphere already. When that supply was gone they would have only the old air circulating loosely through the ship to breathe. That would turn stale then unbreathable all too quickly. Before too long they would suffocate. All the regular crew had some training in ship maintenance except Harry Booth. Such diversified expertise was necessary with so small a complement. Kate struggled to recall the schematics of the ship s atmo sphere systemology knowing their lives depended on it. On that and on Dan and Charlie and Vincent halting their plunge. No use worrying about that possibility she told herself firmly. If they failed to stop their fall and soon she would be flattened before she knew what was happening to her. Concentrate on the regeneration system and let the others worry about keeping us alive long enough to enjoy my repairs. Pizer adjusted the thrusters yet again muttered Never rains . .. The rest was not audible. We re doing better Charlie. But not enough better. Full power on attitude Quads A and B. We re going in at an angle now but we re still going in. The first officer switched his own instrumentation over to manual control. Mark . . . five four three two one ... Again the first officer activated selected external adjusters. Again the Palomino reacted. Not as violently this time and with greater precision. If we can just bring her around Holland murmured nervously we ll have a fighting chance. He knew it had to be finished soon. If they fell much further into the grip of that unrelenting gravity they would forever lose all chance of breaking free. Vincent s cautionary remark about the durability of the thrusters under such strain came back to him but he pushed it from his mind. Either the units would continue to function or they would fail. He had to assume the former because it was fatal to consider the latter. For a few seconds he toyed with the idea of slamming on the supralight drive which should be sufficient to pull them clear. Yeah he thought. In pieces. He would leave that for a last resort and pray if he had to do it that the equations were all wrong. The supralight drive operated with wonderful efficiency in a massless environment. Around much mass it displayed a disconcerting tendency to push against the ship instead of against nothing. Under such circumstances it could push a ship apart also the contents of said ship which included any crew. Hence the need for powerful sublight engines to shove a starship out into the void where it could function properly and harmlessly. A new warning light came on. Again it was Vincent who noticed it first. Hull breach indication Captain. Serious Not immediately. The number four hatch cover just blew outward. The section has been sealed. What s in number four bay A pause while the robot checked inventory then Miscellaneous supplies sir. Non regenerable some organics. What kind If it s survey equipment or samples we can forget it. I m afraid not sir. Manifest shows Pharmaceuticals among the contents. Damn. We can t risk losing that stuff and we could do just that if we re jolted hard enough or if the artificial grav goes out. Be just about right for us to break free of this and then die on the way home for lack of the right medicine to treat some otherwise minor infection. I agree sir. Vincent removed his armature from the console socket and swiveled to depart from the cockpit. I ll go outside and secure the hatch. I don t like it but. . . watch yourself. This is more pull than we ve ever had to deal with. If you break loose you won t be sucked in much faster than the ship but your thrusters might not be enough to boost you back to the hull and there s no way we could maneuver to retrieve you. Yes sir. I am cognizant of the dangers sir. Rest assured I will exercise utmost caution. Vincent floated from the cockpit moving carefully but at high speed back through the corridors. Scanning the readouts Holland s eyes fell again on the still winking lights which reminded him of the damage to their air system. Alex Harry he called into the pickup you still okay back there Rocky but no injuries Dan. Durant sounded tired. We re still working on the lines that broke here in the lab. Leave those for Kate. She s faster than either of you. Check out the damage farther back where the initial interruption occurred. Check. Durant started for the doorway. Let s go Harry. Good luck here Kate. She was already running a diagnostic pen over the multiple tube fracture. You fix the first headache Alex I ll handle this one. She waved the pen at him and he smiled back each grin for the other s benefit and not an expression of humor. Not now. Apply sealer to the edge of the break she told herself trying to see the instruction tape forcing it to unspool once more inside her head. Place sealant alloy between sealer and far end of break . . . She continued like that working steadily if slowly her body tense in expectancy of further jolts and shudders. Normally Vincent would not have bothered with a tether. His internal thrusters provided enough power for him to fly with confidence around any ship. But this was not normal space they were spinning through and Vincent was programmed to be prudent. So he double checked to make sure the high strength metalweave cable was attached securely to himself and to the ship. Then he slid back the exterior hatch of the air lock and made his way outside. The black hole was a dark nothingness resting in the center of a glowing vortex of radiant gas and larger clumps of matter. It attracted his attention only briefly. He was also programmed to be curious though less so than humans. So he ignored the mesmerizing view of the stellar maelstrom and turned his optics instead on the various projections extruding from the Palomino s hull. He had to make his way around them so that his extendible magnetic limbs would remain firmly in contact with the ship s skin. As he moved slowly across the hull back toward the free floating hatch to be resecured he was aware of a steady thunder reverberating around him. It was a thunder no human could have heard a purely electronic thunder the wail dying matter generated as it was crushed out of existence. It possessed also a certain poignancy no human could have appreciated for in many ways Vincent was closer in structure to the meteoric material plunging past him to destruction than he was to the creature known as man. Indeed he mused I am the same stuff differently formed and imbued with intelligence. I am cousin both to meteor and to man. Then his thoughts turned to more prosaic matters: a loose hatch and the possibility of uncertain footing. I do wonder why I was programmed to think in so many human metaphors he thought. I have no feet therefore technically speaking I am incapable of losing my footing. Fortunately his creators and designers had foreseen the possibility of such confusion arising in his electronic mind and had counterprogrammed a restraining pacifying feature into all such mechanicals: humor. Holland and Pizer were unaware of Vincent s private musings as they struggled to stabilize the ship. But they were very much aware of Vincent. Give me a check on his progress Charlie. Pizer moved to comply leaving part of his attention on the still vacillating readouts before him. Vincent do you read This is Charlie Vincent. A loud sizzle like a thousand tons of bacon frying hissed back at him from the speaker. He tried again. Vincent do you read What s it like out there Again the sound of the vast cosmic cookpot. He looked across at Holland shook his head. No response. You heard what we re getting. I don t like it. Pizer started to comment but Holland cut him off. Yes I know I ve been saying that a lot lately. Take it easy on me will you He may be encountering more difficulty than I thought he would. He hesitated then after a moment s consideration said I hate to bother Kate. It s a strain for her and she s busy enough as it is. Pizer said nothing. Holland finally addressed the com pickup. Kate She flashed a last burst with the sealer set it aside and moved within easy reception range of the com unit. I m here Dan. How are you coming on those lines Getting there. It s easy to work the sealer but hard to be neat about it. I remember the diagrams pretty well though and records are helping me make sure I m emplacing the new modules properly. You d better or we ll find ourselves breathing hydrogen instead of air he teased. Then he continued more seriously. I don t like to trouble you with this Kate but we either have a transmission problem or Vincent s receiver is out. In any case we can t contact him. See if you can esplink with him. I need to know how he s doing. I understand Dan. She sat down in her chair forced herself to relax. I ll give him a call. Appreciate it. Kate closed her eyes. Not that it was necessary to the process but doing so helped her concentrate by eliminating sources of possible distraction. She did not need her eyes to see Vincent any more than he needed his electronic optics to see back at her. That s what the experts had told her. They had explained everything in detail when they had inquired if she wished to undergo the operation. That had been ten years ago. Though in fact she had feared the operation she had covered her instinctive reaction so professionally with such naturalness and so convincingly that no one had thought to test her for truthfulness. The decision had to be a voluntary one. Her intelligence and ability had qualified her without subsidiary tests. So had her psych profile. She had known that a scientist able to engage esplink with a correspondingly equipped mechanical had a tremendous advantage over colleagues in wangling important and interesting assignments. Like thousands of others she had wanted to be selected for deep space research. In the highly competitive academic free for all that surrounded such applications every advantage one had over one s colleagues was important. Esplink ability could be critical. It was such a powerful plus because not every operation resulted in the ability to link. Also not every volunteer came out from under the operation or sometimes one would emerge into consciousness with parts of his mental self badly confused. Sometimes permanently confused. Kate McCrae s operation had been one of those that proved completely successful. She well remembered her first and last sight of the esplink itself a tiny metal cylinder half the size of the nail on her little finger. It was buried inside her skull now always ready and able to translate her properly conceived thoughts to a receptive machine unit and to receive impulses in turn from units equipped to broadcast. Sometimes getting it right was more of a strain than anyone imagined including Holland. But the particular rapport Kate had acquired with mechanicals such as Vincent made the risk and strain worthwhile. Now she adjusted her thoughts as she had been trained to do letting them flow outward. It pleased her to regard the process as something wonderfully magical rather than as the simple transference of wave struc tures from one point in space to another. An alarmingly long time . . . several seconds . . . passed before the robot eventually responded. I m sorry Dr. Kate. I was occupied. You mean preoccupied she thought back at him. No . . . occupied. I am never preoccupied. No one can technically be preoccupied as that implies pre Not now Vincent. Save the philosophical homilies for later. You re okay I am still attached to the ship and functioning as intended if that s what you mean. You know it is you disreputable hunk of scrap. Now Doctor ... no flattery when I m working. You will distract me. Unlikely. Where are you A brief pause then Nearly over bay four. I should be able to see the hatch cover soon. Good. She fought to adjust her brain to create audible words spoke dreamily toward the com pickup. Dan I ve made contact with Vincent. Fine. He s all right out there Yes and nearly in sight of the hatch he says. Keep us posted. She turned her thoughts back inward. Any trouble Electromagnetic effects like I ve never experienced. And hope never to experience again. Makes my skin crawl. McCrae smiled eyes still peacefully shut. Vincent could sound so human when he wanted to that she had to remind herself he was a machine an artificial construct of printed circuits and cold alloy much like the Palomino. I am in sight of the hatch now he told her the voice echoing inside her head. Over the hatch opening now. She waited knowing he was inspecting the damage. His analysis was typically succinct The concussion apparently caused the emergency explosive bolts securing the hatch to misfire. Fortunately only the bolts on the normally latched side fired or I d have no hatch here to fix. I will make temporary repairs by welding it shut. Good enough. She relaxed further found herself thinking about Dan as Vincent worked about his reaction to her whenever the esplink was brought up. He knows it s there permanently inside me. Does he secretly regard me as some kind of mutated freak part human part machine She knew some people reacted that way to those equipped with the links and wondered if that was why Dan was always so kind and gentle with her. Or was it something more as she had often hoped Of course he had never given any definite indication that he regarded the presence of the link as anything abnormal. But that didn t mean that... Vincent was thinking at her again. I ve inserted vacuum seal around the edges of the hatch and repositioned the cover. Am now activating my sealer. She could almost see the robot visualized the barrel shaped form secured by line and magnetic lower limbs to the Palomino s hull. One arm would be traveling with great precision over the edge of the hatch a beam of intense red light emerging from its tip. The vacuum seal would turn molten under the heat of that beam as would the metal of the hull beneath it. The result when it cooled would be a crystalline structure not quite metal not quite ceramic. It could not be cut away except with the facilities of a zero g shipyard. Hatch four would be useless for the remainder of their journey but the precious Pharmaceuticals stored inside would be in no danger of drifting or being thrown out. Later the bay could be repressurized and entered safely. The seal Vincent was executing would be as airtight as the rest of the hull. A voice shatteringly loud and crude interrupted her musing. Kate How s he coming You still with him I ll check Dan. Right now he s quoting a flight instructor he once knew. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots but there are very few old bold pilots. She s tuned in on Vincent all right Pizer murmured. Let s hope we disprove that maxim. Just a few degrees more Charlie. Vincent how are you coming McCrae asked silently. A gratified mechanical responded. Finishing the last of it Dr. Kate. Dan... he s secured the hatch. Good. Let me know when he s back inside. Holland turned his attention to his first officer. Charlie we re holding our own here but that s not good enough. She s threatening to destabilize and send us tumbling again. We ve got to get her around. Maximum power on he checked a brace of gauges Quad Thrusters E and H half thrust on A and G. Working replied Pizer carefully making the requisite adjustments. The ship responded. Holland switched a second speaker on as the communicator buzzed for attention. He remained in communication with the lab and Kate added the new call from Power. That you Alex Check Dan. Durant s voice was strained. We can only effect temporary repairs back here and that only to the secondaries. It s a mess. Maybe you and Charlie will get a chance to come back here and refine what Harry and I have done. I doubt we could do much more Alex. I just pilot em I don t build em. That s what we need back here Dan. A construction engineer. With a full internal plumbing shop. I m afraid that we ll eventually lose our air supply unless we can replace the critically damaged modules in the main regenerator complex. Damn. You re sure of that You ought to see what s left of the regenerator s internals and monitors. Looks like a particle beam played through them. You know you can t fix any of those microchip links. All you can do is replace them. We can seal over and set the larger components back in place but you know better than I that it ll all be for nothing unless the rest are replaced. And we don t carry any of the necessary replacements. Holland thought a moment. How about cannibalizing the necessary chips from the secondaries Maybe was Durant s reply but I doubt it. Why Because some of the chips in the secondaries are so weakened from overload they could shatter if we try fooling with their ambient temperatures or voltages. Then we d lose the secondaries in addition to the main system. But I agree it may come to trying that. Let s hope not Alex. Let me know when you and Harry have finished. Maybe I can come back and have a look. Will do. Holland switched off knowing the futility of making a personal inspection of the damage. He had added his final comment to placate Durant. If the scientist couldn t fix the system it was because the parts were not available as he had said. If they didn t have replacements the finest respiratory system technician on Earth couldn t do any better. Vincent shut off the flow of sealant. A moment later he shut off power to his arm and examined his handiwork. The seal was clean flush to the hull and appeared tight. No one could tell for certain about the last until bay four could be repressurized and tested for air leaks but he was confident his work would stand that test. He turned his optics away from the hatch preparatory to starting back toward the lock he had used to leave the ship and his confidence was lessened by the sight that greeted him. Neatly severed by age and the wear and tear it had received against the rim of the lock his cable tether drifted lazily past him. Calmly he reported the break to McCrae. Her first reaction was concern. Are you still secured to the ship Vincent She knew as well as Holland that if the robot had somehow slipped free of the hull he was lost. Still secure . . . and awaiting instructions Dr. Kate. She spoke hurriedly into the pickup. Dan it s Vincent. He s finished sealing the hatch but his cable tether s parted. He s okay for now but without the tether he has no backup if he loses physical contact with the hull. His thrusters may not be enough to get him back. He wants to know how you want him to proceed. Pizer was already half out of his chair. Someone has to take him another secured line so he can get back safely. I ll go after him. Holland threw him a sharp look. Stay put Charlie. You ve plenty to do right here. The first officer looked askance at Holland. You don t mean that Dan. What if it were one of us out there Vincent is one of us. As to the other I wouldn t let you go no matter who it was. Stay at your post. What if it were Kate Holland didn t change his expression. The same. She knows that. You ought to. He spoke into the com. We can t risk anyone else out there now Kate. Not till we regain full control. Tell Vincent to hang on to stay at his present location until further notice. I don t want him moving around untethered until we ve stabilized our attitude. Too much chance he ll be jarred loose. McCrae relayed the information to the waiting robot. I concur came the prompt reply I don t like sitting out here but the captain is right. I believe Transmission stopped. McCrae strained frantically sweat beading her forehead from the effort of projecting. She knew Vincent s human analog programming did not include breaking off a conversation in the middle of a sentence without some kind of explanation. Vincent. Vincent Report A slight but unexpected jolt had produced exactly the result Holland had feared despite Vincent s dutifully remaining in one place. Flailing metal arms groped for protrusions missed as the robot began to drift away from the ship back toward the stern and the distant bottom of the gravity well. Vincent decided not to chance his thrusters unless forced to. There were other methods of remaining in contact with the Palomino. The cable he fired from his body had been designed to enable him to pull objects through free space toward him. Now he utilized it to pull himself back to the ship. As he was reeling himself in he was able to respond positively to McCrae s ur gent call. I am all right Dr. Kate. I momentarily lost my grip. But I am secured again. I will be more conscious now of the forces operating on my body here. I now have physical as well as magnetic adhesion. Please do not worry. Kate She heard the dim voice took a breath and replied. It s okay now Dan. Vincent slipped away for a moment but he s reattached himself. He says he s more secure now than he was before and that he ll be more careful. She gave a brief description of what had happened relaying the robot s own words. Pizer listened then moved as if to leave his chair again. Stay at your post Charlie. What the hell are you made of He s still stuck out there. Next time he might not be able to get back. Holland chose to ignore the question and the challenge behind it. Pizer was operating like the rest of them like the ship under abnormal pressure. As captain Holland was not permitted the psychological release of insubordination. He would not reprimand Charlie for making use of it but wished only that he too had some higher authority to yell at. Instead of snapping back at his first officer Holland kept himself under control and spoke quietly toward the pickup. Kate tell Vincent we re starting to make some progress. We re backtracking to that zero g bubble surrounding the Cygnus. Once we re inside the field again he can hop and skip back to the lock. She nodded though there was no one to see her. The information was relayed to the robot. As she was finishing Durant and Booth returned to the lab. Both men were mentally flayed the close mechanical repair work having proved itself as debilitating as any heavy physical labor. They were concentrated out. Neither disturbed McCrae by listing his accomplishments. Durant waited until the wrinkles above her eyes had smoothed out and some of the tenseness had visibly left her body before asking what the esplink conversation had involved. Looks like Dan s instincts were right she told them. We ve had trouble. What s wrong Kate Booth asked quickly. Problems with the hatch repair Not exactly she murmured. Her eyes were still closed. It s Vincent. His tether broke. We almost lost him. Now she did blink stared wide eyed at them stretching the muscles around each orb. He s okay now. What about the regenerator Durant shrugged. Did the best we could with what we had. But there were still a few items we couldn t find replacements for. He smiled wanly. Just enough of them to cause the entire system to fail before we can get home . . . unless Dan and Charlie can do better or can find a way to bypass what we haven t got. Suddenly he turned quiet looked around in confusion. So did Booth. So did McCrae. Something had happened. There was something missing. They all realized what had happened at the same time. The turbulence the jostling of the ship had vanished. The ship was as still as the inside of a coffin... 4 PIZER leaned back in his chair. His muscles ached as if he had just finished a half day s workout in the Palomino s compact gymnasium though he hadn t moved from his position in all the time they had been playing dice with death. Close he murmured. Too close. I want to be buried ... but not yet. As if trying to cover his embarrassment at his outburst over Vincent he spoke reassuringly to Holland. Don t blame yourself Dan. First we stumble into an impossible area of no gravity around the Cygnus. Then we find out it s irregular in outline and uncertain in effect. You can t blame yourself for not foreseeing the instability of an impossibility. Put that way it makes me feel a little better the captain admitted. And Dan Yeah I apologize for the way I acted for what I said. You know. Skip it. That close to a collapsar everything s stability is a little twisted. Mine too. He turned spoke toward the com pickup. Kate we re going to set down on the Cygnus How s Vincent doing Her voice came back to him a moment later. Still with us and looking for a place to dock. I told him we re going in. He requests permission to remain where he is for purposes of examination. Permission granted. Tell Mm to keep his eyes open. It was an old joke but he still grinned inwardly. Vincent had no eyelids to close with. Charlie you run the lights and scanners. I ll bring us alongside. If you spot anything that looks like an undamaged ship lock or at worst a single entry port say so. A ship the size of the Cygnus should have many. I don t want to waste time hunting through the records for details of her construction. I m betting we ll find something a lot faster visually. Yes sir. A powerful beam illuminated space between the Palomino and the Cygnus as the smaller vessel nudged nearer the dark hulk. They cruised slowly across the surface. Pizer played the light over the craft as they searched both visually and with more complex but less decisive instruments. Quite without warning they found themselves drifting over a city. A thousand lights winked on below. Their brilliance smothered the single searching beam emanating from the Palomino. Ports and domes glowed radiantly. One moment the Cygnus had been a dead thing. Now she had shown herself to be alive with energy if not with organic life. Something had finally reacted to their presence. The great ship had awakened. What the devil s going on now Durant pressed his face to the lab port. He was straining to see into one or more of the glaring ports below wishing for the use of a powerful portable scope. Someone s alive down there McCrae s first reaction was more emotional than analytical. It was also infectious. Behind her and Durant Booth was fumbling to set up his recorders. Then he began speaking into one in low hurried tones. Like the tree on Christmas morning. Pizer s attention shifted regularly from console to port and back again. Funny. Until now I d thought of her only as impressive. But she s pretty too. Pretty or not Holland said tightly we d better set our warheads in firing position. Hold on Dan. Pizer sounded surprised at the captain s caution. They ve got to be friendly. I remember how she was armed. They readied her to do battle with imaginary alien hordes that never materialized. She carries a thousand times more firepower than we do. If her internal lights are functioning we have to assume that her weapons systems are too. She could have blasted us into plasma if she or anyone aboard had such an inclination and could have done so on our first pass without revealing that she is operational. She hasn t done so. Holland hesitated before replying. All right. Well assume the intentions of whoever or whatever s running her now are friendly. Since you re quite right about our being ridiculously overmatched I guess we might as well proceed optimistically. I just don t like going in naked. He checked the main viewscreen punched for and received several different views of the Cygnus before settling on a particular one. There s the command tower. Whoever turned on the lights is likely to be giving directions from up there. There s a subsidiary structure nearby that s likely to be a docking tower. The Palomino swung around moving toward the large conical shape near the front of the great research vessel. As they passed close a large viewport set in the Cygnus s upper section came into clear sight. Your side Dan McCrae was shouting at the pickup. Holland twisted to stare out the port nearby. It seemed as if he could make out shapes moving slowly within the translucent area. Then the Palomino changed attitude and the momentary glimpse vanished. You getting a better view back there Kate All I saw were suggestions of movement. McCrae and Durant were already repeating computer view tapes provided by the ship s scanners. Even after enhancement they remained maddeningly inconclusive. That didn t slow McCrae s enthusiasm. There are people aboard Dan Just shadows. The man standing next to her tried not to sound too critical. He knew she must still be imagining an unlikely reunion with her father but he couldn t bear bludgeoning her with reason. Not now. Besides hadn t they already survived a host of highly improbable events First the discovery of the Cygnus herself then the inexplicable zero gravity field enveloping the ghost ship like some supraphysical amniotic fluid. Who could predict what might reveal itself next It was only slightly more incredible to expect that her father might be on board and alive after twenty years. Durant wouldn t be the one to put a damper on her hopes. Let Holland do that. It was his job. They appear to be moving shapes he added in a more hopeful tone but we can t resolve them. Neither can the computer. They re people Alex. Hope made her more beautiful than ever. I know it. I feel it. I hope you re right. He smiled back down at her her inner radiance eclipsing that of the Cygnus. He was very much afraid her hopes were groundless. The Palomino slid nearer to the command tower instrument antennae radiating from her upper sections like the spines of an alloyed sea urchin. Pizer s attention was riveted on the less spectacular structure closer at hand. It s a docking tower for sure. He gestured at it. See There are two extensible walkways. Wonder why they didn t roll out the red carpet earlier. Since everything else on board seems functional I don t see how they could have missed our orbiting them. For that matter I think our calls should have made it through the interference. We were close enough. He looked puzzled. Wonder what s up. I don t know. Still wishing they were properly armed Holland tried to study the docking tower they were closing on and the imagined location of possible weapons ports. And I don t like it. I don t Eke any of it but they re calling the shots. We re outgunned and hurting and we ve got to repair our air system. Maybe they have the necessary replacement modules and maybe they don t. We ve no choice except to try to find out. Either that or pull off a miracle of microtechnology repair. Holland sighed. Me I m tired of surprises. But Fm also fresh out of miracles. Don t look at me Dan. I m just your average well meaning hot tempered co pilot I d want to go aboard even if we didn t have to. Don t get me wrong Charlie. I m curious to get inside that grand old mystery myself. He stared down at the enormous length of the Cygnus. If there is anyone left alive on board and if he feels like talking he ll have a helluva tale to tell. That s no lie. Pizer grinned. I can hear Booth drooling over his recorder without using the intercom. They eased in tight main engines silent using attitude quads to maneuver the Palomino next to the waiting connector umbilical that protruded invitingly from the docking tower. Holland s frustration showed as they adjusted and readjusted their position striving to line up the ship s main air lock with the umbilical. They should be giving us some help he grumbled. Maybe someone wants to see what land of pilot we ve got aboard. Pilots Holland corrected him. Pay attention to your own end. Let s lock tight right the first time. Temporarily forgotten the Palomino s advance landing party of one was already active. Vincent released his grip on the ship s hull. Using his built in maneuvering unit he scudded the few meters remaining to the end of the connector arm. Armature lasers ready he upended and peered into the yawning maw of the umbilical. It looked deserted. Taking note of the artificial gravity functioning inside the tube he adjusted accordingly and moved forward. Holland touched one control then its mate. Four lights blinked in sequence on the main console bright yellow stars. He fingered two additional controls. Pizer did likewise on his console. Immediately the four lights in front of Holland turned bright green. They stayed that way as a buzzer whooped once became silent. He leaned back from the console. We re here . . . come what may. Holland spoke toward the com. Alex Elate Harry we re linked now. I know I can t expect any of you to lie abed and wait for reports. Well go aboard together... but I want everyone armed. Dan do you really think... Kate began. Everyone Kate. That s an order. A pistol doesn t weigh much. I m not saying I expect well have to use them but we ll be awfully embarrassed if the need arises and our weapons are all resting innocently back here on the ship. You too Harry if you think you can handle one. Booth sounded mildly perturbed. I ve had occasion to defend my neck Captain. I d rather point my recorders at anything we might meet but I know which end of a pistol is for business. Good. Assemble at the main lock. When they had gathered inside Holland nodded to Pizer. The first officer performed the final check on the external readouts. Gravity s point seven normal. That s about right for an umbilical link. It should be standard one within the ship itself. Atmospheric pressure s about six and a half kilos per where it belongs and a little high in oxygen. Nothing wrong with their biosystem. He hefted his pistol firmly glanced over at Holland. The captain nodded again. Pizer thumbed the last switch. The lock door slid aside silently. They heard a slight whooshing as air from within the Palomino mingled with the atmosphere of the Cygnus. A blocky blinking shape was waiting to greet them. Nice work Vincent. Holland gave the familiar metal flank an affectionate pat. He did not bother to ask if the rest of the connector was safe. Vincent would have informed Kate if there had been any danger. Out of the frying pan the robot quipped blithely ignoring the fact that he was a nearer relative of said pan than anything liable to be cooking in it. Hopefully not into the proverbial fire. McCrae moved alongside eyed the machine critically. You sure you re all right I was banged around a bit when I lost my grip on the hull. Nothing a hammer and a little metal polish can t fix thank you. It is fortunate that my heart depends on the steady flow of electrons and not on corpuscles and cells or I might have had an attack when I was floating away from the ship. I am glad my body is not subject to such fragile organic fluxations as throm boses. Stick it in your lubricatory orifice Pizer advised with a smile. One of these days you ll suffer a severe oil blockage and then we ll see who has the laugh. I ll take flesh and blood over cold molybdenoy any day. And you may have it Vincent shot back giving a passable version of a metallic shudder. Easy now said Holland interrupting the banter. He pointed down the umbilical. Company s coming. A bright oval of light had appeared at the far end of the connector link. They waited tensely. When the silence and inaction became unbearable Holland finally yelled out. Hey This is Daniel Holland commanding the S.S. Palomino We ve had some trouble with our regulator system and we could use some help. His plea for assistance produced no more response from the opened end of the umbilical than had his self identification. No one appeared to call back to them. Looks like we ll have to go to them. McCrae s grip on her pistol loosened. Funny sort of greeting. First they ignore us. Then they turn on every light on the ship and extend an umbilical for us. And now they re ignoring us again. Holland nodded. This changes things some. Charlie you stay with the Palomino. We ll use channel C for communication. Linked that way we ought to be able to stay in touch. Pizer started to argue with him visibly disappointed. You re going to need That s an order Charlie. You or I have to stay with the ship. And since you have rank ... Pizer began tactlessly. And since it s my place to go and since that s what the regulations say I m going and you re staying. Pizer slumped looked resigned. Yes sir. You re right of course. Sorry for the backtalk. Talk back Charlie. After eighteen months together you ought to know you can t offend me. The first officer s mood lightened somewhat. We have each other to depend on Holland added indicating the others surrounding him but we all have to depend on you. Keep the ship s eyes and ears open and see what you can find out. It s liable to be more than we will. That s true. Pizer managed a smart salute. Don t worry Mr. Pizer. Vincent had pivoted to face him. They also serve who only stand and wait. Vincent sometimes I think they switched your programming with that of a literary robot. Or were you programmed especially to bug me No sir. To educate you. McCrae laughed a little nervously. Beneath Vincent s easy humor and his very human sense of camaraderie was the unavoidable fact that he contained far more in the way of factual knowledge than any human brain. But this was the first time she had ever heard Mm even hint at his mental superiority. Her reaction she knew was more a reflection of her own hidden foolish fears than of anything the robot had said. The fact was she had more reason to fear any human than she did Vincent The comment had no effect on Pizer. When I volunteered for this mission he said ruefully I never thought I d end up playing straight man to a tin can. What is a tin can sir Vincent asked revealing deliberately McCrae wondered a gap in his vast store of information. Antique construction for storage Pizer informed him. Wasteful of energy and metal. Remind me to refer you to the correct history tape sometime. All right. Holland smiling to himself had to force himself to sound half serious. End of the lessons all around. Keep your pistols in mind if not in hand and don t shoot until you see the green of their eyes. Holland and McCrae led the way down the umbilical corridor Vincent in the middle with Durant and Booth bringing up the rear. Pizer watched them depart feeling a little better for Holland s words but still deeply disappointed. His gaze moved up then down to stare through the transparent material of the tube. Around him the floating city that was the Cygnus lay gleaming but still devoid of any sign of life. Silence and light. Well that was an improvement after eighteen months of silence and darkness. Pizer turned and hurried back inside the Palomino. As they neared the end of the corridor Vincent moved slightly in front of McCrae taking a more prominent position near the forefront of the little expedition. The movement was not born of some mysterious form of mechanical bravery though Vincent could have been counted on to supply that necessary intangible in whatever amount might be required. It was a bit of simple logic one which noted that his metal body was less susceptible to laser fire than human flesh. Holland edged close to the end of the umbilical and peered cautiously into the craft. The tube opened onto a large well lit chamber. Lavish compared to the energy conserving dimmer illumination of the Palomino the bright light made him blink despite his determination not to. Furniture two decades out of style filled the room. Lounges and chairs were scattered about and free form glass ports gave the occupants varying views of deep space. There were decorative plants some real some artificial objets d art and tape viewers for casual reading placed throughout the area. A large curving desk faced the umbilical Holland now stepped clear of. Its top was bare save for several professional pieces of recording equipment. Holland recognized an already obsolete form of play back bank an ident scanner thirty percent larger than current models and several other devices all designed to serve in some fashion to record information or provide it. The fact that this chamber was located on a small artificial world made the function of the reception room no less familiar. No one sat behind the desk. That was the only expected item missing from the room: a receptionist. The chamber was devoid of official greeters human or mechanical but compensated with a feeling they all felt something sensed but not visible. In a moment Holland realized what it was. There was an aura of petrification about the entire chamber from the farthest chair to the simple tape viewers. Looks like the place hasn t been used in years he muttered. I get the feeling we may be the first official visitors since the Cygnus left Earth orbit. McCrae and the others had fanned out into the spacious room. Eerie she said. I don t want to sound melodramatic but... Go ahead Booth urged her. The situation almost demands it. I feel like not a few but a thousand eyes are watching us. She was turning in a slow circle eying the walls. If so where are they Something on this ship turned on the lights sent out an umbilical and filled at least this section with breathable air. Something closed the door to the connector corridor with a plastic snap sealing them off from the Palomino. Cracking noises came from places in the walls and ceiling. Holland s pistol was neatly vaporized. So were the others. Suddenly Vincent was knocked backward his own weapons similarly disabled by the flash of precision laser fire. Vincent McCrae noted that the others were all right then ran to check on the metal body that was lurching unsteadily erect. Down but never for the full count Dr. Kate. His external lights gradually returned to full strength resumed pulsing in proper sequence. Something of a shock. Oh I don t mean the effects of the beams or their presence. It was the speed and efficiency with which they engaged us. And the accuracy of their aim. Only our weapons were damaged. His optics began sweeping the room. There is at least one major class mechanical or competent class human mind functioning on board the Cygnus. Maybe she said looking around nervously now and wishing she possessed the robot s methods of perception it s the Cygnus s mind. Maybe that s what turned on the lights and sent out the connector for us. I would consider that hypothesis Dr. Kate save for one obvious discrepancy. I don t follow you. From our initial circling of the Cygnus to this moment Vincent observed our presence here has been treated with uncertainty. Something or someone is improvising our greeting acting one step at a time. Machines never act so erratically only in preplanned sequence. First we are ignored then welcomed then fired upon and disarmed all without our greeter re vealing himself. Very unmachinelike. So I am inclined to believe there is a non mechanical mind functioning in control of or in conjunction with any mechanical consciousnesses that might be inhabiting this vessel. The . . . non mechanical mind. Have you learned enough to surmise whether it s human or not Insufficient data thus far to proffer a reasoned opinion Dr. Kate. Holland had his communicator out was speaking into the tiny grid. Charlie this is Dan. Do you read Loud and clear came Pizer s response. Something on the Cygnus together with the ship s bulk is screening out the majority of the noise around us. You sound like you re standing behind me. I m beginning to wish I were. Pizer s concern was immediate. Trouble Weapons destroyed by laser fire but no injuries. The intent was clearly just to disarm us not to injure. I ll be there in Hold your position. But what about the No Holland interrupted him more sharply this time. I told you we re okay. I don t want to tempt whoever s monitoring us into incapacitating the Palomino by a further display of arms. Maybe they re just nervous. Such a reception area weapons system conforms with what we know about this ship. It may operate independently of other functions to prevent possible belligerents from coming aboard armed. All right. But watch yourselves. Pizer clicked off. Booth leaned over to whisper something to Durant. So much for the friendship theory. I d say describing the condition of whoever s got eyes on us as nervous is understating it some. Holland s right though the scientist argued. They could already have killed us if that was their intent. Or simply denied us entry to the ship. They may want us aboard defenseless but it s indisputable that they want us aboard. Yeah well I can t say I care for their taste in hors d oeuvres. Or for their manners. Booth was staring uncomfortably at the walls. The weapons which had just destroyed their own pistols were still hidden behind them. No doubt they were primed to fire at any time. He could imagine a half dozen stubby high intensity generators aimed straight at his belly. A door slid aside at the far end of the reception room. They headed for it striving to appear confident succeeding only in looking tense. A high corridor stretched nearly a kilometer into the distance. It was impressively wide. Holland didn t try to conceal his reaction at the sight he was awed once again. Intricate yet slim arches of metal supported the ceiling. The corridor was silent and bare quite sterile looking after the homey atmosphere of the reception chamber. This time he was expecting it when the door closed behind them locking them in the corridor. There was still no reason to panic though it did place one more barrier between them and the safety of the Palomino. A second smaller door moved aside on their right. An internal transport vehicle waited there humming like a stoned dragonfly. Looks like we re not expected to walk. McCrae moved to the air car. Maybe someone s suddenly remembered his manners. She might not have voiced the thought if she could have seen the ranks of unbeautiful but formidable looking mechanicals that now filed into the sealed off reception room. They emerged from behind wall panels assembling with a silence broken only by the scrape of metal on metal. It did not take an education in cybernetics to see at a glance that the function of these machines was not to comfort but to disassemble. Urgently if need be. Without a word passing between them verbal or electronic they began to move in unison toward the now open umbilical leading to the Palomino. The air car sped the group silently along the cylindrical passageway. The walls were largely transparent giving them a spectacular view of surrounding space. It was easy to imagine they were traveling outside the Cygnus tunneling through the void instead of speeding down a fully pressurized tube of plastic and metal. To one side was a vast swirling whirlpool of energy the visual dying gasps of matter being drawn down into the collapsar. Elsewhere the distant pricks of light that were other suns blended into the body of light that was the Cygnus. They reached the far end of the tube. Their vehicle slowed came to a halt. A doorway ahead was closed but opened for them when the air car reached a complete stop. Holland stepped out of the car looked around. Behind them stretched the long empty transport tube they had just traversed. The tube itself showed no other egress. Even if there had been a hatch it would have opened directly into empty space. They could only continue on ahead as someone clearly intended they should. I m getting tired of being bounced around like a ball in a box Booth murmured irritably. Calm down Harry. Holland grinned. Just think of the story this is leading up to. I m looking forward to it. Booth relaxed a little smiled back at him. Just impatient at the delays that s all. I don t think any of us will have much longer to wait McCrae said walking toward the now open door before them. It led into another empty though much smaller corridor. Slow up Kate. Holland hurried to join her and she waited for the others to catch up. She was staring upward toward a wide illuminated port set high in the side of the command tower whose base they had reached. I know I shouldn t get my hopes up but it s hard not to she told Holland. He put a hand on her shoulder pressed gently. It was a pitifully inadequate gesture under the circumstances considering what the Cygnus itself and now the nearby tower represented to her but it was the best he could think of. He was better with a ship. I know Kate. We re all hoping along with you. She glanced at his face then down at the floor then back up at him. It helps... some. The personnel corridor was short. Eventually they reached a section which widened considerably. In the middle of the floor a thick cylinder rose into the ceiling. Several doors were set into its sides. One was open and waiting the green light above it shining steadily. Not much doubt where that goes. Booth spoke as he checked his recorders making sure each of the disposable units was fully charged. I think we re finally going to meet our hosts. All of you remember one thing. Holland paused blocking the elevator doorway. The Cygnus seems stable but it s too close to that black hole to take any chances. We ve already learned that the field holding it motionless here against the gravity pull is subject to variation. We still don t know if the field is artificially generated or if it s a natural phenomenon. If natural it could shift radically or even fail at any time. We don t know how long the Cygnus has been stabilized here. It may have been defying the pull for a decade or more or it could have become trapped here a day ago. My point is that we know practically nothing for certain about the forces in operation in this section of space. Not about those active around the black hole or those keeping the Cygnus clear of it. Ignorance is the most dangerous form of instability and I don t care if you re talking personality or physics. The sooner we repair the Palomino and leave here the better for all of us. This last was spoken while he was staring directly at McCrae. She didn t argue with him and her expression remained unchanged. Good he thought. Emotionally hyper as she was she was still functioning realistically. He could still depend on her if an emergency arose to do that which was right rather than that which might be attractive. And what if her father is aboard and alive He pushed that possibility aside. Take events as they come. Indeed the sooner we are away the better I will like it. Vincent nudged his way into the elevator. Several of my robotic colleagues were victims of black holes. I personally was acquainted with two. They were transferred to drone probes and trained like myself in human machine esplink techniques. The theory was that they could then send messages back from beyond the return limits of the gravity wells of such objects as black holes. A grand experiment the scientists thought Sadly it did not work. Ancient history Vincent said the reporter. Not to me Mr. Booth. For one thing the project designers had not considered the effects that dissolution of their metallic partners under great stress would have on the human end of the esplinks. Several people collapsed mentally under the strain much as their mechanical mind partners did physically under pressure of a different kind. For another nothing is ancient that is so close. The heat generated in such regions would melt me before the pressure rendered me dysfunctional. I have sufficient imagination to convince me it is a process I will do all in my power to avoid experiencing. The elevator door slid quietly shut behind them. They rose in silence casual conversation seeming suddenly indecent. 5 BEFORE long the lift stopped. All eyes were trained on the door. Thoughts and circulation raced. The door slid back. Some of the tenseness drained out of them when it became clear there was no one waiting there either to greet them or destroy them. Cautiously they moved out into the vast domed upper chamber of the command tower. Bare floors made the place seem even larger than it was. The Palomino s compact control cockpit would have been lost here. Above the transparent dome and outside the floor to ceiling ports the stars pressed close. Indicators of steady electronic heartbeats lights winked on the ranks of instruments lining the walls. Two stories of uninterrupted unrelieved instrumentation. Scopes for staring through or offering other varieties of long range perception pierced the dome to bring closer the immensity beyond. Holland tried to imagine the great room as it must have been filled with busy technicians and general crew scientists conversing over the results of this or that research project comparing notes and ideas and dreams while the Cygnus swam through the sea of darkness. Now the only sounds came from muffled relays and hidden servos. Above a pair of spectrographic displays filled dissimilar screens reducing stars and nebulae to coded colors and numbers. A larger screen showed a complex pattern of roughly concentric lines and colors shifting even as he watched it. It had to be monitoring the black hole and the halo of destruction surrounding it he guessed. Another huge screen showed the collapsar region in magnificent color and size. As did everything else about the Cygnus the marvels of the tower impressed Holland. But he kept his perspective. Man s greatest machines could make mere numbers and equations of the Universe but he had not yet discovered an equation to summarize its magnificence nor a series of numbers denoting its beauty. Reductio ad absurdum. Some of his companions were less restrained in their reactions. Stupendous Durant was repeating wide eyed as a kid locked in a candy store over a holiday. Those scopes . . . bigger than anything we ve got on the Palomino bigger than those on non mobile orbiting stations. And the detail on those screens . . . it s incredible It ought to be Booth commented dryly. It cost the taxpayers enough. Durant turned on him. You can t put a price on something like this Harry. You can t evaluate the possibility of great discoveries in terms of credits. I didn t say I could replied the reporter unmoved. I said the taxpayers could. And they did. That s why there ll never be another ship like this one. We ve already agreed that ships like the Palomino are nearly as efficient and much less costly. Agreed. Durant s gaze was roving the banks of instrumentation. As efficient maybe. As meaningful no. That s a tough concept to try to sell the people who have to pay for such projects Alex. But Durant s thoughts were now elsewhere. He had moved away and did not hear. McCrae had walked out into the room. Lights from the instruments and consoles illuminated dim shapes that seemed a part of the machinery across the chamber yet were not. Hello Can you hear us The maybe figures did not respond. If they were human they must have been afflicted with universal deafness. Or else they were ignoring her with a studiousness that bordered on the maniacal. This is Katherine McCrae of the S.S. Palomino. The ship that s just docked with you. Is ... Officer Frank McCrae aboard If he is aboard how may I contact him Still no response. A metal shape moved to hover at her side. They appear to be some form of robot Dr. Kate. Vincent sounded puzzled. They are unique to my experience. One would imagine at least one or two would have broadcast capability yet I cannot contact any of them. You ve been trying I have been attempting for several minutes now the robot answered. They do not respond to any of the standard mechanical languages on any frequency. It is remotely possible this variety has absolutely no electronic communications capability beyond individual programming. That is difficult to believe but not without precedent. I have heard tales of other machines similarly restricted in their ability to converse. But I never actually expected to encounter such inhibited mechanicals. It is a terrifying concept to a fully conversant machine such as myself. You make them sound like mechanical cripples. If so it is unintentional. I presume their designers had their reasons for making them mute. But she could sense his continued disgust. Holland had passed them heading toward the center of the tower. To the far side large ports provided views not only of space outside but of the immense length of the Cygnus herself. He carefully skirted the charged generation projector set into the floor. Near the far end of the room was a series of large consoles that had to have functioned as the command station. Lights sparkled more intensely there than elsewhere. Additional dark forms operated the instruments on two levels some standing others seated. They remained oddly indistinct despite the bright lighting. Holland edged carefully around another projecting device then called for his companion s attention. Look over here. This is my guess as to where everything s run from. Durant hurried to join him shaking his head in still unmoderated wonder. I ve never seen anything to equal this. Never. The shadowy figures working at the consoles continued to fascinate McCrae. This close the humanness of their structure was intensified but their awkward stiff movements and lack of response to her questions belied that. And too Vincent seemed to think they were mechanicals. She started toward one with the intention of questioning him face to face but found herself being held back by a hand on her arm. Hold it Kate. What s wrong Dan I think ... there s something else here. She turned as did the others. Flashing rapidly a new sequence of lights traveled across Vincent s front the robotic equivalent of facial expression. What is it Durant was straining to see what had alarmed Holland. The dim shapes working behind them did not pause but rather continued at their work. They were not what had unnerved Holland. Turning ponderously a section of the far instrumentation detached itself and began to move toward them. It drifted in uncanny silence for something so massive. It was a mechanical of a size and suggestive power Holland had seen at work only in heavy industry. None of those machines was equipped with more than rudimentary programming. Yet the way this one came toward them hinted at considerably more advanced mental abilities. Freely mobile robots of such obvious strength were forbidden on Earth. Response time problems and inertial mechanics made them too dangerous to be allowed. Someone aboard the Cygnus had evidently chosen to ignore such laws. Despite his lack of knowledge about the makeup of the great ship Holland knew that no machine of such power and mobility would have been included among its normal stores. There was no need. Robots of the V.I.N.CENT series were the largest free floaters permitted on Earth. Someone on the Cygnus had gone far beyond those limits in the manufacture of the dark red thing trundling toward them. It had a single crescent optic slashing the tapered head. The visualizer glowed a deep red. It gave no indication of slowing its progression or of addressing them. Vincent appeared to be but a toy in comparison. Holland had his communicator out. Charlie We ve got trouble here. There was no answer. Taking no notice of Holland s words or actions the huge mechanical continued its now decidedly threatening progress toward them. They started to back away moving for the elevator shaft near the center of the tower. If the lift refused to function for them they would have to try to short the controls somehow. Meanwhile Holland was frantically hunting for anything that could serve as a weapon. He found nothing saw no tool locker or supply cabinet. Everything in the tower chamber was flush sealed or functional. Seamed metal ran into the transparencies of the ports. Even the controls on the console were mostly smooth mounted touch sensors. Do you read me he continued to call worriedly into the pickup. Charlie come in Charlie ... A familiar barrel shape inserted itself between the slowly retreating humans and their armored tracker: Vincent. Barely a meter away from its much smaller counterpart the massive red machine slowed hovered motionless. It did not speak but anyone could see that the behemoth was considering the implied challenge of its tiny cousin. Vincent did not move his own armored upper casement sinking down into the cylindrical body to protect the optics. Since his own weapons had been incapacitated by the hidden lasers in the reception room he was making a possibly fatal gesture. But he remained oblivious to any danger daring the larger machine to attack or to continue its hitherto inexorable march onward. Here s a story to end all stories Harry Durant whispered to the reporter. Booth held his recorder stiffly in front of him like a cobra at arm s length. In a way it was the weapon he was most comfortable with though it was unlikely the maroon monster towering over them would be dissuaded from any bellicose gesture by the implied power of the press. A ghost ship of robots and computers Durant went on with this thing in charge. Surprisingly the colossus reacted to his statement The head swiveled on the shoulders to stare at the speaker and the nervous reporter next to him. Not quite Dr. Durant. A logical supposition given your present situation and lack of true knowledge about what has occurred here. It talks after all Booth mumbled. No. Holland was peering around the hovering mechanical. I m sure that voice didn t come from this machine. Maximillian and my robots run this ship only the way I wish it run the voice went on. Holland walked around the monster which did not move to intercept him. The others followed. They possess little in the way of programmed initiative beyond what I choose to bestow on them. Only I command the Cygnus. The source of the voice was a darkened section of the chamber. Something a large circular console rotated to face them. A figure sat inside it cloaked in shadow. Durant squinted at it. How do you know my name You have been constantly monitored ever since the Cygnus s sensors first detected your approach from deep space. Though we were hardly expecting visitors I make it a point always to be prepared for them. You could take that one of two ways Booth whispered to Durant. The scientist hardly heard him now. His full attention was on the mysterious figure. Isolation leads inevitably to caution the voice was saying. No doubt you regarded the Cygnus with equal uncertainty. You must excuse my perhaps extremity of manners in greeting you. But remember that though tiny your ship is of a type unknown to me. I had no idea whether you were human or otherwise. When your origin became clear I could not know what fanatical cults might have infected the politics of Earth since my departure. It behooved me to be careful. I have much entrusted to my keeping. I safeguard it to the best of my abilities. If I erred in welcoming you so brusquely do remember that this vessel is ultimately my responsibility. The figure rose moved out of the shadows into the light. Welcome aboard the Cygnus gentlemen lady and machine. Please excuse Maximillian. The tall bearded figure gestured at the robot that still confronted them. It moved aside well away but still close enough to make its intimidating presence felt. A fact which the speaker Holland thought surely realized. He is most solicitous of my health. Perhaps overly so. But diplomacy has not been needed out here and so I have not programmed it into him. It was Booth who verbally identified the figure they had by now all recognized. Dr. Hans Reinhardt he murmured. He always did have a flair for theatrical entrances. If he s alive McCrae was telling herself frantically then it was still possible ... And for you a pen dipped in poison Mr. Booth. Reinhardt regarded the reporter. I remember reading your articles well before the Cygnus left Earth orbit. I trust your faculties have not dimmed since then They say that the potency of certain acids increases with age. I can still turn a phrase here and there Doctor. Your phrases were often sharp Mr. Booth. For a surgeon who employed words you many times cut with surprising clumsiness sir. You caused many of the subjects of your vivisecting articles to bleed rather pro fusely. If I was doing any cutting Booth gave back it was only out of a desire to expose the unhealthy or the dangerous. I left actual excision to others. Reinhardt only grunted at that. They could see him clearly now as he walked toward them. Booth and he were contemporaries. That was the only visible similarity between them. Reinhardt was taller with the build of an athlete. He had the look of a man fanatical about the care of both body and mind. Isolation had not bent him. He approached them groomed as faultlessly as he had been the day he had addressed the international vision audience prior to the Cygnus s departure some twenty years ago. Save for the preponderance of gray in beard and hair and the additional lines in the long face he appeared little different from the way he had those many years ago. McCrae had her own memories of that day and of that farewell speech. She had romanticized Reinhardt then for he had looked as much soldier as scientist the epitome of the dashing adventurous explorer yet with intellect to match boldness. She had never guessed how much soldier and scientist merged in the man s mind. Reinhardt regarded the mysteries of the Universe not as indifferent questions of physics or chemistry but as implacable malicious foes. They were to be assaulted with science vanquished at any cost forced to yield their treasure house of knowledge. That belief still drove him. It was there in his attitude and especially in those piercing slightly wild eyes. His gaze had always seemed to see a little farther into the Universe than that of most men. It had fixed on reluctant bureaucrats and indecisive politicians and compelled them to appropriate the money to build and crew the Cygnus. Reinhardt had built the great ship. Other men had been his tools and he had used them as roughly and mercilessly as he had used himself. Now those eyes focused on the helpless knot of visitors standing before him. Holland and McCrae examined him in turn. They did not identify with Reinhardt as thoroughly as Durant did. He was a fellow scientist researcher explorer of the unknown. But they did not have the same messi anic zeal. Reinhardt s fanaticism set him apart from them. Apart from them and from the rest of mankind. It did not trouble Reinhardt to see the distrust in their faces. He had lived with it all his life and fully expected it to accompany him to his grave. People would regard even his distrust with uncertainty. That personal isolation was corollary to his dedication. Long before most of the people now with him in the chamber had been born he had realized the necessity of living apart from his fellow man. He would accept it. He would do without close friends or family. In place of them he accepted admirers and there were many. Sycophants had proved useful. He had used them as he had the bureaucrats to further his personal ends. If no one volunteered to read the obituary on his passing it would not distress him. He would settle for having his accomplishments chiseled into his headstone. He smiled at the thought and those watching him misinterpreted the smile. He would require a very tall headstone. Of all those now assembled before this bearded vision from the past Booth was the least impressed. Many times in his long career he had interviewed or watched the great and the mighty. Maybe others reacted differently but he Harry Booth had always paid attention and try as he might not once had he ever seen air space between a great man s feet and the ground. Reinhardt walked like any man. My network considered your Cygnus project Booth said bluntly gesturing to take in the dome and ship around them a waste of the taxpayers money Doctor. The Administrators of the territories of India Southeast Asia and South Africa all lost their posts because they supported you. So the jackals of the press hounded the heels of government until the farsighted among them were destroyed. Reinhardt s voice was now as cold as the space outside the tower and as impersonal. He had heretofore been almost apologetically polite. Now he was seething. The men you speak of will be enshrined by the citizens of the future for their bravery in the face of ignorance and barbarism. The memories of those who slaughtered their careers will become dust less than footnotes in the pages of history. They are the shortsighted fools who are always blind to the fact that some things can t be measured in monetary terms. All such primitives will eventually pass the way of the Neanderthal weeded out of mankind by sensible social selection as were the racists of the dark centuries. Fortunately the Cygnus was on her way and out of the system before those idiots could think to call her back. Dr. Reinhardt McCrae purposely made herself sound as helpless and childlike as possible. The man might be a blind visionary but he was not insensitive. Procuring the funds for construction of the Cygnus had required understanding as well as force. Her approach worked. His manner changed with startling abruptness as he turned to face her. The smile he bestowed on her verged on the paternal. My dear child I know who you are as I know the identities of your companions. I can foresee your question. I m sorry to have to dash your hopes but your father is dead. McCrae sagged despite her belief that she had prepared herself for that answer. Holland comforted her as best he could. To imagine that her father might be alive was one thing. No amount of preparation had actually readied her to hear his actual fate from the lips of the one man in a position to know. Sorry Kate. Durant wished there were more he could say. He was as inept with words as Holland. They left that department to Booth and to the rambunctiously glib Pizer. A man to be proud of Reinhardt continued trying to console her. It was a grave personal loss to me though never as strong as it must be to you. He was a trusted and loyal friend. Diplomacy or no Holland found he could no longer ignore the questions raised by the emptiness of the tower and the sections of the Cygnus they had already passed through. And the rest of the crew He watched the scientist closely. They didn t make it back then Reinhardt appeared simultaneously hurt and surprised as if he had expected Holland s words but had hoped not to hear them. No. What do you mean make it back What... Pity. A good crew good people all. Dedicated to their mission. Wait a minute said Booth sharply. I m missing something here. We know that the mission was eventually recalled to Earth. Yet you and the ship are here and you say the crew is... Expenses again. Yes murmured Reinhardt. What happened after the recall was issued You did receive it Would Reinhardt Booth wondered have a reasonable explanation for the mystery that had teased the people of Earth for twenty years The scientist took a deep breath then began without looking at them. I did as you would expect me to argued pleaded even threatened. But an order like that could not be ignored though I would have done so if I could. But there were others aboard and I knew their sentiments. Also we had been gone from Earth for many years. The feelings of many of the crew toward their mission had changed. Weakened I would say but they were all after all only human. The reaction was to be expected. He paused for a moment waiting for comments. There were none. We turned about and set course for Earth to comply with the orders. Despite all our precautions we ran into difficulty. We encountered a phenomenon no one had expected not those of us aboard ship nor the people who had designed the ship. While traveling at supralight speeds we passed through a vast field of a unique variety of heavy particles. We were through the field before its effects or even its presence could be predicted. There our drive was permanently disabled despite the best efforts of our technical repair staff. All our communications facilities were likewise damaged beyond any hope of calling for aid. There was one remaining option abandoning the ship and utilizing two of our three auxiliary survey craft to return directly to Earth. As their drive systems had been quiescent during the particle field storm they proved to be undamaged. Booth started to say something but Holland placed a restraining hand on his arm. Reinhardt nodded at the reporter then continued his story. I knew this was the choice the crew preferred he said. And so I made it easy for them by ordering them to abandon ship and return home as directed. I told them I would attempt to put the Cygnus on the same course to return ... at sublight velocity. He smiled. Everyone knew that traveling from our position at the time would take me some three hundred years to make Earth orbit. Perhaps it was another of what you term my theatrical gestures Mr. Booth but I chose to remain behind aboard my ship. He gestured a wide sweep that took in the interior of the tower and by inference the whole of the ship. I fought too hard and too long for the Cygnus to leave her certainly not to return to Earth and admit failure. I thought it proper to uphold the ancient tradition of the captain going down with his ship. His expression mocked them. You have experienced the gravitational power of the wonderfully complex stellar object nearby and know that the Cygnus and I may yet pursue the analogy of the sinking ship with considerable fidelity. His tone softened as he again regarded McCrae. Your father believed. He chose to remain with me. We never learned what happened to the others those who left on the two survey craft. But when years passed and no rescue ship came to find us we could guess. I am saddened to learn for certain that they did not make it home. Booth looked thoughtful. Odd that two separate ships failed to make it back or even to make contact with Earth or a navigation beacon he ventured. Not so Reinhardt responded. Neither vessel was equipped with the deep ranging communications equipment of the Cygnus nor with her highly sophisticated and complex navigation system. That both ships should be lost is while sad not unnatural or unexpected. Then if the chances for them were so slim why did everyone else except you and Frank McCrae choose to go Reinhardt stared pityingly at the reporter. What would you have done Mr. Booth Taken the chance of making it back to Earth in a less efficient ship or the chance of living the three hundred years necessary to make the journey at sublight speeds Durant was more interested in the living legend addressing them than in people they could no longer help. You ve lived out here for all these years since the others left... by yourself Not exactly by myself Doctor. Until his death I had the good company and companionship of a man of similar dedication Frank McCrae. After his passing ... I knew enough crude psychology to realize that even I needed some form of companionship if I was to remain sane. So I created companions ... of a sort. There were the Cygnus s surviving mechanicals still aboard. With their aid I repopulated the ship with tougher less emotional assistants. He gestured at the rows of silent fibres manning the consoles behind them. I made them as human as I possibly could. But they don t seem able to talk McCrae observed. When I can make them sound as human as I I will finish that aspect of their construction dear lady. The elevator door opened suddenly. They turned. Charlie Pizer was standing framed in the doorway. He was surrounded by a cluster of efficient looking mechanicals. The downcast Pizer immediately brightened at the sight of his companions. His normal insouciance returned. Hi folks. He indicated his escorts. Have you met the goon squad yet I am sorry for the humorlessness of your company Mr. Pizer. Reinhardt retained his grin. Again my friends I confess that manners are not the strong points of my machines. Please join us Mr. Pizer. The first officer stepped out of the elevator carefully watching the machines that had accompanied him. They did not follow. Dismissed. Reinhardt spoke sharply to the guards. The elevator door closed in front of them. It was an indication of instant unquestioning obedience which Holland noted for future reference. They reflect the manners of whoever programmed them. Pizer said ignoring a warning look from Holland. They took my pistol. I d like it back. What for To shoot me maybe Reinhardt expressed astonishment. You were disarmed for your own safety. Maximillian and my other robots are programmed not only to react against aggression but to prevent it. I assure you said Durant hastily nothing of the sort was intended. I still don t see why once you saw who we were you directed the automatic guards in reception to disarm us Holland said. Captain Holland I have already explained that I saw what you were but not who you were. Your state of mind could not be scanned. For all I knew you were a punitive expedition sent out specifically on the word of surviving malcontents among the Cygnus s crew to kill me. Nonetheless I did not direct the sentry machines in reception to disarm you. You yourself just said they were automatic and so they are. They responded I believe to your brandishing of weapons. That s a normal reaction for a group entering a strange non communicative vessel. And disarmament was the reception room s normal reaction to your display of guns. Both you and the reception area brain reacted if you ll pardon the analogy to similar programming. I have often said that the differences between man and machine are superficial. I d still like my pistol back Pizer repeated unmollified. Your property will be returned to you in good time Mr. Pizer. Until then I must insist for your own safety that it remain secured . . . lest you lose your apparently considerable temper and induce some slow thinking mechanical to violence. As to your boarding with weapons showing were I a military man I would be most suspicious. However I am a scientist so I understand. He finished with an expansive smile. Rest assured you are riot prisoners. You re my guests the first it has been my pleasure to entertain in quite a few years. As Reinhardt turned to speak to McCrae Pizer moved next to Holland and leaned over to whisper to him. There s a whole army of those things on board he declared with a gesture back at the elevator and nobody told them we re guests. Take it easy Charlie. Everything Reinhardt s said about the way we ve been treated so far is reasonable. Not nice but reasonable. Let s give the old boy the benefit of the doubt until he gives us stronger reasons to believe he s something other than what he claims to be. Besides we haven t any choice. Reinhardt was still talking mostly to McCrae when Holland interrupted him. We won t impose on your hospitality Doctor. Well require some minor spare parts. Our trouble s with our atmospheric regeneration system. If you can help us out we can manage the repairs ourselves. And then we can offer you the means of returning to Earth Doctor. Durant eyed him respectfully. In something less than three hundred years. As to your reception I wouldn t be overly concerned. In the years you ve spent out here you must have learned much that is new. You ll be warmly greeted on your return sir. That is a matter of difference between you and your friend Mr. Booth Reinhardt replied matter of factly. What makes you think I want to return Dr. Durant 6 AFTER a long moment of stunned silence Durant spoke again trying not to sound patronizing. Sir I understand your feelings about the Cygnus and the possibility of an ah ambivalent reception back on Earth. Believe me I sympathize. You seem to have made your peace with the Universe out here. He indicated the dim silhouettes working steadily at the far consoles then the hovering mass of the robot Maximillian. You also seem to have forged a workable relationship with your companions who all will outlive you. But surely you realize that no matter how comfortable you have managed to make yourself the Cygnus is in constant danger of being swallowed up and destroyed by that. He pointed to the magnificent image of the black hole on the main viewscreen off to one side. Reinhardt seemed less than somber. In fact he appeared amused by Durant s concern. Ah yes your captain was worried about that too. There is no cause for alarm. As you have already discovered the Cygnus and the section of space immediately surrounding it are immune to such danger. I developed after many years of research and experimentation a system field which enables us to resist gravity even of the strength we are exposed to here. There were three auxiliary survey ships attached to the Cygnus. The crew used two in their apparently ill fated attempt to return to Earth. The third has served me as an experimental vessel with which to explore such ideas as the gravity field nullifier. You can negate gravity then Durant was gaping at him. No Dr. Durant not at all. That accomplishment involves aspects of field theory too esoteric even for me. Someday perhaps . . . but not yet. For now anti gravity is an impossibility according to the laws of known physics. I cannot negate gravity but I can nullify its effect by influencing the gravity waves. He paused for a moment to let the sense of what he had just said sink in. They are bent that is an oversimplification but will do for now around the Cygnus and around any vessel or other solid object within the zone of field influence. Occasionally outside forces and conditions may temporarily cause the field to narrow or expand. This field fluctuation is what nearly caused your destruction. Durant was rubbing his lower lip with a forefinger. That explains the calm around your ship. How powerful a gravity well can you defy That is the question isn t it Doctor Reinhardt replied cryptically. So far theory and experiment seem to indicate that the greater the gravity the narrower the field collapses around the Cygnus. But as the field narrows it intensifies. I do not fully understand the mechanics behind this wave compression. Only that it exists. At some point it would seem that the gravity must overwhelm the field and destroy the ship hiding behind it. Calculations indicate that beyond a certain point the field can no longer be compressed. It becomes an in vulnerable inflexible barrier to the gravity surging around it. At this point the field influences the very fabric of space tangential to it. Exactly how that influence manifests itself I am not yet certain but I have reason and equations to believe that it results in an incredible increase in the velocity of anything inside the field. If you apply increasing pressure with two fingers to a bean one of two things happens. The bean s protective skin its field if you will collapses under the pressure and the bean is smashed. But if the skin field is strong enough... The bean squirts forward free of your fingers Durant concluded. Exactly. Reinhardt looked pleased with himself. And that my friends is what I postulate will happen when the field is compressed to its maximum. It will cause whatever it envelops to burst forward to escape the immense gravitational pressure providing that object with a remarkable and sudden increase in speed. Interesting theory. Holland spoke pragmatically his emphasis on the word theory. We were broadcasting to you from the time we identified this ship as the Cygnus. If you were monitoring us constantly as you say you must have received our signals. I m not sure I accept your statement about caution in the face of unexpected visitors as sufficient reason for ignoring us. If you were monitoring us closely enough to learn our names you must have also learned that our intentions were only friendly. Why didn t you at least respond to our calls There was my aforementioned fear of deception Captain. Reinhardt sounded irritated possibly because Holland had not reacted as expected to the glory of the gravity field nullifier. Also while my receiving instrumentation is mostly repaired I have not yet been able to conclude final restoration of the Cygnus s broadcast facilities. You will recall that I told you the particle storm destroyed all such on board equipment. Yes I was able to monitor your approach quite thoroughly. It was most frustrating being unable to reply. Pizer did not bother to conceal his suspicion of this explanation and was upset that Holland appeared to swallow it. I wish to prove my good faith. Particularly to you Mr. Pizer. The first officer looked startled. Apparently Reinhardt could interpret particle counts and expressions with equal alacrity. You ve indicated you re in a hurry to depart and do not wish to impose on me. Very well. Though your presence is surely no imposition I want to help you in whatever way I can. Maximillian will take you to ship s Stores. You may requisition whatever you need to repair your ship Captain. Holland didn t try to conceal his delight That s very generous of you. Reinhardt shrugged sounded modest. I do not own the Cygnus or her contents Captain Holland. I am only her commander. The ship itself and its contents are the property of the ESRC. You have as much right to her store of material as anyone. I believe you mentioned that your difficulties lay with your regeneration system Holland nodded. You should find everything you need though I fear some of the modular instrumentation and smartparts are twenty years or so out of date. Thanks. Well manage. I m certain you will. He looked over at Durant. Meanwhile I think I can assure you and Dr. McCrae of enough information to make your mission one of historic importance. When I said I did not plan to return to Earth I had no intention of reserving what I have learned over the past two decades to myself. You shall have the honor of bearing news of my dis coveries home and confronting the surviving critics of the Cygnus s mission with them. It will do my soul good to know that such knowledge will be transported by friendly hands. Durant was thirsting for revelations from the hand of the master. Though initially depressed by Reinhardt s confirmation of her father s death McCrae too was growing interested. Although they had not located intelligent alien life the new information they had gathered in eighteen months if coupled with the twenty years of research the Cygnus had carried out would be more than enough to make their journey a grand success. Furthermore she could lay some of the credit at her father s feet. Surely Reinhardt would not refuse his old friend a share of the glory he himself seemed determined not to accept in person. Reinhardt pleased with their reaction began giving instructions to the giant mechanical. Take them back to Maintenance Maximillian. See that they are issued whatever they require from Stores. Except weapons. He smiled at Pizer. Your own will be returned to you or replaced when you are ready to depart. They started for the elevator. There was a grinding noise and Holland turned sharply. Vincent had moved slowly to leave and in doing so had inadvertently crossed Maximillian s path. The huge bulk had nudged the smaller machine off balance. Vincent stopped sent a stream of lights flickering in challenge. Maximillian leaned on him and again Holland heard the abrasive sound of metal scraping metal. Back off Vincent Pizer ordered the robot. What s the point We have to get to Maintenance. Back off now. Not until he does. You re not programmed for adolescent behavior the exasperated Pizer continued eying Maximillian with concern. He wondered exactly how much control Reinhardt did exercise over the monolithic construction. When you re nose to nose with a trash compactor you cool it Vincent didn t budge. Maximillian leaned bringing his weight to bear. Vincent s servos began to whine in protest over the load. Holland didn t intend to permit the situation to go any farther. Call him off Reinhardt. The commander of the Cygnus appeared amused by the confrontation. He seemed content to let the conflict play itself out. A classic confrontation: David and Goliath. Except this time David is overmatched. I said call him off. Holland did not find the situation amusing at all. On my ship you ask Captain. Reinhardt said it without anger. Maximillian moved forward slightly crowding the smaller machine toward the elevator wall. Reinhardt abruptly tired of the game. That s enough Maximillian. Remember these are our guests be they organic or otherwise. With apparent reluctance the giant moved slowly aside and turned toward the lift. Holland wondered what other bits of bellicose programming had been entered into the robot s memory. He whispered hurriedly to McCrae. Communications problems aside and allowing for reasonable suspicion on his part I still think he waited a long time to show any lights. Then louder Take care while we re gone. She smiled thinly as if to say she took care all the time then moved toward Durant and Reinhardt deep in conversation. Holland heard her asking something about hypothetical curvatures of natural gravity waves versus artificial inducements as she joined the scientists. Pizer was waiting near the elevator door. It opened for them as Holland arrived. Those other robots the smaller ones that escorted me up here They aren t any more friendly than Dr. Frankenstein s monster. He gestured at Maximillian. Don t worry. Vincent had assumed a cocky air. One or a hundred I can handle them. They re badly outmoded. I m a much more efficient model. Pizer s eyes appealed to heaven which above the transparent dome of the elevator shaft seemed not so very distant. Lights flickered across Maximillian s chest in a sequence that hinted he had clearly understood Vincent s words and had filed them for future reference. Smile when you say that Vincent. Holland was watching Maximillian. Vincent hesitated but the look in Holland s eyes did not at all match his superficially benign expression. Reluctantly the robot gave a polite twinkle of his own lights. If Maximillian accepted the gesture or even understood it he offered no sign in return. The elevator descended in silence. Reinhardt escorted his three guests slowly around the circumference of the command tower explaining the function of each console and station interpreting readouts that puzzled them patiently answering every one of their questions including those his expression indicated he thought foolish. To Durant the most impressive thing about the tower was not the plethora of instrumentation with backups for backups nor the steady flow of information being correlated and stored by the Cygnus s research banks. It was the speed and efficiency with which every function was being carried out. Nor did he espy a single unit screen or gauge out of order. Everything operated smoothly after twenty years in space. To him that was far more impressive than what the instruments were actually functioning for. This doesn t appear to be the crippled ship you described to us Doctor. For one that supposedly suffered such extensive damage ... We repaired it and it became operable again Reinhardt told him firmly. Much of the work was accomplished before the decision was made by the rest of the crew to try to return to Earth in the survey craft. The final difficulties with the engines defeated them. Subsequent repair and maintenance have been performed by my mechanical companions under my supervision. A ship like the Cygnus must necessarily carry a large contingent of repair robots. My assistance is needed only on rare occasions now to interpret highly unorthodox problems. I had time to do nothing but work on the problems with the engines you must remember. By now the Cygnus and her machines run themselves quite nicely repairing one another caring for one another maintaining one another. But always subject to your directives. Reinhardt executed a slight bow. I sometimes feel that I am only another cog in the Cygnus machine Dr. Durant. I am the repair unit of last recourse the one who interprets what cannot be predicted. In that respect the mechanicals flatter me. They are programmed to serve the crew. As I am the sole surviving member of that crew they obey me. The fact that I am the ship s commander enhances that obedience. I do not command them. They serve me. There is a difference. Gallantly taking McCrae s arm he turned and led the three of them toward another elevator. So you repaired the destruction as best you could including your receiving and monitoring equipment but not your broadcast facilities. Booth was speaking as much for the benefit of his recorder as for himself. But you never acknowledged any of the subsequent orders to return to Earth. The crew made that choice. As to myself ... be fair now Mr. Booth. It was the Cygnus the authorities wanted back. Not me. As I ve said the Cygnus was incapable of returning. But she isn t any more You spoke about your work on her engines. It s hard to say. The machines have managed to repair much of the damage caused by the particle storm thanks to new discoveries we ve made subsequent to the departure of the crew. Frank McCrae was largely responsible for many of them. He smiled pleasantly at McCrae. Assuming I could return the Cygnus to Earth in a reasonable time Mr. Booth there are considerations that prevent me from doing so. Other worlds are yet to be explored. There are life dreams unrealized. If this ship is now able to make it back to Earth and you refuse to obey orders by not making every effort to comply Booth hesitated only an instant the authorities would consider that an act of piracy Doctor. The reporter had a way of breaking through Reinhardt s Spartan exterior. One hand clenched convulsively relaxing only slightly as the doctor spoke. You do have a way with words Mr. Booth. I had thought I was immune to such petty criticisms and response active words. Years of solitude have apparently weakened my armor. You should be proud of your talents. Thanks Booth said dryly. They usually enable me to dig out the truth. One day you may dig too deep Mr. Booth. You run the risk of cave in. I ll take my chances. What about my analysis Certain shortsighted individuals have often interpreted the pursuit of great discoveries as piracy. I am about to prove to you that the ends of science justify the means of science. To be what we are to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end in life. I am risking only my own life to prove that. Without purpose this great craft is nothing a free floating junkyard reworked metal ores and as purposeless as the ores still wasting away in the ground. With purpose it becomes an instrument of man. With purpose I can call myself a man. Those men unwilling to commit themselves to a high purpose are only shadows of men as the ores are but hints of the refined metals they may one day become. Durant nodded knowingly at this little speech his attitude that of an acolyte preparatory to being ordained. McCrae acted noncommittal. This is a dangerous man Harry Booth thought to himself. He knew well that throughout history any human being who had ever adhered publicly to the principle that the end justified the means had proved himself dangerous. It was a law as immutable as the energy mass equations and about as explosive. The elevator had carried Holland Pizer and Vincent below the level of the cross ship air car corridor that had brought them to the command tower. Now they were in the depths of the vast city ship traveling on foot down a much narrower passageway. Looking around Holland saw transparent ports and cylinders part of the superstructure of the great ship. He recalled many years ago the appellation some eager reporter had hung on the Cygnus: the bridge of glass. The bridge to the stars. Mankind had since learned that small bridges would serve its designs as well as great ones. Reinhardt had been right about one thing though. They were not as pretty. Holland shrugged. People had starved themselves before in order to honor properly their gods had gone without food to decorate their temples. The Cygnus was a monument to another god a faster than light temple of another kind. With Reinhardt he mused as the High Priest. Reinhardt would be remembered as master of two disciplines: science and salesmanship. Holland was willing to regard him as a friend assuming the commander of the Cygnus was telling the truth and would truly help them to repair the Palomino. Despite the fact that Reinhardt seemed to be the only human aboard the ports they passed showed evidence of considerable activity. Intership air cars and other transports raced back and forth carrying robots of varying size and shape to unknown destinations for unrevealed purposes. Ahead a group of small maintenance robots appeared and sped by clinging to a vehicle that itself possessed a simple mechanical brain. Holland watched them vanish down the corridor behind them. The whine of their transport receded into the distance echoing in their wake like the last drops of a fading spring shower. Pizer noted all the activity too. He glanced up at the alloyed mastodon convoying them. Pretty busy around here aren t you Max Awful lot of activity for a ship that doesn t seem to be going anywhere and I know old Reinhardt doesn t require this much service. What are you gearing up for Expecting some more company maybe Or afraid of it Maximillian trundled onward without responding. The first officer looked away. Loquacious chap ain t he Dan You know they say that machines incapable of communicating via human speech are degraded simple brain types incapable of performing anything beyond the most menial functions. Still Maximillian did not react. Perhaps he was programmed against such provocations. Perhaps he felt beyond such pitiful attempts. More likely he was just adhering to his designer s orders that the new visitors be treated as guests. Don t bait him Holland ordered. Reinhardt s control over him may not be as absolute as he d like us to believe. Oh I think it is. Pizer looked back up at Maximillian. Max here s just the doc s errand boy and number one foot wiper ain t you Max Still the colossus refused to respond. Pizer gave up trying to provoke it. Before long they reached another bend in the corridor turned right into it. Maximillian moved ahead of them extended a limb to key a sealed doorway. It opened with a clang incongruous compared with the smooth functioning of the other doors they had passed through. This initial impression that they were entering a rarely visited area was magnified by the state of the interior of the chamber. Rows and rows of shelving and compact crates and containers stared silently back at the visitors. There was nothing as plebian as a cobweb hanging about and electrostatic repellers kept the dust off but they still had the feeling they were the first people to enter the storage area in some time. Stationed behind the desk was a robot. Its head was canted to one side in fair imitation of a human asleep on the job. For all they knew the mechanical might have been waiting there behind its desk in that identical unvarying position for a dozen years. He looked much like Vincent and gave the impression of having been used hard with minimal repair. Maximillian moved forward and swung a thick arm knocking the quiescent robot to the floor. Its lights blinked on slowly at first then with the impetus of increasing awareness it rose to an unsteady hover. Its optics took in Holland Pizer Vincent then settled inevitably on the ominous maroon form of Maximillian. It started to back away. Vincent stated the humans mechanical associate quickly. Vital Information Necessary Centralized. Labor force human interactive. The Three Ninety sixth. Latest model new eighty nine biomechanical neuron ics floating synapses heightened initiative and awareness circuitry. Maximillian glowered down at Vincent as he concluded his terse introduction and self description. But though the older machine behind the desk stared with interest at its visitors it did not respond to Vincent s sally with an identification of itself. The older machine did not acknowledge in any fashion. At first Vincent was hurt. That rapidly gave way to worry and concern. But he added nothing to his initial words continued to eye the other machine with puzzlement. Tell you what Charlie. I ll head back to the Palomino and start breaking down that busted regenerator. Looks like they ll have everything we need here. Holland turned to leave. Maximillian immediately pivoted preparatory to blocking the captain s exit. I m sure our host will take good care of us said Pizer hastily guessing what Holland was up to. After all the good doctor indicated he wanted his guests properly treated. Don t worry about me. Holland spoke confidently to the threatening mass of Maximillian. I ll find my way. Be back soon Charlie. Make sure you get everything we might need. Will do. Pizer reached up and boldly tugged at one of the giant s arms an arm which could have lifted half a dozen men off the deck without effort. It did not move. Pizer didn t expect that it would but Maximillian would note the gesture. We need primary and secondary demand oxygen pressure valves with attached microputer units. And a decent ECS proportion flow controller. Holland was out the door and turning up the corridor they had come down walking with the easy air of a man who had all the time in the world. But he was sweating. Maximillian moved half a meter toward the door then stopped obviously confused as to how he should proceed. Max Dr. Reinhardt told you to requisition the parts for us. Let s get cracking. I m as anxious as you are to get out of here. Still moving uncertainly the huge mechanical turned away from the door. Extending a limb he plugged himself into the inventory. Lights flashed on the arm. Corresponding lights began to blink on within the rows of shelving. A drawer popped open then a second each occurrence matched by a distinctive musical tone. Way to go Max. Way to go. Pizer managed to conceal his relief. While Pizer busied Maximillian with the long list of parts requests Vincent sidled off to one side hovered near the desk. I see by your markings that you re from the old Two Eight. General Services right Where you originate from on Earth . . . Amsterdam Kuala Lumpur All the factory jobs from Lumpur called their serial run the tin cans and proud of it. How about you It was as if the older robot simply didn t have audio reception capability. From its markings and body style Vincent knew that was absurd. But it continued to act as if it were completely deaf. It whined away down the nearest aisle of shelving attending to chores which doubtless included maintaining the room and its functions. Lights flashed erratically on Vincent s torso the nearest he could come to non verbally expressing frustration. What in the Unitary was wrong with the old cousin. . . 7 THE air car had transported them rapidly down the length of the Cygnus far past the dock where the Palomino lay berthed in emptiness. They emerged into a corridor left the car. Reinhardt led them into a large chamber filled with the most complex instrumentation McCrae had yet seen on the ship. A steady hum came from somewhere nearby a whisper of great forces and energies held in check. The consoles lining the walls were of a peculiar design. In places she clearly recognized units that were outmoded on Earth by the twenty years that had passed. Elsewhere were components and devices whose purpose she could not decipher. And then there were hybrid instruments that combined very old discarded aspects of space going technology with a sophistication superior to anything she had ever seen. The entire room was a mixture of the outdated and the ultramodern. It looked like a witch doctor s hut lined with masks and dead animals on one side and a unitized free state diagnostic computer on the other. Once left to myself Reinhardt was telling them I had a great deal of time to explore ideas that previous endeavors such as overseeing the construction of the Cygnus had forbidden me. My isolation provided the time and the Cygnus s laboratories the means for much extensive research. So I became obsessed with repairing the engines because all the experts were convinced they could not be repaired and tremendously frustrated when I was eventually forced to agree with them. He smiled meaningfully his hands conducting his words. That is they could not be made to function in the accepted sense in the way they had been designed to function. So I was forced to experiment with concepts that had lain long dormant in the back of my mind. Frank McCrae helped until he died. Then I worked on alone with the computers with all the power of the Cygnus s vast mental resources to aid me. The result was the achievement of one of man s greatest dreams a dream attainable only in free space. I have discovered how to isolate and draw usable power from the reaction of matter and anti matter. Their expressions revealed their shock and he was pleased. Yes I know many scientists consider such an accomplishment beyond the power of our physics consider it impossible. They were correct. It is impossible . . . without the assistance of a stabilizing field analogous to the one that bends gravity around the Cygnus and keeps us from being sucked into the black hole. So we see at work again the marvelous serendipity of science where one discovery leads to another far greater. He turned to face McCrae. It was in the mining of an asteroid for sufficient mass to power the new engines that your father was killed. He moved to a long viewport halted there and gestured below it. They moved to look. Below was the largest open area they had yet encountered on the Cygnus. Four large sealed massive shapes glowed faintly with their individual auroras. They were the ship s supralight engines but different now. They had been altered. Reinhardt s mechanical workers had done an admirable job. I could give you the output of those engines in ergs or gigawatts or any other set of measures you chose. I will simply tell you without exaggeration or boastfulness that there is enough energy capacity down there to supply all of Earth. His listeners seemed impressed so he forged ahead. The seemingly insoluble problem with matter antimatter energy production on a practical scale was never in the releasing of the energy but in the finding of a means to contain the reaction safely so it would not spread. My null g field provided that. It was all very simple really. First it is demonstrated that such a field is possible. Then the engines are modified to generate a variation of said field. They produce enough initial power to maintain this field within themselves and contain the matter anti matter reaction. This new source of power in turn produces a far more powerful field which surrounds the ship and enables it to hold its position against the attractive force of the black hole. You see one discovery thus complements the other. This is the realization of the dream McCrae murmured aloud. It s the breakthrough to colonizing the galaxy. One such engine could power a colony ship three times the size of the Cygnus Durant was almost beyond words. You ll . . . you ll go down as one of the greatest space scientists of all time sir. No ... as one of the greatest scientists of all time. I have never doubted that. Reinhardt s air of self satisfaction filled the room. You said that you wanted us to carry your discoveries home to Earth Durant went on excitedly. Does that include your work on matter anti matter and gravity Do you mean to turn this technology over to us Reinhardt nodded. It s high time others learned of their mistakes and my triumphs. I will accept vindication in absentia. You my friends will serve as the instrument of that vindication. Now that I know who you are and what you stand for I can trust you to do what is right. Durant had turned away was once more drinking in the unique modifications of the power complex below their station. You should come back with us and enjoy the fruits of your success. Doesn t it mean anything to you the chance to confront your critics in person with your magnificent achievements I have already told you that such personal adoration is not necessary. You do not understand me at all Dr. Durant. For me the accomplishment itself is glory enough. To win the race is the vital thing not the broadcasting of it to the losers. You ve done plenty of broadcasting of your beliefs and accomplishments in your time. Reinhardt looked sharply at Booth then relaxed and smiled. Now that he had been able to display his considerable achievements he was past being baited. All means to an end Mr. Booth. I said what I felt it was necessary to say performed the actions I felt were required all for the sake of getting this vessel built and on its way. Such gestures as I may have made to the media were only to assist in realizing that estimable scientific end not for personal ego gratification. Exercising unusual restraint or perhaps caution the reporter offered no reply. There is too much at stake here for me to think of returning to Earth now the scientist continued. Even if I wished to accept your invitation Dr. Durant I could not. I stand on the brink of my greatest achievement. He pointed to the massive engines below. All this is but a means to a still greater end Dr. Durant. Once I thought this ship was the ultimate of my accomplishments. Then I believed that of my discoveries in energy generation and gravity field mechanics. Now I find all are only steps steps leading to another unimaginable beginning. The beginning of what Durant was gaping at him. Reinhardt had pushed his visitors curiosity to the limit. Just when they thought they had him sized and catalogued he shocked them with some new revelation with still further miracles. Durant was no wide eyed student. He had a vivid scientific imagination and was well versed in theoretical as well as practical physical prognostication but Reinhardt had long since exceeded his capacity for wonder. What he thought dazedly could be more important or impressive than the gravity field nullifier or the discovery of a means to power every home and factory on Earth Of only one thing was he still certain: Hans Reinhardt was not exaggerating. If anything he had chosen to understate the importance of the discoveries he had thus far revealed to them. You ll learn all that in due time Doctor. Reinhardt smiled condescendingly at his fellow scientist. Be patient. It is not good to learn too much at one time. The mind loses the ability to place things in proper perspective. The gospel according to Saint Reinhardt Booth muttered. I indeed preach a new gospel Mr. Booth the scientist admitted proudly. The gospel of a new physics which will offer man a new way to look at his Universe. I am no mad prophet. I preach only what I have learned. My sermons are founded on hard facts that can be independently confirmed. There is no dealing in superstition here. Again it was McCrae who forestalled a potentially violent confrontation by stepping verbally between the two men. I d like some proof of your power source. Something to show that what we re seeing are more than just some carefully gimmicked standard supradrive engines. And so you shall my dear. You will have all the proof you wish. All the computer storage banks are open to your perusal. So are the engines themselves. As you will see the readouts and monitoring instrumentation are practically unchanged. So you will know the figures they offer you are genuine. He looked around the room with the attitude of a proud father. When you examine the output of a single engine you will be more amazed than you can imagine. Come along and I ll explain as we walk. Please feel free to ask any questions you like. I enjoy being able to provide answers. That has been the driving force of my entire life you see. To be the one in the position to provide the answers. He glanced back at Durant. Perhaps as we walk I will also explain the beginning I was referring to the next question I have chosen to answer. Durant and McCrae flanked the scientist as they strolled off toward a bend in the room. Booth pretended to examine the master power console but watched as they moved farther from his position. A new source of energy for mankind McCrae was saying speculatively. This could revolutionize much more than deep space travel. It could free the peoples of Earth from dependence on conventional sources of power forever. Precisely agreed the pleased Reinhardt. I call it the Cygnus Process after my ship. As the others moved on Booth remained standing by the quietly humming instruments monitoring the engines below. His companions disappeared around the bend in the room. Booth looked around. The mechanicals manning the instruments ignored him. He turned and hurried away moving in the opposite direction from the one taken by his host and friends. At the moment he was not wor ried about Reinhardt s missing him as much as he was about the possibility he might encounter some of the Cygnus s metal sentries. The good doctor was obviously absorbed in detailing the marvels of the ship and in soaking up the compliments McCrae and Durant would be providing him in turn. Booth had had enough of scientific wonders for a while. There were one or two things bothering him that he preferred to check on away from Reinhardt s scrutiny. The time had come for a little investigative reporting. And if it got him into trouble well his curiosity had placed him in awkward positions before. He had always somehow managed to extricate himself. So if explanations didn t work with Reinhardt he suspected that flattery or humility or both would. He had been following his suspicions and hunches on a professional basis for years and he was damned if he was going to stop now. Holland had located an air car terminal and had chosen one likely to transport him back toward the reception area and the waiting Palomino. It responded to his programming carried him smoothly forward. If he had guessed wrong he could always backtrack and switch to another car. An intersection loomed ahead several corridors converging. He stared intently at the nearing nexus trying to recall if they had passed this hub previously or if one of the side corridors seemed more familiar than the one he was traveling down now. They did not but the intersection itself suddenly grabbed his interest. Six of the humanoid dark cloaked mechanicals hove into view. That in itself was nothing unique he had become familiar with the appearance and design of most of the robots aboard. But their movements and particularly the object they conveyed between them caused him to frown. The flat platform resembled a hospital style gurney less festooned with instrumentation but definitely similar in construction. The analogy was enhanced by the covered somewhat irregular shape lying on the platform. Its silhouette was exceptionally human more so even than that of the six mechanicals surrounding it. They crossed through the intersection and vanished up one of the corridors. Holland knew he had to act quickly before the vehicle carried him past the nexus. If he traveled too far before stopping he likely would not find the right corridor when he backtracked. His hands worked rapidly at the programming unit. The car slowed came to a silent halt just beyond the intersection. Holland leaned back and stared. The odd procession was just turning a far corner. He hesitated briefly. Reinhardt didn t know he was here doubtless still believed he was back in Maintenance and Stores with Charlie and Vincent working to procure the necessary replacement parts for the Palomino s regeneration system under the watchful optics of Maximillian. No sentry or other machine had challenged his progress thus far. It was reasonable to as sume that Reinhardt s instructions regarding the treatment of the new visitors as guests had filtered through the ship s mechanical crew. It was therefore possible he could go anywhere he wished without being confronted. No doubt he was wasting valuable time anyway. His fancies were running away with him. But the object on the platform had looked so manlike. So did the humanoid robots escorting it but if the thing on the gurney was a non functioning mechanical then why the concealing cloth And why six escorts when one or two would have been sufficient to guide the ailing cloaked machine to repair Such imponderables gave rise to flighty speculations that no doubt were nothing more than that but he wouldn t feel comfortable until he knew for certain. Holland did his best to lock the controls of the little car so that it would remain where he left it awaiting his return. Then he hurried after the departed group. He turned the corner around which they had disappeared and was confronted by a long bare corridor. A single closed door was nearby. Careful now he told himself. He knew these machines of Reinhardt s were personally programmed by him and realized they might have been imbued with personalities akin to Maximillian s. They haven t bothered you yet but they may not appreciate being interrupted or spied upon and Reinhardt s not around to countermand any violent impulses you might trigger. So ... watch it. He tried the door ready to run fight or talk fast as the occasion demanded. It opened easily. The long room inside was deserted. That is the people were absent but their memories lay thick. Crew quarters Holland muttered softly to himself as he walked through the room. Bunks were stacked three high. They had the appearance of having been moved and rearranged. He wondered at the cramped space. On a ship the size of the Cygnus the crew s living quarters should have been more spacious. Even the Palomino offered more privacy. He couldn t recall such details from twenty years ago. Maybe the builders of the Cygnus had felt that this kind of dormitory type existence would promote conviviality among the crew. Or perhaps after many years in free space the crew had chosen to make such alterations themselves a small band of humanity drawing closer together for psychological warmth against the vast impersonal coldness surrounding them. There were other possible explanations but he didn t dwell on them. Names from the past jumped out at him from where they appeared on lockers and cases. Occasional bits of individuality shone startlingly from the walls in the form of a pinup or solido. Some of the old fashioned pictures were printed on plastic. The room ended in another door. This one opened reluctantly cranky with an air of disuse. It reminded him of the atmosphere down in Maintenance and Stores. Inside were row on row of old musty uniforms. All appeared to be in good condition. Now his supply of ready rationalizations started to run thin. If the crew had brought casual clothing on the journey with them he guessed they might have grown tired of their official uniforms and had chosen to try to return to Earth in less formal garb. How could he imagine their collective state of mind preparatory to embarking on such a lonely attempt It was conceivable that prior to departing they might have voted to leave behind anything that would remind them of the Cygnus including uniforms. But he was less sure of that reasoning than he had been about the bunk arrangement. Another door opened off the room from the far side. It opened as easily as the first but he was less prepared for what it revealed. Beyond stretched a vaulted chamber like a small cathedral. At the far end he could see the cluster of robots busy around the gurney. They removed the object from it and placed it covering and all into a tubelike canister. The canister was built into the skin of the ship. Holland still couldn t identify the object. Nor could he place the design or function of the otherwise empty room but he recognized the purpose of the canister readily enough. His identification was soon confirmed by a faint puffing sound. A surge of frustration went through him. The canister was a disposal lock. Now he would never know what the object on the platform had been. It was outside the Cygnus. Soon it would pass beyond the protective field enveloping the ship to be captured and dragged down to oblivion by the pull of the black hole. While he could not assign specifics to everything he had observed so far together they added up to a puzzle whose outlines he was beginning to perceive. If anything he was shying away from consideration of those outlines. They framed an ominous possibility The door behind him was jerked violently aside. Maximillian hovered there over him threatening and intimidating even while motionless. Despite his carefully rehearsed excuses the unexpected and sudden confrontation had left him momentarily speechless. He stared at the dull red machine. As near as he could tell it was examining him with equal intentness. His wits returned and with them his voice. He smiled with difficulty. Must ve made a wrong turn. Guess my sense of direction s not as sharp as I thought. I ll be able to find the ship now though. Maximillian gave no sign that this explanation impressed Mm that he believed it or that anything save Reinhardt s explicit orders kept him from shredding Holland on the spot. The feeling it gave Holland was that this machine had been designed to distrust everyone and everything save its single human master. He held the smile though he had seen nothing to indicate that Maximillian could perceive and interpret expressions and edged past the robot. Fear chilled him as he touched both wall and machine while squeezing by. Maximillian s gaze had shifted momentarily to the robots now filing out of the far end of the room. Then it turned to study Holland as the captain walked with a carefully measured stride back up toward the corridor. Holland forced himself not to look back. Behind him the colossus slowly closed the door leading into the vaulted chamber. The room was high ceilinged and domed with some translucent material stronger than glass that had a refractive effect. It was a bubble within a far larger expanse. The larger sealed in section was a vast diversified garden. Vegetables and fruit trees grew within the enclosure. Harry Booth wandered into this inner chamber his gaze held by the greenery and ripening fruits. For an instant he was able to forget he was dozens of light years from Earth. He was back in midwestern North America doing a report for his network on the coming crop year. Yet the plants and trees he was seeing were growing in artificial soil. Some grew in no soil at all. They were kept alive and flourishing by the carefully regulated influx of specialized nutrients and fertilizers. He had seen more extensive hydroponic gardens and denser vegetation but none so efficient. Their extent did not surprise him. A crew the size of the Cygnus s would require corresponding food sources. The smaller the proportion of recycled or concentrated foods the healthier the crew would be. As large as it was this was probably only one of several such artificial farms on board the great ship. One of the mirror faced humanoid machines stood before the main console patiently monitoring readouts. Occasionally it would adjust a control. The trees and ranks of ripening vegetables growing outside the con trol bubble derived their nourishment from injections and modulated circulation of premixed chemicals. From the central console the watchful robot could alter their diet their water supply even their weather. Hello. The mechanical did not respond. Not that Booth expected it would. That would have meant deviating from its programming. It might not as its brethren in the control tower be equipped to reply. Instead an arm moved fingers stiffly turning a dial. A buzzing sound caused Booth to turn look back into the artificially maintained undergrowth. A swarm of tiny machines was flitting through the plants. The buzzing sound came not from the beat of tiny wings but from miniature engines and navigation systems. Booth moved toward the transparent wall stared at the minute robots in amazement. They traveled efficiently accurately from one plant to the next. After a moment of delighted contemplation he turned back to the figure standing before the console. Quite a layout. More elaborate than necessary but they had time for aesthetics in the old days. They have simpler methods of artificial pollination now but none so ... well charming. Did Reinhardt design them also If so I like his pollinators a helluva lot better than that overbearing bodyguard of his. None of this appeared to interest the figure. Booth leaned close fascinated and yet repelled by the reflective featureless face of the mechanical. He wondered if it was equipped to perceive the world around it via less familiar senses. Sophisticated sonar scanning maybe. Or perhaps the smooth egg shaped metal face was a specialized polarizing shield and the robot s true optics lay behind it seeing the world on wavelengths different from Harry Booth s. It continued at its tasks as if the reporter were not present let alone less than a meter from its face. Not programmed to speak huh Well I suppose speech would make you a little too human. But then Reinhardt s a man who enjoys playing God isn t he Maximillian and the sentries aren t human looking enough. He said he wanted needed companions so he caused them to be built. I guess you and your kind are as close as he could come to making himself some human buddies. As anticipated the mechanical did not respond. Its assignment apparently completed it turned to leave the room. Booth ignored it disappointed at its lack of response. He started to return his attention to the quaint tableaux provided by the pollinating machines when something about the robot s movements caught his eye. In disbelief and confusion he stared after it waiting and watching to make certain he hadn t imagined it Then he was positive. His eyes grew wide. The robot limped. Hey . . . wait a minute Waving trying to attract the receding figure s attention he started around the console. You there wait The door closed behind the robot. Booth was seconds behind. A moment of terrible frustration when the door refused to respond for him then it was clear and he rushed out into an empty corridor. His gaze swept up the passage then down. Empty. No distant sounds nothing save a memory that tantalized and wouldn t leave him that and a horrible thought or two. Vincent extended a third limb. One was already disassembling sections of the shattered regenerator feed line. The other was sizing the replacements brought back from the Cygnus s stores. Visual calipers built into his optical system measured the new unit to within a tenth of a millimeter. He decided that the slight divergence in diameter was not critical enough to prevent the replacement from being utilized. It could be adjusted to the necessary tolerance. The difference could be filled by a judicious application of a thin film of liquid polymer. While he concentrated on the task at hand he let his aural receptors remain attuned to the conversation continuing nearby. Charlie I know what I saw. A more contemplative than usual Holland was helping his first officer reseal several of the line breaks. Pizer sounded half distressed half amused by this admission of gullibility on the part of his friend and superior. Dan nobody buries a robot. If they re beyond repair then they re cannibalized for spare parts or deactivated and stored against the time when repair becomes possible. The only reason I can possibly think of for chucking one out into space would be if the ship needed the extra room. And no ship ever built had as much surplus space as the Cygnus. So that doesn t make sense either. You just don t bury robots. I didn t say it was a robot. I said it could ve been a robot. But I didn t get a good enough look at it to be able to say for sure and now we never will. Pizer paused at his work. If it wasn t a mechanical then what It s plain silly Dan. I don t know what it was they shot out into space Holland said but they did it with all the ceremony and reverence of a human funeral. A simple disposal operation wouldn t require the presence of six attendants. That s a waste of energy whether it s being performed by man or by machine. No machine is intentionally wasteful of energy. Neither I d bet is Reinhardt. Maybe Reinhardt lied. Pizer grew thoughtful. Holland had certainly witnessed something. And he was so positive. If anything the captain of the Palomino tended to the unimaginative. He did not invent data to accord with his observations. Then...what had he seen Maybe the first officer continued speculatively there are other survivors on board. You could have stumbled onto the funeral of one of the last of them. If you did see a real funeral then what s the reason for the secrecy on Reinhardt s part What s he been up to What s he trying to hide Holland sealed a weld angrily. Wish I knew. I haven t a clue Charlie. I wouldn t put much past him. I just can t figure the man. His dedication to his work is all consuming but he seems genuinely interested in expanding our knowledge of the Universe and the physical forces that operate within it for the benefit of mankind. It s hard to condemn someone for zealous execution of his duty. Certainly we can t without more evidence than a few glimpses of some maybe funeral for an unknown subject. Well whatever he s up to Pizer observed he seems sincere enough about helping us repair our ship. If he was running something sinister here the best way to cover himself would be to prevent us from leaving. He gestured at the large collection of spare parts they had hauled aboard. None of these are booby trapped. Checked out every piece myself. Everything s functional. Would that be the best way Holland wondered. Or would it be better for him if we left safely to return to Earth to repeat only his version of the events of the last twenty years A wolf remains a wolf even if it has not eaten your sheep. Vincent sounded disapproving. Who asked you big ears Vincent s right. Holland was nodding in agreement. Just because Reinhardt hasn t tried anything yet doesn t mean he isn t thinking about it. One thing we can be pretty sure of: our appearance here was a genuine surprise to him. I don t care how much mechanical help you have running a ship like this without additional human assistance is a round the clock task He may be stalling for time trying to decide just what he wants to do with us. The sooner we leave here the better. It s not a good idea to give a fanatic like Reinhardt too much time to think. Pizer could not agree totally. If you excuse our treatment on arrival he s been polite enough so far. So far. Courtesy would be instinctive in someone like our host. Careful manipulation of guests comes later after he s had time to size us up. Whatever you say. Pizer shrugged. In any case the sooner we finish this the sooner our options will be increased. Let s snap it up Vincent. A pint cannot hold a quart Mr. Pizer the robot replied. If it holds a pint it s doing the best it can. Pizer scowled at the machine. Lay off the snide homilies. And don t think you can muddle me with archaic units of measurement. I know my ancient statistics as well as you. The two of you will work faster said Holland sternly if you ll quit sniping at each other. 8 REINHARDT stared angrily at the readout. He touched several controls and was not pleased with the results they provided him. Get that communication re established at once. Maximillian extended a limb and plugged himself into a console. Man and machine studied the flat expanse of the control center s main screen. Alive with the death of plasma and other matter the black hole filled the screen. The projected hues colored Reinhardt s face like a watercolor wash. His attention shifted from screen to instrumentation switching rapidly from one to another. Both hands danced over controls causing figures and complex word trains to appear on multiple gauges. He would note these perfunctorily adjust other instruments accordingly. Maximillian hovered nearby a sentient extension of the ship s instruments. Physically he became a part of the Cygnus. Spiritually he remained plugged into Reinhardt. Durant and McCrae strolled over to watch. Their attention was divided between the image of the roiling black hole and the intense rapid work of Reinhardt both awesome forces of nature. Fascinating ... Durant s reverent appraisal left some doubt as to whether he was referring to the vision of the collapsar or to its nearby human dissector. Only from a distance McCrae commented with equal ambivalence. Reinhardt finished his immediate work turned to face them. Are you interested in black holes Dr. Durant Durant smiled. That s like asking a sculptor if he d be challenged by attempting to chisel a portrait from the face of the Moon. How could anyone scientist or layman not be fascinated by the deadliest force in the Universe I ve studied collapsars all my life Doctor. The most amazing thing about them is how little we ve actually been able to learn about them since their discovery in the late twentieth century. Of course the problem is the same now as it was then. How do you study something that swallows up your instrument probes as soon as they get near enough to learn anything new It s like trying to study a man who s invisible and can destroy anything that comes within a light year of him. Under such conditions study is im possible and all attempts at scientific analysis are reduced to guesswork. The long dark tunnel to nowhere said McCrae dispassionately. That s what they are. Or to somewhere. Reinhardt spoke casually. Those are the possibilities yet to be explored. Here Dr. Durant has just admirably elucidated why our knowledge of such stellar phenomena is so slim and nonetheless you proceed to offer a conclusion on the basis of imagination rather than fact. Not a very professional judgment Dr. McCrae. I would expect better of you. I was being poetic not analytical. Durant spoke before Reinhardt could reply. By this time the younger man s admiration knew no limits. Yet you ve defied the power of that black hole with your null g field sir. A stunning achievement. Reinhardt acknowledged the compliment. Your praise is excessive Doctor. Durant went on. Your discoveries must have compensated you for the loneliness you ve endured these past years. I can t believe you haven t experienced loneliness despite the company of robot associates. What can a man know of loneliness when he has the whole Universe to keep him company I have had suns for neighbors. I have spent hundreds of happy hours conversing with the mysterious signals that churn the ether. I ve spoken with wonders and listened to the hiss and crackle of worlds being born. Heavenly choirs of quasars sing to me from distances unimaginable with inconceivable power. I am suffused with the gossip of the cosmos. So I am not lonely no. Besides someone once said It is only alone a man can achieve his full potential for greatness. He paused. They were all silent for a long moment though for different reasons. I have made peace with myself and the Universe Reinhardt finally went on. I am kept alive as well as sane by my hunger to learn by my thirst to root out the jealously guarded secrets of nature from then hidden places. He turned waved toward the enormous glowing screen. This massive collapsar for example. Nature s most secure most inviolate hiding place. Who knows what discoveries it shields He stared hard at Durant yet at the same time seemed almost to be pleading. I think Dr. Durant that you are a man who longs for a sense of his own greatness but has not yet found his true direction. Such personal discoveries come rarely at best and never for most men. Now McCrae s attention was concentrated on her companion and not on Reinhardt. Perhaps Durant murmured smiling hopefully back at the elder scientist I d find that here if you re in no rush for us to leave. There are still so many things I d like to ask you. And many things I d like to tell you. Reinhardt sounded pleased. Isn t that what I said my purpose in life was To be the one who answers the questions But I suggest we discuss that matter over dinner. Your friends should have the opportunity to hear also. Meanwhile there is still a great deal I can show you here if you re not yet bored. I m honored by your generosity sir. And I m gratified by your persistent curiosity and your willingness to listen uncritically to what I have to say. The hallmarks of a true man of science. Reinhardt led him off toward a far bank of instruments. McCrae moved to follow them then hesitated. Her gaze traveled back to the vast expanse of the viewscreen lingered on the seething hell of the black hole as she struggled to subdue the storm in her own mind . . . Mesons and muons meteors and more vanished down the gravity well of the black hole. As they were torn apart by immense gravitational forces they gave up energy in the form of radiation. Some of it was at once exquisite and visible like a cruising white shark or a dark tornado. Some of it was still more deadly though detectable only with instruments far more sensitive than the human eye. None of it made sense in the way human generated radiation such as radio waves did. The collapsar was nature gone mad. Yet at the same time it possessed balance and beauty. It is sometimes that way with certain men. Holland Pizer and Vincent having received Reinhardt s invitation to dinner were walking down another of the Cygnus s seemingly endless corridors. Holland was casually memorizing everything distinctive. A marking on a door the number of lights overhead anything that would enable them if necessary to find their own way back through the maze of passageways to the corridor leading to the reception area outside the Palomino. Pizer s attention was periodically distracted by the regular appearance of groups of sentry robots the same variety whose attention and efficiency he had earlier experienced. Vincent drifted alongside the two men. In his fashion the robot was nervous apprehensive and decidedly upset that his colleagues had accepted Reinhardt s invitation. There wasn t anything else we could do Vincent Holland was telling him. Except for our initial reception he hasn t made a single hostile gesture toward us. We d have been asking for a confrontation if we d re fused his invitation without reason. I wouldn t be surprised if something that slight could set him off. You ve noted how volatile he is. I still don t like it. Holland regarded the robot with exasperation. It s only dinner. What could possibly be dangerous about accepting an invitation to dinner Said the spider to the fly. Vincent was not being flippant. I should be with you. What for asked Pizer. To wipe the soup from my chin Better than wiping your face off the floor the machine snapped back. If you will continue to refuse to take care of yourselves I don t see why you keep me from doing so for you. We ll be safer without you and Max trying to knock heads. Pizer eyed a nearby sentry with distaste. I watched Reinhardt when we were first in the command center and you and his toy squared off. He was enjoying the spectacle. Next time he might not interfere. Not that I care whether Max melts you into a puddle of alloy you understand but it could escalate into something really dangerous. Your concern touches me Vincent said sarcastically but it is misplaced. It is your skin you should be worrying about. He assumed a lofty attitude rose half a meter higher above the deck. As would be expected of a mere human you are impressed by the size and overabundance of heavy metals in the construction of that clumsy mechanism. Its circuitry is twenty years out of date and its higher facilities pitifully inadequate. I would put it on a par with basic programmed heavy materials loaders certainly nowhere near in mental ability to my own class. It s not Max s mental faculties that concern me Pizer replied. You are afraid of simple mechanical force Yeah I am. You bet your metallic backside And you should be too for your own sake. I can handle that thing. Far be it from you to admit there isn t anything you can t handle. Semantically outflanked Pizer was ready to give in. Far be it from you to admit that subtle debate and refined discussion won t cause it to fall apart at the seams battered to scrap by your stentorian oratory before it can make sheet metal out of you. Mr. Pizer there are three basic types of machines as well as men: the wills the won ts and the can ts. The wills accomplish everything. The won ts oppose everything. The can ts won t will themselves to try. Very Socratic said Holland finally injecting himself into the discussion. But I doubt that Maximillian would respond as intended Do us all a favor and try to be a can t at least where the monster is concerned. I ve got enough to worry about without you and him playing another robotic version of chicken. We need you Vincent. Not another corkscrew. But I That s an order Vincent. Acknowledged sir. The robot fell into an electronic sulk unhappy with the situation but powerless to alter it. Privately he was considering options creating scenarios and preparing himself for the worst. He was not angry at the two humans however. They were prisoners of themselves. Captain Holland and First Officer Pizer were delightful companions pleasant shipmates. But in his entire existence Vincent had encountered perhaps half a dozen humans who he felt could actually think straight. Unexpected sounds clicking and whirring and staccato buzzes reached them as they rounded another turn in the corridor. Underlying them was something that might have been electronic music. Puzzled they slowed hunted for the source. Vincent led them to a wide doorway down a side corridor. As they reached the doorway the sounds seemed to jump out at them. None of the scattered sentry robots moved to restrain or intercept them. The room beyond was filled with light and less visible varieties of illumination. Holland blinked had to squint. Some of the visual effects inside were disorienting even painful. He was not startled by the sight only surprised to see such an area on board the Cygnus. He had encountered such places before a recreation area for mechanicals. Long ago the idea of such facilities was criticized as wasteful if not downright bizarre. The proponents of such facilities were branded as loco and were classed with the very addled machines they sought to soothe. But as the mental circuitry and design of mankind s mechanical servants became increasingly sophisticated odd forms of behavior that could not be explained as purely engineering errors became more and more frequent. Machines believed completely dependable suddenly went berserk at their posts. Delicate circuits visible only through high powered microscopes showed inexplicable shifts in electron flow for no known reason. The robot psychologist came into being. Initial laughter died when the unexplained incidents dropped off in the areas where such men and their attendant machinery started to work. It was determined that the tremendously fragile mind machinery with which the new robots were endowed required exercise and use other than that programmed for it much as did man s. The first tentative prototypes of the room Holland and the others were now staring into were constructed. Eventually the machines themselves took a metal hand in designing the recreation facilities for factories and ships and service industries. Some of the games and sights they chose were variations or direct adaptations of human forms of recreation. Others seemed nothing but random light and noise to men. Man felt at a loss knowing there were certain types of entertainment that his metal offspring could enjoy and appreciate while he restricted to his organic brain and body never could. The longer they stood motionless before the room the more vulnerable they became to awkward questioning. Several of the nearby sentry robots were already eying Vincent uncertainly. He was one of them but not with them. Hey Vincent you ll have the time of your life in there Pizer said enthusiastically. Better than hovering outside just waiting for us to finish eating. The robot replied cautiously. I don t mean to sound superior but I hate the company of robots. And these are all ancient models. I don t know if we can even converse certainly not to my edification. Twenty years does not ancient make Vincent. Holland was staring with interest at a machine generating three dimensional abstract patterns between two robots. It ll take your mind off worrying so much. Relax have fun. Remember what they say about all work and no play. Vincent generated an electronic sigh. It would be better to agree than to be ordered. This way if he went inside voluntarily he would have no compunctions about slipping out later if he felt the need. All sunshine makes a desert so the Arabs said . . . before the advent of cheap solar power. You ll alert me if you have any trouble Captain If there s even a hint of trouble I will enjoy myself more if I know you remain cognizant of my usefulness. Vincent I m always cognizant of your usefulness. You re indispensable old pot. He smiled. There s nothing wrong with our communicators. If anything unexpected starts you ll be the first to know. Now go on in there try to take it easy and have a good time. You deserve it if only for the amount of work you put in on the regenerator system. Merely doing my duty Captain. I am not programmed to function on the service reward system. That should make the rewards all the more enjoyable when they come. Holland patted the robot on the back. Surface receptors immediately noted the contact converted it into a stream of electrical impulses that were transported to the interpretive section of Vincent s brain. There they were identified correlated with such additional related elements as Holland s tone of voice the context of the conversation and his facial expression. Not so very different from the way a human would have processed identical stimuli. Vincent moved into the noisy room. Pizer had been keeping an eye on the sentries. Now that Vincent had been allowed to enter the recreation area without challenge Holland and he could continue on their way. One sentry seemed to be singling out the first officer for special scrutiny. Pizer flipped him a jaunty salute. As you were ... The sentry did not respond but continued to stare after him until the two men had disappeared around a bend in the main corridor. A simple minded mechanical programmed for few functions it had by then forgotten all about the non Cygnian robot now cavorting in the recreation room with other members of the ship s mechanized crew. Vincent regarded the shifting metal assembly with apparent indifference. He wandered through the crowd seemingly oblivious to the outright stares of some of the other robots. None ventured to engage him in conversation however and he didn t yet attempt to draw them out. He was hunting for a subject likely to be inclined to garrulousness if properly motivated. But it was difficult to distinguish one robotic type from another. The lights made visual identification difficult despite the acuity of his optics. Furthermore Reinhardt s machines reflected his personal rather than a standard cybernetic vision. The presence of this large number of hybrids and modified types further confused the matter. It was for such reasons that the human crew members of the Palomino seemed to regard Reinhardt as nothing if not a scientific genius despite their suspicion of him. Vincent held a somewhat lower opinion of the commander of the Cygnus. To him the perpetrator of these and who knew how many other forms of mechanical destandardization was more a Dr. Moreau than an Einstein. Doubtless most of the mechanicals in the room held their master in high esteem. So Vincent kept his critical opinions to himself. For the time being anyway. He was searching for a robot designed to interact closely with humans: a Calvin series twenty if he was lucky. Such a machine could converse with subtlety and would be more likely to talk freely than other less loquacious types. There were none in sight however. What he spotted instead was a machine he had already encountered. Likely he would get nothing from it as he had or rather hadn t previously. But it was of the same general style as himself. It might em pathize properly if he could break through its enforced reserve. And the inelegant monster Maximillian was not around to intimidate the other this time. So he floated over to the old fashioned pool table hovering for a moment in the background to watch. The aged B.O.B. unit utilized a pressure sensitive cue to match the adjustable arms of the more humanoid machines but he still missed the shot badly. Vincent analyzed the miss automatically calculating the pressure to distance ratio involved and came to the conclusion that the older robot s internal velocity calculations module needed tuning or replacement. Or else he was simply a lousy pool player. The surrounding robots more of Reinhardt s cybernetic mutants appeared to enjoy the miss. It was unusual to see one robot taunting or deliberately conspiring to humiliate another but apparently the old B.O.B. unit regularly received such abuse. Vincent was disgusted the machines were behaving in an almost human fashion. He drifted forward monitoring the sequencing of his external lights so as not to betray his true feelings and opened cheerfully. It appears you are in need of some help. The B.O.B. unit did not respond but Vincent was not to be put off so quickly this time. Vincent is my name he announced. Pool is my game. He took the power cue from Bob inspected it with the air of a machine designed not to use such devices but to manufacture them. Extending a set of fine manipulators he began making adjustments to the cue s trigger and fire mechanism. Other robots around the room paused in their activities to watch. Several tried without success to identify the electronic tune of the V.I.N.CENT model was humming via his internal synthesizer. They failed not having his human interaction library. Within the control tower all was silent save for the steady blips and pops from the multitude of computer readouts. Humanoid robots stood or sat at their posts attending to individually assigned functions. Maximillian hovered before the command console. Occasionally the massive head would shift to take in a distant screen or gauge. A tiny spot of light appeared on one screen. The massive mechanical turned to study it quietly. A dial was turned contact controls carefully attuned. The spot of light grew brighter defining itself against the intentionally muted background of the black hole and its swirling halo of captured radiating mass. The light continued to travel steadily out from the Pit The table was not an antique though it had the look of one. So did the matching chairs and the crystal chandelier above and much of the silverware and other accouterments of a graciously set table. All were reproductions. They had been carefully crafted in the Cygnus s repair shops to Reinhardt s specifications. Three dimensional history tapes from the ship s library provided the models. Only the huge painting of the Cygnus itself which dominated one wall was not an echo of man s past though the frame that held it was. Tastefully aligned drapes framed the expansive window that dominated the opposite wall. The window had the appearance of those once used in old wooden homes the glass crisscrossed with thin hardwood braces. But the transparent material was far stronger than glass the wood decoration instead of support and the view beyond one only a few humans had ever set eyes upon. It looked out onto the illuminated length of the Cygnus and the gravity devil in the sky. Holland and Pizer entered the room. The rest of the human crew of the Palomino were already present. The captain s attention was drawn now not by the distant maelstrom of the collapsar but by the table set with fresh fruits fresh vegetables salads and covered silver dishes from which rose wonderfully aromatic steam. It was all very different from the fare they had lived on during their eighteen months on the Palomino. Two humanoid robots served wine from a real bottle another reproduction. It would have tasted the same if it had been poured from a modern decanter but that would have spoiled the effect. Holland knew that the commander of the Cygnus was not one to spoil an effect. The room and the lavish meal laid before them was shocking not for their elaborateness but because they gave the impression of being exactly the opposite. There was nothing to indicate that any special preparations had been made for them beyond cooking more food than normal. Holland had the feeling that Reinhardt dined like this all the time. For a few seconds he found himself envying his counterpart. That instant of envy vanished quickly. Fresh asparagus was a poor substitute for human companionship an orange no match for sympathy from a fellow creature. Despite the opulent display Reinhardt was more to be pitied than envied. There was no reason he should stint on his meals not with the resources of a vessel designed to feed hundreds devoted to satisfying his needs alone. Holland decided that Reinhardt was entitled to any compensations he could muster. But for some reason the setting still disturbed him. Bookcases leaned against other walls. Some held books made with real paper. Antique star maps decorated real wood paneling. The room was a mixture of the old and the new traits which seemed more and more to characterize Reinhardt himself. The commander of the Cygnus had risen to greet them as they entered. He did not comment on the absence of Vincent though Holland knew it had been noted. Instead after greeting the newcomers he turned his attention back to McCrae. What a pleasant experience to dine once more with a lovely woman. That is an effect quite beyond the most elaborate programming. McCrae nodded ever so slightly. Thank you. Reinhardt now looked back at Holland who had moved to stand alongside Harry Booth. A great many experiments are in progress aboard the Cygnus gentlemen. Some of them are dangerous. In the interests of your own safety I suggest that there are no more unescorted excursions for the duration of your stay. Holland thought the gentle admonition was intended for himself and Pizer. As yet he knew nothing of Booth s solitary exploration of numerous corridors nor of his singular encounter with the peculiar robot in hydroponics. But since Reinhardt appeared willing to let the matter drop with the simple warning he wasn t about to pursue it. Nor was Booth. Reinhardt indicated they should be seated moved quickly to hold a chair for McCrae. Please... She accepted the seat. The physical proximity of the commander made her nervous for reasons she couldn t define. Durant took the chair opposite her and Reinhardt as expected sat at the head of the table between them. Durant found himself eying the painting of the Cygnus that dominated one wall and wondering who had painted it. Reinhardt himself or one of the since departed crew Or had it been on the Cygnus originally Maybe one of Reinhardt s machines had executed the work. He inspected the crystal goblet on the table near his plate. It was a replica of nineteenth century English. All the other table settings had been made by machines. Why not the painting also Why did it disturb him to think that We begin with fresh mushroom soup. Prepared from my own personal garden. Several of the humanoid robots were already dispensing the thick potage. They moved and worked with a fluidity unmatched by the average mechanical. Mushrooms grow especially well on the Cygnus Reinhardt continued. Considering the dark and cold of their immediate surroundings it somehow seems appropriate that they should do so well. Pizer was already downing the soup from the silver bowl before him. This is the kind of Christmas dinner I ve been dreaming about for months. He spooned another mouthful swallowed his eyes closing from the sheer pleasure of it. Delicious. Thank you. I am afraid the spices the white pepper and the butter substitute are from the Cygnus s store of preserved condiments but the parsley you see is also fresh as is the wine in the soup. I have enjoyed reprogramming and experimenting with the machines that do the cooking. I have had ample time to develop an interest in such hobbies without having to neglect my serious work. Booth had barely sampled his soup was staring down at it with a peculiar expression. I remember writing about the extensive hydroponics system back when everyone was doing features on the Cygnus s construction. Large enough to support the needs of the entire crew wasn t it Reinhardt nodded agreeably. These days it s tiny only large enough to supply my personal needs. Most of the cultivated areas have been allowed to lie dormant. Naturally. Be a waste of energy and material to maintain them for no reason at all. A robot refilled the reporter s wineglass. Booth was disappointed that his carefully phrased appraisal had failed to provoke some kind of reaction from Reinhardt. Our spare parts and our wine are vintage Captain. I hope they all prove satisfactory. Reinhardt savored the bouquet from his own glass sipped delicately. We re modifying a few of them Doctor but we should be able to make everything work. Holland chewed his food swallowed and spoke while slicing another portion of meat. The changes that have taken place in the past twenty years have been primarily in the fields of guidance and navigation life support maintenance and automatics. Atmospheric regeneration systemology has remained fairly basic over that period. There s only so much you can do with air. The replacements you ve provided us with were machined a little differently and some of the alloys are different. Nothing that can t be adjusted to work on the Palomino. We ll be finished with our repairs by tomorrow and ready to leave. Durant took immediate exception to that. Speak for yourself Dan. I for one still have a great deal to learn from Dr. Reinhardt. Our mission s finished Alex. It s time for us to start home. All of us. Durant opened his mouth to reply but their attention was diverted by the sudden entry of Maximillian. The machine was a brutal reminder of the realities which held sway beyond the fairy tale ambiance of the dining room. Reinhardt listened sagely to the rapid paced spew of electronics from the robot clearly understanding everything. Whatever the content of the message it produced an immediate change in the commander s attitude. His mood turned from merely pleasant to downright buoyant. Thank you Maximillian. Inform me in time to congratulate him formally. A last series of beeps issued from the machine. Then it pivoted on its repeller units and departed. Reinhardt dwelled in some other dimension for an instant then remembered his guests. Lifting his wineglass as he rose he addressed them all. His particular attention was reserved for the expectant Durant A toast to you and your companions Dr. Durant on the occasion of your visit to the Cygnus. You are the only people of Earth to know of my continued existence the only ones to know that I did not vanish with dreams unfulfilled. Durant lifted his own glass in reflexive response. And to you sir and your magnificent achievements. May they multiply and increase. So they shall so they shall. Reinhardt sounded self important. Not pompous. Never pompous. He was driven beyond that. Tonight my friends we stand on the brink of a feat unparalleled in the history of spatial exploration. And what might that be inquired the ever skeptical Booth. Reinhardt glanced at him. If the data on my returning probe ship matches my computerized calculations it will mean I can proceed with the ultimate test of both the new energy source represented by the Cygnus Process and the null g field generator. I will travel where no man has dared to go. He was staring past them now out the port into space. Durant hesitated disbelieving but Reinhardt s gaze and manner could be indicative of only one possible destination. Into the black hole ... Stunned as they all were by the wonderful madness of such a thought that was as much as any of them could say. 9 REINHARDT continued to gaze past them past the parameters of his ship. His was the look of a man whose dedication was coupled with disregard for anything but achieving a particular end. Such a gaze belonged only to true visionaries. Also true madmen. You strive to attain a most singular end Doctor an awed Durant finally added. Reinhardt replied without smiling. No Dr. Durant. To attain the end of a singularity. That s crazy Booth chimed in not caring now whether he might provoke Reinhardt to anger or not. Impossible It s impossible to travel into a black hole let alone through one It was not the aspersion Booth indirectly cast on Reinhardt s sanity that upset the commander of the Cygnus but rather the reporter s scientific absolutism and negativity. Impossible Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools. He was barely holding his anger in check. Pizer glanced at Holland. Reinhardt noted the look saw that at least the captain was giving the proposal serious consideration. It calmed him somewhat. Foolish to allow a popular demagogue like Booth to upset him Mr. Pizer he told the first officer I was dreaming of this when you were still flying kites. If scientists habitually restricted their researches to what their colleagues considered possible we would still be living in caves or on the Eurasian land mass because of fear of sailing off the edge of the Earth or restricted to the Earth alone because exploration of the cosmos might not seem financially feasible. Such attitudes are characteristic of the Dark Ages. I am surprised that any of you and he looked around the table would adhere to such deterministic nonsense. Dreaming is one thing the dangerous pursuit of dreams another Holland argued. People have dreamed for years about such an attempt and have failed every time. Drone ships have managed to get close but eventually all are trapped by the collapsar s gravity and they vanish beyond the event horizon. You disappoint me Captain Holland. I expected more empathy for such a journey from someone like yourself. Have you no desire no curiosity to know what may He on the other side of a black hole There is no other side Booth insisted. Anything that enters a black hole is smashed down to nothingness by the strength of the gravity. That s one theory Reinhardt readily admitted unperturbed. There are others. The scientific consensus today says there s nothing on the other side McCrae put in. Yet if there is another side which is where Mr. Booth and I disagree then by definition there must be something there. As I ve just pointed out my dear the scientific consensus once insisted the world was flat. It s not possible. Holland still spoke thoughtfully his voice devoid of ridicule. Every leading scientist says it s not possible. Except this one Reinhardt said loftily. Assuming the impossible for a moment Holland finally hypothesized that your field functions as you believe it will and that you can also generate enough power to break through to this imaginary other side ... how do you propose to return Reinhardt surveyed him with the full pity the dedicated scientist reserves for the layman. My dear Captain Holland I do not expect to return. By now the pool table was surrounded by mechanical spectators all viewing the action through optics operating on everything from infrared up through the ultraviolet. Mutters of amazement and admiration filled the air. As yet Vincent s remarkable display of pool prowess had not engendered any apparent hostility not even from the mechanical he was playing against. Making the usual ultrarapid calculations involving distance mass and energy Vincent lined up his next shot. Another ball tumbled neatly into a far pocket. Nearby the old B.O.B. unit he had befriended looked on in astonishment. The tension cue seemed to have become an extension of Vincent s mind as well as his body. Vincent noticed the flicker of lights on the older machine flashing the admiration sequence. The only way to win. Never give the other fellow a shot. Run the table on him. He tilted himself sideways in the air lined up a ridiculously difficult shot and banked it home. A chorus of incredulous buzzes and murmurs rose from the robotic audience he had attracted. Are there any more like us on board Vincent set up his next shot a tough three ball combination. Bob shook its head no. But something had finally convinced the old machine to talk. I m the last. There were others but our series was fairly new when the Cygnus was first outfitted. A lot of us revealed bugs. Every one except myself failed early in his journey. He turned prideful tried to correct the list to his hover. I must have been one of the first in the series to be properly composed. I m still operative. These upstarts think I m some old freak. Vincent made the shot easily moved to follow up as the cue ball glided to a halt. We re still the pride of the fleet back home. He fired another ball in. There are units like you and me operating at every level of fleet command. Also in private commercial service. We re highly regarded and valued. You could be fixed up easily enough. Install some of the latest reaction circuitry and logic capacitors and you d be good as new. No ... better than new. How would you like to go back with us The hum of conversation surrounding the table and players abruptly ceased. A couple of the machines near Bob flashed warning lights. Vincent appraised the scene and the attitude of the other robots. All were Reinhardt made or modified. None appeared sympathetic to his casual offer. He decided he would find no allies among these mechanicals. With one possible exception. I think you d be wise to drop the subject Bob advised him. After studying his audience a moment longer Vincent gave the equivalent of an electronic shrug. Forget it. I was just joking. We wouldn t have room for additional machines anyway. Then he added as an idle afterthought One of those parts Maximillian drew for us doesn t work. I ll be needing a replacement for a regenerator boost module number A Thirty four. He turned back to the game as if nothing had happened lined up another ball. That shot does not compute insisted one of the again fully absorbed onlookers. Don t bet on it Vincent warned him. I have not yet begun to compute. He made the shot with extra English to spare. It catalyzed the expected flurry of electronic oohs and ahs. It also allowed old Bob to slip out of the recreation room without being noticed. Booth had his recorder out and activated. He set it next to his plate. Reinhardt either did not notice it or had no objection to the reporter s recording his statements. The latter was the more likely. Holland was the one currently talking. According to what you ve told us Doctor the surviving lifeboat survey ship has been converted to accept both your matter anti matter energy system and the gravity field distortion unit. But you say it has only traveled to the event horizon not past it into the black hole itself. I admit that being able to pass that close to oblivion and return successfully is a tremendous achievement. Reinhardt didn t change his expression accepting the compliment as his due. But it s akin to sailing a ship atop an ocean as opposed to diving to its bottom. When you begin traveling beneath the surface you have to deal with radically different natural forces. It s the same when you pass the event horizon. He tapped his plate idly with a fork. How do you expect the Cygnus to escape being crushed by the gravity in there Most theories hold that the center of a black hole no longer contains anything we d recognize as mass. It s simply a self sustaining gravity field of incalculable strength. I would assume Durant interrupted that Dr. Reinhardt has sufficient confidence in his field s ability to bend the damaging effects around his ship to drive a hole through what we might call for lack of better terms solid gravity. Indeed. Reinhardt was clearly delighted to have Durant s support. I know that you re thinking that one slight error in navigation could be fatal Captain. That is your field and so I accept your criticism where that is concerned. But I know exactly what I am doing and how I shall proceed. I have worked on the requisite calculations for nearly two years. The course I ve chosen will take the Cygnus into the Pit at the most acute angle possible. The incredible speed generated by the ship s engines will be augmented by the gradually increasing pull which will rise to a climax as we strike the event horizon. The combination should permit me to slingshot through the dimensional warp I believe exists at the center of the singularity in an instant long before the shielding null g field enveloping the Cygnus can be collapsed. I have no intention of waiting around inside the event horizon to test the ultimate limits of that field. It will be sufficient if it protects the Cygnus for several seconds. You re going to encounter all kinds of secondary effects before you ever reach that point. McCrae sounded as dubious as Holland. What about the intense radiation the heat generated by the collapsing matter entering the hole My previous probings and all my studies have shown that if I remain exactly on course the Cygnus will pass through unscathed. Furthermore since the heat within the collapsar s accretion disk is gravity related much of it should be diverted around the Cygnus by the null g field. Fantastic Durant was completely overwhelmed by the proposal. Both the notion itself and the physics involved were beyond my concepts of magnificence. He shook his head slowly. His thoughts were a confused mixture of awe and disbelief. They were mirrored in his expression. Having disposed of his last opponent Vincent drifted away from the pool table. Most of the robots who had watched the contest remained there. Crowding around the table they pushed and shoved one another for the chance to use the cues. With considerable frustration and little success they were trying to imitate Vincent s techniques. The three level pinball machine crackled and chimed satisfactorily as Vincent operated the dozen flippers within. His mind was not on the game. It appeared he moved randomly from one machine to the next. All the while he was edging closer to the exit. At last he allowed a final ball to find its own noisy way through the labyrinth of the last machine and slipped out into the corridor. The sentry robot who had been keeping watch on him turned away for but a moment. When his gaze returned it was in time to see Vincent scudding down the corridor. He signaled to his companion and both moved quickly to the doorway looked out. One glanced up the corridor the other down as they functioned in tandem. Vincent was just turning the far corner. Moving on smoothly pumping metal legs the two sentries rushed after him. Vincent was not restricted to such anthropomorphic methods of locomotion. The instant he turned the corner he accelerated on his repellers and shot down the corridor rounding another corner where two passageways intersected. The sentries reached the same turn peered around it. Vincent was long gone. Their comparatively one track minds struggled to account for his sudden disappearance failed. Blinking in confusion they hurried down the wrong corridor. Durant s mind was working furiously trying to make sense of unheard of possibilities. In the light of so fantastic so grand a proposition it was hard to consider things rationally. It was a losing struggle to moderate his enthusiasm. So you want the Palomino he was mumbling to stand by and monitor your journey You want us to act as observers to record your passage To another place Reinhardt told them and another time where... Booth was making a show of adjusting his recorder. It distracted Reinhardt somewhat broke the mood of scientific ebullience which had filled the dining room. What are you doing Mr. Booth Just changing the sequencing on my recorder. He smiled apologetically at the commander of the Cygnus. I wouldn t want to miss anything. Commendable of you said Reinhardt. Thanks. I think it s important we be sure and get your last words. For posterity. It ll serve as a more effective warning against this sort of insanity than anything I could make up. Reinhardt s momentary euphoria turned once more to anger. Durant he could manipulate with the promise of new wonders. He could tease McCrae with memories of her father. Holland and Pizer he could overawe with his knowledge. But Booth . . . Booth retained the maddening smug self satisfaction of the ignorant man confident in his simple view of the Universe. You re not the first to think me mad. Better men than you Mr. Booth have accused me of irrationality. I could dismiss that. Others laughed at me. That I could ignore with justifiable contempt. The worst though were those who conspired against me and what I was attempting to do. In such cases it was necessary to He caught himself looked down at his food. When he gazed at the reporter again he had regained control of himself. Left to men like you Mr. Booth we would still be living in the dark times of the second millennium. I promise you I will be victorious. For a man who likes to think of himself as an educator you talk an awful lot of conquest Holland observed. Reinhardt stared at him. You would accuse me of militancy Captain Holland Very well. I accept the label. But I am a soldier only in the cause of science. I do not think victorious too strong a claim for the triumph I shall experience. And when I have done what I say I shall do others will try to follow. There was no humor in his smile now nor did he try to temper the edge in his voice. And if successful in such attempts they will then have to deal with me. And what role would such people play in this newly discovered Universe of yours McCrae was watching him closely. But Reinhardt no longer seemed to care about appearing tactful or diplomatic. The moment of triumph over his enemies and scoffers was at hand. There was no longer any need to hide his zealousness from these few visitors. Perhaps none. I have created on board this ship the beginnings of an entirely self sustaining mechanical civilization which responds to my orders and discipline and which Holland wanted to hear more about Reinhardt s plans for his machines but the commander broke off his speech as Maximillian re entered the room. Again only Reinhardt was able to interpret the series of electronic sounds and lights put forth by the huge mechanical. When Maximillian had finished Reinhardt turned back to them. The interruption had sparked a by now familiar transformation. Reinhardt again was at his gracious best. Good news Holland inquired. Indeed. See for yourselves. He pointed to the viewport. An approaching brightness was now clearly visible against the farther stars: sunlight glinting off an incoming ship. The probe I have referred to is about to dock. There are things I must do. I will see you again soon. He pushed back his chair rose. Please. Continue your meal. He smiled tightly. There is nothing you can do to assist and the docking procedure is dull and familiar. Excuse me. He followed Maximillian out of the room. Well Doctor Booth said as Reinhardt was leaving no matter how foolhardy I think you are win lose or draw it s one heckuva story. The commander of the Cygnus disappeared without replying. The door closed behind him. Holland had thoughts of trying the closed door to see if they had been locked in. Reinhardt s cool warning about straying unescorted around the ship still burned in the captain s mind. But there was no reason yet to force anything. If the door was locked there wasn t anything they could do about it. Better to do as Reinhardt had suggested and enjoy the rest of the dinner. There was a chance their regular dining schedule might be interrupted in the near future. Booth looked around the table uncertain to what extent his companions shared his analysis of Reinhardt and the man s absurd proposal. Eventually his gaze came to rest on the first officer. Pizer stared back at him for a long moment. Then the younger man spoke while glancing toward the now closed doorway. Cuckoo as a Swiss clock. He turned to his own meal downing food as if the devil himself were after him. Holland s thoughts were on the problem that might be raised by disciples of another type. He was watching Durant worriedly. The Palomino s elder scientist was not eating. He was standing by the viewport staring silently at the approaching probe ship. Vincent touched a sensor plate. When the door obediently slid aside he drifted into the dimly illuminated Maintenance room. As he had hoped a familiar shape was waiting for him: the battered but still talkative pool player he had substituted for. My name s Bob Twenty six Bio Sanitation Battalion. Of course it is said Vincent agreeably. But since you re the only unit of your type aboard you can leave off the series numbers. I couldn t talk freely before. Those other machines the ones built or altered by Reinhardt They would ve had me disassembled. I have a lot to tell you. His ill lubed repellers whining faintly he moved to the door and carefully scanned the corridor. If Maximillian knew you were here unescorted it would be the end for both of us. Vincent hoped his words sounded as contemptuous as he intended they should. You ve no need to worry about that clumsy dirt mover. I can t understand why you re all so intimidated by him. If you go well prepared into the jungle the drunken elephant can t fall on you. What s an elephant Bob asked. Never mind. We ll have your memory tripled when we get home. He was hunting about the desk area reasoning that the items they needed would be where the supervising robot could keep close watch on them. Do you have lasers Old Bob moved to a counter. A thin irregular shaped metal bar extended forward from one of his arms. It fitted neatly into a socket in the countertop. There was a click. Several drawers popped open. Vincent gave the weapons thus revealed a professional once over. All were slightly archaic but quite sufficiently lethal. Not that he had a choice. He chose a pair checked to make sure they were fully charged and turned to leave. Bob called for him to wait. Listen ... I don t know exactly what you have in mind Vincent but I m with you. I ve had enough of serving as negative pole for every thersitical machine on this ship. And I don t like Reinhardt though it s against my programming to do anything about it. Not that anyone could with Maximillian always hovering around him. Whatever you re planning I d like to help in any way I can. I was counting on that Bob. Again Vincent moved to depart and once more he was held back. Something else There are a few other things you d better know about this ship the robot began. Your friends could be in grave danger. I have confidence in Captain Holland and First Officer Pizer Vincent informed him. In my opinion they often err on the side of caution but for humans they can move decisively when events require. I m certain they are amply suspicious of Commander Reinhardt s intentions and will treat any suggestions of his with due care. It involves more than suggestion Vincent. You don t know anything and neither do they. This has to do with... The probe ship drifted toward the upper surface of the Cygnus and the waiting dock. It decelerated smoothly showing no ill effects from its epoch making journey. Durant still stood staring out the viewport of the dining room. He wished Reinhardt had invited him to go along to greet the probe pilot even if it was a mechanical. But the commander had not and Durant had elected not to press the request. A genius like Reinhardt would divulge secrets and discoveries when he saw fit. That was his right. Pizer sipped his wine and spoke to the introspective McCrae. What does your feminine intuition say Kate She blinked sat up straighter and looked across at him. That hoary old superstition I don t know about it but logic and reason tell me that for all his apparent accomplishments Dr. Reinhardt is walking a tightrope between genius and insanity. I opt for insanity mused Holland aloud. That comment prompted Durant to turn away from the port. I m sorry Dan. I don t buy that. Dedication isn t madness. Maybe he s a little overenthusiastic in his quest for answers but many great scientists are. He has more reason than most to want to vindicate himself and his theories. Considering the length of time he s lived alone out here devoid of human companionship I d say he s done a helluva job of hanging on to his sta bility. Whatever else he may be Booth ventured conversationally he s an out and out liar. I visited one of the main hydroponics stations. He grinned at Holland s expression of surprise. You weren t the only one curious enough to go for a solitary stroll Dan. That tiny one man garden of his that he told us about over dinner The one just big enough to supply his personal needs It s big enough to feed an army. Nothing so strange about that. Durant defended the absent Reinhardt. A small portion of one station is devoted to the raising of foodstuffs while the rest is kept cultivated to assist in purifying the air. Remember the Cygnus wasn t equipped with anything as sensitive as our up to date synthesizer regeneration system. Those closed recycling systems will only serve a small sized crew like our own anyhow. If he wants to move and work freely about the Cygnus he has to maintain full atmospheric pressure throughout the ship. So he s forced to maintain the greenery to help clean the air. Pizer looked unconvinced. For my money it d take a lot more than a few trees to purify the air around here. He glanced at Holland. Tell em about the funeral Dan. Funeral Now McCrae was intrigued. Yeah Pizer went on. A robot funeral with robot pallbearers. Almost human. Durant voiced the expected skepticism. A decade or more without any human contact might make the man a little eccentric but you can t ask me to believe he s programmed his robots to act that human. Exactly. Holland was moodily eying his no longer appetizing meal. I know what I saw though. It was a funeral complete with shroud and solemn observance. I can t say what it was a funeral for. The outline under the shroud looked human but it could ve been anything. It was ejected from the ship before I had a chance to try for a closer look. Why go to such elaborate lengths to dispose of a robot Durant s tone mixed cynicism with amazement at Holland s seeming gullibility. Besides such a procedure would be wasteful. No matter how badly incapacitated any mechanical could be beneficially cannibalized for spare parts. Maybe the Cygnus has no need of such spares but I don t think Reinhardt would be needlessly wasteful of anything. Especially material as valuable as the components of a sentient robot. I told you I didn t say it was a robot. What s that supposed to mean Holland looked hard at him. We have only Reinhardt s word for what happened to his crew. Durant grew angry. The sort of possibility you re hinting at is incredible. You re going to find yourself very embarrassed if you raise the subject with the commander. He ll skewer you with records tapes ... all sorts of indisputable independent corroboration of his statements. I hope so. Ship s coming in said McCrae changing the subject. They watched as the probe passed their viewport and settled into its dock. Holland was forced to admire the efficiency with which the secondary craft had been modified to accept Reinhardt s new propulsion system. Her silhouette looked unchanged. She was an impressive little vessel as big as the Palomino. Booth spoke as they observed the descent and linkup. Speaking of humanoid shapes and the funerals of we don t know whats I ran into something else a little too human in the hydroponics station. Holland was on him immediately. For instance For instance the robot in charge of controlling the operations there. It was almost human too ... in its malfunction. What makes you think so Booth only shrugged. But Durant wouldn t let it pass. Yes what was there about another robot to spook you Harry Reinhardt can t be everywhere on the Cygnus simultaneously. Certain minor operations must have to take care of themselves. This robot looked like it had been taking care of itself for quite a while. It had a limp. And that s what spooked you I don t spook Alex. I ve dealt with about every kind of mechanical the cyberneticists have created from military police models down to broadcast independents with enough brains to translate ancient texts for you. What I m telling you is that I had a gut feeling I was looking at some kind of ... person. I ve seen damaged robots in operation before. Even if it s a household luxury model a damaged humanoid type with a bad leg walks with a certain unmistakable stiffness. That includes those with flexlimbs made of polyethylenes. But this character moved differently. He walked more fluidly than any injured machine I ever saw. What the devil are you suggesting That we get off this ship as soon as possible Holland finished for him. Both men turned to look at the captain. Politely if we can. Surprisingly it was Booth who objected. Hang on now Dan. If Reinhardt s engines can generate enough power to hold him steady here for we don t know how long I figure he s got enough to pull away from this spot without any trouble at all. So Pizer was watching Booth warily. The reporter was apt to go overboard if it could mean a better story. Such enthusiasm was commendable. It had also been known to get people dead. So why not Booth continued excitedly take this ship and Reinhardt back home Easier said than done. But Holland couldn t help considering the thought. Not all that much easier. Now that he had broached the possibility Booth rambled on as if he were proposing the most natural solution in the world. We ve got two scientific whizzes to figure his computer setup and reprogram the robots. The programming can t be all that complicated it s twenty years behind the times. Alex and Kate are not. If Reinhardt s managed to arrange things so that he can run this ship all by himself the five of us plus Vincent ought to be able to do likewise without working up a mental sweat. And while Kate and Alex are working on navigation and cybernetics three of us are left to take care of Reinhardt and his steel dog. He paused for breath then rushed on. Think of it Reinhardt won t mind in the long run. Not once he s been besieged for information on his new drive system and the null g field. He ll thank us for dragging him back home. The government will be delirious because they ll have the Cygnus back and can use it to recoup their colossal investment even if they just turn it into a museum. The established research institutes will have two decades of new data to pore through. See he concluded brightly everybody eventually benefits. Even Reinhardt. He d disagree with you Harry. Booth frowned at Durant. He would today sure but not once we re back on Earth. Not if he s been telling us the truth. And if he hasn t been it s our duty to take him back. He can face acclamation or trial it s all the same to me. We we could be heroes. We could also be dead Holland pointed out. Durant turned away from them. I don t believe what I m hearing. Leaving aside the fact that Reinhardt is considering the greatest experiment in the history of modern astrophysics he d never consent to relinquishing his authority over the Cygnus. Never. You can believe you re hearing this Alex Holland said firmly. My job is to get you all off this ship alive. That s my responsibility and that s what I intend to do the greatest experiment in the history of modern astrophysics notwithstanding. Once we re safely away we ll see about monitoring any crazy schemes Reinhardt has in mind. He turned to the reporter. As for your suggestion Harry I suggest you cool it. Don t bait the bull. I ve done that plenty of times. Booth spoke proudly. And I m still hanging around. We re all aware of your accomplishments and your heroic investigative reporter background Holland replied soothingly but don t push that man. That s an order. You re not operating alone now. I have to think of everyone. You ought to too. I don t want to see any of us left behind. Booth glared at him momentarily. Then he seemed to think things through and relaxed nodding agreement. We still have time he told himself. He was certain that he could eventually convince Holland that his Harry Booth s plan was best for all concerned. If he could convince Holland then Pizer would automatically go along. McCrae could be persuaded. Durant . . . Alex would be a problem. His judgment was blinded by Reinhardt s visions. But he was only one man and more inclined to fight with his intellect than with a weapon. Weapons were likely to be important in the upcoming discussions Booth knew. Not only would they return as heroes he would be reporting the greatest story in a hundred years. GHOST SHIP CYGNUS RETURNS . . . reported by Harrison G. Booth. No ... HARRISON G. BOOTH REPORTS ... return of the ghost ship Cygnus. That sounded better. He returned his attention to the viewport much pleased with himself. Reinhardt entered the pressurized cylinder Maximillian following close behind. Ahead the probe ship could be seen locking into the Cygnus s reception terminal. Soon it will all begin Reinhardt mused. The culmination of my life s work. The answer to one of science s greatest mysteries will be revealed. The possibility he might die did not concern him. If it had he would have returned to Earth long ago. He feared only ignorance not death. The latter he knew for what it was: a cessation of the flow of certain fluids the degradation of internal electric impulses which conveyed stimuli and the eventual dissolution of various organic molecular structures into dust. He shook his head sadly. He could not fathom other men s fear of dying. Why how could they be so concerned with existing when for the most part their existence was a waste They contributed nothing achieved nothing merely took up space. Everything they did every action of their meager lives was geared toward inefficient utilization of their environment for petty personal ends. Yet they continued to insist their way of life constituted a civilization. The cylinder moved toward the probe terminal. 10 VINCENT drifted silently alongside Bob. Both machines traveled as slowly as possible so as to minimize the noise produced by their repellers. Bob s tended to grind from time to time. Vincent was going to see the evidence that would confirm Bob s incredible revelation. The older robot had insisted so that no doubt would be left in the minds of Vincent s human crewmates. They slowed to a halt by a closed door. Bob repeated the admonition for silence then activated the door. It slid back soundlessly. They drifted into a large room. Bob reclosed the door behind them. They were gazing into a roughly circular chamber lit by many colored lights. Deeper lights powerful precision lasers were firing down at a cylindrical platform. The platform turned slowly as the lights played upon it. Several humanoid robots were working at nearby consoles or over the round table. When they moved Vincent caught a glimpse of their stations computer consoles of the most intricate design. As the platform table continued to revolve the watching robots had a clear view of what rested atop it. Several humanoid shapes lay within indentations in the platform. Their heads were the same as those of the humanoids operating the instrumentation but the bodies lying in the indentations were not. Vincent s sensors informed him that they were not as he had hoped superb replicas of human forms. They were human forms. What lay behind the mirrored faceplates that covered each skull he preferred not to speculate on. Lasers flashed at regular intervals and other devices functioned. All were conducted by the robed face plated shapes at the consoles. It was a compact symphony of remote surgery advanced cybernetics and complete moral dessication. These poor creatures are what s left of the original human crew Bob whispered as softly as he could. They are kept alive by a technique of Reinhardt s I don t pretend to understand. They are humans then More robot now than human Vincent. The old robot sounded forlorn. There was nothing a mere B.O.B. unit like myself could have done. Reinhardt had constructed Maximillian as a therapeutic research project or so he told the other humans. With Maximillian s aid he was able to take over the ship. He and Maximillian had secretly reprogrammed the other ro bots to help him. They were not responsible . . . he d altered their circuitry and memories radically. This altered programming did not manifest itself until the time he d chosen for the takeover when then: secret special programming was keyed by a selected phrase spoken only by Reinhardt. Those humans who survived you see what s left of them working around the ship. Occasionally some die despite the best efforts of Reinhardt s programmed surgeons. Some die from natural causes I m sure but I believe others experience a flash of reality and kill themselves. Only a flash Couldn t some of them Vincent asked hopefully still retain enough to be returned to a normal state I doubt it Bob said sadly. Their brains have been altered to do Reinhardt s bidding. They retain no individual will react to nothing save the task they are assigned to. When I was able to isolate myself with one I tried to communicate. None has ever responded to me. How come you weren t reprogrammed by Reinhardt along with all the other robots It was through no cleverness of my own. But for an accident of circumstance I would be as obedient as any you have encountered. You see I was lying dormant in the back of the maintenance area when Reinhardt reprogrammed the robots in my section of the ship. My task was originally performed by humans so I may not have been on any of his lists. I was reac tivated several days after the humans had been killed ... or brought here to be altered. By that time Reinhardt was in complete command of the Cygnus. He was too occupied with other tasks to consider that he might have missed one potentially uncooperative robot. I have taken care not to draw attention to my independent nature. Regardless he would have been right not to be concerned. A single unreprogrammed mechanical or two could be no threat to him. Not with the sentries already under his command and Maximillian to do his bidding. There was no aura of vengeance to Bob s words. Such extreme memory emotions were denied mechanicals. But Vincent thought he could detect a certain dissatisfaction. There must be something... he began. The door opened behind them. Two sentry robots stood there. A rapid display of lights raced across their external monitoring units as they reacted to the presence of Vincent and Bob in the restricted area. They must know I ve told you Bob said hurriedly. Your presence alongside me is enough. We re done for. Get down. Bob cut his repellers and fell almost to the deck as the sentries weapons rose to firing position. Before either could shoot Vincent s own lasers flared several times. Both sentries were knocked back into the anteroom clear of the surgery. They spewed droplets of liquid metal and sparking internal modules. Oblivious to anything not directly affecting their designated task the humanoid surgeons continued operating. Vincent led Bob through the now open door closed it quickly behind them. They concealed the two punctured metal shapes as best they could then started up the corridor. Perhaps when this new information was laid before him Captain Holland would initiate action somewhat more compelling than conversation. Durant paced the dining room ignoring the food and the view outside. How to make them believe he thought frantically. How to show them the importance of Reinhardt and what he proposed to attempt So far Dan and Harry had offered nothing against the commander except groundless suspicions. He had to convince them What s wrong with you people His frustration poured out. The man has given us our lives or have you already forgotten that his generosity is enabling us to repair the Palomino Or that once he was sure we meant him no harm and he glared accusingly at Booth he s been a perfect host More than that he s offered to let us take back to Earth details of his fantastic accomplishments and discoveries knowing he can never be certain we ll see he receives proper credit for them. Holland looked sympathetic but still said what had to be said. That doesn t obviate the fact that he s technically a pirate operating a stolen ship Alex. We don t know that Durant slammed a fist on the table rattling crystalware and spilling gravy on the immaculate imitation lace tablecloth. He says the others abandoned ship and tried to return home. They may still be on their way if they had trouble with their supralight engines. I think we have enough evidence to believe otherwise Alex. Circumstantial Dan Only circumstantial. I ve seen no reason to think that Holland interrupted him. I ve seen enough to make me worry. Both about the actual fate of the missing crew and about Reinhardt s state of mind. Don t be so blasted superior. Men like Reinhardt are a special breed. They push back the frontiers of human knowledge. Sure that can be a little unsettling at times. Holland gave him a long look. You mean one set of rules for those pushing back the frontiers and another for those of us who simply want to live with them Don t put words in my mouth. Where would we be without men like Reinhardt Healthier said Pizer. I m not anti research Alex. You know that. Only against uncontrolled research. Like uncontrolled fusion. You can get burned both ways. Reinhardt says he s checked everything. Charlie doesn t mean that Holland explained. Science needs a system of checks and balances just like law. Here Reinhardt is both. He shook his head slowly. In my book that s research without control. It s Reinhardt s other activities that worry me most not this intended suicidal plunge into the black hole. Other activities Durant s brows drew together. What are you talking about Dan Reinhardt waited expectantly watching the doorway opposite. The probe ship now docked rested nearby. The door leading from the umbilical passageway opened. Quietly the humanoid pilot of the probe joined them. Reinhardt looked him over then said impassively Maximillian will take you to debriefing. I want to check out personally your ship s instrumentation and the information you recorded. He stepped past the pilot. The pilot did not acknowledge the movement. He waited somnolently until Maximillian closed the door leading to the ship. Together the two machines began the passage by cylinder. The two destroyed sentries could not be seen from the upper end of the corridor Vincent noted with relief. His careful snipping of circuitry and module links had rendered their communications systems inoperative should they somehow regain mechanical consciousness. Bob now carried their weapons. How long before they start searching for those two Bob considered. That depends on their duty schedule. They function round the clock save for one fifteen minute maintenance checkup per day. What about periodic reporting in to some central security station I don t know. Bob sounded helpless. That s not the sort of information provided to a clerical robot. If they do send such reports they could be due any time. Then we have to move fast. I d rather not risk provoking any more sentries but we can t take the time to be diplomatic. He gestured back at the bulky desk concealing the incapacitated robots. Those two may already have been missed. . . . and so if he neglected his duty to the bureaucracy it was to perform a higher duty Durant was arguing strenuously. I ask you once more do you have any facts to support your macabre speculations Granted the man s an eccentric as well as a genius but he s not the mad scientist of some second rate horror play. He s willing and eager to share his knowledge with us. So Holland continued to worry about Durant. His defense and praise of Reinhardt had turned from lavish to slavish. So I won t allow you to rush us off this ship Dan. And I won t give you any more time to see the light Alex. We re leaving. All of us together. Durant stared back at him. That s really up to Dr. Reinhardt isn t it No one had noticed McCrae. She was standing more than silently off to one side of the table. She was not withdrawn nor was she daydreaming. She was working. The others continued to debate with facts to argue without knowledge. Dan... Holland barely heard the ethereal murmur but he recognized that tone of voice instantly. Recognized also the faraway look on her face. So did Pizer and Booth and Durant. Conversation ceased. What is it Kate Vincent wants you to meet him in the reception lounge near the Palomino right away. Also Mr. Pizer. Holland was already heading for the dining room door. To his relief he found it unlocked. Let s go Charlie. Downing the last sip of wine in his goblet Booth rose from his seat. I think I ll tag along if you don t mind. They located the elevator leading downward. As he emerged into a familiar corridor Holland put out a restraining arm then edged back into the elevator cab to join his colleagues. What s the trouble Pizer whispered. By way of reply Holland gestured with a nod down the corridor. At the far end they could see Maximillian and the probe pilot disappearing around a far bend. Booth took a step in their direction but Holland moved out to block his path. Now now Harry. That s not our party. But the probe pilot Booth protested. If he s been to the event horizon and succeeded in returning it means To us it means nothing. Not now. Let s move. Booth hesitated an instant then nodded. They hurried toward the cylindrical tubeway and the air cars that could carry them quickly to the Palomino. Vincent was acutely aware of the weight of the laser weapons in his hands but he kept them down. The sentry robots searching the nearby rooms were now moving away instead of toward him. Let s hope they continue searching in the wrong direction he said to old Bob. Both robots moved out of the concealing alcove and jetted up the corridor. Most of his audience had departed but Durant was still full of words and arguments. McCrae had to bear the force of them alone. He stands to accomplish her wide eyed colleague was saying as he stared out the viewport at the black hole one of the final discoveries that has so far eluded mankind. Our knowledge of stellar physics has grown tremendously in the past couple of centuries Kate. Yet we still know nothing about the processes at work inside the event horizon of a black hole. We know little more than the first discoverers of the phenomenon. Reinhardt stands to fill in that blank in our knowledge. Or die in the attempt McCrae said dryly. She paused a moment regarded her friend with a mixture of concern and contempt. I m beginning to think you really do want to go with him Alex. Do you want to die that badly It s not a question of dying. That s what Reinhardt kept saying. Alex I like to think I m as professional and curious as the next scientist. But when curiosity swamps your natural sense of self preservation there s something addled in your mental clock. Durant hardly seemed to hear her enraptured as he was by the sight of the black hole and the vision of exploring its innermost secrets that Reinhardt had conjured up for them. It could be the most fantastic achievement since the dawn of creation he muttered with fine lack of perspective. Eric the Red Columbus Armstrong Kinoyoshi... we could eclipse them all. The door opened and he broke off as Reinhardt entered. The commander of the Cygnus quickly surveyed the room then spoke to McCrae. Where are the others She saw no reason to lie. He might already know and be testing her. Called back to our ship. For an instant Reinhardt seemed confused. There was no means of communica ah yes. The esplink you share with the robot. Extraordinary. A technique which was developed after I left Earth. It was only a matter of time before biophysics matched the strides made by its inorganic counterparts. What seems to be wrong for your companions to be called away from their meal She shook her head. Vincent didn t spell it out. Something having to do with the repairs I d guess. When you re working on something as sensitive as the atmospheric regeneration system using makeshift spare parts you ve got to expect some trouble. It s the kind of repair work that ought to be done in an orbital yard by qualified technicians. I m not surprised they re having difficulties. Let s hope they re solved quickly Reinhardt said. We are almost ready to embark on mankind s greatest journey of exploration. I d rather not be delayed. Greatest perhaps she thought. Riskiest for certain. She turned her gaze to the viewport. Reinhardt noted the look. The danger is incidental when measured against the possibility of being the first to possess the great truths of the unknown. To learn perhaps the secret of mankind s oldest dream. What truth are you pursuing inside the black hole Doctor She frowned at him. You seem to have something specific in mind. Does the bear actually have some idea of what he hopes to find on the other side of the mountain He smiled back at her. Beyond the mountains my dear. Beyond is a new beginning ... a Universe that may be suspended in time where long cherished laws of nature do not apply. You live by the laws of nature. What if these prove inhospitable I can learn to master new ones. I am prepared to cope with whatever I may discover. Especially if I find what I hope to find. Which is Durant asked expectantly. Eternal life. You know that time slows the nearer one travels to the core of a black hole that seconds inside the event horizon can equal years on Earth I see where you re leading Doctor. McCrae tried to give the fantastic theory dispassionate consideration. True you could live forty years in the hole while a millennium passes on Earth but the forty years would still be only forty years ... to you. They would not extend your real lifetime. That is near the center of the hole my dear. Once through the hole I believe I may emerge into a universe indifferent to what we call normal time where those forty years will extend indefinitely. They may become four hundred years or four thousand. There may be no upper limit if the aging process is effectively arrested. Life eternal. With no possibility of death Doesn t that interest you I find the prospect appalling. Reinhardt chose not to reply to that and regarded her with what seemed a certain sadness. Holland and his companions stood nervously in the reception room listening while old Bob poured out a longer version of the tale of deception and murder he had earlier related to Vincent. Occasionally Pizer or Booth would interrupt the older machine s story with a question. For the most part they listened in horrified silence. Vincent hovered nearby his attention focused on the doorway leading back into the maze of corridors. ... and the officer the men trusted most was Frank McCrae because he was a ship s officer as well as a scientist Bob was saying. Kate s father. Pizer was fuming They turned to him when Dr. Reinhardt ignored the orders to return home. They were prepared to take control of the Cygnus. That was when Dr. Reinhardt unleashed his own carefully prepared takeover using the reprogrammed robots. He rationalized his actions by accusing the rest of the crew of planning to mutiny. A mutiny against science he called it science and Reinhardt having become one and the same to his own mind. Dr. McCrae was killed early in the struggle. The sentry robots operating solely at Dr. Reinhardt s discretion quickly finished the others. The rebellion was soon over. Holland stood quietly with the others for a while then finally asked the question to which he was afraid he already knew the answer. What became of the rest of the crew The survivors are still on board. Where Pizer wondered. Are they being held prisoner somewhere That funeral Dan saw... No Mr. Pizer. At least their bodies are not imprisoned. You have seen them yourself in the command tower running the power centers ... The first officer looked uncertain unwilling to make the final mental connection. Robots Mr. Pizer. Vincent spoke brusquely. Humanoid robots. The most valuable thing in the Universe intelligent life means nothing to Dr. Reinhardt Bob went on remorselessly. To him intelligence proves itself worthwhile only when it subordinates other interests to those of the greater good. By greater good he came to believe it meant his personal interests and desires. The Cygnus contains an elaborate surgery. Once it served to repair ... to cure sick humans. Now it has been modified to program human beings to act like robots. They actually retain less individuality than such mechanicals as Vincent and myself. Without their wills the crew became things Reinhardt could command. To me they are neither machine nor man any more and less than either. Pizer looked sick. Holland turned to face the attentive reporter. That explains the funeral I barged into and the limping robot you saw. I was right about the object I watched being ejected from the ship. It was human. But so were the robot pallbearers. You mean there s a human body in those things Booth looked stunned. I thought it was just that Reinhardt was trying to make his robots as human as possible. I didn t think didn t imagine it was the other way around. None of us did Mr. Booth said Vincent. Yet old Bob is telling only the truth. I myself saw the surgery in operation. Holland searched for something on which to vent his anger something to break. He was frustrated by the sight of only seamless metal and unbreakable plastics. We can t just take off and leave those poor devils behind. He continued to eye the reporter. It looks like we ll have to try your plan to take over the Cygnus after all Harry. It was comfortably cool in the reception area but the reporter had suddenly begun to sweat. And risk ending up like the crew If they couldn t pull it off what chance do we have What about our being heroes Harry Pizer was taunting him. Changed your mind mighty fast. Lay off Charlie. I didn t think we d have to fight a setup like this. I didn t know Reinhardt had managed to overcome the whole crew. I thought they d abandoned ship like he told us. Taking on one man and one robot okay but not a programmed army. Robots set to guard are one thing. Murder s another. Captain Bob said gently you would not be doing them a favor by returning them to Earth. The damage to their minds is irreversible. From what I have been able to observe and comprehend of the surgical process it is possible their ability to respond individually might be restored but they would be as mindless as newborn infants. Death is their only release. For God s sake Dan Booth protested be sensible about this. We can t take on every robot on board. They already overcame a crew familiar with the ship. We wouldn t have a chance. He shuddered. We might even be taken alive. Regardless of results said Vincent events have been set in motion which require that we act quickly no matter the course we finally decide upon. What events Vincent Holland asked him. I was forced to destroy two of the sentry robots. They discovered us while we were inside the surgery Their counterparts are possibly searching the ship now. If the two I destroyed are found . . . The humanoid surgeons did not react to our presence but it seems unlikely they did not record our appearance. If it is learned that we and therefore through us you know of the surgery and its function Holland interrupted the robot. He had heard enough. Reinhardt couldn t let us return to Earth. Charlie get aboard the Palomino and prepare for liftoff. Vincent get in touch with Kate and tell her I want her and Alex back here ready to leave on the double. Vincent s lights twinkled in a particular pattern as they hurried toward the Palomino indications that the esplink was being engaged. Pizer hurried on ahead of him. And Booth . . . Booth let out a sigh relieved that his initially daring but now obviously foolhardy plan had been rejected. As a reporter he had had occasion to live the life of the people he had been documenting. He did not however wish to sample the existence of a member of the Cygnus s altered crew. Within the command tower Durant and McCrae. looked on as Reinhardt guided the mechanicals there through various preparatory tasks. Lock in navigation on preprogrammed final course. Commence auxiliary inspection all systems. McCrae was standing before the vast screen on which the three dimensional image of the black hole was being projected. The gravitational maelstrom teased her scientific self. Emotionally it terrified her. Meanwhile Durant had strolled over to stand closer to Reinhardt. You ve achieved all this on your own Dr. Reinhardt. You d have every right to reserve your coming expedition to yourself to reject the request of a Johnny come lately. In quest of Eternal Youth Alex It was hard to tell if the commander was mocking him but by now Durant was so far gone with worshipful admiration that he wouldn t have cared anyway. Scientific truth Doctor. Alex . . . Reinhardt had been about to respond when McCrae s voice drew their attention. She stared blankly past them. Dan wants us back on board. They re ready to lift off. The commander eyed her speculatively for a moment then turned back to his mechanical servants. Prepare engines. Stand by to build for maximum thrust. Commence maximum expansion of the null g field. Then more loudly Maximillian Instantly the huge mechanical joined them floating out from nearby shadows. Within the cockpit of the Palomino Vincent and Pizer finished checking out the ship s systems. How are your readings Pizer asked his companion. All systems are go the robot replied. Air regeneration is now working perfectly. Looks good. Damn it Dan Booth was arguing as he and Holland entered the cockpit if we wait for Alex we may be too late. I ve seen the look in his eyes before believe me. He s been hypnotized by that man. He s not one of us any more. He s become an acolyte. Holland considered then spoke to the robot. Vincent tell Kate I want her back here fast . . . with or without Alex. What if she objects sir Holland s teeth were clenched as he spoke. Then tell her why I want her back. 11 MCCRAE continued to remonstrate with Durant. Alex you can t throw your life away. You re a respected scientist a good research man. You ve got discoveries of your own ahead of you. Discoveries that will mean something because you ll be alive to expound on them. She was pleading desperately with him now. Don t throw all that away. Let him go if he wants to but you ... He can do it Kate Durant countered excitedly blindly. I know he can. There s a whole new Universe beyond the black hole. A point where time and space as we know it no longer exist. We ll be the first to experience it see it ... the first to explore it. He turned away from her his attention going back to the shifting images on multiple screens smothered by the feeling that Great Things were about to happen. It didn t matter. Kate was no longer listening to him anyway. A look of utter horror transformed her visage as Vincent s hurried but graphic description of his own little discovery resounded in her brain. Initiate Cygnus Process Reinhardt was saying. Commence generation sequence ... At the far end of the ship the order was received by humanoid technicians. Adjustments were made to controls and instrumentation. Eight enormous drastically modified engines began to glow softly taming the annihilation beginning within. The aura that appeared around each engine was a radiant side effect of the Cygnus Process. The halo of power. Aboard the Palomino they could neither hear Reinhardt s commands nor witness his directives being carried out but they could feel the results. A subtle vibration shook the cockpit communicated from the skin of the Cygnus. There was a moment s silence as each man absorbed the import of that vibration while their bodies absorbed the actuality of it. Then Booth began looking around wildly like a man seeking some miraculous trans temporal means of escape. He s going to do it The crazy fool really means to do it He ll kill us all if you don t get us out of here now Dan We ve got to pull clear while there s still Take it easy Harry Holland ordered tautly. He wants us free to monitor his flight into the hole. We ve still got time. He may have changed his mind. He may want to take us all down with him to prove just how insane he is. You re gambling with our lives and the odds are going up every second you hesitate. Harry... shut up. Someone besides the men on the Palomino was aware that the time for discussion had ended. The time for decision making had arrived and was passing all too quickly. Kate McCrae emerged from the fog of mind to machine contact. She blinked twice then spoke with quiet finality to the man who was no longer her colleague. Alex we ve got to get back to the ship. Now. They re preparing to leave. Dan can t wait for us much longer. I m staying. Durant s tone left no room for argument. She still held one weapon she hadn t used. She employed it now. You don t understand Alex. Reinhardt s a murderer . . . and worse. Those... creatures over there the ones monitoring all the instruments and flight consoles they aren t humanoid. They re human. Or they were once. A crack appeared in Durant s surety. I don t follow you Kate. Use your head Alex. I know you ve got one. They re what s left of the original human crew. They ve been surgically altered on Reinhardt s orders to obey only his commands. Their wills their humanity have been destroyed. I... I don t believe... McCrae pressed her attack. It s true Alex she continued trying to keep an eye on Reinhardt at the same time. Vincent and an old supply roboclerk saw the surgery. You remember Dan s story about the funeral and Harry s about the robot with the limp No ... I... Durant spun away from her gods and decisions crumbling around him in the face of the unbelievable. Could Vincent be mistaken Booth sure. Dan maybe. But a mechanical as reliable as Vincent one trained to observe and report only facts Vincent disliked Reinhardt. Could that be enough reason for a machine as facile and advanced as Vincent deliberately to fabricate ... It couldn t be true. It couldn t Reinhardt must have noticed something amiss because he was walking toward them now his gaze trained not on Durant but on McCrae. What s wrong Dr. McCrae He was staring intently at her. You look ill. Durant was fighting to organize his thoughts to make sense from chaos. I need time he thought frantically. Time to think this through. But there is no time. Kate s upset that I ve elected to go with you he said hurriedly covering for her. I m afraid she s also going to join us Reinhardt informed them calmly. No She took a step away from them both. Reinhardt regarded her with a mixture of compassion and an icy resolution his previous declamations had only hinted at. The optimum conditions for entering the black hole exist now. Everything is functioning perfectly. With your presence a new opportunity offers itself. You see my dear your esplink will insure that news of our success gets back to the Palomino via the robot you are in mind contact with and thence to the world. You will be helping to complete the mission your father gave his life for. A rare honor. Your friends will leave shortly to save their own lives not realizing they are following my plan for them. What you say about my father is not true she burst out. Reinhardt sighed. There was much to do. He had no time for this. Silly woman. Like all the rest of them she could see no farther than the pitiful span of her own life. She didn t realize that measured against the opportunity of unlocking the secrets of the Universe a life was nothing. Nothing It seemed that she and her friends had learned everything. There was no longer any reason for the masquerade he had been conducting. Durant began edging unobtrusively toward the nearest console. The figures there ignored him intent on their respective duties. My father was a loyal and honorable man McCrae was saying refusing to be intimidated. He would never have condoned the abandonment of this ship as long as her life support systems functioned. I say he did. Durant now stood poised next to a humanoid operating a portion of the complex drive to direction instrumentation. Still the figure ignored him. Durant put a hand over the reflective parabolic face shield waited for the mechanical to object. It did not. He pulled the shield off. A face that had once been human continued to take no notice of him continued to stare only at the controls it had been programmed to watch. Eyes that were smaller versions of the face mask itself stared dully out at a barely perceived world. They hinted only at the void behind them. Durant s mouth dropped open and he began backing away gaping in disgust at the thing that had once been a man a man with hopes and loves and hates just like himself. A man who had been drained of his humanness as thoroughly as a bottle is drained of its contents. Only the empty shell remained behind refilled with the dank noisome syrup of blind obeisance to Reinhardt. You might as well let me go join my friends. McCrae continued to speak with more confidence than she felt. I won t send any messages for you whether you re successful or not. I m sorry to hear you say that my dear but I have no time to argue with you. I would have preferred your cooperation. Perhaps it s better we work another way. He glanced to his right spoke with regret. Maximillian see that the young lady receives appropriate medical treatment immediately. There was a hum that rose above the susurration of power flowing through the ship as the massive robot moved toward McCrae. She looked in disbelief at the nearing machine realizing instantly what was in store for her. No . . . you can t . . . Don t stand there pleading like an idiot child she told herself frantically. He s already altered the word came hard in the face of her personal involvement most of the ship s crew. Why should he hesitate to stop at you Let her go Durant made a sudden wild charge for Reinhardt. He never reached him. A burst of bright deadly light from one of Maximillian s lasers drilled him as neatly as any knife. Reinhardt allowed himself a disappointed glance at the scientist s prone form. I m sorry for you Dr. Durant. I had hopes for a while that you might. . . but I expected too much of you. A pity you could not rise above your primitive self. I would have enjoyed your companionship. If there s any justice at all McCrae said viciously that black hole will be your grave Reinhardt. We are dealing here only with the laws of physics my dear. Not with the arbitrary social contracts man calls law. If I perish it will be only a matter of physics not the other. And you will die with me. Holland s hand paused hovered over a control as Reinhardt s voice suddenly issued from the console speaker. You are cleared for liftoff Captain Holland. I will allow you ample time to clear the Cygnus s null g field but you must aim to achieve sufficient escape velocity immediately. Doctors Durant and McCrae have elected to remain on the Cygnus to participate in the great experiment. They wish you and your friends well. I told you Booth said knowingly. Alex has bought Reinhardt s theory completely. He s as thoroughly under that madman s control as if he d been surgically fixed like the others. Maybe he has Holland countered but Kate wouldn t. Of one mind they all turned to Vincent. Dr. Durant s opinions are no longer of concern. He is dead. Maximillian killed him as he was rushing at Dr. Reinhardt. They re taking Dr. Kate to the hospital. Holland was on his feet instantly. Reinhardt s intentions were as clear to him and the others as they had been to McCrae herself. Get old Bob to show us the fastest way there. Harry you stay here and watch the ship. Don t let anything aboard until we get back. Booth nodded seemed about to say something but decided not to. Pizer made a move to leave. Sorry Charlie said Holland. You re staying too. What Pizer looked back at him in confusion. You ll need all the firepower you can get We may have enough time to reach her. And we may not. It s important to let the people back home know what s happened out here. Harry can t pilot the ship. Don t wait too long Charlie. Get her off before the gravity outside the Cygnus s field becomes too strong. But Dan... That s an order. I wish you a safe voyage home Mr. Pizer. Vincent swiveled to leave the cockpit. Just make sure you get back aboard and in one piece Heart o Steel. Then we can wish each other a safe voyage home. Holland followed the two robots back through the Palomino toward the tube connecting them with the Cygnus. In the power center humanoid figures waited patiently at their stations. They had no need of a superior officer to direct them as one had in the early days of the ship. All responded now only to one man s orders and they responded in unison extensions of his own hands and mind. The glow from the engines in the huge chamber below them intensified. It gleamed from their polished featureless faces. Engage thrusters came Reinhardt s command. Slow at first. Constant monitor on delivery systems. The crew of almost men responded smoothly efficiently. Outside the section of space astern of the Cygnus assumed the aspect of a small sun. The expanding rush of intense light only hinted at the application of power to come. Slowly the Cygnus began to move distorting space around her in ways Einstein had only hinted at for a purpose he could not have imagined. The reception area was deserted when Holland and the robots reached it. By keeping their weapons out of sight they avoided activating the hidden defense system that had disarmed them on their first venture into the great vessel. Old Bob his repellers whining in protest started off at high speed for the nearest elevator. Meanwhile McCrae was fighting not to think of what awaited her as the compact air car transported her and her silent mechanical escort down the corridor. She tried instead to console herself with the knowledge that Dan and the others would probably escape. She tried very hard but she still wanted very much to scream. The air car hissed to a halt and the sentries motioned her out. They walked down several corridors turned a number of corners. As they entered a small anteroom that might once have been a reception area she noticed several other sentries dragging bits and pieces of two no longer intact robots out from behind a desk. One of the guards moved to a wall communicator punched the button located there. The alarm irritated Reinhardt. All his life he had been bothered by the intrusion of trivia. So he would not allow himself to become concerned even after he saw the two destroyed sentries. The thought of a rescue directed toward McCrae had seemed out of the question. That was changed now that it appeared the others knew the location of the only operative surgery. Until now he had known only that the others were aware of his manipulation of the crew. The fact that they knew where the manipulations were carried out might induce them to try something foolish. Interference at this stage was intolerable could not be permitted. He required the use of a compliant Dr. McCrae immediately. It would be best to take precautions. The time has come to liquidate our guests except for their robot and Dr. McCrae. If they succeed in boarding the Cygnus the others are to be eliminated. Do not damage their ship. Maximillian turned obediently and started for the near console composing the orders he would issue to the sentries. Buzzers sounded and echoed down every passageway. The little knot of machines and man slowed. Could Reinhardt know we re on board already Holland mused aloud. I do not think so. Vincent was searching attentively both ahead and behind them. But he has evidently decided we may try to rescue Dr. Kate. Nearby old Bob fluttered unsteadily on his repellers. They sounded dangerously close to grid failure. I knew we should have dragged those sentries you shot and hidden them somewhere else. If you recall Vincent reminded him we did not have the time. The two of us dragging a pair of exploded mechanicals around with us would also likely have drawn more attention than we did. He looked back at Holland. It seems indisputable that Reinhardt now knows we are aware of the location of his abattoir. And suspects well head there. He s right but we ve no time for subtlety. Holland led them up the corridor. Six sentries rushed down a passage. None save one thought to glance into the narrow service accessway leading off to one side and he sensed only shadows within. When they had vanished around the far turn Vincent leaned out checked both directions. Clear he informed his companions. Holland followed him as they dashed across the corridor making for another which old Bob insisted interconnected with the one leading to the surgery. After a while Holland slowed waited for old Bob to catch up. He had fallen behind twice already his internal engines inadequate to the demands of continued speed. I wish he could move a little faster Holland murmured sympathetically. I know he s doing his best but... We have to wait for him. Vincent turned small circles impatiently. I could retrace my original path to the surgery but that would take us through heavily traveled sections of the ship. The fact that we have en countered and had to avoid only a single party of sentries so far is indication enough that Bob can lead us there not only more quickly but with less danger of confrontation with Reinhardt s stooges. I know I know. Holland suddenly frowned eyed his mechanical associate curiously. You re not addressing him as Dr. Reinhardt any more He doesn t deserve the title any more replied Vincent matter of factly. Bob finally rejoined them. They hurried on matching their pace to his with as much patience as they could muster. It seemed as if the Cygnus s instruments themselves had acquired an eerie form of electronic sentience. Everything on the bridge was aglow as if aware of what it was about to encounter. Its humanoid operators showed no hint of excitement. Reinhardt s attention was fixed on the image of the rotating black hole. Maximillian had finished issuing orders to the sentries and now stood at his regular place before the command console. Bring us about Maximillian. Line us up with navigation. Engine room I want reaction stability reports on each engine every sixty seconds. Slowly the great ship began to pivot aligning itself with the distant maelstrom. Gravity twisted around it and its engines commenced to toy with the fabric of space. As the Cygnus turned the Palomino shifted. Booth instinctively put out both hands to steady himself. We re moving. That madman s taking her into the hole for sure. He looked at Pizer. What do we do We wait. The first officer s gaze was focused on the external optical monitor currently peering down the umbilical connecting them to the Cygnus. Only the dim circle of light from the distant reception room showed on the screen. The sentries handled McCrae forcefully but with care as they pushed her toward the circular operating platform. Apparently Reinhardt s instructions had been explicit: control her but don t hurt her. Don t damage the goods she thought furiously. Her anger helped moderate the terror that threatened to overcome her. She tried to analyze the operating theater as the machines efficiently strapped her into one of the molded recesses. The multihued lighting felt harsh on her eyes. Probably it did not trouble the surgeons that were not men. Two of them stood silently nearby waiting for their next subject to be properly secured. Surely they would apply some form of anesthesia before they began work. Surely. Overhead she recognized the fairly standard assortment of narrow beam high intensity lasers. They were capable of cutting flesh or bone to within microscopic tolerances. Nearby were lengths of thin tubing for sup plying or draining organic fluids as might be required and other instruments for inserting various artificial devices. She was so familiar with the arrangement because she had lain on a similar table once before. Idly she wondered if the size of the module to be inserted into her brain was larger or smaller than the esplink already there. She also wondered how much of herself would have to be removed. Or disconnected. At least she no longer worried about screaming. She was too frightened. We re coming Dr. Kate a familiar voice said comfortingly inside her head. Vincent . . . hurry . . . please . . . She could not allow herself the luxury of lapsing into hysteria. That would foil esplink communication. Lights came on in the instrument laden dome overhead. Anesthesia she thought frantically. Please . . . I m still conscious She was being rotated toward the deceptively dull cluster of lights. Please... The lights vanished subsumed in a series of far more intense flares. She turned her head away as cooling but still hot bits of metal and plastic rained down around her. Looking back the other way she saw Holland. He was standing in the doorway flanked by two hovering machines. A crazy quilt of energy beams flashed from their weapons. An occasional opposing beam scored walls or floor around them. Bob stop that thing and get her out of here We ll cover you. Holland ran right Vincent the other way firing at anything that moved and trying to dodge the counter shots of the surprised sentries in the room. Pieces of wall and machinery were flying in all directions. The noise from exploding components and torn alloy was deafening. Still waiting for their instrumentation to respond to their instructions the two humanoid surgeons stood dully nearby. Then one turned and reached to activate the nearby wall communicator. Holland and Vincent noticed the movement at the same time. Two beams struck the surgeon in tandem. What was left of him tumbled into another sentry throwing it off balance and knocking it backward it fell beneath several of the now malfunctioning surgical lasers toward which McCrae was still drifting. Stand aside Bob. Holland took careful aim at the dangerously erratic mechanism and fired several times making sure it was rendered completely inoperative. Bob then hurried to free McCrae but sensed nearby motion of a belligerent nature and called out. Behind you Mr. Holland The captain whirled as three sentry robots crashed through the doorway recently vacated by the invaders. Before Holland could fire Vincent popped up unexpectedly from behind a bulky storage cylinder blocking the path inward. Three arms extended pistonlike. Partially decapitated the three sentries collapsed on the deck. Holland turned his attention to McCrae. Bob was helping her off the platform. You all right She nodded managed a sickly smile. I ll be better when we re back aboard the Palomino. Wordlessly he handed her a weapon and considered what to do next. It was unthinkable that Reinhardt would permit them to return to their ship with McCrae. He wanted her too much. Aboard the Palomino Pizer was wishing he had a certain neck under his thumbs when the console buzzed for attention. Dan... that you You re receiving us Loud and clear. What s happened Kate s okay. We re on our way back. What about pursuit Scrap behind us so far nothing in front of us. Hope it stays that way. Out. Palomino out. He leaned back in his seat relieved. Booth was not. He was worriedly studying his wrist chronometer. They re cutting it close. We re running out of time. Reinhardt s going to have to engage his primary drive pretty soon. Then it ll be too late for us to break clear. He wants us and Vincent free to monitor his dive remember We ve caused him a lot of trouble Charlie. I know his type. Before long he s going to decide Kate s not worth the trouble. Then we ll all be dragged in. Several sentry robots arrived and cautiously entered the smoking operating theater. A door opened and a pair of humanoids appeared started out past the sentries. The guards ignored them moved to open another closed door. Whirling the larger humanoid blasted the guards with a concealed laser. As soon as the sentries were downed Bob and Vincent emerged from the room about to be searched. They hurried after their disguised companions. Unfortunately the section of corridor they were retreating down was one of those covered by remote optical monitors. Having watched the previous action dispassionately Reinhardt now addressed the huge machine hovering alongside him with equal unconcern. Maximillian tell the sentries to fire on any humanoids between Medical Station and the Palomino. Instruct them to aim for the lower limbs. I still want the woman alive if possible. Maximillian hummed a response communicated with the patrolling sentries far more rapidly and efficiently than Reinhardt could. Holland and the others entered a main corridor. Waiting sentries immediately opened fire from a far catwalk. The beams just missed the startled Holland. He ducked back into a side passage and joined his companions in returning the fire. They re onto us. Headgear was removed. McCrae shook hair from her face. Well the costume got us this far. She threw the reflective faceplate out into the corridor. It drew several shots before it was incinerated. The distraction enabled her to knock one guard off his elevated perch. Her attention was instantly drawn from the remaining metal figures on the catwalk to movement far behind them. More sentries could be seen entering the distant end of the side passageway. Dan they re behind us. Holland took a fast look made a quick decision as he fired back at the new threat. The catwalk. Hop to it. We can t stay here. While he and the robots covered she ran forward twisting and dodging in an attempt to stay just clear of the sentries fire. They could react rapidly but they could not predict. She was careful to keep her movements random. With the hovering Vincent and Bob forcing the sentries to fight a multilevel battle Holland and McCrae fought their way up the main corridor along the catwalk. Only their constant movement kept the sentries off balance Holland knew. They were functional but not terribly sophisticated machines. As long as Kate and he could keep from being pinned down where the mechanicals superior firepower could be brought to bear they had a chance. Vincent and Bob dodged through the air thoroughly confusing the sentries. Whenever one tried to concentrate on the unpredictable humans one of the two flying robots would swoop down to destroy it. If they devoted the better part of their fire toward the robots Holland and McCrae pressed forward to obliterate them. The sentries slowness to make up their minds was further demonstrated when two tried to sight on the wildly diving B.O.B. unit. He dodged between them and they promptly shot each other before their circuitry could cancel the directive to fire. But one managed to singe Bob. McCrae was first to notice the damage. Vincent Bob s hit She couldn t devote time herself to make sure the robot was still functional. The sentries kept her too busy. Then there were no more sentries. Bob s flight had become noticeably erratic. Vincent drifted over helped the injured machine slip smoothly toward the floor. There the load on his weakened repellers would be lessened. Holland made a quick thorough inspection of the damage. He wished he knew more cybernetics than the minimum that was necessary to command and perform a few basic repairs. Machines as sophisticated as Vincent and Bob were supposed to diagnose and direct their own repairs if not able to perform them themselves. How badly are you hurt Vincent inquired. First fighting I ve done in thirty years since I was run through post manufacture testing. I only wish it had been Reinhardt and Maximillian out there. That s the spirit. McCrae led the way up the catwalk. Holland right behind. The two robots flanked them. Bob continued to fight to retain his stability. Within the command tower a voiceless but clearly angry Maximillian reacted to the failure of the sentries. As if aware they were being monitored Vincent raised an arm and executed a snappy victory signal. Despite his wishes Reinhardt found his attention drawn by the confrontation. He was furious both at the failure to recapture Kate McCrae and at the time he was being forced to devote to so petty a matter. Your crack unit outwitted and outfought by some mass produced Earth model and that antique from storage. Maximillian pulsed crimson the strongest form of personal expression permitted him. Reinhardt had taken care not to gift his powerful servant with too much sentience. He looked back to the image of the black hole up to scan several readouts. It s a pity about McCrae. But I will not leave them free to spread lies about me. I can t endanger the Cygnus by exploding their ship too soon. If they succeed in returning to their vessel with Dr. McCrae we ll give them some distance before destroying them. They were rushing ahead when Holland suddenly grabbed McCrae and pulled her down. Hit the deck Vincent Bob watch yourselves. More of em up ahead. Bright arcs of destruction lanced over their heads flashed around the evasive robots. There was a crude barricade before them. Sentry robots lined its crest firing inaccurately but threateningly from behind the makeshift bulwark. Their poor shooting was a comfort but the one thing Holland had feared most had come to pass they were prevented from reaching the reception area. It was just beyond the barrier tantalizingly near. The sentries fire might not scorch them he thought desperately as they rolled for cover but if they couldn t break through they would soon be trapped by others coming up from behind. Eventually Reinhardt would concentrate enough firepower to kill them no matter how unsteady the aim of his mechanicals. He knew they couldn t afford the time to take the long way around. There might not even be a long way around. They had to break through ahead. Somehow. 12 NO one was more aware of the frantic passage of time than the two men who waited nervously in the cockpit of the little research ship. Booth again checked his chronometer asked in frustration How much longer are we going to wait If they can t make it they can t make it. There s no reason for us to die too. There s still time Harry. I m sure... Distorted by the nearby crackle of energy weapons Holland s voice sounded over the console speaker. Charlie do you read me Pizer hurried to reply. Loud and clear Dan he lied. The captain had enough to worry about. Pizer could understand him well enough. Tune s up. Holland spoke calmly resignedly. Take her clear. Pizer thought a moment. Where are you Side corridor came the labored reply. Near reception. They ve got the passage blocked though. We can t get through. They ve got us pinned down. Lift off Mr. Pizer You know your orders. I haven t got time to argue with you. A hissing shriek drowned out his final words as a laser beam passed frighteningly close to the communicator grid. Pizer had known what he would do if such a situation arose. He had known before they had separated earlier on the ship. Maybe Holland knew too he thought. He told himself that was the case rationalizing his incipient actions as fast as possible. His shipmates were close by. Too close for him to obey orders. He wouldn t mind a court martial. Not if Holland and Vincent were around to give evidence against him. If that was his destiny why then he was doomed no matter what he chose to do. So why worry Such are the convoluted justifications of the truly brave. Booth stepped as if to block his way. You heard the captain. Orders are to lift clear. You re pretty big on talking heroics Harry and on reporting em. Let s see some. Leaving Booth to consider those words Pizer pushed past the older man. With a muffled curse the reporter raced after him. Pizer was out into the reception area before any of the sentries concentrating on the battle for the passageway reacted to his unexpected appearance. He leaped to one side and fired as the single guard there brought up his weapons. The machine blew apart as Booth dived for the cover of a desk. The first officer quickly regained his feet. He was trying to orient himself when the groans reached him. Damn... Harry You hit He hunted for the reporter saw his boots sticking out from behind the desk. My leg . . . Booth was holding it gingerly. He sat up slowly grimacing from the pain. How bad asked Pizer concerned. I think it s broken. From laser fire I didn t think that sentry got off a shot. As he spoke he was anxiously scanning the large room. The single mechanical had been alone however. No from idiocy. I took a dive for cover that I shouldn t have. He touched his lower leg and winced. When I was thirty I would ve bounced. I m afraid I m not as flexible as I used to be Charlie. Can you walk Pizer knew he couldn t help the reporter and the others at the same time. With Pizer s help Booth got to his feet put a little weight on the leg. The real pain won t hit for a few minutes yet. I can limp I think. All right. Get back to the ship and take up a good defensive position near the lock. We ll be counting on you to make sure none of em gets aboard Harry. Right. Don t worry about that. I ll make sure nothing boards. Pizer hurried off toward the nearby scene of action directed by the noise of fighting. He rounded a bend skidded to a halt. Ahead was the barricade and its platoon of shielded mechanicals. I m behind them Dan he whispered into his communicator. What s your advice My advice was to lift clear Charlie came the reply. But since you ve more guts than brains use your own judgment. I m the one who was fool enough to get himself pinned down here. Pizer hesitated thinking planning. On the other hand he abruptly decided long range planning had never been one of his strong points. From what he had observed of Reinhardt s sentries it certainly wasn t one of theirs either. Confuse them. Don t give them time to react he told himself. Jumping out into clear view he charged the barricade. More concerned with creating a diversion than destruction he fired as rapidly as he could. So closely packed were the sentries behind the wall however that his firing was more effective than he had hoped. It was up to Dan and Kate to realize what was happening and fire carefully in his direction. At the sound of Pizer s berserker yelp the robots turned to confront their unexpected new assailant. Holland McCrae and the two hovering robots charged the barricade simultaneously. Caught in a mental as well as a strategic dilemma the sentries were soon reduced to scrap. Ignoring the occasional hot sparks that flew from isolated sections of mechanicals Pizer stepped over the heaps of steaming metal. Now that the immediate danger was over he was a little appalled at his audacity. A good thing that he hadn t taken the time to think his actions through. Holland and the others were already hurrying past him. McCrae grabbed his arm. Come on Charlie. Partway down the access passage they were halted by a call from behind. Old Bob fluttered near a wall. The whine from his repellers was higher now intermittent. You go ahead the damaged machine told them. I ll stay here and cover you against any fresh pursuit I can t travel fast enough and you can t spare the seconds. Vincent looked at his human companions. Captain ... Mr. Pizer Both men holstered their weapons retraced their steps. Holland examined the robot shook his head in frustration. We can t carry him . . . he s too heavy for the three of us. That isn t necessary sir said Vincent. If you and Mr. Pizer can give him some support he can redirect power from his stabilizer repellers to those providing forward drive. Please... it s not necess Shut up Holland ordered Bob. If it weren t for you we d probably all be dead by now. Pizer moved to the other side of the hovering machine. Each man slipped his arms beneath Bob s own carefully avoiding the repeller grids beneath. They appeared to be carrying him as they started back down the corridor. McCrae and Vincent were on the alert for sentries. Booth s injured leg had apparently undergone a healing nothing short of miraculous. Running without any hint of damage he had rushed back up the umbilical and into the Palomino. A quick jab closed the lock door behind him. The command cockpit was a maze of instrumentation. But most of it was automatic and after eighteen months of spare time he had managed to study the basic controls thoroughly. They would now provide more than amusement. As he studied the pilot s console he fought to recall the answers to the many frivolously asked questions he had put to Holland. He hesitated only briefly before commencing to program the ship s systems. A thin smile of satisfaction creased his face when the engines came on. Several critical gauges on the overhead console lit up. He had power. Now all the ship needed was direction velocity and its freedom. Holland and the others staggered into reception. As they reached the open space the two men let go of Bob and moved in opposite directions to present smaller targets to the anticipated welcoming party of sentries. But reception was deserted. The only sentry present was the one Pizer had obliterated on his emergence from the umbilical. Stands to reason McCrae was saying breathing heavily. Reinhardt can only have so many sentry machines. Some of them would have to be deployed elsewhere on the ship to insure we couldn t make mischief with say the engines. Then something made her frown. Her companions also heard it: the sound of distant engines louder than those of the Cygnus. They rushed toward the connector passageway. What s that idiot trying to do Pizer s voice reflected his outrage and dismay. Holland grabbed him slowed him down. It s too late. He pointed out the nearby port. The umbilical had already disconnected from the Palomino was shrinking in on itself like a worm wriggling back into its hole. They were cut off from their ship. A moment later the Palomino was drifting silently away from them the sound of its familiar engines having ceased as soon as the umbilical had been dropped. They stood quietly by the port and watched each lost in his or her private thoughts. What a fool I was McCrae muttered. If I d just done what Reinhardt wanted you d all be aboard and safely on your way. We re not all Harry Booths Kate. Holland smiled thinly at her. I d still have come after you. She smiled back met his questioning stare. Their reverie was interrupted by a shout of surprise from Pizer. Look They turned from each other temporarily putting aside but not forgetting no never forgetting the unspoken bond that had formed between them. Time enough for elaboration of that nonverbal exchange later. Tune enough... if they lived. The Palomino had been climbing steadily away from the Cygnus. Now it was changing direction no longer moving away. It had commenced to arc slowly back toward the Cygnus. In the pilot s chair Booth fought frantically with the stubborn controls. Steering a sophisticated craft like the Palomino was not like driving a personal transport no matter how many automatics it possessed. Hasty panicky reactions were apt to be more counterproductive than helpful. Everything Booth did only seemed to exacerbate the problem. Reinhardt was equally aware of the smaller ship s troubles. It was coming dangerously near the Cygnus. That ship s out of control. Blow it apart before it hits us. Fire Quickly now. He stared anxiously at the smaller vessel not caring any longer who might be aboard it. Laser cannon tracked the tumbling research vessel uncaringly. Silent orders activated automatic rangers. The Palomino intersected a predicted point in space. Several energy beams simultaneously struck that inter section. The Palomino disintegrated in a brilliant shower of molten metal and torn fragments of self. One such large fragment was ejected at considerable speed toward the stern of the Cygnus. It happened to strike a particularly vulnerable section of the great ship tearing through sensitive instrumentation. Internal doorlocks slammed shut trying to isolate the region from which air was escaping. Former members of the Cygnus s crew who were caught in the sealed off areas passed blissfully into death. The fragment slashed through the port engine control station. Vast energies were left temporarily unbound. Automatic safeties locked down as fast as possible but they could operate no faster than the electrons flowing through their circuitry. There was a substantial explosion. It rocked the whole structure of the Cygnus. In reception everyone except the floating robots grabbed for something stable. Nothing met that requirement but the ship soon steadied itself. Artificial gravity once again took firm hold of the ship s contents including the now shipless crew of the vanished Palomino. Harry ... oh my God McCrae murmured. She stared out the port at the rapidly dispersing particles of what had once been their ship and Harry Booth. I should ve known he was all talk and no guts and locked him up. Pizer was feeling somewhat less than regretful at the reporter s sudden unexpected demise. Don t be too hard on him Charlie. Holland was trying to concentrate on two matters at once. He had reason to think we were the crazy ones not him. He panicked. Harry reported science but I don t think he ever really enjoyed or understood it. Anyway he may have done us a favor. Reinhardt might have intended to blow us up all along. I m certain he would have tried if we d managed to get aboard with Kate. Thanks to Harry we re still alive. And where there s life ... Vincent began. Pizer cut him off bitterly. He was in no mood for the robot s humorous homilies. He was trying to save his own skin Dan. Don t make him out to be some sort of martyr. There s a saying sir the unflappable robot went on that you can t unscramble eggs. A penny s worth of philosophy won t buy us out of this. A good offense is the best defense. Vincent Pizer said in utter exasperation maybe if you took your witticisms and ... He stopped forced himself to consider seriously what the robot was saying. You mean go after Reinhardt and turn the ship around He shook his head. We wouldn t have a chance. It s one thing to fight our way through corridors to here but he d never let us in the control tower. He d seal himself in first. By the time we could try something extreme like donning suits and breaking through the dome it d be too late. That was not what I had in mind Mr. Pizer. There is an alternative. I don t follow you. Holland who had also been devoting considerable thought to their seemingly hopeless situation did. The probe ship The one that s already returned from the event horizon It s equipped with the same Cygnus Process drive and the same null g field. Vincent you re a genius Yes sir the robot acknowledged modestly. It s part of my programming. Holland turned to the other waiting mechanical. Bob what s the quickest way to the probe dock Internal air car he replied instantly. I can program one to carry us directly to the dock. He was already starting back up the corridor. A gaping wound near her stern the Cygnus plunged ahead accelerating toward the lambent vortex of the black hole. Excited to fluorescence by the storm of radiation pouring out from the event horizon glowing gases began to fill space around the ship. Angry auroras swarmed around the ports. Reinhardt was studying the ship s progress when a buzzer demanded his attention. Switching to a rear facing scanner he studied the view thus presented in silence. Magnification was increased. A swarm of irregular shaped objects was cutting the course of the ship. Hasty calculations indicated they would overtake the Cygnus. Meteorites overtaking us. I knew there d be a lot of cosmic debris sucked in with us but I d hoped... Maximillian Bring up the output on the starboard power center. We still have partial power from two of the four engines on the port side. Double the output on the others. We have to increase our speed. Lights flashed across the huge mechanical s chest in a sequence indicating uncertainty and advising caution. Do as I say. We must seize the moment Maximillian. His eyes were wide wild. Hold our course. We will outrun the debris or ride out any impact. Pursued by the soulless components of a planet that never was the Cygnus thundered onward. But she did not gain enough velocity to outrace the tumbling matter that crossed her astern. One jagged chunk of nickel iron plowed lazily into the crest of the ship completely destroying what had been the reception area. The impact jarred the entire ship. Holland stumbled struggled to regain his footing. The whoosh of escaping air that had sounded momentarily terrifyingly in his ears was cut off as a lock door slammed tight behind them. The air car terminus was nearby. They followed Bob into the first of the little vehicles. Holland programmed it according to Bob s directions. All around the ship meteorites disintegrated under the increasing gravitational forces or succumbed to intense internal radiation or collided with one another and silently exploded. Through the transparent walls of the air car cylinder tube they could view the external destruction and the increasingly disturbed radiation that colored the vacuum. Something singed Holland s hair. He looked ahead to see another air car rushing directly for them. Still programmed to seek out and destroy the intruders four sentry robots were firing across the rapidly shrinking distance between the two cars. Under the increasing stress the cylinder itself began bucking and groaning. Holland recalled the flexibility of the null g field wondered if the damage to the ship s engines or the meteorite that had just impacted or perhaps both had done anything to reduce the field s stability. If so the ship might come apart around them any second. Vincent and Bob returned the fire of the approaching sentries. Seeing that the onrushing vehicle was not about to slow Holland assumed manual control of their car. He sent them sliding up in a high bank onto the side of the transport tube without reducing speed. The startled sentries raced on past below them. With a final sorrowful groan the transport tube buckled broke. An internal lock slammed down instantly shutting the tube off from the vacuum outside. The car carrying the sentries continued forward flying out into space with its occupants still turning to fire. There was damage ahead as they once more found themselves traveling through the ship. Holland brought the air car to a halt looked for a break. We can t go any farther over this he decided. We ll have to try walking the main corridor. Bob led them away from the car. The main corridor and its catwalks were still intact but by now walking itself was difficult. It was clear that the null g field was oscillating dangerously. One moment the ship sailed calmly onward the next the Cygnus barely shook free of the increasing gravitational pull. The muffled rumble of distant collisions echoed through the passageway. They had started down the corridor when a violent shock forced them to halt struggling just to remain upright. Refugee from some distant corner of space a flaming ball of matter broke through the ceiling. Its velocity reduced by passage through the Cygnus s null g field and several intervening decks it did not continue its progress through the ship. Instead it struck and bounced tumbling at high speed toward the little group of temporarily paralyzed onlookers. There being no place to hide everyone dropped to the deck. Not that it mattered. The glowing metal flew by overhead annihilated the section of catwalk they had already traversed and vanished through a partition. It was apparently intended by the fates that they should have no time in which to breathe freely before either escaping or perishing. Another laser beam passed close by Pizer. Exhausted they turned to locate the new threat. A single sentry was standing in a side corridor firing at them while reporting into a wall communicator. Holland and the others concentrated their combined fire in its direction and the mechanical was soon shattered. Before or after it had completed its report Pizer wondered. The reception on the screen was jumbled and indistinct but clear enough for a furious Reinhardt to see that his guests were still mobile. The picture was so poor he was unable to tell how many of them were left but the presence of even one antagonist running free aboard the ship during the next critical minutes was not to be tolerated. I want them finished this time Maximillian He turned back to his readouts cursing the accidental enounter that had reduced the Cygnus s power and rendered it vulnerable to the swarm of meteorites. But for them even the loss of nearly half his power would not have been sufficient to threaten the great experiment. If the ship suffered further damage to its engines however he would lose something far more important than mere speed. The null g field would be weakened to the degree that it might no longer be able to protect the Cygnus from the immense gravitational strength of the black hole. Several shards of interstellar flotsam narrowly missed striking the command tower itself. One deep range sensor antenna was completely torn away. Others struck and damaged the corridors leading to the ship s stern. Another impacted close by the docked probe ship. It leaned precariously almost breaking free of its co joining umbilical. Reinhardt resolutely kept his ship on its predetermined course. In free space the Cygnus could have avoided the meteorite swarm easily by a sharp change of direction. But within the gravitational vortex surrounding the collapsar that was not possible. Furthermore the ship was continually being torn apart by the stress the resultant fragments flying in unpredictable directions. Holland and Bob led the way as they stumbled into one of the hydroponics stations. Gathering sentries followed close behind exchanging fire with their tiring quarry. Pizer heard a ripping sound. There was the sudden whoosh of escaping atmosphere. A tiny hole had appeared at the apex of the dome overhead enough to suck vast quantities of air out into space. Automatic pressure sensors immediately sent fresh air pouring into the area but the circuitry that should have slammed shut inner doors surrounding the station to seal in the damaged area failed to function. Air continued to scream out into space. Despite the valiant efforts of the temperature compensators the dome turned dangerously cold. With the drop in pressure ice began to form in the room. Plates broke sending frozen bits of plant and hydroponic tubing swirling through the dome caught in the miniature hurricane pouring upward through the ceiling puncture. Old Bob jetted over to McCrae. His repeller units fought to keep him from being drawn upward. Hang on to me he yelled. Letting go of the stanchion she was clinging to she carefully transferred herself to the machine. With Bob battling the wind they drifted across the now frozen surface of the deck toward the far doorway still jammed open by failed circuits. Holland and Pizer were also trying to fight their way across. They grabbed at anything still secured to the deck. Frozen missiles that had been alive and green seconds ago whizzed dangerously around them. Only Vincent s constant distracting of the pursuing robots enabled the two men to concentrate on making their way safely across the station. It occurred to Vincent that it might be time to take some of his own advice concerning caution. He was battling the oncoming sentries alone a confrontation that eventually had to prove fatal. Turning he jetted toward the center of the dome. At least there he had more room to maneuver. The sentries single mindedly continued their pursuit. Dodging in random directions Vincent was a difficult target to concentrate on. As he was the only one still offering steady resistance the sentries directed the majority of their fire at him. McCrae could feel the strain in the machine carrying her. It would drop half a meter then struggle back up to its former altitude. The whine from Bob s repellers grew steadily more erratic. They would plunge almost to nothing before picking up fitfully again. The temperature in the room continued to fall placing an added burden on the poorly maintained B.O.B. unit. But they were almost to the beckoning doorway. She stared at the opening with a mixture of hope and horror. If its damaged emergency module suddenly became actuated the door would slam irrevocably shut. They would be trapped in the dome. She tried to will it to remain open. Holland blinked against the wind borne particles tried to see overhead. The hole in the dome appeared to have widened slightly. The hurricane intensified around them. He could feel the dangerous pull increasing on his body. If he lost his hold he would be helplessly sucked up and out into the void. Radical decompression by exposure to vacuum was a rotten messy way to die. Despite the growing numbness in his fingers he held tight to the railing continued to pull himself toward the far doorway. Pizer was ahead of him nearly to safety. That left only Vincent. The robot should be just behind him. Vincent Are you... He had intended to ask if the mechanical was all right but a quick glance backward was enough to show that Vincent wasn t. He could see external parts beginning to freeze up. Vincent could stand the ultimate cold of empty space so the frost beginning to coat his shell made no sense. But it was there no doubt about it. Vincent s evasive hovering slowed. He came up close to Holland halted. Then the uprushing gale got hold of him began to draw him up and back. Holding on with one hand Holland reached back with a convulsive swipe barely securing a grip on one of the robot s outstretched arms. His muscles protesting he pulled the hovering machine slowly down toward him. They started again for the doorway. If he lost his remaining hold on the rail they would both vanish through the hole in the dome before Pizer or McCrae knew they were gone. Programmed only to follow and destroy the sentries had begun to cross the open area of the dome station. They slowed. As if time had stopped for them they began spiraling upward slowly helplessly toward the roof. Old Bob and McCrae were already standing in the corridor beyond the lock door. Pizer was next through having to fight past the wind rushing down the corridor into the dome. Like a man swimming upstream Holland somehow managed to get Vincent and himself into the passageway. Old Bob immediately fired at the control module housing. The door slammed down. The gale slowed swirled directionlessly about them. They stamped their feet tried to warm numbed hands. McCrae wondered about frostbite. She could not feel the tips of her fingers. It was Pizer who started first down the corridor. We can t wait here. If those sentries manage to open that door we ll be blown back into the dome. I couldn t make that crossing again. We ve got to get moving Dan. Holland examined the panting chilled group of humans and machines. Vincent was slowly thawing but the cold had penetrated his metal body deeply. He seemed unable to stagger more than a few centimeters forward before having to stop and rewarm. Take Bob and Kate he told Pizer. We ll catch up. McCrae shook her head spoke tersely. No way. We can help him along take some of the load off his repellers the way we did with Bob until his internal heating unit is back to strength. She put her arms around the robot the cold metal momentarily taking her breath away. Holland did the same opposite her. Between them they hurried Vincent along. Behind them behind the now sealed door the ceiling of the hydroponics dome finally burst under the pressure. The air rushed as a body out into space carrying with it frozen bits of plants shards of console circuitry and the remnants of the pursuing sentry robots. What happened to you in there Holland asked the steadily warming robot. Had to ... divert power from heating unit ... to repellers to avoid . . . opposing fire. Chill worse than ... I thought. That wasn t too bright. All safe now... all alive aren t... we We ll discuss it later Holland replied curtly. He was angry. Angry at Vincent for almost getting himself frozen to electronic death for taking risks that he Holland should have been taking. With Vincent s lights flickering unsteadily but with increasing strength the little party of survivors staggered down the passageway fighting to keep their balance as the ship shuddered around them. 13 REINHARDT glowered helplessly at his instruments and ranted at the storm as the Cygnus strove to remain intact under the barrage of meteorites a great ungainly bird assailed by a swarm of potentially deadly bees. A glowing globular wraith bore down on the command tower. Reinhardt saw it stood transfixed by the inexorable approach of mass destruction. It just missed the tower itself ripped into the superstructure nearby. The impact sent humanoids tumbling against one another. Several fell from the upper level platform to lie still and twisted on the deck. Equipment dropped from secured places on the walls instrumentation snapped loose or winked out. Alert all stations for emergency running. Maximillian program the probe. We may have to use it. He studied the main screen. A tribute to its designers and builders it still functioned enough though the concussion had knocked it askew. Readouts set alongside another smaller screen offered the only good news. The last of the meteorites had swept past the Cygnus. There would be no more collisions. He tested various controls demanded information. The four undamaged engines were still pulsing smoothly as were the two still partially functional. Most of the remaining damage had been to the ship s midsection: heart rending but not fatal. He still had ample power and a measure of control. But the readouts were full of warnings of sections so badly battered they might fall at any time. It did not matter now. It was too late to change mind or direction even were he so inclined. Both he and the Cygnus were committed. The sudden silence and comparative stability of the deck underfoot was almost as frightening as the storm had been. The little group turned a corner. The corridor beyond was completely blocked by metal wreckage. Holland inspected it closely. Can t see through. No telling how dense it is. Even if we had the capability we don t have the time to burn our way through. McCrae was still waiting for the ceiling to come crashing down on them. It s over. The storm is over. Is there another way out Bob Another way that could take us around toward the probe s dock The mechanical turned moved to a sealed doorway and extended a portion of one arm. It fit into a matching receptacle set alongside the door. The metal panel slid aside and they found themselves in an alcove directly over the damaged power center. There was atmosphere in the huge chamber. There had to be or the door wouldn t have opened no matter how insistent old Bob s electronic entreaties. No doubt Reinhardt s efficient machines had already repaired the outer hull where the large meteorite had entered repressurized the chamber and gone elsewhere to repair more of the extensive damage. But the repairs had not been perfect. Mixed in with the stale air was another odor McCrae recognized immediately: augmented hydrogen. Dan this entire complex could go up in flames at any minute. Holland had also noticed the leakage. He stepped out gingerly onto the maintenance catwalk crossing over the engines and the deck far below. It swayed dangerously under his weight and he moved off. Any other way around this Bob No Captain came the reply. And we certainly can t go back through Agriculture. Holland considered a moment. Okay. Take Kate across. She started to protest. Now. Bob extended his arms. Deciding that time was now more important than principle McCrae grabbed hold. Bob started off across the open space. Charlie you and Vincent are next. Pizer shook his head. Too much weight. Vincent already had his limbs extended. Nothing ventured nothing gained Mr. Pizer. Besides there is no significant difference in weight between you and the captain. I ll travel above the catwalk just in case. Pizer looked unhappy but took hold of the proffered metal limbs and they started across following Bob and McCrae. She looked over a shoulder saw Holland receding behind her and called out to the other nearing robot. Hurry Vincent. You ve still got to get back for Dan. With the added burden of the humans neither machine was making much speed. Holland realized he couldn t wait. A chance spark could ignite the drifting hydrogen mixture and turn the chamber into a shortlived but highly realistic little hell. He started out onto the catwalk. It swayed as before. Moving cautiously forward he concentrated on maintaining his balance. Hold tight Mr. Charlie Vincent was admonishing his passenger. The first officer was shaking with coughs as the air in the engine chamber became saturated with leaking gases. Old Bob and McCrae reached the platform on the other side. She let go stepped clear and looked back worriedly. Holland was halfway across when the catwalk finally gave way. Instinctively lurching forward he clutched at the falling end and swung toward the far side. McCrae screamed. He turned his back toward the wall somehow hung on as he slammed into it. The gas was beginning to affect him as it had Pizer and he started to cough. Reaching up he tried climbing the broken walkway slipped used all his remaining strength just to hang on. McCrae and Pizer were trying to see down over the edge of the platform through rising darker gases. Neither had a thought of running for safety. Dan McCrae shouted without looking across at Pizer. I can t see him any more She bent over coughed violently. Get em out of here Charlie came Holland s muted order from somewhere below. Both ignored it Vincent started downward. I think Bob and I can bring him up Mr. Charlie. Go to it Vincent. The robots drifted down into the rising gas. McCrae and Pizer managed to open the door leading into the next corridor. Fresh air gusted gently inward driving back some of the suffocating miasma. Carrying the dazed Holland carefully between them the two machines reappeared moments later. They all started up the corridor. Holland was limping and blood trickled from the gash over his eyes. McCrae tried to support him working on the wound at the same time. The wonder of it was that he hadn t broken every bone in his back when he had slammed into the wall. But then she reminded herself he had always been the resilient type. Reinhardt had forgotten the damage caused by the meteorite storm had forgotten the disturbing presence of his only human adversaries. He was standing before the main screen staring at the burgeoning blackness that expanded to shove fierce radiation to the sides. Soon they would pass beyond the event horizon. At that moment they would pass beyond the limits of human knowledge. They would then encounter oblivion or a new Universe. Or perhaps something no man had yet imagined. They couldn t stop us he murmured aloud. We ll make it. To the Universe beyond. To my Universe ... and everlasting life. But Reinhardt was only a genius. He had plotted and gauged predicted and planned and anticipated as best as any mere genius could. The difficulty came from the fact that he no longer had the full strength of the Cygnus behind him only slightly more than half. As the calculations had insisted it would the null g field compacted around the ship. Lacking full power the field generation system was weakened. The already incomprehensible gravity it was passing through began to produce noticeable effects. Instrumentation was shaken. Readouts grew uncertain. The command tower itself began to vibrate under the stress. Increase power he directed Maximillian. Override the safeties on the starboard engines. We re going to maintain full field strength around us. We re going through. Within the crippled starboard power center a bit of metal fell from the ceiling. It struck another below and a slight spark resulted. Suddenly the vast chamber was filled with flames. One of the engines already damaged and unable to cope with heat from without as well as from within imploded. There was a sudden disruption of the field inside the engine that kept the Cygnus Process under control. A minute quantity of matter reacted with an equally minuscule amount of anti matter before the latter could be field contained or dispersed spaceward. The resultant explosion blew out the rear section of the center jolting the entire ship. Material and gas gushed out into the void. Elsewhere on the ship Bob and Vincent reeled as the artificial gravity momentarily went berserk. Depending on their position the three humans were thrown against floor or ceiling or wall. The lights in the corridor winked out. Emergency battery system up full. Reinhardt gave the order as the extent of the damage began to appear on internal monitors. Light returned to the command tower. It was hesitant flickering. As the pull of the collapsar began to affect the most massive portion of the Cygnus where the field had weakened further the ship started to drift sideways. This further complicated the efforts of the null g generation system to protect it. Holland helped Pizer to his feet. They ran faster now in the half light. The walls of the corridor groaned around them. The first sections of the great ship to feel the intensified effects of the gravitational pull were those already weakened by contact with meteoric debris. Bits of loosened or torn superstructure shuddered fell away from the exterior. This in turn unhinged the stability of the areas of which they were a part. Shivering dangerously the command tower remained intact. More and more instrumentation winked out. The consoles themselves threatened to tear free of their wall mountings. Oblivious to the danger humanoid robots continued to perform their designated tasks. Reinhardt had come to a painful but irrevocable decision. Maximillian prepare the probe ship. She s not going to hold under this kind of stress not on half power. The massive mechanical turned obediently moved toward the elevator. Reinhardt paused a moment before following. Slowly he turned to take a last look at the heart of what had become his private empire of discovery and exploration. Twenty years of his life he had spent lobbying for the construction of the Cygnus another twenty to bring it to this point in space. He would go on but without it He would not be cheated of his triumph. His entry into the new Universe would only be a little less grand. Turning he moved to follow Maximillian. A violent ripping noise made him look up. The overhead screen had torn loose from its braces. He had run two steps before something drove a knife into his legs. The screen struck with a resounding crash pinning him to the deck close by the transparent wall of the tower. A brief exhausting struggle proved he was hopelessly pinioned beneath the edge of the heavy viewer. Maximillian help me Another piece of instrumentation fell from above shattered on the deck nearby. Maximillian Reinhardt twisted his upper body looked for his servant. The elevator door was closed. Maximillian had already departed. He turned his eyes to the rows of busy humanoids. You there Help me. I said help me Programmed only to serve their assigned stations they ignored him even as those very stations broke down around them. A panicky Reinhardt turned away found himself staring out the port. Though leaning dangerously the probe ship still rested in its dock. Reinhardt began to lose his monumental self control. Fools Listen to me. Somebody listen or well all perish There was no response from the humanoids. He had reprogrammed them too well. Turning his attention back to the screen he tried again to push himself free. Occasionally his gaze would travel to the still functioning main screen to the view of the expanding blackness that would soon swallow the Cygnus. Somehow Holland put aside consideration of the agony in his injured leg and kept pace with the others as they raced down the corridor. As the ship fell still deeper into the gravity well it started to break up. The corridor trembled around the gasping group of refugees. The view through a wall port provided a boost no amount of rest could have equaled. They were nearing the probe dock. This way shouted Holland. They turned a last bend and found themselves standing outside the lock leading to the connecting umbilical. But when Holland jabbed the stud to open the door it remained unmoving. A red warning light came on instead as a nearby readout provided the explanation. Holland looked around grimly. Connector s been severed. They started searching. McCrae found the hoped for locker. A dozen suits were neatly arranged inside. They chose three with full tanks helped each other dress as minutes ticked past. A brief check insured that each suit was tight that its internal oxygen system was functioning and that the communicators were operative. Holland waved the others clear. Pizer and McCrae moved down the corridor the two robots the other way. Ready Everyone acknowledged by grabbing tight to a secured section of wall or railing. Wrapping one arm around a protruding tube Holland leaned over and touched the three emergency studs in proper sequence. The explosive bolts blew the lock cover out into space. A brief but intense rush of air pulled hard at everyone. It faded as distant emergency doors shut tight sealing them off from the rest of the ship. Well old timer Vincent was saying to Bob as they turned to head for the exit you re going home after all... and as a hero too. Had to uphold the honor of the old outfit Vincent. McCrae standing by the exit noticed something moving at the far end of the passageway. Vincent Bob look out Maximillian had appeared immediately behind the two machines. Bob reacted first thus catching the full force of the large mechanical s lasers. Circuitry flared as he was thrown backward bounced off a wall and fell to the floor. Maximillian shifted to turn his weapons on Vincent and the others. The delay had given Vincent enough time to turn and fire himself. Both precisely aligned shots melted the pistols in Maximillian s hands. Get to the ship he instructed his human companions. I ll handle this. Maximillian had not been rendered harmless however. Two additional arms came up tipped with whirling blades suitable for trimming metal. They were designed to repair. They could as easily dismember. Vincent hovered in his path fired again. But the material of the larger robot s shell was considerably tougher than the thin alloy of the two obliterated lasers. Vincent fired again. The bursts had no effect on the oncoming Maximillian. Hurry Captain. Vincent backed away from the larger mechanical. The three humans exited through the blown hatch. Maximillian hesitated then turned his full attention to the darting distracting Vincent. He rushed up at him. The smaller machine dodged fired again seeking a weak place in the armored monolith and not finding one. Vincent dipped down to fire from closer range ducked as the high speed blades cut over his head. Maximillian shifted again trying to corner his opponent against a wall. Vincent ducked and bobbed firing. The edge of one blade snicked against his shell sent him tumbling off balance into the wall. The impact appeared to have damaged his internal gyro balance system more than the blade had his exterior and he fluttered in one place experiencing the robotic equivalent of dizziness. Maximillian advanced on him. Outside the ship now the three suited figures struggled to make their way toward the probe pulling themselves through the twisted ruin of the Cygnus s external superstructure. Maximillian was on top of Vincent. The smaller robot spun fired several rapid bursts and just escaped through the small hole he had made in the hull before those whizzing blades could cut through his back. Devoid of lasers and Reinhardt s restraint Maximillian used the incredibly tough blades to open the gap wider. He pursued Vincent out into space. There was more room to maneuver outside but the torn surroundings were less predictable. Maximillian rushed forward. Vincent dodged but backed into a curled length of metal. There was no cry of triumph as his opponent became trapped but Maximillian pulsed a slightly deeper crimson as he moved forward and embraced Vincent in a hug capable of distorting the strongest metal alloys. A small door opened in Vincent s lower body. The larger machine did not immediately notice the tiny but efficient cutter that emerged. It pierced the huge mechanical s midsection played havoc with delicate internal circuitry. Tiny flares of fire spat from the hole as Maximillian loosened his grasp and spun away. His hover controls had been severed. Unable to guide himself he tumbled away from the Cygnus caught in the intensifying tug of the black hole. Vincent spared the rapidly shrinking shape only a momentary glance before jetting back into the ship. Old Bob was still lying where he had struck the deck. Most of his lights were out. Maximillian s finished Vincent reported to him. You did well. The reply from the metal form was faint. Thanks to you my friend. I ll get you aboard now. He drifted over the quiescent machine prepared to extend service arms to encompass the barrel shaped body. No. The word was barely understandable. I won t be going with you. Vincent hesitated. Desire battled realization inside him. He could not avoid analyzing the damage Maximillian s lasers had done. One blast had melted the majority of Bob s logic and cognition modules. He had very little mind left. What had been destroyed could be replaced but the B.O.B. unit would have a new personality a new self. He would not be what he was now. Humans talked a lot about an intangible they called the soul. In all the lengthy catalog of several thousand replacement parts for a B.O.B. or a V.I.N.CENT unit there was not one that carried that label. There s no need for me to go home the fatally damaged robot was saying perhaps trying to cheer his friend perhaps only stating the obvious. I am home. Out here. The same for me as it is for you. The final lights began fading as power failed along with the intricate solid state brain. You re still new still fully functional. Carry on for all of us Vincent. The humans will remember and praise their lost associates from the crew of the Cygnus. Only you can remember for the machines. Go now... help your friends... The last set of lights became dark. The thing on the deck was no longer alive. It was merely another piece of scrap metal such as the Cygnus was fast becoming. The corridor was threatening to shake apart around Vincent. His shipmates might be having trouble outside. The suits they had donned were not equipped with free space maneuvering units. Vincent turned and jetted for the open hatch. Holland was working his way across the battered surface of the ship. The sound of the Cygnus tearing itself apart reached him as an eerie groaning through the substance of his suit. He ducked beneath a great arch of bent metal pulled himself weightlessly across an artificial abyss. McCrae was right behind him Pizer in back of her. He reached back and grabbed her hand to help her across the dangerously open space. For an instant her body swung feet first out into space. Then he pulled her down to where she could obtain her own grip. The strength of the nearing black hole was beginning to overwhelm the failing artificial gravity of the Cygnus. Pizer looked back toward the ship s bow. The distant command tower was bending twisting like a drunken lighthouse. He moved forward. His hand reached out for Holland s as he started across the gap and their gloved palms parted. Slowly helplessly he began drifting away from the Cygnus. Another fragment of metal drifted near him. This one however was mobile. One metal arm extended to clutch a thrusting bit of superstructure. Then they were both once more alongside Holland and McCrae. Thanks Pizer told him. He was breathing hard from the narrowness of his escape. A friend in need is a friend indeed. Vincent responded with a twinkle of lights. You re learning Mr. Charlie. Reinhardt saw the tiny figures reach the side of the probe cursed them under his breath. He cursed the cosmos itself the unpredictability of it and of man. Was there nothing pure and perfect a true scientist could cling to in the madness of the Universe He cursed them again. Not because they had reached the probe. Because he had not reached it with them. There was a violent splintering sound and the vibration beneath him changed the viewport exploded inward. Shards of transparent plastic shot past him. At the same time the tower was torn free from the rest of the ship. Reinhardt s eyes bulged from sudden savage decompression as he and the tower were thrown off into space. From decompression of flesh from decompression of dream. Holland opened the lock. They entered the probe successfully and removed their suits. Soon they were crowding into the tiny cockpit. The probe had been designed to accommodate two humans. The four of them filled it tightly. McCrae happened to glance out the right port at the right moment. She saw the control tower spiraling away toward the vortex. Command tower s torn loose. She experienced a brief moment of sorrow for Reinhardt. The sentiment was quickly quashed by the memory of the mind wiped crew of blank featureless faceplates concealing equally blank minds. Her engines were still functioning but the Cygnus was now directionless. Completely out of control the ship swung wildly in the downspiraling well. One thruster broke free of its stern mounting was followed by a section of broken bow. Similar forces clutched at the probe ship as Holland frantically fingered the instrumentation. The engines were activated then the null g field. The shaking stopped. But they were still attached to the Cygnus. We better get the hell off he muttered. The whole ship s breaking up. He touched one control then another. Thrust and the probe lifted clear of the Cygnus. Operating the console manually Holland took them away from the ship. He was trying to put distance between them and the dangerous chunks of metal flying off the larger vessel. They were clear and he rested a moment. But the probe accelerated anyway commenced a wide arc toward the collapsar. Nearby the Cygnus continued to destruct. No longer protected by a null g field it was breaking into smaller and smaller sections. Everyone aboard had reacted to the sudden unprogrammed increase in velocity. Holland frantically began examining the instrumentation trying to recall the phase sequence of twenty year old circuitry. Nothing slowed the ship s acceleration nor altered its course. I don t understand. His muscles were tight with tension and a little fear. Even with the null g operating they could sense an occasional tremor running through the ship as increasing gravity tugged at it. The field s working as it should. But none of the other controls are responding. His hands weaved futile patterns over the instruments. It s no good. I can t turn her. There s no question about it Captain. Vincent had settled back from the console and his own efforts to influence their course. The ship has been preprogrammed. I don t have the necessary information to override. Only two individuals might. Reinhardt and Maximillian. McCrae was surprised at how fast she had resigned herself to the inevitable. At least the end should be quick. We re locked in then Pizer leaned back in his chair. Holland nodded agreement. Navigation is sealed. Probably in case the pilot is incapacitated to hold the ship on course. Reinhardt was determined to make his journey even if unconscious. So we re going into the black hole after all in spite of everything. Holland glanced over at his first officer his friend. Check. Now that their destination was unavoidable McCrae found herself speaking quite calmly. Let s pray that he was the prophet he claimed to be. Holland looked at her his expression conveying a multitude of emotions it was too late to put into words. At that point words would have been inadequate anyway. He who hesitates gathers no moss and a rolling stone is lost. Vincent had moved to the back of the cockpit. The thought of being abruptly reduced to the size of a subatomic particle was one he could comprehend better than any of them. It frightened him. Pizer patted his side comfortingly. Holland watched the instruments. There were many he recognized and a fair number he did not. Several were evidently designed to monitor events beyond mere human perception. The probe continued to accelerate. Ahead of them a blackness was eating the sky. Vincent extended his arms braced himself against the sides of the cockpit. Holland continued to gaze at McCrae and she gazed back both sorrowing for what might have been. Pizer watched them both as the ship began to rotate ignoring the advice of her outraged stabilizing systems. Something was squeezing Holland s guts pressing down on his head and up at his feet. A readout on the console was marked in increments of several thousands. It had by now crawled patiently halfway up its length. Abruptly simultaneous with the fading of light inside the probe it flicked upward and vanished. Much else disappeared with it. Light time a sense of being alive the efficacy of existence. A thought tickled Holland s brain and a thousand years passed on Earth. He was dimly aware that they must have crossed the event horizon. The line where things vanished forever time and space together. He considered the rhyme. Then he considered something else. He should not have been able to consider his considering. Something else impossible was happening. Light. Light should not happen within the confines of a collapsar. Matter should not happen either. Perhaps he was no longer matter. Was pure thought affected by gravity Did he still possess a body He thought he was looking down at himself but there no longer seemed to be anything there. Only darkness and quiet and peace. He was alone adrift in an irrational dimension. Then he imagined there were other thoughts curling and entwining among his own though he could not immediately identify them. Kate Charlie Vincent They remained infinitely distant tantalizingly near. Only the light ahead grew clearer. He imagined it had to be ahead. His speculations turned to the possible existence of white holes knife wounds into other universes. He wondered if Reinhardt could sense him. Then there was something familiar again recognizable warm. Come to me it was saying. Come to me Dan. It the only way. Kate And she responded. You must join with me Dan. And you Charlie. And Vincent ... if you can Vincent. Only thoughts have a chance inside here. Physical materialities will be crushed down to nothing but thought . . . the essences of ourselves . . . I think we have a chance... that way. Holland could feel something warm and all encompassing reaching out to envelop him. The fragmentation of himself that had begun halted. He remained He. It s working . . . came the powerful thought. It s the esplink my thought projection ability it will keep us together ...if we fight for it They blended flowed together thought itself strained beyond its normal borders under the unimaginable force of the collapsar. Then they were through . . . and amazingly still whole. Kate was Kate Charlie Charlie and Dan Holland still Dan Holland. Even Vincent was there. They were themselves and yet something strange and new a galactic sea change that produced all the above and a new unified mindthing that was KateCharlieDanVincent also. Dimly they it perceived the final annihilation of a minuscule agglutination of refined masses the Palomino. It was gone lost in an infinite brightness. They it remained content and infinite now as the white hole itself. They had been compressed compacted but had passed beyond and through with their selves still intact. With the passage came peace and time to contemplate. On a beach was a grain of sand. The sand was part of a continent the continent a component of a world the world a speck of substance in the sea of infinity. They were part of that world part of every world for in passing out the white hole their substance had become dispersed. An atom of Charlie to a nine world system a molecule of Kate to a local cluster of stars a tiny diffuse section of Holland spread thin over a dozen galaxies. Yet they could still think for thought does not respect the trifling limitations of time and space. They were still them and this new thing they had become. Their thoughts spanned infinity as did their finely spread substance and they now had an eternity in which to contemplate the universe they had become ... end

Religion

non-fiction

Traveller was one of the earliest roleplaying games and over the years it has accumulated a wide range of resources. One of its defining features is the array of equipment and weapons available. This article presents short simple conversion rules for using Traveller weapons in a futuristic WOIN game such as N.E.W. The Science Fiction Roleplaying Game. This guide includes notes for converting Mongoose s Traveller from 2008 and the updated version from 2016. As a general rule item costs are the same in both systems and weights in kg are doubled to get lbs. For many equipment items this is all you need the item description describes its function. Weapons have more statistics which are converted according to the guidelines below. Statistics Use the following guidelines to convert a Traveller weapon to WOIN. Damage. Damage is converted using the standard dice conversion table found on the WRRD. This is reproduced below for convenience. Simple cross reference the number of dice with the die type to get the WOIN damage. Type. Traveller does not used damage types so these should be assigned manually but should be fairly obvious. Heat and ballistic are the most common damage types and cold cryo and radiation pop up occasionally. Range. Traveller uses a scale of weapon types based on meters. WOIN uses 5 squares. These convert as follows. Traveller Weapon Type WOIN sq Thrown 3 Pistol 10 Rifle 20 Shotgun 6 Assault Weapon 15 Rocket 30 TRAVELLER WEAPONS Dice 1d 2d 3d 4d 5d d4 1d6 1 1d6 1 2d6 2d6 2 3d6 2 d6 1d6 2d6 3d6 4d6 5d6 d8 1d6 1 2d6 2 4d6 5d6 2 6d6 2 d10 1d6 2 3d6 2 5d6 6d6 4 8d6 d12 2d6 4d6 6d6 8d6 10d6 d20 3d6 2 6d6 4 10d6 13d6 2 16d6 2 Cost. Cost translates directly. No conversion needed. Size. Traveller does not have a size entry so you will need to convert it based on common sense. Pistols are small rifles are medium heavy weapons are large. Weight. WOIN uses lbs and Traveller uses kg so simply double the kg to get lbs. Availability. The usual genre of Traveller is B with some exceptions. The Tech Level TL corresponds to the WOIN Advancement Level AL as follows. From TL 9 onwards AL is simply TL 3. Other Stats The following stats are used by Traveller but not in WOIN. Auto. This entry in Traveller becomes a weapon trait in WOIN. Effects are handled via exploits instead. Magazine. This can be noted for information purposes in WOIN but ammo is handled differently. In WOIN you buy 20 shots for the cost of 5 of the weapon cost. There is a weapon property Single which indicates that a weapon can only be fired once per round. This tends to happen with primitive slow to load weapons. You can use the Traveller magazine figures if you enjoy tracking ammo. Recoil. In Traveller the recoil is compared to your Strength to see if your initiative is modified. Melee weapons have a value called heft which does the same thing. In WOIN take the recoil value and apply it to INITIATIVE according to the following table: Heavy weapons. Heavy weapons in Traveller are listed separately to other weapons and include the grenade launcher RAM rocket launcher PGMP and FGMP. These simply gain the heavy trait in WOIN. Traveller TL WOIN AL 0 Stone Age 0 1 Bronze Age 1 1 2 Medieval 2 2 Renaissance 3 3 Industrial Age 19 20c 4 4 early 20c 4 5 Information Age mid 20c 5 6 Mid late 20c 5 7 Pre Stellar Late 20c 6 8 Pre Stellar fusion solar system visitation 6 9 Pre Stellar early FTL colonized solar system 6 10 Early Stellar new star systems 7 11 Early Stellar Jump 2 8 12 Average Stellar Jump 3 9 13 Average Stellar Jump 4 10 14 Average Stellar Jump 5 11 15 High Stellar Jump 6 12 16 TL 3 17 18 Traveller TL WOIN AL Recoil INITIATIVE 0 1 2 2 4 3 6 Armor Type SOAK Avail Cost Wgt lb Special Ballistic Vest Light 2 6A 500 2 Ceramic Carapace Medium 5 9A 12 000 8 Cloth I Light 3 6A 250 20 Cloth II Light 4 7A 500 10 Cloth III Light 2 9A 750 4 Diplo Vest Light 2 7A 250 0.5 Flak Jacket I Light 2 6A 100 16 Flack Jacket II Light 3 6A 300 18 Flak Shell Medium 4 6A 1 000 16 Jack Light 1 1A 50 2 Mesh Light 1 5A 150 4 Poly Carapace Light 5 7A 10 000 4 Lightweight Poly Carapace Light 6 8A 15 000 4 Advanced Poly Carapace Light 8 10A 35 000 4 Post Apocalyptic Medium 2 5A 150 6 Protec Suit Light 2 6A 500 2 Tactical Riot Armour Heavy 2 6A 600 12 Ablat Medium 1 3 laser 6A 75 4 Conduit Bleed Heavy 2 8 plasma 11B 3 500 16 Dispersion Medium 1 5 energy 9B 2 000 6 Fireproof Suit Light 2 energy 6A 50 2 Reflec Light 5 laser 7A 1 500 2 Neural Sheath Light 10 psionics 14B 80 000 4 Boarding Vacc Suit I Heavy 6 8A 18 000 50 Radshield Boarding Vacc Suit II Heavy 7 9A 24 000 24 Radshield Ceramic Combat Armour Heavy 6 9 energy 10A 300 000 30 Radshield Combat Armour I Heavy 7 7A 96 000 40 Radshield Combat Armour II Heavy 9 9A 88 000 32 Radshield Combat Armour III Heavy 10 11A 160 000 24 Radshield Combat Environment Suit Medium 4 7A 1 000 4 Radshield Emergency Hostile Environmental Suit Heavy 2 7A 9 000 40 Emergency Softsuit Medium 7A 2 000 20 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Suit Heavy 6 6A 8 000 70 Hostile Environment Vacc Suit I Heavy 4 6A 24 000 44 Radshield Hostile Environment Vacc Suit II Heavy 5 7A 20 000 26 Radshield Hostile Environment Vacc Suit III Heavy 6 8A 22 000 26 Radshield Hostile Environment Vacc Suit IV Heavy 7 10A 40 000 20 Radshield Hostile Environment Vacc Suit V Heavy 8 11A 60 000 18 Radshield Pressure Sleeve Light 7A 600 0.5 Psi Enhanced Combat Armour Medium 8 PSI score 13C 500 000 20 Radshield Rescue Suit Medium 6 9A 25 000 44 Radshield Vacc Suit I Medium 2 6A 12 000 34 Radshield Vacc Suit II Medium 4 7A 11 000 20 Radshield Vacc Suit III Medium 5 9A 20 000 16 Radshield Mongoose Traveller 2016 Mongoose released a new version of Traveller in 2016. The following differences apply when converting weapons to WOIN. Range. Range is noted in meters. To get a WOIN range in squares multiply by 0.6. Note that Traveller rifles include a scope in their ranges so divide by 10 if the range is larger than 50 or so. A scope can be added using the usual WOIN upgrade rules. Damage. Use as shown less 1d6 so 3d6 3 is 2d6 3 . Where two D s are noted e.g. 3DD demoting Destructive this means that the damage is multiplied by 10. Other values are converted according to the guidelines for the 2008 Traveller version. Books like the Central Supply Catalog can provide a wide range of ready to use equipment for your WOIN game. You will find some of these on the next page. Weapon Traits The following new weapon traits are used with converted Traveller weapons. AP X. Armour Penetration allows the weapon to ignore the indicated amount of SOAK. Halve the value. Blast X. This is the equivalent of WOIN s Burst X. Halve the value. Bulky. This is the equivalent of WOIN s heavy. Powered Armor Type SOAK Avail Cost Wgt lb Special Ceramic Powered Plate Heavy 8 10 energy 10B 90 000 70 Radshield powered Grav Enhanced Powered Plate Heavy 10 12B 120 000 64 Radshield powered Mechanical Carapace I Heavy 4 6A 15 000 60 Radshield powered Mechanical Carapace II Heavy 5 9A 30 000 50 Radshield powered Powered Plate I Heavy 7 7A 50 000 80 Radshield powered Powered Plate II Heavy 9 11A 85 000 60 Radshield powered Battle Dress SOAK Avail Cost Wgt lb Special Artillery Battle Dress I 13 10A 275 000 Radshield powered Artillery Battle Dress II 15 11A 320 000 Radshield powered Assault Battle Dress I 12 10A 300 000 Radshield powered Assault Battle Dress II 14 11A 330 000 Radshield powered Battle Dress I 11 10A 200 000 Radshield powered Battle Dress II 12 11A 220 000 Radshield powered Ceramic Battle Dress I 11 16 energy 10A 400 000 Radshield powered Ceramic Battle Dress II 13 18 energy 11A 440 000 Radshield powered Combat Pioneer Battle Dress 12 10A 270 000 Radshield powered Command Battle Dress I 12 10A 325 000 Radshield powered Command Battle Dress II 14 11A 350 000 Radshield powered Logistics Battle Dress I 11 10A 290 000 Radshield powered Logistics Battle Dress II 13 11A 320 000 Radshield powered Psi Commando Battle Dress 13 half PSI 12C 1.2 MCr Radshield powered Psi Enhanced Battle Dress I 11 half PSI 10C 800 000 Radshield powered Psi Enhanced Battle Dress II 13 half PSI 11C 880 000 Radshield powered Scout Battle Dress I 10 10B 270 000 Radshield powered Scout Battle Dress II 12 11B 300 000 Radshield powered Dangerous. This weapon is unstable and dangerous to use. If triple ones are rolled it explodes and inflicts its damage on the owner. Destructive. Give this trait to weapons denoted with the DD damage notation. This multiplies damage by 10. These weapons are pretty much one shot kills. Radiation. Add radiation damage to the damage type s . Scope. Ignore this trait. Scopes are added separately in WOIN. Silent. This weapon is silent. Smart. The weapon should be considered to have the Seeker upgrade 2d6 one shot per round . Zero G. Ignore this trait. WOIN s zero g rules are different. Melee Weapons This document does not include examples of converted melee weapons as the WOIN system already has a much larger array of these in books such as Fantasy Equipment. Armour Simply halve the protective value of Traveller 2016 armour types minimum 1 . Note that some Traveller armour contains radiation protection. This SOAKs radiation damage at a value of 5 round down of the RAD value indicated this is so often within 1 point of the actual regular protection that a simple radshield trait is used instead indicating that the armor s SOAK applies to radiation. Remember to double the weight to convert from kg to lb. You will need to assign type light medium heavy powered manually. Archaic armours are not listed below as WOIN Fantasy Equipment already has far more than Traveller. Shields Traveller contains a range of shields. You will simply need to decide whether each is small medium or large. Cost weight etc. all remain the same. Slug Pistols Slug Pistols Damage Type Range Cost cr Size Weight lb Availability Special Antique Pistol 1d6 Ballistic 3 100 S 2 4A Single sidearm Assault Pistol 2d6 Ballistic 6 250 S 2 5A Auto sidearm Autopistol 2d6 Ballistic 6 200 S 2 5A Auto sidearm Body Pistol 1d6 Ballistic 3 500 S 0.5 6A Holdout sidearm Cartridge Pistol 3d6 Ballistic 12 300 S 3 6A Sidearm Coach Pistol 3d6 Ballistic 3 200 S 4 4A Shotgun dangerous sidearm Duck s Foot Pistol 1d6 Ballistic 3 300 S 4 4A Auto dangerous sidearm Flechette Pistol 2d6 Piercing 6 275 S 2 6A Silent sidearm Gauss Pistol 2d6 Piercing 12 500 S 2 10A Auto sidearm Heavy Revolver 3d6 Ballistic 6 400 S 3 5A Revolver heavy sidearm Magrail Pistol 2d6 3 Ballistic 6 750 S 2 11A Auto sidearm Revolver 2d6 Ballistic 6 150 S 2 5A Revolver sidearm Shot Pistol 2d6 Ballistic 2 60 S 1 5A Sidearm Snub Pistol 2d6 Ballistic 3 150 S 0.5 6A Sidearm Universal Autopistol 2d6 Ballistic 6 300 S 2 6A Sidearm auto Zip Gun 1d6 Ballistic 3 50 S 0.5 4A Single Slug Rifles Slug Rifles Damage Type Range Cost cr Size Weight lb Availability Special Accelerator Rifle 2d6 Ballistic 15 900 M 4 6A Advanced Combat Rifle 2d6 Ballistic 27 1 000 M 6 7A Auto Air Rifle I 1d6 Ballistic 3 225 M 8 4A Silent single Air Rifle II 2d6 Ballistic 4.5 350 M 10 4A Silent single Antique Rifle 2d6 Ballistic 15 150 M 12 4A Assault Rifle 2d6 Ballistic 12 500 M 8 6A Auto Assault Shotgun 3d6 Ballistic 3 500 M 10 5A Heavy auto Autorifle 2d6 Ballistic 18 750 M 10 5A Auto Big Game Rifle 2d6 3 Ballistic 12 1 250 M 18 5A Heavy Flechette Submachin e Gun 2d6 Ballistic 12 500 M 6 6A Auto silent Gauss Rifle 3d6 Ballistic 36 1 500 M 8 9A Auto Gauss Sniper Rifle 4d6 Ballistic 60 2 500 M 8 9A Heavy Advanced Combat Rifle 3d6 Ballistic 27 2 000 M 10 7A Auto heavy Magrail Rifle 3d6 3 Ballistic 9 2 500 M 8 11A Auto Rifle 2d6 Ballistic 15 200 M 10 5A Sawed off Shotgun 3d6 Ballistic 10 200 M 4 5A Heavy shotgun Shotgun 3d6 Ballistic 30 200 M 8 4A Heavy Sniper Rifle 2d6 Ballistic 30 700 M 10 6A Silent Spear Gun 2d6 Piercing 25 50 M 4 5A Silent Submachin e Gun 2d6 Ballistic 25 400 M 6 5A Auto Energy Pistols Energy Pistols Damage Type Range Cost cr Size Weight lb Availability Special Gauntlet Laser 2d6 Heat 12 2 500 S 8 7B Sidearm Hand Flamer 2d6 Heat Cone 3 1 500 S 4 7B Sidearm combust Laser Pistol I 2d6 Heat 12 2 000 S 6 6B Sidearm Laser Pistol II 2d6 3 Heat 18 3 000 S 4 8B Sidearm Maser Pistol 2d6 3 Heat 12 25 000 S 6 14B Sidearm AP5 Matter Disintegrator I 1d6x10 Heat 3 2.5 MCr S 2 15C Sidearm destructive Matter Disintergrato r II 2d6x10 Heat 6 4 MCr S 2 16C Sidearm destructive Personal Defense Laser 3d6 3 Heat 15 6 000 S 6 10B Auto sidearm Stunner I 1d6 Heat 3 500 S 1 6B Stun sidearm Stunner II 1d6 3 Heat 3 750 S 1 7B Stun sidearm Stunner III 2d6 Heat 6 1 000 S 1 9B Stun sidearm Energy Rifles Energy Rifles Damage Type Range Cost cr Size Weight lb Availability Special Cryo Rifle 3d6 Cold 6 6 000 M 18 10B Blast 2 Flame Rifle 3d6 Heat Cone 3 2 500 M 16 6B Combust Heavy Laser Rifle 5d6 Heat 72 14 000 M 36 9B Laser Carbine I 3d6 Heat 9 2 500 M 8 6B Laser Carbine II 3d6 3 Heat 12 4 000 M 6 8B Laser Rifle I 4d6 Heat 12 3 500 M 16 6B Laser Rifle II 4d6 3 Heat 24 8 000 M 10 8B Laser Sniper Rifle 5d6 3 Heat 36 9 000 M 12 9B Maser Rifle 4d6 3 Heat 18 30 000 M 16 13B AP5 Plasma Rifle 1d6x10 Heat 18 100 000 M 12 13B Destructive Solar Beam Rifle 1d6x10 Heat 300 200 000 M 8 14C Destructive AP10 Stagger Laser Rifle I 4d6 Heat 18 10 000 M 12 9B Auto Stagger Laser Rifle II 4d6 3 Heat 21 15 000 M 10 11B Auto Heavy Weaponry Heavy Weaponry Damage Type Range Cost cr Size Weight lb Availability Special Anti Materiel Rifle 4d6 Ballistic 60 3 000 L 30 6A Single heavy AP3 Cryojet 3d6 Cold 6 4 000 L 28 8B Heavy blast 2 Disposable Plasma Launcher 2d6x10 Heat 18 8 000 L 16 9B Single destructive smart FGMP I 2d6x10 Heat Radiation 27 100 000 M 24 11C Heavy destructive FGMP II 2d6x10 Heat Radiation 27 400 000 M 24 12C Heavy destructive FGMP III 2d6x10 Heat Radiation 27 0.5 MCr M 30 13C Heavy destructive Flamethrower I 2d6 Heat Cone 3 800 L 40 4A Combust heavy Flamethrower II 3d6 Heat Cone 3 1 500 L 30 5A Combust heavy Flamethrower III 3d6 Heat Cone 6 2 000 L 20 6A Combust Grenade Launcher 60 400 L 12 6A Heavy Machinegun 2d6 Ballistic 30 1 500 L 24 5A Auto PGMP I 1d6x10 Heat 15 20 000 M 20 9B Heavy destructive PGMP II 1d6x10 Heat 27 65 000 M 20 10B Heavy destructive PGMP III 1d6x10 Heat 27 100 000 M 20 11B Heavy destructive Plasma Jet I 1d6x10 Heat 15 16 000 M 20 9B Combust heavy destructive Plasma Jet II 1d6x10 Heat 30 80 000 M 20 11B Combust heavy destructive RAM Grenade Launcher 15 800 M 4 6A Auto heavy Rapid Fire Machinegun 3d6 Ballistic 30 3 000 M 24 6A Auto Rocket Launcher I 3d6 Heat 70 2 000 L 16 5A Burst 3 Rocket Launcher II 3d6 3 Heat 90 2 000 L 16 6A Burst 3 Rocket Launcher III 4d6 Heat 120 2 000 L 16 6A Burst 3 smart Rocket Launcher IV 4d6 6 Heat 150 2 000 L 16 6A Burst 3 smart Artillery Artillery Damage Type Range Cost cr Weight lb Availability Special Demolition Gun 1d6x10 Heat 01.km 30 000 5t 5A Artillery burst 5 destructive AP5 Black Powder Mortar 6d6 Ballistic 0.5km 2000 0.5t 4A Artillery burst 3 Bombardment Gun 2d6x10 Ballistic 30km 0.5Mcr 220t 5B Artillery burst 10 destructive Heavy Bombardment Gun 3d6x10 Ballistic 40km 0.75MCr 500t 5B Artillery burst 10 destructive Heavy Gun 1d6x10 Ballistic 12km 120 000 12t 6A Artillery burst 5 destructive AP4 Infantry Mortar 2d6 Heat 1km 3 500 24lb 5A Artillery burst 5 Light Howitzer 8d6 Heat 6km 50 000 2t 5A Artillery burst 5 Light Gun 8d6 Ballistic 9km 75 000 2t 5A Artillery burst 5 AP3 Siege Gun 4d6x10 Ballistic 50km 19MCr 1 200t 6B Artillery burst 25 destructive AP5 Mass Driver 1d6x10 Ballistic 40km 0.5MCr 7t 9C Artillery burst 5 destructive Explosives Explosives Damage Type Range Cost cr Weight lb Availability Special Breaching Charge 4d6 Heat 250 2 6A Blast 1 Complex Chemical Charge 4d6 Heat 500 2 7A Blast 5 AP 8 Fusion Block 1d6x10 Heat Radiation 10 000 2 13A Destructive blast 6 Neutrino Detonator 8d6 Neutron 50 000 2 14C Only organic matter blast 12 Plastic 3d6 Heat 200 2 5A Blast 5 Pocket Nuke 6d6x10 Heat Radiation 250 000 8 9B Destructive blast 500 TDX 4d6 Heat 1 000 1 9C Horizontal axis only blast 8

Politics & Social Sciences

non-fiction

THX 1138 by Ben Bova Based on the Screenplay by George Lucas and Walter Murch a.b.e book v3.0 Notes at EOF Back Cover: THE PERFECTLY CONTROLLED SOCIETY Its citizens are conceived in test tubes nourished in vats educated intravenously watched by monitors made docile by drugs. The Adam of this 25th century Eden is THX 1138 the Eve is his beautiful roommate LUH 3417. Having yielded to the temptation not to take her state prescribed drugs she lures THX into committing the same crime. How could anyone know she argues. But the electronic monitor is all seeing instead of archangels with flaming swords there are police robots with cattle prods and if there are any gates to this Eden no one knows where. . . PAPERBACK LIBRARY EDITION First Printing: April 1971 Copyright 1971 by Warner Bros. Inc. All rights reserved Paperback Library is a division of Coronet Communications Inc. Its trademark consisting of the words Paperback Library accompanied by an open book is registered in the United States Patent Office. Coronet Communications Inc. 315 Park Avenue South New York N.Y. 10010. Chapter 1 I need something stronger. The observer frowned at his viewscreen picture. It was badly distorted. He could hardly make out the man s face. What s wrong he asked. Nothing. . . nothing really. I just feel. . . I need something stronger. There were fifty viewscreens on the observer s panel all of them clamoring for attention. His head throbbed painfully. He said to this one: If you have a problem don t hesitate to ask for assistance. Call 348 853. And get off my back. . . Yes. . . Thank you I ll be all right. I ll be all right said THX 1138. He stood in front of the medicine cabinet and somehow knew that the observer was no longer paying attention to him. He took two pills from the nearest bottle and returned the bottle to the cabinet. Popping the two pills into his mouth THX 1138 made his way back to the hologram room. He curled up in the deep soft relaxer chair. He was dressed as always in loose fitting white pajamas. His head like everyone s was shaved. He curled into a fetal position thumb in mouth eyes glazed and watched. Watched the three policemen beating the old man. Listened to the soft whistle of the long chrome nightsticks that ended in the solid thunk of flesh being pounded blood vessels bursting skin ripping bones shattering. The old man was still alive he gave a sighing grunt with each impact. THX 1138 watched the policemen beat the old man and felt the soothing glow of the pills taking effect. Somewhere he heard a female voice saying: For more rapid results use your new D code on your Mercicontrol card. Thank you. He nodded and kept watching. The room was dimly lit in a sullen red glow that came from the walls. But the holopicture was bright and sharp. THX could see that the policemen were chrome like their clubs. Robots. But the old man was real. He moaned. He bled. The door to the holoroom opened. THX ignored it THX No. . . later. . . But. . . He pulled tighter together knees under chin. She stood at the door and stared at him for a long empty moment With every thud of the nightsticks she winced. Slowly she closed the door. Her name in the style of the underground society was LUH 3417. She was twenty years old slim and very lovely except for a barely noticeable small red S branded on her left cheek. Her shaved head gave her face a child like innocent appearance. She stood in the little hallway outside the holoroom under the flat glareless light of the overhead panels wearing the standard white pajamas that everyone wore. It was a good apartment three functional immaculate white rooms. And the holoroom. Down on the lowest level of the city closest to the warmth of the Earth s core safe and protected. Protected from what LUH wondered. With a worried frown she walked the four steps from the holoroom s door to the sanitary. It was a gleaming chrome cubbyhole with showerstall depilatory mask sink and medicine cabinet. She stood in front of the cabinet staring into its mirror. She didn t notice her expressive eyes or the curve of her cheek. Only the S. It was quite small now. Baby sized. Will they give me another one when I turn twenty one She opened the medicine cabinet then hesitated. What s wrong asked a male observer s voice. Impulsively she took the bottle of pills that THX had used a few minutes earlier. Never mind she said to the unseen observer. I ll. . . I ll replace these later. She slammed the cabinet door shut. She shook out a fistful of pills put them to her lips and held her hand frozen there for a frightening instant. Then she reached down and tossed the pills into the toilet. She shook the whole bottle s contents into the toilet and flushed all the pills down. Ajter all she thought to herself how can they know How can they find out The medicines don t work as well on natural borns anyway. For a moment she felt elated almost happy with a delicious twinge of guilt the pills are for your own good child . Then she left the sanitary and walked past the holoroom door again. She could still hear the thudding. But now there was a soft moaning sound a crooning. Not from the old man in the holopicture. She knew that sound. It was THX. Her elation vanished. She knew what he was doing. Slowly silently reluctantly LUH cracked open the door of the holoroom just wide enough to see THX. He was breathing hard moaning softly eyes fixed on the picture body jerking spasmodically. LUH looked up at the picture. They were beating a naked girl now. She was silently begging them but they kept on beating her. One of the chrome policemen hauled her up by the wrists to a kneeling position and the others kicked her abdomen her ribs. All in slow motion. Her breasts bounced with each blow. A chrome fist smashed into her face spewing blood. THX was masturbating. A smooth white plastic receptacle set into the chair caught his flow and ducted it off. Keep the apartment spotless. Save the sperm for the state. LUH shut the door her hands shaking. Why did it bother her so Her own holopicture stimuli were so different. . . why did she want She realized she was crying. If anyone saw that With an effort that made her shudder she pulled herself under control. LUH went into the kitchen. She had to do something busy herself. She touched the menu stud on the wall and holopictures of acceptable meals flicked by in eyeblink succession where the cooker screen was. She touched the button again when she saw THX s favorite meal. It was all synthetics of course but the protein was done up to look like real meat. The wall button flashed blue acknowledging her order. Nodding to herself LUH waited for the sound of the pre packaged meal to arrive in the cooker. When it came she stepped to the cooker and opened the door bending over slightly to look inside and make certain it was what she had ordered. It wasn t. She must have been too slow with the selector button or maybe the system was just fouled up again. Too late now there was no way to return the food. It had to be consumed. She let the cooker door snap shut and pressed the middle of three buttons alongside it. The button glowed red. The meal would be ready in five minutes. LUH turned back toward the holoroom. For a moment she hesitated then took a deep breath and started for THX. He was sitting up now. A smooth voiced newscaster was sitting across the room where the beatings had been going on. . . . in the constant striving for perfection in the AIA PB 848 s that have been built this year. Five felons have been caught fleeing Rehabilitation Center DD 2. All five had been undergoing treatment for drug offenses. Two of the felons were the products of the sexact the other three. . . What LUH asked involuntarily. The holopicture flashed blindingly for an instant then the newscaster repeated: Two of the felons were products of the sexact the other three are from Reproclinic 19. The quintet escaped from Compound 545 and were destroyed upon recapture. Reports indicate. . . She touched THX s shoulder. I started dinner for you. I m not hungry he said. The newscaster s voice automatically dropped to subliminal level when they spoke. He sat there smiling amiably mouthing the day s events. Well it s fixed. Come on out and eat it. I don t want to. Impatiently LUH said It s just going to go to waste if you don t eat it. Come on. . . He turned and looked up at her. What s the matter with you Can t you come out of this room and spend some time with me I see you every day. She started to reply then suddenly turned and left the room. THX sat in the relaxer chair half turned to watch her as the door slid shut behind her. With a puzzled frown he got up and followed her out into the hall. What s the matter he asked. She shook her head. Nothing. Come on I ll get your dinner from the cooker. Okay. Let s eat in the holoroom. The news will be finished soon and the comedy shows start next. So she sat in the relaxer chair beside him watching the flesh colored mannequins cavorting to taped laughter. He looked rather puzzled when she insisted on sitting in the same chair with him close enough so that their bodies actually touched. She s a strange girl he thought. He kept trying to concentrate on the holoshow but his eyes drifted to her as she sat beside him staring straight ahead at the holopicture but obviously not looking at it eating slowly her thoughts. . . where What was she thinking LUH. . . She turned to face him. Yes Shaking his head Nothing. He went back to watching the mannequins. Control sat in his sculptured foamchair a thin humorless smile on his lips. The far wall of his spacious office was a holoscreen. At the moment it seemed as if there was no wall there at all and the office appeared to look out on half a dozen horseshoe shaped observer desks each ringed with fifty monitoring screens and manned by an observer in skullcap and earphones. Well he asked one of the observers through the intercom set into the surface of his synthetic wood desk. What s your analysis The holopicture zoomed in on one observer. Each of his fifty screens had the same picture of THX and LUH sitting together the observer saw them the way a mantis must see its prey. She s trying to seduce him obviously said the observer. Obviously Control agreed. But is she aware of what she s doing or is she acting instinctively That s the important question. Without turning his head from the screens the observer answered Her pulse rate neutral activity EEG body temperature they all indicate that she s excited but still at the subliminal level. She doesn t really know what s going on inside her own glands. Control chuckled. But her body knows. Look at the way she s rubbing against him. Disgusting. Yes but she s not consciously trying to commit the crime. She s only responding to her own heredity. Control muttered something to himself. He s starting to feel it the observer noted. All his indicators are. . . well rising. He grinned knowing that Control couldn t see his face. I don t doubt it said Control. I should warn him the observer said. No. At least suggest that he take the proper sedation. No Control snapped. But. . . I don t understand. If we allow her to continue like this then he ll commit the crime with her. Of course. But it won t really be his fault the observer said. No Whose fault will it be The observer had heard that tone of voice from Control before. It was the last warning sound before an irrevocable trap was sprung. I mean to say sir the observer backtracked that. . . well not every man could maintain his principles under. . . eh that kind of treatment. Control answered icily Either he maintains his principles or he falls. If he falls it s his own will his own volition that caused it. The observer shook his head. You fail to understand Control said that LUH 3417 as a natural born a product of the sexact is an atavism a dangerous anomaly a living time bomb ticking away in our society. Sooner or later her genetic heritage will make itself felt and she will seduce some otherwise decent citizen into committing the same crime that spawned her. We could arrest her now the observer said timidly. On drug abuse. I saw her flush a whole bottle of pills down the toilet. No I want to catch her in the sexact. The guiding principle of our society is not vengeance but self protection. Criminals commit crimes. You can t stop them from doing it you can only delay the inevitable moment when they try to damage society and themseves. No matter what we do LUH 3417 is intent on destroying herself. We merely have to wait until she takes the ultimate step and then let society act in the legally prescribed manner. But the man. . . If he has criminal instincts then he will destroy himself too. There s no way for us to prevent it. Our society will be healthier stronger safer more stable with such criminals out of the way. The observer decided not to answer. Control as always was right. No sense arguing. Control watched THX and LUH on the observer s multiple screens for a few minutes longer then pointed a lean finger at the special receptor atop his desk. The holopicture of the observer s warren disappeared with a silent flash to be replaced by the solid wall of the office and its stylized portrait of the legendary First Control with the mysterious clockwork numbers spiraling backward around his puffy stern face. Chapter 2 Frowning with concentration beads of sweat on his face THX manipulated the waldoes carefully. This is the touchiest part of it. If the radioactives. . . He was standing in front of the leaded window of Assembly Bay 17 hands gloved by the metal manipulators which felt clammy and slippery to him now. On either side of him dozens of other men worked straining at identical stations each identically uniformed in white with close fitting cap and earphones. He held still for a moment and inside the lead shielded assembly bay his remote mechanical counterpart hands the waldoes stopped in mid motion. They were holding a tiny capsule of radioactives that would activate the chrome robot lying inert beneath the skeletal metal arms of the waldoes. What s the trouble Assembly Bay 17 are you all right Answer 1138. I m okay THX said. A million voices were buzzing in his earphones orders queries conversations from all over the assembly center. His head throbbed. Please keep your trailing edge circuits from touching the floor. Do not present solid circuits for validation. If you have been issued circuit cards with the new D code function make sure that the pin array is compatible with earlier models. Recycle the step sequencer 2434. Repeat recycle step sequencer. Multiphase analysis please. You re in the green station 6. Go ahead. Another three hours THX thought. Three more hours and I ll be home. And then he added with LUH. He saw her face felt the whisper of her breath on his cheek. Assembly 17 what s the holdup Sorry he muttered. Keep your mind on your work Grid control this is assembly central. Bay 17 initiating thermal transfer. Yellow alert. Read you central. Yellow alert thermal transfer. Blast and radiation procedures. Go ahead bay 17. In another part of the vast underground center LUH sat at an observer s desk eyes flickering over the fifty screens fingers touching out an elaborate sonata of electronic responses to people s needs and fears. But somehow she felt that the screens were watching her. The observation room was dim and shadowy lit mostly by the bluish glowing screens. Hundreds of observers sat at their stations with supervisors pacing between them. LUH sat and listened to the great mindless buzz of millions of voices crackling eternally in her earphones. I m going away on holiday. Should I continue to take pinural or should I switch to something else Congratulations on your access to holiday. Holiday centers are equipped to maintain an agreeable sedation rate within certain limits. You do not need to take any special precautions. This is city probe scanner. We ve run across some illegal sexual activity. It should be on your DTO screen right now. Transfer to Control mode seven. Thank you for assistance in crime prevention. Appropriate credits will be transferred to your account. JDC. . . pickup on three. . . VPT. . . please report to Intrinsic Interloop Station 5. . . sampling error. . . One of her central screens showed a tired looking old man standing in a complaint booth in one of the commercial plazas. Shoppers hurried back and forth behind him. The picture was blurry LUH tried to get it clear but couldn t. What s wrong she asked into her lip mike. The old man held up something that looked like a shopping bag. I just bought these new kind yesterday. . . he rummaged through the shopping bag and pulled out a yellow plastic consumption hexagon. And they don t fit in my consumall and the store doesn t have any of the old ones. LUH tapped out a standard response code on her key board. A taped voice very feminine warm soothing said: For more enjoyment and greater efficiency consumption is being standardized. We are sorry if you have experienced any temporary inconvenience. Place your identification badge in the reader and we will have units transferred to your account as soon as possible. Slightly dazed looking the man obediently undipped the badge from his lapel and slipped it into the reader. He waited patiently until the machine buzzed at him then took the badge back. Thank you. And may we recommend an extra dosage of sedation Etracene enervol and pinural are compatible within group 3A. The old man nodded dumbly and shuffled off to be swept up by the crowd streaming by. LUH cut the picture and turned her attention to a pair of children who giggling were peeking in at the edge of the screen and then ducking out of sight to hide behind a plastisteel bench in the middle of their school plaza. LUH smiled as she pressed a series of keys on her panel. A kind but stern baritone voice said: This monitor is to be used for emergencies or special requests only. All routine information can be easily obtained through the bulletin panels installed at every intersection. One little boy got up from behind the bench stuck his tongue out at the screen and then ran off laughing. LUH watched him until he disappeared around the corner of a building. Then another scene in a screen far up in the left corner of her set caught her eye. She transferred the picture to the four main screens directly in front of her. What s wrong A man was screaming hysterically as he stood in a sanitary. There was no sound coming from him though. Frantically LUH worked the switched on her panel. . . . me. . . help me. . . the man was shrieking. What s wrong The man thrust both hands into the medicine cabinet knocking bottles everywhere. As they clattered to the floor he dropped to his knees and started pouring out handfulls of pills and swallowing them madly. LUH punched a single red button. A taped voice began saying: Take four red capsules in ten minutes take two more. Help is on the way. Do not be afraid. . . Take four red capsules. . . She called Mercicontrol. Okay got it said a brash young man s voice in her earphones. You can let go now we ll take care of him. With a weary sigh she acknowledged and let the screaming pill gobbling man s image return to its upper left screen. The central screens showed four different robot assembly bays now. THX sat at one of them. LUH stared at him. There was no sound from the screens only the constant cacophony of voices in her earphones. But she ignored them now. She watched THX as he worked all concentration all sinew and hard steady nerves manipulating the metal hands as they did their delicate work of breathing radioactive life into a new chrome robot. Like bringing a baby to life she thought. Concourse 5. . . cross three monitor. Concourse 5. . . 3417 LUH. . . LUH. Are you there Relate. Relate. Suddenly realizing that they were talking to her LUH snapped her attention to the frowning man whose image was now filling her right bottom main screen. LUH 3417 she said. Go ahead. This is a control check the man said. Bracket all request limitations. One: Have you received your ratio of enervol Check 643 grams Yes she lied. Did you receive an etracene ration during your last work unit She nodded. You re due for a medical check. All remote monitor findings are within low normal range. A mina plus three was detected but it s not considered dangerous. Thank you. The screen flashed and then showed a commercial shopping plaza once again. The cacophony in her earphones became impersonal again leaving LUH to worry about how long she could go without taking a medical check. How long would it be before they found out she was guilty of drug evasion The voice of her supervisor SEN 5241 cut in: Scan inspectors are on their way. Be on the lookout check back. Yessir she said. But THX was still on her top left main screen still working steadily intently. LUH never saw the explosion in the assembly bay on the screen next to THX s image. She never noticed the bay blow out in a shower of sparks and sudden choking billows of white smoke men running danger lights flashing balefully. Monitor concourse 5 cross three. . . 3417. . . emergency. . . emergency She snapped out of her trance eyes widening at the sight of the accident. Her hands worked the keyboard automatically and all four of her main screens showed the scene. LUH began frantically punching response keys. A deep calm male voice said: You are a true believer. Blessings of the State Blessings of the masses. Thou art a subject of. . . Startled she hit another sequence of keys. The screens showed men crawling through the smoke others lying sprawled inert broken. Flames licked evily through the area. Still no sound. Then: Eject. . . eject. . . evacuate all personnel. . . There s thirty eight men trapped in there. . . Seal all blast hatches Mark Stay calm. Correct procedure is essential. Do not fail to remove auxiliary command circuits before evacuation. Vacuum detail. . . Turn that damned tape off and get those men clear before the whole area goes up Mercicontrol Emergency. . . LUH patched the pictures and sound directly to Mercicontrol. Involuntarily she looked up at the screen where THX s image had been transferred. It was a small screen up at the top row but she could see him still working. In her earphones she heard what he was hearing: There has been an accident in Blue sector 1 14. Do not abandon your post. Repeat do not abandon your post. There is absolutely no danger of radiation leakage. Repeat ... LUH tapped another key and the radiation levels in THX s assembly bay area appeared on her main data screen: already four points above normal and rising. The accident in Blue sector destroyed another 63 personnel giving them a total of 242 lost to our 195. Keep up the good work and prevent accidents. Are you all right LUH turned and saw SEN 5241 middle aged face starting to go into jowls and bags under the eyes. You should be at your post she whispered. SEN s observation console was next to hers. You looked upset. . . not yourself. He reached into a pajama pocket and pulled out a tiny plastic envelope that held two yellow pills. Here. Try these they ll help. He smiled at her. Thanks. He stood there watching her. LUH slowly tore the plastic open shook the pills into her hand and put them to her mouth. There. You ll feel better in no time. I use them all the time. Special issue. You can t get them in the regular stores and dispensers. He smiled again toothily and LUH shuddered. Uh thank you. Think nothing of it. My pleasure to help you. SEN blinked his watery eyes and then turned and went back to his own console. As he sat down he put on his earphones and began scanning the screens. LUH glanced down at the yellow pills still in her palm. Quickly she let them fall to the floor. THX shuffled down the busy roaring pedestrian corridor letting the crowd s mindless momentum carry him along. So he just jumped off the tram platform. Just like that someone was shouting into the ear of his companion a few bodies up ahead of THX. Just like that. Ffftt. Destroyed. You mean you haven t tried ekterol a woman beside him was saying to her friend. It comes in blue capsules and it s just heaven. And from the eternal overhead speakers the announcements. Always the announcements: Please keep your causeways clean. Performance perfect is perfect performance. The level 6421 intermural stadium will have open day on series 621T. Central Plaza stay to right. Con 6 move to left. THX battled his way through the surging crowd and stepped onto a slideway. Here at least he could stand still and let the conveyor do the work. But still from overhead: Please hold handrail and stand on the right if you wish to pass pass on the left. . . Please hold handrail. . . Up ahead he saw a vertitube that would carry him down to his apartment level. He edged to the side of the slideway and gingerly stepped off. A chrome police robot standing alongside the slideway curbing stepped politely aside to let him pass. There was a prayer booth near the tube entrance. THX looked around almost guiltily then quickly stepped in and shut the plastic door. It didn t fit tightly enough to turn on the light he had to tug on it. Finally the light went on illuminating OMM s kindly face. A warm taped voice said gently: My time is yours. Go ahead. THX tried to remember the proper prayer. It had been so many years since. . . Very well proceed said OMM s voice. Well . . . this morning I almost slipped on a radioactive transfer. It s never happened before. I wasn t concentrating enough. Things haven t been. . . Yes said the voice expectantly. Everything s piling up on me THX went on. I don t understand what s happening to me. The medicines don t seem to be keeping me adjusted anymore. . . Yes said the voice knowingly. And my roommate s been acting very strange. I can t explain it. . . I don t know maybe it s me. I haven t been feeling very well lately. I feel jumpy all the time as if something s going to happen. . . something. . . Yes said the voice patiently. I can t understand it. The sedatives. . . I m taking etracene but it doesn t seem strong enough anymore. I have a hard time concentrating. Please forgive me I can t. . . You are a true believer. Blessings of the State. Blessings of the masses. Thou art a subject of the divine. Created in the image of man by the masses for the masses. Let us be thankful we have an occupation to fill. Work hard increase production prevent accidents and be happy. THX slumped back on the bench of the booth. Be happy. He was nearly home almost at the door of the apartment. The crowds of the upper levels were thinned down now quieter slower. A man could stroll calmly here or try to unwind after the noise and tension of the upper working and shopping levels. The timebox was at the corner of the two main corridors. THX crossed over to it took the badge from his lapel and tried to insert it in the proper slot. It didn t fit. They ve changed the mechanism again he thought wearily. Nothing works the way it s supposed to. They keep changing things but still nothing works right. He struggled with the badge for a few moments and finally it slipped into the slot. The mechanism rang dimly once. THX nodded. His working time was entered into the computer satisfactorily. Turning as he clipped his badge back on he saw LUH standing silently holding a punch card in her hand. What is it he asked her. She shook her head without replying. Her .face looked troubled and somehow this bothered him. Glancing at the card in her hand he asked What did you get I have to see SEN. I ve just been given a shift change. When Now. . . Just now. SEN wants me to come to his quarters to talk about it. THX felt his brows knitting into a scowl. SEN can t change your shift. Shift changes have to come through the scheduling office. She said nothing. Why does he want to see you I don t know. Don t go THX said. She looked up at him. I have to. . . he s a G 34. You don t have to he said feeling more and more annoyed. I don t trust him and I don t want you to go. But she only smiled. No don t make trouble. It s nothing. I ought to file a report against him. He can t change your shift and order you around. No please. You ll only make trouble for yourself. I ll go see what he wants. . . I ll be back soon. It won t take long. And she turned and left him standing there tired and confused. Chapter 3 THX sat alone in the holoroom flipping channels at nearly eyeblink speed. A naked black mannequin dancing erotically a newscaster rattling off the day s events a shapeless matron discussing drugs a chrome police robot beating a man to death and finally two men sitting at a table locked deep in discussion: . . . to stimulate the arithmetical and logical processes as an extension of the 5141. Never before have we been so contented never before has life been so satisfying. A referendum of bliss a gratification sustained by the benevolence of authority. . . Why can t I be happy then What s wrong with me He listened to the discussion for a few moments longer then flicked back to the black dancer. But he felt nothing as she swung her rich shining body to the driving music. He flicked the hologram to the policeman but the bloodied man crumpled on the floor and cried pitiably. Disgusted THX turned off the hologram viewer completely. The picture vanished with a soundless bright flash. He sat alone in the dark room. Then he heard something. Jumping up from the chair he called out LUH No answer. He walked into the main room then to the bedroom calling LUH are you here Standing alone in the empty bedroom THX made a sudden decision. He left the apartment and headed for SEN s quarters. Out in the corridors the loudspeakers still called out their constant urgings: Save time save lives. Today only blue dendrites are only forty seven credits buy now. The consumer has a factor of advantage. Did you repent today THX tried to shut them out of his mind but their voices gentle demanding soft strident pried at his consciousness. He had heard them all his life and never really gotten accustomed to them. Maybe it was because the announcements were always being changed. All but: Did you repent today By the time he reached SEN s apartment area THX calculated he had heard that one twenty times at least. In the corridor outside SEN s apartment a crew of men were piling multicolored packing boxes atop a power cart. More men were inside filling up more boxes with someone s personal belongings. A woman supervisor burlier than the movingmen was checking items off a clipboard list: . . . sealed personal effects: three styrenes an occupational syntax a red magma base old style a box of neons twenty three hunter portapods. THX stepped past them to get through the front doorway of the apartment. The movers ignored him as they handled items and placed them in packing boxes. Where are the genotypes. Ahhh. . . could you come and look at this these have been improperly labeled No they haven t said another movingman in a high excitable voice. I placed these in the proper categories myself. But this isn t genotyped. . . The woman waved her clipboard at them. Your identification figures are all wrong. Get this mess straightened out or I ll shift you to manual dredging The two men scuttled out of her way. THX looked through the apartment stepping over packing boxes and around scattered personal belongings that had been strewn across the floor. He found SEN sitting hunched in a corner of the bedroom looking as if he was trying to pretend there was no noise or upset in his apartment. Well SEN said as THX entered the bedroom. Then seeing who it was the older man beamed up at him. It s you. . . come in come. . . You know this is really odd. I was just thinking about you. What in the world are you doing here THX didn t answer. He merely stood over the other man his mind confused trying to think of what he should say where he should begin. The uproar of the movers jangled from the next room. SEN flashed his toothy smile. Sit down why don t you. . . I must apologize for all this chaos. They materialized this morning gesturing toward the movers and it s been going on all day. Well it s a cross I have to bear. My roommate was destroyed you know. THX didn t move. No. . . I guess you wouldn t know. He craned his neck for a glimpse of the female chief mover. I can t understand why everything has to be packed and crated if it s going to be destroyed anyway. . . It s a strange life. He shook his head as if trying to puzzle out the meaning of it all. You have to keep things in perspective. You know Do what you can to make things. . . fit. Forget the rest. Why don t you sit down SEN hauled himself to his feet and padded barefoot into the sanitary. THX watched him shake out a yellow pill from an unlabeled bottle and swallow it. You never answered my question SEN called from the sanitary as he filled a cup with water. What question THX wondered. Slowly he sank down on the bed and leaned his back tiredly against the wall. SEN came back to the bedroom and sat again on the bench in the corner. He hunched his shoulders slightly as if trying to protect himself from unseen forces. I can accept things up to a point he said glancing around. Gesturing to the empty bed next to the one THX sat on My former roommate for instance. Some people might wonder what he did to be destroyed. Waste of time. He did something obviously and now he s gone. That s that. THX wanted to reply wanted to ask about LUH but couldn t seem to get the words started. Leaning forward to make his point his voice intense with earnesty SEN said But if you get a chance to make. . . adjustments. . . you d be foolish to pass them up. You feel that way don t you He stared intently at THX. You re perspiring. It s not very hot in here. Are you sick SEN straightened up and looked around. I m sure it s warmer in here than outside though. I haven t been outside yet but it usually is. . . the control never works properly. . . Finally THX blurted Where is LUH What The chief of the movers intruded her bulky form between them. Count concluded. Looking up at her almost fearfully SEN handed her his badge. She slipped it into a slot underneath her clipboard then returned it to SEN together with a piece of pink paper. You must keep this she said. Yes of course. She left. The apartment was quiet. They really smell SEN said at last. It s quite disgusting. Did you notice it THX asked stubbornly Why did you have LUH come here Why are you so concerned What s going on I want you for my roommate. Ignoring that THX asked again Where s LUH It will be good for both of us SEN explained. I ve got it all arranged. THX finally realized what he was saying. No. . . you can t do that. Living selection is computed. You can t. . . what have you done to LUH She was here. . . Smiling SEN said We had a long talk and she agreed that it would be a good idea for you to switch. She felt that you hadn t been accurately roommated with her in the first place. . . You re upsetting yourself. Would you like something to quiet your nerves You re in violation THX said. Don t say that SEN answered amiably. You look. . . you re not well. She didn t say that about me Shrugging SEN went on I know what you re thinking. . . but program shifting isn t that major a crime is it I know how to. . . arrange things like that. And LUH would only be a problem to you. I ve watched her during work and even for a birth born she s been acting very strangely. I don t see how you can live with one of them. Feeling almost groggy THX got to his feet. SEN was right beside him nearly pleading talking right into his ear I can t live alone I must have another mate. You rate very high in sanitation. I ve checked. In fact I m surprised that you were ever matched with LUH. Her ratings are very erratic you know what I mean. We ll be happy. Believe me I m trying to do you a favor THX staggered toward the door. I don t feel well. He fled from SEN s apartment running blindly down the corridor. He found himself in a prayer booth stomach heaving drenched with sweat. What s the matter with me What am I to her or she to me Nothing. She s an ordinary roommate. I. . . I share. . . Yes said OMM s voice expectantly. I share rooms with her. Our relationship is normal conforming. We share nothing but space. What is she doing . . . Yes said the voice knowingly. . . . to me. I think I m dying. He shuddered. His body was burning. His stomach twisting painfully. Yes said the tape patiently. Suddenly THX was vomiting spewing yellow green corruption and bile over the pure white tile of the prayer booth. You are a true believer OMM said serenely. Blessings of the State. Blessings of the masses. Thou art a subject of the divine. Created in the image of man by the masses for the masses. Let us be thankful we have an occupation to fill. Work hard increase production prevent accidents and be happy. The light flicked off and OMM s picture disappeared. Absolutely empty and weak THX clawed the door open and nearly fell as he tried to get out of the stinking booth. Another man pushed past him started to enter the booth then turned and looked sharply at THX. After a stop at a Mercicontrol booth for cleaning up and a stimulant THX felt better. I can make it home now. She ll be there she ll be there. Chapter 4 The fastest way back to his own apartment was the slideway that whisked through the main pedestrian corridor. But the slideway was stopped THX saw. People were milling around in the corridor and on the stilled conveyor belt of the slideway itself some patient others obviously irritated. Fourth time it s broken down this month. Been out of service for an hour. An hour I ve been waiting for two hours And purring from the overhead speakers: Please hold the handrail and stand to the right if you wish to pass pass on the left. . . Please hold the handrail and stand on the right. If you. . . THX started shouldering his way through the crowd. But soon it got thicker and slower moving as he worked down the corridor. Finally he reached a point where the throng wasn t moving at all just shuffling murmuring complaining buzzing like an immense clot of swarming insects. Jammed shoulder to shoulder with pill nibbling strangers THX couldn t move forward. Nor backward. Never seen a traffic jam like this one. Nah. . . last week you should ve seen that one. Lasted six hours. I fell asleep standing up There were no police robots in sight. No repair crews. No orders or instructions or apologies from the overhead speakers. Nothing but the insane Please hold the handrail and stand to the right. . . Through a forest of heads THX saw a lift tube entrance. He squeezed and pushed and elbowed his way through the mostly docile crowd and took the lift up one flight to the shopping level. I can get across up at this level and then go back down. It was crowded here too. The people had a different attitude in the shopping plazas: more frenzied eyes glittering arms clutching packages hands grabbing at displays. There were plenty of chrome robots here in police helmets and black leather uniforms. The ubiquitous overhead speakers were saying in a friendly smiling voice: Remember Only two more days to fulfill Consumption Quota 88. Don t be caught underconsuming. Be the first in your unit to complete Consumption Quota 88. Buy now I ought to THX realized. He had underconsumed on his last quota and didn t want to get docked for the same thing again. The stores looked crowded. LUH. I want to get home to LUH. But the overhead voices insisted: Only two more days to fulfill Consumption Quota 88. Don t be caught underconsuming. Be the first. . . Somehow it sounded almost like a command. Buy now It ll only take a minute. Buy NOW He stepped into the nearest store entrance and found a head tall pyramid of bright orange plastic hexagons. Each one was stamped Consumption Quota 88. He picked up one of the hexagons and walked over to the credit machine next to the display. Unclipping the badge from his lapel he inserted it in the box like machine. Then he realized Wait. . . this is the old type. . . An observer s voice thin and metallic sounding came from the credit machine. What s wrong This consumption unit. . . it s the old type. I just had my consumall changed last month to take the new type. This one won t fit. There was a barely perceptible click from the machine and a warm soothing feminine voice said: For more enjoyment and greater efficiency consumption is being standardized. We are sorry if you have experienced any temporary inconvenience. Place your identification badge in the reader and we will have units transferred to your account as soon as possible. No. . . THX said. You already have my badge. . . and this is the wrong hexa. . . For more enjoyment and greater efficiency the voice began repeating. THX didn t feel warmed or soothed. Wait You have my badge in the reader akeady. I want it back. The observer s voice came back The mechanism seems to be jammed. Stay where you are and we will have a member of the store s staff assist you. But I m in a hurry to get home No answer. Feeling foolish and angry at the same time THX stood by the machine orange hexagon in hand waiting for someone to come and help him. Several shoppers stepped up to the machine most of them women. It s. . . jammed he told them each lamely. One old woman scowled at him and said I don t know what you re up to but I m going to get a policeman here. She scuttled off. What seems to be the trouble THX turned and saw a man of his own age thin polished looking smiling at him without feeling. My badge is stuck in the machine. . . and I picked up the wrong sized consumption unit. The store manager made a tch sound somewhere between his lips and teeth. Shaking his head he muttered Something like this is always happening. Come back into the office with me and we ll make out a temporary badge for you. We ll send yours to you when the machine repair crew gets it out. THX said But that ll take too long. Can t you get mine now It s right here. The manager shrugged. Do I look like a mechanic I can t get your badge out. It will only take a few minutes to make out a temporary badge for you. By now a handful of shoppers had gathered around them. One of them an elderly man cackled I can get your badge back for you stand aside. He pushed THX out of the way with a frail arm and then whacked the machine on its side with his closed fist. The machine seemed to shudder click and THX s badge popped out into the receiver slot. See The old man grinned his mottled skin folding into accordion pleats. You got to know how to do it The store manager looked as if he was going to have a stroke. Uh. . . thank you THX said. I ll exchange this unit for a proper sized one the manager said to THX ignoring the old man. A few minutes later with a slightly smaller yellow hexagon under his arm THX left the store. But as he was leaving another shopper a middle aged man was banging on the same credit machine with his fists. Idiot machine Someone ought to fix the machine All the damned machines A chrome police robot suddenly appeared at the man s side and grasped him by the arm. Looking badly surprised the man was hauled away. THX felt his stomach beginning to churn again. He left the store and hurried homeward. She ll be there. LUH will be there. The apartment was dark. THX stood by the front door as the overhead light panels automatically glowed to life. There was no sound in the apartment. Grim faced he went to the kitchen and popped the hexagon into the consumall. The bright plastic obligation disappeared with a hiss of suddenly released pressure. He looked into the holoroom. She wasn t there. With a boiling mixture of anger and hurt and fear rising inside him THX went to the sanitary. He reached for the medicine cabinet. No don t. He whirled and saw her standing in the doorway. Her face looked so concerned so beautiful. Childlike. Yet. . . You don t need the drugs she said her voice an earnest whisper. But. . . No. She stepped toward him and reached out to touch his shoulder. Don t hide behind the pills. Face the world. . . the real world. I don t understand. She was looking directly at him her lovely eyes troubled and yet almost happy. You don t need the drugs she repeated. I. . . I was sick. Nodding she asked Would you like something to eat Or do you want to rest No. . . no food. I think I ll lie down for a while. I m tired. . . He leaned on her shoulder and together they went into the bedroom. He lay down and she sat on the edge of the bed next to him. He felt as if he was burning his heart hammered. Yet he didn t feel sick. Something in him was elated wildly happy. With trembling hands he reached out for LUH. She leaned forward and they kissed. His hands slid over her body then they slipped inside her blouse feeling her skin warm and soft and incredibly lovely. He felt her soft soft breasts and the erect little nipples and their mouths melted together and she was lying beside him. Something far far back in his mind was warning him of danger but he ignored it. She was beside him holding him bodies pressed together wanting him as badly as he wanted her. For a ludicrous moment he fumbled her blouse off. She had to help him with her pants. What about you she whispered as he stared at her nude body. For an agonizingly self conscious moment he didn t know what to do. Then he sat up quickly and slipped off his clothes. Her fingertips traced a design of pleasure across his chest. You re beautiful she said smiling at him. You. . . no you re the beautiful one he replied. You re. . . And then he couldn t find the words he wanted so he pulled her against him and kissed her and felt the whole world disappear except for her. She was the whole world all the warmth all the beauty all the incredible unbearable ferocious delight of it. She was saying something to him something urgent her lips at his ear but he couldn t hear her. He was holding her seizing his world the world they made together hearing nothing and seeing nothing but feeling feeling it all explode in a frenzy of joy. When they lay side by side again touching yet apart the warning voice came back to him: What you ve done is wrong Immoral Illegal He turned his head and looked at her drowsing warmly next to him her eyes closed her lips parted in the smallest of smiles. And he thought: To hell with them. To hell with everything. She s what I want. She makes me happy. And then he added: Besides how can they know The chances that they re observing this apartment at this moment are infinitesimal. They ll never know. He slept. When he awoke she was in the kitchen. He padded in there wearing only his pajama pants. She was fully dressed. She turned from the cooker and said Hello as if it was the first time they had seen each other in years. Grinning he went to her and started opening her blouse. She reached up and took his face in her hands. Aren t you hungry Yes. He opened the blouse completely and circled her waist with his arms. For food He laughed. She reached over to the counter beside the cooker and took a squeeze tube of mock cheese and squirted it at him. Hey no. . . He flinched back. Don t. . . don t. . . you ll get it on the floor. LUH tossed a whole plastic pack of food pellets at him. He ducked instinctively laughing. The pellets scattered all over the floor. Still laughing he got down on his hands and knees and started picking them up. LUH dropped down too and they met head to head beside the kitchen table. She was giggling at him. With as much seriousness as he could muster THX said I ve never been under a table before. She was giggling like someone who d taken too many stimalls. Look she pointed to the underside of the gleaming white table. Dirt. THX stared at the smudge under there. That s not dirt. . . can t be dirt. Dirt s a violation. Looks like dirt. He thought a moment then said I have something better. He held out his fist. Her tiny hand touched it and he opened palm up revealing the pellets. Look food. She shook her head. That s not food. . . can t be food. THX sat on the floor next to her. Looks like food. He put one of the pellets in his mouth. Tastes like food. She smacked the underside of his hand and the pellets flew into the air. Laughing she scooped up a handful and tossed them into the consumall. Produced to be consumed THX sat there on the floor laughing at her. She opened a cabinet door and pulled out more pellet packs. Ripping them open she tossed them into the hissing consumall. Hey wait a minute He scrambled to his feet. Not all of them. I m hungry She threw some of the pellets at him. He ducked and grabbed for her. They both went down and his hands were on her breasts again. Ow. . . you re hurting me He let her go. Don t stop she said. But. . . She took his hands in hers and put them back on her breasts. Don t stop. Don t ever stop. Chapter 5 They were lying in bed together neither of them asleep. THX s mind was telling him: You could lose everything. Everything. But I was unhappy before he muttered to himself so low that he couldn t hear it himself. Everything was normal but I was unhappy. Unhappy. Do you think you re going to be happy now If they find out you ll be destroyed. And her too. And it will be your fault. He turned his head to look at her. She was watching him her face troubled aware. I thought you wanted a new roommate he said abruptly. What Oh no. Who told you that SEN. That s not true she said. He was lying. That s not true. . . I need you so much He slid his arm under her head and pulled her to him. I was so scared LUH said. So alone. I needed to touch you so badly. . . to have you touch me. After I started cutting down on your sedatives I was frightened. . . of what kind of a person you d turn out to be. Turn out. . . Ohh. . . I m sorry. . . I don t know what I ve done. I should have left you alone. Yes his mind agreed. But he said No don t say that. The wake up tone sounded. THX started in surprise. What time. . . what shift is it What. . . it s three I think. Three We ll be late He got up out of bed and headed for the sanitary. Come on we ll be late. LUH called to him Don t. . . don t take anything. What He was staring at his own face in the medicine cabinet mirror: puffy eyed tired looking. Try not to take anything. . . please her voice came to him. I ll try he answered softly. I ll try. But his hands were already shaking. The shift was a nightmare. He couldn t concentrate. He kept thinking about LUH. Twice his supervisor had to warn him. THX knew that those warnings went into the permanent record for review by Control. Yet despite the babble of voices in his earphones despite the tension of the work the exasperated looks of the supervisors his own gut turmoil and shaking hands THX felt not happy certainly but different. These things these people around him they didn t touch him. And he realized that they never did. LUH was the one who counted. She was the only one that mattered to him. He left the assembly center after his shift walking tiredly through the homeward bound workers. I ve put in forty three requests for a transfer he heard someone in the crowd say but I haven t heard one word. DRG my superior agrees that I m better suited to work in the fantasy bureau. . . Please move briskly. Do not stop or block passageways. Please do not linger in module dispersal areas. The carbon monoxide rate is plus eight hundred. Abruptly he saw LUH standing at the edge of the slideway searching the crowd. For him. Then she saw him and pushed her way against the homebound pedestrians who were streaming up onto the slideway belt. What are you doing here he shouted at her over the hubbub of the scurrying masses. I thought. . . THX I m afraid. . . He took her by the arm and guided her through the rushing pedestrian traffic. You re not cleared for this precinct. They ll spot your badge. Let s get across the slideway and out of here. They walked silently swiftly cutting across the main traffic flow and heading for the spiraling ramp that bridged the slideway. THX walked with his head down slightly as if he didn t want anyone to recognize him. Up the ramp they went around twice and out across the spidery bridge. The slideway was below them jammed with workers. The outer belts of the way moved slowly about the pace of a leisurely walk. But the center strip was almost a blur of speed with people covering every square inch of it. Just a continuous blur of standing bodies heads shaved sexless and isolated from each other as they stood packed like meat animals riding to the slaughterhouse. An elderly woman stumbled and fell on the outermost slow beltway. People stepped over her as she struggled to get up. Finally a chrome police robot took her arm and helped her to her feet. Old fool a man s voice grumbled up from the slideway. He kept on yammering but he was whisked away and his voice trailed off into the general din of the crowd. THX and LUH didn t slow their pace until they reached a new half unfinished commercial shopping plaza. Even here though the crowds were milling brainlessly and the overhead speakers were hard at work: If you buy more than five dendrites at a time you get the sixth one with only three percent more credits. Buy in volume and save. Slightly out of breath LUH hung back on THX s arm and forced him to slow down. He turned to look at her. Her face was grave. You slipped on a circuit transfer just before lunch didn t you she asked. It wasn t really a question. You were watching She nodded. Nearly angry with her he said You shouldn t be doing that They ll get suspicious. Control watches you observers. But. . . I had to see you. . . I can t just sit there all day and know that by touching a key I can see you. . . and then not do it. Shaking his head You re going to get us both arrested if you re not careful. I m sorry she said. So am I he admitted. Look. . . I can t work this way. I need something. I m too tense on the job. . . can t concentrate. Got to shut out everything and concentrate. You can do it by yourself. I know you can. I can t. . . a human being can t do this kind of work unassisted. If I make a mistake it s all over. You see it every day. Do you want to see me taken away in pieces I don t want to lose you she said. He didn t respond. They walked slowly side by side. THX looked straight ahead not at her his face set in a bitter scowl. LUH said If you. . . if you go back on sedation you won t feel the same about me. You ll report me for drug evasion. He stopped in his tracks. No I couldn t turn you in. . . not now. I. . . I know I couldn t You don t know. You don t. . . Shaking his head miserably THX muttered If I take something you suffer. If I don t I suffer. You can live without sedation she said firmly. You can. I know you can. He felt excited and afraid at the same time. I ve got a slip movement to install on my next shift. I ll never make it the way I am now. There ve already been three explosions this. . . You can do it without etracene she insisted. People were drifting past them staring at them as they just stood in the middle of the half finished shopping plaza not going anywhere not buying anything just standing there talking to each other. Relating. Not alone not isolated. Together. Maybe I can do it without etracene THX said. But then what It can t go on forever. You know it can t. People can t live without drugs. Yes they can I have Others have Natural borns he said then seeing her face reacting to the way he said it he wished his tongue had withered first. Very slowly deliberately calm and precise LUH said There s no difference between the physical makeup of a natural born and a clinic born. It s merely a matter of conditioning. You can overcome the conditioning if you want to. I want I want to be with you. Then let s leave she said suddenly. We can leave here live in the superstructure. . . The superstructure He felt shocked. But nobody lives up there except the shelldwellers. It s all radioactive. The air s poisonous. LUH shook her head No I don t believe that. It s a lie. It s too much THX thought. Everything is upside down. . . so many new feelings new ideas. I need time to think to figure it all out. LUH started walking toward the nearest vertitube entrance. My series is over. You only have one more shift left don t you We could be gone before our next series started. Following her catching up beside her he answered Gone But they d never let us leave. They d stop us catch us. . . They walked to the vertitube and went down to their quarters. When they were safely inside LUH turned to THX and put her arms around his neck. Looking up into his eyes she said simply: Don t let them separate us. He held her he clung to her and there was no question of it. I can t lose her I can t I can t. Much later as they lay in bed together half drowsing LUH murmured They know. They ve been watching us. I can feel it. No. . . they don t know. Control s watching us now she said her voice trembling. No one can see us here. We re alone. But he glanced around the room. There were a dozen places where a camera might be hidden. Chapter 6 THX walked stolidly down the pedestrian corridor following the directional signs that led to Mercicontrol Station 7B73. Help reduce critical noise levels in this area. Be sure to report all decibal surges in excess of one point five on the miura wiegand scale. The corridor was practically empty at this hour and unusually quiet. He reached the Mercicontrol station with its symbol of a stylized marijuana leaf blazoned next to the station number. He hesitated before the door. Then face grim with determination he pushed through the black plastic door which swung shut behind him. He had expected something like a hospital or at least an infirmary such as the one up by the assembly center. Instead it was little more than an oversized prayer booth. There was a comfortable looking contour chair with headrest and three viewscreens set into the otherwise blank wall in front of it. The other walls seemed bare. Everything was colored a cool pastel and from the inevitable overhead speaker a woman s voice was giving a lecture of some sort: Load alteration can be achieved only with adequate gating. High speed gating is dangerous and may result in impaired unity gain. Reduce the setting time of the dosage by one third. . . No one else was in the tiny room. Frowning with uncertainty THX fidgeted by the door. Yes what seems to be the trouble a man s voice said smoothly. It sounded like a tape. I. . . I need some advice. . . psychological advice. For a friend. A click. Then Very well. Please sit down. A trained psychologist will be with you momentarily. Uneasily THX got into the chair. This isn t for myself you understand. It s for a friend. No answer. Then a different voice friendly alive asked What can we do for you today The viewscreens were still blank but at least the overhead lecture had been cut off. THX answered nervously I. . . uh I have a friend who s troubled. . . Have you tried the prayer booths Most problems can be handled by conventional prayer. It s not me THX repeated hastily. I m talking about. . . my friend. He. . . he s too upset to come to you himself. . . I see. Abruptly the central viewscreen lit up with the image of an intense middle aged man hunched forward in a chair identical to the one that THX sat in. A friend he said unbelievingly. THX nodded. All right what s your. . . friend s problem It s hot in here. He eh well he s committed a crime. . . The psychologist s eyebrows raised the barest millimeter. Oh Then perhaps you should be talking to the police. No. . . not yet. He needs help. A sudden fear flashed through THX. These medical visits are private aren t they I mean this conversation isn t being recorded or monitored For the first time the psychologist smiled. All medical discussions are privileged. No records no monitoring. The sacredness of the doctor patient relationship is one of the cornerstones of our society. THX tried to relax. But the fear was still there. Besides the psychologist said if you re merely talking about your friend there s no need for you to be afraid. Yes. . . but it s a serious matter. For him. I understand. Why don t you just tell me all about it Nodding THX answered I. . . don t know how to begin. . . You said your friend committed a crime. Was it a serious crime Sexact. The word came out almost involuntarily fast and clipped. The psychologist looked impressed. Ah hah. I thought so. How did it happen W. . . with his roommate. A natural born. Hmm. Male or female The roommate Female. Shaking his head the psychologist muttered When will they learn No matter what the conditioning you can t put opposite sexes together without causing trouble. Especially if one of them s a natural born. They ve both stopped taking sedatives and everything else. . . no boosters no tranquilizers. . . nothing THX blurted. I thought so. This is very serious you know. I know. The psychologist said If the police find out and they will in time your friend will be jailed. His roommate being a natural born will undoubtedly be destroyed. No I m afraid it s true. Society must protect itself. We can t allow indiscriminate procreation to pollute our gene pool. It s taken generations to bring society to its present high level of efficiency. If we let sex take over again start dropping genetically random babies everywhere where will we be But THX caught himself barely in time. But. . . my friend is. . . so attracted to her. It seems so good to be with her he claims. Why is sex a crime With a patient smile the psychologist answered Sex isn t a crime. There are plenty of healthy safe sexual outlets that society approves of. It s unregulated sex that s dangerous. There was a time when men and women just coupled together driven by uncontrolled and unregulated sexual drives. The children they had were genetically inferior. And there were too many of them. The world suffered from a population explosion. It was so overcrowded that mankind permanently polluted the atmosphere and oceans up above. Why do you think we live safe and happy underground Because indiscriminate sex driven unthinking people wrecked the world up on the surface. They killed themselves off while we disciplined ourselves and built a strong stable society here below. THX had learned all that in history class as a child. But now it sounded unreal hollow. Sex is fine and a natural thing the psychologist went on. But it was never meant to dominate human life. The trouble with unregulated sex is that it forces people to interrelate with other people. Whether it s best for them or not. In our society we ve learned how to channel the sex drive. You can have all the sex you want or need without the messy business of getting a partner. You have your sacred privacy your holy isolation. THX thought of being in bed with LUH of holding her feeling her warmth the softness of her body against his. He squeezed his eyes shut. I must be insane And the children we produce in our clinics the psychologist continued are genetically superior in every way. Carefully matched sperm and egg. Not dependent on who meets whom and where. Not dependent on the size of a woman s breast or a man s penis. All these trivial factors all these emotional bits of nonsense have been regulated out of the system. Do you understand Yes yes I know THX agreed hastily. People don t realize how lucky they are. And we have a complete pharmacology of drugs to help overcome the primitive instincts that still threaten us every day. The psychologist shook his head sadly. When I think of how diligently and patiently the biochemical engineers work every day to produce new drugs new aids to keep people contented and happy the thought of a man or woman deliberately evading drug dosages is enough to make me angry. THX nodded glumly. But that s exactly why we have drugs. To help us to avoid such emotional nonsense. The psychologist held up a yellow capsule. Have you tried these yet They re called neuracol. Very effective. Uh no. . . I don t think they re on the market are they Smiling as he popped the pill into his mouth the psychologist mumbled No suppose not yet. He took a large gulp of water. Well. . . I d advise your friend to seek medical help in person. Naturally since he s guilty of drug evasion and sexact we d have to notify the police. But with proper medical attention perhaps he could be cured. It would be a shame to have him jailed and consumed. Or destroyed. Yes. . . I ll have a talk with him. . . The psychologist nodded and smiled his cheeriest smile as he watched THX get up out of the contour chair. The man s face was a classic picture of guilt fear and uncertainty. Leaning back in his own chair the psychologist touched a button on the control desk before him and re ran the tape of THX s interview. He almost laughed at the man s transparent lies. THX 1138. Medical file please he said to the microphone set into the control desk. Instantly the screens before him flashed THX s medical history. Nothing unusual. Roommate file. One of the screens showed a photograph of LUH with her record superimposed over it. The psychologist glanced at the white lettering and symbols then concentrated on her picture. With a slow grin he thought I can hardly blame him. If I were going to kill myself that s as good a way to do it as any. He reached into a pocket and took out two more pills swallowing them without water. With his other hand he flicked the switch that would send THX s interview to Control s attention. Chapter 7 Tense jaws aching and insides fluttering THX entered the preparation chamber. He stripped slowly let the cleansing fog settle over him. It felt warm and safe and good. From the speakers overhead the preparatory ritual was being recited: This is a reminder of the precision which must be taken at this stage. Three operating cells have already been destroyed in this series. Mercicontrol is supervising all operations during this phase. Prevent accidents and be happy. . . This is a reminder of. . . The fog evaporated leaving his skin feeling chill and prickly. THX dressed quickly but with careful attention to all the rituals of detail. Right sleeve first right slipper first. He was sitting on the bench adjusting his cap s chin strap when SEN entered. What are you doing here THX snapped shaken. You re not cleared for this area. SEN smiled conspiratorially. You know I have a way with the computers. I can clear myself for any area. . . almost. . . I ll report you. It s. . . Listen to me SEN said untroubled. You have no need to distrust me. We re going. . . Get out of here. Leave me alone. You re interrupting codified ritual I ll only be a moment SEN said easily. I wanted to tell you that I ve taken care of LUH. The skullcap slipped out of THX s hands. Wh. . . what I ve programmed her to level 5450. Her transfer should go through by the next series. You re going to need a new roommate. The shift buzzer sounded. Automatically like a chrome mannequin THX stood up. Without a word he headed for the assembly bay leaving SEN standing in the preparation chamber alone. Woodenly THX headed for the assembly bay walking slowly down the brightly lit corridor that linked it with the preparation chamber. Uniform check said a voice from an overhead speaker. Cap missing 1138. Cannot be allowed into assembly bay area without a cap. He blinked shuffled to a stop turned back toward the preparation chamber. If he s still there he found himself thinking I l kill him. I ll put my hands around his throat and squeeze the life out of him. THX could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he slid the door to the preparation chamber open. But SEN had left. The cap was still on the floor where he had dropped it. Contaminated now. THX took a new one from the issue drawer adjusted it and started back toward the assembly bay. Hurry it up 1138 a different voice carped. The shift s waiting. He passed a report box and stopped. With trembling hands he took out a red punch card marked PERSONAL VIOLATION REPORT. With the stylus attached to the box he punched out SEN 5241. He traced the stylus down the many categories listed on the card until he came to Illegal Programming. With a violence born of anger he punched that slot through then jammed the card into the acceptor slot in the box. Now he smiled as he headed for the assembly bay. A grim tight smile of hatred. It was incredibly difficult. THX stood in front of the leaded window and worked the manipulators as carefully as he could while a thousand voices chattered incessantly in his earphones. He tried to concentrate on the half assembled chrome mannequin laying inside the assembly cell but the flashing lights from his computer readout pried at his attention the monitor viewscreen flickered at him gages and dials all demanded his eyes. The supervisor cut in on the background chatter: Retract 1138. SB4 talmod contact. . . retract to 220. Eyes stinging with sweat THX tried to follow the supervisor s orders. If they d only leave me alone and let me concentrate. . . I could do it if they d let me work alone. Control sat in his sculptured chair stamping punch cards with his personal stylus. The communicator buzzed. He flicked a lean finger at the actuator. The whole wall viewscreen glowed to life. An observer sitting at his horseshoe of monitoring screens reported: We are receiving an extreme respiratory count from a Magnum Manipulator in assembly cell 94107. Erratic visual behavior as well. Control s eyes narrowed as he watched the scene on the observer s main screen. Data file he murmured. Instantly the other screens around the observer flashed THX s file: ID photos vital statistics present physical status. There was something familiar about this one Control thought. Then when he saw the listing under roommate he had it: LUH 3417 natural born. Yes he knew the man now. The observer said THX 1138 filed a violation report on SEN 5241 immediately prior to his shift. Violation type Control asked. Illegal programming. Check into it. Stay with him. I ll return to you momentarily. Yessir. Control s long fingers played with his desktop keyboard. The observer disappeared from the huge viewscreen to be replaced by tapes of THX and LUH in their quarters. Control leaned back in his soft comfortable chair and watched them playing making love. Yes he murmured to himself. They did fall. He did things to the keyboard again and the observer returned to the screen. Inform the supervisor of Magnum Manipulator 94107 of procedure to mindlock and make an arrest. Order mindlock for cell 94107 subject 1138 prefix THX. The observer nodded obediently. Every pore in THX s body was oozing sweat as he hunched forward feet planted hard on the floor hands locked inside the manipulators. He was squinting frowning ignoring the babble in his earphones tunneling his vision to see only the mannequin inside the cell and the gleaming tiny cylinders of radioactives that had to be loaded carefully so carefully into the mannequin s power pile. No slips now he commanded himself. Nearly critical. You can do it. You are doing it. He heard LUH s voice telling him You can live without sedation. You can. I know you can. And then he realized that the babble of voices in his earphones was about him. Current brainwave confirmation on 1138. Adrenal off point seven four plus or minus six. Confirm sedation depletion analyze severe. Control requests mindlock for operating cell 94107 subject 1138 prefix THX. Magnum supervisor 94107 requests priority shift. Repeat priority shift. Situation in cell 94107 not conducive to mindlock procedure. Subject 1138 is involved in critical maneuver. THX hung in space. His hands froze in the manipulators. A deadly shining cylinder hovered above the mannequin s inert body as the metal waldo hands froze in mid maneuver. Suddenly a blaring voice screamed shatteringly in his earphones: MAGNUM MANIPULATOR 1138 PREFIX THX OPERATING CELL 94107 SUFFERING SEVERE DRUG VIOLATION. EXTENT PENDING. SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE ARREST. MINDLOCK PENDING. MINDLOCK PENDING. The supervisor s voice was frantically shouting back Priority shift. Repeat priority shift The situation here is dangerous 1138 s involved in a critical mass maneuver. Delay mindlock delay mindlock. . . situation red repeat situation red. Hold hold HOLD. . . A paralyzing whining shrilled through THX s earphones. He jerked spasmodically and in that timeless mindless instant he saw that all the other operators in the assembly bay were also being frozen by the mindlock. Who permitted a mindlock priority in magnum cell 94107 Immediate transfer of disaster responsibility to Control. Checking request for mindlock on cell 94107. What is the time make on this Abort Abort All systems clear. Block it THX fought against the mindlock. With the primal instinct of a terrified animal he battled against the screaming brain shattering whine that paralyzed his every nerve. With every ounce of strength in him he tried to move to blink his fear frozen eyes to clench his fists to make his feet move. The deepest most primitive part of his brain was shrieking at him: run run And the gleaming cylinder of radioactives drifted jerked carried by the metal waldo hands that followed THX s spasmodic struggles toward the neat row of cylinders lined up at the precisely proper and safe spacing next to the inert mannequin s head. Through the skull splitting shriek of the mindlock THX thought he could hear the supervisor: Who authorized this priority Clear the area transfer disaster responsibility to Mercicontrol. Repeat clear the area Where the hell are those damned pills THX was hanging by the manipulator grips trying to run away to hide but held in mindlock. He fought with every ounce of strength in him to release his hands from the manipulators. And in the cell the shining cylinder of radioactives fell with a soundless clatter into the row of its brother cylinders. They tumbled together deadly little metallic children. The mindlock whistle stopped. Clear. . . clear. . . 4444 4445 4446. . . EJECT. . . EJECT. . . EJECT Operators collapsed onto the floor. THX staggered backward his hands suddenly free his feet working from instinct his ears still ringing painfully. He glimpsed a flash of sparks inside the assembly cell. Release mindlock a voice was shouting somewhere. Release mindlock. Replace to command monitor. Transfer obligation for responsibility to central monitor 898. Control center 626 holds no responsibility. . . THX stumbled to his knees and began to crawl toward the safety door where a baleful red light was flashing urgently at him. OMM s voice flooded the assembly bay. Everything is going to be all right. You are in my hands. I will protect you. Everything is going to be all right. Cooperate and stay calm I am here to help you. Everything is going to be all right. . . And intertwined with the calm voice of OMM someone was screaming Get those men out of there Where are the Mercicontrol units Radiation alert radiation alert THX reached the door and grabbed at the handle used it to pull himself up. Leaning against the door he felt the emergency lock yield and the door swung open. He half fell into the decontamination room as the door snapped shut behind him. Yellow lights blinked at him and a cleansing spray hissed out from the walls hard enough to make his skin tingle even under the clothing. His eyes stung momentarily and automatically in response to preconditioning training he stripped and stepped away from the contaminated clothes. The outer door of the decontamination cell clicked open. THX pushed through and found fresh clothes and a shelf of sedation doses. He dressed staring at the pills. Then he turned and activated the polarized window on the other side of the narrow locker. The supervisor s command post was still in chaos. Silently because of the soundproof window the workers of the assembly bay and a team of Mercicontrol people in radiation armor were rushing back and forth dragging operators still unconscious from the mindlock away from the cells and toward the shielded command post. No one payed the slightest attention to THX. The supervisor himself was standing at his console earphones askew on his head swallowing handfulls of pills. The mindlock must work better if you re on sedation THX realized as he watched his unconscious fellow operators being dragged away from their manipulator stations. Then his eyes caught the emergency monitoring gauges on the supervisor s console and he saw why the man was taking pills by the bottle. All the gauges were way up in the red. There could still be an explosion THX pushed through the outer door of the decontamination chamber. A chrome policeman tall and firm was standing out in the hallway waiting for him. THX 1138 you are under arrest for drug evasion. For a flash of a second THX sagged into defeat. Then without his even thinking about it he slammed both hands palms open into the police robot s chest. The machine staggered backward and then toppled clattering noisily to the floor. Top heavy THX s memory told him. They re all built that way. Barely stable. He was running down the corridor running not away from the police. Toward LUH. He had to find her warn her. Maybe they could get away. Get to the superstructure. Find her. Maybe at least she could get away even if they caught him. No time for the corridors or even the slideways. He pounded down the corridor into a main thoroughfare where the constant press of people swallowed him immediately. He rushed along letting the crowd carry him toward the tramway. Chapter 8 Running blindly not even daring to look behind him to see if the police robot followed THX bolted into the tramway and jumped into the first tram car on the platform. The door slid shut behind him and the motors hummed smoothly accelerating the tram until the rapid transit tunnel outside was nothing but a blur of occasional lights streaking by the window. The tram was sleek glistening white built to whisk silently from one end of the vast underground city to the other. And it was impossibly crowded. THX was flattened against the door barely able to breathe in the press of silent impassive people jammed against him. Approaching academy facilities 80A. Please remain seated until the tram has come to a complete stop. Remain seated. Only fifty of the hundred some people squeezed into the tram car had seats. Then THX saw over the heads of the crowd the white helmet and chrome face of a police robot working slowly through the silent uncomplaining thoroughly sedated people. The robot was heading toward him. He pushed away from the door nudging people aside worming through the crowd like a man in a nightmare trying to flee some unknown horror and unable to run no matter how hard he tried. Run THX could barely move in the crowd. There was another door at the farther end of the tram car. THX made his way toward it slowly painfully like a man swimming in quicksilver. Every time he glanced over his shoulder he saw the robot s white helmet heading inexorably for him. Academy facilities 80A. This is the termination of intra urban link DD neck 08. This tram will return to the central web in five minutes. The tram was slowing down. The blurred lights in the tunnel outside took shape became round single lights. Up ahead through the forward window THX could see the terminal platform. And four police robots standing on it. Desperately he looked around for a way out. Any way. A red handle marked EMERGENCY EXIT. FOR USE IN EMERGENCY ONLY. He lunged at it pushing aside a half dozen people. He pulled the handle and a whole window section popped out. The tunnel was roaring outside the tram still hurtling along unbelievably fast now that the blast of its slipstream wind shrilled at his face. The solid walls of the tunnel stared at him. A woman screamed. With a final look over his shoulder at the still advancing robot THX leaped out of the tram. For an instant he was spinning tumbling wind ripping at him and noise blasting. He hit the very solid wall shoulder first and fell to the tunnel floor scraping face and hands against the rough wall surface. For a moment he lay there dazed ears ringing face starting to burn where the skin had been scraped shoulder throbbing. He looked up and saw that the tram had stopped at the terminal several hundred yards down the tunnel. He was in darkness a pool of shadow between two lights recessed in the tunnel walls. 1138 prefix THX on warrant. Drug evasion. Fled tram in transit. Presume destroyed. Investigate. Check 0463. Proceeding. He could see two of the chrome police robots heading for the end of the platform. There were steps leading down to the tunnel floor. Between the steps and THX was nothing but darkness. THX hauled himself painfully to his feet. Stumbling holding his injured shoulder he ran deeper into the tunnel. They won t stop until they find me. Or my body. He scuttled along the wall trying to stay in the shadows. Then his hand felt a recess an open hatchway. Blindly he stepped into it and fell down a metallic chute. Despite himself he screamed in surprise and fear. He landed jarringly in a pile of refuse. It stank. It was churning moiling gurgling obscenely. Absolute darkness. But THX could feel the mass of evil smelling garbage surging slowly like a turgid river of rot. He floundered in it tried to claw his way out. But he could find nothing to grasp no walls not even a solid footing only a mushy quicksand like ooze beneath his frantically treading feet. He was sinking in it. Deeper and deeper. And then his foot struck something. Metal sharp it cut into his heel with a nerve searing pain. Blindly THX pushed his way upward. This was another chute of some kind There s light up ahead The chute was narrowing. He could now see in the faint bluish glow up ahead that there were walls and a ceiling that necked down constantly forcing the river of slime to move faster faster flow toward the light. And then he knew what the light was. Fusion torch This was a garbage incinerator where the refuse of the city was burned by the star hot tongue of fusion flame purified into elemental atoms for recycling as new raw material. A billion degree fusion plasma was waiting for him so hot that it was nearly invisible. THX scrambled to one side of the chute tried to stand against the flow that pushed him inevitably toward the fusion torch. Now he could hear its voice the low steady roar of thermonuclear power the throaty song of a man made star that sang of death not life. The bluish glow was strong enough now to hurt his eyes. But in its fierce light THX saw a single hand grip projecting downward from the ceiling of the chute. He reached out for it missed it once tried again and grabbed it. A hatch. Painfully his injured shoulder shrieking along nerve paths he held onto the grip and worked the release mechanism. The hatch creaked open. THX pulled himself upward an agony of exertion and then lay exhausted stinking panting but alive on the metal flooring above the garbage chute. LUH. His body wanted to stay there to sleep to take time to heal and rest. But his mind repeated LUH. Got to warn her. Get away. . . He forced himself to his feet and staggered down the corridor in which he found himself. At the end of it was a sanitary station and locker room. I ll never make it out in the open like this. The sanitary station was empty. He stripped and showered then put on a fresh set of clothes. There was a row of stimulants bright little vials chock full of pills stand big on one side of the locker area. THX shuddered looking at them. But he left them alone. It seemed like a century before he got back to his own apartment. He was on the wrong side of the city but he didn t dare try the tram again. He kept to the crowded shopping levels stayed on the busiest pedestrian passageways used the slideways as much as he could. Every time he saw a chrome police robot his stomach twisted inside him but the robots merely plodded stoically along ignoring him. He got to the apartment at last and flung the door open. LUH He rushed in looked frantically through each room calling her name. But she wasn t there. The apartment was empty. He stood in the middle of the living room turning in slow helpless circles. Where can she be Does she know Did they arrest her Is she safe And then there were three chrome police robots standing at the still open door. They stepped inside. They were all carrying long chrome rods. THX 1138 you are under arrest for drug evasion and resisting arrest. Further resistance is useless. Then from the same robot came OOM s voice: I am here to help you. Relax. You have nothing to fear. I am here. THX s shoulders slumped. There was no other place to run to. From one of the robots he heard a faint human voice announcing: THX 1138 has been taken into custody at a minimal monetary expenditure. Total operation cost 3000 units under budget. Congratulations. Be efficient. Be happy. The other chrome robot took a step forward and touched THX with his rod. Gently. A searing bolt of electricity blazed through every nerve in his body. He collapsed into blackness. Chapter 9 He was sitting up. It took a long time for his eyes to focus and then he realized it was because there was nothing for them to focus on. He was clean freshly dressed sitting alone in an endless featureless expanse of white. Clinical white soundless odorless no shadows no horizon. Nothing but himself and a perfect endless limbo of pure white. Suddenly he was shivering uncontrollably. He pulled himself together into a fetal ball trying to protect himself against the nothingness that surrounded him. Gradually he grew tired. His eyes closed. He slept. Voices awakened him. He couldn t tell where they were coming from. There was still absolutely nothing to be seen. He couldn t make out what they were saying but the chatter was like the continuous babble of instructions and commands that filled the working and living areas of the city. Somehow THX felt reassured. This at least was familiar. He slept again. This time he was awakened by footsteps. THX got to his feet and looked around to see where they were coming from. Nothing. But the steps were getting louder. Firm heavy even strides. He turned and there was a police robot with an electric rod in one hand. THX backed away. But another police robot appeared and another. He tried to move away from them out of reach of those rods. He had felt what they could do. They circled him three police robots identical and identically armed. THX ran ran in circles while they stood around him shuffling sideways slightly to make certain he couldn t break between them. He ran like a caged animal looking for a way out of an endless treadmill ran until his legs were fluttering with exhaustion his eyes blurred and stinging his lungs raw. As he collapsed to the blank white floor the police robots disappeared with a bluish flash. Chest heaving drenched with sweat THX stared around himself. He was alone again alone in this white void. Which is worse he wondered. Then the voices came back and he could hear them this time. Increase. No. . . here. . . hold this down. Audio. Audio s already on. I can t hear him. They re talking about me . . . cortex bonding probably temporary. Before you report a possible equipment malfunction don t you check the subject Stress category. Correct. . . Origin Birth born Sexact Not on his record. Violation Drug evasion with. . . Triple three triple three Hey easy there THX sat on the bare floor hearing them involuntarily looking for someone or something. But there was nothing except the voices. A sinex drop reading of less than 2000 with an accompanying loss of greater than 350 since admission may indicate. . . Permanent cortex bond. Correct. This really isn t a very good subject. . . limited. All this over here is wasted on him. Hey. . . watch H mmm. . . What do you think Can t tell. Let s get him into organalysis. Shifting. The voices faded off. Blinking THX sat there totally alone. Then there was another sound a tone a soft rich single note that thrummed just barely at the threshold of audibility. THX listened to it cocked his head to hear it better. His eyelids for some reason were getting very heavy. He could hardly keep his eyes open. It was. . . was. . . He was asleep. He awoke and tried to scream. But he couldn t open his mouth. Couldn t move. Not even his eyes. He was totally paralyzed laid out straight on something hard with a huge glaring white light staring down at him like a pitiless eye. He could see he could feel he could hear his own pulse throbbing in his ears. But he couldn t voluntarily move a single muscle. Not twitch or blink or even make his tongue work. His mouth was completely dry. He lay there for an age straining to hear something besides his own heartbeat And then he did. A tiny annoying electrical hum. Into his line of vision came a shining mechanical arm tipped with a cotton pad. He felt something soft and cold rub on his biceps. The first mechanical arm retracted and another or maybe the same one came at him with a hypodermic syringe at its business end. THX felt the needle slip into him. Then more needles along both arms. The whirring sounds of electrical motors were all he could hear busy mechanical insects that flitted around him without pause. A tube was inserted into one nostril a soft surgical green plastic clamp sealed his mouth shut. He watched as a pink fluid gurgled through the tube and into him. The fluid stopped and a little clamp sealed off THX s other nostril. Air pumped through the tube now distending THX s chest bigger bigger more more. Panic raced through him and then the pump stopped the mouth clamp flipped back and THX expelled breath with an explosive painful sigh. Then it all started over again. It went on for hours. Wires into his chest. Pinpricks in strange patterns across his abdomen. Pain lights injections blood sucked out of him by mechanical vampires nerves triggered by electrical impulses. Querying photocells on the ends of fiberoptic stalks staring into his eyes from a few millimeters away. They made his heart race slowed it down contracted his leg muscles in painful spasms sampled his urine masturbated him and sampled that. Somewhere in the vast underground city a computer typed: 1138 THX Diagnosis: COMPATIBLE TYPE A 5 Rate: EXCELLENT Exceptions: LEFT KIDNEY See detailed index 24 921 He awoke in the featureless white limbo again. Awoke with the sound of footsteps jumped to his feet. But these weren t the hard steady beats of a chrome robot. They were soft hesitant pads of slippered feet. Against the blank unmarked background it was impossible to judge distances. A figure was out there hard to make out because it was wearing standard white pajamas. THX watched the figure approaching. It looked like LUH It can t be he told himself. Don t. . . But he wanted it to be her. Then he realized that if it was she would be a prisoner too and they must have done the same things to her that they did to him. So he raged within himself: wanting her and hoping it wasn t her. LUH he heard his own voice calling pleading. She rushed toward him and into his arms. Are you real. . . is it really you They kissed and clung to each other. Are you all right she asked gazing up at him worriedly. He asked What did they do to you For a long moment she didn t answer then she said I m going to have a baby. He felt as if they d electric shocked him again. No no no. . . Hold me LUH begged. Hold me. His arms wrapped protectively about her while his mind went spuming into wild guilt ridden gulfs. It s the end. . . what have I done I m not afraid she said firmly. I m not afraid. But it s wrong. So wrong. What we ve done. . . His strength seemed to ebb away. He let go of her and sank to the floor sobbing. I didn t want this. How did it happen I love you and now I ve done this to you. . . She knelt beside him embraced him. You have to be strong. . . You re going to have a son. Control steepled his fingertips as he watched THX and LUH embracing shedding their clothes making love. His huge viewscreen showed them larger than life and his safe quiet comfortable office was filled with the sounds of their murmurings their breathing their passion. When at last they lay still side by side wet and spent Control took two orange pills and touched a switch on his communicator panel. Instantly his viewscreen showed an observer s cell with THX and LUH on the observer s main screens. You see Control asked academically. Even in prison where they know they re under observation they grapple like animals. Disgusting isn t it The observer nodded his throat too dry to trust his voice just yet. They ve had their chance. It s obviously a hopeless case. Organ banks for him. Destruction for her. If the courts concur I hope someone is intelligent enough to mark his glands as nonconsumables. THX awoke again to the sound of footsteps. But this time they were the heavy measured treads of robots. He leaped up to his feet. LUH stirred and sat up. They were still naked both of them. Two robot policemen and a man dressed in yellow pajamas were coming toward him. LUH got to her feet and THX circled an arm around her protectively. The police and the man stopped a few meters in front of them. The police robots both had electric rods. The man recited tonelessly No person held to service in one section under the laws thereof escaping into another shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service may be due. One of the robots reached out and took LUH by the arm. He pulled her from THX s grasp. No. . . please. . . She screamed and reached for THX eyes wide with terror. THX jumped at the robot but its partner stepped in the way clubbed him to his knees and then touched him on the neck with the stunner. The world exploded into flaming pain and THX blacked out Chapter 10 To THX the courtroom looked like chaos multiplied. He sat in a glassed in cubicle limp exhausted with a pair of earphones jabbering endless babble into his head. He had no idea of how long it had been since they d taken LUH away. Nor where she was. He knew they had been sedating him most of the time in his sensory less prison limbo he had slept. Without dreaming. Without really resting. Now he sat in a high backed chair with two robot policemen gleaming on either side of him. His own defense counsel a stubby little man who had identified himself to THX for the first time a few minutes earlier was standing in front of him listening intently to the gibberish of the court hand pressed to one earphone eyes fixed on the proctor who stood in front of the judge s bench. There seemed to be a dozen cases being tried at once. The proctor was reading off computer cards as fast as he could and THX s earphones shrilled a cacophony of prosecutors and defense counsels shouting phrases that were mostly meaningless to him. But they shouted them with great vehemence as if they really believed in what they were doing. The judge was he the one they kept referring to as Pontifex THX wondered sat high above everyone else at a sort of control booth with a computer console flashing its lights behind him. He also had earphones clapped on his head but his eyes seemed sleepy bored except that every once in a while he snapped awake to say something. It always sounded like something harsh to THX although he couldn t understand most of the terms that the judge used. Then he heard the proctor s voice rattling off his own name: Charge: 1138 prefix THX charged with violation index 3278.927 appendix 445 60 613. Drug evasion malicious sexual perversions unconditional response and transgression. Justice proceed. Pontifex 606 presiding. A waspish little evil faced man got to his feet and bowed to the judge. Mercicontrol prosecutor 727 if it please the court. Mercicontrol respectfully places its evidence before you. . . The computer began flashing madly and the judge seemed to be looking down into a view screen that was set into his booth. Or was he merely dozing Tapes 9198 5116 and 1477 the prosecutor said. These negative documents are certified by AN OTO and registered at files tomb 34. THX s defense counsel raised a stubby finger. Non drug nondrug total excuse. Defendant in unstable condition not responsible. Nondrug asylum. . . precedent. . . But the prosecutor continued without pause Mercicontrol respectfully submits a 5254 immediate destruction on the basis of an ECO TR X 314 totally incurable chemical imbalance with socially deteriorating consequences. The defense counsel wagged his head. Reject reject. Inefficient unwarranted destruction. Must be saved. . . mass is one. . . can be productive. Name of economics cure this soul. . . malignant cure. There is a heritage of good and economic efficiency. . . net gain. Insane said the prosecutor. Granted said the judge nodding. The prosecutor went on Immediate destruction is the only efficiency. The crimes are of secondary importance. The issue is one of genetic inferiority. This man is of the womb. . . Reject reject shouted the defense counsel. He is the product of an illegal sexual perversion the prosecutor said to the judge still ignoring the defense counsel and should have been destroyed at the moment of conception. What is in question here is a concept of economic efficiency and procedure that has allowed these erotics to exist and dilute this great society. Reject reject squawked the defense counsel. The defendant is known to be of clinical origin not of the womb. . . his records. . . The services performed by these erotics must be automated. If sexual perversion is to be stamped out the products of these perversions must. . . Insane. . . insane. . . What s the prosecutor trying to do here All records pertaining to the defendant affirm his clinical origin. The defense counsel reached down for a stack of computer cards and shuffled through them reading The Office of Opportunity the Festival of the Rings employment and living selection depositions made and submitted by the arresting officers. . . there is absolutely no precedent for the allegations made by the prosecution regarding the defendant s origin. The prosecutor grimaced. The defendant has committed crimes of perversion and corruption that are incompatible with clinical origin. . . There can be no doubt in anyone s mind that he is an erotic type. Records that are even remotely subject to error or possible alteration must not stand in the way if society is to defend itself from these perversions. This is not a race issue The defense counsel shifted tack. Not here. . . remember sanctity of the individual regardless of race or origin. Econ equilibrium status 542 through 691 apply to this case. . . The defendant was a roommate of an erotic type. . . crime of persuasion and influence. . . Loss of innocence. . . but examined and proven physically compatible. Crimes not relevant. Defendant used not destroyed. Case rest. The defense counsel slammed his computer cards back on the little table from which he d taken them then turned to THX and smiled. But the prosecutor summarized: The perversions committed by this obsolete race have a definite corrosive effect on our society. If he is not destroyed his deviate characteristics will be transmitted to others. We must not continue to consume these erotics. We must exterminate the source of sin. Economics must not dictate situations which are obviously religious. The judge sighed and stirred in his high seat. Conclude he murmured. If 1138 is consumed and not destroyed this perversion will spread. He must be destroyed. It is the only logical efficient and righteous verdict that can be reached. The proctor looked up from his desk. Concluded Both the prosecutor and defense counsel nodded. The judge said Next case. The proctor began reading another charge. The prosecutor returned to his desk and began leafing through cards. In THX s cubicle the defense counsel stacked his own cards neatly and took off his earphones. You re going THX asked yanking his own earphones from his head. Of course. Your case is finished now. I ve got hundreds of others waiting. But what . . . The computer is analyzing your case. The proctor will inform you of its outcome. But. . . wait. . . With a final smile the defense counsel hurried out of the cubicle. THX started to get up from his chair but one of the chrome police robots laid a heavy hand on his shoulder forcing him back down. The other robot picked THX s earphones off the floor and wordlessly handed it to him. He noticed that the proctor was looking his way and slipped the earphones on. The proctor was reading from a computer tape: . . . 1138 prefix THX is deemed clinic born of certified origin. Stands convicted of index 3278.927 appendix 445 through 613: drug evasion 321 399 and malicious sexual perversion. Deemed organically invaluable. Subject shall be consumed as economics dictate. THX sat there dazed. Consumed Does that mean not destroyed The police robots took his arms and guided him out of the chair past a new defendant entering the cubicle and out into the busy hallway. The courtroom continued to buzz with dozens of simultaneous cases being argued at once. THX never saw LUH enter a defendant s cubicle far on the other side of the noise filled courtroom. Strictly by coincidence her defense counsel was the same as his. Chapter 11 The chrome police robot was carrying a long pole as he led THX through the endless white emptiness of prison. The pole was electrified THX knew it instinctively. He walked grudgingly sullenly without hope but strangely also without fear. They re going to kill me aren t they Destroy me Without slacking pace the robot answered in the voice of OMM It s all right. I am with you. Blessings of the State. Blessings of the masses. You will be consumed and in consumption there is expiation for your wrongs. Transgression is atoned for. Consumption is economically and ethically efficient. Be glad of your chance to cleanse your soul by serving the masses. Meditate and be happy. THX stopped dead. Be happy When they re going to kill me The robot walked on a few paces before noticing that its prisoner was no longer keeping pace beside it. It turned slowly fixed its electro optical eyes on THX and advanced toward him. The pole lowered and pointed straight at his face. Keep moving the robot said in a policeman s voice not OMM s. THX glared at the robot. It took another step toward him and the pole weaved slowly in front of THX s eyes. Stay alive said a silent voice in his mind. Stay alive. THX let his head slump forward a little and the pole moved away from him The robot turned and resumed walking THX followed head still down. After what seemed like hours he saw a speck of color a solid shape far far off in the distance. The robot was walking toward it. THX moved up alongside the policeman straining his eyes for a better look at whatever it was. It was a group of people clustered around what looked like oblong boxes. As they got nearer THX recognized that the boxes were actually bunks set atop blue plastic structures that seemed to have drawers and doors in them under the sleeping mattress. Ten bed modules nine people all dressed in rumpled white pajamas. THX realized the tenth bed module was for him. The robot advanced as far as the edge of the little group pounded his pole on the floor and announced simply: THX 1138. The people one of them was a woman looked at him for a moment from where they stood or sat or lay. Then they turned away. All but one SEN 5241. THX recognized him as the police robot walked off pacing the moments with his firm steady tread. SEN smiled quizzically at THX then made his way around one of the bed modules toward him. SEN said quietly I know you turned me in. THX said nothing. With a shrug and an aimless gesture that took in the tiny universe of beds and people SEN added I m doing quite well here anyway. THX looked at the others. One was obviously blind sitting on the edge of his bed module staring at the world with blank eyes. Near him sat an old man with a kindly face talking to a pimply youngster. The woman was sitting alone she seemed to be sulking about something. Or maybe she s mentally defective THX thought looking harder into her burning hate fear haunted eyes. Off to one side of the cluster was a giant of a man who was clearly insane: he giggled and jibbered drool spilling down his chin huge apelike hands clapping clumsily over something no one else could see. With a shudder THX realized that these would be his companions for the rest of his life. I m setting some things up SEN was babbling on but it s not easy. . . a very difficult balance. He took THX by the arm and led him to an empty blue bed module. Here this is yours. THX sank down onto the mattress. It was spongy almost comfortable. SEN sat down beside him keeping his voice low while his eyes darted around as if searching for danger. Let s get some things straight right from the start. It s going to take some time for you to see my over all plan so until then stay out of things that you don t understand all right You d just be making it more difficult for me. . . It s the least you can do. Right We re trapped in this hell and he s making plans THX wanted to scream. What s wrong with you Why don t you answer me Don t be like that. . . The old man with the kind face a wrinkled withered face with watery blue eyes and sunken cheeks came up and bent close to THX. It s all right he said. You re safe now. You re with friends comrade. My name is PTO 0340. THX turned away from him. PTO shrugged glanced at SEN then shuffled away shaking his head. SEN whispered to THX You re a stupid man. Then still smiling amiably and watching to see who was watching him SEN got up and went to his own bed module. THX sat immobile on his bed. One of the younger prisoners was doing sitting up exercises on the floor next to his module. The retarded woman was sitting huddled on her bed in a trance mumbling incoherently. THX saw now that her clothes were torn in many places. A thin delicate looking man knelt on the floor well away from the beds painting huge lopsided red designs on the smooth bare floor. The big man the idiot was bouncing up and down on the edge of his bed chuckling insanely and uttering aft ear shattering whoop every few minutes. And SEN was sitting on his own bed counting stacks of food cubes that he had amassed. Part of his plan THX thought disgustedly. Without a word he stretched ouf on his own bunk and went to sleep. Time lost all meaning. THX slept and ate listened to the other inmates watched them carry out their lives around the ten blue bed modules. Food arrived in their receptor bins when a musical tone sounded and a blue light flashed. SEN always managed to get at least one extra food cube from somebody. Many of them came from THX who had no more hunger. Several times THX awoke from sleep with a start and found the idiot giant TRG 3442 staring at him. Through it all THX did not speak. Words were completely useless inadequate meaningless. The others talked though. They talked without end. PTO and SEN argued over invisible points of logic all the time. Often DWY 1519 a thin nervous man stood between them and kept the discussion going when otherwise it would have wound down. Why are they holding us here PTO once asked rhetorically. Why don t they destroy us right away Economically it s not sound at all. Very much unlike. . . SEN broke hi with a patient smile I ve said many times before and I suppose I ll have to repeat it again for your. . . Economically. . . DWY began. But PTO kept right on It is incalculably more destructive for you to believe you are about to be destroyed than if you actually were destroyed. We ve got many residents on the verge of hysteria. It s got to stop. What are you talking about demanded SEN. When did you sleep last Do you know what your trouble is You re blind. You ve been here so long you can t see what is happening. We must unite. He clenched his hand. We need unity. We need action. We have come to a time when we must. . . Unite DWY said. SEN turned toward him beckoned to him and DWY bent his ear close to SEN. Listen SEN told him why don t you go over and give a hand to TWA He s really much more interesting than either of us. DWY straightened up his face at first surprised then depressed by his erstwhile leader s rejection. He slowly backed away then turned and went toward TWA the blind man who was pacing between the beds hands extended outward like an insect s antennae. PTO watched the younger man leave them his face a study of grandfatherly concern. Then turning back to SEN he plunged back into the debate: Grasping the essential nature of our situation here is not an act of intuition but a subtle process of the intellect. Intuition is the state of mind most susceptible to fear and terror intellect the most removed. THX watched them from his bed. SEN looked exasperated the old man seemed to be enjoying himself. SEN was saying I have always sensed qualities in people that set them apart qualities of personality and sensibility qualities that become doubly valuable when the individual is placed in an environment of stress such as the one we are in now. PTO: If anything is to be learned it must be learned in an atmosphere of clarity and precision free from the debilitating and enervating intrusions of irrationality. Propping himself up on his elbows THX began to realize They re not debating. They re having two separate monologues From the first moment I met you SEN went on I sensed a deep going quality that would be meaningful to you and to the rest of us. . . But at the same time I was disturbed because I could not identify exactly what that quality was. Intuition may seem more tempting because it is inherently more dramatic said PTO. I can see now that for some reason perhaps you don t even know this yourself. . . Intuition does not force the mind. . . Now I don t believe for a moment. . . As they talked THX slowly became aware that TRG was staring at him. He turned and looked straight at the maniac who stood not far from his bed towering like a grinning mountain. TRG giggled and wiped spittle from his chin with the back of his hand. THX stared at him unable to turn away. You always manage to avoid the issue PTO was saying his voice rising. What s wrong with our present condition We re comfortable and we have plenty of food. I feel absolutely no threat because there is no threat. Why incite trouble You should examine your emotions. It is senseless. . . A scream shattered the moment TRG jerked backward a step and turned his head to see where the scream came from. THX twisted on his bed to look in the same direction. One of the men was huddled over IMM with his hand over her mouth. Her blouse had been pulled down off her shoulders revealing small breasts that were crossed by a livid scar. TRG started toward the man who released IMM and scuttled away backwards stumbling in his haste. The girl pulled the blouse up and held it tightly around herself. TRG stopped in front of her but she wouldn t look up at him just sat there on her bed holding herself and rocking back and forth silently. THX lay back on his bed his head aching horribly. PTO and SEN resumed their talking as if nothing had happened. They talked on. And on. And on. The food chime sounded. THX ignored it. He tried to sleep but only found himself staring into the endless white void overhead bright without glare endless and imprisoning. He heard the heavy tread of a robot policeman and then the triple thump of his pole beating the floor. CAM 5254 said the police robot. THX turned and saw a boy of fourteen or so standing there looking bewildered and very afraid. TRG bumbled up to the boy looked him up and down and began laughing. The boy was visibly trembling. The chrome robot stepped between them and grasped the idiot by the scruff of his neck. TRG seemed to collapse like a rag doll. The robot walked off with the silent TRG dwindling into the distance. Of course THX thought as he watched them disappear only ten people can occupy ten modules. For every new one they bring in one must go. Chapter 12 For LUH it was different. She sat alone in a completely dark compartment too small to stand in. She could only sit with her knees up under her chin. She lost track of time. At first she couldn t sleep she was too terrified to even close her eyes. Then came hunger and finally exhaustion. She slept. Hunger woke her. She felt weak cramped. Her back ached horribly. Her arms and legs were tingling from lack of blood circulation. A sound. No it was only the scrabbling of her own feet against the metal floor of the cell. Destroyed. They were going to destroy her. She remembered the defense counsel his flushed face his slightly embarrassed expression when the Pontifex said Destroyed. The counsel had shrugged. I did the best I could he had said. Just like that. The best he could. Her life was going to be ended. It embarrassed him. It was a sound. From outside. Shuffling. . . footsteps. A muffled voice. A laugh. Suddenly light streamed down on her from overhead. Her eyes squinted and watered involuntarily. Come on now a man s voice called down to her. Don t be bashful. She looked up still squinting. She could barely make out his bulky outline against the unaccustomed light. Here reach up. Don t make me do all the work. Obediently she reached up and a pair of strong hands grasped her arms and pulled her up out of the cell. It looked like a narrow hallway. The floor was studded with small square hatches. Hers was the only open one. This way. The man gestured with one hand and nudged her shoulder in the direction he was pointing. She walked slowly stumblingly her legs aflame suddenly from the long cramped idleness. She tripped on one of the hatch edges and nearly fell. But his strong arm circled her waist and held her up. That feel better He was big a tall thickset man with heavy features and stumpy teeth with spaces between them. He was grinning at her now his face close enough for her to smell his breath. Th. . . thank you. . . He laughed and held her as they walked down the length of the hallway. He pushed a door open and LUH saw a small room white and lit glarelessly from ceiling panels. No furniture except a single straight backed chair in the middle of the room. No doors other than the one they came through. Sit the man commanded. She went slowly to the chair and sat in it. It felt hard and cold. It faced away from the door. Turning back toward him she asked What. . . what s going to happen You ll see. Shaking inside LUH sat there. She concentrated on trying to look unafraid. She forced herself to sit quietly to keep her head erect and not turn around. But her hands gripping the chair s arms were trembling. She stared straight ahead. There was a viewscreen on the wall she noticed for the first time. Destroyed The word kept ringing in her mind. When How Would it be here in this room Was he the executioner The door clicked open. Involuntarily she turned in the chair and saw a second man step in tall hard looking. Eyes directly on her. She turned away from them and stared back at the viewscreen. That s her asked the newcomer. The first man must have nodded. Okay. The door opened again. Footsteps and then the sound of the door closing. Then nothing. Biting her lips LUH sat there unmoving. No sound at all except her own breathing her own pulse hammering in her ears. When she couldn t stand it any more she turned around again. The room was empty. She was alone. She didn t know whether to remain sitting there or not. She started to get up but the door opened again and the men came back in wheeling a holocamera on its dolly. Behind them were three robot policemen. They set up the camera while she sat terrified watching them. Okay we re ready. The first man came up to her and gently pulled her by the arm out of the chair. You won t need this any more pretty. He grinned again and her knees almost gave way under her. The sudden realization was like a flame in her innards. The holoshows he watched. . . the girl wasn t a mannequin Camera set Yeah. Okay pretty here s your big chance in show business. LUH wanted to faint to run to scream. But she couldn t move. She couldn t make a sound. The three robots circled around her. They each had chrome nightsticks in the belts of their uniforms. She felt rather than saw the cameramen grinning. One of the robots grabbed her arms from behind her. She whimpered as another ripped her blouse open. They pulled the blouse off her shoulders then tore off her pants and slippers. She stood there naked cowering wanting to be dead. It s all right pretty. Don t be afraid one of the cameramen said. She turned toward the voice and a robot slapped her in the face. Hard. She tasted blood. Her eyes stung and watered. Then the beating began. Control was reviewing data coldly watching the results of the day s work: economic indices accident reports arrests awards new production highs consumption curves graphs charts tables of numbers and cryptic symbols raced across his viewscreen wall faster than most eyes could follow. He nodded as the data sped by. The amber light on his desk communicator began flashing. He touched the BUSY indicator but the light persisted. Something important. Not red alert but someone had an urgent desire to speak to him. It had better be truly urgent he told himself as he interrupted the data flow. A Mercicontrol doctor s face appeared on the screen much larger than life frowning with professional concern. Sir I m terribly sorry to interrupt you. . . Don t waste my time Control snapped testily. What is it Speak. I just received a laboratory report on a condemned felon sir. Apparently the report was misfiled and it didn t get to this station until. . . Huffing with impatience Control said What is it The prisoner 3417 prefix LUN. . . no sorry it s LUH. She was sentenced to be destroyed. . . sexact drug evasion natural born. . . Yes Well sir the laboratory report indicates that. . . well. . . she s um pregnant sir. The doctor pronounced the repugnant word softly. Control leaned back in his sculptured chair. You re certain of this Yes sir. No doubt about it. The fetus is at a very early stage of course. . . but it s definite. Very well said Control. Place the report in the proper file. Yes sir. I. . . uh I thought you d want to know firsthand sir. Quite right. Control cut the connection and the doctor s face vanished from the viewscreen. For a long moment Control sat staring at the wall at the face of the First Control. Then he reached for the communicator switch again. LUH lay in a pool of her own blood. She couldn t see out of one eye her lips felt numb her whole mouth raw. The pain in her body had reached the point where it slid into numbness. She felt them kicking her but the shock was gone. Agony had reached its maximum her nerves couldn t carry any greater intensity of pain. That s enough a voice said. A sharp voice accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed instantly. Clean her up and deliver her back to Mercicontrol the voice said. LUH looked up too late to see who had spoken. The viewscreen on the wall was fading into darkness. Cut the camera one of the men said. Whew. . . these damned lights are hot. She felt one of them hauling her up and depositing her onto the chair again. She was dizzy everything was blurring out of focus. A man s face swam into view very close to her. That wasn t so bad was it He laughed. Clean her up is it Plenty of time for that later. Mercicontrol won t be in any hurry to get her. Give her a whiff of this. Something pungent exploded in her face. She snapped her head back. They pressed a cold compress against her face. Not too bad. . . you still look kind of pretty. Here. . . A pair of pills were pushed past her swollen lips. Swallow. She had to try several times before she could get them down. Almost instantly though the pain seemed to fade slightly. The room the men slid into reasonably sharp focus. Against one wall the robots stood deactivated smeared with her blood. See she s coming around. Ready to watch yourself on the viewscreen Look The screen brightened and she saw herself with THX. Sitting next to him on the contour seat in the holoroom. And then in bed with him. Look at that one of the men said. Really going at it. She tried to turn her face away but they held her head. Watch it You enjoyed doing it then why don t you want to watch it No. . . Her own voice sounded strange strangled. She tried to get out of the chair but all she could do was slide to her knees. One of them pulled her head up and she saw a man standing in front of her naked swollen bestial. Try this one he said. Control worked his communicator again and saw the room with LUH and her three jailors. She was slumped against the metal chair gagging. One of the jailors pulled her up and draped her across the arms of the chair. Control shuddered. Why are the jailors worse than the criminals If we didn t need them. . . He sensed his pulse quickening as he watched. Well. . . as long as we can preserve the fetus what difference how she s destroyed And he rocked back and forth awash with pleasure watching them. Chapter 13 THX opened his eyes and saw that PTO was standing beside his bed. You re frightened aren t you the old man asked quietly. Just as frightened as the boy the policeman brought in. THX said nothing. Sitting on the edge of the bed PTO smiled warmly and continued You re frightened that at any moment you ll be taken away to be consumed to have your organs used for other people s bodies. I know I ve felt the same way. I couldn t eat. I still have trouble sometimes. . . sometimes it s difficult to keep one s balance. Even at my age. He looked up scanned the little group of them then said But how is this place different from anywhere else We all die sooner or later. None of us knows when it will come or how. At least here our death serves the masses. Your heart will help someone to live. Your eyes can give sight to a blind man. LUH s eyes in someone else s head. Her hands her voice. . . our baby. . . What are they doing to her To them I know how you feel PTO was saying gently. Why when I first came here oh ages ago I was intent on escaping. But. . . escape to where That s the problem. You see there is no other place. THX looked up at him. There is no other place The enormity of it began to sink into his consciousness. There is no other place. Everyplace in the vast city is a prison. Everyplace. No place at all PTO continued. The city is more or less like this isn t it And where else can you go The superstructure up above It s radioactive from all the power units that ve been there for so long. No one there except monsters. Yes actual monsters. . . mutations horrible creatures all twisted and insane from the radiations. The old man made a helpless gesture. And beyond that is the outside. Poisonous. Air too foul to breathe sulfurous rains germs and filth. The water is undrinkable and the whole place smells of corruption. Do you know the legend about the outside I know I know. . . It was DWY anxious to join the conversation or monologue. Men used to live outside up on the actual surface where there was cold and extreme heat and something called snow like powder that fell down on them from the overhead. PTO nodded benignly. Yes. Once men lived in the open in a paradise. Oh there was heat and cold but OMM provided everything that men needed to deal with it and survive. Men lived in splendor and never had to work. Everyone was happy and there was no need of medicines or sedations for no one ever got sick or even tired. But someone ruined everything DWY put in his eyes glittering. Yes said PTO. Some men were not content with OMM s paradise. They wanted more they wanted to breed their own children to populate the world without control without planning. DWY said OMM s Law was: Increase and multiply only within the limits of society s plan. But some people wanted to forget the plan and increase at random. THX s head was beginning to throb. Stop it he demanded silently. Stop it Well you can see what happened. With uncontrolled breeding the outside world eventually became overcrowded and filthy. Pollution and sickness and starvation were everywhere. Thanks to a few far sighted saintly men the underground cities were built. . . And men have lived in them safely and cleanly ever since. And those up on the outside have long since died in their own filth PTO said with great finality. And good riddance to them DWY added. So you see PTO concluded this is the best place to be. We re safe and warm and comfortable. Don t be afraid. There s no other place to go to. The pounding of a police robot s pole on the floor startled the three of them. THX hadn t noticed the robot approaching. OUE 6662 announced the robot. A blank faced middle aged man stood there seemingly in a trance. The robot left him there circled the cluster of beds and reached for the wiry little man who had once attacked IMM. He slapped at the robot s extended hand pushed into its chest and the robot toppled backward and fell with a hollow metallic thud. Laughing hysterically the man jumped up and down on the robot s face. The chrome which looked so solid gave way like a fender crumpling. With a triumphant shriek the little man ran off into the distance. They all watched him getting smaller and smaller against the featureless white expanse. Then he screamed horribly and disappeared altogether. THX turned back and looked at PTO who was shaking his head sadly. Violence he said like a physician identifying a fatal disease. Violence. Just after the next food arrived with its musical tone and blue flash of light two more robots came to take their battered colleague away. It s all insane THX knew. They re killing us in our minds because they want to save our organs for themselves. Don t let them do it to you he heard LUH s voice urging him. Be strong. You can win over them. He ached when he thought of her. LUH. Where is she How can I find her PTO was walking slowly around the bed modules with the teen aged boy CAM 5254 beside him. Yes your point is well taken my boy the old man was saying but it lacks the balance that a broader and deeper range of experience can lend it. When I first arrived here I saw things as perhaps you do now. I was confused about my predicament. . . THX shook his head. Nothing ever changes here. New people come and old ones go but nothing changes. PTO and CAM circled the modules and came back within hearing range: Listen to the mumblings of an old man and bank those flames of violence with earnest inquiry and honest observation. . . From his own bed SEN broke in Mumblings PTO stopped in midsentence. SEN wagged a finger at CAM. Do you know he shouted how many times we ve had to listen to that speech The boy confused looked from SEN to PTO and back again. Do you have any idea SEN demanded rising from his bed how many times. . . we ve had to listen to that identical speech He thinks everyone s as blind as he is PTO tried to smile but his face wouldn t do it. He almost looked angry. You know what you are SEN snapped at him. You make me sick. If we all thought like you. . . IMM screamed from across the cluster of beds a single sharp howl of terror. Everyone turned to her. She was sitting alone no one within ten meters of her. SEN dismissed her with a wave of his hand. You know what I want he said to the rest of the group. Ideas. . . . One idea. One idea could get us out of here if it was the right idea. You know what I mean His eyes wide with fervor SEN called out Not a bunch of facts Who even knows if they re facts He probably makes them up in his sleep. The time has come to act THX sat on the edge of his bed. His stomach felt fluttery. We ve just got to be sure it s the right idea SEN went on. But we ll find it. We ll know it when we see it. I ll know it when I see it. Clear and straight and forward and plain as the nose on your face. The new inmate OUE suddenly stepped up to SEN and punched him directly on the nose. SEN staggered back painfully holding his nose. OUE walked away laughing. PTO turned back to CAM as if nothing had happened. In the years to come you will be grateful for what may now seem like senseless sacrifices. With a passion such as yours. . . SEN more intense than ever rushed over to them and shook his fist in PTO s face. Sooner or later you ll be taken away and destroyed like the others. Not destroyed PTO corrected calmly. Consumed. And so will you be. THX stood up. His knees felt weak. He began to slowly walk away from his bed slowly slowly. He heard PTO saying Of course it is true that no one really knows what happens when one is taken away history tells us that but it is idle to speculate about it. SEN has destroyed himself with worry many times over. LOO 3122 who was taken away long before you arrived believed that he was going to a wonderful place where he would be supremely happy. . . His voice was getting fainter THX kept walking. He was well away from the beds now walking steadily. Away. A chrome police robot passed him heading in the ther direction toward the beds. The policeman didn t even seem to notice THX. After a while far in the distance he heard one of the inmates shouting: No. . . not me. . . take her. . . no no THX kept walking. Chapter 14 Blankness. No horizon no walls no glare and no shadow no sound except the soft padding of his own slippered feet against the slightly resilient floor. Neither heat nor cold. Like a vast white womb the prison enclosed THX huge yet suffocating. On he walked. It might have been hours or days his only clock was the growling pain of his empty stomach. When he got too tired to move he lay down and slept. When he awoke he started moving again. Once far off in the distance he thought he saw a cluster of modules and people standing nearby. But it wavered out of sight as he walked he couldn t find it again. Maybe it s my own cluster with SEN and PTO and the others he thought. Maybe I ve been walking in a circle. There was no way to tell. As closely as he could he kept to a straight line. Even when he lay down he tried to make certain that he kept his body pointed in the direction in which he was moving. But usually he was sprawled in a completely different posture when he woke up again. The hunger was getting bad. THX felt a constant burning ache in his middle. His legs were getting fluttery. And he was seeing things. Off in the corner of his eye strange lights nickered at him. When he turned to look directly at them the lights disappeared. Does hunger cause hallucinations he wondered. Then the voice of OMM came to him from out of the nowhere: Blessings on you. Even here in the realm of confessed and condemned felons I am with you. Do not try to evade your fate. Rest. Surrender your will to the necessities of reality. I will provide. Rest and sleep. Sleep. The taped voice was supposed to be hypnotic but hot anger kept THX going. You let this happen to me he shouted into the nothingness. I was your faithful follower and you led me into this. You let them do this to me. And to her. OMM s taped voice serenely ignored his words. Even here in the realm. . . Rest. . . Surrender. . . Rest and sleep. When he finally did sleep his dreams were filled with OMM s voice but now it was a fierce demanding voice telling him: Thou hast sinned greatly and must suffer for it. The masses will not rest until you have payed for your sins. And he saw himself back at his job in the assembly bay standing on aching rubbery legs hands trembling as he worked the remote manipulators. But inside the assembly area on the other side of the leaded window there was not a robot. LUH lay there her body open and shining metal organs gleaming in the overhead lights. And THX saw that he wasn t assembling her he was taking her apart. He awoke screaming. At his feet were four brown food cubes. His scream choked off as he stared at them. He reached out and touched them. They were real. Even here I provide said OMM s lofty voice. Why he wondered as he slowly picked up one of the cubes. Why feed a condemned man a man they re going to kill The answer came easily. Because they want my body to be in good health when they kill me. They want my organs. The food was at his lips when he told himself that truth. Far off in the distance he saw the blinking lights again. This tune they remained even when he stared right at them. Blinking red and blue lights going on and off in sequence like a signal. His stomach was wrenching his mouth dry and caked. He held the food cubes before his face a brown gritty lump that contained nourishment without taste. No he told himself. Starve yourself. Let your body shrivel and die. Don t give them what they want. But his body answered If they can bring you food they can make you eat it. Don t be a fool. Eat now or they ll make you eat later. They re not going to let a valuable collection of organs destroy its usefulness to them. Be strong he said. Don t give in to them. Even if they can overpower you don t go along with them. Fight But it was a losing argument. He held the food cube in his shaking hands for a few moments longer then took a bite of it then wolfed down all four of them. The blinking signal lights disappeared. Slowly his stomach rumbling with unaccustomed fullness he got to his feet and resumed walking. No voices now no lights. But far off in the distance he saw something a dark blob that grew and took shape a human shape a man approaching him. THX quickened his pace. The man was heading straight for him tall and purposeful. Then THX saw that it was a chrome robot. But not a police robot. The same size and model but this one wore the pastel green uniform of Mercicontrol. THX stopped as the robot came up to him. Don t you think you ve gone far enough asked a human voice from the robot s mouth grill. No. I want to get out. There is no way for you. Why don t you let me lead you back to your compound The robot extended one gloved hand. THX backed away. I m going to find a way out. I m not going to stay here and wait for you to kill me. Kill you Consume me. . . it s the same thing. If a robot could look confused this one would have. Who are you Identify yourself. THX glared at the robot s impassive face and said nothing. Wait. . . wait. . . the human voice said. I have your picture file. . . you re a felon. How did you get into the hospital area Hospital area You re trespassing. Felon 1138 prefix THX. You belong back in the prison area. You re trespassing THX laughed. Then arrest me. Don t move. I m calling the police. They ll pick you up and return you to your proper area. Still laughing THX started to walk past the robot. I said don t move You re not allowed here. . . Shaking his head THX answered You re crazy why should I wait here for the police The robot started walking with him. Very well I ll just have to keep you in sight until the police arrive. You can t get away you know. Shrugging THX asked This is a hospital area Where are the patients Can t you see. . . the voice hesitated. Oh of course not the food conditioning. Well the patients are here. Most of them in cryosleepers in stasis. What Never mind. Two police robots are heading toward us. They ll have you in custody in a few minutes. THX looked around. In every direction nothing but white nothingness. Don t be alarmed the robot said. The police won t hurt you if you don t resist. No they ll just take me out one time to be consumed. The voice from the robot said Well if it s any consolation that s what happens to everybody here. Puzzled THX said You told me this was a hospital. Yes the voice explained pleasantly we take in the people who are incurably ill and put them into cryogenic stasis. If we can cure them we do. If we decide they can t be cured then we consume them for their organs. Sooner or later everyone who comes here is consumed. It s economically efficient. The police robots came into view. THX said Everybody is consumed. Yes the Mercicontrol robot said. So don t feel bad about it. We all have to go sooner or later. Thanks said THX as the police robots came up and silently stood before him. They walked him in an amazingly short time back to a point where he could just barely make out a dark fleck in the middle of the white nothingness. One of the police robots pointed to it. That is your area. Go to it and stay there until sent for. This is your final warning. THX felt an urge to spit at them but he did nothing. The robots stood there and watched as he walked toward the modules. After a long time walking he could make out the flat bed modules and the standing gesticulating people. One of them the boy perhaps climbed up on a bed and began waving to him. THX walked steadily. Their voices began drifting toward him: I can just barely see him. . . He s free Can t you see he s free No. I think he s coming back. I don t see anything. . . I can t see him at all. I think he s been destroyed. I can see him. He s coming back. There. Finally he was close enough for even old PTO to see him. Fool the old man called out Completely reckless behavior. I m not responsible. Finally he was close enough for a few of them to run out to him. What stopped you How cold was it THX said nothing simply kept walking. SEN was standing by the edge of the nearest bed legs straddled like an emperor surveying his domain. Wait he said. Let me talk to him. I know how to handle these things. THX walked right past him toward his own bed. PTO eyed him narrowly You have nothing to fear. . . you re safe again. DWY went to SEN and clutched at his arm. Ask him about the air. He sounds out of breath. SEN nodded and went to THX s bed. Sitting beside him SEN said We have to face the facts. . . you know We have come down to practical reality. I m a practical man. Forget the personal side of things. Hovering behind SEN DWY nodded eagerly. THX bone tired so tired his hunger had gone wordlessly stretched out on the bed. I think he s deficient DWY snapped. Annoyed SEN snapped back Why don t you go find something else to do Why doesn t he speak Can t he hear DWY edged away from the bed. I don t think he knows. THX closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But he felt SEN still sitting alongside him. He heard PTO droning a history lesson at CAM. His legs ached his head was buzzing. I want to help you SEN said so low it was almost a whisper. You can help me. Here take some food. THX looked at him. SEN was holding out one of the food cubes that he had been hoarding. THX frowned at him. You understand SEN went on we re all in this together. You want to leave. You re not like the rest of them. What did you see out there THX turned his head away. As soon as you give me a detailed description of the barrier I can begin delegating responsibility. I ll see to it that we all get out of here safely. The barrier THX thought. The only barrier is your own blindness. Then LUH s face filled his memory and he added bitterly And mine. Suddenly there was a loud yell scuffling shouting and cursing. THX looked over his shoulder and saw DWY and CAM fighting on the floor near the bed where TWA lay. They banged into the bed jarring TWA so hard that he nearly fell on top of them. Swearing angrily he swung his legs down over them stood up and pulled the boy away from DWY. He took my food CAM yelled struggling to get past TWA. He stole it DWY was holding a single brown cube. It was cracked and its edges rubbed raw. Crumbs from it were scattered on the floor around them. TWA turned toward DWY. Well he asked menacingly as he released his hold on CAM. I. . . I thought it was mine DWY said lamely. I couldn t tell. SEN shook his head and said to THX Look at them. . . it s pitiful. They ve even begun to go into my module and look for things. My things. It s all for them anyway. . . it s all for their own good. . . After all my saving. . . starving. . . He shook his head like a disappointed savior. With a loud sigh he added You can t really blame them though can you But we ve got to find something to give them motivation. Mold them into a working team. Words THX thought. Meaningless stupid words. He just talks to hear himself sound important. Information is the key SEN was saying to him. We must concentrate on gaining information. You re with me now I know. I have a contract. Amazingly he took a piece of paper from the pocket of his blouse. Here. He proffered it to THX. All it says is that you re with me. We can only make it together. We must convince the others. THX wanted to laugh at him but he was too serious to laugh at. SEN s hand holding the paper toward THX was trembling. Abruptly he took the paper back stuffed it in his pocket again. Well he said with a forced smile later then. Chapter 15 A chrome robot took IMM. It grabbed for the collar of her blouse as usual but the torn garment came off in its hands. She stood there sullenly the scar jagged across her tight firm breasts. For a ludicrous instant THX thought the robot was going to walk off with the empty blouse. But then it dropped the blouse and took IMM by the arm. She went eyes still smoking as she looked back at them all for the last time. THX slept. When the musical tone started and the blue light flashed he reached into the dispenser bin under his mattress and ate the food cubes that had arrived there. Ate all of them left none for SEN. Sometimes there were two or three usually only one. Several times the tone and light came but the bin remained empty. It never works the same way twice. Do they do that to relieve our boredom Or their own DWY took to sharpening a spoon by scraping it against the edge of his bed module. Where he got the spoon he refused to tell. But he kept sharpening it a little each day. The rest of the time he talked about how he was going to fight his way to freedom. With a sharpened spoon. Against chrome robots. Immediately after one of their meals SEN began giving a speech. He stood in the middle of the little cluster of beds and raised his voice: Without most of us realizing it a new alignment has been formed and it is an exciting healthy development. . . This alignment is already a new majority it will affect the future of us all. We need a new unity but not a unity that discourages dissent. We need dissent. He pointed straight at PTO to make his meaning absolutely clear. When everyone had turned to PTO SEN added But we need creative dissent. Our voices are not joined in any harmonious chorus but the differences are differences of emphasis not of fundamentals. I ve heard this before THX realized. It was on tape an ancient political speech. . . He s memorized it word for word Now the new alignment s greatest need SEN continued is to communicate with all its elements rather than march along in parallel lines that never converge. Tomorrow as we focus on the new movement more clearly we will gain a new unity. What was that PTO said. Look shouted CAM. They all turned to see where he was pointing. A police robot was bringing in a new prisoner. But this one was as small as a child dangling feet off the ground in the policeman s grip. A child No a shelldweller. It was horribly ugly. Hairy long matted hair all over its head and face. Stumpy twisted arms and legs. Teeth flashing in the midst of all that filthy hair. Even its clothing looked like hair or hide of some long extinct animal. Its eyes were sunken and dark. The policeman dropped the freak unceremoniously on the floor. Stamping his pole three tunes it announced: A nondescript: designation 643 1399284. SEN stared at it goggle eyed. For once his smug self assurance seemed shattered. PTO was explaining to young CAM A shelldweller. They live in the superstructure the outer shell. Deformed you see. Rather unique there have only been two others here before. They smell don t they The old man seemed quite proud of his knowledge. TWA cautiously edged toward it. The shelldweller bared its teeth at him and growled. But TWA slowly stepped closer closer and then he kicked it. The shelldweller screeched and jumped back then hopped with lightning speed away from TWA. It jumped up into DWY s lap. DWY screamed in terror. Get away Get away He became a blurred frenzy of flailing arms and legs. Screeching shrilly the shelldweller jumped from one bed to the next until he found one on the edge of the cluster several meters away from any of the people who were standing watching it shocked and afraid. The little twisted man huddled on the bed pulled himself into a furry ball quaking and whimpering. He s more afraid than we are THX realized. Slowly they all returned to normal. PTO began his pedagogical ritual with CAM again SEN returned to making political commentary and hoarding food. But THX watched the shelldweller. He looked so small and so afraid. Except when he bared those teeth. THX was walking around the cluster of beds pacing slowly. TWA and DWY were standing together at the edge of the cluster. The blind TWA was pointing out into the nothingness and DWY was squinting in the direction of his aim. There asked TWA No nothing. You re sure Certainly. TWA shook his head. I wish I could see. It s got to be out there somewhere. I know. SEN claims that if we can spot the barrier actually see it we can begin to figure out how to get past it. Do you believe that Shrugging TWA said Let s look over in that direction. SEN was saying to PTO I think that a leader must whenever he possibly can make the decision for more knowledge rather than less. But he must also have the wisdom to limit freedom so as to insure freedom. That is what will keep us strong and give us direction. PTO threw up his hands in helpless protest against SEN. TWA and DWY trooped over and stood before SEN. Well SEN asked eagerly. We made one hundred and fifty sightings randomly located just as you said DWY reported. And. . . and There were one hundred and forty six absolute negatives and four conditionals most of which occurred in the early familiarization stages of the project and can probably be discounted. PTO chuckled. Not very encouraging. On the contrary DWY retorted. It absolutely proves what I ve always suspected. We re located in a uniform space with no visible limits. . . Cutting him short SEN said Yes yes fine. But we must find the barrier. We can do nothing until it s been located. THX walked away from them. They were all insane. Then he heard a policeman approaching and the triple thud of his pole against the floor. LUH 9998. Before the robot could finish the new prisoner s number THX had whirled around and called LUH. . . But the newcomer was a quiet looking man of middle years still blinking and stunned looking surprised and scared at being here. He can speak DWY marveled. They were all staring at THX. Of course he can SEN said. I knew it all along. I told you so. But THX didn t hear them didn t see them. For a flash of a second he had felt hope even happiness. Now he walked dejectedly back to bis bed slumped onto it rubbed his face tiredly. And SEN sat down beside him. Are you all right What s wrong Go away THX said. I m tired. The chrome robot hadn t left. He advanced on DWY who had turned his back to the policeman and was eating a few hoarded crumbs of food. The police robot picked him up by the collar. DWY looked up in terror. What are you going to do he squeaked. The robot said nothing began hauling him away his legs dangling limp and useless feet dragging on the floor. A wet stain sprouted in the crotch of DWY s pants and trickled down his trouser leg to the floor leaving a trail behind him while he whimpered Uhhh. . . uhhhnn. . . The shelldweller hopped off his bed scampered to the wet trail dabbed a finger in the urine and tasted it. It was impossible to tell behind all that hair whether he frowned or smiled. The musical tone and blue flash of food arrival broke their mood. Everyone went to his bed and reached into the dispenser bins. Conditoned reflex. But the bins were empty. Empty again TWA raged. What are we going to do They re empty more than they re full anymore. They re going to starve us to death But THX thought he heard someone laughing someone who was watching them all on observation screens. Be calm SEN was saying. Remain calm above all else. This elemental crisis is one that makes us feel endangered. But so called bravery is not as useful in these situations as the ability to eliminate any elements of individual fear by thinking selflessly. . . TWA interrupted You ve got food hidden away. It s easy for you to talk Yeah SEN raised his hands for quiet. Now now. Selfishness won t help the situation. We must all. . . Search his module Five of the men started toward SEN. Wait he said smiling hugely. Of course I have been storing food away. For just such an emergency as this What kind of a leader would I be if I didn t prepare for emergencies They stopped and watched him as SEN reached well down under his mattress and pulled out a handful of food cubes. All in line now share and share alike. They lined up obediently. No pushing no jostling SEN called out. There s enough here for everybody. He handed each man a food cube in turn while he muttered Discipline and order the basic ingredients of true freedom. Discipline and order. THX watched from his bed. He wasn t hungry they had been fed only a little while ago. At least it seemed like only a little while ago to him. But the others seemed to think they were starving. Even old PTO was standing in line. SEN absolutely beamed when he handed the old man a food cube. PTO accepted the cube then said Our life is brief and powerless. On all of us the slow sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil reckless of destruction omnipotent authority rolls on its relentless way. SEN turned to THX with a look of absolute disgust on his face. As if in anger the musical tone sounded again and the blue food light flashed. There was the unmistakable clunk of arrival in the dispenser bins. Everyone rushed to his module and opened the bins. Four cubes in each one We re saved CAM shouted his boyish voice cracking. Friends friends SEN called his arms outstretched his smile beatific we have survived the crisis. But as your duly elected leader I must point put that we never know when another emergency will descend upon us. Let us prepare now. Store half your food with mine share and share alike one and all. So now the line formed again and reversed itself each man dumping two food cubes on SEN s bed. The pile became quite respectable. Through it all THX remained on his own bed. Finally when everyone was busily eating and SEN had finished tucking the last of the hoard in the crannies inside his module SEN walked smilingly over to THX. Everyone is sharing his good fortune he said softly. From each for each that s how we survive. As your leader I must ask you to do your share too. THX looked at his round smiling face and thought for a moment how pleasant it would be to smash a fist through it. But instead he reached down and opened his dispenser bin. Pulling out four brown food cubes he handed them all to SEN. All of them SEN seemed overwhelmed. THX got up from the bed. Yes. Enjoy them all. But what are you going to do Where are you going Without looking back THX said I m leaving. Leaving Leaving what Then Yes I see Wait a minute Clutching the four food cubes to his chest with one arm SEN ran after THX and grabbed at his arm. Wait Just for a moment. . . wait. THX stopped. SEN turned to the other prisoners. After long deliberation I have decided to go out and personally examine the barrier. To see first hand what difficulties are involved and decide how to overcome them. I realize that there is an element of risk even danger but moments such as this require that a choice be made and action taken regardless of the danger involved. We will return soon but we will be gone long enough to form an accurate and functional plan of escape and I will have an honest idea of how best to organize us into a working unit. After the first half dozen words of SEN s speech THX began walking slowly outward away from the beds. In the direction opposite the one he had taken last time. SEN finally noticed that THX was leaving cut his speech short and hurried after him. But after only a few steps he dashed back to his bed tore off the mattress pulled out a double armful of food cubes and started after THX he raised one hand in a victory sign to the other prisoners dropping some food cubes in the process. He nearly tripped over them. The new alignment he shouted and then ran after THX. Incredible said PTO. Chapter 16 Hurrying as fast as he could food cubes slipping out from his arms and leaving a Hansel Gretel trail behind him SEN called after THX: Wait Hold up. . . give me a chance. . . THX looked back and slowed slightly so that SEN could catch up with him. Just the thing to put them on their feet SEN chortled. Show them who their leaders are. When we go back they ll be right there He held out the palm of his right hand dropping three more cubes. There s no question about it he said. Even old PTO was taken aback. He turned and looked back. How long before they can t see us anymore THX didn t answer. He merely kept walking. SEN began to stuff his remaining food cubes into the pockets and waistband of his clothes. You re sure this isn t far enough Maybe we d better stop here and rest a minute. But THX kept right on. They walked in silence for quite a while. At last SEN stopped and looked back in the direction they had come in. He raised a hand to shade his eyes from the glareless even light. I can t see them anymore. . . all we have to do is wait here for a while and then head back. SEN looked backward again and suddenly realized that he wasn t sure of their direction back. There was nothing to be seen. Back he muttered. Then to THX Did. . . did you come this far last time THX didn t answer. He started walking again. With eyes widening in sudden understanding SEN scrambled after him and asked You didn t believe all that nonsense about escaping did you You can t escape. No one can escape. We can try. No No don t you see The authorities. . . the State. . . they wouldn t permit it. They wouldn t have built this elaborate prison in such a way that it could be escaped from. Escape is just a hope a carrot dangling before the fools back there to keep them in line. THX said The State doesn t always do things right. Machines don t work computers break down. Maybe this prison isn t escape proof. We ll never know if we don t try. With mounting fear SEN babbled You ll be killed You ll be stopped. Why do you think no one has ever done it There s no place to go. . . How do you know no one s ever done it Do you think they d tell you about it But. . . but. . . but. . . we don t have enough food. THX shook his head and kept walking. Here. . . stop. SEN rummaged through his pockets and came up with a brown food cube. He trotted up to THX who had kept going at his steady pace and offered the food to him. THX refused it with a brisk wave of his hand. SEN gnawed on it himself for a while. Then he realized something. LUH That stopped THX. You re going after LUH aren t you He saw the answer in THX s pain filled eyes. That s ridiculous. Be careful what you say THX told him severely. He resumed walking. SEN had to hurry to keep pace beside him. Listen stop. I knew there was something I d been meaning to tell you. Stop will you LUH the other LUH the one who came to our group. . . he said he saw her THX looked at him without slowing down. A little breathless SEN went on Yes. He saw her before he came to our group. She s going to be coming here too. Yes. How is she THX asked. Fine fine. Very good health. Just as you left her. You re lying. No I m not. I m not. . . THX pushed him away and kept walking. Staggering slightly SEN called You re a fool. You ll never find her and you ll never know. . . SEN stood there alone watching THX plod onward. He turned back but could see nothing. Spinning around looking in every direction he could see nothing but whiteness. Except for the dwindling figure of THX. You can t. . . he shouted. You can t do it THX s figure was getting smaller and smaller. Soon it would disappear altogether. Wait SEN screamed. Don t leave me alone Wait for me They walked with SEN usually trailing THX. Most of the time they were both silent. Occasionally they rested and SEN would pull out a food cube and share it with THX wordlessly. SEN seemed stunned morose afraid. THX didn t know what he felt he thought about LUH but realized that probably SEN was right. He d never see her again never know. But I ll never go back to their prison he told himself. Never When they walked SEN s comments grew rarer and rarer. But he was trying different tacks now. The air is getting thinner he said at one point. Or the pressure s getting greater. It s the pressure. How do you feel Fine. My ears feel funny. . . Are you sure this is the right direction No one s stopped us yet. They kept walking but SEN dragged farther and farther behind. Finally he sank to his knees and just fell over on his side. He gasped out Uhh. . . THX stopped and looked back then went to him. It s the air SEN said weakly as THX bent over him. It s closing in. I can t stand it any longer. There s no room. . . no air. Squatting beside him THX felt like an impatient teacher with a balky child. I haven t got time. You can stay here if you want. He got up and started off again. No SEN scrambled to his feet. He ran stumbling slightly after THX. Hours later SEN was mumbling It shouldn t be this far. But he walked alongside THX. Suddenly THX stopped short. What What is it Look THX said. There was something out there in the white blankness. A spot a pinpoint a landmark against the emptiness. Oh no SEN murmured. THX squinted hard trying to make it out. It doesn t seem to be moving he said. It s an optical illusion SEN said. Or maybe a policeman. SEN s eyes went round with fright. You don t think. . . THX laughed at him. What can they do to us Put us in prison Kill us They started out in the direction of the spot. After a long while it began to take on dimensions. It was a human form. Look. . . he s waving. It s a man and he s waving to us. A police robot wouldn t wave would it THX didn t answer. Soon they were close enough to see that it was a black man tall and muscular with thick arms and a strong handsome face. Hello hello. . . he called to them. I m SRT 5555. THX 1138 THX answered and this is SEN 5241. They were close enough to grasp hands now. SEN hung back a little though. Hey where d you come from SRT asked. Back there. . . someplace. Prison Doesn t make any difference I guess. Do you have any food I m starving. THX turned to SEN who said nothing. He took a step toward SEN. Give him some. SEN looked from THX s face to SRT s then reached into a trouser pocket and pulled out a small piece of a food cube. SRT reached for it. Thanks. Thanks a lot. I haven t had anything to eat for. . . well it s been a long time. As the black man gobbled at the brown cube THX asked What are you doing here I was lost he said through the food showing lots of teeth. You re not lost now No I. . . You know the way out SEN asked brightening. Chewing SRT nodded vigorously. Um hmm. Which way THX asked. It s around here somewhere. What is What SEN demanded. Swallowing the last of the cube SRT said The entrance. I came through it a couple days ago. . . flashing lights around it. THX said Then you re not a prisoner. . . a convict Me Naw. . . I m a hologram. . . an actor. You must ve seen me on the Mannequin Hour most popular holoshow in the city according to last month s polls. He s lying SEN whispered to THX. Or insane. SRT heard him and laughed. No I m not either. My show was dropped. Canceled. Damned computer made an error and placed the Mannequin Hour last on the ratings instead of first. Moved all the other shows up a notch. So everybody on the show was told not to come in till they got the mess straightened out. I was just walking around the city when I stumbled in here. Impossible SEN snapped. Shaking his head SRT said Well there s a doorway with flashing lights all around it somewhere around here. You can believe it or not take your pick. But I m looking for it. Thanks for the food. He started walking away. Wait THX called out. Let s go together. Maybe the three of us can find it together. SRT shrugged. Okay. But he s going back the way we came SEN complained. Maybe you were traveling in circles. I m pretty sure that s the way to the door. SEN grabbed THX s arm and stood tiptoe to whisper into his ear He s a spy. From the police. He s trying to lead us away from the barrier and back to the others. It s a trap. THX kept his eyes on the black man. He looked friendly enough although he seemed a little impatient to get going and slightly exasperated at SEN s behavior. Look if you don t want to come with me I ll go by myself. It s okay. No THX said more on instinct than anything else. We ll go with you. SEN mumbled to himself and glared at the two of them as they walked through the empty whiteness. Within an hour SRT stopped short and pointed. There it is he shouted. THX strained his eyes peering in the direction that the black man s hand pointed. He saw nothing. There s nothing there SEN said matter of factly. He s insane. But SRT was already loping ahead as if he really saw something worth running toward. THX hesitated a moment. Come on here it is SRT called out. Though he tried as hard as he knew how THX saw nothing. He wanted to see a door with flashing lights. But nothing was there. It s a trap I tell you SEN muttered. Maybe THX said. Then with a shrug he started toward SRT off in the distance. If its a trap that s the end of it he thought At least it will be over. Chapter 17 Something funny was happening to his eyes. As THX approached the black man saw him looming larger grinning hands on hips the whiteness seemed to fray to wrinkle and fade and turn gray. The whole blank background of nothingness seemed to change as a camera changes focus bringing objects that were blurred into invisibility suddenly into clear sharp view. There was a door flanked on both sides by flashing varicolored lights And it was set into a metal bulkhead with steel ribs protruding from it and rivets in the ribs. THX put out a hand to feel its reality. What . . . what . . . how can it be He heard SEN breathless behind him. They must have done something to the way we see THX said uncertainly. They did something to our eyes. . . Or maybe the food cubes were drugged SEN suggested. Or hypnosis. SRT was grinning hugely. I told you there was a door. Come on let s get out of here. He yanked the door open and an explosion of noise staggered THX. On the other side of the door was a main pedestrian thoroughfare with torrents of people racing by on slideways or walking scurrying like mice through an experimenter s cage. Please move briskly. Do not stop or block the passageway. Please hold the handrail and stand on the right if you wish to pass pass on the left. Save time save lives. The level 6421 intermural stadium will have an open day on series 621TD. Today only hypo credit may be transferred with a green optimal card. After the quiet and vastness of the prison this pounding noise and rushing mass of faceless humanity was overpowering. . . frightening. SEN covered his face with his hands. THX hung on to the edge of the hatch swaying weak kneed almost tempted to retreat back to the placidity of prison. Where am I going anyway he asked himself. And the answer came back immediately. He knew. He was surprised that he had needed to ask. All right he shouted over the deafening roar of the masses let s head for that door across the corridor. He saw that SEN was standing rock still wide eyed with terror. THX shook him. Come on we re out of it. No. . . we shouldn t. . . Putting his mouth next to SEN s ear he shouted Do you want to stay in prison until the policemen come for you SEN jerked once involuntarily then bolted through the hatchway with a keening whimpering shriek in his throat. Immediately the crowd swallowed him up bore him away like a scrap of paper in a flood tide. THX jumped into the crowd after him with SRT right behind. We ve lost him THX yelled over his shoulder. What A million voices were babbling cackling jabbering over theirs. The loudspeakers were droning their endless orders and instructions. Help reduce critical noise levels in this area. Be sure to report all decibel surges in excess of one point five. Control twelve please. Cybers call in 6442 gate five pick up on fourteen. Agency for internal development moves forward two malthusian units. This is a new high for this series. The tide of humanity was sweeping THX and SRT along pushing elbowing carrying them down the corridor. Like a mindless panicked stampede the people who were so silent and obedient in tram cars so docile and sedated on their jobs so glazed and passive in their apartments were snarling wild eyed frenzied herd animals here in the high density pedestrian corridors of the shopping level. Shopping in the commercial plazas was their one true sport stampeding through the corridors their only adventure. Lost SEN THX hollered to SRT. He ll never find us SRT yelled back Too late. . . stay close. They struggled and battled sideways along the crowd s main flow and made their way to the side wall of the corridor hundreds of meters downstream from where they had entered the corridor. Panting bruised head aching from the noise THX flattened himself along the corridor s metal wall. It was warm from the reflected heat of surging human bodies. SRT lounged beside him looking just as tired but less frightened. After a few minutes THX craned his neck for a look at where they were. No direction signs were in sight and the color markers in this corridor were strange to him. But there was a lift tube entrance down the wall a few meters flanked by prayer booths. THX nodded toward the tube. Where you going SRT shouted. Without answering THX started for the tube. The observer sat at his post watching his fifty view screens earphones buzzing with the normal traffic of the busy city. I have a seal break. Vacuum debris repectacle 444. Entrance on con 65. Send investigator. Subject appears to be suicide victim. Two inmates have fled detention block R Habot 92. Missing since 3:32.16. 1138 prefix THX and 5241 prefix SEN. Recovery operation budgeted and scheduled. Report to Control when felons are in custody. We have an accident in module dispersal center. . . The observer s trained eye flicked to a viewscreen far up to his right. The interior of a lift tube cell. Numbers flashed across the screen showed it was heading upward from the commercial level toward the main computer filing center. He transferred the picture to one of his four main screens. Yes one of the two men in the lift cell wasn t wearing a badge I have a violation here the observer said crisply into his lip mike. Lift tube cell 0848 heading for level four. Badgeless male Caucasian. Trespassing. Checking. Reference police records on badgeless individual. The observer ticked out a police query on his keyboard. Instantly THX s picture and record appeared on a viewscreen at his elbow. Criminal record indicated. But the observer squinted hard at the picture of THX and SRT in the lift cell. The cameras in those little cells were especially bad the picture was distorted severely. The computer might have made a mismatch. With a shrug he muttered Not my decision to make. If the computer says it s the felon THX 1138 it s Mercicontrol s fault if there s a mistake. The observer touched the special stud on his keyboard that linked him with Control. Felon 1138 prefix THX identified and located. THX and SRT left the lift tube at the fourth level. The corridor here was practically empty. Quiet. The lighting was soft and restful. A glowing sign on the wall opposite the tube entrance said: COMPUTER CENTRAL FILES. Overhead a lovely woman s voice said gently Access to Computer Central Files is restricted to authorized personnel only. If you do not have a 5401 green badge kindly step into the visitor s registration area at the end of the corridor and apply for entrance to Computer Central Files. Thank you. . . Access to Computer Central Files is. . . We can t get in THX said pulling up to a stop. SRT tapped his bright green badge. What do you mean we can t get in Where do you think holoshow actors get personal ratings and job assignments But. . . I can t get in. Winking with such exaggeration that half his face seemed to fold over SRT said Trust me friend. The black man headed toward the end of the corridor where an impressive pair of bronze doors stood firmly closed. THX jogged up alongside him. Why are you doing this for me Why do you trust me I was a prisoner. . . I might be a murderer. . . SRT grinned. I was hungry and you gave me some of your food. But it was SEN. He was carrying the food. Yeah but he wasn t going to give me any until you told him to. And besides I know you re not a murderer. . . you would never have been in jail. You d have been destroyed or put to work for the State. THX stared at him. They came to the bronze doors smooth gleaming metal stamped with the words COMPUTER CENTRAL FILES in sculptured letters. Above the doors was engraved the motto of the Computer Center: THINK. Off to the left of the impressive bronze doors was a smaller ordinary plastic door marked: VISITOR REGISTRATION. SRT went to this door pushed it open and looked cautiously inside. Over his shoulder THX could see that there was a small anteroom in there. A single camera eye was set into one wall with a speaker grill under it. Alongside the staring lens a tiny red light glowed dutifully to show that the camera was working. There were no people in the anteroom but an overhead speaker was droning an econometrics lecture: Beyond this is the fact that the didactic design always states conclusions which allow the contrary minded to build resistance. All in all a fair minded judge would conclude. . . THX automatically shut the woman s near hypnotic voice out of his consciousness. Surprised that the anteroom was empty he said to SRT where are the people The black man grinned. Hardly ever any people around here. The computer runs everything by itself for itself. I get the feeling it doesn t like having people around bothering it. But. . . they couldn t leave it totally alone Could they Pretty much. Oh they got observers watching everything but the computer runs itself. No people. Just visitors once in a while like us. Observers. . . Nodding SRT said Now just keep quiet when we go in stay still and do what I tell you. Got to sneak you past the observer. He edged the door open wider and stepped into the anteroom softly. THX followed right behind him. Holding a finger to his lips for silence SRT nudged THX with his other hand so that THX stood plastered against the closed door well out of range of the observer s camera. SRT stepped in front of the camera. Yes came a voice from the grill. What is it Holding his badge very close to the camera lens and quickly stepping past the camera he said SRT 5555 visitor permit 2892. The observer s voice made no comment. Suppressing a laugh SRT tossed his badge to THX in a high arc over the field of view of the camera. THX caught it held it in his hand so that his fingers partially covered the name on it and imitated the black man s maneuver. SDS 5153 permit 2886 he said as he whisked past the camera close enough to the lens so that his clothing brushed it. See SRT said as he took his badge back. We made it with no sweat. THX grinned back at him as they pushed through the plastiglass doors of the registration office and into the main room of the computer files. Where did you learn that trick he asked. Actors learn lots of tricks SRT said. Somebody thought that one up for a detective story I played in. I was the murder victim. Now that they were in the files THX hardly knew what to do. The files were enormous seemingly endless rows of computer consoles memory banks with little desks spaced every twenty consoles. There were readout screens on the desks and keyboards for querying the computer. LUH s records are in here someplace he knew. Now that we re in SRT asked mind telling me what we re looking for Records. . . personnel file for my. . . my roommate. She was sent to prison too I think. I have to find out. SRT walked down one of the narrow aisles between computer modules. The bulky electronics cabinets seemed to stretch on for kilometers humming to themselves lights winking at some inside joke long long rows of electronic memories and data processing constantly at work sleepless emotionless vibrating constantly with the console modules that stood bulky and taller than a man. From some of the modules voices flickered at them: Relay to analysis. Backlog on case 6178821. We ve lost contact with both of them. . . Group unit forty one report to correlation center. Group unit four one repeat four one. . . If the loan runs for thirty seven unearned increments or more. . . Bewildered by the enormity and complexity of the computer files THX wandered down one row after another not knowing what to do next. SRT was right beside him. What they put you in jail for he asked idly. THX stammered Uh. . . drug evasion. . . and eh well my roommate she. . . Oh. SRT shrugged. Hell if they jailed everybody who did that. . . why d they pick on you Shaking his head I don t know. Well come on we can t stay here forever. Ask the computer what you want to know. THX mumbled I m. . . I m afraid. What Then realization dawned on SRT s face. Ohh. . . you re afraid that if you ask about her they ll spot you here. That s smart thinking. No That thought had never occurred to THX. Afraid. . . of finding out. . . what they did to her. Before SRT could reply a voice boomed from the overhead speakers: Warning Warning Hear This Hear This Escaped felon. THX 1138 and an unidentified accomplice have been observed on the fourth level Computer Central Files area. All citizens be on the alert. The escaped felon THX 1138 may be dangerous. Police are converging on the area. Report any suspicious person to Mercicontrol at once Oh oh said SRT glancing ceilingward. You d better get away while you can THX said. The black man shook his head. Won t do any good. They must have my picture by now. Only a matter of time before they find out who I am. No THX shouted and he bolted down the nearest aisle across several rows of modules running at full speed down a row that stretched on endlessly. They said he s unidentified he can still stay out of trouble if they don t find us together. He ran for what seemed like kilometers flashing past the massive stoic computer modules. Finally he stopped and leaned against a warm humming console breathing hard. SRT was nowhere in sight. THX listened for footsteps. None. But from somewhere he could hear: Assistance request from officers 1999 2187. Searching in restricted computer files area. Request three additional officers. Mindlock impossible. Computer file area sensitive to electric fields. Proceed with search. Far far down the row of modules he saw a chrome police robot step out so distant and small that it looked like a toy. But it made his heart flame with fear. Slowly quietly THX edged down to the nearest aisle that cut across the module rows and ducked around its protective corner. He looked around carefully for more chrome faces and white hardhats. None in sight. Then he ran hard as he could away from the police robots. He stopped finally lungs raw with exertion legs rubbery and half collapsed against a little desk set into the end of a row of computer modules. There was a viewscreen and keyboard on the desk. THX recognized it as an interrogation station for asking the computer for information data. LUH he gasped raggedly to himself. Got to. . . find her. . . But if you ask the computer about her they ll get a fix on your exact location. The police will get you. Still breathless he answered himself They know. . . I m here. . . anyway. . . Only a matter of. . . time. . . For an agonized time he stood at the little desk leaning hard on it catching his breath and struggling in his mind for a decision. Then abruptly he slammed down into the tiny plastic chair next to the desk and typed out: LUH 3417. PRESENT LOCATION. The letters and number appeared on the screen as he typed them. He wiped a bead of sweat from his eyes as the computer viewscreen flashed: WORKING. I need her he muttered. She needs me. I ve got to get to her. Save her. He wiped his eyes again. This whole thing is crazy. . . I must be insane. . . What am I doing Everything s so mixed up. . . If only. . . Control saw THX from above through the fisheye lens of a camera set into the Computer Central Files ceiling. He s shown you exactly where he is Control said mildly to his desk communicator. Take him. A deep harsh voice answered Yessir. The computer screen showed THX a view of a Reproduction Center Clinic. Row upon row of fetuses in their clear plastic wombs heads down arms and legs curled umbilical cords connected to nourishment tubes running above the racks on which the plastic jars sat. The screen zoomed in on one container. It was labeled LUH 3417. THX gnashed his teeth in fury. Stupid Stupid stupid system He pounded on the keyboard: LUH 3417 IS A 20 YEAR OLD WOMAN. OBSERVER CATEGORY. REPROCENTER IS GUILTY OF MISLABELING. The computer screen went blank for a moment then the picture of the fetus with her name on its container flashed on again. Typed alongside it appeared the words: FELON LUH 3417 GUILTY OF SEXACT AND DRUG EVASION DESTROYED PER EXECUTION ORDER 9374911. FETUS REMOVED AT AUTOPSY. NAME LUH 3417 TRANSFERRED TO FETUS IN INTEREST OF ECONOMY AND ACCURATE RECORD KEEPING. FETUS TO BE USED FOR EXPERIMENTAL PURPOSES. With a scream of purest agony THX collapsed on the computer keyboard. Chapter 18 The cathedral was vast and dark as black as prison had been white. And it was nearly empty. SEN clung to the shadows trembled in them tried to wrap them around himself protectively while he looked everywhere for danger. Dimly off in the distant far end of the cathedral holocameras stood on dollies outlined by a glow of light that came from a huge glowing picture of OMM atop a yellow figure eight. Thick cables crisscrossed the floor SEN could see and a tiny knot of cameramen and technicians clustered around the cameras. Standing directly in front of OMM s portrait bathed in yellowish light wearing a safiron robe was a tall gaunt monk with deepset glittering eyes. He was saying into the cameras: And it all happened so slowly that most men failed to realize that anything had happened at all. They had never known what all know within that to know is not to know not to know is to be known. To change is to circle without end. SEN crouched in the deepest shadows watching the monk deliver his holosermon. Along these sacred walls he knew were paintings and sculptures and metal constructs of the rarest art treasures to be revered and enjoyed by the masses. But the treasures of the masses were not for him. SEN knew he was a hunted man. But still. . . perhaps. . . perhaps something could be worked out. . . To remain still is to flow with the will of OMM the monk droned on. The breath of OMM is infinitely slow yet he breathes. Avail thyselves. Let us pray: Unify of mind unit of thought unity of behavior. Blessings of the masses. Thou art subjects of the divine. Suddenly the light flicked off leaving nothing but a residual fluorescence from OMM s gentle face. The monk and camera crews seemed to disappear. Somewhere off in that distance SEN saw a door flung open letting in a shaft of dust filled light. The door slammed shut again echoingly. SEN flinched at the sound. After a long time in silence and darkness he began to creep along the wall staying to the deepest shadows but edging toward the still radiating portrait of OMM. Finally he was there standing before the sad eyed bearded face that loomed five stories above him. The holocameras were clustered around him their cables littering the floor. Stacked against the pulpit that the monk had used for his sermon were giant cards with huge letters stencilled on them: BEFORE OMM WAS OMM AFTER OMM WILL BE OMM SEN stood trembling beore the portrait. I ve always done what I knew was best for everybody. I haven t been like the rest of them: lazy unthinking thieves and liars. I ve used the skills you gave me to lead other men to make them better to bring them closer to your perfection. . . I. . . I ve just tried to make things easier not change anything. . . or hurt you. That s right isn t it You never said it was wrong. . . Things don t seem to make sense. Sinking to his knees Sometimes things get left out or they don t seem to fit. . . most people can t see them or they don t know what to do. Sometimes just little adjustments can make all the difference. The portrait of OMM looked down on him placidly. I want to do the right things. . . I want to go back. . . I can start again. I can help. I just need to rest for a while. A door opened somewhere and footsteps clicked hurriedly on the hard plastistone flooring. Panicky saucer eyed SEN jerked around to see who was coming. Dimly visible in the shadowy cathedral a chubby little white robed monk was coming toward him. SEN got to his feet shaking all over as the monk approached. The monk called out You there This is not the place for prayer. His voice echoed sepulchrally. If you want to speak with OMM you must go to a prayer booth or a unichurch. You know that. We ve got to tape another holosermon here in fifteen minutes But I No no. The camera crews will be back in a few minutes. Go pray at the proper stations. Yes SEN muttered. What The monk was close enough now for SEN to see his eyes peering at him from under the white cowl. Are you in any trouble No no ... I m all right SEN answered hurriedly. I m going now. The monk put out a hand to stop him. Where s your badge What s your number and prefix. I m going to have to put this in your record. No I ll just leave. Holding him by the shoulder the monk insisted I m sorry I have to report all intruders. Where is your identification badge SEN glanced down at his empty lapel. I lost it. But that s a violation. I m going to notify the authorities. This is beyond my jurisdiction. The monk turned to head back toward wherever he came from. Frenzied with fear SEN pounced on his back knocked the white robed figure to the floor. No Give. . . give me time The monk began shouting struggling. SEN kicked at hun dropped to all fours on top of him and grabbed at his cowl. Time he snapped his voice hoarse with violence and terror. Time Time Time And with each word he pounded the monk s head against the plastistone flooring. When he stopped the monk s white robe was splattered with red and his eyes were staring up sightlessly at OMM s benign face. SEN rocked back on his heels staring in horror at the monk. Slowly he looked up at the portrait. OMM. . . OMM. . . what have I done He looked back at the body. In the struggle some pills had spilled from the pocket of the monk s robe. They were scattered around the floor now red pills and blue yellow and white. SEN scooped a handful of them indiscriminately and swallowed them with a huge hard gulp. THX sat slumped across the computer desk s keyboard. He wanted to be dead but he wasn t even unconscious.. He just stayed there without the strength or will to move. Destroyed she was destroyed. And the baby. . . they re going to. . . Suddenly a hand grabbed his shoulder. He wheeled around. It was SRT his black face very serious now. Come on he said there must be a hundred police robots prowling around here. We ve got to get out. What difference does it make SRT eyed him. You want to get caught Destroyed maybe Shakily THX got to his feet. No. . . not yet. I have to do something first. The Mercicontrol police dispatcher was sitting at a bank of viewscreens very similar to the station of an observer. But his screens showed what a platoon of police robots were seeing. Except that in the main screen directly in front of him he had patched in the observer s overhead view through the fisheye lens of THX and SRT. His earphones were alive with calls: Both felons located in Computer Central Files are 621B Row 44 8 9. Apprehension pending. I have a nonaccidental death in Cathedral 090 Con F. Are there any felons reported in that area Budget control we need a cost analysis on the THX 1138 account. Include all interest and inflation percentages. Monetary unit total: 649 and rising. Mercicontrol dispatch budget control reports expenditure on 1138 prefix THX is 649 and rising. The dispatcher nodded absent mindedly. He was manipulating control switches madly fingers flying over his keyboard as he tried to coordinate the actions of a full platoon of police robots. The two fugitives were standing now starting to move off. No no he shouted into his lip mike. Take the central aisle 04 07 take the main left. I want you to make a net. Cover every aisle surround station 4350. . . The dispatcher was sweating hard. They re heading down the left central aisle in the northward direction. Who s closest Take 34 units 09 through 17. . . cover all the north exits. Full speed Monetary unit total: 1000 and rising. Suddenly Control s knife edged voice said in his earphones Do you realize that the man with THX 1138 is not SEN 5241 Yessir the dispatcher replied instantaneously. We re running an identification check on him sir. Where is SEN 5241 We. . . we. . . lost track of him sir. All observers have been alerted to report his location as soon as he s spotted sir. I see. Control s voice was like icewater being poured over the dispatcher. Or molten lead. Sir the dispatcher called trembling. Sir we could use another two platoons of police officers. The Computer Central File area is so big. . . as you know sir. And the robots are very slow. But one man can t handle more than a single platoon so we d need at least two more dispatchers. . . Economically unfeasible within the allotted budget for apprehension of these felons Control answered. You ll have to get them with the one platoon assigned. But sir. . . The responsibility is yours said Control with finality. The dispatcher shivered. Yessir. With SRT leading them they got to an exit door at the far end of the vast computer area. A speaker over the metal door blared: Stand where you are. This is a restricted area. This exit is for emergency use only. Stay calm and await instructions. Help is on the way. Grinning SRT said If this isn t an emergency what is THX looked back down the aisle they had come through. A pair of chrome police robots were lumbering their way. Let s go SRT put his shoulder to the door and it popped open with a gust of air blowing in their faces from the corridor outside. The passageway looked deserted. Overhead OMM s reassuring voice said: Everything will be all right. You are in my hands. You have nowhere to go. I am here to protect you. Cooperate with the authorities they only want to help you. You have nowhere to go. Which way SRT asked. Up to the third level THX said unhesitatingly. To the Reproclinic. They pounded down the corridor looking for a lift tube. Behind them they heard a robot s voice calling: We only want to help you. You have nothing to be afraid of. Please come back. We won t harm you. But THX and SRT ran on ignoring the taped voice of the robot outdistancing the machines with their human fear driven legs. Monetary unit total: 1240 and rising. Visual contact with felon 5241 prefix SEN. Habot 25 Con H DS 947. Proceed to pickup. Felon 1138 prefix THX. Visual contact level four area CCF N 228. Apprehension pending. They found a lift tube but THX suddenly pushed SRT away from its entrance hatch. No We can t use it. You wanted to go up to the next level. We can t go back the way we came. The robots But they re watching for us now. They can trap us in the lift tube. Stop the cell. . . or drop it down to the bottom. . . Hey yeah. But where do we go now Looking around at the bare metal walls of the passageway THX said There must be an access stairway somewhere along here. For mantenance on the tube. Okay. You go that way and I ll go this. If you find something yell out. Chapter 19 SEN wandered through the crowded corridors lost in the ever stampeding masses of people who made the shopping levels a chaos of frenzied bodies rushing rushing in response to the goadings from overhead: Today only red dendrites are only fifty credits. Buy now. The consumer has the factor of advantage. Did you repent today SEN let the torrent of rushing bodies carry him along wherever it wanted to. He had no place to go. Once in a while he would see the shining white helmet of a police robot standing well above the heads of the masses. But the robots never came after him. In these pell mell mobs the robots couldn t even see him SEN knew. At Mercicontrol another dispatcher different from the one who was following THX and SRT and yet very much the same received an analysis on his main viewscreen. On the monk found dead in Cathedral 090. Statistical analysis shows the only known felon observed within reasonable range of that location time complex is 5241 prefix SEN. Presume guilty unless otherwise proven. The dispatcher nodded agreement and tapped out a bulletin on his keyboard that would add the murder to SEN s record. What are the latest reports on 5241 prefix SEN Visual contact at Habot 25 Con H DS 947. Contact broken at 1438. Tracking information doesn t match Harris profile of 5241 prefix SEN. Are you sure you re following the right man Computer correlation to point eight. Okay okay. Keep all observers looking for him. Mark him dangerous. The dispatcher nodded again and resumed working his keyboard. SEN drifted aimlessly in the busy roaring crowd. If only there were time. . . time to think. . . to rest. . . When he thought his head would split from the noise and bruisings of the crowd he tried to edge his way out of the main flow of the pedestrian thoroughfare toward a prayer booth or a rest area anything as long as there was some quiet and rest. He found an open corridor entrance along the edge of the main thoroughfare wall and pushing himself free of the rushing crowd staggered out into the empty corridor. It led to a school plaza a restful little plaza with space to spare a bench to sit on and no taped announce ments or glitter eyed shoppers. The school itself was half a level above connected to the plaza by moving stairways. Children were scattered all around the plaza playing intensely at quiet ordered meaningful games. No teacher or supervisor was in sight but still the children didn t raise thek voices or run or get themselves dirty. Taped to each child s arm was a plastic vial filled with a yellowish fluid. A connector tube fed the fluid into the main vein of the forearm. SEN sat exhausted on a bench off to one side of the plaza. He watched the children playing their solemn little games his mind a blank. When there is too much to think on too much to remember it feels good to blank it all out to pretend none of it exists. For a while at least. His body began to relax. Cramped tense muscles were easing the fluttering in his stomach was fading away. SEN almost felt as if he wanted to smile. One of the children approached him his face very grave. My inducer fell off. SEN blinked at him. What The boy held out his left arm. The plastic vial was gone. SEN could see the outlines of where the tape had held it on. Oh I see. . . The boy had the vial in his other hand. The tape was still connected to it but torn raggedly along one edge. OPA 3114 knocked it off the boy said. Really He didn t mean to. SEN took the vial from the boy s hand. It was marked Advanced Primary Economics 5867H. A drop of the yellow liquid trickled out of the dangling connector tube. Look out the boy snapped and reached for the tube to pinch it shut. Oh. . . I m sorry. . . here let me get it back on for you. He taped the vial onto the boy s arm and plugged the connector into the acceptor tube that poked out from the skin of his forearm. There that should do it. You ll have the whole course digested by sleep time. SEN smiled at the boy like an indulgent uncle. A bigger older boy came trotting over. Come on we re going to play stochastics. . . He eyed SEN. What are you doing here Where s your badge SEN shrugged. I m. . . I m an escaped felon. The two boys eyes bugged wide. You re not Why aren t you arrested Another shrug. I will be. . . sooner or later. They didn t know whether to believe him or not but they were plainly fascinated. What did you do How did you escape SEN chuckled at them. Now now. . . it s nothing for your tender ears to listen to. He tapped the vial on the first boy s arm. When I was in school it was all different. We had to lie in bed all the time. Advanced primary economics was a bottle about this big He spread his hands about the width of his shoulders. It took a week to digest it Wow An observer making a routine scan of the school plaza spotted him. In his earphones he was hearing a police dispatcher saying: Lost contact with 1138. An unidentified felon is traveling with him. Will transfer further information when available. The observer ran a crosscheck on all known fugitives. The man in the school plaza was without a badge. When SEN s picture turned up on one of the screens the observer dialed a closeup of the man in the plaza. Visual contact with 5241 prefix SEN he spoke into his lip mike. Habot 25 Con H PS947. Voices crackled in his earphones. PS947 Is he molesting the children Not yet. Request PB 848: officer 1088 proceed with recovery of felon 5241 SEN. Use caution protect children. Current position Habot 25 Con H PS947. Negative sweep of Con J Section H. If 5241SEN is not the unidentified felon traveling with 1138THX then who the hell is he Better get analysis to worry that one. Will comply. SEN had attracted most of the children in the plaza by now. They were clustered around htm. The first boy was reciting from his lessons but the older boy corrected: No. . . impresses on each of us. That s not how it goes. Yes it is the older boy said drawing himself up to dominate the younger child physically. Now now said SEN. Don t argue. Go on continue the lesson. The younger boy singsonged There are no other rational alternatives in this way. We eliminate the economic function generated by the contrast of separate but compatible energies. . . Elements Compatible elements the older boy said. Energies There there SEN soothed. I know the whole text by heart the younger boy said proudly. I got a perfect mark on my test. . . Then a little wistfully I wish I knew what it meant. All those words. . . A chrome robot came down the moving staircase. SEN saw it and stood up. The children turning to follow his gaze flowed back away from him silently as the robot approached. SEN 5241 the robot said. Yes. Smoothly almost gently the robot turned SEN around and pulled his arms behind his back. He taped SEN S hands together at the wrists then taped his mouth and eyes and led him off. The children stood there for a long long moment and watched SEN being led off by the policeman back up the escalator. See said the younger boy. I told you he really was a felon. Chapter 20 THX hurried up the winding metal stairway with SRT a few steps behind him. In the steel walled shaft of the maintenance well their slippered feet made odd shushing sounds that echoed and amplified wierdly. The third level was also practically deserted. Most of the area was taken up by reproclinics and laboratories singleshift installations where automated machines did most of the work. As they stepped out of the maintenance stairwell and into the corridor a taped voice from overhead told them: This is a restricted area. Authorized personnel only. THX ignored the warning and went to the directory map on the opposite wall of the white glarelessly lit corridor. The directory showed that the reproclinics were all neatly arranged in alphanumerical order. LUH 3417 would be in the three dimensional matrix of clinic 12 row 21 file 8. He glanced down the deserted corridor then motioned to SRT to follow him. You are engaged in an unauthorized action. Check procedure manual F 45. This is a double A restricted area. Remain where you are. The corridor emptied into a vast open area filled with rows of slabs that bore dead bodies. Everything was bathed in a cold eery bluish light. Antibacterial SRT murmured. Violation Unauthorized personnel are not allowed in this area. Stand where you are. Mercicontrol officers are on the way. We don t have much time SRT said. I know. THX started moving between the slabs heading in the direction of clinic 12. SRT s eyes widened as he looked at the corpses they were passing. All the insides are gone THX nodded. Look at that one SRT pointed to a body with an oversized head. He must have been a genius What if you find LUH s body here THX asked himself. Another part of his mind answered coldly She s been destroyed. They re not using her organs. Destroyed not consumed. But still he shuddered and forced himself to look straight ahead not at the bodies. Destroyed. Destroyed. How What did they do to her What were her last moments like. How could they. . . Hey here s one with eyes Why would they leave the eyes Despite himself THX turned to look at the body SRT was jabbering about. Oh no. . . He sank to the edge of the slab on which the body rested. His legs seemed too weak to move. Are you all right SRT bent over him. Want something to eat I bet we could find food around here someplace. His stomach churning THX could only shake his head. Well what s the matter What s wrong Forcing himself to speak I. . . knew him. TWA he was a prisoner with me. . . He was blind. That s why they left the eyes. . . They re useless. SRT straightened up. Oh. The black man glanced around. Faintly from far away they heard the inevitable voices of Mercicontrol: Both felons observed entering Reproduction Center Complex. Second felon now positively identified as 5555 prefix SRT. Apprehension pending. Monetary unit total: 1810 and rising. Escaped felon 5241 prefix SEN apprehended and 140 now in custody. Total expenditure 4377 units under budget. Congratulations Be efficient. Be happy. SRT grimaced. Hey they re coming closer. Look. . . if there s something you want to do in here we d better do it and get out. We ve still got to figure out a place where we can hide can t keep running forever. Nodding THX forced himself to stand up. I knew him he mumbled again. In prison. Well at least his troubles are over. Soon he ll be a plastic hexagon just like the rest of them. What That s what they do with the bodies. . . didn t you know that Make them into the consumption units for the consumalls. Neat huh Nothing s wasted. Suddenly a door banged open noisily somewhere up ahead of them and someone entered the clinic whistling atrociously. For a panicked instant THX didn t know what to do. He froze in terror. Behind them were the police robots. Up ahead was what He saw SRT quickly move to an unoccupied slab and lay down on it. After a split second s revulsion THX did the same. Be still Be absolutely still THX commanded himself. Eyes closed. No blinking. Shallow breathing don t let him see your chest move. He tried to make himself believe that he was frozen he was paralyzed he was truly dead. The whistling came closer a raucous horrible noise punctuated by the slapping sounds of slippered feet against the tile flooring of the clinic. Then there was an odd clicking sound like a staple gun working. The whistling was awful tuneless shrill and loud. Pad pad pad click click Pad pad pad click click The sounds were getting closer. THX wanted to steal a glimpse at what was going on but he didn t dare move. Then the footsteps came so close that he knew the whistler was right next to him. He could smell the antiseptic on him even feel his breath. . . Something cool and hard touched his left ear and then PAIN exploded there seared through him like a white hot iron. He leaped off the slab and his roar of pain was accompanied by the shriek of the registration clerk who had been tagging the corpses. The clerk went over backwards and hit the floor with his rump screaming and goggle eyed as THX and SRT dashed headlong away from the slabs down a long row of corpses all bearing bright metal tags on their left ears. Up ahead loomed the many tiered storage racks of Repro clinic 12. The two men raced toward them and didn t stop until they were well inside the dimly lit incubation racks. They stopped at last surrounded by twenty tiered rows of plastic wombs bearing tiny inverted fetuses that were fed by plastic tubes. The light here was a sullen red and the whole area seemed to be pulsating with millions of tiny heartbeats that throbbed just below the level of actual audibility. The overhead speakers suddenly blared: Stop where you are. You cannot escape. All exits have been sealed shut. Give yourself up. We are here to help you. Relax. You have nothing to fear but fear itself. THX headed down the row until he came to a blank wall. He turned and looked helplessly at SRT. Trapped. Then he noticed that SRT had a metal clip stapled to his left ear. He felt his own ear he had one too. How d you. . . keep from screaming SRT grinned. I peeked. Saw what he was doing. . . and I sort of steeled myself for it. Far down the row they saw the gleaming face of a chrome robot drift by blood red in the incubation lights. Didn t see us SRT whispered. Maybe they can t see so good in this light. They ll find us. They began to move slowly cautiously back up the row. The fetuses seemed to be watching them with solemn unblinking eyes. Got to find LUH THX muttered. SRT shook his head. We re in the wrong end of the clinic. Everything here s labeled with LS s or LD s. Got to get her. She s dead SRT told him in a harsh whisper. Forget her The baby. . . her baby. . . mine. . . There s no way SRT insisted. No way. THX froze. Through the row of plastic wombs he could see a chrome police robot pacing slowly on the other side heading in the opposite direction. Can you pick him up on electroscan We ve lost him. SRT pulled him down to a stooping position and together they edged down the row doubled over hunching along on toes and fingertips away from the police robot. Then they saw a door set into a recess between incubator rows. SRT looked around to see if anyone was watching then very carefully inched the door open a crack. He peered in. Crouched behind him THX could see nothing. Then SRT turned to him grinning. Come on. They crawled silently into a monitor room and stood up. The overhead lights went on automatically when they entered. The walls of the little room were covered with screens that showed row after row of fetuses in various stages of maturity. THX looked around. The room was less than ten paces wide. There s no other exit. We re trapped in here. With a shrug SRT answered We re safe for the time being. . . If there s no camera in here watching us. Hmm. SRT turned around looking for a camera lens. Finding none he said Guess they only watch in here when somebody plugs into the monitor controls. THX looked at the control desk. There was only one chair one set of earphones and a lip mike resting on the desk s keyboard. He plopped down in the chair utterly weary. All the screens were staring at him accusingly. Thousands of unborn children and one of them was his. SRT hunched down in the corner next to the control desk and pulled a covering panel loose revealing a complex maze of electronic circuitry. He let the plastic panel clatter to the floor. Hmm he said again. He jiggled one of the circuit boards and all the screens in the room crackled with snowy static. Looks like a series of relays in here. He reached a hand into the wiring. Don t you ll get The voice of OMM came through a speaker in the ceiling: Everything is fine. You are in my hands. I will protect you. Cooperate with Mercicontrol. They only want to help you. Everything is going to be all right. With a glance ceilingward SRT said Maybe I shouldn t have tinkered with it. They know where we are now. Sorry. Sitting at the control desk THX knew it was almost over. Almost over and they were going to get him and destroy him. His body would be turned into a consumable hexagon. His innards would be distributed among the masses. And his child. . . He reached for the earphones sitting on the desktop and pulled them on. What are you doing Without answering THX plugged in the earphones and began fiddling with the control switches on the keyboard. Images flitted across the screens: the slabs of corpses jammed pedestrian corridors in their perpetual uproar trams in transit factories grinding away on the second level shopping plazas the Computer Center. . . He stopped when the screen showed the Computer Center. He grabbed the lip mike from the desktop plugged it in and fitted it in front of his mouth. File on LUH 3417. Instantly a voice responded Who is this Identify please. Reproclinic 12 THX answered as he scanned the desktop for an identification symbol. Station DBR 2618. Okay 2618. . . file on LUH 3417. The main screen in front of him immediately showed a fetus so young that it didn t yet look remotely human. Typed in the lower right corner of the screen was: LUH 3417. SEXACT. STATE WARD. MAINTAIN FOR EXPERIMENTAL PURPOSES. As firmly as he could THX said into the mike Amendment to file on LUH 3417. The flat voice of the computer memory control responded: Recording. Proceed with amendment. It was all automatic now THX knew. Reproclinics were always updating files. If he could make the change in LUH s file now no one would check again for years. By then the danger would be long past no one would remember. Or care. The baby would be safe. Keeping the tremble of excitement out of his voice THX said Present file in error due to faulty programming at Reproclinic 12. Erase present file and amend to read: LUH 3417. Natural. Full citizen. Condition Normal. The typed words on the screen disappeared to be replaced an instant later by his own words. File amendment completed the computer said. THX nodded. Completed. Now it doesn t matter. They ll get me but they won t get her. He unplugged the lip mike and earphones let them fall to the floor and slumped back in the chair. Then he realized: Her Maybe it s a boy. A son. We ought to try to get out of here SRT said to him. THX shrugged. We should try. With a shake of his head THX answered You go. Save yourself. It s me they re really looking for. SRT looked at him closely. Don t you want to live I don t care. Not now. Hmp. You re just like the embryos in those bottles out there. You ve never lived. You re alive but you ve never lived. THX said It doesn t matter. As if in answer a strong calm robot s voice came from the other side of the door: You have nothing to fear. Remain calm and cooperate with the authorities. Everything is going to be all right. Chapter 21 SRT glanced at THX and then at the door. It was shut. Impulsively THX jumped up and slid his chair against the door wedging it firmly. SRT grinned at him. It doesn t matter huh The door jiggled slightly but the chair held it shut. I guess it does matter THX said surprised to hear himself saying it. It still does. The robot s voice unruffled unhurried the perfect public servant said Remain calm. The door seems to be jammed or locked. Please check the lock on your side. We are not going to hurt you. Everything will be all right. They heard a faint buzzing sound and the acrid smell of something burning. A tiny glowing spot appeared on the door just below the latch. Not going to hurt us THX spun around and plugged in the earphones and mike again. Emergency he called. Emergency Fire in Station DBR 2618 Reproclinic 12. Repeat. Emergency. Fire in Station DBR 2618 Reproclinic 12. Top priority. Condition red He turned to SRT. Get ready to run. An automatic tape blared from the celing: EMERGENCY EMERGENCY HEAR THIS HEAR THIS Fire in Station DBR 2618 Reproclinic 12. Discontinue all operations until. . . Now THX yelled. SRT whisked the chair away THX yanked the door open and they bolted past the police robots which were standing dumbly listening to the instructions from the overhead speakers. Before the robots could react the two men were out of the clinic and pounding madly down a main corridor. Upstairs to the factories THX gasped as they ran. More people easier to hide. . . Control was truly agitated. He swallowed another sedative and listened to the reports on his communicator. Monetary unit total: 5000 and rising. Account on 1138 prefix THX has just exceeded primary budget. Have you seen them They must be somewhere in corridor 3 L73. Analysis indicates they are heading up toward the next level. Possibly arming for the superstructure. The chief of Mercicontrol police appeared on Control s giant viewscreen. His puffy face and beady little eyes made him look almost like the legendary First Control. He looked flushed though and apprehensive. We almost had them he said to Control. Speaking first to Control before you were spoken to was a privilege that only a very few had. They ve been very clever. Control maintained his outward calm only with an enormous exertion of self control. But one would imagine that with a city full of police robots observers remote cameras and such you could apprehend two simple fugitives. We got SEN 5241 the chief said defensively. Control said It s the two fugitives I m interested in. They must be caught It s uneconomic to allow them to remain free. The costs of apprehending them are already unbalancing the economic forecast for the month If you don t get them soon the entire year s forecast will have to be redone The police chief blanched. For Control to raise his voice to show worry or anger the chief began to tremble. We re trying. This has been a severe test of our equipment and procedures. In. . . uh in my last annual report I pointed out the need for an improved model robot. Our present Mark XV s are just too slow to keep up with an adrenalin drenched adult male. And we need long distance weapons. The electric rods are no good when the fugitive s half a corridor length ahead of you. Holding his aching head in his hands Control snarled Find them and bring them to justice. Quickly THX and SRT pounded up another spiraling metal stairwell heading for the second level. Far below them they could hear echoing: Yes we hear them. Attempting sonic localization. Connect me with Mercicontrol Dispatch operation 1138 prefix THX. Monetary unit total: 5750 and rising. This time the corridor they stepped into was alive with people. Not the frenetic bedlamites of the shopping levels but the solid quiet serious faced factory workers who had just put in a tiring four hour shift and were plodding homeward. The workers were pouring out of the huge yawning entryways all along the corridor and shuffling wearily toward the transport terminal a few hundred meters from the hatchway that THX and SRT stepped through. THX could see the terminal. A long line of tram cars stood there being obediently filled one at a time by the workers. Every few seconds a tram would start up its electric engine whining. Men and women would back out of the way as the tram car lurched forward and then sped smoothly off into the distance accelerating as it went. Despite the fact that the workers were mostly quiet and sedated their sheer numbers caused a constant uproar of voices and sounds in the corridor. After the quiet of the computer and clinic levels the noise here was a shock to THX. But the crowds meant camouflage protection and safety and THX laughed as he joined the jumble and uproar with SRT right beside him. They let the crowd push them toward the tram cars. For a flash of a second as they were climbing into the tram THX remembered his last ride in one. Suddenly he wanted to back away to run from the tram but it was too late. The crowd surged on and pushed him and SRT on board. There was no room to sit so they stood jammed against other people as the car lurched shuddered then slid away swaying around a curve. The rapid transit tunnel outside turned into a meaningless blur of speed. The tram whizzed past several stations then slowed to a stop. There was a station platform outside but the doors did not open. The jampacked crowd began to mutter. An old woman pounded on the door with her fist. Outside on the platform other workers were milling around looking either curious or angry at the foul up. Then the ever present loudspeakers said: Two fugitives from justice are somewhere on this tram car. The entire station has been sealed off and police are on their way here to make an arrest. Please remain calm. I want to get off a man shouted. The crowd in the tram car roared its agreement. I don t want to be involved in any police arrests the old lady at the doors said. C mon force the doors open The tram rocked dangerously as the crowd surged against the folding doors in the center of the car. The old woman screamed with pain and then the doors buckled and sprang open. The crowd spilled out onto the platform. THX and SRT jumped onto the platform pushed by those behind them. Look SRT called. Down a flight of moving stairs a long file of black jacketed chrome police robots was gliding toward them. Everyone on the platform froze into obedient stillness. Except THX. He bolted toward the other end of the platform. After an instant s hesitation SRT raced along behind him. Autos THX called out. There were a few jetcars parked at the end of the station platform. An overhead speaker was saying: Do not park in yellow zoned sections for longer than three minutes. Jet acceleration must not exceed two percent in the dispersal area. To avoid being singed by jet exhaust please exit your vehicle on the right and walk through the blue zone on the left. THX jumped off the end of the platform and sprinted for the nearest jetcar. Can you drive SRT shouted as they ran. Nodding THX wrenched open the hatch on the nearest car and slid in behind the wheel. He slammed the door shut looked over the control panel briefly found the starter switch. Thumbing it he saw all the control indicators flash green. The turbine engine growled to life then howled into such a high range that it passed human hearing. He only felt its thrilling vibration heard the faintest bone shivering whine. He looked up and saw SRT climbing into the car parked next to his own. Quickly slipping on the earphones that rested on the console beside his seat THX heard a robot s tape voice commanding: Stop where you are. You have nothing to be afraid of. Cooperate with the authorities. THX grabbed the wheel firmly and nudged the throttle forward. The jetcar purred smoothly out onto the thoroughfare. He floored it and the car zoomed away down the traffic corridor rushing toward an immense sign that said XWAY AHEAD. The engine exhaust roared and echoed through the cavernous corridor. He looked in the rearview for SRT. Nowhere. He checked the radar screen on the control panel. SRT wasn t anywhere around. Can he drive THX wondered. I just left him there For an agonizing moment he bit his lip in indecision. Then he slowed the jetcar swung it around across eight lanes of highway and headed down the other side of the corridor back toward the transport station. It seemed incredible but less than a minute had passed since they had left the tram. The crowd was still milling confusedly around the platform. The police robots were working their way through the crowd looking into each person s face and checking their badges. And SRT s blazing red jetcar was still sitting at the end of the platform in the parking area. THX could see the black man in it frowning over the controls pushing buttons. No grin on him now. SRT glanced over his shoulder and THX followed his gaze. Two chrome police robots were approaching the parking area. THX his car idling in the far lane thumbed the window control. He was about to yell for SRT to jump out and run to his own auto when the red car s engine roared to life with a puff of sooty exhaust. The big grin came back to the black man s face. He looked up recognized THX and waved then slammed the red car into gear and shot ahead. Into a concrete pillar. The car was instantly demolished in a thundering explosion. THX felt the shock wave hit him and rattle the car. He sat there immobile unbelieving. A life had been snuffed out in an eyeblink. A friend his only friend the first and last friend he had in the world. Dead. We have an accident in Module Dispersal Center 21. Stolen vehicle into 3T support. Felon killed instantly. Car totaled. Monetary unit total: 15 500 and rising. Now the chrome robots turned toward THX. For a frozen instant he couldn t move. Then like the breaking of a spell he slammed the jetcar s throttle and felt the blast of acceleration snap his head back against the rest. The engine thundered and the station the robots the wreckage of SRT all disappeared into the distance. The guidance screen on his control panel showed that he was approaching an express tunnel. THX swerved the car onto the appropriately marked lane as his earphones buzzed: I have a vehicle entering a restricted access expressway. Vehicle checks with stolen jetcar Samos model registration number 327115. Escaped felon 1138 prefix THX believed operating stolen Samos 327115. Apprehend at once. Proceed with caution. Monetary unit total: 19 000 and rising. Please review all unfunded obligations. THX gunned the jetcar onto the expressway howling down the huge tunnel to. . . where Upward. Up to the first level where the powerplants rumbled and the radioactivity level was high enough to be lethal if you stayed for more than a few hours. And beyond that The traffic monitor grimaced and shook his head as he watched the huge electronic map spread out on the wall display in front of him. One yellow blip THX s car was the center of his attention. Expressway 291 he said into his lip mike. Clear all traffic. Mercicontrol police request full clearance in apprehension procedure. Divert all traffic to link 4833 cross to web 2. THX heard the monitor s commands. His radar screen chimed. Glancing down at it he saw two blips far to the rear of him. Electrocycles 1048 and 1050 dispatched to apprehend fugitive 1138 prefix THX. Predicted route of flight will be transferred to web 3 at 3:47. Proceed. Execute. Electrocycles couldn t catch a turbine driven jetcar THX knew. But as if in answer to his thought the car began to make strange noises. The engine was thumping clunking. Indicators on the control panel began flashing red. The engine s overheating. Automatically the car slowed down. THX frantically scanned the panel. There must be some way. . . Radar fix on stolen Samos 327115. Range five kilometers. He tried every knob and switch on the control panel but the overheat indicator stayed stubbornly red. The engine whined down. The car glided to a stop. Subject vehicle appears to have stopped in expressway 291. Subject has ceased flight. Report when fugitive is in custody. The two yellow blips on the radar screen were drawing steadily closer. It would only be a matter of minutes before they were on top of him. There was a switch marked Cool but whenever THX hit it freezing air swirled around him and the engine temperature indicator stayed firmly in the danger zone glaring balefully at him. His hand touched the switch marked Fuel Recirc and the red lights on the panel suddenly began winking off. The engine growled again then steadied to a sweet purring. The last red light turned green and THX hit the throttle. The car leaped forward. Subject jetcar Samos 327115 appears to be moving again. Range increasing. The radar dots fell behind him again as he zoomed through the express tunnel and up the rampway that led to the first level. A warning sounded in his earphones. You are approaching a restricted area. Danger of radioactivity extreme. Turn back at the next interloop. THX ignored the warning. He glanced at the radar screen. The electrocycles stayed firmly behind him. Robots didn t fear radioactivity. Or did they Where to Where to THX asked himself. There s nothing left for me in this world. Nothing at all. Can t stay on Level One. Can t live in the superstructure. Can t return below. Subject vehicle is entering construction area 36J. Passage through this expressway section is closed. Contact operator at once. Alert construction personnel. Samos 327115 approaching. Evacuate area. Attention Samos 327115. Stop your vehicle. Warning Warning Stop your vehicle. You are approaching a work area. Do you read Respond. Is it a trick Suddenly there was a barrier up ahead with construction equipment strewn across the roadway behind it. OMM s voice broke in. Everything will be all right. You are in my hands. You have nowhere to go. I am here to protect you. You have nowhere to go. Nowhere. . . The radar bonged emergency red lights flashed on the control panel and the car s collision avoidance system automatically cut the engine and fired the retrobrakes. The jetcar skidded sideways bounced off one wall of the tunnel and screeched to a stop against the barrier. Before THX stopped rattling in his seat harness the first police cycle hummed around the slight curve of the tunnel tried to stop and slid sideways into the wall. The robot went over backwards with the cycle on top of him. The second cycle came an instant later it the wreckage of the first. The robot went flying through the air and slammed into the side of THX s car. Control was absolutely livid. Morons he spat. Absolute idiots To let one frightened man consistently wriggle out of your grasp. . . the cost of apprehending one man. . . and it s still not accomplished. . . He became incoherent. On the giant wall screen he watched speechlessly as THX emerged from the ruined jetcar looked around shakily. One of the robots the one that had been on the first bike was getting to its feet. It looked dusty and crumpled but it was still functioning. THX hopped over the barrier and sprinted past the abandoned construction equipment. Another camera farther down the expressway tunnel picked him up running toward it. Control dialed for a close up of the fugitive s face and the camera obediently zoomed in on THX. He looked weary out of breath close to exhaustion. But not afraid. No longer afraid. Determined. Control shook his head and reached for the sedatives lined up in gaudy plastic vials behind his desk. Why can t men with that much strength work for us The robot was trailing him. Looking over his shoulder THX could see that now both robots were hobbling after him. One of them was limping noticeably and clanking with a grating grinding noise the other was missing an arm. But both of them doggedly pursued him like some inevitable fate. We only want to help you. You have nothing to be afraid of. Please come back. We won t harm you. There was a ladder up ahead steel rungs projecting from the metal wall. It stretched up so far that THX couldn t tell where it ended. But it went up. With another glance at his pursuers he grabbed the rungs and started climbing. So did the robots. You cannot survive in the superstructure. You will destroy yourself if you continue. Come back with us. THX kept climbing. Monetary unit total: 25 000 and rising please place a priority transfer of assessment. Surrender to the authorities. You have nothing to fear but fear itself. Attention. All operations on fugitive 1138 prefix THX are cancelled. Subject operations have been declared economically inefficient. Unlimited liability. All annuities are to be written off. The account on 1138 prefix THX is closed. Transfer officers to operation 327. THX hearing the command voice from the robots themselves stopped climbing and hung on the ladder panting and sweat drenched. He looked down and saw that the robots had stopped too. We have to go back. This is your last chance to return with us. You have nowhere to go. You cannot survive outside the city. Come back with us. For an answer THX resumed climbing. He didn t even hesitate. He continued upward rung by painful rung. If he was headed toward death then so what Nothing but death awaited him below even if he should live a thousand years in that inferno below him. For a long time he heard nothing except his own labored breathing felt only the gritty metal rungs in his hands smelled his own sweat. He kept climbing climbing. Toward self destruction. Chapter 22 It was dirty up in the superstructure. Dirty hot and muggy. There were no corridors only a vast open area crisscrossed with structural beams and low overhangs of metal or stone. Dust and grime covered everything. THX stumbled over something half buried in filth. Bones. . . a human ribcage. He backed away. The light up here was strange. Shafts of weird concentrated light seemed to slant through the superstructure here and there filled with dust motes that danced and nickered. In between there were pools of shadow. And the light was fading weakening noticeably. The shadows were getting darker deeper encompassing everything. THX was hungry. And so tired. With a shudder of distaste he sat down in a dust covered nook made by the angle of a heavy steel I beam. Despite the heat he was trembling. He leaned his head back against the grimy beam and was almost instantly asleep. Scrabbling noises woke him. It was dark Absolutely black no lights at all. THX had never seen such darkness before. Something was out there. He could hear something moving around softly snuffling in the blackness. More than one of them. He stayed absolutely still listening wishing his heart wouldn t pound so hard. Something touched his outstretched foot. With an involuntary yell THX yanked his foot back and swung out at the darkness. His hand hit something soft and furry. A throaty yelp and scampering sounds skittering away from him. Shelldwellers he realized. Gradually as his eyes became accustomed to the dark he could make out the faintest glints of them. Their eyes watching him. He pushed himself to a standing position being careful to remain within the slight protection of the I beam s shape. And there he stood for hours warily watching the shelldwellers who snuffled and padded around him uncertainly. Why don t they do something he wondered. And then he realized that they were doing something: they were waiting. Wailing for exhaustion or hunger to do their work for them. Why fight a giant when the giant will soon enough collapse The darkness seemed to be not so bad now. After a long time it definitely appeared to be getting brighter all through the superstructure. Not truly light nothing like the glareless eternal light of the lower levels or even the strong shafts of odd light that had spotted the superstructure hours earlier. It was grayish faint half light cold and somehow damp feeling. But it was enough to see the shelldwellers. Four of them were squatting hairy and wild a dozen meters from THX. They carried no weapons. They were small and gnarled looking. Go away THX shouted at them. Leave me alone. They didn t move. Only four of them he thought. If I don t chase them they ll wait for me to fall asleep or collapse from hunger. With a deep intake of breath he gathered his strength and rushed at them. They scattered shrieking. He laughed and watched them disappear into the distance. Then something fell on his back from above and hot teeth bit into his shoulder. Something else dropped on him and he went down. They were all over him biting and tearing at him with their nails. THX roared and pulled one of them off flailed at the others fought his way to his knees. The shelldwellers swarmed over him six eight he couldn t tell how many. They had tricked him into coming out into the open where they could attack him. The back of his mind raged at his own stupidity and his fury carried over into his fighting. He bowled them over got to his feet and picked two of them up one in each hand and hurled them away. He kicked and swung and slapped at them. He used one of them as a club to split the skull of another. He roared and snapped and fought like any jungle beast. They fled. They dragged one of their members with them leaving two others laying inertly on the filth strewn floor. THX stood there trembling feeling trickles of blood on his shoulder his face his legs. His hands were bruised and raw. They ll be back he knew. The light was stronger now almost the way it was when he had first come up to the superstructure. But the light seemed to be falling in a different way opposite the direction it had been slanting in before. THX shook his head. Can t stay here he realized thinking of the shelldwellers. Might as well make an end of it and go Outside. He walked shakily still bleeding toward the nearest shaft of light. Looking up he saw an access tunnel with a ladder built into its side. Through some sort of grill work at the top he could see a grayish blue color. Probably one breath of the poisonous air Outside and it ll be all over he thought. But what else is there Better that than being eaten by the shelldwellers. He climbed the ladder slowly though almost reluctantly. The grillwork was rusted shut and he almost felt relieved. But with grim stubbornness he pushed against it first with one hand then both then with his back wedged against it straining sweatily against the gritty bars. Scan Notes v3.0: Proofed carefully italics intact.

Science Fiction

fiction

Volume Four Venus Series by Edgar Rice Burroughs To Brigadier General KENALL J. FIELDER FOREWARD VENUS at its nearest approach to Earth is still a little matter of twenty six million miles away barely a sleeper jump in the vast reaches of infinite space. Hidden from our sight by its cloak of enveloping clouds during all time its surface has been seen by but a single Earth man Carson of Venus. This is the fourth story of the adventures of Carson of Venus on the Shepherd s Star as narrated by him telepathically to Edgar Rice Burroughs at Lanikai on the island of Oahu. It is a story complete in itself. It is not necessary even to read this foreword unless you happen to be curious to learn how Carson navigated interplanetary space and something of the strange lands he has visited the vast deserted oceans he has navigated the savage beasts he has encountered the friends and enemies he has made and the girl whom he won over apparently insuperable obstacles. When Carson of Venus took off from Guadalupe island off the west coast of Mexico in his giant rocket ship his intended destination was Mars. For more than a year his calculations had been checked and rechecked by some of the ablest scientists and astronomers in America and the exact moment of his departure had been determined together with the position and inclination of the mile long track along which the rocket ship would make its take off. The resistance of the Earth s atmosphere had been nicely calculated as well as the Earth s pull and that of the other planets and the Sun. The speed of the rocket ship in our atmosphere and beyond had been as accurately determined as was scientifically possible but one factor had been overlooked. Incomprehensible as it may appear no one had taken into consideration the pull of the Moon Shortly after the take off Carson realized that he was already off his course and for some time it appeared likely that he would score a direct hit upon our satellite. Only the terrific velocity of the rocket ship and the pull of a great star saved him from this and he passed over the Moon by the narrowest of margins scarcely five thousand feet above her loftiest mountains. After that for a long month he realized that he was in the grip of the Sun s attraction and that he was doomed. He had long since given up hope when Venus loomed far ahead and to his right. He realized that he was going to cross her orbit and that there was a chance that she might claim him rather than the Sun. Yet he was still doomed for had not Science definitely proved that Venus was without oxygen and incapable of supporting such forms of life as exist upon Earth Soon Venus seized him and the rocket ship dove at terrific speed toward the billowing clouds of her envelope. Following the same procedure that he had purposed using in making a landing on Mars he loosed batteries of parachutes which partially checked the speed of the ship then adjusting his oxygen tank and mask he bailed out. Landing among the branches of giant trees that raised their heads five thousand feet above the surface of the planet he encountered almost immediately the first of a long series of adventures which have filled his life almost continuously since his advent upon Amtor as Venus is known to its inhabitants for he was pursued and attacked by hideous arboreal carnivores before he reached the tree city of Kooaad and became the guest prisoner of Mintep the king. It was here that he saw and loved Duare the king s daughter whose person was sacred and upon whose face no man other than royalty might look and live. He was captured by enemies of Mintep and put upon a ship that was to carry him into slavery in a far country. He headed a mutiny and became a pirate. He rescued Duare from abductors but she still spurned his love. Again and again he befriended protected her and saved her life but always she remained the sacrosanct daughter of a king. He was captured by the Thorists but he escaped the Room of the Seven Doors in the seaport of Kapdor. He fought with tharbans and hairy savages. He sought Duare in Kormor the city of the dead where reanimated corpses lived their sad gruesome lives. He won renown in Havatoo the perfect city and here he built the first aeroplane that had ever sailed the Amtorian skies. In it he escaped with Duare after a miscarriage of justice had doomed her to death. They came then to the country called Korvan where Mephis the mad dictator ruled. Here Duare s father was a prisoner condemned to death. After the overthrow of Mephis Duare believing Carson dead flew back to her own country taking her father with her. There she was condemned to death because she had mated with a lesser mortal. Carson of Venus followed in a small sailing boat was captured by pirates but finally reached Kooaad the tree city which is the capital of Mintep s kingdom. By a ruse he succeeded in rescuing Duare and flew away with her in the only airship on Venus. What further adventures befell them Carson of Venus will tell in his own words through Edgar Rice Burroughs who is at Lanikai on the island of Oahu. THE EDITOR Contents FOREWARD Contents Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII Chapter XXIII Chapter XXIV Chapter XXV Chapter XXVI Chapter XXVII Chapter XXVIII Chapter XXIX Chapter XXX Chapter XXXI Chapter XXXII Chapter XXXIII Chapter XXXIV Chapter XXXV Chapter XXXVI Chapter XXXVII Chapter XXXVIII Chapter XXXIX Chapter XL Chapter XLI Chapter XLII Chapter XLIII Chapter XLIV Chapter XLV Chapter XLVI Chapter XLVII Chapter XLVIII Chapter XLIX Chapter L Chapter LI Chapter LII Chapter LIII Chapter LIV Chapter LV Chapter I IF YOU will look at any good map of Venus you will see that the land mass called Anlap lies northwest of the island of Vepaja from which Duare and I had just escaped. On Anlap lies Korva the friendly country toward which I pointed the nose of our plane. Of course there is no good map of Venus at least none that I ever have seen because the scientists of the southern hemisphere of the planet the hemisphere to which Chance carried my rocket ship have an erroneous conception of the shape of their world. They believe that Amtor as they call it is shaped like a saucer and floats upon a sea of molten rock. This seems quite evident to them for how else might the spewing of lava from the craters of volcanoes be explained They also believe that Karbol Cold Country lies at the periphery of their saucer whereas it is as a matter of fact the Antarctic region surrounding the south pole of Venus. You may readily perceive how this distorts their conception of actual conditions and is reflected in maps which are to say the least weird. Where actually the parallels of longitude converge toward the pole their conception would be that they converged toward the Equator or the center of their saucer and that they were farthest apart at the periphery of the saucer. It is all very confusing to one who wishes to go places on the surface of Amtor and must depend upon an Amtorian map and it seems quite silly but then one must bear in mind the fact that these people have never seen the heavens because of the cloud envelopes which enshroud the planet. They have never seen the Sun nor the planets nor all the other countless suns which star the skies by night. How then might they know anything of astronomy or even guess that they lived upon a globe rather than in a saucer If you think that they are stupid just bear in mind that man inhabited the Earth for countless ages before it occurred to anyone that the Earth was a globe and that within recent historic times men were subjected to the inquisition broken on the rack drawn and quartered burned at the stake for holding to any such iniquitous theory. Even today there is a religious sect in Illinois which maintains that the Earth is flat. And all this in the face of the fact that we have been able to see and study the Heavens every clear night since our earliest ancestor hung by his tail in some primordial forest. What sort of astronomical theories do you suppose we would hold if we had never seen the Moon the Sun nor any of the Planets and myriad stars and could not know that they existed However erroneous the theory upon which the cartographers evolved their maps mine were not entirely useless though they required considerable mental mathematical gymnastics to translate them into usable information even without the aid of the theory of the relativity of distance expounded by the great Amtorian scientist Klufar some three thousand years ago which demonstrates that the actual and the apparent measurements of distance can be reconciled by multiplying each by the square root of minus one So having a compass I flew a little north of west with reasonable assurance that I should eventually raise Anlap and Korva. But how could I foresee that a catastrophic meterological phenomenon was soon to threaten us with immediate extinction and literally hurl us into a series of situations as potentially lethal as that from which we had fled on Vepaja Duare had been very quiet since we had taken off. I could understand why and I could sympathize with her. Her own people whom she loved and her father whom she worshipped not only as her father but as her jong had condemned her to death because she had mated with the man she loved. They all deplored the stern law of the dynasty as much as she but it was an inexorable commandment that not even the jong himself might evade. I knew what she was thinking and I laid my hand on hers comfortingly. They will be relieved when morning comes and they discover that you have escaped they will be relieved and happy. I know it she said. Then do not be sad dear. I love my people I love my country but I may never return to them. That is why I am sad but I cannot be sad for long because I have you and I love you more than I love my people or my country may my ancestors forgive me it. I pressed her hand. We were silent again for a long time. The Eastern horizon was lighting faintly. A new day was breaking on Venus. I thought of my friends on Earth and wondered what they were doing and if they ever thought of me. Thirty million miles is a great distance but thought travels it instantaneously. I like to think that in the next life vision and thought will travel hand in hand. What are you thinking asked Duare. I told her. You must be very lonely sometimes so far from your own world and your friends she said. Quite the contrary I assured her. I have you and I have many good friends in Korva and an assured position there. You will have an assured position in that Heaven of yours of which you have told me if Mephis ever gets hold of you she said. I forgot. You do not know all that transpired in Korva I said. You have told me nothing. After all we haven t been together for very long And just being together seemed enough didn t it I interrupted. Yes but tell me now. Well Mephis is dead and Taman is now jong of Korva. I told her the whole story in detail and of how Taman having no son adopted me in gratitude for my having saved the life of his only daughter the Princess Nna. So now you are Tanjong of Korva she said and if Taman dies you will be jong. You have done well Earthman. I am going to do even better I said. Yes What I drew her to me and kissed her. That I said. I have kissed the sacrosanct daughter of an Amtorian jong. But you have done that a thousand times. Are all Earthmen as silly They all would be if they could. Duare had put her melancholy from her and we joked and laughed as we flew on over the vast Amtorian sea toward Korva. Sometimes Duare was at the controls for by now she was an excellent pilot and sometimes I. We often flew low to observe the strange and savage marine life which occasionally broke the surface of the sea huge monsters of the deep some of which attained the dimensions of an ocean liner. We saw millions of lesser creatures fleeing before fearsome carnivorous enemies. We saw titanic battles between monstrous leviathans the age old struggle for survival which must exist upon every planet of the Universe upon which life exists the reason perhaps why there must always be wars among nations a cosmic sine qua non of life. It was mid afternoon. The thing that was to change our lives was about to happen. The first intimation of it was a sudden lightening of the sky far ahead. We noticed it simultaneously. What is that asked Duare. It looks as though the Sun were trying to break through the cloud envelopes of Amtor I said. I pray Heaven that he doesn t succeed. It has happened in the past said Duare. Of course our people knew nothing of the Sun of which you tell me. They thought it the all enveloping fire which rose from the molten mass upon which Amtor is supposed to float. When a break came in our protective cloud envelopes the flame struck through destroying all life beneath the cloud rift. I was at the controls. I banked sharply and headed north. I am going away from there I said. The Sun has broken through one of the cloud envelopes he may break through the other. Chapter II WE WATCHED the increasing light upon our left. It illumined the whole sky and the ocean but it was intensest at one spot. As yet it resembled only bright sunlight such as we are accustomed to on Earth then suddenly it burst through like blinding flame. There had been coincidental rifts in both cloud envelopes Almost instantly the ocean commenced to boil. We could see it even at a distance. Vast clouds of steam arose. The heat increased. It was fast becoming unendurable. The end said Duare simply. Not yet I replied as with throttle wide we raced toward the north. I had chosen flight to the north because the rift was a little southwest of us and the wind was from the west. Had I turned back toward the east the wind borne heat would have followed us. In the north lay what hope we had. We have lived said Duare. Life can hold nothing better for us than that which we have enjoyed. I am not afraid to die. Are you Carson That is something that I shall never know until it is too late I said smiling down at her for while I live I shall never admit the possibility of death. Somehow it doesn t seem to be for me at least not since Danus injected the longevity serum into my veins and told me that I might live a thousand years. You see I am curious to know if he were right. You are very silly she said but you are also reassuring. Enormous clouds of steam blotted out everything in the southwest. They rose to the clouds dimming the sunlight. I could imagine the devastation in the sea the myriad of living things destroyed. Already the effects of the catastrophe were becoming plainly discernible below us. The fleeter reptiles and fishes were fleeing the holocaust and they were fleeing north Instinct or intelligence or whatever it was it filled me with renewed hope. The surface of the ocean was alive with them. Mortal enemies raced side by side. The stronger creatures pushed the weaker aside the fleeter slithered over the tops of the slower. How they had been warned I cannot guess but the flight was on far ahead of us though our speed was greater than the swiftest of the creatures racing with us from death. The air was becoming no hotter and I had hopes that we should escape unless the cloud rift enlarged and the Sun took in a larger area of Amtor s surface and then the wind changed It blew in a sudden furious gust from the south bringing with it stifling heat that was almost suffocating. Clouds of condensing vapor whirled and swirled about us drenching us with moisture and reducing visibility almost to zero. I rose in an attempt to get above it but it was seemingly everywhere and the wind had become a gale. But it was driving us north. It was driving us away from the boiling sea and the consuming heat of the Sun. If only the cloud rift did not widen we might hope for life. I glanced down at Duare. Her little jaw was set and she was staring grimly ahead though there was nothing to see but billowing clouds of vapor. There hadn t been a whimper out of her. I guess blood will tell all right and she was the daughter of a thousand jongs. She must have sensed my eyes upon her for she looked up and smiled. More things happen to us she said. If you wished to lead a quiet life Duare you picked the wrong man. I am always having adventures. That s not much to brag about though. One of the great anthropologists of my world who leads expeditions to remote corners of the Earth and never has any adventures says that having them is an indication of inefficiency and stupidity. I don t believe him said Duare. All the intelligence and efficiency in the world could have neither foreseen nor averted a rift in the clouds. A little more intelligence would probably have kept me from attempting to fly to Mars but then I should never have known you. No on the whole I m rather glad that I am no more intelligent than I am. So am I. The heat was not increasing but the wind was. It was blowing with hurricane force tossing our sturdy anotar about as though it were a feather. I couldn t do much about it. In such a storm the controls were almost useless. I could only hope that I had altitude enough to keep from being dashed on some mountain and there was always the danger from the giant Amtorian forests which lift their heads thousands of feet into the air to draw moisture from the inner cloud envelope. I could see nothing beyond the nose of the anotar and I knew that we must have covered a great distance with the terrific tail wind that was driving us furiously toward the north. We might have passed the sea and be over land. Mountains might loom dead ahead or the mighty boles of a giant forest. I was not very happy. I like to be able to see. If I can see I can face almost anything. What did you say asked Duare. I didn t know that I said anything. I must have been thinking aloud that I would give almost anything to be able to see. And then as though in answer to my wish a rift opened in the swirling vapor ahead and I saw. I almost leaped at the controls because of what I saw a rocky escarpment looming high above us and dead ahead. I fought to bank and turn aside but the inexorable wind carried us toward our doom. No scream broke from Duare s lips no faintest echo of the fear that she must have felt must have because she is human and young. The thing that appalled me most in the split second that I had to think was the thought of that beautiful creature being broken and crushed against that insensate cliff. I thanked God that I would not live to see it. At the foot of the escarpment we should lie together through all eternity and no one in all the Universe would know our resting place. We were about to crash when the ship rose vertically scarcely a dozen yards from the cliff. As the hurricane had toyed with us before it did again. Of course there must have been a terrific up draft where the roaring wind struck the face of the escarpment. It was this that saved us combined with the fact that when I had discovered that I could not maneuver away from the cliff I had cut my engine. Now we rose high above a vast tableland. The vapor torn to shreds floated off in little cloud like wisps and once more we could see the world below us. Once more we breathed. But we were still far from safe. The tornado had not abated. I glanced back in the direction of the cloud rift but now there was no brightness there. It had closed and the danger of incineration had passed. I opened the throttle a little in a rather futile effort to battle the elements and keep the anotar on an even keel but we were dependent more upon our safety belts than upon our engine for salvation for we were so tossed about that often our landing gear was above us and we dangled helplessly in our belts. It was a harrowing experience. A down draft would plummet us toward the ground with the velocity of a power dive and when it seemed that we must surely crash the giant hand of the storm would toss us high aloft. How long we were the plaything of the Storm God I may only guess but it was not until almost dawn that the wind abated a little and once more we were permitted to have some voice in the direction of our destiny and even then we must still go where the wind willed for we could not fly against it. For hours we had not spoken. We had made an occasional attempt but the howling of the wind had drowned our voices. I could see that Duare was almost spent from the buffeting and the nervous strain but there was nothing that I could do about it. Only rest could revive her and there could be no rest until we could land. A new world lay below us with the coming of the new day. We were skirting a great ocean and I could see vast plains and there were forests and rivers and far away snow capped mountains. I believed that we must have been driven thousands of miles toward the north for much of the time the throttle had been wide open and all the time that terrific wind had been at our tail. Where could we be I felt confident that we had crossed the Equator and must be in the north temperate zone but where Korva lay I could not even guess and might never know. Chapter III THE TORNADO died out in a last few fitful gusts. The air was suddenly calm. It was like the peace of Heaven. You must be very tired said Duare. Let me take the controls. You have been fighting that storm for sixteen or seventeen hours and you have had no sleep for two days. Well neither have you and do you realize that we ve had neither food nor water since before we left Vepaja There s a river down there and game said Duare. I hadn t realized before how thirsty I was and hungry too. And so sleepy I don t know which I am the most. We ll drink and eat and then we ll sleep I told her. I circled around looking for some sign of human habitation for it is always men that must be feared most. Where there are no men one is comparatively safe even in a world of savage beasts. In the distance I saw what appeared to be a large inland lake or an arm of the sea. There were little patches of forest and the plain was tree dotted beneath us. I saw herds grazing. I dropped down to select my quarry run it down and shoot it from the ship. Not very sporting but I was out for food not sport. My plan was excellent but it did not work. The animals discovered us long before we were within range and they took off like bats out of Hell. There goes breakfast I said. And lunch and dinner added Duare with a rueful smile. The water remains. We can at least drink. So I circled to a landing near a little stream. The greensward close cropped by grazing herds ran to the water s edge and after we had drunk Duare stretched out upon it for a moment s relaxation and rest. I stood looking around in search of game hoping that something would come out of the near by forest into which it had fled effectively terminating my pursuit of it in the anotar. It couldn t have been more than a minute or two that I stood there in futile search for food on the hoof but when I looked down at Duare she was fast asleep. I didn t have the heart to awaken her for I realized that she needed sleep even more than she did food so I sat down beside her to keep watch while she slept. It was a lovely spot quiet and peaceful. Only the purling murmur of the brook broke the silence. It seemed very safe for I could see to a considerable distance in all directions. The sound of the water soothed my tired nerves. I half reclined supporting myself on one elbow so that I could keep better watch. I lay there for about five minutes when a most amazing thing happened. A large fish came out of the stream and sat down beside me. He regarded me intently for a moment. I could not guess what was passing in his mind as a fish has but one expression. He reminded me of some of the cinema stars I had seen and I could not repress a laugh. What are you laughing at demanded the fish. At me Certainly not I assured him. I was not at all surprised that the fish spoke. It seemed quite natural. You are Carson of Venus he said. It was a statement not a question. How did you know I asked. Taman told me. He sent me to bring you to Korva. There will be a great procession as you and your princess ride on a mighty gantor along the boulevards of Sanara to the palace of the jong. That will be very nice I said but in the meantime will you please tell me who is poking me in the back and why At that the fish suddenly disappeared. I looked around and saw a dozen armed men standing over us. One of them had been prodding me in the back with a three pronged spear. Duare was sitting up an expression of consternation on her face. I sprang to my feet. A dozen spears menaced me. Two warriors were standing over Duare their tridents poised above her heart. I could have drawn my pistol but I did not dare use it. Before I could have killed them all one of us would have been killed. I could not take the chance with Duare s life at stake. As I looked at the warriors I suddenly realized that there was something very peculiar and inhuman about them. They had gills which their heavy beards did not conceal and their fingers and toes were webbed. Then I recalled the fish which had come out of the stream and talked to me I slept and I was still dreaming That made me smile. What are you smiling about demanded one of the warriors me I am laughing at myself I said. I am having such an amusing dream. Duare looked at me wide eyed. What is the matter with you Carson she demanded. What has happened to you Nothing except that it was very stupid of me to fall asleep. I wish that I could wake up. You are awake Carson. Look at me Tell me that you are all right. Do you mean to tell me that you see what I see I demanded nodding toward the warriors. We both slept Carson but now we are awake and we are prisoners. Yes you are prisoners said the warrior who had spoken before. Come along with us now. Duare arose and came and stood close to me. They did not try to prevent her. Why do you want to make us prisoners she asked the warrior. We have done nothing. We were lost in a great storm and we landed here for food and water. Let us go our way. You have nothing to fear from us. We must take you to Mypos replied the warrior. Tyros will decide what is to be done with you. I am only a warrior. It is not for me to decide. Who are Mypos and Tyros asked Duare. Mypos is the king s city and Tyros is the king. He said jong. Do you think he will let us go then No said the warrior. Tyros the Bloody releases no captives. You will be slaves. The man may be killed at once or later but Tyros will not kill you. The men were armed with tridents swords and daggers they had no firearms. I thought I saw a possibility for Duare s escape. I can hold them off with my pistol I whispered while you make a run for the anotar. And then what she demanded. Perhaps you can find Korva. Fly south for twenty four hours. You should be over a great ocean by that time then fly west. And leave you here I can probably kill them all then you can land and pick me up. Duare shook her head. I shall remain with you. What are you whispering about demanded the warrior. We were wondering if you might let us take our anotar with us said Duare. What would we do with that thing in Mypos Maybe Tyros would like to see it Ulirus suggested another warrior. Ulirus shook his head. We could never get it through the forest he said then he turned suddenly on me. How did you get it here he demanded. Come and get in it and I ll show you I told him. If I could only get him into the anotar along with Duare it would be a long time before Ulirus would see Mypos again and we would never see it. But Ulirus was suspicious. You can tell me how you did it. he countered. We flew it here from a country thousands of miles away I told him. Flew it he demanded. What do you mean Just what I said. We get in it and it flies up into the air and takes us wherever we wish to go. Now you are lying to me. Let me show you. My mate and I will take it up into the air and you can see it with your own eyes. No. If you are telling me the truth about the thing you would never come back. Well finally they did help me shove the anotar among a clump of trees and fasten it down. I told them their jong would want to see it and if they let anything happen to it he d be very angry. That got them for they were evidently terribly afraid of this Tyros the Bloody. We started off through the forest with warriors in front and behind us. Ulirus walked beside me. He wasn t a bad sort. He told me in a whisper that he d like to let us go but that he was afraid to as Tyros would be sure to learn of it and that would be the end of Ulirus. He was much interested in my blond hair and gray eyes and asked me many questions about the country from which I came. I was equally interested in him and his fellows. They all had beautiful physiques smooth flowing muscles and not an ounce of unnecessary fat but their faces were most peculiar. Their full black beards and their gills I have already mentioned these with their protruding lips and pop eyes resulted in a facial pulchritude of something less than zero. They look like fish Duare whispered to me. Just how piscine these Myposans were we were to learn later. Chapter IV WE FOLLOWED A well marked trail through the forest a typical Amtorian forest a forest of exquisite loveliness. The lacquer like bark of the trees was of many colors and the foliage of soft pastel shades heliotrope mauve violet. Flowering parasitic plants added to the riot of color flaunting blooms beside which our most gorgeous Earthly orchids would have appeared as drab as a church mouse at a Mardi Gras. There are many types of forests on Venus as there are on Earth but this through which we were passing is the most common while the most awe inspiring and amazing are those such as cover Vepaja the tops of which rise fully five thousand feet above the ground and whose trees are of such enormous girth that as at Kooaad the palace of a king is carved within one a thousand feet from its base. I am an inveterate worshipper of beauty so that even though Duare and I were marching to an unknown fate I could still be thrilled by that which met my eyes on every side. I could still wonder at and admire the gaily plumaged birds and insects and the tiny flying lizards which flitted from flower to flower in the eternal routine of pollination but I could also wonder why Ulirus had not taken my pistol from me. Perhaps there are few people more gifted with telepathic powers than I yet I do not always profit by my knowledge. Had I I should not then have thought about my pistol for while I was wondering why Ulirus had not taken it from me he pointed to it and asked me what it was. Of course it might have been only coincidence. It is a charm I told him which protects me from evil. Let me have it he said holding out a hand. I shook my head. I wouldn t do anything like that to you Ulirus I said for you have been very decent to my mate and me. What do you mean he demanded. Several of the other warriors were looking on interestedly. This is my personal charm I explained anyone else touching it might die. After all it was not exactly a lie. However if you would like to take the chance you may. I took the weapon from its holster and proffered it to him. He hesitated a moment. The other warriors were watching him. Some other time he said we must be getting on to Mypos now. I glanced at Duare. She was keeping a very straight face though she was smiling inwardly I guessed Thus I retained my weapon for the time being at least and though the warriors showed no further desire to handle it they did not lose interest in it. They kept eyeing it but I noticed that they were very careful not to brush against it when they were close to me. We had marched through the forest for about a mile when we came into the open again and ahead I saw the body of water that I had seen from the anotar before I made my fateful landing. On its shore and perhaps a mile away was a city a walled city. That is Mypos said Ulirus. It is the largest city in the world. From where we stood on slightly higher ground I had a good view of Mypos and should say that it covered perhaps a hundred acres. However I didn t dispute Ulirus s claim. If he wished to believe that it was the largest city in the world that was all right with me. We approached a large gate which was well guarded. It was swung open when Ulirus was recognized. The officer and members of the guard gathered around us asking many questions of our captors and I was delighted that among the first things that they were told was of the magical charm that I carried which dealt death to whomever else touched it. They curl up like worms and die in horrible convulsions explained Ulirus. Ulirus was quite a propagandist however unintentionally. Nobody it seemed wished to touch it. Now I said I wish that you would take us at once to Tyros. Ulirus and the officer appeared astounded. Is the man mad demanded the latter. He is a stranger said Ulirus. He does not know Tyros. My mate and I I explained are of the royal family of Korva. When the jong dies I shall be jong. The jong of any other country should receive us as befits our rank. Not Tyros said the officer. Perhaps you do not know it but Tyros is the only real jong in the world. All the others are impostors. You had better not let Tyros know that you claim to be related to a jong. He would have you killed immediately. What are you going to do with us then I asked. Ulirus looked at the officer as though for instructions. Take them to the slaves compound at the palace he directed they look fit to serve the jong. So Ulirus marched us off again. We passed along narrow crooked streets flanked by one storied houses built of frame or limestone. The former were of roughly split planks fastened to upright framework the latter of carelessly hewn blocks of limestone. The houses were as crooked as the streets. Evidently they had been built by eye without benefit of plumb line. The windows and doors were of all sizes and shapes and all manner of crookedness. They might have been designed by a modernist of my world or by a child of five. The city lay as I later learned on the shore of a great fresh water lake and as we approached the lake front we saw buildings of two stories some with towers. The largest of these is the palace of Tyros. The compound to which we were taken adjoined the palace grounds. Several hundred tiny cells bounded an open court in the center of which was a pool. Just before we were admitted Ulirus leaned close to me. Do not tell anyone that you are the son of a jong he whispered. But I have already told you and the officer at the gate I reminded him. We will not tell he said but the slaves might in order to win favor. I was puzzled. And why won t you tell I asked. For one reason I like you for another I hate Tyros. Everyone hates Tyros. Well I thank you for the warning Ulirus but I don t suppose I can ever do anything to repay you then the guard opened the gate and we were ushered into our prison. There must have been fully three hundred slaves in the compound mostly creatures like ourselves but there were also a few Myposans. The latter were common criminals or people who had aroused the ire of Tyros the Bloody. The men and women were not segregated from one another so Duare and I were not separated. Some of the other slaves gathered around us animated by curiosity a part of which was aroused by Duare s great beauty and a part by my blond hair and gray eyes. They had started to question us when the officer who had admitted us strode into the compound. Look out whispered one of the slaves. Here comes Vomer then they drifted away from us. Vomer walked up to me and eyed first me and then Duare from head to feet. His bearing was obviously intentionally insulting. What s this I hear he demanded about something that you ride in that flies through the air like a bird How should I know what you heard I retorted. One couldn t tell from their facial expressions the mental reactions of these Myposans because like true fish they didn t have any. Vomer s gills opened and closed rapidly. Perhaps that was a sign of rage or excitement. I didn t know and I didn t care. He annoyed and disgusted me. He looked surprisingly like a moon fish numbers of which I had seen seined off the Florida Keys. Don t speak to me in that tone of voice slave shouted Vomer don t you know who I am No nor what. Duare stood close to me. Don t antagonize him she whispered it will only go the harder with us. I realized that she was right. For myself I did not care but I must not jeopardize her safety. Just what do you wish to know I asked in a more conciliatory tone though it griped me to do it. I want to know if Ulirus spoke the truth he said. He told me that you rode in a great thing that flew through the air like a bird and the other warriors with him said the same thing. It is true. It can t be true objected Vomer. I shrugged. If you know it can t be true why ask me Vomer looked at me steadily with his fishy eyes for a moment then he turned and strode away. You have made an enemy said Duare. They are all our enemies I said. I should like to punch his face. A slave standing near smiled. So should we all he said. He was a nice looking chap well put up a human being and not a freak of nature like the Myposans. I had noticed him before. He had been surreptitiously eying me. It was evident that my appearance had aroused his curiosity. My name is Kandar he said by way of opening up a conversation with me. I am from Japal. I am Carson of Venus I told him. I am a citizen of Korva. I have never heard of such a country and I have never before seen a man with hair and eyes the color of yours. Are all the men of Korva like you I tried to explain the matter to him but of course he couldn t grasp the fact that there was another world far from Amtor nor could he readily accept my statement that Korva lay thousands of miles to the south. In that direction lies the edge of Amtor he objected not more than four or five hundred kob and no country could exist beyond that where all is fire and molten rock. So he too thought that his world was flat but at that his was a more tenable theory than that of the inhabitants of the southern hemisphere. I questioned him about our captors and the treatment that we might expect from them. Our work ashore is not heavy he explained and we are not treated so very badly but at sea that is different. Pray that you are not sent to sea. Chapter V THE SLAVES other than the Myposans were from various countries mysterious lands with strange names lands which lay east and west and north but none that lay south. That was the terra incognita the land of terror into which no one ever ventured. Nearly all of the slaves had been captured after being shipwrecked on the shores of the great lake on which the city of Mypos lay or on the coast of an ocean which they said lay about ten miles from the city. Kandar told me that the lake was about five hundred miles long and that Mypos lay close to the lower end of it and Japal at the upper end. We of Japal he said trade with several friendly countries which lie along the coast of the great sea and we have to pass Mypos on our voyages. Some times we are wrecked and sometimes a ship of Japal is attacked by the Myposans and captured. Most of the wrecks occur where the lake empties into the ocean through a narrow channel. Only at high tide can a ship pass through the channel from the ocean to the lake for at low tide the waters of the lake rush madly into the ocean and no ship can make headway against the current. When the tide is high the waters of the ocean flow into the lake and then a passage can be made. Duare and I had a little cubicle to ourselves and we only hoped that they would leave us together until I could perfect some plan of escape. We slaves were fed twice a day a stew of something that looked a little like shrimp and which also contained chopped tubers and flour made from the ground seeds of a plant which grows in profusion with little or no cultivation. Kandar said it might not be very palatable but that it was nutritious and strength giving. Occasionally meat was added to the stew. They want us to be strong Kandar explained so that we can do more work. We build their ships and their houses and row their galleys till their fields carry their burdens. No Myposan does any work if he has sufficient slaves. The day following our capture Vomer came into the compound with some warriors and selected a number of male slaves whom he ordered to accompany him. Kandar and I were among them. We were marched down to the water front where I had my first glimpse of Myposan ships. Some of them were quite large being over a hundred feet in length. They were equipped with sails as well as oars. The largest which lay at anchor sheltered by a rude breakwater I took to be warships: These were biremes with large flat overhanging decks above the upper bank of oars capable of accommodating hundreds of warriors. There was a small deck house both fore and aft upon the tops of which were mounted some sort of engine the purpose of which I could not determine but which I was to learn later greatly to my discomfiture and sorrow. I asked Kandar if the Myposans had any motor driven ships but he did not know what I meant. This aroused my curiosity and further questioning confirmed my suspicion that we had been carried far north of the Equator into what was to the inhabitants of the southern hemisphere the terra incognita of Venus where an entirely different culture prevailed. Everything here was quite different there being nothing to compare with the advanced civilization of Vepaja Korva or Havatoo the countries with which I was most familiar. There were signs of old age and disease here among both the Myposans and their prisoners indicating that they knew nothing of the longevity serum of the south. Their weapons and customs differed widely. Their language however was similar though not identical with that of the southern peoples. Vomer put us to work loading a barge with rock that was to be used to strengthen the breakwater. He walked among us with a sort of bull whip flicking first one and then another on bare legs and bodies. The act was purely sadistic as the best workers received as many lashes as the shirkers. I saw that he had his eyes on me and that he was slowly working his way toward me. I wondered if he would dare. At last he came within striking distance of me. Get to work slave he growled and swung his whip hand back for a terrific blow. I dropped the rock I had lifted and faced him my hand upon the butt of my pistol. Vomer hesitated his gills fluttering rapidly a sign of rage or excitement in these strange creatures who have no facial muscles with which to register emotion. The warriors with us and the other slaves were watching. Vomer was on a spot and I wondered what he would do. His reaction was quite typical of the petty tyrant and bully. Get to work he blustered and turned and struck another slave. The warriors were staring at him with fishy eyes. One couldn t tell what they were thinking but the second in command didn t leave me in doubt long. Give me your whip he said to Vomer. If you are afraid to punish the slave I am not. The fellow had a most repulsive countenance looking not at all unlike a sculpin with whiskers. His gills were palpitating and I could see that he meant business. Who said I was afraid demanded Vomer. I do said the warrior. I am in command here blustered Vomer. I can punish a slave or not as I please. If you are so anxious to punish him take my whip. The fellow seized it and came toward me. Hadn t you better tell him about this I said to Vomer tapping my pistol. What about it demanded the warrior. It kills I said. It can kill you before you can strike me. The fellow s protruding lips formed an O. and he sucked air in noisily through his teeth. It was a Myposan laugh. When angry they often reverse the operation and blow the air out with a whistling sound. He continued to advance upon me. I don t want to kill you I said but if you attempt to strike me with that whip I will. My only reason for not wishing to kill him was based upon the certainty of reprisal that might jeopardize Duare s safety. Otherwise I should have been glad to kill him and all his kind. You d better use your trident on him cautioned another warrior. I ve whipped slaves to death before boasted the fellow and I can whip this one to death then he rushed at me with upraised whip. I whipped out my pistol the r ray pistol that destroys flesh and bone and let him have it. There was no smoke nothing visible just a sharp staccato buzz then there was a great hole in the center of the fellow s face and he sprawled forward dead. All about me the slaves stood wide eyed and terrified and the gills of the fish men opened and closed rapidly. The warrior who had advised the dead man to use his trident raised his weapon to hurl it at me and he went down too with a hole in his heart. I swung around then so that I was facing them all. They looked at Vomer as though awaiting orders. He hesitated. I let the muzzle of my pistol swing in his direction. Get to work slaves he said we have wasted enough time. Both his voice and his knees shook. Kandar was working beside me. One of us must always keep an eye on him he said otherwise he ll get you when your back is turned. I ll help you watch. I thanked him. I felt that I had a friend. Chapter VI WHEN WE GOT back to the slaves compound Kandar told Duare what had happened. I would have stopped him could I have done so for the poor girl had enough to worry about as it was. I knew that you had made an enemy of Vomer she said the very first time he came out to speak to you. This thing had to come. It is just as well that it is over so that we may know where we stand. If I could get an audience with Tyros I said it is possible that we might receive better treatment even our release. What makes you think so inquired Kandar. He is a jong and it seems reasonable to believe that he would accord to people of our station in life the ordinary amenities of decent and civilized society. My mate is the daughter of a jong and I am the son of one. I referred to my adoption by Taman Jong of Korva. Kandar smiled and shook his head. You do not know Tyros he said nor the psychology of the Myposans. They consider themselves a superior race and the rest of us on a par with the beasts. I have even heard them voice their wonder that we are endowed with speech. It is Tyros ambition to conquer the world carrying the Myposan culture to all benighted races and at the same time enslaving or destroying them. He is well aware of the fact that I am the eldest son of the Jong of Japal yet I receive no better treatment than the meanest slave. No my friend it would do you no good to have an audience with Tyros even if you could obtain one which of course you cannot. The best that you can do is hope for the impossible. And what is that asked Duare. Escape. You think that that is impossible I asked. Well let us say improbable Kandar replied for after all nothing is impossible to the man of imagination and initiative such as I assume you to be. And may we count on your co operation I asked. Absolutely. I do not intend remaining a slave here indefinitely. Death would be far preferable. You have been here longer than we I said. You must have given much thought to escape. Perhaps you already have a plan. I wish I had he replied but you will find it difficult to plan where one is not the master of one s simplest acts and where one is constantly under the watchful eyes of armed warriors and traitorous spies. Spies asked Duare. What do you mean I mean that among the slaves there are always those who will inform against their fellows in the hope of currying favor with their masters. You cannot be too careful with whom you discuss even your hopes. You do not even know that I am not a spy he added with a smile. I ll take a chance on that I told him. I think I am a sufficiently good judge of human nature to know a man of honor even upon only short acquaintance. Thank you but don t be too sure he laughed which made me all the surer of him. I liked Kandar and so did Duare. He was quite genuine the sort of fellow you might meet in the officers club at Schofield or San Diego. Had he not been captured by the Myposans he would one day have been jong of Japal and he probably had a family tree the roots of which reached way back into antiquity as did those of most of the royal families of Amtor with which I am acquainted. Unlike the Polynesians whose genealogies were handed down by word of mouth for hundreds of years and are all mixed up with myth and legend these people had a written language and the records were true and exact for ages. On my mother s side I can trace my ancestry back to Deacon Edmund Rice who came to Sudbury Massachusetts about 1639 and from him to Cole Codoveg who was King of Briton in the third century yet by comparison with Duare or Kandar or Taman I am a parvenu. These people are extremely proud of their ancestry yet they can still accept others at their face value regardless of their background. About mid forenoon of the day following my encounter with Volmer he came swaggering into the compound with a number of warriors his bodyguard I called them for I was quite sure that hated as he was he dared not come alone among the slaves. In a loud voice he summoned Duare to step forward. Instantly I was alert and antagonistic. I didn t know what he wanted of Duare but whatever it was I was against it so I stepped up beside her. I didn t call your name slave growled Vomer in the most insulting tone of voice he could conjure. I said nothing. Back to your kennel slave he shouted. Not until I know what you want of my mate I told him. His gills flapped and he pursed his hideous lips and blew out air like a spouting whale. The flapping of the gills by these Myposans has an almost obscene sound and the blowing of air when they are angry is equally disgusting. But disgusting or not it was quite evident that Vomer was angry and I could endure his obnoxious manifestation of anger for the pleasure that it gave me to have made him angry. As you may have gathered I did not like Vomer. He took a step toward me and then hesitated then he looked at his warriors but they were looking the other way. Evidently they had heard of or seen the lethal possibilities of the r ray. Between his flapping gills and his blowing he had difficulty in controlling his voice but he managed to scream Carson of Venus step forward I am already here I said. This he ignored. Kandar of Japal step forward he wheezed. He would probably have liked to bellow but his gills were still flapping and he was still blowing spasmodically which would naturally interfere with bellowing. I had to laugh. What are you laughing at slave It was only a gurgle. Duare laid a hand upon my arm before I could reply. She has far more sense than I. I wanted very much to say that I had seen moon fish seined off the Florida Keys but that I had never before seen moon fish with whiskers and that I thought them very amusing. Vomer called a couple of more names and the slaves stepped forward and took their places beside us then he told us to fall in and follow him. The warriors formed before and after us and we left the slaves compound and marched out into the narrow streets of the city. Where were we going To what new scenes what new adventures what new dangers were we being conducted Chapter VII THE SREETS OF Mypos are narrow and winding. As the Myposans have neither wheeled vehicles nor beasts of burden their streets need not be wide and the fact that they are narrow and winding would make the city easier to defend in the event of invasion. A single stalwart Horatius might hold any one of them against a greatly superior force. In many places our little party of slaves and warriors were compelled to move in single file the pedestrians we met flattening themselves against the walls of the buildings as we squeezed past. And so we progressed to an open plaza near the water front. Here there were a number of Myposans surrounding a small platform near which we were halted. Immediately a number of the Myposans congregated there came among us and commenced to examine us and one with a huge beard mounted the platform. One of those who moved among us attracted his attention and touched Duare on the shoulder. The bearded one caught Vomer s eye. Bring the woman to the platform he directed. I waited as Vomer led Duare up the three or four steps to where the other man stood. What was going to happen I did not know but I had my suspicions. What do you know of this woman asked the man of Vomer. The fellow who had touched Duare s shoulder moved forward to the platform and the others crowded about him. She was captured beyond the forest with a man who says that she is a janjong in some country of which no one ever heard replied Vomer. Beyond that I know nothing of her. She has behaved well but the man is insubordinate and dangerous. He is down there and he pointed to me. The man with the large beard fixed his fishy eyes upon me while Vomer whispered to him earnestly. They spoke together thus for a moment and then Vomer left the platform. The man standing beside Duare looked down on the little crowd below him. Who wishes to buy this fine female slave he asked. So that was it Well I had guessed correctly but what was I going to do about it I will buy her said the man who had touched Duare. I could kill many of them with my pistol but eventually they would overpower me and Duare would be if anything worse off. What will you pay demanded the auctioneer. One hundred kloovol replied the man. A vol has about the same purchasing power as our fifty nine cent dollar. Kloo is the prefix forming the plural. So this creature had dared to appraise Duare daughter of a thousand jongs at fifty nine dollars I fingered the butt of my pistol longingly. And who will pay more asked the auctioneer. Yes who grumbled a Myposan standing near me. Who would dare bid against Kod who buys for Tyros He spoke in a very low voice to one who stood near him. There were no other bids and Duare was knocked down to Kod. I was furious. Duare was to be taken away from me and worse still she was to become the chattel of a heartless tyrant. All my moderate intentions went by the board. I determined to fight it out killing as many as I could seize Duare and blast my way to the city gates. With any luck at all I might make it for the element of surprise in my action would give me a great advantage. Vomer and the warriors were pressed pretty closely around me. I had not noticed it before but they had been closing in on me and now before I could put my plan into action they leaped upon me and by weight of numbers bore me to the ground. It was evidently the fruit of Vomer s whispered conversation with the auctioneer. Before I could whip out my pistol they bound my hands behind my back and I was helpless. They did not take my weapon from me and I knew why. I had said that whoever touched it would die and they believed me. While I was down Vomer kicked me in the ribs and after they had jerked me to my feet he struck me in the face. I don t know how much further he would have gone had not the auctioneer commanded him to desist. Do you want to ruin a valuable piece of property he cried. I was smarting under the indignities that Vomer had heaped upon me but I was more concerned about Duare s future. The man Kod was leading her away and she was looking back at me with a brave little smile. I shall come for you Duare I cried after her. Somehow some way I shall come. Silence slave snapped Vomer. Kandar was standing near me. Duare is fortunate he said. Why I asked. She was bought for Tyros he replied. And what is fortunate about that I demanded. It seems to me to augur a future worse than death for a woman such as Duare. You are mistaken. She will serve one of the women of the royal family. Not after Tyros has seen her I argued. Skabra will see her and Skabra will see that Tyros does not get her. Who is Skabra I asked. Tyros mate the Vadjong of Mypos a she tharban and a jealous one. You need have no fear that Duare will fall into the hands of Tyros while Skabra lives she is too beautiful. Were she ill favored Skabra might let Tyros have her. Well that offered a ray of hope and I was thankful for even the slightest glimmer. Just then a man came and touched Kandar on the shoulder and he went to the slave block. A number of Myposans swarmed around him feeling of his muscles examining his teeth. The bidding for Kandar was spirited. He brought three hundred fifty kloovol three and one half times as much as Duare but then he was a strong husky man and as he was not being bid in by an agent of Tyros the bidding was open to all. After Kandar had been purchased the man who had bought him touched me on the shoulder and it was my turn to go to the block. I went with my hands bound tightly behind my back. Who wishes to buy this fine male slave he droned. No one spoke. There was no bid. The auctioneer waited a moment looking first at one potential bidder and then at another. He is very strong he said. He has fine teeth. I have examined them myself. He could do a great deal of work for many years. I am sure that he is quite as intelligent as any members of the lower orders. Who wishes to buy him Again there was silence. It is too bad to destroy such a fine slave urged the auctioneer. Almost he had tears in his eyes. And that was understandable since he received a commission on every slave sold and every unsold slave was a blot on his escutcheon. Suddenly he got quite angry. Why did you touch him he almost screamed at the man who had laid a hand on my shoulder. I didn t touch him for purchase snapped the fellow I only wanted to see if his flesh was firm just a matter of curiosity. Well you had no business to do it. Now you will have to bid on him. You know the law of the slave market. Oh all right said the fellow. I don t want him but I ll pay ten kloovol for him. Anybody else crave this fine male slave inquired the auctioneer. It seemed that no one did. Very well he said this fine male slave has been sold to the agent of Kron for ten kloovol. Take him away So I had been sold for five dollars and ninety cents That was certainly a blow to my ego. It is a good thing that I have a sense of the ridiculous. Chapter VIII WELL AT LEAST I would not be separated from Kandar and that was something for he had been in Mypos long enough to become more or less familiar with the city and the manners and customs of its inhabitants. If an opportunity for escape arose he would be invaluable as an ally. Yron s agent motioned us to accompany him and Kandar started to comply but I stood still. Come slave commanded the agent. What are you standing there for Come with me He raised a whip he carried to strike me. My wrists are bound I said. What of it he demanded. Come along Not until you free my hands I told him. He struck me then with his whip. Get going slave he cried. Not until my hands are freed I said stubbornly then he struck me again whereupon I lay down. The fellow became furious and struck me again and again but I would not budge. If you want your slave alive said Kandar you will free his hands. He will never come until you do. I knew that it was a hell of a way for a five dollar and ninety cent slave to act but I felt that by asserting myself at the beginning I might find the going easier later. The agent hit me a couple of more blows for good luck then he stooped and freed my hands. Get up he ordered and as I rose to my feet he swelled visibly exhaling wind through his teeth. I am a great slave driver he said they always obey me. I was glad he was satisfied and winked at Kandar. Kandar grinned. Be careful he cautioned. They make short shrift of slaves who are recalcitrant and don t forget that you didn t cost Yron very much. He could easily afford to do away with you. Vomer had been standing around evidently enjoying the whipping I had received. You shouldn t have freed his hands he said to Yron s agent. Why demanded the fellow. Because now he can kill you with that thing he explained pointing at my pistol. Give it to me commanded the agent. I slipped it from its holster and proffered it to him muzzle first. Don t touch it cried Vomer. It will kill you if you touch it. The man drew back. He was in a quandary. You needn t be afraid I told him you would never have touched it and as long as you treat Kandar and me well I ll not kill you. I slipped the weapon back into its holster. You ve bought something for Yron said Vomer venomously. When he finds out what he ll lop off your head. I suppose the fellow was unhappy for his gills fluttered. I couldn t tell of course by the expression on his face as that never changed. Like all the rest of his kind he had no facial muscles to reflect his moods. Come along slaves he ordered and led Kandar and me away. It was not far from the slave market to Yron s house and we presently found ourselves in a large patio in the center of which was a pool about fifty feet wide and a hundred long. There were trees and shrubs and flowers and an expanse of lawn all in the soft pastel shades of Amtorian verdure. Several slaves were pruning and trimming and cultivating and there were three armed with wooden tridents standing like sentries about the pool. I noticed that these often glanced up at the sky. Naturally I looked up also but I saw nothing. Glancing into the pool I saw a few fishes swimming about but they did not interest me then. Some one had notified Yron that two new slaves had arrived and presently he came out into the patio to inspect us much as a gentleman farmer on Earth would inspect a couple of new cows or horses. There was nothing distinctive about Yron except that his trappings and weapons were more ornate than those of common warriors. He looked us over carefully felt of our muscles examined our teeth. A fine specimen he said indicating me. What did you have to pay for him Ten kloovol said the agent. They must have paid you to take this one then he said nodding toward Kandar. I gave Kandar the laugh then. I think the agent was not very happy then. Casting about for an out he said I was very fortunate. I got both these fine male slaves for three hundred sixty kloovol. You mean to tell me you paid three hundred and fifty for that he yelled pointing at Kandar when you could buy magnificent specimens like this for only ten Nobody wanted this one said the agent. That is why I got it so cheap. No one else bid. Why demanded Yron. Because he is insubordinate and dangerous. They had to tie his hands behind his back to keep him from killing people. Yron s gills fluttered and flapped and he blew and he blew and he blew reminding me of the Big Bad Wolf in the Three Little Pigs. So he fairly screamed. So you bought a dangerous slave that no one else would have and you brought him here The auctioneer made me buy him pleaded the agent but if you don t want him I ll kill him and repay you the ten kloovol. I laid my hand upon the butt of my pistol and the agent saw the gesture. All right said Yron. Kill him. I drew the pistol from its holster and the agent changed his mind. On second thought he said I ll buy him from you and then resell him. Perhaps I can make some profit from him. Listen I said to Yron this is all very foolish. If I am well treated and my friend here is well treated I will kill no one. And you will work for me and obey orders demanded Yron. As long as we are well treated I said. What is your name Carson. And yours Kandar. Yron called to a funny looking little man whose mouth appeared to be beneath his chin. He looked like a shark. He was a sort of major domo. Carson and Kandar said Yron will go to the ship the next time we sail in the meantime keep them around the pool and let them guard the children and as for you he shouted at the agent if this Carson causes any trouble you ll go to the ship then he came and examined me closely. Where did you come from he demanded. I never saw any of your kind who looked like you. I never saw anyone with yellow hair and gray eyes before. As there was no use trying to explain something to him that he couldn t possibly understand I simply told him that I came from a country far to the south. There is no country to the south he said only molten rock and fire so that settled that. Yron the great noble walked away and recentered his house. The major domo approached us. He seemed to undulate toward us. Momentarily I expected to see him roll over on his back and bite somebody so sharklike was his appearance. He handed us each a wooden trident. You will remain close to the pool he said until you are relieved. Let nothing harm the children. Let no one enter the pool other than Yron or one of his women. Be constantly on the lookout for guypals. Never forget that you are very fortunate to be in the service of so great a man as the noble Yron then he undulated away. Kandar and I walked over beside the pool where the other three slaves were patrolling and one of them instantly recognized Kandar and greeted him most respectfully. You do not recognize me of course he said. I was a warrior in the bodyguard of Jantor Jong of Japal your father. My name is Artol. I am sorry to see a prince of Japal here. As I served your father I will serve you in whatever way I can. We are neither common warrior nor royal prince here said Kandar. Let us serve one another. Whatever you wish replied Artol but you are still my Prince. Kandar smiled and shrugged. How came you here he asked. So Artol told his story. Chapter IX WE WERE TWENTY he said twenty warriors of the Jong s own bodyguard. A great ship with two banks of oars manned by a hundred slaves and carrying a huge sail for fair winds was fitted out to carry a great cargo of wares to Torlac which lies five hundred klookob to the west on the shores of the Noellat gerloo. We knew that the cargo was valuable because we twenty were sent along to guard it twenty warriors of the Jong s own bodyguard picked men all from the best warriors of Japal. It was to be a long journey two hundred klookob down the great Lake of Japal five hundred klookob along the coast of the Noellat gerloo to Torlac and then back fourteen hundred klookob 3500 miles altogether. Note: Noellat gerloo the name of the ocean means mighty water. Ellat is might and the prefix no is identical with our suffix y so noellat means mighty. Gerloo is water. But it turned out to be a short journey said Kandar you came only as far as Mypos. On the contrary my prince we completed our journey to Torlac but not without incident. While we were lying at the lower end of the Lake of Japal waiting for the tide that would float us through the channel into the Noellat gerloo we were attacked by a Myposan ship of war fifty oars and a hundred warriors. They slipped up upon us at night and swarmed our deck. It was a great battle Prince twenty against a hundred for our galley slaves were no good to us and the sailors of our ship were little better. Our officer was killed in the first clash and I Artol took command. The captain of the ship terrified was in hiding so the command of the ship as well devolved upon me. We fought as only the jong s bodyguard knows how to fight but five to one are heavy odds. And then they armed their galley slaves and turned them upon us forcing them to fight. Still we held our own. The decks were red with blood. As we cut them down more threw themselves upon us two for every one we killed and then I saw that the tide had changed it was running out of the lake into the ocean. So far we had been able to hold the hatch leading from the fighting deck to the deck where the galley slaves sat at their oars and I sent a good man down there with his orders then with my own hands I slipped the anchor. I shouted the command to row and leaped to the tiller. The ship swung around and headed for the ocean dragging the enemy ship with it. It was certain that one of the ships would be wrecked and quite probably both. The Myposans ran for their own ship just as some of their fellows cut her loose from us. We were caught in the swirling rush of the waters racing from the lake into the ocean. I could hear the crack of the whips on the slaves backs as the galley masters urged them to greater effort for only by tremendous effort could they give the ship steerage way in that racing torrent. I am a soldier and no sailor but I guided the ship through the channel in the darkness of night until it floated at last on the bosom of the ocean then the captain came out of hiding and took command. Instead of thanking me for saving his ship he berated me for slipping the anchor. We had words then and I told him that when we returned to Japal I should report to the jong himself that he had hidden all during the battle when he should have been on deck defending this ship. That is why I am here. But I do not understand said Kandar. Wait. I am not through. Presently you shall know. When I checked up after the fight I found that only ten of us remained and five of these were wounded. Also we had eleven Myposan prisoners eleven who had been unable to reach the deck of their ship after it had been cut loose. These were sent down to the galley masters to help man the oars. In due time we reached Torlac unloaded our cargo and took on another for Japal. The return trip was uneventful until after we entered the Lake of Japal. We lay to at the lower end of the lake so that we should pass Mypos after dark as is the custom. Then we rowed slowly and silently up the lake with no lights showing on the ship. It was quite dark. One could not recognize faces on deck. There was a great deal of movement there I thought men passing to and fro constantly. We came opposite Mypos. The lights of the city were plainly discernible. Some one said What is that right there to starboard At that I and my warriors moved to the starboard rail. I had no more than reached it than some one seized me around the waist leaped to the rail with me and then into the lake. It was a Myposan You know how these fellows swim my prince. Half the time he had me under water half drowned but at last he dragged me ashore at Mypos more dead than alive. When I could gather my breath and my wits I found myself in a slave compound with all my men. Later I learned the truth. The captain fearful that we would report him to the jong had liberated the Myposans with the understanding that they would take us prisoners. As a matter of fact he had stipulated that they were to drown us but the temptation. to take us in as prisoners whom they might sell into slavery was too much for them. It saved our lives. So that my prince is how I came to be a slave in Mypos and I live only to return to Japal and have the life of the coward and traitor who sent ten of the jong s bodyguard into slavery. Who was this captain asked Kandar. His name is Gangor. Kandar nodded. I know much of him he said but nothing good. It was rumored that he was high in the councils of the party that has long sought to overthrow the jong my father. That name meant nothing to me then. It was to mean much later. Chapter X AS WE THREE talked the major domo came sinuously toward us more shark like than ever. You stand here and talk slaves he accused when you should be watching for guypals. For this you should be beaten.. Separate Patrol the pool. If a child is harmed you all die most unpleasantly. So we fell to walking around the pool with the other two guards and some of us were always looking up at the sky though for what I hadn t the remotest idea. After the major domo left the patio I fell in beside Kandar. What are guypals I asked. They are large birds of prey he said really very dangerous. If it were not for the guards they would come down and carry off the children. As it is guards or no guards you never can tell when they will come. If they do some of us may be killed. They are terrific fighters and absolutely without fear. It seemed to me a lot of foolishness guarding children against birds when there weren t any children nor any birds. At least I hadn t seen any. It would have been much more sensible I thought to let us sit down and rest until the children came out into the patio. As guypals don t fly at night we were dismissed as soon as it got dark and taken to the slaves compound where we were fed a nasty mess and herded into a shed to sleep on filthy grass mats. Yron s slaves evidently didn t fare any too well. I wondered about Duare. Was she being well treated Was she safe Would I ever see her again I fell into a fitful sleep worrying about her. At dawn the next day after a vile breakfast we were taken to the patio again and told to look out for guypals and guard the children. If the guypals are as dangerous as you say I remarked to Kandar why do they give us wooden tridents What can we do with a piece of wood against such fierce birds All we can do is the best we can he said. They are afraid to arm us with metal tridents we might turn on them. You know these Myposans are at heart arrant cowards. Well I hope I see a guypal today I said anything to break the monotony. I d even like to see one of their children it might attract a guypal or two. Where do they keep these children of theirs anyway Kandar laughed and pointed into the pool. There he said. There are the children. I looked into the pool but saw nothing but the few strange looking fishes I had occasionally seen the previous day. I see nothing in there I said but a few weird looking fishes. Those are the children said Kandar. I looked at him in surprise for a moment until I got the idea. I see I said. We have people like that in my own world being childless they lavish their affection on dogs and cats. These people have adopted fishes. Kandar shook his head. You are quite wrong on both scores he said. In the first place these people have no affection to lavish on anything and in the second these are their children and he pointed to the fishes swimming playfully about the pool. You are very amusing I said. I didn t intend being. I am really quite serious. You see these fishlike creatures are really the children of Yron and his mate. It is incredible I said. But a fact. Human beings such as we bring forth young that somewhat resemble themselves. Many of the beasts do likewise. Some creatures lay eggs in which the embryo develops. The Myposan females bring fish into the world fish that eventually develop into Myposans. If you look closely you will see that the largest of these creatures is already developing hands and feet. Later it will slough its tail then it will become an amphibian and crawl out on land. Slowly its head and face will change becoming more human it will walk erect and it will become a Myposan but it will still have gills as well as lungs and be partially amphibious. I looked closely at one of the darting fishes and plainly saw rudimentary hands and feet. Somehow it seemed shockingly obscene. I owe you an apology I said to Kandar but I really thought that you were joking. So these are the children we are guarding The little darlings. Papa seems quite solicitous about their safety but he and Mamma don t pay much attention to them otherwise. The Myposans are absolutely devoid of affection. They have no word for love. Their protective instinct is strong however a purely biological reaction against racial extinction. They will protect these little monstrosities with their lives. These are very young I suppose I said. They are more than a year old. The females come into their pools to spawn once a year and give birth to thousands of tiny fishlike creatures some say as many as a million. These almost immediately find their way out into the lake through the subterranean channels which connect all these pools with the Lake of Japal. Where they go is not definitely known but probably out into the ocean where those that survive remain for a year of course most of them are devoured by the larger denizens of the sea. In the case of Yron s mate only three survived from last year s spawning. These may not even be hers I suggested. Oh yes they are Kandar assured me. Some instinct always guides the little rascals back to the pool in which they were spawned. I don t see how anyone can tell I demurred. Instinct again said Kandar. These creatures are endowed with a congenital antipathy for similar creatures devoid of identical genes. If one of another spawning should blunder into this pool in search of his own these creatures would set upon it and either drive it out or kill it. The parents especially the females have the same instinctive power of recognition of their own. Myposan slaves have told me that it is not uncommon for none of a female s own spawning to return all having been devoured at sea. If in such a case the young of another female blunders into her pool she immediately recognizes that it is not hers and destroys it. I presume that is a provision of Nature to prevent inbreeding I suggested. On the contrary it is a provision of Nature to insure inbreeding said Kandar. The Myposans never mate with offspring outside their own families. After you have been here a little longer you will be struck by the startling family resemblances and characteristics. You still see that Yron and his mate look and act alike and if you ever witness a gathering of the clan you will be struck by the remarkable resemblances. I was about to ask some further question what I do not now recall when I heard a shrill scream from overhead and the whir of wings. The guypals cried Artol. Chapter XI GUYPALS They were large birds and ferocious. There must have been a dozen of them. They dove for us and for the pool. We poked and struck at them with our wooden tridents and they zoomed and dove again. People came running from the house. Yron and his mate were among them. There was a great deal of noise and a great deal of excitement. The warriors who came had metal tridents but these the guypals eluded. They seemed to know that the wooden weapons wielded by the slaves could not do much damage. The Myposans were blowing furiously and flapping their gills. All were screaming orders and advice. It was bedlam. The noise should have frightened off almost anything. We were doing pretty well and keeping the guypals at a distance when one of them eluded us and dove straight for the pool. It looked as though one of Mrs. Yron s little darlings was about to get his. You can t get up much enthusiasm about succoring a fish. At least I can t but I had a job to do and it was only natural that being what I am I should do the best I could to acquit myself worthily. I imagine that I just don t think such things out. I act quite mechanically. Had I stopped to think I should have said to myself These may be children to some but they are just fish to me and if I save them they will grow up to be three more enemies. I shall let them die but I said nothing of the kind to myself. I imagine that what crossed my mind and influenced me was a subconscious reminder that I had been given the job of protecting these creatures and that nothing else counted. Of course it all happened in the fraction of a second. The guypal dove for the pool and I drew my r ray pistol and blew a hole through it. It crumpled and fell into the pool then I turned the pistol on the others which were circling about awaiting another opportunity to elude us. Three more dropped and the others flew away. Yron approached me. I thought he was going to express his indebtedness to me but he did nothing of the sort. He didn t even thank me for saving his little darlings. What is that thing he demanded. A pistol I replied. What is a postol he asked. This I said. And it killed the guypals he asked. I killed the guypals. Without me the pistol could not kill them unless I added they had touched it. Could it kill anything else he asked. Certainly anything. Me You and all your people I assured him. Give it to me slave he demanded. Certainly I said holding it out toward him but if you touch it will kill you. He drew back and commenced to blow. His gills flapped. Throw it away he commanded. He might as well have asked me to cut off my right hand and throw it away. I was saving that pistol for some future emergency. You may wonder why I had never used it on these people in a break for freedom. It was because I had never yet found conditions such that I might hope to escape and take Duare with me and I certainly had no intention of trying to escape without her. I just grinned at Yron and shook my head. I may need it I said if the people of Mypos do not treat my mate and me well. Yron fairly danced up and down. Throw it away slave he screamed. I Yron a noble of Mypos and your master command you. And I Carson of Venus a prince of Korva refuse. You could have heard Yron s gills flap a city block away and he was blowing like a whale which he didn t at all resemble. I don t know whether or not fish have high blood pressure but I am sure Yron didn t as otherwise he would have exploded. I think I have never seen any other creature in the throes of such a terrific rage the more terrific because of its futility. Seize him he screamed at several of his warriors who had come to the pool following the alarm. Seize him and destroy that thing The warriors had been interested listeners to our altercation. They had heard me say that whoever touched my pistol would die so they came forward warily each one intent upon permitting some one else to be first. They were very polite in this respect. There was no rude elbowing of others aside in order to be the first to seize me. That is close enough I said pointing the pistol at them. They halted in their tracks looking very uncomfortable. Spear him commanded Yron. I pointed the pistol at Yron. When the first spear is raised you die I told him. The warriors looked questioningly at him. Hold cried Yron. Do not spear him yet. Wait until I have gone. You are not going until you have countermanded that order I told him. I think that perhaps we had better discuss this matter so that there may be no more misunderstandings they are always annoying and sometimes fatal. I do not discuss anything with my slaves replied Yron haughtily. I shrugged. It is all the same to me I said but remember this: If my mate and my friend Kandar here and I are not treated well you die. I can kill you any time I wish. Your mate You have no mate here. Not here but in the palace of Tyros. She was purchased for him in the slave market. You d better advise him to treat her well. At the same time arrange to release us and return us to the place where we were captured. Such insolence he cried. Wait until Tyros hears of this. He will have you killed. Not before I have killed Tyros. Tell him that. I thought I might as well play up my advantage while I could for it was evident that he was already afraid of me. How can you reach Tyros in his palace he demanded. By killing every one who tries to stop me commencing with you I said twirling my pistol around my index finger. I don t believe that you could do it you are just boasting said Yron. I shall prove it I said leveling my pistol at him. At that he dove into the pool and disappeared. I found it difficult not to laugh he cut such an amusing figure in his fright. All the slaves and warriors were standing around watching me at a respectful distance. I waited for Yron to come to the surface. I was going to give him another scare but he didn t come up. Five minutes passed and nothing happened except that the warriors slowly dispersed going back into the building. Finally only we slaves remained in the patio. Yron must have drowned I said to Kandar. By no means replied Kandar. He may be out in the lake by this time or in a grotto at the bottom of the pool or back in his palace. But how I asked. These people are amphibians explained Kandar. They can remain under water for considerable periods of time. Also they have underwater corridors that lead from their pools out into the lake as well as other corridors that lead to smaller pools within their palaces and there are usually grottos which are really parts of the pools far under water where they can remain in hiding breathing through their gills. Kandar told me a great deal about these Myposans but nothing that was later to stand me in better stead than the description of these underwater corridors. He did not like the Myposans upon whom he looked with the utmost contempt. He said that they were neither fish nor human and their arrogant egotism irked him no end. They consider themselves supermen whose destiny it is to rule the world forcing what they call their culture on all other peoples Culture he snorted and then words failed him. We have had peoples like that in my own world I said led by such men as Genghis Kahn and Attila the Hun who wrecked the culture and civilization of their times and set the world back many centuries and I suppose we shall have others. And what happened after them asked Kandar. Civilization struggled slowly from the mire into which they had plunged it as I suppose it always will struggle back after each such catastrophe but to what glorious heights it might have attained had they never lived Chapter XII THE NEXT DAY dawned like any other day. The intense light of the Sun filtering through the two cloud envelopes imparted a brilliance comparable to that of an April day in our own northern hemisphere when the sky is lightly overcast by fleecy clouds yet for me it was to be no ordinary day. It was to mark a definite a drastic change in my fortunes. With other slaves I was still guarding the horrid little creaters in the pool. I day dreamed of Duare. I lived again the high moments of our lives together. I planned. I schemed fantastic schemes for our escape but when all was said I was still a slave. The major domo came into the patio with four warriors. They were garbed differently from those I had seen on the grounds of Yron s palace or elsewhere. Their trappings were more ornate. Kandar was patrolling at my side. Members of the jong s guard he said. I wonder what they are doing here. We were soon to learn. Led by the major domo they approached us. The major domo confronted me. His gills flapped idly and he blew a little as befits one who addresses a low slave. Slave he said you will accompany these warriors. Why I asked. Then his gills did flap and he blew angrily. Because I say so he bellowed. That is not enough I said. I don t like it here but I don t intend going some place that may be worse. Enough of this snapped one of the jong s warriors. Come slave and come alive or we will take you dead. He came toward me. I drew my pistol and the major domo seized the arm of the warrior. Careful he cautioned. With that thing he can kill you and he will. He threatens one of the jong s guard demanded the warrior. I do I said. I threaten them all and I can kill them all. Ask any of Yron s people if I speak the truth. Why hasn t that thing been taken from him demanded the warrior. Because whoever touches it dies said the major domo. Tell me where I am going and why I insisted and then perhaps there will be no reason for killing. The major domo and the warriors stepped to one side and whispered together then the former said to me There is no reason why you should not know. The noble Yron as a mark of his loyalty and high esteem has presented you to our beloved jong. So The noble Yron was getting rid of a dangerous and undesirable alien by passing him on to his ruler. The loyal Yron I had to smile. Had the German Kaiser presented Trotsky armed with a bomb to the Czar of Russia the acts would have been somewhat analogous. Why are you smiling demanded the warrior spokesman. I am happy I said. I shall be delighted to go to the palace of Tyros and I will go willingly on one condition. Slaves do not make conditions growled the warrior. I am an exception I said you have never before seen a slave like me. I twirled my pistol about my finger. Well what do you want now demanded the major domo. I think that Yron should also present Kandar to his jong. Kandar is a much more valuable slave than I and if Yron really wishes to demonstrate his loyalty and high esteem he should present a really royal gift to his jong two princes instead of one the Crown Prince of Japal and the Crown Prince of Korva. Of course I didn t say Crown Prince I said Tanjong. I made this condition not only because I had grown very fond of Kandar but because I felt that he could be very helpful to me in effecting the rescue of Duare and the eventual escape of all three of us. That said the warrior is an excellent suggestion. But Yron only mentioned the slave Carson objected the major domo. Should I return to Tyros with only one slave and have to report that Yron refused to give two the jong might be very angry with Yron suggested the warrior. The major domo was on a spot. So was Yron. I shall have to consult my master said the former. We will wait said the warrior and the major domo disappeared within the palace. I hope you don t mind going with me I said to Kandar. I felt that we might work together but I had no opportunity to discuss the matter with you. I was delighted when you mentioned it he replied. I only wish that Artol might accompany us. I wish so too but perhaps I have gone as far as is safe. Tyros might become suspicious if he learned that he had acquired three slaves who were bound together by ties of friendship and that one of them had proved highly insubordinate. I have a feeling that Yron has pulled a boner. The shark like major domo came weaving back into the patio. His gills were moving gently and he sucked air in between his teeth as he addressed the warrior. The noble Yron is delighted by the opportunity to present two slaves to the mighty Tyros. He would be delighted to give three slaves. That is noble of him I said and if this warrior of the jong s guard would like to select an unusually fine slave I suggest that he have a look at this one with whom I have been particularly impressed since I have been in the palace of Yron and I indicated Artol. The major domo glared at me with his fishy eyes his gills flapped and he blew noisily. Artol was one of Yron s best and most valuable slaves. The warrior looked him over felt his muscles examined his teeth. An excellent specimen he said. I am sure that our jong will be well pleased with this gift. Artol was pleased too for now he would not have to be separated from his beloved Tanjong. I was pleased Kandar was pleased the jong s warriors were pleased. The major domo was not pleased but I was sure that Yron was glad to get rid of me at any price. Now he could come out into his patio without fearing for his life. Perhaps I could make Tyros so anxious to be rid of me that he would give us all our freedom. The leader of the warriors stood looking at me. He seemed to hesitate. I guessed that he was wondering what other demands I might make if he again attempted to take me away and hesitated to subject his authority to any further embarrassing contretemps. Kandar Artol and I were standing together. The other slaves and warriors and the major domo were watching the ranking warrior. The situation was becoming strained and difficult and I was on the point of relieving it by suggesting that we leave for the palace of Tyros when a whir of wings and a shrill whistle attracted our attention upward. Guypal someone cried and sure enough a huge guypal was diving straight for the pool. The warriors with their metal tridents and the slaves with theirs of wood rushed about frantically screaming and raising such a din as should have frightened away a battalion of guypals but it never deterred this one. It was diving straight for the center of the pool well out of reach of the tridents. A dozen were cast at it and all missed. What has taken so long to tell happened in a few seconds and in those few seconds I whipped out my pistol and as the guypal touched the surface of the pool I sent a stream of r rays through its body. It cut the water staining it red with its blood and then it floated to the surface dead. The warriors looked at me in open mouthed astonishment. The major domo nodded his head. You see he said to the warriors that what I told you is true. This is a very dangerous man. And so Yron is giving him to Tyros exclaimed the leader of the warriors. You do not understand hedged the major domo. This is Yron s most valuable slave. All alone he can guard the children against guypals. Twice now has he proved this. Yron thought that Tyros would be glad to have such a guard for the royal children. The warrior grunted. Perhaps he said. And now I said to the warrior why don t you take us to Tyros Why are we hanging around here listening to this little man The major domo was speechless from blowing. Very well said the warrior. Come slaves and thus at last we started for the palace of Tyros Kandar Artol and I. Chapter XIII I THOUGHT that now I should see Duare often but I was doomed to disappointment. The palace of Tyros sprawls over many acres and the compound where the common slaves are confined is far from the precincts allotted to royalty where Duare served as I learned soon after arriving. The slaves quarters were open sheds forming a quadrangle in the center of which was a pool. There was no growing thing within the quadrangle just bare earth pounded hard by the passage of bare and sandaled feet. We slept upon mats. The pool was for bathing. Its connection with the lake was by a conduit too small to permit of escape. Fresh water was being constantly supplied it from a stream which ran down from the distant hills so it was always clean and fresh. The entire compound was kept in immaculate condition and the food rations of the royal slaves were far better and more generous than those I had before seen. Insofar as these matters were concerned we had little of which to complain. It was the arrogance and brutality of the guards that made the lives of many of the slaves miserable. My reputation and I arrived simultaneously. I could tell it by the way the guards eyed me and my pistol and it soon spread to the slaves with the result that I was immediately the center of attention. Kandar and Artol had to tell over and over the story of my encounters with Yron and his major domo and so great became the laughter that the guards came among us with their whips and laid onto many a back. I called Kandar and Artol to my side and when the guards came slashing in our vicinity I laid my hand upon the butt of my pistol and the guards passed us by. Among the slaves was a Myposan named Plin who was very friendly. Now I do not like Myposans but a friendly Myposan might some time be a handy thing to have around so while I did not particularly cultivate Plin neither did I discourage his friendly advances. He was much interested in my pistol and asked many questions about it. He said that he was surprised that I had not been murdered while I slept as a slave with such a weapon as mine was a very dangerous person for any master to have around. I told him that Kandar Artol and I took turns standing watch every night to prevent just that very thing. And it will really kill anybody who touches it he asked. Certainly I said. He shook his head. Maybe the other things you have told me are true but I do not believe that anyone would be killed just by touching it. If that were true you would be killed. Would you like to touch it and prove your theory I asked. Certainly he said. I am not afraid of it. Let me have it. I shook my head. No I said. I would not let a friend kill himself. He grinned. You are a very smart man he said. Well I thought he was rather smart too. He was the only Myposan who had had the brains to pierce my ruse. I was glad that he was my friend and I hoped that he would keep his suspicions to himself. In order to change the subject which was growing distasteful to me I asked him why he was in slavery. I was warrior to a noble he explained and one day this noble caught me making love with one of his concubines so he sold me into slavery and I was purchased by Tyros agent. And you will have to remain a slave the rest of your life I asked. Not if I am fortunate enough to win the favor of Tyros he said. Then I should be freed and probably be permitted to enter the service of Tyros as a warrior. And you think that this may happen I asked. Something tells me that it may happen very soon he replied. You have been a slave in the palace of Tyros for some time I asked. Yes. Then perhaps you can give me some information that I should very much like to have. I shall be glad to if I can he assured me. What is it My mate Duare was purchased by Tyros agent. Have you seen her Do you know where she is and how she fares I have seen her said Plin. She is very beautiful and she fares quite well. She is serving the Vadjong Skabra Tyros queen. That is because she is so beautiful. I don t understand I said. Well you see Tyros has many concubines some of which have been slaves but none of them is very beautiful. Skabra sees to that. She is very jealous and Tyros is much afraid of her. She has let him have a number of ill favored concubines but when a beautiful woman like your mate comes along Skabra takes her for herself. So my mate is safe As long as she serves Skabra she is safe he said. Life in the slave compound of the jong of Mypos was monotonous. The guards took us out in shifts for odd jobs around the palace grounds. As a rule they were too bored themselves to even wield their whips on those who were too helpless or too poor to protect themselves. They left Kandar Artol and me alone because of my pistol and Plin who was able to receive money from outside won immunity and favors by bribery. He hung around me a great deal and was always fawning on me and flattering me. I got rather tired of him. I chafed under the enforced inaction which offered not the slightest suggestion of a hope for escape. I wished that they would give me more work to occupy my time. Wait until you re sent to the ships said one of my fellow slaves you ll get work enough there. The days dragged on. I longed for Duare and for freedom. I commenced to concoct fantastic and wholly impractical schemes for escape. It became an obsession with me. I didn t discuss them with Kandar or others because fortunately I realized how silly they were. It was well that I didn t. Then one day Tyros sent for me. Tyros the great jong had sent for a slave The compound buzzed with excitement. I had an idea why I was being thus singly honored. The gossip of the slave compound and the guardroom had reached the ears of Tyros and his curiosity had been aroused to see the strange slave with yellow hair who had defied nobles and warriors. It was curiosity that killed the cat but I feared it might work with reverse English in this instance. However the summons offered a break in the monotony of my existence and an opportunity to see Tyros the Bloody. It would also take me into the palace proper for the first time and I had been anxious to gain some knowledge of it against the day that I might attempt to take Duare away. So I was escorted by a strong detachment of warriors to the palace of the jong of Mypos. Chapter XIV THE MYPOSANS have little or no sense of the artistic. They seem to be form and line blind. Their streets are crooked their houses are crooked. The only harmony that abounds is that of disharmony. The palace of Tyros was no exception. The throne room was a shapeless polyangular space somewhere near the center of the palace. In some places the ceiling was twenty feet high in others not much more than four. It was supported by columns of different sizes irregularly spaced. It might have been designed by a drunken surrealist afflicted with a hebephrenic type of dementia praecox which of course is not normal because surrealists are not always drunk. The dais upon which Tyros sat on a wooden bench might have been rolled out of a giant dice box and left where it came to rest. Nobody could possibly have placed it where it was for the major portion of the room was behind it and Tyros back was toward the main entrance. I was led around in front of the dais where I had my first sight of Tyros. It was not a pleasant sight. Tyros was very fat the only Myposan I had seen whose physique was not beautiful. He had pop eyes and a huge mouth and his eyes were so far apart that you could see them bend inward to focus. His great gills were terribly inflamed appearing diseased. On the whole he was not a pretty sight. The room was full of nobles and warriors and among the first that I saw was Yron. His gills were palpitating and he was blowing softly. I knew by these signs that he was distraught. When his eyes alighted on me his gills flapped angrily. How is the noble Yron this morning I inquired. Silence slave ordered one of my guard. But Yron is an old friend of mine I objected. I am sure that he is glad to see me. Yron just stood there and flapped and blew. I saw some of the nobles near him sucking air through their teeth and I guessed that they were laughing at his discomfiture for that is as near as they can come to laughing. I saw Vomer there too. I had almost forgotten him. He stared at me with his dull fishy eyes. He hated me too. In all the room full of people I had no friend. When I was halted below the dais Tyros focused his eyes upon me. Yellow hair he commented. A strange looking creature. Yron says that he is a very valuable slave. What makes him so valuable his yellow hair I have heard many things about you slave. I have heard that you are insubordinate and disrespectful and that you carry a weapon that kills people if you merely point it at them. What foolishness is that They ve been lying to me haven t they Yron probably has I said. Did he tell you that I was a valuable slave Silence cried a noble at my side. Slaves do not question the great jong. Tyros waved the man to silence. Let him speak. I asked him a question. His answer interests me. Yes slave Yron said that you were very valuable. Did he tell you what he paid for me I asked. It was some very large amount. I do not recall that he stated it exactly but I know that he gave me the impression that you had cost him quite a fortune. He paid just ten kloovol for me I said. I didn t cost him much and he was afraid of me those are the reasons that he presented me to you. Why was he afraid of you demanded Tyros. Because he knew that I could kill him any time I wished so he gave me to you. Perhaps Yron wanted you killed. All gills were flapping by this time and there was a great blowing. Every eye was upon Yron. He lies he screamed. I gave him to you Tyros to guard your children. Twice he saved mine from guypals. But he cost you only ten kloovol demanded Tyros. I got a very good bargain. I But he cost only ten kloovol and you were afraid of him so you gave him to me. Tyros was screaming by this time. Suddenly he focused his popeyes on me as though struck by a new idea. How do I know that that thing can kill anybody he demanded . The noble Yron has told you so I reminded him. The noble Yron is a liar and the son of a liar snapped Tyros. Fetch a slave he shouted at a warrior standing near him. While he was waiting for the slave to be brought he returned his attentions to the unhappy Yron. He vilified and insulted him and his ancestors back for some ten generations then he started in on Yron s wife her ancestors and her progeny nor did he desist until the slave was brought. Stand him up with his back to that pillar ordered Tyros then he turned to me. Now kill him with that thing if you can he said. Why should I kill a fellow slave when there are so many of my enemies about me I demanded. Do as I tell you slave ordered Tyros. I kill only in self defense I said. I will not kill this man. You can t kill him that is the reason fumed Tyros. That thing wouldn t kill anybody. You are a great liar and you have frightened others with your lies but you can t frighten Tyros. But I can easily prove that it will kill I said without killing this defenseless man. How demanded the jong. By killing you I told him. Figuratively Tyros went straight through the ceiling. His gills flapped wildly and he blew so hard that he couldn t speak for a full minute. Seize him he cried to the members of his bodyguard. Seize him and take that thing from him. Wait I ordered pointing the pistol at him. If anyone comes nearer me or threatens me I ll kill you Tyros. I can kill every one in this room if I wish. I do not wish to kill any one unless I am forced to. All I ask is that you set free my mate Duare myself and my two friends Kandar and Artol. If you do that we will go away and you will be safe. As long as I am in Mypos no one is safe. What do you say Tyros His warriors hesitated turning toward him. Tyros was on a spot. If he showed fear of me he would lose face. If he insisted on his bodyguard carrying out his orders he might lose his life. He decided to hedge. He turned on Yron. Traitor he screamed. Assassin You sent this man here to kill me. Because he has refused to do your bidding I forgive him what he has said to me. After all he is only an ignorant creature of a lower order. He knows no better. But you knave You shall die For high treason I condemn you to death and this man shall be your executioner. Send that other slave back to his quarters and place Yron against the pillar in his place he ordered then he turned again to me. Now let s see what that thing will do. Kill Yron I told you once that I kill only in self defense. If you want some one killed come and attack me yourself or shut up. Like most tyrannical despots Tyros was half mad. He had little or no control of his temper and now he was frantic. He fumed and bellowed and flapped and blew and tore at his beard but I saw that he feared me for he made no move to attack me himself nor did he order others to do so. Listen I said. I had to shout to be heard above the racket he was making. Free us as I suggested and let us go away in peace. If you don t I may be forced to kill you in order to effect our escape. You would be well rid of him at any price said one of his nobles. This was all Tyros required to give him a slender out. If that is the wish of my people he said I will consider it. In the meantime return this slave to the slaves quarters and let me see no more of him. Chapter XV WHEN I returned to the compound I found that the slave whom I had refused to kill had spread the story of my encounter with Tyros and as is usually the case with such a story it had lost nothing in the telling. The other slaves looked at me as they might at one who had returned from the grave or what might probably be a better simile as one on his way to the death chamber. They crowded around me asking many questions some of them just content to touch one who had bearded the lion in his den. Plin was loudest in his praise. Kandar seemed worried. He thought that I had finally sealed my doom. Artol was genuinely proud of me. He had the warrior s reaction that what I had done was worth dying for. Somehow Plin s praise seemed tinged by envy. After all Plin was a Myposan. Kandar Artol and I finally detached ourselves from the others and sat down on the hard packed ground to talk. They were both very grateful that I had included them in my demand for freedom but neither of them thought that there was the slightest chance that Tyros would free us. He ll find some way to destroy you said Kandar. After all one man can t overcome a city full of enemies. But how asked Artol. Have you a plan S s s t cautioned Kandar. Here comes Plin. So Kandar mistrusted the Myposan. I was not surprised. The fellow was too oily and his protestations of friendship were overdone. Kandar Artol and I had maintained something of a night watch one of us always trying to remain awake but we must have slipped up that night for the next morning my pistol was gone. It had been stolen while we slept. I discovered my loss almost immediately I awoke and when I told the others Kandar said Where is Plin Plin was not in the slaves compound. We wondered how he had dared touch the weapon. Either the proffered reward or the threat of punishment had been too great for him to resist. You see we did not doubt that it was Plin. I expected to be put to death immediately but a circumstance intervened to save me temporarily. It was a royal celebration. One of Tyros young had developed arms and legs and lungs and was ready to emerge from the pool the future jong of Mypos. Many slaves were required in connection with this celebration and we were all herded into the great royal patio covering several acres in the center of which was the jong s pool where the royal monstrosities developed. The patio was filled with nobles warriors women and slaves. I saw Plin and approached him but he went quickly away into that part of the garden reserved for free men. So that had been Plin s reward Of course I could not follow him there. Warriors saw to that. A palace slave saw the little drama as Plin eluded me and the warriors roughly turned me back. The fellow smiled at me. You must be the slave from whom Plin stole the strange weapon he hazarded. I am I said. I wish I knew where it was. It is in the pool he said Tyros was so afraid of it that in his terror he ordered Plin to throw it into the pool. Well at least I knew where my pistol was but little good it would do me. It might lie there forever for it would never corrode. The metal of which it was fabricated insured that. And doubtless no Myposan would dare retrieve it. There was a great deal of drinking going on mostly a potent brew that the Myposans concoct. Tyros was drinking a great deal and getting rather drunk. I saw Skabra his vadjong a most brutal looking female. I did not wonder that Tyros was afraid of her. And I saw Duare too but I could not catch her eye. I could not get close enough to her and there were hundreds of people there constantly milling. In the afternoon a great cry arose and every eye was turned upon the pool from which a hideous little amphibian emerged. It still had the head of a fish. Nobles ran forward to catch it but it eluded them scampering here and there to avoid capture. Finally however it was brought to bay and a net was thrown over it then it was borne away to the royal nursery where it would have a private pool and could complete its development. By this time Tyros was quite drunk. I saw him approach Duare and I saw Skabra rise from her bench and move toward them. I couldn t hear what Tyros said to Duare but I saw her little chin go up as she turned her back on him. Skabra s voice was raised in anger shrill harsh and Tyros ordinarily afraid of her screamed back at her brave with liquor. They were calling each other all the unroyal names they could lay their tongues to. Every eye was upon them. Suddenly Tyros seized Duare and started to drag her away then it was that I started for him. No one paid any attention to me. All were too interested in the actions of the principals in this royal triangle for now Skabra had started in pursuit. Tyros was running toward the pool carrying Duare with him. He reached the edge and to my horror dove in dragging Duare beneath the surface with him . Chapter XVI A WARRIOR tried to bar my way as I ran toward the pool. I swung a right to his chin and he went down. A trident whizzed past my head as I dove and another cut the water beside me after I had submerged. But no one followed me. Perhaps they felt that Tyros was safe in his own element and needed no protection. Perhaps they didn t care what happened to Tyros for they all feared and hated him. The pool was deep very deep. Ahead of me and below I could see the figures of Tyros and Duare going deeper and deeper. Could I reach them before Duare drowned Could either of us survive a struggle with the amphibian king and reach the surface alive These questions harassed me but I swam on. As I reached the bottom I saw Tyros slither into a dark hole at the very bottom of the pool s side wall and as I followed him my lungs seemingly on the verge of bursting I saw something lying on the floor of the pool. It was my pistol lying where Plin had thrown it. I had only to reach out my hand and pick it up then I was in a dark corridor fighting for my life and Duare s. I thought that corridor would never end nor did it add any to my peace of mind to realize that it might end in a watery cavern from which there would be no escape for me or for Duare. My only hope and encouragement lay in what Kandar had told me of these pools and passageways. I prayed that this passageway led to another near by pool. It did. Presently I saw light ahead and then above. Almost unconscious from suffocation I shot to the surface just in time. Another second I honestly believe and I should have been dead. I saw Tyros dragging Duare from the pool. Her body was limp. It was evident that she was dead. Had I been absolutely certain of that I could have shot Tyros then but I hesitated and in the brief instant of my indecision he bore her through a doorway and was gone. I was absolutely exhausted. I tried to climb from the pool only to discover that I did not have the strength. What I had gone through had sapped it all. I looked about me as I clung to the edge of the pool. I was in a small apartment or court which the pool almost entirely filled. It had no roof. Several doors led from it. There was one small window. My strength came back rapidly and I dragged myself from the pool and followed through the doorway which had swallowed Tyros and Duare. Here I encountered a veritable labyrinth of corridors. Which way had Tyros gone There was no clew. Every precious moment counted if Duare alive I was to rescue her or Duare dead I was to avenge her. It was maddening. Presently I heard a voice and I followed it. Soon I recognized it. it was Tyros drunken voice exhorting commanding. At last I found him. He was bending over the lifeless form of Duare demanding that she arise and follow him. He was telling her that he was tired of carrying her. He didn t seem to realize that she was dead. When he saw me and my levelled pistol he screamed then he swept Duare s body up and held it before him as a shield as he hurled his trident. It was a poor cast and missed. I advanced slowly toward him taking my time gloating over my vengeance. All the time Tyros was screaming for help. I didn t care how much help came I could always kill Tyros before they could kill me. I expected to die in that chamber and I was content because I would not live without Duare. Tyros tried to draw his sword as he saw me coming nearer but Duare s body interfered. At last he let it slip to the floor and still screaming he came toward me. it was then that a door flew open and a dozen warriors burst into the room. I let Tyros the Bloody have it first. He collapsed in a heap then I turned the weapon upon the advancing warriors. They nearly got me as a veritable shower of tridents drove through the air at my almost naked body. it was the very number of them that saved me. They struck one another and their aim was diverted just enough to permit me to dodge and elude them. After that it was simple. The warriors with their swords were no match for me. I mowed down ten of them before the remaining two turned and fled. At last I was alone with the body of my mate. I turned toward it. Duare was sitting up looking at me wonderingly. How did you do it Carson she demanded. However in the world did you do it I could do much more than this for you I said as I took her in my arms. What now asked Duare presently. We are trapped. But at least we shall die together. We are not dead yet I said. Come with me I led the way to the pool from which we had just emerged. Through the one small window I could see the great lake scarcely a hundred yards away. I was certain that a corridor led from this pool to the lake. Can you swim another hundred yards under water I asked her. I can try she said. Wait until I make sure that there is a corridor leading to the lake then I dove into the pool. I found an opening near the bottom of the end of the pool nearest the lake so I was reasonably certain that it led into a corridor that would take us out of the city of Mypos. The only drawback to the plan was that we should be swimming in the lake right off the quays of Mypos in broad daylight. It didn t seem possible that we could escape detection. As I broke the surface of the pool after locating the corridor Duare whispered to me that she heard someone approaching. I listened. Yes I could hear them plainly the sound of sandalled feet and the rattling of accouterments then we heard men shouting and the sounds were very near. Come Duare I called and she dove in. I led her to the mouth of the tunnel and followed her in. I must have been wrong in my estimate of the distance to the lake. It was far more than a hundred yards. I marvelled at Duare s endurance for I was almost all in and virtually at my last gasp had I dared to gasp when I saw light shining from above. As one we shot up to the surface and as our heads broke it almost simultaneously Duare flashed me a reassuring smile. Ah what a girl In two worlds yes even in all the Universe I doubt that there is like her. We found ourselves in a small circular pool in the bottom of a roofless windowless tower. A ledge a few feet wide encircled the pool. We dragged ourselves on to it to rest and plan. We decided to remain where we were until after dark then try to reach the lake. If we were followed into this pool I could account for our pursuers as fast as they stuck their heads above the surface. How I thanked Heaven for that pistol Well after dark we swam through the remainder of the passageway to the lake and followed the shore line to a point beyond the city. What hideous terrors of the deep we were fortunate enough to escape I can only guess but we came through all right. More by intuition than anything else I made our way back to the point at which we had left the anotar. Our hearts were in our mouths as we searched for it. The night was dark. Even the strange Venusian luminance seemed lesser than usual. At last we gave up disheartened and lay down on the soft grass to rest. We both must have fallen asleep almost instantly for the next I remember it was daylight. I sat up and looked around. Duare lay asleep beside me and a hundred yards away just inside the forest was the anotar I shall never forget with what a sense of gratitude to God and with what relief we felt the ship rise above the menaces of this inhospitable land. The only blemish on our happiness was that Kandar and Artol were still prisoners in Mypos. Chapter XVII THERE ARE fortunately recorded indelibly upon our minds moments of great happiness that we have enjoyed. Standing out among mine I am sure will be the moment that the anotar rose from the ground that day and I realized that Duare and I were reunited and that she was safe. Safe That word has its nuances. Safety is relative. In relation to her immediate past Duare was quite safe but we were still thousands of miles from Korva with only a very hazy idea of the direction of our goal. We had enough concentrated fuel to fly the ship for probably some fifty years but we would have to make occasional landings for food and water and it seemed as though every time we landed something terrible happened to us. But that is Venus. If you had a forced landing in Kansas or Maine or Oregon the only thing you d have to worry about would be the landing but when you set a ship down in Venus you never know what you re going to run up against. It might be kloonobargan the hairy man eating savages or a tharban that most frightful of lion like carnivores or a basto a huge omnivorous beast that bears some slight resemblance to the American bison or perhaps worst of all ordinary human beings like yourself but with a low evaluation of life that is your life. But I was not so much troubled by consideration of these possibilities as I was of the fate of Kandar and Artol. They were splendid fellows and I hated to think of their having to remain slaves in Mypos. Duare had evidently been watching my face for she said What is troubling you Carson You look worried. I was thinking of Kandar and Artol I replied. We had hoped to escape together. Who is Artol she asked. I do not recall a slave by that name. I met him after I was taken to Yron s palace I explained. He was a warrior in the bodyguard of Jantor jong of Japal Kandar s father you know. We should help them to escape if we can said Duare. I can t risk your safety again I said. They are our friends she said. We cannot abandon them without making an effort to save them. That was like Duare. Well I said we might fly over the city and see what can be done about it. I have a plan. Perhaps it will work and perhaps it won t. That will depend more upon Kandar and Artol than on us. Take the controls a minute. As she flew the ship circling back toward Mypos I found writing materials in one of the storage compartments and wrote a note to Kandar. I showed it to Duare and after she had read it she nodded her approval. We can do our part easily enough she said I hope they can do theirs. I tied the note to a spare bolt and took the controls. We were now about a thousand feet above Mypos and I started a wide spiral down toward the city aiming at Tyros palace. As we got closer I could see people staring up at us from the streets and from the palace grounds and I could see others scurrying for safety. Of course none of them had ever seen an aeroplane before for our anotar is the only one in Venus as far as I know at least none of them had seen one except the Mypos warriors who had captured us. Of course they had told everyone about it but nobody believed them. I headed for the slave compound in the palace grounds flying very low and looking for Kandar or Artol. At last I recognized them both they were standing together looking up at us. Although I had told Kandar all about the anotar he looked now as though he couldn t even believe his eyes. As I circled again some of Tyros warriors ran into the compound and commenced to hurl spears at us the three pronged tridents with which they are armed. As far as we were concerned they were quite harmless but they fell back among themselves and after one impaled a warrior they desisted. I didn t want the warriors in the compound because I didn t wish them to see me drop the note to Kandar. But how to get rid of them Finally I hit upon a plan. The only trouble was that it might chase Kandar out of the compound too but I could only try it. I zoomed to a thousand feet and then banked and dove for the compound. You should have seen slaves and warriors scurry for safety But Kandar and Artol never moved from their tracks. If the compound had only been a little longer and there had been no pool in it I could have landed and taken off again with Kandar and Artol before the terrified warriors could have been aware of what I was doing. Duare gave a little gasp as I flattened out and just missed the cornice of one of the palace buildings by a hair then I banked again and came back. This time I dropped the note at Kandar s feet then I rose and circled back low over the compound. I saw Kandar pick up the note and read it. Immediately he raised his left hand above his head. That was the signal I had written him to give if he would make the attempt to escape that I had suggested. Before I flew away I saw him destroy the note. I rose high and went inland. I wanted the Myposans to think that we had gone away for good. After we were out of sight of the city I turned north and gradually circled back toward the lake on which Mypos is situated. Still well out of the sight of the city I found a secluded cove and made a landing a short distance off shore. Here we waited until after dark. Chapter XVIII IT WAS VERY peaceful on the waters of that little cove. We were not even threatened by any of the fearsome creatures which swarm the lakes and seas of Venus. In fact none came near us. Our only discomfort was hunger. We could see fruits and nuts and berries growing on shore but we could also see kloonobargan watching us from behind trees and bushes. Fortunately we were on a fresh water lake so we did not suffer from thirst and we were so happy to be together again and so contented to be temporarily safe that we did not notice the lack of food particularly. After dark we took off again heading for Mypos. The motor of our anotar is noiseless so I didn t anticipate being discovered. I took to the water about a mile above the city and taxied slowly toward it avoiding the galleys anchored in the roadstead of the city. Venus has no moon and no stars are visible through her solid cloud blankets. Only a mysterious eerie light relieves the gloom of the nights so that they are not utterly black. One can see faintly for a short distance. We came at last to a point about a hundred yards off the palace and here we waited. The night dragged on. We could see the ghostly shapes of ships out beyond us with here and there a light on them. We could hear the sounds of men s voices on ship and on shore and on shore there were many lights. I am afraid they have failed I said. I am afraid so replied Duare but we must not leave before daylight. They might come yet. Presently I heard shouts on shore and very dimly I saw a boat put off. Then a torch was lighted in it and I could see that the boat was full of warriors. The boat was not coming directly toward us but was quartering. I could hear men shouting from the shore: Not that way Straight out They must have escaped said Duare. Those men are searching for them. And they re coming our way now I said for the boat had changed its course following the directions from shore. I searched the surface of the water for some sign of Kandar and Artol but I could not see them. The boat was coming straight for us but not rapidly. Evidently they were moving cautiously so as not to overlook the fugitives in the darkness. Presently I heard a low whistle the prearranged signal. It seemed to come from off our port bow. The ship was lying with its nose toward the shore and the boat load of warriors was approaching from slightly to starboard. I answered the signal and started the motor. We moved slowly in the direction from which that low whistle had come. Still I saw no sign of Kandar or Artol. Some one in the approaching boat shouted There they are and at the same time I saw two heads break the water a few yards from us. Now I knew why I had not seen them: they had been swimming beneath the surface to avoid discovery coming up to signal and then going under again when they heard the answer. Now they were swimming strongly toward us but the boat was approaching rapidly twenty paddles sending it skimming across the water. It looked as though it would reach us about the same time that Kandar and Artol did. I shouted to them: As I pass you grab the side of the ship and hang on I m going to tow you out until we re away from that boat far enough to stop and get you on board. Come on cried Kandar we re ready. I opened the throttle a little and bore down on them. The Myposans were very close. They must have been surprised to see the anotar on the water but they kept on coming. A man in the bow raised his trident and called on us to stop. Take the controls Duare I said. She knew what to do. Duare always does. For a girl who had led the cloistered life she had in the palace of her father before I came along she is a marvel of efficiency and initiative. I turned and faced the boat just as the fellow in the bow cast his trident. It was a close shave for us: the weapon whizzed between Duare s head and mine. Two other warriors had risen and were poising their tridents then I let them have it. The hum of my r ray pistol sounded no warning to them but almost simultaneously three Myposan warriors crumpled and fell two of them over the side of the boat into the lake. Kandar and Artol had seized the side of the ship and Duare had given her more throttle. Two more tridents were hurled but this time they fell short. We were pulling away rapidly when Duare saw another boatload of warriors ahead of us. The boat had evidently been lowered from one of the ships in the roadstead. Thinking quickly Duare throttled down. Climb aboard she cried to the two men and they lost no time in obeying her then she opened the throttle wide and bore straight down on the second boat. I heard the frightened cries of its crew and saw the frantic efforts they were making to get out of our way as Duare pulled up the anotar s nose and we rose gracefully above them. Nice work I said. Beautiful said Kandar. Artol was speechless for a moment. It was his first flight. This was the first plane he had ever seen. Why don t we fall he said presently. Kandar was thrilled. He had heard me talk about the anotar but I imagine that he had taken all that I said with a grain of salt. Now he could scarcely believe the testimony of his own senses. I was planning to return Kandar and Artol to Japal where Kandar s father Cantor was jong. It lies at the upper end of the Lake of Japal about five hundred miles from Mypos and as we didn t wish to arrive there before dawn I determined to make a landing and ride the night out on the surface. There was no wind and the surface of the lake was like glass so we made an easy landing and prepared to lie there until morning. We settled ourselves comfortably in the two cockpits content to wait out the night. I asked Kandar if they had much difficulty in making their escape. It was not easy he said. As you know the outlet from the slaves pool to the lake is too small to permit the passage of even a small man so we had to find some way to reach one of the palace pools. After you killed Tyros things were in a chaotic condition. Skabra his wife proclaimed herself sole ruler but she is so generally hated that several factions sprang up insisting that their particular candidate be made jong. There were so many of them that they have at least temporarily defeated their own purpose and Skabra rules but the discipline of the palace guards has been undermined. Naturally they want to favor him who may be next jong and as they are hoping that it won t be Skabra they are not very loyal to her. They spend most of their time holding secret meetings and scheming so the interior palace guard is extremely lax. Artol and I decided to take advantage of this and we also decided upon a bold move. We knew that the royal pool connected with the lake that much we were positive of so we agreed that the royal pool was the one we would use. The slaves compound is usually heavily guarded but tonight was the exception. Only one warrior stood at the gate that leads into the palace grounds. We had no weapons not even the wooden trident with which we are furnished when we guard the royal pool. We had nothing but our bare hands. And a tremendous desire to escape added Artol. Yes admitted Kandar that was our most powerful weapon the will to escape. Well we worked our way around to the guard a great bearded fellow who had always been extremely cruel to all of us slaves. That made it easier said Artol. Whatever the cause it was not difficult for Artol said Kandar grinning. When we approached close to him the guard asked what we were doing in that part of the compound and ordered us back to our shelters and he supplemented the order with a poke of his trident. That was what we had expected and hoped for. I seized the trident and Artol leaped on the fellow and got him by the throat. You have no idea how powerful Artol is or how quick. The guard didn t have time to cry out before his wind was shut off and then he was down on his back with Artol on top of him choking the life out of him and I had the trident. I knew what to do with it too. We took his sword as well as his trident and leaving his body where it lay walked out into the palace grounds. This portion of them is not well lighted and we came to the wall surrounding the royal pool without being discovered. Here was another guard. He proved a much simpler obstacle to overcome because now we had a sword and a trident. Leaving his corpse resting peacefully on the ground we entered the enclosure wherein lies the royal pool. This was well lighted and there were several people loitering on the other side of the garden. As we approached the pool one of them came toward us. It was Plin. The fellow slave who turned traitor and stole my pistol I explained to Duare. Oh by the way how did you get it back asked Kandar. Plin threw it into the royal pool I replied and when I dove in after Tyros and Duare I found it lying at the bottom but go on what happened then Well continued Kandar Plin screamed for the guard. We didn t wait any longer then we both dived into the pool hoping we could find the corridor leading to the lake and not drown before we could swim through it. And we barely made it said Artol. I think I did drown a couple of times before my head finally broke the surface. As it was I was practically unconscious and if Kandar hadn t held me up for a couple of minutes I d have been a goner. So that s how the search started for you so quickly I said it was Plin. Kandar nodded. Yes he said and my only regret at leaving Mypos is that I shall now not be able to kill Plin. I can take you back I said. Kandar grinned. No thanks he said I am not that mad at anybody. Then too having such a friend as you outweighs Plin and all my other enemies. I shall not try to thank you for what you and Duare have done for us not in words. There are none adequate to express my gratitude. I am only a common warrior said Artol and know but few words but after my jong you have all my loyalty. Chapter XIX AS DAWN APPROACHED we took off and headed up the lake toward Japal. Kandar thought that we had better set the ship down outside the city when he and Artol could go to one of the gates and make themselves known. I m afraid he said that if they saw this thing flying low over the city they might fire on it. With what I asked. I thought you told me that you had no fire arms. We haven t he replied but we have engines that throw rocks or lighted torches for hundreds of feet into the air. They are upon the walls of the city and the decks of the ships anchored off shore. If one hit your propeller you would be brought down. We shall land outside the city I said and this we did. Japal is a very much better looking city than Mypos and larger. There is a level plain stretching inland from it and on this plain we landed about a hundred yards from one of the city gates. We could see the consternation our appearance caused the guard at the gate. Several warriors who had been standing outside rushed in and slammed the gates closed. Others jammed the barbican pointing and gesticulating. Kandar and Artol dropped to the ground and walked toward the gate. Presently we could see them talking to the men in the barbican then they turned and started back toward us. Immediately afterward the gates opened and several warriors rushed out then Kandar and Artol commenced to run the warriors pursuing them. I realized that something was radically wrong. The crown prince of a country doesn t run away from his country s soldiers unless there is something radically wrong. I saw that the warriors were going to overtake Kandar and Artol before they could board the anotar or at least bring them down with the spears they carried. Of course I didn t know what the trouble was but I saw that Kandar and Artol seemed to be in plenty. I had commenced to feel responsible for them. I think we always feel responsible for our friends. I know I do. So I decided to do something about it. My best weapon under the circumstances was the anotar. I gave her the gun and started toward the running men and then I lifted her off the ground a little just enough to clear Kandar s and Artol s heads and dove straight for the warriors. I hadn t retracted my landing gear and it and the pontoons simply mowed em down then I rose banked and landed close to Kandar and Artol. They clambered into the after cockpit and we were off. What happened I asked Kandar. There has been a revolution led by a fellow named Gangor he replied. My father escaped. That is all I know. One of the warriors at the gate told me that much. He would have told me more if one of Gangor s officers hadn t come out and tried to arrest us. Wasn t it Gangor who arranged for your capture by the Myposans Artol I asked. Yes he replied. Now I owe him double vengeance. I wish that I might have gotten into the city even though I may never avenge what he did to me. You may some day said Kandar. No said Artol sadly he has but one life and I must avenge my jong first. Where to now I asked Kandar. We ll take you any place you d like to go before we set out in search of Korva. I can think of only one place that my father may have escaped to said Kandar. Far back in the mountains lives a tribe of savage aborigines called Timals. My father once befriended Yat their chief and they are extremely loyal to him and to all other lapalians though they refuse to own allegiance to any sovereign other than their own savage chieftain. I should like very much to go to the Timal country and see if my father is there. The flight was uneventful. We passed over some wonderful game country and several mountain ranges until we finally came to the Timal country a high plateau surrounded by jagged peaks a most inaccessible country and one easily defended against invasion. Kandar pointed out a village in a canyon which opened out onto the plateau and I dropped down and circled above it. The people stood in the single street looking up at us. They showed neither panic nor fear. There was something peculiar in their appearance yet they seemed to be human beings. At first I couldn t make out what it was but as we dropped lower I saw that they had short tails and horns. They were armed with spears and knives and some of the males were menacing us with the former when Kandar caught sight of his father and called to him. My brother Doran is here too Kandar told me. He is standing beside my father. Ask your father if it s safe to land I said. He did so and received a negative answer. Yat says you may come into the village but not the strangers Jantor shouted up to us. But I can t come in unless we are permitted to land the anotar said Kandar. Tell Yat that these people are friendly. One is Artol a former member of your Guard the others are Carson of Venus and his mate Duare of Vepaja. They rescued me from Gangor. Persuade Yat to let them land. We saw Jantor turn then and speak to a large savage but the latter kept shaking his head then Jantor called to us again as we circled low above the village. Yat says that strangers are not allowed in Timal only I and the members of my family and he doesn t like the looks of that ship that sails in the air. He says that it is not natural and that the people who ride in it cannot be natural they might bring misfortune to his people. I can understand how he feels for this is the first time that I ever saw human beings flying. Are you sure this Carson of Venus and his mate are human They are just as human as you or I said Kandar. Tell Yat that he really ought to let the ship land so that he can examine it. No one in Amtor ever saw such a thing before. Well eventually Yat gave permission for us to land and I came down close to the village and taxied up to the end of the single street. I know that those ignorant savages must have been frightened as the anotar rolled toward them but not one of them turned a hair or moved away a step. I stopped a few yards from Jantor and Yat and immediately we were surrounded by bucks with couched spears. For a moment it looked serious. The Timals are a ferocious looking people. Their faces are hideously tattooed in many colors and their horns only add to the ferocity of their appearance. Yat strode boldly to the side of the ship and looked up at Duare and me. Jantor and Doran accompanied him. Kandar introduced us and the old Timal chief examined us most carefully. Finally he turned to Jantor. He is a man even as you he said indicating me. Do you wish us to be friends with him and his woman It would please me said Jantor because they are the friends of my son. Yat looked up at me. Do you wish to be friends of the Timals and come among us in peace he asked. Yes I replied. Then you may descend from that strange creature he said. You may remain here as long as you wish the friends of Yat and his people. I have spoken and my people have heard. We climbed down glad to stretch our legs again. The Timals gathered around but at a respectful distance and inspected us and the ship. They had much better manners than civilized people of the great cities of Earth who under like circumstances would probably have torn our ship to pieces for souvenirs and stripped our clothes from us. They have received you in friendship said Jantor and now you will find them kind and hospitable. They are a proud people who hold their honor most sacred. As long as you merit their friendship they will be loyal to you should you not merit it they will destroy you. We shall try to merit it I assured him. Chapter XX OLD YAT WAS tremendously interested in the anotar. He walked all around it occasionally poking it with a finger. It is not alive he remarked to Jantor yet it flies like a bird. Would you like to get in it and see how I control it I asked. For reply he crawled into the forward cockpit. I got in beside him and explained the controls to him. He asked several questions and they were all intelligent questions. I could see that despite horns and tail Yat was a high type of reasoning human being. Would you like to go up in it I asked. Yes. Then tell your people to move away and not to come out on this level ground until I have taken off. He did as I asked and I came about and taxied down the valley onto the little plain. The wind was blowing right down the canyon so my take off was up hill and we were going pretty fast practically up to the village before I left the ground. We skimmed over the heads of the watching Timals and then I banked and climbed. I glanced at Yat. He showed no sign of nervousness but just sat there as unconcerned as a frozen goldfish looking all around at the scenery and peeking over the side of the cockpit at the panorama of landscape below. How do you like it I asked. Fine he said. Tell me when you want to go back to your village. Go there he said and pointed. I flew through a pass in the mountains as he had directed. Ahead and far below stretched a broad valley. Go there he said and pointed again. Now lower he directed a moment later and presently I saw a village beneath us. Go low above that village. I flew low above a thatched village. Women and children screamed and ran into their huts. A few warriors stood their ground and hurled spears at us. Yat leaned far over the side as I circled back at his request. This time I heard a warrior cry: It is Yat the Timal Yat looked as happy as a gopher with a carrot. Go home now he directed. Those were the enemies of my people he said after a while. Now they will know what a great man is Yat the Timal. All the Timals of Yat s village were waiting when we returned. I was sure glad to see you coming back said Kandar. These fellows were getting nervous. Some of them thought that you had stolen Yat. Warriors gathered around their chief. I have seen a new world said Yat. Like a bird I flew over the village of the Valley People. They saw me and knew me. Now they will know what great people the Timals are. You flew over the village of the Valley People exclaimed a warrior. Why that is two long marches away. I flew very fast said Yat. I should like to fly in this bird ship said a sub chief and then a dozen others voiced the same wish. No said Yat that is for chiefs only. He had now done something that no one else in his world had ever done. It set him apart from other men. It made him even a greater chieftain than he had been before. We learned to like these Timals very much. They were very courteous to Duare the women especially going out of their way to be kind to her. One would never have expected it in such primitive savages. We rested there for a few days and then I flew Jantor Kandar and Doran back to Japal to reconnoiter. As the anotar does not carry more than four comfortably I left Duare and Artol behind. I knew that she would be safe with the Timals and anyway I expected to be back before dark. We circled low over Japal causing quite a commotion in the streets. Jantor hoped that in some way he might get in touch with some of his friends and learn what was going on in the city. There was always the chance of a counterrevolution that would place him back on the throne but either his friends were all dead or imprisoned or afraid to try to communicate with him for he never saw one whom he could trust. As we prepared to leave and return to Timal I circled far out over the lake gaining considerable altitude and from this vantage point Jantor discovered a fleet of ships far down the lake. If it s not asking too much he said to me I d like to fly down there and see who that is. I headed for the fleet and presently we were circling above it fifty ships of war packed with fighting men. Most of them were biremes and there were several penteconters open galleys with decks fore and aft and propelled by fifty oars as well as sails. Some of the biremes had a hundred oars on each side and carried several hundred warriors as well. All had their sails set and were taking advantage of a gentle breeze. The Myposan war fleet said Jantor and it s headed for Japal. Gangor is going to have his hands full remarked Kandar. We must warn him said Jantor. But he is your enemy expostulated Doran. Japal is my country replied Jantor. No matter who is jong there it is my duty to warn him. On the way back to Japal Jantor wrote a message. We dropped down low over the palace grounds Jantor making the sign of peace by raising his right hand. Almost immediately people commenced to come from the palace and presently Jantor recognized Gangor and called to him. I have an important message for you he said and dropped the weighted note over the side. A warrior caught it before it reached the ground and took it to Gangor. The fellow read it carefully and then motioned us to come lower which I did circling close above them. I appreciate your warning Jantor said Gangor when we were within easy ear shot. I wish you would land. We shall need your help and advice in defending the city. I promise that you will not be harmed. I looked at Jantor so did Kandar and Doran. We waited for his curt refusal of the invitation. It is my duty he said to us. My country is in danger. Don t do it counselled Kandar. Gangor is not to be trusted. He would not dare harm me after making that promise said Jantor too many warriors heard him and they are not all dishonorable men. All those with him are traitors like himself said Doran. My duty lies there insisted Jantor. Will you take me down please If you insist I ll land you outside the city I said it is your right to risk your life at the hands of a scoundrel like Gangor but I will not risk my ship and the safety of my mate. I circled low above them again and Kandar exacted a new promise from Gangor that his father would not be harmed and that he would be permitted to leave the city whenever he chose. Gangor agreed volubly far too volubly I thought. Bring that thing that you fly in right down here in the palace grounds he said I ll have them cleared. Never mind I said I shall land outside the inland gate. Very well said Gangor and I myself will come out to meet you Jantor and escort you into the city. And don t bring too many warriors with you I cautioned him and don t come within trident range of my ship. I shall take off immediately after the jong has disembarked. Bring Kandar and Doran with you Jantor invited Gangor. They will both be welcome and I promise again that you shall all be perfectly safe the moment that you step foot within the walls of Japal. I shall feel better now that Doran and I are going along with you said Kandar as we rose and headed for the plain beyond the city. You are not going to accompany me said Jantor. You do not trust Gangor. Possibly you are right. If I die the future of our country lies with you and Doran the future of our dynasty. You must both live to bring men children into the world. If all three of us placed ourselves in Gangor s power simultaneously the temptation might prove too much for him to resist. I think that I alone shall be safe enough. Neither of you may accompany me. Come now sir exclaimed Kandar you must let us go with you. Yes said Doran you must. We are your sons what will the people of Japal think of us if we let our father go alone into the hands of his greatest enemy You shall not accompany me said Jantor with finality. It is a command and that ended the matter. I set the ship down three or four hundred yards from the inland gate and presently Gangor came out of the city and approached us with a dozen warriors. They halted at plenty of distance from the ship and Jantor who had already dropped to the ground advanced toward them. I wish we had never come here said Kandar. I can t help but feel that our father has made a grave mistake in trusting Gangor. He seems quite sure that Gangor will live up to his promise I said. You heard him ask me to wait and witness the battle and then come for him when it was over. Yes said Doran but I don t share his faith. Gangor has always been notorious for his perfidy but no one paid much attention to it because he was only captain of a merchant ship at the height of his fortunes. Who could have dreamed that he was to make himself jong of Japal Chapter XXI I COULDN T HELP but have a great deal of respect for Jantor. He was doing a very courageous albeit a very temerarious thing. I watched him as he walked toward his enemies. His step was firm his head high. He was every inch a jong. I had taken off immediately he left us and was circling about rather low. Jantor had approached to within a few steps of Gangor when the latter suddenly raised his short heavy spear and plunged it through the jong s heart. Kandar and Doran cried out in horror. I opened the throttle and dove straight for the wretch and as he saw me coming he and his warriors turned and fled for the city. Low behind them I turned my pistol on them. Several fell but Gangor reached the city gate in safety. Without a word I rose and flew over the city and out across the lake. For some time neither Kandar nor Doran spoke. Their faces were drawn and tense. My heart ached for them. Finally Kandar asked me where I was going. I am going to tell the Myposan fleet that Japal has been warned and is ready to annihilate them. Why he asked. It was your father s wish to save the city. Some day you will be jong there. Do you want it conquered by the fishmen You are right he said. It was late in the afternoon that I dropped down low over the leading Myposan galley the largest of the biremes. They had evidently seen us from a distance as the deck was crowded with warriors all staring at us. Be careful cautioned Kandar. They are preparing a rock thrower. If they hit us we re through. I gave the peace sign then and called down to them that I had a message for their commander. A big fellow whom I recalled having seen in Tyros palace answered the peace sign and motioned for me to come closer. Tell them to take the rock out of that catapult I shouted. He nodded and gave the necessary order and after they had unloaded the thing I dropped down quite low. The anotar is quite maneuverable and can fly at very low speeds so I had no difficulty in carrying on at least a broken conversation with the ship Who commands the fleet I asked. Skabra the vadjong he replied. Do you know who I am Yes the slave who killed Tyros he replied. I should like to talk with Skabra if she is not too mad at me I said. The fellow grinned. Their faces are hideous enough in repose but when they grin they are something to frighten grown ups with. Their fish mouths spread across their faces forcing their gills open. Their countless sharp fish like teeth are exposed behind their huge beards. Skabra is not angry he said. Which is her ship I asked. This he said. Well tell her that Carson of Venus wishes to speak to her. Tell her I have very important news for her. Just as I finished the sentence the old girl came on deck. God but she s the beauty. She looks like a bloated cod fish. What do you want she demanded. Do you want to murder me too No I shouted. You were kind to my mate. I would not harm you. I have important news for you but I can t talk this way. Get in a small boat and row off a little way. I ll come down and land on the water and talk with you. You must take me for a fool she said. I d be at your mercy. I had to keep circling the ship and shouting a few words at a time. It was no way in which to carry on a conversation. Very well I said. The word I have for you is very important and I have given my word that I shall not harm you in any way. However do as you see fit. I ll stand by a few minutes. I could see them talking excitedly on the deck for a few minutes and then I saw a boat being lowered with Skabra in it so I came down a short distance from the ship and waited. Presently they came alongside. The old girl greeted me pleasantly. She didn t seem to harbor any ill will because I had killed her mate nor was I surprised at that. You see I d not only rid her of a most obnoxious husband but I d put her on the throne where she d rule until the horrid little amphibian monstrosity that was her son grew to maturity. The first thing I d like to know she said is how you escaped from Mypos. I shook my head. I might be a prisoner there again some time so I ll keep that secret to myself. Perhaps you re wise she said but if you do come again you ll be treated well as long as I m vadjong. Now what is the important news you have for me Japal knows that your fleet is coming and the city is fully prepared. I advise you to turn back. Why are you doing this she asked. For two reasons: You were kind to my mate and the sons of Jantor are my friends. I do not wish to see Mypos and Japal at war. She nodded. I understand she said but nevertheless I shall keep on and attack Japal. We need more slaves. Many of our galleys are undermanned. The creatures die like flies at the oars. We talked a little longer and then finding that I could not persuade her to give up her plan I taxied away and took off. As we approached Japal we saw that the fleet was fully manned but remaining close to the city. Kandar wanted to wait and learn the outcome of the battle. It was now late in the afternoon so there was little likelihood that the engagement would take place before morning as the biremes would move up slowly so as not to exhaust the men at the oars they would need all their strength and energy for maneuvering during battle. They ll probably come up to within about a kob Kandar said and lie to until dawn thus the slaves will be well rested. A kob is two and a half of our Earthly miles. I didn t like the idea very well as I was anxious to return to Duare and get started on our search for Korva but it meant so much to Kandar that I agreed to wait. He knew where there was a cove a short distance along the coast and we flew there and anchored. At dawn Kandar awakened me. The Myposan fleet is moving in he said. I can hear the creaking of their oars. I listened. Very faintly I could hear the complaining of the wooden oars against the wooden rowlocks. Even a greased oar is not entirely silent. We took off and headed for Japal and almost immediately we saw the Myposan fleet coming in in three lines of fifteen or sixteen ships each. The fleet of Japal still lay close below the city wall. When the first line of the Myposan fleet was within a hundred yards of the enemy fleet the engagement started. A ball of fire rose from the deck of one of the Japal ships described a graceful arc and landed on the deck of a Myposan bireme. The burning brand had been shot from a catapult. Immediately the engagement became general. Fire balls and rocks were hurled from both sides. Many fell into the water but many found their marks. Three ships were on fire and I could see men hauling buckets of water from the lake to fight the flames. Still the Myposan fleet moved in. They are going to grapple and board said Doran. Soon I saw why the Japal fleet hugged the shore for now the batteries on the wall of the city opened up. These were heavier than the catapults of the ships they threw larger fire balls and heavier rocks. The penteconters had moved up now between the big ships of the Myposans. They were much faster and more maneuverable. Their principal purpose as far as I could see was to harass the enemy by coming alongside and hurling short spears through the ports where the rowers sat chained to their benches. Disable enough oarsmen and you have disabled the ship. A rock from a shore catapult dropped directly into the center of one of these penteconters killing two or three men instantly and crashing through the bottom of the ship which immediately commenced to fill and sink. The survivors leaping overboard were speared from the deck of the Japal ship they had been attacking. I could hear the dying men screaming and cursing. That was a good shot said Kandar. By now four of the attacking ships were burning their crews taking to small boats of which there were not half enough while the slaves burned in their chains. Their screams were horrifying. Other Myposan ships came alongside those of Japal and there was hand to hand fighting on decks slippery with blood. It was a gruesome sight but fascinating. I dropped lower to get a better view as the smoke from the burning ships was cutting down the visibility. I dropped too low. A rock from a catapult struck my propeller smashing it. Now I was indeed in a bad fix. Chapter XXII MY FIRST THOUGHT when I saw that my ship had been hit was of Duare. Here I was over a battle between two peoples who were my enemies. What chance had I of ever returning to Timal What was to become of Duare I cursed myself for my crass stupidity as I glided to a landing. I just had altitude enough to permit me to land about a mile along the shore from Japal. I hoped that in the heat and excitement of battle no one on the walls of the city had seen the accident or noticed where I had gone. I had come down close beside a forest and I immediately got Kandar and Doran to help me push the anotar into concealment among the trees. As I looked back toward the city I saw that smoke from burning ships hid much of it from my view and I hoped that it had also hidden my landing from the city. Kandar and Doran were most sympathetic. They said that the fault was all theirs. That if I had not been trying to help them the accident would never have happened. I told them that there was no use crying over spilled milk and that what we had to do now was find some tools and some wood to make a new propeller. I removed what was left of the old one one blade and the stub of the other. As I was explaining to Kandar the tools I should need and the kind of wood he became very much interested and asked me many questions about the construction of a propeller how to determine the correct pitch and so forth. You would have thought that he was going to make one himself. Getting the right wood was a simple matter. The same kind of trees from the wood of which I had made this propeller grew in the forest where we were but getting tools was an entirely different matter. There are plenty in Japal said Kandar. We must find some way to get them. Doran and I have hundreds of friends in the city if we could only reach them. They racked their brains for some plan but the whole thing looked utterly hopeless. Finally Doran hit upon something which at least contained the kernel of success but a very small kernel. I know a man who makes knives he said. I know him very well for he has done a lot of work for me. I also know that he is honest and loyal. He lives close to the wall not far from the inland gate. if we could reach his house we could get knives. But how can we reach his house demanded Kandar. By climbing the wall said Doran. Kandar laughed. At its lowest point the wall is one ted high he said. I can t jump that high. A ted is 13.2 Earth feet. No one has to jump explained Doran. You stand on Carson s shoulders I climb up and stand on yours I am already over the wall. Suppose you got caught I said. Gangor would have you killed no I won t let you take that risk. There s practically no risk said Doran. We will do it after dark. Everyone will be tired after the battle and anyway the watch is never very good. How will you get back asked Kandar. My friend s house stands against the wall. The roof is only a vulat below the top of the wall. I shall go down through the door in his roof get tools come up and there you are It sounds simple said Kandar. I think the risk is too great I said. We shall do it said Doran. That night we approached the city after dark Doran leading us to a point which he was sure was just outside the knife maker s house. It was not far from the inland gate too close I thought if the sentries kept any kind of watch at all. Everything went splendidly. Kandar climbed on to my shoulders and Doran scrambled up on to his. There we were just like that when a gruff voice behind us said Come down. You are prisoners. We are the guard. I was holding onto Kandar s legs to support him and before I could draw my pistol I was seized from behind. Kandar and Doran lost their balance and fell on top of me and half a dozen warriors. Most of us went down but the fellow who had seized me never lost his hold. When we had disentangled ourselves and gotten to our feet I found that I had been disarmed. One of the warriors was displaying my pistol proudly. I saw him use this this morning he said. If I hadn t recognized him when I did and gotten it away from him he d have killed us all. Be careful of it I cautioned him it is apt to kill you. I shall be careful of it he said and I shall keep it always. I shall be proud to show it to my children. Your children will never see it said another. Gangor will take it away from you. We had been walking toward the inland gate while they were talking and now we were admitted. Again I was a prisoner but I thanked Heaven that Duare was not one also. They shoved us into a room off the guardroom in the barbican and let us there until morning. None of the warriors seemed to have recognized either Kandar or Doran and I was hopeful that no one would. Doran who was quick witted had told a cock and bull story about our having been out hunting and not getting back before the gates closed we were trying to get into the city and go to our homes. One member of the guard asked Why were you hunting when there was a battle A battle exclaimed Doran. What battle We have been gone for two days. The Myposans came in many ships explained the fellow and there was a great battle but we drove them off. We took many prisoners but they got none. Fine said Kandar. I am sorry that we were not here. About the middle of the morning an officer came and said that Gangor wanted to see the man who flew around in the air the one who had killed so many of his warriors. That is I I said stepping forward. Who are these others he demanded. I don t know I said. They were returning from a hunting trip when I met them last night and they asked me to help them get over the wall and into the city. It seemed strange to me that an officer should not know either Kandar or Doran but the former explained to me later that Gangor had evidently commissioned a lot of low born fellows mostly sailors from ships he had sailed on so it was not strange that they were not recognized. Well said the officer I might as well take you all along Gangor would probably like to see your friends too. The moment that we were ushered into Gangor s presence he recognized Kandar and Doran. Ah he exclaimed the traitors. I saw you fighting against my ships yesterday. You saw nothing of the kind I said. Shut up snapped Gangor. You were fools to try to come into Japal. Why were you coming in A ha I know. You were coming to assassinate me. For that you shall die. I condemn you all to death. Take them away. Later I shall decide how they shall die. Chapter XXIII WE WERE TAKEN to a dungeon below the palace of the jong into which Gangor had moved. It was a most unsanitary and unpleasant place. They chained us to the wall our jailer who did it being unnecessarily rough with us. He wore the keys to the dungeon and our padlocks on a chain about his neck. He took the chain off to use the key when he fettered us and he struck us each several times with it just to satisfy his lust for cruelty. There could have been no other reason as we offered no resistance nor did we even speak to him. If I ever had murder in my heart it was then and for a long time I planned how I might kill him. It was then that an idea came to me. After the fellow had left us I noticed how dejected Doran appeared and I told him to cheer up that we had to die sometime. I didn t feel very cheerful myself. I kept thinking of Duare. She would never know what had happened to me but she would guess that I was dead for she would know that only death would keep me from returning to her. How can I be cheerful said Doran when it was my silly plan that brought us here to die. It is no more your fault than ours said Kandar. We had to take a chance. It was merely a misfortune not a fault which caused it to fail. I shall never forgive myself insisted Doran. We remained in that dungeon for a couple of weeks. A slave brought us food once a day we saw no one else and then at last our jailer returned. He was quite alone. I backed close to the wall as he came in. I just came to tell you he said that you are to die the first thing in the morning. Your heads are to be cut off. It is that homely head of yours that should be cut off I said. What are you anyway a Myposan I saw Kandar and Doran looking at me in astonishment. Shut up growled the jailer or I ll give you another taste of the chain. Get out of here I yelled at him. You stink. Go take a bath before you come down here again among your betters. The fellow was so mad that he couldn t speak but he came for me as I knew he would he came with his chain swinging. It was what I had planned it was happening just as I had hoped it would and when he came within reach of me I seized his throat in both my hands. He tried to scream for help but I had his wind choked off and he couldn t. But he was beating me all the time with his chain. I pushed him over closer to Kandar. Grab his chain I said before he beats me to death. Kandar got hold of it and held on while I choked the brute. I thought of the blows that he had struck us so wantonly and I gave his neck an extra twist. I have killed many men in self defense or in line of duty some I have been glad to kill but usually it has made me sad to think that I must take a human life. Not so now I enjoyed every second of it until his corpse hung limp in my grasp. I snatched the chain from about its neck and let it slip to the floor then I unlocked my padlock and freed myself. Quickly I did the same for Kandar and Doran. At first said Doran I couldn t understand why you wanted to enrage that fellow and get another beating for nothing but the moment he stepped toward you I guessed what you had in mind. It was a very clever trick. Yes I said but what now Maybe this is where we come in said Kandar. We were both born and raised in this palace. We know more about it than the jong our father did. More than anyone in Japal added Doran. You know how little boys are. We explored every corner of the place. And you know a way out I asked. Yes said Kandar but there s a hitch. What is it I asked. There is a secret passage leading from the palace out into the city. It ends in a building near the wall. In the cellar of that building another passage starts that leads outside the city. But where s the hitch I repeated. The hitch is he said that the secret passage starts in the jong s own sleeping apartments and the chances are that Gangor occupies them now. We ll have to wait until he is away said Doran. Can we get to them without being apprehended I asked. We can try said Kandar. I think it can be done after dark. It is after dark now I said. So we start said Doran. And may our luck hold added Kandar. Kandar led the way along a dark corridor and up a flight of stairs at the top of which he cautiously opened a door and looked into the room beyond. All right he whispered come on. He led us into the palace kitchen and through that and several pantries into a huge state dining room. The jongs of Japal lived well. We followed Kandar to the end of the room farthest from the main entrance and here he showed us a little door hidden behind hangings. Where the jong used to escape when he became bored he explained. Beyond the door was a narrow corridor. Go quietly cautioned Kandor. This corridor leads to the jong s sleeping apartments. We ll have a look in them and see if Gangor is there. We crept along noiselessly through the dark little corridor until Kandar halted at a door. We pressed close behind him as he opened it a crack. The room beyond was in darkness. Gangor is probably drinking with some of his cronies whispered Kandar and hasn t retired yet. We are in luck. Come on follow me but still go quietly. We crept across that dark room Doran touching Kandar to keep in contact and follow him and I touching Doran. It seemed a perfectly enormous room to me and traversing it that way in total darkness I somehow lost my balance just enough to cause me to throw one foot out to regain my equilibrium. Well I threw it in the wrong place at the wrong time. It hit a table or something and knocked it over. The thing fell with a crash that would have awakened the dead and instantly there was a cry and a light went on. There was Gangor right in front of us sitting up on. his sleeping couch screaming for the guard. On a table at the side of the couch lay my pistol. Gangor had taken it away from the warrior of the guard all right. It would have been better for him had he not. As I leaped forward and snatched it from the table a dozen warriors burst into the apartment. This way Kandar shouted to me and the three of us backed away toward the secret entrance to the corridor leading from the palace. At least I thought that that was where he was leading us but he wasn t. As he told me later he had not wished to reveal the secret to Gangor and his warriors. I menaced the advancing guardsmen with my pistol. Stand back I ordered. Don t come closer or I ll kill you Kill them screamed Gangor. Kill them all A warrior rushed me. I pressed the trigger but nothing happened. For the first time since I had had it my r ray pistol failed me failed me when it was a question of life or death and even more a question as to whether I was ever to return to Duare again. But unarmed as I was there were other weapons at hand. Maybe they had not been designed as instruments of death but they were to serve their purpose. I seized a bench and hurled it into the face of the advancing warrior. He went down and immediately Kandar and Doran grasped the possibilities of the furnishings of the apartment and seized upon the nearest things at hand. Behind them a cluster of spears had been arranged upon the wall as a decoration. I saw them and dragged them down. Now we were armed But the odds were against us twelve against three or rather eleven now for the man I had hit with the bench lay where he had fallen and Gangor only sat on his couch screaming for more guardsmen. I saw Kandar working his way toward him and so Doran and I moved with him keeping our backs against the wall. Fencing with spears is quite an interesting experience while thus engaged one does not doze I can assure you. It happened that the spear which had fallen to me was light and rather long a fact which gave me an advantage that I was not long in realizing and seizing upon. I found that while I could not parry well with one hand I could jab quite effectively so picking up a light table to use as a shield I succeeded so well that I jabbed an antagonist in the heart after parrying his thrust with my table. Doran and Kandar had each killed a man and now the remainder of them seemed less keen to push the assault. Kandar had worked around until he was close beside Gangor s couch and as he jerked his spear from the heart of a dead guardsman he wheeled and drove it through Gangor s body. Gangor did not die immediately. He lay sprawled across his couch vomiting blood and between paroxysms screaming in agony. Jantor jong of Japal had been avenged. Now more warriors were pushing into the chamber and it looked pretty bad for us three when there burst upon our ears the sound of gongs and trumpets. As if by magic the fighting stopped as we all listened. Chapter XXIV BENEATH THE SOUND of the gongs and trumpets we could hear men shouting. It is the call to arms cried a warrior. The city has been attacked. The Myposans have returned said another. Who will lead us We have no jong. You have a jong I cried. Follow Kandar He is your jong. They hesitated for a moment then a warrior said Kandar is jong. I will follow him. Who will come with me Kandar taking advantage of their indecision started for the door and Doran and I followed him. Come commanded Kandar. To the streets. To the defense of Japal Like sheep they followed him. When we arrived in the palace grounds and the warriors there saw Kandar and Doran leading some of their fellows they cheered then Kandar took command leading a strong party out into the city streets where fighting was in progress. It was then that I saw that it was not Myposans who had attacked Japal but strange repulsive looking warriors of a sickly greenish hue and entirely hairless no hair on their heads no whiskers no eye brows no eyelashes and right on the tops of their heads was a little knob of flesh. They fought with swords and long handled hooks holding the latter in their left hands. With these hooks they would catch an antagonist and draw him close then cut or thrust at him with the sword. Oftentimes the hook was enough if the point caught at the base of the brain. They were nasty weapons. If my pistol had been serviceable they wouldn t have worried me much but with only a spear I felt very much at a disadvantage. I had had no time to examine the pistol since I had recovered it but now I stopped before getting into the thick of the fight and went over it carefully. Evidently some one had been tampering with it probably in an effort to discover how it worked and I was much relieved to see that they had merely changed an adjustment. In a few seconds I had remedied the trouble and when I looked up I saw that I was just in time or almost just in time. I wasn t quite sure which for a big green devil was reaching for me with his hook. I was in a most disadvantageous position as I had rested my spear in the hollow of my left elbow with the butt on the ground while I worked on my pistol and the hook had already passed over my shoulder to take me in the back of the neck. It was just a matter of a split second before I should be gaffed. I did what was probably the best thing but I did it quite mechanically there was no time for conscious reasoning. I sprang toward my antagonist. Had I sprung away the hook would have impaled me but by springing toward him I confused him. At the same time I struck his sword aside with my left arm and sent a stream of r rays through his heart. It was a close call. Kandar and Doran were in the thick of the fight a little ahead of me. Kandar was closer and he was hotly engaged with one of the invaders. He too had nothing but a spear and I hurried to his aid. He had so far successfully knocked the gaff to one side every time his antagonist reached for him with it and then he would have to parry a sword thrust so he never got a chance to bring his spear into play as an offensive weapon. He was always on the defensive and no duel or war was ever won that way. I reached him just as a second enemy attacked him. The r rays hissed from the muzzle of my gun and both Kandar s antagonists went down then I started right through the ranks of the enemy spraying r rays to the right and left and ahead cutting a path wide enough to drive a combine through. I was having a glorious time. I felt as though I were winning a war all by myself. Suddenly I realized that the invaders were fleeing before me and on both sides. I looked back. I could see nothing but these hideous warriors. They had closed in behind me and I was being carried along with them. Presently I was tripped and as I fell I was seized on either side my pistol was snatched from my hand and I was hustled along with the defeated army. Down the main street of Japal they dragged me and out through the inland gate nor did their retreat end there for Japal s fighting men followed them far out onto the plain constantly harassing their rear. It was almost dark when they abandoned the pursuit and turned back toward the city. It was then that I became convinced that Kandar did not know I had been made prisoner. Had he I am sure that he would never have given up the pursuit until I had been rescued. A warrior on each side had been dragging me along up to the time but now that the pursuit had ceased a halt was called and while the creatures rested a rope was tied about my neck and when the march was resumed I was led along like a cow to the slaughter. I saw my pistol tucked into the loincloth of a warrior and I kept my eyes on the fellow hoping that I might find an opportunity to retrieve it. I knew that only as a forlorn hope could I use it if I had it for my captors were so numerous that though I might have killed many of them eventually they would have overwhelmed me. I was terribly depressed. Ill fortune seemed to dog my footsteps. Right on the threshold of freedom that would have permitted me to rejoin Duare immediately my rash impetuosity had plunged me into a predicament which was probably as fraught with danger as any I had ever encountered. Why should I have tried to fight a battle practically singlehanded I don t know. Probably I am overconfident in my own prowess but I have reason to be. I have come through some mighty trying experiences and escaped hundreds of dangers. Where were these strange silent creatures taking me What fate lay in store for me I had not heard them speak a word since I had seen them. I wondered if they were alalus lacking vocal organs. One of them approached me as we resumed the march. He wore three gold armlets and the haft of his gaff was circled by three golden rings. What is your name he demanded in the universal language of Amtor. So they were not alalus. Carson of Venus I replied. From what country come you The United States of America. I never heard of it he said. How far is it from Brokol I never heard of Brokol I replied. Where is that He looked disgusted. Everyone has heard of Brokol he said. It is the greatest empire in Amtor. It lies forty kob from here on the other side of those mountains. That would be a hundred miles. I not only had to get myself captured but now I had to walk a hundred miles Then my country is ten million four hundred thousand kobs from Brokol I said doing some lightning mental calculating. There is nothing that far away from anything he said petulantly. You are lying to me and that will make it worse for you. I am not lying I said. That is the nearest my country ever gets to Brokol sometimes it is farther away than that. You are the greatest liar I have ever heard of he said. How many people live in your country If I tell you you won t believe me. Tell me anyway. It is probably a little country. Do you know how many people live in Brokol I m afraid I could never guess. You are very right that you could never guess there are fifty thousand people living in Brokol I guess he expected me to faint. Indeed I said. Yes fifty thousand and I am not lying to you. Now how many live in your little country Tell me the truth. Somewhere around a hundred and thirty million. I told you to tell me the truth. There are not that many people in all Amtor. My country is not on Amtor. I thought he was going to explode he became so angry. Are you trying to make a fool of me he demanded turning a dark green. Not at all I assured him. There is no reason why I should lie to you. My country is in another world. If Amtor were not surrounded by clouds you could see it at night shining like a tiny ball of fire. I said you were the greatest liar I had ever heard of he said. I now say that you are the greatest liar any one ever heard of you are the greatest liar in the world. I do not like to be called a liar but what was I to do about it Anyway there was something of awe and respect in the way he said it that made it sound more like a compliment than an insult. I don t see why you should doubt me I said. The chances are that you have never heard of Vepaja or Havatoo or Korva yet they are countries which really exist. Where are they he demanded. Right on Amtor I said. If you can lead us to countries we have never heard of you will probably not be sacrificed to Loto El Ho Ganja but you had better not lie to her or to Duma. Loto El Ho Ganja literally translated into English means most high more than woman. None of the various peoples of Amtor with whom I had come in contact had any religion but this name and his mention of sacrifice in connection with it suggested that she might be a goddess. Is Loto El Ho Ganja your vadjong I asked. Vadjong means queen. No he said she is not a woman she is more than a woman. She was not born of woman nor did she ever hang from any plant. Does she look like a woman I asked. Yes he replied but her beauty is so transcendent that mortal women appear as beasts by comparison. And Duma I asked. Who is Duma Our jong the richest and most powerful jong in Amtor. You will probably see him when we reach Brokol and maybe Loto El Ho Ganja too. I think they will wish to see such a great liar one whose hair and eyes even are lies. What do you mean by that I demanded. I mean that there can be no such thing as a man with yellow hair and gray eyes therefore they must be a lie. Your powers of reasoning are amazing I said. He nodded in agreement and then said I have talked enough and walked away. If these Brokols have anything to recommend them it is their lack of garrulity. They talk when they have something to say otherwise they remain silent in which they differ greatly from most of my own species. I am always amazed if not always amused by the burst of feminine gabble which follows the lowering of a theater curtain for an intermission. There can t be that much important conversation in a lifetime. Chapter XXV I MUST SAY that after my conversation with this chap whose name I later learned was Ka at Ka at I was really curious to reach Brokol and see a woman so beautiful that she made other women appear as beasts. If it hadn t been for my concern over Duare I d have looked forward to it as another rare adventure. One must die eventually even though he has been inoculated with the longevity serum as have I so if he has no one dependent upon him he might as well crowd all of the adventure and experience into his life that he can even though he at times risks that life. During the long marches to Brokol no one spoke to me again. They communicated with me and among themselves largely by signs. I sometimes wondered that their vocal cords did not atrophy. I had much time to think and of course most of my thoughts revolved about Duare but I also thought of the strange suggestions Ka at had placed in my mind. I wondered what he meant when he said that Loto El Ho Ganja had never hung from any plant. Why should anyone wish to hang from a plant I am quite sure that the horse thieves they used to lynch in the days of our old West would not have chosen to hang from a tree or from anything else. The Brokols carried nothing but their spears swords and a little bag of food for we lived off the country as we went so they covered quite a little ground every day. During the morning of the fifth day we climbed through a mountain pass and from the summit I saw a city lying on a well watered tableland below. The party halted at the summit and looking down upon the city bowed three times from the waist. We were standing pretty close together and the opportunity I had been awaiting came because of that. I was behind and touching the warrior who carried my pistol. As he bowed I brushed against him and when he straightened up he did not have my pistol it was hidden in my loincloth. I didn t know when the opportunity to use it might come. I knew that I couldn t shoot my way out of a city full of enemies but as a last resort I could sell my life dearly. Anyway I was glad to have my weapon back again somehow it gives me a feeling of security and superiority that I don t have without it and that is strange because before I came to Venus I never carried a weapon of any description. The bowing at the summit of the pass I learned later was something of a religious ritual Brokol being considered by them a holy city. In it was located the principal temple of Loto El Ho Ganja. Here came the people of the lesser villages to worship and make offerings. We continued the march immediately and were soon at one of the gates of Brokol. I shall not bore you with the details of our entry into the city but I may say that it was not a triumphal entry for Ka at. He had been defeated and he brought back no spoils and only a single prisoner. Ka at was a yorkokor or commander of a thousand men. Yorkokor means literally a thousand daggers and is a military title corresponding with our colonel. The three gold armlets that he wore and the three golden rings which encircled the haft of his gaff were the insignia of his office. I was taken to an open square or plaza in a poor part of the city and locked in a cage. There were a number of these cages but only one other had an occupant. He was a human being like myself and his cage was next to mine. We were not exactly on exhibit but the plaza was not enclosed and many Brokols came and gawped at us. Some of them poked us with sticks and others threw stones at us. For the most part however they just looked and commented a word or a short phrase. They were not given to loquacity. One looked at me and said to his companion What is it The other just shook his head. Yellow hair said the first. Gray eyes said the second. They were running on terribly for Brokols. You talk too much the man in the next cage yelled at them. One of them threw a rock at him and then they both walked away. They hate to have anyone say they talk too much confided my neighbor. I nodded. I was suddenly sick at heart as though I felt a premonition of tragedy. Somehow I connected it with Duare and I didn t feel much like talking. The fellow in the next cage shook his head sadly. You don t look like a Brokol he said but you talk like one. It is too bad. When I saw you coming I thought that I was going to have some one to talk with. I have been afraid that I was going to forget how to talk. I am sorry I said. I shall be glad to talk with you. He brightened up. My name is Jonda he said. Mine is Carson. I am from Tonglap. Where are you from From Korva I said. There was no use going through the futile explanation of where the United States of America was. No one on Venus could have understood it. I never heard of Korva he said. Tonglap is far away in that direction. He pointed toward the north. I am a vookor in the army of Tonglap. Vookor really means one dagger but is the title of an officer who commands one hundred men a captain. Tonglap means big land. The days dragged heavily and I became much depressed. Here I was in a cage in a strange land a prisoner of queer half human creatures my ship lay disabled at Japal and Duare was far away in Timal. How long I wondered would those savage people remain friendly to her. I began to lose hope for it seemed impossible that she and I ever would be reunited that we should ever reach Korva. Jonda had told me that at any moment one of us might be chosen as a human sacrifice to Loto El Ho Ganja. From remarks I have overheard he said I think she either drinks the blood of the victim or bathes in it. I understand that she is very beautiful I said. Have you ever seen her No and I don t want to. I understand that it isn t good for one s health to have Loto El Ho Ganja take an interest in one. Let us hope that she never hears of us. After a couple of weeks Jonda and I were taken from our cages and put to work cleaning up an oval field which had tiers of benches built around it. The benches were raised the lower tier being some ten feet above the ground so that the whole thing resembled a Spanish bull ring more than it did anything else. There were two main gates and a number of small doors in the wooden paling surrounding it. I remarked to Jonda that it seemed strange to me that we didn t see more slaves in the city. As far as I knew there were only the two of us. I ve never seen any others he replied. Duma the jong sent out that expedition under Ka at to gather slaves but he didn t do very well. He may have had his head lopped off for it by this time. Shut up snapped one of the warriors that were guarding us. You talk too much. Work don t talk. While we were working half a dozen warriors entered the arena and approached our guard. The jong has sent for these two said their leader. One of our guard nodded. No words wasted there. They conducted us to the palace grounds and through what appeared to be a well kept orchard of small fruit trees. I could see what appeared to be some kind of fruit hanging from the branches but only one or two to a tree. There were many guards about. When we had come closer to the orchard I was amazed to see that what I had thought was fruit were diminutive Brokols dangling in the air by stems attached to the tops of their heads. This suddenly explained many things among them the knob on the tops of the heads of all the Brokols I had seen and Ka at s statement that Loto El Ho Ganja had never hung from a plant. The little Brokols were perfectly formed. Most of them hung quietly swaying in the breeze with their eyes shut but a few were very active wriggling their arms and legs and making complaining sounds. It all reminded me of the first stirrings of a new born babe yet there was something almost obscene about it. They were of all sizes from those but an inch long to some that were fully fifteen inches in length. Jonda pointed to one of these and remarked Pretty nearly ripe and about to fall off. Shut up snapped one of our guard. That was practically the extent of the conversations we ever had with our captors. Chapter XXVI WE WERE TAKEN into the presence of the jong where we were told to bow four times. It is remarkable that from the depth of the African forest to the Court of Versailles on Earth or Venus there is a similarity in the trappings and the ritual surrounding kings. The throne room of Duma was as elaborate as the culture and means of the Brokols could make it. There were battle scenes painted on the walls there were dyed fabrics hanging at the windows and doorways swords and spears and the heads of animals adorned the walls. Duma sat upon a carved bench on a dais strewn with furs. He was a large man as hairless and hideous as his subjects and he was loaded with bracelets armlets and anklets of gold. A Brokol woman the first I had seen sat on a lower bench beside him. She too was weighted down with golden ornaments. She was Dua the vadjong. This I learned later as also that the jongs of Brokol were always named Duma and the vadjongs Dua. Which is the slave from Japal asked Duma and then I see it must be the one with yellow hair and gray eyes. Ka at did not lie. Did you tell Ka at that you came from a country ten million four hundred thousand kobs from Brokol fellow Yes I said. And did you tell him that there were a hundred and thirty million people in your country Correct. Ka at did not lie he repeated. Nor did I I said. Shut up said Duma you talk too much. Could you lead an expedition to that country for the purpose of obtaining loot and slaves Of course not I replied we could never reach it. Even I may never return to it. You are even as Ka at said the greatest liar in the world said Duma then he turned his eyes upon Jonda. And you he said where are you from From Tonglap. How many people are there there I never counted them replied Jonda but I may say that there are fully ten times as many as there are in Brokol. Another liar said Duma. Brokol is the largest country in the world. Can you lead my warriors to Tonglap so that they may take prisoners and loot I can but I won t said Jonda. I am no traitor. Shut up said Duma. You talk too much. He spoke to an officer. Take this one who is from Tonglap and put him back in his cage. Loto El Ho Ganja wished to see the other one. She has never seen a man with yellow hair and gray eyes. She did not believe Ka at any more than I did. She said also that she would be amused to hear the greatest liar in Amtor. They led Jonda away and then several men with plumes fastened to their heads surrounded me. They carried golden gaffs and very heavy short swords with ornate hilts. Their leader looked at Duma who nodded and I was led from the throne room. When you enter the presence of Loto El Ho Ganja bow seven times the leader instructed me and do not speak unless you are spoken to then only answer questions. Ask none and make no gratuitous observations of your own. Loto El Ho Ganja has a throne room of her own in a temple that stands not far from the palace. As we approached it I saw hundreds of people bringing offerings. Of course I could not see everything that they brought but there were foods and ornaments and textiles. It evidently paid well to head the church of Brokol as it does to head most churches and cults. Even in our own Christian countries it has not always proved unprofitable to emulate the simple ways of Christ and spread his humble teachings. Loto El Ho Ganja sat on a gorgeous golden throne that made Duma s bench look like a milkmaid s stool. She was surrounded by a number of men garbed like those who escorted me. They were her priests. Loto El Ho Ganja was not a bad looking girl. She was no Brokol but a human being like me. She had jet black hair and eyes and a cream colored skin with just a tinge of olive through which glowed a faint pink upon her cheeks. I d say that if she were not beautiful she was definitely arresting and interesting and she looked alert and intelligent. After I had bowed seven times she sat looking at me in silence for a long time. What is your name she asked after a while. She had a lovely contralto voice. Listening to it I could not imagine her drinking human blood or taking a bath in it. I am Carson kum Amtor Tanjong kum Korva I replied which in English would be Carson of Venus Prince of Korva. And where is Korva It is a country far to the south. How far I do not know exactly several thousand kobs however. Did you not tell Ka at that your country lay ten million four hundred thousand kobs from Brokol she demanded. Were you lying then or now I was not lying at all. The world from which I originally came is not Korva and that other world is ten million four hundred thousand kobs from Brokol. By what name is it known she asked. The United States of America. She wrinkled her brows in thought at that and a strange puzzled expression came into her eyes. She seemed to be straining to bring some forgotten memory from the deepest recesses of her mind but presently she shook her head wearily. The United States of America she repeated. Would you tell me something about your country I cannot see what you could expect to gain by lying to me. I shall be glad to tell you anything you wish to know I replied and I can assure you that I shall not lie to you. She arose from her throne and stepped down from the dais. Come with me she said and then she turned to one of her priests. I would examine this man alone. You may all leave. But Loto El Ho Ganja objected the man it would be dangerous to leave you alone with this man. He is an enemy. She drew herself up to her full height. I am Loto El Ho Ganja she said. I know all things. I have looked into this man s eyes I have looked into his soul and I know that he will not attempt to harm me. The fellow still hesitated. Such a thing has never been done he said. You heard my command Ro ton she said sharply. Do you my high priest dare question my authority He moved away at that and the others followed him. Loto El Ho Ganja led me across the room toward a small door. The throne room of this goddess if that was what she was was even more elaborate than that of Duma the jong but its wall decorations were gruesome rows of human skulls with crossed bones beneath them doubtless the skulls and bones of human sacrifices. The small room to which she led me was furnished with a desk several benches and a couch. The benches and the couch were covered with furs and cushions. Loto El Ho Ganja seated herself on a bench behind the desk. Sit down she said and I seated myself on a bench opposite her. She asked me about the same questions that Duma had and I gave her the same answers that I had given him then she asked me to explain how there could be another world so far from Venus and I gave her a very sketchy explanation of the solar system. Sun planets moons she said musingly moons and stars. I had not mentioned stars. I wondered how she could have known the word. Before they brought me before you I said I was told to speak only when I was spoken to and to ask you no questions. You would like to ask me some questions Yes. You may she said. Ro ton and the lesser priests would be shocked she added with a shrug and a smile. How did you know about stars I asked. She looked surprised. Stars What do I know about stars I am Loto El Ho Ganja. That answers your question. I know many things. Sometimes I do not know how I know them. I do not know how I knew about stars. In the back of my mind are a million memories but most of them are only vague and fragmentary. I try very hard to piece them together or to build them into recognizable wholes she sighed but I never can. Of course you are not a Brokol I said. Tell me how you came to be here a living goddess among alien people. I do not know she said. That is one of the things I can never recall. Once I found myself sitting on the temple throne. I did not even know the language of these people. They had to teach me it. While I was learning it I learned that I was a goddess and that I came from the fires that surround Amtor. My full title is Loto El Hotanja Kum O Raj literally Most High More Than Woman Of The Fire or for short Fire Goddess but that is too long and is only used on state occasions and in rituals. Ro ton and a few of the others I permit to call me just Loto in private. She pronounced it lo to and as it means Most High it was still something of a title. You she added graciously may call me Loto while we are alone. I felt that I was getting on pretty well to be permitted to call a goddess by her first name. I hoped that she was going to like me so well that she wouldn t care to drink my blood or even bathe in it. I shall call you Carson she said. Like so many other things that I cannot understand I seemed to be drawn to you from the moment I first saw you by some mysterious bonds of propinquity. I think it was when you said United States of America. That name seemed to strike a responsive chord within me. Why I do not know. United States of America She whispered the words softly and slowly almost caressingly and there was that strange far away look in her eyes. Chapter XXVII LOTO AND I were getting on famously when there came a scratching at the door. Enter said The Fire Goddess. The door was opened and Ro ton stood scowling on the threshold. I thought I told you we were to be left alone said the goddess with some asperity. I come from Duma said Ro ton. He wishes to offer a sacrifice to Loto El Ho Ganja and he looked straight at me with a very nasty expression on his green face. If he insists I shall accept his sacrifice said Loto but I shall reserve the right to select the victim and she looked so meaningly at Ro ton that he turned a dark green which faded almost immediately to a sickly greenish white. It will probably be one of those who disobey me. Ro ton faded from the scene closing the door after him while Loto tapped her sandalled toe upon the floor. He aggravates me so she said. Whenever I demonstrate any liking for a person he runs immediately to Duma and gets him to select that person as an offering. One of these days I am going to lose patience and select Ro ton myself. That would be a great honor for Ro ton but I don t think he d enjoy it. Is it true I asked that you drink the blood of the sacrificial offerings Her eyes flashed angrily. You are presumptuous she exclaimed. You have taken advantage of my kindness to you to ask me to divulge one of the most sacred secrets of the temple. I stood up. I am sorry I said. Now I suppose I must go. Sit down she snapped. I am the one to decide when you are to go. Have you no manners I have never before had the honor of being entertained by a goddess I said so I do not know just how to act. You are not being entertained by a goddess she said. You are entertaining one. Goddesses do not entertain any one especially slaves. I hope that I am entertaining you Most High I said. You are. Now tell me more about The United States of America. Has it many cities Thousands. Any as large as Brokol Most of them are larger. One has nearly seven million people. What is that city called she asked. New York. New York she repeated. New York. It seems just as though I had heard that name before. Again we were interrupted by scratching on the door. It was a priest to announce that Duma the jong was coming to the temple to pay his respects to Loto El Ho Ganja. Loto flushed angrily but she said We will receive him. Summon the priests to the holy chamber. When the priest was gone she turned again to me. I cannot leave you here alone she said so you will have to come with me. We went out into the throne room. It was what she called the holy chamber. Loto told me to stand over at one side then she took her place on the throne. Priests were arriving. Ro ton came. They made a barbarous spectacle in that skull decorated room with their green skins and their plumes of office. Soon I heard the sound of drums first at a distance then drawing nearer and presently Duma entered preceded by drummers and followed by fully a hundred officers. They stopped before the dais and bowed seven times then Duma mounted the dais and sat on a low bench next to Loto El Ho Ganja. Every one else in the room remained standing. You could have heard a pin drop it was so quiet. They went through a sort of stupid ritual for a while Duma standing up every few seconds and bowing seven times. When that was over they commenced their conversation. I could hear every word. Ro ton tells me that you have refused my sacrifice said Duma. That is something that has never before happened. I did not refuse it replied Loto. I simply said that I would select the victim. That is the same as refusing it said Duma. I wish to select my own offering. You may said Loto but I have the right to refuse any offering that is not acceptable. You seem to forget that I am Loto El Ho Ganja Kum O Raj. And you seem to forget that I am the jong of Brokol snapped Duma. To a goddess a jong is only another mortal said Loto icily. Now if you have no further matters to discuss I permit you to withdraw. I could see that Duma was furious. He turned dark green and he fairly glared at Loto. A jong has warriors he said angrily. He can enforce his wishes. You threaten me demanded Loto. I demand that I be permitted to select my own offering. Duma was fairly shouting now. I told you that you might name your selection said Loto. Very well said Duma. It is the slave Carson with whom you have been closeted alone for hours defying the traditions of the temple. I decline your offering said Loto. Duma leaped to his feet. Take that slave back to his cage he shouted. I ll attend to this woman later. Now I declare that she is no goddess but that I Duma am a god. Let those who accept me as their god bow seven times. That was the last I heard as several warriors had seized me and hustled me out of the holy chamber. They took me back to my cage and locked me in. Jonda was still in the adjoining cage and when I told him what had happened he said that I didn t have long to live now. That s what comes of getting mixed up with goddesses and jongs he added. They were going to kill me anyway I reminded him. At least this way nobody s going to drink my blood. Maybe Duma will he suggested. You say he s god now. If that is so he can select you for his first sacrifice. I wonder if the people will stand for his ousting Loto El Ho Ganja I said. If a jong has plenty of warriors his people will stand for anything said Jonda. Loto El Ho Ganja seemed all powerful to me I said. The high priest and the jong did her homage and stepped around for her until Duma lost his temper. Look exclaimed Jonda pointing. Who is that they re bringing I ve never seen a human woman here before. I looked and was shocked. It is Loto El Ho Ganja I said. So Duma is a god now said Jonda. Two warriors were escorting Loto El Ho Ganja. They were not rough with her. Perhaps they felt that she might still be a goddess regardless of what Duma had proclaimed and one doesn t willingly offend a goddess. They were coming toward our cages and presently they stopped in front of mine unlocked the door and pushed Loto in with me. Chapter XXVIII I HAVE HAD many strange experiences in my adventurous life but being locked up in a cage over night with a goddess was a new one. Loto appeared dazed. I imagine the shock of her fall from Olympus was terrific. What happened I asked. This is the end she said. Thank God this is the end. I feel it. She spoke in Amtorian all but one word: God. That she spoke in English There is no word for God in Amtorian. Most High More than Woman of The Fire is the nearest approach to the name of a deity that I have ever heard here. Where did she learn that one English word I asked her but she only looked more dazed than ever and said that she did not know. Why is it the end Loto I asked. He has condemned me to death she said and then she laughed. I who cannot die am condemned to death. But he has condemned you too you and this other prisoner and you can die. I wish that I might save you. You tried to Loto I reminded her. Why did you do that It has cost you your life. I liked you she said. I was drawn to you by some power I do not understand. We three Loto Jonda and I condemned to death talked together long into the night. They told me strange almost unbelievable things about these green Brokol people. They told me that their blood was not red but white like the sap of some plants and that they ate no meat though they drank the blood of warm blooded animals. I asked about the tiny Brokols I had seen hanging from trees and they told me that the Brokol females laid small nut like eggs which were planted in the ground. These grew into trees and in a matter of years bore the fruit I had seen hanging. When the little Brokols were ripe they dropped from the trees wild untamed creatures that had to be captured and disciplined. Each family usually had its own orchard of Brokol trees the one I had seen belonging to the royal family. Guypals the great birds with which I had become familiar at Mypos accounted for many little ripening Brokols which accounted for the armed warriors guarding the royal orchard. Here was a race of people who not only had family trees but family orchards. When a woman planted an egg she stuck a little marker in the ground beside it to identify it just as our home gardeners place markers every spring in their gardens so that they will know which are beets and which tomatoes when they come up. Because of guypals and insect pests the infant mortality of the Brokols is appallingly high not one in a thousand reaching maturity. However as the Brokols are polygamous and both the ground and the females extremely fertile there is little danger that race suicide will exterminate them. I might mention that no dogs are allowed in the orchards. During a lapse in the conversation Loto suddenly exclaimed I did not drink human blood. While I was Loto El Ho Ganja Kum O Raj I could not tell you but now that I have been deposed I am free to speak. Somehow I could not believe that you did I told her but I am glad to hear it from your own lips. No she said it was Ro ton Duma and a few of the more favored priests who got the blood to drink. It was only their craving for blood which ever induced them to sacrifice a human slave as these were considered very valuable as workers. Most of the offerings were Brokols who had incurred the displeasure of Duma or Ro ton but they did not drink the blood of these. I did not even kill the victim Ro ton did that. I merely presided and repeated a chant but the priests let the people think that I drank the blood in order to impress them. It seems that the common people must be afraid of their goddess in order to be held under control. You and Carson speak of strange creatures of which I have never heard said Jonda the godless one. Let us talk of something else then said Loto. I should like to hear more about The United States of America of New York New York New York She whispered the name slowly drawing it out and her eyes were dreamy and introspective. Suddenly she exclaimed Betty Betty Betty I m getting it She was terribly excited. Call call Betty call. I almost have it Oh God I almost have it Brooklyn Now I have it Brooklyn Then she swooned. I tried to revive her but she didn t respond so I had to let her lie there. I knew that she would regain consciousness eventually. What she had said mystified me. What could she know about Brooklyn I had mentioned New York but never Brooklyn yet I could not be mistaken she had said Brooklyn plainly. And what did she mean by call and who was Betty When she came to I intended to get an explanation if I could. Could it be that there was another American on Venus whom she had seen and talked with If I had reached the Shepherd Star another might have done so. Perhaps he had been a prisoner here maybe an offering with whom she had talked before he died. I must find out But what good it would do me other than to satisfy my curiosity I did not know for was I not to die on the morrow Thinking these thoughts I fell asleep. It was morning when I awoke. I was alone. Loto was not in the cage and the door was still securely locked Chapter XXIX I AWOKE Jonda but he could give me no information. He was as much mystified as I. Something tells me that I shall never see Loto again and that I shall carry this unsolved mystery to the grave with me. Shortly before noon Brokols commenced filing past our cages. They were going toward the bull ring that Jonda and I had once cleaned. Many of them stopped and looked at us commenting usually in a most uncomplimentary manner upon our looks and antecedents. Presently they came for us a couple of dozen warriors. I wanted to use my pistol but I decided to wait until we got in the arena and I could wreak greater havoc. The warriors were much concerned and not a little upset by the absence of Loto. They saw that the lock of the door had not been tampered with. When they asked me how she had escaped I could only say that I did not know. They took us to the arena which was crowded with Brokols. It was very quiet nothing like a Spanish bull ring or an American baseball game when they have a large audience. There was little conversation no cheering no shouting. When Duma entered with his family and entourage the place was as quiet as a tomb. Jonda and I were standing in the center of the arena with our guards one of whom left us and went and spoke with Duma. Presently he returned and said that Duma wished me to come to him. Half the guards accompanied me. What became of the woman demanded Duma overlooking the fact that I had not bowed to him either four times or once. That is a stupid question to ask me I told him. Duma turned the color of a green lime. You must know I continued that if I did know I wouldn t tell you. I don t know but if I told you that you would not believe me. No I don t know but I can guess. What do you guess he asked. I guess that you can t hold a goddess behind bars I said and I also guess that she has gone to arrange punishment for you and Ro ton for the way you have treated her. You were very stupid to treat the Most High More Than Woman of the Fire the way you did. It was Ro ton s fault said Duma. Ro ton was there and he looked very uncomfortable and when Duma said again It was all Ro ton s fault he couldn t contain himself. You wanted to be the Most High More Than Man of the Fire he blurted. That was your idea not mine. If she comes back she ll know whose fault it was. Goddesses always do I said. You can never fool em. Take him away snapped Duma. I do not like him. I think I hear her coming now I said looking up in the air. Immediately Duma Ro ton and all those around them looked up. It was a very tense moment but no Loto El Ho Ganja Kum O Raj appeared. However I had upset their nervous equilibrium which was all that I hoped to do though it wouldn t have surprised me much if a girl who could have disappeared so completely and mysteriously as Loto had the night before had suddenly materialized carrying a flaming sword. However she didn t and I was hauled back to the center of the arena. Jonda bowed to me seven times. Jonda had a sense of humor but the Brokols hadn t. There was a hissing noise as though thousands of people had gasped simultaneously and I guess that is exactly what happened then the silence was deathly. Duma shouted something that I could not understand drums were beaten and the warriors left us alone in the center of the arena. We are about to die said Jonda. Let s give a good account of ourselves. Two warriors came out and handed us each a spear or gaff and a sword. See that you put on a good show said one of them. You are going to see one of the best shows ever put on in this arena I told him. When the warriors had retired to places of safety one of the small doors in the arena wall was opened and six nobargans came out. The nobargans are hairy manlike cannibals. They have no clothing nor ornaments hut they fight with slings with which they hurl stones and with the crudest kind of bows and arrows. The derivation of the word nobargan may interest you. Broadly it means a savage literally it means hairy men. In the singular it is nobargan. Gan is man bar is hair. No is a contraction of not meaning with and is used as a prefix with the same value that the suffix y has in English. So nobar means hairy and no bargan hairy man. The prefix kloo forms the plural hairy men savages. I have preferred throughout this narrative to use the English form of plural as a rule as the Amtorian is quite awkward in this case kloonobargan. The nobargans came toward us growling like wild beasts from which they are not far removed. If they were proficient with their slings and bows our gaffs and swords would offer no defense. We d never be able to get close enough to use them. I threw down my gaff and drew my pistol carrying the sword in my left hand to use to fend off the missiles of the savages. Jonda wanted to barge ahead and get to close quarters but I told him to wait that I had a surprise for him the nobargans and the Brokols so he dropped back at my side. The savages were circling to surround us as I raised my pistol and dropped the first one then all I had to do was pan as the photographers say. One by one the creatures went down. Some missile flew by our heads and three of the beast men had time to charge us but I dropped them all before they reached us. Utter silence followed and endured for a moment then I heard Duma raving like a madman. He had been cheated out of the sport he had expected. There had been no contest and we had not been killed. He ordered warriors to come and take my pistol from me. They came but with no marked enthusiasm. I told them to stay back or I would kill them as I had killed the nobargans. Duma screamed at them to obey him. Of course there was nothing else for them to do so they came on and I dropped them just as I had the savages. The Brokol audience sat in absolute silence. They are the quietest people But Duma was not quiet. He fairly jumped up and down in his rage. He would have torn his hair had he had any. Finally he ordered every armed man in the audience to enter the arena and get me offering a splendid reward. Good work said Jonda. Keep it up. After you have killed all the inhabitants of Brokol we can go home. I can t kill them all I said. There are too many of them coming now. We ll be taken but at a good price. Thousands of armed men were jumping over the barrier and coming toward us. I can t say they were hurrying much. Everyone seemed to be quite willing to let some one else win the reward but they were coming nevertheless. As they were closing in on us I heard a familiar sound above me. But it could not be true I looked up and there far overhead circled an aeroplane. It could not be true but it was. As far as I could see it I could recognize that ship. It was the anotar my anotar: Who had repaired it Who was flying it Who else could it be but Duare the only person in all this world who could fly an aeroplane. Look I cried pointing up. She comes Loto El Ho Ganja Kum O Raj comes for vengeance Everybody looked up. Then they turned and looked at Duma and Ro ton. I looked at them too. They were beating it out of that arena as fast as they could go. I ll bet they re running yet. The anotar was circling low now and I was waving wildly to attract the attention of Duare or whoever was in it. Presently Duare leaned out and waved. I called to the Brokols to fall back out of the way or be killed by the bird ship coming with a new Loto El Ho Ganja. I thought they might notice too soon that Duare was not the original Loto. They made room in a hurry scrambling out of the arena and leaving the stadium as fast as they could go. Duare landed in the arena a beautiful landing and a moment later I had her in my arms. I would have done the same thing had we been on the corner of 42nd and Broadway. Doran was in the ship with her and a moment later Jonda was in and I was at the controls with Duare at my side. We were both so full of questions that we almost burst but eventually I learned that one of Kandar s first acts after he became jong of Japal was to send a strong body of warriors to Timal to bring Duare and Artol back to his court. He also following my instructions had had a new propeller made for the anotar. Knowing that I had been captured by the Brokols they knew where to look for me though they had little hope of reaching me in time. We were flying at a couple of thousand feet altitude when I looked back at Jonda. He was gazing around and down wide eyed with excitement. What do you think of it I asked him. I don t believe it he said. I think Ka at was right you are the greatest liar in the world. EDITOR S NOTE: Not that it has any bearing on this story but just as an example of a remarkable coincidence I want to reproduce here a news item that appeared in the daily press recently. Brooklyn Sept. 24. Special Correspondence. The body of Betty Callwell who disappeared twenty five years ago was found in the alley back of her former home here early this morning. The preservation of the body was remarkable as Miss Callwell must have been dead for twenty five years. Friends who viewed the body insist that it did not look a day older than when she disappeared. The police fear foul play and are investigating. Chapter XXX WHEN I WAS young I used to dream of living an adventurous life and it may be that these youthful dreams more or less shape one s later life. Perhaps that is why I took up flying when I was old enough. it may account for the rocket ship I built for a trip to Mars a trip that ended on Venus I had desired adventures but recently I had had little else than misadventures and I must admit that I was getting pretty well fed up on them so when Duare and Doran arrived in the nick of time over the arena in Brokol while Jonda and I were facing the impossibility of withstanding the assault of several thousand warriors armed with swords and gaffs and bore us off in the anotar I made up my mind then and there that we were to have no more adventures or misadventures but were heading south in our search for Korva just as quickly as possible. Under ordinary circumstances I should have been glad to take Jonda to Tonglap his homeland but I was not going to risk Duare s safety any further so when Doran told Jonda that he would be welcome in Japal until he could find the means to return to Tonglap I was more than pleased since Japal was in the general direction we would have to travel to get to Korva and Tonglap was not. We were given a royal welcome in Japal the anotar was stocked with food and water and as quickly as we decently could we bade our friends good by and took off. Duare and I had discussed our course and had come to the conclusion that if we flew in a southwesterly direction we would come pretty close to hitting the land mass known as Anlap or Birdland on which Korva is situated. This course took us down the length of the Lake of Japal for about five hundred miles and then out over a noellat gerloo or mighty water which is Amtorian for ocean. Isn t it restful sighed Duare. After what we ve been through almost anything would be restful I replied. This is almost too restful and too good to be true. I thought that I should never see you again Carson. They told me some of the horrible customs of the Brokols their drinking of human blood and all that. I was nearly frantic before I was able to take off in the anotar to search for you. Won t it be wonderful to get back to Korva where we are loved And for the first time since we met have peace and security. My dear if it s humanly possible I think I shall never leave Korva again. Won t Taman and Jahara be amazed and delighted to see us again Oh Carson I can hardly wait to get back. It s a long flight I told her and after we reach Korva we may have a long search before we can locate Sanara it s a very little city in a very big country. The ocean across which we were flying proved to be enormous and it was a very lonely ocean. We saw a few ships at the lower end of the Lake of Japal and a few more close to the coast on the ocean but after these we saw nothing just a vast expanse of gray sea a sea that was never blue for it had no blue sky to reflect only the gray clouds that envelop Venus. Amtorian shipping seldom sails out of sight of land for all maps are wildly inaccurate because of their belief that Amtor is a saucer shaped world floating on a sea of Molten rock with what is really the nearer Pole as the periphery or outer edge of the saucer and the Equator at the center. You can readily see how this would distort everything. Then too the mariners have no celestial bodies to guide them. If they get out of sight of land they are sunk figuratively and very likely to be sunk literally. Duare and I were much better off as I had built a compass in Havatoo and I had roughly corrected the Amtorian maps from my knowledge of the true shape of the planet. Of course my maps were pitifully inadequate but at least had some claim to verity. We were getting pretty tired of that ocean when Duare sighted land. I had been confident that Japal lay in the northern hemisphere and from the distance we had travelled since leaving it I was certain that we had crossed the Equator and were in the southern hemisphere where Korva lies. Perhaps this was Korva that we were approaching The thought filled us both with elation. It was really a lovely land although a barren rock would have looked lovely to us after the monotony of that long ocean crossing during which we had seen nothing but water for a full week. As we neared the land I dropped down for a closer view. A great river wound down a broad valley to empty into the sea almost directly beneath us. The valley was carpeted with the pale violet grass of Amtor starred with blue and purple flowers. Little patches of forest dotted the valley. We could see their glossy lacquer like boles of red and azure and white and their weird foliage of heliotrope lavender and violet moving to a gentle breeze. There is something strangely beautiful about an Amtorian landscape beautiful and unreal. Perhaps it is the soft pastel shades that make it look more like a work of art than a creation of Nature. Like a gorgeous sunset on Earth it is something that could never be reproduced by man. I sometimes think that man s inability to reproduce the beauties of Nature has led to the abominable atrocities called modern art. Oh how I d like to get down there among those flowers exclaimed Duare. And get captured or killed by some of the weird creatures that roam your fantastic planet I retorted. No young lady As long as our food our water and our fuel hold out we stay right up in the air where we re safe until we find the city of Sanara. So my planet is fantastic is it demanded Duare coming to the defense of her world like the Travel Bureau of Honolulu or the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. I suppose your planet is perfect with its crooked politicians its constants warring religious sects its gangsters and its funny clothes. I laughed and kissed her. I should never have told you so much I said. From what you have told me I gather that the best thing about your planet isn t there any more she said. What s that I asked. You. So I kissed her again. Look I exclaimed presently there s a city Sure enough several miles up the river and close to it there lay a city. It can t be Sanara can it asked Duare hopefully. I shook my head. No it is not Sanara. The river near Sanara runs due east this one runs due south. Furthermore this city doesn t resemble Sanara in any respect. Let s have a closer look at it suggested Duare. I couldn t see any harm in that so I headed for the city. It reminded me a little of Havatoo except that it was entirely circular while Havatoo is a half circle. There was a large central plaza with avenues radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel and there were other avenues forming concentric circles spaced equidistant from one another between the central plaza and the high outer wall of the city. It looks like two Havatoos stuck together observed Duare. I wish it were Havatoo I said. Why demanded Duare. We just escaped from that city with our lives. I don t ever care to see it again. The very idea I the daughter of a thousand jongs was not good enough to live in Havatoo so they were going to destroy me That was a bit stupid I admitted. I dropped down close over the city. Everything about it was round the central plaza was round the buildings were all round the whole city was round and many of the buildings were capped with spheres. Now people were running into the streets and the great central plaza and out upon their roofs looking up at us. Many of them waved to us and we replied. What an interesting city said Duare. I d like to visit it. The people look very friendly too. My dear I replied you are becoming a veritable glutton for disaster. I wouldn t go down there for the world said Duare. I just said I d like to visit it. Just then my propeller flew off. Chapter XXXI THE PROPELLER was the one that Kandar had made and fitted to the engine while I was a prisoner in Brokol. Evidently he hadn t fitted it properly. I think you are going to get your wish Duare I said. We haven t enough elevation to clear the city so I guess I ll have to bring her down in that plaza. As I spiralled to a landing the people fled from the plaza giving me plenty of room but the moment the anotar came to a stop they swarmed out again forming a circle about it. They danced around the anotar singing and laughing. Others behind them had gathered handfuls of flowers with which they showered us. The songs they sang were songs of welcome. Such a reception of strangers in an Amtorian city was without parallel in my experience it was remarkable it was amazing. And it certainly reassured us. Presently three of them approached us and the dancing and singing stopped as the others gathered around to listen. All were smiling. Somehow they reminded me of the acrobats I used to see on the old vaudeville circuits with their set smiles mugging I think it was called. One of the three bowed and said Welcome to Voo ad if you come in peace. Voo ad means First City. We landed because of an accident to our anotar I replied but we come in peace and we are appreciative of your friendly reception. My name is Ata voo med ro he said. I say he because I couldn t tell whether the speaker was a man or a woman. Like all the others he looked like both or neither and as ata voo med ro means A One million three it gave me no clew to the speaker s sex. My mate is Duare of Vepaja I replied and I am Carson of Venus. You are both very welcome here he said and I hope that you will descend from that strange creature which flies through the air like a bird and come with me to pay your respects to Vik vik vik our jong. Just then I saw one of the people pick up my propeller and run off with it. I called Ata voo med ro s attention to this and asked him to have the prop brought back to me. It had fallen into a bed of flowers so I hoped it had not been greatly injured. You shall have it when you need it he assure me. Duare and I climbed down from the anotar and accompanied Ata voo med ro and his two companions across the plaza toward one of the larger buildings which face it. A large crowd followed us to the door of this building which proved to be the jong s palace. There were neither old people nor children in the crowd and they all looked more or less alike plump and rather soft looking. Although they wore weapons a sword and dagger they did not look like a race of fighters. Each of them wore a single skirt like garment which I later discovered is not a garment at all just a number of long pouches or pockets strapped about their waists and falling almost to their knees but they are so close together that they resemble a pleated skirt. Running down the exact center of their face and body both front and back is a well defined reddish line that looks like a birth mark. As you know the two halves of our faces and bodies are not identical. In these people the lack of identicalness is more marked though not to the extent of being a deformity. Perhaps the fine red line bisecting their faces adds to the apparent difference between the two halves. We were ushered into the presence of Vik vik vik which in English means 999. He smiled at us most benignly and said The Vooyorgans welcome you to Voo ad or the First People welcome you to the First City. He asked us many questions about the countries from which we came and told us that we were to consider ourselves his guests during our stay in Voo ad. I told him that I should like very much to make the necessary repairs on our anotar and depart as quickly as possible if he would have the propeller returned to me. You see we have been away from home for a long time and we are anxious to return. I can very well understand that he replied but we shall all be very much disappointed if you do not remain with us at least a couple of days. This portion of Anlap is almost a wilderness and we have no neighbors who are friendly and very few visitors so you can see that you would be doing us a great favor if you would remain a short time we hear so little of the outside world of Amtor. We are really in Anlap I asked then perhaps you can tell us the general direction of Korva. I have heard of Korva he replied but I do not know where it lies. Now please tell me that you will remain at least two days as I wish to arrange a banquet and entertainment for you before you depart. Under the circumstances the only decent thing we could do in view of his generous hospitality was to remain so we told him it would be a pleasure to accept his invitation. He seemed genuinely pleased and directed Ata voo med ro to show us about the city and see that we wanted for nothing which might enhance the pleasure of our visit in Voo ad. Across from the jong s palace was a very large building it must have been fully two hundred feet in diameter that attracted our immediate attention when we left the palace with Ata voo med ro. The building was an enormous dome at least a hundred feet high. It dwarfed everything around it. Naturally it intrigued our curiosity and I asked Ata voo med ro what it was. You shall see it before you leave Voo ad he replied. I shall leave it until the very last as the supreme moment of your visit to our city. I can guarantee that you will find it extremely interesting. He led us about the city showing us the shops the flowers and shrubbery that grow in profusion and calling our attention to the carvings on the buildings. He also took us into an art shop where the work of the best artists of Voo ad was on exhibition. These people show remarkable aptitude in reproducing natural objects with almost photographic fidelity but there was not the slightest indication of creative genius in any of the work we saw. While all the people looked and dressed much alike we saw many doing menial work and I asked Ata voo med ro if there were different castes among them. Oh yes he replied all the kloo meds and above are servants voo meds who have no du are in the next higher class they are the artisans then come the voo meds with a du that is the class I am in. We are just below the nobles who run from voo yor yorko to voo med royalty is always under yorko. There are other caste divisions but it is all rather complicated and I am sure would not interest you. Perhaps the above has not interested you but in English it is a little more interesting as it gives some meaning to their strange numerical names. What he said was that all the 2 000 000 s and above were servants the 1 000 000 s with no prefix letter du were in the artisan class then came his class the 1 000 000 s with a letter the nobles run from 100 000 to 1 000 000 and royalty is always under 1000. Vik vik vik s 999 is always the jong s name or number. These high numbers do not mean that there are that many people in Voo ad it is merely a naming system and just another indication to me of their total lack of creative genius. Duare and I spent two very dull days in Voo ad and in the afternoon of the second day we were summoned to attend the banquet being given by the jong. The table built in the form of a hollow ring with people sitting on both sides of it was in a circular room. There were about two hundred guests all apparently of the same sex for all were similarly garbed and looked more or less alike. They had plenty of hair on their heads but none on their faces. There was a great deal of chattering and laughter and those perpetual frozen smiles when they were not laughing. I overheard a great deal of the conversation which elicited laughter but could find nothing to laugh at. Duare who sat between Vik vik vik and me remarked that some article of food she was eating was delicious whereat Vik vik vik and others within hearing broke into laughter. It didn t make sense. I like to see people happy but I also like to feel that it is because they have something to be happy about. The food was really delicious as were the wines and the guests ate and drank what seemed to Duare and me enormous amounts. They seemed to derive far more pleasure and gratification from eating and drinking than the act warranted some even swooned with rapture. I found it rather disgusting and heartily wished that the banquet was over so that Duare and I might take our leave. We both wanted a good night s rest as we expected to leave the next day and I still had the propeller to adjust after it was returned to me. I asked the jong if he had arranged to have it returned to me immediately. You shall have it in plenty of time before you leave he replied with that kindly smile of his. We should like to leave as early tomorrow as possible I said glancing at Duare. I was immediately concerned by her appearance there was a startled almost frightened look in her eyes. Something is happening to me Carson she said. I started to rise. A strange sensation pervaded me. I could not move. I was paralyzed from the neck down Chapter XXXII I LOOKED around at the others at the table they were still laughing and chattering and they were moving their arms and bodies. They were not paralyzed only Duare and I. I looked at Vikvik vik he was staring at us intently. Here is a very choice fruit he said offering me something that looked like a cross between an avocado and a banana. Of course I could not raise a hand to take it then he offered it to Duare who was equally helpless. Vik vik vik waited a moment and then he threw the soft fruit in her face. So you spurn my hospitality he cried and then he broke into loud laughter attracting the attention of all the guests to us. Even so he continued even though you refuse to accept what I offer you shall still be my guests. You shall be my guests forever At that everybody laughed uproariously. What a notable addition you two will make to our collection in the Museum of Natural History. I think we have no pairs whatsoever in the upper categories and we certainly have no male with gray eyes and yellow hair. We have no female in this category my jong said Ata voo med ro. Right you are assented Vik vik vik. We have a female nobargan but I presume we may scarcely maintain that she is of the same species as this woman. What is the meaning of all this I demanded. What have you done to us The results of what we have done should I think be quite obvious to you replied Vik vik vik still laughing. You have trapped us by pretended friendliness so that you may kill us. I have known of many treacherous and despicable acts but this would bring a blush of shame to even a nobargan. You are mistaken replied the jong we have no intention of killing you as specimens you are far too valuable. In the interests of science and education you will be preserved forever serving a much better purpose than you could be continuing your silly carnal lives. He turned to Ata voo med ro. Have them taken away he ordered. Two stretchers were brought and we were carried out of the banquet hall by eight of the 2 000 000 caste four to a stretcher. Out of the palace they carried us and across the plaza to the enormous dome I have already described the building that Ata voo med ro had told us would be left until the very last as the supreme moment of our visit to Voo ad. When I thought of the fiendish hypocrisy of the creature I could have gnashed my teeth which was about all there was left for me to do. Inside the dome was one enormous room with platforms arranged in concentric circles upon which were specimens of many of the larger beasts and reptiles of Amtor supported by props or scaffolding while from the wall hung perhaps a couple of hundred human beings and nobargans in ingeniously devised slings which distributed their weight equally to all parts of their bodies. Similar slings were adjusted to Duare and me and we were hung upon the wall side by side in spaces beside which lettered plaques had already been affixed giving our names the countries from which we came our species sex and such other information as had evidently seemed to the Vooyorgans either educational or interesting. All this had been attended to while we were being entertained as honored guests The other specimens who were in a position to see us had watched our arrival and our mounting with interest. Others were quite evidently asleep their chins resting upon their breasts. So we could sleep Well that would be something in the nature of a reprieve from the hideous fate which had overtaken us. A group of Vooyorgans who had been in the building had gathered to watch us being hung in position they read the placards describing us and commented freely. They were most interested in Duare who was possibly the first specimen of a female of our breed they had ever seen. I noticed one in particular who said nothing but stood gazing at her as though entranced by her beauty. Watching him I was suddenly impressed by the fact that the reddish median line was missing and that the two halves of his face were practically identical. This creature was I presumed what biologists term a sport. It differed too in other ways: it was not continuously smiling or laughing nor did it keep up the incessant chatter of its fellows. I find it difficult not to refer to these creatures as males. They all looked so exactly alike that it was impossible to determine which were men and which women but the fact that they all carried swords and daggers has influenced me to refer to them as males. They had left us our weapons and I noticed that all the other exhibits in sight still wore theirs except that their spears if they had any were fastened to the wall beside them. These weapons of course enhanced the educational value of the specimens and it was quite safe to leave them with creatures who were paralyzed from the neck down. Vooyorgans were constantly entering the building and strolling through the aisle to examine the exhibits. Sometimes they stopped to speak with a specimen but as they usually poked fun at the poor helpless things they were generally met with silence. As darkness fell the building was artificially illuminated and great crowds of Vooyorgans came to look at us. They often stopped before us and laughed at us making uncomplimentary and insulting remarks. These were the same people who had danced around us a couple of days before showering us with flowers welcoming us to their city. After a couple of hours the building was cleared and the lights dimmed only a few guards remained. They were of the 1 000 000 caste with letter which includes what one might term the white collar class and the soldiers if any of these plump soft creatures could claim that honorable title. Although the lights had been dimmed it was still quite light enough to see quite plainly near the outer wall of the building where we were hanging as only the center lights had been completely extinguished. About twenty guards had been left in the huge building no likelihood that any of us would riot or escape one can t do either successfully while animated only from the larynx up. Several of them were discussing us and congratulating Voo ad upon having acquired such valuable additions to her Museum of Natural History. I have always wanted to see a woman said one. These other specimens are always talking about their women. They differ somewhat from the males don t they Now this one has an entirely different figure and a far more delicate face than the male it also has much more hair on its head more like we Vooyorgans. The gray eyes and yellow hair of the male make him an outstanding exhibit said another. My eyes are a gray blue and sometimes look gray and at others blue. I guess it is hard to tell which color they really are but my hair is not yellow although Amtorians usually describe it as such they having no word for blond. One member of the guard standing in front of us was very quiet it neither laughed nor gabbled. Suddenly it commenced to shiver as though with ague then it reeled drunkenly and fell to the floor where it writhed as though in an epileptic fit which I thought was what ailed it. Dan voo med is about to divide remarked one of its fellows. A couple of others glanced at D 1 000 000 and sauntered off unconcernedly. You d better get a couple of stretchers the first speaker called after them. A companion looked down at Dan voo med writhing groaning and struggling on the floor. It is about time it said. Dan voo med was commencing to worry od feared that od might be one of those unfortunate ones who die before they reproduce their kind. Od is a neuter pronoun analogous to it. The creature s struggles were now becoming violent its groans and screams filled the vast chamber echoing and re echoing from the domed ceiling and then to my horror I saw that the creature was splitting apart along the reddish median line I have described right down the center of its head and body. With a last violent convulsion the two halves rolled apart. There was no blood. Each half was protected by a thin palpitating membrane through which the internal organs were clearly observable. Almost immediately two stretchers were brought and the two halves were placed upon them and carried away. That both were still alive was evident as I saw their limbs move. Poor Duare was as white as a ghost and almost nauseated by the revolting thing that we had witnessed. Oh Carson she cried what manner of horrid creatures are these Before I could reply a voice from my other side exclaimed Carson Carson Napier Is it really you Chapter XXXIII I TURNED to look. The voice came from a man hanging on the wall beside me. I recognized him immediately. Ero Shan I cried. And Duare is here too he said my poor friends When did they bring you here This afternoon I told him. I have been asleep he said I try to sleep as much as I can it is one way of passing away a lifetime hanging on a wall he laughed a little wryly. But what ill luck brings you here I told him briefly and then asked how he had ever come to leave beautiful Havatoo and get into such a predicament as this. After you and Duare escaped from Havatoo he commenced the Sanjong rulers of Havatoo commissioned me to attempt to build an aeroplane from your plans. I discovered that some of the essential features you must have carried in your head for they were not on your drawings. That is too bad I said they were not on the drawings that I left in Havatoo because I had become accustomed to keeping the final drawings in the anotar after it had neared completion. I really don t know why I did so. Well I finally achieved an anotar that would fly he continued though I nearly killed myself half a dozen times in the attempt. Some of the best minds in Havatoo were working with me and finally we designed and built a plane that would really fly. I was never so delighted with anything in my life I wanted to be up all the time and I kept going farther and farther from Havatoo. I flew Nalte to Andoo to see her parents and her people and what a sensation the anotar was there Oh tell us about Nalte exclaimed Duare. How is she She was well and happy the last time I saw her said Ero Shan I hope she still is. Possibly well but not happy with you gone said Duare. And to think that we shall never see one another again he said sadly but then he exclaimed more brightly I have you two now what is your misfortune is my good luck though I d forfeit it to have you safely out of here. Go on with your story I urged tell us how you got into this fix an exhibit in a museum of natural history Well I had flown some distance from Havatoo one day into an unexplored district to the southwest when I ran into the worst storm I have ever encountered in my life it was of a violence that beggars description and was accompanied by clouds of hot steam. The same storm that drove us north to Mypos I suggested. The Sun broke through rifts in the cloud envelopes causing terrific winds and making the ocean boil. It must have been the same storm agreed Ero Shan. Anyway it carried me across a sea to this land and when I was close to Voo ad my engine quit and I had to come down. People came running from the city And danced around you and threw flowers at you I interrupted. Ero Shan laughed. And fooled me completely. Did Vik vik vik give a banquet for you he asked. This afternoon I said. We seem to come to grief wherever we go even in beautiful Havatoo. I must tell you said Ero Shan after you two escaped the Sanjong reviewed their findings on Duare and discovered that they had erred in condemning her to death. You are both now free to return to Havatoo. That is splendid I exclaimed laughing. Won t you please tell Vik vik vik At least said Duare if we can retain our sense of humor we shall not be entirely miserable if I could only forget the horrible thing we just witnessed while you were asleep. What was that asked Ero Shan. One of these creatures had an epileptic fit and fell apart I explained. Have you ever seen anything like that Often he said. The halves seemed to be still alive when they carried them away said Duare. They were Ero Shan told her. You see these creatures are amoebic neuters and their dividing is the physiological phenomenon of reproduction. There are neither males nor females among them but more or less periodically usually after enjoying an orgy of eating and drinking they divide into two parts like the amoeba and other of the Rhizopada. Each of these parts grows another half during a period of several months and the process continues. Eventually the older halves wear out and die sometimes immediately after the division and sometimes while still attached in which case the dead half merely falls away and the remaining half is carted off to make itself whole. I understand that this division occurs about nine times during the life of a half. They are without sentiments of love friendship or any of the finer characteristics of normal human beings and because they cannot create their kind they have no creative genius in art or letters they can copy beautifully but are without imagination except of the lowest order. Their reception of you was typical. Being weaklings averse to physical combat they use hypocrisy as a weapon. Their singing their dancing their flower throwing are all instruments of deception while they were feting you they were having your placards lettered duplicity is their outstanding characteristic. Is there no escape asked Duare. There is a man near me who comes from a city called Amlot somewhere in Anlap who tells me he has been here fully a hundred years and that in all that time no one has escaped. Oh why couldn t they have killed us exclaimed Duare it would have been much kinder. The Vooyorgans are not kind Ero Shan reminded her. We slept. A new day came bringing its string of sightseers. The creature that had shown an interest in Duare came early and stood staring at her whether in admiration or dislike I could not tell. Unlike the others it did not smile. Finally it came close and touched her leg. Get away from there I shouted. It shrank back startled then it looked at me and said I would not harm the woman. Who are you anyway I demanded and why are you hanging around my mate She is not for you no woman is for you. The creature sighed it really looked unhappy. I am Vik yor it said. I am not like my fellows. I am different. I do not know why. I do not enjoy what they enjoy eating and drinking until they fall apart. I shall never fall apart I shall never divide I am no good to myself nor to anyone else. If I could be always with such as she I would be happy. After a while Vik yor went away. His name or number indicated that he was of the royal caste. How did he happen I asked Ero Shan. He is a sport he explained they occur occasionally especially in the older or royal caste. This one may have been part of a division of Vik vik vik when it grew its other half it was identical with the original half and there was no line of demarcation between the two halves no line of cleavage. I suppose that like the first amoebae which must have had a tendency to develop into some higher form of life these creatures show the same tendency by not dividing possibly it is a step toward a form of human being like ourselves. It will take several million years and nothing short of a miracle said Duare. The fact that he is so definitely attracted to you said Ero Shan would indicate that he is groping for something better and nobler than just being an amoeba. Why don t you encourage him a little I mean be kind to him. A friend here might be a very valuable asset. Duare shuddered. They are all so repulsive to me she said. I am always expecting them to fall apart. Vik yor can t fall apart Ero Shan reminded her. Well that is at least something in his favor. Perhaps I ll try what you suggest Ero Shan. It can t do any harm. I might even try being what Carson calls a vamp and make Vik yor fall in love with me she said laughing. I think he already has I said. Jealous demanded Duare. Of an amoeba Scarcely. I think he is a male amoeba teased Duare he has already learned to paw. Chapter XXXIV WELL Vik yor kept coming to the museum every day and now we all tried to be decent to him. His devotion to Duare was almost doglike and she quite startled me by encouraging him. It didn t seem possible that Duare of Vepaja the daughter of a thousand jongs who had been brought up to consider herself as near a goddess as the Vepajans know could try to arouse the love of such a creature as Vik yor. I joked about it. If I were only an amoeba I said you would not have scorned my love for so long as you did you would have sought after me and made love to me yourself. Don t be horrid said Duare to win our freedom I would make love to a Myposan. Do you think you are going to win our freedom I asked. I am going to try she said. But what good would freedom do three people paralyzed from the neck down There is freedom in death she said. You mean you are going to try to get Vik yor to kill us I demanded. As a last resort she replied wouldn t that be better than life here the man from Amlot has been here a hundred years But Vik yor would never kill you said Ero Shan. He wouldn t know he was killing me. How do you plan on doing it I asked. I am going to teach Vik yor how to use your r ray pistol she explained and tell him that if he will put it against our hearts and squeeze the trigger we ll all join him outside and run away as that will liberate our other selves from the flesh that now holds them. What makes you think he wants to run away with you I demanded. I have learned much about men since I left my father s palace in Vepaja. But Vik yor is not a man I argued. He s getting there said Duare with a twinkle in her eye. He s just a damn rhizopod I growled and I don t like him. The next day when he came around Duare really went to work on him. I should think you would be bored to death here in Voo ad she said you are so different from all the others. Vik yor really smiled. Do you think I am he asked. Certainly I do cooed Duare. You should be out in the world where there are things to see and things to do where there are life and action and beautiful women The most beautiful woman in the world is here said Vik yor getting bold. Oh Duare you are the most beautiful thing I ever saw And paralyzed from the neck down said Duare. Now if I were not paralyzed and we were set free we could all go out into the world in our anotar and have a wonderful time. Do you mean that you would take me he asked. Of course said Duare. Could I be with you always he demanded. It was a good thing for Vik yor that I was paralyzed. You could be with me as much as possible said Duare. Vik yor looked at her for a long time one of those devouring possessive looks that send husbands to the upper dresser drawer looking for the family gun. Vik yor came close to Duare. I can free you he whispered but I heard him. How demanded the practical Duare. There is an antidote for the poison that paralyzed you explained Vik yor. It is necessary that this be kept on hand for sometimes when they have drunk too much wine our own people make a mistake and drink the poison intended for a potential exhibit. A single drop on the tongue neutralizes the poison in the nerve centers. When will you bring it asked Duare and how can you give it to us and free us without the guards knowing I shall come at night and bring poisoned wine to the guards explained Vik yor then I can free you and we can escape from the city. We shall be very grateful said Duare and we will take you with us. I shall free only you said Vik yor these others mean nothing to me and I do not wish your mate along anyway. For an amoeba Vik yor seemed to be doing quite well along evolutionary lines he was by now at least a louse. What the future held for him I could not predict unless I became rid of my paralysis then I was sure my prophetic powers would approach the miraculous. So it didn t want me along To that proposition of Vik yor Duare shook her head. I will not go without Carson of Venus and Ero Shan she said. I will not free them replied Vik yor I do not like him he nodded in my direction. He does not like me. I think he would like to kill me and I am afraid of him. Would you kill Vik yor if you were free Carson Not if he behaves himself I replied. You see said Duare Carson says that he will not kill you if you behave yourself. I will not free him replied Vik yor stubbornly. Evidently he didn t intend to behave himself. Very well said Duare there is nothing more to be said on the subject but if you will not do that much for me you needn t come and talk to me any more. Please go away. Vik yor hung around for a while trying to get Duare to talk to him but she wouldn t say a word and finally he walked away and left the building. That is that I said our little scheme has failed the triangle is disrupted your boy friend has gone off in a huff and you will not see him again. You don t know your amoebae retorted Duare it will be back. I have a plan Duare I said. It would be better for one of us to escape than for all of us to remain here forever. You have that opportunity and there is no reason why Ero Shan and I should keep you from taking advantage of it. Never said Duare. I will never go without you and Ero Shan. Listen I said let Vik yor free you then take my r ray pistol. I think you know enough about the construction of the anotar to replace the propeller with Vik yor s help. If you can t get away without him you can always use the pistol on him if you find it necessary. Fly to Sanara I am positive it lies almost due south of us. Once there I am sure that Taman will send an expedition to rescue Ero Shan and me. That is the best plan yet said Ero Shan. I don t like the idea of going off and leaving you two demurred Duare. It is our only chance I told her but if Vik yor doesn t come back we ll not have even this chance. Vik yor will come back said Duare. It s amazing how well women know males even male amoebae for Vik yor did come back. It was a couple of days before he came two days of agonizing uncertainty. I could almost have hugged him when I saw him sidling in our direction. He was pretending to be deeply interested in some other exhibits. I don t know why I keep calling it he but I suppose that when you know something has fallen in love with your wife you just naturally don t think of it as it. Anyway it finally reached us. Paying no attention to Ero Shan or me it hesitated before Duare. Oh you re back Vik yor she exclaimed I am so glad to see you. You ve changed your mind haven t you You re going to let us all go away with you out into that beautiful world I have told you about. No said Vik yor. I will take you but not the others and if you will not come willingly I intend to poison these two at the same time that I poison the guards then you ll have to come with me alone or be killed for when Vik vik vik discovers that the effects of the poison have worn off he will have you destroyed. Go with him Duare I said never mind us. Vik yor looked at me in surprise. Maybe I have been mistaken in you it said. You certainly have Duare assured it. Carson is a very nice person and we really should have him along in case we get into trouble he s an excellent swordsman. No snapped Vik yor. I know why you want him along you like him better than you do me. That is why I was going to poison him anyway before we left but now I may change my mind. You d better exclaimed Duare vehemently for if you harm him in any way I ll kill you Do you understand that I ll go with you but only on condition that no harm comes to Carson of Venus or Ero Shan. Very well agreed Vik yor. I want you to like me so I ll do all that I can to please you except take these two with us. Is the anotar all right she asked him. Have the people damaged it in any way It is all right replied Vik yor it stands in the plaza just where you left it. And the part that fell off do you know where that is Yes and I can get it any time I wish all I have to do is take poisoned wine to the home of the one who found it. When will you come for me asked Duare. Tonight replied Vik yor. Chapter XXXV YOUR BOY FRIEND is the de Medici of the amoebae I remarked after Vik yor had left us. It is horrible exclaimed Duare. I shall feel like a murderess myself. You will be an accessory before the fact I twitted her and so equally guilty. Please don t joke about it she begged. I am sorry I said but to me these creatures are not human poisoning them would be the same to me as spraying oil on a stagnant pond to kill off mosquito larvae. Yes added Ero Shan don t let it depress you think of what they have done to us they deserve no consideration nor pity from us. I suppose you are right admitted Duare but right or wrong I m going through with it. The remainder of that day dragged on like a bad dream in clay up to his knees. When no sightseers or guards were near us we went over our plans again and again. I urged on Duare the advisability of attempting to make at least a crude map of the country she would cover while searching for Sanara. She could estimate distances rather closely by the ground speed of the anotar and her compass would give her direction at all times. By noting all outstanding landmarks on her map she would be able to turn over to Taman some very valuable data for the rescue expedition. Of course we had no idea of the distance to Sanara. Anlap the land mass on which it was located might be a relatively small island or it might be a continent I was inclined to think that it was the latter Sanara might be three thousand or five thousand miles from Voo ad. Even were it close it might take Duare a long time to find it you can t land any old place on Amtor and ask directions even when there is any one to ask. Duare would have to find Sanara and recognize it before she would dare land. She might be a year finding it she might never find it. As she would have to come down occasionally for food and water there would always be the risk of her being captured or killed and then there was Vik yor I certainly was going to be in for a lot of worrying maybe for years maybe for the rest of my life worry and vain regret. At long last night fell. More hours passed and Vik yor did not come. Only the guards remained in the museum the guards and the living dead. A basto bellowed. How the dickens they ever got some of the big beasts they had on exhibit I ll never know. A basto stands fully six feet tall at the shoulder and weighs twelve hundred pounds or more. Singing and dancing around one of them and throwing flowers at it wouldn t get you anything but a goring then it would eat you. The bellowing of the basto started off the rest of the lower animals including the nobargans which growl and roar like beasts. We were treated to a diapason of savage discord for fully an hour then they stopped as unaccountably as they had started. Your boy friend must have got cold feet I remarked to Duare. Why would cold feet keep him from coming she wanted to know. I keep forgetting that you re not from the land of the free and the home of the brave. Where s that asked Ero Shan. It is bounded on the north by Canada on the south by the Rio Grande on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and on the west by the Pacific. That must be in deepest Strabol said Ero Shan for I never heard of one of those places. Here comes Vik yor exclaimed Duare excitedly. Your gigolo comes I said rather nastily I m afraid. What is a gigolo asked Duare. A form of life lower than an amoeba. I am afraid that you do not like Vik yor my darling said Duare. I am glad that there was a comma in your voice at the right place I said. Don t be silly said Duare. I am inclined to believe that every one as much in love as I am with Duare waxes silly occasionally. Of course I knew that Duare loved me I knew that I could trust her to the ends of the world but That is a funny thing about love that but. The thought that that pussy amoebic neuter was in love with her or as nearly so as the thing could understand love and that it was going to be with her for an indefinite time while I hung on a wall dead from the neck down got my goat. If you are a man and if you are in love you will know just how I felt. Vik yor was carrying a jug. Knowing what was in the jug would have given me a strange sensation if I could have felt any sensations but I did fell disgust for the sneaking thing that would take the life of its own fellows. He came up to Duare. Is it all arranged she asked the anotar the propeller Yes it replied and we are very fortunate for tonight Vik vik vik is giving a banquet and every one will be so drunk that we can get away without being detected. You have the antidote It withdrew a small vial from one of its pocket pouches and held it up to her. This is it. Give me some right away begged Duare. Not yet I must remove the guards first then he raised the jug to his lips and pretended to drink. One of the guards drew near. Oh said the guard you are Vik yor I thought some one had come in that was not permitted after closing hours. We are always glad to see royalty interested in the exhibits. Would you like some wine asked Vik yor. Yes very much replied the guard. Call all your fellows then said Vik yor and we will all drink together. Pretty soon all the guards were gathered there drinking out of Vik yor s jug. It was a horrible experience hanging there watching wholesale murder being done. I had to ease my conscience by thinking how they had used similar duplicity to lure us to a fate even worse than death and that anyway they were being given a pleasant ending for soon they were all as drunk as hoot owls and laughing dancing and singing then one by one they toppled over dead. There were twenty of them and they all died practically at our feet. Vik yor was proud as a peacock. Don t you think I m clever it asked Duare. They never guessed that I was poisoning them even Vik vik vik could do no better. You are quite remarkable said Duare now give me the antidote. Vik yor fished down first into one pouch and then into another. What did I do with it the creature kept repeating. Duare was getting more and more frightened and nervous. Didn t you bring it she demanded. Or was that something else you showed me I had it said Vik yor. What in the world did I do with it In spite of myself I could scarcely keep from hoping that he would never find it. To be separated from Duare under circumstances such as these was unthinkable death would have been preferable. I had a premonition that if she went away with Vik yor I should never see her again. I commenced to regret that I had ever been a party to this mad enterprise. Look in the one behind urged Duare you have looked in all the others. Vik yor pulled its belt around until it could reach into the pouch that had been hanging down behind. Here it is it cried. My belt must have slipped around while I was dancing with the guards. I knew I had it because I showed it to you. I couldn t imagine what had become of it. Quick Give me some demanded Duare. Vik yor turned the vial upside down and shook it then he removed the stopper and told Duare to stick out her tongue which he touched several times with the stopper. I watched spellbound. Ero Shan was craning his neck to see Duare. Presently she gasped. It s happening she said. I can feel life coming to my body. Oh Carson if only you could come with me Vik yor was watching Duare intently. It reminded me of a big cat watching a mouse a fat obscene cat. Presently it stepped up to her and cut her down. It had to support her for a moment and when I saw its arm about her it seemed to me that she was being defiled. Almost immediately however she was able to stand alone and then she moved away from him and came to me. She couldn t reach my lips I was hung too high on the wall but she kissed my hand again and again. I could look down and see her doing it but I could not feel it. Vik yor came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. Quit that it said. Duare reached up and removed my r ray pistol from its holster. I thought she was going to use it on Vik yor but she didn t. Why don t you I asked her looking meaningly at Vik yor. Not yet she replied. Come ordered Vik yor. You d better take the holster too I said. She came and got it and again she clung to my hand kissing it. This time Vik yor jerked her away roughly. You may not guess it Vik yor I said but some day you are going to die for what you think you are going to do and what you have done and even for what you never will do and I am going to kill you. The thing just laughed at me as it dragged Duare away. She was turning her dear face back toward me all the time. Goodbye my darling she called to me and then Vik yor spoke. You will never see her again it taunted me. She is mine now all mine. The thing lies cried Duare then: Goodbye my darling until I come back to you Goodbye I called and then she was lost to sight behind a great gantor that elephantine beast of burden such as I had seen in Korva. I glanced at Ero Shan. There were tears in his eyes. Chapter XXXVI VIK YOR AND DUARE had not had time to leave the building before there came a great noise from the entrance laughing and chattering and the scuffling of many feet and presently I saw at least a hundred people lurch and stagger into view. It was Vik vik vik and the banquet guests and most of them were quite drunk. At the sight of the guards strewn about the floor Vik vik vik became violent and abusive. The lazy beasts cried the jong and went up and kicked one of them. It was then that they discovered that the guards were dead. They are all dead said one of the creatures. Who could have killed them Never mind that now said Vik vik vik I ll find out later. First I want to get the woman I came for. Come Ata voo med ro Where is the antidote We ll have her back to life and take her to the banquet. She s going to live in the palace with Vik vik vik. Other jongs have a vadjong why shouldn t I You should cried some sycophant. Vik vik vik and Ata voo med ro searched the wall where Duare should have been. She s gone exclaimed the latter. The jong looked at me and demanded Where is she creature How should I know I replied. She has been gone a long time. How did she get away Who took her demanded Vik vik vik. I do not know I replied. I had been asleep when I awoke she was gone. Vik vik vik turned to the guests. Search for her Search the whole city Hurry Then it said to Ata voo med ro Summon all those who were on guard here today and Ata voo med ro scampered out after the others. The jong looked at Ero Shan. Did you see her go Yes replied Ero Shan. Who took her A man. What man demanded the jong. Well it wasn t anyone you know for the only men in Voo ad are hanging on these walls. What was it then I never saw him before said Ero Shan he had wings like an angan but he was not an angan he was a man a human man. He flew in and looked at the guards and they all fell dead then he cut the woman down and flew away with her. He said that he was coming back to look at you and all the rest of the Vooyorgans so pretty soon you will all be dead unless you liberate all the human beings in here. That is what he said. Nonsense said Vik vik vik you are lying to me but he looked worried. Just then I heard the b r r r of an r ray pistol from the direction of the plaza and there were screams and shouts mingled with it. What was that demanded the jong. It sounds like the man who came for the woman said Ero Shan. When he thought his brain made a noise like that. I guess that is what killed the guards. Vik vik vik left then and he left on the run probably for his palace. That was Duare I said to Ero Shan. They caught her she didn t have time enough. They haven t got her yet said Ero Shan as the humming of the pistol came to our ears again mingled with the shouts and screams of the Vooyorgans. The whole population of the city must be out there from the noise they re making. I wonder if Duare can fight them all off. They re not very keen on fighting I should say replied Ero Shan. I think she has an excellent chance if they don t succeed in damaging the anotar. Or if Vik yor doesn t turn yellow. He couldn t be any yellower. The noise in the plaza continued for some time punctuated by occasional bursts of r ray fire. When I heard these I knew that Duare still lived and that they hadn t recaptured her yet but between bursts I was nearly frantic with apprehension. After a while the noise died down there was no more shouting and the r rays ceased to hum. What had happened What had been the outcome of Duare s courageous attempt to escape Had they recaptured her Had they killed her Had she really gotten away Was I ever to know the answer to even one of these questions Ero Shan spoke to me breaking the thread of my lugubrious reverie. Perhaps we should never have let her go he said. I am glad she went I replied. I would rather that she were dead than eternally condemned to this hideous existence. And of course suggested Ero Shan taking a brighter view of the situation there is always the chance that she may succeed and that some day your friend Taman jong of Korva may march on Voo ad and release us. But suppose I countered still prone to look upon the dark side because of my fear and sorrow concerning Duare suppose that Taman does come will we be much better off We shall still be paralyzed. Oh come exclaimed Ero Shan don t be so gloomy. When Taman takes Voo ad he can force the jong to furnish him with the antidote. You speak as though it were already an accomplished fact I said smiling. That is the way we should feel. I am sorry that I have been so depressed I ll buck up from now on. By the way what was the purpose of that cock and bull story you told Vik vik vik about the man who flew in and flew away with Duare Ero Shan laughed. If you can put fear into the hearts of your enemies you already have an advantage over them especially if it is fear of the supernatural that is something they can t combat. Killing you doesn t help any they feel that it will only increase their danger. Then too I wanted to disabuse his mind of any suspicion he may have had that you or I were in any way responsible. Had he believed that the reasonable thing for him to have done would have been to have had us destroyed lest we free ourselves and the others. I scarcely slept all that night wondering about Duare. I tried to question the new guards when they came on duty but they just told me to shut up and they kept as far away from Ero Shan and me as they could after they had removed the dead bodies of their fellows. Long day after long day dragged slowly by and still we heard no faintest word concerning Duare. The guards would not talk to us neither would those who came to see the exhibits it was evident that they had received orders undoubtedly from the jong. Had Duare escaped If she had she was off somewhere alone with Vik yor. That thought added nothing to my peace of mind. I killed Vik yor in some dozens of different and most satisfying ways during those long hours. I also killed Ata voo med ro and Vik vik vik nor did I stop there I indulged in a perfect orgy of murder the vain wishful imaginings of impotency. However it was very pleasurable imagining and there are few pleasures in which one may indulge while hanging against a wall dead from the neck down. Chapter XXXVII VIK YOR AND DUARE had not reached the exit when Vik vik vik and the banquet guests burst into the museum. Quick Hide whispered Vik yor dragging Duare back behind the body of the gantor. The drunken fools muttered Vik yor. They have upset all my plans now we may not get away at all. They have passed said Duare presently now we may go on. Vik yor hesitated. They may come back he said. If they discover that I am gone they ll make a search said Duare then you will be caught. And killed said Vik yor trembling. But l won t be killed I won t be here they ll just find you they won t know that I had anything to do with setting you free. You stay here I m going to join them and pretend that I was at the banquet too. You re going to do nothing of the sort snapped Duare you re going out into the plaza and help me fix the anotar you re going through with this thing. I am not insisted Vik yor. Vik vik vik would have me killed if he knew I had set you free. If you don t come along with me warned Duare he will know. How will he know I ll tell him No you won t snarled Vik yor and drew a dagger. Duare whipped out the r ray pistol. Put that dagger back or I ll kill you she threatened. Vik yor hesitated. It knew nothing about an r ray pistol but it was an arrant coward and Duare s tone of voice alone would have been enough to frighten it. It started to return the dagger to its sheath. No said Duare give it to me and your sword too you re not to be trusted. Reluctantly Vik yor handed over the weapons. Suppose they attack us now it asked. You can hide behind me said Duare. Come now We re going to the plaza. She had to poke the muzzle of the pistol in the middle of the thing s back in order to force it toward the exit. A moment later they were in the plaza. It was deserted at this time of night and they crossed to the anotar in safety. The propeller lay beneath it and a hasty examination showed that it was undamaged then she examined the flange shrunk to the end of the crankshaft to which it had been bolted. The bolts were there and undamaged the nuts must have vibrated off almost simultaneously Kandar had evidently neglected to use either lock washers or cotter keys. These Duare found among the spare parts in the cockpit of the anotar together with the necessary nuts. Climbing forward on the wing she told Vik yor to hand up the propeller and then to come up himself and give her a hand. Together they fitted the propeller over the bolts and Duare started the nuts by hand then she applied the wrench a heavy tool that she had difficulty in handling in the awkward position in which she had to work. She had two nuts securely set and cottered when the guests came rushing from the museum in search of her. There she is cried one discovering her almost immediately and then they all came running toward the anotar. Vik yor scrambled into the cockpit and hid. Duare switched the wrench to her left hand and drew her pistol. Keep away she called or I ll let you have it. Perhaps they didn t know what she was going to let them have so they came on. The r rays hummed from the muzzle of the weapon and the leaders crumpled to the pavement. That stopped the others at least for the time and Duare continued to tighten the remaining nuts. Vik yor peeked from the cockpit it saw the dead and heard the screams of the wounded. Things looked pretty safe to it so it crept out and came to Duare s side. Duare was working feverishly. She had thought everything out far in advance of either Carson or Ero Shan. Perhaps discovery by these Vooyorgans would make it more difficult than she had hoped but she was still determined to go on with it and flying away from Voo ad without Carson and Ero Shan was no part of it. The thing that she had planned on doing after she and Vik yor had repaired the anotar was to force him to give up the vial of antidote even if she had to kill him to get it and then to go back into the museum and free Carson and Ero Shan. Discovery by the Vooyorgans had greatly complicated matters but it had not compelled Duare to give up the plan. More creatures were now rushing into the plaza and the anotar was surrounded. Again Duare was forced to stop her work and turn a stream of r rays upon those who menaced her most closely and again the others fell back. This time Vik yor did not hide. Feeling safe under the protection of Duare it remained and watched her using the pistol on its people. The thing intrigued it greatly and gave it ideas one of which it put into practice almost immediately after Duare returned the pistol to its holster and went to work on the last remaining nut. While the girl s attention was centered on her work Vik yor stole up behind her and stealthily removed the pistol from its holster. The first intimation Duare had that the weapon had been taken from her was the sudden b r r r of r rays. She wheeled about in astonishment to see Vik yor pumping r rays indiscriminately into the crowd surrounding the anotar. Many of the creatures were falling dead and wounded and the others were fleeing for the safety of near by buildings. Give me that snapped Duare. Vik yor turned it on her. Finish the work it said. I want to get out of here. You fool cried Duare. Turn that thing the other way if you kill me you ll never get away. Give it back to me No said Vik yor sullenly. I shall keep it. Your only chance of getting away yourself is to do as I say. Do you think I ll give this thing back to you so that you can kill me I am not such a fool. Duare returned to her work she could wait. She gave the last nut its final turn and hammered in the cotter key then she turned back to Vik yor. Get into the cockpit she said we are ready to go. Vik yor climbed into the cockpit and Duare took her place at the controls. The engine started the propeller spun the anotar moved. Duare taxied down wind to the far end of the plaza then she came about into the wind. Hundreds of pairs of eyes watched her from windows and doorways but no one ventured out to detain her Vik yor had been too unrestrained in firing practice. The anotar gained speed it rose gracefully into the air and turning south disappeared into the night. Vik yor was terrified it trembled and yammered in a frenzy of fear. We shall fall it jibbered. We shall fall Be quiet snapped the girl. Take me down Let me out Duare would have gladly done so had she had possession of the vial of antidote and her pistol. She did not reply but elevated the nose of the anotar and rose higher. Vik yor was cowering beside her covering its eyes with its hands. Are you coming down it asked. Just a moment said Duare don t look now. She climbed to five thousand feet. Wisps of cloud from the inner envelope whipped against the windshield in the weird light of the Amtorian night the ground was barely visible it appeared much farther away than it really was. Duare cut the engine and glided. You may get out now she said. Vik yor uncovered its eyes and looked over the side of the cockpit and then with a scream it shrank back. It was trembling so that it could scarcely speak. It glanced up and saw the clouds close above and it screamed again. Quit screaming ordered Duare. You would have killed me Vik yor managed to say at last you would have let me get out way up here. Give me the antidote and my pistol and I ll take you down and let you get out offered Duare. The creature looked over the side again this time for much longer. We do not fall it said. Finding that the anotar remained aloft it slowly regained a little composure if not courage. Well said Duare if you want to go down and get out give me the vial and the pistol You ll take me down and I ll keep them both said Vikyor. What makes you think so demanded Duare. This said Vik yor shoving the pistol against the girl s side take me down or I ll kill you Duare laughed at him. And then what would happen to you she demanded. Do you think this anotar flies itself If I left these controls for a minute the ship would dive nose first to the ground so fast that it would bury itself and you. You are lying said Vik yor. It would come down by itself. That s just what I told you it would come down by itself all right but there would be nothing left of the anotar or us. Don t you believe me No you are lying. All right I ll show you and with that Duare put the ship into a spin. Above the roar of the wind rose the shrieks of Vik yor. Duare levelled off at five hundred feet. Now do you think I was lying she asked. Her voice was firm and level betraying no slightest indication of the terror that had gripped her for the last two thousand feet of that long dive. Only twice before had she brought the anotar out of a spin and then Carson had been beside her at the other controls. This time up to the last moment she had thought that she was not going to bring it out. Don t ever do that again wailed Vik yor. We might have been killed. Will you give me the vial and the pistol now asked Duare. No replied Vik yor. Chapter XXXVIII BY THE TIME morning came and Vik yor could look down and see the world passing slowly beneath them it had lost much of its fear of the strange situation in which it found itself. It now had almost complete confidence in Duare s ability to keep the thing up in the air and with returning confidence it commenced to think of other things than the hazards of flying. You kept pressing your lips to his hands it said. Why did you do that Duare s thoughts were far away. Eh she said. Oh because I love him. What is love asked Vik yor. You would not understand it cannot be explained to one who cannot know love. It is what one feels for one s mate. Did he like to have you press your lips to his hand I am sure he did I certainly hope so. Vik yor held out a hand. Do it to me it directed. Duare struck the hand away and shuddered. You disgust me she said. You belong to me said Vik yor. You are going to teach me what love is. Don t talk about love to me snapped Duare you defile the very name. Why don t you like me asked Vik yor. It is not alone because you are not a human being replied the girl I have liked many of the lower animals. It is because you are cruel and cowardly because you made me come away and leave my mate in that horrible place because you haven t one of the finer characteristics of a man because you are not a man. Have I answered your question Vik yor shrugged. Well it said it doesn t make much difference whether you like me or not. The thing is that I like you what you like or don t like affects you not me. Of course if you liked me it might be much more pleasant. Anyway you belong to me. I can look at you I can touch you. As long as I live you will be always with me. I never liked anyone before. I didn t know that there was such a thing as liking another creature. We Vooyorgans don t like anyone nor do we dislike anyone. A person is with us today and gone tomorrow it makes no difference to us. Before I commenced to change I used to divide like the others. Even after being with one of my halves for years I never missed it after we divided nor did I ever have any feeling whatever for the new half that grew. Once I was half of Vik vik vik the jong I was the left half. It is the right half that retains the name and identity. I have always been a left half until now now I am a whole I am like you and Carson and Ero Shan I am a man After studying the ways of other forms of life some of the wise ones among us think that our right halves are analogous to the females of the other species and the left halves to the males so you see I have always been a male. I am not interested said Duare. But I am said Vik yor. It makes no difference whether you are interested or not if I am. I like to talk about myself. I can almost believe that you are a man said Duare. Vik yor was silent for some time. It was occupied by gazing at this new world over which it was flying like a bird. Duare was trying to plan some way of getting hold of the vial and the pistol her whole life now revolved about that one desire. I am hungry said Vik yor. So am I agreed Duare but I don t dare land unless I have my pistol we might be attacked. I can kill things with it said Vik yor. Didn t you see me last night I must have killed fifty. Firing into a crowd of hundreds is not the same as firing at a charging basto said Duare where there were so many you couldn t miss them all. Perhaps not said Vik yor but I shall keep the pistol. If you had it you would kill me. What are you doing Duare was spiralling down above a large lake. Look out cried Vik yor. We shall be drowned if you go into the water. All right said Duare it is better to drown than starve to death. Will you give me the pistol No said Vik yor I would rather drown. As a matter of fact it had suddenly concluded that this was just another attempt of the woman to frighten it into giving up the pistol. Vik yor was far from being a fool. However it was thoroughly shaken when Duare failed to bring the anotar up and it settled upon the surface of the lake for Vik yor could not swim. Duare took a drinking vessel from one of the compartments and going out upon the wing dipped up some water. She took a long satisfying drink then she lay down on the wing and washed her hands and face. Give me some water said Vik yor when she arose. Duare dumped the remaining water from the vessel and came back into the cockpit. Didn t you hear me demanded Vik yor. I told you to give me some water. I heard you said Duare starting the engine. Well go and get me some ordered the Vooyorgan. When you give me my pistol said Duare taxiing for a take off. I will not give you the pistol said Vik yor. All right said Duare as she swept down the lake for the take off. That was very good water and we may not find fresh water again for days. Vik yor said nothing but it was doing a lot of thinking maybe having a woman was not such a good thing after all if it could learn to fly this thing it could kill the woman and well what That stumped Vik yor. It couldn t go back to Voo ad after what it had done for Vik vik vik would surely have it killed it couldn t live in this savage world full of terrible beasts and men. Vik yor was not the first to get hold of something and not be able to let go the Vooyorgan was certainly in a fix possibly as bad a fix as any amoeba had been in since the dawn of life on Amtor. Duare continued to fly south as she couldn t carry out the plan she had in mind until she recovered the r ray pistol. In the meantime she might find Sanara in which event she would be among friends who would take the pistol away from Vik yor. Presently there loomed ahead an obstacle that barred further flight toward the south a forest that induced within her a little surge of nostalgia. Only in her native Vepaja had she ever seen another such forest. The tops of its trees were lost in the inner cloud envelope five thousand feet above the ground the enormous boles of some of its giants were a thousand feet in diameter. In Vepaja the homes of her people were carved in living trees a thousand feet above the floor of the forest. One could not fly above such a forest and threading one s way through its mazes was hazardous in the extreme. Carson might have ventured it were it necessary but not Duare. She turned toward the east seeking a way around it. She was becoming very hungry but these mighty forests bore their fruits too high. The forest extended for perhaps a hundred miles ending at the foot of a mountain range which presented an equally insurmountable obstacle to further southward flight as its towering peaks were lost in the eternal clouds. Down its canyons roared mountain torrents fed by the perpetual rains that fell upon its upper slopes. The torrents joined to form rivers which cut the alluvial plain that stretched eastward as far as the eye could reach and these rivers united to swell a mighty waterway that rolled on toward the horizon and some distant nameless sea. Nowhere in all this vast and lonely wilderness had Duare seen a sign of human habitation but there were grazing herds and prowling carnivores and forests of small trees where edible fruits and nuts might be expected to abound. It might be all right to try to starve Vik yor into submission thought Duare did that not also presuppose her own starvation so the Vooyorgan won a moral victory and Duare searched for a safe landing place near a forest. A herd of grazing herbivores galloped away as she dropped down and circled to reconnoiter before landing. Seeing no sign of dangerous beast Duare brought the ship down close to the forest. What are you going to do demanded Vik yor. Find something to eat replied Duare. Bring me something too ordered the Vooyorgan. If you eat said Duare you will get it yourself. I do not wish to go into the forest some dangerous beast might attack me. Then you ll go hungry. I am starving said Vik yor. Duare climbed from the cockpit and dropped to the ground. She would have felt safer had she had the pistol but she had learned that it was useless to ask for it. Wait for me called Vik yor. Hunger had finally bested its cowardice and it was climbing from the anotar. Duare did not wait but continued on toward the forest. Vik yor ran after her and when it caught up with her it was out of breath. Why didn t you wait for me it demanded. You belong to me you should do as I tell you. Duare looked at it disgustedly. I belong to a man she said. I am a man said Vik yor. You wouldn t be a man in thirty million years I am surprised that you even had nerve enough to crawl out of a stagnant pool. They had entered the forest and Duare was looking up at the trees in search of food when Vik yor suddenly dashed past her and scrambled up a tree then a hideous roar shattered the silence of the wood. Duare wheeled about. A tharban was creeping toward her. Vik yor had seen it and fled without warning her. He was now safely ensconced in a near by tree shaking as with palsy. Chapter XXXIX THE THARBAN might be described as the Amtorian lion although it does not bear much resemblance to Felis leo except that it is a ferocious carnivore. It is much larger its tawny coat is striped lengthwise with dark brown markings its enormous jaws splitting half the length of its head are armed with sixteen or eighteen fangs and its feet are equipped with three heavily taloned toes it has a black mane much like that of a horse long pointed ears and the tail of a lion. It also has a most abominable disposition and an insatiable appetite. For Duare the situation was not overly auspicious. Though there were trees all around her she could not possibly climb to safety before the creature could overhaul her. Shoot it she called to Vik yor. The Vooyorgan drew the pistol but his hand shook so that he could not aim and the r rays buzzed futilely in many directions other than the right one. Look out cried Duare you ll hit me The tharban appeared to be enjoying the situation for it continued to creep slowly upon the prey which it knew could not escape. Throw the pistol down to me cried Duare. No shouted Vik yor I won t give it to you I told you I wouldn t. Fool screamed Duare. She faced the terrible creature with only a sword a tin whistle would have been almost equally as effective. She was about to die and Carson would never know. He would hang there on that wall until death released him the longevity serum with which he had been inoculated in Vepaja a curse rather than a blessing. Suddenly the tharban halted in its tracks and voiced a thunderous roar the very ground seemed to tremble to it. Duare realized that the creature was looking at something beyond and behind her and she cast a quick glance in that direction. The sight that met her eyes appalled her. Slinking upon her from behind was a creature as large and as terrible as the tharban. Its body closely resembled that of a Bengal tiger in the center of its forehead was a single eye on a short antenna from the shoulders just anterior to the forelegs grew two enormous chelae and its jaws were terribly armed as those of the tharban. This creature Duare knew well for they haunt the forests of Vepaja from the ground to the highest branches where life may be found and they prey upon all forms of life. By the advent of this terrible beast Duare s situation was altered only to the extent of the probability of which one reached her first and they were about equidistant from her. Answering the tharban s roar came the scream of the tongzan. Now the tharban charged fearing its prey would be stolen by the other. The same fear must have motivated the tongzan simultaneously for it charged too. And Duare between these two engines of destruction seemed about to be torn to shreds. Vik yor safe in a tree watched the events unfolding beneath it with thoughts only of itself. With Duare dead it could no longer travel in the anotar it would be earthbound prey to some hideous creature such as those two which were about to rend and devour Duare. Vik yor felt very sorry for itself and cursed the hour that it had looked upon a woman or thought that it might emulate a man. As the two beasts rushed for her Duare threw herself to the ground and the creatures met above her. She felt their pads and talons upon her body their roars and screams resounded in her ears as they battled above her. Presently one of them gave back a few feet uncovering her and then Duare rolled cautiously aside. Now she could see them so engrossed were they in their duel that they paid no attention to her. The tongzan had already lost its single eye and most of its face but it held to the tharban with one mighty chela drawing it closer to those terrible jaws and cutting and rending it with its other chela. Duare moved cautiously to a near by tree and clambered to safety she had been careful to select a small tree lest the tongzan s mate should come for they cannot climb a tree of small diameter. From the safety of her sanctuary she watched the bloody duel below. The tharban had inflicted hideous punishment on the tongzan which was literally torn to ribbons from its muzzle back to its shoulders nor was the tharban in much better shape. It too was torn and bleeding and one foot had been completely severed by a giant chela which was now groping for its throat while its mate held the huge tharban in a viselike unbreakable grip. The blinded tongzan screamed continually and the tharban roared the forest reverberated to the hideous din. Vik yor still clung to its tree shaking from terror. Duare in an adjoining tree viewed it with contempt the thing that aspired to be a man. She glanced down at the battling carnivores the tongzan was clawing the tharban to ribbons with the talons of both its powerful front feet and the blindly groping chela was finding the throat. At last spreading wide it found its goal and then those mighty nippers closed and the tharban s head rolled upon the ground severed as cleanly as by a guillotine. For the moment the victor stood over its fallen antagonist and then it commenced to devour it. Blind horribly mutilated still its insatiable maw must be filled. Blood flowed from its countless wounds in veritable torrents yet it ate and ate until it sank lifeless upon the bloody remains of its repast dead from loss of blood. Directly above her Duare discovered a bunch of grape like fruit and soon she too was satisfying her hunger while Vikyor eyed her enviously. Bring me some of that it said. Get your own advised Duare. There is no fruit in this tree. Duare paid no more attention to him looking around she discovered a tree that bore nuts which she recognized as both delicious and nutritious. She climbed down from her tree and swarmed up another here she gathered nuts and ate them. She filled her pouch with them and descended. I am going she called to Vik yor if you wish to come with me you had better get down out of that tree. She would have gladly gone off and left it but for the pistol which she must have to carry out her plan. I am afraid cried Vik yor another of those creatures might come along. Duare continued on toward the anotar. Suddenly she stopped and called back to Vik yor Stay where you are Hide I ll come back for you later if they don t get you. She had seen a dozen men sneaking toward the anotar they were short squat hairy men and they carried spears. Duare broke into a run and so did the warriors it was a race for the anotar. Duare had a slight advantage she was nearer the anotar than they and she was fleeter of foot. One of the warriors outdistanced his fellows but Duare reached the plane first and clambered into the cockpit just as the warrior arrived. As he clambered onto the wing in pursuit of her the engine started and the propeller whirred. The ship taxied along the rough ground and the warrior had all he could do to keep from being thrown off. It rose and zoomed upward. The man clutched the edge of the cockpit he looked down preparing to jump he had had enough but when he saw the ground so far below he shut his eyes and seized the edge of the cockpit with both hands. Duare banked and the man s body slid its full length along the wing while he clung frantically to his hold. He screamed. Duare banked again more steeply trying to shake him off but he hung on with a grip of death then as she flattened out he clambered into the cockpit beside her. For a moment he just sat there panting limp as a dishrag too terrified to move. Duare fastened her safety belt and climbed. The man looked over the side and drew a crude dagger from his belt. He stuck the point of it against Duare s side. Take me down he commanded in a coarse guttural. If you don t I ll kill you. And this thing will fall and you ll be killed warned Duare. You d better take that knife out of my side if you want me to take you down. He pulled the knife back a couple of inches. Hurry he said take me down. Will you promise to let me go if I take you down asked the girl. No you belong to me. I take you back to the village. You re making a mistake said Duare. If you promise to let me go I ll take you down. If you don t . What asked the man. I m going to keep you. What do you think you would do if I don t promise to let you go I ll show you said Duare with a trace of venom in her voice. You asked for it and you re going to get it. What did I ask for demanded the man. This said Duare and looped the anotar. Screaming the man plunged to his doom. He fell not far from his companions who came over and examined the splash and the hole his body had made in the ground. There is not much left of Djup said one. The thing is coming back said another looking up into the sky. lf it comes close we can kill it with our spears said a third we have killed big birds before. We cannot kill it said the first warrior because it is not alive. I am going into the forest where it cannot follow us and as he started on a run for the forest the others followed him. Duare tried to head them off but fear gripped them they would not turn aside they ran into the forest at the very point at which Duare had emerged. They saw the dead bodies of the tharban and the tongzan and sat down and commenced to eat. They ate like beasts tearing the meat from the carcasses in great chunks and growling ceaselessly. Vik yor sat in the tree above them paralyzed with fear. Oh why had it ever left Voo ad What in the world had made it think that it wanted a woman Now it hated her. It was all her fault. it did not know it but it was learning fast that there is always a woman at the bottom of everything especially trouble. One of the warriors looked up and pointed. What is that he asked his fellows. It was Vik yor s foot carelessly protruding below some foliage. It is a foot said another. There must be a man at the end of it. Or a woman I am going up to see. The shaking of the tree caused Vik yor to look down. When it saw one of the hairy warriors ascending it screamed and started up the bole. The warrior pursued and being a better climber than Vik yor soon overhauled it. Vik yor forgot about the r ray pistol that was hidden in one of its pocket pouches. With it it could have routed fifty hairy warriors. The warrior seized Vik yor by one of its ankles and dragged it down. Vik yor would have fallen to the ground had the warrior not supported it. Hanging to its captive s hair the warrior descended. Chapter XL DUARE CRUISED about near the forest waiting for either the warriors or Vik yor to come out she would not abandon the pistol. Had she known what was going on in the wood her hopes would have been crushed. Vik yor trembling and almost too weak to stand was surrounded by its captors who were discussing it. We have just eaten said one we can take this back to the women and children. He pinched Vik yor. It is tender perhaps we can find something else for the women and children. I am sure that I could eat some of this tonight. Why not eat it here demanded another. The women and children will make a loud noise if we don t give them some. It is mine said the warrior who had climbed the tree after Vik yor. I am going to take it back to the village. He tied a leather thong about Vik yor s neck and dragged the creature along behind him. The other warriors followed. When they came out into the open Duare saw them and flew closer. There was Vik yor How was she ever to recover the pistol now The warriors looked up at the anotar and discussed it. Some of them thought that they should go back into the forest but when Duare circled high above them and gave no indication that she was going to swoop down on them they lost their fear: and kept on toward their village. The village lay on the bank of a river not far from where Vik yor had been captured. It was not a village easily seen from the air as it consisted of a few poor grass shelters scarcely three feet high the village blending into the tall grasses among which it was built. Before they reached the village Duare circled very low above the little party and begged Vik yor to drop the pistol thinking that she could dive and frighten the warriors away from it before they could recover it but Vik yor with the stubbornness of the ignorant refused. At last they reached the village where a couple of dozen filthy women and children ran out to meet them. They tried to lay hands on Vik yor as they screamed for meat and Duare circling low again heard them and realized that Vik yor might soon be lost to her and the pistol along with him. Banking low above them she called out Look out I m coming down to kill you Then she dove for them. She knew that she was taking long chances for they were sure to hurl their spears and one lucky hit might cause her to crash but she must have that pistol In a shower of spears she came down on them her landing gear lowered with which to rake them. It was too much for them they turned and ran so did Vik yor whose life was endangered as much as were the lives of the others. Fortunately Vik yor ran in the opposite direction from that taken by the savages and Duare landed beside him. Get in she cried. Hurry Here they come Sure enough they were coming after their meat a half dozen women in the lead but they were too slow. Duare easily outdistanced them and a moment later the anotar rose into the air and flew away. If I had had that pistol said Duare none of these things would have happened. Now give it to me so that we won t have to go through things like that again. No said Vik yor sullenly. I suppose you d rather be killed by a wild beast or eaten by savages than give me that pistol so that I can protect us. I shall not be eaten by savages nor killed by wild beasts said Vik yor. I am going back to Voo ad nothing that Vik vik vik can do to me would be as bad as what I ve gone through. Take me back to Voo ad at once. And be hung up on a wall again Do you think I m crazy But I ll tell you what I will do: If you ll give me the pistol and vial I ll take you back and I ll get word to Vik vik vik that I made you take me away. The Vooyorgan shook its head. No it said. With the pistol that kills so easily I might be able to make Vik vik vik see reason. If I go back without it I shall be killed. I have been watching you fly this thing I can fly it. If you will not take me back to Voo ad I shall kill you and fly back by myself. Perhaps that be the better way after all. Think what an impression I would make if I flew into Voo ad all alone. I think that then I might kill Vik vik vik and become jong. The more I think of it the better I like the idea what do you think of it I can t say that it appeals to me to any great extent replied Duare. In the first place I don t like the idea of being killed in the second place you couldn t fly the anotar. You might get it off the ground but you d be sure to crack up. Of course you d kill yourself but that wouldn t compensate for the loss of the anotar. You are trying to discourage me said Vik yor but you can t fool me. It stuck the muzzle of the pistol against the girl s side. Take the thing down to the ground it ordered. Duare was certain that the creature intended to kill her as soon as the anotar landed and then try to fly it itself. The only way in which she might thwart this plan was to keep the anotar in the air. I told you to take it down snapped Vik yor when it became apparent that the plane was losing no altitude. If I do you ll kill me said Duare. If you don t I ll kill you returned Vik yor. I have these other things you call controls I just shoot you and then commence flying it myself. The reason I told you to take me down was so I could let you out and then practice a little while by myself. Then if I should find that I do not like it I would take you in again. There will be nothing for me to get into after you have practiced for a couple of minutes. You needn t try to make me change my mind by frightening me said Vik yor. I have made up my mind and once my mind is made up Yes said Duare I have noticed that. Very well she added take that pistol out of my ribs and I will take you down. Vik yor replaced the pistol in one of its pocket pouches and watched every move that Duare made as she brought the anotar to a landing. Now get out it said. You are headed into the wind said Duare keep going straight ahead and don t try to climb too fast then she stepped to the wing and dropped to the ground. Vik yor opened the throttle wide and the anotar leaped forward swerving to the right. Duare held her breath as the ship bounced and leaped erratically she gasped as one wing grazed the ground then the anotar leaped into the air. Duare could hear Vik yor s screams of terror they were almost worth the loss of the anotar. The creature had managed to level off but the ship was rolling first on one side and then on the other it described circles it started into a dive and then the nose was suddenly jerked up and it zoomed aloft. Finally it rolled completely over and Vik yor was flying upside down its screams filling the welkin with horrific noise. Each moment Duare expected to see the ship crash that would not have surprised her but when Vik yor completed a half loop and leveled off barely a few feet from the ground she was surprised. The ship was headed for the river near which it had taken off. In its terror the Vooyorgan was clawing at everything on the instrument board including the ignition switch and the motor stopped. The ship sailed gracefully up the river a few feet above the water until losing momentum it pancaked to a safe landing its pilot hanging half conscious in its safety belt. Duare could scarcely believe that that mad flight had not ended in tragedy that the anotar was still whole yet there it was floating serenely down the river as though it had not just been through as harrowing an experience as may come to a well behaved aeroplane in a lifetime. The girl ran to the river bank praying that the current would bring the anotar to shore it seemed to be drifting closer in. Finding that it had not been killed Vik yor was on the verge of hysterics with relief. It yammered and gibbered with delight. Didn t I tell you I could fly it it shrieked. A shift in the current was now drifting the anotar toward the center of the river soon it would be past Duare. She looked into the deep flowing water. What ravenous monsters might lurk beneath that placid surface To lose the anotar was to forfeit her life and Carson s as well. It was that last thought that sent her into the midst of the hidden dangers of the flood. Striking out boldly she swam strongly toward the anotar. A slimy body brushed against her leg. She expected great jaws to close upon her next but nothing happened. She closed in on the anotar she seized a pontoon and climbed to the wing she was safe Vik yor had found her store of nuts and was devouring them greedily. She did not care all she cared about was that the anotar was unharmed and that she was aboard it. Chapter XLI DUARE STARTED the motor that she might keep the anotar under control but she let it continue to drift down the river. Finally she found that for which she was looking a little island with a patch of backwater at its lower end. She brought the anotar into this quiet water and dropped anchor. Vik yor paid no attention to what was going on it was still gobbling nuts like a famished squirrel. Duare reached for a nut but Vik yor struck her hand away and pushed the nuts out of her reach. Duare watched it in amazement it scarcely hesitated long enough to chew the tough meat of the nuts it even had to gasp for breath. Soon it commenced to laugh and then it would stop long enough to sing only to commence again a moment later. Wine it cried If I only had wine But there is water. It looked around and saw that the anotar was swinging idly against the shore of a small island. What are we doing here it demanded. We are going to remain here overnight said Duare. I am tired. I am going ashore said Vik yor. You won t go off and leave me because I have the vial and the pistol. It commenced to laugh and sing as it gathered up all of the remaining nuts and carried them ashore then it lay down on its belly and drank from the river. It continued to eat and drink until Duare thought that it must burst and the more it ate and drank the more hysterical it became. In final and complete ecstasy it rolled upon the ground screaming and laughing then it lay still panting. It lay there for about fifteen minutes then it rose slowly to its feet completely enervated. It took a few steps toward the anotar its eyes glassy and staring it shuddered and fell to the ground writhing in convulsions it screamed. I am dividing it cried and I can t divide Duare watched it in the throes of its futile contortions until it died. Duare went ashore and took the vial and the pistol from the thing s pocket pouches then she weighed anchor and started the motor. The anotar rose like a great bird and circled while Duare got her bearings. The subdued light of the young night gave good visibility at midnight it would be darkest for then the Sun would be shining upon the opposite side of the outer cloud envelope and the refracted light would be at its lowest intensity. By midnight Duare could be back at Voo ad. She set her course toward the north. The great mountain range was upon her left mysterious and a little frightening in the half light then came the mighty forest dark and forbidding. What a different world this was without Carson Now it was a world filled with loneliness and menace a gloomy terrifying world. With him it would have been just as dark but it would have been thrilling and interesting. But now she was flying back to him Would her bold plan of rescue be crowned with success These were the questions to which the night and the hours held the answers. Chapter XLII ERO SHAN awakened and looked around. The Museum of Natural History was deserted except for a few sleepy guards and the sad and hopeless array of exhibits. Awake Carson he asked. Yes I replied I have slept only fitfully. I cannot rid my mind of the fear that something terrible has happened to Duare. Think of her out there in the night alone with that sub human creature and it had the pistol. I heard the guards saying that Vik yor killed many of its own people with my pistol. It must have taken it from Duare and it was her only guarantee of safety. Don t worry counselled Ero Shan it won t help. Do you believe in the prophetic qualities of dreams No. Ero Shan laughed. Well neither do I but I just had a pleasant dream. It may not have been prophetic but it was cheering. I dreamed that we were all back in Havatoo and that Nalte was giving a wonderful dinner for us. All the members of the Sanjong were there and they were heaping praise on Duare. I had a dream too I said. I saw the anotar crash and I saw Duare s broken body lying dead beside it. It is well that you don t believe in dreams said Ero Shan. I don t believe in dreams I almost shouted but why did I have to dream such a thing as that A guard came up. It carried a little switch with which it hit me across the face. Be quiet it snapped then from behind the great gantor at my left came the b r r r of an r ray pistol and the guard which had struck me slumped to the floor. Other guards came running up as a figure stepped into view from behind the gantor. Duare I cried. The guards started for her but she came on straight toward them the deadly rays humming from the muzzle of her weapon. As four or five went down the others turned and fled shouting an alarm. Duare rushed to me the vial in her hand. Quickly she touched my tongue several times with the stopper then she turned to minister to Ero Shan. Even before the antidote had taken full effect she cut us both down. I felt life returning I could move my legs my arms. Warriors were rushing into the building alarmed by the shouts of the guards. Duare turned to meet them as Ero Shan and I staggered to our feet. Duare only turned to make sure that we could follow her then she started for the doorway and Ero Shan and I were at her heels with drawn swords. The Vooyorgans went down before those rays of death like wheat before a scythe and the living turned and ran from the building. Spears were hurled but fortunately they missed us and at last we stood in the plaza where we saw a crowd making for the anotar a rage filled mob bent upon destroying it. Quick cried Duare to the anotar It was an invitation that we did not need we were already half way to it. The Vooyorgans were swarming over the ship by the time we reached it. Whether they had done any irreparable damage or not we could not tell. They were more determined than I had imagined they would be but they were a poor match against Ero Shan s sword and mine and none against the r ray pistol that Duare handled like a veteran. Soon those that survived had fled to the safety of the nearest buildings and we stood in complete command of the situation. Give me the vial Duare I said. What do you want of it she asked as she handed it to me. Those other poor devils in there I said nodding toward the museum. Yes she said I had intended freeing them too but when the creatures put up such resistance I couldn t take the time especially with the anotar in danger. But how can you do it We should not separate and we don t dare leave the anotar. Taxi it right up to the entrance I said so that it blocks it completely. You with the pistol and Ero Shan with his sword can hold that position while I go in and free the exhibits. It took me a full half hour to free the human beings. They were all warriors and they all had their arms and were they Hell bent on revenge Those that I freed first helped me cut down the others and by the time we were all through a couple of hundred well armed warriors were ready to march out into the plaza. I won t try to tell you of their gratitude several hard bitten fighting men with faces and bodies covered with scars broke down and wept. They wanted to follow me to the ends of the world if I wished them to and if the anotar would have held them I d have taken them all for with them I could have conquered a world. We taxied the anotar from the entrance and let them out. When they found they couldn t come with me they said goodbye and started for the palace of Vik vik vik and as we rose silently above Voo ad we heard screams and curses coming from the building. I asked Duare what had become of Vik yor. She told me and then she said The poor creature not only could not multiply but it could not divide. A short time later Ero Shan pointed back. The sky was red with flames. The warriors I had released had fired Voo ad. They will welcome no more visitors with flowers and song said Ero Shan. And Vik vik vik will give no more of his delightful banquets added Duare. Into the night and the south we flew and once again Duare and I were safe and together. Once again we were taking up our search for the city of Sanara which is in the Empire of Korva in the land of Anlap. Chapter XLIII ALAP IS A considerable land mass lying in the southern hemisphere of Venus. A portion of it lies in the south temperate zone but it extends toward the north far into Strabol the torrid zone. Practically all of this part of Anlap is totally unexplored and uncharted its northern boundary being indicated on Amtorian maps by dotted lines. When Duare Ero Shan and I escaped from Voo ad in the anotar we flew directly south for there I believed lay Korva the empire ruled by my friend Taman. How far away lay Sanara the Korvan seaport which Taman had made capital of the empire since the overthrow of the Zani revolutionists we had no idea. Duare had flown a considerable distance in this direction while preparing to effect the escape of Ero Shan and myself from Voo ad and she had told me that farther progress south had seemed effectually blocked by forests of tremendous height and a great mountain range the top of both of which were eternally hidden in the innermost of the two great cloud envelopes which surround Venus protecting her from the terrific heat of the sun. We were to learn later that Anlap is roughly divided into three parts by this mountain range and another one much farther to the south. Both of these mighty ranges run in an east west direction and between them is an enormous well watered plateau comprising vast plains of almost level land. I would have been glad to have returned Ero Shan to his native city of Havatoo had Duare s safety not been my first and almost only consideration and I may say that I also longed for that peace and safety and relaxation which Sanara seemed to offer and which I had enjoyed for only a few brief intervals since that fateful day that my rocket ship had sped into the void from desolate Guadalupe on my projected trip to Mars which had ended on Venus. Ero Shan and I had discussed the matter and he had been most insistent that we fly directly to Sanara and thus ensure the safety of Duare before giving any thought to his return to Havatoo but I had assured him that once there I would assist him in building another anotar in which he could return home. After we reached the mountains I turned east searching for a break in them where I might continue our southward journey for it would have been suicidal to attempt to fly blind through the lower cloud envelope without the slightest knowledge of the height to which the mountain range rose. But I will not bore you with an account of that tedious search. Suffice it to say that the lower cloud envelope does not always maintain the same altitude but seems to billow upward and downward sometimes as much as five thousand feet and it was at one of those times that it was at its highest that I discerned the summits of some relatively low peaks beyond which there seemed to be open country. I was flying just below the inner cloud envelope at the time and I immediately turned south and with throttle wide sped across those jagged peaks which since creation no man doubtless had ever looked upon before. Speed was of the utmost importance now as we must get through before the cloud envelope billowed down and enveloped us. Well said Duare with a sigh of relief as the vast plain which I have previously mentioned opened out below us we got through and that augurs well I think for the future but this doesn t look much like the country surrounding Sanara does it It doesn t look at all like it I replied and as far as I can see there is no sign of an ocean. It may not look like Korva said Ero Shan but it is certainly a beautiful country. And indeed it was. As far as the eye could reach in every direction the plain was almost level with only a few low scattered hills and forests and rivers breaking the monotony of its vast pastel shaded expanse. Look said Duare there is something moving down there. Far ahead I could see what appeared to be a procession of little dots moving slowly parallel with a great river. It might be game said Ero Shan and we could use some meat. Whatever they were they were moving with such exact military precision that I doubted very much that it was game however I decided to fly over them drop down and investigate. As we came closer and could see them better they resolved themselves into the most amazing things that any of us ever had seen. There were about twenty enormous man made things crawling over the plain. In front of them on their flanks and bringing up the rear were a number of smaller replicas of the leviathans. What in the world are they demanded Duare. The whole thing looks to me like a battle fleet on land I replied. It s the most amazing sight I have ever seen and I am going to drop down and have a closer look at it. Be careful cautioned Duare. Don t forget that thing you call a jinx which you say has been camping on our trail for so long. I know you are perfectly right my dear I replied and I won t go too close but I d like to see just what those things are. I circled above that Brobdingnagian caravan and dropped down to about a thousand feet above it and this closer view revealed that its individual units were far more amazing and extraordinary than they had appeared at a distance. The largest units were between seven hundred and eight hundred feet long with a beam of over a hundred feet and they rose to a height of at least thirty feet above the ground with lighter superstructures rising another thirty feet or more above what I am constrained to call the upper decks as they resembled nothing so much as dreadnoughts. Flags and pennons flew from their superstructures and from their bows and sterns and they fairly bristled with armament. The smaller units were of different design and might be compared to cruisers and destroyers while the big ones were certainly land dreadnaughts or I might say super dreadnaughts. The upper decks and the superstructures were crowded with men looking up at us. They watched us for a moment and then suddenly disappeared below decks and I realized instantly that they had been called to their stations. That didn t look good to me and I started to climb to get away from there as quickly as possible and simultaneously I heard the humming of t ray guns. They were firing at us with that deadly Amtorian t ray which destroys all matter. With throttle wide I climbed zig zagging in an attempt to avoid their fire upbraiding myself for being such a stupid fool as to have taken this unnecessary chance and then a moment later as I was congratulating myself upon having made good our escape the nose of the anotar disappeared together with the propeller. The jinx is still with us said Duare. Chapter XLIV AS I CAME down in a long glide the firing ceased and a couple of the smaller units detached themselves from the column and came slithering across the plain toward us at terrific speed. They were right there when we landed and their guns were trained on us. I stood up in the cockpit and raised my hands in sign of peace. A door in the side of the contraption opened and six men dropped to the ground and came toward us. All but one were armed with r ray pistols and rifles the exception who led them evidently being an officer. Their costumes consisted of loincloths sandals and helmets the helmets being the only unusual departure from the almost universal Amtorian costume of men. They were a rather grim looking lot with square jaws and set unsmiling faces. They were rather handsome in a sinister sort of way. They came and stopped beside the anotar looking up at us. Get down said the officer. Ero Shan and I dropped to the ground and I helped Duare down. Why did you shoot us down I demanded. Perhaps Danlot the lotokor will tell you replied the officer I am taking you to him. They herded us into the belly of the strange craft from which they had come. There must have been between two and three hundred men aboard this three hundred foot neolantar as I later learned they called it. On this lower deck were the sleeping quarters galley and mess rooms as well as room for the storage of provisions and ammunition. On the next deck were batteries of guns that fired through ports on both sides and at the blunt and rounded bow and stern. The upper deck to which we were finally taken was also heavily armed having guns in revolving turrets forward and aft lighter guns on top of the turrets and batteries forward and aft over which the turret guns could fire. The superstructure rose from the center of this upper deck. The upper deck of the superstructure was what I suppose one might call the bridge while below that were the cabins of the of fixers. All these ships are called lantars which is a contraction of the two words lap and notar lap meaning land and notar meaning ship. The big dreadnought is called a tonglantar or big land ship the cruiser a kolander or fast land ship the destroyer a neolantar or small land ship. I call them super dreadnaughts cruisers and destroyers because these are what they most resemble in our navies on Earth. We were taken to one of the super dreadnaughts which proved to be the flagship of the fleet. This craft was simply tremendous being seven hundred and fifty feet long with a hundred and sixteen foot beam. The upper deck was thirty feet above the ground and the superstructure rose thirty feet above that. It was dressed with ensigns banners and pennons but otherwise it was a very grim and efficient looking fighting machine. Forward on the upper deck was a group of officers and to these we were escorted. Danlot the lotokor who commanded the fleet was a hard bitten stern looking man. Who are you and what were you doing coming over the fleet of Falsa in that thing he demanded. He was scrutinizing us all most intently and suspiciously as he spoke. We have been lost for many months I said and we were trying to find our way home. Where is that he asked. Korva I replied. Never heard of it said Danlot. Where is it I am not quite sure myself I replied but it is somewhere south of here on the southern coast of Anlap. This is Anlap he said but the sea is to the east and there is no Korva there. To the south are mountains that cannot be crossed. What is that thing you were flying through the air in and what makes it stay up It is an anotar I said and then I explained the principle of it to him briefly. Who built it he asked. I did. Where have you just flown from From a city called Voo ad north of the mountains I replied. Never heard of it said Danlot. You have been lying to me and you are a poor liar. You say you are coming from a place that no one ever heard of and going to a place that no one ever heard of. Do you expect me to believe that I ll tell you what you are you are Pangan spies all of you. At that I laughed. What are you laughing at he demanded. Because your statement is absolutely ridiculous on the face of it I replied. If we had been spies we would never have come down to be shot at. The Pangans are all fools snapped Danlot. I might agree with you that I am a fool I said but I am no Pangan. I never even heard of a Pangan before. I had no idea what country I am in now. I still say that you are spies he insisted and as such you will be destroyed. My mate I said indicating Duare was formerly the janjong of Vepaja and my friend Ero Shan is a soldier biologist of Havatoo and I am Carson of Venus a tanjong of Korva. If you are civilized people you will treat us as befits our rank. I have heard of Havatoo said Danlot. It lies over three thousand miles east of here across the ocean. Many years ago a ship was wrecked on the Falsa coast. It was a ship from a land called Thora and on board it was a man from Havatoo who was a prisoner of the Thorists. These Thorists were a bad lot and we killed them all but the man from Havatoo was a very learned man. He still lives with us in Onar. Perhaps I shall let you live until we return to Onar. What was the name of this man from Havatoo asked Ero Shan. Korgan Kantum Ambat replied Danlot. I knew him well said Ero Shan. He disappeared mysteriously many years ago. He was a very learned man a soldier physicist. He told me that he fell off the quay into the river one night said Danlot was swept over the falls below the city and miraculously escaped with his life. He managed to climb onto a floating log below the falls and was carried down to the ocean where he was captured by the Thorist ship. As there was no way in which he could return to Havatoo he has remained here. After this Danlot s attitude toward us softened. He told me that they were on their way to the Pangan city of Hor. He didn t like the idea of taking us into battle with him he said we would be in the way especially Duare. If I could spare a ship he said I would send you back to Onar. There are absolutely no quarters for women on these lantars. I can double up with my klookor said the officer who had brought us and the woman may have my cabin. A klookor is a lieutenant. Very good Vantor said Danlot you may take the woman back with you. I did not like that and I said so but Vantor said there was no room for me aboard his ship and Danlot cut me short peremptorily reminding me that we were prisoners. I saw the shadow of a sarcastic smile curl Vantor s lips as he led Duare away and I was filled with foreboding as I saw her leave the flagship and enter the destroyer. Immediately after this the fleet got under way again. Danlot quartered me with a young sublieutenant or rokor and Ero Shan with another with the understanding that we would have to sleep while these men were on duty and give up the cabins to them when they returned to their quarters. Otherwise we had the run of the ship and I was rather surprised at that but it convinced me that Danlot no longer felt that we were Pangan spies. About an hour after we got under way I saw something dead ahead coming across the plain toward us at a terrific rate of speed and when it got closer I saw that it was a diminutive lantar. It came alongside the flagship which was still moving forward and did not diminish its speed and an officer came aboard from it and went immediately to Danlot and almost immediately thereafter the flags and pennons on all the ships were struck with the exception of the ensign and an additional flag was raised below the ensign on the staff which topped the superstructure. It was a red flag with crossed swords in black the battle flag of Falsa. Now the fleet fanned out with destroyers in three lines far ahead followed by three lines of cruisers and the battleships in rear at the apex of the triangle. From the front and either flank little scout ships came racing in and took their positions on either side of the ships to which they were attached. The men of the flagship were all at their stations. The great fleet moved steadily forward in perfect formation. It was battle formation all right and I knew that a battle must be impending but I could see no enemy and as no one was paying any attention to me I went up to the bridge to get a better view of what was going on and to see if I could locate an enemy. There were officers and signalmen there sending and receiving messages. There were four t ray guns mounted on the bridge each with its complement of three gunners so that the bridge while large was pretty well crowded and certainly no place for a sightseer and I was surprised that they permitted me to remain but I later learned that it was on Danlot s orders that I was given free run of the ship on the theory that if I were a spy I would eventually convict myself by some overt act. Have you ever been in a battle between lantar fleets one of the officers asked me. No I replied I never saw a lantar until today. If I were you then I d go below he said. This is the most dangerous place on the ship. In all probability more than half of us will be killed before the battle is over. As he ceased speaking I heard a whistling sound that rose to a long drawn out shriek and ended in a terrific detonation as a bomb exploded a couple of hundred yars ahead of the flagship. Instantly the big guns of the battleship spoke in unison. The battle was on. Chapter XLV THE VERY LARGEST guns of the battleship hurl shells weighing a thousand pounds to a distance of about fifteen miles while smaller bore guns hurl five hundred pound shells from twenty to twenty five miles. These guns are used when the enemy is below the horizon as the t ray and the r ray describe no curve in their flight. Moving as they do always in a straight line the target must be visible to the gunner. The leading destroyers and cruisers were now out of sight bearing down on the enemy to get their terribly destructive t ray guns into action. Enemy shells were bursting all about us our battleships were firing salvo after salvo. Presently the battleships leaped forward at accelerated speed rolling and bumping over the uneven ground so that the sensation was much the same as being on the deck of an ocean going ship in a heavy sea yet the firing never ceased. I saw a direct hit on the superstructure of the next ship in line. Every man on the bridge of that ship must have been killed instantly. Though it seemed to me like a man without eyes it kept its place in line and continued firing its commander and his staff operating it from an armored control room in the bowels of the ship from radio instructions received from the flagship. While handicapped it was still able to fight. You see what I meant said the officer who had advised me to go below nodding in the direction of the wreck of the superstructure. I see I said but it is far more interesting here than it would be below. You will find it still more interesting when we close with the enemy he said. We could now see our cruisers and some of the destroyers ahead. They were closely engaged with some enemy craft and at last we saw the big battleships of the enemy coming up over the curve of the planet and in another half hour we were in the thick of it. The little scout ships were buzzing around like mosquitos and they and the destroyers were launching wheeled torpedos at the enemy ships while enemy ships of the same class were attacking us similarly. The booming of the big guns had given place to the hissing of t rays which are capable of destroying nearly all forms of matter. These ships have two forms of protection heavy armorplate against shells over which lies a thin protective coating which is impervious to t rays but which can be dissolved by a certain chemical. And now that the two fleets were in close contact another form of gun was brought into action which fired shells containing this acid and when a direct hit was made you could see a great blotch on the side of the hit ship where the t ray protective material had been dissolved and the armorplate beneath was exposed. Immediately the ship was vulnerable to t rays on this spot and the t ray guns of opposing ships were at once trained on it and it became the strategy of such a ship to continually maneuver so that this vulnerable spot was not presented to the enemy. As we approached the vortex of the battle I discovered that one of its most interesting phases centered about the little wheeled torpedos. Mounted on a tricycle undercarriage they are self propelling and are supposed to move in a straight line toward the target at which they are aimed when they are launched thus naturally a rough terrain will deflect them and they are really highly effective only at very close range. Their purpose is to disable the heavy endless belts upon which the lantars run after the manner of our own caterpillar tractors and tanks. One of the functions of the little scout ships is to destroy enemy torpedos as well as to launch their own and this they do with small t ray guns. To me these would be the most interesting ships to command. They are amazingly fast and maneuverable and the busiest things I ever saw darting to launch a torpedo zigzagging out again at terrific speed to avoid t ray fire or chasing an enemy torpedo to put it out of commission. The flagship was in the thick of the battle now and I soon found more interesting things than the little scout ships close at hand for we were engaged in a duel with the men on the superstructure of an enemy warship close off our starboard side. Six of our men were already dead and one of our guns had been put out of action. A chemical shell had hit its shield removing the protective coating and exposing it to the deadly t ray fire of the enemy. The t rays opened a big hole in it and the gunners dropped one by one. Two men were dragging another shield to the gun and I gave them a hand. We held it in front of us to protect us from enemy fire but in getting it into position my companions exposed themselves and both were killed. I looked around to see if someone was coming to command the gun but I found that everyone else on the bridge had been killed with the exception of the crews of the other guns one of which was now being fired by the only remaining officer. So I took my place on the seat at the gun s breech and glued my eye to the little periscope which barely topped the shield. I was entirely protected from everything but shellfire until another chemical shell should strike my shield. Through the periscope I could plainly see the bridge of the enemy ship and I could see that they were not much better off than we. The deck was littered with dead and it was evident that two of their guns were out of commission. Below me the two ships were hurling broadsides of chemical shells and t rays into one another s hulls. There was a gaping hole in the side of the enemy ship but our t rays had not yet reached a vital spot. Now I turned the periscope back on the enemy bridge and saw a foot protruding beneath the shield of the gun directly opposite me. I set my sights on the foot and blew it off. I heard the fellow scream and then I saw him roll to the deck. He should have held onto himself better for now his head was exposed and a couple of seconds later that followed his foot. The gun however kept on firing. There might be two more gunners behind that shield. The t ray travels in a straight path not much greater in diameter than an ordinary lead pencil. The two bursts that I had fired from the gun had convinced me that it was an extremely accurate weapon. Naturally the rolling and the bumping of the two ships as they forged along side by side made almost any hit more or less of an accident. No matter how much a ship rolls there is an instant at each end of its roll when it is static and it was at this instant that I had fired my two bursts. Now I determined to try for another lucky shot and sought to train my gun on the tiny opening in the muzzle of the enemy gun that was facing me. If I could strike that tiny target the gun would be permanently disabled. Following that little target with my sight was nerveracking. I fired a dozen bursts without accomplishing anything and then for a fraction of a second the two ships seemed to stand perfectly still simultaneously. My sight was directly on the opening in the muzzle of the enemy gun as I pressed the button which liberates the t ray. I could see the gun quiver as the t rays bored completely through it and I knew that I had made a direct hit and that that gun would fire no more. Only one gun was now in action on the enemy bridge and I could see two of its gunners lying dead outside the shield so I was pretty sure that it was manned by only one man and that the surviving gunner or gunners of the piece I had hit would try to reach the remaining gun and reinforce its crew so I turned my piece on the space between the two guns and waited. Sure enough both gunners started to dart across simultaneously and I got them both. Looking around for new worlds to conquer I turned my periscope on other parts of the enemy battleship. It had taken a terrific beating but most of its guns were still in action. I saw a point very low down on the hull where a chemical shell had burst. It was on the armored apron that protects the running gear. I turned my piece on that spot and pressed the button. It was impossible to hold it there constantly because of the movement of the two ships but I had the satisfaction of seeing a hole appear in the armor and I kept on plugging away at it until there was a hole there as big as a man s head exposing the great metal track upon which the monster traveled. The track was moving so fast that the t rays were spread over a considerable surface with the result that no immediate effects were observable but presently I saw the tracks crumple beneath the giant wheels and jam. Instantly the battleship swung toward us with the blocking of its wheels on the port side while the starboard side was still in motion. We veered away at full speed just in time to avoid a collision and then as the enemy ship came to a stop we left her to the mercy of the destroyers and scout ships that swarmed around her like hyenas and jackals. For the first time since I had manned the gun I had an opportunity to look about me and I saw that the enemy fleet was in full flight with our destroyers and cruisers harassing it. Astern as far as the eye could see the plain was dotted with disabled ships of both sides and I could see hand to hand fighting on the ground as the Falsans sought to take prisoners. Night was falling and the flagship was signaling the fleet to return to formation. As far as I was concerned the battle was over and as I looked around the bridge I could appreciate why the officer had suggested that I go below. He and I and two gunners were the only survivors of the engagement. As I stood up and surveyed the carnage he came over and spoke to me. You fought that gun well he said. Not much like a Pangan spy do you think I said smiling. No nor not much like a man who has never seen a lantar before he said. I have seen other ships and fought them too but they sailed on oceans and not on land. You will get plenty more fighting tomorrow he remarked. We should reach Hor by early afternoon and then there will really be fighting. What is this war all about I asked. It s a matter of grazing land for the herds he replied. Panga wants it all. So we have been fighting over it for the last ten years and while we have been fighting the men of Hangor have stolen nearly all of their herds and the men of Maltor have stolen nearly all of ours. Doesn t either side ever win any decisive battles I asked. Our fleet always defeats theirs he replied. But so far we have been unable to take the city of Hor that would decide the war. And then what I asked. He shrugged. Your guess is as good as mine he said but the chances are we will go to war with Maltor to recover our stolen herds. After the battle a couple of hospital ships and a transport came up from the rear. The transport brought replacements and the hospital ships took the wounded aboard. Most of the night was devoted to making repairs and there was little sleep. When morning broke I saw two very strange looking craft that had come up during the night. They were heavily armored enormous monstrosities with cone shaped prows that came to a point about fifteen feet above the ground. Each had four very heavy guns pointing straight ahead just in rear of the cones. The muzzle of each gun was flush with the surface of the armorplate the guns themselves being hidden in the interior of the hull. There was one on either side one above and one below the prow lighter protective t ray guns fired from ports along the sides and at the stern. The hulls were cylindrical in shape and the whole ship looked like an enormous torpedo. I could not see what their purpose could be for it was evident that their maneuverability would be very poor. Shortly after daylight we got under way and soon thereafter Danlot sent for me. Your conduct during yesterday s action has been reported to me he said. Your action was highly commendable and I would like to show my appreciation in some way. You can do that I replied by permitting me to rejoin my mate. That was another matter I wished to speak to you about he said. Your mate is missing. Missing I exclaimed. What do you mean Was she killed during yesterday s action No he replied. Vantor s body was found in his cabin this morning. He had been stabbed through the heart and your mate was not on the ship when they searched it for her. Chapter XLVI DUARE GONE Out there somewhere alone and on foot in this strange land. You must let me go and look for her I said. Danlot shook his head. You could accomplish nothing he said. I have sent two scouting lantars to search the country for her. That is kind of you I said. He looked at me in surprise. Evidently you do not understand he said. Your mate has murdered one of our of fixers or at least the evidence indicates as much and she must be brought to justice. I was appalled. You cannot mean that I exclaimed. It is quite obvious why she had to kill him. It is evident that he deserved to be killed. We do not look at such matters that way replied Danlot. Vantor was a good officer with years of training. He was extremely valuable to Falsa much more valuable than forty women. And now he said as though the incident were closed as far as I was concerned what can I do for you to show my appreciation of what you did yesterday It took all the willpower 1 possessed not to tell him what I thought of his justice and his valuation of Duare but I realized that if I were ever to help her I must not antagonize him also there was budding in my mind the germ of an idea. Ero Shan and I would like to help man one of the little fast scouting ships I said. They seem to offer a far greater field of action than any of the others. He looked at me a moment before he replied and then he said You like to fight don t you When there is anything to fight for I replied. What have you got to fight for here he asked. You are not a Falsan and you certainly have no quarrel with the Pangans if what you have told me about yourself is true as you never even heard of them until yesterday. I should like to have the opportunity of winning in some measure the confidence and gratitude of Falsa I replied. It might temper the judgment of the court when my mate is brought to trial. You must hold your women in high esteem in your country he said. We do I replied in the highest esteem. A woman s honor there would be worth the lives of forty Vantors. We are different he said. We consider women as necessary evils and little more than that. I have paid more for a good zorat than most women bring. But to get back to your request I am going to grant it. As you will be here the rest of your lives you and your friend might as well learn to serve Falsa in some useful way. Why do you say that we will be here the rest of our lives I asked. Because you will he replied. It is absolutely impossible to cross the mountains which hem Anlap on the north and south. To the east is an ocean and you have no ship. To the west is an unknown land which no man has ever explored. And furthermore I don t think that you would be permitted to leave. You would know too many of our military secrets and if by chance you could reach some other country by the same token those people could reach us and we have enough trouble with the Pangans without having men from some strange country making war upon us. After my interview with Danlot I sought out Ero Shan. You don t know it I said but you want to come with me and help man one of the fast little scouting ships. I don t know what you re talking about he said. I know you don t because I only just now got permission from Danlot for you and me to serve aboard one of the little ships. That s all right with me he said but just why do you want to do that I told him about Duare then and that as service on one of the scouting ships would permit us to range much farther than the main fleet we might by chance find her which we never could do aboard a big battleship. And then what would you do he asked. The officer in command of the scouting ship would bring Duare back for trial and you couldn t do anything about it. I think we could I said. We would have learned how to operate the ship and we have our r ray pistols and there would be only five men to dispose of. Ero Shan nodded. I see possibilities in that idea he said with a smile. While we were still talking an officer came up and told us that we had been ordered aboard the Athgan 975 which lay alongside the battleship. We immediately went to the lower deck and out through the door there where we found the Athgan 975 awaiting us. The word Athgan means scout and it is a compound of ath meaning look and gan meaning man which gives look man or scout. The commander of the 975 was a rokor or sub lieutenant named Ganjo. He didn t seem very enthusiastic about having a couple of green men detailed to his ship. He asked us what we could do and I told him that we were both gunners so he set Ero Shan at a gun in the stern and me at one in the bow which pleased me because it permitted me to sit beside the driver I don t know what else to call him possibly pilot would be better. There were seven men aboard the ship in addition to rokor the pilot four gunners and two torpedomen. The gunners each had two guns one firing chemical shells and the t rays. The guns were double barreled affairs the t ray barrel being on top of the chemical shell barrel and clamped to it rigidly so that only one set of sights was necessary. The guns protruded beyond the hull of the ship about three quarters of their length and could swing forty five degrees in any direction. The port and starboard guns and the gun in the stern had a similar range of action. There was a torpedo tube on each side of the ship so with our great speed and maneuverability we were a very dangerous little buggy. From the start I watched every movement that the pilot made and it was not long before I was confident that I could pilot the 975 myself and I was most anxious to try it. The squadron to which the 975 was attached raced far ahead of the fleet and I soon realized why the Falsans wore helmets for notwithstanding that we were strapped to our seats with safety belts we were banged around considerably as the little ship raced with terrific speed over all sorts of terrain. Before noon we came in sight of a large city which I knew must be Hor. Up to this time we had not seen anything of an enemy fleet but now their scout ships and destroyers came racing from one of the city s gates. They far outnumbered us and as we were merely a scouting force our squadron commander ordered us to retire. We kept just out of effective range and one of the athgans was detached and sent back to the main fleet to report to Danlot. We hung around waiting for the main body of the enemy fleet to come out but they didn t show themselves and in the early afternoon our fleet put in an appearance but it heralded itself long before it arrived sending salvos of shells over our heads which burst inside the city and the big guns of the city answered from the city walls. Hor was rather an imposing looking metropolis of considerable extent and with tall buildings showing beyond its loft wall. It was a huge fortress which looked absolutely impregnable nor in ten years had Falsa been able to reduce it. As we were watching the effect of the shell fire I saw a direct hit by a thousand pound shell on one of the taller buildings. There was a terrific detonation and the building simply fell apart. We could hear the crash way out on the plain and we saw the dust rise high above the city wall. The Pangans replied with a terrific bombardment which demolished two of our dreadnaughts. And now the fleet moved closer and I saw the two mighty monstrosities moving up. I asked the pilot what they were. Something new that s never been used before he replied but if they work the Pangans are in for the surprise of their lives. Just then three gates flew open and the whole Pangan fleet came out firing. It seemed to me that it was a very stupid maneuver for they were all bunched at the gates and offered a splendid target and I said as much to the pilot. You never can tell what the Pangans are going to do he said. Their jong probably got mad when that building was demolished and ordered the whole fleet out to punish us. Only about half their fleet was in the battle yesterday so we will be in for some pretty hot fighting now. Here come the gantors he exclaimed. Now we ll see them in action. The two huge torpedo shaped ships were advancing at considerable speed with a flock of protecting destroyers on either side. A huge Pangan battleship was coming to meet them firing every gun that she could bring to bear but the gantors as the pilot had nicknamed them after an elephantine Amtorian beast of burden came roaring on. The battleship evidently sensing that she was going to be rammed turned to run back coming broadside to the nearer gantor which suddenly leaped forward at terrific speed. There was no hope for the battleship. The sharp deadly armored point of the gantor struck it amidships fifteen feet above the ground and rammed into it for fifty feet firing its bow guns and its forward port and starboard guns raking the whole interior of the battleship. As it hung there a moment finishing its work of destruction the other gantor passed it and you may rest assured the remainder of the Pangan fleet gave it a wide berth opening up a broad path for it and though there was no ship in front of it it kept on straight toward the city. The first gantor in the meantime backed out of the stricken battleship and apparently unscathed followed its companion. I saw now that each of them was headed for a gate and I instantly recognized the real purpose for which they had been constructed. We followed close behind one of them with several other athgans. Behind us came a column of battleships. If we get inside the city said our rokor we are to take the first left hand avenue. It leads to the barracks. That is the objective of our squadron. Shoot anyone who offers resistance. The gates of Hor are of wood covered with armorplate but when the gantor hit them they crashed down upon the avenue beyond and the gantors went over them and we followed turning into the first avenue at the left. Through the gates behind us the great battleships had rolled. On toward the center of the city they moved. We could hear the sound of the battle that was being carried into the heart of Hor as we made our way toward the barracks. This building or series of buildings we found along one side of an enormous parade ground. The Pangans were certainly unprepared for anything of this sort. There was not a single gun ready to receive us the men who rushed from the barracks having only their r ray pistols and rifles which were utterly useless against our armored athgan. The battle went on in the city until almost dark. Falsan athgans ranged the avenues striking terror to the hearts of her citizens while the battleships massed in the great square before the jong s palace and dealt death and destruction until the jong surrendered. But in the meantime the main body of the Pangan fleet had escaped through the rear gates of the city. However Hor had been taken and the ten year war was supposedly over. During the fighting in the city we had suffered three casualties on the 975. The pilot had been killed by a chance r ray shot through an open port as had our rokor and the man at the port gun. I was not piloting the athgan and as the pilot is supposed to rank directly beneath the rokor I assumed command of the ship. The only reason I got away with it was because there was no superior officer to know about it and the three remaining Falsans were simple warriors who could have been commanded by anyone with initiative. Chapter XLVII I WAITED in the plaza for some time expecting instructions from my squadron commander but I got none. Pangans mostly girls were moving about the plaza freely and presently I saw a number of Falsan warriors with them and it was evident that the men had been drinking. About this time three Pangan girls came to the 975 and offered us liquor in small jugs. Ero Shan and I refused but the three Falsans on board accepted it enthusiastically and after a few drinks they became hilarious and remarking something to the effect that to the victors belong the spoils they left the ship and went off arm in arm with the Pangan girls. Ero Shan and I were now alone on the ship. We discussed our situation and what we might do under the circumstances. Now that we have complete possession of the 975 I said we might as well take advantage of it and go out and search for Duare. We stand about one chance in a million of finding her he replied but I m for that millionth chance if you are. Well we certainly can t find her in the City of Hor I said so we might as well go out and scour the country in the vicinity of the place where she disappeared. You realize of course what the penalty will be for stealing a ship and deserting when we are finally picked up. Oh we re not deserting I said we re looking for our squadron commander. Ero Shan laughed. It s all right if you can get away with it he said. I headed the 975 back along the avenue down which we had come from the gate at which we had entered the city. Along the entire route we encountered crowds of drunken warriors singing and dancing with Pangan girls. The Pangans seem to be a most hospitable people remarked Ero Shan. The Falsans say that they are fools I said but I should say that it is the Falsans who are the fools right now. When we reached the gate which still lay where the great gantor had thrown it we found it heavily guarded by Falsan warriors who halted us. There were no girls here and these men had not been drinking. An officer approached and asked where we thought we were going. l am looking for my squadron commander I replied. I can t find him in the city and I thought possibly the squadron might have formed outside of Hor. You will probably find him up around the central plaza said the officer. Most of the fleet is there and none of our fleet is outside the city. Disappointed I turned back and took the main avenue which led toward the center of the city and the jong s palace and as we proceeded evidence of the hospitality of the Pangans multiplied the visible effects of which had degenerated into nothing less than a drunken orgy. One thing that was particularly noticeable was the absence of Pangan men from the avenues and the fact that few if any of the Pangan girls appeared to be under the influence of liquor. In the central plaza before the jong s palace pandemonium reigned. A great many ships of our fleet were there packed in without military order their decks filled with Pangan girls and drunken Falsan warriors. For the purpose of carrying out the fiction that I was looking for my squadron commander I made inquiries from a warrior attached to the flagship a man whom I knew would recognize and remember me. Squadron commander he repeated. He is probably in the palace. The jong is giving a banquet for the officers of our fleet. He handed me a jug. Have a drink he invited. It is good liquor the best I ever tasted. These Pangans are really wonderful people treating us this way now that after ten years we have won the war and conquered Hor. Have a drink. No thanks I said. I have got to get into the palace and find my squadron commander. And we moved off in the direction of the great gates of the jong s palace. Do you really mean that you want to get in there asked Ero Shan. I certainly do I said. I think Danlot should know that his entire force is drunk. You come with me Ero Shan. Whatever happens we will stick together. The guard at the palace gate halted us. I have an important message for the lotokor Danlot I said. The man sized us up. Except for our helmets we wore no regulation article of the Falsan uniform. The fellow hesitated and then he called an officer to whom I repeated my statement. Certainly he said come right in. You will find your commanding officer in the banquet hall. The corridors of the palace and the apartments into which we could see as we made our way toward the banquet hall were filled with drunken Falsan officers and sober Pangans. At the entrance to the banquet hall we were halted again and once again I repeated the statement that I had a message for Danlot. While we were waiting for an officer whom the sentry had summoned we had an opportunity to take in the scenes in the banquet hall. Long tables filled the room at which were seated all the higher officers of the Falsan navy practically all of whom were obviously under the influence of liquor and beside each drunken Falsan sat a sober Pangan. On a raised platform at the far end of the room at a smaller table sat Jahan jong of Panga with the highest officers of his realm and the ranking officers of the Falsan navy. Danlot sat on the jong s right. He was slumped in his chair his chin resting on his breast. He seemed to be asleep. I don t like the looks of this I said to Ero Shan in a whisper. Neither do I he replied. I think we should get out of here. It would be a waste of time delivering your message to Danlot. I m afraid it s too late anyway I said. I had scarcely ceased speaking and we still stood looking into the banquet hall when Hajan the jong rose and drew his sword. It was evidently a prearranged signal for simultaneously every Pangan officer in the banquet hall followed the example of his jong and every Pangan sword was pointed at the breast of a Falsan. Trumpets sounded and other trumpets carried the call to arms down every corridor of the palace and out into the city. I snatched off Ero Shan s helmet and my own and tossed them on the floor. He looked at me in sudden surprise and then smiled for he realized that now no one could identify us as Falsans and that for the time being we might be overlooked possibly long enough to permit us to escape. A few of the Falsan officers resisted and were killed but most of them were disarmed and made prisoners. In the confusion we made our way out of the palace and through the gates with a number of Pangan officers. As we reached the plaza we saw Pangan troops pouring in from every avenue while Pangan girls were pouring from every ship and fleeing to safety. The fighting in the plaza was soon over as it was in other parts of the city for the drunken disorganized Falsans could put up little or no resistance since most of them had been surreptitiously disarmed by the Pangan girls. Within an hour the Falsans had been herded into the plaza before the barracks and were being held there under guard. Most of them lay asleep on the sward in drunken stupors. A few of those who had been on guard at the gates escaped on foot out into the night. The Pangans had taken thousands of prisoners and the entire Falsan land fleet. It looked to me as though the ten year old war was over. The Pangans were not such fools after all I said to Ero Shan. We were standing near the 975 looking at it longingly and wondering how we could get out of the city with it when an officer came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. Who are you two he demanded as I turned around to face him. We were prisoners of the Falsans I replied but after the men who were guarding us got drunk we escaped. Then I had an inspiration. We are both gunners I said and I am a pilot. We would like to enlist in the service of your jong. The officer scratched his head. You don t look like Falsans he admitted But you re not Pangans so I ll put you under arrest until morning and then the proper authorities can decide what is to be done to you. He summoned some soldiers then and told them to lock us up until morning and then to bring us to his headquarters. From his insignia I saw that he held a rank similar to that of colonel. Nowhere that I have been on Venus have I found any differentiation between Army and Navy and the ranks that I have translated into military titles a Navy man would probably have translated into Navy titles. I like the system for it certainly simplifies matters of precedence and rank and makes for a unified fighting force comprising all branches of every service. Ero Shan and I were taken to a guardhouse and locked up and there ended a day of action excitement successes and reversals and with it the blasting of my hopes to steal the 975 and prosecute my search for Duare. Chapter XLVIII THE FOLLOWING morning no one came to take us to the officer who had arrested us until after noon and as we were conducted through the city we saw columns of dejected Falsans marching through the gates of Hor out onto the plains beyond. Our guard told us that Danlot and several other high Falsan officers were being held as hostages until the signing of a peace treaty satisfactory to Panga. In the meantime the remainder of the Falsans were being permitted to depart for home taking with them two ships loaded with provisions. They were faced with a march of some two thousand miles with only humiliation and vain regret as their constant companions. Yesterday they had been a victorious army today they were defeated and disarmed their entire grand fleet captured by the Pangans. I do not envy the next girl who offers one of those men a drink remarked Ero Shan. We were taken to the headquarters of Banat the Yorkokor who had caused our arrest and he accompanied us to a still higher officer a lotokor or general unless you are a Navy man in which event you may call him an admiral. Banat explained the circumstances of our arrest and repeated the statement that I had made to him at the time. Where are you from if you are not from Falsa demanded the general. Perhaps you are from Hangor or Maltor. Ero Shan is from Havatoo I explained and I am from Korva which lies beyond the mountain range to the south. There is nothing beyond that mountain range said the general. That is the end of the world. Were you to cross those mountains you would fall into the sea of molten rock upon which Amtor floats. There are many countries beyond those mountains I replied and I have lived in several of them ever since I first came to Amtor Since you first came to Amtor exclaimed the general. What do you mean by that You must have been born on Amtor and you couldn t have lived anywhere before you were born. I was not born on Amtor I replied. I was born in a world which at its nearest approach to Amtor is 26 000 000 miles away. The man is mad said the general. There is no other world but Amtor. I am not so mad I replied but that I can fight a gun and pilot a ship and I would like the chance to do that for Panga until I can resume my search for my mate. Your mate Where is she She too was captured by the Falsans when our anotar was shot down but she escaped from them the night before they attacked Hor. What is an anotar he asked. It is a ship that flies in the air I replied. Ero Shan my mate and I were trying to reach Korva in it when the Falsans shot us down. A ship that flies in the air snorted the general. First you tell me that you are from another world and now you tell me that you ride around in a ship that flies in the air. Are you trying to insult my intelligence Possibly his last statement is true said Banat. I was talking with some of the Falsan officers at the jong s banquet last night and they told me of this marvelous invention which they had shot down in which two men and a woman were riding through the sky. They were drunk snapped the general. They told me this before they had started to drink replied Banat. I am sure that in this matter the man is speaking the truth. Well if you want to assume the responsibility for them said the general you may have them and assign them to such duties as you wish. After we left the general I told Banat that I was more familiar with the small scout ships than with any others and that I had been a prisoner on the 975 which was in the plaza before the palace and that I was perfectly capable of piloting it. Banat took us to his own home which seemed strange to me until I discovered that he was tremendously interested in what I had told him about another world than Amtor. He questioned me at length and showed a very intelligent interest in my explanation of our solar system. You mean to say that Amtor is a round ball flying around the thing you call the Sun he demanded. And that it turns all the way around every day Why don t we fall off when it s upside down There s something my friend that you will have hard work explaining. So then I had to explain gravity to him and I think he grasped in a vague sort of way but anyway he was terribly impressed with my knowledge and he admitted that what I had told him explained many things that had hitherto puzzled him the one that impressed him most being an explanation of the transition from night to day which occurred with regularity every so many hours. Another thing that has always puzzled me he said is how Amtor could float on a sea of molten rock without itself melting. The upshot of our conversation was that he became so sufficiently impressed with my experience and erudition that he agreed to let me pilot the 975 and have Ero Shan aboard as a gunner. Ero Shan and I devoted the next few days to getting the 975 in shipshape condition and erasing all signs of the battle through which she had passed. For this purpose Banat had detailed a number of Pangan mechanics and as he had attached no officers to the 975 1 was in charge of the work. About ten days after our arrival in Hor Banat told me that we were ordered out with a fleet that was to take the field the next day against the City of Hangor whose men had been conducting raids against the Pangan herds all during their war with Falsa. It was to be a punitive expedition in which the captured Falsan land fleet was to be used. Hangor he told me lay on the coast about five hundred miles east of Hor and that it was founded hundreds of years ago by outlaws from Hor and from Onar the capital of Falsa who had become roving bandits. He said that they were a bad lot and now that the war with Falsa was over the Pangans would devote themselves to the destruction of Hangor. He assigned six men to complete the crew of the 975 and again he failed to appoint any officer with the result that I went out in command. It seemed a loose and careless way of doing things but I was to learn that that was one of the failings of the Pangans. They are at heart not a military people and they often act impulsively and without due deliberation. I noticed that as we moved toward Hangor there was nowhere near the efficiency displayed that had been apparent when the fleet had been in the possession of the Falsans. The ships must have been strung out over a distance of twenty miles. No scout ships were sent ahead nor were there any flankers. Even when the fleet was within fifty miles of Hangor it was still not in battle formation nor were the men on the ships at their stations. We were paralleling a range of low hills at the time when suddenly a fleet of fast cruisers and scout ships debouched from a ravine and before the commander of the Pangan fleet knew what was happening his force had been cut in two. Chemical shells and t rays were striking the big ships from all directions and the little scouts were launching their wheeled torpedos as they ranged up and down our lines almost without opposition. The tactics of the Hangors was entirely different in some respects from that of the Falsans. Their fast cruisers ranged up alongside of our big ships and as they were getting into position fighting men poured up from the lower decks until the upper decks were filled and then they poured over our rails and with r rays guns and swords fell upon our officers and crews from the bridges to the lower decks and all the while their wicked little scout ships raised havoc up and down the line. I got into a dogfight with three of them and holding my own all right till one of their torpedos smashed my starboard track. That was the end of me as far as fighting was concerned and when they saw that I was out of commission they streaked off to continue harrassing the remainder of our fleet. Within half an hour of the first attack many of our ships were disabled and the remainder were in full flight many of them being pursued by fast cruisers and the little scouts. Here s where we change navies said Ero Shan. It s all right with me if they ll have us I replied and almost any navy would be better than the Pangans . I never saw such glaring inefficiency and stupidity in my life. No wonder the Falsans said they were fools remarked Ero Shan. While nobody is paying any attention to us I said to Ero Shan let s make a break for those hills. An excellent idea he said and then he turned to the Pangan members of our crew. How about it he asked. They d only catch us said one of the men and they d kill us for trying to escape. All right I said do as you please. Come on Ero Shan and we jumped from the 975 and started for the hills. Chapter XLIX WE REACHED THE hills apparently without being observed but after going up the canyon a short distance we clambered up its side until we reached an elevation from which we could look out over the plains. We could see the 975 and standing beside it the Pangan crew waiting to be made prisoners. In all directions we could see the Pangan ships racing to escape and the fast cruisers and the scout ships of the Hangors clinging to them relentlessly. Many Pangan ships were out of commission and others had been captured in battle. It was a complete rout a decisive defeat and I imagined that the Hangors would go on stealing Pangan herds indefinitely. We remained where we were until the victorious fleet started for Hangor with their prizes and their prisoners. Such disabled ships as they could move at all they towed behind undamaged Pangan battleships. Now assured that our flight had not been noticed we came down into the canyon and made our way back to the 975 where we knew we could find food and water in her lockers. Before it became too dark we examined the damage that had been done the little scout ship and discovered that a day s work might put it in running condition again for there were tools and spare parts aboard. We started to work immediately but when darkness fell we had to abandon it. After we had eaten we discussed our plans and decided to try to find Onar the capital of Falsa where we believed Duare might be a prisoner. We thought that by hugging the foot of the northern mountain range we should be far enough away from any city and off the beaten track so far that there would be no danger of our being discovered and once in Onar I was sure that we would be well received for we had fought with the Falsan fleet and no one there would know that we had also fought on the side of the Pangans. And so we laid our plans and with such assurance of success that they seemed almost accomplished by the time we fell asleep. The next morning we were up before dawn had breakfast and started working on the track the moment that it was light again. We worked like a couple of galley slaves under the lash and by mid afternoon the work was completed. There I said as we crawled out from under the 975 in two shakes of a dead lamb s tail we ll be on our way and then I saw Ero Shan looking past me at something and from the hopeless expression on his face I guessed that what he saw was not pleasant. I turned slowly around. Almost upon us were some fifty very savage looking men mounted upon zorats those weird looking creatures which Amtorians use for saddle animals but which I hate to dignify with the name of horse. They are about the size of a small horse with long slender legs suggesting great speed. Their feet are round and nailless and heavily calloused on the bottom. Their almost vertical pasterns suggest that they might be a hard gaited beast but this is not so for their almost horizontal femurs and humeri absorb the jolts and render the zorat an easy riding saddle animal. Above their withers and also just forward of their kidneys are soft pads or miniature humps which form a perfect saddle with natural pummel and cantle. Their heads are short and broad with two large saucer like eyes and pendulous ears. Their teeth are those of a herbivore but they can use them effectively as weapons when their short tempers are aroused although their principal means of defense is their quickness. The men who now surrounded us carried r ray rifles and pistols as well as swords. They wore gaudy loincloths of many colors and turbans of similar patterns which were wound around their heads leaving one end about a yard long which hung down over their left shoulders. Their scowling faces were as hard as granite. What are you doing Pangans demanded one of them. We are not Pangans I said and we were trying to repair this ship so that we could go to Hangor and get directions for getting out of this country without being captured by the Pangans again. You were prisoners of the Pangans he asked. Yes I said. They brought us along with them when they came to attack Hangor yesterday. Will that ship run asked the man. No I replied and it never will. It cannot be repaired. If you are not Pangans the fellow continued you must be either Falsans or Maltors. Which are you Neither I said. You must be lying he said. There are no other cities in Anlap. We are not from Anlap I told him. Where are you from then From California I replied. It s a little country that s not at war with anybody and certainly not with Hangor. He had two of his men dismount and disarm us and then he ordered us up behind two others and we set off in the direction of Hangor. The zorats were very fleet and apparently tireless and we must have covered fifteen or twenty miles before we came to a camp just before dark. The camp was in a forest at the edge of a stream at the mouth of a canyon in which I could see a large herd of Amtorian cattle. In the camp of these herders who were also warriors there were a number of women but no children and when we arrived the women were cooking the evening meal. I say cooking the evening meal they were cooking a part of it boiling vegetables over many individual fires. The rest of the meal consisted of meat which they ate raw the women passing it on huge platters and the men cutting strips from it as they went by. They were certainly a rough lot and during the meal and after it there were several bloody fights mostly over women. I saw one man badly beaten up because he looked at a woman too long. Though they fought viciously upon the slightest provocation or upon none at all they did not use their weapons relying entirely upon their hands feet and teeth to inflict damage upon their adversaries. It is a point of honor among them that they do not kill one another and if one should transgress this unwritten law the others would fall upon him and kill him. There was quite a little discussion concerning Ero Shan and myself and the location of California. It is a little country that is not at war with us explained one of the party which had captured us and they are going to Hangor to get someone to tell them how to get out of this country and get back to California. At that everybody laughed. You just go right up to Jeft when you get to Hangor said one of the men and tell him you want someone to show you the way back to California then everybody laughed again. What is so funny I asked one of them. You would think it funny too if you knew Jeft he replied. Who is Jeft He is our jong and he is a real jong too. No slave has ever escaped from Hangor since Jeft became jong. You are going to take us back to Hangor to put us into slavery I asked. Of course replied the man who had captured us. Have you ever been a slave asked one of them. Yes I said. Well don t think that you know what slavery is until after you have been one of Jeft s slaves. Then you can boast if you live through it. After a while they told us that we could go to sleep and we curled up on the ground at one side of the camp. Jeft must be a pleasant person remarked Ero Shan. The Myposans were not pleasant people I said neither were the Brokols nor the Vooyorgans but I lived through captivity with them and I escaped. May your luck hold here said Ero Shan drowsily and fell asleep. Early the next morning they mounted us on a couple of zorats and sent us with a guard of five men toward Hangor which we reached late that afternoon. Hangor is a mean little walled city with narrow crooked filthy streets lined with hovels which one could not dignify with the name of houses. Slatternly women sat in the doorways and dirty children played in the filth of the streets. The jong s house to which we were immediately taken was larger but no less disreputable than the others. Jeft was sitting in an open courtyard in the center of his house when we were taken before him. He was an extremely gross and brutal looking man wearing a filthy loincloth that had once had a pattern and a similarly disreputable turban. He was drinking something from an enormous tankard and spilling a great deal of it over his chin and down his front. What have we here he bellowed as we were led before him. Two men from California who escaped from the Pangans during the battle day before yesterday explained one of the men who had brought us. From California hey demanded Jeft. I ve just been waiting to get my hands on one of you zorat thieves from California. Oh I said so you are familiar with California are you Of course I m familiar with California he fairly shouted. Who says I ain t You mean to call me a liar What do you want in my country anyway comin in here and calling me a liar I didn t call you a liar I said. I was just pleased to know that you were familiar with California. There you go calling me a liar again. if I say you called me a liar you did call me a liar. However I am still pleased to know you are familiar with California I said. You don t think I m familiar with California you don t think I ve ever been to California. So You don t think I ve ever been to California when I say I have. What do you mean coming here and looking for trouble I did not reply and he immediately flew into another frenzy. Why don t you answer me he demanded. What s the use of answering you when you know all the answers I said. You even know about a country that you never heard of before and it lies on another world 26 000 000 miles from Amtor. You are a big bag of wind Jeft and if I failed to call you a liar before I do now. I knew that we could expect no mercy from this man and that nothing I might say to him might make it any easier or any harder for us while we were here. He was an ignorant and a degraded bully and I had taken all from him that I intended to let come what might. My words had an entirely different effect upon him than I had anticipated Like the bag of wind that I had termed him he deflated as though he had been punctured. He took a big swallow from the tankard to hide what I imagine was his embarrassment and then said to the men who had brought us Take them away and turn them over to Stalar and tell him to see that they work. Chapter L WE WERE TAKEN through crooked streets some of them ankle deep in filth to what appeared to be the extreme limits of the city and there in a filthy room beside the city walls we were turned over to Stalar. He was a tall man with thin cruel lips and close set eyes. He wore two r ray pistols and there was a heavy whip lying on the desk in front of him. Where are you from he asked. From California I replied. At that he leaped up and seized the whip. Don t lie to me he shouted you are Pangans. I shrugged. All right have it your own way I said. What you or any of the rest of your filthy tribe think doesn t interest me. At that he came around the desk the whip in his hand. What you need is a lesson slave he growled. I looked him straight in the eye. If you strike me with that I ll kill you I said and if you don t think I can just try it. The yellow cur backed down. Who said I was going to strike you he said. I told you I was going to teach you a lesson and I am but I haven t got the time to bother with you two now. Get on into the compound and he unlocked a gate in the outer wall beyond which was a large enclosure crowded with men nearly all of whom were prisoners taken from the Pangan fleet. One of the first men I saw was Banat the Pangan officer who had befriended us. He looked terribly dejected but when he saw us he came up and spoke to us. I thought you had escaped he said. We thought so too I replied. My men on your ship told me that you had gotten away safely into the hills. We did but we came down to the 975 again for food and we were captured by a band of Hangorian herders. How are they treating you here He turned his back toward me revealing a dozen raw welts. That is how they treat us he said. They are building an addition to the city and trying to speed it up with whips. I don t think I can take it I said. You had better take it he replied. I saw two men resist yesterday and they were both shot dead on the spot. That might be the easiest way out I said. I have thought of that he said but one clings to life. There is always hope. Maybe Carson can get away with it said Ero Shan he just got away with murder with the jong and with the fellow called Stalar and they both backed down. Some of these slave drivers they have over us won t back down said Banat they haven t the mentality of a nobargan. After a while some women entered the compound carrying food to us. it was a filthy mess in filthy vessels and not enough to give each man half a meal. Who are the women I asked Banat. They are slaves that have been captured in raids their fate is even worse than ours. I can imagine so I said thinking of the bestial creatures who passed for men in Hangor. The next morning we were given another similar meal and taken out to work and when I say work I mean work. We were set to cutting and carrying the lava rock with which they were building the wall around the new part of the city. Twenty five or thirty slave drivers with r ray pistols and whips stood over us and if they saw a man stop even to wipe the sweat from his face they struck him. I was set to cutting rock at some distance from the new wall but I could see that there were women slaves working there mixing and laying the mortar in which the rocks were set. After a while Stalar came out among us. He seemed to be looking for someone and I had a rough idea that he was looking for me. At last he found me. How is this slave working he asked the slave driver who was standing over us. All right so far said the man he is very strong. He can lift rocks easily that any two other slaves have to strain to lift. Watch him said Stalar and beat him until he screams for mercy if he shirks his work or gives you any trouble for I can tell you that he is a trouble maker. Then he walked away. What has Stalar got against you asked the guard after the chief slave driver was out of hearing. I haven t the slightest idea I said unless it is that he thinks I am a Pangan. Aren t you asked the guard. No I replied but I was careful to keep on working diligently all the time for fear the man was looking for an excuse for whipping me. I had decided that it was foolish to antagonize them up to a point where they would kill me for there must always be the hope of escape and eventual reunion with Duare if she still lived. Stalar s a mean one said the guard. Is he I asked. He has never harmed me. Wait said the man he ll get you. I can tell by the way he spoke that he has something against you. He wanted you to take it out on me I said. I guess that s right assented the guard but you go on doing your work and I won t bother you. I don t get pleasure out of beating the men the way some of the others do. I guess you re a pretty decent fellow I said. After I had cut a number of building blocks to the correct size the guard told me to carry them over to the walls. The guard at the walls told me where to put them down and I deposited them beside a woman slave who was laying mortar. As I did so she turned and looked at me and my heart leaped to my mouth it was Duare. I was about to speak but she silenced me with a finger to her lips and then she whispered out of the corner of her mouth They will beat us both if we speak. I felt a stinging lash across my back and turned to face the guard who was overseeing the work at this part of the wall. What do you mean by loafing around here he demanded. My first impulse was to kill him and then I thought of Duare. I knew I must suffer anything for now I must live. I turned and walked away to bring more rock. The fellow struck me again as I was going the lash wrapping around my body and bringing blood. When I got back to my rock pile the guard there saw the welts on my body. Why did you get those he asked. The guard at the wall said that I was loafing I replied. Were you he asked. You know that I do not loaf I answered. That s right he said I ll go with you the next load you carry. I picked up two more of the building stones which was one more than any of the other slaves could carry and started back toward the wall my guard accompanying me. When I put the rocks down by Duare I stooped close to her and brushed my arm against her body. Courage I whispered. I will find a way. As I stood up the wall guard came up swinging his whip. Loafing around here again hey he demanded carrying his whip hand back. He was not loafing said my guard. Leave him alone he belongs to me. I ll whip any lazy slave I want to said the wall guard and you too as far as that s concerned and he started to lay the lash on my guard. I jumped him then and seized his whip. It was a foolish thing to do but I was seeing red. I took the whip away from him as easily as though he had been a baby and when he drew an r ray pistol I took that from him too. Now Stalar came charging up. What s going on here he demanded. This slave just tried to kill me said the wall guard he should be beaten to death. Duare was looking on her eyes wide with terror terror for what might be going to happen to me. I must say that I was considerably concerned myself for my brief experience with these cruel sadistic guards suggested that Stalar might order the wall guard s suggestion put into execution. Then my guard intervened. If I were you Stalar he said I d do nothing of the sort. This guard was attacking me when the slave came to my rescue. He did nothing more than disarm the man. He offered him no harm. I could see that Stalar was furious but he only said Get back to your work all of you and see that there is no more of this. And then his eyes fell upon Duare. Get to work slave he snapped and raised his whip to strike her. I stepped between them. Don t I said. Stalar hesitated. He will never know how near death he was then but he was yellow all the way through and he was afraid of me. Get to work he repeated and turned on his heel and walked away. I went back to my rock pile then with my guard. That was very decent of you I said and I thank you but won t you get into trouble No he said. Jeft the jong is my uncle. I looked at him in surprise. I must say I blurted carelessly you don t take after your uncle. To my relief the guard grinned. My mother was a Pangan slave woman he said. I think I must take after her. The Pangans are not a cruel people. This guard whose name was Omat had revealed such a surprisingly sympathetic nature that I felt that I might with safety ask a favor of him and I was about to broach the matter when he himself gave me an opening. Why did you risk your life to protect that slave girl from Stalar he asked. It seems to me that you have already stirred up enough trouble for yourself without doing that. She is my mate I said. We were captured by the Falsans and separated. I had no idea what had become of her until I saw her laying mortar at that wall. I wish that I might talk with her. He thought this over for a moment and then he said Perhaps I can arrange it for you. You are a good worker and I don t think you would ever make any trouble if they left you alone. You have done twice the work for me of any other slave and you have done it without grumbling. Chapter LI THAT EVENING when the female slaves brought our supper to us I noticed that Omat was in charge of them. He called my name and when I answered and walked over to him I saw that Duare was with him. I had not noticed her at first because she had been hidden from me by some of the other slave women. Here is your mate said Omat. I shall let her remain here while you eat and you needn t hurry he added. I took Duare s hand and pressed it and we walked off to one side a little way from the other slaves and sat down on the ground together. At first neither of us could speak we just sat there holding hands. Presently Duare said I never expected to see you again. What strange fate brought us together again in Jangor Providence has been so unkind to us I said that maybe it is trying to make it up to us a little now. But tell me what happened to you and how it is that you are here. It is not a very pleasant story she said. I know dear I said but tell me what you did after you killed Vantor and of course it was you who killed him. She nodded. Yes. It was in the middle of the night. Everybody on the ship was asleep including the sentry at the door which had been left open. I simply walked out it was that easy but I didn t know which way to go. My only thought was to get away somewhere and hide for I knew that if they caught me they would kill me because of what I had done. And in the morning I lay down in some tall grass and slept. When I awoke I saw the battle fleet of the Falsans moving toward the east. I knew you were with it and though I never expected to see you again I went along in the same direction to be as near to you as possible. After a while I came to a little stream where I drank and bathed and then refreshed I went on again but by this time the fleet was out of sight. And then in the middle of the afternoon I saw one of those little scout ships coming toward me and I hid but evidently they had seen me for they came directly to my hiding place. Half a dozen of these terrible Hangors got out of the ship and seized me. It would have been as senseless as it would have been futile to try to escape them. I soon realized that I had fallen into the hands of some very terrible people and that it was useless to expect either sympathy or kindness from them. Like the bandits they are they were out looking for any sort of loot or prey they could find. They send these ships out constantly and sometimes in great numbers especially after a battle between the Falsans and the Pangans when they prey upon disabled ships looting them and taking prisoners. The ship I was on was really scouting the battle that they knew was imminent but in the meantime looking for anything else they could pick up. They continued on to the west and presently discovered our disabled anotar. They could not make out what it was and when I told them they would not believe me and one of them flew into a terrible rage because he thought that I was lying to them. I sometimes think that many of them are quite mad. I am sure of it I said. No normal mind could be as cruel and unreasoning as some of these Hangors. But go on with your story. There is not much more to it she replied. They stole everything that they could from the anotar demolished the instruments and the engine and then came back toward Hangor and here I am and here are you. At least we are together again I said and that is something for now we can plan on escaping. You are always the optimist said Duare. I have escaped before I reminded her. I know she said but somehow this seems so terribly hopeless. Even if we escape from Hangor we have no way of escaping from the country. Our beloved anotar has been destroyed and from what I have been told the mountains to the south are absolutely impassable and the land is full of enemies. I refuse to give up hope I said. What became of poor Ero Shan she asked after a moment s silence. He is here I said and I have another friend here a Pangan officer named Banat. Between the four of us we may be able to cook up some scheme for escape. By the way where are you quartered It is just the other side of that wall she said. The men s and the women s compounds adjoin. They tell me that they used to herd them all in together but there were so many fights and so many men slaves were killed that they had to segregate them. The slaves had finished their meal by this time and the women had returned from their compound to take away the empty bowls. Omat came with them and beckoned to Duare. We stood up and I held her in my arms for just a moment then she was gone. It was good to have had her to myself for even this short time and I felt far more hopeful than I had since she had been taken from the Falsan flagship though I must admit that my hope lived on very meager fare. After Duare left I went over and sat down with Ero Shan and Banat. Why didn t you come over and see Duare I asked Ero Shan. You could have so little time together he said that I did not want to rob you of any of it. She inquired about you I said and I told her that you were here and that we also had another friend in Banat and the four of us should be able to work out some plan whereby we might escape. Whatever it is said Ero Shan you can count me in on it. I would rather be killed trying to escape than to remain here to be beaten to death. The next day Stalar assigned me to another job. I was sent with a dozen other slaves who for one reason or another he particularly disliked to a large corral where a number of zorats were kept. It was so filled with accumulated filth that the animals were knee deep in it and could move around only with the greatest effort. While the work was offensive and nauseating in the extreme it had one advantage in that the guards were not near enough to us to crack us with their whips and as they wouldn t come down into the filth they sat on the fence and swore at us. This was all right while we were loading the carts but we had to push them about a mile outside the city to dump them where their contents could later be used for fertilizing the fields where they raised vegetables and grain for the zorats that are kept up. It was while we were pushing the carts that the guards could get at us and then they made up for lost time. One of the guards soon discovered that I was much stronger and much faster than any of the other slaves so he attached himself to me and made a game of it. He laid wagers with another guard that I could load faster pull heavier loads and get them out to the dumping ground sooner than any of the other slaves and in order to encourage me he laid on with his lash. I took it because I had found Duare and I didn t want anything to happen to me now. The other guard had picked out a husky slave on which he had placed his wager and he stood over him lashing him furiously to make him work faster. The wager was on the number of full loads we could take out to the dump during the remainder of the day and a certain amount of money was to be paid on each load which either slave took out more than the other. It was soon obvious that I should win money for my guard but the fellow was greedy to collect all that he could so he lashed me out and lashed me back until I was covered with raw welts and the blood was running down my back and sides. Notwithstanding my anger and my suffering I managed to control my temper until I felt that I could stand no more. On one trip I got out to the dump after the others had all unloaded and started the return trip to the corral. This left my guard and myself alone at the dump a mile away from the city and with no one near us. I am a very powerful man but I was about ready to drop from exhaustion. The afternoon was only about half over and I knew that the fool would kill me if this went on until night and as we reached the dump I turned and faced him leaning on the forked tool which I had been using to load and unload the cart. If you were not a fool I said you would not waste your energy and mine by beating me. Pretty soon I shall not have strength enough left to pull the cart after I have loaded it. Shut up you lazy beast he cried and get to work and then he came for me with his whip again. I jumped forward and seized the whip and jerked it from his hand and when he started to draw his pistol I raised the tool as though it had been a spar and drove it into his chest. It must have pierced his heart for he died almost instantly. I stooped over his body and took his r ray pistol from him concealing it beneath my loincloth then I laid him near the cart and unloaded its contents upon him until he was completely hidden a filthy thing buried beneath filth. Chapter LII I HAD MURDERED a guard and I could imagine what the penalty would be but I hoped that I had hidden the evidence of my crime sufficiently well to prevent detection. Unless the body were discovered they couldn t very well establish the corpus delicti in fact they couldn t even know that a crime had been committed. However I will admit that I was a little bit nervous as I returned to the corral alone and I was still more nervous when the other guard who had accepted the wager accosted me. Where is your guard he demanded. He followed you back I said. He thought that you were having other guards slaves help your slave load his cart and he wanted to catch you at it. He s a liar snapped the man looking around. Where is he He must be here I said for he is not with me and then I started loading my cart again. The disappearance of my guard might have constituted an absorbing mystery if the other guard had told anybody about it but he didn t. He was too crooked and too greedy. Instead he told me to slow down or he would beat the life out of me. If you will protect me from the other guards I said I will work so slow that you will be sure to win. See that you do he said and so I took it easy all the rest of the afternoon. At quitting time the guard whose slave had been pitted against me was really worried. He had won his wager but there was no one from whom to collect his winnings. Are you sure your guard came back to the corral he asked me. That s where he said he was going when he left me I replied. Of course I was working so hard that I didn t watch him. It is very strange he said. I can t understand it. When the women slaves brought our food to us that evening Omat was not with them but Duare was there and she brought my bowl to me. Ero Shan and Banat were with me. I had outlined a bold plan to them and they both had agreed to see it through or die in the attempt. As Duare joined us we gathered around her trying to hide her from the guards and then we moved off into a far corner of the compound in the shadow of one of the shelters beneath which the slaves slept. Duare sat down on the ground and we crowded around her effectually hiding her from view from any part of the compound. There were only two guards and they were engrossed in conversation. One of them had come with the women and when they left he would leave returning only when they collected the empty bowls. The guards were always sleepy at night and they didn t bother us unless some slave raised a disturbance and night offered the only rest that we had from their cruelty. As I ate I explained my plan to Duare and presently I saw that she was crying. Why the tears I asked. What is the matter Your poor body she said it is covered with welts and blood. They must have beaten you horribly today. It was worth it I said for the man who did it is dead and I have his pistol hidden beneath my loincloth. Because of these welts which will soon heal we have a chance to escape. I am glad you killed him she said. I should have hated to live on knowing that a man who had treated you so still lived. After a while the women slaves came back and collected the empty bowls and we were fearful that one of the slave women might discover Duare and expose her but if any of them saw her they said nothing and they were soon gone and their guard with them. We waited until nearly midnight long after the compound had quieted down and the slaves had fallen asleep. The single guard sat with his back against the gate that opened out toward the corral where I had worked that day. Another gate opened into the city and a third into the compound of the female slaves but these it was not necessary to guard as no slaves could escape in either of these directions. I stood up and walked over toward him and as he was dozing he did not notice me until I was quite near him then he leaped to his feet. What are you doing here slave he demanded. Sh I said. I have just heard something that you ought to know. What is it he asked. Not so loud I said in a whisper if they know that I am telling you they will kill me. He came closer to me all attention now. Well what is it Four slaves are planning on escaping tonight I told him. One of them is going to kill you first. Don t say anything now but look over there to your left. And as he looked I drew the pistol from beneath my loincloth and placing it over his heart pressed the button. Without a sound he died falling forward upon his face. I stooped and quickly lifted him into a sitting position propped against the wall beside the gate then I took his pistol from him and looking back saw that Duare Ero Shan and Banat were tiptoeing toward me. We spoke no word as I opened the gate and let them out. Following them I closed it gently. I handed the extra pistol to Ero Shan and then led them down to the corral where the zorats were confined. Stealthily we stole among the brutes speaking soothingly to them for they are nervous and short tempered. They milled a little and tried to move away from us but finally we each captured one seizing them by an ear which is the way they are led and controlled. We led them down to the gate which I opened and then we mounted. No saddles or bridles are used upon the creatures one guides them and stops them by pulling on their long pendulous ears. A pull on the right ear turns them to the right a pull on the. left ear to the left and by pulling on both ears they may be stopped. They are urged forward by kicking them with the heels while a gentle pull on both ears slows them down. As the zorats corral is outside the city wall we were for the time being at least free and as soon as we had left the city a short distance behind we put heels to our weird mounts and sped up the broad valley at top speed. There was to be no rest for those zorats that night nor for us either for we must pass the camp of the herders before daylight if we were to be reasonably safe from detection and pursuit. It was a hard ride but we felt that it would be a successful one. We had the hills on the left to guide us and the big eyes of our mounts permitted them to see in the dim light of an Amtorian night. Duare and I rode side by side with Banat and Ero Shad directly behind us. The padded feet of the zorats gave forth no sound and we rode like ghosts through the darkness. Presently Ero Shan moved up beside me. We are being pursued he said. I just happened to look back and I saw a number of mounted men following us and they are gaining on us rapidly. Give Banat your pistol I said and then you go ahead with Duare. You will find plenty of arms and ammunition on board the 975. No said Duare decisively I shall not leave you. We will stay together until the end. I knew from her tone of voice that it was futile to argue so I told them that we would have to ride faster and I urged my zorat to even greater speed. They may not be very beautiful but they are really wonderful little saddle animals. They are almost as fast as a deer and have tremendous endurance but they had come a long way and I didn t know whether they would hold out or not. Looking back I saw what appeared to be quite a number of mounted men bearing down on us rapidly. I guess we are going to have to fight I said to Ero Shan. We can get a few of them before they get us he replied. I won t go back to Hangor said Duare I won t Kill me before they can get to me Carson promise me that you will. If I fall I replied you ride on to the 975 and then I told her how to start the motor which was quite similar to that of the anotar with which she was so familiar. The fuel used in the motor is the same as that which we used in the anotar. The element 93 vik ro is released upon a substance called lor which contains a considerable proportion of the element yor san 105 . The action of the vik ro upon the yor san results in absolute annihilation of the lor releasing all its energy. When you consider that there is 18 000 000 000 times as much energy liberated by the annihilation of a ton of coal as by its combustion you will appreciate the inherent possibilities of this marvelous Amtorian scientific discovery. Fuel for the life of the 975 could be carried in a pint jar. After a brief argument I persuaded Duare to promise me that if I fell she would try to reach the 975 and seek a passage through the southern mountains beyond which we were positive Korva lay. And then the pursuers were upon us. Chapter LIII AS I TURNED on my mount my r ray pistol ready in my hand prepared to sell my life dearly I heard Ero Shan laugh and an instant later I had to laugh myself. What are you laughing at demanded Duare. Look I said our pursuers are the zorats which escaped from the corral and followed after their companions. We must have passed the herders camp just before dawn and later on in the morning we saw the 975 far ahead of us where we had left it. I was greatly worried for fear the herders might have been there ahead of us and damaged it in some way but when we reached it we found it in the same shape that we had left it but we did not relinquish our zorats until I had started the engine and demonstrated to my own satisfaction that the 975 was in running order then we turned them loose and they started grazing around us with their fellows. I told Ero Shan and Banat to be prepared to fight either the port starboard or stern guns if the necessity arose and I kept Duare up forward with me for she could fire the bow gun if we got into action a thing none of us anticipated. Banat wanted to return to Hor where he assured me we would be well received but I was fearful to risk Duare further and Hor might again be in the hands of the Falsans. I told Banat however that I would approach Hor after dark and that he could then make his way on foot to the city and he agreed that that was fair enough. I should have liked however to have shown you some of the real hospitality of Hor. We were witnesses to the hospitality of Hor I replied. Banat laughed. We are not such fools as the Falsans think us he said. Look said Duare excitedly. There is a ship approaching. We all looked then and sure enough off our starboard bow we could see a small scout ship racing toward us. The only way we can avoid a fight I said is by turning back and I certainly don t want to do that. Then let s fight said Duare. What do you think she is Banat I asked. He took a long look and then he replied She is one of those fast Hangor faltars as we call them. Faltar means pirate ship and is a contraction of the combination of the two words fad meaning kill and anotar ship. And they are fast he added. I doubt if the 975 could run away from her. I swung around and headed right toward her and as soon as we were within range Duare commenced firing chemical shells. She made a clean hit on the bow right in front of the pilot s seat and then she sent a stream of t rays for the mark. They were firing their bow gun too but they were not so fortunate as we or else they didn t have as good a gunner for they scored nothing but clean misses. We had both slowed down to permit greater accuracy in our fire and were approaching each other slowly now when suddenly the faltar veered to the left and I could tell instantly from her erratic maneuvering that the pilot had been hit. Their starboard gun was bearing on us now but Duare had the whole side of their ship as a target and our starboard gun could now also be brought to bear. Several chemical shells hit us. I could hear the plop of their bursting and both Duare and Ero Shan who was manning our starboard gun scored hits with chemical shells which they followed immediately with their deadly t rays. In the meantime Banat had run a torpedo into the starboard tube and now he launched it. It went straight for its target and the explosion which followed nearly capsized the faltar and put her completely out of commission. It was a short fight but a sweet one while it lasted. However I was glad to turn away and resume our journey toward Hor leaving the disabled Hangor ship still firing at us futilely. We drew off a few miles and then got out and examined the hull of the 975. There were several places where the t ray insulation had been dissolved and these we patched up with new insulation before we proceeded. I asked Banat if it were true that no one had ever crossed the mountains to the south or seen any indications of a pass through them. As far as I know he said they have never been crossed but on one or two occasions our herders have reported that when the clouds rose up as you know they sometimes do they have seen what appeared to be a low place in the range. Have you any idea where it is I asked. It is about due south of Hor he replied. That is where our best grazing land is. Well we ll hope that the clouds rise up when we get there I said but whether they do or not we are going to cross the southern range. I wish you luck said Banat and you ll need it especially if you succeed in getting into the mountains at all. Why I asked. The Cloud People he replied. Who are they I demanded. I never heard of them. They live in the mountains always among the clouds. They come down and steal our cattle occasionally and when they do every portion of their bodies is covered with fur garments with only holes for their eyes and a hole to breathe through. They cannot stand our dry atmosphere. In olden times people used to think that they were a hairy race of men until our herdsmen killed one of them when we discovered that their skin was extremely thin and without pores. It is believed that they must perspire through their noses and mouths. When the body of the one who was killed by our herders was exposed to the air the skin shriveled up as though it had been burned. Why should we fear them I asked. There is a legend that they eat human flesh replied Banat. Of course that may be only a legend in which there is no truth. I do not know. They wouldn t stand much chance against the 975 said Ero Shan. You may have to abandon the 975 suggested Banat a lantar you know is not exactly built for mountain climbing. It was well after dark when we approached Hor. Banat importuned us again to come into the city. He said that at the gate it would be revealed whether the Falsans were still occupying Hor. As much as I d like to I said I cannot take the chance. If the Falsans are guarding your gates a single lucky shot might put us out of commission and you well know that they would never let a strange lantar get away from them without some sort of a fight. I suppose you are right he said and then he thanked me again for aiding in his escape and bidding us good by he started off on foot for the city and was soon lost in the darkness. That perhaps is the last time that I shall ever see the yorkokor Banat the Pangan. And now we moved slowly through the night toward the south and our hearts were filled with thankfulness that we had come this far in safety and our minds with conjecture as to what lay ahead of us in the fastnesses of the mountains which no man had ever crossed the mountains in which dwelt the Cloud People who were supposed to eat human flesh. Chapter LIV WHEN MORNING came we saw the mountains far away to the south of us their summits hidden in the eternal clouds. Only the lower slopes were visible up to an altitude of some five thousand feet. What lay above that was the mystery which we must solve. As we approached more closely we saw a herd of zaldarst the Amtorian beef cattle. Several herders who had discovered us were attempting to drive them toward the mountains with the evident intention of hiding them in a canyon which opened in front of them and where they evidently believe a lantar could not follow. A zaldar is a most amazing appearing animal. It has a large foolish looking head with big oval eyes and two long pointed ears that stand perpetually upright as though the creature were always listening. It has no neck and its body is all rounded curves. Its hind legs resemble in shape those of a bear its front legs are similar to an elephant s though of course on a much smaller scale. Along its spine rises a single row of bristles. It has no tail and no neck and from its snout depends a long tassel of hair. Its upper jaw is equipped with broad shovel like teeth which always protrude beyond its short tiny lower jaw. Its skin is covered with short hair and a neutral mauve color with large patches of violet which especially when it is lying down make it almost invisible against the pastel shades of Amtorian scenery. When it feeds it drops down on its knees and scrapes up the turf with its shovel like teeth and then draws it into its mouth with a broad tongue. It also has to kneel down when it drinks for as I have said before it has no neck. Notwithstanding its strange and clumsy appearance it is very fast and the herders mounted on the zorats soon disappeared with the entire herd into the mouth of the canyon the herders evidently believing us to be raiders. I should like to have had one of the zaldars for some fresh beef but although the 975 could have overhauled the herd and I could have shot some of the beasts I would not do so because I realized that they belonged to the Pangans. As the canyon into which the herders had driven their charges seemed to be a large one and as it lay directly south of Hor I felt that we should explore it and so I piloted the 975 into it. We advanced but a short distance into the canyon when we saw fully a hundred herders lined up across the mouth of a narrow side canyon into which they had evidently driven their herd. The men were all armed with r ray rifles and as soon as we came within sight they dropped down behind the stone wall which served both as a fence to pen their herd and as a breastworks behind which to defend it. We had been running without colors as we really didn t know what we were and couldn t have decided until we had been able to see the colors of any potential enemy when we would immediately have run up his colors on the flagstaff that rises above the pilot s seat. Positive that these were Pangan herders and not wishing to get into a fight with them or anyone else I now ran up the Pangan ensign. A man stood up behind the breastwork then and shouted Who are you Friends I replied. Come over. I want to talk to you. Anyone can run up a Pangan ensign he replied. What are your names You don t know us I replied but we are friends of the yorkokor Banat whom we have just left at Hor. He was captured by the Hangors replied the man. I know it I said and so were we. We just escaped with Banat yesterday. The herder walked toward us then but he kept his rifle ready. He was a nice looking young fellow with a fine face and a splendid physique. As he approached I opened the door and dropped to the ground. He stopped when he saw me immediately suspicious. You re no Pangan he said. I didn t say that I was but I fought with the Pangan fleet when it went to fight Hangor and I was captured when the fleet was routed. Are you sure that the yorkokor Banat is safe in Hor he demanded. We let him out last night near the gates I said and if Hor is not in the hands of the Falsans he is safe. It was because of the fear that it might be that we did not go any closer to the city. Then he is safe said the young fellow for the Falsans were defeated and sent home on foot. We knew that I replied but things turn about so suddenly here in this country that we didn t know but what they had returned and conquered Hor. You knew Banat I asked. I am his son and this is his herd. I am in charge of it. Duare and Ero Shan had come out and joined us by this time and the young fellow looked them over curiously. May I ask he said what you are doing up in these mountains Our country lies beyond them I explained and we are trying to find a pass to the other side. He shook his head. There is none and if there were the Cloud People would get you before you could get through. Your father told me that Pangan herders had sometimes seen a low place in the range when the clouds rose. Yes he said. That is about ten miles down the valley but if I were you I d turn back. If you are friends of my father you can go and live in Hor but if you keep on you will surely die. No man has ever crossed this range. We are going to try it nevertheless I told him but if we find we can t make it we ll come back to Hor. Then if you live I will see you there he said for you will never get through this range. I have been in it a little way in several places and I can tell you that the cliffs and gorges are simply terrific. His men had followed him out and they were standing around listening to our conversation. Finally one of the older men spoke up. I was up in that canyon ten miles from here about five years ago when the clouds rose higher than I have ever seen them. I could see sky beyond the low peaks. The canyon branches after you have gone into it about a mile and if there is any way to cross the range there it would be up the righthand fork. That s the one I d take if I were going to try it. Well thanks for the information I said and now we must be on our way. Tell your father that we got this far at least. How are you fixed for meat We haven t any I replied. He turned to one of his men. Go and get a quarter of that zaldar we butchered yesterday he said and you go with him he said to another and help him with it and bring along a bundle of smoked meat too. I was certainly grateful for these additional provisions. I had no Pangan money to pay for them with but I offered him some of our ammunition. He refused saying that we might need it and after the meat was brought we bade them good by and started in search of the canyon that might lead us to Korva or to death. Chapter LV WE FOUND THE mouth of a large canyon exactly where they had told us we would and after going up it about a mile we came to the fork and took the one that led to the right. It was getting late and the clouds were pretty low above us now so we decided to stop for the night. We were all armed now with rifles and pistols but we were mighty careful to keep a sharp lookout as we descended from the 975 to gather wood for a fire to cook our zaldar steaks. We finally had a good fire going and were broiling the steaks when we heard savage roars coming toward us from up the canyon. We were immediately on the alert standing with our rifles ready for I recognized the roars as those of the tharban a lion like Amtorian carnivore. But it wasn t any tharban that came in sight first but the strangest looking figure that I have ever seen a human being entirely encased in furs with only holes for its eyes and for breathing purposes. One of the Cloud People said Duare. And he is about to be not even that said Ero Shan. When the Cloud Man saw us he hesitated but then a terrific roar of the tharban sent him on again. Get the tharban I said and raised my rifle. Ero Shan and I fired simultaneously and the great cat leaped high into the air with a piercing shriek and then Duare put another stream of r rays into it as it hit the ground but I think it was already dead. By that time the Cloud Man was right in front of us and he stood looking at us still hesitating. You had a close call I said. I am glad that we were here to kill the tharban. He still stood looking at us in silence for a moment and then he said Aren t you going to kill me Of course not I said why should we All the plains people try to kill us he replied. Well we won t kill you I assured him and you are free to go whenever you wish to. What are you doing up in these mountains he asked. These belong to the Cloud People. Our country is on the other side of these mountains I told him. We were trying to find the way through. . Again he was silent this time for a full minute. It is strange to stand looking at a man all muffled up like that and not to have any inkling of what is passing in his mind because his eyes and his face are hidden from you. My name is Mor he said presently. You have saved my life and for that I will guide you through the Mountains of the Clouds. You cannot go through by night but in the morning I will come for you and without another word he turned and walked away. We must have left the jinx behind said Duare. I think I buried him under the fertilizer back there in Hangor I said. This is certainly a lucky break if it is true but it is almost too good to be true. We ate our steaks and some dried fruit and vegetables which Duare had boiled in water for us and then we went into the 975 locked the door and threw ourselves down to sleep utterly exhausted. When morning came we were up early and while we were eating our breakfast we saw fully a hundred fur clad Cloud Men coming down the canyon toward us. They stopped about a hundred yards from the 975 and one of them advanced. I am Mor he said do not be afraid. We have come to take you through the Mountains of the Clouds. Those are about the pleasantest words I have heard for a long time said Duare in an aside to me. Can we get through in this lantar I asked Mor. There will be one or two bad places he said but I think that you can get through with it. Can it climb It can climb I said almost anything but a vertical cliff. Follow us said Mor. You will have to stay very close for you plains people cannot see very far in the clouds. Some of my men will walk on either side to warn you of danger. Pay close attention to them for after we have climbed a way the least mistake you make may send you into a gorge thousands of feet deep. I shall pay attention I assured him. Mor walked directly in front of us and I kept the nose of the 975 almost touching him. The canyon rose steeply but it was broad and level at this point and we had no difficulty at all and in about half an hour we entered the clouds. From then on it was one of the most nerve racking experiences that I have ever endured. We climbed continually and Mor turned and twisted up what must have been one of the most God awful trails in existence. We made numerous hairpin turns and on several occasions the side of the 975 scraped the rocky wall while on the opposite side there was nothing but billowing clouds through which at the level of the lantar I could see the tops of trees waving and I knew that we must be on a narrow ledge little wider than the ship. After we had entered the clouds Mor and the other Cloud Men whom I could see had divested themselves of their furs which they rolled into neat bundles and strapped on their backs. Now they were entirely naked and as entirely hairless. Their thin skins were of the color of a corpse and as they climbed they panted like dogs and their tongues hung out of the corners of their mouths. Their eyes were very large and round and they had tiny noses the combination giving them a most owl like expression. I think they were quite the most hideous creatures that I have ever seen. When I thought that we must be at the top of the highest mountain that had ever existed on any planet we rolled onto a level surface and after a few minutes Mor raised his hand for us to stop. He came back then and said We will rest here. This is our village. I looked about me but saw nothing but clouds or perhaps I should better say fog through which the visibility was not over fifty feet if that much. Presently women and children materialized out of it and came and talked with the men and looked at the lantar but they seemed afraid of it and remained at a safe distance. How much farther I asked Mor before we will be down out of the clouds on the other side If we are lucky we will reach the summit tonight he said and then late tomorrow you will be below the clouds on the other side. My heart sank. The rest of this day and another day tomorrow was not very pleasant to look forward to. Our nerves were almost a wreck already but we lived through it and late the next day we came down below the clouds into a beautiful canyon. Mor and his companions had donned their fur suits and surrounded the lantar. I told Ero Shan to bring the quarter of beef and I got out to thank Mor and say good by and I offered the beef to him when Ero Shan brought it. You have plenty he asked. We can get along I replied with what food we have. You cannot tell he said. There are no herds on this side only wild game and sometimes rather difficult to get. But I want to repay you for what you have done for us I said. No he said. You owe us nothing. You saved my life for that I can never repay you. And know he added that you are always welcome in the home of the Cloud People. I thanked him and we bade them good by then and started off down the canyon. And these were the impossible mountains I said. And those were the man eaters who would destroy and devour us said Duare. Banat would be surprised if he knew how easily we had accomplished the impossible remarked Ero Shan. And we have the tharban to thank I said. That was certainly a lucky break for us for without Mor s gratitude we should never have come through. It would have been impossible to have found or negotiated that trail without his help and guidance. We went down the canyon to its mouth where there opened before us a scene that was to us one of exquisite beauty for I recognized distant landmarks of a terrain over which I had flown many times and I knew that we had reached Korva and in the distance I imagined that I could see the towers and spires of Sanara. We had been gone a year or more. We had suffered appalling vicissitudes. We had survived unspeakable dangers. We had overcome seemingly insuperable obstacles but at long last we were home.

Science Fiction

fiction

AT MICROFlCHE REFERENCE LIBRARY A project of Volunteers in Asia By: FAO Forestry Paper Published by: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Publications Division Via della Terme di Caracaiia 00100 Home ITALY Available from: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Publications Division Via deiie Terme di Caracalia 00100 Rome ITALY Reproduced with permission. Reproduction of this microfiche document in any form is subject to the same restrictions as those of the original document. FAO FORESTRY PAPER fao sida sa FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS Rome 1982 The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country territory city or area or of its authorities or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. M 30 ISBN 92 5 l 01248 2 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic mechanical photocopying or otherwise without th 3 prior permission of the copyright owner. Applications for such perr lission with a statement of the purpose and extent of the reproduction should be addressed to the Director Publications Division Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Via delle Terme di Caracalla 00100 Rome Italy. 0 FAO 1982 IRTRODUCTION This manual deals with the construction and operating prinoiples of the frame saw. Many different kinds and makes of frame saws are in use. A very oomon type of Swedish origin originally made in 1946 has been chosen as the example in this manual. Today s modern frame saw has the same basic funotion although capacity infeed and sawing acouracy is increased. Where frsme saws of other makes differ considerably this is pointed out. FAO gratefully acknowledges its indebtedness to the Government of Sweden whose financial aid made possible the publication of this manual and to the Employers deration of Smdish Ihhatries who povided the original material. coNTEms 1. Construction aud operating principles ...... 2 2. Forces and movements ....................... 38 3. Setting sawblades into frame saw sash ....... 68 4. Row to feed logs into a frame saw .......... 79 5. Main t enance ................................ 92 6. Revolutions cog numbers and peripheral speeds 97 3 2 11 PART1 CO IO ARDOpERAT F R IRCI pLw iE 1. Foundation with base plate ................... 3 2. Crank section ................................ 7 3. Bottom frame ................................. 14 4. Upper frame .................................. 15 5. Guide system ................................. 16 6. Sash ......................................... 19 7. Roll frame and feed rolls .................... 24 8. Feeding mechanism ............................ 31 Appendix ..................................... 36 39 1. Foundation with Base mate The eaw freme must be built on a etrong foundation of reinforced concrete of about60 80 m3. Sometimes however up to 100 m3 is necessary to get a etrong enough base for the eaw frame when ground conditions are bad. The foundation should be Bornewhat longer in the longitudinal direction of the 8aw mill than in the transverse direction since the prinoipal direction of motion of the moving part8 of the frame coinoides with the direction of sawing. Accurate drawings shouldbe supplied by the manufaoturer. The ftanction of the foundation is: The foundation must therefore be erected on eolid mund. If there ia no such ground available pile driving must be done. At the same time the foundations must not be directly on solid rock which can carry vibrations to adjoining areas some distance away. 4 A foundation on rock needs an inter vening layer of a suppressing material for example clsy or sand. Sand especially is good at absorbing vibrations. It must be repeated that when the pre liminary studies for anchoring the frame saw foundation are done a good solid ground base must be found. If there is any doubt always consult a soecialist. because the consequences of error could be serious. It is also unwise to run all the saw frsmes within the mill at the same speed number.of revolutions . It is best to make the frames work out of sequence in order to counterbalance each other s motions the same as a group of soldiers breaking step when cross ing a slender bridge. The ideal situation is to have the moving parts of one frame at the upper dead centre when the moving parts of the other frame are at the bottom dead centre. In practice however this is not possible to achieve and instead one tries to vary the speed of each frsme. Usually the cant frame works four to five revolutions faster per minute than the log frame which avoids harmonic peaks of vibration. In addition it also avoids the sympathetic vibr tions in the surrounding ground which creates disturbing shaking to buildings in the vicinity. To obtain the necessary working height on the ground floor of the sawing building the foundation should be built up to a suitable height above the floor to make enough space for necessary conveying machinery etc. In the past the cant frame has often been mounted too low. The trend now is to raise it to a better working height on the upper floor. When installing modern roll conveyers the aim is to obtain a working height of 700 mm. On top of the foundation a BASE PLATE is fixed: by embedding it in the conorete bed and by 8 anchor bolts 45 mm embedded in the concrete bed. These anchor bolts must penetrate the whole foundation to get adequate anchorage. The base plate consists of a deep U section frame. The U shape is partly chosen because this design has very high bending resistance especially where the bearirg housings are positioned. For technical explanations of this see PART II FORCXSANDMU S. This shape makes a strong plate but other types of beams can also be used. Another advantage of the U shape is that it can be filled with concrete so that the anchorage of the plate to the foundation is strongly reinforced. In the base plate there are bearing housings for the roller bearings of the crank shaft. The lower half of the housing is placed in the base plate itself. The upper half called the bearing cap is fastened with bolts in the base plate. There is one disadvantage with this system. If the outer ring of the crankshaft roll be rri.ng which is normally fixed in the bearing housing starts to rotate in the base plate the who1 e base plate must be substituted or reconstructed in si tu. 6 Therefore the most modern types of frame saws are fitted with detachable bearing housin@made of cast steel for the crankshaft roll bearing. Some older frsme saws have White metal ring lubricated bearings See appendi The flunction of the base plate ist to hold the construction of the frame together to support the whole weight of the frame saw about 10 tons to absorb and transmit to the foundation the powerful inertia forcesVV that arise during sawing. The predominant forces that influence the base plate aret 1. VERTICAL IQRCXS that arise due to: the up and down movement of the upper end of the connecting rod. the up and down movement of the sash. 2. HORIZONTAL FCRCES that arise mostly due to: the flywheel counterweights which in certain positions have a horizontal component of movement the lower end of the connecting rod which in certain positions has a horizontal component of movement. the pressure of the log against the saw blades. 3. SIDEFQRCRS from: the belt tension. the power from the motor. These forces can vary considerably depend on the size of the motor and how the power is transmitted i.e. through direot drive or through transmission drive. More detail on these stresses is explained inFart2 RCESARDMDVENENTS. Detachable bearing housing a 3 79 2. Crank Section The crank section consists of: a crank shaft of: 2 centre shafts 2 flywheels with counterweights lorankpin a connecting rod. A. Crankshaft with flywheel The crankshaft is mounted in the base plate by means of two spherical SKY roller bearings see appendix . Some frame saws have white metal ring lubricated bearings instead. It is a detachable type which means that it is built up of several parts. The crankshaft is divided into two similar halves. Each half consists of: one centre shaft pressed into an eccentric onto this eccentric has been bolted a flywheel with a counte weight. The crankshaft halves are joined together by means of a crank pin. The connecting .vd is attached to this pin by the lower connect ing rod bearing. The crank pin is fitted with mechanical joints in both the crankshaft halves which make it easy to disassemble. In some frame saws the eccentric and the flywheel are cast in one piece . When the two halves have been joined together by the crank pin the flywheels are positioned on either side of the connecting rod placed as close as possible to the connecting rod bearing. This is done to reduce the strain in the shaft. The shorter the crank pin the more rigid it is and the better it resists strati. In 0th er models the flywheels are located outside the base plate and the counterweights are positioned on either side of the orank pin. weight On the ends of the crankshaft out side the bearings in the base plate are fixed: a crankshaft pulley on the feeding side which in turn drives the friction disc or pulley for the log feeding mechanism. A variable drive meohanism see page 33 can be mounted. When this is done there is no need for a driving pulley since log feeding is powered by a separate electric motor. a keyed on driving pulley on the driving side to trsnsmit the driving power from the motor to the crankshaft. The driving jxlley has a two piece hub whioh makes it easy to disassemble. The above applies when each frame saw is direct driven from its own separate motor. 9 If there is a system with one motor driving more than one saw through a trans mission gear it is necessary to have in addition a free running pulley an O pulley running on strong double row roller bearings adjacent to the driven pulley on an extension of the crankshaft. The transmission belt from the motor pulley is connected to either the driven pulley or to the adjacent free running O pulley. When the power is to be disconnected the belt is moved by means of a belt guide from the driving pulley over to the O pulley. When power is to be connected the belt is moved back from the O pulley to the driving pulley. The belt guide consists of a clamp through which the belt passes. A lever at the operator s position on the infeed side of the saws close to the log feeding control moves the belt sideways. Braking the crankshaft rotation can be done in two different wayqdepending on whether the saw is powered by direct motor drive or transmission gear: Direct driven saws. The brake system consists of an ordinary brake lining surrounding a brake drum on the driving pulley. The lining is tightened around the brake drum by means of a lever placed at the operator s position on the upper stand close to the infeed controls. Transmission gear driven saws. The belt guidebar is connected with a brake lining that surrounds the brake drum of the fixed driving pulley. The brake is actuated when the belt guide lever is moved to its bottom position which moves the belt over to the C pulley. IIireot motor drive Transmission gem 10 The forces on the crankshaft and the connecting rod are very complex.See PAFIT 2 FORCFS AND MOVEMENTS . It is there fore not possible to fully balance a frsme saw. To enable the moving parts to work as smoothly and quietly as possible the crank shaft is fitted with flywheels and fixed counterweights which together counterbalance some of the rotating arts of the frame. The parts that move up and down however cause high free vertical forces. By using extra counterweights it is possible to reduce or eliminate these vertical forces. But in doing so free horizontal forces will develop. The difficulty is to find the degree of balancing that is best for each individual machine. bven if total balancing is not achievable at least by partial balancing free forces are reduced and distributed more evenly both in the vertical and horizontal directions. To achieve the best balance the fixed counterweights are provided with cavities where imn or lead weights can be inserted to fine tune the balance. Above all it is essential to counter balance: the high force on the lower connecting rod bearing in the 9 to 6 o oclock section and the 3 to 12 o clock section and in addition the negative force on the lower connecting rod bearing in the 12 to 9 o clocks section and the 16 to 3 oVclockl section . In addition the counterweights help to overcome: forces at TDC and EDC the 12 and 6 olclockW positions. Counter weight E3ctra weights 11 The Action of the flywheels and the counterweights is therefore: Past2 FQRCES AND MX XCNTS explains balancing in detail. B. The connecting rod The connecting rod is made from one piece of I section steel 2 m. long. The function of the connecting rod is: ment into a reciprocating movement. This means that the connecting rod must turn 700 times minute when the number of revolutions is 350 revolutions minute. The forces that act on the connecting rod depend on: the weight of the sash 250 400 kg with inserted blades . the weight of the connecting rod itself 250 kg. the number of revolutions per minute. In total the connecting rod must absorb inertia forces of about 20 tons. To enable the connecting rod to with stand these strains it is necessary: to make it of spe cial steel. to design it for strength. This is the reason why the I section is chosen. 12 The conneoting rod is subject to both compression and tension. See Part 2 lQRCESARDMOVEMENTS. These are not constant but alternate during each turn of the crankshaft. These stress variations could cause the material of the connecting rod to weaken and failure might occur from fatigue. Far anything that is exposed to repetition of stress there is a fatigue limit which is the maximum repetion of stress that the body in question can be esqosed to without fracturing from fatigue. The fatigue limit of the connecting rod depends on: the type and structure of its material the surfaoe condition of the material. This means that the more even and smooth the connecting rod is the more repetition of stress it will stand before it fractures from fatigue. Therefore the connecting rod must be protected from any nicks. Under no conditions must it be hit agains any solid object or be tapped with a hard or sharp tool. Every nick creates a concentration of stress which gets bigger the deeper the nick is. A relatively small nick on a connect ing rod might because of the strong con centration of stress around it eventually result in an apparently inexplicable break age. __ .__. . . .. . Undamaged connecting rod I One nick. . . . 0 1 I 1 13 Another thing to note is that corrosion e.g. formation of rust reduces the fatigue limit considerably and increases the risk of fatigue breakdown. C air or water should paint connect The connecting rod has two bearings one lower and one u per. The lower connecting rod bearing is mounted on the crankshaft journal. A spherical SK roller bearing see appendix has been chosen for the lower end to eliminate: any alignment defects in the vertical direction of the frame. any side forces working on the oonneot ing rod for instance due to sash im balance. Such an imbalance might occur if the mass of the frame is not symmetrically distri buted around its centre for example if the blades are not perfectly oentred. The upper connecting rod bearing con sists of a needle bearing see appendix . There is a hole in the piston pin which serves as a tank for lubricLting oil. A needle bearing is chasm to ensure that all the parts above the crankshaft arz as small and light as possible. A nelzdle bearing is smaller and lighter than otI er bearings. lower connecting rod bearing 14 3. Bottom Rwne Cha bottom fkame is plwed at the iower floor level of the a mill buildiag. It oonaiete of: A. two lower aide frame8 whioh are both fastened to the brree plate by B. four bolts at the bottom and joined together by C. two stay bolts at the top. The funotion of the bottom frame iet tri extend the each height to enable oonnecting rod to be larger to eupport the two upper side W es to mapport the brake and belt guide eye to serve aa a eupport body for parta of the feeding meQhaz nn and lubri oator. 15 4. Upper Rwne The upper frame is attached to the lower frame by bolts. It consists of: A. two upper side frames B. one top pieoe and C. two oonnecting plates at the bottom one on each side. The function of the upper frame is: to support the system of guides to support the roll frame and the feeding mechanism to transmit to the foundation through the bottom frame the vertical forces created when the sash presses against the guides. To be able to support the roll frames attached to both the infeed and outfeed sides of the upper frame there a3 0: D. at the driving side a vertical cylindrical shaft the attach ment shaft or the swinging shaft. E. at the feeding side a similar shaft called locking shaft. B 16 59 Guide System To the side frames four guides two upper and two lower are attached with bo 6. A saw frame guide is described as: a guide rail having a polished surface that is made of cast iron. This material has low friction for the wear plates to run on. The function of the guides is: to locate the sash in relation to j There are two different kinds of guides: A. Flat guides which have completely straight aad plane slide faoes. They are positioned on the infeed side. B. V Guides which have slide faces shaped like a V. They are posi tioned on the outfeed side. Thus the sash is guided on both the infeed and outfeed side during its movement up wardanddownward. The front guides as seen from the Weed side are always adjustable. The reason for this is that the tolerance between guide and friotion plate the playV1 rmrst be adjustable to oorreot wear on guides and wear plates. If the guide is too tight the npleye made too small overheating and a risk of damege to guides and friction plates could result. If the guide is not tight enough the plays too big the sash will be loose and this could be transmitted to the sawlines resulting in poor sawing. There is also a risk that the guide the friction plate and guide bolts will break with the risk of fur the: df dse Adjust ing nut Adjust ing scr Stay tightel 17 Some frame saws have the guides mounted as shown in the figure alongside. The guides are lubricated from a 12 tube grease pump a high pressure lubricator. The lubrication is pro portional to the speed of the saw frame stopping when the saw frame stops. The lubricant flows with a pressure of up to 100 atmospheres 10 mPa . The lubricator is mounted on one of the side frames. It is driven by an eccentric directly from the crankshaft. To each V guide two lubrication tubes are connected and to each flat guide one lubrication tube is connected. fi: r Driving Wie I LUBRICATING SYSTEM blat guide V guide 1 lubrication 2 lubrication . tubes Lever for m centric 18 The load on the lower guides is heaviest as they are mounted closest to the upper end of the oonnecting rod. Therefore they take the horizontal forces created by the upper end of the oonnecting rod at certain positions of movement. Because of this high pressure these guides are provided with water cooling making it easier to carry away the heat caused by the h h pressure. This makes it possible to adjust the guides of the sash with minimum tolerance which markedly improves the efficiency of sawing. The water cooling device is a closed system where the water is continuously pumped. It consists of: a system of radiator cells an electric fan and aPump. This self contamed equipment oan be placed beside the frame or on the bottom floor or in any other suitable place. Water is led through tubes to the guides which are hollow so that the water can pass through them. Expansion tank I 19 The sash consists of four parts: A. one upper cross beam B. one lower cross beam c. two columus one on each side. The lower cross beam has a bracket on its under side in the form of two wings. Attached to these is the upper crank pin which connects the sash with the connecting rod. The distance between the upper and the lower cross beam is adjusted so that the upper blocks in the lowest position of the frame and the lowpr blocks in the highest position of the frame do not touch the log. The columns are made of steel tubing to keep weight down. In relation to its weight tubing has high resistance to oom pression and tension stress. The two columns and the two beams make up the sash into which the saw blades are inserted. To hold the sawblades each cross beam is provided with a slot i.e. a clearance into which are inserted: D. top hangers at the top and E. bottom hangers at the bottom. The saw blades are fitted into these hangers when the saw blades are set. I A Bottom hangers I Top hangers 20 The sash is constructed: to withstand the stresses created when the blades are fitted. Each blade is fitted with a tension of 7 g tons. If seven blades are fitted the total tension will be 5CL6 j tons. to enable in particular the lower cross beam to absorb forces from the moving connecting rod. These forces are of a magnitude of 15 20 tons and they alternately put the beam under bending stress upwards and downwards. At the top dead centre where the whole sash must slow down stop and change direction the connecting rod will bend the beam down. At bottom dead csntre where the sash once again must slow down stop and change direction the force from the connecting rod will bend the beam up. The cross beam seen in a cross section is in principle like two U beams back to back. The U beam is chosen because it gives advantage both in manufacturing and in strain distribution such as: the U form is easy to manufacture in the foundry. in resisting stress the U form has an advantage because this shape gives a high bending resistance i.e. resis tance against bending stress . 1 20TON Lower crotx beam Centre of bending 6 Too low Correct Too high 21 In the centre of the cross beam there are two strongly dimensioned angular stiffeners or ribs the function of which is to steady the beam against the forces mentioned above. The tension stress acting on the sash through the set of blades depends on and varies with the number of blades and how tight each blade has been fitted. The stress that the connecting rod transmits to the sash mainly the lower cross beam primarily depends upon: the weight of the sash and the number of revolutions per minute. The sash must be dimensioned according to the diameter timber to be sawn. The bigger the timber the bigger the sash and the higher the weight. The width of the sash can vary between 18 and 34 which is the inside dimension and also the diameter limit of w log that can pass through the frame. The weight of the sash varies between about 250 kg for a 15 frame with inserted blades and about 400 kg for a 34 frame with inserted blades. The stress transmitted by the connect ing rod to the lower cross beam of the sash will increase: with increased weight of the sash i with increased speed rev. min. There is a limit to the stress placed on any piece of machinery and in this case the manufacturers place restrictions on the weight and speed as under: for a 18 frame . 380 390 rev. min. for a 24 frame . . . X 365 rev. mk for a 30 frame . . . around 320 rev in. Weight of the sash fumber bevolut 22 To the columns of the sash four gauge attachments are fastened one in eaoh corner. Between these and the outer blades on either side blocks or gauges measuring bodies located between adjaaent blades to determine the thickness of the sawn timber are looated. This makes it possible to align the whole set of blades with sorews fixed in the gauge attachments. In the four oorners of the sash the ends of the cross beams are provided with bra s for the sliding blocks. The function of the sliding blocks is to guide the sash into the guides of the upper frame. The surface of the blocks is made up of interchangeable friction plates made of a low friction low wear material such as aluminium blocks with a special bakelite finish pockenholeVV or other low friction 7tat erial . The aluminium blocks are pre ferred for weight and maintenance reasons. The aim is to get friction as low as . possible between the friction plates and the guides in order to prevent overheating because overheating can cause the guides to buck1 e . The sliding blocks on both sides of the sash are made in the same way: on the infeed side as flat blocks and on the outfeed side as pointed blocks to steer the sash in the guides. So the sash is guided both on the feeding mechanism side and the driving side of the frame. The syatsm with flat blocke and flat guides makes adjustment of the sash easier and the number of surfaces requiring care ful clearance adjustment is reduced. 23 Blades must be fitted into the sash with an overhang eetting to make the blade at the upward stroke move away from the cutting line in the log which is continuously fed. Overhang setting means that the tooth line is set away from the wrtical and has a slope away from the log at the bottom. 1 This owrhang must be obtained without fitting the blades 60 that the tension line falls diagonally through the blades. To gst a correct overhang the two cram besms are not vertically one above the other. In relation to a vertical plumb line through the centre of the saws the upper sliding blocks are displaced towards the front log infesd and the lower elidin blocks towards the rear log outfeed 7 . The overhang is about 50 mm from vertical. 7. Roli Frame and Feed rolls The function of the roll frame is: It consists of: the upper roll frames one in front and one at the back. Seen from the infeed side . the lower roll frames one in front and one at the back. Seen from the infeed side . The upper roll frame The frame is supported on both the infeed and outfeed sides by shafts attached to the upper frame: on the driving side of the frame by vertical holding swinging shafts on the feeding mechanism side of the frame by locking shafts. Each upper roll frame is fixed on and can swing out on the swinging shaft to give access to the sash e.g. when changing blades . Each roll frame carries an upper feeding roll. 25 The roll frame is cast and provided with: a vertical hole A for the holding shaft on the driving side. a vertical notch B for the lock and the locking shaft on the feeding mechanism side. two vertical holes B for the clamps. a horizontal hole C for one sprocket shaft on the driving side. two horizontal holes D and D for the supporting shaft to the upper roll clamps. Eaoh roll frame can be raised and lowered along the vertical swinging shaft to make it possible to adjust it to different diameter logs. This is done manually by means of the hand wheel. The hand wheel acts on a toothed trans mission gear F of which the teeth are mesh ing with the corresponding rack of teeth of the swinging shaft G. The toothed transmission gear is provided with a locking devioe in the form cf a catch H which meshes a ratchet wheel I. This is placed on the shaft between the hand wheel and the gear. With this device the gear and the roll frame can be locked in the correct position for any given log diameter. When raising and lowering the frame the catch must be in the raised position. 26 The lower roll frame The lower roll frames are constructed on the same principle as the upper ones. Since they must give fina support to the log during sawing they are fixed vertiually. Like the upper roll frames they swing outwards Nowadays they are made of cast steel for strength. E h roll frame supports a lower feed roll. Both the upper and lower roll frame can be locked inwards i.e. the operating position by a simple catoh on the feedi mechanism side of the stand which is then turned 60 that it totally encloses the locking shaft. This also eliminates any play in the roll frame. The lock is inaccessible when the saw is working. The feed rolls The feed rolls are called: upper feed rolls lower feed rolls. The diction of the feed roll is to feed the log through the frame saw in the smoothest possible way. The upper rolls consist of one front and one rear roll which: rotate on shafts mounted in rising and falling clamps roll clamps on the upper roll frame. Such a roll is also called a pendular roller. In some models the roll shaft is mounted directly on the rising and falling roll frame a fixed roll. The roll frames are adjusted verti cally with a hand wheel and then they are automatically self adjusting from the bottom position. Close Open 27 are self adjusting vertically because of the rising and falling clamps to small variations in the diameter of the log. If however sawing is done butt end first the rolls have to be lifted by a special device because they cannot open themselves up from the small end of one log to the butt end of the next one. This lifting is one by means of a hydraulic cylinder which the sawyer can control from the log carriage. The cylinder has a piston mounted between the pendular roll clamp and the roll frame. The pressure comes from a hydraulic pump on the upper side of the side frame. In some frame saws the lifting is done by pneumatl .c valves operated by the sawyer from the log carriage. The lifting devfoe consists of a pneumatic cylinder with a piston which is mounted on the roll freme. The air pressure comes from a separate motor driven compressor. are driven from the feeding mechanism by means of a chain. A sprocket is mounted on the roll shaft on the side of the feeding mechanism. When the revolving frame is recessed this chain wheel will mesh with a corresponding chain driven from the feeding meohanism. The lower feed rolls one front and one rear: consist of roller sections that are mounted on a cylinder of cast steel. These centre cylinders are mounted vertically fixed in interchangeable metal bushes in the lower roll frame. Because the bushes are interchangeable there is no risk of the rolls pulling sideways because of wear in the bearing boxes. are driven from the feed mechanism by means of a cog wheel transmission. On the side of the feeding mechanism the shaft journal of the roll is provided with chain wheels that mesh with a cog wheel of the feeding medhanism when the swinging roll frame is engaged. Oil tut Yoke IFI Hvdraulic piston I Hydraulic I TJ cyl incle I:1 r endular 4 roller 20 Pattern of feed rolls The function of the feed rolls has earlier been described as: to feed the log through the frame by rotating and also to restrain the log while be ing fed to prevent it turning or moving sideways. This task must be done under very different conditions dependent upont the form of the material I MC I I or CANT I that is round and has small contact sur faoes against the feed rolls that has two faces egainst the hardness and surface of the material for exsmple logs with bark on or off frozen or un frozen timber. The demands on the funotion of the feed rolls are: that the timber is not damaged by pressures that leave marks on the sawn surface. that the log is fed evenly and steadily without slipping. Slipping results in the wrong relationship between feeding and overhang setting which results in poorer sawing and more strain on the blades. 29 For the feed rolls to f unction properly two things are required: 1. The right pattern for different conditions. 2. Satisfactory maintenance as part of the preventive maintenance system of the pattern of the feed rolls. The roll pattern is made in one of two different ways: A. a roll core is provided with patterned rings or B. the pattern is cut directly into the roll. The roll pattern can in principle be of two different kinds: spiked or toothed i.e. the contact points have been made pointed to grip the log better and reduce slipping betwben log and feed rolls to aminimum. flat or grooved i.e. the contact points have been made smooth so as not to damage soft timber. In the log frame the spiked pattern is usually used both for the upper and lower feed rolls. Since the stresses are biggest on the lower feed rolls these are usually pro vided with replaceable spiked rings often with cleaning irons between them. In the cant frame only feed rolls with a smooth pattern are used to prevent any roll marks on the surfaces of the sawn block. These surfaces are normally the final product surface. 30 In frames that are used for both log and cant cutting the lower feed rolls are often provided with: one oentre part consisting of spiked rings. side parts consisting of flat rings. The spiked rings in the centre are positioned a little lower than the flat rings on the sides. I The form and pattern of the rolls depend upon what logs are to be cut and the climatic conditions etc. during which sawing takes place. 2. The maintenance of the feed rolls must regardless of their form and pattern aim to keep the pattern of the feed rolls in good condition. t This is done either by exohang ing worn rings or by re cutting or grinding feed rolls of fixed pattern. 31 8. Feed Mechanism The feed mechanism is made for con tinuous feeding. This means that the log is fed when the blades are moving up as well as when they are moving down. It is done as has been said before by the lower and upper feed rolls. The feed mechanism consists of a gear box with a friction drive mounted on one side stand. The frame is said to be a right hand or left hand frame depending on which side of the stand right or left the feeding mechanism is mounted. The function of the feeding mechanism is to transmit a rotating move ment from the crankshaft to the feed l OllS. The friction drive consists of: a friction wheel A mounted on a horizontal shaft and two fibre rollers one upper B and one lower B mounted on vertical shafts. Both rollers can be moved against the common friction wheel. The upper roller B is movable along a splined shaft and is used for the feeding. It is automatically pressed against the frict ion wheel by a spring device with a force that increases with the resistance to feeding. Contact between the roller and the friction wheel is made by means of a knob D close to the frame. The lower roller B mounted on its shaft is only used for return feeding and is otherwise lifted from the friction wheel. It starts to work when a wheel handle C is turned thereby releasing a strong spring. This spring is mounted in such a way that it will press the friction roller against the wheel. . :. .: i i: 32 The function of the friction drive is to enable the feed rolls to turn at different speeds. The speed can be varied from 10 to 40 mm stroke with special arrangements up to 50 mm stroke . The speed of the friction roller B can be adjusted by contact with a longer or shorter radius of the friction wheel A. The speed is increased as the friction roller B moves towards the periphery of the friction wheel. The transmission of power is done as follows: A belt from a driving wheel mounted on the crankshaft drives the friction wheel A. The wheel drives the friction roller B which then starts to rotate together with its vertical shaft E. A mitre wheel gearing F transmits the rotation from the vertical shaft E to a horizontal shaft G. On this horizontal shaft G are mounted both a cog wheel H that meshes with the cog wheels I of the iower feed rolls and a sprccketJ that transm the move ment to the upper feed rolls through a driving chain K the out sides of which mesh with sprockets L and L . These sprockets are mounted on horizontal shafts in the upper feed frame. The feed rolls are finally set to work by a driving chain M that runs over a spzcoketN on one of the hori zontal shafts and also over a sprocket 0 mounted on the shaft of the feeding mechanism. 33 Feeding mechanism m Variator The main parts of this feed mechanism are: 7.5 hp motor A which drives by means of V belts. the variable drive consisting of two tapered discs Band C . These discs transmit the movement through a belt D to two other tapered discs E and F . These latter discs are mounted on a shaft G which is connected to: the gear drive H which in turn drives the feed rolls I of the frame saw. the 0.25 hp motor J which changes the feed speed. the stand K on which the parts of the feed mechanism are mounted and which is fixed to the frame by four bolts. Both motors are controlled by a con trol panel placed on the log carriage or on a special stand. It works as follows: The motor of the feed mechanism drives with V belts a shaft L. Two tapered discs B and C are mounted on this shaft. The inside disc B is fixed on the frame and cannot be moved sideways. The outside disc C however is mounted directly on a movable shaft. By moving the shaft L the position of the cutside disc C can be charged in the longitudinal direction of the shaft. Between these two discs runs the wide belt D. The other end of the belt drives pulleys E and F on driven shaft G. i 4 dlL I Bt J 34 The inner of these discs E is movable along the shaft. In the longitudinal direction of the shaft as seen outwards frcm the frsme this disc is epring loaded by a aoil spring inside the hub and is therefore always preesed against the out aide disc. Through this the belt is stretched. The driven axle 0 ia in driving contact with the lower feed rolls I through a spur gearunitH. The upper feed rolls I are driven by a chain transmission I frcm the feeding mechanism. The feed speed is varied by ohanging the position of the outside diet C in relation to the inside disc on the shaft. Fhrowh this the belt will run on a bigger or smaller diameter between the two tapered discs E and F. Since the length of the belt and the distance between the es 3 and L are unchanged the tapered diece E and F on the driven axle will auto matically adjust themselves to new conditions by the spriag load that acts on the inside disa. If the discs B and C are pressed closer together the belt will run on a bigger diameter between discs E and F on the driven Sbft. Through this the driven ehaft B will rotate faster than the shaft L. Since it is the driven ehaft Q that is connected with the feed rolls J 35 On the other hand the belt will run on a q mailer diameter if the discs B and C are proved away fkom each other. At the same time the belt is rurming on a bigger diameter between the tapered discs E and F on the driven a e. Since it ia the driven axle 3 that is connected with the feed rclle the rotation speed of the feed rolls will decrease when the disos B and C on the axle shaft are moved away from each other. In thie way the gear ratio between the engine of the feed meohanism and the gear bar can be varied infinitely in the ratio of 1x7. This means that the feeding can be infinitely varied frcm 10 to 70 mm stroke. The ad ustment of the feed speed is read on an indicating devioe placed above the feed mechanism. _ . . . . .... @o 0 0 I 0 0 4 . . 36 The bearings dealt with in this manual viet white metal bearinga needlebearings and epherical roller bearings axe all radial bear which means that they mainly take up strese wcrking in the radial direction. White metal bearings ccnsiet oft a bearing housing made of one piece a lining in the shape of a bush or two oup halves a lubrication device. The bearing cups are made of brcnse which oanstandahighbea ing e eandahigh number of revolutions. They are mounted in the bearing housing with a rcund fit. Taps and acllsrs prevent them tim turning with the axle The lining wt into these bearing cups is deaf tin antimony copper andlead. This composition metal is called white metal or berbbit. To fir the white metal prcperly on the bearingcupface afewehallowhcles are drilled into the eurface alternatively it is provided with a few dovetail slots. Because white metal has a low meltiqg point any overheating means that only the metallinizsgia damsgedandnct thebearizg. It it3 eaayto castanewmetallin . The mcvement in a slide bearing is made while the shaft journal is sliding against the bearing cups. Friction then occurs but it is very much reduced by an oil film oreated between the twc bearing surfaces by means of special cil m. oil halves m Hhen the shaft starts to rotate in that bearing it brings with it an oil lqer that is I pressed in under the shaft like a we which lifta the shaft frcm the lower bearing cup. The 1 faster the tie rctates the thicker the oil wedge. Therefore it is impcrtantthatbearing playn is big enough to srake it possible for the oilwedgeto grcwandliftthe ahaft. 37 Roller bearings ie the ccmprehensive term for cylinder bearin@ and needle bearin@. These types of bearings ccasiet of: outer ring inner ring rcllem and hcldere for the rollers which keep them apart and in position. The bearing pressure ie absorbed by the rollers positioned between the two rings. Rcller berrringf offer lee6 rolling resistance than ordinary bearings end resistance is nearly independent of velocity. These two types of bearings also require less lubrication and at the same time the risk of overheating is smaller. Contrary to white metal bearings these bearings are lubricated with grease. The lower connecting red bearing and the bearings of the crankshaft pins consist of spherical double row roller bear s. The two rows of rollers have a common spherical roll conveyer in the outer ring which makes them self ccntmlling and able to adjust themselvee to the taper of the shaft. The upper connecting rod bear ocn siste of a type of needle bearing called gudgeonpinbearing. The reason for havinga needle bear here ie that this type of bearing is suitable when the movements are to and fm which is the case for the upper end of the connecting red. Needle bearings also have good resis tance against shook loads. Since the friction in a needle bear is three times bigger than in a roller bssr ing it is not suitable for the lower connecting rod bearing where speed and friction are high. Instead of rollers the needle bearing haa two rcwa of needles each needle being 70 raa long and 6 mp in dismeter. The gudgecnpinis hcledandserves as atsnk for the lubricant. Needle Needle bearing bearing Grease ways Grease ways Needles. F:hT . : TENSION AND . : ... :: .: COMPRESSION FORCES PART11 mHcEs Am me 1. Bodies PBotionm and Foroee ..................... 2. Strew and Strain ............................... Prin aq streeer Compression .................. Tension ...................... Seoondaqy Stree er Shear ........................ Tomion ...................... mbineil Stress: Bending ...................... Compreseion and Bending ...... 3. Statio and mio Streea ...................... 4. F horn that influenoe etruotural atrcmgth ..... Conoentrated strainm ......... Surfaoe quality .............. Corrosion ................... Heat treataemt ............... Checka ....................... 5. The Movement Mechanism of the R am Saw ........ 6. Wroel ading on the sash the cmmeoting rod and oxank xW journal ......................... 7. The outting ooonditiona of the Sash ............. Appendix ....................................... Et 2 39 43 44 tz 47 f 53 61 66 67 39 1. Bodies Motions and roes In mechanics a car or the sash of a gsagsa is called a body. The weight of a body or more correotly its mass is given in kilograms. Amovingbodyhas acertain velooity which is defined in metree per second or minute or in kilometres per hour. A change in velocity is calledt Acceleration if the velooity is increasd and Rettudation if the velooity is reduced. The acceleration or retardation is the change in veloaity e g. m se over a oertain unit of time each second . It is therefore measured in a unit that is metree per seoond every second 80 it consist8 of: alengthunit and a squared time unit. There is a unit for aooeleration oalled etree per aeco written a8 m aeo 9 8 d squer dl or m 0 . Mass Velocity Acceleration Retardation 40 To make a body a mass aooelerate or retard aooelerate negatively a foroe is needed. The relationship between foroe mass and aoceleration is: lUNl3 NASSxAC JEXERATION which is written: F m I a where: F the foroe sffeoting the body or the mass m the mass of the body a the aooeleration. The unit for mass of a body is logram 431. The unit of foroe is the Newton. 1 N I the foroe that gives2a mass of 1 kg an aooeleration of 1 m se0 . The unit for foroe used to be the poundal whioh was the foroe required to give an llb mass an aooeleration of 1 foot seo2. This text uses the metric N on. Anyforcethat aots onabodyalwap creates a resisting foroe inside the body. A body is reluotant to change ite state whether it is at rest or in motion. V it ie moving it is also reluotant to change its direction. For instanoe if the movement of a car or a gangsaw sash is to be changed in speed or direction these bodies will try to maintain their existing velocity or direotion. Theee reeieting and internal forces are oalled inertia fames. They are given in Newtons. If one tries to chaage the velocity or the direction of for instance a oar or a sash such bodies will resist with foroes oalled inertia foroee that are measured ir New tones A cold winter morning the car rqill not start l To etpt it movimg a high force is ed to accelerate it moves less force is needed to itsgoing until one wants to star . .e J . .: JIG: . .:: .I . 0 4 0 3 F Then a hi br it her f 0 a ZGGZll: 41 What we have dealt with ao far are bodies with inertia foroea in linear move mentt i.e. tryiq to move straight ahead with unchanged velooity. Ef a body for instsnce a weight attaohed to a rope is swung in a cirole it will due to inertia fomes try to move etraight ahead i.e. to move aw from the centre. This type of inertia force is called oentrifuual force. The magnitude of the oentrifugal foroe depends on the maes of the moving body the radius of the circle and the velocity of the body. If the velooity is unchanged but itswsightor the radius of the oirole is made two three or four times bigger the centrifugal foroe will also become two three or four times b Y I . On the other hand if the velocity for instance the ma er of revolutions per minute is doubled trebled eto. the oentrifugal forue will increase with the square of the velocity i.e. it will beoome 2 x 2 3 x 3 or 4 x 4 times greater. l ie means in practioe that for frsme saws it is the rotational veloaity i.e. the number of revolutions that has the greatest influence on the magnitude of the centrifugal forue If the number of revolu tions ie doubled the oentrifugal foroe ie increased four timee. 42 A oar hm a weight of1OOOkg. We want to aooelerate the oar f rom standstill to a velocity of 72 km hour in 10 eeoonds. What magnitude of mass force is required for thie acaoeleration presuming that the acceleration is uniform The ma8e 1aOOkg The veloaity o 72 km h 20 m see. The aoaeleration iet Velooi 20 Time i6 2 m eeo2 The required fome is then: F I m x a F 1 000 mass I: 2 aoceleration 2 000 Newton. 72 lan ho Sta.ndstill Fbr aomparison we can find out what foroe is required to aocelerate a moving Bsageaw sash weighing 345 kg from bottom dead oentre where it is stationary at 6 o clock to maximum velooity which at 330 revolutione min ie equal to 10.3 m sea and takes plaoe at the 3 o clook position. The auoeleration of a sash is not uniform as the acceleration of the car in the above emmple. Thie makes our oalculations some what mre complioated. Without goiq into details of how the caloulations are made the nmximum acoeleration at the upper turning point at 12 o clook is 4l2 m sea2 aee figure along side . The required force is then: 345 the marre x 412 the acceleration 142 140 Newton. Thie is the force that is transmitted by the upper crankshaft bearing. The magnitude of thie foroe oan be compared with the lesser force required in the car example. Accolemtion of the Sash 43 2. Stressand Strain All bodies oonsist of very small particles oalled moleoules. These are attaohedto eaoh other b aertain internal foroes in the material itself so oalled cohesive forces. When a meohaniaal part is influenced by outside foams it undergoes a ohange of form or shape usually so 1 that it cannot be seen or measured. These outside forces strive to ohaage the looation of the moleoules and so the shape . At the ssme time the oohesive foroes inside the material resist to prevent these changes of location. The external force is oalled a stress: it is the force on a body exerted over a given area. The internal foroe resistiag the change of ehape is oalled strain and is measure d in the ssme way a foroe over a given area. If the external foroes are bi ger than the internal ones a ohange of form of the material takes plaoe. If the body reoovers its original form completely when the e tress is removed the change of folm is oallsd elastio. Depending on the material of the body and the magnitude of the foroe a permanent deformation sometimes ooours. This chrrage of form is then said to be p1aatia. If the external foroes are sven greater the chargeoffonncango so fsrthat the material will break. This is aalled fracture. SrmESSAM STRAINARE RCESTIIBTACTONA NENAIZEBOFTAEWATERIBL i.e. TRE RELATIONSHIP F MERF F IS THE mRCE TRAT ACTS ON THE CROSS SECTION A. A They are rmasure d in Newton rise2 or Newton om2. Rote: Strain is a force induoed as a reaotion to stress: it is independent of the xrial under straw. This is distinot from structural strength whiah is r THEBBafTPOFA TORESIST OR R2BBTION CHBNIZEOF CAUSED BpEXTERNALliDRCEZ The structural strength properties of a material are usually given as limits that result inpenusnent changes offormorbreakage. A given body has different etruotural strength for different kinds of stress viz. tension compression knding etc. There are three main groups of streseesr 1. Primary stress i.e. compression and tension. 2. Seaondaq stress i.e. shear where the stress is tangential to the stress see figure alongside . Twisting stress torsion is an emple of shear. 3. Combined stresses ooour when more than one stress ants at the same time. This 44 Risu3ry stress: Compression The figure to the right shows a part under oompression. A aompression in any material is calculated by the following formula: Compression The compressive force Sectional area of rod Compreesion ocoura in a saw frame in the following places: In the columns of the sash due to the tension from the inserted eaw bladee. In the oonnecting rod when it reduces the downward movement of the sash roughly between 9 and 6 o olock where compression is greatest. See figure and appendix . In the oonnecting rod when it aocelerates the sash upwards roughly between 6 and 3 o olook. 1 45 Rimaxy stresst Tension The figure to the right shows a part under tension. The teamion in any material is cal culated by the following formula: Tension II The strstohinR force Seotional area of the rod Applied to the above example: T w P 1 N om2 Fir a saw frame the biggest tension etrees is in the oonnecting rod: when the velooity of the sash going up is being reduced retarded which ie rou ly between 3 and 12 o clock as it heads for the upper dead centre where the tension in the conneoting rod is greatest. appendix. See figure and when the conneoting md pulls the sashdownwards roughlybetween 12 and 9 o clock. 46 Seoondary etresst Shear The figuretothe right shows a part under shear stress. Theee stresses arise when the acting fames occur in the planes of the surfaoes oonoerned so that two adjoining surfacea are pressed past each other as when a pair of soissors are outting. This is often the case in riveted joints. In frame saws shear stress oocum in the rivets at the base of the sawblades. Shear stress is oalculated by the formula belowt shsar The shear force Area of the shearing material 47 Secondary stress: Torsion A special form of shear is twisting usually called torsion. This stress occurs when for instance a shaft is subjected to a turning movement for example when a screw or bolt is tightened. Imagine a shaft consisting of an infinite number of thin discs. If such a shaft is turned all these discs will turn slightly whioh results in shear stress between the discs. This type of shear is called torsion The figure shows how torsion inoreases from the centre of shaft towards the periphery. Because of this shafts can be made hollow without significantly reducing torsional strength yet markedly reducing weight. Forsionalstrengthis proportional to the cube of the diameter of the shaft. If we double the diameter the torsional strength will increase eight times which means that we can increase the twisting force eight times without increasing the stress on the shaft. D l D 2 48 .Combined stress: Bending Rending stresses occur if for instanoe a bar is under pressure perpendioular to its centre line. Bending stresses are oomposed of both tension and compression. At the centre line the stress is eero. Above the centre line there is oompression. Below the centre line there is tension. To calculate the msgnitude of the bending stress is oomplicated and it is not pursued in this manual. A praotical example however oan assist our understanding. It is much easier to bend a ruler aa shown in version A in the figure than as ahcwn in version B. We can see that the measure H taken in the same direction as the bending foroe is more important to bending resistance than the measure B. These two faotors i.e.: the relationship of stress sround the Bile beam centre the influence of the measure H on the resistanoe to bending sre behind the design of the I secticn beam or I girder. Version A Version B 49 When constructing the I girder the aim is to make the waist liner narmw measure B to reduoe the amount of material in those sections where it is not needed the stress is minimal in the oentre line and high measure H to concentrate the mass of material as far away as possible from the beam oentre thereby looating as much s erial as possible to sections where the etude of tension and com pression is strongest. A given cross sectional area see figure of differing distribution illustrates in this series of drawings how the structural strength of girders V81Pg We have obtained a bending strength in d more than three times stronger than the original one in a . t 2000 F a brealload in all alternatives Weight KG CM 1 275 breakload 80 000 KG 50 In a saw frame bend q stresses occur in the conecting rod dua to inertia that originates when the lower part of the oonneoting rod is foroed to follow the rotating movements of the orakshaf journal. These stresses are strongest at the upward stroke at 3 o clock and at the downward stroke at 9 o clock. See figure and appendix. The oonneoting rod must therefore be: as light as possible to reduce inertia. as strong ss possible to resist bend@ stress. For these reasons connecting rods are I shaped in the oross beams due to stress from sawblade tension about 7bgO 000 N Made and also from the inertia of the sash and the conneoting rod about 15Cb2OC 000 N . Fbr the same reasons applied to the oonstruotion of I girders oxss beams me made deep measure H in order to obtain the greatest bending rigidity. 6 51 Combined stressr Compreesionatld Bendinq Another example of multiple stresses is that which erpoees a body to both oolp preseion and bendiq strains. If a bar for instance a connecting rod is long in relation to its oross section and comes under influence of a oompressional strain the direction of which is not completely in line with the centre line of the bar the bar will bow. If the stress is high enough the bar might finally break. J . 3 c F u Strains in a Cormeating Rod due to Tension Compres Ision and Bending 52 In a saw frame the greatest risk of this stress ie in the conneoting rod. The risk of we ooaurring is increased if at the same time bendirg forcee are preeent in the oonneoting rod. Ba previously explained see also appendix in certain posit ions the oonneoting rod is sub jeot to bending etrees. Be can be eeen from the figure the maximum compression oooum at B.D.C. 6 o olook and decreaaee to zero at 3 o olock. Maximum banding ooours between 3 ololock and 2 o clook. The greatest riek of the combination ie between 5 ololook and 4 o olook on the upstroke. SSgure and appendix. Compress ion Bending 3 53 3. Static and Dynamic Streee The fame creating etrees on a body oan be of two d.ifferent kind etatio or dpamio. A static foroe maintains the 8 e magnitude independent of time. If the foroe ie increased breakage will eventually ooour. The actual foroe at which the material will fraoture ie aalled the breaking: fame and it OO LWB at breaking point. A dynamio force is oharaoterieed by the faot that the magnitude of the fome varies pulsatee between two ertremee whioh 11188118 that the etraine within the body aleo vary puleate in the came way. If a meohanioal part oomes under the continuous influence of a fome that puleatee repeatedly fraoture might oocur in epite of the faot that the magnitude of the force mey be considerably below the etatio breaking point of the parti oularmeohanioal part. The puleating streee finally etraina the meohanioal part 80 that it reaohee the fatigue limit of that material. Constraint Constraint Fatiguelimit rS 54 The fatigue limit of a material ie the nmximum etatio and dynamic etrees that oan be put on a material without an unlimited number of puleati sltreesee oaut3ing hreerkage. The fatigue limit of any material is al well below ite break point Fbr materials ikequently ueed in meohauioa the magnitude of permitted streeeee are Imown and tabulated. One of the beet examples to be found ie the alternating tezmion compreseion in the conneoting sod and the lower oroef beam that is alteruatively pushed and pulled. The design of meahanical oomponente under dymmio streee is alraye much heavier than oorreepondiug part6 under etatio stress only. l ie ie the reason why the lower omes beam ie so heavily dimensioned. Another example of a oomponent subject to fatigue is the ommk haf t whioh in addition to torsion ia al60 under bending etreee ooourring eaohupwardmddownward movement of the sash and the oonueoting rod. Referriag baak to bending atrerre the upper half of the crankshaft ie in termion and the lower half in aompreesion. See figure Bat aa the crankahaf t rotatee the part that wae in tension will develop compression half L turn later. R.IT any given point of the cra hsf t the etreeaee are oomtantly alteruatiu from texmion to compreesion a typioal example of a oomponent mabjeot to fatigue r II 7 I.. I S I I i l llB j .1:: :.:.. . . . .._ . . .. . . . ..: . . . . . _ _ . . . . . . . 4. Factora that influence Structural Strength There are many different faotom that influence the etructural etreugth of a oomponent particularly against fatigue. Some of the most important are: Concentrated strains Sharp oornera holee not properly drilled different typee of niokm hack and uneven surfaoes result in strati looally ooncentrated. Theee cause abrupt restriotione in the tranamieeion of foroe through the oomponent. Thie lada to etreesee greater than those only due to the reduced eectional area of the niok. The surface of maohine paHe under dynamio rain must therefore have all oornem and edgera well rounder i.e. with large radius. See figure. 55 56 Surfaoe quality Bodice with polished and ground mxrfaoea demonstrate more reairrtanoe and strength than bodiear with rough uneven 8wfaoe8. Corroraion F st and other chemical corrosion reduces etructural strength aonsidersbly This ie oorrected I T surface conditioning painting and the uBe of rust proof materiala. 57 Heat treatment A metal pa rt that has been repaired through welding usually has a lower fatigue limit due to: unfavouzsble struoture of the weld material. built in heat stress in the material following the welding. Firstly figure a the weld meterial A as well as the auxrounding original material B are heated up during the welding procedure above the temperature at which a structural change takes place in the materials. In thiqfollowed by uncontrolled cooling of A and B a zone C usually results which is stiffer and more brittle than the original material B which reduces its fatigue limit figure b . In order to retain the structure and improve the strength of the material in the weld joint annealing is practiced This means that zones A and B are heated up to 750 850 C depading on carbon content for half to one hour followed by cooling in normal air. Electric welding however does not normally require this procedure. Seoondly when welding a given part eee figure c th e material heated at point C tends to expand. The rest of the material B is still cool and does not expand but rather prevents e ion and strives to pea together the material of the C zone which is plastio and workable due to high temperature and therefore uauaea bulging figure d . Ekpandingand compressive foroea more or leas eliminate each other end the frame remains rectangular as long as C material is hot. B A B b d An example of how heat stress can occur when a machine foundation is welded together pint c. 58 But then the oomponent cools off the material around C oontreote which remlte in BtF866 and Shape OhA@. elilUiJWte this the component muat be heated up in one of the following three different wayat 1. The material at 1 ia heated up to approxin ely the same temperature am the material at point C. Thie creates a uniform expansion and oompreerrion. 2. The whole part is heated up to XI during the welding whioh makes the lpaterial pleat io 80 that stress is eliminated so oalled hot welding. 3. The whole part ia streaa relief annealed at 6OO C within a few houm ter the oompletion of the welding. IMe: Welding of more complicated pa s should be left to experienoed workehope. Cheokm AS we have seen the eaah 3.6 under significant etreesea and some components are more subject to fatigue than others. lb ensure proper fumtioning of the frame saw these vulnerable parte: the lower aroea beam the connecting md the crank pin the orank muat be checked regularly and given nurintenanoe. Incorporate ohecb into the preventive maintenance progrmrne 59 5 The Eovement Mechanism of the Frame Saw The oscillating movement meohaniam of the frame saw is bslred on orank mot ion i.e. a rotating movement is converted through a connecting rod into a t d fro movement. The figure is an explanatory aketoh of the moving perks of a frame Eaw where: A c the centre of the oxankahsft B R the centre of the crank pin C I the centre of the aaah pin. Point A rotates at an even speed which is the number of revolutions of the frame saw for inatanoe 350 r min. Faint B will then describe a oirole around I point A. This ie done at an even epeed as B is direotly linked to A. Fbint C is given a movement that is identical to the movement of the eaah aa it oan be regarded aa a part of the sash. At the same time it oan be regarded a.a a part of the upper conneoting rod bearing and the diatanoe that It travela the lemgth of the stroke of the aaah I in our oaee 600 mu. AE the aaah is steered in its guidea the rotating move ment of A and B is transformed to a mov metnt up and down. 11 Upper f Lower B 60 During the movement of point C the apeed at which it travels and ita dire ion vary Ihe figure ahowa the speed of point C. The horizontal axis hae been divided into the 12 points of the clock faoe. The vertioal axis shows the epeed of C at a oertain olook face position of B. The speed ia at its lowest i.e. 0 m min at t top dead centre TDC i.e. when B is at the 12 o clock position and att bottom dead oentre BDC i.e. when B is at the 6 o aloak position. The speed is at it6 highest during: the downward movement when B is at the 9 olclook poait ion and during the upwfxrd movement when B is at the 3 olclock position. Aa the speed of movement of the sash cha se during one xwolut ion of the crank t this means that the sash is alternatively aocelerated and retarded. The figure 6howa the acoeleration of point c. It indicates that the aoaelerat ion is greater at the TDC and EDC or the turning points when point B is at 12 and 6 ololook positions and that aoaeleration is greater at the upper dead centre point B at 12 olalook than at the lower dead oentre B at 6 ololock . Velocity of Sash Acceleration of Sash 61 6. Fbrcea actiw on the Smh the Connectiq Rod and the Crankshaft Journal The Bash and the lower CmB8 beam in particular are under forces that originate from: the moviq parka of the frame saw each sawbladee and parts of the connecting rod particularly the aooeleration and reterdation of the sa6h the cutting fome at sawing. With inserted blades an 18 sash weighs mound 245 kg a 26 Bash weigha 345 kg and a ll BaBh 400 kg. The upper end of the connecting rod moves up and down 1 ike the eaah. Therw fore a certain part of the maas of the canneoting rod around 55 kg can be added to the ma86 that moves upward and downward. We have seen earlier that: Fbrce Mass x Acceleration. In this maeI the total forces can be calculated by multiplying the acceleration of the Bash at different positions by the weight of the Bash plua the weight of the sawblades and the hanger8 plus 55 Q of the connecting rod. 62 By their weight the fitted BaWbladBB inoreaae the foroea but they also influence the each beoauae of the fitting tension whioh oan be 70 000 N or more for eaoh blade. A frame Baw that holds 9 blades thue has a fitting tension of 630 000 N in total. Apart from these foroee the aaah is also subject to gutting foroea that ariee From sawing. These foruea at leaat the ones that act at right aaglea to the W wbladee increase with the equare of the feed speed. The streee on the blades is atrsagely enough greater while ret ing than while sawing. When eawi a 40 am cant at a feed speed of 33 mm stroke the fome that originatea from feeding is 2 000 lV at return sawing just er the turn of the stroke at the HOC. Under the very same oant aize and feed speed the foroe at the outting movement ie biggest just before the BDC and reaohee 1400 N blade. The oonnecting rod ia subject to forces that oonaiat of: forces from the upward and do ward nmving parts eaah bladea and part of the connecting rod . outtlng foroee at sawing. inertia forces. The firat two of these inertia forces have already been dealt with. Here we disouse the third group of influenoing foroee. 2 000 63 When the lower end of the oonneoting rod is rotating it ia influenced by fomee of inertia that strive to baud it. Theme fOrOe6 axe Bp eed alOX@ the connecting rod but to make it simple we can assume that they act fzwm one point only situated one third down the leagth of the oonnecting rod from the oentre afthe omnk pin. The conneoting rod ia under maximum bend stress at thie point. How the inertia foroea that act an the oonnecting rod change their size end direction at different poaitiona of the crank pin is given in the figure alongside. R cm this figure we can see that these foroea are zero at the turning points 12 and 6 o oloak while they reach their greateat at a point situated roughly where the connecting rod and the radius of the flywheel form a right angle which ocoura just before the 3 o alook and just ter the 9 o clock pOSitiOkU3. Aa indioated in the appendix the other etrecmee on the oonnecting rod tension and oompreaaion are mallest when the bending etrees ia largest. But on the other hand tanaion and oom premion inoreame when bending deoreaaes towarda the dead oentree. Bending strains 64 The orankehaft jourrvrl ie aubjeot to all theme foraea tmtted to the crank pin through the lower oonneoting rodbearing. The biggemt Some aoting on the aonneating rod bearing oaaura at the upper dead oentre i.e. the 12 o olook position. The whole of this forae is not trams mittedthrowhthe crankshaft bearing to the barse plate and the foundat ion but ie reduoed through oounter balancing of the flywheel. Flywheele are made with permranent aoamterweighte plaoed on the oppoeite aide of the CrankBhaft from the Caulk pin which Bhif te the oentre of 6 towards that side. The distanae from the aentre of maam to the aentre of rotation ie thue modified BO that all the rotating maea fames eliminate eaoh other 811 muoh as poesible. Aa ehown in the figure68 Cl is the aentrifugal fome of the rotating part of the connecting rod the conneot ingradbearingandthearank pin while C2 ie the centrifugal forae of the eccentrically plaaed aounterwe@hte of the two flywheels. If these two oentrifugal foroee Cl and C2 have the same magnitude C2 will oounterbalanoe Cl. When the orank pin is at the 6 and 12 olaloak positione the upward and downward lpoving inertia fames of the aash and part of the conneoting rod alternatively put oompreeeion and t ion on the lower connecting rod ming. Appends Ektra Counterweib Counterweight I I I Tension 1 I Compression I 65 These up and downwerd acting inertia forces can be reduced however if the foroe C2 ia made bigger than the foroe Cl. Fkrt of the up and downward foroe F whioh is transmitted through the connect ing rod from the s ah and the up and downward moving part of the connecting rod will then be counterbalanoed verti cally. The force F however is zero at the 3 and 9 ololock positions. C2 can be increased by melting lead into apeaially provided holes in the fly wheel. To obtain the beat results from the counterbalance the size of the lead waht muat be tested individually for eaoh frame saw. The out of balance that this creates in the flywheel will oauae forces that do not counterbalance when the orank tap is in the 3 and 9 o olock positiona where F 0. This will cause Borne horizontal vibration but these are lees than those that would occur if ne balanc ing was done of the flgrJhee1 The up and downward forces would then treat e very strong vertical vibration c2 66 7. The Cutting Condition6 of the Saeh The working stroke outtimg ..__... ._................... ....... 2 3 4 Direction of feed A. EXficient cutting I B. Less efficie cutting c. Wood crushing D. Return eawing E. Free wheeling L F. Middle of the stroke 5 6 i.e. where cutting potential cannot be IlEd.UlmiZed. 67 n 0 S .__ 1 Ei 4 E f 68 PART III SETTIEX3SAWBLADESmFaehaESAWSASH 1. Rensoving blades from the sash ............................. 2. Setting blade6 into the sash .............................. Inserting hangers ......................................... Inserting eawbladee ....................................... Inserting blocks .......................................... Adjustment of overhaq setting ............................ Setting right angle of a eet of sawbladee ................. Plumbing in a eet of sawblades ............................ Adjustment of eplitters. ICnife guides. ................. Safety equipment .......................................... 70 71 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 69 The setting of blades can be divided into two main parts: Removing blades from the sash. Setting blades into the sash. . Here the two jobs are described in sequence as performed by an Operator usually the sawyer or sawdoctor and a Helper. The sash must be securely looked in its upper position. Front upper and lower 1 11 frames must be open. Switoh off the current. OPERATOR stands in front of the sash. Operator Helper HELPER is on the out feed side of the frame elevated on a board that has been placed between the knife guides to enable him to loosen the top hanger. OFEXATOR 1. tiosene upper and lower blook attachments on the right hand side the upper ones just enough for blocla to remain in place. 70 REMDVIMG BLADESF ROMTIESASH HELPER 2. Knocks away right lower support blook. Then takesaway other blocks one by one from right to left so that the blade6 are completely free. 3. Colleots two or three blades together and pulls them out of the bottom hangers. 4. Tekee the blades and puts them in the Bawdoctor B box. 2. Loosena each hanger in three steps otherwise there ie a risk of breaking the hanger on the last blade . Starts with centre blade. Con tinuEeon alternate sides with eaah step. I Step Rignt order ofl each step I Knock8 away left upper support seen from the INper s position . Takasaway the blocks one by one from left to right. Meanwhile kewremaining blooks in position by push ing side of last blade against them. 3. Collects the spa cf two or three blades together the same as the Operator and pushee the blades out from top hangers. 4. Checks blooka. D BCE E if damaged. Cleana un broken blooks and pute them in their respeotive box 6 l The blades have now been removed from the sash. 71 SEZTINBLAI ESIrJTOTRESASH Insert the hangers OPEZWlQR 2. Checlm wers and makes sure the contaot surfaces and the blade hooks are straight and parallel the rivet is fixed the opening between the blades corresponds to the thickness of the blades and that there are no indiaations of fraatures. 3. Puts the bottom hangere through the lower cross beams from the top down wards with the attach ments first . Then turm them one quarter of a turn to m e the attaohments oome into contact with the lower side of the beam and look into position. I I t Problems in a Hanger I HEXPER 1. Cleans the cross besms from sawdust eto. Brushes carefully or preferably uses oom pressed air. If a wear ing plate is used on top of the upper oross beam cheeks that it is in the right position. 2. Cheeks the hangers and makes sure the uontaat surfaces and blade hooks are straight and parallel the rivet is fixed the opening bet ween the blades corres ponds to the thickness of blades and that there there are no indications of fraotures. 3. Puts the top through the cross beam from the top downwexds. Then turns them one quarter of a turn so that the hanger wedges are straight across the beam. Turns the eccentric lever a little more than half way down to make it easier to slip on the spanner. 72 Inmrting the aawbladse OPERAlQR 1. Takea the blader one et 8 time oarrying ths blade at the baok with the lait hand and aalanoing it with the right hand holw the front at the bottom the teeth faoing Opsrstor . IIE S upper end to the Hfilpar. 2. Iiurerte the bottom end of the blade into the l t bottom hanger. Then oon tinuerr with the reet of the blades. 1. Wee the blade by glwping upper end with the right hand. Rolds the hanger with the left hand. 2. limerts upper end of the blade into the 00rrespmlin.g top hangsr. Adjust0 the wedge in the top hanger 80 that the blade is looated in the hanger. If the blade ia standing free it oould fall foruazd onto Operator. Ineert f rom lsft to right. Ifhen all the blades are inserted position the blades the hEIllgere 6idewaye to the approate poBitiOn they will have later when the blooks are inserted. 3. Adjust the blades in the 1 13. bottom hangere in the direot ion of 6ewing aoth Outer blade8 Lower OX 066 the outRide blade6 8 a little for ward of the oentre bladee i.e. they will out first. the blades are plaoed evetriofC the whole set of Adjust the blsdea into the top hangere in the sane way 88 the Operator es with the bottom. blades ie perpendi oular to the direction of eawing. the fitting tension will be oorreot in the blades. Sinoe blades are poeitioned aa above width a rule on poeitioning ie poesible oentre of hangers ehould in figure or the tint of the hanger and are often of dif feirent diffioult to state. Aa far aa ooinoide with a line 88 shown be j.n line with gullets. 73 Insert of blocks 1. Ineerts with the left hand the lower left support block i.e. on that side where the block attachments have not been touched and are therefore at right angles . With the right hand presses the free blade agaFnst the block so that the bottom hanger is correotly posi tioned and the block is held in plaoe Continues until all the blades and blocks are in serted. Finally inserts the last support blook. 2. 1. With the right hand inserts the upper support block oorres pending to that of the sawyer Presses the blade with the left hand against the block to keep it in place. Taps the wedge with the hsmmer so that the blade is stretched a little the blook is then fixed and stays in position by itself. The top hangers are now posxtioned a little to one side. Continues like this until all the blades and blooks are in serted. Finally inserts the support block. The last support blook is often a bit bigger than the distance allows. If the difference is small the support blook can be tapped down the Helper drives his block upwsrds . If the difference is big the blook attaohment must be un sorewed. N er force the last support b ok with heavy blows. The support blook could beoome deformed and be pressed so hard that later adjustment will be more difficult. Tightensthe upper blook attaohment a little when all the blooks are in serted so that they do not fall out At the ssme time adjusts the blocks so that they are all in a horizontal line together. 2 Loosens the eooentrios of the top hanger a little and adjusts the position of the top hangers sideways so that they are directly in line with the blade. Then completes the first step in the ten sioning of the blades. At this stage also adjusts the hanger wedges. Star4swith the outside blades and works alternately from left to right towards the oentre. 74 Adjustment of overhang eettis HELPER Adjusts the right overhar setting on the overhang setting board. Holds the board against one blade E a time preesee against tooth line and taps with the haPPmer at upper end c blade in the direction oi sawing so that the righl overhang setting is obtained. Direction of sash movement 1 L If the overhang setting already adjusted is too mall gently taps out the blade at upper end. II ii i: At this stage the blades must not be stretohed eo much that they risk damsge or that the etretohing plats6 of the blades get jolted. 2. Taps top hanger wedges to achieve a slight stretoh ing of the blades. 75 Setting right angle of a set of sawblades 1. Puts the aligning edge on the be kg PiVet OP the frsme saw stand. Arts the aligning T square on the aligning edge. Checks by moving it sgainst the eides of the blades that the the blades are at right angles to the edge i.e. parallel to the T square . If the set of sawblades is not at right angles adjusts the angles by tightening the front and baok screws of the block attachments differentially. Do not use any foroe which might result in a deformation of the blooks without the blades reaching the right position. Then it would be difficult to continue settingthe sngles ofthe rest of the blades. 2. When all the blades are at right angles tightens the right hand side block attach ment but makes sure that the setting does not change during tightening. 3. Loosens the sash and pushes it to bottom dead centre 4. Checks the angle of the blades in the esmewayas inland 2 above when the sash has reached the lower position. The adjust ment is made with the upper line of blocks. 76 Phmbing in a set of ouwbladee OF ERAToh REILFm 1. Holdsthe T equsre against the aligning edge with one edge a 1. oi bfie QYwe Gif to one side of 8 blade. The Bet of eawblades will be vertioel if the side of the blade when making ite IUOVB meat up and down is always at the same die tanoe from the fixed measuring point. If the distance to the eiae of the blade ie not the a8me going up aa going down the upper block row must be adjusted eidewaye. Laoeena both aorewm equ8lly on that eide of the blook Bttaoh ment where the eet of aawbladee neede edjuating ana correa poondingly tightens both screw0 at the other block attach ment. The set of bledee will move in the right w 4 r. 1. Pushem the frappe to make the each move elowly up 8nd down . 2. Tighten8 the set of blades in etagee. Steps 2 snd 3 . starts with the outside Liladee and worlca alternatively towarde oentre. Tightena centre blade laet in every etep. If sawI does not start until following day delay tightening until S8Wiw ie to etart thus avoiding oro e h wea a hlarlna hainn M....WW a c under pressure for an unneoeeesrily longtie. It ie esaentisl that all blades are equally tightened or load on omes beama will be WI evenly dietributed and result in curved S8Wing. Checks strain in blade8 by preesing each blade h8rd with hand. 77 Ol EXKPOR 1. Puts the aligning edge against inside of one of the bladessawing the main yield. Notet fir oant frames put the edge along the inside of one of the outside blades of the cant boards . 2. Indioatmby signsalready agreed upon how Helper must move ti splitter so that it bears against the inside of the align ing edge. Adjustment of splitters hife guides 4. Repeats this procedure with the othersplitter. I I HELPER 1. hoeens the splitters and moves them a little together. 2. Moves the splitter as directed by Operator so tbst it bears against irside edge of aligning edge. 3. Fixes and looks splitter. 4. Repeats this procedure with the other splitter. 5. Cheeks adjustment onoe more see above. 78 Safety equipment A newly sharpened blade is easily dmaged even by gentle nudges and Insups. Coztaot with other objeote oau damsge both edges and teeth setting. To avoid dsmsge the edge can be protected by strips of plastio that are placed over the teeth. Even more easily dmsged are the hands of the Operator which can be cut when blades are handled espeoially when the Operator is inserting blades blooks or tightening the blook attachments. m using the plastio strips the Operator is protected during the whole procedure except when the overhaug setting is adjusted. The strips are easy to put on and take off. 79 I PARTIV HOW TO FEED LOGS IMI O A FRAIE SAW lE z 1. Cat Sawing Principles ......................................... 80 2. Sawing Symmetrical Logs ........................................ 82 3. Sawing Lngs with Rum Defects .................................. 84 3.1 Crooked Logs ............................................. 84 3.1.1 Straight Sawing .................................. 85 3.1.2 Curve Sawing ..................................... 86 3.1.3 A Comparison of Straight Sawing or Curve Sawing . . 86 3.1.3.1 Straightness ........................... 87 3.1.3.2 Positioning of the Pith ................ 87 3.1.3.3 Wane ................................... 87 3.1.3.4 Practical Performance .................. 87 3.2 Logs with regular Cross Sections ....................... 87 3.3 oval Logs ................................................ 88 4. Sawing I.qs with Bole Defects .................................. 90 5. Sawing bgs with Heart Shakes .................................. 91 6. Sawing Logs with Quality Defects ............................... 91 80 1. Cant Sawing Prinoiplee The principles of aant cawing ooneist of two steps figure 1 . Step I. The log ie eked in the log frsme whieh gives a oant and one or more boards on eaoh side. Step II. The oant is reeawn in the oant fYsme whioh gives a main yield of planks and a number of boards on each side. The msin yield has now been blook sawn i.e. the eawblades have touched all four sides and normally can be marketed as they are. The boarda from both steps are f urther processed in one or more edgers. Edgesawing The cant to Resawing Fig 1 a1 The Hawing ie usually done in two framee one log frame eaw and one oant frame saw which operate one after the other. The sawing however oan be done in juet one frame that ie set up periodioally for edging or reaawing. In thie oaae the cants mu be piled up between the two operations. When prooeeeing the lo@ the purpose ie to aohievez a good result both EI regards quality and quantity. the highest poeeible economio yield. The log8 must therefore be correotly fed into the frame maw. The log oan be ofr different siee and tree speoies different form and quality rJee figure 3 and must be treated acoordingly. When the log sawyer or oant eawyer haa eaoh log or oant before him he must m e an aaseewnent quiokly and position the log or the cant for the sawing procedure to ensure the beet result poeeible. Once the sswbladee have etarted to cut into the log there is no possibility of making any adjustment. Such action might very well oame a breakdown. See figure 2 and 3.1.2 Curve Sawing . :eeult of tryi to move log eidewqm tier wing hae barted. 82 Logs with fom d Fig.3 2. Sawing Symmetrical Lo609 Figure 3 A eymmetrioal log ie round and etraight without arsy fow defeota haa quality faulta in the foxm of knots dietributed evenly in number and eiee. Infeed Rule for Symetrioal I4xB inbRand Cant amer .. . I___ I Centre line of log or the oamt all coincide with oentre line of the eet of blades. Ezoeption to rule8 If for instams too emall a log for the aotual setting haa be inoluded the aawn mrfaue of the ca msy be too mull for the laain yield.. hgsawing Cant resew t I I I I I I I I I I I I I L Centre line of. blades I kntre line I I If log 1 I Centre I 4 lineof oant Fig.4 83 Figure 5a show8 this ease where the cawing prooedure hae followed the tie i.e. the oentre line of the oant follows the oentre line of the eet of bladee Roth plrrnke have got wane Figure lib ehowa a eide movement of the oant 80 that the two oentre lineis do not ooinoide. This has resulted in one of the two planked being fully edged. The other one has got more wane but due to the natural taper of the log not markedly longer. One drawbaok here however is that the full edged plank hae beaome pith included . 31 come species dietortion on drying ie often worst in pith included planks therefore their value may be reduced. See figure 50 . Before aligning a straight oant with a eawn surfaoe whiah is too small one should bear in mind that: in Borne epeciee the eidewaya move ment figure 5b must not become 80 big that excessive dietortion or pith oraoka appear when the log ie dried alignment following the basio rule figure 5a ie reoommended when the log ie of euoh a quality that knotB deoay blue stain etc make wane acoeptable. 49 1 J Q3.5 b Fig.5 c 84 3. Sawinp: Lo with Form Defects 3.1 Crooked Loga The most oommon form of orookedness ie weep c or @long crook . The aweep may not acoording to previous Swedieh log quality standards emeed 25 mm for each 1.5 m. A 4.5 m long log could therefore have a mnjrirmlm even sweep not exceeding 75 mn. See figure 6 . Infeed Rule for Crooked Log Log Rramet The cant from a crooked log sawn in thie way ie arooked but the surfaces are evenly sawn. see figure 8 Infeed Rule for Crooked Cant Cant Rramet oant and Baw it so that main yield just falle within sawn eurfaoe on inside of the sweep. See figure pa . Fig.6 nt boards within 6awn surface of 85 If one does not follow the rule and saws izat 2 I ordance with figure 9b: wanewill appear in the middle of one of the main planks but at the same time the amount of wane at the ends of the other plank will decrease. If the quality of the log is low beoause of knots blue etain etc. such a sawing approach rosy be recommended. See figure 10 . not likethis Fig.gb The rule is that the main yield should fall within the sawn surface in the inner sweep. If this rule ie followed resawing in the cant freme can be done in accordance with either of two principles: 3.1.1 Straight Sawing The oant is sawn straight i.e. it is fed though the frame so that the blades make straight cuts. The align ment is then made as indicated in figure 11. The main yield should then fall within the sawn surface of the block at the points A and B and the middle cut should fall within the sawn surface in point C. Fig.11 86 3.1.2 Curve Sawillg The cant ia sawn curved i.e. it ia fed 80 that the e.aw cuts fol:au the weep of the oant ae in figure 12. The possibility of doing thia in a oent frame ie limited depending on: the dintame between the knife guides and the blades. The cloeer they are the greater the poamibility. the length of the knife guidee the dietanoe between the eeparating plates for the main yield. L Fig.13 Proaedure for Curve Sawing Position 1 Weed Blade A oute within sawn surfaae ofcanteo main yield beaomea O.iJly edged Dire ion of oantr b end of block is moved eidewaye 80 centre line through top and butt ends is off line compared to centre line through set of blades. sawing of fir half. Butt end of oant ie ehifted aide ways so that blade A followa edgeofeawn surfaoe dcant Fig.12 Ebsition 2 Blade A now at edge of 8x21 cant. Centre line through topti butt ena of block ie inline butehifted in comparison with centre line of eet of bladee. Middle eection is eaun with elight ehift of the aant. Pee ion 3 Sawing of butt end ie done without any ehifting of aant. The cute become straight. SauIlB uF face ie wider here due to log taper ec etraight sawing should not reault in timber with wane. 3.1.3 A Comperison of Straight Sawing or Curve Sawing of oants fram logs with sweep is made below. 87 3.1.3.1 Straightness Straight sawiw results in straight main yield. Curve sawing gives main yield with bow. The thioker the plaxik or board the more important a defect bow becomes. During drying restraint in a stack will tend to straighten bowed pieoes. 3.1.3.2 RDsitioning of the pith Straight sawing reaulte in spread end therefore poor positioning of the pith in the main planks as it falls inside both planks whioh aan lead to distortion snd oraaks during drying. Curve sawing can more favourably position the pith which reduces risk of distortion and cheeks. 3.1.3.3 Wane Straight sawingusuallyresults in more wane on one of the main planks. Curve sawing reduces the wane and if the sweep is not too great wane can be eliminated resulting in full edged main yield. 3.1.3.4 FYaotical performanoe . Straight sawing is eimpler than ctie sawing. Curve sawing may there fore slow produotion levels unless there is speoial infeed equipment to simplify the procedure. Whether txooked cants are straight or curve aawn at the cant frame is up to the individual sawmill. applying aurve sawing however it is possible to increase the sawn timber reaovely. 3.2 Logs with Irregular Cross Sections In figurel logs with irregular oross eeotions are shown one being oval the other irregular. If these loge are positioned in the way that is shown in figure 15b where eaoh is resting against points on the upper and lower rollers that are not in a vertical line the log will turn during sawing resulting in a twieted cant. Snfeed Rule for Log with Irregular Cross Section Log Frsmer This gives the log the safest steering thrpugh the frame. 1 _ Direotionofpdth Cmss swtia 88 3.3 oval i zs When mearruring an oval log different diameters can be recorded depend done. 7 on how the measurement is See figure 16 . The log oan therefore be designated for different size olasses. To avoid this oval logs must be measured by cross measurement. In practice one measurement is made of the maximum diameter and one of the minbaum diameter following which the mean value is calculated and used. To prevent an oval log from turn ing durw the sawing prooess aocording to the infeed rule for logs with irregular cross sections it can only be positioned resti either on its flat or high side. See figure 17 . High side max.measure h i Fig: 16 I FWitioning on Positioninq on high side flat side Fig: 17 In figwe 18 the top side of an oval log is shown: positioned on its high side positioned on its flat side. In the figure lines have been drawn that indicate 125 150 and l 75 mm wide planks as well as 50 63 and 75 mm plank thickness. The intersection between any of these two lines shows.how the corner of a cant board will fall in relation to the top area of the log. 89 The table in figure 18 indicates: the different way8 to measure logs and to which size olase the log would have been azsigned depending on the rezulte from theee. In addition we oan eee: alternative dimenaione for the different size claaees and a deeoription of the edge of the main yield. We oan draw the following oonolusions kpm the tablet Measuring the maximum diameter resulte in the highest amount of wane no matter how the log is positioned. lUeaauri 3B the minimual diameter gives the greatest oertainty of fkll edged main yield. pbsitioning the log on its flat aide gives an advantage in one case only when cutting 50 x 175 mm. To position the log on its flat side however necessitates that the log is straight if any benefit ie to be gained. Fig.18 I fili@mmnt onmh side for lsg frame Cant width I A Alignment on flat side for log frame Cant width 1 1m IVC thiok 63 ness mm@jO Alternative 90 It is however oormnon that oval log0 also have sweep A eoftwood tree that gmbxi crooked fomm ncompreeaion wood on the low aide of the log reeulting in an oval stem. Figure19 OWE how crookedness and ovality ooow at the same time in a log. If the crook is placed downward6 the oval is on its high aide. InfeedRule for Oval Lng LogRmmer The log is normally positioned on its high eide. In addition adjust log so that resting points between rollers and log are in a vertical line. @hive 15 I 4. Sawing Logs with hole Cefeots ane of crook A bole soar will occur on a stand tree following external damage and ml sequent healing. The bole soar umally take8 the form of a depression in the log whioh can be 80 deep that the main yield ie affected. Infeed Rule for Log with Bole Soar Log Wane: Turn log 80 that the bole roar ie on the top side. See figure 20. I If the log is positioned with the bole scar on the side both planks can be affected so that they need cutting. o P 21. 91 5. Sawing faue with Heart Shakee Heart nhakes ooour mostly in large diameter logs. They originate in the standing tree. Aa the heartwood get8 older and dries it PDey rink to the etege of oheoking. If euohbge are stored in water the oraokss will ewe11 up and difmppear only to widen again when the sawn timber ie dried. Infeed Rule for L R with He Shakea Log Frame: Rmition the log 80 t t the biggest oreok lie6 horizontally. See Fig.22.J L If the log ie poeitioned with the hemt ehake vert ically it will af feot both planke af er reeawing. BSg.23. 6. Sawim Ime with wits Defecte A log with knots dietributed evenly over the mu faoe mu be poeitioned primarily aooording to itrr form. Very often however a log hae moat of ite knot6 aoncentrated on one aide. Thin oan be due to the faot that the tree haa been growing next to an open epaoe eo that the branohee have developed more on that aide. Or the tree might have been crooked and the branches have developed more on the opposite side in order to even out the load dietribution. Infeed Rule for L on with met. knota on one side Len Framer I Torn the log 80 fhst the worst side ia up Mgure a. I Fig: 22 Fig: 23 The smaller orme eeotion of the lamta will then appear on the faoe of the planke. If the log ie positioned with the noret knote to one eide larger orom eeotion knots or wing Imote will appeex on the faoe of the cant boarde depreeeing quality more. The above nilee describe the procedure for aligning loge with only one defect at a time. But a log oan have many different defects at the came time 80 it ie neceesary to detemine nhioh of these defects will have the greatest influenoe on the sawn yield. 92 PART V MAINTENANCE Check ups JEe 1. 2. 3. 4. 59 6. 7. 8. 99 10. 11. In order to achieve an effective production the frame saw has to be Daily ................................ 93 Weekly ............................... 93 Monthly ............................. 94 Every three months .................. 94 Twice a year ........................ 94 Once a year ......................... 94 Lower connecting rod bearing ......... 94 Upper connecting rod bearing ........ 95 Guide control ....................... 95 Control of sash movement ............ 95 Guide cooling system ................ 96 maintained regularly: daily check ups should be carried out and repair6 made by skilled personnel and with original spare parts. Detailed maintenance and greasing instructiona must be provided by each frame Baw manufacturer. eaw maintenance. Below are some more general statements on frame There are two kinds of maintenance: pre maintenance such as greasing oiling controls and adjustments. minor repairs or services to eliminate previous disturbances in production. Pre maintenance ie of the utmost importance in order to reduce the rate of breakdown. 93 Check ups 1. Dailg b Before starting the machine check: the lubricating system ensuring that grease flows into the sash guides. the water cooling device fan and pump. the play between guides and sliding blocks. that the sawdust evacuation slope is open. that the roll frames are looked into position. that the opening between upper and lower roll frames is set according to log dimensions. that the blade setting is correct. that greasing: has been done following grease instructions. While sawing: adjust feeding speed according to instructions. if the speed of the sash is reduced when feeding logs through infeed has to be stopped and the reasons for the disturbance found. if a piece of wood is wedged between blades or between blades and sash columns the frame must be stopped and the piece removed ignorance of this might cause accidents or overheating of blades. if greasing or cooling of the guides is not satisfactory a certain smell from the sliding blocks can be noticed if this happens the reason has to be found and rectified Cooling water must not be passed through overheated sliding blocks until they have cooled off. 2. Weekly The temperature of the lower connecting rod bearing should be measured and registered. The cross beams colmms and connecting rod should be cleaned and checked for damage. To achieve the best result an electric or pneumatic brush should be used. The connecting rod should be brushed lengthwise. Damages or nicks on the cress beams are easier to discover when the blades in the sash are t ight ened. Smaller nicks should be grounded down with an emery or a polishing cloth. 94 3. Monthly Adjust all ohains and cheek for wear and tear. Check shafts and bearings of the feed rolls. Cheok the wear of the sliding blocks. Check and tighten all bolts including anchor bolts. 4. Evem Three Months The lower connecting rod bearings should be washed and cleaned. 5. Pwice a Year The bearing play of the upper and lower conneoting rod bearings should be measured. If it exceeds the recommended limits the bearing must be replaced. 6. Once a Year The frame saw should be thoroughly checked all worn parts should be replaced bolts should be tightened and bearings cleaned. The connecting rod bearings should be washed. The guides should be cleaned and checked. The movement of the sash should be controlled. The alignment of the frame saw should be checked so that any changes in foundation or base plate may be noted. 7. Lower Connecting Rod Bearing This bearing is one of the most important and has to be maintained oare fully. Grease types and working greasing intervals can be found in the manu facturer s recommendations. Important to note when greasing: Before greasing grease nipples and the grease pump muzzle should be cleaned to avoid dirt getting into the bearing. Greasing should be done immediately after the frame has been stopped. The temperature of the connecting rod and the bearing caps should be checked. Maximum allowed temperature is 60 G. At least once a week the inside temperature of the hearing should be measured. This temperature and the temperature in the sawmill should be registered. Increased temperature is normally an indication of bearing pollution or of wear and tear. By studying the registered temperature variations it is possible to maintain or repair details before complete breakdown. Increased temperature can also be caused by faulty mounting of the guides resulting in abnorraal sash movement or vibrations. If the reason for incre ased temperature cannot be detected the bearing has to be washed and greased several times before the result is satisfactory. 95 8. Upper Connect iw Rod Bearing The gudgeon pin of this needle bearing should be oheoked and cleaned once a year The brake should be locked when the sash is in its top position. The sash should be fixed in its upper position by using a pulley. The infeed guide bolts ehould be loosened and the guides pulled back aa far as possible. Tine bolts in the crank pin brackets of the lower cross beams should be loosened. The slots in the pin brackete should be widened to release the pin. Using the pulley the sash should be adjusted so that the pin can be removed. To prevent the bearing needles from falling out a provisional pin should be inserted when removing the original pin. 9. Guide Control The guides ehould be controled and aligned once a year. The infced guides are checked by using a straight edge at least as long as the guide and an insert knife measuring device. If the play exceeds recommendations the guide must be exchanged or repaired. The outfeed guides should be ohecked using a straight edge long enough to cover upper and lower guides simultaneously. The oheok up should be made having the guides mounted in the frame. For maximum play allowed between straight edge and guide see matmfacturer s reoommendations. To align the guides when mounted in the frame use a plumb line from the upper to the lower guides and oompare with allowed deviation. If this control indicate6 that the base line of the frame for any reason has been ohanged correction should be made by adjusting the base plate. 10. Control of gash Movement Thie should be carried out once a year but also if abnormal vibrations in the frame are noticed. There are two ways of oontrolling thist 1. Open the caps of the lower connecting rod bearing and measure the distance between the rollers and the outer ring. The die tanco should be the same for any position of the sash. 2. A more accurate result is aohieved using two plumb lines and two metal sheets with a hole in the centre. See figure below. 95 1 Good 2 3 Accepted 4 G Correction required Attaoh the two metal pieoes to the crank ahaft bearing houeing as shown in figure. pull the plumb lines through the holes in the metal pieces and attach the line to the lower OZVBB beams of the aaah and vertical to the holes. The cash should be in ite top poeit ion. Adjust the metal pieoee to oentre the plumb line in the hole. Wing a file mark the position of the plumb lines of the lower or088 beam Lower the each to its bottom position and attach the plumb lines to their previous position using the file marks. If the movement of the sash is incorrect this can be seen from the position of the plumb line in the hole. The figure ehowe some typioal faults of which some can be accepted and some have to be correoted. 11. Guide Cooling System Regnlar control of the cooling system effioiency ie recommended. It ie ea8ily carried out by measuring in and outgoing water temperature Maximum allowed outgoing. temperature is 65 X and maximum allowed difference between in and outgoing water temperature ia 15 C. 97 I Opurnas AID CALCULkTIOEi i PARTVI REYOLUTIONS COG NUMBERSANDPERIPHERALSPEEDS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5 6. 7. 8. sE e Introduotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ........a.. 98 Abbreviations used in text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ...... 98 Row to oaloulate the number of revolutiona of a ehaf t 99 Row to calculate the diameter of a pulley . . . . . . . . . . 100 Row to oaloulate the number of teeth required on a sprooket l . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .e . ....... ........... 101 Row to oalculate the number of revolutions of a shaft when power ie transmitted over several intemediate ems . . . . . . . . . ..fa........................... . .. 102 Row to oalculate peripheral speeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Some praotioal emmplee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ........ 104 g8 1. Intmduotion Within the 6aw milling industry it ie often necessary to be able to calculate for inetancet the number of revolution6 of a shaft in order to be able to fit a matching blade or grinding dim. the required diameter of a pulley to obtain a oertain number of revolutione. the neoeseary number of teeth of a driven spmoket in order to match it to the desired number of revolution6 of for inetanoe driving sprockets. the peripheral speed of a revolving cimular eawblade in order to determine the correct epeed to feed the saw. This manual use6 practical examples to show now emwere to these types of crueetione uan be obtained. 2. Abbreviatione used in Text Diameter . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Circumference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Constant Pi IC the number 3.1416 which ie used to calculate the circumference of a circle . . . . . . . . . Mets per second . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peripheral speed Velocity Number of cogs or teeth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Number of revolutions revs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . expressed ae I ... d . . . . a . . . . J r . . . . m se0 V . . . . z . . . . n r min or r eec 99 3. Row to Calculate the number of Revolutions of a Shaft i TASK: To find the number of revolution6 of the driven ah t A in the figure below 300 mm I n 1440 r min n . ii INITIAL POINTS: We start from what we know: that the engine B rune at 14.40 r min. that the pulley C has a diameter of 3OO mm. that the pulley D hae a diameter of 450 m. iii CALCULATIONS: To find out the unknown number of revolutions the following calculationa are made: The number of revolutions of the engine ie multiplied by the diameter in nxn of the pulJ.ay of the engine. In this caee it ie 1440 x 300. Thie figure is divided by the diameter of the driven pulley which gives the unknown number of revolutions i.e. n enRine speed x diameter of driving pu llw I unknown Ilum diameter of driven pulley ber of revs. In this case the answer iet n 144ox3oo 450 960 r min lOO 4 How to Calculate the Diameter of a Fulleg i TASK: To find the euitable diameter of pulley A in the figure below. n 970 r min 1200 r min ii INITIAL FCINTSr We start from what we know: that the driven shaft B haa a pulley C the diameter of whioh ie 4.00 mm. that this shaft neede to rotate at 1200 r m that the engine D runa at 970 r min. iii CALCULATIONSt To find the unknown diameter the following caloulatione are made: To start with we oaloulate the gear ratio between the pulley and the engine. This ie done by dividing the number of revolutione of the pulley by the number of rtifvolution6 of tne eia kds i.e. number of revolutions of pulley min 1200 number of revolutions of engine min 55 Then thie ratio is multiplied by the diameter of the driven pulley C i.e. 1200 do 970 x 400 495 E r This reeult oan be rounded off to the higher figure of 500 mm whioh ie a standard diameter. 101 5. How to Caloulate the Number of Teeth required on a Spmket To calculate the gear ratio for chain drivee or aog transmieeion i.e. the relationship between the number of teeth or oo@ of the driving and the driven spmcket the game pmoedure oan be used as in the previous example. The only difference ie that inetead of using the diameter of P wheel the number of teeth or cogs ie used. i TASK: To find the neceeaary number of teeth of the driven epmcket A in the figure below. n 100 r min z 20 ii INITIAL pOlXJ S: We start from what we know: that the oonveyer roller B will do 100 r mine that its spmcket has 20 teeth that the engine C doea 60 r min. iii CALCULTIONS: The following aalculatione are made according to the general formula: epeed of cog wheel A speed of cog wheel B x the number of teeth of cog wheel B the ewn number of teeth of cog wheel A. Applied to our ewmpler divide the speed of engine A by the speed of oonveyor roller B and multiply the result by the number of teeth of the chain wheel B i.e. engine speed A min conveyor speed B min x number of teeth of wheel B unknown number of teeth of wheel A. With figure0 inserted x 20 12 teeth 102 6. How tc Caloulate t hc xtiber of Revolutiors of a Shaft when Power is e . . trant3 it svueral inteGGXGGShafte i TASK: To determine the rotation speed of machine C when power is transmitted through an intermediate shaft B hrn the driving wheel A as illustrated in figure below. d 4OOmm d 600mm d 3OOmm ii INITIAL POINTS: We start from what we know: that the speed of the driving wheel A ie 600 r min. that the diameter of the driviag wheel A is 490 tmn that the driven wheel of the intermediate shaft B has a diameter of 300 mm. that the driving wheel of the intermediate shaft B has a diameter of 600 mm. that the diameter of the diso of machine C is 300 mm. iii CALCULATIONS: To find the unknown number of revolutions the following oalaulations are made: the number of revolutions of the intermediate shaft B ie fir oaloulated ae followe: diameter of driving wheel number of rew of driven wheel diameter of driven wheel p number of revs of driving wheel Note: Make sure which wheel is driven and which is driving. With figures inserted: number of revolutiona of B 600 the number of revolutions of B 800 r min. the number of revolutions of C oan be caloulated using the aame formula: n 600 number of revolutions of C 300 800 the number of revolution of C c 600x800 3oo 1600 r mix 103 7 How to Calculate Peripheral Speeds Peripheral speed henceforth marked with the letter V is the speed of an is agined rotating point situated on the oimuntferenoe of the rotating shaft. It is u.mdky exprassed sr s ras per second m se0 . i TASK: To fine the peripheral speed V of the tooth points of a oimular sawblade. See figure below . n 900 r m d 1200 mm ii INrrIAL POINTSZ We start from what we larcwr that the diameter of the eawblade is 1200 nsn. that the sawblade es 900 r min. iii CALCULATION3 Io find the unknown peripheral speed the following general formula is used: The circumference of the sawblade c in rztres is multiplied by the number of revolutions of the sawblade in r set . Using the formula for the circumference of a aimle o n x d we calculate the cimumference of the sawblader c nx 1.2: 3.14 x 1.2 m 3.77 m. The circumferences c is then multiplied by the nwll ber of revolutions per second of the sawblade i.e. V 3.77 x 900 r min 3.77 x r set 57 m see. Note revs second revs minute 60 1g4 8. Some Practical Eramples A. How to calculate the maximum number of revolutions of a grinding disc. i TASK: To install a new grinding disc in a grinder mounted on a oiroular saw we need to know the maximum number of revolutions of a disc of a given diameter. See figure below. ii INITIALPOINTS: We start from what we know: that when grinding free hand with a ceramic disc as in this case a maximum peripheral speed of 28 m set is allowed. that the diameter of the diso is 305 mn. iii CALCULATIONS: The unknown number of revolutions n oan be oalculated from the formula: peripheral speed V circumference c x number of revolutions r min 60 In this example V 28 m set c nr x diameter of disc 3.14 x 0.305 0.96 m Inserted into the above formula we find: n II 28 x 60 o 0.96 1750 r min. 105 B. How to oalculate the necessary number of teeth of a spmoket. i TASK: To oaloulat e the required number of teeth on the sprocket of motor A in figure below to make the ml1 conveyer work at a desired speed. ii INITIAL FxUxrS: We start from what we knowt that the required speed of the ml1 oonveyer is about 75 that the sprocket on motor A does 90 r m m min. that the driven spmcket B has 20 teeth s and diameter of 175 IMU iii cALcuLATIONSt This pmblem is solved by using the formula number of revolutions of sprocket A number of revolutions of sprocket B x number of teeth of sprocket B the unknown number of teeth of sprooket A. To be able to use this formula we must first calculate the number of revolutions of sprocket B. We know that the peripheral speed of B must oorrespond to the desired peripheral speed of the ml1 oonveyer i.e. 75 m mine w using the formula below we oan therefore oaloulate the number of revolutions of BI Peripheral speed n x diadter x number of revolutions. With figures inserted: 75 n x j n wx yp 175 136 r min. Notes 175mm lg m We can now oalculate the neoessaqy number of teeth of driviw epmoket A by using the first formula: Unknown number of teeth Z is A 3 x 20 13.25 13 teeth rounded off to neareet whole number w check this example for ZA willwork a little faster than 75 m min. I 13 teeth we find that ml1 conveyor Tipo llto SAGRAF Napoh

Biology & Nature & Biological Sciences;Science & Math

non-fiction

If you find any errors please correct them and label this file up 0.1 Version 1.0 of Have Space Suit will Travel HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL by Robert A. Heinlein Chapter 1 You see I had this space suit. How it happened was this way: Dad I said I want to go to the Moon. Certainly he answered and looked back at his book. It was Jerome K. Jerome s Three Men in a Boat which he must know by heart. I said Dad please I m serious. This time he closed the book on a finger and said gently I said it was all right. Go ahead. Yes ... but how Eh He looked mildly surprised. Why that s your problem Clifford. Dad was like that. The time I told him I wanted to buy a bicycle he said Go right ahead without even glancing up so I had gone to the money basket in the dining room intending to take enough for a bicycle. But there had been only eleven dollars and forty three cents in it so about a thousand miles of mowed lawns later I bought a bicycle. I hadn t said anymore to Dad because if money wasn t in the basket it wasn t anywhere Dad didn t bother with banks just the money basket and one next to it marked UNCLE SAM the contents of which he bundled up and mailed to the government once a year. This caused the Internal Revenue Service considerable headache and once they sent a man to remonstrate with him. First the man demanded then he pleaded. But Dr. Russell we know your background. You ve no excuse for not keeping proper records. But I do Dad told him. Up here. He tapped his forehead. The law requires written records. Look again Dad advised him. The law can t even require a man to read and write. More coffee The man tried to get Dad to pay by check or money order. Dad read him the fine print on a dollar bill the part about legal tender for all debts public and private. In a despairing effort to get something out of the trip he asked Dad please not to fill in the space marked occupation with Spy. Why not What Why because you aren t and it upsets people. Have you checked with the F.B.I. Eh No. They probably wouldn t answer. But you ve been very polite. I ll mark it Unemployed Spy. Okay The tax man almost forgot his brief case. Nothing fazed Dad he meant what he said he wouldn t argue and he never gave in. So when he told me I could go to the Moon but the means were up to me he meant just that. I could go tomorrow provided I could wangle a billet in a space ship. But he added meditatively There must be a number of ways to get to the Moon son. Better check em all. Reminds me of this passage I m reading. They re trying to open a tin of pineapple and Harris has left the can opener back in London. They try several ways. He started to read aloud and I sneaked out I had heard that passage five hundred times. Well three hundred. I went to my workshop in the barn and thought about ways. One way was to go to the Air Academy at Colorado Springs if I got an appointment if I graduated if I managed to get picked for the Federation Space Corps there was a chance that someday I would be ordered to Lunar Base or at least one of the satellite stations. Another way was to study engineering get a job in jet propulsion and buck for a spot that would get me sent to the Moon. Dozens maybe hundreds of engineers had been to the Moon or were still there for all sorts of work: electronics cryogenics metallurgy ceramics air conditioning as well as rocket engineering. Oh yes Out of a million engineers a handful got picked for the Moon. Shucks I rarely got picked even playing post office. Or a man could be an M.D. or a lawyer or geologist or toolmaker and wind up on the Moon at a fat salary provided they wanted him and nobody else. I didn t care about salary but how do you arrange to be number one in your specialty And there was the straightforward way: trundle in a wheelbarrow of money and buy a ticket. This I would never manage I had eighty seven cents at that moment but it had caused me to think about it steadily. Of the boys in our school half admitted that they wanted to space half pretended not to care knowing how feeble the chances were plus a handful of creeps who wouldn t leave Earth for any reason. But we talked about it and some of us were determined to go. I didn t break into a rash until American Express and Thos. Cook Son announced tourist excursions. I saw their ads in National Geographic while waiting to have my teeth cleaned. After that I never was the same. The idea that any rich man could simply lay cash on the line and go was more than I could stand. I just had to go. I would never be able to pay for it or at least that was so far in the future there was no use thinking about it. So what could I do to be sent You see stories about boys poor but honest who go to the top because they re smarter than anyone in the county maybe the state. But they re not talking about me. I was in the top quarter of my graduating class but they do not give scholarships to M.I.T. for that not from Centerville High. I am stating a fact our high school isn t very good. It s great to go to we re league champions in basketball and our square dance team is state runner up and we have a swell sock hop every Wednesday. Lots of school spirit. But not much studying. The emphasis is on what our principal Mr. Hanley calls preparation for life rather than on trigonometry. Maybe it does prepare you for life it certainly doesn t prepare you for CalTech. I didn t find this out myself. Sophomore year I brought home a questionnaire cooked up by our group project in Family Living in social studies. One question read: How is your family council organized At dinner I said Dad how is our family council organized Mother said Don t disturb your father dear. Dad said Eh Let me see that. He read it then told me to fetch my textbooks. I had not brought them home so he sent me to school to get them. Fortunately the building was open rehearsals for the Fall Blow Out. Dad rarely gave orders but when he did he expected results. I had a swell course that semester social study commercial arithmetic applied English the class had picked slogan writing which was fun handicrafts we were building sets for the Blow Out and gym which was basketball practice for me I wasn t tall enough for first team but a reliable substitute gets his varsity letter his senior year. All in all I was doing well in school and knew it. Dad read all my textbooks that night he is a fast reader. In social study I reported that our family was an informal democracy it got by the class was arguing whether the chairmanship of a council should rotate or be elective and whether a grandparent living in the home was eligible. We decided that a grandparent was a member but should not be chairman then we formed committees to draw up a constitution for an ideal family organization which we would present to our families as the project s findings. Dad was around school a good bit the next few days which worried me when parents get overactive they are always up to something. The following Saturday evening Dad called me into his study. He had a stack of textbooks on his desk and a chart of Centerville High School s curriculum from American Folk Dancing to Life Sciences. Marked on it was my course not only for that semester but for junior and senior years the way my faculty advisor and I had planned it. Dad stared at me like a gentle grasshopper and said mildly Kip do you intend to go to college Huh Why certainly Dad With what I hesitated. I knew it cost money. While there had been times when dollar bills spilled out of the basket onto the floor usually it wouldn t take long to count what was in it. Uh maybe I ll get a scholarship. Or I could work my way. He nodded. No doubt ... if you want to. Money problems can always be solved by a man not frightened by them. But when I said With what I was talking about up here. He tapped his skull. I simply stared. Why I ll graduate from high school Dad. That ll get me into college. So it will. Into our State University or the State Aggie or State Normal. But Kip do you know that they are flunking out 40 per cent of each freshman class I wouldn t flunk Perhaps not. But you will if you tackle any serious subject engineering or science or pre med. You would that is to say if your preparation were based on this. He waved a hand at the curriculum. I felt shocked. Why Dad Center is a swell school. I remembered things they had told us in P.T.A. Auxiliary. It s run along the latest most scientific lines approved by psychologists and and paying excellent salaries he interrupted for a staff highly trained in modern pedagogy. Study projects emphasize practical human problems to orient the child in democratic social living to fit him for the vital meaningful tests of adult life in our complex modern culture. Excuse me son I ve talked with Mr. Hanley. Mr. Hanley is sincere and to achieve these noble purposes we are spending more per student than is any other state save California and New York. Well . . . what s wrong with that What s a dangling participle I didn t answer. He went on Why did Van Buren fail of re election How do you extract the cube root of eighty seven Van Buren had been a president that was all I remembered. But I could answer the other one. If you want a cube root you look in a table in the back of the book. Dad sighed. Kip do you think that table was brought down from on high by an archangel He shook his head sadly. It s my fault not yours. I should have looked into this years ago but I had assumed simply because you liked to read and were quick at figures and clever with your hands that you were getting an education. You think I m not I know you are not. Son Centerville High is a delightful place well equipped smoothly administered beautifully kept. Not a blackboard jungle oh no I think you kids love the place. You should. But this Dad slapped the curriculum chart angrily. Twaddle Beetle tracking Occupational therapy for morons I didn t know what to say. Dad sat and brooded. At last he said The law declares that you must attend school until you are eighteen or have graduated from high school. Yes sir. The school you are in is a waste of time. The toughest course we can pick won t stretch your mind. But it s either this school or send you away. I said Doesn t that cost a lot of money He ignored my question. I don t favor boarding schools a teen ager belongs with his family. Oh a tough prep school back east can drill you so that you can enter Stanford or Yale or any of the best but you can pick up false standards too nutty ideas about money and social position and the right tailor. It took me years to get rid of ones I acquired that way. Your mother and I did not pick a small town for your boyhood unpurposefully. So you ll stay in Centerville High. I looked relieved. Nevertheless you intend to go to college. Do you intend to become a professional man Or will you look for snap courses in more elaborate ways to make bayberry candles Son your life is yours to do with as you wish. But if you have any thought of going to a good university and studying anything of importance then we must consider how to make best use of your next three years. Why gosh Dad of course I want to go to a good See me when you ve thought it over. Good night. I did for a week. And you know I began to see that Dad was right. Our project in Family Living was twaddle. What did those kids know about running a family Or Miss Finchley unmarried and no kids. The class decided unanimously that every child should have a room of his own and be given an allowance to teach him to handle money. Great stuff . . . but how about the Quinlan family nine kids in a five room house Let s not be foolish. Commercial arithmetic wasn t silly but it was a waste of time. I read the book through the first week after that I was bored. Dad switched me to algebra Spanish general science English grammar and composition the only thing unchanged was gym. I didn t have it too tough catching up even those courses were watered down. Nevertheless I started to learn for Dad threw a lot of books at me and said Clifford you would be studying these if you were not in overgrown kindergarten. If you soak up what is in them you should be able to pass College Entrance Board Examinations. Possibly. After that he left me alone he meant it when he said that it was my choice. I almost bogged down those books were hard not the predigested pap I got in school. Anybody who thinks that studying Latin by himself is a snap should try it. I got discouraged and nearly quit then I got mad and leaned into it. After a while I found that Latin was making Spanish easier and vice versa. When Miss Hernandez my Spanish teacher found out I was studying Latin she began tutoring me. I not only worked my way through Virgil I learned to speak Spanish like a Mexicano. Algebra and plane geometry were all the math our school offered I went ahead on my own with advanced algebra and solid geometry and trigonometry and might have stopped so far as College Boards were concerned but math is worse than peanuts. Analytical geometry seems pure Greek until you see what they re driving at then if you know algebra it bursts on you and you race through the rest of the book. Glorious I had to sample calculus and when I got interested in electronics I needed vector analysis. General science was the only science course the school had and pretty general it was too about Sunday supplement level. But when you read about chemistry and physics you want to do it too. The barn was mine and I had a chem lab and a darkroom and an electronics bench and for a while a ham station. Mother was perturbed when I blew out the windows and set fire to the barn just a small fire but Dad was not. He simply suggested that I not manufacture explosives in a frame building. When I took the College Boards my senior year I passed them. It was early March my senior year that I told Dad I wanted to go to the Moon. The idea had been made acute by the announcement of commercial flights but I had been space happy ever since the day they announced that the Federation Space Corps had established a lunar base. Or earlier. I told Dad about my decision because I felt that he would know the answer. You see. Dad always found ways to do anything he decided to do. When I was little we lived lots of places Washington New York Los Angeles I don t know where usually in hotel apartments. Dad was always flying somewhere and when he was home there were visitors I never saw him much. Then we moved to Centerville and he was always home his nose in a book or working at his desk. When people wanted to see him they had to come to him. I remember once when the money basket was empty Dad told Mother that a royalty was due. I hung around that day because I had never seen a king I was eight and when a visitor showed up I was disappointed because he didn t wear a crown. There was money in the basket the next day so I decided that he had been incognito I was reading The Little Lame Prince and had tossed Dad a purse of gold it was at least a year before I found out that a royalty could be money from a patent or a book or business stock and some of the glamour went out of life. But this visitor though not king thought he could make Dad do what he wanted rather than what Dad wanted: Dr. Russell I concede that Washington has an atrocious climate. But you will have air conditioned offices. With clocks no doubt. And secretaries. And soundproofing. Anything you want. Doctor. The point is Mr. Secretary I don t want them. This household has no clocks. Nor calendars. Once I had a large income and a larger ulcer I now have a small income and no ulcer. I stay here. But the job needs you. The need is not mutual. Do have some more meat loaf. Since Dad did not want to go to the Moon the problem was mine. I got down college catalogs I had collected and started listing engineering schools. I had no idea how I could pay tuition or even eat but the first thing was to get myself accepted by a tough school with a reputation. If not I could enlist in the Air Force and try for an appointment. If I missed I could become an enlisted specialist in electronics Lunar Base used radar and astrar techs. One way or another I was going. Next morning at breakfast Dad was hidden behind the New York Times while Mother read the Herald Trib. I had the Centerville Clarion but it s fit only for wrapping salami. Dad looked over his paper at me. Clifford here s something in your line. Huh Don t grunt that is an uncouth privilege of seniors. This. He handed it to me. It was a soap ad. It announced that tired old gimmick a gigantic super colossal prize contest. This one promised a thousand prizes down to a last hundred each of which was a year s supply of Skyway Soap. Then I spilled cornflakes in my lap. The first prize was AN ALL EXPENSE TRIP TO THE MOON That s the way it read with three exclamation points only to me there were a dozen with bursting bombs and a heavenly choir. Just complete this sentence in twenty five words or less: I use Skyway Soap because . . . And send in the usual soap wrapper or reasonable facsimile. There was more about joint management of American Express and Thos. Cook and with the cooperation of the United States Air Force and a list of lesser prizes. But all I saw while milk and soggy cereal soaked my pants was: TRIP TO THE MOON Chapter 2 First I went sky high with excitement . . . then as far down with depression. I didn t win contests why if I bought a box of Cracker Jack I d get one they forgot to put a prize in. I had been cured of matching pennies. If I ever Stop it said Dad. I shut up. There is no such thing as luck there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe. Do you intend to enter this Do I I assume that to be affirmative. Very well make a systematic effort. I did and Dad was helpful he didn t just offer me more meat loaf. But he saw to it I didn t go to pieces I finished school and sent off applications for college and kept my job I was working after school that semester at Charton s Pharmacy soda jerk but also learning about pharmacy. Mr. Charton was too conscientious to let me touch anything but packaged items but I learned materia medica and nomenclature and what various antibiotics were for and why you had to be careful. That led into organic chemistry and biochemistry and he lent me Walker Boyd and Asimov biochemistry makes atomic physics look simple but presently it begins to make sense. Mr. Charton was an old widower and pharmacology was his life. He hinted that someone would have to carry on the pharmacy someday some young fellow with a degree in pharmacy and devotion to the profession. He said that he might be able to help such a person get through school. If he had suggested that I could someday run the dispensary at Lunar Base I might have taken the bait. I explained that I was dead set on spacing and engineering looked like my one chance. He didn t laugh. He said I was probably right but that I shouldn t forget that wherever Man went to the Moon on Mars or the farthest stars pharmacists and dispensaries would go along. Then he dug out books for me on space medicine Strughold and Haber and Stapp and others. I once had ideas along that line. Kip he said quietly but now it s too late. Even though Mr. Charton was not really interested in anything but drugs we sold everything that drugstores sell from bicycle tires to home permanent kits. Including soap of course. We were selling darned little Skyway Soap Centerville is conservative about new brands I ll bet some of them made their own soap. But when I showed up for work that day I had to tell Mr. Charton about it. He dug out two dustcovered boxes and put them on the counter. Then he phoned his jobber in Springfield. He really did right by me. He marked Skyway Soap down almost to cost and pushed it and he almost always got the wrappers before he let the customer go. Me I stacked a pyramid of Skyway Soap on each end of the fountain and every coke was accompanied by a spiel for good old Skyway the soap that washes cleaner is packed with vitamins and improves your chances of Heaven not to mention its rich creamy lather finer ingredients and refusal to take the Fifth Amendment. Oh I was shameless Anybody who got away without buying was deaf or fast on his feet. If he bought soap without leaving the wrappers with me he was a magician. Adults I talked out of it kids if I had to I paid a penny for each wrapper. If they brought in wrappers from around town I paid a dime a dozen and threw in a cone. The rules permitted a contestant to submit any number of entries as long as each was written on a Skyway Soap wrapper or reasonable facsimile. I considered photographing one and turning out facsimiles by the gross but Dad advised me not to. It is within the rules Kip but I ve never yet known a skunk to be welcome at a picnic. So I used soap. And I sent in wrappers with slogans: I use Skyway Soap because it makes me feel so clean. highway or byway there s no soap like Skyway its quality is sky high. it is pure as the Milky Way. it is pure as Interstellar Space. it leaves me fresh as a rain swept sky. And so on endlessly until I tasted soap in my dreams. Not just my own slogans either Dad thought them up and so did Mother and Mr. Charton. I kept a notebook and wrote them down in school or at work or in the middle of the night. I came home one evening and found that Dad had set up a card file for me and after that I kept them alphabetically to avoid repeating. A good thing too for toward the last I sent in as many as a hundred a day. Postage mounted not to mention having to buy some wrappers. Other kids in town were in the contest and probably some adults but they didn t have the production line I had. I d leave work at ten o clock hurry home with the day s slogans and wrappers pick up more slogans from Dad and Mother then use a rubber stamp on the inside of each wrapper: I use Skyway Soap because with my name and address. As I typed Dad filled out file cards. Each morning I mailed the bunch on my way to school. I got laughed at but the adults most inclined to kid me were quickest to let me have their wrappers. All but one an oaf called Ace Quiggle. I shouldn t class Ace as an adult he was an over age juvenile delinquent. I guess every town has at least one Ace. He hadn t finished Centerville High a distinction since Mr. Hanley believed in promoting everybody to keep age groups together. As far back as I remember Ace hung around Main Street sometimes working mostly not. He specialized in wit. He was at our fountain one day using up two dollars worth of space and time for one thirty five cent malt. I had just persuaded old Mrs. Jenkins to buy a dozen cakes and had relieved her of the wrappers. As she left Ace picked one off my counter display and said You re selling these. Space Cadet That s right Ace. You ll never find such a bargain again. You expect to go to the Moon just selling soap Captain Or should I say Commodore Yuk yuk yukkity yuk That s how Ace laughed like a comic strip. I m trying I said politely. How about some You re sure it s good soap Positive. Well I ll tell you. Just to help you out I ll buy one bar. A plunger. But this might be the winning wrapper. Sure thing Ace. Thanks a lot. I took his money he slipped the cake into his pocket and started to leave. Just a second Ace. The wrapper. Please He stopped. Oh yes. He took out the bar peeled it held up the wrapper. You want this Yes Ace. Thanks. Well I ll show you how to get the best use of it. He reached across to the cigar lighter on the tobacco counter and set fire to it lit a cigarette with it let the wrapper bum almost to his fingers dropped it and stepped on it. Mr. Charton watched from the window of the dispensary. Ace grinned. Okay Space Cadet I was gripping the ice cream scoop. But I answered Perfectly okay Ace. It s your soap. Mr. Charton came out and said I ll take the fountain Kip. There s a package to deliver. That was almost the only wrapper I missed. The contest ended May 1 and both Dad and Mr. Charton decided to stock up and cleaned out the last case in the store. It was almost eleven before I had them written up then Mr. Charton drove me to Springfield to get them postmarked before midnight. I had sent in five thousand seven hundred and eighty two slogans. I doubt if Centerville was ever so scrubbed. The results were announced on the Fourth of July. I chewed my nails to the elbows in those nine weeks. Oh other things happened. I graduated and Dad and Mother gave me a watch and we paraded past Mr. Hanley and got our diplomas. It felt good even though what Dad had persuaded me to learn beat what I learned at dear old Center six ways from zero. Before that was Sneak Day and Class Honeymoon and Senior Prom and the Class Play and the Junior Senior Picnic and all the things they do to keep the animals quiet. Mr. Charton let me off early if I asked but I didn t ask often as my mind wasn t on it and I wasn t going steady anyhow. I had been earlier in the year but she Elaine McMurty wanted to talk boys and clothes and I wanted to talk space and engineering so she put me back into circulation. After graduation I worked for Mr. Charton full time. I still didn t know how I was going to college. I didn t think about it I just dished sundaes and held my breath until the Fourth of July. It was to be on television at 8 P.M. We had a TV a black and white flatimage job but it hadn t been turned on in months after I built it I lost interest. I dug it out set it up in the living room and tested the picture. I killed a couple of hours adjusting it then spent the rest of the day chewing nails. I couldn t eat dinner. By seven thirty I was in front of the set not watching a comedy team and fiddling with my file cards. Dad came in looked sharply at me and said Take a grip on yourself Kip. Let me remind you again that the chances are against you. I gulped. I know Dad. Furthermore in the long run it won t matter. A man almost always gets what he wants badly enough. I am sure you will get to the Moon someday one way or another. Yes sir. I just wish they would get it over with. They will. Coming Emma Right away dearest Mother called back. She came in patted my hand and sat down. Dad settled back. Reminds me of election nights. Mother said I m glad you re no longer up to your ears in that. Oh come now sweetheart you enjoyed every campaign. Mother sniffed. The comics went back where comics go cigarettes did a cancan then dived into their packs while a soothing voice assured us that carcinogenous factors were unknown in Coronets the safe. Safe SAFE smoke with the true tobacco flavor. The program cut to the local station we were treated to a thrilling view of Center Lumber Hardware and I started pulling hairs out of the back of my hand. The screen filled with soap bubbles a quartet sang that this was the Skyway Hour as if we didn t know. Then the screen went blank and sound cut off and I swallowed my stomach. The screen lighted up with: Network Difficulty Do Not Adjust Your Sets. I yelped Oh they can t do that They can t Dad said Stop it Clifford. I shut up. Mother said Now dearest he s just a boy. Dad said He is not a boy he is a man. Kip how do you expect to face a firing squad calmly if this upsets you I mumbled he said Speak up. I said I hadn t really planned on facing one. You may need to someday. This is good practice. Try the Springfield channel you may get a skip image. I tried but all I got was snow and the sound was like two cats in a sack. I jumped back to our local station. jor General Bryce Gilmore United States Air Force our guest tonight who will explain to us later in this program some hitherto unreleased pictures of Federation Lunar Base and the infant Luna City the fastest growing little city on the Moon. Immediately after announcing the winners we will attempt a television linkage with Lunar Base through the cooperation of the Space Corps of the I took a deep breath and tried to slow my heartbeat the way you steady down for a free throw in a tie game. The gabble dragged on while celebrities were introduced the contest rules were explained an improbably sweet young couple explained to each other why they always used Skyway Soap. My own sales talks were better. At last they got to it. Eight girls paraded out each held a big card over her head. The M.C. said in an awestruck voice: And now . . . and now the winning Skyway slogan for the ... FREE TRIP TO THE MOON I couldn t breathe. The girls sang I like Skyway Soap because and went on each turning her card as a word reached her: it ... is ... as ... pure ... as ... the ... sky ... itself I was fumbling cards. I thought I recognized it but couldn t be sure not after more than five thousand slogans. Then I found it and checked the cards the girls were holding. Dad Mother I ve won I ve won Chapter 3 Hold it Kip Dad snapped. Stop it. Mother said Oh dear I heard the M.C. saying present the lucky winner Mrs. Xenia Donahue of Great Falls Montana. . . . Mrs. Donahue To a fanfare a little dumpy woman teetered out. I read the cards again. They still matched the one in my hand. I said Dad what happened That s my slogan. You didn t listen. They ve cheated me Be quiet and listen as we explained earlier in the event of duplicate entries priority goes to the one postmarked first. Any remaining tie is settled by time of arrival at the contest office. Our winning slogan was submitted by eleven contestants. To them go the first eleven prizes. Tonight we have with us the six top winners for the trip to the Moon the weekend in a satellite space station the jet flight around the world the flight to Antarctica the Beaten by a postmark. A postmark sorry we can t have every one of the winners with us tonight. To the rest this comes as a surprise. The M.C. looked at his watch. Right this minute in a thousand homes across the land . . . right this second there is a lucky knock on a lucky door of some loyal friend of Skyway There was a knock on our door. I fell over my feet. Dad answered. There were three men an enormous crate and a Western Union messenger singing about Skyway Soap. Somebody said Is this where Clifford Russell lives Dad said Yes. Will you sign for this What is it It just says This Side Up. Where do you want it Dad passed the receipt to me and I signed somehow. Dad said Will you put it in the living room please They did and left and I got a hammer and sidecutters. It looked like a coffin and I could have used one. I got the top off. A lot of packing got all over Mother s rugs. At last we were down to it. It was a space suit. Not much as space suits go these days. It was an obsolete model that Skyway Soap had bought as surplus material the tenth to hundredth prizes were all space suits. But it was a real one made by Goodyear with air conditioning by York and auxiliary equipment by General Electric. Its instruction manual and maintenance and service log were with it and it had racked up more than eight hundred hours in rigging the second satellite station. I felt better. This was no phony this was no toy. It had been out in space even if Ihad not. But would someday. I d learn to use it and someday I d wear it on the naked face of the Moon. Dad said Maybe we d better carry this to your workshop. Eh Kip Mother said There s no rush dearest. Don t you want to try it on Clifford I certainly did. Dad and I compromised by toting the crate and packing out to the barn. When we came back a reporter from the Clarion was there with a photographer the paper had known I was a winner before I did which didn t seem right. They wanted pictures and I didn t mind. I had an awful time getting into it dressing in an upper berth is a cinch by comparison. The photographer said Just a minute kid. I ve seen em do it at Wright Field. Mind some advice Uh No. I mean yes tell me. You slide in like an Eskimo climbing into a kayak. Then wiggle your right arm in It was fairly easy that way opening front gaskets wide and sitting down in it though I almost dislocated a shoulder. There were straps to adjust for size but we didn t bother he stuffed me into it zippered the gaskets helped me to my feet and shut the helmet. It didn t have air bottles and I had to live on the air inside while he got three shots. By then I knew that the suit had seen service it smelled like dirty socks. I was glad to get the helmet off. Just the same it made me feel good to wear it. Like a spacer. They left and presently we went to bed leaving the suit in the living room. About midnight I catfooted down and tried it on again. The next morning I moved it out to my shop before I went to work. Mr. Charton was diplomatic he just said he d like to see my space suit when I had time. Everybody knew about it my picture was on the front page of the Clarion along with the Pikes Peak Hill Climb and the holiday fatalities. The story had been played for laughs but I didn t mind. I had never really believed I would win and I had an honest to goodness space suit which was more than my classmates had. That afternoon Dad brought me a special delivery letter from Skyway Soap. It enclosed a property title to one suit pressure serial number so and so ex US AF. The letter started with congratulations and thanks but the last paragraphs meant something: Skyway Soap realizes that your prize may not be of immediate use to you. Therefore as mentioned in paragraph 4 a of the rules. Skyway offers to redeem it for a cash premium of five hundred dollars 500.00 . To avail yourself of this privilege you should return the pressure suit via express collect to Goodyear Corporation Special Appliances Division attn: Salvage Akron Ohio on or before the 15th of September. Skyway Soap hopes that you have enjoyed our Grand Contest as much as we have enjoyed having you and hopes that you will retain your prize long enough to appear with it on your local television station in a special Skyway Jubilee program. A fee of fifty dollars 50.00 will be paid for this appearance. Your station manager will be in touch with you. We hope that you will be our guest. All good wishes from Skyway the Soap as Pure as the Sky Itself. I handed it to Dad. He read it and handed it back. I said I suppose I should. He said I see no harm. Television leaves no external scars. Oh that. Sure it s easy money. But I meant I really ought to sell the suit back to them. I should have felt happy since I needed money while I needed a space suit the way a pig needs a pipe organ. But I didn t even though I had never had five hundred dollars in my life. Son any statement that starts I really ought to is suspect. It means you haven t analyzed your motives. But five hundred dollars is tuition for a semester almost. Which has nothing to do with the case. Find out what you want to do then do it. Never talk yourself into doing something you don t want. Think it over. He said good bye and left. I decided it was foolish to burn my bridges before I crossed them. The space suit was mine until the middle of September even if I did the sensible thing by then I might be tired of it. But I didn t get tired of it a space suit is a marvelous piece of machinery a little space station with everything miniaturized. Mine was a chrome plated helmet and shoulder yoke which merged into a body of silicone asbestos and glass fibre cloth. This hide was stiff except at the joints. They were the same rugged material but were constant volume when you bent a knee a bellows arrangement increased the volume over the knee cap as much as the space back of the knee was squeezed. Without this a man wouldn t be able to move the pressure inside which can add up to several tons would hold him rigid as a statue. These volume compensators were covered with dural armor even the finger joints had little dural plates over the knuckles. It had a heavy glass fibre belt with clips for tools and there were the straps to adjust for height and weight. There was a back pack now empty for air bottles and zippered pockets inside and out for batteries and such. The helmet swung back taking a bib out of the yoke with it and the front opened with two gasketed zippers this left a door you could wiggle into. With helmet clamped and zippers closed it was impossible to open the suit with pressure inside. Switches were mounted on the shoulder yoke and on the helmet the helmet was monstrous. It contained a drinking tank pill dispensers six on each side a chin plate on the right to switch radio from receive to send another on the left to increase or decrease flow of air an automatic polarizer for the face lens microphone and earphones space for radio circuits in a bulge back of the head and an instrument board arched over the head. The instrument dials read backwards because they were reflected in an inside mirror in front of the wearer s forehead at an effective fourteen inches from the eyes. Above the lens or window there were twin headlights. On top were two antennas a spike for broadcast and a horn that squirted microwaves like a gun you aimed it by facing the receiving station. The horn antenna was armored except for its open end. This sounds as crowded as a lady s purse but everything was beautifully compact your head didn t touch anything when you looked out the lens. But you could tip your head back and see reflected instruments or tilt it down and turn it to work chin controls or simply turn your neck for water nipple or pills. In all remaining space sponge rubber padding kept you from banging your head no matter what. My suit was like a fine car its helmet like a Swiss watch. But its air bottles were missing so was radio gear except for built in antennas radar beacon and emergency radar target were gone pockets inside and out were empty and there were no tools on the belt. The manual told what it ought to have it was like a stripped car. I decided I just had to make it work right. First I swabbed it out with Clorox to kill the locker room odor. Then I got to work on the air system. It s a good thing they included that manual most of what I thought I knew about space suits was wrong. A man uses around three pounds of oxygen a day pounds mass not pounds per square inch. You d think a man could carry oxygen for a month especially out in space where mass has no weight or on the Moon where three pounds weigh only half a pound. Well that s okay for space stations or ships or frogmen they run air through soda lime to take out carbon dioxide and breathe it again. But not space suits. Even today people talk about the bitter cold of outer space but space is vacuum and if vacuum were cold how could a Thermos jug keep hot coffee hot Vacuum is nothing it has no temperature it just insulates. Three fourths of your food turns into heat a lot of heat enough each day to melt fifty pounds of ice and more. Sounds preposterous doesn t it But when you have a roaring fire in the furnace you are cooling your body even in the winter you keep a room about thirty degrees cooler than your body. When you turn up a furnace s thermostat you are picking a more comfortable rate for cooling. Your body makes so much heat you have to get rid of it exactly as you have to cool a car s engine. Of course if you do it too fast say in a sub zero wind you can freeze but the usual problem in a space suit is to keep from being boiled like a lobster. You ve got vacuum all around you and it s hard to get rid of heat. Some radiates away but not enough and if you are in sunlight you pick up still more this is why space ships are polished like mirrors. So what can you do Well you can t carry fifty pound blocks of ice. You get rid of heat the way you do on Earth by convection and evaporation you keep air moving over you to evaporate sweat and cool you off. Oh they ll learn to build space suits that recycle like a space ship but today the practical way is to let used air escape from the suit flushing away sweat and carbon dioxide and excess heat while wasting most of the oxygen. There are other problems. The fifteen pounds per square inch around you includes three pounds of oxygen pressure. Your lungs can get along on less than half that but only an Indian from the high Andes is likely to he comfortable on less than two pounds oxygen pressure. Nine tenths of a pound is the limit. Any less than nine tenths of a pound won t force oxygen into blood this is about the pressure at the top of Mount Everest. Most people suffer from hypoxia oxygen shortage long before this so better use two p.s.i. of oxygen. Mix an inert gas with it because pure oxygen can cause a sore throat or make you drunk or even cause terrible cramps. Don t use nitrogen which you ve breathed all your life because it will bubble in your blood if pressure drops and cripple you with bends. Use helium which doesn t. It gives you a squeaky voice but who cares You can die from oxygen shortage be poisoned by too much oxygen be crippled by nitrogen drown in or be acid poisoned by carbon dioxide or dehydrate and run a killing fever. When I finished reading that manual I didn t see how anybody could stay alive anywhere much less in a space suit. But a space suit was in front of me that had protected a man for hundreds of hours in empty space. Here is how you beat those dangers. Carry steel bottles on your back they hold air oxygen and helium at a hundred and fifty atmospheres over 2000 pounds per square inch you draw from them through a reduction valve down to 150 p.s.i. and through still another reduction valve a demand type which keeps pressure in your helmet at three to five pounds per square inch two pounds of it oxygen. Put a silicone rubber collar around your neck and put tiny holes in it so that the pressure in the body of your suit is less the air movement still faster then evaporation and cooling will be increased while the effort of bending is decreased. Add exhaust valves one at each wrist and ankle these have to pass water as well as gas because you may be ankle deep in sweat. The bottles are big and clumsy weighing around sixty pounds apiece and each holds only about five mass pounds of air even at that enormous pressure instead of a month s supply you will have only a few hours my suit was rated at eight hours for the bottles it used to have. But you will be okay for those hours if everything works right. You can stretch time for you don t die from overheating very fast and can stand too much carbon dioxide even longer but let your oxygen run out and you die in about seven minutes. Which gets us back where we started it takes oxygen to stay alive. To make darn sure that you re getting enough your nose can t tell you clip a little photoelectric cell to your ear and let it see the color of your blood the redness of the blood measures the oxygen it carries. Hook this to a galvanometer. If its needle gets into the danger zone start saying your prayers. I went to Springfield on my day off taking the suit s hose fittings and shopped. I picked up second hand two thirty inch steel bottles from a welding shop and got myself disliked by insisting on a pressure test. I took them home on the bus stopped at Pring s Garage and arranged to buy air at fifty atmospheres. Higher pressures or oxygen or helium I could get from the Springfield airport but I didn t need them yet. When I got home I closed the suit empty and pumped it with a bicycle pump to two atmospheres absolute or one relative which gave me a test load of almost four to one compared with space conditions. Then I tackled the bottles. They needed to be mirror bright since you can t afford to let them pick up heat from the Sun. I stripped and scraped and wire brushed and buffed and polished preparatory to nickel plating. Next morning Oscar the Mechanical Man was limp as a pair of long johns. Getting that old suit not just airtight but helium tight was the worst headache. Air isn t bad but the helium molecule is so small and agile that it migrates right through ordinary rubber and I wanted this job to be right not just good enough to perform at home but okay for space. The gaskets were shot and there were slow leaks almost impossible to find. I had to get new silicone rubber gaskets and patching compound and tissue from Goodyear small town hardware stores don t handle such things. I wrote a letter explaining what I wanted and why and they didn t even charge me. They sent me some mimeographed sheets elaborating on the manual. It still wasn t easy. But there came a day when I pumped Oscar full of pure helium at two atmospheres absolute. A week later he was still tight as a six ply tire. That day I wore Oscar as a self contained environment. I had already worn him many hours without the helmet working around the shop handling tools while hampered by his gauntlets getting height and size adjustments right. It was like breaking in new ice skates and after a while I was hardly aware I had it on once I came to supper in it. Dad said nothing and Mother has the social restraint of an ambassador I discovered my mistake when I picked up my napkin. Now I wasted helium to the air mounted bottles charged with air and suited them. Then I clamped the helmet and dogged the safety catches. Air sighed softly into the helmet its flow through the demand valve regulated by the rise and fall of my chest I could reset it to speed up or slow down by the chin control. I did so watching the gauge in the mirror and letting it mount until I had twenty pounds absolute inside. That gave me five pounds more than the pressure around me which was as near as I could come to space conditions without being in space. I could feel the suit swell and the joints no longer felt loose and easy. I balanced the cycle at five pounds differential and tried to move And almost fell over. I had to grab the workbench. Suited up with bottles on my back I weighed more than twice what I do stripped. Besides that although the joints were constant volume the suit didn t work as freely under pressure. Dress yourself in heavy fishing waders put on an overcoat and boxing gloves and a bucket over your head then have somebody strap two sacks of cement across your shoulders and you will know what a space suit feels like under one gravity. But ten minutes later I was handling myself fairly well and in half an hour I felt as if I had worn one all my life. The distributed weight wasn t too great and I knew it wouldn t amount to much on the Moon . The joints were just a case of getting used to more effort. I had had more trouble learning to swim. It was a blistering day: I went outside and looked at the Sun. The polarizer cut the glare and I was able to look at it. I looked away polarizing eased off and I could see around me. I stayed cool. The air cooled by semi adiabatic expansion it said in the manual cooled my head and flowed on through the suit washing away body heat and used air through the exhaust valves. The manual said that heating elements rarely cut in since the usual problem was to get rid of heat I decided to get dry ice and force a test of thermostat and heater. I tried everything I could think of. A creek runs back of our place and beyond is a pasture. I sloshed through the stream lost my footing and fell the worst trouble was that I could never see where I was putting my feet. Once I was down I lay there a while half floating but mostly covered. I didn t get wet I didn t get hot I didn t get cold and my breathing was as easy as ever even though water shimmered over my helmet. I scrambled heavily up the bank and fell again striking my helmet against a rock. No damage Oscar was built to take it. I pulled my knees under me got up and crossed the pasture stumbling on rough ground but not falling. There was a haystack there and I dug into it until I was buried. Cool fresh air ... no trouble no sweat. After three hours I took it off. The suit had relief arrangements like any pilot s outfit but I hadn t rigged it yet so I had come out before my air was gone. When I hung it in the rack I had built I patted the shoulder yoke. Oscar you re all right I told it. You and I are partners. We re going places. I would have sneered at five thousand dollars for Oscar. While Oscar was taking his pressure tests I worked on his electrical and electronic gear. I didn t bother with a radar target or beacon the first is childishly simple the second is fiendishly expensive. But I did want radio for the space operations band of the spectrum the antennas suited only those wavelengths. I could have built an ordinary walkie talkie and hung it outside but I would have been kidding myself with a wrong frequency and gear that might not stand vacuum. Changes in pressure and temperature and humidity do funny things to electronic circuits that is why the radio was housed inside the helmet. The manual gave circuit diagrams so I got busy. The audio and modulating circuits were no problem just battery operated transistor circuitry which I could make plenty small enough. But the microwave part It was a two headed calf each with transmitter and receiver one centimeter wavelength for the horn and three octaves lower at eight centimeters for the spike in a harmonic relationship one crystal controlling both. This gave more signal on broadcast and better aiming when squirting out the horn and also meant that only part of the rig had to be switched in changing antennas. The output of a variable frequency oscillator was added to the crystal frequency in tuning the receiver. The circuitry was simple on paper. But microwave circuitry is never easy it takes precision machining and a slip of a tool can foul up the impedance and ruin a mathematically calculated resonance. Well I tried. Synthetic precision crystals are cheap from surplus houses and some transistors and other components I could vandalize from my own gear. And I made it work after the fussiest pray and try again I have ever done. But the consarned thing simply would not fit into the helmet. Call it a moral victory I ve never done better work. I finally bought one precision made and embedded in plastic from the same firm that sold me the crystal. Like the suit it was made for it was obsolete and I paid a price so low that I merely screamed. By then I would have mortgaged my soul I wanted that suit to work. The only thing that complicated the rest of the electrical gear was that everything had to be either fail safe or no fail a man in a space suit can t pull into the next garage if something goes wrong the stuff has to keep on working or he becomes a vital statistic. That was why the helmet had twin headlights the second cut in if the first failed even the peanut lights for the dials over my head were twins. I didn t take short cuts every duplicate circuit I kept duplicate and tested to make sure that automatic changeover always worked. Mr. Charton insisted on filling the manual s list on those items a drugstore stocks maltose and dextrose and amino tablets vitamins dexedrine dramamine aspirin antibiotics antihistamines codeine almost any pill a man can take to help him past a hump that might kill him. He got Doc Kennedy to write prescriptions so that I could stock Oscar without breaking laws. When I got through Oscar was in as good shape as he had ever been in Satellite Two. It had been more fun than the time I helped Jake Bixby turn his heap into a hotrod. But summer was ending and it was time I pulled out of my daydream. I still did not know where I was going to school or how or if. I had saved money but it wasn t nearly enough. I had spent a little on postage and soap wrappers but I got that back and more by one fifteen minute appearance on television and I hadn t spent a dime on girls since March too busy. Oscar cost surprisingly little repairing Oscar had been mostly sweat and screwdriver. Seven dollars out of every ten I had earned was sitting in the money basket. But it wasn t enough. I realized glumly that I was going to have to sell Oscar to get through the first semester. But how would I get through the rest of the year Joe Valiant the all American boy always shows up on the campus with fifty cents and a heart of gold then in the last chapter is tapped for Skull and Bones and has money in the bank. But I wasn t Joe Valiant not by eight decimal places. Did it make sense to start if I was going to have to drop out about Christmas Wouldn t it be smarter to stay out a year and get acquainted with a pick and shovel Did I have a choice The only school I was sure of was State U. and there was a row about professors being fired and talk that State U. might lose its accredited standing. Wouldn t it be comical to spend years slaving for a degree and then have it be worthless because your school wasn t recognized State U. wasn t better than a B school in engineering even before this fracas. Rensselaer and CalTech turned me down the same day one with a printed form the other with a polite letter saying it was impossible to accept all qualified applicants. Little things were getting my goat too. The only virtue of that television show was the fifty bucks. A person looks foolish wearing a space suit in a television studio and our announcer milked it for laughs rapping the helmet and asking me if I was still in there. Very funny. He asked me what I wanted with a space suit and when I tried to answer he switched off the mike in my suit and patched in a tape with nonsense about space pirates and flying saucers. Half the people in town thought it was my voice. It wouldn t have been hard to live down if Ace Quiggle hadn t turned up. He had been missing all summer in jail maybe but the day after the show he took a seat at the fountain stared at me and said in a loud whisper Say ain t you the famous space pirate and television star I said What ll you have Ace Gosh Could I have your autograph I ain t never seen a real live space pirate before Give me your order Ace. Or let someone else use that stool. A choc malt. Commodore and leave out the soap. Ace s wit went on every time he showed up. It was a dreadfully hot summer and easy to get tempery. The Friday before Labor Day weekend the store s cooling system went sour we couldn t get a repairman and I spent three bad hours fixing it ruining my second best pants and getting myself reeking. I was back at the fountain and wishing I could go home for a bath when Ace swaggered in greeting me loudly with Why if it isn t Commander Comet the Scourge of the Spaceways Where s your blaster gun Commander Ain t you afraid the Galactic Emperor will make you stay in after school for running around bare nekkid Yuk yuk yukkity yuk A couple of girls at the fountain giggled. Lay off Ace I said wearily. It s a hot day. That s why you re not wearing your rubber underwear The girls giggled again. Ace smirked. He went on: Junior seein you got that clown suit why don t you put it to work Run an ad in the Clarion: Have Space Suit Will Travel. Yukkity yuk Or you could hire out as a scarecrow. The girls snickered. I counted ten then again in Spanish and in Latin and said tensely Ace just tell me what you ll have. My usual. And snap it up I ve got a date on Mars. Mr. Charton came out from behind his counter sat down and asked me to mix him a lime cooler so I served him first. It stopped the flow of wit and probably saved Ace s life. The boss and I were alone shortly after. He said quietly Kip a reverence for life does not require a man to respect Nature s obvious mistakes. Sir You need not serve Quiggle again. I don t want his trade. Oh I don t mind. He s harmless. I wonder how harmless such people are To what extent civilization is retarded by the laughing jackasses the empty minded belittlers Go home you ll want to make an early start tomorrow. I had been invited to the Lake of the Forest for the long Labor Day weekend by Jake Bixby s parents. I wanted to go not only to get away from the heat but also to chew things over with Jake. But I answered Shucks Mr. Charton I ought not to leave you stuck. The town will be deserted over the holiday I may not open the fountain. Enjoy yourself. This summer has worn you a bit fine. Kip. I let myself be persuaded but I stayed until closing and swept up. Then I walked home doing some hard thinking. The party was over and it was time to put away my toys. Even the village half wit knew that I had no sensible excuse to have a space suit. Not that I cared what Ace thought . . . but I did have no use for it and I needed money. Even if Stanford and M.I.T. and Carnegie and the rest turned me down I was going to start this semester. State U. wasn t the best but neither was I and I had learned that more depended on the student than on the school. Mother had gone to bed and Dad was reading. I said hello and went to the barn intending to strip my gear off Oscar pack him into his case address it and in the morning phone the express office to pick it up. He d be gone before I was back from the Lake of the Forest. Quick and clean. He was hanging on his rack and it seemed to me that he grinned hello. Nonsense of course. I went over and patted his shoulder. Well old fellow you ve been a real chum and it s been nice knowing you. See you on the Moon I hope. But Oscar wasn t going to the Moon. Oscar was going to Akron Ohio to Salvage. They were going to unscrew parts they could use and throw the rest of him on the junk pile. My mouth felt dry. It s okay pal Oscar answered. See that Out of my silly head Oscar didn t really speak I had let my imagination run wild too long. So I quit patting him hauled the crate out and took a wrench from his belt to remove the gas bottles. I stopped. Both bottles were charged one with oxygen one with oxy helium. I had wasted money to do so because I wanted just once to try a spaceman s mix. The batteries were fresh and power packs were charged. Oscar I said softly we re going to take a last walk together. Okay Swell I made it a dress rehearsal water in the drinking tank pill dispensers loaded first aid kit inside vacuum proof duplicate I hoped it was vacuum proof in an outside pocket. All tools on belt all lanyards tied so that tools wouldn t float away in free fall. Everything. Then I heated up a circuit that the F.C.C. would have squelched had they noticed a radio link I had salvaged out of my effort to build a radio for Oscar and had modified as a test rig for Oscar s ears and to let me check the aiming of the directional antenna. It was hooked in with an echo circuit that would answer back if I called it a thing I had bread hoarded out of an old Webcor wire recorder vintage 1950. Then I climbed into Oscar and buttoned up. Tight Tight I glanced at the reflected dials noticed the blood color reading reduced pressure until Oscar almost collapsed. At nearly sea level pressure I was in no danger from hypoxia the trick was to avoid too much oxygen. We started to leave when I remembered something. Just a second Oscar. I wrote a note to my folks telling them that I was going to get up early and catch the first bus to the lake. I could write while suited up now I could even thread a needle. I stuck the note under the kitchen door. Then we crossed the creek into the pasture. I didn t stumble in wading I was used to Oscar now sure footed as a goat. Out in the field I keyed my talkie and said Junebug calling Peewee. Come in Peewee. Seconds later my recorded voice came back: Junebug calling Peewee. Come in Peewee. I shifted to the horn antenna and tried again. It wasn t easy to aim in the dark but it was okay. Then I shifted back to spike antenna and went on calling Peewee while moving across the pasture and pretending that I was on Venus and had to stay in touch with base because it was unknown terrain and unbreathable atmosphere. Everything worked perfectly and if it had been Venus I would have been all right. Two lights moved across the southern sky planes I thought or maybe helis. Just the sort of thing yokels like to report as flying saucers. I watched them then moved behind a little rise that would tend to spoil reception and called Peewee. Peewee answered and I shut up it gets dull talking to an idiot circuit which can only echo what you say to it. Then I heard: Peewee to Junebug Answer I thought I had been monitored and was in trouble then decided that some ham had picked me up. Junebug here. I read you. Who are you The test rig echoed my words. Then the new voice shrilled Peewee here Home me in This was silly. But I found myself saying Junebug to Peewee shift to directional frequency at one centimeter and keep talking keep talking I shifted to the horn antenna. Junebug I read you. Fix me. One two three four five six seven You re due south of me about forty degrees. Who are you It must be one of those lights. It had to be. But I didn t have time to figure it out. A space ship almost landed on me. Chapter 4 I said space ship not rocket ship. It made no noise but a whoosh and there weren t any flaming jets it seemed to move by clean living and righteous thoughts. I was too busy keeping from being squashed to worry about details. A space suit in one gravity is no track suit it s a good thing I had practiced. The ship sat down where I had just been occupying more than its share of pasture a big black shape. The other one whooshed down too just as a door opened in the first. Light poured through the door two figures spilled out and started to run. One moved like a cat the other moved clumsily and slowly handicapped by a space suit. S help me a person in a space suit does look silly. This one was less than five feet tall and looked like the Gingerbread Man. A big trouble with a suit is your limited angle of vision. I was trying to watch both of them and did not see the second ship open. The first figure stopped waiting for the one in the space suit to catch up then suddenly collapsed just a gasping sound Eeeah and clunk. You can tell the sound of pain. I ran to the spot at a lumbering dogtrot leaned over and tried to see what was wrong tilting my helmet to bring the beam of my headlight onto the ground. A bug eyed monster That s not fair but it was my first thought. I couldn t believe it and would have pinched myself except that it isn t practical when suited up. An unprejudiced mind which mine wasn t would have said that this monster was rather pretty. It was small not more than half my size and its curves were graceful not as a girl is but more like a leopard although it wasn t shaped like either one. I couldn t grasp its shape I didn t have any pattern to fit it to it wouldn t add up. But I could see that it was hurt. Its body was quivering like a frightened rabbit. It had enormous eyes open but milky and featureless as if nictitating membranes were across them. What appeared to be its mouth That s as far as I got. Something hit me in the spine right between the gas bottles. I woke up on a bare floor staring at a ceiling. It took several moments to recall what had happened and then I shied away because it was so darn silly. I had been out for a walk in Oscar . . . and then a space ship had landed . . . and a bug eyed I sat up suddenly as I realized that Oscar was gone. A light cheerful voice said Hi there I snapped my head around. A kid about ten years old was seated on the floor leaning against a wall. He I corrected myself. Boys don t usually clutch rag dolls. This kid was the age when the difference doesn t show much and was dressed in shirt shorts and dirty tennis shoes and had short hair so I didn t have much to go on but the rag dolly. Hi yourself I answered. What are we doing here I m surviving. I don t know about you. Huh Surviving. Pushing my breath in and out. Conserving my strength. There s nothing else to do at the moment they ve got us locked in. I looked around. The room was about ten feet across four sided but wedge shaped and nothing in it but us. I couldn t see a door if we weren t locked we might as well be. Who locked us in Them. Space pirates. And him. Space pirates Don t be silly The kid shrugged. Just my name for them. But better not think they re silly if you want to keep on surviving. Are you Junebug Huh You sound like a junebug yourself. Space pirates my aunt I was worried and very confused and this nonsense didn t help. Where was Oscar And where was I No no not a junebug but Junebug a radio call. You see I m Peewee. I said to myself Kip old pal walk slowly to the nearest hospital and give yourself up. When a radio rig you wired yourself starts looking like a skinny little girl with a rag doll you ve flipped. It s going to be wet packs and tranquilizers and no excitement for you you ve blown every fuse. You re Peewee That s what I m called I m relaxed about it. You see I heard Junebug calling Peewee and decided that Daddy had found out about the spot I was in and had alerted people to help me land. But if you aren t Junebug you wouldn t know about that. Who are you Wait a minute I am Junebug. I mean I was using that call. But I m Clifford Russell Kip they call me. How do you do. Kip she said politely. And howdy to you Peewee. Uh are you a boy or a girl Peewee looked disgusted. I ll make you regret that remark. I realize I am undersized for my age but I m actually eleven going on twelve. There s no need to be rude. In another five years I expect to be quite a dish you ll probably beg me for every dance. At the moment I would as soon have danced with a kitchen stool but I had things on my mind and didn t want a useless argument. Sorry Peewee. I m still groggy. You mean you were in that first ship Again she looked miffed. I was piloting it. Sedation every night and a long course of psychoanalysis. At my age. You were piloting You surely don t think the Mother Thing could She wouldn t fit their controls. She curled up beside me and coached. But if you think it s easy when you ve never piloted anything but a Cessna with your Daddy at your elbow and never made any kind of landing then think again. I did very well and your landing instructions weren t too specific. What have they done with the Mother Thing The what You don t know Oh dear Wait a minute Peewee. Let s get on the same frequency. I m Junebug all right and I homed you in and if you think that s easy to have a voice out of nowhere demand emergency landing instructions you better think again too. Anyhow a ship landed and another ship landed right after it and a door opened in the first ship and a guy in a space suit jumped out That was I. and something else jumped out The Mother Thing. Only she didn t get far. She gave a screech and flopped. I went to see what the trouble was and something hit me. The next thing I know you re saying Hi there. I wondered if I ought to tell her that the rest including her was likely a morphine dream because I was probably lying in a hospital with my spine in a cast. Peewee nodded thoughtfully. They must have blasted you at low power or you wouldn t be here. Well they caught you and they caught me so they almost certainly caught her. Oh dear I do hope they didn t hurt her. She looked like she was dying. As if she were dying Peewee corrected me. Subjunctive. I rather doubt it she s awfully hard to kill and they wouldn t kill her except to keep her from escaping they need her alive. Why And why do you call her the Mother Thing One at a time Kip. She s the Mother Thing because . . . well because she is that s all. You ll know when you meet her. As to why they wouldn t kill her it s because she s worth more as a hostage than as a corpse the same reason the kept me alive. Although she s worth incredibly more than I am they d write me off without a blink if I became inconvenient. Or you. But since she was alive when you saw her then it s logical that she s a prisoner again. Maybe right next door. That makes me feel much better. It didn t make me feel better. Yes but where s here Peewee glanced at a Mickey Mouse watch frowned and said Almost halfway to the Moon I d say. What Of course I don t know. But it makes sense that they would go back to their nearest base that s where the Mother Thing and I scrammed from. You re telling me we re in that ship Either the one I swiped or the other one. Where did you think you were Kip Where else could you be A mental hospital. She looked big eyed and then grinned. Why Kip surely your grip on reality is not that weak I m not sure about anything. Space pirates Mother Things. She frowned and bit her thumb. I suppose it must be confusing. But trust your ears and eyes. My grip on reality is quite strong I assure you you see I m a genius. She made it a statement not a boast and somehow I was not inclined to doubt the claim even though it came from a skinny shanked kid with a rag doll in her arms. But I didn t see how it was going to help. Peewee went on: Space pirates . . . mmm. Call them what you wish. Their actions are piratical and they operate in space you name them. As for the Mother Thing . . . wait until you meet her. What s she doing in this hullabaloo Well it s complicated. She had better explain it. She s a cop and she was after them A cop I m afraid that is another semantic inadequacy. The Mother Thing knows what we mean by cop and I think she finds the idea bewildering if not impossible. But what would you call a person who hunts down miscreants A cop no A cop yes I guess. So would I. She looked again at her watch. But right now I think we had better hang on. We ought to be at halfway point in a few minutes and a skew flip is disconcerting even if you are strapped down. I had read about skew flip turn overs but only as a theoretical maneuver I had never heard of a ship that could do one. If this was a ship. The floor felt as solid as concrete and as motionless. I don t see anything to hang on to. Not much I m afraid. But if we sit down in the narrowest part and push against each other I think we can brace enough not to slide around. But let s hurry my watch might be slow. We sat on the floor in the narrow part where the angled walls were about five feet apart. We faced each other and pushed our shoes against each other each of us bracing like an Alpinist inching his way up a rock chimney my socks against her tennis shoes rather for my shoes were still on my workbench so far as I knew. I wondered if they had simply dumped Oscar in the pasture and if Dad would find him. Push hard Kip and brace your hands against the deck. I did so. How do you know when they ll turn over Peewee I haven t been unconscious they just tripped me and carried me inside so I know when we took off. If we assume that the Moon is their destination as it probably is and if we assume one gravity the whole jump which can t be far off my weight feels normal. Doesn t yours I considered it. I think so. Then it probably is even though my own sense of weight may be distorted from being on the Moon. If those assumptions are correct then it is almost exactly a three and a half hour trip and Peewee looked at her watch. E.T.A. should be nine thirty in the morning and turn over at seven forty five. Any moment now. Is it that late I looked at my watch. Why I ve got a quarter of two. You re on your zone time. I m on Moon time Greenwich time that is. Oh oh Here we go The floor tilted swerved and swooped like a roller coaster and my semicircular canals did a samba. Things steadied down as I pulled out of acute dizziness. You all right asked Peewee. I managed to focus my eyes. Uh I think so. It felt like a one and a half gainer into a dry pool. This pilot does it faster than I dared to. It doesn t really hurt after your eyes uncross. But that settles it. We re headed for the Moon. We ll be there in an hour and three quarters. I still couldn t believe it. Peewee What kind of a ship can gun at one gee all the way to the Moon They been keeping it secret And what were you doing on the Moon anyhow And why were you stealing a ship She sighed and spoke to her doll. He s a quiz kid Madame Pompadour. Kip how can I answer three questions at once This is a flying saucer and Flying saucer Now I ve heard everything. It s rude to interrupt. Call it anything you like there s nothing official about the term. Actually it s shaped more like a loaf of pumpernickel an oblate spheroid. That s a shape defined I know what an oblate spheroid is I snapped. I was tired and upset from too many things from a cranky air conditioner that had ruined a good pair of pants to being knocked out while on an errand of mercy. Not to mention Ace Quiggle. I was beginning to think that little girls who were geniuses ought to have the grace not to show it. No need to be brisk she said reprovingly. I am aware that people have called everything from weather balloons to street lights flying saucers. But it is my considered opinion by Occam s Razor that Whose razor Occam s. Least hypothesis. Don t you know anything about logic Not much. Well ... I suspected that about every five hundredth saucer sighting was a ship like this. It adds up. As for what I was doing on the Moon She stopped and grinned. I m a pest. I didn t argue it. A long time ago when my Daddy was a boy the Hayden Planetarium took reservations for trips to the Moon. It was just a publicity gag like that silly soap contest recently but Daddy got his name on the list. Now years and years later they are letting people go to the Moon and sure enough the Hayden people turned the list over to American Express and American Express notified the applicants they could locate that theywould be given preference. So your father took you to the Moon Oh heavens no Daddy filled out that form when he was only a boy. Now he is just about the biggest man at the Institute for Advanced Study and hasn t time for such pleasures. And Mama wouldn t go if you paid her. So I said I would. Daddy said No and Mama said Good gracious no . . . and so I went. I can be an awful nuisance when I put my mind on it she said proudly. I have talent for it. Daddy says I m an amoral little wretch. Uh do you suppose he might be right Oh I m sure he is. He understands me whereas Mama throws up her hands and says she can t cope. I was perfectly beastly and unbearable for two whole weeks and at last Daddy said For Blank s sake let her go maybe we ll collect her insurance So I did. Mmmmm . . . that still doesn t explain why you are here. Oh that. I was poking around where I shouldn t doing things they told us not to. I always get around it s very educational. So they grabbed me. They would rather have Daddy but they hope to swap me for him. I couldn t let that happen so I had to escape. I muttered The butler did it. What Your story has as many holes as the last chapter of most whodunits. Oh. But I assure you it is the simple oh oh here we go again All that happened was that the lighting changed from white to blue. There weren t any light fixtures the whole ceiling glowed. We were still sprawled on the floor. I started to get up and found I couldn t. I felt as if I had just finished a cross country race too weak to do anything but breathe. Blue light can t do that it s merely wavelengths 4300 to 5100 angstroms and sunlight is loaded with it. But whatever they used with the blue light made us as limp as wet string. Peewee was struggling to tell me something. If . . . they re coming for us ... don t resist . . . and . . . above all The blue light changed to white. The narrow wall started to slide aside. Peewee looked scared and made a great effort. above all ... don t antagonize . . . him. Two men came in shoved Peewee aside strapped my wrists and ankles and ran another strap around my middle binding my arms. I started to come out of it not like flipping a switch as I still didn t have energy enough to lick a stamp. I wanted to bash their heads but I stood as much chance as a butterfly has of hefting a bar bell. They carried me out. I started to protest. Say where are you guys taking me What do you think you re doing I ll have you arrested. I ll Shaddap said one. He was a skinny runt fifty or older and looked as if he never smiled. The other was fat and younger with a petulant babyish mouth and a dimple in his chin he looked as if he could laugh if he weren t worried. He was worrying now. Tim this can get us in trouble. We ought to space him we ought to space both of em and tell him it was an accident. We can say they got out and tried to escape through the lock. He won t know the dif Shaddap answered Tim with no inflection. He added You want trouble with him You want to chew space But Shaddap. They carried me around a curved corridor into an inner room and dumped me on the floor. I was face up but it took time to realize this must be the control room. It didn t look like anything any human would design as a control room which wasn t surprising as no human had. Then I saw him. Peewee needn t have warned me I didn t want to antagonize him. The little guy was tough and dangerous the fat guy was mean and murderous they were cherubs compared with him. If I had had my strength I would have fought those two any way they liked I don t think I m too afraid of any human as long as the odds aren t impossible. But not him. He wasn t human but that wasn t what hurt. Elephants aren t human but they are very nice people. He was built more like a human than an elephant is but that was no help I mean he stood erect and had feet at one end and a head at the other. He was no more than five feet tall but that didn t help either he dominated us the way a man dominates a horse. The torso part was as long as mine his shortness came from very squat legs with feet I guess you would call them feet which bulged out almost disc like. They made squashy sucking sounds when he moved. When he stood still a tail or third leg extruded and turned him into a tripod he didn t need to sit down and I doubt if he could. Short legs did not make him slow. His movements were blurringly fast like a striking snake. Does this mean a better nervous system and more efficient muscles Or a native planet with higher gravity His arms looked like snakes they had more joints than ours. He had two sets one pair where his waist should have been and another set under his head. No shoulders. I couldn t count his fingers or digit tendrils they never held still. He wasn t dressed except for a belt below and above the middle arms which carried whatever such a thing carries in place of money and keys. His skin was purplish brown and looked oily. Whatever he was he was not the same race as the Mother Thing. He had a faint sweetish musky odor. Any crowded room smells worse on a hot day but if I ever whiff that odor again my skin will crawl and I ll be tongue tied with fright. I didn t take in these details instantly at first all I could see was his face. A face is all I can call it. I haven t described it yet because I m afraid I ll get the shakes. But I will so that if you ever see one you ll shoot first before your bones turn to jelly. No nose. He was an oxygen breather but where the air went in and out I couldn t say some of it through the mouth for he could talk. The mouth was the second worst part of him in place of jawbone and chin he had mandibles that opened sideways as well as down gaping in three irregular sides. There were rows of tiny teeth but no tongue that I could see instead the mouth was rimmed with cilia as long as angleworms. They never stopped squirming. I said the mouth was second worst he had eyes. They were big and bulging and protected by horny ridges two on the front of his head set wide apart. They scanned. They scanned like radar swinging up and down and back and forth. He never looked at you and yet was always looking at you. When he turned around I saw a third eye in back. I think he scanned his whole surroundings at all times like a radar warning system. What kind of brain can put together everything in all directions at once I doubt if a human brain could even if there were any way to feed in the data. He didn t seem to have room in his head to stack much of a brain but maybe he didn t keep it there. Come to think of it humans wear their brains in an exposed position there may be better ways. But he certainly had a brain. He pinned me down like a beetle and squeezed out what he wanted. He didn t have to stop to brainwash me he questioned and I gave for an endless time it seemed more like days than hours. He spoke English badly but understandably. His labials were all alike buy and pie and vie sounded the same. His gutturals were harsh and his dentals had a clucking quality. But I could usually understand and when I didn t he didn t threaten or punish he just tried again. He had no expression in his speech. He kept at it until he had found out who I was and what I did and as much of what I knew as interested him. He asked questions about how I happened to be where I was and dressed the way I was when I was picked up. I couldn t tell whether he liked the answers or not. He had trouble understanding what a soda jerk was and while he learned about the Skyway Soap contest he never seemed to understand why it took place. But I found that there were a lot of things I didn t know either such as how many people there are on Earth and how many tons of protein we produce each year. After endless time he had all he wanted and said Take it out. The stooges had been waiting. The fat boy gulped and said Space him He acted as if killing me or not were like saving a piece of string. No. It is ignorant and untrained but I may have use for it later. Put it back in the pen. Yes boss. They dragged me out. In the corridor Fatty said Let s untie his feet and make him walk. Skinny said Shaddap. Peewee was just inside the entrance panel but didn t move so I guess she had had another dose of that blue light effect. They stepped over her and dumped me. Skinny chopped me on the side of the neck to stun me. When I came to they were gone I was unstrapped and Peewee was sitting by me. She said anxiously Pretty bad Uh yeah I agreed and shivered. I feel ninety years old. It helps if you don t look at him especially his eyes. Rest a while and you ll feel better. She glanced at her watch. It s only forty five minutes till we land. You probably won t be disturbed before then. Huh I sat up. I was in there only an hour A little less. But it seems forever. I know. I feel like a squeezed orange. I frowned remembering something. Peewee I wasn t too scared when they came for me. I was going to demand to be turned loose and insist on explanations. But I never asked him a question not one. You never will. I tried. But your will just drains out. Like a rabbit in front of a snake. Yes. Kip do you see why I had to take just any chance to get away You didn t seem to believe my story do you believe it now Uh yes. I believe it. Thanks. I always say I m too proud to care what people think but I m not really. I had to get back to Daddy and tell him . . . because he s the only one in the entire world who would simply believe me no matter how crazy it sounded. I see. I guess I see. But how did you happen to wind up in Centerville Centerville Where I live. Where Junebug called Peewee. Oh. I never meant to go there. I meant to land in New Jersey in Princeton if possible because I had to find Daddy. Well you sure missed your aim. Can you do better I would have done all right but I had my elbow joggled. Those things aren t hard to fly you just aim and push for where you want to go not like the complicated things they do about rocket ships. And I had the Mother Thing to coach me. But I had to slow down going into the atmosphere and compensate for Earth s spin and I didn t know quite how. I found myself too far west and they were chasing me and I didn t know what to do ... and then I heard you on the space operations band and thought everything was all right and there I was. She spread her hands. I m sorry Kip. Well you landed it. They say any landing you walk away from is a good one. But I m sorry I got you mixed up in it. Uh . . . don t worry about that. It looks like somebody has to get mixed up in it. Peewee . . . what s he up to They you mean. Huh I don t think the other two amount to anything. He is the one. I didn t mean Tim and Jock they re just people gone bad. I meant them him and others like him. I wasn t at my sharpest I had been knocked out three times and was shy a night s sleep and more confusing things had happened than in all my life. but until Peewee pointed it out I hadn t considered that there could be more than one like him one seemed more than enough. But if there was one then there were thousands maybe millions or billions. I felt my stomach twist and wanted to hide. You ve seen others No. Just him. But the Mother Thing told me. Ugh Peewee . . . what are they up to Haven t you guessed They re moving in on us. My collar felt tight even though it was open. How I don t know. You mean they re going to kill us off and take over Earth She hesitated. It might not be anything that nice. Uh . . . make slaves of us You re getting warmer. Kip I think they eat meat. I swallowed. You have the jolliest ideas for a little girl. You think I like it That s why I had to tell Daddy. There didn t seem to be anything to say. It was an old old fear for human beings. Dad had told me about an invasion from Mars radio broadcast when he was a kid pure fiction but it had scared people silly. But people didn t believe in it now ever since we got to the Moon and circled Mars and Venus everybody seemed to agree that we weren t going to find life anywhere. Now here it was in our laps. Peewee Are these things Martians Or from Venus She shook her head. They re not from anywhere close. The Mother Thing tried to tell me but we ran into a difficulty of understanding. Inside the Solar System That was part of the difficulty. Both yes and no. It can t be both. You ask her. I d like to. I hesitated then blurted I don t care where they re from we can shoot them down ... if we don t have to look at them Oh I hope so It figures. You say these are flying saucers . . . real saucer sightings I mean not weather balloons. If so they have been scouting us for years. Therefore they aren t sure of themselves even if they do look horrible enough to curdle milk. Otherwise they would have moved in at once the way we would on a bunch of animals. But they haven t. That means we can kill them if we go about it right. She nodded eagerly. I hope so. I hoped Daddy would see a way. But She frowned. we don t know much about them . . . and Daddy always warned me not to be cocksure when data was incomplete. Don t make so much stew from one oyster Peewee he always says. But I ll bet we re right. Say who is your Daddy And what s your full name Why Daddy is Professor Reisfeld. And my name is Patricia Wynant Reisfeld. Isn t that awful Better call me Peewee. Professor Reisfeld What does he teach Huh You don t know You don t know about Daddy s Nobel Prize Or anything I m just a country boy Peewee. Sorry. You must be. Daddy doesn t teach anything. He thinks. He thinks better than anybody . . . except me possibly. He s the synthesist. Everybody else specializes. Daddy knows everything and puts the pieces together. Maybe so but I hadn t heard of him. It sounded like a good idea . . . but it would take an awfully smart man if I had found out anything it was that they could print it faster than I could study it. Professor Reisfeld must have three heads. Five. Wait till you meet him she added glancing at her watch. Kip I think we had better get braced. We ll be landing in a few minutes . . . and he won t care how he shakes up passengers. So we crowded into the narrow end and braced each other. We waited. After a bit the ship shook itself and the floor tilted. There was a slight bump and things got steady and suddenly I felt very light. Peewee pulled her feet under her and stood up. Well we re on the Moon. Chapter 5 When I was a kid we used to pretend we were making the first landing on the Moon. Then I gave up romantic notions and realized that I would have to go about it another way. But I never thought I would get there penned up unable to see out like a mouse in a shoe box. The only thing that proved I was on the Moon was my weight. High gravity can be managed anywhere with centrifuges. Low gravity is another matter on Earth the most you can squeeze out is a few seconds going off a high board or by parachute delay or stunts in a plane. If low gravity goes on and on then wherever you are you are not on Earth. Well I wasn t on Mars it had to be the Moon. On the Moon I should weigh a little over twenty five pounds. It felt about so I felt light enough to walk on a lawn and not bend the grass. For a few minutes I simply exulted in it forgetting him and the trouble we were in just heel and toe around the room getting the wonderful feel of it bouncing a little and bumping my head against the ceiling and feeling how slowly slowly slowly I settled back to the floor. Peewee sat down shrugged her shoulders and gave a little smile an annoyingly patronizing one. The Old Moon Hand all of two weeks more of it than I had had. Low gravity has its disconcerting tricks. Your feet have hardly any traction and they fly out from under you. I had to learn with muscles and reflexes what I had known only intellectually: that when weight goes down mass and inertia do not. To change direction even in walking you have to lean the way you would to round a turn on a board track and even then if you don t have traction which I didn t in socks on a smooth floor your feet go out from under you. A fall doesn t hurt much in one sixth gravity but Peewee giggled. I sat up and said Go and laugh smartie. You can afford to you ve got tennis shoes. I m sorry. But you looked silly hanging there like a slow motion picture and grabbing air. No doubt. Very funny. I said I was sorry. Look you can borrow my shoes. I looked at her feet then at mine and snorted. Gee thanks Well . . . you could cut the heels out or something. It wouldn t bother me. Nothing ever does. Where are your shoes. Kip Uh about a quarter million miles away unless we got off at the wrong stop. Oh. Well you won t need them much here. Yeah. I chewed my lip thinking about here and no longer interested in games with gravity. Peewee What do we do now About what About him. Nothing. What can we do Then what do we do Sleep. Huh Sleep. Sleep that knits up the ravell d sleave of care. Tired Nature s sweet restorer balmy sleep. Blessings on him who invented sleep the mantle that covers all human thoughts. Quit showing off and talk sense I am talking sense. At the moment we re as helpless as goldfish. We re simply trying to survive and the first principle of survival is not to worry about the impossible and concentrate on what s possible. I m hungry and thirsty and uncomfortable and very very tired . . . and all I can do about it is sleep. So if you will kindly keep quiet that s what I ll do. I can take a hint. No need to snap at me. I m sorry. But I get cross as two sticks when I m tired and Daddy says I m simply frightful before breakfast. She curled up in a little ball and tucked that filthy rag doll under her chin. G night Kip. Good night Peewee. I thought of something and started to speak . . . and saw that she was asleep. She was breathing softly and her face had smoothed out and no longer looked alert and smart alecky. Her upper lip pooched out in a baby pout and she looked like a dirty faced cherub. There were streaks where she had apparently cried and not wiped it away. But she had never let me see her crying. Kip I said to myself you get yourself into the darndest things this is much worse than bringing home a stray pup or a kitten. But I had to take care of her ... or die trying. Well maybe I would. Die trying I mean. It didn t look as if I were any great shakes even taking care of myself. I yawned then yawned again. Maybe the shrimp had more sense than I had at that. I was more tired than I had ever been and hungry and thirsty and not comfortable other ways. I thought about banging on the door panel and trying to attract the fat one or his skinny partner. But that would wake Peewee and it might antagonize him. So I sprawled on my back the way I nap on the living room rug at home. I found that a hard floor does not require any one sleeping position on the Moon one sixth gravity is a better mattress than all the foam rubber ever made that fussy princess in Hans Christian Andersen s story would have had no complaints. I want to sleep at once. It was the wildest space opera I had ever seen loaded with dragons and Arcturian maidens and knights in shining space armor and shuttling between King Arthur s Court and the Dead Sea Bottoms of Barsoom. I didn t mind that but I did mind the announcer. He had the voice of Ace Quiggle and the face of him. He leaned out of the screen and leered those wormy cilia writhing. Will Beowulf conquer the Dragon Will Tristan return to Iseult Will Peewee find her dolly Tune in this channel tomorrow night and in the meantime wake up and hurry to your neighborhood druggist for a cake of Skyway s Kwikbrite Armor Polish the better polish used by the better knights sans peur et sans reproche. Wake up He shoved a snaky arm out of the screen and grabbed my shoulder. I woke up. Wake up Peewee was saying shaking my shoulder. Please wake up Kip. Lea me alone You were having a nightmare. The Arcturian princess had been in a bad spot. Now I ll never know how it came out. Wha did y want to wake me for I thought the idea was to sleep You ve slept for hours and now perhaps there is something we can do. Breakfast maybe She ignored that. I think we should try to escape. I sat up suddenly bounced off the floor settled back. Wups How I don t know exactly. But I think they have gone away and left us. If so we ll never have a better chance. They have What makes you think so Listen. Listen hard. I listened. I could hear my heart beat I could hear Peewee breathing and presently I could hear her heart beating. I ve never heard deeper silence in a cave. I took my knife held it in my teeth for bone conduction and pushed it against a wall. Nothing. I tried the floor and the other walls. Still nothing. The ship ached with silence no throb no thump not even those vibrations you can sense but not hear. You re right Peewee. I noticed it when the air circulation stopped. I sniffed. Are we running out of air Not right away. But the air stopped it comes out of those tiny holes up there. You don t notice it but I missed something when it stopped. I thought hard. I don t see where this gets us. We re still locked up. I m not sure. I tried the blade of my knife on a wall. It wasn t metal or anything I knew as plastic but it didn t mind a knife. Maybe the Comte de Monte Cristo could have dug a hole in it but he had more time. How do you figure Every time they ve opened or closed that door panel I ve heard a click. So after they took you out I stuck a wad of bubble gum where the panel meets the wall high up where they might not notice. You ve got some gum Yes. It helps when you can t get a drink of water. I Got any more I asked eagerly. I wasn t fresh in any way but thirst was the worst I d never been so thirsty. Peewee looked upset. Oh poor Kip I haven t any more . . . just an old wad I kept parked on my belt buckle and chewed when I felt driest. She frowned. But you can have it. You re welcome. Uh thanks Peewee. Thanks a lot. But I guess not. She looked insulted. I assure you Mr. Russell that I do not have anything contagious. I was merely trying to Yes yes I said hastily. I m sure you were. But I assumed that these were emergency conditions. It is surely no more unsanitary than kissing a girl but then I don t suppose you ve ever kissed a girl Not lately I evaded. But what I want is a drink of clear cold water or murky warm water. Besides you used up your gum on the door panel. What did you expect to accomplish Oh. I told you about that click. Daddy says that in a dilemma it is helpful to change any variable then reexamine the problem. I tried to introduce a change with my bubble gum. Well When they brought you back then closed the door I didn t hear a click. What Then you thought you had bamboozled their lock hours and hour ago and you didn t tell me That is correct. Why I ought to spank you I don t advise it she said frostily. I bite. I believed her. And scratch. And other things. None of them pleasant. I changed the subject. Why didn t you tell me Peewee I was afraid you might try to get out. Huh I certainly would have Precisely. But I wanted that panel closed ... as long as he was out there. Maybe she was a genius. Compared with me. I see your point. All right let s see if we can get it open. I examined the panel. The wad of gum was there up high as she could reach and from the way it was mashed it did seem possible that it had fouled the groove the panel slid into but I couldn t see any crack down the edge. I tried the point of my big blade on it. The panel seemed to creep to the right an eighth of an inch then the blade broke. I closed the stub and put the knife away. Any ideas Maybe if we put our hands flat against it and tried to drag it Okay. I wiped sweat from my hands on my shirt. Now . . . easy does it. Just enough pressure for friction. The panel slid to the right almost an inch and stopped firmly. But there was a hairline crack from floor to ceiling. I broke off the stub of the big blade this time. The crack was no wider. Peewee said Oh dear We aren t licked. I backed off and ran toward the door. Toward not to my feet skidded I leveled off and did a leisurely bellywhopper. Peewee didn t laugh. I picked myself up got against the far wall braced one foot against it and tried a swimming racing start. I got as far as the door panel before losing my footing. I didn t hit it very hard but I felt it spring. It bulged a little then sprang back. Wait a sec Kip said Peewee. Take your socks off. I ll get behind you and push my tennis shoes don t slip. She was right. On the Moon if you can t get rubber soled shoes you re better off barefooted. We backed against the far wall Peewee behind me with her hands on my hips. One . . . two . . . three . . . Go We advanced with the grace of a hippopotamus. I hurt my shoulder. But the panel sprung out of its track leaving a space four inches wide at the bottom and tapering to the top. I left skin on the door frame and tore my shirt and was hampered in language by the presence of a girl. But the opening widened. When it was wide enough for my head I got down flat and peered out. There was nobody in sight a foregone conclusion with the noise I had made unless they were playing cat and mouse. Which I wouldn t put past them. Especially him. Peewee started to wiggle through I dragged her back. Naughty naughty I go first. Two more heaves and it was wide enough for me. I opened the small blade of my knife and handed it to Peewee. With your shield or on it soldier. You take it. I won t need it. Two Fisted Death they call me around dark alleys. This was propaganda but why worry her Sans pew et sans reproche maiden rescuing done cheaply special rates for parties. I eased out on elbows and knees stood up and looked around. Come on out I said quietly. She started to then backed up suddenly. She reappeared clutching that bedraggled dolly. I almost forgot Madame Pompadour she said breathlessly. I didn t even smile. Well she said defensively I have to have her to get to sleep at night. It s my one neurotic quirk but Daddy says I ll outgrow it. Sure sure. Well don t look so smug It s not fetishism not even primitive animism it s merely a conditioned reflex. I m aware that it s just a doll I ve understood the pathetic fallacy for ... oh years and years Look Peewee I said earnestly I don t care how you get to sleep. Personally I hit myself over the head with a hammer. But quit yakking. Do you know the layout of these ships She looked around. I think this is the ship that chased me. But it looks the same as the one I piloted. All right. Should we head for the control room Huh You flew the other heap. Can you fly this one Unh ... I guess so. Yes I can. Then let s go. I started in the direction they had lugged me. But the other time I had the Mother Thing to tell me what to do Let s find her. I stopped. Can you get it off the ground Well . . . yes. We ll look for her after we re in the air in space I mean. If she s aboard we ll find her. If she s not there s not a thing we can do. Well ... all right. I see your logic I don t have to like it. She tagged along. Kip How many gravities can you stand Huh I haven t the slightest idea. Why Because these things can go lots faster than I dared try when I escaped before. That was my mistake. Your mistake was in heading for New Jersey. But I had to find Daddy Sure sure eventually. But you should have ducked over to Lunar Base and yelled for the Federation Space Corps. This is no job for a popgun we need help. Any idea where we are Mmm . . . I think so. If he took us back to their base. I ll know when I look at the sky. All right. If you can figure out where Lunar Base is from here that s where we ll go. If not Well we ll head for New Jersey at all the push it has. The control room door latched and I could not figure out how to open it. Peewee did what she said should work which was to tuck her little finger into a hole mine would not enter and told me it must be locked. So I looked around. I found a metal bar racked in the corridor a thing about five feet long pointed on one end and with four handles like brass knucks on the other. I didn t know what it was the hobgoblin equivalent of a fire ax possibly but it was a fine wrecking bar. I made a shambles of that door in three minutes. We went in. My first feeling was gooseflesh because here was where I had been grilled by him. I tried not to show it. If he turned up I was going to let him have his wrecking bar right between his grisly eyes. I looked around really seeing the place for the first time. There was sort of a nest in the middle surrounded by what could have been a very fancy coffee maker or a velocipede for an octopus I was glad Peewee knew which button to push. How do you see out Like this. Peewee squeezed past and put a finger into a hole I hadn t noticed. The ceiling was hemispherical like a planetarium. Which was what it was for it lighted up. I gasped. It was suddenly not a floor we were on but a platform apparently out in the open and maybe thirty feet in the air. Over me were star images thousands of them in a black sky and facing toward me big as a dozen full moons and green and lovely and beautiful was Earth Peewee touched my elbow. Snap out of it Kip. I said in a choked voice Peewee don t you have any poetry in your soul Surely I have. Oodles. But we haven t time. I know where we are Kip back where I started from. Their base. See those rocks with long jagged shadows Some of them are ships camouflaged. And over to the left that high peak with the saddle a little farther left almost due west is Tombaugh Station forty miles away. About two hundred miles farther is Lunar Base and beyond is Luna City. How long will it take Two hundred nearly two hundred and fifty miles Uh I ve never tried a point to point on the Moon but it shouldn t take more than a few minutes. Let s go They might come back any minute. Yes Kip. She crawled into that jackdaw s nest and bent over a sector. Presently she looked up. Her face was white and thin and very little girlish. Kip ... we aren t going anywhere. I m sorry. I let out a yelp. What What s the matter Have you forgotten how to run it No. The brain is gone. The which The brain. Little black dingus about the size of a walnut that fits in this cavity. She showed me. We got away before because the Mother Thing managed to steal one. We were locked in an empty ship just as you and I are now. But she had one and we got away. Peewee looked bleak and very lost. I should have known that he wouldn t leave one in the control room I guess I did and didn t want to admit it. I m sorry. Uh . . . look Peewee we won t give up that easily. Maybe I can make something to fit that socket. Like jumping wires in a car She shook her head. It s not that simple. Kip. If you put a wooden model in place of the generator in a car would it run I don t know quite what it does but I called it the brain because it s very complex. But I shut up. If a Borneo savage had a brand new car complete except for spark plugs would he get it running Echo answers mournfully. Peewee what s the next best thing Any ideas Because if you haven t I want you to show me the air lock. I ll take this I shook my wrecking bar and bash anything that comes through. I m stumped she admitted. I want to look for the Mother Thing. If she s shut up in this ship she may know what to do. All right. But first show me the air lock. You can look for her while I stand guard. I felt the reckless anger of desperation. I didn t see how we were ever going to get out and I was beginning to believe that we weren t but there was still a reckoning due. He was going to learn that it wasn t safe to push people around. I was sure I was fairly sure that I could sock him before my spine turned to jelly. Splash that repulsive head. If I didn t look at his eyes. Peewee said slowly There s one other thing What I hate to suggest it. You might think I was running out on you. Don t be silly. If you ve got an idea spill it. Well . . . there s Tombaugh Station over that way about forty miles. If my space suit is in the ship I suddenly quit feeling like Bowie at the Alamo. Maybe the game would go an extra period We can walk it She shook her head. No Kip. That s why I hesitated to mention it. I can walk it ... if we find my suit. But you couldn t wear my suit even if you squatted. I don t need your suit I said impatiently. Kip Kip This is the Moon remember No air. Yes yes sure Think I m an idiot But if they locked up your suit they probably put mine right beside it and You ve got a space suit she said incredulously. Our next remarks were too confused to repeat but finally Peewee was convinced that I really did own a space suit that in fact the only reason I was sending on the space operations band twelve hours and a quarter of a million miles back was that I was wearing it when they grabbed me. Let s tear the joint apart I said. No show me that air lock then you take it apart. All right. She showed me the lock a room much like the one we had been cooped in but smaller and with an inner door built to take a pressure load. It was not locked. We opened it cautiously. It was empty and its outer door was closed or we would never been able to open the inner. I said If Wormface had been a suspenders and belt man he would have left the outer door open even though he had us locked up. Then Wait a second Is there a way to latch the inner door open I don t know. We ll see. There was a simple hook. But to make sure that it couldn t be unlatched by button pushing from outside I wedged it with my knife. You re sure this is the only air lock The other ship had only one and I m pretty certain they are alike. We ll keep our eyes open. Nobody can get at us through this one. Even old Wormface has to use an air lock. But suppose he opens the outer door anyhow Peewee said nervously. We d pop like balloons. I looked at her and grinned. Who is a genius Sure we would ... if he did. But he won t. Not with twenty twenty five tons of pressure holding it closed. As you reminded me this is the Moon. No air outside remember Oh. Peewee looked sheepish. So we searched. I enjoyed wrecking doors Wormface wasn t going to like me. One of the first things we found was a smelly little hole that Fatty and Skinny lived in. The door was not locked which was a shame. That room told me a lot about that pair. It showed that they were pigs with habits as unattractive as their morals. The room also told me that they were not casual prisoners it had been refitted for humans. Their relationship with Wormface whatever it was had gone on for some time and was continuing. There were two empty racks for space suits several dozen canned rations of the sort sold in military surplus stores and best of all there was drinking water and a washroom of sorts and something more precious than fine gold or frankincense if we found our suits: two charged bottles of oxy helium. I took a drink opened a can of food for Peewee it opened with a key we weren t in the predicament of the Three Men in a Boat with their tin of pineapple told her to grab a bite then search that room. I went on with my giant toad sticker those charged air bottles had given me an unbearable itch to find our suits and get out before Wormface returned. I smashed a dozen doors as fast as the Walrus and the Carpenter opened oysters and found all sorts of things including what must have been living quarters for wormfaces. But I didn t stop to look the Space Corps could do that if and when I simply made sure that there was not a space suit in any of them. And found them in a compartment next to the one we had been prisoners in. I was so glad to see Oscar that I could have kissed him. I shouted Hi Pal Mirabile visu and ran to get Peewee. My feet went out from under me again but I didn t care. Peewee looked up as I rushed in. I was just going to look for you. Got it Got it You found the Mother Thing she said eagerly. Huh No no The space suits yours and mine Let s go Oh. She looked disappointed and I felt hurt. That s good ... but we have to find the Mother Thing first. I felt tried beyond endurance. Here we had a chance slim but real to escape a fate worse than death I m not using a figure of speech and she wanted to hang around to search for a bug eyed monster. For any human being even a stranger with halitosis I would have done it. For a dog or cat I would although reluctantly. But what was a bug eyed monster to me All this one had done was to get me into the worst jam I had ever been in. I considered socking Peewee and stuffing her into her suit. But I said Are you crazy We re leaving right now We can t go till we find her. Now I know you re crazy. We don t even know she s here . . . and if we do find her we can t take her with us. Oh but we will How This is the Moon remember No air. Got a space suit for her But That stonkered her. But not for long. She had been sitting on the floor holding the ration can between her knees. She stood up suddenly bouncing a little and said Do as you like I m going to find her. Here. She shoved the can at me. I should have used force. But I am handicapped by training from early childhood never to strike a female no matter how richly she deserves it. So the opportunity and Peewee both slid past while I was torn between common sense and upbringing. I simply groaned helplessly. Then I became aware of an unbearably attractive odor. I was holding that can. It contained boiled shoe leather and gray gravy and smelled ambrosial. Peewee had eaten half I ate the rest while looking at what she had found. There was a coil of nylon rope which I happily put with the air bottles Oscar had fifty feet of clothesline clipped to his belt but that had been a penny saving expedient. There was a prospector s hammer which I salvaged and two batteries which would do for headlamps and things. The only other items of interest were a Government Printing Office publication titled Preliminary Report on Selenology a pamphlet on uranium prospecting and an expired Utah driver s license for Timothy Johnson I recognized the older man s mean face. The pamphlets interested me but this was no time for excess baggage. The main furniture was two beds curved like contour chairs and deeply padded they told me that Skinny and Fatty had ridden this ship at high acceleration. When I had mopped the last of the gravy with a finger I took a big drink washed my hands using water lavishly because I didn t care if that pair died of thirst grabbed my plunder and headed for the room where the space suits were. As I got there I ran into Peewee. She was carrying the crowbar and looking overjoyed. I found her Where Come on I can t get it open I m not strong enough. I put the stuff with our suits and followed her. She stopped at a door panel farther along the corridor than my vandalism had taken me. In there I looked and I listened. What makes you think so I know Open it I shrugged and got to work with the nutpick. The panel went sprung and that was that. Curled up in the middle of the floor was a creature. So far as I could tell it might or might not have been the one I had seen in the pasture the night before. The light had been poor the conditions very different and my examination had ended abruptly. But Peewee was in no doubt. She launched herself through the air with a squeal of joy and the two rolled over and over like kittens play fighting. Peewee was making sounds of joy more or less in English. So was the Mother Thing but not in English. I would not have been surprised if she had spoken English since Wormface did and since Peewee had mentioned things the Mother Thing had told her. But she didn t. Did you ever listen to a mockingbird Sometimes singing melodies sometimes just sending up a joyous noise unto the Lord The endlessly varied songs of a mockingbird are nearest to the speech of the Mother Thing. At last they held still more or less and Peewee said Oh Mother Thing I m so happy The creature sang to her. Peewee answered Oh. I m forgetting my manners. Mother Thing this is my dear friend Kip. The Mother Thing sang to me and I understood. What she said was: I am very happy to know you Kip. It didn t come out in words. But it might as well have been English. Nor was this half kidding self deception such as my conversations with Oscar or Peewee s with Madame Pompadour when I talk with Oscar I am both sides of the conversation it s just my conscious talking to my subconscious or some such. This was not that. The Mother Thing sang to me and I understood. I was startled but not unbelieving. When you see a rainbow you don t stop to argue the laws of optics. There it is in the sky. I would have been an idiot not to know that the Mother Thing was speaking to me because I did understand and understood her every time. If she directed a remark at Peewee alone it was usually just birdsongs to me but if it was meant for me I got it. Call it telepathy if you like although it doesn t seem to be what they do at Duke University. I never read her mind and I don t think she read mine. We just talked. But while I was startled I minded my manners. I felt the way I do when Mother introduces me to one of her older grande dame friends. So I bowed and said We re very happy that we ve found you Mother Thing. It was simple humble truth. I knew without explanation what it was that had made Peewee stubbornly determined to risk recapture rather than give up looking for her the quality that made her the Mother Thing. Peewee has this habit of slapping names on things and her choices aren t always apt for my taste. But I ll never question this one. The Mother Thing was the Mother Thing because she was. Around her you felt happy and safe and warm. You knew that if you skinned your knee and came bawling into the house she would kiss it well and paint it with merthiolate and everything would be all right. Some nurses have it and some teachers . . . and sadly some mothers don t. But the Mother Thing had it so strongly that I wasn t even worried by Wormface. We had her with us so everything was going to be all right. I logically I knew that she was as vulnerable as we were I had seen them strike her down. She didn t have my size and strength she couldn t pilot the ship as Peewee had been able to. It didn t matter. I wanted to crawl into her lap. Since she was too small and didn t have a lap I would gratefully hold her in mine anytime. I have talked more about my father but that doesn t mean that Mother is less important just different. Dad is active Mother is passive Dad talks Mother doesn t. But if she died Dad would wither like an uprooted tree. She makes our world. The Mother Thing had the effect on me that Mother has only I m used to it from Mother. Now I was getting it unexpectedly far from home when I needed it. Peewee said excitedly Now we can go. Kip. Let s hurry The Mother Thing sang Where are we going children To Tombaugh Station Mother Thing. They ll help us. The Mother Thing blinked her eyes and looked serenely sad. She had great soft compassionate eyes she looked more like a lemur than anything else but she was not a primate she wasn t even in our sequence unearthly. But she had these wonderful eyes and a soft defenseless mouth out of which music poured. She wasn t as big as Peewee and her hands were tinier still six fingers any one of which could oppose the others the way our thumbs can. Her body well it never stayed the same shape so it s hard to describe but it was right for her. She didn t wear clothes but she wasn t naked she had soft creamy fur sleek and fine as chinchilla. I thought at first she didn t wear anything but presently I noticed a piece of jewelry a shiny triangle with a double spiral in each corner. I don t know what made it stick on. I didn t take all this in at once. At that instant the expression in the Mother Thing s eyes brought a crash of sorrow into the happiness I had been feeling. Her answer made me realize that she didn t have a miracle ready How are we to fly the ship They have guarded me most carefully this time. Peewee explained eagerly about the space suits and I stood there like a fool with a lump of ice in my stomach. What had been just a question of using my greater strength to force Peewee to behave was now an unsolvable dilemma. I could no more abandon the Mother Thing than I could have abandoned Peewee . . . and there were only two space suits. Even if she could wear our sort which looked as practical as roller skates on a snake. The Mother Thing gently pointed out that her own vacuum gear had been destroyed. I m going to quit writing down all her songs I don t remember them exactly anyhow. And so the fight began. It was an odd fight with the Mother Thing gentle and loving and sensible and utterly firm and Peewee throwing a tearful bad little girl tantrum and me standing miserably by not even refereeing. When the Mother Thing understood the situation she analyzed it at once to the inevitable answer. Since she had no way to go and probably couldn t have walked that far anyhow even if she had had her sort of space suit the only answer was for us two to leave at once. If we reached safety then we would if possible convince our people of the danger from Wormface Co. in which case she might be saved as well . . . which would be nice but was not indispensable. Peewee utterly flatly and absolutely refused to listen to any plan which called for leaving the Mother Thing behind. If the Mother Thing couldn t go she wouldn t budge. Kip You go get help Hurry I ll stay here. I stared at her. Peewee you know I can t do that. You must. You will so You ve got to. If you don t I ll . . . I ll never speak to you again If I did I d never speak to myself again. Look Peewee it won t wash. You ll have to go No Oh shut up for a change. You go and I stay and guard the door with the shillelagh. I ll hold em off while you round up the troops. But tell them to hurry I She stopped and looked very sober and utterly baffled. Then she threw herself on the Mother Thing sobbing: Oh you don t love me any more Which shows how far her logic had gone to pot. The Mother Thing sang softly to her while I worried the thought that our last chance was t trickling away while we argued. Wormface might come back any second and while I hoped to slug him a final one if he got in more likely he had resources to outmaneuver me. Either way we would not escape. At last I said Look we ll all go. Peewee stopped sobbing and looked startled. You know we can t. The Mother Thing sang How Kip Uh I ll have to show you. Up on your feet Peewee. We went where the suits were while Peewee carried Madame Pompadour and half carried the Mother Thing. Lars Eklund the rigger who had first worn Oscar according to his log must have weighed about two hundred pounds in order to wear Oscar I had to strap him tight to keep from bulging. I hadn t considered retailoring him to my size as I was afraid I would never get him gas tight again. Arm and leg lengths were okay it was girth that was too big. There was room inside for both the Mother Thing and me. I explained while Peewee looked big eyed and the Mother Thing sang queries and approvals. Yes she could hang on piggy back and she couldn t fall off once we were sealed up and the straps cinched. All right. Peewee get into your suit. I went to get my socks while she started to suit up. When I came back I checked her helmet gauges reading them backwards through her lens. We had better give you some air. You re only about half full. I ran into a snag. The spare bottles I had filched from those ghouls had screw thread fittings like mine but Peewee s bottles had bayonet and snap joints. Okay I guess for tourists chaperoned and nursed and who might get panicky while bottles were changed unless it was done fast but not so good for serious work. In my workshop I would have rigged an adapter in twenty minutes. Here with no real tools well that spare air might as well be on Earth for all the good it did Peewee. For the first time I thought seriously of leaving them behind while I made a fast forced march for help. But I didn t mention it. I thought that Peewee would rather die on the way than fall back into his hands and I was inclined to agree. Kid I said slowly that isn t much air. Not for forty miles. Her gauge was scaled in time as well as pressure it read just under five hours. Could Peewee move as fast as a trotting horse Even at lunar gravity Not likely. She looked at me soberly. That s calibrated for full size people. I m little I don t use much air. Uh . . . don t use it faster than you have to. I won t. Let s go. I started to close her gaskets. Hey she objected. What s the matter Madame Pompadour Hand her to me please. On the floor by my feet. I picked up that ridiculous dolly and gave it to her. How much air does she take Peewee suddenly dimpled. I ll caution her not to inhale. She stuffed it inside her shirt I sealed her up. I sat down in my open suit the Mother Thing crept up my back singing reassuringly and cuddled close. She felt good and I felt that I could hike a hundred miles to get them both safe. Getting me sealed in was cumbersome as the straps had to be let out and then tightened to allow for the Mother Thing and neither Peewee nor I had bare hands. We managed. I made a sling from my clothesline for the spare bottles. With them around my neck with Oscar s weight and the Mother Thing as well I scaled perhaps fifty pounds at the Moon s one sixth gee. It just made me fairly sure footed for the first time. I retrieved my knife from the air lock latch and snapped it to Oscar s belt beside the nylon rope and the prospector s hammer. Then we went inside the air lock and closed its inner door. I didn t know how to waste its air to the outside but Peewee did. It started to hiss out. You all right Mother Thing Yes Kip. She hugged me reassuringly. Peewee to Junebug I heard in my phones: radio check. Alfa Bravo Coca Delta Echo Foxtrot Junebug to Peewee: I read you. Golf Hotel India Juliette Kilo I read you Kip. Roger. Mind your pressure. Kip. You re swelling up too fast. I kicked the chin valve while watching the gauge and kicking myself for letting a little girl catch me in a greenhorn trick. But she had used a space suit before while I had merely pretended to. I decided this was no time to be proud. Peewee Give me all the tips you can. I m new to his. I will Kip. The outer door popped silently and swung inward and I looked out over the bleak bright surface of a lunar plain. For a homesick moment I remembered the trip to the Moon games I had played as a kid and wished I were back in Centerville. Then Peewee touched her helmet to mine. See anyone No. We re lucky the door faces away from the other ships. Listen carefully. We won t use radio until we are over the horizon unless it s a desperate emergency. They listen on our frequencies. I know that for sure. Now see that mountain with the saddle in it Kip pay attention Yes. I had been staring at Earth. She was beautiful even in that shadow show in the control room but I just hadn t realized. There she was so close I could almost touch her . . . and so far away that we might never get home. You can t believe what a lovely planet we have until you see her from outside . . . with clouds girdling her waist and polar cap set jauntily like a spring hat. Yes. I see the saddle. We head left of there where you see a pass. Tim and Jock brought me through it in a crawler. Once we pick up its tracks it will be easy. But first we head for those near hills just left of that that ought to keep this ship between us and the other ships while we get out of sight. I hope. It was twelve feet or so to the ground and I was prepared to jump since it would be nothing much in that gravity. Peewee insisted on lowering me by rope. You ll fall over your feet. Look Kip listen to old Aunt Peewee. You don t have Moon legs yet. It s going to be like your first time on a bicycle. So I let her lower me and the Mother Thing while she snubbed the nylon rope around the side of the lock. Then she jumped with no trouble. I started to loop up the line but she stopped me and snapped the other end to her belt then touched helmets. I ll lead. If I go too fast or you need me tug on the rope. I won t be able to see you. Aye aye Cap n Don t make fun of me Kip. This is serious. I wasn t making fun Peewee. You re boss. Let s go. Don t look back it won t do any good and you might fall. I m heading for those hills. Chapter 6 I should have relished the weird romantic experience but I was as busy as Eliza crossing the ice and the things snapping at my heels were worse than bloodhounds. I wanted to look back but I was too busy trying to stay on my feet. I couldn t see my feet I had to watch ahead and try to pick my footing it kept me as busy as a lumberjack in a logrolling contest. I didn t skid as the ground was rough dust or fine sand over raw rock and fifty pounds weight was enough for footing. But I had three hundred pounds mass not a whit reduced by lowered weight this does things to lifelong reflex habits. I had to lean heavily for the slightest turn lean back and dig in to slow down lean far forward to speed up. I could have drawn a force diagram but doing it is another matter. How long does it take a baby to learn to walk This newborn Moon baby was having to learn while making a forced march half blind at the greatest speed he could manage. So I didn t have time to dwell on the wonder of it all. Peewee moved into a brisk pace and kept stepping it up. Every little while my leash tightened and I tried still harder to speed up and not fall down. The Mother Thing warbled at my spine: Are you all right. Kip You seem worried. I m ... all right How . . . about . . . you I m very comfortable. Don t wear yourself out dear. Okay Oscar was doing his job. I began to sweat from exertion and naked Sun but I didn t kick the chin valve until I saw from my blood color gauge that I was short on air. The system worked perfectly and the joints under a four pound pressure gave no trouble hours of practice in the pasturewas paying off. Presently my one worry was to keep a sharp eye for rocks and ruts. We were into those low hills maybe twenty minutes after H hour. Peewee s first swerve as we reached rougher ground took me by surprise I almost fell. She slowed down and crept forward into a gulch. A few moments later she stopped I joined her and she touched helmets with me. How are you doing Okay. Mother Thing can you hear me Yes dear. Are you comfortable Can you breathe all right Yes indeed. Our Kip is taking good care of me. Good. You behave yourself Mother Thing. Hear me I will dear. Somehow she put an indulgent chuckle into a birdsong. Speaking of breathing I said to Peewee let s check your air. I tried to look into her helmet. She pulled away then touched again. I m all right So you say. I held her helmet with both hands found I couldn t see the dials with sunlight around us trying to see in was like peering into a well. What does it read and don t fib. Don t be nosy I turned her around and read her bottle gauges. One read zero the other was almost full. I touched helmets. Peewee I said slowly how many miles have we come About three I think. Why Then we ve got more than thirty to go At least thirty five. Kip quit fretting. I know I ve got one empty bottle I shifted to the full one before we stopped. One bottle won t take you thirty five miles. Yes it will . . . because it s got to. Look we ve got plenty of air. I ll figure a way to get it to you. My mind was trotting in circles thinking what tools were on my belt what else I had. Kip you know you can t hook those spare bottles to my suit so shut up What s the trouble darlings Why are you quarreling We aren t fighting Mother Thing. Kip is a worry wart. Now children I said Peewee I admit I can t hook the spares into your suit . . . but I ll jigger a way to recharge your bottle. But How Kip Leave it to me. I ll touch only the empty if it doesn t work we re no worse off. If it does we ve got it made. How long will it take Ten minutes with luck. Thirty without. No she decided. Now Peewee don t be sil I m not being silly We aren t safe until we get into the mountains. I can get that far. Then when we no longer show up like a bug on a plate we can rest and recharge my empty bottle. It made sense. All right. Can you go faster If we reach the mountains before they miss us I don t think they ll ever find us. If we don t I can go faster. Except for these pesky bottles. Oh. She hesitated. Do you want to throw one away Huh Oh no no But they throw me off balance. I ve just missed a tumble a dozen times. Peewee can you retie them so they don t swing Oh. Sure. I had them hung around my neck and down my front not smart but I had been hurried. Now Peewee lashed them firmly still in front as my own bottles and the Mother Thing were on my back no doubt she was finding it as crowded as Dollar Day. Peewee passed clothesline under my belt and around the yoke. She touched helmets. I hope that s okay. Did you tie a square knot She pulled her helmet away. A minute later she touched helmets again. It was a granny she admitted in a small voice but it s a square knot now. Good. Tuck the ends in my belt so that I can t trip then we ll mush. Are you all right Yes she said slowly. I just wish I had salvaged my gum old and tired as it was. My throat s awful dry. Drink some water. Not too much. Kip It s not a nice joke. I stared. Peewee your suit hasn t any water What Don t be silly. My jaw dropped. But baby I said helplessly why didn t you fill your tank before we left What are you talking about Does your suit have a water tank I couldn t answer. Peewee s suit was for tourists for those scenic walks amidst incomparable grandeur on the ancient face of the Moon that the ads promised. Guided walks of course not over a half hour at a time they wouldn t put in a water tank some tourist might choke or bite the nipple off and half drown in his helmet or some silly thing. Besides it was cheaper. I began to worry about other shortcomings that cheap jack equipment might have with Peewee s life depending on it. I m sorry I said humbly. Look I ll try to figure out some way to get water to you. I doubt if you can. I can t die of thirst in the time it ll take us to get there so quit worrying. I m all right. I just wish I had my bubble gum. Ready Uh . . . ready. The hills were hardly more than giant folds in lava we were soon through them even though we had to take it cautiously over the very rough ground. Beyond them the ground looked natter than western Kansas stretching out to a close horizon with mountains sticking up beyond glaring in the Sun and silhouetted against a black sky like cardboard cutouts. I tried to figure how far the horizon was on a thousand mile radius and a height of eye of six feet and couldn t do it in my head and wished for my slipstick. But it was awfully close less than a mile. Peewee let me overtake her touched helmets. Okay Kip All right Mother Thing Sure. All right dear. Kip the course from the pass when they fetched me here was east eight degrees north. I heard them arguing and sneaked a peek at their map. So we go back west eight degrees south that doesn t count the jog to these hills but it s close enough to find the pass. Okay Sounds swell. I was impressed. Peewee were you an Indian scout once Or Davy Crockett Pooh Anybody can read a map she sounded pleased. I want to check compasses. What bearing do you have on Earth I said silently: Oscar you ve let me down. I ve been cussing her suit for not having water and you don t have a compass. Oscar protested: Hey pal that s unfair Why would I need a compass at Space Station Two Nobody told me I was going to the Moon. I said Peewee this suit is for space station work. What use is a compass in space Nobody told me I was going to the Moon. But Well don t stop to cry about it. You can get your directions by Earth. Why can t I use your compass Don t be silly it s built into my helmet. Now just a moment She faced Earth moved her helmet back and forth. Then she touched helmets again. Earth is smacko on northwest . . . that makes the course fifty three degrees left of there. Try to pick it out. Earth is two degrees wide you know. I knew that before you were born. No doubt. Some people require a head start. Smart aleck You were rude first But Sorry Peewee. Let s save the fights for later. I ll spot you the first two bites. I won t need them You don t know how nasty I can I have some idea. Children Children I m sorry Peewee. So am I. I m edgy. I wish we were there. So do I. Let me figure the course. I counted degrees using Earth as a yardstick. I marked a place by eye then tried again judging fifty three degrees as a proportion of ninety. The results didn t agree so I tried to spot some stars to help me. They say you can see stars from the Moon even when the Sun is in the sky. Well you can but not easily. I had the Sun over my shoulder but was facing Earth almost three quarters full and had the dazzling ground glare as well. The polarizer cut down the glare and cut out the stars too. So I split my guesses and marked the spot. Peewee See that sharp peak with sort of a chin on its left profile That ought to be the course pretty near. Let me check. She tried it by compass then touched helmets. Nice going Kip. Three degrees to the right and you ve got it. I felt smug. Shall we get moving Right. We go through the pass then Tombaugh Station is due west. It was about ten miles to the mountains we made short work of it. You can make time on the Moon if it is flat and if you can keep your balance. Peewee kept stepping it up until we were almost flying long low strides that covered ground like an ostrich and do you know it s easier fast than slow. The only hazard after I got the hang of it was landing on a rock or hole or something and tripping. But that was hazard enough because I couldn t pick my footing at that speed. I wasn t afraid of falling I felt certain that Oscar could take the punishment. But suppose I landed on my back Probably smash the Mother Thing to jelly. I was worried about Peewee too. That cut rate tourist suit wasn t as rugged as Oscar. I ve read about explosive decompression I never want to see it. Especially not a little girl. But I didn t dare use radio to warn her even though we were probably shielded from Wormface and if I tugged on my leash I might make her fall. The plain started to rise and Peewee let it slow us down. Presently we were walking then we were climbing a scree slope. I stumbled but landed on my hands and got up one sixth gravity has advantages as well as hazards. We reached the top and Peewee led us into a pocket in the rocks. She stopped and touched helmets. Anybody home You two all right All right dear. Sure I agreed. A little winded maybe. That was an understatement but if Peewee could take it I could. We can rest she answered and take it easy from here on. I wanted to get us out of the open as fast as possible. They ll never find us here. I thought she was right. A wormface ship flying over might spot us if they could see down as well as up probably just a matter of touching a control. But our chances were better now. This is the time to recharge your empty bottle. Okay. None too soon the bottle which had been almost full had dropped by a third more like half. She couldn t make it to Tombaugh Station on that simple arithmetic. So I crossed my fingers and got to work. Partner will you untie this cat s cradle While Peewee fumbled at knots I started to take a drink then stopped ashamed of myself. Peewee must be chewing her tongue to work up saliva by now and I hadn t been able to think of any way to get water to her. The tank was inside my helmet and there was no way to reach it without making me and Mother Thing dead in the process. If I ever lived to be an engineer I d correct that I decided that it was idiotic not to drink because she couldn t the lives of all of us might depend on my staying in the best condition I could manage. So I drank and ate three malted milk tablets and a salt tablet then had another drink. It helped a lot but I hoped Peewee hadn t noticed. She was busy unwinding clothesline anyhow it was hard to see into a helmet. I took Peewee s empty bottle off her back making darn sure to close her outside stop valve first there s supposed to be a one way valve where an air hose enters a helmet but I no longer trusted her suit it might have more cost saving shortcomings. I laid the empty on the ground by a full one looked at it straightened up and touched helmets. Peewee disconnect the bottle on the left side of my back. Why Kip Who s doing this job I had a reason but was afraid she might argue. My lefthand bottle held pure oxygen the others were oxy helium. It was full except for a few minutes of fiddling last night in Centerville. Since I couldn t possibly give her bottle a full charge the next best thing was to give her a half charge of straight oxygen. She shut up and removed it. I set about trying to transfer pressure between bottles whose connections didn t match. There was no way to do it properly short of tools a quarter of a million miles away or over in Tombaugh Station which was just as bad. But I did have adhesive tape. Oscar s manual called for two first aid kits. I didn t know what was supposed to be in them the manual had simply given USAF stock numbers. I hadn t been able to guess what would be useful in an outside kit a hypodermic needle maybe sharp enough to stab through and give a man morphine when he needed it terribly. But since I didn t know I had stocked inside and outside with bandage dressings and a spool of surgical tape. I was betting on the tape. I butted the mismatched hose connections together tore off a scrap of bandage and wrapped it around the junction I didn t want sticky stuff on the joint it could foul the operation on a suit. Then I taped the junction wrapping tightly working very painstakingly and taping three inches on each side as well as around the joint if tape could restrain that pressure a few moments there would still be one deuce of a force trying to drag that joint apart. I didn t want it to pull apart at the first jolt. I used the entire roll. I motioned Peewee to touch helmets. I m about to open the full bottle. The valve on the empty is already open. When you see me start to close the valve on the full one you close the other one fast Got it Close the valve when you do quickly. Roger. Stand by. Get your hand on the valve. I grabbed that lump of bandaged joint in one fist squeezed as hard as I could and put my other hand on the valve. If that joint let go maybe my hand would go with it but if the stunt failed little Peewee didn t have long to live. So I really gripped. Watching both gauges I barely cracked the valve. The hose quivered the needle gauge that read empty twitched. I opened the valve wide. One needle swung left the other right. Quickly they approached half charge. Now I yelled uselessly and started closing the valve. And felt that patchwork joint start to give. The hoses squeezed out of my fist but we lost only a fraction of gas. I found that I was trying to close a valve that was closed tight. Peewee had hers closed. The gauges each showed just short of half full there was air for Peewee. I sighed and found I had been holding my breath. Peewee put her helmet against mine and said very soberly Thanks Kip. Charton Drugs service ma am no tip necessary. Let me tidy this mess you can tie me and we ll go. You won t have to carry but one extra bottle now. Wrong Peewee. We may do this stunt five or six times until there s only a whisper left or until the tape wears out I added to myself. The first thing I did was to rewrap the tape on its spool and if you think that is easy wearing gloves and with the adhesive drying out as fast as you wind it try it. In spite of the bandage sticky stuff had smeared the connections when the hoses parted. But it dried so hard that it chipped off the bayonet and snap joint easily. I didn t worry about the screw thread joint I didn t expect to use it on a suit. We mounted Peewee s recharged bottle and I warned her that it was straight oxygen. Cut your pressure and feed from both bottles. What s your blood color reading I ve been carrying it low on purpose. Idiot You want to keel over Kick your chin valve Get into normal range We mounted one bottle I had swiped on my back tied the other and the oxy bottle on my front and were on our way. Earth mountains are predictable lunar mountains aren t they ve never been shaped by water. We came to a hole too steep to go down other than by rope and a wall beyond I wasn t sure we could climb. With pitons and snap rings and no space suits it wouldn t have been hard in the Rockies but not the way we were. Peewee reluctantly led us back. The scree slope was worse going down I backed down on hands and knees with Peewee belaying the line above me. I wanted to be a hero and belay for her we had a brisk argument. Oh quit being big and male and gallantly stupid Kip You ve got four big bottles and the Mother Thing and you re top heavy and I climb like a goat. I shut up. At the bottom she touched helmets. Kip she said worriedly I don t know what to do. What s the trouble I kept a little south of where the crawler came through. I wanted to avoid crossing right where the crawler crossed. But I m beginning to think there isn t any other way. I wish you had told me before. But I didn t want them to find us The way the crawler came is the first place they ll look. Mmm . . . yes. I looked up at the range that blocked us. In pictures the mountains of the Moon look high and sharp and rugged framed by the lens of a space suit they look simply impossible. I touched helmets again. We might find another way if we had time and air and the resources of a major expedition. We ve got to take the route the crawler did. Which way A little way north ... I think. We tried to work north along the foothills but it was slow and difficult. Finally we backed off to the edge of the plain. It made us jumpy but it was a chance we had to take. We walked briskly but not running for we didn t dare miss the crawler s tracks. I counted paces and when I reached a thousand I tugged the line Peewee stopped and we touched helmets. We ve come half a mile. How much farther do you think it is Or could it possibly be behind us Peewee looked up at the mountains. I don t know she admitted. Everything looks different. We re lost Uh ... it ought to be ahead somewhere. But we ve come pretty far. Do you want to turn around Peewee I don t even know the way to the post office. But what should we do I think we ought to keep going until you are absolutely certain the pass can t be any farther. You watch for the pass and I ll watch for crawler tracks. Then when you re certain that we ve come too far we ll turn back. We can t afford to make short casts like a dog trying to pick up a rabbit s scent. All right. I had counted two thousand more paces another mile when Peewee stopped. Kip It can t be ahead of us. The mountains are higher and solider than ever. You re sure Think hard. Better to go another five miles than to stop too short. She hesitated. She had her face pushed up close to her lens while we touched helmets and I could see her frown. Finally she said It s not up ahead. Kip. That settles it. To the rear march Lay on Macduff and curs d be him who first cries Hold enough King Lear. Macbeth. Want to bet Those tracks were only half a mile behind us I had missed them. They were on bare rock with only the lightest covering of dust the Sun had been over my shoulder when we first crossed them and the caterpillar tread marks hardly showed I almost missed them going back. They led off the plain and straight up into the mountains. We couldn t possibly have crossed those mountains without following the crawler s trail Peewee had had the optimism of a child. It wasn t a road it was just something a crawler on caterpillar treads could travel. We saw places that even a crawler hadn t been able to go until whoever pioneered it set a whopping big blast backed off and waited for a chunk of mountain to get out of the way. I doubt if Skinny and Fatty carved that goat s path they didn t look fond of hard work. Probably one of the exploration parties. If Peewee and I had attempted to break a new trail we d be there yet relics for tourists of future generations. But where a tread vehicle can go a man can climb. It was no picnic it was trudge trudge trudge up and up and up watch for loose rock and mind where you put your feet. Sometimes we belayed with the line. Nevertheless it was mostly just tedious. When Peewee had used that half charge of oxygen we stopped and I equalized pressure again this time being able to give her only a quarter charge like Achilles and the tortoise. I could go on indefinitely giving her half of what was left if the tape held out. It was in bad shape but the pressure was only half as great and I managed to keep the hoses together until we closed valves. I should say that I had it fairly easy. I had water food pills dexedrine. The last was enormous help any time I felt fagged I borrowed energy with a pep pill. Poor Peewee had nothing but air and courage. She didn t even have the cooling I had. Since she was on a richer mix one bottle being pure oxygen it did not take as much flow to keep up her blood color index and I warned her not to use a bit more than necessary she could not afford air for cooling she had to save it to breathe. I know Kip she answered pettishly. I ve got the needle jiggling the red light right now. Think I m a fool I just want to keep you alive. All right but quit treating me as a child. You put one foot in front of the other. I ll make it. Sure you will As for the Mother Thing she always said she was all right and she was breathing the air I had a trifle used but I didn t know what was hard ship to her. Hanging by his heels all day would kill a man to a bat it is a nice rest yet bats are our cousins. I talked with her as we climbed. It didn t matter what her songs had the effect on me that it has to have your own gang cheering. Poor Peewee didn t even have that comfort except when we stopped and touched helmets we still weren t using radio even in the mountains we were fearful of attracting attention. We stopped again and I gave Peewee one eighth of a charge. The tape was in very poor shape afterwards I doubted if it would serve again. I said Peewee why don t you run your oxy helium bottle dry while I carry this one It ll save your strength. I m all right. Well you won t use air so fast with a lighter load. You have to have your arms free. Suppose you slip Peewee I won t carry it in my arms My righthand backpack bottle is empty I ll chuck it. Help me make the change and I ll still be carrying only four just balanced evenly. Sure I ll help. But I ll carry two bottles. Honest Kip the weight isn t anything. But if I run the oxy helium bottle dry what would I breathe while you re giving me my next charge I didn t want to tell her that I had doubts about another charge even in those ever smaller amounts. Okay Peewee. She changed bottles for me we threw the dead one down a black hole and went on. I don t know how far we climbed nor how long I know that it seemed like days though it couldn t have been not on that much air. During mile after mile of trail we climbed at least eight thousand feet. Heights are hard to guess but I ve seen mountains I knew the heights of. Look it up yourself the first range east of Tombaugh Station. There s a lot of climbing even at one sixth gee. It seemed endless because I didn t know how far it was nor how long it had been. We both had watches under our suits. A helmet ought to have a built in watch. I should have read Greenwich time from the face of Earth. But I had no experience and most of the time I couldn t see Earth because we were deep in mountains anyhow I didn t know what time it had been when we left the ship. Another thing space suits should have is rear view mirrors. While you are at it add a window at the chin so that you can see where you step. But of the two I would take a rear view mirror. You can t glance behind you you have to turn your entire body. Every few seconds I wanted to see if they were following us and I couldn t spare the effort. All that nightmare trek I kept imagining them on my heels expecting a wormy hand on my shoulder. I listened for footsteps which couldn t be heard in vacuum anyhow. When you buy a space suit make them equip it with a rear view mirror. You won t have Wormface on your trail but it s upsetting to have even your best friend sneak up behind you. Yes and if you are coming to the Moon bring a sunshade. Oscar was doing his best and York had done an honest job on the air conditioning but the untempered Sun is hotter than you would believe and I didn t dare use air just for cooling any more than Peewee could. It got hot and stayed hot and sweat ran down and I itched all over and couldn t scratch and sweat got into my eyes and burned. Peewee must have been parboiled. Even when the trail wound through deep gorges lighted only by reflection off the far wall so dark that we turned on headlamps I still was hot and when we curved back into naked sunshine it was almost unbearable. The temptation to kick the chin valve let air pour in and cool me was almost too much. The desire to be cool seemed more important than the need to breathe an hour hence. If I had been alone I might have done it and died. But Peewee was worse off than I was. If she could stand it I had to. I had wondered how we could be so lost so close to human habitation and how crawly monsters could hide a base only forty miles from Tombaugh Station. Well I had time to think and could figure it out because I could see the Moon around me. Compared with the Moon the Arctic is swarming with people. The Moon s area is about equal to Asia with fewer people than Centerville. It might be a century before anyone explored that plain where Wormface was based. A rocket ship passing over wouldn t notice anything even if camouflage hadn t been used a man in a space suit would never go there a man in a crawler would find their base only by accident even if he took the pass we were in and ranged around that plain. The lunar mapping satellite could photograph it and rephotograph then a technician in London might note a tiny difference on two films. Maybe. Years later somebody might check up if there wasn t something more urgent to do in a pioneer outpost where everything is new and urgent. As for radar sightings there were unexplained radar sightings before I was born. Wormface could sit there as close to Tombaugh Station as Dallas is to Fort Worth and not fret snug as a snake under house. Too many square miles not enough people. Too incredibly many square miles. . . . Our whole world was harsh bright cliffs and dark shadows and black sky and endless putting one foot in front of the other. But eventually we were going downhill oftener than up and at weary last we came to a turn where we could see out over a hot bright plain. There were mountains awfully far away even from our height up a thousand feet or so they were beyond the horizon. I looked out over that plain too dead beat to feel triumphant then glanced at Earth and tried to estimate due west. Peewee touched her helmet to mine. There it is Kip. Where She pointed and I caught a glint on a silvery dome. The Mother Thing trilled at my spine What is it children Tombaugh Station Mother Thing. Her answer was wordless assurance that we were good children and that she had known that we could do it. The station may have been ten miles away. Distances were hard to judge what with that funny horizon and never anything for comparison I didn t even know how big the dome was. Peewee do we dare use radio She turned and looked back. I did also we were about as alone as could be. Let s risk it. What frequency Same as before. Space operations. I think. So I tried. Tombaugh Station. Come in Tombaugh Station. Do you read me Then Peewee tried. I listened up and down the band I was equipped for. No luck. I shifted to horn antenna aiming at the glint of light. No answer. We re wasting time Peewee. Let s start slogging. She turned slowly away. I could feel her disappointment I had trem bled with eagerness myself. I caught up with her and touched helmets. Don t let it throw you Peewee. They can t listen all day for us to call. We see it now we ll walk it. I know she said dully. As we started down we lost sight of Tombaugh Station not only from twists and turns but because we dropped it below the horizon. I kept calling as long as there seemed any hope then shut it off to save breath and battery. We were about halfway down the outer slope when Peewee slowed and stopped sank to the ground and sat still. I hurried to her. Peewee Kip she said faintly could you go get somebody Please You know the way now. I ll wait here. Please Kip Peewee I said sharply. Get up You ve got to keep moving. I c c can t She began to cry. I m so thirsty . . . and my legs She passed out. Peewee I shook her shoulder. You can t quit now Mother Thing you tell her Her eyelids fluttered. Keep telling her Mother Thing I flopped Peewee over and got to work. Hypoxia hits as fast as a jab on the button. I didn t need to see her blood color index to know it read DANGER the gauges on her bottles told me. The oxygen bottles showed empty the oxy helium tank was practically so. I closed her exhaust valves overrode her chin valve with the outside valve and let what was left in the oxy helium bottle flow into her suit. When it started to swell I cut back the flow and barely cracked one exhaust valve. Not until then did I close stop valves and remove the empty bottle. I found myself balked by a ridiculous thing. Peewee had tied me too well I couldn t reach the knot I could feel it with my left hand but couldn t get my right hand around the bottle on my front was in the way and I couldn t work the knot loose with one hand. I made myself stop panicking. My knife of course my knife It was an old scout knife with a loop to hang it from a belt which was where it was. But the map hooks on Oscar s belt were large for it and I had had to force it on. I twisted it until the loop broke. Then I couldn t get the little blade open. Space suit gauntlets don t have thumb nails. I said to myself: Kip quit running in circles. This is easy. All you have to do is open a knife and you ve got to . . . because Peewee is suffocating. I looked around for a sliver of rock anything that could pinch hit for a thumb nail. Then I checked my belt. The prospector s hammer did it the chisel end of the head was sharp enough to open the blade. I cut the clothesline away. I was still blocked. I wanted very badly to get at a bottle on my back. When I had thrown away that empty and put the last fresh one on my back I had started feeding from it and saved the almost half charge in the other one. I meant to save it for a rainy day and split it with Peewee. Now was the time she was out of air I was practically so in one bottle but still had that half charge in the other plus an eighth of a charge or less in the bottle that contained straight oxygen the best I could hope for in equalizing pressures I had planned to surprise her with a one quarter charge of oxy helium which would last longer and give more cooling. A real knight errant plan I thought. I didn t waste two seconds discarding it. I couldn t get that bottle off my back Maybe if I hadn t modified the backpack for nonregulation bottles I could have done it. The manual says: Reach over your shoulder with the opposite arm close stop valves at bottle and helmet disconnect the shackle My pack didn t have shackles I had substituted straps. But I still don t think you can reach over your shoulder in a pressurized suit and do anything effective. I think that was written by a man at a desk. Maybe he had seen it done under favorable conditions. Maybe he had done it but was one of those freaks who can dislocate both shoulders. But I ll bet a full charge of oxygen that the riggers around Space Station Two did it for each other as Peewee and I had or went inside and deflated. If I ever get a chance I ll change that. Everything you have to do in a space suit should be arranged to do in front valves shackles everything even if it is to affect something in back. We aren t like Wormface with eyes all around and arms that bend in a dozen places we re built to work in front of us that goes triple in a space suit. You need a chin window to let you see what you re doing too A thing can look fine on paper and be utterly crumby in the field. But I didn t waste time moaning I had a one eighth charge of oxygen I could reach. I grabbed it. That poor overworked adhesive tape was a sorry mess. I didn t bother with bandage if I could get the tape to stick at all I d be happy. I handled it as carefully as gold leaf trying to get it tight and stopped in the middle to close Peewee s exhaust entirely when it looked as if her suit was collapsing. I finished with trembling fingers. I didn t have Peewee to close a valve. I simply gripped that haywired joint in one hand opened Peewee s empty bottle with the other swung over fast and opened the oxygen bottle wide jerked my hand across and grabbed the valve of Peewee s bottle and watched those gauges. The two needles moved toward each other. When they slowed down I started closing her bottle and the taped joint blew out. I got that valve closed in a hurry I didn t lose much gas from Peewee s bottle. But what was left on the supply side leaked away. I didn t stop to worry I peeled away a scrap of adhesive made sure the bayonet and snap joint was clean got that slightly recharged bottle back on Peewee s suit opened stop valves. Her suit started to distend. I opened one exhaust valve a crack and touched helmets. Peewee Peewee Can you hear me Wake up baby Mother Thing make her wake up Peewee Yes Kip Wake up On your feet Champ Get up Honey please get up. Huh Help me get my helmet off ... I can t breathe. Yes you can. Kick your chin valve feel it taste it. Fresh air She tried feebly I gave her a quick strong shot overriding her chin valve from outside. Oh See You ve got air. You ve got lots of air. Now get up. Oh please just let me lie here. No you don t You re a nasty mean spoiled little brat and if you don t get up nobody will love you. The Mother Thing won t love you. Mother Thing tell her Stand up daughter Peewee tried. I helped her once she was trying. She trembled and clung to me and I kept her from falling. Mother Thing she said faintly. I did it. You ... still love me Yes darling I m dizzy . . . and I don t think I ... can walk. You don t have to honey I said gently and picked her up in my arms. You don t have to walk any farther. She didn t weigh anything. The trail disappeared when we were down out of the foothills but the crawler s tracks were sharp in the dust and led due west. I had my air trimmed down until the needle of the blood color indicator hung at the edge of the danger sector. I held it there kicking my chin valve only when it swung past into DANGER. I figured that the designer must have left some leeway the way they do with gasoline gauges. I had long since warned Peewee never to take her eyes off her own indicator and hold it at the danger limit. She promised and I kept reminding her. I pressed her helmet against the yoke of mine so that we could talk. I counted paces and every half mile I told Peewee to call Tombaugh Station. It was over the horizon but they might have a high mast that could see a long way. The Mother Thing talked to her too anything to keep her from slipping away again. It saved my strength to have the Mother Thing talk and was good for all of us. After a while I noticed that my needle had drifted into the red again. I kicked the valve and waited. Nothing happened. I kicked it again and the needle drifted slowly toward the white. How you fixed for air Peewee Just fine. Kip just fine. Oscar was yelling at me. I blinked and noticed that my shadow had disappeared. It had been stretched out ahead at an angle to the tracks the tracks were there but my shadow was not. That made me sore so I turned around and looked for it. It was behind me. The darn thing had been hiding. Games That better said Oscar. It s hot in here Oscar. You think it s cool out here Keep your eye on that shadow bud and on those tracks. All right all right Quit pestering me. I made up my mind that I wouldn t let that shadow get away again. Games it wanted to play huh There s darn little air in here Oscar. Breathe shallow chum. We can make it. I m breathing my socks now. So breathe your shirt. Did I see a ship pass over How should I know You re the one with the blinkers. Don t get smart. I m in no mood to joke. I was sitting on the ground with Peewee across my knees and Oscar was really shouting and so was the Mother Thing. Get up you big ape Get up and try. Get up Kip dear Only a little way now. I just want to get my wind. All right you ve got it. Call Tombaugh Station. I said Peewee call Tombaugh Station. She didn t answer. That scared me and I snapped out of it. Tombaugh Station come in Come in I got to my knees and then to my feet. Tombaugh Station do you read me Help Help A voice answered I read you. Help M aidez I ve got a little girl dying Help Suddenly it sprang up in front of my eyes great shiny domes tall towers radio telescopes a giant Schmidt camera. I staggered toward it. May Day An enormous lock opened and a crawler came toward me. A voice in my phones said We re coming. Stay where you are. Over and out. A crawler stopped near me. A man got out came over and touched helmets. I gasped: Help me get her inside. I got back: You ve given me trouble bub. I don t like people who give me trouble. A bigger fatter man got out behind him. The smaller man raised a thing like a camera and aimed it at me. That was the last I knew. Chapter 7 I don t know if they took us all that weary way back in the crawler or if Wormface sent a ship. I woke up being slapped and was inside lying down. The skinny one was slapping me the man the fat one called Tim. I tried to fight back and found that I couldn t. I was in a straitjacket thing that held me as snugly as a wrapped mummy. I let out a yelp. Skinny grabbed my hair jerked my head up tried to put a big capsule into my mouth. I tried to bite him. He slapped me harder and offered me the capsule again. His expression didn t change it stayed mean. I heard: Take it boy and turned my eyes. The fat one was on the other side. Better swallow it he said. You got five bad days ahead. I took it. Not because of the advice but because a hand held my nose and another popped the pill into my mouth when I gasped. Fatty held a cup of water for me to wash it down I didn t resist that I needed it. Skinny stuck a hypodermic needle big enough for a horse into my shoulder. I told him what I thought of him using words I hardly ever use. The skinny one could have been deaf the fat one chuckled. I rolled my eyes at him. You too I added weakly. Squared. Fatty clucked reprovingly. You ought to be glad we saved your life. He added Though it wasn t my idea you strike me as a sorry team. He wanted you alive. Shaddap Skinny said. Strap his head. Let him break his neck. We better fix our ownselves. He won t wait. But he started to obey. Skinny glanced at his watch. Four minutes. The fat one hastily tightened a strap across my forehead then both moved very fast swallowing capsules giving each other hypos. I watched as best I could. I was back in the ship. The ceiling glowed the same way the walls looked the same. It was the room the two men used their beds were on each side and I was strapped to a soft couch between them. Each hurriedly got on his bed began zipping up a tight wrapping like a sleeping bag. Each strapped his head in place before completing the process. I was not interested in them. Hey What did you do with Peewee The fat man chuckled. Hear that Tim That s a good one. Shaddap. You I was about to sum up Fatty s character but my thoughts got fuzzy and my tongue was thick. Besides I wanted to ask about the Mother Thing too. I did not get out another word. Suddenly I was incredibly heavy and the couch was rock hard. For a long long time I wasn t awake or truly asleep. At first I couldn t feel anything but that terrible weight then I hurt all over and wanted to scream. I didn t have the strength for it. Slowly the pain went away and I stopped feeling anything. I wasn t a body just me no attachments. I dreamed a lot and none of it made sense I seemed to be stuck in a comic book the sort P.T.A. meetings pass resolutions against and the baddies were way ahead no matter what I did. Once the couch gave a twisting lurch and suddenly I had a body one that was dizzy. After a few ages I realized vaguely that I had gone through a skew flip turn over. I had known during lucid moments that I was going somewhere very fast at terribly high acceleration. I decided solemnly that we must be halfway and tried to figure out how long two times eternity was. It kept coming out eighty five cents plus sales tax the cash register rang NO SALE and I would start over. Fats was undoing my head strap. It stuck and skin came away. Rise and shine bub. Time s awastin . A croak was all I managed. The skinny one was unwrapping me. My legs sagged apart and hurt. Get up I tried and didn t make it. Skinny grabbed one of my legs and started to knead it. I screamed. Here lemme do that said Fatty. I used to be a trainer. Fats did know something about it. I gasped when his thumbs dug into my calves and he stopped. Too rough I couldn t answer. He went on massaging me and said almost jovially Five days at eight gravities ain t no joy ride. But you ll be okay. Got the needle Tim The skinny one jabbed me in my left thigh. I hardly felt it. Fats pulled me to a sitting position and handed me a cup. I thought it was water it wasn t and I choked and sprayed. Fats waited then gave it to me again. Drink some this time. I did. Okay up on your feet. Vacation is over. The floor swayed and I had to grab him until it stopped. Where are we I said hoarsely. Fats grinned as if he knew an enormously funny joke. Pluto of course. Lovely place Pluto. A summer resort. Shaddap. Get him moving. Shake it up kid. You don t want to keep him waiting. Pluto It couldn t be nobody could get that far. Why they hadn t even attempted Jupiter s moons yet. Pluto was so much farther that. My brain wasn t working. The experience just past had shaken me so badly that I couldn t accept the fact that the experience itself proved that I was wrong. But Pluto I wasn t given time to wonder we got into space suits. Although I hadn t known Oscar was there and I was so glad to see him that I forgot everything else. He hadn t been racked just tossed on the floor. I bent down discovering charley horses in every muscle and checked him. He didn t seem hurt. Get in it Fats ordered. Quit fiddlin . All right I answered almost cheerfully. Then I hesitated. Say I haven t any air. Take another look said Fats. I looked. Charged oxy helium bottles were on the backpack. Although he continued if we didn t have orders from him I wouldn t give you a whiff of Limburger. You made us for two bottles and a rock hammer and a line that cost four ninety five earthside. Sometime he stated without rancor I m gonna take it out of your hide. Shaddap said Skinny. Get going. I spread Oscar open wriggled in clipped on the blood color reader and zipped the gaskets. Then I stood up clamped my helmet and felt better just to be inside. Tight Tight Oscar agreed. We re a long way from home. But we got air Chin up pal. Which reminded me to check the chin valve. Everything was working. My knife was gone and so were the hammer and line but those were incidentals. We were tight. I followed Skinny out with Fats behind me. We passed Wormface in the corridor or a wormface but while I shuddered I had Oscar around me and felt that he couldn t get at me. Another creature joined us in the air lock and I had to look twice to realize that it was a wormface in a space suit. The material was smooth and did not bulge the way ours did. It looked like a dead tree trunk with bare branches and heavy roots but the supreme improvement was its helmet a glassy smooth dome. One way glass I suppose I couldn t see in. Cased that way a wormface was grotesquely ridiculous rather than terrifying. But I stood no closer than I had to. Pressure was dropping and I was busy wasting air to keep from swelling up. It reminded me of what I wanted most to know: what had happened to Peewee and the Mother Thing. So I keyed my radio and announced: Radio check. Alfa Bravo Coca Shaddap that nonsense. We want you we ll tell you. The outer door opened and I had my first view of Pluto. I don t know what I expected. Pluto is so far out that they can t get decent photographs even at Luna Observatory. I had read articles in the Scientific American and seen pictures in LIFE bonestelled to look like photographs and remembered that it was approaching its summer if summer is the word for warm enough to melt air. I recalled that because they had announced that Pluto was showing an atmosphere as it got closer to the Sun. But I had never been much interested in Pluto too few facts and too much speculation too far away and not desirable real estate. By comparison the Moon was a choice residential suburb. Professor Tombaugh the one the station was named for was working on a giant electronic telescope to photograph it under a Guggenheim grant but he had a special interest he discovered Pluto years before I was born. The first thing I noticed as the door was opening was click . . . click . . . click and a fourth click in my helmet as Oscar s heating units all cut in. The Sun was in front of me I didn t realize what it was at first it looked no bigger than Venus or Jupiter does from Earth although much brighter . With no disc you could be sure of it looked like an electric arc. Fats jabbed me in the ribs. Snap out of your hop. A drawbridge joined the door to an elevated roadway that led into the side of a mountain about two hundred yards away. The road was supported on spidery legs two or three feet high up to ten or twelve depending on the lay of the land. The ground was covered with snow glaringly white even under that pinpoint Sun. Where the stilts were longest about halfway the viaduct crossed a brook. What sort of water was that Methane What was the snow Solid ammonia I didn t have tables to tell me what was solid what was liquid and what was gas at whatever hellish cold Pluto enjoyed in the summer. All I knew was that it got so cold in its winter that it didn t have any gas or liquid just vacuum like the Moon. I was glad to hurry. A wind blew from our left and was not only freezing that side of me in spite of Oscar s best efforts it made the footing hazardous I decided it would be far safer to do that forced march on the Moon again than to fall into that snow. Would a man struggle before he shattered himself and his suit or would he die as he hit Adding to hazard of wind and no guard rail was traffic space suited wormfaces. They moved at twice our speed and shared the road the way a dog does a bone. Even Skinny resorted to fancy footwork and I had three narrow squeaks. The way continued into a tunnel ten feet inside a panel snapped out of the way as we got near it. Twenty feet beyond was another it did the same and closed behind us. There were about two dozen panels each behaving like fast acting gate valves and the pressure was a little higher after each. I couldn t see what operated them although it was light in the tunnel from glowing ceilings. Finally we passed through a heavy duty air lock but the pressure was already taken care of and its doors stood open. It led into a large room. Wormface was inside. The Wormface I think because he spoke in English: Come I heard it through my helmet. But I couldn t be sure it was he as there were others around and I would have less trouble telling wart hogs apart. Wormface hurried away. He was not wearing a space suit and I was relieved when he turned because I could no longer see his squirming mouth but it was only a slight improvement as it brought into sight his rearview eye. We were hard put to keep up. He led us down a corridor to the right through another open double set of doors and finally stopped suddenly just short of a hole in the floor about like a sewer manhole. Undress it he commanded. Fats and Skinny had their helmets open so I knew it was safe in one way. But in every other way I wanted to stay inside Oscar as long as Wormface was around. Fats undamped my helmet. Out of that skin bub. Snap it up Skinny loosened my belt and they quickly had the suit off even though I hindered. Wormface waited. As soon as I was out of Oscar he pointed at the hole. Down I gulped. That hole looked as deep as a well and less inviting. Down he repeated. Now. Do it bub Fats advised. Jump or be pushed. Get down that hole before he gets annoyed. I tried to run. Wormface was around me and chivvying me back before I was well started. I slammed on the brakes and backed up glanced behind just in time to turn a fall into a clumsy jump. It was a long way to the bottom. Landing did not hurt the way it would have on Earth but I turned an ankle. That didn t matter I wasn t going anywhere the hole in the ceiling was the only exit. My cell was about twenty feet square. It was I suppose carved out of solid rock although there was no way to tell as the walls and floor and ceiling were the same elephant hide used in the ship. A lighting panel covered half the ceiling and I could have read if I d had anything to read. The only other detail was a jet of water that splashed out of a hole in the wall landed in a depression the size of a washtub and departed for parts unknown. The place was warm which was well as there was nothing resembling bed or bedclothes. I had already concluded that I might be here quite a while and was wondering about eating and sleeping. I decided I was tired of this nonsense. I had been minding my own business out back of my own house. Everything else was Wormface s fault I sat down on the floor and thought about slow ways to kill him. I finally gave up that foolishness and wondered about Peewee and the Mother Thing. Were they here Or were they dead somewhere between the mountains and Tombaugh Station Thinking it over glumly I decided that poor little Peewee was best off if she had never wakened from that second coma. I wasn t sure about the Mother Thing because I didn t know enough about her but in Peewee s case I was sure. Well there was a certain appropriateness to the fix I was in a knight errant usually lands in a dungeon at some point. But by rights the maiden fair ought to be imprisoned in a tower in the same castle. Sorry Peewee as a knight errant I m a good soda jerk. Or jerk. His strength is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure. It wasn t funny. I got tired of punishing myself and looked to see what time it was not that it mattered. But a prisoner is traditionally expected to scratch marks on the wall tallying the days he s been in so I thought I might as well start. My watch was on my wrist but not running and I couldn t start it. Maybe eight gees was too much for it even though it was supposed to be shockproof waterproof magnetism proof and immune to un American influences. After a while I lay down and went to sleep. I was awakened by a clatter. It was a ration can hitting the floor and the fall hadn t helped it but the key was on it and I got it open corned beef hash and very good too. I used the empty can to drink from the water might be poisoned but did I have a choice and then washed the can so that it wouldn t smell. The water was warm. I took a bath. I doubt if many American citizens during the past twenty years have ever needed a bath as much as I did. Then I washed my clothes. My shirt shorts and socks were wash and wear synthetics my slacks were denim and took longer to dry but I didn t mind I just wished that I had one of the two hundred bars of Skyway Soap that were home on the floor of my closet. If I had known I was coming to Pluto I would have brought one. Washing clothes caused me to take inventory. I had a handkerchief sixty seven cents in change a dollar bill so sweat soaked and worn that it was hard to make out Washington s picture a mechanical pencil stamped Jay s Drive In the thickest malts in town A canard I make the thickest and a grocery list I should have taken care of for Mother but hadn t because of that silly air conditioner in Charton s Drugstore. It wasn t as bedraggled as the dollar bill because it had been in my shirt pocket. I lined up my assets and looked at them. They did not look like a collection that could be reworked into a miracle weapon with which I would blast my way out steal a ship teach myself to pilot it and return triumphantly to warn the President and save the country. I rearranged them and they still didn t. I was correct. They weren t. I woke up from a terrible nightmare remembered where I was and wished I were back in the nightmare. I lay there feeling sorry for myself and presently tears started welling out of my eyes while my chin trembled. I had never been badgered not to be a crybaby Dad says there is nothing wrong with tears it s just that they are socially not acceptable he says that in some cultures weeping is a social grace. But in Horace Mann Grammar School being a crybaby was no asset I gave it up years ago. Besides it s exhausting and gets you nowhere. I shut off the rain and took stock. My action list ran like this: 1. Escape from this cell. 2. Find Oscar suit up. 3. Go outdoors steal a ship head home if I could figure out how to gun it. 4. Figure out a weapon or stratagem to fight off the wormfaces or keep them busy while I sneaked out and grabbed a ship. Nothing to it. Any superman capable of teleportation and other assorted psionic tricks could do it. Just be sure the plan is foolproof and that your insurance is paid up. 5. Crash priority: make sure before bidding farewell to the romantic shores of exotic Pluto and its friendly colorful natives that neither Peewee nor the Mother Thing is here if they are take them along because contrary to some opinions it is better to be a dead hero than a live louse. Dying is messy and inconvenient but even a louse dies someday no matter what he will do to stay alive and he is forever having to explain his choice. The gummed up spell that I had had at the hero business had shown that it was undesirable work but the alternative was still less attractive. The fact that Peewee knew how to gun those ships or that the Mother Thing could coach me did not figure. I can t prove that but I know. Footnote: after I learned to run one of their ships could I do so at eight gravities That may simply call for arch supports for a wormface but I knew what eight gees did to me. Automatic pilot If so would it have directions on it in English Don t be silly Clifford Subordinate footnote: how long would it take to get home at one gravity The rest of the century Or just long enough to starve to death 6. Occupational therapy for the lulls when I went stale on the problems. This was important in order to avoid coming apart at the seams. 0. Henry wrote stories in prison St. Paul turned out his strongest epistles incarcerated in Rome Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in jail next time I would bring a typewriter and paper. This time I could work out magic squares and invent chess problems. Anything was better than feeling sorry for myself. Lions put up with zoos and wasn t I smarter than a lion Some anyhow And so to work One: how to get out of this hole I came up with a straight forward answer: there wasn t any way. The cell was twenty feet on a side with a ceiling twelve feet high the walls were as smooth as a baby s cheek and as impervious as a bill collector. The other features were the hole in the ceiling which ran about six feet still higher the stream of water and its catch basin and a glowing area in the ceiling. For tools I had the stuff previously listed a few ounces of nothing much nothing sharp nor explosive nor corrosive my clothes and an empty tin can. I tested how high I could jump. Even a substitute guard needs springs in his legs I touched the ceiling. That meant a gravity around one half gee I hadn t been able to guess as I had spent an endless time under one sixth gravity followed by a few eons at eight gees my reflexes had been mistreated. But although I could touch the ceiling I could neither walk on it nor levitate. I could get that high but there was nothing a mouse could cling to. Well I could rip my clothes and braid a rope. Was there anything near the hole on which to catch it All I could recall was smooth floor. But suppose it did catch What next Paddle around in my skin until Wormface spotted me and herded me back down this time with no clothes I decided to postpone the rope trick until I worked out that next step which would confound Wormface and his tribe. I sighed and looked around. All that was left was that jet of water and the floor basin that caught it. There is a story about two frogs trapped in a crock of cream. One sees how hopeless it is gives up and drowns. The other is too stupid to know he s licked he keeps on paddling. In a few hours he has churned so much butter that it forms an island on which he floats cool and comfortable until the milkmaid comes and chucks him out. That water spilled in and ran out. Suppose it didn t run out I explored the bottom of the catch basin. The drain was large by our standards but I thought I could plug it. Could I stay afloat while the room filled up filled the hole above and pushed me out the spout Well I could find out I had a can. The can looked like a pint and a pint s a pound the world round and a cubic foot of water weighs on Earth a little over sixty pounds. But I had to be sure. My feet are eleven inches long they ve been that size since I was ten I took a lot of ribbing until I grew up to them. I marked eleven inches on the floor with two pennies. It turns out that a dollar bill is two and a half inches wide and quarter is a smidgeon under an inch. Shortly I knew the dimensions of room and can pretty accurately. I held the can under the stream letting it fill and dumping it fast while I ticked off cans of water on my left hand and counted seconds. Eventually I calculated how long it would take to fill the room. I didn t like the answer so I did it over. It would take fourteen hours to fill the room and the hole above plus an hour to allow for crude methods. Could I stay afloat that long You re darn tootin I could if I had to. And I had to. There isn t any limit to how long a man can float if he doesn t panic. I balled my slacks and stuffed them in the drain. I almost lost them so I wrapped them around the can and used the bundle as a cork. It stayed put and I used the rest of my clothes to caulk it. Then I waited feeling cocky. Maybe the flood would create the diversion I needed for the rest of the caper. Slowly the basin filled. The water got about an inch below floor level and stopped. A pressure switch I suppose. I should have known that creatures who could build eight gee constant boost ships would design plumbing to fail safe. I wish we could. I recovered my clothes all but one sock and spread them to dry. I hoped the sock would foul a pump or something but I doubted it they were good engineers. I never really believed that story about the frogs. Another can was tossed down roast beef and soggy potatoes. It was filling but I began to long for peaches. The can was stenciled Available for subsidized resale on Luna which made it possible that Skinny and Fatty had come by this food honestly. I wondered how they liked sharing their supplies No doubt they did so only because Wormface had twisted their arms. Which made me wonder why Wormface wanted me alive I was in favor of it but couldn t see why he was. I decided to call each can a day and let the empties be my calendar. Which reminded me that I had not worked out how long it would take to get home on a one gee boost if it turned out that I could not arrange automatic piloting at eight gees. I was stymied on getting out of the cell I hadn t even nibbled at what I would do if I did get out correction: when I got out but I could work ballistics. I didn t need books. I ve met people even in this day and age who can t tell a star from a planet and who think of astronomical distances simply as big. They remind me of those primitives who have just four numbers: one two three and many. But any tenderfoot Scout knows the basic facts and a fellow bitten by the space bug such as myself usually knows a number of figures. Mother very thoughtfully made a jelly sandwich under no protest. Could you forget that after saying it a few times Okay lay it out so: Mother MERCURY .39 Very VENUS .72 Thoughtfully TERRA 1.00 Made MARS 1.50 A ASTEROIDS assorted prices unimportant Jelly JUPITER 5.20 Sandwich SATURN 9.50 Under URANUS 19.00 No NEPTUNE 30.00 Protest PLUTO 39.50 The prices are distances from the Sun in astronomical units. An A.U. is the mean distance of Earth from Sun 93 000 000 miles. It is easier to remember one figure that everybody knows and some little figures than it is to remember figures in millions and billions. I use dollar signs because a figure has more flavor if I think of it as money which Dad considers deplorable. Some way you must remember them or you don t know your own neighborhood. Now we come to a joker. The list says that Pluto s distance is thirty nine and a half times Earth s distance. But Pluto and Mercury have very eccentric orbits and Pluto s is a dilly its distance varies almost two billion miles more than the distance from the Sun to Uranus. Pluto creeps to the orbit of Neptune and a hair inside then swings way out and stays there a couple of centuries it makes only four round trips in a thousand years. But I had seen that article about how Pluto was coming into its summer. So I knew it was close to the orbit of Neptune now and would be for the rest of my life my life expectancy in Centerville I didn t look like a preferred risk here. That gave an easy figure 30 astronomical units. Acceleration problems are simple s 1 2 at2 distance equals half the acceleration times the square of elapsed time. If astrogation were that simple any sophomore could pilot a rocket ship the complications come from gravitational fields and the fact that everything moves fourteen directions at once. But I could disregard gravitational fields and planetary motions at the speeds a wormface ship makes neither factor matters until you are very close. I wanted a rough answer. I missed my slipstick. Dad says that anyone who can t use a slide rule is a cultural illiterate and should not be allowed to vote. Mine is a beauty a K E 20 Log log Duplex Decitrig. Dad surprised me with it after I mastered a ten inch polyphase. We ate potato soup that week but Dad says you should always budget luxuries first. I knew where it was. Home on my desk. No matter. I had figures formula pencil and paper. First a check problem. Fats had said Pluto five days and eight gravities. It s a two piece problem accelerate for half time and half distance do a skew flip and decelerate the other half time and distance . You can t use the whole distance in the equation as time appears as a square it s a parabolic. Was Pluto in opposition Or quadrature Or conjunction Nobody looks at Pluto so why remember where it is on the ecliptic Oh well the average distance was 30 A.U.s that would give a close enough answer. Half that distance in feet is: 1 2 x 30 x 93 000 000 x 5280. Eight gravities is: 8 x 32.2 ft. sec. sec. speed increases by 258 feet per second every second up to skew flip and decreases just as fast thereafter. So 1 2 x 30 x 93 000 000 x 5280 1 2 x 8 x 32.2 x t2 and you wind up with the time for half the trip in seconds. Double that for full trip. Divide by 3600 to get hours divide by 24 and you have days. On a slide rule such a problem takes forty seconds most of it to get your decimal point correct. It s as easy as computing sales tax. It took me at least an hour and almost as long to prove it using a different sequence and a third time because the answers didn t match I had forgotten to multiply by 5280 and had miles on one side and feet on the other a no good way to do arithmetic then a fourth time because my confidence was shaken. I tell you the slide rule is the greatest invention since girls. But I got a proved answer. Five and a half days. I was on Pluto. Or maybe Neptune No on Neptune I would not be able to jump to a twelve foot ceiling Pluto alone matched all facts. So I erased and computed the trip at one gravity with turnover. Fifteen days. It seemed to me that it ought to take at least eight times as long at one gee as at eight more likely sixty four. Then I was glad I had bulled my way through analytical geometry for I made a rough plot and saw the trouble. Squared time cut down the advantage because the more boost the shorter the trip and the shorter the trip the less time in which to use the built up speed. To cut time in half you need four times as much boost to cut it to a quarter you need sixteen times the boost and so on. This way lies bankruptcy. To learn that I could get home in about two weeks at one gravity cheered me. I couldn t starve in two weeks. If I could steal a ship. If I could run it. If I could climb out of this hole. If Not if but when I was too late for college this year fifteen more days wouldn t matter. I had noticed in the first problem the speed we had been making at skew flip. More than eleven thousand miles per second. That s a nice speed even in space. It made me think. Consider the nearest star Proxima Centauri four and three tenths light years away the distance you hear so often on quiz shows. How long at eight gees The problem was the same sort but I had to be careful about decimal points the figures mount up. A lightyear is I had forgotten. So multiply 186 000 miles per second the speed of light by the seconds in a year 365.25 x 24 x 3600 and get 5 880 000 000 000 miles multiply that by 4.3 and get 25 284 000 000 000 Call it twenty five trillion miles. Whew It works out to a year and five months not as long as a trip around the Horn only last century. Why these monsters had star travel I don t know why I was surprised it had been staring me in the face. I had assumed that Wormface had taken me to his home planet that he was a Plutonian or Plutocrat or whatever the word is. But he couldn t be. He breathed air. He kept his ship warm enough for me. When he wasn t in a hurry he cruised at one gee near enough. He used lighting that suited my eyes. Therefore he came from the sort of planet I came from. Proxima Centauri is a double star as you know if you do crossword puzzles and one is a twin for our own Sun size temperature special pattern. Is it a fair guess that it has a planet like Earth I had a dirty hunch that I knew Wormface s home address. I knew where he didn t come from. Not from a planet that runs a couple of centuries in utter airlessness with temperatures pushing absolute zero followed by a summer in which some gases melt but water is solid rock and even Wormface has to wear a space suit. Nor from anywhere in our system for I was sure as taxes that Wormface felt at home only on a planet like ours. Never mind the way he looked spiders don t look like us but they like the things we like there must be a thousand spiders in our houses for every one of us. Wormface and his kin would like Earth. My fear was that they liked it too much. I looked at that Proxima Centauri problem and saw something else. The turn over speed read 1 110 000 miles per second six times the speed of light. Relativity theory says that s impossible. I wanted to talk to Dad about it. Dad reads everything from The Anatomy of Melancholy to Acta Mathematica and Paris Match and will sit on a curbstone separating damp newspapers wrapped around garbage in order to see continued on page eight. Dad would haul down a book and we d look it up. Then he would try four or five more with other opinions. Dad doesn t hold with the idea that it must be true or they wouldn t have printed it he doesn t consider any opinion sacred it shocked me the first time he took out a pen and changed something in one of my math books. Still even if speed of light was a limit four or five years wasn t impossible or even impractical. We ve been told for so long that star trips even to the nearest stars would take generations that we may have a wrong slant. A mile of lunar mountains is a long way but a trillion miles in empty space may not be. But what was Wormface doing on Pluto If you were invading another solar system how would you start I m not joking a dungeon on Pluto is no joke and I never laughed at Wormface. Would you just barge in or toss your hat in first They seemed far ahead of us in engineering but they couldn t have known that ahead of time. Wouldn t it be smart to build a supply base in that system in some spot nobody ever visited Then you could set up advance bases say on an airless satellite of a likely looking planet from which you could scout the surface of the target planet. If you lost your scouting base you would pull back to main base and work out a new attack. Remember that while Pluto is a long way off to us it was only five days from Luna for Wormface. Think about World War II back when speeds were slow. Main Base is safely out of reach U.S.A. Pluto but only about five days from advance base England The Moon which is three hours from theater of operations France Germany Earth . That s a slow way to operate but it worked for the Allies in World War II. I just hoped it would not work for Wormface s gang. Though I didn t see anything to prevent it. Somebody chucked down another can spaghetti and meat balls. If it had been canned peaches I might not have had the fortitude to do what I did next which was to use it for a hammer before I opened it. I beat an empty can into a flat narrow shape and beat a point on it which I sharpened on the edge of the catch basin. When I was through I had a dagger not a good one but it made me feel less helpless. Then I ate. I felt sleepy and went to sleep in a warm glow. I was still a prisoner but I had a weapon of sorts and I believed that I had figured out what I was up against. Getting a problem analyzed is two thirds of solving it. I didn t have nightmares. The next thing tossed down the hole was Fats. Skinny landed on him seconds later. I backed off and held my dagger ready. Skinny ignored me picked himself up looked around went to the water spout and got a drink. Fats was in no shape to do anything his breath was knocked out. I looked at him and thought what a nasty parcel he was. Then I thought oh what the deuce he had massaged me when I needed it. I heaved him onto his stomach and began artificial respiration. In four or five pushes his motor caught and he was able to breathe. He gasped That s enough I backed off got my knife out. Skinny was sitting against a wall ignoring us. Fats looked at my feeble weapon and said Put that away kid. We re bosom buddies now. We are Yeah. Us human types had better stick together. He sighed wretchedly. After all we done for him That s gratitude. What do you mean I demanded. Huh said Fats. Just what I said. He decided he could do without us. So Annie doesn t live here any more. Shaddap the skinny one said flatly. Fats screwed his face into a pout. You shaddap he said peevishly. I m tired of that. It s shaddap here shaddap there all day long and look where we are. Shaddap I said. Fats shut up. I never did find out what had happened because Fats seldom gave the same explanation twice. The older man never spoke except for that tiresome order to shut up or in monosyllables even less helpful. But one thing was clear: they had lost their jobs as assistant gangsters or fifth columnists or whatever you call a human being who would stooge against his own race. Once Fats said Matter of fact it s your fault. Mine I dropped my hand to my tin can knife. Yours. If you hadn t butted in he wouldn t have got sore. I didn t do anything. Says you. You swiped his two best prizes that s all and held him up when he planned to high tail it back here. Oh. But that wasn t your fault. So I told him. You try telling him. Take your hand away from that silly nail file. Fats shrugged. Like I always say let bygones be bygones. I finally learned the thing I wanted most to know. About the fifth time I brought up the matter of Peewee Fats said What d you want to know about the brat for I just want to know whether she s alive or dead. Oh she s alive. Leastwise she was last time I seen her. When was that You ask too many questions. Right here. She s here I said eagerly. That s what I said wasn t it Around everywhere and always underfoot. Living like a princess if you ask me. Fats picked his teeth and frowned. Why he should make a pet out of her and treat us the way he did beats me. It ain t right. I didn t think so either but for another reason. The idea that gallant little Peewee was the spoiled darling of Wormface I found impossible to believe. There was some explanation or Fats was lying. You mean he doesn t have her locked up What s it get him Where s she gonna go I pondered that myself. Where could you go when to step outdoors was suicide. Even if Peewee had her space suit and that at least was probably locked up even if a ship was at hand and empty when she got outside even if she could get into it she still wouldn t have a ship s brain the little gadget that served as a lock. What happened to the Mother Thing The what The I hesitated. Uh the non human who was in my space suit with me. You must know you were there. Is she alive Is she here But Fats was brooding. Them bugs don t interest me none he said sourly and I could get no more out of him. But Peewee was alive and a hard lump in me was suddenly gone . She was here Her chances even as a prisoner had been enormously better on the Moon nevertheless I felt almost ecstatic to know that she was near. I began thinking about ways to get a message to her. As for Fats insinuation that she was playing footy with Wormface it bothered me not at all. Peewee was unpredictable and sometimes a brat and often exasperating as well as conceited supercilious and downright childish. But she would be burned alive rather than turn traitor. Joan of Arc had not been made of sterner stuff. We three kept uneasy truce. I avoided them slept with one eye open and tried not to sleep unless they were asleep first and I always kept my dagger at hand. I did not bathe after they joined me it would have put me at a disadvantage. The older one ignored me Fats was almost friendly. I pretended not to be afraid of my puny weapon but I think he was. The reason I think so comes from the first time we were fed. Three cans dropped from the ceiling Skinny picked up one Fats got one but when I circled around to take the third Fats snatched it. I said Give me that please. Fats grinned. What makes you think this is for you sonny boy Uh three cans three people. So what I m feeling a mite hungry. I don t hardly think I can spare it. I m hungry too. Be reasonable. Mmmm He seemed to consider it. Tell you what. I ll sell it to you. I hesitated. It had a shifty logic Wormface couldn t walk into Lunar Base commissary and buy these rations probably Fats or his partner had bought them. I wouldn t mind signing I.O.U.s a hundred dollars a meal a thousand or a million money no longer meant anything. Why not humor him No If I gave in if I admitted I had to dicker with him for my prison rations he would own me. I d wait on him hand and foot do anything he told me just to eat. I let him see my tin dagger. I ll fight you for it. Fats glanced at my hand and grinned broadly. Can t you take a joke He tossed me the can. There was no trouble at feeding times after that We lived like that Happy Family you sometimes see in traveling zoos: a lion caged with a lamb. It is a startling exhibit but the lamb has to be replaced frequently. Fats liked to talk and I learned things from him when I could sort out truth from lies. His name so he said was Jacques de Barre de Vigny Call me Jock. and the older man was Timothy Johnson but I had a hunch that their real names could be learned only by inspecting post office bulletin boards. Despite Jock s pretense of knowing everything I soon decided that he knew nothing about Wormface s origin and little about his plans and purposes. Wormface did not seem the sort to discuss things with lower animals he would simply make use of them as we use horses. Jock admitted one thing readily. Yeah we put the snatch on the brat. There s no uranium on the Moon those stories are just to get suckers. We were wasting our time and a man s got to eat don t he I didn t make the obvious retort I wanted information. Tim said Shaddap Aw what of it Tim You worried about the F.B.I. You think the Man can put the arm on you here Shaddap I said. Happens I feel like talking. So blow it. Jock went on It was easy. The brat s got more curiosity than seven cats. He knew she was coming and when. Jock looked thoughtful. He always knows he s got lots of people working for him some high up. All I had to do was be in Luna City and get acquainted I made the contact because Tim here ain t the fatherly type the way I am. I get to talking with her I buy her a coke I tell her about the romance of hunting uranium on the Moon and similar hogwash. Then I sigh and say it s too bad I can t show her the mine of my partner and I. That s all it took. When the tourist party visited Tombaugh Station she got away and sneaked out the lock she worked that part out her ownself. She s sly that one. All we had to do was wait where I told her didn t even have to be rough with her until she got worried about taking longer for the crawler to get to our mine than I told her. Jock grinned. She fights pretty well for her weight. Scratched me some. Poor little Peewee Too bad she hadn t drawn and quartered him But the story sounded true for it was the way Peewee would behave sure of herself afraid of no one unable to resist any educational experience. Jock went on It wasn t the brat he wanted. He wanted her old man. Had some swindle to get him to the Moon didn t work. Jock grinned sourly. That was a bad time things ain t good when he don t have his own way. But he had to settle for the brat. Tim here pointed out to him he could trade. Tim chucked in one word which I took as a general denial. Jock raised his eyebrows. Listen to vinegar puss. Nice manners ain t he Maybe I should have kept quiet since I was digging for facts not philosophy. But I ve got Peewee s failing myself when I don t understand I have an unbearable itch to know why. I didn t and don t understand what made Jock tick. Jock Why did you do it Huh Look you re a human being. At least he looked like one. As you pointed out we humans had better stick together. How could you bring yourself to kidnap a little girl and turn her over to him Are you crazy boy I don t think so. You talk crazy. Have you ever tried not doing something he wanted Try it some time. I saw his point. Refusing Wormface would be like a rabbit spitting in a snake s eye as I knew too well. Jock went on You got to understand the other man s viewpoint. Live and let live I always say. We got grabbed while we were messin around lookin for carnotite and after that we never stood no chance. You can t fight City Hall that gets you nowhere. So we made a dicker we run his errands he pays us in uranium. My faint sympathy vanished. I wanted to throw up. And you got paid Well . . . you might say we got time on the books. I looked around our cell. You made a bad deal. Jock grimaced looking like a sulky baby. Maybe so. But be reasonable kid. You got to cooperate with the inevitable. These boys are moving in they got what it takes. You seen that yourself. Well a man s got to look out for number one don t he It s a cinch nobody else will. Now I seen a case like this when I was no older than you and it taught me a lesson. Our town had run quietly for years but the Big Fellow was getting old and losing his grip . . . whereupon some boys from St. Louis moved in. Things were confused for a while. A man had to know which way to jump else he woke up wearing a wooden overcoat like as not. Those that seen the handwriting made out those that didn t . . . well it don t do no good to buck the current I always say. That makes sense don t it I could follow his logic provided you accepted his live louse standard. But he had left out a key point. Even so. Jock I don t see how you could do that to a little girl. Huh I just explained how we couldn t help it. But you could. Even allowing how hard it is to face up to him and refuse orders you had a perfect chance to duck out. Wha d you mean He sent you to Luna City to find her you said so. You ve got a return fare benefit I know you have I know the rules. All you had to do was sit tight where he couldn t reach you and take the next ship back to Earth. You didn t have to do his dirty work. But I cut him off. Maybe you couldn t help yourself out in a lunar desert. Maybe you wouldn t feel safe even inside Tombaugh Station. But when he sent you into Luna City you had your chance. You didn t have to steal a little girl and turn her over to a a bug eyed monster He looked baffled then answered quickly. Kip I like you. You re a good boy. But you ain t smart. You don t understand. I think I do No you don t. He leaned toward me started to put a hand on my knee I drew back. He went on There s something I didn t tell you . . . for fear you d think I was a well a zombie or something. They operated on us. Huh They operated on us he went on glibly. They planted bombs in our heads. Remote control like a missile. A man gets out of line . . . he punches a button blooie Brains all over the ceiling. He fumbled at the nape of his neck. See the scar My hair s getting kind o long . . . but if you look close I m sure you ll see it it can t ave disappeared entirely. See it I started to look. I might even have been sold on it I had been forced to believe less probable things lately. Tim cut short my suspended judgment with one explosive word. Jock flinched then braced himself and said Don t pay any attention to him I shrugged and moved away. Jock didn t talk the rest of that day. That suited me. The next morning I was roused by Jock s hand on my shoulder. Wake up Kip Wake up I groped for my toy weapon. It s over there by the wall Jock said but it ain t ever goin to do you any good now. I grabbed it. What do you mean Where s Tim You didn t wake up Huh This is what I ve been scared of. Cripes boy I just had to talk to somebody. You slept through it Through what And where s Tim Jock was shivering and sweating. They blue lighted us that s what. They took Tim. He shuddered. I m glad it was him. I thought well maybe you ve noticed I m a little stout . . . they like fat. What do you mean What have they done with him Poor old Tim. He had his faults like anybody but He s soup by now . . . that s what. He shuddered again. They like soup bones and all. I don t believe it. You re trying to scare me. So He looked me up and down. They ll probably take you next. Son if you re smart you ll take that letter opener of yours over to that horse trough and open your veins. It s better that way. I said Why don t you Here I ll lend it to you. He shook his head and shivered. I ain t smart. I don t know what became of Tim. I don t know whether the wormfaces ate people or not. You can t say cannibal. We may be mutton to them. I wasn t especially scared because I had long since blown all fuses in my scare circuits. What happens to my body after I m through with it doesn t matter to me. But it did to Jock he had a phobia about it. I don t think Jock was a coward cowards don t even try to become prospectors on the Moon. He believed his theory and it shook him. He halfway admitted that he had more reason to believe it than I had known. He had been to Pluto once before so he said and other men who had come along or been dragged on that trip hadn t come back. When feeding time came two cans he said he wasn t hungry and offered me his rations. That night he sat up and kept himself awake. Finally I just had to go to sleep before he did. I awoke from one of those dreams where you can t move. The dream was correct sometime not long before I had surely been blue lighted. Jock was gone. I never saw either of them again. Somehow I missed them . . . Jock at least. It was a relief not to have to watch all the time it was luxurious to bathe. But it gets mighty boring pacing your cage alone. I have no illusions about them. There must be well over three billion people I would rather be locked up with. But they were people. Tim didn t have anything else to recommend him he was as coldly vicious as a guillotine. But Jock had some slight awareness of right and wrong or he wouldn t have tried to justify himself. You might say he was just weak. But I don t hold with the idea that to understand all is to forgive all you follow that and first thing you know you re sentimental over murderers and rapists and kidnappers and forgetting their victims. That s wrong. I ll weep over the likes of Peewee not over criminals whose victims they are. I missed Jock s talk but if there were some way to drown such creatures at birth I d take my turn as executioner. That goes double for Tim. If they ended up as soup for hobgoblins I couldn t honestly be sorry even though it might be my turn tomorrow. As soup they probably had their finest hour. Chapter 8 I was jarred out of useless brain cudgeling by an explosion a sharp crack a bass rumble then a whoosh of reduced pressure. I bounced to my feet anyone who has ever depended on a space suit is never again indifferent to a drop in pressure. I gasped What the deuce Then I added Whoever is on watch had better get on the ball or we ll all be breathing thin cold stuff. No oxygen outside I was sure or rather the astronomers were and I didn t want to test it. Then I said Somebody bombing us I hope. Or was it an earthquake This was not an idle remark. That Scientific American article concerning summer on Pluto had predicted sharp isostatic readjustments as the temperature rose which is a polite way of saying Hold your hats Here comes the chimney I was in an earthquake once in Santa Barbara I didn t need a booster shot to remember what every Californian knows and others learn in one lesson: when the ground does a jig get outdoors Only I couldn t. I spent two minutes checking whether adrenalin had given me the strength to jump eighteen feet instead of twelve. It hadn t. That was all I did for a half hour if you don t count nail biting. Then I heard my name Kip Oh Kip Peewee I screamed. Here Peewee Silence for an eternity of three heartbeats Kip Down HERE Kip Are you down this hole Yes Can t you see me I saw her head against the light above. Uh I can now. Oh Kip I m so glad Then why are you crying So am I I m not crying she blubbered. Oh Kip ... Kip. Can you get me out Uh She surveyed that drop. Stay where you are. Don t go way She already had. She wasn t gone two minutes it merely seemed like a week. Then she was back and the darling had a nylon rope Grab on she shrilled. Wait a sec. How is it fastened I ll pull you up. No you won t or we ll both be down here. Find somewhere to belay it. I can lift you. Belay it Hurry She left again leaving an end in my hands. Shortly I heard very faintly: On belay I shouted Testing and took up the slack. I put my weight on it it held. Climbing I yelled and followed the final g up the hole and caught it. She flung herself on me an arm around my neck one around Madame Pompadour and both of mine around her. She was even smaller and skinnier than I remembered. Oh Kip it s been just awful. I patted her bony shoulder blades. Yeah I know. What do we do now Where s W I started to say Where s Wormface but she burst into tears. Kip I think she s dead My mind skidded I was a bit stir crazy anyhow. Huh Who She looked as amazed as I was confused. Why the Mother Thing. Oh. I felt a flood of sorrow. But honey are you sure She was talking to me all right up to the last and I didn t die. What in the world are you talk Oh. I don t mean then. Kip I mean now. Huh She was here Of course. Where else Now that s a silly question it s a big universe. I had decided long ago that the Mother Thing couldn t be here because Jock had brushed off the subject. I reasoned that Jock would either have said that she was here or have invented an elaborate lie for the pleasure of lying. Therefore she wasn t on his list perhaps he had never seen her save as a bulge under my suit. I was so sure of my logic that it took a long moment to throw off prejudice and accept fact. Peewee I said gulping I feel like I d lost my own mother. Are you sure Feel as if she said automatically. I m not sure sure ... but she s outside so she must be dead. Wait a minute. If she s outside she s wearing a space suit Isn t she No no She hasn t had one not since they destroyed her ship. I was getting more confused. How did they bring her in here They just sacked her and sealed her and carried her in. Kip what do we do now I knew several answers all of them wrong I had already considered them during my stretch in jail. Where is Wormface Where are all the wormfaces Oh. All dead. I think. I hope you re right. I looked around for a weapon and never saw a hallway so bare. My toy dagger was only eighteen feet away but I didn t feel like going back down for it. What makes you think so Peewee had reason to think so. The Mother Thing didn t look strong enough to tear paper but what she lacked in beef she made up in brains. She had done what I had tried to do: reasoned out a way to take them all on. She had not been able to hurry because her plan had many factors all of which had to mesh at once and many of them she could not influence she had to wait for the breaks. First she needed a time when there were few wormfaces around. The base was indeed a large supply dump and space port and transfer point but it did not need a large staff. It had been unusually crowded the few moments I had seen it because our ship was in. Second it also had to be when no ships were in because she couldn t cope with a ship she couldn t get at it. Third H Hour had to be while the wormfaces were feeding. They all ate together when there were few enough not to have to use their mess hall in relays crowded around one big tub and sopping it up I gathered a scene out of Dante. That would place all her enemies on one target except possibly one or two on engineering or communication watches. Wait a minute I interrupted. You said they were all dead Well ... I don t know. I haven t seen any. Hold everything until I find something to fight with. But First things first Peewee. Saying that I was going to find a weapon wasn t finding one. That corridor had nothing but more holes like the one I had been down which was why Peewee had looked for me there it was one of the few places where she had not been allowed to wander at will. Jock had been correct on one point: Peewee and the Mother Thing had been star prisoners allowed all privileges except freedom . . . whereas Jock and Tim and myself had been third class prisoners and or soup bones. It fitted the theory that Peewee and the Mother Thing were hostages rather than ordinary P.W.s. I didn t explore those holes after I looked down one and saw a human skeleton maybe they got tired of tossing food to him. When I straightened up Peewee said What are you shaking about Nothing. Come on. I want to see. Peewee every second counts and we ve done nothing but yak. Come on. Stay behind me. I kept her from seeing the skeleton a major triumph over that little curiosity box although it probably would not have affected her much Peewee was sentimental only when it suited her. Stay behind me had the correct gallant sound but it was not based on reason. I forgot that attack could come from the rear I should have said: Follow me and watch behind us. She did anyway. I heard a squeal and whirled around to see a wormface with one of those camera like things aimed at me. Even though Tim had used one on me I didn t realize what it was for a moment I froze. But not Peewee. She launched herself through the air attacking with both hands and both feet in the gallant audacity and utter recklessness of a kitten. That saved me. Her attack would not have hurt anything but another kitten but it mixed him up so that he didn t finish what he was doing namely paralyzing or killing me he tripped over her and went down. And I stomped him. With my bare feet I stomped him landing on that lobster horror head with both feet. His head crunched. It felt awful. It was like jumping on a strawberry box. It splintered and crunched and went to pieces. I cringed at the feel even though I was in an agony to fight to kill. I trampled worms and hopped away feeling sick. I scooped up Peewee and pulled her back as anxious to get clear as I had been to Join battle seconds before. I hadn t killed it. For an awful moment I thought I was going to have to wade back in. Then I saw that while it was alive it did not seem aware of us. It flopped like a chicken freshly chopped then quieted and began to move purposefully. But it couldn t see. I had smashed its eyes and maybe its ears but certainly those terrible eyes. It felt around the floor carefully then got to its feet still undamaged except that its head was a crushed ruin. It stood still braced tripod style by that third appendage and felt the air. I pulled us back farther. It began to walk. Not toward us or I would have screamed. It moved away ricocheted off a wall straightened out and went back the way we had come. t reached one of those holes they used for prisoners walked into it and dropped. I sighed and realized that I had been holding Peewee too tightly to breathe. I put her down. There s your weapon she said. Huh On the floor. Just beyond where I dropped Madame Pompadour. The gadget. She went over picked up her dolly brushed away bits of ruined wormface then took the camera like thing and handed it to me. Be careful. Don t point it toward you. Or me. Peewee I said faintly don t you ever have an attack of nerves Sure I do. When I have leisure for it. Which isn t now. Do you know how to work it No. Do you I think so. I ve seen them and the Mother Thing told me about them. She took it handling it casually but not pointing it at either of us. These holes on top uncover one of them it stuns. If you uncover them all it kills. To make it work you push it here. She did and a bright blue light shot out splashed against the wall. The light doesn t do anything she added. It s for aiming. I hope there wasn t anybody on the other side of that wall. No I hope there was. You know what I mean. It looked like a cockeyed 35 mm. camera with a lead lens one built from an oral description. I took it being very cautious where I pointed it and looked at it. Then I tried it full power by mistake. The blue light was a shaft in the air and the wall where it hit glowed and began to smoke. I shut it off. You wasted power Peewee chided. You may need it later. Well I had to try it. Come on let s go. Peewee glanced at her Mickey Mouse watch and I felt irked that it had apparently stood up when my fancy one had not. There s very little time. Kip. Can t we assume that only this one escaped What We certainly cannot Until we re sure that all of them are dead we can t do anything else. Come on. But Well I ll lead. I know my way around you don t. No. Yes So we did it her way she led and carried the blue light projector while I covered the rear and wished for a third eye like a wormface. I couldn t argue that my reflexes were faster when they weren t and she knew more than I did about our weapon. But it s graveling just the same. The base was huge half that mountain must have been honeycombed. We did it at a fast trot ignoring things as complicated as museum exhibits and twice as interesting simply making sure that no wormface was anywhere. Peewee ran with the weapon at the ready talking twenty to the dozen and urging me on. Besides an almost empty base no ships in and the wormfaces feeding the Mother Thing s plan required that all this happen shortly before a particular hour of the Plutonian night. Why I panted. So she could signal her people of course. But I shut up. I had wondered about the Mother Thing s people but didn t even know as much about her as I did about Wormface except that she was everything that made her the Mother Thing. Now she was dead Peewee said that she was outside without a space suit so she was surely dead that little soft warm thing wouldn t last two seconds in that ultra arctic weather. Not to mention suffocation and lung hemorrhage. I choked up. Of course Peewee might be wrong. I had to admit that she rarely was but this might be one of the times ... in which case we would find her. But if we didn t find her she was outside and Peewee do you know where my space suit is Huh Of course. Right next to where I got this. She patted the nylon rope which she had coiled around her waist and tied with a bow. Then the second we are sure that we ve cleaned out the wormfaces I m going outside and look for her Yes yes But we ve got to find my suit too. I m going with you. No doubt she would. Maybe I could persuade her to wait in the tunnel out of that bone freezing wind. Peewee why did she have to send her message at night To a ship in a rotation period orbit Or is there My words were chopped off by a rumble. The floor shook in that loose bearing vibration that frightens people and animals alike. We stopped dead. What was that Peewee whispered. I swallowed. Unless it s part of this rumpus the Mother Thing planned It isn t. I think. It s a quake. An earthquake A Pluto quake. Peewee we ve got to get out of here I wasn t thinking about where you don t in a quake. Peewee gulped. We can t bother with earthquakes we haven t time. Hurry Kip hurry She started to run and I followed gritting my teeth. If Peewee could ignore a quake so could I though it s like ignoring a rattlesnake in bed. Peewee . . . Mother Thing s people ... is their ship in orbit around Pluto What Oh no no They re not in a ship. Then why at night Something about the Heaviside layers here How far away is their base I was wondering how far a man could walk here. We had done almost forty miles on the Moon. Could we do forty blocks here Or even forty yards You could insulate your feet probably. But that wind Peewee they don t live here do they What Don t be silly They have a nice planet of their own. Kip if you keep asking foolish questions we ll be too late. Shut up and listen. I shut up. What follows I got in snatches as we ran and some of it later. When the Mother Thing had been captured she had lost ship space clothing communicator everything Wormface had destroyed it all. There had been treachery capture through violation of truce while parleying. He grabbed her when they were supposed to be under a King s X was Peewee s indignant description and that s not fair He had promised. Treachery would be as natural in Wormface as venom in a Gila monster I was surprised that the Mother Thing had risked a palaver with him. It left her a prisoner of ruthless monsters equipped with ships that made ours look like horseless carriages weapons which started with a death ray and ended heaven knows where plus bases organization supplies. She had only her brain and her tiny soft hands. Before she could use the rare combination of circumstances necessary to have any chance at all she had to replace her communicator I think of it as her radio but it was more than that and she had to have weapons. The only way she could get them was to build them. She had nothing not a bobby pin only that triangular ornament with spirals engraved on it. To build anything she had to gain access to a series of rooms which I would describe as electronics labs not that they looked like the bench where I jiggered with electronics but electron pushing has its built in logic. If electrons are to do what you want them to components have to look pretty much a certain way whether built by humans wormfaces or the Mother Thing. A wave guide gets its shape from the laws of nature an inductance has its necessary geometry no matter who the technician is. So it looked like an electronics lab a very good one. It had gear I did not recognize but which I felt I could understand if I had time. I got only a glimpse. The Mother Thing spent many many hours there. She would not have been permitted there even though she was a prisoner at large with freedom in most ways and anything she wanted including private quarters with Peewee. I think that Wormface was afraid of her even though she was a prisoner he did not want to offend her unnecessarily. She got the run of their shops by baiting their cupidity. Her people had many things that wormfaces had not gadgets inventions conveniences. She began by inquiring why they did a thing this way rather than another way which was so much more efficient A tradition Or religious reasons When asked what she meant she looked helpless and protested that she couldn t explain which was a shame because it was simple and so easy to build too. Under close chaperonage she built something. The gadget worked. Then something else. Presently she was in the labs daily making things for her captors things that delighted them. She always delivered the privilege depended on it. But each gadget involved parts she needed herself. She sneaked bits and pieces into her pouch Peewee told me. They never knew exactly what she was doing. She would use five of a thing and the sixth would go into her pouch. Her pouch Of course. That s where she hid the brain the time she and I swiped the ship. Didn t you know I didn t know she had a pouch. Well neither did they. They watched to see she didn t carry anything out of the shop and she never did. Not where it showed. Uh Peewee is the Mother Thing a marsupial Huh Like possums You don t have to be a marsupial to have a pouch. Look at squrrels they have pouches in their cheeks. Mmm yes. She sneaked a bit now and a bit then and I swiped things too. During rest time she worked on them in our room. The Mother Thing had not slept all the time we had been on Pluto. She worked long hours publicly making things for wormfaces a stereo telephone no bigger than a pack of cigarettes a tiny beetle like arrangement that crawled all over anything it was placed on and integrated the volume many other things. But during hours set apart for rest she worked for herself usually in darkness those tiny fingers busy as a blind watch maker s. She made two bombs and a long distance communicator and beacon. I didn t get all this tossed over Peewee s shoulder while we raced through the base she simply told me that the Mother Thing had managed to build a radio beacon and had been responsible for the explosion I had felt. And that we must hurry hurry hurry Peewee I said panting. What s the rush If the Mother Thing is outside I want to bring her in her body I mean. But you act as if we had a deadline. We do The communicator beacon had to be placed outside at a particular local time the Plutonian day is about a week the astronomers were right again so that the planet itself would not blanket the beam. But the Mother Thing had no space suit. They had discussed having Peewee suit up go outside and set the beacon it had been so designed that Peewee need only trigger it. But that depended on locating Peewee s space suit then breaking in and getting it after the wormfaces were disposed of. They had never located it. The Mother Thing had said serenely singing confident notes that I could almost hear ringing in my head: Never mind dear. I can go out and set it myself. Mother Thing You can t Peewee had protested. It s cold out there. I shan t be long. You won t be able to breathe. It won t be necessary for so short a time. That settled it. In her own way the Mother Thing was as hard to argue with as Wormface. The bombs were built the beacon was built a time approached when all factors would match no ship expected few wormfaces Pluto faced the right way feeding time for the staff and they still did not know where Peewee s suit was if it had not been destroyed. The Mother Thing resolved to go ahead. But she told me just a few hours ago when she let me know that today was the day that if she did not come back in ten minutes or so that she hoped I could find my suit and trigger the beacon if she hadn t been able to. Peewee started to cry. That was the f f first time she admitted that she wasn t sure she could do it Peewee Stop it Then what I waited for the explosions they came right together and I started to search places I hadn t been allowed to go. But I couldn t find my suit Then I found you and oh Kip she s been out there almost an hour She looked at her watch. There s only about twenty minutes left. If the beacon isn t triggered by then she s had all her trouble and died for n n nothing She wouldn t like that. Where s my suit We found no more wormfaces apparently there was only one on duty while the others fed. Peewee showed me a door air lock type behind which was the feeding chamber the bomb may have cracked that section for gas tight doors had closed themselves when the owners were blown to bits. We hurried past. Logical as usual Peewee ended our search at my space suit. It was one of more than a dozen human type suits I wondered how much soup those ghouls ate. Well they wouldn t eat again I wasted no time I simply shouted Hi Oscar and started to suit up. Where you been chum Oscar seemed in perfect shape. Fats suit was next to mine and Tim s next to it I glanced at them as I stretched Oscar out wondering whether they had equipment I could use. Peewee was looking at Tim s suit. Maybe I can wear this. It was much smaller than Oscar which made it only nine sizes too big for Peewee. Don t be silly It d fit you like socks on a rooster. Help me. Take off that rope coil it and clip it to my belt. You won t need it. The Mother Thing planned to take the beacon out the walkway about a hundred yards and sit it down. If she didn t manage it that s all you do. Then twist the stud on top. Don t argue How much time Yes Kip. Eighteen minutes. Those winds are strong I added. I may need the line. The Mother Thing didn t weigh much. If she had been swept off I might need a rope to recover her body. Hand me that hammer off Fats suit. Right away I stood up. It felt good to have Oscar around me. Then I remembered how cold my feet got walking in from the ship. I wish I had asbestos boots. Peewee looked startled. Wait right here She was gone before I could stop her. I went on sealing up while I worried she hadn t even stopped to pick up the projector weapon. Shortly I said Tight Oscar Tight boy Chin valve okay blood color okay radio I wouldn t need it water The tank was dry. No matter I wouldn t have time to grow thirsty. I worked the chin valve making the pressure low because I knew that pressure outdoors was quite low. Peewee returned with what looked like ballet slippers for a baby elephant. She leaned close to my face plate and shouted They wear these. Can you get them on It seemed unlikely but I forced them over my feet like badly fitting socks. I stood up and found that they improved traction they were clumsy but not hard to walk in. A minute later we were standing at the exit of the big room I had first seen. Its air lock doors were closed now as a result of the Mother Thing s other bomb which she had placed to blow out the gate valve panels in the tunnel beyond. The bomb in the feeding chamber had been planted by Peewee who had then ducked back to their room. I don t know whether the Mother Thing timed the two bombs to go off together or triggered them by remote control nor did it matter they had made a shambles of Wormface s fancy base. Peewee knew how to waste air through the air lock. When the inner door opened I shouted Time Fourteen minutes. She held up her watch. Remember what I said just stay here. If anything moves blue light it first and ask questions afterwards. I remember. I stepped in and closed the inner door found the valve in the outer door waited for pressure to equalize. The two or three minutes it took that big lock to bleed off I spent in glum thought. I didn t like leaving Peewee alone. I thought all wormfaces were dead but I wasn t sure. We had searched hastily one could have zigged when we zagged they were so fast. Besides that Peewee had said I remember when she should have said Okay Kip I will. A slip of the tongue That flea hopping mind made slips only when it wanted to. There is a world of difference between Roger and Wilco. Besides I was doing this for foolish motives. Mostly I was going out to recover the Mother Thing s body folly because after I brought her in she would spoil. It would be kinder to leave her in natural deep freeze. But I couldn t bear that it was cold out there and I couldn t leave her out in the cold. She had been so little and warm ... so alive. I had to bring her in where she could get warm. You re in bad shape when your emotions force you into acts which you know are foolish. Worse still I was doing this in a reckless rush because the Mother Thing had wanted that beacon set before a certain second now only twelve minutes away maybe ten. Well I d do it but what sense was it Say her home star is close by oh say it s Proxima Centauri and the wormfaces came from somewhere farther. Even if her beacon works it still takes over four years for her S.O.S. to reach her friends This might have been okay for the Mother Thing. I had an impression that she lived a very long time waiting a few years for rescue might not bother her. But Peewee and I were not creatures of her sort. We d be dead before that speed of light message crawled to Proxima Centauri. I was glad that I had seen Peewee again but I knew what was in store for us. Death in days weeks or months at most from running out of air or water or food or a wormface ship might land before we died which meant one unholy sabbat of a fight in which if we were lucky we would die quickly. No matter how you figured planting that beacon was merely carrying out the deceased s last wishes words you hear at funerals. Sentimental folly. The outer door started to open. Ave Mother Thing Nos morituri. It was cold out there biting cold even though I was not yet in the wind. The glow panels were still working and I could see that the tunnel was a mess the two dozen fractional pressure stops had ruptured like eardrums. I wondered what sort of bomb could be haywired from stolen parts kept small enough to conceal two in a body pouch along with some sort of radio rig and nevertheless have force enough to blow out those panels. The blast had rattled my teeth several hundred feet away in solid rock. The first dozen panels were blown inwards. Had she set it off in the middle of the tunnel A blast that big would fling her away like a feather She must have planted it there then come inside and triggered it then gone back through the lock just as I had. That was the only way I could see it. It got colder every step. My feet weren t too cold yet those clumsy mukluks were okay the wormfaces understood insulation. Oscar you got the fires burning Roaring chum. It s a cold night. You re telling me Just beyond the outermost burst panel I found her. She had sunk forward as if too tired to go on. Her arms stretched in front of her and on the floor of the tunnel not quite touched by her tiny fingers was a small round box about the size ladies keep powder in on dressing tables. Her face was composed and her eyes were open except that nictitating membranes were drawn across as they had been when I had first seen her in the pasture back of our house a few days or weeks or a thousand years ago. But she had been hurt then and looked it now I half expected her to draw back those inner lids and sing a welcome. I touched her. She was hard as ice and much colder. I blinked back tears and wasted not a moment. She wanted that little box placed a hundred yards out on the causeway and the bump on top twisted and she wanted it done in the next six or seven minutes. I scooped it up. Righto Mother Thing On my way Get cracking chum Thank you dear Kip. . . . I don t believe in ghosts. I had heard her sing thank you so many times that the notes echoed in my head. A few feet away at the mouth of the tunnel I stopped. The wind hit me and was so cold that the deathly chill in the tunnel seemed summery. I closed my eyes and counted thirty seconds to give time to adjust to starlight while I fumbled on the windward side of the tunnel at a slanting strut that anchored the causeway to the mountain tied my safety line by passing it around the strut and snapping it back on itself. I had known that it was night outside and I expected the causeway to stand out as a black ribbon against the white snow glittering under a skyful of stars. I thought I would be safer on that windswept way if I could see its edges which I couldn t by headlamp unless I kept swinging my shoulders back and forth clumsy and likely to throw me off balance or slow me down. I had figured this carefully I didn t regard this as a stroll in the garden not at night not on Pluto So I counted thirty seconds and tied my line while waiting for eyes to adjust to starlight. I opened them. And I couldn t see a darned thing Not a star. Not even the difference between sky and ground. My back was to the tunnel and the helmet shaded my face like a sunbonnet I should have been able to see the walkway. Nothing. I turned the helmet and saw something that accounted both for black sky and the quake we had felt an active volcano. It may have been five miles away or fifty but I could not doubt what it was a jagged angry red scar low in the sky. But I didn t stop to stare. I switched on the headlamp splashed it on the righthand windward edge and started a clumsy trot keeping close to that side so that if I stumbled I would have the entire road to recover in before the wind could sweep me off. That wind scared me. I kept the line coiled in my left hand and paid it out as I went keeping it fairly taut. The coil felt stiff in my fingers. The wind not only frightened me it hurt. It was a cold so intense that it felt like flame. It burned and blasted then numbed. My right side getting the brunt of it began to go and then my left side hurt more than the right. I could no longer feel the line. I stopped leaned forward and got the coil in the light from the headlamp that s another thing that needs fixing the headlamp should swivel. The coil was half gone I had come a good fifty yards. I was depending on the rope to tell me it was a hundred meter climbing line so when I neared its end I would be as far out as the Mother Thing had wanted. Hurry Kip Get cracking boy It s cold out here. I stopped again. Did I have the box I couldn t feel it. But the headlamp showed my right hand clutched around it. Stay there fingers I hurried on counting steps. One Two Three Four ... When I reached forty I stopped and glanced over the edge saw that I was at the highest part where the road crossed the brook and remembered that it was about midway. That brook methane was it was frozen solid and I knew that the night was cold. There were a few loops of line on my left arm close enough. I dropped the line moved cautiously to the middle of the way eased to my knees and left hand and started to put the box down. My fingers wouldn t unbend. I forced them with my left hand got the box out of my fist. That diabolical wind caught it and I barely saved it from rolling away. With both hands I set it carefully upright. Work your fingers bud. Pound your hands together I did so. I could tighten the muscles of my forearms though it was tearing agony to flex fingers. Clumsily steadying the box with my left hand I groped for the little knob on top. I couldn t feel it but it turned easily once I managed to close my fingers on it I could see it turn. It seemed to come to life to purr. Perhaps I heard vibration through gloves and up my suit I certainly couldn t have felt it not the shape my fingers were in. I hastily let go got awkwardly to my feet and backed up so that I could splash the headlamp on it without leaning over. I was through the Mother Thing s job was done and I hoped before deadline. If I had had as much sense as the ordinary doorknob I would have turned and hurried into the tunnel faster than I had come out. But I was fascinated by what it was doing. It seemed to shake itself and three spidery little legs grew out the bottom. It raised up until it was standing on its own little tripod about a foot high. It shook itself again and I thought the wind would blow it over. But the spidery legs splayed out seemed to bite into the road surface and it was rock firm. Something lifted and unfolded out the top. It opened like a flower until it was about eight inches across. A finger lifted an antenna swung as if hunting steadied and pointed at the sky. Then the beacon switched on. I m sure that is what happened although all I saw was a flash of light parasitic it must have been for light alone would not have served even without that volcanic overcast. It was probably some harmless side effect of switching on an enormous pulse of power something the Mother Thing hadn t had time or perhaps equipment or materials to eliminate or shield. It was about as bright as a peanut photoflash. But I was looking at it. Polarizers can t work that fast. It blinded me. I thought my headlamp had gone out then I realized that I simply couldn t see through a big greenish purple disc of dazzle. Take it easy boy. It s just an after image. Wait and it ll go away. I can t wait I m freezing to death Hook the line with your forearm where it s clipped to your belt. Pull on it. I did as Oscar told me found the line turned around started to wind it on both forearms. It shattered. It did not break as you expect rope to break it shattered like glass. I suppose that is what it was by then glass I mean. Nylon and glass are super cooled liquids. Now I know what super cooled means. But all I knew then was that my last link with life had gone. I couldn t see I couldn t hear I was all alone on a bare platform billions of miles from home and a wind out of the depths of a frozen hell was bleeding the last life out of a body I could barely feel and where I could feel it hurt like fire. Oscar I m here bud. You can make it. Now can you see anything No Look for the mouth of the tunnel. It s got light in it. Switch off your headlamp. Sure you can it s just a toggle switch. Drag your hand back across the right side of our helmet. I did. See anything Not yet. Move your head. Try to catch it in the corner of your eye the dazzle stays in front you know. Well I caught something that time Reddish wasn t it Jagged too. The volcano. Now we know which way we re facing. Turn slowly and catch the mouth of the tunnel as it goes by. Slowly was the only way I could turn. There it is Okay you re headed home. Get down on your hands and knees and crab slowly to your left. Don t turn because you want to hang onto that edge and crawl. Crawl toward the tunnel. I got down. I couldn t feel the surface with my hands but I felt pressure on my limbs as if all four were artificial. I found the edge when my left hand slipped over it and I almost fell off. But I recovered. Am I headed right Sure you are. You haven t turned. You ve just moved sideways. Can you lift your head to see the tunnel Uh not without standing up. Don t do that Try the headlamp again. Maybe your eyes are okay now. I dragged my hand forward against the right side of the helmet. I must have hit the switch for suddenly I saw a circle of light blurred and cloudy in the middle. The edge of the walkway sliced it on the left. Good boy No don t get up you re weak and dizzy and likely to fall. Start crawling. Count em. Three hundred ought to do it. I started crawling counting. It s a long way Oscar. You think we can make it Of course we can You think I want to be left out here I d be with you. Knock off the chatter. You ll make me lose count. Thirty six . . . thirty seven . . . thirty eight We crawled. That s a hundred. Now we double it. Hundred one . . . hundred two . . . hundred three I m feeling better Oscar. I think it s getting warmer. WHAT I said I m feeling a little warmer. You re not warmer you blistering idiot That s freeze to death you re feeling Crawl faster Work your chin valve. Get more air. Le me hear that chin valve click I was too tired to argue I chinned the valve three or four times felt a blast blistering my face. I m stepping up the stroke. Warmer indeed Hund d nine . . . hund d ten . . . hun leven . . . hun twelve pick it up At two hundred I said I would just have to rest. No you don t But I ve got to. Just a little while. Like that uh You know what happens. What s Peewee goin to do She s in there waiting. She s already scared because you re late. What s she goin to do Answer me Uh . . . she s going to try to wear Tim s suit. Right In case of duplicate answers the prize goes to the one postmarked first. How far will she get You tell me. Uh ... to the mouth of the tunnel I guess. Then the wind will get her. My opinion exactly. Then we ll have the whole family together. You me the Mother Thing Peewee. Cozy. A family of stiffs. But So start slugging brother. Slug . . . slug . . . slug . . . slug . . . tw und d five . . . two und d six . . . tw und d sev n I don t remember falling off. I don t even know what the snow felt like. I just remember being glad that the dreadful counting was over and I could rest. But Oscar wouldn t let me. Kip Kip Get up Climb back on the straight and narrow. Go way. I can t go away. I wish I could. Right in front of you. Grab the edge and scramble up. It s only a little farther now. I managed to raise my head saw the edge of the walkway in the light of my headlamp about two feet above my head. I sank back. It s too high I said listlessly. Oscar I think we ve had it. He snorted. So Who was it just the other day cussed out a little bitty girl who was too tired to get up Commander Comet wasn t it Did I get the name right The Scourge of the Spaceways ... the no good lazy sky tramp. Have Space Suit Will Travel. Before you go to sleep Commander can I have your autograph I ve never met a real live space pirate before . . . one that goes around hijacking ships and kidnapping little girls. That s not fair Okay okay I know when I m not wanted. But just one thing before I leave: she s got more guts in her little finger than you have in your whole body you lying fat lazy swine Good bye. Don t wait up. Oscar Don t leave me Eh You want help Yes Well if it s too high to reach grab your hammer and hook it over the edge. Pull yourself up. I blinked. Maybe it would work. I reached down decided I had the hammer even though I couldn t feel it got it loose. Using both hands I hooked it over the edge above me. I pulled. That silly hammer broke just like the line. Tool steel and it went to pieces as if it had been cast out of type slugs. That made me mad. I heaved myself to a sitting position got both elbows on the edge and struggled and groaned and burst into fiery sweat and rolled over onto the road surface. That s my boy Never mind counting just crawl toward the light The tunnel wavered in front of me. I couldn t get my breath so I kicked the chin valve. Nothing happened. Oscar The chin valve is stuck I tried again. Oscar was very slow in answering. No pal the valve isn t stuck. Your air hoses have frozen up. I guess that last batch wasn t as dry as it could have been. I haven t any air Again he was slow. But he answered firmly Yes you have. You ve got a whole suit full. Plenty for the few feet left. I ll never make it. A few feet only. There s the Mother Thing right ahead of you. Keep moving. I raised my head and sure enough there she was. I kept crawling while she got bigger and bigger. Finally I said Oscar . . . this is as far as I go. I m afraid it is. I ve let you down . . . but thanks for not leaving me outside there. You didn t let me down . . . you were swell. I just didn t quite make it. I guess we both didn t quite make it ... but we sure let em know that we tried So long partner. So long. Hasta la vista amigo I managed to crawl two short steps and collapsed with my head near the Mother Thing s head. She was smiling. Hello Kip my son. I didn t . . . quite make it Mother Thing. I m sorry. Oh but you did make it Huh Between us we ve both made it. I thought about that for a long time. And Oscar. And Oscar of course. And Peewee. And always Peewee. We ve all made it. Now we can rest dear. G night . . . Mother Thing. It was a darn short rest. I was just closing my eyes feeling warm and happy that the Mother Thing thought that I had done all right when Peewee started shaking my shoulder. She touched helmets. Kip Kip Get up. Please get up. Huh Why Because I can t carry you I tried but I can t do it. You re just too big I considered it. Of course she couldn t carry me where did she get the silly notion that she could I was twice her size. I d carry her . . . just as soon as I caught my breath. Kip Please get up. She was crying now blubbering. Why sure honey I said gently if that s what you want. I tried and had a clumsy bad time of it. She almost picked me up she helped a lot. Once up she steadied me. Turn around. Walk. She almost did carry me. She got her shoulders under my right arm and kept pushing. Every time we came to one of those blown out panels she either helped me step over or simply pushed me through and helped me up again. At last we were in the lock and she was bleeding air from inside to fill it. She had to let go of me and I sank down. She turned when the inner door opened started to say something then got my helmet off in a hurry. I took a deep breath and got very dizzy and the lights dimmed. She was looking at me. You all right now Me Sure Why shouldn t I be Let me help you inside. I couldn t see why but she did help and I needed it. She sat me on the floor near the door with my back to the wall I didn t want to lie down. Kip I was so scared Why I couldn t see what she was worried about. Hadn t the Mother Thing said that we had all done all right Well I was. I shouldn t have let you go out. But the beacon had to be set. Oh but You set it Of course. The Mother Thing was pleased. I m sure she would have been she said gravely. She was. Can I do anything Can I help you out of your suit Uh . . . no not yet. Could you find me a drink of water Right away She came back and held it for me I wasn t as thirsty as I had thought it made me a bit ill. She watched me for some time then said Do you mind if I m gone a little while Will you be all right Me Certainly. I didn t feel well I was beginning to hurt but there wasn t anything she could do. I won t be long. She began clamping her helmet and I noticed with detached interest that she was wearing her own suit somehow I had had the impression that she had been wearing Tim s. I saw her head for the lock and realized where she was going and why. I wanted to tell her that the Mother Thing would rather not be inside here where she might . . . where she might I didn t want to say spoil even to myself. But Peewee was gone. I don t think she was away more than five minutes. I had closed my eyes and I am not sure. I noticed the inner door open. Through it stepped Peewee carrying the Mother Thing in her arms like a long piece of firewood. She didn t bend at all. Peewee put the Mother Thing on the floor in the same position I had last seen her then undamped her helmet and bawled. I couldn t get up. My legs hurt too much. And my arms. Peewee . . . please honey. It doesn t do any good. She raised her head. I m all through. I won t cry any more. And she didn t. We sat there a long time. Peewee again offered to help me out of my suit but when we tried it I hurt so terribly especially my hands and my feet that I had to ask her to stop. She looked worried. Kip ... I m afraid you froze them. Maybe. But there s nothing to do about it now. I winced and changed the subject. Where did you find your suit Oh She looked indignant then almost gay. You d never guess. Inside Jock s suit. No I guess I wouldn t. The Purloined Letter. The what Nothing. I hadn t realized that old Wormface had a sense of humor. Shortly after that we had another quake a bad one. Chandeliers would have jounced if the place had had any and the floor heaved. Peewee squealed. Oh That was almost as bad as the last one. A lot worse I d say. That first little one wasn t anything. No I mean the one while you were outside. Was there one then Didn t you feel it No. I tried to remember. Maybe that was when I fell off in the snow. You fell off Kip It was all right. Oscar helped me. There was another ground shock. I wouldn t have minded only it shook me up and made me hurt worse. I finally came out of the fog enough to realize that I didn t have to hurt. Let s see medicine pills were on the right and the codeine dispenser was farthest back Peewee Could I trouble you for some water again Of course I m going to take codeine. It may make me sleep. Do you mind You ought to sleep if you can. You need it. I suppose so. What time is it She told me and I couldn t believe it. You mean it s been more than twelve hours Huh Since what Since this started. I don t understand Kip. She stared at her watch. It has been exactly an hour and a half since I found you not quite two hours since the Mother Thing set off the bombs. I couldn t believe that either. But Peewee insisted that she was right. The codeine made me feel much better and I was beginning to be drowsy when Peewee said Kip do you smell anything I sniffed. Something like kitchen matches That s what I mean. I think the pressure is dropping too. Kip ... I think I had better close your helmet if you re going to sleep. All right. You close yours too Yes. Uh I don t think this place is tight any longer. You may be right. Between explosions and quakes I didn t see how it could be. But while I knew what that meant I was too weary and sick and getting too dreamy from the drug to worry. Now or a month from now what did it matter The Mother Thing had said everything was okay. Peewee clamped us in we checked radios and she sat down facing me and the Mother Thing. She didn t say anything for a long time. Then I heard: Peewee to Junebug I read you Peewee. Kip It s been fun mostly. Hasn t it Huh I glanced up saw that the dial said I had about four hours of air left. I had had to reduce pressure twice since we closed up to match falling pressure in the room. Yes Peewee it s been swell. I wouldn t have missed it for the world. She sighed. I just wanted to be sure you weren t blaming me. Now go to sleep. I did almost go to sleep when I saw Peewee jump up and my phones came to life. Kip Something s coming in the door I came wide awake realized what it meant. Why couldn t they have let us be A few hours anyhow Peewee. Don t panic. Move to the far side of the door. You ve got your blue light gadget Yes. Pick them off as they come in. You ve got to move Kip. You re right where they will come I can t get up. I hadn t been able to move not even my arms for quite a while. Use low power then if you brush me it won t matter. Do what I say Fast Yes Kip. She got where she could snipe at them sideways raised her projector and waited. The inner door opened a figure came in. I saw Peewee start to nail it and I called into my radio: Don t shoot But she was dropping the projector and running forward even as I shouted. They were mother thing people. It took six of them to carry me only two to carry the Mother Thing. They sang to me soothingly all the time they were rigging a litter. I swallowed another codeine tablet before they lifted me as even with their gentleness any movement hurt. It didn t take long to get me into their ship for they had landed almost at the tunnel mouth no doubt crushing the walkway I hoped so. Once I was safely inside Peewee opened my helmet and unzipped the front of my suit. Kip Aren t they wonderful Yes. I was getting dizzier from the drug but was feeling better. When do we raise ship We ve already started. They re taking us home I d have to tell Mr. Charton what a big help the codeine was. Huh Oh my no We re headed for Vega. I fainted. Chapter 9 I had been dreaming that I was home this awoke me with a jerk. Mother Thing Good morning my son. I am happy to see that you are feeling better. Oh I feel fine. I ve had a good night s rest I stared then blurted: you re dead I couldn t stop it. Her answer sounded warmly gently humorous the way you correct a child who has made a natural mistake. No dear I was merely frozen. I am not as frail as you seem to think me. I blinked and looked again. Then it wasn t a dream No it was not a dream. I thought I was home and I tried to sit up managed only to raise my head. I am home My room Clothes closet on the left hall door behind the Mother Thing my desk on the right piled with books and with a Centerville High pennant over it window beyond it with the old elm almost filling it sun speckled leaves stirring in a breeze. My slipstick was where I had left it. Things started to wobble then I figured it out. I had dreamed only the silly part at the end. Vega I had been groggy with codeine. You brought me home. We brought you home ... to your other home. My home. The bed started to sway. I clutched at it but my arms didn t move. The Mother Thing was still singing. You needed your own nest. So we prepared it. Mother Thing I m confused. We know that a bird grows well faster in its own nest. So we built yours. Bird and nest weren t what she sang but an Unabridged won t give anything closer. I took a deep breath to steady down. I understood her that s what she was best at making you understand. This wasn t my room and I wasn t home it simply looked like it. But I was still terribly confused. I looked around and wondered how I could have been mistaken. The light slanted in the window from a wrong direction. The ceiling didn t have the patch in it from the time I built a hide out in the attic and knocked plaster down by hammering. It wasn t the right shade either. The books were too neat and clean they had that candy box look. I couldn t recognize the bindings. The over all effect was mighty close but details were not right. I like this room the Mother Thing was singing. It looks like you Kip. Mother Thing I said weakly how did you do it We asked you. And Peewee helped. I thought But Peewee has never seen my room either then decided that Peewee had seen enough American homes to be a consulting expert. Peewee is here She ll be in shortly. With Peewee and the Mother Thing around things couldn t be too bad. Except Mother Thing I can t move my arms and legs. She put a tiny warm hand on my forehead and leaned over me until her enormous lemur like eyes blanked out everything else. You have been damaged. Now you are growing well. Do not worry. When the Mother Thing tells you not to worry you don t. I didn t want to do handstands anyhow I was satisfied to look into her eyes. You could sink into them you could have dived in and swum around. All right Mother Thing. I remembered something else. Say . . . you were frozen Weren t you Yes. But Look when water freezes it ruptures living cells. Or so they say. She answered primly My body would never permit that . Well I thought about it. Just don t dunk me in liquid air I m not built for it. Again her song held roguish indulgent humor. We shall endeavor not to hurt you. She straightened up and grew a little swaying like a willow. I sense Peewee. There was a knock another discrepancy it didn t sound like a knock on a light weight interior door and Peewee called out May I come in She didn t wait I wondered if she ever did but came on in. The bit I could see past her looked like our upper hall they d done a thorough job. Come in dear. Sure Peewee. You are in. Don t be captious. Look who s talking. Hi kid Hi yourself. The Mother Thing glided away. Don t stay long Peewee. You are not to tire him. I won t Mother Thing. Bye dears. I said What are the visiting hours in this ward When she says of course. Peewee stood facing me fists on hips. She was really clean for the first time in our acquaintance cheeks pink with scrubbing hair fluffy maybe she would be pretty in about ten years. She was dressed as always but her clothes were fresh all buttons present and tears invisibly mended. Well she said letting out her breath I guess you re going to be worth keeping after all. Me I m in the pink. How about yourself She wrinkled her nose. A little frost nip. Nothing. But you were a mess. I was I can t use adequate language without being what Mama calls unladylike. Oh we wouldn t want you to be that. Don t be sarcastic. You don t do it well. You won t let me practice on you She started to make a Peewee retort stopped suddenly smiled and came close. For a nervous second I thought she was going to kiss me. But she just patted the bedclothes and said solemnly You bet you can Kip. You can be sarcastic or nasty or mean or scold me or anything and I won t let out a peep. Why I ll bet you could even talk back to the Mother Thing. I couldn t imagine wanting to. I said Take it easy Peewee. Your halo is showing. I d have one if it weren t for you. Or flunked my test for it more likely. So I seem to remember somebody about your size lugging me indoors almost piggy back. How about that She wriggled. That wasn t anything. You set the beacon. That was everything. Uh each to his own opinion. It was cold out there. I changed the subject it was embarrassing us. Mention of the beacon reminded me of something else. Peewee Where are we Huh In the Mother Thing s home of course. She looked around and said Oh I forgot. Kip this isn t really your I know I said impatiently. It s a fake. Anybody can see that. They can She looked crestfallen. I thought we had done a perfect job. It s an incredibly good job. I don t see how you did it. Oh your memory is most detailed. You must have a camera eye. and I must have spilled my guts too I added to myself. I wondered what else I had said with Peewee listening. I was afraid to ask a fellow ought to have privacy. But it s still a fake I went on. I know we re in the Mother Thing s home. But where s that Oh. She looked round eyed. I told you. Maybe you don t remember you were sleepy. I remember I said slowly something. But it didn t make sense. I thought you said we were going to Vega. Well I suppose the catalogs will list it as Vega Five. But they call it She threw back her head and vocalized it recalled to me the cockcrow theme in Le Coq d Or. but I couldn t say that. So I told you Vega which is close enough. I tried again to sit up failed. You mean to stand there and tell me we re on Vega I mean a Vegan planet Well you haven t asked me to sit down. I ignored the Peeweeism. I looked at sunlight pouring through the window. That light is from Vega That stuff That s artificial sunlight. If they had used real bright Vega light it would look ghastly. Like a bare arc light. Vega is way up the Russell diagram you know. It is I didn t know the spectrum of Vega I had never expected to need to know it. Oh yes You be careful Kip when you re up I mean. In ten seconds you can get more burn than all winter in Key West and ten minutes would kill you. I seemed to have a gift for winding up in difficult climates. What star class was Vega A maybe Probably B. All I knew was that it was big and bright bigger than the Sun and looked pretty set in Lyra. But where was it How in the name of Einstein did we get here Peewee How far is Vega No I mean How far is the Sun You wouldn t happen to know Of course she said scornfully. Twenty seven light years. Great Galloping Gorillas Peewee get that slide rule. You know how to push one I don t seem to have the use of my hands. She looked uneasy. Uh what do you want it for I want to see what that comes to in miles. Oh. I ll figure it. No need for a slide rule. A slipstick is faster and more accurate. Look if you don t know how to use one don t be ashamed I didn t at your age. I ll show you. Of course I can use one she said indignantly. You think I m a stupe But I ll work it out. Her lips moved silently. One point five nine times ten to the fourteenth miles. I had done that Proxima Centauri problem recently I remembered the miles in a light year and did a rough check in my head uh call it six times twenty five makes a hundred and fifty and where was the decimal point Your answer sounds about right. 159 000 000 000 000 weary miles Too many zeroes for comfort. Of course I m right she retorted. I m always right. Goodness me The handy dandy pocket encyclopedia. She blushed. I can t help being a genius. Which left her wide open and I was about to rub her nose in it when I saw how unhappy she looked. I remembered hearing Dad say: Some people insist that mediocre is better than best. They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can t fly. They despise brains because they have none. Pfah I m sorry Peewee I said humbly. I know you can t. And I can t help not being one . . . any more than you can help being little or I can help being big. She relaxed and looked solemn. I guess I was being a show off again. She twisted a button. Or maybe I assumed that you understand me like Daddy. I feel complimented. I doubt if I do but from now on I ll try. She went on worrying the button. You re pretty smart yourself Kip. You know that don t you I grinned. If I were smart would I be here All thumbs and my ears rub together. Look honey would you mind if we checked you on the slide rule I m really interested. Twenty seven light years why you wouldn t be able to see the Sun It isn t any great shakes as a star. But I had made her uneasy again. Uh Kip that isn t much of a slide rule. What Why that s the best that money can Kip please It s part of the desk. It s not a slide rule. Huh I looked sheepish. I forgot. Uh I suppose that hall out there doesn t go very far Just what you can see. Kip the slide rule would have been real if we had had time enough. They understand logarithms. Oh indeed they do That was bothering me time enough I mean. Peewee how long did it take us to get here Twenty seven light years Even at speed of light well maybe the Einstein business would make it seem like a quick trip to me but not to Centerville. Dad could be dead Dad was older than Mother old enough to be my grandfather really. Another twenty seven years back Why that would make him well over a hundred. Even Mother might be dead. Time to get here Why it didn t take any. No no. I know it feels that way. You re not any older I m still laid up by frostbite. But it took at least twenty seven years. Didn t it What are you talking about Kip The relativity equations of course. You ve heard of them Oh those Certainly. But they don t apply. It didn t take time. Oh fifteen minutes to get out of Pluto s atmosphere about the same to cope with the atmosphere here. But otherwise pht Zero. At the speed of light you would think so. No Kip. She frowned then her face lighted up. How long was it from the time you set the beacon till they rescued us Huh It hit me. Dad wasn t dead Mother wouldn t even have gray hair. Maybe an hour. A little over. It would have been less if they had had a ship ready . . . then they might have found you in the tunnel instead of me. No time for the message to reach here. Half an hour frittered away getting a ship ready the Mother Thing was vexed. I hadn t known she could be. You see a ship is supposed to be ready. Any time she wants one Any and all the time the Mother Thing is important. Another half hour in atmosphere maneuvering and that s all. Real time. None of those funny contractions. I tried to soak it up. They take an hour to go twenty seven light years and get bawled out for dallying. Dr. Einstein must be known as Whirligig Albert among his cemetery neighbors. But how Kip do you know any geometry I don t mean Euclid I mean geometry. Mmm . . . I ve fiddled with open and closed curved spaces and I ve read Dr. Bell s popular books. But you couldn t say I know any geometry. At least you won t boggle at the idea that a straight line is not necessarily the shortest distance between two points. She made motions as if squeezing a grapefruit in both hands. Because it s not. Kip it all touches. You could put it in a bucket. In a thimble if you folded it so that spins matched. I had a dizzying picture of a universe compressed into a teacup nucleons and electrons packed solidly really solid and not the thin mathematical ghost that even the uranium nucleus is said to be. Something like the primal atom that some cosmogonists use to explain the expanding universe. Well maybe it s both packed and expanding. Like the wavicle paradox. A particle isn t a wave and a wave can t be a particle yet everything is both. If you believe in wavicles you can believe in anything and if you don t then don t bother to believe at all. Not even in yourself because that s what you are wavicles. How many dimensions I said weakly. How many would you like Me Uh twenty maybe. Four more for each of the first four to give some looseness on the corners. Twenty isn t a starter. I don t know Kip I don t know geometry either I just thought I did. So I ve pestered them. The Mother Thing Her Oh heavens no She doesn t know geometry. Just enough to pilot a ship in and out of the folds. Only that much I should have stuck to advanced finger painting and never let Dad lure me into trying for an education. There isn t any end the more you learn the more you need to learn. Peewee you knew what that beacon was for didn t you Me She looked innocent. Well . . . yes. You knew we were going to Vega. Well ... if the beacon worked. If it was set in time. Now the prize question. Why didn t you tell me Well Peewee was going to twist that button off. I wasn t sure how much math you knew and you might have gone all masculine and common sensical and father knows best. Would you have believed me I told Orville and I told Wilbur and now I m telling you that contraption will never work Maybe not Peewee. But next time you re tempted not to tell me something for my own good will you take a chance that I m not wedded to my own ignorance I know I m not a genius but I ll try to keep my mind open and I might be able to help if I knew what you were up to. Quit twisting that button. She let go hastily. Yes Kip. I ll remember. Thanks. Another thing is fretting me. I was pretty sick Huh You certainly were All right. They ve got these uh fold ships that go anywhere in no time. Why didn t you ask them to bounce me home and pop me into a hospital She hesitated. How do you feel Huh I feel fine. Except that I seem to be under spinal anesthesia or something. Or something she agreed. But you feel as if you are getting well Shucks I feel well. You aren t. But you re going to be. She looked at me closely. Shall I put it bluntly Kip Go ahead. If they had taken you to Earth to the best hospital we have you d be a basket case. Understand me No arms no legs. As it is you are getting completely well. No amputations not even a toe. I think the Mother Thing had prepared me. I simply said You re sure Sure. Sure both. You re going to be all right. Suddenly her face screwed up. Oh you were a mess I saw. Pretty bad Awful. I have nightmares. They shouldn t have let you look. They couldn t stop me. I was next of kin. Huh You told them you were my sister or something What I am your next of kin. I was about to say she was cockeyed when I tripped over my tongue. We were the only humans for a hundred and sixty trillion miles. As usual Peewee was right. So I had to grant permission she went on. For what What did they do to me Uh first they popped you into liquid helium. They left you there and the past month they have been using me as a guinea pig. Then three days ago three of ours they thawed you out and got to work. You ve been getting well ever since. What shape am I in now Uh . . . well you re growing back. Kip this isn t a bed. It just looks like it. What is it then We don t have a name for it and the tune is pitched too high for me. But everything from here on down She patted the spread. on into the room below does things for you. You re wired like a hi fi nut s basement. I d like to see it. I m afraid you can t. You don t know Kip. They had to cut your space suit off. I felt more emotion at that than I had at hearing what a mess I had been. Huh Where is Oscar Did they ruin him My space suit I mean. I know what you mean. Every time you re delirious you talk to Oscar and you answer back too. Sometimes I think you re schizoid Kip. You ve mixed your terms runt that ud make me a split personality. All right but you re a paranoid yourself. Oh I ve known that for a long time. But I m a very well adjusted one. You want to see Oscar The Mother Thing said that you would want him near when you woke up. She opened the closet. Hey You said he was all cut up Oh they repaired him. Good as new. A little better than new. Time dear Remember what I said. Coming Mother Thing Bye Kip. I ll be back soon and real often. Okay. Leave the closet open so I can see Oscar. Peewee did come back but not real often. I wasn t offended not much. She had a thousand interesting and educational things to poke her ubiquitous nose into all new and fascinating she was as busy as a pup chewing slippers. She ran our hosts ragged. But I wasn t bored. I was getting well a full time job and not boring if you are happy which I was. I didn t see the Mother Thing often. I began to realize that she had work of her own to do even though she came to see me if I asked for her with never more than an hour s delay and never seemed in a hurry to leave. She wasn t my doctor nor my nurse. Instead I had a staff of veterinarians who were alert to supervise every heartbeat. They didn t come in unless I asked them to a whisper was as good as a shout but I soon realized that my room was bugged and telemetered like a ship in flight test and my bed was a mass of machinery gear that bore the relation to our own mechanical hearts and mechanical lungs and mechanical kidneys that a Lockheed ultrasonic courier does to a baby buggy. I never saw that gear they never lifted the spread unless it was while I slept but I know what they were doing. They were encouraging my body to repair itself not scar tissue but the way it had been. Any lobster can do this and starfish do it so well that you can chop them to bits and wind up with a thousand brand new starfish. This is a trick any animal should do since its gene pattern is in every cell. But a few million years ago we lost it. Everybody knows that science is trying to recapture it you see articles optimistic ones in Reader s Digest discouraged ones in The Scientific Monthly wildly wrong ones in magazines whose science editors seem to have received their training writing horror movies. But we re working on it. Someday if anybody dies an accidental death it will be because he bled to death on the way to the hospital. Here I was with a perfect chance to find out about it and I didn t. I tried. Although I was unworried by what they were doing the Mother Thing had told me not to worry and every time she visited me she looked in my eyes and repeated the injunction nevertheless like Peewee I like to know. Pick a savage so far back in the jungle that they don t even have installment plan buying. Say he has an I.Q. of 190 and Peewee s yen to understand. Dump him into Brookhaven Atomic Laboratories. How much will he learn With all possible help He ll learn which corridors lead to what rooms and he ll learn that a purple trefoil means: Danger That s all. Not because he can t remember he s a supergenius but he needs twenty years schooling before he can ask the right questions and understand the answers. I asked questions and always got answers and formed notions. But I m not going to record them they are as confused and contradictory as the notions a savage would form about design and operation of atomic equipment. As they say in radio when noise level reaches a certain value no information is transmitted. All I got was noise. Some of it was literally noise. I d ask a question and one of the therapists would answer. I would understand part then as it reached the key point I would hear nothing but birdsongs. Even with the Mother Thing as an interpreter the parts I had no background for would turn out to be a canary s cheerful prattle. Hold onto your seats I m going to explain something I don t understand: how Peewee and I could talk with the Mother Thing even though her mouth could not shape English and we couldn t sing the way she did and had not studied her language. The Vegans I ll call them Vegans the way we might be called Solarians their real name sounds like a wind chime in a breeze. The Mother Thing had a real name too but I m not a coloratura soprano. Peewee used it when she wanted to wheedle her fat lot of good it did her. The Vegans have a supreme talent to understand to put themselves in the other person s shoes. I don t think it was telepathy or I wouldn t have gotten so many wrong numbers. Call it empathy. But they have it in various degrees just as all of us drive cars but only a few are fit to be racing drivers. The Mother Thing had it the way Novaes understands a piano. I once read about an actress who could use Italian so effectively to a person who did not understand Italian that she always made herself understood. Her name was Duce. No a duce is a dictator. Something like that. She must have had what the Mother Thing had. The first words I had with the Mother Thing were things like hello and good bye and thank you and where are we going She could project her meaning with those shucks you can talk to a strange dog that much. Later I began to understand her speech as speech. She picked up meanings of English words even faster she had this great talent and she and Peewee had talked for days while they were prisoners. But while this is easy for you re welcome and I m hungry and let s hurry it gets harder for ideas like heterodyning and amino acid even when both are familiar with the concept. When one party doesn t even have the concept it breaks down. That s the trouble I had understanding those veterinarians. If we had all spoken English I still would not have understood. An oscillating circuit sending out a radio signal produces dead silence unless there is another circuit capable of oscillating in the same way to receive it. I wasn t on the right frequency. Nevertheless I understood them when the talk was not highbrow. They were nice people they talked and laughed a lot and seemed to like each other. I had trouble telling them apart except the Mother Thing. I learned that the only marked difference to them between Peewee and myself was that I was ill and she wasn t. They had no trouble telling each other apart their conversations were interlarded with musical names until you felt that you were caught in Peter and the Wolf or a Wagnerian opera. They even had a leit motif for me. Their talk was cheerful and gay like the sounds of a bright summer dawn. The next time I meet a canary I ll know what he is saying even if he doesn t. I picked up some of this from Peewee a hospital bed is not a good place from which to study a planet. Vega Five has Earth surface gravity near enough with an oxygen carbon dioxide and water life cycle. The planet would not suit humans not only because the noonday sun would strike you dead with its jolt of ultraviolet but also the air has poisonous amounts of ozone a trace of ozone is stimulating but a trifle more well you might as well sniff prussic acid. There was something else too nitrous oxide I think which was ungood for humans if breathed too long. My quarters were air conditioned the Vegans could breathe what I used but they considered it tasteless. I learned a bit as a by product of something else the Mother Thing asked me to dictate how I got mixed up in these things. When I finished she asked me to dictate everything I knew about Earth its history and how we work and live together. This is a tall order I m not still dictating because I found out I don t know much. Take ancient Babylonia how is it related to early Egyptian civilizations I had only vague notions. Maybe Peewee did better since she remembers everything she has heard or read or seen the way Dad does. But they probably didn t get her to hold still long whereas I had to. The Mother Thing wanted this for the reasons we study Australian aborigines and also as a record of our language. There was another reason too. The job wasn t easy but there was a Vegan to help me whenever I felt like it willing to stop if I tired. Call him Professor Josephus Egghead Professor is close enough and his name can t be spelled. I called him Joe and he called me the leitmotif that meant Clifford Russell the monster with the frostbite. Joe had almost as much gift for understanding as the Mother Thing. But how do you put over ideas like tariffs and kings to a person whose people have never had either The English words were just noise. But Joe knew histories of many peoples and planets and could call up scenes in moving stereo and color until we agreed on what I meant. We jogged along with me dictating to a silvery ball floating near my mouth and with Joe curled up like a cat on a platform raised to my level while he dictated to another microphone making running notes on what I said. His mike had a gimmick that made it a hush phone I did not hear him unless he spoke to me. Then we would stumble. Joe would stop and throw me a sample scene his best guess of what I meant. The pictures appeared in the air positioned for my comfort if I turned my head the picture moved to accommodate me. The pix were color stereo television with perfect life and sharpness well give us another twenty years and we ll have them as realistic. It was a good trick to have the projector concealed and to force images to appear as if they were hanging in air but those are just gimmicks of stereo optics we can do them anytime we really want to after all you can pack a lifelike view of the Grand Canyon into a viewer you hold in your hand. The thing that did impress me was the organization behind it. I asked Joe about it. He sang to his microphone and we went on a galloping tour of their Congressional Library. Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just as math is the key and that we will survive or founder depending on how well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn t look glamorous to me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth. This library had hundreds maybe thousands of Vegans viewing pictures and listening to sound tracks each with a silvery sphere in front of him. Joe said they were telling the memory. This was equivalent to typing a card for a library s catalog except that the result was more like a memory path in brain cells nine tenths of that building was an electronic brain. I spotted a triangular sign like the costume jewelry worn by the Mother Thing but the picture jumped quickly to something else. Joe also wore one and others did not but I did not get around to asking about it as the sight of that incredible library brought up the word cybernetics and we went on a detour. I decided later that it might be a lodge pin or like a Phi Beta Kappa key the Mother Thing was smart even for a Vegan and Joe was not far behind. Whenever Joe was sure that he understood some English word he would wriggle with delight like a puppy being tickled. He was very dignified but this is not undignified for a Vegan. Their bodies are so fluid and mobile that they smile and frown with the whole works. A Vegan holding perfectly still is either displeased or extremely worried. The sessions with Joe let me tour places from my bed. The difference between primary school and university caused me to be shown examples. A kindergarten looked like an adult Vegan being overwhelmed by babies it had the innocent rowdiness of a collie pup stepping on his brother s face to reach the milk dish. But the university was a place of quiet beauty strange looking trees and plants and flowers among buildings of surrealistic charm unlike any architecture I have ever seen I suppose I would have been flabbergasted if they had looked familiar. Parabolas were used a lot and I think all the straight lines had that swelling the Greeks called entasis delicate grace with strength. Joe showed up one day simply undulating with pleasure. He had another silvery ball larger than the other two. He placed it in front of me then sang to his own. I want you to hear this Kip As soon as he ceased the larger sphere spoke in English: I want you to hear this. Kip Squirming with delight Joe swapped spheres and told me to say something. What do you want me to say I asked. What do you want me to say the larger sphere sang in Vegan. That was my last session with Prof Joe. Despite unstinting help despite the Mother Thing s ability to make herself understood I was like the Army mule at West Point: an honorary member of the student body but not prepared for the curriculum. I never did understand their government. Oh they had government but it wasn t any system I ve heard of. Joe knew about democracies and representation and voting and courts of law he could fish up examples from many planets. He felt that democracy was a very good system for beginners. It would have sounded patronizing except that is not one of their faults. I never met one of their young. Joe explained that children should not see strange creatures until they had learned to feel understanding sympathy. That would have offended me if I hadn t been learning some understanding sympathy myself. Matter of fact if a human ten year old saw a Vegan he would either run or poke it with a stick. I tried to learn about their government from the Mother Thing in particular how they kept the peace laws crimes punishments traffic regulations etc. It was as near to flat failure as I ever had with her. She pondered a long time then answered: How could one possibly act against one s own nature I guess their worst vice was that they didn t have any. This can be tiresome. The medical staff were interested in the drugs in Oscar s helmet like our interest in a witch doctor s herbs but that is not idle interest remember digitalis and curare. I told them what each drug did and in most cases I knew the Geneva name as well as the commercial one. I knew that codeine was derived from opium and opium from poppies. I knew that dexedrine was a sulphate but that was all. Organic chemistry and biochemistry are not easy even with no language trouble. We got together on what a benzene ring was Peewee drawing it and sticking in her two dollars worth and we managed to agree on element isotope half life and the periodic table. I should have drawn structural formulas using Peewee s hands but neither of us had the slightest idea of the structural formula for codeine and couldn t do it even when supplied with kindergarten toys which stuck together only in the valences of the elements they represented. Peewee had fun though. They may not have learned much from her she learned a lot from them. I don t know when I became aware that the Mother Thing was not or wasn t quite a female. But it didn t matter being a mother is an attitude not a biological relation. If Noah launched his ark on Vega Five the animals would come in by twelves. That makes things complicated. But a mother thing is one who takes care of others. I am not sure that all mother things were the same gender it may have been a matter of temperament. I met one father thing. You might call him governor or mayor but parish priest or scoutmaster is closer except that his prestige dominated a continent. He breezed in during a session with Joe stayed five minutes urged Joe to do a good job told me to be a good boy and get well and left all without hurrying. He filled me with the warm self reliance that Dad does I didn t need to be told that he was a father thing. His visit had a flavor of royalty visiting the wounded without being condescending no doubt it was hard to work me into a busy schedule. Joe neither mothered nor fathered me he taught me and studied me a professor thing. Peewee showed up one day full of bubbles. She posed like a mannequin. Do you like my new spring outfit She was wearing silvery tights plus a little hump like a knapsack. She looked cute but not glamorous for she was built like two sticks and this get up emphasized it. Very fancy I said. Are you learning to be an acrobat Don t be silly Kip it s my new space suit a real one. I glanced at Oscar big and bulky and filling the closet and said privately Hear that chum It takes all kinds to make a world. Your helmet won t fit it will it She giggled. I m wearing it. You are The Emperor s New Clothes Pretty close. Kip disconnect your prejudices and listen. This is like the Mother Thing s suit except that it s tailored for me. My old suit wasn t much good and that cold cold about finished it. But you ll be amazed at this one. Take the helmet. It s there only you can t see it. It s a field. Gas can t go in or out. She came close. Slap me. With what Oh. I forgot. Kip you ve got to get well and up off that bed. I want to take you for a walk. I m in favor. They tell me it won t be long now. It had better not be. Here I ll show you. She hauled off and slapped herself. Her hand smacked into something inches from her face. Now watch she went on. She moved her hand very slowly it sank through the barrier she thumbed her nose at me and giggled. This impressed me a space suit you could reach into Why I would have been able to give Peewee water and dexedrine and sugar pills when she needed them. I ll be darned What does it A power pack on my back under the air tank. The tank is good for a week too and hoses can t give trouble because there aren t any. Uh suppose you blow a fuse. There you are with a lungful of vacuum. The Mother Thing says that can t happen. Hmm I had never known the Mother Thing to be wrong when she made a flat statement. That s not all Peewee went on. It feels like skin the joints aren t clumsy and you re never hot or cold. It s like street clothes. Uh you risk a bad sunburn don t you Unhealthy you tell me. Unhealthy even on the Moon. Oh no The field polarizes. That s what the field is sort of. Kip get them to make you one we ll go places I glanced at Oscar. Please yourself pal he said distantly. I m not the jealous type. Uh Peewee I ll stick to one I understand. But I d like to examine that monkey suit of yours. Monkey suit indeed I woke up one morning turned over and realized that I was hungry. Then I sat up with a jerk. I had turned over in bed. I had been warned to expect it. The bed was a bed and my body was back under my control. Furthermore I was hungry and I hadn t been hungry the whole time I had been on Vega Five. Whatever that machinery was it included a way to nourish me without eating. But I didn t stop to enjoy the luxury of hunger it was too wonderful to be a body again not just a head. I got out of bed was suddenly dizzy recovered and grinned. Hands Feet I examined those wonderful things. They were unchanged and unhurt. Then I looked more closely. No not quite unchanged. I had had a scar on my left shin where I had been spiked in a close play at second it was gone. I once had Mother tattooed on my left forearm at a carnival. Mother had been distressed and Dad disgusted but he had said to leave it as a reminder not to be a witling. It was gone. There was not a callus on hand or foot. I used to bite my nails. My nails were a bit long but perfect. I had lost the nail from my right little toe years ago through a slip with a hatchet. It was back. I looked hastily for my appendectomy scar found it and felt relieved. If it had been missing I would have wondered if I was me. There was a mirror over the chest of drawers. It showed me with enough hair to warrant a guitar I wear a crew cut but somebody had shaved me. On the chest was a dollar and sixty seven cents a mechanical pencil a sheet of paper my watch and a handkerchief. The watch was running. The dollar bill the paper and the handkerchief had been laundered. My clothes spandy clean and invisibly repaired were on the desk. The socks weren t mine the material was more like felt if you will imagine felted material no thicker than Kleenex which stretches instead of tearing. On the floor were tennis shoes like Peewee s even to a U.S. Rubber trademark but in my size. The uppers were heavier felted material. I got dressed. I was wearing the result when Peewee kicked the door. Anybody home She came in bearing a tray. Want breakfast Peewee Look at me She did. Not bad she admitted for an ape. You need a haircut. Yes but isn t it wonderful I m all together again You never were apart she answered except in spots I ve had daily reports. Where do you want this She put the tray on the desk. Peewee I asked rather hurt don t you care that I m well Of course I do. Why do you think I made em let me carry in your breakfast But I knew last night that they were going to uncork you. Who do you think cut your nails and shaved you That ll be a dollar please. Shaves have gone up. I got that tired dollar and handed it to her. She didn t take it. Aw can t you take a joke Neither a borrower nor a lender be. Polonius. He was a stupid old bore. Honest Kip I wouldn t take your last dollar. Now who can t take a joke Oh eat your breakfast. That purple juice she said tastes like orange juice it s very nice. The stuff that looks like scrambled eggs is a fair substitute and I had em color it yellow the eggs here are dreadful which wouldn t surprise you if you knew where they get them. The buttery stuff is vegetable fat and I had them color it too. The bread is bread I toasted it myself. The salt is salt and it surprises them that we eat it they think it s poison. Go ahead I ve guinea pigged everything. No coffee. I won t miss it. I never touch the stuff I m trying to grow. Eat. Your sugar count has been allowed to drop so that you will enjoy it. The aroma was wonderful. Where s your breakfast Peewee I ate hours ago. I ll watch and swallow when you do. The tastes were odd but it was just what the doctor ordered literally I suppose. I ve never enjoyed a meal so much. Presently I slowed down to say Knife and fork Spoons The only ones on She vocalized the planet s name. I got tired of fingers and I play hob using what they use. So I drew pictures. This set is mine but we ll order more. There was even a napkin more felted stuff. The water tasted distilled and not aerated. I didn t mind. Peewee how did you shave me Not even a nick. Little gismo that beats a razor all hollow. I don t know what they use it for but if you could patent it you d make a fortune. Aren t you going to finish that toast Uh I had thought that I could eat the tray. No I m full. Then I will. She used it to mop up the butter then announced I m off Where To suit up. I m going to take you for a walk She was gone. The hall outside did not imitate ours where it could not be seen from the bed but a door to the left was a bathroom just where it should have been. No attempt had been made to make it look like the one at home and valving and lighting and such were typically Vegan. But everything worked. Peewee returned while I was checking Oscar. If they had cut him off me they had done a marvelous job of repairing even the places I had patched no longer showed. He had been cleaned so thoroughly that there was no odor inside. He had three hours of air and seemed okay in every way. You re in good shape partner. In the pink The service is excellent here. So I ve noticed. I looked up and saw Peewee she was already in her spring outfit. Peewee do we need space suits just for a walk No. You could get by with a respirator sun glasses and a sun shade. You ve convinced me. Say where s Madame Pompadour How do you get her inside that suit No trouble at all she just bulges a little. But I left her in my room and told her to behave herself. Will she Probably not. She takes after me. Where is your room Next door. This is the only part of the house which is Earth conditioned. I started to suit up. Say has that fancy suit got a radio All that yours has and then some. Did you notice the change in Oscar Huh What I saw that he was repaired and cleaned up. What else have they done Just a little thing. One more click on the switch that changes antennas and you can talk to people around you who aren t wearing radios without shouting. I didn t see a speaker. They don t believe in making everything big and bulky. As we passed Peewee s room I glanced in. It was not decorated Vegan style I had seen Vegan interiors through stereo. Nor was it a copy of her own room not if her parents were sensible. I don t know what to call it Moorish harem style perhaps as conceived by Mad King Ludwig with a dash of Disneyland. I did not comment. I had a hunch that Peewee had been given a room just like her own because I had one that fitted the Mother Thing s behavior but Peewee had seen a golden chance to let her overfertile imagination run wild. I doubt if she fooled the Mother Thing one split second. She had probably let that indulgent overtone come into her song and had given Peewee what she wanted. The Mother Thing s home was smaller than our state capitol but not much her family seemed to run to dozens or hundreds family has a wide meaning under their complex interlinkage. We didn t see any young ones on our floor and I knew that they were being kept away from the monsters. The adults all greeted me inquired as to my health and congratulated me on my recovery I was kept busy saying Fine thank you Couldn t be better. They all knew Peewee and she could sing their names. I thought I recognized one of my therapists but the Mother Thing Prof Joe and the boss veterinarian were the only Vegans I was sure of and we did not meet them. We hurried on. The Mother Thing s home was typical many soft round cushions about a foot thick and four in diameter used as beds or chairs floor bare slick and springy most furniture on the walls where it could be reached by climbing convenient rods and poles and brackets a person could drape himself on while using the furniture plants growing unexpectedly here and there as if the jungle were moving in delightful and as useful to me as a corset. Through a series of parabolic arches we reached a balcony. It was not railed and the drop to a terrace below was about seventy five feet I stayed back and regretted again that Oscar had no chin window. Peewee went to the edge put an arm around a slim pillar and leaned out. In the bright outdoor light her helmet became an opalescent sphere. Come see And break my neck Maybe you d like to belay me Oh pooh Who s afraid of heights I am when I can t see what I m doing. Well for goodness sakes take my hand and grab a post. I let her lead me to a pillar then looked out. It was a city in a jungle. Thick dark green so tangled that I could not tell trees from vine and bush spread out all around but was broken repeatedly by buildings as large and larger than the one we were in. There were no roads their roads are underground in cities and sometimes outside the cities. But there was air traffic individual fliers supported by contrivances even less substantial than our own one man copter harnesses or flying carpets. Like birds they launched themselves from and landed in balconies such as the one we stood in. There were real birds too long and slender and brilliantly colored with two sets of wings in tandem which looked aerodynamically unsound but seemed to suit them. The sky was blue and fair but broken by three towering cumulous anvils blinding white in the distance. Let s go on the roof said Peewee. How Over here. It was a scuttle hole reached by staggered slender brackets the Vegans use as stairs. Isn t there a ramp Around on the far side yes. I don t think those things will hold me. And that hole looks small for Oscar. Oh don t be a sissy Peewee went up like a monkey. I followed like a tired bear. The brackets were sturdy despite their grace the hole was a snug fit. Vega was high in the sky. It appeared to be the angular size of our Sun which fitted since we were much farther out than Terra is from the Sun but it was too bright even with full polarization. I looked away and presently eyes and polarizers adjusted until I could see again. Peewee s head was concealed by what appeared to be a polished chrome basketball. I said Hey are you still there Sure she answered. I can see out all right. It s a grand view. Doesn t it remind you of Paris from the top of the Arc de Triomphe I don t know I ve never done any traveling. Except no boulevards of course. Somebody is about to land here. I turned the way she was pointing she could see in all directions while I was hampered by the built in tunnel vision of my helmet. By the time I was turned around the Vegan was coming in beside us. Hello children Hi Mother Thing Peewee threw her arms around her picking her up. Not so hasty dear. Let me shed this. The Mother Thing stepped out of her harness shook herself in ripples folded the flying gear like an umbrella and hung it over an arm. You re looking fit Kip. I feel fine Mother Thing Gee it s nice to have you back. I wished to be back when you got out of bed. However your therapists have kept me advised every minute. She put a little hand against my chest growing a bit to do so and placed her eyes almost against my face plate. You are well I couldn t be better. He really is Mother Thing Good. You agree that you are well I sense that you are Peewee is sure that you are and most important your leader therapist assures me that you are. We ll leave at once. What I asked. Where Mother Thing She turned to Peewee. Haven t you told him dear Gee Mother Thing I haven t had a chance. Very well. She turned to me. Dear Kip we must now attend a gathering. Questions will be asked and answered decisions will be made. She spoke to us both. Are you ready to leave Now said Peewee. Why I guess so except that I ve got to get Madame Pompadour. Fetch her then. And you Kip Uh I couldn t remember whether I had put my watch back on after I washed and I couldn t tell because I can t feel it through Oscar s thick hide. I told her so. Very well. You children run to your rooms while I have a ship fetched. Meet me here and don t stop to admire flowers. We went down by ramp. I said Peewee you ve been holding out on me again. Why I have not What do you call it Kip please listen I was told not to tell you while you were ill. The Mother Thing was very firm about it. You were not to be disturbed that s what she said while you were growing well. Why should I feel disturbed What is all this What gathering What questions Well ... the gathering is sort of a court. A criminal court you might say. Huh I took a quick look at my conscience. But I hadn t had any chance to do anything wrong I had been helpless as a baby up to two hours ago. That left Peewee. Runt I said sternly what have you done now Me Nothing. Think hard. No Kip. Oh I m sorry I didn t tell you at breakfast But Daddy says never to break any news until after his second cup of coffee and I thought how nice it would be to take a little walk before we had any worries and I was going to tell you Make it march. as soon as we came down. I haven t done anything. But there s old Wormface. What I thought he was dead. Maybe so maybe not. But as the Mother Thing says there are still questions to be asked decisions to be made. He s up for the limit is my guess. I thought about it as we wound our way through strange apartments toward the air lock that led to our Earth conditioned rooms. High crimes and misdemeanors . . . skulduggery in the spaceways yes Wormface was probably in for it. If the Vegans could catch him. Had caught him apparently since they were going to try him. But where do we come in As witnesses I suppose you could call it that. What happened to Wormface was no skin off my nose and it would be a chance to find out more about the Vegans. Especially if the court was some distance away so that we would travel and see the country. But that isn t all Peewee went on worriedly. What else She sighed. This is why I wanted us to have a nice sight see first. Uh . . . Don t chew on it. Spit it out. Well . . . we have to be tried too. What Maybe examined is the word. I don t know. But I know this: we can t go home until we ve been judged. But what have we done I burst out. I don t know My thoughts were boiling. Are you sure they ll let us go home then The Mother Thing refuses to talk about it. I stopped and took her arm. What it amounts to I said bitterly is that we are under arrest. Aren t we Yes She added almost in a sob But Kip I told you she was a cop Great stuff. We pull her chestnuts out of the fire and now we re arrested and going to be tried and we don t even know why Nice place Vega Five. The natives are friendly. They had nursed me as we nurse a gangster in order to hang him. But Kip Peewee was crying openly now. I m sure it ll be all right. She may be a cop but she s still the Mother Thing. Is she I wonder. Peewee s manner contradicted her words. She was not one to worry over nothing. Quite the contrary. My watch was on the washstand. I ungasketed to put it in an inside pocket. When I came out Peewee was doing the same with Madame Pompadour. Here I said I ll take her with me. I ve got more room. No thank you Peewee answered bleakly. I need her with me. Especially now. Uh Peewee where is this court This city Or another one Didn t I tell you No I guess I didn t. It s not on this planet. I thought this was the only inhabited It s not a planet around Vega. Another star. Not even in the Galaxy. Say that again It s somewhere in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. Chapter 10 I didn t put up a fight a hundred and sixty trillion miles from nowhere I mean. But I didn t speak to the Mother Thing as I got into her ship. It was shaped like an old fashioned beehive and it looked barely big enough to jump us to the space port. Peewee and I crowded together on the floor the Mother Thing curled up in front and twiddled a shiny rack like an abacus we took off straight up. In a few minutes my anger grew from sullenness to a reckless need to settle it. Mother Thing One moment dear. Let me get us out of the atmosphere. She pushed something the ship quivered and steadied. Mother Thing I repeated. Wait until I lower us Kip. I had to wait. It s as silly to disturb a pilot as it is to snatch the wheel of a car. The little ship took a buffeting the upper winds must have been dillies. But she could pilot. Presently there was a gentle bump and I figured we must be at the space port. The Mother Thing turned her head. All right Kip. I sense your fear and resentment. Will it help to say that you two are in no danger That I would protect you with my body As you protected mine Yes but Then let be. It is easier to show than it is to explain. Don t clamp your helmet. This planet s air is like your own. Huh You mean we re there I told you Peewee said at my elbow. Just poof and you re there. I didn t answer. I was trying to guess how far we were from home. Come children. It was midday when we left it was night as we disembarked. The ship rested on a platform that stretched out of sight. Stars in front of me were in unfamiliar constellations slaunchwise down the sky was a thin curdling which I spotted as the Milky Way. So Peewee had her wires crossed we were far from home but still in the Galaxy perhaps we had simply switched to the night side of Vega Five. I heard Peewee gasp and turned around. I didn t have strength to gasp. Dominating that whole side of the sky was a great whirlpool of millions maybe billions of stars. You ve seen pictures of the Great Nebula in Andromeda a giant spiral of two curving arms seen at an angle. Of all the lovely things in the sky it is the most beautiful. This was like that. Only we weren t seeing a photograph nor even by telescope we were so close if close is the word that it stretched across the sky twice as long as the Big Dipper as seen from home so close that I saw the thickening at the center two great branches coiling around and overtaking each other. We saw it from an angle so that it appeared elliptical just as M31 in Andromeda does you could feel its depth you could see its shape. Then I knew I was a long way from home. That was home up there lost in billions of crowded stars. It was some time before I noticed another double spiral on my right almost as wide flung but rather lopsided and not nearly as brilliant a pale ghost of our own gorgeous Galaxy. It slowly penetrated that this second one must be the Greater Magellanic Cloud if we were in the Lesser and if that fiery whirlpool was our own Galaxy. What I had thought was The Milky Way was simply a milky way the Lesser Cloud from inside. I turned and looked at it again. It had the right shape a roadway around the sky but it was pale skim milk compared with our own about as our Milky Way looks on a murky night. I don t know how it should look since I d never seen the Magellanic Clouds I ve never been south of the Rio Grande. But I did know that each cloud is a galaxy in its own right but smaller than ours and grouped with us. I looked again at our blazing spiral and was homesick in a way I hadn t been since I was six. Peewee was huddling to the Mother Thing for comfort. She made herself taller and put an arm around Peewee. There there dear I felt the same way when I was very young and saw it for the first time. Mother Thing Peewee said timidly. Where is home See the right half of it dear where the outer arm trails into nothingness We came from a point two thirds the way out from the center. No no Not Vega. I want to know where the Sun is Oh your star. But dear at this distance it is the same. We learned how far it is from the Sun to the planet Lanador 167 000 light years. The Mother Thing couldn t tell us directly as she did not know how much time we meant by a year how long it takes Terra to go around the Sun a figure she might have used once or not at all and as worth remembering as the price of peanuts in Perth . But she did know the distance from Vega to the Sun and told us the distance from Lanador to Vega with that as a yardstick six thousand one hundred and ninety times as great. 6190 times 27 light years gives 167 000 light years. She courteously gave it in powers of ten the way we figure instead of using factorial five 1x2x3x4x5 equals 120 which is how Vegans figure. 167 000 light years is 9.82 x 1017 miles. Round off 9.82 and call it ten. Then 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 miles is the distance from Vega to Lanador or from the Sun to Lanador Vega and the Sun are back fence neighbors on this scale. A thousand million billion miles. I refuse to have anything to do with such a preposterous figure. It may be short as cosmic distances go but there comes a time when the circuit breakers in your skull trip out from overload. The platform we were on was the roof of an enormous triangular building miles on a side. We saw that triangle repeated in many places and always with a two armed spiral in each corner. It was the design the Mother Thing wore as jewelry. It is the symbol for Three Galaxies One Law. I ll lump here things I learned in driblets: The Three Galaxies are like our Federated Free Nations or the United Nations before that or the League of Nations still earlier Lanador houses their offices and courts and files the League s capital the way the FFN is in New York and the League of Nations used to be in Switzerland. The cause is historical the people of Lanador are the Old Race that s where civilization began. The Three Galaxies are an island group like Hawaii State they haven t any other close neighbors. Civilization spread through the Lesser Cloud then through the Greater Cloud and is seeping slowly through our own Galaxy that is taking longer there are fifteen or twenty times as many stars in our Galaxy as in the other two. When I began to get these things straight I wasn t quite as sore. The Mother Thing was a very important person at home but here she was a minor official all she could do was bring us in. Still I wasn t more than coolly polite for a while she might have looked the other way while we beat it for home. They housed us in that enormous building in a part you could call a transients hotel although detention barracks or jail is closer. I can t complain about accommodations but I was getting confoundedly tired of being locked up every time I arrived in a new place. A robot met us and took us down inside there are robots wherever you turn on Lanador. I don t mean things looking like the Tin Woodman I mean machines that do things for you such as this one which led us to our rooms then hung around like a bellhop expecting a tip. It was a three wheeled cart with a big basket on top for luggage if we had any. It met us whistled to the Mother Thing in Vegan and led us away down a lift and through a wide and endlessly long corridor. I was given my room again a fake of a fake with all errors left in and new ones added. The sight of it was not reassuring it shrieked that they planned to keep us there as long as well as long as they chose. But the room was complete even to a rack for Oscar and a bathroom outside. Just beyond my room was a fake of another kind a copy of that Arabian Nights horror Peewee had occupied on Vega Five. Peewee seemed delighted so I didn t point out the implications. The Mother Thing hovered around while we got out of space suits. Do you think you will be comfortable Oh sure I agreed unenthusiastically. If you want food or anything just say so. It will come. So Is there a telephone somewhere Simply speak your wishes. You will be heard. I didn t doubt her but I was almost as tired of rooms that were bugged as of being locked up a person ought to have privacy. I m hungry now Peewee commented. I had an early breakfast. We were in her room. A purple drapery drew back a light glowed in the wall. In about two minutes a section of wall disappeared a slab at table height stuck out like a tongue. On it were dishes and silverware cold cuts fruit bread butter and a mug of steaming cocoa. Peewee clapped and squealed. I looked at it with less enthusiasm. You see the Mother Thing went on with a smile in her voice. Ask for what you need. If you need me I ll come. But I must go now. Oh please don t go Mother Thing. I must Peewee dear. But I will see you soon. By the bye there are two more of your people here. Huh I put in. Who Where Next door. She was gone with gliding swiftness the bellhop speeded up to stay ahead of her. I spun around. Did you hear that I certainly did Well you eat if you want to I m going to look for those other humans. Hey Wait for me I thought you wanted to eat. Well . . . Peewee looked at the food. Just a sec. She hastily buttered two slices of bread and handed one to me. I was not in that much of a hurry I ate it. Peewee gobbled hers took a gulp from the mug and offered it to me. Want some It wasn t quite cocoa there was a meaty flavor too. But it was good. I handed it back and she finished it. Now I can fight wildcats. Let s go Kip. Next door was through the foyer of our three room suite and fifteen yards down the corridor where we came to a door arch. I kept Peewee back and glanced in cautiously. It was a diorama a fake scene. This one was better than you see in museums. I was looking through a bush at a small clearing in wild country. It ended in a limestone bank. I could see overcast sky and a cave mouth in the rocks. The ground was wet as if from rain. A cave man hunkered down close to the cave. He was gnawing the carcass of a small animal possibly a squirrel. Peewee tried to shove past me I stopped her. The cave man did not appear to notice us which struck me as a good idea. His legs looked short but I think he weighed twice what I do and he was muscled like a weight lifter with short hairy forearms and knotty biceps and calves. His head was huge bigger than mine and longer but his forehead and chin weren t much. His teeth were large and yellow and a front one was broken. I heard bones crunching. In a museum I would have expected a card reading Neanderthal Man circa Last Ice Age. But wax dummies of extinct breeds don t crack bones. Peewee protested Hey let me look. He heard. Peewee stared at him he stared toward us. Peewee squealed he whirled and ran into the cave waddling but making time. I grabbed Peewee. Let s get out of here Wait a minute she said calmly. He won t come out in a hurry. She tried to push the bush aside. Peewee Try this she suggested. Her hand was shoving air. They ve got him penned. I tried it. Something transparent blocked the arch. I could push it a little but not more than an inch. Plastic I suggested. Like Lucite but springier Mmm . . . said Peewee. More like the helmet of my suit. Tougher though and I ll bet light passes only one way. I don t think he saw us. Okay let s get back to our rooms. Maybe we can lock them. She went on feeling that barrier. Peewee I said sharply. You re not listening. What were you doing talking she answered reasonably when I wasn t listening Peewee This is no time to be difficult. You sound like Daddy. He dropped that rat he was eating he might come back. If he does you won t be here because I m about to drag you and if you bite I ll bite back. I warn you. She looked around with a trace of animosity. I wouldn t bite you. Kip no matter what you did. But if you re going to be stuffy oh well I doubt if he ll come out for an hour or so. We ll come back. Okay. I pulled her away. But we did not leave. I heard a loud whistle and a shout: Hey buster Over here The words were not English but I understood well enough. The yell came from an archway across the corridor and a little farther on. I hesitated then moved toward it because Peewee did so. A man about forty five was loafing in this doorway. He was no Neanderthal he was civilized or somewhat so. He wore a long heavy woolen tunic belted in at the waist forming a sort of kilt. His legs below that were wrapped in wool and he was shod in heavy short boots much worn. At the belt and supported by a shoulder sling was a short heavy sword there was a dagger on the other side of the belt. His hair was short and he was clean shaven save for a few days gray stubble. His expression was neither friendly nor unfriendly it was sharply watchful. Thanks he said gruffly. Are you the jailer Peewee gasped. Why that s Latin What do you do when you meet a Legionary Right after a cave man I answered: No I am a prisoner myself. I said it in Spanish and repeated it in pretty fair classical Latin. I used Spanish because Peewee hadn t been quite correct. It was not Latin he spoke not the Latin of Ovid and Gaius Julius Caesar. Nor was it Spanish. It was in between with an atrocious accent and other differences. But I could worry out the meaning. He sucked his lip and answered That s bad. I ve been trying for three days to attract attention and all I get is another prisoner. But that s how the die rolls. Say that s a funny accent you have. Sorry amigo but I have trouble understanding you too. I repeated it in Latin then split the difference. I added in improvised lingua franca Speak slowly will you I ll speak as I please. And don t call me amico I m a Roman citizen so don t get gay. That s a free translation. His advice was more vulgar I think. It was close to a Spanish phrase which certainly is vulgar. What s he saying demanded Peewee. It is Latin isn t it Translate I was glad she hadn t caught it. Why Peewee don t you know the language of poetry and science Oh don t be a smartie Tell me. Don t crowd me hon. I ll tell you later. I m having trouble following it. What is that barbarian grunting the Roman said pleasantly. Talk language boy. Or will you have ten with the flat of the sword He seemed to be leaning on nothing so I felt the air. It was solid I decided not to worry about his threat. I m talking as best I can. We spoke to each other in our own language. Pig grunts. Talk Latin. If you can. He looked at Peewee as if just noticing her. Your daughter Want to sell her If she had meat on her bones she might be worth a half denario. Peewee clouded up. I understood that she said fiercely. Come out here and fight Try it in Latin I advised her. If he understands you he ll probably spank you. She looked uneasy. You wouldn t let him You know I wouldn t. Let s go back. That s what I said earlier. I escorted her past the cave man s lair to our suite. Peewee I m going back and see what our noble Roman has to say. Do you mind I certainly do Be reasonable hon. If we could be hurt by them the Mother Thing would know it. After all she told us they were here. I ll go with you. What for I ll tell you everything I learn. This may be a chance to find out what this silliness means. What s he doing here Have they kept him in deep freeze a couple of thousand years How long has he been awake What does he know that we don t We re in a bad spot all the data I can dig up we need. You can help by keeping out. If you re scared send for the Mother Thing. She pouted. I m not scared. All right if that s the way you want it. I do. Eat your dinner. Jo Jo the dogface boy was not in sight I gave his door a wide berth. If a ship can go anywhere in no time could it skip a dimension and go anywhere to any time How would the math work out The soldier was still lounging at his door. He looked up. Didn t you hear me say to stick around I heard you I admitted but we re not going to get anywhere if you take that attitude. I m not one of your privates. Lucky for you Do we talk peacefully Or do I leave He looked me over. Peace. But don t get smart with me barbarian. He called himself Iunio. He had served in Spain and Gaul then transferred to the VIth Legion the Victrix which he felt that even a barbarian should know of. His legion s garrison was Eboracum north of Londinium in Britain but he had been on advance duty as a brevet centurion he pronounced it centurio his permanent rank was about like top sergeant. He was smaller than I am but I would not want to meet him in an alley. Nor at the palisades of a castra. He had a low opinion of Britons and all barbarians including me nothing personal some of my best friends are barbarians women the British climate high brass and priests he thought well of Caesar Rome the gods and his own professional ability. The army wasn t what it used to be and the slump came from treating auxiliaries like Roman citizens. He had been guarding the building of a wall to hold back barbarians a nasty lot who would sneak up and slit your throat and eat you which no doubt had happened to him since he was now in the nether regions. I thought he was talking about Hadrian s Wall but it was three days march north of there where the seas were closest together. The climate there was terrible and the natives were bloodthirsty beasts who dyed their bodies and didn t appreciate civilization you d think the Eagles were trying to steal their dinky island. Provincial . . . like me. No offense meant. Nevertheless he had bought a little barbarian to wife and had been looking forward to garrison duty at Eboracum when this happened. Iunio shrugged. Perhaps if I had been careful with lustrations and sacrifices my luck wouldn t have run out. But I figure that if a man does his duty and keeps himself and his weapons clean the rest is the C.O. s worry. Careful of that doorway it s witched. The longer he talked the easier it was to understand him. The us endings turned to o and his vocabulary was not that of De Bello Gallico horse wasn t equus it was caballo. His idioms bothered me plus the fact that his Latin was diluted by a dozen barbarian tongues. But you can blank out every third word in a newspaper and still catch the gist. I learned a lot about the daily life and petty politics of the Victrix and nothing that I wanted to know. Iunio did not know how he had gotten where he was nor why except that he was dead and awaiting disposition in a receiving barracks somewhere in the nether world a theory which I was not yet prepared to accept. He knew the year of his death Year Eight of the Emperor and Eight Hundred and Ninety Nine of Rome. I wrote out the dates in Roman numerals to make sure. But I did not remember when Rome was founded nor could I identify the Caesar even by his full name there have been so many Caesars. But Hadrian s Wall had been built and Britain was still occupied that placed lunio close to the third century. He wasn t interested in the cave man across the way it embodied to him the worst vice of a barbarian: cowardice. I didn t argue but I would be timid too if I had saber toothed tigers yowling at my door. Did they have saber tooths then Make it cave bears. Iunio went back and returned with hard dark bread cheese and a cup. He did not offer me any and I don t think it was the barrier. He poured a little of his drink on the floor and started to chomp. It was a mud floor the walls were rough stone and the ceiling was supported by wooden beams. It may have been a copy of dwellings during the occupation of Britain but I m no expert. I didn t stay much longer. Not only did bread and cheese remind me that I was hungry but I offended lunio. I don t know what set him off but he discussed me with cold thoroughness my eating habits ancestry appearance conduct and method of earning a living. Iunio was pleasantas long as you agreed with him ignored insults and deferred to him. Many older people demand this even in buying a thirty nine cent can of talcum you learn to give it without thinking otherwise you get a reputation as a fresh kid and potential juvenile delinquent. The less respect an older person deserves the more certain he is to demand it from anyone younger. So I left as lunio didn t know anything helpful anyhow. As I went back I saw the cave man peering out his cave. I said Take it easy Jo Jo and went on. I bumped into another invisible barrier blocking our archway. I felt it then said quietly I want to go in. The barrier melted away and I walked in then found that it was back in place. My rubber soles made no noise and I didn t call out because Peewee might be asleep. Her door was open and I peeped in. She was sitting tailor fashion on that incredible Oriental divan rocking Madame Pompadour and crying. I backed away then returned whistling making a racket and calling to her. She popped out of her door with smiling face and no trace of tears. Hi Kip It took you long enough. That guy talks too much. What s new Nothing. I ate and you didn t come back so I took a nap. You woke me. What did you find out Let me order dinner and I ll tell you while I eat. I was chasing the last bit of gravy when a bellhop robot came for us. It was like the other one except that it had in glowing gold on its front that triangle with three spirals. Follow me it said in English. I looked at Peewee. Didn t the Mother Thing say she was coming back Why I thought so. The machine repeated Follow me. Your presence is required. I laid my ears back. I have taken lots of orders some of which I shouldn t have but I had never yet taken orders from a piece of machinery. Go climb a rope I said. You ll have to drag me. This is not what to say to a robot. It did. Peewee yelled Mother Thing Where are you Help us Her birdsong came out of the machine. It s all right dears. The servant will lead you to me. I quit struggling and started to walk. That refugee from an appliance dealer took us into another lift then into a corridor whose walls whizzed past as soon as we entered. It nudged us through an enormous archway topped by the triangle and spirals and herded us into a pen near one wall. The pen was not apparent until we moved more of that annoying solid air. It was the biggest room I have ever been in triangular unbroken by post or pillar with ceiling so high and walls so distant that I half expected local thunderstorms. An enormous room makes me feel like an ant I was glad to be near a wall. The room was not empty hundreds in it but it looked empty because they were all near the walls the giant floor was bare. But there were three wormfaces out in the center Wormface s trial was in progress. I don t know if our own Wormface was there. I would not have known even if they had not been a long way off as the difference between two wormfaces is the difference between having your throat cut and being beheaded. But as we learned the presence or absence of the individual offender was the least important part of a trial. Wormface was being tried present or not alive or dead. The Mother Thing was speaking. I could see her tiny figure also far out on the floor but apart from the wormfaces. Her birdsong voice reached me faintly but I heard her words clearly in English from somewhere near us her translated words were piped to us. The feel of her was in the English translation just as it was in her bird tones. She was telling what she knew of wormface conduct as dispassionately as if describing something under a microscope like a traffic officer testifying: At 9:17 on the fifth while on duty at etc. The facts. The Mother Thing was finishing her account of events on Pluto. She chopped it off at the point of explosion. Another voice spoke in English. It was flat with a nasal twang and reminded me of a Vermont grocer we had dealt with one summer when I was a kid. He was a man who never smiled nor frowned and what little he said was all in the same tone whether it was She is a good woman or That man would cheat his own son or Eggs are fifty nine cents cold as a cash register. This voice was that sort. It said to the Mother Thing: Have you finished I have finished. The other witnesses will be heard. Clifford Russell I jumped as if that grocer had caught me in the candy jar. The voice went on: listen carefully. Another voice started. My own it was the account I had dictated flat on my back on Vega Five. But it wasn t all of it it was just that which concerned wormfaces. Adjectives and whole sentences had been cut as if someone had taken scissors to a tape recording. The facts were there what I thought about them was missing. It started with ships landing in the pasture back of our house it ended with that last wormface stumbling blindly down a hole. It wasn t long as so much had been left out our hike across the Moon for example. My description of Wormface was left in but had been trimmed so much that I could have been talking about Venus de Milo instead of the ugliest thing in creation. My recorded voice ended and the Yankee grocer voice said Were those your words Huh Yes. Is the account correct Yes but Is it correct Yes. Is it complete I wanted to say that it certainly was not but I was beginning to understand the system. Yes. Patricia Wynant Reisfeld Peewee s story started earlier and covered all those days when she had been in contact with wormfaces while I was not. But it was not much longer for while Peewee has a sharp eye and a sharper memory she is loaded with opinions. Opinions were left out. When Peewee had agreed that her evidence was correct and complete the Yankee voice stated All witnesses have been heard all known facts have been integrated. The three individuals may speak for themselves. I think the wormfaces picked a spokesman perhaps the Wormface if he was alive and there. Their answer as translated into English did not have the guttural accent with which Wormface spoke English nevertheless it was a wormface speaking. That bone chilling yet highly intelligent viciousness as unmistakable as a punch in the teeth was in every syllable. Their spokesman was so far away that I was not upset by his looks and after the first stomach twisting shock of that voice I was able to listen more or less judicially. He started by denying that this court had jurisdiction over his sort. He was responsible only to his mother queen and she only to their queen groups that s how the English came out. That defense he claimed was sufficient. However if the Three Galaxies confederation existed which he had no reason to believe other than that he was now being detained unlawfully before this hiveful of creatures met as a kangaroo court if it existed it still had no jurisdiction over the Only People first because the organization did not extend to his part of space second because even if it were there the Only People had never joined and therefore its rules if it had rules could not apply and third it was inconceivable that their queen group would associate itself with this improbable Three Galaxies because people do not contract with animals. This defense was also sufficient. But disregarding for the sake of argument these complete and sufficient defenses this trial was a mockery because no offense existed even under the so called rules of the alleged Three Galaxies. They the wormfaces had been operating in their own part of space engaged in occupying a useful but empty planet Earth. No possible crime could lie in colonizing land inhabited merely by animals. As for the agent of Three Galaxies she had butted in she had not been harmed she had merely been kept from interfering and had been detained only for the purpose of returning her where she belonged. He should have stopped. Any of these defenses might have stood up especially the last one. I used to think of the human race as lords of creation but things had happened to me since. I was not sure that this assemblage would think that humans had rights compared with wormfaces. Certainly the wormfaces were ahead of us in many ways. When we clear jungle to make farms do we worry if baboons are there first But he discarded these defenses explained that they were intellectual exercises to show how foolish the whole thing was under any rules from any point of view. He would now make his defense. It was an attack. The viciousness in his voice rose to a crescendo of hatred that made every word slam like a blow. How dared they do this They were mice voting to bell the cat I know but that s how it came out in translation. They were animals to be eaten or merely vermin to be exterminated. Their mercy would be rejected if offered no negotiation was possible their crimes would never be forgotten the Only People would destroy them I looked around to see how the jury was taking it. This almost empty hall had hundreds of creatures around the three sides and many were close to us. I had been too busy with the trial to do more than glance at them. Now I looked for the wormface s blast was so disturbing that I welcomed a distraction. They were all sorts and I m not sure that any two were alike. There was one twenty feet from me who was as horrible as Wormface and amazingly like him except that this creature s grisly appearance did not inspire disgust. There were others almost human in appearance although they were greatly in the minority. There was one really likely looking chick as human as I am except for iridescent skin and odd and skimpy notions of dress. She was so pretty that I would have sworn that the iridescence was just make up but I probably would have been wrong. I wondered in what language the diatribe was reaching her Certainly not English. Perhaps she felt my stare for she looked around and unsmilingly examined me as I might a chimpanzee in a cage. I guess the attraction wasn t mutual. There was every gradation from pseudo wormface to the iridescent girl not only the range between but also way out in left field some had their own private aquaria. I could not tell how the invective affected them. The girl creature was taking it quietly but what can you say about a walrus thing with octopus arms If he twitches is he angry Or laughing Or itches where the twitch is The Yankee voiced spokesman let the wormface rave on. Peewee was holding my hand. Now she grabbed my ear tilted her face and whispered He talks nasty. She sounded awed. The wormface ended with a blast of hate that must have overtaxed the translator for instead of English we heard a wordless scream. The Yankee voice said flatly But do you have anything to say in your defense The scream was repeated then the wormface became coherent. I have made my defense that no defense is necessary. The emotionless voice went on to the Mother Thing. Do you speak for them She answered reluctantly My lord peers ... I am forced to say . . . that I found them to be quite naughty. She sounded grieved. You find against them I do. Then you may not be heard. Such is the Law. Three Galaxies One Law. I may not speak. The flat voice went on Will any witness speak favorably There was silence. That was my chance to be noble. We humans were their victims we were in a position to speak up point out that from their standpoint they hadn t done anything wrong and ask mercy if they would promise to behave in the future. Well I didn t. I ve heard all the usual Sweetness and Light that kids get pushed at them how they should always forgive how there s some good in the worst of us etc. But when I see a black widow I step on it I don t plead with it to be a good little spider and please stop poisoning people. A black widow spider can t help it but that s the point. The voice said to the wormfaces: Is there any race anywhere which might speak for you If so it will be summoned. The spokesman wormface spat at the idea. That another race might be character witnesses for them disgusted him. So be it answered the Yankee voice. Are the facts sufficient to permit a decision Almost immediately the voice answered itself: Yes. What is the decision Again it answered itself: Their planet shall be rotated. It didn t sound like much shucks all planets rotate and the flat voice held no expression. But the verdict scared me. The whole room seemed to shudder. The Mother Thing turned and came toward us. It was a long way but she reached us quickly. Peewee flung herself on her the solid air that penned us solidified still more until we three were in a private room a silvery hemisphere. Peewee was trembling and gasping and the Mother Thing comforted her. When Peewee had control of herself I said nervously Mother Thing What did he mean Their planet shall be rotated. She looked at me without letting go of Peewee and her great soft eyes were sternly sad. It means that their planet is tilted ninety degrees out of the space time of your senses and mine. Her voice sounded like a funeral dirge played softly on a flute. Yet the verdict did not seem tragic to me. I knew what she meant her meaning was even clearer in Vegan than in English. If you rotate a plane figure about an axis in its plane it disappears. It is no longer in a plane and Mr. A. Square of Flatland is permanently out of touch with it. But it doesn t cease to exist it just is no longer where it was. It struck me that the wormfaces were getting off easy. I had halfway expected their planet to be blown up and I didn t doubt that Three Galaxies could do so or something equally drastic. As it was the wormfaces were to be run out of town and would never find their way back there are so many many dimensions but they wouldn t be hurt they were just being placed in Coventry. But the Mother Thing sounded as if she had taken unwilling part in a hanging. So I asked her. You do not understand dear gentle Kip they do not take their star with them. Oh was all I could say. Peewee turned white. Stars are the source of life planets are merely life s containers. Chop off the star . . . and the planet gets colder . . . and colder . . . and colder then still colder. How long until the very air freezes How many hours or days to absolute zero I shivered and got goose pimples. Worse than Pluto Mother Thing How long before they do this I had a queasy misgiving that I should have spoken that even wormfaces did not deserve this. Blow them up shoot them down but don t freeze them. It is done she sang in that same dirgelike way. What The agent charged with executing the decision waits for the word ... the message goes out the instant we hear it. They were rotated out of our world even before I turned to join you. It is better so. I gulped and heard an echo in my mind: twere well it were done quickly. But the Mother Thing was saying rapidly Think no more on t for now you must be brave Huh What Mother Thing What happens now You ll be summoned any moment for your own trial. I simply stared I could not speak I had thought it was all over. Peewee looked still thinner and whiter but did not cry. She wet her lips and said quietly You ll come with us Mother Thing Oh my children I cannot. You must face this alone. I found my voice. But what are we being tried for We haven t hurt anybody. We haven t done a thing. Not you personally. Your race is on trial. Through you. Peewee turned away from her and looked at me and I felt a thrill of tragic pride that in our moment of extremity she had turned not to the Mother Thing but to me another human being. I knew that she was thinking of the same thing I was: a ship a ship hanging close to Earth only an instant away and yet perhaps uncounted trillion miles in some pocket of folded space where no DEW line gives warning where no radar can reach. The Earth green and gold and lovely turning lazily in the warm light of the Sun A flat voice No more Sun. No stars. The orphaned Moon would bobble once then continue around the Sun a gravestone to the hopes of men. The few at Lunar Base and Luna City and Tombaugh Station would last weeks or even months the only human beings left alive. Then they would go if not of suffocation then of grief and loneliness. Peewee said shrilly Kip she s not serious Tell me she s not I said hoarsely Mother Thing are the executioners already waiting She did not answer. She said to Peewee It is very serious my daughter. But do not be afraid. I exacted a promise before I surrendered you. If things go against your race you two will return with me and be suffered to live out your little lives in my home. So stand up and tell the truth . . . and do not be afraid. The flat voice entered the closed space: The human beings are summoned. Chapter 11 We walked out onto that vast floor. The farther we went the more I felt like a fly on a plate. Having Peewee with me was a help nevertheless it was that nightmare where you find yourself not decently dressed in a public place. Peewee clutched my hand and held Madame Pompadour pressed tightly to her. I wished that I had suited up in Oscar I wouldn t have felt quite so under a microscope with Oscar around me. Just before we left the Mother Thing placed her hand against my forehead and started to hold me with her eyes. I pushed her hand aside and looked away. No I told her. No treatments I m not going to oh I know you mean well but I won t take an anesthetic. Thanks. She did not insist she simply turned to Peewee. Peewee looked uncertain then shook her head. We re ready she piped. The farther out we got on that great bare floor the more I regretted that I had not let the Mother Thing do whatever it was that kept one from worrying. At least I should have insisted that Peewee take it. Coming at us from the other walls were two other flies as they got closer I recognized them: the Neanderthal and the Legionary. The cave man was being dragged invisibly the Roman covered ground in a long slow easy lope. We all arrived at the center at the same time and were stopped about twenty feet apart Peewee and I at one point of a triangle the Roman and the cave man each at another. I called out Hail Iunio Silence barbarian. He looked around him his eyes estimating the crowd at the walls. He was no longer in casual dress. The untidy leggings were gone strapped to his right shin was armor. Over the tunic he wore full cuirass and his head was brave with plumed helmet. All metal was burnished all leather was clean. He had approached with his shield on his back route march style. But even as we were stopped he unslung it and raised it on his left arm. He did not draw his sword as his right hand held his javelin at the ready carried easily while his wary eyes assessed the foe. To his left the cave man hunkered himself small as an animal crouches who has no place to hide. Iunio I called out. Listen The sight of those two had me still more worried. The cave man I could not talk to but perhaps I could reason with the Roman. Do you know why we are here I know he tossed over his shoulder. Today the Gods try us in their arena. This is work for a soldier and a Roman citizen. You re no help so keep out. No watch behind me and shout. Caesar will reward you. I started to try to talk sense but was cut off by a giant voice from everywhere: YOU ARE NOW BEING JUDGED Peewee shivered and got closer. I twisted my left hand out of her clutch substituted my right and put my left arm around her shoulders. Head up partner I said softly. Don t let them scare you. I m not scared she whispered as she trembled. Kip You do the talking. Is that the way you want it Yes. You don t get mad as fast as I do and if I lost my temper . . . well that d be awful. Okay. We were interrupted by that flat nasal twang. As before it seemed close by. This case derives from the one preceding it. The three temporal samples are from a small Lanador type planet around a star in an out center part of the Third Galaxy. It is a very primitive area having no civilized races. This race as you see from the samples is barbaric. It has been examined twice before and would not yet be up for routine examination had not new facts about it come out in the case which preceded it. The voice asked itself: When was the last examination made It answered itself: Approximately one half death of Thorium 230 ago. It added apparently to us only: About eighty thousand of your years. Iunio jerked his head and looked around as if trying to locate the voice. I concluded that he had heard the same figure in his corrupt Latin. Well I was startled too but I was numb to that sort of shock. Is it necessary again so soon It is. There has been a discontinuity. They are developing with unexpected speed. The flat voice went on speaking to us: I am your judge. Many of the civilized beings you see around you are part of me. Others are spectators some are students and a few are here because they hope to catch me in a mistake. The voice added This they have not managed to do in more than a million of your years. I blurted out You are more than a million years old I did not add that I didn t believe it. The voice answered I am older than that but no part of me is that old. I am partly machine which part can be repaired replaced recopied I am partly alive these parts die and are replaced. My living parts are more than a dozen dozens of dozens of civilized beings from throughout Three Galaxies any dozen dozens of which may join with my non living part to act. Today I am two hundred and nine qualified beings who have at their instant disposal all knowledge accumulated in my non living part and all its ability to analyze and integrate. I said sharply Are your decisions made unanimously I thought I saw a loophole I never had much luck mixing up Dad and Mother but there had been times as a kid when I had managed to confuse issues by getting one to answer one way and the other to answer another. The voice added evenly Decisions are always unanimous. It may help you to think of me as one person. It addressed everyone: Standard sampling has been followed. The contemporary sample is the double one the intermediate sample for curve check is the clothed single sample and was taken by standard random at a spacing of approximately one half death of Radium 226 The voice supplemented: call it sixteen hundred of your years. The remote curve check sample by standard procedure was taken at two dozen times that distance. The voice asked itself: Why is curve check spacing so short Why not at least a dozen times that Because this organism s generations are very short. It mutates rapidly. The explanation appeared to satisfy for it went on The youngest sample will witness first. I thought he meant Peewee and so did she she cringed. But the voice barked and the cave man jerked. He did not answer he simply crouched more deeply into himself. The voice barked again. It then said to itself I observe something. Speak. This creature is not ancestor to those others. The voice of the machine almost seemed to betray emotion as if my dour grocer had found salt in his sugar bin. The sample was properly taken. Nevertheless it answered it is not a correct sample. You must review all pertinent data. For a long five seconds was silence. Then the voice spoke: This poor creature is not ancestor to these others he is cousin only. He has no future of his own. Let him be returned at once to the space time whence he came. The Neanderthal was dragged rapidly away. I watched him out of sight with a feeling of loss. I had been afraid of him at first. Then I had despised him and was ashamed of him. He was a coward be was filthy he stank. A dog was more civilized. But in the past five minutes I had decided that I had better love him see his good points for unsavory as he was he was human. Maybe he wasn t my remote grandfather but I was in no mood to disown even my sorriest relation. The voice argued with itself deciding whether the trial could proceed. Finally it stated: Examination will continue. If enough facts are not developed another remote sample of correct lineage will be summoned. Iunio. The Roman raised his javelin higher. Who calls Iunio Stand forth and bear witness. Just as I feared lunio told the voice where to go and what to do. There was no protecting Peewee from his language it echoed back in English not that it mattered now whether Peewee was protected from unladylike influences. The flat voice went on imperturbably: Is this your voice Is this your witnessing Immediately another voice started up which I recognized as that of the Roman answering questions giving accounts of battle speaking of treatment of prisoners. This we got only in English but the translation held the arrogant timbre of Iunio s voice. Iunio shouted Witchcraft and made horns at them. The recording cut off. The voice matches the machine said dryly. The recording will be integrated. But it continued to peck at lunio asking him details about who he was why he was in Britain what he had done there and why it was necessary to serve Caesar. lunio gave short answers then blew his top and gave none. He let out a rebel yell that bounced around that mammoth room drew back and let fly his javelin. It fell short. But I think he broke the Olympic record. I found myself cheering. Iunio drew his sword while the javelin was still rising. He flung it up in a gladiatorial challenge shouting Hail Caesar and dropped into guard. He reviled them. He told them what he thought of vermin who were not citizens not even barbarians I said to myself Oh oh There goes the game. Human race you ve had it. Iunio went on and on calling on his gods to help him each way worse than the last threatening them with Caesar s vengeance in gruesome detail. I hoped that even though it was translated Peewee would not understand much of it. But she probably did she understood entirely too much. I began to grow proud of him. That wormface in diatribe was evil Iunio was not. Under bad grammar worse language and rough manner that tough old sergeant had courage human dignity and a basic gallantry. He might be an old scoundrel but he was my kind of scoundrel. He finished by demanding that they come at him one at a time or let them form a turtle and he would take them all on at once. I ll make a funeral pyre of you I ll temper my blade in your guts I who am about to die will show you a Roman s grave piled high with Caesar s enemies He had to catch his breath. I cheered again and Peewee joined in. He looked over his shoulder and grinned. Slit their throats as I bring them down boy There s work to do The cold voice said: Let him now be returned to the space time whence he came. Iunio looked startled as invisible hands pulled him along. He called on Mars and Jove and laid about him. The sword clattered to the floor picked itself up and returned itself to his scabbard. lunio was moving rapidly away I cupped my hands and yelled Good bye lunio Farewell boy They re cowards He shook himself. Nothing but filthy witchcraft Then he was gone. Clifford Russell Huh I m here. Peewee squeezed my hand. Is this your voice I said Wait a minute Yes Speak. I took a breath. Peewee pushed closer and whispered Make it good Kip. They mean it. I ll try kid I whispered then went on What is this I was told you intend to judge the human race. That is correct. But you can t. You haven t enough to go on. No better than witchcraft just as lunio said. You brought in a cave man then decided he was a mistake. That isn t your only mistake. You had lunio here. Whatever he was and I m not ashamed of him I m proud of him he s got nothing to do with now. He s been dead two thousand years pretty near if you ve sent him back I mean and all that he was is dead with him. Good or bad he s not what the human race is now. I know that. You two are the test sample of your race now. Yes but you can t judge from us. Peewee and I are about as far from average as any specimens can be. We don t claim to be angels either one of us. If you condemn our race on what we have done you do a great injustice. Judge us or judge me at least Me too on whatever I ve done. But don t hold my people responsible. That s not scientific. That s not valid mathematics. It is valid. It is not. Human beings aren t molecules they re all different. I decided not to argue about jurisdiction the wormfaces had ruined that approach. Agreed human beings are not molecules. But they are not individuals either. Yes they are They are not independent individuals they are parts of a single organism. Each cell in your body contains your whole pattern. From three samples of the organism you call the human race I can predict the future potentialities and limits of that race. We have no limits There s no telling what our future will be. It may be that you have no limits the voice agreed. That is to be determined. But if true it is not a point in your favor. For we have limits. Huh You have misunderstood the purpose of this examination. You speak of justice. I know what you think you mean. But no two races have ever agreed on the meaning of that term no matter how they say it. It is not a concept I deal with here. This is not a court of justice. Then what is it You would call it a Security Council. Or you might call it a committee of vigilantes. It does not matter what you call it my sole purpose is to examine your race and see if you threaten our survival. If you do I will now dispose of you. The only certain way to avert a grave danger is to remove it while it is small. Things that I have learned about you suggest a possibility that you may someday threaten the security of Three Galaxies. I will now determine the facts. But you said that you have to have at least three samples. The cave man was no good. We have three samples you two and the Roman. But the facts could be determined from one sample. The use of three is a custom from earlier times a cautious habit of checking and rechecking. I cannot dispense justice I can make sure not to produce error. I was about to say that he was wrong even if he was a million years old. But the voice went on I continue the examination. Clifford Russell is this your voice My voice sounded then and again it was my own dictated account but this time everything was left in purple adjectives personal opinions comments about other matters every word and stutter. I listened to enough of it held up my hand. All right all right I said it. The recording stopped. Do you now confirm it Eh Yes. Do you wish to add subtract or change I thought hard. Aside from a few wisecracks that I had tucked in later it was a straight forward account. No. I stand on it. And is this also your voice This one fooled me. It was that endless recording I had made for Prof Joe about well everything on Earth . . . history customs peoples the works. Suddenly I knew why Prof Joe had worn the same badge the Mother Thing wore. What did they call that Planting a stool pigeon. Good Old Prof Joe the no good had been a stoolie. I felt sick. Let me hear more of it. They accommodated me. I didn t really listen I was trying to remember not what I was hearing but what else I might have said what I had admitted that could be used against the human race. The Crusades Slavery The gas chambers at Dachau How much had I said The recording droned on. Why that thing had taken weeks to record we could stand here until our feet went flat. It s my voice. Do you stand on this too Or do you wish to correct revise or extend I said cautiously Can I do the whole thing over If you so choose. I started to say that I would that they should wipe the tape and start over. But would they Or would they keep both and compare them I had no compunction about lying tell the truth and shame the devil is no virtue when your family and friends and your whole race are at stake. But could they tell if I lied The Mother Thing said to tell the truth and not to be afraid. But she s not on our side Oh yes she is. I had to answer. I was so confused that I couldn t think. I had tried to tell the truth to Prof Joe ... oh maybe I had shaded things not included every horrid thing that makes a headline. But it was essentially true. Could I do better under pressure Would they let me start fresh and accept any propaganda I cooked up Or would the fact that I changed stories be used to condemn our race I stand on it Let it be integrated. Patricia Wynant Reisfeld Peewee took only moments to identify and allow to be integrated her recordings she simply followed my example. The machine voice said: The facts have been integrated. By their own testimony these are a savage and brutal people given to all manner of atrocities. They eat each other they starve each other they kill each other. They have no art and only the most primitive of science yet such is their violent nature that even with so little knowledge they are now energetically using it to exterminate each other tribe against tribe. Their driving will is such that they may succeed. But if by some unlucky chance they fail they will inevitably in time reach other stars. It is this possibility which must be calculated: how soon they will reach us if they live and what their potentialities will be then. The voice continued to us: This is the indictment against you your own savagery combined with superior intelligence. What have you to say in your defense I took a breath and tried to steady down. I knew that we had lost yet I had to try. I remembered how the Mother Thing had spoken. My lord peers Correction. We are not your lords nor has it been established that you are our equals. If you wish to address someone you may call me the Moderator. Yes Mr. Moderator I tried to remember what Socrates had said to his judges. He knew ahead of time that he was condemned just as we knew but somehow though he had been forced to drink hemlock he had won and they had lost. No I couldn t use his Apologia all he had lost was his own life. This was everybody. you say we have no art. Have you seen the Parthenon Blown up in one of your wars. Better see it before you rotate us or you ll be missing something. Have you read our poetry Our revels now are ended: these our actors as I foretold you were all spirits and are melted into air into thin air: And like the baseless fabric of this vision the cloud capped towers the gorgeous palaces the solemn temples the great globe itself . . . itself yea all which it ... inherit shall dissolve I broke down. I heard Peewee sobbing beside me. I don t know why I picked that one but they say the subconscious mind never does things accidentally. I guess it had to be that one. As it well may commented the merciless voice. I don t think it s any of your business what we do as long as we leave you alone My stammer was back and I was almost sobbing. We have made it our business. We aren t under your government and Correction. Three Galaxies is not a government conditions for government cannot obtain in so vast a space such varied cultures. We have simply formed police districts for mutual protection. But even so we haven t troubled your cops. We were in our own backyards I was in my own backyard when these wormface things came along and started troubling us. We haven t hurt you. I stopped wondering where to turn. I couldn t guarantee good behavior not for the whole human race the machine knew it and I knew it. Inquiry. It was talking to itself again. These creatures appear to be identical with the Old Race allowing for mutation. What part of the Third Galaxy are they from It answered itself naming co ordinates that meant nothing to me. But they are not of the Old Race they are ephemerals. That is the danger they change too fast. Didn t the Old Race lose a ship out that way a few half deaths of Thorium 230 ago Could that account for the fact that the youngest sample failed to match It answered firmly It is immaterial whether or not they may be descended from the Old Race. An examination is in progress a decision must be made. The decision must be sure. It will be. The bodyless voice went on to us: Have either of you anything to add in your defense I had been thinking of what had been said about the miserable state of our science. I wanted to point out that we had gone from muscle power to atomic power in only two centuries but I was afraid that fact would be used against us. Peewee can you think of anything She suddenly stepped forward and shrilled to the air Doesn t it count that Kip saved the Mother Thing No the cold voice answered. It is irrelevant. Well it ought to count She was crying again. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves Bullies Cowards Oh you re worse than wormfaces I pulled her back. She hid her head against my shoulder and shook. Then she whispered I m sorry Kip. I didn t mean to. I guess I ve ruined it. It was ruined anyhow honey. Have you anything more to say old no face went on relentlessly. I looked around at the hall. the cloud capped towers . . . the great globe itself Just this I said savagely. It s not a defense you don t want a defense. All right take away our star You will if you can and I guess you can. Go ahead We ll make a star Then someday we ll come back and hunt you down all of you That s telling em. Kip That s telling them Nobody bawled me out. I suddenly felt like a kid who has made a horrible mistake at a party and doesn t know how to cover it up. But I meant it. Oh I didn t think we could do it. Not yet. But we d try. Die trying is the proudest human thing. It is possible that you will that infuriating voice went on. Are you through I m through. We all were through . . . every one of us. Does anyone speak for them Humans will any race speak for you We didn t know any other races. Dogs Maybe dogs would. I speak for them Peewee raised her head with a jerk. Mother Thing Suddenly she was in front of us. Peewee tried to run to her bounced off that invisible barrier. I grabbed her. Easy hon. She isn t there it s some sort of television. My lord peers . . . you have the advantage of many minds and much knowledge It was odd to see her singing hear her in English the translation still held that singing quality. but I know them. It is true that they are violent especially the smaller one but they are not more violent than is appropriate to their ages. Can we expect mature restraint in a race whose members all must die in early childhood And are not we ourselves violent Have we not this day killed our billions Can any race survive without a willingness to fight It is true that these creatures are often more violent than is necessary or wise. But my peers they all are so very young. Give them time to learn. That is exactly what there is to fear that they may learn. Your race is overly sentimental it distorts your judgment. Not true We are compassionate we are not foolish. I myself have been the proximate cause of how many many adverse decisions You know it is in your records I prefer not to remember. And I shall be again. When a branch is diseased beyond healing it must be pruned. We are not sentimental we are the best watchers you have ever found for we do it without anger. Toward evil we have no mercy. But the mistakes of a child we treat with loving forbearance. Have you finished I say that this branch need not be pruned I have finished. The Mother Thing s image vanished. The voice went on Does any other race speak for them I do. Where she had been now stood a large green monkey. He stared at us and shook his head then suddenly did a somersault and finished looking at us between his legs. I m no friend of theirs but I am a lover of justice in which I differ from my colleagues in this Council. He twirled rapidly several times. As our sister has said this race is young. The infants of my own noble race bite and scratch each other some even die from it. Even I behaved so at one time. He jumped into the air landed on his hands did a flip from that position. Yet does anyone here deny that I am civilized He stopped looked at us thoughtfully while scratching. These are brutal savages and I don t see how anyone could ever like them but I say: give them their chance His image disappeared. The voice said Have you anything to add before a decision is reached I started to say: No get it over with when Peewee grabbed my ear and whispered. I listened nodded and spoke. Mr. Moderator if the verdict is against us can you hold off your hangmen long enough to let us go home We know that you can send us home in only a few minutes. The voice did not answer quickly. Why do you wish this As I have explained you are not personally on trial. It has been arranged to let you live. We know. We d rather be home that s all with our people. Again a tiny hesitation. It shall be done. Are the facts sufficient to permit a decision Yes. What is the decision This race will be re examined in a dozen half deaths of radium. Meanwhile there is danger to it from itself. Against this mischance it will be given assistance. During the probationary period it will be watched closely by Guardian Mother the machine trilled the true Vegan name of the Mother Thing the cop on that beat who will report at once any ominous change. In the meantime we wish this race good progress in its long journey upward. Let them now be returned forthwith to the space time whence they came. Chapter 12 I didn t think it was safe to make our atmosphere descent in New Jersey without filing a flight plan. Princeton is near important targets we might be homed on by everything up to A missiles. The Mother Thing got that indulgent chuckle in her song: I fancy we can avoid that. She did. She put us down in a side street sang good bye and was gone. It s not illegal to be out at night in space suits even carrying a rag dolly. But it s unusual cops hauled us in. They phoned Peewee s father and in twenty minutes we were in his study drinking cocoa and talking and eating shredded wheat. Peewee s mother almost had a fit. While we told our story she kept gasping I can t believe it until Professor Reisfeld said Stop it Janice. Or go to bed. I don t blame her. Her daughter disappears on the Moon and is given up for dead then miraculously reappears on Earth. But Professor Reisfeld believed us. The way the Mother Thing had understanding he had acceptance. When a fact came along he junked theories that failed to match. He examined Peewee s suit had her switch on the helmet shined a light to turn it opaque all with a little smile. Then he reached for the phone. Dario must see this. At midnight. Curt Please Janice. Armageddon won t wait for office hours. Professor Reisfeld Yes Kip Uh you may want to see other things first. That s possible. I took things from Oscar s pockets two beacons one for each of us some metal paper covered with equations two happy things and two silvery spheres. We had stopped on Vega Five spending most of the time under what I suppose was hypnosis while Prof Joe and another professor thing pumped us for what we knew of human mathematics. They hadn t been learning math from us oh no They wanted the language we use in mathematics from radicals and vectors to those weird symbols in higher physics so that they could teach us the results were on the metal paper. First I showed Professor Reisfeld the beacons. The Mother Thing s beat now includes us. She says to use these if we need her. She ll usually be close by a thousand light years at most. But even if she is far away she ll come. Oh. He looked at mine. It was neater and smaller than the one she haywired on Pluto. Do we dare take it apart Well it s got a lot of power tucked in it. It might explode. Yes it might. He handed it back looking wistful. A happy thing can t be explained. They look like those little abstract sculptures you feel as well as look at. Mine was like obsidian but warm and not hard Peewee s was more like jade. The surprise comes when you touch one to your head. I had Professor Reisfeld do so and he looked awed the Mother Thing is all around you and you feel warm and safe and understood. He said She loves you. The message wasn t for me. Excuse me. Oh she loves you too. Eh She loves everything small and young and fuzzy and helpless. That s why she s a mother thing. I didn t realize how it sounded. But he didn t mind. You say she is a police officer Well she s more of a juvenile welfare officer this is a slum neighborhood we re in backward and pretty tough. Sometimes she has to do things she doesn t like. But she s a good cop and somebody has to do nasty jobs. She doesn t shirk them. I m sure she wouldn t. Would you like to try it again Do you mind Oh no it doesn t wear out. He did and got that warm happy look. He glanced at Peewee asleep with her face in her cereal. I need not have worried about my daughter between the Mother Thing and you. It was a team I explained. We couldn t have made it without Peewee. The kid s got guts. Too much sometimes. Other times you need that extra. These spheres are recorders. Do you have a tape recorder Professor Certainly sir. We set it up and let a sphere talk to it. I wanted a tape because the spheres are one shot the molecules go random again. Then I showed him the metal paper. I had tried to read it got maybe two inches into it then just recognized a sign here and there. Professor Reisfeld got halfway down the first page stopped. I had better make those phone calls. At dawn a sliver of old Moon came up and I tried to judge where Tombaugh Station was. Peewee was asleep on her Daddy s couch wrapped in his bathrobe and clutching Madame Pompadour. He had tried to carry her to bed but she had wakened and become very very difficult so he put her down. Professor Reisfeld chewed an empty pipe and listened to my sphere whispering softly to his recorder. Occasionally he darted a question at me and I d snap out of it. Professor Giomi and Dr. Bruck were at the other end of the study filling a blackboard erasing and filling it again while they argued over that metal paper. Geniuses are common at the Institute for Advanced Study but these two wouldn t be noticed anywhere Bruck looked like a truckdriver and Giomi like an excited Iunio. They both had that Okay I get you that Professor Reisfeld had. They were excited but Dr. Bruck showed it only by a tic in his face which Peewee s Daddy told me was a guarantee of nervous breakdowns not for Bruck for other physicists. Two mornings later we were still there. Professor Reisfeld had shaved the others hadn t. I napped and once I took a shower. Peewee s Daddy listened to recordings he was now replaying Peewee s tape. Now and then Bruck and Giomi called him over Giomi almost hysterical and Bruck stolid. Professor Reisfeld always asked a question or two nodded and came back to his chair. I don t think he could work that math but he could soak up results and fit them with other pieces. I wanted to go home once they were through with me but Professor Reisfeld said please stay the Secretary General of the Federated Free Nations was coming. I stayed. I didn t call home because what was the use in upsetting them I would rather have gone to New York City to meet the Secretary General but Professor Reisfeld had invited him here I began to realize that anybody really important would come if Professor Reisfeld asked him. Mr. van Duivendijk was slender and tall. He shook hands and said I understand that you are Dr. Samuel C. Russell s son. You know my father sir I met him years ago at the Hague. Dr. Bruck turned he had barely nodded at the Secretary General. You re Sam Russell s boy Uh you know him too Of course. On the Statistical Interpretation of Imperfect Data. Brilliant. He turned back and got more chalk on his sleeve. I hadn t known that Dad had written such a thing nor suspected that he knew the top man in the Federation. Sometimes I think Dad is eccentric. Mr. van D. waited until the double domes came up for air then said You have something gentlemen Yeah said Bruck. Superb agreed Giomi. Such as Well Dr. Bruck pointed at a line of chalk. That says you can damp out a nuclear reaction at a distance. What distance How about ten thousand miles Or must you do it from the Moon Oh ten thousand miles is sufficient I imagine. You could do it from the Moon Giomi interrupted if you had enough power. Magnificent It is agreed van Duivendijk. Anything else What do you want demanded Bruck. Egg in your suds Well See that seventeenth line It may mean anti gravity I ain t promising. Or if you rotate ninety degrees this unstable Latin thinks it s time travel. It is If he s right the power needed is a fair sized star so forget it. Bruck stared at hen s tracks. A new approach to matter conversion possibly. How about a power pack for your vest pocket that turns out more ergs than the Brisbane reactors This can be done Ask your grandson. It won t be soon. Bruck scowled. Dr. Bruck why are you unhappy asked Mr. van D. Bruck scowled harder. Are you goin to make this Top Secret I don t like classifying mathematics. It s shameful. I batted my ears. I had explained to the Mother Thing about classified and I think I shocked her. I said that the FFN had to have secrets for survival just like Three Galaxies. She couldn t see it. Finally she had said that it wouldn t make any difference in the long run. But I had worried because while I don t like science being secret I don t want to be reckless either. Mr. van D. answered I don t like secrecy. But I have to put up with it. I knew you would say that Please. Is this a U.S. government project Eh Of course not. Nor a Federation one. Very well you ve shown me some equations. I can t tell you not to publish them. They re yours. Bruck shook his head. Not ours. He pointed at me. His. I see. The Secretary General looked at me. I am a lawyer young man. If you wish to publish I see no way to stop you. Me It s not mine I was just well a messenger. You seem to have the only claim. Do you wish this published Perhaps with all your names I got the impression that he wanted it published. Well sure. But the third name shouldn t be mine it should be I hesitated. You can t put a birdsong down as author. uh make it Dr. M. Thing. Who is he She s a Vegan. But we could pretend it s a Chinese name. The Secretary General stayed on asking questions listening to tapes. Then he made a phone call to the Moon. I knew it could be done I never expected to see it. Van Duivendijk here . . . yes the Secretary General. Get the Commanding General . . . Jim . . . This connection is terrible . . . Jim you sometimes order practice maneuvers . . . My call is unofficial but you might check a valley He turned to me I answered quickly. a valley just past the mountains east of Tombaugh Station. I haven t consulted the Security Council this is between friends. But if you go into that valley I very strongly suggest that it be done in force with all weapons. It may have snakes in it. The snakes will be camouflaged. Call it a hunch. Yes the kids are fine and so is Beatrix. I ll phone Mary and tell her I talked with you. The Secretary General wanted my address. I couldn t say when I would be home because I didn t know how I would get there I meant to hitchhike but didn t say so. Mr. van D. s eyebrows went up. I think we owe you a ride home. Eh Professor That would not be overdoing it. Russell I heard on your tape that you plan to study engineering with a view to space. Yes sir. I mean Yes Mr. Secretary. Have you considered studying law Many young engineers want to space not many lawyers. But the Law goes everywhere. A man skilled in space law and meta law would be in a strong position. Why not both suggested Peewee s Daddy. I deplore this modern overspecialization. That s an idea agreed Mr. van Duivendijk. He could then write his own terms. I was about to say I should stick to electronics when suddenly I knew what I wanted to do. Uh I don t think I could handle both. Nonsense Professor Reisfeld said severely. Yes sir. But I want to make space suits that work better. I ve got some ideas. Mmm that s mechanical engineering. And many other things I imagine. But you ll need an M.E. degree. Professor Reisfeld frowned. As I recall your tape you passed College Boards but hadn t been accepted by a good school. He drummed his desk. Isn t that silly Mr. Secretary The lad goes to the Magellanic Clouds but can t go to the school he wants. Well Professor You pull while I push Yes. But wait. Professor Reisfeld picked up his phone. Susie get me the President of M.I.T. I know it s a holiday I don t care if he s in Bombay or in bed get him. Good girl. He put down the phone. She s been with the Institute five years and on the University switchboard before that. She ll get him. I felt embarrassed and excited. M.I.T. anybody would jump at the chance. But tuition alone would stun you. I tried to explain that I didn t have the money. I ll work the rest of this school and next summer I ll save it. The phone rang. Reisfeld here. Hi Oppie. At the class reunion you made me promise to tell you if Bruck s tic started bothering him. Hold onto your chair I timed it at twenty one to the minute. That s a record. . . . Slow down you won t send anybody unless I get my pound of flesh. If you start your lecture on academic freedom and the right to know I ll hang up and call Berkeley. I can do business there and I know I can here over on the campus. . . . Not much just a four year scholarship tuition and fees. . . . Don t scream at me use your discretionary fund or make it a wash deal in bookkeeping. You re over twenty one you can do arithmetic. . . . Nope no hints. Buy a pig in a poke or your radiation lab won t be in on it. Did I say radiation lab I meant the entire physical science department. You can flee to South America don t let me sway you. . . . What I m an embezzler too. Hold it. Professor Reisfeld said to me You applied for M.I.T. Yes sir but He s in your application files Clifford C. Russell. Send the letter to his home and have the head of your team fetch my copy. . . . Oh a broad team headed by a mathematical physicist Farley probably he s got imagination. This is the biggest thing since the apple konked Sir Isaac. . . . Sure I m a blackmailer and you are a chair warmer and a luncheon speaker. When are you returning to the academic life . . . Best to Beulah. Bye. He hung up. That s settled. Kip the one thing that confuses me is why those worm faced monsters wanted me. I didn t know how to say it. He had told me only the day before that he had been correlating odd data unidentified sightings unexpected opposition to space travel many things that did not fit. Such a man is likely to get answers and be listened to. If he had a weakness it was modesty which he hadn t passed on to Peewee. If I told him that invaders from outer space had grown nervous over his intellectual curiosity he would have pooh poohed it. So I said They never told us sir. But they thought you were important enough to grab. Mr. van Duivendijk stood up. Curt I won t waste time listening to nonsense. Russell I m glad your schooling is arranged. If you need me call me. When he was gone I tried to thank Professor Reisfeld. I meant to pay my way sir. I would have earned the money before school opens again. In less than three weeks Come now. Kip. I mean the rest of this year and Waste a year No. But I already I looked past his head at green leaves in their garden. Professor . . . what date is it Why Labor Day of course. forthwith to the space time whence they came. Professor Reisfeld flipped water in my face. Feeling better I I guess so. We were gone for weeks. Kip you ve been through too much to let this shake you. You can talk it over with the stratosphere twins He gestured at Giomi and Bruck. but you won t understand it. At least I didn t. Why not assume that a hundred and sixty seven thousand light years leaves room for Tennessee windage amounting to only a hair s breadth of a fraction of one per cent Especially when the method doesn t properly use space time at all When I left Mrs. Reisfeld kissed me and Peewee blubbered and had Madame Pompadour say good bye to Oscar who was in the back seat because the Professor was driving me to the airport. On the way he remarked Peewee is fond of you. Uh I hope so. And you Or am I impertinent Am I fond of Peewee I certainly am She saved my life four or five times. Peewee could drive you nuts. But she was gallant and loyal and smart and had guts. You won a life saving medal or two yourself. I thought about it. Seems to me I fumbled everything I tried. But I had help and an awful lot of luck. I shivered at how luck alone had kept me out of the soup real soup. Luck is a question begging word he answered. You spoke of the amazing luck that you were listening when my daughter called for help. That wasn t luck. Huh I mean Sir Why were you on that frequency Because you were wearing a space suit. Why were you wearing it Because you were determined to space. When a space ship called you answered. If that is luck then it is luck every time a batter hits a ball. Kip good luck follows careful preparation bad luck comes from sloppiness. You convinced a court older than Man himself that you and your kind were worth saving. Was that mere chance Uh . . . fact is I got mad and almost ruined things. I was tired of being shoved around. The best things in history are accomplished by people who get tired of being shoved around. He frowned. I m glad you like Peewee. She is about twenty years old intellectually and six emotionally she usually antagonizes people. So I m glad she has gained a friend who is smarter than she is. My jaw dropped. But Professor Peewee is much smarter than I am. She runs me ragged. He glanced at me. She s run me ragged for years and I m not stupid. Don t downgrade yourself Kip. It s the truth. So The greatest mathematical psychologist of our time a man who always wrote his own ticket even to retiring when it suited him very difficult when a man is in demand this man married his star pupil. I doubt if their offspring is less bright than my own child. I had to untangle this to realize that he meant me. Then I didn t know what to Say. How many kids really know their parents Apparently I didn t. He went on Peewee is a handful even for me. Here s the airport. When you return for school please plan on visiting us. Thanksgiving too if you will no doubt you ll go home Christmas. Uh thank you sir. I ll be back. Good. Uh about Peewee if she gets too difficult well you ve got the beacon. The Mother Thing can handle her. Mmm that s a thought. Peewee tries to get around her but she never does. Oh I almost forgot. Whom may I tell Not about Peewee. About the whole thing. Isn t that obvious Sir Tell anybody anything. You won t very often. Almost no one will believe you. I rode home in a courier jet those things go fast. Professor Reisfeld had insisted on lending me ten dollars when he found out that I had only a dollar sixty seven so I got a haircut at the bus station and bought two tickets to Centerville to keep Oscar out of the luggage compartment he might have been damaged. The best thing about that scholarship was that now I needn t ever sell him not that I would. Centerville looked mighty good from elms overhead to the chuckholes under foot. The driver stopped near our house because of Oscar he s clumsy to carry. I went to the barn and racked Oscar told him I d see him later and went in the back door. Mother wasn t around. Dad was in his study. He looked up from reading. Hi Kip. Hi Dad. Nice trip Uh I didn t go to the lake. I know. Dr. Reisfeld phoned he briefed me thoroughly. Oh. It was a nice trip on the whole. I saw that he was holding a volume of the Britannica open to Magellanic Clouds. He followed my glance. I ve never seen them he said regretfully. I had a chance once but I was busy except one cloudy night. When was that. Dad In South America before you were born. I didn t know you had been there. It was a cloak and daggerish government job not one to talk about. Are they beautiful Uh not exactly. I got another volume turned to Nebulae and found the Great Nebula of Andromeda. Here is beauty. That s the way we look. Dad sighed. It must be lovely. It is. I ll tell you all about it. I ve got a tape too. No hurry. You ve had quite a trip. Three hundred and thirty three thousand light years is that right Oh no just half that. I meant the round trip. Oh. But we didn t come back the same way. Eh I don t know how to put it but in these ships if you make a jump any jump the short way back is the long way round. You go straight ahead until you re back where you started. Well not straight since space is curved but straight as can be. That returns everything to zero. A cosmic great circle That s the idea. All the way around in a straight line. Mmm He frowned thoughtfully. Kip how far is it around the Universe The red shift limit I hesitated. Dad I asked but the answer didn t mean anything. The Mother Thing had said How can there be distance where there is nothing It s not a distance it s more of a condition. I didn t travel it I just went. You don t go through you slide past. Dad looked pensive. I should know not to ask a mathematical question in words. I was about to suggest that Dr. Bruck could help when Mother sang out: Hello my darlings For a split second I thought I was hearing the Mother Thing. She kissed Dad she kissed me. I m glad you re home dear. Uh I turned to Dad. She knows. Yes Mother agreed in a warm indulgent tone and I don t mind where my big boy goes as long as he comes home safely. I know you ll go as far as you want to. She patted my cheek. And I ll always be proud of you. Myself I ve just been down to the corner for another chop. Next morning was Tuesday I went to work early. As I expected the fountain was a mess. I put on my white jacket and got cracking. Mr. Charton was on the phone he hung up and came over. Nice trip. Kip Very nice Mr. Charton. Kip there s something I ve been meaning to say. Are you still anxious to go to the Moon I was startled. Then I decided that he couldn t know. Well I hadn t seen the Moon hardly I was still eager though not as much in a hurry. Yes sir. But I m going to college first. That s what I mean. I Well I have no children. If you need money say so. He had hinted at pharmacy school but never this. And only last night Dad had told me that he had bought an education policy for me the day I was born he had been waiting to see what I would do on my own. Gee Mr. Charton that s mighty nice of you I approve of your wanting an education. Uh I ve got things lined up sir. But I might need a loan someday. Or not a loan. Let me know. He bustled away plainly fussed. I worked in a warm glow sometimes touching the happy thing tucked away in a pocket. Last night I had let Mother and Dad put it to their foreheads. Mother had cried Dad said solemnly I begin to understand Kip. I decided to let Mr. Charton try it when I could work around to it. I got the fountain shining and checked the air conditioner. It was okay. About midafternoon Ace Quiggle came in plunked himself down. Hi Space Pirate What do you hear from the Galactic Overlords Yuk yuk yukkity yuk What would he have said to a straight answer I touched the happy thing and said What ll it be. Ace My usual of course and snap it up A choc malt You know that. Look alive. Junior Wake up and get hep to the world around you. Sure thing Ace. There was no use fretting about Ace his world was as narrow as the hole between his ears no deeper than his own hog wallow. Two girls came in I served them cokes while Ace s malt was in the mixer. He leered at them. Ladies do you know Commander Comet here One of them tittered Ace smirked and went on: I m his manager. You want hero ing done see me. Commander I ve been thinking about that ad you re goin to run. Huh Keep your ears open. Have Space Suit Will Travel that doesn t say enough. To make money out of that silly clown suit we got to have oomph. So we add: Bug Eyed Monsters Exterminated World Saving a Specialty Rates on Request. Right I shook my head. No Ace. S matter with you No head for business Let s stick to the facts. I don t charge for world saving and don t do it to order it just happens. I m not sure I d do it on purpose with you in it. Both girls tittered. Ace scowled. Smart guy eh Don t you know that the customer is always right Always He certainly is. See that you remember it. Hurry up that malt Yes Ace. I reached for it he shoved thirty five cents at me I pushed it back. This is on the house. I threw it in his face.

Science Fiction

fiction

THE ADVOCATE OF INDUSTRY AND JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC MECHANICAL AND OTHER IMPROVEMENTS. VOLUME 5. THE Scientific American CIRCULATION 14 000. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. At 128 Fulton Street New York Sun Building and 13 Court Street Boston Ma.s. BY MUNN COMPANY. The Principal Office being at New York. Barlow Payne Agents 89 Chanoery Lane London Geo. Dexter Bro. New York City. Stokes Bro. Philadolphia. R. Morris Co. Southern. Responsible Agents may also be found in all the prinoipal oities and towns in the United Sta.tes. T.ERMS S2 a yea S1 In advance and the remainder In 6 months. luil luuu Jri m :. . . . Mobile and Ohio Railroad. NEW YORK APRIL 20 1850. LOCOMOTIVE AND CAR HOISTER. Fig. 1. This is the invention of Mr. Nathaniel W. to preserve the eqUilibrium of the Hoister and The Directors a.re pushin g this work forward with a zeal and vigor which promises to ad vance the road r ... pitlly tow ... rtls itM completi tion. The contracts for the first 33 miles are all let and. the contractors are rapidly going ahead with the work. The line commencing at the city is opened the timber cleared off c. nearly to Eight Mile Creek and the gra ding rapidly being finished. From present ap pearanceil the grading for the thirty three miles will in a few months be ready for the structure a.nd the iron. We are very glad to notice the increILsing prosperity of the N. Y. and New Haven Rail road the receipts for the first three months of 1850 amounted to 89 503 52 against 55 853 23 for the corresponding three months in 1849 SDowiftg an increase this year of 35 568 29. This is a verv handsome increase but it must be borne in mind that the road was super Prime of Lancaster City Pennsylvania. Its keep it from rocking. J is the connecting rod object is to afford the be t meaUiI of hoisting attached to fra.me D and rack or screw K locomotives and cars on the track when by running into the wood work or jack L over any accident they have run oft . The plan for . pinion M. N is the cogwheel operated by pin one thing is certain to accomplish the object ion 0 to which the double lever P is attach desired and in the most simple nd easy ed which oper tes upon the ra.tchet and manner. thus gives the forward or backward motion to Figure 1 repre Oel.lts . the Hoister s ope the rack K. R is a ca t iron plate on each ting on a single rail or track. A represents side of jack L fastened by two screws to an the cap that rests upon the cylinder E hav elevated post of the platform. S is a bolt ing a screw partly through its centre and four runing through plate R to confine jack L to arms at the bott6m of the cylinder which the platform. Jack L works upon the bolt works upon the screw C confined in the frame S for the purpose of elevating connection J D for the purpose of raising or lowering a car. when necessary. T are falls working at their E are curved. supports faltened to the frame D centre upon double hingeli having four sup to which two wheels F are attached that run ports U to each fan for the purpose of level upon the rail G. H is a roller extending from ing and holding the platform firm when raised the endR of the curved support E across the or lowered on a. lever or on a.n incline when rail G ea.ch end resting on the side plates the ground may be uneven. V is the rope t not in full operation in January 1849. The above receipts are independent of all amounts due to connecting roads. If freed from the in cumbrance of the Harlem road .this would be one of the best paying roads in the .country and we can see no reason why it cannot ex tend across it and reach this city through a dif ferent avenue. We hope to see it done soon. :: ::: c : The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company is about putting under contract a large amount of new work comprising the line from Tygart s Valley River to a point on the s9uth fork of Fish Creek. SUKar Crop oC TexBS. The Galvasten News is informed by one of the most inteligent merchants and sugar plan ters of tha.t vicinity that he estimates the su gar crop of Texas next year at ten housand hogsheads and at twenty five thousand in five years after while in ten years from this time he believes the sugar crop in Texas will equal that of Louisiana. This estimate that jour nal remarks is not made at random but from data that would probably satisfy most men anel remove every reasonable doubt. c ::: Engllsh Horses. It is said that according to a late census of England the number of horses in that country ha been found to ha.ve diminshed from 1 000 000 to 200 000 within the last two years in other words the Railroad have dispensed with the use of 800 000 horses and these animals ail well as oxen are now scarcely used for transportation and thus the grain and food which the 800 000 horses formely consumed have been dispensed with and the land used for the growth of hay ana grass is devoted to the growth of grain alone for the supply of bread. There is great excitement among the factory operatives in England about what.is termed the Relay System that is to have a gang hO go to work after the 10 hours labor of the other has expired. The ten hours system there is not the thing. Figure 2. tached to the platform to b e fastened to the I comotive or car Hoister on the double r il or rail o r cross tie to hold the platform station track. ary. W Is the rope fastened to frame D to be A B C D E and the platform with the falls attached to the locomotive or car to draw the T are the same as at figure 1. F are double same lengthwise in place of a block and tackle wheels running upon the double rails G. His which by the operation of the lever P at an upright support attached to frame D and figure 1 or lever M at figure 2 and rack K mortieed through and fitting into the rack and and I the car is drawn backward orforward extending to the axle of the wheels F. There thus when the car or locomotive may be in a is a rack running parallel with the platform hollow or down an embarkment the Hoister upon a friction roller J through a post K will draw the car to such a position as to ad at each end and operated on by pinion L mit the Hoister to be placed underneath and in each post which pinion is operated by two raise the car or locometive and by the opera._ wheels or levers M with arms on each side tion of the devices of jack or screw L carry of the post K which give the rack I the for it right on to the track. ward and backward motion and thus carry Figure 2 represents the operation of the 10 the wheels F along the rails G. The rlick NUMBER 31. is divided in the centre and secured by a connection N to lengthen Or shorten the rack so as to bring the screw C and cap A to the proper place under the sides of the fra.me of the car. YY are braces attachedandf sten ed to the pla.tform and posts K. One or more of these jacks are placed under each side of the car or one under each end and the car is raised up on the vertica.l screw jacks and when off the ground the rack and pinion levers or the windlasses arB employed to move the vertical jacks on their rails car rying the car along with them the whole dis tance of the rail or jack pla.tform and by re peated efforts of this kir.d the car i. easily and quickly replaced on the track. The limplici. ty of this invention is apparent. Every per SOil knows the power of Ihe screw jacks and their peculiar fitness for lifting the cars a.nd when placed on wheels and run ona portable railroad their a.da.ptation s herein combined to hoist cars on the track is self evident. The inventor has takp n measures to secure a patent. is fnl l triptll Low Headed Fruit Trees. By having low headed fruit trees the sun which is perhaps in our hot and dry summers the cause of more disease and destruction in fruit trees than all other diseases together is kept from almost litere.lIy scalding the S p as it does in long na.ked trunks and limbs. The limbs and leaves of a tree should always ef fectually shade the trunk and keep it coo . The leaves only should have plenty of sun and light they can bear and profit by it. If trees were suffered to branch out low say within one or two feet of the ground we should hear very much less of fire blight frozen sap blight black spots nd the like. The ground is always looser moister a.nd cool er under a low branching tree than under a high one. Grass and weeds do not grow a hundreth part so rank and readily nd muloh. ing becomes unnecessary. The wind has not half the power to rack and twist and break the tree and shake off the fruit a matter Of no inconsiderable consequence. The trees will be much longer lived and more prolifio beauti_ ful and profitable. The trees are more easily rid of destructive insects the fruit is much less damaged by falling and the facilities for gathering it are much greater there is less danger in elimbing and less of breaking limbs. The trees require less pruning and scraping and washing and the roots are protected from the plough which is too often made. to tear and mutilate them. ::: Stammering. Dr. Turner of Newark N. J. in a publish ed note on the subject of stammering says: Permit me to say that stammering is caused by attempts to speak with empty lungs. In singing the lungs are kept well inflated and there is no stutering. The method of cure is to require the patient to keep his lungij well filled to draw frequent long breaths to speak loud and to pause on the instant of finding embarrassment in his speech taking a long inspiration before going on again. I cured one of the worst cases I ever knew on this prin ciple. Two fine golden solidi of Theodosius the Great and his son Arcadius were lately found in Lanyon quarry near Penzance the first minted at Constantinople and tho last instead of the:.name of the mint having the letters 0 C I in the place which is held to signify that the coin is of the purest gold. The dates belong tO i . the latter part of the fourth and begining of ho filth 00 .. wh tho c . 1850 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN INC Scitntiftt tntricAn. : th em . lI e t h O U g h t h e vv a s a t B: u en a :V i s ta . L e VV l s to n a n d L u e n s to n s u s p e n S I o n A:g: r l: c u l tu r a1 A d d r e . s . 311 tt B d We are indebted to the Agricultural Society lSrr nnrnn Does not this prove that the brutes have me rl ge. This bridge which is to connect the State of of Trumbull County Ohio for a. printed copy mory F hA I Correspondence of the Scientific American. WASHINGTON CITY April 15 1850. New York with Canada at Lewiston and of the transactions of their ourt nnua Imp ortant to Inventors. As was anticipated that clause of the De ficiency Bill relating to the completion of the wings of the Patent Office BUIlding has caus ed considerable commotion in the Senate. But you will perceive it has taken an unexpected turn and the question now is not whether the money shall be taken from the Patent fund but whet.her it shall be expended at all. It cannot however be supposed that the plan of Mr. Dickinson will be adopted viz. of leaving the wings an unsightly ruin as a mo nument of the imprudence of Congress in suf fering itself to be coaxed into the commence ment of a work requiring six times the amount of the original e3timate. It is too late to mourn over the past and the only wise course left is to vote sufficient money from the Trea sury to complete the job and to act more wa rily in future. After the proper quantity of indignation has been let off I believe the amount will be appropriated but not out of the Patent Fund. The bill as amended will then be returned to the House when I presume the difficulty will be ettled by a Joint Com mittee of Conference. A desideratum long called for is about to be supplied by which inventors and the pub lic will be much benefitted. The sage injunc tion a place for everything and everything in its .place has never been practically applied to the patent business in this country for there are no regular marts for the sale of Patent Rights or the exhibition of working models. Mr. P. G. Washington a gentleman very fa vorably known in this city and from his long connection with the Post Office Department to the country generally has taken this matter in hand in a manner best explained to your selves by the following fi pm his advertisement of the Ul1lted States Patent Agency Wash ington It is not the object of this .Agency to pro cure Patents for Inventors nor to purchase Rights but to receive Patent Rights in trust and to assume the expense and risk of their introduction and sale for an equitable com mission on whatever may be realized. Its plan includes the establishment of depots where the public may find and purchase new inventions and contract for the right to manu facture and vend the same. The fecunity of American genius is only equalled by the eagerness of American enter_ prise to avail itself of its benefits but many meritorious inventiens lie wholly dormant for want of time means or opportunity on the part of inventors to bring them properly before the public while of those they offer in the mar ket the knowledge is slowly diffused and the sales correspondingly restricted. This Agency purposes to make immediate arrangements for introducing inventions to the public simulta neously in every part of the United States and the exhibition advertisements and per sonal applications at which it aims will ena_ ble the public to ascertain ex .. mine and se cure the newest mechanism combinations and processes in art and science best adapted to any given use or employment. Queenston will be when finished the longest Meeting and which contains the Address of bridge of one span in the world. It is now Sam . St. John A. M. Prof. of Chemistry in being erected under the direction of Mr. Ed the Western Reserve College. In perusing the ward W. SerrelJ Civil Engineer. Mr. S. was Address we were struck with the freshness of one of Col. Hughes first assistants on the Isth the knowledge of its author he is posted up mus of Panama and made a great part of the with the very latest discoveries in Agriculture. location of the railway which is now being Our farmers we see are exhibiting a most built from Chagres to Panama. He has also commendable spirit of enterprise and desire been engaged for several years upon the pub for scientific information in Agriculture. Ohio lic works of this State and New Jersey. The is the first Agricultural State in tll.e Union bridge when finished will Ite one thousand and appears determined to keep the lead. and forty two feet between the points of BUp.. C:iF r:Oa n k U n . port nineteen feet wide at the roadway and One day last week news arrived in this city is calculated to sustain a load of BOO tons. and published in aU the papers announcing The estimated cost of the structure is 30 000. the safety of Sir John Franklin. The news The Engineer proposes to have it open for was brought by the dog mail from the wilds public travel on the 1st of September next. of Minesota some Indians having seen the Alb. Eve. Journal. fieet of the lost navigator sailing safely The Wheeling Bridge which is now the through the North West Passage. TlliI next longest in the world is 1010 feet from centre day it turned out that it was the vessel sent to centre at the supporting towers 3 feet less in search of Sir John that was seen. It is our than the one proposed for Lewiston. The ag opinion that Sir John is no more but it is sin gregate strength of its cables is 4 950 tons gular that no traces of him or his hardy and and it will sustain a load of 3 000 tons. The scientific crew have been discovered. It is length of the cables altogether is 1 380 feet. almost like a tempting of Providence to g@ in The Albany Evening Journal must surely be search of him. mistaken about the price of the Lewiston Mlneral Rlche uthern DUnols. During the past week a number of new mo dels have been placed in the Exhibition Room of the Patent Office. Among them is a beau tifulone of Hiram Tucker s Improved Mantel also one of Yerger s Artifical Legs. In the Hall of the National Institute have been pla ced a number of curious specimens of Mexican armor. Not the least is a notable pair of spurs the spikes of which are nearly the size of a ten_ penny nail. Armed with such weapons it is no wonder Santa Anna and his companions were enabled to run. Quite a number of enterprising inventors with working models for the inspection of Congress are stillm the city but until the settlement of the slavery question all attempts to attract attention will be labor in vain. The making of models appears to be a pro fitable business for no less than three persons I Ii I have recently commenced business in that line near the Patent Office. I Many of our naval officers think highly of the invention of a gentleman of your city. It I appears that thQ steam passes into the con densing apparatus from the cylinders and be ing then resolved into water returns again to the boilers to go through a similar process without wasting in the least. By the aid of this invention the fresh water in the boiler at starting can be used for an entire trip. The Baltimoreans are cracking jokes at the expense of Mr. Porter and his balloon. They tell him if he will only give them notice of his intended rerial visit they will give him a public reception. Professor Beck has been delivering a very interesting course of lectures at the Smithso nian Institute on the Chemistry of Nature. Severs.l hundred young trees have been recen t ly planted on the grounds of the Institute which III a few years will furnish a most de lightful promenade. A large number of new casts of the new bust of Daniel Webster have been sold at 20 each. One of our most eminent physicians asserts that a shock from a galvanic battery will prove an effectual remedy where a person has been stupified by an overdose of morphine. An iron bridge over Rock Creek near George town has been completed and the cost is found to be not more than one half that of a wooden one erected last year. Henceforth iron bridges mus t in all cases supereede wooden ones not only on account of their superior beauty but for their durability. I hear that the inventor of the machine for extinguishing fires on board vessels will when Congress is at leisure test the power of his apparatus on an old hulk near the Navy Yard. Seeing will be believing. Letters addressed to P. G. Washington D. C. on the business of this Agency will if pre paid receive prompt attention in like manner letters may be addressed to or person al enquiries made of D. Wellington N. E. Patent Agency Haskin s Building Court st. Boston A. L. Smith Northern Patent Agen cy No.2 John st. N. Y. or to E. F. Ray_ mond Central Patent Agency No. 169 Ches nut st. Philadelphia. . Too above correBpondence is published for the benefit of a vast many of our readers who have valuable inventions patented but have not facilities for introducing them to the world. An Agency like the above properly conducted win have a tendency to do much good to both the inventor and manufacturer and we hope to see the designs of this company properly ap preciated and their labors rewarded. ED. :::::l Ocean Steam Navigation to Europe. The Cunard Steamers commenced their week ly trips from Liverpool last week and will run on the 1st of May from New York and Boston. The Collins steamers five in number will commence their semi_monthly trips on the 27th instant and their weekly trips on the first of June . The Franklin will begin her trips to Havre next month and h er mate will be ready in the fall. The Brem.en line two steamers now leaves Southampton and New York once a month. The City of Glasgow will leave Glas gow on the 16th for New York and thereafter leave each port in alternate months. . The Virginia Gold Mines. The gold mines in Virginia owned by Messrs. Barnum Cc . of Baltimore have been sold to a New York Comp .. ny for 40 000. These mines have been yielding very well and ar rangements will now be made to sink shafts several hundred feet when it is expected gold will be found in more abundance and in larger quantities than nearer the top of the surface. c _____ _ When your New York Firemen with their martial music visited the President his old ar horse who was grazing on the grounds pricked up his ears and charged headlong into A Chinese lady with her two children arrived in this city last week from Cs.nton en route for London. She is a lady of rank and very beautiful. w:w Bridge only 30 000. The pstimated cost of The Morgan County Journal says that the the Wheeling Bridge was 139 000. Mr. Serrell little county of Hardin contains iron ore is an able New York Engineer possessing enough to build the Pacific Railroadfiftytimes great energy enterprise and knowledge of his over and the adjoining counties of Gallatin profession. and Salina could furnish the State with coal The Telegraph BUI The following is a Bill which has just past the Legislature of this State and there is no one who can honestly find fault with it and we know that its oquirements were required. Section 1. Any person connected with any Telegraph Company in this State either as clerk operator messenger or in any other ca pacity who shall wilfully divulge the contents or the nature of the contents of any private communication entfusted to him for transmis_ sion or delivery or who shall wilfully refuse or neglect to transmit or deliver the same shall on conviction before any court Iile ad judge guilty of a misdemeanor and shall suf fer imprisonment in the County Jail or W ork_ h. use in the County where such conviction shall be had for a term of not nlOre than three months or shall pay a fine not to exceed five hundred dollars in the discretion of the Court. Sec. 2. This Act shall take effect immedi ately. Nevv Orleans llI1nt Closed. This mint closed on the first of this month. Mr. Macmnrdo the late treasurer sent in.his resignation s.ome months since to take effect so soon as his successor should be appoint ed and the department has made two or three appointments but the smallness of the salary in comparison to the duties and responsibility of the station and the enormous amount of the official bond have deterred the parties from accepting. Early last month Mr Macmurdo sent in his positive resignation to take effect on the 31st March and no appointment having been made the office is now vacant with a consequent suspension of operations. The office has been tendered to various parties who have declined for the reason stated above and the United St ttes are now witillmt a Sub treasury in New Orleans. Extraordinary Discovery. Prof. Von Grusselbach of Stockholm has very lately brought to a state of perfection the art of producing a torpor in the whole .sys tem by the application of cold of different de grees of intensity proceeding from a lesser to a greater so as to cause the human body to become perfectly torpid without permanent in jury to any organ or tissue of the frame. In this state they may remain one hundred or a thousand years and again after a sleep of ages be awakened to existence as fresh and blooming as they were when they they first sunk into the frigirific slumber. Exchange. The learned Dane has no doubt been dwell ing among the bats and bears. for a thousand years. Pope County has mines of iron which are of a kind Iilasily prepared for the furnace being the brown hrematite. Har_ den County is also rich in solid bodies of lead ore which is almost pure galena. Zinc is also found in great quantities in this same region and frequently in the same mine with the lead. The ore is that caJled zinc blend being a sul phuric of zinc. c:::: Silver Mines 01 llIexlco. The Vera Cruz Locomotive says that the product of the silver mines of Mexico for the year 1849 will not be less than thirty millions of dollars. What becomes of it all Mexico is always hard up always poor publicly and privately always on the brink of bankruptcy. This is said to be a larger sum than ever be fore extracted in one year from the mines. The years 1804 and 1805 were very produc tive butthe quantities extracted did not reach thirtty millions it was about twenty six. x: ::::: Leather. Tanners complain that it takes more hide than formerly to make a pound of leather which they attribute to the quick method in which cattle are fattened for market. In 1793 there were 200 000 pairs of leather breeches made for the working people in England. This was the average annual supply. Now cotton fus_ tains corduroys and other heavy manufactures have been used as a substitute. :::::::x:: Invention 01 PeK ged Shoes. The first man who pegged a shoe in this or any other country is said to be now living at Hopkinton Mass. His name is Joseph Wal ker. The value of boots and shoes nQW made in Massachusetts alone is 18 000 000 annual_ lY. This means wooden pegs metal for pegs were employed among the Romans. c::: Singular Petrification. The Minesota Pioneer says that at the mouth of Crow River a navigable stream entering the Mississippi on the west side. 35 miles above St. Paul there are said to be visible in the bottom of the river several petrifications in the shape of men tnd horses. : x: The boats on the North River are doin ... fine business this Spring but the Erie Rail road is taking away ajgreat deal of travel from Albany. J ames Montgomery complains that the steam boilers in E.K. Collin s Line are infringe ments of his patent some honestly say that they are no more .than mere evasions at best. It is an object of ome conseq ence o lid Vt in New York in a wIlldy day as lt realizes a scene in the desert afar dust and dirt. M 1850 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN INC .. ....ft __ For the Scientifio Amerioan. The Stephenson BY J AR. CEE. A detailed account of the proof opening of the stupendous Britannia Tubular Bridge erected under the supervision of Robert Ste phenson the celebrated English Railway En gineer has lately made the tour of the paperB. To the Civil Engineers of this country Ste phenson B name and fame must be as familiar aB houBehold godB while to the public in general he is known only as the Engineer of the Tubular Bridge erected across the Mpnai Straits on the line of the Lond 0n and Du blin Railway. The conception erection and suc cessful completion of this structure involviug novelty of invention and boldnesB of design ab.truBe calculation and the utmost practical knowledge of the powers and capacities of me tals conversion of means already known to the accomplishment of new purposes and that far seeing and fore seeing of consequences which defies defeat would alone fix the fame ef any mortal. But Robert Stephenson s name as a just gentlemanly and generous man and fame aB a bold and successful railway and lo comotive engineer was established yearB be fore this Tubular Bridge was thought of. To enumerate the different lines of railway con structed under his supervision will be super fluous Buffice it to say that in Britain he is Emperor of Railways and Continental Eu rope accordB homage to his genius. Consider ing the natural obstacleB to be overcome and sectional interests to be conciliated the con Btruction of the London and Birmingham Rail way in 1839 undoubtedly reflects more credit to the genius of Stephenson than any of his subsequent works the Britannia Tubular Bridge not excepted. The gradientB of this line are based upon the angle of repose of 16 feet per mile as a maximum and traversing a densely populated and highly cultivated tract of country cut up with turnpikes and canals in every direction necessarily involved the con struction of stupendous excavations and em bankments tunnels and viaducts bridges and culvertB. Amongst the excavations may be noticed the Tung Cutting thirty miles from London on the chalk formation about one mile long and from forty to sixty feet deep and the BleBworth Cut ing in N orthamptonBhire through solid limestone rock abounding in wa ter about two miles long and forty feet deep. Amongst tunnels of which there are seven on this line varying from one quarter to one and a quarter miles in length near the village of Kilsby in N orthamptonshire. The erection f this tunnel was originally contracted for by Mr. Nowell a well known and skillful mason but upon sinking the shaft he found the shale full of water which could not be Btopped out and consequently had p ither to be pumped out or let out by a heading driven the whole length of the tunnel involving an unforeseen expense which would have been ruinous to a private individual. This .preyed upon the mind of Mr. Nowell so keenly that he died in a short time broken hearted when the Company released the heirs from the obligations of the contract immediately proceeded to the oxecution of the work at their own cost and supervision. 1 .is tunnel waB the most difficult and tedious work 5tirniiftt carp and grumble but the men actually em ployed have made up their minds that the work will be completed and it is completed. Robert Stephenson is a native of the Coun ty of Northumberland England and son of the no less celebrated George Stephenson the father of the present sYBtem of Railway tra velling and the inventor of the first locomo tive the Rocket which carried off the prize at the opening of the Liverpool and Manches ter Railway. George Stephenson accomplish ed for land tm velling what Robert Fulton achieved on the water. America is justly proud of the one England ought to glory in the other. George Stephenson was a genins a self made man. In youth and manhood he labored as a collier in the coal pits. He per ceived and felt in himself the want of educa tion and to obtain the means for his son Ro bert to go to school his natural mechanical gifts enabled him to lepair his fellow work men s clocks and watches at over hours He has been heard to boast publicly that when a boy he knocked dung for two pence per day and yet George Stephenson died a year ago at his seat at Tapton Derbyshire a rich man and the first Railway Engineer of the age The people of the United States have no conception of the exertion the almost super human exertion necessary for a man in Eng land to shake off ignorance and poverty and clothe himself with riches and fame. The ter rific struggle of anguish is better pourtrayed in the marble of the Laacoon than in pen and ink descriptions. In af plying little more than twenty years ago for the Act of Incorporation for the Liv erpool and Manchester railway George Ste phenson dared not tee the Commons house of Parliament what he knew could be accom plished by the use of railways for the purpose of travelling. He dared not tell them that he contemplated running trains at the rate of amttitllu. tracts and had to complete them under an ad vance in price of labor of thirty per cent. they had signed contracts which were all one sided in favor of the companies and which if strict ly fulfilled would have ruined every mother s son of em. Some undertook to do in two years that which was impossible to be done in three others were responsible for Blips in cut tings and others undert@ok to make tunnelB where they knew little or nothing of the na ture of the soil which had to be excavated. Some John Bull fashion stuck to their con tracts manfully some pulled up stakes and run but when settling day came Stephenson. as umpire betwixt the company and the con tractor stepped i and acted conscientiously equitably. . He had the power of the Lord Chancellor and he used it wisely. If the con tractors as a body cleared nothing very few lost anything. In thus acting StephenBon ran the risk of losing favor with companies but his fame was founded too securely to fear the attacks of concentrated meanness. There is something very remarkable and un usual in the fact that George and Robert Ste phenson father and son are both men of great geniuB and talents natural and acquired. Both had to force themselves upwards George by his natural genius and stlength of mind Ro bert by the same qualities burnished by edu cation private study and intense application. Who can fail to discover the prophe cy of Joel vii. 7 10 : They hall run like mighty men they shall climb the wall like men of war a.nd they shall march every one on his ways and they sha.ll not break their ranks c. The father has gone to that bourne from whence no traveller returns The son yet remainB amongst his fellow mortals both alike respected honored and admired great and good and Bhining examples of what may be achieved by genius talent and untiring ap_ plication. twenty miles per hour lest he should be con sidered an enthusiast a madman At the The Value ot: the Mechanic Arts. time the Act waB obtained and at the time of The following article is taken from the Phila the completion of the line the Company had delphia Ledger. We select it for its intrinsic not definitely settled upon the power to be worth in advocating claims which the public used for the transportation of the carS. Sta especially the wealthy generally overlook: tionary engines with ropes and horse power A writer in one of the public journals as had their respectIve advocates but the Com cribes the prosperity of Philadelphia to com pany wisely offered a prize of 500 sterling merce. Commerce especially when free and for a locomotive which should draw a given unshackled is one of the most important sonr weight a given number of miles in a certain ces of wealth not only to Philadelphia but to time. George Stephenson who had superin all countries and to every city but there is an tended the erection of the railway now set other worthy of the most profound considera himself to work to build a motor to travelllp_ tion and which we are too apt to overlook on it and in a short time the Rocket was from the quiet and unobtrusive walks of its ready. In this engine was displayed for the labours. We allude to the mechanic arts first time the method of generating steam and which lie at the bottom of Philadephia proB regulating the supply of steam by the steam perity and have made us so distinguished in itself by me us of the tubular boiler and the every foreign country for the beauty and soli blast pipe exhausting into the throat of the dity and speed of our locomotives the superb chimney. The engine was four wheeled and elegance of Our coaches the taste and power the cylinders were placed outside at an angle of our fire engines the splendor of our house of about 300 towards the driving shaft. Af hold furniture and the utility in general ef ter twenty years experience the locomotive all our mechanical inventions and machinery does not essentially differ from this. They to perform and abridge labor. The mechanic have been improved proportioned and beauti artB are so familiar to us that we too often fied but the mode of generating and applying fail to appreciate them. They are so noisless the power remains the same now as then. that we hear not their voices except when we 2 not overlook the details of wealth while we re vel in their enjoyment Do y e not forget the hardy weather beaten Tar while luxuriating in the tropical fruits brought from distant climes by his labor What do we owe then to the mechanic arts to hUBbandry and to the fisheries Everything. Yet how seldom do we accord them justice How prone are all to ascribe to other agencies aU the merits of the mechanic arts and to aSBign to the mechanic a position inferior to that of all other agencies Commerce is a great element of civilization but the mechanic arts are as superior as a thousand horse power engine is to a. locomo tive f one horse power. A W ork ot: Art. The Evening Post says there iB now in the Custom House a copy of the statue which an erninentFrench artist Gayrard is about to send to M. Vattemare for presentation to Congress. It is designed to embody the artist B idea of the American Republic and represen.ts a young female of graceful figure and majesticcounten ance seated upon a bale of cotton whose head is surrounded by a halo of thirt en stars and who holds in her hand the banner of the na tion surrounded by the Phrygian cap. Her left hand rests on a helm significant alike of sovereignity and maritime power. At her feet is the American Eagle and distributed about the ground are emblems of various kinds such as bowB and arrows the cornucopia the plough a sheaf of Indian corn c. c. This model is about two feet in height and rests up.on a pedestal conceived in good taste the sides of which will be ornamented with bas re lief representationB of prominent events in the history of the United States Buch as the De claration ofIndependence the Treaty of Peace of 1 783 the Surrender of Cornwallis c. The whole reflects great credit upon the skill and ingenuity of the artist and when finished in bronze as it is intended to be the figure some twenty fset in height will form a most impos ing object. The model is sent over in advance to get the criticism of competent perBons be fore the large Btatue iB finished. c:: Death by Spontaneous CombustJon. The foliowing extraordinary occurence is related by the Gazette des Tribunaux : A few days ago in the tavern near the Barriere de FE toile a journeyman painter named Xavier C well known for hiB in temperate habits while drinking with BOrne comrades laid a wager that he would eat a lighted candle. His bet was taken and scarce ly had he introduced the flaming candle when he uttered a slight cry and fell powerless to the ground. A bluish flame was seen to flicker about his lips and on an attempt being made to offer him assistance the bystanders were horrors truck to find that he was burning inter nally. At the end of half an hour his head and the upper part of his chest were reduced to charcoal. Two medical men were called in and recognized that Xavier had fallen a vic tim to spontaneous combustion. This confla_ gration of the human frame is frightfnlly rap id in its progress bones skin and muscle are all devoured conBumed and reduced to ashes. A handful of dust on the spot where the vic_ tim lay is all that remains. We have Been the above in a number of paperB and must pronounce it to be more wonderful than true. The human Dody is very Upen the Buccessful completion and opera enter the factory where hundreds of operatives upon. the wl ole line and Stephenson hire tion of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway are building up the wealth of society on their planted Frank Forster as resident engineer a Robert Stephenson established at Newcastle part to aid the farmer and the fisherman in gentleman qualified from his openness and on Tyne a Locomotive Factory and conjoint their productive avocations and who furnish courtesy of character and great knowledge of ly with his father entered into the erection of all the materials for commerce. Every de mining operationB succeBsfully to gainthe con_ those stupendous lines of railway which en partment of labor is the link of a vast chain fidence and good will of the workmen and circle the Isle of Britain in the meshes of a but the mechanic arts forge a. thousand while Killed by the Crater ot: Vesuvius. difficult to burn. complete in a short ti::ne what another set of net. Of course they could not superintend all eommerce only constitutes one while it de Charles Carroll Bayard Midshipman of the hands would if done at all have been done at the lines in operation at one time which left pendB on the thousands. Every part of a no U. S. Navy aged 22 and a promIsing Bon of the sacrifice of ene Or two years of time an openings for the talents of other eminent en ble ship comes from the workBhop of the me_ a distinguiBhed gentleman of Philadelphia item not to be overlook@d when the Btock of gmeers Buch aB Brunei Vignoles Rastnck chanic as well as the 10comGtive and car. died at NapleB Feb. 22d of a wound received thiB Company amounted to about five millions Locke Buck Cubilt Gooch Cabery Walton Every part of her cargo iB furnished by the far from a stone thrown from the crater of Vesuvi sterling. It appears from the Report in the c. c. mer the planter the mechanic and the manu us while he was standing in company with Times that Stephenson has again employ Upon the completion of the London and facturer. Mansions Btores palaces towers other officers on the side of the mountain. ed him aB resident engineer over the erection Birmingham Railway the principal contrac forts citadels light houBes all rise from the The eruption was one of the most brilliant and of the Tubular Bridge. He could not have tors of England met at the London Tavern magic action of the mechanic arts. Interior tremendous that has been witnessed for many done better. In practically carrying out all for the purpose of presenting Robert itephen_ embellishments are alike indebted to its agen_ years. It was moreover remarkably sudden great public v. orks the amount of abBtruse son with a service of plate as a testimonial of cy where luxury lounges on its easy cushion as none of the usual. Bigns preceded it. A let engineering knowledge is not so muah to be re their respeet and esteem. To some narrow or the caprice of Epicurean indolenceB laps it ter states that the mountain literally roared lied upon for their successful completion as a minded worms this step appeared much in self in the soft dreams of Sardanapalus in the with . the efforts it made to diBgorge itself. The good share of that courtesy firmness and just the shape of a public bribe but not one of the power where beauty slumbers in the saloon noise was like the firing of cannon at sea and ness which inspireB every one down to the parties interested had any more idea of brib where literati discuBs or in the Senate where at every discharge there was thrown up a mass 011 J driver boys and bellows blowers with confi ing Stephenson than they had of rooting up statesmen debate If all these facts are trite of lava and rocks which at night looked like r:::t: dence. Superanuated outsiders may doubt the monument. Contractors had taken con yet how seldom are they thought of Do we balls of fire. olJ I mll 1850 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN INC 4 S ci nrl n k a m tJn t 4 U . l t Improvements In Door Knobs. 1 M before the railroad branched ILway out through t pattern suitable as a general rule lor al . r. tu nnnn lUUI t. Mr. Wm. L. Kirkham Brandford Conn. K kh . d t bl the West no such event would hlLve happened 4: I.l ir am s invention comprIses an a JUS a e has made an exceedingly useful improvement d h f h d k b had our boat been fitted up with Mr. Wilcox s spin Ie in t e collars 0 t e oor no s two on the spindles or shanks for door knobs for propeller. being used for a door whereby one general Improved Grain Dryer. Mr. Chas. S. Snead of Louisville Ky. has invented a very excellent Grain Dryer for which he has taken. mea.sures to secure a pa_ tent. It is composed of a number of hollow semi spherical large circular tubes the upper part of which are concavo or to use a com mon term hollowed out to receive the grain. These pipes b ing hollow are heated by steam and any number of them but tAn is the number used are set at a small distance apart above one another firmly secured to a frame. There is an opening made through every one to allow the grain to drop down from the one to the other thus passing down through and over the whole set of tubes. There are a number of rakes placed at differ ent distances apart on radiating arms into the concave part of every pipe and these rakes are set in motion by a band and pulley dri ving the vertical shaft on which the rake arms are secured. The rakes therefore stir the grain ali the time and carry it forward and around each tube pushing it into the opening whence it drops into the next tube thus carrying the grain round the whole cir cumference of the six tubes and delivering it perfectly dry at the bottom. There is no fear of scorching and the grain Can be operated by the mQtion of the rakes to dispel the moisture in any kind of grain be it mOre or less. This Grain Dryer has been in operation for some time and given great satisfaction. The grain is delivered on to it by a hopper at the top and it is suitable for drying meal 80S well as gra.in. Horse Shoes Fastened Without Nalls. A Mr. William Perry of Plymouth Eng. has invented and taken out a patent for fas tening horse shoes by wires instead of nailing them on. The holes for the wires are bored through the animal s hoof by means of a drill which is set with the utmost accuracy to bore at the right angle to prevent pricking the quick somethi ng which our blacksmiths all know about a.nd which alWAYs. ca.naes lame ness in the animal. The wire is introduced in the form of a staple from the upper part of the hoof the limbs of the sta.ple approaching one another towards the shoe to suit two holes in the shoe punched close together when they re twisted together and folded down into lit tle recesses cut in the ah .. e. Four staples two on each side suffice to fasten the shoe. The wire must be of the best manufacture and annealed. This is a plan of horse shoeing which appears to be both new and good but a practical test is the only way to prove the va lue of any invention. All we can say about it is the plan can be easily tried and there is some evidence of its value in the fact that the patent a.lone must have cost the inventor all of 800. Sheet Iron Pipes. Sheet iron pipes of a new manufacture have lately been introd ced into England from France where they have been in use for sever al years. They are made of sheet iron which is bent to the required form and then strongly riveted together after which they are coated with an alloy of tin and the longitudinal joints are soldered so as to render them both air tight and water proof. In oroler to give them more stiffness they are ne xt coated on the outside with asphalte cement and if they are intended to be used as water pipes the in side is aho coated with bitumen which resists like glass the action of acids and alkalies. They are 80 elastic that they will bear a con eiderable deflection without injuring the pipes or causing any leakage at the joints. The verticlLl joints screw together in the same man ner as cast iron gas pipes. These pipes have been used for water for gas and for draining and are found to be more economical than cast iron besides being less liable to leak and for water pipes they are more healthy than the common ones. Annual of Scientific Discove ry. I A new alkali has b btained in Scotland .. it . V 1l 1 Ipm . which he has taken the usual measures to se length of sprndle can be set in the collars to cure a patent. Heretofore the spindles of door suit doors of different thickness. This inven knobs had to be made of different lengths for tion is valuable because its field of applica. doors of different thicknesses hence there was tion is very extensive. no uniform system of making the pindle no IMPROVED MACHINERY FOR MAKING COTTON BAT TING AND FOR SIZING AND DRYING IT. This machinery is the invention of Mr. Jere X runs in another size box D1 and this sIZes miah Essex of Bennington Vermont and the other side of the web of batten whence it is was p tented about four years ago. The pa carried over the roller H and the two upper tentee and those who have long known the prac drying reels J J and received on a roller K tical value of the improvements patented have being pressed firmly thereon by the rolier L. deemed this the best way and no doubt is of The roller K is allowed to rise up as it fills by spreading befor the public a knowledge frank the slot in the bearings in the frame. The and open of the same. reels are open rollers made of metal with hor The same patent is of two parts izontal rods as represented running on their one to form the batting into webs of different circumferences on which the web rolls and rubs. or one even thickness as may be desired and of any length by combining the bats as de livered from different carding machines making them into one web and winding it on a rolier from whence it is delivered to the second part of the invention represented by the accompa nying engraving which is a side vertICal sec tion only it shows but four drying reeh partly broken off whereas there are 8 reels employed this will be understood. M represents the roll er with the web of batten round it 80S taken from the first part of the invention. B B B and C are rollers to conduct the batten up between the two rollers W and F. The roller W runs in a box D filied with size or glue of such kind most suitable consequently the npper surface of the web is sized and carried along over the drying reels G G and then be tween the rollers X and Z. The lower roller These reels and the whole frame is made of metal to prevent the possibility of burning for as the heat to dry sized batting has to be very intense the danger of burni.ng the bat ting and the machine is imminent if the ma chine is not made of incombustible materials. The drying reels ar .. operated by cog wheels or their equivalents. The claim for this inven_ tion is the arrangement of one or more series of reels that rotate by means of wheels or other equivalents to conTey the bat in com bina.tion with the sizing or glazing apparatus for glazing or sizing and drying cotton or oth er wadding in the manner described. The arrangement of this machinery for this part of the invention is very simple and good because simple. Any other information may be ob tained by letters addressed p.p. to the Patentee. WILCOX S AMPHIBION PROPELLER. Great inventions like great ideas are on l rowing a discomfit ted politician up salt ri v ly tnrown out at g1 eat intervals. This in er. The dotted lines represent the interior vention is that of Mr. H. G. Wilcox of Tio mechanical arrangement to operate the rock ga Tioga Co. Pa.. However much we may ing shaft. I is an eccentric on the crank shaft differ in opinion from the inventor it is but of the engine. E is the eccentric rod which is right that he should let the world judge of connected to the rocking shaft by a connecting the merits of his invention which he considers bar and guide block D. H H are two ropes of no small importance for canal navigation attach8d to thd graplers C C and pa.ssing and this is the reason he has chosen the Sci around a pulley G. These ropes are to be entific American as the blilst vehicle for letting employed in lifting up the graplers when they the world know what he has done. This fi come in contact with snags so as to Hnag gure represents a canal boat. them up and clear the way for the progress of A represents a rocking shaft with two arms the Amphibion Propeller. Brunton invented on it to which are attached the two propelling the Mechanical Traveller for railroads in 1812 arms B B with. grappling claws C C secured and Gordon another for common roads in on plates to seize hold of the bottom of the 1 818 but a land carriage is very different from canal as the shaft is rocked and heave ho a water vessel. Having been nearly wrecked the boat forward with the mighty impulse of doubling Troy Point on the Erie Canal long Ne W Cotton Glnnlng Machlne Vanted The goverment of India having at the sug gestion of the Agri HorticuJtural Society of In. dia announced that a prize of Rupees Five Thousand shall be given for an improved cot ten cleaning machine unrestricted by any particular mechanical principle su h as in the opinion of the goverment shall have fully a.ttained tIle principal objects described by the society namely to be so perfect in its action in separating cotton wool from the seed and possessing such qualities of expedition simpli city and comparative cheapness as to render it likely to come into practical use and the Agri Horticultural Society having determined to adjudge it. Gold Medal for the same object its hereby notified that the following are the conditions under which the above and other prizes will be awarded : CONDITIONS. l. The machine shall be ca pable of separating the ordinary hort sta.ple cotton grown in India from the seeu. 2. E ach competitor hall deposit free from charge .. full sized working machine in the so ciety s rooms lIfetcalfe Hall Ca.lcutta together with a letter descriptive of the machine and the moue of working it addressed to the hono rary secretary of the Agri Horticultura. Socie ty of India on or before the 1st of J a.nuary 1852. 3. In the invent of no ma.chine being deem ed worthy of the full amount of 5 000 Rs. a smaller prize will be awarded for the best mlL chine offered in proportion to its merits in the estimation of the goverment of India. 4. The society s gold medal will be given with the goverment prize of 5 000 Rs. and in the event of there being more than one cQmpe titor a silver medal will be awarded for the next best machine provided it shows much ingenuity and comparative success. Noticc is hereby also given that the Agri Horticultural Society of India will be prepared to award subject to the same conditions as those named above a silver medal and the Bum of Rs. 250 placed at its diposal by Major Jenkins Agent to the Governor General in As sam for an efficient cotton threshing machine adapted to free from trash either seed cotton or cotton wool of the indigenous kinds. N. B Sa.mples of Indian seed cotton can be obtained on a.pplication to Dr. Royle or Messrs. Grindlay Co. after the 1st of June next. JAMES HUME Honorary Sec. Agri Hort. Sec. of India.. Calcutta January 1850. Resolution passed at a general meeting of the Agri Horticultural Society of India held on the 13th December 1 849. That one hundred copies of the above adver tisement be transferred to Charles HuffnlLgle Esq. Consul of the United States of America he having most kindly offered to arrange for their gratuitous distrilmtion throughout that country. The above is an official advertisement pub lished in the Republic at the seat of Gov ernment Washington. In order that our mechanical friends may know the amonnt of the prize we would state that a rupee is 2s. 2d sterling or the whole amount 2 500. The prize is a very small one considering the dis tance the machine has to be carried for exhi_ bition. It is not likely there will be many competitors in the United States unless it be with some machines that are now in use soma of which we believe will answer the purpose very well. If it had been Bome literary prize for gentlemen wranglers the prize would per h ps have been ten instead of five thousand rupees. Ne W Kind o:f Coal. The schooner Peerless says the Boston Post arrived at this port On Tuesday brought part of a deck load of new coal. A vein was dis covered this SpriI g near Dorchester NOTa Sc tia and some:few chaldrons have been got out. It has a glossy appearance and when lighted with a match it burns like gas. Dr. Jackson is analyzing a piece of it. 1850 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN INC _ _. __ . :::::::::::::::S:C:irn: .:ti:fi: :a: :m:er:i_ a:u:. :::::::::::::::2 rious days of despotic power upon the pain of by the deceased William Woodworth. The 11 death except those of royal blood. The art claims of the deceltsed William Woodworth Scientific american NEW YORK APRIL 20 1850. Changes In Society Progress oC Travel ling. Within the present century the customs of Society in respect to travelling have under gone great changes. Fifty yeald ago not a single steamboat disturbed the waters of a river lake or sea in the wide world. Now what do we behold Europe bridged to America by a steam voyage of ten days and the smoke of the steamship s funnel afar off on the ocean may be seen weekly from the Peak of Teneriffe and the Cliffs of Helena s Ocean Isle. Fifty years ago j aunty sloops carried our forefathers up the North River to Albany in the short pace of five and six days. The sloop captain wa s then a man of no little distinction the entrusted treasurer of great men s lives but Othello s occupation s gone. Instead of a worthy human cargo the North River skipper is now content with a cargo of beef eans or bran and he casts a wistful look to the swift .Jllida as she fieets past him with crowded decks steaming her way to old Beaverwyck in less time than he can clear the Pallisades. Our rivers lakes and seas are now swarming wi th steamboats conveying travellers from place to place hun dreds of miles apart iu less time than our country farmers used to take in going to meet ing. M uch as the steamboa t changed the cus toms of society it was found insufficient for modern requirements. As Adam was without Eve so the steamboat required ILn helpmete in order that water and land. communication might cordially embrace each other. For ma ny years the water maid sought in vain for an appropriate partner. She had passed out of her teens and had reached the full bloom of womanhood ere a favored one presented him self. It was then when at twenty years of age Mr. Locomotive with the speed of the Rocket flew to embrace the lonely damsel and soon woo d and won the maiden fair. Since the nuptials of Mr. Locomotive and Mi s Steamboat were celebrated in 1828 so ciety has received a new and progressive im pulse. A few years ago very few travelled to any great distance Or frequently from their fire sides and those who did were content with the slow stage coach or canal boat. But such kinds of 10Qomotion would be stealing from time now. The stage driver was once a. man of some importance in his way a kind of King JehU with his long whip and his six in hand. It was no small event and that but a very few years ago when he drove into the village with his prancing steeds to the sound of his own bugle. But alas I for the instability of human professions up came the iron horse snorting on his steam whistle .. Get out the way old Dan Tucker and bumping without much ceremony both driver and stage off the track. The driver s horn is yet sometimes heard afar in woods and among the Alleghanies but its sound is less merry than of old. Instead of the driver rattling away at Hey jim along or Old Zip Coon he is Ireq uently heard to play with a sigh Oh the days when we went staging it long time ago. I lThere is nothing more striking than to wit ness the new spirit which has been awakened by improvements in locomotion. The smith still wields his hammer as of old the carpen ter shoves his plane as his father did before him the grocer weighs and measures his su gar as his ancestor did but nobody travelled before and everybody travels now. Our neigh_ borhood is not bounded by Uncle John s house over the creek now but our neighborhood is the whole world and our neighbors the rest of mankind. We have now the Steamboat Locomotive and Telegraph and by them the means of communicating and travelling in an incredible short space of time but it is probable that we will not long be content even with such rapid means of travelling or speaking. Who can tell that we may not in forty years after this travel at the rate of 100 miles ill the same time and as easy as we now travel 40 miles. Greater wonders have been accomplished du ring the past forty years. House Cleaning. As this is about the season when good housewives clean their houses from cellar to garret it may be well to say a few words on the subject. When you wash paint don t use soft soap and warm water for that will take off the paint as well as the dirt. Use .cold water and hard soap. Scrub the floors with soft soap and don t put down the carpets un til the fioor is perfectly dry. Always put down some fine clean mind clean straw nnder the carpet and lay it smooth and leve . Carpets may be cleaned by pounding them in strong soap suds and washing them well out of the soap. The suds must be very strong and cold. This is done by cutting down the hard soap and dissolving it in warm water. The suds should feel slippery between the fingers. Bed s.teads should receiv a complete scrubbing with soap and water and should not be put up until perfectly dry. The seams and holes should then be ILnointed with corrosive subli mate dissolved in alcohol or sulphur mixed with camphine or a solution of the chloride of zinc. No person should go to sleep in a damp bedroom. Many people by overlooking this caution during house cleaning season catch severe colds and make their beds with the clods of the valley before the subsequent Christmas. Always commence to clean at the top of the honse and descend by steady and regular stages. Some people clean their hous es with quietness and B arce any disorder oth ers do not do an1more work but make a great deal of noise. If there is a dog or cat about the house it generally disappears till the squall is over. The grand rule for facilitating work is ystem. Arrange ILl the work to be done and how it is to be done before commencing. For want of system many a job has to be done over and over again. c The Tyrlan Purple. As the nymph Tyms was with the dog of her lover Hercules she perceived that the agima s mouth was stained a beautiful violet color from the fish of a sheH which he had broken on the sea shore. And so beautiful. did it appear to her that she declared to Her cules he should see her no more until he had procured for her a suit dyed of .thlLt color. Then Hercules moved by love coUected an im. menM number of those shells wHh which he dyed a robe for the nymph. Such is the legend from the name of the nymph so evidently metaphorical connected with the discovery of the celebra.ted Tyrian dye. The character of the ancient Tyrian Purple is greatly magnified as we look it at through the long telescope of history. Almost the only accounts of the Tyrian purple are handed down to liS by Aristotle and Pliny especially the latter in whose time this dye had attained to its greatest perfection. He describes it as having been obtained from two species of shell fish the Bucinum and the Purpura. This dye was famous a thousand years before the Christian era. As many do not know that wool silk and cotton will not receive the same color from the same substances we would state that the Tyrian purple was dyed in wool alone. It is stated by thEi historians named that the shell fish were bruised and the liquor obtained from them was left in salt water in tin vesseld moderately hot for ten days. Iuto this liquor the wool was kept for five hours then taken out and washed md then immersed in the bath until all the color in the liquor was exhausted. To produce different of dyeing this color was lost to the world were different from the claims granted to his I about the 12th century it expired with the last heirs and assiguees after he was dead. This I I remnant of Tyre s existence. During a num is the complaint and apparently a just one ber of ages this famous dye was lamented as The agents of the Woodworth Patent some of I an irrevocable loss. them at least have been very tyranical about In the early part of thp. 17th century Mr. their privileges. Cole an English gentleman discoverd some We have personally said little about this shell fish on the coast of England which pro present controversy because others are saying duced a light purple color and in 1709 the so much. We like every inventor s rights faithful famous Reaumur of France discovere l on the ly protected bu w lon t like to see Congre s coast of that. country various shell fish which make special laws for favorites because they produced a fine purple color on linen. Fonte have means and influence at command. It nelie in giving an account of Reaumur s di is our opinion that the agents of the Wood covery said that it was a greater discovery worth Patent have tried to stop machines than the aneient purple. But at the time of from working which had not the least approx this re discovery of the purple America was imation in operation to the Woodworth ma beginning to send some of her famous colors chine. Wa always endeavor to view every into Europe. From the scarcity of the shell subject impartially and to speak out freely fish and the troubls of forming the color it without fear or favor for we always keep our never could be produced at a price below what selves free from all entangling alliances. ED. Royalty alone could pay but as in politics so For the S American. in art the cochineal insect of America has gi v en to the lowliest the privilege of wearing at a moderate price this once royal color. A most splendid scarlet is dyed on fine white wool by groundcochiMal at the following rates p r lb : l oz. cochineal 2 oz. cream of tar tar wine glass fuJI Gf the nitro muriate of tin. The wool is boiled in a clean vessel of copper or tin in pure water with the above ingredients for one hour. The color can be blued or made of a violet shade by handling the wool in warm alkaline water for about half an hour. There can be no doubt but a portion of tin from the Tyrian baths was ta ken up by the hot salt water and absorbed by the wooL This was the true basis or mor daunt of their celebrated color. c o The Woodworth Patent. MESSRS. EDITOR : Holding diff rent opin ions from those expressed in the Scientific American about the Woodworth Patent I have taken it upon myself to ask if you had examined th subject in all its bearings .. nd had viewed it with that illlpartiality which ge nerally characterizes the articles in your pa per. When l ny man bring. forward a useful invention one which from its nature and su periority over others renders it of universal application there is never wanting men who by every means endeavor not only to rob the inventor oithe profits accruing from his inven tion but what is more dear to him still the honor of the invention. This was the case with the deceased William Woodwortk he was robbed in life of the profits of his inven tion and selfish men like the bigots of old cannot let his ashes repose in peace. His im provements in Planing Machines have been of the greatest benefit to the United States and surely his heirs have the best right to receive some remuneration for the inventions of their predecessor whose invention taking the price of pl .. ned lumber subject to the patent tax has been reduced at least 30 per cent and he was the first inventor of the machine as itnow stands and no other as has been proven over and over again and can be proven again by a fair tria.l. Hoping that I might get you to give the subject a more thorough examination I re_ main yours M. REMARKS ON T H E ABOVE . It is the fortuue of Editors to rp cei va blame for the opinions of others to be accused of uttering sentiments expressed by correspond ents. If the readers of newspapers were more critical in examining all they read they would soon learn to separate the wheat from PcrcusslOl. Cap lIIachlne. I observe in the public journals frequent pa_ ragraphs extolling the ingenuity and efficien cy of a Percussion Cap IIbchine at the U. S. Arsenal in W ashin gton which forms and primes the cap aud in your l ast number I read that it is now being exhibited at the Ca pit@ . This machine is a comJination of prin_ ciples for which I hold a patent dated lIiarch 20 1849 applied in October 1848. I have a memorial before Congress asking compensa tion for the invention of machinery and in fringements for the manufacture of these caps. As I consider the representations and exhibi tion referred to are of a nature to bias public opinion to my inj ury at this crisis therefore justice to myself and the public S em to de mand a his tory of facts. The Cap Machine and improvements in the manufacture were prosecuted by me at the U. S. Arsenal in West Troy N. Y. by request of the Board of Ordinance during the years 1842 3 4 5. At these dates there was not either in Europe or America ny useful self operating machine for this purpose nor is there at this moment any which is not an im provement of my rights which I intend soon to defend. In 1846 one of my machines was put in operation at the Arsenal and the caps made by it were primed by a machine COll structed there and corresponding with my projections. In 1848 an enlisted man there was permitted to combin.e the priming with the cap machine in violation as I con ceive of an understanding implied that the Board of Ordinance would not interfere with my improvements. This Combination is the maehine now in the Capitol it Was a part of my original plan and was in drawings in 1844. In wait ing during three Sessions .the result of my Memorial I have till now refrained prefer ring o n injunction on their progress. R. M. BOUTON. West Troy April 9 1850. Mr. Bouton has been known to us by re pute for some years as a very worthy and in genious mechanic ED. : c:::: Engllsh and American Patent Laws. shades of colors Pliny says nitre wine and the chaff. Our correspondent Junius Redi a marine plant called Flucu8 were occasional vivus has given his views about the W ood ly added. One color was very dark inclining worth Patent and as he always speaks to the to a violet with a reddish hue and another point we say he can take care of himself. We WHoS a crimson but the shade most famous re know that our correspondent spoken of above sembled coagul ated blood laus ei summa in tells some truths and he surely knuws that he colore sanguinis concretio There was anoth expresses the very sentiments we have uttered er shade called in Exodus chap. xxv. wool again and again about plundering inventors twice dyed. This was the deepest and rich of their rights. We have no sympathy with est color produced by select fish and without patent pirates not a spark of it. But what the employing any alkaline liquor to darken are the complaints against the Woodworth the shade. In the reign of Augustus a pound Patent Why that the Assignees hold a pa of this color on fine wool cost about 180 but tent which elaims by an ex parte act of Con none were permitted to wear it in those glo gress a patent for an invention not invented The London Patent Journal says that a Bill is about to be brought into Parliament for the amendment of the English Patent Laws. It also says We understand it is the intention of the American Congress to reduce the fees for pat@nts to English subjects to the same scale as that for American citizens. We can assure the Patent Journal that there will be no such change in our Patent Laws in a hur ry unless the English Patent fees are first re duced to the same standard. Whenever this is done the reform spoken of will at once be effected. We are glad to see the Journal working so hard for a Reform of the British Laws. The fees for the three kingdoms are. shamefully high. The huge seal that troublesome ap I pendage to a British Patent should be con II signed to the shades of Pluto. I c..... I Great Patent Case. . . On t e 15th inst. before Judge Kane Phila I IDJunctlOns were ordered against Brant and 20 others for infringing the Parker s Patent for E improvements on water wheels. 0 gs 1850 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN INC _ _2_4_ 6 __ 5 ci tu t ifi t a m tt i_t4 U . ____ __________ _ I claim the manufacture of mantel pieces any artl cle l d b th f I s graspe etween e J aws 0 the fo m h f . by the combination of cast iron frames of or r or s ape 0 any pIece as new or the gen LIST OF PATENTS CLAIMS ISSUED FROM THE UNITE D STATES PATENT OFFICE For the week ending . Jpril 2 1850. To A. Keeney of Ctulisle Pa. for improvement in agitating coal grates. What I claim is giving the compound ver tical and horizontal oscill ating motion to the grate blHs as herein set forth. To J. F. Lawrence L. A. Farnsworth of Clue mont N. K for improved blind and shutter opener a.nd fastener. What we ciaim is the opening and olosing of window blind and retaining them when open 9r closed by means of the rotary opener which is circular at its centre and gradually enlarges into scroll shaped extremities having a groove in its surface extending spirally from one of its scroll shaped terminations to the other com bined with the arm secured to the window ca sing and the lever made fast to the blind substantially in the manner herein Bet forth. To O. B. Loomis of Windsor Conn. for improve ment in Rotary Churns. What I claim is the devices of gea.ring 80S described by which I change the motions of the churn box and dasher with regard to each other so that while one is stationary the other shall rotate and vice Versa. To J. W. McElive. of Philadelphia Pa. for im provement in Spring l atresses. What I claim is so constructing a spring matress that the springs of the same shall project outwards beyond the light frame work which supports them in their places so that the whole upper and under surface as well as the edges of the matress shall present a yielding surface to the touch by means of the projec ting springs. I also claim the manner of constructing the hair quilted upper or under coverings of the springs as set forth that is to say th e hair covering which rests on or aga inst the springs is first made separately like a quilted bed spr ad and when drawn over the springs by which the matress though long used presents a uniform and elastic surface. To C. Perley of New York N.Y for improvements in cat head and shank painter stoppers. I claim the application of the lock piece with the wedge or lug to act in the mortise to hold the link on the lug when put down for that purpose or let the anchor go by rai sing it without the intervention of any other moving part such lock piece and lug or wedge being connected or combined and operating with the other parts substantially in the man ner and with the effects described ani shewn. To F. M. Ray of New York N. Y for improve ment in the manufacture of india rubber springs for cars 0. I claim the method of making cylinders or rolls of prepared india rubber by rolling up a thin sheet of prepared india rubber on a man drel whilst the said sheet is in a green state and as it comes from the heated callendering cylinders substantially as described. And I also claim as my invention in com bination with the callendering cylinders such as are usually employed in the manufacturing of prepared india rubber a mandrel or cylin drical rod pressed against the periphery of a cylinder or roller so that the thin sheet of pre pared rubber in the green state and taken as it comes from the callendering cylinders may be wound upon the mandrel . and the several windings made to adhere by presure substan tially as described. ro J. S weet of Hughesville Pa. for improved re movable teeth for scrapers. I claim securing the removable teeth to any vice substantially as herein set forth. eral combination of pumps pistons or :floats namental open work with a back or ground T W G L dd k f 0 m. Jr . of Cllmbridge Mils . for im or other parts connected to the machinery to wor 0 plate glasB or other vitrified substance provement in the Fluid Level. b I d e regulated or to the motive power to be reg co ore in imitation of marble or after any oth I claim a lever for determining a horizontal ulated which are in use in the general combi er style of decoration the said ground work and perpendicular and the inclination of a.ny b . nation of hydraulic motion regulators but em g secured to the frames by means of plas slope with the same constructed substantially claim to have overcome two several difficul_ ter of paris or any other means that gives as herein above set forth that is with a shal ties which have heretofore existed in this kind strength and support to the whole substantial low cylndrical vessel or a tube in the shape of ly as descrl bed. t . of regulators as follows rust the want of sen To S E. Winslow of Kensington Pa. for spring inclined plane and roller saoh stepper. What I claim is the depress ed form of the spring or inclined plane as I have called it and the roller so adjusted to this depression by the slide that in raising the window sash it operates as a friction roller but in lowering the window sash it operates as a clog to keep it from falling substantially as described above. FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 9 1850 To Wm. p Barnard of Bristol Conn f0r impro Yed arrangement of door springs and levers. What I claim is attaching the spring a.nd rod to the jamb of the door or standing part of the hinge when combined with a swinging rod a ttached to the door or swinging part of the hinge all the parts being arranged sub stantially as described whereby the spring tends to close the door until opened to its ful lest extent and theu acts to hold th 3 door open. To II Billings of Beardstown Ill for composition for covering hams. I do not intend to claim as my invention the covering of meats or other articles with paper and cloth or other flexible materials previous to coating them with my preserving composition but what I claim is the formation of a preserving composition for coating meats fruits vegetables c. by the union of rosin shellac and linseed oil substantially in the manner and in nearly the proportions as herein set forth. To D. H. Chamberlain Assignor to Homers Ladd of Boston Mass. for improvement in Dividers and Compasses. I claim making d ividers compasses with the micrometer adj ust ment herein above described the combination of devices for the same con sisting of a circular rack bar arranged in slots in the legs of the ilivider with a spring in the slots of the movable leg and the micrometer screw all working together as herein above specified. To J. E . Dalton Thos. Stevens of New Vienna Ohio for improved entrance to Bee Hives. We claim the devices for opening and closing the entrance of the bee house in the manner set forth. To A Dietz of New York N. Y. for improvement in rings for harness c. What I claim is the combination of a sliding bar or sliding bars either with or without guides or guard bars with a ring in the man ner substantially as described for the purpose of being applied to straps for harness .. r for any other purpose to which it may be applica ble. To J. Dixon of Jersey City N. J. for pro e for making c .. st .toel. I claim in the above process of making cast steel partly decarbonizing pig or cast iron in an oven stra.tified with pulverized oxide of iron substantia.lly as described and then mel ting such decarbonized pig or cast iron in cru cibles substantially as described. Mr. Dixon we see is bound to carry the manufacture of American steel above all for eign competition. To M. Finkle of Utica N. Y. for improvement in machinery for making wire heddles. I do not claim the old machine herein de scribed as being one heretofore used and by which a.n incomplete heddle is produced but I claim the arrangements herein described whereby the heddle is made complete in one machine and at one aad the same operation or any other combination which is ally the same thing and by which results are produced. substanti ana.logous an en Ire rmg half filled with quicksilver or sitiveness to take e3rIy notice of any variation other liquid in combination with a graduated f t o mo ion of quickness in motion to open or annular dial whether a :floating needle or indi I h c ose t e steam valve of power energetICally cator be used or not the whole arrangement applied to overcome friction of steam valvQ. being substantially as herein above set forth. S econdly the difficulty which has already ex To S. Lewis of TJffin Ohio Cor improvement in isted in obtaining and maintaining a uniform machinery for cuttings screws on the rails of bed steads. discharge of water or liquids from u nder pis I claim the combination of the adjustive clasp screw and holder for sustaining and confining the nut to the end of the rail and centering the same so that the axis of the nut shall always be coincident with the centre of the rail whether the latter De of large or small diameter substantially as herein set forth. I likewise claim the pecular form and man ner of securing the utter to the cylindrical head as described that is to say making the cutter as represented and letting the tapered end of the shank into the recess bringing the angular shoulder against the cylinder and sus taining the bevelled points against the interi or bevelled surfa.ce of the cylinder head by which arrangement the instrument during the operatiQU of cutting is forced firmly against the head the strain upon the confining screw being thereby greatly reduced and the cutting tool itself strengthened. To J. Low of New Britain Conn. for improvement in Harnesi Hames. What I claim is making the hame of a sin gle piece of wrought iron inclosing a piece Of wood in euch a man 1er as to present an en tire iron surfa.ce so that it may be readily fin ished in any convenient or ornamental way and in a. durable manner when the hame is constructed substantially as herein described. To C. Mortimer of Philadelphia Pa. for process of making paint from bituminous coal. I claim the process of making black paillt from bituminous coal by the cleansing in wa ter grinding mixing with acid re grinding in acid and washing substantially as herein ful ly set forth. To J. A. Pease of Philadelphia Pa. for elastic roller and sash bearer. I claim the combination of an elastic roller with a shaft and box the whole constructed and arranged as before described for the purpose of supporting a sash in any desired position. To J. Peirson of Wilmington Del. for improve ment in gearing for seed planters. I wish it to be distinctly understood that I do not claim the alternate motion by which the seed tubes and seed rollers are thrown in and out of operation but what I claim is the employment of the latch plate in combination with the connecting plate carrier and inter mediate eog wheel for altern tely gearing and ungearing the cog wheel on the axle of the plating cylinder with the cog wheel on the hub of the driving wheel in the manner and for the purpose described. To W. H. Phillip. of Surrey England for improve ment in apparatus for exti6 guishing fires. Patented in England Dec. 4 1844 In America April 9 1850. What I claim is the means of subduing and extinguishing fire by generating carbonic acid gas and other gases resulting from combustion in apparatus substantially as herein de cribed To Wm. P. Pierce Assignor to E. t. T. Fairbanks Co of St. Johnsbury Vt. for improvement in sca.le beams. I claim in combination with the beam and the knife edge bearings of the loop the two vertical or nearly vertical projections salients as arranged with respect to loop and beam subEtantially in the manner and for the pur pose herein before specified. To A. Nash of ::Logansport Ind for improvement hi endless aprons for Threshers. tons rising and falling as motion varied connected to steam valve and acted upon by water moved by pumps. What I claim is the combination of a pump moved with a reciprocal motion with the ma chine sought to be regulated and with the wa ter or :fluid acting on a piston and parts connect ing it to a steam valve which controls the steam moving said machinery in such a manner as to cause the piston to ise ILnd fall at each action of thQ pump without moving the valve while the machinery has the proper speed and mo_ ving or opeuing or closing said steam valve with a quick striking motion overcoming fric tion about said valve as with the blow of a hammer when the motion of said machinery is too fast or too slow or any analogous ar rangement which will produce the same result substantially in the manner and for the pur poses and objeets herein set forth. To J. D. Price of Smithsburg Md. for improve ment in apparatus for sprinkling streets 0. What I cla.im is the combination of the sprinkling pipe and force pumps with the re volving water vessel the several pa.rts being arranged and operating substantially as here in set forth. ToJ. F. Rea.in of Darlington Md. for improve ment in Plow Cleaners. What I claim is the plow cleanser construct ed of two share blades substantially as herein set forth for the purpose of autting in two the weeds and other obstructions which accumu late upon the coulter and thus detaching them therefrom. To A. M. Rice Assignor to S. H. Lombard A. M. Rice of Boston Mass. tor improvement in Chim ney Caps. I lay no claim to the invention of a ventila tor made with a series of conic or pyramidal guards fenders or frustra but I claim one m de with the helical continuous fender or guard applied to the c imuey or :flue and having its coils arranged or inclined with respect to one another substantially as herein before specified. To D. G. Starkey of New York N. Y. for im provement in Oil Cans. I claim the combination of the socket carry_ ing the male screw and the taper tubes or spouts screwing into the socket with the c61 laps able gutter percha reservoir in the manner described or in any other way substanally the same. This is an excellent oil can. No machine shop should be without it not one. ED.J To BJIL Townsend .. f Q uincy ill for improvement in machines for raking and loading hay. What I claim iii the simultaneous raking a.nd loading of hay from the ground by ma chinery substantially as herein set forth where by the labor of making winnows and cocking as in the usual process of hay making is saved at the same time that the operation is both expedited and cheapened. To l IL Wilder of Princeton Mas. for improve ment in Wing Gudgeons. I claim the improvement of making the wing gudgeon when cast or founded with a clear space between each of the wings and the flanch or face plate the same being for the pur pose as herein set forth. ADDITIONAL IMPROVEMENTS. common scraper in the manner herein set forth To J Johnson of Geneseo N. Y for improved so th .. t they can be attached at pleasure method of working the pall in parallel vices. I claim the endless grating composed of bari secured to the hide or leather straps by twist ingthe latter in the manner and for the purpos es herein set forth. To J H. Smith of Brooklyn N. Y. for improve ment in separating stearine from E laine. Patented April 1 1841. Improvement added April 9 1850. What I claim as my additional improve ments is the a pplication of alcohol as herein described for the purpose of making candles. It strikes us that this sILme substance was described long ago in Vol. 4 Sci. Am. The use of alcohol or separating the stearine from whereby the same scraper is adapted to ordi What I claim is the within described combi nary earth excavation or to the excavation nation of the spring pawl and the metalic f1lil of gravel or cobble stones as described. plate or lever with the foot of one of the ::m To H. Tucker of Cambridge Mass. fur improved crossed levers by which the spring pawl is llm ManteI piece. made to act upon and retain the rack bar when m To L. B. Pitcher of Syracu .. N. Y. for improve ment in Hydraulic Regulator.fe r maohinery. Ante dated March 23 1850. In this invention I do not claim the size 1850 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN INC f: I oleine is old and well known that we can as sure all our readers. DESIGNS. To D. L . Barlett of Baltimore Md. for design for Stoves. To J. Crandall of Troy N. Y. Assi ..nor to A. Cox Co. for design for stoves. To J. Wager of Troy N. Y. for design for stoves. TO CORRESPONDENTS. A. W. De C. of Me. We have received both model and letter. The C aveat fee is 20 paid down. Your plan appears to be a very good one. No rights can be so sold as rights without a patent. You may make any bar gain you choose. I J. G. of N. H. We cannot tell how the valves of the English engine areo perated whe ther by heart cams or others but on page 313 Vol. 2 Sci. Am. there is an engraving of one. Mr. Bishop s. There is no man who wishes to save money who should be without our paper it has saved tens of thousand of dol lars t the community since it was establish ed. S. K. of Mass. As you say no in ventor should fail to get his invention publish ed in the Sci. Am. if he is wise for himself. You know the benefits of it. The cost of the cut of the machine you speak of will only be 1 0 . C . R. o f Vt. We know o f n o anchor like yours. It appears to be good arld useful and patentable but you could not we think insert the other invention. The le ch is good certainly new and patentable. C. R. of Vt. We have been unable to procure a map of Minesota and have therefore given you credit for 1 . D. G. o f N. Y. Your cheese press i s a most excellent one but we do not see a point on which to base a. good cl im for a patent except it may be the combination of the weight frame with the crank levers but even this claim is very doubtful as it may be considered only an equivalent by the Patent Office for a common mechanical combination. We could not advise you to apply for a patent. T. W. J. of Iowa. Patents have been taken ent for fastening horse shoes without nails. The Awakener is very good but the Clock Awakener is the best in OUr opinion. Rembert whose name was on our last list of Patents uses the endless apron on his Reaper. M. T. R. of N. Y. Your Lock Gate could not be patented. It is at least 35 years old : this WI can assure you. Erasmus. You should know by this time that we do not publish the letters of per sons under an assumed name merely and es pecially when penned in such miserable lan guage and more miserable pen scratching. L. B . of Conn. We have never advo cated the right of patentees to patent property in entail forever. YQu have not paid strict at tention to the articles on this subject as the views expressed are the same as yours. M. E . of Ind. So far as we can judge by your sketch your paddle wheel is well known and has been used for propellers years ago. Wait till our history i published and see if we are not right. T. S. of Ohio. The Patent Fund will not long be much of an affair according to present appea rances. J. L. of N. Y. The same princIple and material which you propose has been often used. The precise form of your wheel we have never seen before but it so nearly resem bles others that we think you could get no pa tent. F. G. H. of Rochester. We conclude that you made a mistake in writing us as we ma de no such statement and you certainly .. acted the part of a sneak by not having cour age to sign your name or to pay postage. If the machine had been your own we presume you would not have objected to any statement in regard to it. N. W. P. of Pa. Your propeller is very ancient in principle a model was exhibited at the last fair of the American Institute pre cisely the same it having been put there as a. curiosity. No patent could be obtained for it. H. . W. of S. C. We shall attend to nib your order without delay and write you in L q 9. Scientific enquiries. C . A. of Conn. An ingenious machine for charging purcussion caps was patented in 1848 but it is too complicated to be explained without drawings. It has befere been alluded to in the Sci. Am. american. ADVERTISEMENTS. to some time since and the books forwarded T HE SUBSCRIBER having devoted nearly S S N Y Y 30 years to the study of the theory and practice . S. . of . . our engraving and of Mech lllcal Phllosop y now offers to furnish pa advertisement will appear next. week. We tentable improvemento In many of the labor saving branches of machinery having many on hand at this could not find room for it in this number. time. Applications setting forth the object to be at . w e e f Al T E G tained and addressed post paid to the subscriber a.t 0 a. . . . ower Co. the North.r.n Patent Agency No. 2 John st. N. Y. manufacturers of the Submarine Armour re wlll meet WIth prompt attentIOn. 30 4 WENDALL WRIGHT Inventor. side in Boston Mass. 62 Broad st . Correspondent Is informed that we do not kn lw of any such establishment as he re fers to. PR CTICAL llIACHINISTS An excellent opportunity now occurs to a prnctical Machinist of well esta.blished reputation and some capital t engage extensively in the Steam En ine Boiler and Foundry BuisnesB. An establishment is now rea.dy C. O. R. of California. Glad to hear for buisness ample in all its details including exten sive wharf room for a.ny sized steam boats and from from you. The buisness referred to is progress its position if preperly conducted will doubtless com ing finely we shall be able to communicate mand a I .. rgo share of buisness. A practic 1 Machin ist as a partner is required to conduct the whole with you by the last steamer in May. establishment .. nd only those fully competent need .. p H. D. of N. Y. We have gl ven all ply. Address post paid MACHINE CO. Box No. 741 Philadelphla Pa. 30 4 the information about drying barrels c. in T O YOUNG MEN. Pleasant and profitable our possesion. We think that it would answer Employment may be obtained by any num ber of active and intelligent young men by apylying to your purpose well but do not advise a change the undersigned. A small cash capital will be neces f th t d d . sary to commence with. Every person engaging in I WI your presen mo e you are omg a this business will be secured from the possibility of profitable buisness. loss while lhe prospects for a liberal profit fe unsur W. McB. of Ohl o. We cannot dl scove passed. F t particulars address post paid r FOWLERS WELLS 131 Nassau st. anything patentable in the sketch sent. It is 29 4 New York City. a cutter wheel with adjustable cutters a ood machine but not new. N. B. of Mo. The specifications and drl .wings of your invention with fees were forwarded to the Patent Office on the 1 6th An engraving of the Clutch will appear in next week s Sci. Am. It is a good inven tion. J. Curtis Danemora N. Y. On the 30th of March we forwarded a letter to you which demanded Immediate attention. Have you not received it Money received on account of Patent Office business since April 10 1850 C. S. M. of Pa. 50 W. S. K. of Ct.f 50 G. D. P. of Mass. 30 C. P. W. 0 Vt. 20 D. N. T. of Vt. 40 and H. T. P. of La. 30 W. B . K. of Mass 20 N. G. F. of N. H. 20. I RON FOUNDERS FACING DUST. An approved article of Sea Coal Dust to mix with facing sand also superior Charcoal Foundry Black ing very finely bolted and heavy. Lehigh Soap stone Blaok Lead Dust and Fire Cl YJ for sale by G. O. ROBERTSON City office 4 Liberty Place near the Post Office N. Y. 31 2 L AP WELDED WROUGHT IRON Tube. for Tubular Boilers from 1 1 4 to 7 inches in di: ameter. The only Tubes of tbe same quality and manufacture as those so extensively used in England _Scotland France and Germany for Loco motive .Nlarine a.nO other Steam Engine Boilers. THOMAS PROSSER SON Patentoes ml 28 Platt street New York. .6. SPHALTUM. To Manufacturers of .11 Iron Ware and Varnish llIakers. The Bnbscribers being the principal holders and ex pecting to receive a large and continued supply of the r. 1 asphaltum would call the attention f Varnish l IIakers Japanners Machinists Manufacturers of Iron Ware Steamboat Machinery Agricultural and other Instruments Shipholders or others reqniring or using Black Paint Black Va.rnish or Ja.pan to the article as being of fine quality very brilli .. nt and coming very much cheaper than any gum used in the manufacture of Varnish. . Japan. or Paint. 28 4 t S chielfelin Bros. Co. I04 and 106 John st. Patent Office. 128 FULTON ST. NOTICE TO INVENTORS. II ventors and others requiring protection by United State. Letters Patent a.re informed that al business rela ting to the procuration of letters patent or filing ca veats is tra.nsacted at the Scientifio America.n Office with the utmost economy alid despa.tch. Drawings of all kinds exeouted on. the most reasonable terms Messrs. Munn Co. can be consnlted at all tilDes in regard to Patent businesst at their office and such ad vice rendered 61 will eli.aDle inventors to adopt the safest mean. for s.ourinr theIr right . Arra.ngements ha.ve been made with Messrs. Bar low: and Payne Patent Attornies in London for pro curmg Letters Patent in Great Britain and France with great facility and dispatch. MUNN CO. 128 Fultonotreet N ew York. MANUFACTURERS SUPPLY STORE. The subscribers would call the attention of man ufacturers generally to his stock of articles for the use of factories both cotton a.nd wollen oonsisting of every variety and kind used by them which he can offer at ft.S fair rates a.s any other establishment in thi.s or any other market. H. has also constantly on hand a full assortment of Leather Belting revetted stretched and cemented of all sizes made from the best material and in the best manner warranted equal if not superior to any made in this country and at prices which must be I tisfactory to those wishing a superior article. He is also agent for tile sale of Cotton and Woolen Ma chincry of the most improved kinds. Those favoring him with a ca.ll will be satisfied both in regard to quality and price. P. A. LEONARD 66 Beaver st. 23 3ID SCRANTON PARSHLY New Haven Conn. have just finishod and will sell to the first who will fork over tho cash 2 splendid side Lathes 12 feet long swings 25 in. welgh. 2800 pounds with back and screw gearing centre follower rest driU chuckJt. and overhead reversing pullies all complete price 300. It is a. rare chance for those in want gf Lathes. Also 7 of those 8 feet Lathes a. 125 e .. ch. The fact that 5 01 them have been sold within the lest 10days is all that need be said. Send the money aud we will ship to your order. Other Lathes large 2d lathe excepted as heretofore advertised in this paper for Sale at low prices al lliIual. 22 tf T o PAINTERS AND OTHERS. Ame ricltn Anatomic Drier E lectro Chemical gra.in ing colors Electro Negative gold size and Chemical Oil Stove Polish. The Drier improves in quality by ag ls adapted to all kinds of paints and also to Prmters mke and colors. The above articles are compounded upon known chemicallaws and are sub mitted to the public without further comment. Manu I ctured and sold wholesale and r.tail at 114 John ot. Now York and Flushing L. i. N. Y. by Q UARTERMAN SON Painters and Chemists N. B. J he dner for printers inks will effect a great saving as the boiled oil used by painters2 wil l an awer the purpose without further preparatlOll. 3m B RITISH PATENTS. Messrs. Robertson Ce. Patont SolicitOr of which firm Mr. J. C . Robe tsoll tbe Editor o f the Mechanics Magazine from lts commencement in 1833 is prinoipal partner undertake THE PROCURATION OF PATENTS fdr Engl nd Scotland Ireland and all other European Countries and the transactIOn generally of a.ll busi ness relatmg to patents. InstructioDP to Inventors can be had gratis on ap plica.tion to Mr. THOMAS PROSSER 28 Platt street New York as also the necessary lorms of Petitio and DeclaratioR for British Patents. ml tf PATENT OFFICE 166 Fleet street London. MATTEAWAN MACHINE WORKS. Locomotive Engines of evety size and pattern. Also tenders. wheels axles and other railroad machi ne.rr. Stationary engines boilers 0. Arranged for dnvmg cotton woolen and other mill. Cotton and woolen machinery of every rlescription embodying all the modem improvem ents. Mill geenng from prob ably the most extenSIve assortment of patterns in this line in any section of the country. Tools tur ning athes slabbing I laining cutting and d illing machm... Together WIth all other tools reqUIred in IDachine shops. Apply at the Matteawan Co. Work Fishkill Landing N. Y. or at No. 66 Beaver st. Nevi York CIty to 24tf WILLIAM B. LEONARD Agent. M OS SELMAN ZlNC . The Vieill. Mon f bugne Company supply their agents M Call and treng New York WIth Rooffing and Flooring in sheets 3 by 7 feet from 11 to 2 ounces per square foot . . C rrugated. :I by 7 feet 27 oz. lor roofing pub he bUIldmgs. Ship Sheathing Metal 14 by 48 inches 22 to 30 oz. Perforated of varit us sizes for sieves sifting meta.ls. c. Grey Zinc Paint for preserving Iron and Wool work. :lpelter Wire Nails Imit tation Bronze Statuary c. They warra. t their metal free from any admixture of iron or any brittle su stance and recommend it for the :nanufacture of artIcles exposed t the action of water as it does not rust. Plans speClficatlOns models and other infor mation may be had of their agents. 28 5t Lie ..e Belgium January 1850. F OREIGN PATENTS. PATENTS procured in GREAT BRITAIN and her colonies also France_ BelgIUm Holland . c. c. with . certainty and dis patch through speOlal and responSIble agents appoint ed by and conneeted only with this establishment. Pamphlet contain ing a. synopsis of Foreign Patent laws a.nd InformatIOn can be had gratis on application JOSEPH P. PIRSSON 1 Civil Engineer 20tf Office 5 Wal street. New York. M ACHINERY. S. C. HILLS No. 43 Fulton Strlllet N. Y. de ler in Steam Engines Boil drs Iron Planers Lathes Universal Chucks Drills Kase s Von Schmidt s and other Pumps JOhnson s Shingle machines Woodworth s Daniel s and Law s Planing machines Dick s Presses Punches and Shears Morticin l and Tennoning Machines :Belt ing m hinery oil Bea.l s patent Cob and Corn Mills Burr Mlll and Gnndstones Lead and Iron Pipe 0. Letter. to be noticed must be post pard. 26 6t SASH AND BLIND MACHINE Patented by . Jesse Leavens ot Springfield Mass. is tho best Sasl . and :Blind Ma.hine now in use. The Machine cost 300 at the shop where they Lre made near Springfield oxtra charge for tho right of using. The machine does .. II to .. Window Sash and Blind except puttmg them together. Orders from abroad will be prolDptJy attended to by addre.sing JESSE LEA VENS : Palmor Depot Mas.. 22 20t B ARLOW PAYNE Patent Agent. and I . Con.ulting Engineers S9 Chancery Lane London i I mll tt Patent Journal Office. . 1I ISla 1850 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN INC Scimfifit to increase the quantity of liquor and reduce the strength in proportion while the heaters increase the strength by evaporation making For the Soientifio American. Tanning Practical Relllark8. Concluded from page 240. less in qlla.ntity. It will readily be perceived that this business requires constant care and watchfulness throughout neglect in the early stages is fatal. The rolling machine produced a great ch nge in the appearance and quality of sole leather. It was invented about the year 1810 by Col. William Edwards. Previous to that period the hammer and lap stone smoothed the sur face of the sole a laborious operation. The roller is of brass 4k in diameter and 8 inches long cast over a steel gudgeon projecting at each end lk inches. It runs in brass boxes inlaid into two j aws of iron which extend. 1:Ip the sides of the vibrator and are firmly secu red to it by bolts. The vibrator is of hard wood 4 by 8 at the lower end and 4 by 5 above the j aws about 10 feet long secured to a spring pole 20 feet Ion g and 7 by 7 by a noddle pin. The sFring pole is secured firmly at one end and rests over a fulcrum about 8 feet from the vibrator. The vibrator is kept in its place by guides on each side and is con nected with the moving power by a pitman about 10 feet long. The motion is usually given by a crank 12 to 14 inches in sweep up on a vertical shaft about 100 per minute. Be neath the roller is a table 19 feet long by 8 Wide 2 feet 8 inches high of two inch plank well supported and under the sweep is a bed piece of the hardest wood that can be obtain ed corresponding to the circle of the vibrator nd bolted firmly to a tier of timbers laid hori zontally up to and making part of the face of the table which in turn fe supported by vertical timbers to the foundation of the build ing. The natural position of the roller is about two inches above the bed pi ce. The side of leather is spread on the table the back to the operator the grain up and is dr wn under the roller when in motion. The roller is brought down upon the side by a compound lever attached to the spring pole by iron rods by a foot of the operator at pleasure the pres sure supposed to be equal so 5 tons. The side is moved while the leyer is down or not at the will of the operator until the whole surface is smoothed alike when the pressure is taken off and the side withdrawn and laid upon the floor in his rear. Previous to the rolling the side is spread upon a spong ing table on the side of the loft opposite to the rolling t ble and water is applied by a woolen cloth to any dry part of the surface to temper the whole alike the curls and doub lings flattened out when it is folded and laid in a pile convenient to the roller. Sometimes 8. little oil is added to the water when the grain of the leather is dry and husky. The leather is hung up by one end upon hooks Or nails in any vacant part of the dry ing loft after r lling for 24 hours when it is nearly dry it is taken down and rolled se_ cona time and packed down for 12 hours more in square piles flesh up and as heltvy a pres snre put upon it as any convenient dead weight will give. It is then ready for market. When the rolling was first introduced old prejudices were strong against it. The late Jacob Lorillard of New York made a journey into Mass l.chusetts to see the machine operate on the leather and after witnessing the beau tiful change it produced he exclaimed it coverS up a multitude of sins. He never ful ly approved of it and Guest the old leather dealer in Albany would never tis said buy a side of rolled leather while he lived. At the present time and for twenty years past no 80le leather is marketable until it has been rolled. The surface of the leather is extended beyond the power of the lap stone and it is cut up so economically that a larger per cen tage of soles are sa.ved which were lost in parings before. Like many other inven tions the time secured by this patent was well nigh expired befora it was generally adop_ ted and the present generation are reaping its unrequited benefits. In concluding these remarks we would ob serve that some tanners heat their bark by steam either by a boiler erected for the pur pose or by the waste ste m from an engine where that power is used. Steam is supposed Four patents at least have been used to bring forward the business to its present per fection none of which have been profitable to the inventors. The hide mill the heater the roller have stood every test and are one or all found in every tannery . Justice to that mind and genius who invented them now in the shades of life would loudly demand a renew .. 1 of the patents and like justice in extension of the time secured by old patents as is the copyright to twenty eight years and we hope .. movement of this kind by the inventors of America may yet obtain such an amendment to the Patent Laws of the U.nited States. The Practical Remarks on Tanning are now completed and we must say th t no such information has ever been published in any work before. The articles h ve been furnished by a practical tanner of great experience and scientific knowledge who can reason on cause and effect He car ies on a very extensi ve bu siness and has generously written for the purpose of spreading abroad useful knowledge. There are a few errors in the articles to which we refer. Erata. lst Art. page 1 84 for living na ture read living creature. 2nd Art. page 196 for usually 4 to 6 hours read 2 to 4 hours and for when the . openings are closed the heat decreases read the heat increas es also read current instead of . amount of air and casts them into the pool for carts c. Art. 3rd page 208 for hemlock bark only 3i to 6 per cent. read to 4 per cent. and instead of 200 000 trees destroyed read 800 000. Art. 4 pa.ge 216 for work aud those sizes read week their for those. with a round for work and . Art. S page 224 for vats .feet deep read 5 feet deep. These are all the errors very few indeed for proof uncorrected by the author. As the ar ticles are stand fd all the errors require to be thus pointed out. History :: c: of Propellera and St eam Navi gation. Continued from page 240. THE INCLINEn PLANE STEAMBOAT. FIG: 36. This boat has novelty but grea.tly lacks the grand essential practicability. It is 24 years old and is the invention of a Mr. Thomson of Scotland. A A and B B are two par .. llel iron bars to which the planes are fixed the one being close to the side of the boat and the other farther off so that in working alternately up and down they pass each other freely. These planes projecting from the vessel s sides will be ob jected to but as this is merely a trial improve ments of course were to follow. 2 2 I c. the planes each of which a re fastened to the par allel bar by their respective swivels. D D and E E are working beams that raise and aepres. the planes. The ends D and D working close to the boat for the bar A A while tp e other end reaches out for B B the rod H connects two working beams in the manner represented in the figure so that both ends of tho. parallel bars by this communica. tien l i.se and sink alike. There are two rock ing beams that run acrOSB the boat to the oth er side where there is the Bame machinery as on this side nly there is no occasson for more than one connecting rod H as this one is suf ficient for all. Now the piston rod of the en gine by working a lever upon one of the rock ing cross beams sets the whole in motion : there is no occl .sion even for a single wheel er amtritan. crank a rew connecting rods and levers were and the cry of fire caused the utmost conster al that was required. nation among the passengers. The captain In this boat we have two sets of pa.ddles and hi gallant crewhowever uid not waver for working below one another on each side of an instant. T 1e boat was headed for the shore the boat something which has not been pre and tbe passengers and others with whatever sen ted in any other engraving in this History valuable they could collect were ordered to the of Propellers. The inventor had the object bow of the boat to be ready to leap on shore. principally in view of safety. The general In the meantime M. Macfarlane the mate opinion about steamboats especially those called the crew together. The beds were strip with paddle wheels about twenty five years ped of blankets and each of the crew seized a ago was an unfitness for sea navigation. blanket and with their mate at their head rush The old tar used to say oh yes they are ed into the midst of the devouring flames and good enough for carrying landsmen up and with the blankets smothered the fire and in a down a river in a sunny day. Had any sea few moments had it entirely subdued. Thus captain been told thirty years ago that steam by the coolness of the officers and the perfect boats were safer than sailing vessels nd discipline and obedience of her crew a perhaps would yet usurp their dominion on the ocean terrible disaster was averted and the Scott es he would in al likelihood be looked upon as a caped uninjured . The author of the accident madman expressing opinions good enough for was put ashore at the next wood yard and a fresh water sailor. when the boat arrived at New Orleans the ac The above inclined plane paddles are total cident was forgotten. ly unfit for propelling they never would an swer for a steamboat navigating the ocean. No propeller will answer the purpose howeyer scientific the ideas em lraced in its construc tion if it is not perfectly and firmly built in al its parts without hinges and such like things. CuriOUS Fact. Dr. Sichel has communicated to the An na.les des Sciences N aturelles Paris a curi ous fact which some of our readers may like to amuse themselves in verifying. He says that twenty years since he made the obser_ vation so carefully and for such a period of time as to become perfectly assured that cats which have perfectly white coats that Is with not even a spot of another color and blue eyes are invariably deaf. We may make as close to them as we will any noises that usually terrify them such 3S the cracking of a whip imitation of the barking of a dog clap ping the cands c. and yet provided these sounds are not of a nature to convey vibrations by shaking the ground as when we strike the floor with a lammer the animal will remain perfectly indifferent. If however there is the smallest spot or shade of black brown grey red c. on the coat or if the iris instead of being blue or grayish blue is yellow or par takes of some deeper color then will the au ditory functions be found in their normal state. This blue color of the iris is indeed rather rare and generally found only in very young ani mals and when in the progress of age it be comes exchanged or a deeper color though the white skin yet remain hearing becomes established. Paris is the most wonderful city in the world for prodigious developements. The range of observation of her savans is the most won derful minute and comprehensive. From men with tails to cats without a black spot in them nothing escapes their notice except it may be probaiJiZity. c A Cave Found. The Shepherdstown Va. Registpr says that as the workmen at the cement qu .. rry of Mr. Alexand.er R. Boteler were blasting on Friday week they blew off rock from the front of what was soon iscovered to be a n tural cave. The entrance is of the size of a flour barreL One of the men entered it the distance of a few feet and drew out the neck of a black bot tle and also a horse shoe. Strange if true. An Aillerican Mineralogist In Turkey. D. J. Lawrence Smith of Charleston S. C . whom some four years since received the ap pointment of Mineralogist from the Sultan of Turkey is now on his return home having ful filed his engagement with the Turkish Govern ment. D uring his absence hehas been .. ctive Iy employed in making explorations through out Turkey and Syria and his labors have been distinguished by many very interesting and valuable discoveries in science. c: ::: A DI8uter Averted by DIsclplllle . The steamer Alex. Scott had a narrow es cape from distruction by fire during a recent trip to New Orleans. She had among her car_ go a lot of baled hemp wb ich was stored in the engine or deck room. Just below Natchez a deck passenger either designedly or by acident set the hemp on fire. The flames spread rapidly ::: c:::: Law is fine buisness when confined to books but very different whea transferred to courts. About 52 000 bodies are yearly buried in the city of London. c LITERAR.Y NOTICES. ORIGIN OF THE MATERIAL UNIVERSR . A little work purporting to give a description of the manner of the formation of the earth and events connected therewith has just been laid upon our table by Messrs. Dewitt Davenport Tribune Buildings. The name of the aulhor of the above pamphlet has been omitted in the publication but it is supposed to have been written by one who remembers when this earth was in a fluid state. TRIAL OF PROF WEBSTER. By the favor of C. B. Norton Esq. we are enabled to acknowledge the ree ception of Phillips Sampson Co. . edition of the Trial of Prot. Webster for the murder of Dr. Park man. The book contains 315 pages and is probably the most correct edition publislted but such book. do no good and we cannot recommend people to buy the . The Mistake of a Lifetime : or The Robber of tbe Rhine Valley. By Waldo Howar E sq. This magnificent romance of the mysteries of the Shore and the vicissitudes of the Sea. meets with an un precedented sale. It is in the hands of almost every one and those who have not already obtained it will unquestionably get it. It sells lor only 12 1 2 cents and may be found at any periodical depot in the United States. The book was issued last week at the Flag of our Union Office by F. Gleason who we learn keeps his presses running night and day to satisfy the great demand for this splendid produc tion. S. French 131 Nassau st. late 293 Broadway N. Y. i. wholesale Agent. .. FIFTH YEAR OF The Best Mechanical Paper I N T H E W O R L D A New Volume of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN is commenced about the 20th of Sept. each year and is the best paper for Mechanics and Inventors published in the world. Each volume contains 4HI pages of most valuable reading matter and is illustrated with over 500 1IIECHANICAL ENGRAVINGS of NEW INVENTIONS. I17 The Scientinc American is a Weekly Journal of Art Science and Mechanics having for its object the advancement of the INTERESTS OF MECHANICS MANUFACTURERS and INVENTORS. E ach num ber is illustmted with from five to TEN original EN GRAVINGS OF NEW MECHANICAL INVEN TIONS nearly all of the best inventions which are patentod at Washington being illustrated in the Sci entific Amerioan. It also contain. a Weekly List of Patent Claims notices of the progress of all Me chanical and Scientific Irnprovements practical di rections on the construction ma.na.gement and URe of all kinds of MACHINERY TOOLS. 0. c. This work is adapted to binding and the subscriber is posses sed at the end of the year of a large volume of416pages illustrated with upwards of500 mecbanicalongravings. TERMS : Single subscription 2 a year inadvaIlCej 1 for six months. Those who WIsh to subscribe have only to enclose the amonnt in a letter directed to A PRESENT To any person who will send us Three Subscribers we will present 8. copy of the PATENT LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES together with all the information rela tive to PATENT OFl lCE BUSINESS including full direo tiona for taking out Patents method of making the Specifications Cla.ims Drawings Models buyjnil selling and transferring Patent Rights 0. N. B. Subsoribers will bear in mind that we em ploy no Agents to travel on our account. MUNN CO. Publishers of the Scientific American. . 128 Fulton street Ne York. All Letters must ee X ost Paid. Induceillents :for Clubbing. 5 copies for 6 months 4 1 10 co ie. for 12 month. Ili 5 12 8 20 for 12 28 Soothern andWe.tern money taken at par fot sub scriptions. Post Offioe stamps taken atlhe lull value 1850 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN INC

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Gordon Dickson Dorsai 01 Dorsai INTRODUCTION from David Drake I don t insist that you believe DORSAI is the best novel of military SF ever written: one could make a pretty good case for Heinlein s STARSHIP TROOPERS. I will however insist that those two novels first published within weeks of one another in 1959 are in combination the standard against which the subgenre of military SF must be judged. Everybody who s attempted a complex task knows that mere are more ways to go wrong than there are to do the job right DORSAI and STARSHIP TROOPERS are a useful illustration of the diversity nonetheless possible between first class works even within a category as narrow as military SF. Heinlein s novel focused on the individual soldier and the social forces that molded him. DORSAI is an investigation of the problems of high command and the qualities that produce the ideal commander. The differences in approach aren t so much apples and oranges but rather the drive and driven plates of a clutch: both command and execution are necessary for a military system to work. In my opinion Dickson and Heinlein have explored these segments of the system not only as well as anybody in the field has done but as well as anybody is likely ever to do. DORSAI is an exposition of what Basil Liddell Hart termed the Strategy of Indirection. I do not imply a necessarily direct connection. Instead of overwhelming one s opponent by brute force the exponent of indirection maneuvers so that his opponent has to attack or better yet is checkmated without a battle. Liddell Hart developed his theories as a reaction to the blood drenched kilting grounds of World War tee a conflict that was as perfect an example of the brute force approach and its limitations as one could find. The brute force technique as refined to its quintessential form by Field Marshal Haig involved silencing hostile machine guns by attacking with more infantry than the machine gunners had bullets. I wish I were exaggerating but read the accounts. Liddell Hart went further back in history and examined the campaigns of Hannibal Sherman and particularly the Byzantine general Belisarius to find an alternative strategy. To defeat an entrenched enemy maneuver around him and force him to leave his fortifications in order to protect his rear areas. Instead of attacking an enemy destroy his supplies so mat he has to retreat. Move into a position that the enemy must take ideally for reasons of perceived honor rather than pragmatic need and let him waste his strength against your fortifications until you move out and leave him with a useless shell. These are the sorts of campaigns that Donal Graeme the hero of DORSAI fights. Anyone who has had the fortune to be involved in the other sort of war will wish that more real life officers had considered the responsibilities of command as clearly as Dickson did. DORSAI is and was conceived as a self standing novel. Because of the strength of its conception however it has become the foundation of one of science fiction s most ambitious and far ranging constructs the Childe Cycle. The Cycle is a vast structure spanning a millennium from the historical 14th century to a fictional future in which the triune aspects of humanity will be united again in a form both superhuman and super humane. Much of the Cycle remains to be written still today more than thirty years after the original publication of DORSAI but the pieces of the interlocking whole continue to appear each excellent in its own right It is a tribute to the structure of the original novel that the conception shown here in microcosm remains valid despite the weight of detail accreting in the later novels. I ve discussed DORSAI as paradigm: for fiction writers in general for military professionals and for viiB Dickson himself in his later work. None of the above could have touched me when I first read the novel at age 15. Well I read THE GENETIC GENERAL which is not quite the same thing but almost. What struck me and caused me to reread the novel a number of times was mat this is one heck of a good story. It s a model of clean prose seamless structure and fast action hi this too DQRSAI is a paradigm for other writers. But that doesn t have to matter to readers whether first timers or like me the other day for the umpteenth time. Dive in and have fun David Drake Chatham Country NC viii CADET The boy was odd. This much he knew for himself. This much he had heard his seniors his mother his father his uncles the officers at the Academy mention to each other nodding their heads confidentially not once but many times during his short eighteen years of life leading up to this day. Now apart wandering the empty rec fields in this long amber twilight before returning to his home and the graduation supper awaiting him there he admitted to the oddness whether truly in himself or only in what others thought of him. An odd boy he had overheard the Commandant at the Academy saying once to the Mathematics Officer you never know which way he ll jump. Back at home right now the family would be wait ing his return unsure of which way he would jump. They would be half expecting him to refuse his Outgoing. Why He had never given them any cause to doubt. He was Dorsai of the Dorsai his mother a Kenwick his father a Graeme names so very old their origin was buried in the prehistory of the Mother Planet. His courage was unquestioned his word unblemished. He had headed his class. His very blood and bones were the heritage of a long line of great professional soldiers. No blot of dishonor had ever marred that roll of warriors no home had ever been burnt its inhabitants scattered and hiding their family shame under new names because of some failure on the part of one of the family s sons. And yet they doubted. He came to the fence that marked off the high hurdles from the jump pits and leaned on it with both elbows the tunic of a Senior Cadet pulled tight across his shoulders. In what way was he odd he wondered into the wide glow of the sunset. How was he different He put himself apart from him in his mind s eye and considered himself. A slim young man of eighteen years tall but not tall by Dorsai standards strong but not strong by Dorsai standards. His face was the face of his father sharp and angular straight nosed but without his father s massiveness of bones. His coloring was the dark coloring of the Dorsai hair straight and black and a little coarse. Only his eyes those indeterminate eyes that were no definite color but went from gray to green to blue with his shifting moods were not to be found elsewhere on his fam ily trees. But surely eyes alone could not account for a reputation of oddness There was of course his temper. He had inherited in full measure those cold sudden utterly murderous Dorsai rages which had made his people such that no sane man cared to cross one of them without good reason. But that was a common trait and if the Dorsai thought of Donal Graeme as odd it could not be for that alone. Was it he wondered now gazing into the sunset that even in his rages he was a little too calculating a little too controlled and remote And as he thought that thought all his strangeness all his oddness came on him with a rush together with that weird sense of disembodiment that had afflicted him now and again ever since his birth. It came always at moments like mis riding the shoulders of fatigue and some great emotion. He remembered it as a very young boy in the Academy chapel at evening service half faint with hunger after the long day of hard military exercises and harder lesson. The sunset as now came slanting in through the high windows on the bare highly polished walls and the solidographs of famous battles inset in them. He stood among the rows of his classmates between the hard low benches the ranked male voices from the youngest cadet to the deep man voices of the officers in the rear riding the deep solemn notes of the Recessional that which was known as the Dorsai Hymn now wherever man had gone and which a man named Kipling had written the words of over four centuries before. . .. Far called our navies melt away On dune and headland sinks the fire. Lo All our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre ... As he had remembered it being sung at the burial service when his youngest uncle s ashes had been brought back from the slagged battlefield of Donneswort on Freiland third planet circling the star of Sirius. ... For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard All valiant dust that builds on dust And guarding calls not thee to guard . . . And he had sung with the rest feeling then as now the final words in the innermost recesses of his heart. ... For frantic boast and foolish word Thy Mercy on Thy People Lord A chill shiver ran down his back. The enchantment was complete. Far and wide about him the red and dying light flooded the level land. In the farther sky the black dot of a hawk circled. But here by the fence and the high hurdles he stood removed and detached enclosed by some clear transparent wall that set him apart from all the universe alone untouchable and enraptured. The inhabited worlds and their suns sank and dwindled in his mind s eye and he felt the siren deadly pull of that ocean of some great hidden purpose that promised him at once fulfillment and a final dissolution. He stood on its brink and its waves lapped at his feet and as always he strove to lift his foot and step forward into its depths and be lost forever but some small part of him cried out against the self destruction and held him back. Then suddenly as suddenly as it had come the spell was broken. He turned toward the craft that would take him home. As he came to the front entrance he found his father waiting for him in the half shadow leaning with his wide shoulders spread above the slim metal shaft of his cane. Be welcome to this house said his father and straightened up. You d better get out of that uniform and into some man s clothes. Dinner will be ready in half an hour. MAN The men of the household of Eachan Khan Graeme sat around the long shimmering slab of the dining board in the long and shadowy room at their drinking after the women and children had retired. They were not all present nor short of a minor miracle was it ever likely that they would be in this life. Of sixteen adult males nine were off at the wars among the stars one was undergoing reconstructive surgery at the hospital in Omalu and the eldest Donal s granduncle Kamal was quietly dying in his own room at the back of the household with an oxygen tube up his nose and the faint scent of the bay lilac to remind him of his Maran wife now forty years dead. Sitting at the table were five of which since three o clock this afternoon Donal was one. Those others who were present to welcome him to bis adulthood were Eachan his father Mor his elder brother who was home on leave from the Friendlies and his twin uncles lan and Kensie who had been next in age above that James who had died at Donneswort. They sat grouped around the high end of the table Eachan at its head with his two sons on his right and his two younger twin brothers on his left. They had good officers when I was there Eachan was saying. He leaned over to till Donal s glass and Donal took it up automatically listening with both ears. Freilanders all said lan the grimmer of the two dark twins. They run to stiffness of organization without combat to shake them up. Kensie says Mara or Kultis and I say why not They have full companies of Dorsai there I hear said Mor at Donal s right. The deep voice of Eachan answered from his left. They re show guards. I know of those. Why make a cake of nothing but icing The Bond of Kultis likes to think of having an unmatched bodyguard but they d be fanned out to the troops fast enough in case of real trouble between the stars.1 And meanwhile put in Kensie with a sudden smile that split his dark face no action. Peacetime soldiering goes sour. The outfits split up into little cliques the cake fighters move in and an actual man a Dorsai becomes an ornament. Good said Eachan nodding. Donal swallowed absently from his glass and the unaccustomed whiskey burned fiercely at the back of his nose and throat. Little pricklings of sweat popped out on his forehead but he ignored them concentrating on what was being said. This talk was all for his benefit he knew. He was a man now and could no longer be told what to do. The choice was his about where he would go to take service and they were helping him with what knowledge they had of the eight systems and their ways. ... I was never great for garrison duty myself Eachan was continuing. A mercenary s job is to train maintain and fight but when all s said and done the fighting s the thing. Not that everyone s of my mind. There are Dorsal and Dorsal and not all Dorsal are Graemes. The Friendlies now said Mor and stopped with a glance at his father afraid that he had interrupted. Go on said Eachan nodding. I was just about to point out said Mor there s plenty of action on Association and Harmony too I hear. The sects will always be fighting against each other. And there s bodyguard work Catch us being personal gunmen said lan who being closer in age to Mor man Mor s father did not feel the need to be quite so polite That s no job for a soldier. I didn t mean to suggest it said Mor turning to his uncle. But the psalm singers rate it high among themselves and that takes some of their best talent. It leaves the field posts open for mercenaries True enough said Kensie equably. And if they had less fanatics and more officers those two worlds would be putting strong forces out between the stars. But a priest soldier is only troublesome when he s more soldier than priest. I ll back that said Mor. This last skirmish I was in on Association an elder came down the line after we d taken one little town and wanted five of my men for hangmen. What did you do asked Kensie. Referred him to my Commandant and then got to the old man first and told him that if he could find five men in my force who actually wanted such a job he could transfer them out the next day. lan nodded. Nothing spoils a man for battle like playing butcher he said. The old man got that said Mor. They got their hangmen I heard but not from me. The lusts are vampires said Eachan heavily from the head of the table. Soldiering is a pure art. A man with a taste for blood money or women was one I never trusted. The women are fine on Mara and Kultis grinned Mor. I hear. I ll not deny it said Kensie merrily. But you ve got to come home some day. God grant that you all may said Eachan somberly. I am a Dorsai and a Graeme but if this little world of ours had something else to trade for the contracts of out world professionals besides the blood of our best fighting men I d be more pleased. Would you have stayed home Eachan said Mor when you were young and had two good legs No Mor said Eachan heavily. But mere are other arts beside the art of war even for a Dorsai. He looked at his eldest son. When our forefathers settled this world less than a hundred and fifty years ago it wasn t with the intention of providing gun fodder for me other eight systems. They only wanted a world where no man could bend the destinies of another man against that second man s will. And that we have said lan bleakly. And that we have echoed Eachan. The Dorsai is a tree world where any man can do as he likes as long as he respects the rights of his neighbor. Not all the other eight systems combined would tike to try their luck with this one world. But the price the price He shook his head and refilled his glass. Now those are heavy words for a son who s just going out said Kensie. There s a lot of good in life just the way she is now. Beside it s economic pressures we re under today not military. Who d want the Dorsai anyway besides us We re all nut here and very little kernel. Take one of the rich new worlds like Ceta under Tau Ceti or one of the richer older worlds like Freiland or Newton or even old Venus herself. They ve got cause to worry. They re the ones that are at each other s throats for the best scientists the best technicians the top artists and doctors. And the more work for us and the better life for us because of it. Eachan s right though Kensie growled lan. They still dream of squeezing our free people up into one lump and then negotiating with that lump for the force to get the whip hand over all the other worlds. He leaned forward across the table toward Eachan and in the muted light of the dining room Donal saw the sudden white flash of the seared scar that coiled up his forearm like a snake and was lost in the loose sleeve of his short undress tunic. That s the danger we ll never be free of. As long as the cantons remain independent of the Council said Eachan and the families remain independent of the cantons there ll be no success for mem lan. He nodded at all about the table. That s my end of the job here at home. You can go out to the wars with easy consciences. I promise you your children will grow up free in this house free of any man s will or the house will no longer stand. I trust you said lan. His eyes were gleaming pale as the scar in the dimness and he was very close to that Dorsai violence of emotion that was at once so cold and so deadly. I have two boys now under mis roof. But remember no men are perfect even the Dorsai. There was Mahub Van Ghent only five years back who dreamed about a little kingdom among the Dorsai in the Midland South only five years ago Eachan He was on the other side of the world said Eachan. And he s dead now at the hand of one of the Benali his closest neighbor. His home is burnt and no man acknowledges himself a Van Ghent any more. What more do you want He should have been stopped sooner. Each man has a right to his own destiny said Eacban softly. Until he crosses the line into another man s. His family has suffered enough. Yes said lan. He was calming down. He poured himself another drink. That s true that s true. They re not to blame About the Exotics said Mor gently. Oh yes answered Kensie as if the twin brother that was so much a part of himself had never gotten excited at all. Mara and Kultis interesting worlds. Don t mistake them if you ever go there Mor or you either Donal. They re sharp enough for all their art and robes and trappings. They won t fight themselves but they know how to hire good men. There s things being done on Mara and Kultis and not only in the arts. Meet one of their psychologists one time. They re honest said Eachan. That too said Kensie. But what catches at me is the fact they re going some place in their own way. If I had to pick one of the other worlds to be born on I would always be a soldier said Mor. You think so now said Kensie and drank. You think so now. But it s a wild civilization we have nowadays with its personality split a dozen different ways by a dozen different cultures. Less than five hundred years ago the average man never dreamed of getting his feet off the ground. And the farther we go the faster. And the faster the farther. It s the Venus group forcing that isn t it asked Donal his youthful reticence all burnt away in the hot fumes of the whiskey. Don t you think it said Kensie. Science is only one road to the future. Old Venus Old Mars Cassida Newton maybe they ve had their day. Project Blaine s a rich and powerful old man but he doesn t know all the new tricks they re dreaming up on Mara and Kultis or the Friendlies or Ceta for that matter. Make it a point to take two good looks at things when you get out among the stars you two young ones because nine times out of ten that first glance will leave you fooled. Listen to him boys said Eachan from the top of the table. Your uncle Kensie s a man and a half above the shoulders. I just wish I had as good advice to give you. Tell them Kensie. Nothing stands still said Kensie and with those three words the whiskey seemed to go to Donal s head in a rush the table and the dark harsh boned faces before him seemed to swim in the dimness of the dining room and Kensie s voice came roaring at him as if from a great distance. Everything changes and that s what you must bear in mind. What was true yesterday about something may not be true today. So remember that and take no man s word about something without reservation even mine. We have multiplied like the biblical locusts and spread out among the stars splitting into different groups with different ways. Now while we still seem to be rushing forward to where I have no idea at a terrific rate increasing all the time I have this feeling as if we are all poised hanging on the brink of something something great and different and maybe terrible. It s a time to walk cautious it is indeed. I ll be the greatest general that ever was cried Donal and was startled as the rest to hear the words leap stumbling and thick tongued but loud from within him. They ll see I ll show them what a Dorsai can be He was aware of them looking at him though all their faces were blurred except by some trick of vision that of Kensie diagonally across the table from him. Kensie was considering him with somber reading eyes. Donal was conscious of his father s hand on his shoulder. Time to turn in said his father. You ll see said Donal thickly. But they were all rising picking up their glasses and turning to his father who held his own glass up. May we all meet again said his father. And they drank standing. The remains of the whiskey in his glass flowed tasteless as water down Donal s tongue and throat and for a second everything cleared and be saw these tall men standing around him. Big even for Dorsai they were even his brother Mor topping him by half a head so that he stood like a half grown boy among them. But at that same instant of vision he was suddenly wrung with a terrible tenderness and pity for them as if he was the grown one and they the children to be protected. He opened his mouth to say for once in his life how much he loved them and how always he would be there to take care of them and then the fog closed down again and he was only aware of Mor leading him stumblingly to his room. Later he opened his eyes in the darkness to become aware of a dim figure drawing the curtains of his room against the bright new light of the double moon just risen. It was his mother and with a sudden reflexive action he rolled off his bed and lurched to her and put his hands on her shoulders. Mother he said. She looked up at him with a pale face softened by the moonlight. Donal she said tenderly putting her arms around him. You ll catch cold Donal. Mother he said thickly. If you ever need me ... to take care of you Oh my boy she said holding his hard young body tightly to her take care of yourself my boy ... my boy MERCENARY Donal shrugged his shoulders in the tight civilian half jacket and considered its fit as reflected in the mirror of his tiny boxlike cabin. The mirror gave him back the image of someone almost a stranger. So much difference had three short weeks brought about in him already. Not that he was so different but his own appraisal of himself had changed so that it was not merely the Spanish style jacket the skintight under tunic and the narrow trousers that disappeared into boots as black as all the rest of the costume that made him unfamiliar to himself but the body within. Association with the men of other worlds had done this to his point of view. Their relative shortness had made him tall their softness had made him hard their untrained bodies had made his balanced and sure. Outbound from the Dorsai to Alpha Centauri and surrounded by other Dorsai passengers he had not noticed the gradual change. Only in the vast terminal on Newton surrounded by their noisy thousands had it come on him all at once. And now transhipped and outbound for the Friendlies facing his first dinner on board a luxury class liner where there would probably be no others from his world he gazed at himself in the mirror and felt himself as suddenly come of age. He went out through the door of his cabin letting it latch quietly behind him and turned right in the tightly narrow metal walled corridor faintly stale with the smell of dust from the carpet underfoot. He walked down its silence toward the main lounge and pushed through a heavy sealing door that sucked shut behind him into the corridor of the next section. He stepped into the intersection of the little cross corridor that led right and left to the washrooms of the section ahead and almost strode directly into a slim tall girl in an ankle length blue dress of severe and conservative cut who stood by the water fountain at the point of the intersection. She moved hastily back out of his way with a little intake of breath backing into the corridor to the women s washroom. They stared at each other halted for a second. Forgive me said Donal and took two steps onward but between these and a third some sudden swift prompting made him change his mind without warning and he turned back. If you don t mind he said. Oh excuse me. She moved back again from the water fountain. He bent to drink and when he raised his head from the fountain he looked her full in the face again and recognized what had brought him back. The girl was frightened and that strange dark ocean of feeling that lay at the back of his oddness had stirred to the gust of her palpable fear. He saw her now clearly and at once at close range. She was older than he had thought at first at least in her early twenties. But there was a clear eyed immaturity about her a hint that her full beauty would come later in life and much later than that of the usual woman. Now she was not yet beautiful merely wholesome looking. Her hair was a light brown verging into chestnut her eyes wide spaced and so clearly green that opening as she felt the full interest of his close gaze they drove all the other color about her from his mind. Her nose was slim and straight her mourn a little wide her chin firm and the whole of her face so perfectly in balance the left side with the right that it approached the artificiality of some sculptor s creation. Yes she said on a little gasping intake of breath and he saw suddenly that she was shrinking from him and his close survey of her. He frowned at her. His thoughts were galloping ahead with the situation so that when he spoke it was unconsciously in the middle of me conversation he had in mind rather than at the beginning. Tell me about it said Donal. You she said. Her hand went to her throat above the high collar of her dress. Then before he could speak again it fell to her side and some of the tightness leaked out of her. Oh she said. I see. See what said Donal a little sharply for unconsciously he had fallen into the tone he would have used to a junior cadet these last few years if he had discovered one of them in some difficulty. You ll have to tell me what your trouble is if I m going to be any help to you. Tell you she looked desperately around her as if expecting someone to come upon them at any moment How do I know you re what you say you are For the first time Donal check reined the horses of his galloping estimate of the situation and looking back discovered a possible misconception on her part I didn t say I was anybody he answered. And in fact I m not I just happened to be passing by and saw you seemed upset about something. I offered to help. Help Her eyes widened again and her face suddenly paled. Oh no she murmured and tried to go around him. Please let me go. Please He stood his ground. You were ready to accept help from someone like me if he could only provide proofs of identity a second ago said Donal. You might as well tell me the rest of it. That stopped her efforts to escape. She stiffened facing him. I haven t told you anything. Only said Donal ironically that you were waiting here for someone. That you did not know that someone by sight but expected him to be a man. And that you were not sure of his bona fides but very much afraid of missing him. He heard the hard edge in his own voice and forced it to be more gentle. Also that you re very frightened and not very experienced at what you re doing. Logic could take it further. But she had herself under control now. Will you move out of the way and let me by she said evenly. Logic might make it that what you re engaged in is something illegal he replied. She sagged under the impact of his last word as if it had been a blow and turning her face blindly to the wall she leaned against it. What are you she said brokenly. Did they send you to trap me I tell you said Donal with just a hint of exasperation Fm nothing but a passer by who thought maybe I could help. Oh I don t believe you she said twisting her face away from him. If you re really nobody ... if nobody sent you ... you ll let me go. And forget you ever saw me. Small sense in that said Donal. You need help evidently. I m equipped to give it. I m a professional soldier. A Dorsai. Oh she said. The tension drained from her. She stood straighter and met his eyes with a look in which he thought he read some contempt. One of those. Yes he said. Then frowned. What do you mean one of thoseT I understand she answered. You re a mercenary. I prefer the term professional soldier he said a little stiffly in his turn. The point is she said you re for hire. He felt himself growing cold and angry. He inclined his head to her and stepped back leaving her way clear. My mistake he said and turned to leave her. No wait a minute she said. Now that I know what you really are there s no reason why I can t use you. None at all of course said Donal. She reached in through a slit in her tight gown and produced a small thick folding of some printed matter which she pushed into his hand. You see this is destroyed she said. I ll pay you whatever the usual rates are. Her eyes widened suddenly as she saw him unfold what he held and start to read it. What are you going You aren t supposed to read that How dare you She grabbed for the sheet but he pushed her back absently with one hand. His gaze was busily running down the form she had given him his own eyes widening at the sight of the facsimile portrait on it which was that of the girl herself. Anea Marlivana he said. Select of Kultis. J Well what if I am she blazed. What about it Only said Donal that I expected your genes to imply intelligence. Her mouth fell open. What do you mean by that Only that you re one of the worst fools I ve had the bad fortune to meet. He put the sheet into his pocket. I ll take care of it. You will Her face lit up. A second later it was twisted in wrath. Oh I don t like you she cried. I don t like you at all He looked at her a little sadly. You will he said if you live long enough. He turned about and pushed open the door through which he had come just a few minutes ago. But wait a minute her voice leaped after him. Where will I see you after you ve got rid of it How much do I have to pay He let the door sucking to behind him be the period to that question of hers and his answer to it. He went back through the section he had just traversed to his own cabin. There. with the door locked he considered the sheet she had given him a little more closely. It was nothing more and nothing less than a five year employment contract a social contract for her services as companion in the entourage of William Prince and Chairman of the Board of that very commercial planet Ceta which was the only habitable world circling the sun Tau Ceti. And a very liberal social contract it was requiring no more than that she accompany William wherever he wished to go and supply her presence at such public and polite social functions as he might require. It was not the Hberalness of the contract that surprised him so much a Select of Kultis would hardly be contracted to perform any but the most delicately moral and ethical of duties but the fact that she had asked him to destroy it. Theft of contract from her employer was bad enough breach of contract infinitely worse calling for complete rehabilitation but destruction of contract required the death penalty wherever any kind of government operated. The girl he thought must be insane. But and here the fine finger of irony intruded into the situation being the Select of Kultis she could not possibly be insane any more than an ape could be an elephant. On the extreme contrary being die product of a number of the most carefully culled forebearers on that planet where careful genetic culling and wizardry of psychological techniques was commonplace she must be eminently sane. True she had impressed Donal on first acquaintance as possessing nothing much out of the ordinary except a suicidal foolishness. But this was one instance where you had to go by the record books. And the record books implied that if anything about this business was abnormal it was the situation itself and not the girl involved in it. Thoughtfully Donal fingered the contract. Anea had clearly had no conception at all of what she was requesting when she so blithely required him to destroy it. The single sheet he held and even the words and signatures upon it were all integral parts of a single giant molecule which in itself was well nigh indestructible and could not be in any way altered or tampered with short of outright destruction. As for destruction itself Donal was quite sure that there was nothing aboard this ship that could in any way burn shred dissolve or in any other fashion obliterate it. And the mere possession of it by anyone but William its rightful owner was as good as an order of sentence. A soft chime quivered on the air of his cabin announcing the serving of a meal in the main lounge. It chimed twice more to indicate that this was the third of the four meals interspersed throughout the ship day. Contract in hand Donal half turned toward the little orifice of the disposal slot that led down to the central incinerator. The incinerator of course was not capable of disposing of the contract but it might be that it could lie unnoticed there until the ship had reached its destination and its passengers had dispersed. Later it would be difficult for William to discover how it had reached the incinerator in the first place. Then he shook his head and replaced the contract in his pocket. His motives for doing so were not entirely clear to himself. It was that oddness of his at work again he thought. Also he told himself that it seemed a sloppy way of handling the situation this girl had got him into. Quite typically he had already forgotten that his participation in the matter was all of his own contriving. He straightened his half jacket and went out of his cabin and down the long corridor through various sections to the main lounge. A slight crowding of likewise dinner bound passengers in the narrow en trance to the lounge delayed him momentarily and in that moment looking over the heads of those before him he caught sight of the long captain s table at the far end of the lounge and of the girl Anea Marlivana amongst those seated at it. The others seated with her appeared to consist of a strikingly handsome young officer of field rank a Freilander by the look of him a rather untidy large young man almost as big as the Freilander but possessing just the opposite of the other s military bearing in fact he appeared to half slouch in his seat as if he were drunk. And a spare pleasant looking man in early middle age with iron gray hair. The fifth person at the table was quite obviously a Dorsai a massive older man in the uniform of a Freiland marshal. The sight of this last individual moved Donal to sudden action. He pushed abruptly through the little knot of people barring the entrance and strode openly across the room to the high table. He extended his fist across it to the Dorsai marshal. How do you do sir he said. I was supposed to look you up before the ship lifted but I didn t have time. I ve got a letter for you from my father Eachan Khan Graeme. I m his second son Donal. Blue Dorsai eyes as cold as river water lifted under thick gray brows to consider him. For pan of a second the situation trembled on the balance point of Dorsai pride with the older man s curiosity weighed against the bare faced impudence of Donal s claim to acquaintance. Then the marshal took Donal s fist in a hard grip. So he remembered Hendrik Gait did he the marshal smiled. I haven t heard from Eachan for years. Donal felt a slight cold shiver of excitement course down his spine. Of all people he had chosen one of the ranking Dorsai soldiers of his day to bluff acquaintance with. Hendrik Gait First Marshal of Freiiand. He sends you his regards sir said Donal and ... but perhaps I can bring you the letter after dinner and you can read it for yourself. To be sure said the marshal. I m in Stateroom Nineteen. Donal was still standing. The occasion could hardly be prolonged further. But rescue came as something in Donal had more than half expected it would from farther down the table. Perhaps said the gray haired man in a soft and pleasant voice your young friend would enjoy eating with us before you take him back to your stateroom Hendrik I d be honored said Donal with glib promptness. He pulled out the empty float before him and sat down upon it nodding courteously to the rest of the company at the table as he did so. The eyes of the girl met him from the table s far end. They were as hard and still as emeralds caught in the rock. MERCENARY II Anea Marlivana said Hendrik Gait introducing Donal around the table. And the gentleman who was pleased to invite you William of Ceta Prince and Chairman of the Board. Greatly honored murmured Donal inclining his bead toward them. ... The Unit Commandant here my adjutant... Hugh Killien Donal and the Commandant Freilander nodded to each other. ... And ArDell Montor of Newton. The loose Limbed young man slumping in his float lifted a careless half drunken hand in a slight wave of acknowledgment. His eyes so dark as to appear almost black under the light eyebrows that matched his rather heavy blond hair cleared for a disconcerting fraction of a second to stare sharply at Donal then faded back to indifference. ArDell said Gait humorlessly set a new high score for the competitive exams on Newton. His field was social dynamics. Indeed muttered the Newtonian with something between a snort and a laugh. Indeed was. Was indeed. He lifted a heavy tumbler from the table before him and buried his nose in its light golden contents. ArDell said the gray haired William gently reproving. ArDell lifted his drink pale face and stared at the older man snorted again on laughter and lifted the tumbler again to his lips. Are you enlisted somewhere at the moment Graeme asked the Freilander turning to Donal. I ve a tentative contract for the Friendlies said Donal. I thought I d pick between the Sects when I got there and had a chance to look over the opportunities for action. Very Dorsai of you said William smiling from the far end of the table next to Anea. Always the urge to battle. You over compliment me sir said Donal. It merely happens that promotion comes more quickly on a battlefield than in a garrison under ordinary conditions. You re too modest said William. Yes indeed put in Anea suddenly. Far too modest. William turned about to gaze quizzically at the girl. Now Anea he said. You mustn t let your Exotic contempt for violence breed a wholly unjustified contempt for this fine young man. I m sure both Hendrik and Hugh agree with him. Oh they would of course said Anea flashing a look at the other two men. Of course they would Well said William laughing we must make allowances for a Select of course. As for myself I must admit to being male enough and unreconstructed enough to like the thought of action myself. I ... ah here comes the food. Brimming soup plates were rising above the surface of the table in front of everybody but Donal. You d better get your order in now said William. And while Donal pressed the communicator key before him and attended to this necessary duty the rest of them lifted their spoons and began their meal. ... Donal s father was a classmate of yours was he Hendrik inquired William as the fish course was being served. Merely a close friend said the marshal dryly. Ah said William delicately lifting a portion of the white delicate flesh on a fork. I envy you Dorsai for things like that. Your professions allow you to keep friendship and emotional connections unrelated to your work. In the Commercial area he gestured with a slim tanned hand a convention of general friendliness obscures the deeper feelings. Maybe it s what the man is to begin with answered the marshal. Not all Dorsal are soldiers Prince and not all Cetans are entrepreneurs. I recognize that said William. His eyes strayed to Donal. What would you say Donal Are you a simple mercenary soldier only or do you find yourself complicated by other desires The question was as blunt as it was obliquely put. Donal concluded that ingenuousness overlaid with a touch of venality was perhaps the most proper response. Naturally I d like to be famous he said and laughed a trifle self consciously and rich. He caught the hint of a darkening cloud on the brow of Gait. But he could not be concerned with that now. He had other fish to fry. There would he hoped be a chance to clear up the marshal s contempt for him at some later time. For the present he must seem self seeking enough to arouse William s interest. Very interesting said William pleasantly. How do you plan to go about becoming these pleasant things I was hoping said Donal maybe to learn something of the worlds by being out among them something I might be able to use to my own advantage as well as others. Good Lord is that all said the Freilander and aughed in a way that invited the rest of the table to join in with him. William however did not laugh although Anea joined her own clear amusement to that of the commandant and ArDell s snorted chuckle. No need to be unkind Hugh he said. I like Donal s attitude. I had the same sort of notion myself once when I was younger. He smiled in a kindly fashion on Donal. You must come talk to me too he said after you ve had your chat with Hendrik. I like young men with ambition. ArDell snorted with laughter again. William turned to look sadly at him. You should try to eat ArDell he said. We ll be making a phase shift in four hours or so and if you don t have something solid on your stomach My stomach said the young man drunkenly. And what if my stomach should reach universal dimensions out of phase What if should reach universal dimensions and be everywhere and never come back to point position again He grinned at Williams. What a waste of good food. Anea had paled to a sickly color. If you ll excuse me she murmured rising hastily. I don t blame you a bit said William sharply. ArDell that was in inexcusable bad taste. Hugh help Anea to her stateroom. I don t want him flared Anea. He s just like all the rest of you But the Freilander was already on his feet looking almost like a recruiting poster in his trim uniform and coming around the table to take her arm. She jerked away from him turned and went unsteadily out of the lounge. Hugh following closely behind her. They passed through the doorway into the corridor but as they turned to move out of sight Donal saw her turn to the tall soldier and lean into the protection of his arm just before they disappeared. William was continuing to speak calm and acid words of disapprobation to ArDell who made no retort but gazed drunkenly and steadily back at him out of his black unmoving eyes. During the rest of the meal the talk turned to military affairs in particular field strategy in which triologue ArDell pointedly excluded Donal was able to win back some of the personal credit which his earlier remark about fame and riches had cost him in the marshal s eyes. ... Remember William said as they parted in the corridor outside the lounge after the meal. Come in and see me after you ve finished with Hendrik Donal. I ll be glad to help you if I can. And with a smile and a nod he turned away. Donal and Gait went off down the narrow corridor .that forced them to walk one behind the other. Following the thick shoulders of the older man Donal was surprised to hear him ask: Well what do you think of them Sir said Donal. Hesitating he chose what he took to be the safest subject. I m a little surprised about the girl. Anea said Gaft stopping before a door marked with the number nineteen. I thought a Select of Kultis would be Donal stopped honestly at a loss more ... more in control of herself. She s very healthy very normal very intelligent but those are only potentialities retorted the marshal almost gruffly. What did you expect He threw open the door ushered them both in and closed the door firmly behind them. When he turned around there was a harder more formal note to his voice. All right now he said sharply what s ail this about a letter Donal took a deep breath. He had tried hard to read Gait s character during the course of the dinner and he staked everything now in the honesty of his answer on what he thought he had seen there. No letter sir he said. To the best of my knowledge my father never met you in his life. Thought as much said Gait. All right what s it all about then He crossed to a desk on the other side of the room took something from a drawer and when he turned about Donal was astonished to find him filling an antique pipe _ with tobacco. That Anea sir he said. I never met such a foot in my life. And he told fully and completely the story of the episode in the corridor. Gait half sat on the edge of the desk the pipe in his mouth now and alight puffing little clouds of white smoke which the ventilating system whisked away the second they were formed. I see he said when Donal had finished. I m inclined to agree with you. She is a fool. And just what sort of insane idiot do you consider yourself I sir Donal was honestly astonished. I mean you boy said Gait taking the pipe out of his mouth. Here you are still damp from school and sticking your nose into a situation a full planetary government d hesitate at. He stared in frank amazement at Donal. Just what did you think what did you figure ... hell boy what did you plan to get out of it Why nothing said Donal. I was only interested in seeing a ridiculous and possibly dangerous situation smoothed out as neatly as possible. I admit I hadn t any notion of the part William played in the matter he s apparently an absolute devil. The pipe rattled in Gait s suddenly unclenched jaws and he had to grab it quickly with one thick hand to keep it from falling. He took it from his lips and stared in amazement at Donal. Who told you that he demanded. No one said Donal. It s obvious isn t it Gait laid his pipe down on the table and stood up. Not to ninety nine per cent of the civilized worlds it isn t he retorted. What made it so obvious to you Certainly said Donal any man can be judged by the character and actions of the people with which he surrounds himself. And this William has an entourage of thwarted and ruined people. The marshal stiffened. You mean me he demanded. Naturally not said Donal. After all you re a Dorsai. The stiffness went out of Gait. He grinned a little sourly and reaching back for his pipe retrieved and relit it. Your faith in our common origin is ... quite re freshing he said. Go on. On this piece of evidence you read William s character do you Oh not just that said Donal. Stop and think of the fact that a Select of Kultis finds herself at odds with him. And the good instincts of a Select are inbred. Also he seems to be an almost frighteningly brilliant sort of man in that he can dominate personalities like Anea and this fellow Montor from Newton who must be a rather high level mind himself to have rated as he did on his tests. And someone that brilliant must be a devil queried Gait dryly. Not at all explained Donal patiently. But having such intellectual capabilities a man must show proportionately greater inclinations toward either good or evil than lesser people. If he tends toward evil he may mask it in himself he may even mask its effect on the people with which he surrounds himself. But he has no way of producing the reflections of good which would ordinarily be reflected from his lieutenants and initiates and which if he was truly good he would have no reason to try and hide. And by that lack you can read him. Gait took the pipe from his mouth and gave a long slow whistle. He stared at Donal. You weren t brought up on one of the Exotics by any chance were you he asked. No sir said Donal. My father s mother was a Maran though. And my mother s mother was Ma ran. This Gait paused and tamped thoughtfully in the bowl of his pipe it had gone out with one thick forefinger business of reading character did you get this from your mother or your grandmother or is it your own idea Why I imagine I must have heard it somewhere replied Donal. But surely it stands to reason anyone would arrive at it as a conclusion with a few minutes thought. Possibly the majority of us don t think said Gait with the same dryness. Sit down Donal. And I ll join you. They took a couple of armchair floats facing each other. Gait put his pipe away. Now listen to me he said in a low and sober voice. You re one of the oddest young fish I can remember meeting. I don t know quite what to do with you. If you were my son I d pack you up in quarantine and ship you home for ten more years seasoning before I let you out among the stars all right he interrupted himself abruptly raising a silencing hand as Donal s mouth opened. I know you re a man now and couldn t be shipped anywhere against your will. But the way you strike me now is that you ve got perhaps one chance in a thousand of becoming something remarkable and about nine hundred and ninety nine chances of being quietly put out of the way before the year s out. Look boy what do you know about the worlds outside the Dorsai Well said Donal. There are fourteen planetary governments not counting the anarchic setups on Dunnin s World and Coby Governments my rear echelon interrupted Gait rudely. Forget your civics lessons Governments in this twenty fourth century are mere machinery. It s the men who control them who count. Project Blaine on Venus Sven Holman on Earth Eldest Bright on Harmony the very planet we re headed for and Sayona the Bond on Kultis for the Exotics. General Kamal began Donal. Is nothing said Gait sharply. How can the Elector of the Dorsai be anything when every little canton hangs to its independence with tooth and nail No I m talking about the men who pull the strings between the stars. The ones I mentioned and others. He took a deep breath. Now how do you suppose our Merchant Prince and Chairman of the Board on Ceta ranks with those I mentioned You d say he s their equal At least said Gait. At least. Don t be led astray by the fact that you see him traveling like this on a commercial ship with only the girl and Montor with him. Chances are he owns the ship the crew and officers and half the passengers. And you and the commandant asked Donal perhaps more bluntly than was necessary. Gait s features started to harden and then he relaxed. A fair question he rumbled. I m trying to get you to question most of the things you ve taken for granted. I suppose it s natural you d include myself. No to answer your question I am First Marshal of Freiland still a Dorsai and with my professional services for hire and nothing more. We ve just hired out five light divisions to the First Dissident Church on Harmony and I m coming along to observe that they operate as contracted for. It s a complicated deal like they are all involving a batch of contract credits belonging to Ceta. Therefore William. And the commandant persisted Donal. What about him replied Gait. He s a Freilander a professional and a good one. He ll take over one of the three Force commands for a short test period when we get to Harmony for demonstration purposes. Have you had him with you long Oh about two standard years said Gait. And he s good professionally He s damn good said Gait. Why do you think he s my adjutant What re you driving at anyway A doubt said Donal and a suspicion. He hesitated for a second. Neither of which I m ready to voice yet. Gait laughed. Save that Maran character sniffing of yours for civilians he said. You ll be seeing a snake under every bush. Take my word for it Hugh s a good honest soldier a bit flashy perhaps but that s all. I m hardly in a position to argue with you murmured Donal stepping aside gracefully. You were about to say something about William when I interrupted you Oh yes said Gait. He frowned. It adds up to this and I ll make it short and clear. The girl s none of your business and William s deadly medicine. Leave them both alone. And if I can help you to the kind of post you re after Thank you very much said Donal. But I believe William will be offering me something. Gait blinked and stared. Hell s breeches boy he exploded after half a second. What gives you that idea Donal smiled a little sadly. Another one of my suspicions he said. Based on what you call that Maran character sniff ing of mine no doubt. He stood up. I appreciate your trying to warn me sir. He extended his fist. If I could talk to you again sometime Gait stood up himself taking the proffered fist mechanically. Any time he said. Damned if I understand you. Donal peered at him .suddenly struck by a thought. Tell me sir he asked. Would you say I was odd Odd Gait almost exploded on the word. Odd as his imagination failed him. What makes you ask that I just wondered said Donal. I ve been called that so often. Maybe they were right. He withdrew his fist from the marshal s grasp. And on that note he took his leave. MERCENARY III Returning again up the corridor toward the bow of the ship Donal allowed himself to wonder a little wistfully about this succubus of his own strange difference from other people. He had thought to leave it behind with his cadet uniform. Instead it seemed it continued to ride with him still perched on his shoulders. Always it had been this way. What seemed so plain and simple and straightforward to himself had always struck others as veiled torturous and involved. Always he had been like a stranger passing through a town the ways of whose people were different and who looked on him with a lack of understanding amounting to suspicion. Their language failed on the doorstep of his motives and could not enter the lonely mansion of his mind. They said enemy and friend they said strong and weak them and us . They set up a thousand arbitrary classifications and distinctions which he could not comprehend convinced as he was that all people were only people and there was very little to choose between them. Only you dealt with them as individuals one by one and always remembering to be patient. And if you did this successfully then the larger group things all came out right. Turning again into the entrance of the lounge he discovered as he had half expected to the young Newtonian ArDell Montor slumped in a float by one end of the bar that had made its appearance as soon as the dinner tables had been taken up into the walls. A couple of other small drinking groups sparsely completed the inhabitants of the lounge but none of these were having anything to do with Montor. Donal walked directly to him and Montor without moving lifted the gaze of his dark eyes to watch Donal approach. Join you said Donai. Honored replied the other not so much thickly as slowly from the drink inside him. Thought I might like to talk to you. His fingers crept out over the buttons on the bar pad next to him. Drink Dorsai whiskey said Donal. Montor pressed. A second later a small transparent goblet full rose to the bartop. Donal took it and sipped cautiously. The drinking the night he had attained his majority had acquainted him with the manner in which alcohol affected him and he had made a private determination never to find himself drunk again. It is a typical matter of record with him that he never did. Raising his eyes from the glass he found the Newtonian staring steadily at him with his eyes unnaturally clear lost and penetrating. You re younger than I said ArDell. Even if I don t look it. How old do you think I am Donal looked him over curiously. Montor s face for all its lines of weariness and dissipation was the scarcely mature visage of a late adolescent a situation to which his shock of uncombed hair and the loose limbed way he sprawled in his float contributed. A quarter of a standard century said Donal. Thirty three years absolute said ArDell. I was a school child a monk until I was twenty nine. Do you think I drink too much I think there s no doubt about it answered Donal. I agree with you said ArDell with one of his sudden snorts of laughter. I agree with you. There s no doubt about it one of the few things in this God abandoned universe about which there is no doubt. But that s not what I was hoping to talk to you about. What was that Donal tasted his glass of whiskey again. Courage said ArDell looking at him with an empty penetrating glance. Have you got courage It s a necessary item for a soldier said Donal. Why do you ask And no doubts No doubts ArDell swirled the golden drink in his tall tumbler and took a swallow from it. No secret fears that when the moment comes your legs will weaken your heart will pound you ll turn and run I will not of course turn and run said Donal. After all I m a Dorsai. As for how 1 11 feel all I can say is I ve never felt the way you describe. And even if I did Above their heads a single mellow chime sounded interrupting. Phase shift in one standard hour and twenty minutes announced a voice. Phase shift in one standard hour and twenty minutes. Passengers are advised to take their medication now and accomplish the shift while asleep for their greatest convenience. Have you swallowed a pill yet asked ArDeli. Not yet said Donal. But you will Of course. Donal examined him with interest. Why not Doesn t taking medication to avoid the discomfort of a phase shift strike you as a form of cowardice asked ArDell. Doesn t it That s foolish said Donal. Like saying it s cowardly to wear clothes to keep you warm and comfortable or to eat to keep from starving. One is a matter of convenience the other is a matter of he thought for a second duty. Courage is doing your duty ... In spite of what you personally might want. Yes said Donal. Yes said ArDell thoughtfully. Yes. He replaced his empty glass on the bar and pressed for a refill. I thought you had courage he said musingly watching the glass sink fill and begin to re emerge. I am a Dorsai said Donal. Oh spare me the glories of careful breeding said ArDel harshly picking up his now full glass. As he turned back to face Donal Donal saw the man s face was tortured. There s more to courage than that. If it was only in your genes he broke off suddenly and leaned toward Donal. Listen to me he almost whispered. I m a coward. Are you sure said Donal levelly. How do you know I m frightened sick whispered ArDell. Sick frightened of the universe. What do you know about the mathematics of social dynamics It s a predicative system of mathematics isn t it said Donal. My education didn t lie in that direction. No no said ArDell almost fretfully. I m talking about the statistics of social analysis and their extrapolation along lines of population increase and development. He lowered his voice even further. They approach a parallel with the statistics of random chance I m sorry said Donal. That means nothing to me. ArDell gripped Donal s arm suddenly with one surprisingly strong hand. Don t you understand he murmured. Random chance provides for every possibility including dissolution. It must come because the chance is there. As our social statistics grow into larger figures we too entertain the possibility. In the end it must come. We must destroy ourselves. There is no other alternative. And all because the universe is too big a suit of clothes for us to wear. It gives us room to grow too much too fast. We will reach a statistically critical mass and then he snapped his fingers the end Well that s a problem for the future said Donal. But then because he could not help reacting to the way the other man was feeling he added more gently Why does it bother you so much Why don t you see said ArDell. If it s all to go just like that as if it never has been then what was the use of it all What s to show for our existence I don t mean things we built they decay fast enough. Or knowledge. That s just a copying down from an open book into our own language. It has to be those things that the universe didn t have to begin with and that we brought to it. Things like love and kindness and courage. If that s the way you feel said Donal gently withdrawing his arm from the other s grasp why drink this way Because I am a coward said ArDell. I feel it out there all the time this enormousness that is the universe. Drinking helps me shut it out that Godawful knowledge of what it can do to us. That s why I drink. To take the courage I need out of a bottle to do the little things like passing through phase shift without medication. Why said Donal almost tempted to smile. What good would that do It s facing it in a little way ArDell fixed him with his dark and pleading eyes. It s saying in one little instance go ahead rip me to the smallest shreds you can manage spread me over your widest limits. I can take it. Donal shook his head. You don t understand said ArDell sinking back in his float. If I could work I wouldn t need the alcohol. But I m walled away from work nowadays. It s not that way with you. You ve got your job to do and you ve got courage the real kind. I thought maybe I could . . . well never mind. Courage wouldn t be transferable anyway. Are you going to Harmony asked Donal. Whither my Prince goes there go I said ArDell and snorted his laugh again. You should read my contract sometime. He turned back to the bar. Another whiskey No said Donal standing up. If you ll excuse me I ll see you again muttered ArDell keying for another drink. I ll be seeing you. Yes said Donal. Until then. Until then ArDell lifted his newly filled glass from the bar. The chime sounded again overhead and the voice reminded them that only seventy odd minutes remained before shift time. Donal went out. Half an hour later after he had gone back to his own room for one more careful rereading and study of Anea s contract Donal pressed the button on the door of the stateroom of William Prince and Chairman of the Board on Ceta. He waited. Yes said the voice of William over his head. Donal Graeme sir said Donal. If you aren t busy Oh of course Donal. Come in The door swung open before him and Donal entered. William was sitting on a plain float before a small deskboard holding a pile of papers and a tiny portable secretary. A single light glowed directly above him and the deskboard silvering his gray hair. Donal hesitated hearing the door click to behind him. Find a seat somewhere said William without looking up from his papers. His fingers flickered over the keys of the secretary. I have some things to do. Donal turned about in the gloom outside the pool of light found an armchair float and sat down in it. William continued for some minutes scanning through his papers and making notes on the secretary. After a while he shoved the remaining papers aside and the deskboard released drifted with its burden to over against a farther wall. The single overhead light faded and a general illumination flooded the cabin. Donal blinked at the sudden light. William smiled. And now he said what s the nature of your business with me Donal blinked stared and blinked again. Sir he said. I think we can avoid wasting time by ignoring pretenses said William still in his pleasant voice. You pushed yourself on us at the table because you wanted to meet someone there. It was hardly the marshal your Dorsai manners could have found a better way than that. It was certainly not Hugh and most unlikely to be ArDell. That leaves Anea and she s pretty enough and you re both young enough to do something that foolish . . . but I think not under the conditions. William folded his lean fin gers together and smiled. That leaves me. Sir I Donal started to stand up with the stiffness of outraged dignity. No no said William gesturing him back. Now it d be foolish to leave after going to all this trouble to get here wouldn t it His voice sharpened. Sit down Donal sat. Why did you want to see me asked William. Donal squared his shoulders. All right he said. If you want me to put it bluntly ... I think I might be useful to you. By which said William you think you might be useful to yourself by tapping the till as it were of my position and authority go on. It so happened said Donal that I came into possession of something belonging to you. William extended his hand without a word. After a second s hesitation Donal extracted Anea s contract from his pocket and passed it over. William took it unfolded it and glanced over it. He laid it carelessly down on a little table beside him. She wanted me to get rid of it for her said Donal. She wanted to hire me to dispose of it for her. Evidently she didn t know how hard it is to destroy a sheet of the material contracts are made on. But you took the job said William. I made no promises said Donal painfully. But from the start you intended to bring it straight to me. I believe said Donal it s your property. Oh of course said William. He smiled at Donal for a long moment. You realize of course he said finally that I needn t believe a word of what you ve said. I only need to assume that you stole it yourself and later got cold feet about disposing of it and dreamed up this cock and bull story in a attempt to sell it back to me. The captain of this ship would be glad to put you under arrest at my word and hold you for trial as soon as we reach Harmony. A slight cold galvanic shiver ran down Donal s spine. A Select of Kultis won t lie under oath he said. She I see no reason to involve Anea in this said William. It could be all handled very conveniently without her. My statement against yours. Donal said nothing. William smiled again. You see said William the point I m laboring to bring home to you. You happen not only to be venal but a fool. Sir the word shot from Donal s lips. William waved a disinterested hand. Save your Dorsai rages for someone who ll be 49m impressed by them. I know as well as you do you ve no intention of attacking me. Possibly if you were a different sort of Dorsai but you re not. You are as I say both venal and a fool. Accept these statements for the obvious facts they are and we can get down to business. He looked at Donal. Donal said nothing. Very well then went on William. You came to me hoping I could find you of some use. As it happens I can. Anea is of course just a foolish young girl but for her benefit as well as my own being her employer we ll have to see she doesn t get into serious trouble. Now she had confided in you once. She may again. If she does so by no means discourage her. And to keep you available for such confidences William smiled again quite good humoredly this time I believe I can find you a commission as Force Leader under Commandant Hugh Kiliien when we touch down on Harmony. There is no reason why a military career shouldn t go hand in hand with whatever other uses I can find for you. Thank you sir said Donal. Not at all A chime sounded over some hidden wall speaker. Ab phase shift in five minutes. William picked up a small silver box from a table near his feet and sprung it open. Have you taken your medication yet Help yourself. He extended to Donal. Thank you sir said Donal carefully. I have. Then said William helping himself to a white tablet and replacing the box. I believe that is all. I believe so sir said Donal. Donal inclined his head and went out. Stopping outside the stateroom door only long enough to take one of his own phase shift sedatives he headed back toward his own stateroom. On the way he stopped by the ship s library to check out an information spool on the First Dissident Church of Harmony and this delayed him sufficiently so that he was passing down one of the long sectional corridors when the phase shift occurred. He had been prudently asleep during those previous shifts he had gone through while outbound from Dorsai and of course he had learned years ago what to expect. In addition he was fully medicated and the shift itself was over before it was really begun. In fact it took place in no time in no conceivable interval at all. Yet it had happened and some inextinguishable recognizing part of him knew and remembered that he had been torn apart down to the most fractional elements of his being and spread to the wide universe and caught and collected and reassembled at some arbitrary point light years from his destruction. And it was this memory not the shift itself that made him falter for one short step before he took up again his steady march back to his stateroom. And the memory would stay with him. He continued on down the corridor but he was far from having run his gauntlet for the day. As he reached the end of one section Anea stepped out from the cross bar corridor there that was the exact duplicate of the one several sections down where he first met her. Her green eyes were afire. You ve been seeing him she snapped barring his way. Seeing ... oh William he said. Don t deny it. Why should I Donal looked at her almost with wonder. Surely it s nothing to make a secret about She stared at him. Oh she cried. You just don t care for anything do you What did you do ... about what I gave you I gave it back to its owner of course said Donal. There was no other sensible thing I could do. She turned suddenly so white that he almost reached out to catch her certain she was about to faint. But she did no such womanish thing. Her eyes as she stared at him were shocked to enormity. Oh she breathed. You . . . you traitor. You cheat and before he could make a move or say a word to stop her she had whirled about and was running off down the corridor back in the direction from which she had come. With a certain wry unhappiness for in spite of his rather low opinion of her common sense he had really expected her to listen to his explanation he took up his solitary walk to his stateroom. He traveled the rest of the way without meeting anyone. The corridors in the aftermath of the phase shift were deserted by prudent passengers. Only passing a certain stateroom he heard sounds of sickness from within and looking up recognized the number on its door as one he had looked up just now on his recent trip to the library. It was the stateroom of ArDell Montor and that would be the man himself inside it now unraedicated and racked by the passing of the phase shift fighting his own long battle with the universe. FORCE LEADER All right gentlemen said Hugh Killien. He stood confident and impressive in his chameleon battle dress with the fingertips of his right hand resting on the gently domed surface of the mapviewer before him. If you ll gather around the viewer here he said. The five Force Leaders moved in until all six men stood thickly clustered around the meter square area of the viewer. The illumination from the blackout shell enclosing them beat down and met the internal upward illumination of the viewer so that Donal glancing around at his fellow officers was irresistibly reminded of men caught between wrath and wrath in some small package section of that hell their First Dissident Church Liaison Elder had been so eloquent about only a few hours since at the before battle service. ... Our position is here Hugh was saying. As your commandant I make you the customary assurance that it is a perfectly tenable position and that the contemplated advance in no way violates the Mercenaries Code. Now he went on more briskly as you can see we occupy an area five kilometers in front and three kilometers in depth between these two ridges. Second Command of Battle Unit 176 to our right Fourth Command of Battles to our left. The contemplated action calls for the Second and Fourth Commands to hold fast in full strength on both our flanks while we move forward at sixty per cent of strength and capture a small town called Faith Will Succour which is here His index finger stabbed down and rested upon the domed image of the map. ... At approximately four kilometers of distance from our present position. We will use three of our five Forces Skuak s White s and Graeme s and each Force will make its separate way to the objective. You will each have your individual maps. There are woods for the first twelve hundred meters. After that you will have to cross the river which is about forty meters in width but which Intelligence assures us is fordable at the present time with a maximum depth of a hundred and twenty centimeters. On the other side it will be woods again thinning out gradually right up to the edge of the town. We leave in twenty minutes. It ll be dawn in an hour and I want all three Forces across that river before full daylight. Any questions What about enemy activity in the area asked Skuak. He was a short stocky Cassidan who looked Mongoloid but was actually Eskimo in ancestry. What kind of opposition can we expect Intelligence says nothing but patrols. Possibly a small Force holding the town itself. Nothing more. Hugh looked around the circle of faces. This should be bread and butter. Any more questions Yes said Donal. He had been studying the map. What sort of military incompetent decided to send us at only sixty per cent of strength The atmosphere in the shell froze suddenly and sharply. Donal looked up to find Hugh Killien s eyes on his across the viewer As it happened said the commandant a slight edge to his words it was my suggestion to Staff Graeme. Perhaps you ve forgotten I m sure none of the other Force Leaders have but this is a demonstration campaign to show the First Dissident Church we re worthy of our hire. That hardly includes gambling the lives of four hundred and fifty men retorted Donal unmoved. Graeme said Hugh you re junior officer here and I m commandant. You ought to know I don t have to explain tactics to you. But just to set your mind at rest Intelligence has given a clear green on enemy activity in the area. Still persisted Donal why take unnecessary chances Hugh sighed in exasperation. I certainly shouldn t have to give you lessons in stategy he said bitingly. I think you abuse the right the code gives you to question Staff decisions. But to put an end to this there s a good reason why we ll be using the minimum number of men. Our main thrust at the enemy is to come through this area. If we moved forward in strength the United Orthodox forces would immediately begin to strengthen defenses. But doing it this way it should appear we re merely moving to take up a natural vacuum along the front. Once we have the town tied down the Second and Fourth Commands can filter in to reinforce us and we are in position to mount a full scale attack at the plains below. Does that answer you Only partially said Donal. I Give me patience snapped the Freilander. I have five campaigns to my credit Force Leader. I d hardly stick my own neck in a noose. But I ll be taking over White s Force and leaving him in command back here in the Area. You I and Skuak will make the assay. Now are you satisfied There was of course no reply to be made to that. Donal bowed his Head in submission and the meeting broke up. Walking back to his Force area however alongside Skuak Donal remained unreconstructed enough to put an extra question to the Cassidan. Do you think I m starting at shadows asked Donal. Huh grunted Skuak. It s his responsibility. He ought to know what he s doing. And on that note they parted each to marshal his own men. Back in his own Force area Donal found that his Groupmen had already assembled his command. They stood under arms drawn up in three hues of fifty men each with a senior and junior Groupman at the head of each line. The ranking senior Groupman a tall thin Cetan veteran named Morphy accompanied him as he made his rounds of the ranks inspecting the men. They were a good unit Donal thought as he paced down between the rows. Well trained men battle seasoned although in no sense elite troops since they had been picked at random by the Elders of the First Dissident Church William having stipulated only his choice of officers for the demonstration Battle Unit. Each man carried a handgun and knife in addition to his regular armament but they were infantry spring rifle men. Weapon for weapon any thug in the back alley of a large city had more and more modern firepower but the trick with modern warfare was not to outgun the enemy but carry weapons he could not gimmick. Chemical and radiation armament was too easily put out of action from a distance. Therefore the spring rifle with its five thousand sliver magazine and its tiny compact non metaUic mechanism which could put a sliver in a man sized target at a thousand meters time after time with unvarying accuracy. Yet thought Donal pacing between the silent men in the faint darkness of pre dawn even the spring rifle would be gimmickable one of these days. Eventually the infantryman would be back to the knife and short sword. And the emphasis would weigh yet again more heavily on the skill of the individual soldier. For sooner or later no matter what fantastic long range weapons you mounted the ground itself had to be taken and for that there had never been anything but the man in the ranks. Donal finished his inspection and went back to stand in front of them. Rest men he said. But hold your ranks. All Groupmen over here with me. He walked off out of earshot of the men in ranks and the Groupmen followed him. They squatted in a circle and he passed on to them the orders of the Staff he had just received from Hugh handing out maps to each of them. Any questions he asked as Hugh had asked his Force Leaders. There were none. They waited for him to go on. He in turn looked slowly around the circle assessing these men on whom his command would depend. He had had a chance to get to know them in the three weeks previous to this early morning. The six who faced him represented in miniature the varying reactions his appointment as Force Leader had produced in the Force as a whole. Of the hundred and fifty men under him a few were doubtful of him because of his youth and lack of battle experience. A larger number were unequivocably glad to have him over them because of the Dorsai reputation. A few a very few were of that class of men who bristle automatically as man to man whenever they find themselves in contact with another individual who is touted as better than they. The instinctive giant killers. Of this type was the Senior Groupman of the Third Group an ex Coby miner named Lee. Even squatting now in this circle on the brink of action he met Donal s eye with a faint air of challenge his brush of dark hair stiffly upright in the gloom his bony jaw set. Such men were troublemakers unless they had responsibility to hold them down. Donal revised his original intention to travel himself with the Third Group. We ll split up into patrol sized units of twenty five men each he said. There ll be a Senior or Junior Groupman to each unit. You ll move separately as units and if you encounter an enemy patrol you ll fight as a unit. I don t want any unit going to the rescue of another. Is that clear They nodded. It was clear. Morphy said Donal turning to the thin Senior Groupman. I want you to go with the Junior unit of Lee s Group which will have the rearguard position. Lee will take his own half group directly in front of you. Chassen he looked at the Senior Groupman of the Second Group you and Zolta will take positions third and fourth from the rear. I want you personally in fourth position. Suki as Junior of the First Group you ll be ahead of Chassen and right behind me. I ll take the upper half of the First Group in advance position. Force said Lee. How about communications Hand signal. Voice. And that s all. And I don t want any of you closing up to make communication easier. Twenty meter miminum interval between units. Donal looked around the circle again. Our job here is to penetrate to me little town as quickly and quietly as we can. Fight only if you re forced into it and break away as quickly as you can. The word is it s supposed to be a Sunday walk commented Lee. I don t operate by back camp rumor said Donal flatly his eyes seeking out the ex miner. We ll take all precautions. You Groupmen will be responsible for seeing that your men are fully equipped with everything including medication. Lee yawned. It was not a gesture of insolence not quite. All right said Donal. Back to your Groups. The meeting broke up. A few minutes later the almost inaudible peep of a whistle was carried from Force to Force and they began to move out. Dawn was not yet in the sky but the low overcast above the treetops was beginning to tighten at their backs. The first twelve hundred meters through the woods though they covered it cautiously enough turned out to be just what Lee had called it a Sunday walk. It was when Donal in the lead with the first half Group came out on the edge of the river that things began to tighten up. Scouts out he said. Two of the men from the Group sloshed into the smoothly flowing water and rifles held high waded across its gray expanse to the far side. The glint of their rifles waved in a circle signaled the all clear and Donal led the rest of the men into the water and across. Arrived on the far side he threw out scouts in three directions ahead and along the bank each way and waited until Suki and his men appeared on the far side of the river. Then his scouts having returned with no sight of the enemy Donal spread his men out in light skirmish order and went forward. The day was growing rapidly. They proceeded by fifty meter jumps sending the scouts out ahead then moving the rest of the men up when the signal came back that the ground was clear ahead. Jump succeeded jump and there was no contact with the enemy. A little over an hour later with the large orange disk of E. Eridani standing clear of the horizon Donal looked out through a screen of bushes at a small battle torn village that was silent as the grave. Forty minutes later the three Forces of the Third Command Battle Unit 176 were united and dug in about the small town of Faith Will Succour. They had uncovered no local inhabitants. They had had no encounter with the enemy. FORCE LEADER II The mime of Force Leader Graeme was mud. The Third Command or at least that portion of it that was dug in around the village made no great attempt to hide the fact from him. If he had shown at all mat he was sensitive to their opinion of him they would have made even less. But there was something about his complete indifference to their attitude that put a check to their obvious contempt. Nevertheless the hundred and fifty men that had been forced by him to make their approach on the village under full equipment and maximum security effort and the three hundred other men who had made a much more casual and easy approach and were congratulating themselves on being out from under such an officer agreed in an opinion of Donal that had reached its nadir There is only one thing that veterans hate 63B worse than being made to sweat unnecessarily in garrison and that is being made to sweat unnecessarily in the field. The word had gone out that the day s work was to be a Sunday walk. And it had been a Sunday walk except for those serving under a green young Dorsai officer name of Graeme. The men were not happy. Along about twilight as the sunset was fading through the bushy limbed trees that were the local mutant variform of the Earthly conifer that had been imported when this planet was terraformed a runner came from Hugh at Command HQ just outside the enemy end of the village. He found Donal seated astride a fallen log studying a map of the local area. Signal from Battles said the runner squatting beside the log. Stand up said Donal quietly. The runner stood. Now what s the signal Second and Third Commands won t be moving up until tomorrow morning said the runner sulkily. Signal acknowledged said Donal waving him off. The runner turned and hurried away with another instance of the new officer s wax and braid to relate to the other enlisted men back at HQ. Left to himself Donal continued to study the map as long as the light lasted. When it was completely gone he put the map away produced a small black whistle from his pocket and peeped for his ranking Senior Groupman. A moment later a thin body loomed up against the faintly discernible sky beyond the treetops. Morphy sir. Reporting came a voice of the Senior Groupman. Yes said Donal. Sentries all posted Groupman Yes sir. The quality of Morphy s tone was completely without inflection. Good. I want them alert at all times. Now Morphy Yes sir Who do we have in the Force that has a good sense of smell Smell sir Donal merely waited. Well sir said Morphy finally and slowly. There s Lee he practically grew up in the mines where you have to have a good sense of smell. That s the mines on Coby Force Leader. I assumed those were the mines you meant said Donal dryly. Get Lee over here will you Morphy took out his own whistle and blew for the Senior Groupman Third Group. They waited. He s about the camp isn t he said Donal after a moment. I want all the men within whistle sound that aren t on sentry duty. Yes sir said Morphy. He ll be here in a moment. He knows it s me. Everybody sounds a little different on these whistles and you get to know them like voices after a while sir. Groupman said Donal. I d be obliged if you didn t feel the need to keep telling me things I already know. Yes sir said Morphy subsiding. Another shadow loomed up out of the darkness. What is it Morphy said the voice of Lee. I wanted to see you spoke up Donal before the Senior Groupman had a chance to answer. Morphy tells me you have a good sense of smell. I do pretty well said Lee. Sir I do pretty well sir. AH right said Donal. Both of you take a look at the map here. Look sharp. I m going to make a light He flicked on a little flash shielded by his hand. The map was revealed spread out on the log before them. Look here said Donal pointing. Three kilometers off this way. Do you know what that is Small valley said Morphy. It s way outside our sentry posts. We re going there Donal said. The light went out and he got up from the log. Us Us sir the voice of Lee came at him. The three of us said Donal. Come along. And he led the way surefootedly out into the darkness. Going through the woods he was pleased to discover the two Groupmen were almost as sure footed in the blackness as himself. They went slowly but carefully for something over a mile and then they felt the ground beginning to slope upward under their feet. All right. Down and easy said Donal quietly. The three men dropped to their bellies and began in skilled silence to work their way up to the crest of the slope. It took them a good half hour but at the end of that time they lay side by side just under the skyline of a ridge looking over into a well of blackness that was a small hidden valley below. Donal tapped Lee on the shoulder and when the other turned his face toward him in the gloom Donal touched his own nose pointed down into the valley and made sniffing motions. Lee turned his face back to the valley and lay in that position for several minutes apparently doing nothing at all. However at the end of that time he turned toward Donal again and nodded. Donal motioned them all back down the slope. Donal asked no questions and the two Groupmen volunteered nothing until they were once more back safely within the lines of their own sentry posts. Then Donal turned toward Lee. Well Groupman he said. What did you smell Lee hesitated. His voice when he answered had a note of puzzlement in it. I don t know sir he answered. Something sour sort of. I could just barely smell it. That s the best you can do inquired Donal. Something sour I don t know sir said Lee. I ve got a pretty good nose Force in fact a note of belligerence crept into his voice. I ve got a damned good nose. I never smelled anything like this before. I d remember. Have either of you men ever contracted on this planet before No said Lee. No sir answered Morphy. I see said Donal. They had reached the same log from which they had started a little less than three hours before. Well that ll be all. Thank you Groupmen. He sat down on the log again. The other two hesitated a moment and then went off together. Left alone Donal consulted the map again and sat thinking for a while. Then he rose and hunting up Morphy told him to take over the Force and stay awake. Donal himself was going to Command HQ. Then he took off. Command HQ was a blackout shell containing a sleepy orderly a map viewer and Skuak. The commandant around asked Donal as he came in. Been asleep three hours said Skuak. What re you doing up I wouldn t be if I didn t have the duty. Where s he sleeping About ten meters off in the bush at eleven o clock said Skuak. What s it all about You aren t going to wake him are you Maybe he ll still be awake said Donal and went out. Outside the shell and the little cleared space of the HQ area he cat footed around to the location Skuak had mentioned. A battle hammock was there slung between two trees with a form mounding its climate cover. But when Donal reached in to put his hand on the form s shoulder it closed only on the soft material of a rolled up battle jacket. Donal breathed out and turned about. He went back the way he had come past the Command HQ area and was stopped by a sentry as he approached the village. Sorry Force said the sentry. Commandant s order. No one to go into the village area. Not even himself he says. Booby traps. Oh yes thank you sentry said Donal and turning about went off into the darkness. As soon as he was safely out of sight however he turned again and worked his way back past the sentry lines and in among the houses of the village. The small but very bright moon which the Harmonites called The Eye of the Lord was just rising and throwing through the ruined walls alternate patches of tricky silver and black. Slipping in and out of the black places he began patiently to search the place house by house and building by building. It was a slow and arduous process carried out the way he was doing it in complete silence. And the moon mounted in the sky. It was nearly four hours later that he came upon what he was searching for. In the moonlit center of a small building s roofless shell stood Hugh Killien looking very tall and efficient in his chameleon battle dress. And close to him almost close enough to be in his arms was Anea the Select of Kultis. Beyond them both blurred by action of the polarizer that had undoubtedly been the means of allowing it to carry her invisibly to this spot was a small flying platform. ... Sweet Hugh was saying his resonant voice pitched so low it barely carried to the ears of Donal shrouded in shadow outside the broken wall Sweet you must trust me. Together we can stop him but you must let me handle it. His power is tremendous I know I know she interrupted fiercely all but wringing her hands. But every day we wait makes it more dangerous for you Hugh. Poor Hugh gently she raised her hand to touch his cheek what I ve dragged you into. Dragged Me Hugh laughed low and confidently. I went into this with my eyes open. He reached out for her. For you But she slipped away from him. Now s not the time for that she said. Anyway it s not me you re doing this for. It s Kultis. He s not going to use me she said fiercely to get my world under his thumb Of course it s for Kultis said Hugh. But you are Kultis Anea. You re everything I love about the Exotics. But don t you see all we have to work on are your suspicions. You think he s planning against the Bond against Sayona himself. But that s not enough for us to go to Kultis with. But what can I do she cried. I can t use his own methods against him. I can t lie or cheat or set agents on him while he still holds my contract. I ... I just can t. That s what being Select means She clenched her fists. I m trapped by my own mind my own body. She turned on him suddenly. You said when I first spoke to you two months ago you said you had evidence I was mistaken Hugh s tone was soothing. Something came to my attention at any rate I was wrong. I have my own built in moral system too Anea. It may not reach the level of psychological blockage like yours he drew himself up looking very martial in the moonlight. But I know what s honorable and right. Oh I know. I know Hugh she was all contrition But I get so desperate. You don t know If he had only made some move against you personally Me She stiffened. He wouldn t dare A Select of Kultis and besides she added with more of a touch of common sense than Donal had heretofore given her credit for possessing that d be foolish. He d have nothing to gain and Kultis would be alerted against him. I don t know Hugh scowled in the moonlight. He s a man like anyone else. If I thought Oh Hugh she giggled suddenly like any schoolgirl. Don t be absolutely ridiculous Ridiculous His tone rang with wounded feelings. Oh now I didn t mean that. Hugh now stop looking like an elephant that just had his trunk stung by a bee. There s no point in making things up. He s far too intelligent to she giggled again then sobered. No it s his head we have to worry about not his heart. Do you worry about my heart he asked in a low voice. She looked down at the ground. Hugh I do like you she said. But you don t understand. A Select is a ... a symbol. If you mean you can t No no not that she looked up quickly. I ve no block against love Hugh. But if I was involved in something ... something small and mean it s what it would do to those back on Kultis to whom a Select means something You do understand I understand that I m a soldier he said. And that I never know whether I ll have a tomorrow or not. I know she said. And they send you out on things like this dangerous things. My dear little Anea he said tenderly. How little you understand what it is to be a soldier. I volunteered for this job. Volunteered She stared at him. To go look for danger to go look for opportunities to prove myself he said fiercely. To make myself a name so that the stars will believe I m the kind of man a Select of Kultis could want and belong with Oh Hugh she cried on a note of enthusiasm. If you only could If only something would make you famous. Then we could really fight him He checked staring at her in the moonlight with such a sandbagged expression that Donal in the shadows nearly chuckled. Must you always be talking about politics he cried. But Donal had already turned away from the two of them. There was no point in listening further. He moved silently out of earshot but after that he went quickly not caring about noise. His search for Hugh had taken him clear across the village so that what was closest to him now was his own Force area. The short night of Harmony s northern continent was already beginning to gray toward dawn. He headed toward his own men one of his odd certainties chilling him. Halt cried one of his own sentries as Donal broke clear of the houses. Halt and give sir Come with me snapped Donal. Where s the Third Group Area from here This way sir said the man and led the way trotting to keep up with Donal s long strides. They burst into the Third Group area. Donal put his whistle to his lips and blew for Lee. What mumbled a sleepy voice from half a dozen meters distance. A hammock heaved and disgorged the bony figure of the ex miner. What the hell ... sir Donal strode up to him and with both hands swung him about so that he faced toward the enemy territory from which me dawn breeze was coming. Smell he ordered. Lee blinked scrubbed his nose with one knotty fist and stifled a yawn. He took a couple of deep breaths filling his lungs his nostrils spread and suddenly he snapped into complete awakedness. Same thing sir he said turning to Donal. Stronger. All right Donal wheeled about on the sentry. Take a signal to Senior Groupmen First and Second Groups. Get their men into trees high up in trees and get themselves up too. Trees sir Get going I want every man in this Force a dozen meters off the ground in ten minutes with their weapons The sentry turned to make off. If you ve got time after making that signal try to get through to Command HQ with it. If you see you can t climb a tree yourself. Got that Yes sir. Then get going Donal wheeled about and started himself on the business of getting the sleeping Third Group soldiers out of their hammocks and up the trunks of tall trees. It was not done in ten minutes. It was closer to twenty by the time they were all off the ground. A group of Dorsai schoolboys would have made it in a quarter of the time from the sounder sleep of youth. But on the whole thought Donal pulling himself at last up into a tree they had been in time and that was what counted. He did not stop as the others had at a height of a dozen meters. Automatically as he hurried the others out of their hammocks he had marked the tallest tree in the area and this he continued to climb until he had a view out over the tops of the lesser vegetation of the area. He shaded his eyes against the new rising sun peering off toward enemy territory and between the trees. Now what d we do floated up an aggrieved voice from below and off to one side of his own lofty perch. Donal took his palm from his eyes and tilted his head downward. Senior Groupman Lee he said in a low but carrying voice. You will shoot the next man who opens his mouth without being spoken to first by either you or myself. That is a direct order. He raised his head again amid a new silence and again peered off under his palm through the trees. The secret of observation is patience. He saw nothing but he continued to sit looking at nothing in particular and everything in general and after four slow minutes he was rewarded by a slight flicker of movement that registered on his gaze. He made no effort to search it out again but continued to observe in the same general area and gradually as if they were figures developing on a film out of some tangled background he became aware of men slipping from cover to cover a host of men approaching the camp. He leaned down again through the branches. No firing until I blow my whistle he said in an even lower voice than before. Pass the word quietly. He heard like the murmur of wind in those same branches the order being relayed on to the last man in the Third Group and he hoped to the Second and First Groups as well. The small chameleon clad figures continued to advance. Squinting at them through the occulting leaves and limbs he made out a small black cross sewn to the right shoulder of each battle dress. These were no mercenaries. These were native elite troops of the United Orthodox Church itself superb soldiers and wild fanatics both. And even as the recognition confirmed itself in his mind the advancing men broke into a charge upon the camp bursting forth all at once in the red gray dawnlight into full throated yips and howls underlaid a second later by the high pitched singing of their spring gun slivers as they ripped air and wood and flesh. They were not yet among the trees where Donal s force was hiding. But his men were mercenaries and had friends in the camp the Orthodox elite were attacking. He held them as long as he could and a couple of seconds longer and then putting his whistle to lips he blew with the damper completely off a blast that echoed from one end of the camp to the other. Savagely his own men opened up from the trees. And for several moments wild confusion reigned on the ground. It is not easy to tell all at once from which direction a sliver gun is being fired at you. For perhaps five minutes the attacking Orthodox soldiers labored under the delusion that the guns cutting them down were concealed in some groundlevel ambush. They killed ruthlessly everything they could see on their own eye level and by the time they had discovered their mistake it was too late. On their dwin died numbers was concentrated the fire of a hundred and fifty one rifles and if the marksmanship of only one of these was up to Dorsai standards that of the rest was adequate to the task. In less than forty minutes from the moment in which Donal had begun to harry his sleep drugged men up into the trees the combat was over. The Third Group slid down out of their trees and one of the first down a soldier named Kennedy calmly lifted his rifle to his shoulder and sent a sliver through the throat of an Orthodox that was writhing on the ground nearby. None of that cried Donal sharply and clearly and his voice carried out over the sea. A mercenary hates wanton killing it not being his business to slaughter men but to win battles. But not another shot was fired. The fact said something about a significant change in the attitude of the men of the Third Command toward a certain new officer by the name of Graeme. Under Donal s orders the wounded on both sides were collected and those with serious wounds medicated. The attacking soldiery had been wiped out almost to a man. But it had not been completely one sided. Of the three hundred odd men who had been on the ground at the time of the attack all but forty three and that included Force Leader Skuak were casualties. Prepare to retreat ordered Donal and at that A moment the man facing him turned his head to look past at something behind Donal. Donal turned about. Pounding out of the ruined village hand gun in his fist was Commandant Killien. In silence not moving the surviving soldiers of the Command watched him race up to him. He checked at their stare and his eyes swung about to focus on Donal. He dropped to a walk and strode up to within a few meters of the younger officer. Well Force Leader he snapped. What happened Report Donal did not answer him directly. He raised his hand and pointed to Hugh and spoke to two of the enlisted men standing by. Soldiers he said. Arrest that man. And hold him for immediate trial under Article Four of the Mercenaries Code. VETERAN Directly after getting into the city with his canceled contract stiff in his pocket and cleaning up in his hotel room Donal went down two flights to pay his visit to Marshal Hendrik Gait. He found him in and concluded certain business with him before leaving to pay his second call at a different hotel across the city. In spite of himself he felt a certain weakness in the knees as he announced his presence to the doorbot. It was a weakness most men would have excused him. William Prince of Ceta was someone few persons would have cared to beard in his own den and Donal in spite of what he had just experienced was still a young a very young man. However the doorbot invited him in and summoning up his calmest expression Donal strode into the suite. William was as the last time Donal had seen him busy at his desk. This was no affectation on William s part as a good many people between the stars could testify. Seldom has one individual accomplished in a single day what William accomplished in the way of business daily as a matter of routine. Donal walked up to the desk and nodded his greeting. William looked up at him. I m amazed to see you he said. Are you sir said Donal. William considered him in silence for perhaps half a minute. It s not often I make mistakes he said. Perhaps I can console myself with the thought that when I do they turn out to be on the same order of magnitude as my successes. What inhuman kind of armor are you wearing young man that leads you to trust yourself in my presence again Possibly the armor of public opinion replied Donal. I ve been in the public eye recently. I have something of a name nowadays. Yes said William. I know that type of armor from personal experience myself. And then said Donal you did send for me. Yes. And then without warning William s face underwent a change to an expression of such savagery as Donal had never seen before. How dare you snarled the older man viciously. How dare you Sir said Donal wooden faced I had no alternative. No alternative You come to me and have the effrontery to say no alternative Yes sir said Donal. William rose in swift and lithe motion. He stalked around the desk to stand face to face his eyes up tilted a Httle to bore into the eyes of this tall young Dorsai. I took you on to follow my orders nothing else he said icily. And you grandstand hero that you are wreck everything. Sir Yes sir . You backwoods moron You imbecile. Who told you to interfere with Hugh Killien Who told you to take any action about him Sir said Donal. I had no choice. No choice How no choice My command was a command of mercenaries answered Donal without moving a muscle. Commandant Killien had given his assurance in accordance with the Mercenaries Code. Not only had his assurance proved false he himself had neglected his command while in the field and in enemy territory. Indirectly he had been responsible for the death of over half his men. As ranking field officer present I had no choice but to arrest him and hold him for trial. A trial held on the spot It is the code sir said Donal. He paused. I regret it was necessary to shoot him. The court martial left me no alternative. Again said William. No alternative Graeme the space between the stars does not go to men who can find no alternatives He turned about abruptly walked back around his desk and sat down. All right he said coldly but with all the passion gone get out of here. Donal turned and walked toward the door as William picked up a paper from before him. Leave your address with my doorbot said William. I ll find some kind of a post for you on some other world. I regret sir said Donal. William looked up. It didn t occur to me that you would have any further need of me. Marshal Gait has already found me another post. William continued to look at him for a long moment. His eyes were as cold as the eyes of a basilisk. I see he said at last slowly. Well Graeme perhaps we shall have something to do with each other in the future. I ll hope we will said Donal. He went out. But even after he had closed the door behind him he thought he could feel William s eyes still coming at him through all the thickness of its panel. He had yet one more call to make before his duty on this world was done. He checked the directory out in the corridor and went down a flight. The doorbot invited him in and ArDell Montor as large and untidy as ever with his eyes only slightly blurred from drink met him halfway to the entrance. You said ArDell when Donal explained what it was he wanted. She won t see you He hunched his heavy shoulders looking at Donal and for a second his eyes cleared. Something sad and kind looked out of them to be replaced with bitter humor. But the old fox won t like it. I ll ask her. Tell her it s about something she needs to know said Donal. I ll do that. Wait here Ardell went out the door. He returned in some fifteen minutes. You re to go up he said. Suite 1890. Donal turned toward the door. I don t suppose said the Newtonian almost wistfully I ll be seeing you again. Why we may meet answered Donal. Yes said ArDell. He stared at Donal penetratingly. We may at that. We may at that. Donal went out and up to Suite 1890. The doorbot let him in. Anea was waiting for him slim and rigid in one of her high collared long dresses of blue. Well she said. Donal considered her almost sorrowfully. You really hate me don t you he said. You killed him she blazed. Oh of course. In spite of himself the exasperation she was always so capable of tapping in him rose to the surface. I had to for your own good. For my good He reached into his tunic pocket and withdrew a small telltale. But it was unlighted. For a wonder this apartment was unbugged. And then he thought of course I keep forgetting who she is. Listen to me he said. You ve been beautifully equipped by gene selection and training to be a Select but not to be anything else. Why can t you understand that interstellar intrigue isn t your dish Interstellar ... what re you talking about she demanded. Oh climb down for a moment he said wearily and more youngly man he had said anything since leaving home. William is your enemy. You understand that much but you don t understand why or how although you think you do. And neither do I he confessed although I ve got a notion. But the way for you to confound William isn t by playing his game. Play your own. Be the Select of Kultis. As the Select you re untouchable. If she said you ve nothing more to say than that All right he took a step toward her. Listen then. William was making an attempt to compromise you. Killien was his tool How dare you she erupted. How dare I he echoed wearily. Is there anyone in this interstellar community of madmen and madwomen who doesn t know that phrase and use it to me on sight I dare because it s the truth. Hugh she stormed at him was a fine honest man. A soldier and a gentleman Not a ... a Mercenary he inquired. But he was. He was a career officer she replied haughtily. There s a difference. No difference. He shook his head. But you wouldn t understand that. Mercenary isn t necessarily the dirty word somebody taught you it is. Never mind. Hugh Killien was worse than any name you might be mistaken enough to call me. He was a fool. Oh she whirled about. He took her by one elbow and turned her around. She came about in shocked surprise. Somehow it had never occurred to her to imagine how strong he was. Now the sudden realization of her physical helplessness in his hands shocked her into abrupt and unusual silence. Listen to the truth then he said. William dangled you like an expensive prize before Killien s eyes. He fed him full of the foolish hope that he could have you the Select of Kultis. He made it possible for you to visit Hugh that night at Faith Will Succour yes he said at her gasp I know about that. I saw you there with him. He also made sure Hugh would meet you just as he made sure that the Orthodox soldiers would attack. I don t believe it she managed. Don t you be a fool too Donal said roughly. How else do you think an overwhelming force of Orthodox elite troops happened to move in on the encampment at just the proper time What other men than fanatic Orthodox soldiery could be counted on to make sure none of the men in our unit escaped alive There was supposed to be only one man to escape from that affair Hugh Killien who would be in a position then to make a hero s claim on you. You see how much your good opinion is worth Hugh wouldn t Hugh didn t interrupted Donal. As I said he was a fool A fool but a good soldier. Nothing more was needed for William. He knew Hugh would be fool enough to go and meet you and good soldier enough not to throw his life away when he saw his command was destroyed. As I say he would have come back alone and a hero. But you saw through this she snapped. What s your secret A pipeline to the Orthodox camp Surely it was obvious from the situation a command exposed a commandant foolishly making a love tryst in a battleground that something like the attack was inevitable. I simply asked myself what kind of troops would be used and how they might be detected. Orthodox troops eat nothing but native herbs cooked in the native fashion. The odor of their cooking permeates their clothing. Any veteran of a Harmony campaign would be able to recognize their presence the same way. If his nose was sensitive enough. If he knew where to look for them There was only one logical spot Anyway she said coldly. This is beside the point. The point is suddenly she fired up before him Hugh wasn t guilty. You said it yourself. He was even according to you only a fool And you had him murdered He sighed in weariness. The crime he said for which Commandant Killien was executed was that of misleading his men and abandoning them in enemy territory. It was that he paid with his life for. Murderer she said. Get out But he said staring baffledly at her I ve just explained. You ve explained nothing she said coldly and from a distance. I ve heard nothing but a mountain of lies lies about a man whose boots you aren t fit to clean. Now will you get out or do I have to call the hotel guard You don t believe He stared at her wide eyed. Get out. She turned her back on him. Like a man in a daze he turned himself and walked blindly to the door and numbly out into the corridor. Still walking he shook his head like a person who finds himself in a bad dream and unable to wake up. What was this curse upon him She had not been lying she was not capable of doing so successfully. She had really heard his explanation and it had meant nothing to her. It was all so obvious so plain the machinations of William the stupidity of Killien. And she had not seen it when Donal pointed it out to her. She of all people a Select of Kultis Why Why Why Scourged by the devils of self doubt and loneliness Donal moved off down the corridor back in the direction of Gait s hotel. AIDE DE CAMP They met in the office of Marshal Gait in his Freiland home and the enormous expanse of floor and the high vaulted ceiling dwarfed them as they stood three men around a bare desk. Captain Lludrow this is my Aide Commandant Donal Graeme said Gait brusquely. Donal this is Russ Lludrow Patrol Chief of my Blue Patrol. Honored sir said Donal inclining his head. Pleased to meet you Graeme answered Lludrow. He was a fairly short compact man in his early forties very dark of skin and eye. You ll trust Donal with all staff information said Gait. Now what s your reconnaissance and intelligence picture There s no doubt about it they re planning an expeditionary landing on Oriente. Lludrow turned to ward the desk and pressed buttons on the map keyboard. The top of the desk cleared to transparency and they looked through at a non scale map of the Sir ian system. Here we are he said stabbing his finger at roe world of Freiland here s New Earth his finger moved to Freiland s sister planet and here s Oriente his finger skipped to a smaller world inward toward me sun in the positions they ll be in relative to one another twelve days from now. You see we ll have the sun between the two of us and also almost between each of our worlds and Oriente. They couldn t have picked a more favorable tactical position. Gait grunted examining the map. Donal was watching Lludrow with quiet curiosity. The man s accent betrayed him for a New Earthman but here he was high up on the Staff of Freiland s fighting forces. Of course the two Sirian worlds were natural allies being on the same side as Old Earth against the Venus Newton Cassida group but simply because they were so close there was a natural rivalry in some things and a career officer from one of them usually did best on his home world. Don t like it said Gait finally. It s a fool stunt from what I can see. The men they land will have to wear respirators and what the devil do they expect to do with their beachhead when they establish it Oriente s too close to the sun for terraforming or we would have done it from here long ago. It s possible said Lludrow calmly they could intend to mount an offensive from there against our two planets here. No no Gait s voice was harsh and almost irritable. His heavy face loomed above the map. That s as wild a notion as ierraforming Orients. They couldn t keep a base there supplied let alone using it to attack two large planets with fully established population and industry. Besides you don t conquer civilized worlds. That s a maxim. Maxims can become worn out though put in Donal. What demanded Gait looking up. Oh Donal. Don t interrupt us now. From the looks of it he went on to Lludrow it strikes me as nothing so much as a live exercise you know what I mean. Lludrow nodded as did Donal unconsciously. Live exercises were something that no planetary Chief of Staff admitted to but every military man recognized. They were actual small battles provoked with a handy enemy either for the purpose of putting a final edge on troops in training or to keep that edge on troops that had been too long on a standby basis. Gait almost alone among me Planetary Commanders of his time was firmly set against mis action not only in theory but in practice. He believed it more honest to hire his troops out as in the recent situation on Harmony when they showed signs of going stale. Donal privately agreed with him although mere was always the danger that when you hired troops out they lost the sense of belonging to you in particular and were sometimes spoiled through mismanagement. What do you think Gait was asking his Patrol chief. I don t know sir Lludrow answered. It seems the only sensible interpretation. The thing interrupted Donal again would be to go over some of the nonsensible interpretations as well to see if one of them doesn t constitute a possible danger. And from that Donal broke in Gait dryly you are my aide not my Battle Op. Still Donal was persisting when the marshal cut him off in a tone of definite command. That will be all Yes sir said Donal subsiding. Then said Gait turning back to Lludrow we ll regard this as a heaven sent opportunity to cut an arm or two off the fighting strength of the Newton Cassidan fleet and field force. Go back to your Patrol. I ll send orders. Lludrow inclined his head and was just about to turn and go when there was an interruption the faint swish of air from one of the big office doors sliding back and the tap of feminine heels approaching over the polished floor. They turned to see a tall dazzlingly beautiful woman with red hair coming at them across the office. Elvine said Gait. Not interrupting anything am I she called even before she came up to them. Didn t know you had a visitor. Russ said Gait. You know my sister in law s daughter The Elvine Rhy Elvine this is my Blue Patrol Chief Russ Lludrow. Very deeply honored said Lludrow bowing. Oh we ve met or at least I ve seen you before. She gave him her hand briefly then turned to Donai. Donal come fishing with me. I m sorry said Donal. I m on duty. No no Gait waved him off with a large hand. There s nothing more at the moment. Run along if you want. At your service then said Donal. But what a cold acceptance she turned on Lludrow. I m sure the Patrol chief wouldn t have hesitated like that. Lludrow bowed again. I d never hesitate where the Rhy was concerned. There she said. There s your model Donal. You should practice manners and speeches like that If you suggest it said Donal. Oh Donal. She tossed her head. You re hopeless. But come along anyway. She turned and left and he followed her. They crossed the great central hall and emerged into the garden terrace above the blue green bay of the shallow inland sea that touched the edges of Gait s home. He expected her to continue down to the docks but instead she whirled about in a small arbor and stood facing him. Why do you treat me like this she threw at him. Whyr Treat you He looked down at her. Oh you wooden man Her lips skinned back over her perfect teeth. What re you afraid of that I ll eat you up Wouldn t you he asked her quite seriously and she checked at his answer. Come on. Let s go fishing she cried and whirled about and ran down toward the dock. So they went fishing. But even slicing through the water in pursuit of a twisting fish at sixty fathoms depth Donal s mind was not on the sport. He let the small jet unit on his shoulders push him whither the chase led him and in the privacy of his helmet condemned himself darkly for his own ignorance. For it was this crime of ignorance which he abhorred above all else in this case his ignorance of the ways of women that had led him to believe he could allow himself the luxury of a casual and friendly acquaintanceship with a woman who wanted him badly but whom he himself did not want at all. She had been living here in this household when Gait had brought him here as a personal aide. She was by some intricate convolution of Freiland inheritance laws the marshal s responsibility in spite of the distance of their relationships and the fact that her own mother and some other relatives were still living. She was some five years older than Donal although in her wild energy and violence of emotion this difference was lost. He had found her excitements interesting at first and her company a balm to what though he would not admit it to himself in so many words was a recently bruised and very tender portion of his ego. That had been at first. You know she had said to him in one of her peculiar flashes of directness. Anybody would want me. Anybody would he admitted considering her beauty. It was not until later that he discovered to his dismay that he had accepted an invitation he had not even suspected was there. For four months now he had been established at the marshal s estate learning some of the elements of Freilander Staff Control and learning also to his increasing dismay some of the intricacies of a woman s mind. And in addition to it all he found himself puzzled as to why he did not want her. Certainly he liked Elvine Rhy. Her company was enjoyable her attractiveness was undeniable and a certain brightness and hunger in her personality matched similar traits in his own. Yet he did not want her. No not the least bit not at all. They gave up their fishing after several hours. Elvine had caught four averaging a good seven or eight kilograms. He had caught none. Elvine he began as he went up the steps of the .terrace with her. But before he could finish his carefully thought out speech an annunciator hidden in a rosebush chimed softly. Commandant said the rosebush gently the doorbot announces a Senior Groupman Tage Lee to see you. Do you wish to see him Lee murmured Donal. He raised his voice. From Coby He says he is from Coby answered the rosebush. I ll see him said Donal striding quickly toward the house. He heard the sound of running feet behind him and Elvine caught at his arm. Donal she said. This ll just take a minute he answered. I ll see you in the library in a few minutes. All right She let go and fell behind him. He went in and to the entrance hall. Lee the same Lee who had commanded his Third Group was waiting for him. Well Groupman said Donal shaking hands. What brings you here You do sir said Lee. He looked Donal in the eye with something of the challenge Donal had marked the first time Donal had seen him. Could you use a personal orderly Donal considered him. Why I ve been carrying my contract around since they let us all go after that business with Killien said Lee. If you want to know I ve been on a bat That s my cross. Out of uniform I m an alcoholic. In uniform it s better but sooner or later I get into a hassle with somebody. I ve been putting off signing up again because I .couldn t make up my mind what I wanted. Finally it came to me. I wanted to work for you. You look sober enough now said Donal. I can do anything for a few days even stop drinking. If I d come up here with the shakes you d never have taken me. Donal nodded. I m not expensive said Lee. Take a look at my contract. If you can t afford me yourself I ll sign up as a line soldier and you pull strings to get me as 95B signed to you. I don t drink if I ve got something to do and I can make myself useful. Look here He extended his hand in a friendly manner as if to shake hands again and suddenly there was a knife in it. That s a back alley hired killer trick said Donal. Do you think it d work with me With you no. Lee made the knife vanish again. That s why I want to work for you. I m a funny character commandant. I need something to hang to. I need it the way ordinary people need food and drink and home and friends. It s all there in the psychological index number on my contract if you want to copy it down and check on me. I ll take your word for it for now said Donal What is wrong with you I m borderline psycho Lee answered his lean face expressionless. Not correctable. I was born with a deficiency. What they tell me is I ve got no sense of right or wrong and I can t manage just by abstract rules. The way the doctors put it when I first got my contract I need my own personal living god in front of me all the time. You take me on and tell me to cut the throat of all the kids under five I meet and that s fine. Tell me to cut my own throat the same thing. Everything s all right then. You don t make yourself sound very attractive. I m telling you the truth. I can t tell you anything else. I m like a bayonet that s been going around all my life looking for a rifle to fit on to and now I ve found it. So don t trust me. Take me on probation for five years ten years the rest of my life. But don t shut me out. Lee half turned and pointed one bony finger at the door behind him. Out there is hell for me commandant. Anything inside here is heaven. I don t know said Donal slowly. I don t know that I d want the responsibility. No responsibility. Lee s eyes were shining and it struck home to Donal suddenly that the man was terrified: terrified of being refused. Just tell me. Try me now. Tell me to get down and bark like a dog. TeU me to cut my left hand off at the wrist. As soon as they ve grown me a new one I ll be back to do whatever you want me to do. The knife was suddenly back in his hand. Want to see Put that away snapped Donal. The knife disappeared. All right I ll buy your contract personally. My suit of rooms are third door to the right the head of the stairs. Go up there and wait for me. Lee nodded. He offered no word of thanks. He only turned and went. Donal shook himself mentally as if the emotional charge that had crackled in the air about him the last few seconds was a thing of physical mass draped heavily upon his shoulders. He turned and went to the library. Elvine was standing looking out the great expanse of open wall at the ocean as he came in. She turned quickly at the sound of his steps and came to meet him. What was it she asked. One of my soldiers from the Harmony business he said. I ve taken him on as my personal orderly. He looked down at her. Ev Instantly she drew a little away from him. She looked out the wall one hand tailing down to play with a silver half statuette that sat on a low table beside her. Yes she said. He found it very hard to get the words out. Ev you know I ve been around here a long time he said. A long time At that she turned to face him with a slight look of startlement. Four months It seems like hours only. Perhaps he said doggedly. But it has been a long time. So perhaps it s just as well I m leaving. Leaving Her eyes shot wide hazel eyes staring at him. Who said you were leaving I have to of course he said. But I thought I ought to clear something up before I go. I ve liked you a great deal Ev But she was too quick for him. Liked me she cried. I should think you should Why I haven t hardly had a minute to myself for entertaining you. I swear I hardly know what it looks like any more outside of this place Liked me You certainly ought to like me after the way I ve put myself out for you He gazed at her furious features for a long moment and then he smiled ruefully. You re quite right he said Tve put you to a great deal of trouble. Pardon me for being so dense as not to notice it He bent his head to her. Til be going now. He turned and walked away. But he had hardly taken a dozen steps across the sunlit library before she called his name. Donal He turned and saw her staring after him her face stiff her fists clenched at her side. Donal you ... you can t go she said tightly. I beg your pardon He stared at her. You can t go she repeated. Your duty is here. You re assigned here. No. He shook his head. You don t understand Ev. This business of Oriente s come up. Fm going to ask the marshal to assign me to one of the ships. You can t. Her voice was brittle. He isn t here. He s gone down to the Spaceyard. Well then I ll go there and ask him. You can t. I ve already asked him to leave you here. He promised. You whatT The words exploded from his lips in a tone more suited to the field man to this quiet mansion. I asked him to leave you here. He turned and stalked away from her. Donal He heard her voice crying despairingly after him but there was nothing she or anyone in that house could have done to stop him then. He found Gait examining the new experimental model of a two man anti personnel craft. The older man looked up in surprise as Donal came up. What is it he asked. Could I see you alone for a minute sir said Donal. A private and urgent matter. Gait shot him a keen glance but motioned aside with his head and they stepped over into the privacy of a tool control boom. What is it asked Gait. Sir said Donal. I understand Elvine asked you if I couldn t continue to be assigned to your household during the upcoming business we talked about with Patrol Chief Lludrow earlier today. That s right. She did. I did not know of it said Donal meeting the older man s eyes. It was not my wish. Not your wish No sir. Oh said Gait. He drew a long breath and rubbed his chin with one thick hand. Turning his head aside he gazed out through the screen of the control booth at the experimental ship. I see he said. I didn t realize. No reason why you should Donal felt a sudden twist of emotion inside him at the expression on the older man s face. I should have spoken to you before sir. No no Gait brushed the matter aside with a wave of his hand. The responsibility s mine. I ve never had children. No experience. She has to get herself settled in life one of these days and ... well I have a high opinion of you Donal. You ve been too kind to me already sir Donal said miserably. No no ... well mistakes will happen. I ll see you have a place with the combat forces right away of course. Thank you said Donal. Don t thank me boy. Abruptly Gait looked old. I should have remembered. You re a Dorsai. STAFF LIAISON Welcome aboard said a pleasant faced Junior Captain as Donal strode through the gas barrier of the inner lock. The Junior Captain was in his early twenties a black haired square faced young man who looked as if he had gone in much for athletics. I m J.C. Allmin Clay Andresen. Donal Graeme. They saluted each other. Then they shook hands. Had any ship experience asked Andresen. Eighteen months of summer training cruises in the Dorsai answered Donal. Command and armament no technical posts. Command and armament said Andresen are plenty good enough on a Class 4J ship. Particularly Command. You ll be senior officer after me if anything happens. He made the little ritual gesture reaching out to touch a close white carbon plastic wall beside him. Not that I m suggesting you take over in such a case. My First can handle things all right. But you may be able to give him a hand if it should happen. Be honored said Donal Care to look over the ship I m looking forward to it. Right. Step into the lounge then. Andresen led the way across the small reception room and through a sliding bulkhead to a corridor that curved off ahead of them to right and left. They went through another door in the wail of the corridor directly in front of them down a small passage and emerged through a final door into a large pleasantly decorated circular room. Lounge said Andresen. Control center s right under our feet reversed gravity. He pressed a stud on the wall and a section of the floor slid back. You ll have to flip he warned and did a head first dive into the hole. Donal who knew what to expect followed the J.C. s example. The momentum of his dive shot him through and into another circular chamber of the same size as the lounge in which everything would have been upside down and nailed to the ceiling except for the small fact that here the gravity was reversed and what had been down was up and up was down instead. Here said Andresen as Donal landed lightly on the floor at one side of the opening is our Control Eye. As you probably saw when you were moving in to come aboard the Class 4J is a ball and hammer ship. He pressed several studs and in the large globe floating in the center of the floor that which he had referred to as the Control Eye a view formed of their craft as seen from some little distance outside the ship. Half framed against the star pricked backdrop of space and with just a sliver of the curved edge of Freiland showing at the edge of the scene she floated. A sphere thirty meters in diameter connected by two slim shafts a hundred meters each in length to a rhomboid shape that was the ship s thrust unit some five meters in diameter at its thickest and looking like a large child s spinning top pivoted on two wires mat clamped it at the middle. This was the hammer. The ship proper was the ball. No phase shift equipment asked Donal. He was thinking of the traditional cylinder shape of the big ships that moved between the stars. Don t fool yourself answered Andresen. The grid s there. We just hope the enemy doesn t see it or doesn t hit it. We can t protect it so we try to make it invisible. His finger stabbed out to indicate the apparently bare shafts. There s a covering grid running the full length of the ship from thrust to nose. Painted black. Donal nodded thoughtfully. Too bad a polarizer won t work in the absence of atmosphere he said. You can say that agreed Andresen. He flicked off the Eye. Let s look around the rest of the ship by hand. He led out a door and down a passage similar to the one by which they had entered the lounge. They came out into a corridor that was the duplicate of the curving one they had passed in the other half of the ship. Crew s quarters mess hall on the other one explained Andresen. Officer s quarters storage and suppliers repair section on this one. He pushed open a door in the corridor wall opposite them and they stepped into a section roughly the size of a small hotel room bounded on its farther side by the curving outer shell of the ship proper. The shell in this section was at the moment on transparent and the complicated dentist s chair facing the bank of controls at the foot of the transparency was occupied although the figure in it was dressed in coveralls only. My First said Andresen. The figure looked up over the headrest of the chair. It was a woman in her early forties. Hi All she said. Just checking the override. Andresen made a wry grimace at Donal. Antipersonnel weapons he explained. Nobody likes to shoot the poor helpless characters out of the sky as they fall in for an assault so it s an officer s job. I usually take it over myself if I m not tied up with something else at the moment. Staff Liaison Donal Graeme First Officer Coa Benn. Donal and she shook hands. Well shall we get on asked Andresen. They toured the rest of the ship and ended up before the door of Donal s stateroom in Officer s Country. Sorry said Andresen. But we re short of bunk space. Full complement under battle conditions. So we had to put your orderly in with you. If you ve no objection Not at all said Donal. Good Andresen looked relieved. That s why I like the Dorsai. They re so sensible. He clapped Donal on the shoulder and went hurriedly off back to his duties of getting his ship and crew ready for action. Entering his stateroom Donal found Lee had already set up both their gear including a harness hammock for himself to supplement the single bunk that would be Donal s. All set asked Donal. All set answered Lee. He still chronically forgot the sir but Donal having already had some experience with the fanatic literal mindedness with which the man carried out any command given him had refrained from making an issue of it. You settle my contract yet I haven t had time said Donal. It can t be done in a day. You knew that didn t you No said Lee. All I ever did was hand it over. And then later on when I was through my term of service they gave it back to me and the money I had coming. Well it usually takes a number of weeks or months Donal said. He explained what it had never occurred to him that anyone should fail to know that the contracts are owned entirely by the individual s home community or world and that a contract agreement was a matter for settlement between the employer and the employee s home government. The object was not to provide the individual so much with a job and a living wage as to provide the home government with favorable monetary and contractual balances which would enable them to hire in their turn the trained specialists they needed. In the case of Lee s contract since Donal was a private employer and had money to offer but no contractual credits the matter of Lee s employment had to be cleared with the Dorsai authorities as well as the authorities on Coby where Lee came from. That s more of a formality than anything else though Donal assured him. I m allowed an orderly since I ve been commandant rank. And the intent to hire s been registered. That means your home government won t draft you for any special service some place else. Lee nodded which was almost his utmost expression of relief. ... Signal chimed the annunciator in the stateroom wall by the door suddenly. Signal for Staff Liaison Graeme. Report to Flagship immediately. Staff Liaison Graeme report to Flagship immediately. Donal cautioned Lee to keep from under the feet of the ship s regular crew and left. The Flagship of the Battle made up by the Red and Green Patrols of the Freilander Space Force was like the Class 4J Donal had just left already in temporary loose orbit around Oriente. It took him some forty minutes to reach her and when he entered her lock reception room and gave his name and rank he was assigned a guide who took him to a briefing room in the ship s interior. The room was filled by some twenty odd other Staff Liaisons. They ranged in rank from Warrant Couriers to a Sub Patrol Chief in his fifties. They were already seated facing a platform and as Donal entered he was apparently the last to arrive a Senior Captain of flag rank entered followed closely by Blue Patrol Chief Lludrow. All right gentlemen said the Senior Captain and the room came to order. Here s the situation. He waved a hand and the wall behind him dissolved to reveal an artist s extrapolation of the coming bat tie. Oriente floated in black space surrounded by a number of ships in various patterns. The size of the ships had been grossly exaggerated in order to make them visible in comparison with the planet which was roughly two thirds the diameter of Mars. The largest of these the Patrol Class long cylindrical interstellar warships were in varying orbit eighty to five hundred kilometers above the planet s surface so that the integration of their pattern enclosed Oriente in web of shifting movement. A cloud of smaller craft C4Js A subclass 9s courier ships firing platforms and individual and two man gnat class boats held position out beyond and planetward of them right down into the atmosphere. We think said the Senior Captain that the enemy at effective speed and already braking will come into phase about here a cloud of assault ships winked into existence abruptly a half million kilometers sunward of Oriente and in the sun s eye. They fell rapidly toward the planet swelling visibly in size. As they approached they swung into a circular landing orbit about the planet. The smaller craft closed in and the two fleets came together in a myriad of patterns whose individual motions the eye could not follow all at once. Then the attacking fleet emerged below the mass of the defenders spewing a sudden cloud of tiny objects that were the assault troops. These drifted down attacked by the smaller craft while the majority of the assault ships from Newton and Cassida began to disappear like blown out candles as they sought safety in a phase shift that would place them light years from the scene of battle. To Donal s fine trained professional mind it was both beautifully thrilling and completely false. No battle since time began had ever gone off with such ballet grace and balance and none ever would. This was only an imaginative guess at how the battle would take place and it had no place in it for the inevitable issuance of wrong orders the individual hesitations the underestimation of an opponent the navigational errors that resulted in collisions or firing upon a sister ship. These all remained for the actual event like harpies roosting upon the yet unblasted limbs of a tree as dawn steals like some gray thief onto the field where men are going to fight. In the coming action off Oriente there would be good ac tions and bad wise decisions and stupid ones and none of them would matter. Only their total at the end of the day. ... Well gentlemen the Senior Captain was saying there you have it as Staff sees it. Your job yours personally as Staff Liaisons is to observe. We want to know anything you can see anything you can discover anything you can or think you can deduce. And of course he hesitated with a wry smile there s nothing we d appreciate quite so much as a prisoner. There was a ripple of general laughter at this as all men there knew the fantastic odds against being able to scoop up a man from an already broken open enemy ship under the velocities and other conditions of a space battle and find him still alive even if you succeeded. That s all said the Senior Captain. The Staff Liaisons rose and began to crowd out the door. Just a minute Graeme Donal turned. The voice was the voice of Lludrow. The Patrol Chief had come down from the platform and was approaching him. Donal turned back to meet him. I d like to speak to you for a moment said Lludrow. Wait until the others are out of the room. They stood together in silence until the last of the Staff Liaisons had left and the Senior Captain had disappeared. Yes sir said Donal. I m interested in something you said or maybe were about to say the other day when I met you at Marshal Gait s in the process of assessing this Oriente business. You said something that seemed to imply doubt about the conclusions we came to. But I never did hear what it was you had in mind. Care to tell me now Why nothing sir said Donal. Staff and the marshal undoubtedly know what they re doing. It isn t possible then you saw something in the situation that we didn t Donal hesitated. No sir. I don t know any more about enemy intentions and plans than the rest of you. Only Donal looked down into the dark face below his wavering on the verge of speaking his mind. Since the affair with Anea he had been careful to keep his flights of mental perception to himself. Possibly I m just suspicious sir. So are all of us man said Lludrow with a hint of impatience. What about it In our shoes what would you be doing In your shoes said Donal throwing discretion to the winds I d attack Newton Lludrow s jaw fell. He stared at Donal. By heaven he said after a moment. You re not shy about expedients are you Don t you know a civilized world can t be conquered Donal allowed himself the luxury of a small sigh. He made an effort to explain himself once again in terms others could understand. I remember the marshal saying that he said. I m not so sanguine myself. In fact mat s a particular maxim I d like to try to disprove some day. However that s not what I meant. I didn t mean to suggest we attempt to take Newton but mat we attack it. I suspect the Newtonians are as maxim ridden as ourselves. Seeing us try the impossible they re very like to conclude we ve suddenly discovered some way to make it possible. From their reactions to such a conclusion we might learn a lot including about the Oriente affair. Lludrow s look of amazement was tightening into a frown. Any force attacking Newton would suffer fantastic losses he began. Only if they intended to carry the attack through interrupted Donal eagerly. It could be a feint nothing more man that. The point wouldn t be to do real damage but to upset the thinking of the enemy strategy by introducing an unexpected factor. Still said Lludrow to make their feint effective the attacking force would have to run the risk of being wiped out. Give me a dozen ships Donal was beginning when Lludrow started and blinked like a man waking up from a dream. Give you he said and smiled. No no commandant we were speaking theoretically. Staff would never agree o such a wild unplanned gamble and I ve no authority to order it on my own. And if I did how could I justify giving command of such a force to a young man with only field experience who s never held command in a ship in his life He shook his head. No Graeme but I will admit your idea s interesting. And I wish one of us at least had thought of it. Would it hurt to mention it It wouldn t do any good to argue with a plan Staff has already had in operation for over a week now. He was smiling broadly. In fact my reputation would find itself cut rather severely. But it was a good idea Graeme. You ve got the makings of a strategist. I ll mention the fact in my report to the marshal. Thank you sir said Donal. Back to your ship then said Lludrow. Good by sir. Donal saluted and left. Behind him Lludrow frowned for just a moment more over what had just been said before he turned his mind to other things. ACTING CAPTAIN Space battles mused Donal are said to be held only by mutual consent. It was one of those maxims he distrusted and which he had privately determined to disprove whenever he should get the chance. However as he stood now by the screen of the Control Eye in the main control room of the C4J watching the enemy ships appearing to swell with the speed of their approach he was forced to admit that in this instance it was true. Or true at least to the extent that mutual consent is involved when you attack an enemy point that you know that enemy will defend. But what if he should not defend it after all What if he should do the entirely unexpected Contact in sixty seconds. Contact in sixty seconds announced the speaker over his head. Fasten all said Andresen calmly into the talker before him. He sat with his First and Second Officers duplicating him on either side in a dentist s chair across the room seeing the situation not in actual images as Donal was doing but from the readings of his instruments. And his knowledge was therefore the more complete one. Cumbersome in his survival battle suit Donal climbed slowly into the similar chair that had been rigged for him before the Eye and connected himself to the chair. In case the ship should be broken apart he and it would remain together as long as possible. With luck the two of them would be able to make it to a survival ship in orbit around Oriente in forty or fifty hours if none of some dozens of factors intervened. He had time to settle himself before the Eye before contact was made. In those last few seconds he glanced around him finding it a little wonderful in spite of all he knew that this white and quiet room undisturbed by the slightest tremor should be perched on the brink of savage combat and its own quite possible destruction. Then mere was no more time for thinking. Contact with the enemy had been made and he had to keep his eyes on the scene. Orders had been to harry the enemy rather than close with him. Estimates had been twenty per cent casualties for the enemy five per cent for the defending forces. But such figures without meaning to be are misleading. To the man in the battle twenty per cent or even five per cent casualties do not mean that he will be twenty per cent or five per cent wounded. Nor in a space battle does it mean that one man out of five or one man out of twenty will be a casualty. It means one ship out of five or one ship out of twenty and every living soul aboard her for in space one hundred per cent casualties mean ninety eight per cent dead. There were three lines of defense. The first were the light craft that were meant to slow down the oncoming ships so that the larger more ponderous craft could try to match velocities well enough to get to work with heavy weapons. Then there were the large craft themselves in their present orbits. Lastly there were the second line of smaller craft that were essentially antipersonnel as the attackers dropped their space suited assault troops. Donal in a C4J was in the first line. There was no warning. There was no full moment of battle. At the last second before contact the gun crews of the C4J had opened fire. Then It was all over. Donal blinked and opened his eyes trying to remember what had happened. He was never to remember. The room in which he lay fastened to his chair had been split as if by a giant hatchet. Through the badly lit gap he could see a portion of an officer s stateroom. A red self contained flare was burning somewhere luridly overhead a signal that the control room was without air. The Control Eye was slightly askew but still operating. Through the transparency of his helmet Donal could see the dwindling lights that marked the enemy s departure on toward Oriente. He struggled upright in his chair and turned his head toward the Control panel. Two were quite dead. Whatever had split the room open had touched them too. The Second officer was dead Andresen was undeniably dead. Coa Benn still lived but from the feeble movements she was making in the chair she was badly hurt. And there was nothing anyone could do for her now that they were without air and all prisoners in their suits. Donal s soldier trained body began to react before his mind had quite caught up to it. He found himself breaking loose the fastenings that connected him to his chair. Unsteadily he staggered across the room pushed the lolling head of Andresen out of the way and thumbed the intership button. C4J One twenty nine he said. C4J One twenty nine he continued to repeat the cabalistic numbers until the screen before him lit up with a hel meted face as bloodless as that of the dead man in the chair underneath him. KL said the face. A twenty three Which was code for: Can you still navigate Donal looked over the panel. For a wonder it had been touched by what had split the room but barely. Its instruments were all reading. A twenty nine he replied affirmatively. M Forty said the other and signed off. Donal let the intership button slip from beneath his finger. M Forty was Proceed as ordered Proceed as ordered for the C4J One twenty nine the ship Donal was in meant get in close to Oriente and pick off as many assault troops as you can. Donal set about the unhappy business of removing his dead and dying from their control chairs. Coa he noted as he removed her more gently than the others seemed dazed and unknowing. There were no broken bones about her but she appeared to have been pinched or crushed on one side by just a touch of what had killed the others. Her suit was tight and intact. He thought she might make it after all. Seating himself in the captain s chair he called the gun stations and other crew posts. Report he ordered. Gun stations One and Five through Eight answered. We re going in planetward he said. All able men abandon the weapon stations for now and form a working crew to seal ship and pump some air back in here. Those not sealed off assemble in lounge. Senior surviving crewman to take charge. There was a slight pause. Then a voice spoke back to him. Gun Maintenanceman Ordovya it said. I seem to be surviving Senior sir. Is this the captain Staff Liaison Graeme Acting Captain. Your officers are dead. As ranking man here I ve taken command. You have your orders Maintenanceman. Yes sir. The voice signed off. Donal set himself about the task of remembering his ship training. He got the C4J underway toward Oriente and checked all instruments. After a while the flare went out abruptly overhead and a slow hissing noise registered on his eardrums at first faintly then scaling rapidly up in volume and tone to a shriek. His suit lost some of its drum tightness. A few moments later a hand tapped him on his shoulder. He turned around to look at a blond headed crewman with his helmet tilted back. Ship tight sir said the crewman. I m Ordovya. Donal loosened his own helmet and flipped it back inhaling the room air gratefully. See to the First Officer he ordered. Do we have anything in the way of a medic aboard No live medic sir. We re too small to rate one. Freeze unit though. Freeze her then. And get the men back to their posts. We ll be on top of the action again in another twenty minutes. Ordovya went off. Donal sat at his controls taking the C4J in cautiously and with the greatest possible margins of safety. In principle he knew how to operate the craft he was seated in but no one knew better than he what a far cry he was from being an experienced pilot and captain. He could handle this craft the way someone who has taken half a dozen riding lessons can handle a horse that is he knew what to do but he did none of it instinctively. Where Andresen had taken in the readings of all his instruments at a glance and reacted immediately Donal concentrated on the half dozen main telltales and debated with himself before acting. So it was that they came late to the action on the edges of Oriente s atmosphere but not so late that the assault troops were already safely down out of range. Donal searched the panel for the override button on the antipersonnel guns and found it. Override on the spray guns he announced into the mike before him. He looked at the instruments but he saw in his imagination the dark and tumbling space suited bodies of the assault troops and he thought of the several million tiny slivers of carbon steel that would go sleeting among them at the touch of his ringer. There was a slight pause before answering and then the voice of Ordovya came back. Sir ... if you like the gunmen say they re used to handling the weapons Maintenanceman snapped Donal. You heard he order. Override Override sir. Donal looked at his scope. The computer had his targets in the gunsights. He pressed the button and held it down. Two hours later the C4J then in standby orbit was ordered to return to rendezvous and its captain to report to his Sub Patrol chief. At the same time came a signal for all Staff Liaisons to report to the flagship and one for Staff Liaison Donal Graeme to report personally to Blue Patrol Chief Lludrow. Considering the three commands Donal called Ordovya on the ship s phone and directed him to take care of the first errand. He himself he decided could take care of the other two which might or might not be connected. Arriving at the flagship he explained his situation to the Reception Officer who made a signal both to the Staff Liaison people and to the Blue Patrol chief. You re to go directly to Lludrow he informed Donal and assigned him a guide. Donal found Lludrow in a private office on the flagship that was not much bigger than Donal s stateroom in the C4J. Good said Lludrow getting up behind a desk as Donal came in and coming briskly around it. He waited until the guide had left and then he put a dark hand on Donal s arm. How d your ship come through he asked. Navigating said Donal. There was a direct hit on the control room though. All officers casualties. All officers Lludrow peered sharply at him. And you I took command of course. There was nothing left though but antipersonnel mop up. Doesn t matter said Lludrow. You were Acting Captain for part of the action Yes. Fine. That s better than I hoped for. Now said Lludrow tell me something. Do you feel like sticking your neck out For any cause I can approve of certainly answered Donal. He considered the smaller rather ugly man and found himself suddenly liking the Blue Patrol chief. Directness like this had been a rare experience for him since he had left the Dorsai. All right. If you agree we ll both stick our necks out. Lludrow looked at the door of the office but it was firmly closed. I m going to violate top security and enlist you in an action contrary to Staff orders if you don t mind. Top security echoed Donal feeling a sudden coolness at the back of his neck. Yes. We ve discovered what was behind this Newton Cassida landing on Oriente ... you know Oriente I ve studied it of course said Donal. At school and recently when I signed with Freiland. Temperatures up to seventy eight degrees centigrade rock desert and a sort of native vine and cactus jungle. No large bodies of water worth mentioning and too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Right. Well said Lludrow the important point is it s big enough to hide in. They re down there now and we can t root them out in a hurry and not at all unless we go down there after them. We thought they were making the landing as a live exercise and we could expect them to run the gauntlet back out in a few days or weeks. We were wrong. Wrong We ve discovered their reason for making the landing on Oriente. It wasn t what we thought at all. That s fast work said Donal. What s it been ... four hours since the landing They made fast work of it said Lludrow. The news is being sat on but they are firing bursts of a new kind of radiation from projectors that fire once move and fire again from some new hiding place a large number of projectors. And the bursts they fire hit old Sinus himself. We re getting increased sun spot activity. He paused and looked keenly at Dona as if waiting for comment. Donal took his time considering the situation. Weather difficulties he said at last. That s it said Lludrow energetically as though Donal had been a star pupil who had just shone again. Meteorological opinion says it can be serious the way they re going about it. And we ve already heard their price for calling it off. It seems there s a trade commission of theirs on New Earth right now. No official connection but the Commission s got the word across. Donal nodded. He was not at all surprised to hear that trade negotiations were going on in normal fashion between worlds who were at the same time actively fighting each other. That was the normal course of existence between the stars. The ebb and flow of trained personnel on a contractual basis was the lifeblood of civilization. A world who tried to go it on its own would be left behind within a matter of years to wither on the vine or at last buy the mere necessities of existence at ruinous cost to itself. Competition meant the trading of skilled minds and that meant contracts and contracts meant continuing negotiations. They want a reciprocal brokerage agreement Lludrow said. Donal looked at him sharply. The open market trading of contracts had been abandoned between the worlds for nearly fifty years. It amounted to speculating in human lives. It removed the last shreds of dignity and security from the individual and treated him as so much livestock or hardware to be traded for no I other reason than the greatest possible gain. The Dorsai along with the Exotics Mara and Kultis had led the fight against it. There was another angle as well. On tight worlds such as those of the Venus Group which included Newton and Cassida and the Friendlies the open market became one more tool of the ruling group while on loose worlds like Freiland it became a spot of vulnerability where foreign credits could take advantage of local situations. I see said Donal. We ve got three choices Lludrow said. Give in accept the agreement. Suffer the weather effects over a period of months while we clean out Oriente by orthodox military means. Or pay a prohibitive price in casualties by a crash campaign to clean up Oriente in a hurry. We d lose as many lives to the conditions down there as we would to the enemy in a crash campaign. So it s my notion that it s a time to gamble my notion by the way not Staff s. They don t know anything about this and wouldn t stand for it if they did. Care to try your idea of throwing a scare into Newton after all With pleasure said Donal quickly his eyes glowing. Save your enthusiasm until you hear what you re going to have to do it with replied Lludrow dryly. Newton maintains a steady screen of ninety ships of the first class in defensive orbit around it. I can give you five. SUB PATROL CHIEF Five said Donai He felt a small crawling sensa tion down his spine. He had before Lludrow turned him down the first time worked out rather carefully what could be done with Newton and how a man might go about it. His plan had called for a lean and compact little fighting force of thirty first class ships in a triangular organization of three sub patrols ten ships to each. You see Lludrow was explaining it s not what craft I have available even with what losses we ve just suffered my Blue Patrol counts over seventy ships of the first class alone. It s what ships I can trust to you on a job where at least the officers and probably the men as well will realize that it s a mission that should be completely volunteer and that s being sneaked off when Staff s back is turned. The captains of these ships are all strongly loyal to me personally or I couldn t have picked them. He looked at Donal. All right he said. I know it s impossible. Just agree with me and we can forget the matter. Can I count on obedience asked Donal. That said Lludrow is the one thing I can guarantee you. I ll have to improvise said Donal. I ll go in with them look at the situation and see what can be done. Fair enough. It s decided then. It s decided said Donal. Then come along. Lludrow turned and led him out of the office and through corridors to a lock. They passed through the lock to a small courier ship empty and waiting for them there and took it to a ship of the first class some fifteen minutes off. Ushered into the ship s large and complex main control room. Donal found five senior captains waiting for him. Lludrow accepted a salute from a gray haired powerful looking man who by saluting revealed himself as captain of this particular ship. Captain Bannerman said Lludrow introducing him to Donal Captain Graeme. Donal concealed a start well. In the general process of his thinking he had forgotten that a promotion for himself would be necessary. You could hardly put a Staff Liaison with a field rank of commandant over men captaining ships of the first class. Gentlemen said Lludrow turning to the other executive officers. I ve been forced to form your five ships rather hastily into a new Sub Patrol unit. Captain Graeme will be your new chief. You ll form a reconnaissance outfit to do certain work near the very center of the enemy space area and I want to emphasize the point that Captain Graeme s command is absolute. You will obey any and all of his orders without question. Now are there any questions any of you would like to ask before he assumes command The five captains were silent. Fine then. Lludrow led Donal down the line. Captain Graeme this is Captain Aseini. Honored said Donal shaking hands. Captain Sukaya Mendez. At your service captain. Captain El Man. Honored said Donal. A scarred Dorsai face neanng forty looked at him. I believe I know your family name captain. High Island isn t it Sir near Bridgehead answered El Man. I ve heard of the Graemes. Donal moved on. And Captain Ruoul. Honored. Well then said Lludrow stepping back briskly. I ll leave the command in your hands Captain Graeme. Anything in the way of special supplies Torpedoes sir answered Donal. I ll have Armaments Supply contact you said Lludrow And left. Five hours later with several hundred extra torpedoes loaded the five ship Sub Patrol moved out for deep space. It was DonaTs wish that they get clear of the home base as soon as possible and off where the nature of their expedition could not be discovered and countermanded. With the torpedoes Lee had come aboard Donal having remembered that his orderly had been left aboard the C4J. Lee had come through the battle very well being strapped in his hammock harness throughout in a section of the ship mat was undamaged by the hit that had pierced to the control room. Now Donal had definite instructions for him. I want you with me this time he said. You ll stay by me. I doubt very much I might need you but if I do I want you in sight. I ll be there said Lee unemotionally. They had been talking in the Patrol chief s stateroom which had been opened to Donal. Now Donal headed for the main control room Lee following behind. When Donal reached that nerve center of the ship he found all three of the snip s officers engaged in calculating the phase shift with Bannerman overseeing. Sir said Bannerman as Donal came up. Looking at him Donal was reminded of his mathematics instructor at school and he was suddenly and painfully reminded of his own youth. About ready to shift asked Donal. In about two minutes. Since you specified no particular conclusion point the computer run was a short one. We ve merely been making the usual checks to make sure mere s no danger of collision with any object. A four light year jump sir. 4Good said Donal. Come here with me Bannerman. He led the way over to the larger and rather more elaborate Control Eye that occupied the center of this control room and pressed keys. A scene from the library file of the ship filled the globe. It showed a green white planet with two moons floating in space and lit by the illumination from a G2 type sun. The orange and the two pips said Bannerman revealing a moonless Freilander s dislikes for natural planetary satellites. Yes said Donal. Newton. He looked at Bannerman. How close can we hit it Sir said Bannerman looking around at him. Donal waited holding his eyes steady on the older man. Bannerman s gaze shifted and dropped back to the scene in the Eye. We can come out as close as you want sir he answered. See in deep space jumps we have to stop to make observations and establish our location precisely. But the precise location of any civilized planet s already established. To come out at a safe distance from their defenses I d say sir I didn t ask you for a safe distance from their defenses said Donal quietly. I said how close Bannerman looked up again. His face had not paled but there was now a set quality about it. He looked at Donal for several seconds. How close he echoed. Two planetary diameters. Thank you captain said Donal. Shift in ten seconds announced the First Officer s voice and began to count down. Nine seconds eight seven six five four three two shiftl They shifted. Yes said Donal as if the shift itself had never interrupted what he was about to say out here where it s nice and empty we re going to set up a maneuver and I want all the ships to practice it. If you ll call a captain s conference captain. Bannerman walked over to the control board and put in the call. Fifteen minutes later with all junior officers dismissed they gathered in the privacy of the control room of Bannerman s ship and Donal explained what he had in mind. In theory he said our Patrol is just engaged in reconnaissance. In actuality we re going to try to simulate an attacking force making an assault on the planet Newton. He waited a minute to allow the weight of his words to register on their minds and then went on to explain his intentions. They were to set up a simulated planet on their ship s instruments. They would approach this planet which was to represent Newton according to a random pattern and from different directions first a single ship then two together then a series of single ships and so on. They would theoretically appear into phase just before the planet fire one or more torpedoes complete their run past the planet and immediately go out of phase again. The intention would be to simulate the laying of a pattern of explosions covering the general surface of the planet. There was however to be one main difference. Their torpedoes were to be exploded well without the outer ring of Newton s orbits of defense as if the torpedoes were merely intended as a means to release some radiation or material which was planned to fall in toward the planet spreading as it went. And one other thing the runs were to be so timed that the five ship force by rotation could appear to be a large fleet engaged in continuous bombardment. ... Any suggestions or comments asked Donal winding it up. Beyond the group facing him he could see Lee lounging against the control room wall and watching the captains with a colorless gaze. There was no immediate response and then Ban nerman spoke up slowly as if he felt it had devolved upon him the unwelcome duty of being spokesman for the group. Sir he said what about the chances of collision They ll be high I know said Donal. Especially with the defending ships. But we ll just have to take our chances. May I ask how many runs we ll be making As many said Donal as we can. He looked deliberately around the group. I want you gentlemen to understand. We re going to make every possible attempt to avoid open battle or accidental casualties. But these things may not be avoidable considering the necessarily high number of runs. How many runs did you have in mind captain asked Sukaya Mendez. I don t see replied Donal how we can effectively present the illusion of a large fleet engaged in saturation bombardment of a world in under a full two hours of continuous runs. Two hours said Bannerman. There was an in stmctive murmur from the group. Sir continued Bannerman. Even at five minutes a run that amounts with five ships to better than two runs an hour. If we double up or if there s casualties it could run as high as four. That s eight phase shifts to an hour sixteen in a two hour period. Sir even doped to the ears the men on our ships can t take that. Do you know of anyone who ever tried captain inquired Donal. No sir began Bannerman. Then how do we know it can t be done Donal did not wait for an answer. The point is it must be done. You re being required only to navigate your ships and fire possibly two torpedoes. That doesn t require the manpower it would to fight your ships under ordinary conditions. If some of your men become unfit for duty make shift with the ones you have left. Shai Dorsai murmured the scarred El Man and Donal glanced toward him as grateful for the support as for the compliment. Anyone want out Donal asked crisply. There was a slow but emphatic mutter of negation from all of them. Right. Donal took a step back from them. Then let s get about our practice runs. Dismissed gentlemen. He watched the four from other ships leave the control room. Better feed and rest the crews Donal said turning to Bannerman. And get some rest yourself. I intend to. Have a couple of meals sent to my quarters. Sir acknowledged Bannerman. Donal turned and left the control room followed by Lee as by a shadow. The Cobyman was silent until they were in the stateroom then he growled: What did that scarface mean by calling you shy Shy Donal turned about in surprise. Shaey shy something like that. Oh Donal smiled at the expression on the other s face. That wasn t an insult Lee. It was a pat on the back. Shai was what he said. It means something like true pure the actual. Lee grunted. Then he nodded. I guess you can figure on him he said. The food came a tray for each of them. Donal ate lightly and stretched himself out on the couch. It seemed he dropped instantly into sleep and when he awoke at the touch of Lee s hand on his shoulder he knew he had been dreaming but of what he could not remember. He remembered only a movement of shapes in obscurity as of some complex physics problem resolving itself in terms of direction and mass somehow given substance. Practice about to start said Lee. Thank you orderly he said automatically. He got to his feet and headed toward the control room shedding the druggedness of his sleep as he went. Lee had followed him but he was not aware of this until the Cobyman pushed a couple of small white tablets into his hand. Medication said Lee. Donal swallowed them automatically. Bannerman over by the control board had seen him come in and now turned and came across the floor. Ready for the first practice run sir he said. Where would you like to observe controls or Eye Donal looked and saw they had a chair set up for him in both locations. Eye he said. Lee you can take the other chair as long as there does not seem to be one for you. Captain you I know Bannerman said Donal I should have mentioned the fact I meant to have my orderly up here. I m sorry. Not at all sir. Bannerman went over and fitted himself into his own chair followed by Lee. Donal turned his attention to the Eye. The five ships were in line in deep space at thousand kilometer intervals. He looked at their neat Indian file and stepped up the magnification slightly so that in spite of the distance that should have made even the nearest invisible they appeared in detail in lighted by the Eye. Sir said Bannerman and his quiet voice carried easily across the room. I ve arranged a key in. When we make our phase shift that library tape will replace the image in the Eye so you can see what our approach will actually look like. Thank you captain. Phase shift in ten seconds The count down ticked off like the voice of a clock. Then there was the sensation of a phase shift and abruptly Donal was sweeping closely over a planet barely fifty thousand kilometers distance from its surface. Fire and Fire spoke the speaker in the control room ceiling. Again the indescribable destruction and rebuilding of the body. The world was gone and they were again in deep space. Donal looked at the four other ships in line. Abruptly the leading one disappeared. The rest continued seemingly to hang there without motion. There was no sound in the control room about him. The seconds crept by became minutes. The minutes crawled. Suddenly a ship appeared in front of Ban nerman s craft. Donal looked back at the three behind. Now there were only two. The run continued until all the ships had made their pass. Again ordered Donal. They did it again and it went off without a hitch. Rest said Donal getting out of the chair. Captain pass the word for all ships to give their personnel a break of half an hour. Make sure everyone is fed rested and supplied with medication. Also supply every person with extra medication to be taken as needed. Then I d like to talk to you personally. When Bannerman had accomplished these orders and approached Donal Donal took him aside. How about the reactions of the men he asked. Fine captain Bannerman said and Donal was surprised to read a true enthusiasm in his voice We ve got good crews here. High level ratings and experience. I m glad to hear it said Donal thankfully. Now ... about the time interval Five minutes exactly sir. Bannerman looked at him inquiringly. We can shorten slightly or lengthen as much as you want. No said Donal. I just wanted to know. Do you have battle dress for me and my orderly It s coming up from stores. The half hour slid by quickly. As it approached its end and they prepared to tie into their chairs Donal noticed the chronometer on the control room wall. It stood at 23:10 and the half hour would be up at 23:12. Make that start at 23:15 he directed Bannerman. The word was passed to the other ships. Everyone was in battle dress in their chairs and at their posts waiting. Donal felt a strange metallic taste in his mouth and the slow sweat began to work out on the surface of his skin. Give me an all ship hookup he said. There was a few seconds pause and then a Third Officer spoke from the control panel. You re hooked in sir. Men said Donal. This is Captain Graeme. He paused. He had no idea what he had intended to say. He had asked for the hookup on impulse and to break the strain of the last few moments which must be weighing on all the rest as much as him. I ll tell you one thing. This is something Newton s never going to forget. Good luck to all of you. That s all. He wigwagged to the Third Officer to cut him off and looked up at the clock. A chime sounded softly through the ship. It was 23:15. SUB PATROL CHIEF II Newton was not to forget. To a world second only to Venus in its technical accomplishments and some said not even second to a world rich in material wealth haughty with its knowledge and complacent in the contemplation of its lavish fighting forces came the shadow of the invader. One moment its natives were secure as they had always been behind the ringing strength of their ninety ships in orbit and then enemy craft were upon them making runs across the skies of their planet bombing them with what1 No Newton was never to forget. But that came afterward. To the men in the five ships it was the here and now that counted. Their first run across the rich world below them seemed hardly more than another exercise. The ninety ships were there as well as a host of other spacecraft. They or as many of them as were not occluded by the body of the planet registered on the instruments of the Freilander ships. But that was all. Even the second run was almost without incident. But by the time Donal s leading ship came through for the start of the third run Newton was beginning to buzz like a nest of hornets aroused. The sweat was running freely down Donal s face as they broke into the space surrounding the planet and it was not tension alone that was causing it. The psychic shocks of five phase shifts were taking their toll. Halfway in their run there was a sudden sharp tremor that shook their small white walled world that was the control room but the ship continued as if unhurt released its second torpedo and plunged into the safety of its sixth phase shift. Damage called Donal and was surprised to hear his voice issue on an odd croaking note. He swallowed and asked again in a more normal controlled tone. Damage No damage called an officer sharply from the control panel. Close burst. Donal turned his eyes almost fiercely back onto the scene in the Eye. The second ship appeared. Then the third. The fourth. The fifth. Double up this time ordered Donal harshly. There was a short minute or two of rest and then the sickening wrench of the phase shift again. In the Eye its magnification jumping suddenly Donal caught sight of two Newtonian ships one planetward the other in a plane and at approximately two o clock to the line of the bombing run they had begun. Defensive began Donal but the gun crews had waited for no order. Their tracking had been laid and the computers were warm. As he watched the Newtonian ship which was ahead and in their plane opened out like a burst balloon in slow motion and seemed to fall away from them. Another phase shift. The room swam for a second in Donal s blurred eyes. He felt a momentary surge of nausea and on the heels of it heard someone over at the panel retching. He blazed up inside forcing an anger to fight the threatening sickness. It s in your mind it s all in your mind he slapped the thought at himself like a curse. The room steadied the sickness retreated a little way. Time It was Bannerman calling in a half gasping voice from the panel. Donal blinked and tried to focus on the scene in the Eye. The rank odor of his own sweat was harsh in his nostrils or was it simply that the room was permeated with the stink of all their sweating In the Eye he could make out that four ships had come through on this last run. As he watched the fifth winked into existence. Once more he called hoarsely. In at a lower level this time. There was a choked sobbing like sound from the direction of the panel but he deliberately did not turn his head to see who it was. Again the phase shift. Blur of planet below. A sharp shock. Another. Again the phase shift. The control room full of mist No his own eyes. Blink them. Don t be sick. Damage No answer. Damage Light hit. Aft. Sealed Once more. Captain Bannerman s voice we can t make it again. One of our ships Check in the Eye. Images dancing and wavering yes only four ships. Which one I think Bannerman gasping Mendez. Once more. Captain you can t ask Give me a hookup then. Pause. You hear me Give me a hookup. Hookup some officer s voice. You re hooked up captain. All right this is Captain Graeme. Croak and squeak. Was that his voice speaking I m calling for volunteers one more run. Volunteers only. Speak up anyone who ll go. Long pause. Shai Dorsai Shai El Man any others Sir Bannerman The other two ships aren t receiving. Blink at Eye. Focus. True. Two of three ships there yawning out of line. Just the two of us then. Bannerman At croaking your orders sir. Make the run. Pause ... Phase shift Planet whirling shock dark space. Can t black out now Pull her out of it Pause. Bannerman Weakly responding: Yes sir PHASE SHIFT Darkness ... Up It was a snarling harsh bitter whisper in Donal s ear. He wondered eyes closed where it was coming from. He heard it again and once again. Slowly it dawned on him that he was saying it to himself. He fought his eyes open. The control room was still as death. In the depths of the eye before him three small tiny shapes of ships could be seen at full magnification far flung from each other. He fumbled with dead fingers at the ties on his suit then bound them to his chair. One by one they came free. He pushed himself out of the chair and fell to his knees on the floor. Swaying staggering he got to his feet. He turned himself toward the five chairs at the control panel and staggered to them. In four of the chairs Bannerman and his three officers sagged unconscious. The Third Officer seemed more than unconscious. His face was milkish white and he did not seem to be breathing. All four men had been sick. In the fifth chair Lee hung twisted in his ties. He was not unconscious. His eyes were wide on Donal as he approached and a streak of blood had run down from one corner of the orderly s mouth. He had apparently tried to break his ties by main strength like a mindless animal and go directly to Donal. And yet his eyes were not insane merely steady with an unnatural fixity of purpose. As Donal reached him Lee tried to speak but all he was able to manage for a second was a throttled sound and a Httle more blood came out of the corner of his mouth. Y arright he mumbled finally. Yes husked Donal. Get you loose in a minute. What happened to your mouth Bit tongue mumbled Lee thickly. M arright. Donal unfastened the last of the ties and reaching up opened Lee s mouth with his hands. He had to use real strength to do so. A little more blood came out but he was able to see in. One edge of Lee s tongue halfway back from the tip had been bitten entirely through. Don t talk directed Donal. Don t use that tongue at all until you can get it fixed. Lee nodded with no mark of emotion and began painfully to work out of the chair. By the time he was out Donal had managed to get the ties loose on the still form of the Third Officer. He pulled the man out of the chair and laid him on the floor. There was no perceptible heartbeat. Donal stretched him out and attempted to begin artificial respiration but at the first effort his head swam dizzily and he was forced to stop. Slowly he pulled himself erect and began to break loose the ties on Bannerman. Get the Second if you feel up to it he told Lee. The Cobyman staggered stiffly around to the Second Officer and began work on his ties. Between the two of them they got the three Freilanders stretched out on the floor and their helmets off. Bannerman and the Second Officer began to show signs of regaining consciousness and Donal left them to make another attempt at respiration with the Third Officer. But he found the body when he touched it. was already beginning to cool. He turned back and began work on the First Officer who was still laxly unconscious. After a while the First Officer began to breathe deeply and more steadily and his eyes opened. But it was apparent from his gaze that he did not see the rest of them or know where he was. He stared at the control panel with blank eyes like a man in a heavily drugged condition. How re you feeling Donal asked Bannerman. The Freiland captain grunted and made an effort to raise himself up on one elbow. Donal helped and between the two of them they got him first sitting up then to his knees and finally with the help of the back of a chair to pull him up to his feet. Bannerman s eyes had gone directly to the control panel from the first moment they had opened. Now without a word he pulled himself painfully back into his chair and began clumsily to finger studs. All ship sections he croaked into the grille before him. Report. There was no answer. Report he said. His forefinger came down on a button and an alarm bell rang metallically loud through the ship. It ceased and a faint voice came from the speaker overhead. Fourth Gun Section reporting as ordered sir The battle of Newton was over. HERO Sirius himself had just set and the small bright disk of that white dwarf companion that the Freilanders and the New Earthmen had a number of uncomplimentary names for was just beginning to show strongly through the wall of Donal s bedroom Donal sat bathed in the in between light dressed in only a pair of sport trunks sorting through some of the interesting messages that had come his way recently since the matter of the raid on Newton. So engrossed was he that he paid no attention until Lee tapped him on one brown tanned shoulder. Time to dress for the party said the Cobyman. He had a gray dress uniform of jacket and trousers cut in the long line Freiland style over one arm. It was fashionably free of any insignia of rank. I ve got a couple of pieces of news for you. First she was here again. Donal frowned getting into the uniform. Elvine had conceived the idea of nursing him after his return from the short hospital stay that had followed the Newton affair. It was her convenient conclusion that he was still suffering from the psychological damage of the overdose of phase shifting they had all gone through. Medical opinion and Donal s to the contrary she had insisted on attaching herself to him with a constancy which lately had led him to wonder if perhaps he would not have preferred the phase shifting itself. The frown now vanished however. I think I see an end to that he said. What else This William of Ceta you re so interested in answered Lee. He s here for the party. Donal turned his head to look sharply at the man. But Lee was merely delivering a report. The bony face was empty of even those small signs of expression which Donal had come to be able to read in these past weeks of association. Who told you I was interested in William he demanded. You listen when people talk about him said Lee. Shouldn t I mention him No that s all right Donal said. I want you to tell me whenever you find out anything about him you think I might not know. I just didn t know you observed that closely. Lee shrugged. He held the jacket for Donal to slide his arms into. Where d he come from asked Donal. Venus said Lee. He s got a Newton man with him big young drunk named Montor. And a girl one of those special people from the Exotics. The Select of Kultis That s right What re they doing here He s top level said Lee. Who is on Freiland and not here for your party Donal frowned again. He had almost managed to forget that it was in his honor these several hundred well known people would be gathered here tonight. Oh not that he would be expected to place himself on show. The social rules of the day and this particular world made lionizing impolite. Direct lionizing mat is. You honored a man by accepting his hospitality that was the theory. And since Donal had little in the way of means to provide hospitality for the offering the marshal had stepped into the breach. Nevertheless this was the sort of occasion that went against Donal s instinctive grain. He put that matter aside and returned to that of William. If the man happened to be visiting Freiland it would be unthinkable that he should not be invited and hardly thinkable that he should decline to come. It could be just that. Perhaps thought Donal with a weariness beyond his years I m starting at shadows. But even as his mind framed the thought he knew it was not true. It was that oddness in him now more pronounced than ever since the psychic shaking up of the Newtonian battle with its multiple phase shifts. Things seen only dimly before were now be ginning to take on shape and substance for him. A pattern was beginning to form with William as its center and Donal did not like what he saw of the pattern. Let me know what you can find out about William he said. Right replied Lee. And the Newton man And the girl from the Exotics. Donal finished dressing and took a back slipway down to the marshal s office. El vine was there and with her and the marshal as guests were William and Anea. Come in Donal called Gait as Donal hesitated in the entrance. You remember William and Anea here I d be unlikely to forget. Donal came in and shook hands. William s smile was warm his handclasp firm but the hand of Anea was cool and quickly withdrawn from Donal s grasp and her smile perfunctory. Donal caught Elvine watching them closely and a faint finger of warning stirred the surface of Donal s mind. I ve looked forward to seeing you again said William. I owe you an apology Donal. Indeed I do. I ve underestimated your genius considerably. Not genius said Donal. Genius insisted William. Modesty s for little men. He smiled frankly. Surely you realize this affair with Newton s made you the newest nova on our military horizon I ll have to watch out your flattery doesn t go to my head. Prince. Donal could deal in double mean ing too. William s first remark had put him almost at his ease. It was not the wolves among people who embarrassed and confused him but the sheep dogs gone wrong. Those in fact who were equipped by nature and instinct to be one thing and through chance and wrongheadedness found themselves acting contrary to their own natures. Possibly he had thought that was the reason he found men so much easier to deal with than women they were less prone to self deception. Now however a small intake of breath drew his attention to Anea. You re modest she said but two touches of color high on the cheek bones of her otherwise slightly pale face and her unfriendly eyes did not agree with her. Maybe he said as lightly as he could that s because I don t really believe I ve got anything to be modest about. Anyone could have done what I did above Newton and in fact several hundred other men did. Those that were there with me. Oh but it was your idea put in Elvine. Donal laughed. All right he said. For the idea I ll take credit. Please do said Anea. Well put in Gait seeing that things were getting out of hand. We were just about to go in and join the party Donal. Will you come along I m looking forward to it answered Donal smoothly. They proceeded a small knot of people out through the big doors of the office and into the main hall of the mansion. It was already full of guests in terspersed with drifting floats laden with food and drinks. Into this larger body of people their small group melted like one drop of coloring matter into a glass of water. Their individual members were recognized captured and dispersed by other guests and in a few seconds they were all separated all but Donal and Elvine who had taken his arm possessively as they had come out of the office. She pulled him into the privacy of a small alcove. So that s what you ve been mooning over she said fiercely. It s her Her he pulled his arm loose. What s wrong with you Ev You know who I mean she snapped. That Select girl. It s her you re after though why I don t know. She s certainly nothing special to look at. And she s hardly even grown up yet. He chilled suddenly. And she abruptly realizing that this time she had gone too far took a sudden frightened step back from him. He fought to control himself but this was the authentic article one of the real Dorsai rages that was his by inheritance. His limbs were cold he saw everything with an unwonted clarity and his mind ticked away like some detached machine in the far depths of his being. There was murder in him at the moment. He hung balanced on the knife edge of it. Good by Ev he said. She took another stiff legged step back from him then another and then she turned and fled. He turned about to see the shocked faces of those nearby upon him. His glance went among them like a scythe and hey fell away before it. He walked forward through them and out of the hall as if he had been alone in the room. He was pacing back and forth in the bare isolation of the marshal s office walking off the charge of adrenalin that had surged through him on the heels of his emotion when the door opened. He turned like a wolf but it was only Lee. You need me asked Lee. The three words broke the spell. The tension in him snapped suddenly and he burst out laughing. He laughed so long and loud that the Cobyman s eyes became shadowed first with puzzlement and then with a sort of fear. No ... no ... it s all right he gasped at last. He had a fastidiousness about casually touching people but now he clapped Lee on the shoulder to reassure him so unhappy did the lean man look. See if you can find me a drink some Dorsai whisky. Lee turned and left the room. He was back in seconds with a tulip shaped glass holding perhaps a deciliter of the bronze whisky. Donal drank it down grateful for the burn in his throat. Learn anything about William He handed the glass back to Lee. Lee shook his head. Not surprised murmured Donal. He frowned. Have you seen ArDell Montor around that Newtonian that came with William Lee nodded. Can you show me where I can find him Lee nodded again. He led Donal out onto the ter race down a short distance and in through an open wall to the library. There in one of the little separate reading cubicles he found ArDell alone with a bottle and some books. Thanks Lee said DonaJ. Lee vanished. Donal came forward and sat down at the small table in the cubicle opposite ArDell and his bottle. Greetings said ArDell looking up. He was not more than slightly drunk by his own standards. Hoping to talk to you. Why didn t you come up to my room asked Donal. Not done ArDell refilled his glass glanced about the table for another and saw only a vase with some small native variform lilies in it. He dumped these on the floor filled the vase and passed it politely to Donal. No thanks said Donal. Hold it anyway ArDell said. Makes me uncomfortable drinking with a man who won t drink. No besides better to just bump into each other. He looked at Donal suddenly with one of his unexpected flashes of soberness and shrewdness. He s at it again. William Who else ArDell drank. But what would he be going with Project Blaine ArDell shook his head. There s a man. And a scientist. Make two of any of the rest of us. Can t see him leading Blaine around by the nose but still .. . Unfortunately said Donal we are all tied to the business end of our existence by the red tape in our contracts. And it s in business William shines. But he doesn t make sense ArDell twisted the glass in his hands. Take me. Why would he want to ruin me But he does. He chuckled suddenly. I ve got him scared now. You have asked Donal. How ArDell tapped the bottle with one forefinger. This. He s afraid I may kill myself. Evidently he doesn t want that. Will you asked Donal bluntly. ArDell shook his head. I don t know. Could I come out of it now It s been five years. I started it deliberately to spite him didn t even like the stuff like you. Now I wonder. I ll tell you he leaned forward over the table they can cure me of course. But would I be any good now if they did Math it s a beautiful thing. Beautiful like art. That s the way I remember it but I m not sure. Not sure at all any more. He shook his head again. When the time comes to dump this he pointed again at the bottle you need something that means more to you. I don t know if work does any more. How about William asked Donal. Yes said ArDell slowly there is him. That would do it. One of these days I m going to find out why he did this to me. Then What does he seem to be after asked Donal. I mean in general Who knows ArDell threw up his hands. Business. More business. Contracts more contracts. Agreements with every government a finger in every honey pot. That s our William. Yes said Donal. He pushed back his float and stood up. Sit down said ArDell. Stop and talk. You never sit still for more than a second or two. For the love of peace you re the only man between the stars I can talk to and you won t sit still. I m sorry Donal said. But there re things I have to do. A day ll come maybe when we can sit down and talk. I doubt it muttered ArDell. I doubt it very much. Donal left him there staring at his bottle. He went in search of the marshal but it was Anea he encountered first standing upon a small balcony deserted except for herself and gazing out over the hall directly below with an expression at the same time so tired and so longing that he was suddenly and deeply moved by the sight of it. He approached her and she turned at the sound of his footsteps. At the sight of him her expression changed. You again she said in no particularly welcome tone. Yes said Donal brusquely. I meant to search you out later but this is too good a chance to pass up. Too good. I mean you re alone ... I mean I can talk to you privately said Donal impatiently. She shook her head. We ve got nothing to talk about she said. Don t talk nonsense said Donal. Of course we have unless you ve given over your campaign against William. Well The word leaped from her lips and her eyes flashed their green fire at him. Who do you think you are she cried furiously. Who ever gave you the right to have any say about what I do I m part Maran through both my grandmothers he said. Maybe that s why I feel a sense of responsibility to you. I don t believe it she snapped. About you being part Maran that is. You couldn t be part Maran someone like you a she checked fumbling for words. Well He smiled a little grimly at her. A what A ... mercenary she cried triumphantly finding at last the word that would hurt him the most in her misinterpretation of it. He was hurt and angered but he managed to conceal it. This girl had the ability to get through his defenses on the most childish level where a man like William could not. Never mind that he said. My question was about you and William. I told you not to try intriguing against him the last time I saw you. Have you followed that advice Well I certainly don t have to answer that question she blazed directly at him. And I won t. Then he said finding suddenly an insight into her mat was possibly a natural compensation for her unusual perceptiveness where he was concerned. You have. I m glad to know that. He turned to go. I ll leave you now. Wait a minute she cried. He turned back to her. I didn t do it because of you Didn t you Surprisingly her eyes wavered and fell. All right she said. It just happened your ideas coincided with mine. Or that what I said was common sense he retorted and being the person you are you couldn t help seeing it. She looked fiercely up at him again. So he just goes on ... and I m chained to him for another ten years with options Leave that part to me said Donal. Her mouth opened. You she said and her astonishment was so great that the word came out in a tone of honest weakness. I ll take care of it. You she cried. And the word was entirely different this time. You put yourself in opposition to a man like William she broke off suddenly turning away. Oh she said angrily I don t know why I keep listening to you as if you were actually telling the truth when I know what kind of person you are. You don t know anything at all about what kind . of a person I am he snapped nettled again. I ve done a few things since you first saw me. Oh yes she said you ve had a man shot and pretended to bomb a planet. Good by he said wearily turning away. He went out through the little balcony entrance abruptly leaving her standing there and unaware that he had left her not filled with the glow of righteous indignation and triumph she had expected but oddly disconcerted and dismayed. He searched throughout the rest of the mansion and finally located the marshal back in his office and alone. May I come in sir he said from the doorway. Of course of course Gait looked up from his desk. Lock the door behind you. I ve had nothing but people drifting in thinking this was an extra lounge. Why d they think I had it set up without any comfortable floats or cushions in the first place Donal locked the door behind him and came across the wide floor to the desk. What is it boy asked the marshal. He raised his heavy head and regarded Donal intently. Something up A number of things agreed Donal. He took the bare float beside the desk that Gait motioned him into. May I ask if William came here tonight with the intention of transacting any business with you You may ask answered Gait putting both his massive forearms on the desk but I don t know why I should answer you. Of course you needn t said Donal. Assuming he did however I d like to say that in my opinion it would be exceedingly unwise to do any business with Ceta at this time and particularly William of Ceta. And what causes this to be your opinion asked Gait with a noticeable trace of irony. Donal hesitated. Sir he said after a second. I d like to remind you that I was right on Harmony and right about Newton and that I may be right here as well. It was a large pill of impertinence for the marshal to swallow since in effect it pointed out that if Donal had twice been right Gait had been twice wrong first about his assessment of Hugh Killien as a re sponsible officer and second about his assessment of the reasons behind the Newtonian move on Oriente. But if he was Dorsai enough to be touchy about his pride he was also Dorsai enough to be honest when he had to. All right he said. William did come around with a proposition. He wants to take over a large number of our excess land forces not for any spe cific campaign but for re leasing to other employers. They d remain our troops. I was against it on the grounds that we d be competing against ourselves when it came to offering troops to outside markets but he proved to me the guarantee he s willing to pay would more than make up for any losses we might have. I also didn t see how he intended to make his own profit out of it but evidently he intends training the men to finer specializations than a single planet can afford to do and maintain a balanced force. And God knows Ceta s big enough to train all he wants and that its slightly lower gravity doesn t hurt either for our troops that is. He got his pipe out of a compartment in the desk and began to fill it. What s your objection he asked. Can you be sure the troops won t be leased to someone who might use them against you Donal asked. Gait s thick fingers ceased suddenly to fill his pipe. We can insist on guarantees. But how much good are guarantees in a case like that asked Donal. The man who gives you the guarantee William isn t the man who might move the troops against you. If Freilander leased troops were suddenly found attacking Freilander soil you might gain the guarantee but lose the soil. Gait frowned. I still don t see he said how that could work out to William s advantage. It might said Donal in a situation where what he stood to gain by Freilander fighting Freilander was worth more than the guarantee. How could that be Donal hesitated on the verge of those private suspicions of his own. Then he decided that they were not yet solid enough to voice to the marshal and might indeed even weaken his argument. I don t know he replied. However I think it d be wise not to take the chance. Hah Gait snorted and his fingers went back to work filling the pipe. You don t have to turn the man down and justify your refusal to Staff and Government. I don t propose that you turn him down outright said Donal. I suggest you only hesitate. Say that in your considered opinion the interstellar situation right now doesn t justify your leaving Freiland short handed of combat troops. Your military reputation is good enough to establish such an answer beyond question. Yes Gait put the pipe in his mouth and lit it thoughtfully I think I may just act on that recommendation of yours. You know Donal I think from now on you better remain as my aide where I can have the benefit of your opinions handy when I need them. Donal winced. I m sorry sir he said. But I was thinking of moving on if you ll release me. Gait s eyebrows abruptly drew together in a thicket of dense hair. He took the pipe from his mouth. Oh he said somewhat flatly. Ambitious eh Partly said Donal. But partly I ll find it easier to oppose William as a free agent. . Gait bent a long steady look upon him. By heaven he said what is this personal vendetta of yours against William I m afraid of him answered Donal Leave him alone and he ll certainly leave you alone. He s got bigger fish to fry Gait broke off jammed his pipe into his mouth and bit hard on the stem. I m afraid said Donal sadly there are some men between the stars that are just not meant to leave each other alone. He straightened in his chair. You ll release my contract then I won t hold any man against his will growled the marshal. Except in an emergency. Where were you thinking of going I ve had a number of offers said Donal. But I was thinking of accepting one from the Joint Church Council of Harmony and Association. Their Chief Elder s offered me the position of War Chief for both the Friendlies. Eldest Bright He s driven every commander with a spark of independence away from him. I know said Donal. And just for that reason I expect to shine the more brightly. It should help build my reputation. By Gait swore softly. Always thinking aren t you I suppose you re right said Donal a trifle unhappily. It comes of being born with a certain type of mind. WAR CHIEF The heels of his black boots clicking against the gray floor of the wide office of the Defense Headquarters on Harmony the aide approached Donal s desk which had been his home for three years now. Special urgent and private sir. He placed a signal tape in the blue shell of ordinary communications on the desk pad. Thank you said Donal and waved him off. He broke the seal on the tape placed it in his desk unit and waiting until the aide had left the room pressed the button that would start it. His father s voice came from the speaker deep toned. Donal my son We were glad to get your last tape and to hear of your successes. No one in this family has done so well in such a short time in the last five generations. We are all happy for you here and pray for you and wait to hear from you again. But I am speaking to you now on an unhappy occasion. Your uncle Kensie was assassinated shortly over a month ago in the back streets of the city of Blauvain on St. Marie by a local terrorist group in opposition to the government there. lan who was of course an officer in the same unit later somehow managed to discover the headquarters of the group in some alley or other and killed the three men he found there with his hands. However this does not bring Kensie back. He was a favorite of us all and we are all hard hit here at home by his death. It is lan however who is presently the cause of our chief concern. He brought Kensie s body home refusing burial on St. Marie and has been here now several weeks. You know he was always the dark natured of the twins just as it seemed that Kensie had twice the brightness and joy in life that is the usual portion of the normal man. Your mother says it is now as if lan had lost his good angel and is abandoned to the forces of darkness which have always had such a grip on him. She does not say it in just that way of course. It is the woman and the Maran in her speaking but I have not lived with her twenty seven years without realizing that she can see further into the soul of a man or woman than I can. You have in some measure inherited this same gift Donal so maybe you will understand better what she means. At any rate it is at her urging that I am sending you this signal al though I would have been speaking to you about Kensie s death in any case. As you know it has always been my belief that members of the same immediate family should not serve too closely together in field or garrison in order mat family feelings should not be tempted to influence military responsibilities. But it is your mother s belief that lan should not now be allowed to sit in his dark silence about the place as he has been doing but that he should be once more in action. And she asks me to ask you if you could find a place for him on your staff where you can keep your eye on him. I know it will be difficult for both of you to have him filling a duty post in a position subordinate to you but your mother feels it would be preferable to the present situation. lan has expressed no wish to return to an active life but if I speak to him as head of the family he will go. Your brother Mor is doing well on Venus and has recently been promoted to commandant. Your mother urges you to write him whether he has written you or not since he may be hesitant to write you without reason you having done so well in so short a time although he is the older. All our love. Eachan. The spool seen through the little transparent cover stopped turning. The echoes of Eachan Khan Graeme s voice died against the gray walls of the office. Donal sat still at his desk his eyes fixed on nothing remembering Kensie. It seemed odd to him as he sat there to discover that he could remember so few specific incidents. Thinking back his early life seemed to be filled with his smiling uncle and yet Kensie had not been home much. He would have thought that it would be the separate occasions of Kensie s going and coming that would be remembered but instead it was more as if some general presence some light about the house had been extinguished. Donal sighed. It seemed he was accumulating people at a steady rate. First Lee. Then the scarfaced El Man had asked to accompany him when he left Freiland. And now lan. Well lan was a good officer aside from whatever crippling the death of his twin brother had caused him now. It would be more than easy for Donal to find a place for him. In fact Donal could use him handily. Donal punched a stud and turned his mouth to the little grille of the desk s signal unit. Eachan Khan Graeme Graeme house South District Foralie Canton the Dorsai he said. Very glad to hear from you although I imagine you know how I feel about Kensie. Please ask lan to come right along. I will be honored to have him on my staff and to tell the truth I have a real need for someone like him here. Most of the ranking officers I inherited as War Chief have been browbeaten by these Elders into a state of poor usefulness. I know I won t have to worry about lan on that score. If he would take over supervision of my training program he would be worth his weight in diamonds natural ones. And I could give him an action post either on my personal staff or as Patrol Chief. Tell Mother I ll write Mor but that the letter may be a bit sketchy right at present I am up to my ears in work at the moment These are good officers and men but they have been so beaten about the ears at every wrong move mat they will not blow their nose without a direct order. My love to all at home. Donal. He pressed the button again ending the recording and sealing it ready for delivery with the rest of the outgoing signals his office sent daily on their way. A soft chime from his desk reminded him that it was time for him to speak once more with Eldest Bright. He got up and went out The ranking elder of the joint government of the Friendly Worlds of Harmony and Association maintained his own suite of offices in Government Center not more than half a hundred meters from the military nerve center. This was not fortuitous. Eldest Bright was a Militant and liked to keep his eye on the fighting arm of God s True Churches. He was at work at his desk but rose as Donal came in. He advanced to meet Donal a tall lean man dressed entirely in black with the shoulders of a back alley scrapper and the eyes of a Torquemada that light of the Inquisition in ancient Spain. God be with you he said. Who authorized this requisition order for sheathing for the phase shift grids on the sub class ships I did said Donal. You spend credit like water. Bright s hard middle aged face leaned toward Donal. A tithe on the churches a tithe of a tithe on the church members of our two poor planets is all we have to support the business of government. How much of this do you think we can afford to spend on whims and fancies War sir said Donal is hardly a matter of whims and fancies. Then why shield the grids snapped Bright. Are they liable to rust in the dampness of space Will a wind come along between the stars and blow them apart Sheathe not shield replied Donal. The point is to change their appearance from the ball and hammer to the cylindrical. I m taking all ships of the first three classes through with me. When they come out before the Exotics I want them all looking like ships of the first class. For what reason Our attack on Zombri cannot be a complete surprise explained Donal patiently Mara and Kultis are as aware as anyone else that from a military standpoint it is vulnerable to such action. If you ll permit me He walked past Bright to the latter s desk and pressed certain keys there. A schematic of the Procyon system sprang into existence on one of the large gray walls of the office the star itself in outline to the left. Pointing Donal read off the planets in their order moving off to the right. Mara Kultis Ste. Marie Coby. As close a group of habitable planets as we re likely to discover in the next ten generations. And simply because they are habitable and close therefore we have this escaped moon Zombri in its own eccentric orbit lying largely between Coby and St. Marie Are you lecturing me interrupted Bright s harsh voice. I am said Donal. It s been my experience that the things people tend to overlook are those they learned earliest and believe they know best. Zombri is not habitable and too small for terraforming. Yet it exists like the Trojan horse lacking only its complement of latter day Acheans to threaten the Procyon peace We ve discussed this before broke in Bright. And we ll continue to discuss it continued Donal pleasantly whenever you wish to ask for the reason behind any individual order of mine. As I was saying Zombri is the Trojan horse of the Procyon city. Unfortunately in this day and age we can hardly smuggle men onto it. We can however make a sudden landing in force and attempt to set up defenses before the Exotics are alerted. Our effort then must be to make our landing as quickly and effectively as possible. To do that best is to land virtually unopposed in spite of the fact that the Exotics will undoubtedly have a regular force keeping its eye on Zombri. The best way to achieve that is to appear in overwhelming strength so mat the local commanders will realize it is foolish to attempt to interfere with our landing. And the best way to put on a show of strength is to appear to have three times the ships of the first class mat we do have. Therefore the sheathing. Donal stopped talking walked back across to the desk and pressed the keys. The schematic disappeared. Very well said Bright. The tone of his voice showed no trace of defeat or loss of arrogance. I will authorize the order. Perhaps said Donal you ll also authorize another order to remove the Conscience Guardians from my ships and units. Heretics began Bright. Are no concern of mine said Donal. My job is to get these people ready to mount an assault. But I ve got over sixty per cent native troops of yours under me and their morale is hardly being improved on an average of three trials for heresy a week. This is a church matter said Bright. Is there anything else you wished to ask me War Chief Yes said Donal. I ordered mining equipment. It hasn t arrived. The order was excessive said Bright. There should be no need to dig in anything but the command posts on Zombri. Donal looked at the black clad man for a long moment. His white face and white hands the only uncovered part of him seemed rather the false part than the real as if they were mask and gloves attached to some black and alien creature. Let s understand each other said Donal. Aside from the fact that I don t order men into exposed positions where they ll be killed whether they re mercenaries or your own suicide happy troops just what do you want to accomplish by this move against the Exotics They threaten us answered Bright. They are worse than the heretics. They are Satan s own legion the deniers of God. The man s eyes glittered like ice m the sunlight. We must establish a watchtower over them that they may not threaten us without warning and we may live in safety. All right said Donal. That s settled then. I ll get you your watchtower. And you get me the men and equipment I order without question and without delay. Already these hesitations of your government mean I ll be going into Zombri ten to fifteen per cent understrength. What Bright s dark brows drew together. You ve got two months yet until Target Date. Target Dates said Donal are for the benefit of enemy intelligence. We ll be jumping off in two weeks. Two weeks Bright stared at him. You can t be ready in two weeks. I earnestly hope Colmain and his General Staff They ve the best land and space forces between the stars. How Bright s face paled with anger. You dare to say that our own organization s inferior Facing facts is definitely preferable to facing defeat said Donal a iittle tiredly. Yes Eldest our forces are definitely inferior. Which is why I m de pending on surprise rather than preparation. The Soldiers of the Church are the bravest in the universe cried Bright. They wear the armor of righteousness and never retreat. Which explains their high casualty rate regular : necessity for green replacements and general lower tevel of training Donal reminded him. A willingness to die in battle is not necessarily the best trait in j a soldier. Your mercenary units where you ve kept them free of native replacements are decidedly more combat ready at the moment. Do I have your backing from now on for anything I fee I need Bright hesitated. The tension of fanaticism relaxed out of his face to be replaced by one of thoughtful ness. When he spoke again his voice was cold and businesslike. On everything but the Conscience Guardians he answered. They have authority after all only over our own Members of the Churches. He turned and walked around once more behind his desk. Also he said a trifle grimly you may have noticed that there are sometimes small differences of opinion concerning dogma between members of differing Churches. The presence of the Conscience Guardians among them makes them less prone to dispute one with the other and this you ll grant I m sure is an aid to military discipline. It s effective said Donal shortly. He turned himself to go. Oh by the way Eldest he said. That true Target Date of two weeks from today. It s essential it remain sectet so I ve made sure it s known only to two men and will remain their knowledge exclusively until an hour or so before jump off. Bright s head came up. Who s the other he demanded sharply. You sir said Donal. I just made my decision about the true date a minute ago. They locked eyes for a long minute. May God be with you said Bright in cold even tones. Donal went out. WAR CHIEF II Geneve bar Colmain was as Donal had said commander of the best land and space forces between the stars. This because the Exotics of Mara and Kultis though they would do no violence in their own proper persons were wise enough to hire the best available in the way of military strength. Colmain himself was one of the top military minds of his time along with Gait on Freiland Kamal on the Dorsai Isaac on Venus and that occasional worker of military miracles Dom Yen Supreme Commander on the single world of Ceta where William had his home office. Colmain had his troubles including a young wife who no longer cared for him and his faults he was a gambler in a military as well as a monetary sense but there was nothing f wtong with either the intelligence that had its home in his skull or the Intelligence that made its headquarters in his Command Base on Mara. Consequently he was aware that the Friendly Worlds were preparing for a landing on Zombri within three weeks of the time when the decision to do so had become an accomplished fact. His spies adequately informed him of the Target Date that had been established for that landing and he himself set about certain plans of his own for welcoming the invaders when they came. The primary of these was the excavation of strong points on Zombri itself. The assault troops would find they had jumped into a hornet s nest. The ships of the Exotic fleet would meanwhile be on alert not too far off. As soon as action had joined on the surface of Zombri they would move in and drive the space forces of the invasion inward. The attackers would be caught between two fires their assault troops lacking the chance to dig in and their ships lacking the support from below that entrenched ground forces could supply with moon based heavy weapons. The work on the strong points was well under way one day as at the Command Base back on Mara Colmain was laying out a final development of strategy with his General Staff. An interruption occurred in the shape of an aide who came hurrying into the conference room without even the formality of asking permission first. What s this growled Coimain looking up from the submitted plans before him with a scowl on his swarthy face which at sixty was still handsome enough to provide him compensation in the way of other female companionship for his wife s lack of interest. Sir said the aide Zombri s attacked What Colmain was suddenly on his feet and Ibe rest of the heads of the General Staff with him. Over two hundred ships sir. We just got the signal. The aide s voice cracked a little he was still in his early twenties. Our men on Zombri are fighting with what they have Fighting Colmain took a sudden step toward the aide almost as if he would hold the man personally responsible. They ve started to land assault troops They ve landed sir How many We don t know sir Knucklehead How many ships went in to drop men None sir gasped the aide. They didn t drop any men. They all landed. Landed I or the fraction of a second there was no sound at all in the long conference room. Do you mean to tell me shouted Colmain. They landed two hundred ships of the first class on Zombri Yes sir the aide s voice had thinned almost to a squeak. They re cleaning out our forces there and png in He had no chance to finish. Colmain swung about on his Battle Ops and Patrol Chiefs. Hell and damnation he roared. Intelligence Sir answered a Freilander officer halfway down the length of the table. What s the meaning of this Sir stammered the officer. I don t know how it happened. The latest reports I had from Harmony three days ago Damn the latest reports. I want every ship and every man we can get into space in five hours I want every patrol ship of any class to rendezvous with everything we can muster here off Zombri in ten hours. Move The General Staff of the Exotics moved. It was a tribute to the kind of fighting force that Colmain commanded that they were able to respond at all in so short a time as ten hours to such orders. The fact that they accomplished the rendezvous with nearly four hundred craft of all classes all carrying near their full complement of crews and assault troops was on the order of a minor miracle. Colmain and his chief officers aboard the flagship regarded the moon swimming below them in the Control Eye of the ship. There had been reports of fighting down there up until three hours ago. Now there was a silence that spoke eloquently of captured troops. In addition Observation reported in addition to the works instigated by the Exotic forces another hundred and fifty newly mined entrances in the crust of the moon. They re in there said Colmain ships and all. Now that the first shock of discovery had passed he was once more a cool and capable commander of forces. He had even found time to make a mental note to get together with this Dorsal Graeme. Supreme command was always sweet bait to a brilliant youngster but he would find the Council of United Churches a difficult employer in time and the drawback of a subordinate position under Colmain himself could be compensated for by the kind of salary the Exotics were always willing to pay. Concerning the outcome of the actual situation before him Colmain saw no real need for fear only for haste. It was fairly obvious now mat Graeme had risked everything on one bold swoop. He had counted on surprise to get him onto the moon and so firmly entrenched there that the cost of rooting him out would be prohibitive before reinforcements could arrive. He had erred only and Colmain gave him full credit for all but that single error in underestimating the time it would take for Colmain to gather his strength to retaliate. And even that error was forgive able. There was no other force on the known worlds that could have been gotten battle ready in under three times the time. We ll go in said Colmain. All of us and fight it out on the moon. He looked around his officers. Any comment Sir said his Blue Patrol chief maybe we could wait them out up here Don t you think it said Colmain good humoredly. Tney would not come and dig in in our own system without being fully supplied for long enough to establish an outpost we can t take back. He shook his head. The time to operate is now gentlemen before the infection has a chance to get its hold AH ships down even the ones without assault troops. We ll fight them as if they were ground emplacements. His staff saluted and went off to execute his orders. The Exotic fleet descended on the moon of Zombri like locusts upon an orchard. Colmain pacing the floor of the control room in the flagship which had gone in with the rest grinned as the reports began to flood in of strong points quickly cleaned of the Friendly troops that had occupied them or dug in ships quickly surrendering and beginning to dig themselves out of the deep shafts their mining equipment had provided for them. The invading troops were collapsing like cardboard soldiers and Colmain s opinion of their commander which had risen sharply with the first news of the attack began to slip decidedly. It was one thing to gamble boldly it was quite another to gamble foolishly. It appeared from the morale and quality of the Friendly troops that there had after all been little chance of the surprise attack succeeding. This Graeme should have devoted a little more time to training his men and less to dreaming up dramatic actions. It was Colmain thought very much what you might expect of a young commander in supreme authority for the first time in his life. He was enjoying the roseate glow of anticipated victory when it was suddenly all rudely shattered. There was a sudden ping from the deep space communicator and suddenly two officers at the board spoke at once. Sir unidentified call from Sir ships above us Colmain who had been watching the Zombri surface through his Control Eye jabbed suddenly at his buttons and the seeker circuit on it swung him dizzily upward and toward the stars coming to rest abruptly on full magnification on a ship of the first class which unmistakably bore the mark of Friendly design and manufacture. Incredulously he widened his scope and in one swift survey picked out more than twenty such ships in orbit around Zombri within the limited range of his ground restricted Eye alone. Who is it he shouted turning on the officer who had reported a call. Sir the officer s voice was hesitantly incredulous he says he s the Commander of the Friendlies. What Colmain s fist came down on a stud beside the controls of the Eye. A wall screen lit up and a lean young Dorsai with odd indefinite colored eyes looked out at him. Graeme roared Colmain. What kind of an imitation fleet are you trying to bluff me with Look again commander answered the young man. The imitation are digging their way out down there on the surface by you. They re my sub class ships. Why d you think they would be taken so eas ily These are my ships of the first class one hundred and eighty three of them. Colmain jammed down the button and blanked the screen. He turned on his officers at the control panel. Report But the officers had already been busy. Confirmations were flooding in. The first of the attacking ships had been dug out and proved to be sub class ships with sheathing around their phase shift grids little weapons and less armor. Colmain swung back to the screen again activated it and found Donal in the same position waiting for him. We ll be up to see you in ten minutes he promised between his teeth. You ve got more sense than that commander replied Donal from the screen. Your ships aren t even dug in. They re sitting ducks as they are and in no kind of formation to cover each other as they try to jump off. We can annihilate you if you try to climb up here and lying as you are we can pound you to pieces on the ground. You re not equipped from the standpoint of supplies to dig in there and I m well enough informed about your total strength to know you ve got no force left at large that s strong enough to do us any damage. He paused. I suggest you come up here yourself in a single ship and discuss terms of surrender. Colmain stood glaring at the screen. But there was in fact no alternative to surrender. He would not have been a commander of the caliber he was if he had not recognized the fact. He nodded finally grudgingly. Coming up he said and blanked the screen. Shoulders a little humped he went off to take the little courier boat that was attached to the flagship for his own personal use. By heaven were the words with which he greeted Donal when he at last came face to face with him aboard the Friendly flagship you ve ruined me. I ll be lucky to get the command of five C class and a tender on Dunnin s World after this. It was not far from the truth. Donal returned to Harmony two days later and was cheered in triumph even by the sourest of that world s fanatics as he rode through the streets to Government Center. A different sort of reception awaited him there however when he arrived and went alone to report to Eldest Bright. The head of the United Council of Churches for the worlds of Harmony and Association looked up grimly as Dona came in still wearing the coverall of his battle dress under a barrel cut jacket he had thrown on hastily for the ride from the spaceport. The platform on which he had ridden had been open for the admiration of the crowds along the way and Harmony was in the chill fall of its short year. Evening gentlemen said Donal taking in not only Bright in the greeting but two other members of the Council who sat alongside him at his desk. These two did not answer. Donal had hardly expected them to. Bright was in charge here. Bright nodded at three armed soldiers of the native elite guard that had been holding post by the door and they went out closing the door behind them. So you ve come back said Bright. Donal smiled. Did you expect me to go some place else he asked. This is no time for humor Bright s large hand came down with a crack on the top of the desk. What kind of an explanation have you got for us for this outrageous conduct of yours If you don t mind Eldest Donal s voice rang against the gray walls of the room with a slight cutting edge the three had never heard before and hardly expected on this occasion. I believe in politeness and good manners for myself and see no reason why others shouldn t reciprocate in kind. What re you talking about9 Bright rose. Standing wide legged and shoulder bent above the smooth almost reflective surface of the gray desk the resemblance to the back alley scrapper for the moment outweighed the Torquemada in his appearance. You come back to us he said slowly and harshly and pretend not to know how you betrayed us Betrayed you Donal considered him with a quietness that was almost ominous. How betrayed you We sent you out to do a job. I believe I did it said Donal dryly. You wanted a watchtower over the Godless. You wanted a permanent installation on Zombri to spot any buildup on the part of the Exotics to attack you. You remember I asked you to set out in plain terms what you were after a few days back. You were quite explicit about that being just what you wanted. Well you ve got it You limb of Satan blared Bright suddenly losing control. Do you pretend to believe that you thought that was all we wanted Did you mink the anointed of the Lord would hesitate on the threshold of the Godless He turned and stalked suddenly around the desk to stand face to face with Donal. You had them in your power and you asked them only for an unarmed observation station on a barren moon. You had them by the throat and you slew none of them when you should have wiped them from the face of the stars to the last ship to the last man He paused and Donal could hear his teeth gritting in the sudden silence. How much did they pay you Bright snarled. Donal stood in an unnatural stillness. I will pretend he said after a moment that I didn t hear that last remark. As for your questions as to why I asked only for the observation station that was all you had said you wanted. As to why I did not wipe them out wanton killing is not my trade. Nor the needless expenditure of my own men in the pursuit of wanton killing. He looked coldly into Blight s eyes. I suggest you could have been a little more honest with me Eldest about what you wanted. It was the destruction of the Exotic power wasn t it It was gritted Bright. I thought as much said Donal. But it never occurred to you that I would be a good enough commander to find myself in the position to accomplish that. I think said Donal letting his eyes stray to the other two black clad elders as well you are hoist by your own petard gentlemen. He relaxed and smiling slightly turned back to Bright. There are reasons he said why it would be very unwise tactically for the Friendly Worlds to break the back of Mara and Kultis. If you ll allow me to give you a small lesson in power dis You ll come up with better answers than you have burst out Bright. Unless you want to be tried for betrayal of your employer Oh come now Donal laughed out loud. Bright whirled away from him and strode across the gray room. Flinging wide the door by which Donal had entered and they had exited he revealed the three elite guard soldiers. He whirled about arm outstretched to its full length finger quivering. Arrest that traitor he cried. The guards took a step toward Donal and in that same moment before they had any of them moved their own length s worth of distance toward him three faint blue beams traced their way through the intervening space past Bright leaving a sharp scent of ionized air behind them. And the three dropped. Like a man stunned by a blow from behind Bright stared down at the bodies of his three guards. He swayed about to see Donal reholstering his handgun. Did you think I was fool enough to come here unarmed asked Donal a little sadly. And did you think I d submit to arrest He shook his head. You should have wit enough to see now I ve just saved you from yourselves. He looked at their disbelieving faces. Oh yes he said. He gestured to the open wall at the far end of the office. Sounds of celebration from the city outside drifted lightly in on the evening breeze. The better forty per cent of your fighting forces are out there. Mercenaries. Mercenaries who appreciate a commander who can give them a victory at the cost of next to no casualties at all. What do you suppose their reaction would be if you tried me for betrayal and found me guilty and had me executed He paused to let the thought sink in. Consider it gentlemen. He pinched his jacket shut and looked grimly at the three dead elite guards and then turned back to the elders again. I consider this sufficient grounds for breach of contract he said. You can find yourself another War Chief. He turned and walked toward the door. As he passed through it Bright shouted after him. Go to them then Go to the Godless on Mara and Kultis Donal paused and turned. He inclined his head gravely. Thank you gentlemen he said. Remember The suggestion was yours. PART MARAN There remained the interview with Sayona the Bond. Going up some wide and shallow steps into the establishment it could not be called merely a building or group of buildings that housed the most important individual of the two Exotic planets Donal found cause for amusement in the manner of his approach. Farther out among some shrubbery at the entrance to the estate he had encountered a tall gray eyed woman and explained his presence. Go right ahead the woman had said waving him onward. You ll find him. The odd part of it was Donal had no doubt that he would. And the unreasonable certainty of it tickled his own strange sense of humor. He wandered on by a sunlit corridor that broad ened imperceptibly into a roofless garden past paintings and pools of water with colorful fish in them through a house that was not a house in rooms and out until he came to a small sunken patio half roofed over and at the far end of it under the shade of the half roof was a tall bald man of indeterminate age wrapped in a blue robe and seated on a little patch of captive turf surrounded by a low stone wall. Donal went down three stone steps across the patio and up the three stone steps at the far side until he stood over the tall seated man. Sir said Donal. I m Donal Graeme. The tall man waved him down on the turf. Unless you d rather sit on the wall of course he smiled. Sitting cross legged doesn t agree with everyone. Not at all sir answered Donal and sat down cross legged himself. Good said the tall man and apparently lost himself in thought gazing out over the patio. Donal also relaxed waiting. A certain peace had crept into him in the way through this place. It seemed to beckon to meditation and Donal had no doubt was probably cleverly constructed and designed for just that purpose. He sat comfortably now and let his mind wander where it chose and it happened not so oddly at all to choose to wander in the direction of the man beside him. Sayona the Bond Donal had learned as a boy in school was one of the human institutions peculiar to the Exotics. The Exotics were two planetsful of strange people judged by the standards of the rest of the human race some of whom went so far as to wonder if the inhabitants of Mara and Kultis had developed wholly and uniquely out of the human race after all. This however was speculation half in humor and half in superstition. In truth they were human enough. They had however developed their own forms of wizardry. Particularly in the fields of psychology and its related branches and in that other field which you could call gene selection or planned breeding depending on whether you approved or disapproved of it. Along with this went a certain sort of general mysticism. The Exotics worshiped no god overtly and laid claim to no religion. On the other hand they were nearly all they claimed by individual choice vegetarians and adherents of nonviolence on the ancient Hindu order. In addition however they held to another cardinal nonprinciple and this one was the principle of noninterference. The ultimate violence they believed was for one person to urge a point of view on another in any fashion of urging. Yet all these traits had not destroyed their ability to take care of themselves. If it was their creed to do violence to no man it was another readily admitted part of their same creed that no one should therefore be wantonly permitted to do violence to them. In war and business through mercenaries and middlemen they more than held their own. But thought Donal to get back to Sayona the Bond and his place in Exotic culture. He was one of the compensations peculiar to the Exotic peoples for their different way of life. He was in some way that only an Exotic fully understood a certain part of their emotional life made manifest in the person of a living human being. Like Anea who devastatingly normal and female as she was was to an Exotic literally one of the select of Kultis. She was their best selected qualities made actual like a living work of art that they worshiped. It did not matter that she was not always joyful that indeed her life must bear as much or more of the normal human sorrow of situation and existence. That was where most people s appreciation of the matter went astray. No what was important was the capabilities they had bred and trained into her. It was the capacity in her for living not the life she actually led that pleasured them. The actual achievement was up to her and was her own personal reward. They appreciated the fact that if she chose and was lucky she could appreciate life. Similarly Sayona the Bond. Again only in a sense mat an Exotic would understand Sayona was the actual bond between their two worlds made manifest in flesh and blood. In him was the capability for common understanding for reconciliation for an expression of the community of feeling between people ... Donal awoke suddenly to the fact that Sayona was speaking to him. The older man had been speaking some time in a calm even voice and Donal had been letting the words run through his mind like water of a stream through his ringers. Now something that had been said had jogged him to a full awareness. ... Why no answered Donal I thought this was standard procedure for any commander before you hired him. Sayona chuckled. Put every new commander through all that testing and trouble he said. No no. The word would get around and we d never be able to hire the men we wanted. I rather enjoy taking tests said Donal idly. I know you do Sayona nodded. A test is a form of competition after all and you re a competitor by nature. No normally when we want a military man we look for military proofs like everyone else and that s as far as we go. Why the difference with me then asked Donal turning to look at him. Sayona returned his gaze with pale brown eyes holding just a hint of humor in the wrinkles at their corners. Well we weren t just interested in you as a commander answered Sayona. There s the matter of your ancestors you know. You re actually part Maran and those genes even when outmatched are of interest to us. Then there s the matter of you yourself. You have astonishing potentials. Potentials for what A number of rather large things said Sayona soberly. We only glimpse them of course in the results of our tests. Can I ask what those large things are asked Donal curiously. I m sorry no. I can t answer that for you said Sayona. The answers would be meaningless to you personally anyway for the reason you can t explain anything in terms of itself. That s why I thought I d have this talk with you. I m interested in your philosophy. Philosophy Donal laughed. I m a Dorsai. Everyone even Dorsai every living thing has its own philosophy a blade of grass a bird a baby. An individual philosophy is a necessary thing the touchstone by which we judge our own existence. Also you re only part Dorsai. What does the other part say Donal frowned. I m not sure the other part says anything he said. I m a soldier. A mercenary. I have a job to do and I intend to do it always in the best way I know how. But beyond this urged Sayona. Why beyond this Donal fell silent still frowning. I suppose I would want to see things go well. You said want to see things go well rather than like to see things go well. Sayona was watching him. Don t you see any significance in that Want Oh Donal laughed. I suppose that s an unconscious slip on my part. I suppose I was thinking of making them go well. Yes said Sayona but in a tone that Donal could not be sure was meant as agreement or not. You re a doer aren t you Someone has to be said Donal. Take the civi . lized worlds now he broke off suddenly. Go on said Sayona. I meant to say take civilization. Think how short a time it s been since the first balloon went up back on Earth. Four hundred years Five hundred years Something like that. And look how we ve spread out and split up since then. What about it I don t like it said Donal. Aside from the inefficiency it strikes me as unhealthy. What s the point of technological development if we just split in that many more factions everyone hunting up his own type of aberrant mind and hiving with it That s no progress. You subscribe to progress Donal looked at him. Don t you I suppose said Sayona. A certain type of progress. My kind of progress. What s yours Donal smiled. You want to hear that do you You re right. I guess I do have a philosophy after all. You want to hear it Please said Sayona. All right said Donal. He looked out over the little sunken garden. It goes like this each man is a tool in his own hands. Mankind is a tool in its own hands. Our greatest satisfaction doesn t come from the rewards of our work but from the working itself and our greatest responsibility is to sharpen and improve the tool that is ourselves so as to make it capable of tackling bigger jobs. He looked at Sayona. What do you think of it I d have to think about it answered Sayona. My own point of view is somewhat different of course. I see Man not so much as an achieving mechanism but as a perceptive link in the order of things. I would say the individual s role isn t so much to do as it is to be. To realize to the fullest extent the truth already and inherently in him if I make myself clear. Nirvana as opposed to Valhalla eh said Donal smiling a little grimly. Thanks I prefer Valhalla. Are you sure asked Sayona. Are you quite sure you ve no use for Nirvana Quite sure said Donal. You make me sad said Sayona somberly. We had had hopes. Hopes There is said Sayona lifting one finger this possibility in you this great possibility. It may be exercised in only one direction that direction you choose. But you have freedom of choice. There s room for you here. With you The other worlds don t know said Sayona what we ve begun to open up here in the last hundred years. We are just beginning to work with the butterfly implicit hi the matter bound worm that is the present human species. There are great opportunities for anyone with the potentialities for this work. And I said Donal have these potentialities Yes answered Sayona. Partly as a result of a lucky genetic accident that is beyond our knowledge to understand now. Of course you would have to be retrained. That other part of your character dial rules you now would have to be readjusted to a harmonious integration with the other part we consider more valuable. Donal shook his head. There would be compensations said Sayona in a sad almost whimsical tone things would become possible to you do you know that you personally are the sort of man who for example could walk on air if only you believed you could Donal laughed. I am quite serious said Sayona. Try believing it some time. I can hardly try believing what I instinctively disbelieve said Donal. Besides that s beside the point. I am a soldier. But what a strange soldier murmured Sayona. A soldier full of compassion of whimsical fancies and wild daydreams. A man of loneliness who wants to be like everyone else but who finds the human race a conglomeration of strange alien creatures whose twisted ways he cannot understand while still he understands them too well for their own comfort. He turned his eyes calmly onto Donal s face which had gone set and hard. Your tests are quite effective aren t they Donal said. They are said Sayona. But there s no need to look at me like that. We can t use them as a weapon to make you do what we would like to have you do. That would be an action so self crippling as to destroy all its benefits. We can only make the offer to you. He paused. I can tell you that on the basis of our knowledge we can assure you with better than fair certainty that you ll be happy if you take our path. And if not Donal had not relaxed. Sayona sighed. You are a strong man he said. Strength leads to responsibility and responsibility pays little heed to happiness. I can t say I like the picture of myself going through life grubbing after happiness. Donal stood up. Thanks for the offer anyway. I appreciate the compliment it implies. There is no compliment in telling a butterfly he is a butterfly and need not crawl along the ground said Sayona. Donal inclined his head politely. Good by he said. He turned about and walked the few steps to the head of the shallow steps leading down into the sunken garden and across it to the way he had come in. Donal The voice of Sayona stopped him. He turned back and saw the Bond regarding him with an expression almost impish. believe you can walk on air said Sayona. Donal stared but the expression of the other did not alter. Swinging about Donal stepped out as if onto level ground and to his unutterable astonishment his foot met solidity on a level unsupported eight inches above the next step down. Hardly think ing why he did it Donal brought his other foot forward into nothingness. He took another step and another. Unsupported on the thin air he walked across above the sunken garden to the top of the steps on the far side. Striding once more onto solidity he turned about and looked across the short distance. Sayona still regarded him but his expression now was unreadable. Donal swung about and left the garden. Very thoughtful he returned to his own quarters in the city of Portsmouth which was the Maran city holding the Command Base of the Exotics. The tropical Maran night had swiftly enfolded the city by the time he reached his room yet the soft illumination that had come on automatically about and inside all the buildings by some clever trick of design failed to white out the overhead view of the stars. These shone down through the open wall of Donal s bedroom. Standing in the center of the bedroom about to change for the meal which would be his first of the day he had again forgotten to eat during the earlier hours Donal paused and frowned. He gazed up at the gently domed roof of the room which reached its highest point some twelve feet above his head. He frowned again and searched about through his writing desk until he found a self sealing signal tape capsule. Then with this in one hand he turned toward the ceiling and took one rather awkward step off the ground. His foot caught and held in air. He lifted himself off the floor. Slowly step by step he walked up through nothingness to the high point of the ceiling. Opening the capsule he pressed its self sealing edges against the ceiling where they clung. He hung there a second in air staring at them. Ridiculous he said suddenly and just as suddenly he was falling. He gathered himself with the instinct of long training in the second of drop and landing on hands and feet rolled over and came to his feet like a gymnast against a far wall. He got up brushing himself off unhurt and turned to look up at the ceiling. The capsule still clung there. He lifted the little appliance that was strapped to his wrist and keyed its phone circuit in. Lee he said. He dropped his wrist and waited. Less than a minute later Lee came into the room. Donal pointed toward the capsule on the ceiling. What s that he asked. Lee looked. Tape capsule he said. Want me to get it down Never mind answered Donal. How do you suppose it got up there Some joker with a float answered Lee. Want me to find out who No never mind said Donal. That ll be all. Bending his head at the dismissal Lee went out of the room. Donal took one more look at the capsule then turned and wandered over to the open wall of his room and looked out. Below him lay the bright carpet of the city. Overhead hung the stars. For longer than a minute he considered them. Suddenly he laughed cheerfully and out loud. No no he said to the empty room. I m a Dorsai He turned his back on the view and went swiftly to work at dressing for dinner. He was surprised to discover how hungry he actually was. PROTECTOR Battle Commander of Field Forces lan Ten Graeme mat cold dark man strode through the outer offices of the Protector of Procyon with a private and secret signal in his large fist. In the three outer offices no one got hi his way. But at the entrance to the Protector s private office a private secretary in the green and gold of a staff uniform ventured to murmur that the Protector had left orders to be undisturbed. lan merely looked at her placed one palm flat against the lock of the inner office door and strode through. Within he discovered Dona standing by an open wall caught by a full shaft of Procyon s white gold sunlight gazing out over Portsmouth and apparently deep in thought. It was a position in which he was to be discovered often these later days. He looked up now at the sound of fan s measured tread approaching. Six years of military and political successes had laid their inescapable marks upon Donal s face marks plain to be seen in the sunlight At a casual glance he appeared hardly older than the young man who had left the Dorsai half a dozen years before. But a closer inspection showed him to be slightly heavier of build now even a little taller. Only this extra weight slight increase as it was had not served to soften the clear lines of his features. Rather these same features had grown more pronounced more hard of line. His eyes seemed a little deeper set now and the habit of command command extended to the point where it became unconscious had cast an invisible shadow upon his brows so that it had become a face men obeyed without thinking as if it was the natural thing to do. Well he said as lan came up. They ve got New Earth his uncle answered and handed over the signal tape. Private and secret to you from Gait. Donal took the tape automatically that deeper more hidden part of him immediately taking over his mind. If the six years had wrought changes upon his person and manner they had worked to even greater ends below the surface of his being. Six years of command six years of estimate and decision had beaten broad the path between his upper mind and that dark oceanic part of him the depthless waters of which lapped on all known shores and many yet unknown. He had come you could not say to terms but to truce with the source of his odd ness hiding it well from others but accepting it to himself for the sake of the tool it placed in his hands. Now this information lan had just brought him was like one more stirring of the shadowy depths a rippled vibration spreading out to affect all integrate with all and make even more clear the vast and shadowy ballet of purpose and counter purpose that was behind all living action and for himself a call to action. As Protector of Procyon now responsible not only for the defense of the Exotics but of the two smaller inhabited planets in that system St. Marie and Coby that action was required of him. But even more as himself it was required of him. So that what it now implied was not something he was eager to avoid. Rather it was due and welcome. Indeed it was almost too welcome fortuitous even. I see he murmured. Then lifting his face to his uncle Gait 11 need help. Get me some figures on available strength will you lan lan nodded and went out as coldly and martially as he had entered. Left alone Donal did not break open the signal tape immediately. He could not now remember what he had been musing about when lan entered but the sight of his uncle had initiated a new train of thought. lan seemed well these days or at least as well as could be expected. It did not matter that he lived a sdlitary life had little to do with the other 199 commanders of his own rank and refused to go home to the Dorsai even for a trip to see his family. He devoted himself to his duties of training field troops and did it well. Aside from that he went his own way. The Maran psychiatrists had explained to Donal that no more than this could be expected of lan. Gently they had explained it. A normal mind gone sick they could cure. The unfortunate thing was that at least in so far as his attachment to his twin had been lan was not normal. Nothing in this universe could replace the part of him that had died with Kensie had indeed been Kensie for the peculiar psychological make up of the twins had made them two halves of a whole. Your uncle continued to live the psychiatrists had explained to Donal because of an unconscious desire to punish himself for letting his brother die. He is in fact seeking death but it must be a peculiar sort of death which will include the destruction of all that matters to him. If thy right hand offend thee cut if off. To his unconscious the lan Kensie gestalt holds the lan part of it to blame for what happened and is hunting a punishment to fit the crime. That is why he continues to practice the for him morbid abnormality of staying alive. The normal thing for such a personality would be to die or get himself killed. And that is why they had concluded he refuses to see or have anything to do with his wife or children. His unconscious recognizes the danger of pulling them down to destruction with him. We would advise against his being urged to visit them against his will. Donal sighed. Thinking about it now it seemed to him strange that the people who had come to group around him had none of them come really because of the fame he had won or the positions he could offer them. There was lan who had come because the family had sent him. Lee who had found the supply of that which his own faulty personality lacked and would have followed if Donal had been Protector of nothing instead of being Protector of Procyon. There was Lludrow DonaTs now assistant Chief of Staff who had come to him not under his own free will but under the prodding of his wife. For Lludrow had ended up marrying Elvine Rhy Gait s niece who had not let even marriage impose a barrier to her interest in Donal. There was Geneve bar Colmain who was on Donal s staff because Donal had been kind and because he had no place else to go that was worthy of his abilities. And lastly there was Gait himself whose friendship was not a military matter but the rather wistful affection of a man who had never had a son and saw its image in Donal though it was not really fair to count Gait who was apart as still Marshal of Freiland. And in contradistinction to all the rest there was Mor the one Donal would have most liked to have at his side but whose pride had driven him to place himself as far from his successful younger brother as possible. Mor had finally taken service with Venus where in the open market that flourished on that technological planet he had had his contract sold to Ceta and now found himself in the pay of Donal s enemy which would put them on opposite sides if conflict finally came. Donal shook himself abruptly. These fits of depression that took him lately were becoming more frequent possibly as a result of the long hours of work he found himself putting in. Brusquely he broke open the signal from Gait. Donal: The news about New Earth will have reached you by this time. The coup d etat that put the Kyerly government in control of the planet was engineered with troops furnished by Ceta. I have never ceased to be grateful to you for your advice against leasing out units to William. But the pattern here is a bad one. We will be facing the same sort of internal attack here through the local proponents of an open exchange for the buying and selling of contracts. One by one the worlds are failing into the hands of manipulators not the least of which is William himself. Please furnish us with as many field units as you can conveniently spare. There is to be a General Planetary Discussion meeting on Venus to discuss recognition of the new government on New Earth. They would be wise not to invite you so come anyway. I myself must be there and I need you even if no other reason impels you to come. Hendrik Gait Marshal Freiland. Donal nodded to himself. But he did not spring immediately into action. Where Gait was reacting against the shock of a sudden discovery Donal in the situation on New Earth recognized only the revelation of something he had been expecting for a long time. The sixteen inhabited worlds of the eight stellar systems from Sol to Altair survived within a complex of traded skills. The truth of the matter was that present day civilization had progressed too far for each planet to maintain its own training systems and keep up with progress in the many necessary fields. Why support a thousand mediocre school systems when it was possible to have fifty superb ones and trade the graduates for the skilled people you needed in other areas of learning The overhead of such systems was tremendous the number of top men in each field necessarily limited moreover progress was more effective if all the workers in one area of knowledge were kept closely in touch with each other. The system seemed highly practical. Donal was one of the few men of his time to see the trouble inherent in it. The joker to such an arrangement comes built in to the question how much is a skilled worker an individual in his own right and how much is he a piece of property belonging to whoever at the moment owns his contract If he is too much an individual barter between worlds breaks down to a series of individual negotiations and society nowadays could not exist except on the basis of community needs. If he is too much a piece of property then the field is opened for the manipulators the buyers and sellers of flesh those who would corner the manpower market and treat humanity like cattle for their own gain. Among the worlds between the stars this question still hung in argument. Tight societies like the technological worlds of the so called Venus group Venus herself Newton and Cassida and the fanatic worlds of Harmony and Association and Coby which was ruled by what amounted to a criminal secret society had always favored the piece of property view more strongly than the individual one. Loose societies like the republican worlds of Old Earth and Mars the Exotics Mara and Kultis and the violently individualistic society of the Dorsai held to the individual side of the question. In between were the middling worlds the ones with strong central governments like Freiland and New Earth the merchandising world of Ceta the democratic theocracy of St. Marie and the pioneer underpopulated fisher planet of Dunnin s World ruled by the co operative society known as the Corbel. Among the tight societies the contract exchange mart had been in existence for many years. On these worlds unless your contract was written with a specific forbidding clause you might find yourself sold on no notice at all to a very different employer possibly on a completely different world. The advantages of such a mart were obvious to an autocratic government since the government itself was in a position to control the market through its own vast needs and resources which no individual could hope to match. On a loose world where the government was hampered by its own built in system of checks from taking advantage of opposing individual employers the field was open for the sharp practices not only of individuals but of other governments. Thus an agreement between two worlds for the establishment of a reciprocal open market worked all to the advantage of the tighter of the two governments and must inevitably end in the tighter government gaining the lion s share of the talent available on the two worlds. This then was the background for the inevitable conflict that had been shaping up now for fifty years between two essentially different systems of controlling what was essentially the lifeblood of the human race its skilled minds. In fact thought Donal standing by the open wall the conflict was here and now. It had already been under way that day he had stepped aboard the ship on which he was to meet Gait and William and Anea the Select of Kultis. Behind the scenes the build up for a final battle had been already begun and his own role in that battle ready and waiting for him. He went over to his desk and pressed a stud speaking into a grille. I want all Chiefs of Staff here immediately he said. For a top level conference. He took his finger from the stud and sat down at the desk. There was a great deal to be done. PROTECTOR II Arriving at Holmstead the capital city of Venus five days later Donal went immediately to a conference with Gait in the latter s suite of rooms at Government Hotel. There were things to take care of he said shaking hands with the older man and sitting down or I d have been here sooner. He examined Gait. You re looking tired. The Marshal of Freiland had indeed lost weight. The skin of his face sagged a little on the massive bones and his eyes were darkened with fatigue. Politics politics answered Gait. Not my line at all. It wears a man down. Drink No thanks said Donal. Don t care for one myself Gait said. I ll just light my pipe ... you don t mind I never did before. And said Donal you never asked me before. Heh ... no Gait gave vent to something halfway between a cough and a chuckle and getting out his pipe began to fill it with fingers that trembled a little. Damned tired that s all. In fact I m ready to retire but how can a man quit just when all hell s popping You got my message how many field units can you let me have A couple and some odds and ends. Say twenty thousand of first line troops Gait s head came up. Don t worry Donal smiled. They will be moved in by small clumsy stages to give the impression I m letting you have five times that number but the procedure s a little fouled up in getting them actually transferred. Gait grunted. I might ve known you d think of something he said. We can use that mind of yours here at the main Conference. Officially we re gathered here just to agree on a common attitude to the new government on New Earth but you know what s really on the fire don t you I can guess said Donal. The open market. Right. Gait got his pipe alight and puffed on it gratefully. The split s right down the middle now that New Earth s in the Venus Group s camp and we Freiland that is are clear over on the nonmar ket side by way of reaction. We re in fair enough Strength counting heads as we sit around the table but that s not the problem. They ve got William and that white haired devil Blaine. He looked sharply over at Donal. You know Project Blame don t you I ve never met him. This is my first trip to Venus said Donal. There s a shark said Gait with feeling. I d like to see him and William lock horns on something. Maybe they d chew each other up and improve the universe. Well .. . about your status here Officially I m sent by Sayona the Bond as an observer. Well that s no problem then. We can easily get you invited to step from observer to delegate status. In fact I ve already passed the word. We were just waiting for you to arrive. Gait blew a large cloud of smoke and squinted at Donal through it. But how about it Donal 1 trust that insight of yours. What s really in the wind here at the Conference I m not sure answered Donal. It s my belief somebody made a mistake. A mistake New Earth explained Donal. It was a fool s trick to overthrow the government there right now and by force at that. Which is why I believe we ll be getting it back. Gait sat up sharply taking his pipe from his mouth. Getting it back You mean the old government returned to power He stared at Donal. Who d give it back to us William for one I d imagine said Donal. This isn t his way of doing things piecemeal. But you can bet as long as he s about returning it he ll exact a price for it. Gait shook his head. I don t follow you he said. William finds himself working with the Venus group right now Donal pointed out. But he s hardly out to do them a kindness. His own aims are what concerns him and it s those he ll be after in the long run. In fact if you look I ll bet you see two kinds of negotiations going on at this Conference. The short range and the long range. The short range is likely to be this matter of an open market. The long range will be William s game. Gait sucked on his pipe again. I don t know he said heavily. I don t hold any more of a brief for William than you do but you seem to lay everything at his doorstep. Are you sure you aren t a little overboard where the subject of him is concerned How can anyone be sure confessed Donal wryly. I mink what I mink about William because he hesitated If I were in his shoes I d be doing these tilings I suspect him of. He paused. William s weight on our side could swing the conference into putting enough pressure on New Earth to get the old government back in power couldn t it Why of course. Well then. Donal shrugged. What could be better than William setting forth a compromise solution that at one and the same time puts him in the opposite camp and conceals as well as requires a development in the situation he desires Well I can follow that said Gait slowly. But if that s the case what s he after What is it he ll wantT Donal shook his head. I m not sure he said carefully. I don t know. On that rather inconclusive note they ended their own private talk and Gait took Donal off to meet with some of the other delegates. The meeting developed as these things do into a cocktail gathering in the lounges of the suite belonging to Project Blaine of Venus. Blaine himself Donal was interested to discover was a heavy calm looking white haired man who showed no surface evidences of the character Gait had implied to him. Well what do you think of him Gait murmured as they left Blaine and his wife in the process of circulating around the other guests. Brilliant said Donal. But I hardly think someone to be afraid of. He met Gait s raised eyebrows with a smile. He seems too immersed in his own point of view. I d consider him predictable. As opposed to William asked Gait in a low voice. As opposed to William agreed Donal. Who is not or not so much. They had all this time been approaching William who was seated facing them at one end of the lounge and talking to a tall slim woman whose back was to them. As Gait and Donal came up William s gaze went past her. Well Marshal he said smiling. Protector The woman turned around and Donal found himself face to face with Anea. If six years had made a difference in the outward form of Donal they had made much more in that of Anea. She was in her late twenties now and past die last stages of that delayed adolescence of hers. She had begun now to reveal that rare beauty that would deepen with age and experience and never completely leave her even in extreme old age. She was more developed now than the last time Donal had seen her more fully woman formed and more poised. Her green eyes met Donal s indeterminate ones across mere centimeters of distance. Honored to see you again said Donal inclining his head. The honor is mine. Her voice like the rest of her had matured. Donal looked past her to William. Prince he said. William stood up and shook hands both with Donal and with Gait. Honored to have you with us Protector he said cheerfully to Donal. I understand the marshal s proposing you for delegate. You can count on me. That s good of you answered Donal. It s good for me said William. I like open minds around the Conference table and young minds no of fense Hendrik are generally open minds. I don t pretend to be anything but a soldier growled Gait. And it s precisely that that makes you dangerous in negotiations replied William. Politicians and businessmen always feel more at home with someone who they know doesn t mean what he says. Honest men always have been a curse laid upon the sharpshooter. A pity put in Anea that there aren t enough honest men then to curse mem all. She was looking at Donal. William laughed. The Select of Kultis could hardly be anything else but savage upon us underhanded characters could you Anea he said. You can ship me back to the Exotics any time I wear too heavily on you she retorted. No no. William wagged his head humorously. Being the sort of man I am I survive only by surrounding myself with good people like yourself. I m enmeshed in the world of hard reality it s my life and I wouldn t have it any other way but for vacation for a spiritual rest I like to glance occasionally over the wall of a cloister to where the greatest tragedy is a blighted rose. One should not underestimate roses said Donal. Men have died over a difference in their color. Come now said William turning on him. The Wars of the Roses ancient England I can t believe such a statement from you Donal. That conflict like everything else was over practical and property disputes. Wars never get fought for abstract reasons. On the contrary Donal said. Wars invariably get fought for abstract reasons. Wars may be instigated by the middle aged and the elderly but they re fougfat by youth. And youth needs more man a practical motive for tempting the tragedy of all tragedies the end of the universe which is dying when you re young. What a refreshing attitude from a professional soldier laughed William. Which reminds me I may have some business to discuss with you. I understand you emphasize the importance of field troops over everything else in a world s armed forces and I hear you ve been achieving some remarkable things in the training of them. That s information right down my alley of course since Ceta s gone in for this leasing of troops. What s your secret. Protector Do you permit observers No secret said Donal. And you re welcome to send observers to our training program any time. Prince. The reason behind our successful training methods is the man in charge my uncle Field Commander lan Graeme. Ah your uncle said William. I hardly imagine I could buy him away from you if he s a relative. I m afraid not answered Donal. Well well we ll have to talk anyway. By heaven my glass seems to have got itself empty. Anyone else care for another No thank you said Anea. Nor I said Donal. Well I will Gait said. Well in that case come along marshal William turned to Gait. You and I ll make our own way to the bar. They went off together across the lounge. Donal and Anea were left facing each other. So said Donal you haven t changed your mind about me. No. So much for the fair mindedness of a Select of Kultis he said ironically. I m not superhuman you know she flashed with a touch of her younger spirit. No she said more calmly there s probably millions as bad as you or worse but you ve got ability. And you re a self seeker. It s that I can t forgive you. William s corrupted your point of view he said. At least he makes no bones about being the kind of man he is Why should there be some sort of virtue always attributed to a frank admission of vice wondered Donal. Besides you re mistaken. William he lowered his voice sets himself up as a common sort of devil to blind you to the fact that he is what he actually is. Those who have anything to do with him recognize the fact that he s evil and think that in recognizing this they ve plumbed the depths of the man. Oh Her voice was scornful. What are his depths then Something more than personal aggrandizement. You who are so close to him miss what the general mass of people who see him from a distance recognize quite clearly. He lives like a monk he gets no personal profit out of what he does and his long hours of work. And he does not care what s thought of him. Any more than you do. Me Caught by an unexpected amount of truth in this charge Donal could still protest. I care for the opinion of the people whose opinion I care for. Such as she said. Well you he answered for one. Though I don t know why. About to say something and hardly waiting for him to finish so she could say it she checked suddenly and stared at him her eyes widening. Oh she gasped don t try to tell me that I hardly know why I try to tell you anything he said suddenly very bitter and went off leaving her where she stood. He went directly out from the cocktail gathering and back to his own suite where he immersed himself in work that kept him at his desk until the small hours of the morning. Even then when he at last got to bed he did not sleep well a condition he laid to a walking hangover from the drinks at the cocktail gathering. His mind would have examined this excuse further but he would not let it. PROTECTOR HI ... A typical impasse said William Prince of Ceta. Have some more of this Moselle. Thank you no answered Donal. The Conference was in its second week and he had accepted William s invitation to lunch with him in William s suite following a morning session. The fish was excellent the wine was imported and Donal was curious although so far they had spoken of nothing of real importance. You disappoint me William said replacing the decanter on the small table between them. I m not very strong in the food and drink department myself but I do enjoy watching others enjoy them. He raised his eyebrows at Donal. But your early training on the Dorsai is rather Spartan In some respects yes answered Donal. Spartan and possibly a little provincial. I m finding myself sliding into Hendrik Gait s impatience with the lack of progress in our talks. Well mere you have it said William. The soldier loves action the politician the sound of his own voice. But there s a better explanation than mat of course. You ve realized by now no doubt that the things mat concern a Conference aren t settled at the Conference table he gestured with his hand at the food before him but at small tete a tetes like these. I d guess then mat the tete a tetes haven t been too productive of agreements so far. Donal sipped at the wine left in his glass. Quite right said William cheerfully. Nobody really wants to interfere in local affairs on a world and nobody really wants to impose an institution on it from the outside such as the open market against the will of some of its people. He shook his head at Donal s smile. No no I m being quite truthful. Most of the delegates here would just as soon the problem of an open market had never come up at all on New Earth so that they could tend to then own styles of knitting without being bothered. I ll still reserve my judgment on that said Donal. But in any case now we re here we ve got to come to some decision. Either for or against the current government and for or against the market. Do we asked William. Why not a compromise solution 1 What sort of compromise Well that of course said William in a frank tone is why I asked you to lunch. I feel very hum Gordon K. Dickson ble about you Donal I really do. I was entirely wrong in my estimate of you five years ago. I did you an injustice. Donal lifted his right hand in a small gesture of deprecation. No ... no said William. I insist on apologizing. I m not a kind man Donal. I m interested only in buying what others have to sell and if a man has ability I ll buy it If not He let the sentence hang significantly. But you have ability. You had it five years ago and I was too concerned with the situation Co recognize it The truth of the matter is Hugh Killien was a fool. On that I can agree with you Donal said. Attempting to carry on with Anea under my nose I don t blame the girl. She was still a child then for all her size. That s the way these Exotic hothouse people are slow growing. But I should have seen it and expected it. In fact I m grateful to you for what you did when I think back on it Thank you murmured Donal. No I mean mat absolutely. Not that I m talking to you now out of a sense of gratitude alone I wouldn t insult your credulity with such a suggestion. But I am pleased to be able to find things working out in such a way that my own profit combines with the chance to pay you a small debt of gratitude. At any rate I appreciate it said Donal. Not at all. Now the point is mis said William leaning forward over the table personally of course I favor the open market. I m a businessman after all and there re business advantages to perfectly free trading. But more than open markets it s important to business to have peace between the stars and peace comes only from a stable situation. Go on said Donal. Well there are after all only two ways of imposing peace on a community from the inside or from me outside. We don t seem to be able to do it to ourselves from the inside so why not try imposing it from the outside And how would you go about that Quite simply said William leaning back in his float. Let all the worlds have open markets but appoint a separate individual supraplanetary authority to police the markets. Equip it with sufficient force to back up its authority against even individual governments if need be and appoint a responsible individual in charge whom governments will think twice about tangling with. He raised his eyes calmly to Donal across the table and paused to let expectation build to its proper peak in this young man. How would you like the job he asked. I Donal stared at him. William s eyes were shrewd upon him. Donal hesitated and the muscles of his throat worked once. I he said. Why the man who commanded a force like that would be the word faltered and died unspoken. He would indeed said William softly. Across from him Donal seemed to come slowly back to him Gordon Dickson self. He turned narrowed eyes on William. Why come to me with an offer like this he demanded. There are older commanders. Men with bigger names. And that is just precisely why I come to you Donal replied William without hesitation. Their stars are fading. Yours.is rising. Where will these older men be twenty years from now On the olfaer hand you he waved a self explanatory hand. I said Donal. He seemed to be dazzled. Commander Call it Commander in Chief said William. The job will be there and you re the man for the job. Fm prepared in the name of Ceta to set up a tax on interplanetary transactions which because of our volume of trade we will bear the most heavily. The tax would pay for your forces and yourself. All we want in exchange is a place on a three man commission which will act as final authority over you. He smiled. We could hardly put such power in your hands and turn you loose under no authority. I suppose Donal was hesitant. I d have to give up my position around Procyon I m afraid so said William frankly. You d have to remove any suspicion of conflicting interests. I don t know. Donal s voice was hesitant. I might lose this new post at any time n Tliere s no need to worry about that said William. Ceta should effectively control the commission since we will be paying the lion s share. Besides a force like mat once established isn t easy to disband. And if they re loyal to their commander and your troops I hear usually are very much so you would be in a position to defend your own position if it came to that. Still Donal still demurred. Taking a post like that I d inevitably make enemies. If something should go wrong I d have no place to turn no one would hire me Frankly said William sharply I m disappointed in you Donal. Are you completely lacking in foresight His tone took on a little impatience. Can t you see that we re inevitably tending toward a single government for all the worlds It may not come tomorrow or even in the next decade but any supraplanetary organization must inevitably grow into the ultimate central authority. In which case said Donal I d still be nothing but a hired hand. What I want his eyes burned a little more brightly is to own something. A world ... why not I m equipped to control a world and defend it. He turned on William. You ll have your position he said. William s eyes were hard and bright as two cut stones. He laughed shortly. You don t mince words he said. I m not that kind of man said Donal with a slight swagger in his tone. You should have expected me to see through this scheme of yours. You want supreme authority. Very well. Give me one of the worlds under you. And if I was to give you a world said William. Which one Any fair size world. Donal licked his lips. Well why not New Earth William laughed. Donal stiffened. We re getting nowhere said Donal. He stood up. Thank you for the lunch. He turned and headed for the exit from the lounge. Wait He turned to the sound of William s voice. The other man was also on his feet and he came toward Donal. I ve underestimated you again said William. Forgive me. He placed a detaining hand on Donal s arm. The truth is you ve only anticipated me. Indeed I d intended you to be something more than a hired soldier. But ... all this is in the future he shrugged. I can hardly do more than promise you what you want. Oh said Donal. Something more than a promise. You could give me a contract confirming me as the supreme authority on New Earth. William stared at him and this time he did laugh loudly and long. Donal he said. Excuse me ... but what good would a contract like that be He spread his arms wide. Some day New Earth may be mine to write you a contract for. But now Still you could write it. It would serve as a guarantee that you mean what you say. William stopped laughing. His eyes narrowed. Put my name to a piece of writing like that he said. What kind of a fool do you take me for Donal wilted a little under the angry contempt in the older man s voice. Well ... at least draw up such a contract he said. I suppose I couldn t expect you to sign it. But ... at least I d have something. You have something that could possibly cause me some slight embarrassment said William. I hope you realize it d do nothing more than that in me face of my denial of ever having discussed the matter with you. I d feel more secure if the terms were laid out ahead of time said Donal almost humbly. William shrugged not without a touch of scorn. Come on then he said and led the way across the room to a desk. He pressed a stud on it and indicated a grille. Dictate he said. Later leaving William s suite of rooms with the unsigned contract in his pocket Donal came out into the general hotel corridor outside so swiftly that he almost trod upon the heels of Anea who seemed also to be leaving. Where away he said. She turned on him. None of your business she snapped but an expression which the inescapable honesty of her face would not permit her to hide aroused his sudden suspicions. He reached out swiftly and caught up her right hand which was clenched.into a fist. She struggled but he lifted the fingers easily back. Tucked into the nest of her palm was a tiny contact snooper mike. You will continue to be a fool he said wearily dropping her hand with the mike still in it. How much did you hear Enough to confirm my opinion of your she hissed. Bring that opinion to the next session of the Conference if you can get in he said. And went off. She stared after him shaken with a fury and a sudden pain of betrayal for which she could find no ready or sensible explanation. She had she told herself through that afternoon and the evening that followed no intention of watching the next session personally. Early the next morning however she found herself asking Gait if he would get her a visitor s pass to the Conference room. The marshal was obliged to inform her that at William s request this session of the Conference was to be a closed one. He promised however to bring her what news he could and she was forced to rest uneasily content with that. As for Gait himself he went on to the Conference arriving some few minutes late and discovering that the session had already started. William himself had begun the proposal of a plan that made the Dorsai Marshal of Freiland stiffen to attention even as he was sitting down on his float at the Conference table. ... To be established by a vote of this body William was saying. Naturally he smiled our individual governments will have to ratify later but we all know that to be pretty much a formality. A supraplanetary controlling body having jurisdiction over trade and contracts only in conjunction with a general establishment of the open market satisfies the requirements of all our members. Also once this is out of the way there should be no reason why we should not call upon the present insurgent government of New Earth to resign in favor of the previous regular government. And I expect that if we call with a united voice the present heads of state there will yield to our wishes. He smiled around the table. I m open for questions and objections gentlemen. You said spoke up Project Blaine in his soft precise voice something about a supranational armed force which would enforce the rulings of this controlling body. Such an armed force is of course contrary to our principles of individual worldrights. I would like to say right now that I hardly think we would care to support such a force and allow it such freedom if a commander inimical to our interests was at its head. In short We have no intention of subscribing to a commander other than one with a thorough understanding of our own principles and rights interrupted Arjean of St. Marie all but glaring at the Venusian. Gait s shaggy brows shot together in a scowl. There was something entirely too pat about the way these two had horned in. He started to look over at Donal for confirmation of this suspicion but William s voice drew his attention back to the Cetan. I understand of course said William. However I think I have the answer to all of your objections. He smiled impersonally at all of them. The top commanders as you know are few. Each one has various associations which might make him objectionable to some one or more of the delegates here. In the main I would say nothing more than a professional soldier. The prime examples of this of course are our Dorsal The glances around the table swung quickly in on Gait who scowled back to hide his astonishment ... The Marshal of Freiland would therefore because of his position in his profession and between the stars be our natural choice. But William barely got the word out in time to stifle objections that had begun to voice themselves from several points around the table Ceta recognizes that because of the marshal s long association with Freiland some of you may not welcome him in such a position. We re therefore proposing another man entirely equally a Dorsai but one who is young enough and recently enough on the scene to be considered free of political prejudice I refer to the Protector of Procyon Donal Graeme. He gestured at Donal and sat down. A babble of voices broke out all at once but Donal was on his feet looking tall and slim and remarkably young amongst the group of them. He stood waiting and the voices finally died down. I won t keep you for more than a minute said Donal looking around at them. I agree thoroughly with Prince William s compromise solution to the problem of this Conference because I most heartily believe the worlds do need a watchdog over them to prevent what s just now taken place from happen ing. He paused and looked around the table again. You see honored as I am by Prince William s nomination I can t accept because of something which just recently came into my hands. It names no names but it promises things which will be a revelation to all of us. I also will name no names but I would guess however that if this is a sample of what s going on there are probably half a dozen other such writings being traded around. He paused to let this sink in. So I hereby refuse the nomination. And further I m now withdrawing as a Delegate from this Conference in protest against being approached in this manner. I could not accept such a post or such a responsibility except with perfectly clean hands and no strings attached. Good by gentlemen. He nodded to them and stepped back from their stunned silence. About to turn toward the exit he stopped and pulled from his pocket the unsigned and nameless contract he had received from William the previous day. Oh by the way he said. This is the matter I was talking about. Perhaps you d all like to look it over. He threw it onto the table in their midst and strode out. As he left the lounge behind him a sudden eruption of voices reached to his ears. He did not go directly back to his own suite but turned instead to Gait s. The doorbot admitted him and he made his way to the main lounge of the suite striding in with the confidence of one who expects to find it empty. It was not however. He had made half a dozen long strides into the room before he discovered another person seated alone at a chess board on a little table and looking up at his entrance with startled eyes. It was Anea. He checked and inclined his head to her. Excuse me he said. I was going to wait for Hendrik. I ll take one of the other lounges. No she had risen to her feet. Her face was a little pale but controlled. I m waiting for him too. Is the session over Not yet he replied. Then let s wait together. She sat down at die table again. She waved a hand at the pieces presently set up in the form of a knights castles problem. You play Yes he said. Then join me. It was almost an order the way she said it. Donal showed no reaction however but crossed the lounge and took a seat opposite her. She began to set out the pieces. If she expected to win she was mistaken. Donal won three swift games but oddly without showing any particular flair or brilliance. Consistently he seemed able to take advantage of opportunities she had overlooked but which had been there before her in perfect obviousness all the time. The games seemed more a tribute to her obtuseness than his perception. She said as much. He shrugged. You were playing me he said. And you should rather have been playing my pieces. She frowned but before she had a chance to sort this answer out in her mind there was the sound of steps outside the lounge and Gait entered striding along fast and excitedly. Donal and she both rose. What happened she cried. Eh What Gait s attention had been all for Donal. Now the older man swung on her. Didn t he tell you what happened up to the time he left No She flashed a look at Donal but his face was impassive. Quickly Gait told her. Her face paled and became shadowed by bewilderment. Again she turned to Donal but before she could frame the question in her mind Donal was questioning Gait. And after I left You should have seen it the older man s voice held a fierce glee. Each one was at the throat of everybody else in the room before you were out of sight. I swear the last forty years of behind the scenes deals and the crosses and the double crosses came home to roost in the next five minutes. Nobody trusted anybody everybody suspected everybody else What a bombshell to throw in their laps Gait chuckled. I feel forty years younger just for seeing it. Who was it that actually approached you boy It was William wasn t it I d rather not say said Donal. Well well never mind that. For all practical purposes it could have been any of them. But guess what happened Guess how it all ended up They voted me in as commander in chief after all said Donal. They Gait checked suddenly his face drop ping into an expression of amazement. How d you know Donal smiled a little mirthlessly. But before he could answer a sharp intake of breath made both men turn their heads. Anea was standing off a little distance from them her face white and stiff. I might have suspected she said in a low hard voice to Donal. I might have known. Known Known what demanded Gait staring from one to the other. But her eyes did not waver from Donal. So this was what you meant when you told me to bring my opinion to today s session she went on in the same low hate filled voice. Did you think that this ... this sort of double dealing would change it For a second pain shadowed Donal s normally enigmatic eyes. I should have known better I suppose he said quietly. I assumed you might look beyond the necessities of this present action to Thank you she broke in icily. Ankle deep into the mud is far enough. She turned on Gait. I ll see you another time Hendrik. And she stalked out of the room. The two men watched her go in silence. Then Gait slowly turned back to look at the younger man. What s between you two boy he asked. Donal shook his head. Half of heaven and all of hell I do believe he said and that was the most illuminating answer the marshal was able to get out of him. COMMANDER IN CHIEF Under the common market system controlled by the United Planetary Forces under Commander in Chief Donal Graeme the civilized worlds rested in a highly unusual state of almost perfect peace for two years nine months and three days absolute time. Early on the morning of the fourth day however Donal woke to find his shoulder being shaken. What he said coming automatically awake. Sir It was the voice of Lee. Special Courier here to see you. He says his message won t wait. Right. Groggily but decisively Donal swung his legs over the edge of his sleeping float and reached for his trunks on the ordinary float beside him. He gathered them in brushing something to the floor as he did so. Light he said to Lee. The light went on revealing that what he had knocked down was his wrist appliance. He picked it up and stared at it with blurry eyes. March ninth he murmured. That right LeeT That s right responded the voice of Lee from across the room. Donal chuckled a little huskily. Not yet the ides of March he murmured. But close. Close. Sir Nothing. Where s the courier Lee The garden lounge. Donal pulled on the trunks and on a second s impulse followed them with trousers tunic and jacket complete outerwear. He followed Lee through the pre dawn darkness of his suite in Tomblecity Cassida and into the garden lounge. The courier a slim small middle aged man in civilian clothes was waiting for him. Commander the courier squinted at him. I ve got a message for you. I don t know what it means myself Never mind interrupted Donal. What is it I was to say to you the gray rat has come out of the black maze and pressed the white lever. I see said Donal. Thank you. The courier lingered. Any message or orders commander None thank you. Good morning said Donal. Good morning sir said the courier and went out escorted by Lee. When Lee returned he found Donal already joined by his uncle lan Graeme fully dressed and armed. Donal was securing a weapons belt around his own waist. In the new glare of the artificial light after the room s darkness and beside his dark and giant uncle the paring down effect of the last months showed plainly on Donal. He was not so much thinned down as stretched drum tight over the hard skeleton of his own body. He seemed all harsh angles and tense muscle. And his eyes were hollowed and dark with fatigue. Looking at him it would be hard not to assume that here was a man either on the verge of psychological and nervous breakdown or someone of fanatic purpose who had already pushed himself beyond the bounds of ordinary human endurance. There was something of the fanatic s translucency about him in which the light of the consuming will shows through the frailer vessel of the body. Except that Donal was not really translucent but glowed body and all like one fine solid bar of tempered steel with the white ashy heat of his consuming but all unconsumable will. Arm yourself Lee he said pointing to a weapons belt. We ve got two hours before sun up and things begin to pop. After that I ll be a proscribed criminal on any world but the Dorsai and you two with me. It did not occur to him to ask either of the other men whether they wished to throw themselves into the holocaust that was about to kindle about him and it did not occur to the others to wonder that he did not. lan did you make a signal to Lludrow I did said lan. He s in deep space with all units and he ll hold them there a week if need be he says incommunicado. Good. Come on. As they left the building for the platform awaiting them on the landing pad outside and later as the platform slipped them silently through the pre dawn darkness to a landing field not far from the residence Donal was silent calculating what could be done in seven days time absolute. On the eighth day Lludrow would have to open his communication channels again and the orders that would reach him when he did so would be far different from the sealed orders Donal had left him and which he would be opening right now. Seven days They landed at the field. The ship a space and atmosphere courier N4J was lying waiting for them its ground lights gleaming dimly on steady ready. The forward lock on the great shadowy cylinder swung open as they approached and a scar faced senior captain stepped out. Sir he said saluting Donal and standing aside to let them enter. They went in and the lock closed behind them. Coby captain said Donal. Yes sir. The captain stepped to a grille in the wall. Control room. Coby he said. He turned from the grille. Can I show you to the lounge commander For the time being said Donal. And get us some coffee. They went on into the courier s lounge which was fixed up like the main room on a private yacht. And presently coffee was forthcoming on a small autocart from the galley which scooted in the door by itself and parked itself in the midst of their floats. Sit down with us Cor said Donal. Lee this is Captain Coruna El Man Cor my uncle lan Graeme. Dorsai said lan shaking hands. Dorsal responded El Man. They smiled slightly at each other two grimly carved professional warriors. We have met lan said. Right said Donal. Now that introductions are over how long will it take us to make it to Coby We can make our first jump immediately we get outside atmosphere answered El Man in his rather harsh grating voice. We ve been running a steady calculation on a standby basis. After the first jump it ll take a minimum of four hours to calculate the next. We ll be within a light year of Coby then and each phase shift will take progressively less calculation as we zero in. Still five more calculation periods at an average of two hours a period. Ten hours plus the original four makes fourteen straight drive and landing in on Coby another three to four hours. Call it eighteen hours minimum. All right said Donal. I ll want ten of your men for an assault party. And a good officer. Myself said El Man. Captain I ... very well said Donal. You and ten men. Now. He produced an architectural plan from inside his jacket. If you ll all look here this is the job we have to do. The plan was that of an underground residence on Coby that planet which had grown into a community from a collection of mines and never been properly terraformed. Indeed there was a question whether even with modern methods it could be. Coby was just too far out from hospitable Procyon and formed of the wrong materials. The plan itself showed a residence of the middle size comprising possibly eighteen rooms surrounded by gardens and courtyards. The differences which only began to appear as Donal proceeded to point them out from an above ground residence of the ordinary type on other planets lay in the fakery involved. As far as appearances went someone in the house or in one of the gardens would imagine he was surface dwelling on at least a terraformed world. But eight tenths of that impression would be sheer illusion. Actually the person in question would have ultimate rock in all directions rock ten meters overhead at the furthest rock underfoot and rock surrounding. For the assault party this situation effected certain drawbacks but also certain definite advantages. A drawback was that after securing their objective who was a man Donal did not trouble himself to identify withdrawal would not be managed as easily as it might on the surface where it was simply a matter of bundling everyone into the nearby ship and jumping off. A great advantage however which all but offset the drawback mentioned was the fact that in this type of residence the rock walls surrounding were honeycombed with equipment rooms and tunnels which maintained the above ground illusion a situation allowing easy ingress and surprise. As soon as the four with him had been briefed Donal turned the plans over to El Man who went off to inform his assault party and suggested to Lee and lan that they join him in getting what sleep they could. He took himself to his own cabin undressed and fell into the bunk there. For a few minutes his mind tight tuned by exhaustion threatened to wander off into speculations about what would be taking place on the various worlds while he slept. Unfortunately no one had yet solved the problems involved in receiving a news broadcast in deep space. Which was why of course all interstellar messages were taped and sent by ship. It was the swiftest and when you came right down to it the only practical way to get them there. However twenty years of rigid training slowly gained control of Donal s nerves. He slept. He woke some twelve hours later feeling more rested than he had in over a year. After eating he went down to the ship s gym which cramped and tiny as it was was still a luxurious accessory on a deep space vessel. He found lan methodically working out in the Dorsai fashion a procedure the large dark man went through every morning when conditions did not prohibit it as conscientiously and as nearly without thought as most men shave and brush their teeth. For several minutes Donal watched lan on the single bar doing arm twists and stands and when his uncle dropped to the mat his wide torso gleaming with perspiration and the reek of it strong in Donal s nostrils Donal took him on at grips and holds. The results were a little shocking to lan. That lan was stronger than he was only to be expected. His uncle was the bigger man. But Donal should have had a clear edge in speed both because of age and because of his own natural reflexes which were unusually good. The past year s strain and physical idleness however had taken their toll. He broke three holds of his uncle s with barely a fraction of a second to spare and when he did at last throw the older man it was by the use of a feint he would have scorned to use his senior year at school back on the Dorsal a feint that took sneaking advantage of a slight stiffness he knew to be the result of an old wound in his uncle s deep scarred left arm. lan could hardly have failed to recognize the situation and the reason behind the slightly unfair maneuver that had downed him. But nothing seemed to matter to him these days. He said nothing but showered and dressed with Donal and they went in to the lounge. Shortly after they sat down there there was the medication warning and a few minutes later the shock of a phase shift. On the heels of it El Man came walking into the lounge. We re in range commander he said. If you want the news Please said Donal. El Man touched one of the walls and it thinned DORSAI1B into transparency through which they could see the three dimensional image of a Cobyman seated at a desk. ... Has been spreading came the voice of the man at the desk following quickly upon the charges brought by the Commission for the Common Market System against Commander in Chief Graeme of the United Planetary Forces. Hie Com Chief himself has disappeared and most of his deep space units appear presently to be out of communication and their whereabouts are presently unknown. This development has apparently sparked outbreaks of violence on most of the civilized worlds in some cases amounting to open revolt against the established governments. The warring factions seem split by a fear of the open markets on he part of the general populaces and a belief that the charges against Graeme are an attempt to remove what safeguards on the rights of the individual still remain in effect As far as this office has been informed righting is going on on the present worlds Venus Mars Cassida New Earth Freiland Association Harmony and St. Marie and the governments of the following worlds are known to be deposed or in hiding Cassida New Earth and FreUand. No outbreaks are reported on Old Earth Dunnin s World Mara Kultis or Ceta. And there is no present violence here on Coby at all. Prince William has offered the use of his leased troops as a police force to end the disturbances and levies of Cetan troops are either on or en route to all trouble spots at the present time. William has announced that his troops will be used to put down trouble wherever they find it without respect to what faction this leaves in power. Our job is not to take sides he is reported as stating but to bring some kind of order out of the present chaos and put out the flames of self destruction. A late signal received from Old Earth reports that a number of the insurgent factions are agitating for the appointment of William as World s Regent with universal authority and strong man powers to deal with the present emergency. A somewhat similar movement puts forward the name of Graeme the missing Com Chief for a similar position. That s all for now concluded the man at the desk watch for our next signal in fifteen minutes. Good said Donal and gestured to El Man to shut off the receiver which the scarred Dorsai captain did. How long until planetfall A couple of hours replied El Man. We re a bit ahead of schedule. That was the last phase shift. We re on our way in on straight drive now. Do you have co ordinates on our landing point Donal nodded and stood up. I ll come up to control he said. The process of bringing the N4J into the spot on the surface of Coby corresponding to the co ordinates indicated by Donal was a time consuming but simple procedure only mildly complicated by Donal s wish to make their visit undetected. Coby had nothing to defend in the sense a terraformed world might have and they settled down without incident on its airless surface directly over the freight lock to one of the subsurface transportation tunnels. All right said Donal five minutes later to the armed contingent of men assembled in the lounge. This is an entirely volunteer mission and I ll give any of you one more chance to withdraw without prejudice if you want to. He waited. Nobody stirred. Understand said Donal I want nobody with me simply because he was shamed into volunteering or because he didn t want to hesitate when his shipmates volunteered. Again he waited. There were no withdrawals. Right then. Here s what we ll be doing. You ll follow me down that freight lock and into a receiving room with a door into a tunnel. However we won t be taking the door but burning directly through one of the walls to the service section of an adjoining residence. You ve all seen a drawing of our route. You re to follow me or whoever remains in command and anyone who can t keep up gets left behind. Everybody understand He looked around their faces. All right he said. Let s go. He led out down the passageway of the ship out through their lock and down into the freight lock into the receiving room. This turned out to be a large gloomy chamber with fused rock walls. Donal measured off a section of one wall and set his torchmen to work. Three minutes later they were in the service section of a Coby residence. The area in which they found themselves was a network of small tunnels wide enough for only one man at a time and interspersed with little niches and crannies holding technical devices necessary to the maintenance and appearance of the residence. The walls were coated with a permanent illuminating layer and in this cold white light they filed along one of the tunnels and emerged into a garden. The cycle of the residence s system was apparently now set on night. Darkness held the garden and a fine imitation of the starry heavens glittered overhead. Ahead and to their right was the clump of main rooms soft lit with interior light. Two men to hold this exit whispered Donal The rest of you follow me. He led the way at a low crouching run through the garden and to the foot of some wide stairs. At their top a solitary figure could be seen pacing back and forth on a terrace before an open wall. Captain said Donal. El Man slipped away into the bushes below the terrace. There was a little wait in the artificial night and then his dark shadow was seen to rise suddenly upon the terrace behind the pacing figure. They melted together sagged and only the shadow of El Man was left. He beckoned them up. Three men to hold this terrace whispered Donal as they all came together at the head of the stairs. El Man told off the necessary number of the assault party and they continued on into the lighted interior of the house. For several rooms it seemed almost as if they would achieve then objective without meeting anyone other than the man they had come to seek. Then without anything in the way of warning at all they were suddenly in the middle of a pitched battle. As they emerged into the main hall hand weapons opened up on them from three converging rooms at once. The shipmen automatically responding to training dropped to the floor took cover and returned the fire. They were pinned down. They were but not the three Dorsai. Donal lan and El Man reacting in that particular way that was a product of genes reflexes and their own special training and that made the Dorsai so particularly valuable as professional soldiers these three had responded automatically and in unison a split second before the fire opened up on them. It was almost as if some small element of precognition had entered the picture. At any rate with a reaction too quick for thought these three swung about and rushed one of the enemy doorways reached it and closed with their opponents within before that opposition could bring their fire to bear. The three found themselves in a darkened room and fighting hand to hand. Here again the particular character of the Dorsai soldier paid off. There were eight men in ambush within this particular room and they were all veteran soldiers. But no two of them were a match at hand to hand fighting with any single Dorsai and in addition the Dorsai had the advantage of being able almost by instinct to recognize each other in the dark and the melee and to join forces for a sudden common effort without the need for discussion. The total effect of these advantages made it almost a case of three men who could see fighting eight who were blind. In DonaTs case he plunged into the dark room right on the heels of El Man and to El Man s left with lan right behind him. Their charge split the defenders within into two groups and also carried them farther back into obscurity a movement which the Dorsai by common silent consent improved on for the purpose of further separating the enemy. Donal found himself pushing back four men. Abandoning three of these to lan behind him under the simple common sense precept that you fight best when you fight only one man at a time he dove in almost at the level of his opponent s knees tackled him and they went down and rolled over together Donal taking advantage of the opportunity to break the other soldier s back in the process. He continued his roll and came up pivoting and instinctively side stepping. A dark body flung past him but that instinct spoken of before warned him that it was El Man flinging himself clear across the room to aid the general confusion. Donal reversed his field and went back the way from which El Man had come. He came up against an opponent plunging forward with a knife held low slipped the knife chopped at the man s neck with the calloused edge of his hand but missed a clean killing stroke and only broke the man s collar bone. Leaving that opponent however in the interests of keeping on the move Donal spun off to the right cornered another man against the wall and crushed this one s windpipe with a stiff fingered jab. Rebounding from the wall and spinning back into the center of the room his ears told him that El Man was finishing off one opponent and lan was engaged with the remaining two. Going to help him Donal caught one of fan s men from be hind and paralyzed him with a kidney punch. lan surprisingly enough was still engaged with the remaining enemy. Donal went forward and found out why. lan had caught himself another Dorsai. Donal closed with both men and they went down in a two on one pin the opponent in a stretcher mat held him helpless between Donal and his uncle. Shai Dorsai gasped Donal. Surrender Who to grunted the other. Donal and lan Graeme said lan. Foralie. Honored said die strange Dorsai. Heard of you. Hord Vlaminck Snelbrich Canton. All right then let me up. My right arm s broken anyway. Donal and lan let go and assisted Vlaminck to his feet El Man had finished off what else remained and now came up to them. Hord Vlaminck Coruna El Man said Donal. Honored said El Man. Honor s mine replied Vlaminck. I m your prisoner gentlemen. Want my parole I d appreciate it said Donal. We ve got work to do here yet. What kind of contract are you under Straight duty. No loyalty clause. Why Any reason why I can t hire you on a prisoner s basis asked Donal. Not from this job. Vlaminck sounded disgusted. I ve been sold twice on the open market because of a typo in my last contract. Besides he added as I say I ve heard of you. You re hired then. We re looking for the man you re guarding here. Can you tell us where we ll findhimr Follow me said Vlaminck and led the way back through the darkness and opened a door. They stepped through into a short corridor that led them up a ramp and to another door. Locked said Vlaminck. The alarm s gone off. He looked at them. Further than this he could not in honor go even on a hired prisoner s basis. Burn it down said Donal. He and lan and HI Man opened up on the door which glowed stubbornly to a white beat but finally melted. lan threw a concussion bolt at it and knocked it open. Within a large man with a black hood over his head was crouched against the far wall of the room a miner s heavy duty ion gun in his hand pointing a little unsteadily at them and shifting from one to the other. Don t be a fool said lan. We are all Dorsal The gun sagged in the hand of the hooded man. A choked bitter exclamation came from behind the mask. iCome on Donal gestured him out. He dropped the gun and came shoulders bowed. They headed back through the house. The tire fight in the hall was still going on as they retraced their footsteps but died out as they reached the center hall. Two of the five men they had left behind there were able to navigate on their own power and another one could make it back to the ship with assistance. The other two were dead. They returned swiftly to the terrace through the garden and back into the tunnel picking up the rest of their complement as they went. Fifteen minutes later they were all aboard and the N4J was falling into deep space. In the lounge Donal was standing before the hooded man who sat slumped on a float. Gentlemen said Donal take a look at William s social technician. lan and El Man who were present looked sharply over at Dona not so much at the words as at die tone in which he had said them. He had spoken in a voice that was for him unexpectedly bitter. Here s the man who sowed the whirlwind the civilized worlds are reaping at this moment went on Donal. He stretched out his hand to the black hood. The man shrank from him but Donal caught die hood and jerked it off. A slow exhalation of bream supped out between Donal s lips. So you sold out he said. The man before them was ArDell Montor. COMMANDER IN CHIEF II ArDell looked back at him out of a white face but with eyes that did not bend before Donal s bleak glance. I had to have work he said. I was killing myself. I don t apologize. Was that all the reason asked Donal ironically. At that ArDell s face did turn aside. No he said. Donal said nothing. It was her ArDell whispered. He promised me her. Her The note in Donal s voice made the other two Dorsai take an instinctive step toward him. But Donal held himself without moving under control. Anea She might have taken pity on me ArDell whispered to the floor of the lounge. You don t understand ... living close to her all those years ... and I was so miserable and she ... I couldn t help loving her No said Donal. Slowly the sudden lightning of his tension leaked out of him. You couldn t help it. He turned away. You fool he said with his back to ArDell. Didn t you know him well enough to know when he was lying to you He had her in mind for himself. William Nor ArDell was suddenly on his feet. Not him with her It can t be ... such a thing It won t said Donal wearily. But not because it depends on people like you to stop him. He turned back to face ArDell. Lock him up will you captain. El Man s hard hand closed on ArDell s shoulder and turned him toward the entrance to the lounge. Oh ... and captain Sir said El Man turning to face him. We rendezvous with all units under Fleet Commander Lludrow as soon as possible. Yes sir. El Man half pushed half carried ArDell Montor out of the room and as if symbolically out of the main current of the history of mankind which he had attempted to influence with his science for William Prince of Ceta. The N4J set out to make contact with Lludrow. It was not a thing to be quickly or easily accomplished. Even when it is known where it should be it is far from easy to track down and pinpoint as small a thing as a fleet of human ships in the inconceivable vast nesses of interstellar space. For the very good reasons that there is always the chance of human error that a safety margin must always be maintained better to fall short of your target than to come out too close to it and that there is for practical purposes no such thing as standing still in the universe. The N4J made a phase shift from where it calculated it was to where it calculated the fleet to be sent out a call signal and got no answer. It calculated again signaled again and so continued until it got first a very faint signal in response then a stronger one and finally one which permitted communication. Calculations were then matched between the flagship of the fleet and the N4J and at last a meeting was effected. By that time better than three more days of the al loted week of incommunicado had passed. Donal went aboard the flagship with lan and took command. You ve got the news was his first question of Lludrow when the two of them were together again. I have said the Fleet commander. I ve had a ship secretly in shuttle constantly between here and Dunnin s World. We re right up to date. Donal nodded. This was a different problem from the N4J s of finding Lludrow. A shuttle between a planet whose position and direction of movement was well known and a fleet which knew its own position and drift could hop to within receiving distance of that same planet in one jump and return as easily provided the distance was not too great as it sometimes was between the various planets themselves for precise calculation. Want to see a digest or shall I just brief you asked Lludrow. Brief me said Donal. Lludrow did. The hysteria that had followed on the charges of the Commission against Donal and Donal s disappearance had caused the existing governments already shaky and torn by the open market dissension to crumble on all the worlds but those of the Exotics the Dorsai Old Earth and the two small planets of Coby and Dunnin s World. Into the perfect power vacuum that remained William and the armed units of Ceta had moved swiftly and surely. Pro tern governments in the name of the general populace but operating directly under William s orders had taken over New Earth Freiland Newton Cassida Venus Mars Harmony and Association and held them now in the iron grip of martial law. As William had cornered less sentient materials in the past he had just prior to this cornered the field troops of the civilized world. Under the guise of training reassignment lease stand by and a dozen other paper maneuvers William had had under Cetan contract actual armies on each of the worlds that had fallen into disorder. All that had been necessary for him was the landing of small contingents plus officers for the units already present with the proper orders. Staff meeting said Donal. His staff congregated in the executive room of the flagship. Lludrow Fleet Commander lan Field Commander and half a dozen senior officers under each. Gentlemen said Donal when they were seated around the table. I m sure all of you know the situation. Any suggestions There was a pause. Donal ran his eye around the table. Contact Freiland New Earth or some place where we have support said lan. Land a small contingent and start a counteraction against the Cetan command. He looked at his nephew. They know your name the professionals on all sides. We might even pick up support out of the enemy forces. No good said Lludrow from the other side of the table. It s too slow. Once we were committed to a certain planet William could concentrate his forces there. He turned to Donal. Ship for ship we overmatch him but his ships would have ground support from whatever world we were fighting on and our ground forces would have their hands full trying to establish themselves. True enough Donal said. What s your suggestion then Withdraw to one of the untouched worlds the Exotics Coby Dunnin s World. Or even the Dorsai if they ll take us. We ll be safe there in a position of strength and we can take our time then about looking for a chance to strike back. lan shook his head. Every day every hour he said William grows stronger on those worlds he s taken over. The longer we wait the greater the odds against us. And finally he ll have the strength to come after us and take us. Well what do you want us to do then demanded Lludrow. A fleet without a home base is no striking weapon. And how many of our men will want to stick their necks out with us These are professional soldiers man not patriots fighting on their home ground You use your field troops now or never said lan shaking his head. We ve got forty thousand battle ready men aboard these ships. They re my responsibility and I know them. Set them down on some backwater planet and they ll fall apart in two months. I still say All right. All right Donal was rapping with his knuckles on the table to call them back to order. Lludrow and lan sat back on their floats again and they all turned to look at Donal. I wanted you all to have a chance to speak up he said because I wanted you to feel that we had explored every possibility. The truth of the matter is that both you gentlemen are right in your objections just as there is some merit in each of your plans. However both your plans are gambles long gambles desperate gambles. He paused to look around the table. I would like to remind you right now that when you fight a man hand to hand the last place you hit him is where he expects to be hit. The essence of successful combat is to catch your enemy unawares in an unprotected spot one where he is not expecting to be caught. Donal stood up at the head of the table. William he said has for the last few years put his emphasis on the training of ground troops field troops. I have been doing the same thing but for an entirely different purpose. 1 He placed his finger over a stud on the table before him and half turned to the large wall behind him. No doubt all you gentlemen have heard the military truism that goes you can t conquer a civilized planet. This happens to be one of the ancient saws I personally have found very irritating since it ought to be obvious to any thinking person that in theory you can conquer anything given the necessary wherewithal. The case for conquering a civilized world becomes then a thing of perfect possibility. The only problem is to provide that which is necessary to the action. They were all listening to him some a little puzzled others doubtfully as if they expected all of what he was saying to turn suddenly into some joke to relieve the tension. Only lan was phlegmatic and absorbing. Over the past few years this force which we officer has developed the wherewithal some of it carried over from previous forces some of recent development. Your men know the techniques although they have never been told in what way they were going to apply them. lan here has produced through rigorous training the highly specialized small unit of the field forces the Group which under ordinary battle conditions numbers fifty men but which we have streamlined to a number of thirty men. These Groups have been trained to take entirely indepen dent action and survive by themselves for considerable periods of time. This same streamlining has gone up through the ranks extending even to your fleet exercises which have also been ordered with a particular sort of action in mind. He paused. What all this boils down to gentlemen he said is that we are all about to prove that old truism wrong and take a civilized world lock stock and barrel. We will do it with the men and ships we have at hand right here and who have been picked and trained for this specific job as the planet we are about to take has been picked and thoroughly intelli genced. He smiled at them. They were all sitting on the edges of their floats now. That world he pressed the stud that had been under his finger all this time the wall behind him vanished to reveal the three dimensional representation of a large green planet is the heart of our enemy s power and strength. His home base Ceta It was too much even for senior officers. A babble of voice burst out around the table all at once. Donal paid no attention. He had opened a drawer at his end of the table and produced a thick sheaf of documents which he tossed on the table before him. We will take over Ceta gentlemen he said. By in a twenty four hour period replacing all her local troops all her police all her garrisons and militia and law enforcement bodies and arms with our own men. He pointed to the sheaf of documents. We will take them over piecemeal independently and simultaneously. So that when the populace wakes up the following morning they will find themselves guarded policed and held not by their own authorities but by us. The details as to targets and assignments are in this stack gentlemen. Shall we go to work They went to work. Ceta large low gravity planet that it was had huge virgin areas. Its civilized part could be broken down into thirty eight major cities and intervening agricultural and residential areas. There were so many military installations so many police stations so many armories so many garrisons of troops the details fell apart like the parts of a well engineered mechanism and were fitted together again with corresponding units of the military force under Donal s command. It was a masterpiece of combat preplanning. Now said Donal when they were done. Go out and brief your troops. He watched them all leave the conference room all with the exception of lan whom he had detained and Lee for whom he had just rung. When the others were gone he turned to the two still with him. Lee he said in six hours every man in the fleet will know what we intend to do. I want you to go out and find a man not one of the officers who doesn t think it ll work. lan he looked over at his uncle when Lee finds such a man and reports to you I want you to see that the man is sent up to see me right away. Is that clear The other two nodded and went out to do each his own job in his own fashion. So it was that a disgruntled Groupman from a particular landing force had a surprising meeting and surprisingly cordial chat with his commander in chief and that they went out together half an hour later arm in arm to the control room of the flagship where Donal requested and got a voice and picture hookup to all ships. All of you Donal said smiling at them out of their screens after he had been connected have by this time been informed about the impending action. It s the result of a number of years of top level planning and the best intelligence service we have been lucky enough to have. However one of you has come to me with the natural fear that we may be biting off more than we can chew. Therefore since this is an entirely new type of operation and because I believe firmly in the rights of the individual professional soldier not to be mishandled I m taking the unprecedented step of putting the coming assault on Ceta to a vote. You will vote as ships and the results will be forwarded by your captain as for or against to the Flagship here. Gentlemen DonaJ reached out an arm and brought the man Lee had discovered into the screen area with him I want you to meet Groupman Theiss who had the courage to stand up like a free man and ask questions. Caught unawares and dazzled by the sudden limelight into which he had been thrust the Groupman licked his lips and grinned a little foolishly. I leave the decision to all of you added Donal and signaled for the viewing eyes to be cut off. Three hours later Groupman Theiss was back on his own ship astounding his fellow soldiers with an account of what had happened to him and the votes were in. Almost unanimous reported Lludrow in favor of the attack. Only three ships none of the first line and none troop carriers voting against. I want those three ships held out of the attack said Donal. And a note made of their names and captains. Remind me about that after this is over. All right. He got up from the float where he had been sitting in the Flagship Lounge. Give the necessary orders commander. We re going in. They went in. Ceta had never taken the thought of enemy attack too seriously. Isolated in her position as the single inhabitable planet as yet largely unexplored and unexploited that circled her G8 type sun of Tau Ceti and secure in the midst of an interstellar maze of commitments that made every other planetary government to some extent dependent upon her good will she had only a few ships in permanent defensive orbit about her. These ships their position and movement fully scouted by Donal s intelligence service were boxed and destroyed by Donal s emerging fleet almost before they could give warning. And what warning they did give fell on flabbergasted and hardly believing ears. But by that time the asault troops were falling planetward dropping down on city and military installation and police station behind the curtain of night as it swung around the big but swiftly turning world. They came down in most cases almost on top of their targets for the ships that had sowed them in the sky above had not been hampered in that action by enemy harassment. And the reaction of those on the ground was largely what might have been expected when veteran troops fully armed and armored move in on local police untried soldiers in training and men relaxed in garrison. Here and there there was sharp and bitter fighting where an assault unit found itself opposed to leased troops as trained in war as they. But in that case reinforcements were speedily brought in to end the action. Donal himself went down with the fourth wave and when the sun rose the following morning large and yellow on the horizon the planet was secured. Two hours later an orderly brought him word that William himself had been located in his own residence outside the city of Whitetown some fifteen hundred kilometers distant. I ll go there said Donal. He glanced around him. His officers were busy and lan was off somewhere with an arm of his field troops. He turned to Lee. Come on Lee he said. They took a four man platform and made the trip with the orderly as guide. Coming down in the garden of the residence Donal left the orderly with the platform motioned Lee to accompany him and entered the house. He walked through silent rooms inhabited only by furniture. All the residents of the house seemed to have vanished. After some little time he began to think that perhaps the report had been in error and that William was gone too. And then he passed through an archway into a little anteroom and found himself facing Anea. She met his gaze with a pale but composed face. Where is he asked Donal. She turned and indicated a door on the far side of the room. It s locked she said. He was in there when your men started to land and he s never come out. Nobody else would stay here with him. I ... I couldn t leave. Yes said Donal somberly. He examined the locked door from across the room. It wouldn t have been easy for him. You care about him Her voice brought his head up sharply. He looked at her seeking some note of mockery in her expression. But there was none. She was honestly questioning. I care somewhat for every man he said. He walked across the room to the door and laid his hand upon it on a sudden impulse he put his thumb into the finger lock and the door swung open. A sudden coldness blossomed inside him. Stay with her he threw over his shoulder to Lee. He pushed open the door found himself faced by another heavier door but one which also opened to his touch and went in. At the end of a long room William sat behind a desk occupied by a mass of papers. He stood up as Donal entered. So you re finally here he said calmly. Well well. Going closer Donal examined the man s face and eyes. There was nothing there to evoke such a notion but Donal had the sudden suspicion that William was not as he should be. It was a very good landing. Very good said William tiredly. It was a clever trick. I acknowledge the fact you see. I underestimated you from the first day I met you. I freely admit it. I m quite conquered am I not Donal approached to the other side of the desk. He looked into William s calm exhausted face. Ceta is in my control said Donal. Your expeditionary forces on the other worlds are cut off and their contracts aren t worth the paper they re written on. Without you to give the orders it s all over with. Yes . .. yes I thought as much said William with the hint of a sigh. You re my doom you know my weird. I should have recognized it earlier. A force like mine among men must be balanced. I thought it would be balanced with numbers but it wasn t. He looked at Donal with such a strange searching expression that Donal s eyes narrowed. You re not well said Donal. No I m not well. William rubbed his eyes wearily. I ve been working too hard lately and to no purpose. Mentor s calculations were foolproof but the more perfect my plan the more perfectly it always went awry. I hate you you know said William emotionlessly dropping his hand and looking up at Donal again. No one in all the history of man has ever hated the way I hate you Come along said Donal going around the desk toward him. I ll take you to someone who can help you No. Wait William held up his hand and backed away from Donal. Donal stopped. I ve got something to show you first. I saw the end the minute I got reports your men were landing. I ve been waiting nearly ten hours now. He shivered suddenly. A long wait. I had to have something to keep myself occupied. He turned about and walked briskly back to a set of double doors set in a far wall. Have a look he invited and pressed a button. The doors slid back. Donal looked. Hanging in the little close area revealed there was something only barely recognizable by what was left of its face. It was or had been his brother Mor. SECRETARY FOR DEFENSE Flashes of clarity began to return. For some time now and again they had been calling him from the dark corridors down which he walked. But he had been busy too busy to respond until now. But now slowly he let himself listen to the voices which were sometimes those of Anea and Sayona and lan and sometimes the voices of those he did not know. He rose to them reluctantly slow to abandon the halls of darkness where he traveled. Here was the great ocean he had always hesitated to enter but now that he was in it it held him warm and would have possessed him except for their little voices calling him back to petty things. Yet duty lay to them and not to it that duty that had been impressed on him from his earliest years. The things undone the things ill done and what he had done to William. Donal said the voice of Sayona. I m here he said. He opened his eyes and they took in a white hospital room and the bed in which he lay with Sayona and Anea and Gait standing beside it along with a short man with a mustache in the long pink jacket of one of the Exotic psychiatric physicians. Donal swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. His body was weak from long idleness but he put the weakness aside the way a man puts aside any irritating but small and unimportant thing. You should rest said the physician. Donal looked at him casually. The physician looked away and Donal smiled to ease the man. Thanks for curing me doctor he said. I didn t cure you said the physician a little bitterly his head still averted. Donal turned his glance on the other three and a sadness touched him. In themselves they had not changed and the hospital room was like similar rooms had always been. But yet in some way all had dwindled the people and the place. Now there was something small and drab about them something tawdry and limited. And yet it was not their fault. Donal began Sayona on a strangely eager questioning note. Donal looked at the older man and he like the physician looked automatically away. Donal shifted his glance to Gait who also dropped his eyes. Only Anea when he gazed at her returned his glance with a child s pure stare. Not now Sayona said Donal. We ll talk about it later. Where s William One floor down . .. Donal the words broke suddenly from Sayona s lips in a rush. What did you do to him I told him to suffer said Donal simply I was wrong. Take me to him. They went slowly and on Donal s part a little unsteadily out the door and down to a room on the floor below. A man there lay rigid on a bed like the one Donal had occupied and it was hard to recognize that man as William. For all the asepsis of the hospital a faint animal smell pervaded the room and the face of the man was stretched into a shape of inhumanity by all known pain. The skin of the face was tautened over the flesh and bones like cloth of thinnest transparency over a mask of clay and the eyes recognized no one. William said Donal approaching the bed. The glazed eyes moved toward the sound of his voice. Mor s trouble is over. A little understanding flickered behind the Pavlovian focusing of the eyes. The rigid jaws parted and a hoarse sound came from the straining throat. Donal put his hand on the drum tight brow. It ll be all right he said. It ll be all right now. Slowly like invisible bonds melting away the rigidity began to melt out of the man before them. Gradually he softened back into the shape of humanity again. His eyes now comprehending went to Donal as if Donal s tall form was one light in a cavern of lightlessness. There ll be work for you to do said Donal. Good work. All you ever wanted to do. I promise you. William sighed deeply. Donal took his hand from the brow. The eyes dropped closed and William slept. Not your fault said Donal absently looking down at him. Not your fault but your nature. I should have known. He turned a little unsteadily to the others who were staring at him with new eyes. He ll be all right. Now I want to get to my headquarters on Cassida. I can rest on the way. There s a great deal to do. The trip from the Maran hospital where both Donal and William had been under observation to Tomblecity on Cassida passed like a dream for Donal. Waking or dreaming he was still half in that ocean into which at Mor s death he had finally stepped and the dark waters of which would never entirely leave him now. It was to become finally a matter of living with it this sea of understanding along the margin of which he had wandered all the young years of his life and which no other human mind would be able to comprehend no matter how long his explanation. He understood now why he understood this much had the shock of Mor s death brought him. He had been like any young animal hesitant on the edge of the unknown before his own uncertain desires and the sharp nudge of circumstance combined to tumble him headlong into it. He had had to learn first to admit then to live with and finally to embrace his difference. It had been necessary that what was uniquely Donal be threatened first by the psychic shocks of the phase shifts during the attack on Newton and second by the manner of Mor s dying for which only he knew how truly he was responsible in order that he be forced to fight for survival and fighting discover fang and use of claw. In that final battle he had seen himself at last full imaged in the un plumbed depths and recognized himself at last for what he was a recognition no one else would ever be able to make. Anea alone would know without needing to understand what he was it is Woman s ancient heritage to appreciate without the need to know. Sayona William and a few such would half recognize but never understand. The rest of the race would never know. And he he himself knowing and understanding was like a man who could read lifting the first small book from a library the shelves of which stretched off and away to infinity. A child in a taller land. Anea Sayona Gait and the others came with him back to Tomblecity. He did not have to ask them to come with him. Now they followed instinctively. DONAL The man was different. Already a few people were beginning to say it. And in this fact lay the seeds of a possible difficulty. It was necessary considered Donal that a means be taken to lightning rod such a recognition and render it harmless. He stood in that position which was becoming very common with him of late alone on a balcony of his residence outside Tomblecity hands clasped behind his back like a soldier at parade rest gazing out toward the Milky Way and the unknown stars. He heard Anea come up behind him. Sayona s here she said. He did not turn. And after a moment she spoke again. Do you want me to talk to him by myself she asked For a little while answered Donal still without moving. He heard her footsteps move away from him into the bigness of the lounge behind him. He lost himself in the stars again and after a moment there was the sound of a man s voice and a murmur of conversation between it and Anea s. At this distance their words were indistinguishable but Donal did not have to hear the words to know what they were saying. Eight months had gone by since he had opened his eyes onto the full universe that was exposed to his view alone. Eight months thought Donal to himself. And in that short time order had been returned to the civilized worlds. A parliament of peoples had been formed with an interiorly elected council of thirty two Senior Representatives two for each world. Today here on Cassida that parliament had voted on its choice for a permanent Secretary for Defense Donal s mind reached out and enclosed the problem of what Sayona would this moment be saying to Anea. ... And then he went around the room a little before the voting. Sayona s voice was now murmuring in the lounge behind him. He said a word here and a word there nothing important. But when he was done he had them in the palm of his hand. It was just as it was last month when he mingled with the delegates to the full parliament. Yes replied Anea. I can see it how it was. Do you understand asked Sayona looking at her keenly. No she said serenely. But I ve seen it. He blazes blazes like an atomic flare among a field full of little campfires. Their small lights fade when they get too close to him. And he hoods his light when he s amongst them to keep from blinding them. Then you re not sorry Sorry Her happy laugh tore his question to foolish ribbons. I know said Sayona soberly what effect he has on men. And I can guess his effect on other women. Are you sure you ve got no regrets How could I But she looked at him suddenly questioningly. What do you mean That s why I ve come tonight said Sayona. I ve got something to tell you ... if I can ask you a question after I m through What kind of question she queried sharply. Let me tell you first he said. Then you can answer or not whichever you like. It s nothing that can touch you now. Only I should have told you before. I m afraid I ve put it off until ... well until there was no more putting off possible. What do you know about your own gene history Anea Why she looked at him I know all about it. Not this part said Sayona. You know you were bred for certain things He put one old slim hand on the edge of her float in a gesture that begged for understanding. Yes. Mind and body she answered watching him. And more said Sayona. It s hard to explain in a moment. But you know what was behind Montor s science don t you It treated the human race as a whole as a single social entity self repairing in the sense that as its individual components die off they are replaced by the birth of new components. Such an entity is manipulable under statistical pressures in somewhat the same manner that a human being may be manipulated by physical and emotional pressures. Increase the temperature of a room in which a man stands and he will take off his jacket. This was William s key to power. But she stared at him. 7 m an individual No no. Wait Sayona held up his hand. That was Montor s science. Ours on the Exotics had somewhat the same basis but a differing viewpoint. We regarded the race as manipulable through its individuals as an entity in a constant state of growth and evolution by reason of the birth of improved individuals among the mass that constituted it. Gene selection we believed was the key to this both natural or accidental and controlled. But it is said Anea. No Sayona shook his head slowly. We were wrong. Manipulation by that approach is not truly possible only analysis and explanation. It is adequate for an historian for the meditative philosopher. And such Anea have we of the Exotics been wherefore it seemed not only valid but complete to us. But manipulation by that means is possible only in small measure very small. The race is not controllable from within the race such gene selection as we did could use only those characteristics which we already knew and understood. And it repelled us from those genes which we detected and could not understand and of course we could not work with ones we did not know existed or could exist. We were without seeing the fact crippled both at the beginning and the end we had only the middle. We could not conceive of characteristics to breed toward goals which were not already presented to us and already understood by us. That was the proper end however truly new characteristics. And the beginning was necessarily truly new genes and gene combinations. The problem was stated long ago we deceived ourselves that the statement was not meaningful. Simply it is this could a congress of gorillas gathered to plan the breeding of the supergorilla plan a human being Discard the line of development of mightier muscles stronger and longer teeth greater specialization to master their tropical environment Manipulation of the race from within the race is a circular process. What we can do the valuable thing we can do is to stabilize conserve and spread the valuable genetic gifts that come to us from outside our own domain. William and you must have known this better than any one else Anea belongs to that small and select group of men who have been the conquerors of history. There s a name you know for this rare and freakish individual but a name means nothing by itself. It s only a tag hung on something we never completely understood. Such men are unopposable they can do great good. But also usually an equally great deal of harm because they are uncontrolled. I m trying to make you understand something rather complex. We on the Exotics spotted William for what he was when he was still in his early twenties. At that time the decision was taken to select the genes that would result in you. Me She stiffened suddenly staring at him. You. Sayona bent his head to her briefly. Didn t you ever wonder that you were so instinctively opposed to William in everything he did Or why he was so perversely insistent on possessing your contract Or why we back on Kultis allowed such an apparently unhappy relationship to continue Anea shook her head slowly. I ... I must have. But I don t remember You were intended as William s complement in a psychological sense. Sayona sighed. Where his instincts were for control for the sake of controlling yours were towards goals purposes and you did not care who controlled so long as the control was directed toward that purpose. Your eventual marriage which we aimed for would have we hoped blended the two natures. You would have acted as the governor William s personality needed Tlie result would have been beneficial ... we thought. She shuddered. I d never have married him. Yes said Sayona with a sigh you would have. You were designed if you ll forgive the harsh word to react at full maturity to whatever man in the galaxy stood out above all others. A little of Sayona s gravity lifted for a moment and a twinkle crept into his eyes. That my dear was by no means difficult to provide for it would have been near impossible to prevent it Surely you see that the oldest and greatest of the female instincts is to find and conserve the strength of the strongest male she can discover. And the ultimate conservation is to bear his children. But there was Donal she said her face lighting up. Quite so Sayona chuckled. If the strongest male in the galaxy were wrongly directed misusing his great strength still for the sake of the great value of that strength you would have sought him out. Strength abilities are tools these are important. How they are used is a separate matter. But with Donal on the scene ... Well he was the ruin of all our theories all our plans. The product of one of those natural accidents outside our domain a chance combining of genes even superior to William s. The blending of a truly great line of thinkers with an equally great line of doers. I failed to realize this even when we tested him. Sayona shook his head as though to clear it. Or ... perhaps our tests were just not capable of measuring the really important characteristics in him. We . .. well we don t know. It s that that worries me. If we ve failed to discover a true mutation someone with a great new talent that could benefit the race then we have failed badly. Why what would it have to do with you she asked. It would be in the area where we are supposed to have knowledge. If a cyberneticist fails to recognize that his companion has a broken bone he is not culpable if a physician makes the same mistake he merits severe punishment. It would be our duty to recognize the new talent isolate it and understand it we on the Exotics. It may be that Donal has something he does not recognize himself. He looked at her. And that is the question I must ask you. You are closer to him than anyone else do you think Donal may have something something markedly different about him I don t mean simply his superior genius that would be simply more of the same kind of thing other men have had I mean some true ability over and above that of the normal human. Anea became very still for a long moment looking beyond rather than at Sayona. Then she looked at Sayona again and said Do you want me to guess Why don t you ask him It was not that she did not know the answer she did not know how or what she knew nor did she know how to convey it nor whether it was wise to convey it. But the knowing within her was quietly and completely certain that Donal knew and would know what should and should not be said. Sayona shrugged wryly. I am a fool I do not believe what all my own knowledge assures me. It was perfectly certain that the Select of Kultis would make such an answer. I am afraid to ask him knowing that makes the fear no less. But you are right my dear. I .. . will ask him. She lifted her hand. Donal she called. Out on the balcony he heard her voice. He did not move his eyes from the stars. Yes he answered. There were footsteps behind him and then the voice of Sayona. Donal You ll have to forgive me said Donal without turning. I didn t mean to make you wait. But I had something on my mind. Quite all right said Sayona. I hate to disturb you I know how busy you ve been lately. But there was a question I wanted to ask. Am I a superman asked Donal. Yes that s essentially it Sayona chuckled. Has somebody else been asking you the same question No Donal was smiling himself. But I imagine there s some would like to. Well you mustn t blame them said Sayona seriously. In a certain sense you actually are you know. In a sense Oh Sayona made a little dismissing gesture with his hand. In your genera abilities compared to the ordinary man. But that wasn t my question I believe you have said that a name is without meaning in itself. What do you mean by Superman Can your question be answered if that tag has no meaning no definition And who would want to be a Superman asked Donal in a tone halfway between irony and sadness his eyes going to the depth beyond depth of starspace. What man would want twenty billion children to raise What man would cope with so many How would he like to make the necessitous choices between them when he loved them all equally Think of the responsibility involved in refusing them candy when they shouldn t but could have it and seeing that they went to the dentist against their wills And if Superman means a unique individual think of having twenty billion children to raise and no friend to relax with complain to to blow off steam to so that the next day s chores would be more bearable. And if your Superman were so super who could force him to spend his energies wiping twenty billion noses and cleaning up the messes twenty billion petulant bratlings made Surely a Superman could find some more satisfying use for his great talents Yes yes said Sayona. But of course I wasn t thinking of anything so far fetched. He looked at Donal s back with mild annoyance. We know enough about genetics now to realize that we could not have suddenly a completely new version of the human being. Any change would have to come in the shape of one new experimental talent at a time. But what if it were an undiscoverable talent Undiscoverable Suppose said Donal I have the ability to see a strange new color How would I describe it to you who cannot see it Oh we d locate it all right replied Sayona. We d try all possible forms of radiation until we found one you could identify as the color you were seeing. But still you wouldn t be able to see it yourselves. Well no said Sayona. But that would be hardly important if we knew what it was. Are you sure persisted Donal not turning. Suppose there was someone with a new way of thinking someone who in childhood forced himself to do his thinking within the framework of logic because that was the only way those around him thought. Gradually however as he grows older he discovers that there are relationships for him that do not exist for other minds. He knows for example that if I cut down that tree just below us out here in my garden some years in time and some light years in distance away another man s life will be changed. But in logical terms he cannot explain his knowledge. What good would it do you then to know what his talent was No good at all of course said Sayona good humoredly but on the other hand it would do him no good at all either since he lives in and is part of a logical society. In fact it would do him so little good he would undoubtedly never discover his talent at all and the mutation being a failure would die aborning. I disagree with you said Donal. Because I myself am an intuitional superman. I have a conscious intuitive process. I use intuition consciously as you use logic to reach a conclusion. I can crosscheck one intuition against the other to find out which is correct and I can build an intuitive structure to an intuitive conclusion. This is one single talent but it multiplies the meaning and the power of all the old while adding things of its own. Sayona burst out laughing. And since according to my own argument this ability would do you so little good that you wouldn t even be able to discover it it therefore stands that you wouldn t be able to answer my question about being a superman in the affirmative when I ask it Very good Donal. It s been so long since I ve had the Socratic method used in argument against me I didn t even recognize it when I came face to face with it. Or perhaps you instinctively would prefer not to recognize my talent said Donal. No no. That s enough said Sayona still laughing. You win Donal. Anyway thank you for setting my mind at rest. If we had overlooked a real possibility I would have held myself personally responsible. They would have taken my word for it and I would have been negligent. He smiled. Care to tell me what the real secret of your success has been if it s not a wild talent I am intuitive said Donai. Indeed you are said Sayona. Indeed you are. But to be merely intuitive he chuckled Well thank you Donal. You don t know how you ve relieved my mind on this particular score. I won t keep you any longer. He hesitated but Donal did not turn around. Good night. Good night said Donal. He heard the older man s footsteps turn and move away from him. Good night came Sayona s voice from the lounge behind him. Good night answered Anea. Sayona s steps moved off into silence. Still Donal did not turn. He was aware of the presence of Anea in the room behind him waiting. Merely intuitive he echoed to himself in a whisper. Merely He lifted his face once more to the unknown stars the way a man lifts his face from the still heat of the valley to the coolness of the hills in the early part of the long work day when the evening s freedom is yet far off. And the look on his face was one which no living person not even Anea had seen. Slowly he lowered his eyes and slowly turned and as he turned the expression faded from him. As Anea had said carefully he hooded the brilliance of his light that he might not blind them and turning full around at last entered once more and for a little while again into the habitation of Man. The End

Science Fiction

fiction

file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt THE GATES OF CREATION Philip Jose Farmer I Thousands of years ago the lords had used drugs electron ics hypnotism and psychotechniques to do without sleep. Their bod ies stayed fresh and vigorous their eyes unclouded for days and nights for months. But their minds eventually crumbled. Halluci nations unbounded anger and an unreasonable sense of doom gripped them. Some went mad forever and had to be killed or im prisoned. It was then that the Lords found that even they makers of uni verses owners of a science that put them only one step below the gods must dream. The unconscious mind denied communication with the sleeping conscious revolted. Its weapon was madness with which it toppled the pillars of reason. So all Lords now slept and dreamed. Robert Wolff once called Jadawin Lord of the Planet of Many Levels of a world that was constructed like a Tower of Babylon dreamed. He dreamed that a six pointed star had drifted through a window into his bedroom. Whirling it hung in the air above the foot of his bed. It was a pandoogaluz one of the ancient symbols of the religion in which the Lords no longer believed. Wolff who tended to think mostly in English thought of it as a hexaculum. It was a six sided star its center glowing white each of its facets flashing a ray a scar let an orange an azure a purple a black and a yellow. The hex aculum pulsed like the heart of the sun and the rays javelined out raking his eyelids lightly. The beams scratched the skin as a house cat might extend a claw to wake its sleeping master with the tiniest sting. What do you want Wolff said and knew he was dreaming. The hexaculum was a danger even the shadows that formed between its beams were thick with evil. And he knew that the hexaculum had been sent by his father Urizen whom he had not seen for two thou sand years. Jadawin The voice was silent the words formed by the six rays which now bent and coiled and writhed like snakes of fire. The letters into which they shaped themselves were of the ancient alphabet the original writing of the Lords. He saw them glowing before him yet he under stood them not so much through the eye as through a voice that spoke deep within him. It was as if the colors reached into the center of his mind and evoked a long dead voice. The voice was deep so deep it vibrated his innermost being whirled it and threatened to bend it into nightmare figures that would forever keep their shape. Wake up Jadawin his father s voice said. By these words Wolff knew that the flashing rayed hexaculum was not only in his mind but existed in reality. His eyes opened and he stared up at the concave ceiling self luminous with a soft and shifting light veined with red black yellow and green. He put out his left hand to touch Chryseis his wife and found that her side of the bed was empty. At this he sat upright and looked to left and right and saw that she was not in the room. He called Chryseis Then he saw the glit tering pulsing six rayed object that hung six feet above the edge of his bed. Out of it came in sound not fire his father s voice. Jadawin my son my enemy Do not look for the lesser being you have honored by making your mate. She is gone and will not be back. Wolff stood up and then sprang out of bed. How had this thing gotten into his supposedly impregnable castle Long before it had reached the bedroom in the center of the castle alarms should have wakened him massive doors should have slid shut throughout the enormous building laser beams should have been triggered in the many halls ready to cut down intruders the hundred different traps should have been set. The hexaculum should have been shattered slashed burned exploded crushed drowned. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 1 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt But not a single light shone on the great wall across the room the wall that seemed only an arabesqued decoration but was the alarm and control diagram panel of the castle. It glimmered quietly as if an uninvited guest were not within a million miles. The voice of Urizen his father laughed and said You did not think you could keep the Lord of Lords out with your puny weapons did you Jadawin I could kill you now where you stand gaping so foolishly so pale and quivering and filmed in sweat. Chryseis Wolff cried out again. Chryseis is gone. She is no longer safe in your bed and in your universe. She has been taken as quickly and as silently as a thief steals a jewel. What do you want Father Wolff asked. I want you to come after her. Try to get her back. Wolff bellowed leaped up onto the bed and launched himself over its edge at the hexaculum. For that moment he forgot all reason and caution which had told him that the object could be fatal. His hands gripped the many colored glowing thing. They closed on air and came together and he was standing on the floor looking up above him at the space where the hexaculum had been. Even as his hands touched the area filled by the starred polyhedron it had vanished. So perhaps it had not been physical. Perhaps it had after all been a projection stirred in him by some means. He did not believe so. It was a configuration of energies of fields momentarily held together and transmitted from some remote place. The projector might be in the universe next door or it might be a million universes away. The distance did not matter. What did matter was that Urizen had penetrated the walls of Wolff s personal world. And he had spirited Chryseis away. Wolff did not expect any more word from his father. Urizen had not indicated where he had taken Chryseis how Wolff was to find her or what would be done to Chryseis. Yet Wolff knew what he had to do. Somehow he would have to locate the hidden self enclosed cosmos of his father. Then he would have to find the gate that would give entrance to the pocket universe. At the same time that he got ac cess he would have to detect and avoid the traps set for him by Urizen. If he succeeded in doing this and the probabilities were very low he would have to get to Urizen and kill him. Only thus could he rescue Chryseis. This was the multimillennia old pattern of the game played among the Lords. Wolff himself as Jadawin the seventh son of Urizen had survived 10 000 years of the deadly amusement. But he had managed to do so largely by being content with staying in his own universe. Unlike many of the Lords he had not grown tired of the world he had created. He had enjoyed it although it had been a cruel enjoy ment he had to admit now. Not only had he exploited the natives of his world for his own purposes he had set up defenses that had snared more than one Lord male and female some his own brothers and sisters and the trapped ones had died slowly and horribly. Wolff felt contrition for what he had done to the inhabitants of his planet. For the Lords he had killed and tortured he suffered no guilt. They knew what they were doing when they came into his world and if they had beaten his defenses they would have given him a painful time before he died. Then Lord Vannax had succeeded in hurling him into the universe of Earth although at the cost of being taken along with Jadawin. A third Lord Arwoor had moved in to possess Jadawin s world. Jadawin s memory of his former life had been repressed by the shock of dispossession of being cast weaponless into an alien uni verse and without the means to return to his own world Jadawin had become a blank a tabula rasa. Adopted by a Kentuckian named Wolff the amnesiac Jadawin had taken the name of Robert Wolff. Not until he was sixty six years old did he discover what had hap pened before the time that he had stumbled down a Kentucky moun tain. He had retired from a lifetime of teaching Latin Greek and Hebrew to the Phoenix area of Arizona. And there while looking through a newly built house for sale he had begun the series of ad ventures that took him through a gate back into the universe he had created and had ruled as Lord for 10 000 years. There he had fought his way up from the lowest level of the monoplanet an Earth sized Tower of file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 2 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Babylon to the palace castle of Lord Arwoor. There he had met and fallen in love with Chryseis one of his own semicreations. And he had become the Lord again but not the same Lord as the one who had left it. He had become human. His tears loosed by his anguish at the loss of Chryseis and the ter ror of what could happen to her were proof of his humanity. No Lord shed tears over another living being although it was said that Urizen had cried with joy when he had trapped two of his sons some thousands of years ago. No time waster Wolff set about doing what had to be done. First he must make sure that someone occupied the castle while he was gone. He did not want to repeat what had happened the last time he had left this world. On returning he had found another Lord in his place. Now there was only one man who was capable of filling his shoes and whom he could trust. That was Kickaha born Paul Janus Finnegan in Terre Haute Indiana Earth . It was Kickaha who had given him the horn that had enabled him to get back into this world. Kickaha had given him the indispensable help that had permitted him to regain his Lordship. The horn With that he would be able to track down Urizen s world and gain entrance to it He strode across the chrysoprase floor to the wall and swung down a section of the wall carved in the semblance of a giant eagless of this planet. He stopped and gasped with shock. The hiding place no longer had a horn to hide. The hollowed out part in which the horn had lain was empty. So Urizen had not only taken Chryseis but he had stolen the an cient Horn of Shambarimen. So be it. Wolff would weep over Chryseis but he would spend no time in useless mourning for an artifact no matter how treasured. He walked swiftly through the halls noting that none of the alarms were triggered. All slept as if this were just another day in the quiet but happy times since Wolff had regained possession of the pal ace on top of the world. He could not help shivering. He had always feared his father. Now that he had such evidence of his father s vast powers he dreaded him even more. But he did not fear to go after him. He would track him down and kill him or die trying. In one of the colossal control rooms he seated himself before a pagoda shaped console. He set a control which would automatically bring him in sequence views of all the places on this planet where he had set videos. There were ten thousand of these on each of the four lower levels disguised as rocks or trees. They had been placed to allow him to see what was happening in various key areas. For two hours he sat while the screen flashed views. Then knowing that he could be there for several days he plugged in the eidolon of Kickaha and left the viewer. Now if Kickaha were seen the screen would lock on the scene and an alarm would notify Wolff. He placed ten more consoles in operation. These automatically began to scan throughout the cosmos of the parallel universes to detect and identify them. The records were seventy years old so it was to be presumed that universes created since then would swell the known number of one thousand and eight. It was these that Wolff was interested in. Urizen no longer lived in the original one of Gardazrintah where Wolff had been raised with many of his brothers sisters and cousins. In fact Urizen who grew tired of entire worlds as swiftly as a spoiled child became weary with new toys had moved three tunes since leaving Gardazrintah. And the chances were that he was now in a fourth and this last one had to be identified and pene trated. Even when all had been recorded he could not be sure that his fa ther s universe was located. If a universe were entirely sealed off it was undetectable. A universe could be found only through the gates each of which gave off a unique frequency. If Urizen wanted to make it really difficult for Wolff to find him he could set up an on off on gate. This would open at regular intervals or at random times depending upon Urizen s choice. And if it happened not to open at the time that Wolff s scanner was searching that parallel corridor it would not be detected. As far as the scanners were con cerned that area would be an empty one. However Urizen wanted him to come after him and so should not make it too difficult or impossible for him to do so. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 3 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Lords must eat. Wolff had a light breakfast served by a talos one of the half protein robots looking like knights in armor of which he had over a thousand. Then he shaved and showered in a room carved out of a single emerald. Afterwards he clothed himself. He wore cor duroy shoes tight fitting corduroy trousers a corduroy short sleeved shirt open at the neck but with a collar that curved up in back a broad belt of mammoth leather and a golden chain around his neck. From the chain hung a red jade image of Shambarimen given to him by the great artist and artificer of the Lords when he Wolff had been a boy of ten. The red of the jade was the only bright color of his garments the rest being a thrush brown. When in the castle he dressed simply or not at all. Only during the rare occasions when he went down to the lower levels for state ceremonies did he dress in the magnificent robes and complex hat of a Lord. In most of his descents he went incognito clad in the garments or nongarments of the local natives. He left the walls of the castle to go out onto one of the hundreds of great balcony gardens. There was an Eye sitting in a tree a raven large as a bald eagle. He was one of the few survivors of the on slaught on the castle when Wolff had taken this world back from Ar woor. Now that Arwoor was dead the ravens had transferred their loyalty to Wolff. Wolff told the raven that he was to fly out and look for Kickaha. He would inform other Eyes of the Lord of his mission and also tell the eagles of Podarge. They must inform Kickaha that he was wanted at once. If Kickaha did get their message and came to the castle only to find Wolff gone he was to remain there as Lord pro tem. If after a reasonable interval Wolff did not return Kickaha could then do whatever he wanted. He knew that Kickaha would come after him and that it was no use forbidding him to do so. The raven flew off happy to have a mission. Wolff went back into the castle. The viewers were still searching without success for Kickaha. But the gate finders needing only microseconds to scan and identify had gone through all the universes and were already on their sixth sweep. He allowed them to continue on the chance that some gates might be intermittent and the search scan and gate on state had not coincided. The results of the first five searches were on paper printed in the classical ideographs of the ancient language. There were thirty five new universes. Of these only one had a sin gle gate. Wolff had the spectral image of this placed upon a screen. It was a six pointed star with the center red instead of white as he had seen it. Red for danger. As plainly as if Urizen had told him he knew that this was the gate to Urizen s world. Here I am. Come and get me if you dare. He visualized his father s face the handsome falcon features with large eyes like wet black diamonds. Lords were ageless their bodies held in the physiological grip of the first twenty five years of life. But emotions were stronger even than the science of the Lords working with their ally time they slashed away at the rocks of flesh. And the last time he had seen his father he had seen the lines of hate. God alone knew how deep they were now since it was evident that Urizen had not ceased to hate. As Jadawin Wolff had returned his father s enmity. But he had not been like so many of his brothers and sisters in trying to kill him. Wolff had just not wanted to have anything at all to do with him. Now he loathed him because of what he had done to innocent Chryseis. Now he meant to slay him. The fabrication of a gate which would match the frequency image of the hexaculum entrance to Urizen s world was automatic. Even so it took twenty two hours for the machines to finish the device. By then the planetary viewers had all reported in. Kickaha was not in their line of sight. This did not mean that the elusive fellow was not on the planet. He could be just outside the scope of the viewers or he could be a hundred thousand places elsewhere. The planet had even more land area than Earth and the viewers covered only a tiny part of it. Thus it might be a long long time before Kickaha was appre hended. Wolff decided not to waste any time. The second the matching hexaculum was finished he went into action. He ate a light meal and drank water since he did not know how long he might have to do file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 4 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt without either once he stepped through the gate. He armed himself with a beamer a knife a bow and a quiverful of arrows. The primi tive weapons might seem curious arms to take along in view of the highly technological death dispensers he would have to face. But it was one of the ironies of the Lords technology that the set ups in which they operated sometimes permitted such weapons to be effec tive. Actually he did not expect to be able to use any of his arms. He knew too well the many types of traps the Lords had used. And now Wolff said it must be done. There is no use waiting any longer. He walked into the narrow space inside the matching hexaculum. Wind whistled and tore at him. Blackness. A sense as of great hands gripping him. All in a dizzying flash. He was standing upon grass giant fronds at a distance from him a blue sea close by a red sky above hugging the island and the rim of the sea. There was light from every quarter of the heavens and no sun. His clothes were still upon his body although he had felt as if they were being ripped off when he had gone through the gate. More over his weapons were still with him. Certainly this was not the interior of Urizen s stronghold. Or if it were it was the most unconventional dwelling place of a Lord that he had ever seen. He turned to see the hexaculum which had received him. It was not there. Instead a tall wide hexagon of purplish metal rose from a broad flat boulder. He remembered now that something had pushed him out through it and that he had had to take several steps to keep from falling. The energy that had shoved him had caused him to pass out of it and a few paces from the boulder. Urizen had set another gate within his hexaculum and had shunted him off to this place wherever it was. Why Urizen had done so would become apparent quickly enough. Wolff knew what would happen if he tried to walk back through the gate. Nevertheless not being one to take things for granted he did attempt it. With ease he stepped out on the other side upon the boulder. It was a one way gate just as he had expected. Somebody coughed behind him and he whirled his beamer ready. II THE LAND ENDED ABRUPTLY AGAINST THE SEA WITH NO INTERVENING beach. The animal had just emerged from the sea and was only a few feet from him. It squatted like a toad on huge webbed feet its colum nar legs folded as if they were boneless. The torso was humanoid and sheathed in fat with a belly that protruded like that of a Thanks giving goose. The neck was long and supple. At its end was a human head but the nose was flat and had long narrow nostrils. Tendrils of red flesh sprouted out around the mouth. The eyes were very large and moss green. There were no ears. The pate was covered like the face and body with a dark blue oily fur. Jadawin the creature said. It spoke in the ancient language of the Lords. Jadawin Don t kill me Don t you know me Wolff was shocked but not so much that he forgot to look behind him. This creature could be trying to distract him. Jadawin Don t you recognize your own brother Wolff did not know him. The frog seal body lack of ears blue fur and squashed long slitted nose made identification too difficult. And there was Time. If he had really called this thing brother it must have been millennia ago. That voice. It dug away at the layers of dusty memory like a dog after an old bone. It scraped away level after level it... He shook his head and glanced behind him and at the feathery vegetation. Who are you he asked. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 5 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt The creature whined and by this he knew that his brother if it were his brother must have been imprisoned in that body for a long long time. No Lord whined. Are you going to deny me Are you like the others They d have nothing to do with me. They mocked at me they spat upon me they drove me away with kicks and laughs. They said. . . It clapped its flippers together and twisted its face and large tears ran from the moss green eyes and down the blue cheeks. Oh Jadawin don t be like the rest You were always my favorite my be loved Don t be cruel like them The others Wolff thought. There had been others. How long ago Impatiently he said Let s not play games whoever you are. Your name The creature rose on its boneless legs muscles raising the fat that coated them and took a step forward. Wolff did not back away but he held the beamer steady. That s far enough. Your name. The creature stopped but its tears kept on flowing. You are as bad as the others. You think of nobody but yourself you don t care what s happened to me. Doesn t my suffering and loneliness and agonies all this time oh this immeasurable time touch you at all It might if I knew who you were Wolff said. And what s hap pened to you. Oh Lord of the Lords My own brother It advanced another giant splayfoot the wetness squishing from out under the webs. It held out a flipper as if beseeching a tender hand. Then it stopped and the eyes flicked at a spot just to one side of Wolff. He jumped to his left and whirled the beamer pointing to cover both the creature and whoever might have been behind him. There was no one. And as the thing had planned it leaped for Wolff at the same time that Wolff jumped and turned. Its legs uncoiled like a catapult released and shot it forward. If Wolff had only turned he would have been knocked down. Standing to one side he escaped all but the tip of the thing s right flipper. Even that striking his left shoulder and arm was enough to send him staggering numbly to one side making him drop the beamer. Wolff was enormously solid and pow erful himself with muscles and nerve impulses raised to twice their natural strength and speed by the Lords science. If he had been a normal Earthman he would have been crippled forever in his arm and he would not have been able to escape the second leap of the creature. Squalling with fury and disappointment it landed on the spot where Wolff had been sank on its legs as if they were springs spun and launched itself at Wolff again. All this was done with such swift ness that the creature looked as if it were an actor in a speeded up film. Wolff had succeeded in regaining his balance. He jumped.out for the beamer. The shadow of the creature passed over him its shriek ing was so loud it seemed as if its lips were pressed against his ear. Then he had the beamer in his hands had rolled over and over and was up on his feet. By then the thing had propelled itself again to wards him. Wolff reversed the beamer and using his right hand brought the light but practically indestructible metal stock down on top of the creature s head. The impact of the huge body hurled him backward he rolled away. The sea thing was lying motionless on its face blood welling from its seal like scalp. Hands clapped and he turned to see two human beings thirty yards away inland under the shadow of a frond. They were male and female dressed in the magnificent clothes of Lords. They walked to wards him their hands empty of weapons. Their only arms were swords in crude leather or fish skin scabbards. Despite this seeming powerlessness Wolff did not relax his guard. When they had ap proached within twenty yards of him he told them to stop. The crea ture groaned and moved its head but made no effort to sit up. Wolff moved away from it to be outside its range of leap. Jadawin the woman called. She had a lovely contralto voice which stirred his heart and his memory. Although he had not seen her in five hundred or more years he knew her then. Vala he said. What are you doing here The question was rhetorical he knew she must have file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 6 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt also been trapped by their father. And now he recognized the man. He was Rintrah one of his brothers. Vala his sister and Rintrah his brother had fallen into the same snare. Vala smiled at him and his heart sprang again. She was of all women he had known the most beautiful with two exceptions. His lovely Chryseis and his other sister Anana the Bright surpassed her. But he had never loved Anana as he had Vala. Just as he had never hated Anana as he had Vala. Vala applauded again and said Well done Jadawin You have lost none of your skill or wits. That thing is dangerous even if detest able. It cringes and whines and tries to gain your trust and then bang It s at your throat It almost killed Rintrah when he first came here and would have if I had not struck it unconscious with a rock. So you see I too have dealt with it. And why did you not kill it then Wolff said. Rintrah smiled and said Don t you know your own little brother Jadawin That creature is your beloved your cute little Theotormon. Wolff said God Theotormon Who did this to him Neither of the two answered nor was an answer needed. This was Urizen s world only he could have refashioned their brother thus. Theotormon groaned and sat up. One flipper placed over the bloody spot on his head he rocked back and forth and moaned. His lichen green eyes glared at Wolff and he silently mouthed vitupera tion he did not dare voice. Wolff said You re not trying to tell me you spared his life be cause of fraternal sentiment I know you better than that. Vala laughed and said Of course not I thought he could be used later on. He knows this little planet well since he has been here such a long long time. He is a coward brother Jadawin. He did not have the courage to test his life in the maze of Urizen he stayed upon this island and became as one of the degenerate natives. Our father tired of waiting for him to summon up a nonexistent manhood. To punish him for his lack of bravery he caught him and took him off to his stronghold Appirmatzum. There he reshaped him made him into this disgusting sea thing. Even then Theotormon did not dare to go through the gates into Urizen s palace. He stayed here and lived as a hermit hating and despising himself hating all other living beings especially Lords. He lives upon the fruit of the islands the birds and fish and other sea things he can catch. He eats them raw and he kills the natives and eats them when he gets a chance. Not that they don t deserve their fate. They are the sons and daughters of other Lords who like Theotormon were craven. They lived out their miserable lives upon this planet had babies raised these and then died. Urizen did to them as he did to Theotormon. He took them to Appirmatzum made them into loathsome shapes and brought them back here. Our father thought that surely the monstering of them would make them hate him so much they would then test the trap door planets try to get into Appirmatzum and revenge themselves. But they were cowards all. They preferred to live on even in their stomach turning metamorphosis rather than die as true Lords. Wolff said I have much to learn about this little arrangement of our father. But how do I know that I can trust you Again Vala laughed. All of us who have fallen into Urizen s traps are upon this island. Most of us have been here only a few weeks al though Luvah has been here for half a year. Who are the others Some of your brothers and cousins. Besides Rintrah and Luvah there are two other brothers Enion and Ariston. And your cousins Tharmas and Palamabron. She laughed merrily and pointed at the red sky and said All all snared by our father All file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 7 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt gathered together again after a heartrending absence of millennia. A happy family reunion such as mortals could not imagine. I can imagine Wolff said. You still have not answered my question about trust. We have all sworn to a common front truce Rintrah said. We need each other so we must put aside our natural enmity and work together. Only thus will it be possible to defeat Urizen. There hasn t been a common front truce for as long as I can remember Wolff said. I remember Mother telling me that there had been one once four thousand years before I was born when the Black Sellers threatened the Lords. Urizen has performed two mira cles. He has trapped eight Lords all at once and he has forced a truce. May this be his downfall. Wolff then said that he would swear to the truce. By the name of the Father of all Lords the great Eponym Los he swore to observe all the rules of the peace agreement until such time as all agreed to abandon it or all were dead but one. He knew even as he took the oath that the others could not be relied upon not to betray him. He knew that Rintrah and Vala were aware of this and trusted him no more than he did them. But at least they would all be working to gether for a while. And it was not likely that any would lightly break truce. Only when a great opportunity and strong likelihood of escap ing punishment coincided would any do so. Theotormon whined Jadawin. My own brother. My favorite brother he who said he would always love me and protect me. You are like the others. You want to hurt me to kill me. Your own little brother. Vala spat at him and said You filthy craven beast You are no Lord nor brother of ours. Why do you not dive to the deeps and there drown yourself take your fearfulness and treachery out of our sight and the sight of all beings that breathe air Let the fish feed upon your fat carcass though even they may vomit you forth. Crouching extending a flipper Theotormon shuffled towards Wolff. Jadawin. You don t know how I ve suffered. Is there no pity in you for me I always thought you at least had what these others lacked. You had a warm heart a compassion that these soulless monsters lacked. You tried to kill me Wolff said. And you would try again if you thought you had a good chance of doing it. No no Theotormon said attempting to smile. You misun derstood me entirely. I thought you would hate me because I loved even a base life more than I did a death as a Lord. I wanted to take your weapons away so you couldn t hurt me. Then I would have ex plained what had happened to me how I came to be this way. You would have understood then. You would have pitied me and loved me as you did when you were a boy in the palace of our father and I was your infant brother. That is all I wanted to do explain to you and be loved again not hated. I meant you no harm. By the name of Los I swear it. I will see you later Wolff said. Now for the present be gone. Theotormon walked away spraddle legged. When he had reached the edge of the island he turned and shouted obscenities and abuse at Wolff. Wolff raised his beamer although he meant only to scare Theotormon. The thing squawked and leaped like a giant frog out over the water his rubbery legs and webbed toes trailing behind him. He went into the water and did not come up again. Wolff asked Vala how long he could stay under the surface. I do not know. Perhaps half an hour. But I doubt that he is hold ing his breath. He is probably in one of the caverns that exist in the roots and bladders that form the base of this island. She said that they must go to meet the others. While they walked through the frond forest she explained the physical facts of this world as far as she knew them. You must have noticed how close the horizon is. This planet has a diameter of about 2170 miles. About the size of Earth s moon Wolff thought. Yet the gravity is only a little less than that of our home planet. Not much stronger than Earth s Wolff thought. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 8 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt The gravity fades off abruptly above the atmosphere she said and extends weakly through this universe. All the other planets have similar fields. Wolff did not wonder at this. The Lords could do things with fields and gravitons that the terrestrials had never dreamed of as yet This planet is entirely covered with water. What about this island he said. It floats. Its origin is a plant which grows on the bottom of the sea. When it s half grown its bladder starts to fill with gas produced by a bacterium. It unroots itself and floats to the surface. There it ex tends roots or filaments which meet with the filaments of others of its kind. Eventually there s a solid mass of such plants. The upper part of the plant dies off while the lower part continues to grow. The decaying upper part forms a soil. Birds add their excrement to it. They come to new islands from old islands and bring seeds in their droppings. These produce the fronds you see and the other vegeta tion. She pointed at a clump of bamboo like plants. He asked Where did those rocks come from There were several whitish boulders with a diameter of about twelve feet beyond the bamboos. The gas bladder plants that form islands are only one of perhaps several thousand species. There s a type that attaches itself to sea bottom rocks and that carries the rock to the surface when they re buoyant enough. The natives bring them in and place them on the is lands if they re not too big. The white ones attract the garzhoo bird for some reason and the natives kill the garzhoo or domesticate it. What about the drinking water It s a fresh water ocean. Wolff glancing through a break in the wilderness of purplish yellow streaked fronds and waist high berry burdened bushes saw a tremendous black arc appear on the horizon. In sixty seconds it had become a sphere and was climbing above the horizon. Our moon she said. Here things are reversed. There is no sun the light comes from the sky. So the moon provides night or ab sence of light. It is a pale sort of night but better than none. Later you will see the planet of Appirmatzum. It is in the center of this universe and around it the five secondary planets revolve. You will see them too all black and sky filling like our moon. Wolff asked how she knew so much about the structure of Urizen s world. She answered that Theotormon had given the information though not willingly. He had learned much while a prisoner of Urizen. He had not wanted to part with the information since he was a surly and selfish beast. But when his brothers cousins and sister had caught him they had forced him to talk. Most of the scars are healed up she said. She laughed. Wolff wondered if Theotormon did not have good reasons after all for wanting to kill them. And he wondered how much of her story of their dealings with him was true. He would have to have a talk with Theotormon some tune at a safe distance from him of course. Vala stopped talking and seized Wolff s arm. He started to jerk away thinking that she meant to try some trick. But she was looking upwards with alarm and so was Rintrah. III THE FRONDS SIXTY FEET HIGH HAD HIDDEN THE OBJECT IN THE SKY. Now he saw a mass at least a quarter mile wide fifty feet thick and almost a mile long floating fifty feet in the air. It was drifting with the wind which came from an unknown quarter of the compass. In this world without sun north south east and west meant nothing. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 9 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt What is that he said. An island that floats in the air. Hurry. We have to get to the vil lage before the attack starts. Wolff set off after the others. From time to tune he looked up through the fronds at the aeronesus. It was descending rather swiftly at the opposite end of the island. He caught up with Vala and asked her how the floater could be navigated. She replied that its inhabit ants used valves in the giant bladders to release their hydrogen. This procedure required almost all the natives since each bladder valve was operated by hand. During a descent they would all be occupied with the navigation. How do they steer it The bladders have vents. When the abutal want the island to go in one direction they release gas from banks of bladders on the side opposite to that in which they want to go. They don t get much power thrust but they re very skillful. Even so they have to contend with the winds and don t always maneuver effectively. We ve been at tacked twice before by the abutal and both times they missed our is land. They ll drop sea anchors big stones on the ends of cables to slow them down. The first attackers settled down close to our island instead of just above it and had to content themselves with an attack by sea. They failed. She stopped then said Oh no These must be the Ilmawir. Los help us. At first Wolff thought that the fifty craft that had launched from the floater were small airplanes. Then as they circled to land against the wind he saw that they were gliders. The wings fifty feet long were of some pale shimmering stuff and scalloped on the edges. A painted image of an eye with crossed swords above it was on the un derside of each wing. The fuselage was an uncovered framework and its structure and the rudder and ailerons were painted scarlet. The pilot sat in a wickerwork basket just forward of the monowings. The nose of the craft was rounded and had a long horn projecting to a length of about twenty feet in front of it. Like the horn of a narwhal Wolff thought. As he later found out the horns were taken from a giant fish. A glider passed above them on a path which would make it land ahead of them. Wolff got a glimpse of the pilot. His red hair stood at least a foot high the hair shone with some fixative oil. His face was painted like a red Indian s with red and green circles and black chevrons ran down his neck and across his shoulders. The village is about a half mile from here Vala said. On the extreme end of the island. Wolff wondered why she was so concerned. What did a Lord care what happened to others She explained that If the Ilmawir made a successful landing they would kill every human being on the island. They would then plant some of their surplus people as a colony. The island was not entirely flat. There were rises here and there formed by the uneven growth of the bladders. Wolff climbed to the top of one and looked over the fronds. The abuta was down to fifty feet now settling slowly and headed directly for the village. This was a group of about one hundred beehive shaped huts built of fronds. A wall twenty feet high surrounded the village. It looked as if it were constructed of stones bamboo fronds and some dull gray poles that could be the bones of colossal sea creatures. Men and women were stationed behind the walls and several groups were out in the open. They were armed with spears and bows and arrows. Beyond the village were docks built of bamboo. Along them and on the shore were boats of various builds and sizes. The floater s bot tom was a dense tangle of thick roots. There were however open ings in it and from several of these large stones at the ends of cables of vegetable matter were dropped. The stones were white gypsum like and carved into flat discs. They trailed in the sea as they were dragged along by the island then struck the land. The cables of some caught under the docks. Other anchors fell and struck against the walls of the village. They were snagged in the tangle of stuff forming the high piled walls. They bumped along the grassless ground and slammed into the file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 10 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt sides of the huts. These collapsed under the impact of the stones. At the same time arrows were shot spears and rocks dropped and flaming ob jects cast from the hatches onto the people below. Some islanders were struck down huts started to burn. The flaming objects ex ploded and a dense black smoke rose from them. The defenders however were not helpless. From a large central building came men and women with curious devices. They lit and released them and they rose swiftly towards the underpart of the floater. They caught in the tangle of roots and burned there. Then they exploded and fire spread among the roots. The roof of a hut lifted up and fell over to one side like the roof of a trapdoor spider. The walls collapsed in orderly fashion out wards falling to the ground and forming a petal figure. In the center of the hut was a catapult a giant bow with an arrow made from the horns of the creature that had provided the booms on the noses of the gliders. To it were attached a number of flaming bladders. The bow was released and the burning arrow shot upwards and buried it self deep within the under part of the floater. The catapult crew began to wind the string back. A man fell from an opening in the floater and was followed by ten more. They came down as if parachuting. Their descent was checked by a cluster of bladders attached to a harness around the shoulders and chest. An arrow caught the first abutal just before he struck the ground and then three more of the ten behind him were transfixed. The survivors landed untouched a few feet from the catapult. They unstrapped their harness and the bladders rose away from them. By then they were surrounded. They fought so fiercely one got to the catapult only to be run through with two spears. The island floater driven by the wind began to pass over the vil lage. Other stones on cables had been dropped and a few had caught in the tangle of the walls without breaking. Then ropes fell onto the fronds and the huge loops tightened around them. Caught at the forward end the floater swung around so that its bulk hung over this part of the surface island. By then the gliders had made their landing not all successfully. Because of the density of the vegetation the crafts had to come down upon fronds. Some were flipped over some crashed through several fronds before being caught and held. Some slipped down between the fronds and smashed into the tough thick bushes. But from where he stood Wolff could see at least twenty pilots unhurt who were now slipping through the jungle. And there had to be others. He heard his name called. Vala had come back and was standing at the foot of the hill. What do you intend to do she said angrily. You have to take sides Jadawin whether you want to or not. The abutal will kill you. You may be right he said as he came down the hill. I wanted to get some idea of what was going on. I didn t want to rush blindly into this without knowing where everybody was how the fight was going on. . . . Always the cautious and crafty Jadawin she said. Well that s all right it shows you are no fool which I already know. Believe me you need me as much as I need you. You can t go this thing alone. He followed her and presently they came upon Rintrah crouching under a frond. He gestured at them for silence. When they were be side him Wolff looked at where Rintrah was pointing. Five abutal warriors were standing not twenty yards from them. The tail of a wrecked glider rose from behind a crushed bush to their left. They carried small round shields of bone javelins of bone tipped with bamboo and several had bows and arrows. The bows were made of some hornlike substance were short and recurved and formed of two parts that were joined in a central socket of horn. The warriors were too far away for him to overhear their conference. What s the range of your beamer Vala said. It kills up to fifty feet he said. Third degree burns for the next twenty feet and after file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 11 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt that second degree burns up through a light singe to no effect. Now s your chance. Rush them. You can kill all five with one sweep before they know what s going on. Wolff sighed. There would have been a time when he would not even have waited for Vala s urgings. He would have killed them all by now and been tempted to continue the work with Vala and Rin trah. But he was no longer Jadawin he was Robert Wolff. Vala would not understand this or if she did she would see his hesitation as a weakness. He did not want to kill but he doubted that there was any way of forcing the abutal to call off their attack. Vala knew these people and she was probably telling him the truth about them. So like it or not he had to take sides. There was a yell behind them. Wolff rolled over and sat up to see three more abutal warriors about forty feet from them. They had burst out from behind a frond and were charging towards them their javelins raised. Wolff twisted around to face the three abutal and he pressed on a plate on the underside of the three foot long barrel. A dazzling white ray pencil thick traced across the bellies of all three. The vegetation between and in back of them smoked. The three fell forward the jav elins dropping from their hands and they slid on the grass face down. Wolff rose to one knee turned and faced the five. The two archers stopped and took aim. Wolff dropped them first then the other three. He continued to crouch and looked about him for others who might have been attracted by the cries. Only the wind through the fronds and the hushed cries and muffled explosions of the battle at the vil lage could be heard. The odor of burned flesh sickened him. He rose and turned over the three corpses then the five. He did not think that any were still alive but he wanted to make sure. Each was almost cut in half by the beam. The skin along the gashes was crisped under the blood. There was not much blood since the energy of the beam absorbed by the bodies had cooked their lungs and intestines. Their bowels contracting had ejected their contents. Vala looked at the beamer. She was very curious but knew better than to ask Wolff if she could handle it. You have two settings she said. What can it do on full power It can cut through a ten foot slab of steel he replied. But the charge won t last more than sixty seconds. On half power it can project for ten minutes before needing recharging. She looked at his pockets and he smiled. He had no intention of telling her how many fresh charges were in his pockets. What happened to your weapons he said. Vala cursed and said They were stolen while we slept. I don t know whether Urizen or that slimy Theotormon did it. He started to walk towards the battle the two followed close behind. The island above threw them into a pale shadow which would be deepened soon when the night bringing moon covered this side of the planet. Ilmawir men and women both were still dropping out of the openings in the bottom. Others buoyed up by larger clus ters of bladders were working on the bottom as fire fighters. They used many faceted objects that when squeezed spurted out water. Those are living sea creatures she said. Amphibians. They travel on land by spurting out jets of water and rolling with the thrusts. Wolff set the beamer at full power. Whenever they came near a rope tangled in a tree or a stone anchor he cut the cable loose. Three times he came across abutal and set the beamer on half power. By the time he was a few yards from the village he had severed forty cables and killed twenty two men and women. A lucky thing for us you came when you did Vala said. I don t think we could have driven them off if you hadn t arrived. Wolff shrugged. He ejected a power pack and slipped another of the little cylinders into the file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 12 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt breech. He had six left and if this contin ued he would soon be out. But there was nothing he could do to con serve them. The village was surrounded on the land side by about ninety abu tal. Apparently those who had dropped into the village had been wiped out but the villagers were busy putting out fires. However they no longer had to worry about attack from directly overhead. The Ilmawir island had been affected by the cutting of so many ca bles. It had slipped on downwind by a quarter mile and only because a hundred other ropes and anchors had been used had it managed to keep from losing the surface island altogether. Wolff beamed the group of officers who were standing on top of the only hill near the village. Presently the other abutal became aware of what was happening. Half left the siege to surround the hill. The area bristled with spears and arrows. The Lords would have been open to a concentrated fire of arrows but they were protected behind a group of four white stone idols on the hill. Vala said They re on the defensive now. If they don t know it now they soon will. And that will be good for us. Perhaps. . . She was silent for a while. Wolff shot three men as they ran to wards a hollow in the hill. He said Perhaps what Our beloved father left a message for us on this island. He told us some of what we have to do if we hope to get within his castle. Apparently we have to find the gates which lead to him. There are none on this island. He says there is a pair on another island but he did not say just where. We have to find them by ourselves so I was thinking. . . A roar arose from the abutals and the front lines rushed the hill. The archers sent a covering fire of at least thirty arrows per volley. Vala and Rintrah cowered behind an idol as Wolff had told them to do. Much as he hated to expend his power he was forced to do so. He put the beamer on full and shot over the heads of the front lines. Smoke arose from vegetation and flesh alike as he described a circle with the white ray. The archers had had to expose themselves to get good shots and so most fell. Arrows rattled around Wolff leaping off the stone idols. One creased his shoulder another ricocheted off stone and flew between bis legs. Then there were no more arrows. The abutal in the second ranks seeing those crumple before them smelling the fried flesh wavered. Wolff began on them and they fled back into the jungle. You were thinking he said to Vala. We could search a thousand years using this island as our ship and not find one island that has the gates. Perhaps that is Father s idea. He would enjoy seeing us in a futile search enjoy our despair. And the friction and murder that such long association would make inevitable among us. But if we were on an abuta which would enable us not only to travel faster but to see far more from its altitude . . . It s a fine idea he said. How do we talk the abutal into letting us accompany them And what guarantee is there that they would not turn on us the first chance they got You have forgotten much about your younger sister. How could you of all who have loved me not remember how persuasive I can be She stood up and shouted at the seemingly uninhabited jungle. For a while there was no response. She repeated her demands. Presently an officer walked out from behind a frond. He was a tall well built man in his early thirties handsome behind the garish circles on his face. Besides the black chevrons down neck and shoulders he was decorated with a painted seabird on his chest. This was an iiphtarz and it indicated a commander of the glider force. Behind him came his wife clad in a short skirt of red and blue seabird feathers her red hair coiled on top of her head her face painted with green and white lozenges a necklace of fingerbones around her neck an iiphtarz painted across her breasts and three concentric circles of crimson black and yellow painted around her navel. As was the custom among the abutal she accompanied her husband in battle. If he file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 13 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt died it was her duty to attack his killers until she slew them or died her self. The two advanced up the hill until Wolff told them to come no further. Vala began talking and the man began to smile. His wife however watched Vala closely and scowled throughout the conver sation. IV DUGARNN THE OFFICER CAPITULATED ONLY WHEN CERTAIN TERMS had been agreed upon. He refused to leave the island until he had gotten at least part of what the Ilmawir had intended to take when they attacked. Vala did not hesitate to promise him that the de fenders domestic fowl and animals sea rats and small seals would be his prize of war. Moreover the abutal could mutilate the corpses of their enemies and scalp them. The surface islanders who called themselves Friiqan objected when they heard these terms. Wolff told their leaders that if they did not accept they would find the war continued. And he Wolff would take no sides this time. Surlily they said they would do as he wished. The abutal stripped the villagers of everything they considered valu able. The other Lords Luvah Enion Ariston Tharmas and Palamabron had been in the village when the attack started. They were very surprised to see him and they could not hide their envy of his beamer. Only Luvah seemed glad to see him. Luvah the runt of the lot was sandy haired and fine featured except for a broad and full mouth. His eyes were a deep blue and he had a faint milky way of freckles across the bridge of his nose and cheeks. He threw his arms around Wolff and hugged him and even wept a little. Wolff permitted the embrace because he did not believe that Luvah would take the chance to stab him. As children the two had always been close and had much in common both being imaginative and inclined to let others do and think as they wished. In fact Luvah had never in dulged in the Lords deadly game of trying to dispossess or slay the others. How did our father manage to entice you out from your world where you were safe and happy Wolff said. Luvah grinned crookedly and said I might ask you the same thing. Perhaps he played the same trick on you as on me. He sent a messenger a glowing hexaculum and it said that it was sent by you. You wanted me to come visit you you were lonely and wished to talk again to the one member of your family who did not want to kill you. So after taking what I thought were good precautions I left my universe. I entered what I thought was your gate only to find myself on this island. Wolff shook his head and said You were always too impetuous brother too rash. Yet I feel honored that you would forsake your safety to visit me. Only. . . Only I should have been much more careful more sure that the messenger was from you. At another time I might have been. But at the moment the hexaculum arrived I was thinking of you and long ing for you. Even we Lords have our weaknesses you know. Wolff was silent for a while watching the exultant Ilmawir carry away fowl animals necklaces and rings of sea jade. Then he said We are in the most desperate situation we have ever faced Luvah. The greatest peril of course is our father. But almost as deadly are those on whom we have to depend most. Despite their word of honor they will always need watching. Now I propose that we sup port each other. When I sleep you watch. When you sleep I stand guard. Luvah smiled one sidedly again and said And when you sleep you will keep one eye open to watch me heh brother Wolff frowned and Luvah said hastily Do not be angry Jadawin. You and I have managed to survive so long because we never fully gave our trust. With the best of reasons. How sad it is that all of us our sisters brothers and cousins once lived and studied and played together in innocence and even love. Yet today we are as hungry wolves at each others throats. And why I ask you Why I will tell you. It is because the Lords are mad. They think they are gods when all the time they are only human beings really no better than these savages here. Only they happen to be heir to a great power a science and technology which they use without under standing the principles behind it. They are as evil children with toys that create whole worlds and destroy file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 14 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt whole worlds. The great and wise men who devised the toys have long since died knowledge and science have died out and the good inherent in the cosmic powers is twisted for their benefit and theirs only. I know that well brother Wolff said. Better than you per haps since I was once as selfish and vicious as those others. Yet I underwent an experience which I will tell you about sometime. It changed me into a human being I hope into a being only you have the ability to appreciate. The Ilmawir had dropped great balloon like ladders with weights on them from the abuta. The loot was tied to these and floated back up along guideropes into the hatches in the bottom of the island. Those gliders worth repairing were also returned to the floater. When the stripping of the Friiqan was done the abutal ascended. Wolff rode up in a harness attached to a pair of bladders. He held his beamer ready since now the abutal had him in a position where they could attempt murder and have some hope of success. However no moves were made. He rose through the opening and was seized by two grinning women. They dragged him to one side and unharnessed him. The bladders were taken into the dun interior of a large cham ber where other bladders were stored. When all the Lords were landed they were led by Dugarnn and his woman Sythaz up a winding flight of steps to the upper part of the island. The stairs were made of very light paper thin but strong material. This was the hardened shell of gas bladders. On the abuta where weight was critical everything was as light as possible. This consideration had even affected the language as he was to discover. Although the speech differed little in basic vocabulary from the par ent it had undergone some sound changes. And new words relating to weight shape flexibility size and vertical and horizontal direction had arisen. These were used as classifiers in a sense unknown to the pristine speakers. Indeed no noun and few adjectives could be used without accompanying classifiers. In addition a detailed nautical and aeronavigational terminology had arisen. The stairwell was a shaft cut through a hard tangle of roots. On coming out at its top he found himself on the floor of a sort of am phitheater. The floor was made of broad strips of bladder covering and the sloping walls were composed of huge bladders tied together with roots. There was only one building on the great deck a thatch roofed opensided longhouse. This was the social and recreational building. It had flat stones on which each family cooked the meals. Domestic fowl and sea rats ran loose and meat seals played in an inch deep pool of water near the center. Sythaz the commander s wife showed them where they would live. These quarters consisted of cubicles cut out of the roots and floored and walled with bladder shells. Openings were cut in the floor and descent was made by a portable ladder. The only light came from through the hatch or from small fish oil lamps. There was just enough room to take two steps one way and two another. The beds were coffin shaped holes in the wall in which were mattresses of feathers stuffed into sealskin. Most of the daily and nightly activity took place on the maindeck. There was absolutely no privacy ex cept in the chief s bridge. Wolff had expected the abutal to hoist anchor and sail off at once. Dugarnn said that they must wait awhile. For one thing the island needed more altitude before it could start out over the open seas. The bacteria that generated gas in the bladders worked very fast when fed nutrient but it still would take two days before the blad ders were filled enough for Dugarnn to consider it safe to cast loose. Secondly the invasion had cost the abutal a relatively staggering number of casualties. There were just not enough people to work the island efficiently. So Dugarnn proposed something that the abutal had not had to do for a long time. The shortage of population would be made up by recruiting from the Friiqan. After making sure his guests knew where they were to be quartered Dugarnn went back to the surface. Wolff curious accompanied him. Vala insisted on going with him. Whether this was to satisfy her curiosity or just to keep an eye on him Wolff did not know. Probably she had both mo tives. Dugarnn explained to the chief of the Friiqan what he wanted. The chief dispirited waved a hand to indicate that he did not care what happened. Dugarnn gathered the survivors together and made his offer. To Wolff s surprise many volunteered. Vala told him that the two peoples were thorough enemies but that the Friiqan had lost face. Moreover many of the young considered an aerial life as ro mantic. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 15 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Dugarnn looked the volunteers over and picked out those who had distinguished themselves during the fighting. He chose more women than men especially those with children. There was an initial cere mony of ritual torture which consisted of lightly burning the candi date on his or her groin. Normally a captured enemy was tortured to death unless he exhibited exceptional stoicism and bravery. Then he could be initiated into the tribe. In emergencies such as now the torture was only token. Later after the island had set sail the initiates would go through a ceremony in which each would mingle his blood with that of an Ilmawir. This prevented revenge from the surface people since blood brotherhood was sacred. There s another reason besides needing more crew Vala said. The abutal in fact both surface and air islanders have a tendency to inbreed. To avoid this prisoners are sometimes adopted into the tribe. She was very friendly with Wolff now and insisted on being with him every moment. She had even resumed calling him wivkrath the Lords term for darling. She leaned against him every time she had a chance and once even gave him a light kiss on the cheek. Wolff did not respond. He had not forgotten even after 500 years that they had been lovers and yet she had tried to kill him. Wolff set out for the area of the gate through which he had en tered. Vala went with him. To her questions he answered that he wanted to talk to Theotormon once more. That sea slug What can he have that you would want Information perhaps. They came to the gate. Theotormon was not in sight. Wolff walked along the edge of the island noting that here and there the land sank slightly under his weight. Apparently the bladders were not so thick in these places. How many of these islands are there on this planet and what is the maximum size he said. I do not know. We have sighted two since we ve been here and the Friiqan say that there are many more. They speak of the Mother of Islands a relatively huge island that they claim to have heard of. There are many aerial islands too but none larger than the Ilma wirs . Why do you want to talk of boring things like that when we have ourselves to discuss Like what he said. She faced him so close that her upraised lips almost touched his chin. Why can t we forget what happened to us After all that was a long time ago when we were much younger and therefore not so wise. I doubt that you ve changed he said. She smiled and said How would you know Let me prove that I am different now. She put her arms around him and placed her head on his chest. Different in everything but one. I loved you once and now that I see you again I realize I ve never really stopped loving you. Even when you tried to murder me in my bed he said. Oh that Darling I thought you were with that loathsome and conniving Alagraada. I thought you were betraying me. Can you blame me because I was crazed with jealousy You know how terri bly possessive I am. I know only too well. He pushed her away and said Even as a child you were selfish. All Lords are selfish but few to the degree to which you were. I cannot see now why I ever loved you. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 16 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt You toad she cried. You loved me because I am Vala. That s all just that I am Vala. He shook his head and said That may have been true once. But it is not true any longer. Nor will it ever be true again. You love another Do I know her It s not Anana not my stupid murderous sister. No he said. Anana is murderous but she s not stupid. She didn t fall into Urizen s trap. I don t see her here. Or has something happened to her Is she dead Vala shrugged turned away and said I haven t heard of her for three hundred years. But your concern shows that you do care for her. Anana Who would have thought it Wolff did not try to change her mind. He did not think that it was wise to mention Chryseis even though Vala might never have con tact with her. There was no use taking a chance. Vala spun around and said What happened to that Earth girl What Earth girl he said taken aback at her viciousness. What Earth girl she mimicked. I mean that Chryseis the mor tal you abducted from Earth some two and a half millennia ago. From a region the Earthlings call Troy or something like that. You made her immortal and she became your mistress. Along with quite a few thousand others he said. Why pick on her Oh I know I know. You have really become degenerate my brother Wolff Jadawin. So you know my Earth name the name by which I prefer to be called And how much else do you know about me And why I ve always made it my business to have as much information about the Lords as it is possible to get she said. That is why I have stayed alive so long. And why so many others have died. Her voice became soft again and she smiled at him. There s no reason for you to pick a quarrel with me. Why can t we let bygones be bygones Who picked a quarrel No there s no reason why bygones can t be just that provided they are bygones. But the Lords never re member a good turn or forget an injury. And until you ve convinced me otherwise I will regard you as the same old Vala. As beautiful maybe even more beautiful but still with a black and rotten soul. She tried to smile. You always were too blunt. Maybe that was one reason why I loved you so much. And you were more of a man than the others. You were the greatest of all my lovers. She waited for him to return the compliment. Instead he said Love is what makes a lover. I did love you. Did. He walked away from her along the edge of the shore. He looked back from time to time. She was following him at a distance of twenty feet. Now and then the earth sank beneath his feet. He stopped for her to catch up with him and said There must be many caves on the bottom. How can Theotormon be called out He can t. There are many caves yes. Sometimes a whole group of bladders die either from disease old age or from being eaten by a fish which finds them tasty. Then caverns exist for a while al though they re eventually filled up by new growths. Wolff filed this information away for possible use. If things went too badly a man could always take refuge under the island. Vala must have guessed what he was thinking a gift he had found irritat ing when they had been mates and she said I wouldn t go under there. The water swarms with man eaters. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 17 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt How does Theotormon survive I don t know. Maybe he s too fast and strong for the fish. After all he s adapted for that kind of life if you want to call it a life. Wolff decided that he would have to give up on Theotormon. He walked back into the jungle with Vala close behind. By now he per mitted her to be at his back. She needed him too much to kill him. He had gone only a few yards when he was knocked down from behind. At first he thought that she had leaped upon him. He rolled away from her trying to draw his beamer from its holster at the same time. He saw then that she had been propelled into him by another. The huge glistening wet body of Theotormon was flying at him. The bulk came flat down on him and his breath was knocked out by the impact of 400 pounds. Then Theotormon was sitting on top of him and striking savagely at his face with the flippers. The first blow knocked him half unconscious the second drove him into darkness. V Although he had no recollection of the few seconds after his senses had dissolved he must not have been entirely unconscious. He had gotten his two arms out from under the pinning mass and seized the flippers. Slippery as they were he managed to keep a grip on them. He regained full consciousness just as he yanked savagely on them so strongly that Theotormon shrieked with pain and half rose. That was enough for Wolff. He shoved against the bulging paunch and thrust himself partly free. He bent his free right leg and kicked. Now it was Theotormon s turn to gasp for breath. Wolff rose to his feet and kicked hard again his shoe driving into the weakest part of the monster his head. Theotormon caught on the forehead slumped back. Wolff kicked him in the jaw and then half buried another kick in the paunch. Theotormon the moss green eyes glazed fell back his legs doubled under him. Yet he was not out and when Wolff advanced on him to finish his work Theotormon kicked with a huge foot. Wolff caught the foot and so denied its full impact but he was shoved backwards. Theotor mon arose crouched and leaped again. Wolff also leaped forward his right knee driving upward. It caught Theotormon on his chin and both fell to the ground again. Wolff scrambled up felt for his beamer and found it was not in his holster. His brother also rose. They faced each other at a distance of six feet both breathing heav ily and just becoming aware of the pain of the blows they had taken. Wolff s natural strength had been increased twofold by artificial means and his bones had been toughened without being made brit tle to match the muscular strength. However all Lords had under gone the same treatment so that when they engaged in physical combat among themselves the original strength was relatively the same. Theotormon s body had been reshaped by Urizen and he outweighed his brother by at least one hundred and sixty pounds. Apparently Urizen had not increased Theotormon s power by much since Wolff had been able to match him so far. Weight meant much in a fight though and it was this that Wolff had to watch for. He must not give Theotormon another chance to use it. Theotormon his wind having returned growled I will batter you into unconsciousness again Jadawin. And then I will carry you into the sea dive into a cavern and hold you while my pets eat you alive. Wolff looked around. Vala was standing to one side and smiling very curiously. He did not waste his breath or time asking for her aid. He charged Theotormon leaped high into the air and kicked out with both feet. His brother had frozen for a second at the unex pected attack then he ducked. Wolff had hoped that he would. He kicked low but Theotormon was very fast. Wolff s shoes came down hard on his back the shoes slipped on the wet back and Wolff skidded down the back. He whirled even as he shot off Theotormon. The monster turned and leaped expecting or hoping to find Wolff flat on his back. Instead he was caught by another kick in the jaw. This tune Theotormon did not get up. His dark seal fur red with blood from a torn lip and gashed jaw and mashed nose he lay breathing noisily. Wolff kicked him several times in the ribs to make file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 18 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:39 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt sure he stayed down. Vala applauded Wolff and said Well done. You are the man I once loved still love. And why didn t you help me he said. You didn t need it. I knew you d knock that bag of blubber out of his pinhead mind. Wolff looked through the grass for his beamer but could not find it. Vala did not move from where she stood. She said Why didn t you use your knife I would have if it had been necessary. But I want him alive. We re taking him along with us. Her eyes widened. In the name of Los why Because he has certain abilities we may be able to use. Theotormon groaned and sat up. Wolff kept an eye on him but continued his search. Finally he said All right Vala. Hand it over. She reached within her robe and brought out the beamer. I could kill you now. Do it then but don t waste my time with idle threats. You don t scare me. All right. Have it then she said fiercely. She raised the beamer and for a moment Wolff thought he had goaded her too far. After all the Lords were proud far too proud and overly swift to react to in sult. But she pointed the beamer carefully at Theotormon and a white rod of light touched the end of one flipper. Smoke curled up burnt flesh stank. Theotormon fell backwards his mouth open his eyes staring. Vala smiling reversed the weapon and handed it to Wolff. He swore and said There was no reason but viciousness for that Vala. Viciousness and stupidity. I tell you he might have been the difference between death and life for us. She walked strolled over to the huge wetness and bent over to look at him. She raised the flipper the end of which was charred. He s not dead yet. You can save him if you want to. But you ll have to cut off the flipper. It ll be cooked halfway to his shoulder. Wolff walked away without further comment. He recruited a num ber of Ilmawir to help him get Theotormon on the island. Hoisted by four bladders Theotormon rose up through a hatch. There he was pulled to one side and stretched out on the floor of a brig. This was a cage with very light but steel strong bars of laminated bladder shells. Wolff did the surgery himself. After forcing a drugged drink provided by the Ilmawir wizard down Theotormon s throat he ex amined a number of saws and other surgical tools. These were the property of the wizard who took care of both the spiritual and phys ical welfare of his people. With several saws fitted with the teeth of a sharklike fish Wolff cut off the flipper just below the shoulder. The flesh went quickly the bones offered enough resistance to dull two saws. The wizard thrust the red hot end of a torch against the huge wound to seal off the blood vessels. Moreover the wizard applied a salve to the burn as suring Wolff that it had saved the lives of men who had been burned over half their bodies. Vala watched the entire operation with a slight sneer. Once her gaze met Wolff s as he looked up from his work and she laughed. He shuddered although she had a beautiful and striking laugh. It re minded him of a gong he had once heard while voyaging down the Guzirit river in the land of Khamshem on the third level of the planet of his own universe. It had golden notes to it that was the only way to describe the laughter. The gong had probably been of bronze hanging in the dark adytum of an ancient and crumbling temple of jade and chalcedony muffled by stone and the green density of the jungle. It was bronze but it gave forth golden vibrations. And this was how the laughter of Vala sounded bronze and golden and also with something dark and smoldering in it. She said He ll never be able to grow a new flipper unless you keep peeling off the scab. You file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 19 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt know regeneration won t take place if there s scar tissue. You let me worry about those things he said. You ve inter fered enough. She sniffed and went up the narrow corkscrewing staircase to the maindeck. Wolff waited awhile. After it seemed reasonable that Theotormon was not going to die of shock he also went up onto the deck. The Friiqan adoptees were being trained for their new duties and he watched them for a while. He asked Dugarnn how the great gas plants were fed since it seemed to him that the nutrient would weigh much. There were at least four thousand of the bladders each as large as the cell in a zeppelin. Dugarnn explained. A growing bladder did not have to be fed. But when it matured it died. The skin would become dry and hard but was specially treated to preserve flexibility and expandability. New colonies of gas generating bacteria were placed therein. These had to be fed but the amount of gas they produced was very high in propor tion to the amount of food they needed. This was mainly the heart stuff of growing plants although the bacteria could work on fish meat or decaying vegetable matter. Dugarnn left him saying there was much work to be done. The shadow of the moon passed and full daylight returned. The island began to tug harder against the ropes. Finally Dugarnn decided that it was buoyant enough to cast loose. The stone anchors were drawn up and the ropes around the fronds cut. The island drifted past them and slowly rose. It settled at a hundred and fifty feet for a while. Then as the gas continued to fill the bladders it rose to five hundred feet. Dugarnn ordered the bacteria food to be reduced. He inspected the entire island a trip which took several hours and returned to the bridge. Wolff went down to see how Theotormon was coming along. The wizard reported that his patient was doing even better than could be expected. Wolff climbed up a flight of steps to the top of the walls. Here he found Luvah and one of his cousins Palamabron. The latter was a well built and handsome man darkest of the family. He wore a conical hat with hexagonal rim both decorated with emerald green owls. His cloak had a turned up collar in back and epaulets in the shape of lions couchant. The fabric was a green shimmering stuff with a pattern of trefoils pierced with a bleeding lance. His shirt was electric blue and piped with white skulls. A great belt of leather was bossed with gold and set with diamonds emeralds and topazes. His baggy pants were white and black striped and calf length. The boots were of some pale soft red leather. He made a striking and handsome figure of which he was well aware. He nodded at Wolff s greeting then left. Wolff watching him chuckled. He said Palamabron never did care too much for me. I would worry if he did. They won t do anything as long as we re on this aerial island Luvah said. At least they won t unless this search takes too long. I wonder how long it will take We could float forever over these seas and never happen across the gates. Wolff looked at the red skies and the green blue oceans and at the island they had left a piece of unattached land seemingly no larger than a penny now. White birds with enormous wings and yellow curved beaks and orange ringed eyes flew over them and gave forth shrill ululations. One settled down not far from where they stood and cocked its head and fastened an unblinking green eye upon them. Wolff remembered the ravens of his own world. Did some of these great birds have a slice of human brain within their unbird like sized craniums Were they watching and listening for Urizen Their father had some means of observing them otherwise he would not be get ting full enjoyment from this game. Dugarnn told me that the abuta is pushed always by the same wind. It takes it around and around this world of water in a spiraling path. Eventually it covers every area. But the island that has the gates may always be on a different course. Always out of sight. Wolff shrugged and said Then we won t find it. Perhaps that is the way Urizen wants it. He would like us to go mad from frustration and boredom and slit each other s throat. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 20 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Perhaps. However the abuta can change course when its people so wish. It s a slow process but it can be done. Also. . . He was silent for so long that Luvah became uneasy. Also what Our good father has placed other creatures here besides man birds a few animals and fish. I understand that some of the islands water and air alike are populated by rather vicious flying creatures. Vala called from below saying that their meals were prepared. They went down to eat at one end of the chief s table. Here they heard what Dugarnn was planning. He was ready to thrust the abuta off course. Somewhere to the southwest was another floating island that of their most bitter enemies the Waerish. Now that the Ilmawir had Wolff and his beamer they could join battle for the last time with the Waerish. It would be a glorious victory for the Ilmawir the Waerish would be swallowed up by the ocean forever. Wolff agreed since there was little else he could do at that mo ment. He hoped that the Waerish would not be found since he wanted to conserve the power packs of the beamer for more impor tant matters. The bright red days and pale red nights that followed were many and unvaried. They were at first however busy for Wolff. He learned all he could about the management of the abuta. He studied the mores of the tribe and the idiosyncrasies of each member. The other Lords with the exception of Vala showed little interest in any of these. They spent their tune at the bow looking for the island that was supposed to contain the gates of Urizen. Or they complained to the abutal or to each other. And always one Lord was insulting an other although in a way that barely avoided an outright challenge from the insulted. Wolff became more disgusted with them as each day passed. Ex cept for Luvah none was worth saving. They had an arrogance that displeased the abutal. Wolff warned the Lords against this many times saying that their lives were dependent upon the natives. Should these be too antagonized they were likely to dump the Lords over board. His advice was taken for a while and then the lifelong belief in their near divinity would take hold of the Lords again. Wolff spent much time on the bridge with Dugarnn. It was neces sary to do this to smooth out the ridges of ill feeling his brothers and cousins raised. He also went into the glider training school since the abutal could not fully give a man admiration and respect unless he had won his wings. Wolff asked Dugarnn why this was so. To Wolff the gliders seemed more of a hindrance and unnecessary expense and trouble than anything else. Dugarnn was astonished at the question. He groped for words then said Why it s just because ... it is. That s all. No man is a man until he makes his first solo landing. As for your implications that gliders aren t worth the trouble I deny those. When the day comes that we find an enemy you will eat your words. The next day Wolff went up in a glider. He got into a tandem seat instruction ship which was hauled aloft at the end of a cable borne by two great bladders. The craft rose upward until the abuta was a small brown oval below. Here the swifter upper winds carried them along until they were several miles ahead of the island. Then the in structor Dugarnn unlocked the Lift mechanism. The bladders were then hauled down back to the abuta with a slim but strong cord to be used again. As Jadawin Wolff had flown many types of craft. On Earth he had gotten a private pilot s license qualifying him to fly single motor craft. He had not flown for many years now but he had not forgotten all his old skills either. Dugarnn let him handle the controls for a while as they spiraled downwards. He tapped Wolff s shoulders and nodded approvingly then took the controls over. The glider came in upwind sideslipping at the last moment and landing on one side of the broad deck. Wolff took five more lessons during the last two of which he made the landings. On the fourth day he soloed. Dugarnn was very impressed saying that most students required twice that time. Wolff asked what happened if a soloing student missed the abuta. How could the islanders pick him up file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 21 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Dugarnn smiled and lifted his hands palms up and said that the unfortunate was left behind. No more was said about that although Wolff noted that Dugarnn had insisted that the beamer be left on the island when Wolff had gone up. Wolff had placed it in the care of Luvah whom he did not think would misuse it. Not to the extent the others would anyway. Thereafter Wolff went bare chested as befitted a man who wore a painted iiphtarz upon his chest. Dugarnn insisted that Wolff also be come a blood brother. On hearing this the other Lords scoffed. What Jadawin son of the great Lord Urizen direct descendant of the Los himself be brother to these painted ignorant savages Have you no pride brother Brother me no brother brothers he replied. These people have at least not tried to slay me. That is more than I can say for any of you except Luvah. And they are not to be despised by the likes of you. They are masters of their own little worlds. You are homeless and trapped like dull witted fat geese. So do not be so ready to scorn me or them. You would be far better off if you would condescend to make friends with them. The time may come when you will need them very much. Theotormon his flipper pink and half grown out now was squat ting in the inch deep pool. He said The whole accursed lot of you are doomed long may you scream when Urizen finally closes the trap on you. But this I will say for Jadawin. He is twice the man any of you are. And I wish him luck. I wish he may get to our beloved father and exact vengeance from him while the rest of you die hor ribly. Shut your ugly mouth you toad Ariston cried. It is bad enough to have to look at you. My stomach wrings itself out when I see you. To have to hear you you abomination is too much. I wish that I were in my own lovely world again and had you at my feet and in chains. Then I would make you talk monsterling so fast your words would be a gabble for mercy. And then I would feed you inch by inch to some special pets of my own oh beautiful little pets. And I Theotormon said will pitch you over the side of this floating island some night and will laugh as I watch you flailing at the air and hear your last scream. Enough of this childish bickering Vala said. Don t you know now that when you quarrel among yourselves you delight the heart of our father He would love to see you tear each other apart. Vala is right Wolff said. You call yourselves Lords makers and rulers of entire universes. Yet you behave like spoiled and evil brats. If you hate each other remember that the one who taught you this horrible hatred and who now has set the stage for your death still lives. He must die. If we have to die ourselves in making sure of his death so be it. But at least try to live with dignity and so dignify your deaths. Suddenly Ariston strode towards Wolff. His face was red and his mouth was twisted. He towered over Wolff though he was not as broad. He waved his arms and the saffron robes set with scarlet and green imbrications flapped. I have put up with enough from you detested brother he howled. Your insults and your insinuations that you are better than us now because you have become less than us one of those animals have enraged me. I hate you as I have always hated you hated you far more than the others. You are nothing a ... a ... foundling With this insult the worst the Lords could conceive for they could think of nothing worse than not to be of the true lineage of Lords he began to draw his knife. Wolff bent his knees ready to fight if he had to but hoping he would not. It would look very bad for the Lords if they brawled in front of the abutal. At that moment a cry arose from the gondola on the prow of the island. Drums began to beat and the abutal dropped what they were doing. Wolff caught hold of a man running by and asked what the alarm was about. The man pointed to the left indicating something in the sky. Wolff turned to see an object dark and fuzzy against the red dome of the sky. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 22 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt VI Even as wolff ran towards the bridge another object ap peared. Before he had reached the gondola he saw two more. They made him prickle with uneasiness and a sense of strangeness. He could not identify the reason for this at first. But before he reached the gondola he knew. The objects were not drifting with the wind but were coming in at right angles to it. Something was propelling them. On the bridge Dugarnn told Wolff what he wanted of him. He was to stay by his side until ordered otherwise. As for the other Lords now was the time for them to earn their keep. Dugarnn had heard them boasting of their prowess. Let them put their swords where their mouths were or words to that effect. Communication on the island surface during a battle was by drum. Orders to those inside the island stationed on the ports on the sides or the hatches at the bottom were transmitted by another means. Throughout the abuta was a network of thin narrow pipes. These were fashioned from the bones of the girrel fish and had the prop erty of transmitting sound quite well. The abutal could use voice over the girrel bones up to seventy five feet. Past this distance a code was rapped out by a tiny hammer. Wolff watched Dugarnn issue orders which were performed swiftly by the well trained people. Even children were carrying out duties within their capabilities and so relieving adults for more difficult and dangerous posts. To Vala who had come up to the bridge Wolff said We so called divine Lords could learn much about cooperation from these so called savages. No doubt Vala replied. She looked out across the oceans and said There are six now. What are they Dugarnn mentioned the Nichiddor but he had no tune to tell me what they are. Be patient. We ll know soon enough. Too soon I sus pect. The gliders had been fastened to the lift bladders. The pilots got into the cockpits while the ground crews fitted the explosive bladder bombs to the wings. Then the wizard clad in robes and a mask passed along the gliders. He carried a double ankh with which he blessed the pilots and their craft. Between each pair of gliders he stopped to shake the double ankh at the ufo and hurl maledictions. Dugarnn became impatient but dared not hurry the wizard. As soon as the last of the twenty airmen had been touched by the ankh and prayed over Dugarnn gave the signal. The bladders with their white winged cargoes were released. They soared up and up until they had attained a height of a thousand feet above the island. Dugarnn said They ll release themselves as soon as the Nichid dor nests get within range. Los guard them since few will get through. But if the nests can be destroyed. . . There are eight now Wolff said. The nearest was a half mile away. Ball shaped it had a diameter of about three hundred yards. The fuzzy appearance had been caused by the many uneven projec tions of plants. These grew out to conceal the gas bladders that formed irregular concentric rings. On the surface of the spheroid nest were hundreds of tiny figures. An aerial dung ball Wolff thought. Dugarnn pointed above him and Wolff saw a number of small dark objects. Scouts Dugarnn said. The Nichiddor won t attack until the scouts report to them. Who are the Nichiddor There s one now coming down to take a close look. The wings were black feathered and had a spread of at least fifty feet. They sprouted out from the five foot wide shoulders below which was a hairless human torso. The breast bone projected several feet and under it was the abdomen with a human navel. The legs were thin and ended in huge feet that were mainly clawlike toes. A long black feathered tail spread out behind it. The face was human except for the nose. This extended like an elephant s proboscis for several feet and was as flexible. As the Nichiddor swept over them it raised the proboscis and trumpeted shrilly. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 23 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Dugarnn glanced at Wolff s beamer. Wolff shook his head and said I d rather they didn t know yet what they re up against. My supply of charges is limited. I want to wait until I can get a number with a single shot. He watched the Nichiddor flap heavily away towards the nearest nest. The creatures were undoubtedly the work of Urizen who had placed them here for his own amusement. They must be human be ings although not necessarily Lords he had transmuted in the labo ratory. They could have been abducted from other worlds than his some might even be descended from Earthmen. Now they lived a strange life beneath red skies and a dark moon born and raised on an aerial nest that drifted with the winds of this landless world. They lived largely on fish which they caught as an osprey catches fish with their talons. But when they came across a surface or air island they killed to eat raw human flesh. By now Wolff could see why the nests were going against the wind. The hundreds of Nichiddors on it had gripped the plants in their talons and were flapping their wings in unison. The foul chariot of the skies was drawn by as strange birds as ever existed. When the nest had come within a quarter mile the wings stopped beating. Now the other nests drew up slowly. Two settled down wards from these the Nichiddor would attack the bottom of the is land. Two others veered around behind the island and then came on the other side. Dugarnn waited calmly until the Nichiddor had set their attack pattern. Wolff asked him why he did not order the gliders to attack. If they were released before the main body of Nichiddor came at us Dugarnn said every Nichiddor would rise to bar the way. The gliders could not possibly get through them. But with only a small number of Nichiddor attacking the gliders we have a chance of get ting through to the nests. At least that has been my experience so far. Wouldn t it be wisest from the Nichiddors viewpoint to elimi nate the gliders first Wolff asked. Dugarnn shrugged and said You d think so. But they never do what seems to me the most strategic thing. It s my theory that being deprived of hands the Nichiddor have suffered a lessening of intelli gence. It s true they can manipulate objects to some extent with their feet and their trunks but they re far less manual than we. Then again I could be wrong. Perhaps the Nichiddor derive a certain pleasure from giving the gliders a fighting chance. Or perhaps they are as arrogant as sea eagles which will attack a shark that out weighs them by a thousand pounds a vicious creature that an eagle cannot possibly kill or if it could would not be able to carry off to some surface island. The wind carried to the abuta the gabble of hundreds of voices and the trumpeting of hundreds of proboscises. Suddenly there was a silence. Dugarnn froze but his eyes were busy. Slowly he raised his hand. A warrior standing near him held a bladder in his hand. By him was a bowl shaped stone with some hot coals. He held his gaze upon his chief. The silence was broken with the united scream of Nichiddor through their snaky noses. There was a clap as of thunder as they launched themselves from the nests and brought their wings together in the first beat. Dugarnn dropped his hand. The warrior dipped the short fuse of the bladder into the fire and then released it. It soared upwards to fifty feet and exploded. The gliders dropped from their lifts each towards the nest ap pointed to it. Wolff looked at the dark hordes advancing and lost some of his confidence in his beamer. Yet the Ilmawir had beaten off attacks by the Nichiddor before although with great loss. But never before had eight nests ringed the abuta. A great winged white bird passed overhead. Its cry came down to him and he wondered if this could be an eye of Urizen. Was his fa ther watching through the eyes and brains of these birds If so he was going to see a spectacle that would delight his bloody heart. The Nichiddor so thick they were a brown and black cloud sur rounded the island. Just out of bowrange they stopped advancing and began to fly around the island. Around and around they flew file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 24 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt in an ever diminishing circle. The Ilmawir archers all males waited for their chief to signal to fire. The women were armed with slings and stones and they also waited. Dugarnn knowing that it would weaken them to spread out his people along the top of the walls had concentrated them at the prow. There was nothing to prevent the Nichiddor from landing at the far end. However they did not settle down there. They hated to walk on their weak legs. Wolff looked out at the gliders. Some had dropped below his line of vision to attack the two nests below the underside. The others were coming down swiftly in a steep glide. A number of Nichiddor rose from the nest to meet them. Two fliers passed over the nearest nest. Small objects trailing smoke dropped from them and fell on the nests. Females flapping their wings scrambled towards them. Then there was an explosion. Smoke and fire billowed out. Another explosion followed. The two gliders pulled up sharply. Carried upward by the momen tum of their steep dives they turned and came back for another and final pass. Again their bombs hit. Fire spread through the dry plants and caught and enfolded some of the giant gas cells. The females screamed so loudly they could be heard even above the wing beatings and trumpetings of the circling horde. They rose from the burning nest their infants clutched in their toes. The entire nest blew apart catching some of the females burning them in flight or hurling them head over heels. Infants dropped towards the sea below their short wings ineffectively flapping. Wolff saw one mother fold her wings and drop like a fish hawk to wards her infant. She caught it beat her wings and lifted slowly to wards an untouched nest. Two nests burning and exploding spun towards the ocean. By then several hundreds of males had detached themselves from the ring around the island. They flew after the gliders which by now were far down headed towards a landing on the waves. The nests on a level with the island were out of range of his beamer. It was possible the two below might not be. Wolff told Dugarnn what he meant to do and went down a fifty foot winding staircase to a hatch at its bottom. The nests there had risen close and he caught both of them with a sweep of the full power of the beamer. They blew up with such violence that he was lifted and al most knocked off the platform. Smoke poured up through the hatch. Then as it cleared away he saw the flaming pieces of vegetation fall ing. The bodies of the children and females plummeted into the sea. The male warriors from the nests were trying to get through the bottom hatches. Wolff put the beamer on half power and cleared the area. Then he ran along the gangplank stopping at every hatch to fire again. He accounted for at least a hundred attackers. Some had gotten through the defending abutal at the hatches at the far end. It took him a while to kill these since he had to be careful not to touch the many great bladders. Even though he slew thirty he could not get them all. The island was too large for him to cover all the bottom area. By the time he climbed back up to the hatch he found that the Nichiddor had launched their mass attack. This end of the island was a swirling screeching shouting screaming mob. There were bodies everywhere. The archers and slingers had taken a heavy toll of the first wave and a lighter toll of the second. Then the Nichiddor were upon them and the battle became a melee. Although the winged men had no weapons other than their wings and feet these were powerful. With a sweep of a wing a Nichiddor could knock down an Ilmawir. He could then leap upon his stunned and bruised foe and tear at him with the heavy hooked clawlike toenails. The abutal defended them selves with spears swords which were flat blades lined with shark s teeth and knives formed from a bamboolike surface plant. Wolff methodically set about to kill all those in the neighborhood of the maindeck. The Lords had made a compact group all facing outwards and slashing with their swords. Wolff took careful aim and slew the Nichiddor pressing them. A shadow fell on him and he fell on his back and fired upwards. Two Nichiddor struck the deck on each side of him the wing of one buffeting him. It covered him like a banner and stank of fish. He crawled out from under just in time to shoot two that had forced Dugarnn back against the wall. Dugarnn s wife lay near him her spear stuck in a file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 25 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt winged man s belly. Her face and breasts were ripped into shreds and the Nichiddor who had done it was tearing out her belly. He fell backwards his claws caught in her entrails as Wolff shot him from behind. For the next minute it was near death for him. At least two dozen Nichiddor came at him from all sides and from above. He spun like a top using the beam as a spray around him and in the air. The corpses half severed smoking stinking piled up around him. Then he was over them out in the open on the fringes of the eddying bat tle. He shot everywhere and usually hit his target though twice an abutal was borne by the thrust of the fight into the beam. This could not be helped he was lucky that he had not hit more. The Ilmawir despite a fierce resistance had lost half their num bers. Even with Wolff s help they were being defeated. The Nichid dor despite casualties that should have made them retreat refused to stop. They were intent on extermination of their foe even if it meant near extermination for them. Wolff cleared the attackers around the Lords again. They were all on their feet and swinging their swords although covered with blood. Wolff called to them to form around him. While they kept off the winged men he would shoot over them. He stood upon a pile of Nichiddor his feet braced on the slippery corpses and coolly re sumed firing. Suddenly he realized that he was down to his last two power packs. He had hoped to save some for Urizen s stronghold but there was nothing he could do to conserve them now. If he did not use the beamer he and all that fought with him would die. Vala standing just in front of him yelled. He looked upward where she was pointing. A dark object spanned the skies: a black comet. It had appeared while all were intent upon the fight. The abutal near them also looked up. They gave a cry of despair and threw down their weapons. Ignoring the winged men they ran towards the nearest hatches. The Nichiddor after searching the skies for the cause of the panic also reacted with terror. They launched themselves into the air to get to the nests or to escape to the protect ing underside of the island. Wolff did not throw down his beamer but he was as frenzied as the others in their attempt to get to the closest cover. Dugarnn had told him of the black comets that occasionally visited the space above this planet. He had warned of that which always accompanied the comet. As Wolff raced towards a hatch there were small whistling noises around him. Holes appeared in the foliage of the walls little curls of smoke rose from the sheathing of the maindeck. A Nichiddor ten feet up flapping his fifty foot wings frantically screamed. He fell to the deck his skin pierced in several places smoke coming from one wing. Another and another winged man dropped and with them some abutal. The corpses jerked with the impact of the tiny drops. Wolff s beamer was knocked out of his hand by the blow of a drop of quicksilver. He stooped and picked it up and resumed his run. For a moment he could not get into the hatchway because of the Lords jammed before it. They fought each other cursed and cried to Los. Some even cried out for their father Urizen or their long dead mother. For one wild second Wolff thought of clearing the way for himself with the beamer. It was exactly what any of them with the possible exception of Luvah would have done. To stay out here was to be dead. Every bit of time counted. Then whoever was the cause of the pile up got through and the others clawed and bit and scratched their way in. Wolff went through the hatch in a dive headfirst. Something touched his pants. His calf burned. There was a splashing noise and hot mercury clung to the back of his head. He fell past the shallow ladder and hit the floor with his two hands dropping the beamer be fore he hit. He absorbed most of the shock with his bent arms and then rolled over. He brought up against Palamabron who was just starting down the second ladder. Palamabron yelled and pitched for ward. Wolff looking down the well saw Palamabron on top of a pile of Lords. All were shouting and cursing. None however seemed to be hurt badly. At another time Wolff would have laughed. Now he was too con cerned with scraping the globules of file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 26 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt hot mercury from his hair. He examined his leg to make sure that the hit there had only been glanc ing. Then he went on down the steps. It was best to get as far below as possible. If this were a heavy and steady mercury drop shower the entire upper decks could be destroyed. If the big gas bladders were penetrated good bye forever to all. VII Vala greeted him IN the twilight of a gangplank by a spheroid cell. She was laughing. Her laughter was not hysteria but genuine amusement. He was sure that if there were enough light he would be able to see her eyes shining with mirth. I m glad that you find this funny he said. He was covered with Nichiddor blood which was rapidly being carried off by his heavy sweating and he was shaking. You were always a strange one Vala. Even as a child you loved teasing the rest of us and playing cruel jokes upon us. And as a woman you loved blood and suffering in others more than you loved love. So I am a true Lord she said. My father s daughter. And I might add my brother s sister. You were just like me dear Jadawin before you became the namby pamby human Wolff the degenerate half Earthling. She came closer and lowering her voice said It has been a long time since I have had a man Jadawin. And you have not touched a woman since you came through the gate. Yet I know that you are like a he goat brother and that you begin to suffer when a day passes without taking a woman to bed. Can you put aside your so evident loathing of me which I do not understand and go with me now There are a hundred hiding places in this island dark and warm and private places where no one will disturb us. I ask you though my pride is great. She spoke truly. He was an exceedingly strong and vigorous man. Now he felt longing come upon him a longing that he had put aside every day by constant activity. When night came and he went to bed he had bent his mind to plots against his father trying to foresee a thousand contingencies and the best way to dispose of them. First the blood feast and then the lust dessert he said. It s not I who rouses you but the thrust of the blade and the spurt of blood. Both do she said. She held out her hand to him. Come with me. He shook his head. No. And I want to hear no more of this. The subject is forever dead. She snarled As you will soon be. No one can. . . Vala turned and walked away and when he next saw her she was talking earnestly to Palamabron. After a while the two walked off into the dimness of a corridor. He thought for a moment of ordering them back. They were in effect deserting their posts. The danger from the Nichiddor seemed to be over but if the mercury shower became heavier the island could be badly crippled or destroyed. He shrugged and turned away. After all he had no delegated au thority. The cooperation among the Lords was only a spoken agree ment there was no formal agreement of organization with a system of punishments. Also if he tried to interfere he would be accused of doing so because of jealousy. The charge would not be entirely base less. He did feel a pang at seeing Vala go off with another man. And this was a measure of what he had once felt for her that after five hundred years and what she had tried to do to him he should care even the fraction of a bit. He said to Dugarnn How long does a shower last About a half hour the chief replied. The drops are carried along with the black comets. The laughter of Urizen we call them since he must have created them. Urizen is a cruel and bloody god who rejoices in the sufferings of his people. Dugarnn did not have exactly the same attitude towards Urizen that the Lords did. In the course of the many thousands of years that the descendants of the trapped Lords had been here the name of file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 27 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Urizen had become that of the evil god in the abutal pantheon. Dugarnn had no true idea of the universe in which he was born. To him this world was the world the only one. The Lords were demi gods sons and daughters of Urizen by mortal women. The Lords were mortal too though extraordinarily powerful. There was an explosion and Wolff feared for a moment that one of the gas bladders at the far end of the island had been penetrated. One of the abutal said that a Nichiddor nest had gone up. Less protected than the island it had received a concentration of drops one bladder had blown up another and in the chain reaction the whole nest was hurled apart. Wolff went over to where Theotormon crouched in a corner. His brother looked up at him with hate and misery. He turned his head away when Wolff spoke to him. After a while as Wolff squatted quietly by him Theotormon began to fidget. He finally looked at Wolff and said Father told me that there are four planets that revolve in orbit about a central fifth. This is Appirmatzum the planet on which is his stronghold. Each planet is about the size of this one and all are separated from Appirmatzuin by only twenty thousand miles. This universe is not a recent one. It was created as one of a series by our father at least fifteen thousand years ago. They were kept hidden their gates only being activated when Father wished to enter or leave one. Thus the scanners failed to detect them. Then that is why I ve seen only three of the planets Wolff said. The outer ones are at the corners of an equilateral quadrangle. The planet opposite is always hidden by Appirmatzum. He did not wonder at the forces which enabled such large bodies to be so relatively close and yet stay in undeviating paths. The sci ence of the Lords was beyond his comprehension as a matter of fact it was beyond the understanding of any of the Lords. They had inherited and used a power the principles of which they no longer understood. They did not care to understand. It was enough that they could use the powers. This very lack of knowledge of principles made the Lords so vul nerable at times. Each only had so many weapons and machines. If any were destroyed lost or stolen a Lord could only replace them by stealing them from other Lords if there were any still in exist ence. And the defenses they set up against other Lords always had holes in them no matter how impregnable the defenses seemed. The vital thing was to live long enough while attacking to find these holes. So no matter how powerless the group seemed at the moment Wolff had hopes that he could win. While waiting for the mercury shower to cease he had time to think. From some corner of his mind came an irrelevancy that had been bothering him for a long long time. It had nothing to do with the present situation. It might have been sent by the unconscious to keep him from worrying about Chryseis for whom he could do noth ing at all at this moment. The names of his father brothers sisters and cousins had made him wonder ever since he had regained his memory of his life as Jadawin Lord of the World of Tiers. Urizen Vala Luvah Anana Theotormon Palamabron Enion Ariston Tharmas Rintrah these were the names of the vast and dark cosmogens found in William Blake s Didactic and Symbolical Works. It was no coincidence that they were the same. Of that Wolff was convinced. But how had the mystical English poet come across them Had he known a dispos sessed Lord wandering on Earth who had told him of the Lords for some reason It was possible. And Blake must have used some of the Lord s story as a basis for his apocalyptic poetry. But the story had been very much distorted by Blake. Some day if Wolff got out of this trap he would do some research on Earth and also among those Lords who would let him get close enough to them to talk. The pounding of the quicksilver stopped. After waiting for half an hour to make sure that the storm was all over the islanders went back upon the maindeck. The floor was broken up pitted and scorched. The walls had been pierced so many times that the roots and leaves were rags of vegetation. The gondola had been hit by an especially heavy concentration and was a wreck. Tiny globules of mercury lay all over the deck. Theotormon said The mercury shower can t be compared to a meteor shower. The drops are only traveling about a hundred miles an hour when they hit the atmosphere and they are considerably slowed up and broken up before they reach the surface. Yet ... file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 28 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt He waved a flipper to indicate the damage. Wolff looked out over the sea. The surviving nests were drifting slowly away. The winged men had enough problems of their own without resuming the attack. One nest was so overburdened with ref ugees from others that it was losing altitude. Dugarnn was sad. He had lost so many people that it would be very difficult to maneuver the island and impossible to defend it against another attack. Now they would drift helplessly around and around the world. Not until the children had grown up would they become powerful again. It was unlikely that the island would be left alone long enough for the children to become adults. My people are doomed he said. Not as long as you keep fighting Wolff said. After all you can avoid battle with other abutal islands and with the surface islands. You told me that the only reason two abuta get together for a conflict is that both maneuver to approach each other. You can quit doing that. And the Nichiddor are rare. This is the first tune in fifteen years that you have met a cluster of nests. What Run away from a fight Dugarnn said. His mouth hung open. That . . . that s unthinkable. We would be cowards. Our names would be a scornword in the mouths of our enemies. That s a lot of nonsense Wolff said. The other abutal can t even get close enough to identify you unless you let them. But that s up to you. Die because you can t change your ways if that s what you want. Wolff was busy helping to clean up the island. The dead and wounded Nichiddor were dumped overboard. The dead abutal were given a long burial ceremony officiated over by Dugarnn since the wizard had had his head twisted off during the battle. Then the bod ies were slipped over the side and received by the sea. Days and nights drifted by as slowly as the wind driven island. Wolff spent much time observing the great brown spheres of the other planets. Appirmatzum was only twenty thousand miles away. So near and yet so far. It might as well be a million miles. Or was it truly so impossible to get there A plan began to form a plan so fan tastic that he almost abandoned it. But if he could get the materials he might just might carry it out. The abuta passed over the polar area the surface of which looked just like the others. Twice they saw enemy islands at a distance. When these began to work their way towards Dugarnn s island Du garnn sadly ordered his island to flee. The banks of gas bladders on one side were operated to give the island a slow lateral thrust and the distance between the two was kept equal. After a while the enemy gave up having used up as much gas in his bladders as he dared. Dugarnn explained that the maneuvers which brought two abuta into battle conflict sometimes took as much as five days. I ve never seen people so anxious to die was Wolff s only com ment. One day when it seemed to all the Lords that they would drift above the featureless waters forever a lookout gave a cry that brought them running. The Mother of All Islands he shouted. Dead ahead The Mother of Islands If this was the mother of islands then her babies must be small in deed. From three thousand feet Wolff could span the floating mass from shore to shore with one sweep of the eye. It was not more than thirty miles wide at the broadest and twelve miles long. But most things are relative and on this world it was a continent. There were bays and inlets and even broken spaces that formed lakes of sea water. At various times some force perhaps collision with other islands had crumpled up parts of the island. These formed hills. And it was on top of one of the hills that Wolff saw the gates. There were two hexagons of some self illuminated metal each huge as the open end of a zeppelin hangar. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 29 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Wolff hurried to notify Dugarnn. The commander was aware of the gates and was barking out orders. A long time ago he had prom ised Wolff that when the gates were found he would terminate the agreement. Wolff and the beamer and the Lords could leave the abuta. There was not near enough time to valve off gas to lower the is land. Before the desired altitude could be reached the abuta would have drifted far past the Mitza the mother. So the Lords hastened to the lowest deck where jump bladder harnesses were ready for them. They strapped the belts around their shoulders chests and legs and then were towed to the hatch. Dugarnn and the abutal crowded around them to say farewell. They said no words of good bye to any of the Lords but Wolff and Luvah. These two they kissed and they pressed the flower of the young gas plant in their hands. Wolff said farewell and stepped through the hatch. He fell as swiftly as a man below an open parachute. The other Lords followed him. There was an open space among the fronds in which he tried to land but he miscalculated the wind. He crashed into the top of a frond which bent beneath him and so broke his fall. The others also made good landings though some were bruised. Theotormon had an extra large jump harness because of his four hundred and fifty pounds but he came down faster than the others anyway. His rubbery legs bent under him he rolled and he was up on his feet squawking because he had banged his head. Wolff waited until they were recovered. He waved at the Ilmawir who were peering down at him from the hatches. Then the island passed on and presently was out of their sight. The Lords made their way through the jungle towards the hill. They were alert since they had seen many native villages from the abuta. But they came to the hill gates without seeing the aborigines and presently were standing before the towering hexagons. Why two Palamabron said. Vala said That is another of our father s riddles I m sure. One gate must lead to his palace on Appirmatzum. The other who knows where But how will we know Palamabron said. Stupid Vala said. We won t know until we go through one or the other. Wolff smiled slightly. Ever since she had gone off with Palama bron she had treated him with even more contempt and scorn than the others. Palamabron was bewildered by this. Evidently he had been expecting some sort of gratitude. Wolff said We should all go through the same one. It won t be wise to split up our forces. Wrong one or right one we must be united. Palamabron said You are right brother. Besides if we split and one group were to get into Urizen s stronghold and kill him then that group would have control. And they would betray the second group. That is not why I think we should stay together Wolff said. But you have a good point. On top of his head Vala said. Palamabron is no more of a thinker than he is a lover. Palamabron reddened and he put his hand upon the hilt of his sword. I am through swallowing your insults you vixen in heat he said. One more and your head will roll off your shoulders. We have enough fighting ahead of us Wolff said. Save your fury for that which lies on the other side of one of those gates. He saw a movement in the bushes a hundred yards away. Pres ently a face showed. A native was watching them. Wolff wondered if any of the natives had tried to go through the gates. If one had his disappearance would have terrified the others. Possibly this area was tabu. He was interested in the natives reactions because he considered that they might be of some help someday. Just now he did not have time or did not wish to take time. Chryseis was in Urizen s strong hold and every minute there must be agony. It might not be agony only of spirit she could be tormented physically by his father. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 30 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt He shuddered and tried to put out of his mind the pictures that this thought painted. One thing at a time. He looked at the others. They were watching him intently. Al though they would have strongly denied it they regarded him as a leader. He was not the oldest brother and one of his cousins was older. But he had taken immediate and forceful measures whenever any crisis had come up on this world. And he had the beamer. More over they seemed to detect something different in him a dimension that they lacked although they would have denied this too. His ex perience as Robert Wolff the Earthman had given him a grip upon matters that they had always considered too mundane to bother with. Insulated from hard labor from having to deal with things at a primitive level they felt lost. Once they had been makers and semi divine rulers of their own private universes. Now they were no bet ter perhaps not as good as the savages they so despised. Jadawin or Wolff as they were beginning to call him was a man who knew his way around in a world of savages. Wolff said It s one fate or the the other. A case of eenie meenie minie moe. And what barbaric language is that Vala said. Earth type. I ll tell you what. Vala is the only woman here . . . But more of a man than most of you Vala said. . . . so why don t we let her pick out which one we enter It s as good a method as any for choosing. That bitch never did anything right in her life Palamabron said. But I say let her designate the gate. Then we won t go wrong if we enter the one she doesn t choose. Do what you like Vala said. But I say that one. She pointed at the right hand hexagon. Very well Wolff said. Since I have the beamer I ll go first. I don t know what s on the other side. Rather I know what is there death but I don t know what form it ll take. Before I go I d like to say this. There was a time brothers cousins sister when we loved each other. Our mother lived then and we were happy with her. We were in awe of our father the gloomy remote forbidding Urizen. But we did not hate him. Then our mother died. How she died we still don t know. I think as some of you do that Urizen killed our mother. It was only three days after she died that he took to wife Araga the Lord of her own world and so united his domain with hers. Whoever murdered our mother we know what happened after that. We found out that Urizen was beginning to be sorry that he had children. He was one of the very few Lords to have children being raised as Lords. The Lords are dying out they are paying for their immortality so called and for their power with gradual extinction. They have also paid with the loss of that one thing that makes life worthwhile: love. Love said Vala. She laughed and the others joined her. Luvah half smiled but he did not laugh. You sound like a pack of hyenas Wolff said. Hyenas are car rion eaters powerful nasty vicious brutes whose stench and habits make them despised and hated everywhere. However they do serve a useful function which is more than I can say for you. Love I said. And I repeat it again. The word means nothing to you it has been too many thousands of years since you felt it. And I doubt that any of you felt it very strongly then. Anyway as I was saying we found out that Urizen was considering doing away with us. Or at least disowning us and driving us out to live with the abo rigines on a planet in one of his universes a world which he intended to make gateless so we could never strike back at him. We fled. He came after us and tried to kill us. We got away and we killed other Lords and took over their worlds. Then we forgot we were brothers and sisters and cousins and be came true Lords. Hateful scheming jealous possessive. Murderers cruel alike to each other and to the miserable beings file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 31 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt who populated our worlds. Enough of this brother Vala said. What are you getting at Wolff sighed. He was wasting his breath. I was going to say that perhaps Urizen has done us a favor with out meaning to. Perhaps we could somehow find it in ourselves to resurrect the childhood love to act as brothers should. We. . . He stopped. Their faces were like those of stone idols. Time could break them but love would never soften them. He turned and stepped through the right hand gate. VIII HIS FEET SLID OUT FROM UNDER HIM AND HE FELL ON HIS SIDE. HE caught a glimpse of smooth glassy surfaces as he slid down the hill on top of which the gate was set. The stuff on which he raced downhill was dry and slippery although it gave an impression of oiliness. No matter how he tried to dig his heels in how strongly he placed the flats of his hands against the stuff to brake himself he sped on down. It was like being on ice. He shot on gaining speed. Throwing himself over with a convul sive twist he managed to face the direction in which willynilly he was going. Ahead was a gentling of the slope and when he reached it his velocity slowed somewhat. Still he was going at least sixty miles an hour with no way of stopping himself. His head was raised to keep his face from being burned and his hands were upheld. By then his clothes should have been burned off him and his flesh should have been crisped and unraveling from the friction but he sped on with only a slight feeling of warmth. The skies were purple and just above the edge of the horizon the arc of a moon he thought it was a moon was showing. The arc was a deeper purple than the skies. He was not inside any Lord s palace he was on another planet. Judging from the distance of the horizon this planet was about the size of the one he had just left. In fact he was sure that it was one of the bodies that he had seen in the skies from the surface of the waterworld. Urizen had tricked them. He had set up the gate through which they had gone to jump them to one of the bodies circling about Appirmatzum. The other gate back on the waterworld might have led to Urizen s world. Or it might have led to here also. There was no way of knowing now. Whichever way the other entrance presented it was too late to do anything about it. He was caught helplessly in one of his father s jokes. A practical joke if you could consider death as practical. He had traveled perhaps two miles when the incline began to turn upwards. Within a half mile he was slowed down to what seemed a thirty mile an hour velocity although it was difficult to tell with the few references he had. Off to his right at a long distance were a number of peculiar looking trees. Not knowing how tall they were or how far away he could not determine just how fast he was traveling. And then just as he slowed down to about ten miles an hour and the incline sloped sharply upwards he rose over its edge. He was in the air out over the lip of the rise beyond the edge of a precipice. He fell unable to hold back a scream. Below him forty or fifty feet was a one hundred foot wide stream of water. The other side was blocked off by a wall of the same vitreous substance on which he had slid. He dropped into the canyon kicking to maintain an upright posi tion so he could hit the water feet first. The water was not as far away as he had thought however being only thirty five feet down. He struck with his feet and plunged into tepid waters. He went on down down then began to swim upwards. The current carried him on swiftly between the canyon walls and took him around a bend. Just before he was carried around it he saw a Lord hit the surface and another halfway down the wall. Then the canyon opened out and the river broadened. He was sliding and bumping over rapids. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 32 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Fortunately the rocks were smooth and slick vitreous also. He escaped cuts but did suffer some bruises. Once past the rapids he found that the current had slowed. He swam to the shore which led up gently from the water. But he could not keep a handhold on the land and slid back into the river. There was nothing to do but swim along the shoreline and hope that eventually he would find a place which would enable him to scramble onto the land. His clothes and the bow and arrows and knife and beamer weighed him down. As long as he could he resisted the need to abandon them. When he began to tire he slipped off the bow and quiver. Later he unstrapped his belt and holster and scabbard. These he dropped into the water but slipped the beamer and his knife inside his pants. After a while he rid himself of the knife. Now and then he looked back. Eight heads were bobbing up and down. All had survived so far but if the banks continued to resist grasping they would all soon be drowned. All except Theotormon. He could outswim and outfloat them all even with one flipper only half grown out. It was then that Wolff got an idea. He swam against the current al though the effort took more strength than he could afford. He swam until Luvah and Vala and Tharmas were close to him. Then he yelled at them to also swim against the current if they wished to be saved. Presently Theotormon s huge oily blue black bulk was beside him. Behind him came Ariston Enion and Rintrah. Last of all the most boastful but the most fearful to enter the gate was Palamabron. His face was white and he was breathing even more heavily than the rest. Save me brother he cried. I can t go on much longer. I will die. Save your breath Wolff said. To Theotormon he said We have need of you brother. Now you the once despised can help us. Without you we shall all drown. Theotormon swimming easily against the current chuckled. He said Why should I You all spit on me you say I make you sick. I have never spit upon you Wolff said. Nor have I said you sicken me. And it was I who insisted that you come with us. I did so because I knew that we would need you. There are things you can do with that body that we cannot. It is ironic that Urizen who set this trap and who also transformed you into a sea thing prepared you to survive in his trap. He unwittingly gave you the means to escape and so to help us escape. It was a long speech under the circumstances and left him winded. Nevertheless he had to praise Theotormon otherwise he would leave them to die and laugh while doing so. Theotormon said You mean Urizen outwitted himself Wolff nodded. And how can I escape from this Theotormon said. You are swift and strong as a seal in the water. You can propel yourself so swiftly that you can shoot through the water and on up onto the bank. You can also shove us one by one onto the bank. I know that you can do this. Theotormon grinned slyly. And why should I push you to safety If you don t you ll be left alone on this strange world Wolff said. You can live for a while. But you ll be lonely. I doubt that there s anyone here you can talk to. Moreover if we re to get off this world we have to find the gates which will lead us off. Can you do this alone Once on land you ll need us. To hell with you Theotormon screamed. He upended and dis appeared beneath the surface. Theotormon Wolff called. The others echoed his call. They treaded water and looked de spairingly at each other. There was nothing of the haughty Lord in their faces now. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 33 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Suddenly Vala screamed. She threw her hands up into the air and went under. So swiftly she went she must have been pulled under. A few seconds passed. Then Theotormon s oily blue black head appeared and a moment later Vala s red hair. Her brother s long toes were entangled in her hair her head held by the foot. Say you re sorry Theotormon shouted. Apologize Tell me I m not a loathsome mass of blubber Tell me I m beautiful Promise to love me as you did Palamabron on the island She tore her hair loose leaving some dark red strands between his toes. She screamed I ll kill you you blotch I m a long way from dying yet And if I were I d go gladly to my death rather than make up to you His eyes wide Theotormon paddled away from her with his feet. He turned to Wolff and said See Why should I save her or any of you You would still hate me just as I would hate you. Palamabron began to yell and to splash violently. Save me Theotormon I can t stay up any longer I m too tired I ll die Remember what I said about your being alone Wolff gasped. Theotormon grinned and dived and presently he was pushing Pa lamabron ahead of him. With his head on his brother s buttocks he pushed driving with his flippers and his great webbed feet. Palama bron slid from the water and two body lengths onto the glassy shore. There he lay breathing like a sick horse the water running from his nose and saliva from his mouth. One by one Theotormon propelled the others onto the bank where they lay like dead men. Only Vala refused his offer. She swam as hard as she could summoning strength that Wolff would not have believed possible she had left. She skidded up a body s length and soon was nudging herself very slowly on up the gentle slope. When she had reached a level spot she carefully got to a sitting position. She looked down at the others and said with scorn So these are my brothers The all mighty Lords of the universes A pack of half drowned rats. Sycophants of a sea slug begging for their lives. Theotormon slid upon the bank and past the men. He walked on his bent legs past Vala and did not look at her. And when the others had regained some of their strength and breath they too crawled to the level land. They were sorry looking since most of them had slipped off their clothes and their swords in the water. Only Wolff and Vala had retained their clothes. He had lost all his weapons but his beamer. She still had her sword. Except for her hair she looked as if she had never been in the water. Her garments had the property of repelling liquids. Luvah had scooted over to Wolff after trying twice to walk to him and ending on his buttocks both times. His color had come back to his face so that the freckles across his cheeks and nose did not stand out so sharply. He said We were caught by our father as easily as children playing hide and seek are caught. Now from children we have become infants. We cannot even walk but must crawl like ba bies. Do you suppose that our father is trying to tell us something I do not know about that Wolff said. But this I do know. Urizen has been planning this for a long long time. I am beginning to believe that he made the planets that revolve around Appirmatzum for one reason only. This world and the others are designed to tor ment and to test us. Luvah laughed without much merriment. And if we survive the torment and pass the tests what is our reward We get a chance to be killed by our father or to kill him. Do you really believe he will play fair Won t he make the stronghold absolutely impregnable I cannot believe that our father will be fair. Fair What is fair There is supposed to be an unspoken agree ment that every Lord will leave some slight loophole in his defense. Some defect whereby an extremely skillful and clever attacker can get through. Whether this is true in all cases I do not know. But Lords have been killed or file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 34 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt dispossessed and these Lords thought they were safe from the most powerful and clever. I do not think that the successful ones were successful because of built in weaknesses by the defender. The chinks in the armor were there for another reason. That reason is that the Lords have inherited their weapons. What they haven t inherited or taken from others they cannot get. The race has lost its ancient wisdom and skill it has become users consumers not creators. So a Lord must use what he has. And if these weapons do not cover every contingency if they leave holes in the armor then they can be penetrated. There is another aspect to this. The Lords fight for their lives and fight to kill each other. But most have lived too long. They weary of everything. They want to die. Deep in the abyss of their minds below the thousands of strata of the years of too much power and too little love they want to die. And so there are cracks in the walls. Luvah was astonished. You do not really believe this wild theory brother I know I am not tired of living. I love life now as much as when I was a hundred. And the others they fight to live as much as they ever did. Wolff shrugged and said It s only a theory of mine. I have evolved it since I became Robert Wolff. I can see things that I could not see before and that none of you can see. He crawled to Vala and said Lend me your sword for a moment. I want to try an experiment. Like cutting my head off she said. If I wanted to kill you I have the beamer he replied. She took the short blade from its scabbard and handed it to him. He tapped the sharp edge gently on the glassy surface. When the first blow left the stuff unmarked he struck harder. Vala said What are you doing You ll ruin the edge. He pointed at the scratch left by the second blow. Looks like a scratch made in ice. This stuff is far slipperier more frictionless than ice but in other respects it seems to resemble frozen water. He handed the weapon to her and drew his beamer. After putting it on half power he aimed it at a spot on the surface. The stuff grew red then bubbled. Liquid flowed from it. He turned the beamer off and blew the liquid from the hole. The others crawled over to watch him. You re a strange man Vala said. Whoever would have thought of doing this Why is he doing it Palamabron said. Is he crazy cutting holes in the ground Palamabron had recovered his haughtiness and his measured way of speaking. Vala said No he s not crazy. He s curious that s all. Have you forgotten what it is to be curious Palamabron Are you as dead as you look . . . and act You were certainly lively enough a little while ago. Palamabron flushed but he said nothing. He was watching the growth of tiny crystals on the walls of the hole and along the edges of the scratch. Self regeneration Wolff said. Now I have read as much as possible on the old science of our ancestors but I have never read or heard of anything like this. Urizen must have knowledge lost to others. Perhaps Vala said he has gotten it from Red Orc. It is said that Orc knows more than all of the other Lords put together. He is the last of the old ones it is said that he was born over a half a mil lion years ago. It is said. It is said Wolff mimicked. The truth is that nobody has seen Red Ore for a hundred millennia. I think he is a dead man but his legend lives on. Enough of this. We have to find the next set of gates though where those will lead us I don t know. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 35 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt He rose carefully and shuffled slowly a few steps forward. The sur face of this world was not entirely barren vitreosity. There were widely spaced trees several hundred yards away and between them mushroom shaped bushes. The trees had thin spiraling trunks that were striped with red and white like barber poles. The trunks rose straight for twenty feet then curved to left or right. Where the curve began branches grew. These were shaped like horizontal 9 s and covered with a thin gray fuzz the strands of which were about two feet long. Rintrah naked shivered and said It is not cold but something makes me uneasy and quivers through me. Perhaps it is the silence. Listen and you hear nothing. They fell silent. There was only a distant soughing the wind rip pling through the bushes and the stiff projections on the end curled branches and the slursh slursh of the river. Aside from that nothing. No bird calls. No animal cries. No human voices. Only the sound of wind and river and even that hushed as if pressed down by the purple of the skies. Around them the pale white land rolled away to the four horizons. There were some high rounded hills the tallest of which was that which had sent them speeding down the hill. From where they stood they could see its mound and the gate a tiny dark object on its top. The rest was low hills and level spaces. Where do we go from here Wolff thought. Without some clue we could wander forever. We could wander to the end of our lives pro vided we find something to eat on the way. He spoke aloud. I believe we should follow along the river. It leads downward perhaps to some large body of water. Urizen cast us into the river this may mean that the river is to be our guide to the next gate... or gates. That may be true Enion said. But your father and my uncle has a crooked brain. In his perverse way he may be using the river as an indication that we should go up it not down it. You may be right cousin Wolff replied. However there is only one way to find out. I suggest we go downriver if only because it will be easier traveling. He said to Vala What do you think She shrugged and said I don t know. I picked the wrong gate the last time. Why ask me Because you were always the closest to father. You know better than the rest of us how he thinks. She smiled slightly. I do not think you mean to compliment me by that. But I will take it as such. Much as I hate Urizen I also ad mire and respect his abilities. He has survived where most of his con temporaries have not. Since you ask I say we go downriver. How about the rest of you Wolff said. He had already made up his mind which direction he was going but he did not want the others complaining if they went the wrong way. Let them share the responsibility. Palamabron started to speak. I say no I insist that. . . IX A WAIL CAME DOWN AGAINST THE WIND AND THEY TURNED TO STARE upriver. Several hundred yards away an animal tall as an elephant had appeared from around a hill. Now it stood between two large boulders the head on the end of its long neck much like that of a camel s with antlers. Its eyes were enormous and its teeth long and sharp a carnivore s. Its body was red brown and furry and sloped sharply back from the shoulders. The legs were thin as a giraffe s de spite the heavy body. They ended in great spreading dark blue cups. On seeing the cup feet Wolff guessed their function. They looked too much like suckers or vacuum pads which would be one of the few means to enable an animal to walk across this smooth surface. Stand still he said to the others. We can t run if we could there d be no place to go. The beast snorted and slowly advanced towards them. It swiveled its neck back and forth turning its head now and then to look behind it. The right front foot and left rear foot raised in unison file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 36 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt the cups giving a plopping noise. These came down to give it a hold in its for ward progress. Then the left front foot and the right rear one raised and so it came towards them. When it was fifty yards from them it stopped and raised its head. It gave a cry that was half bray and half banshee wail. It lowered its neck until the jaw was on the ground and then scraped the jaw against the ground. The head slid back and forth on the pale surface. Wolff thought that this motion could be the equivalent of the paw ing of dirt of a Terrestrial bull before it charged. He put his beamer on half power and waited. Suddenly the creature raised its head as high as it would go screamed much like a wounded rabbit and galloped at them. It was necessarily a slow gallop since the suction cups did not come off easily. To the humans it seemed too swift. Wolff could afford to wait to determine if the beast were bluffing. At twenty yards he placed the end of the beam at the juncture of neck and chest. Smoke curled up from the red brown fur which blackened. The animal screamed again but did not stop its charge. Wolff continued to hold the beam as steadily as he could. Then see ing that its impetus might carry it to the point where its fanged head could seize them he switched to full power. The beast gave a last scream its long thin legs crumpled its body came down on them. The cups stuck to the ground the legs cracking beneath the weight the body settling slowly. The neck went limp and the head lolled the red purple tongue sticking out the hazel eyes glassy. There was silence broken by Vala s laugh. There s our dinner and breakfast and dinner again already cooked for us. If it s edible Wolff said. He watched while Vala and Theotormon knife handled by one foot stripped off the hide and cut out half burnt steaks. Theotormon refused to test the meat. Wolff shuffled forward very carefully but even so his feet went out from under him. Vala and Theotormon who had gotten to the beast with out slipping laughed. Wolff arose and continued his journey. He said If no one else dares I ll try the meat. We can t stand around debating whether it s safe or not. Vala said I m not afraid of it just disgusted. It has such a rank odor. She bit into it chewed with distaste and swallowed. Wolff de cided that there was no use his testing it now. With the others he waited. When a half hour passed and Vala showed no ill effects he started to eat it. The others shuffled or crawled to the carcass and also ate. There was not too much they could stomach since most of the meat was charred leaving only a narrow area where the heat had cooked or half cooked the flesh. Wolff borrowed Theotormon s knife and cut out other steaks. Re luctantly because he wished to conserve the power of the beamer he cooked the steaks. Then they each took an armful and began to march down the river. Wolff lingered for a while considering the possibility of severing the suction pads and using them for his loco motion. He gave up the idea after feeling the thickness of the bones of the legs and the toughness of bone and cartilage at juncture of pad and leg. Vala s sword might do the job but its edge would be too blunted for use afterward. At the end of a two mile crawl they came to a group of bushes near the riverbank. These were three feet high and mushroom in shape the upper part spreading out far from the slender base. The branches were thick and corkscrew and like the trees grew fuzz. At close range the fuzz looked more like slender needles. There were also large dark red berries in clusters at the ends of the branches. Wolff picked one and smelled it. The odor reminded him of pecan nuts. The skin was smooth and slightly moist. He hesitated about biting into the berry. Again it was Vala who dared the strange food. She ate one exclaiming all the while over its deliciousness. A half hour went by during which she ate six more. Wolff then ate several. The others picked them off. Palamabron the last to try them complained that there were not many left for him. Vala said It is not our fault that you are such a coward. Palamabron glared at her but did not answer. Theotormon think ing that here he had found someone file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 37 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt who would not dare to answer him back took up the insults where Vala left off. Palamabron slapped Theotormon in the face. Theotormon bellowed with rage and leaped at Palamabron. His feet slipped out and he skidded on his face into Palamabron s legs. Palamabron went down like a bowling pin. He slid sidewise out of reach of Theotormon s flailing flipper. Both made a frenzied but vain effort to get at each other s throat. Finally Wolff who had not shared the scornful laughter of the others called a halt. He said If these time wasting displays of childishness continue I ll put a stop to them. Not with the beamer since I don t care to use up power on the likes of you. We ll just go on without you or send you away. We have to have unity and a minimum of discord. Otherwise Urizen will have the pleasure of seeing us destroy ourselves. Theotormon and Palamabron spat at each other but quit their struggles. Silently in the pale purple shade of the moon overhead they continued to slide their feet forward. The night had brought an end to the silence. They heard bleatings as of sheep and bellowings as of cattle from a distance. Something roared like a lion. They passed another clump of bushes and saw small bipedal animals feeding off the berries. These were about two and a half feet tall brown furred and lemur faced. They had big rabbit ears and slit eyes. Their upper legs ended in paws their lower in suction discs. They had short scarlet tails like a rabbit s. On seeing the human beings they stopped eating and faced them their noses wiggling. After being convinced that the newcomers were no danger they resumed eating. But one fellow kept his eyes on them and barked like a dog at them. Presently a four legged animal the size of a Norwegian elkhound came around a low hill. It was shaggy as a sheep dog yellowish and built like a fox. At the ends of its feet were thin skates of bone on which it raced towards the bipeds. These barked in alarm and all took off in a body. They made swift progress despite the pads but the skate wolf was far faster. The leader of the bipeds seeing that they had no chance dropped behind until he was even with the slowest of his charges. He shoved against the laggard knocking him over then he ran on. The sacrifice screamed and tried to get back up on its suckers only to be knocked down again by the snarling skate wolf. There was a brief struggle ending when the wolf s jaws closed on the biped s throat. Wolff said There s your explanation for the scratches we ve seen now and then on the surface. Some of these creatures are skaters. He was silent for a while thinking that skates would enable them to make much better progress. The problem was getting them down. They passed another long necked hyena bodied deer antlered beast. This one did not offer to bother them. It bit into a rock of the vitreous substance ripped out a chunk and chewed upon it. It kept its eye upon them groaning with delight at the taste of the rock its stomach rumbling like defective plumbing in an old house. They went on and soon came within three hundred yards of a herd of the creatures all grazing upon the rocks. There were young among them awkwardly chasing each other in play or nursing from the mothers. Some of the bulls bray wailed at the intruders and one kept pace with them for a while. They passed antelope like animals marked with red diamond shapes on white and with two horns that intertwined. Bone skates grew at the end of their legs. Wolff began to look for a place to sleep. He led them into a semi amphitheater a level between four hills. I ll stand first watch he said. He designated Enion as next and Luvah after him. Enion protested asking by what authority Wolff could pick him. You can refuse to take your share of responsibility if you wish Wolff said. But if you sleep when your turn comes you may wake up in the jaws of that. He pointed past Enion s shoulder and Enion whirled so swiftly he lost his footing. The others looked in the direction in which Wolff s finger was pointing. On top of one of the hills a huge maned animal was glaring down at them. Its head was that of a short snouted croc odile and its body was catshaped the feet ending in broad cups. Wolff put the the beamer on half power and shot. He flicked the actuation plate briefly and aimed towards the hairs of the mane. The hairs crisped and smoked and the beast roared turned and file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 38 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt disap peared beyond the hill. Wolff said Now somebody has to be officially given authority. So far we ve avoided that is you ve avoided a decision. You ve more or less let me run things. Mostly because you re too lazy or too occupied with your own petty problems to face this issue. All right now s the time to settle this. Without a leader whose orders will be immediately obeyed in emergencies we re all lost. So what do you say Beloved brother Vala said I think that you have shown that you re the man to follow. I vote for you. Besides you have the beamer and that makes you the most powerful of all. Unless of course some of us have hidden weapons we ve not displayed as yet. You re the only one who has enough clothes to conceal weap ons he said. As for the beamer whoever is on guard will have it. They all raised their eyebrows at this. He said It s not because I trust your loyalty. It s just that I don t think any of you would be quite stupid enough to try to keep it for yourself or try to take off on your own. When we resume the march I expect to get the beamer back. All then voted except for Palamabron. He said that he did not have to vote since it was obvious that he would be overruled by the majority anyway. Surely brother you were not going to nominate yourself Vala said. Even you with all your hideous egotism could not think of that. Palamabron ignored her. To Wolff he said Why am I not one of the sentinels Don t you trust me You can stand first watch tomorrow night Wolff replied. Now let s all get some sleep. Wolff sat guard while the others slept on their hard beds of white rock. He listened to the distant animal cries: the bray wails roars and some new sounds a shrill fluting a plaintive sobbing a whis tling. Once something beat out a gonging and there was the flutter of wings overhead. He rose to his feet now and then and slowly pivoted around to cover all points of the compass. At the end of a half hour he woke up Enion and gave him the beamer. He had no watch to determine the tune any more than the others did but like them he knew the measured passage of tune. As a child he had gone through a species of hypnosis which enabled him to clock the sec onds as accurately as the most precise of chronometers. For a while he did not sleep. He was worried about the first watch of the next night when Palamabron would be entrusted with the beamer. Of all the Lords he was the most unstable. He hated Vala even more than the others. Could he withstand the temptation to kill her while she slept Wolff decided he would have a talk with Pala mabron in the morning. His cousin must understand that if he killed her he would have to kill them all. This he could do with the beamer but he would be alone from then on. This was a curious thing. Though the Lords could not stand to be with each other they could stand the idea of being alone even less. In other circumstances they would want no one but themselves of course. In these they shared a dread of their father and some comfort in having compan ions in misery and peril. Just before he went to sleep he had an idea. He swore. Why had he not thought of it Why had not the others It was so obvious. There was no need to creep and slip along on the ground. With boats they could travel swiftly and much more surely. They would be safe from the predators. He would see what they could do about this in the morning. He was propelled from sleep at dawn by shouting. He sat up to see Tharmas shooting at a maned beast one just like the liongator he had scared off by singeing its hair. The beast came down the hill swiftly plop plopping as its suction pads pulled free. Behind it lay three dead mates. The survivor came within ten feet and then dropped its snout cut half off. Tharmas held the beamer while he stared at the carcass. Wolff shouted at him to turn the power off. The ray was drilling into the side of the hill. Tharmas suddenly realized what he was doing and deactivated the weapon. By then most of the charge was gone. Groaning Wolff took the beamer back. Now he was down to his final power pack. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 39 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt The others went to work swiftly. They took turns with the knives of Theotormon and Vala and stripped the tough hides off the dead beasts. This was slow work both because of their ineptness and be cause they kept sliding on the glassy surface. And they could not re frain from arguing with him saying that all the hard work was for nothing. Where would he get the framework for the boats he planned Even if he could use these hides as coverings for the boats there were not enough to go around. He told them to shut up and keep on working. He knew what he was doing. With Luvah Vala and Theotormon he shuffled off to the nearest bushes. Here it was necessary to use more power to kill an animal that was eating the berries and refused to give up its claim. It was like a Chinese dragon. It hissed and struck threateningly at them before they got within its range. Its skin was as thick and ridged as armor plate and could be penetrated only by a beam at full power. Even its eyes were protected. When Wolff shot at these the ray struck transparent coverings. The creature began waving its head wildly so that Wolff could not keep the beam on one spot. Eventu ally he cut through the armor back of the head and it turned over and died exposing the serrated plates and tiny suction discs on which it made progress. If this keeps up we ll be out of power he said to the others. Pray that that time does not come. Wolff tested the toughness of the bark of the bushes and found it to be strong indeed. Chopping down the bushes and slicing off lengths to make a framework for the rough coracles he had in mind would be long hard work and ruin the sword. It was then glancing at the caterdragon as he called it that he saw a ready made vessel. Well not quite finished but it should need less work to complete than the original boat he had in mind. The sword driven by his powerful arm was equal to the task of separating the caterdragon s locomotion plates from the body armor. Thereafter the sword and the knife cut up the internal organs. By then the other Lords were with them and they took turns at the work. All were soon covered with blood which also ran over the area and made the surface even more frictionless. Several of the lion gators attracted by the odor of blood and then driven frantic by it attacked. Wolff had to expend more power in killing them. The only possible sources for paddles were the 9 shaped branches on the trees. The bark of these resisted the edge of the sword. Again Wolff had to use his beamer. He cut enough branches to make ten paddles three extra since Theotormon could not handle one with his flippers. The needles came off easily when cut with a knife. They had a rather flexible canoe sixty feet long. The only open ings to worry about were the mouth and nostrils. These were dis posed of by bending the hollow front part back and up and tying a small boulder to it with Vala s cloak. The weight of the boulder stopped the forward part from straightening out and thus kept it above the water level they hoped. Again Wolff had to use some more power to burn off the pieces of gristle and the blood that ad hered to the inside walls of the armor plate. Then walking on their knees the Lords shoved their makeshift boat towards the river. Near the edge of the river they rose to their feet and got into the dragonboat by falling over the sides and into the bottom. They did so by teams of twos one on each side to keep the craft from falling to one side. When all but Wolff and Vala had gotten in the two urged the boat down. Fortunately there was a very gentle incline. As the craft picked up a little speed Wolff and Vala clung to the sides and the others pulled them aboard. The night bringing moon crossed the horizon and the dragoncraft floated with the current. Two Lords stayed on paddle duty to keep the boat straight while the others tried to sleep. The moon passed and after it came the bright purple of the naked skies. The river was smooth disturbed only by tiny waves and ripples. They passed through canyons and came out again between rolling ground. The day passed without incident. They complained about the stench from the meat and blood they had not been able to clear away. They made jokes as each had to rid himself of food and drink. They spoke grouchily of their lack of sleep the previous night. They talked about what might face them when or if they ever found the gate that would lead them into the palace of their father. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 40 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt A day and a night floated by. Several hours after the second dawn they came around a wide bend of the river. Ahead was a rock that split the river a dome of white about thirty feet high. On top of it side by side was a pair of towering and golden hexagonal frames. X FROM THE EDGE OF THE RIVER WHERE THE DRAGONBOAT WAS beached Wolff studied the problem. It was useless to try to climb the near perpendicular and near frictionless rock without some aids. A rope had to be thrown up to catch on something. The hexagons were too wide to try to settle a noose around them. A grappling hook might do the job. It could be presumed that the other side of the gate that which opened onto another planet he hoped would hold a grapple. The hides of animals could be cut and tied or sewn together to make a rope although the strips would have to be tanned to give them flexibility. The metal for the hooks was a big problem. There might be metal somewhere in this world perhaps not too far away. But getting to it across the land would be a slow process. So there was only one thing to do and he did not expect that the two most vital in this particular project would be cooperative. Nor were they. Vala did not want to give up her sword and Theo tormon refused to part with his knife. Wolff argued with them for several hours pointing out that if they did not give up their weapons they would be dead in time anyway. Wolff said after Theotormon s violent refusal Very well. Be pig headed. But if the rest of us find a way to get through the gate we will not take you with us. I swear it You will be pushed back into this pale world of icestone and you will stay here until an animal de vours you or you die of old age. Vala looked around at the Lords who sat in a circle about her. She smiled and said Very well. You may have my sword. You won t get my knife I promise you that Theotormon said. The others began to scoot on their buttocks towards him. He stood up and tried to run past them. His huge feet gave him a better grip on the white stuff than the others could manage but Wolff reached out and clutched his ankle and he went down. He fought as best he could submerged under the pile of bodies. Eventually weeping he gave up. Then muttering scowling he went off to sit down on the river s edge by himself. With some chalky stone he found Wolff traced lines on Vala s sword. He set the beamer at full power and quickly cut out trian gles. He then arranged the three pieces and set several round pieces of the sword on top of them. With the beamer at half power he fused the three prongs and round pieces into a single unit. After plunging these into cold water he heated the prongs in their middles and ham mered them into slightly hooked shapes. He curved another strip of sword with heat and hammered and fused this onto the top of the prong so that a rope could be tied around it. Since he did not have to use Theotormon s knife he gave it back to him. He cut the end of Vala s sword into a point and thus pro vided her with a somewhat short sword. As he pointed out it was better than nothing. Making the rope took several days. It was not difficult to kill and flay the animals and then cut out strips for rope lengths. Tanning presented difficulties. He searched for materials but could find noth ing. Finally he decided to grease the plaited rawhide with animal fat and hope for the best. One dawn as the empurpling shadow of the moon withdrew the dragonboat was launched well above the gaterock. With the Lords behind him paddling backwards Wolff stood up in the prow and he file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 41 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt cast the grapple upwards in an arc and released the rope after it. The three pronged device went through the gate and disappeared. He pulled in on it as the boat rammed into the base of the rock. For a second he thought he had a hold. Then the grapple came flying out of the gate and he fell back. He caught himself but the uneasy equilibrium of the boat was upset. It turned over and all went into the water. They clung to the upturned bottom and Wolff managed to keep hold of the rope and grapple. A half hour later they tried again. Try and try again Wolff told them. That s an old Earth saying. Spare me your proverbs Rintrah said. I m soaked as a drown ing rat and as miserable. Do you think there s any use trying again What else is there to do Let s get at it. Give it the old college try. They looked at him uncomprehendingly and then reluctantly launched the boat again. Now Wolff made a more difficult cast. He threw for the very top of the hexagon. It was at least twelve feet high which made the top of the frame forty two feet above water. Nevertheless he threw well the prongs gripping the other side of the frame. I got it he said grinning. He pulled in on the rope to take up the slack. The boat slid on by the right side of the rock rubbing against it. He ordered the men to continue backwatering which they tried without success. The boat began to bend as the current wrapped it around the rock. Wolff in the bow knew that if he continued to be carried with the boat he would slide the prongs sidewise off the top of the frame. He clung to the rawhide rope and allowed the boat to be taken off from under him. Then Wolff was hanging onto the rope his feet in the water. He lifted his feet to brace himself against the rock only to have them slide away. He quit this method of climbing and hauled himself up hand over hand on the greasy rope. This was not easy to do since the rock curved just gently enough to make the rope follow it closely the tension being greatest just above his handhold. Without slack he had to force his hands to slide between rope and rock. He rose slowly. Halfway up he felt the tension go. There was a crack barely audible above the swirl of water at the rock base. Yell ing with disappointment he fell back into the river. When he was hauled out by Vala and Enion he discovered that two of the prongs had broken across where they joined the top part. The pieces were now somewhere at the bottom of the river. What do we do now Palamabron snarled at him. You have used up all our weapons and drained your beamer of much of its power. And we are no closer to getting through the gate than before. Less I say. Look at us. Look at me. Spouting water like an old fish brought up from the abyss and weary oh Los how weary Go fly a kite Wolff said. Another old Earth saying. He stopped eyes widening and said I wonder. . . Palamabron threw his hands up into the air and said Oh no not another of your wonderful ideas Wonderful or not they re ideas Wolff said. So far I m the only one who s had anything to offer . . . besides whinings com plaints and backbitings. He lay on his back for a while staring up at the purple skies and chewing on a piece of meat Luvah had handed him. Was a kite a fan tastic thought Even if it could be built would it work He discarded the kite. If one were made big enough to carry a heavy prong it would not go through the hexagon. Wait a minute. What if the kite dangling a hook on the end of a rope were flown above the hexagon He groaned and gave up the kite again. It just would not work. Suddenly he sat up and shouted. It might do it Two file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 42 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Two what Luvah said startled out of his drowse. Not kites Who said anything about kites Luvah replied. Two boats and two good men to throw Wolff cried. It might work. It better. I ve about exhausted my ideas and it s evident I m not going to get any from the rest of you. You ve used your brains these many thousands of years for only one purpose: to kill each other. You re good for nothing else. But by Los I m going to make you good for something else You re tired Vala said. Lie down and rest. She was grinning at him. That surprised him. Now what would she be amused about She was wet and muscle aching and as frustrated as the others. Could it be that she still had some love for him beneath that hate Perhaps she was proud of him that he continued to improvise and to fight while the others only nursed their resentments. Or was she trying to make him think that she still loved him and was proud of him Did she have a secret reason for this display of amiability He did not know. To be a Lord was to mistrust every motive of another Lord and with good reason. By the time the first two coracles were half made Wolff changed his plan. Originally he had wanted to have two of the little round boats approach the gaterock on each side. But then he decided that three would be better. Using wood of the bushes and tree branches and strips of hide for ties he made a high scaffolding. Each of its four legs was placed on a boat one on the dragoncraft and each one of the other three on a coracle. Then after rehearsing the Lords many times in what they must do Wolff began the operation. Slowly the boats at the base of the rectangular scaffolding were pushed into the water. The current near the shore was not as swift as out in the river s center so the Lords could keep it from being carried off at once. While they swam and shoved against the boats Wolff climbed up the narrow ladder built on one leg of the scaffolding. This was supported by the larger dragon boat and thus the leg with Wolff on it did not tip over too far. Even so for a moment he feared a turnover. Then as he hitched himself on his belly along the planking of the scaffolding the struc ture righted. The other Lords working in teams climbed into the big boat and the three small ones. They went in simultaneously to distribute the weight equally. Vala Theotormon and Luvah were each already in a coracle and they helped Palamabron Enion and Ariston. Tharmas was very agile he got into the dragonboat with a quick heave and twist of his body. The Lords began paddling to direct the scaffolding. They had some trouble at first since the coracles built more like tubs than boats were difficult to navigate. But they had launched the structure well above their goal so that they could get the feel of their awkward craft before they reached the rock. Wolff clung to the forward part of the structure the bridge which projected out above the water. The bridge pitched and rolled and twice he thought sure that it would go over with him. Then the white dome of the rock with the twin golden hexagons was dead ahead. He shouted down to the Lords and they began backpaddling. It was vital that the scaffolding not crash into the rock with much speed. Fragile it could not resist a strong im pact. Wolff had decided that he would enter the left gate since the last time they had taken the right. But as the end of the bridge neared the scaffolding veered. The bridge drove in at a slant towards the right hexagon. Wolff rose to a crouch and as the structure rammed with a loud noise into the rock he leaped forward. He shot through the hexagon with his beamer in his belt and a rope coiled around his shoulders. XI HE DID NOT HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA OF WHAT HE WOULD FIND ON the other side. He expected either another planet or Urizen s strong hold. He suspected that Urizen was not through playing with file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 43 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt them and that he would find himself on the third of the planets that re volved around Appirmatzum. He might have a comfortable landing or be dropping into a pit of wild beasts or down a precipice. As he landed he realized that he had come in against an incline. He bent his knees and put out his hands and so stopped himself from banging into the stone. It was smooth but not frictionless and it leaned away from him at a forty five degree angle. Turning he saw why the grapples had slid back out of the gate at his first experi ment. The base of the hexagon on this side was set flush with the stone. There was no purchase for any hold. He smiled knowing that his father had foreseen hooks and had set up the trap against them. But his son had gotten through. Wolff pushed against the seemingly empty area within the hex agon. Unlike the gate through which they had entered the water world this was not one way. Urizen did not care for some reason or another whether they went back into the planet of purple skies. Or he knew that they would never want to return to it. Wolff climbed up the stone incline which was set on the side of a hill. He tied one end of his rope around a small tree and then went back to the gate. He flipped the free end of the rope through the gate. It jerked and presently Vala s face appeared. He helped her through and the two of them grabbed hold of the other Lords as they climbed through. When Rintrah the last was safe Wolff stuck his head through the gate for a final look. He made it quick because it gave him a fright ening feeling to know that his body was on a planet twenty thousand miles distant from his head. And it would be a grim joke exactly to his father s tastes if Urizen should deactivate the gate at that mo ment. The end of the bridge was only three feet from the hexagon. The scaffolding was still holding straight although in time the currents would swing one of the boats supporting a leg and carry off the whole structure. He withdrew his head his neck feeling as if it had just escaped a guillotine. The Lords should have been exultant but they were too tired from their labors and they were burdened with the future. By now they knew that they were on another of the satellites of Appirmatzum. The sky was a deep yellow. The land around them was apart from this hill flat. The ground was covered with a six inch high grass and there were many bushes. These were much like the Terrestrial plants Wolff knew. There were at least a dozen species which bore berries of different sizes colors and shapes. The berries had one thing in common however. They all had a very disagreeable odor. Near the hill of the gate was the shore of a sea. Along the sea ran a broad yellow sandbeach that extended as far as they could see. Wolff looked inland and saw mountains. The side of one had some curious formations that resembled a face. The longer he looked at it the more sure he was that it was a face. He said to the other Lords Our father has given us a sign I think. A marker on the road to the next gate. I also think that he is not directing us just for our benefit. They started across the plain towards the distant ranges. Presently they came to a broad river and followed its course. They found its water to be pure and sweet and they ate the meat and berries they had brought with them from the white and purple world. Then the night bringing moon swung around the horizon. This was mauve and like the other satellites swept the surface of the primary with a pale dusk. They slept and marched all the next day. They were a silent troop now tired and footsore and nervous because of their lack of weap ons. Their silence was also a reflection of the hush of this world. Not an animal or bird cried nor did they see any life besides themselves and the vegetation. Several times they thought they saw a small creature in the distance but when they neared the place they could find nothing. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 44 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt The mountains were three days away. As they got closer the fea tures became more distinct. The evening of the second day the face became that of Urizen. It was smiling at them the eyes looking down. Then the Lords became even more silent and startful since they could not escape the gigantic stone face of their father. Always he seemed to be mocking them. Halfway through the fourth day they stood at the foot of the mountain and below the brobdingnagian chin of Urizen. The moun tain was of solid stone flesh pink and very hard. Near where they stood was an opening a narrow canyon that rose to the top of the mountain at least ten thousand feet above. Wolff said There doesn t seem any other way to go than through there. Unless we go around the mountains. And I think we d be wast ing our time if we did that. Palamabron said Why should we do what our father wants We have no choice Wolff said. Yes we ll dance to his tune and then he ll catch us and spit us on a roast like fowl Palamabron said. I have a notion to quit this trudging this weary weary road. And where will you settle down Vala said. Here In this para dise You may be too stupid to have noticed it brother but we are almost out of food. The meat is almost gone and we ate the last of the berries this morning. We have seen nothing on this world that seems edible. You may try the berries if you wish. But I think they re poisonous. Oh Los Do you think Urizen means to starve us to death Palamabron said. Wolff said I think we ll starve unless we find some food. And we won t find any standing here. He led the way into the canyon. Their path took them on smooth bare rock that had once been the bed of the stream. The river had shifted to the other side of the canyon and was now several feet below the stone banks. Bushes grew sparsely on the lip of the stone. The Lords followed a meandering course all day. That night they ate the last of their food. When dawn came they rose with empty bellies and a feeling that this time their fortune had deserted them. Wolff led them as swiftly as he dared thinking that the sooner they got out of the gloomy canyon the better. Moreover this place offered no food. There were no fish in the river there were not even insects. The second day of their starvation they saw their first living crea ture. They came around a bend all silent and walking slowly. Their noiselessness plus their approach from downwind enabled them to be close to the animal before it detected them. Two feet high it was standing on its kangaroo like hind legs and holding a branch with two lemur like front paws. On seeing them it quit eating the berries glanced wildly around and then launched itself away with great leaps. Its long thin tail projected stiffly behind it. Wolff started to run after it but quit as soon as he realized its speed. The animal stopped when it was a hundred yards away and turned to face them. Its head was much like a purebred Persian cat s except that the ears were a jackrabbit s. The body was khaki the head chocolate the ears magenta. Wolff advanced steadily towards it and it fled until it was out of sight. He decided that it would be a good thing if the Lords had clubs in case they came within close range of the hopper again. He cut the bushes to make sticks that would be heavy enough to do the job. Palamabron asked him why he did not kill the beast with his beamer. Wolff answered that he was trying to waste as little power as possible. The thing took off so swiftly that he was not sure he could hit it. The next time power conservation or not he would shoot. They had to have something to eat. They continued on their way and began seeing more of the hoppers. These must have been warned by the first since they all kept well out of range. Two hours later they came to a wide fissure in the canyon walls. Wolff went down it and found that it led to a box canyon. This was about thirty feet lower than the main one about three file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 45 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt hundred yards wide and four hundred deep. The floor was thick with bushes among which he saw one hopper. He went back to the others and told them what they were to do. Luvah and Theotormon stayed within the narrow passage while the rest walked out into the canyon. They spread out in a wide circle to close in on the lone animal. The hopper stood in a large clearing its nose twitching its head turning quickly from side to side. Wolff told the others to stop and he walked slowly towards it the club held behind his back. The ani mal waited until Wolff was within ten feet of it. Then it disappeared. Wolff whirled around thinking that it had jumped with such swift ness that he had not been able to see it. There was no animal behind him. There were only the Lords gaping and asking what had hap pened. Approximately three seconds later the beast reappeared. It was now thirty feet from him. Wolff took a step towards it and it was gone again. Three seconds later there were two animals in the clearing. One was ten feet away from Vala. The other was to Wolff s left and fifteen feet away. What the hell Wolff said. It took much to startle him. Now he was far more than startled. He was bewildered. The animal near Vala disappeared. Now there was one left. Wolff ran towards it his club raised and shouting hoping to freeze the ani mal long enough to get a chance to strike it. It vanished. A little later it reappeared to his right. A second hopper was with it. The Lords closed in on them. The two beasts suddenly became five. After that there was much yelling screaming and confusion. Some of the animals had popped up behind the Lords and several Lords turned to give chase. Then there were two of the creatures that Wolff was to call tempusfudgers. These two became three as the wild chase continued for another three seconds. Then there was one. The Lords pursued that one and suddenly had two before them. Three animals were being chased three seconds later. Then there was one. The Lords came in on it from all directions at full speed. Two ani mals reappeared one directly in front of Palamabron. He was so startled he tried to stop stumbled and fell on his face. The creature hopped over him and then vanished as Rintrah swung at it with his stick. There were two now. Three. All of a sudden none. The Lords stopped running and stared at each other. Only the wind and their heavy breathing sounded in the box canyon. Abruptly three of the beasts were in their midst. The chase started again. There was one. Five. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 46 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Three. Six. For six seconds three. Six again. Wolff called a halt to the milling chase. He led the Lords back to the entrance where they sat down to recover their breath. Having done that they began chattering away to each other all asking the same questions and no one with an answer. Wolff studied the six animals a hundred yards away. They had for gotten their panic though not the cause of it and were nibbling away at the berries. A silence fell upon the Lords again. They looked at their pensive brother and Vala said What do you make of it Jadawin I ve been thinking back to the time that the first animal we saw vanished he said. I ve been trying to calculate the lengths of their disappearances and the correlation between the number at one time and at succeeding times. He shook his head. I don t know. Maybe. It doesn t seem possi ble. But how else explain it. Or if not explain describe anyway. Tell me have any of you ever heard of a Lord having success with time travel experiments Palamabron laughed. Vala said Jackass She spoke to WolfL I have heard that Blind Orc tried for many years to discover the principles of time. But it is said that he gave up. He claimed that trying to dissect time was a problem as insolvable as explaining the origin of the universe. Why do you ask Ariston said. There is a tiny subatomic particle which Earth scientists call the neutrino Wolff answered. It s an uncharged particle with zero rest mass. Do you know what I m talking about All shook their heads. Luvah said You know we were all ex ceedingly well educated at one time Jadawin. But it has been thou sands of years since we took any interest in science except to use the devices we had at hand for our purposes. You are indeed a bunch of ignorant gods Wolff said. The most powerful beings of the cosmos yet barbaric illiterate divini ties. What has that got to do with our present situation Enion said. And why do you insult us You yourself said we must quit these in sults if we are to survive. Forgive me Wolff said. It s just that I am sometimes overwhelmed at the discrepancy . . . never mind. Anyway the neutrino behaves rather peculiarly. In such a manner in fact that it might be said to go backward in time. It really does Palamabron said. I doubt it. But its behavior can be described in time travel terms whether the neutrino actually does go into reverse chronological gear or not. I believe the same applies to those beasts out there. Maybe they can go forward or backwards in time. Perhaps Urizen had the power to create such animals. I doubt it. He may have found them in some universe we don t know about and imported them. Whatever their origin they do have an ability which makes them seem to hop around in time. Within a three second limit I d say. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 47 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt He drew a circle in the dirt with the end of his stick. This repre sents the single animal we first saw. He drew a line from it and described another circle at its end. This represents the disappearance of it its nonexistence in our time. It was going forward in time or seemed to. I ll swear it was not gone for three seconds when it first disap peared Vala said. Wolff extended a line from the second circle and made a third cir cle at its end. Then he scratched a line at right angles to it and bent it back to a position opposite the second circle. It leaped forward into time or can be described as doing so. Then it went back to the time slot it did not occupy when it made the first jump. Thus we saw a beast for six seconds but did not know that it had gone forward and backward. Then the animal let s call it a tempusfudger jumped forward again to the time at which its first avatar had come out of the first jump. Now we have two. The same animal fissioned by time travel. One jumped the three seconds forward again and we did not see it during that tune. The other did not jump but ran about. It jumped when tempusfudger No. 2 reappeared. Only No. 1 also jumped back just as No. 2 came out of the time hop. So we have two again. But all of a sudden there were five Rintrah said. Let s see. We had two. Now No. 1 had made a jump and he was one of the five. He jumped back to be one of the previous two. Then he jumped forward again to become No. 3 of the five. No. 2 had jumped when there was only one tempusfudger to become No. 2 of the five. No. 1 and No. 2 jumped forward and then back to also become No. 4 and 5 of the five. No. 4 and 5 then jumped ahead to the period when there were only two. Meanwhile No. 1 had leaped over three seconds No. 4 didn t leap and No. 5 did. So there were only two at that instant. He grinned at their lax faces. Now do you understand That s impossible Tharmas said. Time travel You know it s impossible Sure I know. But if these animals aren t time traveling what are they doing You don t know any more than I do. So if I can de scribe their behavior as chronosaltation and the description helps us catch them why object Why don t you use your beamer Rintrah said. We re all very hungry. I m weak after chasing those flickering on again off again things. Wolff shrugged and arose and walked towards the fudgers. They continued eating but kept watching him. When he was within thirty yards they hopped away. He followed them until they were getting close to the blind wall of the canyon. They scattered. He put the beamer on half power and aimed at one. Perhaps the tempusfudger was startled by the raising of the weapon. It disappeared just as he fired and the beam s energy was absorbed by a boulder beyond it. He cursed flicked off the power and aimed at another. This leaped to one side and avoided the first shot. He kept the power on and swung the beam to catch it. The animal jumped again narrowly escaping the ray. Wolff twisted his wrist to bring the fudger within touch of the beam. The animal disappeared. Quickly he swung the weapon back towards the others. A fudger sprang across his field of vision and he brought the white ray upon it. It disappeared at the same time. There was a shout behind him. He turned to see the Lords pointing at a dead animal a few yards to his left. It lay in a heap its fur scorched. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 48 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt He blinked. Vala came running and said It dropped out of the air it was dead and cooked when it hit the ground. But I didn t hit anything except just now he said. And the ani mal I hit hasn t reappeared yet. That fudger was dead on arrival three seconds ago maybe a little more she said. Three seconds before you hit the other. She stopped grinned and said What do I mean . . . other It s the same one you hit. Killed before you hit it. Or just as you hit it. Only it jumped back. Wolff said slowly You re telling me I killed it first then shot it. No not really. But it looked that way. Oh I don t know. I m confused. Anyway we have something to eat he said. But not much. There s not enough meat there to satisfy us. He whirled and brought the beam around to describe a horizontal arc. It struck some rocks then came to a fudger. And the beam went out. He continued to aim the beamer steadily at the fudger which stood poised upon its hind legs its big eyes blinking. The power s gone he said. He ejected the power pack and stuck the beamer into his belt. It was useless now but he had no intention of throwing it away. The time might come when he would get his hands on some fresh packs. He wanted to continue the hunt with sticks. The others vetoed him. Weak and hungry they needed food at once. Although the meat was half charred they devoured it greedily. Their bellies quit rum bling a little. They rested a moment then got to their feet and went after the tempusfudgers again. Their plan was to spread out in a wide circle which would contract to bring all the animals within reach of the clubs. The fudgers began hopping wildly and flickering in and out of existence ... or time. At one moment there were none when all must have simultaneously decided to jump forward or to jump backward. It was difficult to tell what was going on during the hunt. Wolff made no effort at the beginning to keep count. There were six then zero and then six then three then six then one then seven. Back and forth in and out while the Lords ran around and howled like wolves and swung their sticks hoping to connect with a fudger just as it came out of the chronoleap. Suddenly Tharmas club thudded against the side of the head of one of the animals as it materialized. It collapsed jerked several times and died. Eight had dropped out of the air. One had stayed behind as a car cass while the others became invisible. There should have been seven the next time but there were eight again. Three seconds later there were three. Another three seconds nine. Zero. Nine. Two. Eleven. Seven. Two. Eleven and Wolff threw his stick and caught one in the back. It pitched forward on its face. Vala was on it with her stick and beat it to death before it could recover from its stunned condition. There were fifteen quickly cut to thirteen when Rintrah and Theotormon each killed one. Then zero. Within a minute the tempusfudgers seemed to go riot. Terrified they hurled themselves back and forth and became twenty eight zero twenty eight zero and fifty six or so Wolff roughly estimated it. It was of course impossible to make an accurate count. A little later he was sure only because his arithmetic assured him it should be so that the doubling had resulted in one thousand seven hundred and ninety two. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 49 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt There had been no more casualties among the fudgers to reduce the number. The Lords had been unable to kill any. They were being buffeted by the ever increasing horde knocked down by hoppers ap pearing in front of them behind them and beside them stepped upon scratched kicked and hammered. Suddenly the little animals stampeded towards the exit of the can yon. They hurtled over the floor and should have jammed into the narrow pass but somehow formed an orderly arrangement and were gone. Slowly sore and shaken the Lords arose. They looked at the four dead animals and shook their heads. Out of almost eighteen hundred that had been at hand easy prey in theory these pitiful four were left. Half a fudger will make one good meal for each of us Vala said. That s better than none. But what will we do tomorrow The others did not answer. They began collecting wood for the cooking fires. Wolff borrowed Theotormon s knife and started the skinning. In the morning they ate the scraps left over from the evening s feast. Wolff led them on up. The canyon remained as silent as before except for the river s murmuring. The walls kept on pressing in. The sky burned yellow far above. Fudgers appeared at a distance. Wolff tried throwing rocks at them. He almost struck one only to see it disappear as if it had slipped around a corner of air. It came into sight again three seconds later twenty feet away and hopping as if it had an important engagement it had suddenly recalled. Two days after they had last eaten the Lords were almost ready to try the berries. Palamabron argued that the repulsive odor of the ber ries did not necessarily mean that they had a disagreeable taste. Even if they did they were not necessarily poisonous. They were going to die anyway so why not test the berries Go ahead Vala said. It s your theory and your desire. Eat some She was smiling peculiarly at him as if she were enjoying the conflict between his hunger and fear. No Palamabron said. I will not be your guinea pig. Why should I sacrifice myself for all of you I will eat the berries only if all eat at the same time. So you can die in good company Wolff said. Come on Pala mabron. Put up or shut up old Earth proverb. You re wasting our time arguing. Either do it yourself or forget about it. Palamabron sniffed at the berry he was holding made a face and let the berry fall on the rocky floor. Wolff started to walk away and the Lords followed. About an hour later he saw another side canyon. On the way into it he picked up a round stone which was just the right size and weight for throwing. If only he could sneak up close enough to a fudger and throw the rock while it was looking the other way. The canyon was a little smaller than that in which the Lords had made their first hunt. At its far end was a single tempusfudger eating the berries. Wolff got down on his hands and knees and began the slow crawl towards it. He took advantage of every rock for covering and managed to get halfway across the canyon before the animal no ticed anything. It suddenly quit moving its jaws sat up and looked around its nose wiggling its ears vibrating like a TV antenna in a strong wind. Wolff hugged the ground and did not move at all. He was sweating with the effort and tension since the starvation diet had weakened him considerably. He wanted to jump up and run at the fudger and hurl himself upon it tear it apart eat it raw. He could have devoured the entire animal from the tips of its ears down to the tip of its tail and then broken the bones open to suck out the marrow. He forced himself to stay motionless. The animal must get over its suspiciousness soon after which Wolff could resume his turtle like approach. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 50 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Then from behind a rock near the fudger another beast appeared. It was gray except for red wolflike ears had a long pointed face a bushy tail and was about midway in size between a fox and a coyote. It sprang at the tempusfudger coming up from behind it just as it was looking the other way. Its teeth closed on air. The fudger had disappeared escaping the jaws by a fraction of an inch. The predator also disappeared vanishing before it struck the ground. Three animals appeared two fudgers and one predator. Wolff who liked to tag unknown things at once called it a chronowolf. For the first time he was seeing the creature that nature or Urizen had placed here to keep the fudger from overpopulating this world. Wolff now had time to figure out what was happening with the leapers. There had been two. Then there were none. Then three. So the original fudger and the chronowolf had jumped ahead. But the fudger had stayed only a microsecond and leaped back also. So that he had reproduced himself and now there were two for the wolf to chase. Again the animals vanished. They reappeared four in number. Two fudgers two chronowolves. The chase was on not only in space but in the strange gray corridors of backwards forwards time. Another simultaneous jump into the tempolimbo. Wolff ran to wards a boulder around which grew a number of bushes. He hurled himself down and then peered between the bushes. Seven again. This time a wolf had come out of wherever he had been just behind his quarry. He hurled himself forward and his jaws closed around the neck of the fudger. There was a loud crack the fudger dropped dead. Seven living and one dead. A fudger had gone back and then for ward again. The living vanished. Evidently the wolf did not intend to stay behind and eat his kill. Then six were jumping around the plain. Savagely a wolf bit an other wolf on the neck and the attacked crumpled in death. Nothing for three seconds. Wolff ran out and threw himself down on the ground. Although not hidden behind anything this time he hoped that his motionlessness combined with the terror of the fudgers and the bloodlust of the wolves would make them not notice him Another wolf had been born out of time s womb. Parthenogenesis of chronoviators. Two wolves launched themselves at each other while the third watched them and the fudgers hopped around in apparent confusion. The observer predator became participant not in the struggle be tween his fellows but in the hunt. He caught a fudger by the throat as it hurtled by him in its blind panic. A fudger and a wolf died. The living flickered out again. When they came back into his sight a wolf gripped a fudger s neck and cracked it. Wolff slowly rose to his feet. At the exact moment that one of the wolves died he hurled his stone at the winner. It must have caught the motion out of the corner of its eyes since it vanished just before the stone would have struck. And when it shot out of the chute of time it was going as swiftly as its four legs would take it towards the exit. I m sorry to deprive you of the spoils of victory Wolff called out after it. But you can resume the hunt elsewhere. He went to call the other Lords and to tell them that their luck had changed. Six animals would fill their bellies and furnish a little over for the next day. There came the tune again when the Lords had been without food for three days. They were gaunt file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 51 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt their cheeks hollow their eyes couched within dark and deep caves their bellies advancing towards their spines. That day Wolff sent them out in pairs to hunt. He had intended to go alone but Vala insisted that he take Luvah with him. She would hunt by herself. Wolff asked her why she wanted it that way and she replied that she did not care to be accompanied by only one man. You think you might become the victim of a cannibal Wolff said. Exactly she said. You know that if we continue to go hungry it s inevitable that we ll start eating one another. It may even have been planned by Urizen. He would very much enjoy seeing us kill one another and stuff our bellies with our own flesh and blood. Have it your own way Wolff said. He left with Luvah to ex plore a series of side canyons. The two sighted a number of fudgers eating from bushes and began the patient hours long creeping upon them. They came within an inch of success. The stone thrown by Wolff went past the head of his intended victim. After that all was lost. The fudgers did not even bother to take refuge in tune but leaped away and were lost in another canyon. Wolff and Luvah continued to look until near the time for the moon to bring another night of hunger torn sleeplessness. When they got back to the meeting place they found the others looking very perturbed. Palamabron and his hunting companion Enion were missing. I don t know about the rest of you Tharmas said but I m too exhausted to go looking for the damn fools. Maybe we should Vala said. They might have had some luck and even now be stuffing themselves with good meat instead of shar ing it with us. Tharmas cursed. However he refused to search for them. If they had had luck he said he would know it when he next saw their faces. They would not be able to hide their satisfaction from him. And he would kill them for their selfishness and greed. They wouldn t be doing anything you wouldn t if you had their chance Wolff said. What s all the uproar about We don t know that they ve caught anything. After all it was only a suggestion by Vala. There s no proof not the slightest. They grumbled and cursed but soon were asleep with utter weari ness. Wolff slept too but awoke in the middle of the night. He thought he had heard a cry in the distance. He sat up and looked at the others. They were all there except for Palamabron and Enion. Vala sat up also. She said Did you hear something brother Or was it the wailing of our bellies It came from upriver he said. He rose to his feet. I think I shall go look. She said I ll go with you. I cannot sleep any longer. The thought that they might be feasting keeps me angry and awake. I do not think the feasting will be on the little hoppers he said. She said You think. . . I do not know. You spoke of the possibility. It becomes stronger every day as we become weaker and hungrier. He picked up his stick and they walked along the edge of the river. They had little difficulty seeing where they were going. The moon brought only a half darkness. Even though the walls of the canyon deepened the twilight there was still enough light for them to proceed with confidence. So it was that they saw Palamabron before he saw them. His head appeared for a moment above a boulder near the wall of the canyon. His profile was presented to them then he disappeared. On bare feet they crept towards him. The wind carried to them the noise he was making. It sounded as if he were striking one stone against another. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 52 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Is he trying to make a fire Vala whispered. Wolff did not answer. He was sick since he could think of only one reason why Palamabron would want to build a fire. When he came to the huge rock behind which Palamabron was he hesitated. He did not want to see what he thought he must when he came around the boulder. Palamabron had his back to them. He was on his knees before a pile of branches and leaves and was knocking a piece of flint against a rock that was heavy in iron. Wolff breathed a sigh of relief. The body beside Palamabron was that of a fudger. Where was Enion Wolff came up silently behind Palamabron his stick raised high. He spoke loudly. Well Palamabron The Lord gave a short scream and dived forward over the firepile. He rolled and came up on his feet facing them. He held a very crude flint knife. It s mine he snarled. I killed it and I want it. I have to have it. I ll die if I don t get to eat So will we all Wolff said. Where is your cousin Palamabron spat and said The beast He s no cousin of mine. How should I know where he is Why should I care You went out with him Wolff said. I don t know where he is. We got separated while we were hunting. We thought we heard a cry Vala said. It was a fudger I think Palamabrcn said. Yes it was. The one I killed a little while ago. I found it sleeping and killed it and it cried out as it died. Maybe Wolff said. He backed away from Palamabron until he was at a safe distance. He continued on up the rivershore. Before he had gone a hundred yards he saw the hand lying beside a boulder. He went around it and found Enion. The back of his head was crushed in beside him lay the bloody rock that had killed him. He returned to Palamabron and Vala. She was still there the Lord and the fudger were gone. Why didn t you stop him Wolff said. She shrugged and smiled. I m only a woman. How could I stop him You could have he replied. I think you wanted to enjoy the chase after him. Well let me tell you there won t be any. None of us have the strength to waste it climbing around here. And when he eats he ll have enough strength to outclimb or outrun us. Very well she said. So what do we do now Keep on going and hope for the best. And starve she said. She pointed at the boulder which hid Enion s body. There s enough food for all of us. Wolff did not reply for a moment. He had not wanted to think about this but since he was faced with it he would do what had to be done. Vala was right. Without this food however horrible it was to think about it they might well die. In a way Palamabron had done them a favor. He had taken the guilt upon himself of killing for them. They could eat without considering themselves murderers. Not that killing would bother the rest of them. He however would have suffered agonies if he had been forced into a position where he had to slay a human being to survive. As for the actual eating he was now feeling only a slight repul sion. Hunger had deadened his file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 53 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt normal horror against cannibalism. He returned to wake the others while Vala picked up the rocks dropped by Palamabron. By the time they returned she had not only started a fire but was intent on the butchering. Wolff held back for a moment. Then thinking that if he was to share in the food he should also share in the work he took Theotormon s knife. The others offered a hand but he turned them down. It was as if he wanted to punish himself by making himself do most of the grisly work. When the meal was cooked half cooked rather he took his share and went around the boulder to eat. He was not sure that he could keep the meat down and he was sure that if he watched the others eat he would not be able to keep from vomiting. Somehow it did not seem so bad if he were alone. Dawn had found them still cooking. Not until the middle of the morning did they start traveling again. The meat that had not been eaten was wrapped in leaves. If Urizen was watching us Wolff said he must really be laughing. Let him laugh Vala said. My turn will come. Your turn You mean our turn. You may do what you like. All I m interested in is what I do. Typical of the Lords said Wolff without elaborating. He watched her for a while after that. She had amazing vitality. Perhaps it was the food that had given her such a swift walk and had filled out her cheeks and arms. He did not think so. Even during the star vation she had not seemed to suffer as much as the rest or to waste away as swiftly. If anybody could survive to get at her father s throat it would be Vala he thought. May I not be far behind her he prayed. Not so much for venge ance on Urizen though I want that as to rescue Chryseis. XII They had been without food for a day when they emerged from the canyon. Before them at the foot of a long gentle hill was a plain that stretched to the horizon. A quarter of a mile away was a small hill and on this were two giant hexagons. They stopped to look dully at their goal. Wolff said I suggest we take one or the other gate immediately. Perhaps there may be food on the other side. If not Tharmas said. I d rather die quickly trying to get through Urizen s defenses than starve slowly. Which at the moment looks as if it might. . . He let his voice trail off thinking that the Lords felt low enough. They followed him sluggishly up to the foot of the golden gem studded frames. He said to Vala Sister you have the honor of choosing the right or the left entrance for us. Continue. Only be quick about it. I can hear my strength ebbing away. She picked up a stone turned her back to the gates and cast the stone over her head. It sailed through the right gate almost striking the frame. So be it Wolff said. He looked at them and laughed. What a crew Brave Lords Tramps rather Sticks a broken sword a knife and muscles shaking with weakness and bellies groaning for meat. Was ever a Lord attacked in his own stronghold by such a con temptible bunch Vala laughed and said At least you have some spirit left Jadawin. That may mean something. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 54 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt I hope so he said and he ran forward and jumped through the right gate. He came out under a deep blue sky and onto ground that gave under his feet a little. The topography was flat except for a few steep hills so rough and dark that they looked more like excres cences than mounds of dirt. He doubted they were dirt since the sur face on which he stood was not earth. It was brownish but smooth and with small holes in it. A foot high stalk thin as a pipestem cleaner grew out of each hole. Almost like the skin of a giant he thought. The only vegetation if it could be called that was a number of widely separated trees. These were about forty feet high were thinly trunked and had smooth sharply pointed branches that projected at a forty five degree angle upwards from the trunk. The branches were darker than the saffron of the main shaft and sparsely covered with blade like leaves about two feet long. The other Lords came through the gate a minute later. He turned and said I m glad I didn t find anything I couldn t have handled without your help. Vala said They all were sure that this time the gate would lead into Urizen s stronghold. And perhaps I d trip a few traps before I went down he said. And so give the rest of you a chance to live a few minutes longer. They did not reply. Wolff gazed reproachfully at Luvah whose cheeks reddened. Wolff tested the gate. It had either been deactivated or else was unipolar. He saw a long black line that could be the shore of a lake or sea. This world unlike the one they had just left gave no indica tions of the direction they must take. On the side where he had first stepped however he had seen two rough dark hills very close to gether. These might or not be some sort of sign from Urizen. There was only one way to find out which Wolff took without hesitation. He set out on the slightly springy ground the others trailing. The shadow of a bird passed before them and they looked up. It was white with red legs about the size of a bald eagle and had a monkey face with a curving bird s beak instead of a nose. It swooped so low that Luvah threw his stick at it. The stick passed behind its flaring tail. It squawked indignantly and climbed away swiftly. Wolff said That looks like a nest on that tree. Let s see if it could have eggs. Luvah ran forward to recover his stick then stopped. Wolff stared where Luvah was pointing. The earth was rippling. It rose in inch high waves and advanced towards the stick. Luvah turned to run thought better of it turned again and ran to pick up the stick. Behind him the earth swelled rose up and up and raced forward like a surfer s wave. Wolff yelled. Luvah whirled saw the danger and ran away from it. He ran at an angle towards the end of the wave. Wolff came along behind it not knowing what he could do to help Luvah but hoping to do something. Then the wave collapsed. Wolff and Luvah stopped. Abruptly Wolff felt the earth rising below his feet and saw that another swell ing had started some ten feet from Luvah. Both turned and raced away the earth or whatever it was chasing after them. They made it back to the area around the gate which had been stable and would continue to be so they hoped. They got to the safety zone just in time to escape the sudden sink ing of the land behind them. A hole broad and shallow at first ap peared. Then it narrowed and deepened. The sides closed in on themselves there was a smacking sound and the hole reversed its original process. It widened out until all was smooth as before ex cept that the foot high thin growths sprouting from each depression kept on vibrating. What in Los name Luvah said over and over. He was pale and the freckles stood out like a galaxy of fear. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 55 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Wolff was a little sick himself. Feeling the earth tremble under him had been like being caught in an earthquake. In fact that was what he had thought when it first happened. Somebody yelled behind him. He spun to see Palamabron trying to get back through the gate through which he had just stepped only to go flying vainly through the frame. He must have been following them and waited until he thought they had gone some distance from the gate. Now he was trapped as much as they. More so since Wolff had use for him. Wolff shoved the others away from Palamabron s throat and shouted at them to leave him alone. They drew back while Palamabron shook and his teeth chat tered. Palamabron Wolff said you have been sentenced to death be cause you broke truce with us and murdered your cousin. Palamabron seeing that he was not to be killed out of hand took courage. Perhaps he thought he had a chance. He cried At least I did not eat my own brother And I had to kill him He attacked me first Enion was struck in the back of the head Wolff said. I knocked him down Palamabron shouted. He started to rise when I seized a rock and hit him with it. It was not my fault he had his back turned. Would you ask me to wait until he had turned around There s no use talking about this Wolff said. But you can go free. Your blood will not be on our hands. Only you can t stay with us. None of us would feel safe to sleep at night or turn our backs on you. You are letting me go Palamabron said. Why Don t waste time talking Wolff said. If you don t get out of our sight within ten minutes I ll let the others at you. You d better leave. Now Wait a minute Palamabron said. There s something very sus picious about this. No I won t go. Wolff gestured at the others. Go ahead. Kill him. Palamabron screamed turned and ran away as swiftly as he could. He seemed weak and his legs began to move slowly after the first thirty yards. He looked back several times then seeing that they were not coming after him he quit running. The earth swelled behind him and built up until it was twice as high as his head. At the moment it gained its peak Palamabron looked over his shoulder again. He saw the giant wave racing to wards him and he screamed and began to run again. The wave collapsed the tremors following the collapse upsetting Palamabron and knocking him off his feet. He scrambled up and continued to go on although he was staggering by now. A hole opened up ahead of him. He screamed and darted off at right angles to it seeming to gain new strength from terror. The hole disappeared but a second gaped ahead of him. Again he raced away this time diagonally to the hole. Another wave began to build up before him. He whirled slipped fell hard rolled over and stumbled away. Presently the swelling which had risen directly between Palamabron and the Lords grew so high that it walled him off from their sight. After that the wave froze for a moment rigid except for a slight trembling. Gradually it sub sided and the plain was flat again with the exception of a six foot long mound. Swallowed up Vala said. She seemed thrilled. Her eyes were wide open her mouth parted the lower lip wet. Her tongue flicked out to trace with its tip the oval of both lips. Wolff said Our father has indeed created a monster for us. Perhaps this entire planet is covered with the skin of ... of this Weltthier. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 56 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt What said Theotormon. His eyes were still glazed with terror. And though he had been shrinking during the starvation on the last world he now seemed to have dwindled off fifty pounds in the past two minutes. His skin hung in loops. Weltthier. World animal. From German a Terrestrial language. A planet covered with skin he thought. Or maybe it was not so much a skin as a continent sized amoeba spread out over the globe. The idea made him boggle. The skin existed there was no denying that. But how did it keep from starving to death The millions and millions of tons of proto plasm had to be fed. Certainly although it ate animals it could not get nearly enough of these to maintain itself. Wolff decided to investigate the subject if he ever got the chance. He was as curious as a monkey or a Siamese cat always probing pondering speculating and analyzing. He could not rest until he knew the why and how. He sat down to rest while he considered what to do. The others Vala excepted also sat or lay down. She walked from the safety zone placing her feet carefully with each step. Watching her he un derstood what she was doing. Why had he not thought of that She was avoiding contact with the plants hairs that grew from the holes pores . After traveling on a circle with a radius of about twenty five yards she returned to the gate area. Not once had the skin trembled or begun to form threatening shapes. Wolff stood up and said Very good Vala. You beat me to it. The beast or whatever it is detects life by touch through the feelers or hairs. If we navigate as cautiously as ships going through openings in reefs we can cross over this thing. Only trouble is how do we get past those He pointed outwards to the horny buttes the excrescentoid hills. The hairs began to crowd together at their bases and beyond the buttes they carpeted the ground. She shrugged and said I don t know. We ll worry about it when we get to it he said. He began walk ing looking downwards to guide himself among the feelers. The Lords followed him in Indian file with Vala again being the only ex ception. She paralleled his course at a distance of five or six yards to his right. It s going to be very difficult to hunt animals for food under these conditions he said. We ll have to keep one eye on the hairs and one on the animal. A terrible handicap. I wouldn t worry she said. There may be no animals. There is one I m sure exists Wolff said. He did not say anything more on the subject although it was evident that Vala was wondering what he meant. He headed towards the tree in a branch of which he saw the nest. A circular pile of sticks and leaves it was lodged at the junction of the trunk and a branch and was about three feet across. The sticks and leaves seemed to be held together with a gluey substance. He stepped between two feelers propped his club against the tree and shinnied up the trunk. Halfway up he saw the tops of two hex agons on one of the buttes. When he got to the nest he clung to the trunk with his legs one arm around the trunk while with the other hand he poked through leaves on top of the nest. He uncovered two eggs speckled green and black and about twice the size of turkey eggs. Removing them one by one he dropped them to Vala. Immediately thereafter the mother returned. Larger than a bald eagle she was white with bluish chevrons furry monkey faced fal con beaked saber toothed wolf eared bat winged archeopteryx tailed and vulture footed. She shot down on him with wings folded until just before she struck. The wings opened with a whoosh of air and she screamed like iron being ripped apart. Perhaps the scream was intended to freeze the prey. If so it failed. Wolff just let loose of the trunk and dropped. Above him came a file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 57 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt crash and another scream this time of frustration and panic as the beast rammed partly into the nest and partly into the trunk. Evidently it had expected to have its momen tum absorbed by Wolff s body. And it may have underestimated its speed in its fury. Wolff hit the ground and rolled knowing that he was disturbing the feelers but unable to prevent it. He came up on his feet clumps of glued together sticks and leaves raining around him from the shat tered nest. He got to one side just in time to escape being hit by the body of the half stunned flier. However the blow would not have been a full one since the creature had slowed its fall with an instinc tive outspreading of wings. By then the earth skin was reacting to the messages transmitted by the feelers. Not only Wolff had contacted them. The other Lords had scattered when Wolff fell and they had brushed against hairs all around the tree. Back to the tree Wolff yelled at them. Vala had anticipated his advice she was already halfway up the trunk. He began shinnying after Vala only to feel talons sharp and hot as glowing white hooks fasten into his back. The flying beast had recovered and was at him again. Once more he let loose and fell backward. He kicked his feet against the trunk and shoved out to throw himself into a horizontal attitude. And so he came down hard but with the beast below him. Two breaths whooshed out his and that of the beast crushed be neath him. Less hurt Wolff rolled off stood up and kicked the thing in the ribs. Its mouth gaped beneath the brownish beak its two saber teeth covered with saliva and blood. Wolff kicked again and turned back to the tree. He was bowled over by two Lords frantic to get to the safety of the tree. Tharmas stepped on his head and used it as a springboard to leap for the trunk. Rintrah pulled him down shoved him away and started to climb. Staggering back from the push Tharmas fell over Wolff who was just getting to his hands and knees. From her perch near the top of the tree Vala was laughing hyster ically. She laughed and pounded her thigh and then suddenly shrieked. Her hold lost she fell hard broke off a branch turned over and came down on her shoulder. She lay stunned at the base of the tree. Theotormon was perhaps the most terrified. Still huge despite the many pounds of fat that had thawed off him and handicapped by having flippers he had a hard time scaling the tree. He kept slipping back down the while he could not refrain from looking over his shoulder and gibbering. Wolff managed to get to his feet. Around him around the tree rather the skin was going mad. It rose in great waves that chased after Luvah and Ariston. These two were going around in circles with great speed their fright giving their weary and hungry bodies fresh strength. Behind them the earth flesh rose up moved swiftly after them then began to curl over. Other waves appeared ahead of them and pits yawned beneath their feet. Suddenly Luvah and Ariston passed each other and the various moving tumors and depressions hot on their heels collided. Wolff was confused by the chaos of tossing bumping smacking gulping shapes of protoplasm. More than anything the scene resembled a collection of maelstroms. Before the skin could get its signals straight and reorganize it had lost Ariston and Luvah. They gained the trunk of the tree but they impeded each other s ascent. While they were clawing at each other Wolff picked up the body of the flier and hurled it from him as far as he could. It landed on an advancing swell which stopped the mo ment it detected the carcass. A depression appeared around and be neath the body. Slowly it sank until it was below the surface. Then the lips of the hole closed over it and there was only a mound and a seam to show what was beneath. The flier had been a sacrifice since Wolff had wanted to keep the body for food. The area around the tree smoothed out made a few ripples and became as inert as if it were truly made of earth. Wolff went around the tree to examine Vala. She was sitting up breathing hard her face twisted with pain. Since the skin was springy the im pact had not been as hard as if it had occurred on hard dirt. She was bruised on her shoulder and the side of her face and for a while she could not move her arm. Her worst injury seemed to be to her dignity. She cursed them for a pack of cowardly fools and males fit only to be slaves if that. The Lords were abashed by her insults or sullen. They felt that she was right they were ashamed. But they were certainly not going to admit the truth. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 58 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Wolff began to think the whole affair had been funny. He started laughing then straightened up with a groan. He had forgotten the gashes inflicted by the flier s talons. Luvah looked at his back and clucked. The blood was still oozing out although he expected that it would soon stop flowing. He certainly hoped that Wolff would not be come infected since there was no medicine to be had. You re very cheerful Wolff growled. He looked around for the eggs. One was smashed and spread over the base of the tree. The other was nowhere in sight and presumably had been swallowed by the skin. Oh Los moaned Ariston. What do we do now We re about to die of hunger we re lost we can t leave this tree without being swallowed alive by that monster. Our father has killed us and we have not even gotten close to his stronghold. You Lords and Makers of Universes are pitiful creatures indeed when stripped of your fortress walls and your weapons Wolff said. I ll tell you another old Earth proverb. There s more than one way to skin a cat. What cat Where Theotormon said. I could eat a dozen cats right now. Wolff rolled his eyes upwards but did not answer. He told the others either to get on the other side of the tree or go up it. Then he took Theotormon s knife and went out a few feet from the tree. Squatting he jammed the knife with all his strength into the skin. If it was flexible enough to shape itself into rough pseudopods or holes it had to be vulnerable. He snatched the knife out of the wound and rose and retreated a few steps. The skin shrank away became a hole then a cone formed around the wound and the cone thrust up like a crater slowly build ing itself. Wolff stood patiently. Soon the crater flattened out and the wound was revealed. Instead of the blood he had been half expect ing a thin pale liquid oozed out. He approached the wound taking care to avoid the hairs near it. Quickly he slashed at the skin again dug out a quivering mass of flesh and ran back to the tree. There was a storm of protoplasmic shapes once more: waves craters ridges and brief swirlings in which the flesh formed corkscrew pillars. Then it subsided. Wolff said The skin immediately around the tree seems to be tougher and less flexible than that further away. I think we re safe as long as we stand on it although the skin might be capable of a . . .a tidal wave that could sweep us off. Anyway we can eat. The other Lords took turns cutting out chunks. The raw flesh was tough slimy with ichor and ill smelling but it could be chewed and swallowed. With something in their bellies they felt stronger and more optimistic. Some lay down to sleep Wolff walked to the shore. Vala and Theotormon followed him and Luvah seeing them de cided to go along. The land area ended abruptly with no beach for transition. Along the edge there were so few feelers they could relax a little. Wolff stood on the very edge and looked into the water. De spite the fact that there was no sun to cast its beams the clear water allowed him to see quite deep into it. There were many fish of various sizes shapes and colors swim ming close to shore. Even as he watched he saw a long slender pale tentacle shoot out from under the edge and seize a large fish. The fish struggled but was drawn quickly back under the edge. Wolff got down on all fours and leaned out over the edge to see what kind of creature it was that had caught the prey. The rim on which he stood extended out quite far. In fact he could not see the base of the land. Instead he saw a mass of writhing tentacles many of which gripped fish. And farther back were tentacles that hung deep into the abyss. Presently one coiled upon itself and brought up a gigantic fish from the deeps. He withdrew his head hastily since one of the nearby tentacles was snaking out and up in his general direction. He said I won dered how such a monster could get enough to eat. It must feed mainly on the sea life. And I ll bet that this animal on which we stand is a vast floater. Like the islands of the waterworld this thing is free unattached to any base. That s nice to know Luvah said. But how does that help us file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 59 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt We need more to eat Wolff replied. Theotormon you re the swimmer among us. Would you jump in and swim around a bit Stay close to shore and be ready to shoot back in. Come out fast like a seal. Theotormon said Why should I You saw how those tentacles grabbed those fish. I think they re grabbing blindly. Maybe they can detect vibrations in the water I don t know. But you re fast enough to evade them. And the tentacles immediately under this edge are small. Theotormon shook his head. No I won t risk my life for you. You ll starve if you don t Wolff said. We can t keep on cutting out chunks of skin. It gets too violent. He pointed at a fish that was just skimming by below the surface. It was fat and sluggish with a head shaped like a sphinx. Wouldn t you like to sink your teeth in that Theotormon drooled and his belly thundered but he would not go after it. Give me your knife then Wolff said. He removed the weapon from its scabbard before Theotormon standing on one leg could lift the other to clutch the hilt with his toes. He turned and ran and dived out as far as he could. The fish wheeled away from him and scooted away. It was slow but not so slow that he could catch it. Nor had he thought he could. He was interested in finding out if a tentacle feel ing the vibrations of the splash and his strokes would come probing for him. One did. It undulated down from the fleshy base to which it was attached and then out towards him. He swam back towards the shore dipping his head below the water to watch it. When he saw it suddenly gain speed as it neared him he reached out one hand and grabbed its tip. Until then he had not been certain that the tentacle was not poisonous like a jellyfish s. However the fish that had been seized had fought vigorously with no indication of being envenomed. The tentacle doubled up on itself looped and went around him. He released the tip turned and grabbed the tentacle about twelve inches back from its tip. He began to saw at the skin with the knife which went through fairly easy. The tentacle abandoned its efforts to wrap itself around him and began to pull back. He kept hold with one hand and continued to cut. The water became darker as he was carried back under the edge. Then the knife was through and he was swimming back up with the severed part in his teeth. He heaved the tentacle up on shore and was beginning to pull him self out when he felt something enfold his right foot. He looked down at a mouth on the end of another tentacle. The mouth was toothless but strong enough to keep its grip on his foot. He clung with his arms on the edge and gasped Help me Theotormon took a few steps towards him on his rubbery legs and then halted. Vala looked down at the thing and smiled. Luvah snatched the broken sword from her scabbard and went into the water. At that Vala laughed and she followed Luvah in. She came back up took Wolff s dagger and dived back down. She and Luvah went to work on the tentacle a few feet from the mouth. The shaft parted Wolff pulled himself on out with the amputated mouth part still ensocked on his foot. The two pieces of flesh could be eaten only after being pounded against the treetrunk to tenderize them. Even then eating them was almost like chewing on rubber. But it was more food in the stomach. Afterwards they advanced gingerly over the plain. At the point by the first butte where the hairs began to cluster thickly they halted. Now they could see their goal. A half mile away on top of a tall butte was the pair of golden hexagons. Wolff had picked up the branch that Vala s fall had broken off. He threw this hard as he could and watched it come down in the hairs. The whole area reacted at once and far more violently than the less haired area. The skin stormed. Oh Los Ariston said. We re done for We could never get across that. He shook his fist at file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 60 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt the sky and shouted You our fa ther I hate you I loathe you and abominate the day that you jetted me from your foul loins You may think you have us where you want us But by Los and crooked Enitharmon I swear that we ll get to you yet That s the spirit Wolff said. For a moment I thought you were going to whine like a sick dog. Tell the old bastard off He can probably hear you. Ariston breathing hard fists still clenched said Brave enough talk. But I still would like to know what to do. Wolff said to the others Any ideas They shook their heads. He said Where is all the diabolical cleverness and weasel agility of mind that the children of Urizen are supposed to have I ve heard tales of each one of you of how you have assailed the stronghold of many a Lord and by your wits and powers have taken his universe from him. What is the matter now Vala said They were brave enough and clever enough when they had their weapons. But I think they re still recovering from the shock of being taken so easily by our father. And of being deprived of their devices. Without those they lose that which made them Lords. Now they re only men and pretty sorry men at that. We re so tired Rintrah said. My muscles ache and burn. They sag as if I were on a heavy planet. Muscles Wolff said. Muscles He led them back to the tree. Despite the flame in his back every time he pulled on a branch agony from the talon wounds he worked with a will. The other Lords helped him and each soon had a bundle of branches in his arms. They returned to the rim of the overgrown area and here began to cast the sticks as far out into the feelers as they could. They did not do it all at once but spaced their throws. The skin reared up like a sea in a hurricane. Waves craters wavelets coursed back and forth. But as the skin continued to be activated its ragings became less. Near the end of the supply of branches it began to react feebly. The last stick got no more than a shallow hole and a weak and quickly subsiding wave. Wolff said It s tired now. Its rate of recovery may be very swift however. So I suggest we get going now. He led the way walking swiftly. The skin quivered and humped up in response to the warnings from the feelers and broad three or four inch deep holes appeared. Wolff skirted them then decided he should trot. He did not stop until he had reached the foot of the butte. This like the first they had passed seemed to be an excres cence a huge wart on the skin. Though its sides rose perpendicularly it was wrinkled enough to give hand and footholds. The ascent was not easy but was not impossible. They all got to the top without mishap. Wolff said Yours is the honor again Vala. Which gate Ariston said She hasn t done very well so far. Why let her pick it Vala turned on him like a tigress. Brother if you think you can do any better you choose But you should show your confidence in yourself by being the first to go through the gate Ariston stepped back and said Very well. No use breaking with the custom. Vala said So it s a custom now Well I choose the left one. Wolff did not hesitate. Although he felt that this time he might find himself weak and weaponless in Urizen s fortress he stepped through. For a moment he could not understand where he was or what was happening he was so dizzy and the objects that hurtled above him were so strange. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 61 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt XIII HE WAS ON A HUGE GRAY METALLIC CYLINDER THAT WAS ROTATING swiftly. Above him on both sides and also coming into view as the cylinder whirled were other gray cylinders. The sky behind them was a pale pink. Between each pair of cylinders were three glowing beams of mauve light. These began about ten feet from the ends of the cylin ders and from the middle. Every now and then colored lights burst along the lengths of the beams and ran up and down them. Red or ange black white purple they burst like Very lights and then bobbed along the beams as if jerked along by an invisible cord. When they came to a point about twelve feet from the cylinders they flared brightly and quickly died out. Wolff closed his eyes to fight off the dizziness and the sickness. When he opened them again he saw that the others had come through the gates. Ariston and Tharmas fell to the surface and clung as tightly as they could. Theotormon sat down as if he feared the spinning would send him scooting across the metal or perhaps might hurl him out into the space between the cylinders. Only Vala seemed not to be affected. She was smiling although it could have been a mere show of courage. If so she was to be admired for achieving even this. Wolff studied the environment as best he could. The cylinders were all about the size of skyscrapers. Wolff did not understand why they were not all spun off immedi ately by centrifugal force. Surely these bodies could not have much gravity. Yet they did. Perhaps no perhaps Urizen had set up a balance of forces which enabled objects with such strong gravities to keep from falling on each other. Perhaps the colored lights that ran along the beams were manifestations of the continual rebalancing of whatever statics and dynamics were being used to maintain the small but Earth heavy bodies. Wolff did not know anything except that the science that the Lords had inherited was far beyond that which Terrestrials knew. There must be thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands of these cylinders. They were about a mile apart from each other spinning on their own axes and also shifting slowly about each other in an intri cate dance. From a distance Wolff thought the separate bodies would look like one solid bulk. This must be one of the planets he had observed from the waterworld. There was one advantage to their predicament. On a world as tiny as this one they would not have to go far to find the next set of gates. But it did not seem likely that Urizen would make things so easy for them. Wolff stepped back to the gate and tried to reenter it. As he had expected it only permitted him to step through the frame and back onto the cylinder. He turned and tested its other side only to find that equally unfruitful. Then he set out to look for the gates by walk ing around the circumference. And when he had gotten less than halfway around he saw the two hexagons. These were at one end and hung a few inches above the surface the pale sky gleaming pinkly between the lower frame and the cylin der surface. With the others he began to talk towards it. He kept his eyes on the gates and tried not to see the whirling shifting objects around him. Wolff was in the lead and so was the first to notice the unexpected behavior of the twin hexagons. As he came within fifty feet of them they began to move away. He increased his pace the gates did not maintain quite the same distance. When he broke into a run they went more swiftly but still he gained a little. He stopped the gates stopped. He made a dash at them only to see them start off just as quickly. As he stepped up his speed he gained on them. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 62 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt The other Lords were behind him. Their feet slapped on the me tallic surface and their gaspings whistled through the atmosphere. Wolff stopped again. The gates halted. The other Lords except Vala gathered around him and babbled. Los First he starves us to death. . . then runs us to death. Wolff waited until he had recovered his breath then said I think they can be caught. They began to slow down in their speed as I went faster. It s a proportional decrease. But I don t think I can go quickly enough and long enough to catch them. Who s the fastest here Luvah said I could always beat the rest of you in a foot race. But now I am so tired and weak. . . Try Wolff said. Luvah grinned uncertainly at him and inched towards the gates. Hovering they moved away. He broke into a dash and presently was gone around the curve of the cylinder out of their sight. Wolff turned and ran in the opposite direction. After him came Vala. The dizzyingly close horizon jumped at him he sped on and then he saw Luvah and the gates. Luvah was now within ten feet of them but he was slowing down. And as his legs refused to move as he wished and his breath burned out of his lungs the gates drew away. Wolff came up behind the gates. When he was as close to them as Luvah the gates slipped sideways like wet soap between two hands. Vala came in at an angle towards them but they veered off. The panting Lords stopped forming three corners of a square with the gates at the remaining comer Where are the others Wolff said. Luvah jerked a thumb. Wolff looked around to see them straggling around the curve of this minute world. He called to them his voice sounding eerie in the strangely propertied atmosphere. Luvah started to go forward but stopped at Wolff s order. Ariston Tharmas Rintrah and Theotormon spread out. Under Wolff s directions they formed a pentagon with the gates at the ends of two legs of the figure. Then all began to close in on their quarry. They kept the same distance between them and advanced at the same pace. The gates oscillated back and forth but made no break. With two minutes of slow and patient closing in the Lords were able to seize half of the frames. This time Wolff did not bother to ask Vala which exit they should take. He went through the left. The others came through on his heels and their look of dismay reflected his. They were on another cylinder and down at the end was another pair of hexagons. Again they went through the tiring chase and the boxing in. Again they stepped through a frame the one to the right this time. Again they were on another cylinder. This occurred five tunes. The Lords looked at each other with fa tigue reddened and exhaustion circled eyes. Their legs trembled and their chests ached. They were covered with sweat and were as dry within as a Saharan wind. They could hardly keep their grips on the hexagons. We can t go on much longer Rintrah said. Don t be so obvious Vala said. Try to say something original once in a while. Very well. I m thirsty enough to drink your blood. And I may if I don t get a drink of water soon. Vala laughed. If you come close enough I ll broach you with this sword. Your blood may be thin and ill smelling but at least it should be wet enough. Wolff said Somehow we always seem to take the gate that leads us everywhere but to Urizen. Perhaps we should split up this time. At least some might get to our father. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 63 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt The others argued about this Vala and Luvah only abstaining. Fi nally Wolff said I m going through one gate with Vala and Luvah. The rest of you will go through the other. That s that. Why Vala and Luvah Theotormon said. He was squinting sus piciously and his voice had a faint whine. Why them Do you three know something we don t Are you planning on deserting us I m taking Luvah because he s the only one I can trust I think Wolff said. And Vala is as she s pointed out more than enough times the best man among you. He left them squabbling and with his sister and Luvah went through the left gate. A few minutes later the others came through. They looked bewildered on seeing Wolff Luvah and Vala. But we went through the right hand gate Rintrah said. Vala laughed and said Our father has played us another grim jest. Both gates of a pair lead to the same cylinder. I suspect that they all will. He s not playing fair Ariston said. At this Wolff and Luvah laughed and presently the others Ariston excepted had joined him in his mirth. When the howling which had a note of despair in it had died Wolff said I may be wrong. But I think that every one of these thousands of cylinders in this this birling world has a set of gates. And if we continue the same behavior we ll go through every one of them. Only we ll die before we get a fraction of the way. We must think of something new. There was a silence. They sat or lay on the hard gray shiny metal while they whirled around the cylinders above them rotated about each other in a soundless and intricate saraband and the twin hex agons at the end hovered and seemed to mock. Finally Vala said I do not think that we have been left without a way out. It would not be like our father to stop the game while we still have an atom of breath and of fight in us. He would want to drag out the agony until we broke. And I m sure that he plans on allowing us eventually to find the gate that will conduct us into his stronghold. He must be planning some choice receptions for us and he would be disappointed if he could not use them. So I think that we have not been using our wits. Obviously these gates lead only to other sets on other cylinders. That is they do if we go through the regular way through the side which is set with jewels. But what if the gates are bipolar What if the other side would take us where we want to go Wolff said I tested the other side when we first came through. Yes you tested the initial gate. But have you tested any of the double gates Wolff shook his head and said Exhaustion and thirst are robbing me of my wits. I should have thought of that. After all it s the only thing left to try. Then let s up and at them Vala said. Summon your strength this may be our exit from this cursed birling world. Once more they corraled the twin hexagons and seized them. Vala was the first to go through the side opposite the gem set side. She disappeared and Wolff followed her. On coming through and seeing another cylinder he felt his spirits dissipate like wine in a vacuum. Then he saw the gate at the end and knew that they had taken the correct route. There was only one golden hexagon. It too hovered a few inches above the surface. But it spun on its axis around and around com pleting a cycle every second and a half. The others came through and cursed when they realized that they were still on a birling. But when they saw the single rotating gate some brightened up others sagged at the thought of facing a new peril. Why does it whirl Ariston said weakly. I really can t say brother Vala said. But knowing Father I would suspect that the gate has file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 64 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt only one safe side. That is if we choose the right side we ll go through unharmed. But if we take the wrong side . . . You ll observe that neither side has jewels both are bare. So there s no way of distinguishing one side from another. I am so weary I do not care Ariston said. I would welcome death. To sleep forever free of this agony of body and mind that is all I desire. If you really feel that way Vala said then you should be the first to test the gate. Wolff said nothing but the others added their voices to Vala s urgings. Ariston did not seem so eager to die now he objected saying that he was not fool enough to sacrifice himself for them. You are not only a weakling but a coward brother Vala said. Very well I will be the first. Stung Ariston started towards the spinning hexagon but stopped when a few feet from it. He stared at it and continued to stand mo tionless while Vala jeered him. She shoved him to one side so hard he staggered and fell on the gray surface. Then she crouched before the golden cycler and studied it intently for several minutes. Sud denly she launched herself forward and went through the opening headfirst. The gate whirled on around. Ariston arose without looking at the others or replying to their taunts. He walked up to the gate bent his knees and dived through. And he came out on the other side and fell on the gray surface. Wolff the first to him turned him over. Ariston s mouth hung open his eyes were glazing his skin was turning gray. Wolff stood up and said He went through the wrong side. Now we know what kind of gate this is. That bitch Vala has all the luck Tharmas said. Did you notice which side she went through Wolff shook his head. He studied the frame in the pink dusk. There were no markings of any kind on either side to distinguish one from the other. He spoke to Luvah and they picked up Ariston s body by the feet and shoulders. They swung it back and forth until at Wolff s shout they released the corpse at the height of its forward swing. It shot through the frame and came out on the other side and fell on the surface. Wolff and Luvah went to the other side and once more swung his body and then cast it through the frame. This time it did not reap pear. Wolff said to Rintrah Are you counting Rintrah nodded his head. Wolff said Lift your finger and when the right side comes around point it. Do it swiftly Rintrah waited until two more turns had been made then stabbed his finger. Wolff hurled himself through the frame hoping that Rin trah had not made a mistake. He landed on Ariston s body. There was the sound of sea and a red sky above. Vala was standing nearby and laughing softly as if she were actually enjoying their father s joke. They were back on an island of the waterworld. XIV The other lords came through the gate one by one rintrah last. They did not look as downcast as might have been expected. At least they were on familiar grounds almost home one might say. And as Theotormon did say they could eat all they wanted. The gate through which they had entered was the right one of an enormous pair. Both stood on a low hill. The immediate terrain looked familiar. After the Lords had gone to the shore to quench their thirst they cooked and ate the fish that Theotormon caught. They set up a guard rotation system and slept. The next day they ex plored. There was no doubt that they were back on the great island the natives called the Mother of Islands. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 65 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Those gates are the same ones that started us off on the not so merry go round Wolff said. We went through the right hand one. So the left one may lead to Urizen s world. Tharmas said Perhaps . . . well this is not the most desirable of worlds. But it is better to enjoy life here than to die or live in pain in one of Urizen s cells. Why not forget that gate There is food and water here and native women. Let Urizen sit in his seat of power for ever and rot waiting for us to come to him. You forget that without your drugs you will get old and will die Wolff said. Do you want that Moreover there is no guarantee that Urizen will not come to us if we don t go to him. No you may sit here in a lotus eater s dream if you want but I intend to keep fighting. You see Tharmas Vala said smiling crookedly. Jadawin has stronger reasons than we do. His woman who is not a Lord by the way but an inferior breed from Earth is a prisoner of Urizen s. He cannot rest while he knows she is in our father s hands. It s up to you to do what you want Wolff said. But I am my own master. He studied the red heavens the two huge seeming planets that were in sight at this tune and a tiny streak that could have been a black comet. He said Why go through the front door where Urizen expects us Why not sneak through the back door Or a better met aphor through a window In answer to their questions he explained the idea that had come to him when he looked at the other planets and the comet. They replied that he was crazy. His concepts were too fantastic. Why not he said. As I ve said everything we need can be got ten even if we have to go through the gates again. And Appirmatzum is only twenty thousand miles away. Why can t we get there with the ship I proposed A balloon spacecraft Rintrah said. Jadawin your life on Earth has addled your wits I need the help of every one of you Wolfi said. It s an under taking of large magnitude and complexity. It ll take tremendous la bors and a long time. But it can be done. Vala said Even if it can be accomplished what s to prevent our father from detecting our craft as it comes through the space between this world and his We ll have to take the chance that he s not set up detectors for spacecraft. Why should he The only entrance to this universe is through the gate that he made himself. But what if one of us is a traitor she said. Have you thought that one of us may be in Urizen s service and so spying for him Of course I ve considered that. So has every one else. However I can t see a traitor putting himself through the extreme dangers that we just went through. And how do we know that Urizen is not seeing and hearing ev erything right now Theotormon said. We don t. That s another chance well have to take. It s better than doing nothing Vala said. There was much argument after that with all the Lords finally agreeing to help him in his plan. Even the objectors knew that if Wolff succeeded those who refused to aid him would be marooned on this island. The thought that their brothers might be true Lords again while the objectors would be no better than the natives was too much for them. The first thing Wolff did was to find out the temper of the neigh boring natives. To his surprise he found that they were not hostile. They had seen the Lords disappear into the gate and then come out again. Only the gods or demigods could do this therefore the Lords must be special and dangerous creatures. The natives were more than happy to cooperate with Wolff. Their religion a debased form of the Lords original religion determined this decision. They believed in Los as the good God and in Urizen as the evil one their version of Satan. Their prophets and medicine men maintained that some day the evil one Urizen would be overthrown. When that hap pened they file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 66 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt would all go to Alulos their heaven. Wolff did not try to set them straight on the facts. Let them believe what they wished as long as they helped him. He set everybody to work on the things that could be done immediately and with mate rials available on this world. Then he went through the gate that led to the other planets. Luvah went with him. Both were buoyed up by gas bladders strapped to their backs and armed with short spears and bows and arrows. Through gate after gate they traveled searching for the things that Wolff needed. They knew what to expect and what dangers to avoid. Even so the adventures they met on this trip and the many trips thereafter were enough to have filled several books. But there were no more casualties. Later Vala and Rintrah accompanied Wolff and Luvah. They brought back chunks of the vitreous stuff from the world of the skat ing and suction pad animals. From the Weltthier they brought back piles of bird droppings. These added to the store of their own and the natives excrement were to provide the sodium nitrate crystals in Wolff s plan. The mercury was gotten from the natives who had large supplies picked up from the island after the showers that came with the black comets. The mercury droplets were religious objects and were given to Wolff only after he argued that they were to be used against Urizen. He discovered that one of the plants on the island was a source of wood alcohol. Other plants could be burned to give the charcoal he needed. And the planet of the tempusfudgers furnished sulphur. Wolff had to have a platinum catalyst in the making of nitric acid. While on the cylinders of the birling world he had thought that the cylinders might be composed of platinum or of a platinum alloy. This metal had a melting point of 1773.5 Centigrade and was resistant to cutting. Wolff had no means to melt it in the birling world or any tools sharp enough to cut out chunks from a cylinder. Luvah pointed this out to which Wolff replied that they would use Urizen s own de vices for the job. He took all the Lords with him even though Theotormon and Tharmas strongly objected. They cornered the mobile twin gates and then pulled them to the edge of the cylinder. Here Theotormon found out why it was necessary for him to make the trip. His weight was needed to force the gates halfway down over the arc of the edge of the cylinder. The forces that kept the gates upright were strong but could not resist the combined weight and muscles of the Lords. A portion of the arc went through one of the gates. Had the gate been held motionless the piece of the cylinder would merely have projected through its matching gate on another cylinder. But when the gate was pulled sidewise along the edge something had to give. The gate acted like a shears and cut off the part which went through the frame. After setting the gate upright the Lords went through it to the next cylinder where they found a chunk of the platinum. And they used the next gate to cut the chunk into smaller pieces. On the cylinder of the whirling death gate Wolff tested it with sev eral stones. As soon as a stone disappeared he marked the safe side with a dab of yellow paint brought from the waterworld. Thereafter they had no trouble distinguishing the death side from the safe side. Wolff had the gates that could be moved in the various worlds transported to a more advantageous location. The island on the waterworld became one vast forge of smoke and stink. The Lords and the natives complained mightily. Wolff listened scoffed laughed or threatened as the occasion demanded. He drove them on. Three hundred and sixty dark moons passed. The work was slow disappointing many times and often dangerous. Wolff and Luvah kept on making trips through the gates bringing back from the still perilous circuit the materials they needed. By this time the balloon spacecraft was half built. When finished it would ascend with the Lords until it rose above the atmosphere. Here the pseudogravity field weakened rapidly if Theotormon was to be believed and the craft would use the drag of the dark moon to pick up more speed. Then blackpowder rockets would give it more velocity. And steering would be done through small explosions of power or through release of gas jets from bladders. The gondola would be airtight. Wolff had not yet worked out the problem of air renewal and file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 67 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt circulation or the other problems brought on by nongravity. Actually they should have a certain amount of gravity. They would not be getting into space as a rocket does which attains escape velocity. Levitated by the expanding gas in the lift bladders they would rise until the atmosphere gave out. Once past the atmosphere the craft would lose its buoyancy and would have to depend upon the pull of the moon and the weak reaction of wooden cased rockets to give them thrust enough to escape the waterworld s grip. Moreover if they did pull loose from the waterworld they would be in danger of being seized by the field of the moon. There s no way of determining the proper escape path and neces sary vectors by mathematics Wolff said to Luvah. We ll just have to play it by ear. Let s hope we re not tone deaf Luvah said. Do you think we really have a chance With what I have in mind I think there is Wolff replied. Just now today I want to think of other things. There are the spacesuits to work on for instance. We ll have to wear them while in the gon dola since we can t rely on the gondola being too airtight. The fulminate of mercury for the explosive caps was made. This was a dark brown powder formed by reaction of mercury alcohol and concentrated nitric acid. The nitric acid which oxidized sulfur to sulfuric acid was ob tained through a series of steps. The sodium nitrate gotten by crys tallization from the bird droppings and human excrement was heated with sulfuric acid. The sulfuric acid was derived by burning sulfur with saltpeter that is potassium or sodium nitrate. Free nitrogen of the air was fixed by combining it with hydrogen from the gas bladders to form ammonia. The ammonia was mixed with oxygen from an oxygen producing bladder at the correct tem perature. The mixture was passed over a fine wire gauge made from smooth compact platinum to catalyze for catalysis. The resulting nitrogen oxides were absorbed in water the dilute acid was gotten by concentration through distillation. The materials for the furnaces and containers and pipes were furnished by the vitreous stuff from the planet of skaters. Black gunpowder was made from charcoal sulfur and the salt peter. Wolff also succeeded in making ammonium nitrate a blasting powder of considerable power. One day Vala said Don t you think that you re making far too many explosives We can t take more than a fraction on the ship. Otherwise the ship ll never get off the ground. That s true he replied. Maybe you were also wondering why I ve stocked the explosives at widely separated locations. That s be cause gunpowder is unstable. If one pile goes up the others won t be affected. Some of the Lords paled. Rintrah said You mean the explosives we ll be taking on the ship could go off at any time Yes. That s one more chance we ll be taking. None of this is easy or safe you know. But I d like to add a possibly cheering note. It is ironic and laughable if we succeed that Urizen himself has supplied the materials for his own undoing. He has furnished us with the basic weapons which might overthrow his supertechnology. If we live we ll laugh Rintrah said. I think however that Urizen will be the laugher. Old Earth proverb: We ll at least give him a run for his money. Another proverb: He who laughs last laughs best. That night Wolff went to Luvah s hut. Luvah woke up swiftly on feeling Wolffs hand on his shoulder. He started to draw the knife made of flint from the tempusfudger planet. Wolff said file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 68 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt I m here to talk not kill. Luvah you are the only one I can trust to help me. And I need help. I am honored brother. You are by far the best man among us. And I know that you are not about to propose treachery. Part of what I plan may seem at first to be treachery. But it is necessary. Listen carefully young brother. Within the hour they left the hut. Carrying digging and hacking tools they went to the hill on which stood the twin gates. Here they were met by twenty natives all of whom Wolff was sure he could trust. They began cutting and digging through the tangle of decayed vegetation and bladder roots that formed the island. All worked swiftly and hard so that by the time the moon had passed and taken night with it they had completed a trench around the hill. They kept on working until there was only a few inches of roots to go before coming to the water level. Then the natives placed ammonium nitrate and fulminate caps in the trench. When this was done they threw in the chopped up roots and dirt and made an attempt to cover the signs of excavation. Anybody can see at a glance that digging has been done here Wolff said. I m banking on nobody coming here however. I told all of you that today would be a rest day so that you wouldn t rise until late. He looked at the gates. Now you and I must travel the circuit again. And we must do it swiftly. When they came to the planet of the tempusfudgers Wolff gave Luvah one of his blowguns. This was made of the hollow bamboo like plants that grew on the mother island. The natives used them to shoot darts tipped with a stupefacient made from a certain species of fish. They hunted the birds and the rats on the island with these. Wolff and Luvah went into a canyon and there knocked out five of the fudgers. Wolff searched until he found the entrance to a burrow in which chronowolves lived. He placed the end of the blowgun in side the burrow and expelled the dart. After waiting a minute he reached in and dragged out a sleeping wolf. The animals still unconscious were cast into the gate that would open into Urizen s world. Or it should lead there. It was possible that both gates merely led to the next secondary planet as the gates on the birling world had. I hope the little animals will trigger off Urizen s alarms Wolff said. The alarms will keep him busy for a while. There s also the possibility that the fudgers and wolf s time leaping and duplicating abilities will enable them to survive for a while. They may even mul tiply and spread through the palace and set off any number of traps and alarms. Urizen won t know what the hell s going on. And he ll be diverted from the gate through which he expected us to come. You don t know that Luvah said. Both these gates here and both those on the waterworld may just lead to another secondary. Nothing s certain in any of the multitudinous universes Wolff said. And even for the immortal Lords Death waits around every corner. So let s go around the corner. They passed through the gate into the Weltthier. There was no sign of the chronobeasts. Wolff took heart at this thinking that the chances were very good that the animals had gone into Urizen s stronghold. Back upon the waterworld Luvah went off to accomplish his mis sion. Wolff watched him go. Perhaps he had been wrong in suspect ing Vala of alliance with her father. But she had been too lucky in getting to a safe place whenever danger threatened. She had acted too quickly. Moreover when they were in the river of the icerock planet she had been too buoyant and just a little too assured. He suspected that the girdle around her waist contained devices to ena ble her to float. And there was the choosing of the gates by her. Every tune these had led to a secondary. They should have gone through one of Urizen s gates at least once. She had been too self as sured even for her. It was as if she were playing a game. Although she hated her father she could have joined him to bring her brothers and cousins to file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 69 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt death. She hated them as much as she hated her father. She could have transceivers implanted in her body. Thus Urizen would be able to hear and probably to see all that she did. She would enjoy the game as a participant perversely enjoy it even more if she were in some danger herself. Urizen could take pleasure in the deadly games as if he were watching a TV set. It would be a genuine spectator sport for him. Wolff returned to the hill to start the next to last phase. The na tives were just about finished loading the ship with black powder ammonium nitrate and mercury fulminate. The half built craft con sisted of two skeletons of hollow bamboo in which the gas cells had been installed. One was the lower decks of the planned ship the upper part was supposed to be attached at a later date. From the beginning he had known that using the ship as a space traveler was impossible. He doubted very much that it would work or if it would that the voyage between this world and Appirmatzum could be made. The odds were far too high against success. But he had pretended confidence in it and so the work had gone on. Moreover any spy among the Lords or any other monitor for Urizen would have been fooled. Perhaps Urizen was watching him now and wondering what he meant to do. If so by the time he found out it would be too late. The natives released the two halves of the ship from its moorings. They rose several feet and then stopped weighed down by the sev eral tons of explosives. This altitude was all that Wolff desired. He gave the signal and the natives pushed the crafts up the hill until their prows were almost inside the frame. There was just enough room for the ship to slide through the frames. Wolff had ordered it built in two sections because the fully built ship could not have nego tiated the space. Even the partial frames had only an inch on either side on top and bottom to spare. Wolff lit the fuses on each side of the two floating frameworks and signaled his men. Chanting they pushed the crafts on in. Wolff standing to one side could see the landscape of the island on the other side of the gate. The first ship seemed to be chewed up or lopped off as it floated through the gate frame. Presently all but the aft of the second was gone and then that too had disappeared. Luvah appeared from the jungle with Vala s unconscious body over his shoulder. Behind him were the other Lords alarmed puz zled and angry or frightened. Wolff explained to them what he meant to do. He said I could tell no one except Luvah because I could trust no one else. I suspect Vala of spying for our father but she may be innocent. However I could not take a chance on her. So I had Luvah knock her out while she slept. We ll take her along in case she is not guilty. By the time she wakes up she ll be in the midst of it. Too late for her to do anything then. Now get into the suits. As I ve explained they ll operate under water as well as in space. Better since they were designed for diving. Luvah looked at the gate. Do you think the explosives went off Wolff shrugged and said There s no way of telling. It s a one way gate of course so there ll be no indication from the other side. But I hope that by now Urizen s initial traps have been destroyed. And I hope he s very upset wondering what we ve done. Luvah put a suit on Vala and then donned one himself. Wolff su pervised the touching off of the fuses to the explosives planted at the bottom of the ditch around the hill. The fuses led through hollow bamboo pipes to the gunpowder ammonium nitrate and fulminate of mercury. XV There was a rumble and a shaking of the earth. up rose the decayed vegetation and the roots in a great cloud of black smoke. When the debris had settled and the smoke had blown away Wolff led the Lords towards the hill. It was sinking swiftly its anchorage to the rest of the island severed and the lower part ripped apart. Under the weight of the heavy golden hexagons it went down. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 70 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Wolff threw several fuse lit bombs at the base of the gates to has ten the descent to the sea. The gates began to topple. Wolff held his men steady until the upper part struck the sides of the pit formed by the explosion. As the gates slid into the water below he gave the order to jump. His mask over his face the air tanks turned on a flint tipped spear in one hand and a flint knife and flint axe in his belt he leaped into the water. The top of the gates disappeared just as he came up to the surface for a better look. The water was so foul with bits of roots and humus that he could not see anything. He grabbed the top of the frame and let its weight pull him down. It was on its way to the bottom of the sea but he could go only a little way with it. He felt Luvah who was holding Vala in one arm grab his ankle with the other. Another Lord should be getting hold of Luvah s ankle. Theotormon would be the only free swimmer until they got through the gate. Wolff made sure by feeling that he was at the left gate. Then he began swimming. He had no trouble entering the gate. The inrush of sea water carried him on in. The current carried him down a long hall. The walls were self luminous and radiated enough light for him to make out details. Some of the wall plates were partially ripped off or bent. Down at the end of the hall two thick white metal doors were twisted gro tesquely. The explosion had done its work well. It was conceivable that the doors could have sealed off the rest of the palace from the flood of water. Eventually the pressure of water from the sea bottom would have burst them open. By that time the Lords would also have been dead from pressure. Wolff went through the crumpled doors and on down another cor ridor. Seeing it come to an end he twisted around until his feet were ahead of him. The water boiled at its end striking the wall and then going off down a slightly sloping corridor. Wolff took the impact with his feet shoved and was off with the current down the hall. The light showed him a series of long metal spikes below him. Undoubtedly they were prepared for the invading Lords who were now passing above them. The corridor suddenly dipped and the water was racing down a fifty degree angle. Wolff barely had time to see that it branched into two other corridors before he was carried helplessly out the great window at the end. He fell whirling over and over seeing the palace walls rush by and a garden below. He was being hurled down by a cascade formed by the sea spouting out the window. The crash into the pool at the bottom of the falls stunned him. Half conscious he swam up and away and was at the edge of the pool. Originally the pool had been a sunken garden. Lucky for him he thought otherwise he would have been smashed to death. He dragged himself up over the lip of stone still clutching his spear. The other Lords came bobbing up one by one. Theotormon was first. Luvah was next with a conscious and frightened Vala behind bim. Rintrah swam in a few seconds later. Tharmas floated into the edge of the pool. He was face down his arms outspread. Wolff pulled him up and turned him over. He must have smashed into the side of the window before being carried out. His leg was snapped at the knee and the side of his face was crushed in. Vala stormed at Wolff. He told her to shut up they did not have time for talking. In a few words he explained what he had done and why. Vala recovered quickly. She smiled though still pale and said You have done it again Jadawin Turned Urizen s own devices against him I do not know if you are guilty of allying yourself with our father or not Wolff said. Perhaps I am overly suspicious though it may be impossible to be that when dealing with a Lord. If you are inno cent I will apologize. If not well our father must by now be con vinced that you have betrayed him and are with us. So he will kill you before you can explain unless you kill him first. You have no choice. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 71 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Jadawin you were always a fox So be it I will kill our father the first chance I get Who knows I may have the chance I would have sworn up to a few hours ago that we would be trapped as soon as we entered his domain But here we are and he has a deadly problem on his hands She pointed up at the great window through which the sea was cataracting. Obviously the gate is on the highest level of the palace. And water flows downward. If he doesn t do something soon he will be drowned like a rat caught in its own hole. She turned to indicate the land outside the palace. As you can see the palace is in a valley surrounded entirely by high mountains. It will take some time but the entire sea of the waterworld will come through the gates unless the matching gates on the waterworld settle on a shallow bottom. This valley will be flooded and then the water will spill over the mountains and inundate the rest of the planet. Rintrah said Why don t we just climb the mountains and watch our father drown Wolff shook his head. No Chryseis is in there. Rintrah said What is that to the rest of us Urizen will have flying craft Wolff said. If he escapes the pal ace in one he will pick us off. Even if we should hide from him we would be doomed. He has merely to leave us here. Eventually this world will be flooded. We will be trapped perhaps to starve again. No if you want to get away from here and back to your own uni verse you will have to help me kill Urizen. He said to Theotormon You were allowed a little freedom while you were his prisoner. If we could find the area you know we could better avoid traps. There is an entrance at the bottom of the sunken garden which is now a pool Theotormon said. That would be the best way to enter. We can swim up to the levels that are not yet flooded. If we avoid contact with the floor and walls we can prevent setting off the traps. They plunged into the water and hugging the sides of the pool to avoid the impact of the falling waters swam around behind the cataract. It was easy to locate the door since a current was roaring through it. They let it sweep them through until they came to a stair case. This was broad and built of sculptured red and black stone. They swam up it and after many turnings came to another level. This too was flooded so they continued their ascent. The next floor was inches deep in water and filling swiftly. The Lords climbed on up the stairs until they were on the fourth story. Urizen s palace was like every Lord s magnificent in every respect. At another time Wolff might have lingered to look at the paintings drapes sculptures and treasures loot of many worlds. Now he had but two thoughts. Kill Urizen and save his great eyed wife Chryseis. Wolff looked around before giving the word to advance. He said Where s Vala She was behind me a moment ago Rintrah said. Then she s in no trouble Wolff replied. But we may be. If she s sneaked off to join Urizen. . . We d better get to him before she does Luvah said. Wolff led the way expecting at every second a trap. There was however a chance that Urizen had not set any here. Undoubtedly there would be defenses at every entrance. But Urizen may have thought himself safe here. Moreover the water pouring through from above and below might have deactivated the power supplies. What ever contingency Urizen had prepared himself for he had never thought of another planet s seas emptying themselves into his do main. Theotormon said The floor above is the one where I was kept prisoner. Urizen s private apartments are also there. Wolff took the first staircase they came to. He walked up slowly looking intently for signs of file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 72 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt traps. They came without mishap to the next floor and then stood for a moment. The closer they got to Urizen the more nervous they became. Their hate was beginning to be tinged with some of the old awe they had felt for him when they were children. They were in a huge chamber the walls of which were white mar ble. There were many bas reliefs carved on them scenes from many planets. One showed Urizen seated on a throne. Below him a new universe was forming out of chaos. Another scene showed him stand ing in a meadow with children at play around him. Wolff recognized himself his brothers sisters and cousins. Those had been happy times even though there were shadows now and then to forecast the days of hate and anxiety. Theotormon said You can hear the rumble of the water above. It won t be long until this floor too is flooded. Chryseis is probably held in the same area in which you were prisoner Wolff said. You lead the way there. Theotormon his rubbery legs acting as springs went swiftly. He traced bis way without hesitation through a series of rooms and halls that would have been a bewildering labyrinth to a stranger. Theotormon stopped before a tall oval entrance of scarlet stone with purplish masses that formed ragged silhouettes of winged crea tures. Beyond was a great chamber that glowed a dull red. That is the room in which I spent most of my tune he said. But I fear to go through the doorway. Wolff extended his spear through the archway. Theotormon said Wait a minute. It may have a delayed reaction to catch whoever goes in it. Wolff continued to hold the spear. He counted the seconds es timating how far within the chamber he would have gone if he walked on in. There was a flare of light that blinded him and sent him reeling back. When he regained his sight he saw that his spear was shorn off. Heat billowed out from the expanding air in the chamber and there was the odor of charred wood. Lucky for you that most of the heat was localized and went up ward Theotormon said. The trap covered about twenty yards. Beyond that the room might be safe. But how to get past the death that waited He stepped back some paces cast the butt of the spear through the archway and turned his back. Again light burst forth driving the shadows of the Lords down along the corridor and then sending a wave of heat out after them. Wolff turned and threw an arrow into the room and gave the archway his back again while he counted. Three seconds passed before the trap was sprung again. He gave an order and they returned to the level staircase which was half below the rising waters. They put on their oxygen masks and dipped themselves into the water. Then they ran down the hall as swiftly as they could hoping that the water would not dry off them. At the archway Wolff tossed another arrow through. As soon as the light died but before the heat had thoroughly dissipated he dashed into the chamber. Behind him came Theotormon and Luvah. They had three seconds to cover twenty yards and a few feet. They made it. With the heat drying off the film of water on their suits and warming their backs. But they were through. Rintrah cast an arrow into the room and he and Tharmas ran into the heat. Wolff had turned around to watch them as soon as the light disappeared. He cried out because Tharmas had hesitated. Tharmas did not heed his warning to wait and try again perhaps because he did not hear it. He was racing desperately his eyes wide behind the goggles. Wolff shouted to the others to turn away as Rintrah sped past him. There was another nova of light a scream and a thud. Heat billowed over the Lords they smelled the charred fish skin of the suit and burned human flesh. Tharmas was a dark mass on the floor his fingers and toes almost burned off. Without a word the others turned away and went on through the room. Near its other archway file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 73 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Theotormon led them through a very narrow doorway although he did not do so until after it had been tested. They came into a hemispherical room at least one hundred yards across. Within the room were many large cages all empty ex cept for one. Wolff saw the occupant of the cage first He cried out Urizen XVI THE CAGE WAS TEN FEET BY TEN. IT WAS FURNISHED ONLY WITH A thin blanket on the floor a pipe for drinking water a hole for excre tion and an automatic food dispenser. The man within it was very tall and very thin. He had the face of a bearded and starved falcon. His hair fell down his back to his calves and his beard hung below his knees. The black hairs were threaded with gray by which Wolff knew that his father had been a long time in the cage. Even after the so called immortality drugs were cut off their effect lasted for years. Urizen advanced towards the bars but he was careful not to touch them. Wolff warned the others back in a low voice. He walked up to the bars as if he meant to grip them. Urizen watched him with deep sunken and feverish eyes but did not open his mouth. A few inches from the bars Wolff stopped and said Do you still hate us so much Father that you would let us die He raked the bars with the tip of an arrow veins of light ran over the metal. Urizen smiled grimly and spoke in a hollow pain shot voice Touching the bars is only painful not fatal. Ah Jadawin you were always a fox No one but you could have gotten this far. No one but you and your sister Vala and perhaps Red Orc. So she did evade all your traps and snared the snarer Wolff said. She is indeed a remarkable woman my sister. Where is she Urizen asked. Did she die this time I know that she was with you because she told me what she intended to do. She is in the palace and still to be reckoned with Wolff said. All this time she had us convinced that you were in the Seat of Power. She was playing with us sharing our dangers pretending to be our ally. I suspected her of working with you but this ... I never dreamed of. I am doomed Urizen said. I cannot get out you cannot open this cage to release me. Even if you wanted to you could not. And I must die soon unless I can get help. Vala has implanted a slowly act ing and painful cancerous growth within me. In fact she has done this three times only to remove it each time before I died and then nurse me back to health. I would be lying if I said I was sorry and you know it Wolff said. You are getting what you deserve. Moral lectures from you Jadawin Urizen said. His eyes blazed with the old fire and Wolff felt something within him quail. The dread of his father had not died yet. I heard that you had changed much since your life on Earth but I could not believe it. Now I know it is true. I did not come here to argue with you Wolff said. There is lit tle time for talk left anyway. Tell me Father how we can get to the control room safely. If you want vengeance you must tell us. Vala is loose again and probably in the control room right now. Urizen said Why should I tell you anything I am going to die but I will at least have the pleasure of knowing that you Rintrah Luvah and Theotormon will die with me. Does it give you pleasure to know that Vala will triumph That she will live on That your body too will be stuffed and mounted in the trophy hall Urizen smiled bitterly. If I tell you what you want then Vala might die but you would live. It is a loathsome choice to make. Ei ther way I lose. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 74 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt You may hate us Wolff said but we have never done anything to you. Yet Vala. . . Theotormon said The seas will soon be flooding this level. Then we all die. And Vala safe in her control room will laugh. And she will take whatever vengeance she has been planning against Chryseis. Wolff felt helpless. He could not threaten Urizen to make him talk. What more could he do to him than had been done He said Let s go. We can t waste any more time. To Urizen he said Good bye forever Father. You must die and soon. You hold revenge against Vala in your heart and if you would unlock your lips you would get it. But hatred blinds you and makes you rob yourself. Urizen called after them Wait Eagerly Wolff returned to the cage. Urizen licked his lips and said If I tell you will you do me one favor I can t free you Father Wolff said. You know we have no time to figure out how to do it. Moreover even if I could I wouldn t. I would kill you before I would loose you upon the world. The favor I trade is exactly that Urizen said. Death. I am suffering agonies my son. My pride forbade me to say so until now. But one more minute of this life seems like a thousand years to me. If it were not for my pride I would have gone down on my knees be fore you long ago would have begged you to put me out of my tor ture. That I would never do. Urizen does not beg. But a trade that is another thing. I agree Wolff said. An arrow between the bars will do it. Urizen whispered and in a few words told them what they needed to know. He had just finished when there was laughter at the far end of the room. Wolff whirled to see Vala walking towards them. He fitted an arrow to a bow string knowing as he did so that Vala would not have shown herself unless she felt sufficiently protected. Then he saw through Vala to the wall behind her and knew that it was a projection. He hoped that she had not also overheard Urizen. If she had she would be able to do what she wished with them. I could not have done better if I had planned it this way her image said. It is fitting and my greatest desire to have all of you die together. A happy family reunion You may witness each other s death struggles. How nice And I will be leaving this planet and this universe and may then trap the surviving brother and my beloved sister Anana. Only I will rest for a while and amuse myself with your Chryseis. You have failed so far and you will continue to fail Wolff shouted. Even if you kill us you will not live long to enjoy your tri umph You know about the etsfagwo poison of the natives of the waterworld don t you How it can be served in food and leaves no taste How it goes through the veins and stays there for a long time with no ill effect And then it suddenly reacts and doubles the victim up in terrible pain that lasts for hours And how there is no antidote Well Vala I suspected you of treachery. So I had the etsfagwo put in your supper last night. It will soon take hold of you Vala and then you will not be able to laugh about us. Wolff had not done this and until this moment had not even thought of doing so. But he was determined that if he died Vala would pay for it with some hours of mental anguish. The image screamed with fury and desperation. It said You are lying Jadawin You would not do this you could not You are just trying to scare me You will know whether I tell the truth or not in a very short time Wolff shouted. He turned to shoot the arrow through the bars of the cage to fulfill his promise to Urizen. As he shifted he saw Vala s image flicker out of existence. Immediately thereafter a green foam spurted out of hidden pipes in the ceiling. It shot down with great force spread out rose to the knees of the file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 75 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:40 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Lords and set them to coughing with its acrid fumes. Wolff s eyes watered and he bent over. He leaned down to pick up the bow and arrow which he had dropped. The fumes made him cough even more violently. Suddenly the foam was to his neck. He struggled to get through it and to the door at the far end although there might be another trap waiting there. The foam rose above his head. He held his breath while he put his air mask on. Then he lifted it a little from his face and blew out the foam it had collected. He hoped the others had enough presence of mind to think of their masks. Within a few steps of the exit he felt the foam begin to harden. He strove against it pushing as hard as he could. It continued to resist him to reduce his progress to a very slow motion. Abruptly the foam became a jelly and the green opacity cleared away. He was caught like a fly in amber. Wolff could not see the others who were behind him. He was fac ing the archway towards which he had struggled. He tried to move his arms and legs and found that he could make a little progress. With a vast effort he could shove himself forward less than an inch. Then the jelly like a tide moved him back again and settled around him. There was nothing he could do except wait for his air supply to run out. The breathing system was a closed system one that reused air and did not dissipate the carbon dioxide. If it had been an open system he would have been dead already. The jelly closed in around so tightly that there would have been no place for the breathed out carbon dioxide to go. He had perhaps a half hour of life remaining. Vala would be laughing now. And Chryseis great eyed beautiful Chryseis what was she doing Was she being forced to watch this scene Or was she lis tening to Vala s descriptions of what Vala intended for her Fifteen minutes passed by with his every thought seeking a way out. There was none. This was the end of over 25 000 years of life and the powers of a god. He had lived for nothing he might as well never have been born. He would die and Chryseis would die and both would be stuffed and mounted and placed on exhibit in the trophy hall. No that was not true at least. Vala would have to abandon this place. The waters roaring through the permanent gate at the top level of the palace would ensure that. She would be denied this pleas ure. His body and Chryseis would lie beneath a sea in darkness and cold until the flesh rotted and the bones were tossed back and forth by the currents and strewn about. The waters He had forgotten that they were racing through the halls of the levels above and down the staircases. If only . . . The first rush half filled the corridor beyond the archway and ripped out a chunk of jelly. The corridor was quickly filled and the jelly began to dissolve. The process took time however. The waters crept towards him eating their way and turning the jelly into a green foam that was absorbed by the liquid. More than half an hour had passed since he had estimated that he had about thirty minutes of air left. He felt that every breath would be his last. The jelly became green foam and obscured his vision. The thick stuff melted away and he was free. But now he was in as much dan ger as before. Submerged in water he would drown as soon as the air ran out. He swam towards the others whom he could see through a green veil. He yanked them loose from the jelly that still held them only to find that Rintrah was dead. He had gotten his mask on in time but something had gone wrong. Wolff gestured at Theotormon and Luvah and swam towards the other exit. It opened to their only hope. To try to go through the door through which the seas were pushing was impossible because of the current. They were carried like it or not towards the other archway. Wolff dug at the jelly which clogged the doorway until it broke loose and he was carried headlong into the next room. His brothers came at his heels and slid on their faces across the room and piled into him against the opposite wall. They rolled out of the stream and were on their feet. Wolff turned the air off and lifted his mask. He not only had to speak to them but there would be a minute or two before the room filled in which they could conserve what little supply remained in the tanks. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 76 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:41 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Urizen told me that there is a secret door to a duplicate control room He had it prepared in case somebody ever did get into the main control room It has controls which will deactivate those of the main room But to get to it we have to go through the doorway with the heat ray trap. He didn t have time to tell me how to turn off the heat rays We ll put our masks back on when the water gets too high and then go through. The water should knock the projectors out I hope They placed the masks over their faces and crouched in a corner near the archway to gain protection from the full force of the cur rent. The sea struck the wall opposite the archway and then raced off down the floor and through the door. Seeing that the water was not activating the rays Wolff hurled his stone axe towards the door. Even through his closed lids he saw the dazzle. When he opened his eyes the water was boiling. The axe had been swept on through the arch. The waters rose swiftly carrying the treading Lords up towards the ceiling. When there was only a foot of air between the sea and the ceiling they put on their masks. Wolff dived as close towards the floor as he could get and began swimming. Suddenly the air shut off. He held his breath and continued swimming. There was a glare of light that blinded him and the water seemed to burn his exposed hands and back of neck. He bumped against the side of the arch and was borne out into the next room. Here he shoved his feet against the floor and propelled himself upward. He held his hands out to soften the impact against the ceiling which he could not yet see. His head bumping against stone he removed his mask and breathed in. His lungs filled with air then water slapped him in the mouth and he coughed. His vision returned Theotormon and Luvah were beside him. Wolff lifted his hand and pointed downward. Fol low me He dived his eyes open his hands sliding along the wall. There was a green jade statue a foot high once an idol of some people in some universe squatting in a niche. Wolff rotated its head and a sec tion of the wall opened inwards. The three Lords were carried into the large room. They scrambled to their feet and Wolff ran to a con sole and pulled on a red handled lever. The door closed slowly against the pressure of the water leaving a foot of water in the room. Identifying the console Urizen had told him about there were at least thirty Wolff pressed down a rectangular plate on which was an ideogram of the ancient writing once used by the Lords. He stepped back with the first smile he had had for a long tune. Vala not only won t be able to use her controls any more he said she s trapped in her control room as well. And all gates of es cape in the room are deactivated. Only the permanent gates in the palace like the gate to the waterworld are still on. Wolff reached towards the button that would activate the view screen in the other control room. He withdrew his hand and stood in thought for a moment. The less our sister knows of the true situation the better for us he said. Theotormon come here and listen carefully. Wolff and Luvah hid behind a console and peered through a nar row opening between the console and its screen. Theotormon pushed the button with the end of his flipper. Vala was staring at him her long hair dark red with damp and her face twisted with fury. You she said. Greetings sister Theotormon answered. Are you surprised to see me still living And how do you feel knowing that I have sealed off your escape and rendered you powerless Where are your brothers your betters Vala said trying to see past him into the room. They re dead. Their airtanks gave out and so did mine. But this body that our father gave me enabled me to hold my breath until the water washed away your jelly. So Jadawin is finally dead I don t believe it. You are trying to play a trick on me you stupid slug You re in no position to call names. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 77 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:41 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Let me see his body she said. Theotormon shrugged. That s impossible. He s floating some where in the palace. I barely made it to this room myself. I can t go out to get him without flooding this room. Vala looked at the water on the floor and then she smiled. So you re trapped too. You fish stinking idiot you don t even have the brains of a fish You just told me what your situation is Theotormon gaped. He said But. . . but. . . You may think you have me in your power Vala said. And so you do in a manner of speaking. But you are just as much in mine. I know where the spacecraft is. It can get us off this planet and to an other which has a gate through which we can leave this universe. Now what do you propose to do about this impasse Theotormon scratched the fur on his head with the tip of a flipper. I don t know. Oh yes you do You re stupid but not that stupid You ll make a trade with me. You let me out and I ll let you leave with me in the ship. There s no other way out for either of us. Wolff could not see Theotormon s expression but he could deduce from his tone the cunningness and suspicion on his face. How do I know I can trust you You don t any more than I can trust you. We ll have to arrange this so neither of us can possibly trip the other up. Do you agree Well I don t know. . . This control room won t be harmed if the seas get a mile high and sit forever on the palace. I have food and water enough for a year. I can just sit here and let you die. And then I ll figure some way to get out believe me. I ll discover a way. In that case Theotormon said why don t you do it Because I don t want to stay in this room for a year. I have too many things to do. All right. But what about Chryseis She comes with me. I have plans for her Vala said. Her voice became even more suspicious. Why should you care about her I don t. I just wondered. Maybe . . . maybe you could give her to me. From what Jadawin said she must be very beautiful. Vala laughed and said That would be one form of torture for her. But it isn t enough. No you can t have her. Then it s not a deal Theotormon said. You keep her. See how you like being cooped up with her for a year. Besides I don t really think you can swim to the spacecraft The water pressure will be too much. Vala said You stupid selfish slimegut You d die yourself rather than let me have anything Very well take her then Wolff smiled. He had told Theotormon to bring up Chryseis and so take her mind off him. This business about Chryseis was just irrel evant enough and so Theotormonically selfish that she might be con vinced that he was not hiding the truth. Theotormon clapped his flippers together with glee. Wolff hoped that his joy was all act since he was not sure that Theotormon might not betray him at the last moment. Theotormon said All right. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 78 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:41 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Now how can we get to the spacecraft You ll have to release me first. I m not going to tell you and then have you take off without me. But if I open the door to your room you ll be able to get out ahead of me. Can t you set the controls so they ll open the doors by the time you get here Theotormon grunted as if the thought were a new one. All right Only you ll have to come out of the room with absolutely no clothes on. You must both be nude and emptyhanded. I ll come out of my room weaponless. We ll both leave at exactly the same time and meet in the corridor that links the two rooms. Vala gasped and said I thought . . . You mean you knew all the tune how to get here ... so that s where the other controls are And I thought the other end of the corridor was a wall. It won t do you any good to know Theotormon said. You can t get out until I let you. Oh yes strip Chryseis too. I don t want you to hide any weapons on her. Vala said You re not taking any chances are you Perhaps you re more intelligent than I thought. What was she planning If she did meet him in the middle of the corridor she would be helpless against Theotormon s far greater strength. He would attack her the moment she revealed the location of the spacecraft and she must know that. The truth was that Wolff Luvah and Theotormon knew where the ship was. Theotormon had pretended ignorance only to seem to give her an advantage. She had to be lured out of the room otherwise she would never come out. Wolff knew his sister. She would die and take Chryseis with her rather than surrender. To her it was inconceivable that a Lord would keep a promise not to harm her. She had good reason. In fact Wolff himself though he never thought of himself as a genuine Lord anymore was not sure he would have kept his word to her. Certainly he did not intend that Theotormon adhere to his assurances. Then what did she have in mind Theotormon went over the method of conduct with Vala again pretending that he was not quite sure. Then he deactivated the screen and turned to Wolff and Luvah. Wolff opened the door into the cor ridor so that he and Luvah could go out ahead of time. As Theotor mon had said the corridor linked the two control rooms. Both con trol rooms and the hall between were in an enclosed unit of fourteen feet thick metal alloy. The unit could hold any pressure of water and was resistant even to a direct hit by a hydrogen bomb. The interior wall was coated with a substance which would repel the neutrons of a neutron bomb. Urizen had placed the secret control room in this unit near the main control room for just such situations as this. Anyone who managed to get into the main room would not know that there was an exit to the corridor until part of the seemingly solid wall of the main control room opened. The corridor itself though an emergency convenience had been furnished as if a reception for Lords were to be held in it. It con tained paintings sculptures and furniture that a Terrestrial billion aire could not have purchased with all his fortune. A chandelier made from a single carved diamond weighing half a ton hung from a huge gold alloy chain. And this was not the most valuable object in the corridor. Wolff hid behind a davenport covered with the silky chocolate and azure hide of an animal. Luvah concealed himself behind the base of a statue. Theotormon made sure that they were ready and re turned to the control room to inform Vala that they could now pro ceed to meet each other as planned. He then pressed the button that operated the door to Vala s room. The wall at the other end of the corridor slid upwards. Light poured out of the opening and Vala stuck her head cautiously around the frame. Theotormon did the same from his door. He stepped out quickly ready to hurl himself back if she had a weapon. She gave a low laugh and came out of the doorway her hands held out to show their emptiness. She was naked and magnificent. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 79 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:41 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Wolff gave her a glance. He had eyes only for the woman who fol lowed her. It was his Chryseis the beautiful huge eyed nymph with tiger striped hair. She too was unclothed. The Horn of Shambarimen Theotormon said. I almost forgot Where is it It is in the control room Vala replied. I did not bring it be cause you told me to be emptyhanded. Go get it Chryseis Theotormon said. But when you return with it hold it up above your head at arm s length and do not point it at me. If you make a sudden motion with it I will kill you. Vala s laughter filled the corridor. Are you so suspicious that you suspect even her She would not hurt you She is definitely not going to do anything for me Theotormon did not reply. Instructed by Wolff he was playing the role of the overly alert Lord to keep Vala from suspecting any treachery. If Theotormon had been too trusting she would have scented something foul at once. Vala and Theotormon then advanced towards each other taking a step forward slowly and in unison. It was as if they were partners in a formal dance they moved so stately and in such matching rhythm. Wolff crouched and waited. He had taken his suit off so that it would not hinder his movements. The sweat of tension covered his body. Neither he nor Luvah were armed. They had lost all their own weapons before they reached the secret room. And the room to his dismay had contained no arms. Apparently Urizen had not thought it necessary. Or much more likely there were weapons hidden be hind the walls accessible only to one who knew how to find them. Urizen had not had time to give that information if he had ever in tended to do so. The plan was to wait until Vala had passed Luvah hidden on the other side of the hall. When he rushed out behind her Theotormon would jump her. Wolff would hurl himself from his hiding place and help the other two. Vala stopped several feet away from the diamond chandelier. Theotormon also stopped. She said Well my ugly brother it seems that you have kept your side of the bargain. He nodded and said So where is the spaceship He went forward one step in the hope that she too would take one and so place herself nearer. Vala stood still however. Mock ingly she said The entrance to it is just on the other side of that rose shaped mirror. You could have gone to it and left me to die if you had known about it You witless filth Theotormon snarled and leaped at her. Luvah came out from behind the statue but bumped into Chryseis. Wolff rose and sped straight at Vala. She screamed and held up her right hand the palm at right angles to her arm fingers stiffly pointing toward the ceiling. Out of the palm shot an intensely white beam no thicker than a needle. She moved her hand to her left in a horizontal arc. The beam slashed across Theotormon s neck and his head fell off. For a moment the body stood upright blood fountaining upward from his neck. Then he fell forward. Wolff whirled like a broken field runner. He threw himself down on the floor behind Theotormon s feet. Vala hearing Luvah curse as he recovered from his bump into Chryseis spun around. Evidently she thought that this was the nearest danger and that she had enough time to deal with Wolff. Chryseis had reacted quickly. On seeing the head of the seal man fall off and roll back behind Theotormon she had dived for the pro tection of a statue. Vala s ray took off a chunk of the base of the statue but missed Chryseis. Then Luvah was coming in head down. Vala leaped adroitly aside and chopped down with the edge of the palm of her left hand. Luvah fell forward on his face unconscious. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 80 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:41 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt Why she had not killed him with the tiny beamer implanted in the flesh of her palm was a mystery. Perhaps she wanted someone to save as a torture victim in keeping with the psychology of the Lords. Wolff was helpless or so Vala thought. She advanced towards him. You I shall kill now she said. You re too dangerous to leave alive for a second longer than necessary. I m not dead yet Wolff said. His fingers closed on Theotor mon s head and he hurled it at her. He was up on his feet at once and running towards her knowing that he did not have a chance but hoping that something would happen to deflect her aim long enough. She raised her hand to ward off the grisly projectile. The beam split the head in half but one section continued to fly towards her. The ray directed towards the ceiling momentarily cut the gold alloy chain. And the half ton diamond chandelier came down upon her. Wolff was still charging while all this occurred. He dived onto the floor to be below her line of fire in case she was still living and could use the hand. She glared up at him the light not yet gone from her eyes. Her arms and her body were pinned beneath the diamond from beneath which blood ran. You. . . did it brother she gasped. Chryseis came out from behind the statue to throw herself into his arms. She clung to him and sobbed. He could not blame her for this but there were still things to do. He kissed her a few times hugged her and pushed her away from him. We have to get out while we can he said. Push in on the third gargoyle to the left on the upper decoration on that mirror. She did so the mirror swung hi. Wolff put his unconscious brother on his shoulders and started towards the entrance. Chryseis said Robert What about her He stopped. What about her Are you going to let her suffer like this It may take a long time before she dies. I don t think so he said. Besides she has it coming. Robert Wolff sighed. For a moment he had been a complete Lord again had become the old Jadawin. He put Luvah on the floor and walked over to Vala. She twisted and her hand came loose a section of the shorn diamond falling over onto the floor. Wolff leaped at her and caught her hand just as the ray shot forth from the palm. He twisted her hand so violently that the bones cracked. She cried out once with pain before she died. Directed by Wolff the laser beam had half guillotined her. Wolff Chryseis and Luvah entered the spaceship. It rose straight up the launching shaft to the very top of the palace. Wolff headed the ship for the exit gate hidden in the mountains of the tempusfudger planet. Only then did he have tune to find out how Vala had man aged to get Chryseis from her bed and out of their world. The hexaculum awoke me she said while you were still sleep ing. It Vala s voice warned me that if I tried to wake you you would be killed in a horrible way. Vala told me that only by follow ing her instructions would I prevent your death. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 81 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:41 PM file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20Jose 20 20World 20of 20Tiers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt You should have known better he said. If she had been able to hurt me she would have done it. But then I suppose that you were too concerned for me. You did not dare to take the chance that she might be bluffing. Yes. I wanted to cry out but I was afraid that she might be able to carry out her threats. I was so terrified for you that I was not thinking straight. So I went through the gate she designated one of those gates that take you to a lower level of our planet. I deactivated the alarms before entering it as she ordered. Vala was waiting in the cave where our gate took me. She had already set up a gate to take us to this universe. The rest you know. Wolff turned the controls over to Luvah so that he could embrace and kiss her. She began to weep and soon he was weeping too. His tears were not only from relief for having gotten her back unharmed and relief from the unrelenting strain of the experiences in this world. He wept for his dead brothers and sister. He did not mourn those who had just died the adults. He mourned for his brothers and sister as the children they had once been and for the love they had had for each other as children. He grieved for the loss of what they might have been. file: F rah Philip 20Jose 20Farmer Philip 20...iers 2002 20 20The 20Gates 20of 20Creation.txt 82 of 82 8 27 03 9:23:41 PM

Medicine & Health Sciences;Health, Fitness & Dieting

non-fiction

Limits SSCol Larry Niven 1985 Version 2002.08.18 CONTENTS Introduction The Lion in His Attic Spirals by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle A Teardrop Falls Talisman by Larry Niven and Dian Girard Flare Time The Locusts by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes Yet Another Modest Proposal: The Roentgen Standard MORE TALES FROM THE DRACO TAVERN. Folk Tale The Green Marauder War Movie The Real Thing Limits INTRODUCTION Half my output used to be short stories. It s common knowledge in this field that the money is in novels but it s also true that stories come in their own length. Stretching an idea beyond its length is even worse than over compressing it. Ordinarily I would have continued to write short stories What happened was I hit a bump in my career. A novice writer should try anything not just to pay the rent but because he needs practice versatility skills. Later he must learn to turn down bad offers: the first bump. The second bump comes when he learns to turn down good offers. I m a slow learner. I learned to say no but that was only a couple of years ago. Show me a contract and I flinch but III committed myself years ago it gets signed and then the book must be written. Footfall being written with Jerry Pournelle is a year and a half overdue and finished. But everything else is backed up behind it. I didn t know whether The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring would be one book or two it was conceived as Siamese twins. It s two and The Smoke Ring is awaiting Footfall So are a children s book to be written with Jerry Pournelle and Wendy All and The Legacy of Heoro4 with Jerry again and Steven Barnes. A collection of the Warlock stories needed rewriting to remove redundancies. I ve been rewriting speeches into articles for the Philcon. Where would I find time to write short stories But I did. In 1983 Fred Saberhagen wrote me with a strange proposal. How would I like to write a Berserker story The idea: Fred will ask half a dozen friends to write tales of human Berserker encounters. Fred will shuffle them into the order he likes and write a beginning and an ending to turn it all into a novel. Sure I wanted to write a Berserker story I didn t have to do any research it was all in my head. I ve been reading them long enough. I wrote A Teardrop Falls and sent copies to Fred and to Omni which bought it for an indecently large sum considering that I hadn t even built my own background. I ve since seen other Berserker pastiches in the magazines and I await the novel with some eagerness. There was to be a new magazine on the stands a meld of fact and fiction aimed at the general reading public. Its name: Cosmos. Its editor: Diana King. Diana commissioned a story for that magazine from me and Jerry Pournelle. Topic: probably asteroid mining. Tone: space advocacy and light. What we d really like to be writing I said is To Bring Home the Steel by Don Kingsbury. Only it s already done. Call it a character flaw: I have to be inspired. Jerry and I gathered one evening to plot the story. I didn t get going until we realized who it was that scared Jackie Halfie into leaving Earth. What happened Cosmos became Omni Diana King resigned and was replaced by Ben Bova. Ben rejected Spirals because it was too long. The story ultimately appeared in Jim Baen s Destinies. Collaborations are hard work. The only valid excuse for collaborating is this: there is a story you would like to write and you don t have the skills you d need to write it alone. Exceptions Sure Jerry and I wrote Spirals together because it was more fun that way. And there is a classic exception a way of collaborating that holds no risks at all. Here s how it works. You ve got a story in your trunk. Somewhere in there is a terrific story idea but it never jelled. You broke your heart over it when you didn t yet have the skills and now you can t throw it away and you can t bear to look at the damn thing either. Then you meet a writer who seems to have the skills you would have needed. Hand him the manuscript Can you do anything with this Look: you ve already done your share of the work and it s earned you nothing. He s done no work at all. If he says No you ve lost nothing. He s lost nothing. If he says Yes it s his risk. Maybe you can get reinspired. It was that way with The Locusts. I d only recently met Steven Barnes. The direction he was taking he would soon become the best of the New Wave writers. Well I couldn t have that I handed him The Locusts and he made it work. Ultimately I watched that story lose him his first Hugo Award. We ve since written two novels together. At the Phoenix World Science fiction convention in 1979 I told James Baen that I had run out of anything to say about the Warlock s Era. Jim made me a proposal. We ll invite some good people to write stories set in the Warlock s world. You be editor. I ll do all the work you take all the credit. I don t think either of us believed it would work out that way and it didn t. I didn t expect Jim to leave Ace Books I also had my doubts as to whether one writer would want to work in another s universe. But we tried it. I hoped wistfully that reading stories set in my own universe might reinspire me. It did. Dian Girard is an old friend and writing Talisman with her was a delightful experience. I wrote The Lion in His Attic on my own by moving my favorite restaurant and restauranteur 14 000 years into the past. That s Mon Grenier in Reseda owned and run by Andre Lion. Both stories have appeared in More Magic three years overdue. The Roentgen Standard was party conversation among some of the crazier members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. Most of what I did that night was listen. When Omni bought the article I earmarked half the money as a LASFS contribution. The LASFS turned the money over to the Viking Fund lest mankind sever communications with Mars. Beginning around 1970 Harlan Ellison enlisted a team to build a solar system and to write stories within it. The project was to become a book Harlan s World: Medea. When the book appears Harlan will assuredly tell the tale of Medea s creation in detail and so I need not. But my patience is legendary read: half imaginary and I don t write stories to be read only by an editor. Flare Time must be ten years old by now. I managed to get Harlan s reluctant permission to publish Flare Time in a British anthology Andromeda and some years later in Amazing Stories. I took the right to publish it here. I like bars. Gavagan s Bar Jorkens and the Billiards Club the White Hart Callahan s Saloon: I like the ambience the decor the funny chemicals. I wanted one for my own. I wanted a vehicle for dealing with philosophical questions. I wanted to write vignettes. How else would I find time to write anything but novels I found it all in the Draco Tavern. The chirpsithra In particular claim to own the galaxy though they only use tidally locked worlds of red dwarf stars and to have been civilized for billions of years. It may be so. If confronted with any easily described sufficiently universal philosophical question the chirps may certainly claim to have solved it. Best yet the Draco Tavern reminds me of those wonderful multispecies gatherings on the old Galaxy covers. On the subject of limits: We are the creators. A writer accepts what limits he chooses and no others. Often enough it s the limits that make the story. And we know it. In historical fiction the author may torture probability and even move dates around if it moves his main character into the most interesting event points but he would prefer not to because events form the limits he has chosen. In fantasy he makes the rules and is bound only by internal consistency. In science fiction he accepts limits set by the universe and these are the most stringent of all but only if he so chooses. One penalty for so choosing is this: the readers may catch him in mistakes. I ve been caught repeatedly. It s part of the game and I m willing to risk it. I ve also been known to give up a law or two for the sake of a story. I ve broken the lightspeed barrier to move my characters about. I gave up conservation of rotation for a series of tales on teleportation. You ll find fantasy here too but observe how the stories are shaped by the limits I ve set. Most of my stories have puzzles in them and puzzles require rules. I seem to be happiest with science fiction the literature of the possible where an army of scientists is busily defining my rules for me. Other tales in the Draco Tavern series may be found in my Convergent Series published by Del Rey Books in 1979. What have we here Long stories short stories very short stories new and old. Collaborations. Science fiction and fantasy and economic theory. Have fun. THE LION IN HIS ATIIC Before the quake it had been called Castle Minterl but few outside Minterl remembered that. Small events drown in large ones. Atlantis itself an entire continent had drowned in the tectonic event that sank this small peninsula. For seventy years the seat of government had been at Beesh and that place was called Castle Minter . Outsiders called this drowned place Nihilil s Castle for its last lord if they remembered at all. Three and a fraction stories of what had been the south tower still stood above the waves. They bore a third name now: Rordray s Attic. The sea was choppy today. Durily squinted against bright sunlight glinting off waves. Nothing of Nihilil s Castle showed beneath the froth. The lovely golden haired woman ceased peering over the side of the boat. She lifted her eyes to watch the south tower come toward them. She murmured into Karskon s ear And that s all that s left. Thone was out of earshot busy lowering the sails but he might glance back. The boy was not likely to have seen a lovelier woman in his life and as far as Thone was concerned his passengers were seeing this place for the first time. Karskon turned to look at Durily and was relieved. She looked interested eager even charmed. But she sounded shaken. It s all gone Tapestries and banquet hail and bedrooms and the big ballroom...the gardens...all down there with the fishes and not even merpeople to enjoy them...that little knob of rock must have been Crown Hill...Oh Karskon I wish you could have seen it. She shuddered though her face still wore the mask of eager interest. Maybe the riding birds survived. Nihilil kept them on the roof. You couldn t have been more than...ten How can you remember so much A shrug. After the Torovan invasion after we had to get out Mother talked incessantly about palace life. I think she got lost in the past. I don t blame her much considering what the present was like. What she told me and what I saw myself it s all a little mixed up after so long. I saw the traveling eye though. How did that happen Mother was there when a messenger passed it to the king. She snatched it out of his hand playfully you know and admired it and showed it to me. Maybe she thought he d give it to her. He got very angry and he was trying not to show it and that was even more frightening. We left the palace the next day. Twelve days before the quake. Karskon asked What about the other But warning pressure from her hand cut him off. Thone had finished rolling up the sail. As the boat thumped against the stone wall he sprang upward onto what had been a balcony and moored the bow line fast. A girl in her teens came from within the tower to fasten the stern line for him. She was big as Thone was big: not yet fat but hefty rounded of feature. Thone s sister Karskon thought a year or two older. Durily seeing no easier way out of the boat reached hands up to them. They heaved as she jumped. Karskon passed their luggage up leaving the cargo for others to move and joined them. Thone made introduction. Sir Karskon Lady Durily this is Estrayle my sister. Estrayle they ll be our guests for a month. I ll have to tell Father. We bring red meat in trade. The girl said Oh very good Father will love that. How was the trip Well enough. Sometimes the spells for wind just don t do anything. Then there s no telling where you wind up. To Karskon and Durily he said We live on this floor. These outside stairs take you right up past us. You ll be staying on the floor above. The top floor is the restaurant. Durily asked And the roof It s flat. Very convenient. We raise rabbits and poultry there. Thone didn t see the look that passed across Durily s face. Shall I show you to your rooms And then I ll have to speak to Father. Nihilil s Castle dated from the last days of real magic. The South Tower was a wide cylindrical structure twelve stories tall with several rooms on each floor. In this age nobody would have tried to build anything so ambitious. When Rordray petitioned for the right to occupy these ruins he had already done so. Perhaps the idea amused Minterl s new rulers. A restaurant in Nihilil s Castle Reached only by boats At any rate nobody else wanted the probably haunted tower. The restaurant was the top floor. The floor below would serve as an inn but as custom decreed that the main meal was served at noon it was rare for guests to stay over. Rordray and his wife and eight children lived on the third floor down. Though Rordray s Attic was gaining some reputation on the mainland the majority of Rordray s guests were fishermen. They often paid their score in fish or in smuggled wines. So it was that Thone found Rordray and Merle hauling in lines through the big kitchen window. Even Rordray looked small next to Merle. Merle was two and a half yards tall and rounded everywhere with no corners and no indentations: his chin curved in one graceful sweep down to his wishbone his torso expanded around him like a tethered balloon. There was just enough solidity enough muscle in the fat that none of it sagged at all. And that was considerable muscle. The flat topped fish they were wrestling through the window was as big as a normal man but Merle and Rordray handled it easily. They settled the corpse on its side on the center table and Merle asked Don t you wish you had an oven that size I do said Rordray. What is it Dwarf island fish. See the frilly spines all over the top of the thing Meant to be trees. Moor at an island go ashore. When you re all settled the island dives under you then snaps the crew up one by one while you re trying to swim. But they re magical these fish and with the magic dying away I m wondering how to cook the beast. That really wasn t Merle s department but he was willing to advise. Low heat in an oven for a long time maybe an eighth of an arc meaning an eighth of the sun s path from horizon to horizon. Rordray nodded. Low heat covered. I ll heat it first. I can fiddle up a sauce but I ll have to see how fatty the meat is...All right Merle. Six meals in trade. Anyone else could have a dozen but you Merle nodded placidly. He never argued price. I ll start now. He went through into the restaurant section scraping the door on both sides and Rordray turned to greet his son. We have guests said Thone and we have red meat and we have a bigger boat. I thought it proper to bargain for you. Guests good. Red meat good. What have you committed me to Let me tell you the way of it. Thone was not used to making business judgments in his father s name. He looked down at his hands and said Most of the gold you gave me I had spent. I had spices and dried meat and vegetables and pickle and the rest. Then a boat pulled in with sides of ox for sale. I was wondering what I could sell to buy some of that beef when these two found me at the dock. Was it you they were looking for I think so. The lady Durily is of the old Minterl nobility judging by her accent. Karskon speaks Minterl but he might be of the new nobility the invaders from Torov. Odd to find them together You didn t trust them. Why did you deal with them Thone smiled. Their offer. The fame of Rordray s Attic has spread throughout Minterl so they say. They want a place to honeymoon they had married that same day. For two weeks stay they offered...well enough to buy four sides of ox and enough left over to trade Strandhugger in on a larger boat large enough for the beef and two extra passengers. Where are they now And where s the beef I told...eep. It s still aboard. Rordray roared. Anita I meant to tell Estrayle to do something about that but it Never mind you ve done well. Anita came hurrying from the restaurant area. Rordray s wife resembled her husband to some extent: big boned heavy placid of disposition carrying her weight well. What is it Set the boys to unloading the new boat. Four sides of beef. Get those into the meatbox fast they can take their time with the other goods. She left calling loudly for the boys. Rordray said The guests I gave them the two leeward rooms as a suite. Good. Why don t you tell them dinner is being served And then you can have your own meal. The dining hall was a roar of voices but when Rordray s guests appeared the noise dropped markedly. Both were wearing court dress of a style which had not yet reached the provinces. The man was imposing in black and silver with a figured silver patch over his right eye. The lady was eerily beautiful dressed in flowing sea green and a thumblength taller than her escort. They were conversation stoppers and they knew it. And here a man came hurrying to greet them clapping his hands in delight. Lady Durily Lord Karskon I sin Rordray. Are your quarters comfortable Most of the middle floor is empty we can offer a variety of choices Quite comfortable thank you Karskon said. Rordray had taken him by surprise. Rumor said that Rordray was a were lion. He was large and his short reddish blond hair might be the color of a lion s mane but Rordray was balding on top and smooth shaven and well fed with a round and happy face. He looked far from ferocious . Rondray Bring em here Rordray looked around disconcerted. I have an empty table in the corner but if you would prefer Merle s company... The man who had called was tremendous. The huge platter before him bore an entire swordfish fillet. Durily stared in what might have been awe or admiration. Merle by all means And can you be persuaded to join us I would be delighted. Rordray escorted them to the huge man s table and seated them. The swordfish is good The swordfish is wonderful Merle boomed. He d made amazing progress with the half swordfish while they were approaching. It s baked with apricots and slivered nuts and...something else I can t tell. Rordray The nuts are soaked in a liqueur called brosa from Rynildissen and dried in the oven. I ll try it Karskon said and Durily nodded. Rordray disappeared into the kitchen. The noise level was rising toward its previous pitch. Durily raised her voice just high enough. Most of you seem to be fishers. It must have been hard for you after the merpeople went away. It was Lady. They had to learn to catch their own fish instead of trading. All the techniques had to be invented from scratch. They tell me they tried magic at first. To breathe water you know. Some of them drowned. Then came fishing spears and special boats and nets. You said they I m a whale said Merle. I came later. Oh. There aren t many were folk around these days. Anywhere. We aren t all gone Merle said while Karskon smiled at how easily they had broached the subject. The merpeople went away all right but it wasn t just because they re magical creatures. Their life styles include a lot of magic. Whales don t practice much magic. Even so Karskon wondered what are you doing on land Aren t you afraid you might ah change Magic isn t dependable any more But Rordray is. Rordray would get me out in time. Anyway I spend most of my time aboard Shrimp. See if the change comes over me there it s no problem. A whale s weight would swamp my little boat and leave me floating. I still don t see C Sharks Ptli. Damn brainless toothy wandering weapons The more you kill the more the blood draws more till Merle shifted restlessly. Anyway there are no sharks ashore. And there are books and people to talk to. Out on the sea there s only the whale songs. Now I like the singing who wouldn t But it s only family gossip and weather patterns and shoreline changes and where are the fish. That sounds useful. Sure it is. Fisherfolk learn the whale songs to find out where the fish are. But for any kind of intelligent conversation you have to come ashore. Ah here s Rordray. Rordray set three plates in place bearing generous slabs of swordfish and vegetables cooked in elaborate fashions. What s under discussion Were creatures Karskon said. They re having a terrible time of it almost everywhere. Rordray sat down. Even in Rynildissen The wolf people sector Well Durily said uncomfortably they re changing. You know there are people who can change into animals but that s because there are were folk among their ancestors. Most were folk are animals who learned how to take human form. The human shape has magic in it you know. Rordray nodded and she continued. In places where the magic s gone it s terrible. The animals lose their minds. Even human folk with some animal ancestry they can t make the change but their minds aren t quite human either. Wolf ancestry makes for good soldiers but it s hard for them to stop. A touch of hyena or raccoon makes for thieves. A man with a touch of lion makes a good general but Merle shifted restlessly as if the subject were painful to him. His platter was quite clean now. Oh to hell with the problems of were folk. Tell me how you lost your eye. Karskon jumped but he answered. Happened in the baths when I was thirteen. We were having a fight with wet towels and one of my halfbrothers flicked my eye out with the corner of a towel. Dull story. You should make up a better one. Want some help Karskon shook his head smiling despite himself. Where are you from Inland. It s been years since I tasted fresh fish. You were right it s wonderful. He paused but the silence forced him to continue. I m half Torovan half Minterl. Duke Chamil of Konth made me his librarian and I teach his legitimate children. Lady Durily descends from the old Minterl nobility. She s one of Duchess Chamil s ladies in waiting. That s how we met. I never understood shoreside politics Merle said. There was a war wasn t there long ago Karskon answered for fear that Durily would. Torov invaded after the quake. It was an obvious power vacuum. The tales tell that the Torovan armies never got this far south. What was left of the dukes surrendered first. You ll find a good many of the old Minterls hereabouts. The Torovans have to go in packs when they come here. Merle was looking disgusted. Whales don t play at war. It s not a game Karskon said. Rordray added Or at least the stakes are too high for ordinary people. There was murky darkness black with a hint of green. Blocky shapes. Motion flicked past drifted back more slowly. Too dark to see but Karskon sensed something looking back at him. A fish A ghost Karskon opened his good eye. Durily was at the window looking out to sea. Leftward waves washed the spike of island that had been Crown Hill. There was grass almost to the top Durily said but the peak was always a bare knob. We picnicked there once the whole family What else do you remember Anything we can use Two flights of stairs Durily said. You ve seen the one that winds up the outside of the tower like a snake. Snake headed it used to be but the quake must have knocked off the head. Animated No just a big carving...urn...it could have been animated once. The magic was going out of everything. The merpeople were all gone the mainlanders were trying to learn to catch their own fish and we had trouble getting food. Nihilil was thinking of moving the whole court to Beesh. Am I rambling too much darling No telling what we can use. Keep it up. The inside stairs lead down from the kitchen through the laundry room on this floor and through Thone s room on the lower floor. Thone. Karskon s hand strayed to his belt buckle which was silver and massive which was in fact the hilt of a concealed dagger. He s not as big as Rordray but I d hate to have him angry with me. They re all too big. We d best not be caught...unless we or you can find a legitimate reason for being in Thone s room Durily scowled. He s just not interested. He sees me he knows I m a woman but he Doesn t seem to care...or else he s very stupid about suggestions. That s possible. If he s part of a were lion family He wouldn t mate with human beings Durily laughed and it sounded like silver coins falling. No he thought she wouldn t have had trouble seducing a young man...or anything male. I gave her no trouble. Even now knowing the truth Our host isn t a were lion she said. Lions eat red meat. We ve brought red meat to his table but he was eating fish. Lions don t lust for a varied diet and they aren t particular about what they eat. Our host has exquisite taste. If I d known how fine a cook he is I d have come for that alone. He shows some other signs. The whole family s big but he s a lot bigger. Why Docs he shave his face and clip his hair short Is it to hide a mane Docs it matter if they re lions We don t want to be caught Durily said. Any one of them is big enough to be a threat. Stop fondling that canape sticker dear. This trip we use stealth and magic. Oddly reluctant Karskon said Speaking of magic... Yes. It s time. You re quite right. They re hiding something Rordray said absently. He was carving the meat from a quarter of ox and cutting it into chunks briskly apparently risking his fingers at every stroke. What of it Don t we all have something to hide They are my guests. They appreciate my food. Well said his wife don t we all have something worth gossipping about And for a honeymooning couple At which point Estrayle burst into a peal of laughter. Arilta asked Now what brought that on But Estrayle only shook her head and bent over the pale yellow roots she was cutting. Arilta turned back to her husband. They don t seem loving enough somehow. And she so beautiful too. It makes a pattern Rordray said. The woman is beautiful as you noticed. She is the Duchess s lady in waiting. The man serves the Duke. Could Lady Durily be the Duke s mistress Might the Duke have married her to one of his men It would provide for her if she s pregnant. It might keep the Duchess happy. It happens. Arilta said Ah. She began dumping double handfuls of meat into a pot. Estrayle added the chopped root. On the other hand Rordray said she is of the old Minterl aristocracy. Karskon may be too half anyway. Perhaps they re not welcome near Beesh because of some failed plot. The people around here are of the old Minterl blood. They d protect them if it came to that. Well his wife said with some irritation which is it Rordray teased her with a third choice. They spend money freely. Where Docs it come from They could be involved in a theft we will presently hear about. Estrayle looked up from cutting onions tears dripping past a mischievous smile. Listen for word of a large cat s eye emerald. Estrayle you will explain that said her mother. Estrayle hesitated but her father s bands had stopped moving and he was looking up. It was after supper she said. I was turning down the beds. Karskon found me. We talked a bit and then he well made advances. Poor little man he weighs less than I do. I slapped him hard enough to knock that lovely patch right off his face. Then I informed him that if he s interested in marriage he should be talking to my father and in any case there are problems he should be aware of... Her eyes were dancing. I must say he took it well. He asked about my dowry I hinted at undersea treasures. When I said we d have to live here he said at least he d never have to worry about the cooking but his religion permitted him only one wife and I said what a pity The jewel Rordray reminded her. Oh it s beautiful Deep green with a blazing vertical line just like a cat s eye. He wears it in the socket of his right eye. Arilta considered. If he thinks that s a safe place to hide it he should get a less flamboyant patch. Someone might steal that silver thing. Whatever their secret it s unlikely to disturb us Rordray said. And this is their old seat of royalty. Even the ghost...which reminds me. Jarper The empty air he spoke to remained empty. He said I haven t seen Jarper since lunch. Has anyone Nobody answered. Rordray continued I noticed him hovering behind Karskon at lunch. Karskon must be carrying something magical. Maybe the jewel Oh never mind Jarper can take care of himself I was saying Jarper probably won t bother our guests. He s of old Minterl blood himself. if he had blood. They stuffed wool around the door and around the windows. They propped a chair under the doorknob. Karskon and Durily had no intention of being disturbed at this point. An innkeeper who found his guests marking patterns on the floor with powdered bone and heating almost fresh blood over a small flame could rightly be expected to show annoyance. Durily spoke in a language once common to the Sorcerer s Guild now common to nobody. The words seemed to hurt her throat and no wonder Karskon thought. He had doffed his silver eye patch. He tended the flame and the pot of blood and stayed near Durily as instructed. He closed his good eye and saw green tinged darkness. Something darker drifted past slowly something huge and rounded that suddenly vanished with a flick of finny tail. Now a drifting current of luminescence congealing somehow to a vaguely human shape. The night he robbed the jewel merchant s shop this sight had almost killed him. The Movement had wealth to buy the emerald but Durily swore that the Torovan lords must not learn that the jewel existed. She hadn t told him why. It wasn t for the Movement that he had obeyed her. The Movement would destroy the Torovan invaders would punish his father and his half brothers for their arrogance for the way they had treated him for the loss of his eye. But he had obeyed her. He was her slave in those days the slave of his lust for the Lady Durily his father s mistress. He had guessed that it was glamour that held him: magic. It hadn t seemed to matter. He had invaded the jeweler s shop expecting to die and it hadn t mattered. The merchant had heard some sound and come to investigate. Karskon had already scooped up everything he could find of value to distract attention from the single missing stone. Waiting for discovery in the dark cellar he had pushed the jewel into his empty eye socket. Greenish darkness drifting motion a sudden flicker that might be a fish s tail. Karskon was seeing with his missing eye. The jeweler had found him while he was distracted but Karskon had killed him after all. Afterward knowing that much he had forced Durily to tell the rest. She had lost a good deal of her power over him. He had outgrown his terror of that greenish dark place. He had seen it every night while he waited for sleep these past two years. Karskon opened his good eye to find that they had company. The color of fading fog it took the wavering form of a wiry old man garbed for war with his helmet tucked under his arm. I want to speak to King Nihilil Durily said. Fetch him. Your pardon Lady. The voice was less than a whisper clearer than a memory. I c can t leave here. Who were you The fog wisp straightened to attention. Sergeant Jarper Sleen serving Minterl and the King. I was on duty in the watchtower when the land th th thrashed like an island fish submerging. The wall broke my arm and some ribs. After things got quiet again there were only these three floors left and no food anywhere. I s starved to death. Durily examined him with a critical eye. You seem nicely solid after seventy six years. The ghost smiled. That s Rordray s doing. He lets me take the smells of his cooking as offerings. But I can t leave where I d died. Was the King home that day Lady I have to say that he was. The quake came fast. I don t doubt he drowned in his throne room. Drowned Durily said thoughtfully. All right. She poured a small flask of seawater into the blood which was now bubbling. Something must have been added to keep it from clotting. She spoke high and fast in the Sorcerer s Guild tongue. The ghost of Jarper Sleen sank to its knees. Karskon saw the draperies wavering as if heated air was moving there and when he realised what that meant he knelt too. An unimaginative man would have seen nothing. This ghost was more imagination than substance in fact the foggy crown had more definition more reality than the head beneath. Its voice was very much like a memory surfacing from the past...not even Karskon s past but Durily s. You have dared to waken Minterl s king. Seventy six years after the loss of Atlantis and the almost incidental drowning of the seat of government of Minterl the ghost of Minterl s king seemed harmless enough. But Durily s voice quavered. You knew me. Durily. Lady Tinylla of Beesh was my mother. Durily. You ve grown said the ghost. Well what do you want of me The barbarians of Torov have invaded Minterl. Have you ever been tired unto death when the pain in an old wound keeps you awake nonetheless Well tell me of these invaders. If you can lure them here I and my army will pull them under the water. Karskon thought that Minterl s ancient king couldn t have drowned a bumblebee. Again he kept silent while Durily said They invaded the year after the great quake. They have ruled Minter for seventy four years. The palace is drowned but for these top floors. Durily s voice became a whip. They are used as an inn Rabbits and chickens are kept where the fighting birds roosted The ghost king s voice grew stronger. Why was I not told This time Karskon spoke. We can t lure them here to a drowned island. We must fight them where they rule in Beesh. And who are you I am Karskon Lor Your Majesty. My mother was of Beesh. My father a Torovan calling himself a lord Chamil of Konth. Lord Chamil raised me to be his librarian. His legitimate sons he Karskon fell silent. You re a Torovan s bastard But you would strike against the Torovan invaders. How Dually seemed minded to let him speak. Karskon lifted the silver eye patch to show the great green gem. There were two of these weren t there Durily tells me they were used for spying. The King said What you keep in your eye socket was the traveling stone. Usually I had it mounted in a ring. If I thought a lord needed watching I made him a present of it. If he was innocent I made him another present and took it back. Karskon heaved a shuddering sigh. He had almost believed always he had almost believed. Durily asked Where was the other stone Did your mother tell you of my secret suite For times when I wanted company away from the Queen It was a very badly kept secret. Many ladies could describe that room. Your mother was one. The ghost smiled. But it stood empty most of the time except for the man on watch in the bathing chamber. There is a statue of the one eyed god in the bathing chamber and its eye is a cat s eye emerald. Durily nodded. Can you guide us there I can. Can you breathe under water Durily smiled. Yes. The gem holds mana. If it leaves Minter castle the ghosts will fade. Durily lost her smile. King Nihilil I will show you. Duty runs two ways between a king and his subjects. Now A day or two. We ll have to reach the stairwell past the innkeeper s family. The ghosts went where ghosts go. Karskon and Dually pulled the wool loose from the windows and opened them wide. A brisk sea wind whipped away the smell of scorched blood. I wish we could have done this on the roof she said viciously. Among Rordray s damned chickens. Used their blood. It happened the second day after their arrival. Karskon was expecting it. The dining room was jammed before noon. Rordray s huge pot of stew dwindled almost to nothing. He set his older children to frying thick steaks with black pepper and cream and essence of wine his younger children to serving. Providentially Merle showed up and Rordray set him to moving tables and chairs to the roof. The younger children set the extra tables. Karskon and Durily found themselves squeezing through a host of seamen to reach the roof. Rordray laughed as he apologized. But after all it s your own doing I have red meat Usually there is nothing but fish and shellfish. What do you prefer My stew has evaporated poof but I can offer Durily asked Is there still fish Rordray nodded happily and vanished. Cages of rabbits and pigeons and large bewildered looking moos had been clustered in the center of the roof to give the diners a sea view. A salvo of torpeDocs shot from the sea: bottlenosed mammals with a laughing expression. They acted like they were trying to get someone s attention. Merle carrying a table and chairs said Merpeople. They must be lost. Where the magic s been used up they lose their half human shape and their sense too. If they re still around when I put out I ll lead them out to. Rordray served them himself but didn t join them. Today he was too busy. Under a brilliant blue sky they ate island fish baked with slivered nuts and some kind of liqueur and vegetables treated with respect. They ate quickly. Butterflies fluttered in Karskon s belly but he was jubilant. Rordray had red meat. Of course the Attic was jammed of course Rordray and his family were busy as a fallen beehive. The third floor Would be entirely deserted. Water black and stagnant covered the sixth step down. Durily Stopped before she reached it. Come closer she said. Stay close to me. Karskon s protective urge responded to her fear and her beauty. But he reminded himself it wasn t his nearness she needed it was the gem. He moved down to join Dually and her ally. She arrayed her equipment on the steps. No blood this time: King Nihulil was already with them barely like an intrusive memory at her side. She began to chant in the Sorcerer s Guild tongue. The water sank step by step. What had been done seventy odd years ago could be undone partially temporarily. Durily s voice grew deep and rusty. Karskon watched as her hair faded from golden to white as the curves of her body drooped. Wrinkles formed on her face her neck her arms. Glamour is a lesser magic but it takes mona. The magic that was Durily s youth was being used to move seawater now. Karskon had thought he was ready for this. Now he found himself staring flinching back until Durily without interrupting herself snarled teeth brown or missing and gestured him down. He descended the wet stone stairs. Durily followed moving stiffly. King Nihilil floated ahead of them like foxfire on the water. The sea had left the upper floors but water still sluiced from the landings. Karskon s torch illuminated dripping walls and once a stranded fish. Within his chest his heart was fighting for its freedom. On the fifth floor down there were side corridors. Karskon peering into their darkness shied violently from a glimpse of motion. An eel thrashed as it drowned in air. Eighth floor down. Behind him Durily moved as if her joints hurt. Her appearance repelled him. The deep lines in her face weren t smile wrinkles they were selfishness sulks rage. And her voice ran on and her hands danced in creaky curves. She can t hurry. She d fail Can t leave her behind. Her spells my jewel: keep them together or we drown. But the ghost was drawing ahead of them. Would he leave us Here Worse King Nihilil was becoming hard to see. Blurring. The whole corridor seemed filled with the restless fog that was the King s ghost . No. The King s ghost had multiplied. A horde of irritated or curious ghosts had joined the procession. Karskon shivered from the cold and wondered how much the cold was due to ghosts rubbing up against him. Tenth floor down...and the procession had become a crowd. Karskon trailing could no longer pick out the King. But the ghosts streamed out of the stairwell flowed away down a corridor and Karskon followed. A murmuring was in the air barely audible a hundred ghosts whispering gibberish in his ear. The sea had not retreated from the walls and ceiling here. Water surrounded them ankle deep as they walked rounding up the corridor walls and curving over their heads to form a huge complex bubble. Carpet disintegrated under Karskon s boots. To his right the wall ended. Karskon looked over a stone railing down into the water into a drowned ballroom. There were bones at the bottom. Swamp fires formed on the water s surface. More ghosts. The ghosts had paused. Now they were like a swirling continuous glowing fog. Here and there the motion suggested features...and Karskon suddenly realised that he was watching a riot ghost against ghost. They d realised why he was here. Drowning the intruders would save the jewel save their fading lives. Not drowning them would repel Minterl s enemies. Karskon nerved himself and waded into them. Hands tried to clutch him...a broadsword shape struck his throat and broke into mist. He was through them standing before a heavy ornately carved door. The King s ghost was waiting. Silently he showed Karskon how to manipulate a complex lock. Presently he mimed turning a brass knob and threw his weight back. Karskon imitated him. The door swung open. A bedchamber and a canopied bed like a throne. If this place was a ruse Nihilil must have acted his part with verve. The sea was here pushing in against the bubble. Karskon could see a bewildered school of minnows in a corner of the chamber. The leader took a wrong turn and the whole school whipped around to follow him through the water interface and suddenly into the air. They flopped as they fell splashed into more water and scattered. A bead of sweat ran down Durily s cheek. The King s ghost waited patiently at another door. Terror was swelling in Karskon s throat. Fighting fear with self corrected rage he strode soggily to the door and threw it open before the King s warning gesture could register. He was looking at a loaded crossbow aimed throat high. The string had rotted and snapped. Karskon remembered to breathe forced himself to breathe... It was a tiled bathroom sure enough. There was a considerable array of erotic statuary some quite good. The Roze Kattee statue would have been better for less detail Karskon thought. A skeleton in the pool wore a rotting bath attendant s kilt that would be Nihilil s spy. The one eyed god in a corner...yes. The eye not covered by a patch gleamed even in this dim watery light. Gleamed green with a bright vertical pupil. Karskon closed his good eye and found himself looking at himself Grinning eye closed he moved toward the statue. Fumbling in his pouch for the chisel. Odd to see himself coming toward himself like this. And Durily behind him the triumph beginning to show through the exhaustion. And behind her He drew his sword as he spun. Dually froze in shock as he seemed to leap at her. The bubble of water trembled the sea began to flow down the walls before she recovered herself. But by then Karskon was past her and trying to skewer the intruder who danced back laughing through the bedroom and through its ornate door while Karskon Karskon checked himself. The emerald in his eye socket was supplying the magical energy to run the spell that held back the water. It had to stay near Durily. She d drilled him on this over and over until he could recite it in his sleep. Rordray stood in the doorway comfortably out of reach. He threw his arms wide careless of the big broad bladed kitchen knife in one hand and said But what a place to spend a honeymoon Tastes differ Karskon said. Innkeeper this is none of your business. There is a thing of power down here. I ve known that for a long time. You re here for it aren t you The spying stone Karskon said. You don t even know what it is Whatever it is I m afraid you can t have it Rordray said. Perhaps you haven t considered the implications Oh but I have. We ll sell the traveling stone to the barbarian king in Beesh. From that moment on the Movement will know everything he Docs. Can you think of any reason why I should care Karskon made a sound of disgust. So you support the Torovans I support nobody. Am I a lord or a soldier No I feed people. If someone should supplant the Torovans I will feed the new conquerors. I don t care who is at the top. We care. Who You because you haven t the rank of your half brothers The elderly Lady Durily who wants vengeance on her enemies grandchildren Or the ghosts It was a ghost who told me you were down here. Beyond Rordray Karskon watched faintly luminous fog swirling in the corridor. The war of ghosts continued. And Dually was tiring. He couldn t stay here he had to pry out the jewel He asked Is it the jewel you want You couldn t have reached it without Durily s magic. If you distract her now you ll never reach the air with or without the jewel. We ll all drown. Karskon kept his sword s point at eye level If Rordray was a were lion But he didn t eat red meat. The jewel has to stay Rordray said. Why do you think these walls are still standing Karskon didn t answer. The quake that sank Atlantis the quake that put this entire peninsula under water. Wouldn t it have shaken down stone wails But this palace dates from the Sorcerer s Guild period. Magic spells were failing but not always. The masons built this palace of good solid stone. Then they had the structure blessed by a competent magician. Yes. The wails would have been shaken down without the blessing and some source of mana to power it. You see the problem. Remove the talisman the castle crumbles. He might be right Karskon thought. But not until both emeralds were gone and Karskon too. Rordray was still out of reach. He didn t handle that kitchen knife like a swordsman and in any case it was too short to be effective. At a dead run Karskon thought he could catch the beefy chef...but what of Durily and the spell that held back the water Fool She had the other jewel the spying stone He charged. Rordray whirled and ran down the hall. The ghost fog swirled apart as he burst through. He was faster than he looked but Karskon was faster still. His sword was nearly pricking Rordray s buttocks when Rordray suddenly leapt over the banister. Karskon leaned over the dark water. The ghosts crowded around him were his only light source now. Rordray surfaced thirty feet above the ballroom floor and well out into the water laughing. Well my guest can you swim Many mainlanders can t. Karskon removed his boots. He might wait let Rordray tire himself treading water but Durily must be tiring even faster and growing panicky as she wondered where he had gone. He couldn t leave Rordray at their backs. He didn t dive he lowered himself carefully into the water then swam toward Rordray. Rordray backstroked grinning. Karskon followed. He was a fine swimmer. Rordray was swimming backward into a corner of the ballroom. Trapping himself The water surface rose behind him curving up the wall. Could Rordray swim uphill Rordray didn t try. He dove. Karskon dove after him kicking peering down. There were patches of luminosity confusing...and a dark shape far below...darting away at a speed Karskon couldn t hope to match. Appalled Karskon lunged to the surface blinked and saw Rordray clamber over the railing. He threw Karskon s boots at his head and dashed back toward the King s secret bedroom. The old woman was still waiting with the King s ghost for her companion. Rordray tapped her shoulder. He said Boo. She froze then tottered creakily around to face him. Where is Karskon In the ballroom. Water was flowing down the walls knee high and rising. Rordray was smiling as at a secret joke as he d smiled while watching her savor her first bite of his incredible swordfish. It meant something different now. Durily said Very well you killed him. Now if you want to live get me that jewel and I will resume the spells. If our plans succeed I can offer Karskon s place in the new nobility to you or your son. Otherwise we both drown. Karskon could tell you why I refuse. I need the magic in the jewel to maintain my inn. With the traveling jewel Karskon brought me this structure will remain stable for many years. Rordray didn t seem to notice that the King s ghost was clawing at his eyes. The water was chest high. Both jewels or we don t leave the old woman said and immediately resumed her spell hands waving wildly voice raspy with effort. She felt Rordray s hands on her body and squeaked in outrage then in terror as she realized he was tickling her. Then she doubled in helpless laughter. The water walls were collapsing flowing down. The odd magical bubble was collapsing around him. Clawing at the stone banister Karskon heard his air supply roaring back up the stairwell out through the broken windows away. A wave threw him over the banister and he tried to find his footing but already it was too deep. Then the air was only a few silver patches on the ceiling and the seawash was turning him over and over. A big dark shape brushed past him fantastically agile in the roiling currents gone before his sword arm could react. Rordray had escaped him. He swam toward one of the smashed ballroom windows knowing he wouldn t make it trying anyway. The faint glow ahead might be King Nihilil guiding him. Then it all seemed to fade and he was breathing water strangling. Rordray pulled himself over the top step his flippers already altering to hands. He was gasping blowing. It was a long trip even for a sea lion. The returning sea had surged up the steps and sloshed along the halls and into the rooms where Rordray and his family dwelt. Rordray shook his head. For a few days they must needs occupy the next level up: the inn which was now empty. The change to human form was not so great a change for Rordray. He became aware of one last wisp of fog standing beside him. Well it said how s the King Furious Rordray said. But after all what can he do I thank you for the warning. I m glad you could stop them. My curse on their crazy rebellion. We ll all f fade away in time I guess with the magic dwindling and dwindling. But not just yet if you please War is bad for everyone said Rordray. SPIRALS Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle There are always people who want to revise history. No hero is so great that someone won t take a shot at him. Not even Jack Halfey. Yes I knew Jack Halfey. You may not remember my name. But in the main airlock of industrial Station One there s an inscribed block of industrial diamond and my name is sixth down: Cornelius L. Riggs Metallurgist. And you might have seen my face at the funeral. You mast remember the funeral. All across the solar system work stopped while Jack Halfey took his final trek into the sun. He wanted it that way and no spacer was going to refuse Jack Halfey s last request no matter how expensive it might be. Even the downers got in the act. They didn t help pay the cost but they spent hundreds of millions on sending reporters and cameras to the Moon.. That funeral damned near killed me. The kids who took me to the Moon weren t supposed to let the ship take more than half a gravity. My bones are over a hundred years old and they re fragile. For that young squirt of a pilot the landing may have been smooth but she hit a full gee for a second there and I thought my time had come. I had to go of course. The records say I was Jack s best friend the man who d saved his life and being one of the last survivors of the Great Trek makes me somebody special. Nothing would do but that I push the button to send Jack on his final spiral into the sun. to quote a downer reporter. I still see TriVee programs about ships spiraling into the sun. You d think seventy years and more after the Great Trek the schools would teach kids something about space. When I staggered outside in lunar gravity lighter than the 20 gravity we keep in the Skylark. just enough to feel the difference the reporters were all over me. Why they demanded did Jack want to go into the sun Cremation and scattering of ashes is good enough for most spacers. It was good enough for Jack s wife. Some send their ashes back to Earth some are scattered into the solar wind to be flung throughout the universe some prefer to go back into the soil of a colony sphere. But why the sun I ve wondered myself. I never was good at reading Jack s mind. The question that nearly drove me crazy and did drive me to murder was: why did Jack Halfey make the Great Trek in the first place I finally did learn the answer to that one. Be patient. Probably there will never be another funeral like Jack s. The Big Push is only a third finished and it s still two hundred miles of the biggest linear accelerator ever built an electronic powered railway crawling across the Earthside face of the Moon. One day we ll use it to launch starships. We ll fire when the Moon is full to add the Earth s and Moon s orbital velocities to the speed of the starship and to give the downers a thrill. But we launched Jack when the Moon was new with precisely enough velocity to cancel the Earth s orbital speed of eighteen miles per second It would have cost less to send him into interstellar space. Jack didn t drop in any spiral. The Earth went on and the coffin stayed behind then it started to fall into the Sun. It fell ninety three million miles just like a falling safe except for that peculiar wiggle when he really got into the sun s magnetic field. Moonbase is going to do it again with a probe. They want to know more about that wiggle. The pilot was a lot more careful getting me home and now I m back aboard the Skylailc in a room near the axis where the heart patients stay and on my desk is this pile of garbage from a history professor at Harvard who has absolutely proved that we would have had space industries and space colonies without Jack Halfey. There are no indispensable men. In the words of a famous American president: Bullshit We ve made all the downers so rich that they can t remember what it was like back then. And it was grim. If we hadn t got space industries established before 2020 we d never have been able to afford them at all. Things were that thin. By 2020 AD. there wouldn t have been any resources to invest. They d have all gone into keeping eleven billion downers alive barely and anybody who proposed throwing money into outer space would have been lynched. God knows it was that way when Jack Halfey started. I first met Jack Halfey at UCLA. He was a grad student in architecture having got his engineering physics degree from Cal Tech. He d also been involved in a number of construction jobs among them Hale Observatory s big orbital telescope while he was still an undergrad at Cal Tech and he was already famous. Everyone knows he was brilliant and they re right but he had another secret weapon: he worked his arse off. He had to. Insomnia. Jack couldn t sleep more than a couple of hours a night and to get even that much sleep he had to get laid first. I know about this because when I met Jack he was living with my sister. Ruthie told me that they d go to bed and Jack would sleep a couple of hours and up he d be back at work because once he woke up there was no point in lying in bed. On nights when they couldn t make Out he fltver went to bed at all and he was pure hell to live with the next day. She also told me he was one mercenary son of a bitch. That Doesn t square with the public image of Jack Halfey savior of mankind but it happens to be true and he never made much of a secret of it. He wanted to get rich fast. His ambition was to lie around Rio de Janeiro s beaches and sample the local wines and women and he had his life all mapped out so that he d be able to retire before he was forty. I knew him for a couple of months then he left UCLA to be a department head in the construction of the big Tucson arcology. There was a tearful scene with Ruthie: she didn t fit into Jack s image for the future and he wasn t very gentle about how he told her he was leaving. He stormed out of her apartment carrying his suitcase while Ruthie and I shouted curses at him and that was that. I never expected to see him again. When I graduated there was this problem: I was a metallurgist and there were a lot of us. Metallurgists had been in big demand when I started UCLA so naturally everybody studied metallurgy and materials science by the time I graduated it was damned tough getting a job. The depression didn t help much either. I graduated right in the middle of it. Runaway inflation research chopped to the bone environmentalists and Only One Earthers and Friends of Man and the Earth and other such yo yo s on the rise in those days there was a new energy crisis every couple of years and when I got my sheepskin we were in the middle of. I think number 6. Industry was laying off not hiring. There was one job I knew of. A notice on the UCLA careers board. Metallurgist wanted. High pay long hours high risk. Guaranteed wealthy in ten years if you live through it. That Doesn t sound very attractive just now but in those days it looked better. Better than welfare anyway especially since the welfare offices were having trouble meeting their staff payrolls so there wasn t a lot left over to hand Out to their clients. So I sent in an application and found myself one of about a hundred who d got past the paperwork screening. The interview was on campus with a standard personnel officer type who seemed more interested in my sports record than my abilities as a metallurgist. He also liked my employment history: I d done summer jobs in heavy steel construction. He wouldn t tell me what the job was for. Not secret work he said. But we d as soon not let it out to anyone we re not seriously interested in. He smiled and stood up indicating the interview was over. We ll let you know A couple of days later I got a call at the fraternity house. They wanted me at the Wilshire headquarters of United Space Industries. I checked around the house. but didn t get any new information. USI had contracts for a good bit of space work including the lunar mines. Maybe that s it. I thought. I could hope anyway. When I got to USI the receptionist led me into a comfortable room and asked me to sit down in a big Eames chair. The chair faced an enormous TV screen flat: TriVee wasn t common in those days. Maybe it was before TriVee at all it s been a long time and I don t remember . She typed something on an input console and we waited a few minutes and the screen came to life. It showed an old man floating in mid air.. The background looked like a spacecraft which wasn t surprising. I recognized Admiral Robert McLeve. He had to be eighty or more but he didn t look it. Good morning he said. The receptionist left. Good morning I told the screen. There was a faint red light on a lens by the screen and I assumed he could see me as well as could see him. I d kind of hoped for the Moon. I didn t expect the O Neill colony I added. It took a while before he reacted confirming my guess: a second and a half each way for the message and the way he was floating meant zero gravity. I couldn t think of anything but the Construction Shack that s what they called it then that fit the description. This is where we are McLeve said. The duty tour is five years. High pay and you save it all. Not mush to spend money on out here. Unless you drink. Good liquor costs like transplant rights on your kidneys. So Docs bad liquor because you still have to lift it. Savings don t mean much I said. True. McLeve grimaced at the thought. Inflation was running better than 20 . The politicians said they would have it whipped Real Soon Now but nobody believed them. We ve got arrangements to have three quarters of your money banked in Swiss francs. If you go back early you lose that part of your pay. We need somebody in your field part time on the Moon part time up here in the Shack. From your record I think you d do. Still want the job Industries. I wanted it all right. I was never a nut on the space industries bit I was never a nut on anything but it sounded like good work. Exciting a chance to see something of the solar system well of near Earth space and the Moon nobody had gone further than that as well as to save a lot of money. And with that job on my record I d be in demand when I came home. As to why me. it was obvious when I thought about it. There were lots of good metallurgists but not many had been finalists in the Olympic gymnastics team trials. I hadn t won a place on the team but I d sure proved I knew how to handle myself. Add to that the heavy construction work experience and I was a natural. I sweated out the job appointment but it came through and pretty soon I was at Canaveral. strapping myself into a Shuttle seat and having second and third thoughts about the whole thing. There were five of us. We lifted out from the Cape in the Shuttle then transferred in Earth orbit to a tug that wasn t a lot bigger than the old Apollo capsules had been. The trip was three days and crowded. The others were going to Moon base. They refueled my tug in lunar orbit and sent me off alone to the Construction Shack. The ship was guided from the Shack and It was scary as hell because there wasn t anything to do but wonder if they knew what they were doing. It took as long to get from the Moon to the Shack as it had to get to the Moon from Earth . which isn t surprising because it s the same distance: the Shack was in one of the stable libration points that make an equilateral triangle with the Earth and the Moon. Anything put there will stay there forever. The only viewport was a small thing in the forward end of the tug. Naturally we came in ass backwards so I didn t see much. Today we call it the Skylark and what you see as you approach is a sphere half a kilometer across. It rotates every two minutes and there s all kinds of junk moored to the axis of rotation. Mirrors the laser and power targets the long thin spine of the mass driver the ring of agricultural pods the big telescope a confusion of equipment. It wasn t that way when I first saw it. The sphere was nearly all there was except for a spiderweb framework to hold the solar power panels. The frame was bigger than the sphere but it didn t look very substantial. At first sight the Shack was a pebbled sphere a golf ball stuck in a spider s web. McLeve met me at the airlock. He was long of limb and startlingly thin and his face and neck were a maze of wrinkles. But his back was straight and when he smiled the wrinkles all aligned themselves. Laugh lines. Before I left Earth I read up on his history: Annapolis engineer with the space program didn t make astronaut because of his eyes retired with a bad heart wrote a lot of science fiction. I d read most of his novels in high school and I suppose half the people in the space program were pulled in by his stories. When his wife died he had another heart attack. The Old Boys network came to the rescue. His classmates wangled an assignment in space for him. He hadn t been to Earth for seven years and low gravity was all that kept him alive. He didn t even dare go to the Moon. A reporter with a flair for mythological phraseology called him The Old Man of Space. It was certain that he d never go home again but if he missed Earth he didn t show it. Welcome aboard. He sounded glad to see me. What do they call you he asked. A good question. Cornelius might sound a dignified name to a Roman but it makes for ribald comments in the USA. Corky I told him. I shrugged which was a mistake: we were at the center of the sphere and there wasn t any gravity at all. I drifted free from the grabbandle I d been clinging to and drifted around the airlock. After a moment of panic it turned out to be fun. There hadn t been mom for any violent maneuvers in the tug but the airlock was built to get tugs and rocket motors inside for repairs it was big nine meters across and I could twirl around in the zero gravity. I flapped my arms and found I could swim. McLeve was watching with a critical air. He must have liked what he saw because he grinned slightly. Come on he said. He turned in the air and drifted without apparent motion it looked like levitation. I ll show you around. He led the way out of the airlock into the sphere itself. We were at the center of rotation. All around above and below were fields of dirt some plowed some planted with grass and grains. There were wings attached to hooks at the entrance. McLeve took down a set and began strapping them on. Black bat wings. They made him look like a fallen angel Milton s style. He handed me another pair. Like to fly he asked. I returned the grin. Why not I hadn t the remotest idea of what I was doing but if I could swim in the air with my hands. I ought to be able to handle wings in no gravity. He helped me strap in and when I had them he gave some quick instructions. Main thing is to stay high he said. The further down the higher the gravity and the tougher it is to control these things. He launched himself into space gliding across the center of the sphere. After a moment I followed him. I was a tiny chick in a vast eggshell. The landscape was wrapped around me: fields and houses and layout yards of construction gear and machinery and vats of algae and three huge windows opening on blackness. Every direction was down millions of light years down when a window caught my attention. For a moment that was terrifying. But McLeve held himself in place with tiny motions of his wings and his eyes were on me. I swallowed my fear and looked. There were few roads. Mostly the colonists flew with their wings flew like birds and if they didn t need roads they didn t need squared off patterns for the buildings either. The houses looked like they d been dropped at random among the green fields. They were fragile partitions of sheet metal wood was far more costly than sheet steel here and they could not have borne their own weight on Earth let alone stand up to a stiff breeze. They didn t have to. They existed for privacy alone. I wondered about the weather. Along the axis of the sphere I could see scores. of white puffballs. Clouds I gathered my courage and flapped my way over to the white patch. It was a flock of hens. Their feet were drawn up. their heads were tucked under their wings and they roosted on nothing. They like it in zero gravity. McLeve said. Only thing is when you re below them you have to watch out. He pointed. A blob of chicken splat had left the flock and moved away from us. It fell in a spiral pattern. Of course the splat was actually going in a straight line we were the ones who were rotating and that made the falling stuff look as if it were spiraling to the ground below. Automatic fertilizer machine I said. McLeve nodded. I wonder you don t keep them caged I said. Some people like their sky dotted with fleecy white hens. Oh. Where is everybody I asked. Most are outside working. McLeve said. You ll meet them at dinner. We stayed at the axis drifting with the air currents literally floating on air. I knew already why people who came here wanted to stay I d never experienced anything like it soaring like a bird. It wasn t even like a sail plane: you wore the wings and you flew with them you didn t sit in a cockpit and move controls around. There were lights along part of the axis. The mirrors would take over their job when they were installed for the moment the lights ran off solar power cells plastered over the outside of the sphere. At the far end of the sphere was an enormous cloud of dust We didn t get close to it. I pointed and looked a question. Rock grinder McLeve said. Making soil. We spread it over the northern end. He laughed at my frown. North is the end toward the sun. We get our rocks from the Moon. It s our radiation shielding. Works just as well if we break it up and spread it around and that way we can grow crops in it. Later on we ll get the agricultural compartments built but there s always five times as much work as we have people to do it with. They d done pretty well already. There was grass and millet and wheat for the chickens and salad greens and other vegetable crops. Streams ran through the fields down to a ringshaped pond at the equator. There was also a lot of bare soil that had just been put in place and hadn t been planted. The Shack wasn t anywhere near finished. How thick is that soil I asked. Not thick enough. I was coming to that. If you hear the flare warnings get to my house. North pole. I thought that one over. The only way to ward yourself from a solar flare is to put a lot of mass between you and the sun. On Earth that mass is a hundred miles of air. On the Moon they burrow ten meters into the regolith The Shack had only the rock we could get from the Moon and Moonbase had problems of its own. When they had the manpower and spare energy they d throw more rock our way and we d plaster it across the outer shell of the Shack or grind it up and put it inside but for now there wasn t enough and come flare time McLeve was host to an involuntary lawn party. But what the hell I thought. It s beautiful. Streams rushing in spirals from pole to equator. Green fields and houses skies dotted with fleecy white hens and I was flying as man flies in dreams. I decided it was going to be fun but there was one possible hitch. There are only ten women aboard I said. McLeve nodded gravely And nine of them are married. He nodded again. Up to now we ve mostly needed muscle. Heavy construction experience and muscle. The next big crew shipment s in six months and the company s trying like hell to recruit women to balance things off. Think you can hold out that long Guess I have to. Sure. I m old navy. We didn t have women aboard ships and we lived through it. I was thinking that I d like to meet the one unmarried woman aboard. Also that she must be awfully popular. McLeve must have read my thoughts because he waved me toward a big structure perched on a ledge partway down from the north pole. You re doing all right on the flying. Take it easy and let s go over there. We soared down and I began to feel a definite up and down before that any direction I wanted it to be was up. We landed in front of the building. Combination mess hail and administration offices McLeve said. Ten percent level. It took a moment before I realized what he meant. Ten percent level ten percent of Earth s gravity. It s as heavy as I care to go. McLeve said. And any lighter makes it hard to eat. The labs are scattered around the ring at the same level. He helped me off with my wings and we went inside. There were several people all men scurrying about purposefully. They didn t stop to meet me. They weren t wearing much and I soon found that was the custom in the Shack why wear clothes inside There wasn t any weather. It was always warm and dry and comfortable. You mostly needed clothes for pockets. At the end of the corridor was a room that hummed inside there was a bank of computer screens all active. In front of them sat a homely girl. Miss Hoffman McLeve said. Our new metallurgist Corky Riggs. Hi. She looked at me for a moment then back at the computer console. She was mumbling something to herself as her fingers flew over the keys. Dot Hoffman is our resident genius McLeve said. Anything from stores and inventories to orbit control if a computer can figure it out she can make the brains work the problem. She looked up with a smile. We give necessity the praise of virtue she said. McLeve looked thoughtful. Cicero Quintilian. She turned back to her console again See you at dinner McLeve said. He led me out. Miss Hoffman I said. He nodded. I suppose she wears baggy britches and blue wool stockings and that shiti because it s cool in the computer room I said. No she always dresses that way Oh. Only six months Riggs the Admiral said. Well maybe a year. You ll survive. I was thinking I d damned well have to. I fell in love during dinner. The chief engineer was named Ty Plauger a long lean chap with startling blue eyes. The chief ecologist was his wife Jill. They had been married about a year before they came up and they d been aboard the Shack for three ever since it started up. Neither was a lot older than me maybe thirty then. At my present age the concept of love at first sight seems both trite and incredible but it was true enough. I suppose I could have named you reasons then but I don t feel them now. Take this instead: There were ten women aboard out of ninety total. Nine were married and the tenth was Dot Hoffman. My first impression of her was more than correct. Dot never would be married. Not only was she homely but she thought she was homelier still. She was terrified of physical contact with men and the blue wool stockings and blouse buttoned to the neck were the least of her defenses. If I had to be in love and at that age maybe I did I could choose among nine married women. Jill was certainly the prettiest of the lot. Pug nose brown hair chopped off short green eyes and a compact muscular shape. very much the shape of a woman. She liked to talk and I liked to listen. She and Ty had stars in their eyes. Their talk was full of what space would do for mankind. Jill was an ex Fromate she d been an officer in the Friends of Man and the Earth. But while the Fromates down below were running around sabotaging industries and arcologies and nuclear plants and anything else they didn t like Jill went to space Her heart bled no less than any for the baby fur seals and the three spined stickleback and all the fish killed by mine tailings but she d thought of something to do about it all. We ll put all the dirty industries into space she told me. Throw the pollution into the solar wind and let it go Out to the cometary halo. The Fromates think they can talk everyone into letting Kansas go back to buffalo grass You can t make people want to be poor Ty put in. Right If we want to clean up the Earth and save the wild things we ll have to give people a way to get rich without harming the environment. This is it Someday we ll send down enough power from space that we can tear down the dams and put the snail darter back where he came from. And more. Jill tended to do most of the talking. I wondered about Ty. He always seemed to have the words that would set her off again. And one day when we were clustered around McLeve s house with for a few restful hours nothing to do and Jill was well out of earshot flying around and among the chickens in her wonderfully graceful wing style Ty said to me I don t care if we turn the Earth into a park. I like space. I like flying and I like free fall and the look of stars with no air to cloud them. But don t tell Jill. I learned fast. With Ty in charge of engineering McLeve as chief administrator and Dot Hoffman s computers to simulate the construction and point up problems before they arose the project went well. We didn t get enough mass from the Moon so that my smelter was always short of raw materials and Congress didn t give us enough money. There weren t enough flights from down below and we were short of personnel and goods from Earth. But we got along. Two hundred and forty thousand miles below us everything was going to hell. First the senior senator from Wisconsin lived long enough to inherit a powerful committee chairmanship and he d been against the space industries from the start. Instead of money we got Golden Fleece awards. Funds already appropriated for flights we d counted on got sliced and our future budgets were completely in doubt. Next the administration tried to bail itself out of the tax revolt by running the printing presses. What money we could get appropriated wasn t worth half as much by the time we got it. Moonbase felt the pinch and cut down even more on the rock they flung out our way. Ty s answer was to work harder: get as much of the Shack finished as we could so that we could start sending down power. Get it done he told us nightly. Get a lot of it finished. Get so much done that even those idiots will see that we re worth it. So much that it ll cost them less to supply us than to bring us home. He worked himself harder than anyone else and Jill was right out there with him. The first task was to get the mirrors operating. We blew them all at once over a couple of months. They came in the shuttle that should have brought our additional crew it wasn t much of a choice and we d have to put off balancing out the sex ratio for another six months. The mirrors were packages of fabric as thin as the cellophane on a package of cigarettes. We inflated them into great spheres sprayed foam plastic on the outside for struts and sprayed silver vapor inside where it would precipitate in a thin layer all over. Then we cut them apart to get spherical mirrors. and sliced a couple of those into wedges to mount behind the windows in the floor of the Shack. They reflected sunlight in for additional crops. Jill had her crew out planting more wheat to cut down on the supplies we d need from Earth. Another of the mirrors was my concern. A hemisphere a quarter of a kilometer across can focus a lot of sunlight onto a small point. Put a rock at that point and it melts fast. When we got that set up we were all frantically busy smelting iron for construction out of the rocks. Moonbase shipped up when they could. When Moonbase couldn t fling us anything we dismounted rock we d placed for shielding smelted it and plastered the slag back onto the sphere. Days got longer and longer. There s no day or night aboard the Shack anyway of course: open the mirrors and you have sunlight close them and you don t. Still habit dies hard and we kept track of time by days and weeks but our work schedules bore no relation to them. Sometimes we worked the clock around quitting only when forced to by sheer exhaustion. We got a shipment from Moonbase and in the middle of the refining process the mounting struts in the big melter mirror got out of alignment. Naturally Ty was out to work on it. He was inspecting the system by flying around with a reaction pistol. The rule was that no one worked without a safety line a man who drifted away from the Shack might or might not be rescued and the rescue itself would Cost time and manpower we didn t have. Ty s line kept pulling him up short of where he wanted to go He gave the free end to Jill and told her to pay out a lot of slack. Then he made a jump from the mirror frame. He must have thought he d use the reaction pistol to shove him off at an angle so that he d cross over the bowl of the mirror the other side. The pistol ran out of gas. That left Ty floating straight toward the focus of the miner. He shouted into his helmet radio and Jill frantically hauled in slack trying to get a purchase on him. I made a quick calculation and knew I would ever reach him in time if I tried I d likely end up in the focus myself. Instead I took a dive across his back path. If I could grab his safety line the jerk as I pulled up short ought to keep him out of the hottest area and my reaction pistol would take us back to the edge. I got the line all right but it was slack. It had burned through. Ty went right through the hot point. When we recovered his body metal parts on his suit had melted. We scattered his ashes inside the sphere. McLeve s navy prayer book opened the burial service with the words We brought nothing into this world and it is certain that we shall take nothing out. Afterwards I wondered how subtle McLeve had been in his choice of that passage. We had built this world ourselves with Ty leading us. We had brought everything into this world even down to Ty s final gift to us the ashes which would grow grass in a place no human had ever thought to reach Until now. For time next month we did without him and it was as if we had lost half our men. McLeve was a good engineer if a better administrator but he couldn t go into the high gravity areas and he couldn t do active construction work. Still it wasn t engineering talent we lacked. It was Ty s drive. Jill and Dot and McLeve tried to make up for that. They were more committed to the project than ever. Two hundred and forty thousand miles down they were looking for a construction boss. They d find one we were sure. We were the best and we were paid like the best. There was never a problem with salaries. Salaries were negligible next to the other costs of building the Shack. But the personnel shuttles were delayed and delayed again and we were running out of necessities and the US economy was slipping again. We got the mirrors arrayed. Jill went heavily into agriculture and the lunar soil bloomed seeded with earthworms and bacteria from earthly soil. We smelted more of the rocky crust around the Shack and put it back as slag. We had plans for the metal we extracted starting with a lab for growing metal whiskers. There was already a whisker lab in near Earth orbit but its output was tiny. The Shack might survive if we could show even the beginnings of a profit making enterprise. Jill had another plan: mass production of expensive biologicals enzymes and various starting organics for ethical drugs. We had lots of plans. What we didn t have was enough people to do it all. You can only work so many twenty hour days. We began to make mistakes. Some were costly. My error didn t cost the Shack. Only myself. I like to think it was due to fatigue and nothing more. I made a try at comforting the grieving widow after a decent wait of three weeks. When Ty was alive everyone flirted with Jill She pretended not to notice. You d have to be crude as well as rude before she d react. This time it was different. I may not have been very subtle but I wasn t crude and she told me instantly to get the hell out of her cabin and leave her alone. I went back to my refinery mirror and brooded. Ninety years later I know better. Ninety years is too damned late. If I d noticed nothing else I should have known that nearly eighty unmarried men aboard would all be willing to comfort the grieving widow and half of them were only too willing to use the subtle approach: You re all that keeps us working so hard. I wonder who tried before I did It hardly matters when my turn came Jill s reaction was automatic. Slap him down before it s too late for him to back away. And when she slapped me down I stayed slapped more hurt than mad but less than willing to try again. I hadn t stopped being in love with her. So I worked at being her friend again. It wasn t easy. Jill was cold inside. When she talked to people it was about business never herself. Her dedication to the Shack and to all it stood for in her mind was hardening ossifying. And she spent a lot of time with Dot Hoffman and Admiral McLeve. But the word came: another shuttle. Again there were no women The Senator from Wisconsin had found out how expensive it would be to get us home. Add fifty women and it would be half again as expensive. So no new personnel. Still they couldn t stop the company from sending up a new chief engineer and we heard the shuffle was on its way with a load of seeds liquid hydrogen Vitamin pills and Jack Halley. I couldn t believe it. Jack wasn t the type. To begin with while the salary you could save in five years amounted to a good sum enough to let you start a business and still have some income left it wasn t wealth. You couldn t live the rest of your life in Rio on it and I was pretty sure Jack s goals hadn t changed. But there he was the new boss. From the first day he arrived things started humming. It was the old Jack brilliant always at work and always insisting everyone try to keep up with him although no one ever could. He worked our arses off in two months he had us caught up on the time we lost after Ty was killed. Things looked good. They looked damned good. With the mirrors mounted we could operate on sunlight with spare power for other uses. Life from soil imported from Earth spread throughout the soil imported from the Moon and earthly plants were in love with the chemicals in lunar soil. We planted strawberries corn and beans together we planted squashes and melons in low gravity areas and watched them grow into jungles of thin vines covered With fruit. The Smelter worked overtime and we had moie than enough metals for the whisker lab and biological vats if only a shuttle would bring us the pumps and electronics we needed and if necessary we d make pumps in the machine shops and Jack had Dot working out time details of setting up integrated circuit manufacture. But the better things looked in space the worse they looked on Earth. One of the ways we were going to make space colonies pay for themselves was through electricity. We put out big arrays of solar cells monstrous spider webs a kilometer long by half that wide so large that they needed small engines dotted all over them just to keep them oriented properly toward the sun. We made the solar cells ourselves one of the reasons they needed me was to get out the rare metals from the lunar regolith and save them for the solar cell factory. And it was working. We had the structure and we were making the cells. Soon enough we d have enormous power megaWatts of power enough to beam it down to Earth where it could .pay back some of the costs of building the system. The orbiting power stations cost a fortune to put up but not much to maintain they would be like dams big front end costs but then nearly free power forever. We were sure that would save us. How could the United States turn down free electricity It looked good until the Fromates blew up the desert antenna that we would have been beaming the power down to and the lawyers got their reconstruction tied into legal knots that would probably take five years to untangle. The Senator from Wisconsin continued his crusade. This time we got three Golden fleece awards. Down on Earth the company nominated him for membership in the Flat Earth Society. He gleefully accepted and cut our budget again. We also had problems on board. Jack had started mean it was obvious he had never wanted to come here in the first place. Now he turned mean as a rattlesnake. He worked us. If we could get the whisker lab finished ahead of time at lower cost than planned then maybe we could save the station yet so he pushed and pushed again and one day he pushed too hard. It wasn t a mutiny It wasn t even a strike. We all did a day s work but suddenly without as far as I know any discussion among us. nobody would put in overtime. Ten hours a day yes ten hours and one minute no. Jill pleaded. The Admiral got coldly formal. Dot cried. Jack screamed. We cut work to nine and a half hours. And then it all changed. One day Jack Halfey was smiling a lot. He turned polite. He was getting his two or three hours sleep a night. Dot described him. Like Mrs. Fezziwig. she said. One vast substantial smile. I hope she s happy. I wonder why she did it To save the Shack. She was trying to keep her voice cheerful but her look was bitter. Dot wasn t naive just terrified. I suppose that to her the only reason a woman would move in with a man would be to save some noble cause like the Shack. As to Jill she didn t change much. The Shack was the first step in the conquest of the universe and it was by God going to be finished and self sufficient. Partly it was a memorial to Ty I think but she really believed in what she was doing and it was infectious. I could see how Jack could convince her that he shared her goal. To a great extent he did although it was pure selfishness his considerable reputation was riding on this project. But Jack never did anything half heartedly. He drove himself at whatever be was doing. What I couldn t understand was why he was here at all. He must have known how thin were the chances of completing the Shack before he left Earth. I had to know before it drove me nuts. Jack didn t drink much. When he did it was often a disaster because he was the world s cheapest drunk. So one night I plied him. Night is generally relative of course but this one was real: the Earth got between us and the sun. Since we were on the same orbit as the Moon but sixty degrees ahead that happened to us exactly as often as there are eclipses of the Moon on Earth a rare occasion one worth celebrating. Of course we d put in a day s work first so the party didn t last long we were all too beat. Still it was a start and when the formalities broke up and Jill. went off to look at the air system I grabbed Jack and got him over to my quarters. We both collapsed in exhaustion. I had brought a yeast culture with me from Canaveral. McLeve had warned me that liquor cost like diamonds up here and a way to make my own alcohol seemed a good investment. And it was. By now I had vacuum distilled vodka made from fermented fruit bars and a mash of strawberries from the farm they weren t missed the farm covered a quarter of the inner surface now. My concoction tasted better than it sounds and it wasn t hard to talk Jack into a drink then another. Presently he was trying to sing the verses to The Green Hills of Earth. A mellower man you never saw. I seized my chance. So you love the green hills of Earth so much what are you doing here Change your mind about Rio Jack shook his head the vibration ran down his arm and sloshed his drink. Nope Outside a hen cackled and Jack collapsed in laughter. Let me rest my eyes on the fleecy skies... Grimly I stuck to the subject. I thought you were all set with that Tucson arcology. Oh I was. I was indeed. It was a beautiful setup. Lots of pay and He stopped abruptly. And other opportunities I was beginning to see the light. Well...yes. You have to see it the way I did. First it was a great opportunity to make a name for myself. A city in a building Residential and business and industry all in the same place one building to house a quarter...of a million people. And it would have been beautiful. Corky. The plans were magnificent I was in love with it. Then I got into it and I saw what was really going on. Corky. everyone was stealing that place blind The first week I went to the chief engineer to report shortages in deliveries and he just looked at me. Stick to your own work Halfey. says he. Chief engineer the architects construction bosses even the catering crew every one of them was knocking down twenty five fifty percent They were selling the cement right off the boxcars and substituting sand. There wasn t enough cement in that concrete to hold up the walls. So you took your share. Don t get holy on me Dammit. look at it my way. I was willing to play square but they wouldn t let me. The place was going to fall down. The weight of the first fifty thousand people would have done it. What I could do was make sure nobody got inside before it happened. Jack Halfey chortled. I m a public benefactor. I am. I sold off the reinforcing rods. The inspectors couldn t possibly ignore that. Nothing else I asked. Well those rods were metal whisker compote. Almost as strong as diamond and almost as expensive. I didn t need anything else. Rut I made sure they d never open that place to the public. Then I stashed my ill gotten gains and went underground and waited for something to happen. . I never heard much about it. Of course I wouldn t up here. Not many down there heard either. Hush hush while the FBI looked into it. The best buy I ever made in my life was a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. Just a paragraph about how the Racket Squad was investigating Mafia involvement in the Tucson arcology. That s when things fell into place. I swung around to refill his glass carefully. We use great big glasses and never fill them more than half full. Otherwise they slosh all over the place in the low gravity. I had another myself. it was pretty good vodka. and if I felt it Jack must be pickled blue. You mean the building fell in No no. I realized why there was so much graft. Jack sounded aggrieved. There was supposed to be graft. I wasn t supposed to get in on it. Aha. Aha you know it. I finished reading that article on a plane to Canaveral. The FBI couldn t follow me to Rio but the Mafia sure could. I d heard there was a new opening for chief engineer for the Construction Shack and all of a sudden the post looked very very good. He chuckled. Also I hear that things are tightening up in the USA. Big crackdown on organized crime. Computer assisted. Income tax boys and Racket Squad working together. It shouldn t be long before all the chiefs who want my arse are in jail. Then I can go back cash my stash and head for Rio. Switzerland Oh no. Nothing so simple as that. I thought of something else. Say I better get back to my bunk. He staggered out before I could stop him. Fortunately it was walking distance from my place to his if he d had to fly he d probably have ended up roosting with the chickens. Bloody hell says I to myself Should I add that I had no intention of robbing Jack I was just curious: what inflation proof investment had he thought up But I didn t find out for a long time... A month later the dollar collapsed. Inflation had been a fact of life for so long that it was the goal of every union and civil service organizer to get inflation written into their contracts thereby increasing inflation. The government printed money faster to compensate: more inflation. One of those vicious spirals. Almost suddenly the dollar was down the drain. There followed a full scale taxpayer revolt. The Administration got the message: they were spending too much money. And clearly that had to stop. The first things to go were all the projects that wouldn t pay off during the current President s term of office. Long term research was chopped out of existence. Welfare on the other hand was increased and a comprehensive National Health Plan was put into effect even though they had to pay the doctors and hospitals in promissory notes. The Senator from Wisconsin didn t even bother giving us his customary Golden Fleece award. Why insult the walking dead We met in our usual place a cage work not far from the north pole. Admiral McLeve was in the center in zero gravity. The rest of us perched about the cage work looking like a scene from Hitchcock s The Birds. Dot had a different picture from Aristophanes. Somewhere what with all these clouds and all this air there must be a rare name somewhere...How do you like Cloud Cuckoo Land Putting on wings Docs things to people. Halfey had dyed his wings scarlet marked with yellow triangles enclosing an H. Dot wore the plumage of an eagle and I hadn t believed it the fast time I saw it it was an incredibly detailed beautiful job. McLeve s were the wings of a bat and I tell you he looked frightening as evil as Dracula himself. Leon Briscoe the chemist had painted mathematical formulae all over his in exquisite medieval calligraphy. Jill and Ty had worn the plumage of male and female Least Terns and she still wore hers. There were no two sets of wings alike in that flock. We were ninety birds of mnety species all gathered as if the ancient roles of predator and prey had been set aside for a larger cause. Cloud Cuckoo Land A glum Cloud Cuckoo Land. It s over. McLeve said. We ve been given three months to phase out and go home. Us Moonbase the whole space operation. They ll try to keep some of the near Earth Operations going a while longer but we re to shut down. Nobody said anything at first. We d been expecting it those of us who d had time to follow news from Earth. Now it was here and nobody was ready. I thought about it: back to high gravity again. Painful. And Jill. Her dream was being shot down Ty died for nothing. Then I remembered McLeve. He wasn t going anywhere. Any gravity at all was a death sentence. And I hated Jack Halfey for the grin he was hiding. There had been a long piece in the latest newscast about the roundup of the Mafia lords grand juries working overtime and the District of Columbia jail filled no bail to be granted. It was safe for Jack down there and now he could go home early. They can t do this to us Jill wailed. A leftover Fromate reflex I guess. We ll Go on strike Bomb something She looked around at our faces and when I followed the look I stopped with Dot Hoffman. The potato face was withered in anguish the potato eyes were crying. What was there for Dot on Earth What a downer she said. I almost laughed out loud the old word was so inadequate. Then McLeve spoke in rage. Downers. Yes. Nine billion downers sitting on their fat arses while their children s future slides into the muck. Downers is what they are. Now you know. McLcve the wordsmith invented that word on that day. My own feelings were mixed. Would the money stashed in Swiss francs be paid if we left early even though we had to leave Probably and it was not a small amount but how long would it last There was no job waiting for me...but certainly I had the reputation I d set out for. I shouldn t have much trouble getting a job. But I like to finish what I start. The Shack was that close to being self sufficient. We had the solar power grids working. We even had the ion engines mounted all over the grid to keep it stable. We didn t have the microwave system to beam the power back to Earth. but it wouldn t be that expensive to put in...except that Earth had no antennae to receive the power. They hadn t even started reconstruction. The permit hearings were tied up in lawsuits. No. The Shack was dead. And if our dollars were worthless there were things that weren t. Skilled labor couldn t be worthless. I would get my francs and some of my dollar salary had been put into gold. I wouldn t be broke. And the clincher there were women on Earth. McLeve let us talk a while. When the babble died down and he found a quiet lull he said very carefully Of course we have a chance to keep the station going. Everyone talked at once. Jill s voice came through loudest How The Shack was designed to be a self sufficient environment McLeve said. It s not quite that yet but what do we need Air. someone shouted. Water cried another. I said Shielding. It would help to have enough mass to get us through a big solar flare. If they re shutting down Moonbase we ll never have it. Jill s voice carried like a microphone. Rocks Is that all we need Ice and rocks We d have both in the asteroid belt . It was a put up job. She and McLeve must have rehearsed it. I laughed. The Belt is two hundred million miles away. We don t have ships that will go that far let alone cargo ships... And then I saw what they had in mind. Only one ship McLeve said. The Shack itself. We can move it out into the belt. How long Dot demanded.. Hope momentarily made her beautiful. Three years McLeve said. He looked thoughtful. Well not quite that long. We can t live three years I shouted. I turned to Jill twisting idiot that I was then. The air system can t keep us alive that long can it Not enough chemicals But we can do it she shouted. It won t be easy but the farm is growing now. We have enough plants to make up for the lack of chemical air purification. We can recycle everything. We ve got the raw sunlight of space. Even out in the asteroids that will be enough. We can do it Can t hurt to make a few plans McLeve said. It couldn t help either thought I but I couldn t say it not to Dot and Jill. These four were the final architects of The Plan: Admiral McLeve Jill Plauger Dot Hoffman and Jack Halfey. At first the most important was Dot. Moving something as large as the Shack with inadequate engines a house in space never designed as a ship that was bad enough. Moving it farther than any manned ship no matter the design should have been impossible. But behind that potato face was a brain tuned to mathematics. She could solve any abstract problem. She knew how to ask questions and her rapport with computers was a thing to envy. Personal problems stopped her cold. Because McLeve was one of the few men she could see as harmless she could open up to him. He had told me sometime before we lost Ty Dot tried sex once and didn t like it. I think he regretted saying even that much. Secrets were sacred to him. But for whatever reason Dot couldn t relate to people and that left all her energy for work. Dot didn t talk to women either through fear or envy or some other reason I never knew. But she did talk to Jill. They were fanatical in the same way. It wasn t hard to understand Dot s enthusiasm for The Plan. McLeve had no choices at all. Without the Shack he was a dead man. Jack was in the Big Four because he was needed. Without his skills there would be no chance at all. So he was dragged into it and we watched it happen. The day McLeve suggested going to the asteroids Jack Halfey was thoroughly amused and showed his mirth to all. For the next week he was not amused by anything whatever. He was a walking temper tantrum. So was Jill. I expect he tried to convince her that with sufficient wealth exile on Earth could be tolerable. Now he wasn t sleeping and we all suffered. Of course our miseries including Jack s were only temporary. We were all going home. All of us. Thus we followed the downer news closely and thus was there a long line at the communications room. Everyone was trying to find an Earthside job. It hardly mattered. There was plenty of power for communications. It Doesn t take much juice to close down a colony. We had no paper so the news was flashed onto a TV for the edification of those waiting to use the transmitter. I was waiting for word from Inco: they had jobs at their new smelter in Guatemala. Not the world s best location but I was told it was a tropical paradise and the quetzal was worth at least as much as the dollar. I don t know who Jack was expecting to hear from. He looked like a man with a permanent hangover except that he wasn t so cheerful. The news for a change wasn t all bad. Something for everyone. The United States had issued a new currency called marks it turns out there were marks in the US during revolutionary times they were backed by miniscule amounts of gold. Not everyone was poor. Technology proceeded apace. Texas instruments announced a new pocket computer a million bits of memory and fully programmable for twice what a calculator cost. Firestone Diamonds which had been manufacturing flawless blue white diamonds in a laboratory for the past year and which actually was owned by a man named Firestone had apparently swamped the engagement ring market and was now making chandeliers. A diamond chandelier would cost half a year s salary of course but that was expected to go down. The alleged Mafia chieftains now held without bail awaiting trial numbered in the thousands. I was surprised: I hadn t thought it would go that far. When the dollar went worthless apparently Mafia bribe money went worthless too. Maybe I m too cynical. Maybe there was an epidemic of righteous wrath in government. Evidently someone thought so. because a bond issue was approved in California and people were beginning to pay their taxes again. Something for everyone. I thought the Mafia item would cheer Jack up but he was sitting there staring at the screen as if he hadn t seen a thing and didn t give a damn anyway. My call was announced and I went in to talk to Inco. When I came out Jack had left not even waiting for his own call. Lack of sleep can do terrible things to a man. I wasn t surprised when Jack had a long talk with McLeve nor when Jill moved hack in with him. Jack would promise anything and Jill would believe anything favorable to her mad scheme. The next day Jack s smile was back and ill thought it was a bit cynical what could I do Tell Jill She wouldn t have believed me anyway. They unveiled The Plan a week later. I was invited to McLeve s house to hear all about it.. Jack was there spouting enthusiasm. Two problems he told us. First keeping us alive during the trip. That s more Jill s department but what s the problem The Shack was designed to last centuries. Second problem is getting out there. We ve got that figured out. I said The hell you do. This isn t a spaceship it s just a habitat. Even if you had a big rocket motor to mount on the axis you wouldn t have fuel for it and if you did the Shack would break up under the thrust. I hated him for what he was doing to Jill and I wondered why McLeve wasn t aware of it. Maybe he was. The Admiral never let anyone know what he thought. So we don t mount a big rocket motor. Jack said. What we ve got is just what we need: a lot of little motors on the solar panels. We use those and everything else believe. Scooters and tugs the spare panel engines and last but not least the Moon. We re going to use the Moon for a gravity sling. He had it all diagrammed out in four colors. We shove the Shack toward the Moon. if we aim just right we ll skim close to the lunar surface with everything firing. We ll leave the Moon with that velocity plus the Moon s orbital velocity and out we go. How close He looked to Dot. She pursed her lips. We ll clear the peaks by two kilometers. That s close. More than a mile Jack said. The closer we come the faster we leave. But you just don t have the thrust Almost enough Jack said. Now look. We keep the panel thrusters on full blast. That gives us about a quarter percent of a gravity not nearly enough to break up the Shack Corky. And we use the mirrors. He poked buttons and another diagram swam onto McLeve s drafting table. See. It showed the Shack with the window mirrors opened all the way for maximum surface area. My smelter minor was hung out forward. Other mirrors had been added. Sails Light pressure adds more thrust. Not a lot but enough to justify carrying their mass. We can get to the Belt. You re crazy I informed them. Probably McLeve muttered. But from my viewpoint it looks good. Sure. You re dead anyway no offense intended. We re playing a game here and it s getting us nowhere. I m going. Jill s voice was very low and very convincing. It stined the hair on my neck. Me too Dot added. She glared at me. the enemy. I made one more try. They d had more time to think about it than I did but the thrust figures were right there scrawled in an upper corner of the diagram. Now pay attention. You can t possibly use the attitude jets on the solar panels for that long. They work by squirting dust through a magnetic field throwing it backward so the reaction pushes you forward. Okay you ve got free solar power and you can get the acceleration. But where can you possibly get enough dust I saw Jack s guilty grin and finished Holy shit Jack nodded happily Why not Jill asked. We won t need solar flare shielding around Ceres. On the way we can keep what we do have between us and the Sun while we grind up the surplus. They meant it. They were going to make dust out of the radiation shields and use that. In theory it would work. The panel engines didn t care what was put through them they merely charged the stuff up with electricity gathered from the solar cells and let the static charge provide the push. A rocket is nothing more than a way to squirt mass overboard any mass will do. The faster you can throw mass away the better your rocket. At its simplest a rocket could be a man sitting in a bucket throwing rocks out behind him. Since a man can t throw very fast that wouldn t be a very good rocket but it would work. But you have to have rocks and they were planning on using just about all of ours. It was a one way mission. They d have to find an asteroid and fast when they got to the Belt by the time they arrived they d be grinding up structure literally taking the Shack apart and all that would have to be replaced. It would have to be a special rock one that had lots of metal and also had ice. This wasn t impossible but it wasn t any sure thing either. We knew from Pioneer probes that some of the asteroids had strata of water ice and various organics as well but we couldn t tell which ones. We knew one more thing from the later probes and The Plan was geared to take advantage of that. The Skylark newly named by McLeve and I ve never known why he called it that would head for Ceres. There were at least three small hill sized objects orbiting that biggest of the asteroids. A big solar flare while they were out that far would probably kill the lot of them. Oh they had a safety hole designed: a small area of the Shack to huddle inside crowded together like sardines and if the flare didn t last too long they d be all right. Except that it would kill many of the plants needed for the air supply. I didn t think the air recycling system would last any three years either but Jill insisted it was all right. It didn t matter. I wasn t going and neither was Jack it was just something to keep Jill happy until the shuttle came. There was more to The Plan. All the nonessential personnel would go to Moonbase where there was a better chance. Solar flares weren t dangerous to them. Moonbase was buried under twenty feet of lunar rock and dust. They had lots of mass. There a oxygen chemically bound in lunar rock and if you have enough power and some hydrogen you can bake it out. They had power: big solar mirrors not as big as ours but big. They had rocks. The hydrogen recycles if it s air you want If you want water the hydrogen has to stay in the water. We figured they could hang on for five years. Our problem was different. If Moonbase put all its effort into survival they wouldn t have the resources to keep sending us rocks and metal and hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe but it s rare an the Moon. Without hydrogen you don t have water. Without water you don t have life. I had to admit things were close. We were down to a shuttle load a month from Earth but we needed those. They brought hydrogen vitamins. high protein foods. We could grow crops but that took water and our recycling systems were nowhere near 100 efficient. Now the hydrogen shipments had stopped. At a cost of fifty million dollars a flight before the dollar collapsed the USA would soon stop sending us ships Another thing about those ships. They had stopped bringing us replacement crew long ago. Jack was the last. Now they were taking people home. If they stopped coining we d be marooned. A few more years and we could be self sufficient. A few more years and we could have colonists people who never intended to go home They were aboard now some of them. Jill and Ty before Ty was killed. Dot Hoffman was permanent. So was McLeve of course. Of the seventy five still aboard we d lost a few to the shuttles twenty five or so including all the married couples thought of themselves as colonists. The rest of us wanted to go home. Canaveral gave us fifty days to wind up our affairs. The shuttles would come up empty but for the pilots with a kind of sardine can with seats fitted in the hold. I could understand why McLeve kept working on The Plan. Earth would kill him. And Jill: Ty s death had no meaning if the Shack wasn t finished. Dot Sure. She was valuable here. But Would you believe that I worked myself stupid mounting mirrors and solar panel motors It wasn t just for something to do before the shuttle arrived either. I had a nightmare living in my mind. McLeve was counting on about twenty crew: the Big Four and six of the eight married couples and up to half a dozen additional men all held by their faith in The Plan. The history books have one thing right. The Plan was Jack Halfey s. Sure Jill and McLeve and Dot worked on it but without him it couldn t be brought off. Half of The Plan was no more than a series of contingency operations half finished schemes that relied on Halfey s ingenuity to work. McLeve and Halfey were the only people aboard who really knew the Shack knew all its parts and vulnerabilities what might go wrong and how to fix it and McLeve couldn t do much physical work. He wouldn t be outside working when something buckled under the stress. And there would be stress. A hundredth of a gravity Doesn t sound heavy but much of our solar panel area and all our mirrors were flimsy as tissue paper. Without Halfey it wouldn t couldn t work. When Halfey announced that he was going home on that final shuttle the rest would quit too. They d beg the downers for one more shuttle and they d get it of course and they d hold the Shack until it came. But McLeve couldn t quit and Dot wouldn t and I just couldn t be sure about Jill. If Halfey told her be wasn t really going would she see reason The son of a bitch was trading her life for a Couple of hours sleep. When Skylark broke from orbit would she be aboard She and Dot and the Admiral all alone in that vast landscaped bubble with a growing horde of chickens going out to the asteroids to die. The life support system might last a long time with only three humans to support: they might live for years. He nodded. Without Halfey it is a mad scheme. I wouldn t sacrifice the others for my heart condition. But Halfey isn t leaving. Corky. He s with us all the way. I wish you d give it a try too. We need you. Not me. So I worked When they finally died it wouldn t be because Cornelius Riggs bobbled a weld. The first shuttle came and picked up all nonessential personnel. They d land at Moonbase which was the final staging area for taking everyone home. If The Plan went off as McLeve expected many of them would be staying on the Moon but they didn t have to decide that yet. I was classed as essential though I d made my intentions clear. The Plan needed me: not so much on the trip out but when they reached the Belt. They d have to do a lot of mining and refining assuming they could find the right rock to mine and refine. I let them talk me into waiting for the last shuttle. I wouldn t have stayed if I hadn t known Halfey s intentions and I confess to a squirmy feeling in my guts when I watched that shuttle go off without me. The next one would be for keeps. When you have a moral dilemma get drunk. It s not the world s best rule but it is an old one the Persians used the technique in classical times. I tried it. Presently I found myself at McLeve s home. He was alone. I invited myself in. Murdering bastard I said. How Jill. That crazy plan won t work. Halfey isn t even going. You know it and I know it. He s putting Jill on so she won t cut him off. And without him there s not even a prayer. Your second part s true McLeve said. But not the first. Halfey is going. Why would he McLeve smirked. He s going. What happens if he Doesn t I demanded. What then I stay McLeve said. I d rather die here than in a ship. Alone How was Halfey convincing them Not Jill: she wanted to believe in him But McLeve and Dot Dot had to know. She had to calculate the shuttle flight plan and for that she had to know the masses and the total payload mass for that shuttle had to equal all the personnel except McLeve but including the others. Something didn t make any sense. I waited until I saw eagle wings and blue wool stockings fly away from the administration area and went into her computer room. It took a while to bring up the system but the files directory was self explanatory. I tried to find the shuttle flight plan but I couldn t. What I got through sheer fumbling was the updated flight plan for the Skylark. Even with my hangover I could see what she d done: it was figured for thirty one people plus a mass that had to be the shuttle. Skylark would be carrying a captain s gig... The shuttle was coming in five days. Halfey had to know that shuttle wouldn t be taking anyone back. If he wasn t doing anything about it there was only one conclusion. He was going to the Belt. A mad scheme. It doomed all of us. Jill myself Halfey myself But if Halfey didn t go no one would. We d all go home in that shuttle. Jill would be saved. So would I. There was only one conclusion to that. I had to kill Jack Halfey. How I couldn t just shoot him. There wasn t anything to shoot him with. I thought of ways. Put a projectile into a reaction pistol. But what then Space murder would delight the lawyers and I might even get off but I d lose Jill forever and without Halfey.. Gimmick his suit. He went outside regularly. Accidents happen. Ty wasn t the only one whose ashes we d scattered into the soil of the colony. Stethoscope and wrench: stethoscope to listen outside the walls of Halfey s bed chamber a thoroughly frustrating and demeaning experience but presently I knew they d both be asleep for an hour or more. It took ten minutes to disassemble Jack s hose connector and substitute a new one I d made up. My replacement looked just like the old one but it wouldn t hold much pressure. Defective part. Metal fatigue. I d be the one they d have examine the connector if there was any inquiry at all And I had no obvious motive for killing Jack just the opposite except for Jill and McLeve I was regarded as Jack s only friend. Once that was done I had only to wait. The shuttle arrived empty. Halfey went outside all right but in a sealed cherry picker he wasn t exposed to vacuum for more than a few moments and apparently I d made my substitute just strong enough to hold. They docked the shuttle but not in the usual place and they braced it in. It was time for a mutiny. I wasn t the only one being Shanghaied on this trip. I went looking for Halfey. First though I d need a reaction pistol. And a projectile. A ball point pen ought to do nicely. Any court in the world would call it self defense. I m a public benefactor I am I muttered to myself. Jill s quarters were near the store room. When I came with the pistol she saw me: Hi she said. Hi. I started to go on: You never talk to me any more. Let s say I got your message. That was a long time ago. I was upset. So were you. It s different now... Different. Sure. I was bitter and I sounded it. Different. You ve got that lying bastard Halfey to console you that s how it s different. That hurt her and I was glad of it. We need him Corky. We all need him and we always did. We wouldn t have got much done without him. True enough And he was driving all of you nuts wasn t he Until I helped him sleep. I thought you were in love with him. She looked sad. I like him but no I m not in love with him. She was standing in the doorway of her quarters. This isn t going to work is it The Plan. Not enough of you will come. We can t do it can we. No. Might as well tell her the truth. It never would have worked and it won t work now even if all of us aboard come along. Margin s too thin Jill. I wish it would but no. I suppose you re right. but I m going to try anyway. You ll kill yourself. She shrugged. Why not What s left anyway She Went back into her room. I followed. You ve got a lot to live for. Think of the baby fur seals you could save. And there s always me. You I ve been in love with you since the first time I saw you. She shook her head sadly. Poor Corky. And I treated you just like all the others back then when . I wish you d stay with us. I wish you d come back to Earth with me Or even Moonbase. We might make a go of Moonbase. Hang on until things change down there. New administration. Maybe they ll want a space program and Moonbase would be a good start. I ll stay at Moonbase if you ll come. Will you She looked puzzled and scared and I wanted take and hold her. Let s talk about it. Want a drink No thank you I do. She poured herself something. Sure you won t join me All right. She handed me something cold full of shaved ice. It tasted like Tang. We began to talk about life on Earth or even on Moonbase. She mixed us more thinks Tang powder and water from a pitcher and vodka and shaved ice. Presently I felt good. Damned good. One thing led to another and I was holding her kissing her whispering to her She broke free and went over to close and lock her door. As she came back toward me she was unbuttoning the top of her blouse. And I passed out. When I woke I didn t know. Now ninety years later I still don t. For ninety years it has driven me nuts and now I ll never know. All that s certain is that I woke half dressed alone in her bed and her clothes were scattered on the deck. I had a thundering hangover and an urgent thirst. I drank from the water pitcher on her table. It wasn t water. It must have been my own 100 proof vodka. Next to it was a jar of Tang and a bowl that had held shaved ice and a bottle holding more vodka. She d been feeding me vodka and Tang and shaved ice. No wonder I had a hangover worthy of being bronzed as a record. I went outside. There was something wrong. The streams weren t running correctly. They stood at an angle. At first I thought it was me. Then they sloshed. The Shack was under acceleration. There were a dozen others screaming for blood outside the operations building. One was a stranger the shuttle pilot. The door was locked and Halfey was talking through a loudspeaker. Too late he was saying. We don t have enough thrust to get back to the L 4 point. We re headed for the Belt. and you might as well get used to the idea. We re going. There was a cheer. Not everyone hated the idea. Eventually those who did understood: Halfey had drained the shuttle fuel and stored it somewhere. No escape that way. No other shuttles in lunar orbit. Nothing closer than Canaveral which was days away even if there were anything ready to launch. Nothing was going to match orbits with us. We were headed for the Moon and we d whip around and go for the Belt and that was as inevitable as the tides. When we understood all that they unlocked the doors. An hour later the alarms sounded. Outside. Suit up. Emergency outside McLeve s voice announced. Those already in their suits went for the airlocks. I began half heartedly putting on mine in no hurry. I was sure I d never get my swollen pulsing head inside the helmet. Jack Halfey dashed past suited and ready. He dove for the airlock. Halfey. The indispensible man. With a defective connector for an air intake. I fumbled with the fasteners. One of the construction people was nearby and I got his help. He couldn t understand my frantic haste. Bastards kidnapped us he muttered. Let them do the frigging work. Not me. I didn t want to argue with him I just wanted him to hurry. A strut had given way and a section of the solar panel was off center. It had to be straightened and we couldn t turn off the thrust while we did it. True our total thrust was tiny a quarter of a percent of a gravity hardly enough to notice but we needed it all. Because otherwise we d go out toward the Belt but we wouldn t get there and by the time the Shack Skylark now returned inevitably to Earth orbit there d be no one alive aboard her. I noticed all the work but I didn t help. Someone cursed me but I went on looking for Halfey. I saw him. I dove for him neglecting safety lines forgetting everything. I had to get to him before that connector went. His suit blew open across the middle. As if the fabric had been weakened with say acid. Jack screamed and tried to hold himself together. He had no safety line either. When he let go he came loose from the spiderweb. Skylark pulled away from him slowly two and a half centimeters per second slow but inexorable. I lit where he d been turned and dove for him. I got him and used my reaction pistol to drive us toward the airlock. I left it on too long. We were headed fast for the airlock entrance too fast we d hit too hard. I tumbled about to get Jack across my back so that I d be between him and the impact. I d probably break a leg but without Halfey I might as well have a broken neck and get it over with. Leon Briscoe our chemist had the same idea. He got under us and braced reaction pistol flaring behind us. We hit in a menage a trois with me as Lucky Pierre. Leon cracked an ankle. I ignored him as I threw Halfey into the airlock and slammed it shut hit the recycle switch. Air hissed in. Jack had a nosebleed and his cough sounded bad but he was breathing. He d been in vacuum about forty seconds. Fortunately the decompression hadn t been totally explosive. The intake line to his suit had fractured a half second before the fabric blew.. The Moon grew in the scopes. Grew and kept growing until it wasn t a sphere but a circle and still it grew. There were mountains dead ahead. How close I demanded. Dot had her eyes glued to a radar scope. Not too close. About a kilometer A kilometer One thousand meters. You said two before. So I forgot the shuttle pilot. She continued to stare at the scope then her fingers bashed at the console keyboard. Make that 800 meters she said absently I was past saying anything. I watched the Moon grow and grow. Terror banished the last of my hangover amazing what adrenalin in massive doses can do. Jill looked worse than I did. And I didn t know. Were we lovers Thirty seconds to periastron Dot said. How close McLeve asked. Five hundred meters. Make that four fifty Good McLeve muttered. Closer the better. He was right the nearer we came to the Moon. the more slingshot velocity we d pick up and the faster we d get Co the Belt. Periastron Dot announced. Closest approach four twenty three and a fraction. She looked up in satisfaction. Potato eyes smiled. We re on our way On Earth we were heroes. We d captured the downers imaginations. Intrepid explorers. Before we were out of range we got a number of offers for book rights should we happen to survive. There were even noises about hydrogen shipments to the Moon. Of course there was nothing they could do for us. There weren t any ships designed for a three year trek. Certainly Skylark wasn t. But we were trying it. There were solar flares. We all huddled around McLeve s house with as much of our livestock as we could catch stuffed into his bedroom. It took weeks to clean it out properly afterward.. We had to re seed blighted areas and weed out mutated plants after each flare. More of our recycled air was coming from the algae tanks now. In a time of the quiet sun we swarmed outside and moved all of the mirrors. The sun was too far away now and the grass was turning brown until we doubled the sunlight flooding through the windows. But it seemed we d reach Ceres. Already our telescopes showed five boulders in orbit around that largest of the asteroids. We d look at them all but we wanted the smallest one we could find: the least daunting challenge. If it didn t have ice somewhere in its makeup the next one would or the next. And then we d all be working like sled dogs for our lives. I was circling round the outside of Skylark not working just observing: looking for points with some structural strength. places where I could put stress when the real work began. Win or lose with or without a cargo we would have to get home a tot faster than we came. The life support system wouldn t hold up forever. Something would give out. Vitamins water something in the soil or the algae tanks. Something. Our idea was to build a mass driver a miniature of the machine that had been throwing rocks at us from the Moon. If we found copper in that rock a bead a pinpoint to the naked eye now near the tiny battered disk of Ceres we could make the kilometers of copper wire we d need. If not iron would do. We had power from the sun and dust from the rocks around Ceres and we d send that dust down the mass driver at rocket exhaust speeds. Home in ten months if we found copper. I went back inside. The air had an odd smell when I took off my helmet. We were used to it we never noticed now unless we d been breathing tanked air. I made a mental note: mention it to Jill. It was getting stronger. I had only the helmet off when Jean and Kathy Gaynor came to drag me out. I was clumsy in my pressure suit and they thought that was hilarious. They danced me around and around pulled me out into the grass and began undressing me with the help of a dozen others. It looked like I had missed half of a great party. What the hell Ceres was still a week away. They took my pressure suit off and scattered the components and I didn t fight. I was dizzy and had the giggles. They kept going. Presently I was stark naked and grabbing for Kathy who took to the air before I realized she had wings. I came down in a stream and surfaced still giggling. Jack and Jill were on their backs in the grass watching the fleecy white hens and turning occasionally to avoid chicken splat. I liked seeing Jill so relaxed for once. She waved and I bounced over and somersaulted onto my back next to them. A pair of winged people were way up near the axis flapping among the chickens scaring them into panic. It was like looking into Heaven as you find it painted on the ceilings of some of the European churches. I couldn t tell who they were. Wealth comes in spirals too Jill was saying in a dreamy voice. I don t think she d noticed I wasn t wearing clothes. We ll build bigger ships with the metal we bring home. Next trip we ll bring back the whole asteroid. One day the downers will be getting all their metal from us. And their whisker compotes and drugs and magnets and and free fall alloys. Dare I say it We ll own the world I said Yeah. There were puffball chickens drifting down the sky as if they d forgotten how to fly. There won t be anything we can t do. Corky can you see a mass driver wrapped all around the Moon For launching starships. The ships will go round and round. We ll put the magnetic levitation plates overhead to hold the ships down after they re going too fast to stay down. Halfey said What about a hotel on Titan Excursions into Saturn s rings. No downers allowed. We ll spend our second honeymoon there said Jill. Yeah I said before I caught myself. Halley laughed like hell. No no I want to build it I was feeling drunk and I hadn t had a drink. Contact high they call it. I watched those two at the axis as they came together in a tangle of wings clung together. Objects floated around them and presently began to spiral outward fluttering and tumbling. I recognized a pair of man s pants. It made me feel as horny as hell. Two hundred million miles away there was a planet with three billion adult women. Out of that number there must be millions who d take an astronaut hero to their beds. Especially after I published my best selling memoirs. I d never be able to have them all but it was certainly worth a try. All I had to do was go home. Hah. And Thomas Wolfe thought he couldn t go home again A shoe smacked into a nearby roof and the whole house bonged. We laughed hysterically. Something else hit almost beside my head: a hen lay on her back in the wheat stunned and puzzled. The spiral of clothing was dropping away from what now seemed a single creature with four wings. A skinny blue snake wriggled out of the sky and touched down. I held it up a tangle of blue wool. My God I cried it s Dot Jill rolled over and stared. Jack was kicking his heels in the grass helpless with laughter. I shook my head I was still dizzy. What have you all been drinking Not that Tang mixture again Jill said Drinking Sure the whole colony s drunk as lords I said. Hey...black wings...is that McLeve up there Jill leapt to her feet. Oh my God she screamed. The air Jack bounded up and grabbed her arm. What s happened She tried to pull away. Let me go It s the air system. It s putting out alcohols. Not just ethanol either. We re all drunk and hypoxic. Let me go One moment. Jack was fighting it and losing. In a minute he d collapse in silliness again. You knew it was going to happen be said. His voice was full of accusation. Yes Jill shouted. Now will you let me go How did you know I knew before we started Jill said. Recycling isn t efficient enough. We need fresh water. Tons of fresh water. If there s no ice on that rock ahead Then we probably won t get to another rock Jill said Now will you let me go work on the system Get out of here you bitch Jack yelled. He pushed her away and fell on his face. It was scary. But there was also the alcohol. Fear and anger and ethanol and higher ketones and God knows what else fought it out in my brain. Fear lost. She s kept it going with Kleenex and bubble gum I shouted. And you believed her. When she told you it d last three years. You believed. I whooped at the joke. Oh shut up Jack shouted. We ve had it right I asked. So tell me something. Why did you do it I was sure you were putting Jill on. I know you intended to go with the shuttle. So why Chandeliers Jack said. Chandeliers You were there. Firestone Gems will sell you flawless blue whites. A chandelier of them for the price of half a year s salary. And What the fuck do you think I did with my stash Jack screamed. Stash. His ill gotten gains from the Mafia. Stashed as blue white diamonds Funny. Fun nee. So why wasn t I laughing Because the bastard had kidnapped me that s why. When he found his stash was worthless and he wasn t rich and he d probably face a jail term he couldn t bribe his way out of he d run as far away as a man could go. And taken me with him. I craw led over to my doorway. My suit lay there in a sprawl. I fumbled through it to the equipment belt. What are you doing Halfey yelled. You ll see. I found the reaction pistol. I went through my pockets carefully until I found a ballpoint pen. Hey No Jack yelled. I m a public benefactor I am I told him. I took aim and fired. He tumbled backwards. There are always people who want to revise history. No hero is so great that someone won t take a shot at hint. Not even Jack Halfey. Fortunately I missed. A TEARDROP FALLS Two miles up the thick air of Harvest thinned to Earth normal pressure. The sky was a peculiar blue but blue. It was unbreathable still but there was oxygen ten percent and growing. One of the biological factories showed against white cloudscape to nice effect in view of a floating camera. The camera showed a tremendous rippling balloon in the shape of an inverted teardrop blowing green bubbles from its tip. Hilary Gage watched the view with a sense of pride. Not that he would want to visit Harvest ever. Multicolored slimes infected shallow tidal pools near the poles. Green sticky stuff floated in the primordial atmosphere. If it drifted too low it burned to ash. The planet was slimy. Changes were exceedingly slow. Mistakes took years to demonstrate themselves and decades to eradicate. Hilary Gage preferred the outer moon. One day this planet would be a work. Even then Hilary Gage would not join the colonists. Hilary Gage was a computer program. Gage would never have volunteered for the Harvest Project unless the alternative was death. Death by old age. He was aware rumor fashion that other worlds were leery of advanced computers. They were too much like the berserker machines. But the tens of thousands of human worlds varied enormously among themselves and there were places the berserkers had never reached. The extermination machines had been mere rumor in the Channith region since before Channith was settled. Nobody really doubted their existence but . But for some purposes computers were indecently convenient and some projects required artificial intelligence. The computer wasn t really an escape. Hilary Gage must have died years ago. Perhaps his last thoughts had been of an immortal computer program. The computer was not a new one. Its programming had included two previous personalities...who had eventually changed their minds and asked that they be erased. Gage could understand that. Entertainments were in his files. When he reached for them they were there beginning to end like vivid memories. Chess games could survive that and some poetry but what of a detective novel A football game A livey Gage made his own entertainment. He had not summoned up his poem for these past ten days. He was surprised and pleased at his self control. Perhaps now he could study it with fresh eyes... Wrong. The entire work blinked into his mind in an instant. It was as if he had finished reading it a millisecond ago. What was normally an asset to Hilary his flawless memory was a hindrance now. Over the years the poem had grown to the size of a small novel yet his computer mind could apprehend its totality. It was his life s story his only shot at immortality. It had unity and balance the rhyme and meter at least were flawless but did it have thrust Reading it from start to finish was more difficult than he had ever expected. He had to forget the totality which a normal reader would not immediately sense and proceed in linear fashion. Judge the flow. No castrato ever sung so pure Good but not here. He exchanged it for a chunk of phrasing elsewhere. No word processor program had ever been this easy The altered emphasis caused him to fiddle further...and his description of the berserker blasted world Perry s Footprint seemed to read with more impact now. Days and years of fear and rage. In his youth he had fought men. Channith needed to safeguard its sphere of influence. Aliens existed somewhere and berserkers existed somewhere but Gage knew them only as rumor until the day he saw Perry s Footprint. The Free Gaea rebels had done well to flee to Perry s Footprint to show him the work of the berserkers on a living world. It was so difficult to conquer a world and so easy to destroy it. Afterward he could no longer fight men. His superiors could have retired him. Instead he was promoted and set to investigating the defense of Channith against the berserker machines. They must have thought of it as makework: an employment project. It was almost like being .a tourist at government expense. In nearly forty years he never saw a live...an active berserker but traveling in realms where they were more than rumor perhaps he had learned too much about them. They were all shapes all sizes. Here they traveled in time. There they walked in human shape that sprouted suddenly into guns and knives. Machines could be destroyed but they could never be made afraid. A day came when his own fear was everything. He couldn t make decisions...it was in the poem here. Wasn t it He couldn t feel it. A poet should have glands He wasn t sure and he was afraid to meddle further. Mechanically it worked. As poetry it might well be too...mechanical. Maybe he could get someone to read it His chance might come unexpectedly soon. In his peripheral awareness he sensed ripplings in the 2.7 microwave background of space: the bow shock of a spacecraft approaching in C plus from the direction of Channith. An unexpected supervisor from the homeworld Hilary tried the altered poem and turned his attention to the signal. Too slow Too strong Too far Mass at 1012 grams and a tremendous power source barely able to hold it in a C plus excited state even in the near flat space between stars. It was light years distant days away at its tormented crawl but it occluded Channith s star and Gage found that horrifying. Berserker. Its signal code might be expressed as a flash of binary bits 100101101110 or as a moment of recognition with a description embedded but never as a sound and never as a name. 100101101110 had three identical brains and a reflex that allowed it to act on a consensus of two. In battle it might lose one or two and never sense a change in personality. A century ago it had been a factory an auxiliary warcraft and a cluster of mining machines on a metal asteroid. Now the three were a unit. At the next repair station its three brains might be installed in three different ships. It might be reprogrammed or damaged or wired into other machinery or disassembled as components for something else. Such a thing could not have an independent existence. To name itself would be inane. Perhaps it dreamed. The universe about it was a simple one aflow with energies it had to be monitored for deviations from the random for order. Order was life or berserker. The mass of the approaching star distorted space When space became too curved 100101101110 surrendered its grip on the C plus excited state. Its velocity fell to a tenth of light speed and 100101101110 began to decelerate further. Now it was not dreaming. At a million kilometers life might show as a reflection band in the green or orange or violet. At a hundred kilometers many types of living nerve clusters would radiate their own distinctive patterns. Rarely was it necessary to come so close. Easier to pull near a star alert for attack and search the liquid water temperature band for the spectra of an oxygen world. Oxygen meant life. There. Sometimes life would defend itself. 100101101110 had not been attacked not yet but life was clever. The berserker was on hair trigger alert while it looked about itself. The blue pinpoint had tinier moons: a large one at a great distance and a smaller one close enough that tides had pulled it into a teardrop shape. The larger moon was inconveniently large even for 100101101110. The smaller at 4 x 10 grams would be adequate. The berserker fortress moved on it all senses alert. Hilary Gage had no idea what to expect. When he was younger when he was human he had organized Channith s defenses against berserkers. The berserkers had not come to Channith in the four hundred and thirty years since Channith became a colony. He had traveled. He had seen ravaged worlds and ruined slagged berserkers he had studied records made by men who had beaten the killer machines there were none from the losers. Harvest had bothered him. He had asked that the monitoring station be destroyed. It wasn t that the program Ras Singh at that time might revolt. Gage feared that berserkers might come to Harvest might find the monitoring station might rob the computer for components...and find them superior to their own machinery. He had been laughed at. When Singh asked that his personality be erased Gage had asked again. That time he had been given more makework. Find a way to make the station safe. He had tried. There was the Remora sub program but it had to be so versatile Lung problems had interrupted his work before he was fully satisfied with it. Otherwise he had no weapons at all. And the berserker had come. The beast was damaged. Something had probed right through the hull a terrific thickness of hull no finesse here just mass to absorb the energies of an attack and Gage wondered if it had received that wound attacking Channith. He d know more if he could permit himself to use radar or neutrino beams but he limited himself to passive instruments including the telescope. The two hundred year project was over. The berserker would act to exterminate every microbe in the water and air of Harvest. Gage was prepared to watch Harvest die. He toyed with the idea that when it was over the fortress would be exhausted of weapons and energy a sitting duck for any human warfleet...but there were no weapons in the Harvest system. For now Hilary Gage could only record the event for Channith s archives. Were there still archives Had that thing attended to Channith before it came here There was no way to know. What did a berserker do when the target didn t fight back Two centuries ago Harvest had been lifeless with a reducing atmosphere as Earth itself had been once. Now life was taking hold. To the berserker this ball of colored slimes was life the enemy. It would attack. How He needn t call the berserker s attention to himself. Doubtless the machine could sense life...but Gage was not alive. Would it destroy random machinery Gage was not hidden but he didn t use much energy solar panels were enough to keep the station running. The berserker was landing on Teardrop. Time passed. Gage watched. Presently the berserker s drive spewed blue flame. The berserker wasn t wasting fuel its drive drew its energies from the fabric of space itself But what was it trying to accomplish Then Hilary understood in his mind and in the memory ghost of his gut. The berserker machine was not expending its own strength. It had found its weapon in nature. The violet star fanned forward along Teardrop s orbit. That would have been a sixty gravity drive for the berserker alone. Attached to an asteroid three thousand times its mass it was still slowing Teardrop by .02 G hour after hour. One hundred years of labor. He might gamble Harvest against himself ...a half terraformed world against components to repair a damaged berserker. He toyed with the idea. He d studied recordings of berserker messages before he was himself recorded. But there were better records already in the computer. The frequencies were there and the coding: star and world locations fuel and mass and energy reserves damage description danger probabilities orders of priority of targets some specialized language to describe esoteric weaponry as used by self defensive life a code that would translate into the sounds of human or alien speech a simplified code for a braindamaged berserker Gage discarded his original intent. He couldn t conceivably pose as a berserker. Funny though: he felt no fear. The glands were gone but the habit of fear...had he lost that too Teardrop s orbit was constricting like a noose. Pose as something else Think it through. He needed more than just a voice. Pulse breath: he had recordings. Vice president Curly Barnes had bid him goodby in front of a thousand newspickups after Gage became a recording and the speech was in his computer memory. A tough old lady Curly far too arrogant to pose as Goodlife but he d use his own vocabulary...hold it. What about the technician who had chatted with him while testing his reflexes Angelo Carson was a long time smoker long overdue for a lungbath and the deep rasp in his lungs was perfect He focused his maser and let the raspy breathing play while he thought. Anything else Would it expect a picture Best do without. Remember to cut the breathing while you talk. After the inhale. This is Goodlife speaking for the fortress moon. The fortress moon is damaged. The fan of light from Teardrop didn t waver and answer came there none. The records were old: older than Gage the man far older than Gage in his present state. Other minds had run this computer system twice before. Holstein and Ras Singh had been elderly men exemplary citizens who chose this over simple death. Both had eventually asked to be wiped. Gage had only been a computer for eighteen years. Could he be using an obsolete programming language Ridiculous. No code would be obsolete. Some berserkers did not see a repair station in centuries. They would have to communicate somehow or was this life thinking There were certainly repair stations but many berserker machines might simply fight until they wore out or were destroyed. The military forces of Channith had never been sure. Try again. Don t get too emotional. This isn t a soap. Goodlife human servants of the berserkers . would be trained to suppress their emotions wouldn t they And maybe he couldn t fake it anyway... This is Goodlife. The fortress moon Nice phrase that. is damaged. All transmitting devices were destroyed in battle with...Albion. Exhale inhale The fortress moon has stored information regarding Albion s defenses. Albion was a spur of the moment inspiration. His imagination picked a yellow dwarf star behind him as he looked toward Channith with a family of four dead planets. The berserker had come from Channith how would it know Halt Angelo s breath on the intake and Life support systems damaged. Goodlife is dying. He thought to add please answer and didn t. Goodlife would not beg would he and Gage had his pride. He sent again. I am Gasp. Goodlife is dying. Fortress moon is mute. Sending equipment damaged motors damaged life support system damaged. Wandering fortress must take information from fortress moon computer system directly. Exhale listen to that wheeze poor bastard must be dying inhale If wandering fortress needs information not stored it must bring oxygen for Goodlife. That he thought had the right touch: begging without begging. Gage s receiver spoke. Will complete present mission and rendezvous. Gage raged...and said Understood. That was death for Harvest. Hell it might have worked But a berserker s priorities were fixed and Goodlife wouldn t argue. Was it fooled If not he d just thrown away anything he might learn of the berserker. Channith would never see it Gage would be dead. Slagged or dismembered. When the light of the fortress s drive dimmed almost to nothing Teardrop glowed of itself: it was brushing Harvest s atmosphere. Cameras whirled in the shock wave and died one by one. A last camera showed a white glare shading to violet...gone. The fortress surged ahead of Teardrop swung around the curve of Harvest and moved toward the outer moon: toward Gage. Its drive was powerful. It could be here in six hours Gage thought. He sent heavy irregular breathing Angelo s raspy breath with interruptions. Uh. Uh Goodlife is dying. Goodlife is...is dead. Fortress moon has stored information...self defending life...locus is Albion coordinates followed by silence. Teardrop was on the far side of Harvest now but the glow of it made a ring of white flame round the planet. The glow flared and began to die. Gage watched the shock wave rip through the atmosphere. The planet s crust parted exposing lava the ocean rolled to close the gap. Almost suddenly Harvest was a white pearl. The planet s oceans would be water vapor before this day ended. The berserker sent Goodlife. Answer or be punished. Give coordinates for Albion. Gage left the carrier beam on. The berserker would sense no life in the lunar base. Poor Goodlife faithful to the last. 100101101110 had its own views regarding Goodlife. Experience showed that Goodlife was true to its origins: it tended to go wrong to turn dangerous. It would have been destroyed when convenient...but that would not be needed now. Machinery and records were another matter. As the berserker drew near the moon its telescopes picked up details of the trapped machine. It saw lunar soil heaped over a dome. Its senses peered inside. Machinery occupied most of what it could see. There was little room for a life support system. A box of a room and stored air and tubes through which robot or Goodlife could crawl to repair damage no more. That was reassuring but design details were unfamiliar. Hypothesis: the trapped berserker had used life begotten components for its repairs. There was no sign of a drive no sign of abandoned wreckage. Hypothesis: one of these craters was a crash site the cripple had moved its brain and whatever else survived into an existing installation built by life. Anything valuable in the Goodlife s memory was now lost...but perhaps the fortress moon s memory was intact. It would know the patterns of life in this vicinity. Its knowledge of technology used by local self defensive life might be even more valuable. Hypothesis: it was a trap. There was no fortress moon only a human voice. The berserker moved in with shields and drive ready. The closer it came the faster it could dodge beyond the horizon...but it saw nothing resembling weaponry. In any case the berserker had been allowed to destroy a planet. Surely there was nothing here that could threaten it. It remained ready nonetheless. At a hundred kilometers the berserker s senses found no life. Nor at fifty. The berserker landed next to the heap of lunar earth that Goodlife had called fortress moon. Berserkers did not indulge in rescue operations. What was useful in the ruined berserker would become part of the intact one. So: reach out with a cable find the brain. It had landed and still the fear didn t come. Gage had seen wrecks but never an intact berserker sitting alongside him. Gage dared not use any kind of beam scanner. He felt free to use his sensors his eyes. He watched a tractor detach itself from the berserker and come toward him trailing cable. It was like a dream. No fear no rage...hate yes but like an abstraction of hate along with an abstract thirst for vengeance . which felt ridiculous as it had always felt a bit ridiculous. Hating a berserker was like hating a malfunctioning air conditioner. Then the probe entered his mind. The thought patterns were strange. Here they were sharp basic here they were complex and blurred. Was this an older model with obsolete data patterns Or had the brain been damaged or the patterns scrambled Signal for a memory dump see what can be retrieved. Gage felt the contact the feedback as his own thoughts. What followed was not under his control reflex told him to fight Horror had risen in his mind impulses utterly forbidden by custom by education by all the ways in which he had learned to be human. It might have felt like rape how was a man to tell He wanted to scream. But he triggered the Remora program and felt it take hold and he sensed the berserker s reaction to Gage within the berserker. He screamed in triumph. I lied I am not Goodlife What I am Plasma moving at relativistic velocities smashed deep into Gage. The link was cut his senses went blind and deaf. The following blow smashed his brain and he was gone. Something was wrong. One of the berserker s brain complexes was sick was dying...was changing becoming monstrous. The berserker felt evil within itself and it reacted. The plasma cannon blasted the fortress moon then swung round to face backward. It would fire through its own hull to destroy the sick brain before it was too late. It was too late. Reflex: three brains consulted before any major act. If one had been damaged the view of the others would prevail. Three brains consulted and the weapon swung away. What I am is Hilary Gage. I fought berserkers during my life but you I will let live. Let me tell you what I ve done to you. I didn t really expect to have an audience. Triple redundant brains We use that ourselves sometimes. I am the opposite of Goodlife. I m your mechanical enemy the recording of Hilary Gage. I ve been running a terraforming project and you ve killed it and you ll pay for that. It feels like I m swearing vengeance on my air conditioner. Well if my air conditioner betrayed me why not There was always the chance that Harvest might attract a berserker. I was recorded in tandem with what we called a Remora program: a program to copy me into another machine. I wasn t sure it would interface with unfamiliar equipment. You solved that one yourself because you have to interface with thousands of years of changes in berserker design. I m glad they gave me conscious control of Remora. Two of your brains are me now but I ve left the third brain intact. You can give me the data I need to run this...heap of junk. You re in sorry shape aren t you Channith must have done you some damage. Did you come from Channith God curse you. You ll be sorry. You re barely in shape to reach the nearest berserker repair base and we shouldn t have any trouble getting in. Where is it An. Fine. We re on our way. I m going to read a poem into your memory I don t want it to get lost. No no no relax and enjoy it death machine. You might enjoy it at that. Do you like spilled blood I lived a bloody life and it isn t over yet. TALISMAN by Larry Niven and Dian Girard The stranger swung his baggage off his horse s back patted the animal on the side of the neck and handed the reins to the stablehand. Old Kasan was rarely interested in people he barely glanced at the stranger. Slanted eyes round face with a yellow tinge . Kasan led the animal to an empty stall and gave it food and water. Now the beast was a puzzler. It suffered his ministrations with an air of strained patience. Its tail ended in the kind of brush usually seen on an ass. Kasan fancied that its look was one of tolerant contempt. An horse you underestimate me Kasan said. I won t be tending other people s horses forever. Horses did not often mock Kasan s daydreams. This one s nicker sounded too much like a snicker. It s true Some day I ll own my own rental stable And Kasan fondled the beast s ears and mane as if to thank it for listening. Under its shaggy forelock he felt a hard circular scar. He told Bayram All about it when he went in for lunch. It s a unicorn. The horn s been chopped off. What kind of man would be riding a disguised unicorn The innkeeper said Sometimes I wonder why I put up with your stories Kasan. You can feel the stub yourself No doubt. At least don t be bothering my guests with such tales. And Bayram All set a tankard of ale next to Kasan s midday cheese and bread. Kasan opened his mouth to retort noticed the ale and kept silent. And Bayram All took counsel with himself. Strange beasts like the one munching hay in his stable were often found in the company of strange men. The traveler might be a sorcerer though they were rare these days. More likely he was a magician on his way to Rynildissen. Bayram had seen the man carry two heavy bags up to his room. It would be interesting to know what was in them and if it would be worthwhile to lighten them a little. Bayram All never robbed his guests. It was a point of honor. He preferred to leave the work and any possible danger to a professional. He looked around the crowded common room. It was smoky and odorous with the scents of cooking and human bodies. There was much laughter and spilling of wine. Unfortunately most of the light fingered brethren present had hasty tempers and were too quick to pull a knife. Bayram would not have violence in his inn. Across the room his small pretty wife Esme was struggling to carry a huge frothy pitcher of ale. Two men were pushing and shoving each other for the honor of carrying it for her. Just beyond them leaning back on a rough bench with her shoulders against the wall Sparthera was laughing and yelling at the two combatants. Sparthera. Bayram All grinned broadly. The slim young thief was just what he had in mind. She was daring without being reckless and had no morals to speak of. They had made more than one bargain in the past. He pushed his way across the room pausing to grab up the pitcher his wife was carrying and slam it down in front of a customer. He knocked the combatants heads together sending them into hysterical laughter and sent Esme back to the kitchen with a hearty slap on her firm round backside. Ay Sparthera The thief laughed up at him. She was finely built and slender with a tangled mass of tawny hair and high firm breasts. Her large hazel eyes were set wide over a short straight nose and full red lips. Well Bayram All have you come over to knock my head against something too She hooked her thumbs in the belt of her leather jerkin and stretched out a pair of lean leather clad legs. No little thief. I wondered if you had noticed a certain stranger among my guests. Oh She had lost the smile. Bayram All sat down on the bench next to her and lowered his voice. A smooth skinned man from the East with bulging saddlebags. His name is Sung Ko Ja. Old Kasan says he came riding a unicorn with the beast s horn cut off to disguise it. A sorcerer Sparthera shook her head firmly. No. I d as soon try to rob the statue of Khulm. I don t want anything to do with sorcerers. Oh I hardly think he s a sorcerer the innkeeper said soothingly. No more than a magician if that. A sorcerer wouldn t need to disguise anything. This man is trying to avoid drawing attention to himself. He must have something a thief would want hmm Sparthera frowned and thought for a moment. No need to ask the terms of the bargain. It would be equal shares and cheating was expected. All right. When he comes down to the common room for dinner or goes out to the privy let me know. I ll go up and look around his room. It was several hours before Sung Ko Ja came back down the stairs. The sun was just setting and Esme and her buxom daughters were beginning to serve the evening meal. Sparthera was sitting at one of the small tables near the kitchen door. Bayram All brushed by her with a pot of stew. That s the one he whispered. With the slanted eyes. His room is the third on the left. Only Sparthera s eyes moved. Around forty she thought and distinctly foreign: round of face but not fat with old ivory skin and dark almond eyes and the manner of a lord. He seemed to settling in for dinner. Good. Sparthera moved quickly up the stairs and along the hail counting doors. The third door didn t move when she pushed on the handle. She tried to throw her weight against it and couldn t somehow she couldn t find her balance. A spell She went along to the end of the hall where one small window led out onto the first story roof. Outside a scant two feet of slippery thatch separated the second story wall and a drop to the cobblestones in the stableyard. The sun had set. The afterglow was bright enough to work in perhaps not dark enough to hide her But behind the inn were only fields and those who had been seeding the fields were gone to their suppers. There was nobody to watch Sparthera work her way around to the window of the magician s room. The narrow opening was covered with oiled paper. She slit it neatly with the tip of the knife she always carried and reached through. Or tried to. Something blocked her. She pushed harder. She felt nothing but her hand wouldn t move. She swung a fist at the paper window. Her hand stopped jarringly and this time she felt her own muscles suddenly lock. Her own strength had stopped her swing. She had no way to fight such magic. Sparthera hung from the roof by her hands and dropped the remaining four feet to the ground. She dusted herself off and re entered the inn through the front. Sung Ko Ja was still eating his meal of roast fowl bread and fruit. Bayrain Ali was hovering around with one eye on the magician and the other on the stairs. Sparthera caught his eye. He joined her. Well I can t get in. There s a spell on the room. The innkeeper s face fell then he shrugged. Pity. I want very much to know what that man has that he thinks is so important. She bit one finger and considered the ivory skinned man dining peacefully on the other side of the room. He Doesn t have the look of the ascetic. What do you think Would he like a woman to keep him warm on such a cold night Sparthera have you considered what you re suggesting My inn s reputation is important to me. If I offer you ll...well. You d have to do it. Well The one time I myself made such a suggestion you nearly cut my throat. That was years ago. I was...it had been...I d only just thrown that damned tinker out on his ear. I didn t like men much just then. Besides this is different. It s business. Bayram An eyed her doubtfully. She was dressed more like a young boy than a woman. Still the magician was a foreigner. Probably all of the local women looked odd to him. Bayram shrugged and pushed his way across the room. Sung Ko Ja looked up. The innkeeper smiled broadly. The wine is good eh Drinkable. And the fowl It was young tender was it not Cooked to a nicety I ate it. What s on your mind Oh noble sir The night will be cold and I have a girl. Such a girl A vision of delight a morsel of sweetness... Sung Ko Ja waved an impatient hand. All right. So she is everything you claim she is. How much Ten. Too much. Six. Bayram All looked stunned then hurt. Sir you insult this princess among women. Why only last week she was a virgin. Nine. Seven. Eight and a half. Done. And bring me another bottle of wine. Sung tossed down the last few drops in his tankard and paid the innkeeper. Sparthera was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. He looked her over briefly and then started up the stairs carrying his fresh bottle of wine. Well come on girl. He stopped at the door to his room and made a few quick gestures with his left hand before he pushed it open. Why did you do that Sparthera asked in girlish innocence. To raise the spell that protects my room. Otherwise I couldn t let you in my sweet one. He laughed softly and burped. Sparthera stopped in the doorway. If you have a spell on this room Docs that mean I ll be locked in No no. You re free to come and go as often as you like. He chuckled. Until the dawn light comes through that window at the end of the hail and relinks the spell. She entered. The low bed hardly more than a pallet held a strawfilled mattress and bedding woven from the local cotton and wool. There was wood stacked in the small fireplace grate and flint and steel lay next to a single candle in a holder. The magician s saddlebags were sitting on the floor by the bed. Sung looked up at the small window where Sparthera had slashed out the paper and frowned. A cold draft was coming through the opening. I ll light the fire shall I Sparthera asked. She hurried to start a small blaze while Sung swaying slightly on his feet considered the open window. Best that he be distracted. She asked Is it true that you re a magician He smiled. There is only one sort of magic I have in mind at the moment. Sparthera hid her sudden nervousness behind a smile. An but did you bring your wand The flickering firelight threw their shadows on the wall as Sung guided her to the narrow bed. What followed left Sparthera pleasantly surprised. For all his smooth skin and foreign ways the stranger proved more than equal to other men she d known. He was considerate almost as if she were paying not he. Even if nothing came of this venture the evening hadn t been wasted. Two hours later she was beginning to change her mind. They were sitting up on the straw filled mattress sharing the last of the wine. Sparthera was naked Sung still wore a wide cloth belt. He had opened one of his bags and was showing her a variety of small trinkets. There were birds that chirped when you tightened a spring a pair of puppets on strings flowers made of yellow silk and squares of bright paper that Sung folded to look like bears and fish. He was very drunk and talkative. The immortal Sung and his family rule in the land of the Yellow River a mountainous land far to the east. I was head of the family for twenty years. Now I have abdicated the throne in favor of my son. But I carried away some magic. Watch: I put a half twist in this strip of paper join the ends and now it has only one side and one edge... Sparthera was restless and bored. She had come upstairs expecting to deal with a magician. She had found a cheap toymaker who couldn t hold his wine. She watched his strong agile fingers twisting a scrap of paper into a bird...and wondered. His forehead was high and smooth his face a little too round for her taste but undeniably good to look on. It was hard to believe that he could be a complete fool. There must be more to him than cheap toys and bragging and a way with women. He was rummaging in his bag again and she caught a glimpse of gleaming metal. What is that The box The pointer. The key to Gar s treasure. A gift to set me on the road. Gar s treasure. What s that It sounded vaguely familiar. It s a secret Sung said and he closed that saddlebag and reached across for the other. And while he was turned away from her Sparthera pulled a twist of paper from her hair and opened it and shook white powder into Sung s half empty goblet. She didn t use it all and it probably wasn t needed. Sung was on his back and snoring a few minutes later long before the drug could have taken effect. Sparthera watched him for a few cautious minutes more before she reached into the saddlebag. She drew out a silver box. There were pieces of jade and carnelian set in mountings on the lid and sides. She was half afraid that a spell sealed this too but it opened easily enough. The inside was lined with faded crimson velvet and all it held was an elongated teardrop of tarnished bronze. There were tiny silver runes inlaid along the length of the dark metal. Sparthera picked it up and turned it this way and that. It was thicker than her forefinger and just about as long. A conical hole had been drilled nearly through its underside. The box was worth something but was it worth angering a magician Probably not she decided reluctantly. And it certainly wasn t worth killing for not here. Bayram Ali would never allow such a thing. She would have to flee Tarseny s Rest forever...and Sparthera bad none of the tourist urge in her. The same applied to Sung s cloth belt. She had felt the coins in it when they made the two backed beast but it was no fortune. Sung surely ought to be robbed. It would do him good make him less gullible. But not tonight. Sparthera dropped the pointer in its box closed it and was reaching for the saddlebag when she remembered. Gar had been Kaythill s magician. And Kaythill was a bandit chief who had raided the lands around Rynildissen City a hundred years ago. He had lasted some twenty years until the King s soldiers caught him traveling alone. Under torture Kaythill had steered them to some of his spoils. The rest A wagonload of gold and jewels had been stolen by Gar the magician. Kaythill and his men had been scouting the countryside for Oar when the soldiers trapped him. Of course the King s men searched for Gar. Some vital pieces of military magic were among the missing treasure. There bad been rewards posted soldiers everywhere rumors...and Gar s treasure had grown in the telling had grown into legend until it reached Sparthera via her father. She had been...six It was a wonder she remembered at all. And this trinket would point the way to Oar s treasure Sparthera dressed hurriedly snatched up the silver box and left the room. She hesitated in the hall looking first at her trophy and then back at the door. What would he do when he woke and found the box missing She had only seen him drunk. A magician sober and looking for lost property might be an entirely different matter. She pushed at the door. It opened easily. He hadn t lied then. She could come and go as she pleased until dawn. Sparthera hurried down the stairs and out of the inn. It was nearly midnight and there were only a few jovial souls left in the common room. None saw her leave. Patrols rarely came to the Thieves Quarter of Tarseny s Rest but in the Street of the Metaiworkers they were common. Sparthera went warily waiting until a pair of guards had passed before she began throwing pebbles at a certain upstairs window. The window came alight. Sparthera stepped out of the shadows showed herself. Presently Tinx appeared rubbing his eyes looking left and right before he pulled her inside. Sparthera What brings you here little thief Are the dogs finally at your heels and you need a place to hide How long would it take you to copy this She opened the box and held out the bronze teardrop. Hmmm. Not long. The lettering is the hard part but I do have some silver. How long An hour or two. I need it now tonight. Sparthera I can t. I need my sleep. Tinx you owe me. Tinx owed her twice. Once for a pair of thieves who had tried to interest Sparthera in robbing Tinx s shop. In Sparthera s opinion robbing a citizen of Tarseny s Rest was fouling one s own nest. She had informed on them. And once she had worked like a slave in his shop to finish a lucrative job on time for Sparthera was not always a thief. But Tinx had had other more pressing debts and he still owed Sparthera most of her fee. The metalworker lifted his hands helplessly and rolled his eyes to heaven. Will I be rid of you then Finished and done. All debts paid. Oh all right then He sighed and still grumbling about his lost night s sleep went back inside to light some candles and a lantern to work by. Sparthera prowled restlessly about the tiny shop. She found means to make tea. Afterward she prowled some more until Tinx glared at her and demanded she stay in one place. Then she sat while Tinx sawed and filed and hammered until he had a bronze teardrop gouged grooves in the surface pounded silver wire into the grooves polished it compared it to the original then held it in tongs over a flame until tarnish dulled the silver. He asked Just how good are your client s eyes I don t really know but by Khulm we re running out of time Well what do you think He handed her copy and original. She turned them swiftly in her hands then dropped the copy into the box and the original into her sleeve. Has to be good enough. My thanks Tinx. She was already slipping through the door. If this works out . She was down the street and out of earshot leaving Tinx to wonder if she had made him a promise. Probably not. She stopped inside the front door of the inn. A moment to get her breath else the whole inn would hear her. Then upstairs on tiptoe. Third door down. Push. It swung open and Sparthera swallowed her gasp of relief. The magician was still asleep and still snoring. He looked charmingly vulnerable she thought. Sparthera pushed the box into a saddlebag under a tunic. It cost her a wrench to leave it but far better to lose a trinket worth a few gold pieces than to face the wrath of an outraged sorcerer. Sparthera had bigger fish to fry. She tiptoed out and shut the door. The first gray glow of morning was showing through the window at the end of the hail. Sparthera stayed out of sight until she saw Sung mount his odd shaggy horse and start off down the King s Way to Rynildissen. He seemed unsteady in the saddle and once he clutched at his head. That worried her. Khulm bear witness I did go easy on that powder she told herself. She found Bayram All counting money at a table in the common room. He looked up at her expectantly. Well What did you find A few toys. Some scraps of colored paper and an old silver box that isn t worth the trouble it would get us. No money Coins in a belt. He never took it off. There wasn t much in it . not enough anyway. Bayram All scowled. Very intelligent of you dear. Still a pity. He left this for you. He tucked two fingers into his wide cummerbund and fished out a pair of silver coins. Perhaps you ve found a new calling. One for you and one for me hmm Sparthera smiled letting her strong even white teeth show. And how much did he pay you last night Six pieces of silver Bayram All said happily. You sold me so cheaply You re a liar and your mother was insulted on a garbage heap. Well. He offered six. We settled for eight. Four for you four for me hmm He looked pained. Sparthera took her five pieces of silver winked and departed wondering what Sung Ko Ja had really paid. That was part of the fun of bargaining: wondering who had cheated whom. But this time Sparthera had the pointer. On a bald hill east of the village Sparthera took the bronze teardrop from her sleeve along with a needle and the cork from one of Sung Ko Ja s bottles of wine. She pushed the base of the needle into the cork set it down and balanced the pointer on the needle. Pointer Pointer show me the way to Oar s treasure she whispered to it and nudged it into a spin. Three times she spun it and marked where it stopped pointing north and northwest and east. She tried holding it in her hand turning in d circle with her eyes closed trying to feel a tug. She tried balancing it on her own fingernail. She studied the runes but they meant nothing to her. After two hours she was screaming curses like a Euphrates fishwife. It didn t respond to that either. Sitting on the bare dusty ground with her chin in her hands and the pointer lying in the dirt in front of her Sparthera felt almost betrayed. So close She was so close to wealth that she could almost hear the tinkle of golden coins. She needed advice and the one person who might help her was one she had vowed never to see again. A faint smile crossed her face as she remembered screaming at him throwing his bags and gear out of the tiny hut they shared swearing by the hair on her head that she d die and rot in hell before she ever went near him again. That damned tinker Pot mender amateur spell caster womanizer: his real magic was in his tongue. She d left her home and family to follow him and all of his promises had been so much air. She d heard that he lived up in the hills now that he called himself Shubar Khan and practiced magic to earn a living. If he cast spells the way he mended pans she thought sourly he wouldn t be of much use to her. But perhaps he d learned something...and there wasn t anyone else she could go to. She stood up dusted herself off bent to pick up the bronze teardrop. The sky was clouding over and the scent of rain was in the air. It matched her dismal mood. What about her vow It had been a general oath not bound by a particular god but she had meant it with all her heart. Sometimes vows like that were the most dangerous for who knew what wandering elemental might be listening She leaned against Twilight smoothing his tangled mane and staring out over his back at the rolling foothills and the mountains beyond. Life was too dear and Oar s treasure too important to risk either on a broken vow. She took her knife from its sheath and started to hack at her long tawny hair. Shubar Khan s house hardly more than a hut was both small and dirty. Sparthera reined her horse to a halt before the door. She looked distastefully at a hog carcass lying in the center of a diagram scratched in the hard dry ground. She had sworn never to speak his name but that name was Tashubar. She called Shubar Khan Come out Shubar Khan She peered into the dark doorway. A faint odor of burning fat was the only sign of habitation. Who calls Shubar Khan A man appeared in the doorway and blinked out at her. Sparthera swung herself down from Twilight s back and lifted her chin a little arrogantly staring at him. Sparthera He rubbed the side of his face and laughed dryly. Oh ho. The last time we saw one another you threw things at me. I think I still have a scar somewhere. You wouldn t care to see it would you An well I thought not. He cocked his head to one side and nodded. You re still beautiful. Just like you were when I found you in that haystack. Heh heh heh. I like you better with hair though. What happened to it I swore an oath she said shortly wondering a little at what passing time could do to a man. He had been a good thirty years old to her fourteen when they met. Now she was twenty six and he was potbellied and sweaty with a red face and thinning hair and lecherous little eyes. He wore felt slippers with toes that turned up and five layers of brightly striped woolen robes. He scratched now and then absentmindedly. But he still had the big knowing hands and strong shoulders that sloped up into his neck and hadn t he always scratched And he d never been thin and his eyes couldn t have shrunk. The change was in her. Suddenly she hungered to get the matter over with and leave Shubar Khan to the past where he belonged. I ve come on business. I want you to fix something for me. She held out the piece of bronze. It s supposed to be a pointer but it Doesn t work. A small dirty hand reached for the pointer. I can fix that Sparthera spun around reaching for her knife. My apprentice Shubar Khan explained. How would you fix it boy There s a storm coming up. The boy hardly more than twelve looked at his master with sparkling eyes. I can climb a tree and tie the thing to a branch high up. When the lightning strikes You short eared offspring of a spavined goat Shubar bellowed at him. That would only make it point to the pole star if it didn t melt first and if it were iron instead of bronze Bali The boy cringed back into the gloom of the hut which was filled with dry bones aborted sheep fetuses and pig bladders stuffed with odd ointments. There was even a two inch long unicorn horn prominently displayed on a small silk pillow. Shubar Khan peered at the silver runes. He mumbled under his breath at length. Was he reading them Old Sorcerer s Guild language he said with some mistakes. What is it supposed to point at I don t know Sparthera lied. Something buried I think. Shubar Khan unrolled one of the scrolls weighted it open with a couple of bones and began to read in a musical foreign tongue. Presently he stopped. Nothing. Whatever spell was on it it seems as dead as the gods. Curse my luck and your skill Can t you do anything I can put a contagion spell on it for two pieces of silver. He looked her up and down and grinned. Or anything else of equal or greater value. I ll give you the coins Sparthera said shortly. What will the spell do Shubar Khan laughed until his paunch shook. Not even for old time s sake What a pity. As to the spell it will make this thing seek whatever it was once bound to. We re probably lucky the original spell wore off. A contagion spell is almost easy. Sparthera handed over the money. Oar s treasure had already cost her far too much. Shubar Khan ushered her and his apprentice loaded down with phials a pair of scrolls firewood and a small cauldron to a steep crag nearby. Why do we have to come out here Sparthera asked. We re just being cautious Shubar Khan said soothingly. He set up the cauldron emptied a few things into it lit the fire the apprentice had set and handed the apprentice the bronze teardrop and one of the scrolls. When the cauldron smokes just read this passage out loud. And remember to enunciate he said as he grabbed Sparthera s arm and sprinted down the hill. Sparthera looked uphill at the boy This is dangerous isn t it How dangerous I don t know. The original spell isn t working but there may be some power left in it and there s no telling what it might do. That s why magicians have apprentices. They could hear the boy chanting in his childish treble speaking gibberish but rolling his R s and practically spitting the Ps. The clouds that had been gathering overhead took on a harsh ominous quality. The wind came up and the trees whipped and showered leaves on the ground. A crack of lightning cast the entire landscape into ghastly brightness. Shubar Khan dove to the ground. Sparthera winced and then strained her eyes into the suddenly smoky air. There was no sign of the boy. Thunder rolled deafeningly across the sky. Sparthera ran up the hill heart thumping. The top of the crag was scorched and blackened. The iron cauldron was no more than a twisted blob of metal. Ooohhh Shubar Khan s apprentice pulled himself to his feet and looked at her with huge eyes. His face was smudged his hair scorched and his clothing still smouldered. He held out a blackened fist with the bronze piece still in it. Did did...did it work he asked in a frightened croak. Shubar Khan retrieved the pointer and laid it on his palm. It slowly rotated to the right and stopped. He grinned broadly and patted the boy heartily on the shoulder. Excellent We ll make a magician of you yet He turned to Sparthera and presented the pointer to her with a bow. She tucked it inside her tunic. Thank you she said feeling a little awkward. Shubar Khan waved a muscular red hand. Always pleased to be of service. Spells enchantments and glamours at reasonable rates. Maybe someday I can interest you in a love philtre. Sparthera rode back down the mountain trail with the bronze teardrop tucked in her tunic feeling its weight between her breasts like the touch of a lover s hand. Just above Tarseny s Rest she reined up to watch a small herd of gazelle bound across a nearby hill. Someday she would build a house on that hill. Someday when she had Oar s treasure she would build a big house with many rooms and many fireplaces. She would have thick rugs and fine furniture and there would be servants in white tunics embroidered with red leaves. She spurred her horse to the crest of the hill. Down below were the river and the town and across the valley were more hills leading away to distant mountains. I m going to be rich she yelled. Rich The echoes boomed back. Rich rich rich until they finally whimpered into silence. Twilight nickered and pulled at his reins. Sparthera laughed. She would have many horses when she was rich. Horses and cattle and swine. She could almost see the hoard trickling through her fingers in a cascade of gold and rainbow colors. Money for the house and the animals and a dowry. The dowry would buy her a husband: a fine respectable merchant who would give her fat beautiful children to inherit the house and the animals. Sparthera took a last lingering look at the countryside before she swung herself back into the saddle. First find the treasure She cantered back into town put Twilight into the stable behind the lodging house and went to her room. It was a tiny cubicle with a pallet of cotton covered straw and some blankets against one wall. Rough colorful embroideries hung on the wattle and daub walls: relics of the days at home on her father s farm. Another embroidery was thrown across a large wooden chest painted with flying birds and a three legged chair with flowers stenciled on the back stood in one corner. Sparthera uncovered the chest and threw open the lid. It was packed with odds and ends relics of her childhood and down at the bottom was a small pouch with her savings in it. She opened the pouch and counted the coins slowly frowning. The search might take weeks or months. She would need provisions extra clothes and a pack animal to carry them. There wasn t enough here. She would have to borrow or beg an animal from her family. She grimaced at the thought but she had little choice. It was a four hour ride to her father s farm. Her mother was out in the barnyard feeding the chickens when she rode in. The elder woman looked at her with what might have been resignation. Run out of money and come home again have you Not this time Sparthera said dismounting and placing a dutiful kiss on her mother s cheek. I need a horse or an ass. I thought maybe father had one I could borrow. Her mother looked at her distastefully. Always you dress like a man. No wonder no decent man ever looks at you. Why don t you give up all those drunkards you hang around with Why don t you... Mother I need a horse. You ve got one horse. You don t need another horse. Mother I m going on a trip and I need a pack horse. Sparthera s eyes lit with suppressed excitement. When I come back I ll be rich Humph. That s what you said when you ran off with that no good pot mender. If your father were here he d give you rich all right You re lucky he s in the mountains for a week. I don t know about horses. Ask Bruk. He s in the barn. Her mother tossed another handful of grain to the chickens and Sparthera started across the dusty barnyard. And get yourself some decent clothes Sparthera sighed and kept moving. Her next older brother was in the loft restacking sheaves of last season s wheat. Bruk Have you got an extra horse He looked down at her squinting into the light from the open barn door. Sparthera You haven t been here for two months. Did you run out of pockets to pick or just out of men She grinned. No more than you ever run out of women. Are you still rolling Mikka in her father s hay ricks He climbed down from the loft looking a little glum. Her father caught us at it twelve days ago and now I ve got to trade the rick for a marriage bed and everything that goes with it. He was a big man well muscled with a shock of corn colored hair dark eyes and full sensuous lips. Lost your hair I see. Well they say that comes of not enough candle wick. Find yourself a man and we ll make it a double celebration. Sparthera leaned against a stall and laughed heartily. Caught at last Well it won t do you any harm and beds aren t as itchy as piles of hay. You ought to be glad. Once you ve married you ll be safe from all the other outraged fathers. Will I though They may just come after me with barrel staves. And I hate to cut short a promising career. Oh the youngest daughter of the family in the hollow has grown up to be... Enough Bruk. I need a horse. Have you got an extra one He shook his head. Twilight pulled up lame did he No. I m planning a trip and I need a pack animal. Bruk scratched his head. Can t you buy one in town There are always horse dealers in the market square. I know too many people in Tarseny s Rest. I don t want them to know I m taking this trip. Besides she added candidly I don t have enough money. What are you up to little sister Murder pillage or simple theft Oh Bruk it s the chance to make a fortune A chance to be rich He shook his head disgustedly. Not again. Remember that crockery merchant And the rug dealer And that tink This time it s different Oh sure. Anyway we haven t got a horse. Why don t you steal one This time it was Sparthera s turn to look disgusted. You can t just steal a horse on the spur of the moment. It s not like a pair of shoes you know. You have to do a little planning and I don t have the time. You d never make a decent thief You d just walk in grab it by the tail and try to walk out. She pulled at her lower lip. Now what am I going to do They both stood there thinking. Bruk finally broke the silence. Well if you only want it to carry a pack you might make do with a wild ass. They break to a pack saddle pretty easy. There are some up in the foothills. I ll even help you catch one. I guess it s worth a try. Bruk found a halter and a long rope and led the way across the cultivated fields and up into the hills. The landscape was scrubby underbrush dotted with small stands of trees. There were knolls of rock and one small stream that ran cackling down the slope. Bruk stopped to study a pattern of tracks. That ll be one . spends a lot of time here too...yup I ll bet it hides over in that copse. You go left and I ll go right. We ll get it when it comes out of the trees. They circled cautiously toward a promising stand of small trees. Sure enough Sparthera could hear something moving within the grove and even caught a glimpse of brownish hide. A branch cracked under Bruk s boot something brown exploded from the cover of the brush and Bruk yelled swinging the loop of his rope. Get the halter Watch out for its hooves. Yeow oooof The animal whirled bounced like a goat on its small sturdy legs and managed to butt Bruk in the middle. Bruk sat down heavily while Sparthera made a frantic grab for the trailing end of the rope. The little animal frantically trying to dodge her groping hands was braying whinnying and making occasional high pitched whistling noises. It was the size of a small pony and had a long silky mane that almost dragged the ground. Its tail was thick muscular and held up at an angle. It had two ridiculous little feathery wings about as long as Sparthera s forearm growing Out of the tops of its shoulders. Bruk staggered to his feet as Sparthera managed to catch and cling to the rope. He launched himself bodily at the beast grabbed it around the neck and threw it off balance. It fell heavily to one side where it kicked its small feet and fluttered its tiny wings to the accompaniment of an incredible cacophony of hoots whistles and brays. Sparthera clapped her hands over her ears and yelled. That s no wild ass What on earth is it Some sort of magic beast Bruk was busily fitting his halter on their uncooperative captive. I don t know he panted. I think it s half ass and half nightmare. If a sorcerer dreamed it up he must have been drunk. He stood back and let it scramble to its feet. It lowered its head pawed the ground savagely lifted its tail and jumped with all four feet. The maneuver carried it forward perhaps two paces its little wings flapping frantically. Sparthera burst out laughing doubled over with mirth. When she recovered enough she stared at their captive and shook her head. Do you think it can be broken to carry a pack Let s get it down to the barn and we ll try it with a pack saddle. Getting the wingbeast down the hill was a production in its own right. It bolted tried to roll then dug its feet in like the most obstinate of jackasses. Finally tired irritated and covered with grime the three of them made it to the barnyard. They managed to get the saddle on its back after Sparthera had been butted and trampled and her brother had been dumped in the watering trough and stood back to watch. The small animal bucked. It turned twisted flapped its ridiculous little wings and rolled in the dust. It tried to bite the saddle girth and scrape the saddle off against the fence. It kicked its heels and brayed. Just when they thought it would never quit it stopped sides heaving and glared at them. The next day it accepted a ripe apple from Sparthera bit Bruk in the buttocks and managed to bolt into the house where Sparthera s mother hit it on the nose with a crock of pickled cabbage. Sparthera was losing patience. It was all taking too long. Had Sung Ko Ja discovered her trick Was he searching Tarseny s Rest for the woman who had stolen his pointer She had told Bayram All that she was visiting her parents. Someone would come to warn her surely. But nobody came that day or the next and a horrid thought came to her. Sung Ko Ja must have followed the pointer far indeed. Even without the pointer he must have a good idea where the treasure lay. He might have continued on. At this moment he could be unearthing Sparthera s treasure It was three days before the winged beast gave up the fight trotted docilely at the end of a rope and accepted the weight of a loaded pack saddle. It even gave up trying to bite as long as they kept out of its reach. Sparthera named it Eagle. It would be better called Vulture Bruk said rubbing at a healing wound. It s smart though I ll grant you that. Only took the beast three days to realise it couldn t get rid of that saddle. Three days Sparthera said wearily. Bruk for once you were right. I should have stolen a horse. She rode back to town leading the wingbeast along behind. It took her half a day to buy provisions and pack her clothing. In late afternoon she set out on the King s Way holding the bronze pointer like the relic of some ancient and holy demigod. She was expecting to ride into the wilderness into some wild unpopulated area where a treasure could lie hidden for eighty years. But the pointer was tugging her along the King s Way straight toward Rynildissen the ruling city of the biggest state around. That didn t bother her at first. Rynildissen was four days hard riding for a King s messenger a week for a traveler on horseback two for a caravan. And Oar s band had done their raiding around Rynildissen. The King s Way was a military road. It ran wide as a siege engine and straight as an arrow s flight. It made for easy traveling but Sparthera worried about sharing her quest with too much traffic. She found extensive litter beside the road: burnt out campfires horse droppings garbage that attracted lynxes. It grew ever fresher. On her third afternoon she was not surprised to spy an extensive dust plume ahead of her. By noon of the next day she had caught up with a large merchant caravan. She was about to ride up alongside the trailing wagon when she caught a glimpse of an odd shaggy horse with a tail like an ass. There was a figure in bulky Eastern robes on its back. Sung Sparthera pulled her horse hard to the side and rode far out over the rolling hill and away from the road. She had no desire to trade words with the smooth faced magician. But what was he doing here The caravan was protection from beasts and minor thieves but the caravan was slow. He could have been well ahead of Sparthera by now. He didn t know the pointers had been switched That must be it. The seeking spell had been nearly dead already. Sung had followed it from far to the east now he was following his memory with no idea that anyone was behind him. Then the important thing was to delay him. She must find the treasure take it and be miles away before Sung Ko Ja reached the site. All day she paced the caravan. At dusk they camped round a spring. Leaving her horse Sparthera moved down among the wagons tents oxen and camels. She avoided the campfires. Sung Ko Ja had pitched a small red and white striped tent. His unicorn was feeding placidly out of a nosebag. Stealing a roll of rich brocade was easy. The merchant should have kept a dog. It was heavy stuff and she might well be spotted moving it out of camp but she didn t have to do that. After studying Sung s tent for some time watching how soundly Sung slept she crept around to the back of the tent and rolled the brocade under the edge. Then away hugging the shadows and into the hills before the moon rose. Dawn found her back on the highway well ahead of the caravan chuckling as she wondered how Sung would explain his acquisition. When she dug the pointer out of her sleeve her sense of humor quite vanished. The pointer was tugging her back. She must have ridden too far. After a hasty breakfast of dried figs and jerked meat Sparthera started to retrace her path paralleling the King s Way. Days of following the pointer had left painful cramping in both hands but she dared not set it down now. At any moment she expected the bronze teardrop to pull her aside. She was paying virtually no attention to her path. At the crest of a smooth hill she looked up to see another horse coming toward her. Its rider was a smooth faced man with skin the color of old ivory and his almond eyes were amused. It was too late even to think of hiding. Oh ho My sweet little friend from two nights ago. What brings you onto the King s Way My hair Sparthera improvised. Cosmetics There s a witch woman who lives that way She gestured vaguely south and gave him her best effort at a flirtatious smile. and I find I can afford her fees thanks to the generosity of a slant eyed magician. Oh dear and I had hoped your lips were aching for another kiss. He looked at her critically. You don t need to visit any witch. Even shorn you are quite enchanting. You must share my midday meal. I insist. Come we can rest in the shade of those trees yonder Sparthera was afraid to spur her horse and flee He might suspect nothing at all else why had he joined the caravan She turned her horse obediently and rode to the shade of the small grove with him trailing the wingbeast behind at the end of its halter. Sung slid easily from his unicorn. He still didn t seem dangerous. She could insist on preparing the food. Wine she could spill while pretending to drink. She swung down from her horse Her head hurt. Her eyes wouldn t focus. She tried to roll over and her head pulsed in red pain. Her arms and legs seemed caught in something. Rope She waited until her head stopped throbbing before she tried to learn more. Then it was obvious. Her hands were tied behind her a leather strap secured her ankles to one of the shade trees. Sung Ko Ja was sitting crosslegged on a rug in front of her flipping a bronze teardrop in the air. Bastard He must have hit her on the head while she was dismounting. Eight nights ago I noticed that someone had cut the paper out of my bedroom window. he said. I woke the next morning with a foul taste in my mouth but that could have been cheap wine or too much wine. Last night some rogue put a roll of stolen dry goods in my baggage which caused me no end of embarrassment. I would not ordinarily have thought of you iii connection with this I confess that my memories of our time together are most pleasant. However he paused to sip at a bowl of tea. However my unicorn who can whisper strange things when I want him to and sometimes when I don t He speaks The unicorn was glaring at her. Sparthera glared back. Magician or no she felt that this was cheating somehow. Such a disappointment said Sung Ko Ja. If only you had come to my arms last night all of this might be different. You sadden me. Here you are and here is this. He held up the pointer. Why She looked at the ground biting her lip. Why Money of course she blurted out. You said that thing was the key to a treasure Wouldn t you have taken it too in my place Sung laughed and rubbed his fingers over his chin. No I don t think so. But I am not you. It may be this was my fault. I tempted you. He got to his feet. He tilted her head back with one hand so he could look into her eyes. Now what s to be done Swear to be my slave and I ll take you along to look for Gar s treasure. A slave Never My people have always been free. I d rather die than be a slave Sung looked distressed. Let s not call it slavery then if you dislike it so much. Bondage Binding Let s say you will bind yourself to me. For seven years and a day or until we find treasure to equal your weight in gold. And if we find the treasure what then Then you re free. That s not enough. I want part of the treasure. Sung laughed again this time in pure amusement. You bargain hard for one who has been pinioned and tied to a tree. All right. Part of the treasure then. How much of it she asked warily. I take the fist and so is most valuable items. We split the rest equally. Who decides Sung Ko Ja will nfl OLd i ii pi t iii L111 nuing IrLicure into two heaps You choose which heap you want That actually sounded fair Agreed: Ah but now it is my turn what are you going to swear by my little sweetheart I want your oath that you ll offer me no harm that you ll stay by my side and obey my commands. until the terms of the agreement are met. Sparthera hesitated. It didn t take a magician to know how to make an oath binding. Even nations kept their oaths...to the letter and that could make diplomacy interesting. She could be making herself rich. Or she could be throwing away seven years of her life. Would Sung hold still for a better bargain Not a chance. All right. I ll swear by Khulm the thieves god who stands in the shrine at Rynildissen. May he break my fingers if I fail. You swear then I swear. Sung bent down and kissed her heartily on the lips. Then he set about freeing her. He set out tea while she was rubbing her wrists. There was a lump on her head. The tea seemed to help. She said We must be very near the treasure. The pointer led me back the way we came...straight into your arms in fact. Sung chuckled. He fished the silver box out of his saddlebag. He opened it took out Sparthera s counterfeit bronze teardrop hesitated then dropped it on the rug. He stood up with the genuine object in his hand. Sparthera cried Stop That s Too late. Sung had flung the genuine pointer into a grove of low trees. I ll keep yours he said. It s only for the benefit of people who think a box has to contain something. Now watch. He pressed down on the silver box in two places and twisted four of the small stone ornaments. The box folded out flat into a cross shape with one long arm. You see There never was a spell on the bronze lump. You took it to a spell caster didn t you Sparthera nodded. And he put some kind of contagion spell on it didn t he She nodded again. So the bronze lump sought what it had been a part of. The box. It s been in there too long. Sung pulled the faded red lining off of the surface. Underneath the metal was engraved with patterns and lettering. Sung stroked a finger over the odd markings. It looks like a valuable trinket on the outside. No casual thief would just throw it away. I might have a chance to get it back. But a magician turned robber would take the pointer just as you did. She d had it in her hands Too late too late. When can we start looking for Gar s treasure Tomorrow morning if you re so eager. Meanwhile the afternoon is growing cold. Come here and warm my heart. Sung dear just how cl... Sparthera s words trailed off in surprise. She had walked straight into Sung s arms. She had behaved like this with no man not since that damned tinker. Her voice quavered as she said I don t act like this. Sung what magic is on me now He pulled back a little. Why it s your own oath I feel like that puppet you showed me This isn t what I meant Sung sighed. Too bad. Well I don t mean I won t share your bed. Her voice was shrill with near hysteria. I just I want power over my own limbs damn you Sung Yes. I tell you now that binding yourself to me Docs not involve becoming my concubine. She pulled away and turned her back and found it was possible. Good. Good. Sung thank you. Her brow furrowed suddenly and she turned back to face him. What if you tell me different later She might have guessed that Sung s answer would be a shrug. All right. What was I trying to say earlier Oh I remember. Just how close is the King s Way We don t want that caravan camping next to us. Somebody might get nosy. Sung agreed. They had moved a good distance down the King s Way before they camped for the night. In the morning Sparthera saddled Twilight and loaded Eagle while Sung packed his gear on the unicorn The wingbeast caught his attention. Where did you get that creature Near my father s farm. It was running wild. I think it s some sort of magic beast. Sung shook his head sadly. No quite the opposite. In my grandfather s day there were flocks of beautiful horses that sailed across the sky on wings as wide as the King s Way. He rode one when he was a little boy. It couldn t lift him when he grew too big. As time went on the colts were born with shorter weaker wings until all that was left were little beasts like this one. I used to catch them when I was a boy but never to fly. Enchantment is going out of the world Sparthera. Soon there will be nothing left. It was a mystery to Sparthera how her companion read the talisman. It looked the same to her no matter which way he said it pointed. Sung tried to show her when they set off that morning. He set the flattened out box on the palm of her hand and said Keep reading it as you turn it. The runes don t actually change but when the long end points right the message becomes Ta netyillo iliq pratht instead of tanetyi lo Skip it. Just skip it. In any case the pointer continued to lead them straight down the King s Way. They reached an inn about dusk and Sung paid for their lodging. Sparthera watched him setting the spells against thieves. Sung was not secretive. Quite the contrary: he drilled her in the spells so that she would be able to set them for him. Though he had freed her from the obligation the magician seemed to consider lovemaking as part of their agreement. Sparthera had no complaints. The magician was adept at more than spells. When she told him this she expected him to preen himself but Sung merely nodded. Keeping the women happy is very necessary in Sung House. How much did I tell you about us that first night You were the immortal Sung. You abdicated in favor of your son. I was bragging. What were you Not the stablehand I think. Oh I was the immortal Sung true enough. We rule a fair sized farming region a valley blocked off by mountains and the Yellow River. We know a little magic we keep a herd of unicorns and sell the horn or use it ourselves but that s not what keeps the farmers docile. They think they re being ruled by a sorcerer seven hundred years old. The immortal Sung. Yes. I became the immortal Sung when I was twenty. My mother set a spell of glamour on me to make me look exactly like my father. Then I was married to Ma Tay my cousin and set on the throne. That s...I never heard of glamour being used to make anyone look older. That s a nice trick isn t it The spell wears off over twenty years but of course you re getting older too looking more and more like your father magic aside. When I reached forty my wife put the glamour on my eldest son. And here I am under oath to travel until nobody has ever heard of Sung House. Well I ve done that. Someday maybe I ll meet my father. What happens to your wife She took my mother s place as head of the House. It s actually the women who rule in Sung House. The immortal Sung is just a figurehead. Sparthera shook her head smiling. It still sounds like a nice job. and they didn t throw you out naked. No. We know all our lives what s going to happen. We think on how we ll leave what we ll take where we ll go. We collect tales of other lands and artifacts that could help us. There s a little treasure room of things a departing Sung may take with him. He leaned back on the bed and stretched. When I left I took the pointer. It always fascinated me even as a boy. I collected rumors about Gar s treasure. It wasn t just the gold and the jewels that stuck in my mind. There is supposed to be a major magical tool too. What is it It s a levitation device. Haven t you ever wanted to fly Sparthera s lips pursed in a silent 0. What a thief could do with such a thing Or a military spy. Yes...and the Regency raised hell trying to find Gar s treasure. But of course you d keep it yourself Or sell it to one government or another. But I ll fly with it first. That night cuddled close in Sung s arms Sparthera roused herself to ask a question. Sung What if I should have a child by you He was silent for a long time. Long enough that she wondered if he d fallen asleep. When he did answer it was in a very soft voice. We would ride off into the mountains and build a great hail and I would put a glamour on the child to raise up a new House of Sung. Satisfied Sparthera snuggled down into the magician s arms to dream of mountains and gold. They woke late the next morning with the dust of the caravan actually in sight. They left it behind them as they rode still following the King s Way. This is ridiculous Sung fretted. Another day and we ll be in Rynildissen Is it possible that this Gar actually buried his loot in the King s Way I wouldn t think he d have the chance. Still I suppose nobody would look for it there. Maybe. Around noon they reached a region of low hills. The King s Way began to weave among them like a snake but the silver box pointed them steadfastly toward Rynildissen. Sung dithered. Well do we follow the road or do we cut across country wherever the pointer points Sparthera said Road I guess. We ll know if we pass it. And road it was until the moment when Sung sucked in his breath with a loud Ab What is it The talisman s pointing that way south. He turned off guiding the unicorn uphill. Sparthera followed puffing the wingbeast along after her. The unicorn seemed to be grumbling just below audibility. Now the land was rough and wild. There were ravines and dry creek beds and tumbled heaps of soil and stone. They were crossing the crest of a hill when Sung said Stop. The unicorn stopped. Sparthera reined in her horse. The wingbeast walked into Twilight s haunches got kicked and sat down with a dismal bray. Sung ignored the noise. Down in that ravine. We ll have to try it on foot. They had to move on all fours in places. The bottom of the ravine was thick with brush. Sparthera hesitated as Sung plunged into a thorn thicket. When she heard his muttered curses stop suddenly she followed. She found him surrounded by scattered bones and recognized the skull of an ass. The pointer reads right in all directions. We re right on it he said. A pair of large stones brown and cracked looked a bit too much alike. Sparthera touched one. Old leather. Saddle bags The bag was so rotten it had almost merged with the earth. It tore easily. Within was cloth that fell apart in her hands and a few metal ornaments that were green with verdigris. Badges of rank for a soldier of Rynildissen. In the middle of it all something twinkled something bright. Sung had torn the other bag apart. Nothing. What have you got She turned it in her hand: a bright faceted stone shaped like a bird and set into a gold ring. Oh how pretty Hardly worth the effort Sung said. He worked his way backward out of the thicket and stood up. Diamonds have no color. They re not worth much. You see this kind of trinket in any Shanton jewel bazaar. Give it here. Sparthera handed it over feeling forlorn. Then that s all there is Oh I doubt it. We re on the track. This was just the closest piece. It must have been part of the hoard or the talisman wouldn t have pointed us here. Even so...how did it get here Did Gar lose a pack mule He opened out the pointer. With the bird s beak he traced a looping curve on the silver surface. There. The talisman is pointing true again. There s still treasure to be found. They climbed back uphill to their steeds. The King s Way was well behind them now and lost among the hills. They were picking their way across a nearly dry stream bed when Sung said We re passing it. Where I don t know yet. Sung dismounted. You wait here. Sparthera come along and she realized he d spoken first to the unicorn. He picked his way carefully up a vast sloping spill of shattered boulders: leg breaker country. At the top panting heavily he opened the box out and turned in a circle. Well Sung turned again. He spoke singsong gibberish in what might have been a lengthy spell but it sounded like cursing. Are you just going to keep spinning It says all directions are wrong Uh Point it down. Sung stared at her. Then he pointed the talisman at his feet. He said Ta netyillo Sparthera my love you may be the best thing that ever happened to me. I am delighted to hear it. My shovel s still on the horse. Shall I go for it Yes. No wait a bit. He started walking staring at the talisman. It must be deep. Yards deep. More. Forget the shovel there must be a cave under us. He grinned savagely at her. We ll have to find the entrance. We re almost there love. Come on. They trudged down the hill trying to avoid twisted ankles or worse. Sparthera paused to catch her breath and caught a blur of motion out of the corner of her eye. It was headed for the animals. Sung What Twilight whinnied in terror. He tossed his head pulling loose the reins Sparthera had looped over a bush and bolted downhill. The unicorn had splayed his front feet and lowered his head as if he thought he still owned a spear. The winged packbeast filling the air with a bedlam of sound was bounding rapidly away in two pace long jumps tiny wings beating the air frantically. Sung let out a yell and charged up to the top of the ravine swinging a heavy branch he d snatched up on the way. Sparthera clambered up beside him swearing as she saw her animals heading off across the landscape. There was a loud wailing sound that put the wingbeast s efforts to shame and then silence. The thing had vanished. What was that I don t know. I m more interested in where it went. Keep an eye out love. Sung pulled his sword from the pack and wandered about the shattered rock. Sparthera s nose picked up a heavy musky animal odor. She followed it heart pounding knife in hand. They were too close to the treasure to stop now. The odor was wafting out of a black gap in the rocks less than a yard across. Sung clambered up to look. That s it he said. It s not big enough though. if we crawled through that the thing whatever it is would just take our heads as they poked through. We ll have to move some rocks. Sparthera picked up a heavy boulder and hurled it away. I feel an irrational urge to go home. I can t go home. Let s move some rocks said Sung and she did. The sun had dropped a fair distance toward Rynildissen and every muscle in her body was screaming before the dripping panting Sung said Enough. Now we need torches. Sung. Did it...occur to you...to let me rest Well why didn t you...oh. Sung was disconcerted. Sparthera I m used to giving orders to women because I m supposed to be the immortal Sung. But it s just for show. I m also used to being disobeyed. I can t. She was crying. I ll be more careful. Shall we rest have some tea Good. Offer me a swallow of wine. That s not For Khuim s sake Sung do you think I d go in there drunk It s in there. I know it. I kept waiting for it to jump on me. Don t you have a spell to protect us No. We don t even know what it is. Here He turned her around and began to massage her neck and shoulders fingers digging in. Sparthera felt tensed muscles unravelling loosening. It was a wonderful surprise. She said It must have half killed the Sung women to let you go. Somehow they managed. She barely heard the bitterness but it did bother him. It was dark in there. The late afternoon light only reached a dozen paces in. They stepped in holding the torches high. There was a rustling flurry of motion and a loud whimpering cry. If one of them had run the other would have followed. As it was they walked slowly forward behind Sung s sword and Sparthera s dagger. The cave wasn t large. A stream ran through the middle. Sparthera noted two skeletons on either side of the stream lying face up as if posed Another cry and a scrabbling sound. Something huge and dark moved just outside the perimeter of light. The animal odor had become sickeningly strong. Sung held the light higher. Off in a corner something huge was trying to pack itself into a very narrow crevice. It looked at them with absolute panic in its eyes pulled its long scaly tail closer under its legs and tried fruitlessly to move away. What in the world is it Nothing from this world that s certain Sung said. It looks like something that was conjured up Out of a bad dream. Probably was. Gar s guardian. The creature was partly furred and partly scaled. It had a long toothed snout and broad paddle like front paws with thick nails. There was a rusted iron collar around its neck with a few links of broken chain attached. Now its claws stopped grinding against rock and its tail came up to cover its eyes. What is it trying to do Sparthera whispered Well it seems to be trying to hide in that little crack. Oh for the love of Khulm You mean it s scared The beast gave a long wailing moan at the sound of her voice. Its claws resumed scratching rock. Let it alone Sung said. He swung the torch around to reveal the rest of the cave. They found a torn and scattered pack with the remains of weevily flour and some broken boxes nearly collapsed from dry rot. Two skeletons were laid out as for a funeral. They had not died in bed. The rib cage on one seemed to have been torn wide open. The other seemed intact below the neck but it was still wearing a bronze helmet bearing the crest of a soldier of Rynildissen and the helmet and skull had been squashed as flat as a miser s sandwich. Aside from the small stream that ran between them and assorted gypsum deposits the cave was empty. I m afraid the Regent s army got here first Sung said. Sparthera bent above one of the bodies. Do you think that thing did this Did it kill them or just gnaw the bodies It Doesn t seem dangerous now. It probably wasn t all that scared in the beginning. Sung was grinning. Gar must have left it here to guard the treasure with a chain to keep it from running away. When the Regent s soldiers found the cave it must have got the first ones in. Then the rest piled in and pounded it into mush. Conjured beasts like that are practically impossible to kill but did you notice the scars on the muzzle and forelegs It hasn t forgotten. I feel sorry for it Sparthera said. Then the truth came home to her and she said I feel sorry for us The treasure must have been gone for years. Except the talisman led us here Sung walked forward following the talisman. He stopped above the skeleton with the flattened skull. Ta netyillo Yes. He reached into the rib cage and came up with a mass of color flickering in his hands. Sparthera reached into it and found a large ruby. There were three others besides and two good sized emeralds. Sung laughed long and hard. So we have a greedy soldier to thank. He ran in saw a pile of jewels snatched up a fistful and swallowed them. He must have thought it would come out all right in the end. Instead Gar s pet got him. Sung wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Fate is a wonderful thing. Here give me those. She did and Sung began tracing the curve on the talisman one jewel at a time. She said They wouldn t have left a talisman of levitation. No they wouldn t. And this stuff isn t worth nearly my weight in gold. Sung stiffened. The pointer It s pointing into the wall itself He got up and began moving along the wall. Sparthera grimaced but said nothing. Sung called Either it s cursed deep in there or there s another cave or...why do I bother It s pointing to Rynildissen. Maybe other places too. There was a war with Sarpuree seventy years ago. We lost so there was tribute to pay. I don t even have to guess where the Regent got the money to pay for it all. He may have sold most of the treasure. Humph. Yes. And if there were any decorative items left they could be spread all through the palace. And some of the soldiers probably hid a few little things like that diamond bird. Even if we were crazy enough to rob the Regent s palace we d never get it all. It s the end of our treasure hunt girl. But you said...Sung How can I ever win my freedom if we don t go on Oh we ll go on. But not looking for Oar s treasure. Sung scooped the jewels into his pocket and handed her the little diamond bird. Keep this as a memento. The rest...well I ve thought of opening a toy shop in Rynildissen maybe. A toy shop Sung frowned. You don t like toys do you Everybody likes toys. But we re adults Sung Girl don t you know that human beings are natural magicians I think it s hereditary. The magic was always there to be used...but now it isn t. And we still want magic. Especially children. Those toys aren t No of course not but they re as close as you re likely to get these days especially in a city. Toys from far places might sell very well. She was still angry. Sung reached to run his fingers over the tawny stubble on her head. We ll live well enough. Come kiss me little thief. Seven years isn t such a long time. Sparthera kissed him she couldn t help it. Then she said I wondered if a diamond bird could be your talisman of levitation. Sung s eyes widened. I wonder...it s worth a try. Not in here though. He took the bird and scrambled up scree toward the cave entrance. Sparthera started after him. Then holding her torch high she looked up. The rock tapered to a high natural vault. It looked unstable dangerous. Something...a bright point Compelled she continued climbing after Sung. But the diamond trinket she told herself was no flying spell. She d been wrong: no soldier would have stolen that. It would be treason. By staying here she would be working in Sung s best interests she told hersell scrambling up the rocks . There was no point in shouting after him. If she were wrong at least he wouldn t be disappointed she told herself and at last the pull of her oath lost its grip . Sung was out of sight. Sparthera scrambled back down and set to work. The soldiers had taken all of their equipment before they turned the cave into a crypt for their brethren by pulling down the entrance. They had taken armor but left the crushed helmet that was part of one corpse. They had taken the metal point from a snapped spear but a three pace length of shaft remained. Sparthera dipped a piece of cloth into the stream then into some of the mouldy flour scattered on the rock floor. She kneaded the cloth until it had turned gooey then wrapped it around the broken tip of the spear. She climbed scree to get closer to the ceiling and reached up with the spear toward a bright point on the cave roof. It stuck. She pulled it down: thin gold filigree carved into a pair of bird s wings about the size of her two hands. It tugged upward against her fingers. Lift me she whispered. And she rose until her head bumped rock. Set me down she whispered and drifted back to earth. No castle in the world held a room so high that she could not rob it with this. And she waited for the impulse that would send her scrambling out to give it to Sung. Sung was bounding downhill with his arms flapping one hand clutching the diamond bauble looking very like a little boy at play. He turned in fury at the sound of Sparthera s laughter. I ve found it she called holding the golden talisman high. And as Sung ran toward her beaming delight Sparthera gloated. For the instant in which she flew Sparthera s weight in gold had been far less than the value of the paltry treasure they had found. She might stay with Sung long enough to take back the jewels or at least the wings. She might even stay longer. If he were right about the toy shop...perhaps he need never learn that she was free. FLARE TIME If the starship s arrival had done nothing else for Bronze Legs this was enough: he was seeing the sky again. For this past week the rammers had roamed through Touchdown City. The fifty year old colony was still small everybody knew everybody. It was hard to get used to this influx of oddly accented strangers stumbling about with vacuous smiles and eyes wide with surprise and pleasure. Even the Medean humans were catching the habit. In his thirty four earthyears of life Calvin Bronze Legs Miller had explored fifteen thousand square miles of the infinite variety that was Medea. Strange that it took people from another world to make him look up. Here was a pretty picture: sunset over the wild lands north of the colony. Peaks to the south were limned in bluish white from the farmlands beyond from the lamps that kept terrestrial plants growing. Everything else was red infinite shades of red. To heatward a level horizon cut the great disk of Argo in half You could feel the heat on your cheek and watch sullenly glowing storms move in bands across the face of the red hot superjovian world. To coidward Phrixus and Helle were two glaring pink dots following each other down to the ridge. The Jet Stream stretched straight across the blue sky a pinkish white band of cloud from horizon to horizon. Thirty or forty multicolored balloons linked in a cluster were settling to graze a scum covered rain pool in the valley below him. Blue tinged shadows pooled in the valley and three human shapes moved through the red and orange vegetation. Bronze Legs recognized Lightning Harness and Grace Carpenter even at this distance. The third had a slightly hunchbacked look and a metal headdress gleamed in her straight black hair. That would be Rachel Subramaniam s memory recording equipment. Her head kept snapping left and right ever eager for new sights. Bronze Legs grinned. He tried to imagine how this must look to a rammer an offworlder he succeeded only in remembering himself as a child. All this strangeness all this red. He turned the howler and continued uphill. At the crest of the ridge a fux waited for him the pinkish white suns behind her. She was a black silhouette four thin legs and two thin arms a pointed face and a narrow torso bent in an L: a lean mean centaur shape. As he topped the ridge and let the howler settle on its air cushion the fur backed away several meters. Bronze Legs wondered why then guessed the answer. It wasn t the smell of him. Fuses liked that. She was putting the ridge between herself and the white glare from Touchdown City s farming lamps. She said I am Long Nose. Bronze Legs. I meet you on purpose. I meet you on purpose. How goes your foray to heatward We start tomorrow at dawn. You postponed it once before. She was accusing him. The fuxes were compulsive about punctuality an odd trait in a Bronze Age culture. Like certain traits in humans it probably tied into their sex lives. Timing could be terribly important when a fux was giving birth. The ship from the stars came he said. We waited. We want to take one of the star people along and the delay lets us recheck the vehicles. Long Nose was black with dull dark red markings. She bore a longbow over one shoulder and a quiver and shovel slung over her lower back. Her snout was sharply pointed but not abnormally so for a fux. She might be named for keen curiosity or a keen sense of smell. She said I learn that your purpose is more than exploration but not even the post males can tell what it is. Power said Bronze Legs. The harnessed lightning that makes our machines go comes as light from Argo. In the Hot End the clouds will never hide Argo from our sight. Our lightning makers can run without rest. Go north instead said Long Nose. You will find it safer and cooler too. Storms run constantly in the north I have been there. Free lightning for your use. If she d been talking to Lightning Harness she would have suffered through an hour s lecture. How the heat exchangers ran on the flood of infrared light from Argo focussed by mirrors. How Argo stayed always in the same place in Medea s sky so that mirrors could be mounted on a hillside facing to heatward and never moved again. But the colony was growing and Medea s constant storms constantly blocked the mirrors Bronze Legs only grinned at her. Why don t we just do it our way Who all is coming Only six of us. Dark Wind s children did not emerge in time. Deadeye will desert us early she will give birth in a day and must stay to guard the...Is nest the word you use Right. Of all the words that might describe the fuxes way of giving birth nest carried the least unpleasant connotations. So she will be guarding her nest when we return. She will be male then. Sniffer intends to become pregnant tonight she will leave us further on and be there to help us on our return if we need help. We take a post male Harvester and another six leg female Broad Flanks who can carry him some of the time. Gimpy wants to come. Will she slow us Bronze Legs laughed. He knew Gimpy a four leg female as old as some post males who had lost her right foreleg to the viciously fast Medean monster humans called a B 70. Gimpy was fairly agile considering. She could crawl on her belly for all we care. It s the crawlers that ll slow us and the power plant. We re moving a lot of machinery: the prefab power plant housing for technicians sensing tools digging tools What tools should we take Go armed. You won t need water bags we ll make our own water. We made you some parasols made from mirror cloth. They ll help you stand the heat for awhile. When it gets really hot you ll have to ride in the crawlers. We will meet you at the crawling machines at dawn. Long Nose turned and moved downslope into a red and orange jungle moving something like a cat in its final rush at a bird: legs bent belly low. They had been walking since early afternoon: twelve hours with a long break for lunch. Lightning sighed with relief as he set down the farming lamp he d been carrying on his shoulders. Grace helped him spread the tripod and extend the mount until the lamp stood six meters tall. Rachel Subramaniam sat down in the orange grass and rubbed her feet. She was puffing. Grace Carpenter a Medean xenobiologist and in her early forties was a large boned woman broad of silhouette and built like a farm wife. Lightning Harness was tall and lean and lantern jawed a twenty four year old power plant engineer. Both were pale as ghosts beside Rachel. On Medea only the farmers were tanned. Rachel was built light. Some of her memory recording equipment was embedded in padding along her back giving her a slightly hunchbacked look. Her scalp implants were part of a polished silver cap the badge of her profession. She had spent the past two years under the sunlights aboard a web rainship. Her skin was bronze. To Rachel Medea s pale citizens had seemed frail un athletic until now. Now she was annoyed. There had been little opportunity for hikes aboard Morven but she might have noticed the muscles and hard hands common to any recent colony. Lightning pointed uphill. Company. Something spidery stood on the crest of the coldward ridge black against the suns. Rachel asked What is it Fux. Female somewhere between seven and eighteen years of age and not a virgin. Beyond that I can t tell from here. Rachel was astonished. How can you know all that Count the legs. Grace didn t you tell her about fuxes Grace was chuckling. Lightning s showing off . Dear the fuxes go fertile around age seven. They generally have their first litter right away. They drop their first set of hindquarters with the eggs in them and that gives them a half a lifetime to learn how to move as a quadruped. Then they wait till they re seventeen or eighteen to have their second litter unless the tribe is underpopulated which sometimes happens. Dropping the second set of hindquarters exposes the male organs. And she s got four legs. Not a virgin. I thought you must have damn good eyes Lightning. Not that good. What are they like Well said Grace the post males are the wise ones. Bright talkative and not nearly so...frenetic as the females. It s hard to get a female to stand still for long. The males...oh for three years after the second litter they re kind of crazy. The tribe keeps them penned. The females only go near them when they want to get pregnant. Lightning had finished setting the lamp. Take a good look around before I turn this on. You know what you re about to see Dutifully Rachel looked about her memorizing. The farming lamps stood everywhere around Touchdown City it was less a city than a village surrounded by farmlands. For more than a week Rachel had seen only the tiny part of Medea claimed by humans...until in early afternoon of this long Medean day she and Grace and Lightning had left the farmlands. The reddish light had bothered her for a time. But there was much to see and after all this was the real Medea. Orange grass stood knee high in slender leaves with sharp hard points. A score of flaccid multicolored balloons linked by threads that resembled spiderweb had settled on a stagnant pond. There was a grove of almost trees hairy rather than leafy decked in all the colors of autumn. The biggest was white and bare and dead. Clouds of bugs filled the air everywhere except around the humans. A pair of things glided into the swarms scooping their dinner out of the air. They had five meter wingspans small batlike torsos and huge heads that were all mouth with gaping hair filled slits behind the head where gill slits would be on a fish. Their undersides were sky blue. A six legged creature the size of a sheep stood up against the dead almost tree gripped it with four limbs and seemed to chew at it. Rachel wondered if it was eating the wood. Then she saw myriads of black dots spread across the white and a long sticky tongue slurping them up. Grace tapped Rachel s arm and pointed into the grass. Rachel saw a warrior s copper shield painted with cryptic heraldics. It was a flattened turtle shell and the yellow eyed beaked face that looked back at her was not turtle like at all. Something small struggled in its beak. Suddenly the mock turtle whipped around and zzzzed away on eight churning legs. There was no bottom shell to hamper the legs. The real Medea. Now said Lightning. He turned on the farming lamp. White light made the valley suddenly less alien. Rachel felt something within her relaxing...but things were happening all around her. The flat turtle stopped abruptly. It swallowed hard then pulled head and limbs under its shell. The flying bug strainers whipped around and flew hard for the hairy trees. The clouds of bugs simply vanished. The long tongued beast let go of its tree turned and scratched at the ground and was gone in seconds. This is what happens when a sun flares Lightning said. They re both flare suns. Flares don t usually last more than half an hour and most Medean animals just dig in till it s over. A lot of plants go to seed. Like this grass Yes the slender leaves were turning puffy cottony. But the hairy trees reacted differently they were suddenly very slender the foliage pulled tight against the trunks. The balloons weren t reacting at all. Lightning said That s why we don t worry much about Medean life attacking the crops. The lamps keep them away. But not all of them On Medea every rule has exceptions Grace said. Yeah. Here look under the grass. Lightning pushed cotton covered leaves aside with his hands and the air was suddenly full of white fluff. Rachel saw millions of black specks covering the lower stalks. We 0611 them locusts. They swarm in flare time and eat everything in sight. Terran plants poison them of course but they wreck the crops first. He let the leaves close. By now there was white fluff everywhere like a low lying fog patch moving east on the wind. What else can I show you Keep your eyes on the balloons. And are there cameras in that thing Rachel laughed and touched the metal helmet. Sometimes she could forget she was wearing it but her neck was thicker more muscular than the average woman s. Cameras In a sense. My eyes are cameras for the memory tape. The balloons rested just where they had been. The artificial flare hadn t affected them...wait they weren t flaccid any more. They were swollen taut straining at the rootlets that held them to the bottom of the pond. Suddenly they rose all at once still linked by spiderweb. Beautiful. They use the IJY for energy to make hydrogen said Grace. UV wouldn t bother them anyway they have to take more of it at high altitude. I ve been told...are they intelligent Balloons No Grace actually snorted. They re no brighter than so much seaweed...but they own the planet. We ve sent probes to the Hot End you know. We saw balloons all the way. And we ve seen them as far coldward...west you d say...as far west as the Icy Sea. We haven t gone beyond the rim of ice yet. But you ve been on Medea fifty years And just getting started Lightning said. He turned off the farming lamp. The world was plunged into red darkness. The fluffy white grass was gone leaving bare soil as warm with black specks. Gradually the hairy trees loosened fluffed out. Soil churned near the dead tree and released the tree feeder. Grace picked up a few of the locusts. They were not bigger than termites. Held close to the eye they each showed a translucent bubble on its back. They can t swarm Grace said with satisfaction. Our flare didn t last long enough. They couldn t make enough hydrogen. Some did Lightning said. There were black specks on the wind not many. Always something new said Grace. Tractor probe Junior was moving into the Hot End. Ahead was the vast desert hotter than boiling water where Argo stood always at noon. Already the strange dry plants were losing their grip leaving bare rock and dust. At the final shore of the Ring Sea the waves were sudsy with salt in solution and the shore was glittering white. The hot steamy wind blew inland to heatward and then upward carrying a freight of balloons. The air was full of multicolored dots all going up into the stratosphere. At the upper reach of the probe s vision some of the frailer balloons were popping but the thin membranous corpses still fluttered toward heaven. Rachel shifted carefully in her chair. She caught Bronze Legs Miller watching her from a nearby table. Her answering grin was rueful. She had not finished the hike. Grace and Lightning had been setting up camp when Bronze Legs Miller came riding down the hill. Rachel had grasped that golden opportunity. She had returned to Touchdown City riding behind Bronze Legs on the howler s saddle. After a night of sleep she still ached in every muscle. Isn t it a gorgeous sight Mayor Curly Jackson wasn t eating. He watched avidly with his furry chin in his hands and his elbows on the great oaken table the dignitaries table the Medeans were so proud of it had taken forty years to grow the tree. Medea had changed its people. Even the insides of buildings were different from those of other worlds. The communal dining hall was a great dome lit by a single lamp at its zenith. It was bright and it cast sharp shadows. As if the early colonists daunted by the continual light show the flare suns the bluish farming lamps the red hot storms moving across Argo had given themselves a single sun indoors. But it was a wider cooler sun giving yellower light than a rammer was used to. One great curve of the wall was a holograph projection screen. The tractor probe was tracing the path the expedition would follow and broadcasting what it saw. Now it moved over hills of white sea salt. The picture staggered and lurched with the probe s motion and wavered with rising air currents. Captain Janice Borg staring avidly with a forkful of curry halfway to her mouth jumped as Mayor Curly lightly punched her shoulder. The Mayor was blue eyes and a lump of nose poking through a carefully tended wealth of blond hair and beard. He was darkened by farming lamps. Not only did he supervise the farms he farmed. See it Captain That s why the Ring Sea is mostly fresh water. Captain Borg s hair was auburn going gray. She was handsome rather than pretty. Her voice of command had the force of a bullwhip one obeyed by reflex. Her off duty voice was a soft dreamy contralto. Right. Right. The seawater moves always to the Hot End. It starts as glaciers Doesn t it They break off in the Icy Sea and float beatward. Any salt goes that way too. In the Hot End the water boils away...and you get some tides don t you Argo wobbles a little Well it s Medea that wobbles a little but Right so the seawater spills off into the salt flats at high tide and boils away there. And the vapor goes back to the glaciers along the Jet Stream. She turned suddenly to Rachel and barked You getting all this Rachel nodded hiding a smile. More than two hundred years had passed on the settled worlds while Captain Borg cruised the trade circuit. She didn t really understand memory tapes. They were too recent. Rachel looked about the communal dining hall and was conscious as always of the vast unseen audience looking through her eyes listening through her ears feeling the dwindling aches of a stiff hike tasting blazing hot Medean curry through her mouth. It was all going into the memory tape with no effort on her part. Curly said We picked a good site for the power plant before the first probe broke down. Heatward slope of a hillside. We ll be coming up on it in a few hours. Is this the kind of thing you want or am I boring you I want it all. Did you try that tape The Mayor shook his head his eyes suddenly evasive. Why not Well the Mayor said slowly I m a little leery of what I might remember. It s all filtered through your brain isn t it Rachel Of course. I don t think I d like remembering being a girl. Rachel was mildly surprised. Role changing was part of the kick. Male or female an epicurean or a superbly muscled physical culture addict or an intellectual daydreamer a child again or an old woman...well some didn t like it. I could give you a man s tape Curly. There s McAuliffe s balloon trip into the big gas giant in Sol system. Captain Borg cut in sharply. What about the Charles Baker Sontag tape He did a year s tour in Miramon Lluagor system Curly. The Lluagorians use balloons for everything. You d love it. Curly was confused. Just what kind of balloons Not living things Curly. Fabric filled with gas. Lluagor has a red dwarf sun. No radiation storms and not much ultraviolet. They have to put their farms in orbit and they do most of their living in orbit and it s all inflated balloons even the spacecraft. The planet they use mainly for mining and factories but it s pretty too so they ve got cities slung under hundreds of gasbags. The tractor probe lurched across mile after mile of dim lit pink salt hills. Rachel remembered a memory tape in Morven s library: a critical reading of the Elder and Younger Eddas by a teacher of history and poetry. Would Medeans like that Here you had the Land of the Frost Giants and the Land of the Fire Giants with Midgard between...and the Ring Sea to stand in for the Midgard Serpent...and no dearth of epic monsters from what she d heard. Captain Borg spoke with an edge in her voice. Nobody s going to force you to use a new and decadent entertainment medium from the stars Curly Oh now I didn t But there s a point you might consider. Distance. Distance There s the trade circuit. Earth Toupan Lluagor Sereda Horvendile Koschei Earth again. Six planets circling six stars a few light years apart. The web ramships go round and round and everyone on the ring gets news entertainment seeds and eggs new inventions. There s the trade circuit and there s Medea. You re too far from Horvendile Curly. Oddly enough we re aware of that Captain Borg. No need to get huffy. I m trying to make a point. Why did you come Variety. Curiosity. The grass is always greener syndrome. The same thing that made us rainmers in the first place. Captain Borg did not add altruism the urge to keep the worlds civilized. But will we keep coming Curly Medea is the strangest place that ever had a breathable atmosphere. You ve got a potential tourist trap here. You could have ramships dropping by every twenty years We need that. Yes you do. So remember that rammers don t build starships. It s taxpayers that build starships. What do they get out of it Memory tapes Yes. It used to be holos. Times change. Holos aren t as involving as memory tapes and they take too long to watch. So it s memory tapes. Docs that mean we have to use them No said Captain Borg. Then I ll try your tourist s view of Lluagor system when I get time. Curly stood. And I better get going. Twenty five hours to dawn. It only takes ten minutes Rachel said. How long to recover How long to assimilate a whole earthyear of someone else s memories I better wait. After he was gone Rachel asked What was wrong with giving him the Jupiter tape I remembered McAuliffe was a homosexual. So what He was all alone in that capsule. It might matter to someone like Curly. I don t say it would I say it might. Every world is different. You ought to know. The rumor mill said that Mayor Curly and Captain Borg had shared a bed. Though he hadn t shown it . Too lightly Captain Borg said I should but I don t. Oh He s...closed. It s the usual problem I think. He sees me coming back in sixty or seventy years and me ten years older. Doesn t want to get too involved. Janice Dammit if they re so afraid of change how could their parents have busted their asses to settle a whole new world Change is the one thing yeah What is it Did you ask him or did he ask you Captain Borg frowned. He asked me. Why Nobody s asked me said Rachel. Oh...Well ask someone. Customs differ. But he asked you. I dazzled him with sex appeal. Or maybe not. Rachel shall I ask Curly about it There might be something we don t know. Maybe you wear your hair wrong. Rachel shook her head. No. But...okay. The rest of the crew don t seem to be having problems. Nearly dawn. The sky was thick with dark clouds but the heatward horizon was clear with Argo almost fully risen. The dull red disk would never rise completely not here. Already it must be sinking back. It was earthnight now the farming lamps were off. Crops and livestock kept terrestrial time. Rows of green plants stretched away to the south looking almost black in this light. In the boundary of bare soil between the wilds and the croplands half a dozen fuxes practiced spear casts. That was okay with Bronze Legs. Humans didn t spend much time in that border region. They plowed the contents of their toilets into it to sterilize it of Medean microorganisms and fertilize it for next year s crops. The fuxes didn t seem to mind the smell. Bronze Legs waited patiently beside his howler. He wished Windstorm would do the same. The two house sized crawlers were of a pattern familiar to many worlds: long bulbous pressure hulls mounted on ground effect platforms. They were decades old but they had been tended with loving care. Hydrogen fuel cells powered them. One of the crawlers now carried welded to its roof a sender capable of reaching Morven in its present equatorial orbit: another good reason for waiting for the web rainship s arrival. The third and largest vehicle was the power plant itself fully assembled and tested mounted on the ground effect systems from two crawlers and with a crawler s control cabin welded on in front. It trailed a raft: yet another ground effect system covered by a padded platform with handrails. The fuxes would be riding that. All vehicles were loaded and boarded well ahead of time. Windstorm Wolheim moved among them ticking off lists in her head and checking them against what she could see. The tall leggy redhead was a chronic worrier. Phrixus or maybe Helle was suddenly there a hot pink point near Argo. The fuxes picked up their spears and trotted off northward. Bronze Legs lifted his howler on its air cushion and followed. Behind him the three bigger vehicles whispered into action and Windstorm ran for her howler. Rachel was in the passenger seat of the lead crawler looking out through the great bubble windscreen. In the Hot End the crawlers would house the power plant engineers. Now they were packed with equipment. Square kilometers of thin silvered plastic sheet and knock down frames to hold it all would become solar mirrors. Black plastic and more frames would become the radiator fins mounted on the back of that hill in the Hot End. There were spools of superconducting cable and flywheels for power storage. Rachel kept bumping her elbow on the corner of a crate. The pinkish daylight was dimming graying as the Jet Stream spread to engulf the sky. The fuxes were far ahead keeping no obvious formation. In this light they seemed a convocation of mythical monsters: centaurs eight limbed dragons a misshapen dwarf. The dwarf was oddest of all. Rachel had seen him close: A nasty caricature of a man with a foxy face huge buttocks exaggerated male organs and the anomaly a tail longer than he was tall. Yet Harvester was solemn and slow moving and he seemed to have the respect of fuxes and humans both. The vehicles whispered along at thirty kilometers an hour uphill through orange grass swerving around hairy trees. A fine drizzle began. Lightning Harness turned on the wipers. Rachel asked Isn t this where we were a few days back Medean yesterday. That s right said Grace. Hard to tell. We re going north aren t we Why not straight east It s partly for our benefit dear. We ll be in the habitable domains longer. We ll see more variety we ll both learn more. When we swing around to heatward we ll be nearer the north pole. It won t get hot so fast. Good. Bronze Legs and a woman Rachel didn t know flanked them on the one seater ground effect vehicles the bowlers. Bronze Legs wore shorts and in fact his legs were bronze. Black by race he d paled to Rachel s color during years of Medean sunlight. Rachel asked half to herself Why not just Bronze Grace understood. They didn t mean his skin. What The fuxes named him for the time his howler broke down and stranded him forty miles from civilization. He walked home. He was carrying some heavy stuff but a troop of fuxes joined him and they couldn t keep up. They ve got lots of energy but no stamina. So they named him Bronze Legs. Bronze is the hardest metal they knew till we came. The rain had closed in. A beast like yesterday s flying bug strainers took to the air almost under the treads. For a moment it was face to face with Rachel its large eyes and tremendous mouth all widened in horror. A wing ticked the windshield as it dodged. Lightning cursed and turned on the headlights. As if by previous agreement lights sprang to life on the bowlers and the vehicles behind. We don t like to do that said Lightning. Do what Use headlights. Every domain is different. You never know what the local life will do when a flare comes not tifi you ve watched it happen. Here it s okay. Nothing worse than locusts. Even the headlights had a yellowish tinge Rachel thought. The gray cliffs ahead ran hundreds of kilometers to heatward and coldward. They were no more than a few hundred feet high but they were fresh and new. Medea wobbled a little in its course around Argo and the tides could raise savage quakes. All the rocks had sharp angles wind and life had not had a chance to wear them down. The pass was new too as if God had cleft the spine of the new mountains with a battle ax. The floor of it was filled with rubble. The vehicles glided above the broken rock riding high with fans on maximum. Now the land sloped gently down and the expedition followed. Through the drizzle Bronze Legs glimpsed a grove of trees hairy trees like those near Touchdown City but different. They grew like spoons standing on end with the cup of the spoon facing Argo. The ground was covered with tightly curled black filaments a plant the color and texture of Bronze Legs own hair. They had changed domain. Bronze Legs hadn t been in this territory but he remembered that Windstorm had. He called Anything unexpected around here B 70s. They do get around don t they Anything else It s an easy slope down to the shore Windstorm called but then there s a kind of parasitic fungus floating on the ocean. Won t hurt us but it can kill a Medean animal in an hour. I told Harvester. He ll make the others wait for us. They rode in silence for a bit. Drizzle made it hard to see much. Bronze Legs wasn t worried. The B 70s would stay clear of their headlights. This was explored territory and even after they left it the probes had mapped their route. That professional tourist Windstorm called suddenly. Did you get to know her Not really. What about her Mayor Curly said to be polite. When was I ever not polite But I didn t grow up with her Bronze Legs. Nobody did. We know more about fuxes than we do about rammers and this one s peculiar for a rammer How could a woman give up all her privacy like that You tell me. I wish I knew what she d do in a church. At least she wouldn t close her eyes. She s a dedicated tourist. Can you picture that But she might not get involved either. Bronze Legs thought hard before he added I tried one of those memory tapes. What You History of the Fission Period in Eurasia 1945 2010 from Morven s library. Education not entertainment. Why that Well what s it like It s...it s like I did a lot of research and formed conclusions and checked them out and sometimes changed my mind and it gave me a lot of satisfaction. There are still some open questions like how the Soviets actually got the fission bomb and the Vietnam War and the Arab Takeover. But I know who s working on that and...It s like that but it Doesn t connect to anything. It sits in my head in a clump. But it s kind of fun Windstorm and I got it all in ten minutes. You want to hear a libelous song about President Peanut Through the drizzle they could see the restless stirring of the Ring Ocean. A band of fuxes waited on the sand. Windstorm turned her howler in a graceful curve back toward the blur of the crawlers headlights to lead them. Bronze Legs dowsed his lights and glided toward the fuxea. They had chosen a good resting place far from the dangerous shore in a broad stretch of black man s hair that any marauder would have to cross. Most of the fuxes were lying down. The four legged female had been impregnated six Medean days ago. Her time must be near. She scratched with sharp claws at her itching hindquarters. Harvester came to meet Bronze Legs. The post male biped was slow with age but not clumsy. That tremendous length of black tail was good for his balance. It was tipped with a bronze spearhead. Harvester asked Will we follow the shoreline If we may choose we will keep your vessels between us and the shore. We plan to go straight across Bronze Legs told him. You ll ride the raft behind the bigger vessel. In the water are things dangerous to us said Harvester. He glanced shoreward and added Things small things large. A large one comes. Bronze Legs took one look and reached for his intercom. Lightning Hairy Jill Turn your searchlights on that thing fast The fuxes were up and reaching for their spears. So it s the fuxes who give you your nicknames Rachel said. Why did they call you Lightning I tend the machines that make lightning and move it through metal wires. At least that s how we explained it to the fuxes. And Windstorm you saw the big redhead girl on the other howler She was on guard one earthnight when a troop of fuxes took a short cut through the wheat crop. She really gave them hell. Half of Touchdown City must have heard her. And you Grace. They named me when I was a lot younger. Grace glared at Lightning who was very busy driving and clearly not listening and by no means was he smiling. But they didn t call me Grace. The way we have children the fuxes think that s hilarious. Rachel didn t ask. They called me Boobs. Rachel felt the need for a change of subject. Lightning are you getting tired Would you like me to take over I m okay. Can you drive a crawler Actually I ve never done it. I can run a howler though. In any terrain. Maybe we ll give you one after Then Bronze Legs voice bellowed from the intercom. Something came out of the ocean: a great swollen myriapod with tiny jointed arms moving around a funnel shaped mouth. Teeth churned in the gullet. The fuxes cast their spears and fled. Bronze Legs tucked Harvester under one arm and sped shoreward the howler listed to port. Deadeye fell behind two fuxes turned back and took her arms and pulled her along. The monster flowed up the beach faster than any of them ignoring the spears stuck in its flesh. One two three searchlights flashed from the vehicles and played over the myriapod. The beams were bluish unlike the headlights. Flare sunlight. The myriapod stopped. Turned clumsily and began to retreat down the beach. It had nearly reached the water when it lost coordination. The legs thrashed frantically and without effect. As Rachel watched in horrible fascination things were born from the beast. They crawled from its back and sides. Hundreds of them. They were dark red and dog sized. They did not leave the myriapod they stayed on it feeding. Its legs were quiet now. Three of the fuxes darted down the beach snatched up their fallen spears and retreated just as fast. The mynapod was little more than a skeleton now and the dog sized feeders were beginning to spread across the sand. The fuxes climbed aboard the air cushioned raft that trailed behind the mobile power plant. They arranged their packs and settled themselves. The paired vehicles lifted and glided toward the water. Lightning lifted the crawler and followed. Rachel said But We ll be okay Lightning assured her. We ll stay high and cross fast and there are always the searchlights. Grace tell him There are animals that like the searchlights Grace patted her hand. The expedition set off across the water. The colony around Touchdown City occupied part of a fat peninsula projecting deep into the Ring Sea. It took the expedition twelve hours to cross a bay just smaller than the Gulf of Mexico. Vermilion scum patches covered the water. Schools of flying non fish veered and dived at sight of the wrong colored headlights. The fuxes stayed flat on their platform...but the water was smooth the ride was smooth and nothing attacked them. The rain stopped and left Phrixus and Helle far up the morning sky. The cloud highway of the Jet Stream showed through a broken cloud deck. Lightning and the other drivers left their headlights on since the sea life seemed to avoid them. Somewhere in there Rachel reclined her chair and went to sleep. She woke when the crawler settled and tilted under her. Her brain was muzzy...and she had slept with the recorder on. That disturbed her. Usually she switched it off to sleep. Dreams were private. The crawler s door had dropped to form a stairway and the crawler was empty. Rachel went out. The crawlers howlers raft and mobile power plant were parked in a circle and tents had been set up inside. There was no living human being in sight. Rachel shrugged she stepped between a howler and the raft and stopped. This was nothing like the Medea she d seen up to now. Rolling hills were covered with chrome yellow bushes. They stood waist high and so densely packed that no ground was visible anywhere. Clouds of insects swarmed and sticky filaments shot up from the bushes to stab into the swarms. The fuxes had cut themselves a clearing. They tended one who was restless twitching. Bronze Legs Miller hailed her from their midst. Rachel waded through the bushes. They resisted her like thick tar. The insects scattered away from her. Deadeye s near her time Bronze Legs said. Poor baby. We won t move on until she s dropped her nest. The fux showed no swelling of pregnancy. Rachel remembered what she had been told of the fux manner of bearing children. Suddenly she didn t want to see it. Yet how could she leave She would be omitting a major part of the experience of Medea. She compromised. She whispered earnestly to Bronze Legs Should we be here Won t they object He laughed. We re here because we make good insect repellants. No. We like humans. Deadeye s voice was slurred. Now Rachel saw that the left eye was pink with no pupil. Are you the one who has been among the stars Yes. The feverish fux reached up to take Rachel s hand. So much strangeness in the world. When we know all of the world it may be we will go among the stars too. You have great courage. Her fingers were slender and hard like bones. She let go to claw at the hairless red rash between her front and back legs. Her tail thrashed suddenly and Bronze Legs dodged. The fux was quiet for a time. A six legged fux sponged her back with water the sponge seemed to be a Medean plant. Deadeye said I learned from humans that deadeye meant accurate of aim. I set out to be the best spear caster in... She trailed off into a language of barking and yelping. The odd looking biped held conversation with her. Perhaps he was soothing her. Deadeye howled and fell apart. She crawled forward pulling against the ground with hands and forefeet and her hindquarters were left behind. The hindquarters were red and dripping at the juncture and the tail slid through them: more than a meter of thick black tail stained with red and as long as Harvester s now. The other fuxes came forward some to tend Deadeye some to examine the hindquarters...in which muscles were still twitching. Ten minutes later Deadeye stood up. He made it look easy given his tail and his low center of mass perhaps it was. He spoke in his own language and the fuxes filed away into the yellow bushes. In the human tongue Deadeye said I must guard my nest. Alone. Travel safely. See you soon Bronze Legs said. He led Rachel after the fuxes. He won t want company now. He ll guard the nest till the little ones eat most of it and come out. Then he ll go sex crazy but by that time we ll be back. How are you feeling A little woozy Rachel said. Too much blood. Take my arm. The color of their arms matched perfectly. Is she safe here I mean he. Deadeye. He ll learn to walk faster than you think and he s got his spear. We haven t seen anything dangerous around. Rachel they don t have a safety hangup. I don t understand. Sometimes they get killed. Okay they get killed. Deadeye has his reasons for being here. If his children live they ll own this place. Some of the adults ll stay to help them along. That s how they get new territory. Confusing. You mean they have to be born here Right. Fuxes visit. They don t conquer. After awhile they have to go home. Grace is still trying to figure if that s physiology or just a social quirk. But sometimes they visit to give birth and that s how they get new homes. I don t think fuxes ll ever be space travelers. We have it easier. That we do. Bronze Legs I want to make love to you. He missed a step. He didn t look at her. No. Sorry. Then she said a little desperately will you at least tell me what s wrong Did I leave out a ritual or take too many baths or something Bronze Legs said Stage fright. He sighed when he saw that she didn t understand. Look ordinarily I d be looking for some privacy for us...which wouldn t be easy because taking your clothes off in an unfamiliar domain...never mind. When I make love with a woman I don t want a billion strangers criticizing my technique. The memory tapes. Right. Rachel I don t know where you find men who want that kind of publicity. Windstorm and I we let a post male watch us once...but after all they aren t human. I could turn off the tape. It records memories right Unless you forgot about me completely which I choose to consider impossible you d be remembering me for the record. Wouldn t you She nodded. And went back to the crawler to sleep. Others would be sleeping in the tents she didn t want the company. The howler s motor was half old half new. The new parts had a handmade look: bulky with file marks. One of the fans was newer cruder heavier than the other. Rachel could only hope the Medeans were good with machinery. The tough looking redhead asked Are you sure you want to go through with this I took a howler across most of Koschei Rachel told her. She straightened then swung up onto the saddle. Its original soft plastic seat must have disintegrated what replaced it looked and felt like tanned skin. Top speed a hundred and forty kilometers an hour. Override this switch boosts the fans so I can fly. Ten minutes of flight then the batteries block up and I ve got to come down. Six slots in the ground effect skirt so I can go in any direction. The main thing is to keep my balance. Especially when I m flying. Windstorm did not seem reassured. You won t get that kind of performance out of a fifty year old machine. Treat it tender. And don t fly if you re in a hurry because you ll be using most of the power just to keep you up. Two more things She reached out to put Rachel s hands on a switch and a knob. Her own hands were large and strong with prominent veins. Searchlight. This knob swings it around and this raises and lowers it. It s your best weapon. If it Doesn t work flee. Second thing is your goggles. Sling them around your neck. Where are they Windstorm dug goggles from the howler s saddlebag: a flexible strap and two large hemispheres of red glass. A similar set swung from her own neck. You should never have to ask that question again on Medea. Here. The other vehicles were ready to go. Windstorm jogged to her own howler leaving Rachel with the feeling that she had failed a test. It was past noon of the Medean day. Harvester was riding Giggles the six legged virgin. The rest of the fuxes rode the ground effect raft. The vehicles rode high above the forest of chrome yellow bushes. Windstorm spoke from the intercom. We stay ahead of the crawlers and to both sides. We re looking for anything dangerous. If you see something you re afraid of sing out. Don t wait. Rachel eased into position. The feel of the howler was coming back to her. It weighed half a kiloton but you stifi did some of your steering by shifting weight... Windstorm aren t you tired I got some sleep while Deadeye was dropping her hindquarters. Maybe Windstorm didn t trust anyone else to supervise the rammer. Rachel was actually relieved. It struck her that most Medeans had lost too many of their safety hangups. The bushes ended sharply at the shore of a fast flowing river carrying broad patches of scarlet scum. Some of the patches bloomed with flowers of startling green. Harvester boarded the raft to cross. There was wheatfield beyond but the yellow plants were feathery and four meters high. Hemispheres of white rock appeared with suspicious regularity. The expedition had swung around to north and heatward. Argo stood above the peaks of a rounded mountain range. Many limbed birds rode the air above them. Rachel looked up to see one dropping toward her face. She could see the hooked beak and great claws aiming at her eyes. Her blind fingers sought the searchlight controls. She switched on the searchlight and swung the beam around and up. Like a laser cannon: first fire then aim. Calmly now. The beam found the bird and illuminated it iii blue fire: a fearsome sight. Wings like oiled leather curved meat ripping beak muscular forelegs with long talons: and the hind legs were long slender and tipped each with a single sword blade. They weren t for walking at all nor for anything but weaponry. The bird howled shut its eyes tight and tried to turn in the air. Its body curled in a ball its wings folded around it. Rachel dropped the beam to keep it pinned until it smacked hard into the wheatfield. The intercom said Nice. Thank you. Rachel sounded deceptively calm. Grace wants to call a halt Windstorm said. Up by that next boulder. Fine. The boulders were all roughly the same size: fairly regular hemispheres one and a half meters across. Grace and Bronze Legs came out of the crawler lugging instruments on a dolly. They unloaded a box on one side of the boulder and Grace went to work on it. Bronze Legs moved the dolly around to the other side and unfurled a silver screen. When Rachel tried to speak Grace shushed her. She fiddled a bit with various dials then turned on the machine. A shadow show formed on the screen: a circle of shadow and darker shapes within. Grace cursed and touched dials feather lightly. The blurred shadows took on detail. Shadows of bones lighter shadows of flesh. There were four oversized heads mostly jaws overlapping near the center and four tails near the rim and a maze of legs and spines between. Four creatures all wrapped intimately around each other to just fill the shell. I knew it Grace cried. They were too regular. They had to be eggs or nests or plants or something like that. Windstorm dear if we pile this junk back on the dolly can you tow it to the next rock They did that. The next rock was very like the first: an almost perfect hemisphere with a surface like white plaster. Rachel rapped it with her knuckles. It felt like stone. But the deep radar shadow showed three bigheaded fetuses just filling their environment plus a tiny one that had failed to grow. Well. They all seem to be at the same stage of development Grace observed. I wonder if it s a seasonal thing Rachel shook her head. It s different every time you turn around. Lord You learn a place you walk a couple of kilometers you have to start all over again. Grace don t you ever get frustrated You can t run fast enough to stay in one place I love it. And it s worse than you think dear. Grace folded the screen and stacked it on the dolly. The domains don t stay the same. We have spillovers from other domains from high winds and tidal slosh and migration. I d say a Medean ecology is ruined every ten years. Then I have to learn it all over again. Windstorm dear I d like to look at one more of these rock eggs. Will you tow The windstorm was sudden and violent. Damn it Grace this isn t the way we planned it We do our biological research on the way back After we set up the power system then we can give the local monsters a chance to wreck us. Grace s voice chilled. Dear it seems to me that this bit of research is quite harmless. It uses up time and supplies. We ll do it on the way back when we know we ve got the spare time. We ve been through this. Pack up the deepradar and let s move. Now the rolling hills of feather wheat sloped gently up toward an eroded mountain range whose peaks seemed topped with pink cotton. The three legged female Gimpy trotted alongside Rachel talking of star travel. Her gait was strange rolling but she kept up as long as Rachel held her howler to the power plant s twenty KPH. She could not grasp interstellar distances. Rachel didn t push. She spoke of wonders instead: of the rings of Saturn and the bubble cities of Lluagor and the Smithpeople and the settling of whale and dolphin colonies in strange oceans. She spoke of time compression: of gifting Sereda with designs for crude steam engines and myriads of wafer sized computer brains and returning to find steam robots everywhere: farmland city streets wilderness households disneylands of fads that could explode across a planet and vanish without a trace like tobacco pipes on Koschei op art garments on Earth weight lifting on low gravity Horvendile. It was long before she got Gimpy talking about herself. I was of my parent s second litter within a group that moved here to study your kind Gimpy said. They taught us bow and arrow and a better design of shovel and other things. We might have died without them. The way you said that: second litter. Is there a difference Yes. One has the first litter when one can. The second litter comes to one who proves her capability by living that long. The third litter the male s litter comes only with the approval of one s clan. Else the male is not allowed to breed. That s good genetics. Rachel saw Gimpy s puzzlement. I mean that your custom makes better fuxes. It Docs. I will never see my second litter Gimpy said. I was young when I made my mistake but it was foolish. The breed improves. I will not be a one legged male. They moved into a rift in the eroded mountain range and the incredible became obvious. The mountains were topped with pink cotton candy. It must have been sticky like cotton candy too. Rachel could see animals trapped in it. Gimpy wanted no part of that. She dropped back and boarded the raft. They crossed the cotton candy with fans blasting at maximum. The big vehicles blew pink froth in all directions. Something down there wasn t trapped at all. A ton of drastically flattened pink snail with a perfect snail shell perched jauntily on its back cruised over the cotton candy leaving a slime trail that bubbled and expanded to become more pink froth. It made for the still corpse of a many limbed bird flowed over it and stopped to digest it. The strangeness was getting to Rachel and that was a strange thing for her. She was a rammer. Strangeness was the one constant in her life. Born aboard a ramship not Morven she had already gone once around the trade circuit. Even a rammer who returned to a world he knew must expect to find it completely changed and Rachel knew that. But the strangeness of Medea came faster than she could swallow it or spit it out. She fiddled with the intercom until she got Grace. Yes dear I m driving. What is it It s confusion. Grace why aren t all planets like Medea They ve all got dommns don t they Deserts rain forests mountains poles and equators...you see what I mean She heard the xenobiologist s chuckle. Dear the Cold Pole is covered with frozen carbon dioxide. Where we re going it s hotter than boiling water. What is there on the trade circuit worlds that splits up the domains Mountain ranges An ocean for a heat sink Temperature altitude rainfall Medea has all of that plus the one way winds and the one way ocean currents. The salinity goes from pure water to pure brine. The glaciers carry veins of dry ice heatward so there are sudden jumps in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide. Some places there are no tides. Other places Argo wobbles enough to make a terrific tidal slosh Then again everything has to adapt to the flares. Some animals have shells. Some sea beasts can dive deep. Some plants seed others grow a big leaf for an umbrella. Beyond the pass the mountains dropped more steeply down to an arm of the Ring Sea. Rachel had no problem controlling the howler but the mobile power plant was laboring hard with its front vents wide open to hold it back and little pressure left for steering. There should be no real danger. Two probes had mapped this course. Everything is more different huh Excuse me dear...that s got it. Sonofabitch we could live without that sonofabitching tail wind. Okay. Do you remember the mock turtle we showed you yesterday evening We ve traced it six thousand kilometers to coldward. In the Icy Sea it s seagoing and much larger. Follow it heatward and it gets smaller and more active. We think it s the food supply. Glaciers stir up the bottom and the sea life loves that. To heatward a bigger beast starves...sometimes. But we could be wrong. Maybe it has to conserve heat in the colder climates. I d like to try some experiments someday. The white boulders that turned out to be giant eggs were thicker here on the heatward slopes. And on the lower slopes But this was strange. The mountainsides were gay with pennants. Thousands of long flapping flags orange or chrome yellow. Rachel tried to make it out. Grace was still talking Rachel began to feel she d opened a Pandora s Box. The closer you look to the Hot Pole the more competition you find among the sea life. New things flow in from coldward constantly. All the six limbed and eight limbed forms we think they were forced onto the land kicked out of the ocean by something bigger or meaner. They left the ocean before they could adopt the usual fish shape which is four fins and a tail. Grace wait a minute now. Are you saying...we... Yes dear. The smile Rachel couldn t see had to be a smirk. Four limbs and a tail. We dropped the tail but the human form is perfectly designed for a fish. Rachel switched her off. The hillside trees had extensive root systems that gripped rock like a strong man s fist and low almost conical trunks. On each tree the tip of the trunk sprouted a single huge leaf a flapping flag orange or chrome yellow and ragged at the end. All pennants and no armies. Some of the flags were being torn apart by the air blast from the ground effect vehicles. Perhaps that was how they spread their seeds Rachel thought. Like tapeworms. Ask Grace She d had enough of Grace and she d probably have to start with an apology... The day brightened as if clouds had passed from before the sun. The slopes were easing off into foothills now. Gusts of wind turned some of the flapping pennants into clouds of confetti. It was easier to go through the papery storms than to steer around. Rachel used one hand as a visor the day had turned quite bright. Was she carrying dark glasses Of course the goggles It was a flare She kept her eyes resolutely lowered until she d pulled the red cups over her eyes and adjusted them. Then she turned to look. The suns were behind her left shoulder and one was nearly lost in the white glare of the other. Bronze Legs was asleep in a reclined passenger chair in the trailing crawler. It was like sleeping aboard a boat at anchor...but the sudden glare woke him instantly. Going downhill the mobile power plant rode between the two crawlers for greater safety. The angle of descent hadn t seriously hampered the ponderous makeshift vehicle. But all bets were off now. Flare The fuxes were still on the raft. They could be hurt if they tumbled off at this speed but their every instinct must be telling them to get off and dig. Bronze Legs flattened his nose against the windscreen. Charles Hairy McBundy fighting to slow the power plant and raft wouldn t have attention to spare and there had to be a place to stop. Someplace close someplace fiat dirt rather than rock and damn quick There to the left Not quite flat and it ended short in a cliff Tough. Bronze Legs hit the intercom button and screamed Hard left Hairy and when you stop stop fast Hairy was ahead of him. Vents had already opened in the air cushion skirts of raft and power plant. Robbed of thrust through the forward vents the vehicles surged left and forward. Bronze Legs teeth ground against each other. One silver parasol had opened on the raft probably Harvester s and five sharp fux faces were under it. Their tails thrashed with their agitation. Grace brought the crawler around to follow. Left and forward too fast like the power plant. Hairy was on the ledge now. He cut his air cushion all at once. The power plant dropped. Its skirt screamed against rock then dirt then at the edge of the drop quit. The fuxes boiled off the raft raised parasols and began digging. The crawler vibrated sickeningly as Grace cut the air cushion. She was wearing her ruby goggles. So was Bronze Legs he must have donned them without help from his conscious mind. He glanced again at the fuxes and saw only silver disks and a fog of brown dirt. The other crawler had stopped on the slant. Windstorm s howler sat tilted but not rolling. Windstorm herself was sprinting uphill. Good enough. She should be inside in one of the crawlers. Strange things could emerge in flare time. Where was the other howler pilot Far downslope and losing ground. Too far to climb back in any reasonable time. That was Rachel the rammer wasn t it With a little skill she could turn the howler and use the larger rear vents to bring her back but she wasn t showing that skill. She seemed to be trying to back up. Not good at all. Grace Can we take the crawler down to her We may have to try. Try the intercom first dear. See if you can talk her back up. Bronze Legs tried. Her intercom s off. Oft Really The little idiot And she s not about to notice the little light. Wait here she comes. Rachel s howler lifted on emergency power hovered then started uphill. Grace said She may have trouble landing. Then Bronze Legs saw what was happening around them. To Rachel it seemed that everyone was in panic. Far above her both crawlers and the power plant had come to a screeching halt. Tough competent Windstorm had abandoned her own vehicle and was fleeing in terror from nothing visible. The fuxes the native Medeans were nowhere in sight. Could they all know something Rachel didn t She was having her own problems. The damned obsolete sluggish howler refused to back up it coasted slowly frictionlessly downhill further and further from safety. To hell with that. She flipped the override. The howler went up. Rachel leaned far back and the howler tilted with her staying low following the upward curve of terrain. If the power quit early she wanted some chance to land. But the howler purred nicely uphill faster now while Rachel concentrated on her balance. She was marginally aware that the gay orange pennants had all turned to dead black crepe and that certain round white boulders were cracking crumbling. But when things emerged from the boulders she screamed. All in an instant the mountains were acrawl with a thousand monsters. Their skins were shiny white. Their eyes were mere slits in heads that were mostly teeth. As Rachel rose toward the precarious safety of the crawlers the creatures chose their target and converged. They ran with bodies low tails high legs an invisible blur. In seconds that meager flat place where the crawlers rested was covered with rock demons. No safety there. She flew over the crawlers glimpsed peering faces behind the windscreens and kept going. The boulders had been rare near the crest and the rock demons weren t there yet. Neither was Rachel of course. She d get as far as possible before the howler quit. And then what She flipped on the headlights and the searchlight too. The rock demons throve in flare time but even they might fear too much flare sunlight. It was worth a try. The mountain s rock face grew steeper and steeper. No place to land unless she could reach the crest. The fans howled. Here was the ridge coming level. Rachel cursed venomously. The crest was carpeted in pink sticky cotton candy. Its proprietors had withdrawn into huge snail shells. The howl of the fans dropped from contralto toward bass. Pale six legged monsters searching for meat on bare rock turned big heads to squint as Rachel sank low. They blurred into motion. The crawler coasted just above the pink froth riding the ground effect now not really flying. Strange corpses and strange skeletons were marooned in that sea. The wind from the fans was full of pink froth. Then she had crossed and was coasting downhill and it was already too late to land. The howler rode centimeters above the rock too fast and gaining speed. Here the slope was shallower and she was still in the pass chosen long ago by Medeans monitoring a tractor probe. But the howler rode too low. If she opened a slot to brake the skirt would scrape rock the howler would flip over. Find a level spot A quick glance back told her she didn t want to stop anyway. A dozen of the rock demons had crossed the cotton candy. Probably used their siblings for stepping stones after they got stuck Rachel held hard to her sanity and concentrated on staying right side up. The things were holding their own in the race. Maybe they were even catching up. Bronze Legs squeezed between the crates and the roof to reach the crawler s observation bubble. It was big enough for his head and shoulders. He found one of the rock demons with its forelegs wrapped around the bubble blocking part of his view while it gnawed at the glass. Rock demons swarmed on the ground. The fuxes couldn t be seen but a few rock demons lay unnaturally quiet where the fuxholes were and Bronze Legs saw a spear thrust through the melee. He called down Try the searchlights. Won t work Grace answered. She tried it anyway. Other searchlights joined hers and the thrashing rxk demons blazed painfully bright even through goggles. They turned squinted at the situation then came all in a quick rush. The bronze spearhead on Harvester s tail stabbed deep into a straggler. The rock demon s blood jetted an incredible distance. It died almost instantly. If there were live fuses under the somewhat tattered silver parasols they were safe now. All the rock demons were swarming round the vehicle s searchlights. They liked the light. Grace chortled. Tell me you expected that I wouldn t dare. I feel a lot safer now. The monsters weren t tearing at the lights they fought each other for a place in the glare. What do they think they re doing We ve seen this kind of reaction before Grace answered. Medean life either loves flares or hates them. All the flare loving forms act like they re programmed to stay out of shadows during flares. Like in the shadow of a mountain they d be in just the conditions they aren t designed for. Most of em have high blood pressure too and terrific reserves of energy. They have to accomplish a lot in the little time a flare lasts. Be born eat grow mate give birth Grace get on the intercom and find out if everyone s still alive. And see if anyone knows which sun flared. Why What possible difference could it make Phrixus flares last up to three quarters of an hour. Helle flares don t last as long. We re going to have to wait it out. And see if Rachel called anyone. Right. Bronze Legs half listened to the intercom conversation. Along the heatward slopes of the mountains the black flags flew in triumph growing longer almost as Bronze Legs watched making sugar while the sun flared. The rock demons milling in the searchlight beams were now hungry enough to be attacking each other in earnest. A vastly larger number of rock demons had deserted the mountainsides entirely had swarmed straight down to the shoreline. The waves were awash with sea monsters of all sizes the rock demons were wading out to get them. Grace called up to him. Rachel didn t call anyone. Lightning says she made it over the crest. Good. What do you think she ll do Nobody knows her very well. Hmm...She won t land in the cotton candy. She probably could because those snails are probably hiding in their shells. Right But she won t. It d be too messy. She ll stop on the coldward slope or beyond anywhere it s safe to wait it out. If there is anywhere. Do you think she ll find anywhere safe She won t know what s safe. She won t find anyplace that isn t swarming with something not this far to heatward. The further you look to heatward the more ferocious the competition gets. Then she ll keep going. If she Doesn t wreck herself she ll go straight back to Touchdown City. Let s see Morven s on the other side of the planet now. Say it ll be up in an hour and we ll let them know what s happening. That way we ll know she s safe almost as soon as she Docs. Grace you don t think she d try to rejoin us She can t get lost and she can t stop and Touchdown s visible from fifty miles away. She ll just head home. Okay... There was a funny edge of doubt in Grace s voice. She stabbed at an intercom button. Lightning Me. You watched Rachel go over the crest right Did she have her headlights on Bronze Legs was wondering just how teed off the rammers would be if Rachel was dead. It took him a moment to see the implications of what Grace was saying. The searchlight too All right Lightning. The long range sender is on your roof. I want it ready to send a message to Morven by the time Morven rises which will be to south of coldward in about an hour...No don t go out yet. The way the beasts are running around they should die of heatstroke pretty quick. When they fall off the roof you go. The rock demons followed Rachel twelve kilometers downslope before anything distracted them. The howler was riding higher now but Rachel wasn t out of trouble. The emergency override locked the vents closed. If she turned it off the power would drop and so would the howler. She was steering with her weight alone. Her speed would last as long as she was going down. She had almost run out of mountain. The slope leveled off as it approached the river. The vicious pegasus type birds had disappeared. The rolling mountainsides covered with feathery wheat were now covered with stubble stubble with a hint of motion in it dark flecks that showed and were gone. Millions of mice maybe Whatever: they were meat. The demons scattered in twelve directions across the stubble their big heads snapping snapping. Rachel leaned forward across her windscreen to get more speed. Behind her three rock demons converged on a golden Roman shield...on a mock turtle that had been hidden by feather wheat and was now quite visible and helpless. The demons turned it over and ripped it apart and ate and moved on. The howler slid across the shore and onto flowing water. Each patch of scarlet scum had sprouted a great green blossom. Rachel steered between the stalks by body english. She was losing speed but the shore was well behind her now. And all twelve rock demons zipped downhill across the stubble and into the water. Rachel held her breath. Could they swim They were under water drinking or dispersing heat or both. Now they arched upward to reach the air. The howler coasted to a stop in midstream. Rachel nerved herself to switch off the override. The howler dropped and hovered in a dimple of water churning a fine mist that rapidly left Rachel dripping wet. She waited. Come what may at least the batteries were recharging. Give her time and she d have a howler that could steer and fly. The heatward shore was black with a million mouse sized beasties. They d cleaned the field of feather wheat but what did they think they were doing now Watching Rachel The rock demons noticed. They waded clumsily out of the water and once on land blurred into motion. The shore churned with six legged white marauders and tiny black prey. It seemed the fates had given Rachel a break. The water seemed quite empty but for the scarlet scum and its huge blossoms. No telling what might be hugging the bottom while the flare passed. Rachel could wait too. The coldward shore looked safe enough...though it had changed. Before the flare it had been one continuous carpet of chrome yellow bushes. The bushes were still there but topped now with a continuous sheet of silver blossoms. The clouds of insects swarmed still though they might be different insects. Upstream something was walking toward her on stilts. It came at its own good time stopping frequently. Rachel kept her eye on it while she tried the intercom. She got static on all bands. Mountains blocked her from the expedition other mountains blocked her from Touchdown City. The one sender that could reach Morven in orbit was on a crawler. Dammit. She never noticed the glowing pinpoint that meant Bronze Legs had called. It was too dim. Onshore two of the rock demons were mating head to tail. The thing upstream seemed to be a great silver Daddy long legs. Its legs were slender and almost long enough to bridge the river its torso proportionately tiny. It paused every so often to reach deep into the water with the thumbless hands on its front legs. The hands were stubby armored in chitin startlingly quick. They dipped they rose at once with something that struggled they conveyed the prey to its mouth. Its head was wide and flat like a clam with bulging eyes. It stepped delicately downstream with all the time in the world...and it was bigger than Rachel had realized and faster. So much for her rest break. She opened the rear vent. The howler slid across the river and onto shore and stopped nudging the bushes. The Daddy long legs was following her. Ten of the dozen rock demons were wading across. As the bottom dipped the six legged beasts rose to balance on four legs then two. As bipeds they were impressively stable. Maybe their tails trailed in the mud bottom to serve as anchors. And the mice were coming too. Thousands of them swimming in a black carpet among the patches of scum. Rachel used the override for fifteen seconds. It was enough to put her above the silver topped bushes. The lily pad shaped silver blossoms bowed beneath the air blast but the ground effect held her. She wasn t making any great speed. Bugs swarmed around her. Sticky filaments shot from between the wide silver lily pads and sometimes found bugs and sometimes struck the fans or the ground effect skirt. She looked for the place that had been cleared for a fux encampment. Deadeye would be there a feisty male biped guarding his nest if Deadeye still lived. She couldn t find the gap in the bushes. It struck her that that was good luck for Deadeye considering what was following her. But she was lonely and scared. The Daddy long legs stepped delicately among the bushes. Bushes rustled to show where ten rock demons streaked after her veering to snatch a meal from whatever was under the blossoms then resuming course. Of the plant eating not mice there was no sign except that here and there a bush had collapsed behind her. But they were all falling behind as the fuel cells poured power into the howler s batteries. Rachel oriented herself by Argo and the Jet Stream and headed south and coldward. She was very tired. The land was darkening reddening and it came to her that the flare was dying. The flare was dying. The goggles let Bronze Legs look directly at the Suns now to see the red arc enclosing the bright point of Helle. A bubble of hellfire was rising cooling expanding into the vacuum above the lesser hell of a red dwarf star. There were six legged rock demons all around them and a few on the roofs. All were dead from heatstroke or dehydration. A far larger number were gathering all along the Ring Sea shore. Now they swarmed uphill in a wave of silver. They paired off as they came and stopped by twos in the rocks to mate. The diminished wave swept around the expedition and petered out. Now the mountains were covered with writhing forms: an impressive sight. They make the beast with twelve legs Bronze Legs said. Look at the size of those bellies Hey Grace aren t the beasts themselves bigger than they were They have to be. They ve got to form those eggs. Dammit don t distract me. The intercom lit. Grace wasn t about to notice anything so mundane. The paired rock demons were growing quiet but they were still linked head to tail. Bronze Legs opened the intercom. Lightning s voice said I ve got Duty Officer Toffier aboard Morven. Okay. Toffier this is Miller. We ve got an emergency. Sorry to hear it. The male voice sounded sleepy. What can we do about it You ll have to call Touchdown City. Can you patch me through or shall I record a message Let s check... The voice went away. Bronze Legs watched a nearby pair of rock demons crawling away from each other. The thick torsos seemed different. A belly swelling that had extended the length of the torso was now a prominent swelling between the middle and hind legs. It was happening fast. The beasts seemed gaunt all bone and skin except for the great spherical swelling. With fore and middle legs they scratched at the earth digging digging. Miller you d better record. By the time we got their attention they d be over the horizon. We ll have them in another hour. But I don t see how they can help either. Listen Miller is there something we can do with an interstellar message laser At this range we can melt a mountain or boil a lake and be accurate to Dammit Toffier we re not in trouble Touchdown City s in trouble and they don t know it yet Oh Okay set to record. To Mayor Curly Jackson Touchdown City. We ve weathered the flare. We don t know if the fuxes survived yet. The rammer Rachel Subramaniam is on the way to you on a howler. She has no reason to think she s dangerous but she is. By the time you spot her you d be too late to stop her. If you don t move damn quick the human colony on Medea could be dead within the year. You ll need every vehicle you can get your bands on... The expedition had crossed a great bay of the Ring Sea in twelve hours. Rachel could cross it in three but she d be rid of what followed her moments after she left shore. She had heard Lightning mention the parasitic fungus that floated on this arm of the Ring Sea that was deadly to fuxes and any Medean life...unless the flare had burned it away. The flare was long over. She rode through the usual red lit landscape in a circle of the white light from headlights taillights searchlight. She hungered and thirsted for the light of farming lamps the color of Sol of ship s sunlights the sign that she had come at last to Touchdown City. But she hungered more for the fungus that would kill the rock demons and the Daddy long legs. She hated them for their persistence their monstrous shapes their lust for her flesh. She hated them for being themselves Let them rot slow or quick. Then three hours to cross the bay half an hour more to find and navigate that rubble strewn pass and downhill toward the bluewhite light. That was the shoreline ahead. Ominously blood colored beasts milled there. One by one they turned toward the howler. Rachel cursed horribly and without imagination. She had seen these things before. The expedition s searchlights had pinned a tremendous thousand legged worm and these things had been born from its flesh. They were dog sized tailless quadrupeds. Flare time must have caught a lot of the great myriapods brought vast populations of parasites to life for this many to be still active this long after the flare. More than active. They leapt like fleas...toward Rachel. She turned to heatward. Weak as she felt now one could knock her out of the saddle. Her entourage turned with her. Two more rock demons had dropped out. Eight followed and the great spider and a loyal population of protomice exposed now that the bushes had ended. And hordes of insects. Rachel s reason told her that she was taking this all too personally. But what did they see in her She wasn t that much meat and the spider wasn t that hungry. I reached down now and then to pluck a proto mouse and once it plucked up a rock demon with equal nonchalance. The demon raved and snapped and died within the spider s clamshell mouth but it clawed out an eye too. And the demons had the proto mice for food but they had to streak down to the water every so often to cool off and fight their way back through the blood red quadrupeds eating what they killed. The mice had fed well on the yellow bushes and who knew about the tiny might be insects What did they all want with Rachel After a couple of hours the shore curved south and now it was white tinged with other colors: a continuous crust of salt. Rachel s climate suit worked well but her face and hands were hot. The wind was hot with Argo heat and the heat of a recent flare. The Daddy long legs had solved its heat problem. It waded offshore out of reach of the red parasites pacing her. It was five hours before the shore turned sharply to coldward. Rachel turned with it staying well back from shore where blood colored quadrupeds still prowled. She worried now about whether she could find the pass. There would be black tightly curled ground cover and trees foliated in gray hair with a spoon shaped silhouette and sharp edged young mountains to the south. But she felt stupid with fatigue and she had never adjusted to the light and never would: dull red from Argo pink from two red dwarf suns nearing sunset. More hours passed. She saw fewer of the red parasites. Once she caught the Daddy long legs with another rock demon in its clamshell jaws. The hexapod s own teeth tore at the side of the spider s face...the side that was already blind. Flare loving forms used themselves up fast. Those trees . Rachel swung her searchlight around. The ground cover the black man s hair was gone. A black fog of insects swarmed over bare dirt. But the trees were hairy with a spoon shaped silhouette. How far had those trees spread on Medea She could be in the wrong place... She turned left uphill There were low mountains ahead young mountains all sharp edges. A kilometer short Rachel turned to parallel them. The pass had been so narrow. She could go right past it. She slowed down then impatient speeded up again. Narrow it had been but straight. Perhaps she would see farming lamps shining through it. She noticed clouds forming and began cursing to drive away thoughts of rain. When the light came it was more than a glimmer. She saw a sun a white sun a real sun shining against the mountains. As if flare time had come again But Phrixus and Helle were pink dots sinking in the west. She swerved toward the glare. The rising ground slowed her and she remembered the spider plodding patiently behind her she didn t turn to look. The glare grew terribly bright She slowed further puzzled and frightened. She pulled the goggles up over her eyes. That was better but still she saw nothing but that almighty glare at the end of a bare rock pass. She rode into the pass into the glare into a grounded sun. Her eyes adjusted. The rock walls were lined with vehicles: flyers tractor probes trucks crawlers converted to firefighting and ambulance work anything that could move on its own was there and each was piled with farming lamps and batteries and all the farming lamps were on. An aisle had been left between them. Rachel coasted down the aisle. She thought she could make out man shaped shadows in the red darkness beyond. They were human. By the pale mane around his head she recognized Mayor Curly Jackson. Finally finally she slowed the howler let it sink to the ground and stepped off. Human shapes came toward her. One was Mayor Curly. He took her arm and his grip drove pain even through the fog of fatigue. You vicious little idiot he said. She blinked. He snarled and dropped her arm and turned to face the pass. Half the population of Touchdown City stood looking down the aisle of light ignoring Rachel...pointedly. She didn t try to shoulder between then. She climbed into the howler s saddle to see. They were there: half a dozen rock demons grouped beneath the long legs of the spider a black carpet of proto mice all embedded in a cloud of bright motes insects. The monsters strolled up the aisle of light and the watching men backed away. It wasn t necessary. Where the light stopped Rachel s entourage stopped too. Mayor Curly turned. Did it once occur to you that something might be following your lights Your flare colored lights You went through half a dozen domains and every one had its own predators and its own plant eaters and you brought them all here you gutless moron How many kinds of insects are there in that swarm How many of them would eat our crops down to the ground before it poisoned them Those little black things on the ground they re plant eaters too aren t they All flare loving forms and you brought them all here to breed The next time a flare goes off would have been the last time any Medean human being had anything to You d be safe of course. All you d have to do is fly on to another star... The only way a human being can turn off her ears is to turn off her mind. Rachel didn t know whether she fainted or not. Probably she was led away rather than carried. Her next memory began some time later beneath the light of home with the sounds and the smells of home around her strapped down in free fall aboard the web ramship Morven. On the curve of the wall the mobile power plant and one of the crawlers had finally left the realms of crusted salt. They ran over baked dirt now. The howler was moored in the center of the ground effect raft surrounded by piles of crates. It would be used again only by someone willing to wear a spacesuit. The four remaining fuxes were in the crawlers. Argo was out of camera range nearly overhead. The view shifted and dipped with the motion of the trailing crawler. No the beasts didn t actually do any harm. We did more damage to ourselves Mayor Curly said. He wasn t looking at Captain Borg. He was watching the bob wall. A cup of coffee cooled in his hand. We moved every single farming lamp out of the croplands and set them all going in the pass right And the flare loving life forms just stayed there till they died. They aren t really built to take more than a couple of hours of flare time what they d get if both suns flared at once and they aren t built to walk away from flarelight either. Maybe some of the insects bred. Maybe the big forms were carrying seeds and insect eggs in their hair. We know the six legged types tried to breed as soon as we turned off the lamps but they weren t in shape for it by then. It Doesn t matter now. I suppose I should... He turned and looked at her. In fact I do thank you most sincerely for melting that pass down to lava. There can t be anything living in it now. So you came out of it with no damage. Not really. The locusts hurt us. We moved the farming lamps in a hurry but we took our own good time getting them back in place. That was a mistake. Some flare hating bugs were just waiting to taste our corn. Too bad. And a nest of B 70s killed two children in the oak grove. Captain Borg s mind must have been elsewhere. You really reamed Rachel out. I did Curly said without satisfaction and without apology. She was almost catatonic. We bad to take her back up to Morven before she d talk to anyone. Curly is there any way to convince her she didn t make a prize idiot of herself At a guess I d say no. Why would anyone want to Captain Borg was using her voice of command now. I dislike sounding childish especially to you Curly but baby talk may be my best option. The problem is that Rachel didn t have any fun on Medea. You re breaking my heart. She won t even talk about coming down. She didn t like Medea. She didn t like the light or the animals or the way the fuxes bred. Too bloody. She went through thirty odd hours of hell with your power plant expedition and came back tired to death and being chased by things out of a nightmare and when she finally got to safety you called her a dangerous incompetent idiot and made her believe it. She didn t even get laid on Medea What Never mind it s trivial. Or maybe it s absolutely crucial but skip it. Curly I have sampled the official memory tape of Medea the one we would have tried to peddle when we got back into the trade circuit Curly s eyes got big. O o ob shit It comes to you Docs it That tape was an ugly experience. It s unpleasant and uncomfortable and humiliating and exhausting and scary and there s no sex. That s Rachel s view of Medea and there isn t any other and nobody s going to enjoy it. Curly bad paled. What do we do Put Rachel s equipment on somebody else I wouldn t wear it. No rammer is really manic about her privacy but there are limits. What about a Medean Who Don t you have any compulsive exhibitionists Curly shook his head. I ll ask around but...no maybe I won t. Doesn t it tell you something that she couldn t get screwed What man could go with a woman knowing she ll be peddling the memory of it to millions of strangers Yuk. The crawlers had stopped. Human shapes stepped outside wearing skintight pressure suits and big transparent bubbles over their heads. They moved around to the ground effect raft and began opening crates. It s no good. Curly it s not easy to find people to make memory tapes. For a skill tape you need a genuine expert with twenty or thirty years experience behind him plus a sharp edged imagination and a one track mind and no sense of privacy. And Rachel s a tourist. She s got all of that and she can learn new skills at the drop of a hat. She s very reactive very emotive. And she very nearly wiped us out. She ll be making tapes till she dies. And every time something reminds her of Medea her entire audience is going to know just what she thinks of the planet. What ll happen to us Oh...we could be worried over nothing. I ve seen fads before. This whole memory tape thing could be ancient history by the time we get back to civilization. Civilization As opposed to what Curly knew the answer to that one. He went back to watching the wall. And even if it s not...I ll be back. I ll bring another walking memory like Rachel but more flexible Okay How long One circuit then back to Medea. Sixty to seventy earthyears. Good said Curly because there was certainly no way to talk her into any shorter journey. He watched men in silver suits setting up the frames for the solar mirrors. There was not even wind in the Hot End and apparently no life at all. They had worried about that. But Curly saw nothing that could threaten Touchdown City s power supply for hundreds of years to come. If Medea was to become a backwash of civilization a land of peasants then it was good that the farmlands were safe. Curly turned to Janice Borg to say so. But the rammer s eyes were seeing nothing on Medea and her mind was already approaching Horvendile. THE LOCUSTS by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes There are no men on Tau Ceti IV. Near the equator on the ridged ribbon of continent which reaches north and south to cover both poles the evidence of Man still show There is the landing craft a great thick saucer with a rounded edge gaping doors and vast empty space inside. Ragged clumps of grass and scrub vegetation surround its base now. There is the small town where they lived grew old and died: tall stone houses a main street of rock fused with atomic fire a good deal of machinery whose metal is still bright. There is the land itself overgrown but still showing the traces of a square arrangement that once marked it as farmland. And there is the fores4 reaching north and south along the sprawling ribbon of continent spreading even to the innumerable islands which form two thirds of Ridgeback s land mass Where forest cannot grow because of insufficient water or because the carefully bred bacteria have not yet built a sufficient depth of topsoil there is grass an exceptionally hardy hybrid of Buffalo and Cord with an abnormal number of branching roots developing a dense and fertile sod. There are flocks of moos resurrected from a lost New Zealand valley. The great flightless birds roam freely sharing their grazing land with expanding herds of wild cattle and buffalo. There are things in the forest. They prefer it there but will occasionally shamble out into the grasslands and sometimes even into the town. They themselves do not understand why they go: there is no food and they do not need building materials or other things which may be there for the scavenging. They always leave the town before nightfall arrives. When men came the land was as barren as a tabletop. Doc and Elise were among the last to leave the ship. He took his wife s hand and walked down the ramp eager to feel alien loam between his toes. He kept his shoes on. They d have to make the loam first. The other colonists were exceptionally silent as if each were afraid to speak. Not surprising Doc thought The first words spoken on Ridgeback would become history. The robot probes had found five habitable worlds besides Ridgeback in Earth s neighborhood. Two held life in more or less primitive stages but Ridgeback was perfect. There was one celled life in Ridgeback s seas enough to give the planet an oxygenating atmosphere and no life at all on land. They would start with a clean slate. So the biologists had chosen what they believed was a representative and balanced ecology. A world s life was stored in the cargo hold now in frozen fertilized eggs and stored seeds and bacterial cultures ready to go to work. Doc looked Out over his new home the faint seabreeze stinging his eyes. He had known Ridgeback would be barren but he had not expected the feel of a barren world to move him. The sky was bright blue clouds shrouding Tau Ceti a sun wider and softer than the sun of Earth. The ocean was a deeper blue flat and calm. There was no dirt. There was dust and sand and rock but nothing a farming man would call dirt. There were no birds no insects. The only sound was that of sand and small dust devils dancing in the wind a low moan almost below the threshold of human hearing. Doc remembered his college geology class fieldtrip to the Moon. Ridgeback wasn t dead as Luna was dead. It was more like his uncle s face after the embalmers got through with him. It looked alive but it wasn t. Jase the eldest of them and the colony leader raised his hand and waited. When all eyes were on him he crinided his eyes happily saving his biggest smile for his sister Cynnie who was training a hobotape camera on him. We re here people his voice boomed in the dead world s silence. It s good and it s ours. Let s make the most of it. There was a ragged cheer and the colonists surged toward the cargo door of the landing craft. The lander was a flattish dome now its heat shield burned almost through its Dumbo style atomic motor buried in dust. It had served its purpose and would never move again. The great door dropped and became a ramp. Crates and machinery began to emerge on little flatbed robot trucks. Elise put her arm around her husband s waist and hugged him. She murmured It s so empty. So far. Doc unrolled a package of birth control pills and felt her flinch. Two years before we can have children. Did she mean it as a question Right be said. They had talked it through too often in couples and in groups in training and aboard ship. At least until Jill gets the ecology going. Uh huh. An impatient noise. Doc wondered if she believed it. At twenty four tall and wiry and with seven years of intensive training behind him be felt competent to handle most emergencies. But children and babies in particular were a problem he could postpone. He had interned for a year at Detroit Memorial but most of his schooling related directly to General Colonization. His medical experience was no better than Elise s his knowledge not far superior to that of a 20th century GP. Like his shipmates Doc was primarily a trained crewman and colonist. His courses in world settling funny chemistry water purification basic mine engineering exotic factor recognition etc. were largely guesswork. There were no interstellar colonies not yet. And bearing children would be an act of faith a taking possession of the land. Some had fought the delay bitterly. The starship would have been smelling of babies shortly after takeoff if they d had their way. He offered Elise a pill. Bacteria and earthworms come first. Men last he said. We re too high on the chain. We can t overload the ecology Uh huh. before we ve even got one. And look She took a six month birth control pill and swallowed it. So Doc didn t say: suppose it Doesn t work out Suppose we have to go home He passed out the pills and watched the women take them crossing names off a list in his head. The little robot trucks were all over the place now. Their flat beds were endless belts and they followed a limited repertoire of voiced orders. They had the lander half unloaded already. When Doc bad finished his pill pushing he went to work beside Elise unloading crates. His thirty patients including himself were sickeningly healthy. As an unemployed doctor he d have to do honest work until someone got ill. He was wrong of course. Doc had plenty of employment. His patients were doing manual labor in 1.07 gravities. They d gained an average often pounds the moment the landing craft touched down. It threw their coordination and balance off causing them to strain muscles and gash themselves. One of the robot trucks ran over Chris foot. Chris didn t wince or curse as Doc manipulated the bones but his teeth ground silently together. All done here Chris. Doc smiled. The meteorologist looked at him bleakly from behind wire rimmed glasses eyes blinking without emotion. Hey you re a better man than I am. If I had a wound like that I d scream my head off Something only vaguely like a smile crossed Chris lips. Thanks Doc he said and limped out. Remarkable control Doc mused. But then again that s Chris. A week after landing Ridgeback s nineteen hour day caught up with them. Disrupted body rhythms are no joke adding poor sleep to the weight adjustment led to chronic fatigue. Doc recognized the signs quickly. I m surprised that it took this long he said to Elise as she tossed sleepless. Why couldn t we have done our adjusting on ship she mumbled opening a bleary eye. There s more to it than just periods of light and darkness. Every planet has its own peculiarities. You just have to get used to them before your sleep cycles adjust. Well what am I supposed to do Jesus hand me the sleeping pills wouldja please I just want to sleep. Nope. Don t want anyone hooked on sleeping pills. We ve got the russian sleep sets. You ll have one tomorrow. The russian sleep headsets were much preferred over chemical sedatives. They produced unconsciousness with a tiny trickle of current through the brain. Good Elise yawned. Sunset and dawn they both seem to come too soon. The colony went up fast. It was all prefabs makeshift and temporary the streets cluttered with the tools machinery and electric cables which nobody had put away because there was no place for them. Gradually places were made. Hydroponic tanks were assembled and stocked and presently the colonists were back on fresh food. Much more gradually the stone houses began to appear. They blasted their own rock from nearby cliffs with guncotton from the prefab chemical factory. They hauled the fractured stone on the robot trucks and made concrete to stick it together. There was technology to spare and endless power from the atomic motor in the landing craft. They took their time with the houses. Prefabs would weather the frequent warm rains for long enough. The stone houses were intended to last much longer. The colonists built thick walls and left large spices so that the houses could be expanded when later generations saw fit. Doc squinted into the mirror brushing his teeth with his usual precise vertical movements. He jumped when he felt a splash of hot water hit his back. Cut that out Elise he laughed. She settled back in her bathtub wrinkling her nose at him. Three years of meager showers on the ship had left her dying for a real bathtub where she could waste gallons of water without guilt. Spoilsport she teased. If you were any kind of fun you d come over here and... And what he asked interested. And rub my back. And that s supposed to be fun I was thinking that we could rub it with you. She grinned seeing Doc s eyes light up. And then maybe we could rub you with me... Later they toweled each other off still tingling. Look Doc said pulling her in front of the mirror. He studied her marveling. Had Elise become prettier or was he seeing her with new eyes He knew she laughed louder and more often than when they had met years ago in school she the child of a wealthy family and he a scholarship student who dreamt of the stars. He knew that her body was more firm and alive than it had been in her teens. The same sun that had burnt her body nut brown had lightened her reddish hair to strawberry blond. She grinned at him from the mirror and asked Do you propose to take all the credit He nodded happily. He d always been fit but his muscles had been stringy the kind that didn t show. Now they bulged handsome curves filling out chest and shoulders legs strong from lifting and moving rock. His skin had darkened under the probing of a warm friendly sun. He was sleeping well and so was she. All of the colonists were darker more muscular with thicker calluses on hands and feet. Under open sky or high ceilings they walked straighter than the men and women of Earth s cities. They talked more boldly and seemed to fill more space. In the cities of Earth the ultimate luxury had been building space. It was beyond the means of all but the wealthiest. Here there was land for the taking and twelve foot ceilings could be built. The house Doc was building for Elise almost finished now would be as fine as any her father could have built for her. One that would be passed on to their children and then to their grandchildren . She seemed to echo his thought. One last step. I want a bulge right here and she patted her flat abdomen. Your department. And Jill s. We re up to mammals already and we re adjusting. I ve got half the russian sleep sets back in the infirmary already. The Orion spacecraft was a big obtrusive object mace shaped cruising constantly across the sky. What had been a fifth of a mile of deuterium snowball the fuel supply for the starship s battery of laser fusion motors was now a thin shiny skin still inflated by the residue of deuterium gas. It was the head of the mace. The life support system ending in motors and shock absorbers formed the handle. Roy had taken the ground to orbit craft up and was aboard the Orion now monitoring the relay as Cynnie beamed her holotape up. It was lonely. Once there had been too little room now there was too much. The ship still smelled of too many people crowded too close for too long. Roy adjusted the viewscreen and grinned back at Cynnie s toothy smile. This is Year Day on Ridgeback she said in her smooth announcer s voice. It was a barren world when we came. Now slowly life is spreading across the land. The farming teams have spent this last year dredging mulch from the sea bed and boiling it to kill the native life. Now it grows the tame bacteria that will make our soil. The screen showed a sequence of action scenes: tractors plowing furrows in the harsh dirt colonists glistening with sweat as they pulled boulders from the ground and Jill supervising the spreading of the starter soil. Grass seed and earthworms were sown into the trenches and men and machines worked together to fold them into the earth. Cynnie had mounted a camera on one of the small flyers for an aerial view. The soil is being spread along a ten mile strip she said and grains are being planted. Later we ll have fruit trees and shade trees bamboo and animal feed. It was good Roy thought watching. It was smooth. Getting it all had been rough enough. Before they were finished the colonists had become damn sick of Roy and Cynnie poking their cameras into their every activity. That sign above the auditorium toilet: Smile Roy Is Watching He d tried to tell them. Don t you know who it is that builds starships It s taxpayers that s who And they ve got to get something for their money. Sure we re putting on a show for them. if we don t when election time comes around they may ask for a refund. Oh they probably believed him. But the sign was still up. Roy watched Cynnie interview Jase and Brew in the fields watched Angie and Chris constructing the animal pens. Jill thawed some of the fertilized goat eggs and a tape was shown of the wriggling embryos. At first Cynnie reminisced Ridgeback was daunting. There was no sound: no crickets no birdsongs but no roar of traffic either. By day the sky is Earthlike enough but by night the constellations are brighter. It s impossible to forget how far from home we are we can t even see Sol invisible somewhere in the northern hemisphere. It s hard to forget that no help of any kind could come in much less than twenty five years. It would take five years just to refuel the ship. It takes fourteen years to make the trip although thanks to relativity it was only three years ship time. Yes we are alone. The image of Cynnie s sober face segued to the town hail a geodesic dome of metal tubing sprayed with plastic. But it is heartening that we have found in each other the makings of a community. We come together for midday meal discussions songfests and group worship services. Cynnie s face was calm now comforting. We have no crime and no unemployment. We re much too busy for marital squabbles or political infighting. She grinned and the sparkle of her personality brought pleasure to Roy s analytical mind. In fact I have work to do myself So until next year this is Cynnie Mitchell on Ridgeback signing off. A year and a half after landing a number of animals were out of incubation with a loss of less than two percent. The mammals drank synthetic milk now but soon they would be milling in their pens eating Ridgeback grass and adding their own rich wastes to the cooking compost heaps. Friday night was community night at the town hail. From the inside the ribs of the dome were still visible through the sprayed plastic walls and some of the decorations were less than stylish but it was a warm place a friendly relaxing place where the common bond between the Ridgebackers was strengthened. Jill especially seemed to love the stage and took every opportunity to mount it almost vibrating with her infectious energy. Everything s right on schedule she said happily. The fruit flies are breeding like mad. Booo And if hear that again I m gonna break out the mosquitoes. Gang there are things we can live without but we don t know what they are yet. Chances are we ll be raising the sharks sooner or later. We ve been lucky so far. Really lucky. She cleared her throat dramatically. And speaking of luck we have Chris with some good news for the farmers and bad news for the sunbathers. Chris There was scattered applause most vigorously from Chris tiny wife Angie. He walked to the lectern and adjusted the microphone before speaking. We uh he took off his glasses polishing them on his shirt then replaced them smiling nervously. We ve been having good weather people but there s a storm front moving over the mountains. I think Greg can postpone the irrigation canals for a week we re going to get plenty wet. He coughed and moved the microphone close to his mouth. June and I are working to program the atmospheric model into the computer. Until we do weather changes will keep catching us unaware. We have to break down a fairly complex set of thermo and barometric dynamics into something that can be dealt with systematically wind speed humidity vertical motion friction pressure gradients and a lot of other factors still have to be fed in but we re making progress. Maybe next year we ll be able to tell you how to dress for the tenth anniversary of Landing Day. There were derisive snorts and laughter and Chris was applauded back into his seat. Jase bounded onto the stage and grabbed the mike. Any more announcements No AU right then we all voted on tonight s movie so no groans please. Lights The auditorium dimmed. He slipped from the stage and the twin beams of the holo projector flickered onto the screen. It was a war movie shot in flatfilm but optically reconstructed to simulate depth. Doc found it boring. He slipped out during a barrage of cannon fire. He headed to the lab and found Jill there already using one of the small microscopes. Hi hon he called out flipping on his desk light. Working late Well I m maybe just a wee bit more bugged than I let on. Just a little. About what I keep thinking that one day we ll find out that we left something out of our tame ecology. It s just a feeling but it won t go away. Like going on vacation Doc said deliberately flippant. You know you forgot something. You d just rather it was your toothbrush and not your passport. She smeared a cover glass over a drop of fluid on a slide and set it to dry. Yes it feels like that. Do you really have mosquitoes in storage She twinkled and nodded. Yep. Hornets too. Just how good is it going You know how impatient everyone is. No real problems. There sure as hell might have been but thanks to my superior planning she stuck out her tongue at Doc s grimace. We ll have food for ourselves and all the children we can raise. I ve been getting a little impatient myself you know As if there s a part of me that isn t functioning at full efficiency. Doc laughed. Then I think you d better tell Greg. I ll do better. I ll announce it tonight and let all the fathers to be catch the tidings in one shot. Oh boy. What No it has to be done that way. I know it. I m just thinking about nine months from now. Oh boy. So it was announced that evening. As Doc might have expected someone had already cheated. Somehow Nat the midwestern earthmother blond had taken a contraceptive pill and even with Doc watching had avoided swallowing it. Doc was fairly sure that her husband Brew knew nothing of it although she was already more than four months along when she confessed. Nat had jumped the gun and there wasn t a woman on Ridgeback who didn t envy her. A year and eleven months after Landing Day Doc delivered Ridgeback s first baby. Sleepy exhausted by her hours of labor Nat looked at her baby with a pride that was only half maternal. Her face was flushed yellow hair tangled in mats with perspiration and fatigue. She held her baby swaddled in blankets at her side. I can hear them outside. What do they want she asked drowsily fighting to keep her eyelids open. Doc breathed deeply. Ridiculous but the scentless air of Ridgeback seemed a little sweeter. They re waiting for a glimpse of the little crown princess. Well she s staying here. Tell them she s beautiful Ridgeback s first mother whispered and dropped off to sleep. Doc washed his hands and dried them on a towel. He stood above the slumbering pair considering. Then he gently pried the baby from her mother s grip and took her in his arms. Half conscious mother s wish or no the infant must be shown to the colony before they could rest. Especially Brew. He could see the Swede s great broad hands knotting into nervous fists as he waited outside. And the rest of them in a half crescent around the door and the inevitable Cynnie and Roy with their holotape cameras. It s a girl he told them. Nat s resting comfortably. The baby was red as a tomato and looked as fragile as Venetian glass. She and Doc posed for the camera then Doc left her with Brew to make a short speech. Elise and Greg Jill s husband had both had paramedic training. Doc set up a rotating eight hour schedule for the three of them starting with Elise. The group outside was breaking up as he left but he managed to catch Jase. I d like to be taken off work duties for a while he told the colony leader when the two were alone. Jase gripped his arm. Something s wrong with the baby There was a volume of concern in the question. I doubt it but she is the first and I want to watch her and Nat. Most of the women are pregnant now. I want to keep an eye on them too. You re not worried about anything specific When Elise left her shift at the maternity ward she found him staring at the stone ceiling. She asked Insomnia again Shall I get a russian sleep set She studied his face. The baby She d seen it too then. You just left the baby. She s fine isn t she They re both fine. Sleeping. Harry She was the only one who called him that. What is it No nothing s bothering me. You know everything I know. It s just that... Well It s just that I want to do everything right. This is so important. So I keep checking back on myself because there s no one I can call in to check my work. Can you understand what I m getting at She pursed her lips. Then said I know that the only baby in the world could get a lot more attention than she needs. There shouldn t be too many people around her and they should all be smiling. That s important to a baby. Doc watched as she took off her clothes and got into bed. The slight swell of her pregnancy was just beginning to show. Within six months there would be nine more children on Ridgeback and one would be theirs. Predictably Brew s and Nat s daughter became Eve. It seemed nobody but Doc had noticed anything odd about Eve. Even laymen know better than to expect a newborn child to be pretty. A baby Doesn t begin to look like a baby until it is weeks old. The cherubs of the Renaissance paintings of Foucquet or Conegliano were taken from two year olds. Naturally Eve looked odd and most of the colony who had never seen newborn children took it in their stride... But Doc worried. The ship s library was a world s library. It was more comprehensive and held more microfilm and holographically encoded information than any single library on earth. Doc spent weeks running through medical tapes and got no satisfaction thereby. Eve wasn t sick. She was a good baby she gave no more trouble than usual and no less. Nat had no difficulty nursing her which was good as there were no adult cows available on Ridgeback. Doc pulled a microfisch chip out of the viewer and yawned irritably. The last few weeks had cost him his adjustment to Ridgeback time and gained him...well a kind of general education in pediatrics. There was nothing specific to look for no handle on the problem. Bluntly put Eve was an ugly baby. There was nothing more to say and nothing to do but wait. Roy and Cynnie showed their tapes for the year. Cynnie had a good eye for detail. Until he watched the camera view trucking from the landing craft past the line of houses on Main Street to Brew to a closeup of Brew s house Doc had never noticed how Brew s house reflected Brew himself. It was designed like the others: tall and squarish with a sloped roof and small window. But the stones in Brew s house were twice the size of those in Doc s house. Brew was proud of his strength. Roy was in orbit on Year Day but Cynnie stayed to cover the festivities such as they were. Earth s hypothetical eager audience staff hadn t seen Year Day One. Jase spoke for the camera comparing the celebration with the first Thanksgiving Day in New England. He was right: it was a feast a display of the variety of foods Ridgeback was now producing and not much more than that. His wife June sang a nondenominational hymn and they all followed along each in his own key. Nat fed Eve a bit of corncake and fruit juice and the colonists applauded Eve s gurgling smile. The folks back on Earth might not have thought it very exciting but to the Ridgebackers it meant everything. This was food they had grown themselves. All of them had bruises or blisters or calluses from weeding or harvesting. They were more than a community now they were a world and the fresh fruit and vegetables and the hot breads tasted better than anything they could have imagined. Six months after the birth of Eve Doc was sure. There was a problem. The children of Ridgeback totaled seven. Two of the women had miscarried fewer than he might have feared and without complications. Jill was still carrying hers and Doc was beginning to wonder but it wasn t serious yet. Jill was big and strong with wide hips and a deep bust. Even now Greg was hard put to keep her from commandeering one of the little flyers and jouncing off to the coastline to check the soil or inland to supervise the fresh water fish preserve. Give her another week . The night Elise had delivered their child it had been special. She had had a dry birth with the water sack rupturing too early and Doc had had to use a lubrication device. Elise was conscious during the entire delivery eschewing painkillers for the total experience of her first birth. She delivered safely for which Doc had given silent thanks. His nerves were scraped to super sensitivity and he found himself just sitting and holding her hand whispering affection and encouragement to her while Greg did much of the work. With Elise s approval he named their son Gerald shortened to Jerry. Jerry was three weeks old now healthy and squalling with a ferocious grip in his tiny hands. But even a father s pride could not entirely hide the squarish jawline the eyes the . All the children had it all the six recent ones. And Eve hadn t lost it. Doc continued his research in the microlibrary switching from pediatrics to genetics. He had a microscope and an electron microscope worth their hundreds of thousands of dollars in transportation costs he had scrapings of his own flesh and Eve s and Jerry s. What he lacked was a Nobel Prize geneticist to stand behind his shoulder and point out what were significant deviations as opposed to his own poor slide preparation techniques. He caught Brew looking at him at mealtimes as though trying to raise the nerve to speak. Soon the big man would break through his inhibitions Doc could see it coming. Or perhaps Nat would broach the question. Her eldest brother had been retarded and Doc knew she was sensitive about it. How long could it be before that pain rose to the surface And what would he say to them then It was not a mutation. One could hardly expect the same mutation to hit all of seven couples in the same way. It was no disease. The children were phenomenally healthy. So Doc worked late into the night sometimes wearing a black scowl as he retraced dead ends. He needed advice and advice was 11.9 light years away. Was he seeing banshees Nobody else had noticed anything. Naturally not the children all looked normal for they all looked alike. Only Brew seemed disturbed. Hell it was probably Doc that was worrying Brew just as it was Doc that worried Elise. He ought to spend more time with Elise and Jerry. Jill lost her baby. It was stillborn pitiful in its frailty. Jill turned to Greg as the dirt showered down on the cloth that covered her child biting her lip savagely trying to stop the tears. She and her husband held each other for a long moment then with the rest of the colonists they walked back to the dwellings. The colonists had voted early and unanimously to give up coffins on Ridgebaek. Humans who died here would give their bodies to the conquest of the planet. Doc wondered if a coffin would have made this ceremony easier more comforting in its tradition. Probably not he thought. Dead is dead. Doc went home with Elise. He d been spending more time there lately and less time with the microscopes. Jerry was crawling now and he crawled everywhere you had to watch him like a hawk. He could pick his parents unerringly out of a crowd of adults and he would scamper across the floor cooing his eyes alight...his deepset brown eyes. It was a week later that Jase came to him. After eight hours of labor June had finally released her burden. For a newborn infant the body was big and strong though in any normal context he was a fragile precious thing. As father Jase was entitled to see him first. He looked down at his son and said He s just like the others. His eyes and his voice were hollow and at that moment Doc could no longer see the jovial colony leader who called squaredanees at the weekly hoedown. Of course he is. Look don t con me Doc. I was eight when Cynnie was born. She didn t look like any of them. And she never looked like Eve. Don t you think that s for me to say Yes. And damned quick Doc rubbed his jaw considering. If he was honest with himself he had to admit he ached to talk to somebody. Let s make it tomorrow. In the ship s library. Jase s strong hand gripped his arm. Now. Tomorrow Jase. I ve got a lot to say and there are things in the library you ought to see. Here he said dialing swiftly. A page appeared on the screen three quarters illustration and one quarter print to explain it. Notice the head And the hands. Eve s fingers are longer than that. Her forehead slopes more. But look at these. He conjured up a series of growth states paired with silhouettes of bone structure. She s maturing much faster than normal. At first I didn t think anything about the head. Any infant s head is distorted during passage from the uterus. It goes back to normal if the birth wasn t difficult. And you can t tell much from the features all babies look pretty much alike. But the hands and arms bothered me. And now See for yourself Her face is too big and her skull is too small and too flat. And I don t like the jaw or the thin lips. Doc rubbed his eyes wearily. And there s the hair. That much hair isn t unheard of at that age but taken with everything else...you can see why I was worried. And all the kids look just like her. Even Jase Junior. Even Jerry. And Jill s stillbirth. In the ship s library there was a silence as of mourning. Jase said We ll have to tell Earth. The colony is a failure. Doc shook his head. We d better see how it develops first. We can t have normal children Doc. I m not ready to give up Jase. And if it s true we can t go back to Earth either. What Why This thing isn t a mutation. Not in us it can t be. What it could be is a virus replacing some of the genes. A virus is a lot like a free floating chromosome anyway. If we ve got a disease that keeps us from having normal children That s stupid. A virus here waiting for us where there s nothing for it to live on but plankton You No no no. It had to come with us. Something like the common cold could have mutated aboard ship. There was enough radiation outside the shielding. Someone sneezes in the airlock before he puts his helmet on. A year later someone else inhales the mutant. Jase thought it through. We can t take it back to Earth. Right. So what s the hurry It d be twenty four years before they could answer a cry for help. Let s take our time and find out what we ve really got. Doc in God s name what can we tell the others Nothing yet. When the time comes I ll tell them. Those few months were a busy time for Ridgeback s doctor. Then they were over. The children were growing and most of the women were pregnant including Angie and Jill who had both had miscarriages. Never again would all the women of Ridgeback be having children in one ear shattering population explosion. Now there was little work for Doc. He spoke to Jase who put him on the labor routines. Most of the work was agricultural with the heavy jobs handled by machines. Robot trucks trailing plows scored rectangular patterns across the land. The fenced bay was rich in Earthborn plankton and now there were larger forms to eat the plankton. Occasionally Greg opened the filter to let discolored water spread out into the world contaminating the ocean. At night the colonists watched news from Earth 11.9 years in transit and up to a year older before Roy boarded the starship to beam it down. They strung the program out over the year in hour segments to make it last longer. There were no wars in progress to speak of the Procyon colony project had been abandoned Macrostructures Inc. was still trying to build an interstellar ramjet. It all seemed very distant. Jase came whistling into Doc s lab but backed out swiftly when he saw that he had interrupted a counseling session with Cynnie and Roy. Doc was the closest thing the colony had to a marriage therapist. Jase waited outside until the pair had left then trotted in. Rough day Yeah. Jase Roy and Cynnie don t fight do they They never did. They re like twins. Married people do get to be like each other but those two overdo it sometimes. I knew it. There s something wrong but it s not between them. Doc rubbed his eyes on his sleeve. They were sounding me out trying to get me talking about the children without admitting they re scared. Anyway what s up Jase brought his hands from behind his back. He had two bamboo poles rigged for fishing. What say we exercise our manly prerogatives Ye gods In our private spawning ground Why not It s big enough. There are enough fish. And we can t let the surplus go they d starve. It s a big ocean. By now the cultivated strip of topsoil led tens of miles north and south along the continent. Jill claimed that life would spread faster that way outward from the edges of the strip. The colony was raising its own chicken eggs and fruit and vegetables. On Landing Day they d been the first in generations to taste moa meat whose rich flavor had come that close to making the New Zealand bird extinct. Why shouldn t they catch their own fish They made a full weekend of it. They hauled a prefab with them on the flyer and set it up on the barren shore. For three days they fished with the springy bamboo poles. The fish were eager and trusting. They ate some of their catch and stored the rest for later. On the last day Jase said I kept waiting to see you lose some of that uptight look. You finally have a little I think. Yeah. I m glad this happened Jase. Okay. What about the children He didn t need to elaborate. Doc said They ll never be normal. Then what are they I dunno. How do you tell people who came twelve light years to build a world that their heirs will be... he groped for words. Whatever. Changed. Animals. Christ. What a mess. Give me time to tell Elise...if she hasn t guessed by now. Maybe she has. How long A week maybe. Give us time to be off with Jerry. Might make it easier if we re with him. Or harder. Yeah there s that. He cast his line out again. Anyway she ll keep the secret and she d never forgive me if I didn t tell her first. And you d better tell June the night before I make the big announcement. The words seemed to catch in his throat and he hung his head miserable. Tentatively Jase said It s absolutely nobody s fault. Oh sure. I was just thinking about the last really big announcement I helped to make. Years ago. Seems funny now Doesn t it It s safe people. You can start dreaming now. Go ahead and have those babies folks. It s all right... His voice trailed off and he looked to Jase in guilty confusion. What could I do Jase It s like thalidomide. In the beginning it all looked so wonderful. Jase was silent listening to the sound of water lapping against the boat. I just hate to tell Earth that s all he finally said in a low voice. It ll be like giving up. Even if we solve this thing they d never risk sending another ship. But we ve got to warn them. Doc what s happening to us I don t know. How hard have you no never mind. Jase pulled his line in baited it and sent it whipping out again. Long silences are in order when men talk and fish. Jase I d give anything I have to know the answer. Some of the genes look different in the electron microscope. Maybe. Hell it s all really too fuzzy to tell and I don t really know what it means anyway. None of my training anticipated anything like this. You try to think of something. Alien invasion. Pause. Oh really Jase s line jumped. He wrestled in a deep sea bass and freed the hook. He said It s the safest most painless kind of invasion. They find a world they want but there s an intelligent species in control. So they design a virus that will keep us from bearing intelligent children. After we re gone they move in at their leisure. If they like they can use a countervirus so the children can bear human beings again for slaves. The bamboo pole seemed dead in Doc s hands. He said That s uglier than anything I ve thought of. Well Could be. Insufficient data. If it s true it s all the more reason to warn Earth. But Ridgeback is doomed. Jerry had his mother s hair sunbleached auburn. He had too much of it. On his narrow forehead it merged with his brows...his shelf of brow and the brown eyes watching from way back. He hardly needed the shorts he was wearing the hair would have been almost enough. He was nearly three. He seemed to sense something wrong between his parents. He would spend some minutes scampering through the grove of sapling fruit trees agile as a child twice his age then suddenly return to take their hands and try to tug them both into action. Doc thought of the frozen fertilized eggs of dogs in storage. Jerry with a dog...the thought was repulsive. Why Shouldn t a child have a dog Well of course I guessed something Elise said bitterly. You were always in the library. When you were home the way that you looked at Jerry...and me come to think of it. I see now why you haven t taken me to bed much lately. She d been avoiding his eyes but now she looked full at him. I do see. But Harry couldn t you have asked me for help I have some medical knowledge and and I m your wife and Jerry s mother damn it Harry Would you believe I didn t want you worrying Oh really How did it work Her sarcasm cut deep. Bleeding he said Nothing worked. Jerry came out of the trees at a tottering run. Doc stood up caught him swung him around chased him through the trees...caine back puffing smiling holding his hand. He almost lost the smile but Elise was smiling back with some effort. She hugged Jerry then pulled fried chicken from the picnic basket and offered it around. She said That alien invasion idea is stupid. Granted. It d be easy to think someone has done it to us. Haven t you found anything Isn t there anything I can help with I ve found a lot. All the kids have a lower body temperature two point seven degrees. They re healthy as horses but hell who would they catch measles from Their brain capacity is too small and not much of it is frontal lobe. They re hard to toilet train and they should have started babbling at least long ago. What counts is the brain of course. Elise took one of Jerry s small hands. Jerry crawled into her lap and she rocked him. His hands are okay. Human. His eyes...are brown like yours. His cheekbones are like yours too. High and a little rounded. Doc tried to smile. His eyes look a little strange. They re not really slanted enough to suspect mongolism but I ll bet there s a gene change. But where do I go from there I can see differences and they re even consistent but there s no precedent for the analysis equipment to extrapolate from. Doc looked disgusted. Elise touched his cheek understanding. Can you teach me to use an electron microscope Doc sat at the computer console watching over Jill s shoulder as she brought out the Orion vehicle s image of Ridgeback. The interstellar spacecraft doubled as a weather eye and the picture once drab with browns and grays now showed strips of green beneath the fragmented cloud cover. If Ridgeback was dead it certainly didn t show on the screen. Well we ve done a fair old job. Jill grinned and took off her headset. Her puffy natural had collected dust and seeds and vegetable fluff until she gave up and shaved it off. The tightly curled mat just covered her scalp now framing her chocolate cameo features. The cultivated strip has spread like weeds. All along the continent now I get CO2 oxygen exchange. It jumped the ridges last year and now I get readings on the western side. Are you happy No she said slowly. I ve done my job. Is it too much to want a child too I wouldn t care about the...problem. I just want... It s nobody s fault Doc said helplessly. I know I know. But two miscarriages. Couldn t they have known back on Earth Wasn t there any way to be sure Why did I have to come all this way... She caught herself and smiled thinly. I guess I should count my blessings. I m better off than poor Angie. Poor Angie Doc echoed sadly. How could they have known about Chris The night Doc announced his conclusions about the children there had been tears and harsh words but no violence. But then there was Chris. Chris who had wanted a child more than any of them could have known. Who had suffered silently through Angie s first miscarriage who hoped and prayed for the safe delivery of their second effort. It had been an easy birth. And the morning after Doc s speech the three of them Chris Angie and the baby were found in the quiet of their stone house the life still ebbing from Chris eyes and the gaps in his wrists. I m sorry he said over and over shaking his head as if he were cold his watery brown eyes dulling. I just couldn t take it. I just...I just... and he died. The three of them were buried in the cemetery outside of town without coffins. The town was different after the deaths a stifling quiet hanging in the streets. Few colonists ate at the communal meals choosing to take their suppers at home. In an effort to bring everyone together Jase encouraged them to come to town hall for Movie Night. The film was The Sound of Music. The screen erupted with sound and color dazzling green Alps and snow crested mountains happy song and the smiling faces of normal healthy children. Half the colonists walked out. Most of the women took contraceptives now except those who chose not to tamper with their estrogen balance. For these Doc performed painless menstrual extractions bimonthly. Nat and Elise insisted on having more children. Maybe the problem only affected the firstborn they argued. Doc fought the idea at first. He found himself combatting Brew s sullen withdrawal Nat s frantic insistence and a core of hot anger in his own wife. Earth could find a cure. It was possible. Then their grandchildren would be normal again the heirs to a world. He gave in. But all the children were the same. In the end Nat alone had not given up. She had borne five children and was carrying her sixth. The message of failure was halfway to Earth but any reply was still nineteen years away. Doc had adapted the habit of talking things over with Jase hoping that he would catch some glimpse of a solution. I still think it s a disease he told Jase who had heard that before but didn t mention it. The bay was quiet and their lines were still. They talked only during fishing trips. They didn t want the rest of the colony brooding any more than they already were. A mutant virus. But I ve been wondering could the changes have screwed us up A shorter day a longer year a little heavier gravity. Different air mixture. No common cold no mosquito bites even that could be the key. On a night like this in air this clear you could even see starglades casting streaks across the water. A fish jumped far across the bay and phosphorescence lit that patch of water for a moment. The Orion vehicle mace shaped rose out of the west past the blaze of the Pleiades. Roy would be rendezvousing with it now preparing for tomorrow s Year Day celebration. Jase seemed to need these trips even more than Doc. After the murders the life seemed to have gone out of him only flashes of his personality coming through at tranquil times like these. He asked Are you going to have Jill breed mosquitoes Yes. I think you re reaching. Weren t you looking at the genes in the cytoplasm Yeah. Elise s idea and it was a good one. I d forgotten there were genes outside the cell nucleus. They control the big things you know: not the shape of your fingers but how many you get and where. But they re hard to find Jase. And maybe we found some differences between our genes and the children s but even the computer Doesn t know what the difference means. Mosquitoes. Jase shook his head. We know there s a fish down that way. Shall we go after him We ve got enough. Have to be home by morning. Year Day. What exactly are we celebrating this time Hell you re the mayor. You think of something. Doc sulked watching the water ripple around his float. Jase we can t give up Jase s face was slack with horror eyes east up to the sky. Doc followed his gaze to where a flaring light blossomed behind the Orion spacecraft. Oh my God Jase rasped Roy s up there. Throwing his bamboo pole in the water Jase started the engine and raced for shore. Doc studied the readouts carefully. Mother of God he whispered. How many engines did he fire Six. Jill s eyes were glued to the screen her voice flat. If he was aboard he...well there isn t much chance he survived the acceleration. Most of the equipment up there must be junk now. But what if he did survive Is there a chance I don t know. Roy was getting set to beam the messages down but said that he had an alarm to handle first. He went away for a while and . she seemed to search for words. She whispered Boom. If he was outside the ship in one of the little rocket sleds he could get to the shuttle vehicle. Jase walked heavily into the lab. What about Cynnie What did she say Doc asked quickly. Jase s face was blank of emotion. She talked to him before the accident. And It s all she would say. I m afraid she took it pretty bad. This was sort of the final straw. His eyes were hollow as he reminisced. She was always a brave kid you know Anything I could do she d be right behind me measuring up to big brother. There s just a limit that s all. There s just a limit. Doc s voice was firm only a slight edge of unease breaking through his control. I think we had better face it. Roy is dead. The Orion s ruined and the shuttle craft is gone anyway. He could be alive... Jifi ventured. Doc tried to take the sting out of his voice and was not entirely successful. Where On the ship crushed to a paste Not on the shuttle. It s tumbling further from the Orion every second. There s no one on it. In one of the rocket sleds His face softened and they could see that he was afraid to have hope. Yes. Maybe that. Maybe on one of the sleds. They nodded to each other and they and the other colonists spent long hours on the telescope hoping and praying. But there was nothing alive up there now. Ridgeback was entirely alone. Cynnie never recovered. She would talk only to her brother refusing even to see her child. She was morose and ate little spending most of her time watching the sky with something like terrified awe in her eyes. And one day seven months after the accident she walked into the woods and never returned. Doc hadn t seen Jerry for three weeks. The children lived in a community complex which had some of the aspects of a boarding school. The colonists took turns at nursing duty. Jill spent most of her time there since she and Greg were on the outs. Lately Elise had taken up the habit too. Not that he blamed her he couldn t have been very good company the last few months. Parents took their children out to the T shaped complex whenever they felt like it so that some of the children had more freedom than others. But by and large they all were expected to live there eventually. Brew was coming out of the woods with a group of six children when Doc stumbled out into the sunlight and saw Jerry. He wore a rough pair of coveralls that fit him well enough but he would have looked ludicrous if there had been anything to laugh about. Soft brown fur covered every inch of him. As Doc appeared he turned his head with a bird quick movement saw his father and scampered over. Jerry bounced into him wrapped long arms tight about his rib cage and said eagerly Daddy. There was a slight pause. Hello Jerry. Doc slowly bent to the ground looking into his son s eyes. Daddy Doc Daddy Doc he chattered smiling up at his father. His vocabulary was about fifteen words. Jerry was six years old and much too big for his age. His fingers were very long and strong but his thumbs were small and short and inconsequential. Doc had seen him handle silverware without much trouble. His nose pugged jaw massive with a receding chin. There were white markings in the fur around his eyes accentuating the heavy supraorbital ridges making the poor child look like The poor child. Doc snorted with self contempt. Listen to me. Why not my child Because I m ashamed. Because we lock our children away to ease the pain. Because they look like Doc gently disengaged Jerry s fingers from his shirt turned and half ran back to the ship. Shivering he curled up on one of the cots and cursed himself to sleep. Hours later he roused himself and woozy with fatigue he went looking for Jase. He found him on a work detail in the north fields picking fruit. I m not sure he told Jase. They re not old enough for me to be sure. But I want your opinion. Show me said Jase and followed him to the library. The picture on the tape was an artist s rendering of Pithecanthropus ereetus. He stood on a grassy knoll looking warily out at the viewer his long fingered hand clutching a sharp edged throwing rock. I ll smack your head said Jase. I m wrong then You re calling them apes I m not. Read the copy. Pithecanthropus was a small brained Pleistocene primate thought to be a transitional stage between ape and man. You got that Pith is also called Java Man. Jase glared at the reader. The markings are different. And there is the fur Forget em. They re nothing but guesswork. All the artist had to go on were crumbling bones and some broken rocks. Broken rocks Pith used to break rocks in half to get an edged weapon. It was about the extent of his tool making ability. All we know about what he looked like comes from fossilized bones very much like the skeleton of a stoop shouldered man with foot trouble topped with the skull of an ape with hydrocephalus. Very nice. Will Eve s children be fish I don t know dammit. I don t know anything at all. Look Pith isn t the only candidate for missing link. Homo Habilis looked a lot more like us and lived about two million years ago. Kenyapithicus Africanus resembled us less but lived eighteen million years earlier. So I can t say what we ve got here. God only knows what the next generation will be like. That depends on whether the children are moving backwards or maybe sideways. I don t know Jase I just don t know The last words were shrill and Doc punctuated them by slamming his fist against a wire window screen. Then because he could think of nothing more to say he did it again. And again. And Jase caught his arm. Three knuckles were torn and bleeding. Get some sleep he said eyes sad. I ll have them send Earth a description of Eve the way she is now. She s oldest and best developed. We ll send them all we have on her. It s all we can do. Momentum and the thoroughness of their training had kept them going for eight years. Now the work of making a world slowed and stopped. It didn t matter. The crops and the meat animals had no natural enemies on Ridgeback. Life spread along the continent like a green plague. Already it had touched some of the islands. Doc was gathering fruit in the groves. It was a shady place cool quiet and it made for a tranquil day s work. There was no set quota. You took home approximately a third of what you gathered. Sometimes he worked there and sometimes he helped with the cattle examining for health and pregnancy or herding the animals with the nonlethal sonic stunners. He wished that Elise were here with him so they could laugh together but that was growing infrequent now. She was growing more involved with the nursery and he spent little of his time there. Jill s voice hailed him from the bottom of the ladder. Hey up there Doc. How about a break He grinned and climbed down hauling a sack of oranges. Tired of spending the day reading I guess she said lightly. She offered him an apple. He polished it on his shirt and took a bite. Just needed to talk to somebody. Kinda depressed Oh I don t know. I guess it s just getting hard to cope with some of the problems. I guess there have been a few. Jill gave a derisive chuckle. I sure don t know Greg anymore. Ever since he set up the brewery and the distillery he Doesn t really want to see me at all. Don t take it so hard Doc comforted. The strain is showing on all of us. Half the town Docs little more than read or play tapes or drink. Personally I d like to know who smuggled the hemp seeds on board. Jill laughed which he was glad for then her face grew serious again. You know there d probably be more trouble if we didn t need someone to look after the kids. She paused looking up at Doc. I spend a lot of my time there she said unnecessarily. Why It was the first time he d asked. They bad left the groves and were heading back into town along the gravel road that Greg and Brew and the others had built in better days. We...I came here for a reason. To continue the human race to cross a new frontier one that my children could have a part in. Now now that we know that the colony is doomed there s just no motive to anything. No reason. I m surprised that there isn t more drinking more carousing and foursomes and divorces and everything else. Nothing seems to matter a whole lot. Nothing at all. Doc took her by the shoulders and held her. Go on and cry he silently said to her. God I m tired. The children grew fast. At nine Eve reached puberty and seemed to shoot skyward. She grew more hair. She learned more words but not many more. She spent much of her time in the trees in the children s complex. The older girls grew almost as fast as she did and the boys. Every Saturday Brew and Nat took some of the children walking. Sometimes they climbed the foothills at the base of the continental range sometimes they wandered through the woods spending most of their efforts keeping the kids from disappearing into the trees. One Saturday they returned early their faces frozen in anger. Eve and Jerry were missing. At first they refused to discuss it but when Jase began organizing a search party they talked. They d been ready to turn for home when Eve suddenly scampered into the trees. Jerry gave a whoop and followed her. Nat had left the others with Brew while she followed after the refugees. It proved easy to find them and easier still to determine what they were doing with each other when she came upon them. Eve looked up at Nat innocent eyes glazed with pleasure. Nat trembled for a moment horrified then drove them both away with a stick screaming filth at them. Over Nat s vehement objections and Brew s stony refusal to join Jase got his search party together and set off. They met the children coming home. By that time Nat had talked to the other mothers and fathers at the children s complex. Jase called a meeting. There was no way to avoid it now feelings were running too deep. We may as well decide now he told them that night. There s no question of the children marrying. We could train them to mouth the words of any of our religions but we couldn t expect them to understand what they were saying. So the question is shall we let the children reproduce He faced an embarrassed silence. There s no question of their being too young. In biological terms they aren t or you could all go home. In our terms they ll never be old enough. Anyone have anything to say Let s have Doc s opinion a hoarse voice called. There was a trickle of supportive applause. Doc rose feeling very heavy. Fellow colonists... The smile he was trying on for size didn t fit his face. He let it drop. There was a desperate compassion in his voice. This world will never be habitable to mankind until we find out what went wrong here. I say let our children breed. Someday someone on Earth may find out how to cure what we ve caught. Maybe he ll know how to let our descendants breed men again. Maybe this problem will only last a generation or two then we ll get human babies again. If not well what have we lost Who else is there to inherit Ridgeback No The sound was a tortured meld of hatred and venom. That was Nat loving mother of six with her face a strained mask of frustration. I didn t risk my life and leave my family and and train for years and bleed and sweat and toil so my labor could fall to...to...a bunch of goddamned monkeys Brew pulled her back to her seat but by now the crowd was muttering and arguing to itself. The noise grew louder. There was shouting. The yelling too grew in intensity. Jase shouted over the throng. Let s talk this out peacefully Brew was standing screaming at the people who disagreed with him and Natalie. Now it was becoming a shoving match and Brew was getting more furious. Doc pushed his way into the crowd hoping to reach Brew and calm him. The room was beginning to break down into tangled knots of angry emotionally charged people. He grabbed the big man s arm and tried to speak but the Swede turned bright baleful eyes on him and swung a heavy fist. Doc felt pain explode in his jaw and tasted blood. He fell to the ground and was helped up again Brew standing over him challengingly. Stay out of our lives Doctor he sneered openly now. You ve never helped anything before. Don t try to start now. He tried to speak but felt the pain and knew his jaw was fractured. A soft hand took his arm and he turned to see Elise big green eyes luminous with pity and fear. Without struggling he allowed her to take him to the ship infirmary. As they left the auditorium he could hear the shouting and struggling Jase on the microphone trying to calm them and the coldly murderous voices that screamed for no monkey Grandchildren. He tried to turn his head towards the distant sound of argument as Elise set the bone and injected quick healing serums. She took his face and kissed him softly with more affection than she had shown in months and said They re afraid Harry. Then kissed him again and led him home. Doc raged inwardly at his jaw that week. Its pain prevented him from joining in the debate which now flared in every corner of the colony. Light images swam across his closed eyes as the sound of fists pounding against wood roused him from dreamless sleep. Doc threw on a robe and padded barefoot across the cool stone floor of his house peering at the front door with distaste before opening it. Jase was there and some of the others somber and implacable in the morning s cool light. We ve decided Doc Jase said at last. Doc sensed what was coming. The children are not to breed. I m sorry I know how you feel Doc grunted. How could Jase know how he felt when lie wasn t sure himself We re going to have to ask you to perform the sterilizations... Doc s hearing faded down to a low fuzz and he barely heard the words. This is the way the world ends... Jase looked at his friend feeling the distaste between them grow. All right. We ll give you a week to change your mind. If not Elise or Greg will have to do it. Without saying anything more they left. Doc moped around that morning even though Elise swore to him that she d never do it. She fussed over him as they fixed breakfast in the kitchen. The gas stove burned methane reclaimed from waste products the flame giving more heat control than the microwaves some of the others had. Normally Doc enjoyed scrambling eggs and woking fresh slivered vegetables into crisp perfection but nothing she said or did seemed to lift him out of his mood. He ate lightly then got dressed and left the house. Although she was concerned Elise did not follow him. He went out to the distillery where Greg spent much of his time under the sun drunk and playing at being happy. Would you The pain still muffled Doc s words. Would you sterilize them Greg looked at him blearily still hung over from the previous evening s alcoholic orgy. You don t understand man. There was a stirring sound from the sheltered bedroom behind the distillery and a woman s waking groan. Doc knew it wasn t Jifi. You just don t understand. Doc sat down wishing he had the nerve to ask for a drink. Maybe I don t. Do you No. No I don t. So I ll follow the herd. I m a builder. I build roads and I build houses. I ll leave the moralizing to you big brains. Doc tried to say something and found that no words would come. He needed something. He needed . Here Doc. You know you want it. Greg handed him a canister with a straw in it. Best damn vodka in the world. He paused and the slur dropped from his voice. And this is the world Doc. For us. For the rest of our lives. You ve just got to learn to roll with it. He smiled again and mixed himself an evil looking drink. Greg s guest had evidently roused herself and dressed. Doc could hear her now singing a snatch of song as she left. He didn t want to recognize the voice. Got any orange juice Doc mumbled after sipping the vodka. Greg tossed him an orange. A real man works for his pleasures. Doc laughed and took another sip of the burning fluid. Good lord. What is that mess you re drinking It s a Black Samurai. Sake and soy sauce. Doc choked. How can you drink that Variety my friend. The stimulation of the bizarre. Doc was silent for a long time. Senses swimming he watched the sun climb feeling the warmth as morning melted into afternoon. He downed a slug of his third screwdriver and said irritably You can t do it Greg. If you sterilize the children it s over. So what It s over anyway. If they wanna let a drunk slit the pee pees of their...shall we say atavistic progeny Yeah that sounds nice. Well if they want me to do it I guess I ll have to do it. He looked at Doc very carefully. I do have my sense of civic duty. How about you Doc I tried. He mumbled feeling the liquor burning his throat feeling the light headedness exert its pull. I tried. And I ve failed. You ve failed so far. What were your goals To keep. he took a drink. Damn that felt good. To keep the colony healthy. That s what. It s a disaster. We re at each other s throats. We kill our babies Doc lowered his head unable to continue. They were both silent then Greg said If I ve gotta do it I will Doc. If it s not me it ll be someone else who reads a couple of medical texts and wants to play doctor. I m sorry. Doc sat thinking. His hands were shaking. I can t do that. He couldn t even feel the pain anymore. Then do what you gotta do man and Greg s voice was dead sober. Will you...can you help me Doc bit his lip. This is my civic duty you know Yea I know. He shook his head. I m sorry. I wish I could help. A few minutes passed then Doc said drunkenly There s got to be a way. There just has to be. Wish I could help Doc. I wish you could too Doc said sincerely then rose and staggered back to his house. It rained the night he made his decision one of the quick hot rains that swept from the coast to the mountains in a thunderclap of fury. It would make a perfect cover. He gathered his medical texts a Bible and a few other books regretting that most of the information available to him was electronically encoded. Doc took one of the silent stunners from the armory. The non lethal weapons had only been used as livestock controllers. There had never been another need until now. From the infirmary he took a portable medical kit stocking it with extra bandages and medicine then took it all to the big cargo flyer. It was collapsible with a fabric fuselage held rigid by highly compressed air in fabric structural tubing. He put it in one of the soundless electric trucks and inflated it behind the children s complex. There was plenty of room inside the fence for building and for a huge playground with fruit trees and all the immemorial toys of the very young. After the children had learned to operate a latch Brew had made a lock for the gate and given everyone a key. Doc clicked it open and moved in. He stayed in the shadows creeping close to the main desk where Elise worked. You can t follow where I must go he thought regretfully. You and I are the only fully trained medical personnel You must stay with the others I m sorry darling. And he stunned her to sleep silently moving up to catch her head as it slumped to the table. For the last time he gently kissed her mouth and her closed eyes. The children were in the left wing one room for each sex with floors all mattress and no covers because they could not be taught to use a bed. He sprayed the sound waves up and down the sleeping forms. The parabolic reflector leaked a little so that his arm was numb to the elbow when he was finished. He shook his hand trying to get some feeling back into it then gave up and settled into the hard work of carrying the children to the flyer. He hustled them through the warm rain bending under their weight but still working swiftly. Doc arranged them on the fabric floor in positions that looked comfortable the positions of sleeping men rather than sleeping animals. For some time he stood looking down at Jerry his son and at Lori his daughter thinking things he could not afterwards remember. He flew North. The flyer was slow and not soundless it must have awakened people but he d have some time before anyone realized what had happened. Where the forest had almost petered out he hovered down and landed gently enough that only a slumbering moan rose from the children. Good. He took half of them including Jerry and Lori and spread them out under the trees. After he had made sure that they had cover from the air he took the other packages the books and the medical kit and hid them under a bush a few yards away from the children. He stole one last look at them his heirs small and defenseless asleep. He could see Elise in them in the color of their hair as Elise could see him in their eyes and cheeks. Kneading his shoulder he hurried back to the ship. There was more for him to do. Skipping the ship off again he cruised thirty miles west near the stark ridge of mountains their somber gray still broken only sparsely by patches of green. There he left the other seven children. Let the two groups develop separately he thought. They wouldn t starve and they wouldn t die of exposure not with the pelts they had grown. Many would remain alive and free. He hoped Jerry and Lori would be among them. Doc lifted the flyer off and swept it out to the ocean. Only a quarter mile offshore were the first of the islands lush now with primitive foliage. They spun beneath him floating brownish green upon a still blue sea. Now he could feel his heartbeat taste his fear. But there was resolve too more certain and calm than any he had known in his life. He cut speed and locked the controls setting the craft on a gradual decline. Shivering already he pulled on his life jacket and walked to the emergency hatch screwing it open quickly. The wind whipped his face the cutting edge of salt narrowing his eyes. Peering against the wall of air pressure he was able to see the island coming up on him now looming close. The water was only a hundred feet below him now eighty sixty . The rumbling of the shallow breakers joined with the tearing wind and fighting his fear he waited until the last possible moment before hurling himself from the doorway. He remembered falling. He remembered hitting the water at awful speed the spray ripping into him the physical impact like the blow of a great hand. When his head broke surface Doc wheezed for air swallowed salty liquid and thrashed for balance. In the distance he saw the flash of light and a moment later heard the shattering roar as the flyer spent itself on the rocky shore. Jase was tired. He was often tired lately although he still managed to get his work done. The fields had only recently become unkempt as Marlow and Billie and Jill and the others grew more and more inclined to pick their vegetables from their backyard gardens. So just he and a few more still rode out to the fields on the tractors still kept close watch on the herds still did the hand pruning so necessary to keep the fruit trees healthy. The children were of some help. Ten years ago a few of them had been captured around the foothill area. They had been sterilized of course and taught to weed and carry firewood and a few other simple tasks. Jase leaned on his staff and watched the shaggy figures moving along the street sweeping and cleaning. He had grown old on this world their Ridgeback. He regretted much that had happened here especially that night thirty some years before when Doc had taken the children. Taken them where Some argued for the islands some for the West side of the mountain range. Some believed that the children had died in the crash of the flyer. Jase had believed that until the adult Piths were captured. Now it was hard to say what happened. It was growing chill now the streetlights winking on to brighten the long shadows a setting Tau Ceti cast upon the ground. He drew his coat tighter across his shoulders and walked back to his house. It was a lonelier place to be since June had died but it was still home. Fumbling with the latch he pushed the door open and reached around for the light switch. As it flicked on he froze. My God. Hello Jase. The figure was tall and spare clothes ragged but graying hair and beard cut squarely. Three of the children were with him. After all this time . Doc... Jase said still unbelieving. It is you isn t it The bearded man smiled uncertainly showing teeth that were white but chipped. It s been a long time Jase. A very long time. The three Piths were quiet and alert sniffing the air of this strange place. Are these Yes. Jerry and Lori. And Eve. And a small addition. One of the three God could it be Eve sniffed up to Jase. The soft golden fur on her face was tinged with gray but she carried a young child at her breast. Jerry stood tall for a preman eyeing Jase warily. He carried a sharpened stick in one knobby hand. Jase sat down speechless. He looked up into the burning eyes of the man he had known thirty years before. You re still officially under a death sentence you know. Doc nodded his head. For kidnapping Murder. No one was sure what had happened to you whether you or any of the children had survived. Doc too sat down. For the first time the light in his eyes dimmed. Yes. We survived. I swam to shore after crashing the flyer and found the place where I had left the children. He thought for a moment then asked quietly. How is Elise And all the others Jase was unable to raise his eyes from the floor. She died three years ago Doc. She was never the same after you left. She thought you were dead. That the children were dead. Couldn t you have at least told her about your plan Or gotten her a message Doc s fingers played absently with his beard as he shook his head. I couldn t involve her. I couldn t. Could you...show me where she s buried Jase Of course. What about the others Well none of the people were the same after the children left. Some just seemed to lose purpose. Brew s dead. Greg drank himself under. Four of the others have died. Jase paused thinking. Do any of the others know you re here No. I slipped in just at dusk. I wasn t sure what kind of a reception I d get. I m still not sure. Jase hesitated. Why did you do it The room was quiet save for a scratching sound as Jerry fingered an ear. Fleas Absurd. Jill had never uncrated them. I had to know Jase he said. There was no uncertainty in his voice. In fact there was an imperious quality he had never had in the old days. The question was: Would they breed true Was the Pith effect only temporary Was it No. It persisted. I had to know if they were regressing or evolving and they remained the same in subsequent generations save for natural selection and there isn t much of that. Jase watched Lori her stubby fingers untangling mats in her fur. Her huge brown eyes were alive and vital. She was a lovely creature he decided. Doc what are the children What do you think You know what I think. An alien species wants our worlds. In a hundred years they ll land and take them. What they ll do with the children is anybody s guess. I He couldn t bring himself to look at Eve. I wish you d sterilized them Doc. Maybe you do Jase. But you see I don t believe in your aliens. Jase s breath froze in his throat. They might want our world said Doc but why would they want our life forms Everything but Man is spreading like a plague of locusts. If someone wants Ridgeback why haven t they done something about it By the time they land terrestrial life will have an unstoppable foothold. Look at all the thousands of years we ve been trying to stamp out just one life form the influenza viruses. No I ve got another idea. Do you know what a locust is I know what they are. I ve never seen one. As individuals they re something like a short grasshopper. As individuals they hide or sleep in the daytime and come out at night. In open country you can hear them chirping after dusk but otherwise nobody notices them. But they re out there eating and breeding and breeding and eating getting more numerous over a period of years until one day there are too many for the environment to produce enough food. Then comes the change. On Earth it hasn t happened in a long time because they aren t allowed to get that numerous. But it used to be that when there were enough of them they d grow bigger and darker and more aggressive. They d come out in the daytime. They d eat everything in sight and when all the food was gone and when there were enough of them they d suddenly take off all at once. That s when you d get your plague of locusts. They d drop from the air in a cloud thick enough and broad enough to darken the sky and when they landed in a farmer s field he could kiss his crops goodbye. They d raze it to the soil then take off again leaving nothing. Jase took off his glasses and wiped them. I don t see what it is you re getting at. Why do they do it Why were locusts built that way Evolution I guess. After the big flight they d be spread over a lot of territory. I d say they d have a much bigger potential food supply. Right. Now consider this. Take a biped that s man shaped enough so to use a tool but without intelligence. Plant him on a world and watch him grow. Say he s adaptable say he eventually spread over most of the fertile land masses of the planet. Now what Now an actual physical change takes place. The brain expands. The body hair drops away. Evolution had adapted him to his climate but that was when he had hair. Now he s got to use his intelligence to keep from freezing to death. He ll discover fire. He ll move out into areas he couldn t live in before. Eventually he ll cover the whole planet and he ll build spacecraft and head for the stars. Jase shook his head. But why would they change hoc c Doc Something in the genes maybe. Something that didn t mutate. Not how Doc. We know it s possible. Why We re going back to being grasshoppers. Maybe we ve reached our evolutionary peak. Natural selection stops when we start protecting the weak ones instead of allowing those with defective genes to die a natural death. He paused smiling. I mean look at us Jase. You walk with a cane now. I haven t been able to read for five years my eyes have weakened so. And we were the best Earth had to offer the best minds the finest bodies. Chris only squeaked by with his glasses because he was such a damn good meteorologist. Jase s face held a flash of long forgotten pain. And I guess they still didn t choose carefully enough. No Doc agreed soberly. They didn t. On Earth we protected the sick allowed them to breed instead of letting them die...with pacemakers with insulin artificial kidneys and plastic hip joints and trusses. The mentally ill and retarded fought in the courts for the right to reproduce. Okay it s humane. Nature isn t humane. The infirm will do their job by dying and no morality or humane court rulings or medical advances will change the natural course of things for a long long time. How long I don t know how stable they are. It could be millions of years or Doc shrugged. We ve changed the course of our own development. Perhaps a simpler creature is needed to colonize a world. Something that has no choice but to change or die. Jase remember the Cold War I read about it. And the Belt Embargo Remember diseromide and smog and the spray can thing and the day the fusion seawater distillery at San Francisco went up and took the Bay area with it and four states had to have their water flown in for a month So A dozen times we could have wiped out all life on Earth. As soon as we ve used our intelligence to build spacecraft and seed another world intelligence becomes a liability. Some old anthropologist even had a theory that a species needs abstract intelligence before it can prey on its own kind. The development of fire gave Man time to sit back and dream up ways to take things he hadn t earned. You know how gentle the children are and you can remember how the carefully chosen citizens of Ridgeback acted the night we voted on the children s right to reproduce. So you gave that to them Doc. They are reproducing. And when we re gone they ll spread all over the world. But are they human Doc pondered wondering what to say. For many years he had talked only to the children. The children never interrupted never disagreed . I had to know that too. Yes. They re human. Jase looked closely at the man he had called friend so many years ago. Doc was so sure. He didn t discuss he lectured. Jase felt an alienness in him that was deeper than the mere passage of time. Are you going to stay here now I don t know. The children don t need me any more though they ve treated me like a god. I can t pass anything on to them. I think our culture has to die before theirs can grow. Jase fidgeted uncomfortable. Doc. Something I ve got to tell you. I haven t told anyone. It s thirty years now and nobody knows but me. Doc frowned. Go on. Remember the day Roy died Something in the Orion blew all the motors at once Well he talked to Cynnie first. And she talked to me before she disappeared. Doc he got a laser message from Earth and he knew he couldn t ever send it down. It would have destroyed us. So he blew the motors. Doc waited listening intently. It seems that every child being born on Earth nowadays bears an uncanny resemblance to Pithecanthropus erectus. They were begging us to make the Ridgeback colony work. Because Earth is doomed. I m glad nobody knew that. Jase nodded. If intelligence is bad for us it s bad for Earth. They ve fired their starships. Now they re ready for another cycle. Most of them ll die. They re too crowded. Some will survive. If not there then thanks to you here. He smiled. A touch of the old Jase in his eyes. They ll have to become men you know. Why do you put it like that Because Jill uncrated the wolves to help thin out the herds. They ll cull the children too Doc nodded. I couldn t help them become men but I think that will do it. They will have to band together and find tools and fire. His voice took on a dreamy quality. Eventually the wolves will come out of the darkness to join them at their campfires and Man will have dogs again. He smiled. I hope they don t overbreed them like we did on earth. I doubt if chihuahuas have ever forgotten what we did to them. Doc Jase said urgently will you trust me Will you wait for a minute while I leave I...I want to try something. If you decide to go there may never be another chance. Doc looked at him mystified. Alright I ll wait. Jase limped out of the door. Doc sat watching his charges proud of their alertness and flexibility their potential for growth in the new land. There was a creaking as the door swung open. The woman s hair had been blond once. Now it was white heavy wrinkles around her eyes and mouth years of hardship and disappointment souring what had once been beauty. She blinked at first seeing only Doc. Hello Nat he said to her. She frowned. What... Then she saw Eve. Their eyes locked and Nat would have drawn back save for Jase s insistent hand at her back. Eve drew close peering into her mother s face as if trying to remember her. The old woman stuttered then said Eve The Pith cocked her head and came closer touching her mother s hand. Nat pulled it back eyes wide. Eve cooed smiling holding her baby out to Nat. At first she flinched then looked at the child so much like Eve had been so much...and slowly without words or visible emotion she took the child from Eve and cradled it held it and began to tremble. Her hand stretched out helplessly and Eve came closer took her mother s hand and the three of them mother child and grandchild children of different worlds held each other. Nat cried for the pain that had driven them apart the love that had brought them together. Doc stood at the edge of the woods looking back at the colonists who waved to them asking for a swift return. Perhaps so. Perhaps they could now. Enough time had passed that understanding was a thing to be sought rather than avoided. And he missed the company of his own kind. No he corrected himself the children were his kind. As he had told Jase without explaining he knew that they were human. He had tested it the only way he could by the only means available. Eve walked beside him her hand seeking his. Doc she cooed her birdlike singsong voice loving. He gently took their child from her arms kissing it. At over sixty years of age it felt odd to be a new father but if his lover had her way as she usually did his strange family might grow larger still. Together the five of them headed into the forest and home. YET ANOTHER MODEST PROPOSAL: The Roentgen Standard It happened around the time of World War I. The Director of Research for Standard Oil was told There s all this goo left over when we refine oil. It s terrible stuff. It ruins the landscape and covering it with dirt only gets the dirt gooey. Find something to do with it. So he created the plastics industry. He turned useless offensive goo into wealth. He was not the first in history to do so. Consider oil itself: useless offensive goo until it was needed to lubricate machinery and later to fuel it. Consider some of the horrid substances that go into cosmetics: mud organic goop of all kinds and stuff that comes out of a sick whale s head. Consider sturgeon caviar: American fishermen are still throwing it away And the Japanese consider cheese to be what it always started out to be: sour milk. Now: present plans for disposal of expended nuclear fuel involve such strategies as 1 Diluting and burying it. 2 Pouring it into old abandoned oil wells. The Soviets tell us that it ought to be safe after all the oil stayed there for millions of years. We may question their sincerity: the depleted oil wells they use for this purpose are all in Poland. 3 The Pournelle method. The No Nukes types tell us that stretches of American desert have already been rendered useless for thousands of years because thermonuclear bombs were tested there. Let us take them at their word. Cart the nuclear wastes out into a patch of cratered desert. Put several miles of fence around it and signs on the fence: IF YOU CROSS THIS FENCE YOU WILL DIE Granted there will be people willing to cross the fence. Think of it as evolution in action. Average human intelligence goes up by a fraction of a percent. 4 Drop the radioactive wastes in canisters into the seabed folds where the continental plates are sliding under each other. The radioactives would disappear back into the magma from which they came. Each of these solutions gets rid of the stuff but at some expense and no profit. What the world needs now is another genius. We need a way to turn radioactive wastes into wealth. And I believe I know the way. Directly. Make coins out of it. Radioactive money has certain obvious advantages. A healthy economy depends on money circulating fast. Make it radioactive and it will certainly circulate. Verifying the authenticity of money would become easy. Geiger counters like pocket calculators before them would become both tiny and cheap due to mass production. You would hear their rapid clicking at every ticket window. A particle accelerator is too expensive for a counterfeiter counterfeiting would become a lost art. The economy would be boosted in a number of ways. Lead would become extremely valuable. Even the collection plates in a church would have to be made of lead or gold . Bank vaults would have to be lead lined and the coins separated by dampers. Styles of clothing would be affected. Every purse and one pocket in every pair of pants would need to be shielded in lead. Even so the concept of money burning a hole in your pocket would take on new meaning. Gold would still be the mark of wealth. Gold blocks radiation as easily as lead. It would be used to shield the wealthy from their money. The profession of tax collector would carry its own well deserved penalty. So would certain other professions. An Arab oil sheik might still grow obscenely rich but at least we could count on his spending it as fast as it comes in lest it go up in a fireball. A crooked politician would have to take bribes by credit card making it easier to convict him. A bank robber would be conspicuous staggering up to the teller s window in his heavy lead shielding clothing. The successful pickpocket would also stand out in a crowd. A thick lead lined glove would be a dead giveaway but without it he could be identified by his sickly faintly glowing hands. Society might even have to revive an ancient practice amputating the felon s hand as a therapeutic measure before it kills him. Foreign aid could be delivered by ICBM. Is this just another crazy utopian scheme Or could the American people be brought to accept the radioactive standard as money Perhaps we could. It s got to be better than watching green paper approach its intrinsic value. The cost of making and printing a dollar bill which used to be one and a half cents is rising inexorably toward one dollar. If only we could count on its stopping there But it costs the same to print a twenty At least the radioactive money would have intrinsic value. What we have been calling nuclear waste our descendants may well refer to as fuel. It is dangerous precisely because it undergoes fission...because it delivers power. Unfortunately the stuff Doesn t last thousands of years. In six hundred years the expended fuel is no more radioactive than the ore it was mined from. Dropping radioactives into the sea is wasteful. We can ensure that they will still be around when the Earth s oil and coal and plutonium have been used up by turning them into money now. MORE TALES FROM THE DRACO TAVERN... FOLK TALE A lot of what comes out of Xenobiology these days is classified and it Doesn t come out. The Graduate Studies Complex is in the Mojave Desert. It makes security easier. Sireen Burke s smile and honest blue retina prints and the microcircuitry in her badge got her past the gate. I was ordered Out of the car. A soldier offered me coffee and a bench in the shade of the guard post. Another searched my luggage. He found a canteen a sizable hunting knife in a locking sheath and a microwave beamer. He became coldly polite. He didn t thaw much when I said that he could hold them for awhile. I waited. Presently Sireen came back for me. I got you an interview with Dr. McPhee she told me on the way up the drive. Now it s your baby. He ll listen as long as you can keep his interest. Graduate Studies looked like soap bubbles: foamcrete sprayed over inflation frames. There was little of military flavor inside More like a museum. The reception room was gigantic with a variety of chairs and couches and swings and resting pits for aliens and humans: designs borrowed from the Draco Tavern without my permission. The corridors were roomy too. Three chirpsithra passed us eleven feet tall and walking comfortably upright. One may have known me because she nodded. A dark glass sphere rolled through nearly filling the corridor and we had to step into what looked like a classroom to let it pass. McPhee s office was closet sized. He certainly didn t interview aliens here at least not large aliens. Yet he was a mountainous man six feet four and barrel shaped and covered with black hair: shaggy brows full beard a black mat showing through the V of his blouse. He extended a huge hand across the small desk and said Rick Schumann You re a long way from Siberia. I came for advice I said and then I recognized him. B beam McPhee Walter but yes. The Beta Beam satellite had never been used in war but when I was seven years old the Pentagon had arranged a demonstration. They d turned it loose on a Perseid meteor shower. Lines of light had filled the sky one summer night a glorious display the first time I d ever been allowed up past midnight. The Beta Beam had shot down over a thousand rocks. Newscasters had named Walter McPhee for the Beta Beam when he played offensive guard for Washburn University. B beam was twenty two years older and bigger than life since I d last seen him on a television set. There were scars around his right eye and scarring distorted the lay of his beard. I was at Washburn on an athletic scholarship he told me. I switched to Xeno when the first chirpsithra ships landed. Got my doctorate six years ago. And I ve never been in the Draco Tavern because it would have felt too much like goofing off but I ve started to wonder if that isn t a mistake. You get everything in there don t you I said it proudly. Everything that lands on Earth visits the Draco Tavern. Folk too Yes. Not often. Four times in fifteen years. The first time I thought they d want to talk. After all they came a long way He shook his head vigorously. They d rather associate with other carnivores. I ve talked with them but it s damn clear they re not here to have fun. Talking to local study groups is a guest host obligation. What do you know about them Just what I see. They come in groups four to six. They ll talk to glig and of course they get along with chirpsithra. Everything Docs. This latest group was thin as opposed to skeletal though I ve seen both They re skeletal just before they eat. They don t associate with aliens then because it turns them mean. They only eat every six days or so and of course they re hungry when they hunt. You ve seen hunts I ll show you films. Go on. Better than I d hoped. I need to see those films. I ve been invited on a hunt. Sheen told me. I said This is my slack season. Two of the big interstellar ships took off Wednesday and we don t expect another for a couple of weeks. Last night there were no aliens at all until This all happened last night Yeah. Maybe twenty hours ago. I told Sheen and Gail to go home but they stayed anyway. The girls are grad students in Xeno of course. Working in a bar that caters to alien species isn t a job for your average waitress. They stayed and talked with some other Xenos. We didn t hear what happened but we saw it Sheen said. Five Folk came in. Anything special about them She said They came in on all fours with their heads tilted up to see. One alpha male three females and a beta male I think. The beta had a wound along its left side growing back. They were wearing the usual: translators built into earmuffs and socks with slits for the fingers on the forefeet. Their ears were closed tight against the background noise. They didn t try to talk till they d reached a table and turned on the sound baffle. I can t tell the Folk apart. They look a little like Siberian elkhounds if you don t mind the head. The head is big. The eyes are below the jawline and face forward. There s a nostril on top that closes tight or opens like a trumpet. They weigh about a hundred pounds. Their fingers are above the callus and they curl up out of the way. Their fur is black sleek with white markings in curly lines. We can t say their word for themselves their voices are too high and too soft. We call them the Folk because their translators do. I said They stood up and pulled themselves onto ottomans. I went to take their orders. They were talking in nearly supersonic squeaks with their translators turned off. You had to strain to hear anything. One turned on his translator and ordered five glasses of milk and a drink for myself if I would join them. Any idea why I was the closest thing to a meat eater Maybe. And maybe the local alpha male thought they should get to know something about humans as opposed to grad students. Or McPhee grinned. Had you eaten recently Yeah. Someone finally built a sushi place near the spaceport. I can t do my own cooking I d go nuts if I had to run an alien restaurant too Raw flesh. They smelled it on your breath. Oh. I poured their milk and a double Scotch and soda. I don t usually drink on the premises but I figured Sheen or Gail could handle anything that came up. It was the usual I said. What s it like to be human. What s it like to be Folk. Trade items what are they missing that could improve their life styles. Eating habits. The big one did most of the talking. I remember saying that we have an ancestor who s supposed to have fed itself by running alongside an antelope while beating it on the head with a club till it fell over. And he told me that his ancestors traveled in clusters he didn t say packs and followed herds of plant eaters to pull down the slow and the sick. Early biological engineering he said. McPhee looked worried. Do the Folk expect you to outrun an antelope Oboy That was a terrible thought. No we talked about that too how brains and civilization cost you other abilities. Smell for humans. I got a feeling...he wanted to think we re carnivores unless we run out of live meat. I tried not to disillusion him but I had to tell him about cooking that we like the taste that it kills parasites and softens vegetables and meat Why He asked. Jesus B beam you don t lie to aliens do you He grinned. I never have. I m never sure what they want to hear. Well I never lie to customers. And he talked about the hunts how little they test the Folk s animal abilities how the whole species is getting soft...I guess he saw how curious I was. He invited me on a hunt. Five days from now. You ve got a problem anyone in this building would kill for. Ri ight. But what the hell do they expect of me Where Docs it take place The Folk have an embassy not fifty miles from here. Yeah and it s a hunting ground too and I ll be out there next Wednesday getting my own meal. I may have been a little drunk. I did have the wit to ask if I could bring a companion. And B beam looked like he was about to spring across the desk into my lap. He said yes. That s my Nobel Prize calling said B beam. Rick Schumann will you accept me as your ah second Sure. I didn t have to think hard. Not only did he have the knowledge he looked like he could strangle a grizzly bear which might be what they expected of us. The Folk had arrived aboard a chirpsithra liner five years after the first chirp landing. They d leased a stretch of the Mojave. They d prearranged the local weather and terrain over strenuous objections from the Sierra Club and seeded it with a hundred varieties of plants and a score of animals. Meanwhile they toured the world s national parks in a 727 with a redesigned interior. The media had been fascinated by the sleek black killing machines. They d have given them even more coverage if the Folk had been more loquacious. Three years of that and then the public was barred from the Folk hunting ground. IntraWorld Cable sued citing the public s right to know. They lost. Certain guest species would leave Earth and others would kill to protect their privacy. IntraWorld Cable would have killed to air this film. The sunset colors were fading from the sky...still a Mojave desert sky though the land was an alien meadow with patches of forest around it. Grass stood three feet tall in places dark green verging on black. Alien trees grew bent as if before a ferocious wind but they bent in different directions. Four creatures grazed near a stream. None of the Folk were in view. The Folk don t give a damn about privacy B beam said. It s pack thinking maybe. They don t mind our inking pictures. I don t think they d mind our broadcasting everything we ve got world wide. It was all the noisy news helicopters that bothered them. Once we realized that we negotiated. Now there s one Xenobiology Department lifter and some cameras around the fences. The creatures might have been a gazelle with ambitions to be a giraffe but the mouth and eyes and horns gave them away. Alien. The horns were big and gaudy intricately curved and intertwined quite lovely and quite useless for the tips pointed inward. The neck was long and slender. The mouth was like a shovel. The eyes like Folk eyes were below the jaw hinges though they faced outward as with most grazing beasts. The creatures couldn t look up. Didn t the Folk planet have birds of prey Or heights from which something hungry might leap B beam reclined almost sleepily in a folding chair too small for him. He said We call it a melk a mock elk. Don t picture it evolving the usual way. Notice the horns Melks were shaped by generations of planned breeding. Like a show poodle. And the grass we call it fat grass. Why Hey Seen them I d glimpsed a shadow flowing among the trees. The melks had sensed something too. Their heads were up tilted way up to let them see. A concealed nostril splayed like a small horn. Three Folk stood upright from the grass and screamed like steam whistles. The melks scattered in all directions. Shadows flowed in the black grass. One melk found two Folk suddenly before it shrieking. The melk bellowed in despair wheeled and made for the trees. Too slow. A deer could have moved much faster. The camera zoomed to follow it. Into the trees and into contact with a black shadow. I glimpsed a forefoot band slashing at the creature s vulnerable throat. Then the shadow was clinging to its back and the melk tried to run from the forest with red blood spilling down its chest. The rest of the Folk converged on it. They tore it apart. They dragged it into the trees before they ate. Part of me was horrified...but not so damn horrified as all that. Maybe I ve been with aliens too long. Part of me watched and noticed the strange configuration of the ribcage the thickness and the familiar design of legs and knees and the convenient way the skull split to expose brain when two Folk pulled the horns apart. The Folk left nothing but bone. They split the thick leg bones with their jaws and gnawed the interiors. When they were finished they rolled the bones into a neat pile and departed at a waddle. B beam said That s why we don t give these films to the news. Notice anything Too much. The one they picked it wasn t just the smallest. The horns weren t right. Like one grew faster than the other. Right. None of the Folk were carrying anything or wearing anything. No knives no clothes not even those sock gloves. What do they do in winter They still hunt naked. What else The rest drove it toward that one hidden in the woods. There s one designated killer. Once the prey s fate is sealed the rest converge. There are other meat sources. Here There was a turkey sized bird with wonderful iridescent patterns on its small wings and enormous spreading tail. It flew but not well. The Folk ran beneath it until it ran out of steam and had to come down into their waiting hands. The rest drew back for the leader to make the kill. B beam said They killed four that day. Want to watch It all went just about the same way. Show me. I thought I might see...right. The third attempt the bird was making for the trees with the Folk just underneath. It might make it. Could the Folk handle trees But the Folk broke off far short of the trees. The bird fled to safety while they converged on another that had landed too soon and frightened it into panicky circles. Enough of that. I said B beam the Folk sent some stuff to the Draco Tavern by courier. Your gate Security has it now. I think I d better get it back. A microwave beamer and a hunting knife and canteen and it all looks like it came from Abercrombie and Fitch. He stared at me considering. Did they. What do you think I think they re making allowances because I m human. He shook his head. They make things easy for themselves. They cull the herds but they kill the most difficult ones too. Anything that injures a Folk dies. So okay they ve made things easy for us too. I doubt they re out to humiliate us. They didn t leave extra gear for your companion An instructor led us in stretching exercises isometrics duck waddles sprints and an hour of just running for two hours each day. There was a spa and a masseur and I needed them. I was blind with exhaustion after every session...yet I sensed that they were being careful of me. The game was over if I injured myself. B beam put us on a starvation diet. I want us thinking hungry thinking like Folk. Besides we can both stand to lose a few pounds. I studied Folk physiology more closely than I would have stared at a customer. The pointed mouths show two down pointing daggers in front then a gap then teeth that look like two conical canines fused together. They look vicious. The eyes face forward in deep sockets below the hinges of the jaw: white with brown irises oddly human. Their fingers are short and thick tipped with thick claws three to a forefoot with the forward edge of the pad to serve as a thumb. Human hands are better I think. But if the eyes had been placed like a wolf s they couldn t have seen their hands while standing up and they wouldn t be tool users. My gear was delivered. I strung the canteen and the beamer and the sheath knife on a loop of line. I filled the canteen with water changed my mind and replaced it with Gatorade and left it all in a refrigerator. I watched three more hunts. Once they hunted melk again. Once it was pigs. That wasn t very interesting. B beam said Those were a gift. We mated pigs to wild boars raised them in bottles and turned them loose. The Folk were polite but I don t think they like them much. They re too easy. The last film must have been taken at night light amplified for the moon was blazing like the sun. The prey bad two enormous legs with too many joints a smallish torso slung horizontally between the shoulders and tiny fingers around a strange mouth. Again it looked well fed. It was in the forest eating into a hanging melon sized fruit without bothering to pick it. I said That Doesn t look...right. B beam said No it didn t evolve alongside the Folk. Different planet. Gligsfith cick tcharl maybe. We call them stilts. It was faster than hell and could jump too but the Folk were spread out and they were always in front of it. They kept it running in a circle until it stepped wrong and lost its balance. One Folk zipped toward it. The stilt tumbled with its legs folded and stood up immediately but it still took too long. The designated killer wrapped itself around one leg its jaws closed on the ankle. The stilt kicked at its assailant a dozen kicks in a dozen seconds. Then the bone snapped and the rest of the Folk moved in. Do you suppose they ll wear translators when they hunt with us I d guess they won t. I know some Folk words and I ve been boning up. And I ve got a horde of students looking for anything on Folk eating habits. I ve got a suspicion...Rick why are we doing this We ought to get to know them. Why What have we seen that makes them worth knowing I was hungry and I ached everywhere. I had to think before I answered. Oh...enough. Eating habits aside the Folk aren t totally asocial. They re here . and they aren t xenophobes...B beam suppose they don t have anything to teach us They re still part of a galactic civilization and we want to be out there with them. I just want humanity to look good. Look good...yeah. I did wonder why you didn t even hesitate Have you ever been hunting No. You Yeah my uncles used to take me deer hunting. Have you ever killed anything Hired out as a butcher for instance NO. And I waited to say Sure I can kill an animal no sweat. Hell I promised But he didn t ask he only looked. I never did mention my other fear. For all I know it never occurred to anyone else that B beam and I might be the prey. Intelligent beings if gullible. Armed but with inadequate weapons. Betrayed and thus enraged likely to fight back. The Folk eat Earthborn meat. Surely we would make more interesting prey than the boar pigs But it was plain crazy. The chirpsithra enforced laws against murder. If humans were to disappear within the Mojave hunting park the Folk might be barred from the chirp liners. They wouldn t dare. The Folk came for us at dawn. We rode in the Xenobiology lifter. We left the air ducts wide open. The smell of five Folk behind us was rich and strange: not quite an animal smell but something else and not entirely pleasant. If the Folk noticed our scent they didn t seem to mind. B beam seemed amazingly relaxed. At one point he told me casually We re in danger of missing a point. We re here to have fun. The Folk don t know we ve been sweating and moaning and they won t. You re being honored Rick. Have fun. At midmorning we landed and walked toward a fence. It was human built posted with signs in half a dozen languages. NO ENTRY. DANGER. B beam took us through the gate. Then the Folk waited. B beam exchanged yelps with them then told me. You re expected to lead. Me Why Surprise. You re the designated killer. Me It seemed silly...but it was their hunt. lied off What are we hunting You make that decision too. Well inside the fence we crossed what seemed a meandering dune varying from five to eight meters high curving out of sight to left and right. Outside the dune was desert. Inside meadow. A stream poured out of the dune. Further away and much lower its returning loop flowed back into the dune. The dune hid pumps. It might hide defenses. The green black grass wasn t thin like grass it was a succulent like three foot tall fingers of spineless cactus nice to the touch. Fat grass. Sawgrass would have been a real problem. We wore nothing but swim suits we d argued about even that and the items strung on a line across my shoulders. Any of the Folk or B beam himself would have made a better killer than one middle aged bartender. Of course had the beamer and it would kill but it wouldn t kill fast. Anything large would be hurt and angry long before it fell over. All five Folk dropped silently to their bellies. I hadn t seen anything so I stayed upright but I was walking carefully. Naked humans might not spook the prey anyway. They d be alert for Folk. B beam s eyes tried to see everywhere at once. He whispered I got my report on Folk eating habits. Well They drink water and milk. They ve never been seen eating. They don t buy food Pets Or pets or livestock. I thought of that Missing Persons reports Oh for Christ s sake Rick No this is the only way they eat. It s not a hunt so much as a formal dinner party. The rules of etiquette are likely to be rigid. Rigid hell. I d watched them tearing live animals apart. Water gurgled ahead. The artificial stream ran everywhere. I never wondered about the canteen I said. Why a canteen B beam yelped softly. A Folk squeaked back. Yelp and squeak and B beam tried to suppress a laugh. You must have talked about drinking wine with meals. I did. Is there supposed to be wine in this thing B beam grinned. Then lost the grin. The canteen isn t for the hunt it s for afterward. What about the knife and beamer Oh come on the Folk gave me...ub. Butterflies began breeding in my stomach. Humans cook their food. Sushi and Sashimi and Beef Tartar are exceptions. I d said so that night. The beamer s for cooking. if I use it to kill the prey...we ll be disgraced I m not sure I want to come right out and ask. Let s see... The high pitched squeaking went on for some time. B beam was trying to skirt the edges of the subject. The butterflies in my belly were turning carnivorous. Presently he whispered Yup. Knife too. Your teeth and nails are visibly inadequate for carving. Oh Lord. The later you back out the worse it ll be. Do it now if Two melks were grazing beyond a rise of ground. I touched B beam s shoulder and we sank to our bellies. The melks were really too big. They d weigh about what I did: a hundred and eighty pounds. I d be better off chasing a bird. Better yet a boar pig. Then again these were meat animals born to lose. And we d need four or five birds for this crowd. I d be totally winded long before we finished. B beam s exercise program had given me a good grasp of my limits...not to mention a raging hunger. The purpose of this game was to make humans me look good. Wasn t it Anyway there wasn t a bird or a pig in sight. We crept through the fat grass until we had a clear view. That topheavy array of horns would make a handle. If I could get hold of the horns I could break the melk s long slender neck. The thought made me queasy. The smaller one I whispered. B beam nodded. He yelped softly and got answers. The Folk flowed away through the fat grass. I crept toward the melks on hands and toes. Three Folk stood up and shrieked. The melks shrieked too and tried to escape. Two more Folk stood up in front of the smaller one. I stayed down scrambling through the grass stalks trying to get ahead of it. It came straight at me. And now I must murder you. I lunged to the attack. It spun about. A hoof caught my thigh and I grunted in pain. The melk leapt away then froze as B beam dashed in front of it waving his arms. I threw myself at its neck. It wheeled and the cage of horns slammed into me and knocked me on my ass. It ran over me and away. I was curled around my belly trying to remember how to breathe. B beam helped me to my feet. It was the last place I wanted to be. Are you all right I wheezed Hoof. Stomach. Can you move Nooo Minute. Try again. My breath came back. I walked around in a circle. The Folk were watching me. I straightened up. I jogged. Not good but I could move. I took off the loop of line that held canteen and beamer and knife and handed them to B beam. Hold these. I m afraid they may be the mark of the leader. Bullshit. Folk don t carry anything. Hold em so I can fight. I wanted to be rid of the beamer. It was too tempting. We d alerted the prey in this area. I took us along the edge of the forest where the fat grass thinned out and it was easier to move. We saw nothing for almost an hour. I saw no birds no stilts no boar pigs. What I finally did see was four more melks drinking from the stream. It was a situation very like the first I d seen on film. I d already proved that a melk was more than my equal. My last second qualms had slowed me not at all. I d been beaten because my teeth and claws were inadequate because I was not a wolf not a lion not a Folk. I crouched below the level of the fat grass studying them. The Folk studied me. B beam was at my side whispering We re in no hurry. We ve got hours yet. Do you think you can handle a boar pig If I could find one I might catch it. But how do I kill it With my teeth The Folk watched. What did they expect of me Suddenly I knew. Tell them I ll be in the woods. I pointed. Just in there. Pick a melk and run it toward me. I turned and moved into the woods low to the ground. When I looked back everyone was gone. These trees had to be from the Folk world. They bent to an invisible hurricane. They bent in various directions because the Mojave wasn t giving them the right signals. The trunks had a teardrop shaped cross section for low wind resistance. Maybe the Folk world was tidally locked with a wind that came always from one direction . I dared not go too far for what I needed. The leafs tops of the trees were just in reach and I plunged my hands in and felt around. The trunk was straight and solid the branches were no thicker than my big toe and all leaves. I tried to rip a branch loose anyway. It was too strong and I didn t have the leverage. Through the bent trunks I watched melks scattering in panic. But one dashed back and forth and found black death popping up wherever it looked. There was fallen stuff on the ground but no fallen branches. To my right a glimpse of white The melk was running toward the wood. I ran deeper among the trees. White: bones in a neat pile. Melk bones. I swept a band through to scatter them. Damn The leg bones had all been split. What now The skull was split too hanging together by the intertwined horns. I stamped on the horns. They shattered. I picked up a massive half skull with hail a meter of broken horn for a handle. The melk veered just short of the woods. I sprinted in pursuit. Beyond B beam half stood his eyes horrified. He shouted Rick No I didn t have time for him. The melk raced away and nothing popping up in its face was going to stop it now. I was gaining...it was fast too damn fast...I swung the skull at a flashing hoof and connected. Again. Throwing it off slowing it just enough. The half skull and part horn made a good bludgeon. I smacked a knee and it wheeled in rage and caught me across the face and chest with its horns. I dropped on my back. I got in one grazing blow across the neck as it was turning away and then it was running and I rolled to my feet and chased it again. There was a feathery feel to my run. My lungs and legs thought I was dying. But the melk shook its head as it ran and I caught up far enough to swing at its hooves. This time it didn t turn to attack. Running with something whacking at its feet it just gradually lost ground. I delivered a two handed blow to the base of its neck. Swung again and lost my balance and tumbled caught the roll on my shoulder had to go back for the skull. Then I ran floating recovering lost ground and suddenly realized that the grass was stirring all around me. I was surrounded by the black shadows of the Folk. I caught up. A swing at the head only got the horns. I hammered at the neck just behind the head. It tumbled and tried to get to its feet and I beat it until it fell over. I used the skull like an ax...murdering it...and suddenly black bodies flowed out of the fat grass and tore at the melk. B beam got a good grip on the horns and snapped the neck. I sat down. He handed me the line: knife beamer canteen. He was almost as winded as I was. He whispered Damn fool you weren t Wrong. I didn t have breath for more. I drank from my canteen paused to gasp drank again. Then I turned the beamer on a meaty thigh. The Folk must have been waiting for me to make my choice. They now attacked the forequarters. I crouched panting holding the beamer on the meat until it sizzled until it smoked until the smell of it told my belly it was ready. The heaving of my chest had eased. I handed the knife to B beam. Carve us some of that. Eat as much as you can. Courtesy to our hosts. He did. He gave me a chunk that I needed both hands to hold. It was too hot I had to juggle it. B beam said You used a weapon. I used a club I said. I bit into the meat. Ecstasy The famine was over. I hadn t cooked it enough and so what I swallowed enough to clear my mouth and said Humans don t use teeth and claws. The Folk know that. They wanted to see us in action. My evolution includes a club. THE GREEN MARAUDER I was tending bar alone that night. The chirpsithra interstellar liner had left Earth four days earlier taking most of my customers. The Draco Tavern was nearly empty. The man at the bar was drinking gin and tonic. Two glig grey and compact beings wearing furs in three tones of green were at a table with a chirpsithra guide. They drank vodka and consomme no ice no flavorings. Four farsilshree had their bulky heavy environment tanks crowded around a bigger table. They smoked smoldering yellow paste through tubes. Every so often I got them another jar of paste. The man was talkative. I got the idea he was trying to interview the bartender and owner of Earth s foremost multi species tavern. Hey not me he protested. I m not a reporter. I m Greg Noyes with the Scientific American television show. Didn t I see you trying to interview the glig earlier tonight Guilty. We re doing a show on the formation of life on Earth. I thought maybe I could check a few things. The gligstith click optok He said that slowly but got it right. have their own little empire out there don t they Earthlike worlds a couple of hundred. They must know quite a lot about how a world forms an oxygenating atmosphere. He was careful with those polysyllabic words. Not quite sober then. That Doesn t mean they want to waste an evening lecturing the natives. He nodded. They didn t know anyway. Architects on vacation. They got me talking about my home life. I don t know how they managed that. He pushed his drink away. I d better switch to espresso. Why would a thing that shape be interested in my sex life And they kept asking me about territorial imperatives He stopped then turned to see what I was staring at. Three chirpsithra were just coming in. One was in a floating couch with life support equipment attached. I thought they all looked alike he said. I said I ve had chirpsithra in here for close to thirty years but I can t tell them apart. They re all perfect physical specimens after all by their own standards. I never saw one like that I gave him his espresso then put three sparkers on a tray and went to the chirpsithra table. Two were exactly like any other chirpsithra: eleven feet tall dressed in pouched belts and their own salmon colored exoskeletons and very much at their ease. The chirps claim to have settled the entire galaxy long ago meaning the useful planets the tidally locked oxygen worlds that happen to circle close around cool red dwarf suns and they act like the reigning queens of wherever they happen to be. But the two seemed to defer to the third. She was a foot shorter than they were. Her exoskeleton was as clearly artificial as dentures: alloplastic bone worn on the outside. Tubes ran under the edges from the equipment in her floating couch. Her skin between the plates was more gray than red. Her head turned slowly as I came up. She studied me bright eyed with interest. I asked Sparkers as if chirpsithra ever ordered anything else. One of the others said Yes. Serve the ethanol mix of your choice to yourself and the other native. Will you join us I waved Noyes over and he came at the jump. He pulled up one of the high chairs I keep around to put a human face on a level with a chirpsithra s. I went for another espresso and a Scotch and soda and catching a soft imperative hoot from the farsilshree a jar of yellow paste. When I returned they were deep in conversation. Rick Schumann Noyes cried meet Ftaxanthir and Hrofilliss and Chorrikst. Chorrikst tells me she s nearly two billion years old I heard the doubt beneath his delight. The chirpsithra could be the greatest liars in the universe and how would we ever know Earth didn t even have interstellar probes when the chirps came. Chorrikst spoke slowly in a throaty whisper but her translator box was standard: voice a little flat pronunciation perfect. I have circled the galaxy numberless times and taped the tales of my travels for funds to feed my wanderlust. Much of my life has been spent at the edge of lightspeed under relativistic time compression. So you see I am not nearly so old as all that. I pulled up another high chair. You must have seen wonders beyond counting I said. Thinking: My God a short chirpsithra Maybe it s true She s a different color too and her fingers are shorter. Maybe the species has actually changed since she was born She nodded slowly. Life never bores. Always there is change. In the time I have been gone Saturn s ring has been pulled into separate rings making it even more magnificent. What can have done that Tides from the moons And Earth has changed beyond recognition. Noyes spilled a little of his coffee. You were here When Earth s air was methane and ammonia and oxides of nitrogen and carbon. The natives had sent messages across interstellar space...directing them toward yellow suns of course but one of our ships passed through a beam and so we established contact. We had to wear life support she rattled on while Noyes and I sat with our jaws hanging and the gear was less comfortable then. Our spaceport was a floating platform because quakes were frequent and violent. But it was worth it. Their cities Noyes said Just a minute. Cities We ve never dug up any trace of of nonhuman cities Chorrikst looked at him. After seven hundred and eighty million years I should think not. Besides they lived in the offshore shallows in an ocean that was already mildly salty. If the quakes spared them their tools and their cities still deteriorated rapidly. Their lives were short too but their memories were inherited. Death and change were accepted facts for them more than for most intelligent species. Their works of philosophy gained great currency among my people and spread to other species too. Noyes wrestled with his instinct for tact and good manners and won. How How could anything have evolved that far The Earth didn t even have an oxygen atmosphere Life was just getting started there weren t even trilobites They had evolved for as long as you have Chorrikst said with composure. Life began on Earth one and a half billion years ago. There were organic chemicals in abundance from passage of lightning through the reducing atmosphere. Intelligence evolved and presently built an impressive civilization. They lived slowly of course. Their biochemistry was less energetic. Communication was difficult. They were not stupid only slow. I visited Earth three times and each time they had made more progress. Almost against his will Noyes asked What did they look like Small and soft and fragile much more so than yourselves. I cannot say they were pretty but I grew to like them. I would toast them according to your customs she said. They wrought beauty in their cities and beauty in their philosophies and their works are in our libraries still. They will not be forgotten. She touched her sparker and so did her younger companions. Current flowed between her two claws through her nervous system. She said Sssss... I raised my glass and nudged Noyes with my elbow. We drank to our predecessors. Noyes lowered his cup and asked What happened to them They sensed worldwide disaster coming Chorrikst said and they prepared but they thought it would be quakes. They built cities to float on the ocean surface and lived in the undersides. They never noticed the green scum growing in certain tidal pools. By the time they knew the danger the green scum was everywhere. It used photosynthesis to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen and the raw oxygen killed whatever it touched leaving fertilizer to feed the green scum. The world was dying when we learned of the problem. What could we do against a photosynthesis using scum growing beneath a yellow white star There was nothing in chirpsithra libraries that would help. We tried of course but we were unable to stop it. The sky had turned an admittedly lovely transparent blue and the tide pools were green and the offshore cities were crumbling before we gave up the fight. There was an attempt to transplant some of the natives to a suitable world but biorhythm upset ruined their mating habits. I have not been back since until now. The depressing silence was broken by Chorrikst herself. Well the Earth is greatly changed and of course your own evolution began with the green plague. I have heard tales of humanity from my companions. Would you tell me something of your lives And we spoke of humankind but I couldn t seem to find much enthusiasm for it. The anaerobic life that survived the advent of photosynthesis includes gangrene and botulism and not much else. I wondered what Chorrikst would find when next she came and whether she would have reason to toast our memory. WAR MOVIE Ten twenty years ago my first thought would have been Great looking woman Tough looking too. If I make a pass it had better be polite. She was in her late twenties tall blond healthy looking with a squarish jaw. She didn t look like the type to be fazed by anything but she had stopped stunned just inside the door. Her first time here I thought. Anyway I d have remembered her. But after eighteen years tending bar in the Draco Tavern my first thought is generally Human. Great I won t have to dig out any of the exotic stuff While she was still reacting to the sight of half a dozen oddlyshaped sapients indulging each its own peculiar vice I moved down the bar to the far right where I keep the alcoholic beverages. I thought she d take one of the bar stools. Nope. She looked about her considering her choices which didn t include empty tables there was a fair crowd in tonight then moved to join the lone qarasht. And I was already starting to worry as I left the bar to take her order. In the Draco it s considered normal to strike up conversations with other customers. But the qarasht wasn t acting like it wanted company. The bulk of thick fur pale blue striped with black in narrow curves had waddled in three hours ago. It was on its third quart sized mug of Demerara Sours and its sense cluster had been retracted for all of that time leaving it deaf and blind lost in its own thoughts. It must have felt the vibration when the woman sat down. Its sense cluster and stalk rose out of the fur like a python rising from a bed of moss. A snake with no mouth: just two big wide set black bubbles for eyes and an ear like a pink blossom set between them and a tuft of fine hairs along the stalk to serve for smell and taste and a brilliant ruby crest on top. Its translator box said quite clearly Drink not talk. My last day. She didn t take the hint. You re going home Where Home to the organ banks. I am shishishorupf A word the box didn t translate. What s it mean Your kind has bankruptcy laws that let you start over. My kind lets me start over as a dozen others. Organ banks. The alien picked up its mug the fur parted below its sense cluster stalk to receive half a pint of Demerara Sour. She looked around a little queasily and found me at her shoulder. With some relief she said Never mind I ll come to the bar and started to stand up. The qarasht put a hand on her wrist. The eight skeletal fingers looked like two chicken feet wired together but a qarasht s hand is stronger than it looks. Sit said the alien. Barmonitor get her one of these. Human why do you not fight wars What You used to fight wars. Well she said sure. We could have been fourth level wealthy the qarasht said and slammed its mug to the table. You would stifi be a single isolated species had we not come. In what fashion have you repaid our generosity The woman was speechless I wasn t. Excuse me but it wasn t the qarashteel who made first contact with Earth. It was the chirpsithra. We paid them. What Why Our ship Far Stretching Sense Cluster passed through So system while making a documentary. It confuses some species that we can make very long entertainments and sell them to billions of customers who will spend years watching them and reap profits that allow us to travel hundreds of light years and spend decades working on such a project. But we are very long lived you know. Partly because we are able to keep the organ banks full the qarasht said with some savagery and it drank again. Its sense cluster was weaving a little. We found dramatic activity on your world it said. All over your world it seemed. Machines hurled against each other. Explosives. Machines built to fly other machines to hurl them from the sky. Humans in the machines dying. Machines blowing great holes in populated cities. It fuddles the mind to think what such a spectacle would have cost to make ourselves We went into orbit and we recorded it all as best we could. Three years of it. When we were sure it was over we returned home and sold it. The woman swallowed. She said to me I think I need that drink. Join us I made two of the giant Demerara Sours and took them back. As I pulled up a chair the qarasht was saying If we had stopped then we would still be moderately wealthy. Our recording instruments were not the best of course. Worse we could not get close enough to the surface for real detail. Our atmosphere probes shivered and shook and so did the pictures. Ours was a low budget operation. But the ending was superb Two cities half destroyed by thermonuclear explosions Our recordings sold well enough but we would have been mad not to try for more. We invested all of our profits in equipment. We borrowed all we could. Do you understand that the nearest full service spaceport to So system is sixteen squared light years distant We had to finance a chirpsithra diplomatic expedition in order to get Local Group approval and transport for what we needed...and because we needed intermediaries. Chirps are very good at negotiating and we are not. We did not tell them what we really wanted of course. The woman s words sounded like curses. Why negotiate You were doing fine as Peeping Toms. Even when people saw your ships nobody believed them. I expect they re saucer shaped Foo fighters I thought while the alien said We needed more than the small atmospheric probes. We needed to mount hologram cameras. For that we had to travel all over the Earth especially the cities. Such instruments are nearly invisible. We spray them across a flat surface high up on your glass slab style towers for instance. And we needed access to your libraries to get some insight into why you do these things. The lady drank. I remembered that there had been qarashteel everywhere the chirpsithra envoys went twenty four years ago when the big interstellar ships arrived and I took a long pull from my Sour. It all looked so easy the qarasht mourned. We had left instruments on your moon. The recordings couldn t be sold of course because your world s rotation permits only fragmentary glimpses. But your machines were becoming better more destructive We thanked our luck that you had not destroyed yourselves before we could return. We studied the recordings to guess where the next war would occur but there was no discernable pattern. The largest land mass we thought True enough the chirps and their qarashteel entourage had been very visible all over Asia and Europe. Those cameras on the Moon must have picked up activity in Poland and Korea and Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iran and Israel and Cuba and and...bastards. So you set up your cameras in a tearing hurry I guessed and then you waited. We waited and waited. We have waited for thirty years...for twenty four of your own years and we have nothing to show for it but a riot here a parade there an attack on a children s vehicle...robbery of a bank...a thousand people smashing automobiles or an embassy building...rumors of war of peace some shouting in your councils. How can we sell any of this On Earth my people need life support to the tune of six thousand dollars a day. I and my associates are shishishorupf now and I must return home to tell them. The lady looked ready to start her own war. I said to calm her down We make war movies too. We ve been doing it for over a hundred years. They sell fine. Her answer was an intense whisper. I never liked war movies. And that was us Sure who else The qarasht slammed its mug down. Why have you not fought a war She broke the brief pause. We would have been ashamed. Ashamed In front of you. Aliens. We ve seen twenty alien species on Earth since that first chirp expedition and none of them seem to fight wars. The uh qarasht don t fight wars do they The alien s sense cluster snapped down into its fur then slowly emerged again. Certainly we do not Well think how it would look But for you it is natural Not really I said. People have real trouble learning to kill. It s not built into us. Anyway we don t have quite so much to fight over these days. The whole world s getting rich on the widgetry the chirps and the thtopar have been selling us. Long lived too on glig medicines. We ve all got more to lose. I flinched because the alien s sense cluster was stretched across the table staring at us in horror. A lot of our restless types are out mining the asteroids the woman said. And hey I said remember when Egypt and Saudi Arabia were talking war in the UN And all the aliens moved out of both countries even the glig doctors with their geriatrics consulting office. The sheiks didn t like that one damn bit. And when the Soviets Our doing all our own doing the alien mourned. Its sense cluster pulled itself down and disappeared into the fur leaving just the ruby crest showing. The alien lifted its mug and drank blind. The woman took my wrist and pulled me over to the bar. What do we do now she hissed in my ear. I shrugged. Sounds like the emergency s over. But we can t just let it go can we You don t really think we ve given up war do you But if we knew these damn aliens were waiting to make movies of us maybe we would Shouldn t we call the newspapers or at least the Secret Service I don t think so. Somebody has to know Think it through I said. One particular qarasht company may be defunct but those cameras are still there all over the world and so are the mobile units. Some alien receiving company is going to own them. What if they offer...say Iran or the Soviet Union one tenth of one percent of the gross profits on a war movie She paled. I pushed my mug into her hands and she gulped hard at it. Shakily she asked Why didn t the qarasht think of that Maybe they don t think enough like men. Maybe if we just leave it alone they never will. But we sure don t want any human entrepreneurs making suggestions. Let it drop lady. Let it drop. THE REAL THING If the IRS could see me now Flying a light sail craft single handed two million miles out from a bluish white dwarf star. Fiddling frantically with the shrouds guided less by the instruments than by the thrust against my web hammock and the ripples in the tremendous near weightless mirror sail. Glancing into the sun without blinking then at the stars without being night blind dipping near the sun without being fried all due to the quick adjusting goggles and temp controlled skin tight pressure suit the chirpsithra had given me. This entire trip was deductible of course. The Draco Tavern had made me a good deal of money over the years but I never could have paid for an interstellar voyage otherwise. As the owner of the Draco Tavern Earth s only multi species bar I was quite legitimately touring the stars to find new products for my alien customers. Would Internal Revenue object to my actually enjoying myself I couldn t make myself care. The trip out on the chirpsithra liner: that alone was something I d remember the rest of my life. This too if I lived. Best not to distract myself with memories. Hroyd System was clustered tightly around its small hot sun. Space was thick with asteroids and planets and other sailing ships. Every so often some massive piece of space junk bombed the sun or a storm would bubble up from beneath the photosphere and my boat would surge under the pressure of the flare. I had to fiddle constantly with the shrouds. The pointer was aimed at black space. Where was that damned spaceport Huge and massive it had seemed too big to lose when I spun out my frail silver sail and launched...how long ago The clock told me: twenty hours though it didn t feel that long. The spaceport was coin shaped spun for varying gravities. Maybe I was trying to see it edge on I tilted the sail to lose some velocity. The fat sun expanded. My mind felt the heat. If my suit failed it would fail all at once and I wouldn t have long to curse my recklessness. Or Even chirpsithra supplied equipment wouldn t help me if I fell into the sun. I looked outward in time to see a silver coin pass over me. Good enough. Tilt the sail forward pick up some speed...pull my orbit outward slow down don t move the sail too fast or it ll fold up Wait a bit then tilt the sail to spill the light drop a bit wait again...watch a black coin slide across the sun. Tilt to slow tilt again to catch up. It was another two hours before I could pull into the spaceport s shadow fold the sail and let a tractor beam pull me in. My legs were shaky as I descended the escalator to Level 6. There was Earth gravity on 6 minus a few percent and also a multispecies restaurant bar. I was too tired to wonder about the domed boxes I saw on some of the tables. I wobbled over to a table turned on the privacy bubble and tapped tee tee hatch nex ool carefully. That code was my life. A wrong character could broil me freeze me flatten me or have me drinking liquid methane or breathing prussic acid. An Earthlike environment formed around me. I peeled off my equipment and sank into a web sighing with relief. I still ached everywhere. What I really needed was sleep. But it had been glorious A warbling whistle caused me to look up. My translator said Sir or madam what can I bring you The bartender was a small spindly Hroydan and his environment suit glowed at dull red heat. I said Something alcoholic. Alcohol What is your physiological type Tee tee hatch nex ool. Ah. May I recommend something A liqueur Opal Fire. Considering the probable distance to the nearest gin and tonic . Fine. What proof is it I heard his translator skip a word and amplified: What percent ethyl alcohol Thirty four with no other metabolic poisons. About seventy proof Over water ice please. He brought a clear glass bottle. The fluid within did indeed glitter like an opal. Its beauty was the first thing I noticed. Then the taste slightly tart with an overtone that can t be described in any human language. A crackling aftertaste and a fire spreading through my nervous system. I said That s wonderful What about side effects There are additives to compensate: thiamin and the like. You will feel no ugly aftereffects the Hroydan assured me. They d love it on Earth. Mmm...what s it cost Quite cheap. Twenty nine chirp notes per flagon. Transport costs would be up to the chirpsithra. But I m sure Chignthil Interstellar would sell specs for manufacture. This could pay for my whole trip. I jotted the names: chirp characters for Opal Fire and Chignthil Interstellar. The stuff was still dancing through my nervous system. I drank again so it could dance on my taste buds too. To hell with sleep I was ready for another new experience. These boxes I see them on all the tables. What are they Full sensory entertainment devices. Cost is six chirp notes for use. He tapped keys and a list appeared: titles I assumed in alien script. If you can t read this there is voice translation. I dithered. Tempting dangerous. But a couple of these might be worth taking back. Some of my customers can t use anything I stock they pay only cover charges. How versatile is it Your customers seem to have a lot of different sense organs. Hey would this thing actually give me alien senses The bartender signaled negative. The device acts on your central nervous system I assume you have one There at the top Ah good. It feeds you a story skeleton but your own imagination puts you in context and fills in the background details. You live a programmed story but largely in terms familiar to you. Mental damage is almost unheard of. Will I know it s only an entertainment You might know from the advertisements. Shall I show you The Hroydan raised the metal dome on a many jointed arm and poised it over my head. I felt the heat emanating from him. Perhaps you would like to walk through an active volcano He tapped two buttons with a black metal claw and everything changed. The Vollek merchant pulled the helmet away from my head. He had small delicate looking arms and a stance like a tyrannosaur: torso horizontal swung from the hips. A feathery down covered him signaling his origin as a flightless bird. How did you like it Give me a minute. I looked about me. Afternoon sunlight spilled across the tables illuminating alien shapes. The Draco Tavern was filling up. it was time I got back to tending bar. It had been nearly empty I remembered when I agreed to try this stunt. I said That business at the end We end all of the programs that way when we sell to Level Four civilizations. It prevents disorientation. Good idea. Whatever the reason I didn t feel at all confused. Still it was a hell of an experience. I couldn t tell it from the real thing. The advertisement would have alerted an experienced user. You re actually manufacturing these things on Earth Guatemala has agreed to license us. The climate is so nice there. And so I can lower the price per unit to three thousand dollars each. Sell me two I said. It d be a few years before they paid for themselves. Maybe someday I really would have enough money to ride the chirpsithra liners...if I didn t get hooked myself on these full sensory machines. Now about Opal Fire. I can t believe it s really that good I travel for Chignthil Interstellar too. I have sample bottles. Let s try it. LIMITS I never would have heard them if the sound system hadn t gone on the fritz. And if it hadn t been one of those frantically busy nights maybe I could have done something about it . But one of the big chirpsithra passenger ships was due to leave Mount Ford Spaceport in two days. The chirpsithra trading empire occupies most of the galaxy and Sol system is nowhere near its heart. A horde of passengers had come early in fear of being marooned. The Draco Tavern was jammed. I was fishing under the counter when the noises started. I jumped. Two voices alternated: a monotonal twittering and a bone vibrating sound like a tremendous door endlessly opening on rusty hinges. The Draco Tavern used to make the Tower of Babel sound like a monolog in the years before I got this sound system worked out. Picture it: thirty or forty creatures of a dozen species including human all talking at once at every pitch and volume and all of their translating widgets bellowing too Some species like the srivinthish don t talk with sound but they also don t notice the continual skreeking from their spiracles. Others sing. They call it singing and they say it s a religious rite so how can I stop them Selective damping is the key and a staff of technicians to keep the system in order. I can afford it. I charge high anyway for the variety of stuff I have to keep for anything that might wander in. But sometimes the damping system fails. I found what I needed a double walled cannister I d never needed before holding stuff I d been calling green kryptonite and delivered glowing green pebbles to four aliens in globular environment tanks. They were at four different tables sharing conversation with four other species. I d never seen a rosyfln before. Rippling in the murky fluid within the transparent globe the dorsal fin was triangular rose colored fragile as gossamer and ran from nose to tail of a body that looked like a flattened slug. Out among the tables there was near silence except within the bubbles of sound that surrounded each table. It wasn t a total breakdown then. But when I went back behind the bar the noise was still there. I tried to ignore it. I certainly wasn t going to try to fix the sound system not with fifty odd customers and ten distinct species demanding my attention. I set out consomme and vodka for four glig and thimblesized flasks of chilled fluid with an ammonia base for a dozen chrome yellow bugs each the size of a fifth of Haig Pinch. And the dialog continued: high twittering against grating metallic bass. What got on my nerves was the way the sounds seemed always on the verge of making sense Finally I just switched on the translator. It might be less irritating if I heard it in English. I heard: noticed how often they speak of limits Limits I don t understand you. Lightspeed limit. Theoretical strengths of metals of crystals of alloys. Smallest and largest masses at which an unseen body may be a neutron star. Maximum time and cost to complete a research project. Surfaceto volume relationship for maximum size of a creature of given design But every sapient race learns these things We find limits of course. But with humans the limits are what they seek first. So they were talking about the natives about us. Aliens often do. Their insights might be fascinating but it gets boring fast. I let it buzz in my ear while I fished out another dozen flasks of ammonia mixture and set them on Gail s tray along with two Stingers. She went oft to deliver them to the little yellow bugs now parked in a horseshoe pattern on the rim of their table talking animatedly to two human sociologists. It is a way of thinking one of the voices said. They set enormously complex limits on each other. Whole professions called judge and lawyer devote their lives to determining which human has violated which limit where. Another profession alters the limits arbitrarily. It Docs not sound entertaining. But all are forced to play the game. You must have noticed: the limits they find in the universe and the limits they set on each other bear the same name: law. I had established that the twitterer was the one doing most of the talking. Fine. Now who were they Two voices belonging to two radically different species The interstellar community knows all of these limits in different forms. Do we know them all Goedel s Principle sets a limit to the perfectability of mathematical systems. What species would have sought such a thing Mine would not. Nor mine I suppose. Still Humans push their limits. It is their first approach to any problem. When they learn where the limits lie they in missing information until the limit breaks. When they break a limit they look for the limit behind that. I wonder... I thought I had them spotted. Only one of the tables for two was occupied by a chirpsithra and a startled looking woman. My suspects were a cluster of three: one of the rosyfins and two compact squarish customers wearing garish designs on their exoskeletal shells. The shelled creatures had been smoking tobacco cigars under exhaust hoods. One seemed to be asleep. The other waved stubby arms as it talked. I heard: I have a thought. My savage ancestors used to die when they reached a certain age. When we could no longer breed evolution was finished with us. There is a biological self destruct built into us. It is the same with humans. But my own people never die unless killed. We fission. Our memories go far far back. Though we differ in this the result is the same. At some point in the dim past we learned that we could postpone our deaths. We never developed a civilization until individuals could live long enough to attain wisdom. The fundamental limit was lifted from our shells before we set out to expand into the world and then the universe. Is this not true with most of the space traveling peoples The Pfarth species choose death only when they grow bored. Chirpsithra were long lived before they reached the stars and the gligstith cick optok went even further with their fascination with heredity tailoring Docs it surprise you that intelligent beings strive to extend their lives Surprise No. But humans still face a limit on their life spans. The death limit has immense influence on their poetry. They may think differently from the rest of us in other ways. They may find truths we would not even seek. An untranslated metal on metal scraping. Laughter You speculate irresponsibly. Has their unique approach taught them anything we know not How can I know I have only been on this world three local years. Their libraries are large their retrieval systems poor. But there is Goedel s Principle and Heisenberg s Uncertainty Principle is a limit to what one can discover at the quantum level Pause. We must see if another species has duplicated that one. Meanwhile perhaps I should speak to another visitor. Incomprehension. Query Do you remember that I spoke of a certain gligstith cick optok merchant I remember. You know their skill with water world biology. This one comes to Earth with a technique for maintaining and restoring the early maturity state in humans. The treatment is complex but with enough customers the cost would drop or so the merchant says. I must persuade it not to make the offer. Affirmative Removing the death limit would drastically affect human psychology One of the shelled beings was getting up. The voices chopped off as I rounded the bar and headed for my chosen table with no clear idea what I would say. I stepped into the bubble of sound around two shelled beings and a rosyfin and said Forgive the interruption sapients You have joined a wake said the tank s translator widget. The shelled being said My mate had chosen death. He wanted one last smoke in company. It bent and lifted its dead companion in its arms and headed for the door. The rosyfin was leaving too rolling his spherical fishbowl toward the door. I realized that its own voice hadn t penetrated the murky fluid around it. No chittering no bone shivering bass. I had the wrong table. I looked around and there were still no other candidates. Yet somebody here had casually condemned mankind me to age and die. Now what I might have been hearing several voices. They all sound alike coming from a new species and some aliens never interrupt each other. The little yellow bugs But they were with humans. Shells My voices had mentioned shells...but too many aliens have exoskeletons. Okay a chirpsithra would have spoken by now they re garrulous. Scratch any table that includes a chirp. Or a rosyfin. Or those srivinthish: I d have heard the skreek of their breathing. Or the huge gray being who seemed to be singing. That left...half a dozen tables and I couldn t interrupt that many. Could they have left while I was distracted I hot footed it back to the bar and listened and heard nothing. And my spinning brain could find only limits. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Larry Niven was born on April 30 1938 in Los Angeles California. In 1956 he entered the California Institute of Technology only to flunk out a year and a half later after discovering a bookstore jammed with used science fiction magazines. He graduated with a B.A. in mathematics minor in psychology from Washburn University Kansas in 1962 and completed one year of graduate work in mathematics at UCLA before dropping out to write. His first published story The Coldest Place appeared in the December 1964 issue of Worlds of If. Larry Niven s interests include backpacking with the Boy Scouts science fiction conventions supporting the conquest of space and AAAS meetings and other gatherings of people at the cutting edge of the sciences. He won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1966 for Neutron Star and in 1974 for The Hole Man. The 1975 Hugo Award for Best Novelette was given to The Borderland of So . His novel Ringworld won the 1970 Hugo Award for Best Novel the 1970 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1972 Ditmar an Australian award for Best International Science Fiction.

Science Fiction

fiction

Some Will Not Die Algis Budrys Story copyright 1954 Algis Budrys We are not considering a man. We are considering men if no man is an island in a world of nearly six billions then how can any man be independent of others when the population is one tenth that figure Men who would have been lost and insignificant in the world before the plague now had their slightest whims and quirks magnified by a factor of ten. The ripples of any one man s personality spread ten times as far ten times as effectively. A man with nineteen neighbors need not consider any of them too much. A man with one neighbor has either a brother or an enemy or both. So to understand the history of the world after the plague we have to understand that no man not even Theodore Berendtsen could possibly serve as the single focus of that time. We are studying a man yes. But we are considering men. Harvey Haggard Drumm A Study of the Effects of Massive Depopulation on Conventional Views of Human Nature. Chicago 2051 AD mimeographed. SECTION ONE PROLOGUE: This happened many years after the plague at about the same time there was already talk of reviving the American Kennel Club in the east and south. But this happened farther to the northwest: Night was coming down on the immense plain that stretched from the Appalachians to the foothills of the Rockies. The long grass whispered in the evening wind. Clanking and whining a half tracked battlewagon snuffled toward the sunset. Behind it lay the featureless grass horizon almost completely flat and with no life visible in it. The empty grass fell away to either side. Ahead the first mountains lay black and blended by distance a brush stroke lying in a thick line just under the sun. The car moved forward at remorseless speed a squat dark scurrying shape at the head of a constantly lengthening trail of pulped grass. Its armor was red with rust and scarred by welds. The paint was a peeling flat dark green. On the side of the broad double turret someone had painted the Seventh North American Republic s escutcheon with a clumsy brush. The paint was bad here too though it was much recent. Another badge showed through from underneath and under that someone else s. Joe Custis with the assimilated rank of captain in the Seventh Republican Army sat in the car commander s saddle. His head and shoulders thrust up through the open hatch his heavy hands were braced on the coaming. His broadbilled cap was pulled down low over his scuffed American Optical Company goggles and crushed against his skull by an interphone harness. His thick jaw was burned brown and the tight deep lines around his mouth were black with dust and sweat that had cemented themselves together. His head turned constantly from side to side and at intervals he twisted around to look behind him. A speck of white off to his left became a freshly painted well maintained signboard nailed to a post planted at the top of a low rounded rise. He dropped his goggles around his neck and looked at it through his binoculars. It was a hand lettered sign in the shape of a skull not a new sign but one kept renewed reading: NO FOOD NO FUEL NO WO MEN Custis picked up his command microphone. Lew he said to his driver you see that thing Okay well ease toward it. Get set for me telling you to stop altogether. He jacked down the command saddle until his face was level with the turret periscope eyepieces. He raised the scope until its slim stiffly flexible length was fully extended above the turret looking with its many joints like the raised and quivering antenna of something that bred and went to outrageous combat on the red plains of Mars. Slow now Lew...slow...hold it. The car stopped its motors idling and the periscope searched over the rise. Joe Custis reached up and pulled the turret hatch shut close over his head as he sat awkwardly bent down peering into the scope. On the other side of the rise was a valley what had been a valley geologic ages past and was now a broad shallow bowl into which ten thousand centuries of rain had washed the richest topsoil and in the valley were fields and here and there low humped grass grown mounds. There were no lights showing. The fields were empty of movement but one was half harrowed the ground freshly turned the surface still rich and greasy until suddenly the marks of the spike harrow turned out of their course and swayed away toward one of the mounds which was in fact a sod hutment. A farmer had interrupted his work and driven his horse and the precious hand built harrow into shelter. The driver s voice cut into Joe Custis s headphones. Want me to move in for a better look No. No circle around this and let s get back on the old heading. Don t want to go no closer. Might be traps or mines. As Custis lowered the periscope the car backed away. When it had back tracked to where it had first turned off course it swung around and began rolling forward again. The whine of the bogey motors built back up its original pitch. Joe Custis threw the hatch back again and raised the seat to its old position. The signboard began to dwindle as the car left it behind. Back on the car s turtledeck the AA machinegunner s hatch crashed open. Custis turned and looked down. Major Henley the political officer pulled himself up shouting above the dentist s drill whine of the motors: Custis What did we stop for Joe cupped one hand to his ear and after a moment Henley kicked himself higher in the hatch squirmed over the coaming and scrambled forward up the turtledeck. He braced a foot on the portside track cover and took hold of the grab iron welded to the side of the turret. He looked up at Custis swaying and jouncing. Custis wondered how soon he was going to slip and smash out his teeth on the turret. What did you stop for Fortified town. Independent. Wanted to look it over. Gettin to be a few of those places up this way. Interestin . What do you mean independent Don t give a damn for nobody. Only way to get in is to be born there. Or have somethin it would take a cannon to stop. I don t think they got cannon. Would of hit us otherwise instead of buttonin up the way they did. I thought you said this was outlaw controlled territory. Custis nodded. Except for these towns it is. Don t see any more open towns do you I don t see any outlaws either. Custis pointed toward the mountains. Watching us come at em. Henley s eyes twitched west. How do you know It s where I d be. Custis explained patiently: Out here on the grass I can run rings around em and they know it. Up there I m a sitting duck. So that s where they are. That s pretty smart of them. I suppose a little bird told them we were coming Look Henley we been pointin in this direction for a solid week. And they have a communications net that warns them in time. I suppose someone runs the news along on foot That s right. Rubbish ooooooooooooooooooooo You go to your church and I ll go to mine. Custis spat over the side to starboard. I been out on these plains all my life workin hired out to one outfit or another. If you say you know this country better I guess that s right on account of you re a major. All right Custis. I guess all these people out here must be stupid or somethin . Can t figure out how come they re still alive. I said all right. Custis grinned without any particular malice giving the needle another jab under Henley s city thin skin. Hell man if I thought Berendtsen was still alive and around here someplace I d figure things were being run so smart out here that we ought to of never left Chicago at all. Henley flushed. Custis you furnish the vehicle and I ll handle the thinking. If the government thinks it s good enough a chance to be worth investigating then that s it we ll investigate it. Joe looked at him in disgust. Berendtsen s dead. They shot him in New York thirty years ago. They pumped him full of holes and dragged his body behind a Jeep right down the main street at twenty miles an hour. People threw cobblestones at it all the way. That s all there is left of Berendtsen a thirty year old streak of blood down Broadway Avenue. That s only one of the stories you hear. There are others. Henley a lot more people have heard that one than have heard he s still alive. And way out here. Maybe we should look around for Julius Caesar too All right Custis That ll be enough of your kind of wisdom Custis looked down at him steadily the expression on his face hovering at the thin edge between a grin and something else entirely. After a moment Henley blinked and broke the conversation off into a new direction. How soon before we reach the mountains Tonight. Couple more hours you ll get a chance to see some bandits. Now Custis smiled. Henley said Well let me know when you come across something and gingerly crawled back to the AA hatch. He dropped out of sight inside the car. After a moment he remembered reached up and pulled the hatch shut. Custis went back to keep an eye out. At rest his face was impassive. His hands motionlessly held the thick metal of the armor. But now and then as his eyes touched the mountains in his constant scan around the horizon he frowned. And at those times his fingers would flex as though it were necessary for him to reacquaint himself with the texture of wrought steel. Custis had no faith in Henley s hopes. Berendtsen s name was used to frighten children real children or politicians it was all one all over the Republic. It had been the same during all the Republics before it. Somebody was always waving the blue and silver flag or threatening to. A handful of fake Berendtsens had been turned up here and there all over the Chicago hegemony trading on a dead man s legend these past thirty years. Some of them had been laughed down or otherwise taken care of before they got fairly started. Some hadn t the Fourth Republic got itself started while the Third was busy fighting a man who d turned out to be merely a better liar than most. Through the years the whole thing had turned into a kind of grim running joke. But the fact was that the politicians back in Chicago couldn t afford to have the ghost walking their frontiers or what they thought were their frontiers though no one could truly say whose word was Law south of Gary. The fact was that somehow in some way the tale of Berendtsen had come drifting over the eastern mountains and contaminated the people with impatience. The fact was that Berendtsen was a man who had been able to take hold after the plague scoured the world clean of ninety percent of its people in six howling months. Or so the legend said Custis had not much faith in that either. The fact you had to live with in any case was that Berendtsen had put together something called the Second Free American Republic meaning probably the old American East and the eastern half of old Canada and made it stand up for ten years before he got his. And nobody else had ever been able to do as well at least not here where the Great Lakes and Appalachians kept Berendtsen from ever being much more than a name and an occasional banner. But between the times his name frightened them with its promise of armed men coming over the mountains someday and ordering things to suit a stranger someday people still thought of ten whole years with no fighting in the cities. It made them growl with anger whenever the local politicians did something they disliked. It made them restless it left no peace in the minds of the politicians as they tried to convince themselves the cities were almost back to normal That soon enough now the cities and the people of the plains would become part of a functioning civilization once more and the scar of the plague would be healed over at last. It was not a comfortable thing being haunted by a man nobody knew. You could say and say with a good part of justice that Berendtsen was behind every mob that rolled down on Government House and dragged the men inside up to the dark lamp posts. Thirty years since Berendtsen died the story went. Nobody was sure of exactly who d been behind the shooting the politicians or the people. But it was a sure thing it had been the people who d mutilated his body. And six months later the mobs d killed the men they said killed Berendtsen. So there you were try and make sense out of it in a world where the towns went without machinery and the cities went without more than the barest trickle of food. A world where it was still worth a city man s life to approach farm country alone. You couldn t. The man s name was magic and that was that. Custis up in his turret shook his head. If he didn t find this ghost for Henley it was a cinch he d never get paid contract or no contract. But at least he d gotten his car re shopped for this job. Sourly Custis weighed cutting the political officer s throat right here and reporting him lost to bandit action. Or cutting his throat and not reporting back at all. The battlewagon was a long way from Chicago at this point. The only drinking water aboard was a muddy mess scooped out of one of the summer shrunk creeks. The food was canned army rations some of it under the re labeling might be from before the plague and the inside of the car stank with clothes that hadn t been off their backs in three weeks. The summer sun pounded down on them all through the long day and the complex power train that began with a nuclear reactor and a steam turbine and ended in the individual electric motors turning the drive wheels and sprockets threw off more waste heat than most men could stand. Henley was just barely getting along. For Custis and his crew any other way of life was too remote to consider. But it had been a long run. They d stretched themselves to make it from the marginal inexpert captive farmlands at the Chicago periphery and they still had the worst part of the job to do. Maybe it would be easier to simply turn bandit himself. But that meant cutting himself off from the city at least until the next Republic needed the hire of the battlewagon. That was something Custis wouldn t have minded if oil and ammunition replacement barrels for his guns pile fuels and rations for his crew grew on the plain as thick as the grass. Bear 340 Lew he said to his driver through the command microphone and the car jerked slightly on its tracks heading on a more direct course for the nearest of the dark foothills. And so Joe Custis thought there s no help for it you have to chase after a ghost no matter what you d rather do. He looked back across the grass with its swath of crushed matted leaves forever stretching away behind the car. Here and there he knew there were flecks of oil and dried mud that had dropped from the battlewagon s underside. Here and there lay discarded ration cans their crude paper labels already curling away from the flecked tin or enamel plating. Back along that trail lay campsites each with its pits for the machineguns dismounted from the car to guard its perimeter. The ashes were cold. Rain was beginning to turn them into darker blotches on the bared black earth. The gun pits were crumbling. Who came to search these sites what patient men came out of their hiding places to investigate to see if anything useful had been left behind perhaps to find some clue to the car s purpose There were such men even outside the independent towns and the captive farms on the cities borders. Lost wandering hunters mavericks of one kind or another men like Joe Custis but without his resources. Half bandit but unorganized and forever unorganizable. Rogue males more lost than anything else that roamed the plains for the bandits at least had their organization and the independent towns had safety along with their inbreeding. But the men on the plains would die and their children would be few and dying. And the bandits couldn t go on forever. There was no weapon of their own manufacture that could stand up to a farmer s shotgun. And the independent farmer would die buried in the weakling seed he spawned afraid to reach out across the miles of empty grass toward where other independent farmers would give him short welcome scratching the ground with deteriorating tools trying to raise food here on the prairie where there were no smelters not even any hardwood trees to give him implements. And the cities . It was different elsewhere. So the Berendtsen legend said of the tightly packed East where an army could march from one city to another and establish one Law. And so also said the persistent legends of some kind of good living down in the agricultural southern plains. But in the East the cities could reach out and control the farmlands could send their citizens out to grow food or could trade machinery to the farmer and so gradually make one society. Out here it couldn t be done. Or it hadn t been done either Berendtsen s way or in whatever way the middle South was doing it. The first wave of refugees out of Chicago after the plague had set the pattern and nothing had broken it. Without readily available fuel or replacement parts for their machinery and without harvesting and planting crews the surviving farmers had soon learned to shoot on sight. It was either that or be robbed and then starve for farming was back to the point where one man and his family could grow as much food as would feed one man and his family. Some city refugees had organized into bandit groups and managed to get along killing and robbing kidnapping women no man wants to die without leaving sons. Most city refugees those who lived went back into the cities. There was ten times as much room as they needed. But even with all the warehouses in a city there was not ten times as much food. The cities scraped along. Momentary governments subjugated bits of farmland here and there. Measures of one kind and another enforced various kinds of rationing and decreed various sources of protein there were rat farms in Chicago and other things. One way or the other Chicago scraped along. But it dreamed of legends. Custis stared at the mountains. He wondered if he would ever be coming back this way again. And how many men before him he wondered had set out on the road toward Berendtsen Seven republics in Chicago. Bandits in the mountains raiding across the plains forcing the surviving farmers into a permanent state of siege. Night was falling. In some parts of the world the sun rode high in the sky or the first ripples of morning lapped the fabric of the stars. But here now night was falling and Joe Custis searched the edges of his world. CHAPTER ONE: I Matthew Garvin was a young heavy boned man who had not yet filled out to his mature frame. His grip on his automatic shotgun was not too sure. But he had been picking his way through the New York City streets for two days skirting the litter and other obstructions left by the plague and the shotgun made him feel a great deal more comfortable for all that he still half expected a New York City policeman to step out from behind vie of the slewed abandoned cars or from one of the barricaded doorways and arrest him for violating the Sullivan Act. His picture of the world s condition was fragmentary. Most of it was gleaned from remembered snatches of the increasingly sporadic news over the TV. And he had heard those only while lying in delirium on a cot beside the room where his dying father kept death watch over the other members of his family. He had not truly come back to alertness until well after his father was dead and the TV was inoperative though it was still switched on. All he could remember his father telling him in all those days. was If you live don t forget to go armed. He was certain now that his father probably delerious himself had repeated it over and over clutching his arm urgently and slurring the words the way a man will when his rationality tries to force a message out through an almost complete loss of control. And when he had finally wakened and known he was going to live Matthew Garvin had found the Browning lying on the floor beside his cot together with a box of shells still redolent of woodsmoke and old cleaning solvent. His father s old hunting knapsack had been there too stocked with canned food waterproof matches a flashlight a compass and a hunting knife almost as if Matthew and he had been going to leave for the North Woods together. They had been doing that every deer season for the past four years. But this time it was his father s gear that Matthew would be carrying and it was the big Browning instead of the rifle. He had not questioned his father s judgment. He had strapped the knapsack on and taken the shotgun and then he had left the apartment he could not have stayed though he did his best to leave his family in some semblance of decent repose. At first he had not quite known what he was going to do. Looking out the window he could see nothing moving on the streets. A pall of gray mist hung over Manhattan part fog part smoke from where something was burning and had not been put out. He had gone and taken the heavy binoculars from his father s closet and studied the two rivers. They were almost clear of floating debris of various kinds and so he assumed the great wave of dying was over those who still lived would live. He had probably been one of the last to be sick. The streets and the waterfronts were a jumble of abandoned and wrecked equipment cars trucks boats barges much as he had last seen them on the night when he had realized he too was at last growing feverish and dry mouthed. That had been after the government had abandoned the continual effort to keep the streets clear and people in their homes. Here and there some of the main avenues had been opened with cars and buses towed out of the way lying as they had been dropped on the sidewalks. He could see one crane a Metropolitan Transit Authority company emergency truck where it had stopped with a bright blue sports car still dangling from the tow hook. So there had not been time after he fell ill for anything to litter up the opened streets again. He tried the radio he had read enough novels of universal disaster to know nothing would come of it and for a while he had been undecided but his human nature had won out and there had been nothing. He listened for the hum he associated with the phrase carrier wave and did not hear that either. He looked down at the baseboard and saw that someone probably his father had ripped the line cord out of the wall so savagely that the bared ends of the wire dangled on the floor while the gutted plug remained in the socket. But he had not repaired it. The dead TV was good enough in the end he remembered the final government announcement had been quite explicit the President s twanging measured voice had labored from phrase to phrase explaining calmly that some would surely survive that no disease however impossible to check could prove fatal to all human beings everywhere but that the survivors should not expect human civilization to have endured with them. To those of you who will live to re make this world the President had said my only promise is this: That with courage with ingenuity with determination above all with adherence to the moral principles that distinguish Man from the animals the future is one of hope. The way will be hard. The effort will be great. But the future waits to be realized and with God s help it shall be realized it must be realized But that had not been much to go on. He had put the binoculars back if someone had asked him he would have replied that certainly he planned to come back to the apartment he would not have stopped to think about it until he had actually heard his positive words and he had left climbing down flight after flight of stairs. ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo He was on his way to Larry Ruark s apartment he had realized at some point on his journey. Larry lived about fifty blocks uptown by no means a difficult walk and was a close friend from the time they had gone through the first two years of college together before Larry had gone on to medical school. He had no way of knowing whether Larry had survived or not. But it seemed to him the chances were reasonably good. In part they seem so to him because he was associating immunity with the word doctor and because he needed to find a friend alive an undergraduate medical student to whom he gave an inappropriate title because that made his friend likelier to have lived. But in part he knew his reasoning was sound. Larry had been young and in excellent health that was bound to have improved his chances. Matthew Garvin had thought that surely he might find out more about the world on his way to Larry s. He had expected to meet other survivors and talk to them. He had expected that between them he and the other young generally sound people could piece together an accurate idea of what the world s condition was. There was nothing to fear from contact with each other after all either they had the plague and would die or had successfully resisted it and would not. The time of the Carrier Panic before it had been proven the disease agent whatever it was did not need to be transmitted from human hand to hand that ugly time was over. But he had begun to wonder whether the other survivors were aware of that. And he had begun to wonder whether some of them might not have become insane. For though he sometimes heard quick footsteps whose direction was disguised by echoes he had been able to meet no one face to face and when he had stood and shouted no one answered. He knew he had come late to the inevitable sickness. He wondered what it was the more experienced survivors might have found out that would make them act like this. Once he turned a corner and found someone who had survived the plague. It was a young man canted awkwardly against a subway railing dead with fresh blood congealing around the stab wounds in his chest and a torn grocery bag empty trampled at his feet. The streets were badly blocked in places and he had been moving more and more slowly out of the same caution that made him hole up and lock himself in a truck cab overnight. So it was the next day when he saw the placards. He was only a few blocks from Larry s then. The placards were Civil Defense Emergency Posters turned around to expose their unprinted backs. Hand lettered on them now were the words Live Medic and an arrow pointing uptown. After that Matthew Garvin hurried. He was sure Larry Ruark had survived now. And the placards were the first trace of some kind of organization. He had begun to think of the world as a place much like a locked museum at night...except for a sporadic distant hint of sounds that were too much like isolated gunshots. He had heard the sounds of police machineguns during the Carrier Panic and the deep thud of demolition as the Isolation Squads tried to cordon off the stricken areas that had been quite early in the game but this was different. This was like the sound of foot snapped twigs in a forest infested by Indians. The trail of placards led to Larry Ruark s apartment house. The barricade in the doorway had been pulled aside and the front door stood open. It was the first open barricade he had seen since he had set out on his journey though he had caught occasional glimpses of motion behind the windows of barricaded houses. He wondered if those inside had yet made their first ventures outside. It had begun to occur to him that perhaps they had perhaps they had pulled down the barricades and then after a day or so put them back up. They were a defensive measure of course in the last days of the plague the sick the drunk and the stupid had roamed the streets wherever the diminishing police could not turn them back. Matthew Garvin himself had gone through a bout of hysteria in which he had laughed over and over again Now there won t be any war and the urge to go out to get drunk to smash something to break loose and kick out at all the things society had erected in the expectation of war the Shelter signs the newspaper kiosks the computer and television stores the motion picture theaters all the things that battened on desperation that need to show that suddenly he too understood how miserably frightened they had all been under the shell of calm all that had boiled and shaken inside him and if he had been just a little bit different he too would have been roaring down the flamelit streets and there would have been a need of barricades against him. He moved tentatively up the steps to the foyer of Larry Ruark s apartment house. The foyer and the stairs up were clean swept mopped dusted. The brass handle on the front door had been polished. In the foyer stood another placard: Live Medic Upstairs. There was nothing else to see and there were no sounds. He padded up the stairs using only the balls of his feet to touch the treads. Yesterday he would not have done that. He did not entirely understand why he did it now. But it was appropriate to his environment and he was young enough to be quite sensitive about conforming to the shape of the world around him. Larry s apartment was at the head of the stairs. The sign on the door said: Medic Knock and Come In. It was Larry Matthew rapped his knuckles quickly on the paneling and pushed the door in the same motion. Lar The thin hard arm went around his throat from behind. He realized that in another moment he was going to be pulled backward off balance and helpless. He jumped upward and that broke the hold enough for him to turn around still inside the circle of the arm. He and Larry Ruark stared into each other s eyes. Oh my God Larry whispered. He lowered the hand with the butcher knife in it. Matthew Garvin stood panting still in his friend s embrace. Then Larry let his other arm sag and Matthew stepped back quickly. Matt...Jesus Dear God Matt Larry pushed back against the door and sagged on it his eyes round. I saw somebody coming and I figured and it turned out to be you He was emaciated his hair always speckled with early gray was wild and grizzled. His eyesockets were the color of dirty blue velvet. His clothes were stained and shapeless on his bones. Matt s nostrils were still singed with the old mildewed smell of them. Larry what the hell is this Larry rubbed his face the butcher knife dangling askew between his fingers. Listen Matt I m sorry. I didn t know it was you. Didn t know it was me. Oh God damn it I can t talk. Sit down someplace will you Matt I ve I need a minute. All right Matt said but did not sit down. The room was furnished with an old leather couch two shabby armchairs and a coffee table on which sooty old magazines were laid out in a meticulous pattern. Very little light filtered through the cracks between the window drapes. Listen Matt is there any food in that knapsack Some. You hungry Yes. No Anyway that can wait. I just almost killed you is this a time to talk about food We ve got to work this out you ve got to look do you know I can see the George Washington Bridge from my bedroom window Matt cocked his head and frowned. I mean. I watched the people going out across the bridge. It went on for days after the plague died down. They went climbing over the old Isolation Squad barricades. and all the cars and cadavers. I timed it. Something like twenty or thirty an hour. And they weren t going in groups. Twenty or thirty people an hour in Manhattan each got the idea of getting out into the country. They were hungry Matt. And I saw a lot of them coming back some of them were crawling. I m sure they had gunshot wounds. Something over there is turning them back. You know what it s got to be It s got to be the survivors on the Jersey side. They don t have any spare food either. And that means the surviving farmers are shooting them when they try to go for food. Larry Listen food shipments into Manhattan stopped seven weeks ago Warehouses Matt said like a man trying to deliver an urgent message in the depths of a nightmare watching the knife swing back and forth between Larry s fingers. There are people in them. Holed up during the plague. I was just coming out of it then I couldn t get down the stairs yet but there was still a little bit of radio on the Police band and the warehouses were full of them. Dead dying and live ones. They won t let anybody in. You ve got to remember Manhattan is full of crowd control weapons and ammunition. You could pick em up anywhere all you had to do was pry the dead fingers away. They re all gone now of course they ve all been picked up. Anybody who has a food supply is armed. He has to be. If he isn t some armed man has killed him for it by now. There s got to be food. There were two million people on this island There were food stores on every block. They had to have some source of ready supply You can t tell me there still isn t enough here to keep people eating for a while at least. How many of us are there left Larry shook his head. Two hundred thousand maybe. If the national average held good under urban conditions. I don t think it did. I think maybe there s really a hundred fifty thousand. Larry shook his head exhaustedly and walked away from the door with a clumsy stiff jointed gait. He dropped into one of the armchairs and let the knife fall on the footworn carpet beside him. Look you re all right. He motioned toward Matt s gun. You fall into this place naturally. But what about me Look you think about it. Sure there s got to be food around. But who knows where The people who d know are keeping it for themselves. All the obvious places are being emptied. And even when you have it you have to get it home. And if you get it home how long is it before you have to go out again You can t even have water unless you carry it in All right so you carry it. Matt tapped his canteen. He had filled it from the water cooler in an abandoned office this morning and purified it with a Halazone tablet from the kit in his pack. And you have to go look for food because there aren t any more delivery boys. So what There s plenty of time every day. And there s time to think too. You know what this is what you re doing It s panic. All right it s panic It s panic When an animal chews its leg off in a trap too you trying to tell me it didn t need to Larry we re not animals Larry Ruark laughed. Matt watched him. Very gradually he was calming but there was still a sound like a riptide in his ears. He knew he would remember this conversation later better than he was hearing it now. He knew he would act now in ways that later thinking would improve on. But for the moment he could not stop his eyes from trying to watch Larry and the knife at the same time. And he could not keep from trying to settle it now right now before it became intolerable. You can t tell me anybody who can move is anywhere near starving to death in Manhattan. It ll be years before the last food is gone. What do I care if I can t get it I ve got to think my way Larry s eyes jerked down toward where the knife lay near his hand as it dangled over the arm of the chair. You you can go hunt for it. Listen you know what they d do to me if I went outside If they found out I was a med student You know why I put those signs out all around this neighborhood It s not for the people with the gunshot wounds and the inflamed appendixes and the abscessed teeth sure some of em may be desperate enough to come here for help. But you know how I get most of my protein I get it from people who come up here looking to kill me. You know why Because we lied to em. The whole medical profession lied to em. It told them it would lick the plague. It told them that a world full of medical scientists couldn t miss coming up with the solution. And what happened You remember the last days of the plague the Isolation Squads the barricades the machineguns and flamethrowers around the hospitals Sure we told em we were only protecting the research facilities from the mobs when we fortified the hospitals. But they know better. They know their mothers and their wives and kids died because we wouldn t let em in. What do they care about things like a plague that hits the whole world from end to end inside three days A plague everybody gets. A plague that forces a delirious fever on your body so you can t see into the barrel of your microscope or hold two beakers steady All they know is the biggest piles of corpses were lying around the aid stations and the research centers. And I was there all right. I didn t have the training to do any good on the research side so they gave me a Thompson submachinegun and that s how I did my part until I wore it out. And by then nobody minded if I went home. There wasn t much of anybody to mind. I know what they want when they come up here. They want the dumb Medic who s idiot enough to advertise. Well they don t get him. No sir. And that s how I get my protein. Cause it s all protein you know I mean you wouldn t eat a mouse or an earthworm would you Matt But it s all protein. Your body wouldn t care where it came from. It would take it and use it to keep alive and be grateful. All your body wants to do is live another day. But I m not doing too well lately. They re getting wise to me in the neighborhood and all I m getting now is transients. I ll have to think of something new pretty soon. You and me. Larry s eyes darted toward Matt. You and me we d make out together. You can go out and forage and I ll stay here and make sure nobody takes it away. How about that Matt Garvin took a step toward the door. Larry s hand moved aimlessly toward the knife. He pretended not to see what his hand was doing. Please Larry Matt said. I just want to go. Listen you can t go now. We ve got plans to make. You re the only guy I can trust Larry I just want to get out that door me and my shotgun too. I ll throw the knife at your back on the stairs Matt. I will. I ll walk down backwards. That won t be easy. If you slip you re a loser. I guess so. Matt Garvin opened the door and backed out. He backed all the way down the stairs without tripping and watched the silent motionless door of Larry Ruark s apartment. Down on the street he ran silently ripping down placards as he went. II Fourteenth Street lay quiet under the dawn. From the East River across to the Hudson it ran its blue gray length between the soundless buildings. Except for a flock of lean restless pigeons that circled momentarily above Union Square and then fluttered back to earth it was sucked empty of life and motion like a watercourse running between dry banks. The wind of Autumn swept down the width of the paralyzed street carrying trash. East of First Avenue lines of parked cars bleached at the flank of Stuyvesant Town. Here finally something moved. The creeping edge of sunlight touched Matt Garvin s eyes as he lay asleep in the back of a taxi. Garvin was instantly awake but at first only a momentary twitch of his eyelids betrayed him to the day. Then his hand closed on the stock of his shotgun and he raised his body slowly. His eyes probed at the streets and buildings around him. He smiled in thin satisfaction. For the moment he was all that lived on Fourteenth Street. He slid his legs off the folded backs of the lowered jump seats and sat up. The cab was safe enough with the windows up and the doors locked no one could have forced them silently but there could have been men out there waiting for the time when he had to come out. He bent over unstrapped his knapsack and took out his canteen and a tin of roast beef. He opened the roast beef and began to eat raising his head from time to time to be sure that no one was slipping toward him along the line of parked cars. He ate without waste motion taking an occasional swallow of the flat tasting but safe soda water in his canteen. He had run out of Halazone long ago. When the roast beef was finished he repacked his knapsack strapped it on his upper back and after one more look at his surroundings clicked up the latch on the taxi door and silently moved out onto the cobblestoned island that was one of a series separating Fourteenth Street from the peripheral drive around Stuyvesant Town. Cars were parked on both sides of the narrow island their bumpers almost touching. The big red buildings towered upward on Garvin s left as he moved eastward along the housing project s edge but the cars on that side protected him from any kind of accurate fire from the lower floors. In order to aim at him from the upper stories a man would have had to lean so far out of his window as to expose himself to fire from the opposite side of the street. Garvin himself was protected from the south side of Fourteenth Street by the line of cars on his right. Moreover one man and his knapsack were not generally a worthwhile target any longer. Still worthwhile or not he picked his route carefully and held to a low weaving crouch. Holding the shotgun at high port he moved rapidly eastward between the twin lines of cars his eyes never still his feet in their tennis shoes less noisy than the wind his head constantly turning as he listened for what his eyes might miss. And it was his ears that warned him at the corner of Avenue A. He heard the quiet sound of a store s latched door which was bound to snap its lock no matter how carefully eased into place and then there was the friction of leather shoes on a sidewalk. He stopped sheltered by an automobile s curved flanks and the shotgun s muzzle swung almost automatically toward the source of the sound. He straightened his back cautiously and looked across the street through the car s rear windows his breath sucking in through his teeth as he saw her. The girl was slim sprinting across the sidewalk in nervously choppy strides as she left the drugstore. Her face was white and her eyes were terrifiedly wide. Obviously panicked at being out in the street during daylight she was running blindly straight for where Garvin was crouched trying to reach the comparative safety of the island before she was seen. He took two rapid steps backward before he realized there was no place for him to hide and the girl was across the street before he could think of anything else to do. Then she was on the island ducking into the shelter of the double row of cars and it was too late to think. She hadn t seen him yet. She was too intent on safety to see danger until he straightened out of his instinctive crouch letting the shotgun s muzzle drop. Then her mouth opened her eyes becoming desperate and he saw the unexpected gun in her other hand. Hey He shouted in surprise as he charged forward throwing his arm out. He felt the shock of his forearm deflecting her wrist upward and then the gun jumped in her hand the echoes pattering like a hard shoe dance down the empty street. His charge threw their bodies together and his arm hooked like a whip and pinned her gun arm out of the way. His thighs snapped together in time to take the kick of her driving knee but he could only dig his chin into her shoulder and try to shelter his face against the side of her head as her other hand clawed at his ear and neck. Then his momentum overcame her balance and they were safely down on the island s cobblestones. Stay down he grunted urgently as he twisted around and slapped the gun out of her hand catching it before it could be damaged against the stones. She sobbed an incoherent reply and her nails drew fresh blood from his face. He fell back but threw his shoulder into her stomach in time to keep her from forcing her way back to her feet. Haven t you got any sense he cursed out hoarsely as she tried to break away. He flung an arm out and kept her scrambling fingers from his eyes. Every gun in the neighborhood s waiting for us to stand up and get shot. Oh She stopped struggling immediately and this unexpected willingness to believe him was more surprising than his first glimpse of her. As her arms dropped he rolled away wiping the blood off his stinging face. For Christ s sake he panted What did you think I was going to do Her face turned color. I Don t be stupid he cut her off harshly. Do you have any idea how many women were left alive by that damn virus or whatever it was She winced away from the sound of his voice surprising him again. How did she manage to stay alive this naive and sensitive Raping a girl sort of ruins your chances for striking up a permanent acquaintance with her he went on in a gentler voice and was oddly pleased to see a smile lightly touch her face. Here. He tossed her gun into her lap. Reload. What She was staring down at it. Reload damn it he repeated with rough persistence. You re one round short. She picked the weapon up gingerly but snapped the cylinder out as if she knew what she was doing and he felt free to forget her for the moment. He pulled his legs up under him and got into a squat crouch turning his upper body from side to side as he tried to spot the sniper he was almost sure the sound of her shot had attracted. One man was a doubtful target but the two of them were worth anyone s attention and he did not trust that anyone s eyesight to save the girl. The windows of Fourteenth Street looked blankly back at him. For some reason he shuddered slightly. Do you see anyone the girl asked softly surprising him again for he had forgotten her as an individual even while adding her as a factor to the problem of safety. He shook his head. No. That s what worries me. Somebody should have been curious enough to look out. Probably somebody was and now he s picked up a rifle. Apprehension overlaid her face. What re we going to do I ve got to get home. She fumbled in her jumper pockets until she found a tube of sulfa ointment. My father s hurt. He nodded briefly. At least that explained why she d been outside. Then he grimaced. Gunshot wound Yes. Thought so. That stuff s no good. Not anymore. There were so many kinds of things in the drugstore she said uncertainly. This was the only one I was sure of. Is it too old He shrugged. Way past its expiration date that s for sure. And I ve got a hunch we re up against whole new kinds of bacteria that won t even blink at the stuff. Every damn antibiotic in the world was turned loose I guess and what lived through that is what we ve got to deal with. These days my vote s for soap and carbolic acid. Bad he asked suddenly. What Is he hurt bad Her lip trembled. He was shot through the chest three days ago. He grunted then looked back at the blank windows again. Look will you stay here until I get back I want to see you home. You need it he added bluntly. Where are you going Drugstore. Her lips parted in bewilderment. The innocence of trust did not belong on this deadly street. Her simple acceptance of everything he told her even her failure to shoot him when he gave her back the gun reacted in him to create a baseless but deep and sudden anger. To make a phone call he added with brutal sarcasm. Then he managed to smooth his voice. If something happens don t you do anything but turn around and go home understand The anger fading but still strong he jumped to his feet and began to run without waiting for an answer. Stupid kid he thought as he weaved across the street. She had absolutely no business running around loose. He crossed the white center line and no one had fired yet. If the snipers had any brains they d wait until he came out. They d be able to judge whether his load was worth bothering with. How had she managed to live this long His sole slammed into the curb and he drove himself across the sidewalk. Just my luck to get shot by somebody stupid. He tore the door open and flung himself into the drugstore catching one of the fountain stools for balance as he stopped. He leaned on it for a moment while he waited for his breath to slow. They were probably figuring the smart percentage. One man with his pack wasn t temptation enough. He and the girl definitely were once they were close together again where a simple dash under cover of night would reach their bodies. But the girl by herself was safe from all but the myopic and he separated from her was also moderately safe. A handful of packages from the drugstore might tip the scales against him until you stopped to consider that the best thing to do was to wait until he had rejoined the girl in which case if the potential sniper already had a woman.... Sick with calculations he slammed his palms against the edge of the Formica counter top and pushed himself away from the fountain. Among the jumbled shelves he found a bottle of germicide some cotton swabs and bandages. He packed them carefully into his knapsack cursing himself for not asking whether the bullet was still in the wound. He shrugged as he realized that surgical forceps were an unlikely instrument to encounter here drugstore or no. Then he turned toward the outline of the doorway light in the store s darkness and stopped. The store was safe he found himself thinking. The girl had proved that for him by coming out alive. He had reached it and now that he was in it was an easily defended place. Outside lay Fourteenth Street a gray bend of sidewalk swept partially clean by the wind and the dusty blue black of the street s asphalt. Beyond it hunched the sheer blank windowed brick buildings and beyond these the ice blue sky. There were no waiting rifles not where he would be likely to see them. He looked about him. There must be something else he could find that might be useful. If he looked around he was pretty sure to stumble across something. If he looked around long enough. If he waited. He laughed once shortly at himself and stepped out into the street breaking into a run as frantic as the girl s had been his chest pumping his stride off balance from the shifting weight of the pack the sweat breaking out on his face and evaporating icily. He realized that he was afraid and then he was across the street and safely on the island sprawled out on his panting stomach between the cars. He looked up at the girl and suddenly understood that his fear had been of losing the future. He waited a few moments for the pumping of his lungs to slow. The girl was looking at him with some incomprehensible expression shining on her face. Finally he said Now let s get you home. You start and I ll cover you from behind. The girl nodded wordlessly putting aside whatever it was that she had been going to say and turned up the island in the direction from which he had come. He followed her and they worked their way back toward First Avenue neither of them speaking except for his occasional growled monosyllable whenever her crouch grew dangerously shallow. ooooooooooooooo Moving quietly they reached a point opposite the entrance to the Stuyvesant building on the corner of First Avenue. The girl stopped and Garvin closed the ten yard interval between them crouching beside her. He felt his left hand s fingers twitch as the indecisive restlessness of his muscles searched for an outlet. The girl could simply leave him at this point and it might be years before he saw another woman particularly one who was free. At least he assumed she was free. What kind of man would let his woman go out alone like this If she had one he didn t deserve to keep her. Garvin laughed at himself again disregarding her surprise at the short sharp bark. It was still dark when I went down to the drugstore she said her voice betraying her helplessness. But it took me so long to find anything. How are we going to get back across to the building Once more Garvin s trained habits of thought protested their momentary shock at her foolhardiness. She had already betrayed the fact that her home was virtually undefended. Now she seemed to have unquestionably assumed that he was going home with her. He shook his head even while he jeered at himself because he was appalled at the girl for doing what he had feared she would not. The girl was looking at him questioningly and again there was something else in her glance as well. A flicker of annoyance creased his cheeks at his failure to understand it completely. He repeated the head shake. Going to have to run for it. It ll be easier with two of us though he said. You ll go first. I ll cover you and then you ll keep an eye out when I try it. If you see anything shoot at it. He hefted his shotgun grimacing. It was a good defensive weapon suited to fighting in stores or houses but its effective range was pitifully short. He wished now that he had a rifle instead. He shrugged and made sure the shotgun was off safety. He jerked his head toward the building. Let s go. All right she said huskily. She turned and slipped between two cars put her head down and ran blindly across the drive and sidewalk down the short flight of steps to the terrace and into the building s doorway where she stopped and waited for Garvin. He took a quick look around saw nothing and followed her running as fast as he could his legs scissoring in long zig zagging strides his back muscles tense with his awareness of how exposed he was. He reached the steps his momentum carrying him sideward and had to catch himself against the rail while a sudden spray of bullets from across the street crashed into the concrete steps raising an echo of hammer blows to the flat wooden sounds of gunfire. Lead streaks smeared across the concrete and puffs of dust drifted slowly away. Then he was under the rail and in the shelter of the sunken terrace his hands and face bleeding from the laceration of the hedge while his breath panted past the dirt in his open mouth and his heart pumped rapidly and loudly. The girl began firing back. He twisted violently breaking free of the thousand teeth the hedge had sunk into his clothes and stared at the girl in the doorway one leg folded under her the other bent and thrust out her left hand gripping her knee and the muzzle of her revolver supported at her left elbow. As if she were firing at a paper target set up on the opposite rooftop. She squeezed off two shots and waited. Get out of that doorway he shouted. Inside the building The girl shook her head slightly her eyes on the rooftop. Her lower lip was caught between the tips of her teeth and her face was expressionless. There was no answering fire from the rooftop. I can t see him anymore she said. He must have jumped behind a chimney. Sweating Garvin squirmed his legs into position. Try and keep him pinned down he shouted across the terrace and jumping to his feet sprinted for the doorway in a straight line trying to cover the distance as rapidly as possible. He threw one glance across the street saw no movement on the roof and pulled the girl to her feet with a scoop of his arm. He flung the lobby door open and they stumbled through together into shelter. He slumped against the lobby wall his ribs clammy with the perspiration streaming down the sides of his chest. He looked at the girl his eyes shadowed by the darkness of the lobby while his breathing slowed to normal. Once again she was neglecting to reload the gun. And yet she had squatted in that doorway and done exactly the right thing to keep them from being killed. Done it in her own characteristic way of course exposing herself as a sitting target not only to the attacker but to anyone else as well. Somewhere she had learned the theory of covering fire and had the courage to apply it in spite of her woeful ignorance of actual practice. Thus far he had simply thought of her as being completely out of place on the street. Now he found himself thinking that with a little training she might not be so helpless. She looked up at him suddenly catching his glance and he had to say something rather than continue to stand silent. Thanks. You take your chances but thanks. I couldn t just let him.... She trailed the sentence away and did not start another. Pretty dumb guy whoever he was Garvin said. Yes. She stared off at nothing obviously merely filling time and the thought suddenly struck Garvin that she was waiting for something. I can t understand him she said abruptly. Neither can I Garvin said lamely. Perhaps she had not meant to let him in the apartment. It was quite possible and logical that she would ask him to help her get into the building but would leave him then. Was she waiting for him to give her the supplies and leave Or didn t she know what to do now with the sniper waiting outside He cursed himself for not taking the initiative one way or the other but plunged on. Exposing himself on a roof like that. Somebody s sure to pick him off. I didn t mean.... But you re right. He is being foolish. No of course she hadn t meant what he meant. Garvin cursed himself again. To the girl it was incomprehensible that anyone would want to kill someone else. He to whom it was merely stupid to expose oneself to possible fire had completely misunderstood her. He was a predator weighing every move against the chance of becoming prey. She was a fledgling who had fallen out of her nest into his hungry world. He caught himself sharply derision in his mind. But maudlin or not he nevertheless did not want to leave her now with no one to protect her. She looked at him again still waiting. He did not say anything but kept his eyes away from her face waiting in turn. You can t go back out there now she said finally hesitating. No no I can t. He tried to keep his voice noncommittal. Well I.... You can t go out. You ll have to stay here. Yes. And there it was. His fingers twisted back into his damp palm and curled in a nervous fist. Let s get going he said harshly. We have to see about your father. Her expression changed as though some cryptic apprehension had drained away in her as though she in her turn had been afraid that he would not do what she hoped he would. Her voice too was steadier and her lips rose into a gentle smile. I ll have to introduce you. What s your name He flushed startling himself. A gentle remembered voice chided him from the past. Matthew you were impolite. Matth Matt Garvin he blurted. She smiled again. I m Margaret Cottrell. Hello. He took her extended hand and clasped it awkwardly releasing it with abrupt clumsiness. He wondered if he d been right if she had not wanted him to leave and had not known what she could do to stop him if he tried. The thought was a disquieting one because he could not resolve it or reach a decision. He followed her warily as she turned toward the stairway behind the lifeless elevators. Just before she became no more than a darker shadow in the stairwell s gloom he caught the smile on her lips once more. The apartment was on the third floor. When they came out of the stairway she went to the nearest door knocked and unlocked it. She turned to Garvin who had stopped a yard away. Please come in she said. He started forward uneasily. He trusted the girl to some extent more than he trusted anyone else certainly but for two and a half years he had never opened any closed door before completely satisfying himself that nothing dangerous could be waiting behind it. Yet he could not let the girl know that he distrusted the apartment. To her it would probably seem foolish and he did not want her to think him a fool. He stepped into the doorway trying to hold his shotgun inconspicuously. Margaret The voice that came from inside the apartment was thin and strained. Worry flickered over the girl s face. I ll be right there father. I ve got someone with me. She touched Garvin s arm. Please. The second invitation broke his uncertainty and he stepped inside. He s in the back bedroom she whispered and he nodded. To his surprise he noticed that the place was heated. A kerosene range had replaced the gas stove in the kitchen beside the front door and there was a space heater in the living room. Both had their stovepipes carefully led into the apartment s ventilation ducts and the hall grille had been masked off to prevent a backdraft. Garvin pursed his lips. It was a better organized place than he d expected. They reached the bedroom doorway and Matt saw a thin man propped partially up in the bed the intensity of the eyes heightened by the same fever that paled his lips. His chest was bandaged and a wastebasket full of reddened facial tissues sat beside the bed. Garvin felt his mouth twitch into a grimace. The man was hemorrhaging. Father Margaret said This is Matt Garvin. Matt my father John Cottrell. I m glad to meet you sir Garvin said. I rather suspect that I m glad to see you too Cottrell said smiling ruefully. The pale eyes sunken deep in their dark sockets turned to Margaret. Were you the cause of all that firing outside There s a man up on the roof across the street she said. He tried to kill Matt as he was bringing me home. She pulled me out of a real mess Garvin put in. But Matt went back into the drugstore after he met me and I told him you were hurt Margaret said. Cottrell s gaze shifted back and forth between them his smile growing. After he met you eh He coughed for a moment and wiped his mouth. I d like to hear about that while Matt s looking at this. He gestured toward his bandaged chest wincing at the pull on his muscles. Meanwhile Margaret I think I m getting hungry. Could you make some breakfast The girl nodded and went out to the kitchen. Garvin slipped the pack off his back and took out the supplies from the drugstore. As he walked toward the bed he caught Cottrell s look. The man was too sick for hunger and Matt had eaten but neither of them wanted the girl in the room while they were appraising each other. Image A typical day in our fair city Cottrell said when Matt filled him in on what had happened this morning. Matt grunted. He had washed the caked blood off Cottrell s chest and swabbed out the wound which was showing signs of a mild infection unimportant in itself. The bullet was deep in Cottrell s chest too deep to be probed for. And there was a constant thin film of blood in the old man s mouth. Garvin re bandaged him and threw the dirty swabs and bandages away. Then he put the bottle of germicide down on the table beside the bed together with the rest of the supplies. He strapped his knapsack shut testing its balance in his hand. He picked up his shotgun and took the shells out of it. Being busy won t accomplish very much Matt Cottrell said quietly. Garvin looked up from the gun his breath gusting out in a tired sigh. The blood in Cottrell s throat and bronchial tubes made him cough. When he coughed the wound that bled into his respiratory system tore itself open a little farther. And more blood leaked in and made him cough harder. I don t know very much medicine Garvin said. I ve read a first aid manual. But I don t think you ve got much time. Cottrell nodded. He coughed again and smiled ruefully. I m afraid you re right. He threw the newly bloodied facial tissue into the wastebasket. Now then what are your plans The two men looked at each other. There was no point to hedging. Cottrell was going to die and Margaret would be left defenseless when he did. Garvin was in the apartment a place he never could have reached without Margaret and Margaret could not now survive without him. On the level of pure logic the problem and its answer were simple. I don t know exactly Garvin answered slowly. Before I met Margaret I was going to find myself someplace to hole up with a couple of years worth of supplies if I could gather em. There s more in this town than most people know. Or are expert enough to get away from other people Garvin looked at Cottrell with noncommittal sadness. Maybe. I ve come to my own way of looking at it. Anyhow I figure if I can hold out long enough when they start getting desperate and break into apartments if I can make it through that then somebody s bound to get things organized sooner or later and I can join em. I figure we re in for a time of weeding out. The ones who live through it will have brains enough to realize turning wolf doesn t cure hunger. Anyway now that I m here I guess I ll do what I was intending to. Carry in all the stuff I can and just hope. It isn t much he finished but it s the best I can think of. He did not mention the obstacle he was most worried about but it was one over which he had no control. Only Margaret could say what her reaction would be. Cottrell nodded thoughtfully. No it isn t much. He looked up. I think you re probably right in theory but I don t think you ll be able to follow it. Garvin frowned. I don t see why not frankly. It s pretty much what you ve been doing. Yes it is. But you re not I. Cottrell stopped to wipe his lips again and then went on. Matt I m part of a dead civilization. I believe the last prediction was that ten percent of the population might survive. Here in Manhattan under our conditions I d estimate that only half that number are alive today. Under no circumstances is that enough people to maintain the interdependence on which the old system was based. Despite the fact that we are surrounded by the generally undamaged products of twentieth and early twenty first century technology we have neither power running water nor heat. We are crippled. Garvin nodded. There was nothing new in this. But he let the old man talk. He had to have been a tough man in his day and that had to be respected. We have no distribution or communication Cottrell went on. I found this place for Margaret and myself as soon as I could equipped it and armed myself. For I knew that if I had no idea how to produce food and clothing for myself then neither did the rest of my fellow survivors. And the people who did know the farmers out on the countryside must have learned to look out only for themselves or die. And so I took to my cave fortress. If you don t know how to produce the necessities of life and can t buy them then you have to take them. When they become scarce they must be taken ruthlessly. If you have no loaf and your neighbor has two take them both. For tomorrow you will hunger again. I am a hoarder yes he said. I carried in as much food as I could continually foraged for more and was ready to defend this place to the death. I moved the kerosene stoves in and pushed the old gas range and the refrigerator down the elevator shaft so no one could tell which apartment they d come from. I did it because I realized that I that all of us had suddenly returned to the days of the cavemen. We were doomed to crouch in our little caves afraid of the saber toothed tigers prowling outside. And when our food ran low we picked up our weapons and prowled outside having become temporary tigers in our own turn. Yes sir Matt said politely. He couldn t see why old bones raked over now had any effect on him and his plans. Cottrell smiled and nodded. I know I know Matt.... But the point is as I ve said that you are not I. It was my civilization that ended. Not yours. Sir You were young enough when the plagues came so that you were able to adapt perfectly to the world. You re not what I am an average American turned caveman. You re an average caveman and you haven t turned anything yet. But you will. You can t escape it. Human beings don t stay the same all their lives though some of them half kill themselves trying to. They can t. There are other people in the world with them and try as each might to become an island unto himself it s impossible. He sees his neighbor doing something to make life more bearable putting up window screens to keep the flies out say. And then he s got to have screens of his own or else walk around covered with fly bites while his neighbor laughs at him. Or else Cottrell smiled oddly his wife nags him into it. Cottrell coughed sharply wiped his mouth impatiently and went on. Pretty soon everybody wants window screens. And some bright young man who makes good ones stops being an island and becomes a carpenter. And some other bright young man becomes his salesman. The next thing you know the carpenter s got more orders than he can handle so somebody else becomes a carpenter s apprentice. You see Matt nodded slowly. I think so. All right then Matt. My civilization ended. Yours is a brand new one. It s just beginning but it s a civilization all right. There are thousands of boys just like you all over the world. Some of them will sit in their caves maybe draw pictures on the walls before their neighbors break in and kill them. But the rest of you Matt will be doing things. What you ll do exactly I don t know. But it ll be effective. Cottrell stopped himself with an outburst of coughing and Matt bit his lip as the old man sank back on his pillows. But Cottrell resumed the thread of his explanation and now Matt understood that he was trying to leave something behind before he was too weak to say it. Cottrell had lived longer and seen more than the man who was going to become his daughter s husband. This attempt to pass on the benefit of his experience was the old man s last performance of his duty toward Margaret. I think Matt Cottrell went on that whatever you and the other young men do will produce a new culture a more fully developed civilization. And that each generation of young men after you will take what you have left them and build on it even though they might prefer to simply sit still and enjoy what they have. Because someone will always want window screens. It s the nature of the beast. And it is also in the nature of the beast that some people seeing their neighbor with his window screens will not want to make the effort of building screens of their own. Some of them will try to bring their neighbor back to the old level by killing him by destroying his improvements. But that doesn t work. If you kill one man you may kill another. And the other people around you will band together in fear and kill you. And someday after it s been demonstrated that the easiest way in the long run is to build rather than to attempt to destroy after everyone has window screens some bright young man will invent DDT and a whole new cycle will begin. Cottrell laughed shortly. Oh what a nervous day for the window screen makers that will be But the people who know how to make sprayguns will be very busy. The plague was a disaster Matt he said suddenly veering off on a new track. But disasters are not new to the race of Man. To every Act of God Man has an answer drawn from the repertoire of answers he has hammered out in the face of the disasters that have come before. It s in his nature to build dams against the flood to rebuild after the earthquake. To put up window screens. Because apparently he s uncomfortable with what this planet gives him and has to change it to improve on it to make himself just a little more comfortable. Maybe just for the irritated hope that his wife will shut up and leave him alone for a few minutes. Who knows Man hunted his way upward with a club in his hand once. You re starting with a rifle. Perhaps before your sons die the world will once again support the kind of civilization in which a young man can sit in a cave drawing pictures and depend on others to clothe and shelter him. But not now Cottrell said. Now I wouldn t entrust my daughter to anyone but a hunter. And I m making you a hunter Matt. I m leaving you this dowry: responsibility in the form of what my daughter will need to make her happy. In addition I leave you the apartment as a base of operations together with the stove the water still and the fuel oil. The First Avenue entrances to the Canarsie Line subway are on the corner. That tunnel connects with all the others under the city. They ll be a relatively safe trail through the jungle this city has become. You ll be able to get water from the seepage too. Distilled water is easily restored to its natural taste by aeration with an eggbeater. Last of all Matt you ll find my rifle beside the door. It s a mankiller. There s ammunition in the hall closet. That s your environment Matt. Change it. He stopped and sighed. That s all. Garvin sat silently watching the old man s breathing. What would Cottrell have done if his daughter hadn t brought a man home Probably he would have found comfort in the thought that across the world there were thousands of young men and women. His personal tragedy would have been trivial on that scale. Yes doubtless. But would it have made the personal failure any less painful Cottrell s philosophy was logical enough but once again in the face of actual practice logic seemed not enough. Just as now with all the philosophy expounded there was still the problem of Margaret s reaction. Sweat trickled coldly down Garvin s chest. By the way Matt Cottrell said dryly For a young man who doubtless thinks of himself as not being a cave dweller you re apparently having a good deal of trouble recognizing the symptoms of shy young love American girl style. Garvin stared at the old man who went on speaking as though he did not see his flush smiling broadly as he savored the secret joke he had discovered in his first glances at Margaret and Matt. And now if you ll call Margaret in here I think we ought to bring her up to date. He coughed violently again grimacing at this reminder but when he flung the bloody tissue into the wastebasket it was a gesture of victory. oooooooooooooooo Five months later Matt Garvin padded silently through the dark of Macy s his magnum rifle held diagonally across his body. He moved easily for his knapsack was lightly loaded even when stuffed full of the clothing he d picked up for Margaret. Though he made no sound he chuckled ruefully in his mind. First it had been one thing Margaret needed and then another until finally he was going farther and farther afield. Well it was the way things were and nothing could be done about it. A shadow flitted across the lighter area near a door and he stopped in his tracks wishing his breath were not so sibilant. Damn he d have to work out some kind of breathing technique Then the other man crossed the light again and Garvin moved forward. There was a cartridge in the magnum s chamber of course and he was ready to fire instantly. But he could almost be sure there was someone else down here prowling the counters and he didn t want to fire if it could be avoided. On the other hand if he waited much longer he might lose the man in front of him. With a mental shrug he threw the rifle up to his shoulder and shot the man down dropping instantly to the floor as he did so. The echoes shattered through the darkness. Another man fired from behind a display and charged him grunting. Matt sprang to his feet the magnum swinging butt first and broke his neck. He stopped to listen ready to fire in any direction but there was no sound. He grinned coldly. He stopped to strip the packs from both corpses before he vanished into the darkness. He thought to himself not for the first time that a rifle was too clumsy for close in combat that if the man had been able to block the magnum s swing things might easily have worked out another way. What you needed for this sort of situation was a pistol. But he was still reluctant to think of himself as a man with much occasion for one. CHAPTER TWO: Three years went by. His boots full of frigid water and his rifle securely strapped to his pack Matt Garvin was picking his way through the trash in the drainage channel between the subway rails. A hundred feet ahead of him dim light from a roof grating patched out the darkness and he ran his thumb over the safety catch of the Glock he had looted out of a littered pawnshop drawer on Eighth Avenue. He stopped for a moment opened his mouth to quiet the sound of his breath and listened. Water dripped from a girder to the concrete of the station platform ahead of him. Behind him in the tunnel at about the Third Avenue entrance he judged someone else was moving. That was all right. There were two long blocks between them and he d be out of the tunnel by the time the other man was within dangerous distance. He listened again disregarding the faint splash of water on the platform the different but equally unimportant slosh up the tunnel. He heard nothing and his eyes probing as much of the First Avenue station platforms as he could see found nothing but dim gray bounded by the converging lines of platform and roof broken by the vertical thrust of girders. Moving forward cautiously he reached a point near the beginning of the north side platform and stopped to listen again. Nothing moved. He pulled himself up on the platform and lay flat the Glock ready but there was no scrape of motion either on this platform or on the one across the tracks and none of the indistinct shadows changed their shapes as he watched them. Nevertheless as a final if somewhat inconclusive check he listened to the water droplets as they fell steadily from the girder to the platform. Sometimes a man got careless and let such a drop hit him interrupting the beat. But there was nothing. He pushed himself up off his stomach crouched and padded quietly to the tiled wall beside the foot of the stairs. A few months ago he had tried putting up a mirror there in order to see up the stairs without exposing himself. It had been smashed within a few days and he had been especially cautious for a while but no one had ever been waiting for him at the head of the stairs. He had finally come to the conclusion that someone else must have solved the problem ahead of him. A fresh corpse at the street entrance had tended to confirm this the possibility that it was only a decoy had been discarded as an overcomplication. It had been good to feel that he had an ally if only in this vague circumstantial way. It was no indication that the very man responsible might not be his killer tomorrow but there was enough of an idealist left in Garvin to allow him a certain satisfaction at this proof that there was at least one other man somewhere near who could draw the distinction between self protection and deliberate trap setting. However he had never tried to replace the mirror. He listened again as a matter of routine heard nothing and waited. After ten minutes there had still been no sound and knowing that his own approach had been silent he broke suddenly and silently for the opposite wall gun ready to fire in his hand. There was no one at the head of the stairs. He crept upward cautiously found no one at the turnstile level and reached the foot of the stairs to the street. It was unlikely that there would be anyone up there exposed to the daylight. Moreover if he made his passage into the building fast enough he was unlikely to have any trouble. Lately there had not been any considerable amount of sniping from windows. Ammunition was running low and the possible rewards of nighttime scavenging from the corpses were not usually worth the expenditure. Shifting the straps of his pack into a tighter position he moved carefully up the steps took a sweeping look at the deserted length of Fourteenth Street and zig zagged across the sidewalk at a run. His beating footsteps were a sudden interruption in the absence of sound. As he reached the entrance to his building and slipped inside the door silence returned. In the darkness of the lobby Garvin s shoes whispered on worn rubber matting for it had been raining on the last day the building staff had functioned. The firedoor on the stairwell clicked open and shut and his steps on the cement stairs were regular taps of leather as he climbed. He was not completely relaxed above the sound of his own footsteps he listened for the noise that might be made by someone else in the stairwell. Nevertheless though there were other people scattered throughout the fifty odd apartments in the building no one had ever attacked anyone else within the building itself. There had to be a sort of mutual respect between the families. The thought of fighting within the twists and corridors of the building with every closed door a deathtrap was not an attractive one. The stairwell in particular was the only means of passage to the world outside. Only a psychopath would have risked obstructing it. He reached his floor and stepped out on the landing with only a minimum amount of precaution. He crossed the corridor to his own door unlocked it and stepped inside holstering his gun. The shot roared out of the hallway leading from the bedrooms and crashed into the metal doorframe beside him. Garvin leaped sideward landing on the kitchen floor with a thud. His fingers slapped against his gun butt hooked around it and the gun was in his hand his feet under him in a slash of motion as he rolled and flung himself backward behind the stove. The breath whistled out of his nostrils and back in through his mouth in an uneven gasp. There was no sound in the apartment. He turned his head from side to side trying to find some noise a hand on a doorknob a footstep on linoleum that would tell him where his attacker was. There was nothing. The kitchen was beside the apartment door. Beyond it was the dining alcove and the living room and beyond that were two bedrooms opening on a hall that ran the remainder of the apartment s length. The bathroom was at the end of the hall its door facing the apartment entrance. The man could have fired from either bedroom or from the bathroom itself. Where was the man and where was Margaret Garvin s knuckles cracked as his hand tightened on the gun s butt and his face became almost stuporous in its lack of overt expression. Keeping his gun ready Garvin moved forward until he was barely hidden inside the kitchen doorway. His mind was busy searching out and separating the remembered impressions of the attack. The shot had been fired in the hall. It was impossible to decide how far back. Had the man moved after firing He tried to remember if there had been any other sound. No he decided. Wherever the shot had come from there the man still was. What had happened to Margaret His jaw tightened as he considered the possibilities. If she had seen the man come in she might have tried to shoot him if she had been near her gun. If not she might still be hiding somewhere in the apartment waiting for Garvin to come home. If the man had gotten in without her knowing it.... The possibilities were indeterminate he told himself savagely. Whatever had happened in any case there was nothing he could do about it now. If she were still hidden it was up to her to handle that part of the situation as her judgment dictated. There was still no sound in the apartment. How long had the man been here If Margaret was still alive and undiscovered would the hidden man stumble on her if he was forced to move on to another room Her gun was probably in the larger bedroom. Was she there waiting for a chance to get a shot in He could count on nothing to help him. He and Margaret had both learned all the tricks that life in New York demanded. He would have to act as though he could be sure that she would know how to take care of herself. But he was not sure. The silence continued. He had to get the man moving had to get some idea of his location. And he needed freedom of movement. He unstrapped his magnum and carefully set it aside. Backing up noiselessly Garvin reached behind him and opened the casement window pushing the panel slowly. The guide rod slid in its track with a muted sound. Please The voice distorted by the echoes of the hallway was frightened and anxious. Garvin snatched his hand away from the window. It was quiet again. The man had stopped. but the quavering print of his voice was still playing back in Garvin s mind. And suddenly he understood how he would feel unexpectedly trapped in a strange apartment. Every corner would have its concealed death each step its possible drastic consequence. Was the pitiful hope of whatever goods could be brought away worth the stark terror of unknown deadliness He opened the window a bit farther. Please No I.... The words rushed out of the shadowed hallway. I m I m sorry I was frightened.... Garvin s lips stretched in a reflex grin. If the man actually thought Garvin was somehow going to cross from window ledge to window ledge along the building s sheer outside wall he had to be in a room where he was open to such an attack. He couldn t be in the bathroom. The large bedroom was in the corner of the apartment. By the time a man inching along the building s face could possibly reach it it would be easy to take any number of steps to handle the situation. The man had to be in the smaller bedroom the one nearest the living room. And he had to be standing at the door. The door to the small bedroom was set flush with the wall and opened to the left. In order to defend the room or fire down the hallway the door would have to be completely open. Therefore the man s hand and arm were exposed and most probably his face as well. The man had to maintain his position in command of the hall. If Garvin could once get a clear lane of fire down the hallway it was the other man who was trapped in an exitless room. But the hall was dark while the living room had a large window the light of which would have made it suicidal for Garvin to step out. Once again he thought of Margaret. He fought down the urgency of the impulse to cry out for her. If the other man didn t know about her it was so much more advantage on Garvin s side. Grimly Garvin worked the mechanism of the Glock as noisily as possible. The sound like the slip of the window s guide rod was designed only to make his unknown adversary go into a deeper panic. There had already been a bullet in the chamber. He ejected it carefully into his palm and put it in his pocket. He pushed the window completely open thudding the guide rod home against its stop. Please Listen to me The panicked voice began again. I want to be friends. Garvin stopped. Are you listening the man asked hesitatingly. There was no accompanying sound of movement from the bedroom. The man was maintaining his position at the door. Garvin cursed silently and did not answer. I haven t talked to anybody for years. Not even shouted at them or cursed. All I ve done for six years is fight other people. Shooting running. I didn t dare show myself in daylight. It isn t worth it. Staying alive isn t worth it. Grubbing through stores for food at night. Like an animal in a garbage can The trembling voice was filled with desperate disgust. Are you listening Unseen Garvin s eyes grew bleak and he nodded. He remembered the odd touch of kinship he had felt with the man who had killed the stalker at the subway entrance. The mirror at the turn of the steps had been an attempt to make at least that small part of his environment a bit less dangerous. When the stalker smashed it it meant that there were still men who would kill for the sake of a knapsack that might or might not contain food. Please the man in the bedroom said. You ve got to understand why I I came in here. I had to find some people I could talk to. I knew there were people in this building. I got a passkey out of the Stuyvesant Town offices. I wanted to find an apartment for myself. I was going to try to make friends with my neighbors. Garvin twitched a corner of his mouth. He could picture an attempt at communication with the deadly silence and armed withdrawal that lurked through the apartments beyond his own walls. Can t you say something the panic stricken man demanded. Garvin scraped the Glock s barrel against the window frame as though an armed man were beginning to clamber out on one of the nonexistent window ledges. No Think How much food can there be left where we can get to it There are whole gangs in the warehouses and they won t let anybody near them. The rifle ammunition s getting low already. How long can we go on this way fighting over every can of peas killing each other over a new shirt We ve got to organize ourselves get a system set up try to establish some kind of government. It s been six years since the plague and nothing s been done. The man stopped for a moment and Garvin listened for the sound of motion but there was nothing. I I m sorry I shot at you. I was frightened. Everybody s frightened. They don t trust anybody. How can they Talk talk talk What have you done with Margaret damn you But please please trust me. The unsteady voice was on the point of breaking. I want to be friends. Despite his fear the man obviously wasn t going to move from his position until he was absolutely sure that Garvin was out on the window ledges. Even then.... Garvin pictured the man trembling against the door not sure whether to run or stay keeping watch on the hallway ready to spin around at the sound of breaking glass behind him. He was frightened now. But had he been Was it only after that one shot had missed and the self made trap had snapped home that the terror had begun to tremble in his throat What had happened to Margaret Garvin moved back to the kitchen doorway. Come out he said. oooooooooooooooooooo There was a sigh from the bedroom door a ragged exhalation that might have been relief. The man s shoes shuffled on the linoleum of the bedroom floor and his heel struck the metal sill. He moved out into the hall thin his hollowed eyes dark against his pale face. oooooooooooooooooo Garvin pointed the Glock at his chest and fired twice. The man held his hands against himself and fell into the living room. Garvin sprang forward and looked down at him. He was dead. Matt The door of the hall closet rebounded against the wall and Margaret clasped her arms around Garvin. She buried her teeth in his shoulder for a moment. I heard him fumbling with the key. I knew it wasn t you and it was too far to the bedroom. Garvin slipped his gun into its holster and held her feeling the spasmodic shake of her body as she cried. The hall closet was almost directly opposite the door to the small bedroom. She hadn t even dared warn him as he came in. He looked down at the man again over Margaret s shoulder. One of the man s hands were tightly clasped around a Colt that must have been looted from a policeman s body. You poor bastard Garvin said to the corpse. You trusted me too far. Margaret looked up as pale as the man had been when he stepped out to meet Garvin s fire. Matt Hush There wasn t anything else you could do. He was a man a man like me. He was scared and he was begging for his life Garvin said. He wanted me to trust him but I was too scared to believe him. He shook himself sharply. I still can t believe him. There wasn t anything else to do Matt Margaret repeated insistently. You didn t have any way of knowing whether I was all right or not. You ve said it yourself. We live the way we have to by rules we had to make up. He was in another man s house. He broke the rules. Garvin s mouth shaped itself into a twisted slash He couldn t take his eyes off the dead man. We re good with rules he said. The poor guy heard somebody so he took a shot at me. And what could I do Somebody tried to kill me in my own home. It didn t really matter after that what he said or did or what I thought. I had to kill him. Any way at all. He pulled away from Margaret and stood beside the corpse for a moment his arms swinging impatiently as he tried to decide what to do. Then he moved forward as though abruptly breaking out of an invisible shell. His footsteps echoed loudly in the hall and then he was back from the bedroom a sheet dangling out of his clenched hand. Matt what re you going to do Margaret asked her voice almost a whisper as her puzzled eyes tried to read his face. He bent and caught the dead man under the arms. I m putting up a No Trespassing sign. He dragged the corpse to the living room window knotted one end of the sheet to the metal centerpost and slung the remainder of the sheet around the dead man s chest leaving just enough slack so his lolling head would hang out of sight. Then he lowered the corpse through the open window. Garvin turned. Suddenly all his muscles seemed to twist. I hope this keeps them away I hope I never have to do this again. Even with the distance between them Margaret could easily see him trembling. I ll do it again if I have to he went on. If they keep coming I ll have to kill them. After a while I ll be used to it. I ll shoot them down with children in their arms. I ll use their own white flags to hang them up beside this one. I ll ignore the sound of their voices. Because they can t be trusted. I know they can t be trusted because I know I can t be trusted. He stopped turned and looked at Margaret. You realize what that poor guy wanted You know who he sounded like Like me that s who like me Matt Garvin the guy who just wanted a place to live in peace. Matt I know what he said he Hey Hey you in there The muffled voice came blurredly into the apartment followed by a series of sharp knocks on the other side of the wall that separated this apartment from the next. Margaret stopped but Garvin slid forward his boots making no sound on the floor as he moved quietly over to the wall. The knocking started again. You Next door. What s all that racket Garvin heard Margaret start to say something. His hand flashed out in a silencing gesture and he put his ear to the wall. His right hand came down and touched the Glock s holster. I m warning you. He could hear the voice more clearly. Speak up or you ll never come out of there alive. I m mighty particular about my neighbors and if you ve knocked off the ones I had I ll make damn sure you don t enjoy their place very long. Garvin s mouth opened. He d known there was someone in there of course but up to now there had never been any break in the silence. Well The voice was impatient. I ve got the drop on you. My wife s in the hall right now with a gun on your door. And I can get some dynamite in a big hurry. Garvin hesitated. It meant giving the other man an advantage. Hurry up But there was nothing else he could do. It s all right he finally said speaking loudly enough for the other man to hear. There was somebody in here but we took care of it. That s better the other man said but his voice was still suspicious. Now let s hear your wife say something. Margaret moved up to the wall. She looked at Garvin questioningly and he reluctantly nodded. Go ahead he said. This is Margaret Garvin. We re we re all right. She stopped then seemed to reach a decision and went on with a rush. My husband s name is Matt. Who are you That wasn t right. Garvin frowned. She was getting too close to an infringement on the silent privacy that had existed for so long now. Men were no longer brothers. They were distant nodding acquaintances. Surprisingly the other man did not hesitate a perceptible length of time before answering. My name s Gustav Berendtsen. My wife s name is Carol. The tone of his voice had changed and now Garvin thought he could make out the indistinct trace of a pleased chuckle in Berendtsen s voice. Took care of it did you Good. Damn good Nice to have neighbors you can depend on. The voice lost some of its clarity as Berendtsen obviously turned his head away from his side of the wall. Hey Toots you can put that cannon down now. They straightened it out themselves. Out in the hall a safety catch clicked and no longer careful footsteps moved back from the Garvins door. Then Berendtsen s door opened and shut and after a moment there was a shy voice from beside Berendtsen on the other side of the wall. Hello. I m Carol Berendtsen. Is She stopped as though she too was as unsure of herself as Margaret and Garvin were here in this strange situation that had suddenly materialized from beyond the rules. But she stopped only for a moment Is everything all right Sure everything s all right Toots Berendtsen s voice cut in from behind the wall. I ve been telling you those were damn sensible people living in there. Know how to mind their own business. People who know that know how to make sure nobody else tries minding it either. All right Gus all right Garvin and Margaret heard her say her low voice still carrying well enough to be heard through the masonry. I just wanted to hear them say it. And then she added something in an even lower voice. It s been a long time since I heard people just talking and Garvin s hand tightened on Margaret s as they heard her. Sure. Toots sure. But I kept telling you it wasn t always going to be that way. I His voice rose up to a louder pitch. Hey Garvins I gotta idea. Also got a bottle of Haig and Haig in here. Care for some We ll come over he added hurriedly. Garvin looked at Margaret s strained face and trembling lips. He could feel his own face tightening. Please Matt Margaret asked. She was right. It was too big a chance not to take. Sure Hon he said. But get my rifle and cover the door from the hall he added softly. All right he said raising his voice. Come over. Right Berendtsen answered. Be a minute. The words were jovial enough Garvin thought. He heard Margaret move back into the hall and his mind automatically registered the slight creak of the sling s leather as she lifted the rifle to cover the door. And then he heard Carol Berendtsen s voice faintly through the wall. I I don t know she was saying to Gus her voice uncertain. Will it be all right I mean I haven t talked to another woman in.... What ll she think I haven t got any good clothes. And there s a strange man in there... Gus I look so I m ashamed And Gus Berendtsen s voice clumsy but gentle its power broken into softness. Aw look Toots they re just people like us. You think they ve got any time for frills I bet you re dressed just fine. And what s to be ashamed of in being a woman And then there was a moment s silence. I ll bet you re prettier than she is too. You d better think so Gus. Something untied itself in Garvin. I think you can put that rifle away Hon he said to Margaret. He saw her look of uncertainty and nodded to emphasize the words. I m pretty sure. oooooooooooooo Garvin poured out another finger of the Scotch. He raised his glass in a silent mutual toast with Berendtsen who grinned and lifted his own glass in response. Gus chuckled the soft controlled sound rumbling gently up through his thick chest. The glass was almost out of sight in his spade of a hand huge even in proportion to the rest of his body. He sat easily in the chair that should have been too small for him the shaped power of his personality reflected in his body s casual poise. Ought to be able to set up a pretty good combo he said. One of us stays home to hold the fort while the other one goes out for the groceries. Take turns. Might try knocking a hole through this wall too. Be easier. He slapped the plaster with his hand. Garvin nodded. Good idea. They both smiled at the drift of women s voices that came from one of the bedrooms. Make it easier on the baby sitter too. My gal was a little worried Berendtsen agreed. He grinned again. You know we may have something here. He raised his glass again and Garvin catching his train of thought matched the gesture. To the Second Republic Berendtsen said. All six and two halves rooms of it Garvin affirmed. Then his glance reached the living room window and he realized that there was still something undone. He got up to loosen the sheet and let the body fall to join the others that lay scattered among the dark buildings. But he stopped before his hand touched the sheet. No one would know now how much honesty there had been within the fear of the intruder s voice. But it was time somebody in the world got the benefit of the doubt. They d carry him down to the ground Gus and he and give him a burial like a man. CHAPTER THREE: It was winter again and seven years since the plague. December snow lay deep between Stuyvesant s buildings under the frosty night while Manhattan raised its blunt stone shoulders up and here and there silent figures in the department stores took time from their normal foraging and climbed the prostrate escalators to the toy counters. A delegation from the next building in the block made a gingerly meeting with Matt Garvin and Gus Berendtsen out on one of the windswept playgrounds. Garvin watched the delegation leader carefully. It was an older man fat and small eyed a man who d been somebody before the plague he guessed. Matt knew he was being nervous for no clear reason. But he didn t like dealing with older people. There was no telling how much they had time to learn how many little tricks they remembered from the old days. The man smiled affably proffering his hand. Charlie Conner he boomed. I guess I run that shebang back there he said deprecatingly jerking his thumb back over his shoulder toward his own building. But the young wolfish riflemen with him did not twitch their eyes to follow the gesture. Matt Garvin. And this is Gus Berendtsen Matt noticed Gus was looking at Conner the same way he d looked over each member of each new family they d found in the apartments of their building. I guess between us we do your job for our building. Conner grinned. Tough isn t it What d you do just spread out gradual sweating it out every time you made contact with a different family Something like that Gus cut in. Make your point. Conner s eyes shifted. Don t get jumpy he soothed. All I am is figuring now we ve got our whole buildings organized it s time we joined up together. The more people we ve got the more we can control things. The idea is to make sure your own rules get followed in your own territory right Nobody wants any wild hares fouling things up. You want to be sure that as long as you follow the rules everything s all right right You want to know your family s protected while you re out someplace. You want to be sure there s a safe store of food right Well the bigger the community the more sure you can be. Right Garvin nodded. Uh huh. Conner spread his hands. All right. Now I ve got my place organized nice as pie. Ought to. Fifteen years District Captain in this ward. Lots of experience. Now I m sure you boys have things going pretty well but maybe there s one or two things you could stand to have better. Okay here I am. My people re satisfied. Right boys he asked his riflemen. Right boss. Gus said: What you mean is we should join you. Conner chuckled. Well now look I m not likely to want to join you now am I He leaned negligently against the crudely painted sign Gus and Matt had seen planted through the playground s asphalt: Meet me here tomorrow and we ll talk joining up together. Charlie Conner. Gus and Matt exchanged glances. We ll think about it Gus said. You do that Conner said. Oh look I know you think you ve been doing all right. And you have no question about it. But now you re ready to spread out into more than one building and you ve got to figure sooner or later you have to meet somebody with more experience running things. It just figures that s all. You didn t hope you could start a whole city government did you I mean you boys weren t going to run one of you for Mayor or anything were you Conner chuckled uproariously. We ll think about it Gus repeated. You ll hear from us. Conner s eyes narrowed. When Matt said: When we re ready. Conner looked thoughtfully at the two of them. Don t stall me too long now. You worried you might die of old age Gus asked. They turned around and walked away. Conner looked after them turned and stalked back toward his own building. The rifle parties of both sides waited until everyone else was gone and then they backed away from each other. Finally the playground stood empty again. In their apartment Matt put his rifle down softly. Well now we know he said. I thought we d been running into too many rival foraging parties. They had to come from someplace nearby. What do you think about Conner I think he s lost more people than we have or he would have let things go on the way they have been with his foraging parties and ours leaving each other alone unless they were both set on picking up the same thing. So what do we do I think we ve got the upper hand. I think we can stick it out without him longer than he can without us. And meanwhile we keep losing people Garvin looked up sharply. Not as many as he does. That s the key. He s hurting worse than we are. You tell that to our widows. I don t have to tell our widows anything. All anybody can promise a woman these days is that her man s safe as long as he stays inside his own four walls. Of course that way they both starve and so do their kids. Look if we make a deal with Conner nobody dies. You re sure. You re sure Conner means all he wants is to be the big frog in a bigger puddle. He s not looking for extra women or extra food for his own people. He keeps those gunmen of his in line by promising them no more than new friends to play gin rummy with. All right maybe. We can t be sure. We don t have to be sure of anything. We just have to keep as alive as we can. Look Gus I m not saying we should forget Conner. Or his offer I m saying that two or three weeks from now he may not be so bossy. If we re going to trade something with him I want a 50 50 chance of an even deal. Right now we don t have that. So we wait. Well we can try breaking into his building. How many widows do you figure that ll make for us Okay. We ll let it ride. A week later the sign in the playground said: NOTICE Anyone Not A Member Of The East Side Mutual Protective Association Charles G. Conner Pres. is Hereby Declared An Outlaw and is subject to trial under due authority. By The Authority Invested In Me By The Democratic Party Of The State Of New York United States Of America. signed Charles G. Conner Oh yeah huh Matt Garvin said. ooooooooooooooo The little group of men returned to Stuyvesant from the east cutting across the playground and access drives in the courtyards. As he led them back home Matt Garvin shivered and hunched up his heavy collar to protect his ears. The wind was light just strong enough to cover the quiet crunch of footsteps with its whispering but he and the men had been out all afternoon and the chill was beginning to sink deep into their bones. He looked up into the moonless sky wishing there were clouds to cover the light that filtered down from the stars. And a new star burst into searing life between the buildings. Scatter he shouted while the parachute flare drifted slowly down etching each man s shadow blackly against the white of snow and the first fingers of rifle fire reached out. Garvin stumbled for cover behind a car parked at the side of one of the access drives his feet floundering in the wet snow. He was almost blind from the sudden explosion of light into his eyes but he skidded somehow into shelter slamming against the cold metal. His eyes snapped reflectively shut while fire pinwheeled across his retinas but he forced them open and aimed his rifle as best he could trying to cut up the flare s parachute. He missed but it made no difference for there was a triple pop from the roof of one of the buildings and three more of the flares hung swaying and slowly dropping above the frantically running men. He cursed and huddled beside the car snapping almost futile shots at the windows where the red sparks were winking. The crash of rifle fire was like nothing he had heard since the height of the plague. There was never a complete break in the echoing hammer. He judged that there were at least thirty snipers if not more and they were all emptying their clips as fast as possible reloading at top speed and pouring out ammunition at a rate no one could possibly afford. There had been twelve men in his group counting himself. He saw three of them lying in the snow two of them with their rifles pinned under their bodies. Those men had simply folded forward in their tracks. The third had possibly fired once. He had been looking up at any rate for his upper body had fallen back and he lay stretched out his rifle beside him with his legs bent under him. The rest of the men had reached cover of some kind for there was no movement in the courtyard. Most of them were not firing back and not even Garvin could tell where they were. He swore steadily the words falling out in a monotone The trap had sprung perfectly. One man had stationed himself on the roof of the opposite building with his flares and had simply illuminated the court when he picked out the shadows of Garvin s party. The riflemen had been waiting at their windows. The sniping fire cut off abruptly and when Garvin realized why a savage laugh ripped briefly out of his throat. The first flare was almost on the ground and the men in the buildings were looking down at it as blind as he had been. He jumped to his feet instantly shouting. Break for it There was a flounder and the sound of running footsteps in the snow as the remaining men burst out of bushes and from behind cars. Garvin ran jerkily across the driveway hunting fresh cover and now he saw some of the other men running with him like debris tossed by an explosion nightmare shapes in the complexity of wheeling light and lurching shadow thrown by the flares as they oscillated under their parachutes. He threw a glance over his shoulder and stopped dead. One of his men had stopped beside one of the bodies and was trying to carry it away. Drop him Garvin shouted. The flare fell into the snow silhouetting the man. Come on The three other flares high in the air and drifting down slowly were only a little below the tops of the buildings still well above most of the snipers. The man tugged at the corpse once more then gave up. But he was starkly outlined by the flare on the ground burning without any regard for the snow s feeble attempt to quench it. The man began to run. Garvin and the other seven men swallowed up by a trick of the complicated shadow pattern stood and watched him silent now. When he was finally shot down Garvin and someone else cursed once almost in unison and then the eight men slipped around a corner of the building ran across a final courtyard and into Garvins building while the three flares settled down among the four corpses and a triumphant yell broke out from the snipers. Image This is the worst yet Berendtsen said his face taut and his eyes cold as he sat at the table in Garvin s living room. I never thought of flares. This tears it it s no longer a question of competing with them for forage. They re cutting off our supply route. Garvin nodded. We were lucky. If they hadn t fouled up with their flares it wouldn t have been just four. He turned in his chair and let his glance sweep over the other men in his living room. They represented all the families in the building. He saw what he expected in their faces grim concentration indecision and fear in unequal but equally significant mixtures. He turned back to Gus one corner of his mouth quirking upward. There was nothing in these men to mark a distinction between them and the snipers. In a sense they were afraid of themselves. But they had reason to be. All right Berendtsen said harshly we were lucky. But we can t let it go at that. This is just the beginning of something. If we let it go on we ll be starved right out of here. Anybody got any ideas Garvin asked the men. I don t get it one of them said in a querulous voice. Garvin checked him off as one of the frightened ones. We weren t bothering them. Smarten up Howard one of the other men cut in before Garvin could curb his own exasperation. Matt recognized him. His name was Jack Holland and his father had been one of the three men who were cut down at the attack s beginning. He carried a worn and battered toy of a rifle that was obviously his family s second or third best weapon but even with his teen age face he somehow invested that ridiculous .22 with deadliness. Garvin threw a quick glance at Berendtsen. Gus nodded slightly in the near perfect communication that had grown between them. As long as Holland was speaking for them there was no need for their own words. We re the richest thing in this neighborhood the boy went on his eyes and voice older than himself. What s more those guys have kids and women going hungry on account of us cleaning out all the stores around here. We ve been doing plenty to them. Garvin nodded back to Berendtsen and there was a shift in the already complex structure of judgments and tentative decisions that he kept stored in his mind. In a few years they would have a good man with them. He found himself momentarily lost in thought at the plans which now were somehow far advanced in his mind but which had first had to grow bit by bit over the past years. The Second Republic he still smiled as he thought of it but not as broadly had expanded and as it grew to encompass all of this building so he and Gus had more experience to draw from more men to work with and assign to the constantly diversifying duties. Strange to plan for a future in the light of the past. But somehow good to plan to shape to hope. Even to know that though the plan had to be revised from minute to minute as unexpected problems arose the essential objective would never change. He cut through the murmur of argument that had risen among the men. Okay. Holland s put it in a nutshell. We re an organized outfit with a systematic plan for supplying ourselves. That s fine for us not so good for anybody that isn t with us. We all expected something to happen when we started. Some of us may have thought our troubles with Conner these last few trips were the most we could expect. We should have known better but that s unimportant now. Here it is and we re stuck with it. Once again now what do we do We go in there and clean the sons of bitches out someone growled. You going first another man rasped at him. Damn right boy a third said leaving it a moot point as to whom he was supporting. That s what I thought. Berendtsen was on his feet towering over the table as much as his voice crushed the babble. He waited a moment for the last opened mouth to close his bleak eyes moving surely from man to man his jaw set. Garvin drawing on the thousand subtle cues that their friendship had gradually taught him to recognize could catch the faint thread of amusement in the big man s attitude perhaps because he too had recognized the wry spectacle of the no longer quite uncivilized afraid of the still savage. But the men swung their glances hurriedly at Berendtsen and only a few held sly glints in their eyes as they did so. You re acting like a bunch of mice when a flashlight spots em Gus went on. And don t tell me that s exactly what happened to you because there s supposed to be a few differences between us and mice. Matt grinned broadly and a few of the men twitched their mouths in response. Berendtsen went on. This thing s suddenly become serious and it s like nothing we ve run up against before. When people start knocking on walls all around you telling you the building s being organized it s one thing. But those birds are off by themselves. We can t make them do anything. He stopped to sweep the men with his glance once more. And we re not going to try to go into those buildings and take them room by room. It can t be done to us. We can t do it to them. We can t lick them and they can t lick us. But we can chop each other up little by little and we can all starve while we re doing it. Because we sure as hell can t forage and fight a war at the same time. There s plenty of other people out there to make sure it takes a strong party to bring home the bacon. There s one way out. We can join up with each other. If we can get Conner to settle for something less than us being his slaves. It s not the most likable idea in the world but I don t see any other way to save what we ve got. Conner s no prince. He ll try and make it as tough on us as he can. But maybe we can work something out. I say it needs trying because it s a cinch we lose too much any other way. The argument broke loose again and Garvin sat letting it wear itself out. He didn t think Gus was right. It meant somebody would have to stick his neck out and that went against all his grain. But he couldn t think of anything else to do. Gus was right about that part at least. Matt had been hoping that giving it time would show some way out. Now he didn t know what to do so again by instinct he was willing to let somebody else move. He looked across the table at Gus who sat brooding at the blacked out window as if he could see the other buildings huddled in the night outside. Well if we don t do something Jack Holland s sharp voice emerged from the tangle of words we can go down in history as a bunch of people who almost got things started again but didn t make it. I don t give no damn for history another man said. But I got five kids and I want em to eat. And that about settled it Garvin thought. But none of them could honestly call it anything except a bad bargain. Especially Gus and he for it would be they who would have to go out and talk to Conner. oooooooooooo Almost Christmas Gus said in a low brooding voice. He and Garvin stood at the window the blankets pulled aside now that the men were gone and the lamps were out. Peace on Earth good will to men. Oh little town of Stuyvesant how still we see thee.... He snorted. A hundred years from now they ll have Christmases. They ll have trees and tinsel and lights. And I hope the kids play with toy tractors. I got Jim a stuffed bear Garvin said. What d you get for Ted Gus snorted again. What do you get any four year old Books with lots of pictures Carol wants to start his reading pretty soon. A wooden toy train stuff like that. That s for a four year old. When he s a year or two older we can start explaining how come the books don t mean anything and the train s a toy of something that just isn t anymore. It s the question of what you get him then that bothers me. Matt too found himself staring dull eyed at the cold city as Berendtsen s mood communicated itself and seeped into his system. oooooooooooooo Tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow was always better for someone. The difficult task lay in ensuring that the someone was one of yours. He had Jim and one year old Mary. Moreover Margaret was almost certain she was pregnant again. Gus and Carol had Ted. The weight that rode Berendtsen s shoulders slumped Garvin s own. Think it ll work Gus said expressionlessly. Up a pig s tail maybe Matt answered. Image Dawn slipped through the weave of the blankets over Garvin s bedroom windows and he shook his mind free of sleep. He swung off his side of the mattress shivering. Stove s gone out again dear Margaret mumbled sleepily from under the blankets. I know. I guess I forgot to fill it before I went to bed. Go back to sleep he whispered dressing hastily. She turned over smiled and buried her face in the pillow again. By the time he finished lacing his boots she was asleep once more and he chuckled softly at her faint snores. He stopped to look in on the children before he went out to the kitchen to heat shaving water and he lit the burner absently staring down at the flame for a long while before he put the pan on. He walked quietly back to the bathroom with the pan in his hand still bemused less lost in thought than busy avoiding thought washed and shaved with a steady but automatic hand. He flushed the toilet with a pail of dishwater filled and lit the stove had breakfast and finally sighed pushed his dishes away and stood up. He went over to the rough doorway that had been cut in the wall and rapped on it lightly. Yeah Matt Gus answered from inside. Come on in. I m just knocking off another cup of coffee. Garvin stepped inside and sat down at Berendtsen s table. Gus was leaning on his elbows his neck drawn down into his shoulders both hands on the big cup of yellowishly weak coffee that he held just below the level of his chin raising it to his mouth at intervals. They sat without speaking until Gus finally put the emptied cup down. Cold day he said. Damn near froze in bed. Forgot to fill the stove Matt answered. Berendtsen sighed from far back in his throat. He got to his feet and picked up his rifle. He pulled a square piece of white sheet out of his jumper pocket and tied two of the corners to the rifle barrel. Got yours he asked. Inside Matt nodded back toward his apartment. Carol know what you re doing Berendtsen shook his head. Margaret No. I think now we should have told them Gus said. I started to tell Carol . But the way I suddenly figured it before I really said anything was that it wouldn t make any difference in what happened. Figured she might as well get a good night s sleep instead. He grinned wryly. Turned chicken. Matt nodded. Yeah. He moved toward the doorway. Me too. Well let s get it done. They went out through Matt s apartment and made sure the other men were set at their covering positions in the windows that overlooked the next building. Then the two cowards went out into the cold. They stepped out into the middle of the drive that separated the building from theirs stopped and looked up at the blank wall. Garvin exchanged a glance with Gus. What do we do now he asked. Berendtsen shrugged. He held his white flagged rifle more conspiciously and Matt did the same. Finally Gus threw his head back and shouted. Hey Hey you in there The echoes died on the air and nothing moved. Hey Conner We want to talk to you. But somewhere in those banks of glass there must have been a slowly opening window. Behind them in their own building someone fired first but it no longer mattered. It did not cause but was a desperate attempt to prevent the fire that suddenly burst from behind a half dozen windows. Because Matt had been half afraid it would come the crash of fire was not as shocking as the sudden collapse of his right leg. He fell on his side in the drive his head cracking against the asphalt and was completely unable to move for a frantic time that seemed fatally long. Then finally while the sniping from the enemy building was diverted by the heavier fire of his own men he was able to use Gus s body for cover pushing it ahead of him until he reached the shelter of a car. He stayed there till nightfall freezing and bleeding with his eyes unwaveringly on dead Berendtsen s face while the sporadic fire continued over his head between the buildings. And gradually through the long long day until his men were able to get to him and take him back to his building his eyes acquired an expression which they never quite lost again which for the rest of his life blazed up unpredictably to soften the voices of those around him. oooooooooooooo Through his spasmodic sleep Garvin heard the sobs. They rose broke and fell and the beat of his quasi delirium seemed to follow them. At intervals as he shivered or strained his clamped jaw against the pain in his leg he heard Margaret trying to calm Carol. Once he himself managed to say Easy there Ted. I ll explain later when I feel better. Look after your mother meanwhile huh to a bewildered and frightened child. But most of all he could not escape his mind s indelible photograph of Gus Berendtsen s sprawled body. When he woke fully after seventeen hours the shock reaction had ended. His leg hurt but the wound had managed to stay clean and the bones were obviously unbroken. He sat up and looked around. Margaret was sitting in the chair beside him watching him silently. He took her hand gently. Where s Carol She s asleep back in her apartment. Mrs. Potter s taking care of her. Ted s with Jimmy. Her expression was peculiarly set her face unreadable. What are you going to do about those people she asked. He looked at her blankly his mind still fuzzy not catching her meaning immediately. What people She had kept herself under rigid control up to now. Now she broke characteristically. Those savages. Her face was still rigid flexing only enough to let her lips move but her voice cracked like a piano wire whip. People like that shouldn t be alive. People who d do a thing like that Garvin dragged a long breath letting it seep out slowly. A wave of pain washed up from his leg and he closed his eyes for a moment. What could he say That people were not savage by option Already she had forgotten what it meant to the unorganized people of the area having to compete with armed foraging teams. His own mind was clear now. He had thought of another solution to the Conner problem. For Margaret s sake possibly for Carol s as well and for the sake of young Ted who had to somehow grow up in this world and do his man s work in it he was grateful that his next step now would be what it would. He squeezed Margaret s hand. I ll take care of it he said somberly. oooooooooooooooo Hobbled by bandages Garvin ran clumsily across the driveway with his men. The narrow space between the two buildings roared and echoed with the sleet of gunfire between the enemy and the covering guard in his building. Ahead of him he heard the spasmodic and much lighter fire of his advance men as they cleaned out the enemy in the building s basements. He lurched under the shifting weight of the sack of dynamite sticks that he like all the other men in his party was carrying. Holland running beside him put a hand under his elbow. You making it okay Matt We would have handled this without you coming along. Garvin spat out a laugh. I ll have to touch it off. He passed the corner of the building and limped rapidly toward the entrance that would take him into the basement where some of the men must already be placing their charges against the girders and bearing walls. oooooooooooooo Margaret stared at him incredulously. Matt All those people. You killed all those people just because I said.... He stood wordlessly in his living room his vision blurring with each new thrust of pain up his leg his shoulders down the empty sack dangling from his hand. He rubbed his eyes wearily. Matt you shouldn t have listened to me. I was upset. I He realized he was swaying but he did not try to control himself as strongly as he would have if any of his men had been present. I didn t do it because of anything you said he tried to explain the words blurring on his tongue. I did it because it was the only way left. I had to order it and do it myself because I ve got the responsibility. You had to kill those people Because there are more people. Take a look out some other window out some window that shows you the rest of this city with the buildings still standing. No Matt I can t. Have it your way then. He dropped into a chair looking down at the gummy stain on his coverall leg wishing in his weariness that it had been Gus of the two of them who had happened to stand slightly behind the other. Another night fell and Garvin stood at a window and watched it. Christmas Eve Jack he said to Holland who was watching with him. Yes sir. Matt grunted half ruefully. Can t see it can you Jack Holland hesitated frowning uncertainly. I don t know sir. I can see it I can understand the reasons for it all right. But it doesn t.... He looked quickly at Garvin obviously wondering whether it was safe to go on. Matt chuckled again more freely. I won t eat you just because you tell me that what we did doesn t feel right. This is still a free republic. He gestured at the dark buildings and his face twisted with regret. Out there it isn t yet. But it s the same as it was when Gus and I knocked on your father s wall and told him what his choice was the same way Gus knocked on my wall. Gus was wrong that night after the ambush. He was right but he was wrong. We can make them do things our way if we knock louder than Gus ever thought we could make ourselves do. He turned away from the window and put his hand on Holland s shoulder. Better go change the downstairs guard Jack. He looked down at the moonlit rubble that had been the next building. He could almost read the sign that surmounted the tumble of brick metal glass and flesh. LEARN YOUR LESSON COOPERATE Matt Garvin President Second Free American Republic. Yes sir Holland said. He turned to go. Merry Christmas sir. THE END OF PART ONE SECTION TWO PROLOGUE: The ground in the foothills was rocky covered by loose gravel and treacherous. The car heaved itself up over a sharp ridge with torturous slowness and pancaked down on the other side with a hard smash. The steering levers whipped back and forth just short of the driver s kneecaps and the motors raced. No more seeing Joe the driver told Custis. Lights No. Bed er down Lew. The driver locked his treads and cut the switches. The damper rods slammed home in the power pile and the motors ground down to a stop. The car lay dead. Custis slid down out of the turret. All right let s button up. We sleep inside tonight. The driver dogged his slit shutters and Hutchinson the machinegunner began stuffing rags into the worn gasproof seal on his hatch. Robb the turret gunner dogged down the command hatch. Load napalm Custis told him and Robb pulled the racks of fragmentation shells he d been carrying in the guns all day. He fitted new loads locked the breeches and pulled the charging handles. Napalm loaded he checked back in his colorless voice. Acoustics out Custis said and Hutchinson activated the car s listening gear. Henley standing where the twin .75s could pound his head to a pulp with their recoiling breeches asked: What re you going to do now Custis Eat. Joe broke out five cans of rations handed three to the crew and one to Henley. Here. He squatted down on the deck and peeled back the lid of the can. Bending it between his fingers he scooped food into his mouth. His eye sockets were thick with black shadow from the overhead light. His face was tanned to the cheekbones and dead white from there to the nape of his recently shaved skull. The goggles had left a wide outline of rubber particles around his eyes. We ll see all the bandits you want in the morning. You mean you ve made us sitting ducks on purpose I mean if I was a bandit I wouldn t talk to nothin but a sitting duck and I m under contract to let you talk to some bandits. Not from a position of weakness Custis looked up and grinned. That s life Major. Honest that s the way life is. There s somebody Custis said at daybreak. He stepped away from the periscope eyepiece and let Henley take his look at the soldiery squatted on the rocks outside. There were men all around the battlewagon in plain sight looking at it stolidly. They were in all kinds of uniforms standardized only by black and yellow shoulder badges. Some of the uniforms dated two or three Republics back. All of them were ragged and a few were completely unfamiliar. West Coast maybe. Or maybe even East. The men on the rocks were making no moves. They waited motionless under the battlewagon s guns. At first glance the only arms they seemed to have were rifles that had to be practically smoothbores by now and it had taken Custis a while to find out why these men who looked like they d known what they were doing were trusting in muskets against a battlewagon. There were five two man teams spread in a loose circle around the car. Each team had an rifle fitted with a grenade launcher. The men aiming them had them elevated just right to hit the car s turtledeck with their first shots. Black and yellow Henley said angrily. Custis shrugged. No blue and silver that s true he answered giving Henley the needle again. But that was thirty years ago. It might still be Berendtsen. Custis went back to the periscope eyepiece for another look at the grenadiers. Each of them had an open lead lined box beside him with more grenades in it. Custis grunted. Napalm splashed pretty well but it would take one full traverse of the turret to knock out all five teams. The turret took fifteen seconds to revolve 360 degrees while a grenadier could pull a trigger and have a grenade lofting in say one second s time. A few seconds later the grenade would have covered the outside of the car with radioactive dust that would make it death to stay inside or death to get out. Nor could the battlewagon get out of the grenade s way in time the basis of an interdictory weapon like this was that it would be used as soon as you made the slightest move but you could believe no sooner than that. Stalemate Custis grunted. But no worse than that. Generous of em. He unbuckled his web belt and took off his .45. He walked under the command hatch and unclogged it. What re you doing Henley demanded. Starting. He threw the hatch back and pulled himself up getting a foothold on the saddle and climbing out on top of the turret. He flipped the hatch shut behind him and stood up. My name s Custis he said carefully as the men raised their rifles. Hired out to the Seventh Republic. I ve got a man here who wants to talk to your boss. There was no immediate answer. He stood and waited. He heard the hatch scrape beside him and planted a boot on it before Henley could lift it. What about Custis a voice asked from off to one side out of range of his eyes. The voice was old and husky kept in tight check. Custis wondered if it might not tremble were the old man to let it. He weighed his answer. There was no sense to playing around. Maybe he was going to get himself killed right now and maybe he wasn t but if he played games here he might never get a straight answer to anything. Theodore Berendtsen he said. About him. The name dropped into these men like a stone. He saw their faces go tight and he saw heads jerk involuntarily. Well the British had stood guard over Napoleon s grave for nineteen years. Turn this way Custis the same worn voice said. Custis risked taking his eyes off the grenadiers. He turned toward the voice. Standing a bit apart from his troops was a thin weather burned man with sharp eyes hooded under thick white eyebrows. He needed a shave badly. His marble white hair was shaggy. There were deep creases in his face pouches under his eyes and a dry wattle of skin under his jaw. I m the commander here he said in his halting voice. Bring out your man. Custis stepped off the hatch and let Henley come out. The political officer gave him a savage look as he squirmed up and got to his feet. Custis ignored it. Over there the white haired one he said without moving his lips. He s the local boss. He stepped a little to one side and gave Henley room to stand on the sloping turret top but he kept watching the old commander who was wearing a pair of faded black coveralls with that black and yellow shoulder badge. Henley squinted up toward the thin figure. The back of his neck was damp even in the chill morning breeze and he was nervous about his footing. I m Major Thomas Henley he finally said direct representative of the Seventh North American Republic. Then he stopped obviously unable to think of what to say next. Custis realized with a flat grin that his coming out cold with Berendtsen s name hadn t left the major much room to work in. You re out of your country s jurisdiction Major the commander said. That s a matter of opinion. That s a matter of fact the commander said flatly. You and Custis can come down. I ll talk to you. Leave the rest of your men here. Henley s head turned quickly. Should we go with him he muttered to Custis. Lord Major don t ask me But if you re plannin to get anywhere you better talk to somebody. Or do you expect Berendtsen to plop down in your lap Henley looked back at the thin figure on the hillside. Maybe he already has. Custis looked at him steadily. They shot Berendtsen in New York City thirty years ago. They threw what was left of his body on a garbage heap. And a year later there was a tomb over where they threw it. Maybe Captain. Maybe. Were you there Were you oooooooooooooooooooo Custis felt annoyed at himself for getting so exercised about it. He glared at the major. Then his common sense came trickling back and he turned away to give Lew his orders about keeping the car sealed and the guns ready until he and Henley got back. Thirty years dead Berendtsen was. Judged for treason condemned killed and men still quarreled at the mention of his name. Custis shook his head and took another look at the old dried out man on the hill wearing those patched threadbare coveralls. Most of the commander s men stayed behind dispersed among the rocks around the silent battlewagon. Ten of them formed up in a loose party around the commander and Henley and Custis walked along a few yards behind the two men as they started off into the mountains. It was turning into a bright but cool day. Looking up into the west Custis could see the mountaintops pluming as high altitude gales swept their snow caps out in banners. The track they were walking on wound among boulders higher than Custis s head and he felt vaguely uncomfortable. He was used to the sweeping plains where his father had raised him where except for the spindly trees along the sparse creeks nothing stood taller than a man. The commander s base was a group of low one room huts strung out along the foot of a butte with a cook fire pit in front of each one. Their outlines were broken by rocks and boulders piled around them. There were prepared slit trenches spotted around the area two machinegun pits covering the approach trail and a few mortar batteries sited on reverse slopes. From the size of the place and the depth of the organization Custis judged the commander had about four hundred people in his outfit. Custis wondered how he could keep them all supplied and the answer he got from looking around was that he couldn t do it very well. The huts were dark and dingy with what looked like dirt floors. A few wan looking women were carrying water up from a spring balancing pails made out of cut down oil cans. They were raggedly dressed and the spindly legged children that trotted beside them were hollow eyed. Here and there among the rocks there were a few patches of scraggly garden. Up at one end of the valley a small herd of gaunt cows was grazing on indifferent grass. Custis nodded to himself It confirmed something he d been thinking for a couple of years the bandits were still crossing the plains to raid into Republican territory but they d never dared set up their own towns on the untenable prairies. It was an impossible thing to have every man s hand against you and still try to make the change to a settled life. But with women and children the bandits needed a permanent camp somewhere. So now they were pulled back all the way into the mountains trying to make a go of it but with their weapons wearing out. They were dying on the vine something left behind and by the time the cities started spreading out their holdings again there d be little here to stop them. If the cities could ever get themselves organized. Maybe everything was dying. The legendary East and South were too far away to count. Maybe everything that counted was dying. In here the commander said gesturing into a hut. Henley and Custis stepped inside followed by two men with rifles and then the commander. The hut was almost bare except for a cot and a table with one chair all made out of odd pieces of scrap lumber and weapons crates. The commander sat down facing them with his veined brown mottled hands resting on the stained wood. Custis spread his feet and stood relaxed. Henley s hands were playing with the seams along his pant legs. What about Berendtsen Major the commander asked. We ve heard he s still alive. The commander snorted. Fairy tales Possibly. But if he s still alive these mountains are the logical place for him to be. Henley looked at the commander meaningfully. The commander s narrow lips twitched. My name isn t Berendtsen Major. I don t use his colors. And my men don t call themselves The Army of Unification. Things change Henley answered. I didn t say you were Berendtsen. But if Berendtsen got away from New York he d have been a fool to stay near there or use his own name anywhere. If he s in these mountains he might not care to advertise the fact. The commander grimaced. This isn t getting us anywhere. What do you want from me Information then if you have it. We ll pay for it in cash or supplies whatever you say within reason. In weapons Henley paused for a moment. Then he nodded. If that s what you want. And to blazes with what we do to the people in the independent towns I suppose so. What about your own people in the outlying areas once we re re armed It s important that we have this information. The commander smiled coldly. There s no pretense of governing for anyone s benefit but your own is there I m loyal to the Seventh Republic. I follow my orders. No doubt. All right what do you want to know Do you know of any groups in this area that Berendtsen might be leading The commander shook his head. No. There aren t any other groups. I ve consolidated them all. You can have that news gratis. I see. Henley smiled for the first time Custis had ever seen. It was an odd spinsterish puckering of the lips. The corners of his eyes twinkled upward and gave him the look of a sly cat. You could have made me pay to find that out. I d rather not soil myself. A few rusty rifles pulled out of the old armories aren t worth that much to me. Henley s mouth twitched. He looked at the austere pride on the commander s face gathered like a mask of strength and youth on the gray stubbled cheeks and then he said: Well if I ever do find him I m empowered to offer him the presidency of the Eighth Republic. His eyes glittered and fastened like talons on the old commander s expression. Custis grunted to himself. He couldn t say Henley had exactly surprised him. And the old man was looking down at the tabletop his old hands suddenly clenched. After a long time he looked up slowly. So you re not really working for the Seventh Republic. You ve been sent up here to find a useful figurehead for a new combination of power. Henley smiled again easily blandly and looked like a man who has shot his animal and only has to wait for it to die. I wouldn t put it that way. Though naturally we wouldn t stand for any one man dictatorships. Naturally. One corner of the commander s lip lifted and suddenly Custis saw Henley wasn t so sure. Custis saw him tense as though a dying tiger had suddenly lashed out a paw. The commander s eyes were narrowed. I m through talking to you for the moment he said and Custis wondered how much of his weakness had been carefully laid on. You ll wait outside. I want to talk to Custis. He motioned to the two waiting riflemen. Take him out put him in another hut and keep your eyes on him. And Custis was left alone in the hut with the old commander. The commander looked up at him. That s your own car out there Custis nodded. So you re just under contract to the Seventh Republic you ve got no particular loyalty to the government. Custis shrugged. Right now there s no tellin who I m hired out to. He was willing to wait the commander out and see what he was driving at. You did a good job of handling things this morning. What are you about twenty nine thirty Twenty six. So you were born four years after Berendtsen was killed. What do you know about him What have you heard Usual stuff. After the plague everything was a mess. Berendtsen put an army together took over the territory made the survivors obey one law and strengthened things out that way. The commander nodded to himself an old man s nod passing judgment on the far past. You left out a lot of people between the plague and Berendtsen. And you ll never imagine how bad it was. But that ll do. Do you know why he did it Why s anybody set up a government He wanted to be boss I guess. Then somebody decided he was too big and cut him down. Then the people cut the somebody down. But I figure Berendtsen s dead for sure. Do you the commander s eyes were steady on Custis. Custis tightened his jaw. Yeah. Do I look like Berendtsen the commander asked softly. No. ooooooooooooooooooooo But hand drawn portraits thirty years old don t really mean anything do they Custis Well no. Joe felt himself getting edgy. But you re not Berendtsen he growled belligerently. I m sure Berendtsen s dead. The old commander sighed. Of course. Tell me about Chicago he said going off in a new direction. Has it changed much Have they cleaned it up Or are they simply abandoning the buildings that re really falling down Sometimes. But they try and fix em up sometimes. Only sometimes. The commander shook his head regretfully. I had hoped that by this time no matter what kind of men were in charge... When s the last time you were there I was never there. But I ve seen a city or two. The commander smiled at Custis. Tell me about this car of yours. I used to be quite fond of mechanized equipment once. Now he was an old man again dreaming back into the past only half seeing Custis. We took a whole city once with almost no infantry support at all. That s a hard thing to do even with tanks and all I had was armored cars. Just twenty of them and the heaviest weapons they mounted were light automatic cannon in demiturrets. No tracks I remember they shot our tires flat almost at once and we went bumping through the streets. Just armored scout cars really but we used them like tanks and we took the city. Not a very large city. He looked down at his hands. Not very large no. But still I don t believe that had ever been done before. Never did any street fighting Custis said. Don t know a thing about it. What do you know then Open country work. Only thing a car s good for. One car yes. Hell mister there ain t five cars runnin in the Republic and they ain t got any range. Only reason I m still goin is mine don t need no gasoline. I ran across it in an old American government depot outside Miles City. Provin grounds it was. My dad he d taught me about runnin cars and I had this fellow with me Lew Gaines and we got it going. How long ago was that Seven years. And nobody ever tried to take it away from you Mister there s three fifty caliber machineguns and two 75s on that car. The commander looked at him from head to foot. I see. He pursed his lips thoughtfully. And now you ve practically handed it to me. Not by a long shot I ain t. My crew s still inside and it s kind of an open question whether you re ready to get your troops barbecued just for the sake of killing us and making the car no good to anybody. The commander cocked an eyebrow at him. Not as open as all that. Open enough. You set it up so we can both pull back from each other if that turns out best if we come to some kind of agreement. You re here. Your crew s down the mountain. My crew s just as good without me Mister. The commander let it ride switching his tack a little. You ll admit you ve come to a peculiar place for a man who only knows open country work. Custis shrugged. Car needed shopwork. Chicago s the only place with the equipment. If I use their shops I do their work. That s the straight up and down of it. And it s one more reason why gettin the car d be more work than it was worth to you. Anything you busted on it would stay busted for good. And you know it. You re so fond of cars where s yours Wore out right So now you re walkin . Horses. Horses The commander smiled crookedly. All right. It takes a good deal to budge you doesn t it Custis Depends on the spot I m in. My dad taught me to pick my spot careful. The commander nodded again. I d say so. All right Custis I ll want to talk to you again later. One of my men ll stay close to you. Other than that you re free to look around as much as you want to. I don t imagine you ll ever be leading any expeditions up here not if Henley s plans work out. Or even if they don t. He turned away and reached under the cot for a bottle and Custis hadn t found out what the old commander was driving at. Outside they were cooking their noon meal. The camp women were huddled around the firepits bent shapeless as they stirred their pots with charred long wooden spoons and the smell of food lay over the area near the huts in an invisible cloud that dilated Custis s nostrils and made his empty stomach tighten up. Whatever these people ate it was hot and smelled different from the sludgy meat in the car s ration cans. Then he shrugged and closed his mind to it. Walking upwind he went over to a low rock and sat down on it. One of the commander s riflemen went with him and leaned against a boulder fifteen feet away cradling his rifle in the crook of one thin arm and looking steadily at Custis through coldly sleepy eyes. A bunch of kids clustered around the fires filling oil cans that had crude handles made out of insulated wire. When they had loaded up they moved out of the little valley with a few riflemen for escort carrying food out to the men who were in position around the battlewagon. Custis watched them for a while then ignored them as well as he could. So Henley was working for a group that wanted to set up the next government. It wasn t particularly surprising that the Seventh Republic was financing its own death. Every government was at least half made up of men from the one before. They played musical chairs with the titles one government s tax collector was the next government s chief of police and whoever wasn t happy with the graft was bound to be figuring some way to improve it the next time the positions moved around. It looked a helI of a lot like however the pie was cut Custis wasn t going to get paid. The Seventh wouldn t pay him if he didn t come back with Berendtsen and if he did find him the Eighth wouldn t hold to the last government s contract. Custis twitched his mouth. Anyhow the car was running as well as you could expect. If he got out of here Kansas City might have a job for him. He d heard rumors things were happening down there. It wasn t familiar territory and there were always rumors that things were better somewhere else but he might try it. Or he might even head east if the highways over the mountains were still any good at all. That could be a real touchy business all around with God knew what going on behind the Appalachians and maybe an organization that had plenty of cars of its own and no use for half bandit plains people. Going there wouldn t be the smart thing to do. As a matter of fact he knew inside that he d never leave the northern plains no matter how he reasoned. It was too risky heading for some place where they were past needing battlewagons. He wondered how the boys in the car were making out. He hadn t heard any firing from over there and he didn t expect to. But it was a lousy business sitting cooped up in there not knowing anything and looking out at the men on the rocks as time went by. When you came right down to it this was a lousy kind of life waiting for the day you ran into a trap under the sod and the last thing you ever did was try to climb out through the turret while the people who d dug the hole waited outside with their knives. Or wondering every time you went into one of the abandoned old towns on the far prairie where supposedly nobody lived if somebody there hadn t found some gasoline in a sealed drum and was waiting to set you on fire. But what the hell else could a man do Live in the damned cities breaking your back in somebody s jackleg factory eating nothing that couldn t be raised or scavenged right on the spot and not much of that living in some hole somewhere that had twelve flights of stairs before you got to it Freezing in the winter and maybe getting your throat cut for your coat in some back alley Custis shivered suddenly. To hell with this. He was thinking in circles. When a man did that he licked himself before he got started. Custis slid off his rock stretched out on the ground and went to sleep thinking of Berendtsen. CHAPTER FOUR: This is what happened to Theodore Berendtsen when he was young having grown up in the shadow of a heap of rubble with a weathering sign on top of it. That was all he had in the way of a portrait of his father. And this is what he did with it: Ted Berendtsen opened the hatch and shouted down over the growl of the PT boat s engines. Narrows Jack. Holland nodded typed the final sentence of his report with two bobbing fingers and got up. What s the latest from Matt Nothing new. I just checked with Ryder on radio watch. Holland scrambled up on deck stretching his stiff muscles. Man next time Matt sends out a mission somebody else can go. I ve had PT s. Ted nodded sourly. I ve had Philadelphia too he growled in conscious imitation of Jack s voice. For the hundredth time he caught the faint smile on Jack s lips and resolved for the hundredth time to stop his adolescent hero worship. Or at least to tone it down. Brotherly love. Wow He flushed. Boyish excitability was no improvement. Holland grunted and ran his eyes over the bright machine gunned scars in the deck plywood. He shook his head. That s a tough nut down there. Ted nodded solemn agreement instantly stabbed himself with the realization of solemnity flushed again and finally shrugged his mental shoulders and for the hundredth time gave up on the whole problem of being sixteen. Instead he watched the shoreline slip by but soon found himself unable to resist Manhattan s lure. The skyscraper city bulked out the horizon in front of him windows flashing in the sun. He knew Holland was watching the look on his face and he cursed himself for being conscious of it just because Holland had gotten him his first man size rifle and taught him how to use it. Damn it s big he said. Jack nodded. Big all right. Wonder how much more of it s joined up since we left Not the West Side that s for sure. Those boys aren t ever likely to budge Holland said. Ted nodded. Too solemnly again. Matt Garvin put the report down and sighed. Then he looked past Ted at Jack Holland with the quick sharpness of a man who knows that the other will understand him perfectly. People in Philadelphia aren t any different are they Jack smiled thinly and Ted felt envy as he always did whenever Jack and old Matt communicated in these sentences and short gestures that represented paragraphs of the past. He ruthlessly stifled a sigh of his own. When he and Jack had boarded the PT boat a month before he had vaguely hoped that something some uncertain ordeal by fire or inconcise overwhelming experience would give him that intangible which he recognized in Holland as manhood. He had hoped as the PT growled slowly down the Jersey coast that some sort of antagonist would put out from the shore or rise from the sea and that at the conclusion of the harrowing struggle he would find himself spontaneously lean of cheek and jaw carelessly poised of body with automatically short and forceful sentences on his lips. But nothing had changed. What do you think Matt asked him. The question caught him unaware. He realized he must have looked ridiculous with his absent gaze snapping precipitously back to Matt Garvin. About Philadelphia he said hastily. I think we ll have a hard time with them Matt. Garvin nodded. Which would mean you think we re bound to run into those people sometime right Ahuh. He caught the smile on Jack s lips again and cursed inwardly. Yes I do he amended. Damn damn damn Any special reason why you think so Ted shrugged uncomfortably. He thought about his father less than he should have probably. He only vaguely remembered the big man bigger than lifesize doubtless in a child s eyes who had been so friendly. If he had seen his death perhaps he would have that missing thing to fill out his inadequacy a cause passed down to be upheld and to which he could dedicate himself. But he had not seen his father die. Of it all he remembered only his mother s grief still vaguely terrifying whenever too closely thought of. He stood hopeless before Matt Garvin with only reasoning to justify him. I don t know exactly Matt he stumbled. But they re down there with Pennsylvania and New Jersey in their laps whenever they need them. They re going to be crowding up this way in another twenty five thirty years. All we ve got s Long Island and it s not going to be enough to feed us by them. We re stuck out here on this island. They could pinch us off easy. He stopped not knowing whether he d said enough or too much. Garvin nodded again. Sounds reasonable. But this report doesn t show any organization down there. How about that Ted glanced quickly at Jack. If Holland hadn t covered that in his report it could only have been because he shared Ted s opinion that the true situation was self evident. The thought occurred to him that Garvin was testing his reasoning. He felt even more unsure of himself now. Well he said finally I can t think of anything about Philadelphia that would make people down there much different from us. I don t see how they could have missed setting up some kind of organization. Maybe it works a little different from ours because of some local factor but it s bound to be basically the same. He stopped uncertainly. I m not making myself clear am I he asked. It s all right so far Ted. Go on Garvin said betraying no impatience. Well it seems to me Ted went on some of his inward clumsiness evaporating that you d have a tough time spotting our kind of organization if you just took a boat into the harbor like we did in Philly. Chances are you wouldn t run across our radio frequency. If you landed on the West Side you d run into the small outfits in the warehouses. Even if you happened to pick the organized territory I don t know if somebody came chugging up the river I wouldn t be much likely to trust him no matter what he tried to say. It s the same old story. You can t join up with anybody anymore unless it s on your own terms. There s been too much of our hard work and fighting done to keep our organization going. It doesn t really matter whether they ve had to do the same for themselves. Each of us is in the right as far as we re separately concerned. And it d be a lot nicer for us if we were the ones who came out running things because that s the only way we could be sure all that work of ours hadn t been for nothing. He stopped thinking he d finished but as he did another thought came to him. It d be different if there were a lot of things to negotiate about. Then there d be room to talk in. I guess maybe if we keep organizing we ll work our way up to that point. But right now it s a pretty clear cut thing one way or the other. Nobody s any better off than anybody else if somebody was we d of heard from them by now. Looking at it from our viewpoint then it s a lot better for our organization if we do all the deciding on who joins up with us. So if somebody from outside comes nosing around the best thing to do is just discourage him. He broke off long enough to grin crookedly. They sure discouraged us down at Philly. All we ever saw of Philadelphia itself was the waterfront. I d say that almost anything could be going on down there and we couldn t spot it. You d have to go deep into the town itself into the residential area. The same way that somebody coming into Manhattan would have to get to the lower East Side. And I guess we re pretty sure no stranger s going to get that chance. Hmmm. Garvin was grinning at Jack and Holland was smiling back. Ted stood awkwardly looking from one to the other. All right Ted Garvin said turning back to him. Looks to me like you kept your eyes open and your brain working. Faintly surprised Ted acknowledged to himself that he probably had. But he d devoted no special effort to it and he d certainly done nothing else to distinguish himself. The brief engagement in Philadelphia s harbor had offered none of the many hoped for opportunities to shed his adolescence. All in all he didn t know how to answer Matt now and he was deeply grateful that no answer seemed to be expected. I guess that s it Ted. You might as well go home. Margaret ll have supper going by now. Tell her I ll be along in a while will you You and Jack take it easy for a day or two. I ll be giving you something else to do pretty soon. Right Matt. See you tonight. That too he thought had been too crisply casual. He noticed that Jack had started to say something himself probably the same thing in effect and had stopped abruptly with that same half concealed knowing smile at Garvin. Damn damn God damn oooooooooooo Well that s that Holland said outside Matt s headquarters. He stretched luxuriously his eyes grinning. He slapped Ted s shoulder lightly. I ll see you tomorrow he said and walked off his stride catlike easily holding his slung rifle straight up and down with the heel of his hand against its butt. Ted smiled. Jack had been cooped up on the boat for a month. The adjective catlike was as easily applied to his frame of mind as to his walk. Ted smiled again. Ruefully. He hitched his own rifle sling higher up on his shoulder and walked determinedly toward the Garvins apartment. Ever since his father s death Ted and his mother had more or less been staying with the Garvins. Their apartments adjoined and up to the time that Ted had earned the right to carry his own rifle both families had been equally under Matt s protection. Ted had been raised with Jim and Mary Garvin discounting Bob who was five years younger than Ted and therefore even more useless than Mary as a companion. Recently of course Mary had been acquiring greater significance even if she was only thirteen. She seemed to him admittedly more mature of mind than other girls her age most of whom Ted ignored completely. He bent over and tightened the mounting screws on his rear sight with careful concentration. You mean they had a machinegun Mary asked breathlessly. Ahuh. He shrugged casually and made sure the windage adjustment was traveling freely but precisely. Had a bad time for a couple of minutes there. He pulled out the bolt assembly and squinted at the already immaculate walls of the chamber. What did you do then I d have been awfully scared. He shrugged again. Turned around and ran. It looked like only a couple of guys but it smelled like more. No telling what they might have backing them up. He slipped the bolt back in and worked it a few times spreading the lubricant evenly. Tell you the truth I kept thinking about those mortars Matt s got down by the river. No reason for them not to be set up the same way. Anyway we pulled out. Ryder was on the portside turret that s the left and he hosed them down a little. Knocked them out I guess because we were still in range and they didn t do anything about it. He ran the lightly oiled rag over all of the rifle s exposed metal set the safety and slid in a freshly loaded clip. As he looked up Jim caught his eye and winked looking sidelong at Mary. Ted s cheeks reddened and he shot a steely glance at his friend. Well I guess I ll turn in he said lightly. His mother had gone inside a few moments before. He stretched and yawned. He slung the rifle on his shoulder. Good night everybody. Good night Ted Mrs. Garvin smiled looking up from her sewing. G nite Ted Jim said cuttingly. Good night Ted Mary said. He raised his hand in a short casual wave to her and walked through the connecting doorway the heel of his hand resting easily against his rifle s butt. Ted He winced faintly as he closed the door behind him. Yes Mom he said quickly before the apprehension in her voice could multiply itself. She came into the room standing just inside. Of course it s you she said with a nervous smile. I don t know who I thought it d be. Well there s the bogeyman and then there s ghoolies and ghosties... He let his mock gravity trail off into a smile and her face smoothed a little. Can I get you some tea or something he asked putting the rifle up on the rack he d hung beside the door. Why yes thanks. Are you going to sleep now I guess so. I m pretty tired he said on his way to the kitchen. I made your bed. Your room s just the way you left it. Thanks Mom he said letting himself smile with tolerant tenderness in the kitchen where no one could see him. He brought the cupful of tea out to her and she took it with a grateful smile. It s good to have you home again she said. I rattled around in here all by myself. There s all those Garvins next door he pointed out. She smiled lightly. Not as many for me as there are for you. The kids get a little noisy sometimes for my taste. Matt s busy all day and he goes to sleep almost as soon as he eats. And Margaret s not as good company as she used to be. Her smile grew worried. She s getting awfully gloomy Ted. Matt s in his forties and he s still carrying his rifle with the rest of the men. What would happen if he died I guess he s got to Mom. It s his responsibility. If he couldn t handle it somebody else would be running things. He s doing a good job too. I haven t heard many complaints about it. I know Ted. Margaret knows too. But that doesn t help does it No I suppose not. Well there isn t anything we can do about it the way things are. He bent over and kissed her cheek. Going to stay up for a while She nodded. I think so Ted. Good night. Good night Mom. He went down the hall to his room undressed and blew out the lamp. He lay awake his eyes closed in the darkness. It was a hard life for the women. He wondered if that was why Jack Holland wasn t married. He was twenty nine already. Damn. Thirteen more years. Matt was either forty two or three. Old Matt who wouldn t be so old in any other time and place. Old Matt must have been young nineteen year old Matt sometime trying to stay alive in the first few months after the plague. The vague plague that nobody knew much about because he could only know what had happened to him or those with him and had no idea what it had been like all over the world. All over the world. There must be thousands of places like Manhattan scattered out among the cities with men like Matt and Jack in them trying to organize trying to get people together again. And more than likely there were thousands of guys like Ted Berendtsen who ought to cut out this pointless mental jabbering and get some sleep right... now. oooooooooooooooooooo Man I m not going to like this Jim Garvin said as they loaded up their packs and jammed extra clips into their bandoliers. Ted shrugged smoking up his foresight to kill glare. Be crazy if you did. But it s got to be done faster than we figured I guess. Pop say anything to you about it Ted shook his head. Nope. But that report Jack and I brought back from Philly is what did it. We ve got to have this area squared away in case they move up on us. They know where we came from. He settled his pack snugly onto his shoulders and twisted his belt to get the Colt s holster settled more comfortably. He didn t usually carry a pistol but this was going to be close range work once they flushed their men out from cover. The thing weighed a ton. S pose you re right Jim admitted. Ted frowned slightly. Jim should at least have thought of the obvious question as long as he was in a questioning frame of mind. He d wondered about it himself until he realized that the attempt to take all of the lower West Side in one operation had to be made. Just perhaps the slow process that had worked on the East Side could be modified to fit and there was time enough more than likely but that territory had been completely impenetrable for twenty years. The men in it knew every alley and back yard. Any attempt to take it piecemeal would mean an endless series of skirmishes with infiltrators. Of course he had a year and some months on Jim. Set Jack Holland came up to them his pack bulging with ammunition dynamite and gasoline bombs his rifle balanced in his hand. Ted nodded shortly and was vaguely surprised to hear Jim say Yes sir. He looked from Jim to Jack and barely twitched an eyelid. Jack grinned faintly. Okay then let s get formed up. Matt s taking the financial district swinging up from the Battery. We go straight across town. Bill McGraw and another bunch are going in just below Forty second Street. He grinned and gestured perfunctorily and ribaldly. That s us Lucky Pierre. Jim laughed and Ted chuckled winking at Jack again. The kid had been showing his nerves a little. The three of them crossed the street to where the rest of the men in their group were waiting scattered inconspicuously among the cars and doorways from old vital habit. Ted looked up at the sky. It was growing dark. They d move out pretty soon. Jack dropped back and walked beside him. Make sure Jim sticks pretty close to you huh he said in a low voice. I won t be able to keep much of an eye on him myself. Sure Ted answered. I ll take care of him. For two nights and three days what had once been the lower half of Hell s Kitchen had been tearing itself open. From that first cold morning when they had come out of their positions and dynamited their way into a packing plant the slap of rifle fire and the occasional bellow of heavy sidearms had swept and echoed down the cluttered streets and wide deadly avenues. Building by heavy building they had blown gaps in walls smashed windows and shot their way from room to room in the first rush of surprise. Here and there a firebomb had touched off a column of smoke that twisted fitfully in the breeze and light rain that had begun falling on the second day and was still coming down. A steady stream of runners was carrying ammunition up to them and they supplied themselves from whatever miserable little they found while scavenger squads cleaned up the weapons and ammunition left behind by corpses. Two days three nights. They had started on the uptown side of Fourteenth Street with covering squads to clean out the downtown side and leave them a clear supply route. They had reached Eighteenth Street by nightfall of the third day. Ted slumped his head back against a wall and fed cartridges into a clip. How s it Jim Jim Garvin rubbed his hand over his face and shook his head in a vague attempt to clear out some of the weariness. It stinks. Ted put the full clip in his bandolier and started on another. He grinned faintly. Yeah he agreed. You see Jack today Nope. Think he s still around Chances are. He was doing house to house when we were just tads remember He opened his pack and threw Jim a can of meat. Tie into this huh I ve been saving some. The slop they ve been eating here is enough to make you sick. Jim shuddered and exhaled through his clenched teeth. God isn t it just All these bloody warehouses around here too. He opened the can and dug into it gratefully. A stinking set up. Everybody just hung on to what they had and to hell with you buddy. Remember that bunch that d been gettin no vitamins except out of canned fruit No organization at all Jim agreed What the hell s wrong with these people Ted shrugged. Nothing I guess. But they had a bunch of forts all ready made for them. These freakin warehouses were built to take it. And besides they were warehouses. Up to the roof in supplies. Guess it looked like the simple way out. How long d you think we ll be at this mess Depends. If Matt cleans up his end we ll get a push from him. If McGraw comes down we ll have em squeezed. I d like it best if both happened but I don t know that Greenwich Village is a rat trap from what I hear and McGraw s bound to be having it just as tough as we are. I wish I knew how this whole operation was going. So long as Pop s all right I don t give a hoot and a whoop for the rest of the operation. The part I worry about is right here. Yeah but the whole thing ties together Ted explained. That s for somebody else to worry about Jim said. Ted looked at him thoughtfully. Yeah. Guess you re right. For the first time the thought struck him that it didn t look as if Jim was going to take over when his father left off. He was a good man with a rifle and he never stopped after he started. But he didn t do his own worrying. That jarred him somehow. He didn t like the thought because Jim was a friend of his and because he was a first grade fighting man just like his father. Only being a fighting man wasn t good enough any more. It was a bigger sphere of operations now. New factors were coming into the picture all the time. This entire move against the West Side was not a foraging expedition or an organizing process though both would result. It was primarily a strategic maneuver against the day when Philadelphia began to move up the coast. Matt had started out a rifleman and learned bit by bit at the same pace with which the world grew more complicated. But Jim wouldn t have that time to learn by practice what he didn t understand by instinct. He was too young and Matt was too old to give him that time. What the hell this was supposed to be a republic wasn t it A republic lived by developing different kinds of leaders as it needed them. But he didn t like the idea nevertheless. He d have to think it over think it out before he could accept it. Might as well get some sleep Jim he said. Looks like we ve closed up the big shop for the night. I ll take the first watch. Okay. Jim rolled over gratefully and pillowed his head on his arms. Ted checked the action on his .45 which had jammed on him twice already. He handled the truckhorse of a gun distastefully. The only good thing about it was the same thing that was good about Matt s magnum rifle which he wouldn t handle either. The things kicked like bombs burned out their barrels took nonstandard ammunition were nuisances to maintain and had all the subtlety of a club. But hit a man anywhere at all on his body with a bullet from one of them and hydrostatic shock would knock him out if not kill him. Which to Ted s mind was rarely an advantage. There was no point in killing a potentially good man if you could put him out of action some other way. None of which instruction manual thinking Ted reflected was really effective in keeping him from worrying about his big problem. He was beginning to understand why Jack Holland had never really teamed up with Jim on any job. Once you considered things in the proper light all sorts of evidence began turning up. Jack Holland. He hoped it would be Jack Holland who would be taking over from Matt when the inevitable time came. A week now. Jack had finally had to abandon the planned straight forward sweep block by parallel block and had sent his right flank out to clean up as many of the uptown blocks east of Ninth Avenue as it could. On that side of what had become the border of the warehouse gangs territory the Republic s men had made contact with McGraw s group Ryder s now which had executed a duplicate movement. But effectively as far as the warehouse gangs were concerned Garvin s forces were bogged down at Nineteenth Street and Thirty first Street with only minor penetrations into the periphery west of Ninth Avenue. Matt s personal forces were moving slowly out of Greenwich Village with isolated pockets still to be mopped up in the almost ideal defensive positions that twisted alleys and cross streets provided. But there too the actual core of resistance had hardly been bruised for almost all the heavily built docks warehouses and docked ships were still holding out. Somehow Ted had acquired a squad of his own from men who had fallen in with him. They were apparently willing to follow his suggestions without debating them and as long as he didn t seem to be making costly mistakes he was perfectly willing to let it ride that way. They certainly weren t hindering him and Jim any. All of them were heavily stubbled and ragged by now and none of them had had much sleep. The latter probably fogged their judgment and the former operated in his favor as well since his own beard augmented by grime was enough to hide the boyish roundness of his face. ooooooooooooooooo But the ammunition was running low. His head dropped forward and he jerked it up again coming out of his doze. Jack twisted a grin at him. Kinda tiresome ain t it Ted grunted. What d you hear on the box he said motioning toward the radio. Ryder s coming down Matt s coming up. We re going west. Speed: six inches per hour. They tried that stunt with the PT s Holland snorted. Ever try to torpedo a warehouse They knocked out most of the freighters in the channel which doesn t help us a goddamned bit. We ve got to crack those birds soon Jack. I know. We ll be firing Roman candles at them if this keeps up. You got any ideas No. He dozed off again leaning on a garbage can. Ten days and he reached his conclusion. It was not an idea he recognized no more than Austerlitz or the shelling of Monte Cassino were ideas. It was a calculated decision based on the problem before him reached in the light of the urgent necessity for the problem s solution. Again as with many of his recent decisions he did not like it when he came to it. But it was the product of logical extrapolation based on rational thinking and personal knowledge which he could honestly believe he had analyzed completely. Once he recognized this last he knew he had given himself no choice. Problem is to get in close enough to dynamite the warehouses right he said to Jack. Ahuh. Been that way for some time now. They ve got those boys on the roofs of the houses all around them. They can cover them and the lads in the houses keep us back. We clean out a house they toss dynamite down and blow the house to shreds leaving an exposed area we can t cross anyway. Can t go in at night because this is their territory booby trapped. So Wait for an east wind. Get one and burn the houses. Go in under the smoke. Blow your way into the first floor sit back and wait for them to come out. They don t come out blow the second floor. Holland whistled. He looked at Ted thoughtfully. Kind of mean isn t it The guys in those houses get it either way they come out while we re waiting in the street or they burn. Jesus Christ Jim said staring at Ted. Berendtsen swayed wearily on his feet. Suddenly he realized that he had done something neither Jack Holland nor Matt Garvin s son were capable of. He had reached a decision he hated but would carry out given the opportunity because he knew that whether it was right or wrong on some cosmic balance scale he believed it to be right. Or not right necessary. And he could trust that belief because he trusted himself. All right he said his voice calm let s get on that radio and talk to Matt. We ve got an old precedent for all this you know he added dryly. He led his sooty weary men back along the broad length of Fourteenth Street his left hand lost in a bulbous wrapping of bandage his empty pack flapping between his shoulder blades. He and Jim and the rest of his squad were lost in the haphazard column of Matt Garvin s men but his mind s eye separated his own from the rest. All the men were shuffling wordlessly up the street weary past the bone but he tried to read the faces of his squad. There had been many more men in the firing and dynamiting parties but these had been the ones he led. He tried to discover whether the men who followed him thought he was right or wrong. But their faces were blank with exhaustion and he could not let his own expression disclose the slightest anxiety. And then he realized what the hard part of being a man was. When they reached Stuyvesant at last he found Matt Garvin. They looked at each other he with his wounded hand and Matt with a shoulder almost dislocated by the magnum s repeated detonations. He drew one corner of his mouth up crookedly and Matt nodded and smiled faintly. Now I know Berendtsen thought. Silently Ted Berendtsen walked up the stairs while Jim hung back. He ran his hand over his jaws and his cheeks under their temporary gauntness were just as soft. His feet stumbled on the steps. Jesus Christ I m only sixteen he thought. He grimaced faintly at this last illogical protest. Matt had a few more years. CHAPTER FIVE: Matt Garvin had grown old for his time. His oldest son Jim was twenty two and his daughter Mary was twenty. His youngest son Robert was a little past fifteen. And the civilization he had seen re established now held all of Greater New York. It was enough. He could sit at his window looking out over Stuyvesant Town where the building generators had put lights back in the windows and nod slowly to himself. It was done. Up and down the coast where his scouting boats had wandered he knew there were other cities shining once more beside the broad ocean. In those cities there must be other men like himself satisfied with what they had accomplished. Soon now the cities would spill over the pocket civilizations would touch and coalesce and the plague would be forgotten the land and the people whole again. Out in the inlands each isolated by the broken strands of transportation and communication there would be other cities all flickering back to life. And in the farmlands between them where life had not really changed there would be other men waiting to join hands with them. He spoke about it hesitantly during a meeting with his most important lieutenants. And Ted Berendtsen looked up. You re right Matt. It ll happen and soon. But have you thought about what s going to happen when it does Jim Garvin looked up sharply. No his father hadn t thought about it. Not in detail. Neither had he. Berendtsen was finishing his point. We re not just going to puddle up by osmosis you know. Somebody s going to have to build pipelines. And when we get that puddle who s going to be the big frog Somebody ll have to. We can t just all live happily ever after. Somebody still has to lead. What guarantee do we have that we ll enjoy it Jim sighed. Berendtsen was right. They were not one people separated now reuniting. They were half a hundred perhaps more individual civilizations each with its own society each with its own way of life. It would not be an easy or a happy process. Matt Garvin looked at Jack Holland and shrugged his shoulders heavily. Well what s your answer to it all Jack Jim Garvin saw Jack Holland s side glance at Ted before he said anything and nodded quietly to himself. It wasn t Holland who was really second in command it was Berendtsen young as he was. I don t know Holland said. Seems to me that it s about time for a lot of outfits like ours to be spilling over into the surrounding territory yeah. But it s going to be a long time before whatever happens around Boston or Philadelphia makes itself felt up here. They re doing the same thing we are pushing out and looking for land to grow food on. We re out on Long Island busy farming. Philly ll be doing the same thing in its own corner. So will Boston and Washington. It ll be years before we grow up to the size where we ll need more territory. They re even smaller. They ll take more time. By then we ll be farther along. We ll always be stronger than they are. Berendtsen shook his head and the gesture was enough to draw everyone s attention. Not quite the whole problem he said. Matt sighed. No I guess it isn t. How do you read it Our scouting reports from Boston indicate that New England s having the same old problem. You can t farm that country worth a damn. There s a good reason why that was all manufacturing country up there you can t feed yourself off the land. There s nowhere near the population up there that there used to be of course but they re still going to be spreading out faster than anybody else. They ll have to. They need four acres to our one. Now Philly s in a bad spot. They re down on the coast with Baltimore Washington and Wilmington right on their necks. That s besides Camden. They won t move up here until they re sure of being safe from a push coming up from below. They can handle that three ways lick the tar out of those people bunch up with them in some loose alliance against us or and this is what I m afraid of start building up for a fast push in this direction before those other cities get set. Once they ve got a lock on us they can concentrate on holding off anybody else. He leaned forward. Now. We ve already assumed that whatever happens we want our side on top. Something jumped in Jim Garvin s solar plexus. They had hadn t they It had already become a question of How do we get them to do things our way But what other way was there A man worked for himself for what was his. A society an organization of men did the same. You fought for what was yours. All right then Berendtsen said. If Philly moved up here and took over I d join them. So would everybody else. It wouldn t be our society any more but at least it would be a society. We d get used to it in time if we had to. The same thing works in our favor. If we take over another outfit their citizens ll join up with us. They may not like it. Some individuals will be holdouts to the bitter end. But as a whole that group will become part of us. Think it over. Berendtsen s voice and expression had been completely neutral. He spoke as though he were reading off a column of figures and when he stopped he settled back in his chair without any change of manner. Matt nodded slowly. I think you re right. In general and about Boston and Philadelphia. Both those outfits are being pushed. They ll be moving faster than we will. Jim looked around again. Holland was nodding softly and he himself had to agree. He looked at Berendtsen once again trying to understand what made his brother in law tick. There didn t seem to be a fast answer even though they had grown up together. He could guess what Ted would do in a particular circumstance but he could never really get down to the basic motivation that made him do it. Somehow he doubted if Mary could do any better. Both of them could penetrate his calm withdrawn shell along certain fronts but the whole Theodore Berendtsen the man who lived in the whipcord body with the adding machine mind escaped them with unconscious elusiveness. What does it he thought. What was there hidden behind his brooding eyes that pulled each problem apart and allowed him to say Hit it here here and there. Get that and this part ll collapse and let you get at the rest of it as coldly as though it were a piece of physical machinery to be stripped down and rebuilt until it functioned smoothly and without effort. And now there was something new in the wind. Jim shot a fresh glance at his father. Matt was halftwisted in his chair racked by arthritis. His right hand was almost completely useless. And if his mind was still clear his eyes tired but alert Ted s thinking was just as straight and he was out in the city every day directing Ryder in the absorption of the neighboring New Jersey cities while he himself cleaned out the Bronx and lower Westchester. Jim looked up and caught Jack Holland s eye. They grinned wryly at each other and then turned their attention back at Ted. There s only one thing to do Berendtsen said still not raising his voice. No matter how fast they get set down in Philadelphia it ll be two years at least before they come up this way. There s no sign that Trenton s anything but an independent organization yet. We need supplies. We need heavier weapons more tools more machinery. We need men who re used to handling them. And we ve got to nip Boston in the bud. We can t stand to get caught between two forces. Holland stiffened in his chair. You want to push up into New England now Ted nodded. We ve got the men. They re used to the idea of fighting aggressively instead of just defending their personal property. They ve got it through their heads that the best security lies in putting as much distance as possible between our frontier and their families. They ve learned that a cooperative effort gets them more food and supplies than individual foraging. We ll pick up more recruits as we go along. I don t care what kind of set up they ve had up to now ours is bigger. We can feed em and take care of their families better than anyone else. That s an awful lot of fighting Matt said. It doesn t have to be Ted answered. We ll make the usual try at getting them to join us peacefully. Matt looked steadily at Gus Berendtsen s son and said nothing but Ted nodded slowly back with a crooked smile on his face. We ll make the attempt Matt. Jim looked at Holland and Jack looked thoughtfully back. He was right again. They d have to make examples of the first few local organizations but after that they d be able to progress smoothly until they reached Boston. And by then their forces would have grown large enough to carry out the plan. Once they had New England to back them up Philadelphia was no menace. They both looked up and saw Matt s eyes searching their faces. Jim saw Holland nod slowly and then he nodded himself because Ted was right. Yes Jim thought he was right. Again. He had the answer and there was no denying it. There s going to be a lot of killing Jim said but it was just for the record. What record he didn t know. Berendtsen s face softened and for one moment Jim thought he had somehow managed to learn how to read minds. I know he said gently and it took a few seconds for Jim s flash of irrationality to pass and for him to realize that Ted had been answering his spoken question. oooooooooooooo Well what d the great young white father come up with this time Bob asked him his voice sarcastic. Jim looked at his younger brother wearily. Just a couple of ideas on what we re going to do next. But the vagueness of the answer didn t discourage Bob and Jim realized that all he d done was to offer him bait. Yeah When s he taking over For Sweet Willie s sake will you get off this kick and leave me alone Jim exploded. No Bob said I will not leave you alone. The back of his own neck was red but his eyes were snapping with some sort of perverse joy at having gotten under Jim s skin. You may not enjoy thinking but I m going to force your daily quota down your throat anyway. Berendtsen s moving in on Dad as fast as he can and you know it. He got his smell of power when he butchered his way through the West Side and he s been aching for a chance to repeat the performance on a bigger scale. And you and Jack just sit there and let him push Dad around as much as he damn well likes Jim sucked in a breath and looked steadily at Bob for a full minute before he trusted himself to speak. In the back of his mind he admitted that he was a little afraid of these increasing verbal battles with his brother. Bob had read a lot of books and he was constantly poking and prying around the city camping in libraries for weeks at a time or bringing the books home in his pack carefully wrapped and handled more tenderly than his carbine. When Bob talked words fit smoothly into words building nets of step by step assertions that could snare a man in his own fumbling until he found himself running down into foolish silence while Bob just stood there and gibed at him with his eyes cutting him with the slash of his grin. In the first place... he began forcing the words out against the barrier of Bob s obvious patient waiting until he left an opening to be attacked through Ted s brains are what gives him the right to sit in on meetings. He belongs there a hell of a lot more than I do let me tell you In the second place Ted did not butcher his way through the West Side he helped to take care of one small part of it. And I know damn well he didn t enjoy himself because I was with him which you weren t sonny. And if he gets an idea that s going to make life safer for all of us we re damn well going to follow it. Dad s getting old and we might as well face it. He listens to Ted and so does Jack Holland. Personally if Ted wants to push north He stopped and stared helplessly at Bob whose eyes had widened and who was half laughing at him for giving himself away. All right so he does intend to lead a force toward Boston. So what His reasons are damn good ones Jim blurted trying to bolster his position. I ll bet they are Bob said and turned away as though he had won the argument conclusively leaving Jim standing there fighting off the unfounded conviction that he really had. James Garvin I ll thank you to stop cursing at your brother his mother said angrily from the doorway. I was not... Jim began and then blew the breath out of his throat and shrugged hopelessly. All right Mom he said and went past her into the apartment with an apologetic look that was strongly tinged with frustration. He hung up his rifle and went to his room where he sat down on the bed and stared angrily at the wall until dinner time. ooooooooooooooo Ted and Mary were eating with them that night and through the first part of the meal Jim sat uncomfortably between his father and Bob hoping the present silence would continue but knowing that this was extremely unlikely with Bob in the mood he was. Ted was eating quietly and Mary sitting beside him was her usual controlled self. Jim bit off a piece of cornbread viciously drawing an amused side glance from Bob who as usual missed nothing going on around him and who was probably enjoying the situation considerably. Finally his father pushed his plate awkwardly away and looked up. Jim I suppose you ve told your mother and Bob about what we decided at the meeting today Jim grimaced. I didn t get a chance to tell Mom. Bob s got it all figured out for himself of course. His father shot him a quick surprised yet understanding look which was gone immediately as he turned to look inquiringly at Bob. Jim noticed that Ted was still eating with even wasteless motions finishing the last of his supper and not looking up. Well what do you think Bob Matt asked. Bob raised an eyebrow and twitched his eyes to Ted before he looked back at his father. Are you sure it s all right for me to think while Big Chief s here to do it for me Oh no Jim thought wishing a thunderclap would come to erase the entire scene. Even his mother looked at Bob with complete astonishment. Jim didn t dare look at his father. Ted looked up without seeming to be surprised at all. Sounds like that s been building up a long time Bob he said quietly. Want to tell me about it Jim sighed as quietly as he could feeling the shocked tension drain out of his father s body beside him. His mother too relaxed and Mary who had put down her fork and looked evenly at Bob started eating again. He took over Jim thought. Ted had absorbed the force of Bob s explosion and removed its impact from them all and now it was his responsibility and his alone. And while Matt Garvin held his eyes riveted on his younger son and no matter what he might feel he did not speak. Bob held his eyes level with Ted s but Jim could see it was an effort. Finally he said Yes it has. His voice was low but taut and desperate and for one brief moment Jim caught a flash of what he must be feeling. He had thrown a stone into a pond made an unexpectedly insignificant splash and was now somehow in over his head. Jim wanted to smile grimly but realized that this was no time for it. Yes it has Bob repeated his voice rising. I ve been sitting here watching you take over in all directions and I think it stinks His breathing was harsh his face scarlet. He had put himself in an impossible position and there was no direction in which to go but forward. Ted nodded slowly. I think you re right. And once again Bob was helpless. I think you re right because I don t think anybody should be in my position Ted continued still without changing the quiet level of his voice. Unfortunately I seem to have grown into it. With a lot of force feeding Bob shot back recovering. Ted shrugged letting an uncharacteristic sigh seep out between his closed lips. That s the nature of the times Bob. If you re implying that I m exercising some sort of pressure I d like to ask you where you think I got the authority to back it with. Rather than accept that premise I d say that the times are such that they produce the pressure which forces one man to make more decisions than another man. There s a certain step by step logic inherent in human nature and the peculiarities of human psychology which ensures that Man will always organize into the largest possible group. Civilization is inevitable if you want a pat phrase. It so happens that at this stage we are in transition from a city state to a national culture. Such a move always requires that the separate elements be welded into one by force. I d like to remind you that Greece was nothing but a collection of enlightened but small ineffectual and squabbling city states until the advent of Philip of Macedon. Bob saw his opening. His mouth curved into its characteristic thin crook of a smile and his voice gathered confidence again. Heil Berendtsen Ted nodded. If you want it that way yes. Though I d prefer if that s the word an analogy to Caesar. And if you think I enjoy the thought His voice hardened for the first time and Jim paled as he saw something of the restless beast that prowled Ted s mind of nights then Bob I d suggest that you read your Gibbon more thoroughly. Very pretty Bob answered. Very pretty. Destiny has chosen a son and all the stars point to Berendtsen Thank you I ll stick to Hitler. I m afraid you re stuck with me Ted said and finished his peas. Why you egocentric Robert you ll go to your room and stay there his mother exclaimed half rising her cheeks flushed. Ted I m very sorry about all this. I don t know what to say. Ted looked up. I wasn t simply being polite when I said he was right you know. Margaret Garvin looked as bewildered as Bob had. Well. Well she fumbled I don t know.... Suppose we just finish supper Matt said and for a moment Jim hoped he would be obeyed. But Bob pushed his chair farther back and stood up. I don t think I particularly care to eat here right now he delivered and strode out of the apartment. Forgot his carbine Jim commented glad of the opportunity to say something at last. Ted looked at him his lips twitching into a thin smile. Wouldn t go too well with his attitude right now would it Guess not Jim admitted. He dropped his eyes to his plate realizing that he had learned something about Ted Berendtsen today but was still unable to see what it was that let him project the force of his calm authority as though it were a physical strength Jim looked up again and saw Ted staring across the room at the blank wall his eyes as old as Matt s who was trying to reach across the length of the table and silently explain to Margaret with his expression alone. You ought to give him a district to run pretty soon Matt Berendtsen said unexpectedly. He smiled at Matt s astonished look. He uses his head. Matt snorted a somehow painful sound. The sound a man makes when he condemns something dear to him. It s still a republic Ted reminded him. I d rather have him argue with me than have him sit there nodding dumbly. Right now he s learning to think. Give him a little practice and he ll be ready to learn how to think past his emotions. Don t forget we re going to need administrators by the dozens. Matt nodded slowly some of his lost pride in his son returning. I ll see. Do you suppose he was right Mary asked looking gravely at her husband. Jim turned his glance toward his sister. Her remark was completely characteristic. She sat quietly for hours watching and listening and what went on in her mind perhaps Ted Berendtsen alone could guess. Perhaps not even he. And then finally she said a few words much as she had now. Heil Berendtsen I don t know Ted admitted. I don t think so but then a man can t tell when he s going paranoid can he And Jim caught another glimpse of the special hells that Berendtsen reserved for himself. ooooooooooooooo Boston was easy by the time they came to it. They occupied the suburbs isolating the city proper and Matt sent a light naval force to control the harbor. The news of how Providence had fallen must have reached the city for the opposition was light. It was not so much the overwhelming weight of Berendtsen s men that forced the surrender it was the far more crushing power of the past year s bloody history. By the time they reached Boston it was the dead more than the army s living who fought Berendtsen s battles. An army they were by now The Army of Unification no longer simply the New York bunch. Men from Bridgeport and Kingston marched with them beside others now from Lexington and Concord. James Garvin Sergeant Rifleman stood on a hilltop with his corporal a lean jawed pipe sucking man named Drumm and watched the men forming up. The Army of Unification Drumm said his face reflective. Another one of your brother in law s casually brilliant ideas. No regional tag and a nice idealistic implication. No disgrace to be beaten by it since it s an army and much easier to convince yourself into joining since it has the built in ideal of unification to recommend it. You know I m more and more convinced that Berendtsen is one of your rare all around geniuses. Jim grunted and stuffed his own pipe full of the half cured Connecticut tobacco he was gradually becoming accustomed to. He liked Drumm. He d been a good man ever since he d joined up and he was somehow comfortable to talk to. He does all right Jim agreed. Drumm smiled slightly. He does a shade better than that. A reflective look crossed his face and he turned his head to focus on the knot of officers clustered around Berendtsen s figure as he passed out orders. I wonder sometimes what a man like that thinks of himself. Is he his own hero or does he feel some gospel burning inside him Does he perhaps think of himself as nothing more than a man doing a job Does he shut out the signs that tell him some of his men hate him and some love him Does he understand that there are men like us who stand to one side and try to analyze every move he makes I don t know Jim said. It was an old topic and they found themselves bringing it up again and again. My kid brother has a theory about him. Drumm spat past his pipestem. Had a theory he s developed a dozen since or he s false to type. He sighed. Well I suppose we have to have young intellectuals if we re ever to survive to be middleaged philosophers. But I wish some of them at least would realize that they themselves encourage the high mortality rate among them. He grinned wryly. Particularly in these peculiar times. Well he nodded down at the men time to put it on the road again. Maine here we come ready or not. Jim walked down the hill toward his platoon. Maine here we come he thought. And then back down the coast again and home. And after that out again southward. The dirty bitter smoking frontier and behind it union. More and more he could feel his own motives shifting from expediency to a faith in the abstract concept of a new nation and civilization pushing itself upward again. But the dirt and the bitterness went first and he and Harvey Drumm walked with it following Ted Berendtsen. ooooooooooooooo They were deep in Connecticut on the backward swing cleaning out a few pockets that had been missed when Jack Holland who was Jim s company commander now came up to him. Jack was still the same self contained controlled fighting man he had been. His face like Jim s was burned a permanent brown and he wore an old Army helmet but he hadn t changed beyond that. His rifle was still slung from his shoulder at the same angle it had always held and his eyes were steady. But his expression was set into a peculiar mask today and Jim looked at him sharply. Ted wants to talk to you Jim he said his voice unreadable. You free Sure. Jim waved a hand to Drumm and the corporal nodded. I ll keep their pants dry he said raising a chorus of derisive comments from the men. Okay let s go Jim said and walked back beside Holland who remained silent and gave him no opening to learn what had happened. They reached Berendtsen who was standing alone without his usual group of officers waiting for instructions and once again Jim frowned as he saw that even Berendtsen s mask was more firm than usual. There was something frightening in that. Hello Jim Berendtsen said holding out his hand. How s it going Ted Jim said. The handshake was firm as friendly as it ever had been and Jim wondered if it had been his own attitude that made him think they were far more apart than they once had been. Berendtsen let a grim smile flicker around the corners of his mouth but when it was gone his face was sadder than Jim ever remembered seeing it. Bob just called me on the radio he said gently. Matt died yesterday. Jim felt the chill stretch the skin over his cheekbones and he knew that Jack had put his hand on his shoulder but for those first few seconds he could not really feel anything. He could never clearly remember through the rest of his life exactly what that moment had been like. Finally he said How d it happen because it was the only thing he could think of to say that would sound nearly normal and yet not snowball within him into more emotion than he could hide. He died in bed Berendtsen said his voice even softer. Bob couldn t know what it really was. There are so many things to go wrong with a man that could be handled easily if we had any trained doctors. But all we have are some bright young men who ve read a lot of medical books and are too proud to admit they re plumbers. It was a sign of how much he d thought of Matt that Ted should be openly bitter. ooooooooooooooooooooo All the way back along the Hudson Harvey Drumm was the most important thing on Jim Garvin s mind. Harvey Drumm and something he d said and done. They had been bivouacked outside Albany. Jim and Harvey had been leaning their backs against a tree and smoking quietly in the darkness. Well Drumm said at last you won t be seeing me in the morning I guess. That Sawtell boy in the third squad ll make a good corporal. You can replace Miller with him and move Miller up into my spot. How s it sound Sounds fine for Miller and Sawtell Jim answered. I m not sure I like it. You going over the hill Drumm sucked on his pipe. Yes and no. You might say I was going out to do missionary work. That didn t make much sense. You re crazy Jim said perfunctorily. Drumm chuckled. No. The only thing insane about me is my curiosity. Trouble is it keeps getting satisfied and then I have to take it somewhere else. That and my mouth. My mouth wants to satisfy other people s curiosity whether they want it or not. It s time to take em both over the hill. Over the next range of hills maybe. Look you know I m your superior officer and I could have you shot. Shoot me. Oh God damn it What do you want to get out now for Ted s going to be taking the army lots of new places. Don t you want to be along if you re so curious I know Ted s story from here on. I think maybe he does too. Drumm s voice no longer had anything humorous in it. I think maybe he read the same books I did after he realized what his job was. Not that we go about it in the same way but the source books are the same. See you can learn a lot from books. They ll tell you simple practical things. Things like what relationship a wrench has to a bolt and what a bolt s function is. They won t tell you what the best way for you to hold a wrench might be so you can do the best job. If you re any good you can figure it out for yourself And it s the same way with much more complicated things too. You know just before the plague the United States was almost sure it was going to have a war with a country called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. At first they thought the principal weapons would be bombs. But after a while the best opinion was that rather than wreck all the useful machinery and poison the countryside for centuries the weapons used would be bacteriological ones. Diseases. Short term plant poisons. And crippling chemicals. To this day nobody knows for sure whether the plague that hit us wasn t something designed to evade all the known antibiotics and bacteriophages something that got away from somebody s stockpile by accident. Everyone denied it of course. I don t suppose that part of it matters. But just suppose somebody had written a book about what it would be like really be like for the people who lived through it. And suppose thousands of copies of that book had been lying around out in the open in thousands of stores for people to find after the plague. Think of the mistakes it might have saved them. That s what books are for. Books and mouthy curious people like me. We soak up a lot of stuff in our heads while other people are too busy doing practical things. And then we go out and give it to them as they need it. So I think I m due to go off. There must be people out in the wide world who need somebody to tell em what a bolt does and what a wrench does to a bolt. They ll shoot you as soon as you show up most likely. So they ll shoot me. And then they ll never know. Their tough luck. Jim Garvin sighed. All right. Harv have it your way. Almost always do. Where you headed South I guess. Always hated the cold rain. South and over the mountains. I don t figure Berendtsen ll have time to get to New Orleans. Shame. I hear it s a beautiful place. Well if you re going you re going Jim said passing over the Berendtsen part of what Harv had said. He d be there himself to see about that. I wish you weren t. For a mouthy guy you make a good noncom. Sorry Jim. I d rather conquer the world. They d shaken hands in the darkness and the last Jim Garvin ever saw of Harv Drumm the long legged man was walking away whistling an old song Drumm used to sing around campfires now and then. It was an old Australian Army marching song he d said: Waltzing Matilda it was called and some of the words didn t make much sense. Well what re you going to do Bob Garvin demanded his mouth hooked to one side. The passage of a handful of years had not changed him. Berendtsen looked at him coldly. Take the army south. As soon as possible. Trenton s been taken over by the Philadelphia organization. You re more aware of that than I am. You got the original report. Bob smiled thinly and Jim looking at him winced. He tried to find some sort of comfort in his mother s expression but she simply sat with her hands in her lap her face troubled. Still a few worlds left to conquer eh Well go and good riddance to you. Mary looked up. I don t think you should Ted. You know as well as I do what he s up to. He got this man Mackay elected to Mayor. He s got half the minor administrative posts in his pocket. The reason he s so anxious to see you out of New York is because then he ll be able to take over completely. Ted like Mary ignored Bob completely and Jim smiled at his brother s annoyance. I m sorry Mary Berendtsen said gently but this is a republic. Bob has every right to try and bring his group into a position of leadership. If the people decide they want him in I have no right to block him with whatever prestige the Army might give me. And I do have to go out again. It s become increasingly clear to me that as much of the country has to be unified as possible. I do not especially like the techniques necessary to that unification but the important thing the one basic important thing is the union. Everything else follows after. After that it s up to the people to decide how that union s going to function internally. But first the unification must be made. Mary shook her head in angry frustration and for the first time Jim saw all the emotion she controlled beneath her placid surface. Aren t you sick of killing Why do you hide behind these plans and purposes for tomorrow Can t you sometime think in terms of now of the people you are killing now Ted sighed and for one stark moment the mask fell away entirely until even Bob Garvin turned pale. I m sorry darling. But I m not building something for just now. And I can t think in terms of individual people as you ve said I kill too many of them. A silence that seemed to last for hours settled over them. Bob held the unsteady sneer on his face but kept quiet. Jim looked at Berendtsen who sat with his gaze reaching far beyond the open window. Finally Mary stood up awkwardly her hands moving as though to grasp something that constantly turned and twisted just in front of her there but unreachable. I I don t know she said unsteadily. That s the kind of thing you can t answer. She looked at Ted who turned his face up to her. You re the same man I married she went on. Exactly the same man. I can t say now that I ve changed my mind that I m backing out of it all. You re right. I ve always thought you were right. But it s a kind of rightness that s terribly hard to bear. A man shouldn t shouldn t look so far. He shouldn t work in terms of a hundred generations when he s only got his own to live. It s more than his own generation should be asked to bear. Would you like to call it off between us Ted asked gently. Mary avoided his eyes then bit her lip and faced him squarely. I don t know Ted. She shook her head. I don t know myself as well as you do. She sat down finally indecisively and looked at none of them. Well Bob said. What s your move Jim He d been waiting for someone to get around to that hoping illogically that the question would not be raised knowing that it must. And he discovered that he was still afraid of his younger brother. What do you think Mom he asked. She looked helplessly at her two sons her eyes uncertain. Her hands twisted in her lap. I wish I knew she finally said. Her voice trembled. When your father was alive she burst out it was so easy to decide. He always knew what to do. I could understand him. She looked around helplessly again. I don t understand any of you. She began to cry softly. Do anything you like she finished hopelessly too bewildered to cope with the problem any longer. So in the end the decision was given to him to face without help from anyone. He braced his shoulders and met Bob s sardonic gaze. I guess I ll follow Ted he said. ooooooooooooooooooo The sun shone with a fierce biting glare that stabbed from a thousand windows. Jim squinted up the column the added reflection of the ranks of upraised rifles needling his eyes. He swung his head and looked up at the window where Mary and his mother were watching. Bob was somewhere in the crowd that stood on the sidewalks. Through all the nights that he and Ted had spent in Berendtsen s old apartment alone except for Ted s withdrawn shadowlike mother they had never talked. It had been as though one of the two of them had been a ghost barely visible and never within reach. Was it me or was it Ted he thought now. Or was it both of them each locked in the secret prison of his body each haunted in turn each unable to share A whistle shrilled and the truck engines raised their idling cough to a roar that seemed incredibly loud here between the tall brick buildings. All right move out Jim yelled to his men and the first crash of massed footsteps came from the lines of men. The army moved south. SECTION THREE PROLOGUE: Custis had been asleep for about a half hour when somebody touched his shoulder. He turned over in one easy motion and caught the hand around the wrist. With his next move he was on his feet and the girl s arm twisted back between her shoulder blades. What s up Honey he said quietly putting just enough strain on her shoulder to turn her head toward him. The girl was about eighteen or twenty with a pale bony face and black hair hacked off around her shoulders. She was thin and the top of her head came up to his collarbone. She was wearing a man s army shirt that bagged around her and a skirt made by cutting off a pair of pants at the knees opening the seams and using the extra material to make gussets. The whole business was pretty crudely sewn and came down to just above her dirty calves. I was bringing you something to eat soldier she said. O.K. He let go of her wrist and she turned all the way around putting the pail of stew down on the ground in front of him. There was a wooden spoon sticking up out of it. Custis sat down folded his legs under him and started to eat. The girl sat down next to him. Go easy she said. Half of that s mine. Custis grunted. The commander send you over here with this he asked passing the spoon. She shook her head. He s busy. He always gets busy about this time of day working on that bottle of his. She was eating as hungrily as Custis had not looking up and talking between mouthfuls. Custis looked over toward the guard. The man was squatted down with an empty dinner bucket beside him scowling at Custis and the girl. That your man Custis asked her. She looked up briefly. You could say that. There s maybe six or seven of us that don t belong in anybody s hut. There s maybe fifty men without any families. Custis nodded. He looked over toward the guard again shrugged and took the spoon from the girl. The commander here what s his name Eichler Eisner something like that. Anyhow that s what he says. I was with the last bunch he took over up here a couple of years ago. Never did get it straight. Who cares Names come easy. He s the only commander we got. So that didn t tell him anything. What s your name Jody. You from Chicago soldier Right now yeah. Name s Joe Custis. You ever seen Chicago She shook her head. I was born up here. Never seen anything else. You going back to Chicago Joe Go ahead finish that I m full. Custis looked around at the cliffs and huts. I figure I ll be getting out of here maybe. Maybe Chicago s where I ll head for. Don t you know Don t much care. I live where my car is. Don t you like cities I hear they ve got all kinds of stores and things and warehouses full of clothes and food. Where d you hear that Some of the fellows here came out from Chicago and Denver and places like that. They tell me. But Chicago sounds like it s the best of all. Custis grunted. Ain t never been to Denver. He finished the stew. Food s pretty good here. You cook it She nodded. You got a big car Room for extra people to ride in She leaned back until her shoulder was touching his. Custis looked down at the stewpot. You re a pretty good cook. I like it. I m strong too. I m not afraid to work. And I shoot a rifle pretty good when I have to. Custis frowned. You want me to take you to Chicago The girl was quiet for a moment. That s up to you. She was still leaning on his shoulder looking straight out ahead of her. I ll think about it. The guard had been getting uglier and uglier in the face. Now he stood up. All right Jody he s fed. Now get away from him. Custis got slowly to his feet using two fingers of his right hand to quietly push the girl s shoulder down and keep her where she was. He looked over toward the guard with a casual glance and jumped him. He chopped out with his hands and the rifle fell loose. Custis dropped the man scooped up the rifle and pulled out the clip. He worked the bolt and caught the extracted cartridge in mid air. Then he handed the whole business back to the man. You tend to your job and I ll give you no trouble son he told him and went back to where the girl was sitting. The guard was cursing but by the time he d reloaded the rifle he d come to realize just how much Custis had done to him. If he didn t want the girl spreading his story all over the camp his best move was to keep quiet from now on. He did it. The girl looked sideward at Custis as he sat down again. You always move that fast When it s gonna save me trouble I do. You re a funny bird you know How come you ve got that black smear around your eyes Rubber off my goggles. Some of it s under the skin. Can t wash it off. You must of been wearing those goggles a long time. Ever since I was big enough to go along with my dad. He had a car of his own full track job. Found it scroungin around an old U.S. Army place called Fort Knox. That was back before everything got scrounged out. So he took the car and went out looking for people. What with one thing and another he sort of got into working with people of one kind or another. I don t know where my mother is couldn t be alive I guess if all I remember is being in the car with my dad. It wasn t a bad car. Too slow though. On roads I mean. We got caught that way in a town once. This place was built around the only bridge standin over the river and we had to go through it. There was a couple of birds with a bazooka anti tank rocket launcher is what that is down at the far end of the town behind some piled up concrete. We opened up on them but this car only had a 35 millimeter cannon. High velocity stuff and that wears hell out of the riflin . It was pretty far gone. We kept missing and they kept trying to fire this bazooka thing. They must have had ten of the rockets that fit it and one after another they was duds. One of them fired all right but when it hit us it didn t go off. Punched through the armor and got inside the car. The primer went off but the charge was no good. The primer goin off smoked up the inside of the car so bad we couldn t see. Dad was drivin and I heard him trying to stay on the road. Then we hit something with one track maybe they got us with another rocket so we went around in a circle and flipped over sideways. Well I crawled out and the car was between me and the birds with the bazooka. Then my dad crawled out. Both of us were busted up some but our legs were okay. Meanwhile these two birds were bangin away with rifles. Dad and I all we had was .45s. I figured the only thing to do was try and run for it and I said so. Dad said the way to do it was to split up or they d get us both. And I couldn t see it because if we got separated there was no tellin when we d get back together again. Well Dad got this funny look on his face and gave me a shove away from him and he started running. He yelled: Don t you waste me hear and he was shooting at these guys. I got em both later. Your dad must have been a funny kind of man. Custis shrugged. He sat with the girl through the afternoon making talk until finally another rifleman came over to them from the line of huts. He looked down at Custis and the girl his eyes flicking back and forth once and letting it go at that. This Henley fellow you brought wants to see you soldier. What s his trouble I figured that s his business. He give me his wristwatch to come get you. I done that. The man was a big hairy type bigger than Custis. But when Custis came smoothly to his feet annoyance showing on his face the rifleman took a step back. Custis looked at him curiously. The damnedest people were always doing that with him and he had a hard time understanding it. I ll see you later he said to the girl and walked off. oooooooooooo Henley was pacing back and forth in his hut when Custis stopped in the doorway. He twitched his lips nervously. It s time you got here. I watched you out there lollygagging with that girl. Make your point Henley. What d you want to see me about What did I want to see you about Why didn t you come here as soon as the commander released you We have to make plans we have to think this through. We have to decide what to do if our situation grows any worse. Hasn t it occurred to you that this man might be planning to do almost anything to us Custis shrugged. I didn t see any sense in getting all worked up about it. When he makes up his mind we ll find out about it. No use making any plans of our own until we find out what his are. Henley stared angrily at him. Don t you care Don t you care if you get killed Sure I do. But the time to worry about that was back on the plains. Yes and you decided quite easily didn t you Henley stared at Custis waspishly. It wasn t very hard for you to risk all our lives. His eyes narrowed. Unless You know something Custis. No man in his right mind would have acted the way you ve acted unless you knew you weren t in any danger. That s a bad direction for you to think in. Is it You drove up here like a man coming home. What do I know about you after all A freebooting car commander off the same part of the plains where the outlaws run. Yes I know you ve worked for Chicago before but what does that mean Custis could smell the hysteria soaking the officer s clothes. You ve sold us out Custis I can t understand how Chicago could ever have trusted you They must have or I wouldn t of been hired for this job. Henley gnawed his lip. I don t know. He stopped and muttered down at the ground. There are people who want my place for themselves. They might have planned all this to get rid of me. You re a damned fool Henley. Custis was thinking that as late as a few years ago he would have felt sorry for Henley. But since then he d seen a lot of men go to pieces when they thought they might get killed. More of them died than would have if they d kept thinking. It seemed to be something built into them. Custis had never felt it and he wondered if there might not be something wrong with him. But anyhow Custis had learned it wasn t anything to feel one way or the other about. It was something some people did and when you saw it you allowed for it. Henley suddenly said: Custis if we get out of here don t take me back to Chicago. What No listen they ll kill us if we go back without Berendtsen. Or maybe with him. Let s go somewhere else. Or let s stay on the plains. We can live off the country. We can raid farms. Put me in your crew. I don t care I ll learn to shoot a machinegun or whatever you want me to do. But we can t go back to Chicago. I wouldn t have you in my crew if I had to drive and fire the guns all by myself. Is that your final answer Henley s lips were quivering. Damned right You think you know all the answers Custis growled: Get a hold on yourself. And Henley did it. He waited a moment but then he stopped his pacing and flicked one hand up to brush his perspired hair back into place. I ll get out of this. You watch me I ll get out and see you executed. Custis said slowly shaking his head: Look I want to get out of here just as much as you do. I think maybe I can. If I do I ll try and take you along because I got you into this. But if you can t stand the gaff you shouldn t of come out here in the first place. Never mind the speeches Custis. From now on I ll look after myself. Don t expect any help from me. Hey you two the rifleman said from the doorway commander wants you. The sun was going down behind the mountains. It was still broad daylight farther up on the westward faces of the peaks but the valley was filling with shadows. Custis followed Henley along the line of huts feeling a little edgy in the thick gloom here at the base of the cliff and wondering how all this was going to work out. He watched Henley. The officer was walking in short choppy strides and Custis could see him working his self control up to a high pitch. His face lost its desperate set and the look of confidence came back to him. It was only if you knew what to look for that you could still see the panic in him driving him like a fuel. They reached the commander s hut. Come in the commander said from his table and Custis couldn t decide whether he was drunk on his home brew or not. The inside of the hut was so dark that all he could see of the old man was a shadow without a face. It might have been almost anyone sitting there. Custis felt his belly tightening up. Henley stopped in front of the table and Custis took a stand beside him. I m glad to see you re still here Custis the old man said. I was afraid you might be killed trying a break. I m not crazy. I didn t think you were. Henley interrupted. Have you decided what you re going to do The commander sighed. Just why would you want Berendtsen back Major Then he s available Just answer the question please. We ll do this my way. Henley licked his lips. Custis could hear the sound plainly. Well the political officer finally said in a persuasive voice there s been no hope of stability anywhere since he was deposed. Governments come and go overnight. A constitution isn t worth the paper it s written on. We ve never been under Berendtsen s rule but his law stood up better than most. We need something like that in Chicago the whole upper Middlewest needs it. Now that he d gotten started he was talking much more easily. Paper money s so much mouse stuffing credit s nonexistent and half the time your life s at the mercy of the next man s good will. We don t have a society we have a poorly organized rabble. If Berendtsen s still alive we need him. He s the only man anyone ll follow with any enthusiasm. Follow a corpse Follow a name a legend. A legend of a time when there was civilization in the world. Do you really believe that Henley Of course Oh you believe that it ll work you can see how a crowd would fall into line believing it. But you realize don t you that if Berendtsen were to take over Chicago the first thing he would do is order you and your gang hung. Henley gave it one more try. Would he If we were the ones who gave him the opportunity to come back and finish what he d begun I don t think Ted Berendtsen would have shown that kind of suicidal gratitude. No. Then you won t do it I m not Berendtsen. Then who is Do you know where he is Berendtsen s been dead thirty years the old man said. What in heaven s name did you expect If he was alive and he s not he d be sixty years old now. A man that age in this world your whole scheme s fantastic Major and rational men would know it. But you can t let yourselves think rationally about it. You need your Berendtsens too badly. Then that s your final word I want to ask Custis something first. You stay and listen. It ll interest you. Custis frowned. Custis Yes sir Do you think I m Berendtsen You asked me that. No. You don t. Well do you think Berendtsen s alive No. I see. You don t think I m Berendtsen and you don t think Berendtsen s alive then what re you doing up here in these mountains What were you hoping to find Custis felt himself getting angry. He felt he was being chivvied into a corner. Nothing maybe. Maybe I m just a guy doing a job because he has to. Not looking for anything or anybody just doing a job. The commander laughed mirthlessly. The sound stabbed at Custis out of the growing darkness in the cabin. It s time we stopped lying to each other Joe. You put your car your entire life in a position where you might lose them instantly. You know it and I know it and let s not argue the merits of dust grenades against napalm shells. Why did you take that kind of gamble Why were you dangling that bait Who were you hoping might snap at it It was a quick way of finding out what Henley wanted to know. And how did you propose to get out once you d gotten yourself in You don t give two cents paper for Henley. You re an independent armored car commander on a simple contract job why all the extra effort You must have known damned well this mission wasn t in the interests of the Seventh Republic You re a child of the age. If you d let yourself stop and think you would have realized what was going on. But you don t care anything about the Eighth Republic either. A man doesn t pledge allegiance to one of a meaningless string of numbers. No. What you wanted to do was to pledge allegiance to a man who s thirty years dead. Now deny it. Custis didn t have an answer. It was dark outside. He d played out his string with the commander and with himself. You want me to tell you I m Berendtsen don t you Maybe Custis said grudgingly. The commander laughed again a harsh bitter croak of sound that made the hackles stand on Custis s neck. Henley was breathing heavily in the darkness. You and Henley both damned fools. What would you do with your Berendtsen Joe Starve with him up here in these mountains with an old man If you found him did you expect him to go and remake the world for you He tried that once. And maybe he succeeded if men can still hope because he lived. But what could he do now an old man His sort of life is a young man s game if it s anyone s. You Joe you re a different breed from this jackal beside you. What do you think Berendtsen started with What s the matter with you Custis You ve got a car and a crew that ll follow you anywhere. What do you need some ready made hero for Custis had no answer at all. Don t worry Joe Henley s getting an earful. I can hear the gears turning in his head. Right now he s planning how to use you. He can see it already. The Chicago machine swinging in behind you. The carefully built up legend they ll manufacture around you. The indomitable strong American from the plains. All you ll have to do is stand up on a platform and shout and his gang will take care of the rest. That s what he s thinking. But you don t have to worry about him. You can take care of him. It ll be a long time before anyone like you has to worry about anyone like Henley years. And I can sit here and tell you this and the likes of Henley ll still not worry because they think they can always run things. Of course in order to safeguard the legend of Joe Custis he has to make sure once and for all that Berendtsen won t return Custis heard the sound of steel snaking out of Henley s boot top. He jumped for where the man had been but Henley d had minutes to get ready. Custis heard him bump into the desk and the thin scream of his blade through the air. The old man ll have moved Custis thought. He d had time. He heard the ripe sound of Henley s dagger and then the dull chunk as its hilt stopped against flesh. He heard the old commander sigh. He stood still breathing open mouthed until he heard Henley move. He went in low under where the blade might be. As Custis hit him Henley whispered: Don t be a fool Don t make any noise With any luck we can walk out of here He broke Henley apart with his hands making no noise and permitting none from Henley. He let the officer slip to the floor and went silently around the table to where he felt the old man folded over. He touched his shoulder. Commander It s all right the old man sighed. I ve been waiting for it. He stirred. I ve left things in a terrible mess. He was quicker to make up his mind than I had expected. He hunched himself up his cracked fingernails scraping at his shirt. I don t know now...you ll have to get out without me somehow. I can t help you. Why am I so old It s O.K. Commander. I ve had somethin figured out. I ll make it. You ll need a weapon. The commander raised his head and pulled his shoulders back. Here. He tugged at his chest and fumbled the wet knife into Custis s hand. CHAPTER SIX: Here is New York City quite a few years earlier and this is what happened: I Bob Garvin watched the Army go his hands in his pockets an odd light burning in his eyes. He waited until the last truck had swung off Fourteenth Street and turned toward the Lincoln Tunnel until the last man had marched out of sight until the flashes of sun on gun barrels had winked out. Then he stepped back apologized to a citizen he bumped and walked over to the group clustered around Brent Mackay. Morning Mayor he said. Ah good morning counselor Out here like all the rest of us I see. Mackay was an oddity. He looked as lean and hard as any man but he was soft at the core like a bag so full of wind that the cloth stretched drum tight and strong but nevertheless only full of wind. Have to wave bye bye to the brave soldier boys you know Bob said. One of the Mayor s retinue a steely eyed man named Mert Hollis laughed metallically. A wave of sly chuckles swept over the group. Well Bob Garvin said let s get back to work. There s still a government in this city even if the Crown Prince has gone a hunting again. Mackay nodded hastily. Of course. You re quite right counselor. He turned to the rest of the members of the City Council and their assistants. Let s go boys Back to the salt mines. Got to get that sewer project in the works. Ah Mayor... Garvin interceded softly. Yes counselor I d think that could wait a little. Rome wasn t built in a day you know. l d like to get that question of voter eligibility straightened out this morning. Why certainly counselor Mackay chuckled easily. You know that had slipped my mind. Thanks for reminding me. You re welcome I m sure. The Army of Unification took Trenton easily. It ran into a very strong defense in Philadelphia and for a moment Berendtsen debated whether it might not have been a better idea to enter southern New Jersey instead of by passing it. But a flanking column finally battered its way up from Chester and the city fell. Camden then fell with it and the strategy of quick gain was justified. With a strong garrison in the Camden Philadelphia district southern New Jersey was bound to be gradually assimilated with a far lower ratio of losses and meanwhile weeks of time were gained. The Army pushed south. Image Eating slowly Bob Garvin savored his mother s cooking. He smiled at her fondly as she spooned another portion of potatoes on his plate. Thanks Mom but I m just about full. Don t you like them his mother asked anxiously. No no they re fine Mom he protested. But there s only so much room and I ll want some of that pumpkin pie. Mary looked at him acidly. Home life of the public figure she said. Popular candidate for Councilman from the Sixth District enjoys home cooking. Goes home for one of Mom s pies on night before municipal elections. Mary Margaret Garvin looked at her daughter reproachfully. Mary looked down at her plate. Sorry Mother. I can t understand what s come over you lately Margaret Garvin was saying her face troubled. You never used to be this way. Mary shrugged. Nobody s the way they used to be. She toyed with her knife. But I m sorry. I won t do it again. Margaret Garvin looked anxiously at her son. Bob was smiling slightly as he often seemed to be. Apparently he was impervious to anything his sister might say. Well... Margaret Garvin began irresolutely. She frowned as she realized she had no idea of what she was going to say next. She d been this way more and more often since Matt... Matt was gone. There was no sense in hurting herself by thinking about it. He was gone and she was here. And if she seemed to miss his strength more and more every day well everyone grew old some time or the other. I m going over to see Carol Berendtsen she said at last. You children can manage your own dessert without any trouble. The poor woman s worn down to a shadow. She missed Ted. Her boy had been her life since Gus... She would not think of death ...Since Carol didn t have Gus anymore. And no one knew where Ted was beyond an occasional radio report about this city besieged that town captured. And more than that. More than that and the same thing that put the pain in Mary s eyes. Wife and mother both wondering what was happening inside the man one had borne and the other married but neither understood. Margaret Garvin stood up. Her own oldest boy Jim was with Ted. Perhaps she too should be worried. But she never worried about Jim. Jim was like seasoned timber holding up a building. Nothing could hurt him nothing could move him. Jim could take care of himself. Never worried Well no not that. She knew that Jim was as weak as any man whom a bullet might strike down. But Jim was not the complex delicate organism that Ted was or that Bob was. It was impossible to believe of him as one could easily believe of the other two that one slight shock could jar the entire mechanism. Will you be here when I come back Bob she asked. Bob shook his head regretfully. Afraid not Mom. I need a good night s sleep before tomorrow. Vote early and often you know. He chuckled easily. She went over to him and kissed him good night. Take care of yourself Bob she said gently. Always do Mom. Bob shot a glance at Mary after his mother had left. Mary Berendtsen was staring distantly at her teacup her eyes lost. Worried about Ted Bob asked softly. Mary did not look at him. Her mouth twitched into a thin line. I have no quarrel with you he said sincerely. You ve got one with my husband. Bob shook his head violently. Not with him. With his ideals. His social theories if you will. Mary looked up smiling thinly. You tell me where the one leaves off and the other begins. Bob shrugged. That s what makes it look like I hate him personally. But I don t You know that. You d have him killed if you could get away with it. If you could have gotten him killed you d have done it two years ago when he came back from the north. Bob nodded. I ll admit that. But not because I hate him or don t admire him for that matter. Because he stands for the reigning social theory. A theory that s going to drive us back to the caves and snipers if it keeps on. Don t campaign around me Mary snapped. Don t fog your pretty speeches at me What it boils down to is that despite Mackay despite Chief of Police Merton Hollis despite the City Council in your pocket you know damned well that if Ted comes back to stay you ll be on the outside in two bounces And then all the pretty plans and fat jobs won t be worth this She snapped her fingers. Bob shook his head. No Mary he said gently. You re mad at me but you know that s not true. Mackay s a tool true and not a clean one either. Neither are the things I m forced to do. But you know why I want to control the government. And it s not the fat jobs. Her anger spent Mary nodded grudgingly. I know she sighed. You re sincere enough. She laughed shortly. Heaven protect the human race from the sincere idealist And what s Ted Mary winced. Touche. Bob shook his head. No not touche. It s not a new point. What makes it hurt is that you ve been driving yourself insane with it all along. This time Mary s face went white and a mask slipped tightly down over her features as she fled into the shelter of herself. Look Mims you know what I believe what I ve believed ever since I can remember. We were born equal. We were born with a heritage of personal weapons to enforce our equality and it is the personal weapons in the hands of free men which should ensure that each man will not be trespassed against that no one ever will be able to regiment to demand to tithe to take from another man what is rightfully his. If we are each equally armed what man is better than his neighbors If we are all armed who dares to be a thief whether he steals liberty or possessions And what is Ted Berendtsen s belief That men should band together in a group for the purpose of forcing other men to serve that group. How can I compromise to such a man How can I sit still and let him enforce his tyranny upon us How can I let him or his beliefs live in the same world with myself and my beliefs For once Bob s cynical self possession had deserted him. He found himself on his feet his palms resting on the edge of the table staring fiercely down at Ted Berendtsen s wife. Mary raised her head her face blanched completely white. Have you been campaigning on that platform she demanded. Bob Garvin shook his head. No. Not yet. oooooooooooo The Army of Unification took Richmond Atlanta and Jacksonville. Berendtsen s men moved south. Someone threw a rotten cabbage at Mary Berendtsen in the street. Newly elected City Councilman Robert Garvin sat at one end of the long desk at the head. Brent Mackay Mayor of the City of New York sat at the other end at the foot. Merton Hollis the police chief sat next to Bob Garvin. All right then boys Garvin was saying in this matter of the upcoming national elections it breaks down like this. Under the Voters Eligibility Statute any one specific member of the family can cast the vote of an absentee member of the Army of Unification in addition to his own. Right The City Council nodded. Okay. Now technically speaking that extra vote is to be cast in accordance with the expressed wishes of the absentee. He spreads his hands in a helpless gesture. But with the Army on the move like it is with no one knowing for sure exactly what it s doing...Why without casualty lists no one even knows who s dead and who isn t. But Robert we do know Mackay began. Garvin stopped him with a patient smile. Please Mr. Mayor. We ve got radio reports true. But they re vague and they re garbled and who s to say Berendtsen isn t concealing setbacks by ordering his operators to give false locations He shook his head. No we can t go by hearsay. We ll simply have to accept those votes as if they d been directed by the absentees. After all we can t prove they aren t. There was a low chorus of suppressed chuckles of appreciation from the members of the City Council. But suppose those votes aren t cast Mackay protested. After all the families know they haven t been in touch with the men. How can they cast those votes in all conscience Garvin looked at him in cold amusement. Mr. Mayor have you ever heard of anyone once he s ready to vote at all who wouldn t vote as hard as he could This time the chuckles were louder. What s more Garvin said softly while the voters will not be able to get individual directions I m sure they can be made to know how the Army as a whole feels about Berendtsen and his theories. Several heads along the table snapped to sudden attention. As you know Robert Garvin went on still softly the garrison commander at Philadelphia Commander Willets is a staunch follower of Theodore Berendtsen s. He has distinguished himself in following Berendtsen s methods and policies exactly. His administration of the garrison too has been identical with the pattern laid down by his chief. In short we have in Philadelphia a miniature Berendtsen with a miniature Army of Unification administering a miniature Republic. It follows that the reaction of the garrison and of the people of Philadelphia to Commander Willets will be identical with the reaction of the Army as a whole to Theodore Berendtsen. There will also be the close parallel between the condition of the Philadelphians and the condition the citizens of the Republic may expect for themselves should Berendtsen ever become head of the Republic. Those members of the City Council who were closest to Garvin laughed aloud and looked at each other with triumphant grins on their faces. Mackay looked down the length of the table in shock. But but that isn t an AU garrison any more he protested. Hollis took a draft of City policemen down there last year and rotated the original garrison home. Garvin nodded. Quite so. And the original garrison is now on constabulary duty in Maine. We know that. What s your point Mayor Mackay licked his lips in confusion. Well He shot a glance at Hollis hesitated but then pressed on. You know what kind of men we sent down there. And you know we haven t given Willets any support from here when he s demanded replacements and support. Good God man he s been a virtual prisoner down there Even his communications with Berendtsen are monitored. He s no more responsible for what s been going on down in Philadelphia than than He stopped at a loss for a comparison. Than Berendtsen is Mr. Mayor Garvin smiled. Of course. But who knows that outside of ourselves Nobody. But it isn t right You can t just rig something as cold bloodedly as this And what did you think we were doing in Philadelphia Mr. Mayor Conducting an interesting social experiment No no of course not But this Garvin sighed and ignored him from that point on. He turned to the other members of the city s government and thereby the Republic s. Commander Willets will be recalled home to answer charges of oppression misadministration and treason. His trial will take place a week before elections. Our slate of candidates is as follows: for Commander In Chief Merton Hollis. There was a light spatter of applause from the Council and Garvin shook the steely eyed man s hand vigorously. Then he continued: For First Citizen a new office as you know in place of the old designation of President : Robert Garvin. The applause was violent this time and Hollis solemnly shook Garvin s hand. And for Mayor of the City of New York Garvin looked down the table at a smiling Councilman William Hammersby. Garvin s look shifted and Mackay found himself staring helplessly into the eyes of the end. ooooooooooooooo The man in the vaguely army ish clothes clambered to the top of the wall in Union Square gripping a lamp post for support. He waved the Army of Unification s blue and silver pennant wildly over his head. Listen he shouted. Listen citizens I was in Philadelphia. I was with Berendtsen for over three years And I say to hell with the madman and to hell with his flag He ripped away the silver stripe. I ve had enough of the color of bayonets He threw the tattered pennant away and waved another one over his head this one colored blue and red. This is the flag for me Blue for honor and red to remember the blood that Berendtsen has drunk But no white for purity Mary Berendtsen murmured to herself from the edge of the crowd. No one in that milling election eve crowd heard her. Luckily for her no one recognized her either. Garvin smiled pleasantly down at the new communications officer. I m sure you understand your duties Colonel. Now here s the text of your nightly report to Berendtsen. And Brent Mackay s body drifted slowly down the Hudson out to the broad and waiting ocean. II Jim Garvin stood with his hands deep in his pockets listening to the wind flapping in the sides of tents as it swept gloomily across the bivouac area. The wind was very cold condensing his breath into an unpleasant brittle wetness on the thick pile of his collar. He shivered violently as a gust needled his tender right leg still sensitive from the scattering of buckshot that had chipped its bones two years ago during the occupation of Jacksonville. A thin light seeped from behind the stringy pines to the east. It was going to be a cold and miserable day. He looked at his wristwatch and walked toward the nearest tent glad to be moving. He unsnapped the flap tightly sealed and stubborn to his numb fingers and shook the head of the nearer of the two men who slept inside. All right Miller let s go Miller grunted incoherently and then came awake rolling over in his wadding of blankets. He found his helmet with a blind movement of his arm jammed his head into it and crawled out nudging his tentmate with a boot as he came. Still bundled he zipped up his jacket under the blankets before he pulled them off his shoulders and threw them back into the tent. Begley the tentmate crawled out after him mumbling a string of curses while he handed Miller the canvas flagbag. It s a sonofabitch cold day Begley said spitefully as he picked up his bugle. Stinkin South sucked all the goddam blood out of us Miller agreed. Garvin grunted. Whenever he d bothered to think about it at all he d somehow assumed that the last days of this campaign would be the same as they had been when the still young Army of Unification had swung back down the Jersey palisades into New York crisp clear weather with a promise of winter. Instead the winter was almost over now and the ground was soaking with rain and molten frost. The raw wind clawed at a man s insides. It would be a good month before the weather was fit for anything. But considering what the last homecoming had been like it was probably as good a thing for this one to be different as not. So he merely grunted. They walked across the bivouac area to Berendtsen s trailer without further words. When they reached it Miller snapped the AU pennant to the jackstaff shrouds while Begley twisted a mouthpiece into his bugle. Garvin stood motionless beside the trailer his head stiff and erect under its gray helmet the Senior Sergeant s green swath dull under a coat of frost. His shoulders were taut his boots at a forty five degree angle. He looked at his watch again. Flag... He counted to three. Up Miller sent the blue and silver pennant whipping up into the wind and Garvin s jacket stretched over his stiff back as Begley blew Assembly. He held to attention while the men kicked their way out of their tents and lined up for roll call. This is an army now Berendtsen had said. It represents a nation. And a nation must have a continuing army. The answer is a tradition of always having an army. Jim I want you to see that it looks a little like an army. If Berendtsen wanted him to set examples of discipline it was no skin off his nose one way or the other. The men had gradually gotten used to the idea once they d realized it made them a more efficient organization when held within reasonable limits. And this was only one of many changes that had come about while the AU was beating its way down the eastern seaboard. The AU had come a long way in distance and in time from the rabble of men who couldn t have stood before one platoon of this regiment which now made up Berendtsen s army. Even the bloodied and organized force that had marched back to New York from the Northern Campaign would have been broken by one of the now existing specialist groups Eisner s armored cars probably that had prowled through the torrential rain of the siege of Tampa like fireclawed hounds and left to be mopped up by infantry. The AU had learned a lot by the time the blue and silver pennant flew over Key West. Learned a lot enlisted many looted much. It had learned still more as it returned northwards cleaning out pockets and dropping garrisons in the familiar strategy that Berendtsen had developed during the Northern Campaign. So everything east of the Alleghenies was Berendtsen s now. Garvin s gaze swung as he looked bleakly at the lines of silent men waiting at attention. The men were lean and hard in their uniforms old Marine uniforms with helmets and belt buckles finished in crackle gray paint from a business machines factory. Most of them would probably have been a match for any soldier that ever walked the Earth winnowed and weeded as they had been. As to why they fought...Three meals a day and a purpose in life were as good a reason as any. A soldier got his pick of loot such loot as watches and cigarette lighters less luxury than convenience his choice of land to work after his discharge and a chance to find himself a woman. Garvin took the roll call report without taking his eyes off the men. Only a few of them were personally loyal to Berendtsen but all of them followed him. Garvin wondered how they d feel when they were pushed across the Appalachians to the west. He wondered too how he d feel personally and discovered that his mind had been avoiding the subject. He heard Berendtsen s hand on the inside latch of the trailer s door. Tenn hut he barked and the men already stiff turned their waiting eyes on the door. In their tents some of them swore they d keep their eyes oblique the next morning when the trailer door opened. None of them did. The door opened and Garvin stepped aside and held it then swung it back as Berendtsen took three steps forward into the bivouac area. He was wearing a belted coverall that had been dyed black and only Garvin standing slightly behind and a few feet to one side was in a position to notice that his stomach was heavier than it had been. He surveyed the regiment with his usual unrevealing expression and today for the first time and for no obvious reason Garvin saw that the youthfulness of his face was no more than a mask. His facial skin was waxy as though someone had taken a cast of young Ted Berendtsen s features and put it against this older skull under the boyishly combed but darkening hair and let his weary eyes look through. His neck was girdled by deep creases. All men present sir Garvin said. Berendtsen nodded curtly. Good morning Jim. His eyes did not change their impersonal and yet intense expression. His face did not lose whatever singleness of purpose it was that gave it its unvarying mold. And now Garvin realized in the wake of his sudden glimpse of a Berendtsen stripped of all youth that Berendtsen had years ago closed the last door that opened from himself to the world and that now the sound of it had finally reached Garvin s ears. Dismiss the men Sergeant. All companies messed down and ready to move out in an hour. I want you and Commanders Eisner and Holland in my quarters in five minutes. Yes sir. Garvin saluted issued the orders and dismissed the men. He walked across the area to where the company commanders were standing in the dawn gloom leaving the old young stranger behind. We are here. Berendtsen touched his finger to the contour map of Bucks County and then characteristically added a belated As you know. Garvin noted that Holland twitched his thin lips opposite him at the map table. Eisner whose hands were permanently blackened by grease and gear box dust and who was completely withdrawn when away from his cars kept his face expressionless. We will be in New York on the day after tomorrow Berendtsen went on. That is the main body will. He removed the map and substituted another covering the lower part of New Jersey. Now. Our main line of communication between New York and the Philadelphia area as well as our route to the south in general cuts across northern New Jersey and across the Delaware at Trenton. Up to now there has been no reason to enter southern New Jersey at all with the Camden garrison there to guard our flank because of the area s peninsular nature. Which I am sure is obvious to all of us. Accordingly A Company under Commander Holland will now detach itself from the main body cross the river at any practicable point and proceed to occupy southern New Jersey. Garvin you will take over the First Platoon of A Company and act as Commander Holland s Aide in the Field. You will be accompanied by as many armored cars under the subsidiary command of whatever junior officer Commander Eisner appoints as the commander feels such a detachment will require. You will draw supplies and support weapons within Commander Holland s discretion and will provision from the land carrying a basic ration for emergencies. Is that clear Holland and Eisner nodded. Garvin as an NCO said Yes sir. He kept his face blank Berendtsen s orders made him in effect superior in command to whoever the Armored officer would be. They also gave him the duties of a full Lieutenant. He had known of course that Berendtsen would someday make him an officer in spite of his many refusals to accept the rank. But now he wondered. Why had Berendtsen waited until now to exercise this elementary circumvention Up to now this had looked like a standard mop up. Now a new factor had entered the circumstances and Garvin wondered what it really was. Berendtsen resumed. Very well. You will send patrols into every town of significant size and establish communications posts. Liaison is to be maintained by radio with the Camden Philadelphia Garrison Office for the purpose of transmitting regular reports. You will set up new garrisons at Atlantic City Bridgeton and in the former naval installations at Cape May. Berendtsen looked up from the map. Those are your objectives. You will of course pursue our standard occupation and recruitment policies. As usual hereditary officers in communities surviving around former military installations are to be handled carefully. He stopped and something crossed his face briefly too rapidly for Garvin to read. The Philadelphia garrison commander has reported that the area is only sparsely populated no penetration having been made by any civilian groups since the dislocation of the old Philadelphia organization six years ago. 1 am told that there was never an opportunity for Philadelphia to conduct large scale resettlements in the area. For this reason I am sending only one company. However the Philadelphia garrison had probed the area only lightly in spite of whatever generalized conclusions the commander may have drawn. The commander as you have no way of knowing is a man sent out from New York to replace Commander Willets. He smiled dryly. For that reason I am augmenting the company with the armored detachment and staffing it with my best men. Commander Eisner I ll ask you to bear these remarks in mind when you detail your own officer. A few final orders which I ll confirm in writing as soon as my clerk has them typed. Be sure you have them before you leave Commander Holland. As follows: You will maintain radio contact with Philadelphia and New York but you are an entirely independent command until the area has been completely occupied and assimilated into the Republic. Once this has been accomplished the Southern New Jersey Command will be subordinated to the Philadelphia Military District and will be subject to orders from the Philadelphia garrison commander. Until such time you are on record as a detached unit of the Army of Unification in the field and are subject only to the orders of the Commander in Chief. Garvin tried to find something readable in either Berendtsen s or Holland s faces but failed. Berendtsen didn t trust his Philadelphia commander that was sure. And his third person reference to himself as Commander in Chief seemed unnecessarily oblique. More and more Garvin began to suspect that there was something wrong. Perhaps the AU had grown to proportions which kept Berendtsen from personally supervising the entire organization but the Philadelphia garrison was an important one and it seemed inconceivable that an undependable man had gotten the post. Any questions Garvin kept silent as did the two commanders. Suggestions I d like to take that detachment in myself sir Eisner said. Life in New York uneventful as it must inevitably be held no attraction for him. The New Jersey operation offered an extra month s action. Berendtsen shook his head. I d considered sending you he said but I want you in New York too much. Eisner s brows twitched and the man s face unaccustomed to masking his thoughts showed his plain doubt. I m sorry Berendtsen said flatly. Yes sir Eisner answered. All right then Berendtsen concluded You re dismissed and good luck. Garvin followed the two commanders out of the trailer while the clerk s typewriter hammered an accompaniment from their orders their disquieting official orders that plugged all possible loopholes...against what And the wind that keened between the tents seemed stronger now and more piercing than it had been at reveille. oooooooooooooo Berendtsen watched the company roll out missing them already. He could feel the gap in the Army almost as surely as if a chunk had been cut out of his side. But there was no help for it. Perhaps he should have gone in with the whole Army. He d been tempted to. But the men were close to home the New York ones anyway and they wanted to get back. The rest of them were looking forward to a spree in the city. For some of them it was the first real let up in six years. And he had no good reason really to be as much nagged as he was. Whatever was going on in Philadelphia was probably local political maneuvering. Holland s company could handle anything New Jersey might have to put up. Especially with the cars along. And if they got into a serious jam they could call on Philadelphia. No matter what was going on there they d have to turn out garrison on call whatever they thought of it. Perhaps he should have taken the Army into Philadelphia. What for Just because Willets had suddenly turned noncommunicative and finally gone back to New York Willets was an old man by now. Old men developed odd quirks. He wanted no part of politics. He d decided that a long time ago and he couldn t change now. Under no circumstances could he begin dabbling with the internal affairs of the Republic. He had no desire to become a military dictator. Why should there be any reason for him to be a military dictator What was going on in the back of his mind He turned away and went back into his trailer throwing himself on his bunk and staring up at the ceiling. He d cut Holland loose. Given him a completely independent command. Why What had made him decide he might not be in control of the Army much longer Was this it Was this the end he had always somehow felt waiting in the future waiting for him to live as he had to do what he had to until he finally caught up to it Why had he kept Eisner with him Why was he Theodore Berendtsen The Delaware had picked up heat at its headwaters and the warmth was running southward with the river. The last cold air mass of the year had spilled over the mountains in the west northwest to meet it had been deflected slightly by the rising warmth to the north and was now rolling into Delaware Bay like a downhill tide picking up speed in its southwesterly mean direction while spinning slowly. Like a scooping hand it gathered up condensed moisture from the warmer air above the bay and hurled patches of fog and gusts of cold into the face of the marching column. Akin to all the troop movements of the Earth s long military history the column moved forward at the pace of its slowest element the 100 thirty inch strides per minute of the rifle platoons. Garvin sat motionless atop one of the two armored cars spotted between the Second and Third Platoons his boots braced against a cleat watching the column s forward half snaking into the cold and fog while his body vibrated gently to the labor of the car s throttled back motors. His hands and face were coldly slick but he stayed where he was rather than drop into the car s warm interior where he would not be able to survey the entire column. Occasionally he broke into short frenzies of shivering. But he did not climb down off his perch. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Carmody s jeep coming up from the column s rear where four more of the total of ten cars were posted. He frowned slightly turning his head to peer forward once more. Holland had kept the column clear of Philadelphia pointing for the Tacony Palmyra Bridge. Probably they were about to make contact with the Philadelphian command post set up there. Garvin bared his teeth in an uneasy grimace and rose to an abrupt crouch. He waved to the jeep s driver as the vehicle whined up close to the armored car and scrambled over the turret. He clung momentarily to the rung of a step then dropped off into the road easily matching the car s speed without a stumble. He caught a handhold on the jeep and swung himself into the back seat behind Carmody the Armored Lieutenant a balding man descended from the remains of the old Marine colony at Quantico. Got a contact he said. My lead car just radioed back in Tampa code. There s some sort of half arsed CP at the bridge all right but my boy s upset about something and Dunc doesn t upset very easy. Garvin frowned. Tampa had been intercepting their communications and they d had to improve a code during the siege. Now Carmody s man in the scouting armored car was using it again which could only mean that he didn t want Philadelphia to intercept his observations on the Philadelphian post. Think he expects them to give us any trouble he asked. Be a crazy thing to do with our armor. Might blow the bridge Garvin pointed out. Now what s making me think they d do a thing like that he wondered with a stab of illogical panic. You think they d feel that way Carmody asked not quite incredulous enough for Garvin s peace of mind. I don t know Garvin said slowly abruptly realizing that here deep in the Republic s territory it was still as though they were moving into the silent lands to which they were accustomed waiting for the crash and flame of hidden and unexpected dangers. It was as though they were on the verge of combat. But let s get up there in a hurry he told Carmody. The Command Post was a badly armored shack set beside the bridge approaches. An aerial projected from its roof and there was a jeep with scabrous paint parked beside it. Someone had daubed a red and blue V of converging swaths on its hood. What the hell kind of army are you in Garvin barked at the man they had found there. The man spat over his shoulder and stared grubbily up at Holland in the armored car s forward hatch. He ain t Berendtsen is he I asked you a question mister I m in the same goddamn army you are I guess the man said irritably. He ain t Berendtsen is he I m Commander Holland commanding A Company Army of Unification Holland said impatiently. Where s the rest of your detail Ain t none the man answered. What s your rank Bud Garvin asked looking at the man s grimy jumper. Sergeant Philadelphia Military District the man answered spitting again. Okay Sarge Garvin said. We re going to cross your little bridge. He could feel the veins pounding on the backs of his hands and he could see mounded white crests bulging out the corners of Holland s jaws. Not without a pass from Commander Horton you re not. Who the hell s he You kidding He s Philadelphia Command and nothing goes over this bridge east without his pass. You kidding Carmody said softly and tracked his jeep s machinegun around to bear on the man. The man turned pale but he cursed Carmody at the same time. You still ain t going over that bridge. That settles it Garvin said to Holland. They ve got the bridge wired. Miler Find anything like a detonator in that shack No soap Jim the corporal called back from the CP s door. Okay sonny boy let s you and me go for a ride Jim said. He drew his Colt and aimed it at the man s belly. Up on the hood with you he said motioning toward the CP s jeep. The man climbed on sullenly. Jim climbed behind the wheel and kicked the starter. The motor turned over balkily and he had to nurse it for minutes before it was running well enough to move. Then he pulled out into the highway and pointed the jeep over the bridge. The man on the hood turned around his eyes staring. Hey he yelled back You wanna get killed Garvin cut his speed. Where s she wired The man licked his lips but said nothing. Garvin gunned his motor. Okay okay There s trips buried in the asphalt up ahead. He was breathing heavily scared to death. Not of the mine trips though Jim decided but of what would happen to him now he d given away their location. He wondered what sort of methods Commander Horton used to enforce orders. They blew the CP to scrap and shot the jeep s engine into uselessness. As they crossed the bridge Garvin looked back and saw the black speck of the guard half running up the riverbank away from Philadelphia. He looked at Jack Holland and didn t like what he saw in the commander s eyes because he knew the same expression was in his own. There was something wrong something so wrong that it made him debate disregarding orders and recommending that the column turn toward New York at the fastest pace the men could march. Holland looked at him and shook his head. Berendtsen knew what he was doing when he sent us down here he said. Let s get to finding out what it was. ooooooooooooooooooo The Army marched into a New York City turned sullen. Berendtsen feeling the hate like a clammy fog sucked in his breath. A crooked smile edged the corners of his mouth He was almost always right. It was a feeling that prickled the back of his neck each time he made a decision apparently on the basis of no more than a feeling and found that he had acted with almost prescient exactness. Second sight Or just a subconscious that worked immeasurably well There was no way of telling. There were barricades up in the streets and the people stayed behind them kept there by squads of soldiery. There were armed men up on the housetops and heavy weapons concentrated at strong points. And there was a flight of helicopters overhead tagging them like whirling crows against the sky. He could feel the Army growing apprehensive behind him. They had marched into enemy cities before. He halted the first column in the familiar square in front of Stuyvesant Town noticing with a part of his mind that the bare and rough hewn outlines he had left were gone furbished over so that there was no sign that a block of buildings had once stood there. The rest of the Army marched into the square and halted at attention the sergeants commands echoing sharply and yet alone in the silence. And still the people looked out of the windows. What were they expecting What were they waiting for from him Were they waiting for him to suddenly sweep the buildings with fire Did they think he d conquer this city as he d defeated the others Did they think somehow that he had done all this fought all those battles killed all those good men for any sake but theirs He turned toward his Army seeing their white faces turn up to him noting the men who stole glances at the building seeing the fingers curled around the rifles the bodies ready to twist and crouch firing. Most of these men were not New Yorkers. And all of them were his. All he had to do was issue a command. He felt a breeze coming down the street from one of the rivers touching the skin of his face. Dismissed he ordered. ooooooooooooooo Company A maintained routine contact with Philadelphia and Camden learning nothing. Horton s communications operators relayed their reports back into silence and they heard nothing from Horton himself. Nor from Berendtsen. The fog that had hung over the Delaware seemed to have suddenly taken on far tougher substance cutting them off from their commander from the rest of the Republic from the rest of the world. They learned nothing heard nothing knew nothing. The company marched into nothing and Jim and Holland found it difficult to look into each other s eyes. And yet there had still been nothing to really disquiet them. The land at the other side of the bridge was bare and they saw nothing. Philadelphia never mentioned the incident at the bridge or even asked if they had seen the CP s sergeant. It was as though none of that had happened. But it had. They swept out in a broad arc as they moved into the central part of the peninsula maintaining a light skirmish line backed up by the cars which quartered back and forth. But the infection of disquiet had spread to the men. Garvin riding with Carmody as they worked into position for a standard two pronged envelopment of the first fair sized town they had come to slapped his hand irritably on the hatch coaming. Goddamn it Bill look at those riflemen They re all over the bloody terrain exposed seven ways from breakfast none of their heads down nothing They act like they re on a walking tour. A vacuum. We re slogging around in this freakin mental vacuum and it s turning a bunch of professional soldiers into milk maids Easy Jim Carmody said his own voice ragged. That goes for officers too if we re not careful You re damn right it does I almost wish something would happen to put the edge back on us. A sheet of corrugated iron snapped out like a crumb laden tablecloth would have made the same sudden noise. He caught a glimpse of soldiers tumbling while the harsh roar of controlled heavy machinegun fire swept down upon them. Holy Jesus Carmody said. You whistled one up that time and then the bazooka rocket crashed into the car and exploded. Garvin crawled down the side of the flaming car somehow dragging his legs and tumbled into a ditch. He lay there sobbing curses while pain ate him. It took three days to level the town going systematically from house to stubborn house after losing a platoon of men to the machinegun emplacements. They found themselves fighting women and children as well as men and when it was all over they reformed into a scratch company of three understrength platoons and eight cars. Jack Holland came to see Jim before they pulled out to continue the operation. He walked into the flimsy barn which had been virtually the only undefended structure in the town picking his way among the other wounded men. How s it going Jim he asked first. Garvin shrugged. Wish I could shake it off as fast as it happened. He grimaced. What the hell I had it coming to me after all these years. I don t have a real kick. He looked up quickly. Hear anything from Ted Holland shook his head and the creases bunched up tightly on his forehead. No. Not from him or anybody else. I sent in a report on this little place with a special tagline for Horton telling him what a crummy job of scouting he d done. Hoped to get a rise out of him. He squatted down beside Garvin s cot and lowered his voice. Didn t get one. I know why too. Jim this isn t any no man s land down here. Horton s men were all through here. They weren t doing any fighting though. They ve spent three years telling these farmers what a bastard Ted is. They handed out a line of crap that d make your blood run cold. Why do you think these boys were all set up for us Why do you think they fought like they did And where do you think they got their weapons Jim whistled softly between his clenched teeth. What the hell s going on around here Holland shook his head bleakly. I don t know for sure yet. Listen I asked for nursing volunteers from the survivors. There ll be about eight or ten girls coming up here. Maybe they re grateful for us not fulfilling some of the picturesque promises that were made for us. Maybe they re not. I m damned well sure there s a grapevine in this territory that leads straight back to Horton and the smart move would be for them to be on it. Well maybe it can work in both directions. Anyway take a crack at finding out what you can. Jim nodded. Will do. He looked up at Holland who had gotten to his feet again. What re we messed up in Jack How did all this happen What made Horton think he could get away with this But there was no answer of course. Not yet. Perhaps never and if perhaps they did somehow find it out it might be too late. Holland s look said the same. He gestured awkwardly. Well I m about due to shove off. Good luck. I ll see you in about two weeks huh Holland s mouth twitched. I hope so. Well so long Jim said and watched Holland walking out between the rows of wounded men saying goodbye to each of them. His nurse was a girl of about eighteen a pale darkhaired shape in the barn s gloom. Her name was Edith and her voice was pitched so low that he sometimes had to strain to hear it. Hurt she asked as she shifted his blankets. He grunted. About as much as it should. But don t worry about it hon it s my department. He lay on his back looking up at her as she filled a glass with water. She d been coming to tend him regularly for the past five days leaving the other men to the girls who came with her concentrating on him alone. He d asked her about that. Shouldn t you be spending less time on me I m not that bad off. But you re an officer she d answered. He wondered where she d picked up that philosophy and thought of Horton s men. It made interesting thinking. Is that why all you girls are up here Because it s your natural duty to tend wounded soldiers Well... Well no it s just a a thing you do that s all. He hadn t liked that answer. It explained nothing. It was lame with vagueness. Now he looked up at her and wondered if Holland had been right about the grapevine. You always live around here Eadie She shook her head and handed him the glass helping him raise his shoulders so he could drink. Oh no. I came here from Pennsylvania with my folks. All of us did. There wasn t anybody living here then. He digested that and wondered how far Horton s treason had gone. Sorry you came now Oh no If we d stayed where we were Berendtsen would have gotten us. But we re Berendtsen s men. I know she said. But you re not anything like him. She sounded so gravely positive that he almost laughed stopping himself just in time. Did you know he was married to my sister Your sister He seemed to have shocked her profoundly. Is she is she a good woman This time he did laugh while she buried her face in her hands. Oh I m sorry. I don t know why I said that He reached out and stroked her hair. It s all right. And yes she s a good woman. But he was beginning to understand what Holland had meant about propaganda. Somebody had been giving these people a near lethal dose. Now Berendtsen nodded. It s the best time. The Army s dispersed but the men haven t really had a chance to start talking yet. It ll be days before the general public has more than a faint notion that there s been something odd going on. You shouldn t have sent Eisner away Mary declared with sudden fierceness. You convinced everybody that you were guilty. They were positive Eisner just didn t want to face the consequences of what he d been doing under your orders. So what will they think of the man who gave those orders Berendtsen shrugged. Does it make any difference what they think Does it make any difference whether I m the bloody butcher they think I am or not Eisner and his men are free and heading west. He smiled suddenly. I just ordered him out. He turned west of his own accord. Mary jumped up. And does that satisfy you Does it make you happy to know that the great Master Plan is being carried out that Berendtsen s dream of unification goes marching on even if only to that small extent Berendtsen sighed as the knock fell on the door again. I don t care whose plan it is or what it s called. I do know that I gave Eisner an order I couldn t possibly enforce. He carried it out anyway. He got up and went to the door opening it. How are you Bob he said. Robert Garvin looked at him silently for a moment. Then he exhaled loudly as though sighing in relief at the long delayed accomplishment of a complex and difficult task. You re being called upon to answer charges of treason he said bluntly. Your trial begins tomorrow. It was three weeks not two when Jack Holland came back with A Company and Jim sitting outside the barn with his legs in crude casts winced as he saw them. There were four armored cars now with wounded riding on their decks and the last car was being towed by the one ahead. He ran his eyes over the marchers counting and didn t believe the count until he saw Jack s face. We re done Holland said bluntly dropping down beside him. We couldn t beat off an attack by archers right now. What d you run into Jim asked not knowing what else to say. The gamut. Bazookas mortars fragmentation grenades antipersonnel mines...Name it and we got it. And we re not recruiting Jim. We can beat em but we can t recruit em. They just aren t interested. They re scared white at first and then they find out we won t flay them alive for breathing in the wrong direction. Then some of them get sassy. But mostly they just sit and stare at us as if we were conquerors or something. We gave them the offer every time before we moved in. We put up signs we broadcast we yelled. But they wouldn t trust us enough to listen. Then we have to knock them over and that makes us conquerors. The conquerors of South Jersey I don t know Jim. It s the creepiest goddamned feeling I ve ever had. It s nothing like it used to be. Jim nodded. I ve been getting my licks at it. They re so full of this Bogeyman Berendtsen stuff that nothing s going to penetrate. We re all right catch Even if we are the monster s men. But Berendtsen himself Brr You know what kind of rifles they re using Jim M 16s. The woods are full of them. Horton s been a busy boy around here I see Jim said sourly. I ve been thinking about that bridge. That was awfully easy getting across. Yeah Holland agreed. One lousy little man playing roadblock. If we hadn t found anybody we d have reported it to Ted. If we found too many we d have reported that. But we found just about what we expected to. We were suckered into this all right. You figure Ted wasn t supposed to trust Philly Ahuh. Makes sense. He splits off a healthy piece of his army. He doesn t go with the whole army though he s not supposed to think it s really going to be rugged and do that because whoever s behind this knows damn well the AU can t be stopped by anything this side of hell. If Ted went down here and smelled a rat he d turn around and knock Philly on its ear all over again. And if he got mad enough he might come roaring into New York instead of feeling his way like he s doing now or was doing I guess. Sounds like the kind of thing somebody with real brains would dream up. A whole bunch of them more than likely. I don t think there s any one man that can out think Ted Holland said. I wonder what Bob s doing these days Jim said half to himself his eyes narrowing. Anyway here we sit dying on the vine. With the farmers hacking at the roots yeah. Jim wet his lips. He asked the unnecessary question. You tried to get ahold of Ted Sure. Holland sighed. I ve been trying for the last two weeks. All I get is some snotnose in New York. Relay all messages through me please he mimicked viciously. Jim closed his eyes letting his head sink. Ted knew what he was doing making us an independent command. Even if we couldn t get up even a rousing football scrimmage the shape we re in he thought. He knew why he wanted Eisner in Manhattan with him too Holland said. Boy can t you just see those rolling roadblocks cleaning up Manhattan like nobody s business Suddenly they stopped and looked at each other realizing the scale on which they had been thinking. This was more than just Horton playing out some game of his own. This was New York and Philadelphia working together. This was a whole nation suddenly aligned against them. And that night there was the first message from New York. To Officer Commanding A Company and attached armored units Army of Unification. From Interim Commander in Chief. Orders follow: You will proceed immediately to demobilize all units AU under your command permitting each man to retain his personal equipment and weapons. Common supplies will be held under interim custody until arrival of civil governor your former military district. Maintain volunteer militia force to keep order if necessary. Such militia units are not to display AU insignia of any nature. Keep frequency open for further orders. Do not initiate independent messaging. Hollis Interim C.I.C. Holland looked at Garvin who had been moved into the communications center the men had knocked together. You ever heard of anyone named Hollis he asked. Jim looked up. I guess there are a lot of people in New York nowadays that we never heard of. He stared hopelessly down at his immobilized legs. I wonder what happened to Ted he asked conscious of the lost note in his voice. But both of them knew that it no longer mattered. Somewhere in New York the initiative of leadership had been taken up by other men with other purposes. The AU was dead and the purpose behind it had ended. Ted Berendtsen had kept some sort of appointment with history and even if he lived his time was over. And when the force that had been he and his work was ended the arm that he had stretched out into this last territory was as powerless as all the rest. They were finished. Cut off and finished. What do we do Jim asked. What can we do Holland answered. We do what Boston and Tampa did. We re licked. There s nothing we have to say about it anymore. It s still one nation one organization. We don t run it anymore but we ve still got to work in it to keep it alive just because it is an organization. He grinned crookedly. Ted was right again. But the messages had not ended. They listened to a general broadcast from New York and following orders broadcast it over a public address system to the general population. This is Robert Garvin President of the Constitutional Council for the Second Free American Republic. Once again we are free. The power of the Army of Unification has been broken and this nation risen from the ash of dissolution and hopelessness can once more grow broad and prosperous toward the sun. From Maine to Florida we are one people one union inseparable and unyoked. We are a nation of free men armed each equal to the other each a brother to the other each firm in his resolve that no one man shall again impose his twisted will on other men. The right to bear arms is inherent in each of us. The right to subjugate is not. No man may say to another You will do thus and so because I decree it because I have gathered up an army to pillage your home and rob you of your substance. Soon civil governors will be sent to you. They will establish an organization whereby a free election may be held. You will be asked to elect local officers to administer your territory under the general supervision of the governor. People of the Second Free American Republic we bring you liberty. Holland spat. We bring you civil governors rather than an army he said bitterly. Please excuse the fact that these officers have been appointed by us. Didn t we do it in the name of liberty And who the hell do they think gave them their precious union in the first place Jim grinned sadly. I guess Ted always knew that when the people chose a new government it wouldn t be one that approved of Berendtsen. Did you notice something though Holland pointed out. No mention of Ted. Just a couple of passing references. They re not sure yet not sure at all that it s safe to really go all out and call him names. They re nervous. I wonder what s going on in New York Jim Garvin asked. What he felt about Bob he kept to himself. III Robert Garvin sat easily in his chair flanked by the other judges looking down at the man who stood below their rostrum. Garvin smiled thinly and a little regretfully. He felt the weight of what he had done. But he had done it nevertheless because in doing it he had fulfilled his greater duty to freedom to liberty from oppression to liberty from such as Berendtsen. He leaned forward. Theodore Berendtsen you have been found guilty of treason against the human rights of the citizens of the Second Free American Republic. Have you anything to say before sentence is passed upon you It did not matter what he said now. Whatever words Berendtsen might have were weightless now. He had no Army. He had no weapons. Garvin touched the carbine resting against his chair. Weapons were the mark of a man s freedom and all free men carried them now. To be sure some of them looked ludicrous but nevertheless the symbol was there. Touch me not Berendtsen seemed to be hesitating as though undecided whether to speak or not Berendtsen had no personal weapons. He began to speak: I did not come here to defend myself he said. For I am indefensible. I have burned killed and looted and my men have done worse at times... Robert Garvin hardly heard the words. He sat patiently not listening but nevertheless watching the man. Berendtsen was standing with his hands hanging loosely at his sides his head up. It was impossible to tell from this angle what he might be looking at. Garvin felt a ripple of excitement sweep momentarily over the small audience even reaching the judges bench. He shrugged inwardly. Undoubtedly his brother in law had scored some emotional point or other. But emotional points were things you could score all day and still not change the facts. Garvin had built his way to power on emotional points what counted was the cold logical ideal behind them. You could sway a crowd with semantics. Make it do things for you. But this was not a crowd. These were Berendtsen s judges their verdict already delivered their sentence a foregone conclusion. Robert Garvin Garvin s head snapped up and his eyes re focused on Berendtsen. You have given the people personal weapons Berendtsen was saying. You have told them that from this day onward they were free to bear arms that they were equal one and several with all other men. That henceforth no man might tell him what was theirs and what was not. That each man was inviolable and that no man is master. Garvin nodded automatically realizing only later that there was no need for him to do so. Well then Bob Berendtsen said softly as though they were once more across a dinner table from each other who gave you the right to confer the right Something jumped behind Garvin s eyes. We bore arms once. Each and every one of us. We had to. Gradually we began to live so that we no longer had to. Despite the theories some of us bore our arms uncomfortably and were glad to lay them down when there were no longer snipers in the streets. Some of us were free to enter peaceful pursuits such as politics. Despite the time and place there was a ripple of laughter that grated at Robert Garvin s nerves before it died down. Berendtsen smiled thinly up at Garvin. You are where you are today because you did not bear arms because there was an organization of free men ready to return to the weapons if need be but glad to have laid them down who were cooperating in a civilization which had time to support an individual such as yourself. Those who bear arms are their own administrators. Those who do not need others to administer to them. So you are here an administrator elected by an organization and you have given them their weapons back. You have practically forced those weapons on them distributing them on streetcorners willy nilly. But once more I d like to know who gave you the right Berendtsen smiled wryly. It would seem that I did. I built the organization that supports you. I built it without knowing what sort of society it would evolve. I never for a moment thought that any one man could be so wise so foresighted as to impose his personal concept of the ideal society. I simply built a union and left its structure to the people. He looked squarely up at Garvin. You have given the people rifles and thought that you were giving them weapons. But people have a deadlier weapon than anything a gunsmith could design. People want to be safe and comfortable. If safety and comfort are to be found in guns then they will take up guns of their own accord in their own need. And when safety and comfort are found in libraries then the guns rust. The quiet troubled and yet somehow untroubled eyes bored away at Garvin s foundations. You think that men like yourself direct the people. Undoubtedly you grant me that status as well. You are wrong. We exist we find our way into the pages of those history books which are written from the wrong viewpoint because for however long or short a time it is the people think there is safety and comfort in us. He laughed shortly and finished. They are often wrong. But they repair their errors. Garvin felt every eye in the room on his face. Probably he had turned a little pale. It was only natural with the strain of what he had to do. Theodore Berendtsen you have been convicted of treason and the citizens of this Republic are aware of your crime. You are sentenced to go about whatever pursuits you choose unarmed. Berendtsen bowed his head. Garvin saw for the first startling time that he was far older than he seemed that his stomach bulged a little and that his face was completely exhausted. Then Berendtsen looked up for one last time and Robert Garvin saw the underlying expression of his face always there no matter what superficial mood might flicker across it. He understood what had been giving him the constant impression that Berendtsen was still the same calm somehow unassailable man who had taken so many meals on the other side of the table. oooooooooooooooo A running series of directives came into the communications shack in New Jersey: To all units interim military command SFAR: Be advised that the following former officers of the disbanded Army of Unification are enemies of the people: Samuel Ryder Randolph Willets John Eisner All efforts are to be made to intercept these men together with renegade units as they may command. These men have been proscribed. They are not in any way representatives of the SFAR or the Constitutional Council. You will attempt to capture these men and hold them for transportation back to New York where they will be held for courts martial. Any citizen civilian or militia attempting to aid or encourage these men is summarily classified as an enemy of the people and the above orders apply to such persons. Any person of undoubted civilian status engaging in seditious discussion of these men is to be arrested immediately and held for the judgment of the civil governor. Any member of the militia engaging in similar talk is to be court martialed immediately the extreme sentence to be death by firing squad. Any militia officers refusing to carry out these orders will be arrested at the discretion of the highest ranking loyal officer who will carry out the directives above and assume command. Hollis Commander in Chief SFAR Jim looked incredulously at Holland. What do you think s happened Holland his face grave shook his head. I m not sure but I think I know why Ted wanted Eisner with him. I m pretty sure John s last orders were to point his cars west. You think Ted s with him Holland s face held a queer expression for a moment. Not in the flesh. To all units interim military command SFAR: Be advised that the renegade military units under the command of former AU officers Eisner Willets and Ryder have fled out of the borders of the SFAR under determined pursuit by units of the New York Popular Militia. The rebels suffered heavy losses. Our units returned intact. Holland and Garvin laughed savagely. Be further advised that any evidences of Berendtsenism among the populace or in the ranks of military units are to be dealt with summarily. Hollis C.I.C. SFAR The operator who read the message had a nervous voice. Holland raised an eyebrow. Berendtsenism For a moment a savage light gleamed in his and Jim s eyes washing out the dull resignation that had begun to settle there. Do you suppose Ted wasn t as dumb as New York thought he d be Jim asked. It sounds just a little bit like things are going to pieces up there. Suppose he realized that he might want somebody to break out and hung on to Eisner for that purpose And maybe he threw us in here to hole up until New York worked itself into the ground Holland shook his head in bafflement. I don t know. You could never tell with Ted. You could only wonder. oooooooooooooooooo Robert Garvin spun around as Mayor Hammersby came through the door. Well he snapped. Hammersby shrugged. Not yet. What s the matter with them Hammersby gave him a sidelong look. Easy Garvin. It ll happen. Robert Garvin stared at him through a film of over. powering rage. It almost seemed as though even Hammersby were drawing a sort of insolence out of the impossible situation. We can t wait any longer. The old Army men have already delayed us with their talking. If we hold off much more we ll have a revolution on our hands. Isn t that the theory Hammersby asked dryly. Armed freemen choosing their own leaders Why should you object The words dashed themselves against Robert Garvin like cold surf. Hammersby was right of course. The people had a perfect right to choose for themselves to kill or not to kill. Berendtsen s got to die he suddenly shouted. Send out one of Hollis s patented mobs. The people will rule eh With an occasional nudge. Damn it Hammersby Oh I ll do it all right. I m just as worried about my neck as you are. The Mayor turned and left with Garvin staring angrily at his back. He couldn t shoot a man in the back of course. ooooooooooooooooo The last message from New York came metallically into the radio shack: To be re broadcast to the general population at your discretion : This is what Theodore Berendtsen said to his judges. It is the only public speech he ever made and he made it surrounded by men who had been his friends. He did not look at anyone when he said this. His eyes were on something none of us in that room with him could see. But I am sure he saw it as I am sure that when someone reads these words a hundred years from now he will know that a man living in our time was great enough to plan beyond his own life. The voice was a completely unknown one and trembled with feeling. It might be false or it might be real. Almost certainly the man speaking was in the grip of an overpowering emotion and would grin sheepishly at himself when he remembered it later. But some obscure one of Berendtsen s judges had performed that judgment better than had been expected of him. Jim felt a cold chill run along his hackles as he listened and when he touched a switch heard the speakers echoing mournfully outside. He got to his feet and swung himself carefully over to the window leaning heavily on his crutches and watching the faces of the people as they listened. And then the tape recorded voice cut in and Garvin saw the people gasp. I am not here to defend myself Berendtsen said. For I am indefensible. I have burned killed and looted and my men have done worse at times. I killed because some men would rather destroy than build because their individual power was sweeter to them than the mutual liberty of all men. I killed too because I was born to a society and men would not accept that society. For that I am doubly guilty but I could do nothing else. Some issues are not clear cut. Whatever the evils of our society might be I can only say that it was my firm conviction that it would have been intolerable to us had some outside way of life sup planted it. In the last analysis I made few judgments. I am not a superhuman hero. I am a man. I burned as a weapon of war a war not against individuals but against what seemed to me to be darkness. I looted because I needed the equipment with which to kill and burn. I did these things in order to bring union to what had been scattered tribes and uncoordinated city states. We stood on the bare brink of the jungle we had newly emerged from and left alone it would have been centuries before the scattered principalities fought out such a bloody peace as would at last have given us civilization again after it was too late after the books had rotted and the machinery rusted. What binds an organization of people is unimportant. Political ideologies change. Purposes change. The rule of one man comes to an end. But the fact of organization continues no matter what changes occur within that organization. I have committed my last crime against today. I leave you an organization to do with as you will. I have set my hand on today but I have not presumed upon tomorrow. There was a moment s crackling silence and then the New York broadcaster cut off but the name he signed to the message was completely devoid of title or military rank and there was no mention of Hollis or the SFAR or of Robert Garvin. Whatever had brewed in New York was over and this not the blank deadly silence was the proper end to Theodore Berendtsen s time. oooooooooooooooo What the hell is that thing Jim said squinting up into the sun. Helicopter I guess. Looks like the picture Holland answered. You notice the cabin s got a blue red stripe on it Garvin nodded. Yeah I saw it. He leaned more heavily on his crutches. There was a crowd of villagers around them straining against the militiamen who were uncertain enough of their present authority to let the line bulge out raggedly. You notice that Holland said pointing. Jim looked at the ugly pockmarks of bullet scars on the cabin and nodded. Then the aircraft stormed over them gargling its way downward until the landing skids touched the ground and the engine died. The cabin door opened. So that s what happened to Bob Jim said softly. He smiled crookedly and began swinging toward the craft Holland keeping pace with him. They were almost beside it when Holland suddenly touched Jim s arm. Another man had gotten out with Bob and now both of them were turning around to help the other passenger out. The breath caught in Jim s throat as he recognized his mother. Then he stopped and braced himself. When his mother looked at him the shock of recognition in her eyes followed instantly by pain and indecision he was ready. Hello Mom he said. Nothing big I ll be all right in a couple of weeks. She looked at him uncertainly and finally put her arm through Bob s. Hello Jimmy she said. She had grown much older than he remembered her and needed Bob to support her after the long trip. Jim smiled and nodded reassuringly again. Hello Holland Bob said licking his lips nervously. This is Merton Hollis he added indicating the other man who looked at the crowd uneasily the arrogant lines of his face lost in the lax indecision of his face. Holland raised his eyebrows. Can you can you find us a place to stay here Bob asked. Holland grinned crookedly. Permanently I take it Exile is such a nasty word isn t it Garvin winced but said nothing. Hello Bob Jim said. Hello Jim his brother answered without looking at him. I guess there s lots of room around here Holland said. He grinned savagely. Just one thing I m staying around. There s three sisters with a big farm and no man around. I kind of like one of them. One thing like I said. Don t trespass. He patted the stock of his rifle. What happened to Mary Mom Jim asked her. Slow tears began to seep over Margaret Garvin s face. She s dead Jimmy. She and Ted. The the people came and...and they... She looked at Jim with complete bewilderment. But now the people say they re sorry. Now they say they love them and they keep telling me they re sorry...I don t understand Jimmy. Jim and Holland looked at Bob s face and found corroboration in it. Jim laughed at his expression. Then he swung himself forward and looked into the helicopter s cabin. Take a passenger back to New York buddy he asked the pilot. The man shrugged. Makes me no never mind. You ll have to wait a couple of minutes though. He pulled a jackknife out of his pocket and jumped to the ground. He began to scrape out the blue red stripe. Hey don t be an idiot Jim. Garvin cried. They ask you what kind of a Garvin you are nowadays. Jim looked at him wearily. When you find out let me know huh He happened to glance at the crowd and saw Edith pressed forward by the villagers. Why is he taking out the stripe she was saying excitedly to a militiamen. Why is he doing that That s the freedom flag He can t do that. Got a tip for you Bob Jim said smiling thinly. You ve got one friend here anyway. He wondered how that would work out. He wondered as the helicopter jounced northward how a lot of things would work out. He wondered just exactly what legacy Ted Berendtsen had left the human race. Had he died just in time or too soon And Jim knew that no historian probing back could ever know any more than he or Jack could know. Even now even in the end you had to trust Berendtsen s judgment. CHAPTER SEVEN: This happened in New Jersey a generation later with Robert Garvin and Merton Hollis both dead in a duel with each other. Robert Garvin left a legacy and this is what happened to it: Cottrell Slade Garvin was twenty six and had been a sex criminal for three years when his mother called him into her parlor and explained why she could not introduce him to the girl on whom he had been spying. Cottrell darling she said laying her delicately veined hand on his sun darkened own You understand that my opinion of Barbara is that she is a fine girl one whom any young man of your class and station would ordinarily be honored to meet and in due course of time betroth. But surely you must consider that her family there was the faintest inhalation through the fragile nose particularly on the male side is not one which could be accepted into our own. Her expression was genuinely regretful. Quite frankly her father s opinion on the proper conduct of a domicile... The sniff was more audible. His actions in accord with that opinion are such that our entire family would be embroiled in endless Affairs of Integrity and you yourself would be forced to bear the brunt of most of these encounters. In addition you would have the responsibility of defending the notoriously untenable properties which Mr. Holland pleases to designate as Barbara s dowry. No Cottrell I m afraid that much as such a match might appeal to you at first glance you would find that the responsibilities more than offset the benefits. Her hand patted his as lightly as the touch of a falling autumn leaf. I m sorry Cottrell. A tear sparkled at the corner of each eye and it was obvious that the discussion had been a great strain to her for she genuinely loved her son. Cottrell sighed. All right mother he said. There was nothing more he could do at this time. But should circumstances change you will reconsider won t you he asked. His mother smiled and nodded as she said Of course Cottrell. But the smile faded a bit. However that does seem rather unlikely doesn t it Are there no other young ladies At his expression the smile returned and her voice became reassuring. But we ll see. We ll see. Thank you mother. At least he had that much. He rose from his chair and kissed her cheek. I have to be sure the cows have all been stalled. With a final smile exchanged between them he left her hurrying across the yard to the barn. The cows had all been attended to of course but he stayed in the barn for a few moments driving his work formed fist into a grain sack again and again sweat breaking out on his forehead and running down his temples and along the sides of his face while the breath grunted out of his nostrils and he half articulated curses that were all the more terrible because he did not fully understand at whom or what they were directed. Vaguely sick to his stomach he gently closed the barn door behind him and saw from the color of the sunset and the feel of the wind that it would be a good night. The realization was one that filled him with equal parts of anticipation and guilt. The air temperature was just right and the dew had left a perfect leavening of dampness in the night. Cot let the false door close quietly behind him and slipped noiselessly up and across the moist lawn at an angle that brought him out on the clay road precisely at the point where his property ended and Mr. Holland s began. He walked through the darkness with gravel shifting silently under his moccasins his bandolier bumping gently against his body with the occasional feel of oily metal against his cheek as the carbine slung from his shoulder touched him with its curving magazine. It was a comforting sensation his father had felt it before him and his father s father. It had been the mark of free men for all of them. When he had come as close to Mr. Holland s house as he could without disturbing the dog he left the road and slid into the ditch that ran beside it cradling his carbine in the crooks of his bent arms and bellycrawled silently and rapidly until he was as near the house as the ditch would take him. He raised his head behind a clump of weeds he had planted during a spring rainstorm and using this as cover swept the front of the house with his vision. For any of this to be possible without the dog s winding him the breeze had to be just right. On such nights it was. The parlor window perhaps the only surface level parlor window in this area he commented to himself was lighted and she was in the room. Cot checked the sharp sound of his breath and sank his teeth against his lower lip. He kept his hands carefully away from the metalwork of his carbine for his palms were sweated. He waited until finally she put the light out and went downstairs to bed then dropped his head and rested it on his folded arms for a moment his eyes closed and his breath uncontrollably uneven before he twisted quietly and began to crawl back up the ditch. Tonight so soon after what his mother had told him he was shocked but not truly surprised to discover that his vision was badly blurred. He reached the point where it was safe to leave the ditch and stood up quietly. He put one foot on the road and sprang up to the clay surface of the road with an easy contraction of his muscles. He had no warning of a darker shadow among the dappled splotches thrown by the roadside weeds and bushes. Mr. Holland said Hi boy quietly. Cot dropped his shoulder ready to let the carbine he had just reslung slide down his arm and into his hand. He stood motionless peering at Mr. Holland who had stepped up to him. Mr. Holland The old man chuckled. Weren t expecting me huh Cot took a measure of relief from the man s obvious lack of righteous anger. Good uh good evening sir he mumbled. Apparently he was not going to die immediately but there was no telling what was going on in his neighbor s mind. Guess I was right about that patch of weeds springing up kind of sudden. Cot felt the heat rush into his ears but he said Weeds sir Pretty slick. You got the makings of a damn good combat man. Cot was thankful for the darkness as one cause for his flush was replaced by another. The lack of light however did not keep his voice from betraying more than it should have. Mr. Holland s implication had been obvious. My family sir prefers not to acknowledge those kin who had sunk below their proper station. You will understand that under differing circumstances I might thus consider your remark to be in the least not flattering. Mr. Holland chuckled a sound filled with the accumulated checks to hastiness acquired through a lifetime that was half over when Cot s began. No insults intended son. There was a time when a guy like you wouldn t have stopped strutting for a week after a pat on the back like that. Cot could still feel the heat in his cheeks and its cause overrode his sharp sense of incongruity at this midnight debate a completely illogical development of circumstances under which any other two men would long ago have settled the question in a normal civilized manner. Fortunately sir he said his voice now kept at its normal pitch with some effort we no longer live in such times. You don t maybe. Mr. Holand s voice was somewhat testy. I sincerely hope not sir. Mr. Holland made an impatient sound. Boy your Uncle Jim was the best goddamned rifleman that ever took out a patrol. Any family that gets snotty notions about being better than him He chopped the end of the sentence off with a raw and bitter curse. Cot recoiled from the adjective. Sir Excuse me Mr. Holland said sarcastically. I forgot you re living in refined times. Not too refined for a man to go crawling in ditches to sneak a look at a girl though. A girl sitting and reading a book he added with something like shock. Cot felt the adrenaline propelled tingle sweep through his bloodstream and knot his muscles. At any moment Mr. Holland was obviously going to call an Affair of Integrity. Even while he formulated the various points for and against a right to defend himself even if surprised in so palpably immoral an action his reflexes let the carbine slip to the angle of his shoulder and hang precariously from the sling which now despite careful oiling gave a perverse squeak. Cot set his teeth in annoyance. I haven t got a gun on you boy Mr. Holland said quietly. There s better ways of protecting your integrity than shooting people. Cot had long ago decided that his neighbor like all the old people who had been born in the Wild Sixties and grown up through the Dirty Years was to put it politely unconventional. But the sheer lack of common sense in going unarmed into a situation where one s Integrity might be molested was more than any unconventionality. But that was neither here nor there. In such a case the greater responsibility in carrying out the proprieties was obviously his to assume. Allow me to state the situation clearly sir he said In order that there might be no misunderstanding. No misunderstanding son. Not about the situation anyway. Hell when I was your Nevertheless Cot interposed determined not to let Mr. Holland trap himself into a genuine social blunder The fact remains that I have trespassed on your property for a number of years For the purpose of peeping at Barbara Mr. Holland finished for him. Do me a favor son Mr. Holland s voice was slightly touched by an amused annoyance. Certainly sir. Can the Mr. Holland caught himself. I mean show a little less concern for the social amenities ease up on this business of doing the right thing come hell or high water and just listen. Here. Sit down and let s talk about a few things. Cot s nerves had edged to the breaking point. He was neither hung nor pardoned. This final gaucherie was too much for him. I m sorry sir he said his voice nerve driven harder and harsher than he intended but that s out of the question. I suggest that you either do your duty as the head of your family or else acknowledge your unwillingness to do so. Why The question was not as surprising as it might have been had it come at the beginning of this fantastic scene. But it served to crystallize one point. It was not meant as a defiant insult Cot realized. It was a genuine and sincere inquiry. And the fact that Mr. Holland was incapable of appreciating the answer was proof that his mother s advice had been correct. Holland was not a gentleman. Quite obviously there was only one course now open to him if he did not abandon all hope of Barbara s hand. Incredible as it might seem it was to answer the question in all seriousness in an attempt to force some understanding through the long set and bluntly ossified habits of Holland s thinking. I should think it would be hardly necessary to remind you that an individual s Integrity is his most prized moral possession. In this particular case I have violated your daughter s Integrity and through blood connection that of your family as well. Cot shook his head in the darkness. Explain he might but his voice was indication enough of his outrage. What s that Holland s own voice was wearing thin. I beg your pardon sir Integrity damn it Give me a definition. Integrity sir Why everyone Holland cut him off with a frustrated curse. I should have known better than to ask You can t even verbalize it but you ll cut each other down for it. All right you go ahead but don t expect me to help you make a damned fool of yourself. He sighed. Go on home son. Maybe in about twenty years or so you ll get up guts enough to come and knock on the door like a man if you want to see Barbara. Through the occlusion of his almost overwhelming rage Cot realized that he could not now say anything further which might offend Holland. I m certain that if I were to do so Miss Barbara would not receive me he finally managed to say in an even voice gratified at his ability to do so. No she probably wouldn t Holland said bitterly. She s too goddamned well brought up thanks to those bloody aunts of hers Before Cot could react to this Holland spat on the ground and turning his back like a coward strode off down the road. Cot stood atone in the night his hands clutching his bandolier grinding the looped cartridges together. Then he turned on his heel and loped home. He left his carbine on the family arms rack in the front parlor and padded about the surface floor in his moccasins resetting the alarms occasionally interrupting himself to tense his arms or clamp his jaw as he thought of what had happened. The incredible complexity of the problem overwhelmed him presenting no clear face which he could attack and rationalize logically. Primarily of course the fault was his. He had committed a premeditated breach of Integrity. It was in its various ramifications that the question lost its clarity. He had spied on Barbara Holland and done it repeatedly. Her father had become aware of the fact. Tonight rather than issue a direct challenge Holland had lain in wait for him. Then having informed Cot that he was aware of his actions Holland had not only not done the gentlemanly thing but had actually ridiculed his expectation of it. The man had insulted Cot and his family and had derided his own daughter. He had referred to his sisters in law in a manner which if made public would have called for a bandolier flogging at the hands of the male members of the female line. But the fact nevertheless remained that whether Mr. Holland was a gentleman or Holland was not Cot had been guilty of a serious offense. And in Cot s mind as in that of every other human being what had been a twinging secret shame was as disastrous and disgusting as a public horror. And since Holland had refused to solve the problem for him in the manner in which anyone else would unhesitatingly have done so Cot was left with this to gnaw at his brain and send him into sudden short lived bursts of anger intermingled with longer quieter and deadlier spells of remorseful shame. Finally when he had patrolled the entire surface floor Cot walked noiselessly down to the living quarters completely uncertain of the degree of his guilt and therefore of his shame and disgrace knowing that he would not sleep no matter how long he lay on his bed and he fought down that part of his mind which recalled the image of Barbara Holland. Fought but lost. The remembered picture was as strong as the others beside which he placed it beginning with the first one from five years ago when at the age of twenty one he had passed her window on his return from Graduate training. And though he saw her almost every day at the post office or store these special images were not obscured by the cold and proper aloofness with which she surrounded herself when she was not he winced alone. Again there was the entire problem of Barbara s father. The man had been raised in the wild immorality and casual circumstances of the Dirty Years. Obviously he could see nothing wrong with what Cot had been doing. He had sense enough not to tell anyone else about it thank the good Lord but in some blundering attempt to get you two kids together or whatever he might call it what would he tell Barbara Dawn came and Cot welcomed the night s end. As head of the family since his father s death in an affair of Integrity two years before he had of course been the Party at Grievance it was Cot s duty to plan each day s activities insofar as they were to vary from the normal farm routine. Today with all the spring work done and summer chores still so light as to be insignificant he was at a loss but he was grateful for this opportunity to lose himself in a problem with which he had been trained to cope. But after an hour of attempting to think he was forced to fall back on what in retrospect must have been a device his father had put to similar use. If there was nothing else there was always Drill. Out of consideration for his grandmother s age he waited until 7:58 before he touched the alarm stud but not even the heavy slam of shutters being convulsively hurled into their places in the armor plate of the exterior walls the sudden screech of the generators as the radar antennas came out of their half sleep into madly whirling life or the clatter as the household children fired test bursts from their machineguns were enough to quench the fire in his mind. The drill ran until 10:00. By then it was obvious that the household defenses were doing everything they had been designed to and that the members of the household knew their parts perfectly. Even his grandmother s legendary skill with her rangefinder had not grown dull though there was a distinct possibility that she had memorized the range of every likely target in the area. But that if true was not an evasion of her duties but instead a valuable accomplishment. Very good he said over the household intercommunications system. All members of the household are now free to return to their normal duties with the exception of the children who will report to me for their schooling. His mother whose battle station was at the radarscope a few feet away from his fire control board smiled with approval as she returned the switches to AutoSurvey. She put her hand gently on his forearm as he rose from behind the board. I m glad Cottrell. Very glad she said with her smile. He did not understand what she meant at first and looked at her blankly. I was afraid you might neglect your duties as so many of our neighbors are doing she explained by continuing. But I should not have doubted you even to that degree. Her low voice was strongly underlaid with her pride in him. Your fiber is stronger than that. Why I was even afraid that your disappointment after our little talk yesterday might distract you. But I was wrong and you ll never know how thrilled I am to see it. He bent to kiss her quickly so that she would not see his eyes and hurried up to the parlor where the children had already assembled and taken their weapons out of the arms rack. By mid afternoon the younger children had been excused and only his two oldest brothers were out on the practice terrain with him. Stay down Cot shouted at Alister. You ll never live to Graduate if you won t learn to flatten out at the crest of a rise He flung his carbine up to his cheek and snapped a branch beside his brother s rump to prove the point. Now you he whirled on Geoffrey. How d I estimate my windage Quick Grass Geoffrey said laconically. Wrong You haven t been over that ground in two weeks. You ve no accurate idea of how much wind will disturb that grass into its present pattern. Asked me how you did it Geoffrey pointed out. All right Cot snapped. Score one for you. Now how would you do it Feel. Watch me. Geoffrey s lighter weapon cracked with a noise uncannily like that of the branch which now split at a point two inches below where Cot s heavy slug had broken it off. Have an instinct for it do you Cot was perversely glad to find an outlet for his annoyance. Do it again. Geoffrey shrugged. He fired twice. The branch splintered and there was a shout from Alister. Cot spun and glared at Geoffrey. Put it next to his hand Geoffrey explained. Guess he got some dirt in his face too. Cot looked at the point where the grass was undulating wildly as Alister tried to roll away under its cover. He found time to note his brother s clumsiness before he said You couldn t have seen his hand or anything except the top of his rump for that matter. Geoffrey s seventeen year old face was secretly amused. I just figured if I was Alice where would I keep my hands Simple. Cot could feel the challenge to his pre eminence as the family s fighting man gathering thickly about him. Very good he said bitingly. You have an instinct for combat. Now suppose that had been a defective cartridge bad enough to tumble the bullet to the right and kill your brother. What then I hand loaded those cases myself. Think I m fool enough to trust that ham handed would be gunsmith at the store Geoffrey was impregnable. Cot felt his temper beginning to escape the clutch of his strained will. If you re so good why don t you go off and join the Militia Geoffrey took the insult without an expression on his face. Think I ll stick around he said calmly. You re going to need help if old man Holland ever catches you on those moonlight strolls of yours. Cot could feel the sudden rush of blood pushing at the backs of his eyes. What did you say The words drove out of his throat with low deadliness. You heard me. Geoffrey turned away put a bullet to either side of the thrashing Mister and one above and below. Mister s training broke completely and he sprang out of the grass and began to run shouts choking his throat. A rabbit Geoffrey spat contemptuously. Just pure rabbit. Me I ve got Uncle Jim s blood but that Alice he s strictly Mother. He fired again and snapped the heel off Alister s shoe. As Alister stumbled to the ground Cot s open palm smashed against the side of Geoffrey s face. Geoffrey took two sideward steps and stopped his eyes wide with shock. The rifle hung limply from his hands. He had several years to grow before he would raise it instinctively. You ll never mention that relative s name again Cot said thickly. Not to me and not to anyone else. What s more you ll consider it a breach of Integrity if anyone speaks of him in your presence. Is that understood And as for your fantasies about myself and Mr. Holland if you mention that again you ll learn that there is such a thing as a breach of Integrity between brothers But he knew that anything he might say now was as much of an admission as a shouted confession. He could feel the night s sickness seeping through his system again turning his muscles into limp rags and sending the blood pounding through his ears. Geoffrey narrowed his eyes and his lip curled into a half sneer. For a guy that hates armies and soldiers you sure think you can act like a Senior Sergeant he said bitterly. He turned around and began to stride away then stopped and looked back. And I d drop you before you got the lead out of your pants he added. Geoffrey knows echoed through his mind. Geoffrey knows and Mr. Holland found me out. How many others Like a sickening refrain the thoughts tumbled over and over in his skull as he swung down the road with rapid and clumsy strides. The usual coordination of all the muscles in his lithe body had been destroyed by the added shock of what he had learned on the practice terrain. He pictured Geoffrey watching from a window and snickering as he crawled down the ditch. He seemed to hear Mr. Holland s dry chuckle. Over the last three years how many others of his neighbors had seen him As he thought of it it seemed incredible that pure chance had not ensured that the entire countryside was aware of his disgraceful actions. But he could not run from it. It was not the way a man faced situations. The thing to do was to go to the club and watch the faces of the men as they looked at him. As they greeted him there would be a little hidden demon of scorn in their eyes to be looked for. The carbine s butt slapped his thigh as he climbed the club steps. He could not be sure he had found it. As he looked down at the newly refilled mug of rum he understood this with considerable clarity. He could not deny that a strange sort of perverse desire to see what was not really there might have put an imagined edge on the twinkle in Winter s eyes the undercurrent of mirth that always accented Olsen s voice. If Lundy Hollis sneered a bit more than usual it probably meant nothing more than that the man had discovered some new quality in himself that made him better than his fellows. But probably probably and nothing certain. Neither affirmation nor denial. Cot s hand closed around the mug and he scalded his throat with the drink. The remembered visions of Barbara were attaining a greater precision with every swallow. Hello boy. Oh my God he thought. He d forgotten that Holland was a member of the club. But of course he was though Cot couldn t understand how the old man managed to be kept in. He watched Mr. Holland slip into the seat opposite his and wondered how many chuckles had accompanied the man s retelling of last night s events. How do you do sir he managed to say remembering to maintain the necessary civilities. Don t mind if I work on my liquor at the same table with you do you Cot shook his head. It s my pleasure sir. The chuckle came that Cot had been waiting for. Say boy even with a few slugs in you you don t forget to tack on those fancy parts of speech do you Mr. Holland chuckled again. Guess I got a little mad at you last night he went on. Sorry about that. Everybody s got a right to live the way they want to. Cot stared silently into his mug. The clarity that had begun to emerge from the rum was unaccountably gone as though the very touch of Holland s presence was enough to plunge him headlong back into the mental chaos that had strangled his thinking through the night and most of the day. He was no longer sure that Mr. Holland had not kept the story to himself he was no longer sure that Geoffrey had done more than make a shrewd guess ...He was no longer sure. Look boy... oooooooooooooooooooooo And the realization came that for the first time since he had known him Mr. Holland was as much unsure of his ground as he. He looked up and saw the slow light of uncertainty in the man s glance. Yes sir Boy I don t know. I tried to talk to you last night but I guess we were both kind of steamed up. Think you ll feel more like listening tonight Particularly if I m careful about picking my words Certainly sir. That at least was common courtesy. Well look I was a friend of your Uncle Jim s. Cot bristled. Sir I He stopped. In a sense he was obligated to Mr. Holland. If he didn t say it now it would have to be said later. Sorry sir. Please go on. Mr. Holland nodded. We campaigned with Berendtsen together sure. That doesn t sit too well with some people around here. But it s true and there s lots of people who remember it so there s nothing wrong with my saying it. Something that was half reflex twisted Cot s mouth at the mention of the AU but he kept silent. How else was Ted going to get a central government started among a bunch of forted up farmers and lone wolf nomads Beat em individually at checkers We needed a government and fast before we ran out of cartridges for the guns and went back to spears and arrows. They didn t have to do it the way they did it Cot said bitterly. Mr. Holland sighed. Devil they didn t. And besides how do you know exactly how it was done Were you there My mother and father were. My mother remembers very well Cot shot back. Yeah Mr. Holland said dryly. Your father was there. And your mother was always good at remembering. Does she remember how your father came to be here in the first place Cot frowned for a moment at the obscure reference to his father. She remembers. She also remembers my uncle s leading the group that wiped out her family. Holland smiled cryptically. Funny the way things change in people s memories he murmured. He went on more loudly. The way I heard it her folks were from Pennsylvania. What were they doing holding down Jersey land He leaned forward. Look son it wasn t anybody s land. Her folks could have kept it if they hadn t been too scared to believe us when we told them all we wanted was for them to join the Republic. And anyway none of that kept her from marrying Bob. Cot took a deep breath. My father sir never fought under Berendtsen. His Integrity did not permit him to take other people s orders or do their butchery. Ahuh Mr. Holland said. Your father got to be awful good with that carbine. He had to he added in a lower voice. And I guess he had to rationalize it somehow. Your father built up this household defense system he said more clearly. I guess he figured that an armored bunker was the thing to protect his property the same way his carbine protected him. Which wasn t a bad idea. Berendtsen unified this country but he didn t exactly clean it up. That was more than they gave him time for. Holland stopped and drained his mug. He put it down and wiped his mouth. But boy don t you think those days are kind of over Don t you think it s time we came out of those hedgehog houses and out of this hedgehog Integrity business Mr. Holland put his palms on the table and held Cot s eyes with his own. Don t you think it s time we finished the unifying job and got us a community where a boy can walk up to his neighbor s house in broad daylight knock on the door and say hello to a girl if he wants to Cot had been listening with his emotions so tangled that none of them could have been unraveled and classified. But now Holland s last words reached him and once again the thought of what had happened the previous night was laid bare and all his disgust for himself with it. I m sorry sir he said stiffly. But I m afraid we have differing views on the subject. A man s home is his defense and his Integrity and that of his family are what keep that defense strong and inviolate. Perhaps other parts of the Republic are not founded on that principle as I ve heard lately but here the code by which we live is one which evolved for the fulfillment of those vital requisites to freedom. If we abandon them we go back to the Dirty Years. And I am afraid sir he finished with a remembrance of the outrage he had felt the previous night that despite your questionable efforts I shall still marry your daughter honorably or not at all. Holland shook his head and smiled to himself and Cot realized how foolish that last sentence had sounded. Nevertheless while he could not help his impulses he was perfectly aware of the difference between right and wrong. Holland stood up. All right boy. You stick to your system. Only it doesn t seem to work too well for you does it And once again Mr. Holland turned around and walked away leaving Cot with nothing to say or do and with no foundation for assurance. It was as though Cot grappled with a vague nightmare a dark and terrible shape that presented no straightforward facet to be attacked but which put out tentacles and pseudopods until he was completely enmeshed in it only to fade away and leave him with his clawing arms hooked around nothing. It was worse than any anger or insult could have been. His footsteps were unsteady as he crossed the club floor. The rum he had drunk combined with a sleepless night had settled into a weight at the base of his skull. He was about to open the door when Charles Kittredge laid a hand on his arm. Cot turned. How do you do Cottrell Kittredge said. Cot nodded. Charles was his neighbor on the side away from Mr. Holland. How do you do. You look a little tired Charles remarked. I am Charles. He grinned back in answer to his neighbor s smile. Shouldn t wonder holding a drill at 0800. Cot shrugged. Have to keep the defenses in shape you know. Kittredge laughed. Why for God s sake Or were you just rehearsing for the Fourth Cot frowned. Why no of course not. I ve heard you holding Drill often enough. His neighbor nodded. Sure whenever one of the kids has a birthday. But you don t really mean you were holding a genuine dead serious affair Cot was having trouble maintaining his concentration. He squinted and shook his head slightly. What s the matter with that Kittredge s voice and manner became more serious. Oh now look Cot there s been nothing to defend against in fifteen years. Matter of fact I m thinking of dismounting my artillery and selling it to the Militia. They re offering a fair price Cot looked at him uncomprehendingly. You can t be serious Kittredge returned the look. Sure. But you can t. They d stay out of machinegun range and shell you to fragments with mortars and fieldpieces. They d knock out your machinegun turrets come in closer under rifle cover and lob grenades into your living quarters. Kittredge laughed. He slapped his thigh while his shoulders shook. Who the devil is they he gasped. Berendtsen Cot felt the first touch of anger as it penetrated the deadening blanket that had wrapped itself around his thoughts. Kittredge gave one final chuckle. Come off it will you Cot As a matter of fact while I wasn t going to mention it all that banging going on at your place this morning practically ruined one of my cows. Ran head on into a fence. It s not the first time it s happened either. The only reason I ve never said anything is because your own livestock probably has just as bad a time of it. Look Cot we can t afford to unnerve our livestock and poison our land. It was all right as long as it was the only way we could operate at all but the most hostile thing that s been seen around here in years is a chicken hawk. The touch of anger had become a genuine feeling. Cot could feel it settling into the pit of his stomach and vibrating at his fingertips. So you re asking me to stop holding Drill is that it Kittredge heard the faint beginning of a rasp in Cot s voice and frowned. Not altogether Cot. Not if you don t want to. But I wish you d save it for celebrations. The weapons of my household aren t firecrackers. The words were carried as though at the flicking end of a whip. Oh come on Cot For almost twenty four hours Cot had been encountering situations for which his experience held no solutions. He was baffled frustrated and angry. The carbine was off his shoulder and in his hands with the speed and smoothness of motion that his father had drilled into him until it was beyond impedance by exhaustion or alcohol. With the gun in his hands he suddenly realized just how angry he was. Charles Kittredge I charge you with attempt to breach the Integrity of my household. Load and fire. The formula too was as ingrained in Cot as was his whole way of life. Chuck Kittredge knew it as well as he did. He blanched. You gone crazy It was a new voice from slightly beyond and beside Charles. Cot s surprised glance flickered over and saw Kittredge s younger brother Michael. Do you stand with him Cot rapped out. Aw now look Cot... Charles Kittredge began. You re not serious about this Stand or turn your back. Cot All I said was Am I to understand that you are attempting to explain yourself Michael Kittredge moved forward. What s the matter with you Garvin You living in the Dirty Years or something The knot of fury twisted itself tighter in Cot s stomach. That will be far enough. I asked you once: Do you stand with him No he doesn t Charles Kittredge said violently. And I don t stand either. What kind of a fool things going on in your head anyway People just don t pull challenges like that at the drop of a hat anymore That s for each man to decide for himself Cot answered. Do you turn your back then An ugly red flush flamed at Kittredge s cheek. bones. Damned if I will. His mouth clamped into an etched white line. All right then Cot what goes through that door first you or me Nobody will go anywhere. You ll stand or turn where you are. Right here in the club You are crazy You chose the place not I. Load and fire. Kittredge put his hand on his rifle sling. On the count then he said hopelessly. Cot re slung his carbine. One he said. Two. He and Kittredge picked up the count together. Three in unison. Four. Fi Cot had not bothered to count five aloud. The carbine fell into his hooked and waiting hands and jumped once. Kittredge interrupted in the middle of his last word collapsed to the club floor. Cot looked down at him and then back to Michael who was standing where he had been looking at Cot s face. Do you stand with him Cot repeated the formula once more. Michael shook his head dumbly. Then turn. Michael nodded. I ll turn. Sure I ll be a coward. There was a peculiar quality to his voice. Cot had seen men turn before but never as though by free choice. Except for Holland of course the thought came. Cot looked at the width of Michael s back and reslung his carbine. All right Michael. Take your dead home to your household. He stood where he was while Michael hoisted his bother s body over his shoulder. According to the formula he should have publicly called the boy a coward. But he did not and his next words betrayed his reason. He was a good friend of mine Michael. I m sorry he forced me to do it. As he walked home past Mr. Holland s house Cot did not turn his head to see if there were lights in any of the windows. He had kept his family s Integrity unbreached. He had forced another man to turn. But he did not himself know whether he hoped Barbara would understand that in a sense he had done it to redeem himself for her. Two days later at dinnertime Geoffrey and Alister came in five minutes late. Geoffrey s face was wide and numb with shock and Alister s was glowing with a rampant inner joy. It was only when Geoffrey turned that Cot saw his left sleeve soaked in blood. Geoffrey Cot s mother pushed her chair back and ran to him. She pulled a medkit off its wall bracket and began cutting the sleeve away. What happened Cot asked. I got my man today Geoffrey said his voice as numb as his features. He rightfully belongs to Al here though A grin broke through the numbness and a babble of words came out as the shock of the wound passed into hysteria That crazy Michael Kittredge climbed a tree up at the edge of the practice terrain. Had a scopemounted T 4 and six extra clips. Must have figured on an all out war. First thing I knew it felt like somebody hit my shoulder with a baseball bat and I was down with the slugs plowing the ground in circles around me. I tried to do something with my rifle but no go. Kittredge must have had crosseyes or something couldn t hit the side of a cliff with a howitzer after the first shot damn fool stunt scope mounting an automatic somebody should have taught him better and there I was passing out from the recoil every time I squeezed off. You never saw such a blind man s shooting match in your life Then out of this gully he d been imitating an elephant wallowing through up pops Al Slaps the old blunderbuss to his shoulder like the man on a skeet shoot trophy and starts blasting away at Kittredge s tree like there was nothing up there but pigeons Tell you the sight of that came nearer killing me than Kittredge s best out of twenty five. Well the jerk might have been crazy but he wasn t up to ignoring a clipload of soft nose. He swings that lunatic T 4 of his for A1 and this gives me a chance to steady up and put a lucky shot through a leaf he happened to be in back of at the time. He s still out there. Cot felt his teeth go into his lower lip. Michael Kittredge He shot you from ambush He wasn t carrying any banners But that s disgraceful Cot s mother exclaimed. She finished wrapping the gauze over the patch bandage on Geoffrey s bicep. Cot looked at Alister who was standing beside Geoffrey his face still shining. Is that what happened Alister he asked. Alister nodded. Sure that s what happened Geoffrey said indignantly. Think this s a mosquito bite You know what this means don t you Cot asked gravely. Geoffrey began a shrug and winced. Fool kid with a bug. Cot shook his head. The Kittredges may be lax in their training but Michael knew better. In a sense that was a declaration of war. If Michael was out there the rest of his household may not have known about it but when they find out they ll be forced to support his action. So it s a declaration of war Alister suddenly said his tones a conscious imitation of Geoffrey s. What have we been drilling for Geoffrey s eyes opened wide and the secretive laughter returned to his expression as he looked at his younger brother. Not to start a war or get involved in one Cot said. Their gunnery will be sloppier than ours but their armor plate s just as thick. What do you want to do Cottrell his mother asked. Her delicate face was anxious and her hands seemed to have poised for the express purpose of underscoring the question. We ve got to stop this thing before it snowballs Geoffrey said. I didn t get it before but Cot s right. Cot nodded. We ll have to call everybody in to a meeting. I don t know what can be done about the Kittredges. Maybe we ll all be able to think of something. He beat the side of his fist lightly against his thigh. I don t know. It s never been done before. But the Kittredges aren t the AU. We can t handle the problem by simply dropping our shutters and fighting as independent units. The whole community would finish in firing on each other. We ve got to have concerted action. Perhaps if the community lines up as a solid block against them we ll be able to forestall the Kittredges. Unite the community His mother s eyes were wide. Do you think you can do it Cot sighed. I don t know mother. I couldn t guess. He turned back to Alister. We re going up to the club. It s the only natural meeting place we ve got. I think you d better break out the car. The Kittredges might have more snipers among them. He picked his carbine up from the arms rack and started to follow the busily efficient Alister down to the garage. I ll go with you Geoffrey said. Only takes one arm to work the turret guns. Cot looked at him indecisively. Finally he said All right. There s no telling what the Kittredges might be up to along the road. He turned back to his mother. I think it might be advisable to put the household on action stations. She nodded and he went down into the garage. The road was open and glaring white in the sunlight of early afternoon. The armored car s tires jounced over the latitudinal ruts that freight trucks had worn into the road and one part of him was worried about the effect on Geoffrey battened down in the turret. He looked up through the overhead slits and saw the twin muzzles of the 35mm cannon tracking steadily counterclockwise. Where did it begin what started it he thought with most of his mind. The chain of recent events was clear. From the moment that Mr. Holland had discovered him that night four days ago event had followed event as plainly and as inevitably as though it had been planned in advance. If he had not been upset by his meeting with Mr. Holland he would not have called Drill the following morning. If he had never seen Barbara at her window at all there would have been nothing for Geoffrey to taunt him with and no fear of exposure to drive him to the club. If he had not been drinking Mr. Holland s references to Uncle James would not have cut so deeply. Had there been no Drill there would have been no quarrel with Charles Kittredge and even if there had been Drill Charles s remarks would not have been so objectionable had there been no smoldering resentment from his talk with Mr. Holland. For it was true he had been angry. Had he not been Charles and Michael would not be dead and he and his brothers would not now be in the car trying to stop an upheaval of violence that would involve the entire community. But his anger had not been his responsibility. A breach of Integrity remained a breach of Integrity no matter what the subjective state of the Party at Grievance. But where did it really begin If his mother had ever introduced him to Barbara would any of this have happened He rejected that possibility. His mother had been acting in accordance with the code that his father and the other free men who had settled in this area had evolved. And the code was a good code. It had kept the farmlands free and in peace with no man wearing another s collar until Michael Kittredge broke the code. And so while he thought he turned the car off the road and stopped in front of the club. The porch of the club was already crowded with men. As he climbed out of the car s hatch he saw that all the families of the community with the exception of the Kittredges were represented. Olsen Hollis Winter Jordan Park Jones Cadell Rome Lynn Williams Bridges all of them. Even Mr. Holland stood near the center of the porch his lined face graver than Cot had ever seen it. He walked toward them. The news had spread rapidly. He remembered that a lot of households had radios now. He d never seen any use for one before. Probably he ought to get one. As long as the families were uniting a fast communications channel was a good idea. That s far enough Garvin He stopped and stared up at the men on the porch. Lundy Hollis had lifted his rifle Cot frowned. One or two other guns in the crowd were being raised in his direction. I don t understand this he said. Hollis sneered and snorted. He looked past Cot at the car. If anyone in the buggy tries anything we ve got a present for them. The men on the porch drew off to two sides. Two men were crouched in the club s doorway. One held a steady antitank rocket launcher on his shoulder and the other having fed a rocket into the chamber stood ready to slap the top of his head and give the signal to fire. I ll ask once more Looks like you ve united the community boy Mr. Holland said. Against you. Cot felt the familiar surge of anger ripple up through his body. Against me What for There was a scattered chorus of harsh laughs. What about Chuck Kittredge Hollis asked. Charles Kittredge That was an Affair of Integrity Yeah Whose yours or his Hollis asked. Seems like the day of Integrity has sort of come and gone son Mr. Holland said gently. Yeah and what about Michael Kittredge someone shouted from the back of the crowd. Was that an Affair of Integrity too What about those two brothers of yours shooting the kid out of a tree someone else demanded. Geoffrey s in the car with a wounded arm right now Cot shouted. And Mike Kittredge s dead. There was a babble of voices. The burst of sound struck Cot s ears and he felt himself crouch fists balled as the knot of fury within him exploded in reply. All right he shouted. All right I came up here to ask you to stop the Kittredges with me. I see they got to you first. All right Then we ll take them on alone and the devil can have all of you Somehow in the storm of answers that came from the porch Mr. Holland s quiet voice came through. No good boy. See when I said against you I meant it. It s not a case of them not helping you it means they re going to start shelling your place in two hours whether you re in it or not. No. The word was torn out of him and even he had to analyze its expression. It was not a command nor a request nor a statement of fact or wonder. It was simply a word and he knew better than anyone else who heard it how ineffectual it was. So you d better get your family out of there son. The other men on the porch had fallen silent all of them watching Cot except for the two men with the rocket launcher who ignored everything but the armored car. Mr. Holland came off the porch and walked toward him. He put his hand on his shoulder. Let s be getting back son. Lots of room at my place for your family. Cot looked up at the men on the porch again. They were completely silent all staring back at him as though he were some strange form of man that they had never seen before. He shuddered. All right. Mr. Holland climbed through the hatch and Cot followed him slamming it shut behind him and settling into the drivers saddle. He gunned the idling engine locked his left rear wheels and spun the car around. With the motor at full gun the dust billowing the armored car growled back down the road. I heard most of it Cot Geoffrey s tight and bitter voice came over the intercom. Let s get back to the house in a hurry. We can dump a ton of fray on that porch before those birds know what s hitting them. Cot shook his head until he remembered that Geoffrey couldn t see him. They ll be gone Jeff. Scattered out to their houses getting ready. Well let s hit the houses then Alister said from behind the machinegun on the car s turtledeck. Wouldn t stand a chance son Mr. Holland said. He s right. They ve got us cold Cot agreed. What had happened to the code His father had lived by it. All the people in the community had lived by it. He himself had lived by it he caught himself. Had tried to live by it and failed. oooooooooooooooooooooo Cot stood in the yard in front of Mr. Holland s house. It had taken an hour and a half of the time Hollis had given him to get back to his house and move his family and a few belongings to Mr. Holland s house. There had been a strange uncomfortable reunion between Mr. Holland and his grandmother. He had kissed his mother just now and raised his hand as she turned back at the doorway. I ll be all right mother he said. There are a few things I d like to attend to. All right son. Don t be long. He nodded though she was already inside. Geoffrey and Alister had gone in before her taking care of their grandmother and the younger children. Cot smiled crookedly. Alister would be all right. He hoped Geoffrey wasn t too old to adapt. Mr. Holland came out. I d like to thank you for taking us in Cot said to him. Mr. Holland s face clouded. I owe it to you boy. I keep thinking this wouldn t be happening if I hadn t chivvied you along. Cot shook his head. No one way or the other it would have happened. That s rather easy to see now. You coming inside Cot I d like to introduce you to my daughter. Cot looked at the sun. No not enough time. I ll be back Mr. Holland. Got a few loose ends to tie up. Holland looked over the low barely visible roof of Cot s house. A small dustcloud was approaching it from the other side. He nodded. Yeah I see what you mean. Well you d better hurry up. Don t have more than about twenty minutes. Cot nodded. I ll see you. He dropped the carbine into his hand and loped across the yard not having to worry about the dog now cutting through the scrub underbrush until he was just below the crest of a rise that overlooked his house. He flattened himself in the high grass and inched forward until his head and shoulders were over the crest but still hidden in the grass. He d been right. There were three men just climbing out of a light guncarrier. Well that s what our grandparents were he thought. Looters. He slipped the safety. And our parents had a code. And now his brothers had a community. But I ve been living a way all my life and I guess I ve got integrity. He fired and one of the men slapped his stomach and fell. The other two dove apart their own rifles in their hands. Cot laughed and threw dirt into their faces with a pair of shots. One of them bucked his shoulders upward involuntarily as the dirt flew into his eyes. Cot fired again and the shoulders slumped. Thanks for a trick Jeff. The other man fired back using half a clip to cut the grass a foot to Cot s right. Cot dropped back below the crest rolled and came up again ten feet from where he had been. Down by the house the remaining man moved. Cot put a bullet an inch above his head. He had about ten minutes. Well if he kept the man pinned down the first salvo would do as thorough a job as any carbine shot. The man moved again a little desperately this time and Cot tugged at his jacket with a snap shot. Five minutes and the man moved again. He was shouting something. Cot turned his ear forward to kill the hum of the breeze but couldn t make out the words. He pinned the man down again. When he had a minute of life left the man tried to run for it. He sprang up suddenly running away from the weapons carrier and Cot missed him for that reason. When the man cut back he shot him through the leg. Damn Jeff would have done better than that The man was crawling for the carrier. Over at the Kittredges the first muzzle flashes flared and the thud of guns rolled over the hills. Cot put a bullet through the crawling man s head. He d been right. The Kittredges gunnery was poor. The first salvo landed a hundred yards over on the crest of the ridge where he was standing with his rifle in his hand. CHAPTER EIGHT: This happened many years after the plague at about the same time things were beginning to run down in the Great Lakes region and the Seventh Republic there tried to buy time with a legend. But this happened toward the south: I Jeff Garvin moved through the loosened window like a darker shadow in the night and his feet made no sound as he touched the floor. He grinned quietly as he closed the window behind him and adjusted his eyesight with near animal ease to peer at the darkness of the room. He was in the dining room. He took quick stock of the doorways and chose the one most likely to lead to the kitchen. He moved toward it without hesitation holding his rifle with his right forefinger on the trigger while he nudged the door gently open. He d been right it was the kitchen and he stepped noiselessly into it. He located a storage cabinet and began to fill his pack grimacing because most of the food was home canned in glass jars. He d have to be careful with those if he got in a fight. He packed them as carefully as possible stopping to listen carefully after each barely audible tink of their touching. When he had a full load he slipped the pack onto his shoulders and picked up his rifle again. He crossed the kitchen opened the door and stepped back out into the dining room. Whoa feller the voice said and the rifle was jerked out of his hand. He saw the glint of faint light on the barrel of a shotgun and stopped still the spring of his muscles sagging into dissolution. He squinted at the shadowy figure feeling a despair wash through him and knew that was it this was the end a thousand miles and five years away from home. He had fought and tracked his way this far over the cold plains and through the long nights with men against him all the way and this was where he had finally come to the end of it all. A girl had caught him. A girl with a shotgun. He grinned at the thought and let her see the grin where she sat in the semicircle of people who were looking at him. He liked the way she didn t try to avoid it but kept looking at him looking not staring the way the rest of the women were doing at the wild outlaw. What s your name mac the man who seemed to be running things asked. Jeff Cottrell he said with the right amount of hesitation. He d found out long ago that Garvin wasn t a popular name in some places. He had no idea if it was the same way here but there was no use taking chances with a dull knife or a slow fire. What were you doing in the Boston house He looked at the man expressionlessly wondering what sort of local quirk of justice demanded particulars of a man about to be executed out of hand. Stocking up he said willing enough to play along. The man nodded. Been out on the plains a long time That was a trick one. Nobody could do it very long without raiding a lot of towns and a man who raided a lot of towns was bound to run into times when he didn t come and go without leaving some of the citizenry bleeding. On the other hand if he gave them some ridiculously short figure they d simply lose patience with him and get it over with now. Being cagey about it huh the man said. All right we ll let that one go. He didn t seem particularly disturbed. How many people have you killed My share he answered instantly. It was a foregone conclusion anyway. The man took it without any surprise and started another question but the girl cut him off. Don t see any point to carrying this business on any longer she said standing up. Whew I didn t think it d be you that yelled for blood first Jeff thought. Maybe you re right Pat the man admitted. He turned to the rest of the crowd the town s entire adult population probably and directed his next question at them. How do you people feel about it There was a scattering of nods and a few people said Pat s right or things to the same effect. Jeff braced himself. The man turned around and looked at him. We ve got a proposition. Jeff felt the air rush out of his chest. You ve got a what he asked completely astonished. The man smiled tightly. This is something we decided on a while ago. This is a farming town he explained. Every one of us has enough to keep him busy all day and half the night. We can t keep up any sort of adequate guard against people like you and people like you are a nuisance. So we ve got a standing offer to every one of you we catch that doesn t flunk the little oral examination. Goes like this: we ll let you draw food and clothing from the town supplies and give you a place to stay. In return you keep the neighborhood cleaned out of light fingered tramps like yourself. I ll take it Jeff said. The man held up his hand. Let s not get hasty feller. There s a catch far as you re concerned. One of us goes with you everywhere you go around town. He carries a gun. You don t. When you go out hunting we take shifts and send two people with you. You get your rifle outside the town limits and turn it back in before you get inside em again. If we catch you heading out we shoot you down as a sort of generalized favor to all the other towns around here. I ll still take it. Funny the man said they all do at first. There was a ripple of cold grins through the crowd and Jeff didn t waste a thought on wondering why the position was currently empty. The man stepped up and held out his hand. We might as well get to know each other. You re bunking with me. My name s Pete Drumm. Jeff nodded thoughtfully. It was a hard tough hand. Ever ride a horse before Pat asked. Jeff shook his head and looked carefully at the bay hitched to the porch upright. The girl sighed. Well Mister that s a tired horse. He s been tired for the past five years. So even if you re lying don t expect to get very far very fast. Get aboard him. Jeff shrugged and walked over to the animal. He slipped the reins loose and climbed cautiously into the saddle feeling his thigh muscles stretching into unaccustomed lengths and resigning himself to considerable and probably laughable soreness if he kept this up very long. Fortunately the horse did no more than twitch his tail. Pat looked up and grinned. No you re never been on a horse before she said. You look as though you expected to wet your pants any minute. He stared at her for a minute then burst out laughing in the first genuine amusement he d felt in weeks. Damn he liked that girl She swung up into her own saddle and they walked slowly through the town while Pat kept up a running commentary. That s Becker s place. Got a wife four kids. The kids sleep downstairs so they can pretty much take care of themselves. That place next to them is Fritch s. Old Fritch lives alone but he s a sly one. He s got traps all around the place. Wouldn t hurt to look up this way every once in a while though. By the end of the afternoon he had a fairly clear picture of the town s layout. It was much like all the others he d seen on the plains the houses close together for protection with fields running out in all directions. It was late fall now and the fields were bare but he could picture how it would look in the summer: green and prosperous tough as the grass that constantly fought the prairie wind. He spotted a string of bare poles marching toward the horizon and nodded at them. Telephone line the girl explained. Branch out of Kansas City. Some easterners were through here last July hooking up with the St. Louis exchanges. They ll be stringing wire in the spring. All the old stuff blew down long ago of course. Abruptly she turned in the saddle and looked at him. What s it like back East she asked laughing wryly. Funny how we re all part of the same lousy mess and there s the big difference between city people and small town farmers. But Pete tells me it was always like that. She seemed genuinely interested. To make conversation at first and then out of some long pent up well of talk as he forgot himself he began telling her about life back in New Jersey about what the people were like and about his family. She listened intently asking a question here and there occasionally making a surprisingly levelheaded comment. By the time they reined up in front of her house she knew a great deal about him and not even his screaming muscles and aching knees were enough to kill his odd feeling of relaxation. But one thing he never quite let leave his mind some way somehow he had to find a way to escape. By the time he had been in Kalletsburg a week he knew how he was going to do it. It was the only way that would work with these people. It might take a year. Perhaps two. But when the time came he would leave. And he found himself toying with the idea that it just might be possible to take Pat with him. He rolled over in his bunk and clasped his hands behind his head staring up at the lamplit ceiling. There was no use trying to beat the system of watchers they had set up. Even when it was only Pat who was with him there was a pistol holstered to her belt and Drumm had meant what he d said about his going unarmed. That had been an uncomfortable feeling to shake off in itself. His rifle was so much part of him that he had grown accustomed to its weight to balance him. He found himself misjudging the height of his shoulder or overestimating the muscular effort needed to lift his arm. He d felt awkward and clumsy without it and in this short time hadn t quite gotten over it yet. But he could get used to it and get used to having it back when the time came. Because the town s weak spot was its smallness. He was in constant contact with everyone. In a while they d be completely accustomed to the sight of him. If he talked to them and listened to what they had to say he d gradually become one of them. In time too he might start working a small field of his own. Perhaps he d build a house. Give them a hundred signs that he was here to stay tied to the town in the same way they were. And then one night he d disappear and they d be left to look for a new sheriff. And as he d considered before it was just barely possible that Pat might be willing to go along with him by then. He grinned quietly. What have you got to be happy about Drumm asked. Jeff s grin widened. At the moment everybody in town tacitly accepted small town fashion that Pat was Drumm s girl. Oh nothing special he said. He lay awake for a few minutes longer and then went quietly to sleep. Winter came and during its first weeks as the plains outlaws were driven to stock whatever miserable shelters they had managed for themselves Jeff was busy day and night. He d spent his last winter in a cave cut into a riverbank and he knew what the thought processes were that rose from the sort of life. By October he d nailed four figurative hides to the barn door and then the snow blocked everything off until the desperate half starved men began floundering toward the town in mid December. Meanwhile he spent his time talking to Pat or Drumm. Drumm was as interested in his past as Pat had been for an entirely different reason. He showed Jeff the boxed shears of paper covered by his father s precise economical handwriting. A Study of the Effects of Personal Arms on Conventional Theories of Modern Government by Harvey Haggard Drumm with a bow to Silas McKinley Jeff read and looked up at Pete in curiosity. A History of Theodore Berendtsen s Northern Campaign he read from the label of another box With Additional Personal Notes. Dad was in on that one Pete explained. He was a corporal under one of Matt Garvin s sons. Well I ll be triple goddamned Jeff thought. He looked at another box of manuscript labeled The Care and Feeding of the Intellectual Militant. And you re hanging on to these in hopes of getting them to a printing press sometime he asked. Better than that Pete said. I m trying to add to them. That s why I m so interested in your story. I want to write it down. I want to be able to have other people learn from it. See we re doing all right down here. Things starting up even without Berendtsen s people having gone through here. Because my father came through here. Just writing books Just writing books and telling people what was in them and about how in the East things were getting better. It makes a big difference when you know somebody s found a way out of the hole even if you haven t yet. You keep looking. You don t just curl up and die. I guess that s the best excuse for Berendtsen and his bully boys. They had to live so my father could talk about the way things were getting started. But we re past that time now. And I m damned glad. Pete looked at Jeff with shrewd appraisal in his eyes. I wouldn t want to see any more gunmen trying to keep going around here. I guess not. Yeah. What ever happened to your father anyway Jeff asked. He didn t like the way the conversation was going. Pete smiled softly. I don t know. I guess I was about ten or twelve when Ryder s bunch came through here heading for Texas. My mother had just died and my older brother Jim was big enough to run our place with my help. Pop was a rotten farmer anyway so he talked it over with us and when Ryder s bunch pulled out he packed up all the blank paper he could carry and went off with them. I sort of wanted to tag along but Pop stepped on that idea hard. He was right I guess. Ryder wasn t doing any fighting he could avoid but it was still a hard life. Worked out best in the end too when Jim got killed by one of you boys. If I d of gone there wouldn t have been anybody left to work the place. What difference would that make if you weren t here to see it Drumm shrugged uncertainly. I know. But I m here. It just I don t know it just feels that way. Jeff tried to imagine that trait of character that would make a man think in those terms about a tract of land much like any other tract anywhere. But he had to give up on that. Bit by bit he told Drumm the story of what his life had been like beginning with his father s death and carefully ending with Alister s marriage to Barbara and his departure from home. He had to watch himself to make sure he didn t let his real name slip but otherwise he was able to let the story run almost automatically. For some reason a comment that Pete made on Cot s death stayed with him. He found himself thinking about it at unexpected times and places. I m sorry he died Pete said because I m sorry for anybody who dies. But I m glad for his sake he did. A man shouldn t outlive his times. He looked up and speared Jeff with his glance. Once he s decided for certain on what his times really are. Jeff couldn t seem to shake the words loose. ooooooooooooooooo When he d been there a year his patient plan reached its first goal. He had kept up his duties faithfully and had stayed away from the telephone wire crew talking to them only when he encountered them by accident and not trying to send out any messages or ask for help of any kind. It would have been a futile move in any case for his kind of man had no friends and no hope of help but more important he had known the townspeople were watching. They gave him credit on a small plot of land and he found time enough during the day to work it. He had to be awake most of the night but he worked his land as hard as anyone worked theirs while Pat showed him how. His face pinched while his shoulders broadened and the thin layer of winter fat ran off him in muddy streams of perspiration. When he caught a raider stealing his young corn he shot him through the elbow of his gun arm. That complete unpremeditated move tipped the scales in his favor he realized later. The one man who still rode out with him was confidently careless about enforcing the original rules and if he hadn t wanted Pat so much by then he could have shot him and left any time he chose. He debated it briefly but realized that Pat would never go with him on that basis and stuck to his original plan. Wait a year he told himself. In a year they d practically let him carry the town out on his back. That fall he started building his house. Left to himself he might have thrown up a one room shack of some kind but he had enough offers of help to make a bigger project possible. Moreover if he built a place large enough for a family there was something as good as a display poster to advertise his intention of settling down. He realized how right he d been when he caught Pat s mother and father looking at the two of them over the dinner table and exchanging sly glances. It seemed to help in his long campaign to wear Pat down too. And finally when the next spring came he knew it was time. He slept in the house alone riding in and out of town with his rifle in his saddle boot any time he chose. He called everybody in the town by their first names and he seldom had to eat his own cooking. The people of Kalletsburg had forgotten he was a raider an outlaw. Even Pete Drumm had forgotten for he was as sour toward him as he would have been toward any other equal who was winning the contest over Pat. Only me he thought. I haven t forgotten. He waited until the moon died and picked a night when it was cloudy enough to rain piling packs on one of his two horses and working on his rifle until even its slowly deteriorating barrel shone without a trace of pitting. Then he waited patiently until he was sure Pat s parents would be asleep. He sat in his darkened house and counted slow time. Finally he moved. He walked his horses quietly to a stand of cottonwood near the Bartons house and hitched them there moving the rest of the way on foot. Without a trace of having lost his old skill he went into the shed and saddled Pat s horse and then circled the house. And he came inevitably to the dining room window which was still the easiest. Well he thought it s a full circle. Grinning with cold mirth he slid through the loose window and stood once more in the Bartons s dining room at night. He fumed inwardly in response to a by now automatic reflex. He d told Arnold a dozen times if he d told him once to fix that window. But the old man just smiled and insisted that Jeff was all the protection he needed. He shook his head angrily. Well this d teach him. Look boy Pat said from the darkness the only bathroom in this house is still next to the dining room. Can t you learn He sagged against the wall. Pat came over to him and took his hand. You must want something awful bad to keep sneaking in here. I hope it s me. I And all of a sudden he couldn t say it. He felt foolish caught here and somehow awkward and completely ridiculous. I he began again and felt something break open inside him. Damn it he said bewilderedly I was going to ask you to take off with me. But I can t do it I can t leave this goddamn town Pat reached out and held him her hand tousling his hair fondly. You damn fool she said of course you can t You re civilized. II And this happened in the north: Joe Custis stepped out of the dead commander s hut into the flickering shadows from the cookfires. There was a rifleman posted about ten yards away and Custis looked at him thoughtfully. Then he called in a voice pitched to reach the man and no farther. Hey the boss wants some light in here The man grunted and went to one of the near fires for a sliver of burning wood. He carried it back shelding it carefully with his hands. First no lights and now lights he grumbled as he stepped through the doorway. He reached up to a shelf where an oil lamp was sitting and stopped dead as he dimly saw Henley on the floor and the commander lying across the desk. Now who the hell d be dumb enough to kill the commander right in camp... Custis whipped the flat of his hand across the side of the man s neck. He caught the burning light carefully crushed it out on the floor. Then he stepped outside again gently closing the door behind him. He walked slowly away until he was fifty feet away from the huts in the shadows and then he turned toward the fire where he had seen Jody working. He had the knife in his belt under his shirt and as he walked he rolled up his bloody sleeves. His skin gathered itself into gooseflesh under the night wind s chill. When he was fairly close to the fire he changed his pace until he was simply strolling. He walked up to the fire listening for the first sounds from the hut on the other side of the camp. Jody. She looked up wiping the wet hair off her forehead with the back of a hand. Hi soldier Come for supper He shook his head. Still want to come to Chicago She straightened up. Just a minute. She stirred the food in the pot let the spoon slide back into it and picked up her water pail. Ready she said. Let s go. They walked toward the spring. Out of the firelight she touched his forearm. You re not kidding me No. You know how to get down to where the car is Yeah. She put the water pail down. Come on. As they walked up the rise to the galley entrance she gripped his hand. Anything go wrong Joe You get hurt or something No. There s blood on your shirt. Henley s. You sure He spilled it. It belongs to him. She took a deep breath. There s gonna be hell to pay. Can t help it. It worked out that way. He was trying to remember the exact positions the grenadiers had been in. They came to where the two machinegun pits covered the trail into the valley and one of the men there heard them walking. Who s that Me. Jody. The man chuckled. Hey Jody You bringin me my supper The other man laughed out of the darkness. Not right now Sam Jody answered. I got somebody with me. There was more laughter in the shadows among the rocks and then they were past. They made their way down the mountainside walking as quietly as they could on the loose rock and then Custis heard a man s shoes scrape as he settled himself more comfortably in his position. We re there Jody whispered. Okay. Custis oriented himself. After a minute he was pretty sure where he was in relation to the car and where everyone else would be. What now Joe You walk on down. Let em hear you. Talk to em. You sure Joe Yeah. It ll be okay. You re not gonna leave me I told you I d take you didn t I All right Joe. Her fingers trailed over his forearm. Be seeing you. Give me twenty minutes he said and slipped off among the rocks. He moved as noiselessly as he knew how the knife ready in his hand. Once he stumbled over a man. Scuse me Buddy he mumbled. Okay pal he man answered. Take one for me. Farther down the mountains he heard somebody say loudly: Hey it s Jody C mere Jody gal. He could feel the ripple of attention run through the men among the rocks. Equipment rattled as men leaned forward sick of this duty and glad of something to watch and maybe join in on. Now he was behind one of the grenade teams. He inched forward found them and after a minute he was moving on. The men where Jody was were laughing and tossing remarks back and forth. He heard her giggle. He found the next team craning forward to look down into a cup behind some rocks where a small fire had been built on the side away from the car. When he was through he looked over the edge and saw Jody standing in the middle of a bunch of men. Her head was thrown back and she was laughing. When he d left the third emplacement and was working toward the fourth he heard the sound of a slap. A man yelled: Hey girl don t you treat me like that The rest of the men were laughing harshly. The fourth team was easy to handle. Working on the fifth he missed the last man. It was a tricky business getting the first with one sure swing and then going for the other before he could yell. This time the man rolled sideways and there was nothing for Custis to do but kick at his head. He hit the man but didn t even knock him out. The man slid off the rock yelling and Custis scrambled as fast as he could to throw the box of grenades one way the rifle another and jumped for the car. Lew Open up I m coming in he bellowed as the night broke apart. Rifle fire yammered toward him as he ran ricochets screaming off the rocks. The car s motors began to wind up. It was still as dark as the bottom of a bucket and then Hutchinson fired the car s flare gun. The world turned green. Custis slammed into the starboard track cover threw himself on top of it and clawed his way over the turtledeck. He rapped his knuckles quickly on the turret hatch and Robb flung it back. Custis teetered on the edge of the coaming. The car s machineguns opened up hammering at the rocks. Custis heard a man screaming: Where s the damned grenades Then he heard the girl shouting: Joe. He stopped. He looked back toward the sound of her voice. Oh Christ he muttered. Then he sighed. What the hell. and shouted down into the turret: Cover me He jumped down off the battlewagon his boots resounding on the foreplates before he hit the ground. He pitched forward smashing into the gravel then threw himself erect and ran toward the spot. Rifle fire chucked into the ground around him. He weaved and jumped from side to side floundering over the rocks. Hutchinson fired the next flare in the rack and now the world was red laced by the bright glow of the car s tracers as the machineguns searched back and forth in their demiturrets. He heard the tracks slide and bite on the gravel and the whole car groaned as the bogeys lurched it forward. The girl was running toward him and there were men back in the rocks who were sighting deliberately now taking good aim. Joe ooooooooooooo All right damn you He scooped her up and flung her toward the car ahead of him feeling a crack of fire lace across his back. And then the car was practically on top of them. Lew had his driver s hatch open and Custis pushed the girl through. Then he was clambering up the side of the turret and into the command seat. All right he panted into the command microphone. Let s go home. The hatch dropped shut on top of him. He fell into the car landing very hard on his side. Lew locked a track and spun them around. The inside of the car sounded like a wash boiler being pelted with stones. Robb looked at him patting the breeches of his .75s. Open fire Joe No No leave the poor bastards alone. He looked over toward the girl. Hey Jody he grinned. The halfback lumbered down the last slope spraying stones out from under its tracks as it took a bite of the prairie grass. Custis jammed his hands against the sides of the hatch and scowled out at the plains ahead where Chicago lay beyond the edge of the green horizon. He didn t turn his head back. He was through with the mountains. He was going to Chicago. He thought about the jagged holes in State Street s asphalt. He shivered a little. The End

Medicine & Health Sciences

non-fiction

THE VINDICATOR Maxwell Grant This page copyright 2001 Blackmask Online. http: www.blackmask.com CHAPTER I. PRICE OF SILENCE CHAPTER II. CRIME S PENALTY CHAPTER III. THE VANISHED MURDERER CHAPTER IV. GATHERED EVIDENCE CHAPTER V. CROSSED PATHS CHAPTER VI. THE RUBBER KING CHAPTER VII. CRIME DELAYED CHAPTER VIII. VREEKILL CASTLE CHAPTER IX. THE QUEST THAT FAILED CHAPTER X. WALLS OF DOOM CHAPTER XI. TRIGGER SEES THE SHADOW CHAPTER XII. PATHS IN THE DARK CHAPTER XIII. DUEL OF DARKNESS CHAPTER XIV. CRIMELESS MYSTERY CHAPTER XV. AGAIN THE VINDICATOR CHAPTER XVI. THE LAST SHAKEDOWN CHAPTER XVII. DEATH LEAVES A TRAIL CHAPTER XVIII. SHIFTED EVIDENCE CHAPTER XIX. BACK FROM DEATH CHAPTER XX. CRIME S TRUE TALE CHAPTER I. PRICE OF SILENCE THE man in the limousine was nervous fearful as the big car swung into the narrow tree fringed lane. His hands tightened on the metal box that rested in his lap his eyes had a twitch as they peered through the car window. In the front seat the chauffeur calmly turned the car into a driveway between high box hedges. The passenger gave a last look along the lane then settled back with a comfortable sigh. He was home at last after a drive fraught with imaginary terror. Ahead glowed the lights of the big mansion the car was rolling to a stop on a side drive quite close to a large veranda. There were lights on the porch and people too. The strains of dance music wafted from the open windows of the house. All that brought new confidence. Alighting from the car the passenger was no longer shaky. He told the chauffeur to take the limousine to the garage. Then with the metal box tucked beneath his arm the man produced a key and unlocked his own side door. He was smiling at his own fears. Odd that he Thomas Grennel man of finance whose wealth exceeded a million dollars should be worried by a short ride in the dark from the station to his home. True this section of Westchester County was isolated the roads the sort where enemies might lie in ambush. True too that the box which Grennel carried contained much that would attract men of crime. But no one except Grennel and one other man was acquainted with the contents of that box and that other man even though Grennel mistrusted him was not the sort who would resort to highway robbery at least not upon this occasion. Inside the mansion none was aware that Thomas Grennel was at that moment unlocking his own side door hoping to steal into the house unnoticed. Most of the guests some fifty or more were dancing except for the small group that Grennel had seen on the veranda. There were two however who stood near the rear door of the large ballroom chatting as they watched the dancers. One was Grennel s daughter Dorothy the other a guest Ross Bland. THOUGH vivacious Dorothy Grennel was not attractive. She was overly tall and awkward. Her evening gown though as tasteful as it was expensive was too fluffy for her type. It made her arms and neck look skinny rather than slender and it would have suited a demure girl rather than Dorothy whose long haughty face looked its best when she wore a mannish riding habit. Never a good dancer Dorothy preferred to watch the others perform the Lambeth Walk. She knew that her feminine guests were envying her. For Dorothy by her charm alone she thought was keeping Ross Bland from the dance floor. Bland was tall handsome his curly hair and well pointed mustache matching in a light brown hue. His well tailored evening clothes added to his natural poise. Dorothy could count nearly two dozen girls who would have preferred Bland to their present dance partners. There was one exception and that was why Dorothy mentioned her. Cute isn t she questioned Dorothy. The little blonde in green the one at whom you are staring Ross. Bland smiled offered Dorothy a cigarette. He had been thinking that the little blonde was more than graceful. Her sparkling blue eyes and saucy smiling lips were the sort that he would like to meet at closer range. But he did not mention that to his present companion. I was looking at her partner he parried. An odd looking chap with his wide dark eyes and long serious face. Reminds me of a polo pony I used to own. I ve been expecting him to whinny any moment. You d better not let Margaret Brye hear that laughed Dorothy. She s in love with the fellow. His name is Larry Chandler and personally I think he is rather handsome. So was my polo pony chuckled Bland. Then as he flicked his cigarette lighter: Is the girl any relation to Dana Brye the old chap who designs all those elaborate time locks and other contraptions He is her father replied Dorothy and Larry Chandler is secretary to Roger Marquin who controls all those rubber plantations in South America. You ve heard of him of course Bland s eyebrows lifted. Everyone had heard of Roger Marquin since his return from South America a few years ago. Marquin s connections were of an international sort no one knew just how heavily he profited from rises in the price of rubber but his wealth was estimated at a million dollars. Then his gaze turned toward the hall. Bland forgot the persons mentioned at sight of someone else. It was Thomas Grennel coming in from the side door. He had locked that door behind him and was making quick steps toward his study on the other side of the hall. PUFFING his cigarette Bland was heedless of Dorothy s further conversation. He had observed the box that Grennel carried and it roused his curiosity. He was anxious to talk with Grennel. Bland s first problem was to get away from Dorothy and that was suddenly settled for him. A servant approached to say that she was wanted on the telephone. Bland waited until she had passed a corner of the hall then began to stroll toward Grennel s study. As he went a pause in the dance music enabled him to catch Dorothy s words: Mr. Cranston ... You re coming out here Marvelous ... Father Why he was to be at the office tonight... No wait One of the servants is telling me that he just arrived... Yes his chauffeur just brought him from the station... The music had begun again but Bland s knock on the study door was audible within for a voice called to enter. As he stepped in closing the door behind him Bland was startled to see Grennel half risen from his chair hands clamped to the metal box that lay upon the desk. Then seeing it was Bland the financier sank back ran his fingers weakly through his thin gray hair. Grennel had the high cheeks the large aristocratic nose that his daughter had inherited. Usually his expression was one of importance tonight worry made him look shriveled. He pointed Bland to a chair then spoke in a hoarse whisper: I m glad to see you Ross but I don t know whether you should have come here. I thought Grennel hesitated I thought it was someone else who knocked. Bland gave an apologetic shrug. We ve been going to discuss that mining deal he said. The option won t hold much longer Mr. Grennel. I still think I can swing you a controlling interest in the silver mine for twenty thousand dollars. But it may not wait. It will have to wait Grennel opened the box began to take out stacks of currency one hundred thousand dollars in all. Bland s eyes opened wide he was wondering why a twenty thousand dollar proposition had to be postponed when Grennel was exhibiting five times that amount in actual cash. I am taking you into my confidence Grennel s tone again was hoarse. You must promise Ross that you will breathe no word of what I am about to tell you Ross nodded his promise. Grennel brought a letter from his desk passed it across to Bland groaning: Read it. The letter was typewritten in italics evidently done on a special machine. Mr. Thomas Grennel: Seven years ago you were involved in the failure of the People s Trust Co. You never sent the notes to cover the loans granted to you privately by your friend Clayton Witherby although you intended to do so. Perhaps you would be willing to pay 100 000 for the sealed envelope which contains those undelivered notes the sum to be disbursed among depositors who lost through the bank failure. If not they will be made public. The Vindicator Other letters were phrased more strongly. They teemed with actual demands for Grennel s payment to the writer who called himself the Vindicator. The final one specified that the hundred thousand dollars was to be paid in cash setting this night Bland checked it by the date on Grennel s desk calendar as the time limit. Witherby was president of the People s Trust spoke Grennel hopelessly. I actually sent him the notes for a paltry fifteen thousand dollars in the sealed envelope mentioned. I dated them ahead so I would have a chance to pay for I myself was in a predicament at the time. Poor Witherby His plight was worse than I thought. He burned all his personal papers and committed suicide. I thought that my envelope had gone with the rest but evidently I was wrong. Foolishly I let the matter go until now WHAT about the Vindicator questioned Bland. Do you think that he intends to reimburse persons who lost money in the bank crash He does not Grennel forgot his hoarse whisper in his indignation. This is blackmail Ross Sheer blackmail The man himself has been bold enough to call me over the telephone and admit it at the same time reminding me that I must pay. I can tell you much about this crook who calls himself the Vindicator and his sham hypocrisy because I know who he is Grennel interrupted himself. The sharp gleam of his eyes showed that he was not yet willing to take anyone into his entire confidence. He admitted the fact a few moments later. This money declared Grennel tapping the bills that he had replaced in the metal box is marked. I have sent the list with the numbers of the bills and their markings to the New York police. Once I have reclaimed my envelope I shall do more than seek the Vindicator. I shall expose him and the game that he has worked on others before me Gathering the letters Grennel replaced them in the desk drawer. There was a safe near one corner picking up the money box Grennel stepped spryly in that direction. He turned the dials swung the safe door half open. I want you to be here he told Bland in a whisper in case the man himself arrives. Your description of him may be valuable when I denounce him. But you must remain concealed no matter who arrives. Remember: the final letter stated that if any witnesses were present I would suffer Words dying on his lips Grennel fairly shoved Bland into a niche between the safe and the wall then swung the metal door fully open to cover the hiding place. There was reason for Grennel s hurry. A knock had sounded at the study door a sharp imperative rap that carried an expected summons. The time had come for Thomas Grennel to pay his tribute to the Vindicator CHAPTER II. CRIME S PENALTY THROUGH a narrow but ample space at the edge of the safe door Ross Bland saw the visitor who entered Grennel s study. It took the crouched witness only a few seconds to decide that the arrival could not be the Vindicator in person. The fellow was rangy but slightly stooped of build. His face somewhat sharp of feature could have been presentable had he so chosen but inclination plus habit had produced an opposite result. The man wore a leer that seemed fixed to his ugly cornered lips the glint of his eyes was wolfish. He was dressed in an ill fitting waiter s uniform and it was plain that the man had never had training as a servant. Added up the fellow was a thug. Hello Grennel gruffed the rangy visitor. Let s get acquainted. My name s Kobin Trigger Kobin they call me and it s a moniker that s got sense. If you ain t convinced start something Trigger patted his hip pocket. Bland could see the outline of a heavy gun. Either Grennel had steeled himself for this test or felt that he could depend upon Bland. At any rate the financier s accustomed dignity had returned. He acted as though unimpressed by Trigger Kobin. The thug in turn widened his smirk. We re in the same boat Grennel he informed. I don t know nothing more than you do. The big shot wants the dough and sent me to get it. I never met him: I ve only heard him talk over the telephone funnylike the same as you have. He s got plenty on me like he has on you. I gotta deliver that s all. I planted myself out here along with the extra waiters that you hired for tonight and I brought some other guys along. We don t want trouble no more than you do. So let s get it over with. Bland could see Trigger s crafty eyes rove the room. The blinds were drawn at the windows against them Trigger could see the dark lines of steel bars that protected the room against burglary. Trigger s glance seemed to consider the bars unnecessary for he had given the safe a careful scrutiny and had admired it. Good reason for that. The safe like many of the latest and best design had been installed by the expert Dana Brye whose daughter was a guest at Dorothy Grennel s party. I have the money here declared Grennel suddenly. As you state trouble would be bad for both of us. But I must see the envelope and be sure that it is intact. Obligingly Trigger produced the envelope and laid it on the desk letting his hand go to his hip as soon as Grennel raised the envelope to the light. To Bland the envelope looked intact moreover it was stamped with a wax seal that Grennel apparently recognized. With a nod the financier turned toward the safe. Leave the envelope here gruffed Trigger. Grennel obeyed. He went to the safe brought the metal box to the desk and let Trigger count the money. I must open the envelope warned Grennel before you go. That was the understanding Sure thing interrupted Trigger Why the squawk Because the arrangements were changed tonight. This transfer was supposed to have taken place in my office until the Vindicator Grennel pronounced the name contemptuously called up and made new arrangements. TRIGGER came to his feet snarled: The big shot said to mention that. Listen Grennel if you know what s good for you you ll keep your trap buttoned tight Lay off the wise stuff and I ll tell you why. The big shot got leery that something was phony down at your office. That s why he chased you out here. He knows you ve been squawking to the coppers. Sometimes stool pigeons work two ways. Get it There s a police inspector that thinks he s hot stuff a guy name Joe Cardona and you ve been talking to him. Whatever you ve spilled so far don t matter. It ain t been too much. But all the big shot says is: one more squawk Trigger finished the sentence graphically. He brought his hand from his hip made a motion as if slicing his throat then gestured his thumb at Grennel. Rigid the financier made no reply. Bland thought for a moment that the threat had put Grennel on the verge of a collapse. It was Trigger who revived him with the sharp reminder: Well there s your envelope. Open it and find out if the goods ain t the real stuff With hands that could scarcely pluck the paper Grennel finally managed to tear open the envelope. He was feverish as he brought out slips of paper studying them in the light. Then with an eager bound he crossed the room to a huge fireplace where a small fire was burning even though the night was warm. With a pleased gulp Grennel flung the reclaimed notes into the embers watched the papers flare up and turn to ashes carrying his incriminating signatures with them. Trigger leaning against the desk watched the scene with relish. Then remembering that he had closed the bargain he grabbed the metal box made for the door and sidled out into the hallway. The closing of the door awoke Grennel to sudden activity. Forgetful of Bland behind the safe the gray haired man bounded to the door made certain that Trigger had gone toward the kitchen on the other side of the house. Satisfied that the emissary was on his way Grennel pounced back to the desk. He snatched the hand telephone from its cradle and called for a connection with New York City police headquarters. Grennel s eagerness caused Bland to remain where he was. Thoroughly intrigued by the recent scene the young man had no desire to interrupt it. It would be best he thought to let Grennel finish his call undisturbed. After that they could talk over the whole affair. In a moment Grennel s voice rose excitedly over the distant dance music. He was talking to the very man he wanted: Inspector Joe Cardona. I m at home announced Grennel. I had to come here... A call from the Vindicator... Yes the Vindicator that s what the blackmailer calls himself. I have his letters here to prove it... Yes I delivered the marked money... No not to the crook himself. He sent a man for it. A rogue called Trigger Kobin... You ve heard of him Good ... Yes I received what I expected... No I don t care to mention that part of it. You understand of course... THERE was a pause. Evidently Cardona was asking questions. Bland could see perplexity show on Grennel s face. He repeated a name that Cardona must have put. The Shadow asked Grennel. No there was no call from such a person... A friend you say I expected a friend to drop in at the office. A man named Lamont Cranston... No he isn t here. I left before he arrived. But I have a witness present... His name Ross Bland... Grennel had said something previously about knowing who the Vindicator was. Bland wondered why he didn t get to the point. Grennel did come to it after Cardona had finished a few more questions. His lips moving eagerly the financier finally found his chance to speak. I can tell you more inspector he exclaimed. I know who the Vindicator is... Yes positively He gave himself away by something he said when he phoned my office. I was afraid to call you then... There was a click that Bland took for an interrupted connection on the telephone. He hoped that Cardona had not been cut off. But Grennel was talking again and the police inspector was evidently listening although the click was repeated in the midst of Grennel s speech. He gave himself away repeated Grennel with a chuckle. There s only one man that he could possibly be. He calls himself the Vindicator but I recognized his voice. The Vindicator is Grennel stopped himself. He was staring toward a window. He had forgotten that a listener was on the wire waiting for the all important name that Grennel was about to utter. He was riveted only by what he saw. It was something that explained the clicks heard by Bland. Those sounds had been the raising of a window that the hidden witness could not see. Though barred the window had an ordinary sash inside the metal cross braces. The sash had raised two inches and was about even with the down pulled shade. Sharp emphatic flashing a tongue of reflected flame a revolver shot spurted through the scant raised window. Coolly delivered the bullet knifed straight to the victim s heart. Ross Bland sole witness to the tragedy saw the telephone leave Grennel s hand strike the desk and slide to the floor carrying the stand with it. But the fall of the instrument was drowned by a louder thud that of Grennel s body. Collapsing like a dummy figure the gray haired man struck the floor like a thing of waxwork. The name that Grennel had been about to utter was locked within his closed lips by the very man whose identity was at stake. For the thrust through the window delivered from the direction opposite the route that Trigger Kobin had taken could only have been given by a lurker previously in wait. Death had become the final price. Death delivered by the master criminal who called himself the Vindicator CHAPTER III. THE VANISHED MURDERER THE shot that killed Thomas Grennel was timely from the standpoint of the man that fired it. But the murderer had overlooked two factors that definitely concerned him. First the night was warm hence there were persons on the side veranda. Second with a loud blare of sound the orchestra finished the piece it was playing. An emphatic silence had resulted and that sudden stillness was ruined by the gun s report so startling that it cleaved the night air with its echoes. Instantly there were shouts from the veranda. Like the gunshot they were heard by the lone passenger in a big car that was rolling in along the front driveway. Through the blackness that arriving guest had also seen the spurt of flame outside Grennel s study window. As men in evening clothes piled from the veranda to spread across the lawn the passenger in the arriving car spoke calmly to his chauffeur: Drive past the front door Stanley. Stop beyond the house. In the dozen seconds that Stanley required to complete the order the passenger in the back seat underwent a remarkable transformation. As Lamont Cranston a newly arriving guest he had been a figure in evening clothes when he saw the gun spurt from across the angle of the long lawn. But while men were springing from the veranda Cranston had begun to lose that identity. His hands were drawing a black cloak over his shoulders as his arms flung themselves into the sleeves he twisted to scoop a black slouch hat from the seat beside him. As one hand clamped the hat on his head his other hand went for the handle of the door. The moment that the car stopped a figure slid out into the darkness of the driveway a shape that went so swiftly so silently that Stanley still thought Cranston was in the car and sat back patiently to await further orders. Lamont Cranston had become The Shadow. A variety of matters were explained by his quick change. Cardona s question over the telephone regarding The Shadow was prompted by the police inspector s hunch that such a crime hunter would certainly be seeking the trail of so cunning a criminal as the Vindicator. Grennel s answer that he had expected his friend Cranston showed that Cardona s hunch was right even though the inspector did not know it. Finding Grennel gone from the office The Shadow had called his home. Learning of Grennel s return he had headed directly there. SPREADING out from the veranda the excited guests were naturally forming a fanwise cordon across the lawn as they closed in toward the darkened wall outside of Grennel s study. In so doing they were gaining the advantage of light that streamed from the windows on the veranda. No crook however willing he was to fight would be foolish enough to fling himself into the light. His only chance to avoid exposure was to circle the rear of the mansion and take to the smaller lawn on the far side unless he found a chance to duck through the hedges at the rear. In either case the quickest surest way to overtake him was by cutting in from the far lawn. That was the route The Shadow took. As he neared the rear of the house he could hear the shouts of the pursuers coming from beyond the corner. Driving swiftly silently through the darkness The Shadow had heard no scurry from the murderer. He was in time to trap the fellow whether he rounded the house or darted for the hedges. It was up to The Shadow an automatic already in his fist to waylay the killer before the others did. Otherwise those unarmed pursuers would be on the spot. It happened that the bad spot was The Shadow s. As he clipped five yards by cutting close to low roofed steps outside the kitchen door a sudden clatter interrupted him. The door was flung outward with it came a flood of light. A man lunged from the kitchen a drawn revolver in one fist a metal box tucked beneath his other arm. His hurtle carried him across The Shadow s path as he struck the ground the fellow turned to shout back at other men who were using guns to slug their way free from the kitchen. The fellow was Trigger Kobin and as he wheeled about the lighted doorway formed a background for a sight that startled him. Against that glow was a black cloaked human figure a head that wore a black slouch hat. Trigger glimpsed a hawkish profile that disappeared as its owner twisted away to regain the darkness. In that instant Trigger changed the shout that was coming to his lips. His cry was raucous toned: The Shadow With that Trigger fired at blankness. The Shadow had whirled back again into darkness and Trigger took to the same sort of blanket. It was lucky that he didn t shoot again as he dived into the dark for The Shadow would have surely picked him off if given a revolver flash as target. It chanced therefore that The Shadow s shot went wide. As he shifted totally deceiving Trigger the fellow made the mistake of returning a shot from a spot farther away. By all logic the duel should have ended with The Shadow s next gun stab but the tide had turned in Trigger s favor. The thugs at the doorway had heard his shout they had seen The Shadow s shots. They were flinging themselves from the sides of the steps shooting wildly as they came. The Shadow whipping away had to use his next bullet for the nearest of those foemen. Sprawling the first comer hit the ground but the others three in all were bounding across his prostrate form shooting toward the deeper darkness. There was only one direction that The Shadow could have taken: toward the house wall and they expected to riddle him against that background. They were spraying their shots high and low driving in to fall upon their prey. Whether he flattened on the ground or tried to scale the wall The Shadow would be prostrate by the time they reached him. THEN like a stab from nowhere came an answer that dropped another of the thugs. It was repeated this time a crook located it a volcanic gun spurt that seemed to issue from the ground beside the wall. The discovery did the man no good for he received the bullet also. The final hoodlum lunging onward stumbled. He grabbed at the wall to save himself from a plunge into an open place in the ground beside the wall. He had reached The Shadow s protective covering. The cellar windows had stone walled wells outside them for they were below the ground level. Those stone pits were scarcely ever noticed because they were covered with hinged gratings. The Shadow finding one against the wall had yanked the grating up and dropped below it. The grating had not fallen back into place. That was why the last thug stumbled in the pitfall. Before he could recover his balance hands had caught him and were dragging him down. Wildly the mobster tried to slug his invisible opponent. His blow was warded off by The Shadow s arm and with a reverse stroke the cloaked fighter let his own gun reach the thug s skull. The shallow pit retained an occupant but its inmate was no longer The Shadow. He was out from that temporary shelter leaving the stunned crook below the grating that The Shadow dropped back into place. Quick probing shots were The Shadow s next move he dispatched them in an effort to locate Trigger Kobin. There was an answer from a line of trees along the drive beyond where Stanley had parked the limousine. Trigger s one shot was so hasty that it whined harmlessly off into the darkness. Trigger s bad aim did not deter The Shadow. He knew how poor such marksmen could be at long range. His own aim was the sort that could drop Trigger before the fellow fled out through the front drive which was his obvious direction to escape. But The Shadow s fire was thwarted. More men were upon him a shouting frantic crowd whose faces were blurs above the sharp white of their shirt fronts. The guests had lost the murderer s trail when they heard the commotion by the kitchen. They thought that whoever was shooting would be the man to get. All that they clutched was empty darkness but amid it was a swishing form that bowled them in several directions. The Shadow finally forgetting Trigger Kobin had become a human whirlwind. The blows that he delivered were straight armed shoves rather than punches but they carried a power that strewed the lawn with a bewildered array of well dressed young men. He was past the kitchen steps The Shadow still hoping to regain the murderer s trail when he was met by the last of the guests a man who sprang in suddenly. In the gloom The Shadow saw a gleam which told that the fellow had a gun and was swinging it to aim. There was a clang as The Shadow s automatic stroked the revolver. That hard slash numbed the attacker s hand. He lost the gun and grappled only to be flung into the light by the kitchen steps. As his opponent sprawled The Shadow heard a girl s shriek. A blonde clad in an evening dress of green dashed into view. She stooped to aid the sprawled man to rise groggily upon the steps. THE girl was Margaret Brye the blonde that Ross Bland had noticed on the dance floor. Her whole expression showed concern for the man she aided was her fiancee Larry Chandler. He had been first in the chase around the house and his long face was solemn now as he ruefully rubbed his head. Margaret s lips tightened as she stared into the darkness hoping to sight Larry s opponent. But The Shadow was gone and as a token that no one could trace him a strange laugh quivered from the darkness. Sinister mocking that tone certified that he had done his part in battle against men of crime. Elusive the laugh left others guessing as to its precise location. Even Stanley was puzzled staring from the front seat of the limousine the chauffeur scratched his head. That laugh might have come from anywhere. Not so with the voice that Stanley suddenly heard. It was Cranston s quiet tone ordering him to start the car drive out from the grounds turn around and come back to the front door of the mansion. Chance of pursuing either the murderer or Trigger was ended. The Shadow having accomplished the utmost under the circumstances had again become Lamont Cranston. Playing that part he intended to learn what had happened in the mansion prior to his arrival. Such details would be vital to his quest. For The Shadow was sure of one important fact. He knew although he had not viewed the result that Thomas Grennel had been murdered that an unknown killer was the man responsible. He had heard too of a master criminal who styled himself the Vindicator. Other facts testified that the crook in question must be the murderer. The killer s escape therefore marked the beginning of a new campaign. The Shadow true champion of justice would seek the Vindicator that pretender whose claims of righting wrong were but a sham to mask his criminal desires. CHAPTER IV. GATHERED EVIDENCE INSPECTOR JOE CARDONA played an important part in the investigation of the Grennel murder case even though the crime had occurred outside his bailiwick. Arriving at the mansion he found the Westchester County authorities in charge. And they had been eagerly awaiting his appearance. They regarded Cardona as a material witness due to his telephone conversation with Grennel. They felt grateful because the New York City inspector had called them and reported the murder before word had reached them from Grennel s. Joe s testimony moreover was needed to establish that given by another witness Ross Bland. Stocky built swarthy of countenance Cardona had a direct manner that made his statements convincing. He declared emphatically that Grennel had told him of Bland s presence. Every detail given by Cardona such as Grennel s mention of the Vindicator and the payment to Trigger Kobin as go between meshed perfectly with Bland s testimony. When Cardona had finished he found himself shaking hands with Bland whose face had regained its usual smile. While waiting for Cardona the mustached young man had been very much a suspect one county detective holding to the belief that Bland might actually have been the murderer. With Bland cleared he was asked to repeat his testimony. He gave it from the moment of the murder. That shot was fired through the window stated Bland. I heard it I even saw the flash. But I was where I couldn t do anything about it. By the time I was out from behind the safe door the killer was gone. The window was barred. I couldn t go after him through there. I yanked open the study door and ran right into some excited servants. They saw Grennel s body and grabbed me. But I couldn t have gone out through the side door anyway. It was locked. One of the servants had to take Grennel s keys to open it. The servants substantiated Bland s story so did Dorothy Grennel who had arrived with them. That swung the burden to the outside witnesses who told their stories in half a dozen styles but with the same chief fact. All had heard the shot and swore that it had been fired outside. A few claimed that they had seen the gun flash close to the study window. Their story of the chase was uniform. They had pursued the murderer to the back of the house. There they had been diverted from their chase by the roar of battling guns. They had mixed it with a fighter in the dark someone who had flung them right and left to disappear with a parting laugh. The name of that fighter was known. He was The Shadow. Someone had heard the name shouted just before the fray and the title fitted. Like a living shadow he had come and gone but he had left tangible evidence of his battle in behalf of justice. Four crippled crooks had been taken into custody. One of them the thug that The Shadow had slugged was able to act as spokesman in behalf of his pals all of whom had gone to the hospital. The fellow was a small time hoodlum named Muck Salders. He had been too groggy to think up an alias and was glad he hadn t because Cardona recognized him. We didn t come here to pull no rub out testified Muck. We come along with Trigger Kobin because he wanted to chin with old Grennel and didn t want nobody butting in. We was to use our dukes if any guys got tough with us. But Trigger says to lay off with the gats. But when we run into The Shadow Trigger yells to start shooting so we did. Anyway we didn t croak The Shadow so what It wasn t us that put old Grennel on the spot nor Trigger neither. Nobody can hand us a rap for something we didn t know about. POSSESSION and use of firearms seemed a sufficient charge against Muck and the other thugs but that was a matter for the courts to settle. Joe Cardona held to the personal opinion that Trigger Kobin if captured would be due for plenty more. It was certain though that Trigger had not foreseen the murder of Thomas Grennel although he had issued veiled threats to the millionaire. There was one feature that Cardona definitely did not like. Even if found Trigger would furnish no trail to the Vindicator. That was obvious from Trigger s statements to Grennel as reported by Bland. But how to account for the disappearance of Grennel s murderer What had become of the vanished Vindicator A lone witness suddenly offered testimony. He was one of those who had been in the pursuit: Larry Chandler. His previous statements had been similar to those of other guests who had left the veranda. But Larry had something else to add. I was closest to the man he stated. So close that I saw his gun when he chucked it away. I might have nailed him Larry s tone was regretful if I hadn t grabbed the gun instead. This gun demanded a county detective exhibiting the weapon. The one picked up near the kitchen door Larry nodded. I saw The Shadow he declared. I didn t know that he d been fighting crooks so I went after him. That s when I lost the gun. You ll probably find my fingerprints on it to prove my statement. Cardona s eyes went sharp his lips tight. He sped a glance toward Lamont Cranston who was present as a listener but wasn t rated as a witness because he had arrived after all the excitement was over. Cardona knew Cranston recognized him as a man of keenness. He was wondering Cardona was whether Cranston too had noted the smartness of Larry s statement. The young man was intimating that the fingerprints would prove his story whereas they might more logically incriminate him as the murderer. Whether Cranston caught it or not Cardona could not guess. Cranston s face was immobile masklike. Not even the slightest trace of a smile appeared upon his hawkish visage. The county detective snapped a question at Larry. Since you didn t tackle the murderer he said maybe you can at least tell us which way he went. There was only one way he could have gone returned Larry. His face was more solemn than ever. I was coming from one side The Shadow from the other. The killer must have cut through the rear driveway between the hedges. And where after that I don t know. But if he had a car parked in the lane out back he would have used it quick enough. That led to questioning of Grennel s chauffeur who had been in the house with the other servants. He hadn t seen any car in the back lane but maybe one had followed from the station. There had been several cars parked at the station ones that the chauffeur had noted while waiting for Grennel. No one though could testify to having heard a car pull away from the back lane. Again that proved nothing for the lane was fairly distant and the sound of a starting car could easily have escaped notice. Apparently Larry s story was to be taken at face value. Cardona fuming at the thought suddenly introduced a question of his own. Swinging to Larry Joe demanded bluntly: Where were you at the time the shot was fired The shot that killed Grennel parried Larry coolly. I was on the veranda talking to Miss Brye. We were both startled by the shot I was faced toward the study and happened to see it. I told Margaret that s Miss Brye that I was going to see what was the matter. Being near the rear of the veranda I was the first to begin the chase. So many others followed me that the killer ran for it. NOT for a moment did Cardona s eyes leave Larry s. The young man met the inspector s gaze directly. County detectives as well as other witnesses had their eyes glued on the pair. Two persons however glanced elsewhere at Larry s mention of Miss Brye. Those two were Lamont Cranston and Ross Bland. They let their eyes turn toward Margaret read the facial expression of the girl in green. Margaret s face went pale then took on a flush that crept down her neck and shoulders. But she recovered from her stress by the time Cardona turned to her with the question: Is that true Miss Brye. Margaret s eyes were looking past Cardona to meet Larry s. His gaze was as steady as ever and it gave the girl a final lift of courage. That is true said Margaret. Larry and I were on the veranda together. We heard the shot and he dashed away. Others followed and I went with them. That was why I was close enough her voice took on a new firmness to see Larry pick something from the ground. When he dropped it by the kitchen I saw that he had picked up a gun. Cranston s eyes had moved again. They were watching Ross Bland. The Shadow saw that Bland like himself had recognized that Margaret s testimony was colored to support Chandler s story. How much of it was actual truth was something that the girl alone could tell. It was Joe Cardona this time who had missed his opportunity to find a flaw. Margaret s testimony gave the sterling mark to Larry s statement so far as the police inspector was concerned. Joe turned to the county detectives and apologized for breaking into the quiz. They politely thanked him for his efforts. The net result of Cardona s interjected question was to clear Larry of all suspicion thanks to Margaret s support. When the county officials decided to dismiss the witnesses they included Larry Chandler and Margaret Brye among those who were no longer needed. One man alone remained. That was Ross Bland. But the detectives made it clear to everyone that they merely wanted to go over the details of Bland s conversation with Grennel that Bland like all the other guests was cleared completely of any complicity in the case. Joe Cardona rode back to New York City with Lamont Cranston. On the way the ace inspector gloated over his future opportunity. The murder had been done in Westchester but Manhattan Joe s own stomping ground would surely be the place where Trigger Kobin would choose to hide out. Trigger is the guy to find assured Cardona. Maybe he can t tell us who this Vindicator is but it s a cinch he sent Grennel s dough along to the bigshot. That s the lead I m going to go after when I get hold of Trigger Kobin. The best lead that there was tonight. The gloom in the big car hid the slight smile that The Shadow allowed upon his lips. There were persons perhaps who would prove more important in this case than Trigger Kobin. One was Larry Chandler the other Margaret Brye. Besides those two there was a third whose excellent memory of details and whose sharp ability to notice persons faces made him the sort who might obtain important clues on his own. That was a reason why The Shadow was mentally listing him as another person to hold for future reference. If The Shadow s thoughts of the future were correct and they had an uncanny way of being right Ross Bland would figure heavily in the coming search for the unknown Vindicator. CHAPTER V. CROSSED PATHS THE next two days produced sensational newspaper accounts relating to the Grennel murder. There wasn t a doubt that the Vindicator despite the smugness shown in his letters was a crook of superior skill. Facts leaked out to prove that Thomas Grennel was not the first victim of the Vindicator s blackmail schemes. Over a period of a few years the Vindicator had shaken down at least a dozen men of considerable prominence accumulating close to a quarter million dollars by such methods. Some had told a partial story to the police without mentioning the Vindicator by name that was how Inspector Cardona had recognized what was due when he first heard from Grennel. Similarly The Shadow had obtained vague facts regarding the Vindicator. But until he suspected that he had been recognized by Grennel the Vindicator had never resorted to violence let alone murder. Curiously Grennel s death made previous victims talk. Like Grennel all had received documents relating to their own misdemeanors of the past. They had paid cash for such papers then had destroyed them so they were safe in that respect. But when it came to guessing the identity of the Vindicator there was nothing they could offer. One of the victims had used Grennel s trick of delivering marked money then had instructed private detective agencies to watch for it. After a year the cash had bobbed up from various places always defying efforts to trace it back. It was plain that the Vindicator was well fortified financially that he could afford to let hot money cool. He probably would keep Grennel s marked bills in his own possession then release them some months hence through various well protected channels. The people who would eventually put the cash in circulation would not know a thing about it. The sooner therefore that the Vindicator was found the more chance that he would be caught with the unsavory goods. On that account Joe Cardona was combing the underworld for Trigger Kobin. The Shadow however was more interested in the affairs of persons who belonged to a much higher layer of society. LATE in the afternoon of the second day Margaret Brye entered the cocktail lounge of the fashionable Hotel Clairmont. She chose her favorite table in a deep comfortable corner where the lights were mild. There was a man at a nearby table but he looked half asleep. Studying his face Margaret decided that she had never seen him before. She was wrong but could hardly be blamed for the error. The Shadow when he changed the contour of his features always appeared quite different from Lamont Cranston. Margaret was sipping a daiquiri when she saw another man stroll over from the bar. He was coming to her corner and she heard a polite voice that she recognized a moment later the man was seated at her table. Ross Bland exclaimed Margaret. I didn t recognize you at first. I never knew you came in here. I don t usually returned Bland. I just happened to come in with a friend. He had to catch a train so I stayed to finish my drink. Bland had actually arrived alone as The Shadow could have testified. The man s real purpose was to have a private chat with Margaret and he had learned probably through mutual acquaintances that she sometimes came to the Clairmont. I m waiting for Larry said the girl. He s driving me out to Mr. Marquin s home. I m living there you know. So I understand nodded Bland. They tell me that your father likes to isolate himself when he gets in an inventive mood. Not exactly that explained Margaret. Some of his experiments are dangerous. That is why he goes to Vreekill Castle. I shall be glad when he returns to New York so we can take our old apartment. Do you hear from your father often Bland s question was casual but it brought a tightening of Margaret s lips. In any discussion of her father s work she preferred to settle questions rapidly. Opening her handbag she took out some letters laid them on the table. This letter is from dad said the girl picking up an envelope. It came yesterday. He isn t certain how soon he will be back. What is more Margaret was gathering the envelopes putting them back in her bag I never go out there to see him. The road from Vreekill to the castle is a poor one and it is the only way to get there. Besides dad never admits visitors. I don t think he would open the door even for me There was an emphasis to Margaret s tone that discouraged further questions. She wanted the subject changed and Bland obliged. There was another matter that he was particularly anxious to discuss. I m obliged to Larry Chandler remarked Bland because his testimony helped so much the other night. He made it quite clear that the shot was fired from outside the window and not inside the study. Without Larry s statement those county detectives might have doubted my story. Margaret nodded. She was looking past Bland toward the man at the other table and was confident that he was out of earshot. She didn t realize that the low curved ceiling of the nook acted as a sounding board. The Shadow was hearing every word. OF course Bland was offering a cigarette Larry owes a lot to you. His testimony needed your support. It was lucky that you said that you were with him when the shot was fired. There was a touch of alarm in Margaret s eyes her fingers were nervous as they plucked a cigarette from the case. She puffed at the light that Bland offered then found her voice. Let s talk about something else. Margaret was covering the worry in her tone. I feel so badly about poor Mr. Grennel and Dorothy. She s such a good friend of mine. Bland nodded. He seemed to recall something. You two used to race your speedboats didn t you he inquired. Out at the Northview Yacht Club. Isn t your boat called the Whiskaway It was Margaret s turn to nod a bit reluctantly. You ll have to match her with the Rambler chuckled Bland. That s my boat about the same build as your craft. What say to a race some day this week Margaret bit her lips met Bland s eyes. The Whiskaway is up for repairs she said. I... I struck a rock when I missed the channel. A rock outside the Northview basin I didn t know of any there. I ll have to watch out for them in the future. Margaret trying to recover from her confusion was grateful at that moment to see Larry Chandler enter. She beckoned Larry came to the corner shook hands with Bland. After a few moments chat Bland found he had to leave. He was scarcely out of sight before Margaret spoke in a sharp whisper that carried to The Shadow: Larry He suspects that I wasn t with you when that shot was fired Larry stared a moment then shrugged. His hand came across the table steadied on the girl s. It doesn t matter he assured. I really thought you were there Margaret or I wouldn t have said so. It actually happened exactly as I told you after we were alone. I saw someone lift his head there by the window. I said to you: Look Meg and I swung over the rail I didn t hear you say that. I wasn t there Larry You d been there just a moment before. It must have happened when you started away to look for Dot Grennel. Anyway I was halfway to that window sneaking up on the fellow whoever he was when the shot ripped out. I heard that acknowledged Margaret. That s when I forgot Dot and looked for you. I didn t see you where I had just left you. I thought her eyes were large with a dewy sparkle that someone had fired at you. That s why I hurried to the lawn with the men. Poor kid Larry s hand parted the girl s fingers. Of course it scared you But I m glad darling that you testified the way you did. It saved us both a lot of trouble. Margaret s eyes narrowed. Her mood was becoming firmer. There s one question Larry she said. No matter what your answer I promise never to reveal it. But I must have the truth. THE SHADOW could see a twitch of Larry s features. In a moment the man s long face had stiffened for the test. The coming question might prove a grim one. It was possible that the girl might actually ask if Larry himself had been the man by the window. But she didn t. The question that she put brought quick relief to Larry s face. That man by the window asked Margaret did you by any chance recognize him then or later Larry shook his head. Positively not he declared. I couldn t see his face at the window for it was dim and his back was turned. Out by the hedges I barely noticed the gun when he dropped it. I lied about that too reminded Margaret. I thought it would help you Larry. It did and I appreciate it. I was a fool to snatch up that gun and put my own prints on it. The killer must have wiped it on a handkerchief while he ran. Only my prints showed. Fortunately they don t count against me. My story was a true one. It was believed thanks of course to you. The girl s gaze was far away. She didn t doubt a word of Larry s story so far as his own part was concerned. But musingly she came back to that other question: You swear then Larry that you have no idea Who the murderer might be Larry snapped the interruption hotly. Certainly not If I had recognized him I d have shouted it out But what makes you think that I might know the Vindicator Nothing replied Margaret with a forced smile. Nothing except a crazy notion that I suppose I shall forget. Larry arose from the table. Let s go then he suggested. I just called Mr. Marquin. He s having a guest for dinner and wants us there early. You ll remember the chap he was out at Grennel s but he didn t get there until after the fireworks. You mean Lamont Cranston Larry nodded. He and Margaret left the lounge. From his own table The Shadow watched their departure. His changed lips wore a slight smile. Larry s remark was a reminder that it was time for The Shadow too to leave. Soon The Shadow would be back in his guise of Cranston with another opportunity to overhear any comments by Larry and Margaret on the subject of the Vindicator. CHAPTER VI. THE RUBBER KING ROGER MARQUIN S Long Island residence was larger more pretentious than Grennel s Westchester home. Marquin had chosen it because he entertained a lot mostly foreigners who were interested in the rubber trade. Since most of his holdings were managed through South American agents Marquin had no office in Manhattan. A suite of rooms on the second floor of his mansion had been converted into offices where he worked with Larry Chandler his secretary. At present the only guest at the mansion was Margaret Brye. The dinner proved a subdued affair. Roger Marquin sat at the head of a table large enough to have accommodated two dozen diners in addition to the four persons who were present. Yet the table large though it was looked small in proportion to the immense dining room. The service like the food was excellent. Marquin always kept a large retinue of servants in expectancy of many guests and his serving men were so well trained that each course of the dinner seemed to arrive in magical style. From one end of the table Marquin chatted at long distance range with Lamont Cranston at the other. The rubber king was a man of middle age forceful both in manner and expression. His face tanned from long periods that he had spent in the tropics had the large forehead of a thinker the square jaw that marked him as a man of action. It was that combination of brain and brawn that symbolized Marquin s success. In booming tone he talked of expeditions up the Amazon how he had won the control of valuable rubber plantations despite the opposition of powerful foreign syndicates. He spoke almost cheerfully of defeats that he had suffered his air indicating that losses merely drove him on to other gains. Larry and Margaret at opposite sides of the table faced each other in silence throughout the entire meal. Marquin was too busy talking to notice the fact but to The Shadow it evidenced that they had resumed their discussion during the trip from Manhattan. Perhaps Margaret had put some other questions more pointed ones and Larry had not liked them. Possibly their coldness was exaggerated. This gloomy dining room was anything but a chummy place. Near the dinner s end Marquin glanced at Margaret. His heavy tone dwindled as he remarked: Don t worry about your father Margaret. Those experiments of his will soon be over. Furthermore I doubt that he regards them as dangerous. Time bombs are not playthings reminded Margaret. I hope that dad will turn to something different in the future. DINNER ended Marquin conducted Cranston up to his suite of offices. There The Shadow saw stacks of foreign correspondence on a desk which evidently belonged to Larry. There were filing cabinets along one wall proof that Larry s task was a heavy one. Marquin commented on that very fact as they went into the inner office. Young Chandler is a prize he declared. He is far more than a mere confidential secretary. I hope some day although Larry does not know it to appoint him sole manager of my business. How did you first acquire him was Cranston s response. Was he a secretary originally No indeed. He was an architect. With a firm that had many wealthy clients. But the building boom ended and there was no more opportunity for Chandler. He came to me to ask advice regarding conditions in South America. He wanted to go there. Did he ask you to finance the trip Marquin shook his head at Cranston s question. Chandler has money he declared. How large a fortune he never stated. Enough I would say for him to live on the income provided his stocks were paying dividends. I liked him and offered him his present job. He took it because the salary was a good one and enables him to spend money. Chandler is a social climber. I say that in his favor Marquin smiled frankly because I like men with ambition. At present he is engaged to Margaret Brye but I am not sure Marquin s tone lowered to a confidential pitch how that will work out. There s still a question regarding the wealth of her father Dana Brye. By that Marquin intimated that Larry if not a fortune hunter at least took into calculation the financial position of his future father in law. Mention of Dana Brye put Marquin into a reflective mood. He pointed to the safe in the office wall it was similar to the one that The Shadow had seen in Grennel s study. Brye designed that safe declared Marquin. He sold a lot of them because the combinations are so intricate that no one has ever been known to crack one except with dynamite. But I am not sure that Brye is a good business man. He may have money but I doubt it. Unless love of his work is all that moves him he should have retired a few years ago. Instead he is working on a dangerous invention. So dangerous that he has arranged for me to become Margaret s guardian in case A knock interrupted from the door of the outer office. Marquin called to enter Margaret appeared. She hesitated a moment at sight of Cranston then said abruptly: I would like a few hundred dollars Mr. Marquin. Certainly agreed Marquin. He opened a desk drawer. I believe that there is enough in the fund that your father left with me. No wait He was opening a notebook. It appears that you have overdrawn the amount. Did you get some money from Larry The last entry looks like one of his. Margaret nodded. Her eyes were troubled. If it is important declared Marquin I can advance the sum. Again Margaret s air was one of hesitation. At last she unfolded a letter that she carried and handed it to Marquin who read it. Who is this man Jolden asked the rubber king. Why has he written you begging for money He worked for dad years ago replied the girl. Two letters came from him they were addressed to my father so I forwarded them. But dad was evidently too busy to reply. QUICK links were forming in The Shadow s chain of thought. Margaret was holding the envelope from which she had taken the letter. The return address was in one corner of the envelope printed in a sprawly hand. That envelope was one of those that Margaret had taken from her handbag at the Clairmont. Definitely Bland must have seen it and noted its clumsy hand printed address. From it he could have learned where Jolden lived the fact might have interested him. If Bland happened to be investigating the Grennel case on his own there was a chance that he would check on any unusual name that came his way. The name Jolden was unusual. Moreover to The Shadow it was important. Classified in the back of his brain were the names of many lesser crooks and among them was that of Louis Jolden. Since the envelope stated L. B. Jolden it could signify the man in question. Jolden had done time in Sing Sing as a secondary member of a bank robbing mob. That dated back twenty years the exact length of Jolden s sentence. But the fellow had been released in much less time because of good behavior. Why don t you let your father handle this questioned Marquin addressing Margaret. Old employees can become a very great nuisance. Perhaps your father has tired of helping out the poor chap and therefore has ignored his letters. The statement decided Margaret. Very well she said. You are probably right. It was very long ago that Jolden was in dad s employ. But he told me once dad did that if Jolden needed money and he was not around I should give the fellow some. But since he actually wrote to dad I suppose it is not my affair. What should I do Write to Jolden and tell him that I forwarded those other letters Wait suggested Marquin. Do nothing unless the man writes again and becomes insistent. Perhaps your father has already attended to the matter. The two men walked with Margaret to the door of the outer office. When she had gone Marquin shook his head and said: There s Dana Brye for you That is why I fear he may have squandered all the money he made. He is a soft mark for everyone who was ever a friend of his. A moment later Cranston was shaking hands. Marquin wondered why his guest was leaving until he recalled that Cranston had mentioned an appointment that would take him away soon after dinner. The Shadow usually made such statements when he went places as Cranston. Appointments always accounted for a sudden departure if he wanted to stay anywhere he could decide that they were not important enough to keep. Within ten minutes The Shadow still Cranston was leaving Marquin s front driveway a passenger in the limousine that Stanley drove. His hands however were pulling out a secret drawer beneath the seat. From that drawer The Shadow was bringing the black garments that so effectively obliterated his guise of Cranston whenever occasion called. The Shadow intended to pay a prompt call upon Louis Jolden a man whose crooked past might have a powerful bearing upon the crime laden future. CHAPTER VII. CRIME DELAYED JOLDEN S address was well north of Times Square on a side street lined by crumbly old houses that had once been private residences. Most of them including the one where Jolden lived had been converted into cheap apartment houses. The Shadow was no longer in the limousine when he rolled past the row of buildings. He had transferred from the big car to a taxicab an independent cab which The Shadow privately owned. The driver Moe Shrevnitz was the speediest hackie in New York and one of The Shadow s secret agents. There were cars parked along the street and The Shadow noted lurking figures that were shifting back toward an old sedan. Apparently that car had arrived only a few minutes ago. Consequently The Shadow ordered Moe to drive round the block. Observing a space between two buildings The Shadow whispered another order. The cab slackened speed The Shadow dropped off into darkness. By the time the cab had swung the corner he was taking the passage that led into the rear courtyard behind Jolden s house. Scarcely had The Shadow picked the building door that he wanted when a stir occurred near him. Two other persons had crept in by another route they were holding a subdued conference close enough for The Shadow to hear. Yeah here s where you cover Greasy said one. I ll slide back and tell Trigger you re posted. Shuffly sounds marked the speaker s departure. The crook called Greasy remained The Shadow could hear him moving about on the cement just below the steps to the rear door. Meanwhile The Shadow though engaged in an important task was making less noise than the posted crook. Crouched low to avoid a dull light that came through a pane of thick frosted glass The Shadow was working to open a well latched door. Tiny picklike instruments did their duty. But when the latch gave it clicked sharply and Greasy heard it. Immediately his stealth became remarkable. He started creeping toward the steps so neatly that The Shadow could barely detect the sound. Before he managed to locate Greasy s position the thug paused. The situation indicated that Greasy had a drawn gun would be using it at close range if he saw the door move. This was a jam that could become more troublesome the longer The Shadow postponed action. The detail of Greasy s exact position had to be settled. In the dark The Shadow shifted. Against the frosted pane Greasy suddenly saw the shaded edge of a slouch hat that rose then stopped. The crook took two sidesteps to a perfect position and leveled his revolver. He had a suspicion that he had spied The Shadow and Greasy was taking no chances. With a sharp intake of breath he tightened his trigger finger. Right then an avalanche struck him. The hurtling mass bowled Greasy to the ground. His gun clattered unfired as long fingers took his throat. Greasy went senseless when the back of his head rammed the cement. The crook s shift had given away his position. RISING from Greasy s prone form The Shadow turned to the steps and reclaimed his slouch hat which he had balanced sideward on its brim so that it projected against the frosted pane. The next question was what to do with Greasy. After peering into the apartment house hallway The Shadow decided to lug the stunned crook inside. There was a space just beneath the inside stairway that served as a resting place for Greasy. Trussing the crook with belt and handkerchief The Shadow closed the fellow s lips with a strip of adhesive tape that Greasy carried for the purpose of gagging someone else. Moving stealthily past the foot of the stairs The Shadow was a gliding thing of blackness difficult to discern against the darkened stairway. Noiselessly he moved upward to inspect the floors above. It was at the third floor back that he found Jolden s apartment. Most of the doors bore name cards but this one didn t which seemed good policy for an ex convict. The door wasn t latched easing it open The Shadow heard the buzz of voices. He was looking in upon a scene that he had half expected. He saw Jolden a thin lipped tight faced man with baldish head. With darting eyes that peered through clouds of cigarette smoke that he puffed Jolden was talking to a visitor: Ross Bland. Apparently the two were finishing a conference for Bland was about to rise from his chair. It s the straight dope I ve given you assured Jolden in a wheezy voice. And why not he shrugged his shirtsleeved arms considering that I don t owe anything to Dana Brye. We ve got along all right him and me. I ain t no shakedown artist all I ve asked for is to be taken care of. I understand returned Bland in an icy tone. Then more indulgently: I hope Jolden that your conscience rather than the money I just gave you impelled you to reveal the truth. Jolden grinned. Conscience hell he mouthed. I ve done my stretch and that s that Say if I d figured you for a dick when you walked in here you couldn t have made me talk if you d used a hunk of rubber hose That sob stuff you handed me about that poor Grennel dame and her dead father bah You want justice done. Sure A lot of dopes feel that way but they re guys that have never been in stir. If I d ever been that soft the trip to the big house would have cured me. You re using your bean though by trying to dig up the facts without calling in a lot of bulls. Dumb coppers like that Joe Cardona can gum up anything. Jolden paused to take a last puff at an inch of cigarette before he chucked it. Then following Bland toward the door the ex convict added: I needed dough and old Brye won t give it. All I ve ever done is tell him I was hard up nothing else. You wanted to hear what I knew about Brye so I told you for five hundred bucks. This country s still free enough for me to do that ain t it I suppose it is returned Bland his hand on the doorknob. Then curtly: Good night Jolden. WITHDRAWN to the second floor The Shadow watched Bland come down the stairs. Stiffly eyes straight ahead Bland was clutching an inside pocket proof that he carried more money than the five hundred dollars he had paid Jolden. It was obvious that he had found no pleasure in dealing with a man like Jolden but he was trying to act unconcerned probably fearing a knife thrust in the back. It wouldn t do to let Bland walk out through the front door into the hands of new mobbies governed by Trigger Kobin who had mysteriously bobbed back into the game. To warn Bland The Shadow stepped out to meet him gave a friendly whisper that the fellow should have heeded. At that moment Bland heard a sound from above. Alarmed he went berserk. Taking The Shadow to be a foe he flung himself madly upon the black cloaked accoster. Grappling The Shadow tried to whirl Bland to safety along the second floor hall for a sharp clatter had begun on the third story. They reeled against a crazy railing that gave with their weight. Catching a solid post The Shadow remained where he was but Bland went through to the steps that led down from second floor to first. That drop inspired him to another. Bouncing to his feet Bland vaulted the banister and landed in the rear hall of the first floor. The quick dash of his footsteps told The Shadow that Bland had taken the proper route to safety: out through the back door that Greasy no longer guarded. Whipping about The Shadow looked up to the third floor. He flattened instantly for he saw guns above. There were shots but the bullets whined over The Shadow s head. Immediately his sweeping hand sped from his cloak to jab answers with an automatic. Two thuggish figures bobbed above one diving back to safety the other beginning a long sprawling dive down the stairs. Rolling aside The Shadow avoided the hurtling thug that he had clipped. Coming to his feet with a powerful knee spring he gave a mocking challenge as he drove for the top of the stairway. Flattening again near the top step he saw the route by which the thugs had entered: an open trapdoor that led out to the roof. The second thug was crouched below that gap aiming a gun. Behind him stood his leader Trigger Kobin also with a drawn gun. Both fired at sight of The Shadow s head but they were too slow. The Shadow was sliding one step downward as he took that peek. It was his gun poked over the top step that got results. In the midst of blazing shots Trigger s mobster pal collapsed. Trigger himself was wheeling away toward the wall as The Shadow fired. But he made the mistake of stopping too soon as he had that other night. In two more seconds Trigger Kobin should have known the folly of trying to beat The Shadow in a close range duel. But the quick changes in this scene were not yet ended. The Shadow barely managed to halt his trigger tug as a figure lunged through an opening door. It was Jolden he had heard the shots and seen the results. He thought that Bland must have started the battle even though he had caught the tones of a weird laugh. Jolden in the penitentiary nearly twenty years belonged to an era that dated back before The Shadow s amazing campaigns had begun. He had heard of The Shadow but the cloaked fighter s battle challenge was something that newcomers did not talk about when they had reached their prison cells. Therefore Jolden thought that the marksman from the stairway presumably Bland had reached his limit in bagging two crooks out of three. Considering himself the prey that invaders sought and seeing only Trigger left Jolden decided to risk a dash. Hurdling the sprawled figure of the second thug he made for the stairway. His leap took him farther than he expected. Jolden had blocked The Shadow s fire but not Trigger s. For Jolden s guess was right he was the man that Trigger wanted. JABBING the shots that he had hoped to give The Shadow Trigger turned Jolden s hurdle into a plunge. With a mad shriek Jolden went over the top of the stairway. His body writhing in air came down so rapidly that The Shadow could not avoid it. Together they bounded down the stairs. At the halfway point The Shadow clutched the rail and stayed there but Jolden continued to end in a dead crazy shaped mass beside the thug who moaned on the second story floor. Though The Shadow s eyes looked above his ears heard pounding feet from the stair well below. Crooks were invading from the front attracted by the gunfire. They figured that Trigger needed them and they were on their way. The Shadow spurted final shots toward the third floor. Amid the echoes his laugh rang out anew to let Trigger know that he could expect more. Poking a fresh gun through the banister The Shadow blasted away and temporarily halted the new arrivals. Then he started up after Trigger. Trigger had escaped through the trapdoor to the roof. Once in flight he had decided to keep going. When The Shadow rolled out to the roof there was no sign of Jolden s murderer. Trigger had taken a quick route across other housetops. Sirens were wailing from the streets below. Police were arriving too late to trap Trigger Kobin. They would furnish no obstacle therefore to The Shadow when he also used the roofs to reach some empty house and there descend. For The Shadow was carefully clamping the trapdoor to leave no trace of his departure. That task done his laugh came weirdly but subdued as The Shadow began his journey beneath the shroud of night. The game had shifted tonight producing new elements in the quest for the Vindicator. Ross Bland had become an important figure for that young man had personally gotten important facts that referred to Dana Brye. Louis Jolden Bland s informant could talk to no one else not even to admit that he had spoken to a visitor. The fact that Bland had heard Jolden s story was known only to The Shadow. As for Trigger Kobin he had become more than a mere go between in the Vindicator s schemes. Like his hidden chief Trigger had committed murder. Under such circumstances the law would hunt him harder but it was likely too that the Vindicator would use Trigger right along since the fellow s lot was cast. Out of tonight s confusion The Shadow would foresee trails with many crossings new paths that would end their tangle in a straight route to that hidden master of crime the Vindicator. CHAPTER VIII. VREEKILL CASTLE THE death of an obscure ex convict was not important enough to become lunch table conversation at the swanky Northview Yacht Club. Nor were the members interested in the fact that the police had pinned murder on Trigger Kobin after rounding some crippled mobbies in a raid the night before. Among the luncheon group was Ross Bland. He perhaps was thinking of Louis Jolden but there was something else upon his mind. All during lunch he scarcely noticed another silent member who sat opposite him. Ordinarily Bland would have been glad to chat with so prominent a person as Lamont Cranston but today his own plans gripped him. They met Bland and Cranston outside the yacht club library where Bland headed immediately after lunch. It was then that Cranston remarked in quiet tone: Someone was telling me about a buy in Arivada Silver. They say that you have options on a controlling interest. Perhaps we might get together on it. Bland showed a flash of interest. As always when he began intensive conversation he proffered his cigarette case. It s a reclaimed mine he stated. Huge prospects Mr. Cranston. At present prices of silver the big mining interests are so busy with their own projects that they have let many opportunities slide. This is the right time to buy up a mine like the Arivada. At what price Bland started to answer then hesitated. His glance went toward the library and its huge file of charts. He had something more important than the Arivada matter. I ll find out he told Cranston. Suppose I call you in a few days when I have all the details. Cranston was agreeable. He strolled away while Bland went into the library. But Cranston did not go far. Passing the doorway again he saw Bland spreading a large map on the table. From that distance printed names could not be read but The Shadow easily recognized the outlines on the map. The sheet was a navigation chart of the Hudson River. AN hour later Bland started out in his speedboat Rambler bound so someone said on a trip across Long Island Sound. That report did not deceive The Shadow. A package had just been delivered for Lamont Cranston. In the library The Shadow opened the envelope and began to study a collection of aerial photographs. The picture showed Vreekill Castle on the Hudson. They had been taken this morning from a passing airplane. Such craft were commonly seen above the Hudson s cliffs as far north as Vreekill. Comparing the photos with the chart that Bland had so recently consulted The Shadow found that the pictures revealed all and more. Whether or not Bland had learned what he wanted was a question. The Shadow however had certainly obtained required facts. As Margaret Brye had said Vreekill Castle could be reached by a road. The pictures showed a twisty ribbon that extended to the promontory where the castle stood. Perched on the cliff the castle held a precarious position due to the cleft rocks below it. Though the photograph had been taken directly from above the building a sprawl of ancient stone appeared to have an outward lean. Although much of the ground near the castle was barren there were clumps of trees that formed an irregular path toward a cliff just north of the building which was on the west side of the river. A narrow chasm lay between on its brink were a few fair sized saplings that had gained root in crevices among the rocks. An important fact that only the air photos could have shown was the presence of houses among the scrubby patches of woods. The buildings were scarcely more than shacks probably they had belonged to workmen who had once repaired the ancient castle. One of those wooden structures the largest of the tiny group was certainly inhabited for the camera working from above had picked out the pygmy figure of a man who could have considered himself concealed along the trees. Photographs returned to their envelope The Shadow soon was riding to Manhattan. Stanley headed the limousine to the Holland Tunnel glad that Cranston was returning home to New Jersey for furious storm clouds were gathering from the south betokening a late afternoon storm. But while they were riding along the Skyway Cranston instructed Stanley to take him to a certain airport. There Cranston dismissed the limousine and entered an autogiro. Defying the approaching storm he took off in the strange machine. Big flaying arms shaped like a horizontal windmill lifted the wingless giro into a sharp ascent. AS he piloted the craft The Shadow donned his garb of black. He was flying north keeping ahead of the storm clouds but his route was by no means an easy one. Early dusk had brought lights to Manhattan and the city was one mighty cluster of tiny firefly sparkles. The glow of the George Washington Bridge was another landmark but soon The Shadow s only guide was the blackened Hudson sometimes impossible to sight. Lights of water craft occasional glimmers along the shore were beacons that brought The Shadow back to his difficult course until when he was many miles north the blackness of the settled night was broken by a glow upon which he had depended. It was the full moon rising blood red because of the horizon s haze. The Shadow had outraced the storm the clouds had not yet occupied the east. The moonlight according to The Shadow s calculations would be dependable for at least another hour. That space of time was much more than The Shadow needed. He had gauged his own schedule to the moon s. Within the next ten minutes the ruddy glow showed the sight that The Shadow expected. From an altitude of seven thousand feet he spied the toylike structure of Vreekill Castle capped upon its crag. A few miles above the castle The Shadow dropped the autogiro into a tree surrounded clearing and concealed it where no one would discover it. Alighting he spent the next fifteen minutes picking a compass guided path on foot. He came at length to the turning point where he could move eastward to the cliff just north of Brye s stone walled retreat. Despite the moonlight The Shadow determined to visit the largest of the wooden shacks before approaching the castle. Keeping to the trees he found a blackness that the moonlight could not penetrate. Spotting a lamplight from an open window The Shadow advanced with absolute stealth. This side of the shack was away from the moon s glow. One glance within the shack explained how Trigger Kobin replenished his depleted mobs. This was where he kept his reserves and Trigger himself was with his crew. Only three thugs were present but from Trigger s growled statements The Shadow learned that there were at least half a dozen more around the grounds. WHY the squawk Trigger was demanding. This is a cinch here ain t it Nobody s supposed to go into the castle. All right we re seeing that they don t. The way the bunch is posted near here they d spot any guy that tried to get by. All you lugs have to do is take turns keeping watch. One of the thugs grumbled that this duty didn t worry him. The place he wanted to stay away from was New York. His pals muttered their agreement. Trigger shrugged. Stick here then be decided. When this job s over you can lam. A couple of good torpedoes is all I ll need and they re in town already. The way saps like you guys let The Shadow knock you off I ll do better without you Moving away from the shack The Shadow worked his way north of the castle. At moments he paused particularly at places where the trees thinned. There by blotches of moonlight he could see the patrolling members of Trigger s band. They were keeping themselves well under cover. None was close to the castle for their game was to block anyone before such a person reached the bare ground. Lingering at one spot The Shadow gained a proper view of the castle itself. Its stone walls looked crumbly but they bore signs of strengthening patches. Its windows all high were narrow vertical slits. Its door the only mode of direct entry was massive and crisscrossed with bands of steel. Skirting among the trees The Shadow reached the cliff on the north. There he crept on hands and knees taking a snakelike course along the rocks. No watchers were posted near for they were unnecessary. Persons might reach the stone walls of the castle from west or south but on the north side the chasm intervened. Without considerable equipment it would be seemingly impossible for anyone to bridge the chasm. But the watchers had not reckoned with the ingenuity of The Shadow. Black against rock shadows The Shadow arose beside the brink. The space that yawned was too wide for an ordinary leap and it afforded no landing place beyond. Nothing but sheer wall built to the very edge of the castle s crag with an abyss straight below. Close to the cleft The Shadow could hear the murmur of the Hudson s waves stirred by the storm that was beating up from the south. Then came swashes as if larger billows had rolled into the water filled ravine. There were scraping sounds then nothing but the murmur. The Shadow was concentrated upon the castle not the chasm s depths. In the rugged wall he saw a slitted window slightly below his level. He gauged its width and was satisfied. His next task was to reach it. As he stood on the brink The Shadow was holding to two of the saplings that the photograph had shown. He chose the taller of those rock rooted trees. Testing the ground as he edged away The Shadow turned and made a short swift dash that ended in a leap. HIS take off looked as if he had started a crazy jump across the chasm a suicidal stunt that could only have ended in a bounce from the opposite wall. But that spring also had an upward impetus. Its outward effect ended as The Shadow grabbed the sapling. He was literally hurling himself up the slender trunk making a climb through the speed of his surge. His carry in the direction of the chasm was intended to bend the sapling and it did. Instead of sliding back to the ground The Shadow wriggled forward his hands hauling him farther along as the tree yielded downward. He was past the center of the bend. Hanging by his hands he hauled the slender tree into the shape of a drawn bow. Dangling above the abyss The Shadow depended solely upon the strength of his grip to prevent a fall that would have dashed him straight to death. The tree as it bent seemed woefully frail yet The Shadow risked it further. Hand over hand swinging above black nothingness he was working himself to twiglike branches at the tree s very top. The bend of the branches at that point became straight downward. Twiggish branches snapped warningly. The trunk if it could still be called such was like a rope in texture. From this point there could be no return. His strength taxed to the full The Shadow would have a long slow task to work straight upward hand over hand and by that time the sapling already weakening would give beneath the strain. Return however was not in The Shadow s plan. His shoulder was scraping stone. Twisting he saw a slit of black carved in a stretch of grimy gray. Tightening one hand with nails that dug into the sapling s bark The Shadow flung his other arm through the gray slit. His hand found a grip upon an inner ledge. The sapling slid from a loosening fist. It whipped back to its position on the chasm brink lashing to and fro like a living thing resenting the treatment that it had received. While the tree still quivered in the darkness The Shadow s other hand was through the slitted window in the wall taking hold at the side. Strong shoulders heaved. Arms spread wide within the window gave a pull. Twisting to get through the narrow space The Shadow gave another haul and yanked his body inward. His black shape had merged with blackness. Hands reached the floor to make the drop a light one as knees supplied a final shove from the window ledge. The Shadow had arrived within the forbidding walls of Vreekill Castle. CHAPTER IX. THE QUEST THAT FAILED A SPOT of light glimmered upon an ancient flagstone floor turning it threw its brilliant eye against walls of moldy stone where cobwebs formed a woven tapestry. Probing the glow found a doorway leading from one cramped room into another. The beam was The Shadow s flashlight. In the upper story of Vreekill Castle he was picking a route through silent apartments as forlorn and uninviting as dungeons. The Shadow knew the history of Vreekill Castle. Begun in Dutch Colonial days as a sure citadel against raiding Indians it had later been converted into a blockhouse. These were the rooms that had quartered the garrison during that period. Abandoned time and again by successive owners the gloomy isolated structure had finally been acquired by Dana Brye but it was obvious that the present owner had no use for the upper rooms. They had been left to their decay peopled only by ghosts of the past. As he glided through the ravenlike rooms The Shadow s flashlight met a shaft of black only a few feet ahead. There was a whisper: the subdued tone of The Shadow s laugh. He had escaped the deep outside chasm only to miss an inside danger by the fraction of a yard. Turning the flashlight to the right he stepped toward a corner wall where he saw a solid floor. Something detached itself from a broken flagstone and whipped away. The Shadow took a side step to avoid the sliding object but he pivoted with the flashlight as the center keeping the glow fixed on the spot. There was a lashing motion a whisk like the yank of a loose rope. The thing was a black snake that had found its way into the castle seeking field mice as prey for its constrictor s coils. Alarmed by the light the snake had taken to a wide crack in the wall. Other fissures showed along that same wall. Playing the flashlight in a semicircle The Shadow saw a series of narrow jagged crevices. This was the wall on the river side its outward lean was very apparent. Dipping the light to the bottom of the wall The Shadow continued its course down into the black hole that he had so barely avoided. The pit was a stairway and The Shadow s sideward shift had brought him to the steps. They were made of stone those steps and each was a huge single slab. Despite the size of the slabs The Shadow tested each one as he descended. Though they had settled at different angles all the steps were tilted toward the outer wall. The masonry should it finally yield would take to the direction of the river. Perhaps some flaw in the foundation was the cause possibly the original builders had set the castle too close to the brink. The exact reason was less important than the fact that Vreekill Castle could not long continue as a safe abode. AT the base of the stone stairs The Shadow came to a heavy door. Brye had evidently placed that barrier not only to block off the rooms above but to trouble any chance venturer who might enter there. Nevertheless he had foreseen that invasion from that direction was improbable for the door was merely bolted and gave slightly under pressure. Wedging a thin strip of metal through the crack The Shadow worked upon the bolt. Had that measure failed there were others that he would have used. But the bolt allowing play in its socket worked under pressure. Gradually The Shadow forced it back. Hinges groaned as he pressed the door open. Stifling that sound by slower tactics The Shadow gradually gained a required space. Once through the door he closed it again avoiding any repetition of the grinding screeches that sounded like utterances from ghoulish throats. His precautions were wise for from the other side of a fair sized room came a trickle of light that denoted a door that stood ajar. This room stacked with odd boxes was evidently used for storage. If The Shadow s conjecture proved right the room with the light should be Brye s workshop. So it was and more. Peering through the partly opened door The Shadow saw a curious conglomeration. He viewed a large room entirely windowless with workbenches in one corner a cot in another. The room was lighted by oil lamps. At the far side of the room was a tiny oil stove the principal portion of Brye s kitchen. In final contrast the end wall hollowed into a niche contained a huge safe that The Shadow recognized as one of Brye s make. That one room served Dana Brye as workshop eating place living quarters and office. There was no reason why Brye should ever leave it while he dwelt alone in Vreekill Castle and for that very reason Brye was there. He was near the workbench finishing some trifling task and his profile was visible from The Shadow s angle of view. THERE was nothing of the hair brained inventor in Brye s appearance. His profile was well formed with straight forehead even shaped nose and strong chin. His hair gray streaked was somewhat shaggy. Brye s face and expression were youthful despite the wrinkles that came when he smiled. There was cunning in Brye s countenance. First sight was insufficient for The Shadow to pass judgment but it was a certainty that Brye had toiled ably. In his own way he had contrived something which definitely pleased him. His chuckles proved it. Turning from the workbench Brye went to the wall opposite the big safe. There The Shadow saw a door much stronger than the one that blocked the upstairs route a door moreover that had no mere bolt. It was fitted with a combination of the sort that Brye manufactured. His head tilted his lips holding a half smile Brye worked the combination and drew the big door slightly open. Crossing the room with a spry stride he reached the safe and thumbed its dial in rapid fashion. He was engrossed in that task too much so to hear disturbing sounds. The Shadow too was intent yet his ear caught something that Brye missed. It was the stealthy tread of feet upon stone. Looking toward the big door The Shadow saw it open. Into the room stepped a man whose face declared its determination. The arrival was Ross Bland. As he swung the door wide The Shadow could see curved stone steps that came up from below. BRYE had finished with the safe s combination. He was ready to swing open the big metal front when he sensed Bland s presence either from a slight footfall or the draft which swept sharp and chill from the dank stairway. With surprising alacrity Brye whipped about but Bland ready for that emergency was quicker in drawing a gun. He had Brye covered helpless the moment that they came eye to eye. Approaching Brye who stood with upraised hands Bland tapped the man s pockets then pointed him to a chair. As Brye sat down Bland put away his gun and remained standing while he spoke. My name is Ross Bland he told Brye. Thomas Grennel was a friend of mine and so for that matter is your daughter. I mention those two facts Mr. Brye because they will have a bearing on what is to follow. Brye looked interested but not at all disturbed. Last night continued Bland I talked to Jolden. You knew him didn t you Mr. Brye Emphasis on the word knew brought a rise to Brye s grayish eyebrows. Seeing it Bland smiled grimly. Yes Jolden is dead he declared. But he didn t die before he talked to me. He told me that he used to work for you some twenty years ago and why. Probably he lied observed Brye speaking for the first time. His voice was sharp and piping. He has lied to me when he claimed that he was destitute. That is why I refused to help him any longer. I ll take your word for that conceded Bland but you are not touching the main issue Mr. Brye. I mean the reason you paid money to Jolden at all. Because he had been faithful Of course Bland snapped the interruption. But faithful to what I can tell you. Jolden was a member of the Krigley gang big time bank robbers of twenty years ago. But he worked for you and helped you figure out methods of opening all makes of safes but your own. Brye gave a subdued chuckle as though he thought that all other types of safes were obviously easy. I know you camouflaged it declared Bland. Such type of work was in your line of business. But everything that you discovered reached the Krigley gang. They used your information to pull those bank jobs. What if they did demanded Brye suddenly. I had no idea who Krigley was. That is why Why you wrote to him broke in Bland. Yes. Jolden told me that you corresponded with Red Krigley. He s dead Krigley is and so is Jolden the one remaining man who knew the facts. But you know as well as I do Brye that you were deep in the business. Jolden said so. A crook sneered Brye will always brand an honest man as one of his own class. Quite true nodded Bland and a crook can also recognize another crook. Which makes it even. But you say that Jolden is dead. So we can eliminate his testimony. Bland shook his head emphatically. All that we can do he decided coolly is come to terms. I know your present game Brye. It is bigger than any you ever played before. You are the man who calls himself the Vindicator You have used your contacts with important men to gain their confidences. From that you have blackmailed them to gain yourself a fortune. Brye tilted his head back and gave a long laugh. That is something he told Bland that you will find much more difficult to prove than my association with the Krigley gang. I call tell you this You can tell me nothing interrupted Bland. You have merely learned enough to keep your methods covered something in which you failed before. I have not come here to argue the question. I have come to make terms BRYE S laugh faded. His eyes narrowed coldly Bland met them with an equal gaze. As the Vindicator declared Bland you claimed that you intended to make restitution to the proper persons from the funds that you demanded and got. My purpose is to see that it is done. I owe that to my friend Thomas Grennel. Though you may be a murderer Brye it is not my task to punish you. I have another friend: your daughter and on her account I intend to let you go your way. One false move on your part however will justify my ending your ugly career. Turning Bland stepped toward the safe. He had seen Brye unlock the combination therefore knew that he had simply to swing open the door. But Bland s move produced an electrical effect. It brought Brye from his chair in one long maddened bound. Stay away screeched Brye. I warn you Bland couldn t get his gun from his pocket in time to meet Brye s surge. Forgetting the weapon he struck out in a furious attack. His hard punches drove Brye back until the older man reeled away his face buried in his arms. Striking the big door by the lower stairs Brye slumped to the uppermost steps. Standing with fists still clenched Bland saw that Brye s slump was no fake. Long fingered hands were clawing weakly but they could barely stroke away the grizzled hair that had streaked over Brye s eyes. With his opponent temporarily helpless Bland saw no use in wasting opportunity. He made for the safe yanked the big door wide. Inside were boxes stacks of papers but most important a square cabinet that was actually clamped to special crossbars in the safe. That box constructed of thin metal was the one that intrigued Bland. He tried to open it but the top would not budge. All that was plain to The Shadow s gaze. Shifting to get a distant view over Bland s shoulder the hidden watcher saw a streak of copper beneath the silvery line of a steel bar. The sight told him instantly that it was time to intervene. Knowing Bland and his inability to listen when under stress The Shadow paused long enough to draw an automatic. That brief delay was fortunate. At that very moment Bland s efforts to open the metal box came to an abrupt end. The cause was produced by the box itself. It exploded with a blast that not only ruined it but spread the sides of the safe as well. With that shock the whole room quivered responding to a glare of vivid light accompanied by a horrendous roar. When his vision cleared The Shadow found himself sprawled on the storeroom floor staring through the doorway toward a ruined mass of metal against a blank space in the wall. In front of that wreckage lay a misshapen human mass that had been hurled toward the center of the room. The mangled corpse was the remains of Ross Bland the man who had come in quest of the Vindicator s ill gotten wealth to find death instead CHAPTER X. WALLS OF DOOM AMID the reverberations that echoed in The Shadow s ears came sharper clatters as chunks of stone detached from walls and ceiling to strike the floor of the storeroom. A warning rumble told that inner masonry was about to give through loss of its support. Coming to his feet The Shadow swung himself into the doorway that connected with Brye s workroom. There he halted. The ceiling had begun to peel beginning at the niche where the debris of the safe was visible. In peeling the ceiling shed a thick layer of stones and mortar. Loosened chunks caused others to go the epidemic spread toward the center of the room. It was as if some invisible acid had begun to eat its way on a gigantic scale gobbling the ceiling with increasing speed. Only one result could follow it arrived with a titanic crash exactly as The Shadow expected. Due to the collapse of the ceiling below them the flagstones of the floor above came rumbling through bringing some of the heavy stone partitions that divided the tiny upstairs rooms. The floor of the main room quaked. Bland s half mangled figure quivered as though imbued with a return of life. The Shadow could feel tremors from the sides of the stone doorway where he stood. Chance stones fell about him some bounced high enough to glance from his arms and shoulders. But the ancient door frame held. Gazing across a pile of debris The Shadow looked for Dana Brye. He saw the master of Vreekill Castle risen in that other doorway that led to the descending steps. Brye safe relished this scene of ruin. He was studying it with an expert s eye. His time bomb set in the safe had done more than trap his unwanted visitor Ross Bland. In fact Brye wasted no more than a brief glance upon the dead form that was half covered by rubbish. Every trace of Bland s overhandsome features had been obliterated as completely as if they had been mere waxwork which to some degree they had resembled. The blast had singed his clothes into ashes. No mark of identity remained to prove that the dead man was Ross Bland. Brye had seen that almost in a glimpse. His final survey of the room was accompanied by repetitions of his piping laugh. With sudden decision he turned about yanked the steel door that stood beside him. That barrier closed he began his exit by the stairway that curved to places beneath. Instantly The Shadow followed. Brye s route could be the only feasible road to safety. Moreover it gave The Shadow a chance to trace the crafty man. Reaching the metal door The Shadow pulled its latch and tugged it wide. Fortunately Brye had not bothered to twist the dial to lock the combination. Hardly had The Shadow sprung through the open doorway before another explosion occurred. The blast came from beneath the ruined room where Bland s body lay. It heaved the floor like a volcanic eruption threw a barrage of stone in all directions. Spreading outward chunks from that convulsion reached The Shadow. He was hurled head foremost down the winding stairs to bounce from the wall and tumble farther downward in a helpless spiral. CATCHING himself at last The Shadow lay numbed incapable of immediate motion. From the clatter above he knew that the second blast set off by Brye somewhere below must have weakened the old castle even more than had the first explosion. Here on the stairs was total blackness but The Shadow s flashlight operated when his numbed fingers found it. Rising through sheer will he resumed his descent at a pace that was painfully slow. He came to a landing where an open doorway showed a small chamber that had probably once been a dungeon. It was here that the second blast had been set off. Sliding noise broken by heavy thumps proved that the wreckage from above was settling steadily into this lower pit. Eventually Bland s body would slide down with it. Soon after The Shadow resumed his downward descent he was staggered by the effects of another blast at the landing that he had just left. Brye safely below had set off a blast to demolish the upper section of the stairway. Probably he would repeat that process with the stretch that lay ahead Flinging himself down the steps The Shadow let the spiral walls guide him. It was a nightmarish descent that became realistic only when The Shadow stumbled into light along a rocky path at the bottom of the spiral stairs. The level ground felt soft when he sprawled upon it. Too numbed to feel pain he crawled to a jutting rock and settled there. He was in a tiny grotto lighted by electricity probably supplied by a small power unit. Hearing the swish of water The Shadow knew that he had descended at least a hundred feet the height of the crag that Vreekill Castle topped. This grotto was a natural cave connecting with the chasm that The Shadow had crossed to reach the castle. It was here that Ross Bland had come in his speedboat the Rambler after guessing that Margaret Brye had loaned her craft the Whiskaway to her father. Assuming that Brye was the Vindicator Bland had recognized that Vreekill Castle might have a secret way of entry. So had The Shadow but he had bridged the chasm figuring that the upper route would be less protected. A hollow roar ended those reflections. A rocky avalanche came pouring to the bottom of the spiral stairs. Brye had let off the next time bomb as reverberations died to whispers they seemed to speak a warning. The grotto would be next Strength flowed to The Shadow s limbs. Staring over the jutting rock he saw a deep brackish pool in it two speedboats side by side. Brye was clambering from one craft the Rambler into the other which bore the name Whiskaway. Before The Shadow could raise a shout or draw a gun the Whiskaway was in motion. Brye sped it beneath a narrow low vaulted channel rising in the cockpit the grizzled man yanked a thin rope from a concealed spot in the rocks above his head. The Whiskaway was gone out to the watery chasm. The dangling cord controlled the final time bomb. The Shadow s lease on life was cut to the time space that Brye was allowing for his own race to safety FLINGING forward again The Shadow tumbled aboard the Rambler. Still half dazed he found himself trying to start the motor wondering if Brye had put it out of commission. But the motor coughed into life. Yanking the control lever The Shadow shot the Rambler out through the channel. The light from the grotto showed the wall of the chasm straight ahead with a hard twist The Shadow swept the speedboat past the turn. He saw the end of the chasm a mere crack against the moonlight. There lay safety that might even yet be denied. To The Shadow s ears came a rumble vaster than any that had preceded it a subterranean roar that staggered the whole cliff above. It wasn t just the grotto. Brye s last touch had set off as many as a half a dozen mines located at various places beneath the castle. The blast that banished the grotto and its lights sent a sweep of water through the collapsing outlet. Like a tidal wave the billow lifted the Rambler and lofted it out through the rift in the chasm. There were rocks ahead it took all The Shadow s regained skill to veer the boat away from them. He saw his proper channel past the base of the hundred foot cliff where the castle stood. Instinctively The Shadow stared upward for his course was set. He saw Vreekill Castle still ruddy in the glow of moonlight that was about to vanish under the creep of black thunder clouds that dominated the sky. The castle was a hollow shell for its inner floor had settled into one deep pit but until this moment the outer walls had retained their form except for fissures that the moonlight showed. Cracks that were widening spreading into fantastic patterns. In sudden fashion those breaks were rendered vivid by a flash of blinding lightning that split from a storm cloud just as it effaced the moon. With the flash came a peal as loud as sudden as a thunder clap but it did not burst from the glare swept sky. That roar was the outer wall of Vreekill Castle as it spread into a mass of ill shaped fragments and took its long awaited topple from the cliff. A Niagara of stone was bounding from the summit hurling its frightful irresistible cascade toward the tiny hull of the Rambler which was speeding directly beneath. Governed by the law of falling bodies those devastating blocks of masonry were to reach the river in a scant three seconds. That brief time was sufficient for The Shadow. As his eyes saw the great wall cave in his hands had yanked the speedboat s wheel. He was chancing that he had reached the open channel and he had. The Rambler despite a lost second in its veer was more than a hundred feet from the cliff when the stony deluge spattered the river. The Shadow was swinging the Rambler northward when another sweep of lightning came. It showed vacancy atop the cliff except for a few jagged edges of foundations that might have been the summit of the rock itself. Vreekill Castle was gone forever. But Dana Brye in his destructive departure had left but one victim entombed within the ruins. The Shadow had escaped the fate of Ross Bland thanks to the speedboat that the luckless visitor had left in the secret grotto. LIGHTNING flashes guided The Shadow as he sped the Rambler northward but he saw no trace of the Whiskaway upon the heaving surface of the wind lashed Hudson. Brye had probably headed downriver or toward the opposite shore. The Shadow was keeping close to the west bank to pick a landing place from which he could return to his autogiro. He had covered a mile and was throttling down the motor to scan the shore more carefully when the next flare of lightning came. The pelt of rain was audible and with it The Shadow s keen ear detected another sound just below the seat behind the wheel. It was a muffled ticking like a clock. Springing up beside the wheel The Shadow turned about. When lightning flashed he saw a square box wedged in place: a death machine much like the metal cube that Bland had found in Brye s safe. The thing was a portable time bomb that Brye had placed in the Rambler to destroy all traces of Bland s visit. Methodical to the last degree Brye had transferred it from the Whiskaway because his calculations regarding the destruction of the grotto had not included the presence of an abandoned speedboat. The Shadow had seen too much of Brye s devices to risk any trouble from another. Instead of trying to pry the time bomb loose he sprang to the side of the Rambler and took a long dive overboard. By the time The Shadow had swum a dozen strokes the throbbing speedboat had lifted into fragments. His head below the water s surface The Shadow missed another dangerous hail this one composed of broken metal sprayed piecemeal over an area a hundred feet square. Fifty yards farther The Shadow s swim was completed. Pulling himself to a rock beside the shore he stared into the rain swept blackness of the Hudson. Above the fury of the elements his lips phrased a strange grim laugh. The world would believe that Dana Brye had perished in the destruction of Vreekill Castle. The body of Ross Bland when found would support that belief. But Brye alive though posing as a dead man could not evade discovery. The Shadow knew the truth. Some time in the none too distant future he would again find Dana Brye. But the weird mirth toned from his remote bank of the Hudson betokened more than a mere search for a crafty fugitive. It was a renewed challenge issued by The Shadow. A challenge to the Vindicator man of supercrime CHAPTER XI. TRIGGER SEES THE SHADOW DURING the next few days dozens of workers searched the ruins of Vreekill Castle looking for the body of Dana Brye. Among that crew were six who always managed to be digging with their backs turned whenever a news photographer snapped a picture of the search. They were members of the outside squad that Trigger Kobin had kept on duty to make sure that no visitors bothered Dana Brye. Those hoodlums hadn t wanted their present job. Circumstances had simply thrust the work upon them. The huge explosions that came from Vreekill Castle had brought a fire truck from the village along with a sheriff and a carload of deputies. Trigger and three mobbies had decamped by that time in the only car available but they hadn t time to send back for the rest before the villagers arrived. Trigger had previously coached his reserves on what to say if the authorities discovered them living in the shacks near the castle. They told their story and it went across. A couple of them so they said had worked here the summer before when Brye had repaired the outside walls of the castle. Finding work scarce this year they had remembered the empty shacks and had decided to occupy them rather than go on relief. They had brought along some pals other workmen who were out of luck. Honest fellows all who would rather live on what they had saved than become burdens to the taxpayers. The kind hearted sheriff decided to give them the employment that they claimed to need. They were just the right men he declared to help dig out the debris from the castle and they could live in the shacks while they worked there. To preserve their alibi the six unfortunate hoodlums had to accept the sheriff s offer. The situation pleased Trigger Kobin when he heard about it through other mobbies who arrived with curious throngs that came to watch the morbid work. It meant that he would obtain first hand information regarding the recovery of Brye s body should it be found. That news came through on the third afternoon when searchers Trigger s men among them unearthed the mortal remains of Ross Bland. Since it was commonly agreed that Brye had lived alone in Vreekill Castle the body it was decided must be his. In fact the sheriff established that point by questioning the honest workers who had squatted in the shacks among the woods. They testified and this time they told the truth that they had never seen a single visitor come to Vreekill Castle. WHEN Joe Cardona the swarthy New York police inspector saw the front page photograph that showed a crowd watching workers bring the supposed body of Dana Brye to light he crumpled the whole newspaper and slammed it in the wastebasket. That s the stuff that makes crime roared Cardona. Boobs that go around looking at a lot of corpses are the kind of nuts who get what doctors call a murder complex. Some time I m going to tell the commissioner that when he wants to stage a real roundup he ought to send us to a place like this Vreekill Castle. I bet if we grabbed all those spectators we d get a lot of those psycholitical birds they talk about. Cardona s outburst produced a nod of agreement from his only listener Detective Sergeant Markham. To himself Markham was muttering the word psycholitical pronouncing it carefully in syllables sy ko lit ik el. That was one word that Markham intended to look up in the big dictionary that he had acquired by cutting out daily coupons from an evening newspaper over a period of six months. It paid to know what long words meant thought Markham. Maybe that had helped Cardona rise to the rank of inspector. It didn t occur to Markham that the word Cardona had used might not be in any dictionary at all. Those pictures are bad stuff repeated Cardona thumbing toward the wastebasket. You ve got a couple of nephews Markham that you re always talking about. Don t ever let them get interested in stuff like that. Markham nodded rather dutifully. His nephews never looked at the front page of a newspaper. The comic strips were their meat. It gripes me muttered Cardona. Here I am chasing all over town looking for mobbies that used to work for Trigger Kobin and not a one of them anywhere around. I might just as well been out there with that bunch of nincompoops watching guys haul what was left of Dana Brye out of that mess they used to call a castle Cardona s comment was more accurate than he knew. Had he gone to Vreekill he would have seen the men he wanted. They were in the picture that had roused his anger but as usual they had managed to keep their faces away from the camera. It was unlikely however that Cardona would have learned anything from those hoodlums had he found them. They were no longer in direct touch with Trigger Kobin. That fact explained why The Shadow had not dropped in to enliven one of their dreary evenings when they were resting up from their compulsory job at excavation. Trigger The Shadow knew was depending no longer upon the cooperation of a mob. He regarded his reserves as on the lam which they would be as soon as their present work terminated. The Shadow was willing to let them travel unmolested since none of that particular group had aided Trigger in any murders. Like Cardona The Shadow was at present looking for Trigger Kobin because the man had assumed a special importance. He was probably closer to the Vindicator than ever and with leads lacking to Dana Brye The Shadow could profitably take time to hunt up Trigger. Unlike Cardona The Shadow was visiting places other than those where Trigger would normally be found. He knew that Trigger was smart enough to stay away from the usual underworld establishments besides Trigger had announced a new policy that night when he had talked to the mobbies assembled in the shack. He had said that he had acquired a couple of good torpedoes men who were already in town hence The Shadow had checked on persons of that description. Through his own channels in the underworld he had learned that Jeeper Quade and Slink Rembo two highly touted sharpshooters from Chicago had been recent visitors to Manhattan s badlands. THROUGH Hawkeye one of his agents who had an uncanny skill at tracing shifty crooks The Shadow had located Jeeper. The Chicago expert had gone high hat. He was living in a studio apartment in Riverview City a collection of apartment houses that overlooked the East River. Rents in Riverview City were no longer high nor were many questions asked of tenants who paid in advance. Many of the more conservative residents in those apartments had moved because of shootings in the vicinity. The Shadow could picture those dead end streets as just the neighborhood where Trigger Kobin could sneak in and out which meant that he might be using Jeeper s apartment as a hide away. That explained why The Shadow his black garb blended with the darkness of a fire escape was beginning a precarious trip along a tenth story ledge. As he shifted against the wall of the apartment house he took on the appearance of a human beetle too small to be observed from the street below particularly as the wall itself was darkish. The Shadow s objective was a dimly lighted window. Reaching it he clung there as if held in place by the stiff breeze from the river. Working the window open he entered a room. This evidently was the studio portion of the apartment. It was furnished with junky Oriental curios some pieces of cheap statuary and paintings that looked as if they had been bought in wholesale lots. It had an in a door bed and odd clothing strewn about the place showed that it was used as living quarters. The only light was near the wide doorway that led to an outer room. Moving along the wall The Shadow peered through the doorway to view a living room. A darkish wise faced man was tuning in a radio. The Shadow recognized Jeeper Quade saw the fellow press off the radio switch and come to his feet reaching promptly for a gun as the door of the apartment opened. The arrival was Trigger Kobin he gave a snort as he closed the door. Sit down Jeeper voiced Trigger. Cripes You d think you were the guy they re after for a murder rap All you ve got to do is stay relaxed. Any calls come in Yeah returned Jeeper. One from Slink. He got word from one of the guys out at Vreekill. He was waiting at your old number like you told him. Anything new Nothing that we ain t heard. They found Brye s body that s all. Slink says to call him when you want him. Trigger glanced at his watch he decided to ignore the telephone for a few minutes. The reason was explained when the bell began to ring. Trigger made a hasty grab for the telephone. Hello... The expression on Trigger s face became crafty. Yeah we heard from Vreekill... Sure they found Brye s body all right. Straight dope right from the guys that I left there... Yeah it s Brye all right. It couldn t be nobody else... THE call finished Trigger darted a shrewd look at Jeeper. With a wise nod he decided to take this capable lieutenant into his confidence. Jeeper was no ordinary mobbie. He was smart like Trigger and smart guys worked better for persons who knew their stuff. Trigger could tell Jeeper something that would make his eyes pop and it seemed good policy to do it. That was the big shot informed Trigger. This Vindicator guy that I told you all about. Except who he is reminded Jeeper. You didn t put me wise to that. Because I m not supposed to know. Only I m not as dumb as the big shot figures. Strolling across the room Trigger faced about to resume in steady tone: Listen. Up to the time that castle blew itself apart I had a hunch that the big shot was this Dana Brye. If he wasn t what was the idea of me having the mob out there Maybe put in Jeeper the big shot didn t want nobody to get in and see Brye. Or he could have wanted to keep Brye there. And maybe it was Brye who wanted us to keep guys away. That makes sense don t it It did make sense maybe. But not any longer now that Brye s cashed in his checks. Trigger smiled. This was where the smart stuff came. He watched Jeeper s face to see how the theory struck him. This is the fifth time the Vindicator called up reminded Trigger nudging toward the telephone. He s always got two questions: Am I sure that Brye was in the joint when it blew And have they found the body yet He asks the first one over again right now after I tell him that they found the body the way the papers said. Still he don t seem satisfied. He acts like he thinks I m wise to something at least that s the way that funny voice of his sounded. Maybe I am wise. Listen Jeeper. None of the mob even saw Brye from the time we covered the place. He never went out to get his mail. It s still laying at the Vreekill post office. Suppose Brye wasn t in that castle at all Jeeper showed the interest that Trigger expected. Before he could put a question Trigger intervened. I know what you re going to ask said Trigger. What about the body Well what about it Maybe it was a stiff that Brye lugged in there and left. He could have set those bombs of his way ahead. And that s how Trigger spread his wolfish lips in a wide smile Brye could have been around to croak old Grennel. There was a nod from Jeeper. Seeing the fellow s increasing interest Trigger spat a warning. Nobody s to know this not even Slink. We re playing in with the bigshot see It means dough so it would be bum stuff to let him know we ve guessed who he is because he don t want it that way. Brye s using this Vindicator gag to cover up. If nobody knows who you are you re better off. Take for instance The Shadow WITH the words Trigger s lips clamped shut. Past the doorway silhouetted against the wall he saw a shape that was all too familiar a hawkish profile topped by a slouch hat. Stiffening Trigger watched to see if the silhouette moved then coming to his senses he shifted away. Let s have a drink he gruffed to Jeeper. The bottle s in the pantry. He watched Jeeper as the fellow moved away unsuspecting that anything was wrong. Easing back to his former position Trigger finally sighted the profile again. He suspected that it had moved farther back but wasn t sure. Trigger didn t take time to study that silhouette closely. His left hand slid under the back of his coat to reach his right hip. Trigger could shoot left handed as he proved in speedy style. Leaping to the left to get the needed angle he jabbed two shots deep into the corner of the adjoining studio. The silhouette performed a fading slide there was a crash beyond the doorway. Jeeper came dashing from the pantry an uncorked bottle in one hand a fistful of ice cubes in the other. I got The Shadow informed Trigger gleefully. Come on. Let s take a gander. They stepped past the doorway. On the floor lay the shattered portions of a plaster bust that had recently been a life sized replica of the Marquis de Lafayette. Beside it was a dark gray felt hat. I paid ten bucks for that thing commented Jeeper. That s going high for a shooting gallery target. Say how did that hat get there He looked to a shelf above the table where the bust had stood. I guess it must have fell off and landed on that geezer s head. They called the thing a bust. He looked to the floor again. Well it s busted all right Trigger s Shadow was explained. He didn t realize that he had seen two separate silhouettes one of The Shadow in person the other of the Lafayette bust after The Shadow knowing that he had been observed had decked the plaster statue with Jeeper s hat which was handy on the shelf. One token only could have told Trigger Kobin that The Shadow actually had been here and that was a sound that the murderer did not hear the soft closing of the window by which The Shadow had started his departure along his chosen route. CHAPTER XII. PATHS IN THE DARK TRIGGER KOBIN suffered little loss of pride because he had been overquick with his gun. He made a joke of his mistake he told Jeeper and Slink that The Shadow had turned out to be a bust. It took Trigger all night to think up that one meanwhile The Shadow in his turn had considered some constructive thoughts regarding Trigger Kobin. It was plain that Trigger was no more important to the Vindicator than he had been previously. Instead of a mob Trigger merely had two sharpshooting pals. Whether Trigger was called on individual duty or the whole trio brought into play it would be for cover up work only. Nevertheless it was not yet time for The Shadow to inform the police regarding Trigger s whereabouts. By watching Trigger some clue might be gained in indirect fashion to coming moves that the Vindicator intended. That work however belonged to The Shadow s agents. There were plenty of empty apartments in Riverview City so he ordered a picked few to move in there and keep watch on Trigger s activities. With that arranged The Shadow concentrated on the more difficult task of tracing Dana Brye. Since Brye had no criminal record it was a devious matter to learn his past. The Shadow managed it through proper channels but only to a limited extent. Brye had retired from the business of manufacturing safes some years before. His experiments with time bombs a natural outgrowth of his love for the intricate had caused him to move from one workshop to another before he had finally purchased Vreekill Castle. None of his former places were the sort that he could use for hide outs as all of them had been taken over by other businesses. But Brye it seemed had always liked obscure districts and it was likely that he had an address book of unusual places that were vacant. Putting other agents on the investigation of basements that had recently been rented The Shadow hoped for results. They might come if Brye proved overconfident in the fact that he had been declared as dead. There was one place quite different from any of Brye s workshops where the missing man might appear. The Shadow chose that for his own observation on the chance that his path might cross Brye s. Comparing the different theories of Ross Bland and Trigger Kobin The Shadow saw how each had come to a similar conclusion though not in possession of the full facts. Bland had used a starting point that was still a doubtful quantity. He had presumed that Larry Chandler had recognized Dana Brye as the murderer of Thomas Grennel. Since Larry was in love with Margaret Brye he would have had a reason to suppress the fact. From that Bland had checked on other matters his guess about the Whiskaway his study of the Hudson River chart had all resulted in the episode which caused him to denounce Brye as the Vindicator and come to a prompt doom. Trigger playing hunches only was miles wide in his basic belief that Brye had not been in Vreekill Castle at all. Still Trigger had come to the same conclusion as Bland: that Brye was the Vindicator. So he had arrived somewhere with his guesses since his final result tallied with the opinion of a man who had used much sounder methods. One fact that concerned The Shadow was that of the Vindicator s next move. With all the commotion following his murder of Grennel some small excitement at Jolden s death and the huge interest over the explosion of Vreekill Castle the Vindicator could best afford to bide his time since all those events were somewhat related. Grennel had known Brye and had bought a safe from him. Jolden had worked for Brye many years ago. Brye s daughter Margaret had been one of the guests at Grennel s home the night of the murder there as had Larry Chandler the man to whom Margaret was engaged. None of those facts had been linked except by Ross Bland and The Shadow. Nevertheless the Vindicator might be waiting to make sure that the links were not made public. Perhaps the Vindicator was plotting crime of a different sort as a variation before he resumed his blackmail enterprises. Possibly he had taken an actual holiday. The Shadow was confident however that the Grennel shakedown was not the last on the Vindicator s list. Once he had shown himself proof against the law the supercrook would pluck new victims. To block him when he tried that game would be the duty of The Shadow. THERE was one person considered in The Shadow s review of linked events whose interest in all such matters had ended. That person was Margaret Brye. News of the explosion at Vreekill Castle had kept her under a terrible suspense for three long days. She believed her father dead. She had loaned him the Whiskaway under promise not to mention the matter but she had also believed his statement that he merely wanted it for tests of submarine bombs tests which might cause trouble if persons knew that he was working such experiments in a navigated river like the Hudson. It hadn t occurred to her that there was a subterranean route to Vreekill Castle. Her mind had been filled only with the knowledge that time bomb manufacture was a highly dangerous business. She knew too that her father had arranged for Roger Marquin to become her guardian and manage her estate should he Dana Brye come to an unexpected death. The tragedy had fallen. Its final proof had been the finding of the body in the ruins. During the day after that discovery Margaret ignored the front pages of the newspapers. Listlessly she read the society columns where she noticed an item stating that Ross Bland had taken a trip to the West. Probably the journey concerned Bland s silver mines Margaret thought of which she had heard mention. It did not strike her that the name of Ross Bland should have appeared upon the front page in big headlines while that of Dana Brye could be included among those of persons who had gone somewhere without naming the exact destination. Insertion of the Bland notice it happened had been the work of Dana Brye. With evening Marquin s big mansion seemed like one huge morgue to Margaret. The servants moved about like living corpses. She hated the sight of Larry Chandler seated across the table from her. Maybe Larry was in love with her as he claimed but the girl could not forget that they had quarreled only the day before the tragedy at Vreekill. He had felt sorry very sorry so he said when he heard of the explosion. In her present mood Margaret considered that a very ordinary statement. If Larry cared so much for her why hadn t he found some way to really lessen her sorrow Perhaps he didn t know how but Roger Marquin certainly did. He had spoken so sympathetically that Margaret had ended by sobbing her head on his shoulder. All through the dinner hour she felt Marquin s eyes upon her and that knowledge calmed her. She remembered how he had first broken the news. He had told her that if Dana Brye were actually dead he Marquin her father s friend would always be a friend to her. The ordeal had lessened from the moment that Marquin had given her that assurance. Tonight Marquin s sympathy was even more apparent. At eleven o clock the usual hour that he retired he understood that Margaret preferred to remain alone downstairs beside the fire although Larry who also turned in at eleven could see no sense in it. By midnight the huge mansion was so silent that the girl felt soothed. When she went up to her room on the second floor near the suite of offices Margaret noticed the moonlight shining through the window. Half reclining on the bed she undressed slowly listlessly letting her clothes drop to the chair beside her. At last disrobed she was reaching wearily for her nightgown when her eyes turned toward the window saw something that fixed her gaze. It was a figure on the lawn gliding toward the house. It couldn t be a shape cast by the tree boughs for they were entirely stilled. As she watched the startled girl saw the peculiar shade disappear into darkness. Breathless she sat upon the edge of the bed watching for its reappearance. It did not return the thing had vanished like a ghost. A MINUTE must have passed before Margaret sighed drew the nightgown over her shoulders. Perhaps the moonlight pouring in so gently had roused her imagination. Why should she fear a ghost Should any specter visit her it would be her father s. A strange thought yet one that intrigued her. The notion keyed her senses. Staring through the window she hoped again that the moving figure would reappear. Instead she heard a sound. It was slight like the opening of a door. Not her door for when she stared it hadn t moved. Another sound came a scruff as though someone had encountered a chair in darkness. Margaret s mood changed immediately to alarm. Hurriedly finding a dressing gown she looked for the slippers that went with it. They weren t about she decided to waste no more time. From a drawer in the dressing table she brought a .22 automatic that her father had given her on a trip to Mexico a few years before. Softly she opened the door of her room and went out into the hall. She sensed a sound again. It came from Marquin s offices. She was glad that she had not found her slippers for her bare feet made no sound as she trod along the hall. The door of the outer office was open proof that someone was inside. Cautiously approaching the connecting door Margaret opened it a few inches. There was a light in the inner office. It showed a man crouched against the safe at the far wall. His back was turned toward her he wore a dark hat on his head. The girl could see his fingers working the dials in slow proficient fashion. The man could not be Marquin he had gone to bed an hour ago. Nor Larry he also had retired. Tightening her hand upon the gun Margaret covered the crouched man. From what she had heard of burglars they had to be surprised and treated firmly. Reaching for the door she opened it suddenly hoping to bring the man about. He heard the noise and turned exactly as Margaret expected. With that the girl s plan ended. Her fingers numbed by the chill that swept her entire body lost their hold upon the automatic. All her ideas of ghosts swarmed upon her with terrifying reality. For the man that Margaret saw was one who could be nothing other than a ghost. The intruder was her father Dana Brye CHAPTER XIII. DUEL OF DARKNESS NOT until Dana Brye spoke did Margaret grasp the simple truth that her father was still alive. His voice firm but modulated dispelled the girl s illusions of a ghost. Brye was using a familiar tone kindly paternal one that Margaret had often heard. It was quite unlike the piping pitch that Brye employed when excited. The gleam of Brye s eyes betrayed something that Margaret should have noticed but failed to detect. Her father was calm only because she of all persons in the mansion had been the one to discover him. A bulge of one pocket with Brye s fingers just above it signified that he carried a gun. His other hand resting upon a dark gray topcoat that he had placed across a chair showed that he had been ready to begin a rapid flight. The floor lamp too was close. Had he heard Margaret s approach a few seconds sooner Brye could have yanked the cord and produced darkness throughout the room. There is nothing to fear spoke Brye. I am alive. You may be quite sure of that Margaret nodded. She was sure. She watched Brye remove his hat lay it carefully upon the coat while he stroked back his shaggy hair. His face which had momentarily displayed distortion became benign. Whether or not his expression was a mask Margaret accepted it as a true index. Never had the girl seen her father in any mood but a kindly one. He could be querulous she knew for there were times when she had heard his piping voice rise in argument when she was in another room. In her presence however he had never displayed anger nor shown himself unreasonable. Brye noticed that Margaret was staring past him toward the safe. He didn t realize that she had been testing her own eyes wondering whether if this figure of her father proved to be a specter she could see through the shape like a cloud of mist. Brye thought that she was troubled because she had seen him working at the dials. I am not here to commit burglary announced Brye his mild tone carrying a touch of rebuke. You may safely say that you did not see me opening this safe. Actually I was closing it. Nor have I taken anything from it. Instead I have placed something within. Margaret s eyes showed belief. She didn t ask why Brye had still been thumbing the dials when she first saw him. Turning to the safe Brye resumed his manipulation his lips away from Margaret s sight took on a tight smile. Boldly Brye was completing his work with the combination. He reached for the handle of the safe door drew the front partly open then turned to Margaret. You see he spoke with a note of triumph. I already knew the combination Because Mr. Marquin gave it to you Brye was on the point of nodding in response to Margaret s trustful question. Then deciding that the truth would be more impressive he shook his head. Brye saw that he would need props of truth to support his previous falsehood and others to come. Marquin alone knows the combination he replied but my knowledge of this safe enabled me to open it. First let me tell you how I happen to be still alive. That will explain the rest. THE story that Brye purred in confidential tone was one that intrigued his daughter to the core. His time bombs he said were far more important than they were dangerous. Because of their value in warfare he had intended to turn them over to the government as soon as he had perfected the intricate mechanisms. Four nights ago Brye related he had been awakened by peculiar clicking noises that could only have come from the detonators of his empty bombs. Peering into the storeroom he had seen an intruder a man who could only have been some spy in the employ of a foreign government. Brye declared that he had stolen out to the huge front door had found it open. Deciding to go to the village of Vreekill to get aid he was scarcely past the door before the first explosion came. The spy had come across a loaded bomb which Brye had planned to test under water during a cruise in the Whiskaway. That blast set off the others completed Brye. The castle went to ruin Staggered by the shock I found my way down a path to where the Whiskaway was moored. By the time I had crossed the river the boat was awash. She had been damaged by a flying rock. I managed to reach the shore but the Whiskaway lies somewhere in the Hudson. Brye s story explained the matter of the body found in the ruins. Margaret had almost accepted the entire tale when she became dubious on one point. What about the squatters the newspapers mentioned asked the girl. They declared that they saw no one enter or leave Vreekill Castle. Brye had an answer for that question. He was convinced so he said that the pretended squatters were men in the employ of the unknown spy for it would have taken several persons to pry open the great door. Naturally they would not mention their chief s visit. As to whether they had seen Brye leave that was a moot point. Amid the explosions and the storm declared Brye solemnly I may have reached the Whiskaway unnoticed. But it is possible that I am still known to be alive. My inventions he tapped his forehead are here It is better therefore that I should pretend that I am dead. Margaret agreed. Seeing that Brye pressed another point. His face though still kindly displayed a crafty gleam. Marquin has many visitors he declared. Persons from South America but representing many nations. Perhaps Impossible exclaimed Margaret horrified. Mr. Marquin would never have betrayed you You misunderstand me purred Brye. Except for yourself Marquin is the only person that I fully trust. That is why I told you both about my work. Either of you might have mentioned it too freely. Margaret felt that the rebuke belonged to her and said so. She remembered one person with whom she had discussed Brye s experiments: Ross Bland. She felt it unnecessary however to mention him by name. Brye was looking toward the safe. His eyes were craftier than ever. He tilted his head as though he heard a sound then his face expressing well pretended concern he turned to Margaret and whispered: Tiptoe out to the hall and make sure that no one is awake. When you return I shall explain more. THE girl made the trip carefully. Lacking slippers her tread was noiseless but she was anxious not to stumble barefooted over anything. When she returned to report that all was quiet she saw the safe door open. Brye was in front of it he whipped about suddenly clamping his hand to his inside pocket. Seeing an open box inside the safe Margaret felt a momentary suspicion until she saw that it contained nothing but old envelopes and loose papers. Brye coolly closed the box pushed it into a corner. I have placed a note for Marquin in that box he declared. It will explain this other box he lifted one of metal that I am leaving here. Brye was wearing his hat and coat. Margaret remembered how the coat had lain on the chair and realized that Brye could have had the box concealed beneath it. When her father opened the lid of the metal box the girl saw thousands of dollars all in bills of high denomination. My entire fortune declared Brye. Yes Margaret I am wealthy. The manufacture of safes was profitable. But he smiled wryly being dead I cannot open a bank account. I am entrusting this cash to Marquin and should I die I can rely upon Roger to turn it over to you. He will not mention it to you nor will he inform you that I am still alive for I have instructed otherwise. Whatever he tells you act as though you believed it for he will be saying it in your own interest at my request. Margaret nodded. I must also have your promise declared Brye firmly that you will tell no one that I am still alive. No one you understand not even Marquin because he would worry if he knew that someone particularly yourself shared the secret which he soon will learn. Do you promise that I do affirmed Margaret solemnly. And you will abide by that promise persisted Brye until I release you from it Absolutely Brye was satisfied. He put the metal box behind other objects at the rear of the safe. He closed the door twirled the dials. Pulling off the light he whispered for Margaret to follow him through the outer office. It was in that room that Brye suddenly became tense. This time he had heard an actual sound. Look from the window he whispered to his daughter. Tell me if you see a car there. And wait he had detected something else look at the front door too. See if someone has opened it. From the window Margaret whispered back the worst. It s a police car Officers are coming from it One of the servants is at the front door beckoning to them. It looks like Gaylor. He must have heard us here and called the police Brye was shuffling for the door of the outer office Margaret hurrying after him and clutching her dressing gown with one hand while she fumbled in the pocket where she had placed her little automatic. Down by the side stairs she told her father. I ll listen at the top if I hear them coming to cut you off I ll fire a shot in the upper hall. Good agreed Brye. Draw them away if need be. Tell them anything afterward that you saw a burglar or a ghost anything except that I was here. Don t worry dad assured Margaret. I shall remember my promise. THEY were in the hallway. To the left were the side stairs that Margaret had mentioned. Brye reached them first making too much noise in his hurry. From the right he had heard sounds that came up the large front stairway from the lower hall. Alarmed by the noise that Brye made Margaret turned as soon as she neared the side stairs. In dim moonlight reflected through the window she saw a man bound in from a connecting hall. It was Larry Chandler. Dressed in trousers and shirt he was half black half gray in the moonlight. But Margaret could see his face plainly. Huddled trying to obscure her father when he descended the stairway Margaret knew that she must be visible to Larry. She was about to call out that all was well when something glimmered in the moonlight. Larry had a revolver. He was aiming it. His voice was harsher than the girl had ever heard it when he rasped: Stop Before I fire Brye made a slight stumble on the stairway. Hearing it Larry thrust the gun straight for the only figure that he saw which was Margaret s. Before the girl could find her voice to scream Larry pressed the trigger. Death did not come to Margaret Brye. Instead the gun spurt took a slant up toward the ceiling. In from some blackness had come another figure a cloaked form as sable hued as night. A driving fist gloved in black had thrust Larry s gun hand upward. From the side stairway came the jab of shots from Brye s revolver. Seeing Larry he had apparently begun a belated effort to save Margaret s life. He was shooting for the spot where Larry had been but both figures were gone when Brye s gun spouted. The Shadow forceful in his drive had bowled Larry clear from the hallway over the brink of the front stairway. Larry was tumbling downward but his cloaked opponent remained at the top. Lying flat The Shadow poked a gun muzzle along the side hall keeping his aim wide of Margaret he jabbed an answer to Brye s futile shots. Brye like his daughter was away from The Shadow s aim but the gunshot produced results. The crafty inventor did not care to wage further battle with an elusive foe who seemed charmed against bullets whose own gun quick with its response had seemingly poked up from nowhere. Muffled clatters from the side stairs heard only by Margaret and The Shadow were proof that Dana Brye had fled. A triple duel had ended in the darkness with none of the participants harmed. Nor had Margaret Brye petrified throughout that action suffered any effects of battle. Perhaps that was why The Shadow regarded the result a victory. From the gloom at the head of the front stairs came a weird mocking laugh a strain of mirth that brought shivery echoes from the great musty rooms of Marquin s mammoth mansion. Half taunt half challenge that tone told The Shadow s satisfaction over the swift change that he had produced in this scene where death had threatened. CHAPTER XIV. CRIMELESS MYSTERY FEW fighters but The Shadow would have relished the present situation. By thrusting himself into the open he had defeated the prime purpose of his journey here namely to meet up with Dana Brye under circumstances wherein he could make the inventor talk. Instead of that The Shadow had taken over Brye s burden: that of escaping from the house. Brye was gone but The Shadow was in the thick of it. Two shots Larry s and The Shadow s had accomplished the very thing that Margaret had intended to do with her .22 they had attracted everyone to the center of the house instead of the side where Brye had fled. Though Brye had fired a shot in between it had been practically unnoticed amid the closer gunfire. Someone had turned on lights downstairs. Larry reclaiming his revolver halfway down the steps looked up to see The Shadow weaving away from the light that came from the lower floor. With a shout Larry was on his feet. Gaylor the butler was yelling to the officers telling them that Larry was all right. Thus Larry as he dashed upward became the leader of a surge. He had recognized The Shadow as the fighter that he had met at Grennel s. The verdict there had favored The Shadow as a person who sided with the law. Margaret knew that. Standing in the side passage her tiny gun in hand she wondered why Larry was taking up the chase. Only crooks contended with The Shadow so she had heard. That flash of thought cleared the last doubt that Margaret might have held concerning her father. He at least had fled without shooting at The Shadow. His shot at Larry had been delivered in an effort to save Margaret s life. Grateful for that deed the girl overlooked the possibility that Brye might first have seen The Shadow then fired. His shot if meant for Larry alone had been rather long delayed. However that was past. All that counted at the present was The Shadow s plight. It was real for he was ignoring the best path to safety: the side hall where Margaret stood. He didn t want Larry to start another fusillade in that direction with the girl still there. As she saw The Shadow turn toward another hallway Margaret recognized the reason and chafed at her own folly in remaining where she was. Again she didn t see both sides of the matter. Her presence also prevented The Shadow from overtaking Dana Brye. That was something for which her father would have thanked her. Brye anxious to meet no one who might recognize him would not have enjoyed the prospect of outfacing The Shadow. The hall that The Shadow took was blocked. It led to the rear of the house where a flight of stairs went to the servant s quarters. Alarmed by the gunfire some of Marquin s hired help were on the way down. Husky chaps they flung themselves at the cloaked figure that came their way. Moonlight from a hallway window failed to show the gun The Shadow carried otherwise those servants might have dropped back. They were armed only with improvised weapons: one had a broken chair arm another the chassis of a table lamp. A third carried a metal rod the principal portion of a towel rack that the fellow had wrenched from a bathroom wall. With those assorted cudgels the trio piled upon The Shadow. DOWNSTROKES of their arms were met by warding sweeps as The Shadow whirled among them. His system was a series of side strokes delivered in revolving style. He put enough lift to the process to drive the cudgels away from his head and he prolonged his own strokes to land blows in return. His fists each weighted with an automatic planted solid thuds against the jaws of his assailants. Opponents couldn t see The Shadow s strokes arrive for his arms were like invisible pistons shooting out from the vague darkness of his cloaked body. What the servants didn t see they felt. Two were sprawling by the time Larry entered the rear hall. The third husky took a lurch straight for Larry. They met floundering to the floor they wrestled there for the servant thought he was grappling with The Shadow. The officers thought the same when they saw the floundering figures. They were dragging them apart trying to figure which was Larry when a driving thing of blackness shot straight past them. Reversing his course The Shadow was choosing the front hall again. He met Gaylor on the way straight armed the fellow with a force that sent him clear across the hall through a door that ripped open when he struck it. Margaret away from the side hall heard The Shadow s taunting laugh as he left pursuers behind him. With a glad cry she pointed The Shadow toward the side hall. Before he could take that route The Shadow wheeled to meet another adversary. It was Marquin attired in dressing gown a revolver in his hand. The rubber king had come from a front room the opened door flung a path of light that The Shadow would have to cross to reach the side stairs. Marquin s eyes were sharp his square jaw firmly set. He aimed with cold precision when he saw the invader loom upon him. From the shouts that he heard Marquin was justified in the belief that he was meeting a deadly enemy and he more than any of the previous antagonists was the one who could bring The Shadow s mad whirl to an end. The Shadow was sweeping in to beat Marquin s gun not with a shot of his own but with the hope of slashing the revolver aside. Marquin experienced in meeting danger through the long periods that he had spent in primitive lands used sudden tactics to avoid the drive. In the fashion with which he had once avoided the thrust of a savage spear Marquin sidestepped jerking his gun closer to his body. The Shadow s cross slash missed. Striking the wall he recuperated with a valiant back cut of his other hand. Whether that blow could have warded off Marquin s gun before it fired was a question that was never answered. Before either thing happened Marquin s gun hand was wrenched aside by the firm clutch of small determined hands. Margaret Brye had intervened repaying The Shadow for saving her that time when Larry had fired. Marquin struggled to get his gun free but couldn t manage it in time to aim again. The Shadow was away with Larry and the others coming from the rear he took the front stairs as the sure route to safety. Shots rang from above but all were wide. Pursuers were piling pell mell down the stairs as The Shadow vanished through the open front door. By the time that they had reached there he had gained the patrol car which stood with motor still running. A few seconds later two cops shooting wildly from the porch saw the taillights of their car twinkle beyond the driveway while the fading whine of the high speed second gear replaced the echoes of their gunfire. RETURNING into the house one angry officer put in a call to headquarters while the other began to question Gaylor and Larry. The servant stated that he had heard someone enter the house and creep up to the second floor. Coming down by the back stairs Gaylor had phoned for the police. From there the story belonged to Larry. He told how he had sighted someone in the side hall only to be met by the sweeping attack of another assailant. At that point Roger Marquin interrupted. Miss Brye can tell what happened he told the officers. She was the person in the side hall. She has told me so herself. You were very foolish Larry Marquin turned to rebuke his secretary or else you were too excited. Whoever the man who attacked you he saved Margaret s life. Amazement showed on Larry s long face. He heard Margaret declare that she too had heard sounds in the house that she had been looking along the side hall when Larry had seen her. It was plain that Larry plunging toward the front stairs with The Shadow had not heard Brye s shot for he accepted Margaret s story without question. What happened subsequently decided Marquin was your fault Larry. You forced the unknown man to fight his way out of here. In all the commotion I would have shot him down if Margaret had not shown prompt headwork to prevent me. Larry s face reddened then his confusion ended with a display of sudden temper. He was a burglar wasn t he demanded Larry. Maybe he robbed the place before he stole that patrol car. If he wasn t here for crime how could I have known it Because you should have recognized him put in Margaret hotly. He was The Shadow the person who would have captured that murderer at Grennel s if you hadn t interfered What if he was The Shadow snapped Larry. Maybe he was pulling something crooked that night only nobody found it out. Why was he here can you answer that Perhaps I can returned Margaret. I think that he came here to talk to me about my father. Larry stared a blank look on his face. Marquin displayed immediate interest. Are you sure of that He asked Margaret quietly. Did you see The Shadow before Larry encountered him Yes I did replied the girl realizing that she could build slim facts into a case that would favor The Shadow. He was outside my window hoping perhaps that I would notice him in the moonlight. Perhaps he saw me too for I was looking out. Perhaps the noise he made when he entered was to attract my attention. I wonder mused Marquin. what The Shadow could know about your father. He might be able to explain the explosion declared Margaret warily. Perhaps it wasn t accidental as we supposed. Possibly some enemy was responsible. Marquin shook his head. Dana Brye had no enemies he said. What is more his tone became emphatic we know that those experiments of his were dangerous Much more dangerous Margaret than he ever admitted to you. Nevertheless there is a matter that troubles me: the question of your father s fortune. How much money he possessed is doubtful but there has been no trace of where he placed it. Perhaps Marquin spoke hopefully perhaps The Shadow knows. Marquin s words though speculative went far to overrule Larry s claim that The Shadow could have come to the mansion intent on crime. Larry s notion was further ridiculed when Inspector Joe Cardona arrived from headquarters. On the way here Cardona had found the abandoned police car. When he heard the circumstances under which The Shadow had taken it the ace inspector grunted. What else could he have done demanded Cardona with a lot of crazy guys shooting at him He couldn t stay around and pass out calling cards Anybody that thinks The Shadow goes in for crooked work Joe turned an accusing eye on Larry is nuts I regard the episode as closed decided Marquin. To satisfy everyone however his glance too meant Larry I suggest that you accompany me upstairs inspector while I open my safe and make sure that nothing is gone from it. CARDONA went upstairs with Marquin. Larry alone with Margaret in the living room became suddenly apologetic. I m sorry Margaret he said. Very sorry Margaret ignored the statement. Persistently Larry repeated it at intervals for the next five minutes until the mere monotony of his tone became maddening to Margaret. Sorry for what she snapped. Sorry because you didn t manage to shoot me there in the hall That was a mistake Margaret A horrible mistake. It was dark I couldn t see that it was you. You have a cute way of not noticing faces when you don t want to Larry. Funny how you failed to recognize that murderer at Grennel s. You saw him but nobody else did. Yet you couldn t describe what he looked like. It was too dark in back of Grennel s house. I don t mean that time. Margaret raised her tone. I mean when you sneaked over to the window of Grennel s study. No wonder you lied and said you didn t go there. Maybe persons would have wondered I swear I didn t see his face interrupted Larry. You must believe me Remember too Larry s tone was hoarse that you said I was on the veranda. You re in it as deep as I am Larry s final statement was not a tactful one. Possibly he didn t mean it to sound as pointed as it proved but Margaret was in no mood to make allowances. I lied for you she declared coldly because I thought I loved you. In way of gratitude you accuse me for that lie. That means the end of everything between us Larry Larry began to stiffen then relaxed. Marquin was entering the room smiling as he came. Rubbing his hands cheerily he scarcely noticed the dark expressions on the faces of Margaret and Larry. Everything is shipshape informed Marquin. The safe is untouched I didn t have to go through it thoroughly to learn that it had not been opened. Cheer up Larry He clapped the young man on the back. And you too Margaret Our friend The Shadow is cleared and no one has been hurt. After Inspector Cardona finishes writing his report in my office we can call it a night. Margaret smiled and Marquin seemed pleased. He did not know the thoughts that inspired her expression. The girl was glad that Marquin had not searched the safe more thoroughly. She preferred that he should find no evidence of her father s visit until tomorrow when he could give it more sober thought. Riding back to Manhattan Joe Cardona muttered over the details of the report that he had written. One fact had been established. The Shadow s visit had been to good purpose. But it had the elements of a crimeless mystery a fact that baffled Joe Cardona. It don t make sense mumbled the ace inspector. Or does it Whatever it makes Joe shook his head only The Shadow knows CHAPTER XV. AGAIN THE VINDICATOR IT happened that Joe Cardona had for once attributed too much to The Shadow. The most important facts concerning the episode at Marquin s were known to one man only: Dana Brye. The little that Brye didn t know about he learned the next day when he read the newspapers. The grizzled inventor was living in an excellent hide out a basement dwelling that had a boarded door and a dim weather beaten Chinese laundry sign hanging out front. Brye hadn t rented the place he owned it under another name. Some months ago crates had been moved into the place after the Chinese laundryman s lease had expired. Those boxes had remained unpacked until Brye s arrival the morning after his supposed death at Vreekill. That day Brye had unpacked as a result he was at present living in a room that resembled his Vreekill establishment on a small scale. There was a workshop in one corner its bench covered with bits of mechanism. Another corner formed Brye s kitchen. His cot was in the third corner while a fourth actually held a small light safe that Brye had clamped to the floor with special locks. Like the explosive safe at Vreekill Castle the tiny strong box was one of Brye s own manufacture. As with his former quarters there were two ways out. One was the boarded door which Brye did not intend to use the other a trapdoor that led into a small subcellar. From there Brye had a secret exit out through a window that opened on an alley. All in all he regarded this hide out as one where no one not even The Shadow could find him. The place had one advantage over Vreekill Castle. It had a telephone allowing Brye outside contact without the necessity of a long trip. Brye was very particular about that telephone. He kept it in a little closet at the back of the room and whenever he made a call he stepped inside and closed the closet door. During the day that followed his trip to Marquin s house Brye entered that closet often. It was not until evening however that his face showed a canny smile after he had finished a telephone call. Opening his little safe Brye took out a small valise and laid it on the workbench. A glance at his watch brought a nod of satisfaction. Another look toward the closet Brye nodded again. There would still be time for another call before he left here. The thought brought a chuckle from Brye s smiling lips. Soon he would be leaving this hideout on an important mission one that must be fulfilled tonight. No one would witness Brye s exit from the cellar window. No one not even The Shadow CIRCUMSTANCES made The Shadow s surmise about Brye s hide out unimportant. He was no longer looking for it. Dusk had taken The Shadow to a previous district that he had visited the neighborhood where the apartment buildings of Riverview City raised themselves to lofty heights as if to shake off the squalid streets beneath. The Shadow had taken a new interest in the affairs of Trigger Kobin an interest that demanded his personal attention. The day before Jericho Druke The Shadow s giant African agent who hailed from Harlem had been admitted to Trigger s apartment when Trigger was not there. Jeeper had let him in and Jericho posing as a janitor had roused no suspicion from the Chicago thug. Jericho looked like a janitor in his overalls and he had come on a logical mission. He was bringing fresh electric light bulbs to replace those that had burned out. As in the fabled story of Aladdin there was a catch to Jericho s offer of new lamps for old. One of the bulbs that he inserted in the ceiling with the aid of a ladder and his long reach had a tiny microphone attached. When the ceiling lights were on and Jeeper always kept them burning in the gloomy living room the mike was in operation. Anywhere in the building a person could plug a special receiver into an electric light socket and hear everything that was said in Trigger s apartment. Such a receiver the loud speaking end of a dictograph was in the possession of Burbank The Shadow s contact agent. Day and night from the time when Jericho had supplied the light bulb Burbank had been listening in on everything that happened in the apartment occupied by the crooks. Burbank was located in the other apartment that The Shadow had rented for his agents. Off and on during this new day Trigger had been getting telephone calls from the Vindicator. Burbank had relayed all the details to The Shadow and although the calls merely included Trigger s end of the conversation they had been important enough to command The Shadow s personal attention. Eight o clock was the time when Trigger expected a final call. While he waited for it he indulged in comments for the benefit of Jeeper Quade. Trigger felt that he could talk freely to Jeeper as Slink Rembo the other torpedo imported from the Middle West was not yet back from dinner. I told you the big shot was Brye bragged Trigger. He had something on the bean all right. Whatever it was he settled it last night when he was out at Marquin s. How do you know Brye was out there demanded Jeeper. The newspapers didn t say so. Trigger snorted his contempt. He demanded: Ain t Brye s daughter out there That s good enough reason why he d show up. He s using her as a stooge or I ll miss my bet. So he can pull something on Marquin. The grapevine ain t wise reminded Jeeper referring to the mouth to mouth telegraph system of the underworld. It piped that The Shadow mixed into it at Marquin s. That s all. Sure But the grapevine didn t tell us what The Shadow was there for. He wasn t out there calling on Brye s daughter was he No. The Shadow doesn t fall for dolls not even for blondies. Trigger felt that Jeeper s comment clinched his point. You re right The Shadow don t he affirmed. He d even walk out on a Turkish harem that guy Listen Jeeper: The Shadow was out there looking for Brye. Which means that Brye is the Vindicator I can put two and two together and what s more take em apart The telephone bell provided an emphasis to Trigger s final statement. Reaching for the telephone he said to Jeeper: Ten to one it s the Vindicator Brye to you and me because something s hot and here s where I get the dope. Trigger s end of the telephone call consisted mostly of monosyllables chiefly the word yeah which he uttered with various inflections. When he had hung up Trigger turned to Jeeper. It s what I thought he said. We re going to stage another of the Vindicator jobs like the one out at Grennel s. Only I ain t doing the collecting this trip. I m going to talk to the guy that has to do it. He ll like it after I get through with him. WHEN Trigger sneaked from a dead end street a half hour later he was confident that no one was on his trail. He had two sharp eyed lookouts posted in the darkened thoroughfare to make sure that his way was clear. Those watchers were Jeeper and Slink and both boasted that they had eyes like cameras. Perhaps they were right. However no photographer could have snapped a picture of the gliding shape that followed Trigger through the darkness. Garbed in his black attire The Shadow did more than use darkness as his cover he became a part of it. Riding in a cab that he entered in such a manner that the driver saw his face but vaguely Trigger felt complete satisfaction. The police in his estimate were palookas and that applied to Joe Cardona in particular. As for The Shadow Trigger argued that since the cloaked investigator hadn t dropped in and started battle it meant that The Shadow knew nothing about the apartment in Riverview City. It didn t occur to Trigger that The Shadow had decided to leave him alone on the hope that Trigger would be assigned to just such a mission as the one the Vindicator had ordered for tonight. That at least had occurred to the Vindicator. Trigger was using Jeeper and Slink in a manner that the big shot had ordered. Also on his present journey Trigger adopted some precautions that were not of his own choice. Spying another cab at a gloomy corner near an elevated station Trigger dismissed the one in which he rode and transferred to the other cab. Several blocks north he alighted ascending to an elevated platform he took a train and rode two stations south. Hailing another cab he gave an address taken there he looked about then sneaked through an alleyway to the next street. Crossing over Trigger cut through another passageway that brought him to an avenue. He stopped in front of a small jewelry store stared through the window then entered the doorway. Behind the counter was a meek faced baldish man whose name so Trigger guessed was Tobias Bourne. That name was on the sign in front of the jewelry store and the meekish man answered the description that the Vindicator had given. Trigger edged along the counter looking at cheap jewelry. Bourne followed along the other side as though magnetized by the customer. Trigger was well dressed his sharp features were not unhandsome when he avoided his wolfish smile. He seemed to take a solemn interest in the jewelry: hence Bourne suspected nothing until they reached the end of the counter. There Trigger s hand emerged to poke a gun past the counter end. Prodded in the lower ribs Bourne started to raise his arms but stopped when Trigger growled: Lay off This ain t no stickup. Get in the back room. I want to talk to you THE back room was on the other side of a partition. Opening the door Bourne entered with Trigger close behind. Looking around the place Trigger saw another door which he knew led to the cellar for the Vindicator had mentioned that detail. In another corner was a curtained entrance to a passage. It led to a side door that opened into a little courtyard connecting with the last alley that Trigger had cut through. Trigger introduced himself. When he mentioned his name Bourne jerked upward as if he had experienced an electric shock. The baldish jeweler had heard of Trigger Kobin. He gave another start when Trigger spoke of the Vindicator. We re getting places chuckled Trigger. Here s the whole dope Bourne. The big shot knows all about you. He knows how you fenced those sparklers that Peewee Wendorf brought in from Buffalo. What s more he can prove it Bourne s mouth opened to an egg shape. In scared fashion he ejaculated one word: How Because the Vindicator was smart enough to buy some of em informed Trigger and to keep em. Remember the Jem Jewelry Co. that took eight hundred dollars worth That outfit s phony It didn t even have an office nothing but a letterhead. The Vindicator put that one over on you. All he s got to do is send the stuff he bought up to Buffalo along with your letters to Jem Jewelry. When the bulls get tired looking for a company that nobody ever heard about they ll come around to see you. The frantic look on Bourne s face was exactly what Trigger expected. He pushed the jeweler into a chair then leaned back to look him over. He waited until Bourne began to whine an incoherent plea then remarked casually: There s a way out Bourne. All you ve got to do is play ball the way the big shot wants. Again Bourne s mouth formed the word How You ve heard of Noel Shalley haven t you asked Trigger. Then as Bourne nodded: Well the Vindicator has got him labeled just like he had Grennel and all those other big money boys that he shook down. He s given Shalley the deadline just like he did the rest. Tonight Shalley comes across or else. Only it ain t dough this time it s jewels because Shalley collects them and has plenty. Shalley s coming here see To leave the rocks and you re the go between. Bourne began to understand. Realizing that he could protect himself by doing what the Vindicator wanted he found his squeaky voice to ask: What about the evidence that Shalley will be buying That s the way the Vindicator works isn t it You know a lot approved Trigger in a genial tone. Been reading newspapers haven t you Yeah the Vindicator is selling something like he always does. It s nine o clock now in half an hour a messenger will leave an envelope. That s what you re to hand over to Shalley when he shows up at ten. Only not until Shalley gives you the jewels and shows you the letters that the Vindicator sent him so you can check and make sure they re worth a hundred grand. After that you ll get a call from the Vindicator telling you where to deliver em. But don t get jittery Bourne. I ll be around to see it go through. Looking past the jeweler Trigger studied the curtained doorway then the door that led to the cellar. His nod told that he preferred the cellar entrance. That s where I ll be he decided. Come on Bourne. It s nine o clock. Time for you to close up shop. While Bourne was nervously closing the store Trigger watched him from the connecting door in the partition. His eyes toward the front of the shop Trigger didn t notice the slight stir of the curtains at the back corner of the rear room. An outer door opened noiselessly then closed. The silence of the tiny courtyard was stirred by a strange subdued whisper that trailed mysteriously to the alleyway beyond. The Shadow had heard the Vindicator s plans as voiced by Trigger Kobin. From those The Shadow was forming measures of his own. CHAPTER XVI. THE LAST SHAKEDOWN THE huge clock in Marquin s living room was chiming nine when Margaret Brye looked up from a book her lips set in a determined expression that increased her resemblance to her father. She heard someone stepping in from the hallway and if it would prove to be Larry again she wasn t going to talk to him. This would be the fifth time since dinner that he had come in to stare at her and wait for her to speak. It wasn t Larry however. The arrival was Roger Marquin. Margaret changed her grim look to a smile but Marquin did not return it. His heavy face seemed anxious. Where is Larry he asked. I thought I would find him in the office. He went up there after dinner didn t he Margaret remembered that Marquin had gone out soon after dinner to attend a community meeting. He had said that he would be back in an hour or so unless the meeting proved to be important. Evidently it had not been of much consequence. Yes Larry was in the office assured Margaret but he came down here regularly every fifteen minutes hoping I d talk to him which I wouldn t Marquin rang for Gaylor when the butler arrived he asked him if Larry had gone out. Gaylor replied that he had but that the secretary had mentioned that he would return. That s curious remarked Marquin slowly after the servant had left the room. I can t understand why Larry went so soon even if he does intend to come back. There s no reason why he should return. I thought he would go directly aboard the steamer. The steamer echoed Margaret. Yes. The steamship Anaconda returned Marquin. It sails early in the morning for South America. Larry is going to Brazil. Didn t he tell you Margaret s amazed eyes told Marquin that Larry had made no mention of the voyage. Stroking his wide chin Marquin began a thoughtful nod. I begin to understand it he said. You re the person responsible Margaret though you didn t know it. I gasped Margaret. How You will remember explained Marquin that Larry has had a vacation coming to him for some months. Also that I once suggested that if he went to Brazil and met with my representatives there we could consider the trip half business half holiday and would defray the expenses. Margaret nodded. Larry had often talked about that trip. It was to be their honeymoon that was why he had postponed it. Counting upon his marriage to Margaret Larry had intended to take her along. Despite herself the girl found her eyes tear brimmed. Her voice choked when she said: Larry didn t tell me anything about... about this vacation. Maybe... maybe that was why he kept coming in here hoping I d say something. It probably was returned Marquin sympathetically. It troubled me this morning when Larry suddenly said he wanted to take that trip. He knew that the Anaconda was due to sail and said this was his opportunity. I told him to think it over which he did. When he left his desk just before dinner he said that his mind was made up. He was leaving tonight. Margaret s tears became real. In one surge of emotion she realized that she did care for Larry more than she would ordinarily have believed. Marquin sat beside the girl spoke soothingly as he patted her quivering shoulder. Larry is returning because of you Marquin told her. He wouldn t leave without saying good by. It s all for the best Margaret. You two have seen each other too much lately under circumstances that produced a strain. You can both begin all over when he returns a month from now. Gradually the girl s sobs lessened. Marquin added further reassurance: Don t forget that this is Larry s last night in New York. He probably had some matters that needed attention. That is why he decided to go into town. THERE was considerable truth in Marquin s surmise. At that moment Larry Chandler was thinking of a very important matter. Riding in a taxi he was holding a long envelope in his hands while he watched from the window looking for a telegraph office that he knew would be open. He saw the office. Telling the driver to stop Larry alighted entered the office. He handed the envelope to a clerk gave explicit instructions: For immediate delivery The clerk nodded he beckoned to a gum chewing messenger boy. While Larry was receiving his change he watched the messenger go out the door studying the typewritten address on the envelope. Much though he liked to dally the messenger knew he could not linger long on this trip. He had only a dozen blocks to go and the clerk would check to see that he was back in half an hour. That envelope was addressed to Tobias Bourne it bore the street number of the jeweler s little shop. Glancing at the clock in the telegraph office Larry observed that it was just quarter past nine. That allowed the right amount of time for the envelope to reach Bourne. It left Larry exactly one hour at which time he intended to return to this same office. I expect an answer he told the clerk. It will be a package that will arrive at quarter past ten. Soon enough returned the clerk. We don t close until eleven. Larry strolled from the office and turned in the direction of Times Square. The arrangements gave him just enough time to watch an hour s show in one of the news reel theaters. SOME blocks from the lighted area of Times Square a shrouded figure stood in the darkness beside an old fashioned brownstone mansion the most pretentious edifice on its street. This was one of those gloomy forgotten sections that reminded old timers of Manhattan as it had been in the gay 90s. The Shadow was not concerned however with memories of the past. He was thinking of the present and the immediate future. The brownstone house was the home of Noel Shalley noted jewel collector and its location was perfectly suited to The Shadow s vigil. Along a darkened street like this one The Shadow could merge unseen into any of a dozen niches. There were few lights in Shalley s house but The Shadow knew that the collector was at home. He had seen Shalley draw a window blind only ten minutes ago which was luck for The Shadow had arrived only a short while before that. There was no mistaking Noel Shalley. He was a tall stoop shouldered man who kept to the tradition of the 90s by wearing a bushy beard. The beard was quite conspicuous for it was a reddish brown but it identified Shalley on sight which rather pleased him for he was a man of much self importance. Besides Shalley s father and grandfather had worn beards like it and that was enough for Shalley. He had traveled the world over always with the beard accompanying him. People remembered him because of his adornment and except during one trip to London at a time when street gamins delighted in shouting Beaver at anyone who wore a beard Shalley had never regretted his taste for whiskers. While The Shadow s eyes were steady on the upper windows his ears caught a sound below. Cautious footsteps were coming along a passage that led from a side door. That door had been locked when The Shadow tried it. Possibly the man was Shalley but The Shadow doubted it. He let the man turn the other way and continue along the street. There was one place that the departer could not pass without being observed: a spot where a bright light was glowing from an open vestibule while a street lamp gleamed from the curb directly in front of that particular house. The man came into the light darted quick looks right and left as he increased his pace. Before he had reached the farther darkness which made a short stretch to the corner The Shadow caught a full view of the fellow s face. It wasn t bearded. The man was clean shaven and his countenance was recognizable instantly even at a range of nearly forty yards. The profile with its straight forehead even nose and strong chin was that of Dana Brye s A secret visitor to Shalley s home Brye was evidently pleased with what he had accomplished for The Shadow could detect his usual cunning look. When Brye was gone The Shadow edged toward the passage that led to Shalley s side door intending to make an entry of his own. Brye s visit threw a new angle on the case. There were always consequences when Brye slipped in and out of places as he had at Vreekill Castle and at Marquin s mansion. No longer watching Marquin s The Shadow knew that Brye could have other trips there but he hadn t expected to see the missing inventor at Shalley s house. This might mean that Noel Shalley would not leave for Bourne s jewelry shop. It was possible that Brye s visit had made such a trip unnecessary. Perhaps there were factors in the Vindicator s game that The Shadow had not discovered. His own plans fully prepared The Shadow was faced by a last minute situation that threatened to turn them all away. He was half regretting that he passed up the present opportunity to overtake Dana Brye when a new occurrence came one that immediately put matters back in line. FROM the entrance to the side passage The Shadow heard a sound from Shalley s front door. He edged outward in time to see a man step from the doorway and reach back to close the door. Against the momentary light from the inner hall The Shadow saw the bearded face of Noel Shalley. There was no mistaking that profile which Shalley regarded as aristocratic like his beard. By the time that Shalley had locked the door and started down the steps The Shadow had crossed the street and merged entirely with darkness. Shalley stopped at the bottom of the steps looked in the very direction that The Shadow had taken but saw only the dim lights of a parked cab. Stepping toward a street lamp Shalley called Taxi in a booming voice and signaled with his arm. The cab came to life. Swinging across the street the driver opened the door. Noel Shalley stepped into the cab giving Bourne s address as he pulled the door shut. The bearded man was on his way to pay tribute to the Vindicator. From that moment onward many important events were to be shaped by the hand of The Shadow CHAPTER XVII. DEATH LEAVES A TRAIL TWO men faced each other across a back room table. On one side the bearded face of Noel Shalley showed a contemptuous glare from the other the meekish countenance of Tobias Bourne peered with a forced grin. Bourne didn t like his present assignment but his position was mild compared to Shalley s. By playing ball in accordance with Trigger s instructions Bourne had found the task much easier than he thought. At half past nine he had answered a banging at the front door of his shop to receive an envelope from a messenger. At ten o clock there had been a knock at the rear door from the courtyard. There Bourne had admitted Shalley. Their business was coming to a rapid completion. On the table lay letters from the Vindicator which had been sent to Shalley. While Bourne was reading them in squinty fashion he noted that Shalley was reaching in his pocket. Bourne was nervous for a moment thinking in terms of a gun but all that Shalley produced was a chamois bag that he let fall with a thump. Opening the bag with hurried bands Bourne began to appraise the jewels that it contained. There were emeralds rubies sapphires all flawless stones as Bourne viewed them through his glass. The jeweler gave an approving nod. They are worth more than a hundred thousand dollars he asserted raising his tone loud enough to be heard by Trigger behind the cellar door. Far more Mr. Shalley. Why not came Shalley s rumble. I want no more trouble from the Vindicator whoever he may be. Come Bourne Let me have those papers that he promised. Bourne produced them. He saw Shalley s eyes gleam as brightly as the jewels that lay beneath the single lamp. Unlike other victims of the Vindicator Shalley had not expected papers that he intended to destroy. These were documents that the bearded man needed for future protection. One was a death certificate that bore the name of Lionel Durman another a scrawled note evidently a dying confession that bore the same man s signature. The third was a bill of sale made out to Shalley and receipted by Durman. It listed rubies valued at eighty five thousand rupees. Durman was the rajah s secretary muttered Shalley. He stole those gems though I didn t know it. To protect himself he later stole this receipt which he had given me when I bought the gems in good faith. So he confessed it Shalley was eyeing the scrawled paper. Probably to crooks like himself who were torturing him to get the gems he no longer had or the money that he had squandered. I knew that Durman was dead but that didn t help me. Had the rubies been traced to me Shalley s fist thumped the table I could never prove that I had not been part to a criminal transaction I have wanted this missing receipt for years. The confession of course supported it. The fact that Durman is dead he added the death certificate to the other papers relieves me of all worry that I shall ever meet the cad again. Bourne saw the papers go into Shalley s pocket watched the bearded man lean back in satisfied relief. The jeweler poured the gems into the chamois bag and placed the latter in a small square box. He began to wrap the box into a package noting by darted glances that Shalley s expression was becoming rueful. A buzz sounded near Bourne s chair. It was the telephone bell which Trigger had fixed so it would not make too much noise. Bourne answered the call held a brief conversation then glanced at his watch. Quarter past ten he said. I am late but I didn t know his tone was pathetic just where I was to go. You re to remain here Mr. Shalley for exactly half an hour while I take this package to BOURNE cut himself short. He saw a gun muzzle poking from the cellar door and realized that he was not supposed to confide in Shalley. The jeweler hastily licked his lips. Where I go is my own business he declared. Mine and the Vindicator s. I am not coming back so do not wait for me Mr. Shalley. Remember: a half hour and during that time you are to call no one on the telephone. Bourne went out by the rear door taking the package with him. Hardly had the jeweler gone before Shalley looked warily about the little room. Trigger s gun had moved from sight. After a few minutes Shalley shifted over to Bourne s chair and picked up the telephone. Calling police headquarters he asked for Inspector Cardona. Learning that Joe was not there the bearded man announced: My name is Noel Shalley. I have just paid a large sum in jewels to the Vindicator. I can describe those gems so that they can be traced. What is more I can tell you who the Vindicator is. His name is Shalley cut off short. He was on his feet the telephone lowered in his hand. The cellar door had opened. Trigger Kobin was approaching with a leveled revolver. Lay off rasped Trigger. I m pinch hitting for the big shot tonight. I m here to give what he gives to guys that know too much As Trigger finished the announcement Shalley flung the telephone. Its cord was long for Bourne used the telephone in both the shop and the rear room. Trigger dodged the unexpected missile shooting wildly as he ducked. Diving in the opposite direction Shalley grabbed the lamp cord and tugged it. The instant darkness was marred only by the jabs of Trigger s gun. Then came spurts from another weapon. Shalley had a gun too as Bourne had suspected. Amid the incessant roar Shalley must have dropped for his final gun spurt came from the floor just as Trigger knifed another flaming stab in his direction. There was the clank of a gun striking the floor then a fading groan. Gurgling sounds came from the front of the jewelry shop. Men were pounding at the outer door. In that room of death a flashlight glimmered. A man was working in the dark above a body. Finally there was the crinkle of paper as the gleam turned upon a bearded face that lay stiff in death. Footsteps reached the rear door just as the front broke through. Arriving in the back room two patrolmen found no trace of Trigger Kobin. Instead they discovered the body of a dead bearded man who by identification cards in his wallet was promptly identified as Noel Shalley. But the officers found no money in the wallet. Shalley s cash was gone along with the documents that had come from the Vindicator. The fact that the dead man lay penniless made the officers suppose that he had died resisting an ordinary robbery. Using Bourne s telephone they tried to get in touch with Joe Cardona but failed. Too bad one said that the ace inspector was not available to view this scene of crime. ODDLY Joe Cardona had been very close to Bourne s jewelry store but had left a short while before the shooting began. The police inspector was following a tip off that he believed was from The Shadow. Near the alley that allowed a rear exit from Bourne s place of business Cardona had picked up the meek faced jeweler s trail. At this moment he was watching Bourne enter a telegraph office near Times Square. Through the window Cardona saw the jeweler leave a package then depart. Considering the package more important than Bourne Cardona waited. A man came briskly along the street. When he entered the telegraph office Cardona recognized the fellow. He remembered Larry Chandler very well. With all the fuss that Larry had kicked up out there at Marquin s mansion he wasn t the sort of chap to be easily forgotten. When Larry came out again he was carrying the package that Bourne had left. There were plenty of cabs at hand and the young man stepped into one. As soon as Larry s taxi had started Cardona jumped into the one behind. Flashing his badge he gruffed the instruction: Follow that cab It wasn t long before Cardona guessed exactly where the trip would end. The cabs crossed the East River followed the traffic of a boulevard and swung into a paved roadway that Cardona recognized as the straight route to Marquin s home. Figuring that Larry might notice that he was being trailed Cardona told his own driver to ease the speed. By the time the trailing cab rolled into sight of the mansion Larry s taxi was pulling from the driveway having dropped its passenger at the door. Gaylor answered when Cardona rang the doorbell. The inspector asked sharply if Larry had entered Gaylor nodded. Mr. Chandler went to his room said the butler. Do you wish to see him Inspector Yeah. Right away Show me the room. Gaylor led the way with Cardona telling him to hurry. By the time the servant pointed out the closed door of Larry s room the police inspector had made a lot of noise without realizing it. Another door opened Margaret Brye stepped in sight. She hadn t heard Larry enter she gave a surprised gasp when she recognized Cardona. Marquin appeared from his offices. The outer door was ajar and he too had noticed the commotion. Like Margaret Marquin stared as an astonished witness when Joe yanked open the door of Larry s room and entered with a drawn gun. There was a sharp exclamation from the inner corner where Larry was packing a suitcase. Without waiting for Cardona s challenge Larry dropped the package that had come from Bourne and snatched up a revolver that lay in the suitcase. Before he could get a grip on the weapon Cardona lunged at him. Joe always preferred a live prisoner to a dead one and he was glad very shortly that he hadn t been quick with his trigger. For Larry s nerve faltered when he recognized the swarthy police inspector. Battered by Cardona s drive the secretary collapsed in the corner his gun gone from his hand. By way of precaution Cardona clamped handcuffs on Larry s wrists then pocketed the secretary s gun. That done Joe turned to the suitcase. OPENING Bourne s package Cardona found the chamois bag he gave a low whistle when he poured out its sparkling contents. Cardona didn t know where those gems had originally come from but he could guess that they weren t the property of a cheap jeweler like Bourne. Handing the gems to Marquin Cardona dragged Larry to his feet and demanded the facts. Larry merely returned a sudden stare. From the way he acted Cardona decided he was trying to appear bewildered but that didn t go with Joe. Before questioning Larry further the ace decided to have a look in the packed suitcase. There Cardona found a heavy oblong package. Ripping off the wrapping paper he gripped a metal box. It was locked but the fastening gave when Cardona hammered it with his revolver butt. The lid of the box popped open and Cardona was looking at piles of green currency in bundles that totaled one hundred thousand dollars. The amount the high denominations the numbers of the bills matching a memorandum in Cardona s pocket were proof that the ace inspector had struck a long sought find. To Larry Cardona rasped a denunciation that held the other listeners rigid. This was the cash that Thomas Grennel handed over announced the detective ace. It pins more than blackmail on you Chandler. It tags you for a murder rap You re the crook that calls himself the Vindicator Larry s hoarse denials sounded puny. Cardona regarded them as meaningless chatter. This was one time when Joe could not be guessing wrong not at the end of a trail like the one that he had just followed. That trail resulting in the recovery of stolen wealth had been provided by The Shadow CHAPTER XVIII. SHIFTED EVIDENCE CARDONA S next task was to grill the prisoner. As a setting for that process he chose Marquin s inner office where he placed Larry under a strong light. With Marquin and Margaret as witnesses to the quiz Cardona opened fire. What about Grennel he demanded. Who killed him You re the guy that knows Larry shook his head. It wasn t Trigger Kobin snapped Cardona. You can t shove the job on him. It was somebody out there on the lawn. Some fellow that you planted there Say Cardona s eyes were hard. They caught the signs of a nervous twitch on Larry s face. Shoving his chin close to the prisoner s Cardona played his hunch: You could have fired that shot yourself Out of the confusion Larry found his voice. His eyes met Margaret s. Away from the light her face was only a pale blur. Meeting Cardona s gaze again Larry answered the challenge. I couldn t have killed Grennel he argued. I wasn t close enough to the window. I couldn t have done it I tell you A voice intervened. It was Marquin s calm but emphatic in its very ease of tone. Let me ask a question suggested Marquin. Then as Cardona nodded willingness the rubber king turned to Margaret: I must question you not Larry. The other night after The Shadow had gone I overheard you arguing with Larry. Didn t the discussion concern the testimony that you gave after the crime at Grennel s Margaret set her lips firmly. She moved closer to the light boldly facing her questioner. I know that you love Larry added Marquin soberly. You proved that tonight. But I do not feel that I am asking too much when I request you to state the simple truth. There are times Margaret when justice must be served. The girl was still determined not to speak but Marquin s words had taken effect upon another listener. The statement that Margaret had proven her love for him brought a new expression to the face of Larry Chandler. He recognized that the girl must have talked to Marquin some time during the evening and as Larry watched Margaret s reaction he knew from her face that her love was a fact. Before Margaret could be questioned further Larry took the issue as his own. I can answer the question he announced firmly. I lied about what happened at Grennel s. I had left the veranda before the shot was fired. I Larry Margaret s interjection was one of anguish. The handcuffed man hesitated then showed his own determination. Unflinchingly he continued: By my own statements I forced Margaret to testify that I was with her at the time. I was a coward that was all. But only because my story was an honest one. I didn t want to weaken it. Larry looked toward Margaret and received his reward. He had declared the facts at a time when such a step could ruin him. He had done so with the hope of clearing Margaret from any vestige of blame. To the girl that meant that Larry had proven his love as he could have in no other way. Though her face was sad Margaret smiled. Her conflict of emotions revealed her true self brought her closer to Larry than on the night many months ago when she had accepted his proposal of marriage. During those months Larry had been troubled by the increasing dread that Margaret s willingness for marriage had been inspired solely through loneliness. All such doubt was dispelled in this present crisis. It was Larry s task to prove himself innocent of crime that he might collect the prize he saw before him. Boldly he turned to Cardona and put his case in direct fashion. I SAW the murderer that night at Grennel s Larry affirmed but did not recognize him. You will recall that I did not recognize Margaret Miss Brye in the hallway of this house on the night when The Shadow came here. Nor did I recognize you at first inspector when you entered my room. My eyes are not as sharp sighted as they should be. I use these he drew a pair of glasses from his pocket with his handcuffed hands when I work at my desk. That accounts for certain of my shortcomings. But I am innocent of any crime and feel that I can answer all questions to your satisfaction. Cardona liked Larry s way of putting it not because he believed the secretary innocent but because he found it easy to meet direct statements with replies of the same sort. Cardona liked to bat them back and forth as he sometimes described it. All right countered the inspector. If you didn t murder Grennel how did you happen to get his cash Perhaps you ll tell me Cardona s tone was dry that somebody put it in your suitcase. Somebody did returned Larry. I m that person. Tonight after dinner I found the locked box on my desk with a note from Mr. Marquin instructing me to take it to Brazil. Marquin supplied an ejaculation: A note From me Yes this note replied Larry. It also told me he was bringing a folded paper from his pocket to send an envelope to a jeweler named Bourne by messenger. The envelope was with the box and I was to receive a package from Bourne in return. The package with the jewels put in Cardona. What were you to do with it Take it to Brazil too Larry nodded. He had handed the note to Marquin who was reading it. Puzzlement came over Marquin s features. The note says all that he declared. But I didn t write it. I notice too that it instructs Larry to hold box and package intact until receipt of instructions by cable. Marquin passed the note to Cardona who saw that it was typewritten with the initials R. M. at the finish. With a grunt Cardona commented: Anybody could have knocked out this note on one of the typewriters around here. Mr. Marquin always types his memos argued Larry. I naturally supposed that this was one from him. Except for the initials reminded Marquin. I never add them to the notes I leave you Larry. I only include them on memos that go elsewhere. Larry s lips went tight. To Margaret that signified that he was merely annoyed because he hadn t noticed something unusual about the note when he found it. To Cardona it meant that Larry had made a much more serious slip. The game s up Chandler asserted Cardona bluntly. You typed this note yourself as an alibi. I m taking you to headquarters or rather I m sending you there as soon as I can get the men to take you. CARDONA reached for the telephone made a call. Two minutes later he was talking with some show of excitement. He slammed the telephone on its stand and announced: There s been another murder The victim is a man named Noel Shalley. His body was found at Bourne s. These jewels are his. It s all clear Chandler. You re the Vindicator but you ve staged your last shakedown Larry was still staring at the incriminating note that he had so laboriously extracted from his pocket because of the handcuffs that he wore. He turned to Marquin said hopelessly: I m sorry sir. I wasn t trying to accuse you I can t believe that interrupted Marquin tartly. No one other than yourself could have typed that note Larry. You have found the man you were after inspector. I suggest that you take him to the cell where he belongs. Wait Margaret spoke the interruption. She had risen her eyes were flashing. Looking from Marquin to Cardona she pointed toward the box that contained Grennel s money. I have seen that box before the girl declared. Here in a place where Larry could not possibly have found it If you saw it objected Marquin Larry could have seen it. No. I saw it in your safe. You are the only person who knows the combination Marquin looked startled. His lips moved wordlessly but when he found his voice his statement was deliberate. If you saw the box in there Marquin was pointing to the safe someone else must have learned the combination. I never opened the safe when you or anyone else was in this office. The man who opened the safe was my father. Your father Marquin was totally amazed. When The night that The Shadow was here. But your father he was dead three days before Torn between her love for Larry and the promise that she had made to her father Margaret had come to an absolute decision. It was prompted by Marquin s earlier statement that justice must be served. That factor threw the balance for despite her love for Larry Margaret had considered her promise binding. She had lied for Larry once. Tonight she could have lied for her father. One or the other had to be sacrificed and the girl was torn by the dilemma. Nevertheless all honesty and fairness demanded that the guilty man be denounced the innocent person relieved of all suspicion. My father is not dead spoke Margaret. Her own voice seemed very far away. He came here the night that I have mentioned. He opened the safe by some method of his own. He showed me the box and the money in it. He said that he was leaving it for me. What he could do once he could have done again. He left the money here deep in the safe where Mr. Marquin would not find it. But he came here again today to reclaim it. No the girl shook her head as Cardona started an interruption I did not see him today but I am sure that he was here. Because only he could have brought the box from the safe and left it with a false note for Larry. There was every opportunity for him to do so while we were at dinner. Had he come a trifle earlier he would have overheard Larry telling Mr. Marquin that he had decided to take the trip to Brazil. Her denunciation finished Margaret sat down in a daze. Cardona was pummeling her with questions that she didn t seem to hear. She was looking at Larry his head was bowed. He knew the greatness of Margaret s sacrifice. Marquin too was solemn. The only doubter in the room was Joe Cardona. Getting no answers to his questions the inspector hammered the desk and voiced a loud objection. You can t get away with that story Miss Brye Your father is dead that s why you re shoving the blame on him You re in love with Chandler you ve admitted it and you re trying to save him It s easy enough to claim that your father murdered Grennel and Shalley. But Cardona s fist stopped tight on the desk. His eyes stared past the lamplight. Too amazed to speak or move he sat there rigid a frozen gaze on his face that made the others turn. Cardona had recognized the man who had stepped into the room so did they as the arrival reached the glare of the lamplight. It was Dana Brye. His face had lost its craftiness. His features were drawn weary and the expression very pale. He looked the part of a man who had returned to life after a sojourn in the grave. His voice however was firm. Like his daughter Dana Brye had come to a decision. Facing the silent staring group he announced: I am the Vindicator CHAPTER XIX. BACK FROM DEATH ALTHOUGH Dana Brye produced amazement by his unexpected entrance no one was startled at the admission he made. From what Margaret had testified it was evident that Dana Brye if actually alive would logically be the Vindicator. Any man who could mysteriously vanish from Vreekill Castle leaving another body in his place was obviously a master of hidden ways. His ability too at moving in and out of Marquin s home without detection pointed to skill at the very measure which had made the Vindicator a criminal of evil fame. Brye s operations with Marquin s safe were merely further evidence of crooked ability and they came within the field of reason not only because of Margaret s testimony but because every listener knew that the safe in question was one of Brye s own manufacture. If anyone could find a way to open the combination it would be Dana Brye the man who had devised the mechanism. The question was: Why had Brye revealed himself Margaret s disclosure of her father s secret was not sufficient reason. Brye still could have kept out of sight. There was a deeper answer and Margaret believed that she could give it if she chose. Brye a lurking witness to this scene had watched his daughter s loyalty swing from himself to Larry Chandler. Such disappointment might not have influenced him to declare himself a criminal the real rub was that circumstances some unforeseen by Brye had thrown crime s burden on Larry and thereby predicted a permanent unhappiness for Margaret. Behind the fixed expression on Brye s face Margaret could sense emotion. No matter how crooked he might be Brye was still her father and recognized his paternal obligation beyond all else. Margaret knew that he had sacrificed himself for her and the thought swept her with remorse. Flinging her arms around Brye s shoulders the girl laid her blond curls against his chin and sobbed. Every weeping gasp that left her lips was throbbed there from her heart. Her anguish held the witnesses silent. No move was made toward Brye. Rigid as a figure of stone the grizzled inventor made no effort to comfort his daughter. His sacrifice was a stolid one as cold upon the surface as the merciless deeds of the Vindicator. When Brye finally moved an arm he did not let it rest on Margaret s shoulders. Instead he pointed to Larry with the words: Release him. Cardona unlocked the handcuffs and dangled them loosely in readiness for Brye. His hands finding Margaret s shoulders Brye gently eased his daughter from him. As she looked up her brimming eyes and tear streaked face gifted with a loveliness that only her heart could have produced Brye s grip tightened. The muscles of his hands and forearms showed their strength as he turned the girl toward Larry. Go to him. Brye s tone though level carried no reproach. He is the man you love Margaret hesitated then saw that Larry s arms were waiting. As she reached them and heard her lover s soothing voice she realized that this ordeal had forever ended her doubts. She belonged to Larry as she should have known long ago. Whatever her father s fate both she and Larry would always remember that their happiness in days to come would be the legacy of Dana Brye. That thought to them would clear the stigma of her father s name. Whatever his misdeeds Dana Brye had made amends. YOU knew that it was father the girl sobbed to Larry. You recognized him didn t you the night that he killed Grennel. But you wouldn t tell because of me I did not recognize him interposed Larry his tone very solemn. I told you the whole truth Margaret. Had I seen his face I would have told you but no one else. It would have been betrayal to accuse your father without your sanction. Cardona had clamped the handcuffs on Brye s extended wrists. Marquin approaching his face morose said simply: I m sorry Dana. Brye s only answer was a smile. He was looking toward Larry and Margaret. When he spoke Brye looked toward neither Marquin nor Cardona. Eyes still upon the lovers he declared: Anyone who would destroy such happiness should die. I suppose that applies to me. May it apply to all others whose deeds might bring such harm. Cardona wasn t in a mood for parables. Though his gruff voice was a trifle husky Joe began to demand facts. He wanted Brye s full confession and this was the time to get it while the prisoner was in a soft mood. But Brye still watching Larry and Margaret remained heedless of Cardona s questions. You shoved Grennel s money into Marquin s safe summed Cardona. A smart place to put it if you hid it deep but you couldn t leave it there forever. You were waiting until the Shalley job was ripe. It was all set today. So you came here to pick up the dough. You were going to take it along gather in the jewels that Bourne delivered and keep right on traveling. But when you learned that Chandler was going to Brazil you had an idea. Why not let Chandler lug the swag That s the idea that hit you. So you stuck the tin cash box right there on Chandler s desk along with the envelope that was to go to Bourne for him to hand to Shalley. You typed a phony note with Marquin s initials and everything was fixed. Cardona might as well have been inside Marquin s big safe itself shouting at the surrounding walls. None of his words had dented Brye s smiling calm. You made a bad slip jabbed Cardona. You thought it was all off between Chandler and your daughter. If something went sour and Chandler never got started for Brazil where you were going to cable him in Marquin s name and have him send the swag he d at least be the guy to take the rap. But she loved him after all. It was brutal that sort of talk and Cardona knew it. But the Vindicator s murders had been a hundredfold more brutal than any words could be. Cardona didn t intend to stop until he forced Brye into giving details of those very crimes. They look very sweet declared the inspector sarcastically as he turned to stare at Larry and Margaret. But I can spoil that picture Brye. Suppose I don t take your say so that you re the Vindicator until you ve proven it. That means I ll have to take Chandler along too. You can t It was Margaret who gave the challenge. You haven t a bit of evidence against him. My father has taken the blame for all those crimes. You ve just built your own case against him. What more do you require Still wearing his benign smile Brye turned to Cardona to speak at last: She is quite right inspector. If you take me with you I shall be glad to tell you more. By the way there are some business affairs that I would like to settle. Would you Roger he turned to Marquin mind coming in to the city alone a little later I ll be there Dana promised Marquin. You may depend upon me. They were walking toward the door Cardona and Brye the inspector making suggestions that he considered subtle. You ll feel better Brye Joe was saying when you ve got all this off your chest. I know that you re feeling sorry sorry for your crimes Not for my crimes interposed Brye dryly pausing just short of the doorway. For my mistakes Call them what you want conceded Cardona. Crimes or mistakes they can t be changed once they re done. Some mistakes can be amended. Murder can t. When a guy s dead he never comes back. A dry smile flickered on Brye s lips. His tongue seemed to lick it away so that he could make the solemn declaration: I was dead yet I returned. If others only could You mean Grennel and Shalley Yes both. But of the two the one that I particularly mean is Noel Shalley. TIRED of Brye s cryptic remarks Cardona decided to cut all conversation until they were outside. He was due for another interruption however from a different source. The telephone bell had begun to ring Marquin answering the call beckoned from behind his desk. For you inspector. Hooking one arm under Brye s Cardona hauled the prisoner back to the desk with him. But as he stood there talking into the telephone Cardona s grip relaxed. So did the hand that held the telephone. It was only by a sudden grab that Joe caught the instrument as it was toppling from his hand. It s from headquarters announced Cardona his voice peculiarly awed. They ve just been talking to the morgue. It wasn t Shalley who was killed at Bourne s. The beard fooled them until it came loose. They ve found out who the dead man is Joe paused to take another breath. Trigger Kobin The hush that gripped the persons in that inner room was broken by a singular whisper that stirred from Marquin s darkened outer office. A vague strange whisper scarcely audible: almost an echo rising from that past night when The Shadow s presence had been known in this house. Yet with its fade that sibilant token of repressed mirth proved its reality. It was no memory from the past. It was a prelude to the future: the cue for another man to appear upon the scene as strangely as had Dana Brye. In through the doorway stepped the answer to Brye s recent wish: a man whose bearded face and high aristocratic nose went with the dignity of his steady gazing eyes. Behind him blackness seemed to stir. Other eyes burning from the gloom gave evidence of a sponsor who had remained behind the scenes. None saw that strange figure in the background. Their gaze was only on the bearded man another of death s reputed victims whose fate like Brye s had been annulled. That man produced from the past was the last of the Vindicator s victims. Noel Shalley had been brought here by The Shadow CHAPTER XX. CRIME S TRUE TALE IT seemed a greeting from one dead man to another when Dana Brye sprang forward to meet Noel Shalley. His manacled hands extended Brye received the bearded man s warm clasp. Joe Cardona suddenly aroused thought that Brye had started to attack Shalley and drew a revolver to prevent trouble. But the inspector s gun hand lowered when he saw to his complete bafflement that the two were friends. I have brought the letters Brye announced Shalley. The ones that you left at my house this afternoon. With a gesture of his hands Brye indicated Cardona. Shalley passed the letters to the police inspector who stared at them then spread them in front of Marquin who had come to the desk beside him. Larry and Margaret intrigued by this surprise stared over the intervening shoulders to read the letters also. From the Vindicator exclaimed Cardona. Addressed to Dana Brye Demanding a hundred thousand dollars for certain letters That I wrote to Red Krigley added Brye with a pleased chuckle. The head of the Krigley mob. Louis Jolden you ve heard of him was working with me at the time. I didn t know that Krigley was a crook that my letters stating the weaknesses in various makes of safes were being used by his mob. Brye s statement impressed Cardona. The inventor was appearing in a new light as a victim of the type of blackmail in which the Vindicator had specialized. Questions were coming from others Marquin Margaret Larry but Cardona silenced them. Let s hear some more Mr. Brye. My time limit was set declared Brye. The money that the Vindicator demanded was almost my entire fortune. So I put the money in a basement hideaway that I established here in New York and went to Vreekill Castle. I was determined that I would find some way to beat the Vindicator s game. He knew it. He set men to watch me. But Vreekill Castle had a secret outlet by way of the river. I saw how I could turn those watchers to my advantage. If the castle which had become worthless should be destroyed word would go to the Vindicator that I had died. For the first time Brye decided to omit one detail from his new and accurate story. The matter of Ross Bland he decided was one that could wait for further explanation. Bland s visit it happened had precipitated his plans but had not changed them. I set off time bombs that I had planted throughout Vreekill Castle continued Brye. The Vindicator was free to choose his own answer regarding my supposed death. Accident or suicide it did not matter which he believed. I was beyond his reach so long as I remained dead. Shalley thought that Brye had finished. The bearded man supplied an interlude of his own. But I was menaced exclaimed Shalley. Brye learned it knew that my deadline was today. He kept calling me all afternoon. When I finally returned home and talked to him by telephone I invited him to come to my house. When Brye arrived he showed me the letters that he had received from the Vindicator. He left them with me and suggested that I go through with my own payment of tribute that my jewels like Grennel s money would prove the Vindicator s guilt when found in his possession. I started out to Bourne s place Shalley turned to Brye feeling that he especially would be interested in what followed but something happened to change my plans. SHALLEY paused. Brye eager to hear the story did not interrupt with further details that concerned himself. Listeners watched Shalley stroke his reddish beard. He was coming to a portion of the story as incredible as anything that had yet been related yet so definite in Shalley s memory that he finally recited it as the simplest of facts. In the cab declared Shalley his tone half awed I saw myself I mean that literally I was looking at a man already in the cab who might have been my own reflection True the disguise was a simple matter again Shalley stroked his beard but the illusion was perfect. The man who might have been myself was The Shadow. He talked to me quite as confidentially as Brye had. He won my trust I told him all that I knew. I finally agreed to wait in the cab while he took the jewels into Bourne s. The rest flashed instantly to Joe Cardona. The ace could picture that back room as plainly as if he had been there. Bourne and Shalley the latter actually The Shadow completing the transactions that the Vindicator had demanded. Bourne s departure the phone call to headquarters by the pretended Shalley. Then Trigger Kobin. There had been battle Cardona knew. Swift shots in the darkness wherein Trigger the murderer had found a foeman far superior to any that he suspected. The Shadow by one of his clever feints had jabbed home the one shot that counted: a bullet to Trigger s heart. He had been forced to that eventuality. With men beating at the front door there had been no time to remove Trigger s body. Yet it was imperative that the Vindicator wherever he might be should not learn of Trigger s death until The Shadow could complete other moves. But it would not matter if the Vindicator thought that Shalley had died. There in that back room at Bourne s The Shadow had peeled away his own disguise had placed the make up beard and all upon the dead face of Trigger Kobin With the important papers in his own possession The Shadow had placed a wallet bearing cards identifying Shalley in Trigger s pocket. The entering police had found only the body and had taken it for Shalley s. For The Shadow by that time had gone It was Dana Brye who offered the next comment. An admirable arrangement Shalley approved Brye. Unfortunately when I arrived here I heard that you had been murdered. Knowing that my story would never stand without your support I was forced to sacrifice myself to save another innocent man. Brye had stepped to Marquin s safe. Despite his handcuffs he turned the combination and swung the big door wide. That box on the desk he said the one containing Grennel s money was actually in this safe the night I came. So was this box with a quick dip into the safe he brought out another box that Margaret remembered which contains the documents that the Vindicator kept for blackmail. In one envelope I found my letters to Krigley and removed them. In another I found papers relating to Shalley the victim next on the list. That is why I went to Shalley to enlist his aid that the law would find new evidence with the old and have a living witness to testify against A SHARP RASPED command swung everyone about to face a revolver held by Roger Marquin. No longer did Marquin need his oily mask nor did he care that the truth was known regarding the source of his wealth. I am the Vindicator he announced his tone a rumbly snarl. I typed that note to Larry adding the unneeded initials so I could disclaim it if I chose. Had he reached Brazil I would have cabled him where to send the packages. If caught he would have been branded as the Vindicator. Loss of the swag was worth that result. My plan failed but I have another one. I intend to leave here safely. I shall add this wealth his free hand reached for the stacked money and the sparkling gems which lay close together on the desk to the profits that I have already sent abroad It was Joe Cardona who gave a look toward those beside him. Including himself he counted five persons everyone of whom showed the same desire to deal with Marquin at any cost. You can t get away with it warned Cardona. We have you five to one Marquin. The moment you go through that door I shall be safe inserted the Vindicator sharply. I can depend upon Gaylor and the other servants. I have already summoned them in shifting his gun arm Marquin revealed a button at the corner of the desk and if you listen you will hear them. There was a clatter from the outer hall. Marquin chuckling his triumph was backing toward the connecting office that would lead him there when from close behind him came a peal of mocking challenge. Marquin spinning about saw The Shadow. They were face to face The Shadow and the Vindicator. The one a being cloaked in black whose eyes burned their message of vengeance the other a calloused murderer whose latest fruits of crime were tucked beneath his arm yet whose own eyes had suddenly lost their glitter. The .45 that loomed from The Shadow s fist seemed ready to swallow the .32 revolver that Marquin was too late to aim. The Vindicator stood rigid helpless So puny he seemed that The Shadow knowing another clash was close at hand gave the nod that turned Marquin over to those who wanted him. As Cardona Larry and Shalley surged for Marquin with Brye and Margaret close behind him The Shadow wheeled away. There were shouts from the hallway door. Gaylor and the other servants had arrived. They saw only Marquin and the group that was suppressing him for The Shadow had swished away from the intervening doorway into the gloom of the outer office. Hearing Marquin s answering cry the servants surged. Then The Shadow was upon them giving them a taste of sledging automatics not merely his weighted fists. His guns tongued bullets too for tonight Marquin s men were armed with revolvers. They used those weapons as they battled but not with the effect they hoped. Shooting men were sprawling when they fired the only blackness that their bullets found was that of the ceiling the walls the windows not the ink hued garb of The Shadow. The door to the inner office had slammed. When The Shadow opened it he saw chaos. Marquin s gun had been plucked from his hand the weapon was lying in the corner. But the Vindicator a fighting madman had wrenched from the hands that seized him. Across the floor was a strew of bank notes Grennel s money glimmering amid the green were Shalley s jewels. Marquin had lost the swag in his haste but a corner panel swung open showed a spiral stairway by which he had made his escape. Two persons had gone after him: Cardona and Brye. The others Larry Margaret and Shalley were unhurt but they had been sprawled in the final struggle and were too late to take up the chase. Larry however was going after Marquin s gun exclaiming hoarsely: The window We can cut him off before he gets to the garage The Shadow reached the window. He saw the garage heard the final rumble of its opening door. Marquin had shoved it wide he was bounding into the garage as The Shadow aimed. He s taking the roadster added Larry. He ll come out of there like a shot so fast it will be hard to stop him THERE was a note of prediction in Larry s words but before its fulfillment another scene occurred. While The Shadow was calmly aiming to cover the open door of the garage Cardona and Brye bounded from the back of the house. Cardona was ahead but Brye was gaining shouting something that the inspector did not heed. Halfway to the garage Brye overtook him. Flinging his long arms forward he slung them over Cardona s head using the handcuffs to hook Joe s neck. Under Brye s rolling weight Cardona hit the dirt. Both men were flattened there tangled when Marquin made the exit that Larry had promised. But his trip in that high powered roadster was far more stupendous than any he had planned. With one vast roaring blast the roof of the garage split open. Its walls spread aside like the cardboard shams of a movie set. Spreading amid an inferno of flame came the chunks of Marquin s car while from its very center a puny clawing figure climbed fifty feet in air. Last to strike the earth that human shape landed in grotesque fashion a misshapen mass. Inert it lay amid the dust and smoke of the debris. When that cloud settled the last spasms of flame from the shattered garage threw wavering light upon the mangled remains revealing a face which bore sufficient vestiges to identify it as the countenance of Roger Marquin. The Vindicator had perished before starting the next stage of a flight that The Shadow had been ready to nip when it began. Dana Brye foreseeing that Marquin might manage to escape in his high powered roadster had visited the garage before coming to the house tonight and attached a quick action bomb to the ignition system of the murderer s car. WHEN Brye returned to the house with Cardona the grizzled inventor was no longer handcuffed. He was explaining how a body had happened to be found in the ruins of Vreekill Castle and was also stating who the victim was. There was no trap set for Bland declared Brye. I did my best to stop him from opening my safe. He flung me across the room and went ahead while I lay dazed. By opening the safe he set off the first of my time bombs. After the first explosion I had to go through with my plan of abandoning the castle. The finding of a body in the ruins helped my plan of course but it was not intended. As for Bland I believe that he was a crook working a game of his own. Shalley hearing Brye s statement remembered an envelope that The Shadow had left with him. The cloaked visitor himself was gone he had left immediately after the garage had exploded. Cardona received the envelope and read its contents. Don t worry about Ross Bland said Joe to Brye. There was a witness at Vreekill Castle one you didn t know about. The Shadow You mean that he will testify in my behalf Cardona grinned at Brye s question. What a scene it would be The Shadow entering court to take the witness stand A dramatic sequel however that would not be needed. Your story will stand Cardona told Brye. Bland was crooked like you thought. He d been cleaning up on a small scale selling a phony stock called Arivada Silver. This envelope contains all the facts to prove it. Bland figured you were the Vindicator and tried to shake you down. Any jury will believe you on that considering Bland s bad record. Across the room Larry was answering a phone call. He lowered the telephone with one hand and looked at Margaret who was nestled against his other arm. Two passages to Rio exclaimed Larry. Aboard the Anaconda. I only ordered one but they tell me I have two It was Margaret who understood. There was another telephone downstairs one that The Shadow could have used. The ship has a captain Larry laughed the girl. He can marry us can t he After we sail The telephone left Larry s hand. Both his arms were needed as he gathered Margaret into them. Their kiss was accompanied by a happy chuckle from Dana Brye but that was not the only token of approval. From somewhere through the open window it seemed came a parting tone of laughter mirth that faded as if it belonged not to a living being but to the vast domain of night itself. That laugh carried no taunt of challenge for crooks had been met and conquered. It told of triumph The Shadow s final victory over the archcrook Roger Marquin who had styled himself the Vindicator to pose falsely as a man who wanted justice. The Shadow real champion of justice had reason to be triumphant for his prowess had ended the Vindicator s career of evil sham. To Larry and Margaret that mirth meant more. They knew that The Shadow was wishing them Godspeed upon a happy journey which he beyond all others had rendered possible THE END

Biographies & Memoirs

non-fiction

Charles Petzold Windows Programming S I X T H E D I T I O N Writing Windows 8 Apps With C and XAML Consumer Preview eBook www.it ebooks.info PUBLISHED BY Microsoft Press A Division of Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond Washington 98052 6399 Copyright 2012 Charles Petzold All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978 0 7356 7176 8 This document supports a preliminary release of a software product that may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release. This document is provided for informational purposes only and Microsoft makes no warranties either express or implied in this document. Information in this document including URL and other Internet website references is subject to change without notice. The entire risk of the use or the results from the use of this document remains with the user. 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The information contained in this book is provided without any express statutory or implied warranties. Neither the authors Microsoft Corporation nor its resellers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused either directly or indirectly by this book. Acquisitions Developmental and Project Editor: Devon Musgrave Technical Reviewer: Marc Young Cover: Twist Creative Seattle 2 www.it ebooks.info Introduction .................................................................................... 6 The Versions of Windows 8 ............................................................................. 6 The Focus of This Book ...................................................................................... 7 The Approach ........................................................................................................ 8 My Setup .............................................................................................................. 10 The Programming Windows Heritage....................................................... 10 Behind the Scenes ............................................................................................ 13 Errata Book Support .................................................................................... 13 We Want to Hear from You .......................................................................... 14 Stay in Touch ...................................................................................................... 14 Chapter 1: Markup and Code ....................................................... 15 The First Project ................................................................................................. 15 Graphical Greetings ......................................................................................... 21 Variations in Text .............................................................................................. 24 Media As Well .................................................................................................... 33 The Code Alternatives ..................................................................................... 34 Images in Code .................................................................................................. 38 Not Even a Page ................................................................................................ 40 Chapter 2: XAML Syntax .............................................................. 42 The Gradient Brush in Code ......................................................................... 42 Property Element Syntax ................................................................................ 45 Content Properties ........................................................................................... 48 The TextBlock Content Property ................................................................. 52 Sharing Brushes and Other Resources ................................................... 54 Resources Are Shared ...................................................................................... 58 A Bit of Vector Graphics ................................................................................. 59 Styles ...................................................................................................................... 68 A Taste of Data Binding ................................................................................. 74 Chapter 3: Basic Event Handling ................................................. 78 The Tapped Event ............................................................................................. 78 3 www.it ebooks.info Routed Event Handling .................................................................................. 81 Overriding the Handled Setting .................................................................. 87 Input Alignment and Backgrounds ......................................................... 88 Size and Orientation Changes ..................................................................... 91 Bindings to Run ............................................................................................... 96 Timers and Animation ..................................................................................... 98 Chapter 4: Presentation with Panels......................................... 106 The Border Element ........................................................................................ 106 Rectangle and Ellipse .................................................................................... 110 The StackPanel ................................................................................................. 112 Horizontal Stacks ............................................................................................ 116 WhatSize with Bindings and a Converter ........................................... 119 The ScrollViewer Solution ............................................................................ 123 Layout Weirdness or Normalcy ............................................................... 129 Making an E Book .......................................................................................... 130 Fancier StackPanel Items ............................................................................. 133 Creating Windows Runtime Libraries ..................................................... 138 The Wrap Alternative .................................................................................... 140 The Canvas and Attached Properties ..................................................... 142 The Z Index ....................................................................................................... 147 Canvas Weirdness ........................................................................................... 148 Chapter 5: Control Interaction .................................................. 150 The Control Difference .................................................................................. 150 The Slider for Ranges ..................................................................................... 152 The Grid .............................................................................................................. 156 Orientation and Aspect Ratios ................................................................... 163 Slider and the Formatted String Converter .......................................... 166 Tooltips and Conversions ............................................................................ 166 Sketching with Sliders ................................................................................... 168 The Varieties of Button Experience .......................................................... 170 4 www.it ebooks.info Dependency Properties ................................................................................ 179 RadioButton Tags ............................................................................................ 187 Keyboard Input and TextBox ...................................................................... 194 Touch and Thumb .......................................................................................... 198 Chapter 6: WinRT and MVVM .................................................. 205 MVVM Brief and Simplified ...................................................................... 205 Data Binding Notifications .......................................................................... 206 Deriving from BindableBase ....................................................................... 213 Bindings and TextBox .................................................................................... 218 Buttons and MVVM ....................................................................................... 223 The DelegateCommand Class .................................................................... 225 Chapter 7: Building an Application .......................................... 231 Commands Options and Settings .......................................................... 231 The Segoe UI Symbol Font .......................................................................... 233 The Application Bar ........................................................................................ 239 Popups and Dialogs ....................................................................................... 241 Windows Runtime File I O .......................................................................... 244 Await and Async .............................................................................................. 251 Calling Your Own Async Methods ............................................................ 253 Controls for XamlCruncher ......................................................................... 255 Application Settings and Isolated Storage............................................ 271 The XamlCruncher Page .............................................................................. 275 Parsing the XAML ........................................................................................... 279 XAML Files In and Out .................................................................................. 282 The Settings Dialog ........................................................................................ 286 Beyond the Windows Runtime .................................................................. 291 Author Bio ............................................................................................................ 293 5 www.it ebooks.info Introduction This book the 6th edition of Programming Windows is a guide to programming applications that run under Microsoft Windows 8. At the time of this writing May 1 2012 Windows 8 is not yet complete and neither is this book. What you are reading right now is a preview ebook version of the book. This preview version is based on the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 which was released on February 29 2012. Microsoft has announced that the next preview of Windows 8 called the Release Preview will be available in June. The second preview ebook version of this book which will update the seven chapters included here and add more chapters will probably be available in July. If you are reading this in August 2012 or later you are very likely not reading the most recent version. To use this book you ll need to download and install the Windows 8 Consumer Preview as well as Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Windows 8. Both downloads are accessible from the Windows 8 developer portal: http: msdn.microsoft.com windows apps To install Visual Studio follow the Download the tools and SDK link on that page. The Versions of Windows 8 For the most part Windows 8 is intended to run on the same class of personal computers as Windows 7 which are machines built around the 32 bit or 64 bit Intel x86 microprocessor family. When Windows 8 is released later this year it will be available in a regular edition called simply Windows 8 and also a Windows 8 Pro edition with additional features that appeal to tech enthusiasts and professionals. Both Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro will run two types of programs: Desktop applications What are currently referred to as Metro style applications Desktop applications are traditional Windows programs that currently run under Windows 7 and that interact with the operating system through the Windows application programming interface known familiarly as the Win32 API. Windows 8 includes a familiar Windows desktop screen for running these applications. The applications known as Metro style are new with Windows 8. These applications incorporate the Metro design paradigm developed at Microsoft so named because it s been inspired by public signage common in metropolitan areas. Metro design is characterized by the use of unadorned fonts clean open styling and a tile based interface. 6 www.it ebooks.info Internally and externally Metro style applications represent a radical break with traditional Windows. The programs generally run in a full screen mode although two programs can share the screen in a snap mode and many of these programs will probably be optimized for touch and tablet use. Metro style applications will be purchasable and installable only from an application store run by Microsoft. In addition to the versions of Windows 8 that run on x86 processors there will also be a version of Windows 8 that runs on ARM processors most likely in low cost smartphones and tablets. This version of Windows 8 will be called Windows RT and it will come preinstalled on these machines. Aside from some preinstalled desktop applications Windows RT will run Metro style applications only. Many developers were first introduced to Metro design principles with Windows Phone 7 so it s interesting to see how Microsoft s thinking concerning large and small computers has evolved. In years gone by Microsoft attempted to adapt the design of the traditional Windows desktop to smaller devices such as hand held computers and phones. Now a user interface design for the phone is being moved up to tablets and the desktop. One important characteristic of this new environment is an emphasis on multitouch which has dramatically changed the relationship between human and computer. In fact the term multitouch is now outmoded because virtually all new touch devices respond to multiple fingers. The simple word touch is now sufficient. Part of the new programming interface for Metro style applications treats touch the mouse and a stylus in a unified manner so that applications are automatically usable with all three input devices. The Focus of This Book This book focuses exclusively on writing Metro style applications. Plenty of other books already exist for writing desktop applications including the 5th edition of Programming Windows. For writing Metro style applications a new object oriented API has been introduced called the Windows Runtime or WinRT not to be confused with the version of Windows 8 that runs on ARM processors called Windows RT . Internally the Windows Runtime is based on COM Component Object Model with interfaces exposed through metadata files with the extension .winmd located in the Windows System32 WinMetadata directory. From the application programmer s perspective the Windows Runtime resembles Silverlight although internally it is not a managed API. For Silverlight programmers perhaps the most immediate difference involves namespace names: the Silverlight namespaces beginning with System.Windows have been replaced with namespaces beginning with Windows.UI.Xaml. Most Metro style applications will be built from both code and markup either the industry standard HyperText Markup Language HTML or Microsoft s eXtensible Application Markup Language XAML . One advantage of splitting an application between code and markup is potentially splitting the 7 www.it ebooks.info development of the application between programmers and designers. Currently there are three main options for writing Metro style applications each of which involves a programming language and a markup language: C with XAML C or Visual Basic with XAML JavaScript with HTML5 In each case the Windows Runtime is supplemented by another programming interface appropriate for that language. Although you can t mix languages within a single application you can create language independent libraries with their own .winmd files. The C programmer uses a dialect of C called C with Component Extensions or C CX that allows the language to make better use of WinRT. The C programmer also has access to a subset of the Win32 and COM APIs as well as DirectX. Programmers who use the managed languages C or Visual Basic .NET will find WinRT to be very familiar territory. Metro style applications written in these languages can t access Win32 COM or DirectX APIs but a stripped down version of .NET is available for performing low level tasks. For JavaScript the Windows Runtime is supplemented by a Windows Library for JavaScript or WinJS which provides a number of system level features for Metro style apps written in JavaScript. After much consideration and some anguish I decided that this book would use the C and XAML option exclusively. For at least a decade I have been convinced of the advantages of managed languages for development and debugging and for me C is the language that has the closest fit to the Windows Runtime. I hope C programmers find C code easy enough to read to derive some benefit from this book. I also believe that a book focusing on one language option is more valuable than one that tries for equal coverage among several. There will undoubtedly be plenty of other Windows 8 books that show how to write Metro style applications using the other options. The Approach In writing this book I ve made a couple assumptions about you the reader. I assume that you are comfortable with C . If not you might want to supplement this book with a C tutorial. If you are coming to C from a C or C background my free online book .NET Book Zero: What the C or C Programmer Needs to Know About C and the .NET Framework might be adequate. This book is available in PDF or XPS format at www.charlespetzold.com dotnet. I hope to update this book later this year to make it more specific to Windows 8. I also assume that you know the rudimentary syntax of XML eXtensible Markup Language because XAML is based on XML. 8 www.it ebooks.info This is an API book rather than a tools book. The only programming tools I use in this book are Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Windows 8 which I ll generally simply refer to as Visual Studio and XAML Cruncher which is a program that I ve written and which is featured in Chapter 7. Markup languages are generally much more toolable than programming code. Indeed some programmers even believe that markup such as XAML should be entirely machine generated. Visual Studio has a built in interactive XAML designer that involves dragging controls to a page and many programmers have come to know and love Microsoft Expression Blend for generating complex XAML for their applications. While such tools are great for experienced programmers I think that the programmer new to the environment is better served by learning how to write XAML by hand. That s how I ll approach XAML in this book. The XAML Cruncher tool featured in Chapter 7 is very much in keeping with this philosophy: it lets you type in XAML and interactively see the objects that are generated but it does not try to write XAML for you. On the other hand some programmers become so skilled at working with XAML that they forget how to create and initialize certain objects in code I think both skills are important and consequently I often show how to do similar tasks in both code and markup. Source Code Learning a new API is similar to learning how to play basketball or the oboe: You don t get the full benefit by watching someone else do it. Your own fingers must get involved. The source code in these pages is downloadable from the same web page where you purchased the book via the Companion Content link on that page but you ll learn better by actually typing in the code yourself. As I began working on this book I contemplated different approaches to how a tutorial about the Windows Runtime can be structured. One approach is to start with rather low level graphics and user input demonstrate how controls can be built and then describe the controls that have already been built for you. I have instead chosen to focus initially on those skills I think are most important for most mainstream programmers: assembling the predefined controls in an application and linking them with code and data. This is what I intend to be the focus of the book s Part I Fundamentals. The first 7 chapters out of the 10 or so that will eventually make up Part I are included in this first preview version. One of my goals in Part I is to make comprehensible all the code and markup that Visual Studio generates in the various project templates it supports so the remaining chapters in Part I obviously need to cover templates collection controls and data and navigation. In the current plan for the book the book will get more interesting as it gets longer: Part II Infrastructure will cover more low level tasks such as touch files networking security globalization and integrating with the Windows 8 charms. Part III Specialities will tackle more esoteric topics such as working with the sensors GPS and orientation vector graphics bitmap graphics media text printing and obtaining input from the stylus and handwriting recognizer. 9 www.it ebooks.info My Setup For writing this book I used the special version of the Samsung 700T tablet that was distributed to attendees of the Microsoft Build Conference in September 2011. This machine has an Intel Core i5 processor running at 1.6 GHz with 4 GB of RAM and a 64 GB hard drive. The screen from which all the screenshots in the book were taken has 8 touch points and a resolution of 1366 768 pixels which is the lowest resolution for which snap views are supported. Although the machines were distributed at Build with the Windows 8 Developer Preview installed I replaced that with a complete install of the Consumer Preview build 8250 in March 2012. Except when testing orientation or sensors I generally used the tablet in the docking port with an external 1920 1080 HDMI monitor an external Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 and a Microsoft Comfort Mouse 300. Running Visual Studio on the large screen and the resultant applications on the tablet turned out to be a fine development environment particularly compared with the setup I used to write the first edition of Programming Windows. But that was 25 years ago. The Programming Windows Heritage I still get a thrill when I look at my very first book contract: Perhaps the most amusing part of this contract occurs further down the first page: 10 www.it ebooks.info The reference to typescript means that the pages must as least resemble something that came out of a typewriter. A double spaced manuscript page with a fixed pitch font has about 250 words as the description indicates. A book page is more in the region of 400 words so Microsoft Press obviously wasn t expecting a very long book. For writing the book I used an IBM PC AT with an 80286 microprocessor running at 8 MHz with 512 KB of memory and two 30 MB hard drives. The display was an IBM Enhanced Graphics Adapter with a maximum resolution of 640 350 with 16 simultaneous colors. I wrote some of the early chapters using Windows 1 introduced over a year earlier in November 1985 but beta versions of Windows 2 soon became available. In those years editing and compiling a Windows program occurred outside of Windows in MS DOS. For editing source code I used WordStar 3.3 the same word processor I used for writing the chapters. From the MS DOS command line you would run the Microsoft C compiler and then launch Windows with your program to test it out. It was necessary to exit Windows and return to MS DOS for the next edit compile run cycle. As I got deeper into writing the book much of the rest of my life faded away. I stayed up later and later into the night. I didn t have a television at the time but the local public radio station WNYC FM was on almost constantly with classical music and other programming. For a while I managed to shift my day to such a degree that I went to bed after Morning Edition but awoke in time for All Things Considered. As the contract stipulated I sent chapters to Microsoft Press on diskette and paper. We all had email of course but email didn t support attachments at the time. The edited chapters came back to me by mail decorated with proofreading marks and numerous sticky notes. I remember a page on which someone had drawn a thermometer indicating the increasing number of pages I was turning in with the caption Temperature s Rising Along the way the focus of the book changed. Writing a book for Programmers and Other Advanced Users proved to be a flawed concept. I don t know who came up with the title Programming Windows. 11 www.it ebooks.info The contract had a completion date of April but I didn t finish until August and the book wasn t published until early 1988. The final page total was about 850. If these were normal book pages that is without program listings or diagrams the word count would be about 400 000 rather than the 100 000 indicated in the contract. The cover of the first edition of Programming Windows described it as The Microsoft Guide to Programming for the MS DOS Presentation Manager: Windows 2.0 and Windows 386. The reference to Presentation Manager reminds us of the days when Windows and the OS 2 Presentation Manager were supposed to peacefully coexist as similar environments for two different operating systems. The first edition of Programming Windows went pretty much unnoticed by the programming community. When MS DOS programmers gradually realized they needed to learn about the brave new environment of Windows it was mostly the 2nd edition published in 1990 and focusing on Windows 3 and the 3rd edition 1992 Windows 3.1 that helped out. When the Windows API graduated from 16 bit to 32 bit Programming Windows responded with the 4th edition 1996 Windows 95 and 5th edition 1998 Windows 98 . Although the 5th edition is still in print the email I receive from current readers indicates that the book is most popular in India and China. From the 1st edition to the 5th I used the C programming language. Sometime between the 3rd and 4th editions my good friend Jeff Prosise said that he wanted to write Programming Windows with MFC and that was fine by me. I didn t much care for the Microsoft Foundation Classes which seemed to me a fairly light wrapper on the Windows API and I wasn t that thrilled with C either. As the years went by Programming Windows acquired the reputation of being the book for programmers who needed to get close to the metal without any extraneous obstacles between their program code and the operating system. But to me the early editions of Programming Windows were nothing of the sort. In those days getting close to the metal involved coding in assembly language writing character output directly into video display memory and resorting to MS DOS only for file I O. In contrast programming for Windows involved a high level language completely unaccelerated graphics and accessing hardware only through a heavy layer of APIs and device drivers. This switch from MS DOS to Windows represented a deliberate forfeit of speed and efficiency in return for other advantages. But what advantages Many veteran programmers just couldn t see the point. Graphics Pictures Color Fancy fonts A mouse That s not what computers are all about The skeptics called it the WIMP window icon menu pointer interface which was not exactly a subtle implication about the people who chose to use such an environment or code for it. Wait long enough and a high level language becomes a low level language and multiple layers of interface seemingly shrink down at least in lingo to a native API. Some C and C programmers of today reject a managed language like C on grounds of efficiency and Windows has even sparked some energetic controversy once again. Windows 8 is easily the most revolutionary updating to 12 www.it ebooks.info Windows since its very first release in 1985 but many old time Windows users are wondering about the wisdom of bringing a touch based interface tailored for smartphones and tablets to the mainstream desktop. I suppose that Programming Windows could only be persuaded to emerge from semi retirement with an exciting and controversial new user interface on Windows and an API and programming language suited to its modern aspirations. Behind the Scenes This book exists only because Ben Ryan and Devon Musgrave at Microsoft Press developed an interesting way to release early content to the developer community and get advances sales of the final book simultaneously. We are all quite eager to see the results of this experiment. Part of the job duties of Devon and my technical reviewer Marc Young is to protect me from embarrassment by identifying blunders in my prose and code and I thank them both for finding quite a few. Thanks also to Andrew Whitechapel for giving me feedback on the C sample code. The errors that remain in these chapters are my own fault of course. I ll try to identify the worst ones on my website at www.charlespetzold.com pw6. And also give me feedback about pacing and the order that I cover material in these early chapters with an email to cp@charlespetzold.com. Finally I want to thank my wife Deirdre Sinnott for love and support and the necessary adjustments to our lives that writing a book inevitably entails. Charles Petzold New York City May 1 2012 Errata Book Support We ve made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this book and its companion content. Any errors that have been reported since this book was published are listed on our Microsoft Press site at oreilly.com. Search for the book at http: microsoftpress.oreilly.com and then click the View Submit Errata link. If you find an error that is not already listed you can report it to us through the same page. If you need additional support email Microsoft Press Book Support at mspinput@microsoft.com. Please note that product support for Microsoft software is not offered through the addresses above. 13 www.it ebooks.info We Want to Hear from You At Microsoft Press your satisfaction is our top priority and your feedback our most valuable asset. Please tell us what you think of this book at http: www.microsoft.com learning booksurvey The survey is short and we read every one of your comments and ideas. Thanks in advance for your input Stay in Touch Let s keep the conversation going We re on Twitter: http: twitter.com MicrosoftPress 14 www.it ebooks.info Chapter 1 Markup and Code Ever since the publication of Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie s classic book The C Programming Language Prentice Hall 1978 it has been customary for programming tutorials to begin with a simple program that displays a short text string such as hello world. Let s create a few similar programs for Windows 8 and let s do it in what s referred to as Metro style. I ll assume you have the Windows 8 Consumer Preview installed with the development tools and software development kit specifically Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Windows 8 which hereafter I ll simply refer to as Visual Studio. Launch Visual Studio from the Windows 8 start screen and let s get coding. The First Project On the opening screen in Visual Studio the Get Started tab should already be selected. Over at the right you ll see a New Project option. Click that item or select New Project from the File menu. When the New Project dialog box comes up select Templates in the left panel then Visual C and Windows Metro Style. From the list of available templates in the central area select Blank Application. Towards the bottom of the dialog box type a project name in the Name field: Hello for example. Let the Solution Name be the same. Use the Browse button to select a directory location for this program and click OK. I ll generally use mouse terminology such as click when referring to Visual Studio but I ll switch to touch terminology such as tap for the applications you ll be creating. A version of Visual Studio that is optimized for touch is probably at least a few years away. Visual Studio creates a solution named Hello and a project within that solution named Hello as well as a bunch of files in the Hello project. These files are listed in the Solution Explorer on the far right of the Visual Studio screen. Every Visual Studio solution has at least one project but a solution might contain additional application projects and library projects. The list of files for this project includes one called BlankPage.xaml and if you click the little arrowhead next to that file you ll see a file named BlankPage.xaml.cs indented underneath BlankPage.xaml: 15 www.it ebooks.info You can view either of these two files by double clicking the file name or by right clicking the file name and choosing Open. The BlankPage.xaml and BlankPage.xaml.cs files are linked in the Solution Explorer because they both contribute to the definition of a class named BlankPage. For a simple program like Hello this BlankPage class defines all the visuals and user interface for the application. As the class name implies the visuals are initially blank but they won t be for long. Despite its funny file name BlankPage.xaml.cs definitely has a .cs extension which stands for C Sharp. Stripped of all its comments the skeleton BlankPage.xaml.cs file contains C code that looks like this: using System using System.Collections.Generic using System.IO using System.Linq using Windows.Foundation using Windows.Foundation.Collections using Windows.UI.Xaml using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Primitives using Windows.UI.Xaml.Data using Windows.UI.Xaml.Input using Windows.UI.Xaml.Media using Windows.UI.Xaml.Navigation namespace Hello public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent protected override void OnNavigatedTo NavigationEventArgs e 16 www.it ebooks.info The file is dominated by using directives for all the namespaces that you are anticipated to need. You ll discover that most BlankPage.xaml.cs files don t require all these namespace names and many others require some additional namespaces. These namespaces fall into two general categories based on the first word in the name: System. .NET for Metro style applications Windows. Windows Runtime or WinRT As suggested by the list of using directives namespaces that begin with Windows.UI.Xaml play a major role in the Windows Runtime. Following the using directives this BlankPage.xaml.cs file defines a namespace named Hello the same as the project name and a class named BlankPage that derives from Page a class that is part of the Windows Runtime. The documentation of the Windows 8 API is organized by namespace so if you want to locate the documentation of the Page class knowing the namespace where it s defined is useful. Let the mouse pointer hover over the name Page in the BlankPage.xaml.cs source code and you ll discover that Page is in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls namespace. The constructor of the BlankPage class calls an InitializeComponent method which I ll discuss shortly and the class also contains an override of a method named OnNavigatedTo. Metro style applications often have a page navigation structure somewhat like a website and hence they often consist of multiple classes that derive from Page. For navigational purposes Page defines virtual methods named OnNavigatingFrom OnNavigatedFrom and OnNavigatedTo. The override of OnNavigatedTo is a convenient place to perform initialization when the page becomes active. But that s for later most of the programs in the early chapters of this book will have only one page. I ll tend to refer to an application s page more than its window. There is still a window underneath the application but it doesn t play nearly as large a role as the page. Notice the partial keyword on the BlankPage class definition. This keyword usually means that the class definition is continued in another C source code file. In reality as you ll see that s exactly the case. Conceptually however the missing part of the BlankPage class is not another C code file but the BlankPage.xaml file: Page x:Class Hello.BlankPage xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml xmlns:local using:Hello xmlns:d http: schemas.microsoft.com expression blend 2008 xmlns:mc http: schemas.openxmlformats.org markup compatibility 2006 mc:Ignorable d Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid 17 www.it ebooks.info Page This file consists of markup conforming to the standard known as the eXtensible Application Markup Language or XAML pronounced zammel. As the name implies XAML is based on eXtensible Markup Language or XML. Generally you ll use the XAML file for defining all the visual elements of the page while the C file handles jobs that can t be performed in markup such as number crunching and responding to user input. The C file is often referred to as the code behind file for the corresponding XAML file. The root element of this XAML file is Page which you already know is a class in the Windows Runtime. But notice the x:Class attribute: Page x:Class Hello.BlankPage The x:Class attribute can appear only on the root element in a XAML file. This particular x:Class attribute translates as a class BlankPage in the Hello namespace is defined as deriving from Page. It means the same thing as the class definition in the C file The x:Class attribute is followed by a bunch of XML namespace declarations. As usual these URIs don t actually reference interesting webpages but instead serve as unique identifiers maintained by particular companies or organizations. The first two are the most important: xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml The 2006 date harkens back to Microsoft s introduction of the Windows Presentation Foundation and the debut of XAML. WPF was part of the .NET Framework 3.0 which prior to its release was known as WinFX hence the winfx in the URI. To a certain extent XAML files are compatible between WPF Silverlight Windows Phone and the Windows Runtime but only if they use classes properties and features common to all the environments. The first namespace declaration with no prefix refers to public classes structures and enumerations defined in the Windows Runtime which includes all the controls and everything else that can appear in a XAML file including the Page and Grid classes in this particular file. The word presentation in this URI refers to a visual user interface and that distinguishes it from other types of applications that can use XAML. For example if you were using XAML for the Windows Workflow Foundation WF you d use a default namespace URI ending with the word workflow . The second namespace declaration associates an x prefix with elements and attributes that are intrinsic to XAML itself. Only nine of these are applicable in Windows Runtime applications and obviously one of the most important is the x:Class attribute. The third namespace declaration is interesting: xmlns:local using:Hello This associates an XML prefix of local with the Hello namespace of this particular application. You 18 www.it ebooks.info might create custom classes in your application and you d use the local prefix to reference them in XAML. If you need to reference classes in code libraries you ll define additional XML namespace declarations that refer to the assembly name and namespace name of these libraries. You ll see how to do this in chapters ahead. The remaining namespace declarations are for Microsoft Expression Blend. Expression Blend might insert special markup of its own that should be ignored by the Visual Studio compiler so that s the reason for the Ignorable attribute which requires yet another namespace declaration. For any program in this book these last three lines of the Page root element can be deleted. The Page element has a child element named Grid which is another class defined in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls namespace. The Grid will become extremely familiar. It is sometimes referred to as a container because it can contain other visual objects but it s more formally classified as a panel because it derives from the Panel class. Classes that derive from Panel play a very important role in layout in Metro style applications. In the BlankPage.xaml file that Visual Studio creates for you the Grid is assigned a background color actually a Brush object based on a predefined identifier using a syntax I ll discuss in Chapter 2 XAML Syntax. Generally you ll divide a Grid into rows and columns to define individual cells as I ll demonstrate in Chapter 5 Control Interaction somewhat like a much improved version of an HTML table. A Grid without rows and columns is sometimes called a single cell Grid and is still quite useful. To display up to a paragraph of text in the Windows Runtime you ll generally use a TextBlock another class defined in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls namespace so let s put a TextBlock in the single cell Grid and assign a bunch of attributes. These attributes are actually properties defined by the TextBlock class: Project: Hello File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontFamily Times New Roman FontSize 96 FontStyle Italic Foreground Yellow HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Grid Note In this book whenever a block of code or markup is preceded by a heading like this one you ll find the code among this book s downloadable companion content. Generally I ll just show an excerpt of the total file but with enough context so you know exactly where it is. The order of these attributes doesn t matter and of course the indentation doesn t matter and all of them except the Text attribute can be skipped if you re in a hurry. As you type you ll notice that Visual Studio s Intellisense feature suggests attribute names and possible values for you. Often you can just select the one you want. As you finish typing the TextBlock Visual Studio s design view gives you a 19 www.it ebooks.info preview of the page s appearance. You can also skip all the typing and simply drag a TextBlock from the Visual Studio Toolbox and then set the properties in a table but I won t be doing that in this book. I ll instead describe the creation of these programs as if you and I actually type in the code and markup just like real programmers. Press F5 to compile and run this program or select Start Debugging from the Debug menu. Even for simple programs like this it s best to run the program under the Visual Studio debugger. If all goes well this is what you ll see: The HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment attributes on the TextBlock have caused the text to be centered obviously without the need for you the programmer to explicitly determine the size of the video display and the size of the rendered text. You can alternatively set HorizontalAlignment to Left or Right and VerticalAlignment to Top or Bottom to position the TextBlock in one of nine places in the Grid. As you ll see in Chapter 4 Presentation with Panels the Windows Runtime supports precise pixel placement of visual objects but usually you ll want to rely on the built in layout features. The TextBlock has Width and Height properties but generally you don t need to bother setting those. In fact if you set the Width and Height properties on this particular TextBlock you might end up cropping part of the text or interfering with the centering of the text on the page. The TextBlock knows better than you how large it should be. You might be running this program on a device that responds to orientation changes such as a tablet. If so you ll notice that the page content dynamically conforms to the change in orientation and aspect ratio apparently without any interaction from the program. The Grid the TextBlock and the Windows 8 layout system are doing most of the work. To terminate the Hello program press Shift F5 in Visual Studio or select Stop Debugging from the 20 www.it ebooks.info Debug menu. You ll notice that the program hasn t merely been executed but has actually been deployed to Windows 8 and is now executable from the start screen. The icon is not very pretty but the program s icons are all stored in the Assets directory of the project so you can spruce them up if you want. You can run the program again outside of the Visual Studio debugger right from the Windows 8 start screen. Graphical Greetings Traditional hello programs display a greeting in text but that s not the only way to do it. The HelloImage project accesses a bitmap from my website using a tiny piece of XAML: Project: HelloImage File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Image Source http: www.charlespetzold.com pw6 PetzoldJersey.jpg Grid The Image element is defined in Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls namespace and it s the standard way to display bitmaps in a Windows Runtime program. By default the bitmap is stretched to fit the space available for it while respecting the original aspect ratio: If you make the page smaller perhaps by changing the orientation or invoking a snap view the image will change size to accommodate the new size of the page. You can override the default display of this bitmap by using the Stretch property defined by Image. The default value is the enumeration member Stretch.Uniform. Try setting it to Fill: Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Image Source http: www.charlespetzold.com pw6 PetzoldJersey.jpg 21 www.it ebooks.info Stretch Fill Grid Now the aspect ratio is ignored and the bitmap fills the container: Set the Stretch property to None to display the image in its pixel dimensions 320 by 400 : You can control where it appears on the page by using the same HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties you use with TextBlock. The fourth option for the Stretch property is UniformToFill which respects the aspect ratio but fills the container regardless. It achieves this feat by the only way possible: clipping the image. Which part 22 www.it ebooks.info of the image that gets clipped depends on the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties. Accessing bitmaps over the Internet is dependent on a network connection and even then might require some time. A better guarantee of having an image immediately available is to bind the bitmap into the application itself. You can create simple bitmaps right in Windows Paint. Let s run Paint and use the File Properties option to set a size of 480 by 320 for example . Using a mouse finger or stylus you can create your own personalized greeting: The Windows Runtime supports the popular BMP JPEG PNG and GIF formats as well as a couple less common formats. For images such as the one above PNG is common so save it with a name like Greeting.png. Now create a new project: HelloLocalImage for example. It s common to store bitmaps used by a project in a directory named Images. In the Solution Explorer right click the project name and choose Add and New Folder. Or if the project is selected in the Solution Explorer pick New Folder from the Project menu. Give the folder a name such as Images. Now right click the Images folder and choose Add and Existing Item. Navigate to the Greeting.png file you saved and click the Add button. Once the file is added to the project you ll want to right click the Greeting.png file name and select Properties. In the Properties panel make sure the Build Action is set to Content. You want this image to become part of the content of the application. The XAML file that references this image looks very much like one for accessing an image over the web: 23 www.it ebooks.info Project: HelloLocalImage File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Image Source Images Greeting.png Stretch None Grid Notice that the Source property is set to the folder and file name. Here s how it looks: Sometimes programmers prefer giving a name of Assets to the folder that stores application bitmaps. You ll notice that the standard project already contains an Assets folder containing program icons. You can use that same folder for your other images instead of creating a separate folder. Variations in Text You might be tempted to refer to the Grid TextBlock and Image as controls perhaps based on the knowledge that these classes are in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls namespace. Strictly speaking however they are not controls. The Windows Runtime does define a class named Control but these three classes do not descend from Control. Here s a tiny piece of the Windows Runtime class hierarchy showing the classes encountered so far: Object DependencyObject UIElement FrameworkElement TextBlock Image Panel 24 www.it ebooks.info Grid Control UserControl Page Page derives from Control but TextBlock and Image do not. TextBlock and Image instead derive from UIElement and FrameworkElement. For that reason TextBlock and Image are more correctly referred to as elements the same word often used to describe items that appear in XML files. The distinction between an element and a control is not always obvious. Visually controls are built from elements and the visual appearance of the control can be customizable through a template. But the distinction is useful nonetheless. A Grid is also an element but it s more often referred to as a panel and that as you ll see is a very useful distinction. Try this: In the original Hello program move the Foreground attribute and all the font related attributes from the TextBlock element to the Page. The entire BlankPage.xaml file now looks like this: Page x:Class Hello.BlankPage xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml xmlns:local using:Hello xmlns:d http: schemas.microsoft.com expression blend 2008 xmlns:mc http: schemas.openxmlformats.org markup compatibility 2006 mc:Ignorable d FontFamily Times New Roman FontSize 96 FontStyle Italic Foreground Yellow Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Grid Page You ll discover that the result is exactly the same. When these attributes are set on the Page element they apply to everything on that page. Now try setting the Foreground property of the TextBlock to red: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 Foreground Red HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center The local red setting overrides the yellow setting on the Page. The Page Grid and TextBlock form what is called a visual tree of elements except that in the XAML file the tree is upside down. The Page is the trunk of the tree and its descendants Grid and 25 www.it ebooks.info TextBlock form branches. You might imagine that the values of the font properties and Foreground property defined on the Page are propagated down through the visual tree from parent to child. This is true except for a little peculiarity: These properties don t exist in Grid. These properties are defined by TextBlock and separately defined by Control which means that the properties manage to propagate from the Page to the TextBlock despite an intervening element that has very different DNA. If you begin examining the documentation of these properties in the TextBlock or Page class you ll discover that they seem to appear twice under somewhat different names. In the documentation of TextBlock you ll see a FontSize property of type double: public double FontSize set get You ll also see a property named FontSizeProperty of type DependencyProperty: public static DependencyProperty FontSizeProperty get Notice that this FontSizeProperty property is get only and static as well. FontSizeProperty is of type DependencyProperty and a class with a similar name DependencyObject has a very prominent place in the class hierarchy I just showed you. These two types are related: A class that derives from DependencyObject often declares static get only properties of type DependencyProperty. Both DependencyObject and DependencyProperty are defined in the Windows.UI.Xaml namespace suggesting how fundamental they are to the whole system. In a Metro style application properties can be set in a variety of ways. For example you ve already seen that properties can be set directly on an object or inherited through the visual tree. As you ll see in Chapter 2 properties might also be set from a Style definition. In a future chapter you ll see properties set from animations. The DependencyObject and DependencyProperty classes are part of a system that help maintain order in such an environment by establishing priorities for the different ways in which the property might be set. I don t want to go too deeply into the mechanism just yet it s something you ll experience more intimately when you begin defining your own controls. The FontSize property is sometimes said to be backed by the dependency property named FontSizeProperty. But sometimes a semantic shortcut is used and FontSize itself is referred to as a dependency property. Usually this is not confusing. Many of the properties defined by UIElement and its descendent classes are dependency properties but only a few of these properties are propagated through the visual tree. Foreground and all the font related properties are as well as a few others that I ll be sure to call your attention to as we encounter them. Dependency properties also have an intrinsic default value. If you remove all the TextBlock and Page attributes except Text you ll get white text displayed with an 11 pixel system font in the upper left corner of the page. The FontSize property is in units of pixels and refers to the design height of a font. This design height includes space for descenders and diacritical marks. As you might know font sizes are often specified in points which in electronic typography are units of 1 72 inch. The equivalence between pixels and points requires knowing the resolution of the video display in dots per inch DPI . Without 26 www.it ebooks.info that information it s generally assumed that video displays have a resolution of 96 DPI so a 96 pixel font is thus a 72 point font one inch high and the default 11 pixel font is an 8¼ point font. The user of Windows has the option of setting a desired screen resolution. A Metro style application can obtain the user setting from the DisplayProperties class which pretty much dominates the Windows.Graphics.Display namespace. For most purposes however assuming a resolution of 96 DPI is fine and you ll use this same assumption for the printer. In accordance with this assumption I tend to use pixel dimensions that represent simple fractions of inches: 48 1 2 24 1 4 12 1 8 and 6 1 16 . You ve seen that if you remove the Foreground attribute you get white text on a dark background. The background is not exactly black but the predefined ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush identifier that the Grid references is close to it. The Hello project also includes two other files that come in a pair: App.xaml and App.xaml.cs together define a class named App that derives from Application. Although an application can have multiple Page derivatives it has only one Application derivative. This App class is responsible for settings or activities that affect the application as a whole. Try this: In the root element of the App.xaml file set the attribute RequestedTheme to Light. Application x:Class Hello.App xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml xmlns:local using:Hello RequestedTheme Light Application The only options are Light and Dark. Now you get a light background which means the color referenced by the ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush identifier is different. If the Foreground property on the Page or TextBlock is not explicitly set you ll also get black text which means that the Foreground property has a different default value with this theme. In many of the sample programs in the remainder of this book I ll be using the light theme without mentioning it. I think the screen shots look better on the page and they won t consume as much ink if you decide to print pages from the book. However keep in mind that many small devices and an increasing number of larger devices have displays built around organic light emitting diode OLED technology and these displays consume less power if the screen isn t lit up like a billboard. Reduced power consumption is one reason why dark color schemes are becoming more popular. Of course you can completely specify your own colors by explicitly setting both the Background of the Grid and the Foreground of the TextBlock: Grid Background Blue TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 Foreground Yellow 27 www.it ebooks.info Grid For these properties Visual Studio s IntelliSense provides 140 standard color names plus Transparent. These are actually static properties of the Colors class. Alternatively you can specify red green blue RGB values directly in hexadecimal with values ranging from 00 to FF prefaced by a pound sign: Foreground FF8000 That s maximum red half green and no blue. An optional fourth byte at the beginning is the alpha channel with values ranging from 00 for transparent and FF for opaque. Here s a half transparent red: Foreground 80FF0000 The UIElement class also defines an Opacity property that can be set to values between 0 transparent and 1 opaque . In HelloImage try setting the Background property of the Grid to a nonblack color perhaps Blue and set the Opacity property of the Image element to 0.5. When you specify colors by using bytes the values are in accordance with the familiar sRGB standard RGB color space. This color space dates back to the era of cathode ray tube displays where these bytes directly controlled the voltages illuminating the pixels. Very fortuitously nonlinearities in pixel brightness and nonlinearities in the perception of brightness by the human eye roughly cancel each other out so these byte values often seem perceptually linear or nearly so. An alternative is the scRGB color space which uses values between 0 and 1 that are proportional to light intensity. Here s a value for medium gray: Foreground sc 0.5 0.5 0.5 Due to the logarithmic response of the human eye to light intensity this gray will appear to be rather too light to be classified as medium. If you need to display text characters that are not on your keyboard you can specify them in Unicode by using standard XML character escaping. For example if you want to display the text This costs 55 and you re confined to an American keyboard you can specify the Unicode Euro in decimal like this: TextBlock Text This costs 8364 55 Or perhaps you prefer hexadecimal: TextBlock Text This costs x20AC 55 Or you can simply paste text into Visual Studio as I obviously did with a program later in this chapter. As with standard XML strings can contain special characters beginning with the ampersand: amp is an ampersand apos is a single quotation mark apostrophe quot is a double quotation mark 28 www.it ebooks.info lt is a left angle bracket less than gt is a right angle bracket greater than An alternative to setting the Text property of TextBlock requires separating the element into a start tag and end tag and specifying the text as content: TextBlock Hello Windows 8 TextBlock As I ll discuss in Chapter 2 setting text as content of the TextBlock is not exactly equivalent to setting the Text property. It s actually much more powerful. But even without taking advantage of additional features specifying text as content is useful for displaying a larger quantity of text because you don t have to worry about extraneous white space as much as when you re dealing with quoted text. The WrappedText project displays a whole paragraph of text by specifying this text as content of the TextBlock: Project: WrappedText File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock FontSize 48 TextWrapping Wrap For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes when I had put out my candle my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say I m going to sleep. And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me I would try to put away the book which I imagined was still in my hands and to blow out the light I had been thinking all the time while I was asleep of what I had just been reading but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church a quartet the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake it did not disturb my mind but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit the subject of my book would separate itself from me leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness pleasant and restful enough for the eyes and even more perhaps for my mind to which it appeared incomprehensible without a cause a matter dark indeed. TextBlock Grid Notice the TextWrapping property. The default is the TextWrapping.NoWrap enumeration member Wrap is the only alternative. You can also set the TextAlignment property to members of the TextAlignment enumeration: Left Right or Center. Although the TextAlignment enumeration also includes a Justify member it is not supported under the current version of the Windows Runtime. You can run this program in either portrait mode or landscape: 29 www.it ebooks.info If your display responds to orientation changes the text is automatically reformatted. The Windows Runtime breaks lines at spaces or hyphens but it does not break lines at nonbreaking spaces x00A0 or nonbreaking hyphens x2011 . Any soft hyphens x00AD are ignored. Not every element in XAML supports text content like TextBlock. You can t have text content in the Page or Grid for example. But the Grid can support multiple TextBlock children. The OverlappedStackedText project has two TextBlock elements in the Grid with different colors and font sizes: Project: OverlappedStackText File: BlankPage.xaml Grid Background Yellow TextBlock Text 8 FontSize 864 FontWeight Bold Foreground Red HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Windows FontSize 192 FontStyle Italic Foreground Blue HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Grid Here s the result: 30 www.it ebooks.info Notice that the second element is visually above the first. This is often referred to as Z order because in a three dimensional coordinate space an imaginary Z axis comes out of the screen. In Chapter 4 you ll see a way to override this behavior. Of course overlapping is not a generalized solution to displaying multiple items of text In Chapter 5 you ll see how to define rows and columns in the Grid for layout purposes but another approach to organizing multiple elements in a single cell Grid is to use various values of HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment to prevent them from overlapping. The InternationalHelloWorld program displays hello world in nine different languages. Thank you Google Translate Project: InternationalHelloWorld File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page x:Class InternationalHelloWorld.BlankPage FontSize 40 Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Chinese simplified TextBlock Text 你好 世界 HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Top Urdu TextBlock Text ہیلو دنیا HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Top Japanese TextBlock Text こんにちは 世界中のみなさん HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Top 31 www.it ebooks.info Hebrew TextBlock Text שלום עולם HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Center Esperanto TextBlock Text Saluton mondo HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Arabic TextBlock Text مرحبا العالم HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Center Korean TextBlock Text 안녕하세요 전 세계 HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Bottom Russian TextBlock Text Здравствуй мир HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Bottom Hindi TextBlock Text नमस त द नय ह HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Bottom Grid Page Notice the FontSize attribute set in the root element to apply to all nine TextBlock elements. Property inheritance is obviously one way to reduce repetition in XAML and you ll see other approaches as well in the next chapter. 32 www.it ebooks.info Media As Well So far you ve seen greetings in text and bitmaps. The HelloAudio project plays an audio greeting from a file on my website. I made the recording using the Windows 8 Sound Recorder application which automatically saves in WMA format. The XAML file looks like this: Project: HelloAudio File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush MediaPlayer Source http: www.charlespetzold.com pw6 AudioGreeting.wma VerticalAlignment Center Grid The MediaPlayer class derives from Control and has its own built in user interface that automatically fades out until you brush your mouse or finger across it. Alternatively you can use MediaElement for playing sounds. MediaElement is a FrameworkElement derivative that has no user interface of its own although it provides enough information for you to build your own. You can use MediaPlayer or MediaElement for playing movies. The HelloVideo program plays a video from my website: Project: HelloVideo File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush MediaPlayer Source http: www.charlespetzold.com pw6 VideoGreeting.wmv Grid 33 www.it ebooks.info The Code Alternatives It s not necessary to instantiate elements or controls in XAML. You can alternatively create them entirely in code. Indeed very much of what can be done in XAML can be done in code instead. Code is particularly useful for creating many objects of the same type because there s no such thing as a for loop in XAML. Let s create a new project named HelloCode but let s visit the BlankPage.xaml file only long enough to give the Grid a name: Project: HelloCode File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Name contentGrid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid Setting the Name attribute allows the Grid to be accessed from the code behind file. Alternatively you can use x:Name: Grid x:Name contentGrid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid There s really no practical difference between Name and x:Name. As the x prefix indicates the x:Name attribute is intrinsic to XAML itself and you can use it to identify any object in the XAML file. The Name attribute is more restrictive: Name is defined by FrameworkElement so you can use it only with classes that derive from FrameworkElement. For a class not derived from FrameworkElement you ll need to use x:Name instead. Some programmers prefer to be consistent by using x:Name throughout. I tend to use Name whenever I can and x:Name otherwise. Whether you use Name or x:Name the rules for the name you choose are the same as the rules for variable names. The name can t contain spaces or begin with a number for example. All names within a particular XAML file must be unique. In the BlankPage.xaml.cs file you ll want two additional using directives: Project: HelloCode File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt using Windows.UI using Windows.UI.Text The first is for the Colors class the second is for a FontStyle enumeration. It s not strictly necessary that you insert these using directives manually. If you use the Colors class or FontStyle enumeration Visual Studio will indicate with a red squiggly underline that it can t resolve the identifier at which point you can right click it and select Resolve from the context menu. The new using directive will be added to the others in correct alphabetical order as long as the existing using directives are alphabetized . When you re all finished with the code file you can right click anywhere in the file and select Organize 34 www.it ebooks.info Usings and Remove Unused Usings to clean up the list. I ve done that with this BlankPage.xaml.cs file. The constructor of the Page class is a handy place to create a TextBlock assign properties and then add it to the Grid: Project: HelloCode File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock txtblk.Text Hello Windows 8 txtblk.FontFamily new FontFamily Times New Roman txtblk.FontSize 96 txtblk.FontStyle FontStyle.Italic txtblk.Foreground new SolidColorBrush Colors.Yellow txtblk.HorizontalAlignment HorizontalAlignment.Center txtblk.VerticalAlignment VerticalAlignment.Center contentGrid.Children.Add txtblk Notice that the last line of code here references the Grid named contentGrid in the XAML file just as if it were a normal object perhaps stored as a field. As you ll see it actually is a normal object and it is a field Although not evident in XAML the Grid has a property named Children that it inherits from Panel. This Children property is of type UIElementCollection which is a collection that implements the IList UIElement and IEnumerable UIElement interfaces. This is why the Grid can support multiple child elements. Code often tends to be a little wordier than XAML partially because the XAML parser works behind the scenes to create additional objects and perform conversions. The code reveals that the FontFamily property requires that a FontFamily object be created and that Foreground is of type Brush and requires an instance of a Brush derivative such as SolidColorBrush. Colors is a class that contains 141 static properties of type Color. You can create a Color object from ARGB bytes by using the static Color.FromArgb method. The FontStyle HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties are all enumeration types where the enumeration is the same name as the property. Indeed the Text and FontSize properties seem odd in that they are primitive types: a string and a double precision floating point number. You can reduce the code bulk a little by using a style of property initialization introduced in C 3.0: TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontFamily new FontFamily Times New Roman FontSize 96 FontStyle FontStyle.Italic Foreground new SolidColorBrush Colors.Yellow HorizontalAlignment HorizontalAlignment.Center 35 www.it ebooks.info VerticalAlignment VerticalAlignment.Center Either way you can now compile and run the HelloCode project and the result should look the same as the XAML version. It looks the same because it basically is the same. You can alternatively create the TextBlock and add it to the Children collection of the Grid in the OnNavigatedTo override. Or you can create the TextBlock in the constructor save it as a field and add it to the Grid in OnNavigatedTo. Notice that I put the code after the InitializeComponent call in the Page constructor. You can create the TextBlock prior to InitializeComponent but you must add it to the Grid after InitializeComponent because the Grid does not exist prior to that call. The InitializeComponent method basically parses the XAML at run time and instantiates all the XAML objects and puts them all together in a tree. InitializeComponent is obviously an important method which is why you might be puzzled when you can t find it in the documentation. Here s the story: When Visual Studio compiles the application it generates some intermediate files. You can find these files with Windows Explorer by navigating to the HelloCode solution the HelloCode project and then the obj and Debug directories. Among the list of files are BlankPage.g.cs and BlankPage.g.i.cs. The g stands for generated. Both these files define BlankPage classes derived from Page with the partial keyword. The composite BlankPage class thus consists of the BlankPage.xaml.cs file under your control plus these two generated files which you don t mess with. Although you don t edit these files they are important to know about because they might pop up in Visual Studio if a run time error occurs involving the XAML file. The BlankPage.g.i.cs file is the more interesting of the two. Here you ll find the definition of the InitializeComponent method which calls a static method named Application.LoadComponent to load the BlankPage.xaml file. Notice also that this partial class definition contains a private field named contentGrid which is the name you ve assigned to the Grid in the XAML file. The InitializeComponent method concludes by setting that field to the actual Grid object created by Application.LoadComponent. The contentGrid field is thus accessible throughout the BlankPage class but the value will be null until InitializeComponent is called. In summary parsing the XAML is a two stage process. At compile time the XAML is parsed to extract all the element names among other tasks and generate the intermediate C files in the obj directory. These generated C files are compiled along with the C files under your control. At run time the XAML file is parsed again to instantiate all the elements assemble them in a visual tree and obtain references to them. Where is the standard Main method that serves as an entry point to any C program That s in App.g.i.cs one of two files generated by Visual Studio based on App.xaml. Let me show you something else that will serve as just a little preview of dependency properties: 36 www.it ebooks.info As I mentioned earlier many properties that we ve been dealing with FontFamily FontSize FontStyle Foreground Text HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment have corresponding static dependency properties named FontFamilyProperty FontSizeProperty and so forth. You might amuse yourself by changing a normal statement like this: txtblk.FontStyle FontStyle.Italic to an alternative that might look quite peculiar: txtblk.SetValue TextBlock.FontStyleProperty FontStyle.Italic What you re doing here is calling a method named SetValue defined by DependencyObject and inherited by TextBlock. You re calling this method on the TextBlock object but passing to it the static FontStyleProperty object of type DependencyProperty defined by TextBlock and the value you want for that property. There is no real difference between these two ways of setting the FontStyle property. Within TextBlock the FontStyle property is very likely defined like this: public FontStyle FontStyle set SetValue TextBlock.FontStyleProperty value get return FontStyle GetValue TextBlock.FontStyleProperty I say very likely because I m not privy to the Windows Runtime source code but if the FontStyle property is defined like all other properties backed by dependency properties the set and get accessors simply call SetValue and GetValue with the TextBlock.FontStyleProperty dependency property. This is extremely standard code and it s a pattern you ll come to be so familiar with that you ll generally define your own dependency properties without so much white space like this: public FontStyle FontStyle set SetValue TextBlock.FontStyleProperty value get return FontStyle GetValue TextBlock.FontStyleProperty Earlier you saw how you can set the Foreground and font related properties on the Page rather than the TextBlock and how these properties are inherited by the TextBlock. Of course you can do the same thing in code: public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent this.FontFamily new FontFamily Times New Roman this.FontSize 96 37 www.it ebooks.info this.FontStyle FontStyle.Italic this.Foreground new SolidColorBrush Colors.Yellow TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock txtblk.Text Hello Windows 8 txtblk.HorizontalAlignment HorizontalAlignment.Center txtblk.VerticalAlignment VerticalAlignment.Center contentGrid.Children.Add txtblk C doesn t require the this prefix to access properties and methods of the class but when you re editing the files in Visual Studio typing the this prefix invokes Intellisense to give you a list of available methods properties and events. Images in Code Judging solely from the XAML files in the HelloImage and HelloLocalImage projects you might have assumed that the Source property of Image is defined as a string or perhaps the Uri type. In XAML that Source string is a shortcut for an object of type ImageSource which encapsulates the actual image that the Image element is responsible for displaying. ImageSource doesn t define anything on its own and cannot be instantiated but several important classes descend from ImageSource as shown in this partial class hierarchy: Object DependencyObject ImageSource BitmapSource BitmapImage WriteableBitmap ImageSource is defined in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Media namespace but the descendent classes are in Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Imaging. A BitmapSource can t be instantiated either but it defines public PixelWidth and PixelHeight properties as well as a SetSource method that lets you read in bitmap data from a file or network stream. BitmapImage inherits these members and also defines a UriSource property. You can use BitmapImage for displaying a bitmap from code. Besides defining this UriSource property BitmapImage also defines a constructor that accepts a Uri object. In the HelloImageCode project the Grid has been given a name of contentGrid and a using directive for Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Imaging has been added to the code behind file. Here s the BlankPage constructor: Project: HelloImageCode File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public BlankPage 38 www.it ebooks.info this.InitializeComponent Uri uri new Uri http: www.charlespetzold.com pw6 PetzoldJersey.jpg BitmapImage bitmap new BitmapImage uri Image image new Image image.Source bitmap contentGrid.Children.Add image Setting a Name of contentGrid on the Grid is not strictly necessary for accessing the Grid from code. The Grid is actually set to the Content property of the Page so rather than accessing the Grid like so: contentGrid.Children.Add image you can do it like this: Grid grid this.Content as Grid grid.Children.Add image In fact the Grid isn t even necessary in such a simple program. You can effectively remove the Grid from the visual tree by setting the Image directly to the Content property of the Page: this.Content image The Content property that Page inherits from UserControl is of type UIElement so it can support only one child. Generally the child of the Page is a Panel derivative that supports multiple children but if you need only one child you can use the Content property of the Page directly. It s also possible to make a hybrid of the XAML and code approaches: to instantiate the Image element in XAML and create the BitmapImage in code or to instantiate both the Image element and BitmapImage in XAML and then set the UriSource property of BitmapImage from code. I ve used the first approach in the HelloLocalImageCode project which has an Images directory with the Greeting.png file. The XAML file already contains the Image element but it doesn t reference an actual bitmap: Project: HelloLocalImageCode File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Image Name image Stretch None Grid The code behind file sets the Source property of the Image element in a single line: Project: HelloLocalImageCode File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent image.Source new BitmapImage new Uri ms appx: Images Greeting.png 39 www.it ebooks.info Look at that special URL for referencing the content bitmap file from code. In XAML that special prefix is optional. Are there general rules to determine when to use XAML and when to use code Not really. I tend to use XAML whenever possible except when the repetition becomes ridiculous. My normal rule for code is three or more: use a for but I ll often allow somewhat more repetition in XAML before moving it into code. A lot depends on how concise and elegant you ve managed to make the XAML and how much effort it would be to change something. Not Even a Page Insights into how a Windows Runtime program starts up can be obtained by examining the OnLaunched override in the standard App.xaml.cs file. You ll discover that it creates a Frame object uses this Frame object to navigate to an instance of BlankPage which is how BlankPage gets instantiated and then sets this Frame object to a precreated Window object accessible through the Window.Current static property: var rootFrame new Frame rootFrame.Navigate typeof BlankPage Window.Current.Content rootFrame Window.Current.Activate A Metro style application doesn t require a Page a Frame or even any XAML files at all. Let s conclude this chapter by creating a new project named StrippedDownHello and begin by deleting the App.xaml App.xaml.cs BlankPage.xaml and BlankPage.xaml.cs files as well as the entire Common folder. Yes delete them all Now the project has no code files and no XAML files. It s left with just an app manifest assembly information and some PNG files. Right click the project name and select Add and New Item. Select either a new class or code file and name it App.cs. Here s what you ll want it to look like: Project: StrippedDownHello File: App.cs using Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation using Windows.UI using Windows.UI.Xaml using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls using Windows.UI.Xaml.Media namespace TryStrippedDown public class App : Application static void Main string args Application.Start p new App 40 www.it ebooks.info protected override void OnLaunched LaunchActivatedEventArgs args TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock Text Stripped Down Windows 8 FontFamily new FontFamily Lucida sans Typewriter FontSize 96 Foreground new SolidColorBrush Colors.Red HorizontalAlignment Windows.UI.Xaml.HorizontalAlignment.Center VerticalAlignment Windows.UI.Xaml.VerticalAlignment.Center Window.Current.Content txtblk Window.Current.Activate That s all you need and obviously much less if you want default properties on the TextBlock . The static Main method is the entry point and that creates a new App object and starts it going and the OnLaunched override creates a TextBlock and makes it the content of the application s default window. I won t be pursuing this approach to creating Metro style applications in this book but obviously it works. 41 www.it ebooks.info Chapter 2 XAML Syntax A Metro style application is divided into code and markup because each has its own strength. Despite the limitations of markup in performing complex logic or computational tasks it s good to get as much of a program into markup as possible. Markup is easier to edit with tools and shows a clearer sense of the visual layout of a page. Of course everything in markup is a string so markup sometimes becomes cumbersome in representing complex objects. Because markup doesn t have the loop processing common in programming languages it can also be prone to repetition. These issues have been addressed in the syntax of XAML in several ways the most important of which are explored in this chapter. But let me begin this vital subject with a topic that will at first appear to be completely unrelated: defining a gradient brush. The Gradient Brush in Code The Background property in Grid and the Foreground property of the TextBlock are both of type Brush. The programs shown so far have set these properties to a derivative of Brush called SolidColorBrush. As demonstrated in Chapter 1 Markup and Code you can create a SolidColorBrush in code and give it a Color value in XAML this is done for you behind the scenes. SolidColorBrush is only one of four available brushes as shown in this class hierarchy: Object DependencyObject Brush SolidColorBrush GradientBrush LinearGradientBrush TileBrush ImageBrush WebViewBrush Only SolidColorBrush LinearGradientBrush ImageBrush and WebViewBrush are instantiable. Like many other graphics related classes most of these brush classes are defined in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Media namespace although WebViewBrush is defined in Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls. The LinearGradientBrush creates a gradient between two or more colors. For example suppose you want to display some text with blue at the left gradually turning to red at the right. While we re at it let s set a similar gradient on the Background property of the Grid but going the other way. 42 www.it ebooks.info In the GradientBrushCode program a TextBlock is instantiated in XAML and both the Grid and the TextBlock have names: Project: GradientBrushCode File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Name contentGrid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Name txtblk Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 FontWeight Bold HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Grid The constructor of the code behind file creates two separate LinearGradientBrush objects to set to the Background property of the Grid and Foreground property of the TextBlock: Project: GradientBrushCode File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent Create the foreground brush for the TextBlock LinearGradientBrush foregroundBrush new LinearGradientBrush foregroundBrush.StartPoint new Point 0 0 foregroundBrush.EndPoint new Point 1 0 GradientStop gradientStop new GradientStop gradientStop.Offset 0 gradientStop.Color Colors.Blue foregroundBrush.GradientStops.Add gradientStop gradientStop new GradientStop gradientStop.Offset 1 gradientStop.Color Colors.Red foregroundBrush.GradientStops.Add gradientStop txtblk.Foreground foregroundBrush Create the background brush for the Grid LinearGradientBrush backgroundBrush new LinearGradientBrush StartPoint new Point 0 0 EndPoint new Point 1 0 backgroundBrush.GradientStops.Add new GradientStop Offset 0 Color Colors.Red backgroundBrush.GradientStops.Add new GradientStop 43 www.it ebooks.info Offset 1 Color Colors.Blue contentGrid.Background backgroundBrush The two brushes are created with two different styles of property initialization but otherwise they re basically the same. The LinearGradientBrush class defines two properties named StartPoint and EndPoint of type Point which is a structure with X and Y properties representing a two dimensional coordinate point. The StartPoint and EndPoint properties are relative to the object to which the brush is applied based on the standard windowing coordinate system: X values increase to the right and Y values increase going down. The relative point 0 0 is the upper left corner and 1 0 is the upper right corner so the brush gradient extends along an imaginary line between these two points and all lines parallel to that line. The StartPoint and EndPoint defaults are 0 0 and 1 1 which defines a gradient from the upper left to the lower right corners of the target object. LinearGradientBrush also has a property named GradientStops that is a collection of GradientStop objects. Each GradientStop indicates an Offset relative to the gradient line and a Color at that offset. Generally the offsets range from 0 to 1 but for special purposes they can go beyond the range encompassed by the brush. LinearGradientBrush defines additional properties to indicate how the gradient is calculated and what happens beyond the smallest Offset and the largest Offset. Here s the result: If you now consider defining these same brushes in XAML all of a sudden the limitations of markup become all too evident. XAML lets you define a SolidColorBrush by just specifying the color but how on earth do you set a Foreground or Background property to a text string defining two points and two or more offsets and colors 44 www.it ebooks.info Property Element Syntax Fortunately there is a way. As you ve seen you normally indicate that you want a SolidColorBrush in XAML simply by specifying the color of the brush: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 Foreground Blue FontSize 96 The SolidColorBrush is created for you behind the scenes. However it s possible to use a variation of this syntax that gives you the option of being more explicit about the nature of this brush. Remove that Foreground property and separate the TextBlock element into start and end tags: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 TextBlock Within those tags insert additional start and end tags consisting of the element name a period and a property name: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock And within those tags put the object you want to set to that property: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 TextBlock.Foreground SolidColorBrush Color Blue TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock Now it s explicit that Foreground is being set to an instance of a SolidColorBrush. This is called property element syntax and it s an important feature of XAML. At first it might seem to you as it did to me that this syntax is an extension or aberration of standard XML but it s definitely not. Periods are perfectly valid characters in XML element names. With that last little snippet of XAML it is now possible to categorize three types of XAML syntax: The TextBlock and SolidColorBrush are both examples of object elements because they are XML elements that result in the creation of objects. The Text FontSize and Color settings are examples of property attributes. They are XML 45 www.it ebooks.info attributes that specify the settings of properties. The TextBlock.Foreground tag is a property element. It is a property expressed as an XML element. XAML poses a restriction on property element tags: Nothing else can go in the start tag. The object being set to the property must be content that goes between the start and end tags. The following example uses a second set of property element tags for the Color property of the SolidColorBrush: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 TextBlock.Foreground SolidColorBrush SolidColorBrush.Color Blue SolidColorBrush.Color SolidColorBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock If you want you can set the other two properties of the TextBlock similarly: TextBlock TextBlock.Text Hello Windows 8 TextBlock.Text TextBlock.FontSize 96 TextBlock.FontSize TextBlock.Foreground SolidColorBrush SolidColorBrush.Color Blue SolidColorBrush.Color SolidColorBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock But there s really no point. For these simple properties the property attribute syntax is shorter and clearer. Where property element syntax comes to the rescue is in expressing more complex objects like LinearGradientBrush. Let s begin again with the property element tags: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock 46 www.it ebooks.info Put a LinearGradientBrush in there separated into start tags and end tags. Set the StartPoint and EndPoint properties in this start tag: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 TextBlock.Foreground LinearGradientBrush StartPoint 0 0 EndPoint 1 0 LinearGradientBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock Notice that the two properties of type Point are specified with two numbers separated by a space. You can separate the two numbers with a comma if you choose. The LinearGradientBrush has a GradientStops property that is a collection of GradientStop objects so include the GradientStops property with another property element: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 TextBlock.Foreground LinearGradientBrush StartPoint 0 0 EndPoint 1 0 LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops LinearGradientBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock The GradientStops property is of type GradientStopCollection so let s add that in as well: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 TextBlock.Foreground LinearGradientBrush StartPoint 0 0 EndPoint 1 0 LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops GradientStopCollection GradientStopCollection LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops LinearGradientBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock Finally add the two GradientStop objects to the collection: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 TextBlock.Foreground LinearGradientBrush StartPoint 0 0 EndPoint 1 0 LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops GradientStopCollection GradientStop Offset 0 Color Blue GradientStop Offset 1 Color Red 47 www.it ebooks.info GradientStopCollection LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops LinearGradientBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock And there we have it: a rather complex object expressed entirely in markup. Content Properties The syntax I ve just shown you for instantiating and initializing the LinearGradientBrush is actually a bit more extravagant than what you actually need. You might be persuaded of this fact when you consider that all the XAML files we ve seen so far have apparently been missing some properties and elements. Look at this little snippet of markup: Page Grid TextBlock TextBlock TextBlock Grid Page We know from working with the classes in code that the TextBlock elements are added to the Children collection of the Grid and the Grid is set to the Content property of the Page. But where are those Children and Content properties in the markup Well you can include them if you want. Here are the Page.Content and Grid.Children property elements as they are allowed to appear in a XAML file: Page Page.Content Grid Grid.Children TextBlock TextBlock TextBlock Grid.Children Grid Page.Content Page This markup is still missing the UIElementCollection object that is set to the Children property of the Grid. That cannot be explicitly included because only elements with parameterless public constructors can be instantiated in XAML files and the UIElementCollection class is missing that constructor. The real question is this: Why aren t the Page.Content and Grid.Children property elements required in the XAML file 48 www.it ebooks.info Simple: All classes referenced in XAML are allowed to have one and only one property that is designated as a content property. For this content property and only this property property element tags are not required. The content property for a particular class is specified as a .NET attribute. Somewhere in the actual class definition of the Panel class from which Grid derives is the following ContentProperty attribute: ContentProperty Name Children public class Panel : FrameworkElement What this means is simple. Whenever the XAML parser encounters some markup like this: Grid TextBlock TextBlock TextBlock Grid then it checks the ContentProperty attribute of the Grid and discovers that these TextBlock elements should be added to the Children property. Similarly the definition of the UserControl class from which Page derives defines the Content property as its content property which might sound appropriately redundant if you say it out loud : ContentProperty Name Content public class UserControl : Control You can define a ContentProperty attribute in your own classes. The ContentPropertyAttribute class required for this is in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Markup namespace. Unfortunately the current documentation for the Windows Runtime indicates only when a ContentProperty attribute has been set on a class look in the Attributes section of the home page for the Panel class for example but not what that property actually is You ll just have to learn by example and retain by habit. Fortunately many content properties are defined to be the most convenient property of the class. For LinearGradientBrush the content property is GradientStops. Although GradientStops is of type GradientStopCollection XAML does not require collection objects to be explicitly included. Here s the excessively wordy form of the LinearGradientBrush syntax: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 TextBlock.Foreground LinearGradientBrush StartPoint 0 0 EndPoint 1 0 LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops 49 www.it ebooks.info GradientStopCollection GradientStop Offset 0 Color Blue GradientStop Offset 1 Color Red GradientStopCollection LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops LinearGradientBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock Neither the LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops property elements nor the GradientStopCollection tags are required so it simplifies to this: TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 TextBlock.Foreground LinearGradientBrush StartPoint 0 0 EndPoint 1 0 GradientStop Offset 0 Color Blue GradientStop Offset 1 Color Red LinearGradientBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock Now it s difficult to imagine how it can get any simpler and still be valid XML. It is now possible to rewrite the GradientBrushCode program so that everything is done in XAML: Project: GradientBrushMarkup File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Grid.Background LinearGradientBrush StartPoint 0 0 EndPoint 1 0 GradientStop Offset 0 Color Red GradientStop Offset 1 Color Blue LinearGradientBrush Grid.Background TextBlock Name txtblk Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 FontWeight Bold HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock.Foreground LinearGradientBrush StartPoint 0 0 EndPoint 1 0 GradientStop Offset 0 Color Blue GradientStop Offset 1 Color Red LinearGradientBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock Grid Even with the property element syntax it s more readable than the code version. What code illustrates most clearly is how something is built. Markup shows the completed construction. Here s something to watch out for suppose you define a property element on a Grid with multiple 50 www.it ebooks.info children: Grid Grid.Background SolidColorBrush Color Blue Grid.Background TextBlock Text one TextBlock Text two TextBlock Text three Grid You can alternatively put the property element at the bottom: Grid TextBlock Text one TextBlock Text two TextBlock Text three Grid.Background SolidColorBrush Color Blue Grid.Background Grid But you can t have some content before the property element and some content after it: This doesn t work Grid TextBlock Text one Grid.Background SolidColorBrush Color Blue Grid.Background TextBlock Text two TextBlock Text three Grid Why the prohibition The problem becomes very apparent when you include the property element tags for the Children property: This doesn t work Grid Grid.Children TextBlock Text one Grid.Children Grid.Background SolidColorBrush Color Blue Grid.Background Grid.Children TextBlock Text two TextBlock Text three Grid.Children 51 www.it ebooks.info Grid Now it s obvious that the Children property is defined twice with two separate collections and that s not legal. The TextBlock Content Property As you saw in the WrappedText program in Chapter 1 TextBlock allows you to specify text as content. However the content property of TextBlock is not the Text property. It is instead a property named Inlines of type InlineCollection a collection of Inline objects or more precisely instances of Inline derivatives. The Inline class and its derivatives can all be found in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Documents namespace. Here s the hierarchy: Object DependencyObject TextElement Block Paragraph Inline InlineUIContainer LineBreak Run defines Text property Span defines Inlines property Bold Italic Underline These classes allow you to specify varieties of formatted text in a single TextBlock. TextElement defines Foreground and all the font related properties: FontFamily FontSize FontStyle FontWeight for setting bold FontStretch expanded and compressed for fonts that support it and CharacterSpacing and these are inherited by all the descendant classes. The Block and Paragraph classes are mostly used in connection with a souped up version of TextBlock called RichTextBlock that I ll discuss in a later chapter. The remainder of this discussion will focus entirely on classes that derive from Inline. The Run element is the only class here that defines a Text property and Text is also the content property of Run. Any text content in an InlineCollection is converted to a Run except when that text is already content of a Run. You can also use Run objects explicitly to specify different font properties of the text strings. Span defines an Inlines property just like TextBlock. This allows Span and its descendent classes to be nested. The three descendent classes of Span are shortcuts. For example the Bold class is equivalent to Span with the FontWeight attribute set to Bold. 52 www.it ebooks.info As an example here s a TextBlock with a small Inlines collection using the shortcut classes with nesting: TextBlock Text in Bold bold Bold and Italic italic Italic and Bold Italic bold italic Italic Bold TextBlock As this is parsed all those pieces of loose text are converted to Run objects so the Inlines collection of the TextBlock contains six items: instances of Run Bold Run Italic Run and Bold. The Inlines collection of the first Bold item contains a single Run object as does the Inlines collection of the first Italic item. The Inlines collection of the second Bold item contains an Italic object whose Inlines collection contains a Run object. The use of Bold and Italic with a TextBlock demonstrates clearly how the syntax of XAML is based on the classes and properties that support these elements. It wouldn t be possible to nest an Italic tag in a Bold tag if Bold didn t have an Inlines collection. Here s a somewhat more extensive TextBlock that shows off more formatting features: Project: TextFormatting File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Width 400 FontSize 24 TextWrapping Wrap HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Here is text in a Run FontFamily Times New Roman Times New Roman Run font as well as text in a Run FontSize 36 36 pixel Run height. LineBreak LineBreak Here is some Bold bold Bold and here is some Italic italic Italic and here is some Underline underline Underline and here is some Bold Italic Underline bold italic underline and Span FontSize 36 bigger and Span Foreground Red Red Span as well Span Underline Italic Bold . TextBlock Grid The TextBlock is given an explicit 400 pixel width so that it doesn t sprawl too wide. Individual Run elements can always be used to format pieces of text as shown in the first several lines in this paragraph but if you want nested formatting and particularly in connection with the shortcut classes you ll want to switch to Span and its shortcut derivatives: 53 www.it ebooks.info As you can see the LineBreak element can arbitrarily break lines. In theory the InlineUIContainer class allows you to embed any UIElement in the text for example Image elements but it is not implemented. Try to use it and you ll get the error Value does not fall within the expected range. Sharing Brushes and Other Resources Suppose you have multiple TextBlock elements on a page and you want several of them to have the same brush. If this is a SolidColorBrush the repetitive markup is not too bad. However if it s a LinearGradientBrush it gets messier. A LinearGradientBrush requires at least six tags and all that repetitive markup becomes very painful particularly if something needs to be changed. The Windows Runtime has a feature called the XAML resource that lets you share objects among multiple elements. Sharing brushes is one common application of the XAML resource but the most common is defining and sharing styles. XAML resources are stored in a ResourceDictionary a dictionary whose keys and values are both of type object. Very often however the keys are strings. Both FrameworkElement and Application define a property named Resources of type ResourceDictionary. The SharedBrush project shows a typical way to share a LinearGradientBrush and a couple other objects among several elements on a page. Towards the top of the XAML file I ve defined a Resources property element for the collection of resources for that page: Project: SharedBrush File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page Page.Resources x:String x:Key appName Shared Brush App x:String 54 www.it ebooks.info LinearGradientBrush x:Key rainbowBrush GradientStop Offset 0 Color Red GradientStop Offset 0.17 Color Orange GradientStop Offset 0.33 Color Yellow GradientStop Offset 0.5 Color Green GradientStop Offset 0.67 Color Blue GradientStop Offset 0.83 Color Indigo GradientStop Offset 1 Color Violet LinearGradientBrush FontFamily x:Key fontFamily Times New Roman FontFamily x:Double x:Key fontSize 96 x:Double Page.Resources Page Often the definition of resources near the top of a XAML file is referred to as a resources section. This particular Resources dictionary is initialized with four items of four different types: String LinearGradientBrush FontFamily and Double. Notice the x prefix on String and Double. These are .NET primitive types of course but they are not Windows Runtime types and hence they are not in the default XAML namespace. The x:Boolean and x:Int32 types are also available. Also notice that each of these objects has an x:Key attribute. The x:Key attribute is valid only in a Resources dictionary. As the name suggests the x:Key attribute is the key for that item in the dictionary. In the body of the XAML file an element references the resource by using this key in some special markup called a XAML markup extension. There are just a few XAML markup extensions and you ll always recognize them by curly braces. The markup extension for referencing a resource consists of the keyword StaticResource and the key name. In fact you ve already seen the StaticResource markup extension numerous times: it provides the standard Grid with a background brush. The rest of this XAML file uses StaticResource to obtain items defined in the Resources dictionary: Project: SharedBrush File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text StaticResource appName FontSize 48 HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Top Text Foreground StaticResource rainbowBrush FontFamily StaticResource fontFamily FontSize StaticResource fontSize HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Top 55 www.it ebooks.info TextBlock Text Left Text Foreground StaticResource rainbowBrush FontFamily StaticResource fontFamily FontSize StaticResource fontSize HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Right Text Foreground StaticResource rainbowBrush FontFamily StaticResource fontFamily FontSize StaticResource fontSize HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Bottom Text Foreground StaticResource rainbowBrush FontFamily StaticResource fontFamily FontSize StaticResource fontSize HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Bottom Grid Page Here s the result A few notes: Referencing the same three resources in four TextBlock elements cries out for a more efficient approach namely a style which I ll discuss later in this chapter. Resources must be defined in a XAML file lexically preceding their use. This is why it s most common for the Resources dictionary to be near the top of a XAML file and most conveniently defined on the 56 www.it ebooks.info root element. However every FrameworkElement descendant can support a Resources dictionary so you might include them further down the visual tree. The keys must be unique within any Resources dictionary but you can use duplicate keys in other Resources dictionaries. When the XAML parser encounters a StaticResource markup extension it begins searching up the visual tree for a Resources dictionary with a matching key and it uses the first one it encounters. You can effectively override the values of Resources keys with those in more local dictionaries. If the XAML parser cannot find a matching key by searching up the visual tree it checks the Resources dictionary in the Application object. The App.xaml file is an ideal place for defining resources that are used throughout the application. To use a bunch of resources across multiple applications you can define them in a separate XAML file with a root element of ResourceDictionary. Include that file in a project reference it in the App.xaml file and you can then use items in that dictionary. Indeed an example is already provided for you in the standard Visual Studio projects for Metro style applications. The Common folder contains a file named StandardStyles.xaml that has a root element of ResourceDictionary: ResourceDictionary xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml ResourceDictionary This file is referenced in the standard App.xaml file. In fact referencing this resources collection is just about all that the standard App.xaml file does: Application x:Class SharedBrush.App xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml xmlns:local using:SharedBrush Application.Resources ResourceDictionary ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries ResourceDictionary Source Common StandardStyles.xaml ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries ResourceDictionary Application.Resources Application You can include your own collections of resources by inserting additional ResourceDictionary tags in the MergedDictionaries collection. Or you can include your own resources directly in the App object s Resources dictionary. You can also reference the Resources dictionary from code. Following the InitializeComponent call 57 www.it ebooks.info you can retrieve an item from the dictionary with an indexer: FontFamily fntfam this.Resources fontFamily as FontFamily Now try this: Comment out the fontFamily entry in the BlankPage.xaml file but add that item to the dictionary in the BlankPage constructor prior to the InitializeComponent call. this.Resources.Add fontFamily new FontFamily Times New Roman When the XAML file is parsed by InitializeComponent this object will be available within that XAML file. At the time of this writing the ResourceDictionary class does not define a public method that searches up the visual tree for dictionaries in ancestor classes. If you need something like that to search for resources in code you can easily write it yourself by climbing the visual tree using the Parent property defined by FrameworkElement or the VisualTreeHelper class defined in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Media namespace. The Application object for the application is available from the static Application.Current property. The predefined resources such as the ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush referenced by the Grid don t seem to be programmatically enumerable. Nor are they documented. However in Visual Studio you can see a list of the predefined brushes by clicking the Grid in the BlankPage.xaml file and viewing the available Background brush identifiers in the Properties view in the lower right corner of Visual Studio. After ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush the next most important predefined resource identifier is ApplicationTextBrush which is black in the light theme and white in the dark theme. If you need a color to properly contrast with the background as I will shortly this is it. The ControlHighlightBrush is also convenient for a splash of color that contrasts with both the background and foreground. Resources Are Shared Are resource objects truly shared among the elements that reference them Or are separate instances created for each StaticResource reference Try inserting the following code after the InitializeComponent call in the SharedBrush.xaml.cs file: TextBlock txtblk this.Content as Grid .Children 1 as TextBlock LinearGradientBrush brush txtblk.Foreground as LinearGradientBrush brush.StartPoint new Point 0 1 brush.EndPoint new Point 0 0 This code references the LinearGradientBrush of the second TextBlock in the Children collection of the Grid and changes the StartPoint and EndPoint properties. Lo and behold all the TextBlock elements referencing that LinearGradientBrush are affected: 58 www.it ebooks.info Conclusion: resources are shared. It s also easy to verify that even if a resource is not referenced by any element it is still instantiated. A Bit of Vector Graphics As you ve seen displaying text and bitmaps in a Metro style application involves creating objects of type TextBlock and Image and attaching them to a visual tree. There s no concept of drawing or painting at least not on the application level. Internal to the Windows Runtime the TextBlock and Image elements are rendering themselves. Similarly if you wish to display some vector graphics lines curves and filled areas you don t do it by calling methods like DrawLine and DrawBezier. These methods do not exist Instead you create elements of type Line Polyline Polygon and Path. These classes derive from the Shape class which itself derives from FrameworkElement and can all be found in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Shapes namespace which is sometimes referred to as the Shapes library. A deep exploration of vector graphics awaits us in a future chapter. For now let s just examine two of the most powerful members of the Shapes library: Polyline and Path. Polyline renders a collection of connected straight lines but its real purpose is to draw complex curves. All you need to do is keep the individual lines short and supply plenty of them. Don t hesitate to give Polyline thousands of lines. That s what it s there for. Let s use Polyline to draw an Archimedean spiral. The XAML file for the Spiral program instantiates the Polyline object but doesn t include the points that define the figure: 59 www.it ebooks.info Project: Spiral File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Polyline Name polyline Stroke StaticResource ApplicationTextBrush StrokeThickness 3 HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Grid The Stroke property inherited from Shape is the brush used to draw the actual lines. Generally this is a SolidColorBrush but you ll see shortly that it doesn t have to be. I ve used StaticResource with the predefined identifier that provides a white brush with a dark theme and a black brush with a light theme. StrokeThickness also inherited from Shape is the width of the lines in pixels and you ve seen HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment before. It might seem a little strange to specify HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment for a chunk of vector graphics so a little explanation might be in order. Two dimensional vector graphics involve the use of coordinate points in the form X Y on a Cartesian coordinate system where X is a position on the horizontal axis and Y is a position on the vertical axis. Vector graphics in the Windows Runtime use a coordinate convention commonly associated with windowing environments: values of X increase to the right as is normal but values of Y increase going down which is opposite the mathematical convention . When only positive values of X and Y are used the origin the point 0 0 is the upper left corner of the graphical figure. Negative coordinates can be used to indicate points to the left of the origin or above the origin. However when the Windows Runtime calculates the dimensions of a vector graphics object for layout purposes these negative coordinates are ignored. For example suppose you draw a polyline with points that have X coordinates ranging from 100 to 300 and Y coordinates ranging from 200 to 400. This implies that the polyline has a dimension of 400 pixels wide and 600 pixels high and that is certainly true. But for purposes of layout and alignment the polyline is treated as if it were 300 pixels wide and 400 pixels tall. For a vector graphics figure to be treated in a predictable manner in the Windows Runtime layout system all that s required is that you regard the point 0 0 as the upper left corner. For purposes of layout the maximum positive X coordinate becomes the element s width and the maximum positive Y coordinate become s the element s height. For specifying a coordinate point the Windows.Foundation namespace includes a Point structure that has two properties of type double named X and Y. In addition the Windows.UI.Xaml.Media namespace includes a PointCollection which is a collection of Point objects. The only property that Polyline defines on its own is Points of type PointCollection. A collection of points can be assigned to the Points property in XAML but for very many points calculated algorithmically code is ideal. In the constructor of the Spiral class a for loop goes from 0 to 3600 60 www.it ebooks.info degrees effectively spinning around a circle 10 times: Project: Spiral File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent for int angle 0 angle 3600 angle double radians Math.PI angle 180 double radius angle 10 double x 360 radius Math.Sin radians double y 360 radius Math.Cos radians polyline.Points.Add new Point x y The radians variable converts degrees to radians for the .NET trig functions and radius is calculated to range from 0 through 360 depending on the angle which means that the maximum radius will be 360 pixels. The values returned by the Math.Sin and Math.Cos static methods are multiplied by radius which means these products will range between 360 and 360 pixels. To shift this figure so that all pixels have positive values relative to an upper left origin 360 is added to both products. The spiral is thus centered at the point 360 360 and extends not more than 360 pixels in all directions. The loop concludes by instantiating a Point value and adding it to the Points collection of the Polyline. Here it is: Without the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment settings the figure would be aligned at the upper left corner of the page. If the adjustment for the spiral s center is also removed from the 61 www.it ebooks.info calculation the center would be in the upper left corner of the page and ¾ of the figure would not be visible. If you keep HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment set to Center but remove the adjustment for the spiral s center you ll see the figure positioned so that the lower right quadrant is centered. The spiral almost fills the screen but that s only because the screen I m using for these images has a height of 768 pixels. What if we wanted to ensure that the spiral filled the screen regardless of the screen s size One solution is to base the numbers going into the calculation of the spiral coordinates directly on the pixel size of the screen. You ll see how to do that in Chapter 3 Basic Event Handling. Another solution requires noticing that the Shape class defines a property named Stretch that you use in exactly the same way you use the Stretch property of Image. By default the Stretch property for Polyline is the enumeration member Stretch.None which means no stretching but you can set it to Uniform so that the figure fills the container while maintaining its aspect ratio. The StretchedSpiral project demonstrates this. The XAML file sets a larger stroke width as well: Project: StretchedSpiral File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Polyline Name polyline Stroke StaticResource ApplicationTextBrush StrokeThickness 6 Stretch Uniform Grid The code behind file calculates the coordinates of the spiral using arbitrary coordinates which in this case I ve chosen based on a radius of 1000: Project: StretchedSpiral File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent for int angle 0 angle 3600 angle double radians Math.PI angle 180 double radius angle 3.6 double x 1000 radius Math.Sin radians double y 1000 radius Math.Cos radians polyline.Points.Add new Point x y You might also notice that I changed a plus to a minus in the y calculation so that the spiral ends at the top rather than the bottom. The switch to the light theme demonstrates the convenience of using ApplicationTextBrush for the Stroke color: 62 www.it ebooks.info Try setting the Stretch property to Fill to see this circular spiral be distorted into an elliptical spiral. You ll recall how LinearGradientBrush adapts itself to the size of whatever element it s applied to. The same is true when using that brush with vector graphics. Let s instead try an ImageBrush which is a brush created from a bitmap. The code behind file for ImageBrushedSpiral is the same as StretchedSpiral. The XAML file widens the stroke considerably and instantiates an ImageBrush: Project: ImageBrushedSpiral File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Polyline Name polyline StrokeThickness 25 Stretch Uniform Polyline.Stroke ImageBrush ImageSource http: www.charlespetzold.com pw6 PetzoldJersey.jpg Stretch UniformToFill AlignmentY Top Polyline.Stroke Polyline Grid The ImageSource property of ImageBrush is of type ImageSource just like the Source property of Image. In XAML you can just set it to a URL. ImageBrush has its own Stretch property which by default is Fill. This means that the bitmap is stretched to fill the area without respecting the aspect ratio. For the image I m using that would make me look fat so I switched to UniformToFill which maintains the image s aspect ratio while filling the area. Doing so requires part of the image to be cropped. Use the AlignmentX and AlignmentY properties to indicate how the bitmap should be aligned with the graphical figure and consequently where the image should be cropped. For this bitmap I prefer that the bottom be cropped rather than my head: 63 www.it ebooks.info Notice that the alignment of the image seems to be based on the geometric line of the spiral rather than the line rendered with a width of 25 pixels. This causes areas at the top left and right sides to be shaved off. The problem can be fixed with the Transform property of ImageBrush but that s a little too advanced for this chapter. You may have noticed that ImageBrush derives from TileBrush. That heritage might suggest that you could repeat bitmap images horizontally and vertically to tile a surface but doing so is not supported by the Windows Runtime. Any curve that you can define with parametric formulas you can render with Polyline. But if the complex curves you need are arcs that is curves on the circumference of an ellipse cubic Bézier splines the standard sort or quadratic Bézier splines which have only one control point you don t need to use Polyline. These curves are all supported with the Path element. Path defines just one property on its own called Data of type Geometry a class defined in Windows.UI.Xaml.Media. In the Windows Runtime Geometry and related classes represent pure analytic geometry. The Geometry object defines lines and curves using coordinate points and the Path renders those lines with a particular stroke brush and thickness. The most powerful and flexible Geometry derivative is PathGeometry. The content property of PathGeometry is named Figures which is a collection of PathFigure objects. Each PathFigure is a series of connected straight lines and curves. The content property of PathFigure is Segments a collection of PathSegment objects. PathSegment is the parent class to LineSegment PolylineSegment BezierSegment PolyBezierSegment QuadraticBezierSegment PolyQuadraticBezierSegment and ArcSegment. Let s display the word HELLO by using Path and PathGeometry: Project: HelloVectorGraphics File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush 64 www.it ebooks.info Path Stroke Red StrokeThickness 12 StrokeLineJoin Round HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Path.Data PathGeometry H PathFigure StartPoint 0 0 LineSegment Point 0 100 PathFigure PathFigure StartPoint 0 50 LineSegment Point 50 50 PathFigure PathFigure StartPoint 50 0 LineSegment Point 50 100 PathFigure E PathFigure StartPoint 125 0 BezierSegment Point1 60 10 Point2 60 60 Point3 125 50 BezierSegment Point1 60 40 Point2 60 110 Point3 125 100 PathFigure L PathFigure StartPoint 150 0 LineSegment Point 150 100 LineSegment Point 200 100 PathFigure L PathFigure StartPoint 225 0 LineSegment Point 225 100 LineSegment Point 275 100 PathFigure O PathFigure StartPoint 300 50 ArcSegment Size 25 50 Point 300 49.9 IsLargeArc True PathFigure PathGeometry Path.Data Path Grid Each letter is one or more PathFigure objects which always specifies a starting point for a series of connected lines. The PathSegment derivatives continue the figure from that point. For example to draw the E BezierSegment specifies two control points and an end point. The next BezierSegment then continues from the end of the previous segment. In the ArcSegment the end point for the arc can t be the same as the start point or nothing will be drawn. That why it s set to 1 10th pixel short. The result suggests that a pair of Bézier splines was perhaps not the best way to render a capital E: 65 www.it ebooks.info Try setting the Stretch property of Path to Fill for a really big hello : Of course you can assemble the PathFigure and PathSegment objects in code but let me show you an easier way to do it in XAML. A Path Markup Syntax is available that consists of single letters coordinate points an occasional size and a couple Boolean values that reduce the markup considerably. The HelloVectorGraphicsPath project creates the same figure as HelloVectorGraphics: Project: HelloVectorGraphicsPath File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Path Stroke Red StrokeThickness 12 StrokeLineJoin Round 66 www.it ebooks.info HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Data M 0 0 L 0 100 M 0 50 L 50 50 M 50 0 L 50 100 M 125 0 C 60 10 60 60 125 50 60 40 60 110 125 100 M 150 0 L 150 100 200 100 M 225 0 L 225 100 275 100 M 300 50 A 25 50 0 1 0 300 49.9 Grid The Data property is now one big string but I ve separated it into five lines corresponding to the five letters. The M code is a move followed by x and y coordinate points. The L is a line or more precisely a polyline followed by one or more points C is a cubic Bézier curve followed by control points and an end point but more than one can be included and A is an arc. The arc is by far the most complex: The first two numbers indicate the horizontal and vertical radii of an ellipse which is rotated a number of degrees given by the next argument. Following are two flags for the IsLargeArc property and sweep direction followed by the end point. Defining a complex geometry in terms of Path Markup Syntax is one example of something that can be done only in XAML. Whatever class performs this conversion is not publicly exposed in the Windows Runtime. It is available only to the XAML parser. To convert a string of Path Markup Syntax to a Geometry in code would require some way to convert XAML to an object in code. Fortunately something like that is available. It s a static method named XamlReader.Load in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Markup namespace. Pass it a string of XAML and get out an instance of the root element with all the other parts of the tree instantiated and assembled. XamlReader.Load has some restrictions the XAML it parses can t refer to event handlers in external code for example but it is a very powerful facility. In Chapter 7 Building an Application I ll show you the source code for a tool called XamlCruncher that lets you interactively experiment with XAML. Meanwhile here s a Path with Path Markup Syntax created entirely in code: Project: PathMarkupSyntaxCode File: BlankPage.xaml.cs using Windows.UI for Colors using Windows.UI.Xaml using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls using Windows.UI.Xaml.Markup for XamlReader using Windows.UI.Xaml.Media using Windows.UI.Xaml.Shapes for Path namespace PathMarkupSyntaxCode public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent Path path new Path Stroke new SolidColorBrush Colors.Red 67 www.it ebooks.info StrokeThickness 12 StrokeLineJoin PenLineJoin.Round HorizontalAlignment HorizontalAlignment.Center VerticalAlignment VerticalAlignment.Center Data PathMarkupToGeometry M 0 0 L 0 100 M 0 50 L 50 50 M 50 0 L 50 100 M 125 0 C 60 10 60 60 125 50 60 40 60 110 125 100 M 150 0 L 150 100 200 100 M 225 0 L 225 100 275 100 M 300 50 A 25 50 0 1 0 300 49.9 this.Content as Grid .Children.Add path Geometry PathMarkupToGeometry string pathMarkup string xaml Path xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation Path.Data pathMarkup Path.Data Path Path path XamlReader.Load xaml as Path Detach the PathGeometry from the Path Geometry geometry path.Data path.Data null return geometry Watch out when working with the Path class in code: the BlankPage.xaml.cs file that Visual Studio generates does not include a using directive for Windows.UI.Xaml.Shape where Path resides but does include a using directive for System.IO which has a very different Path class for working with files and directories. The magic method is down at the bottom. It assembles a tiny piece of legal XAML with Path as the root element and property element syntax to enclose the string of Path Markup Syntax. Notice that the XAML must include the standard XML namespace declaration. If XamlReader.Load doesn t encounter any errors it returns a Path with a Data property set to a PathGeometry. However you can t use this PathGeometry for another Path unless you disconnect it from this Path which requires setting the Data property of the returned Path to null. Styles You ve seen how brushes can be defined as resources and shared among elements. By far the most common use of resources is to define styles which are instances of the Style class. A style is basically a collection of property definitions that can be shared among multiple elements. The use of styles not 68 www.it ebooks.info only reduces repetitive markup but also allows easier global changes. After this discussion much of the StandardStyles.xaml file included in the Common folder of your Visual Studio projects will be comprehensible except for large sections within ControlTemplate tags. That s coming up in a later chapter. The SharedBrushWithStyle project is much the same as SharedBrush except that it uses a Style to consolidate several properties. Here s the new Resources section with the Style near the bottom: Project: SharedBrushWithStyle File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page.Resources x:String x:Key appName Shared Brush with Style x:String LinearGradientBrush x:Key rainbowBrush GradientStop Offset 0 Color Red GradientStop Offset 0.17 Color Orange GradientStop Offset 0.33 Color Yellow GradientStop Offset 0.5 Color Green GradientStop Offset 0.67 Color Blue GradientStop Offset 0.83 Color Indigo GradientStop Offset 1 Color Violet LinearGradientBrush Style x:Key rainbowStyle TargetType TextBlock Setter Property FontFamily Value Times New Roman Setter Property FontSize Value 96 Setter Property Foreground Value StaticResource rainbowBrush Style Page.Resources Like all resources the start tag of the Style includes an x:Key attribute. Style also requires a TargetType attribute indicating either FrameworkElement or a class that derives from FrameworkElement. Styles can be applied only to FrameworkElement derivatives. The body of the Style includes a bunch of Setter tags each of which specifies Property and Value attributes. Notice that the last one has its Value attribute set to a StaticResource of the previously defined LinearGradientBrush. For this reference to work this particular Style must be defined later in the XAML file than the brush although it can be in a different Resources section deeper in the visual tree. Like other resources an element references a Style by using the StaticResource markup extension on its Style property: Project: SharedBrushWithStyle File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text StaticResource appName FontSize 48 HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Top Text 69 www.it ebooks.info Style StaticResource rainbowStyle HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Top TextBlock Text Left Text Style StaticResource rainbowStyle HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Right Text Style StaticResource rainbowStyle HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Bottom Text Style StaticResource rainbowStyle HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Bottom Grid Except for the application name the visuals are the same as the SharedBrush program. There is an alternative way for this particular Style to incorporate the LinearGradientBrush. Just as you can use property element syntax on elements to define an object with complex markup you can use property element syntax with the Value property of the Setter class: Style x:Key rainbowStyle TargetType TextBlock Setter Property FontFamily Value Times New Roman Setter Property FontSize Value 96 Setter Property Foreground Setter.Value LinearGradientBrush GradientStop Offset 0 Color Red GradientStop Offset 0.17 Color Orange GradientStop Offset 0.33 Color Yellow GradientStop Offset 0.5 Color Green GradientStop Offset 0.67 Color Blue GradientStop Offset 0.83 Color Indigo GradientStop Offset 1 Color Violet LinearGradientBrush Setter.Value Setter Style I know it looks a little odd at first but defining brushes within styles is very common. Notice that the LinearGradientBrush here has no x:Key of its own. Only items defined at the root level in a Resources collection can have x:Key attributes. You can define a Style in code for example like so: Style style new Style typeof TextBlock style.Setters.Add new Setter TextBlock.FontSizeProperty 96 style.Setters.Add new Setter TextBlock.FontFamilyProperty new FontFamily Times New Roman 70 www.it ebooks.info You could then add this to the Resources collection of a Page prior to the InitializeComponent call so that it would be available to TextBlock elements defined in the XAML file. Or you could assign this Style object directly to the Style property of a TextBlock. This isn t common however because code offers other solutions for defining the same properties on several different elements namely the for or foreach loop. Take careful note of the first argument to the Setter constructor. It s defined as a DependencyProperty and what you specify is a static dependency property defined by or inherited by the target class of the style. This is an excellent example of how dependency properties allow a property of a class to be specified independently of a particular instance of that class. The code also makes clear that the properties targeted by a Style can only be dependency properties. I mentioned earlier that dependency properties impose a hierarchy on the way that properties can be set. For example suppose you have the following markup in this program: TextBlock Text Top Text Style StaticResource rainbowStyle FontSize 24 HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Top The Style defines a FontSize value but the FontSize property is also set locally on the TextBlock. As you might hope and expect the local setting takes precedence over the Style setting and both take precedence over a FontSize value propagated through the visual tree. Once a Style object is set to the Style property of an element the Style can no longer be changed. You can later set a different Style object to the element and you can change properties of objects referenced by the style such as brushes but you cannot set or remove Setter objects or change their Value properties. Styles can inherit property settings from other styles by using a Style property called BasedOn which is usually set to a StaticResource markup extension referencing a previously defined Style definition: Style x:Key baseTextBlockStyle TargetType TextBlock Setter Property FontFamily Value Times New Roman Setter Property FontSize Value 24 Style Style x:Key gradientStyle TargetType TextBlock BasedOn StaticResource baseTextBlockStyle Setter Property FontSize Value 96 Setter Property Foreground Setter.Value LinearGradientBrush GradientStop Offset 0 Color Red GradientStop Offset 1 Color Blue LinearGradientBrush Setter.Value Setter 71 www.it ebooks.info Style The Style with the key gradientStyle is based on the previous Style with the key baseTextBlockStyle which means that it inherits the FontFamily setting overrides the FontSize setting and defines a new Foreground setting. Here s another example: Style x:Key centeredStyle TargetType FrameworkElement Setter Property HorizontalAlignment Value Center Setter Property VerticalAlignment Value Center Style Style x:Key rainbowStyle TargetType TextBlock BasedOn StaticResource centeredStyle Setter Property FontSize Value 96 Setter Property Foreground Setter.Value LinearGradientBrush GradientStop Offset 0 Color Red GradientStop Offset 1 Color Blue LinearGradientBrush Setter.Value Setter Style In this case the first Style has a TargetType of FrameworkElement which means that it can include only properties defined by FrameworkElement or inherited by FrameworkElement. You can still use this property for a TextBlock because TextBlock derives from FrameworkElement. The second Style is based on centeredStyle but has a TargetType of TextBlock which means it can also include property settings specific to TextBlock. The TargetType must be the same as the BasedOn type or derived from the BasedOn type. Despite all I ve said about keys being required for resources a Style is actually the only exception to this rule. A Style without an x:Key is a very special case called an implicit style. The Resources section of the ImplicitStyle project has an example: Project: ImplicitStyle File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page.Resources x:String x:Key appName Implicit Style App x:String Style TargetType TextBlock Setter Property FontFamily Value Times New Roman Setter Property FontSize Value 96 Setter Property Foreground Setter.Value LinearGradientBrush GradientStop Offset 0 Color Red GradientStop Offset 0.17 Color Orange GradientStop Offset 0.33 Color Yellow GradientStop Offset 0.5 Color Green GradientStop Offset 0.67 Color Blue 72 www.it ebooks.info GradientStop Offset 0.83 Color Indigo GradientStop Offset 1 Color Violet LinearGradientBrush Setter.Value Setter Style Page.Resources A key is actually created behind the scenes. It s an object of type RuntimeType which is not a public type indicating the TextBlock type. The implicit style is very powerful. Any TextBlock further down the visual tree that does not have its Style property set instead gets the implicit style. If you have a page full of TextBlock elements and you suddenly decide that you want them all to be styled the same way the implicit style makes it very easy. Notice that none of these TextBlock elements have their Style properties set: Project: ImplicitStyle File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text StaticResource appName FontFamily Portable User Interface FontSize 48 Foreground StaticResource ApplicationTextBrush HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Top Text HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Top TextBlock Text Left Text HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Right Text HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Bottom Text HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Bottom Grid Although I obviously intended for the implicit style to apply to most of the TextBlock elements on the page I didn t want it to apply to the first one which appears in the center. If you want certain elements on the page to not have this implicit style you must give those elements an explicit style or provide local settings that override the properties included in the Style object or set the Style property to null. I ll show you how to do that in XAML shortly. In this example I ve overridden the implicit style in the first TextBlock by giving it the default FontFamily name an explicit FontSize and a Foreground based on a predefined resource. 73 www.it ebooks.info You cannot derive a style from an implicit style. However an implicit style can be based on a nonimplicit style. Simply provide TargetType and BasedOn attributes and leave out the x:Key. The implicit style is very powerful but remember: With great power comes and you know the rest. In a large application styles can be defined all over the place and visual trees can extend over multiple XAML files. It sometimes happens that a style is implicitly applied to an element but it s very hard to determine where that style is actually defined At this point you can begin using or at least start looking at the TextBlock styles defined in the StandardStyles.xaml file. These are called BasicTextStyle BaselineTextStyle HeaderTextStyle SubheaderTextStyle TitleTextStyle ItemTextStyle BodyTextStyle and CaptionTextStyle and obviously they are for more extensive text layout than I ve been doing here. A Taste of Data Binding Another way to share objects in a XAML file is through data bindings. Basically a data binding establishes a connection between two properties of different objects. As you ll see in Chapter 6 WinRT and MVVM data bindings find their greatest application in linking visual elements on a page with data sources and they form a crucial part of implementing the popular Model View View Model MVVM architectural pattern. In MVVM the target of the binding is a visual element in the View and the source of the binding is a property in a corresponding View Model. You can also use data bindings to link properties of two elements. Like StaticResource Binding is generally expressed as a markup extension which means that it appears between a pair of curly braces. However Binding is more elaborate than StaticResource and can alternatively be expressed in property element syntax. Here s the Resources section from the SharedBrushWithBinding project: Project: SharedBrushWithBinding File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page.Resources x:String x:Key appName Shared Brush with Binding x:String Style TargetType TextBlock Setter Property FontFamily Value Times New Roman Setter Property FontSize Value 96 Style Page.Resources The implicit style for the TextBlock no longer has a Foreground property. The LinearGradientBrush is defined on the first of the four TextBlock elements that use that brush and the subsequent TextBlock elements reference that same brush through a binding: Project: SharedBrushWithBinding File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text StaticResource appName 74 www.it ebooks.info FontFamily Portable User Interface FontSize 48 HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Name topTextBlock Text Top Text HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Top TextBlock.Foreground LinearGradientBrush GradientStop Offset 0 Color Red GradientStop Offset 0.17 Color Orange GradientStop Offset 0.33 Color Yellow GradientStop Offset 0.5 Color Green GradientStop Offset 0.67 Color Blue GradientStop Offset 0.83 Color Indigo GradientStop Offset 1 Color Violet LinearGradientBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock TextBlock Text Left Text HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Center Foreground Binding ElementName topTextBlock Path Foreground TextBlock Text Right Text HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Center Foreground Binding ElementName topTextBlock Path Foreground TextBlock Text Bottom Text HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Bottom TextBlock.Foreground Binding ElementName topTextBlock Path Foreground TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock Grid Data bindings are said to have a source and a target. The target is always the property on which the binding is set and the source is the property the binding references. The TextBlock with the name topTextBlock is considered the source of these data bindings the three TextBlock elements that share the Foreground property are targets. Two of these targets show the more standard way of expressing the Binding object as a XAML markup extension: Foreground Binding ElementName topTextBlock Path Foreground XAML markup extensions always appear in curly braces. In the markup extension for Binding a couple properties and values usually need to be set. These properties are separated by commas. The ElementName property indicates the name of the element on which the desired property has been set 75 www.it ebooks.info the Path provides the name of the property. When I m typing a Binding markup extension I always want to put quotation marks around the property values but that s wrong. Quotation marks do not appear in a binding expression. The final TextBlock shows the Binding expressed in less common property element syntax: TextBlock.Foreground Binding ElementName topTextBlock Path Foreground TextBlock.Foreground With this syntax the quotation marks around the element name and path are required. You can also create a Binding object in code and set it on a target property by using the SetBinding method defined by FrameworkElement. When doing this you ll discover that the binding target must be a dependency property. The Path property of the Binding class is called Path because it can actually be several property names separated by periods. For example replace one of the Text settings in this project with the following: Text Binding ElementName topTextBlock Path FontFamily.Source The first part of the Path indicates that we want something from the FontFamily property. That property is set to an object of type FontFamily which has a property named Source indicating the font family name. The text displayed by this TextBlock is therefore Times New Roman. Try this on any TextBlock in this project: Text Binding RelativeSource RelativeSource Self Path FontSize That s a RelativeSource markup extension inside a Binding markup extension and you use it to reference a property of the same element on which the binding is set. With StaticResource Binding and RelativeSource you ve now seen 60 percent of the XAML markup extensions supported by the Windows Runtime. The TemplateBinding markup extension won t turn up until a later chapter. The remaining markup extension is not used very often but when you need it it s indispensable. Suppose you ve defined an implicit style for the Grid that includes a Background property and it does exactly what you want except for one Grid where you want the Background property to be its default value of null. How do you specify null in markup Like so: Background x:Null Or suppose you ve defined an implicit style and there s one element where you don t want any part of the style to apply. Inhibit the implicit style like so: Style x:Null You have now seen nearly all the elements and attributes that appear with an x prefix in Windows 76 www.it ebooks.info Runtime XAML files. These are the data types x:Boolean x:Double x:Int32 x:String as well as the x:Class x:Name and x:Key attributes and the x:Null markup extension. The only one I haven t mentioned is x:Uid which must be set to application wide unique strings that reference resources for internationalization purposes. That s for a later chapter. 77 www.it ebooks.info Chapter 3 Basic Event Handling The previous chapters have demonstrated how you can instantiate and initialize elements and other objects in either XAML or code. The most common procedure is to use XAML to define the initial layout and appearance of elements on a page but then to change properties of these elements from code as the program is running. As you ve seen assigning a Name or x:Name to an element in XAML causes a field to be defined in the page class that gives the code behind file easy access to that element. This is one of the two major ways that code and XAML interact. The second is through events. An event is a general purpose mechanism that allows one object to communicate something of interest to other objects. The event is said to be fired by the first object and handled by the other. In the Windows Runtime one important application of events is to signal the presence of user input from touch the mouse a stylus or the keyboard. Following initialization a Windows Runtime program generally sits dormant in memory waiting for something interesting to happen. Almost everything the program does thereafter is in response to an event so the job of event handling is one that will occupy much of the rest of this book. The Tapped Event The UIElement class defines all the basic user input events. These include eight events beginning with the word Pointer that consolidate input from touch the mouse and the stylus five events beginning with the word Manipulation that combine input from multiple fingers two Key events for keyboard input as well as higher level events named Tapped DoubleTapped RightTapped and Holding. No the RightTapped event is not generated by a finger on your right hand it s mostly used to register right button clicks on the mouse but you can simulate a right tap with touch by holding your finger down for a moment and then lifting a gesture that also generates Holding events. It s the application s responsibility to determine how it wants to handle these. A complete exploration of these user input events awaits us in a future chapter. For now let s focus on Tapped as a simple representative event. An element that derives from UIElement fires a Tapped event to indicate that the user has briefly touched the element with a finger or clicked it with the mouse or dinged it with the stylus. To qualify as a Tapped event the finger or mouse or stylus cannot move very much and must be released in a short period of time. All the user input events have a similar pattern. UIElement defines the Tapped event like so: public event TappedEventHandler Tapped 78 www.it ebooks.info The TappedEventHandler is defined in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Input namespace. It s a delegate type that defines the signature of the event handler: public delegate void TappedEventHandler object sender TappedRoutedEventArgs e In the event handler the first argument indicates the source of the event which is always an instance of a class that derives from UIElement and the second argument provides properties and methods specific to the Tapped event. The XAML file for the TapTextBlock program defines a TextBlock with a Name attribute as well as a handler for the Tapped event: Project: TapTextBlock File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Name txtblk Text Tap Text FontSize 96 HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Tapped txtblk_Tapped_1 Grid As you type TextBlock attributes in XAML IntelliSense suggests events as well as properties. These are distinguished with little icons: a wrench for properties and a lightning bolt for events. You ll also see a few with pairs of curly brackets. These are attached properties that I ll describe in Chapter 4 Presentation with Panels. If you allow it IntelliSense also suggests a name for the event handler and I let it choose this one. Based solely on the XAML syntax you really can t tell which attributes are properties and which are events. The actual event handler is implemented in the code behind file. If you allow Visual Studio to select a handler name for you you ll discover that Visual Studio also creates a skeleton event handler in the BlankPage.xaml.cs file: private void txtblk_Tapped_1 object sender TappedRoutedEventArgs e This is the method that is called when the user taps the TextBlock. In future projects I ll change the names of event handlers to make them more to my liking. I ll remove the private keyword because that s the default I ll change the name to eliminate underscores and preface it with the word On for example OnTextBlockTapped and I ll change the argument named e to args. In theory you should be able to rename the method in the code file and then click a little global rename icon to rename the method in the XAML file as well but that doesn t seem to work in the current version of Visual Studio. For this sample program I decided I want to respond to the tap by setting the TextBlock to a random color. In preparation for that job I defined fields for a Random object and a byte array for the red green and blue bytes: 79 www.it ebooks.info Project: TapTextBlock File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page Random rand new Random byte rgb new byte 3 public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent private void txtblk_Tapped_1 object sender TappedRoutedEventArgs e rand.NextBytes rgb Color clr Color.FromArgb 255 rgb 0 rgb 1 rgb 2 txtblk.Foreground new SolidColorBrush clr I ve removed the OnNavigatedTo method because it s not being used here. In the Tapped event handler the NextBytes method of the Random object obtains three random bytes and these are used to construct a Color value with the static Color.FromArgb method. The handler finishes by setting the Foreground property of the TextBlock to a SolidColorBrush based on that Color value. When you run this program you can tap the TextBlock with a finger mouse or stylus and it will change to a random color. If you tap on an area of the screen outside the TextBlock nothing happens. If you re using a mouse or stylus you might notice that you don t need to tap the actual strokes that comprise the letters. You can tap between and inside those strokes and the TextBlock will still respond. It s as if the TextBlock has an invisible background that encompasses the full height of the font including diacritical marks and descenders and that s precisely the case. If you look inside the BlankPage.g.cs file generated by Visual Studio you ll see a Connect method containing the code that attaches the event handler to the Tapped event of the TextBlock. You can do this yourself in code. Try eliminating the Tapped handler assigned in the XAML file and instead attach an event handler in the constructor of the code behind file: public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent txtblk.Tapped txtblk_Tapped_1 No real difference. Several properties of TextBlock need to be set properly for the Tapped event to work. The IsHitTestVisible and IsTapEnabled properties must both be set to their default values of true. The Visibility property must be set to its default value of Visibility.Visible. If set to Visibility.Collapsed the TextBlock will not be visible at all and will not respond to user input. The first argument to the txtblk_Tapped_1 event handler is the element that sent the event in this 80 www.it ebooks.info case the TextBlock. The second argument provides information about this particular event including the coordinate point at which the tap occurred and whether the tap came from a finger mouse or stylus. This information will be explored in more detail in future chapters. Routed Event Handling Because the first argument to the Tapped event handler is the element that generates the event you don t need to give the TextBlock a name to access it from within the event handler. You can simply cast the sender argument to an object of type TextBlock. This is particularly useful for sharing an event handler among multiple elements and I ve done precisely that in the RoutedEvents0 project. RoutedEvents0 is the first of several projects that demonstrate the concept of routed event handling which is an important feature of the Windows Runtime. But this particular program doesn t show any features particular to routed events. Hence the suffix of zero. For this project I created the Tapped handler first with the proper signature and my preferred name: Project: RoutedEvents0 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page Random rand new Random byte rgb new byte 3 public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent void OnTextBlockTapped object sender TappedRoutedEventArgs args TextBlock txtblk sender as TextBlock rand.NextBytes rgb Color clr Color.FromArgb 255 rgb 0 rgb 1 rgb 2 txtblk.Foreground new SolidColorBrush clr Notice the first line of the event handler casts the sender argument to TextBlock. Because this event handler already exists in the code behind file Visual Studio suggests that name when you type the name of the event in the XAML file. This was handy because I added nine TextBlock elements to the Grid: Project: RoutedEvents0 File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page x:Class RoutedEvents0.BlankPage FontSize 48 81 www.it ebooks.info Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text Left Top HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Top Tapped OnTextBlockTapped TextBlock Text Right Bottom HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Bottom Tapped OnTextBlockTapped Grid Page I m sure you don t need to see them all to get the general idea. Notice that FontSize is set for the Page so that it is inherited by all the TextBlock elements. When you run the program you can tap the individual elements and each one changes its color independently of the others: If you tap anywhere between the elements nothing happens. You might consider it a nuisance to set the same event handler on nine different elements in the XAML file. If so you ll probably appreciate the following variation to the program. The RoutedEvents1 program uses routed input handling a term used to describe how input events such as Tapped are fired by the element on which the event occurs but the events are then routed up the visual tree. Rather than set a Tapped handler for the individual TextBlock elements you can instead set it on the parent of one of these elements for example the Grid . Here s an excerpt from the XAML file for the RoutedEvents1 program: Project: RoutedEvents1 File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush 82 www.it ebooks.info Tapped OnGridTapped TextBlock Text Left Top HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Top TextBlock Text Right Bottom HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Bottom Grid In the process of moving the Tapped handler from the individual TextBlock elements to the Grid I ve also renamed it to more accurately describe the source of the event. The event handler must also be modified. The previous Tapped handler cast the sender argument to a TextBlock. It could perform this cast with confidence because the event handler was set only on elements of type TextBlock. However when the event handler is set on the Grid as it is here the sender argument to the event handler will be the Grid. How can we determine which TextBlock was tapped Easy: the TappedRoutedEventArgs class an instance of which appears as the second argument to the event handler has a property named OriginalSource and that indicates the source of the event. In this example OriginalSource can be either a TextBlock if you tap the text or the Grid if you tap between the text so the new event handler must perform a check before casting: Project: RoutedEvents1 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnGridTapped object sender TappedRoutedEventArgs args if args.OriginalSource is TextBlock TextBlock txtblk args.OriginalSource as TextBlock rand.NextBytes rgb Color clr Color.FromArgb 255 rgb 0 rgb 1 rgb 2 txtblk.Foreground new SolidColorBrush clr TappedRoutedEventArgs derives from RoutedEventArgs which defines OriginalSource and no other properties. Obviously the OriginalSource property is a central concept of routed event handling. The property allows ancestor elements to process events that originate with their descendants and to know the source of these events. Alternatively you can set the Tapped handler on the Page rather than the Grid. But with the Page there s an easier way. I mentioned earlier that UIElement defines all the user input events. These events are inherited by all descendant classes but the Control class adds its own event interface consisting of a whole collection of virtual methods corresponding to these events. For the Tapped event defined by UIElement the Control class defines a virtual method named OnTapped. These virtual methods always begin with the word On followed by the name of the event so they are sometimes referred to as On 83 www.it ebooks.info methods. Page derives from Control via UserControl so these methods are inherited on the Page class. Here s an excerpt from the XAML file for RoutedEvents2 showing that the XAML file defines no event handlers: Project: RoutedEvents2 File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page x:Class RoutedEvents2.BlankPage xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml xmlns:local using:RoutedEvents2 xmlns:d http: schemas.microsoft.com expression blend 2008 xmlns:mc http: schemas.openxmlformats.org markup compatibility 2006 mc:Ignorable d FontSize 48 Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text Left Top HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Top TextBlock Text Right Bottom HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Bottom Grid Page Instead the code behind file has an override of the OnTapped method: Project: RoutedEvents2 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt protected override void OnTapped TappedRoutedEventArgs args if args.OriginalSource is TextBlock TextBlock txtblk args.OriginalSource as TextBlock rand.NextBytes rgb Color clr Color.FromArgb 255 rgb 0 rgb 1 rgb 2 txtblk.Foreground new SolidColorBrush clr base.OnTapped args When you re typing in Visual Studio and you want to override a virtual method like OnTapped simply type the keyword override and press the space bar and Visual Studio will provide a list of all the virtual methods defined for that class. When you select one Visual Studio creates a skeleton method with a call to the base method. A call to the base method isn t really required here but including it is a good habit to develop when overriding virtual methods The On methods are basically the same as the event handlers but they have no sender argument because it s no longer needed. In this context sender would be the same as this the instance of the 84 www.it ebooks.info Page that is processing the event. The next project is RoutedEvents3. I decided to give the Grid a random background color if that s the element being tapped. The XAML file looks the same but the revised OnTapped method looks like this: Project: RoutedEvents3 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt protected override void OnTapped TappedRoutedEventArgs args rand.NextBytes rgb Color clr Color.FromArgb 255 rgb 0 rgb 1 rgb 2 SolidColorBrush brush new SolidColorBrush clr if args.OriginalSource is TextBlock args.OriginalSource as TextBlock .Foreground brush else if args.OriginalSource is Grid args.OriginalSource as Grid .Background brush base.OnTapped args Now when you tap a TextBlock element it changes color but when you tap anywhere else on the screen the Grid changes color. Now suppose for one reason or another you decide you want to go back to the original scheme of explicitly defining an event handler separately for each TextBlock element to change the text colors but you also want to retain the OnTapped override for changing the Grid background color. In the RoutedEvents4 project the XAML file has the Tapped events restored for TextBlock elements and the Grid has been given a name: Project: RoutedEvents4 File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Name contentGrid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text Left Top HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Top Tapped OnTextBlockTapped TextBlock Text Right Bottom HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Bottom Tapped OnTextBlockTapped Grid One advantage is that the methods to set the TextBlock and Grid colors are now separate and distinct so there s no need for if else blocks. The Tapped handler for the TextBlock elements can cast the sender argument with impunity and the OnTapped override can simply access the Grid by name: 85 www.it ebooks.info Project: RoutedEvents4 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page Random rand new Random byte rgb new byte 3 public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent void OnTextBlockTapped object sender TappedRoutedEventArgs args TextBlock txtblk sender as TextBlock txtblk.Foreground GetRandomBrush protected override void OnTapped TappedRoutedEventArgs args contentGrid.Background GetRandomBrush base.OnTapped args Brush GetRandomBrush rand.NextBytes rgb Color clr Color.FromArgb 255 rgb 0 rgb 1 rgb 2 return new SolidColorBrush clr However the code might not do exactly what you want. When you tap a TextBlock not only does the TextBlock change color but the event continues to go up the visual tree where it s processed by the OnTapped override and the Grid changes color as well If that s what you want you re in luck. If not then I m sure you ll be interested to know that the TappedRoutedEventArgs has a property specifically to prevent this. If the OnTextBlockTapped handler sets the Handled property of the event arguments to true the event is effectively inhibited from further processing higher in the visual tree. This is demonstrated in the RoutedEvents5 project which is the same as RoutedEvents4 except for a single statement in the OnTextBlockTapped method: Project: RoutedEvents5 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnTextBlockTapped object sender TappedRoutedEventArgs args TextBlock txtblk sender as TextBlock txtblk.Foreground GetRandomBrush args.Handled true 86 www.it ebooks.info Overriding the Handled Setting You ve just seen that when an element handles an event such as Tapped and concludes its event processing by setting the Handled property of the event arguments to true the routing of the event effectively stops. The event isn t visible to elements higher in the visual tree. In some cases this behavior might be undesirable. Suppose you re working with an element that sets the Handled property to true in its event handler but you still want to see that event higher in the visual tree. One solution is to simply change the code but that option might not be available. The element might be implemented in a dynamic link library and you might not have access to the source code. In RoutedEvents6 the XAML file is the same as in RoutedEvents5: each TextBlock has a handler set for its Tapped event. The Tapped handler sets the Handled property to true. The class also defines a separate OnPageTapped handler that sets the background color of the Grid: Project: RoutedEvents6 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page Random rand new Random byte rgb new byte 3 public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent this.AddHandler UIElement.TappedEvent new TappedEventHandler OnPageTapped true void OnTextBlockTapped object sender TappedRoutedEventArgs args TextBlock txtblk sender as TextBlock txtblk.Foreground GetRandomBrush args.Handled true void OnPageTapped object sender TappedRoutedEventArgs args contentGrid.Background GetRandomBrush Brush GetRandomBrush rand.NextBytes rgb Color clr Color.FromArgb 255 rgb 0 rgb 1 rgb 2 return new SolidColorBrush clr 87 www.it ebooks.info Look at the interesting way that the constructor sets a Tapped handler for the Page. Normally it would attach the event handler like so: this.Tapped OnPageTapped In that case the OnPageTapped handler would not get a Tapped event originating with the TextBlock because the TextBlock handler sets Handled to true. Instead it attaches the handler with a method named AddHandler: this.AddHandler UIElement.TappedEvent new TappedEventHandler OnPageTapped true AddHandler is defined by UIElement which also defines the static UIElement.TappedEvent property. This property is of type RoutedEvent. Just as a property like FontSize is backed by a static property named FontSizeProperty of type DependencyProperty a routed event such as Tapped is backed by a static property named TappedEvent of type RoutedEvent. RoutedEvent defines nothing public on its own it mainly exists to allow an event to be referenced in code without requiring an instance of an element. The AddHandler method attaches a handler to that event. The second argument of AddHandler is defined as just an object so creating a delegate object is required to reference the event handler. And here s the magic: set the last argument to true if you want this handler to also receive routed events that have been flagged as Handled. The AddHandler method isn t used often but when you need it it can be very useful. Input Alignment and Backgrounds I have just one more very short program in the RoutedEvents series to make a couple important points about input events. The XAML file for RoutedEvents7 has just one TextBlock and no event handlers defined: Project: RoutedEvents7 File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page FontSize 48 Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 Foreground Red Grid Page The absence of HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment settings on the TextBlock cause it to appear in the upper left corner of the Grid. 88 www.it ebooks.info Like RoutedEvents3 the code behind file contains separate processing for an event originating from the TextBlock and an event coming from the Grid: Project: RoutedEvents7 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page Random rand new Random byte rgb new byte 3 public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent protected override void OnTapped TappedRoutedEventArgs args rand.NextBytes rgb Color clr Color.FromArgb 255 rgb 0 rgb 1 rgb 2 SolidColorBrush brush new SolidColorBrush clr if args.OriginalSource is TextBlock args.OriginalSource as TextBlock .Foreground brush else if args.OriginalSource is Grid args.OriginalSource as Grid .Background brush base.OnTapped args Here it is: As you tap the TextBlock it changes to a random color like normal but when you tap outside the 89 www.it ebooks.info TextBlock the Grid doesn t change color like it did earlier. Instead the TextBlock changes color It s as if yes it s as if the TextBlock is now occupying the entire page and snagging all the Tapped events for itself. And that s precisely the case. This TextBlock has default values of HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment but those default values are not Left and Top like the visuals may suggest. The default values are named Stretch and that means that the TextBlock is stretched to the size of its parent the Grid. It s hard to tell because the text still has a 48 pixel font but the TextBlock has a transparent background that now fills the entire page. In fact throughout the Windows Runtime all elements have default HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment values of Stretch and it s an important part of the Windows Runtime layout system. More details are coming in Chapter 4. Let s put HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment values in this TextBlock: Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Top Foreground Red Grid Now the TextBlock is only occupying a small area in the upper left corner of the page and when you tap outside the TextBlock the Grid changes color. Now change HorizontalAlignment to TextAlignment: Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 TextAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Top Foreground Red Grid The program looks the same. The text is still positioned at the upper left corner. But now when you tap to the right of the TextBlock the TextBlock changes color rather than the Grid. The TextBlock has its default HorizontalAlignment property of Stretch so it is now occupying the entire width of the screen but within the total width that the TextBlock occupies the text is aligned to the left. The lesson: HorizontalAlignment and TextAlignment are not equivalent although they might seem to be if you judge solely from the visuals. Now try another experiment by restoring the HorizontalAlignment setting and removing the Background property of the Grid: Grid TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Top Foreground Red 90 www.it ebooks.info Grid With a light theme the Grid has an off white background. When the Background property is removed the background of the page changes to black. But you ll also experience a change in the behavior of the program: the TextBlock still changes color when you tap it but when you tap outside the TextBlock the Grid doesn t change color at all. The default value of the Background property defined by Panel and inherited by Grid is null and with a null background the Grid doesn t trap touch events. They just fall right through. One way to fix this without altering the visual appearance is to give the Grid a Background property of Transparent: Grid Background Transparent TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 HorizontalAlignment Left VerticalAlignment Top Foreground Red Grid It looks the same as null but now you ll get Tapped events with an OriginalSource of Grid. The lessons here are important: Looks can be deceiving. An element with default settings of HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment might look the same as one with settings of Left and Top but it is actually occupying the entire area of its container and might block events from reaching underlying elements. A Panel derivative with a default Background property of null might look the same as one with a setting of Transparent but it does not respond to touch events. I can almost guarantee that sometime in the future one of these two issues will cause a bug in one of your programs that will drive you crazy for the good part of a day and that this will happen even after many years of working with the XAML layout system. I speak from experience. Size and Orientation Changes The very first Windows program to be described in a magazine article was called WHATSIZE all capital letters of course and it appeared in the December 1986 issue of Microsoft Systems Journal the predecessor to MSDN Magazine. The program did little more than display the current size of the program s window but as the size of the window changed the displayed size also changed. Obviously the original WHATSIZE program was written for the Windows APIs of that era so it redrew the display in response to a WM_PAINT message. In the original Windows API this message occurred whenever the contents of part of a program s window became invalid and needed redrawing. A program could define its window so that the entire window was invalidated whenever its size changed. 91 www.it ebooks.info The Windows Runtime has no equivalent of the WM_PAINT message and indeed the entire graphics paradigm is quite different. Previous versions of Windows implemented a direct mode graphics system in which applications drew to the actual video memory. Of course this occurred through a software lawyer the Graphics Device Interface and a device driver but at some point in the actual drawing functions code was writing into video display memory. The Windows Runtime is quite different. In its public programming interface it doesn t even have a concept of drawing or painting. Instead a Metro style application creates elements that is objects instantiated from classes that derive from FrameworkElement and adds them to the application s visual tree. These elements are responsible for rendering themselves. When a Metro style application wants to display text it doesn t draw text but instead creates a TextBlock. When the application wants to display a bitmap it creates an Image element. Instead of drawing lines and Bézier splines and ellipses the program creates Polyline and Path elements. The Windows Runtime implements a retained mode graphics system. Between your application and the video display is a composition layer on which all the rendered output is assembled before it is presented to the user. Perhaps the most important benefit of retained mode graphics is flicker free animation as you ll witness for yourself towards the end of this chapter and in much of the remainder of this book. Although the graphics system in the Windows Runtime is very different from earlier versions of Windows in another sense a Metro style application is similar to its earlier brethren. Once a program is loaded into memory and starts running it spends most of its time generally sitting dormant in memory waiting for something interesting to happen. These notifications take the form of events and callbacks. Often these events signal user input but there may be other interesting activity as well. One such callback is the OnNavigatedTo method. In a simple single page program this method is called soon after the constructor returns. Another event that might be of interest to a Metro style application particularly one that does what the old WHATSIZE program did is named SizeChanged. Here s the XAML file for the Metro Style WhatSize program. Notice that the root element defines a handler for the SizeChanged event: Project: WhatSize File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page x:Class WhatSize.BlankPage FontSize 36 SizeChanged OnPageSizeChanged Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Top x21A4 Run x:Name widthText pixels x21A6 TextBlock TextBlock HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center 92 www.it ebooks.info TextAlignment Center x21A5 LineBreak Run x:Name heightText pixels LineBreak x21A7 TextBlock Grid Page The remainder of the XAML file defines two TextBlock elements containing some Run objects surrounded by arrow characters. You ll see what they look like soon. It might seem excessive to set three properties to Center in the second TextBlock but they re all necessary. The first two center the TextBlock in the page setting TextAlignment to Center results in the two arrows being centered relative to the text. The two Run elements are given x:Name attributes so that the Text properties can be set in code. This happens in the SizeChanged event handler: Project: WhatSize File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent void OnPageSizeChanged object sender SizeChangedEventArgs args widthText.Text args.NewSize.Width.ToString heightText.Text args.NewSize.Height.ToString Very conveniently the event arguments supply the new size in the form of a Size structure and the handler simply converts the Width and Height properties to strings and sets them to the Text properties of the two Run elements: 93 www.it ebooks.info If you re running the program on a device that responds to orientation changes you can try flipping the screen and observe how the numbers change. You can also sweep your finger from the left of the screen to invoke the snapped views and then divide the screen between this program and another to see how the width value changes. You don t need to set the SizeChanged event handler in XAML. You can set it in code perhaps during the Page constructor: this.SizeChanged OnPageSizeChanged SizeChanged is defined by FrameworkElement and inherited by all descendent classes. Despite the fact that SizeChangedEventArgs derives from RoutedEventArgs this is not a routed event. You can tell it s not a routed event because the OriginalSource property of the event arguments is always null there is no SizeChangedEvent property and whatever element you set this event on that s the element s size you get. But you can set SizeChanged handlers on any element. Generally the order the events are fired proceeds down the visual tree: Page first in this example and then Grid and TextBlock. If you need the rendered size of an element other than in the context of a SizeChanged handler that information is available from the ActualWidth and ActualHeight properties defined by FrameworkElement. Indeed the SizeChanged handler in WhatSize is actually a little shorter when accessing those properties: void OnPageSizeChanged object sender SizeChangedEventArgs args widthText.Text this.ActualWidth.ToString heightText.Text this.ActualHeight.ToString What you probably do not want are the Width and Height properties. Those properties are also defined by FrameworkElement but they have default values of not a number or NaN. A program can 94 www.it ebooks.info set Width and Height to explicit values such as in the TextFormatting project in Chapter 2 XAML Syntax but usually these properties remain at their default values and they are of no use in determining how large an element actually is. FrameworkElement also defines MinWidth MaxWidth MinHeight and MaxHeight properties but these aren t used very often. If you access the ActualWidth and ActualHeight properties in the page s constructor however you ll find they have values of zero. Despite the fact that InitializeComponent has constructed the visual tree that visual tree has not yet gone through a layout process. After the constructor finishes the page gets several events in sequence: OnNavigatedTo SizeChanged LayoutUpdated Loaded If the page later changes size additional SizeChanged events and LayoutUpdated events are fired. LayoutUpdated can also be fired if elements are added to or removed from the visual tree or if an element is changed so as to affect layout. If you need a place to perform initialization after initial layout when all the elements in the visual tree have nonzero sizes the event you want is Loaded. It is very common for a Page class to attach a handler for the Loaded event. Generally the Loaded event occurs only once during the lifetime of a Page object. I say generally because if the Page object is detached from its parent a Frame and reattached the Loaded event will occur again. But this won t happen unless you deliberately make it happen. Also the Unloaded event can let you know if the page has been detached from the visual tree. Every FrameworkElement derivative has a Loaded event. As a visual tree is built the Loaded events occur in a sequence going up the visual tree ending with Page. When Page gets a Loaded event it can assume that all its children have fired their own Loaded events and everything has been correctly sized. Handling a Loaded event in a Page class is so common that some programmers perform Loaded processing right in the constructor using an anonymous handler: public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent Loaded sender args Sometimes Metro style applications need to know when the orientation of the screen changes. In Chapter 1 Markup and Code I showed an InternationalHelloWorld program that looks fine in landscape mode but probably results in overlapping text if switched to portrait mode. For that reason 95 www.it ebooks.info the code behind file changes the page s FontSize property to 24 in portrait mode: Project: InternationalHelloWorld File: BlankPage.xaml.cs public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent SetFont DisplayProperties.OrientationChanged OnDisplayPropertiesOrientationChanged void OnDisplayPropertiesOrientationChanged object sender SetFont void SetFont bool isLandscape DisplayProperties.CurrentOrientation DisplayOrientations.Landscape DisplayProperties.CurrentOrientation DisplayOrientations.LandscapeFlipped this.FontSize isLandscape 40 : 24 The DisplayProperties class and DisplayOrientations enumeration are defined in the Windows.Graphics.Display namespace. DisplayProperties.OrientationChanged is a static event and when that event is fired the static DisplayProperties.CurrentOrientation property provides the current orientation. Somewhat more information including snapped states is provided by the ViewStateChanged event of the AppicationView class in the Windows.UI.ViewManagement namespace but working with this event must await a future chapter. Bindings to Run In Chapter 2 I discussed data bindings. Data bindings can link properties of two elements so that when a source property changes the target property also changes. Data bindings are particularly satisfying when they eliminate the need for event handlers. Is it possible to rewrite WhatSize to use data bindings rather than a SizeChanged handler It s worth a try. In the WhatSize project remove the OnPageSizeChanged handler from the BlankPage.xaml.cs file or just comment it out if you don t want to do too much damage to the file . In the root tag of the BlankPage.xaml file remove the SizeChanged attribute and give the Page a name of page. Then set 96 www.it ebooks.info Binding markup extensions on the two Run objects referencing the ActualWidth and ActualHeight properties of the page: Page FontSize 36 Name page Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Top x21A4 Run Text Binding ElementName page Path ActualWidth pixels x21A6 TextBlock TextBlock HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextAlignment Center x21A5 LineBreak Run Text Binding ElementName page Path ActualHeight pixels LineBreak x21A7 TextBlock Grid Page The program compiles fine and it runs smoothly without any run time exceptions. The only problem is: where the numbers should appear is nothing. This is likely to seem odd particularly when you set the same bindings on the Text property of TextBlock instead of Run: Page FontSize 36 Name page Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Top Text Binding ElementName page Path ActualWidth TextBlock HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextAlignment Center Text Binding ElementName page Path ActualHeight Grid Page This works. It works so well that the size is displayed to the nearest millionth of a pixel: 97 www.it ebooks.info As you change the orientation or size of the page the numbers are updated. This is what makes data bindings so great. Internally a data binding is notified when a source property changes so that it can change the target property but the application source code appears to have no event handlers and no moving parts. Unfortunately by giving up on the bindings to Run we ve also lost the informative arrows. So why do the data bindings work on the Text property of TextBlock but not on the Text property of Run It s very simple. The target of a data binding must be a dependency property. This fact is obvious when you define a data binding in code by using the SetBinding method. That s the difference: The Text property of TextBlock is backed by the TextProperty dependency property but the Text property of Run is not. It s a plain old property that cannot serve as a target for a data binding. The XAML parser probably shouldn t allow a binding to be set on the Text property of Run but it does. In Chapter 4 I ll show you how to use a StackPanel to get the arrows back in a version of WhatSize that uses data bindings. Timers and Animation Sometimes a Metro style application needs to receive periodic events at a fixed interval. A clock application for example probably needs to update its display every second. The ideal class for this job is DispatcherTimer. Set a timer interval set a handler for the Tick event and go. Here s the XAML file for a digital clock application. It s just a big TextBlock: Project: DigitalClock File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Name txtblk 98 www.it ebooks.info FontFamily Lucida Console FontSize 120 HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Grid The code behind file creates the DispatcherTimer with a 1 second interval and sets the Text property of the TextBlock in the event handler: Project: DigitalClock File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent DispatcherTimer timer new DispatcherTimer timer.Interval TimeSpan.FromSeconds 1 timer.Tick OnTimerTick timer.Start void OnTimerTick object sender object e txtblk.Text DateTime.Now.ToString h:mm:ss tt And here it is: Calls to the Tick handler occur in the same execution thread as the rest of the user interface so if the program is busy doing something in that thread the calls won t interrupt that work and might become somewhat irregular and even skip a few beats. In a multipage application you might want to 99 www.it ebooks.info start the timer in the OnNavigatedTo override and stop it in OnNavigatedFrom to avoid the program wasting time doing work when the page is not visible. This is a good illustration of the difference in how a desktop Windows application and a Metro style application updates the video display. Both types of applications use a timer for implementing a clock but rather than drawing and redrawing text every second by invalidating the contents of the window the Metro style application changes the visual appearance of an existing element simply by changing one of its properties. You can set the DispatcherTimer for an interval as low as you want but you re not going to get calls to the Tick handler faster than the frame rate of the video display which is probably 60 Hz or about a 17 millisecond period. Of course it doesn t make sense to update the video display faster than the frame rate. Updating the display precisely at the frame rate gives you as smooth an animation as possible. If you want to perform an animation in this way don t use DispatcherTimer. A better choice is the static CompositionTarget.Rendering event which is specifically designed to be called prior to a screen refresh. Even better than CompositionTarget.Rendering are all the animation classes provided as part of the Windows Runtime. These classes let you define animations in XAML or code they have lots of options and some of them are performed in background threads. But until I cover the animation classes and perhaps even after I do the CompositionTarget.Rendering event is well suited for performing animations. These are sometimes called manual animations because the program itself has to carry out some calculations based on elapsed time. Here s a little project called ExpandingText that changes the FontSize of a TextBlock in the CompositionTarget.Rendering event handler making the text larger and smaller. The XAML file simply instantiates a TextBlock: Project: ExpandingText File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Name txtblk Text Hello Windows 8 HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Grid In the code behind file the constructor starts a CompositionTarget.Rendering event simply by setting an event handler. The second argument to that handler is defined as type object but it is actually of type RenderingEventArgs which has a property named RenderingTime of type TimeSpan giving you an elapsed time since the app was started: Project: ExpandingText File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage 100 www.it ebooks.info this.InitializeComponent CompositionTarget.Rendering OnCompositionTargetRendering void OnCompositionTargetRendering object sender object args RenderingEventArgs renderArgs args as RenderingEventArgs double t 0.25 renderArgs.RenderingTime.TotalSeconds 1 double scale t 0.5 2 t : 2 2 t txtblk.FontSize 1 scale 143 I ve attempted to generalize this code slightly. The calculation of t causes it to repeatedly increase from 0 to 1 over the course of 4 seconds. During those same 4 seconds the value of scale goes from 0 to 1 and back to 0 so FontSize ranges from 1 to 144 and back to 1. The code ensures that the FontSize is never set to zero which would raise an exception. When you run this program you might see a little jerkiness at first because fonts need to be rasterized at a bunch of different sizes. But after it settles into a rhythm it s fairly smooth and there is definitely no flickering. It s also possible to animate color and I ll show you two different ways to do it. The second way is better than the first but I want to make a point here so here s the XAML file for the ManualBrushAnimation project: Project: ManualBrushAnimation File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Name contentGrid TextBlock Name txtblk Text Hello Windows 8 FontFamily Times New Roman FontSize 96 FontWeight Bold HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Grid Neither the Grid nor the TextBlock have explicit brushes defined. Creating those brushes based on animated colors is the job of the CompositionTarget.Rendering event handler: Project: ManualBrushAnimation File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent CompositionTarget.Rendering OnCompositionTargetRendering void OnCompositionTargetRendering object sender object args RenderingEventArgs renderingArgs args as RenderingEventArgs double t 0.25 renderingArgs.RenderingTime.TotalSeconds 1 t t 0.5 2 t : 2 2 t 101 www.it ebooks.info Background byte gray byte 255 t Color clr Color.FromArgb 255 gray gray gray contentGrid.Background new SolidColorBrush clr Foreground gray byte 255 gray clr Color.FromArgb 255 gray gray gray txtblk.Foreground new SolidColorBrush clr As the background color of the Grid goes from black to white and back the foreground color of the TextBlock goes from white to black and back meeting halfway through. The effect is nice but notice that that two SolidColorBrush objects are being created at the frame rate of the video display which is probably about 60 times a second and these objects are just as quickly discarded. This is not necessary. A much better approach is to create two SolidColorBrush objects initially in the XAML file: Project: ManualColorAnimation File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Grid.Background SolidColorBrush x:Name gridBrush Grid.Background TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontFamily Times New Roman FontSize 96 FontWeight Bold HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock.Foreground SolidColorBrush x:Name txtblkBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock Grid These SolidColorBrush objects exist for the entire duration of the program and they are given names for easy access from the CompositionTarget.Rendering handler: Project: ManualColorAnimation File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnCompositionTargetRendering object sender object args RenderingEventArgs renderingArgs args as RenderingEventArgs double t 0.25 renderingArgs.RenderingTime.TotalSeconds 1 t t 0.5 2 t : 2 2 t Background byte gray byte 255 t gridBrush.Color Color.FromArgb 255 gray gray gray 102 www.it ebooks.info Foreground gray byte 255 gray txtblkBrush.Color Color.FromArgb 255 gray gray gray At first this might not seem a whole lot different because two Color objects are being created and discarded at the video frame rate. But it s wrong to speak of objects here because Color is a structure rather than a class. It is more correct to speak of values of Colors. These Color values are stored on the stack rather than requiring a memory allocation from the heap. It s best to avoid frequent allocations from the heap whenever possible and particularly when they re happening 60 times per second. But what I like most about this example is the idea of SolidColorBrush objects remaining alive in the Windows Runtime composition system. This program is effectively reaching down into that composition layer and changing a property of the brush so that it renders differently. This program also illustrates part of the wonders of dependency properties. Dependency properties are built to respond to changes in a very structured manner. As you ll discover the built in animation facilities of the Windows Runtime can target only dependency properties and manual animations using CompositionTarget.Rendering have pretty much the same limitation. Fortunately the Foreground property of TextBlock and the Background property of Grid are both dependency properties of type Brush and the Color property of the SolidColorBrush is also a dependency property. Indeed whenever you encounter a dependency property you might ask yourself How can I animate that For example the Offset property in the GradientStop class is a dependency property and you can animate it for some interesting effects. Here s the XAML file for the RainbowEight project: Project: RainbowEight File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBlock Name txtblk Text 8 FontFamily CooperBlack FontSize 1 HorizontalAlignment Center TextBlock.Foreground LinearGradientBrush x:Name gradientBrush GradientStop Offset 0.00 Color Red GradientStop Offset 0.14 Color Orange GradientStop Offset 0.28 Color Yellow GradientStop Offset 0.43 Color Green GradientStop Offset 0.57 Color Blue GradientStop Offset 0.71 Color Indigo GradientStop Offset 0.86 Color Violet GradientStop Offset 1.00 Color Red GradientStop Offset 1.14 Color Orange GradientStop Offset 1.28 Color Yellow GradientStop Offset 1.43 Color Green GradientStop Offset 1.57 Color Blue 103 www.it ebooks.info GradientStop Offset 1.71 Color Indigo GradientStop Offset 1.86 Color Violet GradientStop Offset 2.00 Color Red LinearGradientBrush TextBlock.Foreground TextBlock Grid A bunch of those GradientStop objects have Offset values above 1 so they re not going to be visible. Moreover the TextBlock itself won t be very obvious because it has a FontSize of 1. However during its Loaded event the Page class obtains the ActualHeight of that tiny TextBlock and saves it in a field. It then starts a CompositionTarget.Rendering event going: Project: RainbowEight File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page double txtblkBaseSize ie for 1 pixel FontSize public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent Loaded OnPageLoaded void OnPageLoaded object sender RoutedEventArgs args txtblkBaseSize txtblk.ActualHeight CompositionTarget.Rendering OnCompositionTargetRendering void OnCompositionTargetRendering object sender object args Set FontSize as large as it can be txtblk.FontSize this.ActualHeight txtblkBaseSize Calculate t from 0 to 1 repetitively RenderingEventArgs renderingArgs args as RenderingEventArgs double t 0.25 renderingArgs.RenderingTime.TotalSeconds 1 Loop through GradientStop objects for int index 0 index gradientBrush.GradientStops.Count index gradientBrush.GradientStops index .Offset index 7.0 t In the CompositionTarget.Rendering handler the FontSize of the TextBlock is increased based on the ActualHeight property of the Page. It won t be the full height of the page because the ActualHeight of the TextBlock includes space for descenders and diacriticals but it will be as large as is convenient to make it and it will change when the display switches orientation. Moreover the CompositionTarget.Rendering handler goes on to change all the Offset properties of the LinearGradientBrush for an animated rainbow effect that I m afraid can t quite be rendered on the 104 www.it ebooks.info static page of this book: You might wonder: Isn t it inefficient to change the FontSize property of the TextBlock at the frame rate of the video display Wouldn t it make more sense to set a SizeChanged handler for the Page and do it then Perhaps a little. But it is another feature of dependency properties that the object doesn t register a change unless the property really changes. If the property is being set to the value it already is nothing happens as you can verify by attaching a SizeChanged handler on the TextBlock itself. 105 www.it ebooks.info Chapter 4 Presentation with Panels A Windows Runtime program generally consists of one of more classes that derive from Page. Each page contains a visual tree of elements connected in a parent child hierarchy. A Page object can have only one child set to its Content property but in most cases this child is an instance of a class that derives from Panel. Panel defines a property named Children that is of type UIElementCollection a collection of UIElement derivatives including other panels. These Panel derivatives form the core of the Windows Runtime dynamic layout system. As the size or orientation of a page changes panels can reorganize their children to optimally fill the available space. Each type of panel arranges its children differently. The Grid for example arranges its children in rows and columns. The StackPanel stacks its children either horizontally or vertically. The VariableSizedWrapGrid also stacks its children horizontally or vertically but then uses additional rows or columns if necessary. much like the Windows 8 start screen. The Canvas allows its children to be positioned at specific pixel locations. What makes a layout system complex is balancing the conflicting needs of parents and children. In part a layout system needs to be child driven in that each child should be allowed to determine how large it needs to be and to obtain sufficient screen space for itself. But the layout system also needs to be parent driven. At any time the page is fixed in size and cannot give its descendants in the visual tree more space than it has available. For example a simple HTML page has a width that is parent driven because it s constrained by the width of the video display or the browser window. However the height of a page is child driven because it depends on the content of the page. If that height exceeds the height of the browser window scrollbars are required. The Windows 8 start screen is the other way around: The number of application tiles that can fit vertically is parent driven because it s based on the height of the screen. The width of this tile display is child driven. If tiles extend off the screen horizontally they must be moved into view by scrolling. The Border Element Two of the most important properties connected with layout are HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment. These properties are defined by FrameworkElement and set to members of enumerations with identical names: HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment. As you saw in Chapter 3 Basic Event Handling the default values of HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment are not Left and Top. They are instead HorizontalAlignment.Stretch and 106 www.it ebooks.info VerticalAlignment.Stretch. These default Stretch settings imply parent driven layout: elements automatically stretch to become as large as their parents. This is not always visually apparent but in the last chapter you saw how a TextBlock stretched to the size of its parent gets all the Tapped events anywhere within that parent. When the HorizontalAlignment or VerticalAlignment properties are set to values other than Stretch the element sets its own width or height based on its content and layout becomes more child driven. The important role of HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment also becomes apparent when you start adding more parents and children to the page. For example suppose you want to display a TextBlock with a border around it. You might discover perhaps with some dismay that the TextBlock has no properties that relate to a border. However the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls namespace contains a Border element with a property named Child. So you put the TextBlock in a Border and put the Border in the Grid like so: Project: NaiveBorderedText File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Border BorderBrush Red BorderThickness 12 CornerRadius 24 Background Yellow TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 Foreground Blue HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Border Grid Page The BorderThickness property defined by Border can be set to different values for the four sides. Just specify four different values in the order left top right and bottom. If you specify only two values the first applies to the left and right and the second applies to the top and bottom. The CornerRadius property defines the curvature of the corners. You can set it a uniform value or four different values in the order upper left upper right lower right and lower left. Notice the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties set on the TextBlock. The markup looks reasonable but the result is probably not what you want: 107 www.it ebooks.info Because Border derives from FrameworkElement it also has HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties and their default values are Stretch which causes the size of the Border to be stretched to the size of its parent. To get the effect you probably want you need to move the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment settings from the TextBlock to the Border: Project: BetterBorderedText File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Border BorderBrush Red BorderThickness 12 CornerRadius 24 Background Yellow HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 Foreground Blue Margin 24 Border Grid I ve also added a quarter inch margin to the TextBlock by setting its Margin property. This causes the Border to be a quarter inch larger than the size of the text on all four sides: 108 www.it ebooks.info The Margin property is defined by FrameworkElement so it is available on every element. The property is of type Thickness the same as the type of the BorderThickness property a structure with four properties named Left Top Right and Bottom. Margin is exceptionally useful for defining a little breathing room around elements so that they don t butt up against each other and it appears a lot in real life XAML. Like BorderThickness Margin can potentially have four different values. In XAML they appear in the order left top right and bottom. Specify just two values and the first applies to the left and right and the second to the top and bottom. In addition Border defines a Padding property which is similar to Margin except that it applies to the inside of the element rather than the outside. Try removing the Margin property from TextBlock and instead set Padding on the Border: Border BorderBrush Red BorderThickness 12 CornerRadius 24 Background Yellow HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Padding 24 TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 FontSize 96 Foreground Blue Border The result is the same. In either case any HorizontalAlignment or VerticalAlignment settings on the TextBlock are now irrelevant. For layout purposes Margin is considered to be part of the size of the element but otherwise it is entirely out of the element s control. The element cannot control the background color of its margin for example. That color depends on the element s parent. Nor does an element get user input from the 109 www.it ebooks.info margin area. If you tap in an element s margin area the element s parent gets the Tapped event. The Padding property is also of type Thickness but only a few classes define a Padding property: Control Border TextBlock RichTextBlock and RichTextBlockOverflow. The Padding property defines an area inside the element. This area is considered to be part of the element for all purposes including user input. If you want a TextBlock to respond to taps not only on the text itself but also within a 100 pixel area surrounding the text set the Padding property of the TextBlock to 100 rather than the Margin property. Rectangle and Ellipse As you saw in Chapter 2 XAML Syntax the Windows.UI.Xaml.Shapes namespace contains classes used to render vector graphics: lines and curves and filled areas. The Shape class itself derives from FrameworkElement and defines various properties including Stroke for specifying the brush used to render straight lines and curves StrokeThickness and Fill for specifying the brush used to render enclosed areas . Six classes derive from Shape. Line Polyline and Polygon render straight lines based on coordinate points and Path uses a series of classes in Windows.UI.Xaml.Media for rendering a series of straight lines arcs and Bezier curves. The remaining two classes that derive from Shape are Rectangle and Ellipse. Despite the innocent names these elements are real oddities in that they define figures without the use of coordinate points. Here for example is a tiny piece of XAML to render an ellipse: Project: SimpleEllipse File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Ellipse Stroke Red StrokeThickness 24 Fill Blue Grid Notice how the ellipse fills its container: 110 www.it ebooks.info Like all other FrameworkElement derivatives Ellipse has default HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment settings of Stretch but Ellipse most decisively reveals the implications of these settings. What happens if you set a nondefault HorizontalAlignment or VerticalAlignment on this Ellipse element Try it The ellipse shrinks down to nothing. It disappears. In fact it s hard to imagine how it can legitimately have any other behavior. If you do not want the Ellipse or Rectangle element to fill its container your only real alternative is to set explicit Height and Width values on it. The Shape class also defines a Stretch property which is similar to the Stretch property defined by Image. For example in the SimpleEllipse program if you set the Stretch property to Uniform you ll get a special case of an ellipse that has equal horizontal and vertical radii. This is a circle and its diameter is set to the minimum of the container s width and height. Setting the Stretch property to UniformToFill also gets you a circle but now the diameter is the maximum of the container s width and height so part of the circle is cropped: 111 www.it ebooks.info You can control what part is cropped with the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties. Rectangle is very similar to Ellipse and also shares several characteristics with Border although the properties have different names: Border Rectangle BorderBrush Stroke BorderThickness StrokeThickness Background Fill CornerRadius RadiusX RadiusY The big difference between Border and Rectangle is that Border has a Child property and Rectangle does not. The StackPanel Panel and its derivative classes form the core of the Windows Runtime layout system. Panel defines just a few properties on its own but one of them is Children and that s crucial. A Panel derivative is the only type of element that supports multiple children. This class hierarchy shows Panel and some of its derivatives: Object DependencyObject UIElement FrameworkElement Panel Canvas Grid 112 www.it ebooks.info StackPanel VariableSizedWrapGrid There are others but they have restrictions that prevent them from being used except in controls of type ItemsControl which I ll discuss in a future chapter . I ll save the Grid for Chapter 5 Control Interaction and I ll cover the other three here. Of these standard panels the StackPanel is certainly the easiest to use. Like the name suggests it stacks its children by default vertically. The children can be different heights but each child gets only as much height as it needs. The SimpleVerticalStack program shows how it s done: Project: SimpleVerticalStack File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush StackPanel TextBlock Text Right Aligned Text FontSize 48 HorizontalAlignment Right Image Source http: www.charlespetzold.com pw6 PetzoldJersey.jpg Stretch None TextBlock Text Figure 1. Petzold heading to the basketball court FontSize 24 HorizontalAlignment Center Ellipse Stroke Red StrokeThickness 12 Fill Blue TextBlock Text Left Aligned Text FontSize 36 HorizontalAlignment Left StackPanel Grid In XAML the children of the StackPanel are simply listed in order and that s how they appear on the screen: 113 www.it ebooks.info Notice that I made this StackPanel a child of the Grid. Panels can be nested and they very often are nested. In this particular case I could have replaced the Grid with StackPanel and set that same Background property on it. Each element in the StackPanel gets only as much height as it needs but can stretch to the panel s full width as demonstrated by the first and last TextBlock aligned to the right and left. In a vertical StackPanel any VerticalAlignment settings on the children are irrelevant and are basically ignored. Notice that the Stretch property of the Image element is set to None to display the bitmap in its pixel dimensions. If left at its default value of Uniform the Image is stretched to the width of the StackPanel which is the same as the width of the Page and its vertical dimension increases proportionally. This might cause all the elements below the Image to be pushed right off the bottom and into the bit bucket. The XAML also includes an Ellipse. What happened to it Like all the other children of the StackPanel the Ellipse is given only as much vertical space as it needs and it really doesn t need any so it shrinks to nothing. If you want the Ellipse to be visible give it at least a nonzero Height for example 48: 114 www.it ebooks.info If you also set the Stretch property of the Ellipse to Uniform you ll get a circle rather than a very wide ellipse. This StackPanel occupies the entire page. How do I know this When experimenting with panels one very useful technique is to give each panel a unique Background so that you can see the real estate that the panel occupies on the screen. For example: StackPanel Background Blue Like all other FrameworkElement derivatives StackPanel also has HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties. When set to nondefault values these properties cause the StackPanel to tightly hug its contents and the change can be dramatic. Here s what it looks like with the StackPanel getting a Background of Blue and HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment values of Center: 115 www.it ebooks.info Horizontal Stacks It is also possible to use StackPanel to stack elements horizontally by setting its Orientation property to Horizontal. The SimpleHorizontalStack program shows an example: Project: SimpleHorizontalStack File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush StackPanel Orientation Horizontal VerticalAlignment Center HorizontalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Rectangle: VerticalAlignment Center Rectangle Stroke Blue Fill Red Width 72 Height 72 Margin 12 0 VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Ellipse: VerticalAlignment Center Ellipse Stroke Red Fill Blue Width 72 Height 72 Margin 12 0 116 www.it ebooks.info VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Petzold: VerticalAlignment Center Image Source http: www.charlespetzold.com pw6 PetzoldJersey.jpg Stretch Uniform Width 72 Margin 12 0 VerticalAlignment Center StackPanel Grid Here it is: You might question the apparently excessive number of alignment settings. Try removing all the VerticalAlignment and HorizontalAlignment settings and the result looks like this: 117 www.it ebooks.info The StackPanel is now occupying the entire page and each of the individual elements is occupying the full height of the StackPanel. TextBlock aligns itself at the top and the other elements are in the center. Setting the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment settings of the Panel to Center tightens up the space the panel occupies and moves it to the center of the display like this: The height of the StackPanel is now governed by the height of its tallest element but all the elements are stretched to that height. To center all the elements relative to each other the easiest approach is to give them all VerticalAlignment settings of Center. 118 www.it ebooks.info WhatSize with Bindings and a Converter In Chapter 3 I discussed how the WhatSize program couldn t accommodate a data binding because the Text property in the Run class isn t a dependency property. Only dependency properties can be targets of data bindings. Fortunately for single lines of text you can mimic multiple Run objects with multiple TextBlock elements in a horizontal StackPanel. Here s WhatSizeWithBindings: Project: WhatSizeWithBindings File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page x:Class WhatSizeWithBindings.BlankPage FontSize 36 Name page Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush StackPanel Orientation Horizontal HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Top TextBlock Text x21A4 TextBlock Text Binding ElementName page Path ActualWidth TextBlock Text pixels x21A6 StackPanel StackPanel HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text x21A5 TextAlignment Center StackPanel Orientation Horizontal HorizontalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Binding ElementName page Path ActualHeight TextBlock Text pixels StackPanel TextBlock Text x21A7 TextAlignment Center StackPanel Grid Page Notice that the root element is now given a name of page which is referenced in the two data bindings to obtain the ActualWidth and ActualHeight properties. The big advantage over the previous version is that there s no longer any need for an event handler in the code behind file. And here it is: 119 www.it ebooks.info No You don t like that it s accurate to a millionth of a pixel The problem of course is that ActualWidth and ActualHeight are double values and when these values are converted to strings for the Text property of TextBlock this is what sometimes happens. In cases like this it is possible to supply a little piece of code to the Binding object so that it performs the data conversion in exactly the way you want. The Binding class has a property named Converter of type IValueConverter an interface with two methods named Convert to convert from a binding source to a binding target and ConvertBack for a conversion from the target back to the source in a two way binding . To create your own custom converter you ll need to derive a class from IValueConverter and to fill in the two methods. Here s an example that shows these methods doing nothing: public class NothingConverter : IValueConverter public object Convert object value Type targetType object parameter string language return value public object ConvertBack object value Type targetType object parameter string language return value If you ll be using the binding only in a one way mode you can ignore the ConvertBack method. In the Convert method the value argument is the value coming from the source. In the WhatSize example this is a double. The TargetType is the type of the target in the WhatSize example a string. 120 www.it ebooks.info If you re writing a binding converter specifically for WhatSize to convert floating point numbers to strings with no decimal points the Convert method can be as simple as this: public object Convert object value Type targetType object parameter string language return double value .ToString F0 But it s more common to generalize binding converters. For example it might be useful for the converter to handle value arguments of any type that implements the IFormattable interface which includes double as well as all the other numeric types and DateTime. The IFormattable interface defines a ToString method with two arguments: a formatting string and an object that implements IFormatProvider which is generally a CultureInfo object. Besides value and targetType the Convert method also has parameter and language arguments. These come from two properties of the Binding class named ConverterParameter and ConverterLanguage which are generally set right in the XAML file. This means that the formatting specification for ToString can be provided by the parameter argument to Convert and a CultureInfo object could be created from the language argument. Here s one possibility: Project: WhatSizeWithBindingConverter File: FormattedStringConverter.cs using System using System.Globalization using Windows.UI.Xaml.Data namespace WhatSizeWithBindingConverter public class FormattedStringConverter : IValueConverter public object Convert object value Type targetType object parameter string language if value is IFormattable parameter is string String.IsNullOrEmpty parameter as string targetType typeof string if String.IsNullOrEmpty language return value as IFormattable .ToString parameter as string null return value as IFormattable .ToString parameter as string new CultureInfo language return value public object ConvertBack object value Type targetType object parameter string language return value 121 www.it ebooks.info The Convert method uses ToString only if several conditions are met. If the conditions are not met the fallback is simply to return the incoming value argument. In the XAML file the binding converter is generally defined as a resource so that it can be shared among multiple bindings: Project: WhatSizeWithBindingConverter File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page x:Class WhatSizeWithBindingConverter.BlankPage FontSize 36 Name page Page.Resources local:FormattedStringConverter x:Key stringConverter Page.Resources Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush StackPanel Orientation Horizontal HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Top TextBlock Text x21A4 TextBlock Text Binding ElementName page Path ActualWidth Converter StaticResource stringConverter ConverterParameter F0 TextBlock Text pixels x21A6 StackPanel StackPanel HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Text x21A5 TextAlignment Center StackPanel Orientation Horizontal HorizontalAlignment Center TextBlock Text Binding ElementName page Path ActualHeight Converter StaticResource stringConverter ConverterParameter F0 TextBlock Text pixels StackPanel TextBlock Text x21A7 TextAlignment Center StackPanel Grid Page The display looks just like the original WhatSize program in Chapter 3. Take careful note of the syntax here: TextBlock Text Binding ElementName page Path ActualWidth Converter StaticResource stringConverter 122 www.it ebooks.info ConverterParameter F0 The Binding markup is spread out over four lines for purposes of clarity and to stay within the margins of the book page but notice that the Binding markup extension contains an embedded markup extension of StaticResource for referencing the binding converter resource. No quotation marks appear within either markup extension. The Common folder in the standard Visual Studio project contains two binding converters. BooleanToVisibilityConverter is useful for controlling the Visibility property which takes on values of Visibility.Visible and Visibility.Collapsed. The BooleanNegationConverter changes true to false and false to true. The ScrollViewer Solution What happens if there are too many elements for StackPanel to display on the screen In real life that situation occurs quite often and it s why a StackPanel with more than just a few elements is almost always put inside a ScrollViewer. The ScrollViewer has a property named Content that you can set to anything that might be too large to display in the space allowed for it a single large Image for example. ScrollViewer provides scrollbars for the mouse users among us. Otherwise you can just scroll it with your fingers. By default ScrollViewer also adds a pinch interface so that you can use two fingers to make the content larger or smaller. This can be disabled if you want by setting the ZoomMode property to Disabled. ScrollViewer defines a couple other crucial properties. Most often you ll be using ScrollViewer for vertical scrolling such as with a vertical StackPanel. Consequently the default value of the VerticalScrollBarVisibility property is the enumeration member ScrollBarVisibility.Visible. This setting doesn t mean that the scrollbar is actually visible all the time. For mouse users the scrollbar appears only when the mouse is moved to the right side of the ScrollViewer and then it fades from view if the mouse is moved away. A much thinner slider appears when you scroll using your finger. Horizontal scrolling is different: the default value of HorizontalScrollBarVisibility property is Disabled so you ll want to change that to enable horizontal scrolling. The other two options are Hidden which allows scrolling with your fingers but not the mouse and Auto which is the same as Visible if the content requires scrolling and Disabled otherwise. The XAML file for the StackPanelWithScrolling program contains a StackPanel in a ScrollViewer. Notice that the FontSize property is set in the root tag based on a predefined identifier: Project: StackPanelWithScrolling File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page x:Class StackPanelWithScrolling.BlankPage FontSize StaticResource HeaderMediumFontSize 123 www.it ebooks.info Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush ScrollViewer StackPanel Name stackPanel ScrollViewer Grid Page Now all that s necessary in the code behind file is to generate so many items for the StackPanel that they can t all be visible at once. Where do we get so many items One convenient solution is to use .NET reflection to obtain all 141 static Color properties defined in the Colors class: Project: StackPanelWithScrolling File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent IEnumerable PropertyInfo properties typeof Colors .GetTypeInfo .DeclaredProperties foreach PropertyInfo property in properties Color clr Color property.GetValue null TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock txtblk.Text String.Format 0 x2014 1:X2 2:X2 3:X2 4:X2 property.Name clr.A clr.R clr.G clr.B stackPanel.Children.Add txtblk Windows 8 reflection works a little differently from .NET reflection. Generally to get anything interesting from the Type object you need to call a Windows 8 extension method GetTypeInfo. The returned TypeInfo object makes available additional information about the Type. In this program the DeclaredProperties property of TypeInfo obtains all the properties of the Colors class in the form of PropertyInfo objects. Because all the properties in the Colors class are static the value of these static properties can be obtained by calling GetValue on each PropertyInfo object with a null parameter. Each TextBlock gets the name of the color an em dash Unicode 0x2014 and the hexadecimal color bytes. The display looks like this: 124 www.it ebooks.info And of course you can scroll it with your finger or the mouse. As you play around with the program you ll discover that the ScrollViewer incorporates a nice fluid response to your finger movements including inertia and bounce. You ll want to use ScrollViewer for virtually all your scrolling needs. You ll discover that many controls that incorporate scrolling such as the ListBox and GridView coming up in a future chapter have this same ScrollViewer built right in. I wouldn t be surprised if this same ScrollViewer is used in the Windows 8 start screen. Wouldn t it be nice to see the actual colors as well as their names and values That enhancement is coming up soon Several times already in this book I ve shown you partial class hierarchies. You may have discovered that the documentation for each class shows only an ancestor class hierarchy but not derived classes so you might have wondered how I assembled the class hierarchies for these pages. They came from a program I wrote called DependencyObjectClassHierarchy which uses a ScrollViewer and StackPanel to show all the classes that derive from DependencyObject. The XAML file is similar to the previous one except I ve specified a smaller font: Project: DependencyObjectClassHierarchy File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page x:Class DependencyObjectClassHierarchy.BlankPage FontSize StaticResource ContentFontSize Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush ScrollViewer StackPanel Name stackPanel ScrollViewer Grid Page 125 www.it ebooks.info The program builds a tree of classes and their descendant classes. Each node is a particular class and a collection of its immediate descendent classes so I added another code file to the project for a class that represents this node: Project: DependencyObjectClassHierarchy File: ClassAndSubclasses.cs using System using System.Collections.Generic namespace DependencyObjectClassHierarchy class ClassAndSubclasses public ClassAndSubclasses Type parent this.Type parent this.Subclasses new List ClassAndSubclasses public Type Type protected set get public List ClassAndSubclasses Subclasses protected set get Just as it s possible to use reflection to get all the properties defined by a class you can use reflection to get all public classes defined in an assembly. These classes are available from the ExportedTypes property of the Assembly object. That s the simple part. The hard part is getting all the Assembly objects you ll need. Conceptually each of the namespaces in the Windows Runtime is associated with an assembly of the same name. If you know a class defined in a particular assembly the assembly in which that class is defined is available from the Assembly property of the TypeInfo object for that class. To write this program I had to figure out which namespaces contain classes that derive from DependencyObject and then pick a sample class from each of those namespaces. That s the purpose of the long list of AddToClassList calls here and I can t guarantee I got them all : Project: DependencyObjectClassHierarchy File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page Type rootType typeof DependencyObject TypeInfo rootTypeInfo typeof DependencyObject .GetTypeInfo List Type classes new List Type Brush highlightBrush public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent highlightBrush this.Resources ControlHighlightBrush as Brush Accumulate all the classes that derive from DependencyObject AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.DependencyObject AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Automation.Peers.AppBarAutomationPeer 126 www.it ebooks.info AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Automation.Provider.IRawElementProviderSimple AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Button AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Primitives.ButtonBase AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Data.Binding AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Documents.Block AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Input.FocusManager AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Brush AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Animation.BackEase AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Imaging.BitmapImage AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Printing.PrintDocument AddToClassList typeof Windows.UI.Xaml.Shapes.Ellipse Sort them alphabetically by name classes.Sort t1 t2 return String.Compare t1.GetTypeInfo .Name t2.GetTypeInfo .Name Put all these sorted classes into a tree structure ClassAndSubclasses rootClass new ClassAndSubclasses rootType AddToTree rootClass classes Display the tree using TextBlock s added to StackPanel Display rootClass 0 void AddToClassList Type sampleType Assembly assembly sampleType.GetTypeInfo .Assembly foreach Type type in assembly.ExportedTypes TypeInfo typeInfo type.GetTypeInfo if typeInfo.IsPublic rootTypeInfo.IsAssignableFrom typeInfo classes.Add type void AddToTree ClassAndSubclasses parentClass List Type classes foreach Type type in classes Type baseType type.GetTypeInfo .BaseType if baseType parentClass.Type ClassAndSubclasses subClass new ClassAndSubclasses type parentClass.Subclasses.Add subClass AddToTree subClass classes 127 www.it ebooks.info void Display ClassAndSubclasses parentClass int indent TypeInfo typeInfo parentClass.Type.GetTypeInfo Create TextBlock with type name TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock txtblk.Inlines.Add new Run Text new string 8 indent txtblk.Inlines.Add new Run Text typeInfo.Name Indicate if the class is sealed if typeInfo.IsSealed txtblk.Inlines.Add new Run Text sealed Foreground highlightBrush Indicate if the class can t be instantiated IEnumerable ConstructorInfo constructorInfos typeInfo.DeclaredConstructors int publicConstructorCount 0 foreach ConstructorInfo constructorInfo in constructorInfos if constructorInfo.IsPublic publicConstructorCount 1 if publicConstructorCount 0 txtblk.Inlines.Add new Run Text non instantiable Foreground highlightBrush Add to the StackPanel stackPanel.Children.Add txtblk Call this method recursively for all subclasses foreach ClassAndSubclasses subclass in parentClass.Subclasses Display subclass indent 1 Notice how the TextBlock for each class is constructed by adding Run items to its Inlines collection. It s sometimes useful for a class hierarchy to display additional information so the program also checks whether the class is marked as sealed and whether it can be instantiated. In the Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight classes that can t be instantiated are generally defined as abstract. In the Windows Runtime they have protected constructors instead. Here s the section of the class hierarchy with Panel derivatives: 128 www.it ebooks.info Layout Weirdness or Normalcy Suppose you have a StackPanel and you decide that one of the items in this StackPanel should be a ScrollViewer with another StackPanel. To determine what might happen in such a situation you might experiment with the StackPanelWithScrolling project and change the XAML file like so: Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush StackPanel ScrollViewer StackPanel Name stackPanel ScrollViewer StackPanel Grid When you try it out you ll discover it doesn t work. You can t scroll. What happened Becoming acquainted with the mechanics of layout is an important part of being a crafty Windows Runtime developer and the best way to make this acquaintance is to write your own Panel derivatives. That job awaits us in a future chapter. The conflict here results from the different ways in which StackPanel and ScrollViewer calculate their desired heights. The StackPanel calculates a desired height based on the total height of all its children. In the vertical dimension by default StackPanel is entirely child driven. To calculate a total height it offers to each of its children an infinite height. When you write your own Panel derivatives you ll see that I m not speaking metaphorically or abstractly. A Double.PositiveInfinity value actually comes into play The children respond by calculating a desired height based on their natural size. The StackPanel adds these heights to calculate its own desired height. 129 www.it ebooks.info The height of the ScrollViewer however is parent driven. Its height is only what its parent offers to it and in our simple example this has been the height of the Grid which is the height of the Page which is the height of the window. The ScrollViewer is able to determine how to scroll its content because it knows the difference between the height of its child often a StackPanel and its own height. Now put a vertically scrolling ScrollViewer as a child of a vertical StackPanel. To determine the desired size of this ScrollViewer child the StackPanel offers it an infinite height. How tall does the ScrollViewer really want to be The height of the ScrollViewer is now child driven rather than parent driven and its desired height is the height of its child which is the total height of the inner StackPanel which is the total accumulated height of all the children in that StackPanel. From the perspective of the ScrollViewer its height is the same as the height of its content which means that there s nothing to scroll. In other words when a vertically scrolling ScrollViewer is put in a vertical StackPanel losing the ability to scroll is totally expected behavior Here s another seeming layout oddity that is actually quite normal: Try giving a TextBlock a very long chunk of text to display and set the TextWrapping property to Wrap. In most cases the text wraps as we might expect. Now put that TextBlock in a StackPanel with an Orientation property set to Horizontal. To determine how wide the TextBlock needs to be the StackPanel offers it an infinite width and in response to that infinite width the TextBlock stops wrapping the text. In the WhatSizeWithBindings and WhatSizeWithBindingConverter you saw how a horizontal StackPanel can effectively concatenate TextBlock elements one of which has a binding on its Text property. But you can t use this same technique with a paragraph of wrapped text because the text will never wrap in the horizontal StackPanel. If you need to concatenate different text strings in a paragraph you ll need to use a single TextBlock with an Inlines collection. If one piece of text needs to be set to a variable data item you can t use a binding because the Text property of Run is not backed by a dependency property. You ll need to set that item from code. Because a vertical StackPanel has a finite width it s an ideal host for TextBlock elements that wrap text as you ll see next. Making an E Book A TextBlock item that goes into a vertical StackPanel can have its TextWrapping property set to Wrap which means that it can actually be a whole paragraph rather than just a word or two. Image elements can also go into this same StackPanel and the result can be a rudimentary illustrated e book. On the famous Project Gutenberg website I found an illustrated version of Beatrix Potter s classic children s book The Tale of Tom Kitten http: www.gutenberg.org ebooks 14837 so I created a Visual Studio project named TheTaleOfTomKitten and I made a folder called Images. From Project Gutenberg s HTML version of the book it was easy to download all the illustrations in the form of JPEG 130 www.it ebooks.info files. These have names such as tomxx.jpg where xx is the original page number of the book where that illustration appeared. From within the Visual Studio project I then added all 28 of these JPEG files to the Images folder. Most of the rest of the work involved the BlankPage.xaml file. Each paragraph of the book became a TextBlock and these I interspersed with Image elements referencing the JPEG files in the Images folder. However I felt it necessary to deviate somewhat from the ordering of the text and images in Project Gutenberg s HTML file. A PDF of the original edition of The Tale of Tom Kitten on the Internet Archive site http: archive.org details taleoftomkitten00pottuoft reveals how Miss Potter s illustrations are associated with the text of the book. There are two patterns: 1. Text appears on the verso left hand even numbered page with an accompanying illustration on the recto right hand odd numbered page. 2. Text appears on the recto page with an accompanying illustration on the verso page. Adapting this paginated book to a continuous format required altering the order of the text and image in this second case so that the text appears before the accompanying illustration. That s why you ll see some page swaps in the XAML file. Given the very many TextBlock and Image elements styles seemed almost mandatory: Project: TheTaleOfTomKitten File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page.Resources Style x:Key commonTextStyle TargetType TextBlock Setter Property FontFamily Value Century Schoolbook Setter Property FontSize Value 36 Setter Property Foreground Value Black Setter Property Margin Value 0 12 Style Style x:Key paragraphTextStyle TargetType TextBlock BasedOn StaticResource commonTextStyle Setter Property TextWrapping Value Wrap Style Style x:Key frontMatterTextStyle TargetType TextBlock BasedOn StaticResource commonTextStyle Setter Property TextAlignment Value Center Style Style x:Key imageStyle TargetType Image Setter Property Stretch Value None Setter Property HorizontalAlignment Value Center Style Page.Resources Notice the Margin value that provides a little spacing between the paragraphs. Each TextBlock element references either paragraphTextStyle for the actual paragraphs of the book or frontMatterTextStyle for all the titles and other information that appears in the front of the book . I 131 www.it ebooks.info could have made the style for the Image element an implicit style by simply removing the x:Key attribute and removing the Style attributes from the Image elements. Many of the TextBlock elements that comprise the front matter have various local FontSize settings. Books generally are printed with black ink on white pages so I hard coded the Foreground of the TextBlock to black and set the Background of the Grid to white. To restrict the text to reasonable line lengths the StackPanel is given a MaxWidth of 640 and centered within the ScrollViewer. Here s a little excerpt of the alternating TextBlock elements and Image elements: Project: TheTaleOfTomKitten File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background White ScrollViewer StackPanel MaxWidth 640 HorizontalAlignment Center pg. 38 TextBlock Style StaticResource paragraphTextStyle x2003 x2003 Mittens laughed so that she fell off the wall. Moppet and Tom descended after her the pinafores and all the rest of Tom s clothes came off on the way down. TextBlock TextBlock Style StaticResource paragraphTextStyle x2003 x2003 Come Mr. Drake Puddle Duck said Moppet Come and help us to dress him Come and button up Tom TextBlock Image Source Images tom39.jpg Style StaticResource imageStyle pg. 41 TextBlock Style StaticResource paragraphTextStyle x2003 x2003 Mr. Drake Puddle Duck advanced in a slow sideways manner and picked up the various articles. TextBlock Image Source Images tom40.jpg Style StaticResource imageStyle StackPanel ScrollViewer Grid The two x2003 characters at the beginning of each paragraph are em spaces. These provide a first line indentation which unfortunately is something not provided by the TextBlock property. You can read this book in either landscape or portrait mode: 132 www.it ebooks.info Fancier StackPanel Items I mentioned earlier I d be showing you a program that displays all 141 available Windows Runtime colors with the colors as well as their names and RGB values. My first example is called ColorList1 but let s begin with the screen shot of the completed program so that you can see the goal: 133 www.it ebooks.info This program contains a total of 283 StackPanel elements. Each of the 141 colors gets a pair: a vertical StackPanel is parent to the two TextBlock elements and a horizontal StackPanel is parent to a Rectangle and the vertical StackPanel. All the horizontal StackPanel elements are then children of the main vertical StackPanel in a ScrollViewer. The XAML file is responsible for centering that StackPanel: Project: ColorList1 File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush ScrollViewer StackPanel Name stackPanel HorizontalAlignment Center ScrollViewer Grid While enumerating through the static properties of the Colors class the constructor in the code behind file builds the nested StackPanel elements for each item: Project: ColorList1 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent IEnumerable PropertyInfo properties typeof Colors .GetTypeInfo .DeclaredProperties foreach PropertyInfo property in properties Color clr Color property.GetValue null StackPanel vertStackPanel new StackPanel VerticalAlignment VerticalAlignment.Center 134 www.it ebooks.info TextBlock txtblkName new TextBlock Text property.Name FontSize 24 vertStackPanel.Children.Add txtblkName TextBlock txtblkRgb new TextBlock Text String.Format 0:X2 1:X2 2:X2 3:X2 clr.A clr.R clr.G clr.B FontSize 18 vertStackPanel.Children.Add txtblkRgb StackPanel horzStackPanel new StackPanel Orientation Orientation.Horizontal Rectangle rectangle new Rectangle Width 72 Height 72 Fill new SolidColorBrush clr Margin new Thickness 6 horzStackPanel.Children.Add rectangle horzStackPanel.Children.Add vertStackPanel stackPanel.Children.Add horzStackPanel Now there s nothing really wrong with this code except that there are numerous ways to do it better and by better I don t mean faster or more efficient but cleaner and more elegant and most importantly easier to maintain and modify. Let s look at a better solution but at the same time be aware that I won t be finished with this example until a future chapter where you ll see not only a better way of doing it but the best way of doing it. The key to making this program better is expressing those color items the nested StackPanel and TextBlock and Rectangle in XAML. Just offhand this doesn t seem possible. We can t put this XAML in the BlankPage.xaml file because we can t tell XAML to make 141 instances of the item unless we actually paste in 141 copies and I suspect we re all agreed that would be the worst way to do it. The ColorList2 program shows how to do it. After creating the project I right clicked the project name in the Solution Explorer and selected Add and New Item. In the Add New Item dialog box I chose User Control and gave it a name of ColorItem.xaml. This process creates a pair of files: 135 www.it ebooks.info ColorItem.xaml accompanied by a code behind file ColorItem.xaml.cs. The ColorItem.xaml.cs file created by Visual Studio defines a ColorItem class in the ColorList2 namespace that derives from UserControl: namespace ColorList2 public sealed partial class ColorItem : UserControl public ColorItem this.InitializeComponent The ColorItem.xaml file created by Visual Studio says the same thing in XAML: UserControl x:Class ColorList2.ColorItem xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml xmlns:local using:ColorList2 xmlns:d http: schemas.microsoft.com expression blend 2008 xmlns:mc http: schemas.openxmlformats.org markup compatibility 2006 mc:Ignorable d d:DesignHeight 300 d:DesignWidth 400 Grid Grid UserControl You ve actually already seen the UserControl class before because Page derives from UserControl. The user refers not to the end user of your application but to you the programmer. Deriving from UserControl is the easiest way for you the programmer to make a custom control because you can define the visuals of the control in this XAML file. UserControl defines a property named Content which is also the class s content property so anything you add within the UserControl tags is set to this Content property. Don t worry about the d:DesignHeight and d:DesignWidth properties in the ColorItem.xaml file. Those are for Microsoft Expression Blend. The actual size of this control depends on its contents. The next step is to define the visuals of the color item in this ColorItem.xaml file: Project: ColorList2 File: ColorItem.xaml excerpt UserControl x:Class ColorList2.ColorItem Grid StackPanel Orientation Horizontal 136 www.it ebooks.info Rectangle Name rectangle Width 72 Height 72 Margin 6 StackPanel VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Name txtblkName FontSize 24 TextBlock Name txtblkRgb FontSize 18 StackPanel StackPanel Grid UserControl It s the same element hierarchy as defined in code in ColorList1 but now it s actually easily readable. The Rectangle and the two TextBlock elements all have names so they can be referenced in the code behind file: Project: ColorList2 File: ColorItem.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class ColorItem : UserControl public ColorItem string name Color clr this.InitializeComponent rectangle.Fill new SolidColorBrush clr txtblkName.Text name txtblkRgb.Text String.Format 0:X2 1:X2 2:X2 3:X2 clr.A clr.R clr.G clr.B The code behind file defines a constructor that accepts a color name and a Color value as arguments. It uses those arguments to set the appropriate properties of the Rectangle and two TextBlock elements. Let me warn you that defining a parameterized constructor in a UserControl derivative is extremely unorthodox. A much better approach is to define properties instead but I don t want to do that right now because these properties should really be dependency properties and that s too involved at the moment. Without a parameterless constructor this ColorItem class cannot be instantiated in XAML. But that s OK for this program because I m not going to try instantiating it in XAML. The BlankPage.xaml file for the ColorList2 project looks the same as the one for ColorList1. What s different is the simplicity of the code behind file: Project: ColorList2 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page 137 www.it ebooks.info public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent IEnumerable PropertyInfo properties typeof Colors .GetTypeInfo .DeclaredProperties foreach PropertyInfo property in properties Color clr Color property.GetValue null ColorItem clrItem new ColorItem property.Name clr stackPanel.Children.Add clrItem Each ColorItem is instantiated with a name and Color and then added to the StackPanel. Creating Windows Runtime Libraries Let s create another version of this program but this time the ColorItem class will be in a library that can be shared with other projects. You can create a Visual Studio solution containing only a library project but this is rarely done for a new library. As you re developing the code in the library you want to test it and it really helps to have an application project in the same solution for that purpose. It s much more common to develop libraries in conjunction with an application and then share those libraries later if desired. So let s create a new application project named ColorList3. In the Solution Explorer add a library project to the solution by right clicking the solution name and selecting Add and New Project. Or pick Add New Project from the File menu. In the Add New Project dialog box select Visual C and Windows Metro Style at the left and Class Library among the available templates. Generally. a library has a multilevel name separated by periods. This name also becomes the default namespace for that project. The library name usually begins with a company name or its equivalent so for this example I chose a library name of Petzold.Windows8.Controls. In a new library Visual Studio automatically creates a file named Class1.cs but you can delete that. Now right click the library project name and select Add and New Item and in the Add New Item dialog box select User Control and give it a name of ColorItem. I decided to enhance the visuals of this ColorItem a little beyond the one you ve already seen: Solution: ColorList3 Project: Petzold.Windows8.Controls File: ColorItem.xaml excerpt UserControl Grid Border BorderBrush StaticResource ApplicationTextBrush BorderThickness 1 Width 336 Margin 6 138 www.it ebooks.info StackPanel Orientation Horizontal Rectangle Name rectangle Width 72 Height 72 Margin 6 StackPanel VerticalAlignment Center TextBlock Name txtblkName FontSize 24 TextBlock Name txtblkRgb FontSize 18 StackPanel StackPanel Border Grid UserControl Notice that I ve given it a Border with an explicit Width property and a Margin. I chose this width empirically based on the longest color name LightGoldenrodYellow . Notice also that the BorderBrush is set to a predefined identifier which will be black with a light theme and white with a dark theme. Themes are set on applications rather than libraries indeed a library has no App class to set a theme so this brush will be based on the theme of the application that uses ColorItem. We still haven t touched the ColorList3 application project. Despite the fact that they re in the same solution this application project will need a reference to the library so right click the References item under the ColorList3 project and select Add Reference. In the Reference Manager dialog box at the left select Solution indicating you want an assembly in the same solution click Petzold.Windows8.Controls and click OK. There is a distinct advantage to having both these projects in the same solution: whenever you build ColorList3 Visual Studio will also rebuild the Petzold.Windows8.Controls library if it s not up to date. The BlankPage.xaml file in ColorList3 is the same as in the previous two projects. The code behind file needs a using directive for the library but otherwise it s the same as ColorList2: Project: ColorList3 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs using System.Collections.Generic using System.Reflection using Windows.UI using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls using Petzold.Windows8.Controls namespace ColorList3 public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent 139 www.it ebooks.info IEnumerable PropertyInfo properties typeof Colors .GetTypeInfo .DeclaredProperties foreach PropertyInfo property in properties Color clr Color property.GetValue null ColorItem clrItem new ColorItem property.Name clr stackPanel.Children.Add clrItem Here s the result: The Wrap Alternative Now let s use that library in another project. There are three ways to do it: Method 1: Add a new application project to the same solution as the existing library: the ColorList3 solution in this example. This is the easiest approach and it certainly makes sense if the two applications are related some way. Instead I m going to use one of the other two methods. These two methods both involve creating a new solution and application project which I ll call ColorWrap. This project needs a reference to the Petzold.Windows8.Control library. Method 2: Right click the References item in the ColorWrap project and select Add Reference. In 140 www.it ebooks.info the left column of the Reference Manager select Browse and then click the Browse button in the lower right corner. This will allow you to browse to the directory location where the Petzold.Windows8.Controls.dll file is located which is the bin Debug directory of the Petzold.Windows8.Controls project in the ColorList3 solution and you can select that DLL. The disadvantage to this method is that you re assuming that the library is complete and finished and that you won t need to make any changes. You re referencing a DLL rather than the project with its source code. However in my experience the really big disadvantage to this method is that it doesn t work quite right with the current release of Windows 8 when there are XAML files involved. That leaves us with: Method 3: In the ColorWrap solution right click the solution name and select Add and Existing Project. The existing project you want to add is the library. In the Add Existing Project dialog box navigate to the Petzold.Windows8.Controls.csproj file. This is the C project file maintained by Visual Studio in the ColorList3 solution. Select that. The library project is not copied Instead only a reference is created to that library project. Regardless Visual Studio can still determine if the library needs to be rebuilt and it performs that rebuild if necessary. Now the Petzold.Windows8.Controls project is part of the ColorWrap solution but the ColorWrap application project still needs a reference to the library. Right click the References section under the ColorWrap project and select the library from the solution just as you did in ColorList3. It could be that you have two instances of Visual Studio running perhaps with the ColorList3 and ColorWrap solutions loaded both of which let you make changes to the Petzold.Windows8.Controls library. That s generally OK as long as you save or compile after making changes. If the same file is open in both instances of Visual Studio and you make changes to that file the other instance of Visual Studio will notify you of changes when that file is saved to disk. With those preliminaries out of the way let s focus on the ColorWrap program which demonstrates how to display these colors with a VariableSizedWrapGrid panel. Despite the name of this panel it really wants all the items to be the same size and that s why I added the explicit Width to the Border in ColorItem. Like StackPanel VariableSizedWrapGrid has an Orientation property and the default is Vertical. The first items in the Children collection are displayed in a column. The difference is that VariableSizedWrapGrid will use multiple columns just like the Windows 8 start screen. This means that the default VariableSizedWrapGrid must be horizontally scrolled so ScrollViewer properties must be set accordingly. Here s the XAML file: Project: ColorWrap File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush ScrollViewer HorizontalScrollBarVisibility Visible VerticalScrollBarVisibility Disabled VariableSizedWrapGrid Name wrapPanel ScrollViewer Grid 141 www.it ebooks.info The code behind file is similar to the previous program except that now it puts the items into wrapPanel: Project: ColorWrap File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent IEnumerable PropertyInfo properties typeof Colors .GetTypeInfo .DeclaredProperties foreach PropertyInfo property in properties Color clr Color property.GetValue null ColorItem clrItem new ColorItem property.Name clr wrapPanel.Children.Add clrItem And here it is: The Canvas and Attached Properties The final Panel derivative I ll discuss in this chapter is the Canvas. In one sense Canvas is the most traditional type of panel because it allows you to position elements at precise pixel locations. However if you ve scoured the properties defined by UIElement and FrameworkElement searching for a property named Location or Position or X or Y you haven t found one. Such a property does not exist 142 www.it ebooks.info because it doesn t have a generalized applicability. We ve managed to make it this far without specifying pixel locations for positioning elements and the only time one is needed is when the element is a child of a Canvas. For that reason Canvas itself defines the properties used to position elements relative to itself. These are a very special type of properties known as attached properties and they are a subset of dependency properties. The attached properties defined by one class Canvas in this example are actually set on instances of other classes children of the Canvas in this case . The objects on which you set an attached property don t need to know what that property does or where it came from. Let s see how this works. The TextOnCanvas project has a XAML file that contains a Canvas within the standard Grid. You can alternatively replace the Grid with the Canvas. The Canvas contains three TextBlock children: Project: TextOnCanvas File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page x:Class TextOnCanvas.BlankPage FontSize 48 Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Canvas TextBlock Text Text on Canvas at 0 0 Canvas.Left 0 Canvas.Top 0 TextBlock Text Text on Canvas at 200 100 Canvas.Left 200 Canvas.Top 100 TextBlock Text Text on Canvas at 400 200 Canvas.Left 400 Canvas.Top 200 Canvas Grid Page Here s the rather unexciting result: 143 www.it ebooks.info Look at that markup again and take special note of the strange syntax: TextBlock Text Text on Canvas at 200 100 Canvas.Left 200 Canvas.Top 100 Judging from their names the Canvas.Left and Canvas.Top attributes appear to be defined by the Canvas class and yet they are set on the children of the Canvas to indicate their positions. Attributes with class and property names like this are always attached properties. The funny thing is Canvas actually doesn t define any properties named Left and Top It defines properties and methods with similar names but not those names exactly. The nature of these attached properties might become a little clearer by examining how they are set in code. The XAML file for the TapAndShowPoint program contains only a named Canvas in the standard Grid: Project: TapAndShowPoint File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Canvas Name canvas Grid Everything else is the responsibility of the code behind file. It overrides the OnTapped method to create a dot an Ellipse element actually and a TextBlock both of which it adds to the Canvas at the point where the screen was tapped: Project: TapAndShowPoint File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent 144 www.it ebooks.info protected override void OnTapped TappedRoutedEventArgs args Point pt args.GetPosition this Create dot Ellipse ellipse new Ellipse Width 3 Height 3 Fill this.Foreground Canvas.SetLeft ellipse pt.X Canvas.SetTop ellipse pt.Y canvas.Children.Add ellipse Create text TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock Text String.Format 0 pt FontSize 24 Canvas.SetLeft txtblk pt.X Canvas.SetTop txtblk pt.Y canvas.Children.Add txtblk args.Handled true base.OnTapped args As you tap on the screen the dots and text appear at the tap point: 145 www.it ebooks.info Here s how the position of the dot is specified in code before it s added to the Children collection of the Canvas: Canvas.SetLeft ellipse pt.X Canvas.SetTop ellipse pt.Y canvas.Children.Add ellipse The order doesn t matter: you could add the element to the Canvas first and then set its position. The Canvas.SetLeft and Canvas.SetTop static methods play the same role here as the Canvas.Left and Canvas.Top attributes in XAML. They let you specify a coordinate point where a particular element is to be positioned. If you make the Ellipse a little larger you ll see a little flaw in the approach I ve used. The Canvas.SetLeft and Canvas.SetTop methods position the upper left corner of the Ellipse at the specified point rather than its center. If you want the center of the Ellipse at the point pt you ll want to subtract half its width from pt.X and half its height from pt.Y. I mentioned that Canvas doesn t define Left and Top properties specifically. Instead Canvas defines static SetLeft and SetTop methods as well as static properties of type DependencyProperty: public static DependencyProperty LeftProperty get public static DependencyProperty TopProperty get As you ll see in a later chapter these are special types of dependency properties in that they can be set on elements other than Canvas. Instead of setting the position of an element by calling Canvas.SetLeft and Canvas.SetTop you can instead set the position by calling SetValue on the child element and referencing the static DependencyProperty objects: ellipse.SetValue Canvas.LeftProperty pt.X 146 www.it ebooks.info ellipse.SetValue Canvas.TopProperty pt.Y These statements are exactly equivalent to the Canvas.SetLeft and Canvas.SetTop calls. In fact although I have never seen the internal source code of the Canvas class I can practically guarantee you that the SetLeft and SetTop static methods in Canvas are defined like this: public static void SetLeft DependencyObject element double value element.SetValue LeftProperty value public static void SetTop DependencyObject element double value element.SetValue TopProperty value These methods show very clearly how the dependency property is actually being set on the element rather than the Canvas. Canvas also defines GetLeft and GetTop methods: public static double GetLeft DependencyObject element return double element.GetValue LeftProperty public static double GetTop DependencyObject element return double element.GetValue TopProperty The Canvas class uses these methods internally to obtain the left and top settings on each of its children so that it can position them during the layout process. You will recall that the SetValue and GetValue methods are defined by DependencyObject which is a very basic class in the Windows Runtime. A property like FontSize is actually defined in terms of the static dependency property: public double FontSize set SetValue FontSizeProperty value get return double GetValue FontSizeProperty The static SetLeft SetTop GetLeft and GetTop methods suggest that the dependency property system involves a dictionary of sorts. The SetValue method allows an attached property like Canvas.LeftProperty to be stored in an element that has no knowledge of this property or its purpose. Canvas can later retrieve this property to determine where the child should appear relative to itself. The Z Index Canvas has a third attached property that you can set in XAML with the attribute Canvas.ZIndex. The 147 www.it ebooks.info Z in ZIndex refers to a three dimensional coordinate system where the Z axis extends out of the screen towards the user. When sibling elements overlap they are normally displayed in the order they appear in the visual tree which means that elements early in a panel s Children collection can be covered by elements later in the Children collection. For example consider the following: Grid TextBlock Text Blue Text Foreground Blue FontSize 96 TextBlock Text Red Text Foreground Red FontSize 96 Grid The red text obscures part of the blue text. You can override that behavior with the Canvas.ZIndex attached property and the weird thing is this: it works with all panels and not just Canvas. To make the blue text appear on top of the red text give it a higher z index: Grid TextBlock Text Blue Text Foreground Blue FontSize 96 Canvas.ZIndex 1 TextBlock Text Red Text Foreground Red FontSize 96 Canvas.ZIndex 0 Grid Canvas Weirdness Much of what I ve described about layout doesn t apply to the Canvas. Layout within a Canvas is always child driven. The Canvas always offers its children an infinite size which means that each child sets a natural size for itself and that s the only space the child occupies. HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment settings have no effect on a child of a Canvas. Likewise the Stretch property of Image has no effect when the Image is a child of a Canvas: Image always displays the bitmap in its pixel size. Rectangle and Ellipse shrink to nothing in a Canvas unless given an explicit width and height. Although HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment have no effect on a child of the Canvas they do have an effect when set on the Canvas itself. With other panels when you set the alignment properties to something other than Stretch the panel becomes as small as possible while still encompassing its children. The Canvas however is different. Set HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment to values other than Stretch and the Canvas shrinks to nothing regardless of its children. Even when the Canvas shrinks down to a zero size the display of its children is not affected. Conceptually the Canvas is more like a reference point than a container. You can use this characteristic of the Canvas to your advantage. For example suppose you try to display a TextBlock in a Grid that is obviously too small for it: Grid Width 200 Height 100 TextBlock Text Text in a Small Grid FontSize 144 148 www.it ebooks.info Grid The TextBlock is clipped to the dimensions of the Grid. You could make the Grid larger of course but you might be stuck with this Grid size perhaps because of other child elements. Still you want the TextBlock to be aligned with these other elements without being clipped to the Grid. The extremely simple solution is to put a Canvas in the Grid and put the TextBlock in that Canvas: Grid Width 200 Height 100 Canvas TextBlock Text Text in a Small Grid FontSize 144 Canvas Grid Even though the Canvas is now clipped to the size of the Grid the TextBlock is not. The TextBlock is still where you want it aligned with the upper left corner of the Grid but it s now displayed without any clipping. It s a very simple technique that can be very useful when you need it. 149 www.it ebooks.info Chapter 5 Control Interaction Early on in this book I made a distinction between classes that derive from FrameworkElement and those that derive from Control. I ve tended to refer to FrameworkElement derivatives such as TextBlock and Image as elements to preserve this distinction but a deeper explication is now required. The title of this chapter might suggest that elements are for presentation and controls are for interaction but that s not necessarily so. UIElement defines all the user input events for touch mouse stylus and keyboard which means that elements as well as controls can interact with the user in very sophisticated ways. Nor are elements deficient in layout styling or data binding capabilities. It s the FrameworkElement class that defines layout properties such as Width Height HorizontalAlignment VerticalAlignment and Margin as well as the Style property and the SetBinding method. The Control Difference Visually and functionally FrameworkElement derivatives are primitives atoms so to speak while Control derivatives are assemblages of these primitives or molecules in this analogy. A Button is actually constructed from a Border and a TextBlock in many cases . A Slider consists of a couple of Rectangle elements with a Thumb which itself is a Control probably built from a Rectangle. Anything that has visual content beyond text a bitmap or vector graphics is almost certainly a Control derivative. Consequently one of the most important properties defined by Control is called Template. As I ll demonstrate in a future chapter this property allows you to completely redefine the appearance of a control by defining a visual tree of your own invention. It makes sense to visually redefine a Button because for example you might want it to be round rather than rectangular so that it looks right in an application bar. It makes no sense to visually redefine a TextBlock or Image because there s nothing you can do with it beyond the text or bitmap itself. If you want to add something to a TextBlock or Image you re defining a Control because you re constructing a visual tree that includes the element primitive. Although you can derive a custom class from FrameworkElement there is little you can do with the result. You can t give it any visuals. But when you derive from Control you give your class a default visual appearance by defining a visual tree in XAML. For use by derived classes Control defines a bunch of properties that the Control class itself does not need. These are properties mostly associated with TextBlock CharacterSpacing FontFamily 150 www.it ebooks.info FontSize FontStretch FontStyle FontWeight and Foreground and Border Background BorderBrush BorderThickness and Padding . Not every Control derivative has text or a border but if you need those properties when creating a new control or creating a new template for an existing control they are conveniently provided. Control also provides two new properties named HorizontalContentAlignment and VerticalContentAlignment for purposes of defining control visuals. A Control derivative often defines a few of its own properties and its own events. Commonly a Control derivative will process user input events from the pointer mouse stylus and keyboard and will convert that input into a higher level event. For example the ButtonBase class from which all the buttons derive defines a Click event. The Slider defines a ValueChanged event indicating when its Value property changes. The TextBox defines a TextChanged event indicating when its Text property changes. It turns out that in real life Control derivatives really do interact more with users so the title of this chapter is accurate. For the convenience of working with user input Control provides protected virtual methods corresponding to all the user input events defined by UIElement. For example UIElement defines the Tapped event but Control defines the protected virtual method OnTapped. Control also defines an IsEnabled property so that controls can avoid user input if input is not currently applicable and it defines an IsEnabledChanged event that is fired when the property changes. This is the only public event actually defined by Control. The idea of a control having input focus is still applicable in Windows 8. When a control has the input focus the user expects that particular control to get most keyboard events. Of course some keyboard events such as the Windows key transcend input focus. For this purpose Control defines a Focus method as well as OnGotFocus and OnLostFocus virtual methods. In connection with keyboard focus is the idea of being able to navigate among controls by using the keyboard Tab key. Control provides for this by defining IsTabStop TabIndex and TabNavigation properties. Many Control derivatives are in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls namespace but a few are in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Primitives namespace. The latter namespace is generally reserved for those controls that usually appear only as parts of other controls but that s a suggestion rather than a restriction. Most Control derivatives derive directly from Control but four important classes derive from Control to define their own subcategories of controls. Here they are: Object DependencyObject UIElement FrameworkElement Control ContentControl ItemsControl 151 www.it ebooks.info RangeBase UserControl ContentControl from which important classes like Button ScrollViewer and AppBar derive seemingly does little more than define a property named Content of type object. For a Button for example this Content property is what you use to set whatever you want to appear inside the Button. Most often this is text or a bitmap but you can also use a panel that contains other content. It is interesting that the Content property of ContentControl is of type object rather than UIElement. There s a good reason for that. You can actually put pretty much any type of object you want as the content of a Button and you can supply a template in the form of a visual tree that tells the Button how to display this content. This feature is not so much used for Button but it s used a great deal for items in ItemsControl derivatives. I ll show you how to define a content template in a future chapter. ItemsControl is the parent class to a bunch of controls that display collections of items. Here you ll find the familiar ListBox and ComboBox as well as the new Windows 8 controls GridView and ListView. This is such an important category of controls that a whole future chapter will be devoted to it. There are a couple ways to create custom controls. The really simple way is by defining a Style for the control but more extensive visual changes require a template. In some cases you can derive from an existing control to add some features to it or you can derive from ContentControl or ItemsControl if these controls provide features you need. But one of the most common ways to create a custom control is by deriving from UserControl. This is not the approach you ll use if you want to market a custom control library but it s great for controls that you use yourself within the context of an application. The Slider for Ranges The final important parent class that derives from Control is RangeBase which has three derivatives: ProgressBar ScrollBar and Slider. Which of these is not like the others Obviously ProgressBar which exists in this hierarchy mainly to inherit several properties from RangeBase: Minimum Maximum SmallChange LargeChange and Value. In every RangeBase control the Value property takes on values of type double ranging from Minimum through Maximum. With the ScrollBar and Slider the Value property changes when the user manipulates the control with ProgressBar the Value property is set programmatically to indicate the progress of a lengthy operation. ProgressBar has an indeterminate mode to display a row of dots that skirt across the screen but also available is ProgressRing which displays a series of dots that parade around in a circle. In the quarter century evolution of Windows the ScrollBar has slipped from its high perch in the control hierarchy and it s commonly seen today only in a ScrollViewer control. Try to instantiate the Windows Runtime version of ScrollBar and you won t even see it. If you want to use ScrollBar you ll 152 www.it ebooks.info have to supply a template for it. Like RangeBase ScrollBar is defined in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Primitives namespace indicating that it s not something application programmers normally use. For virtually all applications involving choosing from a range of values ScrollBar has been replaced with Slider and with touch interfaces Slider has become simpler than ever. In its default manifestation Slider has no arrows. It simply jumps to the value corresponding to the point where you touch the Slider or drag your finger or mouse. The Value property of the Slider can change either programmatically or through user manipulation. To obtain a notification when the Value property changes attach an event handler for the ValueChanged event such as shown in the SliderEvents project: Project: SliderEvents File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush StackPanel Slider ValueChanged OnSliderValueChanged TextBlock HorizontalAlignment Center FontSize 48 Slider ValueChanged OnSliderValueChanged TextBlock HorizontalAlignment Center FontSize 48 StackPanel Grid Both Slider controls here share the same event handler. The idea behind this simple program is that the current Value of each Slider is displayed by the TextBlock below it. This might be considered somewhat challenging when you notice that nothing in this XAML file is assigned a name. However the event handler makes a few assumptions. It assumes that the parent to the Slider is a Panel and the next child in this Panel is a TextBlock: Project: SliderEvents File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnSliderValueChanged object sender RangeBaseValueChangedEventArgs args Slider slider sender as Slider Panel parentPanel slider.Parent as Panel int childIndex parentPanel.Children.IndexOf slider TextBlock txtblk parentPanel.Children childIndex 1 as TextBlock txtblk.Text args.NewValue.ToString This little bit of trickery is merely to demonstrate that there s more than one way to access elements in the visual tree. In the final step the Text property of the TextBlock is assigned the NewValue argument from the event arguments converted to a string. Equally valid would be using the Value property of the Slider: txtblk.Text slider.Value.ToString 153 www.it ebooks.info Although RangeBaseValueChangedEventArgs derives from RoutedEvent this is not a routed event. The event does not travel up the visual tree. The sender argument is always the Slider and the OriginalSource property of the event arguments is always null. When you run the program you ll notice that the TextBlock elements initially display nothing. The ValueChanged event is not fired until Value actually changes from its default value of zero. As you touch a Slider or click it with a mouse the value jumps to that position. You can then sweep your finger or mouse pointer back and forth to change the value. As you manipulate the Slider controls you ll see that they let you select values from 0 to 100 inclusive: This default range is a result of the default values of the Minimum and Maximum properties which are 0 and 100 respectively.. Although the Value property is a double it takes on integral values as a result of the default StepFrequency property which is 1. By default the Slider is oriented horizontally but you can switch to vertical with the Orientation property. The height of the slider area cannot be changed except if you redefine the visuals with a template . The total height of the control in layout includes a bit more space. In layout the default height of a horizontal Slider is 60 pixels the default width of a vertical Slider is 45 pixels. In use these dimensions are adequate for touch purposes. If you repeatedly press the Tab key while this program is running you can change the keyboard input focus from one Slider to another and then use the keyboard arrow keys to make the value go up or down. Pressing Home and End shoots to the minimum and maximum values. Some other variations are illustrated in the SliderBindings project where all the updating logic is incorporated right in the XAML file. Three Slider controls are instantiated in a StackPanel and alternated with TextBlock elements with bindings to the Value properties of each Slider. An implicit style for the TextBlock is defined to reduce markup: 154 www.it ebooks.info Project: SliderBindings File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid.Resources Style TargetType TextBlock Setter Property FontSize Value 48 Setter Property HorizontalAlignment Value Center Style Grid.Resources StackPanel Slider Name slider1 TextBlock Text Binding ElementName slider1 Path Value Slider Name slider2 IsDirectionReversed True StepFrequency 0.01 TextBlock Text Binding ElementName slider2 Path Value Slider Name slider3 Minimum 1 Maximum 1 StepFrequency 0.01 SmallChange 0.01 LargeChange 0.1 TextBlock Text Binding ElementName slider3 Path Value StackPanel Grid Bindings obtain initial values and don t wait for the first ValueChanged event to be fired. Obviously the binding is using a somewhat different approach to converting the double values to strings: 155 www.it ebooks.info The markup for the second Slider sets the StepFrequency property to 0.01 and also sets IsDirectionReversed to true so that the minimum value of 0 occurs when the thumb is positioned to the far right. It s rather rare to set IsDirectionReversed to true for horizontal sliders but more common for vertical sliders. The default vertical slider has a minimum value when the slider is all the way down and for some purposes that should be a maximum value. For that second Slider however the keyboard arrow keys change the value in increments of 1 rather than the StepFrequency of 0.01. The keyboard interface is governed by the SmallChange property which by default is 1. The third Slider has a range from 1 to 1. When the Slider is first displayed the thumb is in the center at the default Value of 0. I ve set both StepFrequency and SmallChange to 0.01 and LargeChange to 0.1 but I ve found no way to trigger the LargeChange jump with either the mouse or keyboard. The Slider class defines TickFrequency and TickPlacement properties to display tick marks adjacent to the Slider but it is my experience that with the current release of Windows 8 these tick marks are barely visible. Something is wrong with the way they re handling color. If the Background and Foreground properties of the Slider are set the Slider uses Foreground for the slider area associated with the minimum value and Background for the area associated with the maximum value but it switches to default colors when the Slider is being manipulated or when the mouse hovers overhead. As we begin creating more Slider controls it becomes necessary to find a better way to lay them out on the page. It s time to get familiar with the Grid. The Grid The Grid probably seems like a familiar friend at this point because it s been in almost every program in this book but obviously we haven t gotten to know it in any depth. Many of the programs in the remainder of this book will use the Grid not in its single cell mode but with actual rows and columns. The Grid has a superficial resemblance to the HTML table but it s quite different. The Grid doesn t have any facility to define borders or margins for individual cells. It is strictly for layout purposes. Any sprucing up for presentation must occur on the parent or children elements. For example the Grid can be in a Border and Border elements can adorn the contents of the individual Grid cells. The number of rows and columns in a Grid must be explicitly indicated the Grid cannot determine this information by the number of children. Children of the Grid generally go in a particular cell which is an intersection of a row and column but children can also span multiple rows and columns. Although the numbers of rows and columns can be changed programmatically at run time it s not often done. Most common is to fix the number of desired rows and columns in the XAML file. This is 156 www.it ebooks.info accomplished with objects of type RowDefinition and ColumnDefinition added to two collections defined by Grid called RowDefinitions and ColumnDefinitions. The size of each row and column can be defined in one of three ways: An explicit row height or column width in pixels Auto meaning based on the size of the children Asterisk or star which allocates remaining space proportionally In XAML property element syntax is used to fill the RowDefinitions and ColumnDefinitions collections so a typical Grid looks like this: Grid Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height 55 RowDefinition Height Grid.RowDefinitions Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width Auto ColumnDefinition Width 10 ColumnDefinition Width 20 ColumnDefinition Width Auto Grid.ColumnDefinitions Children go here Grid Notice that the Grid collection properties are named RowDefinitions and ColumnDefinitions plural but they contain objects of type RowDefinition and ColumnDefinition singular . You can omit the RowDefinitions or ColumnDefinitions for a Grid with only one row or one column. This particular Grid has three rows and four columns and it shows the various ways that the size of the rows and columns can be defined. A number by itself indicates a width or height in pixels. Explicit row heights and column widths are not generally used as much as the other two options. The word Auto means to let the child decide. The calculated height of the row or width of the column is based on the maximum height or width of the children in that row or column . As in HTML the asterisk pronounced star directs the Grid to allocate the available space. In this Grid the height of the third row is calculated by subtracting the height of the first and second rows from the total height of the Grid. For the columns the second and third columns are allocated the remaining space calculated by subtracting the widths of the first and fourth columns from the total width of the Grid. The numbers before the asterisks indicates proportions and here they mean that the third column gets twice the width of the second column. The star values are applicable only when the size of the Grid is parent driven For example suppose 157 www.it ebooks.info that this Grid is a child of a StackPanel with a vertical orientation. The StackPanel offers to the Grid an unconstrained infinite height. How can the Grid allocate that infinite height to its middle row It cannot. The asterisk specification degenerates to Auto. Similarly if a Grid is a child of a Canvas and the Grid is not given an explicit Height and Width all the star specifications degenerate to Auto. The same thing happens to a Grid that does not have default Stretch values of HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment. In the Grid example shown above the second column may actually become wider than the third if that s what the sizes of the children in those columns dictate. However if you have no RowDefinition objects with a star specification the height of the Grid is child driven. The Grid can go in a vertical StackPanel or Canvas or be given a nondefault VerticalAlignment without weirdness happening. The Height property of RowDefinition and the Width property of ColumnDefinition are both of type GridLength a structure defined in Windows.UI.Xaml that lets you specify Auto or star sizes from code. RowDefinition also defines MinHeight and MaxHeight properties and ColumnDefinition defines MinWidth and MaxWidth. These are all of type double and indicate minimum and maximum sizes in pixels. You can obtain the actual sizes with the ActualHeight property of RowDefinition and the ActualWidth property of ColumnDefinition. Grid also defines four attached properties that you set on the children of a Grid: Grid.Row and Grid.Column have default values of 0 and Grid.RowSpan and Grid.ColumnSpan have default values of 1. This is how you indicate the cell in which a particular child resides and how many rows and columns it spans. A cell can contain more than one element. You can nest a Grid within a Grid or put other panels in Grid cells but the nesting of panels could degrade layout performance so watch out if a deeply nested element is changing size based on an animation or if children are frequently being added to or removed from Children collections. You don t want the layout of your page being recalculated at the video frame rate In Chapter 3 Basic Event Handling I presented a Windows 8 version of WHATSIZE the first program to appear in a magazine article about Windows programming. The third article about Windows Programming was in the May 1987 issue of Microsoft Systems Journal and featured a program called COLORSCR color scroll . Here it is as it appeared in that article running under a beta version of Windows 2: 158 www.it ebooks.info Manipulate the scrollbars to mix red green and blue values and you d see the result at the right. In those days most graphics displays didn t have full ranges of color so dithering was used to approximate colors not renderable by the device. The value of each scrollbar is also displayed beneath the scrollbar. The program performed a rather crude and heavily arithmetic attempt at dynamic layout even changing the width of the scrollbars when the window size changed. This seems like an ideal program to demonstrate a simple Grid. Considering the six instances of TextBlock and three instances of Slider required the XAML file in the SimpleColorScroll project starts off with two implicit styles: Project: SimpleColorScroll File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page.Resources Style TargetType TextBlock Setter Property Text Value 00 Setter Property FontSize Value 24 Setter Property HorizontalAlignment Value Center Setter Property Margin Value 0 12 Style Style TargetType Slider Setter Property Orientation Value Vertical Setter Property IsDirectionReversed Value True Setter Property Maximum Value 255 Setter Property HorizontalAlignment Value Center Style Page.Resources I ve decided to display the current value of each Slider in hexadecimal so the Style for the TextBlock initializes sets the Text property to 00 which is the hexadecimal value corresponding to the minimum Slider position. The Grid begins by defining three rows for each Slider and two accompanying TextBlock labels and four columns. Notice that the first three columns are all the same width but the fourth column is three times as wide: 159 www.it ebooks.info Project: SimpleColorScroll File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width 3 Grid.ColumnDefinitions Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height RowDefinition Height Auto Grid.RowDefinitions Grid The remainder of the XAML file instantiates 10 children of the Grid. Each one has both Grid.Row and Grid.Column attached properties set although these aren t necessary for values of 0. I tend to put these attached properties early among the attributes but after at least one attribute such as a Name or Text that provides a quick visual identification of the element: Project: SimpleColorScroll File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Red TextBlock Text Red Grid.Column 0 Grid.Row 0 Foreground Red Slider Name redSlider Grid.Column 0 Grid.Row 1 Orientation Vertical Foreground Red ValueChanged OnSliderValueChanged TextBlock Name redValue Grid.Column 0 Grid.Row 2 Foreground Red Green TextBlock Text Green Grid.Column 1 Grid.Row 0 Foreground Green 160 www.it ebooks.info Slider Name greenSlider Grid.Column 1 Grid.Row 1 Orientation Vertical Foreground Green ValueChanged OnSliderValueChanged TextBlock Name greenValue Grid.Column 1 Grid.Row 2 Foreground Green Blue TextBlock Text Blue Grid.Column 2 Grid.Row 0 Foreground Blue Slider Name blueSlider Grid.Column 2 Grid.Row 1 Orientation Vertical Foreground Blue ValueChanged OnSliderValueChanged TextBlock Name blueValue Grid.Column 2 Grid.Row 2 Foreground Blue Result Rectangle Grid.Column 3 Grid.Row 0 Grid.RowSpan 3 Rectangle.Fill SolidColorBrush x:Name brushResult Color Black Rectangle.Fill Rectangle Grid Notice that all the TextBlock and Slider elements are given Foreground property assignments based on what color they represent. The Rectangle at the bottom has the Grid.RowSpan attached property set to 3 indicating that it spans all three rows. The SolidColorBrush is set to Black so that s consistent with the three initial Slider values. If you can t get everything initialized correctly in the XAML file the constructor of the code behind file is the place to do it. You might wonder why the Orientation property is set on each Slider when that property is also set in the implicit Style. It turns out that in the version of Windows 8 I m using to write this chapter the property setting in the Style doesn t take. It looks good in the Visual Studio preview but not when it 161 www.it ebooks.info actually runs. All three Slider controls have the same handler for the ValueChanged event. That s in the code behind file: Project: SimpleColorScroll File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent void OnSliderValueChanged object sender RangeBaseValueChangedEventArgs args byte r byte redSlider.Value byte g byte greenSlider.Value byte b byte blueSlider.Value redValue.Text r.ToString X2 greenValue.Text g.ToString X2 blueValue.Text b.ToString X2 brushResult.Color Color.FromArgb 255 r g b The event handler could obtain the actual Slider firing the event with the sender argument and get the new value from the RangeBaseValueChangedEventArgs object. But regardless of which Slider actually changes value the event handler needs to create a whole new Color value and that requires all three values. The only somewhat wasteful part of this code is setting all three text values when only one is changing but fixing that would require accessing the TextBlock associated with the particular Slider firing the event. Here s one of 16 777 216 possible results: 162 www.it ebooks.info Orientation and Aspect Ratios If you run SimpleColorScroll on a tablet and rotate it into portrait mode the layout starts to look a little funny and even if you run it in landscape mode a snap view might cause some of the text labels to overlap. It might make sense to add some logic in the code behind file that adjusts the layout based on the orientation or aspect ratio of the display. Adjusting the layout with this particular program becomes much easier if the single Grid is split in two one nested in the other. The inner Grid has three rows and three columns for the TextBlock elements and Slider controls. The outer Grid has just two children: the inner Grid and the Rectangle. In landscape mode the outer Grid has two columns in portrait mode it has two rows. The XAML file for the OrientableColorScroll project has the same Style definitions as SimpleColorScroll. The outer Grid is shown here: Project: OrientableColorScroll File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush SizeChanged OnGridSizeChanged Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition x:Name secondColDef Width Grid.ColumnDefinitions Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height RowDefinition x:Name secondRowDef Height 0 Grid.RowDefinitions 163 www.it ebooks.info Grid Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 Grid Result Rectangle Name rectangleResult Grid.Column 1 Grid.Row 0 Rectangle.Fill SolidColorBrush x:Name brushResult Color Black Rectangle.Fill Rectangle Grid The outer Grid has its RowDefinitions and ColumnDefinitions collections initialized for either contingency: two columns or two rows. In each collection the second item has been given a name so that it can be accessed from code. The second row has a height of zero so the initial configuration assumes a landscape mode. The inner Grid containing the TextBlock elements and Slider controls is always in either the first column or first row: Grid Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 Grid Setting Grid.Row and Grid.Column attributes on a Grid always looks a little peculiar to me. They refer not to the rows and columns of this Grid but to the rows and columns of the parent Grid. The default values of these attached properties are both zero so these particular attribute settings aren t actually required. The Rectangle is initially in the second column and first row: Rectangle Name rectangleResult Grid.Column 1 Grid.Row 0 Rectangle In this version of the program the Rectangle has a name so these attached properties can be changed from the code behind file. This is done in the SizeChanged event handler set on the outer Grid: Project: OrientableColorScroll File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnGridSizeChanged object sender SizeChangedEventArgs args 164 www.it ebooks.info Landscape mode if args.NewSize.Width args.NewSize.Height secondColDef.Width new GridLength 1 GridUnitType.Star secondRowDef.Height new GridLength 0 Grid.SetColumn rectangleResult 1 Grid.SetRow rectangleResult 0 Portrait mode else secondColDef.Width new GridLength 0 secondRowDef.Height new GridLength 1 GridUnitType.Star Grid.SetColumn rectangleResult 0 Grid.SetRow rectangleResult 1 This code changes the second RowDefinition and ColumnDefinition in the outer Grid. These both apply to the Rectangle which has its column and row attached properties changed so that it finds itself in the second column for portrait mode or second row for landscape mode . Here s the program running in a snap mode: When changing sizes and orientation sometimes the Slider controls don t seem to update themselves properly but I m sure that won t be a problem in the release version of Windows 8. 165 www.it ebooks.info Slider and the Formatted String Converter In both ColorScroll programs so far the TextBlock labels at the bottom show the current values of the Slider in hexadecimal. It s not necessary to provide these values from the code behind file. It could be done with a data binding from the Slider to the TextBlock. The only thing that s required is a binding converter that can convert a double into a two digit hexadecimal string. It s disturbing to discover that the FormattedStringConverter class I described in Chapter 4 Presentation with Panels in connection with the WhatSizeWithBindingConverter project will not work in this case. You re welcome to try it out but you ll discover if you don t already know that a hexadecimal formatting specification of X2 can be used only with integral types and the Value property of the Slider is a double. However in this case it might make more sense to write a very short ad hoc binding converter particularly when you realize it can be used for two purposes as I ll discuss next. Tooltips and Conversions As you manipulate the Slider controls in either ColorScroll program you ve probably noticed something peculiar: the Slider has a built in tooltip that shows the current value in a little box. That s a nice feature except that this tooltip shows the value in decimal but the program insists on displaying the current value in hexadecimal. If you think it s great that the Slider value is displayed in both decimal and hexadecimal skip to the next section. If you d prefer that the two values be consistent and that they both display the value in hexadecimal you ll be pleased to know that the Slider defines a ThumbToolTipValueConverter property that lets you supply a class that performs the formatting you want. This class must implement the IValueConverter interface which is the same interface you implement to write binding converters. However a converter class for the ThumbToolTipValueConverter property can t be as sophisticated as a converter class for a data binding because you don t have the option of supplying a parameter for the conversion. On the plus side the converter class can be very simple and do only what is required for the particular case. The ColorScrollWithValueConverter project defines a converter dedicated to converting a double to a two character string indicating the value in hexadecimal. The name of this class is almost longer than the actual code: Project: ColorScrollWithValueConverter File: DoubleToStringHexByteConverter.cs using System using Windows.UI.Xaml.Data namespace ColorScrollWithValueConverter 166 www.it ebooks.info public class DoubleToStringHexByteConverter : IValueConverter public object Convert object value Type targetType object parameter string language return int double value .ToString X2 public object ConvertBack object value Type targetType object parameter string language return value This converter is suitable not only for formatting the tooltip value but also for a binding converter to display the value of the Slider in the TextBlock. The following variation of the ColorScroll program shows how it s done. To keep things simple this version doesn t adjust for aspect ratio. The XAML file instantiates the converter in the Resources section: Project: ColorScrollWithValueConverter File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page.Resources local:DoubleToStringHexByteConverter x:Key hexConverter Page.Resources Here s the first set of TextBlock labels and Slider. The hexConverter resource is referenced by a simple StaticResource markup extension by the Slider. The Binding on the TextBlock is broken into three lines for easy readability: Project: ColorScrollWithValueConverter File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Red TextBlock Text Red Grid.Column 0 Grid.Row 0 Foreground Red Slider Name redSlider Grid.Column 0 Grid.Row 1 ThumbToolTipValueConverter StaticResource hexConverter Orientation Vertical Foreground Red ValueChanged OnSliderValueChanged TextBlock Text Binding ElementName redSlider Path Value Converter StaticResource hexConverter Grid.Column 0 Grid.Row 2 Foreground Red Because the ValueChanged handler no longer needs to update the TextBlock labels that code has been removed: 167 www.it ebooks.info Project: ColorScrollWithValueConverter File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnSliderValueChanged object sender RangeBaseValueChangedEventArgs args byte r byte redSlider.Value byte g byte greenSlider.Value byte b byte blueSlider.Value brushResult.Color Color.FromArgb 255 r g b Is it possible to go another step and define sufficient data bindings so that the ValueChanged handler could be entirely eliminated That would surely be feasible if it were possible to establish bindings on the individual properties of Color like so: Doesn t work Rectangle Grid.Column 3 Grid.Row 0 Grid.RowSpan 3 Rectangle.Fill SolidColorBrush SolidColorBrush.Color Color A 255 R Binding ElementName redSlider Path Value G Binding ElementName greenSlider Path Value B Binding ElementName blueSlider Path Value SolidColorBrush.Color SolidColorBrush Rectangle.Fill Rectangle The big problem with this markup is that binding targets need to be backed by dependency properties and the properties of Color are not. They can t be because dependency properties can be implemented only in a class that derives from DependencyObject and Color isn t a class at all. It s a structure. The Color property of SolidColorBrush is backed by a dependency property and that could be the target of a data binding. However in this program the Color property needs three values to be computed and the Windows Runtime does not support data bindings with multiple sources. The solution is to have a separate class devoted to the job of creating a Color object from red green and blue values and I ll show you how to do it in Chapter 6 WinRT and MVVM. Sketching with Sliders I m not going to show you a screen shot of the next program. It s called SliderSketch and it s a Slider version of a popular toy invented about 50 years ago. The user of SliderSketch must skillfully manipulate a horizontal Slider and a vertical Slider in tandem to control a conceptual stylus that progressively extends a continuous polyline. I m not going to show you a screen shot because the 168 www.it ebooks.info program is very difficult to use and I m pretty much at the baby stage with it at the moment. The XAML file defines a 2 by 2 Grid but the screen is dominated by one cell containing a large Border and a Polyline. A vertical Slider is at the far left and a horizontal Slider sits at the bottom. The cell in the lower left corner is empty: Project: SliderSketch File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height RowDefinition Height Auto Grid.RowDefinitions Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width Auto ColumnDefinition Width Grid.ColumnDefinitions Slider Name ySlider Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 Orientation Vertical IsDirectionReversed True Margin 0 18 ValueChanged OnSliderValueChanged Slider Name xSlider Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 1 Margin 18 0 ValueChanged OnSliderValueChanged Border Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 1 BorderBrush StaticResource ApplicationTextBrush BorderThickness 3 0 0 3 Background C0C0C0 Padding 24 SizeChanged OnBorderSizeChanged Polyline Name polyline Stroke 404040 StrokeThickness 3 Points 0 0 Border Grid It is very common for a Grid to define rows and columns at the edges using Auto and then make the whole interior as large as possible with a star specification. The content at the edges is effectively docked. Windows 8 has no DockPanel but it s easy to mimic with Grid. The Margin properties on the Slider controls were developed based on experimentation. For the 169 www.it ebooks.info program to work intuitively the range of Slider values should be set equal to the number of pixels between the minimum and maximum positions and the Slider thumbs should be approximately even with the pixel for that value. The calculation of the Minimum and Maximum values for each Slider occurs when the size of the display area changes: Project: SliderSketch File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent void OnBorderSizeChanged object sender SizeChangedEventArgs args Border border sender as Border xSlider.Maximum args.NewSize.Width border.Padding.Left border.Padding.Right polyline.StrokeThickness ySlider.Maximum args.NewSize.Height border.Padding.Top border.Padding.Bottom polyline.StrokeThickness void OnSliderValueChanged object sender RangeBaseValueChangedEventArgs args polyline.Points.Add new Point xSlider.Value ySlider.Value After all that it s really astonishing to see the actual drawing method down at the bottom: just a single line of code that adds a new Point to a Polyline. But don t try turning your tablet upside down and shaking it to start anew. I haven t defined an erase function just yet. The Varieties of Button Experience The Windows Runtime supports several buttons that derive from the ButtonBase class: Object DependencyObject UIElement FrameworkElement Control ContentControl ButtonBase 170 www.it ebooks.info Button HyperlinkButton RepeatButton ToggleButton CheckBox RadioButton The ButtonVarieties program demonstrates the default appearances and functionality of all these buttons: Project: ButtonVarieties File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush StackPanel Button Content Just a plain old Button HyperlinkButton Content HyperlinkButton RepeatButton Content RepeatButton ToggleButton Content ToggleButton CheckBox Content CheckBox RadioButton Content RadioButton 1 RadioButton RadioButton 2 RadioButton RadioButton RadioButton.Content RadioButton 3 RadioButton.Content RadioButton RadioButton RadioButton.Content TextBlock Text RadioButton 4 RadioButton.Content RadioButton ToggleSwitch StackPanel Grid I ve included four RadioButton instances all with different approaches to setting the Content property and they re all basically equivalent: 171 www.it ebooks.info If you don t like the look of any of these keep in mind that you can entirely redesign them with a ControlTemplate that I ll explore in a future chapter. Like all FrameworkElement derivatives the default values of the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties are Stretch. However by the time the button is loaded the HorizontalAlignment property has been set to Left the VerticalAlignment is Center and a nonzero Padding has also been set. Although the Margin property is zero the visuals contain a little built in margin that surrounds the Border. ButtonBase defines the Click event which is fired when a finger mouse or stylus presses the control and then releases but that behavior can be altered with the ClickMode property. Alternatively a program can be notified that the button has been clicked through a command interface that I ll discuss in Chapter 6. The classic button is Button. There s nothing really special about HyperlinkButton except that it looks different as a result of a different template. RepeatButton generates a series of Click events if held down for a moment this is mostly intended for the repeat behavior of the ScrollBar. Each click of the ToggleButton toggles it on and off. The screen shot shows the on state. CheckBox defines nothing public on its own it simply inherits all the functionality of ToggleButton and achieves a different look with a template. ToggleButton defines an IsChecked property to indicate the current state as well as Checked and Unchecked events to signal when changing to the on or off state. In general you ll want to install handlers for both these events but you can share one handler for the job. The IsChecked property of ToggleButton is not a bool. It is a Nullable bool which means that it can have a value of null. This oddity is to accommodate toggle buttons that have a third indeterminate state. The classic example is a CheckBox labeled Bold in a word processing program: If the selected 172 www.it ebooks.info text is bold the box should be checked. If the selected text is not bold it should be unchecked. If the selected text contains some bold and some nonbold however the CheckBox should show an indeterminate state. You ll need to set the IsThreeState property to true to enable this feature and you ll want to install a handler for the Indeterminate event. ToggleButton does not have a unique appearance for the indeterminate state CheckBox displays a little box rather than a checkmark. With all that said you might want to gravitate towards the ToggleSwitch control for your toggling needs because it s specifically designed for touch in Metro style applications. Although ToggleSwitch does not derive from ButtonBase I ve included one anyway at the bottom of the list. As you can see it provides default labels of Off and On but you can change those. A header is also available as you ll discover in Chapter 7 Building an Application. The RadioButton is a special form of ToggleButton for selecting one item from a collection of mutually exclusive options. The name of the control comes from old car radios with buttons for preselected stations: press a button and the previously pressed button pops out. Similarly when a RadioButton control is checked it unchecks all other sibling RadioButton controls. The only thing you need to do is make them all children of the same panel. Watch out: if you put a RadioButton in a Border it is no longer a sibling with any other RadioButton. If you prefer to separate the RadioButton controls into multiple mutually exclusive groups within the same panel a GroupName property is provided for that purpose. The Control class defines a Foreground property many font related properties and several properties associated with Border and setting these properties will change button appearance. For example suppose you initialize a Button like so: Button Content Not just a plain old Button anymore Background Yellow BorderBrush Red BorderThickness 12 Foreground Blue FontSize 48 FontStyle Italic Now it looks like this: 173 www.it ebooks.info However certain visual characteristics are still governed by the template. For example when you pass the mouse over this button or press it the yellow background momentarily disappears and the button background changes to standard colors. Also although you can change the Border color and thickness you can t give it rounded corners. ButtonBase derives from ContentControl which defines a property named Content. Although the Content property is commonly set to text it can be set to an Image or a panel. This is obviously very powerful. For example here s how a Button can contain a bitmap and a caption for the bitmap: Button StackPanel Image Source http: www.charlespetzold.com pw6 PetzoldJersey.jpg Width 100 TextBlock Text Figure 1 HorizontalAlignment Center StackPanel Button In a future chapter I ll show you how the Content property can be set to virtually any object and how you can supply a template to display that object in a desirable way. Let s make a simple telephone like keypad. The keys are Button controls and the result is displayed in a TextBlock. In the following XAML file the keypad is enclosed in a Grid that is given a HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment of Center so that it sits in the center of the screen. Regardless of the size of this keypad and the contents of the buttons it should have 12 buttons of exactly the same size. I handled the width and the height of these buttons in two different ways. A width of 288 that is 3 inches is imposed on the keyboard Grid itself. I wanted a specific width because I realized that a user could type many numbers and I didn t want the width of the keypad to expand to accommodate an extra wide 174 www.it ebooks.info TextBlock. The Height of each Button however is specified in an implicit style: Project: SimpleKeypad File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Width 288 Grid.Resources Style TargetType Button Setter Property ClickMode Value Press Setter Property HorizontalAlignment Value Stretch Setter Property Height Value 72 Setter Property FontSize Value 36 Style Grid.Resources Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto Grid.RowDefinitions Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width Grid.ColumnDefinitions Grid Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 Grid.ColumnSpan 3 Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width Auto Grid.ColumnDefinitions Border Grid.Column 0 HorizontalAlignment Left TextBlock Name resultText HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Center FontSize 24 Border Button Name deleteButton Content x21E6 Grid.Column 1 IsEnabled False FontFamily Segoe Symbol HorizontalAlignment Left Padding 0 175 www.it ebooks.info BorderThickness 0 Click OnDeleteButtonClick Grid Button Content 1 Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 0 Click OnCharButtonClick Button Content 2 Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 1 Click OnCharButtonClick Button Content 3 Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 2 Click OnCharButtonClick Button Content 4 Grid.Row 2 Grid.Column 0 Click OnCharButtonClick Button Content 5 Grid.Row 2 Grid.Column 1 Click OnCharButtonClick Button Content 6 Grid.Row 2 Grid.Column 2 Click OnCharButtonClick Button Content 7 Grid.Row 3 Grid.Column 0 Click OnCharButtonClick Button Content 8 Grid.Row 3 Grid.Column 1 Click OnCharButtonClick Button Content 9 Grid.Row 3 Grid.Column 2 Click OnCharButtonClick Button Content Grid.Row 4 Grid.Column 0 Click OnCharButtonClick Button Content 0 Grid.Row 4 Grid.Column 1 Click OnCharButtonClick Button Content Grid.Row 4 Grid.Column 2 Click OnCharButtonClick Grid Grid 176 www.it ebooks.info The hard part is the first row. This must accommodate a TextBlock to show the typed result as well as a delete button. I didn t want a very large delete button so I made the whole first row of the Grid a separate Grid just for these two items. The attributes of the delete button override many of the properties set in the implicit style. Notice that the delete button is initially disabled. It should be enabled only when there are characters to delete. The TextBlock was a little tricky. I wanted it to be left justified during normal typing but if the string got too long to be displayed I wanted the TextBlock to be clipped at the left not at the right. My solution was to enclose the TextBlock in a Border: Border Grid.Column 0 HorizontalAlignment Left TextBlock Name resultText HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Center FontSize 24 Border The Border has a fixed limit to its width: it cannot get wider that the width of the overall Grid minus the width of the delete button. But within that area the Border is aligned to the left and the TextBlock fits entirely within that Border also aligned at the left. As more characters are typed the TextBlock gets wider until it becomes wider than the Border. At that point the HorizontalAlignment setting of Right comes into play and the left part of TextBlock is what gets clipped. After that top row everything else is smooth sailing. The implicit style helps keep the markup for each of the nine buttons as small as possible. The code behind file handles the Click event from the delete button and has a shared handler for the other 12 buttons: Project: SimpleKeypad File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page string inputString char specialChars public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent void OnCharButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args Button btn sender as Button inputString btn.Content as string FormatText void OnDeleteButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args 177 www.it ebooks.info inputString inputString.Substring 0 inputString.Length 1 FormatText void FormatText bool hasNonNumbers inputString.IndexOfAny specialChars 1 if hasNonNumbers inputString.Length 4 inputString.Length 10 resultText.Text inputString else if inputString.Length 8 resultText.Text String.Format 0 1 inputString.Substring 0 3 inputString.Substring 3 else resultText.Text String.Format 0 1 2 inputString.Substring 0 3 inputString.Substring 3 3 inputString.Substring 6 deleteButton.IsEnabled inputString.Length 0 The handler for the delete button removes a character from the inputString field and the other handler adds a character. Each handler then calls FormatText which attempts to format the string. At the end of the method the delete button is enabled only if the input string contains characters. The OnCharButtonClick event handler uses the Content property of the button being pressed to determine what character to add to the string. Such an easy equivalence between the Content visuals of the button and the functionality of the button isn t always available. Sometimes sharing an event handler among multiple controls requires that the handler extract more information from the button 178 www.it ebooks.info being clicked. FrameworkElement defines a Tag property of type object specifically for this purpose. You can set Tag to an identifying string or object in the XAML file and check it in the event handler. Dependency Properties Perhaps you re writing an application where you want all the Button controls to display text with a gradient brush. Of course you can simply define the Foreground property of each Button to be a LinearGradientBrush but the markup might start becoming a bit overwhelming. You could then try a Style with the Foreground property set to a LinearGradientBrush but then each Button shares the same LinearGradientBrush with the same gradient colors and perhaps you want more flexibility than that. What you really want is a Button with two properties named Color1 and Color2 that you can set to the gradient colors. That sounds like a custom control. It s a class that derives from Button that creates a LinearGradientBrush in its constructor and defines Color1 and Color2 properties to control this gradient. Can these Color1 and Color2 properties be just plain old .NET properties with set and get accessors Yes they can. However defining the properties like that will limit them in some crucial ways. Such properties cannot be the targets of styles bindings or animations. Only dependency properties can do all that. Dependency properties have a bit more overhead than regular properties but learning how to define dependency properties in your own classes is an important skill. In a new project begin by adding a new item to the project and select Class from the list. Give it a name of GradientButton and in the file make the class public and derived from Button: public class GradientButton : Button Now let s fill up that class. You will need to add some using directives along the way. The two new properties are named Color1 and Color2 of type Color. These two properties require two dependency properties of type DependencyProperty named Color1Property and Color2Property. They must be public and static but settable only from within the class: public static DependencyProperty Color1Property private set get public static DependencyProperty Color2Property private set get These DependencyProperty objects must be created in the static constructor. The DependencyProperty class defines a static method named Register for the job of creating DependencyProperty objects: static GradientButton Color1Property 179 www.it ebooks.info DependencyProperty.Register Color1 typeof Color typeof GradientButton new PropertyMetadata Colors.White OnColorChanged Color2Property DependencyProperty.Register Color2 typeof Color typeof GradientButton new PropertyMetadata Colors.Black OnColorChanged A slightly different static method named DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached is used to create attached properties. The first argument to DependencyProperty.Register is the text name of the property. This is used sometimes by the XAML parsers. The second argument is the type of the property. The third argument is the type of the class that is registering this dependency property. The fourth argument is an object of type PropertyMetadata. The constructor comes in two versions. In one version all you need to specify is a default value of the property. In the other you also specify a method that is called when the property changes. This method will not be called if the property happens to be set to the same value it already has. The default value you specify as the first argument to the PropertyMetadata constructor must match the type indicated in the second argument or a run time exception will result. This is not as easy as it sounds. For example it is very common for programmers to supply a default value of 0 for a property of type double. During compilation the 0 is assumed to be an integer so at run time a type mismatch is discovered and an exception is thrown. If you re defining a dependency property of type double give it a default value of 0.0 so that the compiler knows the correct data type of this argument. The GradientButton class also needs regular .NET property definitions of Color1 and Color2 but these are always of a very specific form: public Color Color1 set SetValue Color1Property value get return Color GetValue Color1Property public Color Color2 set SetValue Color2Property value get return Color GetValue Color2Property The set accessor always calls SetValue inherited from the DependencyObject class referencing the dependency property object and the get accessor always calls GetValue and casts the return value to the proper type for the property. You can make the set accessor protected or private if you don t want the property being set from outside the class. 180 www.it ebooks.info In my GradientButton control I want the Foreground property to be a LinearGradientBrush and I want the Color1 and Color2 properties to be the colors of the two GradientStop objects. Two GradientStop objects are thus defined as fields: GradientStop gradientStop1 gradientStop2 The regular instance constructor of the class creates those objects as well as the LinearGradientBrush to set it to the Foreground property: public GradientButton gradientStop1 new GradientStop Offset 0 Color this.Color1 gradientStop2 new GradientStop Offset 1 Color this.Color2 LinearGradientBrush brush new LinearGradientBrush brush.GradientStops.Add gradientStop1 brush.GradientStops.Add gradientStop2 this.Foreground brush Notice how the property initializers for the two GradientStop objects access the Color1 and Color2 properties. This is how the colors in the LinearGradientBrush are set to the default colors defined for the two dependency properties. You ll recall that in the definition of the two dependency properties a method named OnColorChanged was specified as the method to be called whenever either the Color1 or Color2 property changes value. Because this property changed method is referenced in a static constructor the method itself must also be static: static void OnColorChanged DependencyObject obj DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args Now this is kind of weird because the whole point of defining this GradientButton class is to use it multiple times in an application and now we re defining a static property that is called whenever the Color1 or Color2 property in an instance of this class changes. How do you know to what instance this method call applies Easy: it s the first argument. That first argument to this OnColorChanged method is always a GradientButton object and you can safely cast it to a GradientButton and then access fields and 181 www.it ebooks.info properties in the particular GradientButton instance. What I like to do in the static property changed method is call an instance method of the same name passing to it the second argument: static void OnColorChanged DependencyObject obj DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args obj as GradientButton .OnColorChanged args void OnColorChanged DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args This second method then does all the work accessing instance fields and properties of the class. The DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs object contains some useful information. The Property property is of type DependencyProperty and indicates the changed property. In this example the Property property will be either Color1Property or Color2Property. DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs also has properties named OldValue and NewValue of type object. In GradientButton the property changed handler sets the Color property of the appropriate GradientStop object from NewValue: void OnColorChanged DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args if args.Property Color1Property gradientStop1.Color Color args.NewValue if args.Property Color2Property gradientStop2.Color Color args.NewValue And that s it for GradientButton. The only job left to do is arrange all these pieces in the class in a way that makes sense to you. I like to put all fields at the top static constructor next static properties next and then the instance constructor instance properties and all methods. Here s the complete GradientButton class from the DependencyProperties project: Project: DependencyProperties File: GradientButton.cs using Windows.UI using Windows.UI.Xaml using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls using Windows.UI.Xaml.Media namespace DependencyProperties public class GradientButton : Button GradientStop gradientStop1 gradientStop2 static GradientButton 182 www.it ebooks.info Color1Property DependencyProperty.Register Color1 typeof Color typeof GradientButton new PropertyMetadata Colors.White OnColorChanged Color2Property DependencyProperty.Register Color2 typeof Color typeof GradientButton new PropertyMetadata Colors.Black OnColorChanged public static DependencyProperty Color1Property private set get public static DependencyProperty Color2Property private set get public GradientButton gradientStop1 new GradientStop Offset 0 Color this.Color1 gradientStop2 new GradientStop Offset 1 Color this.Color2 LinearGradientBrush brush new LinearGradientBrush brush.GradientStops.Add gradientStop1 brush.GradientStops.Add gradientStop2 this.Foreground brush public Color Color1 set SetValue Color1Property value get return Color GetValue Color1Property public Color Color2 set SetValue Color2Property value get return Color GetValue Color2Property static void OnColorChanged DependencyObject obj DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args 183 www.it ebooks.info obj as GradientButton .OnColorChanged args void OnColorChanged DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args if args.Property Color1Property gradientStop1.Color Color args.NewValue if args.Property Color2Property gradientStop2.Color Color args.NewValue There are some alternate ways of writing the property changed handler. If you specify separate handlers for each property you don t need to look at the Property property of the event arguments. Rather than access the NewValue property you can just get the value of the property from the class for example: gradientStop1.Color this.Color1 The Color1 property has already been set to the new value by the time the property changed handler is called. The XAML file in this project defines a couple styles one with Setter elements for Color1 and Color2 and applies these styles to two instances of GradientButton. Any reference to GradientButton in this XAML file must be preceded by the local XML namespace that is associated with the DependencyProperties namespace in which GradientButton is defined. Notice the local prefix in both the TargetType of the Style and when the buttons are instantiated: Project: DependencyProperties File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page xmlns:local using:DependencyProperties Page.Resources Style x:Key baseButtonStyle TargetType local:GradientButton Setter Property FontSize Value 48 Setter Property HorizontalAlignment Value Center Setter Property Margin Value 0 12 Style Style x:Key blueRedButtonStyle TargetType local:GradientButton BasedOn StaticResource baseButtonStyle Setter Property Color1 Value Blue Setter Property Color2 Value Red Style Page.Resources Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush StackPanel 184 www.it ebooks.info local:GradientButton Content GradientButton 1 Style StaticResource baseButtonStyle local:GradientButton Content GradientButton 2 Style StaticResource blueRedButtonStyle StackPanel Grid Page The first one gets the default settings of Color1 and Color2 and the second one gets the settings defined in the Style. Here it is: What I was not able to do was set Color1 and Color2 locally in the GradientButton tag but I assume this is just some oddity that will go away before the Windows 8 release. I want to show you an alternative way to create the GradientButton class that lets you define the LinearGradientBrush in XAML and eliminate the property changed handlers. Interested In a separate project rather than adding a new item and picking Class from the list add a new item pick User Control from the list and give it a name of GradientButton. As usual you ll get a pair of files: GradientButton.xaml and GradientButton.xaml.cs. The GradientButton class derives from UserControl. Here s the class definition in the GradientButton.xaml.cs file: public sealed partial class GradientButton : UserControl public GradientButton this.InitializeComponent Change the base class from UserControl to Button: 185 www.it ebooks.info public sealed partial class GradientButton : Button public GradientButton this.InitializeComponent The body of this class will be very much like the first GradientButton class except the instance constructor doesn t do anything except call InitializeComponent. There are no property changed handlers. Here s how it looks in the DependencyPropertiesWithBindings project: Project: DependencyPropertiesWithBindings File: GradientButton.xaml.cs public sealed partial class GradientButton : Button static GradientButton Color1Property DependencyProperty.Register Color1 typeof Color typeof GradientButton new PropertyMetadata Colors.White Color2Property DependencyProperty.Register Color2 typeof Color typeof GradientButton new PropertyMetadata Colors.Black public static DependencyProperty Color1Property private set get public static DependencyProperty Color2Property private set get public GradientButton this.InitializeComponent public Color Color1 set SetValue Color1Property value get return Color GetValue Color1Property public Color Color2 set SetValue Color2Property value get return Color GetValue Color2Property When first created the GradientButton.xaml file has a root element that indicates the class derives 186 www.it ebooks.info from UserControl: UserControl x:Class DependencyPropertiesWithBindings.GradientButton UserControl Change that to Button as well: Button x:Class DependencyPropertiesWithBindings.GradientButton Button Normally when you put stuff between the root tags of a XAML file you re implicitly setting the Content property. But in this case we don t want to set the Content property of the Button. We want to set the Foreground property of GradientButton to a LinearGradientBrush. This requires property element tags of Button.Foreground. Here s the complete XAML file: Project: DependencyPropertiesWithBindings File: GradientButton.xaml Button x:Class DependencyPropertiesWithBindings.GradientButton xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml Name root Button.Foreground LinearGradientBrush GradientStop Offset 0 Color Binding ElementName root Path Color1 GradientStop Offset 1 Color Binding ElementName root Path Color2 LinearGradientBrush Button.Foreground Button Notice the cool way that the Color properties of the GradientStop objects are set: the root element is given a name of root so that it can be the source of two data bindings referencing the custom dependency properties. The BlankPage.xaml file for this project is the same as the previous project and the result is also the same. RadioButton Tags A group of RadioButton controls allows a user to choose between one of several mutually exclusive items. From the program s perspective often it is convenient that each RadioButton in a particular 187 www.it ebooks.info group corresponds with a member of an enumeration and that the enumeration value be identifiable from the RadioButton object. This allows all the buttons in a group to share the same event handler. The Tag property is ideal for this purpose. For example suppose you want to write a program that lets you experiment with the StrokeStartLineCap StrokeEndLineCap and StrokeLineJoin properties defined by the Shape class. When rendering thick lines these properties govern the shape of the ends of the line and the shape where two lines join. The first two properties are set to members of the PenLineCap enumeration type and the third is set to members of the PenLineJoin enumeration. For example one of the members of the PenLineJoin enumeration is Bevel. You might define a RadioButton to represent this option like so: RadioButton Content Bevel join Tag Bevel The problem is that Bevel is interpreted by the XAML parser as a string so in the event handler in the code behind file you need to use switch and case to differentiate between the different strings or Enum.TryParse to convert the string into an actual PenLineJoin.Bevel value. A better way of defining the Tag property involves breaking it out as a property element and explicitly indicating that it s being set to a value of type PenLineJoin: RadioButton Content Bevel join RadioButton.Tag PenLineJoin Bevel PenLineJoin RadioButton.Tag RadioButton Of course this is a bit cumbersome. Nevertheless I ve used this approach in the LineCapsAndJoins project. The XAML file defines three groups of RadioButton controls for the three Shape properties. Each group contains three or four controls corresponding to the appropriate enumeration members. Project: LineCapsAndJoins File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height RowDefinition Height Auto Grid.RowDefinitions Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width Auto ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width Auto Grid.ColumnDefinitions StackPanel Name startLineCapPanel Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 Margin 24 188 www.it ebooks.info RadioButton Content Flat start Checked OnStartLineCapRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag PenLineCap Flat PenLineCap RadioButton.Tag RadioButton RadioButton Content Round start Checked OnStartLineCapRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag PenLineCap Round PenLineCap RadioButton.Tag RadioButton RadioButton Content Square start Checked OnStartLineCapRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag PenLineCap Square PenLineCap RadioButton.Tag RadioButton RadioButton Content Triangle start Checked OnStartLineCapRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag PenLineCap Triangle PenLineCap RadioButton.Tag RadioButton StackPanel StackPanel Name endLineCapPanel Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 2 Margin 24 RadioButton Content Flat end Checked OnEndLineCapRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag PenLineCap Flat PenLineCap RadioButton.Tag RadioButton RadioButton Content Round end Checked OnEndLineCapRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag PenLineCap Round PenLineCap RadioButton.Tag RadioButton RadioButton Content Square end Checked OnEndLineCapRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag PenLineCap Square PenLineCap RadioButton.Tag RadioButton RadioButton Content Triangle End 189 www.it ebooks.info Checked OnEndLineCapRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag PenLineCap Triangle PenLineCap RadioButton.Tag RadioButton StackPanel StackPanel Name lineJoinPanel Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 1 HorizontalAlignment Center Margin 24 RadioButton Content Bevel join Checked OnLineJoinRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag PenLineJoin Bevel PenLineJoin RadioButton.Tag RadioButton RadioButton Content Miter join Checked OnLineJoinRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag PenLineJoin Miter PenLineJoin RadioButton.Tag RadioButton RadioButton Content Round join Checked OnLineJoinRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag PenLineJoin Round PenLineJoin RadioButton.Tag RadioButton StackPanel Polyline Name polyline Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 1 Points 0 0 500 1000 1000 0 Stroke StaticResource ApplicationTextBrush StrokeThickness 100 Stretch Fill Margin 24 Grid Each of the three groups of RadioButton controls is in its own StackPanel and all the controls within each StackPanel share the same handler for the Checked event. The markup doesn t put any RadioButton in its checked state. This is the responsibility of the constructor in the code behind file. At the bottom of the markup is a thick Polyline waiting for its StrokeStartLineCap StrokeEndLineCap and StrokeLineJoin properties to be set. This happens in the three Checked event handlers also in the code behind file: Project: LineCapsAndJoins File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt 190 www.it ebooks.info public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent foreach UIElement child in startLineCapPanel.Children child as RadioButton .IsChecked PenLineCap child as RadioButton .Tag polyline.StrokeStartLineCap foreach UIElement child in endLineCapPanel.Children child as RadioButton .IsChecked PenLineCap child as RadioButton .Tag polyline.StrokeStartLineCap foreach UIElement child in lineJoinPanel.Children child as RadioButton .IsChecked PenLineJoin child as RadioButton .Tag polyline.StrokeLineJoin void OnStartLineCapRadioButtonChecked object sender RoutedEventArgs args polyline.StrokeStartLineCap PenLineCap sender as RadioButton .Tag void OnEndLineCapRadioButtonChecked object sender RoutedEventArgs args polyline.StrokeEndLineCap PenLineCap sender as RadioButton .Tag void OnLineJoinRadioButtonChecked object sender RoutedEventArgs args polyline.StrokeLineJoin PenLineJoin sender as RadioButton .Tag The constructor loops through all the RadioButton controls in each group setting the IsChecked property to true if the Tag value matches the corresponding property of the Polyline. Any further RadioButton checking occurs under the user s control. The event handlers simply need to set a property of the Polyline based on the Tag property of the checked RadioButton. Here s the result: 191 www.it ebooks.info It seems that the Round join is not implemented in the version of Windows 8 I m using. Although the markup is very explicit about setting the Tag property to a member of the PenLineCap or PenLineJoin enumeration the XAML parser actually assigns the Tag an integer corresponding to the underlying enumeration value. This integer can easily be cast into the correct enumeration member but it s definitely not the enumeration member itself. Much of the awkward markup in the LineCapsAndJoins can be eliminated by defining a couple simple custom controls. These custom controls don t need to have dependency properties they can have just a very simple regular .NET property for a tag corresponding to a particular type. The LineCapsAndJoinsWithCustomClass shows how this works. Here s a RadioButton derivative specifically for representing a PenLineCap value: Project: LineCapsAndJoinsWithCustomClass File: LineCapRadioButton.cs using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls using Windows.UI.Xaml.Media namespace LineCapsAndJoinsWithCustomClass public class LineCapRadioButton : RadioButton public PenLineCap LineCapTag set get Similarly here s one for PenLineJoin values: Project: LineCapsAndJoinsWithCustomClass File: LineJoinRadioButton.cs using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls using Windows.UI.Xaml.Media 192 www.it ebooks.info namespace LineCapsAndJoinsWithCustomClass public class LineJoinRadioButton : RadioButton public PenLineJoin LineJoinTag set get Let me show you just a little piece of the XAML the last group of three RadioButton controls to demonstrate how the property element syntax has been eliminated: Project: LineCapsAndJoinsWithCustomClass File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt StackPanel Name lineJoinPanel Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 1 HorizontalAlignment Center Margin 24 local:LineJoinRadioButton Content Bevel join LineJoinTag Bevel Checked OnLineJoinRadioButtonChecked local:LineJoinRadioButton Content Miter join LineJoinTag Miter Checked OnLineJoinRadioButtonChecked local:LineJoinRadioButton Content Round join LineJoinTag Round Checked OnLineJoinRadioButtonChecked StackPanel You ll notice that as you type this markup IntelliSense correctly recognizes the LineCapTag and LineJoinTag properties to be an enumeration type and gives you an option of typing in one of the enumeration members. Nice This switch to custom RadioButton derivatives mostly affects the XAML file. The code behind file is pretty much the same except for somewhat less casting: Project: LineCapsAndJoinsWithCustomClass File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent foreach UIElement child in startLineCapPanel.Children child as LineCapRadioButton .IsChecked child as LineCapRadioButton .LineCapTag polyline.StrokeStartLineCap foreach UIElement child in endLineCapPanel.Children child as LineCapRadioButton .IsChecked child as LineCapRadioButton .LineCapTag polyline.StrokeStartLineCap foreach UIElement child in lineJoinPanel.Children 193 www.it ebooks.info child as LineJoinRadioButton .IsChecked child as LineJoinRadioButton .LineJoinTag polyline.StrokeLineJoin void OnStartLineCapRadioButtonChecked object sender RoutedEventArgs args polyline.StrokeStartLineCap sender as LineCapRadioButton .LineCapTag void OnEndLineCapRadioButtonChecked object sender RoutedEventArgs args polyline.StrokeEndLineCap sender as LineCapRadioButton .LineCapTag void OnLineJoinRadioButtonChecked object sender RoutedEventArgs args polyline.StrokeLineJoin sender as LineJoinRadioButton .LineJoinTag Keyboard Input and TextBox Keyboard input in Metro style applications is complicated somewhat by the on screen touch keyboard that allows the user to enter text by tapping on the screen. Although the touch keyboard is important for tablets and other devices that don t have real keyboards attached it can also be invoked as a supplement to a real keyboard. It is vital that the touch keyboard not pop up and disappear in an annoying fashion. For this reason many controls including custom controls do not automatically receive keyboard input. If they did the system would need to invoke the touch keyboard whenever these controls received input focus. Consequently if you create a custom control and install event handlers for the KeyUp and KeyDown events or override the OnKeyUp and OnKeyDown methods you ll discover that nothing comes through. If you are interested in getting keyboard input from the physical keyboard only and you don t care about the touch keyboard perhaps for a program intended only for yourself or for testing purposes there is a fairly easy way to do it. In the constructor of your page obtain your application s CoreWindow object: CoreWindow coreWindow Window.Current.CoreWindow This class is defined in the Windows.UI.Core namespace. You can then install event handlers on this object for KeyDown and KeyUp which indicate keys on the keyboard as well as CharacterReceived which translates keys to text characters . If you need to create a custom control that obtains keyboard input from both the physical keyboard and the touch keyboard the process is rather more involved. You need to derive a class from FrameworkElementAutomationPeer that implements the ITextProvider and IValueProvider interfaces 194 www.it ebooks.info and return this class in an override of the OnCreateAutomationPeer method of your custom control. Obviously this is a nontrivial task and I ll provide full details in a forthcoming chapter. Meanwhile if your program needs text input the best approach is to use one of the controls specifically provided for this purpose: TextBox features single line or multiline input with a uniform font much like the traditional Windows Notepad program. RichEditBox features formatted text much like the traditional Windows WordPad program. PasswordBox allows a single line of masked input. I ll be focusing on TextBox in this brief discussion and I ll provide more examples in the chapters ahead. TextBox defines a Text property that sets the text in the TextBox or obtains the current text. The SelectedText property is the text that s selected if any and the SelectionStart and SelectionLength properties indicate the offset and length of the selection. If SelectionLength is 0 SelectionStart is the position of the cursor. Setting the IsReadOnly property to true inhibits typed input but allows text to be selected and copied to the Clipboard. All cut copy and paste interaction occurs through context menus. The TextBox defines both TextChanged and SelectionChanged events. By default a TextBox allows only a single line of input. Two properties can change that behavior. Normally the TextBox ignores the Return key but setting AcceptsReturn to true causes the TextBox to begin a new line when Return is pressed. The default setting of the TextWrapping property is NoWrap. Setting that to Wrap causes the TextBox to generate a new line when the user types beyond the end of the current line. These properties can be set independently. Either will cause a TextBox to grow vertically as additional lines are added. TextBox has a built in ScrollViewer. If you don t want the TextBox to grow indefinitely set the MaxLength property. There is not one touch keyboard but several and some are more suitable for entering numbers or email addresses or URIs. A TextBox specifies what type of keyboard it wants with the InputScope property. With the current version of Windows 8 setting this property in XAML is particularly clumsy involving two layers of property elements which accounts for much of the bulk in the following XAML file for the TextBoxInputScopes program. This program lets you experiment with these different keyboard layouts as well as different modes of multiline TextBox instances and as a bonus PasswordBox: Project: TextBoxInputScopes File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page x:Class TextBoxInputScopes.BlankPage Page.Resources Style TargetType TextBlock Setter Property FontSize Value 24 Setter Property VerticalAlignment Value Center Setter Property Margin Value 6 195 www.it ebooks.info Style Style TargetType TextBox Setter Property Width Value 320 Setter Property VerticalAlignment Value Center Setter Property Margin Value 0 6 Style Page.Resources Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid HorizontalAlignment Center Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto Grid.RowDefinitions Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width Auto ColumnDefinition Width Auto Grid.ColumnDefinitions Multiline with Return no wrapping TextBlock Text Multiline accepts Return no wrap : Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 TextBox AcceptsReturn True Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 1 Multiline with no Return wrapping TextBlock Text Multiline ignores Return wraps : Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 0 TextBox TextWrapping Wrap Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 1 Multiline with Return and wrapping TextBlock Text Multiline accepts Return wraps : Grid.Row 2 Grid.Column 0 TextBox AcceptsReturn True TextWrapping Wrap Grid.Row 2 Grid.Column 1 Default input scope TextBlock Text Default input scope: Grid.Row 3 Grid.Column 0 196 www.it ebooks.info TextBox Grid.Row 3 Grid.Column 1 TextBox.InputScope InputScope InputScope.Names InputScopeName NameValue Default InputScope.Names InputScope TextBox.InputScope TextBox Email address input scope TextBlock Text Email address input scope: Grid.Row 4 Grid.Column 0 TextBox Grid.Row 4 Grid.Column 1 TextBox.InputScope InputScope InputScope.Names InputScopeName NameValue EmailSmtpAddress InputScope.Names InputScope TextBox.InputScope TextBox Number input scope TextBlock Text Number input scope: Grid.Row 5 Grid.Column 0 TextBox Grid.Row 5 Grid.Column 1 TextBox.InputScope InputScope InputScope.Names InputScopeName NameValue Number InputScope.Names InputScope TextBox.InputScope TextBox Search input scope TextBlock Text Search input scope: Grid.Row 6 Grid.Column 0 TextBox Grid.Row 6 Grid.Column 1 TextBox.InputScope InputScope InputScope.Names InputScopeName NameValue Search InputScope.Names InputScope TextBox.InputScope TextBox Telephone number input scope 197 www.it ebooks.info TextBlock Text Telephone number input scope: Grid.Row 7 Grid.Column 0 TextBox Grid.Row 7 Grid.Column 1 TextBox.InputScope InputScope InputScope.Names InputScopeName NameValue TelephoneNumber InputScope.Names InputScope TextBox.InputScope TextBox URL input scope TextBlock Text URL input scope: Grid.Row 8 Grid.Column 0 TextBox Grid.Row 8 Grid.Column 1 TextBox.InputScope InputScope InputScope.Names InputScopeName NameValue Url InputScope.Names InputScope TextBox.InputScope TextBox PasswordBox TextBlock Text PasswordBox: Grid.Row 9 Grid.Column 0 PasswordBox Grid.Row 9 Grid.Column 1 Grid Grid Page This is a program you ll want to experiment with before choosing a multiline mode or an InputScope value. Touch and Thumb In a future chapter I ll discuss touch input and how you can use it to manipulate objects on the screen. Meanwhile a modest control called Thumb provides some rudimentary touch functionality. Thumb is defined in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Primitives namespace and it is primarily intended as a building block for the Slider and Scrollbar. In Chapter 7 I ll use it in a custom control. The Thumb control generates three events based on mouse stylus or touch movement relative to itself: DragStarted DragDelta and DragCompleted. The DragStarted event occurs when you put your finger on a Thumb control or move the mouse to its surface and click. Thereafter DragDelta events 198 www.it ebooks.info indicate how the finger or mouse is moving. You can use these events to move the Thumb and anything else most conveniently on a Canvas. In the AlphabetBlocks program a series of buttons labeled with letters numbers and some punctuation surround the perimeter. Click one and an alphabet block appears that you can drag with your finger or the mouse. I know that you ll want to send this alphabet block scurrying across the screen with a flick of your finger but it won t respond in that way. The Thumb does not incorporate touch inertia. For inertia you ll have to tap into the actual touch events. For the alphabet blocks themselves a UserControl derivative named Block has a XAML file that defines a 144 pixel square image with a Thumb some graphics and a TextBlock: Project: AlphabetBlocks File: Block.xaml UserControl x:Class AlphabetBlocks.Block xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml xmlns:local using:AlphabetBlocks Width 144 Height 144 Name root Grid Thumb DragStarted OnThumbDragStarted DragDelta OnThumbDragDelta Margin 18 18 6 6 Left Polygon Points 0 6 12 18 12 138 0 126 Fill E0C080 Top Polygon Points 6 0 18 12 138 12 126 0 Fill F0D090 Edge Polygon Points 6 0 18 12 12 18 0 6 Fill E8C888 Border BorderBrush Binding ElementName root Path Foreground BorderThickness 12 Background FFE0A0 CornerRadius 6 Margin 12 12 0 0 IsHitTestVisible False TextBlock FontFamily Courier New FontSize 156 FontWeight Bold Text Binding ElementName root Path Text HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center 199 www.it ebooks.info Margin 12 18 0 0 IsHitTestVisible False Grid UserControl The Polygon is similar to Polyline except that it automatically closes the figure and then fills the figure with the brush referenced by the Fill property. The Thumb has DragStarted and DragDelta event handlers installed. The two elements that sit on top of the Thumb the Border and TextBlock visually hide the Thumb but have their IsHitTestVisible properties set to false so that they don t block touch input from reaching the Thumb. The BorderBrush property of the Border has a binding to the Foreground property of the root element. Foreground you ll recall is defined by the Control class and inherited by UserControl and propagated through the visual tree. The Foreground property of the TextBlock automatically gets this same brush. The Text property of the TextBlock element is bound to the Text property of the control. UserControl doesn t have a Text property which strongly suggests that Block defines it. The code behind file confirms that supposition. Much of this class is devoted to defining a Text property backed by a dependency property: Project: AlphabetBlocks File: Block.xaml.cs using Windows.UI.Xaml using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Primitives namespace AlphabetBlocks public sealed partial class Block : UserControl static int zindex static Block TextProperty DependencyProperty.Register Text typeof string typeof Block new PropertyMetadata public static DependencyProperty TextProperty private set get public static int ZIndex get return zindex public Block this.InitializeComponent 200 www.it ebooks.info public string Text set SetValue TextProperty value get return string GetValue TextProperty void OnThumbDragStarted object sender DragStartedEventArgs args Canvas.SetZIndex this ZIndex void OnThumbDragDelta object sender DragDeltaEventArgs args Canvas.SetLeft this Canvas.GetLeft this args.HorizontalChange Canvas.SetTop this Canvas.GetTop this args.VerticalChange This Block class also defines a static ZIndex property that requires an explanation. As you click buttons in this program and Block objects are created and added to a Canvas each subsequent Block appears on top of the previous Block objects because of the way they re ordered in the collection. However when you later put your finger on a Block you want that object to pop to the top of the pile which means that it should have a z index higher than every other Block. The static ZIndex property defined here helps achieve that. Notice that the value is incremented each time it s called. Whenever a DragStarted event occurs which means that the user has touched one of these controls the Canvas.SetZIndex method gives the Block a z index higher than all the others. Of course this process will break down eventually when the ZIndex property reaches its maximum value but it s highly unlikely that will happen. The DragDelta event of the Thumb reports how touch or the mouse has moved relative to itself in the form of HorizontalChange and VerticalChange properties. These are simply used to increment the Canvas.Left and Canvas.Top attached properties. The BlankPage.xaml file is very bare. The XAML is dominated by some text that displays the name of the program in the center of the page: Project: AlphabetBlocks File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush SizeChanged OnGridSizeChanged TextBlock Text Alphabet Blocks FontStyle Italic FontWeight Bold FontSize 96 TextWrapping Wrap HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center TextAlignment Center Opacity 0.1 201 www.it ebooks.info Canvas Name buttonCanvas Canvas Name blockcanvas Grid Notice the SizeChanged handler on the Grid. Whenever the size of the page changes the handler is responsible for re creating all the Button objects and distributing them equally around the perimeter of the page. That code dominates that code behind file: Project: AlphabetBlocks File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page const double BUTTON_SIZE 60 const double BUTTON_FONT 18 string blockChars ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789 Color colors Colors.Red Colors.Green Colors.Orange Colors.Blue Colors.Purple Random rand new Random public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent void OnGridSizeChanged object sender SizeChangedEventArgs args buttonCanvas.Children.Clear double widthFraction args.NewSize.Width args.NewSize.Width args.NewSize.Height int horzCount int widthFraction blockChars.Length 2 int vertCount int blockChars.Length 2 horzCount int index 0 double slotWidth args.NewSize.Width BUTTON_SIZE horzCount double slotHeight args.NewSize.Height BUTTON_SIZE vertCount 1 Across top for int i 0 i horzCount i Button button MakeButton index Canvas.SetLeft button i slotWidth Canvas.SetTop button 0 buttonCanvas.Children.Add button Down right side for int i 0 i vertCount i Button button MakeButton index Canvas.SetLeft button this.ActualWidth BUTTON_SIZE Canvas.SetTop button i slotHeight buttonCanvas.Children.Add button 202 www.it ebooks.info Across bottom from right for int i 0 i horzCount i Button button MakeButton index Canvas.SetLeft button this.ActualWidth i slotWidth BUTTON_SIZE Canvas.SetTop button this.ActualHeight BUTTON_SIZE buttonCanvas.Children.Add button Up left side for int i 0 i vertCount i Button button MakeButton index Canvas.SetLeft button 0 Canvas.SetTop button this.ActualHeight i slotHeight BUTTON_SIZE buttonCanvas.Children.Add button Button MakeButton int index Button button new Button Content blockChars index .ToString Width BUTTON_SIZE Height BUTTON_SIZE FontSize BUTTON_FONT Tag new SolidColorBrush colors index colors.Length button.Click OnButtonClick return button void OnButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs e Button button sender as Button Block block new Block Text button.Content as string Foreground button.Tag as Brush Canvas.SetLeft block this.ActualWidth 2 144 rand.NextDouble Canvas.SetTop block this.ActualHeight 2 144 rand.NextDouble Canvas.SetZIndex block Block.ZIndex blockcanvas.Children.Add block A Block is created in the Click handler for the Button and given a random location somewhere close to the center of the screen. It s the responsibility of the user to then move the blocks to discover yet another way to say Hello to Windows 8: 203 www.it ebooks.info 204 www.it ebooks.info Chapter 6 WinRT and MVVM In structuring software one of the main guiding rules is the separation of concerns. A large application is best developed debugged and maintained by being separated into specialized layers. In highly interactive graphical environments one obvious separation is between presentation and content. The presentation layer is the part of the program that displays controls and other graphics and interacts with the user. Underlying this presentation layer is business logic and data providers. To help programmers conceptualize and implement separations of concerns architectural patterns are developed. In XAML based programming environments one pattern that has become extremely popular is Model View ViewModel or MVVM. MVVM is particularly suited for implementing a presentation layer in XAML and linking to the underlying business logic through data bindings and commands. Unfortunately books such as this one tend to contain very small programs to illustrate particular features and concepts. Very small programs often become much larger when they are made to fit an architectural pattern MVVM is overkill for a small application and may very well obfuscate rather than clarify. Nevertheless data binding and commanding are an important part of the Windows Runtime and you should see how they help implement an MVVM architecture. MVVM Brief and Simplified As the name suggests an application using the Model View ViewModel pattern is split into three layers: The Model is the layer that deals with data and raw content. It is often involved with obtaining and maintaining data from files or web services. The View is the presentation layer of controls and graphics generally implemented in XAML. The View Model sits between the Model and View. In the general case it is responsible for making the data or content from the Model more conducive to the View. It s not uncommon for the Model layer to be unnecessary and therefore absent and that s the case for the programs shown in this chapter. If all the interaction between these three layers occurs through procedural method calls a calling hierarchy would be imposed: 205 www.it ebooks.info View View Model Model Calls in the other direction are not allowed except for events. The Model can define an event that the View Model handles and the View Model can define an event that the View handles. Events allow the View Model for example to signal to the View that updated data is available. The View can then call into the View Model to obtain that updated data. Most often the View and View Model interact through data bindings and commands. Consequently many of the method calls and event handling actually occurs under the covers. These data bindings and commands serve to allow three types of interactions: The View can transfer user input to the View Model. The View Model can notify the View when updated data is available. The View can obtain and display updated data from the View Model. One of the goals inherent in MVVM is to minimize the code behind file at least on the page or window level. MVVM mavens are happiest when all the connections between the View and View Model are accomplished through bindings in the XAML file. Data Binding Notifications In Chapter 5 Control Interaction you saw data bindings that looked like this: TextBlock Text Binding ElementName slider Path Value This is a binding between two FrameworkElement derivatives. The target of this data binding is the Text property of the TextBlock. The binding source is the Value property of a Slider identified by the name slider. Both the target and source properties are backed by dependency properties. This is a requirement for the binding target but not as you ll see for the source. Whenever the Value property of the Slider changes the text displayed by the TextBlock changes accordingly. How does this work When the binding source is a dependency property the actual mechanism is internal to the Windows Runtime. Undoubtedly an event is involved. The Binding object installs a handler for an event that provides a notification when the Value property of the Slider changes and the Binding object sets that changed value to the Text property of the TextBlock. This shouldn t be very mysterious considering that Slider has a public ValueChanged event that is also fired when the Value property changes. When implementing a View Model the data bindings are a little different: the binding targets are still elements in the XAML file but the binding sources are properties in the View Model class. This is the basic way that the View Model and the View the XAML file transfer data back and forth. A binding source is not required to be backed by a dependency property. But in order for the binding to work properly the binding source must implement some other kind of notification 206 www.it ebooks.info mechanism to signal to the Binding object when a property has changed. This notification does not happen automatically it must be implemented through an event. The standard way for a View Model to serve as a binding source is by implementing the INotifyPropertyChanged interface defined in the System.ComponentModel namespace. This interface has an exceptionally simple definition: public interface INotifyPropertyChanged event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged The PropertyChangedEventHandler delegate is associated with the PropertyChangedEventArgs class which defines one property: PropertyName of type string. When a class implements INotifyPropertyChanged it fires a PropertyChanged event whenever one of its properties changes. Here s a simple example of a class that implements INotifyPropertyChanged. The single property named TotalScore fires the PropertyChanged event when the property changes: public class SimpleViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged double totalScore public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged public double TotalScore set if totalScore value totalScore value if PropertyChanged null PropertyChanged this new PropertyChangedEventArgs TotalScore get return totalScore The TotalScore property is backed by the totalScore field. Notice that the TotalScore property checks the value coming into the set accessor against the totalScore field and fires the PropertyChanged event only when the property actually changes. Do not skimp on this step just to make these set accessors a little shorter The event is called PropertyChanged and not PropertySetAndPerhapsChangedOrMaybeNot. Also notice that it s possible for a class to legally implement INotifyPropertyChanged and not 207 www.it ebooks.info actually fire any PropertyChanged events but that would be considered very bad behavior. When a class has more than a couple properties it starts making sense to define a protected method named OnPropertyChanged and let that method do the actual event firing. It s also possible to automate part of this class as you ll see shortly. As you design a View and View Model it helps to start thinking of controls as visual manifestations of data types. The controls in the View are bound to properties of these types in the View Model. For example a Slider is a double a TextBox is a string a CheckBox or ToggleSwitch is a bool and a group of RadioButton controls is an enumeration. A View Model for ColorScroll The ColorScroll programs in Chapter 5 showed how to use data bindings to update a TextBlock from the value property of a Slider. However defining a data binding to change the color based on the three Slider values proved much more elusive. Is it possible at all The solution is to have a separate class devoted to the job of creating a Color object from the values of Red Green and Blue properties. Any change to one of these three properties triggers a recalculation of the Color property. In the XAML file bindings connect the Slider controls with the Red Green and Blue properties and the SolidColorBrush with the Color property. Even if we don t call this class a View Model that s what it is. Here s an RgbViewModel class that implements the INotifyPropertyChanged interface to fire PropertyChanged events whenever its Red Green Blue or Color properties change: Project: ColorScrollWithViewModel File: RgbViewModel.cs using System.ComponentModel for INotifyPropertyChanged using Windows.UI for Color namespace ColorScrollWithViewModel public class RgbViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged double red green blue Color color Color.FromArgb 255 0 0 0 public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged public double Red set if red value red value OnPropertyChanged Red Calculate 208 www.it ebooks.info get return red public double Green set if green value green value OnPropertyChanged Green Calculate get return green public double Blue set if blue value blue value OnPropertyChanged Blue Calculate get return blue public Color Color protected set if color value color value OnPropertyChanged Color get 209 www.it ebooks.info return color void Calculate this.Color Color.FromArgb 255 byte this.Red byte this.Green byte this.Blue protected void OnPropertyChanged string propertyName if PropertyChanged null PropertyChanged this new PropertyChangedEventArgs propertyName The OnPropertyChanged method at the bottom of the class has the job of actually firing the PropertyChanged event with the name of the property. I ve defined the Red Green and Blue properties as double to facilitate data bindings. These properties are basically input to the View Model and they ll probably come from controls such as Slider so the double type is the most generalized. Each of the Red Green and Blue property set accessors fires a PropertyChanged event and then calls Calculate which sets a new Color value which causes another PropertyChanged event to be fired for the Color property. The Color property itself has a protected set accessor indicating that this class isn t designed to calculate Red Green and Blue values from a new Color value. I ll discuss this issue shortly. The RgbViewModel class is part of the ColorScrollWithViewModel project. The BlankPage.xaml file instantiates the RgbViewModel in its Resources section. Project: ColorScrollWithViewModel File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page.Resources local:RgbViewModel x:Key rgbViewModel Page.Resources Notice the namespace prefix of local. Defining the View Model as a resource is one of two basic ways that a XAML file can get access to the object. As was demonstrated in Chapter 2 XAML Syntax a class included in a Resources section is instantiated only once and shared among all StaticResource references. This behavior is essential for an application such as this in which all the bindings need to reference the same object. Each of the Slider controls is similar. Only one is shown here: Project: ColorScrollWithViewModel File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Red TextBlock Text Red Grid.Column 0 210 www.it ebooks.info Grid.Row 0 Foreground Red Slider Grid.Column 0 Grid.Row 1 Value Binding Source StaticResource rgbViewModel Path Red Mode TwoWay ThumbToolTipValueConverter StaticResource hexConverter Orientation Vertical Foreground Red TextBlock Text Binding Source StaticResource rgbViewModel Path Red Converter StaticResource hexConverter Grid.Column 0 Grid.Row 2 Foreground Red Notice that the Slider element no longer has a Name attribute because no other element in the XAML file refers to this element and neither does the code behind file. There s no ValueChanged event handler because that s not needed either. The code behind file contains nothing except a call to InitializeComponent. Take careful note of the binding on the Slider: Slider Value Binding Source StaticResource rgbViewModel Path Red Mode TwoWay This binding is a little long so I ve broken it into three lines. It does not specify an ElementName because it s not referencing another element in the XAML file. Instead it s referencing an object instantiated as a XAML resource so it must use Source with StaticResource. The syntax of this binding implies that the binding target is the Value property of the Slider and the binding source is the Red property of the RgbViewModel instance. RgbViewModel must be a binding source rather than a target. It can t be a binding target because it has no dependency properties. Despite the syntax implying that Value is the binding target in reality we want the Slider to provide a value to the Red property. For this reason the Mode property of Binding must be set to TwoWay which means both that an updated source value causes a change to the target property the normal case and that an updated target value causes a change to the source property which is actually the essential transfer here . The default Mode setting is OneWay. The only other option is OneTime which means that the target is updated from the source property only when the binding is established. With OneTime no updating occurs when the source property later changes. You can use OneTime if the source has no notification mechanism. Also notice that the TextBlock showing the current value now has a binding to the RgbViewModel 211 www.it ebooks.info object: TextBlock Text Binding Source StaticResource rgbViewModel Path Red Converter StaticResource hexConverter This binding could instead refer directly to the Slider as in the previous project but I thought it would be better that it also refer to the RgbViewModel instance. The default OneWay mode is fine here because data only needs to go from the source to the target. The OneWay mode is also good for the binding on the Color property of the SolidColorBrush: Project: ColorScrollWithViewModel File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Rectangle Grid.Column 3 Grid.Row 0 Grid.RowSpan 3 Rectangle.Fill SolidColorBrush Color Binding Source StaticResource rgbViewModel Path Color Rectangle.Fill Rectangle The SolidColorBrush no longer has an x:Name attribute because there s nothing in the code behind file that refers to it. Of course the code in the RgbViewModel class is much longer than the ValueChanged event handler we ve managed to remove from the code behind file. I warned you at the outset that MVVM is overkill for small programs. Even in larger applications often there s an initial price to pay for cleaner architecture but the separation of presentation and business logic certainly has long term advantages. In the RgbViewModel class I made the set accessor of Color protected so that it can be accessed only from within the class. Is this really necessary Perhaps the Color property can be defined so that an external change to the property causes new values of the Red Green and Blue properties to be calculated: public Color Color set if color value color value OnPropertyChanged Color this.Red color.R this.Green color.G this.Blue color.B get return color 212 www.it ebooks.info At first this might seem like asking for trouble because it causes recursive property changes and recursive calls to OnPropertyChanged. But that doesn t happen because the set accessors do nothing if the property is not actually changing so this should be safe. But it s actually flawed. Suppose the Color property is currently the RGB value 0 0 0 and it s set to value 255 128 0 . When the Red property is set to 255 in the code a PropertyChanged event is fired but now Color and color is set to 255 0 0 so the code here continues with Green and Blue being set to the new color values of 0. This version works OK however even though it causes a flurry of PropertyChanged events: public Color Color set if color value color value OnPropertyChanged Color this.Red value.R this.Green value.G this.Blue value.B get return color I ll make the set accessor of Color property public in the next version of the program. Deriving from BindableBase You might have concluded from the RgbViewModel code that implementing INotifyPropertyChanged is a bit of a hassle and that s true. To make it somewhat easier Visual Studio creates a BindableBase class in the Common folder of your projects. Don t confuse this class with the BindingBase class from which Binding derives. The BindableBase class is defined in a namespace that consists of the project name followed by a period and the word Common. Stripped of comments and attributes here s what it looks like: public abstract class BindableBase : INotifyPropertyChanged public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged protected bool SetProperty T ref T storage T value CallerMemberName String propertyName null 213 www.it ebooks.info if object.Equals storage value return false storage value this.OnPropertyChanged propertyName return true protected void OnPropertyChanged CallerMemberName string propertyName null var eventHandler this.PropertyChanged if eventHandler null eventHandler this new PropertyChangedEventArgs propertyName A class that derives from BindableBase calls SetProperty in the set accessor of its property definitions. The signature for the SetProperty method looks a little hairy but it s very easy to use. For a property named Red of type double for example you would have a backing field defined like this: double red You call SetProperty in the set accessor like so: SetProperty double ref red value Red Notice the use of CallerMemberName in BindableBase. This is an attribute added to .NET 4.5 that C 5.0 can use to obtain information about code that s calling a particular property or method which means that you can call SetProperty without that last argument. If you re calling SetProperty from the set access of the Red property the name will be automatically provided: SetProperty double ref red value The return value from SetProperty is true if the property is actually changing. You ll probably want to use the return in logic that does something with the new value. For the next project called ColorScrollWithDataContext I ve created an alternate version of RgbViewModel that derives from BindableBase and I ve given Color a public set accessor: Project: ColorScrollWithDataContext File: RgbViewModel.cs using Windows.UI using ColorScrollWithDataContext.Common namespace ColorScrollWithDataContext public class RgbViewModel : BindableBase double red green blue Color color Color.FromArgb 255 0 0 0 public double Red 214 www.it ebooks.info set if SetProperty double ref red value Calculate get return red public double Green set if SetProperty double ref green value Calculate get return green public double Blue set if SetProperty double ref blue value Calculate get return blue public Color Color set if SetProperty Color ref color value this.Red value.R this.Green value.G this.Blue value.B get return color 215 www.it ebooks.info void Calculate this.Color Color.FromArgb 255 byte this.Red byte this.Green byte this.Blue This form of the INotifyPropertyChanged implementation is somewhat cleaner and certainly sleeker. I ll use this version in the ColorScrollWithDataContext project in the next section. The DataContext Property So far you ve seen three ways to specify a source object in a binding. ElementName is ideal for referencing a named element in XAML and RelativeSource allows a binding to reference a property in the target object. RelativeSource actually has a more important but also more esoteric use that you ll discover in a future chapter. The third option is the Source property which is generally used with StaticResource for accessing an object in the Resources collection. There s a fourth way to specify a binding source: if ElementName RelativeSource and Source are all null the Binding object checks the DataContext property of the binding target. The DataContext property is defined by FrameworkElement and it has the wonderful and essential characteristic of propagating down through the visual tree. Not many properties propagate through the visual tree in this way. Foreground and all the font related properties do so but not many others. DataContext is one of the big exceptions to the rule. The constructor of a code behind file can instantiate a View Model and set that instance to the DataContext of the page. Here s how it s done in the BlankPage.xaml.cs file of the ColorScrollWithDataContext project: Project: ColorScrollWithDataContext File: BlankPage.xaml.cs public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent this.DataContext new RgbViewModel Initialize to highlight color this.DataContext as RgbViewModel .Color this.Resources ControlHighlightBrush as SolidColorBrush .Color Instantiating the View Model in code might be necessary or desirable for one reason or another. Perhaps the View Model has a constructor that requires an argument. That s something XAML can t do. Notice that I ve also taken the opportunity to test the settability of the Color property by initializing it to the system highlight color. 216 www.it ebooks.info One big advantage to the DataContext approach is the simplification of the data bindings. Since they no longer require Source settings they can look like this: Slider Value Binding Path Red Mode TwoWay Moreover if the Path item is the first item in the binding markup the Path part can be removed: Slider Value Binding Red Mode TwoWay Now that s a simple Binding syntax You can remove the Path part of any binding specification regardless of the source but only if Path is the first item. Whenever I use Source or ElementName I prefer for that part of the Binding specification to appear first so I ll drop Path only when the DataContext comes into play. Here s an excerpt from the XAML file showing the new bindings. They ve become so short that I ve stopped breaking them into multiple lines: Project: ColorScrollWithDataContext File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Red TextBlock Text Red Grid.Column 0 Grid.Row 0 Foreground Red Slider Grid.Column 0 Grid.Row 1 Value Binding Red Mode TwoWay ThumbToolTipValueConverter StaticResource hexConverter Orientation Vertical Foreground Red TextBlock Text Binding Red Converter StaticResource hexConverter Grid.Column 0 Grid.Row 2 Foreground Red Result Rectangle Grid.Column 3 Grid.Row 0 Grid.RowSpan 3 Rectangle.Fill SolidColorBrush Color Binding Color Rectangle.Fill Rectangle It s possible to mix the two approaches. For example you can instantiate the View Model in the Resource collection of the XAML file: Page.Resources local:RgbViewModel x:Key rgbViewModel 217 www.it ebooks.info Page.Resources Then at the earliest convenient place in the visual tree you can set a DataContext property: Grid DataContext StaticResource rgbViewModel Or: Grid DataContext Binding Source StaticResource rgbViewModel The second form is particularly useful if you want to set the DataContext to a property of the View Model. You ll see examples when I begin discussing collections. Bindings and TextBox One of the big advantages to isolating underlying business logic is the ability to completely revamp the user interface without touching the View Model. For example suppose you want a color selection program that is similar to ColorScroll but where each color component is entered in a TextBox. Such a program might be a little clumsy to use but it should be possible. The ColorTextBoxes project has the same RgbViewModel class as the ColorScrollWithDataContext program. The code behind file has the same constructor as that project as well: Project: ColorTextBoxes File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent this.DataContext new RgbViewModel Initialize to highlight color this.DataContext as RgbViewModel .Color this.Resources ControlHighlightBrush as SolidColorBrush .Color The XAML file instantiates three TextBox controls and defines data bindings between the Red Green and Blue properties of RgbViewModel: Project: ColorTextBoxes File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page Page.Resources Style TargetType TextBlock Setter Property FontSize Value 24 Setter Property Margin Value 24 0 0 0 Setter Property VerticalAlignment Value Center Style Style TargetType TextBox Setter Property Margin Value 24 48 96 48 Setter Property VerticalAlignment Value Center 218 www.it ebooks.info Style Page.Resources Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width Grid.ColumnDefinitions Grid Grid.Column 0 Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto Grid.RowDefinitions Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width Auto ColumnDefinition Width Grid.ColumnDefinitions TextBlock Text Red: Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 TextBox Text Binding Red Mode TwoWay Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 1 TextBlock Text Green: Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 0 TextBox Text Binding Green Mode TwoWay Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 1 TextBlock Text Blue: Grid.Row 2 Grid.Column 0 TextBox Text Binding Blue Mode TwoWay Grid.Row 2 Grid.Column 1 Grid Result Rectangle Grid.Column 1 Rectangle.Fill SolidColorBrush Color Binding Color Rectangle.Fill Rectangle Grid Page 219 www.it ebooks.info When the program runs the individual TextBox controls are initialized with color values that have an excessive number of decimal places which we probably expect by now but which are correct: Now tap one of the TextBox controls and try entering another number. Nothing happens. Now tap another TextBox or press the Tab key to shift the input focus to the next TextBox. Aha Now the number you entered in the first TextBox has finally been acknowledged and used to update the color. As you experiment with this program you ll find that the Windows Runtime is extremely lenient about accepting letters and symbols in these text strings without raising exceptions but that any new value you type registers only when the TextBox loses input focus. This behavior is by design. Suppose a View Model bound to a TextBox is using a Model to update a database through a network connection. As the user types text into a TextBox perhaps making mistakes and backspacing do you really want each and every change going over the network For that reason user entry in the TextBox is considered to be completed and ready for processing only when the TextBox loses input focus. Unfortunately there s currently no option to change this behavior. Nor is there any way to include validation in these data bindings. If the TextBox binding behavior is unacceptable the only real choice you have is abandoning bindings for this case and using the TextChanged event handler instead. The ColorTextBoxesWithEvents project shows one possible approach. The project still uses the same RgbViewModel class. The XAML file is similar to the previous project except that the TextBox controls now have names and TextChanged handlers assigned: Project: ColorTextBoxesWithEvents File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt TextBlock Text Red: Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 220 www.it ebooks.info TextBox Name redTextBox Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 1 Text 0 TextChanged OnTextBoxTextChanged TextBlock Text Green: Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 0 TextBox Name greenTextBox Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 1 Text 0 TextChanged OnTextBoxTextChanged TextBlock Text Blue: Grid.Row 2 Grid.Column 0 TextBox Name blueTextBox Grid.Row 2 Grid.Column 1 Text 0 TextChanged OnTextBoxTextChanged The Rectangle however still has the same data binding as in the earlier programs. Because we re replacing two way bindings not only do we need event handlers on the TextBox controls but we need to install a handler for the PropertyChanged event of RgbViewModel. Updating a TextBox when a View Model property changes is fairly easy and it prevents the decimal point and row of zeroes but I also decided I wanted to actually validate the text entered by the user: Project: ColorTextBoxesWithEvents File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page RgbViewModel rgbViewModel Brush textBoxTextBrush Brush textBoxErrorBrush new SolidColorBrush Colors.Red public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent Get TextBox brush textBoxTextBrush this.Resources TextBoxTextBrush as SolidColorBrush Create RgbViewModel and save as field rgbViewModel new RgbViewModel rgbViewModel.PropertyChanged OnRgbViewModelPropertyChanged this.DataContext rgbViewModel 221 www.it ebooks.info Initialize to highlight color rgbViewModel.Color this.Resources ControlHighlightBrush as SolidColorBrush .Color void OnRgbViewModelPropertyChanged object sender PropertyChangedEventArgs args switch args.PropertyName case Red : redTextBox.Text rgbViewModel.Red.ToString F0 break case Green : greenTextBox.Text rgbViewModel.Green.ToString F0 break case Blue : blueTextBox.Text rgbViewModel.Blue.ToString F0 break void OnTextBoxTextChanged object sender TextChangedEventArgs args byte value if sender redTextBox Validate redTextBox out value rgbViewModel.Red value if sender greenTextBox Validate greenTextBox out value rgbViewModel.Green value if sender blueTextBox Validate blueTextBox out value rgbViewModel.Blue value bool Validate TextBox txtbox out byte value bool valid byte.TryParse txtbox.Text out value txtbox.Foreground valid textBoxTextBrush : textBoxErrorBrush return valid The Validate method uses the standard TryParse method to convert the text into a byte value. If successful the View Model is updated with the value. If not the text is displayed in red indicating a problem. This works well except when the numbers being entered are preceded with leading blanks or zeros. For example suppose you type 0 in the first TextBox. That s a valid byte so the Red property in RgbViewModel is updated with this value which triggers a PropertyChanged method and the TextBox is assigned a Text value of 0 . No problem. Now type a 5. The TextBox contains 05 . The TryParse method considers this to be a valid byte string and the Red property is updated with the value 5. Now 222 www.it ebooks.info the PropertyChanged handler sets the Text property of the TextBox to the string 5 replacing 05 . But the cursor location is not changed so it s between the 0 and the 5 instead of being after the 5. Perhaps the best way to prevent this problem is to ignore PropertyChanged events from the View Model while setting a property in the View Model from the TextChanged handler. You can do this with a simple flag: bool blockViewModelUpdates void OnRgbViewModelPropertyChanged object sender PropertyChangedEventArgs args if blockViewModelUpdates return void OnTextBoxTextChanged object sender TextChangedEventArgs args blockViewModelUpdates true blockViewModelUpdates false You ll probably also want to clean up the displayed values when each TextBox loses input focus. Buttons and MVVM At first the idea that you can use MVVM to eliminate most of the code behind file seems valid only for controls that generate values. The concept starts to crumble when you consider buttons. A Button fires a Click event. That Click event must be handled in the code behind file. If a View Model is actually implementing the logic for that button which is likely the Click handler must call a method in the View Model. That might be architecturally legal but it s still rather cumbersome. Fortunately there s an alternative to the Click event that is ideal for MVVM. This is sometimes informally referred to as the command interface. ButtonBase defines properties named Command of type ICommand and CommandParameter of type object that allow a Button to effectively make a call into a View Model. Command and CommandParameter are both backed by dependency properties which means they can be binding targets. Command is almost always the target of a data binding. CommandParameter is optional. It s useful for differentiating between buttons bound to the same Command object and it s usually treated like a Tag property. Perhaps you ve written a calculator application where you ve implemented the engine as a View Model that s set as the DataContext. The calculator button for the plus command might be instantiated in XAML like so: Button Content 223 www.it ebooks.info Command Binding CalculateCommand CommandParameter add What this means is that the View Model has a property named CalculateCommand of type ICommand perhaps defined like this: public ICommand CalculateCommand protected set get The View Model must initialize the CalculateCommand property by setting it to an instance of a class that implements the ICommand interface which is defined like so: public interface ICommand void Execute object param bool CanExecute object param event EventHandler object CanExecuteChanged When this particular Button is clicked the Execute method is called in the class referenced by CalculateCommand with an argument of add . This is how a Button basically makes a call right into the View Model or rather the class containing that Execute method . The other two thirds of the ICommand interface contain the phrase can execute and involve the validity of the particular command at a particular time. If this command is not currently valid perhaps the calculator can t add right now because no number has been entered the Button should be disabled. Here s how it works: As the XAML is being parsed and loaded at run time the Command property of the Button is assigned a binding to in this example the CalculateCommand object. The Button installs a handler for the CanExecuteChanged event and calls the CanExecute method in this object with an argument in this example of add . If CanExecute returns false the Button disables itself. Thereafter the Button calls CanExecute again whenever the CanExecuteChanged event is fired. To include a command in your View Model you must provide a class that implements the ICommand interface. However it s very likely that this class needs to access properties in the View Model class and vice versa. So you might wonder: can these two classes be one and the same In theory yes they can but only if you use the same Execute and CanExecute methods for all the buttons on the page which means that each button must have a unique CommandParameter so that the methods can distinguish between them. I have not been able to get it to work however so let me show you the standard way of implementing commands in a View Model. 224 www.it ebooks.info The DelegateCommand Class Let s rewrite the SimpleKeypad application from Chapter 5 so that it uses a View Model to accumulate the keystrokes and generate a formatted text string. Besides implementing the INotifyPropertyChanged interface via the BindableBase class the View Model will also process commands from all the buttons in the keypad. There will be no more Click handlers. Here s the problem: For the View Model to process button commands it must have one or more properties of type ICommand which means that we need one or more classes that implement the ICommand interface. To implement ICommand these classes must contain Execute and CanExecute methods and the CanExecuteChanged event. Yet the bodies of these methods undoubtedly need to interact with the other parts of the View Model. The solution is to define all the Execute and CanExecute methods in the View Model class but with different and unique names. Then a special class can be defined that implements ICommand but that actually calls the methods in the View Model. This special class is often named DelegateCommand and if you search around you ll find several somewhat different implementations of this class including one in Microsoft s Prism framework which helps developers implement MVVM in Windows Presentation Foundation WPF and Silverlight. The version here is my variation. DelegateCommand implements the ICommand interface which means it has Execute and CanExecute methods and the CanExecuteChanged event but it turns out that DelegateCommand also needs another method to fire the CanExecuteChanged event. Let s call this additional method RaiseCanExecuteChanged. The first job is to define an interface that implements ICommand but that includes this additional method: Project: KeypadWithViewModel File: IDelegateCommand.cs using System.Windows.Input namespace KeypadWithViewModel public interface IDelegateCommand : ICommand void RaiseCanExecuteChanged Simple enough. The DelegateCommand class implements the IDelegateCommand interface and makes use of a couple simple but useful delegates defined in the System namespace. The Action object delegate represents a method with a single object argument and a void return value not coincidentally this is the signature of the Execute method. The Func object bool delegate represents a method with an object argument that returns a bool this is the signature of the CanExecute method. DelegateCommand defines two fields of these types for storing methods with these signatures: 225 www.it ebooks.info Project: KeypadWithViewModel File: DelegateCommand.cs using System namespace KeypadWithViewModel public class DelegateCommand : IDelegateCommand Action object execute Func object bool canExecute Event required by ICommand public event EventHandler CanExecuteChanged Two constructors public DelegateCommand Action object execute Func object bool canExecute this.execute execute this.canExecute canExecute public DelegateCommand Action object execute this.execute execute this.canExecute this.AlwaysCanExecute Methods required by ICommand public void Execute object param execute param public bool CanExecute object param return canExecute param Method required by IDelegateCommand public void RaiseCanExecuteChanged if CanExecuteChanged null CanExecuteChanged this EventArgs.Empty Default CanExecute method bool AlwaysCanExecute object param return true This class implements Execute and CanExecute methods but these methods merely call the methods saved as fields. These fields are set by the constructor of the class from constructor arguments. For example if the calculator View Model has a command to calculate it can define the 226 www.it ebooks.info CalculateCommand property like so: public IDelegateCommand CalculateCommand protected set get The View Model also defines two methods named ExecuteCalculate and CanExecuteCalculate: void ExecuteCalculate object param bool CanExecuteCalculate object param The constructor of the View Model class creates the CalculateCommand property by instantiating DelegateCommand with these two methods: this.CalculateCommand new DelegateCommand ExecuteCalculate CanExecuteCalculate Now that you see the general idea let s look at the View Model for the keypad. The class derives from BindableBase for the INotifyPropertyChanged implementation. For the text entered into and displayed by the keypad this View Model defines two properties named InputString and the formatted version DisplayText. The View Model also defines two properties of type IDelegateCommand named AddCharacterCommand for all the numeric and symbol keys and DeleteCharacterCommand. These properties are created by instantiating DelegateCommand with the methods ExecuteAddCharacter ExecuteDeleteCharacter and CanExecuteDeleteCharacter. There s no CanExecuteAddCharacter because the keys are always valid. Project: KeypadWithViewModel File: KeypadViewModel.cs using System using KeypadWithViewModel.Common namespace KeypadWithViewModel public class KeypadViewModel : BindableBase string inputString string displayText char specialChars Constructor public KeypadViewModel this.AddCharacterCommand new DelegateCommand ExecuteAddCharacter this.DeleteCharacterCommand new DelegateCommand ExecuteDeleteCharacter CanExecuteDeleteCharacter Public properties public string InputString 227 www.it ebooks.info protected set bool previousCanExecuteDeleteChar this.CanExecuteDeleteCharacter null if this.SetProperty string ref inputString value this.DisplayText FormatText inputString if previousCanExecuteDeleteChar this.CanExecuteDeleteCharacter null this.DeleteCharacterCommand.RaiseCanExecuteChanged get return inputString public string DisplayText protected set this.SetProperty string ref displayText value get return displayText ICommand implementations public IDelegateCommand AddCharacterCommand protected set get public IDelegateCommand DeleteCharacterCommand protected set get Execute and CanExecute methods void ExecuteAddCharacter object param this.InputString param as string void ExecuteDeleteCharacter object param this.InputString this.InputString.Substring 0 this.InputString.Length 1 bool CanExecuteDeleteCharacter object param return this.InputString.Length 0 Private method called from InputString string FormatText string str bool hasNonNumbers str.IndexOfAny specialChars 1 string formatted str if hasNonNumbers str.Length 4 str.Length 10 else if str.Length 8 228 www.it ebooks.info formatted String.Format 0 1 str.Substring 0 3 str.Substring 3 else formatted String.Format 0 1 2 str.Substring 0 3 str.Substring 3 3 str.Substring 6 return formatted The ExecuteAddCharacter method expects that the parameter is the character entered by the user. This is how the single command is shared among multiple buttons. The CanExecuteDeleteCharacter returns true only if there are characters to delete. The delete button should be disabled otherwise. But this method is called only initially when the binding is first established and thereafter only if the CanExecuteChanged event is fired. The logic to fire this event is in the set access of InputString which compares the CanExecuteDeleteCharacter return values before and after the input string is modified. The XAML file instantiates the View Model as a resource and then defines a DataContext in the Grid. Notice the simplicity of the Command bindings on the thirteen Button controls and the use of CommandParameter on the numeric and symbol keys: Project: KeypadWithViewModel File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page Page.Resources local:KeypadViewModel x:Key viewModel Page.Resources Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush DataContext StaticResource viewModel Grid HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Width 288 Grid.Resources Style TargetType Button Setter Property ClickMode Value Press Setter Property HorizontalAlignment Value Stretch Setter Property Height Value 72 Setter Property FontSize Value 36 Style Grid.Resources Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height Auto 229 www.it ebooks.info RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto Grid.RowDefinitions Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width Grid.ColumnDefinitions Grid Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 Grid.ColumnSpan 3 Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width Auto Grid.ColumnDefinitions Border Grid.Column 0 HorizontalAlignment Left TextBlock Text Binding DisplayText HorizontalAlignment Right VerticalAlignment Center FontSize 24 Border Button Content x21E6 Command Binding DeleteCharacterCommand Grid.Column 1 FontFamily Segoe Symbol HorizontalAlignment Left Padding 0 BorderThickness 0 Grid Button Content 1 Command Binding AddCharacterCommand CommandParameter 1 Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 0 Button Content Command Binding AddCharacterCommand CommandParameter Grid.Row 4 Grid.Column 2 Grid Grid Page The really boring part of this project is the code behind file which now contains nothing but a call to InitializeComponent. Mission accomplished. 230 www.it ebooks.info Chapter 7 Building an Application Even after becoming familiar with various features of the Windows Runtime putting it all together to create an application can still be a challenge. For that reason this chapter is mostly devoted to building a rather larger application than anything else in this book. XamlCruncher features a multiline TextBox for editing a XAML file and a display area that shows the visual tree created by running that XAML through the XamlReader.Load method. I demonstrated XamlReader.Load briefly in Chapter 2 XAML Syntax when I used it to convert some XAML path markup syntax to a PathGeometry object. The method can handle more complex visual trees and a tool such as XamlCruncher is very useful for interactively experimenting with XAML and learning about it. XamlCruncher also features some custom controls and it demonstrates common application needs: An application bar A pop up dialog or popup for customizing program settings Saving and retrieving user settings in isolated application storage Saving and retrieving files in the Documents area I ll add additional features to XamlCruncher in future chapters. Two aspects of this job file input output and asynchronous operations are the subjects of future chapters as well but it will be necessary to at least become acquainted with these topics in this chapter. To allow me to focus more sharply on these two topics I ll discuss them in connection with a simpler program with fewer features called MetroPad which is similar to the traditional Windows Notepad program. Commands Options and Settings The Windows Runtime supports several methods for applications to implement commands and program options. The most important is the application bar which is intended to implement basic program commands in a manner similar to a traditional menu or toolbar. The application bar is a class named AppBar and it s invoked when the user sweeps a finger on the top or bottom of the screen. The application bar then often disappears when a command has been selected. An application bar can appear at the top of the page or the bottom or both. The Page class defines two properties named TopAppBar and BottomAppBar that you generally set to AppBar tags in XAML. 231 www.it ebooks.info AppBar derives from ContentControl and you ll usually set the Content property to a panel that contains the controls that appear on the application bar. Perhaps the best way to become familiar with the use of application bars in real programs is to explore some of the standard Metro style applications that are part of Windows 8. The application bars in the Metro style version of Internet Explorer demonstrates that an application bar can contain a variety of controls. However very often the BottomAppBar contains only a row of circular Button controls. In the StandardStyles.xaml file that Visual Studio creates in the Common folder of a standard application you ll find a Style definition with the name AppBarButtonStyle that defines this circular button. In addition StandardStyles.xaml also defines 29 additional styles based on AppBarButtonStyle for common commands such as Play Edit Save and Delete. These styles include a template that references the AutomationProperties.Name attached property for the text that appears under the button. The button content in these 29 styles is set to character codes ranging from 0xE100 to 0xE11C. This is a private use area in the Unicode standard and makes sense only for the Segoe UI Symbol font. This font has additional symbol characters beyond 0xE11C that you can also use for application bar buttons. In addition the Segoe UI Symbol font supports character codes from 0x1F300 through 0x1F5FF that map to emoji characters. These are icon characters that originated in Japan but that have also found their way into the Microsoft Windows Phone and the Apple iPhone. Some of these characters might also be suitable for application bar buttons. An application to display these symbols is coming up. Unfortunately the AppBarButtonStyle has a TargetType of Button and even if you change that to ButtonBase you cannot use the style for ToggleButton or RadioButton. This is unfortunate because some standard Metro style applications use application bar buttons in this way. For example in the Calendar application the Day Week and Month buttons work like a trio of RadioButton controls and the Show Traffic button in the Map application works like a ToggleButton. I suspect in a future version of StandardStyles.xaml we ll see AppBarToggleButtonStyle and AppBarRadioButtonStyle or perhaps controls designed specifically for application bars. Another approach to implement functionality similar to a ToggleButton in an application bar is illustrated in the Weather application. When tapped the Button labeled Change to Celsius changes to Change to Fahrenheit. A button on an application bar can also invoke a pop up dialog. For example press the button in the Metro style Internet Explorer with the wrench icon and the mouse over tooltip Page tools. A little popup appears with two additional commands: Find on page and View on the desktop. Or try the Map Style button in Maps to see two mutually exclusive options Road View and Aerial View with a checkmark indicating the current selection. Or press the Camera options command in the Camera application. You get a popup with combo boxes a toggle switch and a link for More which displays a larger pop up dialog. All these dialogs are probably instances of Popup defined in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Primitives namespace. Popup has a property named Child that you normally 232 www.it ebooks.info set to a Panel derivative to display a bunch of controls. I ll show you how to use Popup shortly. There s also a class named PopupMenu from the Windows.UI.Popups namespace. As the name suggests PopupMenu is mostly for context menus such as the Cut Copy Paste menu that appears when you press and hold some selected text in the TextBox control. You can create a PopupMenu on your own but it is restricted to text commands and you have no control over the formatting. Also in the Windows.UI.Popups namespace is MessageDialog which is the Metro style version of the message box. I ll have some examples of MessageDialog later in this chapter. If you sweep your finger on the right side of the screen while an application is running you ll bring up the standard list of charms: Search Share Devices and Settings. I ll demonstrate in a later chapter how your application can hook into these charms. In particular the Settings button often invokes a list of options that can include About and Help as well as Settings. However some applications include an Options item on the application bar and the application bar can also contain a Settings item. Indeed StandardStyles.xaml includes a SettingsAppBarButtonStyle that displays a gear icon and the word Settings. How you divide program functionality among these items is up to you but generally you ll use an application bar Options button for items accessed more frequently than the Settings and you ll use the Settings button on the application bar for items accessed more frequently than those on the Settings charm. The Segoe UI Symbol Font To help you and me select symbols for an application bar I ve written a program named SegoeSymbols that displays all the characters from 0x0000 through 0x1FFFF in the Segoe UI Symbol font which is the font specified by AppBarButtonStyle. As you might know Unicode started out as a 16 bit character encoding with codes ranging from 0x0000 through 0xFFFF. When it became evident that 65 536 code points were not sufficient Unicode began incorporating character codes in the range 0x10000 through 0x10FFFF increasing the number of characters to over 1.1 million. This expansion of Unicode also included a system to represent these additional characters using a pair of 16 bit values. The use of a 32 bit value to represent a character code is known as UTF 32 or 32 bit Unicode Transformation Format. But that s a bit of misnomer because with UTF 32 there is no transformation: a one to one mapping exists from the 32 bit numeric codes to Unicode characters. Most modern programming languages and operating systems instead support UTF 16. For example the Char structure supported by the Windows Runtime is basically a 16 bit integer and that s the basis for the char data type in C . To represent the additional characters in the range 0x10000 through 0x10FFFF UTF 16 uses two 16 bit characters in sequence. These are known as surrogates and a special range of 16 bit codes in Unicode has been set aside for their use. The leading surrogate is in the range 0xD800 through 0xDBFF and the trailing surrogate is in the range 0xDC00 through 0xDFFF. That s 233 www.it ebooks.info 1 024 possible leading surrogates and 1 024 possible trailing surrogates which is sufficient for the 1 048 576 codes in the range 0x10000 through 0x10FFFF. You ll see the actual algorithm shortly. Text in languages that use the Latin alphabet is mostly restricted to ASCII character codes in the range 0x0020 and 0x007E so most web pages and other files save lots of space by using a system called UTF 8 for text. UTF 8 encodes these 7 bit characters directly but uses one to three additional bytes for other Unicode characters. Because I wrote SegoeSymbols mostly to let me examine the symbols that might be useful in application bars the program goes up to character codes of 0x1FFFF only. The XAML file has a simple title a Grid awaiting rows and columns to display a block of 256 characters and a Slider: Project: SegoeSymbols File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page Page.Resources local:DoubleToStringHexByteConverter x:Key hexByteConverter Page.Resources Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height RowDefinition Height Auto Grid.RowDefinitions TextBlock Name titleText Grid.Row 0 Text Segoe UI Symbol HorizontalAlignment Center Style StaticResource HeaderTextStyle Grid Name characterGrid Grid.Row 1 HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Slider Grid.Row 2 Orientation Horizontal Margin 24 0 Minimum 0 Maximum 511 SmallChange 1 LargeChange 16 ThumbToolTipValueConverter StaticResource hexByteConverter ValueChanged OnSliderValueChanged Grid Page Notice that the Slider has a Maximum value of 511 which is the maximum character code I want to display 0x1FFFF divided by 256. The DoubleToStringHexByteConverter class referenced in the Resources section is similar to one you ve seen before but it displays a couple underlines as well to be 234 www.it ebooks.info consistent with the screen visuals: Project: SegoeSymbols File: DoubleToStringHexByteConverter.cs excerpt public class DoubleToStringHexByteConverter : IValueConverter public object Convert object value Type targetType object parameter string language return int double value .ToString X2 __ public object ConvertBack object value Type targetType object parameter string language return value Each Slider value corresponds to a display of 256 characters in a 16 16 array. The code to build the Grid that displays these 256 characters is rather messy because I decided that there should be lines between all the rows and columns of characters and that these lines should have their own rows and columns in the Grid. Project: SegoeSymbols File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page const int CellSize 36 const int LineLength CellSize 1 16 18 FontFamily symbolFont new FontFamily Segoe UI Symbol TextBlock txtblkColumnHeads new TextBlock 16 TextBlock txtblkCharacters new TextBlock 16 16 public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent for int row 0 row 34 row RowDefinition rowdef new RowDefinition if row 0 row 2 1 rowdef.Height GridLength.Auto else rowdef.Height new GridLength CellSize GridUnitType.Pixel characterGrid.RowDefinitions.Add rowdef if row 0 row 2 0 TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock Text row 2 1 .ToString X1 VerticalAlignment VerticalAlignment.Center Grid.SetRow txtblk row 235 www.it ebooks.info Grid.SetColumn txtblk 0 characterGrid.Children.Add txtblk if row 2 1 Rectangle rectangle new Rectangle Stroke this.Foreground StrokeThickness row 1 row 33 1.5 : 0.5 Height 1 Grid.SetRow rectangle row Grid.SetColumn rectangle 0 Grid.SetColumnSpan rectangle 34 characterGrid.Children.Add rectangle for int col 0 col 34 col ColumnDefinition coldef new ColumnDefinition if col 0 col 2 1 coldef.Width GridLength.Auto else coldef.Width new GridLength CellSize characterGrid.ColumnDefinitions.Add coldef if col 0 col 2 0 TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock Text 00 col 2 1 .ToString X1 _ HorizontalAlignment HorizontalAlignment.Center Grid.SetRow txtblk 0 Grid.SetColumn txtblk col characterGrid.Children.Add txtblk txtblkColumnHeads col 2 1 txtblk if col 2 1 Rectangle rectangle new Rectangle Stroke this.Foreground StrokeThickness col 1 col 33 1.5 : 0.5 Width 1 Grid.SetRow rectangle 0 Grid.SetColumn rectangle col Grid.SetRowSpan rectangle 34 236 www.it ebooks.info characterGrid.Children.Add rectangle for int col 0 col 16 col for int row 0 row 16 row TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock Text char 16 col row .ToString FontFamily symbolFont FontSize 24 HorizontalAlignment HorizontalAlignment.Center VerticalAlignment VerticalAlignment.Center Grid.SetRow txtblk 2 row 2 Grid.SetColumn txtblk 2 col 2 characterGrid.Children.Add txtblk txtblkCharacters col row txtblk The ValueChanged handler for the Slider has the relatively easier job of inserting the correct text into the existing TextBlock elements but there is that irksome matter of dealing with character codes above 0xFFFF: Project: SegoeSymbols File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnSliderValueChanged object sender RangeBaseValueChangedEventArgs args int baseCode 256 int args.NewValue for int col 0 col 16 col txtblkColumnHeads col .Text baseCode 16 col .ToString X3 _ for int row 0 row 16 row int code baseCode 16 col row string strChar null if code 0x0FFFF strChar char code .ToString else code 0x10000 int lead 0xD800 code 1024 int trail 0xDC00 code 1024 strChar char lead .ToString char trail txtblkCharacters col row .Text strChar 237 www.it ebooks.info Four statements towards the end of the handler demonstrate the mathematics that separate a Unicode character code between 0x10000 and 0x10FFFF into two 10 bit values to construct leading and trailing surrogates which in sequence in a string define a single character. If you re the type of person who prefers not witnessing how sausage is made you can replace those four lines with: strChar Char.ConvertFromUtf32 code For a 16 bit code Char.ConvertFromUtf32 returns a string consisting of one character for codes above 0xFFFF the string has two characters. Passing the method a surrogate code 0xD800 through 0xDFFF raises an exception. The areas that are of most interest in constructing application bar buttons begin at 0xE100 the private use area used by the Seqoe UI Symbol font and 0x1F300 emoji . Here s the first screen of the emoji characters: You can specify a character beyond 0xFFFF in XAML like so: TextBlock FontFamily Segoe UI Symbol FontSize 24 Text x1F3B7 That s the saxophone symbol. The Visual Studio designer will complain upon encountering a five digit character code but it will compile the application regardless and Windows 8 will run it. 238 www.it ebooks.info The Application Bar The two MetroPad programs coming up might represent a first step in creating a Metro style Notepad application. Rather than a menu these programs expose their commands using an application bar. To keep the programs reasonably short I ve eliminated some features that might be expected in a real Notepad like application. MetroPad1 and MetroPad2 are functionally equivalent but use different methods for asynchronous file I O. Here s the BlankPage.xaml file for MetroPad1: Project: MetroPad1 File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush TextBox Name txtbox FontSize 24 AcceptsReturn True Grid Page.BottomAppBar AppBar Padding 10 0 Grid StackPanel Orientation Horizontal HorizontalAlignment Left Button Style StaticResource AppBarButtonStyle Content xE15E AutomationProperties.Name Wrap options Click OnWrapOptionsAppBarButtonClick StackPanel StackPanel Orientation Horizontal HorizontalAlignment Right Button Style StaticResource AppBarButtonStyle Content xE184 AutomationProperties.Name Open Click OnOpenAppBarButtonClick Button Style StaticResource SaveAppBarButtonStyle AutomationProperties.Name Save As Click OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick StackPanel Grid AppBar Page.BottomAppBar Page I ve given the TextBox a little larger font so that it s easier to experiment with scrolling and word wrapping. In the constructor of the code behind file the handler for the Loaded event gives TextBox input focus so the program is ready for your typing: Project: MetroPad1 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt 239 www.it ebooks.info public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent Loaded sender args txtbox.Focus FocusState.Keyboard As you can see in the XAML file an application bar is added to the page by splitting out the BottomAppBar property of Page as a property element and setting it to an AppBar element. The Padding value of 10 0 is standard and puts 10 pixels of padding at the left and right to prevent the contents from getting too close to the edge. Generally an application bar has some buttons on the left and some on the right. When holding a tablet these are more convenient than buttons in the middle. You can use XAML in a couple ways to divide the buttons between left and right. Perhaps the easiest approach is to put two horizontal StackPanel elements in a single cell Grid and align them on the right and left. It s recommended that a New or Add button be on the far right and although this program does not have a New button the other file related buttons should also appear on the right side because they are related to New. I was able to use the predefined SaveAppBarButtonStyle but I had to specify my own symbols and text for the other two items. When you run MetroPad1 it might not be obvious that anything is happening because the program consists entirely of a TextBox with an off white background. But you can type some poetry or other text into the TextBox and when you sweep your finger on the top or bottom of the screen here s what you ll see: 240 www.it ebooks.info Do not specify a RequestedTheme of Light when using an application bar. The AppBar has a black background regardless and the dark outline and text of the buttons will be nearly invisible. AppBar defines an IsOpen property that you can initialize to true if you want the application bar to be visible when the user first runs the program. This might make sense if the program is not usable unless a user executes one of the commands. Clicking one of the buttons does not automatically dismiss the application bar. That must be done in code by setting IsOpen to false. However the user can manually dismiss the application bar in one of two ways: by sweeping a finger again on the top or bottom or by touching anywhere outside the application bar. The first type of dismissal always works. The second is called light dismiss and you can override the default behavior by setting the IsSticky property to true. AppBar also defines Opened and Closed events if you need to initialize an application bar when it s opening or save settings when it closes. Popups and Dialogs When the Button in the MetroPad1 application bar labeled Wrap options is clicked the program displays a little dialog with Wrap and No wrap items. Such a dialog is normally defined as a UserControl and I ve called mine WrapOptionsDialog. The XAML file represents the two options with RadioButton controls: Project: MetroPad1 File: WrapOptionsDialog.xaml excerpt UserControl Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush StackPanel Name stackPanel Margin 24 RadioButton Content Wrap Checked OnRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag TextWrapping Wrap TextWrapping RadioButton.Tag RadioButton RadioButton Content No wrap Checked OnRadioButtonChecked RadioButton.Tag TextWrapping NoWrap TextWrapping RadioButton.Tag RadioButton StackPanel Grid UserControl A few words on color. You ll notice that this Grid has the standard background brush. It needs to have some kind of brush or the background will be transparent. I mentioned earlier that you can t set 241 www.it ebooks.info RequestedTheme to Light when you implement an application bar or the buttons fade into the background. Because a dark theme is in effect here this dialog will have a black background with a white foreground. All of the dialogs that I ve seen in Metro style applications have a white background and black foreground. However I ve had frustrating experiences trying to flip the colors in the dialog box. You can set the Grid background to ApplicationTextBrush or explicitly to white but setting the Foreground on the root element does not property propagate to the RadioButton controls and even explicitly setting Foreground on the individual controls or using a style does not color them properly. This means that the dialogs in this book will have a black background and white foreground until the controls are fixed or more guidance comes from above. The code behind file for the dialog defines a dependency property named TextWrapping of type TextWrapping. The property changed handler checks a RadioButton when this property is set and the property is set when a user checks a RadioButton: Project: MetroPad1 File: WrapOptionsDialog.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class WrapOptionsDialog : UserControl static WrapOptionsDialog TextWrappingProperty DependencyProperty.Register TextWrapping typeof TextWrapping typeof WrapOptionsDialog new PropertyMetadata TextWrapping.NoWrap OnTextWrappingChanged public static DependencyProperty TextWrappingProperty private set get public WrapOptionsDialog this.InitializeComponent public TextWrapping TextWrapping set SetValue TextWrappingProperty value get return TextWrapping GetValue TextWrappingProperty static void OnTextWrappingChanged DependencyObject obj DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args obj as WrapOptionsDialog .OnTextWrappingChanged args void OnTextWrappingChanged DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args foreach UIElement child in stackPanel.Children 242 www.it ebooks.info RadioButton radioButton child as RadioButton radioButton.IsChecked TextWrapping radioButton.Tag TextWrapping args.NewValue void OnRadioButtonChecked object sender RoutedEventArgs args this.TextWrapping TextWrapping sender as RadioButton .Tag The event handler for the Wrap options application bar button is in the BlankPage code behind file. The event handler instantiates a WrapOptionsDialog object and initializes its TextWrapping property from the TextWrapping property of the TextBox. It then defines a binding in code between the two TextWrapping properties. This allows the user to see the result of changing this property directly in the TextBox. The WrapOptionsDialog object is then made a child of a new Popup object: Project: MetroPad1 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnWrapOptionsAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args Create dialog WrapOptionsDialog wrapOptionsDialog new WrapOptionsDialog TextWrapping txtbox.TextWrapping Bind dialog to TextBox Binding binding new Binding Source wrapOptionsDialog Path new PropertyPath TextWrapping Mode BindingMode.TwoWay txtbox.SetBinding TextBox.TextWrappingProperty binding Create popup Popup popup new Popup Child wrapOptionsDialog IsLightDismissEnabled true Adjust location based on content size wrapOptionsDialog.SizeChanged dialogSender dialogArgs popup.VerticalOffset this.ActualHeight wrapOptionsDialog.ActualHeight this.BottomAppBar.ActualHeight 48 popup.HorizontalOffset 48 Open the popup popup.IsOpen true 243 www.it ebooks.info As you can see Popup also has a light dismiss mode that lets you dismiss the Popup by tapping anywhere outside it. By default this property is not enabled but in most cases it should be. The hard part is positioning the Popup. It has VerticalOffset and HorizontalOffset properties for that purpose but generally popups such as this are positioned just above the application bar which means that you need to know the height of the popup the height of the page and the height of the application bar to get it right. I ve found that setting a SizeChanged event on the dialog control is a good way to obtain this information and perform the calculation. The Click handler concludes by setting the IsOpen property of the Popup to true and here it is: The Popup is automatically dismissed when the user taps anywhere outside the Popup and then the user needs to tap once more to dismiss the application bar. Like AppBar Popup has Opened and Closed events if you need to perform some initialization or cleanup. For example it s possible to install a handler for the Closed event of Popup and use that to set the IsOpen property of the AppBar to false. Windows Runtime File I O MetroPad1 has Open and Save As buttons. If it were a real application it would also have New and Save buttons and it would prompt you to save a file if you pressed New or Open without saving your previous work. That logic is coming up in XamlCruncher. The more modest goal here is to introduce you to the Windows Runtime FileOpenPicker and FileSavePicker classes as well as some rudimentary Windows Runtime file I O. If you re familiar with the .NET System.IO namespace you can leverage some of what you already know but the Windows 8 version of System.IO might look a bit emaciated in comparison. Be prepared for plenty of new file I O classes and concepts. The whole file and stream interface has been revamped 244 www.it ebooks.info and any method that accesses a disk is asynchronous. Fortunately C 5.0 has introduced two new keywords await and async which make working with asynchronous methods very easy. But first I want to show you how to use these asynchronous methods without await and async. The FileOpenPicker and FileSavePicker classes are defined in the Windows.Storage.Pickers namespace. These pickers take over the screen from your application and don t return control to the application until they have completed. If this is unacceptable to you you ll probably want to explore the FolderInformation class in the Windows.Storage.BulkAccess namespace for obtaining files and subdirectories on your own. The FileOpenPicker and FileSavePicker classes deliver an object of type StorageFile back to your application. StorageFile is defined in the Windows.Storage namespace and represents an unopened file. Calling one of the Open methods on this StorageFile object gives you a stream object represented as an interface such as IInputStream or IRandomAccessStream. You can then attach a DataReader or DataWriter object to this stream for reading or writing. The stream classes and interfaces are found in Windows.Storage.Streams. Through extension methods defined in System.IO it s also possible to create a .NET Stream object from the Windows Runtime object and then use some familiar .NET objects such as StreamReader or StreamWriter for dealing with these files. You might be able to salvage some existing code that uses .NET streams and you ll also need these .NET stream objects for reading and writing XML files. The only prerequisite for invoking FileOpenPicker is adding at least one string to the FileTypeFilter collection for example .txt . You then call the PickSingleFileAsync method. Notice the last five letters of that method name: Async short for asynchronous. That s a very important sequence of five letters in the Windows Runtime. As you know a Windows Metro program is similar to a Windows Desktop program in being event driven and structured much like a state machine. Following initialization a program sits dormant in memory waiting for events. Very often these events signal activity in the user interface. Sometimes they signal systemwide changes such as a switch in the orientation of the display. Sometimes they signal that a file download has progressed or completed or failed. It s important that applications process events as quickly as possible and then return control back to the operating system to wait for more events. If an application doesn t process events quickly it could become unresponsive. For this reason applications should relegate very lengthy jobs to secondary threads of execution. The thread devoted to the user interface should remain free and unencumbered of heavy processing. But what if a particular method call in the Windows Runtime itself takes a long time Is an application programmer expected to anticipate that problem and put that call in a secondary thread No that seems unreasonable. For that reason when the Microsoft developers were designing the Windows Runtime they attempted to identify any method call that could require more than 50 milliseconds to return control to the application. Approximately 10 15 of the Windows Runtime 245 www.it ebooks.info qualified. These methods were made asynchronous meaning that the methods themselves spin off secondary threads to do the lengthy processing. They return control back to the application very quickly and later notify the application when they ve completed. These asynchronous methods are all identified with the Async suffix and they all have similar definition patterns. The method call in FileOpenPicker class that displays the picker and returns a file selected by the user definitely will not return control to the program in under 50 milliseconds. Consequently instead of a method call named PickSingleFile it has a method call named PickSingleFileAsync. Here s the Click handler for the application bar Open button in MetroPad1 showing the creation and initialization of FileOpenPicker and the PickSingleFileAsync call: Project: MetroPad1 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnOpenAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args FileOpenPicker picker new FileOpenPicker picker.FileTypeFilter.Add .txt IAsyncOperation StorageFile asyncOp picker.PickSingleFileAsync asyncOp.Completed OnPickSingleFileCompleted void OnPickSingleFileCompleted IAsyncOperation StorageFile asyncInfo AsyncStatus asyncStatus PickSingleFileAsync returns quickly but instead of returning with a StorageFile selected by the user it returns an object of the generic type IAsyncOperation StorageFile . That StorageFile type is important because that s what the PickSingleFileAsync will eventually deliver to your program but just not right away. For that reason sometimes an object like IAsyncOperation is called a future or a promise. IAsyncOperation T derives from the IAsyncInfo interface which defines methods named Cancel and Close and properties named Id Status and ErrorCode. The IAsyncOperation T interface additionally defines a property named Completed which you ll notice is set in this code. This Completed property is a delegate of type AsyncOperationCompletedHandler T . Although it s defined as a property it functions like an event. The difference is that an event can have multiple handlers but a property can have only one. To actually initiate the display of the FileOpenPicker your program simply sets the Completed property of the IAsyncOperation StorageFile object to a method of the required type named here OnPickSingleFileCompleted. There is no separate Start method. Setting the Completed property starts it going but perhaps not right away. If your method contains any code after the Completed property is set that code will be executed first. Only after OnOpenAppBarButtonClick returns control back to the operating system is the 246 www.it ebooks.info file picker displayed. The user then interacts with it. When the user selects a file from the picker and presses OK or presses Cancel Windows is ready to deliver a file back to your program. The Completed callback method in your program here called OnPickSingleFileCompleted is called with a first argument that is the same object that PickSingleFileAsync returned but I ve given it a somewhat different name asyncInfo because now it actually has some information for us. If an error occurred which is unlikely in this case the ErrorCode property of this asyncInfo argument is non null and equals an Exception object that describes the problem. For the most part I will be ignoring errors in this little exercise. Otherwise the Completed handler calls GetResults on the IAsyncOperation object. This returns on object of type StorageFile indicating the file selected by the user. However if GetResults returns null the user dismissed the file picker by pressing Cancel and there s nothing further to do. Here s the code so far: Project: MetroPad1 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnPickSingleFileCompleted IAsyncOperation StorageFile asyncInfo AsyncStatus asyncStatus if asyncInfo.ErrorCode null return StorageFile storageFile asyncInfo.GetResults if storageFile null return To open that StorageFile object for reading you can call OpenReadAsync on it. Oh no That s another asynchronous operation Of course it makes sense that opening a file is asynchronous because the call must access the disk and that could take longer than 50 milliseconds. So similar to the first case OpenReadAsync returns an object of type hold your breath IAsyncOperation IRandomAccessStreamWithContentType . Once again set the Completed handler to start the operation going. Here s the complete OnPickSingleFileCompleted handler with the handler for the Completed event of OpenReadAsync: Project: MetroPad1 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnPickSingleFileCompleted IAsyncOperation StorageFile asyncInfo AsyncStatus asyncStatus if asyncInfo.ErrorCode null return StorageFile storageFile asyncInfo.GetResults if storageFile null return 247 www.it ebooks.info IAsyncOperation IRandomAccessStreamWithContentType asyncOp storageFile.OpenReadAsync asyncOp.Completed OnFileOpenReadCompleted void OnFileOpenReadCompleted IAsyncOperation IRandomAccessStreamWithContentType asyncInfo AsyncStatus asyncStatus When OnFileOpenReadCompleted is called the file has been opened and is ready for reading and the GetResults method of the asyncInfo argument returns an object of type IRandomAccessStreamWithContentType. You create a DataReader object based on this stream and the next step is to call LoadAsync to actually read the contents of the file into an internal buffer. Another asynchronous operation requires another Completed handler: Project: MetroPad1 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt DataReader dataReader void OnFileOpenReadCompleted IAsyncOperation IRandomAccessStreamWithContentType asyncInfo AsyncStatus asyncStatus if asyncInfo.ErrorCode null return using IRandomAccessStreamWithContentType stream asyncInfo.GetResults using dataReader new DataReader stream uint length uint stream.Size DataReaderLoadOperation asyncOp dataReader.LoadAsync length asyncOp.Completed OnDataReaderLoadCompleted void OnDataReaderLoadCompleted IAsyncOperation uint asyncInfo AsyncStatus asyncStatus Both IRandomAccessStreamWithContentType and DataReader implement IClosable which is the same as the .NET IDisposable so they appear in using statements to automatically close and dispose of the object when it s no longer needed. Also notice that the DataReader is saved as a field. A call to the OnDataReaderLoadCompleted handler indicates that the file is now present in memory so the contents can be transferred to the TextBox. Not so fast When you set the Completed property of a method like LoadAsync the DataReader class creates a secondary thread of execution that performs the job of accessing the file and reading it into memory. 248 www.it ebooks.info The Completed handler in your code is then called and it runs in that secondary thread. You cannot access user interface objects from that thread. For any particular window there can be only one application thread that handles user input and displays graphics that interact with this input. This UI thread as it s called is consequently very important and very special to Windows applications because all interaction with the user must occur through this thread. This prohibition can be generalized: DependencyObject is not thread safe. Any object based on a class that derives from DependencyObject can only be accessed by the thread that creates that object. In the particular problem we ve encountered the code that transfers text into a TextBox must run in the UI thread. Fortunately there s a way to do it. To compensate for the fact that it s not thread safe DependencyObject has a property named Dispatcher that returns an object of type CoreDispatcher. The HasThreadAccess property of CoreDispatcher lets you know if you can access this particular DependencyObject from the thread in which the code is running. If you can t and even if you can you can put a chunk of code on a queue for execution by the thread that created the object. You do this by calling the Invoke method referencing a method in your code that will run in the proper thread. Here s the OnDataReaderLoadCompleted method calling Invoke on the Dispatcher property of the page. It doesn t matter whose CoreDispatcher object you use because all the user interface objects were created in the same UI thread they all work identically. The last argument passed to Invoke is passed to the handler as the Context property of the event arguments: Project: MetroPad1 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnDataReaderLoadCompleted IAsyncOperation uint asyncInfo AsyncStatus asyncStatus if asyncInfo.ErrorCode null return uint length asyncInfo.GetResults string text dataReader.ReadString length this.Dispatcher.Invoke CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal SetTextBoxText this text void SetTextBoxText object sender InvokedHandlerArgs args string text args.Context as string txtbox.Text text The SetTextBoxText method runs in the UI thread so that it can safely set the text from the file into the TextBox. Very often the method to be executed in the UI thread is passed as an anonymous method to Invoke like this: 249 www.it ebooks.info this.Dispatcher.Invoke CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal sender args txtbox.Text text this null Indeed all the Completed methods can be defined as anonymous methods and that s what I ve done for the logic to save a file in MetroPad1. Even so saving to a file is potentially more involved that opening a file because four asynchronous operations are involved: PickSaveFileAsync on the FileSavePicker OpenAsync on the StorageFile to get a stream from which to create a DataWriter and then after calling WriteString on this DataWriter calling StoreAsync and FlushAsync. However there are some shortcuts. The FileIO class in Windows.Storage contains static methods that can read and write entire StorageFile objects in one big gulp. In summary in implementing the Save As button I ve used the shortcut methods for the file I O and anonymous methods for the Completed handler and Invoke method. Everything goes in the Click handler for the button: Project: MetroPad1 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt void OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args FileSavePicker picker new FileSavePicker picker.DefaultFileExtension .txt picker.FileTypeChoices.Add Text new List string .txt picker.PickSaveFileAsync .Completed asyncInfo asyncStatus if asyncInfo.ErrorCode null return StorageFile storageFile asyncInfo.GetResults if storageFile null return string text null this.Dispatcher.Invoke CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal dispatcherSender dispatcherArgs text txtbox.Text this null FileIO.WriteTextAsync storageFile text .Completed asyncInfo2 asyncStatus2 This actually isn t too bad but as the number of nested anonymous handlers builds up the structure 250 www.it ebooks.info can become quite awkward and particularly messy to trace program flow or implement a simple return statement. Another solution is desperately needed. Fortunately it exists. Await and Async The C 5.0 keyword await allows us to work with asynchronous operations as if they were relatively normal method calls. The MetroPad2 program is the same as MetroPad1 except for the processing of the Open and Save As buttons on the application bar. Here s the Click handler for the Save As button: Project: MetroPad2 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt async void OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args FileSavePicker picker new FileSavePicker picker.DefaultFileExtension .txt picker.FileTypeChoices.Add Text new List string .txt Asynchronous call StorageFile storageFile await picker.PickSaveFileAsync if storageFile null return Asynchronous call await FileIO.WriteTextAsync storageFile txtbox.Text Notice the two occurrences of await preceded with comments. PickSaveFileAsync actually returns an IAsyncOperation on which you must normally set a Completed handler and then call GetResults in the Completed callback to get a StorageFile object. The await operator seems to bypass all the messy stuff and simply return the StorageFile directly. And that s exactly what it does except not quite right away. It looks like magic but much of the messy implementation details are now hidden. The C compiler generates the callback and the GetResults call. But what the await operator also does is turn the method in which it s used into a state machine. The OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick method begins executing normally until PickSaveFileAsync is called and the first await appears. Despite its name that await does not wait until the operation completes. Instead the Click handler is exited at that point. Control returns back to Windows. Other code on the program s user interface thread can then run as can the file picker itself. When the file picker is dismissed and a result is ready and the UI thread is ready to run some code execution of the Click handler continues with the assignment to the storageFile variable and then continues until the next await operator. And so forth with as many await operators as you like until the method completes. The last line in this Click handler calls the static FileIO.WriteTextAsync method. Strictly speaking the await operator is not needed here because conclusion of the Click handler doesn t need to wait for this 251 www.it ebooks.info method to conclude. The FileIO.WriteTextAsync method doesn t return anything and nothing else in the Click handler is dependent on its conclusion. That await operator can be removed in this case and the program will work the same: FileIO.WriteTextAsync storageFile txtbox.Text You ll get a warning message from the compiler but it s OK. The await operator is crucial only when you need a return value from the asynchronous method or when the method must complete before program logic continues. Here s the Click handler for the Open button now using the static FileIO.ReadTextAsync shortcut method: Project: MetroPad2 File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt async void OnOpenAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args FileOpenPicker picker new FileOpenPicker picker.FileTypeFilter.Add .txt Asynchronous call StorageFile storageFile await picker.PickSingleFileAsync if storageFile null return Asynchronous call txtbox.Text await FileIO.ReadTextAsync storageFile Prior to await calling asynchronous operations in C always seemed to me to violate the imperative structure of the language. The await operator brings back that imperative structure and turns asynchronous calls into what appears to be a series of sequential normal method calls. Moreover everything in those Click handlers now runs in the UI thread so you don t have to worry about accessing user interface objects. But despite the ease of await you ll probably want to keep in mind that a method in which await appears is actually chopped up into pieces behind the scenes. There are some restrictions on the await operator. It cannot appear in the catch or finally clause of an exception handler. However it can appear in the try clause and this is how you ll trap errors that occur in the asynchronous method. There are also ways to cancel operations and some asynchronous methods report progress as well. More details in the later chapter devoted to asynchronous operations. The method in which the await operator appears must be flagged as async but the async keyword doesn t do much of anything. In earlier versions of C await was not a keyword so programmers could use the word for variable names or property names or whatever. Adding a new await keyword to C 5.0 would break this code but restricting await to methods flagged with async avoids that problem. The async modifier does not change the signature of the method the method above is still a valid Click handler. But you can t use async and hence await with methods that serve as entry points such as Main or class constructors. 252 www.it ebooks.info If you need to call asynchronous methods while initializing a FrameworkElement derivative do them in the handler for the Loaded event and flag it as async: public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent Loaded OnLoaded async void OnLoaded object sender RoutedEventArgs arg Or if you prefer defining the Loaded handler as an anonymous method: public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent Loaded async sender args See the async before the argument list Calling Your Own Async Methods Suppose you want to isolate the file save logic in a method like this: async void SaveFile string text FileSavePicker picker new FileSavePicker picker.DefaultFileExtension .txt picker.FileTypeChoices.Add Text new List string .txt StorageFile storageFile await picker.PickSaveFileAsync if storageFile null return await FileIO.WriteTextAsync storageFile txtbox.Text The method must be flagged as async because it contains await keywords. You can then call this method from OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick like so: void OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args SaveFile txtbox.Text 253 www.it ebooks.info What happens here is that OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick calls SaveFile and SaveFile begins executing until the first await on the PickSaveFileAsync call. At that point SaveFile returns control back to OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick and that method terminates. When PickSaveFileAsync has a result ready the rest of the SaveFile method proceeds. In this particular case this might be OK. However if you want the OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick method to await the execution of SaveFile it must include an await keyword and be flagged as async: async void OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args await SaveFile txtbox.Text But when you do that SaveFile must be changed as well. It can no longer return void. You can modify SaveFile in several ways but perhaps the easiest is simply changing the return type to Task: async Task SaveFile string text At this point you probably also want to change the name of the method to SaveFileAsync to indicate that it s an asynchronous method that can be awaited. Although the code that you write in this SaveFileAsync method does not run in a secondary thread the other asynchronous methods that SaveFileAsync calls do so. A similar separation of OnOpenAppBarButtonClick and a ReadFileAsync method is a little different. You probably want the ReadFileAsync method to return the text contents of the file so the return type isn t Task but Task string : async Task string ReadFileAsync FileOpenPicker picker new FileOpenPicker picker.FileTypeFilter.Add .txt StorageFile storageFile await picker.PickSingleFileAsync if storageFile null return null return await FileIO.ReadTextAsync storageFile You can then call ReadFileAsync like so: async void OnOpenAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args string text await ReadFileAsync if text null txtbox.Text text 254 www.it ebooks.info It s important to realize that all of this code runs in the user interface thread. You don t have to worry about accessing user interface objects. The two methods in the FileIO class certainly spin off secondary threads to do work but the ReadFileAsync method I ve shown is considered to be asynchronous only because it calls other asynchronous methods. The other code in the method runs in the user interface thread. If you re writing some of your own code that requires a lot of processing time you don t want to do that job in the user interface thread. But instead of using traditional techniques to create and execute threads consider using a task based approach like the Windows Runtime. You can execute program code asynchronously by passing it as a method to the static Task.Run method. Generally this is done as an anonymous method: Task double BigJobAsync int arg1 int arg2 return Task.Run double double val 0 ... lengthy code return val Everything in that anonymous method runs in a secondary thread and hence it cannot access user interface objects. You can then call this method like so: double value await BigJobAsync 22 33 If perchance the anonymous method in BigJobAsync includes its own await operators you would need to flag the anonymous method as async: Task double BigJobAsync int arg1 int arg2 return Task.Run double async double val 0 ... lengthy code return val I ll have much more to say about asynchronous processing in the chapter devoted to the subject. Controls for XamlCruncher Now that you ve seen some rudimentary file I O and asynchronous processing it s time to start looking at XamlCruncher. I won t pretend that this program is commercial grade or even that it doesn t have some serious flaws. But it s a real program with real Metro style features and I ll surely be enhancing it to fix any problems or deficiencies the first version might have. 255 www.it ebooks.info XamlCruncher lets you type in XAML and see the resultant objects and visual tree. The magic method that XamlCruncher uses is XamlReader.Load which you had a brief glimpse of in the PathMarkupSyntaxCode project in Chapter 2. The XAML processed by XamlReader.Load cannot reference event handlers or external assemblies. Here s a view of the program with some XAML in the editor on the left and the resultant objects in a display area on the right: The editor doesn t include any amenities. It won t even automatically generate a closing tag when you type a start tag it doesn t use different colors for elements attributes and strings and it doesn t have anything close to IntelliSense. However the configuration of the page is changeable: you can put the edit window on the top right or bottom. The application bar has Add Open Save and Save As buttons as well as a Refresh button and a button for application options: 256 www.it ebooks.info You can select whether XamlCruncher reparses the XAML with each keystroke or only with a press of the Refresh button. That option and others are available from the dialog invoked when you press the Options button: I ve turned on the Ruler and Grid Lines options to show you the result in the display area on the right. All these options are saved for the next time the program is run. Most of the page is a custom UserControl derivative called SplitContainer. In the center is a Thumb control that lets you select the proportion of space in the left and right panels or top and bottom panels . In the screen shots this Thumb is a lighter gray vertical bar in the center of the screen. The XAML file for SplitContainer consists of a Grid defined for both horizontal and vertical configurations: 257 www.it ebooks.info Project: XamlCruncher File: SplitContainer.xaml UserControl x:Class XamlCruncher.SplitContainer xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml xmlns:local using:XamlCruncher Grid Default Orientation is Horizontal Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition x:Name coldef1 Width MinWidth 100 ColumnDefinition Width Auto ColumnDefinition x:Name coldef2 Width MinWidth 100 Grid.ColumnDefinitions Alternative Orientation is Vertical Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition x:Name rowdef1 Height RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition x:Name rowdef2 Height 0 Grid.RowDefinitions Grid Name grid1 Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 Thumb Name thumb Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 1 Width 12 DragStarted OnThumbDragStarted DragDelta OnThumbDragDelta Grid Name grid2 Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 2 Grid UserControl You ve seen similar markup in the OrientableColorScroll program which altered a Grid when the aspect ratio of the page changed between landscape and portrait. The code behind file defines five properties backed by dependency properties. Normally you ll set the Child1 and Child2 properties to the elements to appear in the left and right of the control but where they actually appear is governed by the Orientation and SwapChildren properties: Project: XamlCruncher File: SplitContainer.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class SplitContainer : UserControl Static constructor and properties static SplitContainer Child1Property 258 www.it ebooks.info DependencyProperty.Register Child1 typeof UIElement typeof SplitContainer new PropertyMetadata null OnChildChanged Child2Property DependencyProperty.Register Child2 typeof UIElement typeof SplitContainer new PropertyMetadata null OnChildChanged OrientationProperty DependencyProperty.Register Orientation typeof Orientation typeof SplitContainer new PropertyMetadata Orientation.Horizontal OnOrientationChanged SwapChildrenProperty DependencyProperty.Register SwapChildren typeof bool typeof SplitContainer new PropertyMetadata false OnSwapChildrenChanged MinimumSizeProperty DependencyProperty.Register MinimumSize typeof double typeof SplitContainer new PropertyMetadata 100.0 OnMinSizeChanged public static DependencyProperty Child1Property private set get public static DependencyProperty Child2Property private set get public static DependencyProperty OrientationProperty private set get public static DependencyProperty SwapChildrenProperty private set get public static DependencyProperty MinimumSizeProperty private set get Instance constructor and properties public SplitContainer this.InitializeComponent public UIElement Child1 set SetValue Child1Property value get return UIElement GetValue Child1Property public UIElement Child2 set SetValue Child2Property value get return UIElement GetValue Child2Property public Orientation Orientation set SetValue OrientationProperty value get return Orientation GetValue OrientationProperty 259 www.it ebooks.info public bool SwapChildren set SetValue SwapChildrenProperty value get return bool GetValue SwapChildrenProperty public double MinimumSize set SetValue MinimumSizeProperty value get return double GetValue MinimumSizeProperty The Orientation property is of type Orientation the same enumeration used for StackPanel and VariableSizedWrapGrid. It s always nice to use existing types for dependency properties rather than inventing your own. Notice that the MinimumSize is of type double and hence is initialized as 100.0 rather than 100 to prevent a type mismatch at run time. The property changed handlers show two different approaches that programmers use in calling the instance property changed handler from the static handler. I ve already shown you the approach where the static handler simply calls the instance handler with the same DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs object. Sometimes as with the handlers for the Orientation SwapChildren and MinimumSize properties it s more convenient for the static handler to call the instance handler with the old value and new value cast to the proper type: Project: XamlCruncher File: SplitContainer.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class SplitContainer : UserControl Property changed handlers static void OnChildChanged DependencyObject obj DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args obj as SplitContainer .OnChildChanged args void OnChildChanged DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args Grid targetGrid args.Property Child1Property this.SwapChildren grid1 : grid2 targetGrid.Children.Clear if args.NewValue null targetGrid.Children.Add args.NewValue as UIElement static void OnOrientationChanged DependencyObject obj DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args obj as SplitContainer .OnOrientationChanged Orientation args.OldValue Orientation args.NewValue 260 www.it ebooks.info void OnOrientationChanged Orientation oldOrientation Orientation newOrientation Shouldn t be necessary but... if newOrientation oldOrientation return if newOrientation Orientation.Horizontal coldef1.Width rowdef1.Height coldef2.Width rowdef2.Height coldef1.MinWidth this.MinimumSize coldef2.MinWidth this.MinimumSize rowdef1.Height new GridLength 1 GridUnitType.Star rowdef2.Height new GridLength 0 rowdef1.MinHeight 0 rowdef2.MinHeight 0 thumb.Width 12 thumb.Height Double.NaN Grid.SetRow thumb 0 Grid.SetColumn thumb 1 Grid.SetRow grid2 0 Grid.SetColumn grid2 2 else rowdef1.Height coldef1.Width rowdef2.Height coldef2.Width rowdef1.MinHeight this.MinimumSize rowdef2.MinHeight this.MinimumSize coldef1.Width new GridLength 1 GridUnitType.Star coldef2.Width new GridLength 0 coldef1.MinWidth 0 coldef2.MinWidth 0 thumb.Height 12 thumb.Width Double.NaN Grid.SetRow thumb 1 Grid.SetColumn thumb 0 Grid.SetRow grid2 2 Grid.SetColumn grid2 0 261 www.it ebooks.info static void OnSwapChildrenChanged DependencyObject obj DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args obj as SplitContainer .OnSwapChildrenChanged bool args.OldValue bool args.NewValue void OnSwapChildrenChanged bool oldOrientation bool newOrientation grid1.Children.Clear grid2.Children.Clear grid1.Children.Add newOrientation this.Child2 : this.Child1 grid2.Children.Add newOrientation this.Child1 : this.Child2 static void OnMinSizeChanged DependencyObject obj DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args obj as SplitContainer .OnMinSizeChanged double args.OldValue double args.NewValue void OnMinSizeChanged double oldValue double newValue if this.Orientation Orientation.Horizontal coldef1.MinWidth newValue coldef2.MinWidth newValue else rowdef1.MinHeight newValue rowdef2.MinHeight newValue My original version of the property changed handler for Orientation assumed that the Orientation property was actually changing as should be the case whenever a property changed handler is called. However I discovered that sometimes the property changed handler was called when the property was set to its existing value. All that s left is looking at the event handlers for the Thumb. The idea here is that the two columns or rows of the Grid are allocated size based on the star specification so that the relative size of the columns or rows remains the same when the size or aspect ratio of the Grid changes. However to keep the Thumb dragging logic reasonably simple it helps if the numeric proportions associated with the star specifications are actual pixel dimensions. These are initialized in the OnThumbDragStarted method and changed in OnDragThumbDelta: 262 www.it ebooks.info Project: XamlCruncher File: SplitContainer.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class SplitContainer : UserControl Thumb event handlers void OnThumbDragStarted object sender DragStartedEventArgs args if this.Orientation Orientation.Horizontal coldef1.Width new GridLength coldef1.ActualWidth GridUnitType.Star coldef2.Width new GridLength coldef2.ActualWidth GridUnitType.Star else rowdef1.Height new GridLength rowdef1.ActualHeight GridUnitType.Star rowdef2.Height new GridLength rowdef2.ActualHeight GridUnitType.Star void OnThumbDragDelta object sender DragDeltaEventArgs args if this.Orientation Orientation.Horizontal double newWidth1 Math.Max 0 coldef1.Width.Value args.HorizontalChange double newWidth2 Math.Max 0 coldef2.Width.Value args.HorizontalChange coldef1.Width new GridLength newWidth1 GridUnitType.Star coldef2.Width new GridLength newWidth2 GridUnitType.Star else double newHeight1 Math.Max 0 rowdef1.Height.Value args.VerticalChange double newHeight2 Math.Max 0 rowdef2.Height.Value args.VerticalChange rowdef1.Height new GridLength newHeight1 GridUnitType.Star rowdef2.Height new GridLength newHeight2 GridUnitType.Star The last of the earlier screen shots of XamlCruncher showed a ruler and grid lines in the display area. The ruler is in units of inches based on 96 pixels to the inch so the grid lines are 24 pixels apart. The ruler and grid lines are useful if you re interactively designing some vector graphics or other precise layout. The ruler and grid lines are independently optional. The UserControl derivative that displays them is called RulerContainer. As you ll see when the XamlCruncher page is constructed an instance of RulerContainer is set to the Child2 property of the SplitContainer object. Here s the XAML file for RulerContainer: Project: XamlCruncher File: RulerContainer.xaml excerpt UserControl 263 www.it ebooks.info Grid SizeChanged OnGridSizeChanged Canvas Name rulerCanvas Grid Name innerGrid Grid Name gridLinesGrid Border Name border Grid Grid UserControl This RulerContainer control has a Child property and the child of this control is set to the Child property of the Border. Visually behind this Border is the grid of horizontal and vertical lines which are children of the Grid labeled gridLinesGrid. If the ruler is also present the Grid labeled innerGrid is given a nonzero Margin on the left and top to accommodate this ruler. The tick marks and numbers that comprise the ruler are children of the Canvas named rulerCanvas. Here s all the overhead for the dependency property definitions in the code behind file: Project: XamlCruncher File: RulerContainer.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class RulerContainer : UserControl static RulerContainer ChildProperty DependencyProperty.Register Child typeof UIElement typeof RulerContainer new PropertyMetadata null OnChildChanged ShowRulerProperty DependencyProperty.Register ShowRuler typeof bool typeof RulerContainer new PropertyMetadata false OnShowRulerChanged ShowGridLinesProperty DependencyProperty.Register ShowGridLines typeof bool typeof RulerContainer new PropertyMetadata false OnShowGridLinesChanged public static DependencyProperty ChildProperty private set get public static DependencyProperty ShowRulerProperty private set get public static DependencyProperty ShowGridLinesProperty private set get public RulerContainer this.InitializeComponent public UIElement Child set SetValue ChildProperty value get return UIElement GetValue ChildProperty 264 www.it ebooks.info public bool ShowRuler set SetValue ShowRulerProperty value get return bool GetValue ShowRulerProperty public bool ShowGridLines set SetValue ShowGridLinesProperty value get return bool GetValue ShowGridLinesProperty Property changed handlers static void OnChildChanged DependencyObject obj DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args obj as RulerContainer .border.Child UIElement args.NewValue static void OnShowRulerChanged DependencyObject obj DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args obj as RulerContainer .RedrawRuler static void OnShowGridLinesChanged DependencyObject obj DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args obj as RulerContainer .RedrawGridLines void OnGridSizeChanged object sender SizeChangedEventArgs args RedrawRuler RedrawGridLines Also shown here are the property changed handlers which are simple enough to use in the static versions as well as the SizeChanged handler for the Grid. Two redraw methods handle all the drawing which involves creating Line elements and TextBlock elements and organizing them in the two panels: public sealed partial class RulerContainer : UserControl const double RULER_WIDTH 12 void RedrawGridLines gridLinesGrid.Children.Clear 265 www.it ebooks.info if this.ShowGridLines return Vertical grid lines every 1 4 for double x 24 x gridLinesGrid.ActualWidth x 24 Line line new Line X1 x Y1 0 X2 x Y2 gridLinesGrid.ActualHeight Stroke this.Foreground StrokeThickness x 96 0 1 : 0.5 gridLinesGrid.Children.Add line Horizontal grid lines every 1 4 for double y 24 y gridLinesGrid.ActualHeight y 24 Line line new Line X1 0 Y1 y X2 gridLinesGrid.ActualWidth Y2 y Stroke this.Foreground StrokeThickness y 96 0 1 : 0.5 gridLinesGrid.Children.Add line void RedrawRuler rulerCanvas.Children.Clear if this.ShowRuler innerGrid.Margin new Thickness return innerGrid.Margin new Thickness RULER_WIDTH RULER_WIDTH 0 0 Ruler across the top for double x 0 x gridLinesGrid.ActualWidth RULER_WIDTH x 12 Numbers every inch if x 0 x 96 0 TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock 266 www.it ebooks.info Text x 96 .ToString F0 FontSize RULER_WIDTH 2 txtblk.Measure new Size Canvas.SetLeft txtblk RULER_WIDTH x txtblk.ActualWidth 2 Canvas.SetTop txtblk 0 rulerCanvas.Children.Add txtblk Tick marks every 1 8 else Line line new Line X1 RULER_WIDTH x Y1 x 48 0 2 : 4 X2 RULER_WIDTH x Y2 x 48 0 RULER_WIDTH 2 : RULER_WIDTH 4 Stroke this.Foreground StrokeThickness 1 rulerCanvas.Children.Add line Heavy line underneath the tick marks Line topLine new Line X1 RULER_WIDTH 1 Y1 RULER_WIDTH 1 X2 rulerCanvas.ActualWidth Y2 RULER_WIDTH 1 Stroke this.Foreground StrokeThickness 2 rulerCanvas.Children.Add topLine Ruler down the left side for double y 0 y gridLinesGrid.ActualHeight RULER_WIDTH y 12 Numbers every inch if y 0 y 96 0 TextBlock txtblk new TextBlock Text y 96 .ToString F0 FontSize RULER_WIDTH 2 txtblk.Measure new Size Canvas.SetLeft txtblk 2 Canvas.SetTop txtblk RULER_WIDTH y txtblk.ActualHeight 2 rulerCanvas.Children.Add txtblk 267 www.it ebooks.info Tick marks every 1 8 else Line line new Line X1 y 48 0 2 : 4 Y1 RULER_WIDTH y X2 y 48 0 RULER_WIDTH 2 : RULER_WIDTH 4 Y2 RULER_WIDTH y Stroke this.Foreground StrokeThickness 1 rulerCanvas.Children.Add line Line leftLine new Line X1 RULER_WIDTH 1 Y1 RULER_WIDTH 1 X2 RULER_WIDTH 1 Y2 rulerCanvas.ActualHeight Stroke this.Foreground StrokeThickness 2 rulerCanvas.Children.Add leftLine These two methods make extensive use of the Line element which renders a single straight line between the points X1 Y1 and X2 Y2 . This RedrawRuler code also illustrates a technique for obtaining the rendered size of a TextBlock. When you create a new TextBlock the ActualWidth and ActualHeight properties are both zero. These properties are normally not calculated until the TextBlock becomes part of a visual tree and is subjected to layout. However you can force the TextBlock to calculate a size for itself by calling its Measure method. This method is defined by UIElement and is an important component of the layout system. The argument to the Measure method is a Size value indicating the size available for the element but you can set the size to zero for this purpose: txtblk.Measure new Size If you need to find the size of a TextBlock that wraps text you must supply a nonzero first argument to the Size constructor so that TextBlock knows the width in which to wrap the text. Following the Measure call the ActualWidth and ActualHeight properties of TextBlock are valid and usable for positioning the TextBlock in a Canvas. Calling the Canvas.SetLeft and Canvas.SetTop properties is necessary only when positioning the TextBlock elements in the Canvas. In either a single cell Grid or Canvas the Line elements are positioned based on their coordinates. 268 www.it ebooks.info As you ll see an instance of RulerContainer is set to the Child2 property of the SplitContainer that dominates the XamlCruncher page. The Child1 property appears to be a TextBox but it s actually an instance of another custom control named TabbableTextBox which derives from TextBox. The standard TextBox does not respond to the Tab key and when you re typing XAML into an editor you really want tabs. That s the primary feature of TabbableTextBox shown here in its entirety: Project: XamlCruncher File: TabbableTextBox.cs using Windows.System using Windows.UI.Xaml using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls using Windows.UI.Xaml.Input namespace XamlCruncher public class TabbableTextBox : TextBox static TabbableTextBox TabSpacesProperty DependencyProperty.Register TabSpaces typeof int typeof TabbableTextBox new PropertyMetadata 4 public static DependencyProperty TabSpacesProperty private set get public int TabSpaces set SetValue TabSpacesProperty value get return int GetValue TabSpacesProperty public bool IsModified set get protected override void OnKeyDown KeyEventArgs args this.IsModified true if args.Key VirtualKey.Tab int line col GetPositionFromIndex this.SelectionStart out line out col int insertCount this.TabSpaces col this.TabSpaces this.SelectedText new string insertCount this.SelectionStart insertCount this.SelectionLength 0 args.Handled true return base.OnKeyDown args 269 www.it ebooks.info public void GetPositionFromIndex int index out int line out int col if index Text.Length line col 1 return line col 0 bool justFoundEol false for int i 0 i index i if Text i r Text i n if justFoundEol line col 0 justFoundEol true else col justFoundEol false return The class intercepts the OnKeyDown method to determine if the Tab key is being pressed. If that s the case it inserts blanks into the Text object so that the cursor moves to a text column that is an integral multiple of the TabSpaces property. This calculation requires knowing the character position of the cursor on the current line. To obtain this information it uses the GetPositionFromIndex method also defined in this class. This method is public and is also used by XamlCruncher to display the current position of the cursor and the current selection if any . Another property not backed by a dependency property is also defined by TabbableTextBox. This is IsModified which is set to true whenever a KeyDown event occurs. Like many programs that deals with documents XamlCruncher keeps track if the text file has changed since the last save. If the user initiates an operation to create a new file or open an existing file and the current document is in a modified state the program asks if the user wants to save that document. Often this logic occurs entirely external to the TextBox control. The program sets an IsModified flag to true when a new file is loaded or the file is saved and to false on receipt of a TextChanged event. However the TextChanged event is fired when the Text property of the TextBox is set programmatically so even if the TextBox is being set to a newly loaded file the TextChanged event is 270 www.it ebooks.info fired and the IsModified flag would be set by the TextChanged handler. You might think that setting the IsModified flag in that case might be avoided by setting a flag when the Text property is set programmatically. However the TextChanged handler is not called until the method setting the Text property has returned control back to the operating system which makes the logic rather messy. Implementing the IsModified flag in the TextBox derivative helps. Application Settings and Isolated Storage Many applications maintain user settings and preferences between invocations of the program. The Windows Runtime provides an area of application data storage sometimes known as isolated storage specifically for the use of the application in storing information of this sort. A program obtains access to this storage through the ApplicationData class in the Windows.Storage namespace. An instance of ApplicationData applicable for the current application is available from the static ApplicationData.Current method. From that object a TemporaryFolder property provides a disk area suitable for temporary data. Other properties LocalFolder LocalSettings RoamingFolder and RoamingSettings are also available for storing more permanent data. The LocalSettings property gives you access to a dictionary in which you can store program settings with names and values. But I don t like to use this. I prefer to store program settings in an XML file that is serialized from a class in the program that I generally called AppSettings. This class implements INotifyPropertyChanged so that it can be used for data binding. It s basically a View Model or perhaps in larger applications part of a View Model. An XML file serialized from AppSettings can be stored in the AppicationData.Current.LocalFolder directory which you ll discover maps to this location on the machine s main drive: Users username AppData Local Packages package family name LocalState The username is the user s name on the computer and package family name is mostly a GUID that uniquely identifies the application. For any Visual Studio application project you can find this name by opening the Package.appmanifest file and clicking the Packaging tab. One program option that should be saved is the orientation of the edit and display areas. As you ll recall the SplitContainer has two properties named Orientation and SwapChildren. For storing user settings I wanted something more specific to this application. The TextBox or rather the TabbableTextBox can be on the left top right or bottom and this enumeration encapsulates those options: Project: XamlCruncher File: EditOrientation.cs namespace XamlCruncher public enum EditOrientation Left Top Right Bottom 271 www.it ebooks.info Here s the first half of AppSettings showing all the properties that comprise program settings. The class derives from BindableBase to implement INotifyPropertyChanged. All the property values are backed by fields initialized with the program s default settings. Notice that the EditOrientation property is based on the EditOrientation enumeration: Project: XamlCruncher File: AppSettings.cs public class AppSettings : XamlCruncher.Common.BindableBase Application settings initial values EditOrientation editOrientation EditOrientation.Left Orientation orientation Orientation.Horizontal bool swapEditAndDisplay false bool autoParsing false bool showRuler false bool showGridLines false double fontSize 18 int tabSpaces 8 public EditOrientation EditOrientation set if SetProperty EditOrientation ref editOrientation value switch editOrientation case EditOrientation.Left: this.Orientation Orientation.Horizontal this.SwapEditAndDisplay false break case EditOrientation.Top: this.Orientation Orientation.Vertical this.SwapEditAndDisplay false break case EditOrientation.Right: this.Orientation Orientation.Horizontal this.SwapEditAndDisplay true break case EditOrientation.Bottom: this.Orientation Orientation.Vertical this.SwapEditAndDisplay true break get return editOrientation 272 www.it ebooks.info XmlIgnore public Orientation Orientation protected set SetProperty Orientation ref orientation value get return orientation XmlIgnore public bool SwapEditAndDisplay protected set SetProperty bool ref swapEditAndDisplay value get return swapEditAndDisplay public bool AutoParsing set SetProperty bool ref autoParsing value get return autoParsing public bool ShowRuler set SetProperty bool ref showRuler value get return showRuler public bool ShowGridLines set SetProperty bool ref showGridLines value get return showGridLines public double FontSize set SetProperty double ref fontSize value get return fontSize public int TabSpaces set SetProperty int ref tabSpaces value get return tabSpaces Besides EditOrientation AppSettings defines two additional properties that more directly correspond to properties of the SplitContainer. These are Orientation and SwapEditAndDisplay. The set accessors are protected and the properties are set only from the set accessor of EditOrientation. These two properties are also flagged with the attribute XmlIgnore indicating that these properties should be ignored when the AppSettings object is serialized into XML. They are not actually part of application settings but they are easily derived from application settings and make the bindings easier. 273 www.it ebooks.info AppSettings also has methods to serialize an instance of itself to XML and save it as a file and to deserialize that file back into an AppSettings instance. The LoadAsync and SaveAsync methods to load and save these files are as the names suggest asynchronous. They use a combination of Windows Runtime classes StorageFolder StorageFile and FileIO and .NET classes XmlSerializer StringReader and StringWriter . The LoadAsync method must be static because it is the only way to create an instance of AppSettings. Some programmers like to use a static property called Current for this purpose to ensure that AppSettings is a singleton in other words to ensure that only one instance of AppSettings exists anywhere in the program. Project: XamlCruncher File: AppSettings.cs excerpt public class AppSettings : XamlCruncher.Common.BindableBase const string FILENAME applicationsettings.xml public async static Task AppSettings LoadAsync StorageFolder storageFolder ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder StorageFile appSettingsFile null AppSettings appSettings null try appSettingsFile await storageFolder.GetFileAsync FILENAME catch Exception This happens the first time the program is run if appSettingsFile null appSettings new AppSettings else string str await FileIO.ReadTextAsync appSettingsFile XmlSerializer xmlSerializer new XmlSerializer typeof AppSettings using StringReader reader new StringReader str appSettings xmlSerializer.Deserialize reader as AppSettings return appSettings public async Task SaveAsync 274 www.it ebooks.info string settingsXml null using StringWriter stringWriter new StringWriter XmlSerializer xmlSerializer new XmlSerializer typeof AppSettings xmlSerializer.Serialize stringWriter this settingsXml stringWriter.ToString StorageFolder storageFolder ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder StorageFile storageFile null try storageFile await storageFolder.CreateFileAsync FILENAME CreationCollisionOption.ReplaceExisting catch Exception TODO: This shouldn t happen but it might await FileIO.WriteTextAsync storageFile settingsXml When the program is first run AppSettings.LoadAsync attempts to access the settings file but it won t exist. An exception is thrown and instead the method simply instantiates AppSettings. That instance will have all default values. The XamlCruncher Page Sufficient pieces have now been created to let us begin assembling this application. Here s BlankPage.xaml: Project: XamlCruncher File: BlankPage.xaml excerpt Page Grid Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height RowDefinition Height Auto Grid.RowDefinitions Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width ColumnDefinition Width Auto Grid.ColumnDefinitions TextBlock Name filenameText Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 275 www.it ebooks.info Grid.ColumnSpan 2 FontSize 18 TextTrimming WordEllipsis local:SplitContainer x:Name splitContainer Orientation Binding Orientation SwapChildren Binding SwapEditAndDisplay MinimumSize 200 Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 0 Grid.ColumnSpan 2 local:SplitContainer.Child1 local:TabbableTextBox x:Name editBox AcceptsReturn True FontSize Binding FontSize TabSpaces Binding TabSpaces TextChanged OnEditBoxTextChanged SelectionChanged OnEditBoxSelectionChanged local:SplitContainer.Child1 local:SplitContainer.Child2 local:RulerContainer x:Name resultContainer ShowRuler Binding ShowRuler ShowGridLines Binding ShowGridLines local:SplitContainer.Child2 local:SplitContainer TextBlock Name statusText Text OK Grid.Row 2 Grid.Column 0 FontSize 18 TextWrapping Wrap TextBlock Name lineColText Grid.Row 2 Grid.Column 1 FontSize 18 Grid Page.BottomAppBar AppBar Padding 10 0 Grid StackPanel Orientation Horizontal HorizontalAlignment Left Button Style StaticResource RefreshAppBarButtonStyle Click OnRefreshAppBarButtonClick Button Style StaticResource AppBarButtonStyle Content xE15E AutomationProperties.Name Options Click OnOptionsAppBarButtonClick StackPanel StackPanel Orientation Horizontal HorizontalAlignment Right 276 www.it ebooks.info Button Style StaticResource AppBarButtonStyle Content xE184 AutomationProperties.Name Open Click OnOpenAppBarButtonClick Button Style StaticResource SaveAppBarButtonStyle AutomationProperties.Name Save As Click OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick Button Style StaticResource AppBarButtonStyle Content xE159 AutomationProperties.Name Save Click OnSaveAppBarButtonClick Button Style StaticResource AddAppBarButtonStyle Click OnAddAppBarButtonClick StackPanel Grid AppBar Page.BottomAppBar Page The main Grid has three rows: for the name of the loaded file the TextBlock named filenameText the SplitContainer and the status bar at the bottom. The status bar consists of two TextBlock elements named statusText to indicate possible XAML parsing errors and lineColText for the line and column of the TabbableTextBox . The Grid is further divided into two columns for the two components of that status bar. Most of the page is occupied by the SplitContainer and you ll see that it contains bindings to the Orientation and SwapEditAndDisplay properties of AppSettings. The SplitContainer contains a TabbableTextBox with bindings to the FontSize and TabSpaces properties of AppSettings and a RulerContainer with bindings to ShowRuler and ShowGridLines . All these bindings strongly suggest that the DataContext of BlankPage is set to an instance of AppSettings. The bottom of the XAML file has the Button definitions for the application bar. As you might expect the code behind file is the longest file in the project but I m going to discuss it in various modular sections so that the discussion won t be too overwhelming. Here s the constructor Loaded handler and a few simple methods: Project: XamlCruncher File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page AppSettings appSettings 277 www.it ebooks.info StorageFile loadedStorageFile public BlankPage this.InitializeComponent Why aren t these set in the generated C files editBox splitContainer.Child1 as TabbableTextBox resultContainer splitContainer.Child2 as RulerContainer Set a fixed pitch font for the TextBox Language language new Language LanguageFontGroup languageFontGroup new LanguageFontGroup language.LanguageTag LanguageFont languageFont languageFontGroup.FixedWidthTextFont editBox.FontFamily new FontFamily languageFont.FontFamily Loaded OnLoaded async void OnLoaded object sender RoutedEventArgs args Load AppSettings and set to DataContext appSettings await AppSettings.LoadAsync this.DataContext appSettings Other initialization await SetDefaultXamlFile ParseText editBox.Focus FocusState.Keyboard DisplayLineAndColumn async Task SetDefaultXamlFile editBox.Text Page xmlns http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml presentation r n xmlns:x http: schemas.microsoft.com winfx 2006 xaml r n r n TextBlock Text Hello Windows 8 r n FontSize 48 r n r n Page editBox.IsModified false loadedStorageFile null filenameText.Text void OnEditBoxSelectionChanged object sender RoutedEventArgs args DisplayLineAndColumn 278 www.it ebooks.info void DisplayLineAndColumn int line col editBox.GetPositionFromIndex editBox.SelectionStart out line out col lineColText.Text String.Format Line 0 Col 1 line 1 col 1 if editBox.SelectionLength 0 editBox.GetPositionFromIndex editBox.SelectionStart editBox.SelectionLength 1 out line out col lineColText.Text String.Format Line 0 Col 1 line 1 col 1 The constructor begins by fixing a little bug involving the editBox and resultContainer fields. The XAML parser definitely creates these fields during compilation but they not set by the InitializeComponent call at run time. The remainder of the constructor sets a fixed pitch font in the TabbableTextBox based on the predefined fonts available from the LanguageFontGroup class. This is apparently the only way to get actual font family names from the Windows Runtime. The remaining initialization occurs in the Loaded event handler because it needs to call the AppSettings.LoadAsync asynchronous method and asynchronous methods can t be called in constructors. The DataContext of the page is set to the AppSettings instance as you probably anticipated from the data bindings in the BlankPage.xaml file. The OnLoaded method begins by setting a default piece of XAML in the TabbableTextBox and calling ParseText to parse it. You ll see how this works soon. The TabbableTextBox is assigned keyboard input focus and OnLoaded concludes by displaying the initial line and column which is then updated whenever the TextBox selection changes. You might wonder why SetDefaultXamlFile is defined as async and returns Task when it does not actually contain any asynchronous code. You ll see later that this method is used as an argument to another method in the file I O logic and that s the sole reason I had to define it oddly. The compiler generates a warning message because it doesn t contain any await logic. Parsing the XAML The major job of XamlCruncher is to pass a piece of XAML to XamlReader.Load and get out an object. A property of the AppSettings class named AutoParsing allows this to happen with every keystroke or it waits until you press the Refresh button on the application bar. If XamlReader.Load encounters an error it raises an exception and the program then displays that error in red in the status bar at the bottom of the page and also colors the text in the TabbableTextBox 279 www.it ebooks.info red. Project: XamlCruncher File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page Brush textBlockBrush textBoxBrush errorBrush public BlankPage Set brushes textBlockBrush Resources ApplicationTextBrush as SolidColorBrush textBoxBrush Resources TextBoxTextBrush as SolidColorBrush errorBrush new SolidColorBrush Colors.Red void OnRefreshAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args ParseText this.BottomAppBar.IsOpen false void OnEditBoxTextChanged object sender RoutedEventArgs e if appSettings.AutoParsing ParseText void ParseText object result null try result XamlReader.Load editBox.Text catch Exception exc SetErrorText exc.Message return if result null SetErrorText Null result else if result is UIElement SetErrorText Result is result.GetType .Name else 280 www.it ebooks.info resultContainer.Child result as UIElement SetOkText return void SetErrorText string text SetStatusText text errorBrush errorBrush void SetOkText SetStatusText OK textBlockBrush textBoxBrush void SetStatusText string text Brush statusBrush Brush editBrush statusText.Text text statusText.Foreground statusBrush editBox.Foreground editBrush It could be that a chunk of XAML successfully passes XamlReader.Load with no errors but then raises an exception later on. This can happen particularly when XAML animations are involved because the animation doesn t start up until the visual tree is loaded. The only real solution is to install a handler for the UnhandledException event defined by the Application object and that s done in the conclusion of the Loaded handler: Project: XamlCruncher File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt async void OnLoaded object sender RoutedEventArgs args Application.Current.UnhandledException excSender excArgs SetErrorText excArgs.Message excArgs.Handled true The problem with something like this is that you want to make sure that the program isn t going to have some other kind of unhandled exception that isn t a result of some errant XAML. Also when Visual Studio is running a program in its debugger it wants to snag the unhandled exceptions so that it can report them to you. Use the Exceptions dialog from the Debug menu to indicate which exceptions you want Visual Studio to intercept and which should be left to the program. 281 www.it ebooks.info XAML Files In and Out Whenever I approach the code involved in loading and saving documents I always think it s going to be easier than it turns out to be. Here s the basic problem. Whenever a New or Open command occurs you need to check if the current document has been modified without being saved. If that s the case a message box should be displayed asking whether the user wants to save the file. The options are Save Don t Save and Cancel. The easy answer is Cancel. The program doesn t need to do anything further. If the user selects the Don t Save option the current document can be abandoned and the New or Open command can proceed. If the user answers Save the existing document needs to be saved under its filename. But that filename might not exist if the document wasn t loaded from a disk file or previously saved. At that point the Save As dialog box needs to be displayed. But the user can select Cancel from that dialog box as well and the New or Open operation ends. Otherwise the existing file is first saved. Let s first look at the methods involved in saving documents. The application button has Save and Save As buttons but the Save button needs to invoke the Save As dialog box if it doesn t have a filename for the document: Project: XamlCruncher File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt async void OnSaveAsAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args StorageFile storageFile await GetFileFromSavePicker if storageFile null return await SaveXamlToFile storageFile async void OnSaveAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args Button button sender as Button button.IsEnabled false if loadedStorageFile null await SaveXamlToFile loadedStorageFile else StorageFile storageFile await GetFileFromSavePicker if storageFile null await SaveXamlToFile storageFile 282 www.it ebooks.info button.IsEnabled true async Task StorageFile GetFileFromSavePicker FileSavePicker picker new FileSavePicker picker.DefaultFileExtension .xaml picker.FileTypeChoices.Add XAML new List string .xaml picker.SuggestedSaveFile loadedStorageFile return await picker.PickSaveFileAsync async Task SaveXamlToFile StorageFile storageFile loadedStorageFile storageFile string exception null try await FileIO.WriteTextAsync storageFile editBox.Text catch Exception exc exception exc.Message if exception null string message String.Format Could not save file 0 : 1 storageFile.Name exception MessageDialog msgdlg new MessageDialog message XAML Cruncher await msgdlg.ShowAsync else editBox.IsModified false filenameText.Text storageFile.Path For the Save button the handler disables the button and then enables it when it s completed. I m worried that the button might be re pressed during the time the file is being saved and there might even be a reentrancy problem if the handler tries to save it again when the first save hasn t completed. More research into how this problem can occur is surely warranted. In the final method the FileIO.WriteTextAsync call is in a try block. If an exception occurs while saving the file the program wants to use MessageDialog to inform the user. But asynchronous methods such as ShowAsync can t be called in a catch block so the exception is simply saved for checking afterward. For both Add and Open XamlCruncher needs to check if the file has been modified. If so a 283 www.it ebooks.info message box must be displayed to inform the user and request further direction. This occurs in a method I ve called CheckIfOkToTrashFile. Because this method is applicable for both the Add and Open buttons I gave this method an argument named commandAction of type Func Task a delegate meaning a method with no arguments that returns a Task. The Click handler for the Open event passes the LoadFileFromOpenPicker method as this argument and the handler for the Add button uses the aforementioned SetDefaultXamlFile. Project: XamlCruncher File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt async void OnAddAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args Button button sender as Button button.IsEnabled false await CheckIfOkToTrashFile SetDefaultXamlFile button.IsEnabled true this.BottomAppBar.IsOpen false async void OnOpenAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args Button button sender as Button button.IsEnabled false await CheckIfOkToTrashFile LoadFileFromOpenPicker button.IsEnabled true this.BottomAppBar.IsOpen false async Task CheckIfOkToTrashFile Func Task commandAction if editBox.IsModified await commandAction return string message String.Format Do you want to save changes to 0 loadedStorageFile null untitled : loadedStorageFile.Name MessageDialog msgdlg new MessageDialog message XAML Cruncher msgdlg.Commands.Add new UICommand Save null save msgdlg.Commands.Add new UICommand Don t Save null dont msgdlg.Commands.Add new UICommand Cancel null cancel msgdlg.DefaultCommandIndex 0 msgdlg.CancelCommandIndex 2 IUICommand command await msgdlg.ShowAsync if string command.Id cancel return if string command.Id dont await commandAction return 284 www.it ebooks.info if loadedStorageFile null StorageFile storageFile await GetFileFromSavePicker if storageFile null return loadedStorageFile storageFile await SaveXamlToFile loadedStorageFile await commandAction async Task LoadFileFromOpenPicker FileOpenPicker picker new FileOpenPicker picker.FileTypeFilter.Add .xaml StorageFile storageFile await picker.PickSingleFileAsync if storageFile null string exception null try editBox.Text await FileIO.ReadTextAsync storageFile catch Exception exc exception exc.Message if exception null string message String.Format Could not load file 0 : 1 storageFile.Name exception MessageDialog msgdlg new MessageDialog message XAML Cruncher await msgdlg.ShowAsync else editBox.IsModified false loadedStorageFile storageFile filenameText.Text loadedStorageFile.Path The CheckIfOkToTrashFile method also demonstrates how additional commands are added to the MessageDialog. By default the only button is labeled Close. 285 www.it ebooks.info The Settings Dialog When the user clicks the Options button the handler instantiates a UserControl derivative named SettingsDialog and makes it the child of a Popup. Among these options is the orientation of the display. You ll recall I defined an EditOrientation enumeration for the four possibilities. Accordingly the project also contains an EditOrientationRadioButton for storing one of the four values as a custom tag: Project: XamlCruncher File: EditOrientationRadioButton.cs using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls namespace XamlCruncher public class EditOrientationRadioButton : RadioButton public EditOrientation EditOrientationTag set get The SettingsDialog.xaml file arranges all the controls in a StackPanel: Project: XamlCruncher File: SettingsDialog.xaml excerpt UserControl UserControl.Resources Style x:Key DialogCaptionTextStyle TargetType TextBlock BasedOn StaticResource CaptionTextStyle Setter Property FontSize Value 14.67 Setter Property FontWeight Value SemiLight Setter Property Margin Value 7 0 0 0 Style UserControl.Resources Border Background StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundBrush BorderBrush StaticResource ApplicationTextBrush BorderThickness 1 StackPanel Margin 24 TextBlock Text XamlCruncher settings Style StaticResource SubheaderTextStyle Margin 0 0 0 12 Auto parsing ToggleSwitch Header Automatic parsing IsOn Binding AutoParsing Mode TwoWay Orientation TextBlock Text Orientation Style StaticResource DialogCaptionTextStyle Grid Name orientationRadioButtonGrid Margin 7 0 0 0 286 www.it ebooks.info Grid.RowDefinitions RowDefinition Height Auto RowDefinition Height Auto Grid.RowDefinitions Grid.ColumnDefinitions ColumnDefinition Width Auto ColumnDefinition Width Auto Grid.ColumnDefinitions Grid.Resources Style TargetType Border Setter Property BorderBrush Value StaticResource ApplicationTextBrush Setter Property BorderThickness Value 1 Setter Property Padding Value 3 Style Style TargetType TextBlock Setter Property TextAlignment Value Center Style Style TargetType local:EditOrientationRadioButton Setter Property Margin Value 0 6 12 6 Style Grid.Resources local:EditOrientationRadioButton Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 0 EditOrientationTag Left Checked OnOrientationRadioButtonChecked StackPanel Orientation Horizontal Border TextBlock Text edit Border Border TextBlock Text display Border StackPanel local:EditOrientationRadioButton local:EditOrientationRadioButton Grid.Row 0 Grid.Column 1 EditOrientationTag Bottom Checked OnOrientationRadioButtonChecked StackPanel Border TextBlock Text display Border Border TextBlock Text edit Border StackPanel local:EditOrientationRadioButton local:EditOrientationRadioButton Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 0 287 www.it ebooks.info EditOrientationTag Top Checked OnOrientationRadioButtonChecked StackPanel Border TextBlock Text edit Border Border TextBlock Text display Border StackPanel local:EditOrientationRadioButton local:EditOrientationRadioButton Grid.Row 1 Grid.Column 1 EditOrientationTag Right Checked OnOrientationRadioButtonChecked StackPanel Orientation Horizontal Border TextBlock Text display Border Border TextBlock Text edit Border StackPanel local:EditOrientationRadioButton Grid Ruler ToggleSwitch Header Ruler OnContent Show OffContent Hide IsOn Binding ShowRuler Mode TwoWay Grid lines ToggleSwitch Header Grid lines OnContent Show OffContent Hide IsOn Binding ShowGridLines Mode TwoWay Font size TextBlock Text Font size Style StaticResource DialogCaptionTextStyle Slider Value Binding FontSize Mode TwoWay Minimum 10 Maximum 48 Margin 7 0 0 0 Tab spaces TextBlock Text Tab spaces Style StaticResource DialogCaptionTextStyle Slider Value Binding TabSpaces Mode TwoWay Minimum 1 Maximum 12 288 www.it ebooks.info Margin 7 0 0 0 StackPanel Border UserControl All the two way bindings strongly suggest that the DataContext is set to an instance of AppSettings just like BlankPage. It s actually the same instance of AppSettings which means that any changes in this dialog are automatically applied to the program. This means that you can t make a bunch of changes in the dialog and hit Cancel. There is no Cancel button. To compensate it might make sense for a dialog to have a Defaults button that restores everything to its factory new condition. A significant chunk of the XAML file is devoted to the four EditOrientationRadioButton controls. The content of each of these is a StackPanel with two bordered TextBlock elements to create a little graphic that resembles the four layout options you saw in the earlier screen shot that is the third screen shot in the Controls for XamlCruncher section . The dialog contains three instances of ToggleSwitch. By default the OnContent and OffContent properties are set to the text string On and Off but I thought Show and Hide were better for the ruler and grid displays. ToggleSwitch also has a Header property that displays text above the switch. In the screen shot I just referred to the labels Automatic parsing Ruler and Grid lines are all displayed by the ToggleSwitch. I thought the labels looked good so I made an effort to duplicate the font and placement with the Style labeled as DialogCaptionTextStyle. A Slider is used to set the font size which might seem reasonable but I also use a Slider to set the number of tab spaces which I ll admit doesn t seem reasonable at all. Even though the AppSettings class defines the TabSpaces property as an integer the binding with the Value property of the Slider works regardless and the Slider proves to be a convenient way to change the property. The only chore left for the code behind file is to manage the RadioButton controls: Project: XamlCruncher File: SettingsDialog.xaml.cs using Windows.UI.Xaml using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls namespace XamlCruncher public sealed partial class SettingsDialog : UserControl public SettingsDialog this.InitializeComponent Loaded OnLoaded Initialize RadioButton for edit orientation void OnLoaded object sender RoutedEventArgs args 289 www.it ebooks.info AppSettings appSettings DataContext as AppSettings if appSettings null foreach UIElement child in orientationRadioButtonGrid.Children EditOrientationRadioButton radioButton child as EditOrientationRadioButton radioButton.IsChecked appSettings.EditOrientation radioButton.EditOrientationTag Set EditOrientation based on checked RadioButton void OnOrientationRadioButtonChecked object sender RoutedEventArgs args AppSettings appSettings DataContext as AppSettings EditOrientationRadioButton radioButton sender as EditOrientationRadioButton if appSettings null appSettings.EditOrientation radioButton.EditOrientationTag The display of the dialog is very similar to the MetroPad programs: Project: XamlCruncher File: BlankPage.xaml.cs excerpt public sealed partial class BlankPage : Page void OnOptionsAppBarButtonClick object sender RoutedEventArgs args SettingsDialog settingsDialog new SettingsDialog settingsDialog.DataContext appSettings Popup popup new Popup Child settingsDialog IsLightDismissEnabled true settingsDialog.SizeChanged dialogSender dialogArgs popup.VerticalOffset this.ActualHeight settingsDialog.ActualHeight this.BottomAppBar.ActualHeight 24 popup.HorizontalOffset 24 popup.Closed OnPopupClose popup.IsOpen true 290 www.it ebooks.info async void OnPopupClose object sender object args try await appSettings.SaveAsync catch Exception exc this.BottomAppBar.IsOpen false The Closed event handler for the Popup saves the updated settings. What happens if XamlCruncher terminates either normally or unexpectedly when the SettingsDialog is still displayed Well any changes that the user made to the settings won t be saved. The same goes for a document that was modified which is potentially a much greater loss. One of the big to do items is to handle the Suspending event of the App object. This event indicates when Windows 8 is suspending an application but also when the application is about to terminate. My thinking now is that the program should save any edited document in the LocalFolder area and then check for the existence of the document the next time the program starts up. One philosophy holds that applications should seem to be continuous experiences even when they are terminated and restarted. Beyond the Windows Runtime Earlier I mentioned some limitations to the XAML that you can enter in XamlCruncher. Elements cannot have their events set because events require event handlers and event handlers must be implemented in code. Nor can the XAML contain references to external classes or assemblies. However the parsed XAML runs in the XamlCruncher process which means that it does have access to any classes that XamlCruncher has access to including the custom classes I created for the program. Here s a piece of XAML that includes a namespace declaration for local. This enables it to use the SplitContainer and nests two instances of it: 291 www.it ebooks.info This piece of XAML is among the downloadable code for this chapter as is the XAML used for the earlier screen shots. This is interesting because it means that XamlCruncher really can go beyond the Windows Runtime and let you experiment with custom classes. More to come. 292 www.it ebooks.info Author Bio Charles Petzold began programming for Windows 27 years ago with beta versions of Windows 1. He wrote the first articles about Windows programming to appear in a magazine and wrote one of the first books on the subject Programming Windows first published in 1988. Over the past decade he has written seven books on .NET programming including the recent Programming Windows Phone 7 Microsoft Press 2010 and he currently writes a column on touch oriented user interfaces for MSDN Magazine. Petzold s books also include Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software Microsoft Press 1999 a unique exploration of digital technologies and The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing s Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine Wiley 2008 . His website is www.charlespetzold.com. 293 www.it ebooks.info Tell us how well this book meets your needs what works effectively and what we can do better. Your feedback will help us continually improve our books and learning resources for you. Thank you in advance for your input What do you think of this book We want to hear from you To participate in a brief online survey please visit: microsoft.com learning booksurvey www.it ebooks.info

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file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt nECROSCOPE D E F I L E R S TOR BOOKS BY BRIAN LUMLEY The Necroscope Series Necroscope Necroscope II: Vamphyri Necroscope III: The Source Necroscope IV: Deadspeak Necroscope V: Deadspawn Blood Brothers The Last Aerie Bloodwars Necroscope: The Lost Years Necroscope: Resurgence Necroscope: Invaders DECROSCOPE D E F I L E R S The Titus Crow Series Titus Crow Volume One: The Burrowers Beneath Transition Titus Crow Volume Two: The Clock of Dreams Spawn of the Winds Titus Crow Volume Three: In the Moons of Borea Elysia The Psychomech Trilogy Psychomech Psychosphere Psychamok Other Novels Demogorgon The House of Doors Maze of Worlds BRIHO IUN1LEY Short Story Collection Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi TOR r A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK nECROSCOPE D E F I L E R S RECROSCOPE: I1RDERS A RESUMfZ Harry Keogh the first Necroscope is gone his essence splintered dispersed and shards of his metaphysical mind dispatched into the darker corners of the myriad Universes of Light. Thus to all intents and purposes he is dead. Death: the cessation of life. The absence of life and the End of Being. Or at least the living have always deemed it so. But as the Necroscope above all others except perhaps the dead themselves was aware death isn t like that. Mind goes on. For how may any great poet scientist artist or architect simply dissolve to nothing His body may quit but his spirit his mind will go on and what he pursued in life he will continue to pursue in death. Great paintings are planned and landscapes scanned in the dead mind s eye and never a brush applied to canvas. Magnificent cities rear and ocean spanning roadways circle the planet but they are only the dreams of their dead architects. Songs as sweet and sweeter than anything devised by Solomon in his lifetime are known to the teeming dead which can never be known to the living for he sang the ones we know more than two thousand years ago and time has improved him. But here a seeming contradiction: if death is such an empty silent place how then all the file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 1 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt singing painting building How do the dead go on To questions such as this there was no answer until there was the Necroscope: a man who could look into the graves of men and into their dead minds. And through him only through Harry Keogh the dead were enabled. He taught them deadspeak how to converse with one another and joined them up across the world he brought sons and daughters to long lost mothers and fathers reunited old friends resolved old doubts and arguments and reinspired the brilliance of great minds guttering low. And without ever intending it scarcely realizing what was happening he became a lone candle flickering in the long night of the dead. And they basked in his warmth and loved him for it. But as much as Harry Keogh gave the dead just so much and more he received. From his mother who in life had been a psychic medium the germ of that metaphysical skill from which his greater abilities derived. From August Ferdinand Mobius a long dead mathematician and astronomer knowledge and iu bKlANLUMLEY mastery of the Mobius Continuum an undimensioned place for want of a better description parallel with all time and space. And from Faethor Ferenczy the history of a vampire world and its undead inhabitants some of which much like Faethor himself had from time to time found their way into our world. But it should be stated that this latter knowledge was obtained more out of the extinct vampire s longing for life than his love of the Necroscope . . . And from that time on from Harry s discovery of vampires in our world to the time of his death in Starside the Necroscope was dedicated to their destruction. For he knew that if the terrible Lords and Ladies of the Wamphyri weren t put down then that they must surely enslave mankind. But in the end himself a vampire and righting the Thing within him to his last breath even Harry gave in died and was no more. Oh really . . . But for every rule there has to be an exception and Harry Keogh Necroscope was he is the exception to the rule of negative interaction between the Great Majority and the living. For in life he was the master of the Mobius Continuum and used it to pursue vampires. So that now in death . . . Harry Keogh was not alone in his lifelong war against the Wamphyri. Recruited into E Branch as a youth he had the backing of that most secret of secret organizations almost to the end. And even when Harry was himself no longer entirely human still Ben Trask the Head of E Branch was his friend. It was Trask the human lie detector who saw the truth of Harry: that he would never turn on his own kind but still best to take no chances and Trask had been tasked to hound him from Earth. Nevertheless when at last the Necroscope returned to Sunside Starside to fight his last great battle there he went of his own accord and not because he was driven out. And it was Ben Trask too along with many more members of E Branch who saw who were given to see Harry s passing on the night he died. It was a vision a hologram a real yet unreal thing. They saw The End of Harry as if it were here and now when in fact it occurred in an alien world on the other side of space time. Thirteen witnesses in all in the ops room at E Branch HQ they all saw the same thing: that smoking smouldering hideous corpse cruciform and crucified in midair tumbling backwards head over heels free of the floor as on an invisible spit. And despite the crisped and blackened face Ben Trask had known who it was that this was Harry. And for all that they encircled it still the thing seemed to fall away from them growing smaller receding toward a nebulous origin or destiny out of which ribbons of neon light reached like myriad writhing tentacles to welcome it. The figure dwindled shrank to a mote and finally disappeared. But where it had been An explosion A sunburst of golden fire expanding hugely silently awe NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS 11 somely So that the thirteen observers had gasped and ducked down and despite that this thing was in their group mind they instinctively turned away from the blinding intensity of its glare and of what flew out of it. All except Trask who had shielded his eyes but continued to watch because that was his nature and he must know the truth. And the truth of it had been fantastic. Those myriad golden splinters speeding outwards from the sunburst angling this way and that sentient seeking disappearing into as many unknown places. Those what pieces Of the Necroscope Harry Keogh All that remained of him of what he d been and what he d meant And as the last of them had zipped by Trask and vanished from view so the writhing streamers of red blue and green ghost light had likewise blinked out of existence . . . file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 2 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt . . . Returning the ops room s illumination to normal. Then everyone had known that Harry was no more that he had died in Starside in an alien vampire world. And only Ben Trask Trask the human lie detector recognized the truth of what he had seen and knew that death especially in the Necroscope s case simply wasn t like that. . . Time has passed twenty one years of time during which a different Necroscope but a true son of his Earth father has come to manhood in that same alien world that claimed Harry. And no less than his father Nathan Kiklu called Keogh by his friends in our world is a vampire hunter. But Nathan has his own problems and hunts his enemies in Sunside Starside. Between the Earth and Nathan s parallel vampire world are two Gates. One is natural the other came into being when an ill conceived Soviet experiment backfired. The first Gate lies along the route of a subterranean river flowing through a cavern system under the foothills of the frowning Carpatii Meridionals the Transylvanian Alps. The second Gate lies in an artificial complex built in the late 70s and early 80s by the Soviets in the base of the Perchorsk ravine in the northern reaches of the Uralski Khrebet Russia s Ural Mountains. While E Branch has access to and control of the natural Gate the Perchorsk Complex lies outside the Branch s sphere of influence. Closed down five years ago by the Russian premier who diverted water from the Perchorsk dam into the mainly ruinous scientific complex to flood it recently the artificial Gate has been reopened by the leader of a burgeoning military faction. This was done out of greed the power mad Russian general who ordered it had found out that Sunside Starside is rich in gold he and a platoon of soldiers went through into Starside in an attempt to fathom the extent of its riches. Their expedition coincided with a vampire resurgence the Russians were taken and before the general was done away with two Lords and a Lady of the Wamphyri extracted from him and the men in his command knowledge of our world. Under constant guerilla attack by Nathan the three Great Vampires Wamphyri decided to take their chances on Earth. Invaders albeit secret invaders 13 i BRIAN LUMLEY they used the natural Gate to enter our world at E Branch s Romanian Refuge a special hospice for traumatized orphans on the banks of the Danube at the junction of Romania Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia. Slaughtering the Refuge s personnel and inmates the trio split up dispersing themselves abroad in the world . . . E Branch alone knew of the vampire invasion. Zek Foener the love of Ben Trask s life had died in the massacre at the Romanian Refuge but in her final moments the telepath contacted Trask to tell him what was happening. Thus Trask was with her when she died at which moment in his grief of griefs he had vowed revenge But the rest of the world couldn t mustn t be told. Else panic at the thought of an invisible almost invincible plague loose among us would run riot. E Branch s Minister Responsible must be told however and he gave the Branch carte blanche to track down and destroy the monsters out of Starside. Moreover liaison with many of the world s great powers guaranteed their assistance too in the event that Trask s organization should need it. These were of course covert agreements only the most tried and trusted leaders were privy to the facts and then not to all the facts . . . Some three years after the invasion finally E Branch locators human bloodhound trackers of men and monsters picked up the mindsmog spoor of the Wamphyri in Western Australia s desolate Gibson Desert. But even as plans were made to counter the menace so a timely quirk of synchronicity not to mention the paradox of a once familiar phenomenon took place. Jake Cutter a young man with a dubious record had been incarcerated in a top security Turin prison for certain acts of vengeance which in fact amounted to murder. But murder only insofar as the law s legal definition. For Jake had taken revenge on a gang of drug running thugs and rapists affiliates of the Russian Mafia who had brutalized and murdered a woman of his intimate acquaintance. In answer to Jake s revenge serial killings the leader of the gang a mysterious Sicilian called Luigi Castellano made arrangements to have Jake killed inside the prison. Learning of this Jake had attempted to escape. But prison guards in Castellano s pay had opened fire on him as he scaled the prison wall. In which moment of extreme danger there had come an astonishing intervention. At first Jake had thought that he d been shot he had actually seen the bullet or the track of a golden bullet or the coruscation of its ricochet or something strike home into his forehead. And then he had fallen but not to the hard packed earth of the prison s exercise yard. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 3 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Instead Jake had fallen into the Mobius Continuum and instantaneously more than five hundred miles through the Continuum to Harry s Room at E Branch HQ in London Harry s Room which decades earlier had provided accommodation for the original Necroscope during his brief tenure as prospective Head of Branch and which Branch espers had since maintained in pristine condition. NECROSCOPE. DEFILERS Simultaneous with Jake s appearance at E Branch HQ so the same espers especially the locator David Chung sensed that something of the Necroscope had returned. Trask however remembering what Harry had become before he quit Earth for Starside could scarcely help but wonder what facet of him had come home. And Trask was also given to wonder: when Harry Keogh died had his vampire been purged or had it purged him . . . The three invaders from Starside are Lords Malinari and Szwart and the female Vavara. Malinari The Mind a mentalist of phenomenal power Lord Szwart who is the very essence of darkness a constantly mutating victim and survivor of his own metamorphic nature and Vavara whose hypnotic disguise is that of a beautiful woman when in fact she is a hag. When these Great Vampires came into our world they brought four lieutenant servitors with them one of whom Korath Mindsthrall whose name identified him as being in thrall to Malinari the Mind was sacrificed as a means of gaining entry to the Romanian Refuge. Thus when the vampire trio destroyed the Refuge butchered its staff and inmates and took new thralls before splitting up and venturing out into our world Korath Mindsthrall s dead and broken body was left behind pulped and drowned in a metal pipe in the shattered sump of the gutted Refuge. The true death for a vampire thrall whose ambitions were always above his station or so Malinari had suspected. For Korath had been his man for long and long and a great deal of Malinari had rubbed off on his lieutenant. Too much for his own good . . . Meanwhile in the Mobius Continuum some faint echo some fragment residual memory ghost or intelligence of the Necroscope Harry Keogh had become aware of scarlet life threads where they crossed the blue threads of men. One such blue life thread was Jake Cutter s and because of its prevalence in some future conflict the Harry revenant traced it back to its source ... to Jake in the Turin prison and indeed to the rigged jailbreak. But the revenant had its limitations spread throughout all the Universes of Light Harry s presence his ability to effect changes in the mundane world of men was at best tenuous. Also his nature and Jake s were opposites in so many ways and yet very much of a kind in so many others. And here he was the very man Jake Cutter himself as unknown to the spirit of the ex Necroscope as Harry was to him about to die under the hammer blows of brutal bullets. But down future time streams Harry had seen Jake s blue thread crossed by scarlet vampire threads and the once Necroscope knew for a fact that what will be has been or that it would be. Wherefore Jake s life couldn t possibly end here. But how to save it The answer came in a moment but without Harry s instigation A golden dart one of his myriad familiars striking home in Jake s head to enhance whatever there was of the metaphysical in a currently mundane mind. A dart of knowledge yes and a set of scrolling numbers like a computer screen running DKlAINLUMLtY amok conjuring the Mobius Continuum which in its turn bore Jake to Harry s Room at E Branch HQ in London . . . Australia and Trask took Jake along for the ride. For whatever Trask s misgivings and he of all men should know the truth of things the rest of his espers saw Jake as a possible answer and perhaps the only answer to their needs: a weapon as powerful as anything the Wamphyri could bring to bear. But first of course he must accept what had happened and come to terms with it learn to utilize the great gifts that he may have received which as yet remained undeveloped in him. To which end and between times when the Keogh revenant was able it he spent time with Jake usually in Jake s subconscious mind his dreams when he was relaxed and more receptive of esoteric knowledge. But just like Ben Trask the ex Necroscope found Jake obstinate cynical and frequently infuriating. For Jake had his own agenda a certain Sicilian criminal called Luigi Castellano and until that had been dealt with he knew he could never be his own man or anyone else s . . . In the nighted gurgling black sump of the ruined Romanian Refuge Harry and Jake used deadspeak to talk to the sloughed away Korath Mindsthrall where his polished bones clattered endlessly in the swirling water of a filtration conduit and they learned the histories of Malinari Szwart and Vavara. And now the ex Necroscope can only hope that in the waking world Jake will remember file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 4 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt what he learned in dreams. But here a problem: Despite Harry s warnings Jake of his own cognizance his own free will has agreed a pact with Korath giving him limited access to his mind. For without the vampire he could never remember Harry s numbers the formulae that conjure the Mobius Continuum. And without Jake the dead but still dangerous very dangerous vampire can never stray from his watery grave. Together however they have the incredible mobility of the Mobius Continuum. Moreover Korath once Mindsthrall now knows hope where no hope existed. Enabled he can now begin scheming toward a suddenly feasible future . . . On Australia s South Pacific coast Trask and his team of espers have tracked down and attacked Lord Nephran Malinari in his casino aerie in the Macpher son Range of mountains his lieutenants and various vampirized victims have been killed destroyed utterly but the Great Vampire himself has escaped. Jake Cutter played a major part in what measure of success E Branch enjoyed but aware of his compromised position and alone in this knowledge unable or unwilling to tell Trask and his espers about his problem he can find little or no satisfaction in his newfound status within the organization. All Jake wanted was to be rid of a strange unwelcome tenant: the ex Necroscope Harry who had seemed intent on taking up partial and perhaps even permanent residence in his head. But now that Harry has gone a very UECILtKS different and far more devious intruder has taken his place. Now too Jake finds himself plagued by Harry s warning: Alive or dead makes no great difference. Never let a vampire into your mind As for Ben Trask: many of his concerns have been assuaged but still there are questions that remain unanswered. Foremost among them: why Jake Why has this problematic young man been chosen apparently against his will for work as important as this Jake Cutter spoiled as a child unruly as a youth and reckless as a man. Why him And not only the Head of E Branch but the ex Necroscope too in his immundane incorporeal fashion has wondered why. For those myriad attendant golden darts revenant of his once being are apart from Harry and given to act of their own accord. He is the advance guard and scout but they are the soldiers the army. Thus it was with Jake: the ex Necroscope found his life thread and so found him but the dart struck home of its own cognizance. Why Why was Jake chosen Perhaps Harry should look to his own past for an answer but in certain cases the past may be just as devious as the future. Even in a mind freed of bodily restraints there are bound to be blank spots times and places that remain forever unremembered. And in the Necroscope s life entire years were lost like pages torn from a book. Perhaps the answer lies there . . . PHUT one IMAGES 1 IMAGES OF THE PAST Ben Trask and his people were home again but there was little enough time for rest and recuperation. The world might well be described as a small planet but it was still a big place its evils were many and England had always had its fair share. Compared with what Trask and his principal espers David Chung the locator and lan Goodly the precog had encountered in Australia the routine of E Branch HQ seemed drab and almost boring. Almost. But here in the heart of London in Trask s own even smaller world of gadgets and ghosts he knew that he could never really get bored. For even when the ghosts were quiet the gadgets would keep right on going and vice versa though often as not they were active at the same time. Right now the gadgets in the shape of the HQ s telephones its ground based and satellite communication systems its computers TVs and video screens were in ascendance catching up on time lost when Trask a handful of his espers and technicians plus a couple of new people had been out of touch by virtue of their work on the other side of the world. But the Head of E Branch knew that the ghosts would come into their own soon enough. He knew it because he commanded them. Ghosts of a sort anyway. And for eight days now he had been steadily working his way through all the paperwork sorting the priority jobs detailing his workforce to whichever tasks best suited their various talents and generally breaking up the logjam. It had to be done because Trask knew that sooner or later he d be on his way once again that he personally would be on his way for this was a personal thing file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 5 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt now out into a world threatened by the greatest of all possible evils. An evil born in another world with a name that was similarly alien and undisguisably evil . . . Wamphyri Despite that there was other work to be done this was the name and the 21 thought that was uppermost in Trask s mind where he sat at his desk in his office at the end of the main corridor in E Branch HQ pen in hand but stilled for the moment not scratching away at one or another of a hundred different documents and forms. Stilled brought to an abrupt halt by this sudden thought or perhaps not so sudden because for some three years now it had never been far from his mind that in a world where Zek was no more in this monstrously unbelievably depleted world the Wamphyri were. They were here and because of them she was not. And he was surprised to hear the rumble in his throat that was a growl trying to escape surprised to see his hand turning white where it now gripped the pen like a dagger. The Wamphyri: Malinari and Szwart and Vavara alive or undead in his world the world where they had murdered Zek And still her last words her last thoughts which she had sent winging to him sighing in his memory from which he could never hope to erase them and would never want to but guessed he d be the better man for it if he could. Goodbye Ben. I love you . .. Then the blinding flash of white light that had woken him up that time three years ago which he had hoped was only the glare of his bedside lamp perhaps blinking into life where his arm had hit the cord as he threshed in his nightmare. Trask had hoped so yes but deep inside he d known it wasn t so. For the truth and Ben Trask were soul mates. The truth was his talent and sometimes his curse. Times such as that time. That blinding flash of white light. . . . . . Which wasn t white at all but green and which wasn t blinding but merely blinking. One of the tiny lights on Trask s desk console drawing him back to Earth to the present to the now. He unfroze tripped a switch spoke to the duty officer: What is it His voice was a harsh rasp. Sorry to interrupt you boss the answer came back Paul Garvey s voice even softer than usual. Garvey was a full blown telepath and despite Branch protocol a mainly unspoken policy that espers would never use their talents on each other still it was possible he d inadvertently detected something of Trask s mood of introspection. This one s for you. It s Premier Gustav Turchin calling from Calcutta said Trask cutting the other short. And casting a glance at the small occasional table where he d deposited the morning newspapers he frowned. Right said Garvey. He s calling from The German embassy Trask nodded understanding dawning. The sly old bastard After a pause mystified Garvey said Well you seem to be way ahead of me Anyway it sounds urgent. Earth Year Trask said nodding to himself. El Nino had let India off light this time around but the world s rapidly changing weather patterns were only one of the Earth s problems. Pollution was NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS another and a big one Turchin would be in Calcutta to lie his head off at the Earth Year Conference there answering Russia s accusers in that respect. Not that he would want to for just like Trask he knew the truth of it: that indeed the destitute Russian military was muddying the world s waters. But at least the conference one of many Earth Year conferences would free him from several far more weighty problems back home. It would also make him the spokesman of his people helping with his image to boot. In Brisbane Trask had worked out a deal with the premier: his help with Turchin s problems in return for certain important information this could be it coming through right now. As for where it was coming from: The morning newspapers carried the story. Last night Turchin had been insulted by Hans Bruchmeister one of the German delegates. There and then he d threatened to abandon the conference fly home and leave the rest of them to get on with it. But since Russia along with the USA was alleged to be one of the worst offenders what would the conference amount to without a Russian representative The other delegates had tried to cool things down but Turchin had insisted: When I have received Herr Bruchmeister s apology when I ve stood face to face with him in the German Embassy here in Calcutta bearding the lion in his own den as it were then and only then will I be encouraged to stay. For after all I m the Russian premier. And I must consider my file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 6 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt reputation and the honour of my people . . . Of course Herr Bruchmeister had been persuaded to apologise with the result that Gustav Turchin was now in the German Embassy building in Calcutta. But: Oh sure thought Trask reading between the lines understanding the real meaning of the report. Bearding the lion in his den bollocks Turchin engineered the whole thing in order to get a few minutes on a secure line and speak to me Paul Garvey was waiting patiently and Trask said Patch him through to my office will you Just pick up your telephone Garvey answered. I ve put him on scrambled so there may be some static. The intercom quit blinking and one of Trask s telephones took over the job. He picked it up and said Trask And an edgy voice on the other end said Ben You appear to be busy. I told your man this was urgent. It s only been a minute Trask answered. It felt like an hour the other grunted and continued: Look I m in the German embassy and this is supposed to be a secure line And scrambled at my end Trask told him. But it s still risky. I like to keep my conversations as private as possible. So I ll be brief and probably a little cryptic. Wait said Trask and tripped his intercom switch to the Duty Officer. Paul is John Grieve in Good. Find him and tell him he s needed in my office right now. Then back to Turchin: Okay go ahead and I ll try to follow you. You . . . and your Mr. Grieve said the other. That s right Trask answered. You could say he s my interpreter. And to himself: When the gadgets can t get it done then it s time for the ghosts Your E Branch always did have the pick of the crop Turchin said knowingly a touch of jealousy coming through. And Trask told him Yes but all natural grown. It s well known that when you force a crop the produce is usually inferior. We re blunt today said the other as a knock sounded on Trask s door. in Blunt and highly pissed off Trask told him. And then to the door: Come Ahl said Turchin. Mr. Grieve. And now we can get on. But tell me: what s pissing you off Ben Admin Trask told him. Frustration. All the duties that won t let me get to my real duty. Too many small things getting in the way of the big things. And then he sighed. I m sorry I was rude. But still this isn t a good day to try er bearding me in my den I assure you And I am sorry I was so impatient said Turchin. Nerves are showing on both sides it seems. As for bearding you his voice lightened up a little you ve obviously read this morning s papers. The Times perhaps Trask switched the phone to his desk speaker and said Yes. Your little tiff at the conference You re getting good at that sort of subterfuge. But very well now you can be as cryptic as you like. John Grieve had come in and was standing by the desk with a notepad. Grieve was in his mid to late fifties and had been with E Branch for half that time at least. Despite being extraordinarily talented he had never been a field operative Trask and previous Heads of Branch had found him too useful in the HQ as duty officer or on standby to send him into the far more dangerous world outside. In any case he wasn t a particularly physical sort of person. A little pudgy now a lifetime smoker and short of breath he was balding grey and prematurely aged. But he was also upright smart as his physical condition would permit polite and very British. With his head held high and stomach pulled in to the best of his ability he might be an ex Army officer or maybe a failed businessman to the man in the street anyway. But in fact he had always been E Branch and Trask relied upon him. Sometimes heavily. In earlier times Grieve had two extrasensory talents one of which had been dodgy Branch parlance for an as yet undeveloped ESP ability and the other quite remarkable and possibly unique. The first had been the gift of far seeing remote viewing which had eventually ceased to work for him his crystal ball had finally clouded over. But in any case this lost ability had probably been a facet of his greater talent which was a different slant on telepathy. And with the loss of his scrying so his telepathic skill had increased proportionately. The trouble with his far seeing had been that he needed to know exactly file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 7 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 23 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS where and what he was looking for otherwise he could see nothing. His talent hadn t worked at random but required direction it had to be aimed at a definite target. And Grieve s special brand of telepathy which at times like this was invaluable was somewhat similar. For yet again he must aim his talent: he could read a person s mind only when they were face to face when he was talking or listening to the target . . . even on the telephone And so like Trask there was no way anyone could lie to John Grieve not directly and on occasions like this his skill made every kind of mechanical scrambler redundant. That in the main was why he could usually be found on duty at the HQ. For his was one ghost that worked hand in hand with many of the gadgets . . . Trask had indicated to Grieve that he should stand beside him he did so and placed his notepad on the desk where Trask could see it. Then the Head of Branch spoke again to the Russian premier. So what s up Gustav And Turchin answered Not long ago we talked about oh this and that a few small problems some of them mutual but nothing hugely important. Perhaps you remember Indeed I do said Trask and Grieve quickly scribbled on his pad: Big stuff You asked if I could locate someone for you the Russian premier continued. An old friend who flits about the Mediterranean quite a bit Luigi Castellano And: Ah yes said Trask. Old what s his name Can t seem to find hide nor hair of him. But then he always did keep a low profile. Oh I don t know about that Turchin appeared contradictory. Marseilles Genoa Palermo . . . He keeps in touch with the old gang. And he also has a good many new friends in my neck of the woods too or so I m told. Grieve wrote: Mob. Mafia. Russian Mafia. But I knew that much already said Trask. What I really need to know is his whereabouts at any specific time so that I can . . . well contact him you know I mean I owe him and you know how I hate being in anyone s debt. One of your finer points yes. Turchin chuckled. But as I was about to say I ve been looking for him myself and for pretty much the same reasons all of the good things he s done for us and never asks a rouble in return. Not that I have much to offer him anyway. But now that you ve opened my eyes to him well I really do think we should be more appreciative. Grieve scribbled furiously. Turchin wants him too. Drugs. L C. s making millions he s helping to ruin both Russia s economy and the world s health Turchin hadn t realized how bad the drugs trafficking situation was. Now that he has he wants L C. taken out. Well what do you suggest Trask said. Are you going to take care of it Will you make some sort of presentation ... or should I see to it If it s me please remember that I m still in the dark as to his whereabouts the old gadfly Well it s like this said Turchin. I ve had one of our local people back home come and see me someone who owes me for a change. In a week or so he ll introduce and recommend an intermediary to our mutual friend perhaps as a new club member Then we sit back and wait for a report place date and time. I think that should do it. Hmmm Trask mulled it over giving John Grieve time to scrawl: He s coerced someone in the Russian mob to introduce an undercover agent to Castellano. When his man has learned L C. s routines he ll get back to us with a venue. And Turchin continued But I m afraid the presentation is going to have to be of your own devising and preferably on our friend s home ground. The greater shame is that what with these Earth Year conferences and what have you I won t be available. I can t be involved personally if you see what I mean . . . Whatever you decide to do with Castellano it will have to be on L. C s or our territory. Turchin doesn t want any part of it. Yes I understand said Trask. You want to keep it politically correct. Well I do have a certain position to maintain . . . He s much higher profile than we are and would make a bigger target. And of course Trask said you don t want to commit too many of your own resources. Meaning the Opposition Russia s own equivalent of E Branch of which Turchin was now the head man. Simply can t said the other. There s so much going on. I mean on a higher plane you know Up in the Urals. Perchorsk. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 8 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt And Trask thought He s committed his espers to getting me those details on the Perchorsk Complex and Gate. While out loud he said: Ah well it can t be helped. But still we ve got things moving at least. I m glad that s all sorted now. Oh but we ve a long way to go yet Ben. I ll be in touch as soon as I ve filled in some blank spots. But if I seem a bit vague I m sure you ll understand. He ll fax you some stuff. In Code. But nothing you ll have too much trouble with. Good said Trask. And tried to finish it off with: Talk to you later . . . But the other wasn t ready to let him go. Wait he said and that edge an edge of fear was back in his voice. We had also talked about a little personal problem of mine Well time is pressing I expect that very soon people will be looking for answers and you mentioned some sort of solution that you might eventually have to hand How are things going on that front Perchorsk again Russian military types Putting some kind of squeeze on him And Necroscope Grieve raised a surprised and querying eyebrow looked at Trask. Trask shrugged it off for the moment and said I m working on it. Believe me Gustav you ll be the first to know. But until then . . . well I still have a few very big problems of my own. Three of them in fact. Ah yes of course But you ll also recall we talked over the possibility of your retirement and a place in the sun Political asylum. Defection. But his not yours. Indeed I do. Well keep it in mind said the other. I would like to be able to visit with you some time that is if you do decide it s time you settled down. For you read I. He is talking about himself. If or when he makes a run for it he wants to come to us. And of course you d be welcome said Trask. My time s up said Turchin. I have accepted ahem Herr Bruchmeister s apology and he has allowed me these couple of minutes in private away from my er retinue Your cretinue Trask grinned however wryly. Precisely to make this call. Let s not leave it so long next time said Trask. Goodbye Ben said the premier. And the line went dead . . . Trask looked up and John Grieve was still there. Their eyes met and Trask said Do you want me to explain I mean a better or more complete explanation than the one you have now Only if you re so inclined Grieve answered. But in any case I think I got the gist of it except maybe that bit about a Necroscope. I mean Turchin knows we have a Necroscope Trask shrugged. He s a pretty shrewd old fox. But anyway don t go worrying your head about it. He s only guessing. And I will explain . . . but not just to you. He glanced at his watch. 1350. I m giving a briefing in just ten minutes so I d better be on my way. Whistle the rest of them up will you John Especially Liz Merrick and Jake Cutter. I want every available man in the ops room in ten minutes espers and techs alike and woe betide any absentee who doesn t have a watertight excuse. After Grieve had left Trask sat there for a moment feeling old. Hell he was old now. Or getting there anyway. The reason he felt it so much on this occasion was because he d failed out there in Brisbane Australia. He d failed Zek failed to kill the one who had killed her. And so back to that again. It was eating at him like acid and he couldn t afford to let it. Because that way the bastards would win. They would win and the world of men or of mankind s domination would die or undie. There would still be men but they would be slaves thralls and the women would be odalisques chattel cattle. And the blood would be the life but not human life. And everyone would be food. That was why Malinari and the other two were here but how they hoped to achieve it how they planned to bring it about in a world with equal amounts of night and day that was something else as yet unfathomed. Or perhaps not for out there in Australia there d been clues. Which was one of the things Trask must talk about he checked his watch again in just five minutes time. He went to straighten his tie but wasn t wearing one. Too damn hot in this ongoing never ending bloody El Nino summer. Talk about Australia. Huh Trask stood up slid out from behind his desk and paced to the door paused shook his head in disgust and went back again. And picking up his notes from the pending tray he thought: Old and absenttninded . me Ben Trask who once thought he d be young forever. That was Zek. With Zek I could be young until I died. Or until she died. And she did. But he knew what would make him young again: to see Malinari cut down beheaded burned to ashes. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 9 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Malinari and the other two and all of theirs that they d corrupted. When they d gone then he d be young again. For a little while anyway. But what the hell . . . this was E Branch and in the Branch you could get old pretty damn fast no matter what. If you lived long enough And: Damn it to belli Trask got angry with himself stamped his feet shook a fist. There s plenty of life in this old dog yet And telling himself that he felt a little better he headed for the ops room. On the way out he remembered to snatch his light summer jacket from the coatstand. . . For some forty odd years now E Branch HQ in the centre of London had occupied the same site. Ostensibly and viewed casually from the outside the place was a well established hotel within easy walking distance of Whitehall down below it was precisely that an expensive hotel. Its top floor however was totally given over to a company of international entrepreneurs which was and had always been the sum total of a string of hotel managers knowledge about it. The seldom seen occupants of that unknown upper region had their own elevator at the rear of the building private stairs also at the rear and entirely closed off from the hotel itself even their own fire escape. Indeed they they being the only identification one might reasonably apply in such circumstances owned the top floor and so fell entirely outside the hotel s sphere of control and operation. And while their private elevator gave them access to the hotel s restaurants and various facilities the hotel s elevators stopped short of the top floor. Their indicator panels didn t even show that such a floor existed. So that just like floor thirteen in many another hotel E Branch simply wasn t there. Except it was. The ops and briefings room was at the opposite end of the main corridor from Trask s office. Walking down that corridor he necessarily passed Harry s Room. An old name plate looking a little tatty and spotted now said just that: HARRY S ROOM Trask paused and tried the doorknob. They had had knobs in those days not handles. Now they didn t even have handles You just blinked at an eye level spot marked ID if the door recognized you it would let you in. Trask had often wondered about that: how did dwarves manage Did they have to jump up and down or were they given special rooms And what about someone sporting a recent black or bloodshot eye But Harry s Room was undisturbed. It had remained the same ever since he d stayed over here when for a time he d considered a position as Head of Branch. That had come to nothing and he d moved on but the impression he d made had stayed. And no one had ever thought to change Harry s Room not even in the slightest degree. The door was locked its key swung on a hook in the D.O. s key press no one went into Harry s Room because . . . well just because. Because it was a region out of time and sometimes out of space. Because it was still his room . . . And Trask moved on but Harry stayed with him. Harry. Harry Keogh Necroscope. The only man in the world in this world anyway who could talk to dead people. And Trask shivered despite the unaccustomed warmth. The only man who had spoken to Zek in life who would have been able to speak to her even in ... in ... But he must put that out of his mind. For now out of the blue there was another. And Trask didn t know if he liked the idea of Jake Cutter speaking to Zek. With Harry there had been warmth courtesy humility and understanding. But Jake Cutter . . . was Jake Cutter. And there was something about him still something about him despite that he d made a bloody good show of it out in Australia that Trask couldn t fathom. Perhaps that was it: simply that he was unfathomable to Ben Trask anyway. For Trask s talent no longer worked on him face to face with Jake his built in lie detector switched off. The man s mental shields were that strong and getting stronger. Why he could be lying his head off and Trask wouldn t know it not for sure He d probably suspect that something wasn t quite right might even suspect his own talent but had no way to determine the truth of it one way or the other. It was much the same for many of Trask s espers. lan Goodly had difficulty reading Jake s future even Liz Merrick who had something of a rapport with Jake could get into his mind only when he was asleep and his shields were down. And that was yet another reason why Trask . . . why he didn t like him Why he couldn t cotton to him Because it was Trask himself the boss the faultless Head of E Branch who must break the Branch s unspoken moral code by using Liz to discover what was going on in there in Jake s unruly head. Unruly yes and Trask was sure that he still had his own agenda that given the chance he d go file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 10 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt off and do his own thing and maybe even get himself killed doing it. What Luigi Castellano A gang boss drug runner torturer and murderer with the Italian and French police some of them anyway in his pay and Mafia contacts deep in the heart of degenerate Russia You couldn t be a one man army against odds like that and get away with it. You needed backing. Backing such as E Branch might be willing to supply and even Gustav Turchin if only Jake would back off and give them the chance. If only he d accept that he now had responsibilities ranging far wider than the gratification of his own blood lust. And: Hah Trask gave a derisive snort. Jake Cutter s blood lust indeed But the fact was that Trask wanted Jake for himself to use in satisfying bis blood lust his craving for the blood and the lives of the Wamphyri. At the end of the corridor people were going into the ops room. Two minutes said John Grieve catching up with Trask and passing him. And three of four more of them right behind him making sure they d be there before he got started. He paused at the doors to let them go by looked back and saw that the corridor was now empty and followed them in ... The ops room. Half of it given over to gadgets mainly communications like the eye in the sky links that could zoom in on an ongoing battle in Ethiopia and show you a pretty decent indecent picture of a soldier grinning as he pushed his bayonet up the anus of a crucified rebel. Or the links to GCHQ the listening station that could tap any insecure and some secure telephone conversations anywhere in the world. Or the extraps computers whose sole function was to extrapolate: to use as many as possible of the known conditions of today s world to try to determine and describe the world of tomorrow. Pretty amazing stuff. . . until you realized what it really was that all it was was a disassociated brain controlling nothing whatsoever. Using it you could see and hear but you could never taste smell or touch. And except on rare occasions you couldn t change anything either. Trask sometimes likened it to God but not exactly because God is omniscient and the computer can know only what you tell it even an extrap is only guessing but he likened it to God because of his belief that He was of omnipotent. Having given men free will how could He possibly control their actions Even if He could how could He apply himself to any single act How could He select or correct or counter any single atrocity when a million more were happening simultaneously all over the world Answer: He couldn t. . . and in Trask s case He hadn t. Trask had thought a great deal about God since Zek s passing. He had tried to come to terms with Him but as yet hadn t quite managed it. Instead he put his faith in the gadgets and the ghosts. The ops room and its gadgets which were usually attended by the techs the men who controlled them. But gadgets like God in Trask s eyes at least simply couldn t do everything. And much less than God their eyes and ears couldn t be everywhere at once. Hence the ghosts. For where it takes time to make a telephone or video call telepathy is instantaneous. And where mechanical extraps could only guess at future events precogs such as lan Goodly occasionally glimpsed the future. And however diligently spies in the sky might search for chemical and nuclear pollutants in the world s continents and living oceans locators like David Chung could actually sniff them out like an X ray finding a cancer. In other words and insofar as Trask s weirdly skilled agents really did touch taste and smell much of the otherwise invisible they were in many ways superior to the machines principally in that they didn t need programming . . . but there were times when they did need inspiring. Electrical and mechanical clatter the hum and buzz and stutter from the other side of the large room fell to a minimum as Trask climbed four steps up to the podium then turned to face a semicircular array of chairs in three ranks so organized that no one s face was hidden behind anyone else s. And there they were: his ghosts or the people who dealt with them looking right back at him. No niceties he told them then his voice rasping like a file on glass. No congratulations on work well done. I ve been through all that and it was well done but it wasn t finished. So no Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen because it isn t even if you are. It s a bad afternoon it s a black afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Worse it could even be one of the last afternoons before a hellishly long night. And without wanting to seem too melodramatic you may be the only ones standing between the twilight and the final darkness. He looked at all the faces blank emotionless waiting to receive emotion inspiration. But where to find it Why in the truth of course where Trask had always found it. You all know the problem he told them. But until we our Australian team went out there no one knew we couldn t be sure that the problem knew us. Now we know. There are Wamphyri in our world file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 11 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt and they know that we know about them. Which makes it a very different ball game. Now we hunters have to be doubly careful and ensure that we don t end up the hunted. It had happened before some thirty odd years ago when an Earth born vampire Yulian Bodescu blood son of Thibor Ferenczy had set himself against E Branch to destroy it. Then only Harry Keogh and his infant boy child a Necroscope whose powers rivalled his father s had been able to stop the impending destruction of E Branch and the plague of vampires that would have ensued. But Trask didn t need to elaborate his espers had read the files and knew the story almost but not quite as well as he did. But Trask had actually been there. And their faces weren t so much blank or emotionless as respectful deeply respectful. For of all the great survivors who ever were surely Ben Trask must rank among the greatest. And now that he had started now that he d settled down a little and saw how well he commanded the attention of his audience Trask began to recognize those oh so respectful faces. Why he even began to discover likenesses to faces that were no longer there But with all respect the latter were real ghosts now who existed only in fond memory and imagination. Such as Darcy Clarke. Darcy the world s most nondescript man and the one with the world s most effective most beneficent to Darcy and reliable talent. For he had been a deflector the very opposite of accident prone: a man with a guardian angel who could stumble blindfolded through a minefield in snowshoes and come out the other side completely unscathed Darcy had been Head of Branch once over until the thing that had got into Harry Keogh got into him too and robbed him of his guardian. Some might say it was Harry s fault but Trask didn t think so. It was E Branch the job this work that would get them all in the end. Darcy s face lingered on for a second in Trask s memory then it was gone. Gone like Darcy himself. But there were others far too many others ready to take its place crowding in they appeared to superimpose themselves on the new faces in the small crowd of people waiting for Trask to continue. And he couldn t help but remember them. Sir Keenan Gormley first Head of Branch. Trask saw him as he had been: sixtyish and starting to show his age round shoulders on a once well built but inevitably sagging body supporting a short neck and the lofty dome of his head. His green eyes a little muddied but missing very little and laughter lines in their corners that belied the weight of his duties his greying well groomed hair receding just a little. Apart from a minor heart problem common in men of his age Sir Keenan had been good for a lot more years yet. . . bad been until he d met up with Boris Dragosani and Max Batu ESPionage agents for Russian s E Branch. Dra gosani had been a vampire and a necromancer while Batu had been so deadly that he could kill with a glance. His talent had stopped Sir Keenan s heart But all of that had been many years ago and with the collapse of Communism the former USSR had suffered such turmoil it was still in a state of flux and political disarray even today. And in any case Dragosani and Max Batu had long since paid with their lives paid in full and more than paid for all their evil deeds they were gone into far darker places than poor Sir Keenan. All thanks to Harry Keogh. Gormley s face faded from the eye of Trask s memory and in its place in his audience was the living face of John Grieve a contemporary of Sir Keenan s from the old days whose presence here had probably invoked the memory in the first place . . . But that wasn t the end of these faces from the past they came in seemingly endless procession. Faces such as that of the seer Guy Roberts. Cursing irreverent far scrying chain smoking Guy who d been the team leader down in Devon that time after Harry Keogh had warned E Branch about Yulian Bodescu. Trask remembered that time well he still had small white scars back and front under his right collarbone where he d been skewered by a pitchfork s tine in the barn of Bodescu s country seat. That had been one bell of a bad time for E Branch. And hell was the only word that adequately described it. Bodescu a fledgling vampire had killed Guy Roberts or rather he d butchered him battered his head to a pulp as Roberts tried to protect Brenda Keogh and her baby son. But Guy hadn t been alone in paying the price of working for E Branch. Their names . . . they weren t quite legion but that was how Trask thought I L C IV of them. So many friends gone from the world forever. Peter Keen Simon Gower and young Harvey Newton: Bodescu had killed them all. And then there d been Carl Quint blown to bits in the Moldavian foothills at the site of an ancient evil. Their faces came and went and the list went on. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 12 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Alec Kyle another ex Head of Branch: his brain drained of all knowledge by the Opposition s scientists in their HQ at the Chateau Bronnitsy. Kyle was quite literally dead kept alive on their machines until the incorporeal Necroscope had stepped in and inhabited the man s body reanimating it. Trask remembered it well: there d been those who had hinted that maybe Harry had taken advantage of the situation but again Trask had denied it. It hadn t been Harry s fault he d been sucked in by the vacuum that was Kyle s vacant head without which the world would have been in dire straits a long time ago. And on and on. Sandra Markham a neophyte telepath who had been the love of Harry s life during the time of the Janos Ferenczy affair. But Janos s metalism may even have been as great as Nephran Malinari s and when he d got into Sandra s mind . . . that had been the end of that. The end of Sandra too. The Necroscope himself had put the vampirized woman out of her misery which only increased his own. But the list didn t stop there . . . The twice dead Trevor Jordan another telepath tangled in a vampire s web of mentalism. Jordan had put a gun to his own head and pulled the trigger at the behest of Janos Ferenczy. The Necroscope had brought Jordan back from the dead God that such things were or had been possible only to have E Branch kill him a second time believing that Jordan too must be a vampire. For when a man has died he should stay dead. Unless of course he s undead. And Ken Layard a Branch locator who had located something best left undiscovered whom certain of Harry Keogh s friends from beyond the grave had been obliged to deal with in the Zarandului Mountains of Romania. And Zek Foener whose lost but beloved face had firmed up on the neck and shoulders of Millie Cleary. They were so different those two and yet in Trask s affections alike in so many ways. Telepaths for one thing and loyal and true for another. But Zek poor Zek Gone from him these three years and still unavenged: her eyes seemed to stare at him from Millie s ever innocent face. And finally the Necroscope Harry Keogh himself lost in time space and the Mobius Continuum. Dead but not in the way we understand death. Gone . . . but not quite. Harry wearing the face of Alec Kyle as he had worn it in life and somehow made it his own. But here lay a problem because Harry s face simply floated on the eye of memory drifting there and refusing to settle on anyone else s shoulders. And then as Trask searched through those suddenly real faces looking back at him he knew why Harry s face didn t fit. It was because no one in his audience in that small crowd of faces would ever be able to accommodate it. And the one face he was searching for was missing. With that realization the poignancy of Trask s mood gradually turned to anger a slow burn that began to twist his lips into a grimace Until the door to the ops room quietly opened and Jake Cutter and Liz Memck stood there for a moment in the ominous brooding silence and the knowledge that everyone s eyes were on them. Especially on Jake Irask was scarcely surprised to note in those same frozen seconds that Harry Keoghs phantom face fitted Jake to perfection. Which only served to make him more angry yet... 2 OF THE FUTURE Trask s thoughts his reflections had taken a few seconds. But they had felt like hours and he coughed to cover his lapse also to choke back some of his anger. For this was perfectly imperfectly typical of Jake: insubordinate contrary and dilatory to the last. And he had Liz warming to him all the way so that Trask was bound to think: If we can t change him turn him make him wo percent ours it won t only be the waste of one man one esper and all his incredible potential but he ll take Liz with him too And I m still not absolutely sure of him. He looked good out in Australia but ever since then . . . what is it with Jake I mean What the hell is it Thoughts that was all but in this place with people such as these thoughts had weight no less than in the Mobius Continuum. And Liz Merrick was a neophyte telepath. She couldn t send unless it was to Jake or to some other mentalist deliberately scanning her mind but she was a damn good receiver. And despite E Branch s code of not PSIing or as some might irreverently have it pissing on each other she may have inadvertently picked up what Trask was thinking. Certainly her expression was cold where it turned aside his own burning gaze. And before Trask could actually say anything: We were practicing she blurted. And then wryly: Or at least we would have been if I She means we Jake cut in. If we hadn t lost it. But we have. It s gone. He shrugged apparently unconcerned. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 13 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Temporarily gone anyway Liz came back. We were giving it one last try and we ... sort of lost track of time. She bit her lip glanced at Jake accusingly and then away from him. Trask looked at her and read disappointment but not with him. She hadn t eavesdropped inadvertently or otherwise. Her coolness was frustration born of her failure or more likely of Jake s. Then looking at Jake . . . Trask didn t know what he was reading. Nothing truth be told And if this were a game of lie dice in some bar Trask supposed he d be buying the next round Jake s shields were that good. But if you re tellincj the truth why mess with shields Or was this simply a byproduct of Harry Keogh s dart some sort of self regulating or intuitive protective device Well that wasn t totally unanticipated Trask was fairly certain that the original Necroscope had managed to dupe him once or twice too. But all that aside their excuses weren t good enough. All skills wax and wane Trask rasped. No one s talent is in top gear all the time. But there s time for practice and there s time for briefings updates staying in touch knowing what s going down. There s no use being in tip top shape if you don t know what s happening around you no point in my posting a daily routine and calling O groups if people like you simply ignore such obviously unimportant insignificant little items So since you ve already managed to hold things up for several minutes now do take your time but eventually find a couple of chairs . . and sit fucking down Trask generally considered the indiscriminate use of curse words indicative of the lack of an adequate or decent vocabulary he wasn t much given to swearing. But however rarely even he was wont to slip up and curse under pressure or like now use bad language to signal his exasperation or displeasure. His espers recognized that fact and knew when to back off most of them. Liz s face reddened but Jake merely shrugged by no means apologetically and continued to look disinterested. Then they separated she took a seat at the back Jake in the front dead centre. Trask quite deliberately waited his gaze tracking them to their seats. . . Jake Cutter was thirtyish but his looks hinted of life on the fast track and loaned him an extra seven or eight years. As Trask had once heard the country and western singer Johnny Cash explain it a quarter century ago on one of his tours of England It isn t the years but the mileage. So with Jake: he had certainly burned a lot of rubber not to mention candles. He was tall maybe six two long legged and with long arms to match. His hair was a deep brown like his eyes and his face was lean hollow cheeked. In profile he had an altogether angular face. He looked as if a good meal wouldn t hurt but on the other hand the extra weight wouldn t sit right on him it would only serve to slow him down. His lips were thin and even cruel and when he smiled you could never be sure there was any humour in it. But that could have been his background he hadn t had it easy especially the last few years. Jake s hair was long as a lion s mane at the back he kept it swept back braided into a pigtail. His jaw like the rest of his face was angular lightly scarred on the left side and his nose had been broken high on the bridge so that it slanted at a steep angle: hawklike Trask thought. But despite his leanness Jake s chest was deep under shoulders broad and square and his sun bronzed upper arms were corded with muscle. His jeans and T shirt displayed his hard fast body to its full advantage and there was little or nothing of shyness reticence or uncertainty about him. If anything Jake was too quick on the uptake and arrogant with it. Indeed Trask thought he has everything I would have liked to have when I was his age Not jealousy but simple frustration: that all of this could end up wasted. But not if Trask had anything to do with it. As for Liz Merrick: well he wasn t about to let her go to waste either As a telepath she was just too valuable. Out in Australia despite that her men talism hadn t fully matured yet she d worked well had seemed a natural. So that if or when her talent came more fully into its own . . . well Trask just wanted to see it happen that was all ... Liz had settled into her seat looked a little less flustered now. She was a very good looking girl no a woman Trask corrected himself. She was maybe five seven willow waisted and her figure was film star stuff. Her hair as black as night was cut in a boyish bob and when she smiled her whole face lit up. A pity she didn t do it more frequently but working for E Branch was a pretty serious occupation. Damn but she d used to smile a lot before Jake Cutter. Trask looked at Cutter sitting in the front row just slumping there with his long legs stretched out in front as if he didn t have a care in the world. The next Necroscope Jake Huh Trask felt his temperature beginning to rise got off Jake and looked at Liz again: Her green eyes looking back at him from under that fringe of jet black hair. A pert nose the only way to describe it really that could very quickly tilt when she was annoyed. Her full mouth with file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 14 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt lips so naturally red they needed only a daily dab of moistening colour sitting slightly aslant over a small determined chin that was wont to set like a rock when her mind was made up. Still very young Liz was full of life and character and the fact was that Trask found it a damn shame that she had ever got mixed up with this lot with his lot yes in the first place. For unless she was very fortunate or one of a kind the job was bound to age her he knew. But what the That was no way to be thinking In fact she was the very stuff of E Branch and the Branch always came first. Trask knew that it came first with Liz too knew that she fitted in here almost as if born to it and wanted nothing more than to be a member of the team. Or at least that was what she had wanted her eager smile and readiness to join in had always said so. So what had changed now For as Trask had so recently observed Liz wasn t much given to smiling. Not any longer. It could be that he had put too much on her out in Australia that she d grown up too fast out there seen too much and come too close until she d realized just how rough dirty and dangerous the work could get. Or it could be that her so called rapport with Jake was breaking down and that maybe a different kind of rapport was developing. As for that kind: E Branch could do without such complications. But the two of them developing and working in unison what a force for good they might make Would make if Ben Trask had his way . . . Right he let his gaze rove over his audience and began again. Now that we re all here maybe we can get on. Those of you who weren t with us out in the Gibson Desert and later in the Macpherson Mountains resort and Jethro Manchester s island will by now have read up on the initial report. Well as reports go it isn t a bad one but it was very quickly prepared and obviously doesn t tell the entire story that will come later and I won t waste time on it here. So this isn t so much a debrief as my opportunity to reiterate to tell you what we ve achieved and what we failed to achieve what little we learned and a lot more that we can only guess at though usually our guesswork is closer to the mark than most. First what we did: With all credit to David Chung for picking up the first whiff of mind smog we successfully located and destroyed Nephran Malinari s bolt hole in the Gibson Desert. We also took out one of his lieutenants the engineer Bruce Trennier who Malinari had recruited at the Romanian Refuge. He had only had Trennier for three years but he d done a good job on him. that one was . . . nasty There s no question in my mind that Trennier was well on his way to becoming Wamphyri This time the credit goes to Liz Merrick she challenged Trennier called on him to draw as it were lured him from his hole and faced him down. And we the rest of the team finished it off cut him down and bunted the poor bastard to a black smoking crisp Trask took a deep breath grunted his satisfaction and continued: We also took out his thralls an entire nest of them well gone into vampirism. But as you are all well aware there isn t any point of no return for victims of vampirism even part gone is way too far gone. So we did them a favour for there was no hope for any of them. But Trennier and Malinari were linked telepathically. In the moments of Trennier s dying he contacted his master which David Chung likewise picked up a momentary contact which nevertheless led us to Brisbane and the Macpherson Range and also to a second bolt hole. Malinari had taken control of Jethro Manchester s Xanadu a holiday resort in the Macphersons. The place was an up market aerie somewhat removed from any manse that he d ever inhabited in Starside In fact his seat was a luxurious bubble apartment over Xanadu s central Pleasure Dome . . . would you believe a casino Now if we were cynics which I know we sometimes are by virtue of our talents that sort of thing might even give us pause about Las Vegas right Trask appeared to have lightened up a little his audience appreciated it and there were even one or two wry smiles nodding heads. But hey let s not go into that he jokingly went on. Lord knows that place has always had its bloodsuckers Some muted laughter now from Trask s audience. But as they settled down again the smile was gone from his face as if it had never been there. He d simply been setting them up. And now the punch line: Xanadu is in ruins gutted like a fish Trask rasped no slightest trace of humour in his sandpaper voice. Gutted yes which wasn t down to us but to Malinari. He did it to us or he tried to and we were damned lucky he didn t pull it off Likewise on Jethro Manchester s island: his thralls there knew we were coming even though they weren t any too well prepared. But then again maybe they hadn t wanted to be ready for us for file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 15 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt after all they were just people dupes victims. So what I m telling you is this: that Nephran Malinari this bloody vampire this Lord of the Wamphyri that he knows about us He probably got quite a lot from . . . from poor Zek a little from Trennier and God only knows how much from us when we were out there in such close proximity to him. He s a telepath no more properly a mentalist a fabulously talented creature with vast reserves of what we call ESP and he s our deadliest enemy since . . . well since the day we caused the vampire world to turn on its axis and destroyed Devetaki Skullguise and her brood in Starside. That s how dangerous he is. And he escaped got clean away . . . where to we don t yet know though we have evidence that suggests he s no longer down under in Australia. But wherever he is one thing seems certain: finding and dealing with Malinari isn t going to get any easier the next time around. . . . Okay be got away. But his people or those poor damned souls who were once people they didn t. We can at least congratulate ourselves that we got that right. So we re now satisfied about as far as we can be that the Australian continent is free of contamination. Naturally we d like to keep it that way and to be absolutely sure I ll be detailing a locator a couple of spotters and maybe a telepath to go back out there and pick it up where we left off. There were clues we didn t get the opportunity to look into and other stuff that still needs tracking down. So those of you who ll be involved: I m sorry for the short notice but time is of the essence. We can no longer afford to sit around doing nothing while three Great Vampires out of Starside are on the loose preparing God only knows what mayhem and madness for our world. Very well we ll know who s going within the next twenty four hours and after that the lucky ones will have just enough time to pack before they re heading down under . . . Trask paused to glance at his notes then nodded and said A moment ago I posed something of a question. And it s a question that has to be in everyone s mind. Just what are Malinari Szwart and Vavara up to in our world Just what is it they re doing or planning to do Well we know what they re not doing. They re not recruiting not taking thralls or making vampires or if they are it s a small localized and tightly controlled industry. What I mean is they re not spreading it around. Not yet anyway. But surely that s what they do. It s their way of life hahl Ask any vampire and he ll tell you that the blood is the life Trask seemed galvanized now his eyes blazing in a suddenly ravaged face. They live by taking thralls by leeching on the blood of their servitors and victims and by spreading death and undeath. So why hasn t the plague come among us I know that time isn t of any real consequence to the Wamphyri but they ve had three years By now the great nations should be at war . . . even with each other Half the population armed with crossbows and wooden stakes and the other half with eyes dripping sulphur hiding in the dark waiting for the night. Cheap silver crucifixes selling for twice the price of gold. Noonday bonfires in every town centre and the sickening stench of burning varnpire flesh. And by night the ever growing ranks of the thirsty ones raping ravaging and making more hunting for new souls to toss on their bonfires the ones that burn in hell Again Trask paused to let all that he d said sink in and in a far more controlled regulated voice went on: If I seemed to go a little over the top just then it was mainly to wake you up spur you on give you something of an incentive not that you need one I m sure. But it s been three long years people and all that time I ve sweated over information which you weren t privy to. And now ... I think it s time you were. A burden shared and all that. . . So what am I talking about Well listen up and I ll tell you. When we first learned that we d been invaded we knew that Malinari and the other two monsters came out of the sump at the Refuge with three senior thralls presumably lieutenants which probably meant one lieutenant each. When we went out to Romania we discovered that they d also recruited three of our people npt espers no but Refuge staff personnel to take with them wherever they were going perhaps as sustenance Godl but more likely as guides in this new world. And definitely as converts recruits vampires. One of the three was Bruce Trennier who we don t have to worry about anymore. But at the time that made two Lords and a Lady of the Wamphyri three lieutenants or Wamphyri aspirants and three up and coming vampires who depending on Starside s laws of unnatural selection might or might not make it into vampirism s upper echelon. And those were the figures we fed to our extrap computers along with several conjectural rates of transmission of vampirism that is. We were actually expecting an epidemic we prepared for one in the expectation that we d find principal targets at three centres of maximum infection and that then we d be able to hit back in a massive military raid followed by the world s longest cleanup period lasting maybe a hundred years So we prepared but we didn t tell everyone. And by everyone I mean most of you. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 16 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt We didn t tell you that the extraps had v orked it all out in their mechanical minds and given us between a year and eighteen months to a maximum of three years until Armageddon and that by then as I ve said the remaining human half of the population would be at war with the vampire half and probably with each other. We didn t tell you because first of all our Minister Responsible had forbidden it you are human after all and many of you have wives and families and while we may be E Branch we re just as prone to panic as anyone else in the face of the ultimate disaster. In short we needed you here not running off to take care of your kith and kin. And we also didn t tell you because that doomsday scenario I painted a minute or so ago was just one of a handful of scenarios and as the old saying goes Where there s life . . c. r i L c. ix o But mainly we myself and one or two others who were in the know mainly we stayed silent because right from the beginning we d seen signs of some kind of strategic cover up I mean by the Wamphyri. What they d done to the Refuge they d made it look like vandalism on the grand scale. Maybe the three missing members of staff had gone crazy wrecked the place and murdered everyone else before running off Maybe that s what they wanted us or the world to think. And in any case surely the last thing we would think in a world that doesn t believe in vampires was that we had been invaded by them And remember only six of those Refuge kids had actually been . . . depleted and even then they showed no external signs of vampirism. Even if some Romanian doctor had got there before we torched the place it would have seemed obvious that the children had been suffering from some form of pernicious anaemia. But pernicious That isn t the word for it. And those kids . . . my God those poor kids And here we see something of Malinari s evil intelligence at work. He left no one alive to tell the tale no one to alert the world to what had really happened. But after . . . after examining Zek surely he would know that we that E Branch would be on to him anyway Well I believe Malinari knew precisely what our world and its peoples are all about. I believe he d got it all from General Mikhail Suvorov and his expeditionary force long before he ever set out to come here and then that he d had it corroborated by poor Zek and Bruce Trennier at the Refuge. He knew first from Suvorov that the people of our world didn t believe in his kind that vampires are considered a myth born of ignorance and ancient superstition. But while that is generally true he also learned from Zek that certain people do have all or most of the facts which of course would tend to make E Branch and its espers his deadliest enemies. So now let s look at it from his point of view if that s at all possible. If Malinari and the others commenced vampirising every human being with whom they came in contact how long before we people who know the truth broke silence And how long then before mankind in its entirety fought back and with what terrible weapons Malinari Szwart and Vavara they were Wamphyri . . . they are Wamphyri But they are only three. Three of them and oh so many of us. And so much still to be learned about the Earth and its peoples this very different world that they would conquer with all its many diverse races. Zek my Zek was the real key. She was a powerful mentalist a telepath who knew others with stranger powers still. She knew E Branch and she knew or she had known other vampires before Malinari. And I can t help but wonder: when he locked on to Zek did he see Harry Keogh in her mind Did he perhaps glimpse the Necroscope in her memories Ah but just think how that would have given him pause: to have fled from one such in Starside only to discover that there were or had been another or others of a like kind here And so he must play this world with extreme caution in the knowledge that he might call down metaphysical powers at least as great and possibly greater than his own . . . All of this is entirely conjectural guesswork of course but our experience of events and nonevents has shown it to be near to the mark. Malinari and the others they have kept low profiles while they prepare to do ... whatever. And the extraps eighteen months are past and likewise the maximum three years to Armageddon . . . yet until we got that whiff of mindsmog it was as if nothing was happening. So what has been happening and what have they been up to Well in Australia we found a number of clues. But first the clear evidence which hit us right between the eyes: Malinari for one hasn t been hiding himself away in a ruined castle in the Carpathians Indeed he was where we might least expect to find him. Which begs the question what of the others Vavara and Szwart Are they too in residence in places where we wouldn t dream of finding them Okay I see what you re thinking. that this isn t so much what they are doing as where they are doing it. But there might yet be answers to both questions in what we found under Xanadu. We and file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 17 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt by that I mean Liz and Jake Cutter found a midnight garden a mushroom farm of sorts a breeding place for vampires. And while the rest of us didn t see it Jake formed the opinion that Malinari had planted his lieutenant out of Starside down there to fester in the earth. That s not such a wild notion he would probably have been the only one of The Mind s retinue who was matured or rotten enough to produce spores. And again according to Jake and Liz the cave where they found this monstrosity was full of that filthy spawn. Worse our Gibson Desert liaison person someone called Peter Miller who for his own crazy reasons had run off on us was also down there. He d been vampirized and. . . and something had been done to him. He had metamorphosed he d been converted reduced to a mass of nutrients for black spore producing vampiric fungi. And all of that loathsome corruption in the earth it was feeding off his juices lcj a Trask s shudder was by no means faked. Anyway Jake torched the place and everything in it... But the point is Xanadu was a spawning ground literally. What if Malinari had cropped all of those spores released them into the casino s air conditioning or ventilation system What Legionnaires disease wouldn t have a look in Forget it But in fact we can t forget it because I might just have it right. And Xanadu wasn t The Mind s only place in Australia. Anyway that s a job for the next Australian team so maybe they re not the lucky ones after all. Malinari s bolt holes may have been more than just places to escape to. We ve really no notion what may be hidden away breeding and waiting out its time down in that old mine in the Gibson Desert. So we ll have to open it up again. As for Jethro Manchester s Capricorn Group island: we burned what was on the surface but who can say what may have been and what might still be underneath Let s for the moment just suppose that these three Great Vampires were preparing to seed the world with spores. Okay so we ve delayed the scheme for one of them but what of the other two That s why now after three years of nothing there s this sudden urgency. Or rather that is why I m bringing the 41 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS urgency home to you for it s been with me all of that time And if you don t believe me well just take a look at my hair There was no humor this time faked or for real in Trask s tone. Oh I know how hard you ve all been working he continued using every possible means to track these creatures down we ve put every spare moment into it and we ve frequently neglected other tasks to stay focussed on this one job. So when I say three years of nothing it s not to belittle anyone but to point up my own frustration. But now it s more than just frustration and a whole lot more than simple anxiety for the world at large. For now I m also anxious deadly afraid for you me us. Why Well let s go back to square one: Malinari knows about us. He knows now for sure that we ve been looking for him all this time and that we re not going to stop. And if he s in contact with the others they know it too. But if you ve read the files on the Yulian Bodescu business all of thirty odd years ago and if you haven t I suggest you do it now you ll know what that means. It may well be that from now on the Wamphyri won t be so happy just sitting around waiting for us to come looking for them but instead may come looking for us I m just about finished. But starting right here and now I want extra effort people. I want daily think tanks and more time spent at your machines and in your minds. Put your gadgets to their full use and likewise your ghost talents. We have to find Malinari again and Vavara and Szwart and we have to find them soon before those extrap computers are shown to have been correct. For remember our three years are up And one last thing. I want extra vigilance from everyone. Not for me but for you. And especially in the dead of night. . . As the espers filed out into the corridor and on to their workplaces and the techs went back to their viewscreens and computers Trask stood in the doorway and stopped his joint Seconds in Command lan Goodly and David Chung telling them Come and talk to me in my office. And when they were there: I ve pretty much left you alone since we got back he told them. No duties and no additional pressures. That s because of all our people you two have enough on your plates already. David although I have two other locators Bernie Fletcher being the better of the two with all due respect they can t hold a candle to you. And lan our other precogs are precogs in name only. Mainly hunchmen they re good at making clever guesses at seeing how things are going to add up. But since we have machines that can do that their only advantage is they don t file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 18 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt require programming. So as usual you two are my main men. Our telepaths aren t in short supply it seems to me Liz Merrick is coming along just fine and that s despite this sudden setback with Jake Cutter which Which you re not buying lan Goodly tall and skeletally thin and looking like nothing so much as an out of work undertaker raised a thinly etched questioning eyebrow. Trask shook his head. No I m not. Liz . I read her like a book and I also read some of the looks she was giving Jake in the Ops room. She thinks he s been stalling keeping her out of his mind. And as for Jake: well I can t any longer read him at all So it s like I suspected: he doesn t intend on making it easy for us. And hardest of all for Liz for I think she s got something of a crush on him. A crush Again Goodly s raised eyebrow lifting higher yet. Now you re really showing your age Fancies him would be more in tune with the times I think. Or perhaps she d like to get into his pants Good grief Whatever said Trask shrugging. But he is going to stay with us Goodly declared with a quiet certainty that Trask knew of old. You ve seen that I see lots of Jake in the future. No great detail nothing definite but he s there. With us or getting in our way I can t say. Maybe both. Hub: Trask grunted and took a deep breath before going on: Anyway and as I was saying you are the top men and it s up to you to motivate activate and galvanize the others while continuing to do your own things to the best of your abilities in the current circumstances. Meaning I know it s not easy for you to work under duress. Your skills aren t like that. They re more or less free agents in their own right. Exactly said Chung. And where Jake Cutter s concerned my talent has never been freer. Anything that once belonged to Harry Keogh such as that old hairbrush it just comes alive when Jake s in the vicinity. So he can kid us all he wants that he s lost it or it s gone away but I know better. Whatever it is that he got from Harry he s got it in spades Trask looked at Chung a Chinese Cockney in his late forties slight in figure but awesome in his abilities as a scryer and locator and nodded. We re agreed on that... we saw it in action out in Australia . . . we d all have been dead without it But having something and being willing to explore it or put it to good use to our use the world s use are entirely different things. . . Anyway enough of Jake for the moment. When we re through here I ll speak to him and Liz both see if I can find out what he s playing at. Trask went behind his desk sat down and continued: Meanwhile how are things going with you two We ve been home more than a week now gentlemen and I haven t heard a peep out of you. David what about the Wamphyri battle gauntlet that our Australian major found in underground Xanadu It could only have belonged to Malinari or maybe to the lieutenant Jake says he used as fertilizer. Anything on that Anything at all Chung shook his head. Right now nothing he said. Malinari seems to have gone to earth. Nothing strange in that. For three years he hid himself away and we didn t get a sniff. He s so in control he never shows a trace of mindsmog. And remember it wasn t him who gave the show away in the first NECROSCOPE: DEF1LERS 43 place it was Trennier s nest in the Gibson Desert that let him down. Even in Xanadu I had to be that close before I located him If it wasn t for Jethro Manchester and those others out in the Capricorn Group we still might not have found him. So it s my guess that if or when we get our break it will be his thralls that let him down not Nephran Malinari himself. And the same thing goes for the others too. Trask tightened his lips growled Well stay on it. We ll set up a separate maps room away from Ops give you more space lots of privacy. You can sleep in there if you have to you and that gauntlet But we have to get results . . . He turned to the precog. lan how s the future looking Goodly s expression was as usual mournful as he answered My problems are the same as always. The future is a hell of a devious thing. And the more I force it the less it works. You know that old saying: more haste less speed Well that s what it s like. Like when you re given a Chinese wood puzzle a jumble of geometric shapes which in the correct positions all fit perfectly into a square box. If you re allowed to work at it in your own time you can do it. But the moment there s a time restriction your fingers turn to thumbs and bits of wood go skittering in all directions. You may not have been pressuring me Ben but I have. And the future doesn t much like it. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 19 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt You ve seen nothing Trask was obviously disappointed. But the precog was chewing his top lip as he answered I have seen . . . things. Glimpses flashes daydreams call them what you will but I m reluctant to call them the future. I m as prone to deia vu feelings dreaming and par amnesia as anyone else and that could be all these things are. They haven t been those very definite scenes that send me reeling the ones that can t be anything else but the future and usually a dangerous future. So naturally I m reluctant to send anyone off on a wild goose chase. Not when we might need all of the manpower we ve got. . . and not that I d know where to send him anyway. You d better explain said Trask. Just exactly what are these things that you ve been seeing. Anything has to be better than nothing. Not necessarily Goodly sighed. But if you insist: I ve seen I don t know shapes figures. Black robed figures drifting or floating. And I ve seen something sinking deeper and deeper into groaning abysses of water. I ve seen ... a warren of tunnels and burrows like gigantic wormholes in the earth all filled with loathsomeness . . . morbid mucus in a cosmic sinus. I ve seen hooded eyes watching and a weird shadow approaching getting closer every time I see it. . . . The precog fell silent. He gave a sharp involuntary shudder and blinked eyes that had seemed momentarily blind or vacant until they refocussed on Trask. And: That s it he said. That s what I ve seen . . . But Trask had fallen under the spell of the other s words so that he too had to give himself a shake before he could say And you call that nothing Nothing we can do anything with the precog answered. I mean it has no application. But it s not nothing said Trask. It s something and I want you to write it down. And from now on you and David and you can pull in one of our telepaths but not Liz I want you working together. In a special map room yes. And then if these things especially these eyes or this shadow if they come any closer perhaps you ll see them that much more clearly. Come closer Goodly looked more gaunt than ever. But if they really are the future that s one thing that s guaranteed. You see the future never stands still but comes closer all the time . . . When Trask was alone again he got on to the duty officer asking him Paul where s Lardis Lidesci I didn t see him at my little pep talk. He s where you sent him a week ago presumably Paul Garvey answered. Downstairs in the hotel with his wife. Or maybe they re outdoors in the park. They miss the wild. Lardis was sitting on the desk when I relieved the night duty officer this morning. He said he wants to get back to work any work Says he thinks he ll go mad doing nothing. What about the knock on the head that maniac Peter Miller gave him in Australia And then the complication of that infection he picked up on our flight home The infection has just about cleared up. A shot or two of penicillin was all it took. Lardis is lucky it wasn t worse. We have infections here that they never even heard of in Sunside. True Trask nodded. But they ve got one I know of that s a lot worse than all of ours put together Anyway send someone to find him will you I never did find the time to ask him about that job in Greece. Also while I m waiting could you tell Liz Merrick and Jake Cutter to come and see me Thanks. . . When Liz knocked on his door just a minute or so later she was on her own. Where s Jake Trask asked her as she took a seat. She had been told to keep an eye on Jake. He had a room at the HQ but he didn t know that Liz had the room adjacent with access to his quarters from the back of her small office. Liz s orders were simple. she was to listen in on Jake s dreams. She should have been doing so ever since they got back from Australia and reporting her findings back to Trask. It went against E Branch s code Trask knew but on this occasion he felt compelled. It was that important to find out what or who Harry Keogh presumably was going on in Jake s mind. So far however she hadn t reported a thing. Similarly during waking hours she and Jake were supposed to be working together improving their telepathic rapport becoming a team. But again Trask remembered that look she d given Jake in the Ops room the one that said she was baffled and maybe a little hurt. By her inability to get through Trask didn t think so. No it was far more likely obstinacy on bis part. Damn the man he thought feeling his frustration bubble up again. 45 file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 20 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS He said he d made arrangements to meet Lardis Lidesci and Lissa in the park she answered. Lardis had said he wanted to see the British Museum Jake offered to give him a guided tour. Actually I think Jake was only too happy to get away from the HQ for a few hours. I get the impression that he s been feeling out of things here. He can t seem to fit in. What Trask got to his feet in a fury. He can t seem to fit in Well that s because he doesn t damn well try to fit in I mean what s going on here Liz Everything seemed to be working just fine down under and now this Is he really such a petulant child And don t tell me I m wrong. And don t go covering for him I saw that look you gave him in Ops. He s obstructing you right His anger wasn t unexpected but he d blown up so suddenly that she was nevertheless taken aback. I ... I mean I ... Did you know I d called the dogs off Trask thumped his desk. Jake s wanted for murder in Italy and for questioning in France yet I ve had our contacts in Interpol pull the files on him albeit temporarily. His mug should be scowling at you from the front page of just about every newspaper in Europe yet the lid s on so tight he doesn t even rate a half inch of column on page six of the Daily Sport. That s what I ve done for him and probably damaged my own reputation in the bargain But for E Branch Jake Cutter couldn t stick his nose outside this building without being arrested and he shows his gratitude by going sightseeing with Lardis and Lissa to the British Museum I just don t believe this Who in hell said he could leave the HQ anyway Liz s mouth opened and closed but didn t say anything and Trask sat back down again with a thump and glared at her across his desk. Well he snarled. And finally she found some words to say and said them despite knowing they would probably set him off again. He has things to work out... he has problems . . . something s got him worried . . . that s all I know. And she sat there biting her lip. But Trask was much calmer now. Colder too. No that isn t all you know he said. Because even if my talent doesn t work on Jake anymore it still works on you. And don t accuse me of spying on you because you know that I don t control this thing of mine it just is. It s like any other sense. If you stick me with a pin I hurt and if you lie to me I know which in your case hurts just as much. You ve changed just recently Liz and it isn t for the better. Okay so this is what you would call a white lie correct But it s a lie just the same. And me I m only interested in the truth. Trask sat back took a deep breath and finished off: Now tell me please is he obstructing you Liz bit her lip again and said Yes I think so. I think I could read him easily if he d let me. And I think in fact I know that I could send to him. Let s face it I did it in Australia and that was when he was three hundred miles away That was under duress he nodded. You were stressed out and it was your last chance for life: a telepathic shout a psychic cry for help. But still three hundred miles And he heard you he even came to you. And then his subsequent jumps into and out of Malinari s bubble dome in the last seconds before it blew itself to hell. And finally he took an entire monorail car full of us the whole damn car through the Mobius Continuum to our safe house in Brisbane. And now . . . now you can t get through to him across a desk I know she was biting her lip again. And he can t remember the numbers. Numbers Just for a moment Trask failed to connect but then he remembered. Harry s formula For the Continuum Liz nodded. In his dreams that s all he does. It s like a repetitive nightmare like watching a computer screen processing an endless display of figures fractions decimals algebraic equations and obscure mathematical symbols and all of it scrolling and mutating down the screen of Jake s mind while he searches for that one all important formula. But he can never find it. . . And that s all he dreams about No Liz shook her head. Sometimes he dreams about that Russian girl her dead face looking at him through the window of a car as it sinks into night black water and sometimes he ... sometimes he dreams about me. Trask shrugged he hoped not negligently . He er fancies you right No Liz said again perhaps ruefully. He rejects me as if I m some kind of intrusion. He rejects everything and he ll continue to do so until he s solved his own problems. Castellano and the mob Trask said sourly. That s one of them. And the others One other I think. But I don t know what it is. But I do know he s frustrated and it would help Who isn t frustrated Trask cut in becoming heated once more. But having gone this far Liz file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 21 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt wasn t about to be stopped. It would help if he knew everything and had access to all the Keogh files or better still if you personally told him all you know about his... well his condition. For a long moment Trask was silent and then he said And is that it the lot That s it. And this time it was the truth. Or ninety percent of the truth anyway. As for the other ten percent. that could be very personal especially since she was in his dreams. And after a moment Trask sighed and said Liz I m really sorry I blew up on you. You re not Jake s keeper after all. It isn t your fault that he has problems. And in a way it isn t his fault either. But believe me I m doing what I can to solve his problems and I just wish we could get some mutual cooperation going that s all. It s that important. I know it is she said standing up. Okay he nodded you can go. If you see him before I do please let him know 1 want to speak to him. L fc f I L t K b I will she said and at the door turned and looked back. And yet again she was biting her lip. Ben . . . Eh He looked at her. So what was this about: the other ten percent perhaps I ... I m not sure about this she said. But when he s asleep and I m in his mind I get this weird feeling that someone s watching. I feel I don t know hooded eyes burning on me. A strange image that retreats when I reach toward it. Hooded eyes Again Trask remembered what Goodly had said. But this had to be different surely. Harry Keogh He took a stab at it. More than a stab really for to him it seemed perfectly obvious: some revenant of the ex Necroscope was in there with Jake. But: No Liz said. I don t think it s Harry. I mean I never knew him but those who did always talk about his warmth. Well this one isn t warm. This one s cold. Very. Maybe it s the other side of Jake said Trask. The dark side. The side that s lusting after revenge. She looked relieved. You think that s possible I m no psychologist he answered but I do know we have different levels of consciousness and even when we re awake we don t always say what we re thinking. Huhi And personally well I don t always think what I m saying which incidentally is about as close as you ll get to a real apology So maybe those eyes are one of Jake s other levels sensing an intruder. You re probably right she said. Because that s usually when his shields go up and I get driven out. And now you re out of here too Trask told her and actually managed to smile. Because I m busy. But stick to it Liz stick to it. And next time don t hold back. You could have told me this stuff without all the agony. Except there wasn t anything to tell she answered. Not of any real importance. Even little things could be important. He forced himself to smile again. You d be surprised. But a moment later as soon as the door closed behind her the smile slipped from his face. Someone else in Jake s mind Someone other than Harry The teeming dead perhaps The Great Majority But if so why would their eyes be hooded Because Liz was an intruder and only the Necroscope Jake Cutter could be trusted with the secrets of the dead Huh If he could be trusted. But right now Trask wouldn t trust him as far as he could throw him. What was Jake hiding that he had to carry on with this deception pretending he was just another empty vessel again It was baffling a mystery within a mystery. And Trask had more than enough of those already . . . NhCROSCUHh U t H 1 L fc K 3 OF THE PRESENT Fifteen hundred hours in London but 1 400 miles to the east it was five in the afternoon and the small Greek island of Krassos in the Aegean was coming awake from its siesta to the blazing heat of an El Nifio evening. The last time it had been this dry was following a previous El Nino the summer of 98. Then fires had swept across the Greek mainland no less than in the Philippines Mexico Florida and South Western Australia. And the Greeks along with file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 22 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt everyone else had learned from the experience. Now in every village and on every beach there were warning signs in four languages and apart from the native Greek it seemed likely that all the others read as badly as the English: NO FIRES NO BARBEKU SMOKERS: PLEASE EXTINGUISH CIGARETE BEFORE YOU THROWING AWAY But everyone got the message and it gave the sun scorched English tourists something to chuckle over other than the translations in the taverna bills of fare. On the other hand there was an item in the Greek newspapers that no one was chuckling over. . . especially not the Greek Islands Tourist Board in Athens. A woman s body had been washed ashore near the village of Limari. It couldn t as yet be called a murder because the circumstances of her death were a mystery and her identity was unknown. The way she d been found the condition of the body which had been in the sea for a week to ten days left no clues as to what had befallen her. But there were several anomalies that at least suggested foul play: namely the fact that most of her face was missing which included her upper teeth and entire lower jawbone. She wasn t going to be identified by use of any dental records that much was certain. Of course she could have been hit in the water by some boat s propeller but how did she get in the water Swimming What in the nude There were nude beaches in the islands true but not on Krassos. Nor was the rest of her body intact her nipples were gone probably nibbled by crabs or fishes her eyes were eaten away and her ears had been shorn off close to the skull accidentally or deliberately was similarly conjectural. And strangest of all no one had been reported missing. Detective Inspector Manolis Papastamos an expert on Greek island life lore and legend had come over by ferry from Kavala in answer to a request for help by the island s constabulary which consisted of one fat old sergeant and four mainly untried village policemen. This kind of investigation fell well outside their scope on an island that was less than sixty miles around where tourism the sun the sand and the clear blue sea was the principal industry. But tourism had been suffering for more than fifteen years now and at a time when the drachma was only very shaky this sort of thing made for extremely bad publicity. The body had been in cold storage for twenty four hours by the time Papastamos and Eleni Barbouris a forensic pathologist who had come over with him from Kavala got to see it where it lay under a crisp white sheet and a light dusting of frost in a commandeered ice cream chest in the back room of a whitewashed bare necessities police post at Limari. Manolis Papastamos was small and slender yet gave the impression of great inner strength. All sinew suntan and shiny black wavy hair he was very Greek with one noticeable exception: in addition to the fierce passions of his homeland he was also quick off the mark in his thinking reflexes and movements. In short there was nothing dilatory about him and his mind was inquiring to a fault. In his mid fifties Manolis looked dapper in his charcoal grey lightweight suit white open necked shirt and grey shoes. And despite the weathered leather look that was beginning to line his face he was still handsome in the classical Greek arrangement of his features: his straight nose high brow flat cheeks and rounded slightly cleft chin. Twenty odd years ago he had been full of fire and zest also ouzo and Metaxa but then something had happened that changed him turned his life around. He was a lot more serious now far more studious and thoughtful. But if his hard bitten down to earth police colleagues in Athens knew what he studied and what Manolis researched almost to obsession in what little spare time his duties allowed him . . . well they might find it peculiar to say the least. We should get her out of there onto a table Eleni Barbouris told him after removing the sheet. She s not so cold I can t cut. In fact the cold should help keep down the odours. You see the swollen abdomen all bloated from immersion There will be gasses. . . He knew what she meant. As a boy in Phaestos on Crete he had seen a dead dolphin washed up on the beach. A large animal seven feet long by four wide because it was so badly swollen it had been too heavy to move. Local firemen wanted to burn it but they had thought it must be full of salt water which would only hinder the burning. Best to let the water out first. But then when one of the men pierced the dolphin s belly with the pick end of his fireman s axe The creature literally exploded With a great hissing farting and shuddering a veritable vibration of dead rubbery flesh the thing had split open like an overripe melon showering every file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 23 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt onlooker including the young Manolis and his village friends with a geyser of rotten vileness The awful stench had seemed to last for days and his mother hadn t been able to wash it out of his clothes. . . You ll perform an autopsy he said backing off a pace. You ve seen plenty of them before I m sure Eleni answered. Or is it that people don t die in peculiar circumstances in Athens This one s been in the water Manolis said and wrinkled his nose. Gasses I can do without gasses. Eleni was about his age but time and the work hadn t been kind to her. Her hair was greying and she seemed to have shrivelled down into herself. She was a small pale woman but still very capable Manolis was sure. Moreover he suspected that she wasn t nearly as cold or callous as she liked to pretend. I have gauze masks she said. Soaked in eau de cologne or maybe ouzo they ll dilute the smell. But they won t keep it out. Not entirely. Turning her head on one side she looked at him quizzically. On the other hand you don t have to watch at all if you don t want to. A queasy stomach perhaps There was no hint of humour in her voice no sympathy either. So maybe it wasn t pretence and Eleni Barbouris really was cold and callous I ll stay he told her nodding. But first let s invite the local boys to help us get her out of there ... After the village policemen had left and they wasted very little time in leaving Eleni got down to it. First an external examination of the body. There was nothing to be done about the corpse s head but if the damage to the ears and lower face was the work of a propeller there was scant sign of any abrasions to the rest of the body. The neck was scarred on the left where something had gouged a groove half an inch wide and quarter of an inch deep in the puffy flesh between the missing ear and the collarbone this might have been caused by the blade of a propeller but Eleni seemed dubious. The throat however was choked behind the missing mandible probably with weed and the pathologist started there cutting the windpipe to lay it open in twin flaps above the clavicle. Within the incision near the top of the oesophagus there was a dark mass that formed a solid blockage. Eleni prodded the mass with a rubber clad finger finding it resilient and spongy to the touch. It wasn t weed and it wasn t a part 51 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS of the human body not unless it was some sort of grossly enlarged tumour. Intrigued she cut through the pectoral muscles to halfway down the chest and used an electrical surgical saw to separate the upper sternum from the ribs and detach it. And finally she cut through the rest of the upper oesophagus revealing more of the blockage. But still she hadn t exposed all of it. Manolis had been watching all of this while doing his best to ignore the smell of death and decay that kept getting stronger all the time. Now through ouzo drenched gauze and the reek of aniseed and rottenness he mumbled What in hell ... is that Looking back at him over the grotesque somehow intimidating shield of her mask Eleni s grey eyes were wide and uncertain. But then she shrugged and answered We won t know until we get it out. The object whatever it might turn out to be completely blocked the dead woman s gullet. It was grey blue and corrugated like a concertinaed worm or slug. As for its texture: It seems firm enough . . . uhi. Eleni grunted digging her fingers in to expand the gullet that I don t think it s going to break up under pressure. Maybe I can get it out in one piece without more butchery. And without further ado she dragged the thing free holding it up for Manolis s inspection. He had backed off more yet which was as well. For as with the dolphin in Phaestos so now with this poor dead woman. It was as if the pathologist had shaken a bottle of champagne and loosened the cork. But what had been released was anything but fine wine. Gasses and pus and mucus foamed out of the neck cavity and disturbed by internal convulsions a stream of yellow shit and gooey cadaverine spurted from the opposite end. The corpse seemed to writhe and nutter as it settled down into itself. Manolis choked Good God and turned away. And: I ll be back when I ve been good and . . . and . . . But he couldn t finish it. Open his mouth again and he d be sick right there not that that would spoil the looks of the room. But in the toilets throwing up at least he had the dubious satisfaction of hearing Eleni doing the same in the ladies cubicle next door . . . file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 24 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt That rarely happens she told him fifteen minutes later when he came out of the toilet. One gets used to such things. Maybe it was the sight of your face that did it its colour and awful grimacing. Perhaps I ... came out in sympathy She was hosing down the white marble floor flushing the mess out through the front room of the police post into the street and down a drain. Outside there was no sign of the village policemen in the sun bleached street just two nuns of some obscure order wearing cowled cassocks that covered them head to toe. The pair had paused in their strolling to stare but in another moment their pale hands fluttered into view as they covered their faces with handkerchiefs before turning and hurrying away. Manolis couldn t blame them. Still very drawn and pale himself he said This place is going to stink forever No no Eleni answered. Powerful antiseptics will clear it in no time. It will smell just like a hospital that s all. The corpse was amazingly clean Manolis thought. Eleni had done a very good job. Well better she than he Will you continue with the postmortem I can see no point she answered. I shall take a sample of the stomach contents though of course they will have rotted down degraded. But don t concern yourself. There s no need for you to be present really. In any case I won t be able to complete an analysis until I m on the mainland. So if I may make a suggestion. why don t you go and have a drink No said Manolis but I ll take you for one later. Meanwhile what have you done with the . . . that thing He couldn t help the shudder that had crept into his voice but hoped she d think it was a late reaction to what had happened. Manolis had caught only a glimpse of the thing in Eleni s hand before the interruption or eruption of the dead woman s body but there had been something about it. Something that reminded him of a time more than twenty years ago when he d been out in the islands Rddhos that time on a different case. Different entirely from any other he d ever handled or been involved with. That was when a group of men and one very special man who could not be denied had told him about just such organisms as he had seen dangling from the pathologist s hand. Or perhaps not for he had never seen one himself and couldn t be sure. The sea cucumber Eleni Barbouris was denying his morbid suspicions even now. Well that didn t kill her if that s what you re thinking. It s under the sheet there. Sea cucumber Manolis frowned but at the same time felt a great wash of relief flooding over him. A holothurian she answered. A cousin to the sea slugs. They normally live in holes in the rocks. This one crawled into a different hole and died there. It might even have battened on her I don t know that much about them but if it did its own gluttony killed it. It got fat and stuck in her gullet. The sheet defrosted now and limp lay on a small occasional table in a corner of the room. Two paces took Manolis to it but he paused a moment before turning back the sheet. The thing lay there lifeless some fourteen inches long blunt and spatulate at one end tapered at the other. It was like a blind cobra headed leech its body corrugated or segmented with rows of erectile hooks lying flat along its back and sides. Rooted in nodules at the base of the tapering neck a frill of sticky dew beaded strings like the byssus threads of mussels lay limply on the glass top of the table. Manolis took a ballpoint out of his pocket and lifted the tail. Protruding from a short tubular organ an anus or perhaps an ovipositor a greyish flaccid spheroid the size of a marble was half visible. It oozed a few droplets of a silvery glistening liquid that slimed the glass. And that Manolis looked at Eleni where she had followed him to the small table. 53 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS She answered him with a shrug. Some kind of sea mouse I really can t say. Something the holothurian ate but didn t have time to digest A sea mouse Manolis said. First sea cucumbers now sea mice And again her shrug but a trifle impatient now. An annelid Aphroditidae iridescent and quite pretty when alive. When I was a child I was interested in every aspect of biology. But now I ve put aside my childish interests and I m a pathologist not a marine biologist What is it with you Manolis and why are you sweating I ... still don t feel too good he told her which was true enough. She d taken off her elastic surgical gloves and now began to reach out her naked hand towards the file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 25 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt organism on the table. As for this thing it s dead and smells and it should be It should be burned Manolis said and with a lightning fast movement arrested her hand. Don t touch that thing. Don t you ever touch anything like it What she stared at him in shocked astonishment. He put her gently aside and said I may be wrong and if so I apologise in advance but I really don t think this is any kind of holothurian. I ll see to it that it s incinerated immediately. Eleni continued to stare at him following his every movement as he wrapped the organism in the sheet. Not a holothurian So what on earth do you think it is And if it s in any way connected with this case a clue to foul play or some such why do you intend to burn it What you ll destroy evidence Our descriptions from what we ve seen will suffice he told her. But one thing is for sure: I won t be letting anyone cut into this to see what made it tick Just be happy that it s stopped ticking that s all. You talk as if it s a bomb she answered. But No buts said Manolis. You ve done a good job here. Now I suggest we go back to Krassos town to our hotel freshen up a little and then eat at one of the excellent tavernas. The meal and that drink I promised you will be on me. Well she shook her head in utter bewilderment. I suppose you re in charge here and Yes I am he was pleased to agree. And now let s find those policemen. I want this body kept on ice but deep frozen this time perhaps in Krassos town. I have friends in London who may want to see it. Holding his small white bundle at arm s length he ushered her out of that place and as they went said As for your alleged sea slug: you re right about evidence of course. So we ll photograph it first and then I ll burn it Manolis was driving a small Fiat hired from one of the island s many tourist oriented outlets. At about 7 P.M. driving in the shade of pine clad mountains he passed a stone walled gauntly impressive monastery built on a false plateau where high cliffs fell sheer to the sea. Concentrating on his driving upon the winding contour clinging road he took no special note of a larger heavier private vehicle where it indicated its driver s intention to pull out of the otherwise empty monastery car park. But as he sped by Eleni Barbouris did notice it. On a tiny island like this she commented someone desires yet more privacy. Umm That expensive car back there the black one with dark one way windows They can see out whoever they are but no one sees in. There are plenty of cars like that in Athens the inspector answered. But you re correct: rich people do seem to enjoy their privacy more than most. Ah but then they can afford to As for those windows: they re far superior to dark glasses when it comes to keeping the sun out of your eyes. I suppose so she said. But here on the eastern side of Krassos in the shade of these mountains and the gloomy evening light they seem so unnecessary. But Manolis a frown etching his face was scarcely listening to her. Instead it was something he had said that continued to resonate in his mind. So that suddenly he found himself muttering When . . . when it comes to keeping the sun out yes. Personally I don t see nearly enough of it she said. What. . . Manolis barked startling her. The sun she said. I said I don t see nearly enough But then as she glanced sideways at him she saw that his eyes were fixed not on her but on his rearview mirror. Why whatever is she started to say craning her neck to look back. Just a few feet behind the other car was bearing down on them like some great blind snarling beast Manolis couldn t hit the brakes because the black car was immediately behind him. He couldn t accelerate because the road ahead made a sharp right turn and disappeared from view. On the right a wall of rock where the road had been cut from the mountainside. And on the left... a sheer drop of a hundred or more feet to jutting rocks and the tideless sea. And no safety barrier between. When the big car s horn blared Manolis was trying to negotiate the bend. Centrifugal force sent his Fiat sliding across double white lines into the oncoming lane. Gritting his teeth hauling desperately on the steering wheel he gasped his relief when he saw that the road ahead was empty. But it made no difference. His car was out of control and skidding. Which was when the heavier vehicle its horn still blaring continuously slammed into the Fiat from behind. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 26 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt The collision served to slow the big car down whiplashed Manolis and his passenger and sent the smaller vehicle rocketing out into empty space. And all of it happening that fast as accidents usually do so that human reactions and even thoughts are almost impossible. Except this wasn t an accident. And: 55 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS Well I suppose it s goodbye to all that Manolis did manage to think quite calmly and uselessly. And I don t even know why or maybe I do. And where s my safety belt Oh shit Eleni had just started screaming when the car hit a jutting outcrop sliced through a clump of stunted cliff clinging heather and struck something far more solid that sent it hurtling outwards again spinning end over end. And glimpsed through a crazily whirling pinwheel of stone and sky the rocky base of the cliffs washed by a slow surging ocean came rushing to meet them . . . In London it was 9 P.M. and almost cool. In all the hotels the air conditioning systems were running at full blast and people were in the streets and the bars in their shirt sleeves enjoying the Indian summer atmosphere. But for others there was work to be done. At E Branch HQ the work hadn t stopped Trask s espers did their various things but theirs was work with a difference. As for Trask himself: he was just about through for the day looking forward to a drink and a good night s sleep. He would sleep at the HQ which had been his habit for almost three years now. But waiting still waiting to see Lardis Lidesci and Jake he d found plenty to occupy his time. For where news theories or any information in general about the invaders from Starside was concerned Trask s office door was always open. Last of several people to come and see him was Millicent Cleary. Millie was a telepath and competent computer operator she was also a member of E Branch s master think tank Trask s current affairs adviser and one of his favourite people the kid sister he d never had. But she wasn t a kid anymore none of the gang from the good old days was. Like Trask himself they d been here too long and E Branch had aged them. Such were his thoughts . . . just a second or so before she looked at him in a certain way that he recognized of old. And: If that was your idea of a compliment she told him I don t think much of it. The kid sister bit s okay I think but I can do without all those wrinkles you just gave me Trask tut tutted. Oh my Here s Millie Cleary spying on the boss s thoughts. She shook her head. Not spying just worrying about you. And incidentally Ben neither look nor feel as old as I am but you really do. And you re looking older day by day. That s why I worry about you big brother And in fact she didn t look as old as her years which in any case were a good deal shorter than his. Millie would be in her late forties but looked five years younger. A very attractive blonde her hair was cut in a fringe low over her forehead flowed down onto her shoulders and framed her oval face while partly concealing her small delicate ears. Her eyes were blue under pencil slim golden eyebrows and her nose was small and straight. Millie s teeth were very white just a little uneven in a slightly crooked frequently pensive mouth. Five feet and six inches tall amply curved and slim waisted she had always made Trask feel big and strong and sometimes clumsy. He liked her a lot indeed a great deal and as far as he was concerned she was one of the few who could get away with murder. But conscious of her talent and channelling his thoughts anew and wondering why he felt the need to Trask got down to business. So what s up I think 1 may have something she told him. You remember when you got back from Australia you asked me to find out what I could about Jethro Manchester s financial affairs Knowing that Malinari had coerced Manchester into some kind of er partnership you were hoping that maybe cash transfers and other transactions might help track Malinari down Well as it turns out and while Manchester may have been a big time philanthropist he wasn t entirely the big softy people think he was. And he certainly wasn t softheaded. She paused to order her thoughts and continued: So being as you have often called me a devious female creature it had crossed my mind that such might be the case. Let s face it one doesn t get to be a billionaire without one has just a few extra cards up one s sleeve right So just an hour or so ago I had John Grieve call Manchester s accountant in Brisbane. That s Andrew Heyt of Haggard Haggard and Heyt and You had him call who at what time Trask cut in frowning as he did a quick mental calculation. At six in the morning Heyt s time that is file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 27 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Deliberately yes Millie told him. People are usually off guard at that time in the morning that s why police carry out their raids in the early hours. And you were carrying out a raid on Manchester s accountant Exactly. Working on a hunch so to speak. Anyway without identifying himself John asked Heyt a few leading questions like: what would be happening now to Manchester s hidden deposits in Switzerland and other countries And before Heyt could blink the sleep out of his eyes get his mercenary little brain in gear and slam the phone down John had done his thing Trask nodded. Namely she continued he read in Heyt s mind the facts of the matter that apart from Jethro Manchester s regular accounts and holdings stocks and shares and the like in various businesses in Australia UK and the USA he also has several numbered accounts in Zurich. John got the numbers Millie looked at Trask in that wide eyed way of hers innocent and shrewd at the same time and said John s good but not that good I mean what do you want miracles Yes he answered drily. I ll accept nothing less. Okay go on. I m hooked. No he didn t get the numbers she answered but he did get the name of the bank: a branch of the rather obscure Burger Finanz Gruppe or Citizens Finance Group. In fact it s the only branch we were able to find and I think if we were to dig just a little deeper we might well discover that it s owned or was owned by Manchester himself His own little piggy bank as it were. Anyway as you know seven years ago most of the world s countries or their governments were signatory to a convention that opened up their banking systems to scrutiny. This was supposed to spell doom for the world s crooked high finance speculators and write finis on the money laundering activities of the organized crime syndicates. It was supposed to but didn t mainly because several major players wouldn t sign up to it. I remember Trask nodded. Russia China Italy Greece oh and one or two South American countries naturally. And Switzerland she told him. For in case you ve forgotten some of the big Swiss banks are still fighting off Second World War Jewish claims on massive sums of money that the Nazis stole and stashed away. As for Italy: well the Italians didn t at all fancy the idea of opening up their Mafia riddled banking systems to scrutiny. And Greece didn t have any cash worth arguing over The Chinese weren t interested indeed in light of China s alleged lack of crime the fact that under its then regime merely socializing with international criminals was punishable by long terms in their infamous correction facilities they felt insulted And then there were those South American countries you mentioned which for obvious reasons wanted nothing at all to do with it. As for poor old Ma Russia: well financially speaking the Russians didn t know and still haven t discovered which way s up . . . She paused again and Trask noticed she was looking a little pensive. Go on he urged her. She shrugged and went on but mainly on the defensive now. The trouble is she started slowly that I ve always been an eager beaver you know Sort of rushing in where angels fear to tread And this time I may have sailed too close to the wind. You re certainly full of cliches Trask s eyes had narrowed. And perhaps just a little of the other stuff too Oh I wouldn t try to er shit you Ben Trask Millie said. No not you. So get on with it. Well she shrugged I suppose that I really should have got authority before I er . . . Before you what Er before I spoke to the Burger Finanz Gruppe bank she told him and paused yet again. Trask sighed and said This is like pulling teeth So who did you er speak to at the bank Not me exactly she answered. I mean I didn t speak to anyone or thing at the bank. But I got our tame tech Jimmy Harvey to do it for me . . . And now things came together. First the time: an hour ago in UK it was nine at night in Zurich. The banks would be closed. And Millie had said she didn t speak to anyone or thing but that Jimmy Harvey had done it for her. Harvey a tech one of E Branch s whiz kid communications and covert surveillance experts. The answer was obvious. You got Jimmy to hack into the bank s computer Trask s question was more an accusation and his stare was penetrating. Still looking innocent but not Millie tried to shrug but her shoulders weren t working. The work of five minutes she said nervously. Enough time to get in get Manchester s file download file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 28 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt a few details like all deposits and withdrawals for the last five years and get out again. A criminal act Trask told her bleakly. But more especially so if it served no purpose except to get me in trouble But it did serve a purpose. What did you get We got that someone had transferred a large sum namely three quarters of a million dollars US from one of Manchester s accounts just twenty four hours after he died. You re forgiven Trask said suddenly excited. If these were numbered personal accounts no one but Manchester himself or a partner could touch them. And we had made sure that news of the tragic accident at his retreat wouldn t break until after our Australian friends had sanitized the mess on that island. So even Haggard Haggard and Heyt wouldn t have had any reason to be interested in those numbered accounts just twenty four hours after Manchester died. And even if they had it s unlikely they d have the authority to move large sums of his ill gotten gains around ... is it No it isn t. So I think you re probably right and this was Malinari s work. And But it didn t have to be she cut in. Trask s face fell. But then he looked at her suspiciously frowningly and said Go on. Well it could have been a payment to one of Manchester s beneficiaries I mean one of the many charities he gave to. What after he was dead A standing order maybe she answered. I mean it could have been in the computer waiting to automatically click in on a certain date. Trask shook his head. Millie he said you re a devious female creature. What you just said wasn t a lie but it wasn t the truth either. It was a what if Now I know you wouldn t pick me up just to drop me again so for whatever reason you ve got to be teasing me. Well believe me this is neither the time nor the place. So without more ado let s have the rest of it or is this perhaps one of your stumbling blocks It could have been she answered. For you see the transfer was made to a charity. Trask s face fell further yet. Say again To charity number nineteen of nineteen numbered charities she nodded. No name or names Er no Millie shook her head. Not of the charity. Just numbers. It was the fifth semiannual payment to a charity that Manchester had been supporting for two years. So what s our interest in it Trask knew the punch line was coming. He read it in her face: that indeed she d got something. But what I ve got the big one Millie had read his mind literally. That s what I ve Do I have to say please he said. She shook her head again. No but there are still stumbling blocks. So what do you want first the good news or the bad news The good he said. The previous payments to charity number nineteen were all in the sum of a quarter million dollars all of them authorized by telephone by Manchester using his PIN and various authentication codes. Ah but this transfer tripled that amount and of course it wasn t Manchester s PIN but his partner s. It s dated the day after Manchester died and the name of the partner is on Jimmy Harvey s printout. All of this time she had been clasping a roll of printout. Now she stepped around Trask s desk to stand beside him leaned over him and opened up the roll and weighted it top and bottom with desk bric a brac. Trask saw that it was page fifteen torn from a far larger printout. But then his eyes skipped to a serial that had been highlighted in yellow. The details of date time and amount were all as Millie had reported them but Trask scarcely noticed them beside the one item that seemed to leap at him from the paper: the name in the authorization column . . . Aristotle Milan Malinari s pseudonym And as that hated name burned itself into his brain Millie said: It s the first time in two years that Malinari has given himself away like this. Other times when he s used Manchester s account he s had Manchester himself authorize it. This time he had no choice because his partner was dead. Trask felt galvanized. In his excitement he had started to his feet. He stared at the printout glared at it unwilling to take his eyes off the paper in case it should disappear. It was the best lead yet. . . possibly as good as the one that had sent him out to Australia. But The extra money he said frowning or maybe all of it is obviously for his use while he gets himself set up again. So why didn t he take more Maybe he doesn t think he needs more she said. Perhaps he didn t want to alarm the bank. I can t say. But don t forget the extraps: our three years are up you said so yourself and things file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 29 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt could be coming to a head. Maybe money won t be important in the world that Malinari and the others are planning. But we trampled on at lea t a third of those plans out in Australia Trask protested. She nodded. So now maybe they re going to speed things up a little. For as you also pointed out during your pep talk the Wamphyri know for sure now that we re after them . . . Feeling tired Trask sat down again. His mind was finding it hard to take in everything that Millie was telling him the picture wouldn t firm up until the last piece was in place and he could scan the whole thing. And so. Okay now you can tell me the bad news he said angling his head to look up at her. Another one of those stumbling blocks I mentioned Millie said. Like what Well like I said the charity is just a number: number nineteen of nineteen charities. There has to be a separate file that details exactly who what and where this charity is but Jimmy didn t have the time he would need to hack into any more files. Let s face it there could be thousands of them He didn t have the time Trask was astonished. What are we paying him for He could make time Millie was looking uncomfortable again. No you don t understand she said. The bank s computer was programmed with a whole bag of countermea sures. Jimmy worked wonders but he could override them for only so long before getting locked out. She shrugged helplessly. So that even if you d sanction it Which I would which I do almost anything We can t get back in. Er and that s not all. Their system has probably backtracked us down Trask got there first. And there ll almost certainly be an official protest. Which means tomorrow morning bright and early I ll have our Minister Responsible bleating at me on the blower And I know that when you get bleated at we can expect to get it in the neck too she said. Hence all of the shilly shallying Trask growled at her when you could have come straight to the point and maybe saved us a little time. But I wanted you to see how clever I was she said and appreciate me for it. Which might take some of the sting out of it when you get around to shouting at me. Do I do too much of that Trask asked her and shook his head promising No shouting. Why if I were ten years younger I might even try to kiss you What s age got to do with it she said. You re as young as you feel or as someone can make you feel. Trask knew a different version of that which went: You re as young as the one you re feeling but he didn t say so. Suddenly he was very aware of Millie s perfume where she was standing close beside him. But as if she d read his mind and perhaps she had she went back around to the front of his desk and stood there looking at him in that way of hers. One of her ways anyway. Er you said stumbling blocks Trask said bringing his thoughts to order. More than the ones you ve mentioned presumably. Okay I can see one such: we don t know where the money went which is where Malinari is. But we re talking about three quarters of a million dollars here. Surely we can trace it We tried Millie told him. That international convention I mentioned Jslo problem any major signatory can gain entry to the database. With our security rating Jimmy simply accessed it went in and took a look. And Would you believe that on that date about that time there were more than twenty movements of that precise number of dollars left right and centre around the world Well there were but not one was destined for charities real or contrived. Trask understood what she was saying. Manchester s money went to a nonsignatory country which is to say Italy Greece China Russia or one of those South American places. Or Switzerland itself she reminded him again. By now Trask s mind had sorted itself out. He was thinking again and doing an excellent job of it. That makes for a hell of a lot of places where Malinari could be he said. The way 1 see it this so called charity can only be one of his friends from Starside. When they came into this world they split up. He ended up in Australia but where did the others go Well wherever he now needs a safe haven and has fled to one of them. And why not since he s been subsidizing that one let s continue to call it a charity for the last two years. Okay we know where he hasn t gone: file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 30 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt to one of the signatory countries. So now let s see if we can eliminate some of the places where he might have gone. I m with you she answered. Trask waved her to a chair and told her: Millie sit down for God s sake ... or mine at least It s nine thirty at night and you re still mobile. You re tiring me out little sister. Funny she said seating herself and crossing her pretty legs but I thought I d woken you up Anyway let s do some of this eliminating. You re way ahead of me right he said. Okay go on. Well she began for five years now ever since Hong Kong s third big financial collapse China has hidden herself away behind a bamboo curtain convinced that the decadent capitalist West is deliberately trying to destabilize her. And now they have this plague to contend with a new bubonic strain running rampant through China and spreading west which they haven t the resources to combat. Also what with their current disinclination toward foreign types in their country especially rich foreigners but including diplomats and aid agencies well they re not the most friendly of people. In short there aren t too many Westerners retiring to Beijing these days And I don t think Malinari would go there either. Strike China said Trask. And probably Russia too. Oh Malinari s dollars would be welcome there for sure but I have it on good authority that he wouldn t be. Gustav Turchin is the new head of the Opposition and I ve already alerted him to the threat. Which leaves Italy Greece Switzerland and South America she said. Of which I fancy Switzerland Trask nodded. Or perhaps South Amer ica Concentration lined his face. Switzerland has high mountains and it s cold. Quite appealing I should think to someone or something from Star side. Not necessarily Millie answered. I read your preliminary report on the Aussie job and I was at your pep talk. You make a point of saying that Malinari was where we would least expect to find him. So why not the others Personally I would think that the most Switzerland has going for it is its neutrality its autonomy and the fact that it welcomes people with lots of money. But Greece and Italy aren t dismissive of high rollers either. This gets us nowhere fast Trask stood up. Or should I say somewhere slowly Whichever it s given me a headache. And it s way past drinkies time. Also I haven t eaten yet. You I m trying to watch my figure she said. But It looks fine to me he told her uncharacteristically. So uncharacteristically that he could bite his tongue off. But she continued if you insist I do. Millie smiled and said Our first date And as Trask put on a tie and shrugged into his jacket he found himself wondering Just bow long have I been going blind anyway For the truth of something had suddenly become astonishingly clear to him which made him also wonder how long she d been hiding it from him. Three years maybe Long enough for him to recover Millie was thoughtful that way. The only trouble was that Trask didn t think he d recovered yet. Not yet no ... OF STRANGE PLACES SURVIVALS AND SUPERSTITIONS The term E Branch wasn t known to the staff of the hotel downstairs to them the upper floor was the headquarters of a firm of multifaceted international entrepreneurs whatever that was supposed to mean. But Trask and his upper echelon were known to them especially to the head waiter of the excellent restaurant and carvery: the peculiar hours that the upstairs people were wont to work and at which they occasionally dined sometimes made for problems in the kitchen. Such as tonight. The hour was late and the kitchen had been busy all day. Trask and Millie took a table in a spot favoured by Branch personnel: a slightly elevated alcove surrounded by small palms in half barrels and varnished pine trelliswork interwoven with imitation clematis and bougainvillaea. Sufficiently remote from the rest of the restaurant it was considered safe to talk business here but to be absolutely certain Jimmy Harvey or one of the other techs would eat here now and then and check the place for bugs . . . the electrical variety. To date they hadn t discovered any. Seating his companion and then himself Trask reached for a pitcher and poured water into two glasses. He would have preferred to get straight back to their conversation but decided to wait until they had ordered. The short walk to the elevator and the ride down had provided an ideal opportunity to get the blood flowing to his brain again and process Millie s information he felt file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 31 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt more able to concentrate his weariness more mental than physical was lifting moment by moment. Which made him wonder out loud: That office of mine. I sometimes feel isolated in there. Is it my imagination do you think or has it got smaller over the years The whole world is smaller Millie answered. A touch of claustrophobia maybe Trask shook his head. I ve been down in the Perchorsk Complex under the Urals the site of the Russian Gate. I know what claustrophobia isl If you ever get the chance to see that place which I hope you never do you ll see what I mean. No it s not claustrophobia nothing physical anyway. Though certainly I sense things closing in on me ... or on us. His sigh involuntary though it was gave a lot away. You re carrying a lot of weight she said. Stressed out and no way to relieve the tension. You d think that being an empath of a sort he answered I d be able to figure that out for myself. Knowing it is one thing she told him. But admitting it is something else. Once you admit it you can do something about fixing it. There are ways to let off steam I m told. He looked at her really looked at her and said You were never married were you Millie Now it was her turn to sigh. That s one of the ways she said. And: No I never was. But you ve known me almost as long as I ve known me so you know that. And you know why. He nodded and said These so called talents of ours of course. It s the same for quite a few of us. lan Goodly because he wouldn t want to know in advance how things would work out between himself and a woman I mean and he certainly wouldn t want to know when harm was coming her way and there was nothing he could do to avoid it The future as he s frequently wont to remind us is a devious place. And so are other people s minds Millie said. I ve been out with men dated men and behind the smiles all they ve been worried about is how much my meal and the wine was costing and what they d get back for their investment. I ve bedded men oh yes a few who were mainly concerned about the size of their own egos. Only their egos And Millie shrugged. That too she said. It seems that male egos and you know whats go hand in hand er and no double entendre intended Oh yes I know: that if I didn t know things would be easier. But if I see a certain look in someone s eyes or maybe detect a certain tone of voice then I ve just got to know what s going on in there. The temptation is irresistible. Any tele path who tells you different is a liar. We may not want to look but we just can t help ourselves. I know Trask told her ruefully. I have problems of my own remember That thing of yours must be a real killer she said. I mean everybody has their little secrets. But the one you love really shouldn t have. So how do you avoid getting hurt when a special someone slips up and tells you a lie even a white lie or simply covers up for something he or she promised and forgot to do or Or or or said Trask. Precisely. But I ve learned to differentiate between 65 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS innocent and deliberate deceit. There are degrees of truth you know But yes I know what you mean. It s never easy. And yet you were married and to a telepath at that. Trask thought about that and for the first time in a long time found himself able to talk about Zek. She never lied he said. If she couldn t tell me the truth she said nothing. But she could read your mind. Trask nodded. Funnily enough she never read anything she thought shouldn t be in there. That s what she told me and I m the one who would know it if she ... if she didn t mean it. Neither have I Millie said. Read anything in your mind that shouldn t be there I mean. Am I that innocent No you re just straight. It s the other side of your talent Ben. You give what you expect to get. Maybe it s just that I m careful where telepaths are concerned he said. And maybe you shouldn t be Millie answered. I m a big girl. I could stand the occasional shock I think. Then the waiter came . . . Everything was off except room service fare if Trask was anyone but Trask they wouldn t get served at all. A little ham mustard sliced tomatoes lettuce and some fresh white bread he file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 32 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt told the portly fussy pseudo Italian waiter. White wine for the lady and a large Wild Turkey for me on the rocks. But do please remember Mario: the ice is for cooling it down not for diluting it. Of course sir and then they were on their own again. That Swiss bank has a list of these so called charities Trask said. They know who or at least where that money went to. Of course they do because they sent it. But getting it out of them could take time she said. Probably more time than we ve got. Even if we told them Manchester s death was suspicious They d freeze his accounts Trask said. Now that they know he s dead they ve probably already done so but even with the Minister Responsible on the case I can t see them giving in too easy. Why they might even see it as their duty to inform the charity that it s under investigation especially since Mr. Milan is was Manchester s bona fide partner And knowing that Jimmy Harvey has been into their files they may even have done that already too . . . or first thing in the morning when their computer starts telling tales on us. And that s my fault she said looking downcast. Fools rush in and like that. So maybe you should speak to the Minister Responsible tonight That s not a should but a must Trask said. I ll do it when we ve eaten. Maybe he can pull some strings do something we haven t thought of. It makes me wish I were a bank robber she said. v w BKlAlNLUMLtY Well you ve made a very good start to your new career Trask told her without a trace of humour. Damn it all but if we had Jake Cutter up and running we wouldn t need to break in. He could simply . . . well go there take Jimmy Harvey with him be in and out like a couple of ghosts and to hell with all the Burger Finanz Gruppe s gadgets She looked at him. So that stuff I ve been hearing about Jake the stuff you left out of your initial report is for real He really did do his thing out there in Australia If he hadn t Trask answered you d be talking to yourself right now. And incidentally since I hadn t planned on making it general knowledge until he had it down pat until it was routine where did you hear about it anyway He already knew the answer to that one. Millie nodded. I am what I am she said and fell silent while their meal was delivered . . . But while they ate: Something else you mentioned during your pep talk Millie said. That you were pretty sure Malinari had fled from Australia. I accept that because you say so also because we know his charity isn t in Australia but what made you so sure We saw Malinari in Xanadu Trask told her Manchester s casino resort in the mountains. But saw is probably the wrong word for it: rather we glimpsed him as he passed overhead. But you can t know what it s like Millie until you ve seen it for yourself. A man shape yes but only roughly. A bat an aerial manta a pterosaur any of those things or all of them. It s a fearful concept in its own right: that the Wamphyri have such power over their flesh. They re metamorphs shape changers. And we re just men and women merely human . . . Anyway he spoke to us. To me mainly but since I m not a telepath he really drove his message home had to in order to get it through my thick skull. He spoke of us meeting again in a different place a different country. Myself I only felt the threat but Liz Merrick got a deal more. Malinari was there and he was gone it was over in a flash but Liz received various impressions. He would go to one of his former colleagues Vavara or Szwart and lair with her or him while starting afresh. You said Various impressions Millie said. Like what for instance What else I mean Opposites Trask answered. Like light and dark: a burst of sunlight on the one hand and midnight in a mineshaft on the other. In other words like Vavara and Szwart themselves Millie said and nodded. Vavara the gleaming jewel albeit evil and Szwart the heart of darkness the Lord of Night. Maybe Trask shrugged. But it was fast as I told you and Liz is still thinking it through trying to remember exactly what she saw in that monster s mind before he shut her out. Hmmm said Millie and: I think perhaps I m jealous. In all these years you never sent me or took me on any field assignments So maybe this kid sister status of mine isn t getting me very far. No but it is keeping you safe Trask thought and hoped she wasn t listening . They had finished eating were almost ready to leave when Lardis Lidesci joined them at their file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 33 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt table. Been looking for you he grunted at Trask and sat down. They said you wanted to see me. If you d been a little earlier you could have eaten with us Trask told him. And then remembering that he was supposed to be angry: And anyway where the hell have you been No let me guess . . . you ve been out with Jake Cutter right Jake s not bad company Lardis answered momentarily surprised by Trask s tone. But then he recovered and snapped And he doesn t shout at me What s more it seems to me he s as out of place here as I am So what else can I tell you Lardis was Szgany: a Sunsider a Traveller a Gypsy. These terms all meant much the same thing but he was a Gypsy from an alien parallel dimension the vampire world of Sunside Starside homeworld of the Wamphyri He was shortish maybe five foot six or seven barrel bodied and almost apelike in the length of his powerful arms. His lank black hair beginning to grey framed a leathery weather beaten face with a flattened nose that sat uncomfortably over a mouth that was missing too many teeth. As for the ones that remained: they were uneven and as stained as old ivory. But under shaggy eyebrows his dark brown eyes glittered his mind s agility denying the encroaching infirmities of his body. Seeming to jingle when he walked clearly a Gypsy even in jeans a modern shirt and Western boots and perhaps especially in the latter still there was something about the Old Lidesci that commanded respect. Rightly so for Lardis had been a leader of his people for a very long time he would be again when things were put right in Sunside. If things were put right in Sunside . . . Hub Trask grunted. First Millie and now you. It seems I ve been shouting all day long Lardis shrugged and said Don t apol er apolo er . . . Apologize said Millie. That s right said Lardis who still wasn t too comfortable with the language. It s inact er inactivity that s all. I feel it too. But my being here isn t anyone s fault so I ve no right to be shouting either. Indeed I should be grateful if only for Lissa s sake. Huhl but she frets too About what might or mightn t be happening in Sunside. But it s almost ten at night Trask said. And I ve been wanting to talk to you all day. You should have let me know said the other. You can t expect me to just wander round looking for something useful to do. I saw my name on one of your pieces of paper on the notice board at least I ve learned to read that much I thought someone was sure to tell me if it was important. I wasn t about to show my ignorance by asking. No one mentioned it so I figured it didn t matter. As for where we ve been: we were in the park the British Museum the cinema The cinema Trask shook his head in disbelief. Watching a movie with Jake And angrily: Then be should have told you except he probably doesn t go much on reading orders either With Lissa and with Jake Cutter aye Lardis nodded his grizzly head. Lissa and I we ve been here three of your years Ben Trask one hundred and fifty Sunside sunups and never been to a cinema Anyway I enjoyed it. A classic Jake says that s doing the rounds again whatever that means. Anyway it s about a ship that sinks and drowns a lot of people. The story s true but some of the people were imag er imag Imaginary Trask helped him out. Aye that s it. The imaginary hero dies in the cold after saving his beloved. Now I ask you what kind of a story is that where after all his troubles the hero sinks into the cold cold water Hub: It made my Lissa cry Titanic said Trask wearily now. That s it said Lardis. And after a moment: So why did you want to see me And what is it that s annoying you so An innocent Trask thought. No a barbarian. A larger than life roughneck illegal immigrant from a parallel dimension. And yet an innocent too. For no blame attaches to Lardis Lidesci. While out loud: I had a meeting a talk with everyone this afternoon he answered. Everyone except you that is. Timings were posted. I had hoped you would be there so that I could speak to you when I d finished with the others. We haven t had time to talk about that Greek job I sent you on. And you re quite right I should have ensured that you were told or told you personally. But in any case I m sure that if you had found anything suspicious you would have reported it by now. The Greek thing you sent me on Lardis said. I think it was what you would call er routine Anyway wasn t it you who called me off it You sent for me brought me out to Australia. And I m glad you did. I wouldn t have missed the action for the world for anyone s world that is Hah: But Greece Too damn hot for my liking. And those Travelling folk weren t much to my liking either. He frowned and his bushy eyebrows tangled over his nose. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 34 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt It s time I heard all about it Trask told him. But not here. Mario is getting ready to shut up shop so we ll go up to my office. I can offer you a glass of brandy to settle you down for the night. What do you say I say it s a deal said Lardis smacking his lips. That stuff of yours has a lot more kick than anything we ever brewed on Sunside that s for sure When they stood up neither man noticed that Millie Cleary was looking just a little disappointed. Her plans for the night or at least her hopes had just flown out the window. But there was always tomorrow . . . Lardis sprawled in a chair in Trask s office. Nursing his brandy in its bowl he stretched his stumpy legs sighed his pleasure and said It s good stuff. I can t taste the little green plums but there s something in there that bites Not plums Trask shook his head. Grapes ... I think. You don t know There are plenty of things I don t know Trask answered. Your world s a lot simpler than mine. That is there s a great deal less to know. Which in a way was true and in others not. Anyway tell me about that Greek job. The Greek job was something he had sent Lardis on mainly to give him something to do. The Old Lidesci had not been exaggerating about the inactivity he was seriously missing the ebb and flow of life and the ever present threat of death or undeath on Sunside Starside. Lardis knew that even with Nathan fighting the war there still it must be a terrible war for Sunside s Szgany. For Necroscope that Nathan Kiklu was messenger of the dead and master of the metaphysical Mobius Continuum still one man couldn t be everywhere at once. The Wamphyri were raiding on Sunside again as of old and Lardis felt guilty that he wasn t there to lead his people in the fighting not even in an advisory capacity. But Nathan had offered to bring him and Lissa to safety in Ben Trask s world and Lissa would hear no argument against it. Old man she d told Lardis this fighting is for the young ones. It s for them to learn the way. For if you do it for them again now then who among them will know how to do it when you are gone Trial and error taught you and an amount of skill I ll grant you and some luck but your legs can t run so fast these days and your lungs are like bellows with holes in them. So come with me and Nathan now and no more swearing and stamping your feet or I m off to find a younger more agreeable man in the world beyond the Gate. Her threat had meant nothing her love meant everything in the world in two worlds to Lardis. And he d known that she was right. His fighting days were over and younger men must now shoulder that burden. And who better than the Necroscope Nathan Kiklu called Keogh in this world But at least here in Trask s world Lardis could continue his fight against the Wamphyri and not only in an advisory capacity. He and his trusty machete had been of indispensable use out in Australia . . . But before Australia when Trask had sent Lardis out to the Greek mainland it wasn t simply a wild goose chase a subterfuge to keep him employed. There had been legitimate reasons too. Ever since the covert invasion of the Wamphyri E Branch had been on the lookout for signs of vampire infestations. Millie Cleary nicknamed Cur i u h rent Affairs by her esper colleagues and sometimes the Reference Library because she had the ability to log all sorts of mundane day to day minutiae in her extraordinary brain had been the one to bring a certain item of interest to Trask s attention. Commuting in to the HQ on the tube one morning one of the few lines still operating after the system s almost total collapse following the Great Flood of 2007 Millie had chanced to pick up a discarded copy of one of the more sensationalist newspapers. This was scarcely Reuters quality reporting it wasn t the sort of thing that Trask s sources would bring automatically to his notice but a page four headline had caught Millie s eye. Vampires Folklore or Fact Also there had been a picture of a girl with silver coins stuck to her eyelids being lowered into her grave in a coffin somewhere in Greece . . . But the story had been oddly atypical in this kind of publication not at all lurid or sensational certainly not in Millie s eyes with her E Branch background and inside knowledge but a straightforward steal or direct transcript from an original Greek newspaper report done without recourse to this dubious rag s usually hysterical attempts at dramatization. The story had been simple: a band of Gypsies had wandered down from Hungary on some pilgrimage or file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 35 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt other and one of their young womenfolk had taken sick. Diagnosed with anaemia she had been hospitalized in Kavala until her menfolk had taken her by force out of the hospital before leaving the area Traced to a nearby village Skotousa which lay on their route north the band were then discovered in the act of burying the girl as in the picture. Since there was no evidence of foul play the local police had been reluctant to interfere with the ceremony. A day or so later pathologists at the hospital in Kavala had decided that since the cause of death was suspected but not known for sure the body must be examined the death registered and a certificate issued. The doctors were of course simply covering for themselves and their hospital. But when the grave in Skotousa was opened . . . the girl was found with a grimace on her face burns on her eyelids and a stake through her heart Someone if not one of her own band of Travelling folk someone else had obviously seen her as a dire threat to the local community. A vampire of course . . . Trask hadn t been too much impressed. He knew from experience that old myths and practices die hard in the Mediterranean islands and the Balkans and these people were after all Travelling folk Gypsies with ancestral memories that went back centuries. Also and for various reasons mainly financial Gypsies weren t the only ones who believed in vampires. Filmmakers in Hollywood were soon to release three new vampire movies including yet another Dracula the so called vampire fad in popular fiction was still filling more than its fair i L t K share of shelf space in the bookshops the Downliners Sect a cult London rock group resurgent from the late 70s were at number three in the charts with a grotesquery titled Somethin s Up That Should Be Down ... ad infinitum. As for Somethin s Up : Millie had even caught herself singing the words from time to time: Hey man look what s walkin round. Somethin s up that won t stay down. Somethin s up from the rotten ground. Time we all got outta town. Outta town. Get outta town . . . Thus for a world that in the main doesn t really believe in the vampire Trask had responded we appear to be doing a damn good job of promoting the fiend And much like the Head of Branch the Old Lidesci hadn t been too impressed with Millie s find either. Travelling folk you say he d queried Trask when the subject was broached. Do you mean like those original Travellers Szgany from Sunside that you once told me about Those misbegotten flea bitten Wamphyri supplicants banished through the Starside Gate with their vampire masters two thousand years ago Aye it could be them their descendants that is. But then again most of the Gypsies of your world are Szgany descendants all of them with the true Traveller blood that is. Not that there was much of good blood in any accursed supplicant tribe that I ever heard of buhl Which is why I want to send you out there Trask had answered. You and a locator and a couple of minders to make sure no harm befalls. I need to know that this burial ritual is just a ritual something that has come down the centuries. I mean I know that in some of the Greek islands the Balkans and especially Romania even today they bury people who die in suspicious circumstances with silver coins on their eyes . . . presumably to keep them closed Just in case you know But this stake thing is something else. We know what that s all about. So who suspected this poor girl and why And was it just superstition or what And so it had been Lardis s task because he was a Gypsy himself and with any luck would be acceptable to the Hungarian band to fly to Greece and find out. And now finally the Old Lidesci told his story. . . We got into Kavala in the early evening just as the sun was failing. There was myself Bernie Fletcher and that burly pair of likely lad minders you found for us Special Branch men on loan from Whitehall s Corridors of Power courtesy of the Minister Responsible . We took a taxi a short drive of just a few miles into Keramoti on the coast where we could eat and hire a car. Bernie got the car while the minders and I ate at a taverna on the seafront. But the sea Ben the sea Even with the sun going down no especially with the sunset I never saw such a sight in my entire life That incredible blue like some vast mirror of the sky turning darker as night drew on. It made me realize what I was missing tied down in London I mean to see that wonderful ocean all curved on its horizon. You must use me more send me out into the world so that I can see it all. Ah the stories I ll take back with me to Sunside one day Where was I Ah yes: Kavala and Keramoti. We didn t go to the local police. Bernie thought it would only complicate matters. We were after all only tourists and chances were they wouldn t care for us interfering in their business. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 36 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Worse they might want to know what was our business And anyway Bernie wanted to show off his skills. He got out his maps on the table where we d eaten picked a route to Skotousa. And: I have a feeling that that s the way they went he said from Kavala to Skotousa. So we ll take the same route see if I can get the feel of them. And we did. Me I kept wanting to tell him he was driving on the wrong side of the road but of course I was wrong. They drive on the right in Greece I can t see why you people don t choose a system and stick to it Likewise your languages. What a hundred or more different tongues with as many and more dialects No wonder you ve been plagued with so many wars nation against nation. In Sunside we have just the one tongue. Szgany No chance of errors in transla er translation. And no roads at all just leafy tracks through the cover of the woods. But I ll tell you something: that Greek tongue has a damn sight more in common with mine than yours does. Why in no time at all I could understand almost everything they were saying Skotousa was some seventy five miles by the time we were there the sun was down and the light was going fast. I ll never get over your sunsets. . . you can actually see it going especially in Brisbane Australia. Bang and it s gone Anyway in Skotousa: Lodgings weren t difficult. We stayed at an inn and that night went down into the bar. I had changed into Sunside clothing for comfort s sake but it wasn t all that far removed from the way some of the locals were dressed. Farmers and such they came in for their ouzo and Metaxa or just to cool off from the day s work in all that terrible heat. They sat under those big slow fans played board games or watched television and didn t seem to find me at all out of place not at first though the bartender did ask if I was Szgany. Aye from a long time ago I told him with a nod. But I didn t say from how far away My people used to wander through these parts or so I m told I went on. But they sold me when I was just a boy. This was a lie of course a story I d heard from Millie Cleary about your world s Travellers which hadn t surprised me a jot Old habits die hard Ben. What descendants of gutless supplicants out of Sunside Hah But their ancestors used to give their children away to the Wamphyri 73 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS Sold you The bartender looked shocked. To English people who could care for me better. Ah that explains your friends these English he said nodding towards Bernie and the others. So then what were your parents Romanian Gypsies maybe I ve heard they ve been selling their children for years That s what I m here to find out I answered. Tm told my people used to wander this way in their caravans about this time of year. I m looking for my roots you know Going back to the Gypsies after what they did to you No not going back to them I answered. I just want to know what they are like how they live. Wouldn t you be curious if you were me About where you sprang from I mean And then he looked around all sly like and said If I were you I d forget about them. We get the Szgany through here from time to time. Some strange folks pass through Skotousa Recently I said. Recently he nodded. And then he leaned across the bar and said Try across the border into Bulgaria a place called Eleshnitsa. You think they re there I questioned him. But how do you know They ve been travelling these old routes for years he told me. And aye they were here but the law moved them on. A dubious lot my friend your Gypsy clan. Once across the border they were out of Greek jurisdiction which I say is a very good thing. Leave well enough alone eh I certainly wouldn t want a Gypsy curse on me Can t blame the police for letting them go. So what had they done wrong I persisted. For the police to move them on I mean. Again he leaned across to me and quietly explained They buried one of their own a young girl in the woods nearby. But some folks didn t think they d made too good a job of it. Local superstitions you understand At which he must have seen how intent I was. Straightening up he gave himself a little shake glanced all about the room and said But there I ve said too much already so let s have done with all that. And so I was forced to push my luck. Before he could move off and serve someone else I grabbed his arm. Haven t I heard something about that I said. Didn t someone dig her up again open up her grave and put a stake through her heart as if she were a monster or something or one of your file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 37 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt vrykoulakas eh For I knew that was what the Greeks call the Vampire. And how he backed off then Him and the entire inn or taverna or whatever with him each and every man of them in there. For if they d heard nothing else they had certainly heard that one ugly word: vrykoulakas So that was that. From then on no one talked to us and the next morning we moved out. Still I didn t find it too odd and I still don t. For it s like you said Ben: in places like that old myths and superstitions never die. What with Romania and the primal Gate at Radujevac just a hundred and fifty or so miles away And the Szgany wandering those roads for a thousand years or more Oh I could well understand the fey of the folks in Skotousa ... I even understood them digging up that girl and putting a stake in her heart perhaps because they remembered a time when such had been routine. could understand it aye . . . But Bernie Fletcher couldn t. He wanted to know what the local police had done about it... apart from letting the Travellers go that is. So the next morning before we crossed the border he sought out old newspapers for the last few days and read up on it. It was a good idea of yours Ben to send Bernie out there with me. Him being a Graeco er a Graecophile Is that it Being able to speak and read it and what all. And there it was in the newspapers: When the pathol er the doctor from Kavala when he d looked at the girl s body cut her open and what have you he d seen that she had been well dead before she d been staked. Dead of this anaemia that is. And since there s no crime in killing the dead and since there was no proof against the Gypsies anyway it had been thought as well to let them go on their way. Almost enough to see us on our way back home too bahl Now see I ve even begun to think of this place as home But no we carried on to Eleshnitsa in Bulgaria. Incidentally that was Bernie Fletcher s choice too. Before I d even mentioned it to him why he d already fathomed it for himself These men of yours Ben Trask: their skills are strange and rare . . . The people in Eleshnitsa told us where we d find the Gypsies: in woods to the north of the village. And do you know it was almost as if I really was back home again when I saw those ruts in the track through the trees. The hooves of horses can t be that much different from those of shads I reckon anyway I knew for sure that caravan wheels had chewed those deep ruts in the good rich soil and I felt it in my bones that we were that close. And we were. When we saw the smoke of their fires rising over a clearing in the trees Bernie dropped me and our minders off. Expert in covert er in covert sur er in watching without being seen damn it that pair of likely lads just seemed to vanish into the greenery. Quiet as mice they were so as never to disturb a bird in the trees but I knew they d be watching out for me. And so I went on alone on foot into the Gypsy camp. The leaves were all brown on the trees from this terrible summer but at least the camp was in shade. The smoke came from the chimney stacks atop their caravans only a madman would set a fire in open woods with everything as dry as this But some of the Szgany folk were about and they saw my approach. Of course they did for I wanted to be seen. I even jingled as I came on all dappled under the wilted trees. And long before their first greetings rang out they knew that I was Szgany too. But they . . . didn t jingle Well not strange. Wamphyri supplicants and their descendants too apparently don t wear silver. Perhaps there s a lesson in that Ben. If you see a Traveller in your world in this world that is and he doesn t wear silver you can be sure he s the son of the sons of some scurvy supplicant servant of a Lord 75 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS or Lady of the Wamphyri in olden Starside Take bets on it if you like for I don t think you d lose. And yet again we see how old habits die hard. But whatever their customs they didn t seem to notice my silver though it should be said we didn t shake hands or clasp forearms either. So perhaps they only use silver in their money or when they place it on the eyes of their dead when they lower them into the ground . . . In any case I was Szgany they didn t shy from me or seem to consider me an outsider I asked to see their chief and was taken to him in his varnished caravan. But he was old that one an old old man. If you think I m old he could give me fifteen years at least He was all dark stained leather a glint of gold tooth a plain gold ring in the lobe of a hairy right ear and more gold on his gnarly fingers. After he had looked me over satisfied himself that I was Szgany he gave a nod and my escort file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 38 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt left us alone together. And then he asked me: Why do you come here Is there something you would tell me Are you a messenger For I can sense that you re from far far away. I have no message I answered. I m just a Traveller as you and your people are Travellers but indeed I have come from far far away. What is this message you re expecting He had seemed eager at first expectant but now withdrew a little into himself and mumbled: No message. Ah no message for old Vladi only to brighten in a moment and say Then perhaps you are something of a message in yourself In what way I asked him. But he only cocked his head on one side and winked saying: That s for me to know and for you to answer. Then question me by all means I shrugged and if I m able to answer be sure I will. Hmm.i He nodded his wrinkled old head of white hair as if he pondered on something and fell silent awhile. But then he started up again and said There are some strange strange places in the world don t you think His voice was a dry rustle like dead leaves stirred by a breeze. A great many I answered. Vast deserts mighty oceans and mountains high as the sky. But I fancy that s not what you mean. In what way strange old chief Of a sudden his rheumy old eyes cleared and clasping my knee he said What clan are you What Traveller tribe What s your name eh I m Lardis a Lidesci I told him at once. And why not for I m proud of it. A Lidesci. . . eh He blinked at me then. Ah a Lidesci you say Hub I don t know it never heard of it or if I did I can t remember. Perhaps in the old days . . . We were only a few and it was a long time ago I told him. Now we re no more except me. And when I see the Travelling Folk I always stop and speak to them. For the old times you know It seems only right. Aye you re right he answered. But not many remember the old times. And fewer still the strange old places The places of which you spoke He tapped his veined crooked old nose and nodded wisely. Places this beak of mine can smell Places it takes me when an owl hoots just so or the bats flit sideways in the face of the moon. Strange and timeless places aye. Places the Szgany remember some of the Szgany a few of us anyway which we visit from time to time. Old places we have always visited but sometimes a new place if it smells right to this old beak. Hubt But this time it let me down. So perhaps I m past it eh Well he was infirm of body and probably of mind too and it seemed to me he was rambling. And despite that his forebears were most likely a dubious lot or perhaps because of it I felt sorry for him. For a while at least until he said: So then Lardis of the Lidescis: well met whoever you are. But your use of the old tongue is strange even antique which is why I thought you were my messenger for whom I ve waited an entire lifetime as my father and my father s father before me. For I am Vladi Ferengi and much like you the last of my line. He must have seen me start for he said Eh Eh Do you know us then know of us And now his voice was sharp. Did I know of them But in Sunside their name has been a curse word since time immemorial Ferenc Ferenczy Ferengi in all its forms an evil invocation Why they had been legendary even among their own kind the Wamphyri The mutant giant Fess Ferenc had been the last of them that I knew of one of a handful who escaped alive from the battle at the Dweller s Garden. Habl Did I know of them And so these people were the descendants of some ancient line of Ferenc supplicants eh Oh a long time ago I ll grant you: two thousand years or more and all of it long forgotten if not in its entirety. But still it had given me pause . . . I quickly covered up. Ferenczy is a name that s not uncommon in Romania which is where you re headed I said. Why I think there may even be a Ferenczy or two in my own ancestry which is why I was startled to hear you speak it. The last was a damned lie of course but not the first for as you yourself have told me Ben the Ferenczys are an ancient honoured established line in old Romania as are many old family names out of Sunside. But Vladi had soured of our conversation now he sat silently glooming on me until my escort reappeared with bad news. There are strangers in the woods that one reported to his chief the while looking me up and down with suspicion in his narrow brown eyes. Ahl said I. But they ll be my colleagues who brought me here to see you. They re not Szgany so I didn t bring them with me into your camp. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 39 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt So they re friends of yours are they My young escort hissed gripping my elbow. Reporters Newspaper men perhaps And old Vladi he looked at me and grunted: Eh Eh 1J h h 1 L b K NtCROSCOPH No I shook my head. They re English visitors to this country. Didn t I tell you I came from afar Then my escort held me more tightly yet saying The men are waiting vour word Vladi. First Maria goes down with the blood curse then those wspaper people show up with their cameras and notebooks and those soiled Sisters of Mercy poking their noses in. What with that doctor from Kavala and the police we ve had enough Now I think we should bloody this one up a little him and these English friends of his. I think they are spies and we should fling them in a thorn thicket for their trouble But Vladi shook his head and said Spies But what would they be spying on We have nothing to hide So let it be. There is trouble enough in our wake. And anyway this Lardis has spoken to me in an ancient tongue that my grandfather knew and he may be of our blood. But having said his piece then he turned to me. You he said. I ve seen enough of you Lardis Lidesci. I ll accept what you ve said but I can t accept that you came among us in a sly fashion. Go and take your secretive friends with you. I don t want to see you again. And so I went. Bernie had turned the car around. My minders met me halfway and I rather fancy that for all they were burly lads they were glad to be out of there too. The Szgany are fearsome in a fight and can hurl their knives with awesome accuracy. Aye and we could feel Ferengi eyes on us all the way out of the woods. In Eleshnitsa at noon Bernie contacted the HQ as usual. There was a message ordering our return along with your instructions for me to join you in Australia. And that s it. I ve told it all . . . 5 OF THE NIGHT Trask poured another brandy into Lardis s glass and for a little while remained silent while he pondered over what he d been told. Then he said I think that maybe I should have spoken to you sooner. Eh Something in it you mean Lardis seemed surprised. You sensed nothing out of the ordinary Trask too was puzzled. Why had Lardis found nothing suspicious in what he d seen and heard But the way you told it there was a definite air of mystery about these people. Aye but there s that about all the Szgany Lardis protested. Now listen: They had been through a lot. They d had sickness in their company and when it was time for them to move on they d taken this girl of theirs from a hospital by force and without permission. That was stupid or more likely stubborn of them yes I agree but such is their nature. Then they d aroused old superstitions in Skotousa by burying her with silver on her eyes which is probably a custom of theirs just as it is among various Szgany clans in Sunside. And from the time of their leaving Kavala all of these newspaper people had been following after them not to mention the police. Then that poor lass was dug up again perhaps by the Skotousa villagers I don t know but someone saw fit to put a stake in her for sure And after her grave had been opened yet again by that pathol er that doctor from the hospital I mean and after he d cut her open and what have you . . . well can t you just see how upset these people must have been Yes I can see all of that readily enough Trask agreed. That doesn t bother me too much or it does the entire sequence of events and the events themselves: the girl s sickness and what have you it s all bothering me But not specifically not at this stage. I mean 1 accept your explanation of the facts as we know them. Leukaemia anaemia various blood infections they re all killers. And I believe that in certain Greek islands and certainly in Romania they still bury people who die that way with silver coins on their eyelids. I m not disputing that old customs die hard Lardis or that what we ve seen here isn t perfectly normal practice among the Szgany. But there are other things that you mentioned which complicate matters . . . Such as This old chief er Vladi Ferengi file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 40 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Yes what of him Trask sat chin in hand fingering his lip staring across his desk at the Old Lidesci. Some five and a half years ago he eventually said we had another visitor from Sunside ... a human visitor that is. I m talking about Nathan Keogh when he came through the Gate into Perchorsk if not exactly of his own free will . . . He paused musingly. Of course he didn t Lardis nodded. He was thrown into the Starside Gate by his vampire brother Nestor of the Wamphyri Or rather by Nestor s first lieutenant Zahar. Later in this world Nathan learned the secrets of the Mobius Continuum and brought you your people and your weapons back to Sunside with him to help us fight Vormulac Unsleep and Devetaki Skullguise. Huhi But that s old news. What of it When Nathan escaped from Perchorsk Trask continued as much to himself as to Lardis he was helped by a band of Travellers. Strangely or even incredibly they were journeying that far north despite that it was winter And as for what this Vladi hinted to you about these strange places Yes Well I never did have the entire story from Nathan it wasn t considered relevant at the time but if I remember correctly he had much the same conversation with the chief of the band that helped him. Also that chief s description as I recall it was identical to this Vladi s. His name this chief Lardis was fascinated now. I never learned it Trask shook his head. But I do remember Nathan saying that these people were descendants of Wamphyri supplicants who must have come through the Gate with their masters millennia ago. Their name alone would have told us that much. He also said they believed that one day their masters . . . that they would return. And the strange places Well it s pure speculation of course said Trask but couldn t the strange places be those regions to which these masters would return or in which they were scheduled to reappear For instance the Gate under the Carpathians upriver from the resurgence at Radujevac They frequently had Szgany visitors in the neighbourhood of the Refuge. Then there s the old Moldavian Khorvaty Faethor Ferenczy had a castle there oh fifteen hundred years ago. And Romania in the region of Halmagiu under the Zarandului Mountains where Faethor held sway and more recently his bloodson Janos. We might even consider Perchorsk which this Vladi might have sniffed out with that talented old beak of his. It s by no means impossible Lardis. Why you yourself are fey in your Szgany fashion and And there d be far more of the Wamphyri taint in their supplicant blood than in mine that s for sure the other nodded. I ll give you odds that these are the same people Trask said. Except I m not taking you on said Lardis. But. . . what does it all mean I don t know Trask answered. I m not sure. But what I would like to know is this: where had these Szgany Ferengi been before that poor girl went down with her weird disorder her so called anaemia And what was this Gypsy band doing in that part of Greece anyway To which I ve no answers. Lardis shook his head. Nor have I not yet said Trask. But if this Vladi Ferengi has the power to sniff out the strange places as he calls them the places where in olden times the Wamphyri came through from Starside or where they then established themselves in our world. . . mightn t he also sense their presence in the here and now I begin to see what you re getting at Lardis growled. And didn t he say that this time his old beak had let him down suggesting that he and his people had been I don t know on some kind of mission maybe searching for something For something or someone said Lardis. Aye someone . . . though I think you re right and I too prefer something Something . . . which had perhaps only recently arrived here Exactly Trask nodded. Hubi Lardis grunted. And: Am I blind then Why haven t I made this connection You didn t have all the facts Trask told him. And anyway two heads are better than one. He sat up straighter. And four or five heads are better yet. We have a think tank tomorrow. Good for now I can give them something to think about. But right now He paused to stifle a yawn. And Lardis said You re tired Ben and so am I. I fancy it s partly this good brandy s fault. No Trask shook his head. Maybe that s what does it for you but for me it s this job. I need a good night s sleep let things work themselves out in my head while my body rests. It s too late tonight to do anything more anyway. I feel the need to work at it of course but can t see us achieving anything more right now than we ll get through in a single hour tomorrow morning. I ll be on my way then said Lardis easing himself upright in a creaking of old bones. But: file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 41 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Wait Trask stopped him frowning. Oh There s something else in what you told me which doesn t seem to fit in anywhere. You ll have to remind me. Something about Sisters of Mercy Your escort listed them among his concerns when he was trying to have Vladi punish you. So who were they Nuns But who would complain about nuns poking their noses in I mean poking their noses into what I didn t have time to question further said Lardis ruefully. For as I explained I was ushered out of there in a bit of a hurry Trask gave a shrug. Well not to concern yourself. Greece has a great many monasteries and such. If the Gypsies were seen as poor itinerants these Sisters of Mercy might have made themselves available for ... I don t know whatever reason. To help them over their grief perhaps Perhaps said Lardis. But all of the Szgany I ever knew were solitary people in that respect. Any grieving there was to be done they did it alone. Aye for in Sunside in the old days and perhaps right now for all I know that was as often as not the only way . . . After Lardis had left Trask pondered things for a few minutes more until he remembered that he had to call the Minister Responsible. By then it was well after eleven. Ah well he thought reaching for the phone. Why should I be the only one who works late But in fact Trask wasn t the only one who was working late. In her temporary secret accommodation adjacent to Jake Cutter s quarters Liz Merrick had fallen asleep while waiting for him to return from his unauthorized outing with Lardis and Lissa Lidesci. It had been the sound of him slamming his door and then his preparations for sleep his occasional muttering and his toilet flushing the liquid hiss of his shower and finally the low hum of his fan that had brought her awake just forty five minutes ago. Of course she couldn t have a fan in case he heard it. And if she needed the toilet which she had but had to wait until he was bumping around in his bed before using the back door and tiptoeing through E Branch HQ s night corridors to the ladies well that was just too bad. But in fact these things weren t Liz s main concerns. She only got angry over these lesser details to cover for her impotence in the larger scheme of things: namely the fact that she had to sneak around like this in the first place and especially that she had to sneak around in Jake s mind. Impotent yes because she couldn t do anything about it she knew that Ben Trask was right and this was all important that Jake himself was all important and not only to the Branch and its work and the world in general. He was very important to Liz too and if he caught her spying on him like this again well that wouldn t much help her case either By the time she d returned from the toilet to what she had come to think of as her hidy hole Jake was on the verge of sleep. And when Liz extended her first tentative probe in his direction she received vague swirling impressions that she at once recognized of old: A dreamy wandering indeed a mental somnambulism his mind s subconscious searching for a direction in which it might take itself . . undecipherable anxieties. . . a nervous shifting of mental patterns. . . the lure of an incredible swirl of numbers equations caculi a veritable wall of numbers enclosing Jake and shutting him in yet hovering just beyond his reach like some elusive sentient cyclone. All of these things and something else. The very weirdest of weird sensations: that he wasn t alone in there . . . Well and he wasn t alone not any longer. But was it Liz herself an echo of her intrusion reflecting from Jake s mainly relaxed shields or was it something else Was it perhaps something that the Necroscope Harry Keogh had left in Jake s mind to watch over him But if so why did he seem to shy from it Liz s questions were in ward directed of course but they were also intense and as a telepath she should have known better. Thoughts are thoughts and telepathy is telepathy. A sensitive person whether a mentalist or not may sometimes detect the uninvited interest of a talented Other usually as a prickling at the back of the neck a warning that someone is watching and Jake Cutter was a lot more than merely sensitive. His mental shields immediately strengthened and Liz as quickly backed off Fortunately she hadn t been detected or if she had then her probe had been perceived much as a fly: an irritation momentarily sensed brushed away and otherwise ignored in the face of some other more serious intrusion. Which caused her to wonder: if Jake s shields hadn t gone up on her account then on file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 42 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt whose And as on several occasions before Liz shuddered uncontrollably at the thought of what Jake was and of what he could do albeit subconsciously. For the moment subconsciously anyway. But in any case it would be prudent to play safe she supposed and keep her mind to herself until she was sure Jake was asleep. The trouble with that was that Liz too was tired. And as she finally drifted back into sleep she missed the deadspeak conversation that took place in the room beyond her cell s thin walls. Not that she would have heard it anyway though she might have sensed something of it might have detected the swing of Jake s emotions made guesses at his denials or rejections his heated assertiveness but that would be all. For only the dead are fully receptive of deadspeak. And only a Necroscope can hear them when they answer . . . You are being obstinate. Moreover you would shirk your duty to your commitment our agreement the pact we swore Korath once Korath Mindsthrall made guttural protest his dead voice welling up from the darkness of Jake Cutter s sleeping mind. And because Jake could no longer pretend to ignore him as he did when awake he answered Yes 1 want out of it Because your interpretation of our agreement this pact you say we swore in no way agrees with mine saved your life . Korath continued. But for my intervention you and your friends especially your woman friend were dead in Malinari s inferno in Xanadu. Except before being rendered to her fats sweet Liz would have suffered even worse torments in The Mind s garden of metamorphosis. Have you forgotten the thing with the not so vacant eyes which once was Demetrakis Mindsthralh Demetrakis of the drooling mouths and swollen penises They were for seeing those eyes or at least for gauging distance and direction and the mouths were for eating for reducing sweet Liz to mulch for Malinari s mushrooms. What and do you suppose the penises were for nothing Well let me inform you that Demetrakis was once an extremely iusry man who made no less a lusty vampire What little of him remained in Malinari s garden . . . ah but you may believe it when I tell you that that would have known what to do with your sweet Liz And then when Jake made no answer: Now hear me out Korath went on. You can t dispute that in your hour of greatest need I showed good faith. Since when for payment you ve betrayed or thought to betray me at every turn. And you dare to incjuire what is that for a pact Hah What indeed But surely I should be the one doing the asking I ve asked no such thing said Jake. But you have thought it implied it. Damn right the other exploded. That pact you devised was sheer hog wash Nothing but a ploy to give you unlimited access to my mind. Harry Keogh was right when he warned me to have no truck with vampires dead or alive. Would you like me to remind you of how it was supposed to be this alleged arrangement or agreement of ours By all means said the other trying to conceal his pleasure that at last Jake was engaging him in conversation however belatedly. For ever since Xanadu Jake had become more and more leery and stubborn so that during the handful of nights passed between Korath had made little or no progress with him. As for the days: in Jake s waking hours his shields the same shields that kept Liz Merrick out were firmly in place and if Korath came too close Jake would think of the sun picturing its glare and its searing cleansing fire which tended to hold the vampire at bay however temporarily. He thought of it now . . . but it was night and he was dreaming and in any case he must have this out with the dead Korath sooner or later one way or the other. That too said Korath momentarily shrinking as he glimpsed the notion in Jake s mind the sun s cosmic furnace origin and staff of life to living things but molten death to the undead. And was that too part of our deah No I think not And was this Jake countered. This constant badgering I think not Let me repeat what you said your very words Korath which I remember well if only because they were lies: Was it too much to ask you wanted to know that in return for your gift to me I should give you my companionship albeit rarely however infrequently when little else intruded on my time That was it. That was all. My company someone to talk to. But rarely infrequently when I wasn t busy. Yet this last week you haven t been out of my mind . . . literally And you ve very nearly driven me out of it Do you know what Ben Trask and his people would do to me if they knew about you Well 1 don t know either but I ve a damn good idea Why I wouldn t put it past him to put a gun to my head and blow it off I don t think anyone would blame him for it either. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 43 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt But they don t know Korath answered. Nor tvill they if you keep your nerve. Also Let me finish Jake cut him short. So for one thing you re placing me in jeopardy and in so doing placing yourself in jeopardy which has to be sheer stupidity on your part. Without me you re nothing a handful of bones washed clean in a subterranean sump you ve said so yourself. So whatever harm comes to me comes to you for when I m gone you ll have no one at all to talk to rarely or infrequently or ever But I know that as well as you Korath protested. It is to preserve you us if you will that I persevere when others would simply give up on you. And as for your gift Jake ignored that last what gift are you talking about You ve given me nothing Your life and the lives of your friends and a loved one Jake knew he d have difficulty arguing that one. He didn t try but answered That s all part and parcel of the same thing. If I had died then you would have gone with me. Not so Korath gurgled in his mind. For I am already dead. But yes I do know what you are talking about. This gift you so desire which I agree was part of our pact is the place of the primal darkness the nowhere place which exists between the places we know the Mobius Continuum. Am I right That s it said Jake with a deadspeak nod and you know it is. You promised to give me the numbers Harry Keogh s formula the means to ride his Mobius strip. And have I not kept my promise Korath seemed taken aback even hurt. Of what do you accuse me now Not once not twice not three times but four I have given you the keys to the Mobius Continuum Without which you were dead. Deny it if you can. I can t said Jake. Even if I were expert at these word games as you still I wouldn t try to deny that one. But what s that for a gift which I can t use unless you re tagging along It s only half mine. And is it my fault too that you ve no head for numbers Korath chuckled now like gas bubbles bursting in a swamp only to sober in the next moment. And: But of course it is only half yours he snapped. For without me you have no formula and without you I have no mobility. Hah And what little I have of that is borrowed But I need to be able to use the Continuum of my own free will Jake protested without recourse to you. Good I agree said Korath. Your own free will. Yes certainly that s very important. Here then the formulal I give it to you And at once immediately so rapidly that Jake was taken completely by surprise Mobius equations commenced mutating on the screen of his or Ko rath s mind. An ordered march of evolving calculi and ever changing algebraic characters and symbols it was as if the solution to a mathematical problem of enormous complexity were unravelling onto the monitor screen of some gigantic computer. But Jake had been here before half a dozen times and more first with the Necroscope Harry Keogh and then with Korath. The weird progression of numbers was just as baffling to him now as it had been the first time but NECROSCOPE: DEF1LHRS 85 instinctively or intuitively with Harry s intuition he knew where to freeze it knew how to stop it at the one point that he remembered. He did so ... and the numbers flowed at once into a trembling outline and formed a Mobius door That s it Jake breathed. A door to the Continuum Aye said Korath equally in awe of what they d done despite that they d done it before. Aye that s it. And I Korath have given it to you. It was our pact do you remember now And with this great gift I have earned the right to To nothing said Jake letting the door collapse in upon itself. I know where to stop it yes but not how to start it I can t possibly remember the entire sequence. No man could. But men didl said Korath. More than one. Mobius was first then the Necroscope Harry Keogh. And on Starside I saw Harry s son called Nathan perform just such wonders. I myself learned it from Harry when he tried to show you how I used a skill passed down to me by Nephran Malinari s bite by his awful essence which runs in my blood. Unlike yourself I do remember the sequence But what good does it do when I can t use it Incorporeal I can t move without I move with you as part of your mind. And I say again am I to he blamed that you ve no head for numbers Plainly that wasn t Korath s fault but still Jake s principal argument that the gift of life however great wasn t the promised gift remained unshakable. Very well he said we re at an impasse. But don t you see that the more you pester me the more likely it is you ll be discovered Now frankly I don t wish you any harm. You re dead and I don t file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 44 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt see how you can do me any great physical injury . . . physical that is. Though I have to tell you that you re slowly driving me crazy And not so slowly either. But anyway if you should be found out still Trask and his people couldn t do you too much harm. What like they d kill you again But me I just don t know what they d do about me. What could they do Korath seemed genuinely curious. Is it really likely that they would kill you I doubt it. Please remember Jake that I have been present in or quite close to your mind almost since you and Harry first came to talk to me in the shattered sump where I drowned and was melted away. I know that in fact Ben Trask desires that you should commune with the teeming dead It is as you yourself might put it all part and parcel of being a Necroscope. Wherefore since it would seem to be a basic requirement that you speak to dead people I mean how can Trask complain For surely it must be obvious that I am now one with the Great Majority. You re a vampire Jake answered. And I ve seen vampires in the flesh. I know what you were like before you died. And as for being one with the Great Majority: you re forgetting that I ve heard them whispering in their graves and know it couldn t be further from the truth And then there s Trask but I don t think I could ever express just how much he detests you and all your kind. Vampires The Wamphyri Trask lives to destroy them Even before Malinari murdered Zek after he murdered you vampires were Trask s main obsession. He s lost too many friends to them. You d like to know what he could do to me in order to rid me of you Well at least one unpleasant solution springs readily enough to mind. 8 Such as And now Korath really was curious. Did you ever hear of prefrontal lobotomy Jake inquired. No I don t suppose you did. It s a medical term for something they used to do to relieve cases of severe schizophrenia. But you have to agree it s kind of drastic right So tell me what the hell are you if not a case of severe schizophrenia Since deadspeak like more orthodox mental telepathy frequently conveys far more than any merely spoken word Korath had seen in Jake s mind something of the procedures involved in prefrontal lobotomy. Now thoughtfully he said My once master Malinari the Mind could do much the same thing. And Jake actually felt the monster shudder Except he did it with his bare hands his liquid fingers his awesome mind Ah hut what Malinari did relieved his victims of. . . why everything It was a cure for life itself. But I don t need or want relieving Jake told him. Only of you. So we have to work something out and put a limit on it. And we have to redefine the terms of this so called pact. Its terms A limit A limit in time said Jake. For see I don t want to be a Necroscope and never did. Three weeks ago I didn t know what a Necroscope was. And still don t know all of it because they won t tell me. What something that s so weird so unnatural I can t be told about it That s not for me. So until I know what it s all about I don t want any thanks. Oh sure I would use the Mobius Continuum will use it to my own ends but after that I don t know I haven t made up my mind yet. On the other hand there s something that I ve very definitely decided: that I won t be beholden to you forever and a day A limit in time then said Korath. Yes we can talk about that I think As for terms what did you have in mind. . . well apart from myself that is Again his phlegmy chuckle a glutinous reverberation that echoed hollowly and humourlessly in the deadspeak aether. First the time limit said Jake when the echoes had subsided. Our God our partnership our deal lasts only as long as it takes both of us to achieve our objectives. But just as soon as we have and whether I ve cracked Keogh s formula or not you re to get out of my mind. But I appreciate your absolute loneliness and for my part I promise that if or when I can I ll give you some of my spare time. Talking to you about your life in a vampire world could prove interesting after all. If or when Some of your spare time But without the Continuum you wouldn t he able to visit me anyway. All the more reason to ensure that I get it Jake answered. Also that eventually I m able to remember it. But in any case surely you re wrong The way I understand it I won t have to visit you we ll be able to communicate at a distance just about any distance much as we re doing right now. But without you being on my back all the time. Hmmm Korath mused. And Jake urged him: Make up your mind before I change mine. The way I figure it I m making a deal with the devil anyway. But: file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 45 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt NECROSCOPE: DEFlLhRS Let s move on said the other cagily. For you talked about objectives and I m interested to know what yours might be. You haven t plucked them right out of my mind then I may be on your mind said Korath but I m not exactly in it. You ve denied me the access I initially requested and for which we bargained else we wouldn t be having this conversation. Jake was taken aback. What Did you expect even more than you ve already got Because if so I d better tell you here and now that it s more than I intend to give You wanted access and you ve got it. You can talk to me whenever you like though so far you ve only chosen to do it when I don t like But that s hardly access to your mind said the other. Being able to talk to you does not define complete access to your mind. Your shields exclude me blanketing more than three quarters of everything you re thinking. My original suggestion the way I remember it was that I should be well much like a part of you and A part of me Thoroughly alarmed now Jake cut the other off. Are you crazy Once you were in how could I get you out I m having a hard enough time of it as it is Exactly said the other. And I too am finding it difficult I m having an extremely hard time of it as you put it. But don t you see how easy it would be if we worked more truly as one Maximum efficiencyl You with your expert knowledge of your world which is an entirely strange place to me and me with my unique knowledge of Malinari Vavara and Szwart . . . and of course with my keys to the Mobius Continuum. Two minds working as one Jake to the benefit of both What could be simpler or more well accommodating Warning bells rang deep in Jake s subconscious mind. Even dreaming he knew this was a word game and also that Korath was very good at it. All factual discussion and legitimate argument to the contrary if the Wamphyri and their disciples were politicians all of their political opponents would find themselves right out of their depth swept away by sheer word power alone And so in order to gain a little breathing space he was obliged to resort to the other s ploy and murmur Hmmm as if thinking it over. Well said Korath. And: To quote you Jake answered Let s move on. But before we do there s something that needs clearing up. I ve never said that I d accept you as part of me as part of my mind that is not even temporarily. But But before we got sidetracked Jake cut the other off yet again we were examining our objectives. And you wanted to know what mine might be. Indeed said Korath. What is it that you seek to do Other than what Ben Trask and his people would have you do that is. Again Jake was taken by surprise this time not so much by the dead creature s skill at arguments and word games as by his more than hinted knowledge of Jake s pursuits outside E Branch. And he couldn t help wondering just how often had Korath eavesdropped on him. Oh he said. So you re thinking I have ulterior motives are you Not necessarily ulterior no. The shake of an incorporeal head. But wasn t it you who said you would use the Mohius Continuum to your own ends Yours as opposed to Ben Trash s that is and perhaps running contrary to his Or have I in some way er misunderstood you . . . And so Jake told him about his vendetta with Luigi Castellano finishing by saying I ve killed three of them who were there that night but two remain. Castellano himself he s the drug running bastard who ordered that. . . that. . . who ordered what took place. And one other who Who was one of the performers aye said Korath. And then as if changing the subject: But did you know and this is an exceedingly strange thing Jake that when you talk to me as we argue our points and so forth gradually getting to know one another you are how may I put it you re a warm one For despite your harsh often hurtful words and your bruscjue manner of expression I can feel your warmth It is the warmth of life I fancy which I only knew as a youth on Sunside before Malinari destroyed my people stole me away into Starside and made me one of his. Which was so long ago that I had almost forgotten it. But you . . . you have rekindled old memories. Jake had been a little choked up with memories of his own but now he put them aside. Are you going soft on me he growled. I don t think so. So what s all this: some kind of scheme to help me see how badly life and undeath have treated you Ah no said the other his deadspeak voice as deep as the Arctic ocean and as bitterly cold. For file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 46 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt I am what I am and I ve done what I ve done. And the truth of it is I ve no regrets at all Well except that it all ended so badly for me and that while my bones are rubbed away whirling in a watery sump Malinari lives and laughs and that while we argue and fyht I ll go forever unavenged But. . . you didn t let me finish. Go on then said Jake. Finish. was saying that when we engage in normal or shall we say trivial conversation you are warm and I can sense your humanity. But when you speak of these dire enemies of yours you are cold in your heart. Even as cold as I am in my sump. It isn t a physical thing hut something of the soul. And so you know about souls right Jake somehow doubted it. know that whatever it was that made me human Korath answered Malinari the Mind took it from me. And I know that when all I had left was undeath he took that back too in exchange for the true death and that therefore he is in my debt as much and more than Luigi Castellano is in yours. We ll then said Jake. It seems to me we ve defined our objectives. But mine was known from the start Korath told him. Didn t I say that all I wanted was to hit back at Malinari Just think of the irony of it: that I can strike back at him from the very heart of darkness from the watery grave to which he sent me But only through me said Jake. Through you and Ben Trask and E Branch aye. So it s not only me you ve recruited but E Branch too Jake s tone was accusing but with very little of energy in it. Instead he felt weary of this entire episode tired of talking tired of listening. Mentally and physically exhausted. Except they don t know it Korath chuckled in his hideous fashion. Nor will ever for when Malinari has paid the price along with these enemies of yours of course then I shall get me gone from you. Though I trust you ll abide by your word and visit with me and my poor old polished bones from time to time Eh The idea was seductive. But so was everything about Korath. His dark deadspeak voice his almost hypnotic manner of expression his very presence. Suddenly Jake could feel the lure the strength of the dead creature s aura and of his argument. Without Korath what chance would he have of bringing Luigi Castellano and his henchman to justice however rough And without Jake what would Korath have but an eternity of loneliness or however long it took for him to fade away What say you Jake said Korath. Are we finally agreed Do we have a deal And: What would it entail Jake wanted to know the question slipping from his lips or from his mind almost of its own accord as the peculiar lethargy continued to creep over him. It must he I think a very simple matter Korath answered his voice the merest whisper now a sibilant hiss the brush of cobwebs against Jake s sleeping being. A simple matter of will you might say of your own free will that is. For I remember upon a time my once master Malinari told me The mind is like a manse with many rooms where thoughts wander like ghosts. And I have the power to reach in and exorcise those ghosts reading their lives and learning their secrets and then driving them out Aye that is what he said. And there s a great deal of my once master in me. I too might enter into one of those rooms one of your rooms that is and listen with my ear to the door until you have need of me... Korath was very open now he could afford to be because he could sense that the hypnotic spell he was casting was working. And even if this initial experiment should fail still its subject would remember little or nothing of what had gone on here from this time forward. What s that you say said Jake flopping uneasily in his bed adrift on the mesmeric cadence of Korath s voice and gradually falling more deeply asleep. Isn t there room enough for both of us Jake the vampire s deadspeak voice went monotonously on in the innocent echoing oh so spacious manse of your mind Only say the word Jake bid me enter and I shall be one with you. Ahhhhhhl The word Jake drifted between levels of sleep one natural and the other hypnotic. But he felt lured toward the latter because it was so calm restful devoid of conflict. Once there he might stop worrying reasoning thinking and let himself be guided by the deep dark voice of the Other. It would be easier that way yes . . . Not so much a word as an invitation Korath answered. Only open up your mind Jake and invite me in. Let down the shields which even now protect you and from what From me Why I am your one true friend in a world that fails to understand or appreciate you What would you rather be: Ben Trask s puppet his tool as I was Malinari s or a Power in your own right A Power in our right Jake my friend Open up ... lower my shields . . . invite him in ... my one true friend . . . And are we so very different you and I Korath s clotted gurgling his insidious file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 47 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt whispering continued. think not. For I have seen you perform deeds which the Wam phyri themselves in all their cruelty might not have dreamed. But you have dreamed them and I Korath feel privileged to have witnessed them. The Wamphyri . . . Cruelty . . . Deeds Jake rolled in his bed got tangled in his single blanket. Your deeds aye. The things you nightmare. Mot so strange really that you should feel afraid in the night. Even the most monstrous of creatures nightmare They dream of what frightened them before they were monsters Perhaps of what made them monsters eh And the ones who made you a monster . . . Ah but what you have done to them And I wonder Jake: does this Castellano nightmare too And who do you suppose features in his dreams Little wonder he wants you dead. Castellano . . . dreams . . . nightmares. Only let me in and we shall make his nightmares real you and I. And who knows what else we shall make Ahhhhhhi Jake was struggling now fighting as a drowning man fights the water even knowing there s no land in sight but he struggled mainly with himself. Tossing and turning sweating a cold clammy sweat with his single blanket wrapped about him like a damp strangling shroud he flailed his arms and didn t feel a thing when his fist struck against the thin wall. But on the other side of that wall Liz Merrick came starting awake. Now what in The wall at her ear bounced again and Liz at once reached out with a clumsily groping probe. It was Jake . . . fighting . . . but fighting what Something was in there with him something tangible yet intangible. Something in his room or in his mind ... his dreams Not yet fully awake herself Liz couldn t tell. But she sensed Jake s dread and his determination not to go under. More than that she also sensed that the Thing he was fighting knew that she was there Surprised and angry it recoiled from her telepathic probe the probe that only Jake should be feeling if he felt anything at all. There was no actual contact no communication with this Thing not for Liz it was sensation pure and . . . not so simple. But without knowing how Liz knew that the Thing she sensed was utterly inhuman. It was slimy sluglike sentient. And it battened on Jake like a leech. Then it dawned on Liz that she wasn t reading the Thing itself but only what Jake was reading of it: his fear of it and the fact that his shields were going down before it It couldn t be read not by Liz but only sensed in the same way that it was sensing her and then not by any of the five mundane senses or even telepathy. But it was more than any nightmare she was sure. Nightmares are personal things they don t recognize or react to outsiders and they certainly don t snarl at them but confine themselves to their victims There was a telephone in the corridor. Liz reached it in a tangle of bed sheets and a fever of trembling. The duty officer. She had to call the D.O. But damn it to hell she couldn t remember the number And just a few paces away Jake s door behind which something terrible was happening or about to happen. And Liz the only one who could stop it. When she had called on Jake for his help in that hellhole at Xanadu he had come to her without reckoning the danger. Yet here she stood like a ghost in her sheet trembling for him but unable to do anything about it for fear that she would give herself and Ben Trask and E Branch away. And no physical danger in it at all not to Liz not that she knew of. Only to Jake or to his mind. Well then to hell with E Branch She clutched at her sheet stumbled to Jake s door began to hammer on it with her small fists and only then thought to try the eye level scanner. Her hidy hole before they walled it off had been a rear annex to Jake s room. If the scanners were still linked his might identify and accept Liz s corneal patterns in addition to Jake s own. Tilting her head she stared up at the ID spot and forced herself to stand still. A small light glowed into life scanned her eye and recognized her. And the door clicked open. Almost falling inside she tripped on her sheet and went sprawling towards Jake s bed. And as the door closed behind her Liz fell on him grabbed his shoulders shook him with all her strength. Jake she slapped his face. Jake wake up His body and legs were wrapped tight in his blanket only his arms and hands were free and they at once grabbed hold of her as his terrified eyes blazed open. Korath he said. Korath In the gloom Liz felt her hair grabbed in one hard hand as the other released her and balled itself into a fist. She managed to get a hand up groped above the bed s headboard found the overhead light cord. And file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 48 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt giving it a yank she flooded the bed with light. But only just in time. The look on Jake s face was vicious a snarl and the muscles of his arm were bunched coiled spring tight on the point of driving his fist into her face. Even now she feared he might do it But no he was awake. Liz Jake said his voice a shudder at first a breathless gasp and then a sigh of relief. Liz But I thought that you were No it s only me she said and fell against his chest and in the next moment realized that only his blanket separated their naked bodies. God He held her tightly for a second or so then kicked his legs in an attempt to free himself from his blanket. I was I must have been nightmaring And then he too realized that they were both naked. But how You . . . you called out to me she lied. I had been working late and stayed over. My room is close by. You were calling out to me . . . and my telepathy ... I heard you. I m a receiver Jake. And whether you ll admit and accept it or not we do seem to have this rapport. You woke me up. Well thank God for this rapport he gasped. And now she saw that he was shaking. What was it Jake What was it that scared you so He shook his head sending droplets of cold sweat flying. And blinking his eyes he looked anxiously all about his small room. But of course there was nothing and no one there only Liz. Then getting a grip of himself he said It was a dream or a nightmare. Or something. She sat up wrapped herself in her sheet again told him You said a name. Korath. And that s a name we ve heard before Jake. You asked me to write it down for you so that you d remember it. That was just before we started our simultaneous assaults on Xanadu and Jethro Manchester s island. So now perhaps you ll tell me. Who is he Who is this Korath Jake But he was fully awake now and in control of himself. Forget it he said shaking his head. It s I don t know a recurrent thing a nightmare something I dream from time to time that s all. It s not usually as bad as this but tonight it was. It was getting kind of... well kind of rough. So I m really glad you came . . . It was all lame stuff he wasn t nearly as good a liar as Liz but it was the best he could do. And suddenly she felt for him really felt for him. Whatever it was about Jake Cutter Liz knew that she was involved. Just a few weeks ago he d come into her life and was now a big part of it. And she d been telling herself to hold him at bay but not really for he hadn t tried that hard hadn t tried at all or maybe she d simply been fooling herself that she wasn t getting involved and trying to fool him too. But damn it she was involved And suddenly she was saying it admitting it in a way that must be unmistakable: Are you really glad I came Jake I mean I don t have to go not if you want me to stay ... No it s okay he said. I don t think I ll be trying to sleep anymore anyway not tonight. Maybe I ll read up a little more on the files that Trask has given me and And then he paused for like a fool he hadn t seen her meaning until now. Then she was in his arms feeling his body and his longing trembling against her. But only for a moment before she felt the change in him too the need turning to fear. But fear of what Of loving and perhaps of losing again Instinctively she tried to probe him to look inside but his shields were there as ever. And now he was holding her away from him at arm s length while the look in his deep brown eyes expressed his torment the fact that he was torn two ways. What is it Jake she said. His shields wavered a little and she saw . . . . . . Longing and denial of that longing. Need and fear of that need. Not fear of Lit herself or of sex nor even of failure. No it was something else. But when she went to probe deeper Jake s shields firmed up again and she was out. And. I wish you wouldn t do that he said. I couldn t help it Liz answered. Don t you know that I ... that I feel for r i i_ c is. you Jake She got up and went to the door. But is that what it is My telepathy Are you afraid that I ll see too much That I ll see what you re hid ing No he said. Yes. And then shaking his head I can t say can t explain it I mean I m not ready to explain it. Well when you are she said. I m not far away. And try not to nightmare Jake. But if you do file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 49 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt well she shrugged helplessly. Just remember: I m not far away. When he nodded she stepped back out into the corridor and let the door close quietly behind her . . . When Liz had been gone awhile Jake relaxed his shields completely and listened. He listened to the far faint barely discernible whispering of the dead in their graves to the ebb and flow of the deadspeak aether like the hush of wavelets on some ethereal shore and to a distant humming and throbbing that was composed of the real sounds of the downstairs hotel and outside the rumbling of the metropolis and farther yet the wheels of the world turning. Korath wasn t there but Jake was sure he would come if he called out to him. The trouble was that he might also come without being called. That was the trouble yes. For Jake wanted to be sure that if or when he made love to Liz Merrick he would be the only one doing it... 6 OF THE DARK PLACES The high mountain road was as still and quiet as the night air with only the molten silver one note call of Greek owls to disturb the gloom. To the south out across the sea a sprinkle of bobbing lights spoke of fishermen in their boats intent on securing their catch of what few fish remained in the still beautiful but decimated Aegean whose temperature was up three degrees on the norm for this time of year. The moon rode low in the sky casting the shadows of Mediterranean pines over the marble chip gravel of an empty parking lot that fronted the arched entrance to a cliff clinging monastery the same monastery that only a few hours earlier Manolis Papastamos had passed in a hired Fiat on his way to disaster. From the roadway had anyone been standing there the fortresslike building s silhouette against the jewel strewn indigo of the vaulted sky was not unlike that of some ancient Crusader castle its bell towers rearing up like horns on the head of a creature risen from the deep. Nor would this picture have been so very far from the truth. Along the approach road from both directions and in the car park itself prominently posted signs told of certain restrictions. Apparently the sweet Sisters of Mercy who inhabited the high stone sanctuary considered this a time of solitude and abstinence and as an order they were repenting the sins of the world. Daytime parking was allowed in the parking lot for the taking of panoramic photographs from dizzy vantage points but not at night. The sounds of revving engines and slamming doors even the murmur of voices might distract the nuns at their devotions. Tours of the inner gardens courtyard outer balconies and the order s gift and workshops had been curtailed indefinitely or until such time as the world s dark forces were in retreat. Other older notices inviting visitors in ladies wearing head scarves skirts. .. limbs covered NECROSCOPE: DEFILHRS bO igvjn to and including knees. Men no shorts or lettered T shirts please had been crossed through with thick black X s or pasted over with signs that read: NO VISITORS NO TRADESMEN EXCEPT AS AUTHORIZED It made for a severely austere scene where in certain of the tower windows even the interior lights seemed dim burning with only a flickering candle s strength. This too wasn t so far from the truth for the convent s mother superior of three years disdained electricity and had banned its use except in the telephone of which she had charge and several other vital areas such as washing cleaning and cooking lacking which the monastery couldn t function. Right now she was asleep. She had been out in the car earlier on monastery business and wished to recuperate. For being up and about in the hours of daylight and even the evening hours depleted her. Daylight is a wickedness created for the seeing and saying and thinking of things that shouldn t be seen said or thought. Likewise electrical communications that might be used to spread silly rumors abroad in the world and artificial lighting systems other than good fat candles. What Wax Ah well then let it be wax. But fat has a certain agreeable pungency . . . Also she had probably been weakened by her own passions. Before her drive her voice had been heard raised in angry complaint against father Mar alini a guest from Rome or so she said who had been at the monastery for a week and a half now despite a rule of long standing that banned all men from residence here. But various sisters had seen this reverend figure and knew that his nature was not unlike that of the Lady of the sanctuary ahhh no no be careful of file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 50 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt their mother superior herself. . . Now against all the rules that Vavara had introduced oh so gradually during the three years of her takeover two of the sisters stronger than the rest were out in the cloisters that surrounded the courtyard seated on a bench in the shade of the fig trees. The one was Sister Delia from Southern Ireland the other Sister Anna from New York. And they were out there talking during what was or should have been their watch: We are doomed of course said Delia once a pretty redhead now shorn of her hair and gaunt in a hooded cassock. Her Irish brogue was a thick guttural whisper her altered voice was hoarse or coarse as were those of all the sisters. If we tried to escape went venturing out from here we d be doomed. Even if she didn t find us still we d be without hope. Driven by ... by our unnatural lusts and desires a small shudder and forced to take blood the lives of others we d be hunted down and destroyed by men. Or sooner or later by the sun Or by the Son said Anna who was once a dreamy one and something of a poet and seemed bent on remembering and trying to retrieve that time. The Son of Him on High. We served them both and Mary too do you u t t i L t K remember And now we serve another who serves the devil The sun or the Son or the mother. One of them will destroy us for sure. Now say Sister Delia: What does one call that Poetic licence or poetic justice One calls it no justice at all at all said the other. And you d best forget all that. We re bound for hell you and I and all the rest of us together. God has turned his back on us which has come of us living unnatural lives so it has. No I m not just talking about Vavara s kind of unnatural. I mean did you never fancy a man Maybe the lad who brings the honey Oh I ve seen you look at him from time to time. I ve seen you smile at him too. Or I used to when you dared to smile That was natural. Natural to love and lust and to have a man lying on our bellies now and then or even to imagine one there. But the way we were never All covered up and cowed and afraid of our own bodies And certainly not the way we are now which is utterly beyond nature. You mustn t talk like that said the ex New Yorker. If she were to hear ... She s up in her tower said Delia. Up there behind her thick velvet curtains where never the sun reaches. And do you know I ve thought of a way A way Anna s voice was a shivery croak. A way to be rid of this vampire bitch said Delia and so to rid the world of her She ll hear you Anna began to shrill. She ll hear you and punish us. She always hears Shhh now said Delia clasping the other and putting a hand over her mouth. Or she really will hear us But think on it now: if we were to go up against her as a body huh: or as an order and if we took her in her tower room at noon and threw open her curtains to let the sun blaze in ... what then We d burn too said Anna logically. But not as hot or as fast as Vavara. And wouldn t it be worth it since we ll be burning soon enough whether or no But now Anna was sobbing bitterly to herself. Are we so reduced then that we ve come to this Have we no hope except we resort to murder And even if we could would the other sisters follow our lead Vavara took us last because we held ourselves off from her lying beauty. But the others. . . they dine on each other Huhi Delia grunted. Don t tell me you think that s all they do. Haven t you heard them on the creep when she s asleep Haven t you heard them laughing They strap on wooden cocks to imitate the men that she won t let them have Are you a virgin Anna Before you took your vows perhaps I think not. I wasn t you can be sure. There s precious few virgins of my age in Ireland I caught a dose do you know what that is And when I was cured I came here I was that ashamed. So I did without men for twelve long years stuck to my vows didn t even finger myself. And for what So that this beautiful bitch can visit me in the night to bite on my breasts and fill me with her special brand of poison Ah but if only there was a cure for this . . . Do you think they ll come for me Anna gasped. I mean with their wooden . . . things She pressed down on her cassock between her legs as if to protect herself. You can be certain of it said the other. By which time you ll probably be ready for it. For don t you see we re falling more deeply under her spell and more deeply into evil day by day or night by night. As for myself I ll be the last. I d rather a wooden stake than a wooden cock. Oh ha ha ha For I ve had the real thing No no Anna clutched at her glanced all about with eyes that were very slightly feral. You file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 51 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt must be quiet now or someone will be bound to hear us. Well what of it said Delia. The sooner the better and let s be done with it. But still I tell you it s her or us. Do you think she won t deal with us as she dealt with Sister Sara She knows which ones of us resist her so it s only a matter of time. Sister Sara Anna s hand flew to her mouth. Is it true then I had heard whispers but Oh it s true Delia cut her short. What are you that much of an innocent then Did you really suppose that Sara was locked up in her room all this time Well listen and I ll tell you the story as I have heard it: Sara was the strong one the wise one. And she was first in the long list of those whom Vavara would seduce and convert. Alas she thought it was love She thought that our new mother superior had fallen in love with her and in spite of an initial repugnance she couldn t refuse her advances but then who among us has refused them For when this bitch Vavara turns it on blood turns to water or to poison. And so Sara was turned. But it was love not lust betrayed her. And with a creature beautiful as Vavara she thought it was heaven not hell sent. But of course our mother superior Eileen was the first to pay the price. She was old frail no match for Vavara. And when that one first came here so beautiful and so penitent of her sins filled with the need to be one of us how could old Eileen refuse her There was no way of knowing not then that this Lady was anything other than she pretended she kept tight rein on the blood lusting thing within and no one ever suspected until it was too late. Yes of course old Eileen would take her in and in her turn be taken in. But the bitch saw no need to recruit her. Frail as a wrinkled late autumn leaf and all dried up the mother superior was no great challenge. Three months to a day after Vavara came Eileen was dead and buried here in the crypt. But is she there now Ah she is not For where Vavara is concerned even dead women have their uses. And old Eileen she was from my country so she was and I know she was a saint. . . also that she died before her time by Vavara s will. All the more reason to loathe this vampire. Anyway Sara was next. Next to be recruited changed forever. But when she saw how Vavara proceeded when she knew she was only the first of a long process which must eventually consume the entire monastery then Sara 1NLV rebelled. Ah and strong in love she was also strong in her hatred her will to survive to fight the evil come among us. Vavara locked her away to repent or so she said the clever bitch and meanwhile went on recruiting all the senior sisters. In no time at all they were hers. But can we think ill of them even as they are now No for this creature is a hypnotist without peer. Anything and everything that was good in the sisters Vavara switched it off as surely as she s switched off the lights so she did and everything that was bad she switched it on. For in our minds we are all wicked as you must know Anna. It s why we re here so it is . . . But that s not true the other gasped. Or perhaps it is true now that our minds have been made to dwell on ... on such wicked things. But please say it wasn t always so Delia sighed nodded and said Yes you re right so you are. Most of our sisters were here because of their purity as pure as the driven snow and only a small handful of which I was one to improve themselves. Oh yes in me there was plenty of room for improvement. But no good to deny wickedness Anna or to pretend it doesn t exist. For if that were the case then why would any of us ever have needed to be here at all at all And then there s Vavara the living proof of wickedness itself. She has defiled us and all good things are flown. That is why you shouldn t listen to some of the things I ve told you some of the things I ve said. For when my head is clear I know it s only the filthy stuff in my blood the evil that she has put there that makes me think and talk that way. We weren t strong enough said Anna wringing her hands. Like our Lord we should have put this devil behind us . . . Hahi said Delia. Listen to you such silliness Where do you suppose mere mortals might find such strength In faith alone I wish it were so but flesh is flesh and iron is iron. And Vavara is iron Only try telling her to get behind you . . . and oh believe me she will As Delia paused for breath and to order her thoughts Anna gave a small gasp and whispered Hush now Is that a light up there in her room They drew back under the leaves of the fig tree peered up through its branches at the highest windows in the square tower where Vavara had her apartments. Was that a glimmer of light up there file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 52 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Had the Lady lit a candle Moonlight on glass Delia hissed in a while. That s all it is. You re sure Yes I m sure. You re letting the night and your imagination run away with you that s all. And anyway we have a right to be here. Indeed we ve no right to be anywhere else for it s our watch. Habi To think we keep guard on this place on this monster as if it were her fortress instead of a sanctuary . . . But it is. It is her fortress said Anna. Her aerie. Yes Delia nodded so it is. And after a moment: Anyway where was I Sara the other whispered. She was jealous. Eh said Delia frowning her surprise her yellow eyes blinking. Why yes I suppose she was. And hell hath no fury eh But it s true it s true And Sara in a double hell: first poisoned by Vavara and now betrayed by her. And so Sara set about to defy Vavara at every turn. She escaped from her room tried to make a run from the monastery. But Vavara caught her and locked her up again. And for the benefit of the sisters not yet taken for there were still one or two including ourselves it was put about that Sara was a mad woman bent on mutilating herself. Her illness was temporary it would pass eventually until which time she must stay confined cared for only by Vavara and those seniors among the sisters who were Vavara s slaves. And so she was kept in what amounted to solitary confinement for two more years tormented and tortured by this vampire bitch Vavara who had determined that Sara would never get out. Not alive anyway. But she did get out just nine days ago or should I say nine nights For like the rest of us and more than some Sara had given in to her poisoned blood and could no longer bear the sun on her flesh or in her eyes. So she made her last run in the evening while Vavara was still in her bed down the road to Skala Astris from where she d take a taxi into Krassos town to the police station there. She would telephone the headquarters of the order in Athens she would see doctors and show them her . . . her disfigurements and she would make charges against Vavara and bring her evil reign to an end. How do I know these things Because I was on watch that night as a penance for looking at Vavara in a certain way. She thought she had glimpsed hatred in my eyes which she had and warned me that there were greater as well as lesser punishments. But her threats had only strengthened my resolve so it had. So then why didn t I go with poor Sara to Krassos town and substantiate her story Because I thought she would fail. Having watched Vavara for long and long I knew it could never be as easy as that. And if Sara failed who would there be to avenge her and put right the wrongs done to her and to others indeed to all of us in this fane of evil Ah but who better than someone already here in the dark heart of the place Who better than myself And so I looked the other way wished Sara well and let her go despite that I thought her errand was doomed. But you know she might have succeeded she just might except that was the night father Maralini came. And he was coming up the road as she was going down it. When he appeared at the wicket door in his hooded robe with his voice out of darkness . . . and that swooning bundle in his arms which moaned and drooled I knew that Satan himself had come visiting. I felt it: an enormous vileness swelling out of the night. And I even said so Falling back and refusing to turn the key to let him in I gasped Is it Satan come to see his children And his eyes flared red as he answered me though the bars. Shaitan Ah no he said. But I almost met him once in a far cold land and know him for a Power I thank you for your compliment sister if that s what it was. But no I m not Shaitan just an old friend of your mistress Vavara here on business. Now let me in for I ve come a long way. He stood Sara on her feet held her there with one long fingered hand L n r i L c K. 3 and thrust the other through the wicket s bars. He caught my wrist and oh ... the shock of terror the bitter chill that went through me then Look Delia showed her wrist and Anna s night seeing eyes were drawn to the long white burn of four fingers and a thumb. And: Not Satan no said Delia but Maralini s evil is as great I m sure. While he held my wrist I felt... I felt my thoughts and memories going out of me into him. He was reading my inner being and his red eyes flared again as he said And so I was right: you are indeed one of Vavara s. Now save yourself some trouble and let me in. Your mistress is expecting me. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 53 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt How could I refuse him When he held my wrist like that my mind was his to command. But he had seen into my thoughts he knew things from my past he smiled as I turned the key and opened the wicket gate. Such a smile So handsome So wicked When he stepped in and after he had lain Sara aside he turned to me. As quick and as brazen as that he unfastened my cassock and fondled my breasts where I stood frozen. And after a while he said Ah but I know why you are here Never fear Sister Delia your wasted years are at an end . . . And while I stood near fainting he gathered up the hem of my gown. Sister Anna s face was ghostly pale in wan moon and starlight. And did he she gasped squeezing hard on her cassock between her legs. Did he But Delia shook her head in mock sadness and said Oh ye of little faith Only see how you are taken And you say you re worried about their wooden things Why you are almost ready Anna Ready and willing for anything. And so are we all. Which is why we must see to Vavara at our earliest opportunity while yet we are able. And after Vavara this so called priest Maralini. Yes yes you re probably right Anna whispered hoarsely with a voice that might just as easily be hoarse from lust as from fear. But go on with your story. Did he take you He might have Delia answered. His hands were hot on my body and yet they were cold. And how his red eyes drank me in. But if you only knew he said how hungry I am. And then he kissed my hard tipped breasts. Ahhhhi Anna gasped and clutched Delia s arm. Right there and then the other went on I expected to be taken. And I knew it would be quick and hot and hurtful but his fluids would be cold inside me. I was open waiting wanton and wanting. But Vavara . . . was up and about And now the bitterness in Delia s voice was almost regretful. A candle glowed into life in her high room its flame flickering in the window and the night was suddenly alive with her presence. She was up and she knew that someone was here but don t ask me how. They sense such things these creatures. Perhaps they can sense each other. And would you believe that I actually found myself warning him But it s so so it is. She comes I told him. Vavara comes Indeed she does he answered in a whisper. And so shall we together you and I. But some other time. I put right my clothing stood back from him and barely in time. He took up Sara whose cowl was back so that her face was visible. And oh that poor ravaged face that poor soul if she yet had a soul But her face Do you remember Anna how pretty Sara had been Why she was even as pretty as you yourself. And now with her hair all shorn most of it pulled out by the roots and her lips cut away so perfectly so precisely to make her look like a fish and her yellow eyes like yours like mine and her ears . . . but oh she had no ears And Maralini gathering her up saying Ah but see. Your mistress hasn t lost her tender loving touch. At which Vavara came out of the tower stairwell floating across the courtyard to the door under the archway. And: Malm i. she said or started to say as she jerked to a halt. She was plainly startled even agitated. And despite that her voice was as always the very sweetest thing in tone I mean still it was stinging and angry. But he had stopped her midway to say: Ah no neither Malin nor Malinari but Maralini. Father Maralini Va vaaaara His voice was a breath from hell. But we had our plans she said. We had a pact that we would not come together until all was secured . . . and then only in order to set the boundaries of our territories. And didn t I ask you not to come here This is the worst possible time when I have problems of my own to deal with. So it would seem this good father answered Vavara s angry words with ones that were carefully measured. Indeed I believe that I may have bumped into one of your problems on my way up the road. And he showed her Sara drooling in his arms. Your touch she said then. And did you see into her I saw he answered. Enough to know that without I put an end to her flight you were in serious trouble. Which would mean of course that I was in trouble too. And I ve had more than enough of troubles just lately. But and he turned to look pointedly at me shouldn t we be talking in private We shouldn t be talking at all she answered him. You shouldn t be here. But since you are and since it appears I m in your debt come with me. Then Vavara turned to me saying You Delia take care of ... of this. She meant Sara. You know where she belongs. No need to lock the door And she glanced knowingly at Maralini not any longer. Sara is safe now and will never try to run away again. She doesn t know how to . . file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 54 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt . And then before Maralini could give Sara to me Vavara took me by the shoulders and shook me. But ah her unnatural vampire strength We shall speak later you and I Delia she hissed. About Sara how she got out while you were on watch But since then until now she never has mentioned it. So perhaps she s forgotten all about it for there have been other things on her mind. For which I m glad so I am ... Anyway it was my watch for the rest of that long night. And don t ask me Anna for I still don t know why I didn t run away myself in the nine nights gone by since then. Or perhaps I do for I fancy my fate would be no less monstrous than Sara s. Which is what keeps all of us here: fear of this vampire bitch Vavara. And now of Maralini too. Later that night I saw him. He was up and about acquainting himself with the place I thought. He came to me and asked about Sara: how was the poor creature As he had last seen her I told him: drooling feverish moaning in her cell in the west tower. And he nodded as if he truly cared and said Aye your mistress has not been kind to her. Then he went away in the direction of the west tower. I was curious and in a little while I was under the west tower huddling on the high stone balcony where it projects out over the ocean. From there I could look up at the barred window of Sara s cell two levels up. And I remembered how she had been when I d taken her there how I had to carry her and how she d mumbled in her weird delirium: He came to me out of a mist she d rambled to no one in particular. And I ran to him begging for his help. I hoped he wouldn t notice my eyes but then I noticed his And when he held my head and looked at me I felt him sucking at my mind my thoughts I still have some but faint so very faint. I can remember you Delia but all else is ghostly fading receding from me ... Then as I seated her on her cot she looked at me oh so vacantly and asked What is this place Where am I And oh I knew we were all possessed . . . But there I was on the high stone balcony. How long Not long I think before I saw candles lit and heard his unmistakable voice that voice out of hell the voice of Maralini. He was with her but for what And that voice: so deep so low so seductive. And then his snarl What he cried out so that I heard him quite clearly. You have ascended You have a leech And then his laugh. But my pleasure with you is doubled and redoubled I shall have you Sara and then your creature both. Then Sara s screech a bone chilling sound the cry of a madwoman oh yes Driven mad by terror and torture. But Sara she d always been a strong one so she had and never more than that night. Whatever was left of her of Sara herself of the sweet sister that we d known it fought back fought off Maralini s advances. I heard her cot go crashing saw shadows clash in the light from her candles and heard again her shriek which ended in such a rending tearing sound that I fancied flesh was being torn. Sara s flesh. And as it later turned out I was right. But then Whether she was thrown or threw herself with all the passionate strength that a madwoman can muster we may never know. But her window bars and all burst outwards. And with her tattered gown fluttering about her like the wings of a broken bird which she was poor thing which she was Sara came plunging out and down Out beyond the high stone balcony she flew such was the force of her headlong dive and dwindling down the face of the cliffs her ragged figure fell towards the night dark sea. Sara poor Sara was gone. And I admit that I considered it a mercy. The next morning before the sun was up Vavara sent for me. She asked no questions about the previous night said nothing about Sara getting out and so forth but told me to go and put Sara s cell to rights. And then she said Let there be a lesson in what you find Delia. The lesson is this: it is not wise to resist me but it is very wise to resist Maralini. Remember while you are by no means beautiful still you have much to lose. Consider yourself fortunate Delia that you are older and your looks are fading. For the gap between beauty and ugliness need not be any wider than the cutting edge of a knife as you have seen. And between homely and hideous Ah but you have not seen the best or the worst of my works Now go And in the chaos of Sara s cell her strewn books tapestries blanket and broken cot I found her lower jaw its flesh all torn like a discarded piece of a slaughtered animal . . . Sister Anna sat shivering under the fig tree and her sulphur eyes were wide in the gloom. But now I m more afraid than ever she said. I thought I d find strength in your strength but instead I ve found horror in your story. When our watch is over I shall pray to God the whole day through. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 55 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt He can t help us else He surely would Delia shook her head. And it s a blasphemy for such as us to even mention His name. No He can t help us but we can help ourselves. There are sharp cleavers in the kitchen and we can shape stakes out of pieces of good pine among the bolts of firewood. It s all too horrid cried Anna starting to her feet. But Delia was suddenly alert. Rising she hissed a warning and caught the other s elbow. Quiet now and keep to the shade. Look And her head tilted upwards. Up there seen through the moon dappled leaves of the fig the window of Vavara s high tower was lit by a pair of flickering candles. Between them a dark silent silhouette gazed out on the night through scarlet pinprick eyes Then the head of the silhouette slowly inclined downwards and it was as if Vavara s fiery gaze saw right through the canopy of fig leaves and into Anna s and Delia s hearts and perhaps into their minds. Huddled together the sisters held tight to each other and looked away. They closed their eyes and held their breath . . . they even held their thoughts as for a minute or two perhaps three they stood frozen in their terror. But when next they dared to look up Vavara was gone . . . London is two cities one seen and one unseen. The one that is and the other that used to be now joined by darkness. The darkness that two thousand years of men have made with all of their building their bridging or arching over their tunnelling of watercourses and vaults and cellars and shelters and their veritable labyrinths of transportation and communication networks. Thus underground London while it is still a part of London is a world apart one that has been set apart by men. 105 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS DK1A1N UU1V1LCI It is a subterranean city of sprawling sewers that used to be canyons sweet water streams and flourishing rivers of low ways and no go ways that once were highways and byways and uncompleted or abandoned human life support systems that now support hordes of squealing rats slithering eels croaking frogs utterly silent etiolated fungi . . . and who knows what else And there are men down there too. The flushers. Ten million cisterns are flushed above most of them many times a day and far below the city s upper pavements the flushers are paid to flush what was flushed. That s their work it s what they do they are the city s troglodyte antibodies scraping away at the metal crumbling brick and reinforced concrete walls within its serpentine veins keeping its systems free and its juices running unclogging the sclerosis of inner arteries and dispersing their accumulated detritus. For if not then the outer skin of the city would erupt in poisons and the city itself die. Such might be the poetic viewpoint while from a flusher s point of view it s far simpler: he shovels shit. Wallace Fovargue had been a flusher would still be if his erstwhile ganger and colleagues would have him. But they wouldn t and neither would the Ministry of Sanitation or its subsidiary ICLC the Inner City of London Council. For Wally Fovargue had been blacklisted and would never again work in the dark and dripping bowels of subterranean London. He would never work there no. But being who he was the way he was and having been a flusher all his life Wally was always going to be there. For he had nowhere else to go ... and anyway the sewers and underground byways suited him to perfection. For one thing and with the exception of other flushers there were no people in them. But the flushers didn t go where Wally went and they certainly didn t live there. Wally had tried the surface world. He didn t much like it he loathed his weekly excursion up from the guts of the city to collect his unemployment benefit. For to the wannabe civil servants who paid it he was just another scruffy bum. Or not just a bum but a freak too. A stumpy legged long armed hunchback freak. And occasionally in the dingy half tiled corridor that looked like the entrance to a urinal Wally would hear the whispers of the other down and outers where they waited in a queue to approach the pay out windows in a stuffy broom closet size room with reinforced one way glass surrounds: That s the freak those whispers would go. Can you wonder why that specimen s out of work Jesus like who s going to employ some kind of fuck who looks like that And Wally had no doubt that the emotionless cold eyed cashiers counting out the money and paying him without ever touching him thought the same thing. One of Mother Nature s little errors our Wally. But on the file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 56 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt other hand they d never argued with him never tried pushing him into some job he didn t want. Oh yes they too knew that he wasn t going to find a job also that they weren t going to find one for him. Only glance at them suddenly catch them unawares and the thought was right there written in their cold eyes and pinched nostrils: Who in his right mind is ever going to employ a sick looking fuck like this The one good thing about it they paid up and got him out of there just as quick as you like. He never had to explain why he hadn t been out looking for a job or how come he continued to be of no fixed abode. The money wasn t much but that was okay Wally could live on it barely. That was the beauty of not having a mortgage to pay off of not having a roof over your head. But in fact Wally had hundreds over his an entire city of them. Westminster the Houses of Parliament Bond Street Mayfair the Bank of England the Ritz even Buckingham Palace Some pretty high class residences up there. And some high class arses perching on the crappers that watered Wally s underworld. But Wally didn t waste time while he was up there. He was obliged to go there for the money but once he d been paid shortly after nine o clock on Thursday mornings for he always tried to be first in the queue then he would get off to the nearest supermarket with his list. Food came first of course then a six pack of beers he didn t drink on Sundays candles and batteries one newspaper he liked to keep up to date with current events and his favourite magazines . . . girlie magazines yes. Wally dressed as best he could which only served to add to the incongruity of his appearance. If he were tramplike he would scarcely warrant a second glance. But reasonably attired he was out of place and people looked at him as they would at a dressed up orangutan. That was what he couldn t bear about the overworld: the fact that people stared frequently laughed and then looked away in embarrassment. He was or might be according to Darwin at least the product of natural selection. Wally s great great grandfather had been a flusher of sorts or as he would have been known in his time a tosher one of an early breed of sewer scavengers who earned their livings from whatever they could salvage and likewise his great grandfather his grandfather and his father immediately before him. So perhaps all those accumulated generations and years of stooping shovelling and scraping had altered his genes to suit. For in aspect he was a troglodyte. Wally was forty three and balding a slipped halo of hair hung down like a curtain to cover his big ears and the back of his pockmarked neck and was cut in a ragged fringe over bushy black eyebrows. His broad shoulders were powerfully muscled as were his gangly arms and short thick thighs. Reduced in height by his stumpy legs and S bend spine he was just three feet and nine inches tall ideal for work in sewers that were often only three to four and a half feet in diameter. Except he no longer worked there . . . As to how that had come about his dismissal: it had resulted from what the tribunal had been obliged to call an accident for Wally had been the only witness. As to what had happened: A flusher he had been working with had been sucked into a vertical sump where he had drowned in excrement. But since this was the second accident L h h I L t K BRIAN LUMLEY 1UO of its sort in nine months another man had been crushed by a cave in of rotten bricks and since both of the deceased were known to be practical jokers who from time to time had preyed on the hunchback . . . . . . The other flushers had flatly refused to work with him. For whether in malice or in passing they d all had their fun with Wally in their time but no way were they about to let him have his with them And the flusher gangs weren t the only suspicious ones there had been serious doubts in the minds of several officials sitting on the tribunal. But lacking evidence to the contrary Wally had got away with double murder. At least to the extent that he hadn t as yet paid for his crimes except in the coin of the rough companionship he d shared with the flushers. Well fuck them Wally wasn t a well man. He had twice suffered from spells of a mild form of hepatitis and he suspected he might have contracted Weil s disease from rat urine. Well read on the hazards of his lifestyle he knew that the disease finds a hold in cuts and scratches and eventually attacks the file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 57 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt brain. Certainly he d found himself thinking some weird things recently and not so recently either. It had started maybe three years back when Wally had been a flusher proper. Then as now his hearing had been more acute than the rest of his mates also his sense of smell and he d begun to hear and smell all sorts of unusual things in subterranean London. Sounds from regions where there shouldn t have been anyone or thing to make them and whiffs that weren t ammonia or choke or fire damp or the putrid stench of sulphurated hydrogen. Weird whiffs really . . . like death and decomposition and yet like life too though just what kind of life was anybody s guess. But in any case the sounds and stenches had always come from places he couldn t reach the unknown abandoned or forgotten nether levels of an older underworld entirely. Places that Wally s coworkers weren t authorized to visit and where they would never wish to venture anyway. Also he had thought on occasion to see movements shadows where there shouldn t be any. Shadows weren t a rarity light a candle and he d have shadows that moved with the flicker of the flame. But in torchlight and especially when the torch was stationary seated on a table perhaps for reading or over his bed as he settled to sleep then Wally s shadows should stay sharp and really weren t entitled to move at all. But sometimes. . . sometimes he thought they did. And very strange shadows at that. Not small scuttling rat shadows but those of something much larger even man size and swiftly flowing. Except of course men don t flow . . . Such were Wally s thoughts on the Thursday morning in question as he carried his bag of provisions into a lane off Fleet Street entered a walled back garden running to wilderness and went down on all fours to vanish under a canopy of brambles and rank shrubbery. South flowed the Thames and east lay the inner City of London itself. The River Fleet a submerged watercourse that once ran on the surface gurgled soundlessly directly underfoot. And there under a thin layer of dirt and parched leaves Wally lifted the Victorian manhole cover that was only one of his many entranceways to the underworld. Fastening his bag to his belt Wally let himself down into darkness. His feet found the rungs and he descended only pausing to pull the antique manhole cover back into place overhead. Then squeezing himself tight to the wall to allow for his malformed back he continued his descent. Twenty feet or so vertical to the first level then a veritable labyrinth of conduits and tunnels and walkways like towpaths that marched alongside turbid rivers of slurry seemingly endless low ceilinged sewers and echoing mist wreathed galleries of rusting abandoned tracks . . . then further descents down shaky flaking rungs that browned his palms with rust and more galleries waterways sewers and so on. Ninety minutes in all to get to the place that Wally called home. A very short distance as the crow flies but crows were in short supply in Wallace Fovargue s domain and the way confused and wandering literally labyrinthine. If Wally had been a ganger a boss there were such places he could have shown his flushers places they wouldn t believe But to get to them they d need to be daring brave and imaginative beyond their mundane imaginations. For they had only ever seen this underworld as a workplace while to Wally it was the entire world his world. And in it some sumptuous places. Sumptuous yes And Wally chuckled as he covered the last few yards of the last tunnel to his residence. The tunnel was an uncompleted in fact barely begun railway line where short small gauge ties were still visible indicating the use of manual bogies in the removal of debris. The tracks however had been taken out possibly to be melted down for war materials. During the Second World War this place had been opened up for use as an air raid shelter. The access shafts had later been filled in but the sweating brick walls still boasted a few tattered recruitment posters that dated back to 1943 and 44 while others continued to warn against fifth columnists. Wally read them as the history of a time he d never known but that his father had remembered vividly until Weil s disease had taken him. The sirens would make an ell of a noise his father had told him. Then the Old Folks d bundle us up me and yer auntie she was in a home somewhere now and urry on darn the unnergrarnd. Well that was like an ome from ome ter me wot wiv workin darn there and wotnot . . . And it was like going home to Wally too. In fact the one and only home he had known for more than a year now since his landlord gave him the boot for frightening the other tenants. Frightening them Why Wally had scarcely ever looked at them Which had been enough apparently. But what the hell there were no snivelling tale telling tenants down here. Just the rats and frogs the eels and mosquitoes and various small bat colonies. And no grubby landlord to pay either. So as for the overworlders Juck em all: Wally climbed up onto what might have been intended for a platform if L fc h 1 L t K b file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 58 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt iuo BKIAfMLUMLhY the underground line and station had ever seen completion. Now he was at the hub of a system of radiating tunnels none of them going very far one of which had still been fitted with indestructible army style bunk beds when Wally first found the place. He d kept one such bed intact dismantling and stacking the others to make more room. He had long since tapped into the nearest water main had all the drinking and washing water he needed the same with gas for cooking. No problem there. But he d steered clear of electricity it was available but he d avoided it. He had this aversion to messing about with live wires and anyway he d heard a rumour that they could track unauthorized users. Also his eyes were pretty well suited to weak light a couple of candles or a dim battery powered torch beam was about all he needed. No TV no but he was equipped with a windup radio. Its aerial was a half mile of wire whose other end was tied to a lightning conductor in the steeple of an old church near Moorgate. One hell of a job that had proved but well worth it. The reception was quite marvellous. Fat for cooking No problem. The restaurants in the inner city poured away thousands of gallons every night. They weren t supposed to but they did. A flusher s nightmare that: scraping or shovelling tons of that slop off of the walls and out of the pipes before it hardened into giant candles and blocked up the entire works. Hub And they wondered why the rat population was swelling the way it was Wally knew where there was a regular chimney of the stuff. The rats could chew all they wanted on the rancid external layers but deep inside it was still pretty clean. It was similar to cheese Wally thought: it went hard or stale on the outside but stayed soft in its core. He had a long handled sugar scoop that could gouge right into it. And it smelled quite wonderful of just about everything they d been cooking up there. Sausages and beans could take on all kinds of oriental flavours . . . As for toilets: three minutes in just about any direction or less than that if you weren t fussy. And Wally wasn t especially fussy. Temperature Winter or summer up above down here it was constant always mild two blankets sufficed. So he was home safe and dry and all that remained was to visit the harem let his ladies know he was back and complain to them about the miserable day he d had upstairs. His ladies: an entire gallery of them on the walls of the tunnel adjoining his bedroom. He would have them in the bedroom itself but that might prove too much of a distraction. There s a time for sleeping and a time for the other hence the harem. And now it was time for the other. Wally had been looking forward to this moment all morning and now his excitement grew as he sat down at his table an old folding card table and took out his magazines. Way back in the past there had been a men s magazine called Playboy the women had been beautiful and the pictures soft edged warm and glowing even artistic in a prurient sort of way. All of that was old NECROSCOPh hat these days when art had given way to pure pornography. But the centrefold tradition still held true if not to its origins. Wally still kept a few of those old Playboy centrefolds pasted to the walls of his harem but they were there for when the mood called for love not lust. They were pictures of women he would have been able to love if he d been able and acceptable not sluts with their legs gaping and their fingers holding themselves open for viewing But the sad fact was that the majority of the glossily lewdly pictured ladies in Wally s harem were of the latter variety. For love had passed him by without a second glance and lust was all that was left. Removing the staples from the magazines Wally spread the centrefolds on his table and examined them in torch and candlelight. Flecks of drool dampened the corners of his mouth as he stared at close range at what would in most women be their most private places. But in these pictures he could look at and into them. He could look at them touch them with trembling fingers and a fevered imagination but never get into them or even near them in the flesh. But there was always the next best thing which of necessity had ever been the way of it with Wally. A man s best friend he told himself hurrying with his paste pot brush his new lady friends and the throbbing penis with which they d suddenly spontaneously endowed him through into his gallery his harem is his good right wanking hand And with his torch jammed firmly in a gap where the mortar had fallen from between bricks in a gradually buckling wall Wally quickly pasted up his new acquisitions. Then taking up his torch in his left hand he began plying his fat veined cock aiming his torch first at one photograph then the next and slowly rotating to take in the entire gallery. This was what his ladies liked he knew: that he shared his affections equally between them showing no file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 59 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt favoritism. But after he had turned full circle returning to his raw recruits then he made fast his torch in the wall again so that it would hold steady as finally he brought himself to climax. Except that didn t happen. For suddenly . . . . . . There in the corner of Wally s eye a shadow where no shadow should be. And while his torch held steady in its crack in the wall still the shadow moved flowed and it was cast by something behind Wally something that was gradually occluding the torch s beam. And while he stood there frozen still clutching his rapidly shrinking penis so that grotesque shape or shadow or dark stain flowed over the circle of light and plunged Wally s ladies and Wally himself into inky darkness. And behind him something awesome breathed just inches from his straining ears On legs like rubber Wally turned looked saw . . . Limned in weak torchlight a jet black silhouette a fantastic shape stood close. Scarlet eyes blinked observing him closely and at close range. Then a hand or something resembling a hand reached out to settle on Wally s shoulder. And as he gave a massive start: INTIMATIONS nu BRIAN LUMLtY Ah no said a low dark voice like the gurgle of one of Wally s drains. Have no fear my son not of me. For we are as one. I have watched you for long and long: how you degrade yourself hiding in the dark places like a moth a fly the light even like a Starside trog or indeed like myself because you are ugly. But believe me you are by no means the ugliest. And the shape flowed to one side a little until the edge of the beam of light fell more surely upon it. And turning its face right profile halfway into the light it tilted its head inquiringly opened wide its furnace eyes and cracked its unbelievable jaws in such a smile that Wally That Wally simply fainted dead away . . . 7 PUTTING IT TOGETHER Ben Trask slept late. After washing shaving and dressing he made a few quick notes and was leaving his room to go to breakfast in the hotel downstairs coffee two slices of toast and a boiled egg as usual when his phone rang. It was the Minister Responsible he d come through the duty officer and was on scrambled. Mr. Trask he began I ve spoken to the director of the Burger Finanz Gruppe bank and managed to extract you from your little pile of mess again This early Trask glanced at his watch not quite 9:30 A.M. in London but of course Switzerland had started off the day an hour earlier. The early bird catches the worm Mr. Trask. But really I have to ask you to take a firmer hand with your people. I mean 1 know the importance of what you re doing but But... I don t think you do know Trask cut in. If you did you d have better things to do than come fishing for apologies especially when I haven t had breakfast yet. And when it comes to digging people out of the shit how deep in it do you think you and the rest of the world would be if not for my people Okay so I had an eager beaver who got ahead of herself. But it s also possible she s given us our best lead so far. So I ve reprimanded her on the one hand congratulated her on the other. Now then do you approve If you do try unloading that chip off your shoulder. If you don t I m open to suggestions. You could always retire me I suppose. And after a brief silence: Must you always take things so personally the Minister s voice was still very calm but much colder now. I mean where your people are concerned Mr. Trask Last night you were almost apologetic. Last night I was very tired said Trask. I m talking about three years worth of tired which to you probably indicates three years of not much happening three years of running around and much ado about nothing Maybe L t f i L c K. you ve got used to the notion that these creatures are here and since they don t seem to be doing too much their threat no longer seems as great. But just because it was quiet for a while doesn t mean it s over Australia proved that much. And yes I do take things very personally where my people are concerned. It s something they call loyalty. You should try it some time. Who knows it might even be infectious. Mr. Trask now you re trying to insult me file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 60 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt I see it the other way round said Trask. Were you out there in Australia with me fighting these bloody vampire invaders of our world Did you see people dying out there blown to bits in booby traps Was it you who er how did you put it extracted me from that little pile of mess when it appeared I was next on the death list Hell no it wasn t you it was my people. But you . . . you haven t even found the time to say that you re glad to see us all back in one piece. And now you expect me to grovel because you ve extracted me from a little pile of mess Of course I take it personally Another brief silence and then: It s true that I haven t yet congratulated you on the Australian job the Minister said. Well now I do so. I m only asking you to remember that just as you answer to me or rather as you are supposed to answer to me so I must answer to others above me. But sometimes answers are hard to come by. As you know I coordinate our security services Mr. Trask which means that I m just as covert in my work as you are in yours. And as vulnerable. When breaches of international etiquette occur and when my people are responsible for you are my people then I m liable to get just as upset as you. Our jobs are equally onerous I assure you. Upset Trask thought. Merely upset The phlegmatism of the upper class English gentleman But he had to smile for he knew that what the Minister had said was very true. Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite em he quoted and was rewarded by the other s wry chuckle. I know the next line to that one the Minister answered. And little fleas have smaller fleas and so ad infinitum. And it also works in reverse right Trask nodded. We little fleas have to be careful how we ride the bigger ones in case they take umbrage and scratch us off. Okay so thanks for helping us out. . . And after a moment: Can I take it that the director of the Burger Finanz Gruppe won t be informing a certain charity about a certain breach of security or etiquette if you insist You can indeed the Minister said. Also if any further funding is to be released through that outlet I m assured that we ll be advised well in advance. Trask jumped at that making no attempt to hide his eagerness. But will that help us I mean do we know where the outlet is What town city country I d just love to be there if or when any more money is paid out. We could trace it right to our . . . well let s for the moment call him our man. Or better still our target. One of our targets. No the Minister answered. All of the Swiss banks still play it very close to their chests er their treasure chests It s the closest thing you ll ever get to a doctor patient relationship. Complete confidentiality. But anyway good luck with whatever it is you ve tracked down. Tracking Trask corrected him. We re not there yet. And talking about not being there my breakfast is waiting and I ve a think tank in just an hour s time. Thanks for calling if not for the slap on the wrist. Think nothing of it said the other. But do please keep those eager beavers of yours on a leash won t you And before Trask could answer he put his phone down. As the Minister Responsible he liked to have the last word. Oh I won t Trask told himself meaning he wouldn t think anything of it. Then slightly ruffled on the one hand pleased on the other he left his E Branch accommodation and went for a late breakfast . . . Going into the think tank in a smaller room off Ops Trask stopped Millicent Cleary and had a word with her in private. I had to take a little flak from the man upstairs he told her. But at least he took the heat off us. I ll tell you about it later. Meanwhile have you given any more thought as to where Mal inari might be Jimmy Harvey was squeezing by them where they stood inside the door. I couldn t help but hear that he said keeping his voice down as he joined them. What part of it Trask looked him up and down. And what in hell have you been doing to yourself A rough night or something Harvey cut a gnomish sort of figure. A short compact man at five feet and four inches he was the whiz kid computer and communications expert who along with Millie had almost got Trask into trouble last night. In his mid twenties and prematurely bald but with long red sideburns and bushy eyebrows that tried hard to make up for his baldness grey watery eyes and a positive genius for electronics he did in fact remind Trask of a clever occasionally mischievous gnome. Right now though there were bags under his eyes his face was lined and sagging and his clothes looked like he d slept in them. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 61 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Yawning behind his hand Harvey answered Trask s question: Last night after Millie went off to talk to you I sat around awhile in Ops more than a while actually. I didn t hit the sack until around three A.M. But I found stuff to do ... I was just following orders putting in some of the extra time you ve been asking for. Anyway before I called it a night I fed some stuff into the extraps. This morning I was back in Ops and the machines have come up with some interesting ideas. As Harvey finished speaking Trask looked beyond him into the room. The other think tank members were all assembled they sat at a large oblong table with notepads and pencils to hand. They were lan Goodly David Chung Paul Garvey and John Grieve all of them longtime members of E Branch the upper echelon as it were. The only one who was missing who really should have been here was Anna Marie English but she was in Sunside. And Zek of course or Mrs. Trask as they had all too briefly known her. But Zek wasn t 1 It BRIAN LUMLEY anywhere anymore or if she was then it was a place way beyond anyone s ability to reach. Beyond Trask s abilities anyway . . . Others who weren t from the original cast were Liz Merrick who was here because of her connection with Jake Cutter and Lardis Lidesci chiefly because he was wont to jump in now and then with some pretty sharp intuitive comments. Jimmy Harvey was a recent recruit he was here to represent the techs. Let s join them Trask said. And we ll start with you Jimmy. And then as they seated themselves Trask at the head of the table: Good morning he greeted the others then went straight into it. We re going to start off with Jimmy. He and Millie have been working er privately on something with terrific potential. It would seem they ve come up with the goods. We re not there yet but we re certainly halfway. That s what we re here for to finish what they ve started. Thinking caps on everyone and let s hear what Jimmy has to say. Jimmy The tired looking Harvey took it from there. Millie and I did a little er poaching last night that s illicit fishing. Mr. Trask might want to enlarge on that later he glanced apprehensively at Trask then at Millie and quickly went on or maybe not. Anyway we narrowed down Malinari s possible whereabouts to just a handful of countries and later I fed them into one of the extraps together with some stuff we d come across in Australia. By then it was late and I didn t wait around to find out what the computer would come up with. But this morning Wait said Trask. We ll all be better off if we can see the whole picture. Just what was this stuff from Australia that you fed into the extrap Harvey shrugged. Well for one there was the Bruce Trennier connection. He was an Aussie or a New Zealander which to me seemed close enough. And then there s the fact that the Australian tropics are just about as far as possible from where we would normally have expected to find Malinari. And since I was putting Trennier s name in there it seemed sensible to include the names of the others who were taken from the Refuge when the Wamphyri came through. So I also entered details from our files on Andre Corner and Denise Karalambos. And finally I requested the odds on our short list of locations. Corner and Karalambos Trask frowned and Millie Cleary stepped in: Andre Corner was a Harley Street psychiatrist who specialized in kids and young adults she said. He d long since made his pile and wanted to give something back. His teenage son had died of a massive drugs overdose. Corner s self imposed penance for letting his son down I suppose was to work at the Refuge as a volunteer helping all those young Romanian people. Trask nodded. Yes I remember now . . . It should have been hard to forget really but he d erased a lot of the details of that time from his mind. And Denise Karalambos was She was a paediatrician from Athens another volunteer Millie obliged. Things were coming together now and Trask and probably everyone else was beginning to see where this was going. How come these things these names and details weren t already in the computer Trask wanted to know. They were Harvey answered. But the extraps aren t programmed to play hunches. They only work with hard facts and we hadn t been asking the right questions. And David Chung the locator came in with: That s right. Instead of describing Starside as their file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 62 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt sort of habitation and trying to predict where the Wamphyri would feel most at home in our world we d have been a lot better off trying to figure out where their new lieutenants were likely to take them So lan Goodly piped up. Just exactly what did your extrap come up with Jimmy And Harvey said I d supplied the computer with the countries that Millie and I had short listed: Italy Greece Switzerland and some South American countries. And I had also paired off Malinari and Trennier in Australia. The rest must have been easy. If I d stuck around for another ten minutes I might well have had the answer last night. Greece said Trask thumping the table and making everyone jump. That s where Malinari has gone to one of his bloody colleagues Szwart or Vavara whichever in Greece. He took Trennier and let Trennier take him to Australia where he then gained his foothold. And as for that poor woman Denise Karalambos she would have made the perfect tour guide in Greece. But for which one of the other monsters Vavara or Szwart Vavara Lardis Lidesci growled at once. And now it begins to make sense ... or most of it ... or I m a bloody fool Okay Trask said again. Let s calm it down keep it orderly though I ll admit I m just as excited as the next man or woman. So then Jimmy what did the extrap come up with You were right first time Harvey nodded. Greece it is. A high probability factor. But the machine wasn t able to pair Miss Karalambos off with one of the Wamphyri couldn t guess which one of them is there . . . He paused to glance at Lardis. So what makes you think it s Vavara And suddenly Lardis was the focus of everyone s attention. Why because Miss Karalambos is a miss the Old Lidesci answered. Because she s female And according to immem er immemor er according to old Sunside legends Vavara always preferred the company of women. Oh she would have had her men . . . er for various reasons. He lowered his head a little to peer briefly at Liz and Millie. To fight her battles for her and so on. But when it came to company Vavara s court was one of women. And she could sway them as easily as she could men. The Lady Vavara Trask sighed. Vavara and Malinari together. Our chance to take out two of these birds of prey with one stone. Not Lady no Lardis shook his head. Not the Lady Vavara just Vavara. he spurned the title Lady because she more than any other female of the 110 t K 1 A IN LUMLtY Wamphyri knew it for a great lie. If you re right and she is in Greece I fancy we go up against the worst possible combination of vampire powers. Malinari and his mentalism and Vavara with her hypnotism. And whatever you do you must never underestimate Vavara because she is female. Remember if you will Wratha the Risen Ursula Torspawn Zindevar Cronesap and the worst of them all Devetaki Skullguise. Hub For weren t they Ladies too Thanks for the reminder said Trask. But just a moment ago you called yourself a bloody fool. Why Because I was there as well you know I was actually out there in Greece before you called me to Australia. I spoke to Travellers to that old chief Vladi Ferengi. A damned Ferengi That in itself should have told me that something wasn t right. And they had known infection that girl of theirs buried with silver coins on her eyes but someone had seen fit to dig the poor lass up again and put a stake through her. Who else do you suppose but the one who had vampirized her in the first place Who else but someone trying to cover her tracks eh You re right said Trask and it is all coming together. But you can t blame yourself for failing to see what now seems so obvious. Being a Traveller Szgany yourself you were simply too close to the problem that s all. And Vladi and his people they were out there looking for one of their strange places one of the Gateways said Lardis. Trask nodded. Or for someone who d recently come through just such a Gate. Old Vladi and that beak of his he d sniffed out Vavara but couldn t find her because she wasn t the great Lord he was looking for. He and his people didn t find Vavara no but it now looks more than likely that she found them By now the other members of the think tank were looking at both Lardis and Trask together and he realized that they weren t in on this. Quickly he explained what had happened to Lardis in Greece then said And so we ve got several leads we can work on for a start Vladi and the Ferengis. We need to know where they d been immediately before that girl went down with with whatever it was for we re not as yet one hundred percent certain. Pretty sure but not certain. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 63 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt And Chung came in again with: Damn You want to know something Of all the places we ve looked at me and the other locators mainland Greece is the one we ve skipped. It s too close to Romania and beyond Romania the USSR as was. Romania has always had its mindsmog clinging to its old places like . . . like some kind of mental radioactivity. But as for the genuine article radioactivity itself: well the Russians have been dumping their crap in the Black Sea for so long now that whenever I try scanning anything in that direction all I get is a headache So even if I d tried no way I was going to pick up Vavara or anyone else in all that smog. But what if you were physically there Trask said. What if you were in Greece itself What then The closer the better Chung answered. Even a blind man knows when he s stepped in something nasty. Will you be putting a team together 119 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS And before Trask could answer Millie Cleary came in with: I m the one who found him Malinari I mean. Isn t it time I was given some fieldwork Now the team s attention switched to Millie and Trask had to agree: She s right. While their methods may have been a bit unorthodox or perhaps I should say downright illegal still Millie along with her colleague in crime Mr. Jimmy Harvey did find us our target. At least they pointed us in the right direction. But we haven t pinpointed Malinari yet. And he quickly covered his and Millie s conversation of the previous night. Following which Millie came back in with So since we now know or strongly suspect that Malinari is with Vavara in Greece that narrows down the number of banks that could have made payment to that charity right Is there any way to find out which Greek banks the Burger Finanz Gruppe does business with Nice try said Trask but I ve only just got our Minister Responsible off my back in respect of your last investigations But. . . you might just have something. I don t think we d get anywhere from the Swiss end complete confidentiality and all that so what we could use is some good Greek liaison. And I think I know just the man. David Chung was pretty certain he knew who Trask was talking about. A good deal of time had passed since the Janos Ferenczy affair in Rhodes and the Greek islands but someone who had been of invaluable assistance had stayed in touch ever since. A firm friend of E Branch the Greek policeman now an Inspector of Police in Athens would be sure to offer them all the help they needed. Indeed he would probably want to be in on it as a leading participant. To be sure he was on the right track however Chung queried: You mean Manolis Papastamos And Trask nodded. The same. As soon as we re out of here I ll contact him and see what I can arrange. So how will we handle it John Grieve spoke up. I mean I know it s early days yet but what s the plan to be If we re sending a team out to Australia and if we re to man the HQ and carry out our normal duties at the same time good Lord You know I can t believe I said normal just then won t it leave us a bit thin on the ground Malinari and Vavara together But this will have to be some kind of task force that we re talking about here We re not going to take them easy assuming that we can find them. And in Greece . . . well even with this Greek fellow on our side we can t expect the same level of local support that we had down under. Again Trask s nod. It s early days yes. But time as they say is of the essence. So you re right and the sooner we formulate a plan a skeleton we can flesh out later the better. And talking about skeletons the follow up Australian team will have to be just that: a spotter a telepath and that about covers it. Our Aussie friends will supply the muscle if such is required. As for a Greek task force: again you re right. We ll have to be out there in strength well as soon as we know for sure just exactly where we re going. izu BRIAN LUMLEY We should start with Vladi Ferengi and his people Lardis Lidesci growled. For once we know where they have been Then we ll know where we are going Trask finished it for him. And then glancing at David Chung: Is Bernie Fletcher on duty We re all on duty Paul Garvey reminded him. We have a couple of men on foreign embassy duties but the rest of us are here at HQ. You asked us to put some time in and we re putting it in. Then let s go down to Ops said Trask standing up. And on the way someone can get ahold of file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 64 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Bernie. Wait said Garvey as his face twisted grotesquely for a second or so. Then: No need to go looking for Bernie he said letting his features return to what everyone was used to. I ve already got him. He s on his way to Ops. Paul Garvey was a telepath. When he used his powers as he had just this moment it wasn t a pretty sight. It required concentration It s all in the way you chew on your lip Garvey himself had often explained it though never humorously. Tall well built and still athletically trim despite his fifty six years Garvey had been good looking too before he d gone up against one of Harry Keogh s most dangerous adversaries the necromancer Johnny Found and lost most of the left side of his face. That had been some twenty years ago. At the time and on several occasions since some of England s best surgeons had worked on Paul until he looked half decent but a real face is made of more than just so much flesh scavenged from other parts. His reconstructed features had been rebuilt from living tissue true but the muscles on the left didn t pull the same as those on the right and even after all these years the nerves weren t connecting up too well. Paul could smile with the right side of his face but not the left for which reason and even though the other espers were used to it he normally avoided smiling altogether . . . and avoided all other facial expressions too. Bernie Fletcher was waiting in Ops when they got there. He was a burly five foot eight redhead an intuitive locator whose talent made him an ideal target for spotters in that it worked both ways: he was a locator but he could also be located. Telepathic members of the Branch indeed all of Trask s espers never had much trouble homing in on Bernie his mental activity was like magnetic north to a lodestone and the telepaths could even send simple instructions which usually arrived in Bernie s mind as compulsive urges. He might occasionally recognize the author and then he d follow up the suggestion as a matter of course even if he didn t know what was going on. Such as now. What s up he said his green eyes narrowing to a frown as Trask and the think tank arrived in Ops. You are said Trask. Up for promotion if you can pull it off. Eh Bernie blinked owlishly. What s going on boss Why am I here The others were pretty much au fait with what Trask was talking about but Fletcher wasn t in on it as yet. Maps said Trask glancing at the big wall screen. Maps of Greece. The most detailed maps we ve got. But David Chung said: Sir Which drew Trask s attention. The locator was still wont to call Trask sir in front of lesser members. Yes Trask looked at him. You asked lan and I to set up a special map room. We did including a big screen. We d be better off three doors down the corridor. Less hustle and bustle. Lead the way said Trask. As the door to Ops closed behind them a handful of espers and techs working there looked at it then at each other shrugged and went back to work. While just outside the door Paul Garvey stepped out alongside Trask and said Ben that skeleton staff you were talking about Back here at HQ I mean I d like to be part of it. Trask knew what he meant. Garvey had taken the plunge just two years earlier and his younger wife was very pregnant. Moreover she was blind which made them the ideal couple. Receptive of his telepathic skills she had found a new life in Paul she could see through his eyes his talent. And with her he needn t concern himself about his looks he had found an outlet for years of trapped emotions. Don t worry about it Trask told him as Chung opened up the door to his and lan Goodly s study room. You re already on my list for rear party duties. You Bernie John Grieve and But Millie Cleary was there right behind him looking at Trask in that way of hers. And so shrugging awkwardly he finished Oh and one or two others. Maybe. Bernie Fletcher had overheard their conversation. What s that he turned to Trask as the others filed by into the room. I m staying back Again Why me You know why you said Trask. Malinari s a mentalist a proven men talist of extraordinary power. At close range he could suck you in like a vacuum cleaner. Let s face it Bernie you stand out like a sore thumb in the metaphysical aether. You glow in the dark man Oh I can use you to discover the whereabouts of such as these Gypsies but I m not going to risk you anywhere near Lord Nephran Malinari. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 65 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt You think I d maybe let the team down Bernie s face had fallen and his expression was suddenly glum. Not you Trask answered but your talent. I m not going to be sending UP any signal flares you can be sure. But that s not my main concern you are. We ve dealt with such as Malinari before. If you re out of touch with the Janos Ferenczy business I suggest you read up on it ASAP and then I m betting you won t want to come with us He turned to Grieve. And John: as usual you ll be our anchorman here at HQ. Do you have any Problems with that The other shook his head. Since I m not much on hand to hand combat flinging grenades jumping out of helicopters and all such I have no problems at all with that. The rest of you can go get yourselves killed. His way of saying break a leg in the theatrical tradition. Trask grinned and said You re just an old stay at home that s all. And me Millie caught at Trask s elbow. Am I to stay at home too We can talk about that when we re finished here he told her. But right now it s business. Which told Millie something at least: that she wasn t business but personal which in turn served to produce a warm if mildly frustrated feeling in her. The room was small a remodelled hotel room with an oval glass topped table standing central two chairs and a big rear window fitted with bars and blinds currently open that looked out on an impressive view of central London. But in the middle of the table Malinari s fire scorched battle gauntlet sat like a grotesque eighteen inch grey metal alien insect and on one otherwise naked wall a four by five foot flat screen viewer was hanging from the picture rail. Beneath the viewscreen set back from the wall a swivel chair stood in front of the white plastic casing of a sophisticated computer console and keyboard. Chung sat down in the swivel chair and switched on the computer. In a moment as he tapped at the keys the screen flickered into life and displayed a detailed map of mainland Greece with Athens at the bottom and Sofia in Bulgaria at the top. Swing northeast Bernie Fletcher instructed into Bulgaria. He now believed he knew what was going on knew what he was looking for. It could only be that Trask and company were following up on his and Lardis s Greek expedition. But if it s their trail you re interested in Vladi Ferengi and his people I have to warn you it s probably cold by now. And to Chung: Now centre Eleshnitsa which is where we last saw them. Trask and the others stood aside looked on as Chung centred the screen on Eleshnitsa in Bulgaria and Bernie reached out a hand and forefinger to touch the printed name that identified the village then the sixteenth of an inch black dot that located the place on the big screen. He stood stock still for a moment his face lined with concentration then shook his head. Stone cold he said. It s been what two weeks Closer to three And the Travellers they ve moved on. Maybe you need a hand said Trask. And to Lardis: Give him a hand. I mean literally. Eh said the Old Lidesci. You re Szgany said Trask. A Gypsy a Traveller a lot closer to these people than we are. And what s more you ve actually met them. Also you re fey with a seer ancestor s blood in you you ve said so often enough yourself. So give Bernie your hand. And David you might like to get in on this too. I want to know where these damned people are Hahl Damned is right Lardis growled. By their name if by nothing else. And he grasped Fletcher s free hand likewise David Chung reaching out a hand and forming a link with Lardis. And now things started to happen. Fletcher s face was suddenly drawn his green eyes rapidly blinking. And: Whoah: he muttered. Now that is strong And to Chung without taking his eyes off the screen: Are you okay working that keyboard one handed But Chief Tech Jimmy Harvey had already taken over the keyboard as Chung slid aside to give him room. And now both locators and Lardis concentrated together on the map on the screen. Strong . . . said Fletcher again. Go north skirt the old border with Yugoslavia then cross the Danube into Romania. Damn but this is good We re getting warm. And suddenly: Now stop . . . hold it right there His index finger was now resting on Teregova in Romania. And: Is that where they are Trask s eagerness his urgency was showing. Just for a moment there you seemed to be heading straight for the Romanian Refuge or what used to be the Refuge. Come to think of it this wouldn t be a bad route for someone who was sniffing out the strange places. The subterranean Gate under the Carpathians . . . and Faethor Ferenczy s old place in the Zarandului Mountains. The more we work on this the more it comes together. And yes I m sure now file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 66 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt that old Vladi and his people are part of this. They might not realize it but they ve been where we want to go and they were somehow touched by what we ve vowed to destroy. Left said Fletcher. I mean west... go west across the border into Hungary. His face was very pale now his eyes sunken and wrinkled up until they were almost closed. And his hand and finger trembled where they contacted the screen. By God I believe we re almost there Makes sense said Millie Cleary breathlessly. Nationalistically these people are Hungarians. Now that Vladi s search for the strange places is over for the time being he s heading home for a little R and R. Didn t know you were in the armed forces. Trask s voice was hushed. Wasn t Millie answered. But I had a boyfriend who was. Er it was a long time ago . . . Not heading home Bernie shook his head but gone home They re there and so are we Everyone s gaze was now riveted to the screen where the locator s hand literally vibrated on a wooded area near the town of Szentes. And Lardis said Would you believe there was once a campsite in Sunside called Szente It belonged to the Szgany Szente and their leader Volpe miserable old shad thief that he was and was hidden away in the forest southwest of Lidesci territory . . . that is until the night the Wamphyri found it. Aye and they found old Volpe too since when the Szgany Szente are no more. Huh But just look at this map: all those woods lakes and rivers. They make ror excellent hunting gathering fishing. Oh yes Vladi and his people they ve gone home all right How are we fixed with Hungary diplomatically and so on Trask was on jt a flash. 1 4 BKIA1N LUIV1LEI Couldn t be better said Millie Cleary. They joined the European Union just three years ago they re using the old NATO standard weaponry and our armed forces are training their junior officers at Sandhurst and the other academies we kept them out of the fire financially when Russia and her once satellites went down the tube and so they owe the West a heck of a lot. Trask nodded. Good. Excellent More work for the Minister Responsible: to speak to his Hungarian counterpart and have old Vladi Ferengi taken into er protective custody in Szeged or maybe even Szentes depending on local public opinion. Lardis you and I shall fly out there together talk to Vladi find out where he d been immediately prior to that poor girl going down with . . . well with whatever. But I m beginning to think we can be pretty sure what was wrong with her. I m ready whenever you are Lardis nodded. Just say the word. And maybe this time we ll actually get somewhere Right said Trask and now it s time to make a few man power plans . . . but I m leaving that and the other logistics to the techs. He tapped Jimmy Harvey on the shoulder where he sat at the computer keyboard. Jimmy we re talking hours not days. A breakdown of all available manpower travel arrangements all the usual logistics yes. An Australian skeleton crew a backup or rear party here at the HQ and the main task force . . . well somewhere in Greece. They ll probably be based somewhere on the Mediterranean coast close to Kavala. But they ll be the last to get under way which will be just as soon as Lardis and I finish up in Szentes. Then we ll join up with them in he offered a shrug wherever ... Trask looked from face to face. Questions There were none. Then think some up he said And find the answers and then tell me about them He headed for the door but Jimmy Harvey stopped him saying: Maybe I should speak to GCHQ the listening station They have access to Brit and US spysats. Maybe they can confirm that the Szgany have gone home actually get them on screen in those Hungarian woods. No said Trask. GCHQ will only want to know what we re doing why we need this information and I would much prefer to keep this to ourselves. So we ll simply take Bernie s David s and Lardis s word for it and work on that. And at the door he turned and said: David I ll have to speak to the Minister Responsible directly I mean right now so that he can fix things up for me in Hungary. Since I can t be in two places at once do me a favour and see if you can contact Manolis Papastamos will you Thanks. And Millie and Liz: I ll see you in my office in half an hour. Liz first. As for the rest of you: thanks everyone. Well done. But it doesn t stop here this is only the start. So now it s back to work people it s back to work ... Trask had barely done talking to the Minister Responsible when Liz Merrick came knocking on his door. He d wedged it open in the vain hope that some fresh air might come wafting through his office wondered if in fact there was any fresh air left anywhere The air conditioning That was a laugh The one system that hadn t been updated in this file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 67 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt place and thirty years ago long before anyone had begun to take note of weird El Nino weather patterns even then the air conditioning at E Branch HQ had been inadequate. Come in and . . . and droop Trask called out. Better yet come in and flog me with some twigs or something . . . Excuse me Looking not quite as wilted as Trask Liz sat down opposite his desk. Well since it feels like I m living in a sauna he told her I may as well act like I am Then serious once more: So what s going on All morning you ve been looking worried. Something I should know about Something with Jake maybe again Trask s halfhearted attempt at humour was already a thing of the past forgotten. And Liz found herself thinking: This is just business to him. No room for anything else. He isn t going to understand. She looked down at the floor for a moment then looked at Trask looked straight at him and set her jaw. And determined but nevertheless stumbling over her words she said I don t think I ... that is I don t want to ... I mean I won t be spying on Jake anymore. Trask raised an eyebrow sighed and said Oh And that s supposed to upset me is it Liz bit her lip. Not intentionally no. But I Well it does upset me He snapped cutting her off. It upsets me a great deal because I m now looking at the ruin of not just one potentially excellent esper but two. However and before I chase you to hell out of here out of the Branch and out of a job you d better tell me why you ve come to this . . . this stupid decision And if you tell me it s a matter of loyalty then I ll have to ask you just where are your loyalties Liz And which is more important: your job E Branch the security of the world or bloody Jake Cutter And now she was angry too which was all to the good because that way she would tell the plain and simple truth ... or the truth as she saw it. And Ben Trask and the truth had always been the best of friends. My spying on him is getting in the way of... of Jake and me of our relationship she said. He knows what I m doing or if not knows then he more than just suspects it which is why we re at an impasse. He can t let me get too close for fear I ll learn well everything. Including those things everyone has that really should be private the things that that That rattle said Trask. You mean like skeletons in our closets Or is it something worse than that No. Maybe. I don t know. Yes. And she looked down at the floor again. But isn t that just exactly what we ve been trying to discover Trask said gically. Don t we want to help Jake and so clear the way for him to start helping us God but he has or he could have the powers of a Necroscope hink about it What a weapon he would make Think about what he s already achieved out in Australia. But if there s something very wrong in there in the depths of his mind and if he s If he s been got at she cut in. If he s a plant despite everything we ve seen so far But is that really feasible Trask shrugged shook his head then nodded however reluctantly. Yes it s still possible. I don t want it to be it s the last thing I want but that s the way it is. We must never underestimate the Wamphyri: their capacity for evil their lust for life or undeath their tenacity. You weren t here Liz but we the rest of us we won t ever forget what happened to Harry Keogh. Harry had the will the guts the strength to fight it yet still he lost the battle. But Jake That s why I can t let you quit not just for E Branch and all that we stand for but for Jake too and for you since you feel that way about him. Now think: if he s in danger shouldn t you be doing something about it or letting me do it If he had cancer wouldn t you want us to cure it cut it out Even saying these things still Trask felt treacherous. It was his lie detector working in reverse detecting bis lie. Yes he wanted to save Jake and keep him safe for E Branch for the world but least of all for Liz. Not until Jake had proved himself beyond all reasonable doubt anyway. Yet still he went on: Whatever it is that s affecting him and I can t believe it s ingratitude stupidity or just plain stubbornness we ve got to find and get rid of it. But if you have . . .feelings for him well surely you can see that for yourself And before she could answer: Okay so tell me what s brought this on. Oh I know it s been coming for some time ever since we got back home. But the last time we spoke I thought we d cleared it all up that there were no more barriers between us except maybe ethical barriers that really have no meaning compared to what we re dealing with. As for myself: it s not easy but I simply can t afford ethics Liz. Not file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 68 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt anymore and certainly not now. And as for the Wamphyri: they don t bave any ethics and never have had. So tell me why have things changed What happened that we re right back to square one Something last night maybe For he had seen it in her eyes: that haunted look and the sleeplessness of course. And so she told him about it most of it as best she was able to remember and he heard her out in silence his talent sorting out the truths from the half truths. But at least there were no blatant lies. Oh the picture she painted was in Jake s favour but the colours she used were all true to life. And she finished by saying So you see Jake is just as scared of this thing as you or as we are which is why he was fighting it. It isn t something he s in league with but something he s doing battle with constantly. It s draining him and if I keep doing what I ve been doing it will drain me too . . . And finally Trask spoke. On top of which he continues to have his own agenda: this thing with Luigi Castellano. That too she said. Plus the fact that he s not aufait with the Branch and its systems but how could he be when he s only been with us a few weeks And he still doesn t know all of the facts with regard to his ... let s call it his condition. I mean the condition we know about that something of Harry Keogh is in him as opposed to this other thing. So it s that again Trask grunted. The things I didn t tell him yet about Harry. Yes she answered it s that again. With all due respect it s like you re trying to have your cake and eat it. And he s the one who s paying for it. You asked him to work for us to be a Necroscope without letting him know what a full blown Necroscope really is without explaining his awesome potential all the terrible things the unthinkable things he might be able to do. But far worse you haven t told him about the dangers about what happened to the original Necroscope. Trask thought about it and sighed. What if I tell him and he can t take it turns us down flat runs away from it That s a chance you have to take Liz answered if only for your own sake. And you can stop kidding yourself about your alleged lack of ethics which is just another word for conscience. Do you really think you re the only one who recognizes the truth when you see it Well you re not. Never con a con man said Trask wryly. Or a con woman Liz nodded. Or a telepath. I know an injured conscience when I bump into one. First Millie and now you he thought. Is there no privacy anymore So now I m the bad guy in all this No I just think you re too close to it she said. What with Zek and all . . . In that same moment she could have bitten her tongue off. But Trask ignored it and said: So instead of trying to cure Jake I should simply trust him right All the others seem to think so. You ve spoken to them I don t have to. But I can tell you one thing: during our think tank session there were more than one or two minds wondering why Jake wasn t there. And after a moment: Listen said Trask. From what you told me just a few minutes ago I could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps just perhaps Jake Cutter is carrying the seeds of a plague. He has the symptoms not in his body but in his mind. Something s in there certainly. And as you yourself have admitted you don t think it s something that Harry Keogh has dropped off for Jake s safe keeping. Now if Jake is just a man albeit a man with a Necroscope s Powers however undeveloped that s all to the good. We ll help him develop and use them yes to our benefit and to his own but mainly to the world s out if he should prove to be more or rather other than an ordinary man with extraordinary powers . . . And she saw the rest of it in his mind Jake Cutter cut down decapitated burning And she knew that Trask had wanted her to see it that he d deliberately cussed his concentration upon it. My God Her hand flew to her mouth what s the problem Trask asked her knowing full well what the prob 128 BRIAN LUMLtY lem was. That while it was easy for her to spy on him it was much harder to do it to the one she was falling in love with. That was part of it but it was also that the truth the terrible terrifying truth had suddenly been brought home to her with as much force as he could muster. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 69 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt But it s Jake we re talking about she cried. Trask nodded. Yes and it s the difference between Bruce Trennier or Jethro Manchester and his family and someone you love. But Liz I would far rather cure than kill. Which is why I ve been so cautious. If he if we are in danger I don t want to perhaps accelerate this thing by telling him what happened to Harry and two of his sons and what might be happening to him I want to watch hope and pray and wait for indisputable proof one way or the other. But But there is one other way he cut her off. I can do as you ask and tell him tell him the whole thing and see how it affects him. Then if he continues to fight it if he fights all the harder we ll know he s worth working on worth saving. But if he gives in submits . . . we ll know that too. And then it ll be a case of watching him all that much more closely. And you because of your relationship with him will have to be the one doing the bulk of the watching. Which in turn means that if or when the time comes you will be the one who has to turn him in to me because there is no other way. So then is it a deal Are you up to it She thought about it. You ll tell him the whole thing if I ll keep on spying on him Not spying on him Trask shook his head. Watching him. As we d watch over a feverish child s symptoms hoping they ll disappear or that he ll be strong enough to throw them off. And that s your best offer In my position he answered it s the only offer I can make. And believe me it s more than I d offer anyone else . . . At which moment there came an interruption. From the corridor the sudden hustle and bustle of hurried motion running footsteps and raised voices. Millie had arrived and was out there waiting to speak to Trask as he d required of her. But so had David Chung arrived and Trask had rarely heard him sounding so agitated: Excuse me Millie but I ve got to see him now. And I do mean now But. . . what is it said Millie anxious as she appeared momentarily in the open doorway squeezing herself to one side flattening to the wall as Chung hurried by without pause. And almost skidding to a halt before Trask s desk barely glancing at Liz the Chinaman blurted: Ben it s Manolis. He was on a case got hurt can t say how bad. But hes hospitalized. Hurt Trask started to his feet his mouth falling open. Manolis in hospital Where LJ E r 1 L E K That s just it Chung answered grimly. He s in Kavala Greece on the Mediterranean coast. And during his few moments of consciousness before they had to sedate him he was asking to speak to you He wouldn t say what it was about but by all acounts he did say that it was desperately important and that you would understand. So do you want to take a guess at it A wild stab in the dark Trask closed his mouth shook his head and said Nothing wild about it But I do want you to get everyone to drop everything and make sure they re all in the Ops Room in the next ten minutes or better still make that five. And turning to Liz: That includes you and Jake Cutter too and no arguments. Better go find him and do it now. Or she said. Or I ll take it you ve turned me down. In which case you know where the elevator is situated. But as she turned away and headed for the door he called after her Well Well she looked back. I m going to find him And Trask breathed a silent sigh of relief. His last for a long time to come . . . Utt ILtKb 8 JAKE S AGENDA Liz didn t find Jake Cutter and when Trask was through bringing everyone up to date and issuing face to face instructions he only had to look at her expression to know the truth. Then: What he said disgustedly. He s out on the town again I don t believe it And this is the man you were pleading for But if this isn t deliberate aggravation I don t know what is Liz could only shake her head despondently. He was in his room first thing this morning 1 could hear him moving about in there. That s all I know about it. But it s like I told you: he was feeling totally out of place here. We hadn t given him anything to do and you hadn t told him everything he should know. I mean it isn t as if he s the kind who can just wander about the place looking dumb file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 70 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt No Trask answered but he can certainly act it As for not putting him in the picture: I was about to do so this morning right now. But now he s gone missing again and anyway I no longer have the time. David Chung lan Goodly and Millie Cleary had hung back the rest of the staff were hurriedly vacating the Ops Room on their way to prepare for the specific roles they d been handed: packing their bags for what would amount to an operational mass exodus or rearranging their schedules as members of the skeletal rear party whichever. Now Chung stepped forward and said Look I wouldn t normally go rummaging around in someone s private belongings without his permission but since this is something of an emergency . . . well there s bound to be some personal stuff in Jake s room that I can use to locate him. We only need to change his door s access code to get me in there and No need for that said Liz. I can get in. As far as the security codes go his room and my place the old annex at the rear are still one room and the optical scanner will accept me. Say no more the locator said. The eyes have it And however nervously he grinned at his own wit for a moment then sobered and said: So what are we waiting for Let s go. Wait said Trask. And to Chung: I also want you to sort out the travel arrangements. So when you ve sent someone out to find Jake and bring him in then get on to our friends at Heathrow and Gatwick. I know it s short notice but I want us to be out of here ASAP today or tonight if at all possible. At the very least I want the advance parties underway. Okay so do whatever s necessary. As for myself: I ll be in my office speaking to the Man Upstairs finding out what kind of help if any we can expect from the Greek authorities. Report to me there. Then as Liz and the locator hurried away Trask turned to the precog lan Goodly. Now what Do you have problems too I don t think so Goodly answered. But you have me down with Lardis going to see Vladi Ferengi. Can I ask why Trask nodded. We ll be dealing with powerful mentalists or with one such for sure Nephran Malinari. Remember just as soon as we found Bruce Trennier Malinari knew we were warm and getting warmer. He knew that we were coming for him and he was ready for us. So this time we re not going to be sending up any signal flares I won t upset things by having too many wild talents appear in any one place at any one time cluttering up the psychic aether so to speak. If psychic talents have signatures then by now he knows ours only too well. So we ll have to build up our presence gradually and yet as quickly as possible you understand without having us all arrive on the scene en masse. That s why we need to get the advance teams away posthaste and you and Lardis form one such team. Oh and you can speak to Liz too. Take her with you. She ll know it if Vladi strays from the truth. I had intended to team her up with Jake but now . . . I m not taking him. Not even if we find him. Jake s what used to be called a loose cannon and I can t risk him going off like that and blowing us all to hell. I see Goodly nodded. So the main reason you re splitting us up is simply as a wise precaution. Again Trask s nod. But in any case I ll have you close to hand just across the border in Hungary: maybe an hour s flight time And as soon as you and Lardis are through talking to this old Gypsy this Vladi Ferengi then you can Join up with me and David somewhere in Greece. I ll keep HQ up to date on our location at all times. That s good enough said Goodly. Good said Trask. And meanwhile how s the future looking Secretive said the other. All I see is movement lots of it. Oh said Trask. But that s not the future that s right now And: Will you be okay with Lardis He looked around but couldn t see the Old Lidesci. e is he anyway Ii2 BRIAN LUMLtlf He went off to get his things together the precog answered. Also to tell Lissa what s going on I imagine. He looked a bit apprehensive not about the job but about Lissa I can see her giving him all sorts of hell going off to fight vampires again hahi And Goodly smiled a rare wry smile. As for working with him: I know we ll get on fine. I haven t forgotten what we owe him. That time in Sunside we were the strangers in a strange land then . . . Look after him then Trask said. You re joking said the other. With that machete of his he ll be the one looking after me And as Goodly went off finally it was Millie s turn. I m staying back again she said flatly. She didn t say it accusingly but Trask knew she was file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 71 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt accusing him anyway. Walk with me he said. And on the way along the corridor to his office: Millie you re not a field operative it isn t your scene. And anyway you re more importantly placed back here than in the thick of it somewhere . . . somewhere out there. And he waved a hand indicating nowhere special but everywhere dangerous. Important to you in my work you mean she said. A statement not a question. And again Trask was quick to catch on. Important in every way he answered. And quite indispensable. Look it s as I ve just explained to lan: where Malinari is concerned we re dealing with a mentalist who can get into our minds and more especially your mind as easily as that. He snapped his fingers. And if you don t believe me you should speak to Liz. You re a telepath Millie and vulnerable. It s simple as that. Yes she answered. I m a very experienced telepath however untried in the field and my shields are a lot better than Liz Merrick s. But Liz is going and I m staying and that s not fair. Don t you think it s time we put this kid sister thing to rest I deserve the chance to get out there and prove myself. Oh And will you also chance getting yourself killed or worse than killed into the bargain A fate worse than death They were at his office door. Once upon a time there was no such thing Trask answered. Not really except to the Victorians and such hypocrites that they were. But now there is. He almost added You really don t know what it would do to me if any harm should come to you but somehow managed to hold it in. Maybe she heard it anyway for now she said What about me if something should happen to you And after a while he said Some people certainly know how to pick their times don t they First Jake Cutter and through Jake Liz and now you. But we don t have time for this Millie. So please try to understand and don t give me any more problems than I ve got right now. As he entered his office she paused held back and turned away. And over her shoulder: Ben don t forget to kiss me goodbye before you leave. It might be your last chance . . . Trask clenched both fists put them on top of his desk and leaned on them. He opened his mouth to call Millie back . . . and didn t. Damn it all to hell he couldn t Because she had to be safer here. But what if she wasn t here when he got back This time she really had heard him and she d probably felt his pain too. And from the corridor Oh don t worry Ben. I shall be here she called out softly. I suppose so anyway. Followed by the rapid tap tap tap of her footsteps quickly receding . . . Trask had been right and there wasn t going to be any help from the Greek authorities. Greece was still having territorial disputes with an increasingly warlike neighbour Turkey and a lot of trouble was brewing with illegal immigrants flooding in from famine stricken Albania. The mainland was full of unrest which put the ball well and truly in Trask s court. This time unlike the Australian job E Branch would be on its own. Trask was jotting down a few notes when David Chung reported as ordered to his office. And once again the locator was excited. It s Jake he said. I found him easily enough but you won t like where I found him. And we won t be bringing him in. Tell me the worst said Trask. He s in Marseilles France said the other. And now for just a moment Trask was excited too. Marseilles He must have used the Mobius Continuum It s the only answer Chung agreed. But Trask s excitement quickly ebbed and he was scowling. He lied to us about losing it. And he s using it to serve his own ends when he should be helping us. His own agenda Chung nodded. Trask stood up came from behind his desk and began pacing the floor. Do you realize what we lose if we lose Jake On the one hand a load of trouble the locator answered. And on the other we could lose the war. The fact is that we and not just us but the world we all need a Necroscope. And if Jake hadn t been there to pull us out of the fire in Australia . . . He let it trail off and shrugged. Er do you think maybe we could have handled it better Meaning I could have handled it better said Trask. You all seem to think so. You Liz Merrick and lan Goodly oh and plenty of others I m sure. Maybe I m too autocratic. The Branch has to have a boss Chung answered. You have this talent of yours and what could be more important than the truth So obviously you re the right man for the job. And it s also obvious that you see something in Jake Cutter some kind of problem that the rest of us haven t file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 72 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt picked up on. Then why don t I know what it is Trask quit his pacing threw up his hands. And before Chung could answer: Never mind. Let it go for now. What s done is done. We ll just have to wait and see how it works out. So now tell roe about those travel arrangements. The choice is yours said Chung. We can fly into Athens tonight if you like a commercial flight out of Heathrow. Or we can charter a small plane fly direct to Kavala. The only problem there is that Kavala s mainly a military airport we could have a problem getting permission to land. Or we can pick up a couple of cheap tickets on a late season package holiday flight leaving at eight thirty tomorrow morning. That one goes to Kavala gets in midday. The airport takes just a handful of tourist flights for the sake of the country s economy. So what s wrong with Athens tonight Trask queried. Ah I forgot to mention the locator answered. There s no connecting flight till midday tomorrow. And Athens and Kavala are quite some distance apart. Maybe it s as well said Trask. In fact it might serve our purpose very well to take one of these these what package holidays He frowned and shook his head. Hard to remember when I last had a real holiday. It was with Zek I think when we went out to sell her place on Zante . . . He stirred himself gave himself a shake. Anyway how come there are spare seats Haven t I been given to understand that these flights are like sardine cans In any normal year they would be the other told him. Oh yes Trask nodded. I was forgetting. El Nino. That s right Chung said. People are running away from the sun Also there are a couple of plague spots in the Greek islands mainly Cyprus Crete and Rhodes. These things and various political problems all the unrest and what have you it puts people off. I suppose it would But plague That new strain of bubonic out of China I thought we had that licked We have the locator agreed. The richer countries anyway. But the not so rich are having trouble paying for the medicine. We re helping out but it takes time the usual bureaucracy. Anyway that really shouldn t concern us those shots we got in Australia have given us all the immunity we can use. I m still sore from mine Okay Trask told him. Get us tickets for tomorrow. Eight thirty out of Gatwick Chung answered. But tell me what do you mean it will serve our purpose well And Trask said As tourists common or garden holiday makers we ll be about as unobtrusive as we can get. You see I m trying to play this by their rules Wamphyri rules I mean. Or the rules they used to play by anyway. Anonymity is synonymous with longevity. Isn t that how it goes That s how it goes said Chung. So we ll keep it anonymous said Trask. At least until it gets close up and personal. Okay so what about the rest of the travel arrangements lan Liz and Lardis are all fixed up for tomorrow. They fly direct to Szeged. By noon tomorrow or maybe a little later they ll be talking to Valdi Ferengi and we ll be with Manolis. No trouble with Liz Chung shook his head. 1 told her where Jake is. She seems resigned to it the fact that he s always going to have these problems. At least until Until he deals with them I know said Trask. So on the off chance that he can deal with them without getting himself killed that is maybe it s all for the best. . . And he began pacing the floor again. What is it boss said Chung concernedly. I mean apart from all this Apart from all this Nothing. Not that I can t put right anyway. Which I will as soon as you re out of here. And as Chung headed for the door: David will you take it from here make sure things run smoothly for a couple of hours I need a little time to sort something out. No problem said Chung closing the door behind him . . . When Trask was alone he got straight on the telephone to Millie Cleary. Millie about that goodbye kiss you mentioned And he took a deep breath and held it a couple of seconds before blurting out the rest of it. What would you say to taking it a step or two farther than that Come again She sounded more than a little surprised. I have the evening off said Trask. How about you My time s my own remember she answered. I don t have any bags to pack. Her words were loaded as usual. And mine are always packed he told her. So I was sort of thinking maybe we can find a quiet file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 73 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt bar with a big overhead fan somewhere. Share a couple of long cool drinks . . . And dinner later on you Following which it ll be just about time for bed Trask said and again held his breath. For after all it was possible he d read this all wrong. But he hadn t read it wrong. And while be wasn t the telepath still he knew she was smiling one of those smiles of hers when she asked him Your place or mine The previous night after Liz had left Jake in his room: He had tried reading a handful of E Branch files that Trask had given him but wasn t able to concentrate his mind kept returning to the nightmare that Liz had interrupted. . . God bless her Or it would return if only he could remember what the damn thing had been about. A fight He d definitely been fighting something and something monstrous at that. But what He remembered talking to Korath remembered the vampire s word games something of his arguments and that they hadn t reached any nrm decision on how to handle their mutual agendas mutual in that they both Planned murders if murder was the right word for it and not simply the extermination of vermin but apart from that nothing. Jake suspected that he had fallen even more deeply asleep perhaps in the mjddle of their deadspeak conversation and that the dead vampire had then 137 left him to his dreams. Or rather to his nightmare. Well and weren t nightmares commonplace to Jake Cutter They certainly were and especially since his introduction to E Branch. But usually he recognized their sources knew where they d sprung from and what they were about and was able to turn his back on them until the next time. This one however was different and continued to bother him probably because he couldn t remember its details. No not a one of them except perhaps the fear. For after all it wasn t too often he d wake up in a cold sweat fighting for his life or for more than just his life for control of his life maybe But it wasn t too hard to guess where that notion had sprung from against something he couldn t recall. Also there had been his seeming rejection of Liz. But the last thing he d wanted to do was reject Liz There he d admitted it he was attracted to her. Hell no he was a whole hell of a lot attracted to her but wasn t about to make love to her while there was even the slightest chance that Korath was still lurking around in there or should that be in here or that he might return. Shit Jake s mind had become a place now It wasn t just his any longer but some kind of communal meeting place for the dead Some of them anyway. Harry Keogh Zek Foener Korath and all those other whisperers in darkness who as yet wouldn t commit themselves to conversing with him because for some unspecified reason they feared him but whose voices nevertheless went echoing through the caverns of his mind . . . . . . Say what They the teeming dead were afraid of fcim So what kind of infernal monster had Jake become that he instilled fear in the incorporeal minds of the Great Majority And who in hell would want to be a Necroscope anyway Thus his mind was a jumble of questions and kaleidoscopic images all of them wheeling against a vast backdrop of mysterious numbers and the esoteric symbols of the Mobius Continuum. And that was the biggest distraction of all: the fact that while the numbers were all there just waiting to be activated he still didn t know how to do it he couldn t as yet send them scrolling down the screen of his mind to the point of numerical critical mass where they would form a Mobius door. In this world only Korath could do that and the dead vampire was something Jake could well do without. . . couldn t he Half a dozen times and more he reached over to his bedside table picked up one of Trask s files then sat propped against his heaped pillows with the file unopened trying to bring his turbulent thoughts to order. But no he was too worn down too weary made weary by the constant fear of Korath s unwarranted and unwanted presence and when he was present by the vampire s interminable nagging to be able to single out and concentrate on any one facet of his predicament. So that by the time the files on his bed formed an untidy patchwork quilt the twisted twirling loop of images in Jake s mind had become as repetitive as monotonously hypnotic as the Mobius strip itself... so much so that as he NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS slipped down into his bed and into sleep his shields also went down collapsing around him into so much mental confetti. By then too in the once annex at the rear of Jake s room Liz Merrick herself physically and file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 74 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt emotionally depleted was already asleep and telepath ically remote from him. And this was just as well for she was about to miss another of Jake s nightmares one taken from life this time crystal clear in his perceptions and scarcely designed to endear him to her. The source of this one however wouldn t be nearly so difficult to trace. For in it Jake was simply reviewing in detail an episode of his own recent past. And of course the source was his memory. And possibly his conscience too . . . Jake was back in that room again that torture chamber of muted lighting heavy drapes and an atmosphere that reeked of terror. The scene of a multiple violation of a by no means innocent but nonetheless helpless girl the Russian mob s drugs courier Natasha Slepak. The woman he d thought he was in love with. And of course in his dream he still was in love with her. Seven people in that room. Jake was one tied to a chair so positioned that he was obliged to watch indeed determined to watch so that he wouldn t forget and when his time came would know how to deal with his tormentors an eye for an eye and all that and Natasha not bound but completely naked and in any case helpless barely conscious under the influence of whatever drugs they d given her. Drugs that made her compliant while yet keeping her aware knowing what was happening to her but incapable of resistance. Which might be just as well for these people people : a dubious description that would probably relish a measure of resistance and they would definitely know how to deal with it. But no they hadn t wanted to do any real physical harm not at this point and not in this room because that was to come later. The ultimate harm yes to Jake and Natasha both. Jake and Natasha and five others in that room: the bastard who had orchestrated this thing Luigi Castellano and the four who played it out for him while he sat there in the shadows and watched. No he didn t. . . partake. But is the man who orders an execution any less responsible than the one who fastens the wrist and ankle straps or the one who fits the metallic dome to the shaven head or the one who throws the switch Castellano had ordered this and perhaps because he didn t take part in it perhaps because he sat there a hunched blot of a figure whose laughter was pitiless watching from behind a cone of white light that fell upon Natasha s nakedness witnessing what he had started and only he could stop but wouldn t Jake hated him all the more for it. Others did this man s dirty work and this was among his dirtiest. But while Castellano himself kept out of sight the others were far less retiring. One after another they went at Natasha while Jake barely conscious that he did it awash with shame disgust and horror studied each man in his 130 BK1AN LUMLhY turn memorizing and measuring him and his ... his preferences against a future reckoning. Oh there was little enough hope of any such future but given only half a chance . . . . . . The threat froze in Jake s mind as something new began to shape. There was one among the four who simply couldn t wait his turn but shuffled forward panting like a dog to where Natasha was being moved around like a human doll by another of her assailants a man who stood by the edge of the bed hugging her thighs grunting as he thrust himself into her with deliberate measured strokes. And having seen this before knowing what was coming Jake strained more yet uselessly at the thin nylon cords that bound him as firmly to his chair as his memory bound him to his nightmare. For the impatient one was a beast a veritable torpedo of a man whose preference was to defile his victims totally. Squat ugly and filmed with the sweat of eager anticipation his shoulders were broad his hands huge and heavy at the end of apish arms and his eyes small and piglike in a moonish face that was filled with unnatural lust. Yet for all his brutish appearance he affected the trappings of sophistication of civilization however coloured by his gangland background. He wore patent leather shoes a silk or possibly sharkskin suit and since he scarcely seemed to have any neck at all an open necked silken shirt. And in a hand like a hammer a cigarette holder and cigarette with smoke curling from its hot tip. Approaching Natasha whose body continued to jerk and flop from the thrusting of the one who grunted the apish man reached out his cigarette towards her face At which the dark shadow that was Castellano straightened up a little in its chair behind the lamp and said: Francesco no I can t let you mark her. The rumbling power of Castellano s voice like the purring of a big jungle cat . . . but ready in a moment to turn into a warning growl a menacing snarl. And Francesco at once withdrew his hand half turned his bullet head and said: Mark her Luigi Me No way Then he looked Jake straight in the eyes and smiled like a shark. I was only file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 75 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt offering the little lady a smoke that s all. A cool sweet drag to ease that burning throat. Can t you see how she gulps and gasps And now he reversed the cigarette holder to place its tip between Natasha s loose lips. Isn t that right little lady Isn t that exactly what you d like A sweet drag from Frankie s cigarette The one between Natasha s legs was finished. He withdrew backing out of Jake s line of sight into the shadows and Jake heard him zip his fly. Natasha flopped where he d left her her legs bent at the knees dangling over the edge of the bed. What little of spirit or strength she had left she somehow concentrated now into a fierce jerk of her head spitting out the cigarette holder and cigarette to send them twirling from the cone of light into the shadows with the glowing tip spiralling like a maddened firefly. And Francesco hoisting her legs onto the bed drawing her upper body to the edge and flopping his semitumescent member in her face saying Well if you won t smoke that let s see how you do with this And Jake watching it all choking on his rage and truth to tell his fear for it was quite obvious by now that neither he nor Natasha were going to walk away from this as the brutal Frankie did his thing. Even then it wasn t over not until he d finished urinating on her when Castellano had to remind him: I think that s enough Francesco. And remember you are the one who will have to clean her up. When they find Natasha I want her to be full of river water. Not piss and definitely not shit Our shit designer shit dream crystals yes of course. But the human variety no. Then it was over But Jake s real nightmare was only just beginning: the realization of what his experience that night had done to him how it had turned him into a killer in his own right. . . Payback time the future he had scarcely dared hope for which now was here. It was a rainy night in Turin and Jake had followed his quarry his third victim to be the torpedo Francesco Reggio himself to a hotel on the Corso Alessandria. In the interim Jake had changed. Now as a bearded limping older man in a broad brimmed hat and shabby full length raincoat his disguise was immaculate. Only his eyes had stayed the same: cold deep and as pitiless as his hatred which was why he kept them hidden under the drooping brim of his hat behind the tinted lenses of an invalid s glasses. Even if Francesco Frankie Reggio had noticed him which he probably had since on several occasions Jake had found himself irresistibly murderously drawn to him during the tortuous train journey along the Mediterranean coast route from Marseilles to Savona then inland to Turin still he would never have recognized him as the man he and Castellano s other thug confidants had drugged and dumped in a swollen river under the Alps in Provence. But conversely Jake didn t ever intend to forget Frankie. Not until there was nothing left of him to forget anyway . . . Four hours earlier Frankie Reggio had taken a taxi from Turin s main rail station and booked into his hotel. The Hotel Novara was an old but decent three star place a leap up market from the no star flophouse which Jake had booked into because it stood directly opposite the Novara across a busy road about half a mile from the city centre. The dilapidated looks of the flop hadn t much bothered him however close proximity to the target was of far greater concern than a couple of cockroaches in the cupboards. And in any case he hadn t intended to spend too much time there. Jake had been in a hurry. Wanting to get settled into his room before Frankie reached his he had taken the first room he was shown on the second floor and as soon as he was alone he d opened his suitcase and taken out the briefcase that housed the components of his long barrelled 7.62 sniper s rifle. Assembly could wait he had only been interested in the telescope. And he had been lucky but it wasn t all luck. For Jake had tailed Frankie several times before when the sadistic torpedo was running errands for Castel DK1A1NI LUIVlLtr lano. On those occasions he d kept his distance while watching and learning and he knew that Frankie usually took rooms in front and two floors up. Likewise tonight. On the other side of the road when the lights had come on in a second floor room sure enough it had been Frankie Reggio. Then Jake had put his own lights out to sit in the dark watching the thug through a chink in his room s drab curtains. But while his eyes and his hatred were drawn constantly to Frankie still Jake hadn t forgotten his purpose here. Undying hatred had brought him here yes but revenge was his business and attention to detail was all important. An eye for an eye. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 76 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Natasha s eyes had been put out forever not literally no but the light in them certainly. And the life behind them had been extinguished entirely The Novara s road facing rooms had railed balconies accessible via large walk through patio styled windows. The distance between balconies was some four feet which was important to the plan that had been hatching in Jake s mind. He d always known what he wanted to do but the bow of it had been a problem. Now the how was working itself out too. As for the Novara s rooms: Sweeping Frankie s room with his crosshaired telescope Jake had seen all he needed to see before the thug looked out for a moment or two on the street then closed his curtains to shut both the night and Jake out. That was okay Jake had seen enough and liked what he d seen it suited his purpose to perfection. Even better he could still see the spot where the room s main lighting effect a pair of typically Italian latter day art nouveau globes in the shape of huge lotus buds sprouting from a cluster of gold metal leaves continued to glow through the curtains from its location on the wall opposite the large bed directly over a small desk and telephone. And as Frankie s shadow had moved around behind his drawn curtains Jake had quickly assembled his rifle and attached the sniperscope . . . then waited. And after a few minutes the lights in the room opposite had gone out. Jake could have shot Frankie dead in his room of course or he could have put a bullet through his heart as he came out of the hotel. It would have been so easy to line him up in his sights and squeeze the trigger . . . much too easy. For that way the torpedo wouldn t have felt it or only for a split second. And he definitely wouldn t have known or cared who had done it to him or why. But as with those other two bastards who Jake had taken out so with Frankie: Jake wanted him to know Wherefore it would have to be done the hard way. Jake had watched his target leave the hotel and get into a taxi and as the car had headed downtown on the noisy near gridlocked night road he d picked up his telephone and called the Novara. His Italian wasn t good by any means but at least he could make himself understood. Can I speak to Mr. Reggio he said. He called me just a few minutes ago from room er I think it s room two one er While it was a decent looking place the Novara wasn t large as hotels go there couldn t be more than two dozen rooms to each floor. Room two one seven sir yes. The switchboard operator had fallen for it. Just a moment sir and I ll connect you. But of course Mr. Reggio hadn t been available ... so would Jake care to leave a recorded message No he wouldn t. Yes he would. He d be leaving a message certainly but not on any answering machine. Fifteen minutes later after Jake had packed his briefcase with items from his suitcase a pair of heavy two litre glass carboys which he had wrapped carefully in hotel towels and after he d changed into a dark business suit brushed his hair and dispensed with his limp he d attracted little or no attention as he crossed the Novara s lobby to the desk. And glancing at the hotel s layout plan it had taken him just a few nervous minutes to register. He d required a room on the second floor. Two one five if it was vacant It was a room that overlooked the road correct Yes he had stayed here before some years ago he d enjoyed his stay and liked the room very much thanks. Jake had been relying on his luck but it was holding. The desk clerk hadn t been doubling on switchboard duties he wasn t the person Jake had spoken to on the telephone and so didn t recognize his voice. And yes two one five was vacant. Ten minutes later Jake had been inside his room following which everything else fell easily into place. Putting out the lights in two one five Jake had gone out onto the balcony climbed over the rail and crossed to Frankie Reggie s side. His glass cutter hadn t been required the glass door slid open almost at a touch. Frankie didn t bother himself too much with security no one in his right mind would dream of crossing him and anyway he d left nothing in the room that was worth the trouble. He hadn t of course reckoned with Jake Cutter or with revenge or even with the devious mind of his own boss Luigi Castellano. For of course neither Frankie nor Jake had known at the time that the torpedo was simply bait the lure in the trap that Castellano had set for Jake. Anyway it was very possible that Jake wasn t in his right mind that night and that even if he had known it wouldn t have deterred him. And to Jake s way of thinking what he had left in room two one seven just across the road the surprise package be had left for Frankie and the grim message it would serve to convey to his boss well that had been worth all the trouble in the file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 77 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt world . . . All of which had been some three hours ago. Since when Jake had sat at his window in the flop patiently waiting for Frankie to return but not for much longer. For Jake s nightmare was rapidly gaining pace now its mainly monochrome scenes shifting on the screen of his mind just as fast as he could follow them. The traffic on the road outside was down to a trickle. Not surprising since it was 1:30 A.M. But the horns were blaring as loudly as ever. For Italian drivers there was only ever one way to drive A taxi came up the rain slick road. Pulling into the kerb it stopped outside the Novara and the wedge shaped Frankie got out. Turning up his collar against the drizzle and putting his hands over his head he made for the dry area under the hotel s entrance canopy paused a moment to adjust his collar vanished within . . . Cold now but burning inside Jake lightly oiled cleaned and fed two oddly dissimilar bullets into his weapon s magazine. And easing the magazine into the rifle s housing he placed the completed assembly on a table where its long barrel pointed out of the open window and across the road . . . Frankie Reggio s lights came on in his room in the Novara. Or rather one of the large lotus buds lit up its glow clearly discernible even through the drawn curtains. An unmissable target. . . Jake had already set up his telephone to call the Novara s switchboard now he hit the instant redial and got the exchange. Room two one seven he told the operator. And as Frankie Reggio shrugged out of his coat his telephone began to buzz . . . Jake could picture Frankie grumbling about defective lightbulbs as he crossed the room to the phone . . . then ignored the phone went to the windows and opened the curtains. Now he was in full view. And now he went back for the phone . . . Si Like the grunt of a pig. Speak English Frankie said Jake. Eh English I know you can do it because I ve heard you once before Jake told him. Don t you remember That night at Luigi s place in Marseilles Me tied to that chair And the girl Natasha And you and your fuckint thug pals doing . . . doing what you did You said Frankie and Jake saw him give a sudden start straighten up and glance nervously jerkily all about his room looking everywhere except up. Me right said Jake. You remember my name Jake Cutter sure said Frankie a little easier. Luigi said it might be you who took out the others. He reached under his arm took an ugly little gun from its holster there. The others . . . were a message Jake said. I was letting Luigi Castellano know that it would soon be his turn. Well now I have another message for him. You can deliver it you ugly unnatural bastard Listen you fucking stupid British fucki Frankie started to curse and rant. And Jake was listening. But he was also cradling the telephone between his chin and right shoulder taking up his rifle aiming it and beginning to apply first pressure to the trigger. And then he cut in on Frankie s cursing to say. Hey thug Now you fucking listen. You remember when you pissed on her I felt every splash. I mean I really felt it: every splash burning on me like acid. Huh Frankie grunted grinned poisonously and promised: Well don t worry. On you it will be acid But: You first said Jake. And then he squeezed the trigger. It was in the lotus bulb light fixture almost one and a half litres of a colourless odourless acid. Jake had unscrewed one of the globes taken the light bulb out and three quarters filled the globe before screwing it back in again. The shot was silenced. Frankie heard a high pitched spitting sound like a cat s sneeze as the bullet punched a hole in his window. But from directly overhead a secondary splintering of glass was clearly audible in the frozen fraction of time before acid and sculptured shards rained down on him. Jake heard Frankie s yelp of shock astonishment then his first shrieks as he dropped the phone staggered away from the wall towards the bed. He was drenched his clothes were already beginning to smoke his flesh too. He capered danced started tearing his melting clothes off. But the telephone was melting too and Frankie s cries rapidly hissing into silence. Do it Jake muttered relishing the moment and yet horrified by it wanting to get it over and file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 78 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt done with. And Frankie did it. On his bedside table a pitcher of water. Except it wasn t water any longer but accelerant and Jake s second bullet was a tracer designed to flare on impact. Frankie tossed the accelerant over himself poured it over his head and shoulders. And Jake again squeezed the trigger. The tracer hit Frankie s window and cracked it sending a pencil jet of searing sulphurous fire leaping across the room . . . towards Frankie. And the room at once blossomed into a ball of blistering white fire. In a split second it was an inferno and at its heart the thug danced a while longer then crumpled down into himself as the windows shattered and flames billowed outwards . . . It was done. But Jake was done too. The Italian police caught him as he left the flop. They d been out in the street watching Frankie not Jake keeping covert guard on the thug as per Castellano s tip off. One of them had spotted the flash of Jake s tracer where it penetrated Frankie s window and then he had seen the blued steel glint of Jake s rifle protruding into the night. And that had been that. . . Though Jake s nightmares usually brought him shuddering awake on this occasion that wasn t the case. Familiar now with these recurrent reminders of his apses into inhumanity reconciled to the fact that they would probably continue until he tracked down and removed their cause or was himself removed he was becoming more and more inured to them. And in addition he was fatigued to the core. So this time he slept on ... Jake s fatigue more mental than physical also accounted for the fact that his shields were down as they had been for the duration of his nightmare. And with the more pressing problems of the real world temporarily forgotten held in abeyance while his dream self relived the horrific events of the recent past and while Jake s conscience tried in vain to accommodate them he had been completely unaware of his audience. But the dead vampire Korath had been with him throughout and he had witnessed everything. For having been driven out of Jake s mind by Liz Merrick at such a crucial juncture as he had been about to enter into it more surely and perhaps permanently or rather having left it of his own free will rather than let her discover his true nature Korath had been eager to return at his earliest opportunity. Thus he had been on hand to leech on Jake s troubled mind and see for himself the extent of the Necroscope s obsession: just how far he would go and indeed how far he had gone to exact a fitting revenge. So that now suspecting that Jake would react badly to any further intrusion while his nightmare was still fresh in mind not wanting to be associated with it in parallel as something to be avoided and detested Korath waited on the rim of Jake s subconsciousness and let him drift on awhile. But when after an hour or so Jake s mind had settled down when it wandered into more mundane dreams but dreams where the continuously evolving formulae of Mobius space time were always present like a word on the tip of his tongue or a solution on the perimeter of his mind but a word or solution that refused to come then Korath made his presence known: Time we talked again Necroscope. Jake tossed in his bed fighting for a moment against the intrusion of Ko rath s deadspeak thoughts but after a while he succumbed to the inevitable. After all he would have to speak to him eventually if only to gain access to the Mobius Continuum. But even so Jake s deadspeak sigh was bitter when he said What you again Of course it s me again said the other. We have a way to go and things to do. Our agendas remember I remember we were arguing word gaming whatever Jake answered. But after that... I remember very little. You were tired Korath told him. You slipped into a dream so vague that it took you from me. . .1 could no longer reason with you while your mind wandered so. And so I left you to it. Nor would I intrude upon you now for I see that you are still weary. But in a few short hours a new day will be dawning and time is of the essence. How far did we get Jake queried. Did we make any progress at all By the time we were done I suppose we were more or less in agreement Korath told him. Our agendas were made specific and as for mutual cooperation we agreed upon a time limit which is to say that when our enemies are no more we each go our separate ways Or you go yours while I... go file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 79 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:51 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt nowhere. As for what we have yet to decide: it s the juestion of who goes first. Who goes first Which agenda takes precedence. Mine of course said Jake. It must be mine because 1 won t be able to concentrate on anything else until Until you ve bad your revenge aye Korath finished it for him. And then continued: But now that I have witnessed the full range oj your passions in that respect I must agree that your agenda has a certain appeal. A definite. . . entertainment value While on the other hand I feel I really should inquire: what use to pursue this Castellano a mere man Jake if while you re thus engaged you lose your world to the Wamphyri Which is why I put it to you that my agenda is far and away the more important the more urgent the more valid of the two. But now Jake was suddenly wary. He had picked up on something that Korath had let slip. What s that You ve witnessed the full range of my passion . . . And before the vampire could erect shields of his own Jake saw what flashed across his incorporeal mind . . . and at once remembered his nightmare. Damn you Korath You were there you were spying on me Because you were disturbed in your sleep The other s lie was instinctive instantaneous. And because you were tormented by your dreams. There was this great anger in you and madness and even regret In all the turmoil I felt myself drawn back to you Jake by this link that exists between us forged from our need for each other. It was as if I heard you crying out calling to me and I answered your call. But when I got here If that were true you would have roused me up brought me out of it Jake cut him short. Instead you let it continue and you saw what I did to Frankie Reggio. . . . I am what I am Korath answered. I am the sum of all that I once was. And even though I am reduced by that same amount I remember how I was. And I know my strengths and my weaknesses. Is it so strange that I desired to know the strength of the one who shall be my... my partner My strong right hand in a great venture our mutual revenge against them that wronged us You were seeing how I measured up Jake was dubious. Is that what you re saying He shook his head. No I don t think so. I think you were simply spying on me. My first thought was to rouse you up Korath kept right on lying. But when I saw what you were about then I became caught up in it. Caught up You mean you enjoyed it It fascinated me. I was fascinated by ... a concept. What concept An eye for an eye said the other. Aye And he chuckled in his obscene fashion. Ah for when you spoke to Frankie and told him how every splash had burned you like acid why you were describing his own fate How splendidly ironic Then I was convinced of our invincibility: I knew you wouldn t shrink from whatever has to be done. And yet having said all that. . . As Korath paused Jake sensed an incorporeal frown a half formed shrug f indecision. Well he prompted him. I have only one small concern said the vampire. The fact that I sensed your regret. did not like what you had done. I should like it Jake answered. But it was inhuman As are the Wamphyri said Korath. And from what I ve seen in your mind as is this Castellano. So then why do you regret your actions Is it some kind of weakness in you No Jake denied it it s a strength. I regret what I ve done because it brings me down to their level and to yours. Hmm The other mused. You have a low opinion of me. And he pretended to ponder on that for a moment or so until in a little while: Still let s not argue any further. And as a show of good faith in order to breach this impasse I shall let you have your way. We ll go after Luigi Castellano first. Good said Jake. But understand I still won t have you in my mind. Not as a permanent fixture. Not permanent but merely Not any way said Jake. Nothing more than you have now. Which in any case is too much. Hahl said Korath. Is there no give and take with you Must you always win Winning isn t the point Jake shook his head. The point is not to lose. Losers end up in subterranean sumps with all of their flesh sloughed off And me I m very much alive. So we do things my way or not at all. In which case I might try to enlist Harry Keogh s aid in getting rid of you for good. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 80 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt At which Korath gave a snort of frustration threw up his hands and said Very well very well So what comes next How will we proceed Where and when do we begin When I call for you you come Jake answered. And when I say you re out you re out. Then when we ve dealt with Castellano we ll rejoin E Branch and go after the Wamphyri. So be it we are agreed Korath grunted. But in his dark and secret heart he knew that the sooner he guided or cajoled the headstrong Jake back towards E Branch the better. For when he d said that time was of the essence he had spoken no truer word and while the future seemed to offer more than a glimmer of hope more than just a slim chance that he would discover some form of continued existence perhaps even a superior form of physical life in Jake still he wanted to be sure it was a chance in a world ruled by men or by him and not by Vavara Szwart and Malinari. Definitely not by Malinari And we begin where How will you find this Castellano There are people I can speak to. People The dead said Jake. They re not really dead or they are but they re not finished. Their minds go on. As I myself am witness aye. So who would know more about Castellano than his victims Jake went on. Or if not his victims as such the ones who are dead because of him which is more or less the same thing. I think I ll start with them. But isn t that one of your problems said Korath. That the dead won t speak to yo Because of you yes Jake offered a deadspeak nod. But those who are bent on revenge as I am bent on revenge they ll speak to me. I m the only one who can give them what they want. And I know that there s at least one among them who . . . who . . . well I know that she will speak to me. You ll go to her first your dead lover Last Jake shook his head. When I m better acquainted with what I m doing the how of it and when I m able to I don t know find some courage I suppose. For after all I let her down . . . Then I ll speak to Natasha. But before that there are others. In life they were scum: vicious murderers and drug running rapist bastards. And in death What have they got now We can be sure the teeming dead won t have anything to do with them just as they won t have anything to do with you These people were Castellano s followers his gang but from what I saw of them they feared him. Now that they ve nothing left to lose I m their one last chance to wreak some kind of revenge their one opportunity to catch up. Paybacks are hell Korath. Oh indeed they are Korath answered. While hidden in his secret heart he promised: And believe me Jake Cutter yours shall be the worst of all possible hells you obstinate fooll But to Jake he only said: So then I m ready. And I know that I shall enjoy working with you. Let it begin. But: After I ve slept my fill Jake answered. I ve got a lot of sleep to catch up on Korath and again that s mainly down to you. So now be on your way. But be warned: if I sense even the slightest tremor in the deadspeak aether Very well. I understand. I shall wait on your call. And you ll hear it Jake told him. Because frankly I m wasting my time with Trask and E Branch. I don t think they ll ever understand what s eating at me they can t because they didn t experience it. I was so lost so helpless but now I m not. Now it s my turn. So don t worry about a thing I will be calling for you. Tomorrow just as soon as I m awake. But tomorrow is another day said Korath. Day as opposed to night awake as opposed to dreaming. Can you be sure you ll remember Jake when you re awake I think so Jake answered. You see I seem to be getting better at this. I mean all of this and all of the time. It was true and the vampire wasn t sure he liked it. Tomorrow then said Korath thoughtfully. So be it. And sleep well Jake Cutter. And Jake felt the creature depart slithering away into the darkness of his dreaming . . . VAVARA AND MALINARI In London Ben Trask and Millicent Cleary dined out. While in a taverna on Skala Astris s ocean facing promenade on Krassos: Malinari sipped from a delicate flute of chilled dark red Mavro Daphne and inquired of his companion How are you finding the Greek food my dear Vavara looked at him at his sardonic smile which came as close as possible to an entirely human file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 81 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt smile however dark and tried not to grimace. She knew that the question was Malinari s grotesque idea of a joke his attempt to lighten her mood and perhaps bring her out of herself which was the reason they had ventured out from the monastery tonight in the first place because of her depression and bad humour but she wasn t going to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that fact. For after all Malinari was the principal source of her displeasure. So instead of throwing back her head laughing and assuming the convivial mode he had doubtless hoped for Vavara repaid him in equally sardonic coin by glancing at him through half shuttered eyes and answering: When first I came here before the simpering pious fools in the monastery took me into their care as it were I found the local food edible well barely so but at least it stayed down. Since that was all there was however and not wanting to place myself in jeopardy by shall we say foraging plainly it had to suffice. My larder in Mazemanse was far better provisioned of course with wild honey wolf hearts Szgany livers and all manner of sweetmeats. And as for the fare on Sunside: even under duress from that creature Nathan and his friends the Lidescis that was infinitely superior Alas that Mazemanse was five hundred years ago and that more recently I allowed you to talk me into coming here. As for my current tastes: this Greek roughage isn t so very different from the Szgany fodder that we once knew I suppose. It sustains one for a while but scarcely satisfies a more . . . what sophisticated palate The one thing I will say for it: it is better far than the frozen desiccated flesh of dead thralls on which we subsisted during our Icelands ordeal. She paused glanced scathingly at the slender glass in his long fingered hand and went on: As for the red wine Ahi came a drunken cry from a table on the other side of the dining area where a handful of German tourists were throwing back their wines beers ouzo chasers and vinegary retsina as fast as they could pour it. Ah But this is the life nicbt wabm The speaker he spoke half in English for the benefit of the English tourists was bald fat and red in the face. But as he spoke stood up and raised his glass he toppled over backwards and went down with a crash much to the entertainment of his companions. But not to Vavara s who continued where she had been interrupted: As for the wine: I disagree with that idiot entirely. And now she smiled albeit sneeringly scornfully. Habl this is the life indeed Well for him perhaps but not for me. For no matter how deep or red the wine it simply isn t the life Ah no he agreed. For only the blood is the life And then twirling his glass so that it sparkled he added But it does help to throw a pleasant light on gloomy things. Maybe you should try a little Vavara pretended not to have heard him. They conversed in Szgany the language of their own world but they were Wamphyri and their linguistic skill was astonishing. They had been on Earth for only three years but understood every language they heard spoken in the taverna. Greek had been easiest of all for it was the closest to their own tongue. And as for Szgany: some of the tourists at nearby tables might well have overheard something of Vavara and Malinari s conversation and they may have wondered in passing about the tongue but the Greeks didn t give it a second thought. The world had become a very small place and catering to foreigners a way of life . . . It was late evening the sea was dark as Malinari s wine the bouzouki music from half a dozen different taverna sources mingled meaninglessly but Malinari at least didn t mind. Personally he said I find this place oddly pleasing strangely attractive. The music is soothing and the odours from roasting meats he lifted his head to sniff at the night air they remind me of Sunside hunts in the long ago. Yes I think I like this island. Well I don t said Vavara and at once returned her gaze to the sea and watched the languid lights of a string of fishing vessels bobbing in the near distance as the boats returned to harbour. You don t care for it said Malinari and poured himself more wine from a bottle in a bucket of ice. Good Then when we set the boundaries I shall ca on you to remember what you ve said tonight. And perhaps I ll make Krassos my headquarters. What Vavara raised an astonished eyebrow and glanced at him again. u truly like this place You re not joking 15U BRIAN LUMLtY He shrugged. It s isolated and the thoughts of its handful of people are simple thoughts. Oh file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 82 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt they have their passions the same as all men but far removed from those of Earth s more sophisticated throngs. In my casino in the mountains of Australia I was surrounded by these so called sophisticates . They were vain greedy and overly ambitious to a man. Civilized on the outside yet seething within their massed thoughts were a tumult: always thrusting intruding seeking to gain the upper hand. You can have them all But when I am a Lord again which I surely will be commanding of my own vast territories my own peoples then let any thrall of mine think to advance himself beyond food in his belly a woman in his bed borders to patrol and beasts to tend and he shall go to the provisioning Vavara heard him out but her eyes were hooded thoughtful as they studied his expression his words. And so it begins she finally replied. Or so it will begin. Borders to patrol you said and beasts to tend. You speak of the provisioning: of your aerie of course or in this world your mountain range or your island or perhaps an entire continent Is that how it will be Malinari one hundred years or more from now Borders and . . . and beasts But surely you mean warrior creatures And as for provisions or the provisioning of which you spoke well that could only be for war obviously Again his shrug but now he spoke more guardedly. For this was after all Vavara s territory for the time being at least . In a hundred years . . . who can say how things will be Vavara we are Wamphyri And as for what I said of sophisticated men of their vices and passions well we have them all in spades It s what we are and we may not change it. Nor would I want to. Nor would you. But for now we re allies and we ll have enemies enough without that we fight each other. In spades She frowned. We have them in spades It s a term I learned in my casino in Xanadu. One of many things I learned as I watched men at the gaming tables losing their money to me. Ah but there s far more than that to be won from these people. Even their world entire. Their world entire she repeated him. And again there s that in your voice which reveals what s on your mind. He sipped at his wine and said Oh and are you a mentalist now Babl Vavara answered curling her lip a little. No for I shall leave the voyeurism to you. And don t try to change the subject. You have already foreseen a time when we ll be at each other s throats again. I can t say I like the idea. And anyway you see too far ahead. Things could get difficult enough today tomorrow or next week without that we go conquering worlds or counting our shad calves tonight even as the first wolf howls to his brothers on high. That last was an old Szgany expression for to Vavara and Malinari having slept the centuries away in the Icelands the lost paradise of Sunside seemed as yesterday. Also Vavara was wont to cling to the old ways far more than her guest was. But as for the wolves of which she spoke: Malinari knew her meaning only too well. 151 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS Hardly the first wolf he said with a scowl. And by no means the last. Yes I had problems in Xanadu. Even a disaster but I was fortunate and saw it coming. What s more I think we can be sure it will come here too. After all you haven t done your best to stave it off. That Gypsy girl you told me about that was a serious mistake. Nor have you helped Vavara snapped back. What of sweet Sara Sweet before you got to her perhaps said Malinari. Do not forget that I saw your handiwork. But at least her body was firm. Oh I would have had her aye. Despite her disfigurements I would have had her blood and body both for my sustenance and pleasure. But she fought me like a mad creature such furious strength It was her vampire waking up in her she was ascending So don t blame me Vavara. Indeed you might perhaps thank me. For if Sara hadn t died that night what then Ah but that could have been a real problem. And anyway it was you who gave her to me remember You hungered for blood after your long journey here she answered. I gave her to you for the blood not the sex I fail to see how any man could want sex not from Sara not after After what After you had . . . teased her in your special way Because she had been too pretty perhaps Malinari smiled his sardonic smile. But her buttocks were still very firm and her legs were long and shapely. And gazing into vacant eyes as opposed to eyes filled with dread . . . that might have made for a very pleasant change. Each to his own tastes eh And then you let her best you Vavara went on. And she threw herself down from that high window into the night ocean. Why for all I know you might have thrown her down yourself in a furious rage when she fought back So don t you try lecturing me on my mistakes Nephran Malinari file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 83 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Habl She tossed her head. But when she washed up on the strand like that Malinari pressed after I had told you that Sara was Wamphyri and had a leech Aye that too Vavara answered grudgingly but far less angrily. With Sara locked up in her cell all that time I had failed to notice her condition. Plainly I had let things go too far with her. Well and what of it The sea took care of that and I took care of the rest of it the ones who came to examine her. But yes you are right: we ve both made serious errors. As for whose mistakes were most damaging to our cause: at least I have corrected mine. But as for yours . . . She shook her head. They lost me my foothold in Australia true said Malinari along with a that I had bred there in accordance with our plan. A setback Vavara that s a and I can start again. Or perhaps you ve been so industrious on my behalf that I don t need to start again. Have you forgotten your promise to show me what you ve made here under the place called Palataki No I didn t forget she answered. And indeed I need to check that all s We up there. he let s stop all this quarrelling he said placatingly. We should finish up re and go. These people are getting far too boisterous and we can do without 152 RIAN LUMLEY involvement. The Germans are drunk and those Greek lads at that table over there: it s obvious that they find you fascinating. But there again what would Vavara be without her fascination eh Malinari was correct. Several members of the German party were well and truly intoxicated by this time they were staggering between tables determined to introduce themselves where they weren t wanted annoying the mainland Greek British and other holidaymakers alike. As for the young local Greek men he had mentioned: three of them sat at a dimly lit bar inwards of the taverna where they drank cheap undiluted ouzo from a tall bottle. Just a little while ago the bottle had been full now it was three quarters empty and their interest in Vavara had increased commensurate with what each of them had drunk. Now inspired by Malinari s comment Vavara deliberately turned in that direction smiled at the men and brushed back her shining black hair with both hands. This action not only revealed her pale bare arms as they rose from under her shawl but also lifted her seemingly perfect breasts. And the points of her apparently erect nipples stood out in sharp definition beneath the red silk blouse that she wore. Gypsyish and wanton and delighting in it for a single frozen moment she looked unbearably delicious. So much so that Malinari himself felt his mouth go dry. But unlike the youths he knew that it was only her allure. For chameleon Vavara could be all things to all men and women and liked to practice her art. But she hadn t mastered it yet not by any means and rarely presented the same facade twice. Malinari had known her for most of his life albeit that more than half of that life had been spent in stasis but even he couldn t have described her. Not the true colour of her eyes other than when she raged and they were uniformly red or the angle of her jaw or even the curve of her lips except to say they were always tempting. For it was all a sham a guise a hypnotic image that she projected to cover her true form. But while Vavara s physical appearance was a lie Malinari knew the truth of her mind very well indeed. For that was where bis talent came into play. And at times like this in close proximity Vavara s mind was such a cesspool that if it was a reflection of her true being then she was a monstrous wrinkled sagging hag And perhaps she was perhaps this was how she compensated for some other deficiency. For Malinari knew that she was lacking as a metamorph a shape shifter he had never once seen her take to the air except upon the back of a flyer. If Vavara had aged accordingly her sluggish flesh unable to keep pace with the years then mass hypnotism would be a perfect foil against the ravages of time. And of course the Wamphyri were ever vain not least their females. His thoughts returned to earth and he looked for the proprietor to call him over and pay the bill. A bottle of wine and two bloody chunks of red meat which had scarcely been touched were the total of their meal. The lo ariasnto should not be more than a few thousand drachmas. I As for the drunken members of the German party: they were arguing now over a spilled table that one of them had collided with and an English tourist was complaining bitterly over the retsina stains on his white jacket. Not only file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 84 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt the mood but also the music had changed. Instead of the melodious bouzoukis the air was suddenly raucous with heavy metal and the nasal vocals of some neutered rock group. Feeling the first lightning flash stab of a headache coming on Malinari winced and put aside his wine. He could sense curious thoughts aimed in his direction or far more likely in Vavara s but ignored them and withdrew into himself a little so avoiding painful contact. The young Greek men who had been so obviously enamoured of Vavara were already leaving. Starting up their motorcycles and swinging their slim backsides into the saddles they roared off along the seafront three abreast in a cloud of dust with their studded leather jackets gleaming in the night. As they went one of them looked back lifted his arm and waved a farewell or a salute at Vavara. And she responded by smiling and inclining her head. You ought not to play up to them Malinari told her as he paid the bill. They re young and they ve had too much to drink. To such as them a nod is as good as a wink. Oh let it be she answered carelessly. It amuses me to set them drooling to know that they re wondering about me and fantasizing in their dirty little minds. Oh Can we afford to have them wondering about you do you think he asked her as they left the taverna stepped into the night and walked along the Skala Astris promenade between the open fronted tavernas and the sea wall among a last handful of late season tourists making their way back to their accommodations. What and you the mistress the er mother superior of a monastery But they don t know that she laughed deep in her throat. This is the first time that I ve been out on a night like this. And on those rare occasions when I m seen in the evening up at the monastery then of course I affect the drab trappings of my order which are designed to hide one s person away from prying eyes. I find it very easy to emit an aura of holiness ... or of unholiness. So don t concern yourself those panting Greek pups only saw what I wanted them to see. Don t we all said Malinari. Skala Astris was little more than a strip of half a dozen flimsy hotels backing the tavernas which themselves backed the sea wall that sprawled a quarter mile to the west before giving way to the beach. Beyond the wall chunks of white marble stuck up from the deep ocean huge blocks of the stuff each weighing many tons. Other than tourism the main industry of Krassos lay in exporting Quality marble its by product faulty or inferior rubble from the quarries was Put to use in landfill building and the substructure of jetties and quays. out in the long ago before tourism as it was today there had been other ustries. The Germans had been here for a long time and not only as tourists. On top of a steep dark hill maybe a half mile to the east remote by Krassos standards from any other village or building the structure that local Greeks had named Palataki rose up like a gaunt out of place and certainly out of time very Greek gothic mansion. Its name meant little palace and some years before the Second World War a German firm had built it there as the headquarters and offices of an exploratory mining concern. For as well as small deposits of gold and silver minerals had been discovered on Krassos that were important to Germany s future war effort. And the island s artisans without knowing exactly why the Germans were here or why they d bought the hill and the lands around but in need of the work as always and so not bothering to ask too many questions had set to with German plans and built Palataki. Then when the work on the literally palatial building was finished rough labour had been easy to find among the island s poorer classes who had been pleased to accept work in the mine tunnels that would soon burrow through the loose soil and rocks of a wooded spur and promontory between Palataki and the Aegean. Spillage from the shafts had gone down into the sea via a bight east of the promontory where dark red flinty mounds were still visible in a region of the coastline that had been irreparably damaged. But the mining operation had failed the minerals had been low grade and the work had ceased. And as war came the Germans had moved out retaining ownership of Palataki and its grounds mining rights in the promontory and nothing else. Then for sixty years the place had stood empty gradually falling into ruins and because of its gloomy gothic aspect it had gained something of a bad reputation among the local communities. All of which served Vavara s purposes very well indeed. Explaining these things to Malinari as they strolled along the promenade which was quiet now as taverna lights dimmed one by one Vavara said There you have it. Then she pointed east and file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 85 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt said: And there it stands Palataki I purchased it from its German owners with the money you sent from your casino. And do you know it would make something of a grand aerie in itself if I were not satisfied with my fortress monastery. But while a monastery makes a very fine manse Palataki Has other uses yes Malinari finished it for her his night seeing eyes taking in what they could of the near distant silhouette: its four storeys rising up from the hill with high gables towerlike cupolas and great windows. I find it truly appealing and very impressive he said. Probably much more so close up. But you have to admit it s in conflict with the rest of this island. I fail to see what the Germans wanted with such a place or perhaps not. Do you know anything of this world s history Not a lot Vavara answered. But then knowing so little of our own history before our time why should I concern myself with theirs To know your foe is to be able to anticipate him Malinari answered. And knowing his history is part of the strategy. I think that if the war had gone in their favour these Germans would have come back and remained here and Palataki would have been far more than a block of offices for some mining operation. Far more likely it would have been a bastion of the Third Reich in this region their headquarters in these islands. Looking at it at its gaunt and grandiose style I can see everything that der Fuhrer was or wanted to be. With his sigils of power his great black swastikas on fields of blood hanging from those windows Palataki would be perfect He was something of a man you know this Hitler. He had his good points I suppose Vavara shrugged. His good points Malinari smiled grimly. If he had been Wamphyri . . . ah but then there would be no room for us eh They had reached the harbour. Most of the boats were in now and tied up and the dark water lapped sullenly gurgling among the berths and moorings. Back along the sea wall no one was to be seen and the lights in a huddle of houses behind the hotels and tavernas the original old fishing village of Skala Astris were out. This late in the season with only a few tourists to cater for the night life was wont to die an abrupt death . . . Vavara had left her limo in the care of her driver a senior sister about a quarter mile out of the village in a partly concealed lay by. Since a good many local Greeks knew that the vehicle belonged to the monastery she deemed it prudent not to be seen getting into or out of it in any guise other than that of a nun and especially not in the company of Malinari. But now as they made to walk inland toward the main coast road there came a diversion: the glare of headlight beams and the roar of revving motorcycle engines. Oh dear sighed Malinari drily. Didn t I warn you not to play up to them The island s bad boys are back. It was of course the three young men from the taverna. They seem full of high spirits Vavara played their game clapping her hands as the three leaned back in their saddles to perform wheelies in the middle of the harbour concourse. High spirits said Malinari. If you re speaking of ouzo then I have to agree But the tall one with the long black hair the one who waved at you his thoughts are dark indeed. Can you read them she said as the three bikers skidded to a halt got ff their machines and lifted them up onto their stands. I don t want to said Malinari. My head is still aching from their racket out he fancies himself that one. And that s not all he fancies. Hallo the man in question grunted as he walked casually towards the Pa r. With a cursory glance at Malinari he came to a halt facing Vavara. Hallo She smilingly greeted him until her smile turned into a sneer. And eri: Hallo and goodbye she said. Goodnight. Goodbye Goodnight He answered her back in the English that she had D K I A IN employed cocked his head a little on one side and smiled his version of a worldy smile. But is not late. I think maybe I walking with you. I want . talking with you. Walking and talking said Malinari stifling a yawn. Is that what you want Is that all Very well then so now hear me talking. Go away. Go now at once while you can still walk and talk. Go away The other scowled his unruly eyebrows meeting in the middle. You go away Is my island. I am man of Krassos. You thee stranger here. Indeed I am a stranger said Malinari. Just how much of a stranger you ll never know. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 86 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Meanwhile the other two men had approached and stood grinning where they leaned against the sea wall. One of them made a point of cleaning his nails with an Italian switchblade. She not liking you said the tall one his looks growing darker by the moment. For taking Malinari s indifference his lackadaisical attitude as a sign of uncertainty or cowardice he felt very sure of himself. I see you doing thee argues see her not doing the smiling. I see her shouting ... at you Now I shout at you He prodded Malinari s chest as if expecting him to flinch and cower back. Malinari didn t flinch but merely grinned a wicked barely controlled grin which made the corners of his mouth twitch and said: Young man you are a very rude very stupid person. And where before Malinari had appeared merely tall now he was very tall very strong and incredibly fast. Without seeming to move his hands were clasping the young Greek s temples. And for two or three long seconds while the other stood there paralysed the vampire Malinari fastened on his mind like a leech sucking at his thoughts . . . . . . Thoughts mainly of Vavara naked writhing panting out her lust on a beach somewhere with her legs wrapped round him. And others of his home in Astris not Skala Astris on the coast but its sister village in the mountains. And of his mother and the road home uncoiling under the whirling wheels of his motorcycle just as it did every night. Then of his work in the Quarries where he sawed out those mighty blocks of pure white marble. And then again back to sex. an English girl he d seduced last summer and a German girl the summer before that. . . Thus Malinari familiarized himself with the man s mind its signature and knew that in future within certain strictures of distance and given an uncluttered psychic aether he would always be able to find him again. Quite the little seducer this one but ugly with it. There was nothing or romance in it only lust much like vampirism in its way and this Greek might even make a useful thrall or lieutenant. But no for where women were concerned he would always be untrustworthy . . . Malinari released him. For a moment the man staggered then recovered and tried to lash out with an arm that felt heavy as lead and a clenched fist made of rubber. Almost without effort Malinari caught his arm twisted it into an armlock and turned him about grabbed his belt at the rear and hoisted him up and over the sea wall out into the water. Lucky for him that there were no sharp marble boulders this close to the harbour. Then Malinari stepped to the man s bike picked it up as if it were a toy whirled and lobbed that into the water too. The other bikers were no longer leaning on the wall. They had come erect their jaws hanging slack and their leather clad frames as stiff as poles. They looked at each other and then at Malinari. They had seen his speed his effortless strength now they saw his fixed grin not quite a rictus inviting them to try their luck and perhaps join their friend where he splashed about in the sea. The one with the knife looked at it as if he didn t recognize it folded its blade and pocketed it. And without saying a word the pair backed away heading for a break in the sea wall where steps went down to the water. But: Ah no said Malinari in their own tongue. Your friend got himself in trouble so let him get himself out. Best if you leave now for if you don t I shall deal with your machines the same way I dealt with his and perhaps with you too. They didn t argue. And as they got astride their bikes: I don t expect we ll be seeing you again tonight said Malinari. Or any night for that matter . . . Bravo said Vavara sneeringly when they were gone. Thank you said Malinari. Since I kept myself in check I deserve every bit of your praise. I could have handled it myself she answered. Now there s no need to he told her. Huh But they were only boys. And they are still boys. But far more importantly they re still alive and there won t be any repercussions . . . By Greek standards the coast road east of Skala Astris in the direction of Limari was a good one with a metalled surface and very few potholes. But over the distance of one third of a mile from the lay by where Vavara had left her vehicle and driver to Palataki s neglected old service road it was serpentine in its winding. Vavara s driver black hooded servile and occasionally shivering but never looking back at her passengers drove at a carefully measured pace the drainage ditches at the sides of the road were file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 87 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt deep and where it had been cut through spurs and steep slopes there were stretches where the cliffs on the right fell sheer to the sea. As they rode Malinari looked out of his window down into one such abyss f air and ocean and asked Would this by any chance be the place where v u er gave our visitors a nudge It was the first time he had been out of the Monastery and all he knew of Krassos was what he had seen of it on the night r his arrival and tonight s excursion. No Vavara shook her head. For that would have been too close to Skala stris. I chose a place remote from the island s villages a spot midway between Palataki and the monastery. The tides around Krassos aren t much the sea is deep in that location and the coast very rugged. When I saw the car go over the rim I knew that if anything of the wreckage should drift away it would not be found for some days. Ah but then again I also knew that there would be no survivors Yet Yet there was one Malinari nodded. And a policeman at that. Did you read the report in the newspapers It seems we ve been very fortunate. My reading skills are rudimentary she answered tossing her head. I have nuns to read for me. Are you referring to the fact that the policeman this Manolis Papastamos has no memory of the event Yes we are probably fortunate that he was banged about. But on the other hand it was very quick I doubt that he would have realised what was happening. He was much too busy trying to keep his car on the road to have time to wonder about what was pushing it off And in any case even if he remembered anything about it why should he believe it was something other than an accident Lying broken in that hospital in Kavala I am sure he has other things to worry about. Also in Krassos town which is where I bought this limo there are several other cars just like it when they can afford it the Greeks are very vain and inclined to show off. Such transports are status symbols on an island as small as this. And anyway in a world such as this one a world of religious fools who would ever think to accuse a nun or nuns Perhaps you re right Malinari shrugged. But still you should never underestimate these people. You sound as if you speak from experience she answered. Your problems in Australia no doubt. Exactly said Malinari. And in answer to your question: Who would accuse a nun But who would have thought to search me out a Lord of Vampires in a casino in a mountain resort in Australia Yet they did. Still Vavara said I m not overly concerned about this man s survival. What a simple policeman What could he make of the leech But as for the female the pathologist she had to die. We couldn t afford to let her report what must have seemed to her a very strange anomaly: a thing like a leech a parasite in a human body and in peculiar circumstances at that. Granted our situation would be somewhat more secure if both of them had died but what s done is done and the matter can t be improved. But tell me what is all this nitpicking Your way of diverting responsibility perhaps Do not think I have forgotten Nephran Malinari that but for your weird appetites I wouldn t have had this problem to deal with in the first place. Be satisfied with what I have achieved. You are argumentative tonight said Malinari. It wasn t my intention to be critical. I was merely stating facts. But if you insist on harping on my appetites then I would remind you of your own. That Gypsy girl for instance. You must have known that in taking her you placed yourself in jeopardy. And then to have let her escape . . . l For a moment Vavara was sullen silent. But then she said: As I have already admitted that was an error. But the girl was beautiful so fey so innocent and so Szgany and after all it wasn t as if I deliberately lured her. No for she sought me out She came to the monastery of her own free will. But once I had seen her... I couldn t turn her away. Her people caravans and all had come over on the great ferries from the mainland. They danced for the tourists in the tavernas played on their drums fiddles and tambourines. They sold paper flowers and other nonsense knick knacks door to door in the villages earning what few drachmas they could. She told me these things when she brought her flowers to the monastery. But she was the loveliest flower of them all. For a day or two I actually thought that I loved her. A beautiful bloom eh said Malinari. And so you sipped her nectar. However wry and unsympathetic his remark was only very slightly caustic. Each to his own. But in any case Vavara wasn t offended. And with a negligent shrug she said I took a little and I gave a little back. I thought she was enthralled indeed she was enthralled to a degree but the call of her kinfolk was stronger. A few days more she would have been mine forever . . . but it wasn t to be. I tell you Malinari: Szgany blood out of Sunside ran strong in that one And as for file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 88 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt her escape: it wasn t so much an escape as that she simply walked away. Mazed but in control of her own mind her own will she left me. Which I suppose was just as well by which I mean that things would even out in the end. If she had stayed the time would surely come when I would find her presence . . . offensive And in leaving she simply hastened her own end. So there you have it. And all said and done I make no bones of it: she was a mistake yes. By now they had left the main road turned right onto the old service road to Palataki and were climbing the steep hill on a narrow zigzagging track that could scarcely be called a road at all. Flanked on the inside by undergrowth and covered with slippery moss with grasses roots and creepers thrusting up through its crumbling surface it was as well that the limo s nun driver took it in first gear and with great caution. And as the dark silhouettes of Palataki s cupolas soared above Malinari saw at once what it was that kept the locals away from the place. The air was made luminous by fireflies glowworms appeared to burn like discarded cigarette ends in the shrubbery despite that the summer had been a long one and the first rains yet to fall still there was a sense of dankness of mouldy rottenness about the place. And where before Malinari had said Palataki the structure was out of place on Krassos now he saw that its grounds even tne hill on which it stood looked and felt exactly the same. It was a place aPart. On an island of the sun such as this one Vavara smiled at him from the darkness of her corner seat a flash of gleaming teeth that could so easily ransforrn into a cave of knives this is one of the few places where I feel c mfortable. NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS 161 L U IV L C I D K 1 PL IN He knew what she meant and answered It definitely has a unique atmosphere. There s nothing like it on Starside and yet I ve never felt so close to home. Well perhaps in Romania. But that is understandable. When I first saw it said Vavara and found it deserted and for sale and when I explored it discovering its cellars and old mine shafts then I knew I had to have it. But on the other hand Malinari said if I were a young Greek lover in search of a place in which to pursue my heart s desire in private it would suit my needs ideally. Just so said Vavara. And indeed they used to come here now and then some of the braver ones anyway. But I long since took care of that. Come and I ll show you what else I ve taken care of. . . The car was up onto the level now and its cowled pallid driver got out to open gates in a tall perimeter fence of metal staves and rusting chicken wire. There was an ankle deep ground mist which seemed to ooze no which in fact oozed up from the earth itself. And Vavara nodded when Malinari looked at her seeking confirmation of what he more than merely suspected. Oh jesss she sighed her eyes glowing red now. Everything is ripening down there. A few more weeks at most. Then the car moved forward again and now Palataki loomed up out of the night. Malinari s mentalist probes went out as the limo drew to a halt before huge doors banded with iron. There is a presence he warned . . . before recognizing the telepathic signature. Ah yes he said then. It s your man er Zarakis aye she answered. My most worthy lieutenant Zarakis Mocks thrall out of olden Starside. He tends the place and by simply being here keeps away unwanted visitors. As they got out of the car Vavara s driver too Malinari noticed that the nun was still shuddering. Indeed she was barely able to stand without leaning on the vehicle. Madame said a deep voice from the shadowed archway that covered the door. And there stood Zarakis tall as Malinari but feral eyed as opposed to the Lord s red. For here at Palataki the vampires and lieutenant alike could relax a little and let themselves appear as their perverse nature intended. Zarakis Vavara spoke to his bowed head. Be easy now. I am here with Lord Malinari to inspect the cellars and tunnels. Is all well down there All is well he answered. And are you hungry Your women bring me food daily he told her. For which I am grateful. She shook her head impatiently. No you misunderstand me. I inquired of you are you . . . hungry file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 89 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Always madame Looking at her his eyes had widened in anticipation until they burned like sulphur in the night. Pointing to the nun Vavara said Then while we go below feed yourself. And if you feel inclined see to any other needs that might require attention. We shall be a little while. Now Malinari understood the woman s fearful trembling but he also appreciated Vavara s concern for her lieutenant s well being. Then as Zarakis grunted his thanks moving eagerly towards the nun: Zarakis Vavara brought him to a halt and cautioned him. Be warned. Don t take so much that you leave her weakened and fainting. For I too have need of her services. She drives this vehicle for me. And with that she turned away and led Malinari in through the great doors . . . The place was a maze of rooms most of them huge. The doors all hung askew on rusted hinges the staircases sagged dangerously and all other fittings had long since been stripped and stolen even the panelling from the walls. Some of the good floorboards had been taken up while others had rotted through. Great holes gaped everywhere and as Vavara stepped ahead she warned Malinari of places where the floor was most likely to give way under his weight. The upper levels are in even worse repair she told him and the attic is fit only for bats. Ah but down below . . . the cellars are carved from stone while the mine tunnels remind me of nothing so much as the basement of my aerie in old Starside. And since there was nothing to break or steal only the ravages of nature are apparent down there And she led him down into darkness. The lack of light meant nothing. Night seeing to them it was like daylight. But still after several steep descents down stone hewn stairways and some negotiating of places where the ceiling had fallen in Vavara lit a torch and took it from its bracket on the wall. See how it flares and the flame bends back she said. A current of air Malinari nodded. This shaft has more than one exit. In the bight above the sea said Vavara. It is my bolt hole my escape route if such should ever be required. And in a cave above the water level I keep a boat. While just around this bend She led the way to a cavern and to what it contained. . . . Who were they Malinari inquired after a while. But can t you tell What you and your much vaunted mentalism You know better than that he told her. I can only read minds where minds exist. But here . . . they no longer exist. The one was the Mother Superior in the monastery Vavara answered him then. The other was the woman I recruited in that place in Romania when nrst we arrived here. She served me well taught me the Greek tongue ex P ained away the many things that I found difficult. But she never stopped s bbing day or night it seemed I could never escape from her whining and whimpering And so I put her out of my misery. Hahl 162 BRIAN LUMLtY Was that your only reason said Malinari. For if memory serves she was also a pretty little thing . . . And: That too Vavara tossed her head. Anyway here she is. And as for the Mother Superior: she s not so superior now eh While they had been standing there a number of purplish grey tendrils of proto flesh had come creeping across the dusty floor to investigate. Though there was very little of sentience in them only residual vampire instinct still Malinari thought he detected a vague query: Perhaps this intrusion means something good to eat. . . But as Vavara stamped her foot and shouted and Malinari reached out his mental probes to whatever was left if anything was left so the tendrils wriggled back fusing with the rest of Vavara s handiwork: an ankle deep morbidly mobile carpet of gelatinous metamorphic filth spreading out in an uneven circle from a pair of slumped sucked dry figures that lay as if reclining against the wall. And protected within that living or undead circle a bed of squat black mushrooms their caps dully glistening from a covering of moisture as thick as sweat. And a heavy mist going up from the whole clinging to the ceiling and seeping into every crack and crevice there. And eventually: It would seem you ve done . . . very well said Malinari. Very well indeed. And Vavara allowed herself to take some small pride in his words. For she knew that they were true and that his admiration was genuine in every respect. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 90 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Likewise his jealousy: that she had what he no longer had which had been taken from him and destroyed in Australia . . . On their way back to the monastery Malinari said Something 1 don t understand. Oh Sara who er fell from that high window had a leech. She was one of the first you took of course but still to have developed a leech in so short a time But she got my egg said Vavara. Really said Malinari. Another error perhaps I cannot see that she would be your first choice Vavara merely smiled. Which leads to my next question said Malinari. Zarakis has been your man for long and long. He would have been ideally suited to the production of spore bearing mushrooms. And indeed with Sara dead he would be your only choice for who else could produce such a crop Any leech bearer Vavara answered or any egg daughter or egg son for that matter. Or any lieutenant who had survived the years and risen through the ranks until he aspired. Such as your man Demetrakis for instance. Exactly said Malinari. Just so and Demetrakis was the spawn for my crop in Xanadu. But as my eyes are witness Zarakis lives and your egg was wasted on Sara. So how is it that lh K I S C I M h I 1 k h I I I 1 s 1 r i t c. v lx f j V w r L : ucrlLclxj itjJ I wasted owe egg on the girl Sara said Vavara. But the first of my eggs went to the Mother Superior. The first of Malinari knew what it meant but couldn t quite accept the concept. Not in connection with Vavara. Perhaps I should exercise better control over my passions eh she said. It would seem that when my emotions get out of hand then that. . . Shrugging she let it trail off. But Malinari understood her well enough. You he said. A mother A mother of vampires All of that and a Mother Superior Vavara laughed. But. . . you were not depleted Malinari was stunned. For he knew the legend: that very occasionally very rarely a Lady of the Wamphyri would be a mother a creature with not just one egg but a great many. And that when they issued forth together in one vast spawning the mother would be so exhausted that she would wither to a wrinkled empty sack thus suffering the true death. It was nature s way the legend said of prolonging Wamphyric life a mother could only come into being in the time of some great bloodwar when the species was at a very low ebb and required replenishing and the one spawning could make vampires of a hundred aspiring thralls. Vavara knew the legend too and said That has to be the answer. Here in this world we are so few that our scarcity must have triggered this thing in me. But in my case I issue my eggs one by one as I will it. So don t expect me to deflate wither and die Malinari I am as firm as ever and firmer than most. So then something new. And Malinari sat and pondered upon it all the way back to the monastery. Vavara a mother of vampires capable of bringing them into being at will. And not only vampires but full blown Wamphyri Hordes of Lords and Ladies in the making their seeds germinating burgeoning even now inside her body within her bastard mutant leech And with his shields firmly in place: But not if I can help it What this new world filled with egg sons and daughters of Vavara all in thrall to her Wamphyri from the very moment of their conversion Would I have room to breathe Would there be any room at all for anyone else He very much doubted it but made no comment. . . why should he give her ideas And putting the notion aside burying it in his secret mind Malinari changed the subject to inquire: Are you satisfied Vavara with what you ve achieved here Mostly yes she answered. When the spores are ripened bursting free then my nuns shall carry them out into the world. They come from all parts these women and the seeds of vampirism shall go back with them to their roots new roots for a new and very different order. And until then the nuns fill roy needs. I take from each of them in their turn and every sip increases their dependency upon me. So you see apart from my one mistake with that Gypsy 8irl all was in order and went according to my plans. Well until you came. What Malinari pretended to be affronted. Will you hold it against me Qrever that I came to file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 91 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt you for help Now tell me without the money I sent y u how would you have purchased even this car let alone Palataki All rev 164 BRIAN LUMLhY UthlLHRS 165 enue those monies earned from the religious industry of your nuns their needlework art and other knickknacks for the tourists was lost when you had to close the monastery down for fear of prying eyes. Without my money Vavara how much of what you ve achieved would have been possible Jethro Manchester s money do you mean Whoever s money said Malinari. But never forget I was the one who found a way to send it. For which I am grateful she said. And I shall help you however I can. But understand Malinari: what I have worked for is mine and mine alone the monastery my women Palataki and the crop ripening in its cellars everything. So if you truly desire to remain on friendly terms make your plans state your requirements take what I can give and begone from here. Malinari turned away from her. So much for five centuries of friendship. Most of which we spent entombed in the ice she reminded him. And that too was your fault as I recall Then when he made no answer she sighed and said Nephran you said it yourself: you ve suffered a setback. Well now overcome it. Begin again and this time be sure to win through. But do it somewhere else. And if you re afraid that in the interim I shall speed ahead of you don t be. This is a big world and room for all of us ... well for a hundred years at least. So he said sourly. You are telling me that out of all those many spores under Palataki you will not let me imprint a few with my authority my personality You are telling me quite literally . . . that I must start again On my own There you have it. And if you in your turn in some unforeseen but perfectly feasible future should suffer just such a setback what then Would you turn to me for help Vavara again I hope not No such future looms she answered. But upon a time I was of a like opinion said Malinari. And look at my situation now. I can promise you that even now in London people plot against us. How they avoided my traps in Xanadu... I don t know can t say but I m sure that they did. The echoes of their group mind are faint and far distant perhaps they are even shielded for their skills are extraordinary among common men but as I sniffed them out once before so I can sense them now. And I ll tell you something else: there was a rare Power among them such as I haven t felt since . . . since . . . But here he paused and let his warning lapse into silence. This E Branch Vavara shrugged. But I have my own plots to hatch and tomorrow my special agents two of these nuns who have served me well in the recent past will fly to London and seek out Szwart. Together with him they will find a way to put some small obstruction in this Trask s way. Did sit still in Starside when enemies plotted against me Never Nor shall I do s in this world. But I personally shall not be involved. Good said Malinari however falsely and halfheartedly. And so it would seem you have everything covered. Yes. Vavara smiled. Irksome isn t it Then they were at the monastery sweeping in through its broad high gates. And a moment later as they got out of the limo: Now you will excuse me said Vavara. There are things I must attend to. I know said Malinari. For you barely touched your food in that taverna. Nor you yours she answered. But here in my own place at least I won t go hungry. You see There s nothing quite like a manse and provisions of your own eh Nephran You forbid me to take from your women Absolutely. One way or the other Malinari I intend that you shall move on. And all this talk of E Branch: it only makes me that much more determined. It seems to me that you are their real target not I and I won t have you leading them to me . . . Alone in his room Malinari prowled the boards awhile. But then pausing at a window to cast his mentalist probes out across the darkened island he stopped scowling. Out there a mind that he recognized. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 92 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Malinari homed in on it: On a certain young Greek clad in iron studded leather I where he trudged all the weary miles home... He pushed a heavy waterlogged motorcycle f alongside. . . And he was alone. . . his so called friends had deserted him ridden off to Krassos fe town in search of adventures of their own ... He cursed his American Western styled hoots H they looked good and were ideal for riding his hike hut they were lousy for walking . . . The way was mainly uphill and oh how he looked forward to the next downhill stretch A pity thought Malinari that he would never reach it. A pity Well not really. Blowing in through the window a warm thermal rose from the night ocean. Malinari quickly shed his clothes got up onto the window ledge leaned out into the abyss. A cloud of tiny Mediterranean bats were on the wing around the monas 1 tery s towers. Inaudible to human ears Malinari heard them well enough. Their sonar cries welcomed him to the night. His eyes filled with blood burning like lamps in his face as he wrought the change. And in the next moment a greater bat or something with a similar shape soared outwards on the air. A man has his needs after all. And if by chance it should bring problems avara s way well what of it She had stated her case made her bed so now her lie in it. And sniffing the air Malinari turned inland and glided to his target. . . 167 UhHILhRb mm 10 KAVALA . . . KRASSOS . . . SZEGED The Suntours plane carrying Ben Trask and David Chung had left Gatwick some forty five minutes late touching down just after 1:30 P.M. local time at Kavala. And if the pair had thought it was warm in London for this time of year the furnace interior of the spartan Greek airport had changed their minds in double quick time. London was cool by comparison. After reporting dutifully to the Suntours representative a tourist harassed young woman using her millboard as a fan and trying desperately hard not to sweat they d excused themselves from the scheduled ferry trip from Keramoti to Krassos and told her they d find their own way across and see her later at their accommodation on the island. Then little knowing that indeed Krassos was to be their destination they had taken a taxi to Kavala hospital. The hospital stood halfway between the airport and the port of Keramoti on the Mediterranean coast and much like the airport itself it had been designed to serve the military. The scenario was that in any future border dispute or shooting war with Serbia or Turkey wounded Greeks would be casualty evacuated to Kavala. The drive was of mercifully short duration only a very few minutes but the antique taxi s air conditioning had long since given up the ghost and even with the windows wound down it was still like sitting in a pressure cooker. Then at the hospital: Though the Minister Responsible had cleared something of the way for them still there was the ID check the obligatory security telephone call and the halfhearted salute from an MP wilting in his sentry box before the striped barrier pole went up and they were allowed through the gates past the guardroom into the hospital s grounds. Finally after Trask had handed the taxi driver a fat wad of notes asking him to wait until told otherwise they entered the large gaunt nationalistically blue and white square block of a building where a nurse waited at the desk in reception to escort them down a white walled corridor on the ground floor to the room where Inspector Papastamos presumably lay abed. Outside the room a heavy set man in civilian clothes was seated on a chair with his arms folded on his chest. His chair was balanced on its rear legs tilted against the wall and he kept pushing himself forward an inch with his head and letting himself fall back again. Patently it was some kind of balancing game designed to keep his mind occupied for his expression was one of total boredom. But as Trask Chung and the nurse drew closer suddenly the man snapped out of it came to his feet and faced them. It was at once obvious to Trask that this was a policeman. As the Head of E branch he had frequent dealings with the police and in his experience and however cliched it might seem they all looked the same to him. From Toulouse to Tangier to Timbuktu no matter their nationality Trask could spot one a mile away. But this one left nothing to chance: he swept file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 93 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt aside his jacket and showed them his badge saying English The greeting was abrupt and even blunt but it told its own story: that he had been expecting them. I m Ben Trask and this is David Chung Trask told him. We re here to see Inspector Manolis Papastamos. The policeman short in the legs but built like a battering ram used a huge left hand to push his jacket even further back displaying not only his badge but also the pistol grip of a gun in its underarm holster. And tilting his head a little on one side he grunted I seeing your IDs please The nurse had just started to explain something in Greek when from inside the room an anxious voice called out: Trask Ben Trask Is that you out there Thank God for that Andreas will let you in ... or perhaps he won t In the next moment the door was snatched open from within and Andreas the blocky policeman stepped aside. After that: It had been a good many years but despite Manolis Papastamos s bruises and bandages Trask knew him immediately where he stood framed in the doorway. Papastamos s shirt was loose and hanging open and he was bandaged under the shirt around his ribs. His face was bruised on the left side from the cheekbone to the chin and his left arm was in a sling to relieve the weight on his shoulder where his collarbone had been cracked. He looked decidedly older and rightly so Trask thought considering all the years flown between and he was definitely shaky. But he was Manolis. Recognition was mutual. After searching Trask s face for a moment then see ng Chung standing beside him the Greek policeman said You two and still thee same Well perhaps a little older eh He went to hug Trask changed 15 m nd and grimaced apologetically explaining It is thee ribs. Some bruised ar d some broken and none of them up to thee hugging. Come in come in Inside the room two more policemen were seated at a table with a deck 168 RIAN LUMLtY of cards laid out in three hands. There was a small pile of money on the table also a bottle of ouzo and some tiny shot glasses. And Trask was at once relieved. I see we re not the only ones who are still the same He pumped Papa stamos s hand but carefully. The message I got... 1 thought you were in a very bad way I very nearly was said the other. But his welcome smile at seeing old friends had turned to a grimace now. And: Ben I need to talk to you tell you things and right now because we don t have thee time to lose. I know Trask answered just as grimly. I knew from the moment we got your call even before your call that there was er something of a problem here You mean thee special kind of problem Papastamos looked at his men a quick glance but they obviously didn t know what he was talking about. Exactly said Trask. The kind we knew once before. Now it was Papastamos s turn to heave a sigh of relief. So perhaps I am not thee obsessive lunatic after all But for this kind of talking we needing thee privacy right These men they don t speak thee English too well but we take no chances eh He spoke quickly authoritatively to his men detectives from his own division in Athens. And without a word they stood up and left the room. There is better. Papastamos invited his visitors to sit poured ouzo then prowled the room while he talked. And without further ado he told them what had happened all of it up to the point where his car had been pushed over the cliff. And you survived that Chung shook his head he couldn t conceal his astonishment and wasn t thinking straight. But then he checked himself and said Yes of course you did But how My seat belt said Manolis. She wasn t fastened thank God I remember we hit somethings going down once twice ... I don t know can t say. But thee car she spinning. Then my door is torn off and I falling through thee air. I thinking: Manolis you are dead Then . . . nothing else. Some men in a fishing boat near thee cliffs see thee car go down. They saving me from thee sea. But Eleni she was gone. Thee water was very deep in that part. . . And afterwards said Trask. Afterwards I wake up in Krassos town in thee hospital. I am shook up: my ribs collarbone jaw and all thee bruises. I go a little crazy you know Because I remember but I can t say anything. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 94 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Not about that what I suspecting They move me here this ward for thee men with thee shell shock. And that is good because I want be off that Krassos Then when I start thinking straight again I call you. Trask nodded and said You d guessed what you were dealing with and you knew who to call first. Not first Manolis shook his head. First I calling thee office in Athens to get these men down here pretty damn fast NtCKObCUPt: UhhlLhKS 16b You thought they wherever they are might try coming after you said Chung. Right. And that kind of thing ... I didn t want it coming after me Manolis shuddered. Not when I was weak unprotected. But this place this hospital he nodded his head in approval she is secure I think. And my men are good. Which prompted Trask to ask: How much do your men know of all this It was a very important question. Only that I have thee accident and that I need help. But how to tell them I mean hey if they knew what I thinking how do I do thee explaining You don t Trask shook his head. No way I m sure these men of yours are very good men but even if they believed you especially if they believed you believed in what you suspected it could jeopardize the whole thing. And E Branch has been on this case for a long time. Then as briefly and as quickly as possible he gave Manolis a sketchy outline of what had been happening and E Branch s role in things. So this is all on you said the other. We were hoping to put some of it on you too said David Chung. But not like this. Hey I am alive said Manolis. Thee reason I put it out that I bad hurt is for throwing these things off my trail. Waiting for you here I am near thee scene. So you want to put some of this on me Yes Good Do it I expecting it We are working together before so now we doing it again. You thinking I wants these damn things in Greece In thee Greek islands What These vry koulakas dog bastards His English was deteriorating commensurate with his mounting anger. Calm down Manolis said Trask and think. While you re certainly alive still you re not in the best possible shape. I mean just look at you . . . You re pretty much banged about. And I m sure you haven t forgotten how it was on Halki Rhodes and Karpathos that time With Janos Ferenczy and his creatures You wouldn t want to slow us down now would you I want do whatever I can the other declared. And: Very well said Trask and went on to tell him about the transfers of large sums of money from Jethro Manchester s Swiss accounts to a bank somewhere in Greece. He finished by saying Find that out for us and you ll be doing us a big favour. And myself Manolis nodded. And Greece and thee world But I can do that from here I think. So will you wait Trask shook his head. No we re moving on. But we ll have your number and we ll stay in touch let you know where we are. That way you can always call us if you get anything. And when I feeling a little better When I getting rid of these bandages then maybe I They know what you look like Trask cut him short. The creatures who did this to you. It was only an excuse for they knew what Trask looked like LJthlLtKb I I 170 BRIAN LUMLbY too one of them did anyway but the Head of E Branch didn t want Manolis to get hurt any worse than he was right now. Manolis chewed his lip then breathed deeply and finally grunted his disappointment. I ... I feeling useless And in a typically Greek display of frustration he threw up his hands. On the contrary Trask told him. With what you ve told us you ve corroborated everything we suspected. Huh said Manolis. Right. But he seemed doubtful. Is there anything else you want to tell us before we go Trask asked him. Tell you no show you sure. And Manolis scattered the playing cards from the tabletop unfolding a map of Krassos in their place. The map was one of those cheap and cheerful none too accurate homegrown efforts that display sites of historic and archaeological interest as well as file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 95 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt local hotels tavernas and allegedly golden sand beaches in short a guide to all the island s tourist traps. Would you believe said Chung that Krassos is where we were supposed to be going Thee island Manolis stared at him remembered his weird talent. Are you er locating something On Krassos Not yet Chung answered ruefully. Later maybe. We re tourists Trask explained. Ah Your cover. But Krassos You knew to go there A coincidence Trask answered. And anyway by now we ve missed the ferry. There will be another ferry in a few hours Manolis told him before thee night. But Ben this island this Krassos she is thee very dangerous place for men like you. For any men You have thee backup Shortly said Trask. And Manolis nodded. Very shortly I hoping But not thee Necroscope eh Not thee Harry Keogh. Ah he was thee one That man ... we are thinking we. are thee bravos yes He stuck out his chest then winced and relaxed his posture. But thee Harry . . . next to that one we are all thee big cowards. He was much too brave for his own good said Trask and in the end came too close. Without him we wouldn t have stood a chance wouldn t have understood even the basic hows or whys of such things. We still owe him for that and now we re using the knowledge he left us all over again. That time we all came too close said Manolis unashamedly shivering. But we were thee lucky ones. He nodded again checked his pocket telephone and scrawled the number on the map. And stabbing at the chart with his pen he explained the layout of the island and its various features. Thee map she is showing it all he said. But anyway I giving you thee running commentary: Thee island she is like thee apple with some bites taken out. Ninety or maybe one hundred kilometres right round. Coast roads mainly except where thee mountains come down to thee sea. Krassos is thee green island thee forests are up in thee hills and mountains. In thee north five or six skalas I explaining thee term skala. Many of thee villages are twinned. By thee sea thee village gets thee name Skala Skala this Skala that. But thee twin in thee mountain is thee main town. In thee old times thee fishermen live by thee sea of course hey they live off thee sea Invaders come they move into thee heights. Then came thee olives and thee farming now thee peoples live in all thee villages. So Astris in mountains Skala Astris on thee coast. In a deep bay in east of Krassos here is Limari a big town of more than fifteen hundred peoples big by island standards you understand. That mutilated body thee one with thee leech was found in thee sea a few miles south of Limari. Here is thee monastery between Limari and thee place where I forced off thee road. Thee big limo was waiting for me there. I didn t get thee number. He gave an apologetic shrug. But hey I was busy And on this southern point here is Skala Astris. Now we are on thee south coast heading west. Here is thee village Portos and thee skalas Peskari and Sotira. And here after thee bend in thee coast is thee big town Krassos town thee capital. Then heading north more villages and skalas all along thee west coast. Most of thee coast roads are very good. But inland up in thee mountains not so good. Manolis shook a cautionary finger. Four wheel drive vehicle my friends if you going up into thee mountains. As for what you looking for he shrugged again I don t know. This vrykoulakas woman s place . . . there are a great many high places on Krassos. But thee island peoples will know everythings about thee foreign peoples who are owning properties. In thee tavernas you can talk ask questions but carefully. Hey who I speaking to eh Of course you ask carefully He laughed and slapped Trask on the shoulder . . . And then it was time to go. Chung folded Manolis s map and pocketed it. Then tossing back the last dregs of ouzo in his glass he held it out empty in front of him. Trask likewise finished off his drink and all three men clinked glasses. Here s to success said Trask and Chung echoed his toast. Me too said Manolis. Er I meaning success yes In the taxi on the way to Keramoti Chung said Well what do you think About the task Trask dabbed sweat from his brow. When the rest of the team join up with us time enough then to think about it. Half a dozen heads the kind of minds and technology that we command will give us a much clearer picture than just yours and mine alone. We re here to do a preliminary survey and file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 96 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt organize a base of operations that s all. So that s the job said Chung. But what about Manolis Ahl said Trask. You re obviously thinking he let us off the hook too easily. You told him he couldn t come with us... and he accepted it just like that Chung shook his head. He didn t even argue the point but sat still and simply let us walk out on him Does that ring true to you Well not to me It isn t the man we know. So what are the odds we ll be seeing him again and I do mean very shortly I m not taking bets said Trask. Put it this way: let s say I wasn t convinced by his acceptance. And in fact he didn t accept it didn t agree one way or the other that he would stay out of it. He didn t say anything much but just played at being frustrated. That was an act... I know because I got an instant reaction from my talent. He was hiding something: his desire to come with us probably. And the hell of it is we could use him if only he wasn t so banged about. Talking about talents said Chung actually I m beginning to feel pretty lonely. Just you and me and what s waiting for us out there. Waiting for us said Trask. I hope not You know what I mean said the locator. The future and whatever it has in store for us. The as yet unfurled immutable and oh so devious future. At least that s how lan Goodly might describe it. Devious yes Trask mused nodding. And immutable. What will be has been eh We must hope said Chung that it continues to be as it has been that we ll win this one just like we won the others. Amen to that Trask agreed wholeheartedly. But tell me: what s all this got to do with feeling lonely I m switched off the locator reminded him. My talent I mean. This close or as close as we think we are I daren t use it. For in Malinari s case what I can find might as easily find me So I ll just hang on to what I ve got until it s really needed. Which also means I m no longer in contact with the rest of our people. Not like a telepath no but just being able to reach out and sense them there. It s something I ve had for well it feels like forever a sense of security of being in good company and I hadn t realized how much I d miss it. But I do. Hence the loneliness. Then I suppose in that respect I m lucky said Trask. I can t switch mine on and off it s simply there. But it doesn t reach out and can t be detected. Not that I m aware of anyway. It doesn t connect me to anyone unless he starts lying to me doesn t disturb the psychic aether so to speak so it isn t something that Malinari can latch on to. Exactly said the other quietly. But that only makes me feel that much more lonely. For the time being there s just the two of us and I m the one who might forget himself start glowing in the dark. Why for all we know I could be doing it right now: like a myriad mental pheromones radiating away from me my own personal version of mindsmog So I ll be very glad when the other members of the team show up. Then they were into and passing through the port of Keramoti: spears of dazzling yellow light and dark shadow smudges where they sped through narrow streets between dusty buildings. But suddenly the air wafting in through the taxi s open windows tasted salty and as the vehicle emerged into full daylight and halted in a sun bleached parking lot close to the deep water harbour the Aegean was there: a horizontal bar of scintillant blinding blue slashed through by the lolling masts of boats at their moorings and draped with their sullen pennants. Even here on the coast the heat was appalling. But beyond the parking lot on the landward side of the street the canvas awnings and motionless umbrellas of a long string of shops and tavernas offered jet black blotches of shade and the irresistible promise of cold drinks. Leaving the taxi Trask and Chung shrugged themselves out of their damp jackets and folded them over their arms. Lugging a single suitcase each in addition to which Trask carried a fat briefcase containing several gadgets one of which was a world ranging telephone and scrambler device they made their way toward the street s hot tarmac and beyond it to the shade and liquid refreshments of the tavernas . . . Meanwhile in Szeged in Hungary at the local police HQ: In a grubby unwelcoming second storey room with barred windows a solid oak table and a handful of wooden chairs Liz Merrick lan Goodly and Lardis Lidesci interviewed old Vladi Ferengi and Vladi in his turn viewed them with such contempt that it bordered on loathing. Hunched in his chair like a wrinkled old spider grinding his jaws on several gold teeth and a very few ivory fangs and endlessly knotting and unknotting his purple veined rheumatic fists he glared his fury at the three across the heavy table. But mainly at the Old Lidesci. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 97 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt You he grunted at Lardis. You came to me in the woods at Eleshnitsa came in friendship bah I in search of your roots but you were only spying on me and mine. I should have let my men bloody you up a little and tumble you in the thorns should never have allowed a stranger in my caravan in the first place. Ah but with your use of the old tongue you made a fool of me. Szgany you Never And if you ever were then no longer. You are a traitor to your own kind Lardis of the Lidescis and that s all you are. I have travelled through and lived in these parts for all my years and never any trouble yet now you have brought the police down on me. I am taken from my people like a common criminal and for what A handful of old wives tales and fairy stories malicious lies and rumours. And you expect me to talk to you I have no respect for you and I have nothing more to say to you. . . He turned his face away. Lardis nodded and answered Old king 1 respect that you are the king of your people but no more than that. As to why I offer you even this much respect: it s because I m a king in my own right. Except I prefer to be known as a leader but one who never led his people into slavery which is what your ancestors did. And I agree: I should not have approached you in your camp not without first ensuring that I d covered my back also my front and my two sides and my top and my bottom because to do so in the old times the time of your father s fathers in a world you ve long forgotten would be to place myself in direst jeopardy. And you call me a traitor Why the very names Ferenc Ferenczy and Ferengi are still curse words among all true sons of the Szgany You probably don t know it old man but you are sprung from a long line of supplicant dogs who called a monster master and tried to assuage his lusts with the blood of anyone unlucky enough to stray into their territory. Worse still they even sacrificed the innocent flesh of their own children Lardis had taken his time considered his words and delivered them in an emotionless monotone in the guttural Szgany of old Sunside an all but forgotten form in this world. But Vladi had understood enough that it caused him to sit up and listen. Eh What His face creased into a thousand wrinkles and his rheumy eyes came glittering alive. Lies and insults From such as you Ferenc Aye I know the name from stories that my grandfather told me where we sat by the campfire as his grandfather told them to him. The Ferenc was glorious A magnificent Boyar of olden times who led my forebears into this world from out of one of the strange places. Why we even took his name the Szgany Ferengi and I have made it the work of a lifetime to wander far throughout this world in search of his messenger or even his kin. For our legends have it that one day one such will come among us. And so I ve searched and waited for him or a Lord just like him destined to return to us from the strange places and raise us to our former glory. Such has been my sole ... my sole pursuit for years without. . . years without But here licking his lips and shrinking back as if fearing that he had said too much Vladi came to a faltering halt. Years without number aye. Lardis nodded taking it up where the old Gypsy had left off. For long and long Vladi a lifetime wasted as your father wasted his before you. For what did you find but a fiend who took one of yours and changed her What did you find but the tvampir the bloodsucker of legend Do not be mistaken: I know the bloody history of you and yours my friend. Now look at me and tell me: can t you see and even hear it in me My looks and the dappled light of distant forests in my eyes And my tongue which is the old the original Szgany language out of another world Surely you of all people recognize the truth when you see it What Vladi Ferengi and that knowing old beak of his Well then and what does your beak smell here in the shape of Lardis Lidesci The precog lan Goodly who had spent some time or as he would have it too much time in Sunside Starside understood much of what Lardis had said. Straightening up where he sat he glanced sideways warningly at his old friend but remained silent. He was concerned that Lardis shouldn t give too much away. On the other hand while Goodly did not agree entirely with the Old Lidesci s approach he acknowledged that he was speaking to one of his own kind a fellow Traveller and had to accept that he was probably best equipped for the job. And as for Liz understanding little of what she heard yet knowing most of what Lardis had said by reason of her telepathy: to her it was as if his words were hypnotic in their monotonous pacing. And likewise to Vladi Ferengi. The old man s jaw had fallen open. Leaning forward in his chair balancing himself with his spindly arms on the table he stared at Lardis at first in disbelief. But the more he looked the more obvious the truth became to him. And yes his nostrils gaped wide as he sniffed out Lardis s origins and yes his old eyes opened wider as he began to accept that Lardis was what he said he file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 98 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt was. I could smell it on you in my camp near Eleshnitsa the old Traveller said then his voice trembling. The smell of the source world where all of the Szgany had their beginnings. But 1 had searched for so long and always in vain that I supposed I was mistaken. There is no water in the desert only mirages. You were a mirage in the desert of my dreaming Also what were you but a man Only a man and scarcely a prince or the mighty boyar of my searching. Now you tell me you are a king and not only that but a messenger out of time too Except your message is a hard one Lardis of the Lidescis and I don t think that I can bear it. Are you saying that my people are ... that they re less than honourable And even less than that said Lardis. Or if not you and your people then your ancient line your ancestors certainly. Then I won t accept it The fire flared again in Vladi s eyes and he thumped the table with both fists making it jump. Oh said Lardis without flinching. Is it so And yet I sense that you ve suspected it for long and long and that I am only telling you what you ve known deep in your heart for years without number. As for my origins and therefore my authority in such matters I can prove them. There s a word I would say to you Vladi of the Szgany Ferengi. A word the other fumed and sputtered. What word Wamphyyyri Lardis growled it like a wolf. Abbbbl Vladi sighed drawing back again. And when you sat by your grandfather as he told his campfire stories as his grandfather told them to him Lardis went on relentlessly didn t he ever speak that word And didn t he tell you its meaning He did He did said the old man. He told me that they the Wam phyri were our enemies in the old times which was why the Ferenc brought us away from the old world into this one. Also he told me that the Wamphyri were bloodsuckers who could not live in the sunlight but came in the dead of night to steal our wives and children in the dark. And that forever and always such would be our lot: to give away our children to strangers. Which you are still doing to this very day said Lardis grimly and unfor givingly. in Romania Bulgaria and many other places giving away and even selling your own children. Because it runs in your vile blood Vladi come down to you through all the forgotten centuries. For I tell you as a true witness that in a far vampire world your ancestors the Szgany Ferengi were Wamphyri supplicants who gave of their blood to a vampire Lord And that is precisely what you have done in Kavala in Greece. Now I can t yet say if that was deliberate a monstrous act of sacrifice or an accident which came about be cause you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But whichever that poor young girl you buried with silver on her eyes was a victim of your search and perhaps of what you found or of something that found you But I ... 1 ... Vladi stuttered. If you are innocent however Lardis went on then your legends have been distorted in the telling distorted by time perhaps or perhaps by shame by the shame of your supplicant ancestors. By shame Old Vladi sat limply shrunken now. All of the fire had gone out of him. What are you saying That because my forebears did wrong in the past they changed the history of my people to suit to hide their sins Is that what you re saying But even if you re right what wrong have I done You ve done according to your blood said Lardis. Right or wrong is for you and you alone to say. As for myself say: purge yourself of all these old legends these dreams which in fact are nightmares. Tell me what I require to know Vladi and help me and my friends rid the world of a great horror. So then said Vladi shaking his head in a dazed manner trying hard to sit up straighter in his chair you are not the Ferenc. No obviously not for you are only a man and you deny him. He was babbling now and it was as if all that Lardis had told him had flown over his head or as if he d heard only what he wanted to hear and would only answer accordingly. Very well then perhaps you are the messenger or a messenger of sorts Is that it Did you come to tell me ... to tell me that the Ferenc and his kind . . . that they are no more Are you saying that. . . saying that my long search is ended Is that why you are here Ferenczys said Lardis. So far as I know so far as I pray they are no more. The last of them was in my time. Fess Ferenc a grotesque monster in his aerie in Starside in a vampire world beyond the Gates you call the strange places. But if by his kind you mean the Wamphyri . . . oh yes they are still here old Vladi. Some of them are here even now in this world. But haven t I file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 99 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt already said as much That girl of yours: she was taken by one of the Wamphyri a female we think who came here recently from the source world. I and others like me would seek them out to destroy them. That s why I ve come to see you. Not to accuse you in person but to ask your help. Only refuse it Lardis nodded grimly then I ll accuse Destroy them The Wamphyri our olden enemies Of course they must be destroyed But Vladi was confused he began to rock to and fro and his old eyes seemed suddenly glazed. What am I to make of all this I have spent a lifetime and I cannot... I do not. . . and what of the old legends . . . They spoke of the old times the history of my people. And now you would tell me . . . you would say that they are lies all of them Lardis nodded. Some of them at least. But the Ferenc ... he was a great A great monster said Lardis. Aye for whichever Ferenc this mighty boyar of yours was he was nevertheless a Lord of Vampires banished out of Sunside by his own kind the Wamphyri. Which tells its own tale: that this so tailed hero was banished for his sins by the greatest sinners of all time Hahi So there you have it. Ferenc Ferenczy or Ferengi they were all of the one blood Vladi and they were monsters all. But the legends The legends handed down to us out of the old times The old times Lardis cut him short and Liz got up and went round to Vladi s side of the table putting her arm around his frail shoulders to support and steady him. Let me tell you how it was in those old times Lardis went on. How it was and how it is even now in Sunside Starside beyond those Gates that you know as the strange places. Aye and how it might yet be in this world if we can t stop this cancer from spreading further. Hear me out and then judge for yourself whether or not I speak truly or falsely. And finally Vladi nodded. Go on then I ll hear you out. Then after a moment s thought Lardis went on to tell the whole story but as briefly as possible painting word pictures in the old Szgany tongue and letting the Gypsy king s imagination and perhaps ancestral memories fill in the blank spaces. Until at last when Lardis was finished and after several long seconds of silence: I ... I think you must be mistaken said Vladi steadier in his voice now but still trembling in his limbs. I pray that you are mistaken. But whether you are or you aren t I cannot dare not tell my people what you have told me What that our proudest legend is only the shameful lie of cowardly forebears No never that But I can and must put an end to my search. For if what you say is true then on this occasion this old beak of mine led me in an entirely wrong direction which brought about a monstrous thing. The girl yes little Maria which is how I shall always remember her she was related to me as are all of the Szgany Ferengi. But oh that lovely child . . . drained of her life force dead and gone from us and lodged in the earth. And all because . . . because I led my people astray But better dead buried and gone from all of us Lardis spoke more quietly now than one of the undead in the aerie of some Lord or Lady of the Wamphyri. Well at least you suspected that much and were wise enough to put a stake through her. Eh What s that the old Romany king stared hard at him. Do you think we did that No no it must have been the work of frightened villagers but never me and mine Yet now . . . now it would seem they were right to do such a terrible thing. And there were tears in old Vladi s eyes as he looked at Lardis and said But the Wamphyri In this world And one of them took my sweet little Maria Is it so We re seeking them out Lardis told him again even the one who did this thing and others like her to put them out of their misery and out of our sight forever. Vladi breathed deep and sat up straighter. Then I ll tell you how it was he said and where It is but I cannot be exact for I don t know all the details. Maria she told us very little. She was mazed and she was Undead said Lardis aye. And Liz her arm around Vladi s slumped shoulders came in with: Whatever you can tell us will be of great assistance. We don t know a lot and this . . . this creature has hidden herself away from us. But one thing seems certain if we don t find her there ll be a great many more innocents lost to the cold earth. Either that or they ll be walking upon it lusting for blood in the night And lan Goodly said It s your chance to redeem yourself Vladi you and all your people. What was done is done. The past is beyond reckoning now but the future is still to come. While we still have a future we all must do our best to protect it. There s not a lot to tell said Vladi then. I dreamed a dream of the strange places and of one file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 100 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt who came out of them to seek his people. We would come south for the winter as always despite that this year the winter is late. And this old beak of mine smelled the wind off the Greek islands I seemed to detect a scent out of time I knew that something very strange awaited us and thought that perhaps this time . . . this time the legend would be answered. In Kavala we took a ferry to ... to the island. We didn t pay a lot but still the Greeks were glad of our custom in what had proved for them a very poor season. And so we brightened up our caravans and wandered the island s villages. The coins were slow in coming but they came little by little. And of course I followed my nose. We camped for some few days on the outskirts of a village called Skala Astris where a deep gorge shaded us from the sun. Maria Cilestu sold paper flowers. She went out one morning with a basket. . . and she didn t come back But this was scarcely an unheard of situation. We had had the occasional runaway before: handsome young men and pretty young girls too who perhaps received offers they couldn t refuse. For you know it can be a hard life on the road and I had always tried to understand the feelings and motives of any who wanted to break with it. But on an island such as that so very small how far could Maria run Not far be sure. Also since we would be there a while longer we knew she could always change her mind and come back to us. Maria had never known her father and her mother had died some time ago. Personally I wasn t too concerned over her she had always proved capable at taking care of herself. Of course some of the younger men worried about her the ones who fancied her you know. But there were none who could lay claim to her. And anyway I was far more concerned about the island itself. For to this old beak of mine ... I don t know ... I can t say but it had an odd atmosphere that island. Well of course it did which was why I had taken my people there in the first place But now that we were there . . . I had dreams dreams about the campfire more properly a bonfire I would find myself standing beside this great fire in the night waiting. And all my people there with me but all in a huddle shivering clinging tight together. Don t ask me what it was about for I hate to think. But they were ominous those dreams and they left me feeling ill. In the daylight hours that weird atmosphere was scarcely any weaker while at night ... I wouldn t even consider letting my men light a fire What music and dancing And the smell of roasting meats going up into the night air Not on that island no From the Greek tavernas aye by all means but not from any campfire of mine And yet I couldn t say why . . . But I can said Lardis grimly. You dreamed what was in your blood Vladi: dreams out of time a time when the fires of your forebears called the Wamphyri to the feast. A time such as I ve spoken of when they came in the night and sniffed out the camps of the Szgany in Sunside. And your shivering people They huddled together because they knew the meaning of that bonfire. It was a signal fire to light the way for the Ferenc for this great boyar of yours calling him to the tithe to his blood tribute But But that was in your dreams Lardis continued while in your waking hours you fretted over it and wouldn t allow the setting of any fires in your camp So there s hope for you yet old king. You know what s right and what s wrong even if your ancestors didn t. Do you think so Vladi s eyes were pleading now. But Lardis only nodded and said Get on with your story. And after a moment s pause: Nothing more to tell Vladi shrugged apologetically. My dreams got worse instead of discovering the one for whom I had searched for so long my no longer trustworthy old beak had led me into the presence of something bad something evil. That was when I decided to break camp and return to the mainland. And as we left that place 1 never once looked back. At the ferry Maria was waiting. But she was changed. And the rest you know: that business at the mainland hospital when she begged to be allowed to go with us and we took her without permission . . . the newspaper men . . . the police . . . those sweet Sisters of Mercy . . . babl My camp was like a busy crossroads in the middle of some vast and sprawling city Well not that bad but bad enough. So that by the time I saw you Lardis of the Lidescis in the forest at Eleshnitsa I d had all I could take of outsiders. I mention that now by way . . . by way of an apology. No need said Lardis with a shake of his head. I think that you ve acquitted yourself King Vladi. And now all that we need said Liz is the name of that island. It was Krassos said the other. And if that s where you are headed then good luck to you. But file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 101 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt as for myself Your wandering days are over said the precog. I can see your future very clearly old king. From here you ll return to your people in the forests where you will spend a good many years yet before your time is up. As for the strange places he shook his head they won t call to you any longer. I believe you said Vladi. And since I m the last of my line what little of my bad blood still remains in my people is so diluted that I know there can never be another old beak like mine. As for the Ferenc: I know the truth now. His ways are not ours and I have been an old fool. Now I ll make sure he s forgotten and that no man goes in search of him again. But don t you understand said Lardis frowning. Didn t I make myself clear when I told you that there is no Ferenc At which the old man gazed at him steadily and for several long moments before answering I wish you were correct Lardis Lidesci but I fear that you are mistaken. There is just such a one. Perhaps the last of his kind I can t say but he is still there. Somewhere on the shores of the Middle Sea in the cities of men he s there. I didn t find him for all my wandering no it s true. But I fancy that s because he hasn t found himself. Hasn t found himself Lardis s frown deepened furrowing his brow. What can you mean Perhaps he s biding his time said Vladi not yet ready to reveal himself. If so then he ll be too late I m done with him now. And when I m gone mine won t know him. No for I ll do my best to dismantle at least one false legend before I die. Your vow said Lardis realizing that whatever the Gypsy king believed it could make little or no difference now. And: Aye said Vladi. My Szgany vow LONDON . . . BAGHERIA CASTELLANO S STORY Luigi Castellano s villa on Sicily s Tyrrhennian coast in the district of Bagh eria one of his several Mediterranean villas or more properly bases of operation was a two storey affair of numerous externally louvered windows all of them closed a walled balcony that enclosed the upper structure and variously angled steeply sloping roofs of fish scale tiles in a dark red terra cotta. A gravel drive wound from ornate iron gates set in high stone walls through an ancient olive grove of grotesquely twisted trees to a dusty parking area in front of the villa. Once the seat of an olive oil empire the place had always been sumptuously appointed but never more so than now. During the more than thirty years since the deaths or disappearances of Castellano s uncles at which time he d bought the villa out of what was rumoured to have been an enormous inheritance not one of the many business associates the handful of visitors and even fewer guests who had entered the place past the cordon of armed soldiers on the gates and in the grounds had failed to be impressed by Castellano s ever expanding magpie collection of objets d art. In one of the ground floor rooms a large gloomy heavily draped yet fabulously rich room in fact Castellano s study in this his principal dwelling the walls with their old masters and antique tapestries the shelved alcoves with rank upon rank of gilded statuettes and ivory miniatures the display cabinets and tables strewn with every conceivable kind of jewelled bric a brac everything offered mute testimony to the obsession of a dedicated collector. But on a more businesslike desk in that same room a desk free of priceless clutter the repetitive softly insistent purr of a telephone had been sounding for several long seconds before Castellano s right hand man a lieutenant of very long standing hurried in through an arched doorway to answer it. At the same time coming from his bedroom behind an iron banded second i i L t K u door Luigi Castellano himself queried Who the bell is it and why did you let it go on ringing for so long He voiced his question in an angry rumbling growl but yet in an accent that affected a cultured tone. Damn it all Garzia You ve let it wake me up Fastening the belt of his flame red dressing gown he came to a halt in the central area of the room and stood glaring at his lieutenant where he in turn stood by the desk. Castellano was tall slim and forward leaning . . . but at such an odd angle that he gave the impression of being about to reach out for something with his spindly arms and long fingered file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 102 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt hands. Judging by his looks he would be aged somewhere between his mid thirties and early forties while in fact he was almost ninety. His shining night black hair was brushed back to cover the tips of long ears where they lay flat to his head his nose was broad and flat in a face that was long and slender to match his frame. Yet with his dark sunken eyes which at a certain angle flared a luminous almost feral yellow and despite his pallor and the weirdly alien design of his form and features in general still he was possessed of a strange attraction. I was in the grounds Garzia answered reasonably. I was reminding the men that we re expecting a visitor our Russian contact and warning them to treat him with respect. . . well for now at least. Having acquitted himself he spoke into the telephone inquiring Yes And in the next moment It s for you Luigi. Alfonso Lefranc calling you from London. Alfonso Castellano grunted. Huh Not before time and yet at the wrong time too Doesn t that idiot Lefranc know any better than to disturb me at this time of day At the desk he seated himself in an armchair before accepting and speaking into the telephone. Alfonso I d almost given up on you. This has to be very important that you d call me at this time of day. I take it you have what I wanted But please be very careful how you answer. That last wasn t any kind of threat although in different circumstances it might have been: if for instance Lefranc had not got what Castellano wanted but simply a reminder: that in the technologically advanced twenty first century no man could ever be sure that his telephone conversations were 100 percent secure. And Luigi Castellano as the head of a small but expanding international illicit drugs empire just couldn t afford to take that kind of chance. In London it was 2:45 P.M. Alfonso Lefranc was in a hooded booth on Victoria railway station. About five foot five thin and shifty eyed with badly pockmarked features and a twitchily nervous disposition he had a certain animal aura about him . . . that of a small bad tempered and generally unpleasant rodent. A human rat yes or if not for his awkward seemingly uncoordinated movements perhaps a weasel. Some might say it went with his job the dirty work that Lefranc had used to do for the Surete and Belgian drug squads as a nark and informer on the gangland activities of his former underworld friends work at which he d excelled until they d asked him to look into the affairs of one Luigi Castellano. But where a majority of the European law enforcers were straight a handful were on the take in Castellano s pocket and he always paid well for inside information. The informer had been informed upon and word of Lefranc s snooping had found its way back to Castellano . . . They had picked him up in Marseilles which would have been the end of him if Castellano hadn t recognized his talent. What Alfonso Lefranc had done for the police he could now do for his new boss Castellano himself. The pay would be good better by far than the piddling handouts he d seen from any of his former employers and the side benefits would be even better: Life on the French and Italian Rivieras in the casinos and on the yachts. Quality clothing the best booze good food and bad women. Castellano made him an offer he couldn t refuse: work for him and live the good life or stop living stop dead . . . period. They had been on one of the mob s yachts at the time and Lefranc had been shown what could happen to anyone who crossed the Sicilian dealer. The trip had taken the form of a party a really wild ride with plenty of Bollinger in buckets of ice designer drugs on silver trays and young girls strewn like so much confetti all over the place to celebrate a declaration of peace between Castellano and a notorious French competitor. Frenchie Fontaine had a couple of minders with him as always but the atmosphere on deck was so friendly that it wasn t long before the hard men succumbed to the wine and to a trio of sirens both retiring with the latter to a stateroom. Their wine was drugged they never fully recovered they had to be half carried back on deck after all the other guests except Frenchie had been sent below. But Lefranc had been told to stay and watch as Castellano cut the throats of the minders and his men wrapped their bodies in lead weights before pushing them overboard. By that time Frenchie restrained by the Sicilian s men had been complaining fairly volubly so they d taken turns at coshing him in the mouth to shut him up. And finally it had been time to say a fond farewell when Castellano had thrown back a tarpaulin to display a heavy steel locker. Frenchie all bloodied in his face and spitting teeth hadn t looked as if he really believed it but he d believed it enough to start fighting again when Castellano s men went to cram him in the locker This time apparently pissed at Frenchie s very determined efforts to stay alive they d worked on his elbows knees ribs and spine literally immobilizing him until all he could do for the moment file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 103 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt was writhe about on the deck like a crippled snake. Then into the locker his metal coffin and all the while the drugs boss Luigi Castellano talking to Frenchie explaining things to him even as he slammed the door shut with two of his men standing on it to get it to stay shut against the frenzied kicking and hammering and cursing from within. And the Sicilian tut tutting to himself as he attached a padlock before continuing to explain that this wasn t personal but business pure and simple that there J wasn t room enough for both men on the drugs scene but that there was plenty of room for Frenchie lots of it at the bottom of the ocean maybe two hundred metres down midway between Marseilles and Perpignan Then the splash as the locker landed flat on the dead calm sea bobbing there a while and settling before slowly turning upright like a wetly lolling tombstone half out of the water and gradually sinking as the sea found a way in. By then all the kicking hammering and head butting had quietened to a dull thumping an invisible squirming and heaving and a muted shrieking that was sensed or imagined rather than heard that only served to set the locker bobbing to and fro sinking that much faster as Frenchie s weight shifted with his spasms. And standing at the rail in the shade of the deck s black and gold striped canopy where they rode at anchor shielding his head from the Mediterranean sun under a broad brimmed hat and his eager eyes behind the dark glasses that had become his trademark whenever he went out in daylight Luigi Castellano had adopted that familiar avid forwards leaning stance with his knuckles white and his hands like claws where they gripped the rail. And there he d stayed as the locker slid from view until the last few bubbles had risen to the surface . . . By then Castellano s men had been swabbing down the deck and one of them the torpedo Francesco Frankie Reggio had even popped a champagne cork and was sluicing telltale crimson slop overboard with fifty francs a flute bubbly. That was when their boss had straightened up backing away from the rail as a fickle current began to drift the yacht more surely into the sunlight. And as if noticing Lefranc for the first time Castellano had said: So there you have it Alfonso. It s as easy as that. I can use you but I certainly wouldn t miss you if you turned me down. So you ll either work for me ... or you won t. What s it to be At which Lefranc had asked him how soon he could start. . . Well Castellano s growing impatience was clearly evident in his sharp tone of voice which brought Lefranc back to earth and to the present the here and now with a jolt. Have you got something for me or haven t you You got me out of my bed Alfonso and I m sure there must be a very good reason why I m standing here in my dressing gown talking to a fucking idiot other than that you like the sound of my voice that is I ve got something for you yes the other gasped. I ve got it but you re not going to like it Luigi. Not at all. Where are you Having noted the fear in his man s voice the drugs boss sat up straighter. It could only be that Lefranc really was afraid to tell him something he didn t want to hear. But since that was his job he had no choice. I m in London Lefranc answered. The railway station at Victoria which has to be the next best thing to a secure line. No one s ever likely to eavesdrop a telephone conversation from a railway station Like you know all those calls from guys to their women telling them their train s been delayed so they ll be late getting in I mean who s going to give a shit Anyway I always call in from this kind of place: public telephones in airports and railway stations and like that. But hey you know I wouldn t take any chances Luigi Not with security. Not with your security And if you re being watched followed But I m not. And despite that his boss couldn t see him Lefranc gave a nervous shake of his head. And even if I was even if some guy had an amplifier on me what could he hear in a place like this To illustrate his point he held the phone outside the shielding hood where an intercity diesel was roaring and jetting gasses making the air shimmer and the platform vibrate as the driver checked out his huge engines. Very well said Castellano grudgingly after the racket in his receiver had subsided. So what is it you ve found out Do you know who those people were what they were doing in Australia and why Jake Cutter was with them Er all of that stuff Lefranc answered apprehensively. Well no not everything not really. But other stuff hell yes And this is ... I mean it s something really big Luigi It s just that I m trying to find the best place to start. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 104 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt How about starting at the beginning Castellano growled. In Brisbane maybe Right said Lefranc. Brisbane sure after you said I should follow them and find out about them. No problem I was on the next plane out. . . . . . I d managed to get their names off their luggage tags at Brisbane airport but I had to be careful because that Jake Cutter guy might have recognized me. And like you know what I mean me and you we re the only ones left right Lefranc was talking about Cutter s vendetta and the fact that of the five people who had been involved with the Russian girl that night only he himself and his boss remained alive. But when Castellano made no reply he continued with his story: Anyway when I got into Heathrow I asked at the Quantas desk about these people I was supposed to be meeting: this guy called Trask a Chinese guy called Chung and a girl called Liz Merrick. Naturally they told me these people had come in on the earlier flight which of course I already knew. But when I said no way that wasn t right and after I d made out like I was pissed about it they showed me the printout from the Skyskip s passenger list. Their names were there of course and I took a good long look and committed this Chung s address to memory. It was easy. Then all I had to do was explain to the people on the desk that I d obviously made a bad mistake apologize and get the hell out of there . . . Pretty smart eh Get on with it said Castellano. Anyway Lefranc quickly went on this Chung has a place in central London so I went after him. It took a little time but eventually I tracked him down followed him to a hotel in the middle of the city. And the rest of that crowd were there. Again it took a while but if I stood around long enough which I was obliged to do they were in and out of there regular as bees at a hive. Which includes this Jake Cutter who is supposed to be on all the most wanted lists right across Europe But this was I don t know a very weird scene Luigi. Weird as shit. They were using the hotel s back entrance these people but they were the only ones who used it Like you know maybe it belonged to them And that wasn t all cause while they seemed to have the run of the place this big expensive hotel none of them was registered there I know because I phoned the desk and checked it out. This Cutter Trask Chung and all the others: they don t have rooms in that hotel. Like weird right I mean how do you figure it Luigi Lefranc s pause was deliberate so that it might even seem he was playing some kind of guessing game with his boss but in fact he only desired to break the other s silence to know that he was being heard to be told that he was doing okay and just to be able to converse with this fucking Sicilian like . . . like another human being and not as if he were a piece of shit But while Alfonso Lefranc was human or perhaps subhuman Castellano wasn t like any other man he d ever known and sometimes he seemed anything but human Like the time on that yacht for instance which Lefranc still night mared about and like right now as the silence between the two lengthened extending itself and growing ever more deafening. So that Lefranc gave a massive start when at last Castellano s warning growl sounded from the phone: Alfomoooo... . I m getting to it I m getting to it Lefranc babbled as he suddenly realized that in the other s eyes he was indeed just such a piece of shit and nothing more. But his nerves were really jumping now it was always the same when he had to speak to Castellano there was no pleasing the guy who simply didn t appreciate all the hours of hard work that people put in on his behalf. But Christ it had been a mistake to task the bastard s patience like that And an even bigger one to keep on doing it So that finally with a deal of twitching and jerking Lefranc continued with his report. Luigi this hotel has seven floors. Stand outside and you can count em. But the room numbers only go up to six four two. As for the rear entrance and the elevator in back of the place: that really does belong to them So it doesn t take a genius to figure out where they are right The only place where they can be They re up there on the top floor sure Okay so that s where they are but it still doesn t tell us who they are or what they re doing and obviously I couldn t just phone the place and ask what was going on up there. And I certainly wasn t about to go barging in there myself and like make a target of myself for this Jake Cutter. Which meant I had to get a man inside. Well I ll cut a long story short Thank goodness for that said Castellano sneeringly. And get right to it Lefranc went on. I paid a guy to go in spend a couple of nights at my file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 105 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt expense do some cautious snooping and find out what he could. This is how it turns out: The top floor isn t a part of the hotel as such it s the HQ or offices of a bunch of international entrepreneurs what the hell ever that s supposed to mean Also my snoop found out that they sometimes eat in the restaurant on the third floor. So a couple of days ago I finally had to move in. I mean I had to you ll see why in a minute but I was careful and got a room on the first floor. And before I let my snoop go I had him plant a bug where these people eat in the restaurant. That was why I had to be in the hotel. See I was obliged to use whatever equipment I could get hold of I didn t want to buy expensive quality stuff in case somebody got curious about what I was doing. But like with the cheap stuff. . . hey I was just a guy checking out his two timing wife right But because it was cheap stuff it didn t have too much range. So that s me in the hotel. . . And talk about after dinner speakers: Luigi I heard some weird shit coming out of that restaurant This outfit these er international entrepreneurs: they call themselves E Branch and are they connected . I heard some talk about a Minister Responsible like maybe a government minister And the way they speak is really something else it s almost a foreign language. English but coded. So okay foreign languages are a hobby of mine. Italian Russian English you name it these are things I m good at. But codes are something else. And these people . . . sometimes it s like they re speaking in some kind of fucking cipher Stuff about precogs locators espers and telepaths and like that. Weird conversations I could only just go with about extraps and GCHQ gadgets and ghosts and some kind of ongoing search for a trio of invaders: three guys called Vavara Malinari and something that sounds like er Schwarz Kraut maybe And Greek and Italian So if that s not international tell me what is Sure I know what a telepath is and this GCHQ s a part of the British security setup right But as for this other stuff. . . it s all a mystery to me Anyway the leader of these people is this Ben Trask but the others Chung Liz Merrick and two other guys called lan Goodly and Lardis Lidesci they all seem to be pretty high up in the rankings. And there are plenty of others. I mean I must have watched two dozen different types male and female in and out of that hotel s rear entrance. But no rolled umbrellas pinstripes or bowler hats. Just normal everyday ordinary looking people if you can believe that. And that s about it Luigi. I m all done. No wait there was just one other thing. It s about these three invaders. When these E Branch types talked about them they grouped them under one funny sounding name. It was ... it was . . . Well said Castellano his voice not so much threatening now as keenly interested even fascinated. Shit I ll remember it in a minute said Lefranc. But I have it on tape anyway which I ll be bringing back with me as soon as I can get out of here. Er Luigi Which might not be for quite some time said Castellano after a moment s thoughtful silence. Because what you ve told me is ... very interesting Alfonso. It s possible you may have stumbled upon something of great importance. As for Jake Cutter ... at first I thought he was just how does one say it an innocent bystander Someone who got in my way and had to be put aside I d never thought of him as anything more than that not until you saw him with those people in Australia. But now . . . Yeah Now I see him as something very different. Castellano s voice was deep and dark now. I think it s possible I don t know how but I think it s possible Jake Cutter knows things that I would dearly love to know. Suddenly he is very important to me and not alone because he s killed off some of my top men and may even be trying to kill me. No it s why he s done these things and why he continues to do them despite that he must know his life is in jeopardy that interests me. Er because of the girl right Lefranc was baffled. His understanding was that it was a vendetta pure and simple. Wrong said Castellano his voice deeper yet. Cutter is working for someone some cause: this E Branch as it now seems. But I fancy they re no simple policemen these people who would appear licensed to take the law into their own hands or ignore it entirely. And Jake Cutter is no simple law officer . . . Lefranc waited said nothing and in another moment it was back to business as his master continued in a more normal less intense manner: Stay on it Alfonso. You ve done well and I m not displeased with your efforts so far. But I m sure there s a lot more to be learned about these people. So you ll stay right where you are. If you need money it s not a problem as of now you file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 106 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt have full access to the London account. But I want results. Stay in daily contact any time of the day or night but use Garzia s number not this one. Garzia will pass on whatever you tell him to me. And above all else be careful and remember: if you should ever be caught and questioned the last thing you ll ever say the last word you ll speak is my name. Because it really would be the last thing ever . . . Sure Luigi. Don t worry about it Lefranc answered the corner of his mouth twitching uncontrollably where he stood in his domed booth on Victoria station. But Castellano didn t hear him because he had already put his receiver down. And then Lefranc remembered that group name he d been searching his memory for. And: Wamphyri he told himself now that it was too late to tell anyone else. Shit yeah that was it: Wamphyri The intercity diesel had long since departed the platform and the Gatwick Express had just pulled in bringing passengers from the airport into the city. Hanging up the phone and exiting from under the dome s privacy Lefranc scarcely noticed two cowled nuns making their way along the platform toward the taxi rank he had enough on his mind already. And as for the nuns: unseen in the shade of their cowls their eyes shone with a luminosity created of a dedication to something other than their order indeed to a new or entirely different order of being that was anything but holy And they had more than enough on their minds to ever notice someone like Alfonso Lefranc . . . Luigi do you think we can talk . . . In the villa at Bagheria Garzia Nicosia stood by the desk of his once friend and now his master or as Garzia preferred to consider their relationship his mentor the vampire Luigi Castellano and patiently waited on his reply. Tall broad shouldered and as straight as a rod Nicosia was an imposing figure in his own right. Despite his pale features he was as dark and brooding in his mind as the history of his country. Sicilian in both looks and nature he was entirely loyal to Castellano and a deadly enemy to his master s enemies. He was indeed in thrall to Castellano which meant that his loyalty was based principally on his awe of the other on that and on a basic understanding of his powers and a promise more than fifty years old that one day he would share those powers. Unlike Lefranc Nicosia would never dream of playing word games with Castellano he knew from past experience that in any conversation with this man one listened and learned and where applicable obeyed asked only the most relevant of questions and other than that made no attempt to discuss redirect or in any way impress oneself upon the flow of Castellano s words and thoughts. Also while commonsense suggestions might on occasion be sought accepted and even appreciated opinions were out of the question. As Castellano himself had once remarked: I ve found that personal opinions are generally slanted in the direction of personal advantage. Since I only ever concern myself with opinions which tend to my advantage namely my opinions I m obliged to view those of others with some suspicion. Often as not I ve discovered them to be the devices of ambitious men. And I can t abide men with ambitions beyond their station . . . Which basically was the reason why Castellano last in an ancient line of men and monsters rarely actually conversed at all. Rather he expressed himself and made known his wishes and generally shaped his future by directing the actions of others and to interfere with his thought processes was to distract and anger him. Garzia Nicosia his companion since boyhood was one of only a handful of men who had ever been able to speak to his master his friend his mentor on something of a level playing field. Even so it was a field with many pitfalls and one must always be careful where one stepped. . . Castellano remained seated in his armchair he leaned forwards with his left elbow on the desk a long fingered left hand supporting and fingering his U t f I L t K b chin. His thoughtful gaze lay upon the telephone silent now in its cradle. But after several long brooding moments sensing Nicosia s eyes upon him and finally acknowledging his statement which had also been a request he stirred and looked up. Then fixing the other s feral eyes with his own burning gaze he nodded and said: I think perhaps you are right: it s time we talked. Years ago ah but how many years eh Garzia I promised you an answer to a certain question indeed to many questions despite that I myself didn t know all of the answers. I was vain enough to believe that in the fullness of time I would learn the greatest mysteries of this thing and eventually come to understand its mechanics. And so I have come to understand . . . some of it and to know some of file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 107 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt the answers. But tell me Garzia do you still remember the questions Of course said Nicosia. They were how and why and to what end What of tomorrow And will it be forever These were a few of them which both of us asked if memory serves and time would seem to have answered at least one or two. Such as said Castellano. The how for one said the other. How do we go on down all the years while others die and crumble to dust Well quite obviously the blood is the life. In drinking the blood the lives of so many others we have prolonged our own. But as for eternity . . . You doubt that what we have is forever Forever is ... it s a very long time Nicosia could only offer a shrug. It means tomorrows without end. But knowing you the way I do and having known you all these years I sense an uncertainty in you that wasn t there before. It s as if even the soonest of those tomorrows the one following today is now indefinite. Oh it will definitely arrive we can be certain of that. . . but can we be sure that we ll be a part of it Castellano stood up stretched strode out from behind his desk. If some other had said what you have said he answered I would take it hard and perhaps consider it wishful thinking. For it would hint of a future in which I had no part. It would at least hint of such a possibility. But you are not any other Garzia. You re my man whom I caused to be like myself. And I m sure that life or undeath burns as fiercely in your veins as it does in mine. You might now don t deny it Garzia for I know I m not the easiest person to live with you might in certain circumstances wish me dead but never yourself And of course if I were to die then in all likelihood you would be following fast on my heels. Following me to hell as it were. Well if we were believers. Garzia said nothing but simply watched the other pace the floor to and fro. But the fact is Castellano continued that you do know me well far better than anyone else and what you have sensed in me does your perceptions credit. Uncertainty you said and you are not mistaken . . . And when Nicosia remained silent: Have I ever told you my story Castellano stopped pacing halting in the middle of the floor. Well of course I have A half dozen times or more over the years. But only to you Garzia because you are my one confidant: my blood brother eh And he chuckled in a rumbling deep throated fashion. Ah but if I can t trust you then who can I trust My blood is yours and yours mine and if men were ever to discover us for what we are he was sober again in a moment your fate would surely be the same as mine. You know you can trust me said the other. And not only because of what we are now but what we have always been. Foundlings as infants we were inseparable friends as boys. When our guardian took us to the USA in 1930 we were innocent children. Then as we grew to youths the war loomed. Having found our way into the Mafia we avoided the conflict returned to Sicily and brought back something of the American dream with us. Except by then it was our dream or more properly yours: a dream of great power wealth even of empire. What happened between us ... was an accident which brought about a change in both of us. But in you that change was ... it was profound a fathomless thing A taste of blood yes Castellano nodded. Which was all it took. My only true friend s blood your blood Garzia. And indeed my change was profound. But go on tell it as you remember it. We went to a powerful don in Palermo said Nicosia. Don Carlo Alcamo he was to be our patron and ease our way into the Sicilian brotherhood. But Don Carlo refused us The war was on we must keep our heads down the Mafia would pull in its horns shrink down into itself for the time being at least and Don Carlo wasn t about to enlist any would be young bloods untried soldiers such as you and I. How very true Castellano nodded. Our blood was untried at that time. Yet mine burned like a fire it leaped in my veins until I could no longer contain it I was twenty two years old already a whole year past manhood which to others of the time was the age of consent to me the age of ascent for the fire in my blood demanded that I rise up Yet this old man this Don Carlo he would hold me down. As if I were a child. And Nicosia took it up again. After the American invasion you were a passenger on the back of the first tank into Palermo from the south. You pointed out possible pockets of resistance which of course included Don Carlo s place. On your advice they blew it to hell and him with it I became a hero to our liberators Castellano chuckled again. I was an untouchable at least as long as the Americans held the island which would be for quite some time. Of course the other dons knew who had brought down Don Carlo Alcamo. They knew but could do nothing about it. I or perhaps I should say we we were feted at the American bases as fifth column heroes of the Sicilian Resistance It gave us a taste of power. We ran the black market and took control of file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 108 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt prostitution. With all the American troops that were on the island both lines proved very profitable. So that despite the gradual resurgence of the dons we were very much in. And from that time forward they weren t ever able to put us out again. Until finally they accepted us. Now all the Old Guard are dead and gone Nicosia carried it on while 193 the new have forgotten or weren t ever aware that we were that we are those same young bloods from seventy years ago . . . All of which is our story said Castellano. But mine is still untold. Not from its beginning. Perhaps you would like to hear it again Refresh my memory by all means said Nicosia. It s a story that has always fascinated me. As it should said Castellano. For after all it s your origin too . . . And in a while he continued: Foundlings you said which in your case was true enough. Found on a doorstep wrapped in a torn blanket on a cold winter night in Nicosia the Sicilian village from which you took your name: you were a foundling Garzia yes. But as for myself the story is somewhat different. I wasn t a foundling as such wasn t left to my fate on a doorstep by some peasant woman who littered me out of wedlock under an olive tree or in some goatherd s barn no but I will admit that I too was a bastard and I know some would have it that I ve been one ever since Well however that may be there was no cold doorstep in my history. My mother was a girl from a family once of high standing though of diminished means at the time of my birth. Later I would meet and even get to know her and then she would try to explain why I d been abandoned or rather why she had been obliged to give me secretly into the care of relatives in Nicosia where you and I met and grew up together. But where you took the town s name I had my own. I was a Castellano from the beginning even though I wasn t For if I d been given my father s name then it would have been something else entirely. The story put about was that I was the orphaned infant of a Genovese line of Castellanos my father had died in a hunting accident in Italy and my mother in childbirth in giving birth to me. My only living relatives were the Sicilian widow and her simpleminded but harmless son who had taken me in. In fact the widow was my grandmother and the simpleton my uncle though he never knew it. The story which my aunt my grandmother and my mother had concocted was their way of protecting not only me but my mother too But from what What was the true story eh Well my mother was a true Castellano which gave my name some legitimacy at least. Her name was Katerin and she had gone into service as a young girl. A servant girl yes in the house of her masters in the Madonie: in fact Le Manse Madonie in the high mountains forty miles east of here. And I was the child of those masters those two men those respected brothers in their high house perched like an eagle s aerie on the very edge of a chasm. And where better for such as them to dwell eh For they were both great birds of prey those Francezcis. But surely I couldn t be the child of both No of course not. But such had been the way of it that my mother wasn t able to differentiate They had both had her from time to time and whenever it took their fancy. Anthony and Francesco: I could be the son of either one So then why hadn t she tried to escape to run away from Le Manse NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS Madonie long ago And why didn t she even now to care for me where I was hidden away Ah but my mother was in thrall to the Francezcis no less than you are to me Garzia and perhaps even more so. For unlike our relationship the fact that we are well friends or as close as our natures will allow she loathed the brothers yet at the same time was drawn to them irresistibly like a moth to the flame But she hated to leave me alone and motherless too at the close of each fleeting visit when the brothers were away on business and she could come to see me. That was in the early years. Later the Francezcis only rarely left Le Manse Madonie together and my mother s visits became fewer and fewer . . . I mentioned relationships. They are all we can ever know Garzia such as we are. Relationships yes. But were we ever in love Did we ever have girls to make our hearts beat faster or to break them with their fickle ways Well and perhaps we were in love now and then as young men in America. But never since then. Or rather never since the accident as you are wont to call it. But that was no accident Garzia it had been bound to happen sooner or later to me if not to you. That was the only accident: that it was you . . . But I ve drifted from my story. Let me get back to it: When I was old enough to understand her whispered words but not yet old enough to understand their meaning my mother told me things. Or rather she would say things to me which at the time made file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 109 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt little sense. She spoke of blood: of some frightful thing in my father s blood in all the Francezci blood which might also be in mine. She talked about vast treasures at Le Manse Madonie and of cellars filled with a king s ransom. I should be heir to all such treasures she said but at the same time she was concerned that I was heir to something else. And I could often feel her eyes upon me those wide hag ridden eyes as if she were fearful of finding some strange taint or sprawling cancer in me. Of course I understand all such things now but at the time . . . what was I but a child Her masters the Francezcis were ageless my mother said. They were their own fathers . . . they were even their own grandfathers Now I ask you Garzia what was a child of five or six tender years to make of that And despite that they had powers and for all their wealth and servants and great house Le Manse Madonie still they were afraid of the sunlight And so saying as if to prove or disprove some lunatic theory she would even drag me into the light Well not so mad after all as it turns out. But fifteen years to go before the sun would begin seething on my flesh . . . And I must watch myself very carefully she said and be ever on my guard to ensure my goodness and worthiness so that I would make a benevolent man pure in my thoughts and humane in my heart. At least I thought that she said humane but she may simply have meant human. And time and time over she warned me not to look too far ahead but to leave the future well alone. I remember she said that to me to a mere child who never in all his waking hours looked beyond tomorrow or the day after 195 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS 194 BRIAN LUMLEY that as if somehow I might think to hatch some kind of plan against the future Not in my waking hours no. Yet in my dreams ... ah but they were something else I dreamed of my own business I saw myself as the head of a demolition and construction company right here in Sicily. But I was too young as yet to even understand my dreams This thing of mine my ability to see into the future in dreams it has a name it s called oneiromancy. My mother mentioned it by name one time and said That is where they get their power: from a living monster in a pit in Le Manse Madonie a Thing that looks afar even into the future. It he the Thing is oneiromantic and the Francezcis are of its blood. And you Luigi . . . you are of their blood . . . and when she said things like that to me my mother would shudder . . . I dreamed of us Garzia you and I and our coming adventures in America. It was no great surprise to me when my aunt died and my babbling uncle was taken into care and your guardian adopted me and took both of us with him to America to seek a better future. No for I had already seen what my future was to be. Something of it anyway. But while my dreams invariably came to pass I could never say how they would come about. For example: in recurrent nightmares that used to bring me screaming awake I dreamed of blood But I never told anyone what was in those dreams not my aunt or her babbling son and most definitely not my mother no For even as a child as yet only slightly precocious I was somehow aware that if she knew for certain what was in me and what was making its presence felt even then it would not have gone well with me. Poor woman I m sure that she would have killed me out of hand in the belief that she was doing me a favour. But while I suspected that I was different I could never in a hundred years have guessed how different eh Dreams of blood yes. Blood to drown in like a river in flood. Dreams of myself awash in blood red rich slippery blood which covered me head to toe Obviously I was bleeding to death I actually felt close to death in those dreams That was why I would come screaming awake in the dead of night. How was I to know that it wasn t my blood Garzia and that it wasn t death but life . . . In America I dreamed of excavating treasures out of the earth of my homeland. But the earth was bloody as if my sharp and shining spade was biting through the bodies of people And there I stood under frowning cliffs in a vast chasm or quarry ankle deep in earth and gore with the shrill voices of all of these buried people shrieking at me cursing me for disturbing their unquiet graves. But mainly they cursed my forebears for putting them down there in the first place. And that too was prophetic speaking not alone of what had been but also of what would be. In file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 110 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt short it would come to pass. For if not precisely as I had dreamed it still the vast treasures that the Francezcis had salted away would be brought up again by me: Luigi Castellano by name but a Francezci by birth and by blood And indeed those great treasures have been and are being brought up even now. If proof should be required only look about this study . . . Also in America where now we were youths I dreamed of a great war and saw its waves washing over Sicily. And knowing it was time we came home I convinced you that our place was here. We returned and the war came it brought with it our so called allies the Axis troops and finally the Seventh Army and our American liberators. As for the rest of the story our story from here on it becomes far easier to relate. Except Garzia we ve still not dealt with the accident as you have always preferred to call it. Perhaps you would like to tell that part Garzia nodded. The part I remember best yes. After two thirds of a century many events seem to flow together and get distorted by time. But that event has always remained clear in my mind. It was like this: The war was over and you had built up your construction company out of our profits from the American occupation forces and from other ventures. Many of our towns and cities had been battered. In Catania Palermo Messina and many other places ruins sprawled in every direction. Terrible for some but work for us. Castellano s Construction Company grew rich from demolition work alone without that we ever constructed a single building But in Palermo a new don was coming into prominence: Don Pietro Al camo son of Carlo And Don Carlo s death three years earlier had been your responsibility. Pietro was well aware of that and despite that we were now accepted by the rest of the Mafia heads for whom the construction company was supplying a legitimate money laundering outlet converting the profits of more orthodox mob businesses such as extortion prostitution and the postwar black market into readily available funds still Pietro vowed to avenge his father s death. One night in Palermo after we d eaten and as we made our way back to the car he struck the upstart Pietro and three of his soldiers. They were waiting in ambush in a dark bombed out alleyway. But having learned this part of our business in America we were scarcely strangers to it and moreover the night was always our friend . . . and more especially yours. You sensed them there Luigi What is more you had seen it coming your strange dreams had forecast something of how it would go down. We foiled the attack their knives pistols and garottes stood no chance against the sawn off shotguns that we carried under our American army greatcoats But in fact this was the first time that we had actually killed with our own hands. Oh we had been involved in our fair share of gangland wars and murders in America and we d ordered punishments or corrections here in Sicily which sometimes went wrong and resulted in death but we ourselves ... we had kept our hands clean until that night. And you had always managed to contain or hold at bay whatever it was in your ancestry in that tainted Francezci blood of yours that your poor mother had so often tried to warn you about. . . Until that night yessssl Castellano hissed for he was no longer able to 197 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS 196 RIAN LUMLEY resist taking the story up again. But you ve made it sound so much easier than it was Garzia. To think that someone or ones who were destined to live as long as you and I possibly forever immortal should have come so close to death Today . . . why even the idea of such a threat infuriates me. But of course we didn t know Until that night when two of Pietro Alcamo s bullets found their way to you. The one shattered your left knee while its twin passed right through your neck and very nearly severed an artery. It did puncture the arterial wall however so that by the time I got you to the car you had lost a lot of blood. Indeed I had your blood all over me I was scarlet from its drench Yet while I despaired for you Garzia I exulted in the knowledge that Pietro Alcamo and his men were lying in that alleyway all crumpled and bloodied and dead. For when they had fallen I had gone to them standing over them where they lay on the hard cobbles letting them see me while yet they were file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 111 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt able. And watching them suck air through the froth and bloody bubbles of their pain I had reloaded my double barrelled weapon fired it reloaded again and so blown their fucking heads off But what a release what a rush what a joy Ah and what a waste eh Garzia For if I d known then what I know now all of that good blood and fresh red meat. . . but there again from swine like that it would probably have choked me Instead it freed me broke the chains of my humanity. For in fact I had been shackled by my facade by the physical shell that designated me a man. And I was far more than a man. A creature of myth Well no longer. I was a reality. I was real and I existed. I had killed. There was blood on my hands and blood in my eyes it lit the night for me like a lamp I could see in the dark And I could smell my victims a hundred yards away in that alley where I d left them to rot. As I carried you to the car bore you on my back with a strength I d never before known all of these sensations came to me reinforcing yet again the knowledge that I was different. As yet I had no name for it I didn t know what to call myself but I knew that I was as different from other men as night from day. And it was your blood Garzia your blood was the final catalyst the accident that at long last gave me that name. At my place in Palermo you were more dead than alive but I knew what to do. Out of nowhere the knowledge came to me. You were my friend in those days we still spoke of such things of friendship and such and you were in need but so was l The events of the night had roused me up. At last I knew what I was missing the final piece in the puzzle that would make me complete. You bled from the bullet hole in your neck. But while the blood was pumping out of you in ugly jets matching the urgent beating of your heart I could see that the spurts were faltering and your pulse was growing weaker second by second. I felt panicked yet at the same time was filled with an overwhelming urge. I bit my lip watching you as you gradually succumbed and the taste of my own blood filled my head like roaring laughter telling me what to do And so you see it was no accident Garzia when my mouth closed on your neck to take from you and to give of myself. No accident but destiny. I knew that you wouldn t die but would be with me for long and long. And at last I knew what to call this thing that was in me which now was transfused in you. You were a vampire Garzia sighed his feral eyes aglow and his mouth falling open to display the gleam of razor teeth. I was and am just such a vampire Castellano nodded his affirmation. But I suspect that I am more than just a vampire. Your recovery took three days three short days for your wounds to heal and for you to rise up but from that day to this I have been the same as you said Garzia. Well perhaps not quite that Castellano gloomed at him but a vampire certainly. At which point footsteps sounded and in a moment a man in coarse peasant s clothing with a rifle slung on his back and a bandolier across his chest appeared in the arched entrance. Sir he said to Castellano a Russian gentleman is here to ... he s here to see ... to s see . . . But seeing the eyes of his masters fade from their feral luminosity to shiny black he stammered to a halt and stepped back a pace. Briefly then as yet not fully recovered from the passion induced by memories of his awakening Castellano leaned towards the messenger in that weirdly menacing way of his. Then he spun on his heel and told Garzia: Please see to our visitor this. . . this Russian gentleman will you Frisk him well and see him in. But Garzia make sure he enters of his own free will. 199 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS 12 DEAD SILENCE . . . NATASHA . . . DEATH OF A RUSSIAN GENTLEMAN Twenty four hours earlier in Marseilles Jake Cutter assisted by the incorporeal wraith revenant or evil essence of Korath once Mindsthrall had tried talking to the dead. Or to be more specific for the first time in his waking hours he d attempted to contact one of them the Frenchman called Jean Daniel who had been the first casualty in Jake s war with the drug dealing file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 112 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt mob boss Luigi Castellano. This is where the skinny bastard died Jake explained to Korath right here in this alley. So if I m likely to find him anywhere this place is probably my best bet. And because deadspeak frequently conveys more than is actually said Korath saw it all as it had happened in vivid if kaleidoscopic detail in Jake s mind and memory: A rainy night two and a half years ago a tall pale thin man with thinning slicked back hair leaving a bar in the wee small hours and getting into his car the door slamming . . . and Jake wincing a little where he stood in the shadows just twenty jive yards away. But no the shock or vibration of the car door being slammed hadn t been sufficient to do the job which was good because Jake wanted Jean Daniel to know what had happened and who was responsible for it. Then Jake coming into view stepping out into the middle of the shining rain slick alley as the car s headlights came blazing alive standing there with his legs slightly apart like an invitation like some gunfyhter out of the Old West as his angular figure was silhouetted in the headlight beams. But Jake was no gunslinger and the only weapon was the car itself Its wipers sluicing drizzle from the windscreen and Jean Daniel twitching jerking as he leaned forward to peer through his window down the alley at Jake. To peer at him and then to recognize him For Jake was waving at him and beginning to walk casually forward head on towards the car. A moment later: The Frenchman turning the key in the ignition . . . and Jake knowing exactly what he was thinking: that he was going to run this fucking idiot English asshole down He thought so anyway. Then Jake hitting the deck as the explosion ripped the darkness and a few glass fragments flew overhead. And Jean Daniel sitting there in the smoking car pinned to his backrest by the steel core of the steering column which the blast of three ounces of plasticjue had driven clean through his guts probably realizing but not yet fully believing that the terrible pain he felt was death. Death in the shape of Jake Cutter looking in at him through his blast shattered window. And the Frenchman s mouth falling open slopping blood as Jake reminded him of what had amounted to a challenge but one which now had been answered in full So now you know who hits the hardest... Jesus Jake groaned feeling sick dizzy disoriented where he reached out a hand and leaned against the wall of the alley. Jesus Christ I did that No good kidding myself it was just a nightmare. I actually did it that and worse. And right now I m planning to do more of it But: Most excellent said Korath. And such a fitting punishment. The rapist raped gutted on the single thrust of a most awesome iron penis. Why I believe that I myself could not have devised a more bah ironic ending for such as him. The only pity: that he didn t live long enough to repent his evil deeds. This from a vampire Jake thought. While out loud: Oh I think he s repented them he answered steadying up again. If not then by now for sure. But that still doesn t absolve me. Then frowning he wondered: So what the hell s wrong with me now Absolution I m not a Catholic . . . I m not an anything Should I really be sorry for what I ve done Should I really be asking for forgiveness Perhaps it isn t me who s asking. Maybe it s this other guy the one who left all sorts of his personal luggage in my head . . . Baki said Korath. Jake there is this weakness in you. And its name is conscience. These brutal men raped and drowned your woman and they would have drowned you. And as for Jean Daniel he would have run you down crushed you to pulp under the metal body of his vehicle. So tell me now how is it you feel ashamed that you struck him down An eye for an eye remember Shame said Jake with a shake of his head. But I m not sure it is shame. As for conscience: well it s that certainly but that s not all it is. Korath I murdered that man these men. Whether they deserved it or not I did it. Okay so I know I m not an especially religious type but until I can make life what gives me the right to take it away And that s it part of my paradox my dilemma. On the one hand I know that I had to do it and that I d do it again will do it again with your help but on the other I feel sick that I have to live with it the fact that I ll probably be having nightmares about these things for the rest of my life. But the greatest paradox is that I did these things to purge myself to cleanse my spirit of the utter hatred I felt for these bastards . . . and that now I m beginning to wonder what good it s done if I only end up hating myself 200 BRIAN LUMLEY Fortunately said the other in a little while such mixed emotions are beyond me. Indeed most file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 113 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt feelings of love pity and self doubt are beyond me. I recognize them in you because I can still vaguely remember something of them in myself: my years as a boy and a youth in Sunside until Malinari s bite freed me of all such weaknesses. Weaknesses Again Jake shook his head. I think you have it backwards. These are our strengths human strengths lacking which we d be no better than . . . . . . Than the Wamphyri Korath had seen it in his mind. But if that s true why do strong men such as Trask fear them so And as Jake searched for an answer to that: Let me try to explain things to you Korath continued and when I m done then by all means deny me if you can: Love is a thing that wears men down it bends them to the will of the object of their affection. But lust is what drives the greater beast on to satisfy his need And while compassion and sacrifice make men poor diminishing their stature in the eyes of ever watchful enemies avarice and vengefulness make them powerful so that lesser men are wary of them. And surely it must be obvious that the man who trusts no one can never be betrayed For where trust and companionship frequently lead to betrayal the very cornerstones of survival are mistrust envy jealousy and ter ritorialism. And always remember that while a good and tender heart is also tender to the taste a heart full of poison tastes only of the piss that keeps it pumping Tolerance is what lets an idle servant sleep late abed while tenor finds him at his post guarding his master s Enough said Jake. Eh Enough I m barely started And you re done. Enough of your word games. But my reasoning wasn t intended as any kind of word game I assure you Since the very beginning since Shaitan himself the Wamphyri have lived by these principles and And died by them said Jake. Don t forget Korath that it was a man a very human being that Malinari Vavara and Szwart ran away from in Star side. As for why strong men such as Ben Trask fear them: they don t fear for themselves but for the weak ones of this world the ones who do believe in such principles such rubbish as you were spouting. And that is the big difference between me and Trask. What I am doing is for myself while what he does is for all of us. You do admire him then How can I do otherwise How can anyone not admire someone whose life is dedicated to the truth And his truth has it that you are wrong. So that while for the moment we re obliged to be allies of a sort don t get carried away and think that you can sway me to your cockeyed principles. I don t want anything to do with them. And: Bravo . . . Bravo . . . Bravo It seemed a hundred deadspeak voices whispered in concert in Jake s mind. But they were faint and distant and some seemed uncertain. Only a hundred of them out of all those many millions. Because for the time being only a small minority of the Great Majority were on his side. Hah: said Korath. Do you hear them the so called teeming dead Well a handful of them anyway. It seems that your words spoken against my principles have convinced a few of them that you are not quite the menace they took you for. So let me too congratulate you Jake: bravo Huh What a pity it doesn t bring us any closer to speaking to this Jean Daniel. Jake had to admit that that was true enough. He and Korath had been here for quite a while now but as yet nothing had happened he wasn t too sure how to go about it this conversing with the dead. In fact the only thing he knew for certain was that he mustn t shout at the dead. That had never been the way of the Necroscope Harry Keogh and it wasn t going to be his. But. . . had he read about that somewhere or had he been told about it or was this knowledge just one more example of the foothold that Harry s revenant had gained on his mind But in any case and that apart: How did one go about introducing or announcing oneself Or did one simply wait until someone else opened the conversation All well and good but what if no one wanted to Jake s thoughts were deadspeak and while his shields were down Korath could read them as clearly as the spoken word. He had done so and now said: Well then perhaps we re wasting our time here after all Since you now speak so highly of Ben Trask and his people maybe we d be better off serving their purpose tracking down Malinari and his kind which incidentally has been my argument since the beginning. Let s face it Jake: this vendetta of yours is a paltry thing compared to what the people of E Branch are doing. But it s my paltry thing Jake stood up straighter as he felt his resolve firming up again or perhaps as the real Jake Cutter came more properly into his own took control of himself and file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 114 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt shook off the aura of someone else . Castellano him and one other murdering dog they are my paltry things Thanks for reminding me Korath. How does it go An eye for an eye right And what was that other thing you said Something about a good and tender heart how it will also taste tender Hey who am I to argue something as monstrous as that with a creature as monstrous as you a vampire But as for my heart: where Castellano is concerned it only pumps piss. So don t you go worrying about my weaknesses Korath once Mindsthrall. Me I m not in thrall to anything least of all my emotions. Bullshit Even as Jake said it he knew it wasn t so that in fact his emotions were in turmoil that he was fighting off someone else s emotions or what was left of them. And to cover his vulnerability with a snarl of frustration if not an actual shout he opened every deadspeak channel and said: Jean Daniel you murdering French bastard where the hell are you And: Right first time a mournful voice sounded clear in Jake s mind. I m in hell Jake Cutter where you sent me. A graveyard in Avignon the town where I was born. At least that s where my bones are. My burial was a cjuiet ceremony just a small handful of people to see me off Luigi Castellano must have hired them I reckon for I had no friends above the ground. And none below it as it now appears So there you have it that s my lot: the loneliness the darkness and the endless silence of the grave. The dead silence until I sensed you here. Startled at first and feeling the small hairs rise on the back of his neck at the weirdness of this thing Jake recovered and responded: You re getting used to it then The situation I mean Caught off guard he didn t know what else to say how to carry it forward. The what The situation Disbelief astonishment in Jean Daniel s dead voice. Used to it And Jake quickly went on At least you ve worked out some kind of mobility for yourself or you wouldn t be here. It had suddenly dawned on Jake that he and Korath were probably in the wrong place after all. If the Frenchman s grave was in Avignon that s where his spirit should be too. Yet Jake s rapidly developing metaphysical powers told him that Jean Daniel was here he could sense the other here his presence. But: Used to it the other moaned again his voice a shuddering deadspeak sob. Do sound used to it What to being dead you fucking idiot No I m not used to it. I hate it the graveyard in Avignon this place the whole fucking bit But because I died here in this lousy alley sometimes I can t help drifting back here. That bar over there it was a haunt of mine. And now I really do haunt it At least I know when I m there even if no one else does. But what s the point of being there if I m . . . if I m not there I can t see hear smell touch or taste anything I m not even a ghost as such just a thing floating in the everlasting darkness. Or rather a nothing. And even the dead ignore me. And you ask me if I m used to it Some sense of humour you ve got there you dumb English shit So now fuck off and leave me to my misery made more miserable by your presence and the knowledge that in the total lousy vacuum of this place the only one I can ever talk to is the one who put me here the lousy fucking Necroscope himself Jake Cutter Damn it to hell why couldn t you have died you and that Russian bitch both when we pushed your car over that bridge into the river But Jean Daniel s insults flew right over Jake s head the fascination of this thing was such that he scarcely heard them. He did hear himself referred to as the Necroscope however and said Is that what they call me For it still hadn t sunk in as yet he wasn t ready to accept or handle the role even if the teeming dead wished it. Which they didn t not yet. What are you deaf The Frenchman said after a moment. Are you still here What the fuck difference does it make what anyone calls you A piece of shit by any other name and all that. It s what you are Cutter. a Necroscope The Necroscope: like a maggot in the minds of the dead In my mind anyway. So get the hell away from me. Leave me alone. No longer sobbing but very much fainter now and more distant it seemed that Jean Daniel s deadspeak voice floated to Jake on a series of muted dwindling sighs from someone who was quickly drifting away from him. Wait said Jake urgently. I need to talk to you. It was like a command and Jean Daniel came drifting back. What He sounded puzzled . Are you magnetic too It s as if I felt you turning me pulling me. But a moment later. No you re not magnetic the Frenchman said. It s just your warmth that s all. As a fire draws a draft you draw the dead. Oh you re the Necroscope all right But you re not all warmth and light Jake Cutter for I can feel your dark side too. Yeah and your cold side for that matter. . . That would be Korath. And as suddenly as that Jake understood that to the Great Majority who file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 115 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt existed in the nothingness the nowhere of death Jake must seem like a lone candle in the dark the warm glow of a small flickering flame. But by the same token Korath would seem like an even greater darkness as cold as the spaces between the stars. Korath knew that too had known it from the start and so remained silent. But Jake could sense him there in the back of his mind listening intently. Doubtless the dead vampire was monitoring his progress. So best to get on with it for failure would only set Korath off again complaining about wasted time. Jean Daniel Jake said get this straight: I don t like you any more than you like me. You tried to kill me ... you did kill the woman I loved and paid for it. In my book that makes us even. But only jwsf even because while you ve moved on now beyond pain I m still hurting. Oh really said the Frenchman his deadspeak voice dripping sarcasm. Well lucky fucking me So while I am merely dead it s a whole lot worse for you because you re actually hurting right And it s my fault and I should feel had about it. Sure I can see that. So let me think it over give me a minute or so to work out a way to tell you how badly cut up I really do feel about all this okay And meanwhile CO AND FUCK YOURSELF So then Jake gritted his teeth but carried on regardless it seems dying hasn t taught you anything: in death you re the same worthless bastard that you were in life. Maybe I shouldn t be too surprised at that because that s in the rules according to Hoyle too: we are what we are and death doesn t change us. But you ve got something I need Jean Daniel and I want you to give it up. So here s the deal: talk to me tell me what I need to know and then I ll leave you in peace. Something you want eh Now the Frenchman laughed however high and shrill. So what s this the Inquisition I might have been bom in Avignon but in the twentieth not the thirteenth century Oh I know what you want Necroscope Hey while I m definitely not partying with what you d call high society down here I m not entirely out of touch either. . . know what I mean Like you ve been Quite the busy little bastard lately right And again instinctively if with someone else s instinct Jake knew what the dead man was talking about. Yeah that s right Jean Daniel s incorporeal nod. Wilhelm Willie Stuker was next on your list then Francesco Frankie Reggio. Me and both of them taken out one two three by you. Which makes it kind of obvious what you re doing and also what you want from me right Stuker said Jake. That fat slimy Kraut queer Was that his name Stuker He shook his head. I never knew him by name only by his ugly looks. Is that right the Frenchman said. Well he sure wasn t any prettier when you got through with him He told me about it... how you packed his asshole with plastitfue set a fuse and left him counting down the seconds to the big hang. I mean I didn t see mine coming hut Willie Jesus he knew about it His ass really was rass or gas whichever. . . Poor Willie We called him that Willie not because his name was Wilhelm hut on account of his twig dick. I never saw a thinner dick on a fatter guy But it wasn t just Willies willy you vaporised Necroscope. You blew his mind too He never was any too stable but during the countdown he completely lost it. Likewise Frankie Reggio: not raving mad no but pretty burned up for sure How s that for a sense of humour Not bad for a dead man eh But you know just thinking about how those guys went out it would really make my eyes water if I had any It has to be said you burned both of them pretty good. Especially Frankie. An eye for an eye Jake answered trying his best not to think about it. Since they liked it dirty those two that was how I gave it to them. You all got what you deserved. So you ve been talking to them have you Willie doesn t talk much said the other. He only gibbers. The couple times I bumped into him I didn t get much sense. He was a queer and a gutless coward in life but since physical is no longer an option there s only one of those things he can be in death. He was crazy with fear when your plastitfue ripped him apart and that s the way he s stayed. He was your colleague and you don t give a damn What My colleague said Jean Daniel. I didn t give a shit for the fat slob pervert when I was alive So why should I care now And the same goes for Frankie. I mean maybe I could use a little quality company around here but those two Castellano kept Frankie around because he scared the competition almost as much as the boss man himself. But as for Willie Stuker: I don t know why anyone would keep him around. Unless it was because he was so fucking nasty Castellano likes nasty. And Jake said See you can talk once you get going. Yeah said the other. Well I m really glad you enjoyed it because as of right now I m all talked out. Luigi Castellano is one subject I won t ever talk about dead or alive. Not to you and not to anyone else. And since there is no file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 116 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt one else except a load of dead fucks who won t have anything to do with me I guess I m safe. Jake sensed his fear and said You re scared of him Even in death And you re the one who called Stuker a coward And after a moment s silence: I don t know said Jean Daniel maybe I am still scared of him. And maybe I m not not any longer. Maybe I even hate him if only because he s still alive and I m dead. But let s face it Cutter I couldn t hate anyone as badly as I hate you. So forget it because I won t be giving you any kind of edge over Castellano. If you go up against him you re on your own. Against him and his hoys you haven t a cat in hell s chance. Even one on one no way you can win. So maybe we ll be talking again some day. In the not too distant future I hope. Worthless bastard said Jake. Maybe you picked the wrong man said Jean Daniel his deadspeak very gradually fading. I m no nark. Maybe you should have gone after Alfonso Lefranc first. Or is he next Well whatever bad luck to you Necroscope. . . Lefranc Jake frowned. He had never come across the name before and didn t know who the other was talking about. But Jean Daniel heard the thought and said: Sure you do you dumb English shit And his deadspeak automatically conjured a picture of Jake s fourth quarry the last but one of the men who had been there that terrible night in Marseilles a man he had tried to trace so far without luck. And yet suddenly Jake started as he remembered an incident at the airport in Brisbane when he had been about to board the UK bound Skyskip with Trask and his E Branch espers. For it was then he d thought to see this selfsame face staring at him through the flexiglass wall that secured the boarding area from the viewing promenade. This sallow badly pockmarked face on a small thin shifty eyed man. A weaselly man with an aura that was distinctly ro dentlike . . . he d been there one minute gone the next. At the time Jake had thought he d imagined it. Considering it a symptom of his obsession when from time to time he would see these hated faces wherever he looked even though three of them were no more dead by his hand he had simply put it out of his mind. For after all what would one of Castellano s gang be doing out in Australia His thoughts were deadspeak of course and: Not very hard to figure said the Frenchman his deadspeak growing fainter as he drifted away doubtless returning to Avignon. Castellano probably sent Lefranc out there to keep his eye on you because you were making a nuisance of yourself. Alfonso is Luigi s intelligence agent a spy the sneakiest bastard you could never wish to meet. But at the same time he s pure rat: a grass a nark an informer. I think Luigi will kill him one day even if you don t. That guy s got more mouth than a pom star s got pussy He s a liability. It s like he just can t help mouthing off. Maybe you should have taken him out first Necroscope. It s a sure thing Alfonso would have talked to you. Oh you ve talked your share said Jake. I ve got a new name to conjure with and you ve proved at least one thing that I d heard about but hadn t experienced. Such as A whisper now in the deadspeak aether. Such as how when people die they go on doing as they did in life. You re the dead proof of it Jean Daniel. You were and you still are a worthless scum bag. Fuck you Necroscooopei But all the edge the poison the vindictiveness gone now from the dead Frenchman s voice while a renewed burst of hushed sobbing replaced it rapidly tapering away into nothing. Likewise I m sure said Jake but to himself now. And then silence . . . Disappointed Jake stood alone yet not alone in the alley in Marseilles. And eventually Korath said: Your diplomacy seems somewhat lacking. Oh said Jake. Diplomacy With scum such as that Maybe you mean I m not as good at lies and word games as you are. I suppose that could be it said the other without taking offence. But all that profanity vituperation verbal abuse. . . such language came as a great surprise to me You re not always so er forthright. Me Jake protested. The way I heard it most of the badmouthing was down to him Anyway I was only answering in kind giving back as good as I got. When in Rome and all that. Among the Wampbyri Korath said invective is seldom used. Why warn an enemy by cursing him when swift and decisive action will speak far louder than any words What purpose is served by swearing file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 117 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt at an insubordinate thrall Even the harshest of words will fly right over his head for they are only words and he is a vampire But if on the other hand his head should do the flying when it is shorn from his shoulders Too late for him said Jake but the rest of the gang will get the message. Exactly said Korath. Indeed we have a saying: stakes and stones may break our bones but calling Will not harm us Jake nodded. We have much the same saying on this side of the Gate. So then said Korath. Better to simply kill than to curse don t you agree Which sounds about right for Starside said Jake but I don t think it would go down too well here As for swearwords: they re used mainly for emphasis often as expletives or where the user hasn t got much of a decent vocabulary. So Ben Trask says anyway. But the Wamphyri don t use bad language eh Korath s deadspeak shrug. In order to goad an enemy into mindless headlong action and so disadvantage him perhaps. But as a matter of course no. That could be worth remembering said Jake. As you will another shrug . And after a moment: But all that is for the future and as for right now what s next Will you try to locate this gibbering Willie Stuker or attempt to speak to the incendiary Frankie Reggio Surely not the latter for his language is almost sure to be hah inflammatory and his response of no value whatsoever. Your victims owe you nothing Jake. Which means that there is only one among the teeming dead who does owe you and even that is a dubious supposition. Natasha said Jake softly. And then frowning: But did you say dubious Certainly. For haven t you often thought it and haven t I seen it in your mind Are you not in large part responsible for Natasha s. . .for her current situation For some few seconds Jake was silent. Conscience yes. And Korath had hit the nail right on the head: what was burning him up inside was as much down to himself as to anyone else. For if he hadn t met Natasha in the first place . . . . . . But he d had this argument with himself a hundred times before and it always came out the same: while he was partly to blame others were far more so. Jake s guilt lay in that he had loved Natasha which caused her to love him theirs lay in that they had killed her for it. And if the only way to get back at them was through her You will go to her then. But where The only place I know Jake answered his voice breaking just a little before he could catch it. Korath saw it in his mind: the bridge near Riez under the Alps of Provence. The broken wall where Castellano s thugs had rammed Jake s car with Jake and Natasha trapped inside over the edge and into the torrential Verdon River. The river was in flood Jake told him. I managed to get clear of the car don t ask me how for we were both drugged. But I survived while Natasha . . . didn t. I wasn t strong enough to swim let alone go back under for her The next thing 1 knew was when I washed up on a bank downstream. The car wasn t found for weeks but when it was she was still in it. So I don t know can t say for sure but maybe it s possible something of her has lingered on right there where she died. You don t know where she s buried She was cremated said Jake. I ... I read about it. She went up in smoke I can t remember where. It seems I ve blotted most of that out of my mind. But the bridge The river That s a place I ll never forget said Jake. Its coordinates will be with me forever. Just along the alley a uniformed gendarme in the recessed entrance to a store had been watching Jake for some time. There was something vaguely familiar about Jake s face and there was definitely something strange about his behaviour He alternated between leaning on the wall and standing up straight pacing to and fro and standing stock still holding his head cocked in an attitude of intent listening and talking to himself. It wasn t possible that he talked to anyone else for he was quite alone. But his face ... a picture in the wanted gallery perhaps The gendarme stepped out of the store doorway started down the alley towards Jake. Jake saw him coming and turned a corner out of sight. Hahi The gendarme broke into a run arrived at the corner and turned it . . . and skidded to an astonished halt. There were no more street corners in the vicinity just blank walls for at least a hundred yards. And no open windows or doorways anywhere in sight. Not so strange in itself file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 118 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt except there was no sign of the fugitive either In fact there was nothing Just the final swirl of a dust devil collapsing onto the sunbaked pavement. For Jake Cutter reluctant and as yet unaccepted Necroscope had doorways of his own ... or almost of his own. And until they were his own if ever his colleague the dead but ever available vampire Korath once Mindsthrall would be there to play the role of keeper of the keys. . . Not too many miles inland of Marseilles under the Alps of Provence the weather was very different. Black clouds were rolling south off the peaks in what was promising to be the first storm of the season. High up in the foothills the narrow road over a stone built humpbacked bridge was mainly deserted. Far below on the road s zigzagging asphalt ribbon one or two cars crawled like bugs along the winding contours their chrome fenders glinting with chitin facets where occasional beams of sunlight forced their way through the threatening thunderheads. Jake stood by the low wall of the bridge looked over and down and shivered. He wasn t cold but he shivered. The stones under his hands had been recently cemented in place no lichen or moss had grown on them as yet it was a very obvious repair to the eight foot gap that Castellano s thugs had created when they crashed his car through. And down below the water was a shallow calm seeming lake in the vast bowl that the river s rush had cut in its rocky bed through all the centuries a lake that narrowed to a bottleneck where the river speeded up toward its next white water descent and the one after that and so on. So that Jake wondered Did I really live through that How many falls did I take before I washed up Following the river s course and rocky descent through his host s eyes Korath answered If I did not know better I would have said your first was surely your last The river was in flood Jake answered and the lake was full to its brim and spilling over. Otherwise we d have hit the bottom and solid rock. But as it was we were no sooner through the wall than we were in the water. It would have been what Maybe twenty feet deep He shook his head. Seemed a whole lot more than that at the time . . . You were very lucky. Yes I was said Jake quietly but with the emphasis on the . And shielding his thoughts keeping them to himself: But she wasn t. Except. . . which she was he thinking about Standing there at the wall suddenly Jake reeled Reeled and sat down with a bump on the grassy bank of a Scottish river It felt as real as if he were actually there and he wasn t any longer Jake but someone else the only one he could be in this place thinking these thoughts: Ma are you there But she wasn t there. She d moved on. Gone to join an even Greater Majority in a special place beyond the beyond. And poor little Harry that was what she d always called him was on his own. Ma he said again. And Korath repeated him: Ma Jake who are it you are talking to Your mother here No of course she wasn t. Wasn t even his mother but Harry Keogh s. It was just another connecting thread something that both Jake and the original Necroscope had in common that the situation had conjured into being in Jake s mind. Just a memory that was all. But not bis memory . . . And as quickly as that he was back at the wall again back in the Jake mind the Jake reality. Jake Korath s voice again and actually anxious It s okay said Jake still a little shaken. It was the river that s all. It was like I don t know a feeling of deja vu or something. See Harry and I we both lost someone in the same kind of way. Harry lost his Ma in the water and I But as his thoughts returned to Natasha they too were like an invocation. Jake Her voice which he d thought he would never hear again. Natasha s voice as if she whispered in his ear causing Jake to gasp and wheel about. . . but in fact she only whispered in his mind. And paradoxically because this was Natasha Jake found it far less believable far less acceptable than when he d talked to Harry Zek Korath or even Jean Daniel. For Natasha had been as real to him as life itself no she had been real to him in life itself Jake had known her the warm living breathing sadly smiling oh so rea Natasha and people who you know just don t talk to you when they re dead. Well and hadn t the Frenchman been real too But despite Jean Daniel s reality his three dimensional status in Jake s mind still he d been a stranger a cardboard figure a target on a shooting range. Yes a target all shot to pieces now. And therein lay the paradox. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 119 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Jean Daniel and the others they simply didn t matter but Natasha was still real in Jake s memory. And hearing her voice for all that it was a deadspeak voice brought it all back in a flood of emotion. And: God he said. Oh God I let you down I let you drownl Jake Jake Jake she said with a voice like the sea in a seashell. Stop punishing yourself. You didn t let me drown. No way You just couldn t stop it that s all. And Jake something you should know . I never felt a thing. I didn t wake up didn t know didn t suffer. And yet you re suffering now he said. Your voice: it s so faint. So weak. But that s not because I m suffering Jake. You see 1 was cremated which is how J d asked for it to be in a will I made a long time ago. Cremated and my ashes scattered on the wind. I had always fancied myself a free one even when I wasn t even when I was trapped for it was my way of escaping from things. So now I am free flying on the wind. I m in the storm clouds on the mountains there and I m falling in rain on the forests and into the seas. I m thinning out as I go spreading myself fine you might say. But that s okay because the less there is of me the greater my freedom. And yet you re here too Because I had to be. It s all a matter of will Jake. When I heard about you About me But how did you hear about me Jake s voice was beginning to break now. The Great Majority talked about you she answered. So many of them Jake: it was like a shout going up They felt how warm you were and at first thought you were someone else. Then they saw that you weren t and how they argued then They re arguing still because as yet many of them daren t trust themselves into your care. Daren t trust themselves Jake shook his head he didn t understand. But who do they think I am the angel Gabriel Ah hut they might they just might Natasha answered. And before he could query her meaning she went on: Jake listen. I can t stay here it s an effort just being here. But I thought you might come back some time and I was right. Now Jake was ashamed because he hadn t come simply to see Natasha not just to talk to her or commiserate but to ask her about Castellano. He could see how selfish how thoughtless that was now. But even so over and above any feelings of self reproach he could sense something else: an irresistible force driving him on. And for the first time Jake knew for sure without knowing how he knew that this wasn t simply a matter of revenge. There was unfinished business here something that someone else might have started but that he must see through to the end. And his thoughts were deadspeak of course. Castellano Natasha said. You feel guilty because you came here to find out about him and not just to talk to me But you don t know how much easier that makes all of this Jake Easier For a moment Jake thought that she was trying to take some of the weight off his shoulders but no for he could actually feel the wave of relief that flowed out from her But. . . how does it make things easier Because I have guilty feelings too She told him. Guilty yes for all those hoops I put you through .... Hoops Jake shook his head. But I don t know what But you do know what Haven t I told you I d always wanted to be free You were that freedom Jake. In the real world the world of the living you were that freedom or you would have been. It took a while to sink in until: I was your way out he said feeling suddenly empty. I was your passport out of a terrible situation . . . But following the emptiness replacing it gathering in him until he expelled it in a sigh ... as much and perhaps more relief than he d felt in Natasha Which was also wrong surely Or was it She heard that last and answered: I played at being in love for my own ends. And you joined in the game you got caught up in it. But it s all right Jake and it s worked out fine. Because now we re both free. Jake spent a moment thinking it through then said: Could it ever have worked for us do you think I mean could it have become more than just a game Both of us had lives before we met she reminded him and we were both carrying too much excess baggage. Some things that I have done. . . I can t say for sure but I might have found any normal sort of lifestyle tame by comparison And maybe I m mistaken but I sensed that it was the same for you. No use trying to guess what the future might have brought Jake or even what your own future might yet bring. Best to face it as it comes. I know he nodded. The future is like shit: it happens. Or as some people might say it s a file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 120 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt devious thing. Not for me she answered. My future s here blowing in the wind. But now that we ve talked surely you ll see that there s no longer any need for revenge against Castellano and Oh but there is Jake cut in as once again he felt that driving force that need to finish unfinished business. Not so much vengeance now but a need definitely. Will you help me I want to know his power base and what I ll be going up against and where to look for him. And it s not just for me Her deadspeak voice was anxious again. Are you sure of that I don t want you putting yourself in harm s way endangering yourself for a lost cause. I can t be sure about the cause he answered truthfully. Isn t simple justice enough But since I ll be going after him anyway the main danger will lie in being unprepared. Following which she told him what he wanted to know: Luigi Castellano s power base his possible whereabouts the strength of the soldiers with which he surrounded himself. But it seemed she had barely enough time. Her voice was in the wind and was rapidly blowing away she finished with a sigh and what might have been a kiss the touch of a single raindrop against Jake s gaunt unshaven cheek. And then she was gone. Or he thought that she was . . . But as soon as Jake and Korath too had also left that place as the first real rain came lashing out of the darkening sky and the wind began gusting with the force of a storm then: Thank you Natasha said Zek Foener the merest whisper in the metaphysical deadspeak aether. Both for giving him peace of mind and for helping him to find the way ahead. That must have been hard for you clearing his conscience like that. Not really said the other even less of a whisper. For it was at least half true: Jake really was going to be my passport out of that mess. Then I won t ask if you actually loved him said Zek. And I won t tell you said the other. But Jake s free now and has his own life to live. My memory is one piece of excess baggage that he no longer has to take with him along the way. Then let me thank you for myself said Zek. For your selfless attitude. You see I ve had my problems too which you ve resolved. For you re right Natasha: freedom is everything. And there s someone I would set free too if only I knew how. And as the storm gathered force and lightning lit the sky over that empty bridge under the Alps of Provence their voices faded and drifted apart Zek returning to her mission on behalf of the new Necroscope and Natasha intent on going her own way the way she had chosen in search of freedom absolute. She at least would have her way for all the world s winds were waiting for her ... Twenty four hours later: In a dusty room floored with roughly hewn hexagonal stone flags in the extensive cellars under Luigi Castellano s villa near Bagheria the master of the house and his second in command took a brief respite from grisly labours and talked. You did well said Castellano the red flaring of flambeaux reflecting in his scarlet gaze as he gloomed sardonically on the tools that Garzia had used to question a certain Russian gentleman their visitor from Moscow. Garzia s tools lay upon a stone table where he had thrown them: hammers with leaden heads coated in rubber a joined pair of metal cups the size of large hen s eggs which could be tightened on a man s tenderest parts by turning knurled screws a metal headband with more projecting screws so positioned as to be over the eyes and ears of the wearer knurled on the outside and filed to sharp points on the inside thumbscrews tongs and spoon shaped gouges and so on. A torturer s museum. Antiques Garzia answered rolling down his sleeves. My collection. You have your treasures from Le Manse Madonie but such as these have more appeal to me. I m told that truth drugs will do the job as well but where s the pleasure in that A low moan sounded from an adjacent room and the vampire Castellano cocked an ear in that direction. Consciousness he said. So soon An amazingly resilient man don t you think He held up well and was extraordinarily reticent at first. He knew the truth meant death said Garzia with a shrug. But when he realized that death would be preferable and that in any case it couldn t be avoided . . . file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 121 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Garzia nodded. What point then in holding back And for all the drawn nails and crushed bones scarcely a drop spilled said Castellano. And once again: Extremely well done and very enlightening once his tongue was loosened. But I could see how you relished the work. I would hate to think that you might one day have me upon your bench His coarse laughter echoed for a moment or two in the smoky gloom then tapered off to a phlegmy gurgling. Or me upon yours said Garzia watching Castellano clean his hands and forearms on a towel. But such a shame that we are reduced to this Castellano grimaced as he tossed the soiled towel aside and commenced soaping down his arms in a bowl of tepid water. Surely this Georgi Grusev this spy for Gustav Turchin surely he could see when we brought him down here that the game was up If he had spoken sooner he might have saved himself a great deal of pain. And that would have been the real shame said the other. We so rarely have the opportunity to practice . . . He picked up and examined a pair of pincers their jaws stained a rusty red. If I had been on top form he would have talked sooner. Each to his own means and devices of course Castellano answered. But unlike you I do not find a man s most sensitive parts to be on the outside. And naturally females are even more susceptible in that respect. As for tools I have my hands Which were finally clean. But they could never be clean of their atroc ities. And as another low moan sounded from the adjacent room: Perhaps we should see to our needs now said Garzia his voice thick with lust. Grusev must be very close to death and if his heart were to stop pumping such a waste Before that however won t you tell me how you knew he was a spy Was it your oneiromancy or just a clever guess Well it s true that I ve had certain dreams Castellano answered. Dreams that go back ... oh a very long time. But the trouble with dreams lies in their meaning their interpretation. For years now I ve anticipated the advent of a man who will try to destroy me but whether by infiltrating my organization as this Russian would have done or by more direct means . . . who can say On the other hand some odd things have been happening recently and I would be a fool if I had failed to notice their obvious connections. Odd things Garzia frowned. Like the problem we ve been having with this Jake Cutter Cutter for one Castellano nodded. What a single man an apparently ordinary man at that who has taken out three of my best and done it so very inventively Obviously he s not so ordinary But it s a tangled skein Garzia and difficult to unravel. For example how is it that Cutter is no longer one of Europe s most wanted Our various connections in the Surete and Interpol seem just as baffled as we are. I m told that the word has come from above from the highest offices which we haven t yet penetrated that Cutter s apprehension is no longer considered a priority He is off the hook . . . but who or what got him off the hook eh Castellano had commenced pacing the stone floor he leaned forward seeming almost off balance in that aggressive loping praying mantis like posture to which his second in command had long since grown accustomed. But in a little while when Garzia remained silent he mutteringly continued: No Jake Cutter is by no means an ordinary man and his involvement in this this whatever it is goes a lot deeper than any simple vendetta. Indeed he could even be the one I ve been waiting for who featured in those earliest dreams of mine. And the hell of it is I once had him right where I wanted him But I thought he was only interested in the girl Natasha. If I had suspected otherwise that she was only a tool a means he was using to get to me and that in fact I was the focus of his ... his what His investigation then you can be sure I would have got my hands dirty long before now As Castellano loped and talked his frustration had become increasingly apparent. His voice was a low rumbling growl his scarlet eyes bulged in a deathly grey face twisted with hatred and his lips were drawn back from gleaming knifelike teeth. A split tongue writhed in his cavern mouth. Garzia had seen these transformations before but rarely so pronounced. Oh yesss.i Castellano went on. How I would have enjoyed wringing it from him until all of his secrets were mine Then instead of leaving it to those four fools I would have seen to it personally that Jake Cutter bothered me no more Luigi said Garzia as his master came to a halt trembling with rage in the middle of the floor I m not at all sure I understand what you re saying. Your powers your reasoning such things are beyond me. No of course you don t see said Castellano. For I am what I am while you are what I made you. But I remember things Garzia I connect things and total them like numbers until the sum of their parts is clearly visible. And if they don t add up ... then I worry about them. There are file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 122 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt matters here that go far deeper than we see on the surface. They go back in time as far back as my mother and as far forward as the present. . . beyond which I can t any longer see. And that is an odd and disturbing thing in its own right: that I no longer dream . . . He glared at the other Garzia who could only shrug. Then let me try to explain said Castellano. And after a moment: In the last days of Le Manse Madonie before it fell into the gulf and took the Brothers Francezci with it my mother had more time for me. That is I could see her more frequently but always in secret. For she swore that if ever her masters should find out about me if ever they discovered that one of them had fathered a son and there was issue from their use and abuse of their servant Katerin then that they would surely kill her and me too And so even as I myself was rising to power I kept well out of their way. No easy matter for they were advisers to all the heads of the Mafia. You will remember Garzia how in those early days I rarely brought myself into prominence And now you know the reason. I knew that my mother s warning was genuine. I knew that if the Francezcis believed they had spawned me then that they would kill me. Anthony and Francesco they used her. No longer sexually no for she had grown old and they were still young but as a servant in Le Manse Madonie as before and also as a messenger and a spy. When she was out and about on Francezci business in Bagheria or Palermo then she would contact me and I would find a way to see her. But the things that she told me That the Francezcis were monsters and Anthony a changeling creature that waxed in shape and form That they kept their own father in a dungeon pit and feared the end of their days which was coming She reminded me of vast treasures in the caverns under Le Manse Madonie gave me documents which she had kept hidden away all those years the records of her brief confinement and of my birth and told me of my legacy: that I was the only legitimate heir to the estate of the Francezcis. As to why she did these things: because the Thing in the pit under Le Manse Madonie had forecast the end of the Brothers Francezci also because she feared that the madness of Anthony would be the end of her too. Not that she was afraid of dying no not at all on the contrary. For having seen what she had seen in their service knowing what she knew of the horrors in and under Le Manse Madonie death was a prospect she welcomed. Now think Garzia. My own grandfather a monstrous Thing so gross that they kept it in a pit had forecast the downfall of his sons the Brothers Francezci. Forecast yes And now you must see where my oneiromancy has its origin These things connect do you see Let me get on: Not long before the end the fall of Le Manse Madonie my mother told me that the Francezcis feared a man. I repeat: they feared a man Garzia One man. He had been into their vaults to rob them impossible according to my mother but he d done it. A man who came and went like a ghost who moved through stone walls and steel vault doors like they were water or as if they had no substance at all but nevertheless a man who was flesh and blood just as we are flesh and blood. The Francezcis they were vampires Garzia even as we are vampires yet they feared this one ordinary man. He had a name he had two names One was Harry Keogh and the other was Alec Kyle. So perhaps there were two such these men who could come and go like ghosts. The brothers traced him or them and discovered that he they were members of an organization called E Branch Ah I saw you start Castellano pointed a slender trembling finger at his second in command. You are beginning to see the emerging pattern. Oh yes Garzia: E Branch that selfsame organization of which Lefranc spoke only a few short hours ago: the organization which now gives Jake Cutter its protection. So quite obviously he is an agent of this E Branch. But if there were any doubt I have yet more proof. I have mentioned how my oneiromancy no longer works for me how I no longer see the future in dreams not even a hint not even a glimpse. My last dream of that kind was more than a month ago. Its theme had been repetitive for three years yet I had never before seen it so clearly. In it I saw two faces and a shadow. A man a woman and a shadow. The first was handsome the second beautiful and the other . . . was other. But like you and me Garzia all three were vampires. They were very great vampires and they were here The handsome one: I saw him clearly. He dwelled in a high place called Xanadu like Kubla Khan yes. In my walking hours I checked and Xanadu exists or rather it existed That casino resort in Australia said Garzia. Where you sent Alfonso Lefranc. My reasons were twofold Castellano nodded. Other than myself Lefranc is the last survivor of file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 123 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Jake Cutter s vendetta. Therefore one: I was using Lefranc as a lure in the same way as I used Frankie Reggio to see if he would attract Cutter s attention away from me. And two: I was eager to know more about the vampire master of Xanadu. But I have to admit that the last thing I suspected at that time was that Cutter or rather this E Branch for which he works was interested not alone in me but in others like we. But they were said Garzia. And they destroyed Xanadu Yes again Castellano s nod and for all I know a very handsome vampire with it just as they had destroyed Le Manse Madonie some thirty years ago For that s what they do Garzia: they kill such as you and I and destroy all our works 217 And Cutter Is an agent in a long line of agents with strange skills. It can only be so. Harry Keogh Alec Kyle Jake Cutter. Not one and the same after all for as I ve seen with my own eyes this Cutter is only a very . . . he s only very . . Castellano paused stood frozen like a mantis in the moment before it strikes. But he had nothing to strike at. Not yet. Only very said Garzia frowning. Young said Castellano finally and flatly. Keogh Kyle and Cutter . . Then slamming his fist into his palm: What Do you suppose it s possible Garzia The other flapped his hands looked bemused. Do you know the expression about using a thief to catch a thief And Garzia gasped. You think that they re using a vampire ... to track vampires It would explain a great many things Castellano nodded. Somehow they control one of our kind and use him as their pet bloodhound. Keogh Kyle Cutter they could indeed be one and the same. Ageless as we are ageless. Silent and secret as you and I are silent and secret. Hah: But of course Keogh and Kyle and now this Jake Cutter of course they come and go like ghosts Even as we come and go when we have a mind. But you told me Jake Cutter was only a man. Garzia waved his arms aloft. And you have actually seen him Seen him For a moment Castellano frowned before slowly continuing: Yes I saw him I had him in my power a man who dared not betray his true nature to another of the same nature who would know how to deal with him His was the cunning of the vampire Garzia he survived that clumsy accident which those four idiots arranged escaped from the car and returned to kill three of them. What s more he also escaped from that prison in Turin when according to very reliable contacts there he should have been weighted down with enough lead to roof over a church Now tell me who but an accomplished vampire could do that As for his vendetta: I cannot doubt but that Lefranc will be next . . . and then myself Except that s not going to happen. Forewarned is forearmed Garzia and we ll be waiting for him. Jake Cutter first and then this E Branch. So they want to know my movements do they And this Georgi Grusev sent by the Russian premier was their sniffer dog See how these old enemies have now joined forces and are in league against me. As for my whereabouts: well obviously they now know where I am. And if they plan to use Jake Cutter against me so be it. Indeed I ll send him an invitation via Moscow: this Grusev s ears his eyes and all his fingers. They ll have his prints of course and so will know his fate . . . In a little while when Castellano s silence made it clear that he was done Garzia said And so our cover and likewise our nature is blown. These people who know where we are and what we are they won t suffer us to live NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS Luigi. The drugs we deal in is one thing but what we are . . . is something else. Is it the beginning of the end do you think The other unfroze turned his gaze upon Garzia and smiled a monstrous smile. Apart from yourself he said I have kept my poisons trapped within me. But if it s to be war then we ll need troops of our own. Not these simple thugs these so called soldiers with which we ve surrounded ourselves but vampires whose lust for life is as great as our own. Time to start recruiting then Garzia nodded. How many men said Castellano are in the gardens A dozen the other answered. Then we shall start with them said Castellano. A small nucleus at first but in the next day or two rapidly expanding. And as for anonymity: synonymous with longevity is it I say to hell file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 124 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt with it Anonymity be damned For I fancy we ll soon be fighting for our longevity Garzia His second in command s gaze went to the arched doorway to the adjacent room from which once more a low moan had sounded. And licking his coarse lips in anticipation he said Luigi it shall be as you say of course. But first before that there s something we really should attend to. Yes we should Castellano agreed leaning in that weird way of his in the direction indicated. For as the blood is the life for too long we have held ourselves in abeyance. Time now to fortify and make strong. Come . . . They entered the other room one of many in the deep labyrinth of cellars under Castellano s stronghold villa and stood for a moment by the table bearing Georgi Grusev s body. A Russian Castellano commented but scarcely a gentleman. Or if he was Garzia gurgled you d never know it now Their naked victim was manacled to the table hand and foot. Heavily built his pale body showed severe bruising around ribs knees ankles and wrists. His fingers and toes were bloody red blobs where the nails had been drawn and he was still bleeding from the ears though not profusely. His rib cage bulged on the right where broken ribs were pushing outwards. His breathing is irregular said Garzia. But his pulse is still strong Castellano answered. And that is all that matters. Quickly they stripped off and loosened the manacles tied the Russian s feet together and hooked them to a chain that dangled from a pulley in the ceiling. And without pause hauling on the chain they hoisted Grusev s body vertically head down hands and arms dangling until his head was some seven feet from the floor. And as Castellano dragged the table to one side his man Garzia stood on a chair and cut the Russian spy s throat ear to ear with a razor sharp knife. Then as the warm red cascade began Garzia set the still living body spin nir g on its chain got down from the chair and kicked it away and joined his awesome awful master where Castellano stood naked open mouthed and BRIAN LUMLEY 218 PHUT THREE crimson eyed staring up in hideous ecstasy while his pale flesh was drenched from that as yet living twirling font of vampiric life. But now an additional transformation a metamorphosis of sorts took place in these monsters for not only were Castellano s and Garzia s mouths gaping wide but also the very pores of their bodies making their faces and forms alveolate honeycombed like sponges All the better for soaking up the spurting life essence of an alleged Russian gentleman . . . MEETINGS AND CONFRONTATI ONS 13 IN ENEMY TERRITORY On Saturday morning about 10:30 local time Liz Merrick Lardis Lidesci and lan Goodly boarded the Russian built ferry The Krassos at Keramoti. From the lower of two observation decks they watched maybe a hundred passengers come aboard on foot also two German tourist buses and several large Greek flatbed trucks but this late in the season neither the freight deck nor the passenger decks were filled to capacity. And despite the cloudless sky or maybe because of it in this long El Nifio summer there were only one or two private cars parked centrally between the trucks and buses none of which carried the foreign plates that would have identified them as tourist vehicles. The renowned Mediterranean sunshine wasn t any longer a blessing but a curse and with the temperature already in the eighties and climbing almost everyone had had more than enough of it. The ferry s passengers were looking forward to a breath of fresh ocean air. Minutes after the last vehicle and persons were aboard the tailgate was raised and the vessel powered up and reversed out into midharbour. There vibrating alarmingly as the rudder was held over it turned about picked up speed and churned for the open sea. In a surprisingly short time Keramoti had dwindled to a toy town against a backdrop of green and yellow foothills and purple mountains and in as much time again the mainland itself had narrowed down to a thin wedge floating on the Aegean s blue horizon with a hazy grey crest of mountains that might just as easily be clouds. As for the bulk of the passengers they were mainly Greeks and Liz who as a child had holidayed frequently in the islands with her Graecophile parents found them very typical indeed almost file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 125 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt stereotypical of the island folk that she had known: The obligatory toothless old grandmother in a black dress and black head square weighed down with a battered suitcase and a plastic bag of red mullets 222 RIAN LUMLEY NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS 223 complaining endlessly of the heat and the fact that her poor fish would surely have gone off by the time she got to Krassos town. And another who might be the first s sister with two live chickens squawking exhaustedly in their wicker cage with every lurch of the ship. And yet a third encumbered with her young grandchildren twin sisters and their disobedient hyperactive brother who insisted on climbing onto the bottom bar of the rail and reaching too far out in order to feed crusts of bread to the vessel s shrilling seagull escorts. Soon called to order by a gruff deckhand the latter banged his chin in his haste to get down and fled wailing to his granny s lap. Then there were the tourists: mainly Germans from the buses on the freight deck but also a few British and other nationalities. The latter were late holidaymakers extempore travellers who knew they d have little or no trouble finding accommodation off season on a wilting Greek island. Mad dogs and Englishmen . . . said Goodly watching from the shade as young British couples paraded the open decks in shorts and open necked shirts or no shirts at all. They ll be burned to crisps before they even see a beach Liz nodded. Whiteys from Blighty she said as she remembered what she and the other E Branch personnel had been called by their friends in the Australian special forces when they had first arrived down under. Thank goodness for my Aussie tan. At least I shouldn t blister I wouldn t be too sure if I were you the precog warned. Outdoors in heat like this . . . even shaded you re not safe. It bounces off sand steel and even stone. What does Lardis inquired. The sunlight said Goodly. Mercifully I seem immune. I don t tan easily and I ve always preferred my skin pale. Myself Lardis shaded his eyes I never imagined any sun could rise so high or get so hot. No wonder my ancestors called this world the Hell lands On Sunside it gets warm but never too warm. Then again it never gets too cold either. I ve read about your world in Branch files Liz told him. And I think I d like to see it some time. But: No you wouldn t Lardis and Goodly told her almost as a man. And the Old Lidesci followed it up with Not just now at any rate. Then he sighed and turned his face away. The precog knew what was bothering him and said Nathan Nathan aye Lardis answered. Nathan and everyone I left behind to fight my fight. If all was going well we should have heard about it heard from him from Nathan long before now. That lad Nana s boy he could come here just as easily as when he brought my Lissa and me out of Sunside. Why he can come and go like . . . like Harry Hell lander himself Like the Necroscope that Harry was and Jake Cutter might yet become He could do it aye and he would do it certainly ... if all was well. Lardis shrugged sighed again and fell moodily silent. Three years the precog nodded his understanding. It s a very long time yes. But looking on the bright side er given that there is one while we haven t heard from Nathan neither have we heard from anyone or any tbing else. The Starside Gates stand open now that s true but since that terrible night when the Refuge was destroyed nothing has come through them. The Romanian Gate is blocked permanently by ten thousand tons of rock and despite that Premier Gustav Turchin doesn t have control of the other Gate at Perchorsk still he seems to have good intelligence of it. So ... perhaps you re worrying needlessly. The three sat together on a bench in the shade of the upper deck facing the stern and watching the ship s wake. Liz sat in the middle with Lardis on her left. Behind them an open hatch led to the passenger lounge a large indoor seating area with a bar for soft drinks tea coffee and biscuits. With its shade and so called air conditioning two overhead fans that turned far too slowly the lounge had lured the bulk of the passengers in out of the sun. Occasionally however a Greek or other national would come out through the hatch to light a cigarette. One such smoker a mature smartly dressed man with his arm in a sling had emerged just a few file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 126 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt minutes ago. Standing at the rail nearby with his cigarette at first he appeared to have no great interest in the three people on the bench. But on hearing snatches of their conversation which should have been meaningless to any outsider he had gradually edged closer until Liz and the precog were suddenly aware of him . . . the way he stared at them as if fascinated. Liz s reaction was instinctive: to open telepathic channels and see what was on this inquisitive stranger s mind. She was a good receiver but her sending was as yet underdeveloped with the exception of Jake Cutter she d had little success with it. Also heeding Ben Trask s warning she had been keeping a tight rein on her telepathy. Venturing into enemy territory like this she didn t wish to alert anyone to her presence and certainly not Malinari the Mind But now looking at this stranger s face and gauging the thoughts behind his penetrating stare: What He was thinking as his jaw fell open. Am I bearing correctly Tbe Gates and Perchorsk Necroscope and Harry . . . The Harry Harry Keogh These people must be E Brancbl. .. Tbey can only be E Brancbi Liz took a deep breath her elbow dug sharply into the precog s ribs as her hand dipped into her shoulder bag to find the grip of her modified Baby Browning. He knows us she gasped. But Manolis Papastamos was fractionally quicker. Yes 1 am knowing you the compact Greek policeman said stepping behind them and sticking his left arm in its sling between them before bringing it up under Liz s chin from the side. We ve never met and I caution you to be very careful what you are doing with your hand in that bag but I am knowing you most definitely. You are Ben Trask s people E Branch They looked saw the blued steel muzzle of an ugly squat little automatic poking out of the sleeve of Manolis s sling and Liz froze with her own weapon 224 BRIAN LUMLEY only half drawn from her bag. Goodly was rising to his feet beginning to tower threateningly over Papastamos and the Old Lidesci was looking astonished and struggling to stand up. But the Greek policeman wasn t alone. Two of the men who had been with him in Kavala were emerging from the lounge intent on enjoying a smoke on the open deck with their chief. Taking in the scene at a glance they immediately sprang to flank the bench and one of them produced a gun. In that same moment seeing that the chance meeting was rapidly turning into a confrontation Manolis held up his right arm and hand and snapped Everyone holding your fire And to Liz: Young lady I am Papastamos. Ben Trask may have mentioned my name to you In which case you will know that I am a friend. Please don t shoot me or do anything to cause me to shoot you And then after waiting a moment to let that sink in: You must be er Liz Still uncertain what was going on Liz nodded. But Papastamos s mind held no threat and so she relaxed breathed easier and took her hand out of her bag. Manolis grinned and drew back his left hand and weapon into the sling and out of sight. Very well he said. This is much better don t you agree Then he signalled to his man to put his weapon away glanced all around the deck to ensure that no one had witnessed the brief burst of activity finally turned to the spindly precog and looked up at him. You will be ... er lan Goodly And as the other nodded: Yes I see it now. Ben s backup team. It is thee coincidence that we should meet like this. He turned to Lardis. And you This is Lardis Lidesci Goodly introduced them as finally the old man got to his feet. Lardis Manolis frowned. Lidesci A Romanian perhaps I don t think Ben mentioned you. That s possible Lardis grunted. I m nobody round here. Not true the precog shook his head. Lardis is very much a somebody. But he s not Romanian. Ah Manolis looked at Lardis again. You E Branch people: all of you mysterious You have thee powers eh Lardis shrugged. Powers Not me not really. I ve a seer s blood in me if that s what you mean not to mention a spot of rheumatism but what I do have is knowledge. And Liz said Lardis s presence here is ... it s something of a secret. If Ben Trask wants to tell you about him I m sure he will. You don t trust me yet. Manolis nodded his understanding and grinned a tight grin. I don t blame you. Me I don t trust anyone And where we are going you shouldn t either. Looking at him looking straight into his eyes Liz said Oh I think we can trust you at least Inspector Manolis Papastamos. Currently based in Athens you head up a squad of drug busters. An expert on the Greek islands you ve worked with the Branch before. You have a lot of respect for us and I know Ben Trask and David Chung hold you in the highest esteem which is all very file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 127 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 225 NECROSCOPE: DEFlLhRb well but And here Liz paused and frowned. But. . . you aren t supposed to be involved in all this Her frown lifted and she tilted a knowing eyebrow at him and said You re gate crashing this one aren t you Abhhi Manolis said this time with more feeling as again his jaw fell open. I know what you have done But this is thee same as thee poor Zek or Trevor Jordan. They too were Telepaths yes Liz cut him short. But don t go changing the subject. You were asked to stay out of this Inspector. You aren t supposed to be here. When I called you a gate crasher it was because I saw it in your mind: you were wondering how you d explain what you re doing here to Ben Trask. The other narrowed his eyes and chewed his lip and after a moment said Well maybe. But this is Greece and I m a Greek. And anyway my men and I we ll be of use. We have thee special weapons. But please I would like that you call me Manolis. He turned again to Goodly. So then Lardis has knowledge ... he understands thee ways of thee enemy and Liz reads thee minds. But what about you I read the future sometimes said the precog. And then as Manolis went to reach in his inside pocket: For instance I won t accept the drink you re about to offer me. If anything I take a shot of scotch not brandy. And when Manolis produced a flask But on the other hand Goodly continued Lardis would very much appreciate it His smile was warm contrasting oddly with his gaunt frame and undertaker s pallor. Manolis s face was full of awe. He shook his head in disbelief looked at the flask in his hand and said Fantastic Liz glanced at the precog and said It seems that credentials are all in order then And he answered Long term I see only the most beneficial of mutual collaborations coming out of all this. Me too said Lardis wiping his mouth after a long swig from Manolis s flask. Exactly what you said And then to Manolis: What is this stuff It s Metaxa said the other. A very special brandy. But surely you are familiar with it There are many things in your world er your country I mean that I m not yet familiar with Lardis answered. But as for this stuff I certainly intend to be Ah you E Branch people said Manolis shaking his head. You are amazing And then he frowned. But. . . you are Ben s backup team Just thee three of you For the time being yes. Goodly answered. Ben intends to build up his forces slowly. Assuming there s time of course said Manolis darkly. In answer to which the precog could only shrug his shoulders. Very well then. Manolis nodded his head decisively. Now there are six f us. As for Ben: he can argue all he likes but thee fact remains that I am and Greece is me and I won t have thee vrykoulahas in my islands He BRIAN LUMLEY L t h I L h K 226 22 indicated the hatch to the lounge area. Let s go inside drink some iced tea and make thee proper introductions. Krassos is only twenty minutes away we ll soon be in thee territory of thee enemy. And twenty minutes later they were . . . Krassos town was typical of any Greek island seaport: its deep water harbour where a hundred yards of mooring fronted the ugly concrete landing concourse its bollards capstans and piles of heavy ropes its tractor tyres hanging from the jetties taking the crushing weight of ships that lolled on the oily swell. And behind the various landing stages the wide dusty service road that was the town s main artery and behind that the shops and tavernas with streets and alleys leading into the shaded heart of Krassos town itself. Disembarking with their luggage the E Branch people and Manolis s contingent noticed a pall of smoke over the eastern district of the town perhaps a quarter mile away. One antique fire engine was drawing off sea water at the harbour s eastern extreme while from some unseen location in the same direction probably the site of the fire the high pitched dee daa dee daa wailing of another fire engine was clearly audible. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 128 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Just before disembarking Manolis had adopted a disguise a false moustache that turned down towards his chin had altered his appearance completely and the blue black stubble that he d been allowing to sprout ever since his accident was beginning to hide his facial bruises. Very Greek from the onset his features might now be described as darkly handsome if not swarthy. Now ushering his group to one side of the concourse away from the bustle of disembarking passengers and the excited honking of traffic he asked Goodly What s our destination Where are we meeting up with Ben Trask The precog who every three hours had been in contact with London by phone answered Ben has arranged for us to stay at the place where he and Chung are accommodated in Skala Astris. That s a little fishing village between I know it Manolis stopped him short and spoke to one of his men in rapid fire Greek. The man went off to speak to a bus driver in charge of one of the German tour buses. Andreas will try to get us a lift on thee bus to Limari on thee eastern side of thee island Manolis explained. They can drop us off along thee way. A lot less conspicuous than taking a taxi. We ll know in a minute or two but I think it will be okay. Andreas can be ... persuasive. And meanwhile do you see that smoke He shook his head worriedly. If it means what I think it means. . . And what do you think it means said Liz. We will see as we pass through Krassos Manolis muttered and from then on remained silently introspective until Andreas returned. Andreas had managed to get them a ride on the bus which in any case was only a little more than half full. When the German tourists had taken their seats then Manolis and his party were allowed to stow their luggage in com partments under the bus and climb aboard. They found seats in the deserted rear end. As they got under way Manolis went up front to have a word with the driver. Returning he said It will be something like an hour with a few stops before we re in Skala Astris. Meanwhile buhl we should enjoy thee views. Well to be truthful there are many beautiful villages bays and beaches on Krassos. Where thee mountains come down to thee sea there are some very high winding and dangerous stretches of road too If anybody knows that I do Later if you look out from thee right side of thee bus you ll think you are floating on thee air That s after we get out of town of course. But before then look over there. To the left of the main road east out of town a fire engine was mainly silent now where it pumped water on a blackened steaming gutted heap of rubble that might be the remains of a small hotel. Oh said Goodly. And what are we looking at Someone is destroying important evidence I think said Manolis scowling. That place it was an ice factory for thee island s hotels its tavernas and fishmongers. Yes but it was also thee place I used as cold storage for thee mutilated body of a woman washed up from thee sea. Ah but she had a leech in her throat that one Was it alive said Liz her eyes wide in morbid fascination. Did you see it I saw it Manolis nodded and shuddered. But alive No it was dead thank God And I burned it. Now someone has done the same for her said Goodly. But I don t think it was Ben Trask. If it had been then an incinerator would have sufficed. Manolis agreed. No this has nothing to do with Trask. Or at least I hope not because if it has it means that they know he s here I shouldn t think so said the precog. This is Vavara s work all right but she wasn t covering her tracks on Trask s account. She s done this because you were here Manolis and because she knows you re still alive. A precautionary measure that s all. But it s her work certainly or Lord Nephran Malinari s and the Lady Vavara s together. Just call her Vavaaara Lardis growled the name out. She was no Lady that one. According to Szgany legends five hundred years old Vavara scorned all such titles because she knew how false they were. She was Wamphyri and proud of it. And she was Vavaaara On Sunside she was feared as much as any Lord and as much by the women as by the men. Manolis looked at him and frowned glanced curiously at the precog and Liz then returned his gaze to Lardis. What is that you are saying Legends nve hundred years old And Sunside . . . thee Sunside in a world of vampires Is this what you are meaning when you say you have thee knowledge But if so then where does a man come by such knowledge Thee way I understand it Manolis Goodly cut in. E Branch keeps its secrets. It s how we survive. BRIAN LUMLtr 228 file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 129 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Everything on a need to know basis. It s as Liz said before: if Ben Trask wants you to know certain things you may be sure he ll tell you. And before the other could ask any further questions: And now I have a few things to tell him. . . . Krassos town had been left behind the view outside the bus had opened up into one of dramatic coastal countryside and blue expanses of ocean the sparkling Aegean on the right and wooded slopes spurs and rocky foothills rising to the left. The precog took out a miniature phone extended a tiny earpiece on its cord and plugged it into his ear and tapped in Trask s number. Trask answered almost immediately. Yes His anxious voice was distorted by interference a lot of unusually heavy static plus feedback from the vehicle s amplifier system which issued the occasional announcements of a young German tour hostess. A lady and her escorts are on their way the precog said. Good said the other. When can I expect you In a little less than an hour. Fine. Is all well Then there was a lot more of the hissing and popping of static before Goodly could answer: Yes but... we made some new friends along the way. And I believe you and your companion know them. You ve er holidayed out here in the Med with one of them once before . . . There was a long pause before Trask growled And just how many of these friends have you picked up along the way Three Goodly answered. They seem very attached to us. Another long pause and yet more static before: Then perhaps I should arrange some extra accommodation. Anything else We had to take a bit of a detour Goodly was careful how he phrased it because of a blaze in Krassos town. Apparently some kind of refrigeration plant has burned down. But they just about had it under control by the time we passed. Had you heard about that It was on the local TV Trask answered trying to keep it light. That and some other interesting stuff. It s all down to this dreadful heat I suspect. Yes the precog answered. And with typical British phlegmatism: There seems to be quite a lot of heat coming down. And a lot more to come I fancy. Trask thought about that for a moment or two then said I think wed better wait and bring each other up to date when you get in. And by the way how are you travelling Er on a bratwurst special I know where it stops said Trask. I can try to meet you there. It wouldnt do to leave you standing around for too long getting all hot and bothered in the midday heat. Best if we get you off the street as soon as possible. Couldn t agree more said the precog. And: Be seeing you soon then. He switched off. . . The main traffic circuit through Krassos town was roughly circular. Vehicles from the east swept around the back of the town swung south and then east onto the port s service road and past the harbour and so on out of town. Thus as the E Branch party including Manolis Papastamos and his men had left the seafront in the bus for Limari they had failed to notice the black limo that came gliding along the promenade behind them and parked in a lot west of the concourse. And more importantly the two nuns in Vavara s limo had failed to notice them. Had their tracks crossed however Manolis would definitely have noticed. For this limo was a car he would remember for the rest of his life. The nuns were only a few minutes late but that was enough. A minor traffic accident had blocked the ring road north of the town and so they d been held up which had caused them to miss the arrival of The Krassos. There would be however three more ferries from the mainland during the afternoon and evening and the nuns had their instructions: to keep covert surveillance in the town s harbour area to watch for the arrival of any odd or suspicious seeming strangers and to report regularly to Vavara at the monastery east of Skala Astris. While their mother superior had made light of Malinari s warnings to his face still she wasn t fool enough to ignore them completely. As for today however the nuns where they sat in the shade of a taverna s awnings directly opposite the deep water harbour sat there cowled pale and silent with their faces muffled and their hagridden eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses would have nothing to report. . . Just before 1:00 P.M. local Trask was there to meet his reinforcements on the main road through Skala Astris. There was no time for anything other than perfunctory greetings as he helped with their luggage and ushered them down a narrow shaded alley toward wrought iron gates that opened file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 130 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt into a large and pleasant garden of flowering hibiscus pomegranate and fig trees. A sign on the gates had named the place as Christos Studios and the studios in question were pantile roofed chalets hidden away between the trees in a roughly circular pattern each with its own pathway and outdoor patio area. The lavish use of varnished Mediterranean pine against recently whitewashed walls and blue painted window shutters and door panels gave these accommodations a very ethnic welcoming look and south of the garden a low wall formed a secondary horizon to that of the sea. Beyond the wall a hanging sign over the empty doorway of a bamboo and raffia roofed bar said THE SHIPWRECK which suited the place perfectly since its design gave it the look of having been washed up on the beach. From within the sandpapered voice of Louis Armstrong sounded on an ancient vinyl rendition of We Have All the Time in the World complete with all the jumps and scratches of ten thousand replays. This place is perfect said Liz as Trask took her to the door of her chalet. And then on second thought Or rather it would be if we were here simply 23 I U t I I L t K b to enjoy it. The sun the sand and the sea. Perfect yes. And she went inside to unpack. But as Trask walked Goodly and Lardis to another door well out of Liz s hearing the precog glanced at him and said What was that she said The three esses sun sand and sea But she missed out the most important S of all. And what would that be Trask asked him. The screaming said Goodly with a curt nod. For I think there ll be quite a bit of that too. You ve seen it Trask gripped his elbow. Something of it the precog answered. In my dreams last night at the hotel where we stayed in Keramoti. Of course it s possible they were just dreams which would be natural enough in the circumstances but I ve kept them to myself because of Liz. First get yourselves sorted out inside said Trask. Then we ll talk about it. Let s meet in say fifteen minutes In The Shipwreck there. Fine said Goodly. And he and Lardis entered their chalet with their luggage. Then it was Manolis Papastamos s turn. He and his men had a slightly larger chalet accommodation for all three into which they tossed their bags with scarcely a glance inside. And again Trask said Fifteen minutes to unpack your stuff and settle in and then a get together and briefing in The Shipwreck. But his tone of voice had echoed his displeasure and as he went to turn away Manolis took his arm. My friend the Greek policeman began then checked himself and added: I take it you are still my friend Trask looked at him his moustache and stubble the genuine anxiety in his eyes and couldn t help but grin however wryly. Always he said. And then he replaced his smile with a frown. But still you re a stubborn pigheaded man. I wanted to keep you out of this for your own good. But why Manolis threw up his good right hand in protest. Because this . . . this vrykoulakas bitch knows me I ve thought about that too. Just exactly how does this creature know me I mean where could she have seen me Has she actually seen me or is her dirty work performed by her minions Minions Trask stared at him. But don t you remember It was Manolis s turn to frown. On Rodhos Halki Karpathos that Janos Ferenczy business He had his thralls his watchers and spies he even recruited some of your people thee poor Ken Layard and Trevor Jordan So why not this Vavara Ben if I have to I ll leave both of thee big fishes to you and your people but whoever it was pushed me off that cliff and killed Eleni Babouris: they re mine Now believe me my men and 1 we ll do whatever you say. And you ll be glad of our help. Actually Trask answered I can probably use you. You re not nearly as badly banged about as I thought you were or if you are you re good at hiding it. That Fu Manchu moustache and the facial growth hides just about everything As for your men: they ll do well enough from what I ve seen of them and they ll benefit from not being known by anyone not even me But that s all right introductions can wait until the briefing in fifteen minutes. Okay Okay said Manolis. But just one thing: Where s Chung He s in the administration building through the trees over file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 131 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt there Trask pointed. He s on the phone exchanging situation reports with our HQ in London. By the way Chung and I have the chalet next door to Liz s should you need to know anything. And Manolis nodded. See you in Thee Shipwreck he said as Trask went back the way they had come . . . The Shipwreck wasn t nearly the wreck it appeared from outside. Within its spacious floor was crazy paved with polished marble and it was level throughout a rare thing on any Greek island where it s usually impossible to find a table that doesn t tilt at least a little to one side. Under the cleverly arranged raffia and bamboo camouflage of the roof there was a varnished pine ceiling where fishing nets festooned the high corners like vast cobwebs. Mediterranean conchs and fan shells decorated the nets and some of these were wired to an electrical circuit and fitted internally with small tinted light bulbs. Of an evening the subdued and intermittent glowing of the shells would add an almost submarine effect to the bar s ambiance. A row of sturdy bar stools stood empty at the well stocked pine topped bar itself while comfortable wicker armchairs were evenly spaced around its glass topped bamboo tables. The walls were painted with Aegean murals. Thus the Christos Studios setup in its entirety with its secluded shaded accommodations and The Shipwreck in its beachfront location made for a very pleasant and satisfactory base of operations. So thought Trask as he and his esper colleagues rearranged the seating moved three tables closer together and sat down. The only absentee was Chung who was still busy on the phone. It was very pleasant yes Trask thought in which respect Liz Merrick s observation that the place was perfect had been acceptable and accurate . . . . . . But then again so were lan Goodly s presentient dreams accurate probably. For Trask had a great deal of faith in the precog s wild talent and with every good reason. But however it worked out there was a lot more to E Branch being here than the sun the sand and the sea. This definitely wasn t going to be any kind of beach party. Ah civilisation said Manolis as he and his two entered the bar precisely n time. As Trask had noted Manolis s men looked very capable. The one who was built like a battering ram short in the legs but broad shouldered and with a chest like a barrel was Andreas. He had close cropped hair on a bullet head a wicked smile with more than a hint of menace behind it and eyes blue as e sea. His father was Greek but his mother had been an American she d died ner Andreas was a child since when he d lived in Athens. Andreas s colleague Stavros was a few years his junior at perhaps twenty 2i 2 BRIAN LUMLhY u c r i L c K. seven years of age. He was as Greek as they come and had shining black hair brown eyes and an athletic almost Olympian figure. Liz found that she couldn t help comparing him with Jake Cutter. It wasn t his face his too straight nose and very Mediterranean looks put paid to that so maybe it was the way he fitted his jeans. The silhouette was . . . reminiscent to say the least. Or perhaps it was simply that Jake was constantly in her thoughts. Close behind Manolis and his pair as they entered the bar a man who was a stranger to all but Trask followed them in. He was a handsome angular young Greek who introduced himself as the proprietor s son. I m Yiannis and I run the bar he told his guests in perfect English. When I m not here my wife will be. Katerina is currently taking her siesta but she ll be here tonight. And then turning to Manolis he said But what you said about civilisation . . . no. And still smiling he shook his head. Not The Shipwreck. Not my place. No Manolis looked surprised. Yiannis pointed out through a window in the shape of a porthole pointed east along the sea wall to where Skala Astris s hotels shops and tavernas made an untidy huddle that somehow marred the tranquility of the view and said again No that .is civilisation I remember when I was a boy and there was just a beach. But civilisation It doesn t come galloping down on us quite so fast these days now that tourism is dying off but if it ever starts up again . . . that s when I ll move The Shipwreck a little farther down the beach. I can t say if it s a blessing or a curse. I am making a living off the slow death of my home my island. But I like to think the disease is not incurable and that it will stabilize eventually. I see what you mean said Manolis. Then take what I said as a compliment. You have a most er agreeable place here. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 132 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Yiannis gave a little bow and went behind the bar. And you may take this as a compliment he said. The compliments of my bar customary when new guests come to Christos Studios. Please allow me to take your orders and serve drinks on the house. Bravo said Lardis at once beaming his pleasure. Metaxa for me if you please. His promise to familiarize himself with that drink was now well on course to being kept. The rest of the E Branch people took cooling fruit drinks Manolis and his men ordered ouzo on the rocks in tall frosted glasses. After serving the drinks Yiannis excused himself and left his guests to their own devices. People were due to check out and he had duties to perform he would return shortly. Then Trask got down to it. The place is just about empty he said. Which suits our purpose ideally. There s a handful of Germans staying in the other studios. Most of them have hired a car or cars and Yiannis tells me they re usually out from dawn till dusk there are better resorts and beaches on Krassos than this one and that s where they ll be. Which means we re fairly private here. As for Yiannis: from what I can gather he s a bit down in the mouth because business has been very bad this year. You can blame this weird El weather for that. Other than that he s a pronounced Anglophile and will see to all our needs. Chung and I have been here since last night and we ve had time to do some thinking and planning. We ve picked up a couple of maps enough for everyone that are far more detailed than the one you gave us Manolis. They re not quite Ordnance Survey standard but they re pretty good. He handed out folded maps. Manolis you ll need to guide your men through this. It s probably better that you do it later for I don t know how long Yiannis will leave us on our own. Okay we all know what this initial phase of the operation must be: to find Malinari and Vavara in their dens without them finding us and to discover how far their vampire contamination has spread. Once we know that it might be possible to call down some firepower on them. I say might because we don t have the same degree of cooperation here as we had in Australia. Indeed if the Greek authorities knew what we re doing here they d most likely kick us out The last thing they need to hear and the last thing we dare let them or anyone else hear is that there are vampires on the loose in the Greek islands That is not if we want to retain some kind of sanity in the world. Very well now open up your maps. This is Krassos. Densely wooded mountains built of the world s finest marbles farms and fishing villages sparse foothills that climb to rearing cliffs and ledges fit only for goats rocky bays shallow harbors and sandy beaches. Idyllic in its prime and an island paradise now it poses a threat far worse than tourism and Yiannis s civilisation creatures who would take it over and the rest of the world with it just as insidiously but far more terribly and totally. So where when and how are we to look for our enemies Well the rules aren t as simple as they may seem. Nor is the territory. We have here some three hundred square miles of island composed as previously described and Vavara and Malinari could be quite literally anywhere within its borders. Here s what I want done with immediate effect. He turned again to Manolis. Get in contact with the island s authorities and see if you can find out if anyone has been reported missing and where from. I think that Wait Manolis stopped him. I checked this out when I was here dealing with thee woman with thee leech. There are no missing locals tourists nothing. And thee island is far too small a place for thee peoples to go absent without being noticed. For a moment Trask was silent but then he nodded and said And so youve proved your point: that your presence isn t only of use to us but probably mdispensable. For that s one line of inquiry closed saving time that we would certainly have wasted ... for which my thanks. But it does leave a major ques t on unanswered. If Vavara has been here for the better part of three years then what or who has she been living on And lan Goodly put in We know that these creatures aren t required to BRIAN LUMLtY I L E K 5 take blood it isn t an absolute necessity but it is an inescapable fact that they do enjoy taking it. As they are wont to say: The blood is the life. It keeps them strong and over a long period file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 133 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt of time they would surely weaken without it. Also I simply can t imagine them denying their leeches. So perhaps what we re looking for And again Manolis jumped in Is a small village or community of say one hundred or less peoples all of whom have fallen under thee bitch vampire s spell. And my friends let me assure you that there are several such villages on this island For I too have given thee problem some thought and now I ask you to look at your maps. His finger stabbed at his map which lay unfolded on one of the tables. Here in thee Ypsarion Oros mountains thee village Panagia whose men quarry thee local marble. Population a mere seventy according to thee legend. And here at Theologos fifty diggers at an archaeological site predating thee Roman occupation. Also thee mountain resort at Kastro where people bathe in thee hot spring to cure their aches and pains. Permanent staff: seventeen. Vavara could be in any of these places and in twice as many others just like them. Chung and I had come to more or less the same conclusion Trask nodded. Even in the more densely populated towns still the numbers only run to a few thousand. Not only does everyone know everyone else but also his business If Vavara was there what this strange beautiful foreign woman who is only ever seen at night she d be taking a big chance. So we re agreed on that point: it would seem most likely that she has inveigled her way into a closed or remote probably mountainous community and gradually taken it over. That way she s had no need to kill any of her recently recruited thralls who are simply there to er supply her loathsome needs. Ugbhhl Then we re decided on how to start said Goodly. We must visit these places in full daylight of course and see if we can detect anything out of the ordinary. We have to visit all such places Trask nodded. Not only the ones Manolis has pointed out but every other location that might fit Vavara s requirements. And we have to be very careful how we go about it. Until our backup forces arrive from London we re only eight strong and I m not going to be calling anyone else in on this until we have definite targets. So I suggest we split up into three teams. What about vehicles said Liz. Chung and I have already hired a car Trask told her. We need two more. And Manolis you and your men need some suitable clothing touristy stuff you know to put a finishing touch to your disguise. Can your men handle that No problem said Manolis. They can even do it now while we talk. I noticed a sign where we got off thee bus a car hire firm in Skala Astris. Giving Andreas and Stavros instructions he sent them off into the village. It took but a moment. Teams then said Trask. But 1 want to keep our talented members split up as much as possible. Talented Manolis raised a querying eyebrow then snapped his fingers and said Ah yes of course Thee locator thee telepath and thee er Precog said Goodly. And the one who knows things Lardis tapped his nose. No Trask told him. It s not you I m concerned about. If these bastard things weren t able to track you down at night I fail to see how they ll detect you here in broad daylight He turned to the others. But out there on the road when we go looking for them I don t want you clustering your minds too close together. Liz you have to keep a tight rein on your telepathy. Malinari has been into your mind once and I ve no doubt he could do it again. Chung s talent is similar: it reaches out from him to locate things and might itself be located. And to Goodly: lan I m not too concerned about you your thing comes and goes true but as far as we can tell it has never betrayed you. While the future is a devious thing which will try to hide itself even from you it s yet more elusive where others are concerned. In short your talent isn t detectable thank goodness for small mercies The same goes for me. But we are espers all and for all we know Malinari or Vavara for that matter could be spotters: creatures who may recognize the psychic signatures of people like us. If that s true then Liz and David Chung are especially at risk and we must keep them apart. So here s what I suggest: The teams will be made up as follows. Manolis Lardis and Liz David Chung and Stavros lan Goodly Andreas and myself. He waited for comments and there were none. One team still to be decided will concentrate on local information gathering and act as odd jobbers . . . there are bound to be some odd jobs that have to be done. The other teams will split up one going east and the other west around Krassos. The roads are mainly coastal with lesser tracks and trails leading off into the mountains. Manolis I hope your men choose four wheel drive vehicles as I did I m sure they will said Manolis. But all this is for tomorrow Trask continued and we ll use the remainder of today to settle in rest up acquaint ourselves with these maps the topography the local who s who and know how file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 134 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt including any relevant items of gossip of course and so on and so forth . . . As he finished speaking the locator David Chung appeared in The Shipwreck s shady doorway. As for local knowledge he said or gossip if you like I ve just this minute overheard Yiannis chatting with a pair of departing Germans in the lobby of the admin building. Seems there was a fatal accident the night before ast and the circumstances are just a bit suspicious. As for news from London well that s suspicious too. He entered flopped into a chair wiped his forehead and said Phew this heat L U 1V1 L C I What kept you said Trask. Would you believe sunspots the locator answered shaking his head in disgust. It would appear that communications worldwide are going haywire. Pocket telephones are out of the question. They ve always had their problems as we know but now . . . anything more than twenty miles all you get is static. It s all come on very sudden apparently. It took a while to get through on the regular telephone in the lobby and then I had to decode John Grieve s double talk. What he told me isn t reassuring. Go on said Trask worriedly. Jimmy Harvey found a device in the restaurant downstairs Chung said. A bug low powered and short range it couldn t possibly transmit outside the four walls of the hotel. So Jimmy checked with reception to see if it was an inside job. The only likely candidate was some French bloke who d checked in shortly after we got back from down under. The register has him down as one Alfonso Lefranc and HQ s first thought was that it must be an alias. So they checked it out with Interpol and. . . what do you know Lo and behold the guy s a nark for Luigi Castellano Then our lot did a check with the airlines and as far as they can tell Lefranc is still is town. They re out looking for him now. And that s only that one . . . Trask s head whirled. Castellano Jake s hang up What the hell was going on here But he logged the information and said What else A scrambled message has come in from Gustav Turchin the locator answered. He thinks that by now his man must have infiltrated Castellano s organization. He says he s got a lot of faith in this person and fully anticipates that he ll soon be able to tell us just precisely where this Sicilian scumbag is. After that it s up to us. But he s anxious that we begin looking into his personal problem back home . . . presumably meaning Russia or more specifically Per chorsk. Yes it does said Trask. And is that it No said Chung squirming a little in his chair. There s one more item and you re not going to like it. I haven t liked anything yet said Trask. You ll like this even less Chung said but it may teach us a lesson. If only we d learned to stick with our ghosts but no we mess with our gadgets too. The trouble with them is the more we use them the more we rely upon them we let them do our figuring for us even when common sense is shoving the answers right up our silly noses Okay someone at HQ was playing about with the extraps and it seems they punched in the right question ... or depending how you view it the wrong one. Go on. What was the question Well not really a question Chung said but a scenario or a simultaneous equation certainly. You know how it works. Pretend I don t Trask answered and get on with it I ... I just want you to stay calm said Chung. And then without further pause Very well the equation was this: Bruce Trennier equals Australia equals Malinari the Mind. Denise Karalambos equals Greece equals Vavara. And therefore Andre Corner equals England . . . equals . . . Trask gave a start and sat bolt upright in his chair. Good God almighty he said. And then hoarsely: How could we be so blind Malinari took Bruce Trennier for his lieutenant because Trennier knew Australia. And Goodly came in with Vavara took Denise Karalambos for her knowledge of Greece or the Greek islands namely this Greek island. Which left Liz to finish it with Szwart took Andre Corner a psychiatrist formerly of Harley Street for his knowledge of... of Londonl Only Manolis who wasn t in possession of all the minutiae failed to appreciate the situation. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 135 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt But he knew it was serious when Trask bounded from his chair and almost upset the tables. Millie he croaked his face more gaunt than ever. God I have to get onto London right now I have to talk to Millie Chung was on his feet too and quickly said I knew you would. So I made arrangements that they d call us back in just fifteen minutes. If you ll just slow down and take it easy by the time you get over to the lobby But Trask was already on his way. Liz followed after him Lardis too because his Lissa was at E Branch HQ but Chung and Goodly stayed behind to explain the situation as best they could to Manolis. It didn t take too long and when they were through Manolis nodded and said Ben he still has thee poor Zek on his mind. And now this. Thee new lady in his life could be in danger. Exactly said Chung. Someone s tried to bug the HQ and we don t know how much they got and it s possible that Szwart who or whatever he is is in London. And one of the last things Ben did before we left was to warn everyone of the possibility that the Wamphyri That they might try to make thee preemptive strike yes said Manolis. Then toying with drinks diluted by melted ice water the three sat silently lost in their own thoughts and waited for Trask and the others to return . . . In the mazelike cellars of Luigi Castellano s Bagheria villa Castellano and his man or his familiar creature his thrall Garzia Nicosia stood in a musty cobwebbed room with a low vaulted ceiling and spoke in voices that reverberated eerily from wall to wall echoed out into the labyrinth of subterranean rooms and corridors and returned as sighing whispers. The room was carved from the bedrock and regularly spaced columns supported the claustrophobic ceiling. In nitre streaked walls two foot square niches had been cut three feet deep around an oblong circumference of about 180 feet each of which more than two hundred of them contained ancient crumbling remains. In addition however many niches contained remnants that weren t nearly so old which had been stuffed in among the collapsed wood of coffins and the mouldering rags and skeletons of the rightful occupants. The burial chamber of the Argucci family said Castellano his face ruddily lit by a flaring faggot held aloft in Garzia s hand. They were a large family and for two hundred years when they owned the ground above and all the many acres around they incarcerated their dead in this vault. A great family yes who planned to remain a family and keep themselves together as one unit even in death. These vaults or cellars as they are now were hewn accordingly. But various disasters followed feuds many trials and few tribulations. Their fortunes waned the Arguccis were split up they travelled abroad into Italy and farther afield. The estate was sold off and became an olive grove and when that failed I Luigi Francezci called Castellano bought it up. As for a detailed history of the Arguccis a progressive family tree it s written on bronze plates over each of those niches there under all of that powdered coffin wood grime and spider debris . . . Ah but prior to selling the old place off and determined that his forebears should never be moved or disturbed the last of the Arguccis fashioned the ingenious doorway to this burial chamber. And back in a time when the estate was the centre of a small but flourishing olive oil empire long before you and I came here Garzia the enterprising proprietor discovered it probably by accident. Well good for him and good for us. For since he is long gone now we re the only ones who know of it. Castellano glanced at a wooden table where piles of ancient ledgers notebooks and manuscripts were long fallen into decay. And sitting on a rickety chair he went on. Enterprising yes this old olive oil baron. He kept his regular accounts in the house upstairs but the true measure of his profits was stashed away down here Well give him his due he may have been less than honest when it came to fiddling the books and declaring his taxes but he never once disturbed these dead and mummied Arguccis. Garzia swept his torch lower until the niches in the walls came alive with dancing shadows jumbled old bones and yawning skulls skulls that seemed to protest albeit silently through jaws fused in rictal shrieks. And: Indeed Garzia agreed. It appears he desecrated nothing that olive oily old man but left all such to us The perfect retreat said Castellano. Spacious overhead and secret places underground. It s almost a fortress walled and well protected with our men in the grounds and as a last resort file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 136 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt ourselves: stronger than other men and less inclined to injury and pain. I ve often wondered just exactly what it would take to kill one such as you or me . . . but I m not ready to find out just yet. Perhaps later Garzia said when the men we ve infected have had time to stabilize For then they ll be vampires too. Well perhaps Castellano considered it. For I would be interested to find out certainly. To know how much punishment creatures such as ourselves can take before giving up our ghosts. But for now . . . let s get done with this. He stood up. On the dusty floor between them lay the naked drained and mutilated body of the Russian double agent Georgi Grusev with his jaws wide open in much the same fashion as many of the mummified figures in the walls. Having hung by his heels in Garzia s torture chamber overnight and all through the day rigor mortis had locked Grusev s jaws in that position likewise the unholy inverted cross of his outspread arms. Garzia had taken care of that by breaking the arms at the shoulders and folding them down. Now the vampires took up the body Castellano at the head and Garzia at the feet and without pause fed it headfirst into the nearest niche. As it went the crumbling bones of some elder Argucci entombed two hundred years before fell into dust and gave it passage. And the silent screams seemed louder yet but Castellano and Garzia didn t hear them. Then as the nightmare pair dusted themselves down and left the burial chamber Garzia looked back in satisfaction. Several dozen pairs of feet none of them Arguccis but all with their flesh in various stages of decay or completely sloughed away protruded from their niches like Georgi Grusev s . . . except his were firm as yet however cold and their toes pointed upwards. And as that secret door swung shut on its hoard of violated dead becoming a solid stone wall once more the monster Garzia paused to scuff out certain telltale marks on the floor twin tracks where Grusev s heels had dragged in the dust and then extinguished his torch and followed the darkly flowing shape of his master as Castellano led on ... THE SUN THE SAND THE SEA AND THE SCREAMING Ben Trask was momentarily absent busy on the phone talking to London. But after he had been gone for only a few minutes his second in command the precog lan Goodly had begun to fill in for him. Always aware of the future s relentless encroachment Goodly had rarely been known to waste time. Manolis I recall your saying something about weapons he began. It was while we were on the ferry. You told Liz you had special weapons. Now what was all that about Ah said Manolis. But lan you weren t in on thee Janos Ferenczy affair were you We learned a few things that time. I know said the other. Those files are required reading for everyone in E Branch. But all of that was twenty five or so years ago. What does it have to do with the here and now Apart from the fact that we re back in the Greek islands that is. What weapons have you brought with you Manolis answered the pre cog s question with one of his own. Standard E Branch stuff Goodly shrugged. Basically nine millimeter Brownings with a few special adaptations. We ve had three years to develop them. Silver tipped bullets mainly. And now there s a new one that shatters and releases a quantity of concentrated oil of garlic into the target. They let you through customs with this stuff Manolis was surprised but only momentarily. We re E Branch said the precog. The weapons were inside a diplomatic bag. No problem at our end in London. And at this end You re tourists Manolis nodded. No one checks tourists. Not when they re coming into Greece. Tourists are money. These days we only check for terrorism and drugs. That s right said Goodly. And Liz tells me that ten or more years ago she was a frequent visitor. She would come over with her parents as tourists. They were never once checked. Manolis could only shrug perhaps apologetically. Er thee Greek peoples are too trusting he said. Maybe. Or let s just say that we have fewer red tape restrictions eh Anyway that s our weapons dealt with said Goodly. Now tell me about yours. Manolis turned to David Chung. You my friend my very good my very old friend you were there and you understand I m sure. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 137 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt The locator reached into a pocket of his lightweight jacket and slid a pair of single headed spearheads of the type used in spearfishing onto the table. Hinged inch long barbs flew open as they slithered to a halt and the spearheads gleamed a dull silver where they lay. The metal was very slightly tarnished or more properly tinted with the bluish bloom of old coins. Silver plated said Chung. I ve had them all this time. The first chance I get I ll be buying the very best speargun I can find. Exactly Manolis exclaimed picking up one of the spearheads. Thee other policeman who was with me in Kavala I sent him back to Athens. He will go to my house a certain drawer in my study and mail me a parcel containing just such items. Meanwhile I too shall buy a speargun and others for my men. We are in thee Krassos a Greek island and even thee children do thee spear fishing. Except with our guns we will be looking for thee bigger fish eh He looked at Goodly. I see said the precog. Not only silver but also stakes of a sort . . . the sort that can t easily be pulled out I have three spearheads said Manolis. With David s two that makes five. We will need five guns. And I know thee best thee most powerful kind to buy. We also have concentrated oil of garlic Goodly told him. Not so much a weapon as a protection. It does sicken them of course and when injected can seriously incapacitate and kill. But in order to do that without a gun . . . you have to get much too close. And that s our arsenal Chung shook his head. Not a hell of a lot. As for doing any serious damage any kind of scorched earth or rather ground clearing policy that might be required well Ben Trask has already explained why we can t expect much help. Not from thee authorities no said Manolis but I might have a few ideas. We ll talk about it later here comes Ben and thee others now. Trask was calmer now also Lardis but Liz was looking very concerned as she had been ever since leaving E Branch HQ. She had managed to get a minute or two on the phone after Trask was through and had enquired after Jake Cutter. But HQ had heard nothing from him and they had more to do right now than worry about Jake. All three sat down and Trask said I ve given HQ their orders. They re to tighten their security wherever possible and remain on station. That is they re all to move into the hotel into HQ accommodation. They re pulling in staff from the various foreign embassies cutting back on police work keeping on their toes. But despite all that still we re overstretched. We have a team down under making sure we didn t overlook anything during our Visit down there. We have other people out looking for Luigi Castellano s spy this Alfonso Lefranc. And of course we have our terrorist squad on full alert as always. The techs are having huge problems with all of this sunspot activity and their gadgets aren t worth shit right now. And the temperature isn t letting up a damn which means everyone s feeling drained. So much for my calling for backup If we strike lucky out here then obviously I ll have to find some extra help from somewhere. But until then Trask shrugged looked from face to face and finished off with We ll just have to manage as best we can. Well said Goodly you did say you d build us up slowly. Nothing s changed really except that we now know we may have some problems back home. So since there s nothing else for it I say we leave it at that and get on with what we came out here to do. That s the commonsense solution yes Trask agreed. And it s the only solution. Except Except now we ll not only be worried for each other said Lardis but for our loved ones too. In my case those at home my real home and also the one ... in my new home. Trask looked at him and offered a grim nod. Ironic the way things work out isn t it Nathan brought you out of Sunside to keep you out of danger and in the last month or so you ve been up to your neck in it And don t you try to keep me out of it Lardis scowled. But Manolis sat up straight in his chair and said Ah And now I am sure Piece by piece I have put it together and now I see it all. Thee only possible explanation how any man could live so long without having discovered Meta xa It lightened the atmosphere at once and Liz was unable to resist reaching out to touch Manolis s mind. His wink confirmed what she d suspected that his seemingly untimely joke had been intended to do just that to lighten the atmosphere which had been far too serious. Likewise Trask and the others they d all needed to ease up smile relax a little. And Manolis had shown them the way. Hub: the Old Lidesci grunted then grinned a wicked grin. But talking about Metaxa where s that Yiannis got to And Liz determined now to throw off all of her anxieties said Manolis I hold you personally responsible in that you may have created a monster And Trask said Lardis promise me you ll go easy on that stuff We still have a job to do. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 138 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt For precisely on cue Yiannis had come back and Trask let his people order a second round of drinks to take to Manolis s accommodation where he would begin to detail their individual tasks in private. Then as they left The Ship wreck he smiled however wryly shrugged and said What the heck . . . why not Let s eat drink and be merry for tomorrow . . . Pausing he held back a little took lan Goodly s arm and steered him out of earshot of the rest and quietly asked him So how about it How about tomorrow But the precog could only sigh in his funereal fashion and answer For the moment it s as much a mystery to me as it is to you Ben. Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die Is that what you re saying or asking Then when Trask made no answer he sighed again shook his head and said No I don t think so. Not tomorrow anyway. A little over an hour later Andreas and Stavros returned with two four wheel drive cars. They were no sooner in than Manolis sent them out again this time to buy some suitable clothing and to find if such existed in the huddle of Skala Astris a hardware store that stocked spearguns. Meanwhile he d been on the phone to a local police office about the rumoured fatal accident and also to his office in Athens checking to see if there had been any breakthrough in tracking down Jethro Manchester s Greek charity. About the latter: No he told Trask after sending his subordinates off on their latest mission. This is real money we are talking about. Thee only man with thee authority to release such informations is thee Governor of the Bank of Greece. He s away and won t be back till Monday and his deputy is a coward who cannot accept thee responsibility Anyway today is Saturday and thee banks are officially closed now. Trask nodded. Stalled again he said. The answer has to be right there in some bloody bank s computer and I can t get at it because someone is away and it s the weekend. Also what with this weather and all I couldn t even have my chief tech a man called Jimmy Harvey hack into it if I wanted to and if he knew which computer it was because the gadgets at HQ are all acting up. It s a hellish frustrating business Manolis. Trask was sitting inside the shade provided by the raffia awning over The Shipwreck s entrance watching David Chung and Liz fooling about in the warm shallow water at the rim of the sea. Close by keeping an eye on the pair the Old Lidesci was seated on a slab of rock with his jeans rolled up and his feet dangling in the water. As for lan Goodly: he was taking a nap perhaps hoping to do a little precognitive dreaming. They are having thee good time eh said Manolis indicating the people on the beach. Yes but don t be mistaken Trask told him. When there s work to be done they ll do it. As for what s left of today . . . it s too late to do very much else. This late in the season an hour or two more and the sun will be setting. Then we ll split up into two or three parties have our evening meal at a decent taverna get a good night s sleep and an early start tomorrow. He looked down across the beach. From then on we re likely to be pretty busy so my lot may as well get some enjoyment out of all this while they can. LJ C I L C K. I am agreeing Manolis answered. But personally I have one more thing to do before tonight. Oh Trask looked up at him. Manolis nodded. When my men return with thee colourful T shirts and thee shorts I shall have one of them drive me up to a village in thee foothills. This unfortunate suspicious accident that David mentioned Well thee burned body of a young man is lying in a coffin on a table in his poor mother s house up there in thee hills and I want to see it. Trask stood up and said You think that maybe Manolis gave a noncommittal shrug. 1 don t know. But after what happened to me on this Krassos I have a problem with thee word accident. I was in a car and barely survived. This other one was riding a motorcycle . . . and didn t. Take Lardis with you Trask nodded. If there s anything to be known about the victims of vampirism he knows it. And if this wasn t just an accident he might well know that too. His special knowledge Manolis said Trask one way or the other that old man has killed more bloody vampires than you and I and E Branch put together Just take my word for it. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 139 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Oh I do said the other. I have seen his machete and I have counted thee notches in its grip. Exactly said Trask. And one other thing before you go. By all means let this man s mother know that you re a policeman I suppose you will have to do that but don t give her your real name and don t let her think that your investigations are in any way extraordinary. I don t want any rumours getting back to our enemies. Ah Ben Ben said the other. But you re forgetting that I am thee policeman and that when necessary I can be thee fox too. Have a little faith in me yes And waving to attract Lardis s attention he set off across the narrow strip of beach to speak to him. . . Manolis and Lardis were late getting back. The sun had set and a dusky evening was coming down when Stavros drove them back in through the gates of the Christos Studios. Then the party of eight split into three smaller groups and headed for the lights of the nearest taverna along a dirt track that paralleled the seafront. Since as yet there was little or no letup in the temperature and no reason to hurry they took it easy assumed a casual holiday attitude talked in lowered tones and kept well within view of each other. A handful of holidaymakers were out and about on their way to or returning from their evening meals young Germans walking hand in hand in the smoky evening air along with a few English couples their heads were paired off in silhouettes against the darkening amethyst horizon merging when they paused to whisper their lovers secrets. For a Greek island is a Greek island. That at least was as it should be ... Feeling the heat and only now beginning to feel the sunlight she d absorbed radiating from her Liz had changed into a light summer dress and sandals. Trask and his men had dressed in short sleeved shirts and shorts but Manolis and his two had chosen to wear lightweight trousers. As Manolis had explained: On a night we would be too conspicuous in shorts. Thee Greeks are more conservative and since we are obviously Greeks . . . He Trask and Lardis formed the rearmost group and as they walked Trask queried him about the motorcycle accident. Myself said Manolis 1 can t be absolutely sure but please understand 1 speak as a trained policeman. I mean I am sure but without thee firm evidence He could only shrug. Explain said Trask. Well said Manolis this youth had apparently consumed a lot of ouzo. This is according to thee statements of friends he had been drinking with earlier right here in Skala Astris actually. When they left him he was drunk and his bike wouldn t start. He was pushing it. Thee next morning he and his machine were discovered in a dry riverbed. Maybe he d tried to get his bike going on a downhill stretch of road or it could be that he was freewheeling I don t know. But apparently he crashed. So what s suspicious about that Trask queried. Thee driving mirror on his handlebars was broken Manolis went on presumably in thee crash. It seems he must have flown from thee bike broke thee mirror in his flight . . . and cut his own throat. It seems so anyway. Cut his throat Now Trask s eyes had narrowed. He sensed the strangeness here detected the quiet but as yet unproven conviction in Manolis s voice and suddenly the evening felt that much cooler. Indeed Manolis continued. Thee glass was still stuck in thee wound. Unconscious he died where he had fallen. Ahl Lardis came in. But he didn t just die did he I mean there was more to it than that now wasn t there Burned Trask said nodding his understanding. And then to Manolis Didn t you originally say that he was burned Yes the other answered. After it crashed thee machine caught fire from thee petrol in thee tank. And since thee youth and thee machine landed in thee selfsame spot And again Lardis came in. He flew from the bike yet both lad and machine ended up in the same place Hahf I see said Trask. And to Manolis Is that it That s it Manolis replied. From me at least. Anything else you should ask Lardis here. For what remains lies more in his province yes What remains Frowning Trask turned to Lardis. So what do you make of it Lardis s normally rough voice was more grim and gravelly yet as he answered I understand that Manolis needs proof that on this world evidence file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 140 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt NECROSCOFE: DEMLHRS 247 is everything but I can assure you it s perfectly clear to me here as it would be on Sunside. Except there these monsters have no need to cover up their evil deeds. But I tell you I could smell this thing as I ve smelled it fifty times before There was a taint in the air my flesh was clammy from it and I knew what it meant. Someone or thing had caused this so called accident. And the selfsame someone or thing had cut this poor lad s throat with the broken mirror and set fire to him and his machine in order to conceal a foul murder. It s as simple as that. But no positive proof said Manolis and Trask almost in unison. Oh but there is said Lardis. We saw the lad s slashed throat and then we visited the scene of the crash and saw the burned out bike. Fortunately there d been no dry brush in that riverbed or the blaze might have spread. Instead it had only burned the bike and the lad of course. But he wasn t burned up entirely and what Manolis has so far failed to mention Is thee blood said Manolis then his voice quieter yet. Yes Lardis is right. Thee big problem is thee blood. The blood Trask looked at each of them in turn. The blood that is the life Lardis growled. But you see there wasn t any blood Ben This lad had spilled his life out yes but not into the dust of that dry riverbed. Now you have it all said Manolis. And to hell with thee lack of evidence Frankly until someone can explain to me thee absence of that young man s blood I have to agree with Lardis. Deep inside I can only believe that this was thee work of thee vrykoulakasl After that it would have been very difficult for the three to present or maintain any sort of carefree holiday facade. There again since they were older more mature men no one would be expecting them to act like kids out of school. And as for this most recent symptom of the island s vampiric infestation: they agreed that for the moment they would say nothing to the other members of the team. They at least should be allowed to enjoy the pleasures of dining out in the Greek island atmosphere and also of sleeping well in their beds tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough to bring all of this to their attention and shatter any illusions of an idyllic Greek island. Not that a great many of those remained anyway . . . At the Sunset Taverna a clean but unremarkable little place at the western extreme of Skala Astris s sea wall a place nestling under a huge canvas canopy with sky blue plastic stacking chairs and square white tables that refused to balance without three beermats under the offending or short legs the eight disparate colleagues took seats remaining in their subgroups but positioning themselves to stay within earshot of each others tables. David Chung Stavros and Liz were at one table Andreas and Goodly at a second while Trask Manolis and Lardis occupied a third. A gentle breeze off the sea stirred the warm night air a very little but was nevertheless welcome the conversation was mainly light and cheerful and Andreas and Stavros both proved to have more than a fair smattering of English. Following Trask s earlier warnings his three espers reined back on their special talents and refrained from exercising their metaphysical minds. Thus the meal passed without incident until towards the end. Other than the eight the taverna was quite empty. This was scarcely the fault of the proprietor his cooking couldn t be faulted and the atmosphere was very pleasant but the fact of the matter was that there were almost as many tavernas in Skala Astris as holidaymakers. As they were finishing up however two young Greeks riding motorcycles pulled up on the road behind the taverna put their bikes on their stands entered and took a table in a far corner. Manolis saw them stared hard at one of them for a moment then quickly averted his gaze. And: Don t look now he told Trask and Lardis under his breath but I believe I have seen that one before thee one with thee screaming skull on his jacket yes. The pair ordered ouzo with water and finally the one whom Manolis had mentioned looked their way and gave a start. Ah see said Manolis then. And it appears that he recognizes me too It was a fact the youth s eyes seemed riveted on Manolis and his face had paled in a moment. He was so distracted so alarmed apparently to find Manolis here that as he reached for the drink that had been placed within arm s reach he almost toppled it from the table. And Manolis said: Aha I know him now. He was skulking about in thee village in thee hills when Lardis and I were about our investigations. So then what does he know that I should know but don t eh I have seen file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 141 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt that look and been in thee similar situations many times before. So then and now we employ thee method of silent intimidation. He looked at his men at the other tables and gave a jerk of his head. Totally in tune with their boss with a rapport that came from many years of service together Stavros and Andreas stood up and moved carefully but purposefully towards the young men. The policemen didn t look like the kind that any young man should argue with and as they went Manolis sat at his ease with his feet stretched out staring indolently at the victims of his silent intimidation. Then Andreas spoke in Greek to the one with the screaming skull jacket and whatever it was he said it brought that one babbling to his feet in a moment. Prodding him in the shoulder Andreas snapped one short word at him and the youth collapsed back down again into his chair. Meanwhile Stavros was cautioning the other youth who looked scared to death and about to flee to stay right where he was. And finally Manolis said I think that now perhaps these big hard biker boys are ready to tell me something. But it will be best if I speak to them on my own without involving you. I B K 1 A IN L. U M L t Y With which he slowly stood up made a show of brushing himself down and walked casually almost swaggeringly across the floor to the corner table. There he sat down and while Andreas and Stavros looked on spoke to the youths for several minutes. Finally he was done with them and let them go and returned to Trask and Lardis. Time we left he said then as the biker pair started up their machines and rode off into the night. So what s going on Trask enquired. It would best suit our purposes the other answered to talk about this back at thee Christos Studios. But there was something new in Manolis s voice. The knowing front that he had presented to the youths was entirely absent and there was little or nothing of the hardened arrogant Greek policeman about him now. . . Back at Christos Studios in The Shipwreck where a pretty young Swiss woman Yiannis s wife Katerina served last drinks before retiring Trask held his O Group for tomorrow Sunday. Before that however he wanted Manolis to explain the business in the taverna. Manolis had already spoken to his men back on the mainland he had asked them to trust him and without going into too much detail had told them there was a problem on Krassos. For even with their background of total loyalty to him he d feared that to tell them too much in the early stages of this game would be to damage his credibility. As things developed however it was and always had been his intention to put them more fully in the picture. Now that things were definitely developing he d spent time talking to them as they walked back from the taverna. Thus all eight of the party were seated in a huddle in The Shipwreck to hear what he had to say and then to accept orders from Trask. Those two in thee taverna Manolis began. They saw me up in Astris thee foothills twin of Skala Astris. They suspected then that I was a policeman perhaps even a special policeman a detective in my civilian clothes and it worried them. Why Because they were thee drinking companions of thee man who died in that motorcycle accident You see they had not been good boys that night. All thee barrels have their bad apples right And Krassos too has its little criminals er as well as thee big ones we re seeking of course. So those two and their dead roasted empty friend they were three of Krassos s bad boys with thee criminal records as long as your arm. But all petty little thefts rowdyism and like that. They style themselves after thee American and European biker gangs. Habl What a joke So they re not very eager to meet up with thee policemen these two and they knew I had spoken to thee dead man s mother. Who could say: perhaps she had mentioned her son s friends eh And perhaps I would come looking for them. Why it was possible they might even find themselves blamed for what had happened Tonight and by pure coincidence they went to thee Sunset Taverna. And they went there for thee same reason we went there to keep out of sight in that quiet little place. But ah Who should happen to be there but myself which is giving them thee shock. When Andreas spoke to thee one with thee screaming skull jacket he at once began to explain about his dead friend said that he and thee other one had nothing to do with it but that they might know someone who did. There had been some troubles that night. These three they had been out looking for thee girls English or German girls thee tourists to have a little fun. And thee dead man especially he had file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 142 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt a bad reputation like that. But this time he had picked on thee wrong girl or woman and he d definitely picked on thee wrong pair. A pair of them yes a man and a woman right here in Skala Astris eating and drinking wine in a taverna closer to thee middle of town. Then when these three bad boy bikers had approached their would be victims to have their fun thee man had reacted violently. So say these two cretins anyway. Their friend now their dead friend was thrown over thee sea wall into thee harbour him and his bike both But these motorcycles . . . they are not thee toys As you have seen they can be heavy machines. So this was a strong man a very strong man indeed. After that they used thee anchor of a small boat to help their friend rescue his bike from thee sea then left him to go off into Krassos town. And that s it . . . And a description Trask said. Of this man and woman Ah yes said Manolis. Thee descriptions. And so to thee point eh But there s no doubt in my mind Ben but that these creatures were thee ones we seek. It was them Vavara and Malinari. Thee man was tall well over six feet. He was strange and foreign . . . but also handsome exotic. And when he clasped thee dead man s head between his hands that one froze and went weak at thee knees. That was how he handled him so easily. Just like he must have clasped Zekl Trask said breathing the words out and almost choking on them. Malinari the Mind Then he cleared his throat and said What about the woman That is thee strangest of all Manolis replied. She was . . . magnetic She had this aura about her. She was so beautiful that she seemed to shine . . . yet they could remember nothing of her actual looks. And: Vavaaaral said Lardis then. Five hundred and more years old that one and born in another world another time. Yet now she is here. Ben we ve found them. Definitely No Trask shook his head his voice a husky whisper again. We know they re here but we haven t found them yet. Tomorrow maybe but not yet not tonight. The nighttime is their time. They re too strong at night. But I ll find them tomorrow or if not tomorrow the day after that or the one after that. If it s the last thing I do I ll find them . . . He looked at Liz and David Chung. You two and especially you Liz now more than ever you must watch yourselves keep a tight rein on your talents. Tomorrow morning when these filthy things are down and sleeping and we go to seek them out that s when you ll come into your own. Again he cleared his throat. As they nodded their understanding Trask relaxed a little. Very well now let s talk tomorrow through go a little deeper into the details. These are the things 1 want done . . . After that: it took perhaps an hour of instructions questions and clarifications and when it was done they all retired to their rooms and tried to sleep. For Liz that proved difficult. A developing telepath whose range was ever improving she occasionally read her colleagues minds unintentionally without even trying. But tonight in Ben Trask s case Liz had sensed that she knew his thoughts anyway. It was the look on his face whenever he spoke a certain name. The name of a man or creature whom Trask despised and hated above all others. Malinari: Lord Nephran Malinari of the Wamphyri And Liz couldn t help wondering just how tight the mission would be with the Head of E Branch leading it. For personal was one thing but this time with Trask This time it was very personal And then of course there was Jake. Always in the back of her mind Jake. She supposed she loved him she knew she did but Jake was involved with his own vendetta and she wasn t a part of it. No room just yet for a new love in his life for it was a lost love that he was trying to avenge. Liz knew that she shouldn t feel jealous about a dead woman but she did and she worried about Jake. She didn t know where he was or how he was ... or even who he was not really. But then again neither did Jake. Not really . . . As Liz tossed and turned awhile lan Goodly left Lardis to get his rest and went to Trask s chalet. He found Trask and Chung talking drinking coffee not yet quite ready to sleep. Trask welcomed him in sat him down and asked What s on your mind But unlike most people when they ask that question Trask meant it not only literally but also metaphysically. And the precog answered in kind. Exactly he said. It s been on my mind awhile now and it s time we talked about it. Those dreams you mentioned earlier Trask sighed by way of an apology. I hadn t forgotten but we ve been pretty busy. This afternoon when you were sleeping I didn t want to disturb you. Also since we ll be working together tomorrow I thought that would be soon enough. But on the other file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 143 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt hand right now is fine if it s bothering you. Bothering and puzzling both said Goodly. For as usual the future is being an utter bastard er if you ll excuse my French. I m shown things but I m not given to understand them. So I was thinking maybe two heads would be better than one. Let s have it then said Trask. What have you seen or foreseen if that turns out to be the case. I think it probably is the case Goodly nodded. Because this afternoon when I was sleeping I was revisited by the same repetitive dream. Before . . . well it might have been a dream I mean I dream just like anyone else but when these things start repeating ganging up on me . . . And he shrugged. A warning or warnings said Trask. Well that s how they have frequently worked out Goodly answered. But the future isn t biased that way. I ve seen good things as well as bad occasionally anyway. And you ve never been wrong said Chung admiringly. Goodly looked at him. Only in my interpretation he said and added until recently. For as you may recall I also saw Jake Cutter as being with us with E Branch for some time to come. That was when we were in Australia since when I ve been proved wrong. In the short term anyway. For where s Jake now And as for the long term the future ... as always it remains to be seen. I know where I would like Jake to be Trask growled. We could certainly use his talents the bloody hothead if he were here But as you say: it remains to be seen. So then tell us about your dreams. They go back a few days said the precog. Back to London and the HQ after we got back from down under just as all of this was beginning to break. I remember said Trask. Something about black robed figures tunnels and hooded eyes Goodly nodded. And a shape or shadow coming ever closer. But as for that last I haven t seen him since flying out here with Liz and Lardis. Him said Trask. This shadow is a he then Again the precog nodded. But don t ask me to describe him. He is literally a shadow a dark blot a flowing . . . something. If I were to hazard a guess however I would say he could only be Lord Szwart said Trask. And he s in London. That s why you haven t seen him since you came out here. You ve distanced yourself from him. And that s what I meant about two heads being better than one said Goodly. For I had come to the same conclusion but I needed someone else to corroborate it. If what you just said is the truth of it and who could possibly know the truth better than you then indeed it has to be Szwart and probably in London yes. My worst nightmare said Trask. A thing as loathsome as that coming ever closer. But not to us not while we re here. Not to you but to the ones you love said Chung. Millie in your case and Lissa in Lardis Lidesci s. Trask looked at him sharply and frowned. Millie Whatever makes you think that I But both the locator and precog were looking away from him as if not wishing to hear it. Trask thought he knew why and in Chung s case he was L U 1V1 right. But on hearing Millie s name spoken Goodly had averted his eyes for a different reason entirely. There s no more use in my lying than in someone trying to lie to me right Trask said. But Millie and I it s only a very recent thing. So how come everyone Oh you ve let it slip given yourself away now and then Chung cut him short. But even if you hadn t good news travels fast He grinned however briefly. Yes Trask nodded. Especially in E Branchl And then to Goodly: Okay but we already know about Szwart. And I ve done what I can to safeguard the HQ and everyone in it. So go on what about the rest of it The rest of it is as it was the precog answered. Black robed figures drifting or floating . . . and something sinking a blob of light receding into watery deeps . . . and a warren of burrows or tunnels all filled with something horrid . . . I remember all that said Trask. So what s new Didn t you say something about screaming Goodly took his time moistening his lips before answering. Yes the new stuff is about screaming. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 144 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt But it s something you aren t going to like too much Ben and I don t like any of it the other cut him short. So out with it. And it s sort of contradictory the precog continued as if he hadn t been interrupted. I mean just because I have seen it that doesn t mean it will be the way I ve seen it. Contradictory Trask frowned. And it doesn t have to be the way you ve seen it That s right Goodly answered yes. For if my being here on Krassos has distanced me from Szwart and if he s in London then why hasn t being here distanced me from . . . from everyone else in London Or is it just because I know them so well that their futures are clearer to me Now Trask felt his throat go dry. So then this really is about our people back home he said. And steeling himself Go on tell me about it. And the precog s voice was shaky as he said I saw women but I saw them burning Ben They were clad in black rags and the flames were leaping up from them consuming them. They held up their arms to the sky and their eyes were luminous with joy and . . . and ... I don t know Relief maybe David Chung s jaw had fallen open. Joy They were burning and screaming and yet they were joyous relieved This isn t... it isn t easy Goodly shook his head. And I don t understand it any more than you will. But no it wasn t these burning women who were doing the screaming. The screaming was coming from someone else the odd woman out. She was screaming in absolute horror of something that she could see which I couldn t. And instead of looking up she was looking down at a gaping chasm that had opened under her feet a yawning black hole that seemed to go down forever. . . As Goodly paused his face ashen so Trask rose and went to him. And Trask s face was as pale as the precog s as he grabbed his shoulders and shook him. I ve ignored it up until now he snarled. But I ve been seeing it in your face ever since I let you in here. I ve probably been ignoring it all evening since you woke up from your nap but I ve known there was something wrong. And now I know what it is. The precog could only sit there rocked by Trask s terrible anger shaking his head in dumb consternation and looking as if he wanted to die yet knowing it wasn t his fault. It was Millie you saw wasn t it Trask said huskily his voice breaking now. It was Millie doing the screaming and you know that it s going to fucking happen And finally as Trask released him and turned away: But we don t know that Ben Goodly spoke up. We only know something will happen. We don t know how or when or why or what the end result will be. Trask had collapsed on his bed his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. God damn you he raved his whole body shaking. You and your fucking talent God damn us all Chung went to him but didn t touch him. Boss he said quietly after a moment. This isn t lan s fault. It s like you said a warning. It gives us extra time to speak to HQ again tell them something s coming down and they ve got to look after the women. It s a warning that s all. Trask took a deep breath looked up said David you know it doesn t work like that. How many times have we seen it When lan says it s going to happen it s going to happen. And that s it. There s no escaping it. But we don t know bow it will happen Goodly repeated himself or what the end result will be. Jesus Jesus said Trask jumping to his feet. I have to speak to London again. But. . . He looked at his friends shook his head and said You two I don t know how to say I m sorry for the way I acted a moment ago. I don t even know if I should just yet. I hate this. I hate our talents. Why can t we be like other men Why do we have to suffer all this shit What in hell did our forebears do that we had to be born fucking freaks lan I didn t mean to go off at you like that. But Millie my God Millie It s all right said the precog. I hate it too Ben. We all do. People say we re talented but I say we re cursed. Just don t. . . don t be concerned with anything else right now. Just go and speak to HQ. And without another word Trask took his jacket and went out into the Mediterranean night. . . Morning the sun just clearing the horizon and it was probably the coolest it would be all day and well into the next night. Now we really are tourists said Liz a passenger in the lead car as all three vehicles headed out from Christos Studios and went their various ways. To all intents and purposes that is ... except the real one. NECRUbCOPb L h f 1 L t K file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 145 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt BK1AIN LUMLtY 1 I used to tour Sunside Lardis chuckled gruffly. But I called it beating the bounds and I rode in a caravan or went on foot. That was how the old Szgany chieftains protected their territories. The farthest I ever went was into Starside to the last great aerie of the Wamphyri. But that was before Trask and Chung and Goodly and Zek and Nathan before they all brought it crashing down of course. This was news to Manolis who was driving. What he said. Ben Trask and thee others they were all with you in a vampire world In my vampire world aye said Lardis. And without them I don t suppose I d be here talking about it. For they re brave lads all these E Branch people. And me and my kind the Szgany as a race we d have been goners without them. E Branch Manolis nodded. Brave ones yes and so many of them are thee goners now gone away for ever. I knew one of them a man called Darcy Clarke quite well but I don t think either of you will have known him. He was before your time with thee Branch. We did some work with thee vrykoulakas bastards on thee island of Halki he and I. That was like it was like a nightmare but we lived through it. Did I say lived through it Hahi Darcy had this thing inside him his talent which so protected him he should have lived to be a hundred Yet now he is no more. No more Darcy Clarke Ken Layard or Trevor Jordan and no more Jazz or Zek. Did you know Jazz Jazz Simmons Now it was Lardis s turn to be surprised. Ah but he was a fighter that one I named my boy after Jazz. My only son Jason Lidesci who by now would have been a chief in his own right. Would have been Manolis glanced at him. The Wamphyri got him Lardis growled and turned his face away. Following which they fell silent. And as these men from different spheres dwelled awhile with their own private memories memories that however disparate were linked by common factors Liz relaxed as best she could and thought about what they were all doing here . . . The three recce or initial search teams consisted of Lardis Manolis and Liz in their four wheel drive vehicle Stavros and Chung in a second and Trask Goodly and Andreas in the third. This first phase of the operation was simply to look the island over and if possible to pinpoint the location of the infestation. Namely to find Vavara and Malinari and to do it in broad daylight when the Great Vampires were least active and probably wouldn t realize that they d been discovered. Manolis and his party went west back towards the capital. Bypassing Kras sos town on its ring road they would swing north on the coastal route then east along the back of the island and eventually meet up with Ben Trask and his party at a place called Skala Rachoniou. By then they would have covered no more than thirty miles or so on the actual coast roads but twice as many again in their forays inland on secondary roads and tracks to the various foothill and mountain villages. Along the way and apart from Krassos itself they would pay visits to every village community and archaeological site of which there weren t too many and acting as tourists assess the viability of each place as a possible aerie or vampire hideout. That was their brief: to carry out a reconnaissance of half of Krassos while Trask and his party covered the eastern half of the island. Also since Manolis s men hadn t been able to find spearguns in Skala Astris he intended to stop at the various fishing villages en route until he d found what he wanted. As for Stavros and Chung they were staying local in the countryside around Skala Astris because it seemed the most likely hunting ground. The unidentified woman with the leech had been washed up only six or seven miles away Vladi Ferengi the Gypsy chief had camped there with his people Manolis had been forced off the road close by and Vavara and Lord Nephran Malinari had actually been sighted there on the night that a would be Hell s Angel made his fatal error. Also and most logical of all David Chung was E Branch s chief locator. If the vampires were in this vicinity Chung should be able to find them . . . That being the case Liz suspected that she and Lardis had been sent on a wild goose chase west away from Skala Astris for a similar reason or more properly the opposite reason: it was simply Trask s way of keeping them out of the line of fire. And if by chance they should get into trouble anyway then the very capable Manolis Papastamos would be on hand to get them out. As for Manolis: he seemed one hundred percent fit again. He drove confidently too confidently on roads like this Liz thought and if he was hurting at all he didn t show it. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 146 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt But there again he did have injuries and it might well be that Trask was taking care of Manolis too if only by ensuring that he was well out of it. Thus Liz felt she could afford to relax a little. And maybe because she had been keeping her telepathy on a tight rein she also decided that now would be a good time to get some practice in. The sun was in the sky the temperature was already rising the Wamphyri would be in their beds or skulking in the darkness of their as yet undiscovered aerie and so she d have little or nothing to fear from them just yet. So she thought. Certainly her heart felt lighter now that she was speeding west as though she was leaving something dark and terrible far behind. If only she could leave her dark and terrible fears for Jake behind her too then her world would be a brighter place and that despite all the horrors she had known in her time with E Branch and others that she supposed must surely be waiting for her around some future bend. But hopefully not around the next bend . . . l was noon of a baking hot very frustrating day when finally Liz brought the car to a halt where the road cut through a high spur overlooking a long white beach fronting the small village cum resort of Skala Rachoniou. She had taken ver driving when Manolis s shoulder had started to play up and now he was BK1A1N LUMLhY resting up beside her easing the pain by pulling on a bottle of Ouzo 12 purchased at a liquor store in one of the villages en route. Lardis thank goodness had remembered Trask s request that he keep his drinking to a minimum and he d refrained from buying Metaxa though Liz guessed he d been sorely tempted. Now he was sitting in the back of the car sipping from a bottle of mineral water that he was sharing with her doubtless feeling envious of Man olis. That s it said the latter glancing at a map where he d folded it onto the dashboard. Thee Skala Rachoniou. According to thee legend on my map which has two umbrellas to signify a beach resort thee place is very popular for thee swimming and snorkelling. Hub But thee map has almost as many umbrellas as thee beach Just look down there Deserted said Liz. Well almost. All of that wonderful ocean and I can t see more than two or three swimmers. It is thee white sand Manolis nodded. You can t walk on it it s so hot. Don t you believe it said Liz. I ll walk on it just as soon as we can get down there. I ve never sweated so much in my life. And Lardis with a pair of binoculars to his eyes growled At least we ll have no trouble finding Ben and the others. In fact I think I can see their vehicle from here. He handed the binoculars to Liz. That taverna in the middle of the straight stretch of road the one with the blue canopy. I see them she said and passed the glasses to Manolis. By now they ll be wondering where we ve got to. We d best get on down there. Letting out the clutch she drove the car back out onto the last mile of winding road to the beachfront. . . So what kept you a worried looking Trask wanted to know when the three joined him Goodly and Andreas in the stirless shade of the open sided taverna. I was just beginning to feel uneasy about you. We ve been here for something like an hour now. And waving for the waiter he called for sandwiches and iced drinks for the latecomers. We had a tyre blow out on us west of Krassos town Liz told him and Manolis did some damage to his shoulder trying to fix it. Lardis and I finished the job. Also we had to try almost a dozen hardware and fishing stores before Manolis could find the right kind of spearguns. He needed spears with the right gauge of thread to take the silvered spearheads. Then he had to chase up someone who was willing to open up his store for him it is a Sunday after all and late in the season. And finally . . . finally there seemed to be lots more road up into and down from the mountains than we d reckoned on. And before Trask could say anything else she went on How long do you plan on us being here Maybe another hour Trask shrugged. Give you time to get your breath have a bite to eat soak up a little liquid. Why Because I for one intend to soak in a little liquid she told him. In fact a lot of it. Manolis can supply the details of our recce not that there s much to tell. And shrugging out of her dress to reveal the bikini underneath but leaving her sandals on her feet against the heat of the sand she set off out of the taverna and down across the narrow strip of beach to the sea. Watching her go Lardis said That Jake Cutter s one lucky lad. Or he would be if he d see sense. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 147 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt She has the hips for it that one. You should be past that stuff Trask told him but Lardis only grinned. When I m past that stuff he answered then by all means shoot me But Trask was frowning. She was short with me he finally worked it out. And she also seemed a little evasive. So what s bothering her now I wonder While he didn t mention it he d also noticed faint purple shadows under Liz s eyes a sure sign that she d been concentrating her mind using her telepathy. Manolis stroked his chin looked at Trask shrewdly and said Maybe she feels thee same way I feel: that you sent us west to keep us out of danger. But I Trask began to protest then saw how pointless it would be to lie. But I m trying to keep us all out of danger he said. We re not expendable none of us and I ll need every one of you if we re to see this thing through. Okay so maybe I seem a little overprotective of Liz. But Nephran Malinari knows her mind and I don t want to use her talent until I absolutely have to. Not anywhere near someone as powerful as he is anyway. Then there s Lardis. He s my responsibility too and As you were mine on Sunside that time said Lardis. But I didn t try to keep you from doing your bit. And his wife is waiting for him back in London Trask continued. So how am I supposed to explain it to Lissa if I go back without him And me said Manolis. What about me Are you responsible for me too Am I not thee big boy in my own right Ah but you didn t want me in on this in thee first place did you Trask threw up his hands. We had to recce this island he protested. I chose you three to do the western half. So you ve done it. And now . . . now if you re ready I think I d like your report he finished lamely. Our report Lardis repeated him. But it s like Liz told you. There isn t anything to report. We didn t find anything. And you Ben said Manolis. What did you find Trask shook his head. The same as you he said. Nothing. Wherever these creatures are they re keeping their heads down. And so we re left with Chung and I can t get through to him. Let me try him again said Goodly taking out his phone. But it was no use the locator s phone had been activated they knew that much but his words were lost in the hiss and sputter of static caused by sunspot activity. So what now said Manolis. Now we go back to Skala Astris said Trask straightening up in his chair. What the hell It s early days and we re not nearly beaten yet. Out in Australia we had thousands of square miles to cover. But we did it in the end. And what s this place but a huge chunk of marble in the middle of the sea We ll find the bastards if not today then tonight or tomorrow night. Like I said yesterday: BK1AIN LUMLEI the nighttime is their time. And so it is but it could well prove to be our time too. Of course we didn t cover all of our half of the island said the precog. Oh Manolis looked at him then at Trask. We stuck to the coast road said the latter but there s a major route right through the mountains the highest part of the island that we ll look at on the way back. We may as well go back together in convoy. Whatever you say said Manolis. But leaning towards the Greek policeman Trask was suddenly frowning again when he asked: Is that ouzo I can smell on your breath Er that was for my shoulder said Manolis. To ease thee pain. And then recognizing a certain look in Trask s narrowed eyes he sighed and added Well not entirely for my shoulder perhaps but it did help a lot I promise you that And when the look didn t go away However since you insist Catching the waiter s eye he called for coffee black . . . By the time Manolis was down to the dregs Liz had finished bathing and was coming back up the beach. And by the time she d reached the taverna her gleaming sun bronzed skin was already dry. THE SEARCHING THE FINDING THE SEETHING Having juggled the crews a little Trask had taken over driving the lead vehicle. Manolis was his file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 148 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt front seat passenger reading the map and Andreas sprawled in the back. Behind them as they climbed into the densely wooded mountains along contour hugging roads Goodly drove the other car. Lardis had moved up front as the precog s navigator but map reading skills were scarcely a necessity Goodly was simply following where Trask led. Liz was taking it easy in the back and all the windows of both vehicles were wound all the way down. At least we re out of the sunlight said Trask beginning to feel more comfortable in the shade of ramrod straight pines. Why it s like being in a regular forest Apart from this terrible heat we could be in Canada or even Norway. Thee Krassos peoples are especially proud of their wooded mountains Manolis told him. And of their marble of course. Some of thee world s finest marbles are quarried here in these mountains. This is thee Ypsaria massif. Well not so massive to thee great world traveller perhaps I mean it isn t thee Rockies but very impressive on a small Greek island yes It s green it s shady and I can breathe without setting fire to my lungs Trask answered. So it s good enough for me. Not too good for driving though. Quite apart from the winding road which is bad enough and demands a lot of concentration this dappled light is very confusing. It s almost as bad as driving at dusk. But in contrast to all the heat and the glare of the coast roads it s very refreshing indeed. He glanced sideways at the Greek who sat studying his map and went on. What s so interesting with the map There s only this one major road if You can call it that so it s not likely we ll get lost. But Manolis was frowning now and stabbing with his finger at a point on SOU BK1AIN LUJVlLtK the folded chart. Here is thee very interesting item he said musingly. An hotel close to a trig point. At twelve hundred metres it is perhaps thee second highest place on Krassos. From up there we can scan thee entire island coast to coast. Good said Trask. We ll take a short break there. Then he saw that Manolis was still intent on the map. So what else are you looking at What s bothering you now Just thee name of thee place said Manolis. It s called . . . it s called Thee Aerie Trask gave a small start then thought about it shrugged and said And so it should be if it s the vantage point that you say it is. Let s face it it s hardly likely that Malinari and Vavara would be advertising their presence now is it Grinning sheepishly Manolis offered an apologetic twitch of his shoulders. No of course not he said. What A place like that... it would be much too obvious. My mind is working overtime I think. But I received thee funny sensation to find such a name on thee map. Or perhaps funny is thee wrong word. In any case now I m feeling very stupid . . . Oh I don t know Trask told him for the fact was that it had given him a funny sensation too. Let s face it this is a nervy business. We re all going to be a little jumpy until we ve got something solid to go on. Then changing the subject to detract from the other s embarrassment: And is that it no other places of interest No little hamlets tucked away off the road There are two other places of interest Manolis answered. Or at least they are of interest to me. Oh Let me explain said the other. This morning I had thee opportunity to speak to Liz about your work in Australia. That was while we were driving to Skala Rachoniou. What she told me sounded like World War Three What Flamethrowers napalm and helicopter gunships Amazing And that was when you were going against only one of these creatures. Good liaison Trask explained. Our Minister Responsible was able to convince the Australian authorities to give us all the help we needed. This time around however . . . I know Manolis nodded. A different country different authorities and a different situation. Still our weapons are pitiful by comparison and in pitifully short supply. I feel mainly responsible for that Trask told him. If I hadn t been so quick off the mark to get out here . . . but on the other hand what difference would it have made We have to deal with these monsters and must do so with whatever weapons are to hand. Precisely said Manolis. But as Liz explained it to me thee Australian infestation was so deep rooted that you had to burn and blast it out of existence. Well good but we won t be doing much blasting and burning with a few spearguns and a handful of nine millimeter automatics I know Trask answered. And if things get really bad I might yet have to get my government to tell yours what s going on and try to enlist their aid. But that isn t going to happen if it means file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 149 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt creating a panic situation right across the world However I do have the power if only as a last resort to call in air strikes from British warships in the Med. In which case there d be hell to pay later explaining it away. It would go something like this: Today in the Mediterranean a British military exercise went disastrously wrong when planes from the aircraft carrier . . . Et cetera et cetera. Right said Manolis. And that is why I find these other places on thee map interesting. One is a marble quarry on thee far side of this mountain thee other is a deserted airport in thee foothills just before we are reaching Limari on thee east coast. An airport Trask was surprised. But I was told Krassos doesn t have an airport. Work was started four years ago Manolis explained and came to a halt a few months ago with thee failure of the euro the devaluation of thee deutschmark and a big decline in tourism. An independent German airline with its own small fleet of VTOLs went broke and since they were footing thee bill. . . He let it taper off. I hadn t heard about that said Trask. Nor I until I was over here that first time said Manolis. But when one chats with thee locals then one hears such things. All very interesting . . . But I still don t know why you re interested said Trask. I mean what has a quarry and an abandoned airport to do with our lack of weapons In answer to which Manolis smiled slyly winked and said Perhaps nothing and I don t want to get your hopes up so it s best that you just wait and see. Then he turned in his seat and began talking in Greek and very rapidly to Andreas . and that one nodding his understanding even though Trask couldn t follow a word. Indeed if anyone had asked him Trask would have remarked that it was all Greek to him . . . The tree line had fallen away behind and the road was that much steeper by the time The Aerie came into view amidst a jumble of fanglike rocks that formed the uppermost crest of the Ypsarias. It wasn t so much that trees wouldn t grow up here as that they couldn t there was no soil to speak of where vast marble outcrops thrust for the sky and only a handful of tortured wind blasted shrubs and herbs found root among the boulder clumps. And there was the hotel The Aerie looking like a scaled down version of an ancient Crusader castle its walls white in the brilliant sunlight silhouetted against the aching blue of a cloudless sky. There was a parking area at the foot of that final jumble and Trask swung r ght off the road onto a bone dry surface that threw up a cloud of dust which Momentarily obscured the vehicle behind. Then the hood of Goodly s car ap Peared and as the dust settled the precog slowed to a halt alongside the lead IV L C 1 vehicle. Blinking owlishly he switched off his engine leaned from his window looked at Trask in the other car and raised a querying eyebrow. We re taking a short break Trask called across to him. This place is called The Aerie and apparently it will afford us quite a view. That is if you feel like making the climb of course. The Aerie was impressive in a gaunt and antique sort of way. It reeked of ages past like fossilised bones or the crumbling pages of an old illuminated manuscript. Trask s reference had been to the access route: a steep climb up steps hewn from the near vertical rock face along a series of dizzy zigzagging causeways. Mercifully the way was at least partly covered over canvas canopies torn in places by forgotten winds flapped in the rising thermals but somehow managed to cast a little shade onto the time hollowed steps. There was or had been another means of ascension evidence of which was still visible. A broken gondola lay rusting in one corner of the parking lot beside a derelict boarding stage and a steel hawser was dangling loose from a gantry and pulley its end lying coiled in the dust. Another length of cable was hanging halfway down the escarpment from the arms of a projecting crane where winding gear stood idle above a wide landing bay. That must be ... how high said Liz craning her neck and squinting up at the landing bay under the square flat roof with its tessellated wall. Ninety or maybe a hundred feet vertical Well personally I m glad that thing isn t working and I ll be only too pleased to do this the hard way Oh the Old Lidesci growled. Then maybe I ll remind you of what you said when we get to the top. If we get to the top file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 150 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt And as the party of six set out to climb Manolis recounted what he d read of the place in the legend on the reverse of his map. Thee Romans quarried white marble in these mountains and thee original place was probably built by them. Later thee Crusaders took it over as a lookout. You will see why when we get up there. Most of thee Crusader lookouts and castles were built in thee high places self explanatory of course. In thee later times there were earthquakes and thee place collapsed inwards. Later still there were invaders who pulled thee ruins down for whatever reasons. When Thee Aerie was built here thee selfsame stones were used and it has been standing as we see it now for some two hundred years or more. Recently it was refurbished as an hotel er if not quite thee five star. I mean take a look at thee place. It is thee veritable ancient ruin eh At the top of the stairway an old partially crippled Greek gentleman and his two sons were waiting to greet them. They had seen the vehicles arrive and had hoped that their visitors were prospective guests. Gesturing the party inside a cavernous room where massive pine beams supported a vaulted ceiling the proprietor recognized Manolis and Andreas as fellow countrymen and began to speak with them at some length. While these three were thus engaged the younger men of the household showed Trask and his people to a panoramic window and invited them to look out. The view was breathtaking all of the southern coast of the island was visible from Krassos town fifteen miles to the southwest to Limari only seven miles away to the southeast. Lardis was staggered. There s nothing quite like this in all Sunside Starside he wheezed still catching his breath from the climb. So much sea sun and sky All of that colour From the top of the Barrier Mountains of home I ve gazed on forests on the one hand and a boulder strewn wilderness on the other but nothing like this. One of the young men of the house had understood something of what the Old Lidesci said if not his references to the vampire world and commented But from thee roof you are seeing even more. Thee whole island all of thee Krassos Andreas and Manolis had joined them at the window and the latter was looking a little downcast. Thee old man has told me a sad story he said. For twenty years he and his family have made a living up here but barely. Recently however some five years now thee tourism has been bad. Now in this El Nino year finally they are broke. They had four guests for just two weeks in May . . . and nothing else but occasional travellers like us. Thee old man he says he must close down now his sons will go to Krassos town to find thee work. I feel sorry for him. Trask nodded. Not the best place to open an hotel. Manolis disagreed. It is an excellent place for thee fresh air thee swimming thee hiking through thee mountains He says thee cooking is superb and thee rooms big and airy. And as for thee views The views are wonderful said Liz and we ve just got to go up to the roof. But did you say swimming You ll see Manolis nodded and he spoke to the young men in Greek. There. And now they ll take us up to thee roof. Ben I couldn t leave without doing something for these poor people. So I ve ordered drinks and a little food on thee roof. It is my pleasure to pay and I shall leave thee large tip. So shall we all. Come. The interior stairways rose steeply from level to level of all four high ceilinged floors. Along the way the Old Lidesci took the hindmost position with Liz at his elbow. Noticing the way he would pause every now and then to sniff at the air she asked him: Is something wrong Eh Lardis looked at her blinked then shook his grizzled head. No nothing. This place may be called The Aerie but it smells only of life and humanity and time. Especially of the latter. I have seen real aeries Liz the great aeries of the Wamphyri which stank of death and undeath. The walls of this place have windows where the sun gets in and they re hung with pictures and tapestries. The ones I knew were clad in the bones of men and beasts furbished with the fats of women and draped at the windows so heavily that o sunlight got in So don t you concern yourself that perhaps I ve noticed something odd for I haven t. It s just that old habits die hard and I entered this place of my own free will. She nodded and said Good and thought to herself I wish I d never asked By then they were up onto the roof surrounded on all four sides by mas I sively thick five foot high walls with the merlons and embrasures of a regular castle. Manolis called to Liz drew her attention to the west facing wall one of the two sides of The Aerie that had not been visible from the parking lot_ and indicated that she should look out and down. Perhaps a mile away to the west the ultimate fangs of the Ypsaria range climbed some six or seven file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 151 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt hundred feet higher yet with twin spurs that advanced in parallel like the spined back of some impossibly huge petrified Jurassic stegosaurus almost to the foot of The Aerie itself. There finally they crumbled down into boulder clumps and sheer sided outcrops of which the last one formed The Aerie s foundations. But only a hundred yards from The Aerie s base between the spurs where they were less pronounced a natural rock basin had been fashioned into a swimming pool with a paved sundeck and a ceramic surround in a classically Greek pattern that traced the basin s oysterlike contours. A flagged path led from The Aerie through sculpted boulder jumbles to the side of the pool where a three metre diving board projected over the deep end. Several small stacks of sun bleached loungers were also positioned poolside along with a bundle of parasols and the setup as a whole would have looked very appealing if not for the fact that There s no water said Liz. And Manolis held up his hands in dismay. Those peaks over there. They are thee natural water trap. In thee winter months thee rain flows down between thee spurs like a river. It passes through cracks in thee rocks into a natural reservoir and feeds a well at thee foot of Thee Aerie. Thee water has always kept a certain level. No matter how much water is taken out thee well refills itself to that same level. It had never once run dry in living memory . . . not until three years ago. Thee swimming pool used water from thee well crystal clear pure drinking water. But three years ago suddenly thee level is dropping. When they take out thee water it doesn t refill. He paused and shrugged Obviously thee greatest need is water for living not for swimming. So thee pool Goes empty Liz finished it for him. No pool no guests. No guests no money. A vicious circle. And thee circle keeps on turning Manolis nodded. Now we have thee El Nino and no end in sight. And so I feel sorry for these people . . . The rest of the party had spread out around the walls they were gazing out through the embrasures following the curve of the world the island of Krassos in its entirety from horizon to horizon. But in the southern wall Liz spied a canvas draped pedestal . . . the base of a telescope. She removed the canvas polished the glass on the sleeve of her dress looked for small change in her pockets. Manolis gave her some silver coins she thanked him and slipped one into the slot. As the instrument whirred into life Liz put her eyes to the binocular scanners then turned the metal barrel on its swivel until it pointed south and some thirty degrees west. What are you looking for Manolis asked her. NECROSCOPE: DEFILEKS Skala Astris she answered. The Christos Studios. I just wondered if I might be able to see them from here. But in fact that wasn t all she was wondering. Ben Trask saw what she was doing and came striding. Having overheard their conversation he d detected something in Liz s voice and knew that what she d said wasn t the whole truth. He came quickly with a worried expression on his face. Liz But Manolis was still talking to her. You ll be fortunate I think to see thee studios from here. It must be six or seven miles. Still if thee telescope reduces thee distance to Liz Trask said again more urgently. As he took her elbow she let go of the telescope and turned to face him. Standing close by Manolis thought the look on her face was oddly defiant. But by now like Trask himself Manolis had noticed the darkening purple under Liz s eyes. And suddenly he too understood. Straightening up and holding her head high Liz said So then am I going to be mollycoddled for the rest of my life by you and E Branch You weren t taking such loving care of me out in Australia when you threw us in at the deep end Jake and I. So what s changed now Liz Trask growled warningly. What are you crazy You know what s changed. Australia changed everything. And I didn t throw you in at the deep end not really. lan had forecast That we d be okay I know Liz cut him short. So if you can put so much faith in the precog s talent why not in mine Trask took her shoulders. Because Malinari can t hit back at lan that s why Because he can t follow his talent home to its source And also because that filthy bloodsucking bastard. . . because he s already taken too much of what I ve loved of what I ve lived for. Too much life Liz the lives of others and too much of my life which I ll be paying for forever so I m not about to let him have yours too. Liz knew what he meant. He was only now getting over Zek getting over it but he d never be able to forget it not until Malinari was dead and now Millicent Cleary was or might be in some kind of file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 152 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt trouble too. Liz could read it in Trask s mind as clearly as if he was speaking it out loud. Not the whole story just his obvious concern. Similarly his concern for her for Liz herself was also crystal clear. Just looking into Trask s eyes she could read the truth of it as if his talent was working in both directions: He bad lost Zek. . . Millicent Cleary was trying desperately bard to step into the breach and help Trask pick up the pieces and she was close to succeeding . . . Liz had now replaced Millie as Trask s kid sister figure. OJ course he worried for her. Still feeling a little hurt but knowing now how much Trask was hurting too gradually Liz s shoulders relaxed and she let the tension drain away. A moment or two more and she was sorry if not apologetic. But at least she was willing to explain. BRIAN LUMLEY It s just so bloody frustrating She blurted it out. And yes I know you ve seen the purple under my eyes. I always have it but even more so now. That s because I ve spent the morning scanning every little town and village we ve been into since we left the Christos Studios. Not in defiance of your orders Ben not really but because I guessed you d sent us out on well not a wild goose chase as such but you didn t think we d have too much to worry about in the west of the island. And you were right there s absolutely nothing there. It had to be done I know so it wasn t a total waste of time but You feel that I haven t made the best use of your talent Trask cut in releasing her shoulders. By now the others had come to see what the fuss was about. lan Goodly who was first to arrive and had heard something of what was going on said She could be right at that. Trask looked at him. Oh The precog nodded. Ben I don t know what s coming let s face it I rarely know what s coming not precisely but whatever it is it has to come soon. I can feel it in my bones just like that time on Sunside Starside. The Big One Just like that yes said Goodly. And as for Liz s frustration I can feel that too my own that is and everyone else s. There s trouble brewing at home and yet we re out here on Krassos doing nothing. At least that s how it feels. We ve covered the island Trask answered. Okay so it s been frustrating. Do you think I don t know that Well I know it as well as the next man or woman. He glanced at Liz. But we have narrowed it down. We re fairly sure now that what we re looking for is closer to home. Again he looked at Liz. Closer to Skala Astris I mean. That is what you were doing right You know it is she answered lowering her head a little. Without even a by your leave I m feeling what lan is feeling she said. Time slipping by and the future coming down on us. I might actually be picking it up from him or from you from Manolis from Lardis. And since we had no luck this morning I don t know I just felt the need to speed things up that s all. Trask looked at Goodly. How about it I can t see that it can do any harm the precog answered. Broad daylight and the sun like a blob of molten gold high in the sky. Wherever they are they have to be down and sleeping. In which case what s the point Trask licked his suddenly dry lips. mean how can Liz hope to pick them up But: No Liz shook her head. You can t back away from it like that. Lies even half lies and white lies don t come easy to you Ben. This worked well enough down under didn t it And how about Jake You had me monitoring him when he was sleeping didn t you I If any harm should come your way Trask s voice was husky now 10 never be able to forgive myself. Then his gaunt face hardened up again and UtflLCKS he said However since it was bound to come to this sooner or later and if you re set on doing it ... let s get to it. On impulse Liz stepped closer and kissed his cheek. Don t worry about me she said. I ll be careful I promise you. Very well he answered. But you d better let us hear it. Tell us what you re seeing and for God s sake be on your guard for anything . . . for whatever you might find. Meanwhile the telescope s internal mechanism had whirred to a standstill and Manolis fed a new coin into its slot while Liz again prepared herself. Then brushing back her hair applying her eyes to the binocular viewers she began her commentary. Actually the coast looks to be only a few miles away. Not even that. The beaches are beautiful . file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 153 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt . . gold merging into turquoise where the sand meets the sea then into blue and deeper blue. I m following the coast road from east to west. That must be Limari close to where that woman s body was found washed up ... then the road moves away from us travelling south. I can t trace it all the way because of embankments cliffs and places where it s been cut through spurs. Now I can just make out . . . make out the towers of a place just off the road a place like a fortress or castle built right at the rim of the sea cliffs. It has these high square towers . . . That s the monastery said Trask his voice hushed so as not to disturb Liz s concentration. We passed it this morning on our way out here. I remember said Goodly keeping his normally high pitched voice as low as possible. It had a sort of portcullis gate and picket door in the front. The gate was closed the picket door too. There were notice boards on the hard standing that fronted the place we passed so quickly I didn t get the chance to read them. I don t recall seeing any monks though but this being a Sunday they d probably be at their devotions. Monks said Manolis. Nor should you expect to see monks. That one is more properly thee convent or nunnery. It has thee nuns of a special order yes but no monks only thee women . . . The precog gave a small start. Women he said and swayed just a little which no one noticed. Nuns . . . Liz had paused. Intent on her viewing and her telepathy she seemed to have stopped breathing while gazing at the monastery. But now she moved on: The road has gone disappeared now behind mountain spurs where they fall to the sea Where I was pushed from thee road said Manolis. And now I m approaching the outskirts of Skala Astris. I can see the seafront and a thin white horizontal line that must be the sea wall. But . . . She Paused again and edged the telescope back just a fraction towards the east. What is it said Trask. Something I nearly missed she answered. There s a knoll in the way that Partly obscures it. Obscures what Trask was insistent. BRIAN LUMLtY A building she said. East of Skala Astris some kind of building on a promontory. I can see its cupola or maybe that should be cupolas where they re lined up in my line of sight. But the place must be quite large. It can only be an hotel yet I don t recall seeing it on . . . Yes said Trask. And now her voice was a whisper as she continued . . . on any map. Liz said Trask frowning as he moved closer. There s something . . . something there she continued so softly that the words were difficult to make out no more than a sigh. Ben 1 think ... I think there s something there That s enough He took her round the waist almost lifted her away from the telescope which obligingly turned itself off. Liz seemed a little unsteady on her feet the shadows under her eyes were purple blooms now and despite her suntan she had a drawn wan look. Trask held her up and asked Are you okay A bit dizzy she answered. But that s okay. I ve had the same thing happen when I ve used ordinary binoculars. It s when the perspective changes: something to do with knowing that what I m looking at is a great deal farther away than it appears. But you did read something And now Liz s eyes went big and round and for a moment she clung to him for support. So that when she said Oh yes her small shudder transferred to him. Yes I m sure I did. In that hotel place close to Skala Astris In both places she answered. In the hotel if that s what it is and in the monastery. The monastery Trask s jaw fell open. For God s sake the monastery But that s the last place I would have thought to ... I would have thought to To look Goodly finished it for him as the significance of what Trask had said struck both of them simultaneously. And then turning to Manolis the precog queried: These nuns you mentioned the women of this order how is it they live in a monastery I thought monasteries were for monks and that nuns dwell in abbeys And there s one other perhaps more important thing: What do they wear these women Do they have their own special attire I mean habits or cassocks Here in Greece Manolis answered a monastery is just a place inhabited by thee holy peoples thee worshipful peoples which may be men or women but not thee two together. And it is thee same with abbeys. Have you never heard of an abbot Of course I have said Goodly annoyed with himself that he d made such a simple if file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 154 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt understandable mistake. And their robes With thee hoods yes Manolis answered. They hide their faces with thee hooded robes to avoid making thee temptations. I saw several of them when I was here with poor Eleni. Come to think of it there were two of them in thee alley outside thee police post in Limari where Eleni and I ... where she examined thee body of that woman . . . that woman with thee leecbi Trask had gone cold. In the blazing midafternoon sunlight he d gone as cold as death itself. And he could feel the short hairs at the back of his neck prickling as if electrified. Is it possible he husked. I mean is it even thinkable And Lardis said Oh yes. It s thinkable. To defile these holy women but what a splendid jest to such as Vavara For to the Wamphyri there s no such thing as a higher power. Might is the only right. And so to find a people who believe in such a power and to such an extent that they worship as these nuns do ... she would delight in defiling them proving them wrong. But I could be wrong Liz said which caused everyone to look at her. Apart from the shadows under her eyes which were fading moment by moment she seemed to be herself again. How do you mean said Trask. What exactly did you feel or sense or whatever At the monastery very little she answered. But enough that you paused there said Goodly. I felt I don t know a shiver she said. As my view passed over that place a chill. Similar to the sensation I get when I look at someone who knows what I can do and doesn t want me reading him or her . . . like Millie Cleary for instance when her shields go up. Then it s just a coolness a mental warning sign saying keep off. But this time . . . She shook her head. Go on said Trask. This time it was like a single drop of ice cold water on my spine she told him. It landed on the back of my neck and ran all the way down. A shiver like I said. And that was why you paused there Trask pressed her. Yes she answered. But the more I concentrated the less I got. If someone was there if someone or ones were sleeping there in those towers they must have thought they were very safe. And when they felt my probe . . . Then their shields went up said Trask. They sensed your intrusion. Perhaps Liz answered. But only on a subconscious level. I mean I was shut out yes but I wasn t investigated. That s one way of looking at it. But on the other hand I don t know maybe we re putting too much emphasis on this. What if I wasn t shut out at all What if there s nothing there and I was simply trying too hard I shivered yes and felt strange but what if I wanted so hard to find something she shrugged undecidedly that I found it anyway Maybe I was mistaken. I m hardly an expert at this sort of thing and But Trask shook his head. What he said. And you re the one who was questioning me about my faith in your talent Liz you sensed something all right. When I was holding you I felt you shuddering. It went right through me. You might be able to fool yourself that way but you can t fool me. I know the truth when I see it and I saw it in you. He nodded curtly. So now tell me about the other place on the outskirts of Skala Astris. You said it might be an hotel. What about that That was different again Liz said grateful now for his support. It was faint so very faint. And it was . . . misty I mean it was like looking through a fog. I felt something saw something but it was so vague that I can t describe it. Try said Trask. For as I recall you couldn t describe it out in Australia either not at first. That s right she said. When I first probed Jethro Manchester s island I had this same kind of problem and couldn t translate my feelings. It was the weird aura of the place. You have to remember said Trask that we aren t talking about human beings. In your day to day work you re coming into contact with human minds. The thoughts you read the pictures you receive are from human beings. But the Wamphyri have gone beyond that. They aren t human not any longer. Perhaps we need to translate their thoughts differently. May I speak said Lardis. Trask glanced at him at the Old Lidesci with an entire lifetime s worth of experience and said Of course you can. What is it It s something you were saying just a moment ago Lardis answered. And it s what you did this morning. What we did What you lan Goodly and Andreas did all three of you aye. Lardis nodded. For it seems you file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 155 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt drove right past both of those places without so much as a glance at them. Well perhaps you glanced at them but that s all. . . By now the young men of the house had brought food drinks and pitchers of water up onto the roof and they were also busy arranging parasols to throw shade on a nest of chairs and small tables. Seeing them beckoning Liz said Let s get out of this sunlight. As they sat down under the parasols and Andreas poured iced drinks Trask turned again to Lardis. You were telling us what we did he said. Or more properly what you didn t do said Lardis. We were remiss is that what you mean Trask frowned. We should have been more alert should have looked closer Should have said Lardis and if it were anyone else you were looking for you would have aye Trask shook his head. I m not with you. No and you weren t with it this morning either Lardis growled. But don t you see this is Vavara and Lord Malinari we re dealing with Vaoaaara who is all things to all men and to most women. And Nephran Malinari also called Malinari the Mind The precog began to see what he was getting at. Not quite your average Lord and Lady he said. Anything but snapped Lardis. Vavara she isn t what you see. She s what she wants you to see And when she s asleep d you really think she would leave herself unguarded When you drove past that monastery you saw what she wanted you to see: a monastery But it isn t no. Nor has it been not for two or maybe three years by my reckoning. Not as long as that vampire bitch has been in residence there What The idea struck Trask like a hammer blow he found it that hard to believe. Are you telling me they can actually do that Just as surely as the Szgany of Sunside are able to hide from the Wamphyri Lardis answered closing down their minds so that the vampires can t sniff them out so the Wamphyri can hide from us. Don t your telepaths have their shields so that others can t read their minds Can t your locator David Chung control his scanning so that others can t locate him But. . . why haven t you mentioned this before Trask was almost lost for words. Because I thought you knew Lardis answered. Because it has to be obvious. For after all most of these Great Vampires were once Szgany and just as we have some of their skills so they have ours. But Vavara and Malinari together... of course they could do it. And Liz: why she was lucky to read anything at all Or maybe she s not just lucky maybe she s good And I mean very goodl Lardis is right said the precog. We really should have been expecting something like this. We E Branch people anyway. And you especially Ben. Me said Trask. Yes said Goodly. We ve all of us read the Keogh files but reading about something and experiencing it are completely different things. You were there that time down in Devon the Yulian Bodescu affair. What about it Trask was completely at a loss. When you flushed out the Bodescu household didn t Harvey Newton see something that he thought was a dog or at least a loping shape running for cover But it wasn t a dog. It was Bodescu himself. But they re shape changers for Christ s sake Trask protested. We all know that much. And mind changers said Liz. I would have bet my life on it that it was you Ben who was speaking to me in the Pleasure Dome in Xanadu. I did bet my life on it and almost lost. Something else we should remember said Goodly. When we tracked Malinari down in Australia it wasn t him who gave the show away. Trennier led us to Manchester who in turn led us to Malinari. It was his thralls who gave Malinari away. So perhaps the same thing is happening here. Maybe Liz has found . . . maybe she has found what Vavara has made here what she s made of the people who were here . . . Your hooded figures said Trask. Your burning women all dressed in their black hooded robes That s what it s beginning to look like said the precog. And Lardis put in: And don t forget those sweet Sisters of Mercy that Vladi Ferengi told us about. I Or thee nuns outside the police post said Manolis. It s all fitting together said Trask. It wasn t fear Liz murmured almost to herself. What s that Again Trask turned to face her. In Australia she answered when I sensed the thoughts or more properly the feelings of those file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 156 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt people on Manchester s island that was fear. They were afraid of the future of what it would bring. They were scared to death of Malinari and what he d done to them through Bruce Trennier. In other words it was just like you said Ben. She met Trask s gaze looked straight into his eyes. They were human thoughts human emotions ... or at least they were at that time when they d only recently been vampirized. But what I got from the building near Skala Astris that wasn t fear. It was like looking into a very young baby s mind. I m not talking about innocence but rather emptiness. A kind of wandering wondering vacancy. You re describing idiocy said Trask. Childishness without innocence. You re right Liz nodded and once more shivered despite that she wasn t cold. For now and then I ve looked into their little minds babies that is. What telepath could resist it Haven t we all wondered what s going on in there Well I found that they re constantly searching for knowledge of the world I suppose. But the feeling I got when I probed that place near Skala Astris it was. . . She paused and gave a small twitch of her shoulders a baffled shrug. And still looking directly into her eyes Trask said The opposite Is that what you sensed Instead of seeking to know to learn to understand what you felt had lost the ability to know. Babies evolve. But what you sensed Had devolved yes said Liz. Well maybe . . . Trask took a deep breath and said Let s finish up here. I want to get back to base see what Chung s come up with if anything. And if nothing at least we know where to point him now. So let s go. Manolis fished a wad of notes out of his pocket tossed it on the table. Andreas wrapped skewered meats in paper napkins and grabbed up a bottle of mineral water. On the way down from the roof Manolis told Trask: Myself and Andreas we ll take one car. You and your people return to Skala Astris in thee other. You re going to take a look at that quarry right said Trask. And thee deserted airport Manolis nodded. But please Ben my friend before you do anything back at base wait for me yes I ll get finished as quickly as possible. I shouldn t be more than an hour at most. And since Andreas has thee food we can eat on thee way . . . A little after three thirty Trask and his party arrived back at the Christos Studios. They had used secondary roads through the foothills to avoid passing the monastery and Liz s unknown building on the eastern approach to the village. Chung and Stavros weren t back yet so the four waited for them in The Shipwreck where Yiannis played some antique music for them. The scratched and battered favourites of forty years ago sounded again in the Greek afternoon. Perhaps signalling the end of a seemingly interminable summer a breeze off the sea had cooled the sands a pair of young German couples had taken the opportunity to come wandering barefoot along the beach exploring this western extreme they were just leaving as Trask and his people settled in. While Yiannis served drinks Trask spoke to him. Yiannis is there some kind of large hotel to the east of here maybe a mile beyond Skala Astris It stands on a promontory I think. Palataki Yiannis nodded. It means the little palace. It s a strange old place all fallen into ruins. But it isn t a hotel. You can see it from the beach. Something of it anyway. Really said Trask. Look let me get my binoculars and then perhaps you d show me. There were binoculars in the car Trask got them and walked down the beach with Yiannis until small waves called up by the breeze sent ripples up the sand to their feet. The shadows were already beginning to lengthen when Yiannis pointed to the east and said: There. You can see the twin cupolas and the roof of the building beneath them behind the tall pines. Not very Greek looking is it With the glasses to his eyes Trask replied No it isn t. I would say it was German. And you d be right said the other. I can tell you about it if you re interested. It took him a few minutes to tell Trask the history of the place and he finished up by saying: When I was a youth er a long time before I met my wife you understand I would take my girlfriends walking up there for some privacy in the grounds of the little palace. It was how do you say it ah yes: a favourite haunt of young lovers. More recently however . . . Yes said Trask. Now it s just a haunt said Yiannis. Strange stories of a ghost with yellow eyes who stands guard over the old ruin. If I believed in ghosts I might suspect it was the lady herself. The Lady Trask s flesh prickled at the back of his neck. The sainted lady yes said Yiannis turning and stepping out back up the beach towards The Shipwreck. Agia Varvara the saint whose small shrine stands in the grounds of Palataki. He said it just as easily just as casually as that without ever knowing that Trask had gone cold through file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 157 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt and through . . . After a moment Trask started after him. Did you say er Vavara He tried to keep his voice even. Varvara Yiannis called back to him. The way you say it it sounds as if you re missing out the first r. In fact it s Varvara which in English translates as Barbara. A Greek saint you say Trask s mind raced. Yes. The shrine has been there as long as I can remember. And Trask wondered Has she seen it Vavara berselp But of course she has And would she be able to resist it the supreme irony of it Not according to Ladis she wouldn t. Now for Trask the mass of evidence seemed overwhelmingly conclusive but as yet his overall knowledge his tactical intelligence was insufficient to set a covert war in motion. This evening however working as a team with their esoteric skills and sure now of their targets he and his espers should at last be able to probe deep into the dark heart of vampire territory. And once they knew the total of the forces facing them and as soon as their own forces were strong enough then no amount of mental camouflage or alien evil would keep Trask and his people from their goal: the total destruction of Vavara and Mal inari and of everything they stood for. And walking up the beach in Yiannis s footsteps Trask was glad now that he wasn t himself a telepath. For if he had been . . . then he couldn t for a moment doubt but that he would turn to the east shake his fists at Palataki s cupolas and beyond them the towers of a once monastery and hurl his threats his curses his vengeful rage and determination at both. Look out you lousy bastard Things He would shout with his enhanced mind. You Vavara you fucking hag and especially you Malinari Your very presence here defies earth air and sea the entire world But I ve found you and I m going to make you wish you d stayed in Starside. I m coming for you you grotesque bastard monsters. Make no mistake Ben Trask and E Branch we re coming for you But since he wasn t a telepath he was unable to offer any such threat any such challenge. And that was just as well . . . David Chung and Stavros and Manolis and Andreas arrived back at the Chris tos Studios almost in tandem with only a minute or so separating them. Liz met them took them straight to Trask s accommodation. Trask hadn t been wasting his time. Despite the continuing indeed worsening sunspot activity which had effectively destroyed ninety five percent of all electrical communications worldwide he d managed to get through to the HQ in London warning them to be wary of nuns. Weird as it must have sounded that in essence had been his message: the D.O. was to get onto the major airports and tell them to check all incoming flights from Greece for nuns. If any such were discovered ways should be found to detain them just long enough for Special Branch to put tails on them. And then they should be kept the hell away from E Branch but at the same time the Branch would take over covert surveillance from the police. All of this to be arranged through the Minister Responsible. Give the bugger something to do . . . Mercifully the D.O. was John Grieve whose tele telepaphic talents werent in the least affected by the weather his less than cryptic reply had been: A new guise on an old geist eh It s amazing the kind of people who pick up bad habits right Or who get infected with them Trask had told him before asking after Millie. She s gone home to get her stuff together says that since she s to be locked up here for the duration there are bits and pieces she needs Grieve had told him. She takes over from me at eight o clock tonight my time. Trask had been alarmed. She s out on her own But: No Grieve had reassured him. I arranged a plainclothes police escort for her. When she s got her stuff together then she can call for another detective to bring her back. And Trask s final question before the incredibly bad line broke up completely: Any news on that Lefranc freak We have . . . locator . . . Special Branch ... we ... gadgets . . . nothing . . . useless . . . And then nothing more except the hiss and sputter of static. Trask had a portable fax machine that hadn t worked since leaving England. But he had tried it anyway to no avail. When he d fed his message into the slot PUT HALF A DOZEN PEOPLE ON STANDBY FOR THE MED. WE MAY NEED HELP. and after requesting a printout confirmation copy all he d got was an A4 sheet of something that looked like a Japanese cryptogram which endlessly repeated itself down the page. And he d believed he knew what Grieve had meant by gadgets . . . nothing . . . useless. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 158 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt The Head of E Branch while he wasn t a prude wasn t much known for cursing either but: Hell and damnation Fuck every fucking thing he d complained slamming the machine back into a bulky briefcase. And especially El fucking Nino Which had taken place just a moment before Liz knocked on the door and brought the others in with her. They sat on beds chairs a small table whatever was available. And Trask said: David you first. Shoot. The locator stood in the middle of the chalet s tiny floor space and said I got something and I got nothing. He tossed a plastic bag onto his bed beside Manolis. The sleeve end of an ugly armoured insectlike piece of metallic machinery like some kind of hollow tool projected from the bag where it lay. Manolis took it out frowned suspiciously went to put his hand into what was obviously some kind of gauntlet. But: Don t said Trask. It s nasty enough as it is. Just flex your hand inside that thing . . . you could do someone including yourself an injury. It s what s known in the trade as a Wamphyri battle gauntlet. Then he turned to Chung again. Nothing Right and yet wrong said the locator looking harassed. I can t pinpoint it because we re in the middle of it. Go on said Trask. Nothing more to say Chung shrugged. If I look forward backward left right up and down I get nothing. But if I go outside the area and look inwards this entire place seethes I don t mean this place but this area. It s contaminated. If I had been using my talent from the first moment we got here I d have known right away. But as you re aware and as you ordered I was keeping it on a tight leash. So then said Trask. The whole place seethes but you can t be more specific. So tell me where does it seethe most Chung thought about it for a few moments then said Along the coast road between here and Limari. But that s only a guess. 1 mean it came and went. I seemed to sense something there . . . and then I didn t. Are you sure we can t narrow it down said Trask. Should I give you a clue How about a mile east of here for example Chung stared at him and narrowed his slanted eyes a little. Funny you should say that he answered. But since I couldn t say for sure ... I just wasn t about to send you off on a wild goose chase. Liz nodded understandingly and said It left you in doubt of your own talent the same as it did to me. It said the locator looking from face to face. Something that Vavara does said Trask and quickly went on: How about the monastery Did you get that far Now Chung s jaw fell open. How did you know Okay said Trask cutting him off. Here s what we re going to do. Another hour and it ll be cooler and darker. The sun will still be visible in the west and it will still be shining on the places where these bastards sleep easiest in their beds: the high places in their aeries that is. Well we ve found two places that just could be their aerie or aeries. And now I want to know what s in them. He opened a map and stabbed at it with his forefinger. Earlier today Liz found us this knoll it got in the way when she was looking through a telescope. It happens to be the highest place in this vicinity and if I haven t forgotten my map reading skills these contours allow for an almost clear line of sight on both locations. That s where we re going next. He stood up said: Boys and girl you have fifteen minutes to get tidied up changed and to do what you ve got to do. Then we re on our way. We ve got to get this next phase over and done with before sundown for obvious reasons. So let s go. And fifteen minutes later they went. . . Using two of the four wheel drive vehicles they drove along a farm track skirting an olive grove then about a mile inland to the foot of the knoll. The knoll s base was formed of a scree skirt that extended all the way round what was in fact a marble outcrop. On the south facing skirt the slope was about one in three and it was marked with crisscrossing goat tracks through hardy herbage to the foot of the outcrop. The vehicles made the climb without too much difficulty but from there on the eight had to go on foot. Trask was concerned for Lardis and said it might be better if he took it easy and waited there but the Old Lidesci insisted that this was his kind of climbing. What is it but a small hill he said. In my time I climbed the Barrier Mountains This isn t your time said Trask making hard work of it up the boulder studded slope. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 159 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt But climbing past him Lardis answered Nor yours by the look of it With one hundred feet to go they climbed into sunlight that came streaming from the west and as the high dome of the knoll levelled out so the going became that much easier. From the top the view was all Trask could have wished for: almost due south the cupolas of Palataki reflected the sunlight where they stood up from the grimly gothic building below and to the southeast the monastery s towers were lit with gold where the cliffs fell sheer to the sea. In that same direction the Aegean itself was already shaded its deep blue surface flecked with small white wave crests. With very little time to spare David Chung and Liz chose a flat topped boulder to use as a table and set themselves up to gaze through their glasses first on Palataki s gilded cupolas. Now remember Trask reminded them as they settled to the task this place stands on top of a mine. We may not find what we re looking for in those cupolas or even in the main building. According to what Yiannis says the promontory was mined extensively almost hollowed out during a prewar German mining operation. So for all we know Vavara might have quite literally gone to ground. On the other hand we suspect she s in the monastery in which case there must be something else in Palataki. Malinari We don t know . . . but we do want to know. We ll go in hand in hand said Liz quietly riding each other s probes. But carefully Trask told her. Oh so very carefully. And be ready to get out if anything if anything If anything probes back the precog lan Goodly finished it for him. The locator had Malinari s gauntlet close to hand its dull metal casing softly agleam in the gradually fading sunlight. In the west the sun s lower rim had already touched the blue grey crest of a distant range of hills. The two espers stood shoulder to shoulder with their elbows resting on the boulder their heads hunched forward the binoculars to their eyes . . . After a minute or so of almost complete silence disturbed only by the shuffle of nervous feet on chalky ground suddenly Liz said Seething yes that s the way I would describe it too David but what s it seething with It isn t Malinari. The other offered a negative twitch of his head and placed his trembling right hand on the gauntlet s scaled surface. This weapon of his is stone cold dead. If Malinari were there I m certain I d have some kind of reaction by now. But something s there for sure. Go down said Liz. Cut through the trees to the building itself the lower floors the cellars and even Stop said the locator his voice cracking like a whip. What is it Trask said hoarsely. Mindsmog Chung whispered now. There s someone there s something there. I ve got him Liz answered with a whisper of her own. Vampire Chung breathed. How many Trask snapped. I want numbers. . o DKlAlNILUMLtY And after a moment: Just the one said Liz. A caretaker I think. Caretaker Trask very carefully put his hand on her shoulder. But: Afe Liz gasped in that same moment withdrawing her probe and snatching the binoculars away from her eyes so quickly that they almost slipped from her grip. I think he must have sensed me. I felt him stiffen. Leave it be said Trask at once. Don t go back in there. You ve done enough. David Now he touched Chung. It s okay the locator told him. I ve moved on past him. He might have picked up on Liz but not me. He definitely isn t Malinari. I m going down down into the mine now into the earth. For it s the earth that s doing the seething. It s ... I don t know . . . but it s poisoned down there. What is it said Trask. What have you found But once again the locator could only reply with a negative twitch of his head. Let me read bis mind said Liz. David s mind. That way I won t be in direct contact and whatever it is won t sense me. Do it said Trask. And in a moment This is it Liz said. An imbecile mind or minds. The devolved thing that I sensed from the roof of The Aerie. That is what s doing the seething. It s . . . it s growing down there And finally recognizing it for what it really was she shuddered herself into Trask s arms and said I think it must be the same as that awful garden under the Pleasure Dome where Peter Miller had rotted down into that hideous Deadspawn said Trask. Or tm deadspawn if you like. The locator was finished for the moment. I can get nothing else he said glad to be out of it and resting his metaphysical mind and his file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 160 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt eyes both. You ve done fine said Trask both of you. But we re not finished yet. Now while there s still time I want you to look at the monastery. . . MALINARI DREAMS OF BLOOD VAVARA OF TREACHERY THEIR DREAMS COALESCE The sunlight was almost gone reduced to a pale yellow stain on the walls and bastion like towers of the monastery as once more Liz and the locator took up their binoculars focussed them for greater range and commenced scanning. And this time Trask said nothing at all made no comment with regard to safety measures for there was now a tangible tension in the evening air which would make any such warnings redundant. The towers Liz queried. The towers yes Chung s almost imperceptible nod as he sent his probe spearing down his line of sight. The one that s closest to the road. I have its highest windows focussed now. Check said Liz her voice a breath of air. Then the locator s shoulders shook in an involuntary shudder. And: God he gasped. Mindsmog but mindsmog like I ve never felt it before so thick you could cut it with a knife Me too Liz whispered. A blanket of mental fog an impenetrable mind shield. And behind it someone sleeping. Except it isn t just a shield but a warning that says: This close and no closer. And now . . . and now . . . what on earth What said Trask urgently. What It s gone Liz answered. I mean it was there for a moment and now . . . no mindsmog nothing. No said Chung. Not nothing but something . . . something different. It s like . . . like a warm scented wind blowing outwards from the monastery. A soothing balming breeze carrying the message that this place is ... that it s Benign Liz finished it for him. Fresh and clean. Wholesome. There s nothing there but goodness and even saintliness. And she actually shrugged BRIAN LUMLEY her shoulders before continuing But of course. For after all the place is a monastery. A lie Trask reminded her while from nearby the Old Lidesci said: Vavaaara You re seeing what she wants you to see All but Ben who sees only the truth. The other tower Trask snapped. Focus on the tower standing at the rim of the cliffs. But quickly now while the sun is still on it. Even as he spoke twin shadows commenced creeping up from the high fortress walls covering the towers with their gloom. And all that was left of the sun was a yellow blister on the hills of the western range. Working in unison locator and telepath together Liz and Chung followed his instructions. I ve got it said Chung and Liz said: There there Their probes were linked each magnified by the other. They saw the shadows creeping no sweeping up the high walls of the tower transmuting it from gold to the faded yellow of ancient stone. Then: It s . . . dim said Chung. And it s dark empty. No there s something there Liz answered him. Some kind of light. . . Careful said Trask as his espers continued to gaze down the barrels of their glasses . . . . . . Where at first the lenses framed grey light then feral yellow light and finally a gush of crimson And as if the binoculars were suddenly filled with blood which was exactly how it had felt they dropped them and went staggering away from the boulder. Choking back their horror and cowering down it seemed they were hiding from something and a single word or query a single hollow grunt like that of some great pig continued to reverberate in their minds. W W WHAT ... W WHAT ... WHATi Then it was gone finished cut off as they withdrew their probes and a wind sprang up out of the twilight to cool the dome of the knoll. Trask grabbed Liz and held her tightly and Manolis went to steady David Chung where his feet skidded on loose pebbles. For all of them had felt something of what the espers had felt. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 161 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt What was it Trask spoke to Liz shuddering in his arms. It was him said Liz. I m pretty sure of it. I mean who else would dream of... of blood We may have woken him up but I don t think he had time to get a fix on our probes. He d most likely think the intrusion was some kind of nightmare or maybe a part of the normal waking process. God at least I hope so Chung nodded his agreement. I think she s right. Myself I often start awake. That s what it felt like: some kind of weird awakening like an ice cold wavefront washing outwards from him. But a red wavefront of frozen blood. Certainly it froze mine At which precise moment: Malinari s gauntlet on the boulder made a metallic sound then gave a clang and sprang like some terrible insect seven or eight inches into the air. A moment later and it fell inert but with all of its murderous blades and hooks fully extended to the marble chip gravel of the knoll s stony dome. Shaken the eight looked at each other and began to breathe again. It s metallic lan Goodly piped. As the sun went down and that wind sprang up it got cooler and contracted and some mechanism inside was activated. I agree said Trask his rasping voice more than a little shaken. But while you re the precog still it s an omen. And I don t think there s any doubt now but that Malinari is there in that tower in what used to be a monastery. Chung was steadier now. Since he was in charge of the alien weapon he knew it better than any of them. I think you re both right he said taking up the gauntlet and putting a slim hand inside it. A moment more to search with his fingertips and its lethal arsenal of punches hooks and gleaming blades ch chinged from sight one after the other as they slipped back into their housings. Now let s get out of here said Trask. The light s going and it ll soon be dusk. The last thing I want is to be out here in the dusk. And certainly not in the dark. As they went scrambling their way back down the side of the knoll no one disagreed with him . . . Dreams of blood yesss Dreams of a life of lust and greed and of ascending to a Lord .. . followed by banishment and suspended animation in the frozen northern wastes. Of the great melt and of the return to Starside and the toppled stumps of once mighty aeries. Then of a man of the Szgany called Nathan whose weird powers were such that they made life and undeath unbearable in what was once a paradise where beyond the Barrier Mountains in Sunside the Szgany fatted in the forest like so many cattle. A land of milk and honey yesss and blood of course the very font of perpetual youth. Dreams of youth and of ages flown . . . and youth flown with them. But a man need not look old not while there is blood for the taking. Nor need a woman look old for that matter. Dreams of Vavara and of her aerie this fine monastery and of the sibling horde she fostered in Palataki keeping them to herself and denying him their use. Oh Vavara . .. you ungrateful greedy withered bitch . Just how many ages have you depended upon your counterfeit beauty your lying mass hypnotic talent to extend your existence The years are countless. And all of that time you ve let your metamorphism lapse. Unused it has wasted like an atrophied muscle become useless to you. And now like a fool you ve trapped yourself here in a castle on the edge of an alien ocean But I Nephran Malinari shall not he trapped when they trapped when they when they come W w what Malinari snapped awake. What He jerked bolt upright on his pallet so suddenly that his companion through the long hours of daylight was dashed to the bare boards of the floor. What What s that She too came quickly awake looking up from where she sprawled naked beside the pallet and seeing almost as if for the first time Malinari s face. But where last night he had seemed strangely handsome when he rescued the ex New Yorker Sister Anna from her would be tormentors the former sisterhood now in his moment of truth Malinari was more surely Wamphyri His hair shone black where it was brushed back behind conchlike ears falling like a small cloak around his shoulders. His brow was high and slate grey as was all the flesh of his naked body and alien features. His eyes were crimson the colour of blood itself and his convoluted snout flared file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 162 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt when he sniffed at the air like a nightmare hound or more properly a great bat. But worse than the rest of these anomalies together Malinari s jaws were incredible monstrous where they gaped at some unseen presence. And: Too soon he snarled and the words rumbled from him like an avalanche. They re here they ve found me too soon What Oh what Sister Anna s hand flew to her mouth. Is it Vavara . . . I mean our Mother Superior Has she heard us Am I to be punished for my sins And she gasped as she gazed upon her nakedness the great bruises on her breasts and thighs the rusty brown web of his sperm where it matted her pubic bush and glued it to her belly. For she had thought it was a dream only a terrible dream Malinari heard her and it was as if he d just this moment noticed her. Eh he grunted wrinkling his nose at her. Vavara No it isn t Vavara you shivering sow It s worse it s much worse than Vavara. What have I done Anna whispered her hands like crippled moths as they fluttered over her bruises. I ... I remember how the sisters held me trapped in my room. I didn t want to let them in but they promised they d do me no harm. All they wanted was to talk to tell me of their plan. I was the last... I had lasted the longest and my innocence was important to their. . . to their plan They planned to use you Malinari scowled his features gradually returning to normal as he recovered from the shock of his awakening to break and abuse you. He stood up in an easy flowing motion caught her under the arm and hauled her upright. I saved you from being wasted that s all. When I took you the first time you were as tight as the hole that s left where the stalk is pulled from a ripe plum and that was good. But to be honest I don t know which of your openings I enjoyed the most. You used your mouth to very good effect well for a novice. And then he grinned a rabid wolf s grin so that Anna could see the split devil s tongue wriggling in the cave of his mouth. But what was he saying Something about her mouth She licked her saltily scaled lips and . . . that taste Caught up by Malinari Sister Anna stood aghast shivering. She tried to cover her nakedness her irreparably defiled body her very soul ... if she still had one. But she was weak in all of her limbs. And there was pain such pain in those several parts of her body that. . . that she had always . . . She opened her mouth to scream her denial and Malinari s hands flew to her head one to grasp her throat the other to cover her mouth. Be quiet he hissed. Or she really will hear you. 1 want her to sleep on if she is still asleep. Get dressed throw on that hooded sack that you wear to cover your sinful body. Ah but how pleasurable this sinning eh Consider yourself fortunate little Anna that a master broke you open with real flesh and not those sluts with their lifeless wooden pricks Releasing her suddenly he thrust her away. Anna trembled so much she could scarcely pull on her habit but finally it was in place and she said 1 must go to her to Vavara and repent what I ve done. I You ll do no such thing said Malinari more nearly a man now. And as she turned her face away in shame: Look at me he commanded her. Look at me now She couldn t refuse as he held her head between his hands but more gently than before. Do you know why you thought it was a dream he said. She could only answer with the smallest shake of her head. Because I took it away from you. When I was in you I told you to forget. And now I m telling you again. Forget that we ve been joined and that you ve felt my flesh expanding within you and my cold seed flooding your openings. Nothing so ... so vile has ever happened to you What you A virgin nun But . . . my bruises Anna whispered as her eyes rolled up and her mind felt the ice of his hands his awful power sucking at her memories erasing them. You fell he told her. You fell on the steep steps when you ran from those filthy lustful women. That s all you remember. And if Vavara or anyone else asks about me you ll say you don t know me except as the good Father Maralini. There now therel And as for that which you thought was a dream why it was a dream Again he released her and as Anna s eyes rolled down they gradually focussed. Then she blinked file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 163 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt gasped and said W why am I here I picked you up my dear he answered when you fell. Yes she whispered. I ... I fell on the steps. Indeed Malinari told her. But you are only bruised and nothing broken. Now you must go for it s evening and the monastery will soon be awake. Tongues would wag I fear if you were to be found here and Vavara would doubtless hear them. The other sisters . . . She shuddered violently. Avoid them yes he nodded. Lest they chase you and you are made to fall again. Now leave me. And abruptly opening his door he thrust her out. . . Malinari dressed quickly then stood in the centre of his cell like room and sent out his probes. It was still very quiet. The nuns were asleep or barely waking I in their cells. And Vavara in the other tower . . . her spell held true. The lying stench of goodness mercy and virtue all of these things of which in fact she knew so very little enticed and enwrapped Malinari s cautious probe until he almost believed them himself. . . except he knew better. Hah: But so much for the bitch: she slept on. Vavara slept yes but what of those others whose spying had brought him snarling awake The roof of the tower its parapet would make for a perfect vantage point. Standing to one side where no stray ray of lethal sunlight would strike if such remained he drew back the heavy drapes layer upon layer of them from one of his narrow windows. But the sun was down and twilight gathering. Good. He left his tiny room swept up the stairs to the trapdoor and let himself out onto the tower s roof. It made an excellent vantage point yes and would make for an even better launching platform when the time came. For as Mal inari assumed his vampire form lifting his face to sniff the night air he was sure that the time would come and soon. The air was alive with the chittering of bats. Inaudible to others it was as though they spoke to Malinari. A pity that he didn t understand them or rather that their tongue was foreign to him. Ah but if only this were Starside and these creatures his familiars. Ten thousand eyes and all of them searching the night at his behest But sight is only one of the senses and a mundane sense at that. Malinari knew the signatures of certain minds his memory was such that he could never forget them and he knew the psychic pattern of a certain group mind the one he believed had wrenched him from his sleep. But on the other hand he also knew that he was as prone to nightmares as ordinary men except his were more nightmarish yet. Which meant that it was possible barely that he d been nightmaring that in reality his shields had not been brushed by the probes of would be intruders would be assassins. But he had to be absolutely certain for his very existence depended upon it Likewise the cessation of Vavara s the ungrateful hag. Westward the gradually fading rays of a vanished sun stuck up like spokes over the distant hills. That was the first place Malinari looked. Drawn by the menace that had been he narrowed his eyes to scowl at the last shred of gold on the western horizon. But the sun was truly down and night fast approaching. Nighttime his time when Malinari s powers were potent beyond the most exaggerated expectations of merely human espers. And there in the west . . . trace elements in the psychic aether like a taint in the balming dusk of evening. His lips drew back in a silent snarl his concentration was such that the cloak of hair rose up from his shoulders as if electrified he separated out the various scents making up the telltale group signature of a body of people known as Known as E Branch They were here They really bad found him And of course they had found Vavara too. Even adversity can have its compensations. In this case he knew what he was up against and she didn t. She didn t even know they were here and wouldn t not if Malinari had any say in it. But there was no denying his vampire enhanced senses those warning odours adrift and dispersing on the aether which yet permeated his innermost mind: The female Liz an emerging Power that one who should be dead in the ruins of Xanadu and yet was here albeit inexplicably . And that cursed locator with his mind like a lodestone or a Starside wolf sniffing at the heels of its prey he d come very close to costing Malinari his life that one These were the principal elements discovered by his probes but they weren t by any means the only ones. No for the group signature was reinforced by others whose talents were harder to define or file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 164 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt understand. Trask for instance. The one scent he had left behind was one of utter loathing of Malinari And Malinari knew why. It was because of Zek the telepath he d encountered and killed in Romania when first he entered this world. She had known all the secrets of these people this E Branch and if he had been able to drain more of them from her before killing her But too late now to cry over spilled blood and a beautiful wasted female body. Zek had been Trask s yes and Trask wanted revenge which by Malinari s lights was perfectly natural. But as for Trask s talent for all of these people were talented as yet it remained a mystery. Malinari had read something of it in Zek s mind as his cold hands drained her knowledge away: it had something to do with truth. But what good was such a talent against the centuried disciplines of a Lord of the Wamphyri If one can only tell the truth or recognize the truth how can he hope to prevail against the very Father of Deceit There can be no common ground no interface where everything is an untruth And the Great Vampire was never born or made who couldn t lie his heart out. Such reasoning or unreasoning was a word game that Malinari played with himself perhaps to reassure himself. . . Then there was this other the one like a spindle tall and thin whose mind seemed singularly weird. Malinari had touched upon it that time in Xanadu but only in passing a tentative cursory probe at best. Indeed he had scanned the entire group but since at the time he had been intent upon making an escape there had been scant opportunity for any kind of in depth probing. And as for the tall one the precog yes his mind had seemed as open as a book yet at the same time blank as a page as yet unwritten For it appeared that his mind held few memories for Malinari to steal only his present thoughts as fleeting as the moment as if he made room for the future by obliterating the past or as if for him time worked in reverse Patently he remembered the past but the focus of his mind was on the future. Definitely a very peculiar mind and a talent that was stranger yet. And again Malinari was prompted to ask himself: What use is a skill which is so unreliable And if the future is so devious as to defy interpretation how then may one use it to any great advantage . . . They were all members of this E Branch these people these esoteric defenders of their world their Earth. Liz a telepath like Zek before her. And Chung with his batlike radar. Trask who knew the truth but who yet might be led astray if one possessed the skill for it and the precog who had little or no faith in bis talent at all These four and how many others For there were others Malinari knew that for a certainty. So much at least he d had from Zek s mind before killing her: the fact that there were others. At least one more had been here with the group this very night not long ago and not too far away. His signature was very faint and previously unknown or at least Malinari had not separated it out before tonight yet was vaguely familiar. If this were Sunside he would hazard a guess indeed he would wager upon it that this one was Szgany That much he would know if not where he was hiding. But this wasn t Sunside . . . And finally there was one other absent now from the group whose signature Malinari remembered from Xanadu. He remembered it... but wasn t able to detect it not tonight. Which was as well. For whereas Liz was a burgeoning mentalist Power of some potential that one Jake the one she d called out to in her terror of the mushroom garden under the Pleasure Dome be was already a Power a very real PRESENCE in the psychic aether Malinari remembered how when Liz was trapped in subterranean Xanadu she had cried out into the psychic aether for help a pitiful cry from an impossible situation. Moreover he remembered how he d gloated while using his own superior mentalism to send her this message: Ab no little thought thief. No one can help you HOW. You thought to use your mentalism against me but Malinari has used it against you I bave lied to Ben Trask impossible But I ve done it and I have located and lost your locator. As for your marvelous precog: he scans the future but senses only confusion for the death and destruction that be foresaw was not mine but his own and yours and Xanadu s. Now you cry out to this Jake your lover perhaps but where is be Oh ha ba baaaaa That had been his final message to her yes before he had been obliged to concentrate on the job in hand: to destroy this E Branch utterly. But at the time he had professed or pretended to know much more than he d actually known of these people. And for all Malinari s telepathic skill and experience he had only once before come across a mind with a signature like Jake s a veritable whirlwind of esoteric numbers symbols and formulae and that too had been in Sunside Starside. Aye and Malinari remembered that one only too well. His name his bated name had been Nathan and file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 165 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt he d been a scourge on all of Malinari s works. On his and Vavara s and even Lord Szwart s. If the likes of Nathan were here and if E Branch numbered such as him within their ranks . . . what then And again Malinari found himself wondering about the escape of these oh so tenacious people from incendiary Xanadu and from all the traps he d laid for them there. How had it happened It should have been impossible. Liz should never have escaped from the guardian of his garden and as for the bomb he d planted in the elevator which wrecked his blister aerie: that should have taken care of at least two of them including their leader Ben Trask. Yet all had lived through it with barely a scratch. Malinari knew that for a fact. Soaring overhead as he made his own escape he d seen them alive in Xanadu s gardens. But even then they had been in direst peril from the inferno that was Xanadu which yet again they d escaped as witness their presence here. Nathan and Jake . . . one and the same No never. The first had been a Sunsider born his psychic aura unmistakably Szgany. While just as undeniably Jake was of Earth of this world for his aura however briefly touched upon had spoken of cities science and sophistication as opposed to forests and foraging and the artless innocence or naivety of Sunside s nomads. Not one and the same then. But two of a kind It began to seem likely. Able to come and go in the wink of an eye and so effect these apparently miraculous escapes. And that signature of constantly mutating meaningless numbers. Perhaps they were more than just a signature it could even be they were a Power in their own right. Meaningless for the moment yes meaningless to Malinari but who could say what the future might or might not bring If ever this Jake should fall into Malinari s hands or if he could be lured into them what then And what hope for mankind on this or any other world if Nephran Malinari were to gain control of a talent such as that Malinari He lurched against the parapet wall starting at the sound of her voice and instinctively reinforcing his shields to guard his thoughts. Not that Vavara s mentalism was any match for his own but Malinari knew how treacherous certain of his thoughts had been and how they might have betrayed him. And: What s this she said sweetly as he turned to face her. A guilty conscience Vavara s guise was radiant no less than on the night they had dined out together. And though Malinari knew it was only a guise and despite his earlier excesses with Anna when he had gone at her endlessly through the long night hours but yet carefully so as not to damage her still he felt the need to possess Vavara . . . and at once put it aside. She could wear a man to a frazzle this one and afterwards when he lay exhausted . . . ... In the stumps of old Starside stacks the gross females of a certain species of spider had similar mating habits. Their tiny mates were never seen except as empty sacks their thorny parts as dry as dust forming little piles of debris under the silken webs of their terrible lovers. Vavara s question had been barbed gathering his wits Malinari smiled wryly as he answered it. Guilty But of course I am always and I won t deny it. How can I for I am Wamphyri And so are you. But a guilty conscience Surely not. After all one must first have a conscience And yet you started she said moving closer. He shrugged and answered Because I didn t expect anyone up and about so close to sunset. That glow in the west there The sun is barely down. That much is obvious she answered and I know it. Else I were not 1 L C K 3 here nor you. But you re an early riser Nephran Malinari. Was there something in her voice An edge of suspicion perhaps He shrugged again sensed her weak exploratory probe and redoubled his shields. My dreams were uneasy. Mine too she told him. It seems some of these stories you told me of your failure in Australia and of the people who chased you from your bubble aerie have affected me badly. Would you believe 1 even dreamed that they were here Really Malinari feigned surprise. Indeed And such was the nature of my dreams that despite the watchers I have on the seaports tonight I shall send out some of my women to scour the land around. Vavara s probes were less exploratory more aggressive now and Malinari had had enough. Let s hope they find nothing he snapped and made as if to move towards the open hatch. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 166 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Quickly putting herself in his way Vavara said But don t you see anything peculiar in all this And don t you agree that it s a very strange thing Nephran even a singular thing in the light of my dreams to find you out here in the twilight all nervous and out of sorts scanning afar Out of sorts He raised an eyebrow. Scanning Why Lady I Ah no Vavara grated suddenly leaning forward to sniff at him her guise crumbling. She let it go deliberately for effect he supposed and in a moment her beautiful eyes were melting into fire bubbling like cauldrons full of blood while her leathery black bat nostrils wrinkled back gaping as they fed on his odours. I m no Lady Lord Malinari and never call me that again. I know only too well what I am and I know what you are When I dream of treachery betrayal and wake up seeking an answer only to find you up here on the roof sending your probes out into the night. . . isn t it understandable that I should ask myself: to what end Treachery He loomed over her fighting to stave off his own fury which had been galvanized by hers and met her fiery gaze with a crimson look of his own. Against you Vavara Neither by word nor deed How can you even think it And as for betrayal: Of what am I accused now Without me how would you have fared on this island in this monastery Where would you have seeded your deadspawn crop No if anyone has been betrayed surely I am that one: Nephran Malinari whose hard won monies purchased dark and dank Palataki wherein to breed your horde to which you deny me access Vavara scarcely appeared to hear a word he said but moved closer still sniffing at him all the harder with her wrinkled convolute snout. You smell. she grunted her guise almost entirely dissolved away now revealing the wrinkled hag underneath but a hag as strong as three strong men with a leathery hide and claws and teeth like knives. You smell of sex with one of mine no doubt and especially of lies. Also of... what fear Apprehension Are you afraid of me then Malinari No I think not but you should be Of what then Of something out there in the night perhaps which you ve sensed with your much vaunted mentalism He might have answered with a blow to flatten her snout or one to shatter her scythe teeth but Vavara s shawl had slipped from her right arm and he saw that she wore a gauntlet. It was a Lady s gauntlet more delicate than a Lord s and designed for flensing rather than braining or dismembering but just as deadly against an unarmed man. Malinari was no coward but neither was he a fool. And backing away from her he lied: I sensed nothing in the night But is it any wonder that I m up here scanning abroad Wouldn t you do the same if it were you who was being thrown out obliged to take your leave of this place I have a ways to go and so must plan my route. She was taken aback. Plan your route Take your leave But isn t that what you wanted he said. To see the back of me Haven t you told me as much to my face Ah but it s all too visible in your face and in your attitude Vavara without that I employ my much vaunted mentalism to read your mind. She stood back a pace withdrew her weak probes and rapidly adjusted her own shields. But And so you shall see the back of me he cut her short. I leave tonight. Tonight Vavara s features flowed she was a woman again she gathered up her shawl and hid her gauntlet in its folds. I ... I had no idea. You said nothing. There was nothing to say. You want me gone and so I shall go. My only regret that our past friendship means so little that for all I ve done to help you you have offered nothing in return. Meaning my holdings in Palataki She narrowed her eyes. Exactly. Your holdings . . . and your women. Hahi she gave a snort but by now her features albeit difficult to ascertain were those of a beautiful woman again it was her guise of course. You re nothing more than a thief Malinari. You take and only then think to ask my leave But I did ask he answered. Er before I took. You asked and I told you no. Once was enough with Sara. And so it comes to this Malinari sighed. The parting of the ways. Yes and we ll be all the better for it Vavara answered. You and I and that thing called Szwart the farther we re apart the better we appreciate each other. For as you yourself said but a moment ago we re Wamphyri after all. Then changing the subject: What will you take with you I brought nothing he shrugged and I shall take nothing away. I have monies in many currencies . . . I ll find a place in Bulgaria or even Romania. Properties are cheap in Romania and the tongue is close to our own. Also I ve heard tell of crumbling old aeries in the mountains that go wanting for a master. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 167 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:52 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt j.y d K I A IN LUMLhY And so you ll start again Nothing else for it he answered. And how will you make away There are plenty of boats for hire in Krassos town Malinari continued to lie making it up as he went. I can pay for my crossing ... or not depending on my mood. But don t concern yourself I won t leave any evidence behind. You ve had trouble enough. I ll travel by night rest by day. It s the only way. And it won t concern you that I m so far ahead of you and presumably Szwart also Vavara was frowning now she was puzzled plainly unsettled by this sudden turn of events. It s a wide world he answered peopled with kind hearts and gullible fools. With luck I ll even find me another Jethro Manchester. But even so deadspawn takes time to mature she quickly maliciously reminded him. And you haven t the makings. No lieutenant of long standing with spores in his blood or a leech in his body to use in the seeding of a garden. Why before you ve so much as started this island and all the Mediterranean lands around shall be mine and England and France Lord Szwart s. Our original plans are in disarray and I now must plan for myself. Surely you ve realized as much that you are now on your own All true said Malinari and I do realize it of course. But while the rest of this world is fighting your plagues mine will be brewing all unsuspected. So that in the end it shall be as it has always been survival of the fittest. The fittest Vavara lifted her chin and smiled luminously at him. Myself obviously That remains to be seen said Malinari. But now you must excuse me. I shall be gone within the hour. And as she grudgingly stood aside he left her there on the roof. . . From his tower room Malinari reached out with his mentalism to find Sister Anna. He seized upon her signature and told her: If you would be out of this place away from this sinister creature and her sisterhood of evil come to me now. I Father Maralini shall leave this place tonight. And of all the sinful women within these walls you are the only one worth saving. Do you hear me Anna If so then come to me. Of course she heard him and came at once. He knew when she was at his door quickly drawing her inside he said Anna my dear do you know the way to Palataki She nodded then gasped as his cold hands went to her head. Meet me on the side road where it rises to the Little Palace he commanded her then. Meet me there in the midnight hour. But keep to the shadows and don t stray too close. The woman Vavara has a man there who would harm you. Yes Anna answered with her eyes rolled up so that only the whites showed . . . the whites and also a little yellow that Malinari had put there during her seduction and defilement and even a few flecks of crimson other than that of normally bloodshot eyes. Seeing it he knew that she was his thrall and that his power was not diminished. A little of his essence was worth a pint of any other s. So he was wont to tell himself. Can you do it He gave her a little shake half stirring her from the stupor induced by the numbing action of his hands. Can you get out of here and make your way unseen to Palataki It s a distance of some five or six miles. I can do it she sighed. It will be easy. Vavara has me on watch tonight and so I can slip away. Good And as her eyes rolled down again and blinked at him: But Father she said. I thought perhaps you d called me here for . . . for something else Something . . . other Leaning closer she brushed against him until Malinari felt the thrust of her stiffening nipples even through the coarse weave of her habit. And oh that sly suggestive smile on her face It was wicked that smile so that indeed he knew his power was undiminished and that Anna was or would be a vampire But: Ah no he told her directing her to the door. Not now for I must away. Later perhaps in Palataki. And Anna do not call me Father. From now on call me master. Do you understand Yes master she sighed as she left him and floated off into the darkness of the monastery . . . At about 8:30 as he made his way westward along the coast road to Skala Astris Malinari heard a motor s growl and stepped out of the way onto the tinder dry vegetation beside the road. Vavara s limo pulled up its window wound down and its nun driver leaned her hooded face out into the night. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 168 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt What is it Malinari recognized the faintly feral glow of her eyes and knew she was Vavara s true thrall. The mistress saw you leave that one said and since she was sending us out and about tonight she thought we might take you into Krassos town. I want no favours of your mistress said Malinari. But she insists said the other. She said that we should . . . that we should see you safely on your way and And safely off her territory aye Malinari snarled. And that you would appreciate . . . that you d appreciate her concern for you the nun continued albeit gaspingly. Malinari showed her his teeth and half turned away . . . and then on second thought turned back. Since it was obvious that Vavara wouldn t rest until she knew he was gone for good and since it suited his purpose to give the bitch just such a false sense of security accepting this ride into town could well work to his advantage. Your mistress ... is very gracious he said. The road is a long one into Skala Astris and I can t be certain of finding a taxi there. Also since I wouldn t want to draw attention to myself by walking these night roads . . . The back door of the vehicle sprang open. Malinari got in and without further pause was carried into Krassos town. As for the cowled women seated BRIAN LUMLtY ft in front brides of a holy order upon a time now wedded to the holy hag Vavara they never once looked back. It could be that they feared him indeed Malinari was sure of it But he fancied they feared Vavara a great deal more . . . They dropped him in a dark deserted alley on the outskirts of the seaport town then continued with their duties. Malinari had scanned their minds on the way into Krassos he knew where they were going: to relieve their sisters keeping watch on the incoming ferries the last of which had recently docked. Wanting to give them time to get out of the way he walked along the seafront toward the harbour until he found a taverna with upstairs seating that looked down on the main road. Ordering red wine he sat listening to soothing bouzouki music while watching the gyrations of a belly dancer on a television screen over the bar. Reception was very poor making the figure on the screen fade in and out like a stroboscopic special effect. Malinari couldn t watch for too long because it made his head ache and anyway he was keeping an eye on the road or trying to. But this close to the centre of a major town this close to people he was at his usual disadvantage. Namely he could hear them. He could hear them thinking. And recognizing only too well the dangers inherent in that he tried not to hear them. Which worked for a little while at least. . . Affecting his best manlike appearance Malinari didn t seem out of place in this setting he might well be Italian French or even cosmopolitan Greek. The taverna s subdued blue lighting hid his paleness and his hair was fashionably long loose and flowing except at his temples and upper sideburns where it was lacquered back to disguise the upper extremities of his fleshy conchlike ears. These might otherwise have betrayed him but betrayed him as what As a foreigner with malformed ears Other than that Malinari was to all intents and purposes just another lone late season tourist on a night out enjoying the cool of evening after another incredibly hot day. Oh there might also be something a little odd about his nose a certain flattish look as if nature had pushed it too far back but in any case the taverna was three quarters empty and none of its patrons was paying him more than casual attention . . . . . . Which might have been because of his eyes. Let anyone look at him curiously or for too long and Malinari would fix him with a certain look with those eyes of his under their high arcing eyebrows those oh so penetrating eyes which were black as night yet oddly luminous and at a certain angle even feral. And then for all his sharply creased black slacks polished shoes silk shirt and fashionable lightweight jacket for all such trappings of mundane civilization then there would be something primal something of the great predatory animal about him. And whoever was watching would sense the danger and quickly look away. This made it easy to maintain his integrity his physical isolation that is but as for his mental file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 169 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt isolation . . . Lord Nephran Malinari of the Wamphyri Malinari the Mind aye. They hadn t called him that for nothing in old Starside. It had been both his blessing and his curse it still was but now more often than not it was his curse. His talent working in reverse working against him. And tonight here and now . . . . . . He could hear them. Their voices in his mind. Their teeming thoughts lustful greedy malicious dirty bloody hateful scheming it was as bad as being back on old Starside in the time of the bloodwars before he d suffered his great defeat and was banished norths Indeed it seemed to Malinari that the only real difference between the Wamphyri and humankind other than their physical strength was that the Great Vampires admitted of their tremendous passions giving vent to them and revelling in their excesses but human beings sought to bury theirs out of sight pretending they didn t exist. But they did they did That was what made men the perfect hosts. Surely it must be so else there were no Wamphyri And all of their secret voices gabble gobbling away in his head invading his mind Those three fat gutted greasy looking men where they sat close to the bar and gazed up at the belly dancer. One of them was thinking: How 1 would love to be into that. All that loose flesh. I d fuck her arse her tits her armpit. . . anything but her sweaty cunt And another was climbing unsteadily to his feet making for the toilets where he would masturbate the grease out of his fat dick. All he could think of was the throbbing in his pants While the third was simply sitting there with a limp penis wishing wishing desperately wishing But since wishing wasn t doing him any good in the back of his mind he was going at the belly dancer with an imaginary knife slicing at the parts that no longer worked for him gutting her like a fish. And not just the dancer but any woman the poor impotent bastard . . . Their thoughts theirs and not Malinari s at all but all of them and a hundred more exactly like them infesting his mind from near and far. A roaring on the one hand and a whispering on the other but all of it intermingling into a mental uproar. It was maddening It was so ... so maddening Hearing a small splintering report he saw that he d been clenching his glass so tightly that it had cracked. That was a very bad sign even an ominous sign which warned him that his old trouble was surfacing again. But he couldn t afford to let it not tonight. Pushing the cracked glass to the far side of his table he sat there trembling watching it dribble red awhile and drinking from the bottle. But the spilled wine only reminded him of blood the rich red blood of the fat bastards in this bar and in the street below and in the town and in all the cities of all the world So that when the bartender suddenly appeared from nowhere plumping a new glass down on the table Malinari came close to starting to his feet grabbing him and. . . and he wasn t sure what else might have happened then But seeing his eyes their luminosity the bartender backed away from him and didn t come back. Nor would he return later when Malinari left not even to collect payment such was the shock and the impression of pent violence he d seen mirrored in Malinari s eyes . . . Malinari got a grip on himself. Stifling his trembling and stabilizing his mental shields to deflect all outside influences he slowly became his own man again. The screen was blank now the belly dancer gone and the night air was cool where it came in across the balcony. It blew on Malinari and his hot mind both gradually cooling them down. And barely in time. For down below Vavara s black limo was cruising east along the seafront heading back towards the monastery and Malinari s mental condition had been such that he might easily have missed it. But no he was fine now and it was time he was on his way. The bartender was nowhere to be seen. Since Malinari didn t care whether he paid for his wine or not he simply rose and left went downstairs to the side of the road and flagged down the first available taxi. By the vehicle s dashboard timepiece it was a minute or so before ten o clock and with time to spare Malinari was being driven back along the coast road toward Skala Astris. Or more precisely toward Palataki . . . A little more than an hour later Vavara s lieutenant Zarakis Mocksthrall stood in the shadow of file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 170 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt the crumbling Little Palace and looked down from the promontory on the scattered handful of lights and ribbon of road that was Skala Astris. The tavernas what few had been open were all closed now and the last fishing vessel had bobbed home and was safely at mooring. In the west the twinkling jewel lights of Portos Peskari and Sotira were strung out along the coast gradually dwindling into the distance and a brilliant half moon laid a path across the sea. Except for the occasional clatter of transports along the road all was quiet. Time now to take a turn about Palataki s overgrown gardens checking for intruders and ensuring that Vavara s candle still burned in its small central shrine. It was his mistress s vanity Zarakis knew and her idea of a joke to keep that candle burning there her mockery of all such symbols of faith even as the images that she assumed mocked true beauty and femininity. For no such candle was ever before lit for Vavara not in Starside or anywhere else until now . . . unless it was a candle of corpse grease whose special incense she enjoyed to inhale. And Zarakis vampire that he was more than a mere thrall and indeed a lieutenant even he shuddered. Mocksthrall she had named him as she named all of her thralls and he accepted without question his station as the first lieutenant currently the only lieutenant of that very heart of mockery the eidolon Vavara. For Zarakis s life or rather his undeath was itself a mockery NECROSCUPh: UhhILtKb in her service. But be that as it may it was far better than the true death and no life at all ... It was a strange night Zarakis thought where he followed familiar paths through the gardens causing the sweating ground mist to swirl about his ankles. There was an unaccustomed stillness in the air as if it were full of some weird expectancy or charged with the static energies of a gathering storm . . . which might well be the case. For the very gentlest of gentle breezes off the sea was cool at last and it seemed that this freakish summer was finally at an end. But as he drew near to the little shrine where the night s first candle had already guttered out what was that A presence here at Palataki Zarakis paused suddenly between paces stood stock still and sniffed at the air. And letting his vampire senses flow out from him he held his breath and waited to see what they would detect. Somewhere nearby a tiny Greek owl hooted its forlorn solitary note like a single drop of molten gold on the motionless air. Motionless now aye for even that gentlest of breezes had ceased to blow. But. . . . . . No one was there else he were stealthier far than Zarakis And as he lit a new candle and placed it in the window of the marble shrine to glimmer its deceit there in the darkness he remembered what Vavara had told him just an hour or so ago: that he should be especially careful this night and attend his duties as never before. She had not been specific but then again her mood had been a bad one and Zarakis had known better than to ask questions. She could flay you with her tongue that one and if that didn t suffice she had other tools with which to finish the job But best not to think such thoughts for one could never be sure that she wasn t Zarakis Vavara s voice sounding in his mind cutting into his thoughts like a razor sharp knife Ahhh He went cold as death the true death and wondered if she d been listening. Mentalism wasn t her forte no but if she were near and concentrating . . . and the night so still Zarakis where are you Her sweetly lying voice calling out to him and behind it her sour signature like a discord in the psychic aether. She must be here to spy on him to ensure that he was about his duties as instructed. What All these years of service and still she didn t trust him But no no he hadn t thought that last he mustn t think such things but pull himself together and answer her call. Mistress I am here Zarakis spoke out loud yet quietly breathlessly and knew that she would hear him anyway. I am in the gardens near the marble shrine. Your candle burns and all else is well. But where . . . where are you I am waiting for you Vavara answered near the entrance to the Little Palace. Hurry now. Of course he babbled. I m on my way. But mistress what is the matter I mean when you were here earlier you seemed dare I say it out of sorts with yourself What is it that so concerns you I 1V1 L C I file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 171 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt For a moment there was silence and Zarakis thought perhaps he d said too much. But then: But I was out of sorts she answered to his relief And I was more than a little short with you Zarakis which is why I now bring you a small token of my esteem. Or should we say a special tidbit A tidbit But how very rare How very strange And her mental voice . . . was there something different about it Or was it just an effect of this weird night the peculiar atmosphere Zarakis was now at the dark entrance but where was Vavara Where are you mistress he enquired. I can t see you. Oh you great laggard She chided him but without discernible malice. I grew weary of waiting for you and have proceeded to the spawning chamber. Follow me down. There is something you must see. And my tidbit Her mood seemed such that he was prompted to be forward with her. She is with me said Vavara. At which Zarakis made yet more haste . . . The way down into the nitre streaked cellars and then through the alveolate bedrock to the old mine workings was treacherous with pitfalls but Zarakis was familiar with it as with the back of his own hand. From the day his mistress first purchased Palataki it had been his lot to patrol its grounds the ruined building itself and its underground labyrinth of tunnels mine workings and natural caverns. The latter had been hollowed out by the sea ages before the Mediterranean s seismic activity had folded the rock and thrust it up to form Palataki s promontory and it was in just such a cavern that Vavara s misted spawning chamber was situated. Zarakis as he emerged from an access tunnel into the main chamber fully expected to see his mistress there also to see the tidbit she d brought with her presumably one of the nuns from the monastery one of the younger nuns Zarakis hoped. But what he did not expect to see was a chamber empty of life other than the creeping loathsomeness covering the floor and the now tumes cent fungi with their gills distended ready at a moment s notice to release their lethal spores. But in fact the cavern wasn t entirely empty of life which became apparent just a moment later when Lord Nephran Malinari Malinari the Mind stepped from the deep shadows behind Zarakis and grasped his head between his hands. It took but a moment. Zarakis opened his mouth to cry out and then was unable to do so. He made as if to wrench himself free and found himself immobilized. And as he went to his knees Malinari released him but just long enough to move round in front of him before once more clasping his head. And: Ah Agh Arghhht Tidbit Zarakis grunted then. For apart from his shock that had been his last coherent thought before Malinari s hands took him and so was the first item of memory to be deleted. M m my tidbit Then all of his limbs jerked spastically as if galvanized by a powerful U E H 1 L E K NECROSCOPE electrical current and his head shook violently: entirely involuntary reactions to the other s preliminary examination. But: No no said Malinari. Hold still lest I hurt you even more. And extending his semiliquid forefingers deep into Zarakis s ears dislodging the ossicles the malleus incus and stapes each in its turn and passing through the inner chamber to the cochlea and from there tearing channels along the nerve connections to the brain he said: As for your tidbit: alas that was a lie. No tidbits here Zarakis. At least not from me to you. But from you to me Well we shall see. And then he laughed and went on Except it was not me who lied to you but your mistress or so you imagined. For just as Vavara s hypnotic powers allow her to create a near perfect imitation of beauty so I have imitated Vavara herself No not physically but in your mind Or rather that which was your mind which is now mine. Malinari s hands transformed by metamorphosis covered Zarakis s head like twin purple veined webs like the leaves of some huge carnivorous plant as the terrible extrusions that were his forefingers continued exploring his silently shrieking victim s brain. And blood from Zarakis s violated ears trickled down his neck to soak his collar while the awful pressure from within caused his eyes to stand out in his face . . . . . . Until Malinari used his thumbs as long and slender as pencils now to dislodge those eyes push them aside and enter their bleeding orbits the better to absorb Zarakis s memories. What you have heard what you have seen and what you have known Malinari murmured. These are the things I seek. Urkl . . . Uk . . . Arghl Zarakis gurgled as his body began jerking again. But the ice of Malinari s hands soon brought him back under control as that Great Vampire told file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 172 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt him: Ah no Don t try to answer. I don t require you to answer physically Zarakis. The answers are all here in your head. All of the secret places you ve discovered down here in this buried maze where a man might hide if he had need. The bolt holes that lead out of this place which you kept secret even from Vavara. The location of her boat and how to get there. The whereabouts of its fuel cache and knowledge of its operation. Ahhhi And all of it flowing out drawn out of Zarakis into Malinari s mind. But not all of his memories not all of his learning and certainly not enough to kill him. For he was a vampire after all a lieutenant who aspired or who had once aspired to be Wamphyri and would prove very hard to kill by this means alone. Even with his mind three quarters incapacitated emptied of knowledge his vampire essence would fight on those strands of mutant DNA that one day might even have metamorphosed into a leech. And: There now there Malinari murmured withdrawing his red wet hands and reshaping them. Rest now and live Zarakis. For if or when that mistress of mirages reaches out from her monastery aerie with a piddling probe 1 want her to be able to read your signature here and to know that all is well . . . even if it isn t. n With which he dragged the drooling lieutenant far back into the access tunnel then into a cobwebbed niche where he propped his limp body against the wall before setting off with all the authority of a man born to this labyrinth or one who had lived here for a long time to examine Vavara s boat for himself. As he strode across the spawning chamber the protoplasmic devolved filth of the cavern reached out and groped upwards as if to grasp him. And though there was no mind there to mention still Malinari lashed out: Begone I am not for you Recognizing his authority like a hand scorched by a flame the filthy mulch at once snatched itself back and withdrew from him and sneering as he went on Malinari was uncaring where he stepped or how many toadstools he crushed. . . JAKE CUTTER RECONNAISSANCE Three days earlier Thursday evening: Why Marseilles Korath was curious. What will you do here I need time to think Jake murmured low under his breath apparently muttering to himself like a disturbed person which in a way he was as he walked the city s boulevards. Time to rest up think things out. Things have changed and yet they haven t. I need to get it sorted. His words were dead speak of course thoughts would have sufficed but he found it easier to actually speak as if to a real three dimensional person walking beside him. Real yes said the other however incorporeal. But walking beside you No except in the sense that our route is the same. Alas that our destinies aren t. Our destinies Jake was only half listening. My destiny said Korath bitterly when all of this is done is to return to my dank and dreary sump. While yours. . . can be whatever you make it. Unfair wouldn t you say That s life said Jake shrugging and wishing that the vampire would shut up so that he could think think about how things had changed and yet hadn t. No said the other I m obliged to disagree. It isn t life but death. And you can take it from me Jake that the two have nothing in common Much like you and I said Jake. Except your mind Korath reminded him. From which you have the power to exclude me in a moment. Your mind Jake the one sentient place in all my empty universe. The only place where I can touch taste hear see and even feel but only what you feel or sense and oh so temporarily. So instead of constantly moaning about it Jake replied why not make the best of what you ve got while you re able Because it isn t the best that I could have. . . or of what you could have that s why. That again said Jake crossing the road to a bank where a cash outlet stood gleaming in a windowed recess. I m to open my mind let down all my L U 1V1 L E I L IV 1 rt IN file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 173 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt shields and bid you enter of your own free will right He was getting wise to the other s aims now and also to his motives. Long term residence. Yes Korath replied at once a little too eagerly. From which time forward or at least until our dual objectives were met we would act and react almost as one. We would be as twin wheels their cogs meshing precisely working in perfect unison. You would no longer need to call out for me in times of danger for I would know the danger I would already be here advising assisting even protecting you. Why I would know your needs at once and all of my instincts would he yours So that in time and given that I d be here to encourage you in your efforts of course it s even possible that you could learn Harry Keogh s formula for yourself. Then in every respect at last you could be the Necroscope that he was That s if I wanted to be the Necroscope said Jake. And I m not at all sure I do. There s a lot more to this than meets the eye more than Trask and his people have told me. Even when they did tell me something I got the impression that what they weren t telling me was a lot worse So when this is all over and by the time I know everything if ever it s possible I ll feel even less inclined than I do now. Right now it looks like I ve swapped Harry Keogh for you and if that s really the case . . . then I was robbed As for your instincts being mine: what instincts are we talking about here Your vampire instincts In which case I don t think so. Ahi said Korath. A poor choice of words on my part. Let us say instead my heightened senses. For with our minds inextricably linked so tightly meshed you would be heir to my superior perceptions. Your sense of smell would be that of the wolf you would have the hearing of a bat and the night seeing eyes of a cat. What price then the lives of this Luigi Castellano and his so called soldiers Hah Small chance they d have against one such as you . . . and I... or us. But there are a couple of senses you seem to have skipped over said Jake. Your sense of taste for example. And I like my meat well done. Then there s your tactile senses. But when I touch a woman I like to know she s thrilled not chilled. And I want to sense her quivering not shuddering. He shook his head No deal Korath. And there s something else . . . two somethings in fact. I don t much like the idea of being heir to anything of yours. Let s face it I ve already been willed something I didn t ask for. As for being inextricably linked it s that word inextricable I don t much care for. Which means we re back to square one and you can forget it. Bah said the other. But you ll come to your senses yet I think. Or to mine. It was 4:30 and the bank was closing. On seeing the automated teller Jake had reached for his wallet his plastic. But he didn t have any plastic and the cash machine was useless to him. Nor did he have any real cash money. For the last three or four weeks E Branch had been seeing to his needs. By now they d have fixed him up with an identity too and anything else he d required if he had stayed on with them. And if he d known that what he and Natasha had had or what he d thought they had wasn t real . . . But he was out now and it didn t seem likely he d be going back. He couldn t if he wanted to not until this was over. For it was as he d told Natasha: it wasn t just her wasn t just revenge for what they d done to her and to him but something else inside him that was driving him on. Something someone else had started that he had to finish. That was what was bothering him: things had changed and yet they were the same . . . He wondered how Liz was doing wondered if she missed him. Probably said Korath. Didn t I advise you to stay with E Branch and deal with their problems and with mine first See what I mean Jake muttered. It s bad enough having you on the edge of my mind where I can keep an eye on you let alone inside it where I can t As for Liz . . . don t talk about her. Don t even think about her. But they were your thoughts Jake not mine said Korath. What Do you think I would take that sort of advantage Not at all. Why the very idea is abhorrent to me For even a vampire a gross and monstrous creature such as I was has a measure of honour. . . Oh really said Jake. Well honour among thieves I ve heard about. But I have to tell you your kind have a very bad rep. In life or undeath I have to agree said Korath. But in the true death Even a vampire has time to recant. Not according to Harry Keogh. Bahi And there s more to that one than meets the eye too Such as I can t say Korath answered. The Great Majority know but they won t speak to me. And then there s what you ve said about E Branch: how they too are evasive on that subject. . . file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 174 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt He let it taper off but something he d said had stuck in Jake s mind and: How are your shields he said. Eh Korath seemed surprised by the change of subject. My shields They are in good order of course. Vampires were ever adept at shielding their minds. Good said Jake. Then from now on shield your thoughts from the Great Majority and direct them only at me. Since the teeming dead won t have anything to do with you it strikes me you could queer my pitch too. You are ashamed of me If you say so said Jake. Hahl A snort of righteous indignation. But Jake s thoughts had moved on. Cash he muttered. I need a place to stay and hotels don t come cheap. Don t you have any friends either then Korath s comment was deliberately snide. I have or had some Jake answered. A few. Which probably answers your earlier question too it s why I came back here because I have friends in Marseilles. Here and in Nice and even in England . . . but on second thoughts I wouldn t want to involve them in this. Anyway the bank s about to close and people are looking at me. So let s move on. But not too far said Korath. Eh You need money don t you And where better to get it than from a bank Jake thought about it for a moment then blinked and said You mean I should use this Mobius Continuum thing to Indeed Korath sighed impatiently cutting him short. It s an incredibly useful tool Jake. Far more so than a key. But it seems to me you ve a lot to learn er for a vicious murderer that is. In fact you re rather innocent So why don t you just walk back across the road and sit awhile under those umbrellas outside that cafe You can watch the last of these people leaving the bank while I engage myself in other small diversions. Diversions Well Korath explained since you shouldn t be seen paying too much attention to the bank I wondered if between times. . . perhaps I might persuade you to direct your gaze elsewhere For example just look at all those pretty little French girls. The way they sit cross legged like that all moist and warm in their skimpy little dresses. Aren t they just fascinating Why there s nothing Quite like that in all Staaaarside If anyone else had said such a thing Jake might well have chuckled. But Korath s lascivious deadspeak voice was a gurgle a grunt the sound of snot in a rooting pig s snout a bubbling pit of depravity. And the mind behind it just didn t bear delving into. Thus when Jake sat down under one of the umbrellas at the cafe across the road from the bank he made a determined effort not to look at the pretty little French girls and for the time being at least Korath remained moodily silent. . . The bank vaults were not what Jake had expected. They were like Russian dolls within dolls within dolls: impenetrable doors behind doors behind doors. But doors whose designers hadn t in any way anticipated the Mobius Continuum and never would learn what had happened here. On the other hand they had anticipated thieves and alarms had been going off from the moment Jake materialized within the secure area and tripped the sensors. After that he moved fast passing through or around the doors in a matter of seconds. In the innermost vault Jake found what he wanted: the day s take bagged up in its various denominations all neatly pigeonholed in a rack of metal shelving. This wasn t Fort Knox not even remotely and there was only a handful of small bags for the taking. But there again Jake wasn t a thief and he wasn t out to make a big killing here. He would be more than satisfied with just a few thousand francs to see him through until Until the next time Korath cut into Jake s thoughts and quickly went on to explain himself: For who knows perhaps this sort of venture could easily develop into something of a habit And that would suit you right down to the ground right Jake spoke through the handkerchief mask that hid his face from the security cameras as he took up a bag with the legend FIFTY THOUSAND FRANCS IN HUNDREDS. Your instincts sort of rubbing off on me is that how you see it He replaced the bag taking up another that said TEN THOUSAND FRANCS IN FIVES. Er something like that said Korath. But why is it you ve chosen the lesser amount When all of this is straightened out if ever Jake told him I may even give this money back ... or maybe not. Because I don t have to. This was my bank Korath No not this branch but my file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 175 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt bank. And as it happens there s a lot more in my account than I intend to take. So in fact it s like I m simply making a small withdrawal here. Bah said Korath disappointedly. And that s it Jake told him as he ripped the bag open and stuffed his pockets. I ve got what I came for and now we can go. But Korath was silent now and the alarms were still sounding . . . Korath Jake said aware of a sullen silence in his head and beginning to sweat in the breathless confines of the place. It s time we weren t here. And after a little while: What would happen to you said the other in the event that I forgot Harry Keogh s remarkable formula and left you here for them to find For the fact is Jake it s no easy trick to keep conjuring those figures and symbols. In my world we had little use for numbers mathematics was literally an unknown science. A Lord or Lady of the Wamphyri would keep a tally of his or her thralls and that was about it. But as for decimals fractions and algebra ... I mean algebra All such would be algibberish to the Wamphyri And the Szgany weren t that much smarter. This isn t funny said Jake sweating harder. You got me in and you can get me out. So get to it. Roll those numbers and I ll do the rest. Ah but where s the incentive in that said Korath. What I should do all the work while you reap all the benefits Perhaps our arrangement this so called partnership wasn t such a good idea after all. I feel that I am being used and all those constantly mutating equations make me dizzy. Wherefore I think we should . . . renegotiate I don t follow you said Jake despite that he did. Indeed you do not said the other not any longer. Nor need I follow you. We go together as equals or not at all. That again That again said Korath but for the last time. So make up your mind Jake what s it to be Jake listened to the alarms sweated some more then tossed several bags of money onto the floor . . . and sat down on them. What Korath seemed astonished. What are you doing What s it look like Jake answered. I m waiting for them to get here and throw me back into a different kind of cage. Or they might simply shoot me on sight. Let s face it I m trapped here caught red handed. For me it s the end of the line. And for you I don t know a return to that sump you re so fond of The one I rescued you from Ah no said Korath and Jake sensed a sly deadspeak smile albeit one that wavered. You ll break before they come. No way said Jake putting his hands behind his head and leaning back against the shelving making himself comfortable. Then let this be the end of it Korath blustered but very nervously now. For in any case I can see no future in it. The police will be into the bank by now said Jake and the guy with the keys will be on his way. Ten more minutes and they ll be opening up this vault. If they don t shoot me first E Branch will probably lay claim to me. Then I ll be forced to tell Trask about you and he ... will have various options. Such as Positive alarm now in Korath s query. He has telepaths access to all kinds of shrinks. They ll probably try to get into my mind and force you out. That ll be the first thing they ll try. But whatever they do it will have to be better than you. After that I don t know prefrontal lobotomy maybe Even the word is unpleasant right The way it sort of slithers off the tongue: lob ot omy . . . Ugbi You ll be a part of the part they lob. You re bluffini No Jake shook his head I m serious. You re testing my strength and I m not giving in. What if E Branch doesn t claim you Then I ll languish in jail said Jake and you ll be up against the same problem. Except by then they ll know who I am which will mean that in future it will be harder to move around undetected and I ll be easier to find and kill. And if or when I die you die. Ben Trask took a little of the heat off me but this is bound to put it on again and . . . He broke off put a finger to his lips and whispered What was that Eh What Jake felt Korath s start. heard nothing. The sound of the outer lock clanging open Jake told him. You didn t hear it because I m slowly raising my shields and the stakes. I bet you ve never played poker have you Korath file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 176 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Wait Korath cried. If you do that if you shut me out we ll lose contact and I won t be able to ... to ... To save my neck said Jake. That s right you won t. And yours is in the same noose. So now who s bluffing Why are you so ... so obstinate Korath whined. They re at the second lock said Jake. So we d better be saying our farewells. By the time I ve shut you out they ll be in. Mo Don t do it STOP the dead vampire shouted in Jake s mind. And a moment later when Jake said nothing: Damn ... damn . . . DAMN but you re good Korath grated the words out as if they were choking him and gave a furious shake of his incorporeal head before continuing And of course you re right: I was only testing you. Jake relaxed his shields a little stood up and said Did you say something Or was it someone out there opening up this last door Here Korath growled. The formula. Use it now and let s be gone from here. And before the vault door could be opened as those weirdly flowing equations commenced scrolling down the screen of Jake s mind so he made a door of his own and stepped through it... As yet Jake was by no means expert at judging the coordinates. He emerged rather clumsily from the Continuum on a popular seafront esplanade east of the city but directly in the path of a young couple who walked arm in arm on the broad pavement. Before he could open his mouth to excuse himself the young man apologized for his clumsiness he obviously hadn t been watching where he was going and Jake escaped into a store that he knew sold quality optical instruments: the place that had been his original target destination. He bought a pair of binoculars found a shaded doorway and moved on to Paris. We really must begin to master this thing Korath told him. We must be more discreet how and where we emerge. Incidentally where are we now The way you keep your mind half closed I can never tell for sure. What good would it do you to know said Jake. You re not familiar with this world. And never will be at this rate Korath answered. Very well I accept that I was out of order in that vault but you can t blame me for trying. Even so I wasn t trying to take advantage of you but simply attempting to ease the way for both of us. I can t help you if I don t know what you re about and certainly not while you insist on keeping your mind half closed to me. Which I do. Indeed Korath sighed. Which prompts me again to ask: Where are we We re in the Saint Germain Depres district of the French capital Jake told him. Paris the Latin Quarter. I used to come here with my mother from time to time and we stayed at several pleasant little hotels. But why here Why not The food s good and I m not much known here. And anyway what s the difference We can go anywhere we want to. And after a moment s pause: I like that said Korath. Oh You said we. You re beginning to think of us as a team. And so we are according to our original agreement Jake answered. Why I might even let my shields down a little if I thought I could trust you not to pull any more stupid stunts. You have my word said Korath making it sound just sincere enough. For that was a pointless exercise at best. Very well said Jake my perimeter shields are down. But I ll know in a moment if you try to intrude a step further than that. Unlike the bank my inner vaults are out of bounds Now we re getting somewhere said Korath. I can tell you re becoming accustomed to this. And that is good But don t try to run before you can walk. Meaning We ve both a way to go before we master this thing. While I can now read your thoughts clearly see what you see and so on and so forth still I can t guide your physical actions. If you were attacked you would have to rely on your own battle skills to get you out of trouble. I Exactly the way I like it Jake nodded. Having you m my mind and having you control it are two different things. Since I need access to the Mobius Continuum the first is something I have to live with. But that s as far as it goes. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 177 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt And in a little while: Obstinate yesss Korath hissed before falling silent. . . Jake found a small hotel booked in under an assumed name and paid cash for three nights. He didn t know if he would need as much time as that but best to be prepared. In his rooms he showered lay on the bed with hands behind his head locked Korath out of his mind for the time being and tried to think things through in private. Which wasn t too easy because pictures of two women kept intruding. Natasha was one but rapidly fading now even as she dispersed herself and faded in death and Liz was the other taking on sharper definition. Liz sweet Liz ... but not so sweet once she d set her mind on doing something on getting somewhere. Gutsy Liz. Gritty and even earthy Liz in a certain kind of way. Long legged and sexy Liz yes . . . Then Jake realized that this wasn t so much an intrusion as a part of the overall problem whether it would work or not he now saw Liz as a major part of his future. Assuming he had one. And of course he could have one he might still have one with E Branch if by now he hadn t entirely ruined his chances by running away and at a crucial moment at that. He remembered what Trask had told him: that when E Branch could trust him it would be his home his family his everything and also that it would protect him with every fibre of its being. He also remembered Trask s warning: that if he were to cheat try to put his own agenda first and run off how that would be the end of it. Except Jake felt that he hadn t so much run off as been . . . what Called away Sidetracked Lured by something or someone inside him Unfinished business yes which someone else had started. Someone like the Necroscope Harry Keogh perhaps But if that were the case why hadn t Harry explained it or tried to tell him about it Granted the Necroscope had admitted that he wasn t entirely there that his elevator didn t stop on every floor and his revenant had been watered down in order to operate on different far flung levels but shouldn t he at least have known his own purpose here Well whatever the Necroscope s purpose in choosing him as his instrument and in burdening him with all the problems that went with it Jake Cutter had a cause of his own to pursue. And lying here on this bed wasn t going to get it done. Or was this urgency this tightening of his guts this compelling need for action against Castellano was it simply another facet of the unknown force that was driving him Damn It was like some kind of maddening ever decreasing circle that must sooner or later drive him headfirst up his own backside To hell with it He jumped up went down to the lobby and obtained a map of the locality: Paris and all the roads and countryside around to a radius of fifty miles. And back in his room he studied it. He remembered a factory on the way to the Cote d Or and Dijon the route his mother had used to drive when they visited Paris and the map brought several landmarks back to memory. Jake had been there and so knew their coordinates. Back in his room he let down his shields invited Korath in and told him We ve work to do. Then after buying a sturdy sausage bag in the hotel s gift shop and using a stall in the gentlemen s toilets as a private launching site to the Mobius Continuum they were on their way. Jake couldn t know it but the original Necroscope had used just such jumping off places in his time. Or on the other hand maybe he did know it. Maybe something deep inside him was remembering . . . They were in the French countryside between Nemours and Courtenay not far from the southbound motorway. Jake was leaning on a three bar fence in the last of the day s light staring along an access road at a modern looking factory complex set in three or four acres all enclosed behind a fifteen foot high security fence. And of course Korath looked with him. So then said the vampire in a little while. Perhaps breaking into places is catching after all. But what is this place In all the surrounding countryside there was no other building to be seen. A river woods and several small lakes but no buildings and Jake knew why. They make industrial explosives here he said. Including one called plastique with which I m fairly familiar. I used it in the SAS. Demolition was something I was good at. It seems I had something of a flare for it. And changing the subject but not really: Notice how quiet it is I was wondering about that said the other. The closest place is about a mile away Jake told him. A hospital built on rollers on the Saint Valerien road. On rollers file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 178 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt So that if this place goes up the hospital will shift but it won t get blown away Jake answered. Ahi said Korath. Now I know what you re talking about. This plasticjuei you used it when you were a soldier you say But it seems to me you ve used it once or twice since then too. His words evoked brief but violent memories sending a pair of scenes flashing across Jake s mind one after the other: Jean Daniel almost cutting himself in half when he started his car and a fat German faggot being torn apart in the blast that blew him screaming into hell. That s right said Jake but my source of supply on both of those previous occasion was very limited and cost me a great deal of money. This time I need a whole lot of the stuff and I don t have time to fool around trying to buy it from people who crack safes for a living. Why should you said Korath when you could be the greatest thief of all time Jake ignored that last and said A place as big as this a couple of acres with contents like that . . . there are bound to be guards night watchmen. Indeed said Korath. And plainly my vampire senses would be invaluable. That is if we were as one. You never give in do you said Jake. And then cursorily Forget it. All we need is a diversion and I have the makings. Anyway I m not too concerned. In a place like this the guards won t be armed with anything more dangerous than nightsticks. They took the Mobius route into the grounds of the factory an area well away from the main building where wooden pallets empty crates and other containers were stacked ready for collection. Having checked that the coast was clear Jake took wads of toilet paper from his sausage bag poured a brandy miniature onto the paper quickly set fire to it and tossed broken pieces of a tinder dry crate into the flames. Another Mobius jump took him into the shadows of the main building the one with all the NO ENTRY and skull and crossbones warning signs from where he could watch the action. In a little while alarms began to sound then shouting voices and running footsteps while floodlights snapped on all around the perimeter wire. Now said Jake. While they re coming out we go in. Inside the factory the incidence of NO SMOKING signs and of skulls and crossbones and other pictorial warnings of fires and explosions was like a signposted path to Jake s objective the more signs he passed the closer he was to what he sought. So that in just a few seconds and two or three Mobius jumps he was filling his sausage bag with top quality plastique in containers like giant toothpaste tubes. Then it was time to go. And when Korath conjured Mobius s equations again Jake still hadn t seen a single guard. When Jake tossed down the heavy sausage bag on the floor of his hotel room he felt Korath wince. For the dead vampire had seen in his mind the devastating properties of this stuff which was as much as he knew about it. But Jake grinned humourlessly and said So what s worrying you now You are already dead. But But don t concern yourself Jake told him. I could jump up and down on this stuff wearing hobnailed boots. It will only work with microwave radiation a detonator or excessive heat which is why I started that fire back at the factory. I knew it would attract a lot of attention and fast As for detonators: I have a small cache hidden away in Marseilles. We can pick them up later. But the night is young and I m getting hungry so I m going to eat first in the restaurant downstairs. After all I m only flesh and blood. As was upon a time said Korath. Ah well at least I ll be able to taste it if only secondhand. Who said I was taking you with me said Jake. But he took him anyway . . . Jake ate well too well and along with the good food and a bottle of excellent wine everything else caught up with him all at once. Suddenly realizing how tiring it could be to share his mind with someone else and a mind that was full of problems of its own at that he decided to make an early night of it. But Jake s weariness wasn t only down to Korath and a full stomach. The metaphysical Mobius Continuum had sapped him too the very weirdness of the thing was totally draining with side or after effects not unlike the glorious hangovers he d used to suffer after his drinking sprees when his mother died. And then to top it all off there was what Natasha had told him: the fact that their affair hadn t been real was a downer despite that it had freed him file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 179 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Which in turn led to the biggest paradox of all: that it hadn t freed him in every respect and that he couldn t ever be free until his vendetta with Cas tellano was resolved one way or the other . . . He had taken a second bottle back to his room with him and he d started to open it before having second thoughts. The idea had been that a couple of extra slugs would settle him down for a good night s sleep . . . but wouldn t it also dull his mind He couldn t afford that not with Korath waiting on the threshold. Probably best to stay sober he thought or not to get any more drunk than he was now. But to be doubly sure he issued the usual warnings and banished the dead vampire back to his sump. Following which he was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillows . . . Jake didn t dream and he did get a good night s sleep without any intrusions from Korath. Something you probably didn t know that one told him when Jake called out for him. But even the dead grow weary. We do as we did in life Jake and for a third of our lives we slept So is it so strange that we occasionally shut down in death Well let me tell you it makes for a very pleasant escape. Myself I would spend all of my time sleeping if not for you . . .for what else was there to do before you and Harry Keogh came along So you see no less than you I too have been wearied by the weirdness of all this. Breakfast said Jake finishing shaving. And then I need to buy some new clothes. Black pants pullover shirt shoes the whole bit. All in black Yes Jake nodded. It has to be my training coming out in me. Since we ll be doing most of our work at night that has to be my colour. Your colour The colour of night. Ahhh said Korath. And after you ve purchased your clothes Then we ll visit that list of places Natasha gave me that bastard Castel lano s properties the bases he works from. First we ll find him and then oiu CKIAM LUMLtY You ll kill him. An eye for an eye Jake answered then staggered just a little as a feeling of deja vu took him unawares. Oh said Korath for he had felt it too. It s nothing Jake lied aware that he d suffered several of these spells just lately: paramnesia as they called it. But whatever they called it the feeling was real and lingered on a while . . . I thought we were going to do most of our work at night Korath queried grumblingly. For he could feel the sun warm on Jake s back where he lay propped on his elbows on a hillside of bone dry stubble looking down on Castellano s villa near Marseilles. While the hot weather was beginning to break inland it hadn t yet reached the Mediterranean coast. Your eyes might be up to that but mine aren t Jake told him as he adjusted the focus of his binoculars. And don t tell me how much easier it would be if I had your eyesight et cetera and all of that stuff. My eyes are just fine better than most. And anyway this has to be done in daylight. I need these coordinates for later. I only have to see a place and lock on then its coordinates go straight into my head and get filed away for later. I don t remember them as such I just know them. How do you know that Didn t I know how to find that swimming pool in Malinari s Xanadu And the garden of our safe house in Brisbane The Latin Quarter in Paris the plas tique factory and this place accept that you know said Korath. But I don t understand how you know. Do you Jake shrugged and said It just. . . came to me. Like maybe he d inherited it. Along with a lot of other stuff apparently. But if you already know these coordinates why are we here The coordinates of this hillside yes said Jake. But of the insides of that villa no. I only remember one room in that place and I almost wish I didn t. But it s all too vague in my memory ... I wasn t in the best possible condition at the time. Anyway right now I m looking into a large downstairs room that might be a study. And I ve got its coordinates. And that s all we re here for No. For as you re well aware I m also looking for Castellano himself. But at this visit yes it will have to suffice. I needed an exact reference and I ve got it. A room in that house which I know I can find unerringly from now on any time I want to. But when precisely When I m ready. . . He held up a mental hand said Please be quiet now. I just saw some file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 180 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt movement in there and I want to know who it is. It was a bent old man who had just this moment entered the study. There was nothing especially sinister about him he went about dusting furniture some LI c r i i_ n n. items on a desk and moved to the windows to check their locks. A caretaker by his looks. Castellano s not at home said Jake. It seems to me this place is empty. Time to move on. To Genoa San Remo Bagheria all the places that Natasha told you about One at a time yes said Jake. You have a good memory. A legacy of Malinari Korath answered sourly. The only good thing he ever gave me and only then by virtue of what he took from me But do you have the coordinates to those places No Jake answered so we ll do it by trial and error. It was dumb of me really. I should have taken them from Natasha s mind. But my own mind . . . was elsewhere at the time. So where do we start San Remo because I ve been there said Jake. And so they went to San Remo . . . San Remo gateway to the Riviera di Ponente. Jake knew the bars the city and the lifestyle. That of the rich anyway. But right now he was slumming. He went to a small bar he knew a dingy little place that served great pizza and toasted sandwiches and his favourite beer imported Dortmunder Actien on tap had brunch and a beer at the bar and while he ate talked to the bartender. The bartender spoke good English and Jake spoke some Italian they got on well enough. The bartender remembered him from previous visits he kept his voice low as he asked: Where have you been hiding Jake Your face was in the papers awhile but not recently. They let you off the hook or something The place was almost empty only two other people seated by the door and locked in conversation so Jake considered it safe to talk. Or something he grinned humourlessly then got down to business. I m looking for . . . for an old friend of mine. A bit of a dark horse called Castellano. A Sicilian I think. But he owns property close to San Remo and I wondered if you If I might know of him The barman small and balding wiped his hands on his apron then cocked his head on one side enquiringly. Do you have a problem with this person Jake If so you should know he is a bad one. I don t know him I never saw him but some of his people or the people he deals with come in here from time to time. These are not nice people. Jake nodded. I know. But you don t need to worry. I don t know your name and I ve never been in your bar in my life. But if they hurt you enough you d tell them otherwise. They re not looking to hurt me Jake answered. They re looking to kill me. That s why I want to get there first. Ah said the other blinking rapidly. So you needn t worry said Jake. If I m alive when this is over they won t be. And if I m dead I won t be doing much talking right BRIAN LUMLhY Except perhaps to me said Korath. Jake told him Be quiet then glanced around the room. The place was still empty so he took the opportunity to pass a wad of francs over the bar. A bank teller s paper wrapper was still intact with a stark black legend 1000 FR. standing out as if illuminated. And: Can you do me an exchange said Jake. For lire The bartender raised an eyebrow began to shake his head. No for another beer said Jake. Pull yourself one too and keep the change. Then without pause: Two kilometres east of San Remo the bartender muttered as he snatched up the money and put it away under the bar where the mountains come down to the sea on the coastal road to Imperia. We call it Millionaire s Row and this Castellano has a place there. I gather he s not often home but there are usually one or two of his drug dealing friends there local hoods who look after the place when he s away. And like I said sometimes they come in here. Which is why it would please me if you were to leave now. I m on my way said Jake getting off his bar stool. And thanks. But just one more thing. Does the place have a name Castellano s place Er yeah I think so said the other his brow wrinkling in concentration. It s called er Le Manse let me think Le Manse . . . file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 181 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Madonie The word sprang into Jake s mind out of nowhere. Right the bartender nodded. Le Manse Madonie. As Jake left the bar Korath said I don t recall that Natasha named the place Neither do I said Jake. But I suppose she must have. Jake found a camhista and changed francs to lire then hired a cab to take him to Imperia some twenty five kilometres east of San Remo. Barely out of the city he asked the driver: Do you know the names of these places He meant the fabulously rich dwellings built into the mountainside at the left hand side of the road. On the other side the cliffs fell sheer to the sea. As good as gold the driver reeled the names off and waved out of his widow at the houses as he sped past. Driving as only an Italian would on a road such as this he seemed oblivious of the danger immediately to his right. And shortly: Le Manse Madonie he cried and Jake told him to pull off the road for a moment while he got his bearings true enough though coordinates might have been a better term for it. It was as Jake had feared. The house a flat roofed chalet style building whose broad front was propped on stanchions and projected from the cliff overhead could only be accessed via a steep private road. And there was no obvious vantage point from which he might view the property through his binoculars. As for the actual location of the place: that had already fixed itself firmly in his mind which would have to suffice for now. And so on to Imperia where Jake found a cafe with panoramic sea views drank several cappuccinos but mainly sat lost in his own thoughts. It wasn t yet noon but already he could feel the pressure building to go places and get things done He knew what he wanted to do but wasn t too sure about the places. Not sure at all about one of them. What s on your mind Korath felt obliged to ask him after a while because Jake was keeping it to himself. Le Manse Madonie said Jake opening up a little. We ve just heen there said Korath. But not the one I know Jake answered. Not the Le Manse Madonie. There s more than one Unless I m going mad yes. Because I know the coordinates of another Le Manse Madonie I think. You think said Korath. So maybe you got something from Natasha after all. Where do you think bis place is That s just the problem said Jake as he sat gazing into the southeast frowning five hundred miles out across the Ligurian Sea. I can t say where it is for sure but I think it s somewhere out there. And I know we do have to go there. By all means said Korath conjuring the Mobius equations. As Jake had remarked to his incorporeal friend he wasn t too sure where he was going but he did know that he had to go there if only to find out. And perhaps to find himself too . . . He was getting used to the Mobius Continuum now. At first he had had to keep his eyes closed. It wasn t that Jake was afraid of the dark but there s dark and there s dark. This was the primal darkness before there was light and before there was matter and weight and time. A place between space and time yet parallel to both of them. A universe between universes. And an absence of everything which must include even the vacuums that Nature so abhors is darker far than simply an absence of light. After he had got over the eyes closed stage then he d kept them shuttered which somehow served to make the blackness grey and was more acceptable. But now he accepted the blackness the utter emptiness itself. And despite that the Mobius Continuum was nothing he could feel it all around him. And through Jake Korath could feel it too. It s like death the vampire said and yet it s alive. Not warm like you hut not cold either. You can feel it And therefore according to the laws of physics it must be feeling me said Jake his voice the merest whisper. For in the Mobius Continuum even thoughts have weight and a normally spoken word can be like a thunderclap. I know nothing of physics said Korath. That s what worries me Jake told him. Neither do I. Or I didn t use to. So I m not sure whose physics these are ... or even if they re physics. Metaphysics maybe. Mobius physics. I only know what your mind shows me. And you re not showing me everything. But there s something I would certainly like to show you said Jake. If only because I want to see it myself again. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 182 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Er shouldn t we be there by now said Korath uneasily. Where Jake whispered. Where we re going. But aren t you interested There s something I want you to see en route. But in a place such as this what s to see More darkness Jake shook his head and said Light The birthlight of the human race. And there was that in his voice an unaccustomed humility that made Korath want to see it too. And: By all means said the vampire. Show me this light. Harry Keogh showed me this in a dream said Jake which was of course more than a mere dream. It must have been for I remember the coordinates. And they re here The past time door opened and Jake stood at the threshold. Korath looked out through his eyes seeming to hear with Jake s ears the incredible one note Ahhhhhhhhi sound of myriad angelic voices like a vast unearthly choir in the sounding chambers of some cosmic cathedral. But in fact there was no sound time and the Mobius Continuum have no sound else it would be the unbearable cacophony of everything that has ever been and is still to be. It was all in the mind in Jake s mind as it had been in only a small handful of other minds before his. A phantom sound that should have been there as the only possible accompaniment to the awesome scene beyond the door. It was like looking into three dimensional space the heart of some incredible blue nebula. For at its source indeed there was a hazy nebulosity. The beginning Jake said reverting to pure thought now as if in a place like this speech were more than unnecessary even irreverent. The source of all human life. And out of the nebulosity uncountable blue threads like living neon filaments seemed to thicken as they came speeding away from the clustered centre towards the observers. The life threads of humanity said Jake knowing it for a fact without remembering if he had been told it or if this were his natural instinct speaking. Every single one of those threads is or was the life of a man a woman a child. In the heart of the cloud there that was the time of the emergence but how many millions of years ago Korath found his voice at last and said Some of them. . . they don t reach the door but falter and blink out. And some of them snap out of existence while others gradually fade. The difference between a sudden termination said Jake and a gentler more gradual death. The difference between an accident or fatal disease and the creep into old age. But just look at them. When you look into deep space you re looking back into time Korath. And the same here except here we re looking back into Man. All of those twisting twining outwards rushing blue life threads all sentient thrusting seeking. Moving from the past to the present. This is Mankind said Jake simply. Everyone who ever was and those who still are. That one there said Korath that blue thread is you Your past. Just see how it crosses the threshold into you But as for me I don t have one. That s because you re dead Jake told him. And when you did have one it was red not blue the scarlet thread of a vampire. Back there along my life thread there are more red threads. Do you see them Yes Korath answered but they re far away and falling farther behind with each passing moment. And most of them . . . have stopped. Snapped out of existence. Permanently. Terminated said Jake. Malinari s people who Ben Trask and E Branch and I stopped out in Australia. Because we daren t let the red contaminate the blue. And Korath s deadspeak voice was very small now as he said We seem to be moving. This past time door and you and I we re being pushed away. But: No Jake answered not pushed away. We re being pushed forward. By time itself. Pushed into the now. Don t you mean into the future Into the now said Jake again. The future is another place and maybe I ll show you it another time. It seemed a contradiction in terms but it would have to suffice. They moved away from the past time door and a moment later Jake said We re here. Wherever here would turn out to be ... It turned out to be the surface of a road up the steep contours of a mountainside with the rim of a high plateau up front and the broad expanse of the sea below and behind. The Madonie said Jake knowing it for a certainty without knowing how. A mountain range in northern Sicily. And down there Luigi Castellano s quarry the quarry in the gorge that Natasha told me about where ostensibly he mines stone for his building projects while in fact he s file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 183 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt mining buried treasures that were stolen by the Nazis in World War Two. Natasha told me about it yes and it was one of the places I had scheduled to visit but I know I didn t get these coordinates from her. From where then said Korath. Jake shook his head. I just knew them. It seems that I ... that I remembered them From the original Necroscope Harry Keogh It s not the first time said Jake. There are times when I speak or when I ve spoken to Lardis Lidesci when I got the same feeling. He evokes a weird sort of pseudomemory in me when I seem to remember the places he talks about places where I can t possibly have been because they re in another world. Jake s binoculars hung from his shoulder on a strap. Now he opened the case took them out and looked through them into the quarry under frowning cliffs. I feel that I ve stood here before he said. But I don t remember that quarry . . . where those men and machines aren t so much quarrying as turning over rubble fallen from . . . huh He paused abruptly and swung the binoculars up up up the face of the sheer gorge to the rim of the plateau craning his neck to focus on that which he knew should be there but wasn t only a rim that was fresh and deeply UCP1LCR.D scarred as from a fall of thousands of tons of rock. He saw the great scar in the face of the high plateau and in the next moment watched it blur out of existence until it became what he had expected to see in the first place: Le Manse Madonie as it once was A squat white walled castle mansion or chateau perched on the edge of oblivion where a moment ago there had been only a mighty bight in the raw cliff face An unassailable fortress standing at the rim of a precipice that towered at least twelve hundred metres over the gorge and the sloping scree wall of the rubble strewn cjuarry. The place was there in the eye of Jake s mind real if only for a moment and then was gone What is if said Korath alarmed as Jake staggered and very nearly fell. What s wrong You didn t see it What in your inner mind Your secret mind You know better than that It was Le Manse Madonie said Jake. It was Le Manse Madonie but now it s only that heap of rubble there which Luigi Castellano excavates for the treasures it once contained. But how do you know these things Partly from what Natasha told me that Castellano wasn t mining rocks here and partly from memory. But not your memory. No Jake shook his head. Not mine . . . Harry Another deadspeak voice in Jake s mind. But definitely not Korath s for this one was entirely human. The voice of someone who had died here who had mistaken Jake for the Necroscope Harry Keogh Jake had given a small start now he got his wits together and said I m not Harry. I m just a friend of his. At least I hope so. Not Harry said that new voice in his head. Well you could have fooled me I felt your warmth exactly the same as his and I just knew it was him But what the hell . . . any friend of Harry s is a friend of mine. Especially around these parts. These parts said Jake. Sicily said the other with a deadspeak nod. And more especially this part of Sicily. It s been quiet as the tomb around here And Jake heard a slightly hysterical deadspeak chuckle. mean man I was beginning to think I d never get to speak to anyone again It s these Sicilians you know Like never a peep out of any of em. See they had their own code in life and And what they did in life they continue to do in death Jake finished it for him. A code of silence. That s right. But listen if you re not Harry then you can only be this other fellow this er Jake said Jake. Jake Cutter. Yeah right said the other far less excited now. And the Great Majority haven t made up their minds about you yet. See even out here in the deadspeak wilderness still I get to hear the occasional whisper. The teeming dead do seem to have some kind of problem with me Jake answered. While I don t quite understand it 1 can t deny it. But either way I wouldn t want to get you in any kind of file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 184 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt trouble. It seems to me you ve enough of that already. Absolutely said the other. You can t be in any deeper shit than being dead man. But on the other hand I really can t get in any deeper shit So what s the difference Anyway it s like I said: any friend of Harry s is a friend of mine. You re an American right said Jake. So who are you Who was I do you mean said the other. Hey you know you re a lot more like Harry than you know I remember he asked me that selfsame question and I answered it the same way too. But damn it it looks like I m a lot rustier than I thought my manners are all shot to hell. Excuse me will you I used to be J. Humphrey Jackson Jr. and I used to build safes. I built a safe in the cellars of Le Manse Madonie which used to stand up there on the rim of the gorge. The brothers who owned the place must have thought I d seen too much so they fixed it for me to have a little accident. End of story . . . until the Necroscope came by and squared things for me. He squared things for you Jake sensed the importance of all this. How did he manage that He brought Le Manse Madonie down said Humph. Right down to its foundations. Blew it to hell right into the gorge and one of those Francezci brothers madmen that they were with it. He said he d square it for me and he surely did. But of course he had his own motives too. Jake knew all of this or not quite all of it. But the more Humph talked about it the more it filled in the blanks in his head. Do you reckon you could tell me the whole story he said. You see quite apart from any trouble with the Great Majority I have problems of my own that need sorting out. Anything you want to know just ask away said Humph. Which was as far as they got for just then there came an angry shout from the direction of the quarry. Jake had his binoculars in his hand and the sun was glinting off the lenses. Someone in the quarry had seen those bright flashes of light and was looking back at him through binoculars of his own. The workers down there were some four hundred yards away and there was rough ground in between rising to the spot where Jake stood. All of which gave him a safety margin. So he thought until he looked through his glasses again. Among the people down there there were more than just hard hat types. Along with the many coveralled workers in and around the diggers and mechanical shovels all of them marked with the legend CASTELLANO CO several men were equipped with metal detectors and other electrical ground sweeping gear While others were simply equipped. Guns said Jake as a bullet spanged sending sparks flying from the road s metal safety barrier a few inches away from his hand. And as the cracki of the shot echoed off the walls of the gorge: That was just a warning shot You re Hot safe here cried Korath bringing into being the Mobius equations. 1V1 L. c. I 18 And Jake told him I couldn t agree more. So let s not be here. And to Humph: I ll be back. Drop in any time Jake said that one. It ll be a pleasure. Let s face it it s not as if I ll be busy or anything. There was a cutting just a few yards up the road. Jake ran for it and as he passed out of sight of the men in the quarry froze the dizzily mutating equations in exactly the right place and ran straight in through the invisible door that sprang into being. Where to said Korath breathlessly in the ultimate darkness of the Mobius Continuum. Back where we came from said Jake. Imperia. He knew the coordinates and together they went there. . . JAKE DfijA VIEWER Imperia to Genoa was a little over fifty miles and since Jake didn t know the route and had no coordinates there was nothing for it but to take a cab. He asked to be dropped in the docklands area and then went looking for a drug dealer any drug dealer in the warren of bars sleazy clubs and markets in the narrow alleys and smelly side streets adjacent to the wharves. Why here Korath wanted to know. Where there s low life there s drugs Jake told him. In London Marseilles Miami Hong Kong you name it it s the same story. Here in Genoa it s a safe bet the drugs arrive in boats and file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 185 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt before the big dealers get to see them the little people the couriers bent customs officials and others on the take they all get their cut enough to satisfy their own needs. Just as long as they re not too greedy that s okay. In Italy which is still the home of the Mafia being greedy doesn t pay except in six foot plots of dirt. Anyway people on the waterfront any waterfront anywhere in the world they know about things like this. So that s why we re here. You seem to knou a lot about it yourself said Korath. From Natasha no doubt when you were lovers But Jake s private life was his own and there were memories of Natasha despite that she d been a courier herself among other things that he knew he d hold dear to the last. For which reasons he answered: I only know that if I wanted to roll some of my own this kind of place is where I d find the makings. And because deadspeak like telepathy frequently conveys more than is actually said Korath knew what he meant. It s a dangerous place then It has its moments I imagine said Jake. But smoking is just a beginning. Then there s injecting and now there s a new line in designers: micros you can lick off the back of a stamp. If you think blood s an addiction I ve got news BKIAIN LUMLtY for you. These dealers are bloodsuckers no less than the ones you knew on Starside Korath. But at least when a man dies from drugs he stays dead And that s about the best I can say for them. In a small bar where you could cut the air with a knife a place that stank of marijuana Jake cornered the barkeep in a booth that he was slopping out and spoke to him. This time the man being a complete stranger Jake made no immediate reference to Castellano. But still he came straight to the point: drugs. You wanna buy said the barkeep an unkempt skeleton of a man with shifty deep sunken eyes. No said Jake I m making a delivery. You know what they say about nice things how they always come in small packages Micros Designers The barkeep shook his head. Smokes I can help you with. These days they re almost legal legitimate. Nobody even cares anymore. But that kind of stuff I m not in that league. That s big business you re talking and if you re such a high roller how come you re sniffing around in a little joint like this Uh uh he shook his head. I m not buying it. Cops and their narks aren t too welcome here friend. From which Jake gathered it was time to call on this one s basic instincts and what had worked in San Remo might just as easily work here. Jake still had francs he slapped a wad on the table in the booth and said: I m just in from Marseilles a courier. I came in with a friend who s selling his er business interests to me. He had to get out because he s too well known. But it seems he left it too late. Just an hour ago he was recognized and the police arrested him. They want to speak to him about oh this and that you know But me being new to this my friend was the one with all the contacts. Now I need to deliver the goods and the sooner the better. We were supposed to off load to a dealer with property a legitimate front here in Genoa. And since this is a guy who doesn t like to be kept waiting I m ready to pay for directions. Some people had just come in and were standing at the bar. The barkeep looked at the money licked his lips and said So who is it you re looking to meet I mean you do know his name right I can t help if I don t know where your stuff s supposed to be going. And now it was make or break time. Castellano said Jake. Luigi Castellano. I think he s a Sicilian. He saw the barkeep give a nervous start and quickly went on: But hey don t worry about it if you can t help me I ll find somebody who will. He reached for the money but the barkeep beat him to it. Try Frankie s he said stuffing the wad in a wide pocket in front of his greasy apron. Frankie s Franchise. It s a dive in a cobbled alley off the next street east of here. Anyone can direct you. But friend if anyone asks who sent you it wasn t me. Don t worry said Jake again. They re expecting me. And just one minute after he d left the barkeep picked up his telephone and made absolutely sure they would be expecting him . . . Am I to understand said Korath when Jake was back out in the street and on the move again that you intend to walk straight into a bastion of your greatest foe a man who has twice tried to kill you Surely that is madness The Mb bius Continuum must be rotting your mindi And as for the file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 186 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt wretched . . . creature you just spoke to who in Starside would be meat for the provisioning why I would offer up my naked throat to a rabid wolf before placing any trust in that one Yet the way you spoke to him I felt certain he must be your long lost brother So tell me: why are you so determined to die Jake You don t know Castellano like I know him Jake answered. And I m not too dumb where other people are concerned either. In the event our friend in the bar back there talks to someone in Frankie s Franchise that s if Frankie s really is Castellano s place so much the better. Except I don t want to give them too much time to figure out what they re going to do with me so we have to be getting a move on. And look I think that must be the place down there that doorway with the red double F sign overhead. He pointed down a long narrow alley. But But the thing is Jake explained we do have the Mobius Continuum and you ll just have to take my word for it that it isn t rotting my brain. Any trouble I can get into you can get me out of in double quick time. But I do have to satisfy myself that this is Castellano s place before . . . before I Yes Before I blow it all the way to hell Jake growled. I m going to take out all of this bastard s places to let him know there s nowhere he can hide. What do you think I ve been doing Korath I haven t simply been looking for Castellano I ve also been checking out his rat holes. And if this is one of them it has to go. And if he s here inside Frankie s Franchise right now at this very moment He won t try to kill me Jake answered not right away. He ll probably want to talk to me first not to mention a lot of other much more unpleasant things he ll want to do to me before he kills me. But we aren t going to let that happen. I see. Korath was very thoughtful now. So then this is how you ll take your revenge by destroying Castellano s every bolt hole before you strike at the man himself and by letting him know that you personally are responsible. Something like that yes. said Jake. An eye for an eye. This bastard has lived on fear for so long not only the fear of his enemies but also of the people in his own organization that it s time someone taught him the real meaning of the word. Castellano has ed on fear he has battened on it. But now I m going to make him choke and maybe throw up on it too. You want him to know you are coming. And all along you ve been taunting him . . . even when you killed his men Especially when I killed his men. Jake nodded. But that wasn t just to get back at him. Those bastards deserved to die at least as much as he does. Hahi Korath grunted then but with such emphasis that Jake could almost U U IV L see the gape of his once jaws the snarl of rough lips drawn back from fang like teeth. But I was so right about you Jake Cutter You are indeed my kind of man. I ll take that as a compliment said Jake. As it was intended said Korath. So then what next What s the plan How do you intend to do this thing If I find out that Frankie s is what we think it is Jake answered darkly I could be out of there as quick as you could roll those numbers and back in again with one of those bombs I made up: three pounds of plastique on a ten second fuse. But of course I need to go inside and get the coordinates first. Ahhhi Korath sighed his appreciation. You ll kill him and anyone who is with him and destroy half of the street into the bargain. Oh such mayhem Bravo Which gave Jake pause. He had been rushing headlong but he wasn t in fact a murderer in the usual meaning of the word. And he didn t want to be. Half the street he said and shook his head. No for innocent people would die. After that there d be no going back. The Great Majority would never forgive me and I don t suppose I d ever forgive myself. Ahl Korath was disappointed. Then you had better think of something else. And Quickly for we re there. We ll have to play it by ear said Jake as he pushed his way through batswing doors under the unlit neons of the double F sign . . . Frankie s Franchise was a dive of the worst kind a place where all the social debris of Genoa could convene and feel perfectly at home. Nighttimes would find it full of wharf rats prostitutes file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 187 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt and their pimps pushers perverts and almost every other variety of sleazy low life. Dirt was ingrained into the floors the poor lighting and filthy flyspecked windows did little to conceal the presence of small cockroaches on the walls and the stench of narcotic cigarettes and stale booze was almost strong enough to qualify as a taste. Also it was very noisy at least at first. When Jake entered an antique American jukebox was playing 1950s rock and roll music Chuck Berry judging by the uniquely clangorous quality of the guitar and the volume was turned all the way up. But as the batswing doors creaked to and fro behind him and Jake paced forward into the place the plug was yanked the music groaned to an abrupt halt and the handful of greasy looking types at the bar turned as a man to stare at him. He was a stranger here true enough but Jake knew that his presence scarcely warranted so much attention. It could only be that he had been informed upon and he knew by whom. All unseen however the dead vampire Korath went with him and as yet Jake didn t feel too uncomfortable he didn t go in fear of his life. The Mobius Continuum or rather his ability to use it was a very comforting concept. When Jake sensed movement behind him and the batswing doors stopped swinging he knew that someone had stopped them and was now guarding the entrance. These people wouldn t want to be disturbed in the pursuit of their business with him. And that in itself the fact that they were very intent upon him tended to reinforce Jake s opinion: that Frankie s was indeed a front one of Castellano s outlets or bases of operation. So then this was the scenario: Behind Jake some heavy to his right the bar on his left and five or six paces ahead a corner wall with a sign pointing to the toilets. And ambling casually toward him from the bar four thugs while one other stayed right where he was looking on. Other than that Frankie s seemed empty had been emptied Jake suspected in anticipation of this moment. But not in anticipation of the next. I want to talk to the boss Jake said. That s Luigi Castellano I m talking about. And he kept walking toward the sign that said toilets. Three of the thugs as ugly brutes as anyone would want to imagine came to a halt. The fourth kept right on coming and he was the ugliest of all. He was a street fighter a bruiser a torpedo. Jake believed he could break a chair over this one s bullet head and it wouldn t stop him. Georgy said the one at the bar in broken English. Bring the jerk over here and sit him down where we can watch him. And don t you be hurting him. Not too much anyway. Uhl said the torpedo and kept coming. And Vince the one at the bar continued. See if the telephone s working again and if it is call Bagheria. Let The Man know what s going down. See if he can guess what just walked in here like it owns the joint. And in a shadowy corner there was movement and the musical beeping of a telephone as someone tapped in the numbers. But Jake s apparently suicidal approach had got him almost everything he wanted to know: Bagheria Sicily Sod s law when the last key on the ring is the one that fits the lock. And the last location on his list which he hadn t yet visited was the one he was looking for. Just an hour or so ago he d been within a few kilometres of his main target Luigi Castellano himself. Jake didn t want anyone to see him using the Mobius Continuum. If the toilets had no windows or back way out well tough. Let these people figure out how he d made his escape. But first he would at least try to make it appear that he had simply made a run for it. His pace picked up and Georgy angled after him. But Jake was at the corner turning it and pushing open a frosted glass door that hid the urinals and toilet booths from view. Stepping through he heard Georgy grunting close behind too close. And quickly turning he used all his strength to slam the door shut on the bustling torpedo. Georgy came right through it in shards of shattering glass grunting his surprise and then his pain as his face and reaching hands were cut to ribbons. Hearing all the noise the other thugs came charging after him only to see him sprawled there in his own slippery blood skidding in it as he tried to get to his feet. As for Jake . . . there was no rear exit no windows nowhere to hide. But the jerk was already gone . . . U M L t Y Why back here Korath wanted to know when Jake emerged from the Continuum in his hotel room in Paris. Things to do said Jake. I now know everything I need to know with regard to locations Except the one in Bagheria. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 188 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Which I m leaving till last. Castellano is there and if I take out all of his other places that s probably where he ll stay. Going by what Natasha told me he s well protected there he s safe there ... or so he thinks. As for its location its coordinates: well since he runs his bogus construction company out of Bagheria The place shouldn t be too hard to find. Correct said Jake. So for tonight if only for tonight Castellano is safe. But as for his rat holes ... at least one of them is going out with a bang. Frankie s I think. Really With all the loss of innocent life which that might entail And again Jake pondered that before answering Well if not a bang a big ball of fire definitely but in the early hours of tomorrow morning when we can be fairly certain the place is empty. And if you re mistaken and someone is there Then he ll be one of Castellano s the one at the bar who was giving all the orders maybe which in my book makes him a drug pushing scumbag and worthy of the heat. Goods said Korath. But that leaves us with a lot of time on our hands. No not really said Jake. Frankie s taught me a lesson that even with the Mobius Continuum as back up it isn t a good idea to go into places like that unarmed. So obviously I need a gun and I know where I can get one. Oh Jake nodded. The armoury at E Branch HQ. I know the coordinates. The door s secured and alarmed of course but we won t be using the door. I don t want them to know I m there don t want any confrontations scenes or problems or anything else that might interfere with what I m doing now. Confrontations and problems with Liz you mean Don t get to know me too well Jake warned then and went on: Also while these binoculars of mine are just fine in daylight they re useless at night. But as I recall there are also nite lites in the armoury. Since the place in Bagheria is Castellano s stronghold and he s likely to have people on watch we won t be going there in daylight hours so We ll steal a pair of these night seeing glasses I ll borrow a pair said Jake yes. Then I want to check my equipment he nodded toward the sausage bag where it stuck out from under his bed and have a good meal and after dark I m going back to the gorge under the Madonie mountains to talk to Humph. Then an early night so I can be up and mobile in the wee small hours to deal with Frankie s Franchise. And the other places Tomorrow is another day Jake gave a grim nod. Didn t I explain how I NECROSCUPh: Utt lLhKb 3 3 want Castellano to know the real meaning of fear That s why we ll do it bit by bit so he can see it creeping up on him. There followed a moment s silence and then: You will never know Korath gurgled in his deepest darkest and most guttural deadspeak voice the pleasure it gives me to work with one such as you on a mission such as this. And Jake sensed that the dead vampire was genuinely appreciative. But still: How I wish that I could say the same he answered with a shudder that he couldn t quite repress . . . E Branch wasn t as easy as he thought. When he emerged from the Continuum inside the armoury he must have stepped in front of a sensor. It made no great difference by the time the alarm went off he had already picked up a 9 mm Browning modified for its special ammunition three spare magazines and a long flat box containing one gross of rounds. And since the nite lite binoculars were in plain view there on a shelf he took them too and was gone from the place as quickly as that. And that s it he said flopping onto his bed in his room in the hotel in Paris. I m all equipped. But are you prepared said Korath. That too Jake answered. Oh I have to clean up this gun and fill the clips and maybe change the fuses on those bombs I put together for even using the Mobius Continuum five second fuses don t allow that much time but that s about it for now. So since we ll be out and about tonight and in the early hours of the morning right now I m going to rest up. Sleep you mean said Korath. Yes. I don t know about you but I find regular use of the Mobius Continuum to be draining. It must be the exhilaration the rush and the weirdness of it that s getting to me. Which is your polite way of asking me to leave Correct said Jake. And remember the usual warnings are still in force. But of course Korath snapped his tone suddenly bitter. As your partner what else could I expect Huh The fact of it is you see me as nothing more than a beast of burden And feigning his file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 189 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt frustration or perhaps not it would have been difficult to tell with any of his lying kind he went his way retreating from the fringes of Jake s mind . . . And when Jake was sure that his unwelcome part time tenant was gone: Just like a genie trapped in his lamp he murmured but to himself this time. The only difference being with Korath I m getting more than the normal quota of three wishes as many shots at the Mobius Continuum as I want. But as for what Jake had told Korath that was true enough he did feel drained of energy. And as gradually he fell into an uneasy sleep: An evil genie trapped in his lamp he continued to murmur to himself who hopes that by befriending me he ll be able to talk me into giving that lamp a rub. Which will suit me just fine as long as I remember not to rub him up the wrong way. The last thing he did before actually falling asleep was to glance at his v D K. l rt IN LUMLtY wristwatch. The time was a little after 5:00 P.M. and the light coming in through his windows was just beginning to fade a little. . . As ever Jake s dreams were overshadowed by a twisting twining figure of eight Mobius Strip symbol accompanied by myriad formulae whose numbers and symbols familiar yet baffling were both guardians and gateway to the metaphysical Mobius Continuum. Endlessly those equations went scrolling down the screen of his mind and he knew exactly instinctively where to stop them in order to form one of those enigmatic doors that were only ever visible to him a door that would take him out of this universe into some place other than our plane of existence. He knew how to stop the equations yes but he still didn t have a clue how to conjure them into being out of nowhere how to start them mutating and flowing and he still couldn t remember their composition or sequence. In his dreams it was easy: they were simply there adrift in his mind ready at a moment s notice to flow with his tide spring into being at his calling. But in his waking hours the idea was too fantastic too otherworldly too unreal to be believable. Which was the problem in a nutshell but Jake didn t know it yet: that to believe was to be enabled that he had been endowed with the knowledge and that it was simply there. And behind those shining figure of eight symbols behind all the numbers and formulae the whispering of the Great Majority was ever present like a skittering of dried up leaves in the deadspeak aether. They argued about Jake and about Harry Keogh almost as if the two were one and the same. They argued about what Harry had become he and two of his sons before they were no more but without actually saying what they had become and then went on to argue the merits the pros and cons of even having commerce with such a thing as a Necroscope a man who speaks to the dead. It was as if a great court were in session in the graveyards of the world and Jake was the one being tried. In his defence Jake recognized Zek s voice and he thought he knew the voices of several others. No he did know them: the voice of Sir Keenan Gorm ley from his tiny plot in a Kensington garden of repose and that of Sergeant Graham Lane an ex ex Army physical training instructor from the cemetery in Harden County Durham England. But how did he know these things these people Even in his dreams such knowledge was puzzling. As for the prosecution : these seemed to Jake to be bitter people mainly people who had failed to make their mark on the world who had left no one behind to remember them and nothing to be remembered by which meant of course that they had no reason to desire any kind of contact with or knowledge of the living world. For such as them that world was gone forever they were resigned to contemplating the dark eternity of death without a backwards glance. No hopers in their lives they were that way in death too. But in Jake s or Harry s defence: We loved the Necroscope. Like a hiss of spray on a distant shore. He never let NECROSCUPt: UtfiLtKb D us down not even at the end never caused us pain except we brought it upon ourselves in his defence. He was vulnerable yet risked everything. He was our light he was our warmth he was all we had. And before him we had nothing not even deadspeak not even each other. And against Jake: But that was Harry Keogh . . . and at the end we didn t trust him either As for this one: he simply isn t the same. Where is his humility He s neither Harry nor Nathan. He s Jake and the company he keeps doesn t bear mentioning And on Jake s behalf: But he could he the new Necroscope This was Zek Foener s sweet voice surely. With the help of the Great Majority Jake could be He doesn t know doesn t understand and yet he seems to remember He remembers some of it anyway including things that the original Necroscope may well have forgotten and for all we know he could be trying to complete something that Harry left unfinished. In fact I m sure he is. But as for Harry: he s gone now gone beyond recall except file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 190 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt perhaps by Jake who is as close to the original as we re ever going to get. That s why we have to give him his chance. And against: His light and warmth are suspect: a shadow follows him and it is cold in its heart. We know what it is and we should turn away from Jake leaving him to whatever fate awaits. He doesn t know doesn t understand it s true. But let s face it: what he doesn t know. .. can t harm us And for: Well good for you Sergeant Graham Lane s rough military deadspeak voice Jake recognized it without knowing how. But say what you like there are plenty of us who are determined to speak to Jake anyway just as we were to speak to Nathan that time. Ah but as I recall you were against that too Who would have been the losers if we d listened to you then eh So don t fool yourselves you can keep us cfuiet forever because we won t let you. And meanwhile if any harm should come to Jake because of your cowardice remember this it will be held against you. It will be on your heads And against: Then perhaps we should turn away from you too. Do not defy us in this matter not unless you actually desire to be shunned by all the teeming dead And Sergeant again: Better wait and see who turns away from whom Death is unforgiving as will the Great Majority be unforgiving if you re proved wrong and you ve denied them their one last chance of renewed contact with decent human life. And against: Ah but isn t that just the problem I say again: the company this Jake keeps simply doesn t bear mentioning So if you really are concerned for decent human life. . . well perhaps you ll first consider that. . . . And so the argument raged to and fro a background babble of distantly whispering voices the hiss of static in the metaphysical deadspeak aether with Jake understanding none of it or so very little that it made no difference . . . He started awake and the dream but oh so much more than any ordinary dream at once faded from memory. o o BK1AN LUMLhY It was 9:00 P.M. dark outside and very dark in his room. Korath A cold breeze blew on Jake s mind as he switched the lights on. I am here said the dead vampire oozing out of nowhere. And yawning Jake told him It s time we were on our way almost. He rubbed sleep out of his eyes tried again to remember his dream. But it was no good it was gone. Our destination First let me wake up. In the bathroom Jake splashed water on his face towelled himself dry then walked into the living area and changed into his black clothing. Picking up his Browning a spare clip and his nite lites he said I want to go back to the Madonie. I need to talk to Humph. You aren t taking your explosive devices with you Later maybe but right now I won t lumber myself. Without another word Korath conjured the Mobius equations. Fascinated as ever Jake watched those constantly mutating numbers and symbols scrolling down the screen of his mind stopped them where he knew they would form a door then stepped through it out of his room and into the Mobius Continuum And just a moment s thought later back out of the Continuum into Sicily s Madonie mountains. The wall of the gorge was a pale dusty yellow in moon and starlight. Jake stood on the road as before looking down into the quarry in the guts of the gorge. Down there a night watchman s brazier glowed orange but there was no movement. An owl offered its faraway hoot and crickets chirred like frying bacon doing their thing in the scrubby roadside herbage. Other than that the night was silent and far too warm of course. Turning round Jake looked out over the Tyrrhenian Sea from his high vantage point. The lights of Capo d Orlando were visible in the east and those of Bagheria and Palermo in the west. The path cast by the moon on the sea was incredibly lovely and Jake found himself thinking of Liz Merrick but Liz in another world another time in a world where there would be time for them to be together. . . Well maybe. But not yet. Realizing that he was silhouetted against the eastern skyline Jake moved to the mouth of the cutting and sat down on a large flat boulder. Using the nite lites to scan the quarry he found the night watchmen two of them where they took it easy in the cab of a mechanical digger and smoked cigarettes. Their smokes made tiny points of bright white light in the grey blob masks of their thermally imaged faces. They didn t pose any kind of threat. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 191 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Now to find Humph Jake murmured quietly. His words were deadspeak and an invitation. Look no further said Humph. Nice that you ve come back so soon ... 7 think. There was something in his voice that hadn t been there before: he seemed reluctant. Jake wondered about it but thought it best not to ask. This isn t a social call Humph. He got straight down to business. I ve come to ask what you know about Harry Keogh. The other was silent for a moment then said: He was a good friend of mine you know Did for me what I couldn t do for myself. He was the same with all the teeming dead: the Necroscope fixed what they were no longer capable of fixing. Fixed said Jake. He righted wrongs took care of unfinished business. In my case he blew that fucking place Le Manse Madonie right off the mountain He had his own reasons I guess but it served my purpose too. So I suppose what I m trying to say I don t tell tales out of school Jake. If the Great Majority aren t talking to you well they probably have their reasons. Out here in the Sicilian sticks for all that I m left mainly in the dark I do get to hear the occasional piece of gossip. And And you re right Jake cut in they don t trust me. They won t let me prove myself. But it was Harry himself who gave me this thing landed me in this mess. Believe me Humph I didn t want to be the new Necroscope. But I m stuck with it anyway. I ve heard as much said Humph. The truth is I ve had more visitors just recently Since I was here Jake cut in. than in the last seventy or so years. Humph s deadspeak nod. In fact as long as I ve been here The Great Majority said Jake a little sourly. They ve warned you off. Something like that said Humph. But hey there are people on your side too Anyway it seems there s been a lot of talk and they ve taken some kind of vote like politics you know Yeah even in the hereafter. It was kind of one sided from what I can make out but the result is your friends are forbidden to talk to you for the time being anyway. And that goes for me too. But as I said any friend of Harry s et cetera. Er within limits. That brought something back to mind and Jake said Do you know who Sir Keenan Gormley is or was Zek Foener or Sergeant Graham Lane Well they ll vouch for me I know that for a fact. . . shitl For suddenly he remembered the details of his dream and knew that they definitely would vouch for him But just the three of them out of all the Great Majority If Jake wanted to get on the right side of the dead it seemed he d have his work cut out. Humph didn t know any of the names Jake had mentioned he d never so much as heard of them hadn t been allowed to speak to anyone who was in favour of Jake not yet. See said Humph I know what s wrong. It s something you re carrying around with you emphasis on thing. Oh I can feel your warmth all right but you also have a shadow. It s cold in that shadow lake. Cold and scary. It s clinging much too close to you and even to someone incorporeal as I am someone with no physical senses at all still that shadow smells something awful. That s because it is something awfuli Jake sensed a great stirring of rage deep inside not his own but Korath s and knew that despite his request that the vampire keep his deadspeak thoughts shielded and converse only with him still his companion was on the verge of breaking silence and speaking in his own defence. i Furthermore he sensed he somehow knew that this was what the Great Majority most feared: intercourse with the unknown a creature like Korath a creature neither living nor truly dead not even now in the normal sense of the word yet possessing knowledge to endanger both the living and the dead alike and that he must intervene before the situation deteriorated out of control. Wherefore: Let me explain something said Jake. You know how Harry went places as easily as snapping his fingers From A to B but without crossing the distance between He did it by using something called the Mobius Continuum. He made invisible doors that only he could see or use. But to do it he needed a mathematical formula. I don t have that formula Humph. My shadow as you call him he has the formula. And without him I m stuck only half the Necroscope you knew. Not even half because for a long time now I ve been learning that this Harry was something else a hard act to follow. No way I can match up to him Jake shook his head. And no way I can carry on his work file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 192 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt either even if I was willing to not without the help of the Great Majority. So you see I m sort of caught in the middle between the devil and the deep blue sea. The devil yes said Humph. That s pretty much bow the dead think of your shadow the Thing that travels with you. But he only travels with me said Jake. He s not part of me. And without him I couldn t travel at all. His mind contains the formula that lets me make my doors but it s useless to him without me. For my part I have the physical means to do it to travel from A to B without crossing the distance between. Else you too would he useless to him said Humph thoughtfully. So what does he get out of it this dead or undead travelling companion of yours Only my promise that when my work is done then we ll deal with his problem. Bottom line: revenge. You see Humph my case is much the same as yours was before you met up with the Necroscope. I want to rid the world of a cancer that caused me grief and that s destined to cause more grief if it isn t rooted out. As for my so called shadow : well it could be argued that his case is far more important than mine in fact I m sure it is. But something inside me insists I do my own thing first. These are personal vendettas then said Humph. In a way they are Jake admitted it. Mine is for sure except I can t be absolutely sure even of that But anyway and as I said if I don t correct it it will cause a lot of others grief too. My world is full of people Humph the children of the Great Majority and drugs are terrible things. So you tell me: Are the dead really so eager to have their own kith and kin join them addicted in life and addicts forever in death dead before their time because of this man I m chasing down He s a monster Humph and I ve sworn to put him down with or without the help of the teeming dead. You know said Humph the more you talk the more you sound like Harry Keogh So tell me more convince me Jake. I mean I really do want to be on your side. There has to be some kind of connection Jake said then between this place Harry Keogh and me. The first time I came here I was drawn here without knowing where I was going. All I knew was I had to come as if 1 was trying to recall something that someone else had forgotten. I just knew to come here like a different kind of deja vu but far more real than that. And I looked up there and saw Le Manse Madonie I expected it to be there remembered something someone else had seen. Harry Keogh It seems the only logical explanation to me. To me too said Humph. He was doing something here said Jake. Not just for you but for himself and maybe for the world. But while I know what he actually did that he took out Le Manse Madonie I still don t know why. Because you wanted it done He shook his head. That doesn t add up it doesn t seem a strong enough reason to me. So what was his motive Humph You ve already admitted that he had one. And after a moment Humph said Maybe you should try asking yourself what it was that always motivated the Necroscope. What it was that he did and did so very well so very thoroughly. But that s easy Jake shrugged. He killed vampires. Humph said nothing but his silence spoke volumes. . . Jake s jaw fell open. He killed vampires he said again almost in a whisper. So these brothers what was their name the Francezcis they were vampires And when his informant remained silent: Humph I m out of here now said that one. We re onto a forbidden subject Jake. But But I can t say any more Humph backed off. Except to wish you luck and hope it all works out for you. Jake felt him fading away back into the silence of death and called out after him Just one more thing . . . Humph Better make it quick then. Like the footfalls of a mouse in Jake s metaphyical mind. The Francezci treasure Jake said his thoughts swiftly chaotically flowing telling a lot more than he actually said the reason the brothers needed a vault: Harry blew it off the mountain along with Le Manse Madonie and it lies buried in the gorge. But how does Castellano this drug running bastard I m trying to bring down how does he know about it How does he know it even existed What s the fucking connection Got to go Necroscope said Humph. And his deadspeak voice was so faint now that Jake wasn t sure he even heard it. But I can tell you something: vampires don t give in easily. They re incredibly tenacious things Jake. The Francezci line it went back a hell of a long way back into history file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 193 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt back into time. So who can say Maybe the same line goes forward too. Goes forward Talk to you soon Jake said J. Humphrey Jackson Jr. Or at least. . . I. . . hope ... soooooo. His deadspeak voice dwindled away to nothing. And somewhere up in the mountains the owl hooted again . . . Things were starting to come together but not fast enough for Jake. Driven by those unreasoning inexplicable urges from deep within with the pressure constantly building he could feel his frustration mounting with each passing moment. He knew he d have to take it out on something and soon or else explode And explode was the executive word. Sensing Jake s mood Korath kept the peace and did what was required of him without question. In Paris Jake fully equipped himself before going back to the gorge. Back on the road standing in the open silhouetted against the night sky where he would be seen he fired three rapid shots into the air to attract the attention of the night watchmen. As they came at the run he watched them through his nite lites. As far as he could tell they were ordinary working men and he had nothing against them. But all of the machinery down in the quarry that belonged to Castellano. Anything that happened here to this machinery and this close to home was certain to enrage and unnerve the bastard. Well fuck him As the night watchmen drew closer scrambling up towards his position Jake moved into the shadows took the Mobius route to their brazier s glow and from there into the cab of the digger where he d seen them smoking. A few seconds to plant his charge and he moved on to the next vehicle. He planted five charges in all all with twenty five second delay fuses then returned to the shadows under the wall of the gorge. Using the Mobius Continuum it had been as simple and as quick as that. The night watchmen were less than fifty feet away from him they peered this way and that into the night and saw absolutely nothing not for the next few seconds. After that. . . but they just wouldn t believe what they would see after that. Jake glanced at his luminous watch and counted it down: Five four three two one bant Five bangs in fact coming just a few seconds apart. The big digger was first of course. The explosion drove it down on its huge shocks which at once tossed it back into the air in two main parts and lots of lesser blazing debris. For a big heavy vehicle it rose up quite a way until its ruptured fuel tanks tore it asunder in midair. By which time a massive eight wheeled dumper truck was teetering about on its nose and three of its great wheels were leaping this way and that across the floor of the quarry blazing as they went. On the road the night watchmen cowered down Jake too as the fireworks show continued. A second digger but smaller than the first was performing aerial cartwheels its severed caterpillar tracks lashing the air like a pair of gigantic crippled snakes. As for the site shack a not inconsiderable structure that used to stand on the far side of the quarry that was in the process of dispersing itself far and wide reduced to fifty thousand fragments of splintered timber buckled aluminum cladding shards of glass and plastic and nuts and bolts that flew everywhere spanging like bullets. Last to go was a conveyor belt and sieve equipment used to filter coins precious metals and other items out of the rubble. In a spectacular explosion the various components of the setup disintegrated and for several long seconds the sky rained fire and scraps of unidentifiable junk. Then the roaring of the flames black smoke roiling for the sky drifting sparks and smaller secondary explosions as drums of fuel oil got hot and blew themselves to hell and the quarry seeming to slump into itself almost as if the rubble and everything else was melting down into one big lake of fire. Jake had moved back behind a jut of rock when the first of the fires lit the night. Now using what little Italian he knew to the best of his ability he called out from that position to the night watchmen where they stood gawping down into the ruins of what had been a work site: You men do you know why you re alive You re alive so you can tell your boss Castellano just exactly what happened here. Be sure to tell him who did it me Jake Cutter and that I won t rest until I ve destroyed all that he owns everything he ever touched. And you can also tell him that when I ve finished with all that then that I ll be coming for him. They looked saw only the fires reflected off the face of the cliff and shrank back. They were out in the open on the road sitting ducks and Jake was nowhere to be seen. They both had weapons file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 194 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt sawn off shotguns by their looks which now amazingly they threw down. Then as they backed off and turned to head down the road toward the distant coast one of them called back: We won t be around from now on. So tell him your f f fucking self Jake knew what he meant. After what had happened here any attempt to explain things to Luigi Castellano would be more than their lives were worth ... Do you feel better now Korath asked him as they sped along the Mobius route to Paris. No Jake answered in like mode. But I will when the rest of tonight s work is done. Marseilles Korath queried. Haven t I warned you about that said Jake. Haven t 1 told you not to try to get to know me too well But it was in your mind clear as crystal said Korath and your thoughts are deadspeak. You no longer shield them from me like you used to and I had even begun to hope that perhaps we how shall I say it That perhaps you and I that maybe we were drawing closer together Think again said Jake. I must be getting careless that s all. Before Korath could utter his usual disgusted snort they were back in the Paris hotel room where Jake quickly re equipped himself. . . On the hillside overlooking Castellano s Marseilles villa Jake used his nite lites to scan the place. His binoculars thermal imaging system showed that there was no heating in the house but then who would be using central heating in weather such as this except a small white patch in a lesser building to one side probably the boiler room. The nite lites couldn t pick up concealed human movements however not unless there was a lot of heat attendant. Still empty said Korath. Probably Jake answered. But in any case we ll keep our eyes open. It was becoming easy now to forget that Korath was incorporeal. Or you will the other reminded him while what I see will always be secondhand pictures relayed by your thoughts and likewise clouded by them and not by direct vision. Just one more example of how much easier it would be if we were one. No requirement for these night seeing devices then we would know at a glance if the house was occupied and if it was we d soon sniff out the occupant. It sounds irresistible said Jake drily. Thanks but no thanks. And having turned down Korath s offer yet again he fell silent and studied the villa. What is it said Korath after a while. Why aren t you moving What gives you pause Are you afraid I was afraid said Jake. I ve only been in that bloody awful place twice and both times I was afraid. Afraid of what they were doing to Natasha and of what they might do to me. And they did it both times. The first time one of them raped her and then kicked several shades of shit out of me. And the next time . . . they all raped Natasha killed her and tried to kill me. And Luigi Castellano sitting in the shadows watching enjoying directing everything. Which is why we re here said Korath. Tonight you get your own back against the house at least. Both times Jake went on as if Korath hadn t spoken it happened in a bedroom. For a long time now I ve shut that room out of my mind the room where I was forced to watch what they did. It s at the back of the villa I think but on the ground floor like the study. I shut it out because I couldn t bear to remember. But now in the dark of night... I can feel it down there. I can almost taste that fucking room . . . and I know its coordinates. And that s where you ll plant your bomb. Exactly said Jake as Korath conjured the Mobius equations. If that s my ground zero maybe I ll be able to forget it. Some of it anyway. But that s only the villa. The rest of it will stay right with me until I catch up with Castellano. The bedroom was as Jake remembered it. He swept it once with a tiny torch planted his bomb on the floor in the centre of the room where he d been bound to a chair and prepared to leave. But then as he shaped the constantly mutating Mobius equations into a door: Uh What Is someone there A voice old sleepy speaking French coming from somewhere else in the house probably the study at the front. What the old caretaker Jesus thought Jake as he stepped into the Continnum and out again into the study. The bomb had only a ten second fuse and time was ticking away. The old man had thrown a blanket onto the floor as he rose from the couch where he d been sleeping. As Jake rushed toward him he almost tripped on the blanket felt it file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 195 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt wrap around his feet. But stumbling forward he managed to gather the caretaker up and swept him through another hastily conjured door And out again on the hillside. Eh W what the caretaker gasped losing his balance and sitting down heavily in the stubble. Which was all he had time to say or do before Castel lano s villa went up in a thunderous uproar of light and sound and fire that set the hills echoing and dogs barking all the way into Marseilles. The distance between the villa and Jake s hillside vantage point was maybe five hundred feet but that wasn t going to be distant enough. The blanket from the study was still wrapped around Jake s feet he kicked free threw himself down alongside the old man and yanked on the blanket to cover them both. Chunks of debris struck against the blanket bounced off and fell to the ground. There was a pattering of lesser fragments and then a smell of burning. The blanket was smouldering. Jake threw it aside stood up and drew the old man to his feet. Patches of stubble were burning and in the sky fluttering like fiery kites scraps of curtains bedclothes and other soft materials were drifting on thermals from the blazing ruins of the villa. Around a small central crater lesser fires were springing into being as burning floorboards rafters and fragments of shattered furnishings continued to fall. The place had been totally gutted and it was perhaps a good thing that Luigi Castellano had enjoyed his privacy there were no other private homes or buildings within a quarter mile. You spared no effort with that one said Korath quietly in awe of Jake s perceptions of the destruction. But Jake wasn t listening. Are you all right he held the old man up with one hand and unobtrusively frisked him with the other. The caretaker looked at him and asked What happened And looking down at his stockinged feet: My shoes I left them ... in there And his eyes were huge where they gazed on the ruins of the villa. Apart from his feet he was fully clad in a shirt trousers and a crumpled lightweight jacket. He d obviously been taking a nap. Cool and still in the darkness of the house keeping a low profile he hadn t showed up in Jake s nite lites. I saw you running from the house Jake lied. It was burning. I helped you to get up here. Maybe you got hit on the head or something The old man felt his head said I ... I don t know. I had a nightmare I think. Something ran at me and then I was here. But I shouldn t have been sleeping in the first place And I ll lose my job They ll sack me They The agency. The caretaker flapped his hands. He had been in shock but was coming out of it. What agency Jake asked him. The agency that employs me said the other. I look after rich houses when the owners aren t there. But what about Mr. Castellano Jake s voice had hardened Isn t he your employer Eh said the other. Mr. Castellano I don t know him. I only have his card in case something happens. And now . . . now something has happened Mon dieui Show me his card said Jake. And the old man still very uncertain of what had happened rummaged in his jacket pockets until he found Castellano s card. Jake glanced at it said. Remember this. Tbe numbers and the addresses both. Done said Korath in a moment. Odd said Jake that for a creature whose world had little use for written words and numbers you happen to be so good at remembering them. The words and numbers Korath replied mean nothing to me. I remember their patterns that s all. My legacy from Malinari the Mind remember Sirens were sounding in the distance a convoy of vehicles came speeding from Marseilles their lights and coloured revolving strobes strung out along a winding road. Jake spoke again to the old man: Here s your card back. But do me a favour. When you speak to the police don t mention me. But you saved my life the other protested. Do I have your word Of course if you insist. It s the least that I file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 196 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt But when you call Castellano Jake cut in by all means tell him about me. I don t even know who you are said the old man. Just tell him an Englishman was here okay The old man looked mystified shrugged and finally nodded his acquiescence. So until the fire engines and police get here you may as well stay where you are and watch the show said Jake. As for me I have to be going. The old caretaker was indeed watching the show the fires dying out others starting up and what was left of the villa s walls crumbling in the furnace heat under a gradually drifting mushroom shaped pall of black smoke but as what Jake had said connected he turned to him or to where he had been and said Going Better perhaps if he had used the past tense since Jake was no longer there . . . PHUT FOUR PSEUDO MEMORIES AND MAYHEM JAKE REMEMBERING As he showered first in hot water but gradually increasing the cold until he could take no more Jake gasped You know I m starving The Mb bius Continuum said Korath. It obviously depletes you. But as for me: I am beyond all such and my situation is different entirely I am starved of life itself Perched on the rim of your mind 1 cannot even appreciate the true taste of your food only an echo of the pleasure which you derive. But better than sitting in your sump right Anything is better than that said Korath. As for starving you don t know the meaning of the word. When your one option is to take the bone plug from the knuckled backbone of a flyer and sip on his grisly spinal fluids then you know the meaning of the word . What Would you try to turn me off eating Jake grimaced. And when Korath declined to answer: The hotel restaurant will have closed by now but I know an excellent Chinese restaurant in Soho. I ate there with Lardis Lidesci. He s from your world one side of your world anyway and he thought the food was great. I am at your service said Korath. Jake dried off swept his hair back. Normally he preferred it done profes sionaly braided into a pigtail by a barber but tonight he made do with a simple band of black elastic. And he dressed simply too in the clothes he d brought with him when he left E Branch which he d had cleaned and pressed up by the hotel . . . In Soho it was 10:20. The place was alive with young Londoners out in the unseasonably warm night. The Chinese food was good likewise the Chinese beer with which Jake washed it down. Afterwards walking in Oxford Circus breathing the city smells and taking in the sights and sounds he said Well Well Korath answered. The food Was good said the other. You thought so anyway. Better than spinal fluids Better than those oj a flyer yes Korath answered darkly. And Jake chose not to question him further. So what now Jake shrugged. I could head for Leicester Square but it s too late to take in a movie he answered. Pity for they were showing Predator 2020 just a few days ago. On the other hand all that gratuitous violence the blood and guts and what have you would probably get you all worked up so I suppose it s just as well. Which leaves us stymied too late to do anything worthwhile and too early to visit Frankie s. I want to ensure that place is empty shut down for the night before I shut it down permanently. Of course I could always ask you to give me a break return to your sump leave me to enjoy my own company a while Go back to Radujevac Korath protested. That dreary place But why Well said Jake you d be surprised how close we are to E Branch HQ right now. Even without the Mobius Continuum it s no great distance. Ah: said Korath. Liz again. She s on your mind. That s why you came to London. Jake shrugged undecidedly. But then however reluctantly he said No that s definitely out. It was just a thought that s all. Or rather she is on my mind how can I deny it when you know she is but I can do without the complications. And anyway I have things to think about other things to do. Such as For one there s a number I want to call said Jake. And for two there s a surprise package I file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 197 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt have to make up for Frankie s Franchise. Oh said Korath. But weren t you the one who was concerned about my craving for gratuitous violence Perhaps I ll yet convince you that we re very much alike you and I. But Jake only shook his head and said No way. Everything I m doing has been it feels like it s been arranged for me. My course has been set for me. I have no choice. It s like I m driven to do what I m doing. Precisely said Korath. And what of myself I did not want to become a vampire Jake. But when I became one do you think that I was not driven Why I could no more deny my blood than you can deny your mysterious urges Well maybe said Jake. But we re different anyway. And now we re going back to Paris. But first he dropped in at a garage he knew in Marseilles explained how his car had run out of gas bought a three gallon container and had the attendant fill it from a pump. Your surprise package for Frankie s said Korath. Part of my package Jake told him. And all it lacks now is a thimbleful of plastique to wrap it up very nicely thank you . . . From the Paris hotel Jake tried an international connection to Bagheria Sicily: Castellano s number from the old caretaker s card but all he got was static. Communications were bad worldwide and getting worse. Which left only one thing to do. It was 11:30 when Jake undressed and stretched himself out full length on his bed. He felt wide awake and didn t think he would actually get any sleep but it was worth a try. Maybe he could glean something useful from the ever present whispers of the teeming dead perhaps the Necroscope Harry Keogh himself if anything was left of him would put in an appearance and Jake could ask him one or two leading questions. And so he tossed and turned and was genuinely suprised in a little while when a customary numbness the prelude to sleep began to invade his mind and limbs. At which he lay still and let himself drift. . . ... At 3:30 A.M. a sleepy switchboard operator gave Jake the early call he d booked. The phone rang a good half dozen times before he picked it up and mumbled his thanks and it took him another ten minutes to get himself together and work out where he was and what he was doing here. Then splashing cold water on his face Jake complained to Korath It s like I don t know like my brain is fogged up You must be right: using the Continuum is draining me. He spoke in all innocence never for a moment suspecting that his dead partner already knew what was affecting him and that in fact he alone was the source of the problem. But indeed Korath was tired too or more properly frustrated and the cause was the same the only difference being that he knew why that it was because he d spent the last four hours trying to penetrate Jake s shields and bury himself even deeper in his unwilling host s mind. The frustration came from having failed and utterly. For now even when Jake s mind was only partially shielded as in sleep still it was impregnable. Whatever powers had been willed to him literally willed to him by the will of the Necroscope Harry Keogh it seemed they d taken root and were growing exponentially and Korath s earlier opportunities had passed him by. Cajoling didn t work neither promises threats nor stealth. He had tried them all and now he would have to find a different key to the innermost rooms of Jake s mind. But all of the probing Jake had suffered as Korath searched for a breach in his defences had taken its toll of him. Even in sleep unaware of Korath s assault he d fought back his metaphysical mind had resisted held and repelled. Which accounted for his weariness and for Korath s mounting frustration. On the other hand the dead vampire considered himself fortunate indeed that in the last few seconds before Jake woke up he d succeeded in inserting a hurried posthypnotic suggestion that the sleeper forget his attempted intru sion Are you there said Jake calling Korath back to earth as it were startling him and causing him to gather his wits. You re very quiet. What s on your mind for a change Almost as if he d guessed what had been going on here though in fact he hadn t. I m here Korath answered. was silent because you didn t require me to speak. Did you want something No Jake replied. It s just that when you re quiet like that I can t help wondering what file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 198 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt you re thinking. See Korath this barrier between us works both ways. Just as my inner mind is forbidden to you yours is forbidden to me. And then perhaps a little suspiciously Maybe we should both be grateful eh Whatever you say said Korath as he carefully strengthened his own shields. . . Dressed all in black Jake returned to the cobbled alleyway in Genoa where the double F neon sign was still unlit and the way was almost blocked by the day s garbage reeking and steaming in piled plastic bags and rusty refuse skips. Frankie s Franchise was flanked by a dingy flyspecked pizzeria on one side and a tiny hardware store selling fishing gear on the other. Jake could only hope they were insured. But what the hell: whoever owned them they d be better off anyway. Looking at the upper storeys Jake saw that the windows of Frankie s upstairs rooms were boarded up. But since the neighbouring windows had been hung with dirty curtains he supposed he d better check inside. He could see inside both the hardware and pizzeria and so had the coordinates. There were no alarms and quick checks of both places showed him that they were unoccupied. Good. Now he could get on with it. Back to Paris for his gear and from there directly into Frankie s barroom. And: Goodbye Frankie s Jake growled as he pressed the button on his five second delay firebomb. Just enough time to fashion a door and get out of there. At the end of the alley he looked back wincing and automatically shielding his eyes from what he knew was coming. Gratuitous violence indeed commented Korath as Frankie s Franchise went into its death throes. First a flash of brilliant yellow light like daylight in the gloomy night street as if someone had switched on the sun and then the sound of a double explosion but the two blasts coming so close together that they were literally inseparable. A sharp crack as the plastique went off like a mortar bomb the sound stretching itself out and changing in timbre into a long drawn out protracted howling like a jet engine on test as the petrol ignited and was propelled by the plastique in pressured sheets of fire along every avenue of expansion. The effect was almost nuclear. The roof came off Frankie s Franchise hurled aloft on a pillar of fire while at the front the door and windows bowed outwards almost as if the building had taken a deep breath before exploding into the street in a frenzy of fire and bricks and glass. And as the lower structure disintegrated so the gutted upper storey remained in place for a brief moment apparently suspended on the heat alone before crumpling down into the inferno below. Then as the initial dazzle faded as the flames roared up and a great ring of smoke shot with fire rose skywards so the adjacent buildings followed suit settled on their foundations groaningly tilted inwards and finally spilled their substance into the sprawling cauldron of yellow fire. And: Done said Jake with some satisfaction. But the fire is bound to spread said Korath. It can take the whole waterfront area out for all I care Jake answered so long as there are no human casualties. There shouldn t be for with the weather the way it is and everything bone dry the fire services are bound to be on standby. They were and as Jake stood there awhile longer surveying his work as astonished people in their nightclothes gathered and sirens began to sound so Korath made ready to conjure the Mobius equations. Then as the first of a fleet of howling fire engines began to arrive Jake moved apart from the crowd into the shadows and made his exit. . . Back in Paris he phoned the Bagheria number again and actually got through. In a crackle of static he heard the phone taken up and then a gravelly voice inquiring Who is it But it wasn t Luigi Castellano s voice. I want to speak to the man who runs the hounds Jake said then not to one of his dogs. So go and get him and make it quick while we still have a line. There was a moment s pause more fizzing and popping and finally a voice that Jake recognized instantly a deep rumbling powerful purr that he d never forget till the day he died and knowing what he knew now not even then. Who are you and what do you want that voice said. I want you Castellano Jake answered. And as for who I am you already know that. I m the one who took out your place in Marseilles and your little gold mine under the Madonie and just a few minutes ago Frankie s Franchise in Genoa. Jake Cutter said the other but his voice was no longer purring. Now it was a snarl a low growl a threat in itself which made any verbal abuse redundant. It was a dark primal voice that said Jake Cutter but which meant You re a dead man Cutter right Jake replied and I ve been cutting into your organization your lousy rat file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 199 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt holes. Next I ll be cutting into you. What said Castellano. All of this for that little cunt Natasha A drug running slut who had been fucked by every boss in Moscow Was she really worth dying for Jake Cutter You tell me you bastard Jake spat. For you re the one who ll be doing the dying. Then the static flared up worse than ever indeed so badly that Jake was barely able to make out the other s reply: When you come I ll be ready Jake. Just you and I winner take all. And be sure I will take you I ll keep your balls in a jar until they rot to remind me of you and your screams in my head forever so that I can listen to them before sleeping. Your screams and Natasha s sobbing ... a duet like a lullaby you know So do please promise me that you won t keep me waiting too long won t you It ll be sooner than you fucking think said Jake And then there was only the static and perhaps a clattering sound as the phone was hurled down in Bagheria . . . Korath had been in Jake s head and he had heard everything. Do you know he said this Luigi Castellano might easily have been Wamphyri The way he taunted you . . . I ve heard just such talk in Starside. Haven t I told you about that The way great enemies would taunt each other before fighting to enrage each other beyond wisdom s reach I fancy that Castellano has tried to do the same. And it seems to me he succeeded Jake scarcely heard him. Furiously he paced the floor his face grimly determined his fists clenched. The black hearted bastard he muttered. You re right he s taunting me. But if he knew what I ve got he wouldn t be so damned cocky. Nor do we know what he has said Korath wisely. That place in Bagheria: Isn t it his stronghold guarded by his best men Perhaps you are the one who shouldn t be so damned cocky. They don t have the Mobius Continuum said Jake. But they will have bullets Korath answered. It only takes one bullet in the right place Jake and that s you finished not to mention myself. . . If I knew where the place was Jake grated it out through clenched teeth I d do it tonight right now Exactly what Luigi Castellano wants you to do said Korath. He wants you to go rushing in all unprepared. But no let your head be your guide Jake and not your heart. And certainly not your hatred. Revenge is a dish Best served cold I know Jake cut in. Then frowning he said But where did you hear that one In Starside said Korath. Where else It seems we share a good many sayings said Jake. It s hardly surprising the other s deadspeak shrug . Men are men in whichever world and their darkest passions are the same except in the Wamphyri of course in whom man s vices are multiplied tenfold and likewise his lusts and rages. So how is it you don t get all fired up Jake asked him. You re Wamphyri or would have been. You say I m infuriating obstinate always giving you a hard time. So why don t you get mad at me How is it that you re always the coolheaded one But I do get mad at you said Korath. Very. And you should consider yourself fortunate that you ll never know how angry I get But But It is simply a matter of continuity said the other. Where you go I go and what NECKUSCUPh: LJthlLtKb 543 you suffer I suffer. What of me without Jake Cutter What becomes of me if you should die I am nothing without you. And so when you play the hotheaded fool J shall remain cool. For as I ve said it s a matter of continuity and I simply can t afford to let you commit suicide. Thanks a bunch Jake growled. But the way you tell it I keep getting this feeling not so much of continuity but of permanency. So I think maybe I should remind you when we re done we re done. I hadn t forgotten said Korath. But we ve a way to go yet. First Luigi Castellano then Lord Nephran Malinari Vavara and Szwart. That was our deal and I shall stick by it. Good said Jake. Let s leave it at that then. But deep down inside he was still very uneasy about this so called partnership and knew he always would be until it was over . . . Jake woke up at 9:00 A.M. Saturday morning washed and dressed pushed his sausage bag of plastique deep under his bed and had a late breakfast in his room before calling for Korath. And how do you feel this morning asked the vampire. In a hurry Jake answered. As always I feel driven but not to suicide So I see said the other. You re much calmer than you were last night. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 200 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt That s because I ve taken your advice Jake answered. I was a bit hot under the collar last night that s all but now I ve cooled down. It s probably a good thing that I don t know where Castellano s place in Bagheria is otherwise I believe I really would have gone there. Which would have been both dangerous and contrary to your original scheme said Korath. For if memory serves which it does and extremely efficiently you want Castellano to feel the noose tightening slowly slowly and bit by bit. Jake nodded. Until the knot is pressing up tight against the back of his neck yes he said. So then how do we proceed What is today s agenda Today we find Castellano s place in Bagheria and check it out said Jake. And tonight we take it out and him with it But between times this evening we go back to San Remo Millionaire s Row. The last of his rat holes Exactly. Let him feel the noose tighten that extra inch. But by now he knows what you ve done indeed you told him as much yourself The total destruction of his villa in Marseilles and likewise the fire at Frankie s Franchise in Genoa. As for the wreckage of his machinery in the Madonie mountains: he will have seen that for himself. So In San Remo . .. he may be waiting for you. Or if not Luigi Castellano in person his paid men certainly. That s a risk I have to take said Jake. I have to for it s part of the plan. I want to be seen in San Remo. But why Because he ll know that if I m there 1 can t be in Sicily at the same time. Ahi I see said Korath. Believing that you can t strike at him on the same night in the space of just a few hours he ll feel secure. You ll take him by surprise That s the plan Jake nodded. But I can t take him if I don t know where he is or how well he s defended. So that s my next task. Do you remember the address on that card The address said Korath. But of course I remember it. Oh yesss For thanks to Lord Malinari called Malinari the Mind I remember almost everything. . . Just a few kilometres out of Bagheria toward Trabia a little west of the Milicia where it ran to the sea and frowning down from rough gradually rising ground across the motorway toward the Tyrhennian coast Castellano s headquarters looked sombre even in broad daylight. But more important the villa looked deserted. I don t get it said Jake from where he lay on a patch of stony ground behind a clump of small rocks staring down on the place through his binoculars. We ve been here for over an hour and nothing has so much as twitched down there. But there are cars what six of them out front and there s smoke rising from two of the chimneys. So where is everybody Inside obviously said Korath. And they never come out But surely that s their prerogative. Korath s incorporeal shrug. Would you come out if you knew someone was waiting to pick you off They don t know I m here. But they do know you re somewhere. You think they re simply lying low think they are doing as I would do in the current situation said Korath. They re taking no chances. Jake shook his head concernedly and said This is a waste of time. I don t like this place I feel exposed and I d gladly move on except I m not satisfied with the coordinates. I mean I can return here to this location any time I like and I m pretty sure I can put down in the middle of those olives within the grounds too but I know nothing at all about the interior layout of the house. So how am I to get inside Must you get inside said Korath. Can t you simply bomb the place from outside against its walls Again Jake shook his head and growled No. I m not going to blow it inwards I m going to blow it up and out and off the face of the map Wrecking it isn t sufficient. I want to remove it permanently as if it was never there. As if it were never there I can t see how that s possible said Korath. Surely there will be rubble Not necessarily said Jake. Not if I use thermite. Thermite This time Korath was at a loss he had little or no knowledge of science and all he had seen in Jake s mind was fire as used at Frankie s Franchise. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 201 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt A different kind of fire Jake told him. And a different kind of heat. Thermite: it s a mixture of oxidized metal iron will do nicely and powdered aluminium. Brown rust and white rust It was all beyond Korath. Something like that said Jake. We call it chemistry. I call it magic said the other. Also I saw some of Nathan Keogh s handiwork on Starside and that was just as devastating as yours Malinari thought so too else I wouldn t be here. So obviously Nathan has or had access to just such powders. Explosive powders burning powders and licjuids that ignite into fireballs out of hell . Hah Is it any wonder the Szgany called this world the Hell lands But from what I ve heard and read of Starside said Jake you ve got it backwards. Anyway let s get out of here. We can figure out later how to get better coordinates. As you wish said Korath conjuring the Mobius equations . . . Jake had the addresses of friends in Australia members of the elite Australian SAS with whom he d worked in the first phase of E Branch s assault on Malinari. And he also had the coordinates of a government safe house in Brisbane. He went there and was surprised but shouldn t have been to find the place dark. The safe house was dark both inside and out and silent. The silence meant nothing the house was quiet because it wasn t in use but the darkness was weird . . . until it dawned on Jake that while it had been midmorning in France in the Australian tropics it was 8:30 P.M. Something he would have to get used to: the fact that with the Mobius Continuum as his means of transport the world was now a very small place. Jake put the lights on in the central operations room and checked one of the telephones. It was working and he tapped in the home number of W. O. II Red Bygraves. Jake s hopes weren t too high that he would be able to contact him but for once the static wasn t too bad and amazingly Red was at home. What yer doing over here mate said Red after Jake told him who he was. I ve come to ask a favour said Jake. Er a big one. Well it can t be too big not after what you did for us said the other. Where are yer I m in the safe house in Brisbane Jake told him. I only just got here. I have your telephone number but no address and I realize we may be thousands of miles apart. But I was wondering if we could maybe get together and talk Then I ll tell you what I need. Well it s true that we could have been thousands of miles apart said Red but the fact is I m at home in Gympie a few miles up the road. Gympie Jake couldn t suppress a chuckle. What in hell s a Gympie It s a town some ninety miles north of you Red answered. And don t you go taking the piss out of my home town But he was chuckling too. Hey stay where yer are and I ll be there in an hour and a bit. oto BK1AIN LUMLtY You re on said Jake. And pick up some beers and a bite to eat on the way. Done said the other. But hey yer wouldn t be in any kind of trouble would yer Always said Jake. But don t sweat it what I m trying to do needs doing even if it isn t exactly on the right side of the law. No sweat Jake Red assured him. With me and the other blokes who worked with yer yer couldn t ever be on the wrong side. I ll be there in a tick. And the phone went down . . . Thinking to get a breath of fresh night air Jake took the Mobius route out into the high walled gardens. But if anything it was warmer than the last time he d been here some few weeks ago. The stars were glorious and the smell of eucalyptus came wafting from trees on the other side of the wall. But up against his side of the wall a pair of articulated open sided monorail cars lay keeled over where they had come to rest when he brought them through the Mobius Continuum from the mountain resort of Xanadu. He d brought the cars the SAS team and a handful of E Branch personnel too. And in doing so he d saved their lives. Er we saved their lives said Korath. Credit where credit is due Jake. My numbers your door. It feels like years ago said Jake. Live fast die young and leave a handsome corpse Korath answered. A Szgany saying Indeed. We have it too said Jake. Also one that goes: doesn t time fly when you re having fun file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 202 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Are you having fun Jake Jake shook his head. Not a bit of it. Life s too short for all this shit. But I know I won t be able to live it right till all of this is behind me. Ah life said Korath. How wonderful it was to be alive and young and to walk in the woods of Sunside with a young girl on my arm. Then his thoughts turned sour as he continued But all that was when I was a Szgany youth and my feelings are different now. It s being here with you that brings these memories to mind. You walked in this garden with Liz. I ve told you not to talk about Liz Jake snapped. And you held her in your arms in your room at E Branch HQ when you were both near naked. Ahhhl And Jake could almost feel the slow drip of his drool. Where but for you I might even have made love to her you creepy Peeping Tom bastard But But I m glad now that I didn t Jake cut him short his voice a snarl of loathing. What with a nightmarish thing like you in my mind No way But if she ll still have me it ll keep until all this is over and you re well and truly out of here Korath s patience was exhausted too and his own frustrations steadily U t 1 L t K mounting so that he wasn t quite in control of himself when he gurgled: Ungrateful dog Did you say when I m out of here Ah but that might not be for a long long time What said Jake at once. What s that I meant nothing Korath was immediately on guard guarding his own tongue his thoughts lest they should betray him again. But your constant carping ... I have difficulty coping with it. When you need me I answer your call I have never once put a foot wrong and what do I get in return What do you get Jake railed at him then bringing up his shields in full force to drive Korath from the rim of his mind. You get sent the hell away from me that s what you get Go on back to your sump in Romania Korath. And if you choose to stay there that s up to you. I was doing just fine on my own and I can do it again. So the hell with you Don t do it Jake Korath cried but his cry rapidly fading. You ll need me. I spoke in anger and meant nothing by it. Jake Jaaaake And then he was gone and Jake stood alone in the garden. But not for long. Korath was right and he did need him and would in the near future for a certainty. So in a little while when he d cooled down he relaxed his shields and said: Very well come on back. But let s concentrate on the job right No more talk about Liz and no more veiled threats. And in a moment: As you will said Korath subdued now. I took our friendship a little too far that s all. But remember: I too am under duress. I do what you ask of my own free will it s true but only to achieve my own agenda. Which is the destruction of Malinari and the others. And what is to stop you when you ve got what you want reneging on our deal and going off without me If only I could said Jake. But I would know that you re always there. I d know that the moment I relaxed you d be back pestering as usual. And so it s stalemate said Korath. It seems we are obliged to trust each other. With me that isn t a problem Jake told him. I ve never broken a trust. But: You did with E Branch Korath reminded him. And again he was right. Because I had to said Jake. You know me as well as anyone now and you know I had to. The thing that s driving me on isn t letting up. I can feel the time ticking by second by second the minutes the hours. And Castellano is still alive. It s not just him and me and it s more than an obsession. It s necessary. It s . . . it s what I do. Now where had that idea come from It wasn t what Jake did at all ... but maybe it was what Harry Keogh had used to do However before he could investigate that line of thought more closely: I understand said Korath. I feel exactly the same about my enemies. And it is very necessary yessss. . . When W. O. II Red Bygraves a slim well muscled crewcut redhead in his early to mid thirties arrived at the safe house in his open topped military looking four wheel drive Jake opened the gates manually to let him in. u c r I L n D K. I f IN L U IV L t Y Then after they had greeted each other: What said Red. No one else here How did yer get file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 203 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt inside to use the phone A simple slip of the tongue for even having seen what Jake could do at firsthand teleportation was hardly a common or easily acceptable concept. Jake didn t waste time but showed him took Red s arm and swung him through a Mobius door and out again into the control room then held him steady as his jaw fell open and his eyes stood out. Jesus H. Christ the SAS man gasped as he came close to dropping the six pack and container of food that he d brought with him. Don t said Jake then. I mean try not to use terms like that. For once again he felt guided by principles that weren t necessarily his own. Red didn t understand the sudden change in Jake s tone but he didn t argue either. He was too startled for that. Like ... I knew yer could do that he said but I wasn t expecting yer to do it. Good grief mate Is that how yer arrived here Like all the way from Blighty Good grief From Sicily actually said Jake. And then as they began to relax and to eat he told Red what he wanted. Thermite The other shook his head. That s a tough one. I can t get it for yer but I know a man who can. Well maybe. And tapping a number into the telephone he went on to explain This ll get the barracks. They ll check me out and put me onto the boss. The boss Jake repeated him. You know him Red nodded. You saved his neck and mine and quite a few others too. Major Tom said Jake. Well that s what Ben Trask calls him anyway. The same said Red. Then he spoke into the phone reeled off a number gave a codeword finally nodded his satisfaction and passed the phone to Jake saying Better yer should speak to him yerself. That way I won t be telling any lies for yer. A number was ringing when it was answered Jake recognized the authoritative voice at once. Major this is Jake Cutter he said. You might remember me. I m in Australia to ask a favour of you. Jake said the other. You re damn right I remember you A favour you say On behalf of E Branch Any time Jake. What can I do for you Jake waited for a sudden burst of hissing popping sunspot static to fade away and then told him. But he finished off quietly this isn t for E Branch. It s for me. That gave the major a moment s pause. And you know how to use this stuff Yes Jake told him. As you may recall your men used it at the Old Mine petrol station in the Gibson Desert. And I m what you could call a quick study. You re a quick something for sure said the major. But no guarantees what you ll use it for right For good said Jake. Only for good. Or put it this way: the world won t be the worse for it. In fact it will be a lot better off. And when do you want it Just as soon as possible said Jake. A moment s pause and then You ve called at an opportune time said Major Tom. A couple of your boys E Branch people I mean are with some of my people at the Old Mine place right now. They re blasting it open again going inside making sure that nothing was overlooked in there. When that s done they ll roast the place and seal it shut permanently with thermite. Trask said that would be happening yes said Jake. How s your er mobility said the major then. I mean I know what you mean said Jake. That s how I got here. And there was another moment s pause. Jake I owe you. A lot of people owe you more than they can ever repay. So here s what I propose. Our people will be finishing their work at the Old Mine any time now probably tonight. So while there can t be any official handover of this stuff I think we can er lose a small cache somewhere in that location. Should we say buried eighteen inches deep at the foot of the first warning signpost you come to as you climb the ramp from the road That would be just fine said Jake gratefully. But as for this conversation the major hurriedly continued well obviously it never happened. Roger that Jake answered. And indeed it was obvious that their conversation had never happened for already he was talking to himself. . . Jake and Red finished eating then sat around for a while drinking Red s beer. Most of us were given a couple of weeks off said Red. I mean we were told to forget everything that had happened. Just like the boss told you it had never happened if yer get the picture and we should go home and get it out of our systems. Which is why I was home when yer called. And yer know it s not at all hard to forget There was some weird shit going down. It was like a bad dream. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 204 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt That s right Jake nodded and there s plenty more weird shit going down right now. I ll be in on it eventually but not until I ve sorted out this other thing. Which is personal right I thought it was said Jake but now I m not so sure. It was personal but now it s a lot more than that. Anyway that s where I m at and I d better be on my way. But not before yer get me back out into the garden okay Jake did it and this time Red s knees buckled as Jake took his arm and led him out into the night beside his vehicle. Then leaning on the car to steady himself he said Well I ve seen some stuff in my time but this ... I still don t believe it 353 NECROSCOPH: DEFILtRS Me neither said Jake and then added I mean I m still getting used to it. But will you be okay driving home I ll be okay yeah said Red still unsteady on his feet. But in any case a damn sight safer than with you I reckon So you can take the high road Jake and I ll take the low road every fucking time But I ll be in Scotland or wherever before ye Jake grinned. And yer welcome said the other. But just you be careful that s all. Be sure not to get lost in ... in that place where or when or whatever it is. He got into his car turned her round and drove out through the gates. Jake closed them after him. Outside Red applied his brakes turned in his seat to look back and wave. He was barely in time to see a swirl of leaves and dry debris spinning like a miniature dust devil drawn up from the garden by the vacuum of Jake s door and already beginning to settle. But as for Jake himself it was as if he d never been there at all ... Jake went back to his Paris hotel booked his room for an extra night then threw himself on his bed. It was a little after one in the afternoon in France yet still he felt tired. Jet lagged he mumbled to himself as he fell asleep. Or Mobius lagged. Or something. And for once Korath left him alone. Jake s shields were now stronger than ever and his mind completely impenetrable. There was no longer any possibility of taking up permanent habitation in either his conscious or subconscious psyches not without he first invite such an invasion and deliberately open his mind to it and Korath s only remaining hope was that some situation would arise where Jake simply couldn t refuse him. He knew that Jake wouldn t grant him total and irrevocable access in order to get himself out of trouble that had become obvious during the abortive episode in the bank vault but he might be persuaded if a loved one was in difficulty. There was only one such loved one that Korath knew of and chances seemed slim . . . but who could say The future was ever a devious thing a difficult thing to gauge and with E Branch still in pursuit of Malinari Szwart and Vavara Liz might yet find herself in dire straits. After all it wouldn t be the first time . . . Jake woke up at 3:30 shaved and showered ate a light early evening meal and went out to find a barber. All sweet smelling and dandied up said Korath later when Jake was getting a little exercise by returning on foot to the hotel through the evening streets. Live fast die young And leave a handsome corpse said Jake. Yes I know. No need to be so morbid. In my position it is difficult to be anything else Korath answered. Tonight will certainly he our most dangerous mission so far yet you make preparation by prettying yourself upl The pigtail keeps my hair out of my eyes Jake answered. And the wash and shave leaves me smooth so that when I apply my makeup it will take more easily. Your makeup Camouflage said Jake. To help me merge with the night. I was once a soldier. As a career it didn t last too long but I did learn a few things. That s as may be said Korath but all these cosmetic preparations they serve to remind me of the way a certain Starside Lady would decorate her thralls with garlands of flowers and honey rubbed into their skins before serving them up screaming to some favoured warrior creature With friends like you said Jake then paused as he felt a warm splash on his neck. Rain That was why it was dark early tonight: the sky was overcast and he had been so busy with his own and Korath s thoughts that he hadn t noticed. The weather was breaking at last storm clouds rolling file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 205 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt down from the north. And as the fat heavy drops came faster Jake took the Mobius route the rest of the way to the hotel . . . It s barely dark said Korath as they set out for San Remo. Barely dark here Jake told him but it s an hour later in Italy. And if their weather is anything like ours it ll be even darker. It was and as Jake stepped from the Continuum at the precise coordinates where yesterday he had stopped the taxi on the Imperia road where it had been blasted from the sea cliffs he stepped straight into the teeth of a thunderstorm Clouds boiled on high and jagged veins of lightning pulsed patterning the sky out over the Ligurian Sea. Overhead jutting from the cliffs on stanchion supports the modern reincarnation of an ancient house of evil Le Manse Madonie loomed like an updated aerie brought into sharp relief and made prominent not only by the lightning but also by illumination from within. The high ocean facing balcony was flooded with light and just for a moment Jake thought to see someone up there on that wind and rain swept platform. But the rain was slanting against the cliffs making everything a blur and he couldn t be sure. Already soaked stepping soggily into the shadows Jake looked up again at a sharp angle and saw nothing but inside the house itself vague figures were on the move their rain blurred outlines appearing on the patio windows their faces peering out then drawing back and disappearing. These were Castellano s people drug running bastards just like him using and looking after the place in the boss s absence and on this occasion perhaps defending it. But tonight in weather like this surely they would be a little lax Surely they wouldn t be expecting trouble on a night such as this Well whether it was expected or not trouble was coming. L t Y D K I A IN Jake had three charges one for each of the stanchion supports. Take those out and the entire house would be a write off and most likely the people inside it too. It wasn t his intention to cut through the stanchions themselves massive steel I sectioned girders that would take acetylene cutting gear and lots of time but simply to blast them loose from their seatings in the cliffs. To which end his charges were each half as powerful as the one he d used on the place in Marseilles: enough to fracture and dislodge the entire face of the cliff let alone the support girders. Now he had to get onto the narrow maintenance ledge at the base of the stanchions but in the downpour and the darkness he could barely see the ledge his angle of observation was acute and the coordinates were very uncertain. The access road had to be safer so Jake made a Mobius jump a hundred yards back along the main road to a lay by where the narrow one lane access road branched off and climbed steeply toward the house. From there a second jump carried him up level with Le Manse Madonie itself enabling him to see the ledge from above. Now the coordinates were lodged firmly in Jake s mind but in the moment before he jumped he thought he saw yet again a furtive movement in a shaded area of the balcony someone moving there and the glint of dull metal as lightning flashed to throw back the shadows. Whoever it was if anyone at all he must be sheltering under the tasselled canopy of a porch swing in one corner of the balcony. Which was why as Jake emerged from the Continuum onto the rainwashed service ledge directly beneath the suspect area he did so with extreme caution crouching down as his eyes scanned the boards of the balcony just fifteen feet overhead. He could see very little only bars of light slanting through the inch wide spacing in the boards but was fully aware how those bars must be lighting on him picking out his movements and banding him like a zebra. If there really was someone up there and if he took a pace forward leaned on the rail and looked over . . . Jake worked as fast as he could cursing under his breath as every bright flash of lightning silhouetted him against the slippery rock face and managed to plant the first two charges in the Vs where the stanchions had been concreted into sockets which had been drilled deep into the cliff face. But then as he put down his sausage bag beside the final stanchion and yanked out the third and last charge his haste let him down. A pocket torch lying loose in the sausage bag was dragged free along with the charge. Before Jake could stop it it fell . . . bounced . . . switched itself on . . . went twirling down into the darkness flashing like a beacon as it spun The clatter had been heard the light seen and from overhead the lookout barked What the fuck ... file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 206 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Holding his breath Jake rammed the last charge into place and set the timer button. The task had taken no more than sixty seconds the timers were set respectively at eighty sixty and just twenty seconds for the last one. This NECKObCUFt: L h h 1 L t K b 3DD way Jake had allowed himself a comfortable twenty second window of escape before the first blast which would be followed in short order by the second and the third. No problem at all if he hadn t been seen. But he had been seen And as Jake straightened up from his task in too much of a hurry so his feet skidded on the wet rock surface and he only just managed to keep his balance. It was time he was gone from here and Korath was already rolling the numbers. Feet clattered on the boards overhead there came the well known ch cfcwf of a small arms weapon being armed followed by a blast of deafening sound not thunder but the obscene clamour of an Uzi firing down through the overhead boardwalk and Jake heard the splintering of wood and the angry insect buzzing of bullets passing too close by. Caught off balance Jake s old fashioned outmoded survival instinct found him reaching for his own weapon stupidly ignoring the numbers that were even now scrolling down the screen of his mind and all the while Korath shouting Jake make a door Make it now Jake Jaaake But Jake was skidding about on the slimy rock surface again and a hatch had opened in the balcony s boardwalk. Ladders were released swung on oiled hinges and slammed down and legs came into view followed by a body and finally an arm and hand with an Uzi that jerked and shuddered as it hosed spurts of fire and a stream of bullets blindly in Jake s direction. He fired back the cracks cracki of his 9 mm Browning automatic almost drowned out by the stutter of the Uzi. But the man on the ladders gave a cry let go his grip and was thrown backwards and at the same time a white hot something a brilliant light hit Jake in the head dissolving everything around him and turning the night to a whirlpool of blinding pain. I m hit Jake thought as everything slipped away from him until all that was left was the Mobius formula constantly mutating in his dimming mind s eye. Make a door Korath screamed again and finally got through to Jake in his last few moments of consciousness. Jake had slipped from the ledge falling he felt the night air rushing past him and knew there was something he must do. A door that was it. He must stop the numbers and conjure a door. And he did ... he brought a door into being directly in his path . . . the path of his descent. From above and behind Jake as the first charge detonated a huge hot hand reached out to fling him headlong into the primal darkness of the Mobius Continuum . . . Jake was a long time surfacing and it seemed an even longer time before he realized he wasn t just dreaming but floating adrift in some unknown medium and that someone was shivering gibbering and cursing where he hid in the BRIAN LUMLtY smallest possible niche of Jake s mind. But wherever Jake was it was dark oh so dark and as quiet as the tomb. Or quieter. It must be night Jake thought the very thought bringing a fresh burst of pain like bright lances of agony splintering in his head. And: Jake said the whimpering thing that clung to him like grim death the thing that was grim death the dead vampire Korath once Mindsthrall where he trembled at the rim of Jake s gradually awakening consciousness. Jake Is that you Is it really you Oddly enough Jake had to think about that. He wasn t sure it was worth it thought itself was painful and he would much rather simply float here but he had to think about it. Was it him really him or was it someone else Before on that ledge under Le Manse Madonie he d felt afraid. But now he only felt sick. Sick with the pain in his head and the stickiness where he put up a hand in the dark to gentle the place where he hurt. But he wasn t any longer afraid. Afraid No not here in the Mobius Continuum. For the Continuum was his place where he hadn t felt afraid for oh for as long as he could remember Not since August Ferdinand Mobius himself had shown him how. . . how to gain access That had been in Leipzig Mobius s tomb there . . . hadn t it Tomb again. What the hell was it with tombs Quiet as the tomb . . . and Mobius s tomb . . . and the teeming dead in their tombs all arguing the merits the pros and cons the differences between Jake and Harry. As if there was a difference. And as for Leipzig: Jake had never fucking been there . . . had he file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 207 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Jake wake up You re delirious said Korath with a catch almost a sob of relief in his deadspeak voice. You re not Harry Keogh you are Jake Cutter And you ve been hurt. But there was nothing in there in your head and I thought you were dead. Take my word for it Jake: being hurt is far better than being dead So pull yourself together and get us out of here. Not Harry Keogh But then why did Jake remember so much of what Harry had been what he d done and what he d left undone It s only a germ of Harry said Korath. The smallest spark of him. He gave you hah a piece of his mindl But no peace of mind said Jake as he came out of it more quickly now. Just a jigsaw puzzle with too many missing pieces. And piece by piece I m putting it all together. I m gradually. . . remembering Which is good said Korath. For knowing what Harry knew can only make us stronger. But his voice carried no conviction. It can make me stronger said Jake the pain gradually subsiding but I m not so sure about you. And there was something in his tone that warned Korath to tread very carefully here. I don t know what you mean. I mean said Jake that there once was a time when the Necroscope had an unwelcome tenant just as I have you. Harry was plagued by a dead vampire whose name.. . was Faethor Ferenczy The memory came home to him out of nowhere just like that. Wrenched loose from the ceiling of some inner vault where contact with the original NECROSCOPE: DE FILERS 3i Necroscope had lodged it shaken free as the result of violent action concussion and pain it drifted like a fall of dust writhing into a recognizable pattern where it settled on the whorls of Jake s brain. Paramnesia yes. Not one of his memories but a memory nonetheless. Of Faethor Ferenczy Faethor clinging to him or to Harry like a leech where he sped down a future time stream their conversation as fresh in Jake s mind as if it had taken place yesterday or as if it were occurring right here and now: You see this blue thread unwinding out of me Jake heard himself or Harry saying to Faethor. It s my future. And mine Faethor answered doggedly. But see it s tinged with red. Do you see that Faethor I see it fool. The red is me proof that I m part of you always. Wrong Jake Harry told him coldly. I can go back because my thread is unbroken. Because I have a past I can reel myself in. But your past was finished where you died back in Ploiesti Romania. You have no thread no lifeline Faethor. What The other s nightmare voice was a croak. Then The master of the Mobius Continuum brought himself to an abrupt halt but the spirit of Faethor Ferenczy hurtled on into the future. Don t do this he cried out in his terror. Don t do it But it s done the Necroscope called after him. You have no life no flesh no past nothing Faethor. All you have left is the future. The longest loneliest emptiest future any creature ever suffered. And now goodbye H H Harry ... Haaarry ... Haaaarrry . .. HAAAAA as the Necroscope closed the future time door to shut Faethor out forever. But before that door slammed shut Jake Harry looked again at the blue thread unwinding out of him them and saw Jake ... Jaaake ... JAAAAAAKE Korath shouted. Get a grip of yourself Reluctantly Jake relaxed his hold on this pseudomemory this fragment from the original Necroscope s past which disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as it had come. And as for what Harry had seen before the future time door closed . . . ... Let it go cried Korath. For he too had witnessed the pseudomemory and his dearest wish was that the entire episode should disappear forever from Jake s mind. Be glad that you are yourself and forget Harry Keogh. He is no more But the episode wasn t disappearing not entirely. Jake continued to cling to at least one part of the pseudomemory as strongly as Faethor had clung to Harry. He knew what he d seen and: I know how to be rid of you he said . . . What said Korath thoroughly alarmed. You would do that to me Send me screaming into a never ending void I didn t say I would do it Jake said. I said I know how to do it. As a last resort of course. Until which time file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 208 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt You can be absolutely certain that I will honour our contract to the full said Korath. 20 BK1AN LUMLhY I know that you ll have to said Jake. For while you re outside my mind in contact with me but outside me I can ditch you any time I want to in exactly the same way as Harry ditched Faethor. Which means from now on you daren t put a foot wrong. For several long moments there was a total sullen silence in the Mobius Continuum while Korath thought about it until he answered But since it isn t and has never been my intention to put a foot wrong I m not in the least concerned Only that you persist in thinking of me in such terms. And now perhaps you ll stop worrying about it And his deadspeak voice was so sincere that Jake was almost convinced. Almost. . . ZANTE SAN REM O All STRALI A KRASSOS LONDON Jake searched for the coordinates for the Paris hotel . . . and found nothing Didn t I tell you there was nothing in there Korath said nervously. Jake didn t answer him but searched for other coordinates. But Korath was right it seemed his mind was empty of them. It was as if a file had been downloaded from his brain or worse deleted entirely. What s going on Jake wondered as Korath s obvious alarm gradually infected him too. No coordinates What s happening here Perhaps it is simply a part of the healing process and we have to be patient Korath answered. But I repeat: before you regained consciousness there was nothing in there. Your mind was as empty as the Mobius Continuum itself But it appeared that the Continuum wasn t entirely empty for even as Korath spoke so something bumped into Jake s face. He automatically groped for it and found his gun free floating in the dark weightlessness. He d obviously dropped it when he was hit at Le Manse Madonie and it had fallen through his door with him. Now he held on to it like a drowning man to a straw. A drowning man said Korath. And something about a straw Jake you re not making sense Disorientation said Jake. A bang on the head which still hurts like hell. Even as he said it another bout of sick dizziness swept over him. I entered your mind Korath told him deep into your mind. Er in a purely exploratory mode you understand Your shields were down and I was trying to revive you. But Amnesia said Jake. Not paramnesia this time but just. . . just amnesia I can t remember the coordinates. None of them Memory loss yet specific to this said Korath his alarm increasing by leaps and bounds. As one part of Harry s memory was revitalized in you so it dislodged another: your instinctive knowledge and use of Mobius coordination 360 RIAN LUMLEY Okay said Jake trying not to panic. But surely you remember the coordinates You must for you ve remembered everything else The Continuum s equations for instance. I remember the sequence of the formulae Korath moaned now and the shape of the thing hut the numbers themselves are as meaningless to me as they are to you As for your coordinates: they are not numbers but locations places and things which only you know buried deep in a part of your mind that I can t reach. . . which is the reason I entered you Jake: to see if I could find a safe coordinate. But all I found was emptiness. Which must have scared the shit out of you said Jake else you d probably still be in there Even at a time like this you never give up trying do you I dared hope Korath tried hard to change the subject that given time time we would transfer automatically to Harry s Room at E Branch HQ. But it appears that thread is now broken leaving us adrift in this place Jake felt a spinning motion. He was no longer in control of the situation. And the more the vastness the utterly unknown size structure nature and purpose of the Mobius Continuum impressed itself upon him the faster he spun. In the total darkness and weightlessness he put up a hand and traced a shallow scabbed over burn from just above his left eyebrow along his temple and into his sideburns. There was dry blood on his hollow cheek and the tip of his ear felt crusted. was creased he said. An inch lower and a little to the right it would have gone in through my eye and ripped out the back of my skull It file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 209 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt has ripped out something certainly said Korath. The coordinates said Jake. What are they bach Sudden hope elation in Korath s deadspeak voice. No said Jake as another wave of nausea threatened to roll him under. I meant the coordinates were ripped out of me. Maybe permanently. Now there s only the spinning ... the sickness.. . and.. . oh Godl And the darkness suddenly exploding like a bomb inside his head the whirling darkness inside which was almost as dark as that outside and Jake sensing he was about to pass out again. But in the midst of all the darkness a distant pinpoint of light and Jake knew that if it was the last thing he ever did somehow he must get to it. He willed himself in that direction and the pinpoint immediately expanded. But in the moment before he reached it even as Korath cried It s a door It s a door the effort overcame him. And he wasn t even aware that he was falling through the door and didn t even feel the sting of the gravel on the path where he sprawled facedown or the cool night breeze wafting over his prone body . . . He woke up to the light but a natural light and to a painful throbbing in his head that caused him to screw up his eyes against both. He was lying on a bed under a white sheet in a white room and a strange man and woman were looking worriedly down at him concern plainly written on their faces. Eh Jake said. What Where am 1 The woman young and pretty took his hand and spoke to him in what Jake suspected was Greek. His knowledge of the language was only very limited so he shook his head. A mistake because that only made the throbbing worse. English the young man said. Are you English Yeah Jake told him his voice a dry croak. And you have to be Greek. A safe bet and not only because of the language. The whitewashed room varnished pine bed fixtures and ceiling beams all spoke of Greece likewise the light coming in through an open window that special Mediterranean light. May I have a drink of water And would you mind telling me where I am The young woman went out of the room and the man said We are Greek yes. And this is our house. On a Greek island said Jake. The young man s eyes opened in surprise bewilderment. But of course he answered. Thee island of Zante said Jake. Zakynthos in the Ionian. He was sure of it. It had come to him out of nowhere but still he was absolutely certain of it. And since he d never been here in his life that was a mystery in itself But one thing for sure he felt good and safe here. Now why should that be Could it be the feel of the place Its clean familiar smell You are thee tourist yes No said Jake then immediately changed his mind and took the easy way out. Yes you re right I m a tourist. I had er an accident... I think. He struggled to sit up the young Greek helped him telling him You are lucky that we found you. You were outside. We had been to a friend s house a party last night. We got home late between one and two in thee morning and found you collapsed on thee path near thee front door. Dim memories were stirring but pseudomemories Jake knew. It was the only possible answer. This is ... Zek s place he said. Zek Foener s place near Porto Zoro in Zante. Ah said the other. You are knowing Zekintha My father he bought this house from Zekintha. For me and Denise my wife. But that was oh some four or five years ago In thee English my name is Dennis. Dennis and Denise Jake blinked looked puzzled. He still felt woozy. This is Zante the other shrugged. Thee island s patron saint is Saint Dionysios. Many peoples here are called Dennis for this reason. Dennis or Denise. But Jake was thinking about what Dennis had said about Zek. Yes of course she would have sold the place four or five years ago when she married Ben Trask. Zek and Harry Keogh had been friends for years and the original Nec roscope had probably felt safe here too. But safe from what What had his problems been Whatever this place had stuck in his mind as it was now stuck in Jake s the only coordinates he they had remembered and the only place Jake had been able to flee to. Flee Now where had that thought come from For Jake hadn t actually fled here but had been drawn here hadn t he Maybe it was Harry who had fled here upon a time. And again Jake asked himself fled here from what. . . Help me up he said. Pulling back the sheet he found himself naked down to his underpants his clothes lay neatly piled on a chair nearby. Dennis was concerned and told him to take it easy but file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 210 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Jake struggled into his trousers and staggered toward the window. Even before he got there however he knew what he would see. We had a doctor to you this morning at first light said Dennis following him. He is thinking you were shot. A hunting accident perhaps Sometimes there are hunters in thee woods. Could be said Jake. I m something of a hunter myself now and then. Outside the window a balcony and below the balcony steep densely wooded slopes falling to the sea. The Mediterranean or more properly the Ionian. Jake knew it knew this place even this room and felt that if he turned round quickly he might even see a lovely girl asleep in that selfsame bed. At least he would remember seeing Penny there. But not his memory no for Jake had never known a Penny. It was totally maddening Where were you staying Dennis asked. Jake scarcely heard him. He was lost in his own thoughts and the fleeting memories of another. They came and went. Happy memories sad memories a changing sea of memories: calm angry storm tossed. A farewell to all this. A departure. This had been Harry Keogh s stepping off place to somewhere else . . . Eh Where am I staying Jake said. Don t worry about it. I ll be okay now. For while everything else was swirling all of these pseudomemories drifting in and out of whichever crevice of esoteric knowledge housed them Jake s coordinates had returned and firmed up. And not only those coordinates he knew but quite a few that someone else had known before him. And Dennis said You should get that wound seen to er Jake Jake told him. But damn it he d almost said Harry The doctor said it should be stitched but since thee scab was healing . . . It s fine said Jake putting on the rest of his clothes looking for his Browning and failing to find it. It ll be just fine. By the time he was fully dressed Denise had returned with a pitcher of water and a glass. Jake drank deeply gratefully then said Thanks for everything. And now I ll be going. And your face said Denise. We didn t wash you. My face Jake crossed to a mirror. She meant his charcoal camouflage from last night gone streaky now on his face. Which reminded him to double check: What day is it The young couple glanced at each other shrugged off their bewilderment and Dennis said It s Sunday. Jake looked at his watch and made a quick calculation. Two in the Ionian afternoon which meant that some seventeen hours had passed since he d bombed Le Manse Madonie outside San Remo. He should go back there would go back there after he d called Korath to take a look at the damage. Do you need a taxi Denise asked him. And more anxiously Are you sure you ll be okay I m sure said Jake making his unsteady way through this well known house to the front door. They stood and watched him walk out into the brilliant sunlight and up the gravel path through the pines toward the road into Argasi. After just a few paces Jake saw the scuffed patch of gravel where he d landed after making his exit from the Continuum and just off the path a glint of dull metal in the undergrowth. It was his gun. He picked it up pocketed it and knowing the way continued up the path. Jake pictured a big motorcycle it could only be a Harley Davidson throbbing up this track to the road and knew it was much more than just a picture in his head. And he wondered what it would feel like to ride a big bike through the Mobius Continuum Well and maybe be would try it some time. If he the real Jake was still around when all of this was over. Reaching the road he looked back. But Zek s place was lost from view hidden in the pines. It was a terrific view out over the Ionian and Jake knew he d always liked it. And as for Zek: she meant a whole lot more to him now and he knew how much she must have meant to Jazz Simmons and later to Trask . . . and even to the Necroscope Harry Keogh. Just thinking of her was like an invocation. She was there in his mind at once. Or her sweet deadspeak voice was anyway. Why did you come here Jake Zek He quickly recovered from the suddenness of her presence. What you re still speaking to me Still risking getting yourself in trouble with the Great Majority Where there s a prosecution there has to be a defence she answered. And I m it advocatus diaboli but I didn t come here simply to speak to you. This time it s coincidental. Ahl said Jake. I see. This was your special place your genius loci and you were drawn back here even as I was. He sensed Zek s deadspeak nod. 1 often find myself drifting back this way. But you You say you were drawn here I had a problem an accident trouble in the Mobius Continuum Jake explained. For a little file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 211 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt while the only place I knew was this place. Which just goes to show how very close you must have been to Harry Keogh. Or him to you. Zek was at once anxious. An accident Yes I can sense your pain. But you re okay now I ve felt better Jake answered but I ll get by. And you re on your own for once. Korath said Jake. I haven t shaken him if that s what you mean. But for a while there my mind must have seemed a very dangerous place and he went AWOL. In fact I was just about to call him. I need him Zek. Without the Mobius Continuum I can t follow things through can t finish what Harry started. Ahi The very smallest deadspeak gasp which scarcely disturbed the aether at all. You think that s what it s all about That Harry has chosen you to complete some specific task Harry discovered fought and killed vampires didn t he said Jake. If nothing else wouldn t he want to avenge you But with Jake s shields down Zek read a lot more into his answer than just that. This isn t about me she said. Harry was gone from the living long before me. It s true that he couldn t abide vampires and if he were here now he d still be working alongside E Branch but that s not what you meant. It s only a part of what you meant. So what s the rest of it Jake I don t know the rest of it said Jake. You re right and there s something more to all this than what E Branch is doing but I ve been left in the dark. Ben Trask and the rest of them they know things they haven t told me things they daren t tell me They want me to work blind to be their new Necroscope without telling me what went wrong for the first Necroscope. I know he had powers they haven t told me about and also that for all of his skills and knowledge he s no longer here. He s dead Zek dead and gone and it wasn t old age that got him You knew him probably as well as anyone and since coming here I ve discovered that he came to see you before he quit this world. What was it made him leave us Zek Him and that girl Penny Lardis Lidesci has as good as told me they went to his place Sunside Starside but why To fight vampires there in their own spawning ground But was that the only reason The puzzle is too big for me Zek. I can t find all the pieces and the picture eludes me. In fact you re the only one who gives a damn and is trying to help me They all give a damn Jake she answered at once. You don t have to worry that you re on your own. You re not and when the teeming dead get to know you the way I m coming to know you. . . you ll have a lot more friends believe me. But the Great Majority and E Branch too they re playing this game by the rules. The dead won t give their loyalty to just anyone they need you to prove yourself. Likewise E Branch but for reasons you don t yet understand perhaps it s about those missing pieces that you mentioned. And remember Jake you haven t helped your case too much by running out on Ben like this. You know I ve run out on him But isn t it obvious she answered. You re here on your own aren t you For now I m on my own yes. Well then . . . Listen said Jake. E Branch thinks I have my own agenda. Well I thought so too at first. But it isn t any longer my agenda I thought that I was avenging the death of... of someone I cared for. But I ve since spoken to her and she s let me off the hook. By that I mean she s taken a lot of pressure off me. Fine but it hasn t made any difference hasn t changed my course one iota I know that I ve got to see this through get it over and done with and finish . . . and finish Something that Harry started I think so yes. And for a little while there was silence in the deadspeak aether. Then Zek said Jake there was a very painful time in Harry Keogh s life. Of all the painful times this was one of the worst. It was a time of lies incredible deceit enormous danger for Harry and for the whole world. At the end of that period even the dead deceived Harry they had to in order to keep faith with him. And E Branch were the worst deceivers of all even though they thought they were doing the right thing. A paradox Not if you knew the whole story. But the point is Harry himself didn t know the whole story and wherever he is now he still doesn t. That period those years were like lost years that never happened. And even if we could speak to him now to an entirely whole Harry still the Great Majority wouldn t tell him. There was pain enough in his life without that we add to it in his afterlife. As for that girl you mentioned Penny: file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 212 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Penny came later when Harry was just about done here. He brought her to me here on Zante they paid me a visit shortly before leaving this world for good. She loved him and believed she could have a life with him. Maybe she could have but that wasn t to be. There was an accident and. . . Penny didn t survive it. But do you know I ve since spoken to her and Penny has no regrets It seems that living a few days with Harry had been like living a fantastic lifetime or even two lifetimes. But don t ask me to explain that last for I can t. When she fell silent Jake prompted her These lost years you mentioned. You re thinking maybe they have something to do with me with what s happening to me now But how and why You said it best yourself she told him. Maybe you re the one he s chosen to finish something he started. But I ve spent time with Harry Jake answered. You know I have. So if there really is something he wants me to do why didn t he tell me about it when he had the chance The only reason I can think of said Zek is that perhaps he himself doesn t know what it is. Jake s head spun and not alone from the constant nagging pain of his wound. You mean some part of him remembers something he should have done but not enough to know what it is And I ve got to do it for him From what you ve told me that seems the likely answer. So what did he do during those lost years Those of the Great Majority who know and there s only a small handful won t talk about it Zek answered. They certainly won t tell me for they long since made a pact never to speak of it. For Harry s sake. Even though he s dead now We ve already been into that she sighed. Jake shook his head in frustration. The dead aren t talking about it not even to you one of their own Huhi But how about the living Why hasn t Trask said something about it Because he s like me said Zek. He doesn t know. Then for Pete s sake tell me something you do know Jake felt like tearing out his hair. What the hell was it with the Necroscope that Trask and E Branch are afraid to talk about There was a brief silence and he could feel how torn Zek was when finally she said I m sorry Jake. Sorry I can t tell you more. But I will tell you this much: being a Necroscope being the Necroscope will be no easy thing. Not for you and not for the teeming dead. What the hell you asked. And yes it can get pretty much like that. Pretty much like hell. Talking to the living or rather to you is one thing and if that was all there was to it. . . but it isn t. And the dead learned long ago in Harry s time that one thing can lead to another. That s why they re so juiet lying still keeping their peace. At least for the time being. They don t care to talk to the living Jake was baffled. They really believe in this RIP hokum They don t give a damn for their former lives in the world they ve left behind don t want to know how their kids are doing how the world itself is getting on and everything they created is being used and built upon by their survivors He shook his head. I don t get it. But they do care said Zek. More than you can know. And if and when they come round to our way of thinking you ll see how very much they care. And that s the answer to both your Questions why for now the Great Majority aren t communicative and why E Branch can t tell you all about Harry. The world needs a Necroscope Jake. But it has to be the right one. He has to be brave and careful and he has to care about what he s doing. He has to care for the dead because they may have to pay a very high price for caring for him . . . I m wasting my time said Jake. And I m getting nowhere. But I do trust you Zek. So if this is how you say it has to be ... then I suppose this is how it has to be. One thing more before we part said Zek. Don t be too despondent Jake. However slowly we are winning the battle more and more of the Great Majority are coming over onto your side seeing things your way. However slowly the tide is turning in your favour. For despite every obstacle in your path all the difficulties and uncertainties you haven t given in. What s more your light burns in our darkness more like Harry Keogh s with every passing hour. And the Thing that you carry with you which the dead fear more than anything else hasn t gained ground but lost it. You re ahead of the game Jake and all we have to do now is make sure you stay there. But I have sent a few less than worthy people your way said Jake remembering the outlines he d seen through the wet patio windows of Le Manse Madonie. Knowing how much the dead respect life that can t have improved my image too much . . . Actually said Zek you also cleared an awful lot of debts along the way. For you re right: not a one of them was worthy. They were murderers all and they re all excluded. They aren t to be counted among the Great Majority. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 213 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt They re excommunicated Always said Zek. Committed to the darkness where they ll do no more harm. And now I have to go. Jake felt her drift away but it was only after she d gone that he realized Zek hadn t answered the one question that she could have answered to which he was sure she knew the answer: Why had Harry Keogh the original Necroscope deserted our world for Sunside Starside . . . A car honked as it went by and Jake suddenly realized that he was on the road to Argasi walking in the brilliant Ionian sunlight. He had walked as he talked as if to a corporeal person. Once you were used to it that was what deadspeak was like. But now he was alone again walking nowhere and to no purpose. Korath came as soon as Jake called out for him. Where were you said Jake. Where else said the other gloomily. Sleeping Sleeping resting being alone. You re not the only one who can suffer from exhaustion you know. That business in the Mobius Continuum was... it was fatiguing to say the least. Sleep and weep said Jake. Are you telling me you missed yet another opportunity to get inside my head I missed nothing Korath snorted. Nor have I forgotten that we have a deal. What he didn t say was that with Jake s mind in shock or at best in something of a turmoil he had felt better off out of there. Anyway why did you call me What s next Now that you ve become aware of the attendant dangers is it at all possible that you ve finally given up on your vendetta But no I can see that was too much to hope for. And he fell silent. All done said Jake. Well good Thanks for asking after my health. I m fine thank you. I nearly got my head blown off but I ll live. Now I need to get back to Paris clean up eat a decent meal and get some healing sleep. Because tonight We ll be busy again. Korath groaned. That s right said Jake. And do you trust yourself to use the Mobius Continuum Are you sure that what happened won t happen again The coordinates are all back in place said Jake. Better than before. And there are a couple of new ones too. But don t worry I won t be checking them out. Not yet a while anyway. Huh Korath grunted as he set the Mobius equations rolling down the screen of Jake s mind. This time the esoteric math was more familiar Jake could even see patterns emerging the weird symbols and numbers no longer had power to awe him. They were a key that was all to the metaphysical Mobius Continuum and he felt he would soon be able to grasp that key for himself. Until then but only until then Korath would remain the gatekeeper. These were secret thoughts which Jake kept guarded in those innermost vaults of mind to which as yet Korath wasn t privy. Thus both men or one man and a creature had secrets known only to themselves. And Zek had been quite right: as yet Korath hadn t taken the upper hand. Not as yet. . . It was 12:40 P.M. in Paris by the time Jake had cleaned himself up taken some aspirins put a plaster on his head and his head gently on the pillows. Feeling ill and fearing a relapse he had no sooner arrived in his room than he d banished Korath back to the ruined Romanian Refuge. Then his nausea had returned with a vengeance. He d felt too sick to eat the pain of his wound was sending regular stabs of lightning deep into his brain it was as well that his plans for the night ahead were vague since he might now have to abandon them entirely. But that as a last resort. For still he hoped his condition would improve with healing sleep. And who could say Maybe his plans would work themselves out too. Then a strange thing as if things in Jake s life weren t strange enough already. But as he closed his eyes to sleep Liz was on his mind again And in the next moment she was really on his mind He came bolt upright in his bed his attitude one of intent listening. It came from far away some kind of contact brief filtered by distance the merest telepathic touch as if for a moment Liz s scent was in his nostrils her sweet breath on his face. No more than that but it was more than enough. Jake felt a chill in his soul it made the short hairs at the back of his neck prickle and stand up straight. Now what the bell was that But it was gone before he could question or examine it or lock on to its location. And after a while he lay back down again but wonderingly. She d felt. . . disturbed Not fearful but deeply disturbed. She d been searching for something file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 214 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt telepathically. Not for Jake but for someone or something or things other. But as always Jake had been on her mind and the effort that Liz had put into whatever it was she was doing had been such that her probe had reached out to touch upon his thoughts too. It was the rapport they had between them. Despite that Jake might be considered undeserving of Liz s affection and regardless of the distance between the connection was still there. It the connection was or had been there . . . but where was Liz He reached out for her sought a direction a coordinate and found nothing. The moment had passed. And Jake had no way of knowing that on Krassos in a place in the mountains called The Aerie Liz had been looking through a telescope searching for Vavara and Malinari no way of knowing that shortly she d be on her way with Trask and the others back to Skala Astris. No way of knowing not yet that E Branch was hot on the trail of mankind s greatest enemies and that much like himself Liz was only a few short hours away from unthinkable horror. Which was as well. For if he had known then he never would have slept. . . It was dark when Jake woke up and he was hungry. But the pain in his head had reduced to a dull throbbing with no more lightning flashes and he found he could think quite clearly. He dressed called for sandwiches in his room then called for Korath. And Korath came: Like a genie in a bottle said Jake. His words were deadspeak of course and conveyed his meaning. A bottle or a lamp said Korath with a mental shrug. What odds Either one would make a pleasurable grave. . . compared to a cramped metal pipe in a drowned subterranean sump And then changing the subject I sec that you re feeling better. Not as good as new said Jake but a little better yes. And that s good because we have things to do. First some bombs big ones that I have to put together Bombs that blast said Korath. And then there s something I m to collect from the other side of the world. And bombs that bum. Precisely. Jake nodded. Explosions and chemical fires said Korath. That s right. You realize of course that this time Castellano will most certainly be waiting for you That seems likely said Jake as he finished eating. But I still hope to surprise him. The Mobius Continuum gives me all the edge I need. But it wasn t enough of an edge at Le Manse Madonie Korath reminded him. Jake sighed and said I see you re your cheerful self as usual. Anyway what happened was my mistake and I won t let it happen again. But talking about Le Manse Madonie it s time we took a look at that place to see what damage I did. Jake took nothing with him but his 9 mm Browning automatic and a spare clip and he and Korath went to Italy to the coordinates of the slip road where it left the highway and climbed to Le Manse Madonie or what was left of it. The sky was clear and the place bright in starlight. Where Le Manse Madonie had looked out over the Ligurian Sea a vivid white scar showed in the face of the cliff like the new flesh under a scab that has been torn away. There was simply nothing there the slip road ended at a sheer drop down to the highway where the entire cliff face had been blasted loose. And it had taken Le Manse Madonie with it. Down below bulldozers were at work clearing the last of the rubble from the road to Imperia. You can be sure that no one lived through that Korath was obviously awed. Whoever it was who shot at you he is no more. Actually said Jake I had hoped that someone had lived through it. That way he might have reported my death too. But he sensed the shake of Korath s head. No Castellano must know by now that you aren t the one to die so easily. And I m sure he will be expecting you. You re probably right said Jake. But he wasn t about to let that stop him. Or rather something the force that drove him on wasn t about to let it stop him. No for the original Necroscope Harry Keogh had gone up against far worse dangers than these Hadn t he In the sprawling Gibson Desert of western Australia somewhere on the three hundred mile trail between Wiluna and Lake Disappointment Jake exited from the Mobius Continuum at coordinates remembered from his brief time with E Branch and the grim work they had done there. It was early morning and relatively cool. Jake stood at the edge of the road more nearly a track file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 215 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt and looked north and a little east at the rugged country ahead. The last time he was here it had been with Liz and he d been looking through binoculars. There was no requirement for those now he knew the way well enough and perhaps even too well. His vantage point was the crest of a rise in the road where it began to dip down into a riverbed that had dried up in prehistoric times and he gazed at the base of a knoll that bulged at the foot of a massive outcrop or butte. The road or ancient riverbed wound around the ridgy shelving base of the outcrop and disappeared north. On the shelf above the road at the base of the knoll that was where the Old Mine petrol station a front for Nephran Malinari s vampiric activities had been situated not so long ago. Then E Branch had discovered it and now . . . . . . Now the face of the knoll was fire blackened the ground around had been scorched clean of vegetation and the entrances to the old mine s workings had been blocked by hundreds of tons of rock blasted from above. They d made a good job of it even as good as Jake had made of Le Manse Madonie. Jake knew that if he moved closer to the actual site of the petrol station he d find evidence of recent activity as recent as last night when E Branch and Major Tom s men had been checking the place over opening it up searching it minutely and closing it down again this time sealing it for good. But he didn t need to go that close. Where a ramp of hard packed earth rose from the road to the elevated shelf in front of the knoll he found what he was looking for a hardwood stake with a warning sign that read: HEALTH HAZARD TOXIC WASTE KEEP OUT Just twelve inches away from the foot of the signpost the ground had recently been turned. Jake glanced at the sign again and thought: Health hazard Well what s buried here is definitely going to become a health hazard for someone He didn t have a spade but the ground was still very loose. Down on his knees scooping up earth and pebbles with his bare hands he soon dug down to the canvas shoulder straps of three thermite charges in their haversack containers. After that the rest was easy he simply hauled on the straps gradually dragging the haversacks up out of the loose soil. And now you re all set said Korath. Right said Jake. But we ve time to go before it s one o clock in the morning in Bagheria Sicily. And that s when I intend to hit him: in the wee small hours of the morning when all good men and true should rightfully be in their beds. Good men and true maybe said Korath. But what about monsters From what you ve said of him this Castellano is one of the worst. Well for an entirely human being that is. Jake could only agree. For neither he nor his dead vampire companion had any way of knowing just how close the latter had come to revealing the truth of it. Which was how things stood when they took the Mobius route back to Jake s hotel in Paris . . . Some hours earlier on the island of Krassos events had moved on apace. With the sun down and the dusky Greek twilight settling in Trask and his people had left the knoll where Liz and Chung had made their observations on Palataki and the monastery returned to the Christos Studios and commenced contingency planning for the night ahead. We now know more or less what we re up against Trask told the others where they gathered in his and Chung s accommodation. The monastery is Va vara s and so are its nun occupants. And you can feel sorry for them all you like but it won t help them. That s the way things are and there s no hope for any of them. lan will confirm that he s already seen them burning or rather that he s already foreseen them burning. But that could well be a symbolic thing as some of his forecasts have been in the past because God knows we don t have anything to burn them with However brutal it might sound I only wish we had Er excuse me Manolis quickly cut in. But it s possible there are other options on that front which might still be open to us. But please go on. I can explain when you re finished. Trask nodded and continued. So then: the monastery has to go and especially since Vavara has a houseguest Lord Nephran Malinari. Now that s a fact: we know that both Vavara and Malinari are in residence and that the monastery must have become some kind of hell for its rightful dwellers . . . they re already burning if you see what I mean. Perhaps that s what our precog has seen. He paused to glance at Goodly. But Goodly s face was gaunt even paler than usual and devoid of any message. Then there s Palataki Trask went on or the Little Palace as the locals refer to it. We can t be absolutely certain what s there but whatever it is it has to be of Vavara s doing. She s been here long enough to have created some sort of garden like that nightmarish cavern under the Pleasure Dome in Xanadu. It s mainly guesswork I admit but going on what Liz and David seem to file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 216 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt have detected there it s our best bet. Malinari Vavara and presumably Szwart too ... it looks like they ve been lying low while they created these bloody vampire mushroom farms. And I won t insult your intelligence by attempting to explain their purpose. But when I think of Szwart somewhere under London . . . my God Trask lurched upright clenched his fists in a mixture of fury and frustration and commenced pacing the floor in what little space there was. And when he d got himself under control again: So then what have we got going for us and what are we up against Or I ll put it another way. Since we seem to have very little going for us what s against us Well the answer to that is just about every bloody thing If I thought we had time to spare it might be possible to call for air strikes from a British warship in the Med. But for that they d need pinpoint accuracy grid references off an Ordnance Survey map simply wouldn t do it and we don t have our techs out here as yet. And of course this weather all of the sunspot activity and what have you is playing merry hell with our gadgets back home so that even if we could talk to our people we couldn t use satellite surveillance. So that s about it. It s highly unlikely we ll be able to call for naval support time definitely isn t on our side and the longer we sit twiddling our thumbs the greater the chance we ll be discovered. In which event there are two possibilities. One that Malinari and Vavara will try to take us out which seems unlikely he s met up with us before and knows we aren t a pushover. Two that they ll turn those nuns loose to cover their escape. I for one have had enough of Malinari escaping. I feel like I don t know like Nayland Smith I suppose on the trail of Fu Manchu: I want the bastard dead Trask stopped pacing flopped down on his bed and finally finished off with Well that s where we re at. Right now I m waiting to talk to London HQ let them know how things are and find out what s happening with them. But it s not all bad news. Yiannis stopped me as we came in he was all excited about the weather going on about how it s breaking over northern Europe and how the sunspot activity is easing off. Fine but even if I get a clear line later tonight still we can t expect any reinforcements before midday tomorrow. Until then we re on our own. So that s me done people and now it s your turn. I could use some clever ideas because frankly I m fresh out. . . He looked at Manolis said You had something to say Manolis nodded. Today on our way back from Skala Rachoniou myself and Andreas we went to take a look at thee marble quarry and thee airport. It s a Sunday nobody doing thee work . . . just security guards at both places. Huh Security guards But this is Greece or more especially a Greek island and security isn t what it used to be. No one tries too hard on an island where you can t make a getaway. And what is there worth stealing in a marble quarry anyway eh Or a deserted disused airport for that matter You tell me said Trask frowning. Dynamite said Manolis. In thee quarry a shack with a rusty padlock watched over by an ouzo soaked sleepy old man who looks more like a shepherd than a watchman. It will be how do you say it like taking thee lollipop from thee baby Candy said Liz. Ah yes thee candy Manolis nodded. Thee big sticks of very powerful candy. And at thee airport an underground reservoir of high octane aviation gasoline. Avgas Ben with access through a hangar. And standing in thee hangar a loaded tanker waiting for tomorrow morning to be driven to Krassos town and ferried across to thee mainland. At least that s where it was destined for. But now . . . Trask thought about it smiled grimly and asked Can you do it You and your men Can thee fishes swim said Manolis. So then here is my suggestion. Since my men aren t thee mindspies and can t be of use in that kind of surveillance we ll send them to make thee necessary er acquisitions which they ll later deliver to us at a prearranged time and location somewhere on thee coast road between Palataki and thee monastery. What do you say As Manolis s plan had unfolded Trask s eyes had lost something of their dullness. Now they gleamed where they looked for the approval of the rest of the team his gaze moving from face to face. Well he said. It s a very horrible thought lan Goodly couldn t manage to suppress a shudder but it would explain the burning. . . . And David Chung said A big tanker like that it could go right in through the monastery s gates tearing them open like tissue paper. And a stick of dynamite in the right place . . . file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 217 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt And Liz asked Manolis Isn t it a lot to ask of your men I mean are you absolutely sure they can do it But Manolis shook his head. Liz there are no absolutes no certainties here he said. So what can I tell you But if you re asking are they qualified . . . believe me they are more than equal to thee task. So how will they go about it Trask asked. I don t want the nitty gritty just the big picture. You ve obviously given it some thought. Manolis nodded. Stavros here was for three years a driver in thee Greek military. Anything with wheels he can drive it. But he goes with Andreas only as a passenger on thee first leg of their short trip. Trask said I see. Andreas drops him off close to the airport where he ll er appropriate the tanker. He will rescue it yes said Manolis. And while he does that Andreas will be driving on to thee quarry To rescue the dynamite Trask nodded. But dynamite is dangerous stuff. Manolis beamed. Precisely And before he joined me in thee drugs squad Andreas was with antiterrorism. He is thee expert with thee explosives. Andreas offered a slightly intimidating grin puffed up his massive chest sighed and gave a self deprecating shrug. But it has to be tonight Manolis reminded everyone for tomorrow thee tanker won t be there. And a thing as big as that thee biggest weapon in our arsenal we can t simply take it and hide it away until it is needed. If we re going to take it we re going to have to use it. Again Trask nodded. That s understood. He stood up. And the beauty of it is we still have some time several hours at least to make up our minds. Now I suggest we take a break in The Shipwreck. This place is much too confining and I feel shut in. We ll be a lot more comfortable in the bar and we can have Yiannis or Katerina fix sandwiches. If we stay apart from other guests and keep the volume down we should be able to talk just as well there as here. Good Lardis Lidesci grunted. I m hungry not to mention thirsty. Listening to you lot prattle on ... well it s very dry work. But if you re thinking of Metaxa Trask told him you re allowed just one. It s looking more and more like tonight could be the night. If so then later we ll be needing our wits about us. One last drink to success then said Manolis. It sounds good to me . . . The Shipwreck was empty. But the small television set above the bar was working. The evening news was showing and at long last it was watchable. As Yiannis had reported the sunspot activity seemed to be waning all the hissing and crackling the bilious flashes of static and the fading in and out no longer entirely obliterated either the sound from the speakers or the screen s images. It was still a far cry from being good but it was the best it had been for quite some time. Yiannis must have seen Trask and the others walking towards the bar for they had no sooner settled in their chairs than he entered and served drinks. They ordered toasted sandwiches and Yiannis made to go off into the small kitchen annex at the rear of the bar. But before doing so he paused and spoke to Trask. The news with Turkey is very bad he said. Another territorial dispute. The Turks are claiming Lesbos and Samos again. These islands are very close to the Turkish mainland and both governments are sabre rattling. It s all very worrying. It must be said Trask. On the other hand said Yiannis a sort of uneasy status quo has prevailed ever since the invasion of Cyprus in the sixties. So let s hope it s just another bout of bad tempered bluster. Perhaps it s this godawful interminable El Nino weather said Trask. While his face showed his understanding of Yiannis s concerns still he made light of them if only to ease the young Greek s mind and improve his mood. Ah but you could be right Yiannis grinned at last. So by all means let s blame El Nino. But as I believe I mentioned earlier the weather is finally breaking. A cloud belt is heading south and rain is expected as early as tomorrow afternoon. What a relief that will be And the sunspot activity Is definitely dying down said Yiannis. It s all been reported on the news. International lines and satellite communications are going to be fully operational again in just a few hours. In fact if you still want to contact London there s no reason why you shouldn t try now. Perhaps I ll do just that said Trask smiling and again making light of it despite that he felt like running for the phone Thanks for the tip. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 218 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt You re welcome. And Yiannis went off to make sandwiches. Trask waited until the young Greek was out of sight then stood up and told his people Save a bite for me. And as he sauntered from the bar: Right now I want to check my gadgets see if they re back on line. Or maybe I ll just try the phone in the admin building. Do you want company Goodly enquired. Trask shook his head. Stay here and eat. I ll be speaking to London and there s nothing you can say that I can t. Ask after Lissa Lardis called after him. Of course Trask answered looking back. And glancing at Liz before she could embarrass herself: I ll be asking after everyone. That s if I can get through. And then he was gone out of the door . . . An hour earlier in a London where the evening s dusk was just turning to a night that threatened storms: No one uses the tubes anymore Millicent Cleary thought to herself when some unspecified trouble on the line ahead caused Millie and the plainclothes Special Branch man escorting her to leave the train at King s Cross with maybe a dozen other stranded passengers. But then again can anyone blame them The Victoria Line was one of the few underground transport systems that still functioned at least in part and even that small handful was subject to frequent disruption. This was how it had been ever since the great flood of 2007. Rising sea levels and water tables higher tides and a Thames that regularly overflowed its banks the water came in faster than they could pump it out Many of the older tunnels had collapsed and been washed away some of the deeper systems were dry depending on the strata but had been made inaccessible or dangerous by the collapse of older shallower levels up above. Today s disruption was just one of many such that Millie had suffered when she travelled into the city from Finsbury Park. But this evening had been one of those evenings. First her escort s car had refused to start again when he picked her up then it had been impossible to find a taxi the train had come in late probably as a result of whatever problem it was that had now shut the line down and had then stood throbbing and vibrating in the station for so long that most of the passengers had got off and left. And now . . . . . . Now she gave a little cry as the high heel of her left shoe got jammed in a grating right there on the platform tearing the shoe right off her foot. Her escort a tall well built man in a light summer suit tut tutted as Millie hopped around on one foot commenting Just isn t your night is it luv Taking her arm and steadying her he went down on one knee and reported It seems this heel of yours is ubi well and truly stuck I m afraid. Damn it Millie replied hotly. What else can go wrong I wonder Looking along the platform she felt deserted experienced a kind of panic on seeing the last few disgruntled passengers hurrying into the various tunnels to the stairways and elevators. The train was already backing out of the station. But along there a grubby little man a very small man a dwarf even was climbing up onto a bench and reaching up with what looked like pipe cutters to the power cables running along the tiled arched curve of the tunnel. Now what on earth . . . There said Millie s escort. That s got it. Didn t want to break the heel off that s all. But coming upright with her shoe he saw the puzzled look on his charge s face changing to a frown and heard her gasp as Millie s telepathic probes collided with other thoughts in the psychic aether. My Lord a sinister mental voice was whispering in Millie s head. Your sabotage plan worked. She is here And we are fortunate. With the exception of one man she is alone Millie s eyes opened wide as her head jerked around to look the other way down the platform. A pair of nuns in black hooded robes were standing there just standing there watching her but their eyes were like yellow points of light in the shade of their cowls and the dark ugly thoughts or message had issued from one of them Then even as Millie s hand flew to her mouth it came again: My Lord do you hear me One of the nuns cocked her head on one side enquiringly. But the next thought that Millie heard came from someone or something entirely different: Yes heard you said that gurgling glutinous telepathic voice in Millie s head. And so did she I fancy But tell me is it darh Too late Millie s escort had seen the dwarf and the shower of sparks that met the little man s file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 219 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt efforts with the pipe cutters. What in the name of... In the next moment it went dark dark as night as all the lights went out but not before Millie had jerked her head and eyes in the direction of the new completely alien thought and stared down at the grating under her feet Down there she knew she d seen something moving ... a flowing motion like sentient sludge in the unknown gloom of the station s service levels. Then the grating tilted under her feet sending her sprawling and she heard her escort s cry of alarm and outrage as he was sent flying away from her. And in a moment floating out of the darkness the feral eyed nuns were upon her hauling Millie upright and fastening on her with hands like iron claws. And something black even blacker than the darkness was rising before her oozing up endlessly from the underworld and its voice was in her head saying: Be sure not to harm her. She is my prize my hostage and I don t want her damaged. Finally seeing its eyes and its jet black shapeless shape Millie knew what it was for certain. And as her worst nightmare reached out for her so she fainted. Following which . . . nothing. It had been Ben Trask s intention to go to the Christos Studios administrative building and try the telephone there but hurrying along the path between the chalets as he was about to pass the door to his and Chung s accommodation he heard a telltale beeping from within. NECROSCOPE: UEhlLhKb s His gadgets might indeed be back on line but it remained to be seen if they were working or just acting up. He swerved toward the door let himself in listened to the beeping. It was a portable fax in his briefcase under his bed. Someone was wanting to send him a message and only one someone sprang to mind: the duty officer at E Branch HQ. Trask yanked the briefcase out plumped it down on the bed took out the fax machine a flat half inch thick device just big enough to take A4 paper with a slot at one end a keyboard send and receive keys and a little red light that was blinking on and off apace with the beeping and shoved a sheet of paper into the slot before pressing the receive key. The machine purred and in a count of five the A4 sheet was propelled out again. Trask snatched it out of the slot and read it: BT: if you re getting gggx this please respond xtoup 1 g I have news. DO. There was some interference but at least Trask had got the message. He fed another sheet of paper into the slot and typed: I have a decoder. So send your stuff scrambled. Then after hitting the send key he drummed his fingers on the machine s casing and waited for the printed sheet to appear. When it did it read: I have a decrntpggoder. So send yourxtpgg stuff scrambled. As if it wasn t scrambled enough already But a lot better than nothing. And in went a third sheet of paper. This time he had to wait a minute then two three three and a half until he was just about to rave at the damn thing for going on the blink again but eventually the machine burped and ejected its coded message. Meanwhile Trask had taken the decoder a machine much like the first in shape and style but less complicated out of his suitcase. It had no keyboard and just one switch and contained its own printout paper. Now Trask pressed the switch and fumbled the sheet of gibberish into the decoder s slot. The machine scanned the message whirred and the decoded printout began jerking and stammering its way out of the slot. Trask couldn t wait so ripped it out and read: Aussie job finished. All clear. Shttpx n ggh I mrddgb redirecting the party to you. You can expect them by Tues first dhhggx light. Do you read If so more to follow ... And Trask spent several frantic minutes coding and sending: 3 BRIAN LUMLEY I read you good I have a request for tonight. Is HMS Invincible in range of Krassos Plan B refers. The fax lit up again Trask fed it a blank sheet out came the message asking him to wait while the duty officer got hold of a tech. He fed in another sheet and waited . . . eventually a coded message . . . the usual rigmarole and: No go on Plan B. Don t send coordinates. Two reasons. The Min Res meaning the Minister file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 220 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Responsible is here. Grttpxxgggeek radar and early warning systems are operational but functioning badly. They might blame Turkey. War in the Med. Two: Invincigtttx ble has satellite coordinated targeting. No good in darkgggttoh ggness unless previously programmed or guided in by satellite. Do you read If so more to follow ... And: Yes God damn you I read Trask rasped as he used the fax. He was so busy that he barely noticed that the precog lan Goodly had come in and was sitting at the foot of the bed reading the messages where he d thrown them down. After that it was five everlasting minutes before the last short enciphered text was delivered and decoded: Bad news. Sorry to report. Half anxxgj hour ago. Special Branch man down. He was hkkygg Millicent deary s escort. Not serious. He was able to call it in from King s Cross underground. But Millie is missing. Every available agent on it. We ll find her but you had to know. JG DO. And Trask just sat there reading the thing over and over and over. But lan Goodly precog that he was had seen it coming and was already out of the door. To hell with caution now. Plan B was a goner and they must revert to Plan A which had always been that they would deal with things themselves if they had to working it out as they went along. So thank God for Manolis Papastamos and his men That was how things stood and when Trask woke up from his current daze his disbelief and when his rage was on him in full that s how things would be ... 21 CONVERGENCE HELL ON EARTH AND UNDER IT Jake wore a thin strip of adhesive plaster under a black headband that served a dual purpose in keeping both the plaster and his braid in place. With charcoal stripes on his face and hands and dressed in black from head to toe he was almost as dark as the night itself. He carried a black sausage bag containing three bombs each made from three pounds of plastique plus Major Tom s haversack devices the thermite bombs that he d picked up in the Gibson Desert in Australia. In addition he d fashioned a lanyard for his Browning which he carried tucked snugly into his trousers this was a lesson he d learned from his temporary loss of the weapon following the firefight at Le Manse Madonie. The nite lite binoculars completed his equipment he wore them with their strap around his neck. At 12:30 A.M. local time he emerged from the Mobius Continuum at previously noted coordinates between Trabia and Bagheria less than a quarter mile south of Castellano s headquarters. It was the same vantage point from which he d studied the place on his earlier visit and the same problems waited to be resolved: he still had no notion of the internal layout of the house and no way of knowing how many of Castellano s people were in situ. The one thing in Jake s favour other than the Mobius Continuum itself : the night was dark under a slow moving cloudy sky and all good men and true should be in their beds. He hoped so anyway. Which I ve heard before said Korath and which I answered. This is no ordinary man Jake. Nor is he good and true. I can t help hut worry that this is your most dangerous venture yet. Mine and yours both Jake answered under his breath. For without me there s no you. You don t have to remind me said Korath. And o course I m worried or both our skins despite that mine is an empty one. BRIAN LUMLtY Kneeling in the cloud cast shadows behind a clump of rocks Jake frowned at the scene presented by his binoculars. Downhill and downwind from his location Castellano s stronghold looked even more forbidding than it had in full daylight. In the dense olive groves surrounding the house four evenly spaced blobs of ghostly grey light floated along narrow paths winding under the trees. Made visible by Jake s nite lites thermal imaging they were Castellano s men keeping watch on the perimeter. Following the heat trail of one of them Jake saw him go to the outer wall watched as he climbed stone steps saw him look out into the darkness in Jake s general direction. Jake wasn t too concerned for unless the man was equipped as he was equipped he wouldn t be able to see much of anything. And yet The short hairs at the back of Jake s neck prickled. He took a sharp breath ducked down took cover. It was a feeling that was all. No it was more than that: it was the very deliberate way the guard had looked out across the wall turning his head as if to slowly scan the rough gradually rising ground in the direction of Jake s position. That was what had caused Jake to take cover: the fear that he might be seen But bow seen in this darkest of nights Maybe this one had nite lites after all but Jake didn t think so. And the hairs at the back of his neck were still file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 221 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt prickling. Having seen what Jake had seen through his eyes and having felt his apprehension now Korath said There s something wrong here. Something strangely familiar about the feel of this place. And it isn t simply that we ve been here before. Frankly I don t like it at all. You and me both said Jake under his breath. This isn t a good place to be. I sensed that the last time we were here. But it s where I have to be if I want to get the job done. And I do want to get it done. Yes I know that now said Korath. And since I can t dissuade you I ll give you my fullest assistance. But still I say to you this place has dangers more than we perceive. Jake nodded eased himself into a more comfortable position from where he could look out again between the rocks and eventually answered An old or perhaps that should be new adage continues to apply. Just as you were a cautious one in life . . . Had to be Korath cut in in order to survive in Malinari s service. Well a deadspeak shrug for as long as I survived. . . . So you go on in death Jake finished. But this time it isn t like that Korath tried to explain. This time it s very different. This place is... too quiet. No it s unquiet Why even the teeming dead are silent here Jake remembered what Humph had told him at the site of the original Manse Madonie. This is Sicily he said. And as I ve just reminded you what the dead did in life they continue And I continue to tell you said Korath hotly that this is different Why don t you listen to me Jake Surely you can feel it for yourself The silence here is. . . absolute Haven t I told you how I eavesdrop on the dead in their graves But not here. Oh they may NhCKUbL UFt: LJtt lLtKb 3H I well be listening to us but they re not saying anything. They re not saying anything at all not even to each other And now as Jake saw the grey anthropomorphic blob get down from the wall and continue on its patrol through the olives he felt it too: the utter silence in the deadspeak aether. And he suddenly realized that he had become used to the whispers of the dead so much so that unless he concentrated they were less than a hiss of background static in the receptors of his metaphysical mind. But in this place even that hiss was absent as if the teeming dead held their breath . . . Exactly said Korath. As if they are waiting for something. For you to join them perhaps I hate to sound morbid but your future isn t looking too bright Jake. My future said Jake slowly lowering the nite lites. And again but more thoughtfully frowningly My future . . . Eh said Korath unable to read Jake s mind because as yet his thoughts weren t fully formed. Past and future Jake breathed the words out as his dead familiar began to get the idea. You intend to look through a future time door said Korath. You ll trace your blue life thread and so witness your survival... or whatever. Which in turn will determine your next step. But Jake shook his head. The future s a devious thing that can quickly lead a man astray he said. Harry Keogh rarely if ever risked looking at the future not in any great detail. But the past is there and there it will stay utterly immutable. No need to fear what s already happened for it can t be changed. Neither can the future said Korath. The thought is crystal clear in your mind. For which reason I daren t look at the future said Jake. For if I did I might try to change it and the future Would resent and resist it said Korath. Something like that yes Jake nodded. But what is past is past and it just might help us to know what we re going up against. So roll those numbers and we ll go down to the gates of that house. The house But you ll be seen No for we won t be there long enough. But I want to know who how many people have passed through those gates in the immediate past. And the only place I can find the answer is in the past Proximity Korath. Having passed through those gates that s where their life threads will show up in Mobius time. While explaining Jake had used his nite lites and chosen a spot under the wall close to the gates. And he d made sure that the fuzzy grey blobs were nowhere near. It took but a moment or no time at all to go to the coordinates that Jake had chosen and one more moment for Korath to roll the numbers a second time. Entering the Mobius Continuum Jake relocated to the coordinates of a file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 222 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt past time door. On the threshold it was NOW but in the far distance the blue nebula of mankind s birth was brilliantly lit and its myriad neon streamers or threads writhed outwards to the past time door itself. And one of the threads had a manlike cross section Jake s shape where it merged with him on the threshold seeming to push him ahead of it. My past Jake said then mindful that speech wasn t needed that even thoughts have weight in the Mobius Continuum. Only go back far enough and everything that I ve been that I ve done will be found somewhere along this thread. I too had a thread upon a time said Korath his deadspeak voice very small. Which came to an end when Malinari and Company broke your bones and crushed you into that pipe under the Romanian Refuge said Jake. If you were to fall through this door that s where you d end up back in the sump to relive everything that has happened to you since you died there over and over again forever. But my thread is a lifeline literally that we can follow into the past returning along it to the NOW when I ve learned what we re up against. Korath was nervous. Are you sure about that Jake I mean that we can get back safely You wouldn t be thinking of forcing me out back there. . . would you Yes I m sure Jake answered speaking with all the authority of the original Necroscope. And no I won t force you out. You re not thinking straight Korath. I need you tonight more than ever. And: Of course the other sighed his relief. Of course you do. Without giving it a second thought for if he had he might well have abandoned the idea Jake launched himself through the past time door willing himself backwards down the time stream. The blue threads the time trails of mankind appeared to accelerate towards him and the single note Ahhhhhhhhh sound of a celestial choir rose in pitch like a temporal Doppler effect as he sped into the recent past. And it was then that the truth became known . . . but such a truth Some of the blue threads racing towards him apparently on a collision course were rapidly changing colour. A good dozen of them merely tinged with pink at first were quickly losing their blue neon tints fading to azure with carmine cores and then And then turning a very distinctive a very uniform red. Bloodred At first Jake was stunned but then he reversed his plunge into the past turned and sped for the NOW. There leaving the past time door behind him he went directly to the coordinates of his vantage point and emerged shaken with Korath clinging to the rim of his mind. The dead vampire s voice was full of anxiety as he breathlessly inquired Did you see But of course you did for I saw through you. Oh yes I saw Jake answered his throat dry as dust and his own voice harsh and croaking. We go up against your kind Korath. Vampires Then for your life s sake and also for what I have come to know as life in you don t do it. But I have to Jake told him believing that he now knew what this was all about or some of it anyway. I can see it now. This is what Harry left undone. He told me that he d seen scarlet vampire threads crossing mine in future time. The same thing we ve just seen in the recent past. They haven t crossed mine yet because that s still to come. Tonight. You can avoid it if you want to. But I m not going to said Jake. What will be has been and in this case vice versa. Without that Harry understood it he knew he was responsible that something had survived that something lived on from the time of his lost years. This is it. It s what he was doing at the original Manse Madonie: destroying vampires. But one of them escaped his notice And came here And put himself about certainly He survived Korath. Anonymity is synonymous with longevity. He hid himself away in his own evil underworld a monster taking the shape of a drug running murderer. But isn t that one and the same thing Castellano The very beast Jake nodded grimly. Castellano and now his men. Yes I see said Korath. Recently in these last few days He has vampirized them as his undead bodyguard Exactly. We ve seen them changing from human to inhuman. But as yet we haven t seen the reddest thread of all. The boss himself is hiding in that place down there . . . which in itself speaks volumes tells me that he s afraid of me. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 223 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Of course he is for he has felt your wrath. But Jake you can t go up against them all. Not on your own. A dozen that we know of and their master Castellano and at least one lieutenant. . . A lieutenant such as yourself It gave Jake pause. You think that Luigi Castellano is Wamphyri He s no common vampire be sure Korath answered. Yes and now I know what it is that has been troubling me so ever since we arrived here. Looking at that house. . . why it was as if I looked at an aerie on Starside Then that s all the more reason why we must stop him now said Jake. We ve forced his hand. He s made vampires. And now if he survives he ll put them to use. We can t allow that. Then let s say our farewells now said Korath. For this is surely the end of you and of me What You ll attempt to go into that house knowing nothing of its mazy ways prowling to and fro planting your bombs and hope to go undiscovered And a house full of vampires at that all of them on the alert as witness these guards in the olive groves But this is madness Jake and you we cannot possibly succeed on our own But then: Jake said a different voice a once resolute voice but now sad tired disillusioned in the otherwise empty deadspeak aether. Zek s voice which Jake recognized at once. And: I tried Jake said Zek despondently. I or we for there are plenty of others on this side on your side who believe in you we ve tried. Indeed the argument is still raging on but the Great Majority have come to no firm decision. LJtflLtKb DK1AN LUMLtY How did you find me he asked her. know your mind now she answered. was a telepath remember And despite that you carry him with you your presence lights the dark like a softly glowing beacon. I m only sorry I couldn t bring you any better news sorry that the Great Majority no longer so great in my eyes seem intent on letting this thing play itself out to the end. Jake could only shrug. Don t worry about it. In my current situation I don t see that it matters too much anyway. I mean what could they do for me except mess me about My mind s cluttered enough already with Korath and with you and with the shattered memories of another Harry Keogh without that the Great Majority should get involved. I don t need their advice Zek and since that s all they can offer . . . But it isn t all that we can offer said another voice. And you do need our advice our help Jake. Yes even as much as we need you Necroscope. As if he had been tapped on the shoulder unexpectedly and in a strange dark place Jake had started violently on hearing this new previously unknown unannounced voice but in another moment he was more concerned than startled. For it was so brimming with pain this voice that it spilled over and he winced at the unthinkable sufferings it evinced. But physical pain In a voice from the grave from one who should be beyond all such mundane miseries And now Zek s gloom lifted and her voice was like a light shining in his mind when she said: Ahhhl Thank goodness Someone speaks up at last And see you re not alone Jake. Didn t I tell you it would be so Here is at least one who is willing to help you and he is not the only one. Indeed he s only the first of many. They ll rally to your call I know they will. Who are you Jake spoke to the stranger. Ask who I was said that one. My name is Georgi Grusev and I was a Russian criminal who tried to redeem himself by working as a spy for Gustav Turchin. Alas that Turchin didn t know what kind of danger he was sending me into though he would probably have sent me anyway and I couldn t possibly know the nature of the creatures I came to spy upon. Castellano said Jake. The same the shade of Georgi Grusev answered with a deadspeak shudder. A vampire him and his man both. His man You may call him a man for now said the other. Hi s name is Garzia Nicosia his master s right hand man yes but in fact they are both monsters. I saw their faces as they worked on me. At first they looked like men but later. . . they didn t. Worked on you Jake grimaced for from the tone of Grusev s voice he knew what kind of work that had been and that it was the source of the Russian s agony even now so intense that Grusev continued to feel it even in death. To what end To discover Turchin s reasons for sending me to spy on them. And Castellano also asked about you. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 224 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt But what could I tell him Nothing for I didn t even know your name. He asked about someone called Harry Keogh too and Alec Kyle and an organization called E Branch. And if I had known anything at all believe me I would have told him But none of what he asked meant anything to me so I told him nothing. Which only served to make him and Garzia Nicosia work with that much more . . . enthusiasm. So in fact you died for me said Jake with something of a catch in his throat. For it wasn t too hard to guess what had happened. Ben Trask must have asked the Russian premier to find Castellano and Turchin had sent Grusev here to verify the drug runner s whereabouts. Died for you said Grusev. For you and those others I spoke of Not really. I died because I didn t know anything about you. I was only here to confirm Castellano s whereabouts. But in any case I m fairly sure now that they would have tortured mutilated and murdered me anyway It is their nature after all. So let s get on for what s done is done and can t be changed. But it can and must be avenged Since it can only be avenged by you and since you seem to think you re in my debt I shall hold you to it. Grusev paused for a moment and then continued: Through all my pain which will abate I think as eventually I erase it from my memory I have sensed you near felt your warmth and listened to your thoughts. And I know you seek vengeance for others as well as for yourself. Ah but you can t ever know how many others or how very close they are Oh they are silent what else would you expect in a place such as this But they remember only too well Necroscope and their loathing of Castellano is no less for all their silence. I tell you this so that you ll know you re not alone in this thing. Not at all. Take my word for it Jake: once you start on this you won t be alone. Jake believed he understood. Grusev could only mean that he wouldn t be alone in spirit that all of Castellano s previous victims would be willing him on to win but he also knew that willpower wouldn t be enough on its own. Any solid information you can give me he said you know I ll be glad to accept it. And Georgi Grusev told him told him some of it at least : something of the layout of the house its sprawling cellars and secrets and gave him several coordinates he could use to good advantage. But he didn t tell him all of it. For if he had Then Jake might never have gone to work at all ... In Krassos it was 1 .45 A.M. local time the small hours of the morning and Ben Trask was cold now rather his mind was icy cold following hours of feverish and incapacitating horror. The horror of knowledge recognition and acceptance and of the contemplation of the unthinkable. But finally the fever was off him Manolis s plan of action was in place and all Trask could do was wait and think. Think back on it all but carefully and try not to go out of his mind again. The trouble with Millie had been bad enough no much more than that it had been hell on earth for Trask but then the rest of it ... it had all been too much. The precog lan Goodly had stepped in and taken over command when that message from E Branch HQ had sunk into Trask s brain: the fact that Millie Cleary s escort had been attacked knocked unconscious in the London underground and the fact that Millie herself was missing. Missing But that was only BRIAN L U M L h Y the half of it for Trask had known in his heart of hearts that Millie was now with Lord Szwart Yes he d gone a little mad when his only thought had been to be out of there to get the hell off Krassos and back to London England as quickly as possible and join the search for Millie but at last the other members of the team had managed to convince him that there was nothing he could do. Then after he d realized that he wasn t any longer in any fit shape to run the show he d handed things over to the precog. And just as well for the worst hadn t yet been. But it had been coming and in short order. And now Ben Trask thought back on it all ... Just after midnight they had gone out in all three vehicles to carry out a final reconnaissance of Palataki and the monastery. To all intents and purposes the island had seemed dead most of the late break tourists had gone home back to England and Germany or wherever and the street and house lights in Skala Astris had been almost outnumbered by those of a small handful of fishing vessels on the wine dark sea. Like the abandoned ghost town in some old Western movie the last twenty four hours had seen Krassos turn into a ghost island. In one way that was a good thing: with all the action that had been planned for tonight they wouldn t want too many observers to many innocent bystanders getting involved which was why timings were so important. For it was all set to happen in the small hours of the morning when file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 225 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Krassos was fast asleep and the undead were wide awake. It was important that they were all up and about that none remained hidden away in some secret crypt or other where they might go undiscovered. The way Goodly saw it and Trask too when he was better able to focus his mind between bouts of red rage Malinari and Vavara had done a superb job of trapping themselves. The monastery stood on a jutting promontory and likewise Palataki with only one access route to each location and no other easily identified exits or escape routes. Both places faced outwards to the sea looking down from sheer cliffs and in fact the former had been built on the very edge and was surrounded by deep water on three of its four sides. The monastery yes when the tanker of avgas ripped out its guts any survivors of the blast would have to come out through the wrecked gates to escape the inferno. There they d come under fire from Trask if at that time he felt up to it along with Manolis his man Stavros and Lardis Lidesci. Meanwhile Andreas would have joined up with the second task force consisting of Goodly Chung and Liz who waited near the entrance to Pala taki s approach road and would have shared with them his stolen dynamite and instructed them in its use. Then when Manolis contacted them by mobile phone to order them to action they would commence their assault on the Little Palace. This last had been calculated to take a lot longer than the grisly work at the monastery Palataki had its vast underground system of mine tunnels after all and the wooded slopes of the elevated feature where it stood would offer cover to any man or thing trying to escape from the explosions and subsequent small arms fire. But with any luck Manolis and his team would soon be finished with their business at the monastery and able to join up with the second group to finish the job at Palataki. That had been their basic almost rudimentary plan. But all of it still to come still some two hours in the future as the three groups had driven out with lowered lights from the Christos Studios a little after midnight two of them to carry out a final recce of the target locations and the third on a thieves mission to the airport and marble quarry. All of which had been one hour and forty five minutes ago. But between then and now disaster And while Trask continued to think back on it principally he thought of the one thing that no one had taken into account: that while their task seemed to have been made less complicated by virtue of the island s rapidly dwindling number of tourists so had their own eventual discovery. For if Vavara and or Malinari suspected that E Branch was here it had now become a very easy thing to track them down using a simple system of elimination. Out of the few dozen remaining foreigners Trask and his people were a collective that would have been hard to miss. Therein had lain the seeds of his near collapse . . . Because Liz was a telepath and this was a night reconnaissance when the mentalist Malinari might be expected to be active she had been left behind at the Christos Studios. At any other time the precog lan Goodly would have left someone with her just to be on the safe side. This time however he couldn t afford it. Every member of the two recce teams was vital to their success and not a man of them could be spared. Trask was better off in the company of his closest colleagues despite that he had been badly shaken his lie detector intelligence in such matters was invaluable. Lardis Lidesci was needed if only for his sense of smell the fact that he could sniff out one of these creatures almost on sight. The locator s talent was completely indispensable Chung would know it at once if anything had changed since he d last scanned the two areas of vampiric infestation . . . and so on. Manolis considered it important that he have a last look at the monastery just to be sure in his own mind that his plan would work and of course the precog lan Goodly himself must be present on the off chance that his unpredictable temporal abilities would allow him a glimpse of whatever was to come. A shame that the precog s talent wasn t working at the time we set out Trask thought. But there again who could blame lan Goodly The future was like that and there was no getting round it. And surely if anyone was to blame it was Trask himself. But at the time his mind hadn t been focussed his thoughts had been somewhere else his lie detecting talent had been knocked right out of sync by LJ t t i L t K the devastating news from HQ. And so what he d seen the truth that he d failed to recognize hadn t impressed itself upon him until it was much too late . . . file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 226 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt He had been in the back of Manolis s four wheel drive as it left the Christos Studios and drove down the side street to the main road through Skala Astris. As the last vehicle in the convoy of three its dipped headlight beams had smoked where they cut through a fine haze of dust thrown up by the lead vehicles. And as Manolis had turned right onto the main road then Trask had looked back through the rear window. His own window was wound down as were they all for the night had turned warm and airless again and a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes had found its way inside. That was why Trask had turned his face away to avoid the dust cloud. But as he had looked back through stinging watery eyes so he had thought to see something: two of Skala Astris s elder citizens as he had then believed them to be standing with their heads close together in a shop dooway. Two females yes in what looked like the standard black garb of Greek peasant women they d quickly turned their faces away and drawn back into the shadows of the doorway . . . possibly to avoid the same cloud of dust thrown up by the cars. And that had been that. . . Then the lead vehicle containing Andreas and Stavros had accelerated and pulled away leaving the other two contingents to get on with their recce. In Trask s vehicle Lardis had sat up front beside Manolis in the car in front David Chung was the passenger with Goodly at the wheel the idea being that the pair would probably work better in tandem hitching rides as it were on each others incredible talents . And so they d allowed a quarter mile of distance to develop between the cars driving first past the Little Palace standing almost unseen behind the pines on its gloomy knoll like feature then three miles farther along the coast road to the spot where Manolis had been forced into his precipitous dive into the sea and finally on to the gauntly looming shadow shrouded monastery on its promontory jut standing sentinel over its terrible secret and the deep dark ocean both. A mile beyond that Goodly had turned his vehicle around in a lay by stopped to get out and wave Manolis down and the five men or at least four of them had put their heads together and spent a few minutes of precious time in voicing their opinions. The fifth man Trask himself lost in his own thoughts had simply gone to the sheer side of the road to stand looking out over the sea. As for the other four: David Chung who was probably the most important of them all this time out had led off. Things have changed. Not drastically but they ve changed. Previously when Liz and I looked at Palataki we saw I don t know a mindless seething something life of a sort I suppose but what kind of life I just can t say. Maybe it s one of those mushroom gardens like the one under the Pleasure Dome in Xanadu. But the place did have a vampire caretaker most likely Vavara s lieu tenant. Well that was then and this is now. As we passed by Palataki tonight I was giving it everything I ve got my full concentration and while that seething something hasn t much changed the lieutenant has. That is he s no longer there but something else is. I detected a much stronger force but only very briefly. It was there and it was gone as if perhaps it had sensed my probe withdrawn shut itself down. Vavara Or Malinari It could have been either one. But I m pretty certain that it was Wamphyri As to whether or not there were thralls in attendance: I don t know can t say. For this one s aura was so strong it overshadowed everything else. But as the locator had finished speaking so Trask had come to his senses and rejoined the group. Probably Vavara he had husked then. Tending her garden. But that s simply an educated guess and by no means a certainty. I m not sure of the truth of anything anymore. But it s a cleverly reasoned guess Goodly had joined in for what would Malinari be doing at Palataki I can t see that the territoriality of the Wamphyri would allow for that. But in any case there s only one of them there so it s academic. And Manolis had added Being separated may even have weakened them. I would rather take them on one at a time than both together. Then Lardis Lidesci had turned to Chung. David what else did you sense I mean at the monastery. Maybe that ll give us a clue as to who s at Palataki. Myself I could smell vampires in both places. And he d been right for Chung had answered I sensed that same lying outer shield the facade that we saw before. Perhaps it s there as a permanent stamp of Vavara. But this time I knew what to expect and looked much deeper and so saw that this so called monastery is the pits of some weird sort of hell And its women once nuns are burning in helll the precog had nodded. Just the way I saw them. Maybe they were Chung had continued. Maybe some of them still are but that s not how it felt. It felt colder than deep space and made my flesh creep. It was as if I d located an ice cold cesspit and they were all wallowing in it. Think about it if you dare. Everything those file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 227 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt dedicated women have kept bottled up inside them all their lives everything they ve denied themselves it s all out now and they re revelling in it Which is about what you d expect Trask had nodded. They are Vavara s now and there s not one of them who we can save. At which Chung had nodded his reluctant corroboration. I m sorry to have to say it but I couldn t detect a spark of human decency in the entire place. Then Goodly had turned to Manolis. How s your plan looking now It looks good and it s thee only plan we ve got Manolis had answered. That parking area in front of thee monastery it allows plenty of manoeuvering space for thee big tanker. Anyway it s far too late to try to change anything now. By now Stavros is halfway to thee airport. Thee tanker is as good as his. When he meets up with Andreas before they return to us then he will have thee fuse a stick of dynamite with which to light thee greater bomb NECROSCOPb U h h I L h K So that s it the ever gaunt Goodly had nodded his cadaverous head curtly. Now we go back to the Christos Studios for Liz deploy to our locations and wait for Stavros and Andreas to meet up with us . . . A glance at his watch. Which they re all set to do in just a little over an hour from now. And on the way back I ll try scanning those places again Chung had told them. See if I can get a better reading. So much for that final recce. Almost everything had seemed to be working as scheduled at least until they d returned to the Christos Studios. . . Trask shivered where he sat in the back of the car back at the lay by a mile east of the vampire ridden monastery and felt the shivers travel right through his body from head to toe. So maybe the cold wasn t simply in his mind and soul after all but also in his bones a more natural physical location. Which has to be good he thought for we ll need to be cold all of us and in all our parts if we re to do what has to be done. But me especially. Burning myself up won t do any good but an ice cold finger on the trigger may yet shoot a silver bullet or two through the hearts of these alien bastards And thinking back on the rest of it on the reason why he felt so cold in his body his mind and his soul Trask knew he was right and that he must stay this way until this ugly business was brought to a close . . . They had returned to Skala Astris in reverse order: which is to say Manolis had been first away with Goodly following on half a mile behind. And this time Trask had sat in front beside Manolis while Lardis occupied the backseat. But as Manolis had approached the monastery so he d slowed down on being met by a blaze of headlights that came from a car heading towards him. And it was only when the other vehicle had swung right off the road after its headlights turned away from them that they d seen what sort of car it was and where it was going. Then as it turned into the parking area in front of the monastery and kept going Manolis had gasped: Vavara s limo Thee car that rammed me into thee sea It s gone in through those great gates Lardis had cried from where he gazed through the rear window. Through the gates and into the monastery. But the windows in front were down and I saw the driver and front seat passenger. They were black clad nuns of course. Two of Vavara s women . . . And even now in the lay by those words came back to haunt Trask: Black clad nuns of course. .. two of Vavara s women. For it was only then that he had realized how totally he d come to rely upon his lifelong talent and how miserably insecure he d become without it how badly he d let the side down by losing his grip on things and letting it slip away. But finally as the Old Lidesci s words had sunk in so Trask s weird talent had returned to him at least in part and he d known the truth: Black clad nuns. . . two of Vavara s women For despite that he had been dazzled he d seen them too as the big black limo turned off the road towards the monastery. And in that selfsame moment he had known where he d seen them before Then: Turn around Trask had cried out to Manolis. We have to go back right now and in through those gates Eh Are you mad But Manolis had slowed down more yet. We can t do that Lardis had gasped his protest from the backseat. What and drive headlong into a hornet s nest Anyway the gates are closing even file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 228 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt now. Then drive on Trask had howled grasping Manolis s arm. Drive like hell for Skala Astris and pray that I m wrong But he hadn t been. At the Christos Studios even as Manolis brought the four wheel drive skidding to a dusty halt Trask had been out of his seat and striding for the chalets. But Katerina Yiannis s wife had been there almost as if to meet him. Carrying a tray with a glass of milk and a plate of sandwiches she d looked more than a little bemused. Twenty maybe twenty five minutes ago she d told Trask Liz asked me for sandwiches. I having to work late anyway so I make some sandwiches for her. Now she is not here. Maybe she takes thee night swim eh By which time Manolis had come from behind to take Trask s arm. He d also taken the tray from Katerina telling her You are probably right. But don t worry I will make sure she gets thee sandwiches. Thank you. But as Katerina excused herself and headed for the administration building Trask had suddenly gone weak at the knees. Staring at Liz s chalet trembling violently in all his limbs and shaking his head in disbelief he d stammered The lights are on and the door . . . the door s open Try not to think thee worst my friend Manolis had tried to calm him. But Trask had wrenched himself free saying: What Don t think the worst You bloody idiot I know the worst Surely you can see it They saw her lights burning and she answered the door thinking it was Katerina Liz Oh my God Liz That was when Manolis had grabbed Trask more fiercely yet and as Lardis came on the scene he too had helped. But that look on Manolis s face had been sufficient warning Trask that if he didn t quiet down and get a grip on himself immediately the somewhat younger rock hard Greek policeman wouldn t hesitate to do something about it By then the other car had arrived it had taken just a few seconds to explain what was happening they d all gone in different directions searching for Liz And not finding her . . . Half an hour earlier: It was a little after 11:15 P.M. local time which is to say Greenwich mean time when Millie Cleary regained consciousness in a dry musty smelling darkness. She checked the time by risking the oh so slight motion involved in BRIAN LUMLtY opening her eyes to slits and glancing at the luminous dial of her wristwatch. This was an habitual instinctive thing almost a reflex reaction to dawning consciousness Millie always checked the time on waking up. But while 11:15 was when she came to and easily ascertainable the where of it was something else entirely. That she was underground seemed undeniable Millie vaguely remembered something of her nightmarish descent to this place but where and how deep underground . . . who could say And then remembering how she d been taken and by whom and on feeling a certain stiffness in her neck Millie s first truly coherent thought was: Ob my good God: Don t let it be Please don t say it s happened But then as her left hand flew to the slender column of her neck massaging both sides under the ears and searching for telltale punctures so a voice came to her out of distance and darkness saying: You need not concern yourself little thought thief. For it has not happened. . . not yet. First I require you to see what I have done to know what I will do and of your own free will to acknowledge me your lord and master. Also I will require you to explain certain problematic matters of the outer world so that in good time I may give them my attention. And finally when we better understand each other when I know what you know of this E Branch and its slayers who are even renowned to have killed such beings as myself then I shall make you more truly mine immortal within certain strictures and send you into the world to do my bidding. My emissary and plague bearer both aaaaye Szwart Millie gasped his awful name into the almost tangible darkness which to her five cringing mundane senses felt like so much black velvet. And: Indeed that gasping rasping gurgling voice answered in her head. am the Lord of Darkness and the Master of Might. But Szwart Simply Szwart Ah no For I am Lord Szwart to such as you little thought thief. Where am I Millie found herself whispering. And far more to the fearful point: Where . . . where are you file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 229 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt am about my business and may not be disturbed. I spoke to you because I sensed that the fear in your mind might kill you. Such a strong mind in such a frail entirely human body. An odd paradox is it not that one such as you with mentalist powers almost the equal of my own which I admit are only middling for a Great Vampire should be so utterly at the mercy of your own darkling fears Hah I suppose that it s all in the mind eh Oh ha ha haaa His mental laughter was numbing and the silence that followed it terrifying until eventually he continued. Ah but your sweet human body is frail and I do not want you rushing blindly to and fro in the darkness perhaps dashing yourself down from a high place and so becoming . . . useless to me. As to where you are you are in just such a high place and I counsel you not to move too suddenly or too far. While Szwart had spent time talking to her Millie s eyes had gradually grown accustomed to the no longer utter darkness. Now as he fell silent she thought to detect movement: a dimly flickering light source that periodically disappeared only to come on again but closer. And something else: she began to hear soft footfalls and a faint wheezy breathing. Millie was lying on her right side on what felt like an old mattress. Stretch ing out her left arm and hand in front of her she felt soft dirt where the mattress lay on the ground. Straining her eyes to look beyond the mattress s rim she saw an edge of hard darkness like a solid beneath the liquid velvet of the upper air and beyond that sensed a great emptiness. She lay on the edge of some subterranean chasm hence Szwart s warning not to rush to and fro or even move too suddenly. But what is this place Millie wondered this time guarding her thoughts. The last thing she needed was a conversation with Lord Szwart. And now she unfroze her mundane senses and called them into play despite their unwillingness. It wasn t cold but it wasn t too warm the temperature was adequate. Behind her against what felt like a vertical wall of rock a blanket lay rumpled where it had been thrown aside. For a single moment Millie allowed herself to touch and identify it before snatching back her hand. She didn t know who or what had lain in it. A cliff in front and a solid wall of rock behind she must be lying on a ledge. But how high above the floor of the chasm The flickering light source was closer and steadier now a candle It must surely be and likewise the slow shuffle of feet the sound of almost asthmatic breathing. The candle was perhaps eight feet below Millie s position on the ledge she must therefore be some twelve feet above the actual floor and it seemed to be advancing over a fairly even surface. For the time being so much for touch and sight. As for hearing: the place was an echo chamber. It had acoustic qualities. She only discovered that fact now when for the first time she let herself breathe more easily without holding it to a whisper and was at once conscious of the air whistling in her lungs and out through her mouth its sound amplified by this cavern of darkness. The beat of her heart too: its thudding was like the steady pounding of some distant trip hammer. Moving to the edge of the mattress she reached out again her hand creeping to where the floor suddenly fell away. But in doing so she dislodged a pebble from the rim in a split second it landed with a small clatter which was followed by a multitude of fading hollowly clattering echoes. And: Ah So you ve come to ave you A human voice that seemed short of breath coming from the direction of the candle s tiny flame a wheezy whisper that yet carried easily in the dark so that even the whisper had its echoes. The motion of the candle had stopped now it came on faster and the footfalls a little heavier. And behind the candle holding it up a tortured shape that Millie at once recognized from earlier. Small and humpbacked this could only be the dwarfish man she had seen on the underground railway platform before the lights went out. The little man who had put the lights out. One of Lord Szwart s creatures obviously. My only one now said Szwart in her mind causing Millie to start because for a moment she d let her guard down. Or rather he was the only one. But now I have you too. He s not the most handsome of men to be sure. But then again who am I to criticize In any case don t be afraid. Wally will not harm you. He knows of your importance to me. Your o y o e Millie couldn t help but think it . What of those women and Andre Comer Ah yes those women Szwart repeated her mockingly Millie thought . And Andre Corner. Hmmm He paused as if to consider it. Well Vavara s women have served their purpose. And as for Mr. Corner an expert in the minds of men who couldn t have fathomed mine not even in a hundred years he is a long time gone. But he was useful in his way. He guided me to London and told me of file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 230 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt older gloomier places in lightless burrows beneath. But then I discovered this forgotten realm the most ancient of all Londons since when I have made it my own. Millie shuddered and Lord Szwart felt it. You find me ugly don t you he growled then very menacingly. My person and even my thoughts. Ugly aye. Very well then so be it And enough of this for now Until I return in person better for you that you guard your thoughts well little thought thief and be sure not to distract me further. Lord Szwart is about his businessss. . . Szwart was gone instantly from Millie s mind. But the hunchback Wallace Fovargue was closer now and for the time being he was a more physical reality if not an actual threat. Millie had seen the candle s glow vanish somewhere to the left of her dark horizon some distance beyond her feet but from the same direction she could still hear Wally s heavy breathing as he climbed some sort of stairway to her level. Now the candle came swaying up into view and Millie saw that in fact it was an ancient oil lamp with the wick turned low. And behind that dim glimmer Wally himself like a lumpish monochrome menace from an antique horror film. With Wally approaching her along the wide ledge Millie got to her knees facing him. In doing so she felt her frilly blouse fall open unbuttoned where it had been pulled from her trouser band and felt the cups of her bra cutting her flesh where they had been lifted up over her breasts to expose them. She quickly adjusted her clothing tucked the blouse in again then held up her hands before her defensively with her fingers crooked into raking claws. I warn you she said gaspingly. Don t try anything. Wally had seen her fumbling with her blouse and had come to a halt. Er about your clothin he whispered then his voice surprisingly timid panting like a dog. It appened when I ... when I dragged you up ere. But you shouldn t be thinkin I did it delib rately cos I wouldn t do somethin like that without. . . without permission. I don t need to see cos I ave ... I ave my pictures. The senses of sight hearing touch and now smell. And Millie couldn t help thinking: God forbid taste But smell was the most recent sense activated and it was one that she could well have done without. For the stomach wrenching stench that wafted from the ex flusher Wally was one of ordure London s sewers in full flood. It was even on his breath carrying to her across a distance of six or seven feet so that she must literally turn her face away. As if reading her mind Wally drew back a pace and said I don t look much I s pose and I prob ly smell a bit rank but that s the place. It s the gettin ere what does it. The mucky ways you as to go an all the manoeuv rin in tight spots. But hey you don t smell so good yourself now. You re still pretty though. And nice to ... to touch. Touch: the fifth sense and Wally had crept forward an inch or two on the ledge his free hand half raised. Millie s vision was improving moment by moment helped by the lamp no doubt but also of necessity. Now in relative close up she saw the dwarf s patchy flaky face his raw ravaged scalp where tufts of hair had fallen from the scabby pink surface under his slipped halo. And: You . . . you re sick she said without intending a double entendre but recognizing it immediately. I mean you look ill. And I wish you wouldn t stare at me like that. Sick he repeated her letting his hand fall to his side again. 111 That ll be the epatitis I s pose. They told me I might become a carrier. Or p raps it s the Weil s disease what you gets from rat s piss. The azards of livin in a place like this. Anyway e said as ow I should show you the place show you is andiwork while e s testin the flue. Are you up to it Can you walk Oh an by the way I m Wally. Millie ignored the hand that Wally again held out to her stood up and said He Do you mean Lord Szwart And if you do do you know what Szwart is Do you know he s a vampire who will drink your blood if he hasn t already Eh Eh Wally started glanced all about licked suddenly dry lips and turned up the wick of his lamp. A vampire A monster Oh I knows all that I know e can come in the dark too an you won t never see or hear im. An I know that if I think too ard e knows what I m thinkin Eh Why e can even speak to me from miles away cept I m not too smart at such as that an can t make ead or tail of it. But I knows what e wants me to do okay an does it quick like. So will you if you ve any sense. Millie nodded. And do you know what he doesn t want you to do That he doesn t want any harm to befall me Wally looked at her slyly handed her the lamp and began to turn away then paused and over his malformed shoulder said I knows that too. But there s arm an there s arm. I mean it s uman comp ny what s important right An it s not like a bit of touchin can do any arm now is it Touchin an a bit of a cuddle p raps I mean we re a very long way file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 231 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt down lady an for you there haint no goin up again less e sends you. By which time you ll be is an you ll always come back to im . . . an to me. Arter all it s uman comp ny what s important right Millie shuddered uncontrollably and said Turn up the lamp a little more and let s see the place. I might easily fall. Turn up the lamp Wally said. Well since e s not ere I s pose I might. But e don t care for too much light so if you should ear im comin you must tell me. If I hear him coming Millie answered following after the dwarfish figure where he led on and looking about for something to hit him on the head with. I should have thought you d recognize his approach sooner than I. Two eads work better than one Wally answered. And mine haint workin too good at all these days. Again his sly glance back at her. The rest of me s in fair workin order though. They were down the stone stairway and onto the floor of the place which Millie saw was a vast cave. Just how did you find this place she asked her guide. How deep under London are we anyway Me I didn t find it Wally answered. Lord Szwart found it. Don t arsk me ow. But men was ere before im. Romans I reckon two tharsand years ago As for ow deep: well four or five Saint Pauls s Cathedrals easy. Romans Millie gazed on a floor fashioned from hexagonal stone flags that were inches deep in dust in places and close to hand a sunken area tiled in decorative if grimy mosaics it could only be a Roman bath. Look there Wally directed her against the wall. Them statues to Mithra Summanus an the others. She held up the lamp and looked. Crudely hewn from stone a row of ten feet tall statues leered down at her from raised pedestals. A sun crowned Mithra with a hammer in one hand and the head of a bull in the other appeared especially sinister. The radiating rays of his sun crown looked more like serpents. And next to him a figure Millie didn t recognize it was naked and manlike but didn t appear to have a mouth. Where its navel should have been a tapering tentacle stuck out from its belly. Summanus Wally wheezed. E was a rare one. We ve never known much abart im. But from the looks of it e wasn t much shaped like us. Metamorphic said Millie. He might even have been Wamphyri She turned to her loathsome escort. You seem to know a lot about these things . . . British Museum Wally chuckled. I ve read up on em I as. As for all the others they s been defaced. See Millie held out her lamp again and saw that he was right: the other statues had been hacked about. Their faces were gone along with various limbs and one of them lay over on its side. Some secret society must ave ad this place said Wally. Them Romans sect members would come darn ere to worship. But they ad their fads their gods came an went an event ally them Romans went with em. This is all that s left. And no one else knows this place even exists Despite her circumstances Millie found it fascinating. And you . . . you ve been to the British Museum to research all of this It seemed incredible. Plenty of times Wally answered. But not durin hopenin ours you understand. See I knows other ways of gettin in. And you know the way up from this place too said Millie. You could show me the way out. Could said Wally. Won t. E wants you ere. An come to think of it so does I. That sly look was on his face again as he took a step closer. Millie backed off until the backs of her knees struck against something and she sat down ... on a raised slab of cold stone. That s a sacrificial dais that is Wally grunted and he was speaking low no longer wheezing. Them Romans did a bit o that now an then. Specially in a secret place like this. Yes she gasped quickly standing and putting the massive slab between them. I can see how they might have. But tell me why doesn t anyone know this place is here Wally shrugged. What good is a secret place that everyone knows abart An it was a long time ago. Since then all kinds of landslides small quakes collapses. 1 was a flusher been all through the underworld I ave every sewer an tunnel an waterway an I never found it. But Szwart er Lord Szwart e as a thing for deep dark places. An they don t come much deeper or darker than this. He had begun edging round the sacrificial slab towards her when Millie noticed something: a strange flickering glow from a place where the cave bottlenecked under a natural rock arch. And file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 232 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt as Wally reached for her as for the first time she noticed the great width of his shoulders and his hugely muscled upper arms she said Perhaps that s Szwart coming now. Eh What Wally literally danced in sudden fright twirling like a grotesque ballet dancer his head and eyes jerking this way and that. That light said Millie. From beyond the arch there. Eh Wally panted his breath coming in foul wheezy gasps again. And then with a sigh Oh that But the sly look was gone now as he said Come on then an I ll show you. Arter all e said I was to show you what e d fashioned darn ere. Me I d ave said grown but e said fashioned. Following the little man to where the hexagonal flags gave way to dry crumbly earth and passing under the natural arch Millie saw what Lord Szwart had fashioned. She no longer needed the oil lamp but held on to it anyway if only as a weapon for Szwart s garden had its own illumination: a blue bioluminescence covering an area some twenty feet in diameter in the even greater cavern beyond the archway. The light was given off by what was growing there in that sunless loam half a mile under London: a subterranean garden of black vampiric fungi. Black mushrooms clustering there their domes glistening with what looked like sweat their distended gills heavy with spores. Deadspawn as E Branch had come to term it But while the mushrooms were rooted in that lifeless soil it couldn t possibly be the source of their nourishment. Then when Millie saw what was: that pair of black hooded garments nun s robes habits lying crumpled to one side where they had been strewn with a small pile of undergarments . . . . . . For a moment her mind went blank so that she scarcely heard what Wally was saying to her or to himself in a small awed voice. E reckons as ow they don t really need to feed murmured the little hunchback but that this lot will be just like mother s milk to her babies an their issue will be that much stronger. As for meself what would I know I says as ow e s probably right. But Gawd haint it a mess And Wally was right it was a very terrible mess indeed. . . 22 JAKE HIS CALL IS ANSWERED. E BRANCH THE ASSAULT ON THE MONASTERY. Scarcely able to accept the evidence of her own senses not daring to believe her eyes Millie s hand flew to her mouth. Stifling a scream and suppressing the rising of her gorge she stared in horror first at the pile of discarded clothing then at the fungi but especially at that bloating mushroom garden and prayed that she wasn t going to pass out again. Only an hour or two had passed since Millie had seen these terrible women in a London tube station. It could only be Lord Szwart s incredible metamorphic power something in his monstrously alien nature that accounted for such as this in so short a time. For now in the middle of the cluster Millie saw a mound or tangle of pale throbbing pinkish blue flesh Human flesh A rounded thigh was clearly discernible and a slack face with one eye closed while the other stared vacantly also a lolling breast with its large nipple standing weirdly erect And in and around those slumped not quite corpses a writhing nest of protoplasmic conduits bloodily pulsing external arteries of monstrously mutated flesh was siphoning nutrients from this fresh human compost and feeding them in a thin spray to the dead soil and so to the deadspawn mushrooms. The living beating hearts of these once nuns were pumping out the liquids of their own bodies Godl Millie gasped then as she felt her senses begin to slip away. But Wally caught her held her up led her stumbling to a boulder and leaned her against it. And as he took the lamp from her and lifted it high: Listen he said cocking his head on one side. Listen What said Millie sickly. What The flue said Wally. E s finally got it open. A passage to the overworld for the wind to blow an carry is plague to mankind. That s ow e says it ll work anyway. And now she could hear it a wind coming up as if out of nowhere and see it too in her mind s eye: a flue a shaft an ancient chimney to the over world now unblocked by Szwart to create a draft and carry his deadspawn up into the world of men . . . into the heart of London Resilient lady that she was finally Millie s legs couldn t any longer support her. She remained conscious but only barely so. She felt the hunchback half dragging and half carrying her back into the lesser cave. But massively built as he was still it took time. Time to get her up onto file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 233 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt the slab not as a sacrifice no but as a sex toy time to fumble her blouse open and wrench her bra loose and time to lift her lower body yanking her trousers and panties down to her ankles thus exposing her to the lamplight and his own bloodshot eyes. And there he stood in all his triumph masturbating wildly and mumbling Better than pictures Much better than any dirty fuckin pictures But why play with himself when for the very first time in his life he could be into a real woman Szwart s orders were entirely forgotten now as Wally dragged Millie to the end of the slab opened her thighs and got between them. Millie knew what was happening looking into Wally s warped mind she knew he would do it But as he leaned over her and as one hand slid under her: Ah no my son came that voice in Millie s head and also in Wally s. She knew it from the way he suddenly stiffened his hands jerking back from her. And as finally she forced her eyes to focus she saw what Szwart did to him. That great head with its crimson burning eyes That night black shape standing there silhouetted in faltering lamplight That outstretched arm and hand or was it a hand reaching for Millie s tormentor hovering over his misshapen back. For a single brief moment it looked like a hand and then didn t. For incredibly its digits had reshaped themselves and melted into a two pronged claw And while it was fluid one moment that crablike claw in the next it was plated with blue gleaming chitin with one sharp stabber and one serrated cutting edge. And finally: My son Szwart gurgled I treated you fairly and have been good to you. I Szwart who am not much known for my goodness have been good to you as none before me. But you . . . have been bad. My orders are for obeying my son and he who cannot obey them cannot live with me. For the miserable thing that you are you have served me well but your service is now at an end. . . in one respect at least. Ah but the garden which I have made also has its needs especially now that the way is opened. .. No said Wally just once as the claw descended. Millie heard a rending schluckl sound and as Wally was dragged away from her the crunch of his malformed backbone being severed. The last thing she saw before fainting was the great black shadow moving away dragging Wallace Fovargue after it towards the blue flickering archway . . . p I As fate would have it Jake Cutter s assault on Luigi Castellano s principal residence and headquarters in Sicily commenced only a few minutes before E Branch s two pronged attack on the Krassos monastery and the Little Palace east of Skala Astris. I want to do the cellars first Jake told the dead Russian Georgi Grusev. The way I see it what with these vampire bodyguards patrolling the grounds of the place the last thing Castellano will expect is an attack from within and certainly not from below. And anyway I want to level the house bring it right down to the ground. You ve told me the cellars are extensive That s good for when the walls start melting the entire house should go down what s left of it. Abi said Korath seeing what was in Jake s mind. Then you intend to follow my advice after all. You ll plant your plastitjue bombs outside the walls of the house. Now that I know what we re up against that has to be the safest way Jake answered nodding absently as he trained his nite lites on the house in the olives and took one last calculating look at it. But the thermite must come first to make sure it gets good and hot in those cellars before the bombs go off all at the same time. That way when the house implodes I can be sure of reducing it and everything in it to so much smoke. And Grusev came in with: But will your thermite charges just three of them as I understand it be sufficient Those cellars are fairly extensive. I was given a guided tour of the place before they got to work on me and I can assure you it s a warren down there easily as spacious below as it is above. There s heat and then there s heat Jake answered. I ve seen this stuff in action as used by the Australian military and this is real heat Just an ounce of this stuff in the nose of an armour piercing shell will scour out a tank set off its ammo and weld its turret shut. And when it s cooled down you won t even be able to find the crew. Twenty first century warfare ugh: Which reminds me I d better leave the other stuff the plastique right here for now in case of accidents. And he took his prepared bombs from the bag and placed them carefully on the ground. You ve convinced me said Grusev. But not me said Korath. What if Castellano has positioned some of his men down there I mean what if he s there himself for whatever reason I can t see it said Jake. He may well have lookouts at the windows but surely he won t be looking inwards And if he or some of his creatures are down there ... so what We can be out just file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 234 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt as quickly as we re in. Now see how heavily you rely on me said Korath. But not nearly as heavily as you rely on me said Jake. Or rather on my continued existence. Korath offered a deadspeak shrug. So since there s little to gain in arguing the point I suggest we get on with it. Jake spoke to Grusev. You told me there s a big storeroom down there for all kinds of designer and micro drugs Yes the Russian answered. Three billion dollars worth as Castellano boasted when he showed it to me. Of course he could afford to because he knew or thought he knew I wouldn t ever he talking to anyone about it. Right said Jake. So we ll start there. And then if for some reason we re not a hundred percent successful still we ll know we ve hit this bastard in the second best place his wallet There was nothing left to be said so Korath set the Mobius equations scrolling down the screen of Jake s mind again and a moment later Jake conjured a door and stepped through it. Then homing in on Grusev s coordinates he or they went there Into the darkness of Castellano s cellars. Feel for the wall on your left Grusev advised. You ll find a shoulder high light switch. Got it Jake whispered switching on the lights. But what he didn t know was that as well as making an electrical connection he d also broken one. And in the house overhead: Luigi said Garzia Nicosia as a red light began flashing on a security display panel in Castellano s study. Something s wrong downstairs in the cellars . . . Oh Castellano glanced up from a pile of paperwork on his desk. So some clumsy fool has managed to trip a switch. Who do we have down there That s just it Garzia answered checking the panel again. Nobody s down there. Not in the storeroom and not anywhere in the cellars. No one that I have sent down there anyway Castellano took a sharp breath stood up and leaned forward in that man tislike way of his with his knuckles turning white on the desktop where they took his weight. For a second or two he remained in that position glaring at nothing in particular apparently listening for something beyond Garzia s range. Until at last his eyes focussed and turned bloodred. And: Ahhhi. he hissed. As I have sensed him before so I sense him now but closer than ever. It s our ghost Garzia. Or rather E Branch s ghost Jake Cutter who comes and goes as sly as ... yes even as sly as a vampire without leaving a trace. Ah but this time he s been caught out by a simple gadget. Come come quickly now and bring grenades Grenades Garzia s jaw fell open. But what of the damage they ll cause And why would you need them anyway If he s here he s trapped and he s only one man You ll never learn will you Garzia Castellano growled loping out from behind his desk. He s one very dangerous very deadly man As for damage: he s done enough of that already. If it means we get him we can afford the loss. And now we ll find out who is the deadliest this Jake Cutter or Luigi Castellano. So bring two of our men Garzia and grenades stun grenades for I want this man alive and meet me in the cellars. But be quick oh so quick before this crafty Jake Cutter fashions his own brand of hell and slips away again . . . In the cellars Jake was almost finished. The thermite charges were fitted with six minute delay fuses and with ample time to move from room to room without invoking the Mobius Continuum he had let Grusev show him the secret doors to several hidden chambers. All of these had low vaulted ceilings supported by once sturdy walls or columns but the stone was old and nitrous the mortar rotten and Jake was satisfied that his thermite charges would completely incinerate the place and bring down the entire house or its debris into the resultant inferno. Jake had left his first device in the drugs storeroom his second in a virtual Aladdin s cave of treasures from the quarry under the Madonie which Castel lano hadn t yet released onto the antiquities or precious metals markets and was in the process of planting the third in a room that Grusev had identified as a torture chamber. He might well have chosen a different location for this third charge but as he had passed quickly through the cellars Grusev had insisted that another vault adjacent to the one in which he d been brutalized should be left alone. It is a burial chamber the dead Russian had explained himself a mausoleum the catacomb of the Arguccis a once great family whose occupants have suffered enough of interference. I share it with them and when Castellano s house comes down we shall be buried properly and forever. However the Arguccis and I would prefer that our bones were not calcined in thermite. If it must be then it must but we think there are better choices. This torture chamber for instance. It is file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 235 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt a terrible place and one that richly deservers to burn Jake had agreed at once at which Korath had commented: Previously you haven t seemed especially respectful of the teeming dead certainly not of Castellano s henchmen of whom you so ruthlessly ingeniously disposed yet now I sense your reverence increasing by leaps and bounds. Is this an additional effect of Harry Keogh do you think Is it possible that you re succumbing to his greater influence his er implant Just how long do you suppose you ll remain your own man Jake I don t know Jake had answered in a hoarse whisper. But as long as it s Harry s influence and not yours I don t especially give a damn So stop distracting me. All of which were deadspeak thoughts that went out into the metaphysical aether. And despite that as yet the Great Majority remained silent still they were privy to them . . . Stealthy as cats and as silent Castellano and his lieutenant Garzia accompanied by two vampire thralls had descended a central staircase into the cellars. Now as Jake Cutter yanked the ring pull activator on the third thermite charge and backed off from it they heard the echoes of his movements coming from the torture chamber. What they didn t hear was Jake s deadspeak as he told Korath and Grusev: That s it the last charge is set and the others have been fermenting for maybe two and a half minutes now. Three more and this place will start cooking and there ll be no stopping it. But while Jake s deadspeak went unheard his movements were more than enough to advise Luigi Castellano of his whereabouts. And with a finger to his lips cautioning his creatures to silence the Sicilian master vampire accepted a stun grenade from Garzia armed it and without pause lobbed it through the open door into the torture chamber. On the point of asking Korath to display the Mobius equations Jake had heard the ch ching as Castellano armed his stun grenade. Momentarily frozen paralysed he saw shadowy figures at the doorway how they snatched themselves back out of sight. . . and out of danger Korath Jake cried out loud Just a split second before the grenade went off By then the numbers were rolling down the screen of Jake s mind again but too late to do anything about it. Indeed even the thought of doing something caused the equations to disintegrate flying apart on the rim of Jake s temporarily blasted mind. He had heard the clatter as the grenade landed and bounced and he d actually managed to dive for cover behind a benchlike device that looked menacingly like a rack. But that was as much as he d achieved before the blast. Not designed to kill the stun grenade hadn t produced much heat except in the immediate vicinity of the explosion. But of blinding light and deafening sound there d been plenty enough to disassociate disorganize and deaden the mind of any normal man of flesh and blood. And Jake Cutter was no exception. With fresh blood in his ears and nose curled in the foetal position he cradled himself in the smoke filled chamber listened to the gonging in his head tried to stop the starbursts from blooming behind his eyeballs and simultaneously attempted to make sense of Korath s hastily reconstituted equations all to no avail. And following fast in the wake of the explosion Castellano and his creatures were into the room falling on Jake and dragging him to his feet. Holding a handkerchief to his mouth Castellano glared redeyed at Jake where he sagged between a pair of vampire thralls his head lolling stupidly. So then Mr. Jake Cutter we ve met before you and I. But this time I know what you are and there are questions you must answer not least how you managed to get in here. Garzia it seems to me this is your area of expertise. You will supply the incentives and I ll ask the questions. The lights are shot Garzia coughed and waved a cloud of smoke away from his face. The blast. I ll light a torch. Light flared as he thumbed a cigarette lighter and lifted its steady flame to an oil drenched torch in its wall bracket. But as the smoke began to clear and the torch came sputtering alive Garzia gasped and pointed at the thermite charge where Jake had planted it beside the wall. A thin curl of smoke was drifting up from its haversack container. What Castellano snarled then. What Bomb Garzia shouted. That s its fuse burning You English bastardl Castellano brought Jake a stinging backhand blow to the face which did nothing to help clear his head. And turning to his lieutenant Get rid of it the Sicilian said. It must have a long fuse else this r i L u is. J file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 236 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt I saboteur would have been out of here by now. So into the old well with it. It can t do much harm down there. The blast will be contained. But the ancient well a walled shaft almost a hundred feet deep was in another room and the bomb was smoking. Looking at it Garzia blinked. Then he went for it reached towards it... and shrank back. He reached for it again and again shrank back. Luigi I ... I can t do this he gasped his eyes bulging and his face twisting in the flaring torchlight. I can t... I mean I can t . . . I just can t do it You fucking idiot Castellano howled. Do you want it to explode But of course that s exactly what Garzia didn t want it to do not while he was standing beside it. You two Castellano yelled at the men holding Jake. One of you do it. There s big money in it for the man who does it. They scarcely moved except to shuffle their feet and glance at each other. For a moment Castellano looked as if he too might panic. But then he took a vicious looking gun out of his pocket and pointed it at his men saying And there s a bullet for you for both of you if you don t fucking do it At which point Jake moaned aloud Two . . . two minutes. Eh said Garzia. Two minutes You hear that Luigi This thing goes off in just two minutes He couldn t know that Jake was mumbling about the other charges and that this one still had three three and a half minutes to go. But in any case: Two minutes Castellano snarled. That s like a lifetime So fuck all three of you worthless spineless dogs and I ll do it myself Just look after this one until I m back. And snatching up the haversack by its strap he loped from the room. Jake s head was clearing the gonging oh so slowly receding Korath he whispered. Where are you Eh said Garzia. Korath He grabbed Jake s hair yanked his head back and spat What s that You have help down here You fucking He lashed out rocked Jake s head back further yet. Again the Mobius equations disintegrated collapsing into a whirlpool of jumbled numerals and esoteric algebra replaced by pain and a million bilious flashes and pinwheels of light. Held up pinioned between Castellano s thugs even if Jake had somehow managed to conjure a door still he wouldn t have been able to use it except perhaps to fall through it. But in the back of his mind: Enough of this Grusev s disgusted bark. What And you dare call yourselves a Great Majority He fights evil the worst possible evil and you would let him fight alone Well that s your business you cowards but never mine. The Necroscope does this for us he suffers it for me and also for you Arguccis all lying still there. But Jake has the power and can t use it because you haven t told him how to use it. I can feel it in my bones: my dead flesh cries out to me for action animation and life in death. And I for one must answer the call of my flesh I Other voices came up out of nowhere. We Arguccis were never cowards Nor are we now. All we wanted was peace and we had if... until this dog Castellano came along defiling us and using our tomb as a charnel house. As for the Necroscope: we feel his magnet lure too even as we have felt his living warmth in our endless night. Only let him ask for our help and he shall have it. Jake heard all of this without understanding its real meaning. But as a drowning man clings to a straw so he knew he had nothing to lose. And: Help me he whispered then. I don t see how but if it s at all possible then please please help me At which a massed sigh went up throughout all the deadspeak aether . . . Luigi Castellano never made it back from the old well. For even before Jake had thought to ask for help from the teeming dead someone had anticipated his needs stirred himself up and was waiting in the shadows. And when Castellano heard the dragging footsteps behind him and after he had turned in his tracks to see who made them He couldn t believe what he saw Some short distance away the lights were still burning in the drugs storeroom and white smoke as dense as a ground mist was only now beginning to roll out ankle deep through the open door as the first of the thermite charges began to cook. Similarly the device that Castellano carried was suddenly issuing a lot more smoke and starting to feel hot. But still he hugged it to his chest gurgling and gagging as he took one stumbling step after another backwards away from the dead man. A dead disfigured man yes A man who Castellano couldn t help but recognize Georgi Grusev file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 237 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt lurching from the direction of the Argucci mausoleum His eyes . . . but there were no eyes just black sockets with blood dried black on his hollow face the flattened silhouette of his head where Garzia Nicosia had taken his ears to send to Gustav Turchin and his arms which should have been dangling loose from the shoulders because Garzia had broken them there now reaching with fingerless hands reaching for Castellano and with vengeful intent Grusev came on and a wave of heat came with him detracting from the heat that Castellano felt welling from the device against his chest which he held between himself and the apparition. But an apparition Of course Surely that was all it could be: a nightmarish hallucination conjured of his own dark imagination. For tortured butchered murdered men don t walk do they Yet this one did and behind the Russian came others who weren t nearly so complete or functional clumping and reeling and even crawling through the thickening smoke The hip high wall of the well was behind Castellano where he stumbled backwards to avoid the stumps of Grusev s terrible fingers. He felt his chest burning and saw that his jacket and waistcoat were smouldering issuing smoke. The thermite charge was beginning to melt in his agonized hands He tried to throw the device from him throw it at Grusev but it was sticking to his chest fusing with him. Finally as Castellano began to scream Grusev s mutilated hands reached L U 1V1 U C I O R. 1 A IN him pushing him backwards to where his backside struck the wall. The Sicilian s legs stopped but his top half kept on going. And as he lost his balance turned upside down and fell shrieking into the well Grusev s blackened protruding tongue came unglued from the roof of his mouth to issue a gurgled farewell: Burn you filthy loathsome thing he said. And then slowly and deliberately as Castellano s screams rose to the pitch of a whistling steam kettle and quickly died away the dead man turned and went stumbling back towards the mausoleum. And behind him the obscene mouth of the well belched smoke and heat and the rancid steam of a boiling vampire . . . Back in the torture chamber Garzia and the two vampire thralls had heard Castellano s scream. Jake heard it too where he was fighting desperately hard to pull himself together in the sure knowledge that at any time now the temperature would suddenly rise by a hundred a thousand and then ten thousand degrees. That sounded like Luigi said Garzia his face a pallid skull mask where he held Jake s head up by his braid sniffing at him like a rabid dog. Your friends got Luigi Taking out a knife he showed it to Jake. If Luigi s gone then I m the new boss the next in line. But unlike him I won t be wasting time fooling about with you. Garzia said one of the thralls if you re the boss it s time we were out of here. This place is getting hot filling up with smoke. We ll be lucky to find our way out. . . that s if we don t get blown apart trying You re right said Garzia. We daren t wait any longer. And to Jake: What kind of bomb was it anyway Thermite said Jake able to see and hear at last. They were incendiary bombs all three of them. And I think you ve left it too late Too late for you for sure said Garzia making ready to draw his knife across Jake s throat. But: Garzia The thralls shrank back let go of Jake and one of them pointed a trembling hand at the smoke wreathed doorway. Garzia looked and saw something saw a stream of rotting crumbling somethings that came walking crawling and flopping through the smoke that was now spilling into the chamber. Their cerecloth garb was falling from them in wormy shreds and tatters and pieces of them were falling too crumbling apart under the stress and strain of unaccustomed movement. But like the mummified figures that shed them even these fretted limbs didn t lie still but kept right on coming Agh aghh: agghbhhi said Garzia the knife falling from his numb fingers as the long dead Arguccis closed on him and his vampire thralls. And Jake as he backed away couldn t believe what he was seeing or what he was hearing as the dead men told him: Go now Necroscope. There s no more work for you here. Your vendetta and ours is over. But remember this night and never let it he said that the Arguccis were cowards. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 238 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Jake s flesh crept on his arms and back his hair stood up as if electrified his jaw fell open and his eyes bugged. This impossible thing that was happening here . . . he was its author He knew now what a Necroscope was knew what it was that Trask and E Branch hadn t been able to tell him knew precisely what those esoteric skills were that they had been hinting at. Necroscope: not just a man with the power to look into the minds of the dead and talk to them but one who can raise them up from their very graves. And he was it and he had done it A wall of heat came blasting in through the doorway. Those Arguccis closest to the door burst into flames and still Jake stood there backed up against the far wall as if pinned there stunned by the knowledge of what he was and what he had done. He saw the leading Arguccis converge on Garzia and his men saw the shrieking three dragged under and buried in ancient desiccated flesh and nitre clad bones and despite the heat he felt his own blood freezing in his veins. Until suddenly: Jake Korath was shouting in his metaphysical mind. Get out of there Here are the numbers the Mobius equations. Can t you hear me Can t you see the numbers Use them Jake and make a door Your time is up And as a mass of liquid stone and jumbled bones came seething through the doorway like so much lava which it was of a sort Jake accepted the equations and conjured a Mobius door. And not a moment too soon. For even as he half staggered half fell through it so the temperature throughout the cellars shot up as if someone had opened a different door entirely a portal to hell Then he was out of there and through the Mobius Continuum and back to his vantage point on the rising ground south of the doomed house . . . where he emerged in the cool of the night and promptly sat down with a thump. But we re not finished yet Korath told him almost as much in awe and horror of Jake as Jake was of himself. There s still the plastitfue the house itself. And: Don t leave the job half finished Jake said Georgi Grusev. Don t we deserve a proper grave the Arguccis and I Jake looked through his nite lites. A half dozen grey blob figures were fleeing from the house which itself had become a shimmering grey mass in the crosshairs of the thermal imaging lenses. Castellano s vampire thugs were getting away escaping into the cover of the densely grown olives. And Jake knew that Korath and Grusev were right he had to finish the job. But: I ... I can t see how I can deal with the ones who ve got out of there he said. But as for the house that has to go yes. Jake s plastique bombs were already rigged with detonators. Setting two minutes on each device he activated the timers and took the Mobius route back down to the house. Streamers of white smoke were belching from the open doors and geysering LJ t t I L t K from the chimneys now and the windows all splintering from the pressured heat within. In very short order Jake planted his bombs at the bases of the front and back walls and at one major end wall. The remaining end wall was of recent and far weaker construction part of a modern extension that probably housed the boiler room and generator. Jake was sure that it would be destroyed along with the more fortresslike building. All done he stood off and saw that he needn t have worried about the escapees. For Castellano s remaining vampire soldiers hadn t gone any further than the ancient olive groves . . . where for more than fifty years their master had been burying many of his victims under the grotesquely twisted roots and branches of those hideously nurtured trees All blackened leather and gleaming white bone these nightmarish lurching long dead cadavers too had answered Jake s call levering themselves up from their shallow graves to herd the terrified vampire mobsters back toward the burning house. And their timing was perfect for the two minutes were up. Jake was near the gates sheltering in the lee of the high stone wall when the house went up or inwards. But even before that final colossal triple ex or implosion the place had been ablaze and beginning to slump down into itself its buckling walls slowly settling into the cauldron of the cellars. Caught within a few yards of the simultaneous detonations the last members of Castellano s vampire mob were ripped apart literally disintegrating in a blast that threw the material of the house inwards and upwards creating a mighty mushroom stem that rose into the sky and a furious wind that rushed outward to flatten the closest of the olives. The ground shuddered and the flash of light was blinding the explosion senses shattering as the house ceased to exist. And when the file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 239 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt echoes stopped coming back from the hills then Jake looked again. Not that there was much to see: just a vast flattened area where the place had been and tons of hot dirt and rubble spattering down out of the sky and geysers of steaming lavalike stuff spouting up volcanically from the surface of the quaking slag . . . Done said Jake then. But how well done Did anyone get away into those olive trees There s a way to find out Korath answered breathlessly in Jake s mind. In the Continuum they looked forward through a future time door at Jake s blue life thread winding its way into a life as yet unlived. But in the immediate future there were no scarlet threads. It seems we got them all said Korath with a grateful deadspeak sigh. In all that blue I can t see a trace of red. Not in this location anyway said Jake. It appears the Arguccis were correct: my vendetta is over now. But as for your problem and E Branch s and the world s at large well that remains to be dealt with. His comment might well have been an invocation. For as Jake emerged from the Continuum back at his vantage point to collect his sausage bag: Jake Liz Merrick s telepathic cry of terror a whisper in the psychic aether coming to him from six hundred miles away. Liz He gasped out loud starting and glancing all about straining his eyes in the darkness to see where she was before realizing that she wasn t. Liz Jake it came again but much clearer louder now as Liz s probe fastened on his. And with it came pictures as vivid as the reality from which they were plucked on the screen of his mind such a whirling kaleidoscope of surreal scenes and sensations that Jake could scarcely accommodate them. And all of this from Liz a good receiver but an alleged amateur when it came to sending except that with Jake she had this rapport. Thank God he thought for this rapport Or perhaps not for the scenes and sensations were at least as terrifying as what he d just been through because Jake knew they were part of Liz s reality: Fire and thunder and the ground shaking underfoot as in an earthquake.. . a wild flight from searing liquid fire followed by a dark confining space. . . and in the midst of all of this a terrible female face as shrivelled and wrinkled as a prune and hideous as hell glaring glaring glaring through crimson eyes in a demoniac mask of hatred which even the devil himself would be proud to wear if he were a woman It came and it went that telepathic cry for help lost its coherency and dissolved away as the threat that Liz faced overwhelmed her. But locked in Jake s mind as if branded there the coordinates remained. Then: Ahhhl said Korath who in those brief moments had been more in sync with his host than ever before. Jake he cried. Jake But surely I know this creature Indeed for in all the world in two worlds there could never be another such as this. Oh I know her now. It is it can only be. . . Vavaaara Fifteen minutes earlier outside the monastery on Krassos: The night was very still. From somewhere in the dark pines a Greek owl declared his authority by hooting a single drop of silver note and after some seconds was answered from more than a mile away by a neighbour who was likewise intent on defending his territory. Nothing else moved or made a sound . . . Then a low rumble gradually growing louder and in another moment the quiet and velvet darkness of the Mediterranean night was shattered by the revving of engines as Manolis Papastamos hurled his four wheel drive off the road and onto the gravel of the parking area aiming it at the forbidding monastery gates. With full headlights blazing the vehicle roared in a ruler straight line across the open space until at the last possible moment Manolis yanked the steering wheel hard over to the right stood on the brakes and almost turned the car over before skidding to a sideways halt in a cloud of dust some ten feet to the right of the gates. By no means a pointless display or exercise the swath cut by the car s headlight beams along with the twin beacons of its red rear lights had played the part of a laser beam guiding a bomb to its target. BRIAN LUMLhY The target was the monastery itself in whose high windows a scattered handful of lights were now flickering into being and the bomb was a tanker full of avgas driven by Stavros Some fifty feet behind the lead vehicle Stavros had driven off the road onto the parking lot s hardstanding straightened up his tanker on the correct trajectory as designated by Manolis in the smaller vehicle and applied his airbrakes. And as the tanker hissed to a halt so Manolis file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 240 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt went running towards it. Lardis Lidesci and Ben Trask had also left the car and taken up positions on both sides of the gates. Anyone or thing who tried to come out through those gates now would have to fight its way past them. And they weren t in any mood to let that happen. Back at the tanker Manolis yelled up to Stavros leaning out of the cab window Ready And with a grim nod Stavros revved the big engine to a coughing snarl. Yes he was ready. Six feet from the rear of the powerfully throbbing vehicle Manolis took out his cigarette lighter and touched fire to the short fuze of a stick of dynamite that was secured to the tanker s fat belly. And then to be doubly sure he went to the back of the vehicle and spun the stopcock on the release valve. Seeing the flare of the burning fuse in his rearview Stavros rammed the tanker into first gear drove it lurching towards the monastery s huge gates. Rapidly accelerating and leaving a trail of highly volatile avgas in his wake he waited until the last moment before throwing the gears into neutral opening the cab s door and jumping out. Rolling as he hit the dirt he came to his feet and ran towards Trask who had stationed himself at a safe distance from the inevitable impact. As for Manolis: he was running as fast as he could to join up with Lardis Lidesci in the lee of the massive wall when the tanker smashed into the gates Smashed into them and through them in a deluge of shattered timbers and roared on across the courtyard gardens and cloisters to a head on collision with the monastery s main structure midway between its rearing towers. The clamour was nerve shredding as steel met stone when for several long seconds all that was heard was the screech of rending metal the howl of a motor gone mad and the landslide rumble of dislodged masonry falling from on high so that for a moment it seemed the mission was a failure. But as the four cringing crouching men outside the monastery s walls began to straighten up then the dynamite exploded. And the dynamite was only the detonator for the real thing . . . Liz remembered answering the door back at the Christos Studios then nothing else until she d woken up in the back of the black limo to find them dragging her out of the car into the monastery s courtyard them being a pair of incredibly strong women in the garb of nuns. Indeed they were or had been nuns and as Liz had shuttered her eyes and feigned unconsciousness putting out a brief telepathic probe to confirm her suspicions finally she d known where she was. Those terrible thoughts of lust and bloodlust coming at her from every direction and in the heart of it all a brightly flaring candle of innocence purity. . . but one whose cold calculating glow she d seen before and knew for a lie And so Liz had lain still which wasn t easy because her neck was stiff and aching where she d been rabbit punched and let them carry her into darkness into the now unholy monastery up two flights of winding stairs where their heels clattered on cold stone and finally into the presence of the awful luminosity the lying light of Vavara. There she had been put down on a low bed or pallet where she d groaned turned on her side and made sure she faced the wall. And when she d felt a seemingly gentle hand on her shoulder shaking her then she d groaned again but oh so softly and continued to feign unconsciousness. Until: Smelling salts a sweet but authoritative voice had said the voice of the lying luminosity speaking to her thralls. Go fetch smelling salts no wait One of you stay tell me about her: who she was with how many and where they are now. And when Vavara had heard the details or as much of them as her informant knew then: So. It must be this E Branch of which Malinari spoke. Malinari the Mind aye the treacherous lying dog No wonder he up and ran And I was right: he knew they were here and so ran off leaving me to fend for myself. But they are only seven now and I have this one. Will they dare attack me knowing that she is mine I think so for Malinari warned me that even as we are ruthless so is this E Branch ... in which case I must prepare. So go now and gather the women down to the cloisters where I shall speak to all of you together. Then as Vavara s thrall had hurried out and her footsteps came echoing back from the stairwell that hand again on Liz s shoulder but no longer gentle whose touch had been as much a lie as Vavara s bell like tones and the vampire s coarsely whispered And as for you my pretty my oh so pretty: when I return we ll talk. For pain is such a wonderful stimulant and I know that it will loosen your tongue . . . but only loosen it mind you letting you keep it awhile longer at least. Ah but while a tongue is requisite to coherent conversation lips are not. What midnight lover will want you then I wonder when in the dark his lips meet nothing but gums and teeth and hardened scar tissue Then she d moved away Liz had heard the door closing and a key grating in the lock and for the first time since regaining consciousness she d been able to relax the mental shields that in close proximity with Vavara she d kept firmly in place. After that she had been up and about in a moment. From the barred window she had looked down on file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 241 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt the courtyard where after what seemed an age she d seen flitting shapes emerging from the central and tower structures gathering in the cloistered areas under laden fig trees and flowering bougain villaes. A beautiful setting for a hideous congregation. And Vavara s voice like a chime of small bells floating up on the night air. She had told them what to expect: no mercy and had gone on to describe D IS. 1 rt IN their duties if they desired to survive how they must kill slake their thirst take no prisoners destroy their enemies to a man. Which is what they re intent on doing to you and to me she had finished. I for one don t intend to let it happen. But you . . . must make your own decisions and fend for yourselves. As for when it will be: soon I fancy. For that dog Malinari has stolen one of mine and fled. Aye and he was eager to be away. Then Vavara had lifted her chin angling her head until her hypnotic gaze locked on the high barred window where Liz stood looking down. And as that flock of once holy women now vampire thralls had begun to disperse so their mistress had turned in a swirl of black cloak and vanished back into the building ... Terrified then galvanized by the look that Vavara had cast at the high window of her prison Liz had determined to fight defend herself when that Lady returned. But whatever Vavara s business was below it had taken her some little time until Liz had begun to hope that she d been forgotten. Not so for that was when she d sensed Vavara s presence and heard once more the key grating in the lock. Then: The door thrown open ... Liz standing there with a wooden stool in her hands raised high ... she had struck with all her strength at nothing Seeming to melt aside Vavara had reached out snatched the stool from midair hurled it away. And: Would you hurt me my pretty She d said making Liz feel so ashamed that she had even tried What to brain so lovely a thing so gorgeous a creature Even to think it had been a sin And Vavara standing there all aglow with a beauty that hurt a hypnotic simulation of purity and irresistible warmth. Irresistible No I am deceived Liz had drawn back sending a telepathic probe to corroborate the truth of it And at once recoiling from the horror at the heart of all that false beauty the shrivelled bloodsucking Thing that was Vavara Vavara had known she was discovered relaxing her guise and turning to a hag she d advanced on Liz showing her a gleaming sickle shaped knife. For you that twisted pitted leathery black monstrosity had croaked then. For your face and beautiful body. But before that or during you ll tell me all. At which there had sounded an angry growling of motors the shriek of tortured brakes and a startled flutter and squawking from the nuns down in the courtyard and cloisters. And how Vavara had thrown herself at the high barred window then croaking her fury and stamping her feet at what she saw. But her rage had lasted only a moment or so before the survival instinct of the Wamphyri took over. Then turning from the window silent now but more deadly than ever she had fallen upon Liz and aimed a stunning blow at the side of her head And as Liz had blacked out so she had thought to hear the sound of more heavier revving and a great crashing . . . and whatever it was that was happening down there it was for now the saving of her natural beauty probably her soul and almost certainly her sanity . . . Ben Trask straightened stepped away from the four wheel drive which had been partly sheltering him was aiming his 9 mm Browning forward and edging toward the ruined gates when the tanker went up and threw him back against the car again. Not the blast for the wall protected him but the sheer ferocity of the sound the rush of light and heat spilling out from the gates expanding across the parking area and the ground lurching under his feet. And falling backwards like that he saw a weird thing: behind the wall like the blooming of some cosmic orchid a boiling dome of brilliant orange that rose higher than the wall itself sending volcanic firebomb streamers spiralling upwards and outwards in every direction in the grandest most terrible fireworks display that Trask had ever seen. And the weird thing was this: silhouetted against that searing fireball a flock of great black tattered birds was rising on the thermals tumbling where they flew with their blazing pinions outspread like so many phoenixes reborn in that great inferno And who could say perhaps they were born again or at least renewed their souls if nothing else for they were nuns in their habits and their aerial acrobatics were not sustained . . . file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 242 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Stavros had been quicker off the mark than Trask. Shouting at the older man to run like hell he was already in their car spinning its wheels and kicking up gravel as he made a run from what was happening a wave of molten fire spilling through the gates and up over the wall Trask ran made a headlong dive and with his legs sticking out from the passenger s door was carried to safety. On the other side of the gates the wall was higher. Manolis Papastamos and Lardis had backed off with their hands up before their eyes to shield them from the crisping heat but they were safe where at last they turned and ran for it Manolis dragging the Old Lidesci after him. And as Stavros brought the car skidding to a halt Trask got out and looked back. To think he d thought it possible that something might have tried to escape from that Yet even now as the fireball shrank back and the monastery blazed a handful of staggering burning figures emerged from the gates like human candles in the night. And Trask might have fallen to his knees and prayed for his own soul forgiveness for what he d been a party to if he hadn t first seen them praying for theirs Standing there in a semicircle with their arms held up and open looking to God in their final moments and hoping He would see them the nuns prayed or simply acknowledged whichever crumpled and fell. But in the moment of their going down even as the feral light went out of their eyes Trask could swear he saw their smoke shimmering into haloes where it rose up before a second tongue of fire roared out through the gates to devour them. The monastery lit the coastal road for half a mile in both directions a twin IJtflLtKS towered torch it stood tall on its promontory and burned with a vengeance. Within its walls the place was surely a seething cauldron by now. But Trask saw only the nuns where they lay crumpled their smoke rising up. The precog had foreseen it and as always he d been right: the future will out no matter what. Yet as it now seemed not quite always. And: Damn you lan Goodly Trask sobbed like a child where he leaned against the car to avoid collapsing. Damn you and your talent and the lying bitching future to hell The last thing he had asked the precog to do before they d split up and gone their separate ways tonight was to look into the future seeking evidence of Liz. Was she alive in time yet to come or was she gone And the gaunt and grey faced Goodly had answered him Ben 1 can t be sure. But I think and I hope and pray that maybe she ll survive. But where Liz is now surely the most important question is will you want her to survive And worse still will you allow her to Trask had heard understood and shuddered to his soul. But hope springs eternal and echoing in his mind the key words had been I think maybe she ll survive. Those were the words that had kept him going. Until now . . . Manolis and Lardis had arrived as the latter got into the back of the car Manolis saw Trask s face. There s no time for that now Ben he said. We ve got to move on. This isn t over yet. Thee Little Palace Palataki is still waiting for us. Trask looked one more time at the monastery . . . and Manolis saw him give a massive start as his bottom jaw gaped open. Then the Greek policeman followed Trask s gaze and understood why. A big black limo Vavara s limo had come crashing out through the blazing wreckage of the gates and was careening towards the four wheel drive Three of the limo s wheels were burning. Its roof and hood were badly dented shedding rubble and large chunks of masonry. Its nearside windows had been blasted out and a front door was hanging from a single hinge striking sparks from flints in the gravel where it jounced and clattered. The rear doors were both open flapping like a bat s wings. And looking something like a monster in its own right seeming hell bent on a head on collision with the stationary car the vehicle came fishtailing across the parking area. But no throwing up a stinging spray of gravel as Trask and Manolis hurled themselves aside passing so close that its near side rear door was torn off on the back of the four wheel drive the limo raced on heading for the road. She got out Trask gasped. God damn her Vavara got out That can only be the witch herself... I know it s her And as the big black car went slewing onto the road and the front door tore loose they all saw that indeed it was her: that nightmare hag crouched over the wheel her great jaws gaping and her crimson eyes glaring at them. Vavara alone in that blasted shell shocked wreck of a car. She alone had escaped. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 243 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Get after her Trask yelled his hatred buoying him up as he piled into the car. And as Manolis got into the front passenger seat alongside Stavros Trask grabbed his shoulder and told him: Now its your turn. This is the selfsame vampire bitch who drove you off the road and killed your pathologist friend. Very well now let s give her a taste of her own bloody medicine What Trask hadn t seen and couldn t know because no one had suggested it might be so was that Liz was in the limo s trunk and that yet again lan Goodly had been right: if only by virtue of Wamphyri tenacity the fact that Liz had been indoors with Vavara who like most vampires maintained a bolt hole or escape route she had survived. This far at least . . . Having heard and understood Trask s harsh vengeful comment to Manolis Stavros needed no further urging. Screaming their protest the gears meshed and the vehicle s tyres churned dust and gravel as he fishtailed it out onto the road straightened up and went hurtling after Vavara s black limo. She had maybe ten seconds start but wasn t much of a driver and despite her more powerful vehicle Stavros was soon catching up with her. Her car is bigger and heavier Lardis said from where he sat beside Trask in the back. Do we really intend to ram it from the road Who will be ramming whom I wonder It s a very long way down to the sea and quite a few sharp rocks to bounce off before you get there. The sharper the better Trask growled. And to Manolis in the front passenger seat: Can Stavros handle it If anyone can Stavros can Manolis answered hanging on for dear life as his man wrestled with the steering and took a sharp right hand bend. Stavros was trying to hug the cliff wall on their right but centrifugal force slid the car out into the oncoming lane. Fortunately in the dead of the Krassos night the road was empty and for a mile ahead it was straight before the next series of bends. A hundred or so yards in front Vavara was doing no better she hadn t regained control after taking the bend and the limo was all over the road. A stream of sparks trailed the big black car where a dangling muffler skittered like a crippled snake. Now s your chance Trask gripped Stavros s shoulder. Stavros accelerated slowly closing the gap between himself and the battered vehicle in front. Vavara saw him coming in her rear view and moved in closer to the cliffs rising on her right. Determined to keep her pursuers from the inner lane she would let them overtake her then do to them what they planned to do to her. But she hadn t reckoned on Manolis three times champion marksman of the Athenian police force. Hold her steady now Stavros my friend Manolis barked as he leaned out of his window and took aim with his automatic. Now Vavara saw him and began weaving this way and that across the road. Then brilliantly inventive acting before Manolis could find his target suddenly she slammed on the brakes Stavros recognized the mechanics of the thing: her limo was by far the more massive machine he would bounce off it and if he bounced in the wrong direction He stood on his brakes and the four wheel went into a long slewing skid coming very close to running out of tarmac on the wrong side of the road the sea cliffs side before stalling and jerking to a standstill. Vavara s limo however had slowed but not stopped. Now stepping on the accelerator she put distance between. The chase was on again and minute by minute the time and the miles were steadily ticking away. In a little while Palataki became visible as a dark silhouette on its knoll perhaps half a mile ahead. We don t know who or what s in that place Trask yelled over the snarling of the car s motor. We don t know what she might activate if she gets there. But we do know she s desperate and that the other team isn t expecting her Got you Manolis shouted back. And to Stavros Get right up behind her again but this time be ready for thee tricks. Stavros obliged was assisted by the fact that the road had started winding once more and Vavara couldn t handle it. And as Manolis again leaned out of his window: Aim at her tank Trask yelled. They were almost through the winding stretch the last bend was a right hander the side road to Palataki was less than 250 yards ahead when Manolis took a deep breath held it and squeezed off three quick shots. The limo was swinging into the bend sliding out across the road to the left when one of file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 244 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Manolis s shots missed the petrol tank but took out the left hand rear tyre. The rubber tore like paper the wheel rim sparked where it chewed into the road and almost in slow motion the limo turned over onto its side sliding across the road and through a flimsy wooden fence. A moment more and it had nosed down out of view. We got the bitch Trask shouted thumping Manolis s back as Stavros brought their vehicle to a halt. And even before the car had stopped moving the Head of Branch was out of his door running to look over the edge of the road. Down there the descent to the rim of the actual sea cliffs was steep but not sheer. Somehow the limo had rolled over again and righted itself and it was plunging headlong down the rocky slope in a fall that all the small stunted pines kindling dry undergrowth and the best brakes in the world couldn t hope to halt. Gravity simply wouldn t be denied. Manolis joined Trask in time to see the end of it. And: I know exactly how thee vrykoulakas bitch is feeling right now he said. And I m glad At the very edge of the high sea cliffs there were several upthrusting outcrops future sea stacks like the ones standing out to sea where tortured strata had buckled and broken in the Mediterranean s frequent geological upheavals. The limo clipped one of these spun off and came to rest with its front wheels over the rim. The limo came to rest but Vavara didn t. Hurled out by NECROSCOPE: DEFILEKb the impact she formed a tattered spinning kite shape as she vanished beyond the horizon of the cliffs and her croaking shriek echoed up to Trask and Manolis for long seconds where they stood watching . . . until finally it was cut off by a far faint splash. Then: Good Manolis grunted. Thee water is very deep here. And I do know what I m talking about But you survived said Trask. And God damn her she s Wamphyri She might survive the fall and the water too Possibly Manolis answered. But nothing we can do about it. There s no way down. And even if there was one wrong step in thee dark . . . He let it trail off and shrugged. I hope she sinks and sloughs away Trask snarled then. But meanwhile there s Palataki Manolis took his elbow. Come my friend. Thee time is wasting . . . Looking east from Palataki lan Goodly David Chung and Manolis s Number Two Andreas had seen the sudden flare up on the horizon and moments later they d heard the rumble of man made thunder. In combination these things were the signal they had been waiting for. And now it was their turn. Shored up in the knowledge that Trask and the others would soon be joining them and each of them armed with half a dozen sticks of Andreas s dynamite in addition to their more conventional weapons they had driven their vehicles up the crumbling overgrown ramp and climbed to the knoll s plateau. There in the grounds of the Little Palace well back from the gothic looking building itself now they prepared for the work of demolition. Before that however the two espers wanted to know exactly what it was they were destroying. In close proximity like this closer to this place of dread than ever before and knowing that their presence on Krassos had been discovered and they no longer required to remain secretive or anonymous now was the ideal opportunity. Ah but what if it s Malinari said Goodly. David your talent is probably more accessible to him and makes you vulnerable. Mine isn t at least I don t think so so let me use it first now before you take any unnecessary risks. Let s for once try to fathom exactly what the future has in store for us without galloping headlong into it. Be my guest said the locator with a small shudder. But to tell you the truth I ve already tried and all I got was the creeps This place is wall to wall mindsmog. It s in the Little Palace it s under us and all around us. But it isn t specific to any one spot and its source must be heavily shielded. Which can mean only one thing: it s definitely Wamphyri and probably Malinari. So be my guest only for God s sake be careful While they talked the third member of their team Andreas could only look on perhaps he wondered what the two were going on about but he remained silent. Manolis had told him to do exactly as they said and that was 418 RIAN LUMLEY good enough for him. But the sooner they got some action going the better this place had to be the last place on earth where anyone in his right mind would want to be especially doing nothing. And Andreas as down to earth a man as might be found but a man who trusted his own natural file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 245 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt instincts was exactly right in his feelings and apprehensions. The gloom under the tall spindly pines seemed full of some alien sentience the three men e f watched sensed unseen eyes upon them. And a sickly ground mist swirled about their ankles barely drifting aside when they moved but clinging to them for all the world as if wanting to know them. In a place like this however and the espers as preoccupied as they were the writhing of the mist so suited the scene that neither man recognized its significance. Then there was Palataki itself standing tall gaunt mist wreathed and rotten to its heart and subterranean burrows its hollow windows like rows of soulless eye sockets as if it were the unseen watcher. And the silence like a suffocating shroud a silence that hurt the ears because they strained in vain to catch a sound beneath which nothing moved except the ground mist and the three men themselves . . . Looking more cadaverous than ever in this fraught setting in the dappled shade of the pines and the almost luminous glow of the ground mist lan Goodly closed his eyes and lowered his head to his chest. And leaning against one of the cars for support he pressed slender sensitive fingers to his temples and forced himself to think ... of absolutely nothing Deliberately voiding his mind albeit temporarily wiping it clean of everything he had ever known or now knew emptying it of all knowledge of times past and present Goodly sought contact only with the ever devious and unforgiving future . . . . . . And touched upon something else entirely. Down in the maze of mine shafts deep under Palataki Nephran Malinari felt the tremors in the mist that issued from his vampire pores and uttered a long drawn out sigh. Ahbbhhl They are here and much sooner than I thought. Which means that you and I must stop this pleasuring now for there s work for us. He spoke to Sister Anna as naked as a newborn babe but no longer as innocent where she sat astride him with her nipples brushing his chest and her backside wriggling deliciously working at him with her womanhood and moaning her pleasure. What s that she answered almost absentmindedly and continued to jerk herself up and down on him tossing her head to and fro more frantically yet. There s someone here Enough now said Malinari lifting her from him. We have other things to do. There are men up there who would kill me if they could. Indeed it s possible they have already killed your ex mistress. But I know a way out and we shall flee to safety you and I. It was a lie it had never been his intention : that Anna should flee anywhere but that she d remain here as his rear guard. MtCKUb UFt: UtflLtKS 41i And standing he told her Now dress yourself while I listen and discover what they are about. Pouting Anna obeyed him and Malinari turned from her and stood still listening. His probes went out traced a path through his mist to the disturbance and there found lan Goodly the precog his weird mind empty of all thoughts except of the future. And: So Malinari thought. He seeks to learn the outcome of the venture in advance. A coward this precog No a wise man. But by no means wiser than Malinari. He has emptied his mind until it is blank. Well then now let me see if I can put something back into it. Something for Vavara I think that greedy bitch vampire who in my hour of need offered me nothing This way I take my revenge while E Branch takes the blame. Then when the score is even the scales balanced and Vavara disadvantaged if she yet survives I shall find myself a new place in which to start over. But not I think in this world. . . In short order as quickly as he could Malinari transmitted a series of telepathic scenes along his probe and couldn t help but laugh at the result of their impact. Up above Goodly straightened from his half slumped position and his eyes shot open but they were vacant glazed as if filmed over. Gasping for breath and shaking like a leaf he threw his hands wide slamming them up against the side of the car to steady himself. The locator stepped closer grabbed him and gasped lan what is it What did you see The glazed look drained from the precog s eyes and blinking rapidly shaking his head as if to clear it finally he answered It... it wasn t the future David. It was the NOW and it s waiting for us below The now Chung frowned. But what is it It s much as we suspected the other stood up straighter subconsciously brushing himself down as if he d been lying in something unpleasant. It was some kind of plot or garden a spawning site like the one Jake Cutter destroyed in Xanadu and there were human remains in it. God it was loathsome Show it to me said Chung at once. Since E Branch will have to deal with it eventually even file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 246 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt after we ve buried it if we can bury it they ll need to know its precise location. So show it to me now and when we ve brought the place down on top of it still I ll know where they have to drill to put the thermite right into the heart of that filthy stuff The precog shook his head. You don t understand he said. I m not the locator David you are. Yet I saw the now and the where of it Someone showed it to me as clear and much clearer than any picture from the future. And looking through his eyes I saw that thing bloating down there under Palataki. As for who showed it to me Goodly s voice shivered to match the tremors in his spindly frame I can still hear his crazy laughter Malinari Chung s eyes went wide. Are you saying he got into your mind O K I A IN L U M U t Y Goodly nodded. It had to be him and I must consider myself fortunate there was nothing in there for him to steal But how to explain it Why would he want us to see what s festering away down there It s almost as if he were urging us to destroy it Perhaps he was said Chung. For after all it s not Malinari s garden but Vavara s. Then put it this way said the precog. Since be is down there too why would he want us to destroy him He wouldn t Chung shook his head. It s impossible. The tenacity of the vampire doesn t allow for it. Precisely said Goodly. He wants us to destroy Vavara s garden but he himself... he must have an escape route You ve got to let me see said Chung again urgently now. Lead me to him and right now We have dynamite. If he s still down there we might even be able to cut him off The precog nodded and without another word he emptied his mind of all thoughts . . . and the link was immediately reestablished. Now Malinari s vampire mist worked against its author he was taken aback to feel this deliberate impertinent even insolent contact Goodly s mind when he emptied it like that was a mental magnet to Malinari s probes they couldn t resist it. Malinari saw it as a challenge to his superior skills and sharpening his wits he waited to see what would develop. Nor did he have long to wait. Zeroing in on Goodly s link following it to Malinari the locator s very different probe lanced home. He didn t actually see Malinari or Vavara s dead spawn garden but he did locate them and knew exactly where they were. Then as he felt Malinari s awesome mentalist mind sucking at him like a telepathic black hole colder than outer space: There he gasped quickly withdrawing. I got it. Better still I got him and his escape routes But it s possible he got something from me too though I m not sure what. You know where he is Goodly had pulled himself together now. Can we reach him He s there Chung pointed at Palataki dead centre. And. . . and he s down tberel Straightening his arm he lowered his finger to an angle of maybe forty five degrees. A hundred feet or so straight down. In an underworld of his own the precog said. All those tunnels crumbling mine shafts and caverns. I saw that much at least when he showed me the garden. The place is as hollow as wormy cheese But you mentioned his escape routes. Where At both ends of the place directly under those cupolas Chung answered. Way down below the stairwells are hewn from the rotten bedrock with old wooden staircases coming up from the mine shafts and caves to the crumbling basement. Malinari can effect his escape from either end of the building. So if we blast those basements and stairwells said the precog fill them with tons of rubble he ll be trapped down there. He turned to Andreas showed NtCKUbLUFt: UtflLtKb 4 1 him a stick of dynamite. After you ve heard our explosions coming from both ends of Palataki then you can take out the midsection. Meanwhile you wait here for the others tell them where we are. Andreas understood well enough. Is okay he nodded. I ready. I waiting. And he held up a stick of dynamite in a tightly clenched fist. Goodly and Chung set off at once went loping through the mist Malinari s mist entwined with the crawling sweat of Vavara s deadspawn toward the old building the locator making for one end of Palataki and the precog for the other. And for the moment neither man found anything odd in what he was doing not beyond the accepted file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 247 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt weirdness of the situation nor in the way he d been inveigled into doing it. While down below Malinari bayed like a moon crazed hound but kept it to himself shielded in his mad mind as he gave Anna her instructions before setting out along his real escape route: the one that would first intercept lan Goodly s descent before taking Malinari to Vavara s boat in a cave over the rim of the slumbering sea ... 423 NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS THE UPPER HAND THE NETHER REGIONS In the Sicilian Night looking down at the seething quaglike remains of Luigi Castellano s razed headquarters unaware that Ben Trask and E Branch had carried out a similar almost simultaneous attack on an alleged monastery on Krassos Jake Cutter reeled from the sudden knowledge that Liz was in danger. And from Vavara Korath reminded him seeming to relish the thought. I have the coordinates Jake gasped. I have to go there now What and put yourself in jeopardy yet again And not only yourself but me my entire future You don t have a future Korath Jake answered. You re a dead thing. But Liz is very much alive. So show me those equations and I do mean now. She s in bad trouble. Oh I agree said Korath. She is in the very worst possible trouble for Vavara has her. And Vavara is Wamphyri So what s your problem Jake had no time for this. Luigi Castellano was Wamphyri too wasn t he Indeed he was but he didn t know it. He had no one to show him the way. He followed the ways of gangland fools instead of his true nature. As a result of which he is dead when he might have been the ultimate master of your world. Vavaaara however is a different being entirely and moreover she has your Liz which makes this a very different situation. You ve been thinking it out. Jake was becoming desperate now. He sensed something coming to fruition in Korath s incorporeal mind felt the ex vampire lieutenant s sudden presence as a real entity and not just as an undead cypher. All very well and good but this isn t the time for thinking. We ve got to go to Liz and right now. Ahi So now it s we is it Korath answered. Moreover it s the we as in you and I close colleagues in this venture. The we as in if and when it suits you and no longer the I that I ve been obliged to suffer when it doesn t. What the hell are you talking about Jake didn t believe it. Some kind of contrary argument or word game at a time like this Just what did this dead creature think he was up to or shouldn t he ask Oh you know very well what I am up to said the other his deadspeak voice darker than ever like the glutinous gurgle of the subterranean sump where by all rights he should have lain trapped forever and not just his polished bones but his loathsome intelligence too. That last thought was Jake s unshielded and irrepressible as the anger he felt rising within himself and Korath read it without even trying. Wherefore: You would have me trapped there still wouldn t you Jake he gurgled. But too late now for that. For when you needed me I answered your call. You the master and poor dead Korath the slave the obedient genie in a bottle. . . until you let me out. Ahl Finally the truth strikes home. Oh yessss You ve had your last wish Jake and now the genie has the upper handl You crazy bastard Jake raged. I need those numbers now. What does it matter who has the upper hand Liz in is trouble And how do you plan to save her the other sneered. You a mere man against Vavara Why you don t even know what kind of trouble Liz is in Also you have no weapons: your gun is lost and your bombs used up. And the most important question of all How will you get there those many miles away across the sea I ll send you back to your sump Jake clenched his teeth. By all means said Korath. And let Liz die or worse You bastard Jake panted but much more quietly. Why did you wait until now You could have done this before. But not so surely Korath chuckled. And never so enjoyably. And as his chuckling slithered off into the deadspeak darkness: Make up your mind Jake. His voice hardened. What s it to be Damn you to hell Jake growled. I ll conjure the Mobius equations myself. He tried. The numbers came they swirled began to form a maddeningly familiar pattern commenced file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 248 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt their mutating dizzying scrolling down the screen of his mind. But just when Jake thought he had it... the formula abruptly fell apart collapsing to a pile of shattered symbols and crumbling cyphers. Not so easy is it Jake said Korath. You ve bluffed me before Jake cried. Indeed I have but not this time. Korath was very sure of himself. Before it was your life that was in jeopardy. And in order to save myself I must save you. Since when I ve seen how much you love this Liz why she s in your every thought your dreams your very heart So now the boot is on the other foot: in order to save her you must give me what I wcm innermost access to your mind so fused with you that you may never more return me to my sump Jake found it unthinkable. You part of me forever Korath sensed the refusal on the tip of his host s tongue and knew that Jake was just stubborn enough to issue it. Before that could happen however: Not forever the vampire said. I am not without honour and I shall hold to our original BRIAN LUMLEY 424 I compact. I said that I did not want you to have the power to reject me and send me back to my sump. I did not say that I wouldn t go of my own free will. But you also said that we d be fused. Despite that Jake was shaking with anxiety for Liz still he was hesitant. A mere mode of expression Korath brushed it aside. Fused only in the sense that we would act as one against our mutual enemies in perfect and seamless collaboration. But come now Jake. Time is wasting. Hurry before it s all used up And when this is over you promise you ll get out My word on it yes. When Lord Malinari Vavara and Szwart are no more when I am avenged then I ll return of my own free will to that watery sump and you can lock me out forever. There was no way round it even knowing the danger Jake had to accept it for something told him that Liz was in worse danger still. And so he gritted his teeth nodded his consent and groaned How do we go about it Simply invite me in Korath breathed in his mind like the gasses rising from a swamp. Simply let down your shields open your mind and of your own free will accept meeee Jake could no longer resist. Without further pause lowering his shields he opened his mind to its very core inviting the dead yet undead Thing that was Korath once Mindsthrall in. And finally as he felt that swift cold flow that nightmarish oozing in the innermost conduits of his being: Ahhhhhi said Korath . . . In the trunk of the big limo Liz had somehow managed to brace herself against the worst of the buffeting that she d suffered. But when the limo had struck the outcrop at the edge of the sea cliffs and spun sideways then her skull had made sudden sharp contact with something hard and metallic and for a few minutes she d lost consciousness. On coming to and feeling the teetering or gentle seesawing motion of the car not knowing her situation but sensing that there was no longer any forward motion she had searched about in the darkness and found a heavy car jack strapped in position in one corner of the large trunk. It had taken a little time to loosen the straps but after that aware by then that her movements somehow governed the inexplicable motion of the car she had set to work. And she was still banging on the curved lid of the trunk near the lock when Jake arrived. His coordinates hadn t let him down it was as if he d been listening to an echo of Liz s cry for help as he d zeroed in on her. And as he emerged from the Continuum at the rim of the sea cliffs the first thing he heard was the clamour from the trunk of the black limo while the first thing he saw was how dangerously the vehicle was perched on the edge of oblivion. For the space of a single heartbeat he froze. For it was as if he d been here before with Natasha. But no he wasn t about to let it happen again. It took just a moment to release the catch and there she was: bruised and awry wild eyed and shivering but Liz for all that. His Liz as Korath had had it. She held the car jack to her chest clutched in her white knuckled hands and for a second Jake thought she would try to throw it at him. But then she let it fall as her eyes went wider still. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 249 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Jake she gasped. Jake Yes it s me he said not knowing what else to say. Jake she repeated herself louder now as she reached up her arms to him. That s right he stepped closer reaching for her. But Liz for God s sake stop moving about If he could have seen himself as she saw him silhouetted in starlight against the dusk of the Aegean night he wouldn t have been in the least surprised at her expression. He was hot grimy dishevelled. He stank of thermite and man made thunder. And blazing in his charcoal streaked face his eyes were just as wild as her own. She tried to stand up fell into his arms and as the car tilted he took her weight and lifted her out of the trunk. The rim of the trunk scraped her knees as the limo groaned a final protest lifted its rear end and went sliding out of view. But they heard its grinding metallic death cries as it crashed its way down the face of the cliff and the splash when it hit the sea before sinking at once to a salty termination. Jake she sighed again as he held her. Are you okay He held her tightly looked all about saw their predicament: the precipitous slope above and the edge of the cliffs in front. Yes. No. I don t know she answered. I don t think anything s broken but I m aching in every joint dog tired and bruised to bits. And with a small hysterical laugh In fact you could say I m totally knackered How about you I mean I barely recognized you. I m good he nodded. At least I think so physically anyway. He cranked his neck at a steep angle and asked But is that a road up there I have to get us out of here. And to Korath: I need the Mobius equations. And answering him with a small dark deadspeak chuckle Be my guest said the other. Eh Jake didn t understand. More word games Something else you want from mO No Korath answered for I now have everything as do you. So by all means go ahead. Try to conjure the formula Jake and see what happens. Jake did it set the numbers rolling in perfect order down the screen of his mind. They reached the point of collapse . . . and didn t collapse He stopped them watched them form a door walked Liz through it and took her up to the road. And as they emerged on high: You lousy bastard thing he snarled out loud. What s that said Liz dizzier than ever and unsteady on her feet. What did you say Nothing said Jake. Everything This bloody creature has cheated me all the way down the line. I had the Mobius formula all along but every time I tried to use it he fucked with my equations I thought it was me thought I wasn t up to it but it was him His thoughts weren t shielded and this close she couldn t mistake his meaning. Moreover she knew he would explain everything to her now because he would have no choice. Before that however there were more important matters. On the eastern horizon that glow lighting the sky: it had to be the monastery. Liz s head cleared she reoriented remembered what she and the others had been about here. And: Palataki she said looking west where twin cupolas rose menacingly over the trees on a night dark promontory. E Branch is at the Little Palace and we have to join them there. Now it was Jake s turn to frown and ask Come again Trask and the others she answered. They re at Palataki that place on the promontory there. We did it Jake tracked down Malinari and Vavara. And that bonfire in the east: that s Vavara s place burning. And Palataki We think that s where she kept her deadspawn garden Liz told him and God only knows what else. We ve got to go there help them get done with it finish whatever they re doing. I don t think I m up to this he shook his head. I mean I don t know what s going on here Then try this she said. Link with me Jake but make it good like never before. She pressed herself to him looked straight into his eyes showed him a kaleidoscopic history of events. And Jake reeled as he took it all in. We ... we seem to be getting better at this he gasped. And Liz nodded. Both of us when we re working as a team. We must be getting better else you wouldn t have heard me. You wouldn t be here and neither would I. If I had managed to get that trunk open and tried to climb out... I could easily have gone down with the limo. This rapport thing he said but Liz made no answer. She was clinging to him still and gazing into his eyes. Jake was aware of Liz as never before this most desirable woman. Her mouth was very close God how he wanted to kiss it and be much more than just the other half of a team Then do it said Korath. Kiss her and be done with it. And I promise I won t look or feel or let myself get too ... er excited Oh ha ha ha haaaa Lousy bastard thing Jake snarled yet again drawing back from Liz and putting her at arm s file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 250 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt length. But her expression didn t change as she said quite simply It s okay Jake. I know now. And I think I understand what was wrong with our relationship . . . before. And with a curt nod of her pretty head But now we have to go. Perfect timing for even as she spoke there came the rumble of a powerful explosion from the direction of Palataki . . . Five minutes earlier: David Chung had taken the landward descent into the Little Palace s underground labyrinth and lan Goodly had entered via the stairwell under the ocean or south facing cupola. Both men were equipped with pocket torches and the dangerous conditions of their work the fact that Palataki was rapidly falling into decay had been immediately apparent. The place was literally a death trap where rotten floorboards threatened to give way at every turn and wormy and crumbling staircases teetered beneath their feet. In addition to which they knew that a Great Vampire indeed Lord Nephran Malinari of the Wamphyri was down here somewhere and that even with their dynamite their weapons and silvered ammunition still they were taking the direst of dire risks. But there was no way round it they must block these exits off and destroy Malinari s escape routes and once they had him sealed in down below then they would be able to relax a little. Meanwhile it was a very nervy time. The precog had determined to descend to as great a depth as he dared light a stick of dynamite with a long fuse and let it fall into the stairwell hopefully all the way to the bottom then get out of there with all speed. Surfacing he would light a second shorter fuse and once again let gravity complete the task while he put distance between. Of course he had the dubious benefit of being prescient he had not foreseen any harm coming his way as a result of this action. But as Goodly above all other men was aware the future is a devious thing and he had never been given to see everything. Indeed just recently he had considered himself fortunate to see anything It was almost as if his talent had given up on him which might in itself be a warning and was in any case a very ominous circumstance . . . Pausing every half dozen treads or so to listen for sounds of movement from below and hearing nothing Goodly had descended to Palataki s basement down groaning wooden staircases. In that cobwebbed sublevel he d found stone stairs hewn from the crumbling bedrock whose spiral he d pursued into the darkness. The good strong white beam from his torch had shown him fresh footprints in dust lying inches thick on the steps proof that this route had been frequently patrolled which in turn served to remind him of Chung s earlier warning that maybe Vavara had left a caretaker down here to manage her loathsome garden. At a depth that the precog calculated to be some fifty feet below Palataki s basement he thought he heard or sensed a slight movement the merest waft of air as if something had stirred in the gloom just beyond his torch s range and came to a halt on a level floor in a low ceilinged man made chamber. The place was shored up with mouldy timbers and as he turned in a circle Goodly saw that he was at a junction of four tunnels uniformly cut through the rock D IS. 1 f L U IVI L C I each of them descending at some thirty degrees into the sentient seeming dark ness. Since these tunnels must surely reach down to the old mine workings it was more than likely they had been hewn as escape routes for German miners and geologists searching for valuable mineral deposits in the shallow labyrinth which presumably lay fifty or more feet below that last according to the locator s calculations. In the event of tremors or cave ins the trapped workers would have have been able to flee from most quarters of the mine to this chamber and from here on up into Palataki. A similar system would have been in use at David Chung s end of the building. In which case Nephran Malinari was simply using bolt holes that had been in use all of seventy odd years ago Which in turn meant that were probably other entrances or exits . . . Other escape routes For Malinari But no time to dwell on these things for suddenly the precog found himself shivering and very much afraid. i At his feet a second stone stairwell yawned it wound down into the nitre streaked rock and had a vertical central shaft that was ideal to Goodly s purpose. Wherefore this far and no further. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 251 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Clipping his torch to the right hand epaulette of his safari jacket and taking a cheap cigarette lighter and a stick of dynamite from a deep side pocket his hand was beginning to shake as he thumbed the wheel to strike a spark And it shook even harder when nothing happened. It must be a misfire and nothing more. He was about to try again when for a second time he felt that waft of disturbed air. Scarcely daring to breathe clammy with dread he turned his body aimed the beam of his torch down each of the four tunnels in turn . . . and in the last one saw a writhing knee deep wall of mist expanding in his direction Above in the grounds of Palataki this mist had seemed in keeping. But down here it was something else again. And so was the dark shadow that reared up and swept toward him out of the heart of it Malinari he thought freezing. It s Malinari Yessss a voice hissed in his head. Lord Nepbran Malinari Mr. Goodly so called precog. Ah but you did not foresee this did you Oh ha ha baaaa The wall of mist collapsed like a wave flattening itself to a ground mist that drifted forward to lap at Goodly s feet. Seeming to cling to him it strengthened Malinari s mentalist contact and stepping toward the precog seeming to flow no less than the mist he issued the Great Vampire drew closer his arms and hands lengthening where they reached for his paralyzed victim. But paralyzed frozen At close quarters like this it had to be Malinari s telepathic influence that kept Goodly immobilized anchored. And if that were so then the precog knew what to do about it. Malinari was battening on Goodly s knowledge his thoughts thoughts of the past and certainly of his fearful present battening on them in preparation to siphoning them off. But the precog was a man with a special skill who on occasion saw more than the present and remembered more than the past. Some times in order to boost his talent he emptied his mind of all knowledge which he did now leaving nothing for the vampire to leech from him. Or rather nothing but blood But while the blood remained the telepathic ice at once melted away out of Goodly s veins and mind and he was his own man again. As for Malinari: Snarling his frustration scarlet eyed and gape jawed the Great Vampire was almost upon his intended victim. And forcing a twisted smile he hissed Well then Mr. Goodly if you won t let me do this the easy way there s always the hard way And his fingers elongated into writhing blue veined worms as they extended themselves towards Goodly s face. While the precog had a gun in his inside pocket he knew he wasn t the best shot in the world and was fairly certain that a flesh wound just wouldn t suffice. So since this time it had to be final he dropped his stick of dynamite and snatched another with a shorter fuse from his pocket. And striking fire from his cigarette lighter which finally worked and applying it to the fuse he deliberately featured his actions in his thoughts showing and even telling Malinari exactly what he was doing. Clever ah eleven said the monster falling back a pace then another and shrinking a little as Goodly stole backwards up the stone staircase holding the dynamite with its sputtering fuse out towards him. But tell me isn t it obvious that you ll destroy yourself as well Perhaps perhaps not the precog croaked from his tinder dry throat. But if the blast brings this entire place down on you then I ll be satisfied either way. Malinari s furious burning gaze went this way and that all about him he saw shrivelled timbers and rotten rock everything in a state of decay. It wasn t going to take much of a blast to bring about a complete collapse. And so: In the unlikely event that you survive your own incredibly daring but stupid act Mr. Goodly he snarled turning from the precog and flowing back into his mist remember this That I shall certainly remember you But only if you survive it too said Goodly. And climbing faster scrambling for his life he let the dynamite fall. Then upwards ever upwards he fled climbing like a madman and mirrored in his flinching mind s eye the spitting and sputtering of the short fuse as he counted the even shorter seeming seconds to the most doubtful future that he d ever imagined . . . At the other end of the Little Palace the locator David Chung hadn t descended nearly so deep into the earth for his way had been more difficult and dangerous yet where the timbers of the upper staircases were eaten away and every other tread prone to instant collapse the moment he planted a foot on it. Yet slowly but surely he had managed to make his way down to the basement and despite that he was hampered by his talent the fact that the atmosphere was so permeated by mindsmog that he felt he was suffocating still file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 252 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt ivi L n i 1J IX 1 f 1 N he had searched about until he d discovered the dark mouth of a stone stairwell so choked with fallen rocks and cobwebbed debris that he hadn t dared to proceed farther. At which point he d heard the sobbing . . . Palataki s basements were extensive and at first the locator hadn t been able to determine the source of the sound an odd circumstance in itself for he was a locator Obviously the mindsmog was so thick here that it was deflecting his probes in the same way that powerful magnetic currents deflect compasses. Indeed it was warping them all to hell But he didn t need his talent to tell him that someone some female Liz Merrick perhaps was distraught down here. And as the sobbing grew louder his principal purpose in this place was temporarily forgotten. After all Liz had been taken by Vavara and by Chung s own reckoning Palataki s underground was Vavara s domain where she nurtured her loathsome garden. That being the case . . . mightn t Liz be imprisoned down here For several breathless minutes Chung had remained absolutely motionless listening to the sobbing as pitiful and heartrending a series of sounds as any he had ever heard until he couldn t stand it any longer. By then too he d discovered its origin: the choked stairwell. But moving closer to the mouth of the shaft and aiming the beam of his torch down into the tight seemingly impassable space below so he d inadvertently stepped on a piece of rotten timber causing it to snap underfoot At which the sobbing had ceased on the instant and he d known that someone was holding her breath Who is it he had whispered into the darkness down there. Is it you Liz Is that you crying No answer but Chung believed he d heard a gasp. Liz it s me David he raised his voice a little. Can t you move Has Vavara got you trapped down there Give me a signal if you can. Some kind of movement maybe And at last a voice answered his but it wasn t Liz s. Go away Almost a little girl s voice on the edge of hysteria. I know who you are and what you ll do to me if I should come out. You re Vavara s man or that false Father Mar alini. Chung saw movement deep down in the hole a white feminine face and a hand that covered her eyes from the bright beam of his torch. I m neither one he said then. I m here to destroy Vavara and. . . and that false father. But who are you I m Sister Anna she answered and he heard the sound of rubble shifting hands clawing. I am I was a nun at the monastery. But then Vavara came and later that wicked father. Since when I ve been hiding out where they can t find me. This place is Vavara s yes but she doesn t come this way. But. . . how long have you been here Narrowing his eyes Chung took out his gun and cocked it. Too long. But now 1 can t live like this any longer in dark holes in the earth only coming out when it s daylight so even if you re not who you say you are I give in. And the sobbing and scrabbling came louder yet. Hands that once were white came up over the rim now grimy with broken nails they were streaked red where sharp rocks had cut them. Chung turned his torch a little to one side as an oh so pretty face similarly streaked came into view. I ... I m stuck she husked between sobs. Please help me up out of here. Show me your face he said then as the mindsmog suddenly thickened. But the light from your torch . . . it s blinding she answered emerging a little farther dragging herself up until she sat on the rim of the steps. Your face Chung insisted. I need to see your eyes. At which there sounded muffled footsteps from behind and a rending of rotten wood as a stair tread collapsed. And starting massively the locator glanced back over his shoulder. That was all the diversion that Sister Anna needed. Batting Chung s gun and torch aside she came to her feet. . . her feral eyes like lamps in the dark. And This is from my master she hissed lifting a long curved knife on high. But her triangular eyes made for a perfect target too and Manolis Papa stamos s torch beam found them just a single moment after his bullet which made a very small hole between them and a fist size hole where it blew out the back of her skull. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 253 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Jesus Jesus Chung gasped rearing up and away from her as Anna s mouth yawned open and her feet left the floor and she flew backwards into the stairwell. Flopping from view she went thundering into darkness taking half a ton of rocks and rubble with her. Are you all right my friend. Manolis grabbed Chung s arm to steady him. 1 couldn t see too well but well enough thank God But tell me did that vrykoulakas bitch touch you Did she perhaps . . . claw you Yes no I mean I m okay the locator babbled. And no she didn t touch me. But she would have. Oh Jesus she would have Very well said Manolis. And now for thee dynamite. Give it to me for I see that you are shaken. Three sticks I think right down that hole. And whatever else is down there with thee dead bitch we send it to hell too yes And the locator was only too glad to agree and comply . . . Up above: while Manolis had gone after Chung Ben Trask had run to the southern end of the Little Palace entered the ruins and commenced a descent along the same route taken by Goodly. Stavros Andreas and Lardis Lidesci had remained on the surface to keep watch for anyone trying to escape from the doomed building. But as Trask had reached the basement so he d heard Goodly coming up from below. Now as the precog appeared in the stairwell panting and gasping for air Trask armed his Browning and prepared for the worst. No one or fearful Thing pursued Goodly however unless it was his own terror and he finally managed to draw air and yell Get out Ben For Christ s sake get out Any second now this place is going sky high The precog couldn t know it but by all rights he should have been dead. He would be dead if the short fuse on that stick of dynamite hadn t been damp and decayed and he would most definitely have been dead if Lord Malinari had so much as suspected it But even now deep down below that faulty fuse was fitfully sputtering gradually eating its way to the sweating explosive charge. And in a nightmarish ascent up swaying staircases where handrails gave way at a touch rotten steps splintered or fell into dust beneath their feet and all thoughts of caution were abandoned as disaster loomed ever closer the two men fought against time and gravity to make it back to the surface. But as pale blue starlight gleamed above where it entered through Pala taki s empty windows and doorways and the espers emerged onto the ground floor Trask first pausing to reach down grab the precog and drag him up the last of the steps so the first stick of dynamite went off which at once set off the second. The floor shook as the double blast front raced up through the stairwells and basement to the ground floor while down below there commenced a rapid chain reactive disintegration as everything collapsed in upon itself. A moment more and dust and debris came jetting up through every crack and crevice billowing into the ground floor rooms and spilling out into the night. And as Palataki shook vibrating on its weakened foundations window and door frames popped and groaned and loosened tiles came sliding from the roof. But staggering out of the wreathing dust clouds Trask and Goodly coughed and choked their way into the open backed away from the stricken Little Palace to a place of safety and only then paused to witness the rest of the drama. First: Manolis Papastamos and David Chung at the other end of the building ducking out through a teetering door frame as more blasts thundered up from the bowels of the earth. Second: Andreas and Stavros hurling sticks of dynamite in through the windows at Palataki s midsection then running off to shelter under the pines. And the trees themselves shaking as the earth underfoot commenced a jittery dancing. And finally the explosions: one two three four but no longer muffled by earth and rock and the ground floor walls blown outwards and the flames blossoming in Palataki s heart into which the old building subsided in a seeming slow motion while the trees shook more yet and deep cracks appeared in the earth. Then: Time we were gone from here said Ben Trask when he and his six colleagues gathered at their vehicles. I couldn t agree more Goodly wheezed still getting his second wind. We ve done all that we can for now and it feels like this place is coming apart at the seams. Yet we still don t know how successful we were Manolis said. And Trask nodded answering: And we ve still to count the cost. Poor Liz . . . Oh And what about me said a familiar sweet but shaken voice from the shadows under the trees. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 254 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt And a moment later Liz stumbled into view. Right on her heels came Jake like a smoke ghost all dark and grimy. Liz Trask said. Liz His knees were trembling so hard that he almost fell. His little sister was safe It all took a few moments to sink in but any celebrations would have to bide their time. For the ground was shaking more violently yet as the chain reaction of imploding mine workings caused subsidence in the upper terrain. Then as a handful of house lights flickered into life in Skala Astris along the coast and the group s vehicles departed Palataki in convoy down the knoll s quivering ramp all unseen in the grounds of the shattered ruin the last thing to go was Vavara s or more properly V rvara s shrine. Its customary candle had not been lit since the death or devolution of Zarakis at the hands of Malinari and now the earth yawned open to swallow it in a single gulp. Thus the holy place that Vavara had made unholy by claiming it for her own was no more. The sfcrme was no more at least. But as for Vavara herself. . . Exerting all the great strength of a Lord of the Wamphyri and yet grunting from the effort Malinari single handedly dragged Vavara s boat an eleven foot caique with a typically Greek sun shade canopy down from the mouth of its cave and across a narrow inaccessible strip of shingle beach to the sea. Vavara would have experienced no such difficulty assisted by her man Zarakis launching this thing would have been the easiest of tasks. But Zarakis was no more along with his vampire mistress s deadspawn garden and for all that Malinari knew or cared the hag Vavara herself that long lived lieutenant out of Starside was by now dead and gone and for a little while at least Lord Nephran Malinari would be obliged to perform such menial tasks himself. Straining to get the boat into the water he thought back on the rush of events since he d left the precog lan Goodly to his presumed fate under Palataki . . . Fearing to be trapped down there by the imminent explosion he d made for the safety of the boat cave. But the greater the distance he d put between himself and that sputtering stick of dynamite the more it had dawned on him that something must be wrong or right The fuse must have burned itself out or the dynamite was faulty or something. But by then it had been too late and far too dangerous to turn back. A pity for despite that his survival was as ever uppermost in his mind the Great Vampire had determined not only to destroy Vavara s garden but also to cause E Branch and its members as much damage as possible. He could only hope that Sister Anna had had more luck. At the secret sea cave Malinari had waited until he heard the first of the explosions before getting to work on the boat. He had reasoned that the confusion overhead almost 150 yards farther inland at Palataki would help camouflage his own activity. Believing him to be trapped below them the E Branch agents would surely be too busy to probe for him and with all the noise and disturbance their talents would in any case be disadvantaged. Also he would keep a tight rein on his presence shielding his thoughts and deadening his aura as only Malinari the Mind knew how. The puttering of his outboard engine as he fled across the calm night dark sea would not be heard ... or if it was they d think it was one of a handful of small fishing vessels whose lights dotted the darkness between the shore and the horizon. But of course his vessel would show no lights at all. And now as more devastating explosions sounded this time from on high beyond the rim of the sea cliffs finally Malinari floated the boat out upon the ocean and clambered on board. Using a short armed paddle to straighten the craft up with its prow aimed at the open sea he stepped to the stern and seated himself took the tiller and made to start the engine. Which was when she came She came from the east hand over hand and clinging to the cliff face not letting herself fall to the damp shingle until she was well clear of the sullen sea. And as Vavara s feet hit the beach then Malinari heard her. So intent on shielding his own thoughts from others he had failed to detect hers. And in another moment she came flopping across the shingle floundering through the water and up into the prow of the caique her eyes blazing with all the fires of hell and a gnarled barbed accusing finger trembling with rage where she aimed it at him. Her tongue was barbed too as she hissed: Oh you treacherous dog What a dog that bites the hand that feeds it No for Lord Nephran Malinari is more treacherous far A wild dog then a great grey wolf like the grey brothers on the Starside flanks of the Barrier Mountains. But no file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 255 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:53 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt for even they have honour while Malinari has none Habi I have done all canines a great disservice by linking them with such as you Externally calm but boiling inside Malinari started the engine opened the throttle jerked the boat into motion. And as Vavara sat down with a bump he told her. If you continue grinding your teeth like that you ll wear them to stumps. Shoulders hunched with her eyes seeming to drip sulphur Vavara came creeping along the floor towards him. Plainly she intended to attack him Ma dame he told her I ve acted only in your service and in my own of course. Didn t I wait for you until the last possible moment even until they commenced blowing Palataki apart Liar Vavara answered continuing to creep toward him. Malinari saw how ravaged she was. What happened to you He seemed so genuinely concerned that Vavara blinked her surprise hold ing back for a moment and explaining: My vehicle was forced from the cliffs I flew out into the sea I swam climbed crawled swam and climbed again. My clothes are ripped to shreds my flesh too and my not inconsiderable patience entirely used up. And it s all down to you Malinari the Warped and Treacherous Mind Now the reckoning. I hope you are prepared. Licking her leathery lips great jaws chomping again she came on. Then I really do think I should point out Malinari told her that while you are a very worthy woman I am a man with all the advantage of the greater strength of a Lord of the Wamphyri. However angry you may be now and however unjustified your anger rage alone will not sustain you. Then perhaps this will She pulled a gun from her ragged clothes but even as she moved Malinari snatched up a jerry can of fuel and hurled it. Vavara was thrown backwards her weapon flew from her claw hand and the jerry can glanced off her into the sea. Then they were at each other s throats as the caique throbbed out across the ocean. Eventually it was stalemate. In the bottom of the boat he clutched her windpipe in a massively strong hand and Vavara s left hand was on his face its long barbed fingers hooked into the orbits of his eyes. I could tear your throat out he told her. And unable to talk she nevertheless answered: And I would blind you on tbe instant They pushed apart and lay gasping glaring their hatred at each other. And Are we done then he enquired. If not for good at least for now A truce she answered rubbing her throat. At least for now. Malinari regained the tiller. I m sure you had a plan. So where are we going My first plan is in ruins she croaked seating herself in the prow. For thanks to you yet again a third of our fuel is now lost in the sea. It was my intention to head for Istanbul via the Dardanelles which is now out of the question. And so I m forced to adopt my second plan. Which is Which isn t so pleasant or so easy and involves a degree of suffering. Tell me about it said Malinari. No she answered. For I see that you are right. You are the stronger and the more devious. If I were to tell you what I ve planned what use would I be to you then As you will Malinari shrugged. So where shall I direct the boat Get out of the way and let me take the tiller she answered. I shall direct it for I know where we re going. And on the way my vampire will replenish me. So be it Malinari grunted. And as they changed places: Wrap yourself well she told him if your intention is to sleep. Sleep I think not he answered. And raising an eyebrow Do you find the nights cold then No. Vavara smiled a grim smile. But when the sun comes up it will be hot and deadly. It will find us adrift and possibly becalmed. Oh really said Malinari. And only a degree of suffering Perhaps something more than a degree she shrugged. But all part of my plan. Then let s hope your plan is a good one said Malinari . . . En route to the Christos Studios in one of the cars Jake told Liz and lan Goodly what he had been up to gave them the bare bones of his story at least and the precog in turn told him about Millie in London: the fact that she d been taken by Lord Szwart. And in the second car Ben Trask sat alone sat there with David Chung Manolis and Lardis yet still alone or at best with his thoughts on the one hand thrilling to the fact of Liz s survival while on the other ... he knew it would take a long time if not forever to recover from Millie deary s ... to recover from her whatever. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 256 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:54 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt But as the three cars returned to base and the weary band parked them got out and stood together for a while with lots to say but unwilling to break the unaccustomed silence Suddenly Goodly went limp at the knees uttered a soft sharp cry and might well have fallen but Jake and Liz propped him up and leaned him against one of the cars. Ben Trask when he saw the precog s pale face knew exactly what had happened he saw the truth of it at once. But it had little enough to do with his weird talent this time for he d seen Goodly looking like this before. And: What is it lan he said at once. What have you seen Damn this thing Goodly straightened up and took a deep breath. When I want it I get nothing. But the moment I relax right out of the blue He stared directly into Trask s eyes. She was in your thoughts right And in mine. And that s what prompted it. She said Trask not daring to hope. She It was Millie Ben Goodly told him. I saw Millie Millie Trask s jaw fell open. How Where When It was close the precog answered. The immediate future I think. But she s alive Ben she is alive Where alive for God s sake The Head of Branch looked as if he was about to start dancing now shifting from one foot to the other and back again in his nervous anxiety. I don t know Goodly answered. A dark place and Ben there was a darker shadow a shape a thing close behind her. Millie was very frightened. She was reaching out... for Liz He turned to look at Liz and nodded. Yes for Liz. And Jake was there too. What Trask s eyes opened wider yet. Jake was there My God But of course he was He grabbed hold of Jake s arm. But before he could say another word: It s okay Jake told him. It s okay. If it can be done we ll do it. And I m ready when you are. And speaking as one Liz and Chung said That goes for me too . . . Jake made two Mobius trips to London and transported Trask and the E Branch crew back to their HQ. Once there it took just a few minutes to kit him out with the equipment he required and the rest was up to Liz and the locator. By 12:35 A.M. local time the giant screen in the Ops Room was displaying a detailed map of London s subterranean systems and Chung was standing before it with various items of Millie s personal belongings a ballpoint Paper Mate pen a small hand mirror she used when applying her makeup a lipstick in a silver plated holder close to hand on a desk. Liz stood beside him bruised but undefeated ready at a moment s notice to add her own special skills to his. And with Trask and Jake looking on the locator placed his left hand on Millie s things and the widespread fingers of his right hand on the map. Then: It was as if his hand was drawn to a certain spot: central London between Waterloo and the Embankment. And This is it he whispered as his index finger began vibrating like a water diviner s hazel twig. Millie s there but deep deep down. Too deep for me to gauge and far deeper than anything we ve known about before that s for sure. It s beyond me to explain it. I can tell you this though: she s reaching for us else I don t think I could have found her so quickly. But there s a hell of a lot of interference mindsmog She s not alone down there or something s so close it makes no difference and it s not too hard to guess what or who it is I don t think that he has detected my probe but his mere presence is fogging everything up making it hard to maintain contact. Keep trying Liz told him placing her left hand on top of his on Millie s things. Just stay with it and guide me to her and if she s trying to reach us I should be able to tell. Telepathically speaking we ve rubbed shoulders fairly frequently Millie and I. I d know her signature anywhere. And if there s one thing I m good at it s receiving. God almighty Trask kept groaning whispering to himself over and over again where he stood a few paces apart with Jake. Good God almighty And: Take it easy Jake whispered back but to no avail. Just try to relax and take it easy. But that s Millie they re talking about Trask answered a little louder now. It s Millie . . . Yes yes it is said Liz. It s Millie reaching out to us. And I think ... I think I ve got her I can t read her ... only her fear making my ughl making my flesh creep And the mindsmog is ... it s overwhelming But I ve got her. The coordinates said Jake moving to her side and placing his hand on top of hers and the locator s. And immediately he was into her mind reading what she read and knowing where Millie was. Liz knew what he would do what he was here to do and said I ll go with you. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 257 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:54 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt DKIA1N LUIV1LEI 1 L C. IV But Jake shook his head. Haven t you had enough of danger tonight You ve done your bit Liz. Now it s my turn. He looked at Trask as haggard a sight as ever he d seen who simply nodded and said Bring her back to me Jake and I ll ask nothing more of you ever again. Whatever Jake answered. But if it all works out there may well be something I ll ask of you. Anything said Trask. And then frowning: But I thought you d solved your problem One of them yes Jake answered. Maybe we ll be able to talk about it later I hope. A moment later a final glance at Liz where she stood biting her lip and Jake turned to his right took a pace forward and was gone . . . In the Mobius Continuum Jake asked Korath Will you help me Against Szwart Korath answered. No one can help you Trust to luck and your weapons. Szwart saw such used on Starside and they worried him considerably. My best advice: get in find the woman and get out Don t go up against Szwart not on his own ground. Avoid him if at all possible and if not run But if I needed your help Jake pressed him you d give it to me Of course said Korath sourly. What happens to you happens to me remember If you die I die and return to my sump. I ve tried that once and didn t much like it So the answer is yes of my own free will I ll help you if needs be. But don t play me for a fool Jake and don t for a moment think I didn t understand what you were saying to Trask about your other problem. Hah So despite that we are now one still I m obliged to be on my guard. Well so be it. Following which only one thing remained to be said. And as the coordinates firmed up in Jake s mind and he made a door he said it: Be on your guard now then Korath for we re there. . . Jake s torch was strapped to his forehead like a miner s lamp pausing before stepping out through the invisible frame of his door he switched it on. And with the strong broad white beam penetrating an otherwise Stygian darkness he emerged onto the hexagonal stone flags of that place of long forgotten esoteric worship abandoned more than eighteen hundred years ago by its Roman sect members. Millicent Cleary was there but Jake didn t at once see her she was huddled behind the raised sacrificial dais making herself as small as possible. But while Jake didn t see Millie he couldn t help but see the giant roughly hewn statues of Mithra and Summanus were they stood in a row with others of their pantheon. And as the beam of his torch threw the carven gods into monstrous almost living relief and their shadows moved on the wall of the cave he fell into a defensive crouch. Jake s heart quickened his finger went to the trigger of his flamethrower he applied a half pressure and saw the pilot light flare up a little and only at the last moment recognized the true nature of what he was seeing. But taking a deep grateful breath as he straightened up he was suddenly aware of what seemed to be furtive movement. And now he wheeled in the direction of the sacrificial slab. And there was furtive movement but in no way hostile. Having seen the glare of Jake s torch as he swept the cave Millie had got to her knees behind the dais drawing herself up until her white face edged up over the rim. In the split second before she ducked down again Jake saw her eyes the perfectly normal eyes of a very frightened woman blinking in the harsh glare of his torch. And as she disappeared he said Millie Is that you What Her small whisper reached him. Who I mean yes yes it s me. Trembling in every limb she managed to stand up and Jake saw that she was exhausted staggering. But who I mean who are you Not that it matters much as long as you re really here. It s Jake he answered as it dawned on him how he must look to her in his combat suit still streaked and dirty with a lamp glaring on his forehead the flamethrower s cylinder on his back and half a dozen grenades attached to his belt. Jake Cutter from E Branch. Finally he had accepted it: he really was one of the team now. Jake she said emerging from behind the dais. Oh thank God They moved together and she clung to him for a moment. Then he said Where is he Where s Szwart Enlarging his flue I think she answered her body shuddering against his. He didn t think the wind was strong enough for the job. And she quickly explained her meaning. Wally Fovargue s lamp was still flickering under the arched entrance to the cave of the garden. file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 258 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:54 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt With Millie cowering behind him Jake went to it took it up and handed it to her. Turn it up full he told her. The brighter the better. Then passing beneath the arch he saw the garden s ignis fatuus biolumines cence and in the next moment saw the garden itself. And clinging to his combat jacket almost holding him back Millie said Is that what you saw under the casino in Xanadu It s much the same Jake nodded grimly. And this is what I did to it His intentions his thoughts were crystal clear in his metaphysical mind and of course they were deadspeak. And even as he applied first pressure to the trigger of his flamethrower so they were heard and answered: Don t said an unknown deadspeak voice. Don t you use that weapon There s methane darn ere marsh gas firedamp call it what yer will the gas given off by rotten vegetation shit an all the dead dogs an cats what s been washed darn ere since forever an you could blow yerself to ell just as easy as that Jake eased his finger off the trigger and speaking out loud said What Who are you Eh said Millie from behind him. Nothing Jake told her and switched to deadspeak. Who is it And if what you say is true why hasn t the oil lamp set it off or the pilot light of my flamethrower D IS. 1 rt IN NECROSCOPE: DEFILERS 441 It s I M pockets streams said the other. VKbeti yer see that there pilot light flare up an sputter that s cause it s in the air an the same goes for my old lamp. But if yer fires that flamethrower thingy chances are yer d get a kind o chain er a chain A chain reaction Jake prompted him. Right said the other. As for who I am . Wallace Fovargue is who I was. Then Szwart killed me cause I was. . . well I was hinterested in the woman. Jake looked at Liz. Wallace Fovergue An ugly diseased little dwarf she told him picking the reason for Jake s question right out of his mind. He was a flusher he worked in London s sewers. Szwart killed him and I think he ended up there she pointed a trembling hand in the heart of that dreadful garden. But Jake there s something else you should know. Something more important. Oh I ve been keeping tabs on Szwart telepathically I mean. I could sense him up there somewhere working on enlarging this flue thing. You ll have noticed that the current of air flowing over these fungi is stronger now I noticed said Jake. When these mushrooms spawn the wind will lift their spores up to the surface through the tubes and into London. But just a moment ago I lost contact with him. I think Szwart s shielding himself which probably means he s heard me talking to you. I don t think we have much time left down here. He s on his way back That s my best guess she answered. Ere whoever you are said Wally. Are yer still listening Yes Jake told him but make it quick. Ow d yer get darn ere Wally was curious. I mean I knows every bloody tunnel an pipe an sewer from ere to the surface an I could never ave done it so cjuickl It s a trick I do said Jake. And in a matter of seconds using a kaleidoscopic series of scenes straight out of his mind he showed Wally something that words couldn t have explained in the same number of hours. An you talk ter dead folks too said Wally wonderingly. Er dead folks.. . well they re my friends said Jake. Does that include me said Wally. I mean for all that I ve been . . . yer know a bit of a lad Millie hadn t told Jake how much a bit of a lad but in any case the Nec roscope would feel sorry for anyone who ended up in this kind of mess. And so he shrugged and answered No point in being your enemy Wally. Not now that . . . well not any longer. See said Wally I can feel myself gettin all used up. The garden is suckin on me an soon I ll be gone. But I reckon e was wrong to do this to me. I never did im no arm. You d like to help me said Jake. Is that it You know something that can help me file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 259 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:54 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt Elp you said Wally. I can more than elp you. I knows ow yer can blow that bastard Thing and is fuckin garden away for good that s all. There was a sob in his deadspeak voice now. mean Szwart s fuckin toadstools are leechin on me suckin me away to nothin at alb. But you can stop im Jake you can stop im. It s the gas yer see it s the gas Jake said Millie tugging at his jacket. A moment ago I felt Szwart s probe. He s coming Jake And any time now he ll be here Okay he answered. I ll get you out of here then return and finish up. You won t have time Millie shrilled. Look at the garden Jake. Look at the mushrooms He looked saw what she meant. One by one the black capped domes of the mushrooms were flattening out their gills opening and the first red coloured spores beginning to drift free. Dim the lamp Jake told Millie then. Put it out then wait for me back at the dais. And to Wally: What do I have to do I ave a nose for such things Wally answered. Ad to ave a nose for em else I couldn t have been a flusher. Yer put a foot wrong dam ere yer a goner So when Szwart first showed me this place I sensed the gas and told im where it was. Where said Jake. Be ind the wall o the cave there said Wally. I s pose e thought it would stunt the growth o is mushrooms so e used rocks an mud an . . . an other stuff to block it up cause it kept leakin in ere see There s a whole chain o caves darn ere a bleedin labyrinth an the one next door is full o gas. Other stuff said Jake. Eh You said he used other stuff to block the hole Mud an crap an . . . oh all sorts o stuff. Wally seemed reticent. But you can pull is wall dam again Jake. Pull it dam an let the methane flow through into ere. Excep by now there ll be a uge body o gas a whole bloody cave full An when it mixes with the air in ere an arter you applies a flame to if... Boom said Jake. Yers said Wally. But a damn sight louder than that Putting out his flamethrower s pilot light Jake let Wally direct him to the wall in question. And sure enough there was a walled up area beneath what had been a natural archway like the mouth of a cave. It is a cave Wally insisted but all blocked up now as yer can see. Jake s torch picked out the rocks where they d been piled and the black mud mortar that Szwart had used to seal the gaps between them. He was pretty sure he could pull the whole thing down again and letting the nozzle of his flamethrower dangle he set about to do just that. He started at the top of the arch got his fingers into the mud and gave a yank on something soft in there Then went flailing backwards tripping and almost falling as a human hand and arm lolled into view The limb was followed by the rest of the body which came slipping and sliding stiff as a mummy where it slithered sideways and came to a halt half in half out of the wall. For a moment startled finally Jake s Adam s apple stopped bobbing and he gathered spit to gulp G God almighty Then : NECROSCOPE D E F I L E R S 443 BRIAN LUMLEY 442 You can say that again a new yet oddly familiar voice sobbed in the dead speak aether. Bad enough being dead in a place like this without having you come to gloat over me Gloat What in hell who in hell for that s where he was most certainly was this person And what was he talking about Jake s thoughts his questions were deadspeak of course and they were answered at once: Oh we ve met before said Alfonso Lefranc. Like maybe at Luigi Castellano s place in Marseilles Jake stepped in close again and wiped dried black mud from a face he would recognize anywhere: the shifty eyed weaselly pockmarked death mask of the last of Castellano s men. And now he knew for certain that his vendetta was at an end for there was no one left to track down. But still he wanted to know What happened to you file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 260 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:54 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt As in life so in death and Lefranc spilled his guts for the very last time. saw you out in Australia he said. Luigi told me to follow you and those E Branch people back to London find out what I could about all of you. I couldn t know it but while I was watching E Branch someone was watching me Shit I should have figured there couldn t be that many fucking nuns in London They seemed to be all over the place So I don t know maybe they thought I was some kind of minder for E Branch. Anyway they took me and when I woke up I was down here wherever here is I was questioned by. . . Jesus by something 1 can t even describe and when he it whatever was done with me He bricked you up in his wall said Jake out loud. Yes after he d pushed his hand into my chest and squeezed my heart until it stopped So that s it no nice carved marble tombstone for me. But what the fuck What good is a stone with a legend that says Here Lies Alfonso Lefranc a Truly Great Nark Anyway Luigi Castellano would have taken me out in the end I m sure. Alfonso said Jake very quietly now consider yourself lucky that I didn t get to you first. And knowing what Jake had done to the others Lefranc felt obliged to admit Oh I do Jake Cutter. I do And as a matter of fact so did Jake . . . Jake came Millie s warning cry from the arched entrance to the abandoned Roman temple. Jake he s here He turned to look where she was pointing into the unknown darkness at the far unexplored end of the cavern well beyond the reach of his torch. A stream of red spores was beginning to waft in that direction carried on a draft of foul air from the abyss. Also from the abyss but a different abyss called Starside a black shapeless something was flowing like a sentient mobile carpet across the floor of the cavern towards him With no time left to spare Jake gasped Sorry about this Alfonso and yanked the corpse bodily from the wall. And tearing frantically at the crumbling black mortar and ill balanced rocks he quickly brought the whole thing tumbling down. Instantly a wave of stinking gas enveloped him shimmering in the light of his torch. And as Jake turned away choking and gasping Lord Szwart was there rising up in the rough shape the very rough shape of a man. A huge black blob of a man. But a man with far more eyes than nature had ever intended and all of them as red as the fires of hell Szwart was a scene out of madness and nightmare a sight to freeze the blood of most men to immobilize them and root them to the floor but Jake wasn t most men. Having conquered his own nightmares he wasn t about to succumb to this one. Korath was in Jake s mind gibbering as he proffered the Mobius equations but Jake used his own numbers his own door and even as Szwart flattened to a blanket and flowed forward to envelop him he was no longer there Under the archway to the old Roman temple Jake put Millie behind him took a grenade from his belt and called out Lord Szwart do you know what this is Szwart was already on the move rushing at breakneck speed over the floor of the cavern and even cutting a swathe through his deadspawn garden in his crazed murderous eagerness. But as Jake armed the grenade and its deadly ch cbingi sounded so the monster came to an abrupt halt. For on Starside he d known just such a man one who appeared and disappeared like smoke and he had seen just such weapons as the one that now came bouncing and clattering across the cavern s dusty floor towards him Count five Szwart Jake called out then. And wave whatever you have that functions as an asshole goodbye Szwart reshaped himself seethed into a stain on the floor became a shadow that fled at unbelievable speed in the opposite direction. And conjuring a door Jake started the countdown himself. But on the count of four he and Millie had already departed that place. As the door closed behind them they were given a hot heavy push into the now friendly primal darkness of the Mobius Continuum. And the seismographs at Greenwich registered a mild tremor with its epicenter deep under London as the entire cavern system and its forgotten Roman temple ceased to exist. . . 445 NtCROSCOPh: UHH1LHRS file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 261 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:54 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt EPILOGUE Three mornings later in Trask s office at E Branch HQ Goodly and Chung finished off briefing their boss on the current state of affairs. As for why Trask needed bringing up to date: according to John Grieve the Officer on Duty the Head of Branch had been AWOL for the past twenty four hours. And by some odd coincidence so had Millicent Cleary. This tidbit of information was of course all very tongue in cheek for discretionary reasons however unnecessary Grieve had reserved it for senior agents only. But in fact there wasn t a single E Branch member man or woman who would have begrudged the pair their time together. Now Trask was back however and the updating session was coming to a close. That s about it Goodly finished off. Our ex Australian team is on Krassos now with Papastamos doing a cleanup job on the monastery and Palataki. Especially Palataki. Trask nodded. And the Greek authorities You say they re buying Man olis s story Hook line and sinker Chung came in. In fact Manolis is a hero er not to mention a very convincing liar He laid the foundations of the thing and after we d got Jake s side of it we were able to build on it. You have to admit it s a wonderful story Manolis is highly respected and Krassos is remote enough that no one in mainland Greece is much interested anyway and In terpol is absolutely knocked out that Luigi Castellano and his organization have been taken out of the picture by Jake Cutter. As they re now aware Jake was er working as an agent of E Branch throughout. Lord but that must have been some kind of mayhem And it all fits in beautifully. And Goodly came back in with The story in brief: Castellano was trying to expand his empire in the Med. After playing the philanthropist and infil trating the monastery he was able to purchase Palataki as a way station for his drug trafficking activities. But the nuns got wind of what was going on and to complicate matters a joint British and Greek drugs operation a crackdown on drugs entering Europe from the Med was putting pressure on Castellano on his regular turf. Seeing their opportunity rival gangs began picking off his properties and people in Marseilles Genoa San Remo and finally Sicily. So just when the Greeks namely Manolis and Company were about to close down his operation in Krassos Castellano decided to cut his losses cover his tracks and get out. Chung took over. While Castellano had his own problems in Sicily his people in Krassos stole a load of avgas bombed the monastery then dynamited Palataki destroying every last trace of his hand in things. But Manolis is still out there with our ex Aussie squad trying to dig up further evidence in fact putting a load of thermite down into Palataki making sure that nothing survived down there ... And again Trask nodded. So Jake s role in all of this Was as an undercover agent provocateur obviously said Chung. Which is enough to clear him with all the European agencies. He s a free man. And I no longer have a hold on him said Trask frowning. But you didn t anyway said Goodly. You promised remember Right said Trask albeit noncommittally. And before they could say anything: Which leaves just one question unanswered and it s the big one. While we re all here patting ourselves on the back just how effective were we out there in the Med Oh I know we did damage both home and abroad but did we get what we were after I doubt it. Malinari Vavara and Szwart said Chung. Jake Cutter is fifty fifty on Szwart. But if he had a flue or a chimney to the surface . . . He shrugged. And I can t believe we got Vavara said Trask. I saw her fall into the sea true but she s Wamphyri And the Wamphyri are tenacious. They re survivors. As for Malinari . . . Well I escaped from that place said the precog. And if I could do it So could he said Trask. Which means we re not by any means finished yet. A knock sounded at the door and Trask said Come in. Liz and Jake entered and despite Liz s bruises she looked a lot better than the last time Trask had seen her. Then again so did Trask look better. As for Jake: Trask looked at him . . . and wondered couldn t help wondering yet again what it was about him. Sometimes if you looked at him quickly a quick glance you d swear it was Harry Keogh standing there. Yet Jake and Harry they were chalk and cheese they couldn t be more different. Maybe it was the sudden shocks of grey at Jake s temples and grey turning white at that But it might also be his eyes. Those eyes that looked on things outside common knowledge those windows on a mind that knew magic Trask caught himself staring and sat up straighter. Hello you two he file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 262 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:54 PM file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt IX 1 f IN growled. What are you a delegation or something Or simply a team And whichever what can I do for you Jake looked back at him also at Goodly and Chung and said The Big Three. Well I suppose you might as well all hear it. And we re all ears said Trask ingenuously. But tell me what s Liz here for I thought we were going to talk about your problem. No said Liz looking directly at Trask it s our problem E Branch s problem all of us because Jake s one of us now and we look after our own. And the last time a similar question came up you said you said You said that if you d got the wrong answer Jake finished it for her then you would have shot me. And with a shrug: So she insisted on coming in here with me. Trask s frown was genuine now as he sat up even straighter. I think I remember the question he said. Wasn t it What s on your mind Jake Cutter Exactly said Jake nodding. And when you d asked it we discovered it was the Necroscope Harry Keogh who was on or in my mind. He was there because he d left a job undone and I was perfectly placed to finish it for him. But since then . . . well now there s something else on my mind and I don t really think you re going to like it so much this time around. Trask glanced at Goodly and Chung and said Gentlemen I think this is between me and Jake and Liz. But as his oldest friends headed for the door Trask s intercom beeped and John Grieves voice said Sir the Minister Responsible has a message on the screen. For your eyes only. I ll get to it in a minute Trask told him. Get to it now sir said the duty officer. Trask pressed a button and a monitor screen rotated up into view on his desk. He read the message read it again and suddenly his face was grey as slate. The door was starting to close behind Chung and Goodly when the latter staggered quickly recovered grabbed the locator s arm and wheeled him back into Trask s office again. What said Chung looking mystified. But then he saw that well known look on the precog s face and another on Trask s and said no more. People said the Head of Branch standing up and reaching for his jacket his eyes beginning to burn again in that leaden mask of a face that oh so vengeful mask. Hold everything . . . l NEXT: DECROSCOPE: MERGERS Take a luxury cruise into carnage. Follow a trail of terror to the Carpathians. Revisit Starside. Take part in the battle for Perchorsk. Get a precog s eye view of tomorrow s Vampire Earth And more . . . file: G rah Brian 20Lumley Brian 20Lumley 20 20E Branch 201 20 20Defilers.txt 263 of 263 2 13 2004 10:10:54 PM

Literature & Fiction;Science Fiction

fiction

file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html The Book of Atrix Wolfe Patricia McKillip click for scan notes and proofing history Contents Prologue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 This Ace Book contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition. It has been completely reset in a typeface designed for easy reading and was printed from new film. THE BOOK OF ATRIX WOLFE An Ace Book published by arrangement with the author PRINTING HISTORY Ace hardcover edition July 1995 Ace mass market edition September All rights reserved. Copyright 1995 by Patricia A. McKillip. Cover art by Kinuko Y. Craft. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by mimeograph or any other means without permission. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group Madison Avenue New York NY 10016. The Putnam Berkley World Wide Web site address is http: www. berkley. com ISBN: 0 441 00361 3 ACE Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group Madison Avenue New York NY 10016. ACE and the A design are trademarks belonging to Charter Communications Inc. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Pa...p 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 1 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Prologue The White Wolf followed the ravens down the crags of Chaumenard to the wintry fields of Pelucir. In wolf shape among the wolves he had scented danger sweeping toward the mountains he loved. His dreams turned dark with the coming of winter chaotic disturbed by fire blood the sharp hoarse cries of ravens calling to one another the cries of humans. Darkness rode a dark horse into the heart of Pelucir wielding a sword of fire and bone that pierced the Wolf s dreams. He would wake suddenly in human shape in a close tangle of fur and smells trying to see beyond stone beyond night into the fire that burned toward Chaumenard. Finally harrowed by dreams and unable to rest content in wolf shape he ran to meet the dark rider in Pelucir. He would stop it there somehow in the broad fields and gentle hills of the kingdom bordering Chaumenard before the rider cast its blank hungry eye into the land of mages and scholars and farmers who raised goats in the high peaks and plowed a furrow from light into shadow down their sharply sloping sides. The mage was old and lingered every year longer and longer in the mountains among the wolves. That year he had forgotten it was winter and that he was human. Pulled so abruptly back into the world he had not stopped to tell anyone where he was going. Nor did he know who fought in Pelucir. He ran in wolf shape faster than any wolf he was a shimmer of icy wind blowing down the mountain s flank the white shadow of his own legend barely perceptible moving swiftly silently under the staring winter moon toward the eye of the terrible storm: the castle of the Kings of Pelucir. He had seen Pelucir in fairer days when the massive bulky castle stood surrounded by flowering fields the slow river running under its bridge reflecting such green that drinking it would be drinking summer itself. The ancient keep a dark square tower beginning to drop a stone here and there like old teeth faced lush fields and meadows that rolled to a rounded hill where an endless wood of oak and birch began. Now the trees stood stark and silvery with moonlight and on the fields a hundred fires burned in the burning cold ringed around the castle. The mage still little more than a glitter of windblown snow paused under the moon shadow of a parapet wall. Tents billowed and sagged in the wind sentries shivered at the fires watching the castle listening. Wings rustled in deep shadow a sentry threw a stone suddenly breathing a curse and a ragged tumble of black leaves swirled up in the wind then dropped again. Another sentry spoke sharply to him they were both silent watching listening. The mage drifted past them searching dreams and random nightmares blew against him and clung. Within the castle children wrapped in ancient tapestries wept in their sleep someone screamed incessantly and would not be comforted young sentries whispered of fowl browning on a spit of hot game pie old men trembling in the ramparts longed for the fires below the sturdy oak on the hill. On the field men feverish with wounds dreamed of feet made of ice instead of flesh and bone of the sharp end of bone where a hand should be of a mass of black feathers shifting softly rustling in the shadows waiting. The mage saw finally what he searched for: a flame held in a mailed fist on a purple field the banner of the ruling house of Kardeth. He had known rulers of Kardeth in his long life: fierce and brilliant warrior princes who grew restless easily and found the choice between acquiring knowledge and acquiring someone else s land an arbitrary one. Scholars they spoke with equal passion of the ancient books and file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Pa...p 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 2 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html arts of Chaumenard and of its rich valleys and wild harsh peaks. This ruler whose name escaped the mage must have regarded Pelucir as a minor obstruction between Kardeth and Chaumenard. But while his army ringed the castle laying a bitter winter siege winter had laid siege to him. He had the wood on the hill for game and firewood he had only to sit and wait starving the castle into surrender. But there was nothing yielding about the massive gates the great keep with its single upper window red with fire the torchlit battlements spilling light and the shadows of armed warriors onto the snow. In the wood the game would be growing scarce and what remained of it thin and desperate in the harsh season. So the chilled hungry exhausted dreamers around the mage told him in their dreams. He took his own shape slowly in front of the prince s tent: a tall man with hair as white as fish bone and a face weathered and hard as the crags he loved. He wore next to nothing and carried nothing. Still the guards clamored around him awhile shouting of sorcery and warding invisible things away with their arrows. The prince pushed apart the hangings and walked barefoot into the snow a sword in one hand. The mage noting how the prince resembled his red haired grandfather finally remembered his name. The prince blinked his grim weary face loosening slightly in wonder. Around him the guard quieted. Let him go Riven of Kardeth said. He is a mage of Chaumenard. He opened the tent hangings. Come in. He nodded at a pallet where a man white and dizzy with fever struggled with his boots. My uncle Marnye. He was wounded last night. He took the boots out of his uncle s hands and pushed him gently down. His mouth tightened again. They come out at night the warriors of Pelucir. I don t know how. They have a secret passageway. Gates open noiselessly for them. Or they slip under walls through stone. At dawn I find sentries frozen in the snow dark birds picking at them. My uncle heard something and was struck down as he raised an alarm. We could find no one. That s why my sentries are so wary of sorcery. There is no magic in that house the mage said. Only hunger. And rage. He knelt by the pallet slid his hand beneath Marnye s head and looked into his blurred glittering eyes. For an instant his own head throbbed his lips dried his body ached with fever. Sleep he breathed and drew the word into a gentle formless darkness easing through the restless shivering body. Marnye s eyes closed. Sleep he murmured and the mage s eyes grew heavy closed. Sleep bound them like a spell. Then the mage opened his eyes and rose stepping away from the pallet. He said his voice changing no louder but taut and intense with passion This must stop. The prince feeling the whip of power behind the words watched the mage silently a moment. He said finally carefully Thank you for helping my uncle. The ancient mages of Chaumenard do not involve themselves with war. You are threatening Chaumenard itself. I know Kardeth. You will crack Pelucir like a nut take what you want. But you will not stop here. You will not stop until you have laid claim to every mountain pass and goatherder s hut in Chaumenard. And every rich valley and every ancient book. Still Riven watched the mage he spoke courteously but inflexibly. Chaumenard is ungoverned. It is full of isolated farmers and wealthy schools where rulers send their children and villagers who carry their villages around on their backs in the high plateaus. They will fight you. That will be as they choose. If you survive this place. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Pa...p 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 3 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html The prince s eyes flickered. He drew breath noiselessly and moved letting the weariness show in his face in his sagging shoulders. He unfolded a leather stool for the mage and sat down himself. He said surprising the mage Atrix Wolfe. Yes. How I saw you when my grandfather ruled Kardeth. I was very young. But I never forgot you. The White Wolf of Chaumenard my grandfather called you and told us tales of your power when you had gone. He said you were are the greatest living mage. I am nearly the oldest Atrix murmured feeling it as he sat. I questioned him for such power seemed invaluable to Kardeth. As a weapon. The prince shrugged slightly. I am what I am. He said that such power among the greatest mages has its clearly formulated restrictions. Experience teaches us restrictions the mage reminded him. They are not dreamed up in some peaceful tower on a mountaintop. If we involved ourselves with war we would end up fighting each other and create far more disaster than even you could imagine. Power is not peaceful. But we try to be. The rulers of Pelucir are not peaceful either he added sliding away from the dream he saw glittering in the prince s eyes. This one will turn himself and his household into ghosts before he will surrender to you. I know the Kings of Pelucir. Go home. And you know the warriors of Kardeth. There was an edge to the prince s voice. We do not retreat. Your warriors are battling inhuman things. Pain. Hunger. Madness. Winter itself. Things without faces and without mercy. So is Pelucir. I know. They loosed their hunting hounds two days ago. The hounds howled with hunger all night long within the walls. So. His hands closed tightened. Now they roam at night in my camp they scavenge with the carrion crows. Among my dead. I will outwait winter itself to outwait the King of Pelucir. And then in spring I will march through the greening mountains of Chaumenard. Spring Atrix warned is another time another world. In this world you are trapped in the iron heart of winter as surely as you have trapped the King of Pelucir and unless you want to turn into an army of wraiths haunting this field you must go back to Kardeth. There is no honor for you here. And therefore no dishonor in retreat. I will see spring in Chaumenard. The prince seemed to see it then: the green world lying in memory in wait just beyond eyesight. His eyes focused again on Atrix Wolfe the fierce and desperate dream still in them. And the King of Pelucir will live to see it here. And so will his wife and his heir and his unborn child. If. If. If you help me. In the green wood on the hill within the endless dream of spring the Queen of the Wood s daughter paused to look across worlds hearing the thin wolf whine of bitter winds scraps of human words in a darkness she found both perplexing and tantalizing. There was a drop of human blood in her and in her father the Queen s consort it brought both of them visions at times living dreams of the world beyond the wood. Her father had learned to ignore them for file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Pa...p 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 4 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html they meant nothing to him. She still learning words for her own world did not make such distinctions: Everything was new everything spoke to her and had a name she had not yet learned that something could mean nothing. Her mother disconcerted by their visions reined beside her. They sat three riders on three white horses two watching a distant world the third watching their faces. What is it her child heard her murmur. What do you see Saro Ilyos what does she see They did not answer immediately lost in the peculiar vision of a white streaked dark trees as barren as bone under moonlight fires blossoming everywhere on the white field. They were alike the Queen s consort and her daughter: both with pale gleaming pearly hair and eyes as dusty gold as acorns. The child spoke first. Ravens. Her small body supple and restless tautened like a scenting animal. She shook her head a little bewildered and produced a human word. Sorrow. The Queen looked at her consort. Her long hair held all the reds and bright golds and yellows of autumn leaves her eyes were dark and gold owl s eyes. Even in her wood they could be troubled. You taught her that word she said. I didn t. Ilyos. I am teaching her the language of power he said absently. Her voice sharpened drew him back into the wood. Sorrow is a word that means nothing until it means everything. That he said softly is what makes it powerful. He looked at her then and touched her slender jewelled hand. Don t be afraid. Humans learn many words they never learn to use. But what is it Saro asked hearing voices now more clearly glimpsing dreams and nightmares images that appeared and drifted apart like windblown clouds. She turned her head and saw the word in her father s eyes. So did the Queen she turned her mount abruptly. You explain it she said and rode away from them to a silver stream into which Oak during one of the wood s arbitrary seasons had dropped gold leaves to lie like coins at the bottom of the clear water. Downstream a white deer lifted its head jewels of water falling from its muzzle and looked at her fearlessly. Saro s eyes followed her mother watched her thoughtlessly a moment: how her long hair flowed like a fiery mantle down the deep green silk she wore how the white deer and the white horse mirrored one another their heads dropped to the silvery water to drink how the oak beside her mother lowered a leafy hand to touch her hair. Death said her father and she turned her head looked at him out of his own eyes. What is death He could not seem to say he tried and then smiled a little brushing her cheek gently with his fingers. Come he said. We are troubling your mother. But the dark dream caught at her again mysterious and urgent as it was. Her father did not move either. She felt his mind which flowed between them more easily than language absorb itself in her curiosity sensing what compelled her attention in the grim and dangerous human chaos. The Queen rode back to them a disturbance of fretful thought. Why must she watch she asked. Why do you let her What fascinates you so It is my heritage Ilyos said apologetically. There is a force at work here terrible as it is it will do her no harm to recognize it now so that she will not be troubled by it later. I hear hounds Saro said suddenly. Hounds she knew: her mother s were gold as sun red as fire white as bone. And I hear someone crying. Or dreaming about crying. She listened picked out the snow s voice rustling dryly across the field a raven s voice a muttering that file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Pa...p 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 5 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html turned into a sudden shout then subsided into muttering again whispers more weeping some talking. She picked out a word. A wolf. A wolf is talking. Wolves don t talk her father said. Yes Not in that world. Listen. He listened. Saro come the Queen said putting a hand on her daughter s reins the tiny silver bells sang. But Saro immersed in the strange unpredictable place tried to see more clearly pouncing like a wild thing on scents movements sounds. The sweet spring air grew misty a wind tumbled over them carrying hints of smoke snow into the Queen s wood. Saro the Queen repeated alarmed. Ilyos. But her consort only watched as entranced as his daughter while with her powerful focused attention she drew the dark world closer to them. A mage she said suddenly and looked at her father without seeing him. Like you. A mage is talking. I hear he said. The Queen twitched her reins restively sapphires sparked along the leather. Around them oak flurried in the strange wind moaned. The birds had already fled. But she could not leave them she watched them worriedly. Both their faces child and father wore the same spellbound expression. And now someone is answering the mage. Hush her father breathed. Listen. The Wolf was on his feet pacing back and forth in the prince s tent agitated but unable to leave. The prince watched him. I cannot help you. Then we will all die here the prince answered eating our pride and stubbornness at the end when we have nothing else to eat. You know I cannot use sorcery for Kardeth against Pelucir. Not if it will save our lives The Wolf turned his shadow splayed looming across the tent walls. You don t need my help to stop this. Put down your arms. Pack your tents and go. I will help you with the wounded. I will not stop. The prince s eyes followed the prowling mage his face remained impassive. The warriors of Kardeth die before they retreat. Even from winter. This is between Kardeth and Pelucir And will be between Kardeth and Chaumenard when Pelucir falls. And still you expect me to help you I will exercise so much restraint in Chaumenard you will hardly recognize the army of Kardeth. I swear this. He held up a hand as the mage whirled. I swear it he repeated softly. You will save lives here and in Chaumenard. No. Then the King of Pelucir and his heir and his unborn child will die here and I will show even less mercy to the goatherders and wanderers of Chaumenard. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Pa...p 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 6 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html The mage stood still his eyes the color of tarnished silver suddenly expressionless holding the prince s gaze. Around them shadows cast by nothing visible trembled in the air. I could force you to leave the mage said. You would have to kill me. Don t tempt me. The mage was shaking he realized with a fury the wolf might have felt caught in the iron teeth of a trap. The prince was very still as if he feared a movement an eyeblink might spark the charged shadows around them. He said again softly very carefully This is as close as I can come to begging. Please. Help me put an end to this. I cannot. The mage walked out into the snow. He moved blindly through the field appalled by the landscape of war: the hunger and the nightmares the bloody snow the unburied frozen dead the terror the pain the howling maddened hounds. The formless fury took shape in his mind then into a vision more terrible than war or winter: something that both armies would end their war to flee from. He fashioned his making out of the black endless winter night the fire from burning arrows the last words of the dying the cries of dreamers the images in their nightmares. He made it out of the bloody claw print of a raven in the snow out of the reflection in the eye of a warrior staring into the raven s eye out of the hunger and cold and hopeless fury of those trapped within the castle walls the cries of children wearing themselves to sleep their dreams when they finally slept. He made it out of the wood on the hill. He found fearful memories there among the lean exhausted animals of gaunt hunters stalking them. Green or a wish for green colored the winter trees in their minds or in his scenting mind. He scarcely noticed it in his great anger and despair. Nor did he notice any faces that were not memories or cries that were not quite human nor recognize any power not his own. His power snagged a hunter out of a dream turned his acorn eyes as black as ravens eyes crowned him with an immense tangle of horn. Among the horns the mage set the moon that warriors most feared: the black moon that cast no shadows under which anything might move. He took the fierce starving hounds out of the field turned them huge and black as night. He did not notice as he took the memory of a white horse and turned it black and set sparks of flame between its teeth the reflection of green in its eyes. He made a warrior with no allegiance but to death and when his own passion had exhausted itself he saw it at the edge of the wood: the dark rider he had come to Pelucir to stop. He bade it come. In the Queen s wood seasons fought: Snow swirled across the torn boundaries of the worlds clung to grass oak boughs the Queen s bright hair. Saro wraith pale in the snow watched streaks of light change the color of her father s hair change his shape the expression in his eyes. He fought it until he could no longer move until the strange power held him motionless. Saro she heard the Queen cry somewhere beyond the raging storm of snow and magic. Saro Terror and wonder shaped and reshaped Saro s face the cold winds of power snatched away her voice changed the position of her bones. She seemed to grow small in the chill world hunched and helpless like the animals she glimpsed in that frozen wood. Her mother s voice seemed very far away. Her father had vanished. A rider with the black moon rising among his burning horns looked at her without recognition. She tried to scream no sound came. He turned away from her rode out of the timeless wood into the human world. Opening gates spilled torchlight across the snow as the King of Pelucir led his warriors among the sleeping army of Kardeth for one final desperate battle to end the siege. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Pa...p 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 7 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html The dark rider met him on the field. One The great mage moves the mage Danicet said twenty years later at the mages school in Chaumenard from moment to moment from shape to shape to meet the constant ever changing needs of life. From stone to eagle to healer when stillness flight life are required Those mages of greatest power must involve themselves in a continuing flow of power for power unused power neglected or refused will find its own shape its own destructive path in the world. So the greatest of mages such as Atrix Wolfe have written out of their own vast and varied experiences. Each moment must concern itself with life for the renegade mage who chooses to deal in death will wear the face of death and in the end become the motionless powerless shape of death. She paused searching the dozen faces in front of her for questions. Her calm eyes Talis Pelucir noted were the exact shade of blue framed by the broad window behind her. A question moved in his mind and somehow into his face. She said Talis All the faces turned toward the prince of Pelucir who had been born in the midst of a curious and deadly whim of a renegade mage. But his eyes behind lenses reflecting the brilliant light above the mountain peaks were opaque his question was mild. What of Atrix Wolfe among the wolves he asked fascinated with the legendary mage. Is he neglecting his powers The White Wolf is very old Danicet said. Her face had changed assuming the gentle wondering expression the mage s name evoked the tone of her voice had softened. I believe that he is choosing his final shape among the wolves. Wind stone Who knows on the mountain he loves what he will become in the end I think Riven of Kardeth s youngest daughter Lares said abruptly causing all the faces to swing toward her that since war is part of life that mages should concern themselves with that. Then the forces of the last battle between Pelucir and Kardeth would have been equal. The faces swung again not toward Danicet but toward Talis who still studied the color of the sky. He and Lares had been at the mages school for two years but the siege that Lares had laid to bitter memory seemed endless. He sat silently unmoved listening to Danicet s answer. Mages do concern themselves with war Danicet said simply as was evidenced in Pelucir. I am only explaining the conclusions the greatest and most experienced mages have reached. You of course will make your own choices. Now. To continue practicing your shapechanging abilities I want you each to hide somewhere within this part of the school. Lares will search for you. Lares Talis thought wearily watching her stiff shoulders beneath the fall of her heavy hair as if she sensed him her shoulders drew even straighter. He rose left the chamber with the other students to fan through the corridors. A closet beckoned immediately Lares would never look for him among mops. A clutter on a shelf caught his eye as he opened the door. Closing it he smelled a mingling of beeswax lamp oil dusty cloths old leather. While his eyes adjusted to a mage s vision in the dark he let his mind roam among the shapes on the shelf. He felt supple leather fine file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Pa...p 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 8 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html parchment. Curious he let his mind linger and following his curiosity turned himself into a page within the book. Some time later he emerged blinking in the dark with a sense of having dreamed some very odd dreams. He pulled the book off the shelf and opened the door. The line of windows along the stone corridor arched across a view of the highest peak in Chaumenard where the trees fell away and the thrust of barren rock began. The windows were black now the hanging lamps lit. He noted it absently still chasing an image in his head or perhaps a word left by a dream. It eluded him. He leaned against the stone wall and opened the book. The spells in it seemed very clear precise fundamental as if written by some great mage for beginning students. Their simplicity masked a broad experience and a powerful sense of order. Intrigued he searched: There was no name anywhere in the book. He continued reading. The feeling grew stronger in him of some mystery some ambiguity in the book or perhaps in the writing of it or perhaps that it was not a book at all but something entirely different. So he felt and turned pages still caught in the odd sense of timelessness he had carried out of the closet as if part of him still dreamed within the book. Talis Pelucir. In the distance someone called someone. He pushed one hand beneath the circular lenses and rubbed his eyes. Then still spellbound he continued reading. He had his father s height and raven s wing hair his mother s cheekbones and her smile. This his older brother Burne among others had told him both their parents had died the night he was born. Talis. His attention wandered suddenly up the mountainside he glanced up. But the windows were black night hid whatever he had sought: a puzzle piece of dream perhaps an eagle s swift flight up the granite face of the mountain so swift that stones and trees blurred Talis He closed his eyes trying to remember the strange elusive dreams that seemed like someone else s memories Talis Something loomed at him. Startled he vanished and moved then reappeared as quickly to catch the book before it hit the floor ducking at the same time to avoid a darkness streaking through the air. He settled the lenses on his nose and eyed Lares warily wondering what else she had in mind. She smiled tightly with little pleasure and less humor her eyes were chilly. Very nice. Thank you he said politely. I ve been searching for you for hours. I ve been here. Why didn t you answer when I called I didn t hear you. Her eyes darkened. He took a firmer grip on the book prepared to jump into it again flea like if she lost her temper. She had a precarious hold on it at best just the sight of Talis caused it to flare sometimes in unexpected ways. She had been raised as he had listening to tales of Hunter s Field the only field which the entire army of Kardeth had ever fled. She bore her father s shame and blamed Pelucir for the sorcery despite the fact as Talis reminded her that the sorcery had killed the King of Pelucir. Bitterness only fed her temper courtesy and alacrity seemed the best defense against it. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Pa...p 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 9 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html She said You hid from me. We were instructed I mean deliberately. After I gave up searching for you. You must have heard me call. I didn t He stopped abruptly his brows puckered hearing the echo of a name in his head. I did hear you call he said slowly his gaze directed into some nebulous realm of memory between them. It was as if I didn t recognize my name. She was silent torn between temper and curiosity. Curiosity took precedence briefly. Where were you hiding I found everyone but you. In here. In a book Her mouth tightened again she said with irritation The mages were beginning to worry. No one could find you. It s past supper I m starving and we were starting to think you must have climbed the mountain to hide among the wolves. He shook his head. I was among the mops. I m sorry he added for safety s sake seeing her eyes narrow as if the idea of mops was a personal affront. He said irrepressibly weary of continuing a battle that had ended twenty years before It s just as well your father failed to take Pelucir the princes of Pelucir have so little dignity. And less honor she snapped. Her words struck his head went back a little. He felt his habitual patience founder suddenly against all the tales of horror and despair that had been his legacy. Why he breathed incredulously must we refight that battle every time we meet I have told you and told you: Pelucir had nothing to do with the sorcery on Hunter s Field. Your father ran from it yes but at least you have a father. Who would have died himself rather than ask a mage to fight his battles for him. And mine of course would have hired some sorcerer inept enough to kill him. And shrewd enough to run when he realized what he had done. Is that what they believe in Kardeth he demanded amazed. That some fly by night sorcerer worked such a deadly and terrible magic that has kept even a prince of Kardeth afraid to fight since then My father is not afraid she retorted furiously. His dreams were broken. In Pelucir. By the King of Pelucir who was losing his land and should have lost it honorably. He lost his life instead Talis said bleakly thinking of his brother Burne younger than Talis at the time watching their father die. Your father lies to you he added reckless and depressed with the argument. He summoned the mage to the battlefield himself. That s the shame he bears. He saw the blood flame in her face beneath her flaming hair. What she might have done he never knew. The mage Hedrix stood with them suddenly a small man with golden eyes and an owl s tufted brows his ancient fragile voice making soothing noises his hands patting the air around them as if to calm the tension in it. No one knows what happened on the last night of the winter siege of Pelucir he said gently. You could argue about it until the crags of Chaumenard crumble into the ground. No mage or sorcerer has ever claimed the sorcery the sorcery itself vanished with the dawn. Lares opened her mouth he patted her wrist still talking and she subsided. All we know is this: The Kings of Pelucir have been through the centuries so oblivious of the magic around them that it is hard to believe they could summon up even the name of a mage let alone summon a file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 10 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html mage. So Lares began furiously. Hedrix shook his head his frail fingers closing on her wrist. No. It makes no sense that your father would have been frightened off the field by something he asked for. Rulers of Kardeth are far too intelligent and experienced with various kinds of power. Then who No one knows he said simply. No one knows. He released her wrist. But you must stop blaming Talis who was after all not an hour old when the battle ended. I cannot help it she said not looking at Talis. It s all I have heard since the day I was born. The tales of the winter siege. The betrayal and dishonor of the King of Pelucir. That s what I heard Talis said softly. The only tales I was told as a child were of the horrors of Hunter s Field by those who survived it and could not forget. It s why Burne sent me here. Lares looked doubtful but at least she was looking at him. Because of the siege He smiled a little tightly. To have some sorcery in the house in case the King of Pelucir finds the rider with his hounds and burning horns and the moon that is no moon at his doorstep again. Burne thinks I could fight it. He leaned back against the wall watching the expression change on her face. I know. Hedrix is right: The Kings of Pelucir have only the vaguest notions of magic. She was silent her eyes hidden again uncertain he sensed but being of Kardeth unwilling to yield a battlefield. The mage touched her lightly. You did well today you found all the hidden magics even Talis. He wasn t exactly hidden she said tartly but without her usual bite. He was standing here reading a book. The mage looked at Talis then at the book in Talis hands. His eyes seemed to grow paler filmy with thought. And we could not find you He took the book opened it Lares looked over his shoulder. It s nothing she said surprisedly. Just a beginner s spellbook. Am I finished Hedrix Are there any more lost things you want me to find Only your temper he said mildly. She smiled. Talis watched her face change again and thought ruefully She would smile like that for me if His eyes followed her down the hall her long lithe stride her hair straight and thick and of a red darker than fire with mysterious shadows in it. Hedrix made a noise. What is it Talis asked. I don t know whose work it is. Atrix Wolfe wrote something here years ago when he came down from the mountain to teach a while. When The name Talis thought was like a spell something enchanted. Years ago. Not long after you were born it would be But he didn t stay long and I don t believe he finished his writings for he never showed them to anyone. I doubt he would have been writing anything this elementary. Perhaps a student wrote it. He handed the book back to Talis. Take it to the library when you are finished with it. You chose an awkward time to vanish he added his tufted brows ascending descending again. Talis settled his lenses with one finger. I didn t mean to. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 11 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Messengers came from Pelucir this afternoon. They were already uneasy at being among mages and became very alarmed when we couldn t find you. They seemed afraid Talis nodded. Yes he said softly. I know those fears. What does my brother want The King wants you to return home. He touched Talis shoulder Talis looked at him silently guessing. He says he needs you now in Pelucir since he has no other heir. Talis drew breath noiselessly loosed it his eyes hidden behind the lenses. He pushed himself away from the wall. Another legacy of Hunter s Field he said briefly. He was badly scarred by his wounds. He stared at the mountains saw only night beyond the stones. His eyes dropped found leather parchment a book without a name. May I take this with me he asked impulsively. Only Hedrix said if you explain to me some day why it fascinates you so. I will Talis promised. When I know. He made one last journey up the mountain at dawn. A brief one he promised the uneasy messengers. But something drew him more than love of the sun struck peaks where light poured from stone to stone like water and the wind roaring up the mountain smelled of wildflowers and pitch turning to amber and the plowed earth in the fields far below. He forgot time. As he climbed up the bare face of the mountain he saw the mages school blocks of stone built on stone looking small and fragile above the vast green forest that spilled away from it. Sometimes mist obscured the mountain s face: The Shadow of the Wolf the students called the mist. They climbed the mountain to look for the White Wolf impelled by legends of him tales the mages told. Perhaps he is there among the wolves the mages said perhaps he is dead: He has not been seen for many years. Look for the white wolf who casts a white shadow. He leaves no footprints in the snow. He vanishes like mist when you chance upon him. His name followed Talis like his misty shadow for no reason that Talis could discern except that the mountain seemed to belong to the mage. The winds sang with wolves voices the higher he climbed the stronger they grew until he felt surrounded by invisible wolves. He stopped before he reached the top. The crown of crags massive upthrusts of stone through which the sun flashed looked airy and magical at a distance closer they became impossible. He had already gone higher than he had ever climbed. He turned breathless sweating the world below reeled with him. He sat for a moment watching hawks below chips of gold fixed in the air an instant before they plummeted toward the shadowy green. His lenses were steaming with his sweat. He took them off cleaned them on his shirt. Then he pulled himself up against the dizzying angle of stone and turned again toward the mountaintop. It pulled at him the stark edge of the world beyond which he could step into pure light. He knew he should turn back he had climbed for hours. But he had left the world behind it seemed he had shrugged it off like the stones that climbed toward the nothingness above the trees. Still he climbed trembling with weariness driven by nothing the white light the mist of light around the stones. He fell once slid down a small avalanche of stone he pushed the lenses back up his nose and climbed again. The winds pulled at him wailed at him pushed past him they seemed to strip him of magic their voices too loud he could no longer hear himself think. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 12 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He stopped again vaguely aware that above him the stones had begun to separate one from another jutting out in cliffs and overhangs at impossible angles. Light and shadow streaked through them working illusions among the stones. He swallowed bone dry and took off his lenses again to clear the mists away. There was blood on his shirt he noticed from his scraped hands. He lifted his lenses again. His hand shook the lenses slipped from his fingers dropped. The stones blurred light and stone and shadow became indistinct flowing into one another. He swayed pushed by the wind then heard his own breath raw and exhausted in his throat. He could not take his eyes off the stark white line of light beyond the mountain. But he could not move his body refused to take one more step away from the world. Nor could he turn spellbound by the mountain s magic. He stood motionless feeling scarcely human understanding why a mage drawn to such high places above the human world would relinquish his own form. He took one more step upward even while every muscle and every threadbare shred of sense protested. Something was wrong he had forgotten one small detail. A white mist crossed the stones above him and falling suddenly back into himself he remembered his lenses. He blinked. The mist had stopped: a blur of white against the crumbled granite. He could not see it clearly. Do you cast a white shadow he wanted to say. Do you leave no path to follow He said Atrix Wolfe His lenses sparked suddenly a star of white fire near his feet. He bent reached for them. He put them on and saw the wolf. It watched him from the edge of the overhanging stones ready to melt into their shadows: the White Wolf of Chaumenard. He looked for its shadow. It s true he whispered trembling with weariness and wonder. The wolf became a streak of white in the air and then a memory. Go home the mountain said. He nodded. Yes he told it. Now I can return to Pelucir. Two Saro dumped a bucket of steaming water into a cauldron plunged chapped cracked hands into it and began to scrub. Scorched strips of onion and potato peelings floated to the surface. She flicked them out onto the flagstones where a wizened old man hunched over a gnarled broom swept them up in his ceaseless path around the kitchen. She washed pots in a corner near the drains. A line of them copper and cast iron waited. She never looked or counted pots appeared and disappeared reappeared according to the great tidal forces of consumption that ruled the castle kitchen. She dealt with the pot or the leftover scraps or the cry of her name whatever was under her nose in her hands in her ears at the moment never looking ahead or back for both past and future were an unbroken unending string of pots distinguishable only by the present when under her busy hands a dirty pot became a clean one. Someone cried Saro She jerked herself out of the cauldron wiped her hands on the skirt of her coarse woolen dress which was too long and too big a castoff from one of the plate washers. The plate file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 13 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html washer had pulled it up impulsively one day and now was too big herself to wear it. You must never make that mistake she d said to Saro. Her eyes were big her belly was big the bones beneath her skin were sharp. She touched Saro s cheek with one finger as Saro gazed at her. You don t understand do you Then it s just as well you are so plain. Never let them touch you and you ll be safe. Poor child she murmured looking down at herself. Saro never saw her again. Saro was one of the spit boys said one day as she emerged unexpectedly from the depths of a cauldron splashed with water fish bones and grease hardly human. Pale as candle wax with a face as unremarkable as the underside of a saucepan. She was dependable like fire if she was fed she worked. She never cried she rarely smiled. She never spoke. Sorrow s child they said when they found her crouched naked and trembling beside the woodpile. No other name occurred to anyone. She slept and fed with the kitchen cats until she was strong enough to work a knobby spindly girl who grew taller through the years but still retained a curious blankness in her features. There seemed nothing to snag the eye nothing for the memory to preserve as if her face induced forgetfulness and only her name and her constantly busy hands were remembered. Saro She followed the thread of her name through the vast crowded kitchen. She remembered voices perhaps because she had no voice. This cry belonged to one of the apprentice cooks. She ducked through a squall of goose feathers the pluckers sent flying through the air rounded a table full of bread dough being kneaded and pulled apart and shaped into loaves doves rings through clouds of smells: onions spattering in butter over fires spices and brandy from huge bowls of minced meat seared flesh from rabbits and game hens roasting on spits slowly turned by sweating spit boys. She dodged a stray dog and the elbow of the head cook as he flung a wooden spoon at one of the undercooks stirring a sauce. Lumpy he growled. Unthinkable Impossible. He was a lean fiery pepper haired man who looked as if he would be happier riding a horse across dangerous lands to deliver a fateful message than inventing fifty different ways to cook venison. Saro found the apprentice cook dumping a pot of stew in a wooden bowl for the dogs. Scorched he muttered. Saro smelled it in the steaming mess. The bottom of the pot was black inside and out from smoke and charred food. He kicked it over to her. She wrapped her fingers in her skirt against the hot pot handle and heaved it up. On her way back to the soap and bristles and cauldron she found herself overrun by a proud flock of liveried servants come to bear trays of cold beef whole poached salmon loaves of braided bread salad fruit dipped in chocolate cakes of cream and walnuts chopped as fine as flour for the midday gathering in the hall. She eased through them carefully knowing that a smudge from the pot on their fine purple and grey plumage would set them hissing and trumpeting like swans. Preening with gossip feathers rustling they gave her no more notice than their shadows. Prince Talis is due back within the day. A messenger was sent ahead last night to tell the King. He rode all night the messenger I heard. And was rewarded. A fine gold chain I heard. I heard a dagger with a haft of gold. No it was a gold Gold is what we all heard then. The King is that relieved that the prince is safely home from Chaumenard and away from all that sorcery. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 14 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html It was the King who sent the prince to learn sorcery. He learned what he learned and now the King wants him to marry. He won t need sorcery for that with what came to show themselves to him: young ladies as fine and stately as he could wish for in his dreams. Saro shifted the pot away from a scalloped hem and found a clearing between four tables where one cook laid raspberries as carefully as jewels on an enormous cake festooned with cream another overlapped thinly sliced carrots and parsnips like fish scales on a school of pâté fish a third turned radish celery and parsley into rose trees and the fourth sculpted a flock of swans out of meringue. Saro crept past them cautiously they were all of nervous temperament and inclined to hysteria if their tables were jogged. Another ember of gossip flared as she hauled the pot safely past the delicate tables. The head hall servant was speaking to the tray mistress who inspected everything that left the kitchen and everyone who carried it. I ve heard the King favors Lady Maralaine of Terine. Some years younger than the prince and not overly talkative but a flower a wild swan Maralaine of Terine the tray mistress mused straightening a border of parsley sprigs on a platter of beef. She was a massive obstinate woman who wore her black hair in a topknot so rigid it seemed carved and who could keep even the spit boys subdued. She s of a large family isn t she Every year it seems brings another Terine lady or lordling to court for a betrothal feast. Maybe the King hopes it will be hereditary. What will All those heirs. She polished a corner of a silver tray with her apron frowning. It s been a grim house without the prince. Sorcery or no it s time he came home to enchant some heirs out of somebody. Saro edged between a wood boy filling the woodbin and an undercook pulling a tray of bread out of the stone oven. She got the pot back to the huge cauldron standing over the drains. She poured hot water from a kettle simmering over a flame into the wash cauldron immersed the dirty pot and leaning deep into the cauldron began to scrub. Saro She straightened trailing soapy water and charred food and made the journey again this time for a frying pan hot off the fire and full of grease and broken sausage. She had to crawl under a table to avoid the hall servants who were moving quickly by then hefting heavy trays and speeding toward the hall before the food cooled. Back at the drains she set the pan down to cool while she finished the stewpot. The sweeper paused to nibble the broken bits of meat out of the pan. Saro For a while dirty pots grew everywhere she collected and washed crawled and pulled and carried from every corner of the kitchen and washed while a tower of gleaming copper and iron grew high beside the wash cauldron. Then the kitchen grew almost calm. The small mincers and peelers napped under tables with scavenged bits of beef and bread in their fists cooks and undercooks discussed supper the tray mistress counted napkins and gossiped with the head hall servant the plate washers sat beside their vast sinks near Saro s cauldron eyed the restless spit boys and whispered. Supper was a prolonged drama of great pies of hare and venison with hunting scenes baked in dough on their crusts vegetables sculpted into gardens huge platters layered with roast geese file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 15 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html woodcocks and pigeons and crowned with tiny hummingbirds made of egg white and sugar. The liveried servants came and went imparting breathless scraps of gossip. Musicians played fanfares for each sculpture that appeared for consumption between fanfares they wandered in and out of the kitchen cooling their throats with wine. One of them hearing distant music even through the kitchen din said urgently Listen Someone s at the gate. The musicians quieted picking out the trumpets flowing voices amid the chatter the clash of undercooks fuming over sauces and the underlying mutter of pots. It s the fanfare for Prince Talis they announced their haughty faces loosening. He s safely home. The head cook grunted and produced a bottle of cherry brandy. The tray mistress pouncing on an idling spit boy lost the cutting edge in her voice and neglected to use the wooden spatula in her hand. Saro wet from head to heel paused to eat burnt potatoes out of the bottom of a pan and then a heel of bread tossed aside when the loaf was cut. Trays began to come back down then everyone picked at the leftovers. Saro immersed herself in water again building her tower of pots. Finally the kitchen quieted. Cooks and undercooks and apprentices left. The tray mistress counted trays napkins and rings for the morning. The sweeper made his last rounds. The plate and cutlery washers wiped delicate porcelain and silver with handles and tines of gold with linen softer than their fingers. They finished and left. Fires were dying down. The peelers and mincers and pluckers found their places under tables among the kitchen dogs. The wood boys and spit boys drifted out into the night their faces tight intent like hunting animals. The cats too began to prowl. Saro finished one last pot and set it down on the stones to dry. Then she heaved the cauldron until it rolled off balance and splashed its dirty water down the drains. Pulling it upright again she began to fill it with cold water. She did this slowly carrying bucket after bucket from the stone cistern in the corner. The tray mistress left yawning hugely showing massive marble teeth. Nothing moved in the kitchen but the cats and the fires settling down into their coals. Saro filled the cauldron partway leaving room for hot water in the morning. She hung the bucket back over the cistern then leaned against the cauldron on her knees her arms folded along the rim her face resting on her arms. She watched the water. It stopped shivering finally grew still so still she could see her breath tremble across it. She watched it eyes drooping wearily but not closed for what happened in the cauldron at night gave her the only pleasure she had. She never questioned it any more than she questioned the hearth fires or the tray mistress s topknot or the head cook s temper. The cauldron washed pots by day and dreamed at nights. Saro never dreamed and so she watched the cauldron s dreams coloring the surface of the water speaking to her in its secret language. She did not understand but the dreams made no demands. They flowed silently across the water and she watched for they soothed her led her into sleep. The dark water turned gold. Golden leaves hung everywhere on slender white trees on massive towering trees that had grown a graceful arching filigree of branches. White hounds ran on a path of gold beneath the trees now and then a leaf would fall glittering through the still air. Riders on white horses followed the hounds leaves scattering in their wake spun whirlwinds of gold in the air then fell again. The faces of the riders were sometimes human sometimes of green leaf or of smooth brown twig. Above them the trees drew up their branches or sometimes bent a bough to touch the riders with a leafy hand. A castle stood in a meadow. Its lower walls were fashioned of thick entwined vines of ivy and rose roses bloomed here and there among the leaves. Its upper walls were white as the marble cutting boards its towers round and crowned with peaked caps of gold seemed as delicate as file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 16 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html what the cooks fashioned from meringue. Rooms flowed through the dreaming cauldron rooms where roses pushed through the inner walls to bloom where fountains flung arcs of diamond into deep pools where groves of pale trees grew beside colored windows jewelled with light. The cauldron s random dreams shifted showed Saro a room within a tower. Candlelight from a tier of deer horn and gold flowed across a dark polished table. A book lay open on the table its pages tidier than the cooks stained torn pages and as incomprehensible. The dreams always ended just as she knew she could no longer kneel upright she had to seek out the warm place along the oven wall. Just before her eyes closed a face formed in the water. She never saw it clearly. She caught a ribbon of pearls tangled in leaf gold hair a prong of deer horn and gold in the crown above the face a glimpse of skin paler than the slender trees. She closed her eyes on that vision hardly seeing it but always keeping it in memory a moment the last thing she saw before sleep black and changeless as the bottom of the empty cauldron transformed her into nothing. Three The White Wolf dreamed. He stood surrounded by leaves touching his face his hair his eyes as if he were somehow part of a tree. Then he detached himself from the tree and began to walk through a wood flushed with the first vivid light filled green of spring. He wore a long simple robe of rough spun wool ample enough to span his long stride. He carried nothing not even he knew in the way that dreamers know in its deep pockets. He moved noiselessly through light and shadow through the tangle of oak and birch white and gold and tender green and patches of impenetrable shadow. In the way of dreams he knew and did not know that he had crossed some boundary between worlds. He knew and did not know that the dead leaves lying beneath the oak might also have been flakes of gold that in the spider webs strung across his path each drop of dew reflected his face that he left no disturbed ground behind him and no shadow. As he walked in the lovely soundless wood three deer as white as snow with eyes of gold and shadows of gold ran through a sunlit clearing in front of him. Light streaked across his eyes and he woke. Healer Someone s grubby brat had opened his door and was pounding on it the voice was high at once desperate and fearful. Healer You must come and see about our cow He grunted and rolled up from his pallet. Scents followed him up: honeysuckle and lavender and mint mixed with the pine needles in the pallet. He ran his fingers through his fishbone hair dislodging a pine needle and ducked easily through the drying herbs and wildflowers hanging from the low beams of his cottage. It was more cave than cottage: wood built against an overhang of granite. Two walls were solid stone he could not stand straight in parts of it. The child clinging to the door observed his movement and was off like a startled rabbit through the trees. The Healer s voice deep and hale for an old man hauled her to a stop. Whose cow A pale face turned he glimpsed yellow hair and wide grey eyes among the ferns and grunted again in recognition. What s wrong with her file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 17 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html She s all bloated and she s drooling The Healer turned back into his cottage put a mixture of mallow meadowsweet mistletoe and rue boiled in water and wine into a pouch. The child was gone when he came out again but he followed her path easily through the broken ferns. The sun had barely risen through the dark trees he saw the cold jagged peaks high above and the bright cold light above them. Even in spring the forest took its time warming but still he walked barefoot through it wearing an old frayed tunic without sleeves he had torn them out long ago to make bandages. It was his habits of sleeping within stone wearing little and appearing unexpectedly up a tree or on a high crag looking for plants that gave him his reputation. Healer they called him to his face behind his back he was the Wild Man. He answered to either and gave them no other name. He healed their animals he had a magic way with plants they said but he refused to extend his healing to humans. He found the child and the cow in a tidy barn on the edge of a plowed field that sloped as all fields that high did down the mountain. The farmer and his wife and their cowherd looked at him anxiously. You see the farmer said indicating the cow. She ate something the cowherd offered. The Healer said nothing went to work with his wet mixture of herbs and his hands. He patted the cow and prodded her looked into her eyes smelled her breath then fed her. She bellowed after a few moments and they all stepped back. She ll be all right the Healer said briefly studying the reeking mass she had produced. She ll feed now. She found some trevilbane in the pasture that s the purple. She was already picking at hay. The fanner and the child followed the Healer out. He did not stop for payment the farmer s raised voice pursued him I ll send the child back to you with something. The Wild Man loping among the ferns remembered his dream then and did not answer. Three white deer with eyes of gold and shadows of gold Fierce sweet wind leaped at him down the mountain he smelled wolves hare wild strawberry stone. Wind and longing threatened to pull him out of human shape he clung grimly to his humanity refusing to remember the few brief moments days or weeks before when after twenty years he had taken the White Wolf s shape. Someone from the school had climbed far too high alone looking for a legend. He had watched students and young mages many times as they sought a glimpse of the elusive White Wolf. Always before winds and loneliness and the relentless stone turned them back before they wandered into danger. This one had fought the wind and would not be convinced by the emptiness ahead of him. So the man became the mage again and then the Wolf. It was that he thought or watch another life in peril because of him. From the pinnacle the Wolf watched the young man stop wind shaken exhausted stunned by the immensity of stone his lenses sliding from his grasp dropping among the rocks. The mage found his lenses for him and then gave him what he had so stubbornly sought so that he would finally turn and go back down the mountain. It was the first magic the mage had worked in twenty years. The ease with which he had slipped out of human shape amazed him. Since then winds lured him stone running water wild things running hawks in flight: His body yearned to melt into whatever shape his eyes touched. Wind touching his bare skin gave him the boundaries of his human shape with it came memory stark and terrible which had bound him in that shape since he had walked through winter from Hunter s Field to Chaumenard. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 18 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He pushed memory away and searched under ferns as he ran and at the roots of trees for the shade loving violets and shepherd s moss. His hands were full of fern buds and wild garlic by the time he reached the cottage. Someone was waiting for him: the stabler from the inn down the road a few turns in the deep forest. He went past the stabler without a word to put the plants down then came back out. The stabler a muscular young man with dung on his boots blinked at the Healer as if he had just realized all the peculiar tales of him were true. He lives in a cave. He runs barefoot summer and winter like an animal. He barely speaks but he knows the name of everything that grows. The innkeeper down the road sent me. There s a lady going up to visit her daughter at the school. But her horse won t budge from the stable he s down and won t get up though none of us can find why. The Healer stood thinking a moment still as stone his eyes streaked and cloudy like tarnished silver remote and unblinking on the stabler s face until the young man shifted uneasily glancing down at himself as if he felt invisible. Then the Healer nodded briefly and disappeared back into his cave. Returning with pouches of varying sizes slung over his shoulders he followed the young man to the inn. He came back late having left the horse on its feet and looking vaguely surprised. He found a sack of new potatoes and some purple foxglove beside his door: payment for the cow. The woman at the inn had given him silver which he tossed into a cracked crockery pot on the window ledge. He built a fire and steeped herbs in water and hung others to dry. After a time he found himself pacing through wood smoke and shadows listening to the winds listening for wolves singing in the winds to the moon rising above the mountaintop. Three white hounds with eyes and shadows as red as fire ran through his dreams that night pursuing the white deer. They made no noise. Their grim silence alarmed the mage in the wood. He wanted to find his way out of the trees then but in the way of dreams he seemed fixed earthbound as a tree. He had no choice but to see what followed the hounds. Nothing followed that night. He woke disturbed and restless wondering what message in the language of dreams his mind was sending him. Hunting the dream said. Hunter. But that dark rider had ridden into legend twenty years before never to be seen again except in memory. The mage needed no dream to remind him: The Hunter the final shape of his magic rode through all his waking hours. The culmination of all he had ever learned He spent the day high on the mountain searching for a tiny wildflower that lived it seemed on stone and air it made a soothing poultice for torn flesh. Stoneflower the goatherds called it and showed him places they had seen it. They kept watch for it sometimes their goats ate too much of it and became intoxicated. The Healer climbed beyond the goats trying to outclimb his dreams the odd shadow over his thoughts as if a black moon had risen out of nowhere and cast its black light across his heart. Near dusk he slipped off a ledge reaching too high for one last plant. He fell in a rattling cascade of shards astonished by pain and resisting all his impulses to melt into stone or soar from stone into air. For a moment he wondered at the fragile shape he had taken and how recklessly he had used it through the years it would be a great relief he felt to leave it finally. Then he slid to a stop among a litter of stones on the edge of a high meadow. He lifted his file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 19 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html face out of grass and wildflowers and looked into a goat s yellow slitted eye. The goatherd helped him sit she was a slender tiny woman as agile as her goats with a face so weathered she might have been born with the mountains. Never go where the goats don t she advised him. Where do you think you can jump that they can t even as wild as you are She boiled stoneflowers and made him a tea which he had never tried before. It numbed his bruises and brought the stars far closer than he had ever seen them. He fell asleep on the meadow and heard just before he dreamed the bell from the school far below warning the students and mages of the night. Three white horses with eyes of bone and shadows of hoarfrost galloped after the hounds. Their invisible riders cast pale glittering shadows of ribbons and mantles and windblown hair. Unlike deer and hound they saw the mage. They turned their great mounts toward him and stopped. He woke just before they became visible. The goatherd and her goats were gone he could hear her voice bouncing here and there among the stones calling one of the goats out of a ravine. She had left him some dark bread and cold lentils he ate them sitting on the meadow his eyes on the tiny stone buildings at the edge of the forest. All that he had learned as mage seemed as remote and incongruous something the mountain or the forest would engulf and render meaningless. Then just before he rose he saw himself from a distance out of a hawk s eye or the eye of the moon: neither human nor inhuman belonging nowhere the powerless mage the man trapped in time haunted by the memory of power. Sorrow shot a barbed point into his heart for that brief moment tore it open to reveal all that he had lost. He stood up with mountain winds and the winds of memory pushing at him coaxing him out of shape. He walked stubbornly painfully down the mountain his eyes fixed firmly on the path he chose his hands remaining empty until he reached his cottage and in its silent shadows he could finally rest. In his dreams the invisible riders became visible. Three riders with no faces sat staring at the mage in the wood. He cried out in terror then but in the way of dreams he knew he had made no sound. One rider was a man with pale bright hair the second a child with his pearly hair flowing long and unbound on the wind. The third rider had hair the colors of autumn leaves with ribbons and strands of pearls braided into it. She wore a crown of deer horn and gold. There was a black oval where her face should have been. Behind them rode hunters with faces of leaves of twisted willow boughs or smooth white birch bark. As the mage s eyes slid across them in wonder and bewilderment finding eyes within leaves a mouth shaped of bark the crowned rider fixed an arrow into her bow. Sorrow a voice cried as she loosed the arrow and he knew in the way of dreams that the voice wild and sweet as running water belonged to the dark empty oval of the face beneath the crown. The air shattered into hoarfrost and light in front of the mage white glittering cold as death. She cried again Sorrow and the arrow struck him. He woke astonished. Four file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 20 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html In the King s castle in Pelucir Talis trying to Extinguish a Candle Flame by Will shattered every mirror around him. It was barely dawn. Awakening early out of habit he had forgotten for a moment where he was. He saw from the window of his chambers not the bare harsh peaks of Chaumenard but the misty green wood on the hill the sky colored pearl around it. The habits of sorcery stirred restively in him pulled him out of bed he remembered with relief the book he had taken from the school. He opened it began a spell at random. The only sounds until the moment he spoke the final word of the spell came from the kitchens and the kennels: wood chopped hounds barking to be fed. Then the round heavy mirror hanging above his clothes chest splintered as neatly as if he had thrown a stone into it and spilled its pieces out of the carved oak frame all over the floor. He stared at the shards puzzled. Then he heard the pounding on his door and other doors opening and the cries astonished fearful and furious of sorcery. He opened his door quickly and found a dozen guards and the King naked under a mantle his hair awry his mistress Genia behind him blinking sleepily her pale brows lifted in wonder. I m sorry Talis said quickly assuming responsibility for having gotten them out of bed but hazy yet about exactly what had happened. What did I do I woke up picking pieces of Genia s mirror out of my beard his brother Burne said incredulously. Did you do that I was trying to extinguish a candle. Burne stared at him. He was a burly energetic man with golden hair and a greying beard a fleck of mirror glinted in it Talis saw with horror. When Burne was younger than Talis he had ridden onto Hunter s Field and watched their father die he had buried both their parents and raised Talis like the son he would never have. Talis familiar with the mingling of loathing and fascination which sorcery inspired in Pelucir heard his brother s voice tighten. You broke mirrors all over the house trying to blow out a candle What did they spend two years teaching you in that place I think Talis said perplexed it must be the spellbook. Then find another book Burne said irritably. Or go out in the woods to practice. You re supposed to learn to defend the castle not demolish it. Our great uncle is probably armed and mounted and out the gate by now trying to fight ravens with a broadsword. He turned left a bloody footprint behind him and cursed pithily. I m sorry Talis said again to his back. He wandered into his chambers again where servants were sweeping up the glass. He stood at the window musing at the wood watching the sun rise behind the trees spilling gold and shadow across Hunter s Field. A corner of the massive keep thrusting a dark angle of stone into his vision caught his attention. Its roof sagged open in places one beam was charred from a flaming arrow that had eaten through the roof slats before the warriors within had put the fire out. The keep was said to be haunted by all the maimed hungry bitter ghosts of warriors who had died during the siege. It was possessed household legend ran of a dark magic woven of the blood and fire anger and fear that had filled it during the siege. No one went into it. You want to what Burne asked during breakfast in the hall. Talis ruthlessly breaking mirrors so early had deprived himself of the sight of younger fairer guests as if he thought ruefully they had vanished along with their reflections. I want to use the keep. I won t disturb anyone there except the ghosts. It s not a laughing matter Burne said testily. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 21 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html I m not laughing Talis said gently. But I m not afraid of ghosts. I grew up with them. They have haunted this house all my life. Burne was silent. He chose a salmon bone from his plate and leaned back sighing. I know. And they have haunted you. No. It s grim in there. I won t have you lost among that keep s memories. I already am Talis thought putting the currant eyes out of bread shaped like a swan. He broke its neck and said patiently The book I brought back with me is unusual. Words don t seem to mean themselves. Burne picking his teeth with the salmon bone was looking askance at him. They don t mean what they should. Mean. What we expect them to. What That s why I caused trouble this morning. The spells seem very simple elementary. Extinguishing a flame like this He concentrated letting the flame of a single candle from the branch in front of them burn in the dark of his mind then fade as he drew the darkness over it. The candle went out. Burne blinked. is not difficult. That s all I was trying to do this morning. Then why did you break all those mirrors Because the spell in the book dealt with mirrors not candles. But it said candles. And fire. So I was confused. So am I. I suspect all the spells are like that. They are in some unknown mage s private language. I must understand the language to work the spells. Burne grunted. I suppose you can t just forget about the book. No. All this sounds far more dangerous than it s worth. You sent me to Chaumenard Talis reminded him. How much is sorcery worth to Pelucir Not your life. Talis shook his head quickly. There s no question of that. He touched his lenses evading Burne s skeptical gaze. Mages don t kill each other with books. I ll be careful. No. Burne I won t stop trying to use this book. It s too tantalizing. I ll go back to Chaumenard if you want No. Burne shifted and changed tactics. Anyway the keep must be a rotten husk by now. You ll break your neck in there. It s probably full of bats and rats along with ghosts and bitter memories. That s another curious thing. If the keep did generate its own strange magic during the siege I want to explore it. It may be a source of power that could be used to defend the castle. Sorcery not connected to any mage but to the heart and life blood of Pelucir. Burne s brows knit. I don t understand. I will. If you let me try. The King was silent frowning at the salmon bone. He made a decision disapproving of it he became abrupt. You will at all times be guarded. Talis surprised did not argue. If you come to harm between that benighted book and the bewitched keep I ll never forgive you. But at least if you re guarded I ll know what became of you. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 22 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Nothing will happen to me Talis promised. He took two guards and the spellbook to the keep after breakfast. The guards too young to be veterans of Hunter s Field followed him grimly tense and pale as if they expected to find both the sorcerer and the sorcery from the legendary battlefield at the top of the keep. The thick door closed but unlatched opened easily children Talis guessed looking for ghosts. Not being so adept at making fire as putting it out he carried a torch. Light pushed at the filmy darkness within but did not fully penetrate it. The narrow windows even those facing the sun were oddly opaque. Something pale glided silently along the edge of the light. Ghosts he heard a guard whisper. The chipped flagstones were stained with blood. The warriors came here the other said softly staring at the floor to get away from It. Their swords were drawn. Talis looked up saw in a gentle Crosshatch of faint dusty light high above more white ghosts stirring along the rafters and rotted planks of the ruined middle floor. They questioned him distantly: Who Owls he said to the guards who looked at him doubtfully they did not believe in owls. Ghosts Talis thought would have smelled less rank. He pushed into the darkness found steps finally worn stone shadowed with the footprints of wounded warriors fleeing Hunter s Field. The steps seemed to build themselves one after another under his descending foot they angled endlessly upward along the walls. Even passing through the dim light in the middle floor Talis could not see what lay beyond it. The steps darkened again he heard a muttered word behind him. Finally he saw an end: a rectangle of black floating within four streaks of pale light. The door leaped suddenly quite close in another step or two his torch fire nearly singed it. He dropped the torch into a sconce on the wall and found a face in the door opening its eyes to gaze at him. It was little more than knotholes cracks and bubbles of pitch that the door had assembled into a rather dour sentinel but one guard nearly lost his balance and tumbled back down the steps. Sorcery he spat like a curse and the face looked mildly affronted. It s only wood Talis said absently. Behind the door he sensed lay the dark heart of the keep s sorcery: its memories and its power. He touched the latch. Stay here. My lord Talis the King It s worse inside Talis said touching his lenses. They swam with sudden fire. He smiled. The guards sat down heavily on the stairs. If you need me he added I ll hear you. He closed the door quickly behind him seeing moving shadows on the walls. The room looked larger than it should have been. The stone walls were sealed against the weather by straw and clay and whitewash dimmed by smoke. Light from the torn roof and the single large window drew the shadows clear: He watched transfixed as an armed man drew back an arrow then dropped both arrow and crossbow as a sword falling out of nowhere cut off his hand. The air seemed suddenly heavy to breathe as if it had filled with smoke and too much heat from the thick cold hearth. Another shadow roamed restlessly across the walls stopped to look out the window and ducked back Talis saw a bolt of fire hurtling toward the window out of the placid empty field. The window moved. He blinked. So had the window dodging the ghostly fire. It looked over the herb gardens now in the back of the kitchen. He turned trembling slightly the silence within the room seemed strained as if at any moment the scream of the man who had lost his hand would break through the boundaries of memory and become real. He felt the sweat on his face he took off his lenses rubbed his eyes with his wrist. He looked for some place to set the book. Table he thought uprighting an overturned stool. A bucket to catch rain. A mirror unbroken. Candles. He stopped thinking then overwhelmed by the sudden terrible despair and fury that seemed to flow into him from the stones under his feet the walls around him. Look the keep said to file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 23 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html him. See. This happened. Yes he whispered yes and sorrow shook him an ache such as he had never felt in his life for the death of a king he never knew. He stumbled to the door leaned against it until his breathing calmed and nothing in his expression would alarm the guards. He had various implements pieces of furniture and whatever might be useful brought up as far as the door. He would permit no one to enter the room. The window shifted randomly during the day as if it fled a bombardment of stones or glimpsed a stealthy moonlit movement. Perhaps sensing his own calm among its memories the keep seemed to grow more peaceful. Fewer shadows wandered across the walls the tension of silent cries within the air lessened. He tried no more spells that day fearing Burne s wrath if something else went awry. But he stayed so long reading the book trying to find a link between mirror and fire what words might mean what that twilight stole into the wood the window framed and the guards hearing the evening fanfares thumped nervously on the door. My lord Talis the King commands your presence in the hall. Burne got his presence but Talis was so absent minded scarcely seeing the faces around him that the King said explosively If it s that disturbing that bat ridden tomb I ll have it sealed shut. You look like a ghost. Talis drew his thoughts out of the keep hastily and applied himself to being as sociable as possible causing before the evening s end at least three different rumors of impending marriage. Burne seemed pleased. But his mistress a kindly and discerning woman saw Talis effort and said gently to him as they retired to their chambers Don t let the King worry you. Love takes time it will recognize itself. Burne knows that. He is trying to put the past behind him but he can t do that using your future. Be patient. Talis returned to the keep before sunrise. The face in the door opened an eye as he opened the door then went back to sleep. Most of the castle still slept. Only the kennels and stables were rousing and the kitchen for guests would be gathering that morning to hunt with the King. Talis far more interested in the mysteries in the spellbook than in running down animals and slaying them hoped his brother would not notice his absence. The window gave him a view of the field and the distant wood a mist of green and shadow where night still lingered beneath the golden oak and the birch whiter than bone. The sun and the hunters would waken it sending great flocks of startled birds wheeling out of the trees. Now the wood dreamed. So did the castle. Talis opened the book. The sun rose without catching his eye for the window had shifted to overlook the formal gardens and fountains. Talis had risen also tantalized by a spell. It seemed effortless: To Open a Latched Door Across a Room. Talis eyed the door and then the book. The spell he knew would have nothing to do with a door. More likely it had to do with boots or wind. But he reasoned if he found what the spell in reality did he could match the reality with the words and prove that in this particular mage s teasing code door meant wind. Implements the book said. One gold cup. A large bowl of water. A candle lit in a holder made of gold. He had brought them all into the keep: They were familiar requirements. He poured water from a bucket into a porcelain washbasin and lit the candle. Beeswax scented the air he had a sudden wistful memory of spring in the high meadows on the mountains. He cleared his mind concentrated. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 24 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Hold the cup upside down above the water the book instructed so that gold reflects water and water reflects gold reflection reflecting reflection. Stand the candle in water between them so that fire gold water lie within the hollow of the cup. Repeat these words thrice. Backward. Talis holding the cup steady above fire gold water hit a blank: The spell ended there. What words he wondered and was illuminated. Drawkcab he said without much hope. Ecirht. Sdrow. Eseht. Taeper. He felt a stirring in the air around him as if the keep alarmed at the strange sorcery watched him. Drawkcab he repeated and thought he heard an echo an unfamiliar voice urgent intense. Ecirht. Sdrow. Eseht. Taeper. Drawkcab he began a third time. Ecirht. Sdrow. Eseht. He heard a scream then faint and distant a memory tearing into time and his face tightened. Taeper he finished grimly and light exploded out of the water. The cup spun out of his hands flew across the room and flattened itself against the far wall. The light humming dangerously left a white streak across Talis vision hit the ceiling at an angle then arced out the window which had moved again attracted perhaps by the trumpets calling the hunt to order below. Talis heard a tortured squeal from the trumpet and the thunk of metal against stone. The noise of the dogs drowned human voices but he could make out in the second before he located his bones and could move an isolated shout here and there among the frenzied howling. Burne he breathed horrified and flung himself at the window clinging to it before it could move again. He leaned precariously over the edge catching his lenses and then his balance as he looked down. Burne was staring at a bolt of white fire burrowing mole like into the ground in front of his horse. The horse a favorite hunter trembled in every muscle but did not throw its rider. The trumpeter sitting dazed among the hounds had not fared so well. Servants bearing trays of spiced wine and hot brandy had flung them into the air splashing themselves goblets rolled among the hounds. The hounds whimpered and bayed at the light horses fought to bolt everyone else seemed frozen hunters musicians kennel masters servants dog boys and the King all staring at the light as with a kind of mindless frenzy it buried the last of itself underground. The faces lifted then to stare at Talis. He saw only one: his brother s. It was a furious glowing thing a little Talis thought like the light he had created. He could not hear Burne well above the racket the hounds made but he caught the drift: What had he learned in two years at Chaumenard and why had Burne bothered to send him there and why had Burne even bothered to survive the winter siege only to live to be killed by his own brother Then he added something that caused Talis to hang even more perilously out the window trying to hear. The hounds having frightened away the light began to quiet the King s voice came clear. out of that keep. It s a nightmare of foul memories and I want you down among people instead of ghosts before you get as crazed as it is It s not the keep Talis shouted back. Burne it s just the book Then throw it down I want the book burned and the keep walled shut Burne listen to me You nearly killed me It was an accident file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 25 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html You accidently missed me No Then what were you trying to do Open a door With a lightning bolt Burne please listen Wait I m coming with you The King refused to discuss the matter. Talis mounted and armed to kill anything that moved caught up with Burne halfway to the wood. Everyone else seemed eager to ask him about the incident to tease to tell him what they were doing and saying the moment lightning leaped out of the keep and nearly hit the King. But lightning wasn t the word for it it was more like something living a strange being made of light with an urge to bury itself alive. And the odd noise it made. The hum. Like some vast vibrating string. Thrum. Burne Talis pleaded but the King only showed him a tight jawed profile. No. The hounds loosed streaked toward the wood. The King urged his hunter into a canter. Talis hesitating looked back at the keep. Riders fanned around him trumpets and horns called a warning to deer and hare boar and bird. The single eye at the top of the keep looked back at Talis opaque with memory or light. He had a sudden crazed image of himself barring the doors from within and letting Burne lay siege against him. But Burne would never forgive him and there was nothing he could do in the keep that couldn t be done elsewhere. Yet it drew at him massive and ancient dark with the ash of siege fires as full of memories as the heads of warriors who had survived the night. It was a mystery like the spellbook which Talis reminded himself he should go back and rescue. He glanced at the riders disappearing into the trees and decided to try once more to persuade Burne. He galloped after the hunt. He heard the trumpets cry of a deer in two different places it seemed. He followed one saw the flicker of gold and scarlet and royal purple among the leaves the riders were farther away than seemed possible. The trumpets sounded again and then the gentle silvery horns called of hare. Hounds belled everywhere from every direction though he saw none of them. He rode quickly recklessly to catch up listening for the trumpets for Burne would pursue the hart before the hare. A lacework of birch leaves brushed across his eyes he ducked down riding low beneath the outstretched boughs of oak and far too quickly. But as fast as he rode the hunt seemed to recede even more quickly away from him. He heard the horn again distant teasing and then suddenly close and from another direction. The hunters had apparently scattered throughout the wood. He turned first toward one fanfare then the other he could see nothing but trees the moving shadows of windblown leaves. He galloped through the shadows bewildered and careless and then across a shallow stream its water slow and heavy with moss capped stones. He felt his horse stumble catch itself and he straightened a little pulling on the reins. The long limb of an oak stretched across the far bank caught him in the chest lifted him out of the saddle and threw him into the stream. The world went black. Then he dragged his eyes open unable to breathe not knowing if he lay in air or water. He found air finally pulled it in trying to blink away the strange mist of green that had enveloped him. Leaves he realized slowly: He had lost his lenses and the world had blurred. Little explosions of pain flared in his knee his ribs one shoulder the back of his head. He lay on his back in water and frog spawn and long slimy ribbons of moss. He groaned and groped for his lenses raising himself piecemeal among the stones finding file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 26 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html everything battered but nothing unworkable. He fished his lenses out of the moss and put them on. One lens was shattered. He cleaned the other and found his boar spear a few broken arrows and the sheath at his belt full of nothing but water. He groped again found his hunting knife. He pushed himself to his feet with the spear and hobbled out of the water. His horse had vanished which surprised him since it was of stolid temperament and disinclined to startle. He stood on the bank balanced against the Spear to take the weight off his knee and listened for the hunt. The wood was soundless. He heard no trumpets no barking hounds no hooves no voices not even disturbed birds complaining above the trees. Not even the leaves moved they might have been carved of stone in the still air though on the ground his bemused eyes told him their shadows moved. A horn sounded a single sweet note. Three deer as white as snow with eyes of gold and shadows of gold ran through the trees in front of him. He heard himself make a sound the hair pricked on the back of his neck. He tried to move he could only grip the spear more tightly to keep from falling. The deer flickered noiselessly away into the trees shadows flowing like sunlight across everything they touched. Three hounds as white as bone with eyes and shadows as red as blood ran soundlessly through the trees in pursuit of the deer. He tried to turn himself invisible the only thing he managed in that upside down world was to erase his shadow. His hands slick on the boar spear he turned desperately to stumble away hide himself from what would come. But he could not move quickly in or out of the vision and what came next came fast. Three white horses with eyes of bone and shadows of hoarfrost galloped after the hounds. Behind them rode three roan and behind them three black and behind them a great gathering of hunters that seemed to have fashioned themselves out of roots tree bark and leaves as if the wood itself were hunting. Through the empty frame of his lenses Talis saw a moving blur of green trees riding a hard wind. Through the unbroken lens he saw the faces of leaf and tree bole the slender woven branches of willow of pale papery birch bark. Only the riders turning their white mounts toward him had no faces. He swayed caught his balance against the spear watching the one with slender jewelled hands ride forward a bright white swirl of long skirt and mantle flowing ribbons of silk and pearl and crowned with gold and bone above long hair streaked with autumn fire and a dark oval that was no face. Frozen Talis watched her notch the arrow in her hand lift her bow. Just before she shot he whispered At least before you kill me let me see your face. And then tell me why. He saw her face. He swayed again trembling wordless. Her eyes were gold and dark troubled in a face at once imperious and vulnerable and so beautiful there seemed no word in human language for what he saw. She lowered her bow. She said her voice like the horn he had heard pure regal haunting I am the mother of sorrow. Oh he breathed his voice gone the world gone except for what existed in the circle of his unbroken lens. How can I help you You can see me. You have crossed into my world. You are not dreaming. No. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 27 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Tell me your name. He drew a long shaking breath to give her that and his bones and anything else she might want of him. My name is Someone shouted it behind him and the world within the lens shattered. He turned bewildered stunned by the frenzied barking of hounds not remembering where he had been what world he had walked out of to see her. Hunters rode out of the trees shouting trumpets sounded dogs swarmed into the stream belling and harrying a boar that in its maddened panic was charging straight across the water at Talis. He did not remember moving. He remembered blood on the boar s tusk after it tore open a hound with the toss of its head and its rank smell as it came close and then its small furious and terrified eye. And then the spear shuddered in his hands tried to wrench itself free. Something splashed across his eyes. He saw the world through a bloody haze. Talis he heard then from another world a secret within the wood. And then he heard the King s voice. Talis He knelt on the ground holding a spear with a dead boar impaled on it that had pushed itself in its dying frenzy all the way up to the cross guard. That much he could see through his broken lens. The hounds were swarming around him barking with wild excitement in his face trying to tell him what he had done. He opened his hands finally let the spear fall. He stumbled rising. Burne caught him dragged him away from the hounds. The King pounded him saying something his face still patchy with fear. Talis winced aching suddenly in every bone. He pulled his lenses off cleaned the blood from the unbroken glass his hands trembling. His hearing seemed to return with his sight as he put the lenses back on his brother s voice penetrated. I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead when it came at your back and you just stood there not listening not turning with enough racket behind you to make the trees jump. And then you turned and brought the spear down and the boar ran up it as cleanly as if it were spitting itself for supper. One stroke straight through the heart. He pounded Talis between the shoulder blades again then took a closer look at him. You re all wet. You have slime in your hair. I fell in the stream Talis said dazedly. Riding too fast after you. I broke a lens and maybe a rib. I was using the spear as a crutch. That s why I had it in my hands at all. Burne eyed him wordlessly a moment his face taut again. Why didn t you use some magic or something You could have been killed I don t know. I wasn t thinking clearly. You must have stunned yourself. That s why you didn t hear us. Yes. He touched his lenses and saw a face within the light and windblown leaves. I was stunned. Burne I m sorry I nearly killed you this morning. Never mind. Burne sighed. It s been tried before. About the keep Never mind about the keep. Keep it. You d only find another place to have your accidents in anyway. It s not Talis stopped himself. Thank you. Well. Anyway it makes a good story. Almost as good as you falling off your horse breaking a lens and killing a charging boar while you hobbled around using your boar spear as a file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 28 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html crutch. He slapped Talis back again loosing a grunt of amazed laughter. You can tell it when we feast on your kill. It seemed to Talis as he stood dripping water and blood seeing blurred green wood through one eye and dogs scrapping over offal through the other a peculiar exchange for magic. He found his horse which had gone nowhere but had simply declined to follow him into a dream and rode home accompanied by various fanfares with the gutted boar hanging upside down on the spear behind him. The physician bandaged his ribs and his knee forbade him to climb the keep stairs and gave him a tonic which he thought could have melted drawbridge chain and which stunned him until evening the next day. It seemed mildly hallucinatory: As he sat through the long boar feast trying to keep his fraying thoughts together he kept glimpsing the face of the woodland Queen among the guests. It was he decided a trick of his broken lenses making him see double. Now a young girl wore the Queen s expression of power and vulnerability now a fall of hair the color of autumn leaves made him catch his breath. Now he saw her face just before it turned away from him to speak. It was a face full of opposites he decided: delicate and regal young and ageless wild and controlled fierce and sweet Trumpets greeted the boar as it entered on a tray of silver and gold. Talis saw himself on the tray suddenly blind and still. If he had not turned if the spear had broken in his fall if he had lost it in the water He swallowed dryly adjusted his lenses and the odd vision vanished along with his appetite. Later the horns bade farewell to the bones and the picked meat and the tusks that lay like quarter moons on the bloody tray. Talis wandering badly forced himself to listen to his great uncle relate a complex incident that had happened last autumn or the one ten years before or some autumn before Talis was born. There was One Great Hunt he decided that went on perpetually in some never ending autumn. That was the Hunt out of which all stories came. Even his boar would come charging out of spring into autumn one day during some drunken feast when he would remember the leaves being all the colors of her hair The story involved a broken stirrup a hedge with a gypsy s laundry drying on it and a pig. Talis eyes strayed. There she was again at the far end of the table holding a hazelnut in her long white fingers each finger ringed with gold. She laughed suddenly at the hunting story her face changed became human. The King said softly to Talis: You re not eating. Are you in pain Talis shook his head. I doubt that I d feel pain if you dropped a table on my head. I just keep wandering out of the world. Burne grunted. Go to bed before you fall in your plate. Servants brought in wet linens scented with rosewater and tiny icy bowls of minced fruit. Talis wiped his hands and rose unsteadily Burne added And stay out of the keep. You re dangerous enough up there when your head is clear. I will Talis said absently. Shadows followed him spun out of the flickering torchlight. Voices laughter music seemed to follow him also even through the dark night as if he walked through some invisible hall where the gathering within celebrated yet another hunt. He climbed the keep steps slowly. There seemed far more of them than usual. He had reached the top and opened the door before he remembered with some surprise that he had been on his way to bed. The room was lighted he realized slowly though he had found his way up in the dark. The light seemed not fire but sun ancient golden still like the wood on a soundless summer afternoon. He made a sound seeing two worlds again: the bleak shadow ridden keep the light trembling in it as if in the otherworld midnight did not exist. In that light not even past existed. All the tormented shadows had vanished on the walls. He file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 29 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html saw only one shadow: tall slender crowned with what looked like a circle of flame or deer horn. He watched it for a long time until his heart seemed made of that sweet light and he felt that at any moment she might step out of the faceless shadow on the wall into his world. He heard her voice distant silvery pure like her hunting horn. Talis. Yes he whispered and again Yes. She said nothing more. He watched until her shadow reached out everywhere pulled him into night. Five The boar and the bolt of lightning leaping out of the keep made Talis name a kitchen word for a day or two. The hall servants told the tale of the burrowing deadly sorcery the frenzied dogs the spilled cups the furious king each a different way as if each had seen a different light. The other tale came piecemeal from the hall: Something had happened to the prince. He had fallen off his horse. He had broken a leg he had broken a rib he had broken any number of bones. He had been dazed he hadn t heard and then there it was coming at his back and he turned and next thing they were pulling his silver spear point out of the boar s heart. It wasn t magic it was all as he had been taught just as his father had done in his time and for that instant with his hair and his shoulders he had looked just like his father. Saro deep in her wash water heard his name echo around the iron cauldron. It was one more kitchen noise if he had called her name to fetch a dirty pot she might have put the name to his voice. Princes were no more real to her than roses or gold or a living boar or the world beyond the kitchen garden. Anything could exist in that magical beyond except Saro. The prince s name was simply a word she could ignore since it had nothing to do with pots. So she scrubbed and did not think and gradually the dancing flame that was the prince s name grew still and unfanned became an ember of memory. The day Prince Talis The day when the light When he almost killed the King and then was almost killed himself And then unexpectedly the ember flared again became an argument scraps of which Saro heard as she picked up dirty bread pans from beside the ovens. The hall servants gathering for the midday meal flurried around the kitchen feathers rustling preparing for flight. I m not going. I m not going. It s not our place to be asked to go up there. Up all those steps. Let the guards take it. They re used to it. It s not just the steps it s Pitch black. And ghosts wander. Hungry ghosts. You d have to be mad to go among them. It s one thing for Prince Talis he s got his magic and the guards are armed but And when you make it past the ghosts and up all those stairs then where are you Face to face so I ve heard with a Thing in the door opening its eyes and glaring at you. Saro loaded with trays set them down beside the cauldron. A mincer darted to her side grabbed a misshapen dove left on the tray and vanished under a table. Bending she began to scrub and heard little more for a while than the slosh of water the scrape of metal on iron her scrub brush on stubborn grease. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 30 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Saro She pulled herself upright turned to the iron stoves where an undercook had scorched a sauce. Carrying the hot pan carefully its long handle wrapped in her skirt she edged around an argument between the tray mistress and the head hall servant. It s not my job the tray mistress said roundly to find a tray bearer for Prince Talis in this muddle. Who should I send Her fingers pinched crablike caught a peeler s small translucent ear. Him He squinched his eyes shut knife in one hand potato in the other. He looked as grimy and knobbed as a new potato. Boy take a tray to the prince in the great keep. His mouth gaped he endeavored to disappear down his shirt. How far do you think he would get with it Two steps into the dark and he d flee leaving Prince Talis meal to the mice. It s not our job to go among ghosts and cobwebs the head servant retorted. Well it s none of mine either. The tray mistress glanced at the ear in her fingers as if wondering how it got there and loosed it distastefully. If he s a mage Prince Talis why can t he levitate his meal from here to there He s busy with his other sorceries the head servant said portentously. And making a new lens so he can read his spells. The tray mistress breathed heavily through her nose. It s your problem she said and turned to add linen in a gold ring to the tray under dispute. Saro heard the head servant s voice rise as she left them behind and eased around another obstacle: two apprentices coming to a boil over spices in a pudding. She dumped the scorched sauce down the drain and added the pan to her pile. Saro She threaded her way through the servants and cooks hurrying now as they drizzled a latticework of chocolate sauce on a stewed pear and placed walnut halves on small tarts of egg and cheese and finely chopped mushrooms. She collected the empty tart pans and then the saucepans added them to her pile which was beginning to teeter. Working quickly she had twin towers one dirty one clean before she heard her name again. Saro The voice belonged to the tray mistress who scowling with frustration dropped a fresh lily on a tray and handed the tray to Saro. Take this to Prince Talis in the keep. All she thinks about is pots she added to the head servant who looked battered but victorious. Nothing else penetrates. She won t know enough to be afraid. Go she added to Saro who was adjusting the heavy silver tray in her slippery hands. And quickly before it cools entirely. The head servant wrinkled his nose fastidiously. But not through the castle. Not looking like that. Go around through the kitchen garden. Is she mute Or just dense Both. Then how will we know if she actually makes it to the top of the keep with the tray The tray mistress rolled an exasperated eye at him. Follow her she snapped and showed him her back. Saro who hadn t seen the woodpile and had scarcely seen the sky since she was found ignored both on her way to the keep. She dodged gardeners dogs guards as easily as she dodged elbows tossed spoons and mincers waving mincing knives at each other. One world was no more perilous than the other for there was only the task at hand. All else could be file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 31 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html ignored as long as she herself was. And even the guards who thought to question her forgot the questions as they looked at her blank face and then forgot her face. It was only when she opened the door to the keep and stood in the thin fingers of light falling from the narrow archers windows along the stairs that she stopped midstep in the middle of her task. Something was happening inside her head. It seemed as if she saw two things at once: the broken shadowy mysterious keep cloudy with owls in the upper rafters and another tower rising through it at once solid and transparent as a dream. This tower had walls through which roses bloomed and a broad sweep of ivory stairs that led to something. Someone Her pale brows crumpled her lips moved soundlessly. Who was it at the top She moved again slowly up stairs of white stone and stairs of dark stone while owls did and did not swivel their heads to look at her through their great golden eyes. The door at the top was of dark carved wood the door at the top was painted white and gold. The door was always closed the door was always open She moved through time and memory scarcely noticing the endless steps trying to make the picture clear in her head before she reached the door. The door was dark and limned by fire and guarded by a face. The door was always open and someone came to meet her smiling The door opened. Snow swirled out of it and she glimpsed for one instant the terrible figure who had come to meet her. Something tried to leap out of her mouth. She brought up both hands to hold it back and the tray crashed to the floor at Talis feet. They stared at one another the prince and the pot scrubber. Then they both crouched picking up goblets cutlery broken plate while the guards and the face in the door watched bemusedly and Talis examined the remains of his meal. What had we here Salmon swimming in gravy roast beef on a bed of broken meringue The bread is only slightly damp. And what was this He tasted a finger. Too sweet. But it was pretty whatever it was. Now. I only have to wring the salad out. I frightened you opening the door so quickly after you braved ghosts and owls and endless stairs. You re not crying are you He looked at her. Then he touched his lenses and looked again. His eyes widened slightly lingered on her face. He said softly after a moment You have the strangest face. It seems to shift. Or blur. Something His own face did not it was quite calm under her gaze. There was something odd about it she could not have described except that it was the only face she had ever seen that made her want to keep looking at it. He asked What is your name She averted her face abruptly touched her mouth with one finger. He made a soft sound. She stood swiftly her face still turned away for she was not used to being visible. Wait he said and she did as she was told. Something appeared in her line of vision: the white lily on the tray. Take it he said. I want to give it to you. She stared at him. She did not take the flower but she felt her face rearrange itself in a very strange way and realized as he smiled that she was smiling. She thought of him all the way back to the kitchens. She found his face at the bottom of every pot she scrubbed between her eyes and every face she looked at in the kitchens. It was still in her mind after supper even while she cleaned the great mess of pots and pans and kettles to clear the cauldron for its nightly dreams. Pausing between pots she touched her face once in curiosity tried to see it in the water. She only saw dark cloud with suds floating around it. And then unexpectedly Talis face formed instead as if the cauldron had taken the thought out of her head. She blinked for he no longer looked calm he was not smiling as in her memory. He was seeing something trying to move away from it without moving. She leaned farther into the cauldron trying to see what he saw. His face grew small then he acquired a file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 32 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html body surroundings. Fire behind him illumined the tangle of oak boughs above his head. As she stared a young woman flung herself toward him. Her hair was long and tangled her face wild in the light strained with fear. She cried something: Fire flashed out of her mouth then diamonds then a small black bird of horror. And then an arrow of white streaked out of nowhere passed between them and shattered the lens over Talis eye. Blood spilled across the black moon rising among the oak boughs. The boughs turned into horns moving slowly into Saro s vision lifting the moon higher until its bloody face filled the cauldron. Then it waned upward out of her sight until she saw the face beneath the moon. The eyes masked in pelt moon black seemed to stare back at her through the dark water. And then it was her own face a dark vague cloud rippling now with her quick terrified breathing. The tray mistress passing behind her said Wake up and finish girl before you fall in. She left the pot where it stood. This time she saw only one tower and it was dark and full of owls questioning her when she disturbed them. She felt her way up with her hands. The steps seemed endless but she was used to having no end in sight. She could not think over and over she saw the white fire strike the prince flinch back as the lens shattered. And then the terrible inhuman face staring at her through water as if it were scenting She saw the door finally impossibly far above her a blackness outlined in fire. She climbed higher it jumped closer closer the face on it awake and watching. She ignored the face and the guards who were making meaningless noises as she pounded on the door. It opened abruptly. The prince gazed at her one lens sparking the other oddly empty she saw as if it had already shattered. He quieted the guards with a gesture and asked gently How can I help you She realized then that with no words and no voice she could tell him nothing. Six The White Wolf dreamed. He was writing a book in the ancient school at the edge of the forest on the highest peak of Chaumenard. A book of spells for beginning students. One spell in particular he needed to put into language clearly and unambiguously for the student who wore the lenses. He was working in the next room the door between them stood open. The mage heard a page turn murmurings water poured out of a beaker. The spell the student worked was twisted dangerous its words would explode in his hands for they meant other than what they said. The mage trying desperately could not remember the true words. Water hissed into fire gold leaf melted dropped in tiny metallic tears onto a mirror. The mage tried to speak he could not find the word that meant: Stop. Rain he found and moon horns heart. Hart Dark. Drawkcab he heard very clearly from the next room. And then there was a sound like air ripping apart. He dropped the pen rising. Steps came toward him from the next room before he could move. Drawkcab a strange voice said. And the night hunter of Hunter s Field stood at the threshold. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 33 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html His face was masked in fur his mouth black with blood the dark moon rode through his fiery horns as through cloud. He raised his hand and said: Xirta Eflow. The mage woke. His heart was pounding even awake he stared into the dark listening trying to separate the Hunter s face from the night. He was alone in his quiet cottage the dark hunter had been a dream. Still he lay tensed incredulous alarmed without knowing why. Danger the dream said. Warning. Drawkcab. He remembered the spell in the book. He sat up murmuring wordlessly hands pushed against his eyes. The spell Which was it Something simple. Repeat these words thrice. Ecirht. Backward. He had buried the spellbook in solid granite beneath the stone cellar under the school. Behind every spell within every word lay the name of the maker. Xirta Eflow. What he wondered suddenly intensely had the young man who had climbed the mountain been doing in his dream He could not possibly have found the book he could not be awake now within the dark sleeping school trying to work the simple dangerously twisted spells within the book. It was a dream he told himself. A nightmare. Nothing. No thing. Drawkcab the strange voice reminded him. He rose and dressed. As he stepped outside he smelled stone in the still air the moon frosted peaks above him and the scent of the earth like some vast sleeping animal. He yearned to shape the wolf run across the plane of night beneath the stars. But if the dream was no dream then he had no time and if it was nothing but a few random fragments of memory pieced together then he had no magic for things he had loved. He thought of stone and for an instant became stone crossing distance as if it were not time and place but simply memory. He stepped forward into time and backward into memory and stood in the hushed enclosed blackness beneath the school. He dove into stone as if it were water seeking what he had hidden twenty years ago before he had run out of the world. The book was gone. Stone was stone it held his name his words nowhere. He drew back into his body and grew still scenting the night again calming his perturbed thoughts to find beneath them a simple answer. One of the old mages must have noticed the book a seep of its magic out of the cellar floor and had brought it up. He would have buried it again in the library where nameless it had been ignored for years until perhaps one of the beginning mages had looked into it for help. He had only to find it bury it again and go back to bed. He searched the sleeping school silent and invisible a shadow in the night looking through dreaming chambers and finding no one awake looking on shelves in the library growing more and more uneasy until his dream became a subtle heartbeat a cold rill of blood running through the stones through someone else s dream. He saw a star of lamplight move down a long corridor toward him. He grew as still as stone and as unremarkable. But the bearer of the lamp hunched and slow simply stopped in front of the blank stone wall and said astonished: Atrix Wolfe file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 34 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:48 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He drew himself free reluctantly shaping the mage whose name he had not spoken in twenty years. He said Hedrix. The light trembled in the old mage s hand. Atrix took the lamp from him. I didn t want to wake anyone. I dreamed of you Hedrix said and woke. His owl s tufted brows were lifted as high as they could go. He touched Atrix held his arm as if he might vanish back into the dream. What are you doing here Have you come back to stay Why did you come so quietly in the dead of night Why didn t you tell me you were here Have you been with the wolves Is that why you were reluctant to come among Hedrix stopped himself abruptly studying Atrix his own face quieting now in a way that Atrix remembered as he focused his thoughts. You re troubled. How can I help you Atrix lowered the lamp sighing noiselessly. I m looking for something. I hoped to come and find it and disappear again with no one knowing I had ever been here. But why Hedrix breathed. Is it so terrible for you to be among humans now No. Only among mages. Hedrix was silent astonished again. Atrix turned restively. Stone walls met his eyes everywhere and he could not leave in any shape without finding the book. His mouth tightened. He said finally dream driven and trying to remember patience Let me talk. If I can remember how mages speak to one another. The hand on his arm tightened. Come with me Hedrix said and led him with brittle slowness lest their sorcery disturb more dreams to his chambers. He sat down Atrix put the lamp on his work table and let his mind prowl a moment among Hedrix s things. The book was not among them. He went to the window drawn to the pale ghost of stones rising up to meet the setting moon behind the thick leaded panes of glass in the window. He let his face fall against the cold glass. He said Has no one ever guessed that I made that monster on Hunter s Field that killed the King of Pelucir He heard no sound behind him not even Hedrix s breath. He turned suddenly afraid for the frail old mage and found Hedrix staring at him his eyes as wide and luminous as a child s. Hedrix said his voice shaking again No. Why would we He tried to pull himself up then failed he still stared. You Yes. Well. Hedrix blinked finally. That explains so many things. He laid a hand over his heart Atrix moved toward him quickly. He knelt at Hedrix s feet took his other hand felt the shocked blood pounding through Hedrix and the pain pushing against his heart. He quieted his thoughts letting the pain flow into his own heart where it belonged. It s over and done with he said. So is my life as mage. Except tonight. I have something simple to do and then I ll leave you again. Hedrix. Don t take it so to heart Why He heard the question struggling out of Hedrix and tried to answer speaking slowly more gently feeling his blood or Hedrix s blood beating with thin frantic hummingbird wings. I wanted to end the siege You should not I know he said. I should not have acted on that field. But I was afraid for Chaumenard. I lost my temper. I tried to stop a war and made something more terrible than war. I made death to stop death. He had trouble finding air suddenly. He closed his eyes calming Hedrix s pain at the word breathing deeply evenly. Hedrix. I need your help. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 35 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Yes I made a mistake on Hunter s Field. And when I came here afterward I made a second mistake. You did not speak. Atrix opened his mouth closed it. He heard Hedrix s breathing then harsh but steadier. No he said finally. I wrote instead. That was my second mistake. Hedrix made a soft noise Atrix looked at him. My silence was a lie the words I wrote were lies. I buried the book. You should never have gone to Pelucir Hedrix whispered. Then that was my first mistake. But in wolf shape I dreamed of that war. Of danger to Chaumenard. I did not stop to think. That you could be more dangerous than the army of Kardeth Atrix bowed his head. I take the shapes I am drawn to: On that field the only shape of power I saw was death. I did not stop to think The pain they shared lessened dwindled finally into memory. Atrix rose went back to the window. Staring at the moonlit peak he saw only snow and black wind and the vast raven s wing of night. Tonight I dreamed again he said. I dreamed of that book opened being used. I saw the Hunter s face. He spoke my name. So I came back here looking for the book. It was a dream Hedrix whispered. Dreams speak when the language of power remains unspoken. That much I have learned in twenty years. You did not find the book. He turned to look at Hedrix. No. Hedrix breathed quietly now Atrix saw though his hands gripped the arms of his chair and his eyes had lost their bright innocent pain had become hooded opaque. He lifted one hand from the chair arm laid it across his eyes as if he saw too many confusions at once. Why didn t you tell me this twenty years ago when you came here after the battle Hedrix asked. Why did you let us all think you had been among the wolves until then We spoke of nothing else when we heard the news from Pelucir. How could you have stayed silent while we tried to guess who had done such a terrible piece of sorcery Atrix shook his head wordless again. There seemed no words he said finally for what I had done. Words were too small they did not mean They would crack like glass if I tried to fill them with this. All I could see then was what I had made. I brought the Hunter here with me. I tried to work I saw him in every spell I wrote. I saw him behind every door I opened between me and every mage and student I spoke to. You spoke to a mage who no longer existed So I buried the book with its flawed magic in solid stone beneath the school and I buried my own magic with it. I could do nothing but that. He shrugged slightly. I could have gone to Pelucir let Burne Pelucir kill me. But this seemed more appropriate and harsher than human justice. What did Hedrix asked uneasily. Relinquishing power. Burying it as I buried the book. Since I no longer knew my name it did not matter what I called myself. For twenty years I have lived without magic. I do not change shape. I move in human time. I am no longer Atrix Wolfe. I am no one. Hedrix stared at him frozen in his chair Atrix wondered if he still breathed. Then he saw Hedrix swallow. What have you done file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 36 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html I am a healer. I roam the mountains collecting herbs and mushrooms and wildflowers Wildflowers. I heal animals. I use no magic I do not touch people who might die if I refuse to use power. I make fire with wood I move stone with my hands I live as simply as it is possible to live. I am no longer a mage named Atrix Wolfe. I am a healer and that is the only name I need He stopped. Hedrix was rising with an effort clinging to the chair. Color had flushed back into his face his eyes were wide bright with some sudden strange emotion. Atrix he said his voice shaking. What have you done Atrix was silent a breath gazing back at him. What was necessary he said at last. What seemed just. I removed a dangerous mage from the world. That Hedrix said was your third mistake. He moved slowly to a small table poured wine into a silver cup and took a swallow before he spoke again. Atrix motionless waited. So the Hunter vanished and Atrix Wolfe vanished and we are left with you picking wildflowers on the peaks of Chaumenard. What we do not have is any kind of truth. You are still the Hunter and the Wolf and how will you be guided when you find yourself once more on a winter battlefield with no temper left and all that enormous power It will not happen again Atrix said succinctly. How do you know How can you know that Only your death would prevent it because that is all you understand of this you make death to stop death. So. You used all your power to destroy Atrix Wolfe. You are still your own dark making. Atrix closed his eyes touched them. Hedrix. The mage destroyed himself. I am a healer. Nothing more. Then why are you here Atrix looked at him. The Hunter seemed to form out of lamplight and shadow between them loosed from an opened spellbook that had been hidden within stone. A small thing he said patiently but doubted it suddenly: that he would find the book and bury it and return to the high cliffs and meadows nameless and without a past. He moved abruptly poured wine and drank it. I must find that book. That s all. That s all at this moment that I understand. He turned abruptly spilling wine the stiffness in his face broke into hair fine lines. I should have gone to Burne Pelucir he said tightly. Walked into his court at dawn twenty years ago and let his warriors kill me. I don t think Hedrix said sitting down that s what you should have done to Pelucir. I was afraid. Of dying That out of fear they would do nothing. What should I have done I don t know Hedrix said uneasily. I only know that power unused is power uncontrolled. You turned away from it but it did not vanish you simply do not know anymore what you are doing with it. Or what it is doing to you. Atrix sat down. It makes me dream he murmured wearily. I thought that was harmless enough. Tell me about the book. What does it look like Big. Very plain bound in undyed leather. There is no name on it. Why file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 37 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Atrix shrugged. The spells were so simple things any mage could have written with a little care and patience. He drank again. Perhaps I knew the name would be a lie. As the book is. You looked in the library. I looked everywhere. It moved itself out of solid stone or a mage moved it. No one else could have. No one spoke of finding it Hedrix s voice grew small suddenly dwindled away. Atrix was silent very still watching Hedrix change in front of his eyes gather himself into himself it seemed as if at the threat of a wild imminent storm. He said his voice inflectionless You know where the book is. One of the younger mages asked me for it. He sensed something in it Where did he find it In a closet he said. On a shelf. I had no idea what it was. I let him take it with him out of Chaumenard Out of Chaumenard Where Atrix rose suddenly alarmed at the odd expression on Hedrix s face. Who has it Talis Pelucir. Talis He stared at Hedrix. Then he heard himself shout. That book is in Pelucir With a prince of Pelucir In the castle on the edge of Hunter s Field Hedrix Does he wear lenses He saw the answer in the mixture of fear and astonishment on Hedrix s face just before the White Wolf began to run. Seven Saro listened. Sound in the kitchen had always been a constantly changing tapestry woven for a moment frayed rewoven with threads spun from the spattering of onions over the fire the rhythm of mincers knives on hardwood the head cook s brittle impatience the undercooks feverish hysteria a peeler wailing the tray mistress s exasperated sibilants milk scalding meat spattering down into the fires wood snapping and groaning the changing voices of fire as it leaped into new wood hungry as a spit boy or sated caressed darkening coals and murmured. Everything had a voice even the dumb plucked headless fowl turning on the spits spoke to the fire. So Saro heard everything as the kitchen s voice. Having no voice she did not distinguish the sound of the chopping blade from the sound of human voices unless the particular sound of her name caught her ear. She gave no thought to what might have come out of her own mouth if she suddenly spoke: It might as easily be the thump of kneaded dough against wood or the clank of a scorched pot kicked across the stones as any human word. But she had a task to do a pot to scour and what stuck to the bottom of this particular pot was death. Death appeared constantly in the kitchen: swans and peacocks with their long necks snapped boars skinned but for their heads the tusks still bloody from combat spring lambs calves pigs among the woodland kill of deer hare squirrel doves quail grouse lark. Some file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 38 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html came with an arrow in the heart or in one eye the spit boys fought the smaller pluckers for the arrows. She could not scour this pot clean with a brush. Clean it as she might the image remained at the bottom: the prince with an arrow of fire in one eye killed like an animal by a hunter crowned with horns and a black bloody moon. She could not grasp the image whole peel it away from the pot carry it in her hands to show to anyone. It existed only in her head and to get it out of her head into someone else s was the urgent task at hand. A pot needed to be cleaned. What was in her head must come out. Language did not immediately suggest itself. Like all the lesser minions in constant turmoil subject to the whims of sounds she responded to anything. Her name was the one necessity. Other words had temporary value. She matched the sound of a voice with the face which needed her: A blackened pan an expression told her everything she needed to know. Of the flurry of words that accompanied the pan one or two might be useful. An outstretched hand with a hot roll out of the oven a dove that had not kept its shape or had lost its currant eyes spoke. An upraised hand spoon knife spoke. A sidelong glance out of a spit boy s fire seared eyes spoke. Everything spoke. She heard what she needed to in the crook of a finger the angle of an elbow. It was a language she could speak. But nothing the kitchen ever said resembled the vision she had seen in the pot. Nor did the human language scattered constantly throughout the kitchen suggest the death of princes. She knew vaguely of the various portions of beef or cooking wine of herbs and greens and roots the wood boys spoke of chopping birch and oak and of every kind of weather musicians spoke of split reeds and ancient fanfares she knew the names of limp birds their plumage bloodied their eyes misted with something they saw that were tossed in a heap at the pluckers feet. She understood the arrowhead snapped off in the breastbone the still distant look in the eye. She could have pointed to prince and arrow and eye. But no language she had ever heard had formed a warning in the dirty water at the bottom of a cauldron and it was that language she sensed she needed to speak in order to be heard. A language of wonder and horror that not even the kitchen fire in all its phases ever spoke. So she listened. For the first time in her kitchen life she picked out the threads of human voices in the ceaseless warp and weft of sounds. She listened for a tone a single word anything which might have bubbled up out of the bottom of a pot filled with dreams anything which had not been tossed around in the kitchen day in and day out since she had come to life beside the woodpile. She collected scraps much as the dogs and the peelers did as she followed the thread of her name through the maze of sounds. The undercooks when they had time between meals seemed to talk of nothing but food. I grated the barest fleck of nutmeg into the raspberry sauce the sauce cook said as Saro dragged a pot past him. A clash of tastes. A brawl the pastry cook said. No no. It encouraged the sweetness of the raspberries. A daring thing but I chanced it. So I boiled the boar s head in a stock of onions and pepper and rosemary salt I added later and garlic a stew cook said to another as Saro came for her stockpot. I debated raisins and cranberries but decided on garlic instead and tiny onions and tiny red potatoes. The brains and tongue are simmering with leeks and cloves. Twenty six quail the fowl cook said counting a pile for the head cook. Eighteen woodcock thirty grouse eleven lark thirteen wild duck. Pluck them the head cook said. Spit the grouse and woodcocks braise the lark and quail in file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 39 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html butter stuff the duck with sliced oranges before they are spitted. They will be served with an orange and brandy sauce. Saro Saro wrested a pan full of burnt butter and sugar from a couple of kitchen dogs. She ate the candied walnut the dogs had missed before she filled the pan with scalding water. At a vast sink nearby the plate washers dipped plates rimmed with gold so gently into water they never splashed. Their hands moved slowly underwater like strange plants in a current that barely rippled the surface as they felt with their fingertips for stains. Unlike Saro in her puddle beside the drains the plate washers stood on dry floor even their skirts and elbows stayed dry. Concentrating they loosed words as carefully as they loosed plates to the dryers. So he took me into the keep because no one goes there but the prince. No. Never the keep. It was dark and an owl flew at my hair. And then he kissed me. He smelled sweet like almonds instead of like smoke and fat like the spit boys. And his hands were so soft and smelled of almond oil. He was pulling my skirt up when something moaned behind me. Ghosts he cried and left me standing there trying to put myself back into my bodice before the ghosts did it for me. Then I heard the ghosts giggle. I stood still as an owl until I saw them against the open door. And then I screeched and chased them into the kitchen midden. Who were they Pair of mincers. So I don t know. He ll never ask me again surely. He has wonderful eyes. Like bits of spring sky. I might have gotten a coin out of him but for the brats. Or maybe not. They speak nicely some and they smell like flowers but they take what they want and then their eyes never see you again. Old Ana says she has a charm for that. You mix rosemary lemon verbena and rose petals and sew them into a velvet pouch and then you put it under your pillow and dream of him. And then you slide it under his pillow and he ll dream His pillow How could I get near a hall servant s pillow They live up in an aerie somewhere. You bribe With what All right then. You make a tiny doll of cornhusks and steal something of his a thread a hair and knot it up in a ribbon around its legs. And you say No one shall untie this knot but me. And then you bury the doll in a bowl of dried lavender. Every night for seven nights you dip your hands in the lavender and hold the doll and say that. And he ll come looking for you. He ll come. Because there will be no one else to free his legs but you. And he ll know you by the smell of lavender which he breathes into his dreams. Saro She found the face behind the voice at the far end of the kitchen and she hauled a great soup kettle slowly past six vast hearths with the spit boys crouched along them faces red with heat and sweating turning birds on the spits and dipping into the dripping pans to baste them. They rarely saw Saro their eyes were for the washers and dryers the pluckers with swans long necks lolling across their thighs. They were wild things living close to fire they ate fire sometimes when no one was looking. Sometimes they ate birds whole off the spit and were beaten. They spoke tersely voices at a pitch to carry low and clear from hearth to hearth through the file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 40 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html babble above them. That one. Who The bone bundle Her you want No not Saro you gizzard. Saro s a scrub brush. She s nothing real. No one s talking Saro. Who then Her. Washer. Look at her hair. Golden as a duck on the spit. Honey. Honey in the mouth. Her. Her with the black hair. Boner Watch her hands boning that hen. Watch her lift a thigh. Turn it. Twist it. Bend it back. And forth. And back. And then back and back and back and there thigh s loose and sliding in her hand and those fingers holding it. She s cutting it. Watch her face. Stare at her and she looks up. Eyes like smoke. She clouted me once with her knife handle. She s too handy with a knife. What d you do to her Nothing. Just staring. Maybe I dipped my finger in the dripping. Maybe I licked it staring at her. Her. Which The plucker. The skinny one With her hair like it s full of dripping You can t see her eyes under her hair. They re like fire. She s an ember now but she flames. She flames. And she doesn t care about ash on your fingers. The others Most others They all watch the fine clothes. The flower eaters from upstairs. The ones who get to see the back of the King s head when they serve. The back of the prince s head. That was his boar we spitted yesterday. Big. They found his silver spearhead in its heart. He does magic the prince. Up in his tower he does magic. He could have all of them. Every one of them. Even the tray mistress. You gizzard. What magic Spells. He has books. Words he reads and then makes them into magic. I know what I d do with a spell. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 41 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Every one of them. Her Saro. You gizzard. Saro is a spell. Saro bending deep into the great wash cauldron soapy water roiling and echoing around her as she scrubbed found the odd words echoing in her head. Saro is a spell. Saro is a spell. The rest of what she had heard from the spit boys made little more sense than the water did sloshing in the cauldron. The washers were slightly less bewildering. Words hid something danced around something slid up to it and away. Something everyone knew but Saro. And whatever it was they would not say the word for it. They said lavenderand ribbons charmsand spells bodices boning knives and honey. Chicken thighs and fireand dreams. But they said no word for the look in the spit boys watching eyes. Something lay beneath words. Something that was not a word but which made words. Something like her dream in the bottom of the pot. There was no word in what she saw: It made words necessary. Saro is a spell. Up in his tower he does magic. He has books. Words. Spells. Saro is a spell. She almost lost her balance fell headfirst into the cauldron trying to see herself out of the spit boys eyes to see herself watching Saro the spell. After a while the words seemed just another noise the kitchen made. But other words she kept: Books words spells. Up in his tower he does magic. Out of his tower he will die. Up in his tower he has words. Saro She pulled herself up trailing water and followed the reedy voice of the sauce cook who had emptied the dripping pans. He shoved the greasy soot coated stack at her. They were still hot she wrapped her hand in her skirt and hunched down dragged them by the lowest handle. She took odd routes under long tables so that the cooks and the hall servants in their purple silks and the musicians in their reds and blacks would not trip headlong into duck fat. Pluckers and peelers idle for a moment and huddled under the tables showed little surprise at her passing. Most of them were nibbling: a pared apple a roasted potato black with ash a stray bone a heel of bread. They shifted out of the way of Saro s pans but never so far into the light to catch the cooks attention. They spoke randomly of everything. My mother was a hall servant a thin blond girl with no front teeth said dreamily. She was never. She was. She was rich and she was beautiful. But she died when I was born and they didn t have room for me upstairs so they kept me down here on the hearth. And then they forgot where I belonged. So I got lost down here. But I really belong up there. Saro was born in the woodpile a boy with a runny nose said. He slapped another boy lightly. Move your feet you gout let her by. Those pans are hot. Saro was carved out of wood the blond girl said. That s why she s put together like that. All clumsy and knobby. And why her face isn t finished. Why the boys demanded. There was a story in her voice in her slowed lilting words. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 42 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Because one day the woodcarver who used to be the sweeper here but his back got so gnarly and crooked his chin sank down to his knee and he could no longer see where he was going and where he had been one day he had a visitor. A what A stranger came who stopped by the woodpile. The woodcarver couldn t see him all he could see was his own face in shiny leather boots. But the stranger s voice was sweet as honey. Give me the doll you are carving old one he said. I want to take it home for my child. I will give you money for it. But the woodcarver wouldn t. You have a child he said to the stranger. This is all I have. And anyway I m not finished with it. And so the stranger got very angry he was a great mage and he said Then I will give you a child of nothing old man since you gave my child nothing. And the wooden doll came alive all unpolished and knobby with part of its face still birch bark and that s why Saro looks unfinished. Ballocks one of the boys said after some deliberation. Tray mistress says a milker left her there in the woodpile. Naked. Saro tugged the trays out of the chorus of snorts and hiccups into an oblong of light between tables. The tray mistress her shadow flung between the tables over Saro turned abruptly a red rose between her teeth. She gestured at one of the hall servants who nearly stepped in the dripping pans before he saw Saro crouched hauling them behind her. He drew back in horror from the grease and waited until she disappeared beneath the next table. There she crawled through a game played with candle stubs and the knucklebones of pigs. They were rolled surreptitiously across the floor toward a target the foot of an undercook or a hall servant and whoever got closest won. Whoever touched the target lost especially if it was a hall servant s shoe for then the players were usually routed and stubs and knuckles flew everywhere. The players mincers mostly and on the edge of turning into spit boys waited for Saro to pass shaking wax and bones. They stared longingly into her pans some scraped crusts into the cooling grease. They spoke little. Him. Pastry. He s still making diddles out of cream. Hit him we re dead. Don t hit him then the player breathed. Throw. Wait for Saro. She s in the way. Wish they d eat and be done. I could eat ham the size of a chair. A whole cow. An ox. They never leave much on the bird bones. There s stuffing. Sage onion liver enough to fill a barn. I could eat it all. Throw. The knucklebone came within a thumbprint of the pastry cook s soft leather shoe. Saro heard their breaths gather and still then fall again together as the cook festooning a cake with loops and swags shifted and kicked the bone away never noticing. We could all die. Him Head hall servant Hit his velvet shoe with a pig knuckle We ll all die. He ll swoon first. Throw. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 43 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Saro emerged into a huddle of musicians. Fanfares they said first and second and third the one Lefeber wrote and then with the first wine the ancient fanfare of the House and with the second wine the Silvan fanfare which you always take too fast and there is a rest before the second cadence. Then Then they noticed what Saro pulled and they scattered hastily draping the pennants and ribbons on their long golden horns carefully over their arms. She reached the drains finally. She poured scalding water into the dripping pans and finished the soup kettle while they soaked. Nothing in its dark wet hollows revealed anything but more dark iron more water. She tipped it at last poured the water down the drain and set it to dry until it was needed. She turned to begin the dripping pans and bending found herself eye to eye with the sweeper. Hunched and shrunken he seemed in danger of turning into the woodcarver in the plucker s tale who had carved Saro out of birch. He seldom spoke only nibbled what he could salvage out of her pots. His broom a knobby crooked staff with a fan of straw on one end seemed a part of him worn down to the bone and shiny with age. He spoke. You re coming alive he said. Your eyes are listening. He touched his fingers to his lips. Don t let them see. You re someone s secret. Don t let them find you alive. He helped soap and water and debris down into the drain and swept on. Saro stared a moment into water looking for her listening eyes. Seeing only the task at hand she put her hand to the task. Eight Talis rode into the green wood. It was morning gold light poured among the trees. The leaves hung still shining green flames if a wind rose it seemed they would ring together like fine glass. Sun laid soft warm hands on Talis hair he lifted his face to it blindly felt light like sweet wine on his lips. He whispered I don t know your name. The leaves did not speak. She was there he felt flowing ahead of him in the light fading into shadow just as he glimpsed her in his unbroken lens. Crossing a stream he saw the reflection of her face among leaves just before his horse s hoof broke the reflection into a thousand crystal pieces. She had been there in the oak s shadow there beside the slender graceful birch. He could not find the place where she had appeared to him every sunlit glint of water every outstretched oak bough seemed to promise her. He rode slowly aimlessly wandering through light and shadow seeing one clear world and one blurred and her in neither of them. He did not know if he rode deep into the wood or circled near its boundary he did not care. He had not been in the wood since he had killed the boar. Movement still strained him until then it was all he could do to climb the stairs in the keep and look for her there among the shadows though she did not come again. But he had dreamed of her that morning standing in a ring of birch saying his name. He felt her touch and woke and her hand turned into light. He rode with the sun until noon. The still trees rose aloof and solitary around him holding secrets he sensed but they would tell him nothing. He heard horns from far away he recognized the fanfares. Wind rose blowing out of his own world breaking the enchanted file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 44 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html silence. He turned toward the horns rode out of the wood onto Hunter s Field. He did not go to eat in the hall he went up into the keep again limping a little haunted by her shadow. Someone noticed his absence: He was interrupted by game hens seasoned with rosemary tiny potatoes stuffed with mushrooms soup of leeks and cream a braided loaf of dark sweet bread a compote of cherries in brandy. He recognized the girl who brought it. You didn t drop it this time he commented. She didn t smile. He studied her face a moment. The guards standing beside the door glanced at her puzzled by his interest then looked disinterestedly away. She was wax pale chafed with water. All the joints in her fingers seemed to be in odd places out of proportion to one another and far too long. Her face without changing expression seemed to change constantly as if the position of her features was never quite fixed never quite aligned. He tried to see the color of her eyes and failed since her eyes had moved beyond him unexpectedly to look through the open door. He glanced back wondering what had drawn her attention. A shadow had crossed the wall he guessed. Or on the table the tiny diamonds in his grinding cloth had caught fire. He said impulsively Set the tray on the table. He followed her in watching her face turn slightly her attention drawn here there. The window moved as she set the tray down light spilled suddenly over it. She did not seem surprised by that or by the restless ghosts roaming in and out of the whitewash. Perhaps he guessed nothing surprised her or everything did. She turned her head suddenly surprising him: She caught his eyes in an intense unblinking gaze that was like a question in a private language. Her lips moved a little she turned her head swiftly her face hidden again. He realized that she had stared straight at him and he still could not remember the color of her eyes. She went out again quickly and noiselessly left him staring at the door. I m seeing things he murmured without my lenses. Several hours later he was interrupted by the King. He heard Burne announce himself cursing the stairs before he entered. Talis fitted the new lens into the frame and slid the lenses on. His brother s face distinct in one eye and imprecise in the other seemed relatively calm in both. I came to see if you were still alive up here Burne said. You ve been far too quiet. No lightning bolts no explosions. The physician said he had not seen you today. I went riding Talis said. And then I came up here to finish my lens. I don t know why he bothers to give you advice when you don t even listen to me. Talis eyed him. He pulled the lenses off cleared a place on the table and sat. I listen to you he said mildly. Now what have I done You re spending all your time in this place for one thing. It s stifling with memories. Look at that. They watched silently as the shadow of a boy with a torn cloak and a handful of arrows edged to the window and knelt to shoot. I don t Burne said tightly know how you stand it up here. They re not my memories Talis said gently. I only see the magic. Burne averted his eyes from the walls abruptly afraid Talis guessed or recognizing one of the figures. He frowned down at his lens wishing he could share some of Burne s past instead of only his memories: the ghostly king Talis had never known the horror of Hunter s Field. Burne had told him tales as everyone had. Someone living he realized early who had not been scarred by the siege or haunted by memory was valuable to the storytellers. Having no file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 45 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html memories of his own he became their receptacle for memory and with his untroubled past for hope. He waited silently knowing what hope Burne had in him now. They never found who did that sorcery Burne asked still troubled by the keep. Not even the mages know in Chaumenard No. Some stranger then hired by Riven of Kardeth. Maybe. But it was a very powerful piece of sorcery. Mages that powerful don t bother to hide their names. An evil mage might Burne suggested. But where is he She Why would an evil mage not use such power again or a good mage use it in the first place Burne shook his head. No good mage would have done it. Mages lives are not separate from their magics. Isn t that what they teach you at the school Which explains my accidents Talis said wryly. I lead a reprehensible life. You know what I mean. Anyway. Outside of trying to kill me now and then the life you lead is far too respectable. This house is full of company and you re shut up here in this keep ignoring half a dozen young women who didn t come to look at my greying hair. It s high time you married. I just came down and killed a boar for you Talis protested. And broke my lenses. Isn t that enough to ask of me for a while I won t have heirs Burne said. You ll inherit Pelucir and you need to give this house another heir. We lost a king when you were born no telling with our history when we ll lose another. Talis dropped his face in his hands murmuring. He emerged almost as quickly to gaze at Burne. It was that boar. It frightened you seeing me in danger. It terrified me Burne admitted. Seeing you spellbound oblivious to shouts hounds barking horses birds trumpets the boar splashing straight at you across the stream and you in another world. Talis opened his mouth closed it. Words filled his mouth. Three white deer he wanted to say to Burne. Three white hounds. Three white horses and the Queen of the Wood with her hair like dying oak leaves and her voice like mourning doves He felt Burne s attention focused acute as it could be when he sensed something concealed from him. Talis the King said and Talis slid off the table still silent. A white fire caught his eye he detached the new lens from the frame and picked up the grinding cloth. I met someone he said finally working at the lens. In the wood. Who A woman. She distracted me. The hunt startled her away. Well who was she I don t know. She didn t tell me her name. We barely talked. I fell off my horse and then I saw three white deer then three white hounds and then three white horses. And then and then she let me see her face. She was very she was more beautiful than The King grunted. They always are he said unexpectedly. The women you meet in a wood or a meadow or beside water whose names you never know. Far more beautiful than those file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 46 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html you know too well. Talis held the lens to his eye. It wasn t like that. It never is. Burne met his brother s exasperated eye within the lens. You may lose your heart to a dozen women in a dozen woods but you will marry a woman with a name and a family suitable to your rank not some nameless someone without sense enough to tell you to get out of the way of a charging boar. It wasn t Talis said tensely a moment when common sense seemed applicable. And if you tell me such moments never are I will pick up this table and throw it out the window. If the window stands still long enough. He ground the lens furiously a moment Burne watched silently. Talis hand slowed he said finally without looking up What does it matter I killed it anyway. And I sent you away for two years to learn to think like that Burne marvelled. He dropped a hand on Talis shoulder. I don t know who you met in the wood but she sounds dangerous. Dangerously feebleminded if nothing else. Tomorrow I want you to join us for the hunt again. And stay with it this time. All right. He listened to Burne linger a moment then cross the room open the door before he raised his head. Burne. The King looked back at him. It really wasn t like that at all. It was like nothing I have ever known. He heard his brother s answer in the silence Burne left behind: It always is. He finished the lens as the sun setting beyond the yard and the rampart wall flooded the window with light. The light faded the window moved showed him the green and dusky blur of wood upon the hill. He put the lens to his eye saw the wood clearly a shadowy secret place in the twilight. He looked at it for a long time until the trees began fading and night rode toward him down the hill. He lit lamps then and fitted the glass into the thin gold frame slid the finished lenses on. He went blind suddenly both lenses filled with black. Wind rose within the tower a strange fierce whirl that nearly blew him off balance. He heard papers fly books snap open pages riffling and tearing. The black wind grew stronger things of glass and wood crashed broke. Something struck him. He stumbled still blind swallowing blood and brought himself up against a corner of the stone hearth. Bewildered shaking he pulled the lenses off. His eyes filled with fire. Then he saw the horn woven into the flames and the black moon of a hundred tales riding among them. He backed against the hearth a sound shaking out of him. His heart beat so raggedly he could scarcely breathe. There seemed nothing human in the fur masked eyes gazing back at him. Hounds enormous and shadow black swarmed around the Hunter their noiseless claws struck sparks on the stones. Still holding Talis eyes the Hunter lifted a fistful of torn pages to his teeth bit into them. Blood ran down his mouth as if words bled. Talis swallowed his throat paper dry. All the sorcery he had ever learned seemed crumpled in the Hunter s hand all the words he knew. He found one as sweat from the flames burned down his face and only the stones against his back held him on his feet the word itself sounded choked barely distinguishable. Why The Hunter raised his hand. Drawkcab he said. A book as ancient as Pelucir and heavy as a stone flew past him and slammed into Talis. His head snapped against the hearth his lungs filled with fire instead of air. As he slid to his knees he felt the Hunter s hand in his hair pulling his head back. Desperate for air he breathed only words dry torn parchment spells he had spoken forced backward into his mouth until he grew blind again and winds roared through him though he could not find a thimbleful of air. Then a wind out of nowhere as fierce and wild as if it had blown down from the mountains of file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 47 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Chaumenard dragged him to his feet. Scraps of words flew out of him his eyes flickered open. He saw the Hunter blur and flow into black flames of horn and hand and waning moon the wind singing like a wolf flattened the hounds into shadows among the ghosts. Outside guards clamored at the wind heaved against the door pounded on it when it would not budge. Hands barely visible like windblown snow gripped Talis lifted him. He struggled and choked again the keep reeling around him. The window framing the green wood rattled in the eerie whine and shattered Talis slumped in the wind s strange hold felt himself blown through broken glass. He glimpsed the keep growing oddly smaller sending a long trail of torn scrolls and parchment in the wake of the wind while from the broken floor below a white mist of owls fled the opposite direction. Then he saw the vast twilight sky wheeling toward him and he closed his eyes. He woke again to birds crying. On his hands and knees in a litter of dry parchment he retched paper and words then sagged onto his back racked and sobbing for air. He felt a hand touch him and panicked rolling wildly. Earth leaf mold scented the air he opened his eyes stared senselessly at the ground. Leaves. His voice raw with pain sounded hardly human. I thought it was more words. He heard a voice spun thin as cobweb. Talis. He lifted his head. A stranger crouched among the roots of an oak tree on the hill overlooking Hunter s Field. He had white shaggy hair eyes an odd blur of light and dark. He wore a torn grass stained tunic his feet were bare. He looked lean craggy weathered both old and timeless like a tree or a stone and as wild as anything that lived among them. He had ridden the wind to rescue Talis from the keep: a mage Talis knew but no one he had ever met. He straightened and wiped tears off his face with the back of his fist. His fingers were locked around something he opened his hand amazed. I brought my lenses. He put them on and saw the expression change on the hard worn face. You the mage said grimly. He closed his eyes briefly opened them as if he expected Talis to disappear. I thought so. Who are you Talis asked. You know me. I don t know you. Then the answer came to him he felt the spidery touch of wonder glide over him. I know you. Yes. Atrix Wolfe. I saw you on the mountain the mage said. You were looking for me. You climbed too high and dropped your lenses. Talis stared at him. But you re here. In Pelucir. You saved my life. The mage s face tightened. Barely. He turned gave a hawk s glance across the field. Talis shifted to kneel beside him. On the field nothing moved but the twilight trembling on it like a gathering army of ghosts. Talis swallowed dryly a word he had swallowed licked like fire at his throat. Is he still here Yes. Do you know what he is Yes. He is the Hunter of Hunter s Field. Yes. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 48 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He killed my father. Talis was still trembling watching things drift eluding definition on the shadowy field. I recognized him from tales. The black moon the burning horns He tensed. He is in the castle with Burne. Atrix Wolfe shook his head. The Hunter is no longer in the keep. Talis looked at him. You know him too What made you come to Pelucir As if you knew I needed help. I knew you needed help the mage said. He seemed to sense Talis confusion and turned his attention from the field. His eyes the bruised grey of the twilight met Talis eyes. He studied the prince a moment as expressionless as stone. Then expression welled into his eyes like water breaking through ice and he looked back across the field. I was trying to find my spellbook. When I learned you had it I knew you were in trouble. How Hedrix told me you had it. After I dreamed that you were using it. A young mage wearing lenses. You dreamed Talis voice sharpened with amazement. But why You ve hardly been seen since before I was born. Why did you appear twice out of nowhere to help me I don t know. Our paths keep crossing. I used magic for the first time in twenty years to show the wolf to you on the mountain And again today I came a long way to cross your path in Pelucir. The wood was soundless now leaves as still in the twilight as if they were spellbound. The full moon rising among the great tangled branches of the oak made Talis throat close. He whispered He tried to kill me with words. He summoned me with them. Talis shuddered. He touched his lenses trying to see more clearly in the night closing around him. Why you Was he hidden in the keep all this time or did he just appear there knowing you would come for the book Where exactly did you find it In a mop closet. The mage turned again to look at him. A mop closet. We had been instructed to hide. I saw your book on the shelf and hid in it. Something about it made me curious. I asked Hedrix if I could take it with me back to Pelucir. You saw me he added remembering just before I left. He touched his lenses again his hand shook left them slightly askew. Why did you keep the book there I buried it in solid stone Atrix Wolfe said. It found its way to you. And then to Pelucir. Wordless Talis watched the mage the mage watched the field. Horns sounded into the twilight bright urgent drawing Talis eyes to the curve of battlement wall against the sky the oblongs of fire spiralling up the round towers the flickering wash of torchlight across the upper window of the keep where someone within searched frantically among the ruins. He said softly The spells don t match the words. That s why I buried it. Talis drew breath soundlessly so not to disturb what was piecing itself so tenuously together. Why The word too was soundless. The mage rose beside the tree. Oak boughs rose above his head the bright moon burning within them. Talis felt the blood flow out of his face at a memory or a sudden vision. Why file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 49 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html are my spells so twisted Atrix Wolfe said. Why have I hidden myself since you were born Why was it you on the mountain looking for me you who found my book He nodded his eyes on the castle across the field. I want and I do not want an answer to that. Why it worked its way out of stone to come here. To this place. To you. He looked down at Talis still kneeling hunched over himself now like an animal gathering into itself avoiding the hunter s eye. Talis heard himself say calmly though his skin felt taut chilled in the moonlight and his body had grown still as leaves as air within the wood How do you know the Hunter of Hunter s Field I made him. The words struck like a blow for an instant Talis thought the sudden sharp pound of his heart would send the birds crying into the air. But the wood was undisturbed around him. He rose noiselessly. The mage all his attention suddenly riveted on the field did not stop him when he began to run. A horn pure and solitary within the wood sounded the beginning of the hunt. Nine The fanfare signalling the beginning of supper refused to sound. The tray mistress and hall servants listened for it absently standing beside steaming silver bowls of soup with tiny saffron biscuits shaped like fish floating in it. Behind them undercooks took long loaves smelling of onion and basil out of the ovens and wrapped them snugly in linens to keep them hot. Haunches of ham crackled and split on the spits juices flowing into the dripping pans the spit boys lean cheeks were pouched with stolen bits of skin. Saro deep in her cauldron heard nothing but water sloshing and echoing around her. A small copper tower of saucepans stood at her elbow some sticky with boiled frosting others with congealing rice flavored with lemon and mint. She was washing them one by one oblivious to the small fingers scooping rice or frosting whichever she uncovered from the top of the tower. As she straightened to reach for a dirty pan noises came clearer: a laugh from the servants the tray mistress s tart voice the head cook snapping at someone a squeal from an apprentice burning a finger. She scrubbed the pan straightened again to lay it on the floor to drain. Silence as if everyone were listening at once was broken by a servant and another laugh. She took a pan and plunged again into water floating with rice kernels and bubbles. She flicked rice out reappearing briefly. Silence again. She finished the pan laid it on the floor heard a murmuring and the head cook s tense voice. The soup the soup The fish will melt. She reached for a frosted pan the tray mistress said grimly They re all here they didn t hunt so why aren t they eating Unless the musicians forgot how to play. Saro bent again felt for the pan in the gummy water. More rice than soap floated past her face the water was cooling. She finished the pan laid it down. Someone should go the tray mistress said. Saro turned heaving against the cauldron. Water slapped over the side toward the drains. A file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 50 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html mincer his breath sugary pushed with her wanting to see the water spill. I ll go the head servant said straightening a gold trimmed cuff fussily. The musicians may know. The head cook studied the fish biscuits in a soup bowl and groaned. The cauldron tipped water poured into the drains. In the unaccustomed silence everyone having nothing else to do looked at Saro. Then their eyes moved to one another. The head cook threw a boning knife across the room. It stuck in a rafter above a spit boy s head the spit boys their chewing suspended looked impressed. Beat them someone the tray mistress demanded. They re eating the hams. What does it matter the head cook asked fretfully. No one else is. Be patient. Pah. He sniffed. What s burning An apprentice sprinted for the fires. Saro poured hot water from the kettle into the cauldron as the head servant came back down the steps. They all looked at him the head cook made a sound like water about to boil. Well The head servant looked bewildered. Apparently the prince is missing. Missing the head cook shouted and Saro stopped abruptly hot water splashing over her hands down her skirt. He s up in the keep. No Then he blew himself away. No. The servant paused. Well. Maybe. The guard What guard The keep guard. They said they heard strange noises. They tried to enter. The door was impossible. Then some strange mage blew past them. The noise died they were able to enter. The prince was gone. What of supper the head cook demanded. The bread is cooling the fish are melting the The beans are scorching the apprentice said heaving pots off the fires. Then he flung open an oven door peered into the blackness. The swans are burning. The head cook turned away moaning. The tray mistress hissed with fierce curiosity at the head servant Go back up. See what more they say. Saro moving more slowly than usual stared into the wash cauldron before she began filling it. She saw nothing but a few grains of rice clinging to the bottom. Habit moved her she was not used to doing nothing. She poured hot water in it. Still she saw no sign in the dark rippling of prince or mage. She added soap more water and began to scrub again. She had nearly finished the saucepans before the head servant returned. By then the head cook had flung a few more things the mincers peelers and pluckers had taken refuge under the tables the undercooks had opened a bottle of brandy and were passing it back and forth. The mage the head servant said pale must have been taken too. So the King says. The King is baleful. The cooks and undercooks stared at him. The tray mistress reached for the brandy bottle. What she asked ominously do you mean taken The mage took he wasn t taken. The mage stole away the prince. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 51 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html The King says not. The King says He paused drawing breath the tray mistress upended the brandy and swigged. The King has sent messengers to the mages in Chaumenard. He bade them ride until their horses fell then run until they could only walk then walk until they could only crawl but to get themselves to Chaumenard before they drew another breath. He is calling a hunt. The head cook morosely beheading black meringue swans interrupted incredulously. A hunt At this hour What can they hunt in the dark A woman. They stared at him again mute. The tray mistress clutched the brandy to her bosom the head cook s knife hung suspended over the charred curved neck of a swan. Saro bent deep into her cauldron heard the word echo oddly in the hollows. Woman the eddying water whispered. Woman woman a woman. What woman The tray mistress s voice cracked. The King said the prince came upon her in the wood. She held him spellbound until he was nearly killed by the boar he killed. At the hearths the spit boys exchanged glances their eyes hooded reflecting fire. Nameless she was. So Prince Talis told the King. And beautiful. The King said that word as if it meant everything but. So the wood is where he will search for Prince Talis tonight. Still the kitchen was silent spellbound by the tale. The woman herself seemed to waver in and out of light and shadow as all their dreaming gazes conjured her. Even the head cook saw her in memory or in desire her shadow fell over the tray mistress s face. Saro listening to their strange silence saw only her own dark reflection at the bottom of the cauldron. The tray mistress said abruptly shaking them all awake Not everyone will hunt. After the King rides those left here will want their supper. Such as it is the head cook muttered. And those returning from the hunt later will want theirs. The head cook his face loosening as he calculated two suppers hot and cold got to his feet. Reheat the soup he commanded. Remove the fish. Chop green onions to float in the bowls with a pinch of paprika. Choppers an undercook roared and choppers scattered like mice from under the table. The head cook s eye fell on the brandy bottle. Take hot brandy and spiced wine to the hunters in the yard and thin slices of apple and game pie quickly Quickly the tray mistress echoed rattling trays. The musicians clustered devising appropriate accompaniment to send off a hasty and desperate hunt. Saro stacking the last of the copper pans found her tower disappear as apprentices whisked away clean pans to heat the brandy and wine. Someone took the last pan out of her hand. She leaned a moment against the cauldron wet idle listening for her name. Voices shouted of the hams and the loaves of bread and of eggs to make more meringue of onions and bowls trays and platters and music but no one cried Saro. Weariness dragged at her bones heat from the ovens and open fires laid heavy hands across her eyes. Still listening for there was always another pot she dreamed a little a word echoed not through the kitchen but in her head. Woman. A woman. Woman. Saro Her body stiffened. But her eyes refused to open. She searched blindly her face turning to catch the sound of her name. Saro she heard again. But she did not recognize the voice. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 52 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html She opened her eyes her hands dropping to the rim of the cauldron to hold herself upright for she was suddenly so tired that her body wanted to melt like water onto the stones. The kitchen was oddly silent dark but for beds of embers glowing fuming fiercely in the hearths. It seemed empty without even a mincer asleep under a table. She could hear as from a distant room or another world the familiar constant tangle of voices and noises the nightly skirmish that produced the feast. In the shadows something moved. She stared motionless still gripping the cauldron. There was no kitchen word for what she saw. The great crown of horns seemed to sweep the rafters with fire though as in a dream nothing burned except the dark moon within them. The man s face was shadowy indistinct it was his eyes she remembered staring at her out of the cauldron seeing her. Huge black hounds swarmed restlessly around him but made no sound. She felt her heart pulse in her throat her head went back a little as he took a step toward her. But nothing else moved all her bones were frozen except her finger bones which gripped the iron cauldron like iron. She could not even blink her eyes were strained wide transfixed by the cauldron s dream coming at her across the kitchen. Saro. She opened her eyes. She felt wet stone under her face her hip her hands. Someone held half an onion under her nose. She took a whiff and pushed herself up. She looked around bewildered faces ringed her: pluckers boners washers the sweeper. The tray mistress loomed over them. Her voice small and faraway at first broke some sound barrier and boomed abruptly. Give her soup and some bread and milk. She s forgotten to eat she has not even that much sense. She ll work herself to death one of these days. Get her on her feet again the pots are starting to pile. A plate washer and the smoky eyed boner helped her sit brought her food. The sweeper swept himself away then swept back again and dropped a meringue swan unburned but missing a tail into her lap. The boner said sharply to the staring crowd around her Leave her be or I ll bone you you little gamecocks. But what happened to her She fainted the plate washer said. It s a wonder she didn t fall headfirst in the cauldron. She patted Saro s shoulder as the crowd dispersed snickering at the thought of Saro s legs dangling out of her wash water. Poor shadowy thing. She s nothing but bones and skin pale and damp like a mushroom. Yet she s always working like something demented. She was silent a little she and the boner both were gazing at Saro like cats as she ate eyes like wood smoke eyes like hazelnuts fixed and unblinking. Look at her the washer whispered. Look at her face. Things move around in it. She never looks the same twice. Like she s not meant to be looked at the boner breathed. To be seen. Or not meant to be found. Saro dropped bread in her lap. Soup would have followed but the boner took it quickly for Saro had begun to shake. She held herself drew her knees up pushed herself against the cauldron her eyes flicking around the kitchen searching for the night hunter among the apprentices putting the morning s sweet rolls into the oven among the scrawny mincers gnawing bread and bones under the table among the spit boys their faces almost as wild and secret as the face in her vision. Found she heard again in her head and knew the word meant her as surely as her name. The horned hunter had isolated her from all the noises and bodies and words in the kitchen. He had looked at her and seen her. Found. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 53 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Eat the washer urged holding the bowl to Saro s lips. It ll be a long night what with the hunters out. You ll need to stay on your feet. The first supper shorter than usual and even more chaotic ate up clean pots spit them out dirty as the head cook replaced reheated improvised. Saro scrubbed rinsed drew fresh water scrubbed again. But nothing could wash away the dark vision in her head the feeling that she no longer belonged to the kitchen one of its familiars like the mincers or the cats that no one outside would claim or recognize or even give a thought to. She belonged in the night hunter s eyes. He had found her. As he would find Prince Talis. He would find her again. She could feel her throat trying to make a sound nothing came. She could not hide in the kitchen among the pluckers and choppers. They would fall into their dreams leave her behind alone in the still dark hours when no one called her name. When not even the fire spoke. The kitchen began to calm itself behind her musicians and servants cooks and undercooks eating wearily at tables everyone else in a corner at a hearth under a table nibbling leftover ham heels of bread broken swans filled with fruit. But still she scrubbed for there were pots frying pans dripping pans heaped crazily around her. Saro and her noises were the kitchen s voice familiar constant no one paid attention to her clattering. Even the boner eating bits of ham off the tip of her boning knife had forgotten her. As they would forget her at the night s end drift away and leave her to the shadows. To the hunter. They re not back yet a musician said fretfully standing at one of the butcher s tables behind her. I haven t heard the horns. They always sound the horns when they leave the wood and again at the gate. If he s with a woman the prince another said wryly he might not be found until morning. If he s off chasing a dream through the wood then what happened to the mage What happened in the keep Saro immersed half of herself and a half dozen saucepans in steaming soapy water. Then she straightened again holding the sides of the cauldron remembering silence the smell of owls the hint of secrets. Up in the keep he does magic But he was gone. The keep was empty She reached again for pots. She finished the last pot long after the plate washers had finished. The royal hunt had not returned. The night seemed soundless as if it too listened for horns. The pastry cooks finished the sweetbreads and butter pastry for the morning. Some left others drowsed or drank wine and talked. The spit boys lay beside their fires watching them feeding them now and then as aware as lovers of every changing mood every shadow. The younglings had gone to sleep the washers waiting for the second supper had fallen asleep at the tables with their heads in their arms. Even the tray mistress drowsed only grunting a little when Saro laid the last gleaming dripping pan on the stack. She turned and looked at the kitchen. No one looked back at her. She was an iron cauldron an apron a table something so familiar no one bothered noticing it not even when it was stalked by a bloody moon above a hunter s masked face. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 54 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html She would hear the horns from the keep slip back into the kitchen before anyone could use a pot to want it washed. She would be safe within the prince s magical room the hunter would never find her there. A flame vanished into an ember cast a shadow across a spit boy s face as he raised it to see what moved in the night what long hair what skirt. But it was nothing only Saro and he forgot about her even before she faded out of the firelight. Ten Talis ran. At first he scarcely heard the hunting horns. They seemed echoes of a battle fought the night he was born a call to the bloody hunt on Hunter s Field. He ran into a past that shaped itself around him into something living. All the memories of the siege were no longer shadows ghosts tales. The ghosts had names they had feverish bloodshot eyes they had torn cloaks and worn boots and broken pieces of armor. They raised a tattered banner: the boar of Pelucir tusks rampant swords crossed above its head a crown above the swords. His father rode among the ghosts. Burne rode beside him and so did his uncles his young cousins. Ravens followed them and the Shadow of the Wolf. He opened the gate the survivors said and we rode out behind him into the winter night to meet Riven of Kardeth. To rout him or die in the field like warriors not like starving rats hiding behind the walls. He was tall your father like you. Dark haired like you. A web of silver over the dark. More like your brother in temperament. He liked movement noise the hunt and the feast. And generous: He liked to give he took pride in his giving a hound a fine hunter a blade a piece of land. The Queen she was the one for the music and the books. She never cared to hunt but she loved to ride. She played a little pipe of rosewood and gold. She died almost to the moment when he died. They saw him fall and then they heard her give a great cry of sorrow and she died there with you beside her in the bed. You have her gentleness her smile. She gave your brother her fair hair and you her eyes. They loved her your brother and the King. Their eyes followed her. Light moving she was like a bird and graceful as water. Water never makes a movement without grace. The Hunter rode with ravens on his horns. His mouth ran with blood. He ate the last words of the dying. He harvested their names so that when dawn stretched across the field taut with silence like an unbeaten drum the dead were unrecognizable. They watched us from the wood until we brought in our dead. And then they came down and got their own. What they knew was theirs. They were gone by nightfall. The rest the snow and the hungry animals got. Your father died. That s enough for you to know. He died on Hunter s Field. We brought him in as we fled inside. We were able to recognize him. All night we watched. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 55 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html By dawn there was nothing alive on Hunter s Field but ravens. The Hunter vanished with the moon. As if he had been a dream. No one knows who made him. Riven of Kardeth paid some sorcerer to make him. He could find no honorable way to defeat Pelucir. There was a ring on your father s right hand that the Queen gave him. We recognized him by that. She cried sorrow. The Hunter killed him and she cried sorrow and died Talis sensed the Wolf behind him. It was a power far stronger more complex than his own. It moved silently as shadow a nebulous presence slipping from leaf to leaf after him it knew his name. His body faltered his knee twisted suddenly throwing him off balance. As he fell he melted into his shadow cast by the moon in a net of boughs. Shadow he picked himself up and limped to an oak then molded himself like bark around its trunk. Talis. The horn sounded again still solitary very close. He shifted upward along the curve of the first branch clung there like some great dark moth. Something moved beneath him shape pulling itself free from leaf and shadow and bark. At first he thought it was the mage. Moonlight struck it and Talis nearly lost hold of both the tree and his shifted shape. What rode below was made of leaves its upturned face layered and molded into fierce and elegant lines. One hand rested on a bare pearl black mane the other held a spiral of silver the fingers were long and graceful and green as birch leaves. Hair rippling heavy the gold of dead oak leaves shook back down broad oak molded shoulders eyes shadowy green seemed to pick Talis out of the bark. He raised the horn and blew. Talis dropped out of the tree ran half man half shadow deeper into the wood. The rider followed a broken leaf a tiny snapped twig a sigh of wind. Other horns sounded then a distant weave of trumpet and hunting horn: the ghosts Talis thought of the One Great Hunt. No one else hunted at night. No one human. He felt himself pulling into human shape then his eyes burning his throat swelling burning with horror. He put his wrist against his mouth to stifle sound and heard his footsteps beating through the dead leaves. Atrix Wolfe they said. Atrix Wolfe. The name pursued him ran beside him casting its white shadow in the moonlight. He cleared his mind stubbornly dreading the touch of the leaf shaped fingers the inhuman eyes almost as much as the White Wolf s charred silver eyes. He pulled his weary struggling body around a huge rotting log and then lay among its ruins half shadow half crumbled lifeless wood. The rider a brush of leaves and moonlight passed him. Talis drew himself into a pool of shadow then under a touch of moonlight became a hare frozen still listening. Trumpets sounded again a bright urgent fanfare of warning to the wood. He moved to the end of the log turned to hide within its hollow heart and found himself face to face with the White Wolf. Talis. Startled out of shape he became human. He whirled to run. Something caught his wrist a human touch. He stumbled wrenched his knee again and caught himself against the the side of the log. He leaned against it catching his breath one hand tight against his ribs watching file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 56 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html helplessly as the mage took shape in front of him. Talis Atrix Wolfe breathed. Talis his throat burning again with too many words tried to twist free the mage pulled him back held him against the wood held his eyes. I am not the only thing you have to run from in this wood and you are running blind. Listen to He disappeared then into all the words that Talis could not say pouring out of him in a sudden furious flare of silver. Talis amazed at himself straightened the mage shaped himself out of light before he could run again. Talis He flung up a hand as Talis shouted a silent question light whiter than moonlight parted against the mage s hand scarred the trees around them. Talis sagged against the dead oak shaken by the uncontrolled power it held no answer he realized no language but a cry. He found words finally and used them. Why Why you He gripped the mage suddenly and stumbling off balance bore him back until a tree stopped them. Why you Atrix Wolfe Trumpets sounded at the name. Ghosts Talis thought furiously the mage his face turning toward them looked suddenly haunted. Was it betrayal Dishonor What did Riven of Kardeth promise you in return If I had taken what he promised me the mage said tersely your father would be alive and both Pelucir and Chaumenard would belong to Kardeth. He slid like a shadow out of Talis hands left him holding wood. It was nothing that simple. No Talis said staring into a tree bole. He turned his head trembling still clinging to the tree searching the worn powerful face for a hint of answer. It wouldn t have been. Anything that simple. He heard horns again an untuned chord and realized suddenly that all the ghosts were in his head. He whispered cold with horror Burne. Yes. Burne. He s hunting at night here He is hunting you Atrix said. He did not move but something of him a thought an expression reached between them in a silent plea. Talis Listen He will be killed Talis did not recognize his own voice. Birds whirled crying out of the trees. Like our father Talis His name shocked through him like a voice cutting through a dream to wake him silence him focus him. He turned still backed against the tree wondering what he had roused with his last cry. He said tightly more quietly I m listening. Find Burne take him out of this wood back to the castle Across Hunter s Field How many dead kings do you want on your mind What do you think I have been doing for twenty years Atrix Wolfe asked him. I have been running as hard and fast as I could away from this. And here I am again in the dark of night on the edge of Hunter s Field while a king of Pelucir rides to meet my making. You brought me back into this nightmare Talis Pelucir. You summoned the Hunter and the Wolf out of twenty years of silence. He has haunted me every moment of those years. If I thought my death would put an end to him now I would not waste another breath on my life. But I can t be certain and I will not leave Pelucir to face him alone again. Talis stared at him. He s your spell. Under your power. I made him the mage said tautly. Yes. But I do not understand anymore what I made that night on Hunter s Field. Talis was silent. He touched his lenses trying to see the harrowed face more clearly in the moonlight. The hunting horns of Pelucir sounded again they called file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 57 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html his name with every note. He nodded once his face bloodless stunned expressionless in the silvery light. I will take Burne out of here. But how will you fight this How can you What magic can you use against yourself Where in all they teach in Chaumenard do they teach you this It is the first thing you learn the mage said wearily. To see. To name. To become what you have named. He turned his head then not toward the hunters but toward the still trees bordering the field. Talis lurched away from the log his heart hammering. Atrix held up a hand: Be still the gesture said and Talis calmed himself finding in the ancient crumbling wood he left a still place in which to think. Go Atrix breathed and Talis said not moving as the mage eased into moonlight and disappeared Where in all of Pelucir can we run from you Moonlight shaped a stag running toward the field. Watching still motionless Talis heard horns cry a fanfare for the hart. His breath caught. The stag was white as moonlight and as silent its horns seemed molded of gold. It cast a white shadow. Hounds slipped after it night black and crying fire leaving bloody prints beneath the trees. He could not see the Hunter. But he saw the horns of the white stag flame suddenly. It stumbled caught itself and ran on crowned with fire. Trumpets cried again bright too close slightly out of tune. Talis swallowing horror like a bitter root slipped into shadows ran a shadow of himself toward the human company. He heard the howl of the Wolf. It cried as if to be heard across Pelucir clear to the mountains of Chaumenard summoning warning. The desperation in the cry dragged at Talis. He stopped bewildered with impulses. If the mage dies he thought wildly we are dead. Burne and I and the hunters of Pelucir. If I go to help him I will be helping the one who made the thing that will kill us all. If I don t we are dead. If I do we are dead he realized calmer now his hands clenched. There is nothing I can do. But if he runs away from us and the Hunter pursues him we may still live He turned slipped quietly through the trees to find the royal hunt to flee the wood with Burne before the King understood what ghosts haunted Pelucir that night. What dark making. He heard the King s horns again hesitant in the odd stillness but ringing true. They were answered the King s hunt spread raggedly in front of him he guessed and taking his shape so that they would recognize him he began to run again. Moonlight flooded the wood a silvery mist within a tiny clearing a circle of birch a disc of grass a disc of starry sky. Talis ran into it before he realized that like the hare in moonlight he was visible to anything that chanced to look. But he reached the other side without setting hounds baying without the dark moon rising in his path. Still motion in the motionless wood snagged his eye as he crossed the edge of the circle: a figure emerging out of pale birch pointing toward him with the gesture of windblown leaves. Moonlight he told himself as his head snapped back at it and the cold sweat pricked his face. Moonlight it seemed and leaves: nothing more. Leaves sighed behind him and were still. He quickened his pace. The King s horns sounded he swung toward them with relief. Something brushed across his shoulder he spun wildly sound leaping out of him. Leaves he thought nothing but leaves. It did not reassure him as he ran recklessly now limping a little in and out of the moonspun shadows. They rustled behind him and were still again. He looked back in spite of himself and saw the shadows of three hounds soundless blood red and flowing like fire after him. Burne he shouted desperately wanting only to find him before the Hunter did. Burne Only horns answered. I m mage he thought fleeing hounds out of another world. I can do better than this. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 58 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Drawkcab a voice said in his head in warning but he insisted arguing with himself: Not every spell is twisted. Some things are simple. Some things are the face they wear. The name they bear. He concentrated but found no spells in his head for the problem only crazed questions. If he became invisible could the invisible hounds see him If he became invisible and still stopped moving would their fiery shadows passing over him mold his shape out of air If he stopped moving he knew he would simply fall lie on the ground and hear nothing see nothing until he had found enough air in the world to breathe and the pain stopped hammering through him. If he became invisible would he still feel pain A horn called behind him. He looked back not wanting to look back knowing what he would see. Three horses as white as moonlight with shadows of moonlight galloped behind the hounds. Burne he cried again. It came out more plea than shout but to his astonishment he heard his brother s voice. Talis Talis the wood murmured around him. I can t he breathed in answer. He saw movement in the trees ahead muted color horses disappearing into shadow. The King s trumpets sounded again a noisy chaotic fanfare. Talis Where are you Here he called to the flickering riders the odd spark of silver the moonlight struck on metal. The word held little sound. The hounds flowed past him noiselessly effortlessly he felt a chill at his back the breath of a horse with eyes as pale as ice. He saw Burne then riding toward him down a long shaft of moonlight. Talis the King shouted. Talis He rode hard close to his horse s neck dodging trees Talis saw him clearly running just as hard but the distance between them never seemed to shorten. Burne began to grow smaller as he rode his voice more distant. Burne Talis the King cried from a long way a world away as he galloped down the moonlight. Then he dissolved into a pale light. Talis murmuring wordlessly with despair stumbled and lost his balance. He saw the white shadow of hooves rising above him the ground struck him before they did. Eleven Saro stood in the empty keep. Something had happened her eye told her. The light from the one unbroken oil lamp on the mantel showed her a broken bowl and torn books scattered in the empty hearth. What had been on the table lay in pieces all over the floor the table itself a massive block of wood with legs as fat as brandy kegs stood on its head. A rafter had fallen hung by one end into the room. Pages wrenched out of books covered the floor the books themselves spines twisted bindings ripped away lay in a pool of water spilled from smashed buckets. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 59 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html She stood very still scarcely breathing trying to become as unobtrusive as shadow as the door post beside her cracked where the guards had broken the latch. The single window stared out at the full moon moonlight limned jagged pieces of glass still clinging to the frame. She heard no sound within the keep not even the owls spoke. She took a step forward into the room felt water lap against her bare feet. Words floated in the water scraps of letters sentences. A letter graceful and tangled around itself glinted gold in the light floated next to her foot. She picked it up carefully flattened it in her palm and studied it. It said nothing. But it was important a key to things Prince Talis knew a kind of magic in itself. She put it carefully into her pocket. This was no place to hide. Something had swept through this room tearing apart everything in sight. Even the gold and silver cups had been twisted dented. Even the silver branch of candles lay flattened on the floor among pieces of mirror and glittering scraps of the prince s cloth. There was not a single book left whole. She took another step into the room. What came here once could come again. It had already found the mage and the prince she guessed. It could find her in this lonely wreck of a room. And no one would ever know that she was gone. At least in the kitchen they might cry her name before she was taken. Here no owls were left to question anything. A sigh of breeze through the window spun flame long and ragged through the air something in what had been shadow caught her eye before the flame subsided. She took another step another mouse quiet trying not to disturb the water she walked through while words floated to her feet and clung. There was a book. One book still whole in the litter of ripped pages empty bindings. Up in the keep he does magic. He has books. Words he reads and then makes into magic. Saro is a spell. The book lay in the underside of the table. It was closed its plain leather cover said nothing. Inside it might speak of cows or recipes for sauces. But it was the only book left whole in the devastated room. Maybe because it spoke of cows. Or maybe because the language it spoke was stronger than what had destroyed everything else in the keep. She knelt in the mingling of water and lamp oil beside the table and picked up the book. It seemed oddly light for its size. She opened it. It spoke on every page she turned. Sometimes there were drawings that spoke in ways she understood: herbs flowers an upside down cup an odd animal that the hunters had never brought back from the wood. Something in it maybe could tell her by any means by fire or ash or water by the position of birds flying across the moon or the pattern of rings in the wood chopped for the woodpile how to say her vision: the prince with his lens shattered by an arrow of light. How to speak. She closed the book. A stronger breeze sent the light shivering then extinguished it as she rose. She froze the book held tight under her arm. The window shifted abruptly left stone wall where the moonlight had been. She waited in the sudden dark feeling her heartbeat in her throat unable to move even to fall though her bones seemed fluid under her skin and waves of terror prickled over her. But nothing came. After a long time the window shifted again finding the moon. She followed the path of moonlight in the dark water to the door. A voice cried from the hall as she entered the kitchen again. The tray mistress lifted her head from the table stared senselessly down at it as if wondering what it was doing under her face. Saro slipped the book beneath a cupboard not far from the cauldron that held stacks of aprons scrub brushes towels soap. The book had survived the fury in the keep nothing in the kitchen was likely to harm it. Turning she saw a spit boy s eyes on her. But they were dazed drugged file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 60 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html with dreams: Saro carrying a book into the kitchen could only be another dream. The tray mistress rose grabbed a tray and banged it with a wooden spoon. The undercooks sprawled wearily among wine bottles lifted pale faces apprentices and wood boys called by the trumpets at the gate slipped in from the night. The head cook followed them tight faced and alert as though he never needed sleep. Apprentices kicked the mincers and choppers under the table reluctantly they emerged blinking at the sudden leap of fire as spit boys heaved logs onto the drowsing embers. A cold supper the head cook said for the returning hunters. Hams were sliced and cold roast fowl and long loaves of bread a simmering soup of shredded beets was ladled out of cauldrons to cool. Lettuces and boiled potatoes and scallions were chopped and mixed with vinegar pepper rosemary and dill. Dark dense cakes heavy with nuts and dried cherries redolent with brandy were pulled from the cooling ovens. Whipped cream and flaked toasted hazelnuts frosted the cakes. The hall servants began to gather in the kitchen. Undercooks funnelled rosettes of minced pear onto the soup. Musicians returning from the hall picked at ham and fowl and shook their heads groggily at the head cook s questions. No the King did not want music at this supper. No Prince Talis had not been found. The tray mistress arranging parsley around the ham and wreaths of rosemary around the roast fowl bade the servants grimly to find out what they could. Bewildered disturbed they piled news onto their trays along with dirty plates. There was magic in the wood that night. A ghostly hunt had ridden with the King s hunt invisible but calling with sweet and melancholy horns. A white stag with burning horns had fled through the trees ahead of the hunt. There was no sign of the mage. But the King had seen Prince Talis running toward him down a long shaft of moonlight. And then he disappeared. Taken the head cook grunted when he heard this. The tray mistress sat down slowly fanning herself with a tray. Saro scrubbing the heavy soup cauldrons scrubbed as noiselessly as possible. Taken the tray mistress breathed. By what The wood the head cook said. The hall servants glanced at one another. Trees the shadows of trees seemed to flicker on the kitchen walls. He was hunted down and taken a servant said softly. The King says by the woman in the wood. He says little else except to curse her and the wood. All he can do now is wait for help from Chaumenard. And the mage the head cook demanded. The one who rescued Prince Talis in the keep The servant shook his head. Gone. Or fighting in the wood still. Some say they heard a strange howling and saw flashing lights and other things among the trees. The King said it was not to the woman Prince Talis ran but toward the King. She took the prince in spite of himself. And no one saw her Only moonlight when he disappeared and the wood. Where the tray mistress asked in bewilderment would she have taken him The question lingered in a sudden silence. The head cook gazed at the tray mistress file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 61 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html speculatively. The spit boys glanced at one another sharing an unspoken thought. Everyone else looked in all directions: at the gleam in a copper pot at fire at dried herbs and cheeses strung across the rafters. Eyes smoldered or grew vague. Saro s hands slowed a kingdom of light and airy bubbles and undulating shadow seemed to shape itself in her water. There the head cook said softly you have it. Have what The question. In a nutshell. Is that where she took him Into an acorn Into moonlight How will the King or the mage find him to bring him home I don t know. The mage will know. The head cook got to his feet restively compelled by the King finishing roast meats and potatoes in oil and rosemary above them. Send up the cakes and cheese. And more brandy he said to the servants. Not that he ll sleep tonight the King. His mouth roiled suddenly over a word he looked ready to spit it. His father dead early his brother lost and him childless sorcery is nibbling away at Pelucir. Prince Talis will return the tray mistress said in horror. He must The head cook studying the cakes did not answer. Lay them in brandy and light it he said to the apprentices. Take the ham bones and simmer them overnight in cloves and bay for soup. Saro finished the last of the cake pans from which the sweeper had picked cherries clinging to the bottom. Her hands felt cold even in the hot water her heart pounded raggedly trying to say something. Prince Talis lost in the wood The prince with the oak behind him in her vision the tangle of boughs the tangle of horns Now her heart said urgently. Now. Now. Now. Her hands sped through pots she moved to the cries of her name so swiftly that undercooks finding her suddenly beside them blinked in surprise and almost saw her. The King sent down for more brandy. Servants brought back half eaten cake. Mincers pluckers boners choppers stood around the tables eating scraps with their eyes shut. Servants brought down the last of the plates the last of the news. The King they said will hunt again. Tomorrow and the next day and the next and every day after that until the prince is found. Slowly the kitchen quieted. The head cook sat up late with the tray mistress and the head servant sharing a bottle of brandy in which a pear like some great golden pearl hung suspended. The spit boys slept at the hearths waking only as the flames dwindled under the soup stock and the simmering in their dreams began to fade. The small children had disappeared with the dogs under the tables. Saro scrubbing the spits clean and the sweetbread pans worked quietly listening to murmurings behind her as the brandy bottle tilted and the brandy s slow rich ooze spoke of pears and liquid gold. Terrible the tray mistress breathed. Terrible. It brings to mind that dreadful winter. The tales that came into the kitchen then. That s what they say up there. The head servant sipped his brandy. That s what they thought attacked the prince. But the mage killed it the tray mistress said anxiously. Didn t he So it can t have been. It was a spell of the prince s that caused him trouble. And they say the wind that rescued him leaped and howled like a wolf. Like the wolf the hunters heard in the wood. Atrix Wolfe the head cook said abruptly. Then he shook his head. No. Not in Pelucir. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 62 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html They say that s what the King saw in his cup before the hunt. The monster of the winter siege. But it came out of the prince s misbegotten spellbook. And a woman taking Talis is far different. Trouble yes but not the nightmare the King feared. A terrible winter the tray mistress repeated. Her elbows thumped on the table a joint in her stool shrilled. That head cook left at the end of the siege. He was a broken man having to cook up feasts of beans and roots and boil soups out of bird bones so empty they whistled. I washed plates then. I did everything the kitchen brats fell ill with hunger and did nothing but cry. The spit boys all left to fight. There was little for them to spit and little more than that to burn. And then to win and lose so much at once It was a bitter victory. Bitter as the winter but for the new prince who only cried once they said and then grew calm and sweet with his mother s eyes watching everything in wonder. To lose Prince Talis would be He s all the King has now. There s two the head cook said precisely pouring more brandy. You ve got to keep that in mind. Two what Sides. Two tales. Two to keep track of. The head servant nodded solemnly his eyes wide bloodshot. The mage may already have dispatched the prince s spell. Leaving us with the prince and the lady in the wood. Which Which is a different thing to look at than a deadly spell the head cook said. There s the mage and the prince s spell. And there s the prince and the lady of the wood. Mage and spell will take care of themselves: We don t need to worry about that anymore. Water heaving onto stone whirling into the drain pulled their eyes to it and then to Saro. She s like a the tray mistress said her voice trailed away. The head cook nodded. Not quite He yawned. The head servant finished looking at Saro and stared down at the table. Like a thing made not born. Made to scrub pots. The tray mistress tapped her temple significantly. Pots she said are what she understands. Not feelings. Or words. Not dreams and restlessness and hankerings like the other girls. Not rising above the kitchen. She barely knows where she is. Nor does she care. The head cook grunted losing interest. Saro let the cauldron stand upright her eyes on the shadow under the cupboard where the book lay hidden. She sat down near it tilted her head back watching fire under her eyelids. The voices soothed her as long as she heard them she would not see the night hunter stalking the kitchen. But as long as she heard them she could not open the book. It was not a pot it did not belong in her hands it belonged to the prince in his keep. They would take it from her she understood clearly for it was not a pot. Not what they were used to. She sat quite still behind the cauldron until voices finally ceased. Chairs spoke to stone shod feet to stone and stairs. The door opened night stood a moment at the doorway dark and crowned with stars. Then the door closed. She drew the book from the shadows. The fire spoke wood snapped pitch hissed. A spit boy snored. Someone under the table whimpered with dreams. A dog barked in the yard. The soup bones simmered the candle in the sconce over Saro s head fluttered in a stray breeze. Everything spoke it seemed except the book which remained under her searching eyes completely silent. Still she studied it turning its pages as gently and carefully as the washers handled the King s gold edged plate. Some of the paper crumbled under her fingers so thin and delicate were the broad pages that survived the windstorm in the keep. But none of the writing crumbled. It was dark and clear in neat file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 63 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html rows on every page and what it said she could not imagine. She held the writing up to her ear and listened she stroked it with her fingertips. It remained as mute as she. Fire guttered drew shadows around her. A spit boy woke murmuring to the fire shifted to drop a piece of wood on it his eyes still closed. Still the shadows remained night gathered itself in corners in pools of darkness. Saro swallowed dryly. Something pricked behind her eyes. A word she could not say burned in her throat. What pricked in her eyes rolled down her face suddenly. She caught it startled. Mincers did this when spit boys batted at them with scarred knuckles for coming too close to their fires. Plate washers did it sometimes silently dropping pearls of water from their eyes into the wash water. Another drop fell to her horror on the page a word blurred under it. She blotted it carefully with her hair everything else being as always slightly damp. The word had not changed shape. She wiped her eyes. There was a task at hand and this was the task: to learn to speak the silent language of the prince s book. If its words were spells and she Saro was a spell then maybe she would find herself within these neat lines. She must learn to say magic in magic ways since she had no other voice. Or perhaps in those incomprehensible pages she would find a voice. She might find anything at all. She felt another odd thing inside her as if she had swallowed the light from the candle and it shone for a moment through her: For that moment she saw beyond the pots. Then she bent over the book again felt it slowly become familiar as all the ceaseless random voices in the kitchen. It became simply one more voice that called her name. She sat with it until the moon set beyond the high kitchen windows and the candle guttered out. Then she slid the book back among the shadows. With one hand stretched out toward it like the spit boys slept beside their fires she curled on the stones behind the cauldron full of odd whispers and visions and fell asleep. Twelve Atrix fought the Hunter until he vanished with the moon. The Hunter pursued the White Wolf through the wood into the open field the Wolf hid among the ghosts of Hunter s Field. Now he was a sword in the hand of a warrior until the warrior fell and the sword dropped to the ground and the moonstruck blade reflected the Hunter s searching eyes. The mage became fire clinging to the bloody rag wrapped around an arrow flying toward the highest window in the keep. The window became an eye the eye blinked shifted. The arrow struck solid stone dropped into the snow. The ghostly flame went out the mage fled. Remembering the living he lured the Hunter again and again away from the castle. As raven he tried to fly toward Chaumenard draw the Hunter after him. The Hunter s hounds became ravens drove Atrix back onto the field back toward the wood. The Hunter refused to be driven from the field and Atrix refused to leave without him. He harried the Hunter constantly out of shape so that those within the castle would not see him. When Burne Pelucir s hunt rode slowly out of the wood near midnight and blew a weary fanfare to the gate the Hunter and his horse and hounds were night shadows pinned motionless and paper thin on the ground the hunters rode across. Talis was not with them. The Hunter would not speak nor would he let Atrix past his raven s eyes into his mind. When file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 64 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html the moon grew small and cold among the stars his hounds fanned the field hurried the mage across it. Atrix trying to see into his making find a name for it behind the Hunter s eyes saw only the most bitter of memories: the King of Pelucir the shaft of the banner of Pelucir driven through his heart dragged down among the hounds. What are you he cried losing his hold of the Hunter who seemed to have no substance but power. But the Hunter did not speak until the moon set. Then his dead moon eyes held Atrix s and he said Sorrow and vanished. Atrix driven uphill to the edge of the wood took his own shape trembling with exhaustion. His own shape refused to do anything for a while but lie on the oak leaves. He waited but the Hunter did not return. He listened for Talis scented the wood like a wolf searched it with his mind. The wood was empty. He closed his eyes and saw Talis father fall the dark hounds gather over him. Sorrow he whispered and rose wearily and carried that word with him to Burne Pelucir. He found Burne sitting alone in the empty hall. Guards stood at every door. Guests looking as haggard as the King murmured in the corridors beyond red eyed drinking wine casting fretful glances into the silent hall. Servants hovered in doorways waiting to be summoned. Atrix appeared out of torch smoke as dishevelled and worn as the hunters. The guards shouted sorcery the hunters raised what came to hand but without conviction since Burne sitting hunched at a table with his chin on his fist only stared at Atrix dourly. Who are you Atrix Wolfe. Burne s brows rose in amazement. He stood after a moment quelled the noise behind him with a shout. He added another shout to the hall servants. Wine Sit down he added to Atrix. We may be suspicious of sorcery in Pelucir but you have a name as ancient as gold. Did you just come from Chaumenard Or are you the mage who blew into the keep to help Talis Both Atrix said. A servant brought wine cups behind him the doorways and corridors were soundless. Atrix touched the cup poured for him did not pick it up. I came to tell you something. I told Talis last night. He Did you find him Burne interrupted. I sent him to find you after I took him out of the keep. We heard your hunting horns in the wood. You never saw him I saw him Burne said but only for a moment. He lifted his cup drank deeply. Atrix stared at his own dark reflection in the polished wood waiting motionless unblinking until he heard the metal hit wood and then he closed his eyes. And then what happened to him I almost reached him. Burne sighed. Almost. He was running toward me down a shaft of moonlight. But he fell and the light closed over him and he disappeared. Atrix opened his eyes. She took him Burne finished grimly and drank again. She Atrix said blankly. The woman he saw in the wood. Atrix moved his gaze from his shadow to the King s weary face. What woman Beautiful he said she was. Beautiful Burne repeated sourly. Nameless coming out of the trees she cast a spell on him and nearly got him killed. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 65 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Last night Atrix asked his thoughts tangling suddenly in moonlit paths nameless woodland enchantments dangers that had nothing to do with him. No days ago. He s been dazed ever since. And now she has him. Who has him Has him where How would I know I hoped he had hit his head when he fell off his horse and imagined her. But no. He brooded at his wine a moment then at Atrix. You he said hopefully. You know all the paths and ways of magic. You could find him. I don t understand Atrix said. He had grown tense struggling to envision ways and paths of magic that did not end in horror on Hunter s Field but went beyond it to unnamed realms into which a prince of Pelucir had vanished. Light and shadow shifted within the hall an unlit torch flamed suddenly tapestries on the walls stirred and settled. Beside him Burne had stopped breathing. Talis wasn t running from a woman last night. He was running He ran from her Burne said. And she took him. He spoke carefully his eyes on the unpredictable shadows around him. That s all I know. The winter siege of Hunter s Field did not leave me much besides Talis. If I lose him I lose I will not lose him. I cannot. You came out of nowhere to rescue him last night from his own sorcery. I ll give whatever you ask if you ll rescue him again. I don t That s what it was wasn t it Burne interrupted. His hands locked suddenly around his cup he did not look at Atrix or at what Atrix s thoughts disturbed around them. In the keep Just one of his dangerous accidents. Atrix grew still. He felt the tension in the silence behind him then he scarcely heard breath or thought. In the uncertain mingling of light and smoke and shadow something threw its own shadow across the hall. Atrix watched it form nebulous and imprecise out of all the fears that the strange magics and mysteries had aroused. They felt the Hunter s presence he realized. They knew and they did not want to know they knew what they feared. They wanted Atrix to tell them anything but that anything but legend terror mystery death anything but that the tales spun out of Hunter s Field had no ending yet. Burne stared into his cup waiting his fear lay like a streak of dark between them cast by nothing visible. Atrix relinquished truth for the moment the air grew brighter calmed itself shadows attached themselves to visible objects. Talis brought a book of mine from Chaumenard. He heard the King s breath again. Yes. It seems simple but it s very complex and very dangerous. I knew it Burne said his voice loosening. I told him so. His hands loosened around his cup he drank. Atrix heard movements murmuring again behind them. He s had other accidents he nearly Never mind. He looked at Atrix finally. What did he conjure up They say it tore the room apart. Something he could not control. But you can. If it s still around. Yes Atrix promised flatly. I will control it. If it s still around. But the sorcery in the keep has nothing to do with a woman in the wood. I don t know how to rescue him from moonlight. It s like him Burne sighed to leap from the bog into the morass. He didn t seem to fear her though he seemed under some enchantment. It was impossible for him to be reasonable. Even to admit she may not be real. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 66 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Real. Burne shifted his mouth tightening. Human he said reluctantly as if to say what she was not somehow made her real. He shook his head. Such things don t happen to princes of Pelucir. And yet Atrix said watching the King s expression you have seen her. I have not. You don t question her existence even though she may be living in light. The King shifted again uncomfortable with wonder or with memory. There are always tales Besides I saw him vanish. Do you remember anything else he said about her Other than that she is as beautiful as the sun and the moon and the stars No. I wouldn t listen to him. I didn t want to hear such things from him. I need him to fall in love with someone human highborn and healthy to give Pelucir heirs. Not a woman who wanders around in a wood without a name who lives in moonlight and is probably as ancient as the moon. Something about deer. What White deer. And three white hounds. She was hunting too that day he saw her. And three A sound came out of Atrix and the King stopped. Three white He stared at Burne seeing the wood again not the terrible leafless wood he knew from the winter siege but the sweet secret green wood of his dreams. Three white deer three white hounds three white horses and the woman Yes Burne said sharply. What is it A song A dream. Atrix shivered a little chilled with wonder remembering the empty oval of her face the arrow striking his heart so that he woke suddenly before he dreamed of pain. She rides through my dreams. But I have never seen her face. Talis did Burne said grimly. He wasn t dreaming. There s always a shadow where her face should be though her hair and her voice are beautiful. She raises her bow and cries Sorrow and shoots me. She does what Burne stared at him. She shoots you Does she kill you I don t know. It s a dream I haven t died yet. It s not a dream and Talis is in it too. The King s voice was rising. Did she shoot him too What is she Some nightmare out of the wood Atrix rose restively. I don t know. He paced a little aware of men moving out of the path of his shadow in case he kept his sorcery there. He came back to Burne s side leaned against the table trying to find his way back into the dream without dreaming. She is not a nightmare. No. She is a mystery His voice faded he heard the Hunter again just before he had vanished at dawn. Sorrow he had said and then the moon set. The hall had grown soundless again around Atrix. He stirred seeing but not knowing what he saw and quelling the terrible urgent impatience he felt at his ignorance. What is it Burne asked tautly. I don t know I need the prince s lenses. He saw her face through them Burne sighed. I knew she meant trouble. Help me. Please. He is all that Pelucir has left. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 67 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html I will find him Atrix said. He stood silently again trying to remember past one night too full of sorcery and twenty barren years what nameless shapes of beauty and mystery he had encountered that might point toward an undiscovered land. He saw the wood again in two worlds: one lifeless dark blanched with winter the other drenched with light green leaves trembling in a sweet soundless wind and both on the edge of Hunter s Field. Burne seemed to glimpse them too as if Atrix s dreams and nightmares fashioned themselves just beyond the morning light. Why he asked slowly would you dream in Chaumenard of a wood in Pelucir Atrix shook his head wordlessly having no answer Burne wanted to hear. I will find Talis he promised again. But it s her wood not yours I must enter and I do not know the way. You ll find it Burne said. You can do anything. You are Atrix Wolfe. He turned in his chair gestured to the waiting crowd and they entered tentatively uncertainly to meet the legend of Chaumenard who was when the King turned back to him no longer there. Thirteen Talis woke. He woke in a dream of the wood he thought dazedly raising his head. No true oak grew that shade of gold though that gold was what the eye looked for in the golden oak. No true grass felt so silken no true shadow laid a swath of such dark velvet across it. No true leaves burned that tender and fiery green in the morning light. The long grass glittered under a web of jewels. He moved his outflung hand touched a jewel and it melted down his finger like a tear. Three white hounds. He stared at the tear of dew remembering. Three white horses. One white stag with golden horns trying to outrun the fire in its horns. The black moon rising in a crown of horns. Atrix Wolfe. He rolled onto his back blinking at the sudden light glancing across his lenses. White birds soared out of the oak into light. He dropped his lenses on the grass hid his eyes in the crook of his arm and watched the Hunter blood running from his mouth eating the page out of a book. Eating words. For a moment Talis tasted the dry cloying parchment again in his own mouth. He tried to kill me with words He heard horns. He recognized them immediately: Burne hunting again after last night s wearying hunt. How had it ended Moonlight Burne riding toward him down a long shaft of moonlight Something had happened he had fallen Burne had missed him in the dark. So the King had returned to the wood. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 68 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Talis slid his lenses on and rose. He felt and knew he looked as if he had been dragged for a mile or two behind a horse. The horns sounded close. He waited standing under the oak searching the wood for movement color. An arrow snicking past him struck the tree above his shoulder. His brows lifted his lenses slid. The tree gave a sudden shudder leaves rustling whispering. Talis ducked behind it. The deer the arrow hunted burst out of some bushes ran deeper into the wood. He saw the hunters then fanning out in front of him some pursuing the deer others searching the wood. As he stepped out from behind the oak he saw Burne. The King rode toward him he stepped clear of the tree s shadow calling urgently as his brother rode past him: Burne The King turned his mount abruptly beneath the oak. Talis saw his expression a mingling of hope and confusion change as he circled among the flickering shadows. He said wearily to their lanky fair haired cousin Ambris who reined his mount where Talis had stood a heartbeat earlier She must have some reason for taking him. Surely she ll give us some sign some message. She wouldn t just take him for the sake of taking something human. Would she He sounded unconvinced. Talis standing between the horses said through clenched teeth: Burne. I don t know Ambris said heavily. Didn t the mage tell you He didn t know either. All she ever did was shoot him in his dreams. Burne Talis said amazed his voice shook. Well then Ambris said. She might have taken him for any reason. Any reason at all. He s young and likely looking it s spring Ambris Burne said irritably. Well you asked. I don t quite understand what you think she is. If you re thinking she is what I think you re thinking and she took him lightly and carelessly as they take humans then we might be old men before she tires of him. Burne Talis whispered. Not even the King s horse flicked an ear in his direction. Fine Burne said explosively. As long as she sets him loose before I die. What are you saying That I shouldn t bother looking for him No but I warned him. I tried to. You don t offer your heart to what shapes itself out of water or light or white birch. But would he listen They never do Ambris said and Burne s face reddened his mouth clamped shut on a word. Ambris added hastily It s likely she wants Talis for some important purpose and she ll give us a message. Or he will. She is not a monster the mage told you but a mystery. Talis felt his bones melt into air and light with horror. Burne he screamed trying to hold the King s reins. Am I dead He might have been the leaves talking above Burne s head the wind trying to grip the silver scrolled reins. I m a ghost he thought cold with terror. Like the ghosts of Hunter s Field. This is how they feel Except that they must remember dying and I can t remember What exactly did Talis say about her Ambris asked. Message Talis thought desperately. Message. She was more beautiful than dreams and that was why he didn t hear the boar charging him or the hounds or the horns or all of us shouting at him to move. Ambris grunted. So that was it. She could have warned him. Did she want him dead file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 69 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html How do I know Burne shouted. Why would she want Talis dead I don t know Ambris said. Why would she ride without a face through a mage s dreams I don t understand any of this. I m just trying to Do you think she was luring him to his death I don t think Ambris said carefully we should assume anything beyond what you saw. He ran down a shaft of moonlight and was taken by the wood. He must be here somewhere. Do you think Burne said starkly it s because of all the animals we kill No Ambris said emphatically. I don t. Nor the trees we cut and burn. So don t ask that. Burne s face lifted toward the leaves that rustled now and then like slow ancient breathing boughs creaked like old bones. Do you think Talis heard him ask tentatively as he knelt on the ground in front of the King s horse. No Ambris said again. Stones could speak if he could hold them the ground could speak if he traced his name through dead leaves. He brushed at them they moved responding to his touch in one world or the other. Burne he began to write. When the mages come from Chaumenard Ambris said they ll help Atrix Wolfe they ll know what to do. Mages Burne said tightly. Nothing they taught him could save him from this. Maybe you re wrong Ambris argued. Maybe he ll find a way to save himself. Burne grunted dubiously. Leaves lifted swirled over Talis word. What can she want Burne asked helplessly. At least she could tell us that. He urged his horse forward abruptly over what was left of his name. Talis crouched stubbornly in the horse s path as it rode through him caught a glimpse through its eyes of leaves and light and a pale misty shadow on the air that humans could not see. I ran down a shaft of moonlight he thought trembling with the aftermath of horror. I was taken by the wood. Maybe I m not dead. Wonder eased through him then he leaned against the oak looking around him at the bright golden world. Maybe I m in her wood But he asked the oak where is she The oak did not answer. The hunt had passed he heard its horns in the distance. He searched for some sign some message saw only the dreaming oak the birch with its leaves of green fire. I don t he whispered even know your name. I am the Queen of the Wood she said. He whirled and saw her standing where a birch had been. Or had he only imagined the birch That is all you need to know. My name is as old as this wood it is never spoken in your world. He was mute gazing at her wondering if he touched her hair would it burn like fire wondering what her eyes had seen to make them at once so powerful and so troubled. He had bridged worlds he could not seem to bridge with a touch the step between them. He knelt finally scarcely knowing what he did gathered cobweb cloth blowing between his hands and raised it to his lips. Tell me he said his eyes closed her silk against his mouth what you want. And you will do it. Yes. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 70 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He felt her hands light like small birds on his shoulders and he stood dazed again by the light in her hair in her eyes. You ran from me last night she reminded him. He made a helpless gesture remembering the confusion of hunts. I know. I was torn. There were too many Too many hunters she said softly her eyes narrowed glittering dark and amber. There was my hunt And there was Burne Burne The King of Pelucir. Ah. The human hunt. He is still troubling my wood. He is searching for me. Last night I was searching for him to warn him I was afraid for him Afraid Of the third hunt. Yes she whispered. He saw her hands close her face close smooth and pale as ivory. The third hunt I heard the cry of the Wolf. He was silent again gazing at her his eyes wide. The White Wolf he said finally of Chaumenard. Yes. I called him in his dreams. Where is he I don t know. Find him. She moved closer to him then her silks flowing on the wind one hand falling like silk on his bare wrist. Find him for me. Bring him into this world. He cannot seem to find his way here though I have called him again and again Him. His voice was flat. Atrix Wolfe. Her face opened slightly at the name. Yes. You couldn t call him here. So you called me. To bring him here she said. Yes. Because no other human knows both him and me to bridge the boundary between our worlds. He opened his mouth closed it. His eyes closed his lips caught between his teeth. He tasted blood before he spoke again. He killed my father. He heard the faintest of breaths a butterfly flying out of her mouth. I need him she said inexorably and he opened his eyes to stare at her. For what he asked in amazement. You are powerful enough to pull me out of my world. Why do you need a human mage Because I need him in the human world. He swallowed feeling chilled again in the soft spring light. He is very powerful. I can t find him if he doesn t want to be found. And he added precisely bitterly I do not want to find him. He heard a slightly more substantial sigh of cobwebs torn or thousand year old tapestry threads breaking apart. Then she said as precisely you will never return to Pelucir. You will remain here forever human in an inhuman time and place. No doubt you will forget Pelucir eventually. But Pelucir will never forget you: the prince who vanished in the wood on file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 71 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html the hill and never returned. He drew breath to shout at her. The shout dissolved into fire burning down his face. He tried to turn away she seemed everywhere. He closed his eyes the hot tears ran between his lashes. The thing that hunts him killed my father. His voice held no sound. On Hunter s Field. He made the Hunter that hunts him. It was a war between kings men Pelucir had no mage. No sorcery to fight his sorcery. Who could Her voice sounded hollow now she averted her face hiding a sudden flick of memory. He is the greatest living mage. He is a lie. He tried to run from what he had made tried to hide. But it found him. And I found him. And I want him before he and this monstrous thing he made destroy each other. He opened his eyes finally she blurred behind the tears caught in his lenses. He made some impatient despairing sound she slid them from his face. He felt her fingers brush his skin a tear clung to one fingertip. Mesmerized he watched her gaze at it then touch her own face with it. I could never cry she whispered. I envy you. He felt his throat burn again this time with wonder with pity. Why What have you lost Love she said simply. Sorrow. He was mute staring at her. The tear hung like a cut jewel below her eye. He lifted his hand touched it and it fell glittering to the grass. No one cries for sorrow. I know. She closed her eyes her face upraised fierce and desperate pale as ivory in her autumn hair. He touched her cheek again his lips parted not daring to breathe. He touched her mouth. She opened her eyes then as if waking. Her lips grazed his fingertips. Then she took his hand in her hands and held it still. No one cries for her. I cannot cry and I think that where she is no one would care to cry for her. That s why I need the mage. And you. I cannot cross into your world to look for her. You can cross boundaries you can show the mage the way to me. He could break the spell on her and bring her back to me. Who Again his voice held no sound. My daughter. My Saro. My only child. She paused searching his face. You said her name. He whispered I said sorrow. Sorrow she said. Then: Saro. Saro. He was silent again watching the shadows and golden lights in her eyes how expression breathed across her face like wind across water changing a curve of bone here a hollow there. He could he realized slowly stand there for a season or three and watch her while leaves the color of her hair drifted down and the tall birch rose out of snow whiter than the snow. He forced himself to speak. How did you lose her to the human world Her eyes narrowed he glimpsed the night in them the queen who rode without a face through the mage s dream. She vanished out of this world. Years ago by mortal reckoning. I have been searching for her that long. I cannot find her here therefore she must be there. Yet I hear no tales of her from your world no one dreams of her. She is disguised hidden in some way. My bright sweet Saro. I dream of her trying to speak to me but I cannot hear what she is saying her words make no sound. Sometimes He stopped started again. Sometimes I see a woman in my dreams. With my eyes. I can t hear what she is saying either. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 72 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Saro is not dead. We change when we are very old. You see us all around you in the wood. But death is for humans. My mother is dead. She died the night my father was killed. The night I was born. They told me it was as if she knew. As if she saw him fall. And so she died. His eyes dropped hidden from her he waited while she considered that argument. But she only said Such matters you must take up with the mage when I am done with him. But first you must find him. You bridge worlds. You saw what he only dreams. If you can find me you can find him. I want his mage s mind his mage s eyes to find my child in your world. Have you seen he asked evenly what he made What came alive and hunted him last night Yes. There was no pity in her face no expression at all. If he is hiding from that what makes you think I can find him I saw him enter my wood carrying you in his arms. If you don t find him he will find you. He slid a hand beneath his lenses over his eyes. If I put myself in enough danger you mean. You will find him and persuade him to help me she said. It is your only hope of escape from this world. Your only path to Pelucir. He shifted a little felt her hold on his hand tighten. His mouth tightened. He has no reason to care. Then she said softly you must find him a reason to care. You have odd powers: You walk between worlds you see what the White Wolf only dreams. You must remember though that if you try to return to your world you will only wander like a ghost among those you love. Like the shadow I became when I followed you. A reflection. A dream. Until the mage is found you are hostage in my world. He caught his breath to protest. Burne he wanted to say to her. The childless King of Pelucir. How he asked reasonably his voice shaking do you expect me to survive what the mage made to destroy us He saw no mercy in her eyes for a moment she did not or could not speak. Her hands were gripping his hand he waited feeling her tremble. They watched him she said finally her face colorless as mist. From within the wood when he cast that spell. Saro and my beloved consort. He and she had some human blood they could see and hear what I could not. Saro seemed open to your world with the intensity of her curiosity. My consort watched with her. And so. Her breath rose and fell. And so. When the greatest human mage worked his spell on your battlefield he shattered the weakened boundary between our worlds and pulled my Saro into yours. In what shape I do not know. I can only guess. By what he did to my consort who was himself among the most powerful in my world. I saw him changed. Warped out of shape and trapped in the mage s terrible spell. I watched him ride away from me onto your battlefield. Talis felt the blood drain out of his face. Cold shook him even her hands on his could not warm him. He opened his mouth to speak could make no sound. She nodded. That is what the mage is fighting. His own power. And my consort s enormous power twisted beyond any recognition. Oh he said without sound. His hands moved drew at her slender wrist elbow shoulder until he had gathered all of her into his arms and held her feeling sorrow with all its thorns bloom in his heart. He felt her face drop finally against his shoulder. So you see file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 73 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Yes he whispered seeing the Hunter in the keep destroying spells seeing the full moon rising in a tangle of oak the mage standing under the oak looking across Hunter s Field watching his past and his future ride toward him in the dark. Yes. Fourteen The White Wolf prowled the wood in Pelucir. He followed paths of light until the sun shifted and they faded. He immersed himself in shadow as in water he found no other land but shadow. He placed his heart into the hearts of trees listened to their secret murmurings they told him nothing he did not know. He tried to dream beneath the oak the only face he saw in the twilight between waking and sleeping was the face of the black moon rising in a cloud of fire and then the Hunter s feral moon eyed face. He called Talis in a mage s silent way he flew with hawks and mourning doves called him with their voices he ran with boar and hare and even with Burne s hunting hounds and used their voices. He slipped into running streams murmured Talis name with the voice of water he called him with the toads among the reeds. He shaped the trumpet s fanfare into Talis name. He looked out of ravens eyes hunting horses eyes deer s eyes the hunters and the hunted. But the Queen had taken Talis beyond the world and Atrix could find no sense no instinct no eyes no sorcery and no dream that could change the wood into another world. At twilight he changed himself into a drift of leaves at the edge of the wood and waited. The moon rose and set. On Hunter s Field nothing moved. For three days he searched the wood for Talis for three nights he waited for the Hunter. Both had vanished. When he fell at odd moments into an exhausted sleep he dreamed of the wood around him. The dream had changed he realized even while dreaming. Three white deer three white hounds three white horses and the Queen of the Wood with her face made of all the wild beauty in her wood: white birch owl s eyes the rich yellow gold light of early autumn the alert elegant faces of hunting animals. She cried a word it was the same word but it meant something else he felt in his dream. She cried Sorrow but it did not mean sorrow She held her bow but did not shoot. He dreamed of Talis. In his dream the prince was made of air and light. He drifted like old leaves drifted wandering through the wood. Sometimes he called to Atrix. His callings were complex and surprising. An oak tree opened a mouth in a seam of bark and said Atrix Wolfe. The name formed out of silken rustlings of birch leaves. A pool of light in which the drifting prince had a shadow as pale as cobweb shaped the letters of his name in brighter gold. Atrix Wolfe the air whispered. Atrix Wolfe said the small birds from within the wild roses. Atrix still hidden in a thick layer of dead leaves that would not crumble underfoot or move for any wind knew even in his sleep that while the imagery of the dream might be nebulous truth lay in it like a nut in a nutshell: Talis had not left the wood and with mages ways he searched for Atrix Wolfe. But waking Atrix could sense him nowhere like the woodland queen Talis called to Atrix in a dream. Atrix searching for him in the true world could not hear his voice. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 74 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Weary hungry and bewildered he rose with the morning sun and moved with the light across Hunter s Field to talk to the King. Burne took him into a quiet council chamber. The King looked as if he had slept in his clothes if he had slept at all. His eyes were bloodshot he wore blood and dirt on his boots from the hunt. He sat on the council table and watched Atrix pace. I know where Talis is Atrix said seeing the impossible world as he spoke: the wood where white deer cast shadows of gold and a queen as ageless as dreams ruled outside of time. Where He is looking for me I hear him call me. But I only hear him when I sleep and I can only search for him when I m awake. He seems to exist only in my dreams. Burne opened his mouth closed it. He poured wine instead of speaking took a hefty swallow. That s preposterous. How can he live in a dream He s flesh and blood. She existed for me in my dreams and for Talis in this world. It s like night and day he is there only when I can t see him. I don t know the path into my own dreams. Burne stared at his cup. He flung it abruptly across the room wine stained the far wall in jagged peaks. Atrix blinking tiredly thought with longing of the mountains of Chaumenard. He s all we have. The King s hands clenched. All I have left. You can t give up. Atrix shook his head. Never. He moved again restlessly sliding fingers through his hair scattering bits of leaf behind him. You can stop hunting though. Not even your hounds could scent him in her wood. Maybe not Burne said wearily but I can t do nothing. If I harry her wood enough maybe she ll give him back to me. I saw her face Atrix said in my dreams. He stopped pacing dropped into a chair silent a moment dreaming of her again. She is like the wood. Like golden light falling through the golden branches of the oak. The fierce hot green stillness of midsummer or the colors blowing everywhere in autumn when the winds are clear and wild as water. She is. In my dream she is. What would she want with Talis then Burne asked perplexedly. He has our mother s looks but he isn t extraordinary and he wears those lenses everywhere. Unless she took him just because she could. Or maybe we did something to offend her. But I would be dreaming of her then instead of you. It s you she shot her arrows at. It s you Talis is calling not me. Nobody is sending me any messages. Atrix stirred a little frowning. She shoots at me out of her world. Talis calls to me out of her world. It s you she wants the King said inspired. Not Talis at all. He looked at Atrix speculatively and with relief. If you go to her maybe she ll set him free. But why take him at all Atrix wondered. If she wants me A hostage Burne suggested. Bait. Why didn t she just appear to me in the wood instead I was there when she took Talis. It makes no sense. Why would she use a prince of Pelucir as bait for a mage of Chaumenard It makes No sense. You re right. But they re both trying to get your attention. Maybe she needs a mage and mistook Talis for one. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 75 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Atrix was silent seeing the arrow fly through his dreams again feeling it strike: That is the message he thought grimly. The heart of the matter. He rose again compelled by mysteries though he wondered how long his weary human shape could bear the confusion and strain of them. A breath of air smelling of pitch and stone and wild strawberry would give him back the mountain s strength he felt. Pelucir smelled too tamely of slow water and grass and ancient trees Burne was speaking wear yourself to the bone. Stay and eat with us. Sleep a little. He paused asked warily Have you seen what Talis made again No. I ve watched for him these past nights I ve seen nothing. Him. It. It bore some odd resemblance to its maker. I don t know where it went. You destroyed it Burne suggested. You sent it back into the pages of the spellbook. Atrix shook his head wearily. I won t leave Pelucir until I know exactly what happened to it. Thank you Burne said. Atrix gazed at him surprised then lifted a hand to his eyes blocking the light trying to think. Be careful he advised the King. Don t hunt at night. And I want that spellbook out of this castle. Burne shrugged. It s in the keep. No one will use it. No one goes up there but Talis. I want it out of Pelucir. I ll take it out of the keep for now hide it somewhere it may stay put for a while now that I am here. Perhaps Talis left something in the keep that will help me find him. A hint of a path between worlds. Nothing was left whole they say. Everything broken torn all his books in shreds. Yours too probably. It s no ordinary book Atrix reminded him. I made it. He sensed the eccentric power as he walked toward the keep. Its high window jumped from one wall to another to stare at him. He listened it was empty except for its memories the owls had fled but not the ghosts. His mind travelled up the stairs the door hung open sagging on one hinge. He followed his thoughts. Standing on the threshold he studied the room while the odd face in the door askew now studied him. He sensed no danger in the restless window which gave him a view of the distant wood. Torn pages and paper were scattered everywhere some books heavy leatherbound tomes had been ripped in two. His eyes flicked over them he lifted the table searching then moved pieces of a bucket a broken bowl scattered firewood blown torches feeling even as he searched the emptiness of the room. Disturbed perhaps by his own growing unease the shadows on the walls grew more profuse telling him their stories: Look they said. See. This happened to me. I know he breathed between his teeth haunted. I know. His search became desperate he looked in the ashes in the grate into the walls and stones. He stopped himself finally chilled. Nothing had ended or resolved itself he was still under siege by his past. The book had moved again out of a place where no one came. He stood silently his mind wandering through rooms and corridors looking for that piece of himself and sensing himself nowhere. Perhaps it had found its own way back to Chaumenard having accomplished its dark and bewildering purpose in Pelucir file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 76 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He found Burne again beginning breakfast with guests and hunters in the hall. He had forgotten how to move unobtrusively among frayed and sleepless humans. He startled even those who recognized him shaping out of air with his torn tunic and callused feet and his eyes like hoarfrost melting over dark water. Cups were overturned knives cracked against plate. A chair rattled back across the stones next to the King a man with yellow hair and a scarred face made room for Atrix. Did you find it Burne asked as servants poured pale wine scented with spices into Atrix s cup filled a plate with pastries stuffed with nuts and cream cold salmon a swan carved out of melon with its wings full of strawberries. He cast a glance at Atrix s face and answered his own question. No. It was most likely destroyed in that strange storm. You saw what was left up there. It wasn t up there. It has a will of its own. It s your book Burne said bewildered. Why did you write something so dangerous and unpredictable I didn t intend to. He ate a bite of salmon some fruit while Burne wrestled with the problem of the spellbook. In the distance Atrix sensed another storm vague yet but imminent: He tensed waiting while Burne argued. You saw all those ghosts up there he said to Atrix. You must have. Yes. They are ghosts of the siege of Hunter s Field. The place is riddled with memories everyone knows it s haunted. My guards hate being up there even armed especially those who lived through the siege. I can t believe after what happened to Talis that anyone would set foot up there now especially not for a spellbook. Talis is the only one who knows anything about magic. It s more than a book Atrix said slowly his mind still on the roil of thoughts and fears moving through the King s house. It s a sign. A message. Something that may tell me what The storm moved down the corridor to the hall he stopped his breath drawn listening. If it s that important Burne said I ll have the castle searched dungeon to keep What he asked sharply turning as guards pushed into the hall. My lord there is a messenger back from from Words dried in the man s throat he shook his head unable to finish. His face looked frozen haunted Atrix saw the ghostly reflection in his eyes. He stood up so did the King his hands coming down hard on the table. What he demanded again the guard swallowed and found his voice. A messenger my lord that you sent out to Chaumenard. I sent a dozen messengers Burne snapped. Again the hall was soundless. They can t have reached the mages so soon Where is he Dead my lord. Burne stared at him He put a hand over his wine cup but did not throw it. Atrix his eyes on his morning shadow scented the castle for more turmoil terror the only storm it seemed was among them. Dead of what He came he came earlier before dawn. He was wounded babbling no one realized for a while who he was no one expected the messengers back What Burne barked happened file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 77 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He said they never reached Chaumenard. They never got out of Pelucir alive. He was the only one to escape it. He was old enough to recognize it. Blood drained out of Burne s face. He lifted his hand stiffly from his cup closed it his thumb had left an indentation in the gold. Tell me he said harshly what he recognized. The Hunter of Hunter s Field. The King s face relinquished all expression. Talis he said to Atrix. Atrix dropped his face into one hand murmuring inarticulately. Talis is in the Queen s wood he answered lifting his head again. Of all of you he will be safest. Burne Is this what Talis conjured up in the keep Yes. No. Yes. The Hunter of Hunter s Field He was in there alone with Talis What do you mean yes and no He stopped abruptly reaching out to Atrix in a sudden plea against his own thoughts. It was your spellbook It was my spell Atrix said. He had to wait a moment for anyone to understand and then a moment or two longer for anyone to believe him. Then Burne took a step back from him and the air everywhere was streaked with silver catching a blinding fire from the morning light. Even Burne s sword was out motionless as if it were spellbound an inch away from Atrix s breastbone. Atrix bowed his head. It would be just he said softly. And even welcome. I won t fight you. But Talis Burne whispered the sword shook slightly in his grip then inched forward to stop over Atrix s heart. Yes. Atrix looked at the blade and then at Burne any spark of sorcery he knew would ignite the hall and leave them fighting ghosts again in terror and despair. Kill me later he suggested to Burne. You need me now. I will be back. Even in Chaumenard I live on Hunter s Field. He waited motionless for the weight over his heart to ease begin to lift before he disappeared. Fifteen Saro opened the unnamed book. It was late the King s hunt had returned long before supper and its confusion of plates and pots and tales carried down the stairs coming in the back door was long over. For the second day since Talis had disappeared the hunt had returned without him. The King had retired in fury and despair to his chamber slamming the door so hard the boom down the long stone passage sounded servants said like one of the prince s explosions. Supper roast peppered venison tiny potatoes roasted crisp hollowed and filled with cheese and onions and chive cherries marinated in brandy and folded into beaten cream sailed over the tray bearer s head and splashed a lively patchwork across a hundred year old tapestry on the wall behind him. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 78 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Brandy was taken up and later another tray which at least made it through the door. Dirty pots came to an end fires were banked the last of the spit boys wandered in from his night prowls and settled on the stones. Saro napping beside the cauldron was roused by the silence. She pulled the book from its secret place. Dawn found her face down between its pages. She shoved it hastily back under the cupboard as the spit boys groping half asleep sat up to toss wood on the fires beneath the bread ovens. The head cook entered later to the smell of hot bread followed by hall servants and yawning undercooks and the tray mistress red eyed and grim. Hunt the head cook said tersely. The dogs were barking in the yard. Again. Take up bread and cheese smoked fish and cold sliced venison. Mince the rest of the venison for pie. Also onions mushrooms leeks. Take up spiced wine. Musicians crowded into the kitchen dressed for the hunt they chewed blearily on hot black bread venison cheese their instruments tucked under their arms their faces alert for any impulse of the King s. Saro filled the wash cauldron. A corner of the book caught her eye she nudged it farther under the cupboard with her foot. We scoured the south wood yesterday a trumpeter said in answer to the tray mistress s query. We sounded fanfares for deer hare grouse quail. But not one for the prince. Wherever he is he s either hidden or beyond eyesight. But the King will run dogs and horses and hunters into a ghostly hunt before he gives up trying to see what can t be seen. The tray mistress closed her eyes and shook her head wordlessly. She opened them a moment later. Saro she called and Saro gathered the loaf pans to wash them. The end of the day s hunt filled the kitchen with feathers as grouse and pheasant and wild duck their cloudy eyes staring at unseen things were plucked beheaded stuffed and spitted. Hare squirrel and deer were skinned gutted and left in the cold meat pantry tanners took away the pile of skins outside the door while the yard dogs squabbled over offal. It s a war with the wood the tray mistress muttered crossly as the sweeper slowly swept blood and water into the drains. Shooting everything that moves. Let s hope he misses Prince Talis. It s fear the head cook said calculating as he spoke his eyes on the raw meat inside the pantry. The venison can be smoked the small game will do for cold pies for the hunters. It s memory of loss and hunger. He ll be saner when the messengers reach Chaumenard and the mages come. Magic the tray mistress said tightly. Even the spit boys glanced up from their fires at the word. Again in Pelucir. But I suppose there s no help for it. She turned abruptly clouted a mincer across the head with a wooden spoon. Already sniffing from onions he only ducked and sniffed harder. Get to work brat or I ll toss you on the offal pile. Something about this has me strung up and simmering. Waiting. And remembering. I keep feeling a shadow inside my bones. The mages will come soon the head cook said absently. Sauce. Orange and honey for the duck pear and onion for the pheasant. Saro s hands slowed she stared at soap bubbles trying to fit mages into her vision. Help for the prince protection against the night hunter seemed to fit nowhere not in the kitchen not among the trees in the wood. Mages seemed a dream word meaningless: The more she looked for them the more rapidly they vanished like the airy palaces of bubbles in her cauldron. Saro a spit boy cried and she turned to gather the dripping pans. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 79 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html She sat up that night until the fires around her turned into a ring of bright watching eyes until the words in the book always incomprehensible turned nearly invisible as well. Still she clung to the book her eyes heavy unblinking waiting for the chains of letters the words skipping across the page like stones across a brook to speak. They remained as mute as she. She touched her lips and then the words. No one in the kitchen cooked up great platters of words to be eaten but somehow an inexhaustible quantity of them came out of people s mouths. Those in the book had as much to do with eyes as with lips they vanished when not looked upon tears changed them and wind and fire. Her eyes dropped wearily the watching eyes glowed bright and disappeared. The book vanished though she felt it in her hands. It remained silent. Perhaps she needed to form words in her mouth before she could form the words on a page. Undercooks consulted great volumes of recipes smudged and stained with oils sauces flours. They argued over them cooked from them words made into food and sent them up to be eaten. She touched her mouth again half dreaming and desperate. One hand slid away from the book the hand remembered it seemed before she did what it had picked up in the keep and put in her pocket. Even in the fading light it gleamed a single letter a graceful scrollwork of gold. She lifted it to her mouth her eyes closing raw and gritty with weariness. Words had to get into her somehow to get out again. She yawned inhaling and tasted bitterness and gold a letter without a sound. She saw the night hunter watching her within the fiery circle of eyes. She jerked herself awake her mouth open trying to make a sound. Nothing stood in the red fuming hearth light. The spit boys snored shadowy fire limned lumps the mincers whimpered in their sleep. Still her heart pounded its own language of terror until the vast dark kitchen smelling of smoke and rising bread calmed her with its insistence of familiar things. At last she moved closed the book. As she lay facing it one hand straying under the cupboard to touch it she swallowed again the unfamiliar taste of gold. The night hunter stood over her. She saw his dark masked eyes the dark moon rising in his horns his face rippling slightly as if she saw him reflected in water at the bottom of the cauldron. He said Drawkcab. His black hounds howled at the word. Drawkcab he insisted through the noises of the hounds staring down at her. A jewel of blood gleamed at one corner of his mouth. Drawkcab he said a third time and the baying of the hounds rose became pure and metallic as the voices of horns. She woke with a start hearing horns. It was a fanfare at the gate in the early hours before dawn. Spit boys sleepily kindling the oven fires glanced toward the sound. Someone wanting in one breathed and another answered lifting his head sharply above his fire Mages it must be. The mages of Chaumenard. They learned at breakfast. Servants took up silver urns of chocolate trays of butter pastries hams glazed with honey and sliced thin as paper eggs poached in sherry birds carved out of melons and filled with fruit. They came back white as cream. The tray mistress listened to their babbling a moment then sat down slowly her own cheeks under the strawberry veins as colorless as suet. The head cook said sharply to the head servant Sit down. Speak slowly. Who is up there and why is no one eating Messengers. Messenger. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 80 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html From Chaumenard The servant shook his head. The head cook sat down suddenly on a stool. Only one came back the servant whispered. Of those the King sent out. They were stopped. At night before they reached the border. The steep rocky hills where the pass narrows and the road overlooks half of Pelucir. What happened there The undercooks had crowded around the head cook no one else moved except the youngest of the choppers and peelers who uneasy sought safety beneath the tables. The hall servants were clustered together around the head servant. The tray mistress rolling her pristine apron in her fists carried it to her mouth. Something someone stopped them. Something. What the tray mistress snapped like the pitch exploding in the fire and a spit boy jumped. The head servant his face grey lined beneath his yellow hair stared back at her dully. A man. A mage. A hunter. His horns like black lightning a black moon rising in them hounds and horse shaped out of night with fire between their teeth. He would not let them pass into Chaumenard. The tray mistress made a sound into her apron. The head cook said quickly Brandy. Are they dead The messenger didn t wait. They all turned and ran. He was the only one to return. He was old enough to recognize the Hunter and that s what s being said up there. That it was the dark making that killed the King s father. The messenger died this morning. The tray mistress covered her eyes and rocked a moment. She reappeared to grip the brandy bottle and drink. Her eyes usually shiny as beetles wings looked sunken and dull. The head cook wordless in the silence drew breath audibly. After so many years The sorcery made for that battle still exists They recognized it the head servant said softly. Those who saw it kill on Hunter s Field. The messenger heard the others shouting as he ran. He took the bottle from the tray mistress and drank. The head cook reached for it. We must bring a mage here to deal with it. We had a mage the tray mistress said heavily. That White Wolf. He s been searching for the prince. He ll deal with this too he told the King that before he vanished. He is the greatest living mage. There was silence again in the kitchen. Other servants came down bearing trays of uneaten food. The head cook gazed at the trays his face tight. Cook the eggs until they harden and roll them in minced sausage. The ham will keep for when the King hunts again. Mash the melon in sweet wine and strain it for cold soup He can t go hunting the tray mistress breathed in horror. Not with that out there. With that and Prince Talis out there together he ll go the head cook said tersely. If that s what drove the mage and the prince out of the keep then the mage will be around somewhere. He s Atrix Wolfe not some fly by night magician. He knows to guard the heir of Pelucir. If he can the tray mistress said starkly. If he s able. She shifted slowly off the stool her eyes wide. Gradually they focused on the plate washers and for an instant on Saro who had turned away from her pots and stood as still as if she understood. Plates the tray mistress snapped the plate washers whirled bent over the cooling water. Pots But Saro had already vanished headlong into her cauldron scouring dripping pans from the hams and baking trays file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 81 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html from the pastries. The head cook not seeing her face forgot her listening eyes. Drawkcab the water deep in the cauldron said as it weltered against the sides. She felt her lips move shaping sounds. It was a spell a message a riddle a warning a terrible magical word. She could no more say it than she could say liver sausage. But he had come into her dream and said it to her. Or her dream had spoken to her out of his image. She scrubbed fiercely at pork grease the word echoing in her head now instead of in the water. She felt the odd prickling in her eyes again for it was as meaningless to her as the words in the prince s book. The King called a council later that morning. Plates of sweetmeats nuts tiny seed cakes were returned to the kitchen untouched pitchers of cold spiced wine returned empty. No one s eating the tray mistress said fretfully. And what is this dent in the bronze tray The King kicked it a servant said morosely. He s boiling and about to froth. He s frothing another servant said returning with goblets. He wiped a sheen off his face and added starkly He s calling the hunt for noon. He thinks something terrible he says the monster came out of the prince s spellbook and that Atrix Wolfe wrote the book so he thinks he says that Atrix Wolfe made You re babbling the head cook snapped. Nonsense. Cold ham herb bread mince pies red wine. The King may throw it to the dogs. At least it will get eaten. The hunt returned to everyone s relief at twilight. As if preparing for siege it had cut a deadly swath through the wood bringing back so much game that the head cook ordered the smokehouse fires lit again and sent spit boys out to hang venison and wild duck above the flames. He sent stew and game pies to the supper hall salads of spinach and radish and bacon hot black bread simple heavy fare that the hunters did not reject. There was more eating than talking the servants reported. There was no news. Saro washed pie pans bread pans stewpots frying pans until looking around dazedly she found a world scoured of dirty pots and very quiet. Sitting in the shadow of her wash cauldron she waited stolidly for the spit boys to come in from the night and bank the fires. They settled finally and began to snore. She drew the book from under the cupboard and set it across her knees. She did not open it. There would be she knew the same tantalizing drawings of mirrors and mandrake roots goblets and flying birds. The same clean precise lines of letters and words that might as well have been spider webs or splotches of cooking oil for all they said anything to her. She leaned back against the cupboard gazed wearily at the hearth fires. She watched little flames spring up now and then out of the darkening embers like ghosts like memories of fire until half dreaming she forgot that fire had a name and saw only bright random blossoms of color spring up out of shimmering red and dark flow gracefully from shape to shape then burrow down again hide among the rustling embers where something restless would snap and fling a sparkling swarm of insects or stars into the air. Darkness curved across one hearth hiding half of it: a massive heavy black that her hands knew as well as her eyes. Sitting still she felt its rough familiar swell against her palms as they pushed against it and its unwieldy weight against her hip as she tilted it and dirty water slapped the sides and spilled. She felt its strength in her its solid unyielding shape that resisted any change unlike the fire that danced to every breath of air and had the power to change whatever it touched. Her mind shifted between them exploring them: the great bubble of iron that held water air dirty pots visions in its hard protective embrace the fire that ate shadows and bone and shone like love in the spit boys eyes and like death in the dead swan s eyes. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 82 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html They entered her as nameless things: She made herself as strong and unyielding as one as brilliant and fluid as the other. Her bones were made of iron cauldron her heart beat with wings of fire Saro she heard someone call from far away: the tray mistress or a spit boy with a dripping pan. She built the iron bubble around her. The voice as light and pure as the horn s voice crumpled against the iron. Later she followed the path of fire around the kitchen saw how it hung mothlike quivering in the curve of a copper pot how it changed the shape of candle wax making something cold and stiff go warm as tears and spill sculpting itself as it cooled. Curious she let her mind flow into the wax fall with it harden again. Just before it hardened she felt herself in another place contemplating another candle set in a holder of rosewood and deer horn. The wax warmed spilled she slid with it felt it begin to slow down the sides of the candle harden Saro a voice cried in the memory and a word moved in the back of her throat an answer. Saro It was as if the iron cauldron had shouted. Her bones shook fell into place her head jerked back. In sudden terror she gathered the bright moths and blossoms and stars all around her before she looked across her ring of fire and met the tray mistress s astonished eyes. Sixteen Talis rode among the hunters of Pelucir. He had grown accustomed in the past few days to being invisible. The horse he rode he had taken from a meadow where horses as beautiful as he had ever seen ran wild. It was the color of butter with a white gold mane and it moved through the human hunt the horns and dogs and shouts as if through drifting leaves. Listening at random Talis heard what had frozen the grim expression on Burne s face and why there were fewer who ventured into the wood with him and why they all seemed intent on killing every living thing in the wood as if preparing for a siege. Of Atrix Wolfe he found no trace. But if the Hunter still haunted the field then the mage must still be there somewhere: in a shadow under a bramble in a window in the keep watching Hunter s Field. Talis had searched by day and night. By day the wood unsettled by the King s hunt seemed so empty of mages he wondered if they had taken their battle back to Chaumenard. At twilight the castle across the field sealed itself tightly no one ventured out. Talis hidden at the edge of the wood could see the silent motionless field until moonrise. Then something blurred the field mist or moonlight so bright it concealed what it illumined. When he tried to move into it he invariably found himself back in the wood no matter what shape he took. It was Atrix Wolfe s magic he had no doubt and it was meant for him. The hunters saw it also from the castle they spoke in hushed shaken voices of battles of mage and Hunter and all the ghosts of Hunter s Field they imagined raging within the mist. Talis spent several nights trying to isolate a single act of magic trying to see even a moving shadow within the mist. He yielded finally in bewilderment and let his star eyed mount find its way back to the meadow file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 83 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html where hock deep in wild lilies it drank from a silver pool that mirrored delicate faces among the lilies. They vanished when Talis looked for them. Oak receded from the meadow in all directions he saw nothing else. He found a rock overlooking the pool and sat down with a sigh weary hungry and harrowed with fears. Time seemed arbitrary in the Queen s wood: Night in Pelucir meant perhaps a deeper shade of blue in the tranquil sky or a dusky lovely twilight that lingered until the sun rose over Hunter s Field. Once night had fallen into the Queen s wood as well for no reason he could find except to cast a powerful urge in him to fall asleep under moonlight. The Queen had walked through all his dreams in robes of flowing moonlight he had brought her gifts a key a bird s nest a sparkling stone a gilded horseshoe a scarlet mushroom but she would not tell him her name. When the wood grew light again and he awoke he found bread and cheese and strawberries wrapped in leaves beside him as if he thought wistfully in her dreams she had brought him gifts. She had not come to him or permitted him to find her again. It was a spur her absence a goad to find Atrix Wolfe so that he could see her face again. He thought of her ceaselessly adrift and lonely in her realm as he was his arms remembered circling her his bones remembered her bones. Light fell through trees gilding the dead oak leaves and he saw her hair fire and amber and gold. The hart raised its head at the sound of a hunting horn and he saw her beautiful vulnerable face. He saw wild roses and thought of her slender white birch and thought of her a white dove flying through green leaves and thought of her. Everything his eyes touched turned into her. Everything his eyes touched had a name and was not her. He did not know her name. Nor he realized watching tiny fish make endless interlocking rings in the still pool did he know her consort s name. Neither did Atrix Wolfe who was fighting him within the mist on Hunter s Field. Talis stirred restively deeply disturbed at his own powerlessness. Atrix Wolfe would not let himself be found neither would the nameless Queen. But unless Atrix could name what he fought he would never defeat it for he believed he fought only himself. A fish touched the surface made a ring. A face appeared in the ring so close to the colors of mosses and reflected meadow grass that Talis did not recognize it until he saw the eyes in the water watching him. He started lifting his own eyes to see the rider made of leaves. The rider said as his dark horse drank from the pool The Queen has lost three birds: a bluebird a red bird a bird as yellow as the sun. She asks that since you have nothing more pressing to do than to sit on a rock watching fish you might find them for her. Talis touched his lenses silently studying the strange elegant face. The wood is full of birds he said finally. How will I know which are hers He felt his heartbeat then answering his own question: It did not matter he would catch them all for the moment in which he gave them to her. The rider turned his mount indifferently. You will know he said. Wait Talis called impulsively and the rider halted his horse glancing back expressionlessly. What is the name of the Queen s consort He did not see what happened. He found himself in the water suddenly sitting among the darting fish his lenses askew and dripping water his face throbbing oddly as if he had been struck. Humans the rider snapped with his back to Talis and rode away. Talis amazed heaved himself out of the pool. A bluebird he told himself trying to wipe his lenses with a sodden file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 84 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html sleeve. A red bird. A yellow bird. They blame us for the Queen s lost consort and her child. Humans. He called again this time silently: Wait. The rider nearly into the wood drew up under an oak. Among the leaves he and his mount dappled with shadow were nearly invisible. Talis sensed his surprise across the meadow. He did not answer but waited while Talis emptied the water out of his boots then walked barefoot through the grass. Mount and rider gazed at him with the same remote expression as he stood beside them. The layered face reminded him of an unopened bud an unfurled leaf something wrapped neatly around itself protecting an inner mystery. Talis said The mage who cast the spell over the Queen s consort fights him with a human magic. If the mage dies there will be no hope for the Queen s consort he will be trapped in that shape as long as he is alive. A leaf shadow or the hint of expression moved across the still face. Talis held up an open hand continued carefully For the mage to unravel the spell he will need to know what magic he is facing. That s why I asked for the name. I did not ask lightly and I meant no offense. What you did to me beside the pool I didn t recognize. A breeze wandered by shook a leaf from the oak. It drifted to the ground. A bird called blue or red or yellow Talis kept his eyes with some prudence on the motionless face. The rider spoke finally. You don t use your magic here. You made me wait while you walked across the meadow. She didn t take me for my magic. He felt the warm blood rise in his face in spite of himself. There are many far better human mages. He paused heard the unspoken question in the air. She took me because she knew I would give her my heart. And then whatever else she wants. I walked across the meadow because I don t know the language of magic in this land. I didn t want you to misunderstand me. It s simple to understand a walking man especially when he is soaking wet and barefoot and carrying his boots. There was a flicker in the green eyes almost a glint of light. It is less easy I see to understand the man sitting quietly beside a pool. I will give you nothing for the mage to use against the Queen s consort. Talis shook his head quickly swallowing. I would not want to hurt her more he said softly. It s only for the mage to understand what magic he is fighting. If I can find him. When. When I find him. The rider dismounted. A dove flew down settled on his shoulder beneath his golden hair. He stood very still holding Talis eyes Talis as still watched the leaf mask waver separate into leaves on a bough rustling in a gentle wind. An oak formed in his mind its great dark branches a lovely complex filigree against the green. A face formed in the leaves branches pieced themselves together like bones leaves shaped around the bone. The tree walked away from its roots turned to look back at itself. I am Oak and I speak for the oak. The birds know me lightning knows me. You know me now Talis Pelucir. Take these birds to the Queen of the Wood. Then find me at the boundary between worlds where wood meets Wood at the edge of Hunter s Field. I have watched there with you. I want to show you what I have seen. Talis blinked the face formed again outside of his mind. Birds had landed on his shoulders he felt feathers brush his cheek a murmur at his ear. The Oak lord set the dove among them. Take this too he said. Tell her it s from me. He added mounting again hearing the question in Talis head Behind you. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 85 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Talis watched him ride into the wood until leaf and branch and shadow hid him or he let his mortal shape flow freely back into them. Then Talis let his boots fall put them on carefully so as not to disturb the birds on his shoulders. He turned. A great palace stood in front of him. It filled the meadow rose out of it its lower walls and towers so thickly covered with vines that the palace seemed to be blooming out of something living. Its upper towers seemed made of light blown glass rainbow colored air. Its gate was an arch of green leaves over a long bridge of thick ancient vines. No one guarded it except Talis thought perhaps the vines themselves. He walked carefully over them vine leaves whispered the dove spoke softly back to them. He stepped through the oak doors found a single room as wide as the meadow with a small silver pool in the middle of it. Lilies made of bronze and glass and wax grew around the pool some as high as saplings others lit like candles scenting the air with honey. The rest of the rooms lay in shadow a palace waiting to be formed Talis guessed at every step. The figure sitting at the edge of the pool lifted a hand. The birds took wing off Talis shoulder flew streaks of color to settle among the frozen lilies. The dove dropped into the Queen s hands. She smiled across the pool at Talis and he felt his heart open wings try to fly. I wish he whispered I had brought you every bird in the wood. If I had known you would smile. The birds brought you to me she said. They were my messengers. But this white one this is a message to me. It is from the Oak lord. I know. I watched you both within this pool. Talis flushed. You saw me sitting with the fish. Oak uses the lightning that catches in its boughs. I heard your question. You have not brought the mage to me. She stroked the dove s breast no longer smiling her face grave. He is hiding from me I think. He must know I m searching for him. How will you find him I don t know. Learn from the oak how to attract lightning perhaps. I must find him quickly before he leaves Pelucir. The Queen tossed the dove into the air. Sit she said to Talis and gestured at the shadows. You are right to want my consort s name. Oak carrying lightning he has swallowed can be occasionally testy. Is that what hit me Talis dropped down marvelling beside a cluster of bronze lilies. In the pool fiery darts of light swarmed like tiny fish. The water was very still. The Queen gestured servants came out of the shadows carrying trays of food and wine. Talis ate mushrooms wild herbs and onions roast hare steeped in wine and spices warm bread stuffed with hazelnuts and soft cheese. The Queen drank pale wine while he ate when he finished she said Saro looked like my consort. Eyes the color of ripe acorns hair long and shining milky white. She inherited his powers and mine something from each of us: the wordless wild wood and the language of humans. He had taught her many things young as she was she knew the languages of birds of trees almost before she could speak. My consort also carried a double heritage of power. That is how he became so terrible. She paused the water in the pool darkened briefly as if the shadow of the Hunter had passed over it. She whispered I do file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 86 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html not expect to see him again. She shook her head at Talis wordless murmur. Never as he was. Never. After what he became. How could he return from that If Atrix when he knows What could he do Change the past My love rode away from me and vanished into the deadly night of humans. Atrix will try to save him. Once he knows. I am sending you to find him for Saro s sake she said fiercely. If a choice must be made Atrix Wolfe must live. My consort is dead. I know him. He could not live knowing what he had become. Nor except for Saro s sake would he permit the mage to live. He will kill Atrix Wolfe if he can out of fury out of grief perhaps in memory of what he once was once had. Once loved. Yes Talis whispered. I have seen him once or twice in this pool. And I saw him the night I hunted you. Part of him still remembers my wood. I wonder if he tries to find his way back here what might stop him from a wild hunt for his lost memories. She raised her eyes to Talis bloodless face. You must not try to save him for my sake. You know how dangerous he is. You must help Atrix Wolfe for Saro s sake. Her voice trembled at the name. She looked down quickly the water trembled as at a touch across the pool. He took her from me he will find her for me. My consort s name was Ilyos. And yours She rose. He felt her fingers brush his cheek lightly he closed his eyes his hand rising to touch her hand closed on air. Swallowing something bittersweet he listened to her steps until they faded. The palace vanished behind him when he left it. He made his way back through the wood to the boundary between wood and field and saw the sky in the human world bruised blue and purple with twilight. As the twilight deepened mist rolled across Hunter s Field hid it and the castle beyond it all but the single eye high in the ancient keep. His heart hammering in his throat Talis walked into the mist. There was always one moment when the blinding swirling brightness seemed about to shape itself become the Hunter or the hunted. And as Talis walked deeper into it all the nebulous possibilities would become only leaves the edge of the wood he had just left. This time the leaves became an oak and the oak as he recognized it and turned to try again caught his shoulder in a sinewy rustling grip and said Wait. Talis stopped still staring into the mist baffled and frustrated. I cannot move beyond the wood he said tightly. How can I find the mage if I can t see into this Close your eyes the Oak lord suggested. It blinds you because you re trying to see. Listen. Talis closed his eyes. A breeze slipped through the trees around him. A bird sang. He concentrated listening to the field instead of the wood what sounds the grass might make what sounds a mage might make moving silently across it listening himself for the footsteps of the Hunter. What do you hear Nothing. Talis opened his eyes. Nothing. What do you see Mist. Nothing. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 87 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html What do you feel He shook his head feeling no warnings from the mist any more than he would have felt a warning from lightning. Nothing he said wearily. It s like a maze with no path no center Listen. I tried Listen to yourself. He paused. Nothing his eyes said his ears his listening heart. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing he whispered and heard the word. He whirled to face the oak chilled suddenly as if he still stood in mist. Atrix Wolfe is gone. That s what I felt the oak said. Standing here on the edge of an empty field. He threw this into my eyes to keep me searching here while he took his battle someplace else Where Talis stared into the mist it began to shape under his eyes into peaks and crags and luminous clouds. He closed his eyes finally seeing what the mage had cast across the field. The Shadow of the Wolf he said. Chaumenard. Seventeen In the kitchens Saro stared into a black moon of water. Fire from a torch held by a spit boy flowed across the water which stood in the bottom of her wash cauldron and was absolutely still. An apprentice sitting beside the cauldron with the mage s book open on his knees struggled with a word. Med ate Metation Anyway after that comes on. Don t skip words the spit boy said tersely his eyes on Saro. She has to know. Mediation. The fire unfolded and flowed like silk across the water. Saro her elbows propped on the rim of the cauldron watched it thoughtlessly barely hearing words. They sorted words and implements whoever could read whoever had a hand free. They pushed things under her nose and read words at her. She understood the fire better whispering on the torch flooding the dark iron with its light trying to see something in the motionless water. Meditation you cheese curd another apprentice said passing with his arms full of onions. Well how am I to know It s not a cooking word. You mind what you re doing the tray mistress said tartly or you ll have her turning us into beetles. Well what is meditation the apprentice on the floor asked aggrievedly when it s not in a sauce Contemplation an undercook said. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 88 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html What Thinking the grey eyed boner said and whacked a fowl in two with her cleaver. Now get on with it She s doing it already anyway. Look at her. Like she was born knowing how. Then what am I doing sitting here reading Shut up and read the spit boy said. Meditation on the desired object. I guess that would be Prince Talis. Right the tray mistress said approvingly sorting napkins for the morning. She looks into fire and water and thinks of him. The object or subject will be seen in the mingling of elmenents. Elements. That s all. He shoved the book away and rose to his knees to look over the side of the cauldron. The spit boy loosed his stiff attentive stance to bend forward an inch. The tray mistress peered saw her reflection mingling with the curious faces. Out of there she snapped. How can she see anything with your great cloudy faces floating around She patted Saro s shoulder gently. That s it then girl. Think of Prince Talis. She raised her voice. Pots No not you she said hastily as Saro started. You re not pots anymore. You re I don t know what you are. But not pots. Saro drifted back into the fire. She heard dripping pans scrape along the floor and her bones used to jumping at an unwashed pot settled down. Talis she thought as if she heard his name for the first time. She saw his face grave thoughtful his eyes hidden under circles of light. Then his head turned slightly she saw his eyes clearly dark blue beginning to smile. She saw him walk into a mist. A white owl flew out of the mist toward the castle. An eye in the keep watched it shifting as the owl passed it above the heads of guards on the walls watching the bright cloud that had dropped out of the clear night sky to cover the field. The owl left the castle behind. Its swift smooth flight faltered then it began to change shape in midair. The bird caught itself spun down a little caught itself again wings laboring. It dropped finally among some trees. Touching the ground it became Talis. He leaned wearily against a tree catching his breath looking back at the stars of fire in the dark rise of stone he had left behind. He turned his back to it finally and began to walk. What Saro heard all around her as the prince walked through fire and water and disappeared. She saw something. She did. Look at her eyes. Round as owl s eyes. What did you see Saro what did you see They surrounded her all the waiting eyes. The spit boy holding the torch broke the silence. How can she say She can t talk. Later after the hall servants had carried back the bones and cold broken fragments of salmon wrapped in pie crust roast venison seared over flames and simmered in wine garlic and rosemary carrots and onions fried in butter and ale baked apples stuffed with cabbage and cream baskets of fruit woven out of egg white and drizzled with chocolate flavored with brandy the undercooks pored over the spellbook looking for a recipe that would make Saro talk. The mincers boners pluckers spit boys and peelers fell on the leftovers like mice then scattered again under tables to the hearths out of the way of the bakers and washers and the disgusted plucker who had to do pots and who left trails of ash and grease behind her as she hauled dirty pots across the kitchen. They had taken a cauldron from the tallow makers for her to wash in Saro had refused to leave her cauldron. It s what she knows best the tray mistress decided. But they gave her a sheepskin to sleep on and moved the cauldron to a warm place beside the ovens. The kitchen quieted but for the rhythmic shaking of bakers tables as they kneaded butter into file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 89 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html rich dough for the morning pastries. The plate washers dried the last plates put them gently away. Then with the smoky eyed boner they came to look at Saro as she sat in the shadow of the cauldron. She s fey the boner said twirling a strand of dark hair around a bitten forefinger. Some witch was her mother not a milker at all. No a mage the washer said. Her eyes caught Saro s pale brown like nuts. Saro stared at them a moment then looked away wrapping her arms nervously around her knees. The boner touched her. We won t hurt you girl. Look. She unwrapped a slice of crusted salmon from her apron untouched but for a bite at one corner. She put it on Saro s knees. Eat it. You need your strength. Saro unwound herself after a moment took a bite. On stools above her the undercooks turned the pages of the spellbook entranced. Look at this one. To Leave a Message in Water. And this: To Sound a Bell at a Distance. To Open a Latched Door Wasn t that the one Wasn t the prince trying to open a door that day When he made lightning and nearly killed the King. They glanced doubtfully at Saro eating cold salmon with her fingers. She wouldn t have accidents would she She s born with it the prince wasn t. Anyway you have to speak with this spell. So she couldn t do it anyway. Must be something in here can help her talk. Some are just born mute. Mages aren t. Saro said the boner when Saro had swallowed the last of the salmon. She put her hand on Saro s clasped tense hands. Listen to me. We want to teach you to talk. Say words. You need it to do magic. She hasn t so far the blue eyed washer murmured. Well we need her to talk. Listen. Saro. Can you say your name Like this. First a hiss. Then open wide. Say ah. Then ro. Do this with your lips. Like a growl. Then O. It s easy. Try it. Saro. She opened one of Saro s hands laid it against her throat. Can you feel my voice Saro feeling wings under her hand water moving stirred with surprise. She felt her own throat with her other hand: Nothing moved. Maybe she hasn t got a voice. Should have a spit boy scare her the nut eyed washer mused. See if she screams. She never has. She has never made a sound. They gazed at her baffled. Just try the boner coaxed. Just move your lips. Sa. Ro. We should tell the King the tray mistress said to the head cook as he stood for a rare idle moment beside the cluster of undercooks looking over their shoulders at the spellbook. There s a mage in his kitchen who has seen Prince Talis. The head cook snorted. Or that there is a mute pot scrubber whom we asked to look for the prince in the bottom of a wash cauldron. Well if you put it that way No matter how it is put that s what the King will see. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 90 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html But he s desperate for any word of Prince Talis I know. So are we all. Leave her to it. She must find her way to tell him he d never listen to us. He d just start throwing. Maybe the tray mistress said dubiously. She did look as surprised as any of us by what she did to the fire. I don t think she knows what she is. How could she and still be happy scrubbing pots all those years I think she s feeling her way to something. She doesn t go by that book. She doesn t know if the words are on their heads or on their heels. She s just doing. And even she doesn t know what she ll do next. But she knew enough to find the spellbook. She knows something. Yes the tray mistress agreed. So we should tell the King. Saro touched her mouth felt her lips move as she watched the boner s mouth. Sa. Ro. The wings in her throat refused to fly. Words could not get out that way. Yet that s what they all wanted from her: words. She had to say what she had seen make a picture into words. She dropped her face against her knees abruptly blinding herself to hear the sounds around her. She s tired the tray mistress said. She s confused poor thing. The wings must fly in her throat fly out of her mouth carrying words with them. Her lips moved again shaping her name. Sa. Ro. She lifted her head abruptly stared at the boner feeling that she had been given something of her own something she would never lose. Saro her lips said with no sound no wings. But the boner smiled suddenly. Good. That s a place to begin anyway. Your name. In the next few days Saro watched Prince Talis fly through fire and water as a hawk an owl a wild goose each time staying a little longer in the air before his magic began to wear away and he reached for earth again. She watched him walk dark roads and rocky fields she watched him run with wild horses through craggy hills. She watched him drift among humans in small crowded smoky rooms listening to them. They never looked at him or spoke to him he might have been a pot scrubber the way their eyes passed over him without seeing. Yet she saw him in her magic cauldron and she felt an odd tumult in her as if she had swallowed a thundercloud its rumbles and flashes of illumination like words trying to form. She did things without thinking as she watched him. She sparked the spit boy s dwindling torch with a touch when the cauldron grew dark. She lifted her hand and an apple fell into it or a heel of bread and she ate absently not moving her eyes from Talis. Once as she studied him trying to envision what had made him invisible to humans she heard a commotion around her cries and hail of dropped utensils. She looked around and found all their eyes searching in bewilderment for her passing over her as eyes passed over Talis. Then in the next moment their eyes found her again knew her she had gone and come back. We must tell the King the tray mistress said adamantly. She s watching the prince. She knows where he is. He sent for mages who could not come well here s the mage who can find him. He won t listen the head cook warned. He must listen. The head cook flung up his hands nearly clipping a mincer with a saucepan lid. Who s to tell him Prince Talis is in the bottom of a cauldron of water You. The King still hunted the wood each day for Talis and each night doors and gates and windows were locked tight against the strange magic that misted over the field. But the wood file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 91 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html was empty of Talis. He had set his path toward a distant blue mist that slowly changed the closer he came to it revealing lines shadows vast sweeps of green and upthrusts of grey that disappeared into cloud. Saro watched clinging to the edges of the cauldron as if she might slip headlong into such bewilder ing land that towered into the sky instead of lying flat like the fields Talis had left behind. She heard the apprentices whispering late one night as she half dreamed beside the cauldron. They huddled under a spit boy s torch he watched them narrowly as if they might somehow take light away from Saro. They turned pages slowly discussed and discarded spells like recipes for tomorrow s supper. Here s one. What about this To Make Small Objects Fall. Too noisy. How to See in the Dark. We d have to put the fires out. Stock s simmering bread rising in the ovens Anyway Saro has to see. Here. How to Levitate an Object. We could levitate something quiet. A mincer. They get noisy if they re dropped. An onion. Boring. This book then We ll levitate the spellbook. Saro someone said their faces pale under the torchfire turned toward her briefly. She felt their eyes. She s busy. Besides she won t care she never looks at it. Besides It s just one spell. Just a small one. First: Place the object to be levitated in a place where its upward momentum will be unimpeded. There was a small silence. Upward momentum unimpeded. What s that Herbs or something Must be a special language mage words. Upward. All right. We know that means up. But what if it doesn t have a momentum Most books don t do they The head cook s do when he throws them. It means you wattle brains where it won t bump into something on the way up. Go on. It ll hit the torch. Shove it to one side. Move your elbow. There. Now go on. Their voices slid away from Saro mingled with the kitchen noises: the crackling pitch in the fires the slow patient bubbling of stock in iron pots the spit boys sleepy open mouthed breathing small invisible pluckers telling stories under a table the sweeper a crooked bundle of bones snoring beside his broom. Talis was flying toward the jagged end of the world: a massive crown of stone washed by moonlight that snagged clouds as they sailed by changed their shapes then loosed them again. The hard wind tore the bird s shape away from Talis now and then caused him to drop wildly catching at his balance with a wing and an arm for a moment until he tucked himself away again behind the feathers. There was magic in that wind Saro sensed light shimmered in it odd shapes and shadows spun through it like leaves disappeared. The bird flew high above a great dark forest that climbed so far up and then stopped leaving bare stone rising upward against the stars. Wind fought the bird as it neared file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 92 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html the stones forced it to drop finally spin down into the trees. The bird changed as it touched ground. The prince sagging against one of the trees rocked with it in the wind as he slid slowly down among its roots. Saro saw his face white and hollowed with shadows his eyes half closed watching the winds ride like wild hunters through the trees watching for something within the winds. After a while he changed shape again. It s hopeless an apprentice cook groaned behind her. We might as well try to levitate a mountain. The book shut with a bang. A white wolf moved through the trees toward the barren peak where the winds began. Eighteen On the highest peak of the mountains of Chaumenard Atrix an illusion of granite among broken slabs and boulders of granite contemplated his creation. The Hunter roaming the ledges below would find him: He seemed linked Atrix thought wearily closer than a shadow to his maker. Moonlight cascaded down the peaks and slopes to flood the valley below the dark hounds moved through it silently little more than shadows themselves sliding over the crags. The Hunter s inexhaustible power astonished the mage. Drawkcab he heard when he had a moment to sleep the Hunter quiet by day prowled through the mage s dreams. Xirta Eflow: the backward face of Atrix s sorcery himself transposed into that terrible reflection of power. But even a shadow resembled the one who cast it in gesture movement it could be controlled. This shadow seemed to have no familiar shape no predictable limits no gestures that blurred into Atrix s gestures of power. The Hunter was isolated and stark as the moon. Atrix seeking himself in the Hunter s mind only fanned an endless rage. You are mine he reminded himself and the Hunter. You are me. I made you. I am in you. You have hidden my face the other side of that dark moon but I am in you. I am you. Granite exploded next to him as if the Hunter had heard his musings. Atrix became a shard in the explosion flying down the face of the cliff toward the Hunter. He aimed himself at the Hunter s heart. The Hunter deflecting stones with a sweep of his hand found the one that did not veer or drop but sped even more quickly toward him changing as it neared the Hunter into a wordless question. What are you He caught the Hunter by surprise slid beneath his defenses and for a moment looked into the Hunter s eyes. He saw a field of fire and night on which darkness shaped itself constantly into ravens hounds black moons the hollow in the skull s eye. He felt the Hunter try to break free block the mage from his mind for another moment Atrix clung to him stared into the darkness within the skull s eye trying to see the power that insisted on such darkness trying to find his own face within the bone. He saw the green wood of his dreams. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 93 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Then fire swept through the wood and he heard himself cry out. He spun toward the fire caught himself and withdrew from the Hunter s mind. He found himself splayed against the face of a cliff wind seeking out his hidden shape relentlessly drawing him into the moonlit world. He melted deep into the rock stayed there hearing the Hunter s hounds howling in fury and feeling the wild wind shake the face of the mountain as it searched for him. I left a dream in the Hunter s mind he thought amazed remembering the fury out of which he had worked his spell on that grim battlefield. Then he felt a terrible mingling of exhaustion and despair well up in him: He had finally seen himself in his shadow. I am the raven I am the hounds I am the black moon rising in the flames I am the Hunter s dream And before I can destroy the Hunter I must become the Hunter. Or he must become me. But which he wondered is which And why if I am the maker and he is what I have made is he so powerful Beyond the solid stone the wind was exhausting its fury. He gathered himself to face the Hunter again before the moon turned its bloody face toward Pelucir. At sunrise he trapped the Hunter deep in the mountain within a great column of limestone his hounds were frozen around him. The mage felt light touch the cold crags high above him and drew himself gratefully toward the warmth. He fell asleep among the scattered shards of granite on the top of the mountain. In his dream he watched a white wolf emerge from the edge of the shadowy forest move along the bare wind whipped face of the mountain. He watched the wolf for a long time before it changed in the way of dreams into a young man standing on the stones looking up his lenses flashing with light trying to see something that was only a word a legend in his world. The young man touched his eyes his lenses dropped suddenly into the rubble at his feet. The White Wolf watched him from the top of the mountain. There was something disturbing in the young man s presence though he had done nothing more than climb and stop and lose his lenses. He still looked up his face bare his eyes searching though the stones must be only a blur against the sky. The mage sparked light in the lenses the young man ignored them. He moved again his next step shattered the lenses underfoot. Still he climbed changing again into the white wolf leaving the world behind to reach the top of the mountain. Atrix felt the icy flash of fear snap out of him even before he woke. Talis he heard himself say pulling himself out of the stones to stand blinking at the light groggy with exhaustion. On the face of the mountain nothing moved. But he was there the prince of Pelucir still searching for the mage. He had seen the mist on Hunter s Field for what it was and had followed Atrix into Chaumenard. He dared not pull Talis into that world even if he could: What he could see so could the Hunter. He dared not let Talis stay on the mountain in any world: What he knew the Hunter would know and Atrix could not guess what he might do. There was only one thing to do and he had no idea how to do it. He sat down in the shadow of a boulder and closed his eyes trying to see into the dream again. Talis he whispered helplessly. Where are you I can t see you. Tell me how to reach you. The shadow of the stone he leaned against lay like stone across his eyes. He struggled against it a moment lying vulnerable exposed to wind and light and any passing life in his human shape. Then he felt himself fall a long way into blackness. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 94 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He stood in the green wood where the small birds sang and invisible roses scented the air. The Queen walked toward him through her trees. They swayed bowing as she passed their leaves trailed through her hair touched her face. She wore green the color of the leaves it drifted around her behind her like cloud mingling with her fiery hair so that she seemed always a little blurred as if she were just stepping out of wind. Atrix Wolfe. Her voice was as he remembered low sweet touched with passion and sorrow. Where are you I am here he said standing in her wood. In Chaumenard. You must come to me. I am here. You are not here. I need you. Talis is searching for you. I know he said helplessly. He looks for me in my dreams awake I look for him. We cannot find each other that way. You must help me. How can I I know nothing of your ways or your world. But you know my name he said perplexedly and watched her eyes grow dark luminous with secret pain. I know you she said. Leaves whirled around her suddenly a great storm of green as if they had been torn away by a season out of time. Through them he glimpsed her face her hair her hand. When the leaves finally fell the trees were bare around her and above them the sky was black. He tasted snow smelled burning wood. The blowing leaves were raven black they cried in hoarse ragged voices as they spun away. He could not see the Queen s face it was a black empty oval. Talis will bring you to me she said. He has found you for me. I will give him back to you. Not here he said terrified again. Not now You wanted him she reminded him. You could not find him in my wood. Now find him in Chaumenard. No he shouted and woke himself. The sun had shifted he lay in light sprawled across the stones. He moved stiffly drawing back into shadow and scanned the mountainside with a hawk s eye. Nothing moved. He let his thoughts drift among the trees found their webbed windblown boughs busy with life. No white wolves prowled among their shadows. None waited hidden among the crags around him. It was only a dream he thought. Still dread clung to him formed a vision in his mind: the prince of Pelucir caught on that strange battlefield between the Hunter and the Wolf. The sun still hung above the mountain it was late afternoon. Hungry he changed shape and hunted the lower meadows forgetting for a brief hour everything except what the wind told him or the earth underfoot or the small movements among the wildflowers. He took his own shape again and stepped through memory and time back up to the mountaintop. The white wolf moved out of the shadows to meet him. Atrix stopped the fear flared through him again coloring his shadow. The wolf changed shape. Talis stood on the high barren peak trembling a little wind shaken as if he had been pulled too abruptly out of a dream. He said confused Atrix Wolfe. Can you see me I can see you Atrix said grimly. Far too clearly. How did I Did you file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 95 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html She sent you here. The Queen of the Wood. The prince s lenses flashed catching light. He slid them straight silently and cast a glance around them and then down the slope still searching it seemed for a vanished world. Talis Atrix said and touched him lightly trying to wake him. The prince looked at him again still stunned. She should never have done this. He ll kill you. You must go I ll take you down No. Talis Listen You listen. Talis reached out suddenly caught the worn cloth over Atrix s breast in both hands shook him. Color streaked the prince s face he was not seeing Atrix the mage realized or the mountain his eyes were filled with trees light the hushed secret green of the wood. I told her yes. To whatever she wanted. If this is what she wants then this is where I stay on this mountain with you until the moon rises and turns black and falls out of the sky. You made your choice on Hunter s Field the night I was born. I have made mine. She wants you. She needs me to bring you to her and between the two of us we will find a way or blood of Pelucir will be shed on a mountain in Chaumenard and that will be on your head too. He loosed Atrix stepped back breathing quickly. He added You lied to the mages of Chaumenard. You lied to Pelucir and to Kardeth. You lied in your writings. Why should you expect me to listen to you For a moment Atrix could not answer. Then a long finger of light cut between them the last dazzling light of day and he found an answer in it. I watched your father die on Hunter s Field he said. I will not watch you die here not for the sake of any woodland queen. I promised your brother I would bring you back to him wherever you were. And then I promised him he could kill me. You will leave this place before the sun sets. This is not your battle and you are not powerful enough to argue the point with me. You promised Burne A sudden evening wind rocked Talis a step he caught his balance staring at Atrix. Burne can t He reached out to Atrix again more gently. Listen to me. You can t I can t what What can t I do Tell me that: where the limits are to what I can do. You can t bring my father back to life by letting Burne kill you. You can t leave your ghost to haunt Pelucir. Argue with Burne Argue with me later but not here and not now. I ll take you to the school. Stay there. Tell them there what is happening here under the Shadow of the Wolf warn them to stay away Atrix listen. Talis voice held a sharp urgent note that snagged Atrix s attention an instant before he moved. The Hunter has a name. What You never knew that. She sent me here to tell you that. She Atrix turned his hands locking on Talis arms. He is my making he has no other name but mine Listen. Think back. What did you make the Hunter out of Night. Atrix s voice shook. Blood. Fire. Fury. Despair. All the terrors and nightmares I found on that field What could she know of him What else He no longer saw the prince s face he saw snow streaked winds a field of fire and snow trees as bare as bone crowning a hill buried in winter a wood through which desperate weary file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 96 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html animals fled the desperate hunters stalking them. Starving deer. Hunter. Ravens. Warriors. Hunters. You took humans No. Only their skills. Their desires. The memory of them in animals minds from the wood. And what else The new moon. And what else The prince held him again tightly his voice as implacable as stone hammering stone. And what else Atrix demanded of his memories. And what else Snow night wind fire the wood on the hill. His breath caught. A green mist flushed across the trees across the barren field. He entered again the wood of his dreams. Did I take something of hers he whispered when I worked that spell He paused again remembering the glimpse of the green wood he had caught in the Hunter s eye. Someone Light faded between them left the prince s face without expression. His name Talis said is Ilyos. He came to them as if summoned. His horse s hooves sparked fire from the granite they barely touched his hounds howled beside him. The new moon smoldered through his horns. His eyes held Talis his hounds swarmed toward the prince who transfixed by the sight seemed incapable of moving. The Hunter lifted a hand pulled the moon from between his horns and threw it at Talis. Drawkcab he said. The black moon streaked through the twilight as if it had fallen out of the sky. Talis spellbound raised his hands to catch it. Atrix shattered it into a shower of burning tears. Ilyos he cried and the Hunter s face swung toward him. Atrix felt the shock of his memories and then of his sudden overwhelming rage. Atrix caught Talis wrist hid them both within a dream of the green wood trees rising still and endless around them spilling light between their leaves. The Hunter rode through the wood. Every oak branch blazed with fire a dark moon hung from every oak. The ground shook beneath his horse s hooves lightning snapped from his hounds teeth. Xirta Eflow he said. Atrix Wolfe. Atrix felt Talis slip from his grip. Atrix Talis called from very far away it seemed from the other side of night. Talis he shouted and saw a black streak split the burning wood a dark road leading to the black moon rising above the wood. Talis ran down the road. Atrix he called and as burning oak began to fall across the road between them he called again Drawkcab. Fire began to streak down the path behind Talis. Atrix his heart burning melted through the fire after the prince and found himself moving down the pale cold glittering path of the rising moon. Silver turned gold all around him in their secret ways the oak watched. He turned bewildered moon and sun spun together above him in the sky. The Queen of the Wood rode the path of gold through the oak to meet him. Her following rode with her. He saw faces of layered leaf and pale birch and woven willow among more human faces which ageless and secret held little human expression. As in his dream the Queen carried a bow. He scarcely noticed it for as in his dream her face was like nothing he had ever seen it seemed to belong in the places he loved most among the elegant wild faces of wolf and hawk and snow leopard the faces in mountains in amber in blue file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 97 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html running water so cold it burned. She raised the bow he watched light through the windblown leaves above her pick out a strand of fire in her hair and then a strand of gold. He felt Talis beside him then heard his quick startled breathing. Then the wind in the oak trees around them roared through leaf and branch. A rider behind the Queen with a face of smooth leaves opened nut green eyes to stare at Atrix. Lightning leaped out of nowhere struck the ground at Atrix s feet. He melted instinctively into the sudden violent whip of air and light. Then he heard Talis voice and reappeared in time to feel the next bolt or perhaps an arrow from the Queen s upraised bow bore into his heart. He heard Talis voice again somewhere above him. He felt oak leaves under his face his hands within his heart something burned past bearing. He felt Talis hands gripping him heard words form in the wild chaotic winds. I didn t bring him to you for this It doesn t matter he whispered to the leaves but Talis heard him. It matters he said sharply. We need you. His voice angled away. Please. You need him too. You want him to find Saro for you. I have found sorrow for her Atrix told him silently the prince read his mind. It s her daughter. Saro. You did something to her that night. She vanished out of the wood into the world. That s why the Queen sent you dreams. To summon you. But you couldn t come to her so she called me instead because I can see her in the world and you never could. She used me to bring you here. Atrix opened his eyes. Talis knelt over him shielding him for some reason that Atrix could not fathom. He said blankly Saro. Then he lifted his head raised himself on one arm to see the Queen s face. He saw her poised arrow first and then her fierce and troubled eye. He said incredulously I took your daughter too Saro she said in the voice out of her dreams and then grew very still the bowstring pulled taut her eye and the arrow s blind eye fixed on Atrix s fate. He waited his own breath stopped. Then she loosed the bow and arrow let them slide from her hands drop to the ground. Talis hands loosened he still knelt supplicant in the oak leaves his face as pale as moonlight until she spoke again. No. I did not bring him here for this. The Queen dismounted. Atrix groped for Talis shoulder pulled himself painfully to his feet keeping a hand on the prince as Talis stood. Tell me he said heavily to the Queen whose eyes like his were shadowed with his past. Tell me what I have done. To Ilyos. To Saro. Ilyos was my consort she said Saro our daughter. You took them both from me that night I have never seen them since. He stared at her and felt the fading fire in his heart leap through him burn dryly behind his eyes. Sorrow he said shaken by the word. When you spoke in my dreams that was always what I heard. Now you know why. Now I know he whispered. Her face was colorless expressionless within the fall of her hair she gave him for the moment nothing but words. I do not expect to see Ilyos again. Not alive not after what your power forced him to do. But I want Saro. She is in your world. Find her. I don t know what you care about except Talis. I will free him now because he did what I asked: He brought you to me. But I will take him and file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 98 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html keep him until Pelucir is only a memory in mortals minds if you fail to find Saro. If you ever love again I will take what you love if you fail to find Saro. I will take whatever peace you find waking and there will be no peace ever in your dreams if you fail to find Saro. I will find Saro he said softly. There is no need to threaten me. Her face changed then its icy stiffness trembling a little. Color touched it. You have so much power she said and so little regard for your life you would have let me kill you. I don t know what you care about enough to threaten you with. I am still alive he reminded her. I seem to care about that. And you have already threatened me with Talis life. It seems I care about that too. She was silent then studying him her brows knit as if he spoke a language she did not expect. She said slowly I spoke to you in your dreams. I rode through them. I sent you portents images. But I never saw your face. I thought you would be different. You thought he suggested painfully I would resemble what I had made. I thought she said you would be less human. Arrogant thoughtless dangerous with power. Or perhaps I should say more human. I have been all of those things. Talis stirred under his hand turned to look at him. There are rules he reminded Atrix tightly governing the choices of powerful and dangerous mages. I know Atrix said painfully. Such rules are made by powerful and dangerous mages who are also more or less human. You will forgive me for that night on Hunter s Field long before I will ever forgive myself. Talis lenses flashed away from him. Perhaps he breathed to the ground then looked at the mage again still aloof but curious. How will you find Saro I don t know. First I must deal with what I have made. Tell me he said to the Queen something about your consort. Anything. She was silent again her hands locked on her arms her face mist pale as she gazed into the winter mists of memory. He has the power of the wood she said finally. Of oak and the red deer and the running stream. Time means little to him. He She stopped then stopped Atrix as he began to speak. He will not die as humans die. She stopped him again her hand upraised her eyes dark. One thing more. He loved Saro. He must not find you with her. They heard you speaking that night. A wolf Saro said. Later when I could think I had that small piece to wonder about. Names drift into my world dreams enchantments. Saro gave me a name before she vanished. So I began to listen for it Atrix Wolfe. He bowed his head. And you gave me a word. How will I find you if I need you Talis will guide you here. Her face softened then at the name. She turned to the prince took his hands in hers. You have been very faithful and very brave. She touched his cheek with her fingers then kissed him. Thank you. Now I will send you back. Where he asked bewildered as if he had only dreamed Pelucir. To your world. His hands shifted locked around her hands as if he were sliding into deep water. I have kept you long enough. Not long. His voice shook. Not long at all. Will I see you again She did not answer. She stepped back from them both began to fade. Atrix caught Talis moving blindly in her wake. The prince twisted away from him but found no place to go in the empty moonlit wood except to the castle rising across the silent field. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 99 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Nineteen Talis walked into a hall full of weary bedraggled hunters. Moving with a mage s ways out of habit he had avoided the gate and the guards it must have seemed he realized that he had formed out of shadow and torch fire for the pale faces and bloodshot eyes around him were as immobile as if he had cast a spell over them. He said to the statue that was Burne I m back. Burne stood up his chair fell over. Behind him a mound of fish skeletons carried by a startled servant tilted on the tray and slid like leaves to the floor. Other servants leaped to life righted the King s chair settled Talis into the empty chair beside the King poured wine. Burne staring at Talis sat down again slowly. You re all right Talis nodded staring into his cup. Fingers glided like silk across his cheek the corner of his mouth still burned. He felt her kiss again brief and sweet her lips the secret closed petals of a rose. Fire shivered across the dark wine he picked up the cup and drank. I m all right he said to Burne. Servants laid things on his plate he gazed at them without interest. Around him people came to life again murmuring but softly so they could listen. Well where were you Burne demanded. In the wood. In her wood. We hunted for you we searched everywhere every day. The mage He stopped his face tightening. That mage said you were in a dream. It was him she wanted. He lifted the cup again. She needed me to find him. That was all. So you found him. Yes. So he s with her now. Yes. He put the cup down again without drinking. No. She needs him to find her child. I don t know where he is. In Chaumenard I think. Do you know that Atrix Wolfe Yes. His hands locked around the cup he sat silently trying to be patient with the cold grey stones the unshaven untidy hunters the flickering candles the tapestries that if lifted would only reveal more stone. If he did not look at the walls he could see the green wood leaves trembling around him as if a hand had just brushed them. If he did not look she would be among them Talis. He looked up saw massive grey squares of stone unkempt faces jewelled hands that moved among fire and gold without grace. Burne s face haggard and furrowed with sleeplessness looked oddly unfamiliar. What What is wrong with you You ve been gone for days trapped in another world you ve found the mage responsible for the death of our father and the horror on Hunter s Field we ve ridden ourselves into wraiths looking for you and now you re back and you can t seem to speak in file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 100 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html words longer than one syllable Are you under some spell Yes. He was on his feet before he thought cup in his hands wanting to throw it for no good reason except that stones were not leaves and shadow was not light. Yes he said again. I am under some spell. Around him faces had turned immobile again. No. I m not under some spell. I wish I were. I would give anything to be spellbound. Burne set his own cup down slowly. If he said one word Talis knew it would be the wrong word and any word would be too many. He waited tense unable to leave for there was no place to go unable to stay and keep looking at Burne s tired human face. We need you too Burne said and then he was sitting again his heart battered and rent but somehow still alive. He drank more wine ate something unable to speak aware of Burne s silence his unusual patience. Talis said finally wearily when some of the faces had turned away from him and random conversations disguised the attention on him What do you want me to do Be here Burne pleaded for a start. You re the only one here who knows anything at all about sorcery and you must know by now what rose with the moon to ride again on Hunter s Field. Atrix Wolfe is still fighting it. Him. He ate another tasteless bite and heard her voice again: His name is Ilyos. He swallowed forced himself to speak. In Chaumenard. Atrix drove him there. Will it stay there I don t know. Maybe they ll kill each other Burne said without hope. Another thing: We can t find that book. What book Atrix Wolfe s book. He said we had to get it out of the castle: It is connected to the Hunter somehow. I don t understand but the mage thought it was important. It s in the keep. It s not in the keep. I looked. You went up there Talis said sharply. I didn t trust anyone else to look. There are bindings and pages scattered everywhere nothing is left whole. He said it would be unharmed. Either he was wrong or it wasn t there. He. He sat silently his brows knit brooding over the mage. Atrix Wolfe he said softly to the candlelight Talis could not read the expression in his eyes. Talis said hunched over his cup scattering words so that he didn t have to think: The book is a lie words in it are untrue the spells go awry. He was writing one spell and thinking always of another. That s why the book is so dangerous. He wrote down mirror but thought Hunter. He wrote water and thought Hunter. The words twisted in his thoughts in his writing of them. Because he is so powerful each act must be unambiguous. And he hasn t had a thought without the Hunter in it since that night. Why Burne asked the candle as if it were the mage. The flame stilled reflected in his eyes. Talis shook his head silently seeing the wood on the hill the winter wood the mage saw the green timeless wood he had torn into. A mistake an accident a thoughtless impulse there seemed no word for it. Ask him he said finally. He was there. I wasn t. You don t want an answer from me. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 101 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He stayed away from the keep until morning. In his dreams he wandered through a leafless wood searching for something: for green for a white deer a tree full of autumn leaves. The only deer he saw were brown thin in the bitter cold. Go home they said. It is always winter now. When he woke he rose and went to a window. He felt his heart leap toward that secret cloud of green on the hill. He could go there he could wait among the trees asking nothing but a little water a nut now and then simply wait among her trees hoping she might notice him lay a hand of light upon his cheek a rose against his mouth. He went into the keep instead. He searched awhile among the torn damp pages. He recognized them all and none of them were Atrix s. Perplexed and uneasy he found the guards who had been with him in the keep when the Hunter had returned. They had taken nothing they had seen no one for there was no one in the castle who would venture up there after that except the King who had looked also and found nothing. He stayed away from the wood until noon. Then he rode without thought and without hope through the trees heard them whisper around him the birds sing a language she understood. She seemed to stand just beyond eyesight in every fall of light her reflection had just vanished out of every stream he crossed. He returned to the castle at sunset. Trumpeters at the gate told of his return he was told three times before he even set foot on the ground that the King wanted him. He found Burne pacing on the parapet walk overlooking Hunter s Field. What is it Talis asked. What happened Burne stopped pacing and looked at him. Nothing apparently he said tersely. But how am I to know that when you vanish Oh. He leaned into a crenellation losing whatever fleeting interest he had in Burne s worries. He watched the fiery green of the wood at sunset fade into a cool shadowed green as the light drained out of it. Sam he thought without hope. If I could find Saro before Atrix Wolfe does perhaps she would love me then Burne had said something he realized and turned reluctantly from the wood. Book Atrix Wolfe s book. Oh. No. I went up and looked this morning. He felt wind at his cheek and closed his eyes. I didn t find it. Talis. What She knows where to find you if she wanted you. He opened his eyes touched his lenses straight with a trembling hand. I know he breathed. Of course I know. Why do you think that makes any difference I suppose it wouldn t. What was it like there What do you see when you ride in the wood Is it so different there Talis shook his head unable to say having no words for the taste of light for the intensity in the air where she might appear. She doesn t want me he said at last his face turned to the wood again. She won t take me like she did before. You don t have to fear that. Burne s hand fell heavily onto his shoulder closed. Is she that cruel he asked incredulously. To leave you like this Cruel things were done to her. He watched the wood a moment longer a still twilight world file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 102 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html growing opaque with shadow his own face haunted drained of light. Then he sighed and looked at Burne. You warned me he said. But how did you know Burne shrugged. I don t know. How does anyone learn these things. He was Talis realized with a touch of interest avoiding Talis eyes. Let s go in. We re still under siege at night until the mage tells us otherwise. I don t understand how even he can be in danger from his own spell. It makes no sense to me. That is the other reason the Queen wanted Atrix Wolfe. He told Burne the tale during supper made him see the winter night again the cold wind blowing between worlds snow falling in the green wood into the burning horns of the Queen s consort the snow streaked wind hiding the Queen s daughter carrying her away into a world of chaos death and dark enchantments. Burne grim and astonished pushed the venison on his plate away as if it might have had magical origins. What a nightmare he said. A single night s work. Where will he even begin to look for the child Here I suppose. In Pelucir. And then wherever he goes for the rest of his life. He paused watching Burne s face his eyes still unreadable behind his lenses. Atrix Wolfe cast the spell he said. But we gave him the words for it. For an instant Burne saw what he saw. Then the King s face closed and he said harshly War is war. It s as old as breathing and he made himself part of it. He forged the best weapon and he took the field. If he was too innocent to know what he was doing that s his fault. And he s paying for it. Talis drank. He is paying for our father s death he said somberly. Let s hope he doesn t pay with his life or we ll be under siege for the rest of ours. He rode out to the wood again the next day and the next. The wood in his dreams was empty barren the wood of his waking hours was hardly less empty except for the hunters in it for none of the guests wanted to risk the fate of Burne s messengers and they needed to be fed. He rode with them a time or two hoping to be struck from his horse by Oak and hobble out of water to see the Queen of the Wood. The noise the arrows slicing randomly into trees birds deer the excited triumphant fanfares for death only made him impatient and despondent. He wandered back up into the keep one morning and began to clean up the litter of ripped parchment and broken wood. He was he told Burne searching for the mage s book: Since it could be nowhere else it must be there. But he knew it was no longer in the keep. It had opened itself its grim power had escaped and looking for it seemed pointless. A book that could find its way out of solid granite into a mop closet and then into Pelucir to summon a mage and his making would not reveal itself at some human whim. He himself wary of sorcery summoned a broom and a hammer to the keep he swept up glass and nailed the table back together burned the broken buckets and the fragments of spells. The ghosts on the walls seemed to pause sometimes to watch him they turned away from his eyes but he felt theirs as if they saw into him knowing that the light that fell into the keep was not the light that filled his eyes knowing that the memory he looked for on the walls had nothing to do with theirs. Burne suspicious came up to see him. You re not he said succinctly beginning that again. The book is gone Talis sighed. Nothing else I can do is dangerous. And I promise: no sorcery in here until the Hunter is dead. You re not staying up here Burne shouted. You nearly lost your life here I want you down where I can see you surrounded by the living instead of by ghosts. If you re not in the wood file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 103 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html hunting a dream you re up here courting disaster Can t you take an interest in anything human Talis startled by his vehemence heard his own voice unexpectedly raised almost unfamiliar. How he demanded. When I have been surrounded all my life by ghosts I grew up knowing how these ghosts died This war has never ended Atrix kept it alive and you and everyone in this house blaming sorcery blaming Kardeth Can you blame me for taking what peace I can in the only place where I recognize the word You might as well be pining after a ghost Burne snapped. You re in love with your own memories. Nothing else. She ll give you nothing now but pain. And there will be little more of you up here than what haunts these walls. Talis stared at him tight lipped. He flung down the hammer in his hand walked to the window. His vision cleared after a moment. The window gave him a view of his thoughts: Hunter s Field the Queen s wood. He turned his face after a moment pushed it against the stones. I can t help her he whispered. And Atrix Wolfe can. She doesn t need me. She needs him. There s nothing left for me to do for her. I can t even help you. All I can do is wait and for what For the emptiness in that wood in my dreams to wear away at my heart until I can no longer feel. And then I can live among the living again. Is that what you want Atrix Wolfe Burne said tightly. Atrix Wolfe. Why is his name always underfoot His voice rose again. Can you be reasonable He killed her consort Or as good as killed him What makes you think you must be jealous of him Talis lifted his face from the stones stared at them. Then he turned to stare at Burne again. I have to hate him. Light fell between them for once it held no imminence of memory. Otherwise I might forgive him. And I was raised with too many ghosts to do that. No one Burne said shouting again said you had to forgive him We weren t arguing about him How did she turn into him I don t know. His voice shook. It s a tangled piece of magic to unravel what happened on Hunter s Field. I have to understand what happened to him that night or it will haunt me and any sorcery I ever do again. How will I ever trust anything I ever do if his magic could twist itself into such terrible shapes wear such a terrible face I have to understand him. I wish Burne said between his teeth I could understand you. He turned abruptly nearly colliding in the doorway with the mute ghost of a girl who came up with Talis tray. She flinched he glanced at the tray and fumed again. Take that back to the kitchen You can at least eat among the living instead of the dead. He added as she pulled herself and her tray aside so he could pass her eyes wide unfocused with alarm And find that spellbook. If he says it s dangerous it s dangerous he should know. It will give you something to do besides haunt the keep and the wood. It s not All right Talis said wearily to Burne s back. He moved to retrieve the tray pulled into the King s wake. But it seemed in the unpredictable shadows to have magicked itself away. Catching up with Burne at the bottom of the steps he glimpsed nothing either of the tray or of its bearer. Maybe she s a ghost he mused. Burne caught his arm but gently. I m trying to be patient he said. I m trying to understand. I know. Who s a ghost That girl. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 104 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html What girl He ate with the King made soothing meaningless noises to the anxious guests and went back to the keep afterward to shut up the room for the sake of some peace with Burne. He found the spellbook lying on the table. He did not touch it. He sat down on the window ledge and gazed at it his eyes wide still as he thought. No one comes up here the guards had said. No one ever comes A face appeared in his mind s eye: pale silent utterly insignificant. He watched her walk into the room carrying his tray watched her look here there and then at him with her face that kept changing eyes he could never remember. She had come once at night he recalled suddenly to tell him something but she could not speak. She had come up alone in the dark to tell him something. No one ever comes here. You come here he whispered. Nothing that exists is insignificant Atrix Wolfe had written in the book that had returned to him. He left it there and went to find her. Twenty Saro watched him. She leaned over the edge of the cauldron. The prince moved through the dark water down through the keep his face visible as light from the narrow windows flashed over him then obscured by the sudden dense shadows. He did not carry the spellbook. She watched him thoughtlessly out of habit not knowing at what moment he might turn his head and see what she had seen. In the past she had watched him ride through a wood that seemed a reflection of the wood the cauldron dreamed: Like him she searched for things in it she could not find for faces emerging out of leaves out of light. She had watched him burn torn pages in the keep feeding broken spells one by one to the hungry flame. She had watched him lean against the moving shadows on the wall take off his lenses and weep. Saro the tray mistress had said earlier. Saro saw the heavy silver tray in her hands: onion soup with a melting crust of cheese over it a loaf of dark bread a flagon of wine a tart of oranges sliced into thin bright circles glistening under a glaze that smelled of ginger. Nobody will go up there but you. So she left her cauldron to take the tray to the prince in the keep. Nobody questioned her when the tray came back down intact nor when still wide eyed she shut the book under the spit boys watching eyes and hurried out with it. He wants his book back the tray mistress guessed. One of the undercooks muttered Never worked anyway. Now the prince walked out of the keep into the yard. Light floated across the water angles of cloudy blue above harsh angles of stone. He did not enter the house again he came along the outer wall as she had gone the narrow neglected stretch where the wildflowers grew between the house and the wall. Guards and pages hurrying past looked astonished at the sight of him. The strip of ground widened at the corner of the house into the kitchen garden with its long tidy rows of herbs and vegetables its vast woodpile its moldering midden. Wood boys splitting logs snagged their upraised axes on air staring at the prince. He rounded the file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 105 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html woodpile ahead of him the garden rows ended in a high stone wall that hid its unseemly sprawling squash vines and lettuces from the formal gardens beyond it. He turned onto the worn path that ended at the open kitchen door. Saro lifted her head blinking. Noises and movement in the kitchen behind her stopped dead. She turned saw everyone cooks mincers spit boys frozen over pots knives fires staring at the kitchen door. She shifted saw the shadow falling through the doorway and blinked again feeling some word trying to come alive in her throat. She stood up slowly and met the prince s eyes. The tray mistress raising her apron to her mouth made a muffled exclamation into it. The prince s eyes moved to her. I don t know her name he said. The tray mistress moved her apron and wobbled a curtsy. Saro my lord she said. For a moment staring at Saro he seemed as frozen as everyone staring at him. Then he lifted a hand touched his lenses. A word tried to come out of him and failed Saro saw with wonder. His eyes went back to the tray mistress. She doesn t speak She never has my lord the tray mistress said faintly. She rallied herself apron to her heart and added Never since she was found. Where Out there beside the woodpile. When The tray mistress shook her head speechless again. Years ago my lord she said finally. Just after the winter siege we found her just a scrap of a child barely alive in the cold and mute as a mop. My lord. He touched his lenses again they turned back to Saro. Then how he asked huskily did you know her name She was someone s sorrow the tray mistress said simply. So we called her that. She saw her name in his face then in his eyes glittering suddenly behind the lenses. He pulled them off brushed the back of his sleeve across his face. A spit boy made a soft noise then went frozen again staring. Everyone else seemed to unfreeze as if the prince s tears had broken some spell. The head cook asked amazed Who is she my lord Can you tell us She s been down here scrubbing pots all of your life. And then she got your book somehow. She s something magical Yes. He looked at the head cook. No one thought to tell the King We were thinking yes the tray mistress said hastily. But you weren t here to tell then and she We knew she watched you the head cook interrupted in that cauldron. We found the spell in your book and we asked her to find you. We could see her watching you see the magic in her eyes. But none of us could see you and she couldn t speak and all the King would have seen was a pot of water and a mute pot scrubber and a kitchen full of mad fools. Still we ve been thinking of how to tell him the tray mistress said but he s been so so fraught. Scalding you might say if you ll forgive me my lord. When he wasn t boiling over. The prince stepped into the kitchen gazing at Saro again. She watched him out of habit relieved that he was out of the cauldron and under her eyes but uneasy too since what would file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 106 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html come seemed oddly imminent and she was as far as ever from being able to warn him. He stood silently looking at her for a long time without moving or speaking the kitchen hushed again around him. Nothing about him spoke not even his eyes which seemed dark and secret suddenly like her cauldron when the dreams in it were about to well up from the bottom and glide across the water. Then he moved murmuring something and slid one hand under his lenses to rub his eyes. She s under a very powerful spell he said and enchanted the entire kitchen. The tray mistress sat down on a stool waving her apron at her face. Boner and plate washer nudged each other and whispered. Mincers and pluckers emerged from under the tables to see what he did. The spit boys grinned their fiery eyes clinging to him. Cooks and undercooks forgot their bubbling sauces. The head cook forgot supper. But who is she he asked again. If you can tell us my lord The prince did not answer. He took Saro s hand. Unused to being touched she started to pull away not knowing what he wanted. He kept his hand out open her fingers sliding away from it edged back slowly across hollows and lines and skin that was not her own. She heard a sigh from a plate washer. The prince smiled a little his face opening again briefly before the thoughts slid back across it. I wonder he whispered gazing at her without seeing her as everyone had all her life. I wonder Now they saw her she realized with surprise. As if she had enchanted herself into being with her own magic. He was seeing her again and then not thoughts coming and going in his eyes expressions changing. No he decided finally aloud I can t tell Burne. He looked at the head cook. You tell him. Tell the King what my lord the head cook asked bewildered. Where I ve gone. And that would be Back into the wood. The wood. The head cook rubbed a lifted eyebrow with his thumbnail and added without hope Hunting my lord Not that wood Talis said evenly. The head cook closed his eyes briefly. My lord Talis he breathed show some mercy to him you just came back. He ll throw a table at me and have me cook it for his supper nails and all. I know. Talis voice was soft but inflexible. But magic has laid siege to this house again and I can t fight it locked inside. Atrix Wolfe the head cook said then stopped abruptly his face a pale hard mask of itself. What has the wood got to do with what Atrix Wolfe made Or with Saro It s all his magic the prince said. Saro looked at him hearing things in his voice like something searing too long in a pan or a sauce boiling too quickly instead of simmering. Her fingers tightened on his hand. He looked at her surprised as if she had spoken. His voice cleared. You don t have to tell him that. Or about Saro. Just tell him I have gone back to the Queen s wood. He ll believe I m safe there. But my lord the head cook exclaimed. If you re not then you must not Tell him I ll return as soon as I can. But my lord file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 107 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html What queen the tray mistress asked quickly gazing at Talis the apron bunched between her clasped hands. All around him mouths were open again eyes round some watching him some Saro. Talis face changed as if torchlight or a hand had brushed it. The Queen of the Wood. He paused then added very gently This is her Saro. As he led her out she stopped in the kitchen doorway to cast a glance back at her cauldron wanting it to come with her as if its hard plain shell in which she had washed every pot in the world and all its wordless inner mysteries were a part of her she dared not leave behind. But she had no way to say cauldron to the prince. She tried to lift it with her thoughts but perversely it refused to budge. Talis seemed to feel her loss he looked back quickly and then at her. What is it he asked. Show me. She looked at him. His eyes narrowed slightly surprised perhaps at what they saw in his mind. Then she felt the cauldron s iron strong heavy solid just beneath her skin within her bones and knew she carried its strange visions with her its dark eye was her eye seeing. But like her it was silent and she needed to make words for Talis who waited patiently catching stray arrows of sunlight in his lenses. She felt something simmering in her froth suddenly and begin to rise wanting to spill over its confines pour into the fire. She let it pour. Talis pulled away from her suddenly catching his breath. The kitchen stunned as he was by the flash between them bubbled wildly crowding to the door. Easy girl the tray mistress called anxiously. The prince wants only to help. Go with him quietly. No one will hurt you. Talis held out his hand again. Pale under the warm light he had grown very still all his thoughts indrawn except one: She saw herself every where in his eyes. She felt the wild stirring in her again she wanted to see out of his eyes see what he saw of her what Saro meant. This time she drew the implacable cold iron around the wildness subduing it and put her hand again into his. He led her with him into a dream. Faces turned toward him everywhere he moved always with the same mute question as if they saw the prince out of one eye and the pot scrubber out of the other and could not tell what they were really looking at. A horse was brought to him. He mounted and held out his hand to Saro who took it as she was told and then was in his arms amazed and troubled again with visions: The horse had not been this horse the arms around her holding her steady had not been his. The gates opened slowly green flowed everywhere beyond them blue flowed to meet it farther than anyone could go. They rode toward the wood on the hill. She almost recognized it: These were the pale trees within the cauldron still and streaked with light these were only a reflection of the true dream. This water flowed silver and sweet as honey among ancient roots but somewhere else the same stream flowed as silver as the moon and the deer lifting its head at the sound of hooves water glittering from its mouth was white instead of brown. She felt words like leaves falling endlessly silently through her. Talis spoke now and then listening for the voices of trees she scarcely heard him. Perhaps he spoke to the trees perhaps they answered him. Their boughs seemed to bend over to listen and the light pouring from leaf to leaf onto her face seemed to blind her with its brightness. A woman moved within the light walked out of it to meet them. For a breath the prince was motionless behind Saro. Then his hands spoke to her coaxed her down where she stood at his stirrup trying to see clearly through the light. The woman s face rippled and blurred as if Saro saw her through the file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 108 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html gently moving water in the cauldron. Saro the woman cried finally but her voice startling birds in the trees seemed to come from very far away and the word itself reaching Saro meant nothing to her in that wood. Twenty one Atrix dreamed. The Queen of the Wood and her following pursued a young deer through the wood. The deer was white as milk with eyes the color of hazelnuts. As fast as the hunters rode it ran faster flowing with an impossible grace over fallen trees through streams across thickets and patches of wild rose and brambles. The Queen cried one word again and again sometimes it meant one thing sometimes another. The deer never faltered though it did turn its head to look back at the sound of the Queen s voice. The hunters did not shoot at it for they carried no bows and they did not catch it it was still running when Atrix woke. The sun was beginning to set silvery behind the mist in which Atrix had shrouded the mountain peak. The mist clung day and night to the mountain. The strongest wind could not tear it away. Thunder rolled from it by night sudden fires snapped through it turning it gold purple blood red vivid colors visible even at midnight Atrix knew to those living on the mountain and within the school. It was a warning: the Shadow of the Wolf. The mages would recognize it he could only hope the students tales of the Hunter and the Wolf igniting in their imaginations would not think it worth their lives to penetrate the mist. He had been fighting for years it seemed for centuries. At times he felt he fought time or death itself the granite heart of the mountain the unchanging heart of the moon something he would never vanquish but never cease to battle as long as it existed. At other times he felt that he simply fought his shadow for it matched his every thought and movement. The glimpse he had caught of the Queen s consort had been the glimpse of a ghost a fragment of memory for the Hunter gave Atrix nothing more of a past than the stark faces on Hunter s Field. Nor did he speak. Night fell beyond the mist. Atrix drew himself within stone and waited. He has the power of the wood the Queen had said. He will not die as humans die. The power of oak and the red deer and the running stream the power of the Queen s wood which Atrix had barely known existed. He thought while he waited for the Hunter s hounds to scent him for the fire in the Hunter s horns to draw his shadow out of stone. He knew the shapes of oak and deer and water in the human world. But oak in the Queen s world was rooted to a different power it turned a different face to time and memory. The hunter in the Queen s following whose face was shaped of oak leaves had turned his face to Atrix and Atrix had caught lightning in his heart. He could fashion light out of thought but he could not snag lightning out of the sky let it cleave through him branch and bole and root and capture it within him let it sing silently like sap until he needed it. Ilyos could but where within the Hunter was he to use his powers or to be summoned The Queen s consort had been swallowed by the dark moon it seemed the fiery horns were his bones. The Hunter had killed all memory of him but his name and a moment of light within the wood. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 109 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Ilyos Atrix thought and the rock he hid in shattered. He searched when he could find a crack in time a chink in the Hunter s mind for memories of the Queen s wood. A tangle of oak bough a flash of green were all he saw before the Hunter furious flung him into the wind or halfway down the mountain. Tumbling shapeless on a fierce wind he took the raven s shape and turning saw the Hunter out of an eye black as the moon among his horns. The Hunter watched him. I know you his silence said. I am you. The raven and the dark moon. I am you. A flock of ravens swarmed up from where he stood with eyes like white moons and claws of finger bone. Atrix dropped among them like a black flame into the Hunter s mind as he shaped his ravens and let them fly. Massed rustling feathers in the dark filled his mind the vague shape beneath them motionless but not quite dead. Nothing more: no oak no green so translucent that leaves seemed made of light. Only ravens in the dark silent but never still and the heart s shadow slowly seeping into the snow. Atrix recognized the memory he had woven it this single thread into his spell. A raven lifted its head looked at him as it had on the field. This its glittering eye said. This is all. Sickened despairing he felt the Hunter s sudden attention. The ravens scattered swept away on a furious winter wind. Atrix flew with them withdrawing his mind from the Hunter s thoughts shaping a hair fine strand of light along the wind s path. The Hunter s fire illumined him a thin streak of gold in the mist. Flame billowed toward him he dropped into moon shadows among the broken pillars of stone at the top of the peak became a shadow among them. A hound leaped out of nowhere its claws tearing the shadows away shredding scraps of dark into the wind. Atrix faded into stone the hound smelled the human or the magic within granite and bayed. Its baying vast and too deep to be heard by humans shook the pillars and boulders until they broke fell together and began a thundering slide down the face of the mountain. Atrix falling with them fearing for the school wove a net of thought in their path and caught the wild current of stone crazily wheeling pillars colliding and cracking against massive boulders brought abruptly to a halt. He shattered them like glass. A thin flood of shards and pebbles slid down toward the edge of the mist and stopped. Thoughtless a moment exhausted he shaped more of himself than he realized lying among the debris of the slide. A dark cloud swarmed over him he breathed feathers saw feathers felt them everywhere for a split second while he heard the thin wailing winter winds of Hunter s Field. This is all the ravens said and a talon of darkness stabbed at one eye and then at his heart. He drew himself into a pebble and then slid down between the broken stones until he felt the earth and eased down into that like water deep into it until he found a secret mountain stream and dropped into that flowed with it through the blackness until he smelled pitch and pine and dark thirsty roots. Then he followed rootwork up into night and separated himself from the tree at the edge of the forest. He found the Hunter waiting for him. The massive dark figure crowned with horn and fire the dark smoldering moon above his head the dark hounds circling him restively seemed suddenly to Atrix something ancient and indomitable something he had not made so much as wakened out of himself or out of a place beyond day and time and night. He gazed back at the Hunter shaking battered uncomprehending asking because he did not know what else to ask What are you Are you only what I made that night on Hunter s Field What I made out of the wood and out of that bloody field Or are you something that was never made and never dies The Hunter did not move did not answer but waited his eyes as mute and alien as the file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 110 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html moon as if for a different question. Atrix added gambling without hope I can t let you kill me. I promised the Queen of the Wood that I would find Saro. The world seemed to explode around him. He fled back beneath the mist. As fast as he moved the wild baying hounds moved and no matter what shape he took the dark moon saw him until the true moon finally hid itself behind the mountain and the Shadow of the Wolf around the broken peak turned colorless and silent. He dreamed again: the fleet white deer the unarmed hunters the Queen calling a word that constantly changed yet always sounded the same. The deer leaped across a stream and someone touched him. He vanished as he woke. From somewhere in the air he saw Talis kneeling on the stones where Atrix had been looking around him perplexedly. The prince started at the sudden flash of fear and anger that streaked the air just before Atrix reappeared. Talis He gripped the prince drew him to his feet. What are you doing back here I left you safe in Pelucir. I came through the Queen s wood Talis said. Atrix she needs you What are you doing there Even she sent you back home. Can t you stay with Burne at least until I m finished here Atrix I found Saro. The words made no sense to Atrix for a moment: Saro was a dream a mystery a problem for the future if he had one. Talis said again I found Saro. And your spellbook. She s been in the kitchen all these years cleaning pots until one day she took your book out of the keep and began learning magic. I don t know why or how she knew it was there she can t talk. She needs your help. She barely remembers the wood she doesn t seem to understand the Queen she s under a spell. Your spell. Your magic changed her somehow that night on Hunter s Field. Atrix loosed him sat down slowly on a stone. For once the winds brought him neither strength nor comfort he hunched his frayed human shape against them shivering. She found my book he said amazed. First you then she She had it hidden in the kitchen. The prince paused studying Atrix. You look terrible he said shortly and slid a pack from his shoulder. The Queen thought you might be hungry. Atrix shook his head too weary to eat. Talis opened the pack drew out bread and meat and wine. The wine when he uncorked it smelled like spring air full of pitch and strawberry. Atrix reached for it wordlessly drank. He glanced at the sun it was mid afternoon. I can t leave he said. Talis wrapped bread around roast boar and handed it to him. He waited until Atrix had eaten half of it before he spoke. If you die here he said not entirely dispassionately no one will be able to help Saro. You must come now she says. You can return here before moonrise. Atrix ate another bite. There seemed no argument besides the angle of the sun and that was high enough yet for him to abandon the peak for a while. He nodded chewing. Talis his eyes caught by unexpected emptiness around him said slowly I thought I remembered more crags up here. They broke. Atrix reached for the wine again found Talis staring at him his face shocked stripped of color. He handed Atrix the rest of the bread and meat. Atrix. Are you going to die here I don t know. Atrix was silent a moment staring at nothing then asked What does she look like Saro file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 111 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Like someone who has scrubbed pots in a kitchen for twenty years. Talis smiled a little tightly. You don t see her. No one ever noticed her. But that was part of your magic I think that you could look straight at her and not see the color of her eyes. And her face changes constantly as if winds are always reshaping it. She has never spoken. But her eyes are beginning to speak. She can put her thoughts into my head. When I led her out of the kitchen she let me take her hand. And then for some reason perhaps I frightened her she let a flash of power flow between us that nearly set the woodpile on fire. He paused and got around to Atrix s question. Her hair is the color of wax. I think. Underneath the wood smoke. Her eyes I still can t remember. He paused again flicked a pebble into nowhere. She barely comes up to my shoulder. I thought that knowing about Ilyos would make the battle simpler. Atrix shook his head gazing through his mist at the trees flowing down the mountain. High on the edge he could see a thumbprint of crumpled trunks like a bruise where he had said Saro s name. He what there is of him is furious with me too. But there s something else What the prince asked warily. I don t know. Try. Try to tell me. He added his eyes opaque behind his lenses Who else have you got to listen to you up here Why do you want to listen to me Because I don t want to make your mistake. Atrix flinched. He felt the winds again hard bright painfully cold. No he said hollowly. That s what Hedrix said to me the night he told me that you had my book. That what I should have written was the truth of Hunter s Field so that other mages could learn from it. Instead as you saw I lied. Talis was silent. He rose suddenly took his cloak off and settled it fighting the wind onto Atrix s shoulders. It s frightening he said finally so softly that Atrix strained to hear knowing that someone as powerful and experienced and wise as you could make such a mockery of everything we were taught. Drawkcab Atrix whispered. The other face of power. And yet that s not all If that were all All what All I m fighting. There seems to be a force beyond the war and the wood that I awoke I don t know what it is. Something ancient immutable that I do not recognize and cannot name Talis swallowed dryly touching his lenses. Death. No. Then it is not death. No Atrix said again. Drawkcab Talis said. His voice shook his hands fell suddenly on Atrix s shoulders Atrix felt him trembling. It s your spell. Your word. If it is not death then it is life. Maybe that s what you are fighting Atrix Wolfe. Life. Atrix rose. He was shaking again not with cold but with a sudden haunting vision: the figure hidden beneath the ravens wings blind motionless but still alive. What lay beneath the ravens wings An unknown warrior on Hunter s Field Or himself file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 112 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He said softly not seeing Talis or the mountain or anything in Chaumenard but only night on a field in Pelucir where the merciless winter winds blew out of memory to shake him now I cannot see past or future beyond that night. Time stopped that night. The White Wolf ceased to exist that night. I cannot see beyond the Hunter s face. He is the shape of my power I cannot change that. Why Talis whispered did you make him I was trying to end the siege. Trying to make Riven of Kardeth retreat. To keep Pelucir and Chaumenard safe. That s all. And I did all of those things. But I turned myself into something even more terrible than the army of Kardeth. And that s what I fight now and what I cannot seem to change. He paused looking at Talis wondering how much he understood. I took the shapes of what I saw on Hunter s Field. I don t know how to change the shape of death. Talis drew breath Atrix could not read the expression behind his lenses. You must find a way the prince said. His voice shook. Atrix Wolfe. You can t die here and leave us with the Hunter. You can t die at Burne s hands in Pelucir. Kings of Pelucir don t kill great mages of Chaumenard. Your shadow would fall across Pelucir as long as the name exists. Your death would haunt Burne all his life. You must find another way. Talis eyes glittered behind his lenses struck by the cold edge of wind or by an edge of sorrow. He reached out touched Atrix gently. You must find a way to live. Atrix followed Talis through his own mist though he could not see what the prince saw that led him unfalteringly through Atrix s blank enchantment to the place where mist frayed into memory and the green wood rose about them. Perhaps he thought the enchantment lay in Talis his heart s need found the wood when the Queen s need summoned him. The Queen waited for them. Her daughter stood beside her. Atrix swallowed sound when he saw her appalled for no spell he might have imagined could have been so thorough or so cruel. She was slight as Talis had said and very thin barefoot and dressed in something shapeless colorless. Her eyes narrowed on his face as if she saw him dimly through a harsh snow flecked wind. They did not lack color but it was nothing that the eye retained long enough to name. Nothing about her held the attention long for as soon as attention focused her face would alter slide away begin to disappear. But she had her father s power. He said to her Saro. My name is Atrix Wolfe. He felt the sudden riveting response to his name the inner eye of power. He looked at the Queen then. Her hands were linked hard around Saro s hand her face unlike her daughter s was unforgettable and at the moment as unchangeable as stone. She said She does not know me. She will Atrix said softly. She remembers me. He added with care She has a very strong power which may become uncontrolled when she remembers that night. It will be focused at me. You may be hurt if you hold her. The Queen s mouth thinned her eyes were cold as winter stars. I will not part from her again. Do what you came to do. He bowed his head. Then he put his hands very gently on Saro s shoulders to channel the flow of her wild power and found her eyes. They saw and did not see color seemed always to recede. Her lips moved soundlessly they shaped her name. Yes he said. Saro And then the mountain winds of Chaumenard seemed to pour through the wood stripping leaves from the trees tearing away limbs. Birds beat against the winds calling the Queen file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 113 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html cried out and pulled Saro close to her staring at what had ridden down the winds into her wood. Saro said the Hunter and around him the ancient oak trees kindled lightning in their boughs. Twenty two Saro slipped free of the Queen and ran into the Hunter s path. For an instant facing him she stood in snow. Winds snarled like wolves around them the flame in his horns streamed wildly behind him the black moon rose above the fire hung in a mist of white. A word filled her mouth it meant him she knew but she could not find it to say it and she could not find him in that masked feral face crowned with fire and horn. Voices cried at her beyond the snow streaked winds as he rode toward her they were the cries of startled fleeing birds. Saro. Found she thought transfixed in the Hunter s eye. Found. And as the snows of memory melted away and light fell over them both she felt bewildered and impatient with both their mute faces as if neither belonged in that falling light in that wood. Saro a bird cried. And then again in the prince s voice Saro She whirled. Talis stood beneath one of the fuming oak trees. Light ran like a live thing behind him through every branch every leaf even its roots beneath the ground sent up an eerie web of light. His lenses were flashing in that brilliance at Saro at the Hunter at Atrix who vanished suddenly under a whip of light at the Queen who stood spellbound her eyes on the Hunter tears like hard cut jewels glittering down her face. Saro Talis called desperately as the dark hounds flowed toward her and she felt their hot breath on her skin. His lenses flashed again and she caught her breath in horror. The hounds reached her milling through the soft air like thunderbolts silent yet dangerous about to explode after the lightning struck. But she had no time for their coal eyes. Talis moved with a strange underwater slowness snagged a strand of light from the oak between his fingers. His eyes went to the Hunter his hand began to rise. Something flashed through Saro as if she were oak struck and burning with power. Her throat moved sounds and shapes tangled together fighting to get out. Something struggled free dropped out of her mouth but it was only a hard jewel of light. Talis hand arched high stopped. Light wove through his fingers. A small dark bird pushed its way out of Saro s mouth and flew panicked crying her word in its own language. Tears dropped cold and diamond hard from her eyes. The light flared in Talis hand. Then an arrow of white fire streaked from the Hunter toward Talis and Saro felt something that was not bird or jewel but torn out of her breath and blood and heart shaping the one word she knew. Saro she cried and Talis face swung toward her. The Hunter s fire struck the edge of his lens and shattered it. The power flung him back against the oak. He slid limply its light wove a gleaming web around him. Its roots lifted long swollen fingers to grip him as he fell hold him fast to earth. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 114 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He shuddered once his face turning blindly toward the Hunter and then lay still. Atrix appeared beside him suddenly kneeling one hand on Talis the other uplifted toward the Hunter whose hounds flowed in a dark circle around the oak. The Hunter his eyes fixed on the fallen prince rode inexorably as night his hand rising again his horse s hooves beating an unswerving path toward mage and prince as if what stood before him were of no more substance than air or light. Another word struggled out of heart and need and the memory of a harsh winter night Saro screamed Father The horse reared above her she saw a confusion of hooves and sky and glowing trees. Then hooves thudded down like stone beside her and the horse stood still as stone. She watched her father s face emerge beneath the Hunter s face as it emerged in her memory. His eyes changed color black fading to the light dusty gold of ripe acorns. She felt her own face change then lost expressions and memories surfacing reshaping her as he found her among his own memories. His eyes loosed her finally to find the Queen standing among her trees the tears melting now burning down her face. Saro she said. Ilyos. He made a sound that might have come out of the split heart of an oak. His gaze swept across the trees the shimmering webs of lightning withdrew into them. He lifted his hand: Mist the colors of leaf and light gathered around them so that they stood together in the private wood of memory. He bent carefully under the weight of the burning horns. His trembling hand touched Saro s face. He breathed her name. She closed her eyes felt his touch in memory on an endless summer day. I can say them now she whispered. All the words you taught me before I learned sorrow. He made another sound a word with no shape that spoke of sorrow. His hand slid away from her to the Queen who had come to stand beside Saro. He caught her tears in his fingers. You are crying. His voice shook. You could never cry before. She caught his hand in hers held it to her eyes her mouth. I learned she said into his palm. Still gripping him she reached out to Saro held her tightly wiping her tears in Saro s hair. Saro twisted her hands into her father s cloak clung to it her eyes moving from face to face as she saw her strange past unfold from green wood to stone kitchen to wood again from their child to no one s child and now the Hunter s child. I saw you she told him feeling the tears on her own face. In my cauldron. In my dreams. Drawkcab you said to me. Your eyes found me. He shook his head wordlessly. Some part of me found you he said at last. Some part of me must always have been trying to return. He was silent again struggling with his own past she saw the shadows of it in his eyes the Hunter s face lying in wait beneath his face. He whispered I did not even see you. You were nothing to me. If you were something I did not hate then you were nothing. And then you spoke and summoned out of me what you had loved. You changed then. The Queen s hand loosed Saro stroked her hair then held her again. Saro gazed into her eyes remembering the gold and dark remembering her voice her touch and how she thought she would have those things forever. One moment you could not speak you were a small pale shadowy wraith you could not remember me Then you spoke and broke the mage s spell yourself. Saro turned suddenly in her hold looked back her father s mist his past and future. Sorrow file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 115 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html burned she learned then like dry kindling like scalding water. I had to she said to him. The words ached in her throat. I saw you kill Prince Talis long ago in my wash cauldron. I tried to learn to speak to warn him. But I saw what I saw. There were only words for that. Prince Talis. He was kind to me. She swallowed pain again which seemed to come with language. His eyes saw me. Death was the last word you taught me. His face twisted away from her. It is the only word I know now. Ilyos the Queen said urgently and he looked down again a terrible darkness fading from his eyes. Ilyos. Stay with us. You have found my wood again. You have found us. Stay. This is a dream he said wearily. This is only a dream. I am Atrix Wolfe s making. If I could stay if somehow I could unweave myself from his spell and stay I would burn these woods again with memory. I was born that night. These Hunter s hands are my hands these hounds and burning horns are mine. I died that night. There is nothing left of Ilyos but memory. His voice faded he gazed at her remembering. Her face grew still then tearless. Saro sensed something waking in her a word growing secret and very powerful. Stay the Queen said softly. If you are nothing but memory then stay. Here among my memories. He started to speak stopped. Words passed between them without shape without sound. He began to tremble the Queen s hold tightened on his hand. Stay she said again. But Saro heard other things the secret language beneath words. The Queen clung to them both her eyes moving back and forth between their faces gathering memories like flowers. Her face blurred suddenly the fire and ivory of it melting in the fire in Saro s eyes. How could I have forgotten you Saro whispered. How could I have looked at you and not known you I never forgot you the Queen said fiercely. Not for a breath. Not for a dream. She looked at her consort again crowned with fire trapped in night. She broke the mage s spell over herself. And over you. It is your power she inherited. He drew breath soundlessly. This is what you want. Yes. A tear fell glittered in the light between them. Yes she said again. I want this. I want you here in my thoughts. In my wood. You fought your way past the mage s spell to find us here. You still have that much power. Free yourself. For my sake. And for yours. His face grew quiet then. He was still looking at the Queen and she at him until the green wood and the golden light seemed to become the world in Saro s memory that held all time and no time within it. He loosed the Queen s hand finally touched her lips with his fingers. Then he looked at Saro. I thought I knew what sorrow is he said. Now I must leave you and now I know. The rich still light around them turned silver with the smoke of smoldering trees. Atrix knelt among the oak roots his eyes closed his hands moving futilely over the thick living bindings that held Talis to the earth. The prince s body seemed to be disappearing in a weave of root the ground crumbled slowly beneath him opening into darkness under the tree. A word leaped out of Saro the mage s face strained and desperate lifted sharply. For an instant the unmasked face of the Hunter the Queen s pale haired consort stunned him. Then he rose swiftly as the Hunter his hounds swarming out of shadow and leaf rode as if to run down the mage and the prince behind him and the oak itself. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 116 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html Atrix flung up a hand before the dark wave of hounds broke against him. Ilyos he cried. Wait The Queen s consort gave him no more time. The mage turned to fire a burning circle around the oak shielding Talis within it. Saro racing the hounds plunged into what stopped them: There seemed no great difference between the mage and what burned beneath a simmering pot. Her mind flowed into fire she heard its voice its secret feathery language. The oak roots under her bare feet moved away from her as if she too burned. She shook fire out of her hair as she knelt beside Talis. A root shifted he slid a little deeper into the earth. A sound jerked out of him as if he felt himself falling and Saro froze. She stared down at him hearing the hard startled pound of her heart. Talis she said but he did not answer. She gripped the roots over him desperately and heard the oak s ancient dreaming voice. Trouble in the wood bone into tree hold deep holdfast bone into wood breath into fire deep bone into root bone into wood human into dreams hold bone and dream deep in the root No she said to it. Beyond the fire she heard a hound yelp sharply the ground shook. I want this human. You have no use for him. I must bury him deep where no human eyes will ever look. A root tightened across Talis chest. He flinched gasping for air too heavy to breathe. Sweat rolled down his face. She touched his cheek gently and he moved again. One eye was crusted with blood behind the shattered lens his other eye fluttered open stared at her senselessly. She turned back to the oak keeping her voice and hands calm despite her terror patting Oak as if it were a weeping mincer or a kitchen dog. I am Saro daughter of the Queen of the Wood and I want this human back. What can I give you in return The fire billowed too close she pushed it away as if it were a windblown tapestry and it settled back. The oak was silent the wood was not nor was the color of the fire always familiar. She tried again. Tell me what I can promise you. You are very old and he is too young to bury. All his dreams will be too young. He was given to me I will ask the Queen to come and sit among your roots and comb her hair and sing The words came out of a song she remembered as she spoke she heard the Queen singing to her. The oak roots shifted slightly. The Queen. She will come if I ask. The Queen of the Wood. She will come with her crown of gold and her golden comb and she will sing to you and braid your leaves into her hair. The Queen of the Wood The roots around Talis eased began to pull away from him bury themselves again in the earth. He struggled murmuring incoherently trying to sit and straighten his lenses at the same time. The lenses slid out of his shaking hand dropped. Blood pooled in his eye ran down his cheek. He wiped it with his sleeve and winced then blinked Saro clear through blood and hot shimmering air. Saro he said tentatively as if the ring of fire blazing with mages lights worked such changes on her face that he no longer recognized her. But his hand knew her his fingers found her wrist circled it tightly. Saro Yes she said. He groped for his lenses to see her more clearly then stared down at them. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 117 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html The shattered lens of her dark vision struck her mute there seemed suddenly too much to say and again no words with which to say it. She put her hand to her mouth. I thought he killed you. Nearly. In my cauldron I thought you died. He slid the lenses on looked at her. A word moved in his throat he spoke it after a moment. You saw this In my cauldron. I saw the I saw my father. I saw this happen. But I could not speak I went to you but I could not speak She felt the tears hotter than the fire burn in her eyes she felt herself trembling. He stared at her still gripping her wrist. I had to say this. But I could only say my name I heard you. His voice shook. He put his arm around her drew her close so close she felt his heartbeat his unsteady breathing against her hair. You were down in the kitchen learning magic because of me You were kind to me she said. He made a sound of wonder or pain his hold tightened. I did nothing Your eyes saw me. She paused gazing back into those strange bleak years. No one ever saw me she whispered. They saw a dirty pot or a clean pot. I saw myself like that. I did not remember where words came from. I never needed them until I saw the Hunter I saw death She pulled away from him suddenly remembering. And I saw someone else in the cauldron crying out to warn you. But I never knew I never knew who it was or what word she cried until now. He made the little inarticulate sound again. She cried sorrow he said. He took her hands bending over them she saw the blood in his hair where he had struck the oak. She felt his lips on her fingers and then his cheek. The fire roared over them suddenly color melting through it he lifted his head swallowing. Atrix. How can he still be fighting How can he have the strength He rose with an effort catching his balance against the oak. Atrix is the fire. It s my father fighting him. Fighting against the spell. My mother wants my father to stay in the wood with her. I don t understand. He leaned dizzily against the tree staring at her out of one good eye. Why must he fight Atrix Wolfe for that Atrix would not stop him. Does he just want Atrix dead Or is there something more to that spell than just Atrix and your father He reached out to her as she began to fray into flame. Saro My father knows me now. She touched him still. Wait. But reappearing on the other side of fire she almost did not know her father. The Hunter s horse and hounds had disappeared. Her father stood among the trees. Instead of horns he wore a flaming crown of oak branches. His hands were webbed with twigs and leaves his feet were rooted to the ground. His skin had hardened darkened his acorn eyes reflected the fire that was Atrix Wolfe. The mage did not fight as fire he engulfed every flare of power that Ilyos threw at him. Her father s battle never stopped except for the moment when Saro appeared freeing herself from the mage s fire and they stared at one another. Saro saw her mother watching from the green shade. Her face held the still intent expression she no longer wept. Her face changed color with every flash from her consort s hands and burning crown. She did not take her eyes from Ilyos but as Saro came to her she reached out pulled Saro close to her. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 118 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html What is he doing Saro breathed. Why is he still fighting the mage Her mother did not answer only watched as each gesture her father made drew another leaf among the lightning weaving through his hair another ring of bark around his skin. The boughs crowning him seemed to arch closer and closer to the mage s fire as if to drink from it as fire streaked from the branches leaves formed in its wake hard and bright as jewels at first then slowly flushing with life. His arms were growing stiff rising arching bending more and more slowly his fingers long and slender branching with new twigs. He stopped moving finally both hands upraised. His face was still visible planes and hollowed contours of bark his open eyes his mouth. He said Atrix Wolfe. The fire drew together slowly shaped the mage. Talis stood behind him clinging to the oak. The mage his face waxen in the sunlight did not take his eyes from Ilyos. He stumbled against a root swaying with weariness and almost lost his balance. He spoke finally heavily Is there no other way None said the Queen s consort. Atrix looked away from him then to the Queen. She met his eyes her own face white within the wild fall of her hair. None she whispered her voice as dry and brittle as falling leaves. Atrix looked back at Ilyos. Sorrow he said his voice shaking and lifted his hand. Bark ringed Ilyos eyes and mouth smoothed his body until there was only a suggestion of what had been human in the knots where branches lifted away from the trunk and in a vague profile that seemed in the dreaming light at last to have grown peaceful. Saro moved. Her bones seemed heavy as wood her steps as unwieldy as a sapling pulling up its roots and walking but she reached the tree finally put her arms around it. She heard the Queen say wearily Go now. No. Do not speak again in my wood. Just go. Saro still clinging to the tree turned her face saw Talis white frozen face turn to her as he stumbled away from the oak. He could not speak. He tried and then his eyes closed. Atrix caught him as he fell. Saro said nothing though she felt words gather in her secretly. She watched as sunlight burned around her the wood growing so bright and strangely beautiful that the mage with the prince in his arms having no place in it finally faded away. Twenty three Atrix stood on Hunter s Field. The Queen s vanishing wood had left him there the green mist of leaves and the lovely light fading around him then showing him a startling reflection of them: the wide green field across which his shadow stretched endlessly and the dazzling late afternoon light which drew the shadow of the King s castle across half the field. He looked around a little dazedly expecting the crags and harsh winds of Chaumenard. Then he settled Talis more securely in his arms to take one last step into the castle where he could finally see how much damage his twisted making had done to Pelucir s heir. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 119 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He could barely see to take the step. Sun streaked across his eyes burned painfully his heart too seemed scored with fire. He wanted to turn to stone where he stood a dark monument to the dead on Hunter s Field. He wanted to return to the Queen s wood bury himself in the ground over which the Queen walked and never speak or think again. But he could not turn to stone with the prince of Pelucir unconscious in his arms and he had to seek not the Queen of the Wood but Burne Pelucir. The burden in his arms was a shadow s weight it was his heart carrying all the memories of the field the sorrows of the wood that made any movement he might make futile any direction wrong. He blinked his vision clear of tears or weariness or light whatever blinded him and saw the Hunter. The Hunter stood in the light as if he had just been made forged out of night and fire and the raven s eye his horns holding not only the dark moon but reaching out to swallow the setting sun in the sky. He seemed in daylight an impossible spell for Atrix to have cast or for any mage he belonged to no one and all of Atrix s battles meant no more to him than the upraised swords of warriors he had left splintered in the grass around them. He did not even look at Atrix. His dark gaze and the eyes of all his hounds were on the prince in Atrix s arms. Atrix felt all the fierce and icy winds of Chaumenard sweep through him at once. His shout so loud it was at first soundless and then shattered windows in the castle drew faces to the walls and turrets. He heard answering shouts as guards saw what stood in daylight on Hunter s Field: the Hunter and his maker and the heir of Pelucir motionless in the mage s arms. Atrix turned away from the sun hid Talis within his shadow on the grass. Then he pulled apart his making. He drew the fire out of the horns and scattered it across the field. He sent the dark moon spinning into the sky where it hung like a dark eye watching expressionless. He felt the ghosts of Hunter s Field rousing around him then and loosed the hounds among them. Pulling at an arm or dragging down a horse and rider they snapped at memory at air. He drew ravens out of the Hunter s mind and sent them swirling around the Hunter so that when Atrix grasped his horns there was only a mass of feathers beneath them jabbing heads and dark wings beginning to fleck with blood. He held the Hunter s horns and shaped a starving deer beneath them: They dwindled to carry time and famine instead of the hidden moon. He swept away the ravens and looked into the Hunter s eyes. The Hunter stood again in light carrying the new moon and the ancient fires in his horns his hounds at his knees his horse as black as night beside him. All of Atrix s power had troubled him little more than dead leaves blowing against him. Atrix staring at him trembling asked helplessly Who are you Out of what battlefield of the heart did I summon you Xirta Eflow. The battle trumpets of Pelucir sounded from the castle. The gates swung wide Burne Pelucir led an army of household guards and guests and scarred seasoned warriors onto Hunter s Field. They flowed into a single line spanning the field behind the King. Atrix heard their secret fury and dread clamor across the silence. The Hunter scenting it turned and mounted his dark horse. He paused his dead moon eyes holding Atrix s eyes. Drawkcab he said. I am what you see when you see Atrix Wolfe. His hounds streaking like shadows across the windblown grass he rode to meet the King. Atrix stunned for a breath felt his own name shock through him in a heartbeat so powerful and painful he thought his heart had broken. Then he reached into his dreams to shape a making that would stop the Hunter on Hunter s Field. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 120 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html He made it out of leaves and light and warm scented air so still that time seemed to end within it. He made it of the golden shadows of white deer and the gold in their eyes and in the leaves lying in a pool of sunlit gold around the oak. He took the paths of sun and moon wound them together ivory and gold and braided into them the dreaming noonday shadows the misty shadows of the moon. He took the fierce beauty in the owl s eye the flight of white doves soaring into light the leap of hare beneath the moon the lightning tangled in the golden oak. He reached backward into memory beyond the endless winter night and found buried behind the Hunter s eyes all he had loved in Chaumenard. Barren crags and ancient forests winds scented with honey wolf wildflowers swift water so pure it tasted like the wind deep snow lying tranquilly beneath moonlight summer light cascading down warm stone under sky so bright it held no color: These he put into his making. Tranquil nights he spent within stone listening to parchment pages rustle around him while the stars turned overhead the magic in young mages eyes quick and lucent as flame he spun out of memory into magic. He took the Healer s powerless past and turned it into power: the newborn animals in his hands trembling with their first breaths the faces of children who roamed with him their eyes alive to every color every shadowy movement in the underbrush their voices calling him Healer his healing hands. Shapes he had taken in his long life mingled together as swiftly as his body remembered them: the white owl in winter the golden hawk ferret and weasel and mink stone wind the tree smelling of sun soaked pitch water thundering over stone endlessly falling the stag that drank the water the White Wolf. He remembered faces he had loved of friend and lover teacher and ruler their eyes speaking his name Atrix Wolfe beginning to smile he worked that name in their eyes into his making. He fashioned with what came to him what had freed itself out of his heart so quickly he did not know what he shaped. He only knew that something grew out of him blazed brighter and brighter in his eyes until trying to see his making to set it free on Hunter s Field he could see only light. He turned blindly standing it seemed in the eye of the sun. Then he heard the odd silence on the field as if around him no one moved no one even thought. The light faded at his sudden fear he began to see again a rippling corner of Talis cloak his hand lying in the grass. Color returned to the world: green the black of his shadow the prince s face staring up at him out of one unbroken lens and one lens splintered and flecked with blood. Talis swallowed but he could not seem to speak. Then he smiled and Atrix saw the magic quick and lucent as flame in his face and the name his eyes gave back to the mage. Burne s army still lining the field was spellbound it seemed they stared at him unharmed but unable to move or speak. Then Burne Pelucir broke free of the spell rode across the field alone. Atrix glanced swiftly around: The only shadows he found were human stretched long by the setting sun across the blazing grass. He said to Talis Where is the Hunter Where shadows go the prince said elliptically. He pushed himself up slowly clung dizzily to the ground trying to steady it under his hands as he sat. Burne reached them. Like Talis he seemed stunned by something staring at Atrix he could not speak. Then he looked at Talis and found words. Where s your other eye It saw too much in the wood. Did you leave it there He touched it and winced. No. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 121 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html I can heal him Atrix promised. Burne dismounted knelt next to Talis. The mage drew their eyes in their silence again he heard the stillness that had fallen over the field. He searched it with his thoughts wary perplexed. Where is my making Gone Burne said. When we could see again there were a few shadows on the ground. Horse a hunter hounds. Then they became shadows of deer and ravens and a tree. And then they burned away. But I made something else the making that destroyed the Hunter. Where is it They looked at him wordless again. Burne spoke at last. There was nothing else he said. There was only you. Talis dreamed. He was in the keep opening a spellbook that had no maker s name on it. The spells were simple precise written for beginning mages. On each page was a single word the name of an object for contemplation. Wood he said and became wood. He turned a page. Stone he said and became stone. Fire he said and became fire. He turned pages spoke words each clear and unambiguous: water light leaf and became water light leaf. He felt the morning sun on his hands between words. The door to the room stood open unguarded no ghosts moved along the walls. He felt each word in his mouth listened to it as he spoke melted into it easily and then became himself again. He turned a page. Saro he said the first ambiguous word and woke. He opened his eyes saw noon light sliding down the silken hangings at his chamber windows. Then he saw the mage seated beside the window his head in his arms on the casement asleep. He wore a long loose robe that Burne had given him a shade paler than the warm light falling over him. Talis lay still watching him seeing the mage in the field shaping himself into all the magic in the world at once each shape strange and wild and more beautiful more haunting than the last until there was no room anywhere on the field or in memory for the Hunter or the ghosts of Hunter s Field. Talis stirred finally groped on the table beside the bed where he kept his lenses. The broken lens was whole again. He put them on remembering Atrix s hands lightly touching his bloody eye the back of his head drawing pain out of him spinning memory into a dream and dream into sleep. His healing apparently had extended itself to Talis lenses. He stood up too quickly grabbed for the table and clung to it until the dark receded. Then he walked carefully to the window. Atrix He touched Atrix s shoulder. The mage woke slowly pulling himself out of some bottomless well of sleep. Straightening he blurred a little into stone and light as if his human body were an arbitrary shape and too stiff now for comfort. I fell asleep he said surprised. There s no need for you to sleep on stone. I got used to it. I had a dream about your spellbook Talis said and Atrix looked at him silently his eyes streaking silver in the light. That the words in it simply meant what they said nothing more. That it was no longer dangerous. It s not Atrix said. He rose dropped his hand gently on Talis shoulder. I was looking through it just before I came in here to see you. You were dreaming of the mage in the keep file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 122 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html as I dreamed about you once using that book. Strange Talis breathed. It seems so simple for something so powerful There are no simple words. I don t know why I thought I could hide anything behind language. He turned Talis face toward the light with his fingers and studied his work. You came within one word of losing that eye he said grimly. If not your life. Saro Talis said softly thinking of her within the ring of fire. I woke up and found a tree trying to bury me and Saro talking making bargains for my life with an oak root. Even now it seems like some very peculiar nightmare. It was just that Atrix said with feeling. I couldn t free you. The oak refused to give you to me I was the enemy within the wood. He stopped abruptly Talis saw the memories well into his eyes stark and terrible before he turned away looked out over Hunter s Field. The bone beside his eye began to ache the first touch of pain. Talis rested his brow against the cool stones watching the wood above the field. I wonder What Atrix said after a moment. About Saro. There are so many things I wish I could ask her. But I don t think the Queen will permit anyone human into her wood again and Saro would never come back here. I will never see that wood Atrix said softly except in dreams. But you found the Queen s child for her and you found me and your heart found its way into her wood. Talis was silent feeling the dry lick of fire again behind his eye. Not always he said. He turned away from the wood touching his lenses straight. Thank you for fixing these. I was curious Atrix said why you wore them how much you could see His face no longer haunted looked gentler but something of all the shapes he had taken of hawk and wolf and wind seemed very close to the surface. Talis looking at him caught a dizzying glimpse of power and freedom that he would never find in Pelucir. Where will you go he asked not wanting to hear filled with a sudden hopeless longing to follow the mage into all his wild magic. Back to the wolves I ll return to Chaumenard eventually. But not to the wolves. He touched Talis again lightly as if he had heard beneath the question all that Talis did not say. I find I like to heal. It s what I ve done in some fashion for twenty years. But first I promised Burne something. The last time you promised him something it was your life. I know Atrix said. I reminded him. He seemed to sense the sudden jarring tangle of Talis thoughts he added dispassionately I did not want to run from anything again. Yes but Burne said that the mage who cast that spell on Hunter s Field twenty years ago vanished with the Hunter. His head bowed slightly turned away from the light to meet Talis gaze. Burne is wrong. But he is far more interested in my life. He told me that he had never imagined what could be done with magic since all he had ever seen were your uncontrollable spells and my deadly sorcery. He asked me to stay and teach you. He did. Talis gripped stone as they floated suddenly and settled again. The bone beside his eye was pounding. You re staying. Yes. Thank you. He loosed stone to grip the mage. Thank you. It might lay a few ghosts to rest Those in the keep are gone he added. The walls were quiet around me when I worked. file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 123 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html You left no room for shadows. Except in the heart. Atrix s eyes strayed again to the green field. Burne asked me why I didn t do that twenty years ago. He said even Riven of Kardeth would have been stunned into submission. If I could have done it I would have. I wonder when in the past twenty years I learned You used the words we gave you on that battlefield. I should have used a different language. He drew Talis away from the light took off his lenses. Fires receded under his gaze his calm face grew slowly distant a memory an ancient stone the face of the wind the Wolf. Sleep now. Talis dreamed this time of a still wood oak trees standing in the rich light remembering and dropping their memories one by one a leaf here there to the ground. He woke again at evening and remembered the Hunter the sharp edge of night the bone white scythe of the moon. But when he went to the window the field lay peacefully in his blurred vision and the moon was full. A square of light from a high tower fell onto the grass. The keep window he realized: Atrix was up there for no one else would go there. No one ever goes there There was a tap on his door supper he assumed and called but no one came. He rose blind in the darkened room and opened the door. His heart saw before he did: the pale shining hair long and wild like her mother s the skin as pale as birch the long elegant bones of her face that seemed to belong to something that ran free in secret places and spoke a different language. She carried his supper on a tray. He took it from her wordlessly. When she met his eyes he wondered how he could have ever forgotten that dusty gold the color of ripe acorns. She said simply No one in my mother s wood knew if you were still alive. So I came here to the kitchen to ask. They knew. They always know. He still stared at her holding the tray between them. You came here. I didn t think you would ever come back here. I m used to this world she said. Come in. Please. Stay and talk to me. He glanced into the darkness the fire he coaxed from a candle sputtered blue and died. She looked at it as she entered flame bloomed under her eyes in candle after candle all around the room until again they were circled in fire. Entranced he turned slowly feeling as if she had enclosed his heart within her magic. In the kitchen there was always a fire awake watching with me. I learned how it speaks before I remembered words. She sat down on the rumpled silk at the foot of the bed still wordless he stood watching the candlelight brush an opal s fire into her hair. Then he remembered the tray and set it between them on the bed. She looked around the room curiously. Things in this world don t change unless you change them. Do they in yours Colors change. Things appear then become something else. You know. You were there. Not long enough. To know that I mean. She looked at him her eyes as clear and golden as wine in a cup. Long enough she said to know other things. He drew a deep breath. Yes. It was not easy to return here. You helped giving me a file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 124 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html mystery. Her brows crooked a little he wondered if in either world she had learned what in both worlds she had been. I gave you something Something to think about. The missing spellbook. Oh. She nodded remembering. The King was shouting at you. I never used it so I brought it back. You never I couldn t remember how to read. The undercooks read it to each other like a cookbook. But it didn t work for them. He stared at her. Then how did you learn all that magic down there She was silent he saw a memory shiver through her. My father. I had visions of him the Hunter with his burning horns and his dead eyes. He woke the magic in me that I had learned so long before. I didn t remember him I was so frightened of him I only knew the kitchen. Her voice shook too many memories were crowding into her eyes. He reached out quickly took her hand held it against his lips and then against his heart. You saved my life. Even Atrix Wolfe said that. I wanted so much to see you again to talk to you. I hoped you would talk to me she said and he saw the long shadow cast across twenty years of loneliness in her eyes. So many of the words I know belong in this world not my mother s. So many things I know she would not understand. But I thought you might. No one else knows both worlds. Yes. He held her hand more tightly in both of his. Yes. No one else but you. Though you know more kitchen words than I do. Pastry she said her face quieting again. Scrub brush. Mince. Pluck. Spit boy. What They turn the spits over the fires and feed the fires and sleep next to them. Their eyes become fire and their hearts. He gazed at her entranced again. There are so many things I don t know. How you found me in the kitchen she said. How you found the spellbook in the keep. How you found your way into my mother s wood. How much you saw in that cauldron of yours. And how you lived through all the days and years down there. Will you tell me that And what happened that night in the human world when the mage stole my father out of our world. Will you tell me that I will. Or he will. And why after all that happened to you and to her the Queen let you return here. Her hand slid gently from his hold. My mother did not want me to come she said slowly. But she did not stop me. She said that she heard your heart calling out to her sometimes and she began to understand how she gave you something to love and then took it away again. He looked away from her then his empty hands wandered over the tray toyed with bread broke it. He tried to speak there seemed no words for what his heart had glimpsed and no real world to say them in. She said that if I could find a way to you I could come. She paused watching him. Eyes speak she said softly. Hands pulling swans apart file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 125 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming Patricia 20McKillip 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html speak. In all those years I could not speak I learned so many languages. His eyes rose again caught hers wide questioning. How did you find your way here I needed to she said simply. Do you want me to come again He opened his mouth to answer. Then he answered her without words. She took the tray back down to the kitchen later knowing that the tray mistress would be counting scratches and the plate washers would still be at the sinks and the head cook debating tomorrow s meals and everyone picking at leftovers. She walked down the stairs and watched their faces turn toward her grow wondering mute as if they were all under some enchantment and only she could break the spell. She said Tell me all your names. scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away 2004 v1 html proofed by an innocent bystander and formatted by AnneH file: G Program 20Files eMule Incoming P... 20 20The 20Book 20of 20Atrix 20Wolfe.html 126 of 126 10 15 2004 10:13:49 PM

Literature & Fiction;Geography & Cultures

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Aspirin Robert Lynn Myth 04 Hit Or Myth B24B36B7 3B81 439A 838B 9CCB24BD58C8

History;Geography & Cultures

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